Link Forster was a worried man and an angry one, angry at himself and at fate. Only yesterday he had been pleased and relieved when he had thought of taking the cows to Dice Grotten’s brother. Dice had thought it a good idea too. Everything seemed plain sailing. Everything would have been if the weather had held. A little rain wouldn’t have hurt, but now had come the first flurries of snow.
And he had two men to find, two men who had knowledge of the killings back in the valley and the chances of their being found seemed to be growing remoter as time passed. The halfblood Osage had been beaten by the rain at first, then he had picked up some sign briefly to the west of the creek only to lose it again. Now there was the Indian encampment and that was an added complication. The halfbreed had scouted the place and declared that it was peopled by Cheyenne and the chances were that the people would not be friendly to whites. At least that would be the safest assumption to make.
“Let them go,” Grotten’s advice had been. “Well be safe over the Colorado line. They’re just cowhands. They have a real scare put into ’em. What’re they goin’ to do?”
But Forster wasn’t so sure.
“That’s what I’m wondering, aren’t I?” he almost shouted.
“Who’s going to pay them heed in Kansas?” Grotten wanted to know. “They’re Texans. They’re discredited before they open their mouths.”
Forster hoped that was true. But he knew that he wouldn’t rest content until he had them both dead in front of him.
“Dice,” he said, “you go out again with Sholto and the ‘breed and you find those two.”
Grotten looked pained. He was presented with enough problems in trying to get a large herd of wild Texas longhorns to Colorado with only a bunch of half-skilled Kansas hands to help him without taking on the finding of two men in this immense land.
“Let ’em go, captain,” he begged. “Hell, we have our hands full with these cows.”
“We don’t get those two and there won’t be any cows,” Forster persisted.
“Nick tried,” Grotten said. “Twice he tried.”
Forster bellowed—
“Then he goes out and he tries again. What’s the matter, Dice, can’t you handle this? Do I have to do everything?”
That was enough for Grotten. His loyalty to Forster was his whole life. He wheeled his horse without another word, smarting under Forster’s remark. He found Sholto and Nick Wetherby on the flanks of the herd and gathered them up with him.
“The captain wants those two Texas men found,” he told them. “And this time we stay out till we find ’em.”
Nick sneered.
“We stay out damn long time, I think.”
“Suits me,” Grotten told him. “Let’s ride.”
The breed was angry, but he knew better than to cross Grotten. He rode north and started quartering the country, searching for any kind of sign and finding nothing. The weather was turning colder now and the men did not have sufficiently warm clothing with them. They shivered with cold in the saddle and cursed. By nightfall they had found nothing until Nick who had ridden on ahead suddenly wheeled his horse and rode back to the other two. When he reached them, they saw that he was excited.
“There’s fires up ahead,” he told them. “An Indian village.”
Grotten said: “You reckon they could be there?”
“It’s a chance,” Nick answered. “Or maybe the Indians sighted ’em.”
“It’s risky,” Sholto put in. “We’re far west now and these could be hostiles.”
Grotten said: “We’re three men with repeating rifles. There isn’t a bunch of savages in the world could face us down.”
“You ain’t been around Indians,” Nick said.
“You scared to go in there?” Grotten demanded.
“I ain’t scared of no damned Indian.”
“All right, then,” Grotten told them. “We’ll pull back a way and camp. Come dawn, we’ll go in and ask questions.”
“There’s one thing,” Nick added. “We’ve been scouted. One of them Injuns snuck up on us and looked us over. I found his sign.”
“Christ,” said Sholto, “I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe they’re goin’ to jump us.”
Dryly, Grotten said: “They can always try.”
He led the way back south a mile or two, then halted in a spot that offered some shelter from the cold wind that was pressing from the north. In vain did Sholto and Nick claim that they would die of cold. Grotten told them to build a fire. Sholto thought the light would be sighted by the Indians. Grotten growled out they weren’t likely to have scouts out in this weather. Indians were as human as anybody else and felt the cold. So they scratched around for brushwood and found not much of that. But it was enough to start a fire. Nick heated coffee while the other two went further afield in search of fuel. They spent half the night bringing in brushwood and keeping the fire up, for they had no more than one blanket apiece and by this time the cold was piercing. But certainly there was no threat from the Indians and in the dawn they saddled, mounted and started their horses through the now inches thick snow. It was not long before they were in sight of the lodges of the Indians.
Sholto and the halfbreed pulled in their horses. They didn’t like what Grotten was getting them into.
“For God’s sake,” Grotten said, “just stick with me and we’ll come out of this all right. But mind, I don’t want either of you two getting trigger-happy. We’re going in there to talk.”
Nick jerked his head.
“Talk to that,” he said.
Grotten turned his head and saw them. For a moment his breath was taken away, the sight was so unexpected. The Indians lined the nearest ridges, mounted. It seemed they had come there by magic. Not a sound came from the riders or their mounts. There was no movement except for the shaking of a horse’s head and a flutter of robe or feather in the light wind. They looked like ghosts through the white curtain of snow. But Grotten knew they weren’t ghosts; they were very concrete indeed. They could bloody a lance-head with the best and lift a man’s hair quick as he could draw breath. He reckoned there were at least twenty of them and the way Indians could ride and fight, even though he and his companions were armed with repeating rifles, they were odds he didn’t look upon favorably.
He didn’t panic, however. He lifted a hand in the universal peace sign. For a moment there was no movement from the line of riders, then a man in the center of the line walked his horse forward, lifted it to a trot and came up close to them. They saw he was a middle-aged man wearing a skin cap. His clothes were old and worn, but his face was that of a warrior and a commander. The scalps hanging from his horse’s gear showed that he was a fighting man of some renown. When he spoke he didn’t beat about the bush in the Indian fashion, but came straight and brutally to the point.
“You will go back,” he said in Cheyenne.
“What’s he say?” Grotten asked Nick. But the halfbreed understood no more than a half-dozen words of the language and had to resort to sign language. The Cheyenne replied with strong and emphatic movements. Finally, Nick told Grotten: “They’re Cheyenne. He’s tellin’ us go back. They want no whites here.”
“Ask him if the two Texans have been here.”
“I just did and he says they’re at war with the whites.”
“You mean these Indians killed ’em?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
Sholto said: “I reckon this is a Mexican standoff. They’re too strong for us to fight. They’re scared of our guns.”
Grotten said: “You could be right. Nick, tell him we are looking for two bad men, one white and one black. If they do not give them to us, many pony soldiers will come and there will be killing.”
Nick told this with signs and the Cheyenne made a snorting noise. He made a sign to the line of warriors and they walked their ponies forward.
Grotten said urgently: “Tell him to get them away from us or some bucks will die.”
Nick did that, but the Cheyenne merely kicked his pony into action and raced away through the snow. Slowly, the others advanced.
“Let’s get out of here,” Grotten said.
“Me first,” said Sholto and wheeled his mount. The others followed suit and they spurred away. The Indians started yelling and when the three Kansans looked back they saw the whole line of them coming after them at a gallop. Sholto heaved his repeater from the saddle-boot and Grotten yelled: “Put that fool thing away, man. Hit one of them and we’re all dead. Just keep on going.”
The Cheyenne warriors chased them for a couple of miles, never coming within pistol shot, but showing their enjoyment of the whitemen’s fear by their delighted yells.
* * *
If it had not been for Nick Wetherby, the three of them would never have found the herd again in the snow and even the halfbreed did not find it easily. Even though the cows were traveling slowly, and now in some misery in the unaccustomed snow, the three men did not come upon them until the late afternoon. They found that the Kansas men were having their trials for the Texas cattle were showing an inclination to drift south back home ahead of the wind and the snow it carried. Forster had hastened the pace as much as he was able for the animals were finding it impossible to graze, small bunches here and there were continually trying to break away from the main bunch. It was Forster’s fear that they were starting to lose their cohesion as a herd and he was getting rattled, knowing his own inexperience at handling these wild southern cows. He was so occupied with this new problem that he paid Grotten little attention when his lieutenant told him of the failure of his mission.
“Forget it,” Forster told him, “we have our hands full of these damned cows. They’re not feeding, they’re not staying together. These fools we brought along don’t appear to have any cattle sense at all.”
“What do you expect?” Grotten said. “They only know farm cows. The only experience they’ve had of these longhorns is the small bunches they’ve stolen. My advice is drive ’em hard. We have to get ’em to Mike before this gets worse. So we run the fat off ’em. They’ll pick it up in the spring.”
“We’re going to lose half this bunch in the cold before we’re done,” Forster complained.
“So we lose half. We still show a profit.”
Both men broke off as a muley cow broke to the right, dodged a rider and showed the way for a dozen others. Grotten reached her first, flapped his slicker in her face and turned her.
And so it went on through the day till dark when most of the crew gathered around the captured wagon and ate an indifferent meal. They were all miserable with extreme cold and there was no fuel but the little that was on the wagon. Men slept little that night and only half the outfit could lie down at a time if they were lucky. On several occasions, cursing, the whole crew was in the saddle to stop the unsettled herd from drifting. An exhausted and red-eyed gang got the animals on the move in the morning. This day Forster drove the herd hard, losing some of the drags in the hard drive, but tiring the rest so that by nightfall they were pleased to halt and rest. This night the majority of them settled, but the snow was unnerving them and still there were some breaks for freedom during the night and at one time Forster feared a general stampede. But when the next dawn came he still had a sizable herd ahead of him. The men were in a bad way now, none of them equipped for such weather. Everyone of them was wearing everything he had in his roll and most of them had on their full complement of longjohns and two shirts. Their hat brims they had tied about their faces with their bandannas, none of them had shaved since they left Combville and they looked a wild and unkempt bunch. Even Forster who was normally a neat dresser looked wretched. And he was hating it. Only his seething ambition and his longing for gain kept him going. The only man who seemed unperturbed was Dice Grotten; he rode stolidly, wearing out horse after horse, but never himself. There was no doubt in his mind that they would reach Colorado and come spring they would have a fine fat herd.