by John Shirley
Mase already regarded Harry Duff as a handful. This boy was even greener. Well, he could always let go of anyone who showed they couldn’t do the job.
“Boys,” said Mase, “the trail we’re taking is a hard one right enough. It’s rough country for a drive, and there may be renegades and badmen. But if you’re willing to ride it without whinin’ about it, I’ll tell you the rules, and I’ll tell you about the pay. And if you’re still willing—you’re hired!”
* * *
* * *
Sunday morning Katie stepped out of the chapel and was surprised to see Gertie Harning apparently waiting for her. Both women wore bonnets and light jackets against the thin rain.
The sight of Gertrude Harning brought Katie’s troubles back to her—she’d done her best to put them out of mind in church, except for a quick prayer when she lit a votive candle—and she was suddenly dreading the meeting with the bank manager to take place on the morrow. Mr. Fuller wasn’t a bad sort, but bankers were notoriously difficult to persuade once they’d made up their minds.
Jim came out behind Katie, hat in his hand. He said “G’morning, Mrs. Harning,” and, squinting up at the rain, quickly put his hat on his head.
She gave him a sad smile. “Good morning, Jim.”
“Is Len here?” Jim asked, looking around for Mrs. Harning’s son.
“No, Tom didn’t want . . . That is, Lenny had work to do today. With his father. And Mary wasn’t feeling well. I’ve heard you are for the time being the man of Durst Ranch, Jim. Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jim solemnly. After a moment he added, “Curly and Hector help me out.”
Katie smiled at that. She glanced at Gertie, considered raising the matter between the Dursts and the Harnings, and then dismissed the notion. There was no point in holding Gertie responsible for her husband’s ways. She had always seemed friendly, despite all. All Katie said was “Gertrude, how are you?”
Gertie smiled wanly. “Well enough.” She seemed to want to say something more—Katie could see her hesitating, searching for words.
Curly’s wife, Maria, and their son, Hector, came out of the church. Their elder child, Consuela, had died two years previously of diphtheria. Maria adjusted the scarf on her head against the rain, murmured greetings, and hurried past them.
Hector paused and asked, “Jim—you going to help us finish that fence tomorrow?”
“Now, the question is,” Jim said, “are you going to help me?” Then Jim grinned.
Katie laughed. Hector chuckled and said, “We’ll get it done, Jim.” Maria and her son waved and went out to the main road.
Gertie licked her lips, then said in a soft voice, “Katie—will you be sending letters on to your husband?”
“I can try to send a letter to Leadton—but there’s no post office there, or stage office either. If I send it to Denison, I’m likely to miss him, and he won’t ever see it. I am writing him a kind of diary letter to send on to Wichita.”
“You have no way to contact him . . . ?”
Katie frowned. Was Gertie going to suggest she ask her husband to sell out to Tom Harning? “Is there something you want me to say to him?”
“I . . .” Gertie seemed to be struggling with herself. Clearly there was something she wanted to say. But there was fear in her eyes. “Just . . . wanted to send my . . . my good wishes for his enterprise. And my hope”—she gave Katie a look that seemed obscurely significant—“my hope that he’s careful out there so that he can come safely home to you. Have a blessed day now.”
Katie watched as Gertie hurried off toward her buggy. Puzzling over Gertie’s behavior, Katie was struck by an unsettling thought. It had really seemed as if Gertie was trying to warn her of something.
And it was a warning Gertrude Harning was afraid to speak aloud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mase watched the herd crossing the Red River with a mingling of satisfaction and trepidation. Most of the herd was across, but there were four hundred to go. It was a cloudy afternoon between the red clay banks of the broad river. The cottonwoods and the brush on the far side showed a high-water mark from some previous flood that had deposited driftwood in the branches. Mase couldn’t help noticing that the mark was higher up than his herd was, by far. And he’d noticed, too, on a low hill overlooking the south bank, the graves of three drowned cowboys.
The herd was twelve miles west of Denison, crossing where the river widened so that it was close to shallow. It was ideal under normal conditions. But last night a rainstorm had rushed in, dumping “the makings of a biblical flood,” as Mick Dollager put it. The storm had moved off to the east, continuing to deliver its watery freight upstream, and this morning the Red River was running high and fast, under clouds running almost as rapidly as the water. The trail’s ford across the river was awash at the edges. Still, the herd was so far willing to wade through it and to swim when they came to the trough in the center.
In last night’s rain, the men had had a wet time of it, sleeping under their slickers as best as they might, and they were having a wetter day, forced to ride over and over into the river to guide the herd. Mase could still feel his own wet clothing rasp against his skin with his every move. He trotted his stallion on the south bank of the river, helping to urge the cattle into the water and keeping an eye on the new men. They were all doing a serviceable job of cow punching this morning, even Denver Jimson, who’d sometimes seemed at loose ends the day before. Afeard that his precious .44 Smith & Wesson might be water damaged in his saddlebags, Denver had given it over to Dollager’s keeping.
They’d taken the chuck wagon across the river first, towed by the oxen and three horses: Ray Jost, Karl Dorge, and Ike Vinder had ridden ahead, pulling the wagon against the current with ropes tied around their horses’ chests. This kept the wagon from being swamped and dumped over. The oxen had been forced to swim part of the way, and Dollager had had water up to his waist, but he’d kept his head, driving the oxen on till at last the chuck wagon reached the far bank.
Moving twenty-four hundred cattle across a swollen river was not speedy work, and the day was moving on faster than the herd was. They would keep moving once across and find a good spot for the noon meal, in an hour or two. . . .
Looking wet and uncomfortable, Ray rejoined Mase on this side of the river.
“Maybe I should’ve stripped down,” said Ray, shifting miserably in his saddle, “like we done when we crossed before with the Richfield drive.”
Mase nodded. Cowboys swimming their horses across a river often rode the short distance nude to keep their clothing dry. “Too cold here,” said Mase. “That was my thinking.”
“Me, too, but now I wished I’d done it.” Ray swung his rope at a straying steer and whooped, “Huh-whup, hu-whup, ease on in!”
The steer rejoined the herd, and Ray rode up beside Mase, where they could watch Jimson, East Wind, Rufus, Lorenzo, and Harry driving the cattle across the ford.
“Kind of wonder if that skinny boy Rufus is going to finish this drive,” Ray said. “Best of times seems like a gust of wind would blow him off his saddle.”
“He’s got a feel for staying in the saddle,” Mase said, watching the boy. “But I do worry on him some.”
The wind picked up, coming down the Red River valley from the east, and brought with it a grumbling sound that in a few moments filled out to a deep rumbling, a sound so elementally powerful, it sent a chill through Mase.
Mase looked east and saw the source of the noise: an immense surge of water, like a tidal wave crammed between riverbanks, was coming hard at them.
“Get out of the river!” he bellowed, spurring his horse into a gallop that took him along the bank to the west. Only Pug and East Wind and Rufus Emmer were out there now.
Pug grabbed East Wind’s reins and tugged him toward the bank behind him. “Come on, boy!”
Still about seventy-five feet from the bank, Rufus turned and gaped in confusion at the oncoming wave. Pug and East Wind reached the bank a second ahead of the flood.
“Rufus Emmer, get out of the river, ya damned fool!” Ray called. Rufus turned toward the south bank.
A series of storms upstream had created the flood surge now roaring down at the remaining cattle in the river, driving debris ahead of it like pellets from a shotgun. Suddenly Rufus wasn’t there, smashed from his horse and engulfed by the thundering river. As the wave crashed, the horse thrashed to the surface, neighing in terror, spinning in the current—and Rufus Emmer was missing from the saddle.
Mase was guiding his own horse with his knees, forcing it to race against the flood surge as he spun his lasso over his head; he watched the water, desperately hoping—and there! It was Rufus bobbing to the surface, flailing his arms, spitting water, his shouts muted by the roaring of the flood. He was coming to a whirlpool, and Mase felt sure that once the boy was sucked under, he wouldn’t come out alive.
Mase angled the stallion into the water, casting the loop, bellowing at Rufus with all his strength. Rufus was grasping at a spinning log, missing it, when he saw the loop falling toward him. He snatched at it, caught the rope with one hand.
“Hold on!” Mase shouted though the boy couldn’t hear him, and he spurred his horse back onto the southern bank; he wound his end of the rope around the saddle horn, quickly taking up the slack, feeling the line go taut.
He drove the horse up a steep slope so that its hooves sank deeply into the clay. The stallion was almost vertical, close to tipping over backward. Then it got purchase on a graveled ledge and dragged itself up, its eyes wild, its coat foamy with sweat.
Mase looked over his shoulder and saw the rope at the farther end vanishing into the water. The horse stumbled—and Mase had to jump free. He landed on his feet, dug in his heels, grabbed the rope, pulled hard, and drew it toward him hand over hand, fighting the current. He could feel the rope biting into his hands. The rope was still taut—but Rufus was nowhere to be seen.
Mase roared at himself, “Hold hard!” And he backed up, pulling, pulling . . . and Rufus bobbed up again, still grasping the rope, spouting water as he broke the surface.
The stallion was on its feet now, and Mase managed to get enough slack so that he could hitch the rope more tightly around the saddle horn. He slapped the horse’s rump, and it moved awkwardly along the bank.
Mase let go of the lasso, and the stallion pulled the boy free from the rushing water and into the shallows.
Then Pug was riding up to Rufus, with East Wind close behind, the two of them jumping down to drag the boy onto the bank.
Still breathing hard from the effort, black spots flickering in front of his sight, Mase made his way down the bank and looked down at the gasping Rufus Emmer.
A few yards away, the river roared furiously along, flinging chunks of trees—and several dead steers.
* * *
* * *
Why, I never saw anything like it,” said Vinder wonderingly. “Any other man would have given that fool boy up for dead. . . .”
“I’ve known Mase a long time,” Pug said. “It’s natural enough for him.”
Mase was dozing by the fire, his head on his saddle, his hat down over his eyes. He could hear them talk, but he had nothing to say.
They’d eaten supper—he’d had to eat with care because of the bandages on his hands—and he was in sore need of rest. Sore indeed, in most every muscle.
Rufus was even sorer. Badly battered but unbroken, he was snoring nearby.
What really hurt was losing eleven beeves. Most of the cattle at the tail end of the drive had been able to swim free, though farther downstream. But of the eleven dead ones, most of them had drowned, their carcasses washed up on a sandbank downriver. A couple more had been injured so badly, flung onto rocks and struck by debris, that they’d had to be put down. Dollager had saved some meat from them for the trail and given some to a passing farmer and his wife—there was too much to take along in the wagon—and Mase told the man to go ahead and come back with friends and butcher the rest of the dead cows.
They’d had to spend a good piece of the day getting the rest of the stragglers back into the main herd, and now all but the night guards—East Wind and Dorge—were gathered around the fire, sitting half slumped on the ground in their weariness.
Mase sighed and pushed his hat back to look at the sky. The clouds had passed, and the stars shone in great sweeping profusion as if luxuriating in the sky. Mase just lay there, listening to the men and wondering what Katie was doing right then. Was she looking up at those stars? Most likely she was reading to Jim about now. . . .
“Rufus sure got a reason to be grateful to Mr. Durst,” said Duff.
“‘And so there grew great tracts of wilderness, Wherein the beast was ever more and more, But man was less and less, till Arthur came,’” intoned Dollager as he worked at scrubbing the Dutch oven.
“What’s that you said?” Duff asked in puzzlement.
“’Twasn’t me, young man,” said the cook. “It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Idylls of the King. A poem concerning King Arthur and his knights. Like our Mr. Durst, Arthur brings civilization by caring for his fellow man.”
“Sí!” Lorenzo called out. “Mase, he is a man like my father.” He sighed. “I have displeased my father. I must get back to him and ask forgiveness.”
“What’d you do to get on his wrong side?” Jimson asked.
“Oh, I ran away with my second cousin. A beautiful woman but—too young. We tried to be married. But we did not succeed. I only succeeded in making everyone angry! Even she is angry with me. And I struck my uncle when he cursed at her. So—my father, he sent me away. But someday . . .”
Still scrubbing, Dollager recited, “‘And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But his father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand. . . .’”
“That the Fred Lord feller again?” Duff asked.
Pug snorted. “Why, you damned fool, that’s from the Bible.”
“Oh, sure, I knew I heard it somewhere.”
“You are a good hand at recitation, Mick,” said Denver.
“I was a stage actor in England as a young man,” Dollager said as he dumped a bucket of water into the Dutch oven to rinse it out. “A fine figure of a young man, too. I fear I was as prone to drama offstage as on. That offstage drama led me here.”
“How’s that?”
“One day a man offered me an insult relating to a lady, and I called him to meet me.”
“That’s all? Just to meet you?” Duff asked.
“He means a duel,” said Denver.
“I am sorry to say, the gentleman died in the encounter,” Dollager went on, dumping the rinse from the pot. “As he was a baronet and I but the son of a cook, I was, as you say, in hot water. The law against dueling is rarely enforced but”—he chuckled dourly—“it was soon to be enforced for me! I joined Her Majesty’s Army so as to escape England. After the Indian war—”
“Which tribe?” Duff asked.
Mase grinned at that but said nothing.
“He means the kind they have in India,” said Pug.
“After two years of service, a colonel in the Army who was a cousin of that baronet pursued me in the courts. And so I was drummed out of the Army and made my way in haste to this land of plenty.”
“Plenty of trouble, you mean,” said Vinder. “That’s what it’s the land of.”
“Vinder, you sourpuss,” said Mase, sitting up, “go on out and relieve East Wind on night guard.”
Vinder frowned like he might object, but thought better of it. He got up, brushed himself off, and went to th
e remuda for a horse.
“We drive west tomorrow, Mase?” asked Lorenzo.
Mase nodded. “I expect to run into the Chickasaw that way in a day or two. We’re likely to lose a few beef to trade our way through. Then it’s north on the Red Trail. Any coffee left, coosie?”
* * *
* * *
Mr. Fuller, you know it’s not only unfair—it’s irregular,” said Katie Durst. “Everyone knows the bank waits till the crop or the herd or the wool is sold before expecting its loan repaid! And that wait gives the bank even more interest to collect!”
The banker squirmed in his seat. “Now, the realities of banking, Mrs. Durst, are not always easy to explain to a lady. . . .”
Katie was thinking, as she looked at Ralph Fuller, that everyone she spoke to lately seemed worried by the encounter. The sheriff, Gertrude Harning, now the banker. She knew what Fuller was squirming over, sure enough. No one wanted to tell a settler that they must become unsettled, that they were to be evicted.
“This business of ‘not easy to explain to a lady’ is hogwash,” Katie said. “Are there unmentionables involved? Or do you think a woman hasn’t the savvy to understand?”
Fuller’s cheeks reddened. “No, no, I ah . . . It’s just that . . . Well, what is policy one year may not be the next! The bank has its own finances to consider. Depositors are few, Mrs. Durst. We have not been growing at the rate we’d like. We sometimes need to call in notes.”
“We told you the money we borrowed was to add to our herd so we could sell it up north, and you said that was a fine idea, being as how so many ranches are filling their purses that way. Now suddenly it’s all chancy? Why is that, Mr. Fuller? My husband has not failed in his enterprise! He is well on his way to selling those cattle and at a top price! We already have a deal with a stock buyer! You have only to wait at most till mid-June—”
“We . . .” Fuller closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She noticed his hands trembling on the desk. “We are foreclosing in forty days.”
