by Janet Dailey
“Now you are being kind, Mrs. Calder.” Such flawless manners seemed so incongruous coming from such a rough-looking man. His attention swung back to Benteen. “I think I’ll take a look-see at the river myself.” He backed his sorrel horse up a few feet, then reined it toward the river ford.
When the Ten Bar trail boss was out of hearing, Benteen demanded, “What did you say to him before I came?”
“Practically nothing. Why?” Lorna frowned.
“You must have said or done something. A man doesn’t look at a married woman the way Giles looked at you unless he’s been given a reason to think his interest was welcome.” His gaze was narrow, punching holes in her newly found self-esteem. “You were looking quite pleased about something when I rode up.”
“He had paid me a compliment—something I rarely hear anymore,” she retorted a little snappishly.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I have been busy lately.” He matched her testiness.
“Why? Because you’ve been bossing this drive?” Lorna gave him a cool look. “Mr. Giles has been busy bossing a drive, too, but that didn’t keep him from saying something nice to me.”
“It’s probably been three weeks since he’s seen a woman.”
“And I suppose it makes a difference because you’ve seen me every day and he hasn’t,” she challenged. “Or maybe Mr. Giles knows how to make a woman feel good about herself and you only know how to make her feel foolish and ignorant.”
Lorna slapped the buckskin with the reins and sent it galloping back over the route they had traveled to the river. She knew Benteen was angry, but so was she. She hadn’t encouraged Bull Giles and she resented the implication that she had.
That night, Benteen assigned himself to the second shift of night herd and spread out a bedroll on the ground outside the wagon so he could be easily wakened. Lorna hadn’t spoken to him since they’d reached camp, and he was damned if he was going to make the first move. The next morning he blamed his irritability on the shortness of the night.
The wagons were sent ahead to cross the Red before the herd. Once the Longhorns had the morning stretch and grazed a short while, Benteen made a circling wave of his hat over his head to signal the men to move them out. The point riders picked up the motion and passed the signal down the line.
The brindle steer quickly shouldered his way to the lead. It wasn’t long until the herd was nicely strung out, a multicolored ribbon of hide and horn moving along. The cattle were walking freely toward the water, at this point drifting, not driven. There had been no water at last night’s bedground, and this morning they were thirsty.
When the brindle and his immediate followers waded in to drink, the drovers tightened ranks to shove the rest of the herd after them and force the lead group into the river. Jessie Trumbo on right point swam his horse in front of the brindle to show him the way to the other side.
“Come on and follow me!” Benteen heard Jessie call to the steer. “Come on, you captain of this sea of horns!”
The swimming Longhorns made a strange spectacle. The mud-red river hid their bodies under the water, leaving exposed only the heads with their sweeping rack of long horns. The cowboys pressed to keep the herd compact, not allowing a gap to appear in the flow of horns.
The first steers reached the opposite bank while the swing men, Jonesy and Andy Young, rode into the river on either side of the swimming cattle. The flank and drag riders continued to push from behind. From his vantage point on the riverbank, Benteen watched the proceedings, alert to anything that might threaten this smooth crossing. Sometimes cowboys never knew what would startle a cow—an eddy, a submerged tree branch, or the cry of a whippoorwill. Andy was letting his side of the herd drift too far downstream, where there were patches of quicksand that could swallow a horse or steer in minutes. Benteen shouted to him above the din of bawling beefs. It was acknowledged with a wave.
Something went wrong in midstream. Benteen never saw what it was. Suddenly the cattle started milling in a circle, trying to turn and swim back to the bank they’d left, but the rest of the herd was being pushed into them.
It had happened quickly—and it had to be broken up just as quickly, or the animals in the middle would be drowned in the crush of churning bodies. Jonesy had already seen it and was swimming his horse directly at the tangled mass, hitting and yelling at the excited beasts to turn them toward the north bank. Benteen spurred his horse into the river as Andy Young turned his mount toward the mill. A steer, swimming in a blind panic, rammed into Andy’s horse. It floundered, unseating its rider.
“Andy’s down!” Jonesy shouted.
Benteen saw the cowboy hat floating downstream, then caught a glimpse of Andy’s head as he bobbed to the surface. The coil of cattle was between him and the rider. Jonesy was closer.
From the north bank, water splashed as Spanish rode his horse into the river to come to their aid, while Jessie held the part of the herd that had already made the crossing.
When Jessie threw a rope for Andy, Benteen directed his efforts to breaking the mill. There wasn’t time to think of the personal risk or danger. There was only the cattle and saving them. Spanish rode his horse close to the center and slid off to begin climbing across the backs of animals to the middle. With border curses and flailing fists, he began driving a wedge in the circle of horns. Benteen’s pressure finished the job, and the steers were once again heading in the same direction toward the north bank.
Benteen’s horse labored onto the bank, trembling and snorting. He was breathing hard, too, but his mind was still on the cattle and getting the rest of the herd across. Two of the flank riders accompanied the stream of horns across. As Shorty Niles rode by Benteen, his face was white and strained.
“The sonofabitches didn’t make it. The stupid sonofabitches,” he cursed, but it was a pain-filled voice.
Benteen looked at the last place where he’d seen Jonesy. His riderless horse was on the south bank, shaking itself like a wet dog. There was no sign of Jonesy or Andy Young. Benteen drank in a deep breath and held it, shutting his eyes before he let it out in a long, wavering sigh.
No attempt was made to look for the bodies of the cowboys until the entire herd had made the crossing and been bunched a half-mile from the river. When they searched downstream, they found the bodies floating a mile away. In all, the mill at the river crossing had taken a heavy toll. Two riders dead and seventy head of cattle drowned.
The bodies were wrapped in tarp and carried to a bluff overlooking the river to be buried. It was a solemn service; by necessity, a brief one, too. Lorna stared at all the emotionless faces of the men standing by the graves, hats in hand. Ely Stanton had fashioned a pair of crude crosses out of tree limbs and rawhide to mark the burial sites, but no names were carved into them. Someone had plucked their hats from the river, and they were hanging on the upright beams of the crosses. No cowboy went anywhere without his hat. He ate with it, slept with it, and died with it.
As trail boss, it was Benteen’s duty to say a few words over them. “They were good men, but You know that. Give them good horses to ride and a clear sky overhead. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lorna repeated, but she was the only one.
Her eyes were bright; a thread of fear trembled over her at the mortality of humans. She didn’t know Jonesy—no one had told her his full name—or Andy Young very well, but they’d both been alive at breakfast this morning, bringing her their plates to be washed. Now they were dead. Yet she seemed to be the only one affected by it.
There was a head-down shuffling-away from the graves. She heard Vince Garvey murmur to another drover, “When I cross over an’ hear some angel singin’ off-key, I guess I’ll know it’s Jonesy. Never could sing a note.”
“Hey, Shorty, would you teach me another verse to ‘Sweet Betsy’?” Zeke Taylor asked.
“Sure.” Shorty nodded.
Lorna watched them filing to their horses. “Doesn’t it bother them?” She hadn’t realized she’d
murmured the question aloud until Rusty spoke up.
“Nearly everyone here has ridden out to see the elephant,” he said. “He’s come close to shakin’ hands with Death many a time. They just don’t let their feelings show when one of their kind meets his Maker. They know about dying, but they know about living, too.”
Rusty walked away without waiting to see if she understood his explanation. Mary paused by the graves and laid a bouquet of wildflowers on each of them, and bowed her head in a silent prayer.
The flowers would die. The elements and the animais that roamed the wild country would soon knock down the crosses, and the grass would cover the graves. Lorna turned and ran to the wagon at the bottom of the slope, unaware of Benteen’s approach or the tightness of his jaw when she turned and fled.
Resolutely Benteen went after her, prepared for another emotional display over the death of the two cowboys. There were tears in her eyes when he reached the wagon, but determination sharpened her tightly drawn features.
“Lorna.”
“You needn’t worry. I’m not going to cry like a child.” She climbed onto the wagon seat and began searching frantically for something. The minute she found it, she hopped to the ground.
“What are you doing?” Benteen frowned.
“I’m going to plant two of the cuttings from my mother’s roses on their graves so they’ll always have a marker.” Her dark eyes challenged him to object.
The gesture made his voice husky. “Make it quick. We’ve got to be moving out.”
12
With Texas and the Red River behind them, the drive began its trek through the Indian territory. This section of the Chisholm Trail between the Red River and the Cimarron had been notorious for the raids on cattle herds by Indians and white renegades alike in the early years of the trail’s history. Although the risk of an attack had lessened, the men kept a sharp eye out for trouble just the same. With the deaths of Andy and Jonesy, the drive was shorthanded, which meant extra duty for everyone.
A week into the Indian nation, Lorna was washing dishes from the noon meal. The arduous life was beginning to show its effects. She had lost weight, taking the girlish plumpness from her cheeks. In spite of the bonnet she wore most of the day, her complexion had lost its milky-white color, burned by the sun and wind to a golden brown. Her hands were chapped and rough from being immersed in water often high in alkali. Sometimes when she looked in the small mirror in the wagon, she doubted if her own mother would recognize her.
It was a small consolation that Mary’s dresses were loose around her waist, too. But Lorna noticed that her sisterly friend appeared to be weathering it better than she was. With a sigh, she turned back to the wreck pan, washed another dish, and handed it to Mary to dry.
There was a vague awareness that someone was watching her. She looked up. Terror leaped through her blood. A half-naked Indian was standing by the chuck wagon, his face and chest smeared with warpaint. All those frightening stories Sue Ellen had told her about white women being taken captive by Indians came rushing to her mind. She dropped the half-washed plate into the water and screamed.
Benteen had just left Spanish on the point to ride ahead when he heard the scream come from the noon camp. Dragging the rifle from its scabbard, he reined his fresh mount toward the distant wagons and buried his spurs in its belly. It had been Lorna who screamed, although he didn’t know how he knew that.
Horses were running behind him. Benteen took one quick look to verify it was Spanish and Shorty Niles from the flank position, coming to support him, as had been preplanned if there was trouble. There weren’t two better men if it turned into a fight.
His suspicions were confirmed when he saw a half-dozen bucks straddling skinny ponies between the herd and the wagons. They all had rifles, two of them brand-new repeating rifles, Army issue. Benteen slowed his horse as he neared them, feeling their stony eyes watching him. He rode past them toward the noon camp, not knowing how many Indians were there, and trapped between the two.
That initial scream of terror seemed to shock Lorna to her senses. The savage had made no threatening move toward her. She was frozen beside Mary and staring at the first real “wild” Indian she’d ever seen. She saw he was old, his scraggly hair nearly gray. He was skinny and leathered, not quite as alarming as she had thought. Lorna dragged her gaze away from him to look more and saw two on horseback, holding the string to a third horse.
The old Indian started talking. Lorna couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but he seemed to be making a very eloquent speech, judging by the graceful gesturing of his hands. She half-turned her head toward the cook.
“Do you understand what he’s saying, Mr. Rusty?” she asked.
“It’s just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to me,” he admitted.
The Indian stopped talking and gestured to his mouth. “I think he wants something to eat,” Mary said.
“Are there any beans left?” Lorna asked.
“Yep,” Rusty answered.
“Hand me a plate, Mary.” Lorna’s hand was shaking when she took it. Smiling widely at the Indian, she held it out to Rusty. “Put some beans on it—and any biscuits you have.” She glanced at the other two Indians on their ponies. “Fix two more plates, Mary.”
She made the same gesture of her hand to her mouth that the old Indian had made and offered the plate to him, stretching her arm to the limit of her reach. He took it and began shoveling the beans into his mouth with his fingers.
“I don’t remember anybody takin’ such a likin’ to those Pecos strawberries,” Rusty commented, and scraped the last of the beans onto a plate.
Mary set the two plates on the edge of the worktable and motioned for the other two Indians to come eat. Then she and Lorna backed away to stand closer to Rusty as the two vaulted from their horses and rushed toward the chuck wagon, setting their rifles on the ground.
“They must be starving.” Lorna frowned at the way they crammed the beans into their mouths.
It saddened Lorna to watch the old Indian lick the tin plate to get the last of the beans. He held out the plate and gestured again to his mouth, wanting more.
Rusty made an empty motion with his hands. “No more. All gone.” In an aside, he murmured to the women, “I hope they don’t ransack the wagon, or we won’t have no more.”
Lorna realized that the situation was still precarious. Then she heard the pounding of horses’ hooves and looked around to see Benteen riding up, followed by the Mexican and Shorty.
Peeling out of the saddle before the horse came to a full stop, Benteen made a quick assessment of the scene—the empty plates and the three Indians turning to face him. It was going to be up to Shorty to keep his eye on the other six between the camp and the herd. He kept the rifle gripped in one hand at his side.
“They seem to be hungry, Benteen,” Rusty said.
Spanish came up beside him, all quiet and alert. “What do they look like to you?” Benteen asked. “Kiowa? Osage? Do you speak their lingo?” Benteen walked slowly forward, all his muscles coiled and ready. Spanish followed a half-step behind.
“No Kiowa. A little Cheyenne. A little Comanche. Maybe they know Spanish,” he suggested.
“Try it.”
Spanish greeted the old Indian, the obvious spokesman for the band, and received an answer. He translated it to Benteen. “The old one is Spotted Elk. He says you are trespassing on his land.” There was a pause as the Indian spoke again and Spanish replied. The Indian said something else. This time Benteen recognized the word “wohaw,” which was what the Indians called the Longhorn cattle. “He says”—Spanish paused—“you must pay him one hundred beefs or you cannot cross his land.”
“Tell him the price is too high.” Benteen had bargained with Indians before. “Tell him I will pay him one wohaw for a toll price to pass through his land.”
There was a lengthy haggling exchange between Spanish and the Indian while they tried to agree on terms. Spanish glanced at Benteen. “H
e says he will settle for twenty beefs—no less.”
“Rusty, what have you got in the wagon? Any geegaws?” Benteen asked, not taking his eyes from the gray-headed Indian. “Any supplies you can spare?”
“Got some red bandannas. Those red devils ought to go for them.” Rusty walked to the front of the wagon and pawed through the contents until he found what he was looking for.
“Lay them on the ground,” Benteen advised, then said to Spanish, “Tell him we will give him five steers, those bandannas, and some tobacco. And tell him”—he reached in his shirt pocket and took out his tally book and pencil—“there’s a big herd a day’s drive behind us. They will pay him twenty steers if he gives them this paper.”
Moistening the lead point, he wrote a quick note: “To Whom It May Concern: This is a good Indian. Pay twenty beefs for passing through his land.” And Benteen signed it “Judd Boston.” It was a dirty trick, but Boston had a few coming. He had no qualms about letting those Indians become Bull Giles’s problem. It was a way of getting back at the rival trail boss for being so forward with Lorna. He tore off the note and handed it to a grinning Spanish, who loved a good joke at someone else’s expense as much as the next cowboy.
Spanish relayed the message. The Indian considered it, then came back with a counter offer that widened the Mexican’s eyes. “While he waits for the big herd, he says he will take ten steers and the young squaw to look after him.”
Lorna’s mouth opened in shock. Benteen didn’t blink an eye. “Tell him the squaw’s no good. She complains too much.”
“Benteen Calder …” She breathed his name in outrage.
“Just shut up and stay out of it, Lorna,” he ordered. “Tell Spotted Elk what I said and repeat the last offer.”
When it was done, the old Indian looked at Benteen with a sidelong glance. “He says you insult him. If you don’t give him ten steers, he will have his braves stampede your herd tonight and you will not have any cattle.”
“Tell Spotted Elk if his braves stampede my herd, I will attack his village and kill all his warriors. Then ask him how his women and children will eat when there are no men to hunt for them.”
