The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  Most families, as Tippit understood it, sold their homes, along with any other items they could spare, to make the trip out west, pursuing an uncertain future. If they had to purchase land upon arrival, they added that to the total when they started making plans.

  On balance, he supposed a drover’s life was easier and cheaper all the way around.

  The scout, a freckle-faced, broad-shouldered man, had reached him now, not smiling as he asked, “What can I do for you?”

  * * *

  * * *

  A good two hours passed before Bliss Mossman saw his foreman riding back to join the herd. They were already aiming for a place to spend the night, a sort of meadow where the Bar X crew had spent a night with last year’s herd, assuming that the stream Mossman remembered hadn’t dried up in the meantime. Barring that, he thought they ought to be all right.

  “Sorry it took so long, boss,” Tippit offered as he slowed his mare beside Mossman’s flea-bitten gray. “Afraid I got to jawing with the wagon master.”

  “So, it is a train, just like we thought,” Mossman replied.

  “Not much of one. Twelve families from Scandinavia, plus one that fell behind to fix a busted wheel.”

  “Just thirteen wagons, and they rode away from one?” The thought of it made Mossman frown.

  “I know. The wagon master—Thomas Redden, never heard of him before—was set against it, but the other men outvoted him.”

  “A train that size, he lets them vote on who gets left behind?”

  “He says these Swedes have been a headache from day one. First time they’ve been out west, but every one of ’em thinks he’s an expert. Half of ’em were threatening to dock his pay for leading them across unless he kept on schedule, no matter what.”

  “Well, if he lets them call the tune, what else can he expect?”

  “I hear you. Anyway, he wants to know what you think about camping out tonight, the train and herd together.”

  Mossman’s frown deepened on hearing that. “What’s that about?” he asked. “Man can’t control his passengers, and now he wants us riding herd on ’em besides the stock?”

  “I didn’t get that feeling from ’im, boss. More like he hopes passing some time with other people might help calm the herring chokers down a little.”

  “Did he sound like they’d be wanting beef for supper? I can tell you right now, that ain’t gonna fly.”

  “No, sir,” Tippit replied. “He never mentioned anything like that.”

  Mossman was thinking past that, to the other problems camping with the wagon train might cause him. If the Scandies stuck to eating their own food, that still left liquor and potential trouble over females he would have to guard against.

  “This Redden’s counting on an answer, I suppose.”

  “Hoping for one, more like. By now, it’s just a mile or so round trip, if I ride back to fill him in.”

  “Free country, I suppose,” Mossman allowed. “But I want two things clear, up front.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The first is booze. I don’t want any Bar X hands with sore heads in the morning, from that aquavit or whatever the Nordskis drink. I don’t care if they wanna chug it down all night. They can’t be sharing it around our men.”

  “Got it. What else?”

  “The women, girls, whatever. I expect some of our men are leaning to the randy side, knowing we won’t be stopping off at Dodge. We need to minimize contact between them and whatever females may be riding with the wagon train. They need to understand that any trouble on that score means getting fired straight off.”

  “I’ll talk to ’em as soon as I get back, boss.”

  “Okay, then. Take it easy on that mare of yours, with all this riding back and forth.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  I hope not, Mossman thought as Tippit rode away, back toward the train.

  * * *

  * * *

  All set, then, boss?” Chad Sturgis asked.

  The wagon master, Thomas Redden, nodded thoughtfully and told his scout, “Seems like it. Their man says the trail boss, guy named Mossman, out of someplace in New Mexico, is worried about liquor getting to his men and maybe ‘female trouble,’ as the foreman put it, since they’ve been out on the trail awhile.”

  “I don’t see any problem there,” Sturgis replied.

  Redden knew all about the Scandihoovian affinity for aquavit or akvavit—“water of life”—which was clear liquor distilled from spuds or grain and flavored with a range of herbs and spices, frequently tasting primarily of dill or caraway. It packed a punch, all right, running to eighty proof or better, but the Olafs mostly handled it all right—at least until one of them tipped the scale and ran amok.

  That hadn’t happened yet, on this trip west, and Redden hoped he’d seen the last of it for good and all.

  As for the female side of things, he’d trust the Nordski fathers to ride herd on wives and daughters, if the Bar X trail boss could control his itchy drovers. Beyond that, Redden saw no way that he could be deemed responsible for any improprieties.

  His bigger problem, as the wagon master saw it, was his shortage of employees on the train. Aside from Sturgis serving as his scout and hunter, he had Marlon Frank running the chuck wagon and Hector Davos, a soft-spoken Greek who doubled as a handyman and a mechanic on the trail.

  Those were the only three men under his direct command. The rest, his paying customers until they reached trail’s end, consisted of eleven families—five Norwegian, four Swedish, three Danish—with forty-nine all told, including children. One more Swedish family of four, the Bjorlins, was a day behind them, working to repair a broken wheel. The husband had declined Redden’s offer to lend him Hector Davos for the job, insisting he could work it out himself.

  That rankled, but the other clans had cast their votes supporting Axel Bjorlin in his stubbornness and pressing on, which caused Tom Redden to consider whether they had any sense of a community at all.

  “One other thing,” he told his scout, just then remembering.

  “What’s that, boss?”

  “This Mossman character sent word they won’t be sharing any beef with strangers met along the way.”

  “Makes sense,” said Sturgis, shrugging. “Figures that he’d want to pinch a penny till it screams.”

  “No doubt. I’m just surprised he thought it needed mentioning.”

  “I guess it take all kinds.”

  “Still, before we get to camp, I’ll mosey down the line and tip these fools to what they can expect.”

  And won’t that be delightful, Redden thought, turning his black buckskin stallion to double back along their line of march.

  * * *

  * * *

  They got a cook that serves the train?” asked Piney Rollins. “Or is it each family serving themselves?”

  “I couldn’t answer that,” Tippit replied. “I saw a chuck wagon but didn’t ask about their feeding schedule.”

  “I just thought we could share a bit, depending on their stores,” Rollins explained. “Guess I won’t bring it up, though.”

  The foreman couldn’t tell if Piney sounded disappointed or relieved. Bearing their boss’s words in mind, he cautioned Rollins, “Keep an eye out for the Bar X hands trying to cadge a drink of anything aside from coffee, though. Boss doesn’t want ’em getting three sheets to the wind and playing sick tomorrow.”

  “Wouldn’t mind a touch of that myself,” Piney confided. “Just for tasting purposes, o’ course.”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t let that ‘tasting’ make you late for fixing breakfast in the morning, eh? And if you’re smart, I wouldn’t make it obvious to Mr. M.”

  “I hear you, boss,” Piney replied. “Can’t set a bad example for my Little Mary, either, don’t you know?”

  “Heaven forfe
nd,” Tippit replied, and nosed his mare off toward a circuit of the Bar X drovers, planning to impart the same advice he’d shared with Rollins.

  It could be a touchy subject, telling grown men how to spend their leisure time, such as it was. He owed that much to Mr. Mossman, though, and would make plain the rancher’s order that his hands be on their best behavior while consorting with the travelers whose path had intersected theirs.

  That, in its turn, made Tippit think about the family left behind to mend its broken wheel and catch up with the wagon train as soon as possible. In ordinary circumstances, that might be all right, but there were still bad men at large in Kansas, and the Bar X herd might well erase the other wagon tracks before their lagging group tried catching up.

  It wouldn’t take much in an unfamiliar land to make them stray and lose the trail their fellow countrymen were following to the southwest. And having lost their way . . . well, damned near anything could happen next.

  Forget it. Not my problem, he decided.

  But he still thought he might have trouble dozing off to sleep this night.

  * * *

  * * *

  Tack Gud, that’s done at last,” said Axel Bjorlin, wiping grease from his stained hands onto a tattered rag.

  “We did a good job, eh, Papa?” His elder son, Nils, beamed up at his fader, seeking praise.

  Before Axel could answer, his wife, Rowan, spoke up for him, saying, “Yes, you did, Nils. Very good indeed.”

  “Det är bra,” Axel granted, though he normally refrained from lavish praise for work expected to be done correctly. How else would a boy absorb the burden of daily responsibility?

  “I want to help next time,” their younger son, Arvid, chimed in.

  “There should not be another time,” Axel advised. “Not if the work is done correctly.”

  Standing next to Rowan, middle child Kirsten, eight years old, evinced no interest in maintenance of Conestoga wagons. Nor, her father thought, should she. Women and girls had duties of their own to keep them occupied, whether housekeeping on a farm or serving menfolk from a house on creaky wheels.

  “Can we catch up now to the other wagons?” Rowan asked.

  Peering into the west, Axel responded, “No, it’s too late in the day for that. We must camp here tonight and get an early start tomorrow.”

  Rowan wore a disappointed look but did not question Axel’s judgment. In their Lutheran religion—Sweden’s formal church of state since 1580—wives were subservient to husbands as dictated in the gospel and from pulpits nationwide. In some respects they stood on nearly equal footing—naming children and the like—but when it came to major choices, such as emigrating to a new land, then embarking on a trek to parts unknown on the frontier—wise women kept their opinions to themselves.

  It was a man’s world, after all, as planned by the Almighty from day one.

  “Will we be safe out here alone tonight?” asked Kirsten, sounding close to tears.

  “Of course,” Axel assured her. “I will stand watch with your brothers to assist me; eh, boys?”

  “Ja, Papa!” his sons cried out as one, clearly delighted by inclusion in the role of family protectors.

  “Nils,” he said, “go fetch my Comblain from the wagon, son.”

  “And take care with it,” Rowan added.

  “He’ll be fine, wife,” Axel cautioned her.

  Nils returned a moment later, reverently carrying his father’s M1870 Belgian Comblain rifle manufactured in Liège and sold as a military weapon to far-flung governments including Chile’s and Brazil’s. It used a falling-block action, chambered for .42-caliber rounds, and measured fifty-one inches, weighing nine and one half pounds. A skilled hand, like Axel, could manage ten single shots per minute, striking man-sized targets beyond three hundred yards in daylight, using the rifle’s iron sights.

  With the Comblain, Nils also carried a leather ammunition pouch filled with rimfire cartridges, each weighing an ounce and one half. So far, since leaving Independence, Axel Bjorlin had shot deer to feed his family and had no doubt that he could do as well with human targets if the need arose.

  Wild Indians for instance, though they’d seen none on the trail so far. If anyone at all threatened his loved once or his property, Bjorlin meant to be prepared.

  Turning to Rowan with the rifle in his hands, a broad smile on his face, Axel inquired, “What shall we have for supper, wife?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Are they staying put?” asked Oren Dempsey.

  “Fixing up a meal, looks like,” Melvin Halstead replied, grinning.

  “I hope they made enough for all of us,” said Dempsey, giving in to mirth and chuckling.

  Halstead ranked as second-in-command of Dempsey’s Comanchero band, so called because they’d started out by trading manufactured goods—tools and cloth, tobacco, various foodstuffs—to the Comanches in exchange for livestock, hides, and slaves. From there, they’d branched out to commune with other tribes: Pueblos, Apaches, Kiowa, and Navajo. Their stock-in-trade had also broadened, drifting to supplies that U.S. law forbade to red men, namely liquor, guns, and ammunition.

  That made Dempsey and his eleven followers outlaws, for all intents and purposes, although they didn’t give a tinker’s damn about such legal niceties. In fact, they didn’t shy away from rape, murder, or highway robbery, and had been known to cross the southern border on occasion, selling “hostile” scalps to military buyers acting on behalf of Mexican president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada.

  It was just coincidence—and a convenient one—that Mexican scalps were mostly indistinguishable from Indian hair and brought the same welcome price: $100 for men, $50 for women, and $25 for children. And why not? Wasn’t it Colorado’s Colonel Chivington who’d issued orders to his cavalry at Sand Creek, only nine years previously, telling them to “kill and scalp all Indians” because, as God assured him, “knits make lice”?

  Dempsey’s mélange of renegades was a mixed bag, cutting across all ethnic lines. As they stood right now, their group included six Anglos, five Mexicans, and one Celestial—a former railroad coolie and opium addict called Wu Yanbin. They’d had a black man with them for a while as well, but he’d been gutshot back in January, when they’d tried to rob a mail coach and Dempsey had left him for the buzzards, howling at them to come back and finish him, at least.

  Why bother, though, when cartridges cost money and a flock of vultures worked for free?

  “We gonna take ’em now?” asked Zachary Bodine.

  “Hold off a bit, I reckon,” Dempsey said. “They’re fixing supper for us. We can wait until it’s done.”

  “The sodbuster’s mujer is easy on the eyes,” Juanito Calderón observed.

  “Remember why we’re mostly in this,” Dempsey chided all of them. “This is a business first. The fun comes afterward.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin felt a rising sense of expectation from his fellow drovers as they put the herd to bed and drew assignments for the night watch. Yesterday had been another day off for him, and tonight he drew the late shift, carrying from two a.m. till dawn.

  He hadn’t been surprised when Sterling Tippit drew the night’s lookouts aside and handed them an extra chore, watching the other Bar X hands as best they could, to bar what Tippit and his boss called “fraternizing” with the wagon train’s immigrant families.

  That was a sensible request, to Catlin’s mind. Meetings with strangers on the trail were rare and often fraught with peril to the herd, while happening across a woman—much less more than one—was roughly the statistical equivalent of being struck by lightning from a cloudless sky. Art heard the campfire talk that he’d expected, drovers boasting of their prowess with the fairer sex, however unlikely that seemed depending on the individual.

  When lonely men were paired
with women they had never met and likely wouldn’t see again, particularly overnight and well beyond the bounds of civilized society, it didn’t take a mastermind to see that sparks might fly.

  And sparks out on the prairie could ignite a wildfire in the time it took blink your eyes.

  Catlin hoped there’d be no trouble—and particularly none on his watch—but he’d keep an eye peeled, just in case. The last thing Mr. Mossman and his drovers needed was a fight erupting with road-weary immigrants who likely had no understanding of the West, its ways, or the tremendous pressure it could place on lonely men trying to earn their keep by any means available.

  A brawl between the Bar X hands and members of the wagon train would be unfortunate, to say the least. A shooting, much less a fatality, could tie the trail drive up for days on end and leave the team shorthanded if the county sheriff felt like jailing those involved.

  By the same token, Catlin didn’t want to draw down on a cowboy he’d been working with for more than three weeks now. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it in a pinch, but the bad blood resulting from it would most likely lead to someone being fired.

  Better to nip a problem in the bud, and better yet if they had no problems at all.

  At least, he thought, not when the burden falls on me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By mutual agreement of the men in charge, the wagon train and Bar X camp were situated fifty yards apart, in theory to minimize the drift of individuals from one group to the other overnight. Aside from watching over the longhorns and their remuda, hands on lookout were supposed to make passes through the intended no-man’s-land from time to time and head off any stragglers.

  Catlin hoped that it would work but wouldn’t bet his paycheck on it.