Killoe (1962)

by L'amour, Louis

  Tap kept his eyes on Holt. We knew there was a man out there in the brush, but we at least I did, depended on Zeb to take care of him. It was a lot of depending, yet a man can do only so much, and we had four men there in front of us.

  “You’re going to have a choice to make,” Tap said, “any minute now. If you make the right choice, you live.”

  Webb Holt’s tongue touched his lips. He knew he was looking right down the muzzle of Tap’s gun, and if Tap was faster than he was, Webb was dead. I had let my horse back up a mite so I could keep both Bud and that blond man under my eyes.

  “You can catch up your horses and ride out,” I said. “You can start any time you’re of a mind to.”

  Suddenly Zebony Lambert was standing on the edge of the brush. “You boys can open the ball any time you like,” he said. “There’s nobody out there in the brush to worry about.”

  You could see them start to sweat. It was three to four now, and my rifle was laid right on one of them. Bud was a tough enough man, but he wasn’t going to play the hero. Not on this fine spring morning. Until a few minutes ago he had been complaining the weather was mighty miserable; now any kind of a morning was a fine morning.

  “You kill that man?” Holt demanded.

  “He didn’t make an issue of it,” Zeb replied. , Nobody said anything for about a minute, and it was a long minute. Then I stepped my horse up, holding that rifle muzzle on Caldwell.

  “Case you’re interested,” I said casually, “this here is a Patterson revolving rifle and she shoots five shots 56 caliber.”

  “Webb … ?” Bud Caldwell was kind of nervous. That Patterson was pointed right at his stomach and the range was less than twenty feet.

  “All right,” Webb Holt replied, “we can wait. We got forty men, and we want these cows. You folks take ‘em along now—you won’t keep them.”

  “Webb?” Tap’s voice had an edge to it that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “You and me, Webb. Those others are out of it.”’

  “Now see here!” Webb Holt’s face was touched with pallor.

  “Forty, you said.” Tap was very quiet. “I say thirty-nine, Webb. Just thirty-nine.”

  Bud Caldwell reached for the sky with both hands and the thin man backed up so fast he fell over a log and he just lay there, his arms outspread.

  The blond man stood solid where he was. “He called it,” he said loudly. “It’s them two.”

  Webb Holt stood with his feet spread, his right side toward Tap Henry. His gun butt was on his right hip, the butt end to the fore and canted a mite.

  “Look,” he said, “we don’t need to—” He grabbed iron and Tap shot him twice through the chest.

  “Lucky you warned me about that left hand,” Tap said. “I might have made a mistake.”

  We rounded up those cattle and drove them home, and nobody said anything, at any time.

  Me, I was thinking about those other thirty-nine men, and most particularly about Colt’s two brothers.

  It was time we pulled out, and pulled out fast.

  Chapter Two.

  We were there when the country was young and wild, and we knew the smell of gunsmoke and buffalo-chip fires. Some were there because they chose the free, wild way, and some were born to it, and knew no other.

  To live with danger was a way of life, but we did not think of it as danger, merely as part of all that we must lace in the natural order of living. There was no bravado in our carrying of guns, for a man could n) more live without a gun in the Texas of the 1850’s than he could live without a horse, or without food.

  We learned to live like the Indians, for the Indians had been there first and knew the way of the land. We could not look to anyone for help, we must help ourselves; we could not look to anyone for food, we must find our food and prepare it ourselves.

  Now there was no more time. Westward the land was open, westward lay our hopes, westward was our refuge. Those were years when half the world grew up with the knowledge that if everything went wrong they could always go west, and the West was foremost in the thinking of all men. It was the answer to unemployment, to bankruptcy, to adventure, to loneliness, to the broken-hearted.

  It was everybody’s Promised Land.

  We pointed the cattle west into the empty land, and the brindle steer took the lead.

  He had no idea where he was going, but he intended to be the first one there. Three thousand five hundred head of mixed stuff, with Tap Henry and Pa away out there in front, leading the herd.

  The wagons took the flank on the side away from the dust. Tim Foley’s boy was driving a wagon, and his wife drove another. Aaron Stark’s wife was driving a third, and Frank Kelsey was driving Tom Sandy’s big wagon.

  Tom and lose Sandy were coming with us. Zeb Lambert had been right about Sandy, for when he heard of our move he promptly closed a deal on an offer for his ranch, sold all his stock but the remuda and some three hundred head of selected breeding stock, and threw in with us.

  He brought two hands with him. Kelsey had been with him ever since Tom Sandy had come to Texas riding a sore-backed mule, and the other hand was Zeno Yearly, a tall Tennessean.

  Tilton, Cole, and Poor rode one flank, and two of Pa’s other hands, Milo Dodge and Freeman Squires, the other.

  We had been making our gather before Tap Henry returned, so getting on the road was no problem. Above all, speed was essential. Now that we had determined to leave, there was no sense in delaying and awaiting an attack, if it came.

  We started before sunup, and those first two miles we kept them moving at a trot. We hoped that if we could keep them busy thinking about keeping up they would have less time to worry about where they were going.

  We had two scouts out, Tim Foley away on the left, and Aaron Stark to the north, watching for any of the Holt crowd.

  Zebony Lambert and me, we ate the dust of the drag, hazing the stragglers back into the herd, changing the minds of any that took a notion to bolt and run for their old home on the Cowhouse.

  We made camp fifteen miles out that first night, bedding them down on about six acres in a bottom where the grass was good and there was water from a small stream that flowed toward the Leon River.

  Ben Cole and Jim Poor took the first guard, riding around the herd in opposite directions.

  The rest of us headed for the chuck wagon where the womenfolks had prepared a meal.

  From now on, the routine would vary little unless we headed into trouble. We would be lucky to make more than fifteen miles a day with the herd, and most of the time it would be closer to twelve. We were short of horses, having about five horses per man, when a drive of that kind could use anywhere up to eight or nine per man.

  A herd of that size would spread out for a mile along a stream when watering, and when bunched for the night would browse a good bit; when actually bedded down they would use a good six acres. After they had fed they would sleep, and about midnight, as if by some secret order, they would rise, stretch, usually browse a little, and finally go back to sleep. Maybe a couple of hours later they would get up again, stretch, and then go back to sleep. Some of them might browse a mite during that second stretch. But by dawn they were all up and ready to move. In ordinary weather two men could keep guard over that many cattle.

  If there was a storm brewing it might take every hand.

  Going to the fire with my cup and a tin plate in my hand, I could hear Ben Cole singing them to sleep. Singing was not just a way of keeping himself company; partly it was that the sound of a human voice—most cowpunchers sounded somewhat less than human when they sang—had a quieting effect. Also, it served notice to the cattle that the shadow they saw out there was a man, and therefore all right.

  Karen filled my plate and cup. “You riding all right, Karen?” She nodded, and her eyes went beyond me to where Tap was sitting. “He’s a good man,” I said dryly.

  Her chin came up defensively. “I like him.” Then, she added, “After all, he is
your brother.”

  Taking my grub, I walked over and dropped to the ground where Tap was sitting. “How you coining, kid?” he asked.

  After that we ate in silence, and I expect all of us were thinking about what lay behind us as much as about what lay ahead. There were long, dry miles before us, but the season was early, and our chances were good. At least as far as Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos.

  When I had cleaned the Patterson, I turned in and stretched out. Nothing better than turning in after a hard day’s work. I slept a little away from the rest of them so I could listen better, never wanting anything to come between me and the night.

  The clouds had drifted off and the sky was clear. Somewhere over on the bluffs a coyote was talking it up, and from time to time a bird called in the night.

  Next thing I knew a hand was shaking me and it was Ira Tilton. He and Stark had relieved Ben Cole and Jim Poor on first guard.

  Rolling out, I put my hat on and slid into my boots. Tilton still stood there, chewing tobacco. He started to say something, then turned and walked off toward the fire, which was burned down to coals.

  Hitching my chaps, I took the Patterson and went to the fire. Tap, who was sharing my night guard, was already squatting there, cupping his hands around the warm cup, and sipping coffee. He glanced up at me, but said nothing, and neither did I.

  Tom Sandy had taken on the job of wrangling horses, and he was up and had a grulla caught up for me. Of a right, a hand usually caught up his own mounts, but Tom was not sleeping much these days. Seemed to me Tom should worry less and spend more time in bed, with problems like his.

  The night was cold. Glancing at the Dipper, I saw it was ‘after three in the morning.

  I swallowed another belt of black, scalding coffee and went over to that grulla and stepped into the saddle.

  He unwound in a tight circle, crow-hopped a few times, and then we started off for the herd, both of us feeling better for the workout.

  Tilton had little to say. “Quiet,” he said, “quiet so far,” and he rode off.

  He was a puzzling man in a lot of ways. He had worked for us upwards of three years and I knew him hardly better than when he first came. Not that that was unusual.

  Folks those days said little about their personal affairs, and many a man in Texas had come there because the climate was not healthy where he came from.

  In Texas you did not ask questions about a man’s past—that was his business. A man was judged by what he was and how he did what there was to do, and if he had been in trouble elsewhere, nobody paid it any mind. And that went for the law, too, where there was law. The law left you alone, no matter how badly you might be wanted elsewhere, so long as you stayed out of trouble where you were.

  As far as that goes, there were several men working for Pa who might have had shady pasts, but they did their work and rode for the brand, and we expected nothing else.

  That coyote off on the ridge was talking to the stars. And he was a coyote, too, not an Indian. Once you’ve heard them both, a body can tell the difference. Only a human voice echoes to any extent, and next to the human the coyote or wolf, but an owl or a quail will not echo at all.

  Off across the herd I could hear Tap singing low. He had a good voice, and he was singing “Brennan on the Moor,” an old 3O song from the old country about an Irish highwayman. Circling wide, I drew up and listened.

  The coyote was still … listening to Tap, most likely … the stars were bright.

  There was no other sound, only the rustling of the water in the stream nearby.

  A big steer stood up and stretched, then another and another. A faint breeze stirred and the big steer lifted his head sharply. Now, a man who trusts to his own hearing only is a fool.., you learn not only to look and listen, but to watch the reactions of animals and of birds, for they will often tell you things you would never sense otherwise.

  Something was moving out there. That steer faced around, walking a step or two toward the north. My Patterson lifted a mite and I eased back on the hammer. The click was loud in the night, and that big steer flipped an ear at me, but kept his eves where they were.

  Tap was across the herd from me, but he was coming around, walking his horse. The herd was uneasy, so, risking revealing myself to whatever was out there, I commenced talking to them, speaking low and confidently, working my horse in nearer to them.

  And I walked my horse toward the trouble.

  The big steer kind of ducked his head, and I could almost see his nostrils flare as he moved up a step. He was full of fight, but his attitude puzzled me.

  Cattle did not like the smell of Indians, and were apt to get skittish if they came around … maybe it was the wild smell, or the use of skins so many of them wore, but the herd did not act like they would if Indians were out there.

  They would not get excited if a white man was approaching, nor were they as nervous as if it was a bear or a eat. In those days grizzlies were found down on the plains in Texas, in the Edwards Plateau country, and there were a good many lions around.

  Walking that grulla ahead, I eased my rifle forward in my hand, then listened.

  The big steer had kept abreast of me. He was not frightened, but full of fight. Nevertheless, he liked the company.

  And then I heard it.

  Straining my ears into the darkness at the edge of the bottom where the cattle were, I heard a faint dragging sound.

  It stopped, but after several minutes it began again.

  Suddenly, Tap was beside me. “What is it, Dan?” he whispered close to my ear.

  “Something dragging. Cover me, Tap. I’m going into the brush for a look.”

  He caught the reins of my grulla when I passed them to him. “Careful, kid. Might be an Indian.”

  On cat feet, I went into the brush. All my life I’d lived in wild country, and this was second nature to me. Over the years I’d become like any cat, and could move in the night and through the brush making no sound.

  A few feet, and then I listened again. Squatting down, I peered under the brush, but it was too dark to see anything. And then I heard that faint dragging sound again, and a panting… a gasping for breath.

  Lifting the Patterson, put the muzzle on the spot and spoke in a low, conversational voice.

  “You’re covered with a five-shot Patterson. If you’re in trouble, tell me. Start anything and you get, all five shots.”

  There was a sort of grunt, almost as if somebody tried to speak and couldn’t, and then there was no more sound at all.

  I eased through the brush and found a long sort of aisle among the willows. There was a faint gray light there, for it was getting on to four o’clock, and lying on the grass was something black.

  “Speak up,” I said, just loud enough.

  No reply. Suddenly there was a faint stirring beside me and a low growl. It was one of Zeb Lambert’s dogs.

  “Careful, boy.” I whispered it to him, but he was going forward, sniffing and whining.

  It was no animal. I knew that. Cautiously I went forward, and suddenly I stood over a dim figure. It was a man, and he was badly hurt.

  “Tap?” I called, keeping my voice down. “It’s a man, and he’s in bad shape!”

  “I’ll get Milo,” he said quickly.

  Milo Dodge was a cowhand who’d had a good bit of experience with wounds and such, and one of the best men in any kind of sickness or injury that I’d ever known. On the frontier we were mighty scarce on doctors. In fact, here I was pushing twenty-three and I’d never even seen one, although there was one down to Austin, and I think they had a doctor or two in San Antonio. When sickness came, or wounds, we naturally cared for our own, and had nowhere else to turn.

  Seemed like only a minute or two until Milo and Tap were back there, and meanwhile I’d put together a mite of fire to give us light.

  The injured man was a Mexican, a slim handsome man with a fine black mustache, but you never did see a man more torn up than he was. His fancy s
hirt and jacket were soaked with blood and his pants all the way to his knees were covered with blood and soaked with it. He’d dragged himself a long distance, you could see that, but he had a knife in his hand, gripped so hard we couldn’t get it loose.

  Milo indicated the ripped and torn sleeves of the wounded man’s jacket. “Wolves been at him.” He pointed at the lacerated condition of the man’s wrists. “He fought them with the knife. Must have had one hell of a time.”

  I’ll get back to the cattle,” Tap said. “You help Milo. Free Squires is out at the herd,”

  The Mexican stirred and muttered as we cut away his bloody clothing. As we examined him, the story became clear.

  Somewhere, several days ago, he had been shot and had fallen from his horse. Obviously his horse had stampeded with him and dragged him at a dead run over the rough country.

  Somehow the Mexican had held onto his gun long enough to shoot his horse … which was one reason guns were carried, for a man never knew when he might be thrown from one of the half-broken wild horses.

  Then he had probably started to crawl, and the wolves had smelled blood and had come after him. He must have used up what ammunition he had, and sometime later they had grown brave enough to rush in on him and he had fought them off with a knife.

  “He wants to live,” Milo said dryly; “this one really put up a fight.”

  “I wonder who shot him?”

  Milo glanced at me. “I was wondering about that, My bet is that he came from the west.”

  We heated water and bathed his wounds and his body. The bullet wound and the drag wounds were several days old and some of them were festering. The teeth marks had all come later. ;

  The bullet had gone all the way through him and was pressed against the skin of his Back. Milo made a slit with his Bowie knife and took the bullet out. Then he made a poultice of ground maize and bound it on both bullet holes.

  It was broad daylight by the time the wounds were dressed, and one of the wagons had pulled alongside to receive the wounded man.