Stampede!

by Matt Chisholm

  Mart said: “You saved my life, Will. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Don’t git sentimental,” Will snarled gently.

  Will then told Mart that he was going to disappear as soon as the sun was directly over head. He would work his way farther east and lose the thoroughbred.

  “Best horse I ever owned,” Mart said.

  Will tightened his lips. He and his brother would never see eye to eye over other men’s horseflesh. Will would rather have died than have men suspect that he had ever stolen a horse. It was a crime equal to striking your own mother or shooting a man in the back.

  He changed the subject and told Mart about their plans to drive a herd north. Mart took some interest in that. He was a top-hand with cows and took a professional interest in the idea. He talked pretty sensibly about what Will should do and even made a few useful suggestions which Will took note of. All the time, he ran his eye over the country below them, watching for movement. Hell, Will thought, it must be awful for a man to live like this, never knowing when a posse was creeping up on you. He wondered what had set Mart on the run this time, but he kept his questions to himself. Mart would tell him when he was good and ready. But he felt an approaching danger all the time he was sitting there. He wondered whether it was a lawman’s posse or a troop of cavalry after his brother.

  He shot his suggestion at Mart and sat back to see the result.

  “Why don’t you come along with us to Kansas, Mart?”

  His brother looked startled. For a moment, he looked as if he liked the idea, then he shook his head and said: “Too risky. You have the family to think of.”

  “Think about it,” Will said. “I can do with another hand on the cow-hunt and there ain’t none bettern you. This’ll die down in a week or so. Nobody’s comin’ lookin’ for you way out in the brush.”

  “It’s temptin’ right enough,” Mart said. “I’ll think on it.”

  Will pressed the point a little.

  “Git you clear up into Kansas. Take another name. Go West. Start a new life.”

  “Sure would be good to do a day’s work again.”

  “Sleep on it. Go ahead, roll up in them blankets. I’ll watch till noon, then I’m heading out with the hosses.”

  Mart got his head down again and drifted away into sleep. Will thought: He could grow his beard long, change his name. Start over new. Stop wearing two guns. Behave like a normal man. He would sure like to see Mart go straight and stay straight. He was a good man under his wild ways. A little prosperity and some responsibility would do him a power of good. He envied Mart his wildness a little. He’d never had time to be wild; he’d always worked too damned hard. And what had he got for it?

  He sat and watched, his eyes wandering over the blue haze of the brush and nothing stirred. He caught himself dozing by noon and got to his feet. He nudged Mart with his toe and said: “I’m lightin’ out, boy.”

  Mart got up and stretched.

  “Thanks for everythin’, Will.”

  Will said, looking at him hard: “I’m takin’ all the hosses.”

  “What?”

  “You ain’t stirrin’ from here. You can wait out the week, then you can join the boys cow-huntin’.”

  Mart went hard.

  “I don’t aim to ‘low you to do that,” he said through his teeth.

  Will smiled. Mart might be the bad man of the family and he might be pretty good with them guns, but that didn’t faze him one little bit.

  “Only way you’ll stop me, “ he said evenly, “is to shoot me.”

  For just one full minute, Mart looked as if he might do just that. Then he laughed and said: “You ole bastard, you.”

  Will said: “Glad you take it that way, boy.” He walked away and caught up the horses. When he had them saddled, he called: “Go easy on your rations. I’ll be back in a week.”

  Mart lifted his hand in farewell.

  Will headed east down the hill and was soon lost to sight of his brother. He headed straight on east till he was an hour from sunset, then he hit water as he knew he would and worked his way along the little water in the creek bottom. He knew just what he was at and every inch of the land which he travelled. He knew the exact spot at which he would leave the water and release the thoroughbred. He laid his quirt across the satin rump and saw the animal head along a brush trail. Now he headed north, going over what he and Mart had done, knowing that it was doubtful if the men after Mart would have an expert tracker with them. Even if they had, he reckoned he stood a good chance of fooling him. He now headed for a well-worn trail that headed for the Nueces River. Here his tracks would be lost among a welter of other sign. He hit the trail after dark and upped the pace a little, moving openly and not caring if he was seen. After a while he came to a fork in the trail and took the lesser road to the west. This led to Mike Quintin’s place and he thought he would stop by for the news there. It lay about a mile off the main trail and it did not take him long to ride the distance.

  As he rode up to the house, he saw that Mike had company. The yard was full of men and horses. The men were Negroes and they wore the uniform of the US. Cavalry. The war was still close enough to Will for the blue uniform to still give him a turn. He wanted to ride out of there, to stay clear of the blue bellies, but they’d seen him and Mike Quintin had seen him. If Mike hadn’t called out: “My God, it’s Will Storm,” he would maybe have gotten away from there later without trouble. But he did call out and as Will reined in there appeared at his side a young white lieutenant.

  This boy said: “Mr. Storm, are you kin to Martin Storm?”

  Will said: “Brother.”

  He was asked politely to get down from his horse. He did so. There followed thirty minutes of close questioning and Will, who was no liar by nature, lied like a professional. He hadn’t seen his brother since before the war and had no idea of his whereabouts. The young lieutenant tried to shake his story, but he stuck to it. The Negro troopers stood around and eyed him as if he was something the coyote rejected. It was not a pleasant thirty minutes and at the end of it, the young lieutenant said: “You mount your horse, Mr. Storm, and we’ll ride along home with you.”

  He didn’t have much choice. If he’d run for it one of those troopers would have cut him down. Even if he had gotten clear, they’d find where he lived and come to his place. No, he had to play this quietly. He must act the part of a peaceable Texas cowman. Hell, he didn’t have to act—that’s what he was.

  He rode out of there under the worried gaze of Mike Quintin, the young officer at his side and the black troopers following along behind. He hated the thought of this bunch of soldier boys descending on his place. Martha and the girls would be scared out of their wits. The only thing in his favor was that the boys weren’t to home and they couldn’t make trouble. He didn’t put it past Jody to plant an injudicious piece of lead in the blue uniform.

  They reached his home place about a couple of hours later and the noise of their arrival brought Martha out into the yard. The moon was up now and you could see almost as plain as day. His wife didn’t look scared at so many blue bellies being there; she looked mad. But the young lieutenant was as courteous as could be to her and she was somewhat mollified. He next asked if there were any other people living there beside herself and her husband. She told them she had three sons but they were out wild horse hunting. Her two daughters were in the house.

  Was Martin Storm in the house? he asked.

  She then told the same story Will had told and she told it straight.

  “We’ll have your daughters out here, ma’am,” the young Northerner told her.

  “You’ll have no such thing,” she retorted and got mad again.

  Will stepped forward.

  “I’ll fetch ‘em out,” he said. Inwardly, he would like to have knocked the Yankee’s teeth down his throat. Outwardly, he was calm. All he wanted was for the soldiers to go. He went into the house and brought out the two girls. They were scared. He told them ther
e was nothing to be scared about, but they were scared just the same. The young officer was pretty gentle with them—Will had to put that down to his credit. Will had his turn to be scared now, he felt sure young Melissa would stumble in her lie.

  He was mistaken. Both girls lied nobly. They were even more convincing than their elders. The young lieutenant listened to them solemnly then he said: “I shall have to search the house, sir.”

  Martha yelled: “Nobody’s searching my house.”

  The young man said: “It’s my duty, ma’am. Nothing’ll be disturbed. My men’re used to searching.”

  He looked at Will as if he expected resistance there, but Will knew when the odds were against him. The Northerner had met some crazy resistance at times like this in Texas. He was dealing with a proud people and he knew it. Only yesterday he had had a man killed during such a search. Just in case, he palmed his Colt’s gun.

  Martha said: “You’ll search my house over my dead body.”

  “Ma’am,” said the officer, “if there’s trouble it’ll be your man who gets hurt.”

  She went white and stepped aside.

  The lieutenant called out, “Sergeant, search the house. Take three men. Corporal, the barn. Two men. The rest of you spread out over there and over there.”

  The men moved. They disappeared blackly into the shadows. Will stayed very still. He still carried his gun and he had an awful impulse to draw it and shoot the lights out of the young lieutenant. He didn’t know he showed anything, but when he looked at Martha and saw the expression on her face as she watched him, he knew that he did. He tried to relax and pretend it wasn’t happening.

  Melissa started to cry and he put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Don’t fret, honey,” he said. “Coupla minutes an’ they’ll be gone.”

  He could hear the men going through the house, see the lamp being carried from room to room. He was shaking. Finally, the men trooped back from the barn. The corporal reported that the fugitive was not there. Five minutes later, the sergeant and his men came out of the house and gave in the same report.

  The young lieutenant said: “All right, mount.” He turned to Will. “I’m not satisfied, Mr. Storm. Your brother is somewhere around these parts and we mean to find him. If you have news of him, remember it is your duty to inform the authorities. You are liable to heavy penalties if you withhold information.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Will said in an even voice.

  The young man mounted and led the way out of the yard. The troopers followed talking among themselves.

  Will let out a sigh of relief, but he knew it wasn’t over yet. It was now that he began to suspect that Mart had killed a soldier.

  Martha walked into the house wooden-faced and he knew that she thought he could have been more of a man and shown that Texans didn’t give a damn for Yankees. With his arm around Melissa, he walked into the house. The place was in chaos; the men had overturned everything in their search. Will smiled to himself. If Mart had been here they wouldn’t have stood a chance. That was the difference between him and Mart. He wondered who’d win in the long run.

  Wordlessly, they began to put the place in order again.

  Chapter Four

  Joe and the boys came back after ten days and they looked like they’d been a gone a year. The wild ones had made them work. But it had been worth it. They came in close-herding thirty mustangs that looked as if they would take fright and run at any moment. Will never knew how they got the wild things even that far. They turned them into the starve-out and then Will started to wonder how they were going to feed the things. He’d never had thirty wild horses on his hands in his life.

  The boys were pretty pleased with themselves and Joe told Will on the side that they had done well. Clay was a real top-hand and George was shaping up. He reckoned George would have to make up his mind whether he was going to follow Jody or Clay. Jody was a chancer. That wasn’t any news to Will. He knew Jody was a chancer. There was something in him that was in Will’s brother Mart.

  Martha and the girls were pretty glad to see the boys back and promptly started to fill them up to the ears with beef steaks and potatoes. Joe ate his in the barn. He never would go in the house and Will reckoned he knew that Martha was made uneasy by his presence. She never could really get accustomed to a Negro being a free man.

  Will sat with Joe in the barn, talking. He told him about Mart riding in, how he had hidden him at the cave and how the soldiers had been here looking for him. Joe agreed that most likely Mart had killed a soldier. He didn’t like the sound of things much, but he reckoned the trouble would die down. The army had other things to do than hunt a single man all the days. He also agreed that there wasn’t any reason why Mart should not join the cow-hunt and even come up the trail with them. Just so long he didn’t show his face around folks too much.

  Will found himself relieved that the Negro went along with his idea of having Mart join them. A lot was going to depend on Joe this trip and it wouldn’t be any good having one member of the crew resenting another. Mart would be a valuable asset on the drive, there was no man Will would rather have along. He had grit, determination and he had cow-sense.

  He didn’t give the boys any time to get any fat on them. He sent them out with the wagon to gather hay. The horses were in the pen and they had to be fed and there was no money for corn. The little they had in the barn wouldn’t go far with thirty horses eating their heads off. These were grass-raised animals and they could stay that way. The best hay lay a mile from the house and the boys went and stayed there for a day or two. Will who had been up twice to visit with Mart during the boys’ absence, now rode out and fetched him home. Well, as far as the hay field. And he set Mart to cutting hay. To Will’s surprise when the boys had finished in showing their enthusiasm for their uncle’s presence Mart fell to cutting hay with a will. He’d grown soft lying around, and he welcomed the chance to harden his muscles up. In a couple of days there was more than enough hay in the barn, sun-cured and sweet. The mustangs seemed to take to it.

  Then the breaking began and the work had to be done fast. Joe hated the idea of breaking a horse brutally, but even he agreed that there was no time for any fancy work. Just the same, he affirmed that a trail-crew would be less than efficient with horses that acted up too much every time you threw a leg over them. They threw up a circular pen so the crazy animals wouldn’t be able to do too much damage in corners, they roped down their first bronc and they got to work.

  How they didn’t have a neck broken Will never knew. It was a matter of ride one horse after another, right through the day from first light. It seemed that for a week they were never free of the sound of pounding hoofs and the yells of encouragement from the onlookers. After a couple of days, however, Will decided that the cow-hunt could wait no longer. He left Joe and Jody to finish off the mounts and sent Mart, Clay and George out to start winkling the cows out of the brush. He’d picked a gathering ground and he’d already built a chute to Joe’s specification for quick branding. One thing he was certain of—there was no time for any fancy cowboy play with the roping and throwing of cattle for branding. All he wanted was a road brand to be dabbed on an animal behind the left shoulder. He didn’t give a damn whether a cow carried his brand and ear-mark or not. If anybody else’s brand got in with his gather, he would recompense the owner later. He was a trusted man and nobody would accuse him of stealing cows.

  He went and set up a camp on Moon Creek where there was plenty of good grass and water. If cows wouldn’t stay there, they were crazy. His main problem was how to hold them there when they were brought in. Certainly there wasn’t time to build a large holding pen for them. They would have to learn to herd and learn fast. He wouldn’t have any truck with any critter that proved unwilling. Such would be either thrown back in the bush or butchered. He knew only too well that he was gathering the most difficult kind of herd in the world— there were too many bulls around for there had been little castratin
g of calves during the war. Most bulls became tractable in a herd, but some of the more dominant ones could raise hell. He would have to play the whole business by ear.

  He needed tame oxen, dogs and more men. He just didn’t have enough men to gather and hold three thousand cattle. He didn’t have enough to gather and hold a quarter of that number.

  He thought of Mike Quintin. He was a good neighbor and a good cattleman. He had oxen and dogs. He was also broke. Without any more ado, he stepped into the saddle and rode for Mike’s place. He found Mike and his family sitting down to their noon meal. He joined them and put his proposition to them. Mike had heard of the gather and he was full of enthusiasm. He said he and his men folk would help. That meant himself and two sons. Besides that he knew of two good men who would throw in for the gather and maybe for the drive. He wouldn’t come on the drive, but he would vouch for his two sons, Charlie and Meredith. The boys showed their enthusiasm. Mike and his crew would be at the gathering ground first light tomorrow with oxen and dogs. Then he and Will talked terms. Mike would throw several hundred of his own cattle into the herd and that would be return enough for the boys’ work. The other two men would have to make their own agreement with Will. Mike told him where they could be found.

  Will thanked Mrs. Quintin for her hospitality, saddled and rode. He found the men he wanted within the hour, one down in Hamilton, a small village down the creek aways which called itself a town. The man was Manning Oaks and he was sitting outside a saloon wondering where the next drink was coming from. He was a burned up little man of about twenty-five and didn’t look much, but Mike Quintin had vouched for him. He was a brush-popper of the first order. His only asset in this world was a gun, two loads for it, a horse and a saddle. The saddle was worth about twice as much as the horse. Will put his proposition— keep on the gather and the drive then his wages at the end of it. Dollar a day. He didn’t have to ask twice. The little man fetched his horse and rode with him.