Stampede!

by Matt Chisholm

  “You all right?”

  “All right. Ride, Will, ride.”

  She was a cowman’s woman—she knew the cows came first.

  He swung the horse and it nearly went down. Somehow, he kept it on its feet. A rider pelted past him and he thought it was young Charlie Quintin. Will spurred and went after him. He wondered how the boys were doing up front. If Joe and Mart were out there, all might be well. If any two men could keep a herd together, it was them. Far off he could hear the thunder of the herd, going away into the distance at an incredible speed. He thought he could hear the yipping of the dogs. God make it so nobody had fallen under the cruel hoofs. His horse was following the herd by instinct, knowing what was wanted of him. Stretching out into a flat run, deadly dangerous in the dark, not knowing what the ground was like. A foot wrong and man and horse could have their necks broken.

  The horse dodged around some brush. There was a rider ahead, crouched over the neck of his horse, illuminated for a moment in brilliant lightning that made the whole world stark and unreal. Then the vision was gone, cut off by almost total blackness.

  There flitted through Will’s mind all the terrible things that could happen to the herd running berserk into the black maw of the night — a pile up on a cut-bank, running clean over a bluff; Will had heard of whole herds being lost that way, each animal following the animal in front of it blindly to its death. He had heard of riders and horses pitching out into nothingness during a wild ride in the dark. He wanted in that moment for the men to stop riding crazily into the night for the sake of a few cows. No bunch of longhorns were worth one man’s life, nor what they stood for.

  There was a loud clap of thunder and that was the signal for the heavens to open. It seemed to drop in a solid wall of water, striking at man and horse violently so that, for a moment, they cringed back from it. Will reached back for his slicker, but it was too late. By the time he got his hand on it, he was soaked through to the skin. The weight of the water beat the brim of his hat down against his face.

  He rode on and came to the churned mud where the herd or part of it had passed. He prayed that the boys had been able to keep them together. They could lose days if the cows were scattered.

  He became aware of a dim figure riding to his right. He reined over and yelled to the man and found it was young Juan Mora. He thought his horse was injured and he hadn’t been able to keep up. Will told him to go back, check that the women were all right and make sure there weren’t any injured men lying around. The boy turned his horse and was gone. Will went on, urging his horse through the blinding downpour. He never knew how long he rode, certainly his horse started to be played out. Maybe he was thinking that he had been wrong to tell the boys to let the cows run if they stampeded. Maybe he should have ordered them to mill them. Most men believed in milling. They could be right. Then, after a very long time and when he was chilled to the bone, he was suddenly behind a mass of trotting cows. Heads up and bellowing, the rain glistening on their backs, dimly showing in the murk.

  He turned off to the north, trying to get around them, his horse slipping and sliding on the mud over the uneven ground. At last he came on a rider on a flagging horse, shouted and learned it was Meredith Quintin. Who was up in front?

  “God knows, Mr. Storm,” the boy said. “We tried to keep ‘em together. But I reckon they ain’t all here.”

  The boy was at the end of his strength, too tired almost to talk, his teeth chattering with cold. Will rode on past him. The cows were slowing. Even before he reached the head of the mass, they had come down to a walk. They were run out. He passed another rider and another. The boys had stayed with them. He was heartened. He came to the wide front of the herd and there he found Mart and Joe talking together.

  Had his own three sons come through the wild ride alive?

  Mart and Joe were pleased to see him.

  Mart said: “The wagon, Will ... are they all right?”

  Will nodded.

  “I reckon so. You know how many you have here?”

  “No. Only thing I know is they split two-three miles back.”

  They wouldn’t know till dawn.

  The cows came slowly to a halt and stood bellowing and bawling. It was an awesome and disturbing sound. Will rode around them, trying to estimate how many they had there by the extent of the ground they covered and checking on the men. He came on Jody huddled on his pony, slicklerless and cold. Will was greatly relieved to hear his voice.

  “You all right, son?”

  “Sure, pa.” A very subdued Jody.

  “Seen your brothers?”

  “I ain’t seen nothin’ nor nobody, pa. I just followed the cows.”

  “You done well. Stay with ‘em. We’ll have to hold ‘em here till dawn. Been exciting enough for you, boy?”

  Jody nodded miserably.

  “I’d of like it a bit more if it had been daylight an’ it wasn’t rainin’.”

  Will chuckled and rode on, coming along to the rear of the herd where he found Manning Oaks, slicker on, wad of tobacco in cheek. He hadn’t seen anything but the cows. Sure was some stampede, eh, boss? Never seen cows run like it. He reckoned they didn’t have more than a third of the herd there. Will thought he was maybe right. He wouldn’t know any more till daylight.

  He rounded the rear of the herd and came on James Madders on the far side. That made five riders. That made it four men and two thousand head of cattle missing, if Manning Oaks was right and there were a thousand head here. Two of the missing men were his sons, Clay and George.

  Don’t start fretting about them, man. They went through the war without you holding their hands.

  He reached Mart and Joe.

  He told Mart who the other riders were with the cows and told him to take over. He’d take Joe back with him to camp and then trail the other cows come daylight. Mart said all right, he’d drift the cows campward when dawn came. Mart’s teeth were chattering with the cold. Will and Joe rode back past the mournful bawling of the cows, crouching under the downpour of the rain. Will had to admit that he was now lost and had no idea at all where he was. But Joe took him unerringly into camp. By this time the false dawn was showing in the sky and it had stopped raining.

  As he rode toward the wagon, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Martha had a fire alight. He had never seen a more welcome sight in his life than the flickering flames of that fire.

  Martha turned from the fire as soon as she heard the horses. Kate and Melissa were there with her. As the two men swung down from the saddle, the three of them rushed to them.

  The first thing Martha wanted to know was had anybody been hurt. Will told her not so far as he knew.

  How about their sons? He admitted he had only found Jody. He inspected his women folk. They were mud splattered, but they seemed all right and steady. He was pleased to see that Juan Mora was there with them. He asked if there had been any injured men found near the bedding ground and was told no. That was a relief to him. Maybe he had a whole crew still.

  “How many horses do we have here?” he demanded.

  Kate told him that even the team mules had run off with the remuda. She had her night horse still. It had been sheltered by the wagon when the run started and she had kept a hold on it. Juan Mora’s horse had been gashed in the leg by a horn, but Will decided it would have to be used. He told Kate and Juan to light out after the horses as soon as it was light enough to pick up their signs. They must bring back horses as soon as they found them, even if it was no more than a half-dozen. They needed horses badly.

  He saw that Martha had tried to clean the place up. She had gathered the bedding that had been trodden into the mud and had started to dry it in front of the fire. It steamed in the heat. He told her that he and Joe would down a cup of coffee and get after the other cattle. She forced them to stay long enough to eat as well in spite of their protests. Juan scouted around as soon as it was light and declared that the horses had run north. He and Kate rode out after them. Will
reckoned his women-folk were taking this better than he was. He didn’t get a word of complaint from Martha. She said let the boys come in whenever it was possible so that she could get some hot food into them. She’d do her best to have dry clothes for them, too. Will patted her on the shoulder, mounted his tired horse and followed Joe out of camp.

  From the turmoil of sign, it looked as if the herd had taken off in one massed bunch, but a mile out from camp, they came to broken ground and it looked as if this had split the herd into smaller groups. The biggest of the bunches that had broken away from those under Mart had headed north-east. They headed after them and found them an hour later with young George doing his best to hold them together. There were upwards of a thousand head there and they were far too many for him to turn and drive. The sun was shining and the boy was drying out a little, but he looked pretty miser able just the same. The three of them got to work at once and got the animals drifting back toward camp. The fight had gone out of them and they seemed tractable enough for anybody. Once they were on the move, Will rode back the way he had come and picked up the trail of another bunch that had headed due north. After a while the sign showed that this third bunch had scattered over hell’s own half-acre. Will didn’t know which of the small bunches to follow; they went to all points of the compass, so he picked on one haphazardly and went after it. It wasn’t long before he came on young Pepe Mora rounding up strays. The boy and his horse were exhausted. He told that he had a bunch in a draw not far off. Will asked him if he had seen Clay, but he said no he hadn’t seen a living soul. Will rode with him to the draw and found there about thirty head. That left an awful lot of cows unaccounted for.

  He debated what to do next and decided that he would waste hours by trying to find Clay. The boy knew how to look after himself. Hell, he was a man grown. He helped Pepe chouse the cows from the draw back to camp.

  When they were back to the bedding ground, they found that the other two bunches were in. Mart had taken Joe and headed north. At a glance Will reckoned he was still about eight hundred cows short. He gave orders that when the men had eaten they were to start the herd up the trail. He left Manning Oaks in charge. Martha was looking pretty anxious because Clay hadn’t come in. Will told her not to worry— they’d find him out there someplace sitting guard on a bunch of cows. He knew his duty.

  On the way out, they met Kate and Juan with about thirty horses. They changed their own mounts and went on, telling Kate that Juan and Jody should go after the remainder of the horses as soon as Juan had eaten. They found Clay around noon standing guard over a hundred head of chastened cattle. He had started to think he would never be found and was glad to see them. He told them that there were strays all around there. Will and Joe started rounding them up. Happily, the country was pretty open and the work was not too difficult, except that they were both bone weary. Nothing like getting cows out of the brush down south. But it was slow work just the same and it was night fall before they had increased the bunch to three hundred head. They decided to stay with the animals and Will would go back to the camp in the morning for help. They took turns sleeping during the night. The cows were quiet and well-behaved.

  In the morning, Will rode back to find the new camp not a mile away from the spot he had just left. He detailed a couple of men to go ahead and help Joe and Clay catch cows. He found that the rest of the remuda was in and they hadn’t lost a single horse. They drifted the herd on slowly north till they reached the bunch with Joe and Clay and threw the runagates in with the main bunch. Clay said there was good water no more than a couple of miles ahead, so Will decided to fill the beasts with water and call it a day. The boys sure needed some sleep.

  They reached the water and bedded the cows down. Will thought he had never been so tired in all his life. Not for the first time he decided he wasn’t getting any younger. The following morning, they held a count and found that they were three short. Will said to hell with it, they’d pick up more than that in strays on the trail. With a grin, Mart said that wasn’t strictly honest and Will said it must run in the family.

  As they pushed on north, Will found himself beside Joe.

  The Negro was his usual taciturn self. “Boss,” he said, “they learned it’s fun to run. We gotta watch ‘em.”

  Chapter Seven

  Will watched them. He watched them night and day. They became an obsession with him. He got to know the awkward ones who might cause trouble at some future date. He found a one-eyed steer that alarmed his herd-mates by stumbling into them and had him taken aside and shot. He would rise in the night and ride carefully down on them to gaze at them in the moonlight. He would awaken in the early hours and rise on elbow to listen to them. If he heard the contented sound he would lie back and doze. If he heard an unfamiliar sound, he would mount his night-horse and go take a look. Martha told him that he was making the men uneasy and he tried to control himself. But such a damned lot depended on him getting this bunch through to Abilene. It had become so that the whole of his manhood and his faith in himself was being put to the test. This, he thought, was his last chance. If he didn’t make the grade this time, he never would.

  Joe was as blunt with him as ever.

  “Will,” he said, “you’re spooked.” They were standing on a rise above the herd in the moonlight, watching the animals slowly settling for the night, hearing the voices of the night-guards. “Men is mighty like cattle. They catch the spooks.”

  Will knew he was right. He tried to get a grip on himself. The herd had behaved itself for a week now. Everything was going smoothly. The men had settled down and they were the best damned crew a man could wish for. There wasn’t one bad egg in the basket. Martha was a good cook and there was nothing like a good cook to keep a crew sweet. Why, the men had even gotten used to having women along. Melissa was being spoiled something terrible. It was a happy crew. They were starting to feel proud of themselves.

  They crossed the Colorado and headed on north for the Brazos. The Colorado was their first main river crossing and it made Will nervous, but he didn’t have any call to be. Old Blue led the cows across like the veteran he was, the horses swam willingly. Young Pepe Mora took a tumble into the water and was roped out half-drowned, but was none the worse for the wetting. They didn’t lose a single cow. They were all pretty proud of themselves. Will started to gain confidence.

  When they reached the Brazos, the water was up. The herd halted and walked into itself, spreading out to graze. Will sent riders up and down stream to look for a crossing. Joe found one five miles north-west and they turned the herd along the river. They didn’t cross that day, but waited till the next day when the position of the sun would be right and then they were forced to swim the cows a good distance. But the banks were pretty firm and they only got a few cows caught that had to be roped out of the mud. They pushed on north.

  The following day, three men rode down on the herd. Their leader was a tall saturnine man with black whiskers. He didn’t tell his name, but announced that he had been delegated by the neighboring ranchers to cut the herd for local strays. Will was riding with Clay off to one side of the herd at the time. Clay was for refusing the request, but Will sighed and accepted it. The man could be what he said and if he wanted to start trouble, a herd was a vulnerable thing. Will didn’t want another run. Mart, Joe and the Mora boys rode up, sensing that Will had trouble on his hands. The three strangers started to cut the herd. In a short time, they claimed something like twenty cows and to Will they were plainly marked with his road brand. Certainly some of them bore the marks of some of the local men back on the Nueces, but one thing he was certain of, the cows didn’t belong to this part of Texas. He showed then that he wasn’t soft. He took his rope from his saddle and said: “You men ride out of here an’ don’t come back or you’ll have your necks stretched.”

  The saturnine man declared that they hadn’t heard the last of this. There was law and order in this part of the state and they’d be back with the sheriff. Will to
ld them to bring a mighty big posse with them while they were about it.

  The men rode away and the crew pushed the cows on north. Will was careful not to hurry them. He reckoned the three men had meant business and he thought they’d be back with reinforcements. Mart agreed with him that they were plain cow thieves trying their luck to get cows the easy way.

  “They want our cows,” Will said, “they’ll git ‘em the hard way.”

  So they let the cattle eat their fill and the first chance they had, they took them to water. Will wanted them full to the ears when they bedded down that night. He found an ideal bedding ground for them and posted extra guards. In camps j every man was to sleep with his hand on a gun. Everybody was to be ready to ride at a moment’s notice. Will didn’t fear for the women, because he knew these local men were after cows and wouldn’t be looking for a fight. They’d try to stampede the cattle and get what pickings they could from the scattered cows.

  But they did something Will hadn’t expected and it certainly put him off balance.

  He was dozing with his back to one of the wagon wheels when he was brought to his full senses by a shrill cry.

  “Fire . . . fire.”

  He was on his feet in a second, shouting for the men to roll out. Men came rearing from their blankets, weapons in their hands. But guns were useless in this contingency. South of the herd, flames crackled in the dry grass.

  Once again Will was torn between his cows and his women.

  He ran for his night horse yelling: “Charlie, George, get the wagon outa here.” He saw the boys gather themselves by the light of the fire and dash for the remuda. Kate was on her feet.

  The herd was on its feet.

  Butts were hitting saddle leather and the crew was on the move. Will shoved away his gun and rode. He’d given orders that if the herd ran it must run north. A fantastic order, but he gave it just the same. And as luck would have it, the fire to the south drove the cows north. Maybe the two boys and Kate could hold the remuda. By the light of the stars, he could see the dark forms of riders moving on the outskirts of the herd. It was possible that the cows would stay together.