Reckoning at Lansing's Ferry

by Lauran Paine

  Chapter Ten

  Ruben had his big graniteware coffee pot sitting on the stones at the edge of the fire. He hopped around, filling four cups, and when the three returning men came forth from the direction of the rope corral, Ruben’s long, thin mouth cut a quick grin across his cheeks. He laughed in a way that plainly said he hadn’t felt easy being all alone at the campsite with Atlanta, and that softly lighted distant grave, through the watch hours of this warm night.

  “I’ll fetch you some dry pants,” he said to Ben. “Here, drink up...the coffee’s good and hot.”

  “Never mind the pants,” responded Ben, dropping down and reaching out for the cup. “I’m near dry, anyway.” He took a swallow of the coffee and leaned his shoulders against a wagon wheel, looking around. “Been quiet like this all night?” he asked.

  “Quiet as a church, Mister Ben. Quiet enough to hear a Comanche step on a twig a quarter mile out.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of Comanches,” muttered Ben right before he yawned.

  “No problem with the herd, either, Mister Ben,” Ruben advised his boss. “Ferd came in a little while ago. You didn’t have no trouble in town?”

  “No trouble, Ruben. Their town marshal, Conrad Beal, will be out here tomorrow afternoon or evening. So, for now, we’re to lay over for a day, maybe two.”

  “Sure, Mister Ben. The critters need a little rest anyway.”

  Bass Templeton, swishing his coffee and gazing down into it, said: “Ruben, it sure would help if we had a little dram of spirits in this black coffee.” He looked up at the drive’s cook.

  Ruben, over behind Ben, scratched his ribs and made a shocked scowl after glancing at his boss. “Not on a drive,” he said. “You know Mister Ben’s orders. No whiskey drinkin’ on the trail.”

  Bass looked down into his cup again. He glumly nodded at this admonition. Then he shot another look over at the cook. His gaze was sly. “No law against a man taking precautions against snakebite though, is there?”

  Smiling, Ben got up, put aside his cup, and without a word went around the wagon to his bedroll. They heard him drop down there, grunt his boots off, and lay back. He let off a long, loud sigh.

  Case Hyle refilled his cup and sat down again, legs crossed under him, face thoughtful, and his thick shoulders hunched forward.

  Ruben gazed for a while upon the two big men sitting in deep silence, before he scrambled under his wagon, scuffed a moment or two in the dust, and emerged to spring upright with a bottle in one hand and the forefinger of his other hand held over his lips. He moved forward and carefully measured out a trickling of this precious whiskey into both of their cups. Then he slipped back under the wagon to restore the bottle to its hiding place.

  The three of them sat on, sipping and saying nothing.

  Ruben poked at his little fire that was slowly dying. His proddings only produced a little sifting of sparks. Finally, he said: “Sure miss young Will. You know, one time he told me about artillery fire durin’ the war levelin’ their home and killin’ his folks.”

  “Damned Yankees,” growled Templeton.

  “No,” said Ruben quickly. “No, it was our cannon, Bass. He told me the barrels were plumb shot smooth and the shells fell a half mile short...smack dab on his folks’ place.”

  Bass drank and swished the liquid in his cup and didn’t speak again for a long time. He seemed to have suddenly become very aware that he was sitting beside Case Hyle. He drained his cup, put it down, turned, and got up. “It’s been a long night,” he muttered, and went off toward his bedroll.

  Ruben put his bright, raffish stare upon Case. “See,” he said. “Bass don’t carry no grudges.”

  Case let this pass. He said: “How was Miss Atlanta after we rode away?”

  “All right I reckon. She got into the wagon and didn’t come back out. I made her coffee, but she didn’t want it.”

  Case turned this over in his mind and stood up. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said to Ruben, then stood up and moved over to his blankets.

  Fully clothed, he lay back to consider the heavens and wonder in his mind if Atlanta’s refusal of Ruben’s coffee did not have something to do with the fear he felt was in her. He thought of other things, his mind drifting aimlessly as a tired man’s mind often does, and had no idea when sleep came, or how long he’d been asleep, when the dull, throaty smash of a six-gun shot brought him back to full consciousness with a pounding heart. He reached for his own pistol, rolled off the blankets, and sat up. Another shot came, then a flurry of them, and after that high, whooping yells in the pit of the westerly night.

  Over by the wagon Ruben Adams let off a bawl of frightened alarm. He was a dimly visible blur, moving jerkily against the bronze glow of the firelight coals.

  West of Case, the lanky frame of Bass Templeton came whirling up off the ground to stand a second in crouched bewilderment, then sink as swiftly down to earth again.

  Case struggled to clear sleep’s deep dregs from his senses and locate those gunshots. They were off in the west, but they were shifting, moving, never twice erupting in the same place.

  Ben Albright’s roaring shout crashed over those other sounds. “Stampede!” he cried. “It’s a stampede!”

  Case felt the earth begin to quiver out where he lay. The air seemed to reverberate, making it impossible right then to determine the direction those panicked animals were running. Shock waves filled the roundabout night and that chilling thunder of two thousand animals with their wickedly sharp horns blindly running was increasing steadily.

  Case sprang up and ran on to the wagon, calling out for Atlanta, a knot in his stomach. Then she was there, hastily dressed, her thick hair cascading darkly over her shoulders. Her face in the light of the moon appeared white with terror and her eyes stood out as black as the pit of the night.

  Bass Templeton came up at the same instant Ben rushed around to the others. Case said loudly: “From the west. Someone is stampeding them toward us...over us!” He did not wait for Ben’s orders. He caught Atlanta roughly by one arm and wheeled away, running on for the creek-side thicket, and beyond it to the waterway itself. Back a short distance, came Ruben, his crippled gait impeding him only slightly. Farther back Ben and Bass were running.

  Those gun shots were closer now. The high-pitched yells of excited riders rose up through the crash of thunder. Case battered his way straight through the underbrush to the water’s edge, still tightly holding onto Atlanta. Arriving at the bank, he said quickly: “Keep hold of my hand. I know you can’t swim, but this is the only way. No matter what, don’t break away from me. Now let’s go.”

  They went down into the current, Case bracing his legs sturdily against its suck and pull. Atlanta stepped over to him, her hand locked with surprising strength to his.

  Crashing their way to the water behind Ruben, Ben Albright and Bass Templeton fought through the undergrowth, came suddenly out upon the bank, hesitated only a second, then lunged ahead into water up to their hips. Ruben had paused upon the bank, gasping, before he finally walked in. Consequently, he was the last man in. He had both arms outstretched as far as possible, clinging to a spindly willow that bent ominously and moaned at his desperate hold. As the water swept Ruben’s feet out from under him, the willow strained low, near to breaking, before Ruben got his footing and stood up again, shaking all over.

  Case squatted low to peer out beneath the underbrush along the creekbank. In this position, he sighted gun flashes right before he saw the frenzied press of dull red bodies appear out of the darkness. As he stared, the leaders of the stampede struck the chuck wagon. He watched in disbelief as the wagon rose up, teetered a second on two wheels, then crashed over onto its side, spilling everything in it upon the ground. The sound of the splintering of the wood echoed through his head.

  But then his attention was drawn to those long, wide, and graceful, but very deadly horns glist
ening in the moonlight as the longhorns headed toward the Trinchera. So closely packed were those rampaging steers that the constant click and rattle of those horns striking, sliding over each other, coming hard against solid objects, made a chilling sound, more frightening than even the gunshots farther back.

  Case straightened up, turned, and put his lips close to Atlanta’s head. “The wagon is gone!” he shouted. “They’ll hit the underbrush now.”

  Just then Ruben let out a yell as the willow broke, and they all turned in time to see his flailing arms beat frantically upon the water’s surface if only for a moment as he was swept up in the current heading south. In a twinkling, he was gone in the trembling darkness.

  Simultaneously with Ruben’s disappearance the first wild steers, forced ahead by the animals behind them, struck into the thicket, tearing up willows and snapping wild grape runners as though they had been twine. The first longhorns went a full fifty feet before the matted undergrowth held them hanging while other animals piled up against and over them.

  Case took Atlanta ten feet farther out into the water. Here, the current thrust turgidly against him, pulling at his legs, eating at the gravelly shoal where his boots were planted down stubbornly. Atlanta still clung to his left hand as she bobbed in the water. She was panting with fear. Upon the sandy shore, dead ahead, a maddened, red-eyed appeared. They could see in the moonlight that he was leaking blood from a dozen deep gashes and that at sight of Ben, who had remained close to the creekbank with his gun cocked, he dropped his head, let off a bellow, and pawed once. Ben’s gun hand flashed red. The steer stood there, staring dumbly. Then he collapsed, shot dead-center in the forehead where his hair whorl was.

  Other steers were bawling deafeningly as they threshed and fought one another in the thicket. Against the high sky the stiffly topped cottonwoods shook while lesser trees swayed wildly then disappeared as they were uprooted by the solid shock of those hundreds of big bovine bodies piled up.

  Case was rigid, watching for animals that might break clear and make it into the creek. He was not even conscious that the stampeders were no longer firing or trying to encourage and prolong the stampede until, off to his right, he saw a small group of run-down cattle appear upon the bank. These animals stood with heaving ribs and lolling tongues, their glistening hides oozing blood from passage through the underbrush. They stood still, though, swinging foamy muzzles left and right but making no move to go into the water.

  He waited several minutes before slowly making his way back toward shallow water, one foot at a time and drawing Atlanta with him. She kept her balance until, six or eight feet farther on, one foot hooked under a buried snag. She screamed as she fell. Case braced himself, tightening his grip around her hand and wrist, preventing her from being swept away as Ruben had been. She came up close by him, gasping, coughing, frightened. A little locket lay exposed between the hardness of her breasts, torn free from beneath her blouse. It reflected the moonlight, drawing his attention downward briefly.

  “Case,” she panted. “Save yourself.”

  He pulled her steadily in. “It’s shallow here. Don’t let go!” he warned her. Then, when she was up against him, Case put both arms around her, holding her to him, feeling the tremor that passed the full length of her. She braced backward to see his face. Then she put up both hands, caught his face, drew it down to hers, and kissed him fiercely upon the lips. His arms tightened until her breath burst raggedly against his cheek. He met her tumultuous fire with a savagery of his own. Then they turned, his arm still supporting her, and made their way cautiously toward the bank.

  With their backs to the couple farther out in the Trinchera, Bass Templeton and Ben Albright saw none of this. Ben had his handgun up, alert for any steer that might make a break and head for the water. A few did appear, then a few more, and finally the creekbank was lined north and south with panting longhorns. But the madness was out of them. The animals were spent and weary from their charge. They simply hung there, stiff-legged, to hold back the rearward pressure, looking dumbly out at the humans in the water.

  It was over.

  Ben twisted in time to see Case leading his niece toward shore. He started in that direction himself, still holding his gun hand high and taking careful steps. Behind him, Bass saw Atlanta off on his right with Case Hyle’s arm tightly around her. He stood for a heavy long moment watching the couple make it to shallow water. Then he finally started forward.

  Those steers farther back began to fight the underbrush, to turn and push against other animals farther west. Here and there a few animals broke out of the thicket and went shambling back the way they had come, tails wringing from the torment of thorn-pin gouges, slavering mouths emitting a low and hoarse bawling.

  A slight dawn breeze stirred a ripped piece of the chuck wagon’s canvas, making it ripple and flop upon the ground. The longhorns nearest this new cause for panic, dropped their heads menacingly, bawled, and went jogging away. An hour earlier this spooky sight would have sent them headlong. Now they were too run out.

  Soon dawn came to illuminate the land with its washy paleness, to give substance to the air with its powerful cattle scent and its dusty heaviness. Somewhere, a long way off, a horse whistled in its distracted way, separated from the other horses and anxious about them. There was no answering neigh for a while, then, off in the dim east across the Trinchera, came a reply to this first call.

  Case, just breaking clear of the creek-side tangle of smashed growth, heard those calls. He estimated where each horse was, before pausing to say to Atlanta: “We’re sure afoot now.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it. “But we’re alive, Case. I wasn’t sure a while ago that we would be.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They stood there in solemn silence, looking at Ruben’s wrecked wagon, at its trampled supplies and its broken bows, tongue, and tailgate. Each of them thought of Ruben.

  They were still thinking of him when Ben said: “Bass, you and Case go take your lariats and see if you can catch the horses. And keep an eye out for Ferd. Let’s hope he’s not hurt.” Albright’s bitter stare fell upon his niece. “You’d better salvage some fresh clothing,” he said, his tone crisp. Then, as the others began moving, he called to Templeton: “Find your guns...take them, too! I don’t think those stampeders will be around, but take guns, anyway.” Then Ben headed toward the creek, obviously bent upon making a southerly search along the banks for Ruben Adams.

  Without thinking, Case addressed Bass, saying: “He never lets down, does he?”

  “No,” Bass answered. “And he never forgets, either.”

  They went to their bedrolls, which they found shredded. Although their saddles, bridles, and guns had been trampled upon, they were not irredeemably mauled. Then they set off in a westerly direction together.

  Out a mile, Templeton said: “We’ll split up here. You go north. I’ll keep on west.”

  After that, Case was alone upon the pale prairie, his only ambulatory companions the run-out steers who put baleful glances upon him but did no more than trot away.

  To the north, the land broke up after a while, becoming a series of storm gashes, some deep enough to hide mounted men within. Here, Case came upon a few small bands of Albright steers that had not been involved in the stampede. But the abrupt appearance among them of a man on foot caused these creatures to bolt in a miniature stampede of their own. They were typical of their range-bred kind. They distrusted mounted men but were accustomed to seeing them. A man on foot, however, was something else again. They would run wildly at the first sight of an unmounted person.

  Case had with him his Winchester carbine, his lariat, and his six-gun in its now soggy holster. There was a tiredness in him that went all the way down to his spirit. Twice, when he encountered sweet water springs, he was tempted to lie down, just for a little while, and close his eyes. He did not, however, do this, but kept on, while all ar
ound him that first light steadily firmed up toward daylight’s yellow glowing, and objects close by and far out began to assume their everyday shapes.

  He thought of the stampede, of the men who had caused it, and there was no distinction, in his mind, between those men and the ones who had stealthily stalked the Albright herd to shoot and kill young Will Johns.

  He thought of Atlanta, too. Of the hardness of her and of that savage kiss at the creek. He knew little of women, but he did not believe that kiss had been more than a way of showing him her gratefulness for what he’d done. He wanted very much to think it meant something else, but he was a man of rare delusions. So he did not now try to read into an event what his common sense told him had never been there.

  He thought, too, of Ruben and Ferd. He heard with painful, sere clarity, Ruben’s cry as he’d been swept away. He doubted very much that Ben would be able to find him. Doubted very much that anyone would see Ruben Adams again. He was hopeful about Ferd, though, figuring he would have ridden in the opposite direction when the herd took off. Unless he had been shot by the men who had caused the stampede.

  The sun came. It jumped over the farthest dip of prairie as it customarily did in summertime, burning the last of night’s lingering haziness from the land, leaving everything clear and sharply limned and recognizable.

  Case paused upon a little rise to let that first heat work its pleasant magic upon his tired, wet, and sluggish body. He turned to look back in the direction of camp. Cattle were scattered everywhere and in bunches, grazing along contentedly now as though there had never been a stampede. Then he turned north again to study the route he must take, and at once saw, deep in the brushy arroyo on his right, an Albright horse standing stocked up and quiet, beside a stunted juniper tree.