by Elmer Kelton
The hours dragged numbly on and on. Heat and thirst had settled over his weary body so long ago that Wade was hardly conscious of them anymore. He was hardly conscious of anything.
The horizon bobbed up and down as a vague, wavy, unreal picture he had seen in restless dreams. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to. Occasionally he snapped himself out of the trance long enough to see the other riders were going through the same thing.
It was a nightmare come true, a fiendish dream born of misery, a devilish ride he would never be able to remember clearly because his senses had dulled to a blunt edge. He was hardly conscious of the long, aching miles that dragged by, or of the fact that the sun had reached its peak and had started down again.
Suddenly there it was, right ahead of them. The enemy they had seen and dreaded so long. The rim!
Wade snapped himself out of his trance. He looked at the rim—tall, forbidding. His burning eyes eagerly scanned the bottom of it. Sure enough, there was the pile of rocks and the scattering of stunted desert brush that marked the trail he and Milholland had found.
They had missed the water hole. But they had come to the right place on the rim.
Wade motioned for the men to bunch the herd right below the rim. While the cattle were being pushed together, the cook rode up with his string of pack mules.
“How about it, Chili? Got enough water left to give every man a good long drink of it?”
The cook nodded. “That’s just about all I got left. But what’ll I fix supper with?”
Wade pointed his chin upward. “There’s water a little piece over the rim.”
The cook took a long look at the rim, Adam’s apple bobbing as he stared, cut his eyes back to Wade, and they held a look that said the trail boss was crazy.
Punchers rode in one by one and watered out. Wade watched Bess Henry. She tried to sip the water in a ladylike manner. But she was too thirsty. She gulped it down like the men. Watching her, he enjoyed the easiness that gradually came back into her dusty, burned face.
He waited until every man in the outfit had had water before he dismounted, picked up the last canteen, and drank as much as he felt was safe. The thought came to him that water never got all the credit it was due. Right now he wouldn’t trade a cupful of it for the stocks of every saloon in town.
He became conscious of Price Stockton standing in front of him, afoot. Lodge Agnew stood behind the man, and a little off to the left. He could feel the storm brewing up in Stockton.
“All right, Massey,” the ranchman said acidly, “you’ve got them this far and almost killed them. What’re you going to do now?”
Wade motioned toward the rim. “We’re taking them on up.”
Stockton scowled. “How? You going to fly?”
“There’s a trail,” Wade answered curtly. “Milholland and I found it, and rode up on it. It’s rough. It’s got some dangerous spots. But we can do it.”
Lodge Agnew spoke up, and Wade began to see what he was up to. “It can’t be done, Price. He brought your herd all the way out here to see it die, just the way I told you. Then you won’t have a chance of squaring your debt. The bank’ll take over. And our friend Massey will make himself a bankful of money—on your cattle.”
Stockton’s face was flushed dark. Wade could see that the heat and the thirst and the misery had gotten to him. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was hardly thinking at all. He was taking Lodge’s words and accepting them for truth.
“Lodge’s right, Massey,” Stockton breathed. His hand dropped down to the butt of his gun. “You’ve got us here where we can’t help ourselves. We can’t fly our cattle up the rim. We can’t take them back. This herd is as good as dead. You’ve killed it. But you’ll never live to make a nickel off of us!”
Stockton started to pull his gun. Wade dropped his own hand to his gun butt.
“I can beat you, Stockton,” he said quickly. “Don’t pull that gun. I don’t want to kill you.”
Stockton hesitated, but Wade knew from the wild look in his steely eyes that he wouldn’t hesitate long. Wade took a step toward him, another, and another, talking all the while.
“It’d do you no good to kill me, Stockton. The bank’d send another man, and it’d send a sheriff, too. You’d lose your ranch and cattle, Stockton. They’d haul you in for murder.”
The ranchman was still paused, the gun half out of his holster. Wade kept moving toward him. Three more steps. Two.
“They’d hang you, Stockton, hang you!”
With a wild curse the ranchman jerked the gun free. Wade jumped in and grabbed it with both hands. For a moment the two men wrestled, twisting and jerking at the pistol. It thundered suddenly. The sound hammered painfully in Wade’s ears. The gunsmoke pinched his nostrils. But the bullet had gone wild.
He wrenched the gun from Stockton and pitched it away. He glimpsed Blackie Hadden picking it up. Then Stockton stepped in wildly, his big fists flailing.
Wade’s anger, the misery and worry he had been through, cut loose in him then. It was no longer of importance that Stockton was Bess Henry’s brother. It mattered only that Stockton had hated him, had made a tough job tougher every chance he had, had taken Wade’s help and offered nothing but hostility in return.
Wade more than matched the ranchman’s blows, giving two for every one he took. He was doing it automatically now, without thought, swinging savagely and without remorse.
Then the anger and bitterness was drained out of him, and Stockton lay on the ground, beaten.
Shame crept back into Wade as Bess Henry stepped up quickly and knelt beside her brother. She had a canteen in her hand. She poured water over a handkerchief and began touching it to Stockton’s face.
“I’m sorry, Bess—Mrs. Henry,” Wade said quietly. “I lost my head.”
She looked up at him without any anger in her eyes. “You could’ve beaten him to the draw. Most any other man would’ve killed him. You kept your head long enough that you didn’t do that. I’m grateful to you, Wade.”
Lodge Agnew’s voice cut into him like the sharp teeth of a saw. “You haven’t heard the last of this, Massey. He’ll get you yet.”
Wade whirled on the man. The anger came roaring back to him.
“You caused this, Lodge. You’ve been digging at him, working him up to it, hoping he’d kill me so you wouldn’t have to. You knew that when this job was done I’d take you back to New Mexico or kill you trying. You tried to kill me by rolling rocks down the slope of that hill and knocking me off the trail.
“And I don’t think Felipe Sanchez died by any accident, either. I’d bet ten years of my life that you waylaid him, roped him out of the saddle and drug him to death. Then you tumbled him down that bank and made it look like he had got himself in a jackpot. I never would be able to prove it, Lodge. But I know!”
He paused, all the fury welling inside of him. “I wouldn’t draw on Stockton awhile ago. But I’m itching to draw on you. Go on, you back-shooting coward. Pull that gun!
Agnew’s face was almost purple with rage. His hands trembled as he started to reach for his gun. But he caught himself.
“Go on, Lodge,” Wade shouted, his voice raw. “Draw it.”
Agnew swallowed hard. He lifted his hands level with his chest. “I ain’t drawing against you, Massey. I ain’t no fool.”
Rage seethed through Wade. He wished Agnew would try to draw. He wanted to beat him and pump slugs into the coward’s body until his gun was empty and then stand over him and watch him die as Felipe had died.
But disappointment seeped into him. He knew Lodge wouldn’t draw. He would kill if he could, but not this way. Not when the other man had an equal chance.
“All right, then,” Wade breathed bitterly, “roll up what gear you got and move out. It doesn’t matter where you go. When this job is done I’ll come looking for you, Lodge. And I’m going to kill you.”
Almost the entire crew was there, watching.
Wade turned on them angrily. “We haven’t got time to be standing around. We’ve got to get those cattle up over the rim and on to water tonight.”
Even the foot of the trail looked tough. Wade was a little bit glad the cowboys couldn’t see all of it. There were places ahead that would scare an eagle. It was an old Indian trail, ten to twenty feet wide in places, two feet wide in others.
“From the looks of it,” he told Snort Shanks, “I’d say the Apaches used it for years before General Crook finally rounded them up. I’ll bet white men have never found it.”
Shanks eyed it like one fistfighter eyeing another. “Well, if the Apaches could take horses up it, we’ll take cattle.”
Snort’s confidence put Wade back in the best humor he had been in since yesterday. “I hoped you’d see it that way. I’m letting you lead the first bunch up. I’ll follow them with Ernesto.”
They cut out about fifty head of the thirsty cattle, choosing mostly cows that weren’t apt to give much trouble.
“You ready, Snort?” Wade asked. His heart was beginning to pound.
The cowboy looked up at the rim, swallowed, then glanced back at Wade with a nervous grin. “Nope, but I won’t be ready at this time tomorrow, either. Let’s go.”
Corey Milholland reined in beside Wade. “Massey,” he said quickly, “how about letting me ride along with you on that first bunch?”
Wade was puzzled. “Well, it’s all right with me. But it’s liable to be dangerous, going up with the first bunch. What do you want to do it for?”
Milholland’s face was earnest. “You thought I was a coward, Massey. Well, I was. Maybe I still am. Pulling you back off that steep slope was something I had to do. There wasn’t any way around it. But I want to see what I can do when I don’t really have to. I want to see if I’m still a coward, or not.”
Wade put his hand on the old cowboy’s shoulder. “You’re no coward, Corey. But if you want to prove it, come along.”
He signaled Ernesto Flores to stay behind. The vaquero grinned. He didn’t mind that order.
Snort Shanks started up the tortuous, twisting trail as point man. Wade and Corey Milholland began pushing the thirsty, fighting cattle. The proddy ones didn’t want to start the climb. Wade and Milholland had to whip them along with ropes to crowd them onto the trail. Once the cattle had started up, the two kept close behind them.
“Don’t push too hard,” Wade cautioned. “Let them pick their own pace.”
It was a scary trail, every bit as boogery as he had thought it would be. In spots it wasn’t a trail at all—just a place that cattle and horses could pick their way across in single file.
Up and up they toiled, barely inching along. Many times Wade’s heart bobbed up into his throat as cattle lost their footing. They always got it back, though. All but one old cow. She didn’t stop falling, bouncing and sliding until she was a hundred and fifty feet below. The life was gone from her long before she came to rest.
But there could be no turning back. Wade and Milholland kept pushing just hard enough that the cattle wouldn’t stop.
Then they came to a place where rushing rainwater had gouged out a part of the trail. It had left a steep furrow that the cattle had to cross. One slip would carry them down the mountainside like timber in a log chute.
Snort Shanks paused only a moment. He stepped down and led his horse across, then he remounted while the cattle began picking their way over. Wade realized that he had hardly taken a breath from the time Snort had started until the last cow had made it.
He turned back to Milholland. “You ready to try it, Corey?” Milholland’s face showed fear, but he managed a sick grin. “I made it before, when you and I came up here by ourselves.” He swung down and walked across, leading his horse. Wade felt pride welling up in him.
At last they reached the top. Wearily Wade took the first deep breath he had taken since he had left the bottom of the rim. He turned and looked back down. He almost wished he hadn’t.
The cattle lifted their heads, sniffed the air, then struck out in a long trot. Wade felt the faint breeze fan his face. Water! The cattle could smell it ahead.
“Let them go, Snort,” he called. They followed the half mile or so to the water hole.
After Wade and Snort Shanks had watered their horses, they left Milholland to hold the first bunch of cattle and help hold up those that would come later. The look in Milholland’s face as the two punchers left him filled Wade’s heart with warmth. The old cowboy had made peace with the world.
There was joy on almost every face when Wade and Snort reached bottom.
“There’s water at the top, plenty of water,” Wade told them. “But get ready for a hard climb before you get to it.”
They cut off another small bunch of cattle. Again Snort Shanks led out. At intervals of a few minutes, Wade would start a cowhand or two up with another bunch. So long as the cattle could see others of their kind ahead of them, they went up fairly well.
So it went, one little bunch after another, winding upward in single and double file like a string of red ants on the desert. He could hear cowboys above him, shouting and whistling, moving the starved cattle on.
At last the big herd had been whittled down to one little bunch. There was no one left but Wade, the cook, Price Stockton, Bess Henry, and the wrangler with the remuda of horses.
Stockton had regained his senses but was still shaky. Bess and the cook had helped him into his saddle. He leaned heavily over the saddle horn. Wade looked worriedly at him, then at the woman.
“Ready, Bess?”
She nodded. He started the last bunch of cattle up the trail. Bess followed, leading her brother’s horse. The cook came next, his string of pack mules following along behind him. Last would be the remuda.
When they finally reached the washout, Wade turned to Bess Henry.
“Pretty dangerous here. You want me to lead Stockton’s horse?”
Her face paled beneath the dust, but she shook her head. “I’ll make it.”
Wade felt proud of her spunk and went on, watching over his shoulder and holding his breath. She made it all right.
Far below, Wade could see the bodies of three or four cattle that hadn’t made it. Bess Henry had not looked down. Wade was glad she hadn’t.
When finally they reached the top, Bess rubbed her arm across her face and murmured, “Thank God.”
Wade reached out and touched her hand. “It was tough. But it’s not so bad the second time.”
She smiled at him and gripped his hand. Warmth flooded him. She must have felt it, too. Her lips parted. Wade almost leaned forward and kissed her. He caught himself and leaned back in the saddle. He thought he could see a trace of disappointment in her eyes. Slowly she relaxed her hand.
But the beating of Wade’s heart did not relax. He had to look away from her to slow his racing pulse. He had been in love with her for weeks now, but there had been a time he might have left, and, eventually, possibly forgotten her. That time was gone. He knew he would never forget her now. He might leave, but nothing would ever be the same.
Cattle were strung out for half a mile or more, running, bawling, madly heading for water. The cowboys were not trying to hold them. It was a sight to make a man glad he had been to hell and back, seeing the way the cattle and horses enjoyed that water.
Cows, steers and old bulls waded out to where they stood up to their bellies in water before they even stopped to drink. The unridden saddle horses drank their fill, and many of them laid down in the cool water, rolling and splashing.
The sight of it brought joy to Bess Henry’s eyes. She seemed to shrug off much of the weariness. Watching her, Wade was glad.
He glanced at Price Stockton. The ranchman had stepped weakly down from his horse and loosened the cinch so the mount could drink in comfort. Now he stood watching the cattle and horses. The heavy lines in his face seemed to soften. The anger and hatred drained from his eyes. A silent peace began taking their place.
> Wade looked a little way up and down the river. There was grass here, grass enough to hold the cattle for weeks. Lord knew they needed a rest. The cowboys needed it, too.
“We’ll set up camp here, Chili,” he told the cook. “Looks like we’ve found the promised land.”
Next morning Wade found Bess Henry sitting her horse on the bank of the river, contentedly watching the herd scattered loosely out over a quarter-mile square of grass. A few hundred yards away sat Price Stockton, watching the same scene.
“How is he, Bess?” Wade asked. “How does he feel now that we’ve got the trip whipped?”
She smiled. “He’s feeling all right, Wade.” She reached out and touched his hand.
She continued, “He knows now that you were trying to help us. He’s wanting to make some kind of amends. He’ll tell you himself, Wade, when he’s found the words he wants to say.”
She looked warmly into Wade’s face. Her eyes were soft and beautiful. “I owe you a lot too, Wade. I want to make it up, some way.”
Wade gripped her hand, gripped it tight. “This is all the payment I’ll ever need, Bess.”
He reached for her, pulled her close to him. He kissed her and found her lips eager. He kept holding her tightly while she leaned her head against his shoulder. She murmured his name, so softly he could barely hear it.
Later he told her, “It’s a good day’s ride on in to town, when you don’t have a lot of cattle to slow you up. I’m going in today. I want to check on the market and send a wire to Underwood & Watson.
“I’ll try to locate a grass lease, too. These cattle ought to have a month or two of grazing before they’re shipped. And we’ll need to have grass waiting for the next bunch we bring up.”
She held his hands and looked worriedly into his eyes. “Be careful, Wade. One of the boys told me that while he was on guard last night, he saw Lodge Agnew come by. He was heading for town, too. He won’t give you an equal chance.”
The morning of the third day, Wade started back from town. He was feeling good. He had found a fine grass lease with plenty of water. The market wasn’t the best he had ever seen, but it was better than he had expected.
