High Rider

by Bill Gallaher

  Pepper neither smiled nor beamed over the accolades, accepting them not as compliments but as statements of fact.

  Most could hardly wait until morning when the drive would get under way; it was what they lived for, and talk around the campfire was wild stories from past drives. When the coffee pot was empty, Emmett yawned. “Well, boys, best we turn in. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow. We’ll see if we can get maybe eighteen or twenty miles out of these critters and break ’em into the trail. Get ’em used to heading in the direction we want ’em to, and tire ’em out enough so that they’ll wanna rest and not wander off into trouble somewhere. Don’t expect there’s a cow alive that hasn’t tried it more than once in its lifetime.”

  In anticipation of the coming journey, John didn’t feel sleepy; indeed, the whole camp was restless. Men tossed and turned in their bedrolls, and a crescent moon was high in the night sky before he heard some snoring. He lay there thinking about what the coming months would bring. He felt more excited than he had when he left Georgetown so many years before, like an explorer off for the first time to some exotic, unknown land. On a map, it was north that he was heading, but he wondered where the journey would really take him.

  FIVE

  We got ourselves an outfit here!

  John awoke the following morning with dawn a rope of light on the horizon, the sky above still starry. He lay there for a few seconds gathering his senses and focusing on the coming day. He was about to stretch when he became conscious of a weight on his chest. The weight began to move. John froze. Peering over his blanket, he saw an enormous coiled rattlesnake stirring from where it had apparently slid to find warmth in the cool night air. John’s bowels felt as if they were shaking themselves loose, and for an instant he did not know what to do. He saw that the snake was lethargic, and without further thought, flung the blanket off. The reptile flew through the air and landed on Duffy, who was just awakening. Duffy yelped and he too threw the snake off, sending it into the cold ashes of the campfire. He had his gun out in a flash, leaped to his feet, and shot the rattler twice, then a third time for good measure. Meanwhile, the other members of the crew were flying from their sleeping rolls and grabbing for their weapons, fearing they were under attack by Indians.

  “Goddamned snake, boys!” Duffy explained. “Come at me outta nowhere, flyin’ through the air like a goddamned bird! Never seen the likes of it!”

  John was tempted to let Duffy think that he had seen his first flying snake, but reasoned it was best to own up to his part. “It was me who did that, Duffy. Woke up with it on my chest and it scared the bejesus outta me. Flung it off without thinkin’, and I apologize.” He was still shaking, thankful that he had not been bitten and had not fouled himself. He would never have lived it down.

  Duffy took some good-natured ribbing from the others and saw the humour in it. He half grinned. “Well, I’da done the same thing. I hate those sonsabitches! Old Saint Patrick drove all the snakes outta Ireland, then sat around on his arse for the rest of his life. Lazy bastard shoulda come to Texas.”

  Emmett laughed. “Too bad you killed it, Duffy. Don’t know how we’re ever gonna get you up that fast again.”

  •

  Emmett let the herd graze for a while, before he, Pepper, along with the chuckwagon, and John and Homer, with the remuda, headed out under a cloudless April sky. Emmett’s job would be to find a good bed-ground for the night. Behind them, the herd moved out, an enormous mass of animal flesh surrounded by roiling clouds of dust, led by Nathan and Rufus and contained by the rest of the crew. The object was to keep the herd moving in one homogeneous string, but in those first days it was nearly impossible. What little mind the Texas longhorns had was at least their own, and the swing and flank men were kept busy routing strays out of mesquite and oak thickets.

  It was those riders, off in the bushes, who encountered snakes—mostly rattlers, but in the wetter areas around streams and ponds, an occasional cottonmouth or copperhead. Most of the men gave the reptiles a wide berth and left them alone, but not Duffy. His hatred of snakes ran deep and that first day he killed six rattlers before the noon break, sometimes riding out of his way to do it. As a reptile slithered away trying to make its escape, he’d slap it hard with his rope and break its back. “Got another one a them sonsabitches!” he’d cry to anyone within hearing distance. The snakes were all diamondbacks, some four to five feet long.

  John could not blame Duffy. The mere sight of a snake, in particular those long, large-fanged devils, made him weak in the knees. On the trail, you always had to check for snakes before you sat down, and stories abounded around the evening campfires of them curling up with a drover at night for warmth. No one had ever heard of anyone dying from a snakebite, but one day a huge rattler bit a grazing calf on the nose. Its face swelled up and it soon collapsed. Emmett put it in the chuckwagon, hoping to save it, and even placed a poultice of kerosene and sliced raw onions on the bite, trying to draw out the poison. It failed and the calf died later in the day. Yet it was not the horror of the incident that bothered most of the men. Losing an animal was like someone picking their pockets.

  The days slipped by and the men grew accustomed to handling the herd, while the herd settled into travelling and being kept in line. The days were long, lasting from dawn until dusk, and were made even longer by the two-hour stints on night watch the men took in rotation. Slowly, they got used to each other as well as to Pepper’s rants when things were not going well for him, which seemed to happen regularly. But everyone loved his sourdough biscuits—on cool nights he slept with the pot of yeast to keep it warm—as well as his beans, which he soaked overnight to make them tender and tasty. The smell of sizzling steaks would drive the men mad, and best of all, he always had the coffee pot on first thing after stopping, and kept it full.

  Over time, Homer came to accept John, perhaps not as an equal, but at least as a fellow human being. Because of their positions on the drive, they had opportunities to talk and that helped. Rufus, on the other hand, was distant and cool, though cordial when necessary, knowing that Emmett would not tolerate any disrespect among a crew living in close quarters for several months. However, around the campfire at night, he would always sit opposite to John, and he was the farthest away when bedding down. With other matters to worry about, Emmett gave no sign of noticing.

  Besides Emmett, of all the crew John liked Duffy best. He was gregarious and did not have a discriminatory bone in his body. John knew Duffy and Emmett had fought side by side in the last battle of the war, although they had never talked about it in front of him, not even at Waco. One evening, when they went to a nearby creek to fetch water for Pepper, Duffy told John what had happened.

  “The Rebs had run us out of Brownsville, and we was holed up on Brazos Island blockadin’ the mouth of the Rio Grande. Our job was to cut off their supply route, but we all knew the war wasn’t gonna last much longer. Then Colonel Barrett heard that the Rebs was leavin’ Brownsville and got it in his craw that we could retake it. Jesus H. Christ, John, it wasn’t real intelligence, it was only rumours! We was more than willin’ to fight where we were if we had to, but to go back to Brownsville when we should of waited for official word that the war was over? That was plain crazy! We marched with the 34th Indiana and the 62nd Coloureds—we was the only cavalry unit in the damned war without horses. Turns out only a handful of Rebs left Brownsville and we didn’t get any further’n about halfway there before we ran into ’em.”

  He chuckled mirthlessly. “We only had rifles and a hundred rounds of ammo each, so it weren’t exactly a fair fight. Kept us pinned down for about a half hour and then they attacked. That’s when Thomas got it. That’s also when Barrett sounded a retreat. Emmett hoisted Thomas up on his shoulder—don’t know where he got the strength from—and we ran till the Rebs stopped chasin’ us. By that time, poor Thomas had bled himself pale as a ghost. Never seen a man more heartbroke than Emmett, standin’ there, soaked in his brother’s blood. Never see
n a man more courageous, either.”

  “I’ve known him ten years and he ain’t never talked about the war. I can see why,” John said.

  “He don’t even talk about it with me. Never has. Maybe he’s holdin’ it all inside in case he ever runs into Barrett.”

  “Maybe. But I’d be surprised. Near as I can tell, Emmett don’t live in the past and he ain’t vengeful. Don’t know that I’ve met a finer man, ’cept maybe his father.”

  Duffy shrugged. “You can’t tell nothin’ about any man. Don’t matter how much you know him. We’re all carryin’ secrets around inside a us.”

  John reflected on that for a moment, and then, because it had piqued his interest, said, “I didn’t know there was coloureds fightin’ down that way. Somethin’ else he never told me.”

  “He told you in his own way. With a man like Emmett, honour is everything, and those men of the 62nd were honourable men. He knew they was fightin’ for an even greater reason than puttin’ an end to slavery. They was fightin’ for the honour of coloured folk everywhere. That’s the reason you was made so welcome in the Cole household.”

  •

  Two weeks of dry weather saw them at Doan’s Crossing on the Red River. Jonathan Doan and his nephew Corwin, both Quakers, had set up a supply post near a gravel-bottomed ford, much of the rest of the river shore being quicksand. Across the muddy waterway was the Oklahoma Territory, and the next opportunity to resupply was in Dodge City. Emmett took on some more beans, coffee, salt pork, and kerosene, and asked the younger Doan if he had seen any Indians.

  “We had a visit two weeks ago,” the sapling-thin Doan replied. “I was away hunting and the other men were off getting supplies when a band of Kiowa came close enough to scare our women silly. They never attacked and I can’t say why. Other than that, they haven’t been much trouble for the big herds going through. Doesn’t mean to say that they won’t try to steal one of your beeves or demand one as a toll. Maybe even try to stampede them and pick up a few strays. It’s best to give them one if they ask. The price of one animal isn’t worth the trouble they can cause if they take a disliking to you.”

  The next day the outfit pushed on, across the Red River. Emmett knew that the two worst obstacles for trailing cattle were water and no water, but unlike their shorthorn counterparts, the longhorns usually had no fear of rivers as long as the sun was not reflecting off the surface and they could see the other side. It also helped if they were thirsty. On drag for a while, John followed the last of the cattle into the river. The cool water rising up the side of his legs filled him with apprehension because he could not swim, but the water never got above Cat’s shoulders and she was sure-footed.

  Later that day, they encountered thousands of bleached buffalo bones, mottling the landscape for as far as the eye could see. It was as if some great hand had slaughtered an endless river of the beasts all at once and emptied the land of its only living inhabitants. The herd passed through the vast boneyard without incident; the animals seemed to have accepted as their fate to plod on across a country as flat as Pepper’s work table and as hot as his chili. It was not until the next evening that they left the last bones behind.

  The days repeated themselves, each an exact duplicate of its predecessor—the skies fair, the afternoons hot, the dust never-ending, the landscape unchanged and immense, demanding humility. The bleak emptiness was so awesome that John was glad to be in the company of a dozen men and a herd of cattle. To be out here alone would have been terrifying.

  Ten miles south of the Canadian River, they camped for the night, hoping to reach the watercourse the next day. There had been so little water for the herd to drink that the beasts were beginning to get restless. The men sensed this, which in turn put them on edge. Around the campfire that night, they watched the smoke curl toward the ground and felt the temperature rise.

  “We’re in for a good storm, I think,” said Emmett. “Guess only a fool would think that we’d stay dry all the way to Ogallala.” He spoke to Homer: “Best you get some horses in here close by so’s the boys can saddle ’em up in case we need to get to the herd fast.”

  The men named their favourites and Homer retrieved them. Once they were hobbled nearby, everyone turned in, hoping they would not need their mounts until they rolled out of bed at the usual time in the morning.

  It took John some time to get to sleep, and he awakened in the middle of the night. The fire had gone out and it was pitch black, the air humid and heavy, as still and silent as death. The camp was about three hundred yards from the herd, but he could clearly hear Glenford Pounds, on night watch, singing.

  O bury me not on the lone prairie

  Where coyotes howl and the wind blows free

  In a narrow grave just six by three—

  O bury me not on the lone prairie.

  John lay listening to the song for a while. So far, the rain had not come, and that was a good thing. But he wondered why, if he could hear Glen singing, he wasn’t hearing any cattle blowing off. His last thought before falling back asleep was that they seemed awfully quiet. Maybe they were expecting something.

  In the predawn, a loud crack and rumble of thunder in the west awakened everyone. A streak of lightning flashed across the sky and the herd voiced its apprehension. Emmett leaped up, and without prompting, the rest of the crew did too.

  “Breakfast’s on hold, boys,” he said. “Best we get out to the herd before it’s spooked completely! Circle around and keep it contained. Talk nice and sing if you have to. Some of ’em might even listen.”

  John and the others swiftly gathered up their bedrolls, donned their rain slickers, grabbed their saddles and rifles, and unhobbled their horses from the string nearby. In a few minutes, they were all riding out to the herd, the thunder still rolling and the lightning still flashing, but much closer now. Ben Munger and Albert Jackson were working the tail end of the night shift, and Ben shouted over the noise of the animals, “Glad to see you fellas! These buggers ain’t none too happy.”

  The herd was milling around, fused with great energy, the adults bellowing and the calves bawling.

  “We better work some of their energy off, boys!” Like Ben, Emmett had to shout to make his voice heard. “Get ’em movin’ toward the river so that if they stampede they’ll at least be goin’ in the right direction.”

  More thunder boomed, followed by jagged bolts of lightning stabbing the ground. The brunt of the storm seemed to be upon them but so far it hadn’t rained. John could have sworn he saw lightning dancing along the horns of some of the steers, and ropes of fire snaking along their backs. He stayed in the drags where he was supposed to be, talking to the cattle, whacking them on their rumps with his rope to get them moving forward. The herd was strung out over a half mile of flat terrain and he could feel its dangerous power in the electrically charged air. There was a deafening explosion that seemed to engulf him, accompanied by a blinding flash of blue-white light. Cat balked and reared, and John thought someone had set a bomb off under her. His ears were ringing like a soundly struck bell and for a moment, he could hear nothing.

  Panic-stricken, the herd bellowed and shot forward, and John spurred Cat and followed. A smell that permeated the air reminded him of when a branding iron is left too long on cowhide. He saw the cause as he rode past two dead cattle, smoke curling up from their hides, and parts of them burned black. More thunder and lightning came, but it had moved eastward. The rain began, great fat individual drops of water that soon turned into a deluge and churned the slick ground into mud. John rode carefully, knowing that a spill might prove deadly.

  Parts of the herd were splintering off and the riders were helpless to do anything but let them go and round them up later. John stayed in position at the rear, waiting for Emmett and the point men to turn the lead beeves back into the rest of the herd in a giant narrow U and halt the stampede. It did not seem long before the animals in front of him began to slow and he saw Emmett and the vanguard coming toward him. They
had managed to turn the herd. As the thundering mass approached, John and Homer rode straight at it, shouting and swinging their ropes. Like a wave curling in on itself, the group of lead animals slowed to a walk, melded in with those behind them, and began milling. The stampede was over.

  With the herd contained, John reined Cat to the east and began rounding up strays. The rain stopped and the sky cleared, and by late morning, the herd was back together. The trail was greasy with mud but at least it gave the drag men a respite from breathing in dust.

  Pepper had coffee with bacon and beans ready for the hungry crew, and the hard and dangerous work made it taste better than usual. Around the fire, the men were jubilant and praise ran high for Emmett, Rufus, and Nathan for getting the herd turned.

  “Give yourselves a pat on the back, boys,” Emmett said. “It was good work all the way around. We only lost those two beeves to lightning.” He grinned. “I believe we got ourselves an outfit here!”

  Before they moved on, Pepper and John returned to the dead cattle and took what edible meat they could salvage. Much of it was good only for son-of-a-bitch stew, but even that would taste good at the end of a long day’s toil.

  The cattle were docile as lambs after their great expenditure of energy and ambled along at a leisurely pace. By late afternoon, the party had reached the breaks of the Canadian River and Emmett called a halt for the day, to let both man and beast rest up after the hectic start to the morning. When Emmett scouted the river, he saw that it was running high and wide, and crossing it would probably be easier on the morrow, provided they did not get any more rain. They camped well back in the breaks, away from the water, where the mosquitoes were not so plentiful.

  In an effort to bridge the gap between himself and Rufus, John waited until he caught the point man alone and complimented him on his good work. Rufus pursed his thin lips and glared at John with brooding eyes. He said, “I don’t need your praise, nigger boy. You do your job with the horses and the arse end of the herd, and I’ll do mine with the front. That’s what we get paid for.”