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Will Storm was heading north into Kansas with his family and three thousand head of wild, mean-minded longhorns. It was a journey that took courage from the start, grim tenacity to keep going and raw guts to see it through to the end. Mortal danger was a constant companion – danger from Indians, flood and rustlers. But Will Storm didn’t scare easy …
STAMPEDE!
By Matt Chisholm
First Published by Panther Books in 1970
Copyright © 1970 by P. C. Watts
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: December 2012
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover image © 2012 by Westworld Designs
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
Will Storm looked over the land and his bitterness was so great that he could taste it.
Everything he turned his mind to offered him bitterness.
The war was over—the war in which he had been on the losing side. He had come home—to what? Poverty that ground all their faces into the red dust of Texas, poverty from which his family expected him to lift them. They didn’t say anything, but they looked at him and he could see the disillusionment in their faces.
The war had finished Texas and it had finished him.
He had come to Texas almost as soon as he had landed in the States from Northern Ireland with his father at the age of twelve. The old man hankered after cheap land. He wanted land, he wanted to feel his own property under his feet, his dream was to claim all the land as far as he could see for his own. In the end the land claimed him in the form of a Comanche raid. Him and ma were killed in front of their children’s eyes.
Only a miracle had saved the children from death. So young Will had grown up Texan and a Texan of the brush-country. He had grown up as hard as the land that nurtured him and he had looked out for himself and his brothers and sisters from an early age.
Now he had to look out for another family, a family of his own making. And he was failing them.
Something stirred in the brush at the foot of the hill and he knew that it was a longhorn coming out of a thicket to graze in the dusk. Wild as deers, they grazed only when there was no chance of meeting man. He watched the dim form of the big-horned cow coming warily into the open to tear at the sparse grass. Even that sight brought bitterness. It reminded him that he was like so many other Texans—cow rich and money poor. He wondered idly and fruitlessly how many critters he owned or could claim if he bothered to slap a brand on them. Two thousand . . . three thousand?
He chuckled dryly to himself—the folks in the old country would rear back in surprise at one of the dirt-poor Storms owning that many cattle.
It was just like a Storm to own so many and to have them valueless.
He might as well get back to the house as stand up here enjoying his miseries. But he hesitated to go back under Martha’s reproachful stare showing him that an idle man was but half a man. He didn’t even have enough cash-money to have himself a drink in town. Well-water was all he would taste tonight and, if the drought parched the country again this year, soon he might not even get that.
He started down the steep slope, stumbling on the worn heels of his cowmen’s boots. A hundred paces and he saw the light in the window of the house.
Goddamit, he thought, what was Martha playing at, wasting valuable coal-oil?
Later, he remembered that. He wasn’t to know then that that light was a symbol of things to come, a light in a terrible darkness.
As he dragged his boots across the yard and the dogs came sniffing around him, pleased to see him as usual, licking his hands, jumping up to lick his face, Martha came hurrying from the house. He knew then that something had happened.
Before she spoke there was time to note that the lamp was burning in the parlor. Martha never allowed the parlor to be used except for visitors.
“There’s a man here for you, Will,” his wife told him breathlessly. “He come askin’ for you-all. Knowed your name an’ all. A stranger.”
That halted him. It was enough to, a stranger ‘way out here asking for him.
“What kind of a man?” he asked.
“A Yankee.”
He recoiled a little and was lost for a moment, confused. He didn’t know any damn Yankees.
“Said his name’s Holt,” Martha went on.
That still didn’t help.
Suddenly, he was angry. There wasn’t any reason to the anger, but it was there just the same. Maybe he was a little scared, too. He had heard tales of the Yankee police. Had they come for him for some reason? A man could break the law without knowing it these days.
He braced himself and said: “You’re all of a fluster, woman. Calm yourself.”
“I’m perfectly calm,” Martha retorted. “He’s a right nice man. A real gentleman.”
Will pictured a smooth, urbane New Englander and he knew he was going to hate him.
“Holt,” he thought. Where had he heard that name?
He pushed past his wife and entered the house, turned right into the parlor and blinked in the light of the lamp.
The room seemed full of people. He saw that his three sons and two daughters were there. A tall dark-coated man rose from the far corner and strode across the room with an outstretched hand. In spite of himself he took it and shook it.
“Timothy Holt,” the man said. His voice showed himself to be a Yankee all right. His back was to the light and Will couldn’t see his face. The man fell back from him exclaiming in surprise. “My gosh,” he said. “When I heard the name Storm I wondered, but it didn’t seem possible. Don’t you remember me, Storm?”
Will was still holding the man’s hand. He turned so that the light shone on the man’s face. Then he too exclaimed in surprise. It didn’t seem possible that of all the thousands of Yankees who could have come to his house this night it could be Tim Holt.
The sight of the man took him back a couple of years into the war, back to the two men lying in the mud of Maryland after the battle had retreated. Two wounded men with the stuffing and the fight knocked out of them. They had no longer been Northerner and Southerner, they had been two wounded and badly frightened men who needed each other. They had tended each other’s wounds, talked, then crawled away in their opposite directions.
“Tim Holt,” Will said.
His mind was in confusion, time jumbled insanely in his mind. It didn’t seem possible . . . He kept his face wooden, as he did always in moments when he didn’t know what to do or say. He found that he was moved profoundly. He had thought about the Yankee often, wondered what had happened to him, how he’d made out. Now he was here in the flesh, standing in his own neat parlor.
He turned to Martha, as he did so often when in doubt.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “Tim an’ me . . . wa-al it’s a long story. You could say we’re old friends, I reckon. Eh, Tim?”
Holt was smiling. He too was moved.
The boys and girls were looking at them, amazed that their father could be on friendly terms with a Yank.
Then it seemed like everybody was talking, the boys and girls asking questions, Martha wanting to know when they’d known each other, Tim and Will patting each other on the arm and asking how they’d been and heck, you haven’t altered a small bit.
Will introduced his family and found that it had been done already. Tim had been there an hour talking with them. They sat and Martha poured lemonade. She didn’t allow strong drink in the house. If Will wanted a nip, he’d have to do it under cover in the barn. He took the opportunity to take a good look at the man whom he had known for no more than a few hours, yet who had made a greater impression on him than any other man living.
Tim Holt was younger than Will—a good ten years younger. Pushing thirty two-three. He’d filled out a little. Hard to believe he had been that half-starved, bloody Northern soldier two years before. He was tired and his clothes were a mite dusty, but he looked like a prosperous man. Will knew a small twinge of envy.
Martha bustled out with the girls. Texas might be short on money, but there was enough to eat. She was proud of her table and she was going to show real Storm hospitality to the visitor.
The three boys sat there with their mouths open, eyeing the man who had fought on the opposite side to them. All three of them had served in Texas regiments—twenty-three year old Clay, the steadiest of the trio, who had ended up sergeant and had come through unscathed; harum-scarum Jody, always in trouble in the army, had been wounded almost with the last shot and had come home, they thought, to die; George, still no more than twenty, still often with the far-away look that comes into a man’s eyes after he has been under heavy fire. Will could not believe that the four of them had come through alive. It showed that the Storms had some kind of luck they could call on.
“Will,” Holt was saying, “you have a fine family. Your boys and me, we’ve been talking about the war. I guess you were mighty fortunate. Two fine daughters, too. Me, I envy you. I’m likely to grow into a crusty old bachelor.”
Will was too proud to say what was in his mind, that girls were just extra mouths to feed. His mind wandered a little. When he came back to the present, he heard Tim talking about cows.
“What was that?” Will asked.
“Your boys tell me you run some cows around here.”
“Cows!” Will said. “That’s about all we do have.”
“Cows!” said Jody, laughing. “If we had as many dollars as we have cows, why, sir . . . ”
Will looked at him sharply. Jody always did shoot his mouth off without thinking. But Will knew that Tim smelled poverty around here. It stared you in the face. He must have ridden in in daylight, seen the state of the place.
“How many would you say, Will?”
“What, cows? Why, I never counted ’em. I never seen ’em for that matter. When we have a chance we kill some for their hides, but there ain’t even a market for hides an’ taller you could call a market.”
“Five hundred?” Tim said.
Not even then did Will suspect what the man was coming to.
“Five hunnerd,” he said. “Why, I’d guess wild at around five thousand. Maybe more.” He explained. “Nobody ain’t touched ’em since before the war. Made a drive to Quincy before the ruckus started. Up the old Sedalia Trail. Sure did surprise the folks around them parts when we drove in with a thousand steers. Took over the town.”
The boys had heard that story a good many times. None of them had gone on the drive and they reckoned to go along on a drive like that sure was living.
“You’ve had experience of trail-driving, then?” Tim asked.
“Sure.”
“Could it be done today?”
Still Will thought the man was talking casually.
“It could be done, but where would a man take his cows? Who’d buy ’em?”
“I would,” said Tim Holt.
Chapter Two
When Will Storm woke up the following morning, his first thought was: I’m goin’ up the old Sedaly again.
It was still dark in the room. He had never lost the habit of rising before light. Martha was snoring. He shook her. Nobody had a right to be sleeping at a time like this.
“Marthy,” he said, “we’re in business.” Her snore broke and she pulled the clothes higher. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on his pants. Two minutes later he was making coffee in the kitchen, coughing pleasurably on the first smoke of the day, his mind racing. He told himself that he was excited as a kid, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t every day a man had hope brought right to his door.
Clay joined him. They grinned at each other. There was a bond between father and son. They were alike. Normally, they were cautious and there was a hard streak in both of them. Now, they shared the same excitement.
“Pa,” Clay said, pouring coffee, or what passed for it, “I can’t hardly believe it.”
“Me neither,” said Will.
They sipped and looked at each other.
“It’s up to us,” Will said. “Tim give us the chance an’ it’s up to us.”
Clay said: “You thought, pa?” His young face was sober now. “You thought how we’re goin’ to do it? What do we use for money? I been awake half the night thinkin’, tryin’ to find some way we can get our hands on some cash-money.”
Will said: “I thought some too. You can’t get what there ain’t. We have to do this without money.”
“How?”
“Credit.”
“Who’d give us credit? There ain’t no credit in the hull of Texas.”
Will leaned forward over the table.
“There’s other fellers in the same fix as us. We need men an’ we’ll get ‘em if we promise ‘em a cut. Our word’s good if nothin’ else ain’t.”
“Horses?”
“There’s the rub. I ain’t gotten over that hurdle yet.”
Will got out of the house before the kids started swarming over him, not wanting to have them asking questions because he didn’t know the answers. Suddenly as he went out into the cold light of the dawn, he sobered and the true immensity of the task before him came home to him. In a moment it seemed crazy that he should undertake such a vast enterprise. Sure, he’d ridden up the trail before the war, but it hadn’t been his drive and he’d been a younger man then. There had been capital behind the deal. He had nothing but three sons and a good name. Maybe that would carry him through. It damned well had to. This was his last chance.
He stalked away from the house, a man in middle years and of middling height, nothing much to look at, but a man possessing the obstinate grit that was needed to cling to a place like this all those years.
One thing in his favor—he knew he had Martha behind him. That woman never failed him. So he wouldn’t likely fail her, not if he could help it.
He washed up at the pump, sticking his head under as he did every morning. When he came dripping from the water, Tim Holt was standing right there at his elbow.
Will said: “You sure give me a start.”
They smiled together.
Tim said: “Will, I know this isn’t going to be easy. Going up the trail, I mean. Can you make out?”
Will felt pretty indignant.
“What makes you think I can’t?” he demanded.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” the Northerner said. “I don’t doubt you. Why else should I come to you? Hell, what I mean is you’ll be needing cash for a hundred things and it’s my guess you don’t have it.”
Will bristled.
“Who says I don’t?”
“Look, Will, we’re both in the same boat. Don’t you see? I’d like to be able to stake you. But I don’t have the wherewithal. I’m taking a gigantic gamble too.”
“You mean—?”
“I won’t try and fool you. I depend on you as much as you do on me.”
And Tim looking so prosperous and all. Will couldn’t take it in for the moment. Doubt and fear darted through him. He rejected them. Heck, this was a chance, wasn’t it
? Maybe a slender one, but he had to take it. What had he to lose?
“You got any more cowmen lined up to buy from?” he asked.
Tim nodded.
“I aim to.”
“How organized’re you at the other end?”
“Me and the others will welcome a hundred thousand head of cattle this coming year.”
Will whistled. That was an unbelievable number.
“There must be a lot of men with a heap of money sunk in this,” he said.
“There’s eight or nine of us. Sunk every penny we can raise. Come this fall we’ll be rich or we’ll be finished.”
“You got faith, Tim.”
“Plenty.”
Will laughed shakily.
“Where do we bring the cows?”
“Abilene, Kansas.”
“Abilene? Why, man—”
“The railroad’ll be there come summer.”
“An’ if it ain’t?”
Tim smiled ruefully.
“Then I reckon we’ll drive ‘em a little further.”
Will thought about that. Finally, he said: “The Storms’ll be there, I reckon,” and thrust out his hand. It was met firmly by Tim Holt’s.
They walked to the house, talking. They sat on the stoop talking and talked till Martha called them into breakfast. They talked through breakfast with all the family chipping in, all except Martha and she mostly kept her talk for Will when they were alone. That way she could air her opinion without undermining his authority.
Finally, it was time for Tim Holt to ride onto the next ranch. Jody saddled his horse in the barn and brought it to the door. The family thought the eastern saddle was kind of funny, but they were too polite to remark on it. Tim told them all goodbye and mounted.
“We’ll see you in Abilene,” Will said.
Tim told him: “I’m banking on it,” and rode out.
“There goes a real gentleman spite of he’s a Yankee,” Martha said.
“He sure do sit that horse funny,” Jody said.
Will said: “We don’t have much time. We start work right now.” Even Jody looked as if he were in agreement with that. They all started talking at once and Martha had to scream for silence.
Stampede! Page 1
