Sweat was building up on D.B.'s forehead and his palms, and he felt the tension in the room.
"How about we make it fifty cent for the whole thing," D.B. said.
Mickey looked over at Pawnee Bill.
"You hear that?" Mickey asked. "Fifty cent for a plate of beans and a case of whiskey. Now that's the real robbery, ain't it though?"
Pawnee Bill grinned. "That's real robbery," he said. "Them beans wasn't worth a penny."
"Here I am, trying to be reasonable and pay my way," Mickey said. "And these old men are looking to steal from us. Now what can you do with a thief?"
Pawnee Bill laughed. "I got ideas of what you can do with a thief."
"Y'all get," Silas Carver shouted from the kitchen. Both barrels of his scattergun were leveled at Mickey Hogg, but the angle was such that he was pretty confident Pawnee Bill would get a face full from the blast, too.
"Pick up your friend, put him in your wagon, take your horses, and get," Silas said. "I'm an old man, so I don't care nothing about dying. But if you go to shoot me, I'll take you along. So if you don't want to leave here in a box, you walk out now."
Pawnee Bill started to slide his revolver from its holster, but D.B. beat him to it, drawing his revolver out.
"D.B., get your rifle and follow them out. If they ain't out of range in five minutes, you put a hole in all four of them," Silas said.
D.B. walked to the gun cabinet on the far wall, keeping his revolver on Pawnee Bill the whole time. Silas stepped closer so that Mickey and Bill would both be sure of his shot if he had to pull the trigger. He also kept stepped to where he could keep an eye on Chess Bowman.
"Now go on and leave," Silas said once D.B. had the rifle in hand.
The two old men followed the four out of the station house and watched as they dropped Dick Derugy's limp body down into the bottom of the buckboard wagon, untied their horses and mounted.
"I ain't going to forget this old man," Mickey Hogg said to Silas Carver. "I'll be back from Santa Fe one day, and I'll be looking for you."
"Ah! I'll probably be dead by the time you get back anyway," Silas said. "Now get going before I decide to shoot you."
They watched the buckboard drive away and the two riders outdistance it, riding off to the west in pursuit of Rab Sinclair and the Cummings wagon train.
"I didn't like that one bit," D.B. said. "I don't mind saying that I was nervous as hell."
Silas laughed as he pointed the shotgun into the air and pulled both triggers, only for the hammers to fall on empty chambers.
"You'd have been a might more nervous is you'd have knowed that gun was empty," Silas said, grinning. "Now you get a horse and ride up about a mile, and you keep a good watch all afternoon. If you don't see them come back by then, we can rest easy tonight."
21
Rab Sinclair knelt down inside the line of bent grass that stretched north across the plains. There were a dozen similar lines, about four feet wide, where the grass seemed to have been pushed over.
"Travois," Rab said.
"What is that?" Rachel asked, standing beside him.
Two days out from the station house, Rab and Rachel had ridden about a mile ahead of the rest of the party, and that's where they were when they came across the strange lines in the grass. Rab, of course, recognized them immediately.
"Travois are the wagons that most of the tribes use," Rab said. "Except they're wagons without wheels. They take a couple of long poles and harness them to a hawss. Then they'll take a buffalo pelt or something and lash that to the two poles. And they can carry supplies on it – blankets, tipi, provisions. Dragging the travois through the tall grass like that is what bends it over. Usually they'll ride single file so that you don't know how many are traveling together. Six lines probably means there must have been maybe as many as sixty travois. I would make that at probably a hundred and fifty men and women, and who knows how many children. They might be chasing the buffalo. But after two years of drought, I can promise you they're suffering."
"What tribe is it?" Rachel asked.
"Probably Cheyenne. Maybe a Sioux tribe, but I wouldn't think so."
"Would they be friendly if we encountered them?" Rachel asked.
"They'd be hungry, Rachel," Rab said. "Whether or not they're friendly would depend a lot on how hungry they are."
Rab stood back up and looked to the north, in the direction that the grass bent.
"How long ago did they come through here?" Rachel asked.
"Yesterday, I reckon," Rab said. "Not more than two days ago."
"I would like to see them," Rachel said. "They must be a wonderful sight."
"Some's more wonderful than others," Rab said. "Might be best if we didn't see them."
This was Rachel's third day riding astride a horse with Rab Sinclair. She enjoyed talking to him. He had a vast knowledge of everything that now seemed important.
Rab looked back at the approaching wagons.
"You wait for them to catch up," Rab said. "You can point out to your folks what these tracks are and impress them with your knowledge. Once your family have caught up, you keep them moving along the worn path. I'll catch you back up in an hour or less."
"Where are you going?" Rachel asked.
"I'm going to make a loop to the south a ways. We should be nearing a creek, and I'd like to see how it's flowing."
Rab got back into Cromwell's saddle and rode at a gallop down toward the south, following along in the path left by the unknown Indians. He intended to make a loop to the south, but his loop was going to take him back to the east. Some time ago they passed by a rise to the south, and Rab had noted its position. A man would be able to ride up from the south without being seen by anyone following along the Trail. And the rise was tall enough to provide a pretty ample view in all directions, but especially back to the east.
It had been two days since they'd left out of Silas Carver's stage station, and Rab Sinclair had decided that if the four ruffians with the buckboard were going to catch them, today would probably be the day for that to happen. If not this afternoon, then surely tomorrow by mid-morning.
Rab did not want to risk Mickey Hogg and Pawnee Bill and the others turning up on his back trail without knowing it. So he rode south a ways and cut back east, following along the bank of a creek where a line of brush would hide him from view of anyone in the distance. After a while he came to the back of the rise he'd seen from the Trail, and he rode up the back of it at a gallop, eager to get to the top to have a look around. Near the top, Rab dismounted and dropped the reins to ground tie Cromwell.
He squatted down on one knee in the tall grass and stayed still. He did not think anyone on the Trail could notice him. The Trail was still some distance away, not even close enough that Rab could make out any more of it than a slight depression in the land, worn down with thousands of travelers.
That was how white people moved. Someone cut a path and by the dozens and the hundreds and the thousands, all followers stayed pretty well on that path. They moved from one place to another, settling in the new spot and spreading out to grow like the web of a spider.
The tribes moved differently. They followed the buffalo from one place to another. They moved in the dozens, never taking the same exact path a second time. They left the grass bent from their travois, a trace of their movement that would disappear in a few days. And when they got to a good hunting ground and killed the buffalo they would need, they left the rest of the herd for the next hunt, in a month or in a year. They stayed for a while, maybe a season or maybe a few days, and then they moved on, leaving the land to reclaim all evidence that they had been in that place for a time.
Rab was indifferent to the ways of the whites and the ways of the Indians. He had seen enough of them all to know that there were good white men and bad, good people of the tribe and bad. No race of man had all the goodness, and neither did a race have all the badness.
There were plenty of whites who claimed the In
dians were all savages and killers. There were plenty among the tribes who claimed similar about the whites – cheats who sought to steal the land from the tribes.
Rab's experience, moving freely between the two people, was that he liked some Indians and he liked some whites. There were some Indians and some whites he respected. There were plenty Indians and plenty whites he was indifferent about. And there were those among the Indians and those among the whites who, he understood, were bad men who could not be trusted to see a man's back.
Rabbie Sinclair intended to do whatever he could to be certain that these four men with the buckboard wagon never saw his back.
After a while he shifted from one knee to the other.
He looked over his shoulder a few times to be sure Cromwell had not wandered too far off. The horse was good about a ground tie, but left too long any horse would begin to stray. Cromwell was on a never ending search for clover.
"You find some clover, hawss?" Rab called over his shoulder. "You eat your clover, but stay down below the top of this hill, here."
The horse gave no answer other than to keep munching where he was.
"What do you think about that gal?" Rab asked. "She's a sight, though, ain't she? You ever seen prettier eyes? She's got her mama's eyes, that's for sure. Green like the summer prairie grass. I could set and look in them eyes for a spell, old hawss. I think she fancies me a bit, too. Two days riding beside me. I know she ain't doing it for the luxury, on account of seeing her last night in camp. Poor gal couldn't hardly walk she was so sore from riding all day."
Rab laughed at the thought of it and smiled down at the horse.
"You don't care about green eyes when you're atop a patch of clover, do you Cromwell?"
He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Rab knew he would soon miss the heat of the prairie when they got to the Jornada and replaced it with the heat of the desert.
He wiped his forehead one more time on his shirtsleeve. He set his hat on his knee and pushed his hair back and held it up off the back of his neck. The long hair seemed to make the sweat and the heat worse. In a moment he'd abandon his watch and catch up to the wagon train, satisfied that there was nothing on the back trail to see. He'd let Cromwell go at a gallop, and that would ease the heat a bit.
He slid his hat back on his head and started to stand, but in the far distance to the east a thing caught his attention, and so he stayed where he was, watching it. Something was out there, right about where the trail should be. It was moving too slow to be a stagecoach. Rab checked again to make certain Cromwell was not wandering. The horse was still fine, well down the slope of the hill.
Slowly, the thing on the horizon came into more focus, and Rab could see that there were a number of spare horses, a wagon, and two riders. More to the point, he could see that the wagon was a simple buckboard wagon.
"Tarnation," he whispered to himself. "That'll be them."
Unless the mounted men rode ahead with some speed, Rab doubted they would catch the wagon train before sundown. But how far would Mickey Hogg and his party go after sundown? How far could Rab push the Cummings group after dark?
Rab was tempted to ride out there and take on those four men right now, by himself.
If he came in from behind he might get one with the Hawken rifle before they knew he was there. And the fact was, he could only see one man in the wagon. It was possible, he reasoned, that the four might now be three, and that could be a fairer fight.
Amos Cummings would never know. Neither would Martha, nor Rachel.
But it felt something like murder to try such a thing unprovoked. Mickey Hogg and the other one, Dick Derugy, had provoked plenty when they abducted Martha Cummings, but if Rab was going to kill them for that then he should have done it when he disarmed them and beat them. The other two had no part in that, but Rab was sure if he tried them now he would have to kill all three of them – or four if one of them was on the wagon and Rab just could not see him.
"If I ain't going to kill 'em, then we'd better get on out ahead of 'em before they can see us," Rab said.
He crouched back down the hill to Cromwell, then he stood up and led the horse farther down the slope. When he was satisfied that he could mount and the hill would still obscure their view, Rab swung himself into the saddle and set off south, seeking out the tree line along the creek that would continue to conceal his presence.
Then he followed the creek to the west for some distance, retracing his earlier ride.
After some time he cut back up to the Trail. Cromwell enjoyed the freedom to move, and the horse kept up a pretty fair trot most of the way. Even so, it took Rab longer than he expected to catch up to the wagon train after he'd followed the Indian tracks back to the Trail.
Already the sun was beginning to drop, and dusk would be upon them in an hour or so.
Rab rode past the back wagons, giving all of the drivers a wave as he passed each one, but when he reached the front wagon, Amos Cummings was walking beside it while his youngest son Paul drove the wagon.
"See anything back there?" Amos asked.
"Saw that buckboard wagon and them men," Rab said. "I could only see three of them, but the fourth one might well have been on the wagon bench, or even in the back."
"Are you certain it was them?" Amos asked.
"I am, Mr. Cummings. We're a long way from anything out here. There's not even a stagecoach relay station for some distance. I can't believe anyone else would have a buckboard wagon out here. You need one of these prairie schoolers for making this journey. That buckboard ain't going to last going across the Arkansas, and them men are fools to try it. Unless they think they can find themselves a good wagon somewhere along the way."
"But where would they find a wagon on the way?" Amos Cummings asked, but he cut short the question when he realized what Rab meant. "What do you recommend we do?"
Rab grinned at Amos Cummings. "The only thing I know to do is the thing you've said I cannot do. We can keep trying to outrun them. We can stop up here a ways and switch out the teams and travel through the night. Hope they have to stop. Rest for a bit after daybreak and then push on again. If we stay out ahead of them far enough, maybe we get across the Arkansas and get clear of them. But Mr. Cummings, if I'm being honest with you, this thing is going to come eventually to them killing me or me killing them. I don't see a way past that."
Amos Cummings sighed heavily. "I refuse to believe there is no alternative."
"Some men are bad, Mr. Cummings. They're bad all the way to the ground. You can wish it warn't so, but it's so."
"Ride ahead and tell Matthew to bring the livestock to a halt. We'll push through the night."
Rab nodded and urged Cromwell forward to catch up to Matthew and Rachel, who were pushing the livestock ahead of them.
***
For the next three nights and two days, the party moved almost without stop, pushing on through most of the nights, spending only three or four hours sleeping just before dawn. They stopped three or four times each day to switch out the teams pulling the wagons. The animals were beginning to get irritable, and so were the people.
But Rab insisted to Amos Cummings that it was necessary to keep ahead of Mickey Hogg, and Amos Cummings insisted to the rest of the party that there was no choice.
Even Rab Sinclair, who could stand a long journey as well as any man, found himself suffering from exhaustion.
The young Bancroft children had to sleep in the wagons. Those who walked often fell far behind the wagons, and those who drove the wagons frequently dozed while sitting upright on the driver's bench.
The morning after the third night, the sun revealed that there had been a subtle change in the terrain. The tall grass seemed shorter here. There were patches of sagebrush and swaths where sandy soil showed. When she mentioned the change in the terrain, Rab confirmed that she was seeing something different from what they'd been traveling through for the last several days.
"We're comin
g out of the prairie and into the high plains," Rab told Rachel. "When we cross the Arkansas we'll be in the high plains, through the Cimarron desert."
Not long after noon that day, Rab Sinclair and Rachel Cummings were riding out well ahead of the wagon train, almost out of sight. It was there that Rab saw a lonely tree sitting by itself down in an arroyo. The tree was unique with a bend in its trunk. It was squat, and all its foliage sat at the top of the tree. The unique curve of its trunk and the way it grew up in an arroyo was familiar to him, and he recognized it as a landmark.
"I know that tree," Rab said to Rachel. "We'll be at the Arkansas in just an hour or two. We'll follow the river for the afternoon and part of the night, and tomorrow we will ford the river."
"Will it be a difficult crossing?" Rachel asked.
"It should not be. There's a good ford where we are crossing, and the river is surely low with the drought," Rab said. "But we will have to fill the water casks at the river, and so it will take time. Right now, any delay is our enemy."
"But surely we've left those men behind? Surely they have not traveled as hard and as fast as we have," Rachel said.
"That all depends on how badly those men want to catch up to us," Rab said. "If they think we have something that they want bad enough, they can catch us. If that wagon falls to pieces on them, and it will sooner or later, then they'll leave it. And when they do, they'll be able to travel quite a bit faster. I have no confidence that they won't still catch us."
"What do we have that they want?" Rachel asked.
Rab filled the bowl of his pipe and lit it. He was getting low on matches and was trying to spare the pipe, but he and Rachel had ridden their horses to a stop to allow the wagons to catch up, and now was a good opportunity to smoke. He puffed the tobacco a few times to get it lit.
"Wagons. Provisions. Money, if you have any. Your mama and Mrs. Bancroft, and I reckon you, too."
Rachel shivered at the thought.
"But once we get out on the Jornada, what they'll want is our water," Rab said. "And that's when it becomes most dangerous, because that's when it's not about what they want, but what they must have to survive."
A Trail Too Far Page 17
