No-Brand Burley was obeying orders. He’d waited a reasonable time, till there could be no turning back. The Trinity was a likely place, partly because the country was wild, and again on account of the high water which would give men and cattle plenty of problems in getting across. The imminence of night and storm was a bonus in the lap of the rustlers. So was the broken, high ground on the other bank, where they had only to crouch and shoot at will.
The sun was in the eyes of the cattle, the blast of the guns in their ears, and the smell of death in their nostrils. It made a bad combination, precisely as Burley had counted. There was panic in the river, the cattle trying to swing, to turn back upon themselves, away from the terror ahead. The crew was confronted with a desperation job, to keep them moving, avoid a tangle which could drown hundreds and spoil the crossing. Men so frantically busy had no time to fight a battle which must be won before the herd could cross.
It was murderous business, and No-Brand had chosen his moment well. Deep within himself, he hated it, even as he levered a fresh cartridge into the breach and squinted through the sights again. The heavy bullet hit high and wide, spattering on the horn of a roan steer, crumpling it. The steer bawled in agony, and tried frantically to turn short about in the face of those who swam at its heels.
There was the making of disaster here. Powder watched, tight-lipped, feeling frustrated and helpless. He was downstream, out of it, for no bullets had been aimed at the wagon. With Mary Ellen on the seat beside him, he was thankful for that, but there was scant comfort in being a spectator of ruin. If these raiders won, it was the end of the drive, and quite literally the end for many of them. And everything was going according to the plan of the rustlers.
Laredo Scott was fighting back, doing his best in the face of overwhelming odds. He was in midstream, and he threw a couple of quick and completely futile shots back from his six-gun. A revolver was no weapon to match a rifle. When you had no target other than tiny puffs of gun smoke which quivered on the air and vanished, the waste of lead was an empty gesture.
Not but what it was hard to know what to do. Had he been there, Powder knew that he would order the men to keep pushing the herd, to stay in the press of bodies, losing themselves among the cattle as well as possible. There was added risk in that, out in the river, where a horse or man could be overwhelmed, ridden under, but only in that way could they hope to reach the far shore, to sweep on to the bank and make a charge in the teeth of the rifles. No pleasant prospect, but a chore which must be done and the alien guns silenced.
Either Laredo didn’t think of that, or he was having no luck. Without showing themselves, the riflemen behind the dunes were winning. Part of the herd had reached the far bank, were piling out and running as they felt hard ground beneath their hoofs. Storm made its sudden wild swirl in the air, and under this cover horsemen swept into sight and rode at the cattle, and the scheme was plain.
There was always a chance that enough men could get across the river to make it hot for the raiders, forcing them to retreat. With good generalship, No-Brand Burley planned to make off with the half of the herd already across, to run them beyond recovery. Later they’d take the rest if possible; but if not, the attack would have paid big dividends.
It was a devil’s herd which ran there, strung out, running up a stormy draw, seeming to head into the sky, a wildly yelling crew behind, while their companions still held the bluffs with ready guns. The rain slashed harder, thunder blanketed the rifles with its growl.
Powder had picked a better crossing than was being followed by the herd. The river was wide and swift, but not deep. Mud and sand grew thick in the water, stirred by the herd above, the sand a steady rattle against the spokes of the wheels. The horses plunged ahead, fighting the current, yielding in part as Powder held their heads downstream. Not once had they had to swim, and with mid-channel past, no water had entered the wagon box.
“Isn’t there something we can do?” Mary Ellen gasped. “It’s terrible!”
Powder swung the wagon sharply. At normal flow this would be a rocky island, but now it was under water, only the difference in the current showing the shallows. The wheels lifted almost clear, and he thrust the reins into Mary Ellen’s hands. He jammed on the brake and jumped down.
“Hold them,” he ordered, and she saw in amazement that he was unhitching one of the horses, stripping the harness off. He carried it over his arm, splashed back and dumped it inside the wagon at her feet.
“Stay here,” he instructed, an order difficult to disobey, since the wagon was stranded now, the remaining horse helpless to pull it. Powder swung onto the bare back of the other cayuse, holding the overlong reins, and kicked it forward.
For a moment it fought, outraged at having a man on its back. But even without a saddle Powder had no particular trouble. The girl observed how easily he controlled the cayuse, forced it to his will. Soon man and horse were wraiths in the rain, and then were splashing out on the far bank. The outlaws, occupied with the regular herd and crew, had apparently missed this byplay. No shot had been fired in his direction.
He was the only man of Broadaxe who had reached the shore. What he could do against them, one lone man to oppose a score, Mary Ellen couldn’t guess. But she watched, straining her eyes, sitting with clenched hands and hurrying breath.
Powder’s plan was simple. Executing it might not be, but he had seen the chance and it was up to him. The odds were long, but there would be no others.
The gusty rain slackened, a shaft of sunlight slanted through broken clouds and picked on him, and someone saw him, shouted an alarm. The raiders turned their attention his way, and bullets made a vicious whine. But the distance was long, and a running horse was a deceptive target.
He was up the bank and behind cover, and ahead of him was a man on foot with a rifle crooked in his arm, unsuspecting of danger. He eased it to his shoulder and was taking deliberate aim, before instinct or the fast thud of nearing hoofs warned him. He swung his head, stared unbelievingly, then jerked the rifle around, too late. Powder had neared to six-gun range, and though both guns screamed in frenzied chatter at one another, the rifle bullet went wide, pointing to the sky. The gun slid in the sand, its butt plowing a thin furrow before it came to rest, just beyond the hand of the man who had fired it. The fingers clutched once and were still.
That had been close, but easy. A risk never mattered once it was past. Powder rode hard, master of the horse, getting speed out of it such as it had never had a chance to show in harness. Even so, it was a slow cayuse by comparison with his own pony, a work horse and nothing could disguise the fact. But solid weight might soon count.
That half-bunch which had been split off were being pushed hard, urged to a wild run—anything to get them circling back away from the river, safely beyond hope of recovery. No-Brand Burley was an old campaigner and had seen trouble come too often when least expected. It came that way now, and he wasn’t there to meet it. He was still down by the river, grouped with the bulk of his crew, keeping a rifle hot. And a bunch of men should be able to drive a herd...
They had figured the same. What they hadn’t counted on was a rider suddenly at the outer rim of the herd, a wild figure looking like Satan himself come to take over, waving his hat in the faces of the leaders, a wild yip tearing in his throat, pushing his horse recklessly against them. A man or a horse could die sudden that way, if not always easy—shoved down, trampled under hoofs sharp and relentless. This was a man on a big horse, a man who laughed at risk and spat in the teeth of death.
The sudden violence of his onslaught did it. The leaders swerved and swung, and the herd turned on itself like a great U and plunged at greater speed. They were getting away from the crew behind, and there was nothing the rustlers could do about it, with the width of the herd separating them from this madman who had appeared from out of nowhere. Blasting powder had no effect but to make the cattle run faster.
The swiped segment of herd was in full stampede now, back toward the river. One man had accomplished it, aided by luck, a man who took chances which most would knowingly avoid. Suddenly it dawned on the comfortably ensconced riflemen that this wild bunch was heading their way, a thousand maddened brutes pinning them against the river and the guns of Broadaxe. Their haven had become a trap.
They broke and ran, reaching their horses. It was too late to try to stem that tide or turn the beasts to right or left. Too late for anything save to ride out of the way if they could, to keep riding. Some of them made it. Others were too slow.
The shaft of sunlight was gone, the rain coming harder. It would be a bad night, a wild dark on the Trinity and across the Texas miles. Mary Ellen found herself shouting wildly, her fists clenched and cheeks aflame. Somehow a cook on a work horse had accomplished the impossible, and the herd was again pouring across, the raiders glad to escape with their lives.
“I could kiss you for that, Powder Burns!” she cried, and was thankful for the gathering dark to hide her flaming cheeks as he splashed alongside and dismounted, reaching for the harness. She hadn’t intended to speak aloud, or not so loud. The words had just slipped out, but the water was like a millrace past the wheels, and he didn’t appear to have heard.
He slung the harness on, hitched the horse in place, and climbed to the seat beside her. Five minutes later, crouching half under the wagon, using a handful of dry wood which had been kept within the wagon, he was coaxing a belated fire to burn, beginning preparations for the meal.
“I’ll help you,” Mary Ellen said, and they worked together, side by side. The rain came in a heavier, sweeping wave, and the fire, half-sheltered as it was, hissed and spluttered and was the lone beacon in a drowning world. Laredo appeared out of the night, nostrils pinching together as he surveyed the scarcely started preparations for supper.
“You can sling hash, Burns, but you’re a damned poor hand on the trail,” he growled. “Everything should have been ready by now. What you been doing?”
It was Mary Ellen who answered, blazing suddenly from the gloom. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Do you think he’s had nothing to do but this? Didn’t you see him turn the herd back and save everybody?”
Warming words, and a man needed them. But more than words would be needed for the four men who had died here at the Trinity. Two Broadaxe men lay dead. Two other men were missing—and only the river knew where, a stream in flood which kept its secrets.
Two men to bury in a rain-wet dawn, to read a few words over. McGill did that, stumbling with his tongue across the printed page of Scripture. He did it again, a conscientious man, for the pair of dead outlaws when they found them. Then, short-handed, they moved into the teeth of the storm. Animosity, gun-heeler of hate, rode where the vacancy had been, saddle-mate for a foreman who’d been shown a fool to all his crew, and, worst of all, to the girl who counted most.
The rain drenched them continuously, with the drive short-handed and the cattle stubborn. Three days of that, and tempers were like rawhide stretched taut, with no more give—lean and bitter. Then nature relented, the sun cracked the clouds in late afternoon, and a trio of riders came out of the north as shivering men hunkered close about a sullen fire. Knowing that all eyes were upon them, that suspicion was a necessary watchword in this land, they pulled up and eased creakily from wet saddles.
At Laredo’s gesture, Powder passed them plates and pointed to the kettle of stew, filling tin cups with a black brew which passed for coffee, handing out biscuits. He studied them carefully, and their hunger at least was genuine. Their story that they’d wintered in Missouri and were eager to follow the sun north he accepted with reservations.
Ormsby was gnarled and twisted like an out-cropping root, and his eyes held that blankness which comes from heavy emotions, from hot thoughts, driven inward too long. Old Leather had been appropriately named, even to his completely hairless scalp, and he’d limp to his grave from a bullet taken long since.
The third and obvious leader of the trio was the Kid, who wore a grin on his hard but handsome face. Alone of the three he might still have moments of youthful softness, but Powder reckoned him as possessing also the fastest gun and coolest head. His greeting had won them the invitation to light and eat, for he’d headed straight for Laredo, holding out his hand.
“You’re Laredo Scott,” he pronounced. “I’d know you anywhere, from the way my pappy used to describe you. He always said you was the best cowman in Texas, Laredo, and Pappy, he had good judgment when it came to cows or men.”
Laredo’s dark face showed his pleasure. “Seems like you’ve got the advantage of me,” he conceded. “But mebby if you’d tell me who your pa was—”
“Sure now, that was right careless of me,” the Kid conceded. “Folks call me The Kid, but my pappy, he was Bill Piper. I’m Johnny.”
“I’m glad to know you, Johnny.” So convincing was the Kid’s act that it seemed to Laredo that he did remember, if hazily, a Bill Piper. By the time the coffee had chased down the stew, Laredo had hired them on for the trip to Montana. As foreman, he asked no one for an opinion concerning them.
In the ensuing days there was no question but what they were competent hands, men who knew cattle, who were willing to work and were uncomplaining. For all that, they had a look foreign to the rest of the crew, despite the fact that they dressed alike and talked the same.
“They seem like good men,” Mary Ellen suggested to Powder, and in the words was a half-voiced doubt.
“So they do,” Powder conceded, and left it at that. She had discovered that he could be garrulous on occasion, a teller of tall tales, but mostly he was a man of silences, reticent with his real opinions. There was at times a disturbing quality about him, a wisdom hard-gained and costly in purchase. What he was really thinking he generally kept to himself. But it was comforting to have him along.
The Kid exhibited his gun prowess one day when a diamondback coiled in their path and rattled harsh defiance. His flat head flew from his ugly length as the six-gun spat, cleanly decapitated. No one commented. But the Kid’s gaze swung, challenge in it, to where the chuck wagon passed, to Powder lounging on the seat.
That evening the Kid sang songs around the camp fire, and made eyes openly at Mary Ellen, glancing obliquely from her across the blaze to where Powder lounged, the challenge more open in his half-closed eyes. Powder lolled and seemed not to notice. Jimmy Dowst’s face went white, then hot, and the amused contempt in the Kid’s glance as it raked him did not help. It was Laredo who put an abrupt period to it, his voice harsh.
“Time to hit the dirt,” he announced. “Work to do tomorrow.”
The Kid gave no back talk. He was thoughtful the next morning as he swung his horse alongside the wagon where Jimmy Dowst drove, Doc being in the saddle again. “I was kinda figgerin’ that Powder was sweet on her,” the Kid said without preamble and a jerk of his head. “And you, o’ course—”
“How’d you figure that?” Jimmy gasped, and his face flamed again.
“I ain’t blind,” the Kid retorted. “Likewise she’s pretty. But I didn’t count on Laredo. I’d say she don’t cotton to him. What’s he got that makes him so sure?”
“I wish I knew,” Jimmy confessed miserably. “But he runs this outfit—not McGill.”
“That way, eh?” The Kid swung his horse and galloped ahead, his teeth tight over a soundless whistle.
As though fate sought to make amends for the trouble at the Trinity, the weather grew good, the trip singularly free of hindrances. They reached the Red and crossed, and Texas lay behind. It was a parting not without its heart-pulls, for the Red was the last link with home.
Here the land was wild, open and unspoiled. They were west of the old cattle trail, once more pioneering for others to follow. It was a green and lovely land, but full of treachery. Powder roused in the night to the groaning of sick men, and the pale cast of first dawn, early in the east, showed that the herd would do no moving that day. Seven men were ill, four desperately so. Among the four were the trio who had joined beyond the Trinity.
“Couldn’t have been anything they et,” Laredo complained. “For we’ve all shared the same grub.” He spat dispiritedly. “I ain’t never seen men much sicker—not an’ live.”
It was Powder who set out afoot, returning an hour later with a collection of roots and herbs. Mary Ellen watched as he cooked these, making a mess not too savory to the eye or tongue.
“This is Indian stuff,” Powder explained. “They know a lot about things like these that most of us don’t dream of. Poke all the fun we like at their medicine men, but they have a lot of good practical working knowledge. Fifty years from now, maybe, some of our doctors will begin to realize that they did know something. But they’ll have to find these same things out for themselves, doing it the hard way, before they’ll believe it. The trouble with us whites is that we always have to do things the hard way. We hate to give anybody else credit for knowing anything.”
He dosed the sick men, who were too ill to protest. By mid-afternoon they were showing signs of improvement. By the next morning they were able to ride again, though still white and shaky. But there was little doubt in the minds of anybody that the medicine had saved their lives.
“I’ve seen men that sick, the same way, before,” Kaintuck observed. “Couple of diff’rent times. Helped bury ’em, both times.”
“I don’t know what we’d do without you, Powder,” Mary Ellen said. “You’re always saving the day!”
Laredo gave Powder a look of open hatred. Mary Ellen, catching it, shivered. It almost seemed to her that Laredo would have preferred for the men to die.
Old Leather was deeply thoughtful. So was the Kid, who had been scrupulous in his attitude since that veiled warning from the foreman. Ormsby alone of the trio rode with a scowl on his face, as though he looked at the world from between bars close-set; as though, even with the open on every hand, he could see only the bars.
Clouds were driving against the sun before it topped its swing. They pushed the sky away and leagued themselves with the forces of darkness when the afternoon was half-run. The land had grown wide and flat, empty to the horizon. The rain held off, but a feel grew in the air—like rain on the wind, or the close-whining lead of an unseen gun. Every man felt it with a rising sense of unease. The cattle knew that here were age-old, untamed forces, about to be set loose. They milled and bawled in a minor key, while the cayuses bit pettishly at rumps and bucked as though the day were just beginning.
Doc squinted toward the ball of sulphur which passed for the sun, and pulled briefly at his tuft of whisker. “There’s going to be thunder—even the slow way it’s coming up,” he declared.
“And plenty lightnin’,” Kaintuck concurred. “Be like a slice of hell, cut thick.”
The flies were clinging, venomous, a plague that seemed to rise up out of the earth and give added annoyance to already jittery nerves. Men’s eyes searched the emptiness and came back, seeking sanctuary, finding none. Tension breathed in the sultriness, and was heavy in the lungs. Old Leather showed up out of nowhere, a gaunt-faced ghost-rider. The face of the Kid, looking at him, was coppery, to match the creeping edge of the sky. Ormsby, watching both, rattled in his throat, a nameless growl.
Powder pulled to an early stop where thin brush made its lonely stand. He halted of his own accord, a full hour ahead of normal, and this time Laredo did not protest. There was less fuel available than usual—a handful of the dry brush, wisps of twisted brown grass from last summer’s growth, scattered buffalo and cow chips. By the time he had his fire going, the thin waver of flame seemed only to accentuate the creeping dark and the wide emptiness. He swung a kettle of already cooked stew over the blaze, teased the coffee pot to a boil.
It took only minutes, but the crew not on duty crowded around, caught in the tension. Men filled their plates and wolfed the food, as though time had run out on them. Night was time for sleep, but no man was thinking of rest this night. A cowboy could sleep at the end of the trail. Some of them might have that deep sleep tomorrow.
Old Leather crouched above his plate, chewing soberly. Ormsby stood up, the gesture abrupt and challenging. His eyes squinted at the closing dark and his words were normal, but the tones came out tight and pinched and harsh.
“Some of us better get out there and help the others, from the looks of what’s comin’,” he suggested. “How about it, Leather? An’ you, Kid?”
Old Leather shivered, and seemed to choke on his food, but he set his tin in the dust. The Kid set down his empty plate and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and came to his feet with the easy grace of a spring uncoiling. He turned half about and the reflection of the firelight was on his face, and his hand hovered close above his holstered gun.
“Wait!” he said, and it was imperative. His glance touched Mary Ellen, where the fire-glow made a halo of her hair, softening her face and lending the illusion that she was a little girl, a child lost and alone on the rim of the prairie. It went on to Powder, standing suddenly still at the end of the chuck wagon, lingered briefly on the tired face of McGill. It was full of question as it reached Old Leather, and hard again as it completed the circle to Ormsby.
“I been doing a lot of thinkin’ lately,” he added. “You and me, Leather, we wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the way Powder fixed us up, the nursin’ Miss McGill give us.” He turned to McGill. “I figure we owe something to you, and I want to tell you somethin’—”
His voice was lost in the thunder of a gun, coming from the darkness at the side. The Kid’s figure rocked, his fingers pounced, closing on the butt of his own weapon. He strove hard to loose it from the leather, to keep his boots firm-planted. For an instant the will seemed stronger than the flesh, but only for a slow breath of agony was this so. Red made a bubbling, splashing rivulet on his shirt front as the life ran out of him, and he took one step and fell.
Shock and surprise held the others motionless. Ormsby’s voice rasped, harsh with overtones. “He was aimin’ to get the drop—then to kill you,” he pronounced. “The dirty rat! I been watchin’ him!”
Specious words, for the smoking Colt was still in Ormsby’s hand, the thin and bitter smoke a jerking gesture from its muzzle, the smell of death in its acrid tang. Now the gun was swinging to cover all of them, and Ormsby’s face changed as he dropped pretense.
“His job was to kill you—but he ratted on it! I don’t make such mistakes—”
A frying pan was in Powder’s hand, and he didn’t bother with his gun. The pan struck Ormsby alongside the head, spoiling his aim, and now, like an echo to the gun, others were taking up the refrain, from out at the edge of darkness—voices of death.
Staggering, Ormsby regained his stride and, not stopping, reached his horse and was in the saddle. Spurring, he was swallowed by the gloom. Old Leather was with him. Now there was a new sound to swallow all lesser ones—the tumult of the herd, low bellows lifting to a frenzied bawling, hoofs hammering the ground, horns in a clash like swords. The soul-shaking rush of stampede!
Powder’s suspicions were confirmed. This trio had been sent by No-Brand Burley to join and betray. If you couldn’t win one way, there was always another. No word bulked bigger than treachery in the lexicon of the lawless.
But there had been good in the Kid, a sufficient residue remaining from youth and imagination to push upward like a spring, seeking to burst from its dark confines. Gratitude had dwelt in Johnny Piper, and he’d gagged at treachery—gagged and gone for his gun, too late, to die by what he’d lived by.