The California Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Them run,” said Mariposa.

  “They’ll keep running,” said Gil. “This is a mighty big dose of bad medicine.”

  Nobody slept the rest of the night. They brought up their own horses, and until first light kept watch on the stolen portion of their horse remuda. In daylight they found only nineteen of their horses.

  “They missed one,” said Gil. “Maybe it’ll show up before we move on.”

  “Some o’ them Injun hosses ain’t too poor,” said Long John. “Likely bin stole, jus’ like they stole ours.”

  “We’ll take the best ones,” said Gil, “and turn the others loose.”

  Ten of the Indian mounts looked as though they might have been taken from somebody’s barn or corral.

  “Some o’ these cayuses got brands,” said Long John. “Yonder’s a pitchfork, an’ there’s a Rockin’ K.”

  “We’ll take them with us,” said Gil. “If any man claims them, he can have them. If nobody does, they’re ours.”

  4

  Gil and the outfit rode out early, pushing the horse herd. The drive would fall yet another day behind, because they still must round up the scattered cattle.

  “The longhorns didn’t seem scattered too bad,” said Van. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and round ’em up today. We lost half a day yesterday, and we’ll lose all of today. I purely hate to lose another whole day tomorrow.”

  “Estanzio and Mariposa find hoss quick,” said Pedro Fagano.

  “They did,” said Gil. “No way we could have recovered the horses any faster, without any risk to ourselves. We’re fortunate that two of our riders were only hurt, instead of killed. Not often that Comanches attack in daylight, but we can’t ever again take it for granted they won’t. From now on, those of you riding flank and drag will have to be as watchful as the point rider. We dare not let them take us like that again. Next time, some of us may die.”

  The riders who had remained in camp shouted their enthusiasm when Gil and the rest of the outfit drove in the recovered horses. Gil dismounted to face a grinning Juan Padillo.

  “Glad you and Vicente are doin’ all right,” said Gil. “I reckon you had no trouble while we were gone?”

  “We have no trouble,” said Juan. “Mayhap be some for you. Rosa come.”

  For a minute Gil said nothing, just leaning his head against his saddle. When he finally spoke, it was with a calmness he didn’t feel.

  “Where is she?”

  “Down by creek,” said Juan. “She bring remuda horse.”

  Gil unsaddled his horse, giving himself time to collect his thoughts. Suddenly he was aware that the rest of the outfit was watching him expectantly.

  “Bo, Manuel, Vicente, and Juan will remain in camp,” said Gil. “Van, you and the rest of the outfit start gatherin’ the scattered longhorns. I may be here awhile. There’s . . . somethin’ I have to attend to.”

  “I know.” Van grinned. “We saw her at the creek.”

  They saddled fresh horses and rode out. Suddenly Gil was exhausted, and it was more than just a long day in the saddle and a night without any sleep. That he could have endured, and often had. No, it was the bitter realization that, for the duration of this trail drive to California, and their return to Texas, his constant companion would be an impulsive, moody, temperamental female. While she was young enough to be his daughter, she had made it abundantly clear she had no intention of behaving like one. He grunted, slapped his Stetson against his thigh and started for the creek. He found her sitting with her back against an elm, calmly awaiting whatever punishment might be her fate. He made a silent vow not to lose his temper, lest he yield to temptation and strangle her.

  “Ah reckon,” she said, without remorse, “you are angry with me.”

  “Not so much angry,” he said evenly, “as disappointed. Disappointed that I am unable to trust you out of my sight. Why did you lie to me?”

  “Because I knew you would not let me come with you. Had I not promised to stay at the ranch, you would have had Clay chain me in the house.”

  “It crossed my mind,” said Gil.

  “Why do you punish me, when I only wish to be with you?”

  “Because,” he shouted, breaking his resolution, “a trail drive is no place for a female!”

  “You brought me out of Mexico on a trail drive.”

  “That was different, and you know it. I couldn’t just leave you there, homeless and alone.”

  “You cared so much for me then, why do you hate me now?”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said desperately. “You were just a child when I found you, and you’re not that much older now. You’re still just a child.”

  “I am not a child,” she said. “I am a woman.”

  She got to her feet and began unbuttoning her shirt.

  “No!” he shouted, turning his back on her. “Rosa, there’s more to bein’ a woman than . . . that.”

  “I know,” she said, enjoying his discomfort. “I have the rest of it too. I was little when you found me, but now I am like my madre. She was a small woman, but big where it matters. I am like her.”

  He turned back to her, trying not to notice that half the buttons on her shirt were undone.

  “Rosa, when I found you, you were very little. Didn’t your mama—your madre—ever tell you your age? How old you were?”

  “She never spoke of it,” said Rosa. “You said I was seven, and that was five years ago. It bothers you that I am young in years?”

  “It bothers me that you claim to be twelve,” said Gil, “while you have the . . . the . . .”

  “The body of a woman,” Rosa finished, “and it is you who say I am twelve. I am as much a woman as I will ever be, and you have no woman. Why do you not want me?”

  Gil almost laughed, but thought better of it. With guns or knives, he would have faced another man in a fight to the death, but this female had disarmed him. It was a Mexican standoff, and the best he could expect was a truce, to allow himself time to think. He tried another approach.

  “Rosa, I . . . it makes me uncomfortable, your feelings, when I am so much older than you. We’ll be many months finishing this trail drive, and I don’t need anything else on my mind. Especially a woman, and that includes you.”

  It was a small compromise, his alluding to her as a woman, but she was pleased and saw it as a major victory.

  “Then you will allow me to finish the trail drive with you?” she asked.

  “We’re a hundred and fifty miles from the ranch; I have no choice.”

  “You have a choice,” she said. “I know it is too far along the trail for you to take me back, and you won’t have to. You took me when I was so little, and so afraid, and I will never forget you for that. But you do not have to keep me forever. If you do not want me with you on the trail drive, then you do not want me with you at the ranch. Give me a horse of my own and I will go. I will not stay where I am not wanted.”

  She turned away and stood looking into the creek. Gil forgot she had lied to him, that he was old enough and frustrated enough to be her father. He took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. Not since that long-ago day in Mexico when he had buried her parents, had he seen so much misery in her eyes. She had put her future in his hands.

  “Rosa,” he said, “I want you to stay.”

  There was no avoiding what followed next. She wept long and hard into the dusty front of his shirt, and until she became silent, he said nothing. Then he moved away, his hands on her shoulders, and looked at her.

  “I’ll have to agree with you,” he said. “You’re no longer a child, and there are few women on the frontier. A man has his hands full, just keepin’ himself alive. Now I must look out for you as well. Disobeying an order on the trail could mean the difference between living and dying. The first damn time you go contrary to what I tell you, you’ll be sorry. I’ll remind you of this day by taking a strap to your backside. You have my promise that you’ll ride standing in your stirrups for
a week. Comprender?”

  “Comprender,” she said. “I will obey.”

  Her calm acceptance threw him, causing him to question his own judgment. Gil had begun to realize that it was not so much Rosa’s intention to irritate him as to gain his attention, to have him notice her, and that was as much the way of a woman as of a child. He had no other Mexican woman with whom to compare her, and being small in stature he had judged her young in years. But now he wondered. . . .

  While the longhorns hadn’t wandered far, they still weren’t able to get the herd ready for the trail that same day. Instead of moving out at first light the next morning, they had to beat the brush for more than two hundred head of missing steers. But as unplanned as Rosa’s arrival had been, it had made an immediate difference in the life of every rider in the outfit, for Rosa had offered to do the cooking.

  “I can’t imagine why you ever objected to her comin’ along in the first place,” said Van innocently.

  “She cook more better than Stump,” said Juan Padillo. “More pretty too.”

  “Some night in the dark o’ the moon,” said Long John, “ye gon’ lose that little gal, ’cause I’m gon’ grab ’er an’ run off.”

  None of the flattery was lost on Rosa, and Gil took it as well as he could. At least he didn’t have to fear for Rosa’s safety insofar as the men were concerned, for any one of them would have fought to the death for her. But he knew not what awaited them in the weeks and months ahead on the long trail, for the hazards were many. But in the deep of the night, his head on his saddle, Gil Austin faced reality. No danger the frontier had to offer troubled him as much as this impossible relationship between himself and Rosa. For a long time he had known that her feeling for him went far beyond that of a little girl for a caring father, but he had told himself it was a one-sided thing, a feeling that he didn’t share. But now he knew better. Unconsciously his feelings toward Rosa had begun to change, and that change had become all too evident to him. When she had offered to take a horse and ride out of his life, the very thought of it had torn him apart, and his grief had not been that of a father about to lose a daughter. His feelings for her went deeper, and were akin to her desire for him, and the whole damn affair was as ludicrous as it was impossible. He was too old for her, but if he rejected her, he was going to lose her. Somewhere along this twisted trail, or at the end of it, he had a decision to make. For one of the few times in his life, Gil was afraid. . . .

  March 15, 1850. Southwest Texas, near the Pecos River

  “Twenty-eight days on the trail,” said Gil disgustedly, “and we’ve come only two hundred miles. That’s a little more than seven miles a day!”

  “Yes,” said Van, “but trouble of one kind or another accounted for nine of those days.”

  “Not good enough,” said Gil. “We’re almost fifteen miles from the Pecos. I aim to reach it tonight, and we’ll cross at dawn, when our backs are to the sun. Before we leave the river, I want those steers to drink all they can hold, because there’ll be no water for another twenty miles. We’re going to drive from the Pecos to that next water, without a break, even if we’re on the trail till midnight.”

  “Why must we cross the river with the sun to our backs?” Rosa wondered.

  “Longhorns won’t cross with the sun in their eyes,” said Gil. “They have to see the other bank, to know where they’re going.”

  “Then why do they run at night, when they can see nothing?”

  Long John chuckled. “Gal, if ye ever figger out why a longhorn does nor don’t do anything, write it down. Ever’ cowboy on the frontier’ll pay good money fer it.”

  Even Gil laughed at that, and they pushed on. When they were within two hours of the Pecos, Gil rode ahead, seeking a place where they might safely water the stock. The Pecos was notorious for its treacherous quicksand, and its presence or the lack of it would determine their approach to the river. For a safe river crossing, Gil sought a point where east and west banks were low, without sudden drop-offs. Gil’s riding ahead to scout the river served a twofold purpose. Finding a safe crossing for the herd the following morning assured them of easy access to the water, when the drive reached the river in late afternoon. Miles away from the water, the longhorns must be headed toward the proposed crossing. Thirsty cattle might stampede headlong over high banks, or even bluffs.*

  Gil found what seemed an ideal crossing. East and west banks sloped to the water for three hundred yards, and there seemed leeway enough that even a stampeding herd could reach the water without danger. Gil rode his horse into the water, finding it shallow and without quicksand. He rode to the farthest bank and then back. Not only had he found the crossing he wanted, it would allow the longhorns easy access to the water to satisfy their thirst.

  Gil rode a mile upriver, returned to the crossing, and continued for about the same distance to the south. Finding no tracks, no Indian sign, he rode back to meet the drive.

  “Water’s low,” Gil told them. “Crossin’ should be no trouble.”

  “Much water come,” Mariposa remarked.

  “They ain’t a cloud in sight,” said Long John dubiously.

  Mariposa looked at the Cajun with what might have been contempt, and said no more. But Gil didn’t dismiss Mariposa’s prediction lightly. The Indian riders rarely spoke or offered advice, but when they did, he listened. In the west, in dry country, a man didn’t have to see the rain to find himself over his head in what had been a shallow river only hours before. While the rain might fall fifty miles away, the river just ahead of them could become a raging torrent as the result of it. The sun was noon high, and Gil made a decision. He spoke to Ramon and some of the other riders who had ridden up from the flank.

  “River’s shallow, for now,” he said. “If we can reach it after sundown, but before dark, I think we’ll go ahead and cross. Rest of you keep the herd moving, and I’ll ride back and tell the drag riders.”

  “It be hard drive,” said Ramon.

  “I don’t blame him, though,” said Van. “A storm somewhere upriver could flood the Pecos for three days, and if there’s goin’ to be spring rain, it’ll come soon.”

  Gil remained with the drag, and they drove the steers to a faster gait. As Long John had pointed out, there were no clouds, but he hadn’t caught the full significance of Mariposa’s words. The Indian had said “much water,” not “rain.” As the sun sank lower, reaching for the western horizon, there was a dirty mass of gray clouds waiting to receive it. There was a tongue of lightning, so brief it might have been imagination. Within an hour of sundown the clouds had darkened and the mass had shifted to the northwest. A cooling breeze whispered through the cottonwoods, and had the steers been long without water, a stampede would have been inevitable. Rosa followed Gil as he rode around the herd, speaking to the riders. Reaching the drag position, Gil joined Juan Alamonte, Manuel Armijo, and Domingo Chavez. Rosa rode along with them, shaking out her lariat as Gil was doing.

  “Storm’s buildin’ to the northwest,” Gil shouted. “We’re goin’ to push on to the Pecos and try to cross tonight. There may be high water by morning. Let’s hit ’em hard, keep ’em bunched, and keep ’em moving!”

  They began swinging doubled lariats against dusty flanks, forcing the drag steers into a lope, and those steers began hooking the rumps of the animals ahead. It had the desired effect, and soon the entire herd rumbled along like a slow-moving stampede. Some of the steers bellowed in protest, but they were caught up in the movement and forced along with the rest.

  “Keep them moving,” shouted Gil. “We’re going to run ’em on across!”

  He rode at a fast gallop to warn the rest of the riders, and by the time he had reached the point position, Ramon already knew what Gil planned to do. Mariposa and Estanzio also knew, and the horse remuda and the packhorses were strung out well ahead of the longhorns. Gil slowed his horse and rode alongside Ramon, ahead of the loping longhorns.

  “The leaders may try to drink, Ramon, soon as they h
it the water. We got to keep ’em bunched, keep ’em moving. When they’re all across, they can water from the other bank. We’ll have to hit ’em hard, don’t let ’em start to mill!”

  Ramon nodded and they separated, Ramon taking his position at the right point, while Gil remained at the left. Both men knew the risk they were taking. Once the lead steers hit the water, they might balk and begin to mill. Worse, they might stampede up- or downstream. Either action might result in Gil and Ramon being caught up in a maelstrom of slashing horns and trampling hooves. Gil held his breath as the horse remuda neared the river. He knew that should the horses balk or even slow their gallop, he and Ramon might be trapped between the horse remuda and the oncoming longhorns. But the intrepid Indian riders didn’t intend for that to happen. Mariposa and Estanzio were behind the horse remuda every step of the way, shouting, shoving, driving. They kept the horses bunched, and it was already dusky dark when the leaders hit the water of the Pecos. The horse remuda cleared the river, slowing only as they climbed out on the farthest bank.

  Even above the thunder of the herd, Gil could hear the shouting of the riders as they kept the steers moving, kept them bunched. The first lead steer into the river tried to turn upstream, and Gil swung his doubled lariat, smashing the animal on its tender nose. The long-horn righted its course, and the others followed. Prodded from behind by the lethal horns of their trailing comrades, the leaders took the only unobstructed path available, stumbling out on the farthest bank and trotting away. The rest of the steers were right on their heels, as the drag riders kept them bunched and moving. When the last steer was out of the water, the drag riders trotted their horses across the river.

  “They did it!” shouted Rosa. “It was magnificent!”

  “You’re a bueno Tejano outfit!” Gil cried.