McAllister 1

by Matt Chisholm

  “Yes. Horace got himself killed.”

  “I know,” said McAllister and that puzzled me. Before I could put a question to him, he had turned his horse and was cantering after the cows.

  Did I dream that he said: “You damn fool”?

  The cattle wandered forward through the night and, even as I watched them, they began to hurry. Every now and then one stumbled into another. They ignored each other. They were no longer a herd; they were three thousand individuals following their noses. I rode along the straggling parade, looking for the point, but there was none; nothing but a sea of longhorns blindly feeling their way in the moonlight across the plain. But I found old Carlos way out in front there. I doubt he had led the march out, but when he realized what was happening, he had put himself in the lead. There was only one steer in charge of this parade and that was him.

  Eight

  DAWN CAME.

  The cattle wandered on and they did not make a nice sight as they stumbled blindly forward, following their noses. They moaned and bellowed eerily as they went and, after a while, I thought if they didn’t stop pretty soon I’d go a little loco myself. Listening to another’s misery, even if it’s only a dumb cow, is not my idea of pleasure.

  The plain seemed to go on forever and there didn’t seem any likelihood of water. We began to think that the cows were indeed plumb loco and there was no water. But the plain can be deceptive. Just after dawn, when the cows were starting to go down and our horses beginning to stagger, the plain suddenly broke up before our eyes and there was a great chasm in it, cutting down into the bowels of the earth, it seemed, through a great mass of rock.

  A good many of the cattle fell as they went down to it. The horses started to run and there was no holding them. Cows and horses went together in a weak and wild scramble. Old Carlos, I saw, thought it beneath his dignity to run. He just plodded ahead unwaveringly and, when he was near the mass of the herd again, he just shouldered his way through it for his drink.

  The water was not too bad in quality, but there was a lot to be desired in quantity. At the base of the chasm, the rock gave way to sand and when we went down there to inspect it, batting cows’ and horses’ heads aside to get there, the water was nearly all gone. And I don’t suppose half the herd had drunk. So McAllister bellowed for shovels and we started digging with a good few hundred thirst-crazy cows around us. Which was not a lot of fun, as you may imagine.

  But we dug like furies just the same and pretty soon there was a little more water and some more cows drank.

  Then Perfido (God bless him for his wisdom) looked further through the rocks and I’m damned if he didn’t find what the Mexicans call an ojo, which means an eye, and is a spring among the rocks. That was where the water came from. All the digging had been unnecessary. Given time, the water-hole would have filled again. We dug and cleared rocks near the eye and the cattle found their way to it. A couple of hours after dawn every man and beast in our company had his belly full of water.

  As one of the boys said: “It sure tempts a feller to stay right where he is and let the drive go hang.”

  Naturally, McAllister had other ideas. There was a few hours work to be done and then we would be on our way. I argued with him out of the hearing of the men. I argued that the cows were in no condition to march to any purpose. They needed a day here.

  McAllister argued against it. The summer was racing towards us, he said. Out there on the plain further north there could be even less water. Every day we spent here, it could grow worse. There wasn’t much you could say against that because it was most likely true.

  “It’ll make the crew feel better, if they’re sitting on water for a day,” I said.

  McAllister snarled: “They ain’t hired to feel better.”

  However obstinate McAllister might be in the general course of events, you could never accuse him of that when something important was at stake. Like a trail herd. He went away and spent some time repairing coosie’s wagon for him. The wheels were all dried up and they needed swelling again in water or they would shed spokes along the trail. The shaft was so dried out that it had started to split and he mended that with dampened rawhide. When it dried it would take on the consistency of iron.

  After that he came to me and said he had changed his mind. We wouldn’t push on today, we would start out again in the cool of the night.

  “You’re talking sense,” I told him.

  He looked surprised. “Did you ever hear me talk anythin’ else?”

  While half the crew slept down in the comparative cool among the rocks, the rest lay on their arms up on the rim of the plain. Two men were awake watching the country all the time. Nobody saw anything stir out there on that endless expanse. Not a wisp of dust, no glitter of the sunlight on a weapon. McAllister seemed satisfied. Not even the Comanches could approach us across that plain without being seen. He stood a long watch himself and declared himself satisfied that no Indians were moving near us.

  As the day started to cool off, he prepared us for the trail, checking gear and particularly the wagon. Satisfied, he put Perfido in charge and told him to go ahead.

  “You stay back here with me, Matthew,” he told me.

  My heart sank, as the dime novel says.

  “What the hell—?” I began.

  “Just save your breath, old timer,” he said. “Don’t get flighty on me now, for God’s sake.” So I shut my mouth and kept it shut till the others were dwindling into the dusk and my heart had sunk down into the area around my boots.

  “I saved my breath,” I said. “Now what in tarnation crazy thing are you up to now, Remington?”

  He smiled gently.

  “Exceptional times call for exceptional action,” he said—rather pompously I thought.

  “You got it wrong,” I said. “Exceptional times call for exceptional men is how it really goes. And I’m no exceptional man. I’m humdrum. Ordinary. Dull. Like I want to stay alive. Does that sound so crazy to you?”

  He looked at me more in sorrow than anger.

  “When will you,” he said, “cease to disappoint me?”

  “I hope,” I said, “that never happens. All the time I’m disappointing you I have a chance of staying alive. I smell trouble here. You’re going to do the great unexpected.”

  He beamed happily.

  “By God,” he exclaimed, “you’re learnin’. At last you’re learnin’, Matt.”

  “Will you get it into your dumb head,” I demanded, “that I have no wish to learn? The last thing I want to do on earth is learn one solitary thing from you.” I looked around. Something was missing. It was our horses. I said: “McAllister, we don’t have our horses.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed.

  “It is also true that a man without a horse in this country is as good as dead. Would you agree with that?”

  “Yes, sir, I reckon I would.”

  I was beginning to get mad. Mad enough to knock McAllister’s teeth down his throat. Let me amend that slightly—I was getting mad enough to attempt to knock his teeth down his throat. I’ve tried a good many times, but I have never succeeded. Which is a matter of great shame and disappointment to me.

  “McAllister,” I said, “this situation may give you a lot of fun, but it don’t do a thing for me. Just ante up. What do you aim to do?”

  It dawned on me that whatever he did now, I would have to do also. Without a horse to ride off on.

  “The Indians,” he said, “can’t follow the herd without horses.”

  I sat down and put my head in my hands. I hoped I had time to count to about three hundred before the Comanches appeared. It would take that time for me to simmer down. This man had stayed behind to take the Indians’ horses from them. Just the thought of it made me go cold from head to foot. My heart could not sink any further. It was frozen.

  “McAllister,” I said slowly and with care so that my voice would not shake, “the Comanches are the smartest horsemen in the world. They’re the gre
atest horse thieves. They’re generally all-around smart. They know this country like their own backyard. What makes you think you can take their horses?”

  He looked very serious, but I knew he was laughing at me behind that wooden Indian face of his.

  “Because I’m smarter,” he said. He turned very business-like all of a sudden. “Now, you an’ me, we get a good night’s sleep. One’ll get you ten, them Indians won’t be around here till dawn. They most likely think we’re camped here till then. I mean the whole crew.”

  “They’ll have seen the herd pull out.”

  “I doubt it. But if they did, why we’ll have to move a little smartly is all.”

  He signed for me to follow him and moved off through the rocks towards the eye. There he drank his fill and then picked his way through the rocks to the furthest extremity of the chasm. He knew the Indians would not enter the chasm this way. There were too many rocks and the going was too steep. As he settled down, he said: “If we don’t get their horses, we’ll shoot their asses off. Which means we won’t of wasted our time.”

  I tried to settle down likewise.

  “Has it occurred to you,” I asked, “what happens if we don’t get their horses and we shoot their asses off?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If they come a-hunting us, what the hell do we get away on?”

  “My,” he said in wonder, “you’re thinkin’ after all, Matthew. That thought had not occurred to me. Yes, sir, it’ll be mighty tough if we don’t get their horses. You’re dead to rights.”

  I knew damn well it had occurred to him. I tried to sleep. I knew I wouldn’t, not till I was back in camp in the comparative safety of the crew. I’d sit there through the dark hours, hearing sounds that weren’t there, seeing shadows that …

  Nine

  I AWOKE WITH a heavy hand over my mouth and I thought: My God, the Indians have got me.

  But they had not. Not quite.

  The hand was McAllister’s. And it was his voice in my ear that said: “Not a goddam sound, ole timer.”

  I sat up and reached for the Spencer. The metal of its stock was ice cold.

  I heard voices.

  They were making no secret of their presence. Theirs was no whispered caution. We heard the soft patter of their unshod horses’ hooves on rock. One of them laughed.

  The moon was riding high and clear. There were a few clouds. The night was still. Every sound was magnified in the rocks. If we could hear them so clearly, they would hear us if we made a sound. Except that I was sure none of them were listening. I looked around for McAllister and he wasn’t there. I didn’t like that too much. Right at that moment, I could have done with company of my own human kind. I remembered that McAllister had been wearing his Cheyenne moccasins. I knew that he would be as silent as a carefully trained Indian tracker. Not all Indians are good at the game, but those that are are very good. McAllister was very good. I hate to admit it, but it was true.

  The sounds came nearer and I knew that the Indians were coming through the rocks to the eye. Every inch of this place would be familiar to them. I wondered if they knew something about it that I didn’t; if one of them would appear magically and silently at my side. I began to look nervously around me. I knew I was thoroughly spooked, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I began to hate McAllister more profoundly than I had ever done before. Which was saying something.

  When finally he joined me, he arrived from behind. I nearly took leave of my shotgun chaps. I also nearly messed them. “You bastard,” I whispered.

  He sounded surprised when he whispered back: “Why this?”

  “Just because you’re McAllister,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence between us and for one crazy moment I thought I had finally gotten through to him and he was genuinely mad at me. I should have known better.

  “Matt,” he said softly, “this is worse than I thought possible.”

  “It couldn’t be worse,” I said.

  “Well, only one thing could make it worse and that one thing’s turned up.”

  “You mean there’s not twenty to thirty Comanches down there, there’s a hundred,” I said.

  “Nope. Worse’n that.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ worse’n that,” I said. “Unless there’s a thousand.”

  “What if they had some white prisoners?”

  That was a foul body blow. I sat down and felt very old and tired.

  “You’re right,” I said, “that’s worse. Let’s you and me creep away like thieves in the night and call it a day.”

  “If I thought you meant that—”

  “Believe me, I mean it.”

  “Not you, ole timer,” he said, “you’re goin’ to do like me.”

  “What’s that?” I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

  “The impossible.”

  “Oh, no.” I was scrambling to my feet. His hand caught my arm and held me down.

  “We’re goin’ to hit them,” he said, as if I hadn’t uttered a word, “in the small hours of the morning.”

  “That’s if they don’t find us first,” I said.

  I saw him nod in the moonlight.

  “Very true,” he said. “Now, this is what we do . . .”

  ~*~

  As I may have said before, once you’ve been scared right down to the soles of your boots, there doesn’t seem much else to be scared of. Just the same, I thought that McAllister was some kind of a monster, the way he stayed calm while we waited. You’d think he’d spent the best part of his life lying up in the rocks within spitting distance of a strong war-party of Comanches. As he said later: “Scared? Sure, I was scared. Who wouldn’t be? But I was damn sure I could pull it off. Christ, I had to, didn’t I?”

  Underneath that rough and tough exterior, I always knew Remington McAllister was a sucker for duty and doing what was right. With an old man like his, he couldn’t be anything else. Old Chad McAllister had taught him well. With a strap when necessary. Chad was a rip-roaring, fighting drunken maniac in my book, but he was large in his ways and in his perception of things. He didn’t mind being thought a mean bastard, but he hated the thought of being petty or little in any way. To be a crook or a bully-boy or a coward was in his book the most undignified thing a man could be. I’ve heard him yell at Rem more than once: “Pride, boy, where’s your goddam pride? I ain’t worried about you goin’ to heaven or hell, by God, but you just think of your pride. Your pride don’t permit you to act bad. Only a punk acts bad. An’ you ain’t no punk, no matter what you think.”

  McAllister had enough pride for ten top families. It was pride that held him there in those rocks, waiting to jump a war-party of Comanches with a natural-born coward like yours truly. As I’ve told McAllister a good few times, if it wasn’t for yellow-bellied coyotes like me fellows like him wouldn’t seem so damned heroic.

  So we waited there in the moonlight and I could have wished myself a thousand miles away.

  There were two captives according to McAllister. Two girls. He couldn’t judge their ages; he didn’t get a good enough look. They’d been caught lately because they looked pretty fresh. Usually, the Comanches walked their captives to exhaustion. There was less chance of their getting free that way. The girls were parked right near the eye. They were not bound.

  So, said McAllister, as though I were the most willing partner in the world, all we had to do was get the girls away from them. Sure, we’d need a little luck. Men needed that all the time, no matter what they were engaged on. His own luck had been pretty good so far and he had no reason to suppose that it would go sour on him now.

  “Just a little luck,” he said. “If we have a bit more luck, we’ll have their horses as well. You’ll see.”

  I didn’t want to see anything. I said so. McAllister ignored me.

  Did the Indians, I asked, have guards set?

  McAllister chuckled softly.

  “No guards. They’re safe as safe here, they think. The
last thing they expect is for us two to be here with repeating rifles.”

  I had the horrible and unhealthy suspicion that he was enjoying this. It just was not possible, so I dismissed the idea from my mind.

  It seemed a year before McAllister sat up and whispered: “Time.”

  I found that my throat was very dry and that I had difficulty in swallowing.

  I remembered McAllister’s words—the worst thing that could happen would be for the Indians to think they were cornered with no chance of escape. I said I was more concerned with my own escape, but that didn’t seem to make much impression on him. If the Indians thought they were cornered they would fight like demons, he said. And we didn’t want that kind of a fight. We wanted the girls safe and, if possible, we wanted horses too. Or at very least we wanted those Indians parted from their horses for a good while.

  So far as I was concerned, he might as well have asked for the moon. I thought I’d tell him this, but I couldn’t find him. He’d slipped away into the darkness. I decided that this was the very last time that I threw in with McAllister. At last I had learnt my lesson. My heart could not stand much more of this kind of thing.

  I began edging my way through the rocks and stopped when I could hear the water coming from the eye. It made a soft musical sound in the night. A horse snorted somewhere off to my right. McAllister had said he knew exactly where the horses were.

  He had said for me to find the girls, but I couldn’t see them. I could see a number of forms wrapped in blankets, laid out in sleep, but it was impossible to know if two of them were the girls. I counted up to fifteen and then I stopped. Fifteen made the odds too much for my taste and I didn’t want to depress myself further. From the sounds, I reckoned that the horses were between the Indians and the way out of the rocks. All I had to do for the moment was to watch the Indians and only start shooting if they showed any signs of alarm. McAllister was engaged in some chore of his own about which I knew nothing. The less I knew, the better. My enthusiasm for what lay ahead grew less every moment.