The Ogallala Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Oh, thanks.” She hurried off in a swirl of her dress and petticoats.

  The evening flew by and soon everyone was ready to turn in. Etta Faye, who had become the center of attention, waved goodbye to Sam and left to stay with the Fanchers.

  He and Billy simply undid their bedrolls and flopped upon them near the wagon. In minutes Sam found sleep. It was the fragrant smell of good coffee brewing that filled his nose before daybreak. He grabbed a cup from his kit and set out for the source.

  “Morning,” Matty said. She was bent over the fire, stirring a huge skilletful of chopped potatoes. “Guess you smelled my coffee, huh?”

  “Morning. Yes, I did.” He squatted down and let her pour him steaming brew in his cup.

  “You think that fussy girl will ever make it up here with these hellions?”

  “If you want to do something bad enough, you can.”

  She nodded and went to laying strips of bacon in another skillet; the strips sizzled when she put them in it. “Reba’s making biscuits.” She motioned toward the woman working the Dutch ovens, shoving coals careful like on the lids.

  “Morning, Sam,” Reba said. “We sure appreciate you getting this school session out here.”

  “Not me. It was the school board.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the one gets things done up here.”

  Matty straightened up from her cooking, wiped her sweaty face on a rag and nodded in agreement. “Reba’s right. Now we’re hoping you agree to take them cattle to Ogallala.”

  He looked off toward the purple horizon and then blew on his coffee. It was all a conspiracy to get him involved in the damn cattle drive. They didn’t know what it was like to tell mothers that he had buried their sons on the prairie where they could never visit the graves to pay their respects—graves with nothing but wind-swaying blue stem for tombstones because the crude crosses he had left had been trampled by the next herd through or consumed in a prairie fire.

  “Morning,” Jason Burns said, joining him.

  “Morning. I figured you could take some of the men after breakfast and repair the outhouses. I brought some lumber and nails. I’m going to shore up that porch and those stairs. The whole thing feels weak when I cross it.”

  “See someone put back the bell rope.”

  “Raul and his boys did that. They also think they fixed the leaks in the roof.”

  “You pay them out of your pocket.”

  “Wasn’t much.”

  “Well, we have the money to repay you,” Matty said. “Reba, how long on the bread?”

  “It’s about ready.”

  “Good, I’ll go ring the bell and get them up then.”

  “Sure,” Reba said. “You two want a couple?”

  “Sure,” Jason said. Sam nodded.

  “Butter’s over here and there is some peach chunky,” Reba said.

  “We’re coming,” Jason said, and both men were up and headed for her.

  The bell began to clap when Sam took his first bite of the hot biscuit lathered in cow butter and thick jam. A taste of heaven—he could recall his mother’s similar treats for her four cowboys.

  Sleepy-eyed folks began to gather. Other wives and women put on aprons and joined in serving food. Almost too full to work, Sam went over and inspected the creaking porch. He sent Billy after tools and another boy to get a few boards from the wagon.

  Matty had the whitewash crew of boys and girls lined up with brushes while a few adults stirred the mixture in pails. Things went fast and furious. Some worked on ladders and the whitewash soon was on the south wall.

  Etta Faye took the more careful brush bearers inside to do the interior. Benches and tables were all taken outside and gone over by the men. Only after being tested for soundness and slivers were they stacked for their return inside. Tall grasses and weeds were cut back with hand sickles to the edge of the playground. By noontime, the outhouses were all they had left to paint.

  Matty rang the bell for lunch and the barbecued beef was stacked on plates along with frijoles and Reba’s sour dough biscuits. After the meal, everyone sat around in the shade and relaxed, except for a crew of teenagers sent to paint the out buildings.

  With a frown, Jason walked over to where Sam rested. “Trouble’s coming. I recognize that dun horse. That’s Harry’s brother riding him.”

  Sam sat up and nodded. “Why’s he coming here?”

  “He’s either going to tell you the feud is on or it’s off.”

  With his tongue tracing a shred of meat caught between his back teeth, Sam got to his feet.

  Ken Wagner reined up the dun. With him were a couple neighbors. “Sam Ketchem?” Wagner looked over the crowd, like he wasn’t certain of his man.

  “That’s me,” Sam said.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, you may have shot my brother, but you ain’t getting a shot at me.”

  “I never killed your brother. I’ve got an alibi, too.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ll see you in hell, Ketchem. Harry was my oldest brother and he never needed to die gut-shot.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I aim to clear all you damn Ketchems out of this country.”

  “Why don’t we step out of here? We can settle this now, you and me.”

  “No, I want you to sweat when you’re getting yours.”

  “That goes two ways, Wagner.”

  “Just cause you was a ranger once, I ain’t scared of you. No, siree. You might’ve got poor Harry, but you ain’t getting me ’fore I get you.” His dark eyes tried to bore a hole in Sam as he checked his horse sharply.

  “That all you got to say. Get the hell out of here,” Sam ordered and waved him aside.

  “This is school land. Public land. You ain’t got no say-so.”

  “I say you’re here disturbing the peace, and you don’t leave, I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”

  “You ain’t heard the last of me, Ketchem,” Wagner said through clenched teeth. He gave a head toss to the others. He and his neighbors trotted off the grounds. Wagner growled how he’d get even if it took forever.

  “Have your funeral paid for,” Sam said after them.

  “It sure ain’t over,” Jason said, looking upset.

  Sam agreed and he saw Etta Fay going back inside with a look of disapproval on her face. Either she intended it for him or the vanishing Wagner brother. He didn’t know which.

  Later, Sam danced with Etta Faye three times, then with Matty, Betty Jones and a host more of the women and young girls even. He was seated on a wall bench drinking lemonade when Etta Faye joined him.

  “What will you do about that man?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “Ignore him best I can.”

  “But, Samuel, he will surely try to kill you.”

  He wanted so bad to tell her that his brother had tried the same thing and ended up dead. “I’ll watch for him.”

  With a bewildered shake of her head, she looked at her hands in her lap. “I think you need the law up here.”

  “Stuart?” he snorted.

  “He is the law.”

  “He is a slick-talking dude who has you all charmed. He won’t do a thing about Earl’s death. He won’t do anything about today either.”

  “Well, I can see you have your mind so made up even good sense won’t crack it.” She rose in a huff and left him.

  The night wore on, and soon everyone was exhausted. The dance and barbecue were such a huge success that everyone promised another in two weeks.

  Sam went to find his bedroll after talking to several others who expressed their concern for his safety. He shrugged off their worries and toed off his boots before getting in his bedroll.

  “Seen you made Etta Faye mad again tonight,” Billy said.

  “You keeping score?” he asked. “You sound a lot like Earl used to.”

  “Ah, boss, everyone in this country knows the only reason she took this teaching job was to be u
p here by you.”

  “First I heard about it.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “She’s as serious about any man as she was ten years ago when I first took her out. She don’t want a man. She wants an admirer.”

  “Like old rose-oil Stuart?”

  “Yes. Go to sleep.” Sam found himself grinning at the new name for the lawman.

  After church services on Sunday, Sam rode over to check on Thelma. He found her in the rocker on the porch underneath a blanket, despite the day’s temperature hovering in the upper nineties.

  “How did the schoolhouse thing go?” she asked, when Sam pulled up a straight-backed chair to join her.

  “Went well, except Ken Wagner came by and accused me of shooting his brother.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “This feud is burned into them like a brand.”

  “It sounds like it is. I’m sorry ’cause there won’t be any rest until your side or theirs is dead.” She looked across the shady yard as if seeing some distant object. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure I know how to handle it. Harry accidentally shot himself chasing me. Do I have to kill all of them?”

  She closed her eyes as if in deep thought. “I would hope not, but perhaps in the end you shall have to. I fear you are dealing with some very ignorant people.”

  “Yes, they must be. How are you feeling?”

  “A little stronger today. Did you come by to tell me today that you’d take the cattle drive next spring?”

  “I knew you’d ask me.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve not decided. My memories of the last one are too sharp. I have neither the heart nor the mind-set to do it.”

  She laid her head back and shut her eyes. “Lots on your mind I know. The loss of Earl and all. This blasted feud and the deaths of those boys. But in memory of them and the colonel, you should go north.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We’ll see.

  Chapter 10

  Billy had been busy working the field for over a week, so the ground was ready for planting. He drove the drill down there, and Sam brought the wagon piled high with sacks of seed oats. They began in the early morning, with Sam opening the gunny sacks, and pulled up close in the field to where the hopper would run out. The sweet smell of the grain thick in his nose, Sam was ready when Billy drove up and they dumped the open sacks in the hopper. As they leveled the supply out with their hands, the rig was ready to plant more ground. Billy clucked to the team with the feeder disks slicing the ground and putting down the long kernels.

  By evening the bottom field was planted and the doves had already found the stray oats. In the dying gasp of the day, the weary horses plodded back to the new barn. Sam lighted a kerosene lantern at the barn, and Billy and he rubbed down both teams and, after graining them, turned them in the lot on the shed side with the few saddle horses they kept.

  “Should I start working up the next field tomorrow?” Billy asked.

  “Probably. That would give us close to thirty acres of oats for hay next year.”

  “But if you go to Nebraska next spring . . .”

  “You’re thinking I won’t be here for the harvest.”

  “Well?”

  “I’ve not agreed to Ogallala. They’ll find someone, but if you still want to go, fine.”

  “I’ve never seen nothing but Texas.”

  They stopped at the door to wash up. Sam poured water out of a bucket into the basin. “All you’ve seen is the hill country. It gets drier and hotter and closer to hell the farther west you go.”

  “Why did the Comanche go out there?”

  “They had no choice. The only buffalo left were out there.” Sam rinsed his soapy hands and then wet his heated face with handfuls of water before he dried off on a stiff feed sack.

  “Were they really as mean as folks said they were?”

  “Yes. They did things to captives that made me puke.”

  “You and the colonel?”

  Sam lit a lamp. “Yes, and some others. Some rangers got killed out there. Warren Hart died of a rattle-snake bite under the eye. He woke up and the snake was right there.”

  “More died than that?”

  “Some others.” Sam really didn’t want to talk about them.

  After taking two lids off the stove, Sam stuffed in kindling and struck a match. The fine strings of wood quickly ignited and he replaced the lids.

  Billy filled the coffeepot from the water pail. “What else happened?”

  “We traded six horse and three mules for two girls and a black boy.”

  “Why did the Comanches trade them?”

  “I think the prisoners were slowing them down.”

  “Didn’t the Comanches usually just kill them?”

  “Usually, but they had lots of loot and must have needed the horses and mules to help carry it.”

  “So how were the prisoners?”

  “They gave them to us naked and nearly out of their minds.” Sam shut his eyes as the gruesome pictures of the three came back. “The girls had been raped many times, and they weren’t even teenagers. The black boy had been gelded. We made them clothing from our blankets and brought them back. All you had to do was touch them, and they went into convulsions, thinking they were going to be abused some more.”

  “It must have been hell?”

  “It was. We brought back a Mrs. Mossel. Some trader had bought her from the Comanches hoping her family had lots of money and would pay him a big ransom. But the Comanches had wiped out the rest of her family. So a church in Fort Worth offered a hundred dollars for her.”

  “You went after her?”

  “The colonel and six of us rangers went out there to get her. She had an Injun baby at her breasts and she feared the whole time we’d take it. She screamed a lot at us and gave an Injun chant all day as we rode. It was spooky.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She committed suicide they say. Ran out in front of a three-team hitch and was trampled to death.”

  “How did those people live? The Comanche?”

  “They killed buffalo and made raids. Their camps stunk bad, and there was no water, so I guess that’s why they never bathed. The women cut their hair short with sharpened shells and dressed in dirty rags. The colonel said they were not supposed to look tempting to another man.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Those little girls were wives to men.”

  “Were all the other Indians like that?”

  “I only chased the Comanche and some Kiowa who lived in teepees.”

  “What do the Comanche live in?”

  “Lodges of skins. Not big, there’s no timber out there. Just willows to make frames.”

  “I guess I ought to be proud to sit at your table, but we’ve sure ate lots of beans lately.”

  Sam looked at the pot of cooked down beans he’d taken off the stove to slop on their plates with a wooden spoon. “We have been eating them a lot. Tomorrow I’ll go to town and hire a cook for this ranch.”

  “Who?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I won’t come back till I find one.”

  “Fair enough. But you better put on a pot of them berries before you go, ’cause you might not be back till after dark.”

  Sam had always sworn he needed a cook. He’d never married one, so he would have to hire one. A cook would probably be cheaper than a wife or a woman to please, anyway.

  The next morning, he arrived at the Tiger Hole at nine o’clock and went in to talk to Marty O’Brien, who was busy polishing glasses.

  “We still got cold beer,” O’Brien said, when Sam bellied up to the bar.

  “Draw me a big schooner and then tell me where I can hire a cook.”

  “A cook. Ye need one now, huh?”

  “Yes, I want a cook. I may hire a horse breaker this winter and I need a couple Mexicans to split out more rails. Besides Billy and I are tired of our ow
n cooking—mostly mine.”

  “There’s a woman with four kids needs a job, Kathy McCarty. Her man was killed in a wagon accident going to San Anton about three months ago.”

  Sam visualized a big fat woman with snotty-nosed kids hanging on her skirts. “Are there any men?”

  “Vibby Leach got drunk and fell in a well and drown.”

  “That’s a shame.” Sam took a big sip of the wonderful cold beer.

  “Worse part is the poor folks whose well he fell into still can’t drink the water.”

  “Any trail-drive cooks out of work?”

  “Might be in San Anton.”

  “Mexican?”

  “Juanita—no, no, she married Jesus and they went to El Paso.” O’Brien shook his head. “Kathy is the only one I know.”

  “Four kids. How old are they?”

  “They all can walk.”

  “Good. Where’s she?”

  “She lives in a shack down behind the wool warehouse.”

  “Is she clean?”

  O’Brien nodded. “Oh, you’ll see.”

  Sam finished the beer and considered threatening the other man if he was sending him on a wild-goose chase. He rode Rob around to the wool warehouse and saw several jacals sitting along the potholed street. He observed some white children playing; they stood up to stare bright eyed at Rob. Horses like him didn’t come down their street often and they looked impressed.

  “Your name McCarty?” he asked and the children searched one another, as if mystified at this stranger’s question.

  “My name’s McCarty. What did you be needing from a McCarty?” asked a woman in a doorway, her hands on her hips. She looked defiantly at Sam. Her blue eyes were the color of the sky, and her hair, as dark as velvet, was swept back and pinned up. Less than five feet tall, she had a trim figure underneath a pressed dress that buttoned to the throat.

  “I understand you need work.” He had removed his hat and held it in his hand.

  “If you come looking for a whore, ride on, mister.”

  He shook his head to dismiss her stern warning. “I came looking for a cook. I own a ranch west of here. One cowboy and I right now, but I may have a crew before long and need a cook and housekeeper.”

  “Where would I live?”

  He put the hat back on. “I guess in the house. Me and Billy can live in the new barn.”