McAllister 1

by Matt Chisholm

  As Mr. Smith insisted on having a good meal ready for the boys by the time they arrived, we did what we could to conceal the fire. I’m not sure that we did all that well, but we built it in a deep hollow in the ground, most likely an old buffalo wallow, and put tarps and blankets all around it so the flames could not be spotted too easily. We built it a good way from the wagon so the light wouldn’t be caught by its white canvas.

  The cook was not fazed by the Indian danger. He declared: “I have met up with a number of copper-colored gentlemen in my time, Matthew. They pose no more danger than do other human varmints. They can be killed like anybody else. And I do not fear death. It has to come at some time, so what better time than in the hot blood of battle. No old age and rheumatiz that way.” As he watched his pots, he cleaned and reloaded his hogleg, whistling out of tune between his teeth.

  The horses presented a real problem. At first I thought of putting them in a rope corral between the wagon and the cows, which would have made them less accessible to any lurking Indians. But I changed my mind. If the Indians ran them off in their traditional way—with a good deal of noise—the herd was bound to be stampeded too. So I placed them to the east of the wagon and pretty well away from the herd. Horace stayed with them, mounted and with his rifle on the saddlebow in front of him. Perfido took the far side of the herd, Mr. Smith held the center at his fire with a horse saddled ready. I asked him how he managed a horse with a wooden leg. His reply was curt to say the least. If I took care of my two legs, he would take care of his one. He could ride any damn horse in our remuda without any help from me. I took up a roving commission and circled the whole outfit.

  To my boundless relief, the cows settled down without any trouble at all. I could only hope that McAllister wouldn’t turn up in the dark with the rest of the herd and disturb them. But McAllister was a good cowman and I reckoned he’d bed his crowd down short of camp if he had come this far.

  I think us three dozed lightly in the saddle, as tired horsemen will. But at midnight I came wide awake. Not because I heard something, but because I’d had a thought.

  What the hell would happen to us, I thought, if the Indians lifted the horse herd? I’d been thinking that ever since the remuda had arrived, but now the thought really hit me. I guess I was thinking that McAllister was relying on me. If the whole remuda was lifted, we might as well give up the ghost and forget about the cows. My mount was pacing steadily around the south side of the herd. As I sighted the white canvas of the wagon, I sang out softly to Horace and he told me to come ahead.

  When I came up alongside him, he said: “Christ, Matt, I feel like I didn’t sleep in a million years.”

  I told him what I thought. He cogitated a while then said: “It can’t be worse than what we have now. I’ll hold this bunch, you go ahead and rope what you can.”

  I started roping horses one by one and taking them over to the wagon where Mr. Smith helped me tie them. Where we could we did so with a double line. A panic-stricken horse, alarmed by shrieks, gunshots and fire, can bust a rawhide lariat any time. The cook laughed when we had about six horses there, tied to wheels, struts, the tailgate, anything that offered itself as an anchor for tying.

  “This wagon ain’t the heaviest thing in the world,” he said. “Likely the horses’ll drag it as far as the Picket Wire if the Indians come.”

  “No they won’t,” I said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’ll be here to stop them.”

  We ended up with a dozen horses tied to the wagon. After that we ran out of rope. We reckoned if the Indians alarmed them, some would pull one way and some another and between them they’d pull the wagon to pieces. The cook thought that really funny.

  “You are a real card, Matthew,” he told me, “an’ no mistake.”

  By dawn, I was mounted on my own horse, Patch, again. If I hadn’t done that I don’t suppose I would have known the Indians were out there waiting for first light.

  I was passing the wagon on my endless circling and just approaching the remuda in the rope corral under Horace’s watchful eye, when old Patch stopped in his tracks and switched his ears forward as he smelled something. Now it could have been anything the old horse didn’t like. But right that minute I was only thinking of Indians. I was pretty sure it was Indians when he started stamping his feet, and laid his ears back flat against his neck.

  “Horace,” I called softly, “they’re here.”

  Patch pitched mildly and I told him not to be a damn fool. He calmed down a little and I strained my eyes to see through the deceitful pre-dawn light. Naturally, I could see nothing.

  I asked myself a simple question—what would McAllister do?

  A simple question like that always had a simple answer from McAllister.

  “Matthew,” he had advised me on more than one occasion, “whatever you do in a tight hole, make it unexpected. When the odds are against you, your number’s up any road, so risk don’t come into it.”

  I could wish that he wasn’t right. But I knew he was. That son-of-a-bitch had gotten me into more unpleasant corners than I’d had hot dinners. Without him I guess I would have stayed at home, married a nice girl and raised chickens.

  What, I asked myself, would the Indians least expect that I would do?

  The answer came instantly. And it started me shaking as if the temperature had dropped to below freezing. I dismissed the idea instantly. Not for the first time in my life, I realized that I was not only not McAllister, but I was not in the same class.

  Old Patch knew where the Indians were all right. He had spotted them dead center. They came over that ridge in exactly the spot he had indicated to me. They timed it perfectly as they always did. To a nicety as you might say. As soon as I could see fifty yards they were in sight, boiling over that ridge-top. I don’t doubt they had been lying up on the far side of that ridge all night. Patch got their scent when they came up it to peek over the top at us.

  Normally under such circumstances, I do exactly what any other sane man who loves life would do. I either hunt cover or I get the hell out of there.

  It must have been my thinking about what McAllister would do that did it. Before I could think a single thought and behave like my usual stay-at-home self, I hit Patch with my quirt. He fought the bit for a second because he didn’t like what I was doing any more than I did, and then we took off straight at them.

  Six

  I SUPPOSE I didn’t turn Patch and run for my life because I was in the extremes of the paralysis of fear. There surely can be no other explanation of my acting so out of character. McAllister, of course, was always a bad influence on me. But it was too late then to debate the weakness of my character. I was acting like a hero and the experience was so petrifying that I couldn’t think of anything else but to go ahead.

  I was pretty damned surprised, but I reckon I wasn’t nearly as surprised as old Horace back at the rope corral nor those Indians who were quirting their horses down that ridge and screaming like wild banshees. They had with them the usual paraphernalia of Comanches stampeding a horse herd—dried cowhides filled with stones which do, I assure you, make enough noise to scare the devil and awaken the dead.

  Patch fought me in earnest. And that was a strange thing—the more that little horse fought me, the more determined I was that he should go ahead. I wound the slack lines around the saddle horn and controlled him with my knees. I jacked a round into the breech of the Spencer and started shooting. Patch bolted in a frenzy of fear and didn’t care where he ran.

  I had a very brief impression of a horse and rider going down and their creating chaos among the riders as they did so. A pinto horse jumped to one side, a picture of panic. Another animal stumbled to its knees. I don’t know how many shots I fired, but the Indians reacted to my shooting as any other men would under the same circumstances. As I rode straight at them, so the tight group of riders opened out like a colorful and blossoming flower, feathers fluttering. Several of the
m dropped their rawhide boomers, but one retained his and went off across the plain with it booming and rattling behind him, kicking up the dust, his horse as scared of the noise as it was of my shots and the general panic. I reined in Patch and found that there were no Indians near me. I could hear Horace spacing his shots carefully and the boom of Mr. Smith’s hogleg from near the wagon. I looked across at the herd, prepared for them to run.

  But apparently they had done all the running they could take yesterday. They were staggering to their feet, bellowing and groaning, some moving about uneasily, but they were not running. Perfido was riding back and forth to hold them where they were, but his movements were calm. The horses in the rope corral were dashing around it in terror as I rode towards them. Horry had stopped firing. As I rode up, he gave me a tight little grin that had no humor in it.

  “You gone loco or somethin’?” he said.

  “Something like that,” I admitted, still amazed at myself and made nervous by the thought that, if I could do a damn fool thing like that once I might do it twice.

  And a man doesn’t like to go against his nature that often.

  I was looking at my future with some trepidation when there came a flurry of shots from the east. We could see nothing of the Indians, for they were now hidden behind ridges, but within a minute or two we spotted a number of riders charging down towards us. Horace lifted his rifle for a shot, but I told him: “Hold it. They’re ours.”

  McAllister rode up with two men, Golly Adams and Wyatt Shafter. McAllister was looking pretty disgusted and I wondered what the hell I had done wrong now?

  He reined in his horse and cocked a leg over the saddle horn. “I took one hell of a risk drawing two men from the cows. We come back to try and save your lives. An’ what the hell do we find? You ridin’ around behavin’ like a goddam hero. Didn’t I ever teach you some sense?”

  “How far off’re the rest of the cows?” I asked. I guess I couldn’t take a sermon right then. My guts were still churning from my foolishness.

  “Couple of miles back.”

  “You and Golly and Wy get some breakfast and keep an eye on things here,” I said. “Horry and me’11 go give the boys a hand with the cows.”

  We rode off south-east.

  Life is always a little stranger than fiction. By all the rules of probability, the Indians should have made a try for the herd while it was split and our forces divided. But they didn’t. They rode clean out of our sight, shaken no doubt by their unexpected welcome. Maybe they thought this was an unlucky day for them and their medicine had gone sour. That might even have taken them back to camp and gotten the idea of raiding us altogether out of their heads. Whether I had killed one of them I didn’t know. I’d hit one of them, I was sure, but, as they so often would, they had managed to catch up the wounded man and carry him out of the fight. This fact aroused my imagination, for they had been pretty surprised and scared by my crazy charge, yet they had retained enough presence of mind to rescue a wounded man.

  So we brought the divisions of the herd together again and started them on their way. Old Carlos led the critters out just as though nothing had happened. Perfido took the lead with him. Some of the boys stayed with the wagon to gulp down a hasty breakfast and then the wagon rattled forward to catch up with the slow-moving herd. The sky above was still dark and frowning and a steady wind blew from the north.

  “I don’t like it, Matthew,” McAllister told me. I didn’t know whether he referred to the threat of rain or the presence of the Indians and I didn’t ask. I knew his answer would only depress me. But the fact that he didn’t like whatever it was could not be cheerful information because McAllister was usually a man who took life as it came and did not worry about one single thing. But the death of the younger Roberts boy was very much on his mind.

  “I never lost a man on the trail before,” he told me. “You know that. Men come before cows no matter what. We lost the Roberts boy on a run. Now there’s the Indians … How many widows’re we makin’, Matt?”

  This wasn’t like McAllister. The fact depressed me.

  “Hell, Rem,” I said. “You ain’t God. You don’t make circumstances.”

  “I know damn well a man don’t make ’em,” he said. “But he should sure know what to do about ’em.”

  Most of the day, he and I rode scout. We couldn’t really spare men from the herd, but we had to. We didn’t want any yelling red men near the cows because we didn’t want another run. Nor did we want any Comanche brave sticking a lance-head or shooting a lead-nosed bullet into any of the crew. So we scoured the plains ahead and on either side of the trail herd for Indians and prayed we did not meet any. One encounter was certainly enough for me. I reckon McAllister and I covered a good few miles that day and our whole string of horses was breathing pretty hard by the time Mr. Smith and his wagon halted to cook dinner. As the boys came in to eat we could see the strain on their faces. Until dark either McAllister or I rode a wide circle still looking for Indians and not finding any.

  “That don’t mean they ain’t around,” McAllister told me.

  “Any chance of them trying after dark?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he replied. “Indians’ll attack at night if it suits ’em. It don’t usually suit ’em is all. I remember havin’ my horses took from me one night not so darn far from here.”

  Hopper Roberts was pretty silent that night. And nobody blamed him, not after his brother being killed by the run. We left him pretty much alone. I guess like McAllister, he was wondering what he was going to say to his father.

  Nobody was more surprised than me to wake up and find myself alive the following morning. The rain was still holding off, but still threatening. Morose and speechless, men stumbled from their blankets and none of them looked like they’d slept much. Breakfasts were hastily shoveled down, coffee slurped, saddles thrown on reluctant horses Men cursed and rode them with a hard rein. Little Horace Mangold protested at such rough treatment and nobody paid him any heed.

  McAllister told me: “You stay loose around the herd, Matt. I’m goin’ ahead. There should be water north of here.”

  I looked at the sky and said: “Pretty soon you’ll have more water than you bargained for.”

  “You always were a happy son-of-a-bitch,” he said.

  I watched him ride out. He was on his own horse, a small but racy canelo California horse. If any mount could get him out of trouble it was that one. I circled the herd wide as the boys strung it out and started to drift it north-west.

  The wind stopped suddenly and the first heavy rain drops came. You could hear the advance guard of the downpour coming towards us across the endless plain. The horizon was blotted out. Hastily we untied our fishes from cantles and got ourselves into them. Horses tried to drift south ahead of the rain and we turned them back into it.

  It hit us like a solid wall of water and for a moment we were stopped by it in our tracks. The cook and his wagon went rattling by. Little Horry Mangold was yipping at his horses. The rain changed sounds so that everything familiar sounded strange.

  The downpour lasted no more than ten minutes and then stopped abruptly as though God had turned off a heavenly faucet. Sounds became real again. The rain had scarcely settled the dust. We did not remove our slickers because we knew it would come again.

  From far off, I thought I heard shots. I was undecided. Maybe I should stay with the herd; maybe I should go and see what had happened to McAllister. He would not thank me for it, I knew. Perfido was riding drag from where he could see everything. He was having trouble with a muley cow when I rode around to him.

  “Did you hear shots?”

  “Sure,” he replied, his mind on the muley cow. “I heard shots.”

  “Maybe McAllister’s in trouble.”

  “He ain’t the only one in trouble. This muley has me in trouble.”

  “Keep your eye on things, I’m riding up ahead.”

  “Sure.” He grabbed the muley by the tail because it ha
d decided to lie down. He twisted the tail and the muley rose again and trotted ahead into the drag.

  I rode forward along the long straggling line of cattle. When three thousand cattle are strung out that way, they cover a good distance. Manny Moss was riding point with old Carlos right beside him. He gave me a grin.

  “Hear them shots?” he asked. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. Which I knew was not true.

  “I’m going to take a look.”

  He nodded and I rode on. The rain started again with renewed force. It staggered my horse with its ferocity and I quirted him into it. Reluctantly he reached for a gallop. This time the weight of the rain was starting to affect the ground and the going became softer as I raced forward.

  I found McAllister about two miles forward of the drive. His horse was down and he was fit to be tied. McAllister, not the horse. The horse was dead.

  “Indians,” he said, “but where they went to I don’t have any idea.”

  We got his gear off the dead animal and he got up behind me. We headed back for the herd and didn’t see hide nor hair of an Indian. McAllister reckoned he’d winged one brave. Horace caught him up a fresh horse and McAllister was soon in the saddle again. McAllister liked to ride a canelo—it was almost a religion with him. But the canelo was dead and I guess he would like an Indian life in return for it. I knew McAllister. His values were simple. And direct.

  The rest of the day went well enough, except for the rain. It did not seem to affect the herd too badly, though we expected them to run at any minute. We reached a flash-flood late in the afternoon and the cows were able to have a good bellyful of water before nightfall. Nothing is better for cows’ sleep than good grass and water before they bed down. So tonight they behaved perfectly. The rain obligingly stopped and they bedded down without much trouble at all. McAllister found them high land from which most of the rain had drained. I was on first watch and rode circle listening to their peaceful chewing and grunting. Hopper Roberts was on guard with me. Whenever we met on our circling he would say to me something like: “Jesus, what do I tell the old man?” There wasn’t much I could say to that.