The Santa Fe Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “I am so glad Father bought your cows and hired you and your friends to go with us to New Mexico,” said Naomi.

  “So am I,” Nell said. “Nothing as glorious as this could ever happen in England.”

  “I’ve read some about England,” said Gavin. “I seem to remember the knights of the Round Table, dragon slaying, and such.”

  “Horse feathers,” Nell replied. “The knights are fat old men who wear powdered wigs and sip tea. The dragons—if there ever were any—are long since dead of boredom.”

  Gavin McCord laughed until there were tears in his eyes, while Naomi looked reprovingly at her sister.

  “Father would take a strap to you,” said Naomi, “if he knew you were spouting such twaddle about jolly old England. An Englishman has his pride, don’t you know?”

  She spoke with an exaggerated English accent, and the two of them burst into fits of laughter that startled the cows at the tag end of the herd. Gavin’s sense of humor got the best of his natural shyness, and he laughed with them. After that, the conversation flowed more easily.

  “Tell us about Texas,” the girls begged.

  And Gavin did. They gave him their undivided attention, and when he slacked off, they begged for more.

  “Tell us about the Indians,” Nell pleaded.

  “You’re likely to meet both Comanches and Kiowa before we reach Santa Fe,” said Gavin. “If I tell you too much, it might scare you all the way back to England.”

  “No,” they cried in a single voice. “Tell us.”

  “I reckon the Comanches are the worst,” said Gavin. “They’ve been givin’ Texans hell for as far back as I can remember. They’ll stampede a herd and then ambush the riders who are tryin’ to round ’em up: They stampeded this very herd one night, while I was out in the bushes…”

  His voice trailed off, and when they sensed his embarrassment, they wouldn’t leave him be.

  “Why were you out in the bushes during the night?” Nell wanted to know.

  “Yes,” said Naomt, “I thought you watched the cattle at night.”

  “We don’t all watch the cattle all the time,” Gavin said defensively, “and there will be times at night when you’ll want to head for the bushes. But don’t do it. There may be a Comanche or Kiowa there waiting for you.”

  “Should I have to go to the bushes at night,” said Nell, “I shall find you and have you go with me.”

  Naomi laughed. “So will I.”

  They were full of mischief and enjoying themselves at his expense, but Gavin became dead serious, and when he spoke, they listened.

  “Anywhere along this trail, we’re subject to Indian attack. Neither of you are to move about in the darkness after turning in for the night. It could get you shot.”

  They stared at him with frightened eyes, and it was Nell who finally spoke.

  “But suppose we have to…have to…”

  “Roll out of your blankets and squat right where you are,” Gavin said.

  “You mean that, don’t you?” Naomi said.

  “Every word,” said Gavin. “On the frontier, there’s more to lose than your privacy. Such as your hair or your life.”

  That sobered them, and the drive went on. Reaching what appeared to be a fourth tributary of the Neosho, Woody waved his hat and the riders began to mill the herd. Gonzales reined up his teams near the water, and Pitkin brought his wagon up directly behind the chuck wagon. The herd wasted no time getting to water. Gonzales and Pitkin began unharnessing their teams, while the riders unsaddled their horses. Nell and Naomi unsaddled their own horses, and the cowboys watched in admiration. The Pitkin women were making it clear they neither expected nor wanted special treatment. Gonzales wasted no time getting supper started. Pitkin approached Woody.

  “Woody, I should be standing watch with the rest of you. Starting tonight, I shall be part of the second watch.”

  “Bueno,” said Woody. “We’ll need you, as we get deeper into Kiowa and Comanche territory.”

  “What about Nell and me?” Naomi asked.

  “Maybe the both of you, before the drive’s done,” said Woody.

  The sun crept toward its daily rendezvous with the western horizon, and as the blue of the sky changed to purple, the first stars appeared. Prominent in the dusk, far to the west, lightning flickered, vanished, then appeared again for a longer time. Thunder rumbled like a distant roll of drums. The cool, damp fingers of a breeze touched their sweaty faces, as it swept in from the west.

  “There’s a storm buildin’ over yonder to the west,” Woody said.

  “It’s a ways off,” said Vic. “It may not reach us till sometime tomorrow. Might even rain itself out before it gets here.”

  “Winds gettin’ up,” Nip observed. “There’ll be rain before dawn, with thunder and lightning a-plenty.”

  Just our luck,” said Rusty. “Two days out of Independence, and we likely got us a stampede comin’.”

  “There must be something we can do to prepare ourselves,” Pitkin said. “What?”

  “When it gets closer—when we know for sure we’re in for it—it’s every man in the saddle,” said Woody. “On stormy nights, there are no designated watches. Nobody sleeps.”

  “What would you have us do?” Nell asked.

  “When it looks like the herd’s about to run,” said Woody, “I want both of you in the wagon. While I’m obliged for your ambition, a stampede is no place to cut your teeth. If the herd takes a notion to run, we’ll have to head ’em, if we can, and that means some hard riding. I saw a rider’s horse go down before a stampedin’ herd once, and we had to gather up what was left of the hombre with a shovel.”

  His words had a profound effect on Naomi and Nell Pitkin.

  “We’ll stay in the wagon,” Naomi said. “Perhaps you should join us, Father.”

  She was serious, and Pitkin seemed torn between anger and laughter. But his sense of humor won out.

  “I fear I am as inexperienced as either of you,” said Pitkin. “If there’s a stampede, with any serious riding to be done, I shall stay out of the way.”

  Pitkin grinned and the outfit laughed, appreciating his frankness. By midnight, there was ample evidence that Nip Kelly’s prediction was about to come to pass. The gentle wind from the west had grown in intensity, sweeping heavy gray thunderheads before it. Lightning shot golden barbs from the cloud mass, and thunder became an ominous, continuous rumble. Woody and the riders were all in the saddle, circling the restless herd. The cattle were on their feet, milling, bawling their fear and frustration.

  “Get ready,” Woody shouted. “They’re goin’ to run.”

  One blaze of lightning flared into the next, until the sky was light as day. The rolling thunder reached a peak, sending forth a clap that seemed to shake the earth. It was more than enough to set the spooked herd in motion, and like a thundering, bawling avalanche, they lit out toward the east, running with the wind.

  3

  Even with the riders anticipating the stampede, they were unable to head the herd, for the running cattle had fanned out almost immediately into a front half a mile wide. Right on the heels of the stampede, the rain came, turning the dusty prairie into instant mud. As the riders rode madly, seeking to head the lead steers, Woody’s horse slipped and went down. He hit the ground and rolled, not completely escaping the murderous hooves of the rampaging longhorns. A hoof struck him in the back of the head.

  He was brought to his senses by the rain falling in his face. The herd had long since disappeared, and the only sound was the patter of rain and the fading rumble of thunder. Woody got to hands and knees, and then shakily to his feet. The storm clouds were breaking up, and a timid first-quarter moon had appeared. Woody began looking for his horse, hoping the animal hadn’t been caught up in the stampede. Suddenly there was the sodden thud of hoofbeats.

  “Rein up and identify yourself,” Woody said, his hand near the butt of his Colt.

  “Nip Kelly,” said a voice from the dark
ness. “I caught a horse runnin’ loose, and I was hopin’ his rider hadn’t been hooked out of the saddle and trampled. Is he yours?”

  “I can’t see him that well,” Woody said, “but he’ll do. Have you seen any of the other riders?”

  “No,” said Kelly. “I was ahead of you, but I think the others was on the far side of the herd. I’ve never seen a herd fan out so fast. The front must have been three hundred yards across.”

  “I hope nobody got caught in front of it,” Woody said. “We’d better see if we can bring them together.”

  The wagons and the camp had been spared, and slowly but surely the riders all made their way back. Some of the horses had been raked by horns, and had to be treated with sulfur salve. After the wind had died, Gonzales had erected one of the canvas shelters and there was hot coffee for the muddy, bedraggled riders.

  “I have learned one thing tonight,” Pitkin said. “There is much about the frontier that one can only understand through experience.”

  “You’ll learn some more tomorrow,” said Woody. “All of us—except for Gonzales—will be roundin’ up cows.”

  “I shall do my share,” Pitkin replied. “How far do they customarily run?”

  “Depends on the intensity of the storm,” said Woody. “Right after this bunch lit out, the thunder began to fade. We shouldn’t be more than two days roundin’ ’em up.”

  “You’ve been hurt,” Naomi said, as Woody knelt by the fire.

  “My horse slipped, and before I could get out of the way, a cow kicked me in the head,” said Woody. “A pretty stiff headache, but I’ll live.”

  “Medicina in wagon,” Gonzales said.

  “Get it for me, please,” said Naomi. “We doctor the horses, and we shall doctor the riders, as well.”

  She filled the second coffeepot with water and hung it over the fire. When the water was hot, she cleansed the gash on Woody’s head, bandaged it, and soaked the bandage with disinfectant.

  “Tarnation,” Vic said, “if I’d knowed this little lady was doin’ the doctorin’, I’d’ve fell off my horse.”

  “I didn’t fall off my horse,” said Woody, with some resentment. “The horse slipped and fell, makin’ it just a mite difficult for me to stay in the saddle.”

  There was considerable hilarity, Woody joining in. Gladstone Pitkin marveled at their ability to laugh about an incident that might have cost a man his life.

  Gonzales had breakfast ready before first light, and by the time the first golden rays of dawn painted the eastern sky, Woody had all the riders in the saddle searching for the stampeded cattle. They had ridden less than a mile when they sighted the first bunch.

  “Might not be as bad as we thought,” Rusty said. “There must be two hundred of ’em over yonder.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too soon,” said Ash. “We might have to track down the rest of the varmints in twos and threes.”

  Since Woody had included Gladstone Pitkin in the roundup, Nell and Naomi had been determined to go. A few head at a time, they began sighting more cattle, and the Pitkins performed surprisingly well. The sun rose in a cloudless blue sky, and by noon, Woody estimated they had recovered a third of the missing longhorns.

  “It isn’t as difficult as I had imagined,” said Pitkin.

  “Sometimes you get a break,” Gavin said. “A herd that’s been spooked by a storm is more likely to run just a mile or two, until the storm lets up. On the other hand, if you’re runnin’ ’em dry, and they’re mad with thirst, the varmints will likely run till they drop, or until they reach the water they’re smellin’. Even the smell of rain that’s ridin’ the wind, from a storm a hundred miles away.”

  “Then a thirst-crazed stampede in the desert could be far more disastrous than what we have just experienced,” said Pitkin.

  “It could,” Woody said, “because the wind is nearly always from the west or northwest, and if there’s rain anywhere between us and the Pacific Ocean, the herd will likely run toward the smell of water.”

  “And that wind is going to become more intense at night,” said Pitkin. “Won’t we be increasing the possibility of a stampede, if we drive them at night?”

  “Maybe,” Woody said. “It’s a calculated risk. There’s less wind in the daytime, but there’s the sun beatin’ down, suckin’ moisture from man and beast. You’ll see, once we’re crossin’ this desert.”

  There were fewer cows in the bunches they found during the afternoon, and a quick tally at sundown left them with less than half the herd recovered.

  “There’s been sun all day,” said Ash Pryor. “Another day of it, and there won’t be a lot of standin’ water from that storm. Them critters ought to come driftin’ back to this stretch of river.”

  “Yeah,” Nip said, “unless they run too far. This ain’t the only tributary from the Osage. They could’ve drifted north.”

  “We’ll give it another day,” said Woody. “Now we’d better drive our day’s gather to camp. As far as the others are concerned, we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “I am fortunate to have an outfit that has been through this kind of thing before,” Pitkin said.

  “We have done that,” said Rusty. “We lost the jug-headed varmints three times on the way from Texas.”

  “It’s amazing that you were able to find them all again,” Nell said.

  “We didn’t,” said Gavin. “Actually, we started the drive with a few more than the herd we brought to Independence. Be it horses, mules, or cows, you can’t drive critters across open country without losin’ some.”

  “I suppose that’s the realistic way of looking at it,” Pitkin observed.

  “Once we reach your holdings in New Mexico, we’ll see that you get an accurate head count,” said Woody. “You don’t pay for cows you don’t get.”

  “While I appreciate your generosity,” Pitkin said, “I would be taking advantage of you and your companions. Had I hired someone else to drive the herd, I would have then been obliged to pay you for thirty-five hundred head, and with less experienced men, this same stampede might have been even more costly.”

  Woody laughed. “Pit, without bein’ aware of it, you’ve adopted the code of the West. Aside from owlhoots and renegade Indians, a Western man will go hungry before he’ll take what he believes is unfair advantage.”

  When they reached camp with the partially recovered herd, Gonzales had supper just about ready.

  “Shuck your saddles and let your horses roll,” Woody said. “We’ll all have time to eat before dark.”

  The sun had been hot, the day long, and the grateful horses took the time to roll in the grass before going to water.

  “By God,” said Vic, “I smell dried apple pies.”

  They had just finished the last of the pies, when the sun dipped below the far western horizon. The first watch saddled up, as early stars twinkled down from a sky that rapidly changed from blue to deep purple. His back to a wagon wheel, Ash Pryor took out a harp and began to play a lonesome melody.

  “That’s beautiful,” Naomi said. “What is it called?”

  “I dunno,” said Ash. “Daddy used to whistle it.”

  “He couldn’t carry a tune in a jug, when it come to singin’,” Rusty said, “but he sure could whistle.”

  Ash drifted from one lonesome ballad to another, each as nameless as the last. There came suddenly the far away moan of a prairie wolf. The harp became silent in mid-melody, as they listened for a repetition of the chilling sound. It came again, rising, falling, then dying away to silence.

  “God,” said Vic, “I hope the varmints ain’t after our cows.”

  “If they are,” Nell said, “what’s to be done about them?”

  “Nothing,” said Woody, “as long as the herd’s scattered. We can’t very well protect the cattle still running loose.”

  “Plains wolves generally ain’t a problem,” Nip said, “unless there’s a really bad winter and game is scarce. But I reckon they could be temp
ted by good Texas beef.”

  But the wolves remained silent, and at first light, the riders began their second day of searching for the scattered herd. They quickly found more than a hundred head of cows that apparently had returned to the closest water they remembered.

  “We’ll have to spread out,” Woody said. “Those we don’t find today, we may not find at all.”

  The outfit had been separated for less than an hour, when there was a shot. Quickly the outfit responded to the signal, and they found Ash Pryor near the remains of a cow.

  “I reckon this is what quieted them wolves,” said Ash. “They didn’t leave much, but I sent a pair of coyotes skitterin’ into the brush when I rode up.”

  “It’s only one animal,” Pitkin observed. “It could be worse.”

  “Yes,” said Woody, “and if we don’t round up the rest of our herd, it may well get worse. Two wolves could have killed this cow, but there could be a whole pack of them by tonight. The varmints have that much in common with buzzards. Somehow they get word to others. Let those cows run loose long enough, and every damn wolf within a hundred miles will be after them.”

  “That’s gospel,” Gavin said. “We’d best put the rest of today to good use.”

  “Gavin,” said Woody, “you come with me. We’ll cross this stretch of river and ride on to the next tributary. The rest of you continue on beyond where we quit the search last night, but not for more than another five miles. It’s unlikely they ran any farther east, and the only other possibility is that after the storm, they may have drifted south.”

  Gavin and Woody rode across the shallow tributary and headed north to the next one.

  “I only hope the herd split and some of ’em headed north,” said Gavin. “That would explain why they haven’t gathered along that tributary where we’ve been searching.”

  “For a fact,” Woody agreed. “They’ve got to have water, and these tributaries of the Osage are still the best source.”