Stampede!

by Matt Chisholm

Will stood over him and asked: “You hit, Joe?”

  “Feels like my fool leg busted.”

  They heard a shout and turned.

  “Sing out or we fire.”

  “By crackey,” Mart said, “that sounded like Jody.”

  This was too much in too short a time, Will thought. First he had Kate here and now this. It wasn’t possible.

  “Jody,” he called.

  “That you, pa?”

  “Yes, come ahead.”

  They heard horses on the move. A small knot of riders came through the moonlight. A moment later there were Jody and George slip ping from the saddle. Pepe and Juan Mora were behind them. The Storms weren’t a demonstrative family, but Will couldn’t help himself now. He briefly flung his arms around his sons. The two boys looked at Kate in amazement. They had taken a bunch of cows back into camp and their mother and Clay told them that Kate had been taken, that Will and the others had gone after her.

  They didn’t stand there talking for long. Sloan and some of his men must still be around. Joe was lying on the ground in pain. Will gave orders for him to be carried over to the light of the fire. Manning Oaks went off to fetch the horses. If he could catch up any belonging to the Kansas men that would be fine. They carried Joe over to the fire and rested him against a saddle there. His face looked gray even in the ruddy firelight. There were two dead men lying there. If there had been wounded, they had fled. Will was thankful, he didn’t want his actions cluttered up with other folk’s wounded.

  He ordered the two Mexican boys to get out into the darkness and keep their eyes open. And their ears too. A man like Sloan didn’t give up so easily. He started on Joe’s leg. Jody talked, telling him that the rest of the boys were back at the wagon. The only man who hadn’t shown himself was James Madders. Will frowned. They had to have a casualty in all this, maybe Madders was the one.

  He cut the leg of Joe’s pants away and found that the bullet had ploughed a furrow strangely from the knee to the ankle. He wasn’t surprised that Joe thought he’d busted his leg. He tested the limb with his hands, but couldn’t find any sign that a bone had been broken.

  “Lordy,” Joe said in surprise when Will gave his verdict, “you sure ‘bout that, boss?”

  “Sure, I’m sure,” Will told him. “Only thing wrong with you is you’re bleeding like a stuck

  pig.”

  Joe blinked and made up his mind. He could see with his own eyes that the wound was a nasty one. He was a horseman and he didn’t fancy plying his trade with one leg.

  “Take the gal away,” he said firmly, “an’ use the hot iron, Will.”

  Kate gasped.

  Will looked at her. She was white. He made a sign to Mart and her uncle led her away. Joe looked at Will and saw he didn’t like it.

  “Now don’t you argue none,” he said. “Jest git it over an’ done.”

  There was a running-iron lying near. Will put this in the hot coals of the fire, built the fire up a little.

  George said in an uncertain voice: “Couldn’t we clean it out with whiskey, pa?”

  Will said: “Can you tell me where we git whiskey out here? Can you tell me that?”

  Joe flicked a grin.

  “We got whiskey, I drink it,” he said.

  Will took off Joe’s bandana and tied it around the top of his leg. He found a stick and twisted it through the ring of cloth. The bleeding stopped. That seemed to please Joe.

  Will walked back to the fire, pulled on a glove and went to take up the running-iron. It was too hot to hold.

  From the other side of the fire, Kate said: “You can’t do it, pa. You just can’t.” He frowned but he didn’t say anything. The decision was Joe’s. He took off his own bandana and wound it around his hand.

  From the south Pepe Mora sang out that horses were coming.

  It proved to be Manning Oaks with the horses. When he saw Will with the hot iron in his hand he asked what was going on. They told him and he said: “Whiskey would do the trick.”

  Will snarled: “You got whiskey?”

  Oaks nodded.

  “Sure I got whiskey,” he said.

  Will threw down the iron and said: “Let me have it.”

  Oaks walked to his horse and brought a bottle from his wallet. He held it and sighed, saying wryly: “It’s wasted on you, you no-good ole Negra.”

  “Wasted on my laig,” Joe said. “Just clean out my insides with it, boss.”

  Oaks took out the cork and handed it to Joe.

  “On the house,” he said.

  Joe put it to his lips and drank, sighed and handed the bottle back.

  “You whites ain’t all bad,” he said.

  Will took the bottle and cleaned out the wound. The process was painful to Joe in the extreme, but he didn’t utter a sound. He just lay there and sweated. When it was done, Will said: “I got a bullet burn on my arm. I reckon I need medicine too. Oaks protested in vain. Will drank. He felt the fire run down into his guts and he started to feel good. He could have done with more, but he saw the other men looking at him. He handed the bottle to Oaks who drank, looked at it wryly and handed it to Mart. Will started collecting shirt ends and bound up Joe’s leg.

  Then they put the fire out. They all moved a couple of hundred yards due west and got down to talking, deciding what they should do.

  Will said: “We want out of here fast, but we ain’t leavin’ the cows.”

  Mart said: “So we gather and drive right now.”

  George said: “We’ll miss a good few in the dark.”

  “Better’n gettin’ your butt shot off,” Mart said. “Better’n leavin’ the hull shebang to these jaspers.”

  Jody said: “You think they’re still around.”

  “Chance we have to take.”

  “All right,” Will said, “if everybody’s agreed let’s git started. Kate, you stay here with Joe. George you stay with ‘em. There’s rifles enough here for an army. You see any thin’ suspicious you shoot and don’t take no chances. We’ll come a-runnin’.”

  They went to their tired horses and got into the saddle. They started gathering cows and they were still gathering when dawn found them. They were all so tired that they could scarcely keep their eyes open. Still, they now saw, there were more cows. The Kansans must have had the bulk of the herd there. They had one piece of luck and that was that Sloan and his men had left their food behind them. At least the Storm crew ate a hearty breakfast. That made them feel a good deal better. But there was no time to rest and they stopped for no longer than it took to shovel food into their mouths. They were still hunting cows by noon and by that time it seemed to Will that he had forgotten what sleep was like. To sleep became a wonderful dream. The horses were not in such a bad condition, for the men had been able to catch up the scattered mounts of the Kansans and put them to good use. They weren’t cow ponies, but they surely learnt something about cows that day.

  Finally, Will declared himself satisfied and they started the herd north-west. There hadn’t been time for a tally, but when he took a good hard look at the herd, he reckoned that they had over two thousand head there. The Kansan horses they scattered, Will declaring that he might be a happily law-breaking Texan, but, by God, he wasn’t a horse-thief. By this time, however, their own mounts were pretty well rested and their bellies were full of good buffalo grass.

  So far there had been no further sign of the enemy, but, just the same, Will didn’t think it was the time for complacency. Every man rode with his eyes on the country as much as on the cows.

  Secretly, he watched his daughter, trying to discover what effect her ordeal had had on her. Certainly, her face was serious. Her smile when it came was wan, but he put that down to lack of sleep as much as anything else. She was young, he told himself, the young recovered quickly. But he found that he couldn’t stay away from her long and continually found himself riding at her side, still unable to believe that he had her safely back. It came to him with something of a jolt that Martha wo
uld still be worried out of her mind, so he sent young Pepe Mora on ahead with the good news.

  His mind no longer dwelled on Sloan with bitter ferocity. He didn’t doubt that he would have drawn on the man if he met up with him, but now his mind was filled with the joy of having his family complete again, with the task of getting the cows to Abilene.

  He found himself dozing in the saddle.

  “You old fool,” he said out loud to himself, “you ain’t as young as you was.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It hurt him so much when he saw Martha’s face, he couldn’t look. Martha was a pretty tough woman, but when she saw Kate she just went to pieces. The men all followed his example and looked the other way. They busied themselves with the cows. They got the team hitched to the wagon. They had to move on, to get as much distance between this place and themselves. Maybe it was fruitless, they moved so slowly, but they had to do it just the same. Will found himself moving around like an automaton now. He knew the men must be as tired as he was. Joe they put in the wagon, though he swore that he was fit enough to ride. Will decided that the men who had been with him also should get what sleep they could. They were downright dangerous the way they were. He ordered Manning Oaks into the wagon too. There’d be precious little room in there, but what did a man care as tired as they were. He wanted wide awake men for the night-watch.

  The night-watch that was mighty close now, the time he dreaded.

  Night caught them almost at the start of the drive and Will pressed on. He’d drive all night, he reckoned. It was clear and the moon was bright. Other men had done it, why shouldn’t he. The cows were behaving themselves. They kept on the move till midnight and he was satisfied. If Sloan came looking for him tonight, he would discover it wasn’t too easy to find him. The men hit their blankets and were asleep as soon as their heads were down. In spite of Martha begging him to he down, he found that his wariness had gotten the better of him. He knew that he was so stupid-tired that he was being insanely obstinate. He sat down with his back to a wagon-wheel with his rifle leaning against him. He went off as if he had been pole-axed.

  He came awake violently. Somebody was shaking him. He blinked and found that it was dawn. The man in front of him was Manning Oaks. One look at him and Will knew that there was something wrong.

  “What’s up?”

  “I found Madders,” Oaks said.

  Will got to his feet and followed the man.

  They walked a couple of hundred yards east and came to a buffalo wallow. There was a man lying in the center of it. Will walked closer and saw the flies black on him. He was dead. The bullet had caught him in the front of his face and it had made a mess of it.

  Will stood looking down at him.

  So they’d had their casualty. A thirty and found cowhand—dead. Sacrificed to the cows.

  “Fetch a shovel, Mannin’,” he said. Oaks walked away.

  They buried him there, taking turns with the shovel, hacking up the hard earth of the prairie. Then Will called the men who were free over and told them what had happened. Martha came too, but she wouldn’t let the girls come. Mart was better with words than Will so he asked him to say something. They took their hats off and Mart said beside the grave: “He was a hired man, Lord, and he sure earned his keep. A man can’t do more than James Madders done. Jest bear it in mind, Lord. Rest in peace, James. Amen.”

  They all said “Amen” and walked away from the grave.

  Will rode up beside the wagon.

  Martha said: “It could have been one of our boys. I keep thinkin’, it could have been one of our boys.”

  Will had thought the same thing. It seemed impossible that they had all of them back safe.

  But how safe? How much more lay in store for them along this accursed trail?

  A day passed and they waited, helplessly tied to their cattle they waited for the shot from ambush that would kill a man and send the herd charging across the prairie. But nothing happened. They grazed slowly north-east through the day, covering the miles gently until they reached good grass and the cattle bedded peacefully as if they were the best behaved cattle in the world. As he went to look out over them and see the guards were posted, the scene was idyllic—the cattle chewing on the cud, the circling riders crooning to them tunelessly, the stars bright overhead. All was peace.

  Clay came to him.

  “We goin’ to make it, pa?” he asked.

  Will looked at Clay. He had been a difficult child, highly strung and sensitive. But he had settled down into a controlled man. He was cut in fine lines, but he had courage, mental courage. There was no fear in his question, just curiosity.

  “We got to make it, son,” Will said.

  “I reckon we have,” Clay said. “Pa, if we make it, what would you say to me pulling out on my own?”

  That was the way it went between them. Clay had never been afraid of him. There had been few confidences between them. Clay had earned his independence through the war. They had never talked much about the war, but Will knew how his son felt about the conflict, even as he knew his own thoughts. Father and son had gone into the war and had been changed fundamentally by it. No man with anything worthwhile in him could go through that and stay the same. It had beaten something out of them and, at the same time, had beaten a new hardness into them. They had seen too many men die, seen too many homes burned, too many children made fatherless. They had watched helplessly while friends died in mortal agony. No human mind could remain unaffected by that kind of thing.

  Clay hated violence. That didn’t mean that he would never employ it; it didn’t mean that he would back down easily before it. The new hardness saw to it that he wouldn’t do that. But he hated it just the same. Clay had witnessed the height of human folly; he had witnessed the ferocity of man and the eternal childishness of man. And the experience had somehow with drawn him from mankind. Young as he was, he had been able to stand well back and take a good hard look at himself and his fellow men. The terrible destruction had created in him the will to build instead of destroy. He wanted to build and he wanted to live in peace. Will knew what was in his son’s mind as if that mind had been his own.

  He liked having Clay around. Somehow his son was a reassurance. He didn’t want him to go. Just the same he knew that he couldn’t hold onto him. That would be doing justice neither to himself nor the boy.

  “I wouldn’t say a thing, boy,” he said. He knew that Clay knew that he didn’t want him to go. He knew there was regret in the boy.

  “A year or two, pa,” Clay said. “Just take a horse an’ ride.”

  Will smiled.

  “Know how you feel,” he said. “I reckon I shall envy you.”

  Strange, he thought, he had been thinking too about breaking out a little, tearing up his roots. His life had gone stale. Back there in Texas, he seemed to be branded by defeat, defeat in his private life, the defeat of the South by the North. How different would it have been if the South had been victorious? What would it have meant to the pawns like him? There would still be the false confidence in high places? There would have been the same terrible mistakes by men who claimed so falsely to know the answers. Will knew that he faced the question of creating his own little world. Was such a thing possible to a small-caliber man like himself? Could a man shape his own destiny?

  “I been thinkin’,” he said, “about leavin’ the old place.”

  Clay was a little startled. He twisted his head and stared at his father, not quite sure of what he meant.

  “How do you mean?” he demanded.

  “I’m not too sure Texas has anything for any of us right now. Oh, I don’t mean she’s finished. I don’t mean she won’t be a great State again. You can’t hold a place like Texas down forever. It’s against the laws of nature. Just for us, I mean . . . it’s finished. Me for one—I’m stale. I was hankering for new land. There’s plenty. Ten years an’ the Indians’ll be finished. The buffalo’ll be gone. There’s goin’ to be grass for the tak
in’. I aim to take some of it.”

  Clay had never seen this side of his father before. He had always thought of Will as a man who accepted what came to him.

  Will went on—

  “If I do that, Clay, I reckon I could do with you bein’ there. Think about it.”

  “You got anywhere particular in mind, pa?” Clay asked.

  “Colorado, maybe. There’s settlements there, mines. They all need beef. It’s good cattle country I’ve heard tell. We’d have to drive through the Indians and that’s a risk, but I reckon we could give it a whirl. But it’s a long way.” Maybe in Colorado they’d be away from the stench of war, the dead smell of defeat. It was running away, but it was running to, also.

  “Think about it, son,” Will said.

  “Sure,” Clay said. “I’ll think about it, pa.”

  “It depends on Abilene,” Will said. “We ain’t there yet. I don’t reckon we’ve seen the last of these Kansas men.”

  They walked back to the camp. The men were talking quietly preparatory to sleeping.

  Martha was preparing food for breakfast. Kate helped her. Kate was wearing a dress now. She hadn’t protested when Will had told her not to wear pants any more. If she rebelled inside against the order, Will couldn’t guess. She had been subdued ever since they had gotten her back from Sloan. She walked around silently with her head down, her eyes on the ground. And the men were shy of her. In pants they had almost accepted her as a boy. Now she was very much a woman, beautiful. They were a little awed. They followed her with their eyes. Martha said she cried a little each night.

  Will turned in, ready for sleep. He was always tired these days. He thought about Colorado and the mountains. A whole new world. Could a man start again at forty-two? Did a man escape from the past by transporting his body to a new location? The only way to find the answer to that was to move and find the answer. He slept and he dreamed of cattle on the run and little Melissa right in their path. She ran to escape them, but she stayed rooted to the spot. He awoke in a sweat to find the camp sleeping peacefully. The night-guards crooned. The stars looked down brightly.