A Trail Too Far

by Robert Peecher

  "Yes, it is," Rachel said.

  Amos Cummings did not release his grip on his daughter's wrist, but he raised up his other hand and slapped her hard across the face. Rachel fell away, but Amos jerked her wrist and brought her back to her feet.

  "Amos!" Martha called out. "Stop that now!"

  "Did you let him touch you?" Amos asked again. "Like a common whore?"

  "Amos!" Martha Cummings shouted, trying to break her husband's madness.

  But Amos Cummings raised up his hand a second time and slapped his daughter across the face again. This time he let go his grip on her arm she fell to the ground.

  "No more riding with him," Amos said. "No more riding with him, and no more leaving the camp at night. I will hogtie you in your bedroll if I have to. Do not defy me, girl."

  Amos turned and walked away.

  Martha dropped to her knees. Rachel was sobbing torrents of tears and she could not catch her breath.

  Martha stroked her hair with one hand and held her head up off the ground with the other. She shushed her daughter.

  "Ride with me in the wagon," Martha said.

  Now Amos called out to the entire party. "Harness the mules. Let's get moving."

  "Shouldn't we wait for Mr. Sinclair?" Stuart Bancroft asked. He had seen the altercation with Rachel, but he did not know what caused it and had heard nothing that was said.

  "Mr. Sinclair can catch us," Amos said. "He is not my concern."

  25

  Chess Bowman picked up Dick Derugy's head and tried to pour a little water into his mouth. Dick chocked and spit out the water.

  They were in the back of the buckboard. Already two horses had fallen out and had to be shot. The water was running perilously low. The animals were all spent. Dick looked bad. The sun had cooked his face so that it was red and blistered underneath his thick growth of whiskers. His eyes were vacant. His lips were cracked and bleeding. He didn't make sense when he tried to talk. No words formed, just grunts and moans.

  Not that anyone else was faring so much better.

  The three men had become disoriented, losing their way twice. They had to ride in circles on the second afternoon out from the Arkansas to find the evidence of a campsite that put them back on the right path. Wherever they could find them, they followed tracks from the Cummings wagon party, but the wind blew so hard that the tracks were often covered over, and the ground was so hard that the tracks sometimes did not exist at all. Following the sun was no use because it filled the whole of the sky, or seemed to. It was impossible to distinguish its arc and know which way was west until very late in the afternoon. There were no landmarks to judge direction or distance.

  Pawnee Bill and Mickey Hogg had taken to arguing with each other. Bill was for turning around. Mickey wanted to press ahead.

  "We're three days from the Arkansas," Mickey said. "We've got to be closer to them emigrants than we is to the river," Mickey argued. "If we leave the wagon and just go on horse, we'll catch them by morning."

  "Dick can't go on horse," Pawnee Bill noted.

  "I don't care about Dick," Mickey whispered. "That man is dead already. When that boy hit him in the head, he knocked his brain aloose. There ain't nothing left to do for him 'cept leave him."

  "We can't leave him," Bill hissed back.

  "Sure we can. Or we can put a bullet in him. Shoot him like you would a horse with a busted leg."

  "I'll not do neither," Bill said, and his tone made Chess look up. He could not hear what was passing between the two of them, but Pawnee Bill's tone was enough to let him know there was an argument.

  "It's down to him or us," Mickey said. "If we don't strike fast, we'll be too weak to strike."

  "What are you saying?" Chess called from the back of the buckboard. "What're you contemplating?"

  Bill and Mickey both wore guilty looks. "You best come down off of that wagon and talk with us," Bill said.

  Chess tried one more time with a bit of water, but it just dribbled out of the side of Dick's mouth. He capped the canteen and climbed down out of the buckboard.

  There was no sky out here. It was all sun. All sun just beating down and baking all that existed below it. There was no escape, neither. The desert offered nary a tree for shade. Even under the buckboard they could find no relief.

  "We're going to have to abandon the wagon so we can move faster and try to catch that wagon train," Mickey Hogg said, squinting out the sunlight as he watched Chess's face for a reaction.

  "Dick can't ride a horse," Chess said. "We have to take the wagon."

  "We'll have to leave Dick, too," Mickey Hogg said. "Leave Dick. Leave the wagon. We'll die out here if we don't."

  Chester Bowman pleaded his case to Pawnee Bill.

  "Come on, Bill," he said. "You been with us a long time. You know me and Dick have ridden together for years. You can't expect me to just leave him out here to die in this sun."

  "Put a bullet in him," Mickey Hogg said.

  Chester glanced at Mickey, but he continued to try to work on Pawnee Bill.

  "He was at Lawrence with you, Bill," Chess said. "You can't leave a man to die who was at Lawrence with you."

  Pawnee Bill dropped his eyes to the ground and shook his head. He knew that Mickey was right. If they didn't mount up on horses and overtake that wagon train now, they'd succumb to the thirst.

  "We got one chance, Chess," Bill said. "Mickey's right. If you don't want Dick to suffer, you should bust a cap on him. If you can't do that, we should cover him with a tarp, leave him with a little water, and if he gets better maybe he can make it out of here on his own."

  Chess Bowman looked at Mickey Hogg, but Mickey was holding his face up to the blinding sky, his eyes shut against the heat of the desert sun.

  "I just can't believe the two of you would talk like this," Chess said. "Dick's our friend. He's been with us since way back."

  "He ain't been with me since way back," Mickey said. "Y'all just joined up with me a month ago."

  Mickey kicked the crusty soil with the toe of his boot, loosening some of it. He pushed it around with his toe.

  "You joined up with us," Mickey said. "And now you're talking about leaving one of us behind. That never happened before. Did it Bill?"

  Pawnee Bill looked over at Dick in the wagon. The man was unconscious. He looked like he was well on his way to a greetin' with the Devil.

  "Dick's dead already," Pawnee Bill said. "It's foolishness to leave ourselves at risk for a man who's already dead. You just got to get that fixed in your mind, Chess."

  Chess Bowman shook his head and walked away from the two men. The troubles all started when the stage pulled in at Six Mile Stage Station, when Pawnee Bill saw the daughter of that sod buster and set his mind to having her. It was those killings that led them to Spear's Hollow, and that's where they fell in with Mickey Hogg.

  And now Chess Bowman found himself stuck in a desert with two no accounts, and poor old Dick Derugy was going to be left to cook to death, no better than if the Kiowa or the Apache had got to him.

  Dick was senseless, but he was in pain. Chess knew from the way he grimaced and moaned that he was in pain. And if they left him, he'd die a sorrowful death of thirst. So Mickey fixed it in his mind, just as Pawnee Bill said he had to.

  Without a word to the others, but with both of them watching, Chess walked over to the buckboard wagon. He let down the back of it and took Dick by the collar, dragging him out of the wagon and dropping him down to the ground. He fell with a thud. Chess slid the thong off his revolver and drew it from his holster. He cocked back the hammer, took a steady aim at Dick's head, and looking away, Chess pulled the trigger and ended Dick Derugy's suffering.

  "Okay," Chess said. "You want to get after them folks and take what they've got, then let's go. But when we get them, you hold that guide for me. He's the one that did this to Dick, and I intend to cut him open and show him the color of his guts before he dies."

  26

  The big Hawken
rifle exploded, and across the small valley of the Cimarron River all those of the Cummings party could hear its echo.

  "Do you think he got something?" Martha asked.

  Amos Cummings said nothing, instead he sipped on his coffee, still too hot to drink.

  They were setting up camp at the base of the Point of Rocks, intending to stay here for two nights. The cottonwoods in the valley provided shade. The Middle Spring was running with good, clear water. The men and women, the children, and the animals were all at last equally refreshed.

  Rab Sinclair had purposely passed by camping at the Lower Spring. They stopped for an afternoon, long enough to fill water casks and water the animals at the spring that ran through the thick buffalograss, but then Rab insisted that they keep going after dark.

  "If those men followed us on the Cutoff, they'll be desperate for water," Rab told Stuart Bancroft. "They are in bad shape, if they're not dead already. They will be desperate to get to the Lower Spring. This is a place where folks usually camp for a day or two, and those men will have to. Our animals are ornery enough, but their hawsses won't leave the water. Not right away. They'd be whipped to death first. So we move on because we can. We'll camp for a couple of days at the Middle Spring. The water ain't as tasty, but it's just as wet."

  Three days later the large rock outcropping on the flat plains came into view – the Point of Rocks. The next day they arrived there and made camp.

  Amos Cummings had not spoken to Rab Sinclair, and the guide's instructions all had to go through Matthew or Stuart or one of the others. Amos had also forbidden his daughter from any conversation with Rab Sinclair.

  When they arrived four days later at the Middle Spring, the Cummings party set up camp, planning to stay two nights at the spring.

  While they set up camp, Rab went into the cottonwoods in the Cimarron valley, looking for fresh meat. Elk and sometimes buffalo were plentiful here, and it did not take him long to track a herd of elk, and firing only one shot with the Hawken he took a buck. Rab used his knife to field dress the elk and then carried it back to the camp over his shoulders.

  He gave the elk to Stuart Bancroft, and showed him how to make a mountain roast of it, spearing the meat and setting it on a stake over the fire.

  "Cut the meat into strips, dry it over the fire for today and tomorrow, and it will last the rest of the way to Santa Fe," Rab said.

  When he was done instructing Stuart on the meat, Rab rode Cromwell up the back side of the large rock outcropping known along the Trail as the Point of Rocks. There was a second Point of Rocks, in New Mexico, between Rabbit Ears and Wagon Mound, but this Point of Rocks was the last bit of Kansas they would see. Below the large table outcropping was the Cimarron Valley, a green place full of cottonwoods fed by the spring and what water the Cimarron River could offer when it was not running dry. From this point on, though, while water was still scarce it at least existed. In places the Cimarron would have decent water. There were more springs and creeks flowing down out of the mountains of Colorado Territory.

  Rab Sinclair had sat here before, when he was young. He and his father had camped at the Middle Spring with a band of Arapaho. One of the warriors had brought Rab up to the top of the Point so that Rab could see how far the cottonwoods stretched, like a giant green snake, following the Dry Cimarron. It was a beautiful sight to behold. In the distance, beyond the cottonwoods, the desert reached out in every way to touch the blue horizon. From the top of the point, it seemed that the desert was everything, and the only bit of anything that wasn't desert was the valley of cottonwoods down below.

  All the beauty in the world was right there at his feet, a cottonwood forest snaking out into the desert. Around the cottonwoods, just holding the desert at bay, were the small flowers of white horsenettle and purple sage. Even the yucca seemed beautiful, a bright green to contrast with the brown grasses of the Jornada.

  And all the ugly in the world was there, too. A gray and dead desert grassland that offered nothing but misery.

  Rab Sinclair had found misery there in that desert grassland. Every time he saw Rachel Cummings, he felt sick in his heart and sick in his stomach. It seemed an impossible cruelty to be separated from her.

  "I did not know if I would ever see this sight again," Rab said to the black faced roan. "I remember seeing it with that Arapaho so long ago. I've seen prettier places, but I've seen few as stark as this one, with all the beauty contained in a neat little strip of river valley. It's a glorious place, hawss, and I hope you'll appreciate that I've brought you here."

  Rab stood up, putting a hand on the roan, and started to jump up into the saddle, but a glance out to the east gave him a new sight. He strained his eyes to be sure of what he was seeing, and then he jumped up into the saddle where he had a slightly better view.

  Three riders, driving a couple of spare mounts, and pushing hard toward the cottonwoods, hard toward the Middle Spring where the Cummings party was camped.

  If it was Mickey Hogg and the others, they had abandoned the wagon, some of their horses, and one of their men.

  They were coming on hard toward the cottonwoods, and something about the way they rode, something about the way their horses moved, suggested to Rab Sinclair that they were suffering. It was possible that they did not stop at the Lower Spring because they did not know about it. Unlike the Middle Spring, surrounded by a valley of green trees that would tell any fool that water was nearby, the Lower Spring was more difficult to find, and the only clue to its existence was a patch of bright green buffalograss.

  If they did not know to look for the Lower Spring, they would easily pass right by it.

  But they would see the trees and know that here was water, even if they did not know of the Middle Spring.

  Rab judged the distance and decided he could beat them to the base of the Point of Rocks, to the Cummings party's campsite – but it would be a close run.

  He pulled the reins and turned Cromwell to go back down the path to the valley below, urging the horse forward with pace.

  ***

  The Cummings party was camped inside a grassy clearing within the line of cottonwoods and not far from the Middle Spring. There was no clear road here in the hard-caked sandy soil of the desert, but the space in the trees created a natural roadway that was easy to recognize, and Mickey Hogg, Pawnee Bill, and Chess Bowman followed the space between the trees into the open clearing.

  When they saw the wagons, Pawnee Bill and Chess Bowman reined in their horses. Mickey, though, had already pulled his horse to a halt. Mickey saw the big Hawken rifle in Rab Sinclair's crossed arms before he even noticed the wagon.

  Rab Sinclair was in the saddle of the blue roan. He'd ridden down from the Point of Rocks and arrived at the camp just as the trio broke into the clearing through the cottonwoods.

  "Y'all best move on," Rab said, his voice loud, but still unhurried.

  Amos Cummings was cutting meat from the elk. Stuart Bancroft and his sons were starting a fire. The three Cummings boys and Graham Devalt were filling casks at the spring. The women were all washing clothes – the first wash anyone's clothes had in many days.

  Amos and Stuart both stood up, seeing Mickey Hogg and the other two for the first time.

  "We need water," Mickey Hogg said. "We're about dead. Our horses are about dead."

  "I told you not to come this way," Rab said. "Your troubles ain't my fault. If I was you, I'd head for the Lower Spring. You passed it about thirty or forty miles back."

  They would find a water hole closer if they kept going west, but Rab did not want these men in front of him.

  "We're here for water," Mickey Hogg said. "We're dying of thirst. Move out of our way."

  Rab cocked back the hammer of the Hawken, and he slid a percussion cap onto the nipple.

  Mickey's shotgun was useless at this range. He might pepper the roan, but neither the horse nor the rider would be hurt much unless the horse threw the rider. If it came to shooting, the best bet was for Bil
l or Chester to charge the young guide. But Mickey wondered if even this strategy would work. If Rab Sinclair could keep his cool with two men charging him, he'd get off a shot with that Hawken and only one man would be charging. And that man would be thirsty and weak. None of them were in a position to fight, but the man mounted on the blue roan looked like he was ready.

  "You'll have to go back to the Lower Spring," Rab said. "There ain't water for you here."

  "It's murder!" Pawnee Bill yelled out, and by the looks of him he was telling the truth. "You let us at that water, or you're killing us. Just the same as if you lifted that rifle and fired a lead ball into my chest."

  Amos Cummings was walking forward. Rab could see him from the corner of his eye. But he did not look away from the three ruffians.

  "Mr. Sinclair, a blind man could see that these men are suffering," Amos said. "You cannot prevent them from getting to the water."

  Rab twitched his lips into a grin and shook his head slightly.

  "Mr. Cummings, you'd be wise to defer to me on this matter," Rab said.

  But Mickey Hogg had a loose strand, and he wasn't about to let go of it.

  "That's right," Mickey said. "We are suffering. We done lost one man. Succumbed of thirst. You can't leave us all to die like that."

  Amos was still walking forward, putting himself dangerously close to Mickey Hogg and the other two. The silent man sitting his horse just behind Hogg was staring hate at Rab Sinclair, and Rab noted it. The silent one, Chess they called him, was the one who'd been driving the wagon at the river, and Rab assumed he was close to the man who died. Brothers, maybe. Longtime friends, at least. Thirst may have gotten that man, but Rab Sinclair knew that it was the blow to the head from the butt of the Hawken rifle that killed him.

  "We are Christians, Mr. Sinclair. Regardless of what kind of morals you learned among the savages, we are Christians and will conduct ourselves as such. It is written in Proverbs: 'If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; if he be thirsty, give him water to drink.'"

  "That's right," Mickey Hogg said. "You can't turn us out and call yourselves Christian men. We'll die of thirst if you turn us out."