CHAPTER 13

HE WEATHER TURNED off hot, and riding to the windward of that herd was plain murder with the heat coming off their bodies in a wave. Nobody wanted it much or long, and me no more than the others.

Me or Shadow held to the point a good part of the time for we alone knew the trail. It was work. The cattle had turned ornery with the heat and just plain didn’t wish to travel, nor to be guided when they did travel.

They seen the mountains yonder and wanted to hole up in some of those shady canyons close upon a running stream, and I felt as they did, but necessity demanded we march along.

The Indians who had followed us along the Mesa Verde cliffs disappeared. Maybe they’d come to a place where it was no longer possible, and maybe they had something else in mind. I hoped they weren’t figuring on a scrap. It was too blamed hot.

The way ahead was narrowing down some and beyond there it widened out with a lot of broken country to north and south, and the Mancos River ahead. Pulling up I let the herd roll by and waited for Parmalee to come up.

First time I ever saw him look dusty. But only a mite. He reined in and we let them go by, and he said, “We’ll water this side of the Mancos? Didn’t you say there was a creek?”

“If there’s water in it.”

“If not, then the Mancos.”

Parmalee had his rifle in his hand, and he pointed with it. There were Indians coming, right down the slope from Mesa Verde, but this was no raiding party. There were only seven… no, eight of them.

It was Powder Face.

“Hold it,” I said to Parmalee, “these are the Indians I hired.”

Powder Face stopped and the others gathered around him. Two of them were mere boys, not over fourteen. “We come work if you see proper.”

I started to welcome them and then had a hunch. “Powder Face,” I said, “you can do us more good if you hold off until night.

“I think,” I added, “somebody is going to try to stampede our cattle, and steal them. Once everybody is in camp, three men will be on guard, then when the night is half gone they will sleep, and three more will ride. I want you to hide out, then move in at night and help guard the herd.

“This herd,” I added, “is your winter meat as well as ours, and it is meat for many seasons. If the cattle are driven off, I cannot feed you.”

“We watch,” he said. “You ride.”

Like smoke they were gone, leaving nothing but a scattering of tracks. To anybody who watched it would have seemed they had tried to beg beef and we had turned them away.

We bedded the herd down on a little branch about five miles west of the Mancos, with good grass all around. They grazed for awhile, then lay down.

Parmalee, Munson, and the two Tyler boys taken the first night-herd, with me, Nick Shadow and Charlie Farnum, a breed, taking the second.

It was one of those still, beautiful nights when a body could hear a stick break a half-mile away. I didn’t hear anything. I was dog-tired and wanting a bath and so hungry I couldn’t finish my grub. I just went and crawled under my soogan and was asleep in no time.

Parmalee woke me up at one o’clock. “We stood it another hour,” he said, “as it was quiet. The wind’s coming up, so be careful.”

Tugging on my boots I said, “See anything of those Injuns?”

“We won’t, will we?”

“Prob’ly not. They’re probably off in the woods fast asleep.” But I was joking and Parm knew it. Those Indians were out there, and they were hearing and seeing everything.

Squatting by the fire I tried to blink the sleep from my eyes while pouring a cup of coffee. It was hot, and black as the hinges of hell, but it tasted good. I picked up a chunk of sourdough bread and some jerky and chewed on it while waiting for Shadow.

He was a sullen man on being awakened in the night and wanted to talk to nobody. In the night I always felt good and took to awakening at any hour with no problems. I also could do a fair job of sleeping at any hour, given the chance, which was rare.

Charlie Farnum never talked much at any time so he and Nick were suited. And I had sense enough to keep my trap shut. We all sat around the fire staring at it with blank faces like so many bumps on a log, slowly letting the coffee take the kinks out of us. After awhile I got up and went out to throw my kak on a little buckskin I was using for a night horse.

It could move like a cat and see like one, and was a horse I trusted for night work, and she seemed to take to me. It nuzzled at me and I fed it a chunk of carrot I had swiped from the chuckbox.

In the western lands a man had best be good friends with his horse or he may never have another friend or need of one. A man afoot in wild country is a man who may not live out the day… which is why horse-stealing was the major sin. In many cases if you stole a man’s horse you condemned him to death, a much less pleasant death than if you’d just up and shot him.

The buckskin humped its back a couple of times to show me it was in good shape and ready for work and also that it would take no nonsense from its rider. That horse wanted to know I was wide awake, and after those bumps she gave me, I was.

Shadow and Farnum followed and we rode out, checking in with the riders we relieved and saw them drift off to the fire. They’d probably have coffee, chew the fat a little and then hit the sack, for they were a tired lot. Cattle drives don’t leave a man much in the spirit of playing the night owl. There’s nothing like a long cattle drive for making a good Christian out of a man… for at least as long as the drive lasts.

That little buckskin taken out, moving around the herd. Things look different at night, so on the first couple of trips around I was mostly locating landmarks and spotting the known troublemakers among the steers. This being a mixed herd it was more apt to stampede than had it been one or the other, but we had a couple of steers and one cow that were plumb flighty, ready to jump at the slightest noise.

We sang to ’em. Then they hear your voice coming and aren’t startled by you. Ride up quick on a steer and he’s liable to jump right off the ground and run clean out of the county. My voice isn’t much, but I often used to tell folks I was a singer, and that I’d sung for crowds of up to three thousand. I didn’t tell them I was talking of cows, but they had heard my voice and probably guessed. Galloway might have made ’em believe it, he was that much of a singer.

Shadow stopped to talk when we met the second time around. “The breed was telling me he thinks it’s too quiet. Nothing stirring out in the brush, and there should be.”

“Well, let’s play it that way,” I said. “Let’s stay on our toes.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Look,” I said, “if something starts them running we got to keep them off the boys so they won’t get tramped. Let’s make it so each time we pass the camp we slow up so there’s somebody in position most of the time. Then if the cattle start to run, try to keep them headed east and out of the canyons. If they get into those canyons and up into the breaks we’ll never get them out before snow flies, and that means we’ll never get them out.”

It was still over an hour before daylight when all of a sudden somebody stepped out of the trees and stood there. Rifle ready, I rode up, although waiting for me like that he wasn’t apt to be an enemy. It was an Indian.

“Powder Face say tell you man come… maybe ten, twelve man.”

“Thanks,” I said, but the Indian did not fade into the brush.

“Powder Face say he thinks they try Indian trick. Use mountain-lion skin.”

And that time he did disappear, but it was a comfort to know they were close by.

Nick Shadow closed in. “Was that you talking?”

So I told him. He knew the trick as well as me. The Indians used to do it with a fresh puma hide. They’d get in close and wave the skin and the cattle would get that smell of cat, and then one of the Indians would imitate the scream and those cattle would be gone.

We started on and I was almost to the camp when I heard that scream, and those cattle came off the ground with a lunge. They made a break toward the camp and I jerked out my pistol and let go with a shot into the air and a wild, Comanche yell. Some of them veered, but some of the others I couldn’t reach and they went through camp just a hellin’. Pots and pans went every which way. I heard a pistol shot and then another and then a scream, and all of a sudden that herd was gone. All that was left was dust and the sound of thundering hoofs.

They were headed for the Mancos River and that was one of the reasons I’d stopped where I had. If they had a run of several miles and then reached the river they might stop to drink. This bunch was pretty fat anyway, and they weren’t like a bunch of wild longhorns all hungry for water who might run for hours.

Wheeling around I rode into camp. It was a shambles. First off I saw a man on the ground or what had been a man. It was one of the Tyler boys. The only way I could tell was by the silver conchas he wore on his belt.

Even as I swung up, Parmalee came down out of a tree. The cook came out of the rocks, and the other two had taken shelter behind the wagon. My pistol shot had come just in time to give them a split second.

“Tyler,” I said, “you and Cookie take care of him.” I indicated the dead man. “Parm, you’d best go help with your cattle.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m going to ride up the canyon. I want to read some sign.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. I’ll take Charlie Farnum. Unless I’m mistaken you’ll find your herd at the river and my Indians will be there too.”

Nick Shadow had gone down after the cattle, but I’d heard Farnum’s horse slow down and I figured he had the same idea I had. I rode out from the camp and he was a-settin’ there waiting for me.

“Figured you might like to look around,” he said, and we started walking our horses slow, keeping to the open ground where we made less sound. Once we drew up to listen, and after a moment Charlie said, “Why you do that for those Indians?”

“They’re good folks,” I said, “and this was their country. It’s nobody’s fault as to what’s happened. Wherever there’s open country there’ll be people coming hungry for land, and it wouldn’t have made much sense to let a lot of folks in Europe starve to death when there was miles and miles of unused land awaiting.

“The Indian would have had a better deal, and should have but for a lot of greedy white men and because of a few scalp-hungry Indians. There was right and wrong on both sides. I’m doing no crying for the Indian. He made his fight but he never could get enough guns and ammunition and the white men kept moving in, but when old Powder Face came to me he came honest, and he told me who he was and what he’d done, and I made him welcome. I figure those boys will make good hands and as far as I’m concerned they’re here forever.”

After that we shut up and rode on, and pretty soon we noticed our horses’ ears go up like they saw something or smelled something, and sure enough there was a fire, and a half dozen men around it, and one young feller had that cat hide in his hands and he was laughing at the way the herd took off. The rest of them must have been off following the herd. I figured Powder Face and Nick Shadow would take care of them.

“Charlie,” I said, “you shoot the first one that moves.”

When I spoke I spoke loud and you never saw a bunch of men come to stillness any swifter. Then I stepped down there and I looked at the tall blond ranny with the hide in his hands and I said, “You killed a good man tonight, a better man than you’ll ever be. So you drop that hide and go for your gun.”

“Can I put the hide down first?”

“Any way you like,” I said, “but have at it.”

Me, I was mad clear through. They’d tried to wipe out our camp and kill us all. It was pure-dee luck that they hadn’t done it.

“You’re a Sackett,” this tall ranny said. “Well, Sackett, I’m Abel Dunn, and I’m going to save Rocker his job.”

He let go the hide and his hand swept down and closed over that six-shooter and my gun stabbed flame at him twice, so close together they looked and sounded like one. And he folded and went down.

“That’s for Tyler,” I said. “Now old Bull Dunn warned me out of the country. You take Abel back to him wrapped in that cougar hide, and you tell Bull Dunn he can leave the country or stay, it don’t make me no mind, but if he stays he better start goin’ to Sunday School and actin’ like it.”

“You talk big,” one of them said. “Wait until Rocker hears about this.”

“You tell him,” I said. “You just ride fast and tell him.”

“You’re the one better leave. You got no more herd than nothing.”

“You wasted your time,” I said. “My herd’s down at the Mancos right now, and its all in one piece and my boys are with it. You started your victory party a mite too soon.”

I could see several bottles around camp so I put bullets in them, and when one of them thinking my gun was empty started to reach, Charlie Farnum put a bullet through his arm.

Right there in front of them I shoved the shells out of that old Dance & Park pistol and loaded up again. And then I went in there and emptied their guns, dropping the shells into the fire and throwing their guns into the brush. Then I taken off.

In about a minute shells began to pop and those Dunn people scrambled for shelter.

Charlie Farnum and me we started east for the herd, riding together. When we were a few miles off we started to sing, and we sang a dozen songs before we shut up and left it to the coyotes.

That Charlie Farnum had a better voice than me.

For that matter, so did the coyotes.