Stampede!

by Matt Chisholm

  Chapter Sixteen

  They sighted a herd off to their right. He and Mart went visiting and found that it was McDowell’s. The trail-boss was pleased to see them. He expressed his satisfaction that Will and his crew had come through this far, frowned when he heard of the death in the crew. He had lost a man too. Wasn’t there anything they could do legally about the attacks? They talked it this way and that, decided that the law was stacked against them here. They’d be lucky if Sloan and his crew didn’t bring charges against them. It was Mart’s opinion that there would only be local law in Abilene. McDowell had lost about twenty head. It could have been much more and he was duly thankful. They decided to keep fairly close so that they could help each other if it became necessary.

  The following day they sighted another herd ahead. This belonged to a man named Rossiter. He wasn’t bossing the drive, but had employed a drive-boss. Rossiter followed the herd in the comparative comfort of a buggy. Will thought he would rather cover this kind of country on a horse. No accounting for taste. Rossiter had had little trouble during the drive. He’d been lucky. The three herds drifted north in a gigantic triangle.

  Then came the day when, Mart, riding ahead, sighted the town. He rode back in some excitement to yell the good news. They found a good bedding ground and stopped the herd. Everybody felt the same excitement. It was as if a terrible tension had been suddenly eased. Nobody could fully believe that it was no longer there. It was like coming into the haven of a safe port after weeks out of a stormy sea.

  Will wasn’t so sure. He was in the North here. Being a Texan would be like being a sitting duck. He debated with himself. Who was the best man to take into town? No use many of the crew going in—there was no money for them to spend. He wanted to take Martha and the girls in, put them up at a hotel, let them have some comfort after the hardships of the trail. But again there was no money. He’d go in, find Tim Holt and get the money. He thought of that with some wonder. My God, he could be rich.

  He told Martha that he would have her sleeping in a comfortable bed the following night. He took Clay with him and Manning Oaks. He thought maybe if Tim Holt was there and the money was forthcoming right off, Manning or Clay could ride back and fetch the women. Yes, that’s the way he’d do it. It was a light-hearted trio that saddled up and rode for town. On the road they were joined by McDowell and some of his riders. They swept into Abilene in style.

  It was the rawness of the place that first struck Will. There were signs that there had been some sort of a settlement here in the past, but, for the most part it was new—new raw lumber, a little brick. But it was the pens that impressed him most, the pens and the masses of cattle in them. The horses were most impressed by the puffing locomotives and showed the fact by trying to take off when they heard the first puff. There was a lot of laughter from the men, one of them was unseated and found himself dumped in the dust amidst the laughter of his fellows. They got him aboard again and rode down the main street.

  Will felt like a country boy coming to town for the first time. He saw for the first time the architectural bluff of the West—the false-fronted building. A single storey house pretending to be a two-storey house. He saw too that as there were plenty of cows around town, there were plenty of cowmen in town. Texans walked the streets, spurs jangling. The Northerners eyed them as if they were wild animals. Nobody was aware that this was the first of many railroad cow towns, that this was a small slice of history. It was just a raw town where the North uneasily met the South. Will and his companions rode clear through the place taking in the sights. It hadn’t been here more than a few months but already hotels, stores, saloons and brothels abounded. The respect able, the not so respectable and the plain villainous were here, plying their trades, grabbing money while money was available, drinking, whoring and fighting. McDowell insisted on buying drinks. They tied their horses and trooped into a frame saloon built of green lumber. Here they met other Texas men, here they heard the tales of the trails and the town. Anything went here, there was no law, nightly the drovers shot out the town lights. The Texans were hated and feared. The listeners heard with horror and amusement that the northern women feared a fate worse than death at their hands. Which showed how ignorant of Texans Northerners could be.

  Will asked if anybody had heard of Tim Holt. Sure said a fellow-Texan standing by. He knew Holt. He was at The Drover’s Cottage. All the well-to-do stayed there. Will tried to pull out of the drinking party, McDowell wouldn’t let him go. He looked at Clay. The boy wasn’t used to drinking and his face was flushed. The talk drifted to Yankees and their business men. They wanted everything water-tight and on paper. Not like Texans who were men of their word and did business on their reputations. This was a different world up here.

  At last Will managed to back out. He wanted his money, then he could stand a few drinks on his own account and ride back triumphantly to Martha, bring her into town and buy her the best. It had been so many years since he had been able to do that.

  On the street, he asked the way to The Drover’s Cottage. A stiff-necked Yankee in a hard hat and wearing a gold watch-chain showed him the way. Will walked to the hotel and there asked for Tim Holt. Sure, Holt had stayed there, but he had checked out. No, they didn’t think he had left town. Had he tried the Bull’s Head Saloon?

  As Will hit the street, he thought: He had better not of left town.

  He found the Bull’s Head. It was full and roaring. It was stifling. The air was pungent with the smell of liquor fumes, sweat and tobacco smoke; men bellowed at the tops of their voices to make themselves heard. Mostly they were Texans from the herds, resplendent in wide-brimmed hats, checked shirts and jingling spurs. They drank hard to kill the dust and the monotony of the trail; this close-packed noisome room was life to them at that moment. Cheek by jowl were drovers, gamblers, cattle-buyers, whores and bunco-steerers. It was all mostly good humored. This town was the salvation of the Texans; a source of profit to the Yankees. They met on common, lawless ground. The Texans were, on the whole at this time, good-humored; the Northerners were awed by the Texan ironmongery, the guns that hung at every hip.

  Will elbowed his way through the mass of humanity, greeted a couple of men he knew, asked for Tim Holt and somebody said they’d seen him around not a few minutes back. Will found him in the crush at the long bar. He had his elbows on it and he was staring into a drink.

  “Tim,” Will shouted.

  The man turned his head. Will saw that he was more than half-drunk. Somehow that was a shock. The expression that came on the man’s face as soon as he recognized the newcomer was another shock. Holt wasn’t please to see him.

  Will shouted rather lamely: “I finally got here.”

  For a moment. Holt didn’t know what to say. His jaw worked, but no words came out of his mouth.

  Finally, he managed: “Have a drink.”

  He collared a passing barman and demanded a glass. The glass came and Holt poured from his bottle. Will jolted the drink down his throat.

  “The cows’re south of town,” he said.

  “Is that so?” Holt said. He searched around with his eyes as if he were hoping that somebody would come to the rescue.

  “Had quite a time gettin’ here,” Will said. He felt unwanted. What in hell was the matter with the man? Doubt and worry coursed through Will. What had gone wrong? Some thing was badly wrong. Holt ought to be delighted to see him. Here was a man who had come up the long trail from Texas with three thousand head of cattle for him.

  “So you made it,” Holt said. “In one piece?” He tried to be a little jovial and failed.

  “Lost a man,” Will said. “Jayhawkers.”

  “Too bad,” said Holt. He poured them another drink.

  Too bad, Will thought. A man gets killed and it’s too bad. Suddenly, he didn’t like Holt at all. Suddenly, he was no longer the man he had shared his fear with during the war.

  “You comin’ out to see the cattle?” he asked. His voice was cold now.
Maybe Holt noticed and maybe he didn’t. He was like a man who could see only his own miserable thoughts.

  “Will,” he said, “I have some bad news for you.”

  Here it comes, thought Will.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “There’s no money,” Holt said.

  Will knew what that meant, but just the same, he said: “What do you mean—no money?”

  “Just what I say. Other men raced you here. I bought their cattle. I haven’t had a cent back yet. I’m spent out.”

  Will gaped at him.

  “Don’t you have credit?” he asked.

  The other shook his head.

  “I took a gamble, I’m operating on a shoe string. I’m up against men with money.”

  “You took a gamble,” Will said. “Sounds more like it was me took the gamble, me an’ the rest of the men that drove cows up the trail. You knew this could happen, Holt. You musta done. You asked for more cows than you could handle.”

  “I’m sorry, Will. I’m truly sorry. But things aren’t as bad as they look. There’re other buyers. Why the place is full of ‘em.”

  “There’s a lot of cows, too,” Will said bitterly. He was so mad with disappointment he could have drawn and shot Holt right there and then. To prevent himself doing something violent, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the place.

  It was dark when he reached the street. What hadn’t he promised Martha? He was going to be a rich man he’d told her. Instead of having worthless cows in Texas, he had them in Kansas now.

  He pulled himself together and walked back to the saloon where he’d left Clay and Manning Oaks. He told them what had happened and that they should get back to camp. They were to tell Martha the way things had gone. He’d stay in town and try to find a buyer. The jollity went out of them then. They left the laughing throng and followed him onto the street. He watched them fork their horses and ride out of town. He then started to search for a buyer. He was still searching by midnight. It looked like the market was glutted. Bitterly, he sought his horse and rode back to camp.

  Martha was awake and waiting for him when he rode in.

  “Don’t you fret, Will,” she said, “somethin’ll turn up.” He wished he had her faith. Morosely, he sought his blankets.

  The following morning, he was in the saddle again, headed for town. This time he went alone. He felt depressed and desperate. The others watched him go and he knew that they depended on him. He felt that he had betrayed them. All those endless miles of the trail seemed to have been wasted. The town he found as lively as when he had left it the night before. The saloons were full and the harlots plied their trade openly. A fight had broken out on Texas Street and there was no law to stop it. A fight when Texas men were concerned meant the use of guns. The art of fist-fighting was unknown to Southerners. He saw a man drop in the dust; men rode away. Two men carried the wounded man into a saloon.

  Will stopped and dismounted. He saw Tim Holt come from a saloon. When he caught sight of Will he dodged back in again. Will had no wish to speak to him. He started looking for buyers.

  Other eyes beside Holt’s had seen Will.

  A man stood in a store window watching the street. A big man, built like a Goliath, his right arm in a sling. There were three other men with him.

  There was delight in Sloan’s eyes when he said: “There he is, boys. We have him.”

  “Now?” asked one of his companions.

  “Not right now,” Sloan said in his heavy calm way. “We do this legal. We’re on our home territory here an’ we don’t want to make a mess on it.”

  “Legal?” said the man. “Hell, there’s no law here.”

  “There’s a kind of law,” Sloan said. “If a man commits murder, the town moves against him. Why, it happened only last month when they took that Texan, Jackson.”

  “Sure,” said another man, “that’s right.”

  “Come on,” said Sloan, “we’ll go and find the colonel. He’s the best place to start.”

  The colonel was Winthrop Foggee.

  He really had been a colonel and he still saw himself as a leader of men, a man of standing in the community. Here in Abilene, as one of the founding fathers, he was regarded as the unofficial mayor. Nobody had gotten around to making Abilene a properly constituted township yet, they had all been too busy making money, setting up the stock-pens, throwing up hotels, stores and saloons. Organization and law and order could come later when the dollars were rolling in and there was enough money around to pay for it. Meanwhile, if there was any concerted action to be taken, the colonel was the one to originate it. The taking of Jackson for gunning down a citizen had been organized like a minor military campaign. It had gone like clockwork. The local action had been so well drilled that not even the Texans, who had sympathized with Jackson for killing a Yankee, had been able to put up a resistance. Thirty men armed with shotguns and rifles had been too much even for them to stomach. Maybe if Jackson had been threatened with hanging they might have exploded into violence, but he had been merely run out of town and told not to come back on pain of death. It seemed a honorable fate to them and they had got on with their drinking and whoring. Besides, most of them were in town for no more than a day or two and it wasn’t easy for them to organize. They either had to respond to spontaneous action or not at all.

  Sloan appreciated this and knew the finer points of the game. His plan was to take it one step further than it had been taken before. Will Storm had to be made out such a double-dyed villain that his fate would be something more than just being run out of town.

  The colonel was an imposing man with a strong personality. He owned a good deal of real estate around town in one way or another and already had a saloon and a store in operation, greatly to his own personal profit. He was a tall man of about forty with a jaw that belonged to a builder of empires. He spoke in a loud commanding voice as if he felt that folk on the other side of town should have the benefit of his words. He was now in the back office of his store busy with his paper work when Sloan came upon him. He outwardly dissociated himself with his saloon because he thought the association might harm him socially.

  He knew Sloan, for the big man had held a commission for some time in the infantry regiment which he had commanded. He was aware that Sloan was a man of violent temperament, but, in his favor, he knew him to be a brave soldier and a hater of Seceshes. The colonel was no lover of Southerners either.

  “Ah, Sloan,” he bellowed when he sighted the giant, “when did you get into town?”

  “Just rode in, colonel. Hope I see you well.”

  “Tolerably, captain, tolerably.”

  Sloan introduced him to the other men, the colonel found them chairs, found them drinks, offered the cigars around. They drank and puffed.

  “Now,” said the colonel, “delighted as I am to see you gentlemen, I am sure that this is not merely a social visit. You have a certain purposeful air about you.”

  “You’re right as usual, colonel,” said Sloan. “I have a problem and I can think of no better man than yourself to come to.” He leaned back and watched the effect of those few words on the other man. It was just as he expected. The colonel blossomed.

  “Quite right, captain,” exclaimed the colonel in a roar. “What’s troubling you?”

  Without any more preamble, the big man launched himself into his story. Even if he said so himself, it sounded like a pretty good one. It was possible, even probable, it was based on facts of which the colonel was already aware. It also fitted in with the colonel’s prejudices. And prejudice, as Sloan knew only too well, was the most potent motivation upon which violence could be based.

  The story went this way—

  Sloan worked land to the south of here. This was a he and the colonel wasn’t aware that Sloan owned land. But, no matter. The colonel accepted it, because it was possible, though it was rather far west at that point in history for Sloan to own land on what must have been the edge of the Chisholm trail. But
the colonel swallowed it and was interested. Sloan went on. He had the land in fair order and had planted; he ran some pretty high-grade cattle that had been the result of careful selection and breeding. In short, they were pretty damned valuable animals. He was aware that he was near the route taken by northing herds and had carefully fenced in his land to protect it and his stock. He spoke not only for himself, but for these other gentlemen. They had foreseen what he had foreseen. Kansas was not only ideal land upon which Texas longhorns could thrive and fatten. It was ideal crop country. He couldn’t have said what crops, but the colonel didn’t ask, so that didn’t matter. The colonel knew that crops grew in eastern Kansas. That was enough.

  Now, each of their holdings had been prospering. They had fattened store cattle for market and were on the way to making a fair profit when along came the Texas herds. He was on dangerous ground here and he knew it. The colonel made a profit out of the presence of the herds and profit was sacrosanct. He hastened to say that he held nothing against the herds nor the men who drove them; he reckoned the war was over and they should let bygones be bygones. The colonel looked at him doubtfully, but he had established himself as a moderate man. If he wanted to go to extremes now, it was because he had been driven to them.

  Up till now, all of the settlers had been on pretty good terms with the drovers. They had been grateful for the cow chips as fuel; they had taken their new-born calves off them for feeders. There had been no reason for any differences with the strangers. The Texans had carefully driven their cattle clear of the fences and hedges.

  Now along came this Will Storm. First, his cows broke into Sloan’s fields. Second, his diseased cattle had got amongst his domestic stock. There had been hell to pay. He had gone out and remonstrated with the drovers. They had fired on him and he had been lucky to escape with his life. He put up what fight he could, but he had been sadly outnumbered. But, angered by his resistance, the Texas men had burned his house and driven off his stock. His crops had been ruined by several thousand longhorns being driven over them.