“Your pa’s talkin’,” she said. “Heed him now. From here on out there’s no foolin’ around. This is real serious. Go ahead, pa.”
Pa hawked and spat into the dust of the yard. Martha tut-tutted and glared. Will ignored her.
“We ain’t goin’ up that trail without a man who’s got know-how,” he said. “That means Joe Widbee. Jody saddle your horse an’ go git him.”
The boy looked a little shocked.
“Why Joe ain’t nothin’—” he began.
“Isn’t not ain’t,” said Martha.
“Joe isn’t nothin’ but a little ole Negra.”
Will chuckled.
“You tell that to Joe an’ he’ll purely expose your lights, boy. Rustle now and go git him.”
Jody grumbled and went to catch up his horse.
“Clay, George, our gear ain’t fit for a rawhider. You git started on it, we don’t have no cash for saddles and such.”
Then they discussed the wagon and whether it would be strong enough to make the trip. Clay thought not, but Will said rawhide and pray, that was all they could do, Jody came back leading his horse. When every member of the family was there, ma looked around at them and dropped her bombshell.
“Well,” she said, “pa made up his mind about this trip. He’s goin’. He’s done the right thing. But I made up my mind too.”
They turned and looked at her. When Martha spoke in that tone, anybody paid her heed.
“What about, Martha?” Will asked. Something inside him trembled. He knew his Martha.
“I’m comin’ too,” she said.
“What?” shouted Jody.
Will said: “You taken leave of your senses, woman?”
She held up her hand imperiously for silence.
“That’s not all,” she declared. “The two girls’re comin’ along too.”
Will got mad.
“Stop this foolishness right here an’ now,” he roared.
Fourteen-year-old Melissa was dancing around singing: “We’re goin’ drovin’, we’re goin’ drovin’.”
Eighteen-year-old Kate clapped her hands together and cried out: “Ma, that’s real wonderful.”
Will shouted: “Kate, quit prancin’ around and be still. Now, see here, Martha, there’s only one man in this family an’ I say that you an’ the girls stay here. The trail ain’t no fitten place for females.”
Martha came right back at him with: “An’ do you think this place without a man is a fitten place for females. Rawhiders, cow-thieves, Indians . . . I’m not exposing the girls to the risk.”
“You have neighbors. You’re safer here. I refuse to even think of you comin’ along.”
Martha retorted: “I can save you the price of a cook. Kate can ride like a man. There’s another saving.”
“I won’t have my daughter actin’ that way.”
“Melly can wear a pack,” said George. “She’s as obstinate as a burro.”
Martha said: “We’re goin’ an’ that’s the end of it.”
Jody howled: “Aw, no, ma, for Pete’s sake. All the fellers’ll be laughin’ at us havin’ women along.”
Martha’s face was red.
“I know you men,” she yelled. “You jest want to get away from us women so you can be wild an’ woolly in them . . . those towns along the trail.”
Will said weakly: “You know that ain’t true, Martha.”
“You’re durn tootin’ I know it’s true,” she cried.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he said huffily.
“We’ll not talk about anythin’ later,” Martha declared. “It’s settled. Me an’ the girls come along.”
After that Will put up a token resistance, but the family knew it was settled just like Martha said. Jody mounted and rode out, Clay and George headed for the barn, the women disappeared into the house and Will sat on the stoop and whittled. He had to quieten himself down after Martha riled him up. He had to think.
After a while he knew what Martha was at. She wanted to keep the family together. She had spent the war years worrying about her men and she had taken all she could take. Now she would share their danger and have them under her eye.
He got up and walked into the kitchen. The girls weren’t there and Martha was at the stove. As he entered, she turned her head and smiled at him. He reckoned she was still a fine-looking woman and had the prettiest figure he had ever seen on a female. He put his arm around her.
“Martha,” he said, “only reason I’m lettin’ you come is I can’t tolerate no other cookin’.”
“You,” she said and pushed him away. Then she was serious. “Can we do it, Will?”
“Martha,” he said. “We got to.”
“We’ll be doin’ it together,” she said. “I couldn’t bear for no more partin’.”
“I know,” he said.
Chapter Three
The next few days were full of action for the Storms. First, Jody took three days to track down Joe Widbee. Finally, he found him with a string of wild horses he had caught by himself. Joe came like he had been summoned by royalty. He had grown up with Will and had ridden for his father. He had been freed several years before the war and during the conflict had taken to the brush and stayed there. Nobody knew better than Joe how to stay alive and live well in hard country.
He was a smallish, crow-black Negro with an expressionless face. Strangers thought him sullen and uncommunicative, but the few who knew him, like Will did, knew him to be what he was—one of the most knowledgeable men in the country on matters concerning the brasada and the trail—a real hombre del campo. It was said that he had been known to walk up to wild horses and catch them with his bare hands they trusted him so. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but that was the kind of man he was.
He was usually a loner. He liked to hunt wild horses and he made a fair living by catching and breaking them. It was said that he lived mostly on other men’s beef and that was probably true. He didn’t make a great show of his pride, but it was stiff and unbending. His mind had been scarred by his being a slave and now he had reverted to the freedom of the wild. He was never going to bend his neck to another man in his life. Rumor had it that he had killed several men in open fight for a slight to his color. The wise stayed clear of him—he could be a dangerous man.
Strangely enough, he never bore Will any resentment and seemed to hold him in great respect, though he made it clear that it wasn’t the respect of an ex-slave for an ex-master, but a man for a man. To Will, one of the few men who understood him, Joe was something special, it was Joe who had taught him most of the things he knew about the brush-country. It was Joe who had insisted that Will learn Spanish, saying that if you only spoke American, you could know only half the country. Half the roots of Texas were Mexican.
So Joe rode in with his string of mustangs, threw them into the starve-out and swung down from his scarred little brush-popper called, appropriately, Scratch. This was a small wild-eyed little monster of a bay that had a chest, barrel and legs as marked with thorns as much as its master’s leggings. Joe claimed that Scratch only had to hear a longhorn moving around in a thicket and the game little horse couldn’t resist charging head first into the solid undergrowth. When Scratch smelled cow, the rider had to look out for himself or he could lose an arm or an eye.
Joe stalked bow-legged across the yard and looked down at Will on the stoop.
“You-all goin’ up the trail,” he said without a smile or a greeting, acting just as if they had broken off a conversation a minute instead of a couple of months ago, “you’m be needin’ them hosses.”
Will had to smile. That was so like the man. You needed horses and he rode in with some. He got up and shook Joe’s hand. Joe stood there nodding, a sign that he was pleased, a runty man in leather leggins, leather hunting shirt and an old Dragoon gun on his hip that looked as big as a cannon.
“Jody tell you we’re drivin’ a herd up to Abilene, Kansas?”
“Sho,”
said Joe.
“You comin’ along? I’ll give you a fair cut. I don’t have no cash.”
“Sho,” Joe repeated and it was settled.
Suddenly, with Joe agreeing, it all seemed possible to Will that they would get the cows to Kansas.
He said: “We can’t start till we each have a good string of horses.”
“I fix it,” Joe said. “I’ll take the three boys. One-two weeks maybe, huh? All right.”
“We gotta move fast. Go up on the spring grass.”
“Sho.”
Martha and the two girls came out of the house. Martha greeted Joe coldly. She didn’t approve of him. She said he was as wild as an animal and smelled like one. Which was probably true. Melissa didn’t have any such misgivings. She adored the little mustanger, smell or no smell. She danced around him all smiles, talking about the drive and how they were all going along. Joe took that in his stride and didn’t bat an eyelid. He didn’t smile at her or pay her much heed, but she seemed assured that her adoration was returned.
Will called the boys and they came kicking up the dust of the yard. They greeted Joe and Will told them they had a wild horse hunt on their hands.
“You’ll learn more in a week from Joe than you could from any other man in a year,” he said. Jody looked skeptical.
“I learn you good,” Joe said. “Two horses a man. Food for a week, missus.” He didn’t look at Martha; he was uneasy around women.
An hour later, Joe and the three boys rode out. The place was suddenly quiet and deserted. Will reckoned the quiet would give him time for some thinking and planning. But he was mistaken. An hour after the four mustangers rode out a horseman came down the trail. A horseman with a horseman’s eye, Will looked first at the horse. If he knew the mount, he’d know the man. He didn’t know the mount— it had racy lines and it stepped daintily like a thoroughbred. Will was puzzled. He rose and stood watching the approaching stranger.
It wasn’t long before he saw that it was no stranger. He recognized the man and with the recognition came a sudden confusion of feeling. It was his brother, Mart, and he hadn’t seen him in a long time.
His mind flashed back into the past, back to the days when Mart had been his kid brother. There was pain in the thoughts. He asked himself: Am I glad he’s come? And the answer was mixed. Mart was trouble and the thought brought some fear with it. Will had Martha and the family to think of. But Mart was his brother and they’d been close.
Mart rode around the north end of the corral and headed across the yard. Will watched him, unsmiling, suddenly tense and troubled, half-pleased, yet full of dread of what might happen now that Mart was here.
Martha came out onto the stoop and recognized him at once.
“Mart,” she said.
Mart halted his fine sorrel horse and looked down at them both. Will took in every detail. No more than a glance was needed to know that the boy had been living rough. His clothes were torn and shabby, the black hat was battered and shapeless, the clean-cut chin was covered with fair stubble. The two guns in their blackened holsters were well-cared for. Two guns, Will’s mind repeated for him. Only a certain kind of a man needed two guns.
Mart said: “Am I welcome, Will?” He watched his brother levelly with a calm that Will could not remember.
Will said: “Surely,” and found that his mouth was dry.
“Martha?”
Martha smiled.
“Of course, you welcome, Mart. Landsakes, you’re kin, aren’t you?”
Then Will saw how tired the man was. Mart smiled and it was no more than a glimmer on the face of an utterly exhausted man.
“Light,” he said and Mart stepped down from the saddle. He rested for a moment against the horse and it looked as if his legs would buckle under him.
“Come into the house,” Martha said. “You look plumb tuckered out.”
Mart followed them into the kitchen and sank down in a chair at the table.
“It’s been a long time,” Will said.
“Too long for me,” Mart said. “Martha, before anything more’s said, you have to know somethin’.”
“We heard you was wanted,” Will told him. “They after you?”
“They will be. I lost ’em around Bandera. Two-three days they’ll reckon I headed home. So I ain’t stoppin’, don’t you fret.”
Martha said softly: “We’re not frettin’, Mart.” She’d always had a soft spot for her husband’s younger brother. You couldn’t find a woman who was against Mart. He fascinated them and they trusted him. Will never heard of him betraying a woman’s trust. Joe Widbee had once described him as: “The straightest thief I ever did know.”
“I have to have sleep,” Mart said. “If I could sleep a hull day without expectin’ to be jumped, I’d get by.”
Will said: “Feed the boy, Martha. I’ll do some thinkin’.”
Then Kate and Melissa came in. At first they were abashed at the sight of the stranger, but when they learned who it was they were all over him. Melissa couldn’t remember him at all, but Kate had vague recollections of the man who had paid them fleeting visits in her childhood. It being Texas and that particular time in history, they were both instructed that they had never seen their Uncle Mart and neither Will nor Martha doubted that they would remember that if any Yankee came nosing around there. Melissa sat on his knee, Kate leaned across the table hanging on his words. Then Martha put a gargantuan meal in front of him and he wolfed it down. Then Will had the idea he was waiting on.
“Mart,” he said, “the cave.”
His brother looked up and smiled. His mind went back into the past. He remembered how the three boys, the two white and one black, Will, Mart and Joe, had found a secret hideout that no grown-up had ever been able to find.
“Sure,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”
And so it came about that Mart was in the house no more than a few hours, long enough for him to have a sleep on Will and Martha’s bed. He was still woozy from tiredness when Will woke him, but he was willing enough to get along when Will reminded him that they had to reach the cave before nightfall. He thanked Martha for her kindness and kissed the two girls, much to Kate’s confusion, and he and Will went out into the yard. He found that his brother had saddled him a little chunky dun and the sorrel was on the end of a lead-line.
Will asked: “The sorrel yours, Mart?”
“No.”
“Then we lose him,” Mart said. And that was the end of that. Mart hated to part with a horse of that caliber, but he reckoned at that moment, Will was boss. They mounted and rode off south. The women waved from the house.
They stayed on the main trail for no longer than they had to. There was little chance of meeting anybody, but Will didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks at all. After a mile they headed east into the brush along a narrow trail which would allow no more than one horse and rider along it. Now and then they heard the sounds of cattle uneasy at their passing, but they didn’t see one of them. They wouldn’t come out of the thickets till sundown to graze in the glades. After an hour or more they came to broken country and soon after that came to a watercourse. Here they stopped to allow the horses to drink, then went on again.
“Remember it, Mart?” Will asked.
“Every inch,” Mart said.
They saw the hills thrusting their rocks to the sky in front of them and entered a tangle of brush. The thoroughbred didn’t like the going at all, but the little brush ponies headed on gamely through it. Will had given Mart a pair of cowhide leggins and he was grateful for them. Thirty minutes or so later they hit another watercourse and this time headed south along it, keeping the animals in the water. The water was pretty deep here and it came up the horses’ bellies, slowing them down some. They stayed in the water a while until they came to the spot that Joe had chosen for them as a safe place to emerge from the water so many years ago. Here, the horses could step out onto rock from the water without leaving a trace. Mart chuckled with
memory and rode his horse onto the bank. Will followed, leading the thorough bred. They stayed on rock for maybe five minutes, then hit brush again and plunged into it. They were climbing now. The sun was going down and there was a hush over the brasada.
The place was ideal. Here Mart would have shelter and water. From the cave he would be able to see for miles. Nobody could get near him without his knowing. The brush was thick but it was low.
Suddenly, they were at the cave and swinging down from their horses.
“Like comin’ home,” Mart said.
They took the wallets from the horses after they had checked the cave didn’t already have a lodger and carried them inside.
“You goin’ back now, Will?” Mart asked.
“No,” said Will, “I’m stayin’ a night and a day while you sleep. An’ no arguments.”
There were no arguments. Mart wanted sleep like nothing else on earth. How long he had been watching and running, Will couldn’t guess. They took a tarp and blankets into the cave and within minutes, Mart was snoring. Will unsaddled the horses, hobbled them then sat outside the cave in the starlight and thought.
It was a bad time for Mart to come. No doubt about that. The whole of their future hung in the balance and Mart had to come. Not that Will wasn’t pleased to see him. Now he was here, he wouldn’t have it any other way. But the last thing he needed right now was a wanted man.
He thought about Mart making a fresh start. The whole West was opening up. Surely, he could go to Colorado or California and ride under a new name. He was a top-hand with cows was Mart. Maybe he could start his own outfit. He was the kind of man who ought to amount to something, not riding the owl-hoot with a passle of Yankees on his tail. That was no life for a man. It could only end one way. Or maybe two ways, a shot in the back or a rope around his neck.
Will shuddered at the thought of Mart hanging.
So he had two things to do and to do better than he had ever done anything before in all his life. He had to get a trail-herd north to Kansas and he had to get Mart settled.
By the time dawn came up, he reckoned he’d made up his mind on both counts. He roused Mart to eat and they ate cold and washed the food down with creek water. They didn’t speak till they were through eating.
Stampede! Page 2
