by Zane Grey
“You got us where the fur is short,” fumed the rebel leader.
Couch’s plan was to drive the rebel caravan along with his own, not by any means a task to facilitate his journey toward Westport. As luck would have it a troop of Union soldiers came along, to whom the rebels were turned over.
Some days later, while in camp on Ash Creek, at three o’clock in the morning, Clint awakened and missed Jack. Such a rare occurrence was always prolific of alarm. Clint hurried out in his bare feet to tell Couch, who was on guard with ten men. They awoke all the men and prepared to repel attack. But nothing happened. At dawn, when Jack had not returned, Clint wanted to search for him, but the boss forbade. At breakfast-time Jack came wagging his tail, leading a strange man into camp, evidently a teamster. He carried a gun.
Couch fastened keen, suspicious eyes on the stranger. A man on foot in that country was either a desperado or an unfortunate traveler.
“Howdy, stranger! Have a bite with us,” was Couch’s gruff greeting. “An’ who may you happen to be?”
“My name’s Asher,” he said, wiping a clammy forehead. “Teamster on the way to Baruth. I was in a camp about eight miles above you. Fifty-one in the caravan. . . . This mornin’ I got up in the moonlight an’ went huntin’ jack rabbits. When I worked back to camp I heard shootin’ an’ yellin’. I sneaked close so I could see across the creek. . . . Soon the shootin’ stopped, but the yellin’ kept up. The wagons began to burn, makin’ a bright light. Then I seen a big bunch of Indians. They set fire to all the wagons. I lay low in the brush, knowin’ for sure all my outfit was dead an’ scalped right then. . . . They rode off, an’ I set down the creek. I met this dog. He was sure trailin’ them Indians. He fetched me here.”
It was the same old story of the plains. But its variations were endless as was its power to blanch the cheek of the stoutest-hearted freighter.
“How many men did you say?” queried Couch, the first to break that stunned silence.
“Fifty-one, all told. . . . If it hadn’t been for me bein’ wakeful an’ goin’ huntin’ there wouldn’t have been anybody to tell the tale.”
“Any women an’ kids?”
“No, thank God for that.”
“Same here. Wal, Asher, reckon you don’t feel none like eatin’, but since you have to go on—same as all of us—set down an’ pitch in.”
Next day Couch’s caravan drove on to Pawnee Rock, one of Clint’s favorite camps along the great trail.
The Arkansas River made a big bend there, which held a million and more acres as level as a floor, where buffalo were always seen grazing. It was a favorite hunting-ground for all the tribes of the plains, and a good deal of the fighting among them took place at this point.
A tribe of Cheyennes came into view of the caravan. They were moving their village, a procedure Clint had observed before and which was very interesting.
When an Indian encampment moved the squaws did all the work. They dismantled the teepees, packed them on the ponies, and tied the poles on either side. When they were ready to move, they turned the bell mare loose.
This bell mare, an adjunct of every traveling band of Indians, was not only the meanest animal among the mustangs, but also chosen, and in fact trained, to run into a caravan, stampede the stock, and lead them away down the rivers or over the ridges, where the Indians waited for them.
When the horses of an Indian tribe had pretty well cropped off the grass round a village the Indians broke camp and moved to a better location. They were therefore nomadic in habit and followed the buffalo.
This day Couch’s men noticed that the bell mare had evidently been steered away from the caravan. The ponies followed with teepee poles tied to their sides, and baskets in which were Indian children, sometimes two or three to a basket. This collection of Cheyennes had numerous dogs, some of which were packing small articles, after the manner of the ponies. Clint thought these dogs had a strain of gray wolf in them.
The Cheyennes came on to a point opposite Couch’s camp, where they halted in plain sight. The bell mare, true to her training, splashed across the shallow creek, but when Couch ordered his men in a half circle with rifles ready, some of the Cheyennes rode out and headed her back. Then the braves dismounted and sat down, cross-legged to smoke, while the squaws put up the teepees, laid down robes and blankets, gathered wood and started a fire, cooked the meat, and called their lords to eat it. And this all happened in plain sight, not a stone’s throw from where Clint sat and watched them.
But Couch’s caravan was not molested, and traveled on to the Little Arkansas, and unfortunately had to halt for the night at a place notorious for ambushes. Pawnees, Cheyennes, Comanches, Arapahoes, and Apaches had attacked many caravans there; and one or the other of these tribes never let a small caravan get by without a fight.
Couch took unusual precautions here, driving a very close corral, placing the six-pound cannon in the most favorable position, and thirty men on guard, stationed all around the circle.
Clint, with his dog Jack, stood the watch with Couch, which was always the worst one—that hour before dawn just at the faintest sign of light in the east. They had a station close to the cannon. Here Clint and Couch, with another guard, walked up and down their beat, with the dog at their heels. The night was cloudy, and warm, threatening rain.
Presently Jack began to whine and lift his nose to sniff the air—a pretty good sign there were Indians somewhere near.
“Wal, we been gettin’ off lucky this trip,” growled Couch. “Reckon we’re in for hell now.”
He tied the dog to a wagon wheel, but Jack grew so restless and suspicious that the boss went around, waking all the men. By the time he got back to the cannon, which faced the opening left between the wagons, Jack began to growl fiercely.
“Look sharp everybody,” yelled Couch, lighting the fuse.
“HYAR THEY COME!” bawled a scout from a wagon seat.
Suddenly pandemonium broke loose. Couch had at last been surprised. His men were awake, but not all in line, and when a horrid medley of Indian screeches rent the air, only one third of the caravan opened fire.
Clint dove under a wagon, gun thrust forward, his hair stiff, and his skin tight and cold, while the blood gushed back to his heart. The mêlée of yells and shots was deafening. Red flashes lit up the dark night, through which swift wild forms sped by. Clint felt wind—a splitting shock—then blankness!
When he opened his eyes he lay on a bed in a strange room. He could see out of a window. Thin snow whitened a roof. Winter! He must be dreaming. His head felt queer, his body like lead. Nothing in sight was familiar. But he reasoned that none of the forts on the plains had a house with a room like this one. He lifted a hand to rap on the wall.
Presently he heard footfalls. A door opened to let in a woman who gave him a look from quick sharp eyes.
“Where am—I?” he asked, and his voice sounded far away.
“Kansas City,” she replied, cheerfully, as she bent over him, felt his head, and gazed into his eyes. “Who might you be?”
“I’m Clint Belmet. . . . All that’s left of me.”
“Good boy! You’ve come to your senses,” she exclaimed, happily. “I never believed it. But the doctor stuck to it—your mind would clear.”
“Clear?” echoed Clint, dazedly.
“You’ve been out of your mind for months,” replied the woman, hovering over him. “They fetched you to the hospital in August. And Mr. Couch had you fetched here to my house in late September. It’s past Christmas now.”
“Christmas? . . . Where am I? Westport?”
“Westport it was. Kansas City now. We’re growin’.”
“Where’s Uncle Jim?”
“You mean Mr. Couch? He left in six days after arrivin’. Led a big caravan out, they said. Over two hundred wagons.”
“What—ails me?” went on Clint, fainter.
“Feel that, young man.” She took his hand and ran his fingers under his hair, above his te
mple, where he felt a long deep groove, healed yet still sensitive to touch.
“Bullet hole.”
“No. It was an arrow, an’ all but scalped you. The bullet hole was in your shoulder an’ pretty bad. But it’s healed, too. You’re on the road to recovery.”
“Where’s—my dog—Jack?”
“Mr. Couch told me about him,” she replied. “He must have been a wonderful dog. When they found you, as I recall it, an Indian was draggin’ you out from under a wagon. An’ your dog was fightin’ him. Stabbed him with a knife, which no doubt he had intended to use on your scalp. They killed the Indian. Mr. Couch said the dog sure saved your scalp.”
“My dog—Jack,” murmured Clint, dreamily. He did not feel anything but a dreary recognition of facts.
In February Clint was able to get out of bed and move around the room, and put a stick of wood in the stove now and then. The weather was cold. Mrs. Mellon had placed a comfortable armchair in front of the stove, where Clint passed hours. He would read and sleep. He took his meals in that chair, with a board across his lap. His thin hands had long fascinated him, and like a baby he had a habit of holding them up to look at. Day by day they seemed to fill out, to grow less transparent. Uncle Jim had once said Clint’s hand was like a ham.
It was in March that Clint began to show marked improvement. The doctor claimed he had at last beaten the blood-poisoning from the bullet wound in his shoulder. Clint’s appetite improved slowly, and then by leaps and bounds.
April brought sunny days, green grass, budding leaves, and lilac blossoms on the hedge outside his open window. The birds sang. Spring! But Clint Belmet’s blood did not leap with joy. He was no longer a boy and all of life worth living lay in the past.
When he grew able to go outdoors his favorite place was the dock, where he would sit for hours watching the muddy swirling river, the stern-wheelers go sloshing by, belching smoke, or the stevedores at work loading or unloading. Then he would walk along the river bank under the trees, and as he became stronger, out beyond the edge of town, where he would find a lonely place, and rest and watch.
His mind was not active. Something had stultified it. Yet he felt sensitiveness about being the hero of the small boys in Westport. He avoided them when possible. They all knew his story. Buff Belmet! If Clint had killed as many Indians and had as many narrow escapes as these lads credited to his fame he would have been a hundred times Kit Carson.
Summer began to slip by. And Clint took to fishing again, though without the old keen zest. Still it was pleasant to sit on the bank, with his back against a tree, and watch his fishing-line for the bite that never came. Not that it mattered!
Along the end of May the first caravan had started west. In June there were several, all large in number, for the Indians had grown fiercer and more persistent in attack, and the war permitted of no escorts. It was hard for Clint to escape from the influence of the terrific struggle between the North and South. Westport seethed with war talk. Soldiers were always moving. It seemed to Clint there were more people in Westport whose sympathies were with the South than with the North. Sometimes he listened covertly to the guarded talk of negro laborers.
In July more caravans headed out across the plains. Clint never failed to be on hand at the starting hour, and never did he see the oxen wag and heave, the great wagons start to roll, without a yearning to go. Something called him out there to the West. The feeling grew on him. He saw the long winding wagon-train stretching out for miles across the prairie, the vast open on all sides, the waving grass, like a blossoming sea, the birds, the rabbits, the antelope, the deer, the huge horizon-wide herds of buffalo, the long, long gray stretches, monotonous, lonely, and grand. In his mind’s eye he was eternally watching the barren levels, the ridges of high ground, for the sudden rise, as if by magic, of the wild, plumed, naked riders of the prairie. He thought of the graves of his loved ones out there, and the grave of his hopes.
For days the first caravan from the west had been expected by Aull & Company. Stage-coaches from Council Grove and soldiers on the move east from the forts brought rumors of caravans that never arrived. They were going to start, but perhaps they had not done so on time—or perhaps they had been halted.
This spring of 1863 was the most anxious the freighting business had ever experienced. If Aull & Company lost out on their expected caravans of pelts they would crash, and smaller companies were no less in a precarious condition. All business that had no direct connection with the war was bad.
On the morning of July 16th an advance rider galloped into Kansas City and reported to Aull & Company that Nelson’s caravan would reach the river some time during the day—one hundred and sixty-nine heavily laden wagons intact, freighters and stock in good shape, and a number of emigrant families that had been rescued at Point of Rocks.
The rejoicing was not confined to Aull & Company. There were a general relief, and a renewal of hope for those who had interest in other caravans.
Clint Belmet had been sure Couch would beat any other caravan in. Nelson must have had a fine early spring, of which he had taken exceptional advantage, and then he had undoubtedly been fortunate on the drive.
No doubt the first person in Kansas City to espy Nelson’s caravan coming was hawk-eyed Clint Belmet. Sight of it seemed to thrill out the strange deadness that had for months held Clint’s emotions. He shook like a leaf. The past seemed to unfold before his eyes—that first drive out from Independence—the brook—little May Bell—the prairie-schooner seat she shared with him—the Indians—the death of mother and father, and all the poignant pictures of the past.
Clint was on hand, foremost in the crowd that welcomed Nelson’s caravan. The train of wagons filled all of the open square next to the storehouse of Aull & Company. Clint mingled with the merry, sweating freighters, and exchanged words with one here and there. He spoke a language they understood. Nelson’s outfit had been attacked twice. No loss! At Point of Rocks fifty mounted freighters had driven off a band of Pawnees who were harassing the remnant of an emigrant train. Pawnees, Comanches, Apaches had come out of winter quarters on the warpath, fiercer, stronger than ever. And a new menace had arisen on the Western plains. Desperadoes, deserters from the armies, bandits and Mexican robbers, were now as much to be guarded against as the Indians. A small caravan might slip across, but the chance was only one in a hundred. If both these foes to travel worked east as far as Council Grove the stage-coach lines would be compelled to cease their runs.
That night in Aull & Company’s store Clint, who was known there, met the blond giant Nelson, boss of this first caravan.
“Howdy! So you’re Buff Belmet? Heerd of you, an’ shore glad to shake your hand.”
“Do you know my uncle Jim Couch?” asked Clint, eagerly.
“I shore do. Now I place you, Buff. It was Jim who told me about your gettin’ shot in thet bad brush Couch had with Comanches. . . . Wal, so you pulled out?”
“Yes, I’m about well again.”
“I’m tarnation glad. Let’s see. It was near a year ago. Time shore flies. Wal, I reckon you’ll be sittin’ tight pretty soon, lookin’ out over the gray, huh?”
“I don’t know, Nelson. Maybe. It depends on Uncle Jim. Can you give me any word of him?”
“Shore. Seen him at Fort Larned last October. He was drivin’ to Santa Fé an’ Vegas. Expected to winter there.”
“Oughtn’t he be pullin’ into Kansas City soon?”
“He ought an’ he shore will be. Don’t you worry, Buff, about thet old hombre. He takes risks, but he gets there. He’s head of the hardest outfit of Injun-fighters on the Old Trail. I shore wish I had them. Fact is, if he comes in while I’m loadin’ I’ll wait an’ join caravans with him. . . . Tough freightin’ these days, Buff. The strain on men is bad. Watchin’ all day, sleepin’ with one eye open all night, is as hard as actual fightin’. It breaks a fellar down.”
“Did you get—up Maxwell’s Ranch—way?” queried Clint, haltingly.
“No. I wintered at Fort Union. Fine open winter an’ early spring. Heerd talk, though, about Maxwell. He’s not doin’ so well. Last fall he lost forty-seven freight wagons. Burned at Cow Creek. Pawnees. An’ I understand he was short supplies an’ was dependin’ on thet train. It never rains but it pours. . . . Wal, the rumor is that Maxwell won’t last out the war. He’s rich in land an’ stock. But if he can’t trade—why, he’ll have to sell out.”
“But wouldn’t whoever bought him out be in the same fix?”
“Reckon he would,” laughed Nelson.
“Do you know anythin’ about Dagget, who drove a caravan into Maxwell’s last May a year ago?”
“Yes. He was shot in a gamblin’ dive in Vegas last winter. I don’t recall who told me. His caravan disbanded, freighters goin’ here an’ there. Couch got a lot of them.”
Clint found speech difficult, his tongue feeling thick and his mouth dry.
“I—I had some friends in Dagget’s outfit,” went on Clint. “Texans. Name was Clement. Hall Clement was the name. An’ ——”
“No, Buff, I’m shore sorry,” spoke up Nelson, when Clint trailed off. “I didn’t hear no word of anybody by thet name.”
“There was a fellow in Dagget’s outfit, who—who was a Texan, too, but no friend of mine. Name was Lee Murdock. . . . Did you happen to hear his name out there—this winter?”
“Murdock? ’Pears to me I did, Buff,” replied Nelson, scratching his head. “I got it. Shore. . . . His name was Murdock, anyhow. I can’t vouch for the front handle. Gambler. Pretty handy with guns an’ had a bad record. Hailed from Texas. An’ if I recollect right he was in Larned last winter.”
“Thanks. He might be the fellow I—I mean.”
“Wal, I wouldn’t have told you if you hadn’t said this Murdock was no friend of yours. . . . Buff, soon as we unload we’re goin’ into camp just out of town. Jone’s pasture. Come out an’ see me. You’ll shore be welcome to dinner. I’ve still got a rump steak of buffalo meat left. Haw! Haw! See him grin. I’ll bet ten dollars your mouth’s waterin’ right now.”
