Nothing happened that night. McAllister and I had breakfast side by side. He was relieved to have gotten through another night and dawn without further trouble. “Thank God,” he said, “we have a good crew.”
“They ain’t bad,” I said.
The weather wasn’t good at the start, but mid-morning the blue sky appeared and the sight of it cheered us all up immeasurably. The cook had a particularly good dinner at about eleven that morning. He sure knew men, that cook. It was just what we needed. And for afters he fried us a batch of bear-sign, which is doughnuts to you. Every man there felt like it was his birthday.
“Mr. Smith,” said McAllister, “my compliments.”
The cook beamed.
“We aim to please,” he said.
As we marched on we watched the flash-floods disappearing before our eyes as the thirsty ground sucked them in. The land steamed. The plains looked greener. We ought to have been pleased. The cows’ bellies would be full by nightfall. As they drifted along, they pulled at the grass. The horses in the remuda had been tied or corralled the night before and they were pretty hungry. Horace had his hands full, trying to drive a bunch of horses that were more interested in feeding than moving. For sure we dare not let them go another night without bait or they wouldn’t be strong enough to work. There was no mesquite around so they could have fed on the beans or anything like that. All there was for them here was grass.
McAllister found us a good resting ground that night. There was a dell about one mile long. In the bottom of it was the remains of a deep flashlake. So we had both grass and water for the cows and the horses. I guess we were all pretty pleased. That night, McAllister put guards up on the walls of that natural shallow valley. But nothing happened and most of us were of the opinion that the Indians had had enough and gone home, wherever that might be. McAllister took a gloomier view.
“Matthew,” he told me, “they ain’t gone home. Or if they have it’s only to fetch some more Indians for the game. They’ve always hit trail herds comin’ through here, ever since Goodnight and Loving broke trail. They’ll hit us again for sure.”
I did not argue with him. All my life I’d been learning how often that man was right. I’d rather die than admit it to him, but it was a fact.
“Face up to it, McAllister,” I said. “You’re way past it.”
“Past what?” he snarled.
“Fighting, feminizing and fooling around generally.”
“I’d bet on me against you any day.”
“You’d win,” I said, “but that wouldn’t prove a goddam thing. I ain’t past it. I never reached it. I’m not in the macho stakes.”
He looked at me soberly and said: “Christ, I don’t get you, Matthew. Don’t you have any ambition?”
“Nary a bit,” I said. “Except to have a chicken ranch, a nice quiet wife and maybe a gentle horse.”
He made a sound of disgust.
“What in hell ever made me partner up with you, for God’s sake?”
“Because I ain’t in the running. I’m so goddam second-rate even you shine beside me.”
He laughed. Then he grew serious again and added: “Matt, we’re gettin’ closer and closer to Comancheria. Pretty soon, we’re goin’ to have Comanches swarmin’ all over us. I don’t want any more damned heroics. Hear?”
“I lost my presence of mind that time, through stark fear. It couldn’t happen again, not in a thousand years.”
“Just so long as that’s understood.”
As the days passed, the heat of the sun increased till it was like midsummer. We started to dry out till we felt like kindling. For two days we failed to find water and we started to worry. After that rain, we told each other, there was bound to be water someplace, but if there was we didn’t find it. Longhorns can go a long time without a drink. Their grazing ranges are sometimes a couple of days from water and they walk miles for a drink. But there are limits even to a longhorn’s endurance. On the third day, both McAllister and I were out miles in front of the herd looking for water. Once more we wore out horses through the day. We searched for miles on either side of our line of march. We used up the third day without any luck. The parched land had sucked up that rain and swallowed it.
The men started to get edgy and one night a fight broke out between the two brothers, Orville and Charlie Moss. It was bitter fighting with real intent to injure behind it. We broke it up just in time. Both brothers ganged up on McAllister and one of them tried to beat his head in with some firewood. My partner grew serious and settled their hash in no time at all. We never did find out what the Mosses were fighting over, but it didn’t seem to matter. The violence expressed the mood of us all. We retired to our blankets with a grudge against life and rose in the morning feeling no better. The herd had kept us on our toes all night, restlessly moving around and lowing as they did. If we didn’t find water that day, our next night would be worse. Worst of all, of course, the horses were suffering and you can’t expect a good day’s work from a thirsty horse. All we could do for them was beg water from the cook and rinse their mouths out.
The crew started to say that we’d been damn fools to even start this drive. They were pretty pointed in their remarks and clearly they blamed McAllister for thinking that the drive could be made at all.
In his usual blunt way, he told them: “You’re grown men, ain’t you? You signed on for the drive. You’re ridin’ for the Roberts brand an’ that’s the end of it. I never heard a cowhand talk against his brand. Nobody’s stoppin’ you getting the hell away from here an’ goin’ home.” Orville Moss said: “How do we ride home with a passel of Comanches breathin’ down our necks?”
“That’s your goddam problem,” McAllister snarled. “If you stay, we don’t have no more loose talk. An’ you better believe I mean it.”
From then on they only held their tongues because they feared him. When he got into that kind of mood, I guess I feared him a little myself. I seen the man in action and I knew.
I tried to sooth matters down a little. “We’re all dried out and living on our nerves,” I said. “We’ll feel better when we find some water.”
Later McAllister said to me quietly: “I have to keep this goddam crew together even if we don’t find water.”
And we didn’t. Not the following day. By now the cows were really suffering and they were starting to act strangely. Now and then one would wander from the herd with no intent to bunch-quit. It was as if they did it absent-mindedly. It gave a man a queer feeling. We seemed to spend all day chasing them back into the line again. I met up with McAllister when we were way out in front water-hunting as usual and I asked him: “What’s happening to the cows, Rem?”
“They’re startin’ to go blind,” he said. To me it was like hearing the crack of doom.
“Maybe the boys were right,” I said. “We should never have started this drive in the first place.”
I thought he would curse me in his usual manner, but he didn’t. Which was worse. He said: “Maybe you’re right at that. But we’re here an’ there’s only one way to go an’ that’s ahead.”
That night we found that we couldn’t settle the herd down. The cows stood around in the moonlight bellowing and grunting in despair. The horses wouldn’t touch grass. We had no water at all to spare them. We each had one small cup of coffee. The cook blamed himself. He hadn’t known it could be as bad as this. He should have packed more water. McAllister told him to shut his head. It wasn’t his fault. You can make a team of mules pull only so much and water weighed heavy.
“There’ll be water,” he said. “You’ll see.”
I wished I could believe him. I had never known the McAllister luck run out, but there had to be a first time for everything.
Seven
A ROUGH HAND was shaking my shoulder. I surfaced blearily from a dream-ridden sleep. For a moment I didn’t want to know that I was alive and on the Staked Plain. But I was and it was Jim Bayard shaking me.
“Matt,” he wh
ispered, “there’s somethin’ up with the herd.”
I sat up quickly and reached out to shake McAllister, but I saw he was up and pulling on his boots.
“What goes?” I asked.
“God knows.” He gave a kind of whispered shout: “Horry, horses for everybody an’ make it damn fast.”
Horace came out of his blankets in his socks and ran for the horses, rope in hand. The alarm had spread through the sleepers. They were reaching for their boots and staggering around stamping their feet into them.
I looked towards the herd, but I couldn’t see much. They seemed to be seething down there, like water boiling. If they were ready to run what the hell was happening? Was there time to buckle my gun on? There was always time for that in Comanche country. But I was all thumbs and I fumbled around with the buckle till I started cursing it.
I ran around the wagon with McAllister ahead of me. We slung our saddles on the first horse we saw, tightened girths by touch and vaulted into the saddle. Somebody was having trouble with his mount and began swearing at it hysterically.
McAllister snapped: “If you can’t keep your nerve, boy, stay in camp.”
The swearing stopped.
Our horses jumped forward and we went down the slight grade towards the herd. We could hear other men coming behind us. One hundred yards and McAllister called: “Hold it.” We all reined in. The fresh horses were fighting their bits. One horse kicked another.
We sat our saddles and stared at the herd. A rider came away from them in our direction.
“That you, boss?”
“Yep.”
“Them cows! For Christ’s sake what’s gotten into them cows?”
The cows seemed to be wandering blindly out into the night. At first as we watched it seemed that they were going in all directions except the east; then suddenly I became aware that their main direction was north-west.
McAllister said: “The poor bastards’re blind all right.”
The boy from the herd was Orville Moss. He said: “Me an’ Golly tried to turn ’em back. We did everythin’ but fire a gun in their faces. It’s like they don’t hear.” McAllister said: “They smelled water.” He turned in the saddle and shouted to the cook: “Pack your wagon and hitch your mules, Mr. Smith. We’re on our way. Horace, the horses stay with the wagon— if you can hold ’em. Boys, you stick with them cows. Just hold ’em together if you can. They’ll take you to water.”
I said: “I hope to hell you’re right.”
McAllister laughed and I thought I heard real relief in his laugh. “I’m always right.”
You see what I mean? You try partnering an opinionated son-of-a-bitch like that. But he was right. He was always right.
I was forking a mean-eyed, roman nosed little sorrel horse that hated all mankind. He chose this moment to show us his worst side. By the time I had him quietened down, I was alone except for McAllister.
He turned and looked at me in the moonlight. His face looked all Indian to me in that moment, like that of a Cheyenne when he’s got a black depression on him.
“Matt,” he said, “you ride with your eyes skinned. There’s Comanche out in the dark there. Come dawn, they’re goin’ to be all over us.”
“How can you tell?”
“Instinct.”
“Like hell it’s instinct!”
He broke his solemn mood and gave a short bark of a laugh. “There’s a young man out there who ain’t too good with his turkey calls.”
“Is that all you’re going on?”
“Wa-al, that an’ the fact that I never heard a turkey call that way at night.”
I turned the sorrel and rode back to the wagon for my Spencer. The cook watched me take it down and he raised his eyebrows.
“So the boss knows they’re there?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “You mean you already knew that?”
“My genius, Matthew, is not confined to cookin’. There’s a fair-sized party out there. Come daylight, they’ll be comin’ in for a closer look at us.”
“Why not jump us in the dark?”
“We’re scattered all over and they ain’t too certain sure where we’re at is-all. When they have us like sittin’ hens, then they’ll jump.”
His mules were hitched and little Horace was heading for his horses. The cook heaved a keg of flour into the wagon and reached down a shotgun. He gave me a grin and went hop-and-step to the driver’s seat. When he had put the shotgun down, and lifted the lines, he said: “This day will sort the men out from the boys, Matthew. It’ll also sort the living from the dead.” Then he said conversationally: “I’ll just hold hard till my partner gives me the word. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to stick together, I reckon.”
I lifted a hand to him and turned my horse back for the herd. I had not covered fifty paces when I heard a faint sound from behind me. I stopped the horse and listened. The horses in the rope corral were shifting about in sudden fright.
Mr. Smith called softly: “Matthew.”
I touched the sorrel with my quirt and turned it. We ran back to the wagon and drew rein.
The cook whispered hoarsely: “That was Horace.”
We strained our eyes in the direction of the horses and could see nothing but dark stirring shadows as the animals moved uneasily about. I urged my horse in that direction and he baulked. I hit him with the quirt. He jumped under the lash, but whirled to avoid going forward.
“Over there!” the cook called.
I turned my head just in time to see a shadow flit off to the right of the wagon. I hit the sorrel again, but he wasn’t having any. He almost stood on his head in refusal to go forward.
I swore and got out of the saddle. Running forward, I heard the cook’s admonition behind me—“Go careful . . .”
Punctuating the two words was a loud roar as his shotgun went off. I heard the shots going past me in the darkness and I thought: So this is what fate has in store for me. I’m going to be shot by my own side. In the back.
I stumbled on something on the ground and nearly went down. The cook shouted in alarm and his voice went from baritone to falsetto. The other barrel of his Greener exploded flame into the dark and something ahead of me near the horses yelped like a stricken rabbit.
I could see some horses run blindly into the rope of the temporary corral. It resisted them for no more than a moment, then snapped like the string of a violin. The horse herd was out and running. They headed down the slope in the direction of the herd—which, I suppose, was some kind of a blessing.
The man must have been close. I heard the twang of the bowstring clear as clear. I also heard the arrow-head smack into me like a woman smacking a kid’s ass.
The way men behave at such moments will never cease to amaze me. If you had asked me what I would do under such circumstances, I would have said that I’d fall down and staunch the blood if I was able. I didn’t fall down. I was so intent on reaching little Horace that it never entered my head to fall down.
He was lying very still in the trampled grass and he was a mess. Not because the horses had stepped on him. They had no doubt all carefully avoided doing just that. No, it was what the Indians had done to him. Within earshot of the cook and I. It didn’t seem possible, but there it was. They had strangled him and his eyes looked as if they had almost popped from his head. It was as if the little man had attained a kind of macabre humor at the moment of death. His tongue protruded and he had bled a lot from the savage knife slashes they had dealt him.
I looked around, but I couldn’t see any sign of movement anywhere.
I raised my voice: “Mr. Smith, they killed Horace.”
I heard the wagon creak and saw its dim shape lean sideways as he climbed down. He came stomp-and-foot across the rough ground. I noticed how hard he was breathing when he came near.
He looked down at his little partner and said: “He knowed what to expect when he signed on, I guess. Poor little bastard. You reckon we have time to dig him in afore we catch up with
the herd, Matthew?”
“We’ll make time, Mr. Smith.”
“I’m obliged.”
It was then that he noticed that I had been hit. He gave a casual glance at the arrow haft sticking out of my left shoulder and said: “We’d best get that thing out afore we start, huh?”
He took the arrow between his finger and thumb and tested its firmness. It didn’t hurt too much because I was still numb.
“In the bone,” he said. “Lie down.”
I lay down. He put his stump right near the spot where the head had entered the flesh, took the haft of the arrow with both hands and gave a sudden jerk.
I remember seeing the night sky turning over a couple of times and I seemed to hear McAllister saying: “You damn fool,” then I had my eyes open and I heard Mr. Smith say: “You can get up now, Matthew. The work’s done.”
Very shakily, I rose to my feet. The weakness of fainting was something to be terribly ashamed of in that world. I said: “I’m really sorry, Mr. Smith.”
“We’ll not mention it again, Matthew,” said the cook, looking away into the night with slight embarrassment. “Maybe we should get on now and rejoin the others. You’ll find I bandaged the wound. Plumb ruined a good shirt, I fear. Howsomever, you’re alive, which I can’t say for everybody.” He went quickly hop-and-skip back to his wagon. I looked around, half-expecting to see an Indian near, but there wasn’t, of course. Very shakily, I walked back to the sorrel and hauled myself into the saddle. I wondered how far the horses had gone.
The horses, we found, had joined the cattle and McAllister had permitted them to stay in the loose herd. McAllister rode over to me and asked what had held us up. He said: “I don’t have enough men to send them nurse-maidin’ you, Matthew, you know. What were the two shots—cook’s shotgun?”
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