by Lauran Paine
“Maybe,” agreed Ben. “But it seems to me that should be up to her.” He drew his horse in close, stepped up, and sat there, turning the cigar around in his fingers. “It takes a pretty good man, sometimes, to sweat out a bad hand when he’s dealt one. Any man can just up and ride away.” He turned his horse, kneed it down off that little knoll, and when he got down to the flat again, he reined up, flicked ash from his cheroot, and sat there listening to Case Hyle’s animal coming down behind him.
When the younger man drew up, Ben turned and said from a perfectly impassive face: “Take the drag like you’ve been doing. And just one word of advice...let Bass come to you. Don’t you go to him.”
Case rode off southwesterly in a loose lope. Ben sat a moment watching him go, then he turned, still with that grave and impassive expression, and booted out his own animal toward the point position far ahead where Bass Templeton was slouching along as the prairie sun got higher and hotter.
But Ben Albright did not go up where Bass was. He was an experienced commander of men, so he rode back a quarter of a mile, coming in behind his niece.
When she threw him her troubled and solemn look, he merely nodded, and said — “It’s going to be hot again today.” — and kept on riding, giving her no chance to draw him into this thing that was patently riding her spirit hard.
They kept within sight of the Trinchera this day, and did not attempt to make good time. Owen Wallace and young Will Johns cursed and stormed their way through that thorny undergrowth, chousing thirsty critters forward.
It was another idiosyncrasy of longhorns that, given the least encouragement, they will hide in shadowy bracken. Owen and Will used plaited drover’s whips to pop them out of these places, while all the time their tempers got increasingly shorter and shorter.
Ruben, jolting along in the dusty wake of the drive, instead of being his usual disagreeable self, sat up there tooling his team along and singing “Lorena” at the top of his off-key, crackly old voice. He hadn’t seen such a splendid battle of Titans since the war — and for this he was grateful to Case and Bass. The fight had reaffirmed his faith in this younger generation that men could still fight so fiercely and competently. He was not even worrying about that single sack of flour remaining, which must now do until they got to the border, and which would fall far short of being adequate to this.
* * * * *
They made a noon halt where the Trinchera’s banks were smoothly clear of undergrowth for a full mile northward, the result of a bank that was as flat as the land on both sides and over which flash floods during the spring had repeatedly uprooted and washed away every growing thing excepting that wiry, hardy, and perennial forage grass.
Here, Owen and young Will complained about the rips in their clothing and ate in a silence that was near to sullenness. Here, too, Bass Templeton stood beside his mount eating with his head down, and Case Hyle, farther back, ate the same way.
Atlanta and her uncle sat together in the shade created by their saddle horses. Twice, the beautiful girl looked up from anguished eyes, and quickly looked down again.
Only Ruben seemed entirely normal as he worked. When this meal was finished, everyone was relieved to get away from the wagon, where that tense and uncomfortable awkwardness was thick enough to cut with a knife.
Atlanta, lingering at the stirrup, was softly spoken to by Ben.
“Ride with me,” he said. “Don’t push things. Let time do what words never can do, girl. Come on.”
They rode off together.
Bass Templeton rode straight out to point position again and Case Hyle spent a little time helping Ruben clean up, letting the herd go on past until the drag came on. Then he too got astride and joined the drive.
They were now close to twenty miles north of Lansing’s Ferry, and because this other vital thing was in their minds, none of them had a single thought about those settlers and their creek-side town.
Once though, Ruben was twisting to expectorate over the wagon side, and thought he saw horsemen far back. This surprised him, so he strained to see through the heavy dust. But those riders, if indeed they were riders at all, faded out where the Trinchera made a quick bend, jutting tangled creek growth between Ruben and what he’d thought he’d seen.
He looked at the Albright riders who were farther out. They were all slouching along with the hot sunlight beating over them, unmindful of anything to their rear. He looked back again, when the drive was far enough along for those riders to come out across that clearing where they had nooned. They did not appear and Ruben gave it up. Sometimes the heat did that to a man. He recalled he’d seen Yank cavalry during the war when it’d been only bone tiredness and his imagination.
He forgot this little interlude and looped the lines at his brake handle, tilted his hat forward to shade his eyes, and tried to doze, but a stray thought came. Mr. Ben had been so absorbed by the fight between Hyle and Bass Templeton he’d forgotten to raise hell about Ruben being late with breakfast. He faintly, slyly smiled over this. Then, off on his right by the creek, came a blistering roar of profane anger. Ruben opened one eye.
Owen Wallace was coming out of a particularly bad brush tangle, riding bent far over and holding his hat in one hand. As Ruben watched, Owen halted, shook leaves and twigs loose, crushed his hat on his head, and turned just as three steers burst clear with Will Johns popping them every jump with his whip.
* * * * *
The day wore along as many other days just like it had worn along — hot and humid and discomfortingly sticky. It was full of the rank smell of animal sweat, and every now and then the silence was broken by the protesting bawls of the cattle.
Stationed at the point, Bass kept pushing his steady way north. Down the herd’s right side rode Ben. On the far left, a mile farther out, rode Atlanta. In the drag, hard to see because of lazy dust, came Case, his job taking more and more work as the heat grew greater, leg weariness began to bother the animals, and just plain sulky laziness caused some critters to hang back.
Ruben’s team knew precisely the correct distance to observe, keeping far enough back from the critters so as not to cause them any uneasiness. They plodded along, white foam working up suds-like under collars, along flanks where traces rubbed, and around their britchings, while again Ruben tried to take a nap.
It was, in every respect, a typical hot day on the trail up out of Texas across the Staked Plains to the hungry north and its booming Kansas markets.
Finally, where clearer creekbank appeared, Owen and Will had a respite. They rode along, some two hundred feet apart, with rawhide whips coiled in hand, watching the nearest cattle leave the water for the onward press of the main drive.
This cleared bankside was not very long, though. Where willows, cottonwoods, and plum thickets grew, they began closing the distance that lay between them and the herd, closing in so that they would be in position to turn back the breakaways again. For a while none of the steers tried to get into the thicket, though.
Owen loped on and was slightly in the lead of young Will, determined to prevent a rush for the shade before it started, when a sharp sound came that wrenched Ruben upright upon his wagon seat, gasping and choking for air. He’d heard that unmistakable sound many, many times. It had never ceased to cause a frantic pounding of his heart. Now, he ducked first one way then another way, craning for the source of that flat, ripping sound. He saw nothing on either side of the wagon or behind it, either, so he sprang back into forward position and strained ahead.
Then he saw, not the source of that single, slamming rifle shot, but the effect of it.
Will Johns’s horse was standing riderless, looking askance at something in the grass. Owen Wallace was also sitting perfectly still up ahead, looking blankly back where young Will lay. As Ruben watched, Owen turned his horse and walked it back, stopped, swung down, and stood there staring. He seemed dumbfounded. Then Owen let
off a keening shout, drew his hand gun, and fired it twice into the air.
Ruben fumbled at releasing the lines, taking them off the brake handle and flipping them, urging his startled team into a bolting rush over to Johns. He saw Case Hyle leave the drag on a dead run, flash past, and slide down to a halt where Owen stood, still looking stunned. Farther out, Ben had reined around. He now sat stiffly erect, looking back down the land toward Ruben’s plunging wagon, and ahead of it, where Hyle and Wallace stood beside their animals. Ben was too far out to have heard anything, too close to the bellowing herd. But now he wheeled about and came loping back, obviously drawn by the stiff stance of those two riders beside Will Johns’s empty saddle. He yelled to Ferdinand to stay with the herd.
Atlanta and Bass Templeton, neither having looked back, kept on riding with the herd, unaware that anything untoward had happened at all.
Chapter Eight
By the time Ruben got there, set the brake of the wagon, clambered down, and ran across the little distance to where Case and Owen stood, Ben Albright had also arrived. He strode up with long steps and halted.
There in the trampled grass lay Will Johns. No one had to kneel and roll him over to know that he was dead. A purplish round hole in the side of his head proved death to have been instantaneous.
“How did it happen?” Ben demanded of Owen Wallace.
“I don’t know,” answered the dark cowboy, still looking bewildered. “He was behind me. I’d just ridden ahead to chouse back some critters. I heard the shot and looked back. I figured Will had fired it, maybe to break up a run for the water by part of the herd.” Owen looked down gravely. “But...there he is...dead.”
Ben kept staring at Wallace. “Let me see your gun,” he ordered.
Wallace’s head flung up. They were all looking at him. He stood like stone, making no immediate move to comply.
Then Case said: “I think he’s telling the truth, Ben. Look at that wound. Will was shot from behind. I saw Owen go loping on ahead. He couldn’t have shot Will from behind.”
Now Ruben spoke up, saying in his quick, nasal way: “Mister Ben, I seen Owen lope ahead, too. And I heard that shot. It come from south of my wagon, down along the creek somewheres.” Ruben then had another thought. “Anyway...when Owen came back and saw Will lyin’ here, he took out his pistol and give the distress signal. He fired twice in the air and yelled. I saw that with my own two eyes.”
Albright knelt at Johns’s side, thumbed back his hat, and looked a long time at the angle of that killing shot. He then pushed himself upright and looked far back along the creek.
Ruben watched this and spoke up again. “Mister Ben, half hour or so ago I thought I saw horsemen trailin’ us. They appeared to be stayin’ in the plum thickets, though, and I wasn’t sure.”
Case Hyle swung back across his animal, reining away. He said to Ben: “You’d better come with me.”
Albright nodded and turned from the body. “Ruben,” he ordered, “make camp! Owen, go fetch Bass and my niece. Let the herd drift to feed.”
Riding together, Case and Ben Albright went south, side-by-side. Neither of them spoke until, near the creek, both dismounted to tie their horses and scout ahead afoot.
Then Ben said: “I don’t understand it. Why young Will? Surely he had no enemies up here, and I don’t believe he had any enemies anywhere who’d hate him enough to trail us this far.”
Case had a suspicion but he kept this to himself. “I’ll go down through the thicket to the creek, then angle back and forth,” he said. “You take the west side.”
They went carefully along in this manner, Case covering the most ground. Down here there was absolute silence, although lowing cattle could be heard in the distance and now and then a scolding brush linnet flew away as they skulked along.
“Ben!” Case called after a while. “Come down to the creekbank where I am. Over here!”
Albright came, pushing tangled creepers and whipping willow growth aside as he advanced. Case was standing in dripping shade almost entirely hidden from view when Ben got down there. Case stepped forth and pointed down at the spongy earth. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. By their tracks, four men had crossed the Trinchera here. None of their horses were shod. All the hoofs were large and had sunk deep in to the spongy soil.
Albright examined the prints a while, threw his glance on across to the Trinchera’s far side, and finally looked calmly around at Case, saying: “I’m getting an idea. What do you make of it?”
“The same thing you do. The same thing I thought when we were riding down here. But what’s got me stumped, Ben, is why?”
“Yeah...why?”
“Not just because we tried to buy flour from them. Surely not because we wanted to pay them to ferry the chuck wagon across. It’d have to be a better reason than those.”
Case turned, studying the land to the south. He plucked at a leaf and idly chewed it. There were no horsemen in sight anywhere. The land lay, as always, under its late springtime dancing heat, empty, hushed, and seemingly endless.
“They had quite a ride,” said Ben. “Men wouldn’t ride over twenty miles and shoot another man without a very good reason.”
“Maybe that kid that Will whipped died.”
But Albright shook his head. “Who dies from a couple of punches?” he said. “They wouldn’t kill Will just because he fought that fellow, would they?”
Case raised his shoulders and let them fall. “How do you determine how men will react? It doesn’t seem likely though. It wasn’t much of a fight.”
Ben stepped back into the shade and stood looking down at those tracks made by the horses of the rough settlers.
“From behind,” he said after several minutes of thinking and studying the area. “Whatever their reason, a man doesn’t shoot from behind.”
“No.”
They stood on for a while longer, both thinking, neither speaking, that creek-side humidity building up around them and the whispering rush of water making its sad, sad sound.
“Let’s go back,” said Ben. “We have to bury Will.”
“And...?”
Ben looked around, his expression stern, his pale eyes like creek bottom pebbles. “I want to know the why of this. You and Bass and I will ride to Lansing’s Ferry.”
Case spat out the leaf and went back through the undergrowth to his horse without saying anything. They were astride, bound for the distant wagon, when he said: “Ben, send someone for the soldiers at Fort Alert.”
Albright kept on riding. He made no reply to this until they were back with the others. Then, handing his horse into Ruben Adams’s care, he said to Wallace: “Owen, I want you to ride for Fort Alert. You know where it’s located?”
“Yes. From here it’s at least forty miles northeast,” responded the swarthy cowboy.
“Take a fresh horse and go right now. Fetch back someone to look into this. You’d better say we need a cavalry company.”
Wallace didn’t move. He had his hard, black eyes fixed upon Ben. “You find something at the creek?” he asked.
The attention of the others came alert, awaiting Ben’s answer to this. They had wrapped Will’s body in an old blanket and rolled it under the wagon out of the spoiling, fiercely hot sun rays.
Ben saw Will’s body there and continued to gaze at it as he said: “Yes, we found some horse tracks where four men crossed the Trinchera heading back south. Unshod, big-footed plow horses.”
“Ahhh,” said Bass Templeton. “Settlers. Those men from Lansing’s Ferry. But why, Ben? Not over that little two-bit flurry between Will and that tomfool young settler who tried to run off a lousy four head.”
“Who knows why?” Case said, and started along to turn loose his horse.
Atlanta turned a little to watch him pace along. Ruben, too, was concerned more with Case than with any of the others
.
With his back to them, Ben said: “Make a grave.”
Owen Wallace went to the remuda where Case was off-saddling. He looked swollen with anger. “Hyle, while I’m gone, pick off one of those settlers for me, will you?” He said more under his breath, his voice pulsing with the peculiar kind of blind and unreasoning hatred he was capable of. He snaked out a fresh animal, saddled it, and flung across its back. “I don’t like to leave,” he said, addressing Case. “I know what Ben’s got in mind. I saw it in his face. I’d like to stick around and be in on that.”
“On what?” queried Case, stepping away from his grounded gear, gazing at the dark, flat face above him.
“Ben Albright...he’s his own kind of law,” Wallace answered. “He’s not going to wait for no Yank soldiers.” Then he reined around and went spurring away toward the creek.
As Case watched, Wallace came to the water and did not even slow, but hooked his horse hard, making it leap far out and land with a tremendous splash. Case thought he would not like to be a horse Owen Wallace was riding when Wallace was upset or in a hurry.
Case returned to the wagon where the others were, and joined Templeton and Ruben in digging a narrow, long hole close to the willows where afternoon shade somewhat ameliorated the intense heat that made this undertaking doubly bitter.
Bass Templeton did not look even once at Case until the grave was finished. Then he shot a quick look around to say: “So those tracks were made by unshod horses?”
“Yes, unshod,” Case confirmed, and then moved along to the creek as Templeton walked away. Case got down upon his knees, removed his shirt, scooped up water, and began to wash his upper torso. He heard no one approaching through his own noise, but when he stood up to let the sun dry him, Atlanta was standing back a short distance watching him. They exchanged a long look.
“My uncle wants you to saddle up,” she said very soberly. “Case...?”
“Yes’m?”
“If you go back there...it isn’t going to help Will at all.”
