Red Trail

by John Shirley

  Mase raised his right hand, palm outward, signing peace.

  The boy held out the string of game, two jackrabbits and a grouse—it seemed he’d caught the animals with Jacob’s game snares—and then dropped it on the ground. Some kind of offering, in return for the food Mase had left him, probably.

  The Sioux lad turned to ride off, and Mase called out, “East Wind Blake! Wait!”

  East Wind turned toward him, holding the mule in check—but seeming tense as Mase approached, as if he might spur her away at any moment.

  Mase halted his mount about ten yards off. “Is that game for us?”

  His face expressionless, the boy nodded.

  Mase smiled. “I thank you. Tell me this—you had no mount, not even a knife with you. What were you going to do with that yearling you were roping?”

  “Find a way to kill it or sell it.” He shrugged. “I was starving. Lost my weapons, my snares. Eating beetles. Mice. Had to try something.”

  Mase nodded. “Come on into the herd, ride with us to camp, and we’ll all share in that game. My cook will make a good stew out of it.”

  East Wind looked at him, then looked toward the herd. He shook his head.

  “Why’d you help me in that stampede, boy?” Mase asked. “We should’ve been at odds.”

  “You fed me. You talked like you was a fair man. There ain’t many of those.”

  Mase looked into the boy’s eyes and weighed him. He made up his mind. It was taking a chance, but he thought it would probably be all right. “You want a job?” Mase asked.

  A flicker of surprise showed on the boy’s face. “Me?”

  “That’s right. We can loan you a remuda horse, and you can give Jacob back his old friend there.”

  “You will hang me.”

  “If we wanted to kill you, we could’ve shot you by now. You saved my bacon back down the trail. That gets you a job. And we’ll let the rustling go. You’d have to work hard, but I’ll pay you fair. If you don’t know cattle, we’ll show you.”

  East Wind seemed to digest this. At last he said, “I know ’em. My father worked for the government agent, herding the cows and sheep for tribal food. I helped him for two years.”

  “Your father still alive?”

  “No. Killed by Apaches. I joined some other Sioux to hunt Apaches. The government said we were renegade. They’re all dead now. All but me.”

  “You get stuck out here alone, eh? Well, sounds like you need a job.”

  “Them men”—East Wind nodded toward the cowboys at the herd—“what do they say?”

  “They do what I tell them. But I’ll sure look like a fool if I don’t bring that mule back. You want the job or not? You’ll be paid same as everyone else.”

  East Wind gave him a long, slow look. Then he nodded.

  “Take up that stew meat there, and let’s ride over to the chuck wagon. You can leave the mule at the remuda and ride with Dollager. Help him out where you can today. Starting with skinning those rabbits and plucking that prairie chicken. We’ll start you working with the herd tomorrow.”

  * * *

  * * *

  No mail for you yet, Senora Durst,” said Mr. Sanchez, smiling sympathetically from the other side of the counter in Tomas’s Mercado General.

  “The Butterfield stage came in yesterday?” Katie asked.

  “Sí, senora. Only some mail for Mayor Greenwald and for Father O’Bannon. Oh, and something for the bank.”

  She glanced at Jim. He was looking over the hard candy, affecting a kind of scientific disinterest. “Well, next time, then. The herd may have gotten delayed on the way to Denison.”

  “Every trail drive—much delay. Demorar!”

  “I’ll just take the coffee, then, and the kerosene, and a bolt of the gingham there, and two pounds of flour, and a half pound of baking starter, a quarter pound of salt, a pound of sugar, and two pints of the strawberries, a spool of the brown thread . . . and let Jim pick out a couple of the hard candies.”

  Jim’s cheek was bulging with a cherry jawbreaker when they carried the packages out into the midmorning drizzle. They put them in the buckboard, and the boy asked, “Can I give Bonnie a strawberry, Ma?”

  “Just one. I’m going to make a pie.”

  Katie watched him feed the horse a strawberry, appreciating his kindness. He was like that with all the stock. He grieved, in his quiet way, when she had to kill a chicken or a lamb. Sometimes she thought he was too tenderhearted to be a rancher.

  “Can I see if Lucas is home?”

  “Go ahead. I’m going to the sheriff’s office and then to see Father O’Bannon. You meet me at the church at lunchtime, and we’ll have a little something at the café.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  He turned away and she said, “Hold it, Jim!”

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “I know you’ll tell Lucas about what happened at the fence. Just keep the story . . . small. Don’t puff it up none. Don’t make it sound like we’re in a war.”

  “No, ma’am, I won’t!” Jim was running off as he said it.

  Katie smiled. But her mind was mostly on Jim’s father. Probably shouldn’t have gotten up her hopes about a letter. Mase had Pug and Lorenzo looking after him; he’d be fine.

  But you never knew. They had so few men with them, and sometimes the Comanches ranged southeast. . . .

  Sheriff George Beslow was just coming to the office when Katie got there. “Morning, Mrs. Durst.”

  “Can I have a word with you, George?”

  A troubled look came into his eyes, and she suspected Tom Harning had gotten to him first. “Come on in.”

  Beslow opened the door for Katie and followed her into the small, stuffy office. An odor of sweat and vomit from the holding cell in back was overlaid by a veneer of old pipe smoke. The sheriff took off his hat, revealing his mostly bald pate. He had a thick brown mustache that hid most of his upper lip, and muttonchop whiskers. She knew him to have been a provost marshal for the Confederacy; and after the surrender, he’d come home to find that the Yankees had taken most of his father’s land for slavery reparations, leaving him impoverished. Katie guessed this accounted for the bitter cast to his expression. She had never seen a smile on him that didn’t seem to have been a lot of work to hoist.

  Beslow tossed his hat on the desk and gestured to the wooden armchair across from it. “Will you sit, ma’am?”

  Katie took a seat as he tamped tobacco into his pipe and then poised himself on the front edge of the desk, almost looming over her. She found it vulgar. But she said, “You might already know that Tom Harning sent his men to bust down a section of our fence. They tore down sixty feet of fencing, and they were fixing to drive cattle through right onto Durst land.”

  Beslow nodded. “Tom spoke to me. He says the property lines have been wrongly drawn. He says your fence was on his land. He’s going to request a new survey.”

  “A new survey!” She hadn’t anticipated that. “But the property lines are clearly described in the deed! That line goes from Coyote Rock due south to Jumpoff Ravine!”

  “That kind of hearsay description—”

  “It’s all there written down on the deed, Sheriff. It’s in no wise hearsay!”

  He made a rumbling sound in his throat and puffed out a harshly aromatic blue cloud of tobacco smoke. She coughed and waved the smoke away. Someone groaned from the holding cell, probably just waking up from a long drunk.

  “Nonetheless,” the sheriff said, looking past her to the street window, “Tom Harning is making the representation to the county.”

  “He destroyed some of my property, and I want him held responsible for it! That fence costs money and time to repair!”

  Beslow shrugged. “When your husband returns, perhaps he’ll take it up with Justice Crosby.”

&nbs
p; “I can take it up with him myself! Don’t you see Harning is trying to intimidate me! He’s trying to pressure me to get out!”

  “That is not the way he described the matter.”

  Katie caught his gaze and held it. “Sheriff, they destroyed Durst property. Are you going to do anything about it or not?”

  Surprised by her icy firmness, he rocked back a little on his perch. “Mrs. Durst, it’s my understanding that you threatened Harning’s men with a gun. And your man threatened to cut them with a knife! You fired shots at his herd, too!”

  “I fired at the ground, George! Those cattle might’ve trampled me and my son! They were driving them right at us!”

  Beslow stood up and went around the desk. He sat down with the air of a judge about to make a determination. Pointing his pipestem at her, he said, “If you had not fired your weapon, you might have a case! But”—he shook his head—“anything else you have to say on the matter will have to be done in court. And . . . Katie . . . there is another matter.”

  A certain sympathetic note had crept into his tone. She found it worrying. Pity from Sheriff Beslow was a bad sign.

  He opened a desk drawer and drew out a folded document. “The bank has asked me to serve you with this notice.” He passed it to her. “They are calling in the loan. You have forty days to pay it, or they will foreclose on the ranch. And you will be evicted.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The little town’s muddy roads had dried out in the warm morning sun, and now the wind off the plains was beginning to raise drifts of dust as Mase rode into Denison with Pug Liberty and Harry Duff. Lorenzo, Ray, and East Wind were looking after the herd to the southeast of town. Mase was here hoping his new hires were waiting for him.

  Denison was a small, nascent settlement along the Red River; it had been officially founded just two years earlier, when the MKT Railroad—which folks called “the Katy”—had built its bridge across the watercourse. The Katy was mostly for minor freight and passengers. It could take but few stock animals, certainly not a herd of any size, so it was of little interest to Mase, but Duff gawked at the engine sitting at the station, its gold-and-black engine trembling, the inverted cone of its chimney puffing great clouds of gray smoke.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time to ride one of those,” he said.

  “You’ll wait a good deal longer,” said Pug. “We have no business with the train.”

  Duff sighed. “Where we meeting those men?”

  “At the stockyards,” Mase said. “You’re going to the general store over there.” He handed him a list. “Fill that, put the goods in those canvas bags, and sling ’em over your horse.” He handed him the purchase money. “While you’re there, see if you can get some boots that’ll fit that Indian boy. His feet are maybe an inch shorter than yours. And a pair of stockings to go with ’em.”

  “You sure you don’t want to get him a silk pillow, too?” Pug asked dryly.

  “I’ll stop the cost from his pay.”

  Duff peered at the list. “I ain’t much of a hand for reading.”

  “Just give it to the merchant. Can you count money?”

  “That I can do!”

  “Then make sure he gives us the right change. Now, go on with you. Pug, come along with me.”

  Mase and Pug rode off toward the stockyards—but Mase stopped partway there, seeing a Butterfield stage office. “Hold on, Pug. I’m just going to mail a letter to Katie. You got anything to mail?”

  Pug snorted. “To who? I’ll wait here.”

  Inside the Butterfield office, a fussy, plump little man in a checked suit stood at the counter; he had cheeks like round red apples and a head equally round.

  “Well, sir!” he called in a squeaky voice. “Headed south or north? That’s all we got for now.”

  “Neither one, leastways not on the stage,” said Mase to the man’s evident disappointment. “I need a stamp that’ll get this letter to Fuente Verde.” He brought out the envelope, addressed to Katie Durst care of Tomas’s Mercado General in Fuente Verde, Texas. “How much for the stamps and to carry it there?”

  “Just the price of the stamps. The government pays us to carry mail.” He looked at the envelope. “I’d make it a fifteen-cent stamp. Only got the Daniel Websters just now.”

  “Daniel Webster will do fine.” Mase paid over the money, watched the man put the stamp on the envelope and cancel it. “When’s the next stage?”

  “Day after tomorrow or so, we hope. Take about three days after that to get the letter to Fuente Verde.”

  “Much obliged.”

  When Mase returned to his horse, he found four men gathered afoot around Pug. Turned out, they were the drive hopefuls; they’d run into Pug on their way to the stockyard.

  Pug introduced Mase. “This is my boss, fellas, Mase Durst. They’re his cows, and he’s the one who hires you.”

  One of them, declaring himself Denver Jimson, had recognized Pug from back in Missouri. Pug’s brother owned a saloon in Augusta, Missouri, where Jimson had been a regular for poker.

  Mase looked Denver Jimson over with considerable doubt. He was a clean-shaven man with dark blond hair, likely in his late thirties, and seeming silently amused about something. He wore a silver-gray Stetson, a gray suit, a silver-threaded vest with a gold watch chain stretched across it; his black boots were more for a town than for work on a cow pony. On his right hip was an ivory-grip, silver-plated Smith & Wesson .44 caliber Model 3 revolver. Mase had seen a gun just like it once before when he’d encountered the gunman John Wesley Hardin in a saloon at Ellsworth, Kansas. Hardin had put the gun on the bar and said, “I’m buying a drink for everyone, and I’ll use this on any man who will not drink with me.” Mase had the drink.

  Of the four men there today, Denver Jimson was the only one wearing a pistol.

  “That’s a serious-looking .44 you have there, Jimson,” Mase said. “You know how to work it pretty well?”

  “Tolerably,” said Jimson with that slight smile.

  “We don’t carry that kind of iron much in our outfit,” Mase said. “If we need a gun, it’s likely to be a rifle.”

  “I’ll leave it in my saddlebag, Mr. Durst.”

  “You ever work a cattle drive?”

  “I have, just once. I won’t pretend I’m a seasoned hand, but I’ve done a little bit of all of it.”

  “Suppose we need a steer cut from the herd. Can you do it?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe so.”

  “How are you for long hours in the saddle?”

  “Mr. Durst, I suspect you have me picked out as a townman. You are not mistaken. But I’m no stranger to hard work and long hours. I grew up with it. Any skill I don’t have, I will learn.”

  “He’s all right, Mase,” said Pug. “I can vouch for him. I’ll be . . . responsible.”

  Mase looked at Pug, sensing more unspoken history between these two men than Pug had let on. He needed hands, and he suspected he was not going to find a replacement willing to take the Red Trail in this town. “Your judgment’s always been good, Pug.”

  He turned to the other three. Karl Dorge, wearing a cowboy’s denims and chaps, was a tanned, blue-eyed man with flaxen hair and a stocky but muscular physique. His grip revealed the calluses and strength of hard work.

  “Karl Dorge is my name, Mr. Durst.”

  “Where you from?” Mase asked.

  “South Pennsylvania,” said Dorge.

  From “Germantown” folk, Mase guessed.

  Dorge didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, so Mase pressed him. “How’d you get from there to here?”

  “I was in the Navy for a while when I was young, able seaman elevated to bosun. The war ended, and I was discharged in Houston. Hired on working cattle down there. Last year I came to Denison on a job and got married. Not enough work hereabou
ts.”

  “So you’re a sailor, and you’ve worked cattle. Experience on a drive?”

  “Yes, sir. Three times.”

  Mase nodded. He turned to the next man, a wiry, weathered older cowboy, maybe midforties, face marked by a frown that didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. “What’s your name?” Mase asked.

  The cowboy hooked a thumb at himself. “Ike Vinder,” he said.

  “You know the job?”

  “Worked with Charles Goodnight more’n ten years. Got tired of the pay and the hours, tried my hand at railroad work, and I did some cooking, too. You got a cook already, boss?”

  “I do.”

  Vinder sighed. “Well, I need a job, and I know cattle drives. You need it, I expect I can do it.”

  “Don’t seem too high on the idea.”

  “I do what needs getting done,” Vinder said. “Is it true you’re making for the Red Trail?”

  “We are. Unless something better opens up in the next few days.”

  Vinder shook his head sadly. “Way I hear it, Shawnee Trail is nothin’ but Indians that’s mad as wet hens, and floods. Can’t hardly go that way. The Red Trail now . . . that’s not much better. Got a bad reputation.”

  “You don’t want to ride my route, don’t sign on, Vinder.”

  Vinder shrugged. “I’ll ride your trail, boss. You tell me to jump, I’ll ask you how high.”

  Not a top hand, Mase decided, but he would do.

  He turned to the last man—or maybe just a boy. He looked even younger than Harry Duff. The boy’s grin was so wide, it near split his face as he stuck out his hand and said, “Rufus Emmer, sir.”

  “How old are you, boy?”

  “Why—eighteen. Just.”

  “You know what you’re called on to do on a trail drive?”

  “Yes, sir. I grew up on my uncle’s ranch—just a half day’s ride south of here. Cattle, dairy cows, and horses. Things have gone askew there, as my aunt Bedalia says, so I’m pokin’ round for other work.”

  “Can you cut out a steer?”

  “Yes, sir, I can. I can rope, and I can shoot.”