Reckoning at Lansing's Ferry

by Lauran Paine

  Most of the cattle were on the Trinchera’s western bank. The few cutbacks, seeing this and motivated by that unique instinct longhorns possessed, were mincing along the east bank, fretfully bawling.

  Case and Owen Wallace had no trouble bunching those four critters the settlers had scattered, pushing them along to the creekbank, then forcing them into the water. They then rode up and down the creek repeating this process until the last of the Albright cattle were on their way to the west bank. Then they came together to sit in the protection of shade provided by the willows, looking out where Ben, Bass, and Ferdinand were talking to Will Johns.

  Farther north were the mounted settlers. They had in part returned to Lansing’s Ferry with that injured youth and his friends, but at least fifteen of them had not. These men, among them Charles Connelly, sat their animals in the morning’s bitter yellow sunlight looking craggily ahead where the Texans also waited.

  “I hope they open up,” growled Owen Wallace. He cursed, then spat aside before adding: “I’d like to lead out through their dirty tent town...the damned Yankees.”

  Case said nothing. He sat there waiting to see what would ensue, but, as time passed, he became more solidly convinced there would be no more trouble. From experience, he knew it was the way of fighting men to either go into action at the drop of a word, a look, a curse, or, when these things did not trigger them, to stand stiff like strange dogs while their urge to combat dwindled.

  This is what ultimately happened here. Connelly finally turned his horse and led out back toward Lansing’s Ferry, and around him dutifully trailed his mounted band. Ben and his Texans also returned to creek side, after a time. They crossed over to the west bank and, without speaking, began to bunch the cattle for the onward drive.

  Case parted from dark Owen Wallace to assist Ruben in hitching up. He saw Atlanta go past in a slow lope and he heard old Ruben’s garrulous words without heeding them. He watched Atlanta swing in to ride at her uncle’s side. He thought privately that if the girl knew men of Ben Albright’s type better, she would leave him entirely alone for several hours yet. She would know that crusty Texas tempers did not diminish readily.

  When Ruben was ready to drive on, Case got into his own saddle and ambled along to join the drag. But because their wet hides and good rest had invigorated the steers, there were at this early stage of the day’s drive no hang-backs yet. So, Case looked far ahead where Ben and his niece were riding. He saw the girl suddenly rein back and turn aside to ride alone. He gently nodded his head. In time, she would learn about men like her uncle.

  * * * * *

  Lansing’s Ferry dropped away. Midmorning advanced to near noon and dust hung above the drive. The Texans rode mechanically and the steers paced along in their same phlegmatic way, too. Ruben’s wagon creaked along through the flatlands. It was hot. They were without cover and after the water dried from their clothing, that burning sun that was upon them kept up its bitter punishment. Albright’s longhorns raised dust in dun clouds, making the men cough and the horses repeatedly blow out through their noses.

  Bass Templeton, in his traditional place far ahead at the point, looked back often. He did not seem, in Case Hyle’s eyes, to do this with the cattle in mind, for each time his gaze sought out and briefly held to Atlanta Pierson.

  Ben Albright rode easy in the saddle, a stiffness gradually leaving his shoulder points, his head beginning after a long time to swing casually right and left as he ran out his experienced look at the cattle.

  There was no water and by early afternoon this became the source of bawling among the steers. Ben loped ahead to speak briefly with Templeton, and afterward Bass ran on ahead while Ben took his position at the lead point.

  For another hour, they crawled over the heartland of this huge land dwarfed to ant-size by an overhead endless brassy sky, as well as by the timelessness of this place where a day was only the merging of dawn with hot midday, and the dwindling of that scalding heat into watery evening. Then Bass appeared far out, dwarfed to insignificance, standing upon the ground in the meager shade of his saddle animal.

  As the lead came up, Bass flagged with an upflung arm toward the shimmering east. He had found where the Trinchera curved away from Lansing’s Ferry again, and was now motioning the herd in this new direction — toward water.

  Another hour passed. The cattle scented the water. So did the saddle animals. There came to the pace of all these beasts a new vigor, a fresh and anticipatory springiness. Case felt it in his own beast. He also noticed that the drag critters were no longer shuffling along with that bovine listlessness that turned the most belligerent longhorn into an indifferent shambling hulk.

  The sun slowly went lower, laying a sullen red glow over the plain, hurting the eyes of the Texans until they came to the end of the tame prairie and encountered once more that tangled wilderness of the Trinchera’s creek sides, only up here where no settlers had thinned that profuse undergrowth, despite the relief of shade, thorn pins brought blood more than once to men and animals alike.

  Chapter Five

  They watered the herd in midafternoon and hazed it along until pre-evening’s saffron glow gilded the land with a soft-shining obscurity, then Ben passed word along that they would make the night’s camp. At once Ruben blocked his wheels, turned loose his harness horses, and set to work preparing the evening meal.

  Atlanta passed Bass Templeton on her way to the creek, tilted him a smile, and passed beyond sight where wild grapes grew.

  Will and Ferdinand stayed with the herd until Ruben beat the bottom of a pan, which was the supper call, then loped out and around the spreading critters and on toward Ruben’s cooking fire smoke that stood straight up.

  Ben rode toward the campfire, too, but in an angling way so that he intercepted Case Hyle a quarter mile out upon the plain.

  When they came together, Ben said: “You did well back there today.” His meaning was clear enough. “It could have ended like it did for Colonel Bee.”

  They rode on together, Case saying nothing and Ben pensive and seeming tired. “But it won’t go so well with the next herd through here, Case. Those young bucks were full of arrogance. That happens when you let people turn you aside. Some of them, mostly the young men, right away think they’ve beaten you some way. They get full of pride.”

  Case looked around at the older man. “Maybe,” he murmured. After a brief pause he added in a stronger voice: “But maybe Connelly’s smarter than he looks. If he is, he won’t start a war down here where he’s outnumbered by Texans a hundred to one.”

  “Ahhh!” exclaimed Ben Albright. “You’re forgetting...this is Reconstruction. Connelly’s kind has the blue-belly troops on their side. Texas is still an enemy state...she’s not back in the Union yet. The Connellys here have their arrogance...and their Union Army.” Ben plucked off his gloves as they approached camp. “But, anyway, you did well today,” he repeated, and this was as close to a compliment as Ben Albright ever came.

  He loped ahead to put up his horse.

  Case dismounted near Bass Templeton to say: “Who draws the first night watch?”

  Templeton replied without looking around: “Will. Then Ferd and Owen. Last, will be you and me. I’ll take the pre-dawn. You’ll take the dawn.” Then Templeton turned and walked away.

  Atlanta, who was yonder by the wagon, saw this. She also saw the long, considering look Case put upon Templeton after he walked out to the corral. A little cloudy, troubled look came to her face. Then Ben strode up to speak to her and she did not see Case again until later, when he’d returned from the creek, freshly scrubbed, and came along to take up a tin plate and eat. By then Bass was also eating, sitting cross-legged near the fire, and seemingly that little incident was quite forgotten.

  Ruben seemed fidgety this night. He moved with more than his customary jerkiness and there was an urgency to him that Case and Atlanta both noticed. When
Will went away and returned without water, Ruben scolded him. Young Will stood there impassively with his clear gaze upon the older man, then he took up a bucket and wordlessly went to the creek.

  Afterward, he sank down beside Case and said in a strong whisper: “Someday I’m going to up-end that cussed old mossy-back and dunk him in one of those buckets of water.”

  Ben made a cigarette when he’d finished eating. He smoked it, considering first the high, grand sweep of dark overhead sky. Then he stood, looked south-eastward, back where Lansing’s Ferry was, and for a long time in his silent way he smoked and stood like that.

  Bass put aside his plate, and reminded the men of the order of their watch. He got upright stiffly and passed along to Atlanta’s side, leaned there upon the wagon’s rough front wheel, and made a smoke.

  After standing there silently for several minutes, he said to Atlanta loud enough for the others to hear: “The nights up here are about as fine as a person ever sees.”

  Atlanta nodded and smiled, but she did not speak. She went on eating her supper.

  Ruben’s agitation appeared to increase as the men took their plates to a bucket, carelessly sluiced them off and placed them upon the chained-up tailgate before drifting along, idly smoking, thoughtlessly talking, and heading for their sougans. Ruben waited until Ben walked clear, then he clambered over the tailgate, and was gone nearly a full minute. When he came scuttling back out again his cheeks were splendidly rosy, his faded eyes glistened with expansive amiability, and his breath reeked of stout rye whiskey.

  The soft night’s lingering last paleness winked out. The heat remained, pulsing upward from the baked earth, and where sap ran among the trees and vines at creek side, there was a musty fragrance that was not unpleasant at all.

  Ben Albright was uneasy this night. He lay upon his ground sheet feeling tension in the roundabout gloom. He finished the cigarette he’d made after supper, stubbed it out, and raised up to look over the camp. Ruben alone remained by the fire, everyone else was away in darkness. A little fiery tip glowed and then dulled out over where Bass Templeton’s bedroll lay. Bass, Ben thought, perhaps also felt that indefinable cross-current of impending events. He was not asleep.

  In fact, Bass was sitting upright on his sougans faintly etched by Ruben’s diminishing little fire, looking for all the world like a Comanche medicine man. His face was darkly limned and moody. His narrowed glance was directed ahead where the willows and cottonwoods were thickest. He smoked without moving, all his attention obviously down upon something there in those yonder trees.

  Ben dropped back down. He had not seen Case Hyle and his niece strolling the hot, bland night toward the west bank of the creek. He thought only that he and Bass Templeton were being troubled by the same elusive worry. Ben put aside his hat, turned up onto his side, and closed his eyes. Whatever was coming would come, and he would face it then, but not until then.

  Where the Trinchera’s north-to-south swift passing cut at a cottonwood’s dead bole it made a softly sucking sound. That lap of water was like light music in the warm night. Nearby lay the corpse-gray trunk of a cottonwood that had fallen to earth in decades gone, its bark sloughing off to present only the smooth underside of fine-grained wood, bone dry now and as hard as oak.

  Over the plain itself there was a total stillness, which was unusual. Two thousand Texas steers did not very often all bed down simultaneously. This night though, they had. The silence was complete, except there by that deadfall cottonwood. The night’s great mystery lay on all sides. Above, stars flashed their diamond-like glow in a purple setting of moonless heavens.

  Case Hyle was conscious of the rhythm of Atlanta’s body as she strolled through all this pleasantness beside him as far as that deadfall cottonwood. There she paused to look skyward, then along the faintly lighted Trinchera waterway. She stepped forward to turn and seat herself upon that old fallen tree and then gazed up at Case, her expression made soft, made sweet by the night, and by her gentle thoughts.

  After a length of quiet meditation, Atlanta said: “I watched you this morning...with those men from that settlement, Case. You handled that very well. But I had a feeling then, about you. You aren’t like the others. There is a difference. I’m sure my uncle and Bass have noticed this, too.”

  He leaned upon a tree regarding her. His expression was thoughtful. “No two men are alike,” he said. “There is always a difference. You discovered that today, I think.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “When you went up to ride with your uncle after we’d lined out the drive on the west bank. I watched you, Atlanta.”

  She looked swiftly away from him, responding quietly: “Yes, I understand now. I should have stayed away from him.”

  “For some men, it takes a while for their temper to cool. Your uncle is that kind of a man.”

  “And you, Case...what kind of a man are you?”

  He didn’t answer her directly, but said in a fading tone: “Sometimes like your uncle. Sometimes not.”

  She arose from the log, made a quarter turn, and halted close to him. Star shine threw its filtered light across her face. He saw its flawlessness, its beauty, and he also saw unknown things deep in her eyes.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said, and this was not a woman’s curiosity. It was the kind of interest only a woman felt who was sincere in her wish to know about a particular man.

  “There’s not a lot to tell, Atlanta. I’m a Texan. I grew up beside the Río Grande. I still have kin down there...but I haven’t seen them in many years.”

  “You were in the war?” she asked softly, hesitating as she watched the willow shadows move across his face.

  He raised his head at this, put his steady gaze fully upon her and seemed to be carefully considering what he would say next. “Yes, I was in the war.” He straightened up off the tree at his back. “Did you know,” he went on very quietly, “that Texas furnished one regiment and nine companies of cavalry to the Union?”

  She stiffened slowly under his stare.

  “And that Alabama furnished one regiment and five companies. That Arkansas sent seven regiments. That Mississippi sent north a full battalion. That Louisiana sent five regiments....”

  He said all this in an impersonal manner, as though it were a page out of history that didn’t much matter now. It showed his strong streak of fatalism. It made him seem older than he actually was. She felt all these things even while what he was indirectly saying to her slowly sank in.

  “Case,” she murmured. “You’re saying, I think, that you fought against my uncle, and the others. That you fought with the Yankee Army.”

  “Yes’m.”

  She stood still and silent for a long while. Then she went back to her deadfall cottonwood and weakly dropped down again. “The others don’t know that,” she said, making a statement of it. “My uncle would fire you tomorrow...on the spot...if he knew.”

  “I reckon so, Atlanta. You can tell them, if you’re of a mind to.”

  He moved over to her. Stood beside the fallen old cottonwood watching her face.

  She swung to face him, looking very troubled.

  “No. If I told them...,” she began, but stopped.

  “A man does in life what he believes is right,” said Hyle, interrupting her, bending a little toward her. “I believed in a solid Union. I knew a lot of other Southerners who felt the same way. I was there when some of them were killed, Atlanta.” He put forth a hand, let it rest lightly upon her shoulder, before continuing. “This is not an easy thing to discuss though. Not tonight.” He stepped back bringing her upright off the log with that compelling hand upon her shoulder. He drew her in close, saying: “The curse follows a man forever, I reckon, when he stands up for what he believes in. In the North, I’m a Texan. In the South, those who know, call me a traitor.”

  He let
that restraining hand drop away. Around them night’s warmth and strangeness ran on. Closer, they stood together feeling the same confusing, the same troubled emotions. He looked down into her face with that unique slanting expression she’d seen him use before, which was so near smiling and so near irony.

  “If I was your uncle,” he said next, “I’d say to you...‘Atlanta, hate a man who wrongs you, admire a man who believes as you believe...but respect with your whole heart the man who knowingly faces ostracism and stands forth for the things he sincerely believes in.’”

  He dropped his shoulders a little, lowered his head, and cut out the night with the broad brim of his hat as he sought, and found, her parted lips with his own mouth. He stood without otherwise touching her for a long moment, then gently drew away. He stood back, unsmiling, looking down into the misty depth of her eyes, seeing them blacker than they normally were and filling with quick, stinging tears. He took her hand in his, turned, and started back toward camp.

  “Come along,” he said, as though she were ten years old. “Dawn will be here soon enough.”

  He stopped once, as they came clear of the thicket, smiled at her crookedly, and said: “Good night, Atlanta. I didn’t do that to see if I could.” Then he bowed and walked on.

  Chapter Six

  Ruben had made several excursions to his secret place in the chuck wagon. Each time he came back to the fire though, he sat with his back pleasurably leaning against a high wheel and stared into the coals. When these died, he put on more faggots and let them die also. He did this the whole night long and only once did some of his usual irascibility show. That was when Owen Wallace began to snore in a bubbling way. But Ruben did not go over and rouse the sleeping cowboy, for of all the men on this drive he was most uneasy around Owen Wallace.

  So he sat on, pleasantly glowing, alternating between dropping off and blinking awake. He heard Will come in from the plain and rouse Ferdinand Haight. Later, he saw Ferd come in and Owen go out to take his place riding around and around the bedded cattle. And still later, when Ruben was beginning to get really drowsy, he saw Bass rise up long before it was time for him to go relieve Owen, make a smoke, and sit there smoking, his face bitter as he inhaled. He saw Bass glance toward the wagon, and after that run his eyes along the ground to where Case Hyle slept.