11

About everything that could be broken on a wagon was found to be splintered or sprung that morning following the buffalo stampede at Ash Creek. About noon of the third day, Kirby got the battered train rolling again, making the six-mile drive to Pawnee Fork for the caravan’s seventeenth camp since leaving Council Grove. At this point they were 153 miles from the Grove, 298 from Westport, and had made, Kirby frowningly calculated, a slow ten-mile-a-day average. Furthermore, from where he sat, hunched over a small fire waiting for Don Pedro, Sam, Laredo, Popo and Uncle Thorpe to assemble for a council, they had mighty slim hope of improving that speed.

The other faces which presently joined his around the fire were equally long. Don Pedro led off. “Well, Mr. Randolph, what do you think of our prospects, now?”

“I dunno, Don Pedro,” said Kirby, frankly. “Thet’s why I called ye all fer this powwow. It looks to me like we’re up the crick.” He paused to look around the firelit circle, missed old Thorpe Springer. “Whar’s Thorpe, Sam? I told ye to fotch him.”

“So ye did. But he wouldn’t fotch. He is right sick, boy. Thet cussed leg’s goin’ black on him, near up to his waist.”

“I’ll look at it, later.” Kirby’s frown deepened. “Why didn’t the old fool speak up? He probably ain’t bin keepin’ thet hossmanure poultice on thet leg at all.”

“Yes he has, too.” Sam informed him, worriedly. “But I tell ye one thing, boy. Hot hoss-manure dressin’ or not, either thet old man is goin’ to lose thet leg or we’re goin’ to lose him.”

“We’ll see,” was all Kirby said, turning abruptly to the business at hand. “How about the wagons, Laredo? And the teams?”

“Mules are in fair shape but we’d best handle them Cone-stogas with a kiss and a prayer. We ain’t got a stick of hardwood left big enough to splint a broken toothpick.”

“Ye got any suggestions?”

“Yeah. I can’t keep my teams rollin’ without I get some spares to spell off my lame ones and my harness-galled ones.” Laredo’s bright black eyes, flickering sharply at Don Pedro, clearly mirrored his Texan’s dislike of the Spaniard. “I got to have them mules of yo’n Mistuh Armijo—one way or anothuh.”

Kirby, watching the young don as the tough skinner braced him, saw the finely arched black brows lift slightly, and relaxed when the Spaniard’s answer came in an amused tone. “Well, Laredo, you may have them. No need to be favoring me with your hard looks.” Don Pedro spread his long hands in a gesture of compliance. “The guns they are carrying can all be put in one wagon.”

“All right.” Kirby intervened, sensing the tension growing across the fire, despite the don’s purring words. “The guns go in the first wagon and Laredo gets his forty spares.” The mountain man’s face was as flat of expression as a bargaining Indian’s. Ignoring Don Pedro’s mocking smirk, he addressed himself to the silent Texan. “Anything else, Laredo?”

“Naw. It makes me no nevuh mind what Armijo does with his damn guns.” The Texas skinner’s drawl went as straight into the young Spaniard as his black glance. “Me, I jest work this heah train.”

“All right. Everybody’s blowed off, now.” Kirby’s words stepped carefully into the eye-locked silence. “Whut are yer orders fer tomorry, Mr. Armijo?”

Don Pedro sat quiet for half a minute, staring into the fire, a rare frown sitting his thin features. When he spoke, he kept his tones as cautiously impersonal as Kirby’s. “It’s the better part of a hundred miles to the Ford of the Arkansas, and at our present rate that means ten days. I’m satisfied that within that time we shall all know a little more about each other and our remaining prospects.” Coming easily to his feet, he smiled the old, gracious smile. “And now, good night gentlemen. If there are no more glares and insults to be exchanged, I have a little matter of, ah, personal business to attend to.” His glance here flicked to Laredo. “Something a trifle more fragrant than your, ah, you will pardon the expression, señor, ‘gamy company.’”

Kirby saw the gleam stab Laredo’s narrow eyes, came to his feet, following the Texan to his.

“Whut does ‘gamy’ mean, mistuh?” As Laredo’s question went to Don Pedro, Kirby went to Laredo, gliding in behind him, quick and light as a mountain cat.

“It means, hombre,” the young don’s level voice was delivered without smirk or smile, “that you smell bad. In a word, Laredo, you stink.”

Watching Laredo, Kirby saw the clawed right hand tense, knew the next instant would send it driving for the low-swung pistol at the Texan’s hip. Across the fire, Don Pedro stood waiting, his handsome face surveying Laredo with the same detached languor that had preluded Tuss’ execution. Kirby knew nothing of the Texan’s gun speed and didn’t intend to find out at the possible expense of his top skinner’s life. His own right arm, hanging long and loose at his side, flashed out in sudden and blurring life.

Don Pedro, his eyes on Laredo, was outmatched. He scarcely had his hand on the hooked butt of the Spanish pistol when he found himself in an admirable position to determine what Laredo’s flintlock horse pistol looked like, viewed bore-hole on.

“Get away from it,” rasped Kirby, keeping the gaping muzzle of Laredo’s weapon swinging a six-inch arc around the compass point of Don Pedro’s navel. “Take it offn him, Sam.” The old trapper, already ahead of the command, was around the fire, his hand starting for the Spaniard’s holster.

“No need, Mr. Randolph. No need—” The young don stepped back away from Sam’s reaching hand, at the same time taking his own hand off the pistol butt. “The situation has gone flat, Randolph.” Kirby caught the “mister” omission. “No drama left. Not for gentlemen like you and me. Though I must say,” Don Pedro, smiling deprecatingly until now, grew serious, “you are very quick, Mr. Randolph.” There was that “mister” back in again. “I make only the reservation that barring the interfering necessity of my having had to watch Laredo, we might have had a closer outcome.”

“We might,” said Kirby, still holding Laredo’s gun on the don. “Ye kin try watchin’ me next time. Thet is, if Laredo don’t outwatch ye meantime.”

The Spaniard shrugged, and Kirby concluded, “Ye kin cut yer stick anytime. And keep yer hands from wanderin’ on the way out.”

Turning to go, Don Pedro smiled again. “Mil gracias, señor. As for Laredo, I meant only to improve his manners. Perhaps a ball in the arm or shoulder. Quién sabe? A captain must have the respect of his men. No es verdad?”

“Ye meant to kill him,” said Kirby, flatly, not offering to elaborate the bald contradiction. Don Pedro sighed, bowed slightly, made his graceful way out of and away from the fire’s jumping light.

“The low-down Mex buzzard!” Laredo’s snarl included Kirby in its snapping bite. “I’d of killed him sure if yuh hadn’t of grabbed my gun off’n me.”

Kirby tossed the weapon back to the Texas skinner. “Mebbe so, Laredo. Me, I allow ye’re lucky to still be suckin’ live air. Ye seen him agin Tuss.”

“I seen him.” Laredo was still sulking, his unvented anger trying to find a way out on Kirby.

“Wal, ye seen a fast man, then.”

“Yeah, I reckon.” The skinner, prodded by his respect for the tall young mountain man, grudged the admission, coppering it with a tacked-on qualifier. “But all the same, yuh should have left me be. Theah was no call fer yuh to go to mixin’ in.”

“Sure,” nodded Kirby, dismissing the impasse with a measured grin. “I reckon thet’s right, Laredo. Now whut ye say we get Uncle Thorpe up h’yar and have a look at thet leg? Ye and Sam tote him over. I’ll build up the fire and heat up the iron—jest in case. Ye’d best roust out Cal and Huff and have them to come over, too. Old Thorpe’s apt to be grumped up as a gnat-bit bull.”

They brought the old man up to the fire and laid him on the clean blanket Kirby had pegged down where the light from the flames would strike it. Huff and Cal, Laredo and Sam, squatted, wince-faced, as Kirby peeled the matted rags off the old teamster’s leg. Thorpe himself lay white and muttering with the pain of the thing.

“It ain’t bad, Kirby boy. It really ain’t. Feels much better then it did yestiddy. I’ll be around soon. Won’t be sech a burden to ye, then. I—”

Kirby near puked when the last wrapping came away from what had once been a knee. The sudden upwafting stench of the rotten flesh and the green horse-droppings of the compress turned his belly over with a flop that shoved his supper clean up around his tonsils. It was a minute before he could look at what he had uncovered.

The flesh of the upper leg was a deep liver-red, from just below the knee to about halfway up the thigh. The foot and lower leg were an odd white-gray color, turning a bruised yellow in places, and Kirby knew before he touched them that they were gone. The knee, swollen twice-normal, was broken open like a ripe melon all around the arrow wound, the proud flesh cringing back from the edges of the splits in thick gray curls. In the wound itself seethed a nest of fat screw-worm maggots.

The firelight blotted out for a moment and Kirby looked up to see Popo reaching him an earthen jug of mescal. He took it, nodding silently, poured an iron cup full of it down the protesting old man. “Hell’s fire, I don’t want thet greaser bile. I feel puny enough as it is!”

“It’ll numb ye a leetle mite, Uncle Thorpe. I got to do some cuttin’ on yer leg.”

“Whut ye goin’ to do, now, Kirby? Whut ye goin’ to do, boy?” The old man was whimpering a little, struggling up to see what Kirby was about. The big scout pushed him gently back, the flat of the huge hand forcing him down easily.

“Nothin’ but a leetle cuttin’ and slicin’ to let the pizen out,” he reassured the trembling oldster. “Same as ye’d slash a festered-up saddle boil on a mule. Give him another can of that mescal, Sam. I got to go get me somethin’ out’n the cook wagon.”

“No ye don’t. I saved ye the trouble.” Sam, standing behind Uncle Thorpe, held up the two-foot meat saw.

“Well go ahead and give him the mescal,” nodded Kirby. “We ain’t got all night.”

By now the old man was feeling the jolt of the first huge gulp they had put down him and took the second willingly enough. Kirby waited half an hour, during which time he and the others took turns small-talking Uncle Thorpe’s mind off his bad leg and lacing him with additional wallops of Popo’s mescal. At the end, the old man, more sick than drunk, but groggy in any event, began to ramble on about Tuss and Clint and Armijo’s gun mules. When he looked up at Kirby and said, “Say, whar the hell’s Clint, anyhow? I ain’t see’d him all day,” Kirby figured they had got him about as far as they could on the rotgut.

God, he hated to do it. Hated to take a man’s leg away from him. Hated even to touch the damn thing. Or look at it. Cripes! It stunk like a dead dog that had just been turned over after lying in the hot sun three days. Grimacing, he nodded to Huff and Cal and Laredo.

Feeling the men seize him, Uncle Thorpe struggled up. “Shet up, Thorpe!” Kirby, sick-nervous now, barked his orders at the oldster. “I’m startin’ to cut now and ye’re goin’ to feel it. I jest don’t want ye grabbin’ my knife hand or kickin’ thet leg around.”

The razor-honed skinning knife slashed around the top half of the thigh, quick as a streak of light. Thorpe screamed, arching his body crazily. The powerful skinners pinned him brutally. Looking intently at the foot-long cut he had made, Kirby saw the meat in it looked wrong, dark and thick and sort of gummy and mushy. Again the knife flashed, six inches above the first cut, and again the old man’s hysterical scream shattered the nerves of his holders. But now the leg meat was fresh and firm, the blood bright and free-running.

Thorpe began to sob and shudder, but lay fairly quiet. Kirby was to the bone in seconds, circle-cutting the meat all around it with a speed and skill gained in the taking off of countless buffalo rounds. He was surprised, though, how much tougher the human muscles cut than the dead animal ones.

Throwing the knife on the blanket, he reached for the saw. At the first grating snag of the blade in the living bone, old Thorpe came up off the blanket bringing all three of his restrainers with him. His eyes bugging with agony, white lips snarling, his scream was more than Kirby could take. “Damn ye, ye’re takin’ it off! Naw. Kirby! Aw, Lord A’mighty, boy. No, no! Please—” The mountain man’s balled fist sledged into the crazed oldster’s jaw. breaking the pleading scream sharp off. The old man slumped limp as a neck-wrung rooster, and Kirby sped the saw in sickening, tooth-edging cuts.

“Sam, grab me thet flange iron out’n the fire. Hurry up. His cussed blood is shootin’ out like water through a bullet-holed bucket.”

Working automatically now, Kirby shoved the blackened, gangrenous log of the severed limb rolling off the blanket. Laredo jumped cursing from the thing as Kirby stood aside for Sam, tight-mouthing his orders. “Plunge it on them veins first. Them big ones.”

The broad iron, spitting-hot, hissed like cold water in bubbling fat as it went across the pulsing stump. Sam kept it running around the bloody pulp until the flange went from apricot to cherry-red to ash-gray. The searing metal cooked the open flesh to a smoking brown.

“All right, Sam. Thet’ll do. Hand me thet tub of tallow, Laredo.”

Scooping the rancid axle tallow in gobbing handfuls Kirby plastered the seared stump thickly. Stepping back he nodded, white-faced, to Sam. “Wrop it up tight with them tore clothes. Then wind a chunk of canvas around it and truss it up gentle-like. I’m goin’ out and puke.”