Dunny immediately slowed, and I felt him slowly relaxing beneath me. He knew his job was all but done. A rider circled behind us, and took the steer on into the cut herd while I pulled Dunny up and patted his neck. I’ve seen a lot of great cutting horses, but I never got to see the greatest one of them all, because—damn me for a braggart—I was always riding him, and his name was Dunny.
Billy let out a long, low whistle as I rode near, and I grinned like a schoolboy, as proud of Dunny as I would have been of my own flesh and blood. Both the Hopkinses loped up to me. They were all smiling.
The boss pointed at my horse. “What will you take for that horse?”
“He can’t be bought.”
“I’ve got a thousand that says he can.”
Billy chimed in before I could answer. “A man could start a little outfit of his own with that money.”
“That’s just enough money to start a little rawhide nester outfit and starve out the first winter.” I didn’t consider the offer for one second. Call me a sucker for a good horse if you want to.
“And I’ll stake you to twenty-five yearling steers,” Bee challenged.
“Think about it, Nate. He’s your horse,” Billy said quietly.
I’ve never been accused of being a good talker, but that was one time when I said just what I wanted to say. It didn’t take me long to do it either.
“This horse ain’t for sale.”
I don’t know why my color was up, but Bee didn’t take it personal. He knew cowboys, and you didn’t have to explain much to him. He just shook his head and grinned. I stared back at him, and he motioned to the herd.
“Are you going to cut anything else?”
“You bet.” I had to fight the urge to lope into the herd like a greenhorn.
That night Billy and I laid in our bedrolls talking a bit before going to sleep. “How come you gave Dunny to me?”
“He’s a great horse, but the fun in great horses for me is finding them or making them.”
“You reckon the good ones are made, or born that way?”
“I guess it’s a little of both.”
“You can have him back if you want him.”
“No.”
“But . . .”
“I gave him to you, and after today I don’t regret it at all.”
I was quiet for a minute.
“Billy?”
“Let’s go to sleep. We’re starting to sound like some of those old saddle partners who have been together too long.”
“You’re right.”
“I know it. Go to sleep.”
“Go to hell.”
“Piss on you.”
I felt better now that we had things squared away and Billy was back for a while. All was right in the world. We slept in the middle of a country where a man could ride forever, and where good horses and good friends were the only riches worth having.
CHAPTER TWENTY
About four weeks before Christmas, we left with a trail herd headed for Dodge. I guess the higher-ups thought Hell’s Bells was management material, because they put him in charge of the crew. Ours would be the last Horseshoe herd up the trail that fall, and as many of the boys weren’t certain of their prospects for a winter job, we traveled at a leisurely pace, even for a trail herd. We weren’t in any hurry to join the ranks of the unemployed. Besides, a slow traveling herd always brings more money at delivery.
The fifth day we were trailing in to Mammoth Creek, ready to make camp for the evening, when we saw two riders coming down from the north. I was sitting my horse wide of the point and talking to H.B. while the herd spread out to water. I was still passing the small talk when I noticed he wasn’t hearing anything I said. His attention was on the two riders who were still a good mile away.
“They look like Rangers.” He packed his pipe, all the while never taking his eyes off the oncoming riders.
“I don’t know how you could tell at that distance.”
“I can tell. I could spot one of those badge-packers at twice that far.”
I was studying them hard wondering what there was about the two riders that was any different. It was true they were coming fast, but many a man left Kansas that way. To my mind they could have just as well been bank robbers, or firemen headed to a fire for that matter.
My attention wavered back to H.B., and I found him dismounted. He was checking his cinches and still eyeing our soon-to-be visitors. By the time I began to smell something funny about the deal he was back on his horse and turning south.
“Yep, those are Rangers. I’ll catch up to you later,” he said over his shoulder as he ran away.
“Where are you going?” I yelled at him. I can still remember his fading cry as he raced out of earshot.
“To hell if I don’t change my ways.”
And yes, it was two Rangers who came roaring up on lathered horses. They were awful curious as to who had fled in their wake, but we all played dumb. Their horses were too tuckered out for pursuit, and they didn’t press us too much on the matter. They knew as well as we did that it was somebody who wasn’t taking any chances on who they might be looking for. For that matter, I don’t know who they were looking for. Back in those days there were a lot of men who got the urge to be a long way off when the Law showed up, and you never knew who was on the scout.
Old H.B. said he’d see us later, but that has been thirty years ago, and I still haven’t come across him or his like. I sometimes wonder where he got off to, but hell, he’s probably still running yet.
What can I tell you to make you understand the life we led, or the hardships we faced? How can I describe the cut of a norther blowing down across the prairie with the sharp edge of a knife? When I say that we were caught in no-man’s-land in an early blizzard, will anyone living know the feeling of such a quickening cold threatening to rupture the very marrow of your bones, and nothing to battle it but cheap coats, and bitter constitutions?
One minute the weather is fine, but you are eyeing the horizon to the north and the slate-gray sky spreading above your head. Any man reared on the plains knows that first harsh burst of cold wind cutting his face for what it could be, and then you can’t see a foot in front of your face, because the snow is blowing so hard. You stay on guard not because you are getting anything done, but because that’s what a good hand is supposed to do.
I know what it feels like not to know where camp lies, or where you are for that matter. I know what it feels like to be so totally blind and alone in the storm and full of a fear as cold as the norther itself. My fingers have been long past the hurting kind of cold, and when my teeth stopped chattering there was only a numbness of body that must be closely akin to death itself.
Nine men tried to stay with the herd as it walked blindly southward with the wind. We somehow managed to make our minds fight the cold and find the good sense to stumble to a cow chip fire that was impossible to find—a fire that went out no sooner than the last man had found its feeble glow. We hunkered miserably wrapped in our blankets, and each of us was alone in his suffering and the knowledge of his own impending death.
Eight hours later, the storm ended as quickly as it had begun, disappearing into the nowhere from whence it came. We were all alive and kicking, and we should have said grace, or sang a hymn of thankfulness and glory to be alive. Instead, we staggered out across the prairie in search of our horses that we had turned loose to fend for themselves as best they could. We found seven good mounts froze to death—those last ridden with the energy necessary to keep warm sweated out of them, and the milk blue glaze of their dead eyes the only remnant of the horrible cold that had taken them.
That morning I saw brave men shaken, and I do not know if they grieved for a favorite horse, or from the shock of dead men finding out they were still alive. They were hard men, but that was often the way of it. Each man carries most of himself to himself alone, and some so much so that they could never know themselves after the fashion that we seek to know our friends.
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We gathered our herd back and rode on a short mount of horses all the way to Dodge. We gathered in the bars and dancehalls and laughed at fate and blizzards. We talked of men and horses and wars long gone, and sought to convince the world that we were invincible. Our brush with mortality along the trail slowly turned to a good story, and like all misery, eventually became an adventure purely by the recounting of it.
That was Christmas Day 1881, and I had turned twenty-five two days before. The bright lights of Dodge called to a cowboy like a siren’s song, but I had no ear for her then. All I could think about was a certain girl down south.
We had permission to spend a few days in Dodge after handing over our herd, but I wasn’t having any of that. The morning after Christmas I saddled Dunny and hit a lope down the trail for Clarendon. I was bound and determined to ask that girl to marry me.
So I rode south with my heart swollen in my chest. I was worried and happy all at the same time. There was a cheap new suit on my person, a ten-dollar gold wedding ring in my saddlebags, and there wasn’t a clue in my head as to whether or not she would have me. To this day I don’t know why I put the suit on in Dodge instead of keeping it wrapped up until I reached Clarendon. I rode fifty miles that first day, and at the end of it I couldn’t put my finger on one concrete thought I’d had all day. I’ve seen hounds take off running game and be gone for days—immune to anything of the outside world except the bawl of their own voices and the thought of the chase. I guess you could say I was sure enough in a mess.
By day I rode as a man possessed, and only long after nightfall did I lay down beside my fire with Dunny’s picket rope beneath me and the stars shining overhead. Each night I stared into the fire and my thoughts whirled around in my head like fireflies.
Alone in my blankets I wondered how there could be so many stars, and what it was that made coyotes howl. I thought about how my cowboying might be over with, and wondered what Billy would say to that.
It became a ritual for me to lay out all my money on the ground before me each night before I fell asleep. I would sit there and count it as if it might have grown since I last beheld it. Like all poor folks, I could wish all I might, but counting doesn’t stretch a dollar any more than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle. Should Barby Allen marry me, we could start a life with thirty dollars, and two player piano tokens courtesy of the Long Branch Saloon. What a hell of a way to start marital bliss.
I was coming down the Tuttle Trail, just west of Zulu Stockade, when I saw a bull wagon coming up from the south. I could tell who was whacking those oxen when I was still a half of a mile off. There wasn’t anyone else in the country as humongous as Long was. He was packing a ten-foot whip in his right hand that cracked like a pistol shot, and stomping size-fifteen footprints beside a three-yoke team.
When I neared to within two hundred yards of him I thought he was cussing, but I soon found out he was laughing and talking to somebody. That somebody was perched atop the lead wagon, and it was a she. She was the prettiest little Indian gal you ever saw, and she was all dolled up in fine buckskin and beads. When I rode up she ducked her chin down shyly, and I couldn’t see anything but the top of her head and two little moccasins poking out from under her skirt.
“Hello, Tennessee,” Long bellowed like the old bull of the woods.
“What kind of load are you hauling, Long? She doesn’t look big enough to need freighted.”
Long puffed out his massive chest like a gobbler gone full strut, and placed his mighty hands on his hips. I could tell he had a happy inside him every bit as big as he was.
“I’m a married man now.”
“I thought you were through with Indian women.”
“I am just through with Choctaw women. Those civilized Indians expect too much of a man.”
“Cheyenne, ain’t she?”
“Yeah, and she’s a princess.”
“I can see that for myself.”
“No, she’s really a princess—the daughter of a chief,” Long said.
“What chief?”
“She’s old Blue Knife’s girl.”
Well, it was a small world after all. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who had been trading on the reservation.
“How did you get him to let you take off with her?”
“I asked him.”
“You just asked him? That’s all?”
“Well, it seems he’s a little partial to my product.”
“I know you make good whiskey, Long, but you mean to tell me that he let you marry his daughter because he likes it so much? Those Cheyenne are more partial to their women than that.”
“She liked me.” Long was beginning to sound a little defensive.
“And that’s all?”
“Well, I did a little trading too.”
“A little?”
“It seems like Blue Knife had recently acquired himself a Winchester, and needed some cartridges. I gave him two hundred rounds of .44 shells, a good horse, a box of cigars, and two bottles of my finest for a wedding gift.”
“You mean to tell me that you are arming the hostiles? What kind of man trades firearms to Indians?”
Long ignored me, and I was wondering if he already knew where Blue Knife had gotten the rifle. While I was thinking of something else smart to say, Long walked over to his new bride and motioned her down. She hopped down beside him and followed him over to where I sat on my horse. I tipped my hat to her, and she blushed before looking back at the ground.
“What’s her name?”
“Fawn.”
“Does she speak English?”
Long lifted his hat and scratched his head some before he said, “Not much. I’ve had a hell of a time trying to talk to her since we left her pa’s lodge.”
She was beginning to get over her shyness, and she looked at me with a frank curiosity. I must admit that I was pretty impressed with Long right then.
“I guess this makes you a chief or something, Long.”
“I just want to be the chief of my own house. That Choctaw woman wouldn’t let me be chief of anything.”
“Are you going to marry her proper?”
“Her pa married us before we left, and I’m taking her with me to Dodge to get a preacher’s say-so.”
“I wish I had the time to go along with you.”
“I’d be proud for you to stand up with me.”
“I’m on my way somewhere important, so I’ll have to miss the wedding.”
“That’s a shame, because you’re sure dressed up for it.” He eyed me up and down carefully.
I decided not to be outdone where women were concerned. “I’m going to try and fetch a wife myself.”
“Are you going after that Clarendon woman?”
Long always seemed to know more than you would expect. He was like a buzzard when it came to the comings and goings in that country. It must have been the miles he traveled and the folks he ran across. But then again, in a country sparse of people, folks just naturally had a lot to tell when they finally ran across somebody who would listen.
“I’m going to marry her if she’ll have me.” I was pretty proud of myself right then for the way I confessed my innermost plans to the world.
Long had a troubled look on his face when he spoke. “Billy done took her off and froze her to death.”
“What do you mean?”
“He stole her off from her pa to take her to a Christmas dance and they got caught in a blizzard.”
There was a lot I wanted to say, and there was a lot I wanted to ask right then, but nothing would come out of my mouth at that moment. I felt like I’d had all my wind knocked out, and the world was falling fast out from under me.
I mumbled my good-byes, and left Long and his bride standing in my dust. If I had ridden fast and hard before, then I must have looked like I had hellhounds on my trail the way I left out of there. That damned Billy had killed my wife.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was N
ew Year’s Eve when I found Barby Allen laid up at Ft. Elliott with the post surgeon to tend her while she was on the mend. I felt like somebody had reached in and tore the heart out of me when I first laid eyes on her swaddled in fever blankets up to her chin. A weak, faint smile lit her face, and for once where she was concerned, I knew just what to do. I took a chair at her bedside, and proceeded in earnest to tell her how I felt about her. I told her about the hopes I had for the two of us, and the kind of man and husband I’d try to be for her. I swore by my soul and damnation that I’d never fail her, and that I loved her so much I was of a mind to kill my own best friend for putting her in such a shape.
“Put your little hand in mine, Barby, and say you’ll marry me.”
All eternity’s prospects seemed to hang in the balance for me, as suspended as the empty hand that I held out to her. That hand seemed to weigh twenty pounds as I waited and hoped for her to bring her own hand out from under her covers and to place it in mine. Barby’s eyes turned down, and I heard the quaver of her chest as she sucked in a quick breath.
“Give me your hand, Barby,” I asked again, more softly than before—so softly in fact that my voice was lost to my own ears. It was as if I was afraid that even so subtle a thing as my own breath could blow away that fragile moment and tip me over the void above which I felt suspended.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she whispered, and her eyes never rose.
The knife fate had driven toward my heart never struck home. I have a lot to be ashamed of in my life, but that moment wasn’t one of them. My hand steadied, and my heart grew strong. I knew that I wasn’t worth one little drop of sweat on her upper lip even if you had chopped both the legs off of her right then, and damned her soul to perdition for the taint of her very name.
“Look me in the eye, and take my hand.”
Her eyes slowly rose to search my face for I don’t know just what. After a long moment she timidly removed her hand from under her blankets and reached out to me. Big tears slid down her cheeks and she stopped her hand just short of mine.
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