How the West Was Won (1963) (20 page)

A match flared briefly as Sherman lighted his pipe. You know this army is better off with you than without you, he said. There's nothing to think about.

Zeb felt his grip on the pistol slipping, but as the Texan twisted him around, the bayonet came almost naturally from its scabbard, and just as the Texan tore his gun hand free the blade went home.

The blow was a short, wicked thrust with a blade that Zeb had himself honed until the point was fine as a needle, the edge like a razor. The Texas soldier gasped and fell back, tearing the hilt of the bayonet from Zeb's hand. The hilt pointed downward from the Texan's diaphragm. He was dead before his body touched the ground.

Stooping, Zeb took the pistol from the dead man's fingers. Why'd you make me do it? he asked brokenly. Why? I'd nothing against you. When he finished searching the dead man for pistol ammunition, Zeb got to his feet. Sherman and Grant had gone, unaware of the brief, desperate struggle that had taken place only a few yards behind them in the darkness. Zeb's mouth was dry and his shoulder was hurting him. The Texan had said there was a spring somewhere around, and he went on through the trees, listening for the sound of water.

Finally, he heard it. A mere trickle it was, falling from a pipe somebody had thrust into the rocks to conduct the water into a basin about the size of a washtub. He knelt and filled his canteen first, not knowing what might happen to drive him from the spot; and then he drank. The water was cold and clear. He drank, and drank again, and then sat down in darkness. He was going back to his outfit if he could find it. He had joined up to do a job and, like it or not, the job was unfinished. What would pa say if he knew his son had thought of quitting? Pa never had much use for quitters. In after years he never quite remembered the sequence of things-the marching, the camping, the fighting, and the marching again were all lumped into one great designless mass in his memory.

He returned to his outfit to find himself the only non-commissioned officer left alive, and there was but one officer. He became a sergeant at Chickamauga, and shortly after that an officer by virtue of a battlefield commission. He became an officer not because of any feat of bravery or because of any sterling quality, but simply because he was the highest-ranking man left alive in his unit. This, he discovered, was the usual reason for battlefield commissions. At Lookout Mountain he made first lieutenant, learning about combat the hard way ... except for what he had learned from pa's stories, for during the long winter evenings Linus had told his boys many a tale of Indian fighting, and Zeb had learned more than he realized.

It was at Chickamauga that he learned of his father's death. There had been no mail for some time, and he first heard of it when a lean, stoop-shouldered Kentuckian came as a replacement to the company. It was Kelly who was with him there at the end ... I'd gone on up the hill. We taken the hill just like he planned, spite of the charge they made. There as he lay dyin' your pa said some-thin' mighty strange ... somethin' about seein' the varmint.' Whatever that might mean.

That would have been pa, all right.

More than once pa had told Zeb and Jeremiah about going to see the varmint, and how it had nearly cost him his life, as well as ma. Zeb, he used to say, there'll be many a time in life when you'll be offered a chance to see the varmint. That's when you'd best stop to figure the cost before you take the next step.

Zeb Rawlings rode with Sherman on his march to the sea, and then suddenly the war was over and he was on a steamboat looking ahead for the first sight of the picturesque rock that marked the site of Rawlings Landing. They set him ashore there with bedroll and haversack, and for a long minute as the steamboat pulled away, he stood there looking up toward the house. It was short of noon and a thin trail of smoke rose from the chimney. He could hear one of the hens cackling ... laid an egg, most likely. He shouldered his gear and started across the field toward the house. He walked steadily, his heart beating with great thumps, his throat tight with emotion. Linus and ma ... they settled this place when the country was new and wild. Linus had built the house with his own two bands, shaping the logs and laying them in place with Sam and Zeke, ma's two brothers, helping. At the graveyard he stopped abruptly. Two new graves had been added and marked with stones, and even before he could see the names, he felt cold fear gathering in his belly. Side by side they were, as they should have been:

1810-1862EVE PRESCOTT RAWLINGS

A door slammed up there at the house, and Zeb saw Jeremiah standing on the porch, shading his eyes with a hand. And then of a sudden Jeremiah dropped his wooden bucket and came running.

Zeb! Is it really you?

Zeb gestured blindly at his mother's grave. I didn't know. Nobody- Didn't you get my letter? She died more'n three months ago, Zeb. She was never quite the same after we heard of pa's death, and I don't think she minded goin', she missed him so.

Only she wanted to see you again. Pa ain't really buried there, of course, but I set up the stone anyway. They'd have liked it so. Slowly, Zeb let his eyes wander over the neatly plowed acres. There were stacks of hay, and a new barn, much better than the old one, had been built. There was a corncrib filled with yellow corn, and the stock looked fat. You've done well, Jeremiah, better than I ever could. He thrust out his hand.

I think I'll be movin' on.

I need you Zeb. You stay on. With the two of us to work the place we could- Only thing brought me back was ma, and she's gone. You've worked hard on this place, Jeremiah, and done a sight better than pa ever did, or me. You've a feeling for the land, and the land answers to that feeling. You could grow corn on a granite boulder if you was of a mind to. You don't need me, and the farm is all yours. That's only fittin' and right.

I don't feel right about this, Zeb. Why should I have it all? What will you do?

Where will you be off to?

I haven't mustered out yet, Jeremiah, and they asked me to transfer to the cavalry and go west. I think that's what I'll do. You sound like pa. You always was like him.

Zeb grinned, in spite of the lump in his throat. I guess I got to see the varmint, Jeremiah.

You'll be fighting Indians, like pa did. Do you like fightin', Jeremiah? Remember pa tellin' us about the grizzly he had the fight with out west? I don't mean old Clubfoot; this was out in the Rockies. Well, I asked him did he like to fight grizzlies and he said no-he just wanted to go someplace, and the grizzly was there first.

He put out his hand again. So long, Jeremiah. Well... Jeremiah looked at him feeling there was something he should say, but finding no words. Well, so long.

Zeb turned away abruptly, not wishing to look longer at his brother, nor at this place with its memories.

When he had gone several steps, Jeremiah called after him. You keep an eye out for your Uncle Sam Prescott, Zeb! And maybe you'll see Aunt Lilith! Jeremiah stood there alone, his big hands empty, watching his brother go. Zeb was the last of his family, and when his family went west they never came back. Linus had come back, but that was before Jeremiah's time. None of the others ever had.

There must be something out there, he said aloud. There must be something out there that gets em.

Then, half smiling, he added, Maybe it's the varmint!

The journey across the plains was endless, the mountains rough, the passes few, the streams treacherous and deadly. The Indian was an omnipresent threat, as unpredictable and impartial as a lightning bolt. Then came the railroad, the parallel line of steel spearing through the wilderness, the road of the mighty Iron Horse. It broke the power of the Indian, stilled forever the thunder of the bison, seeded countless towns and cities, carried the flood of farmers, cattlemen, miners and storekeepers who filled and used the West.

Chapter
14

Jethro Stuart sat his horse for several minutes after coming upon the bodies. His eyes had immediately checked the surroundings for a possible ambush, but concealment of any kind was at least two hundred yards off and the tracks were hours old.

Obviously, the dead men were workers from the railroad, but the Indians had made an end of that, pinpointing their decision with arrows. Jethro Stuart was a dry, laconic man who wasted little motion and less time. Getting down, he heaved the bodies to the backs of his two pack horses and lashed them there. Then he remounted, and with a last careful look around to see that he had missed nothing, he started back to the railroad. As he rode, his eyes traced the twin lines of steel. No question about it, they were making time. Yesterday there had been bald and empty prairie where the rails now flowed westward in a shining stream.

It was progress, but Jethro Stuart was not a man who felt that progress was an unmixed blessing. When he had first come west the land still remained as it must have been for a thousand years or more, and he had seen nothing in it he wanted to change.

Now the railroad had come, brought by Mike King, and Jethro Stuart found he disliked King on general principles. But he was a man who got things done, even if he rode roughshod over everybody and everything that got in the way. Drawing rein on the crest of the long hill, Jethro looked upon the scene below with skeptical eyes. That railroad was going to bring a lot of people west who didn't belong. When coming west was difficult, it demanded a certain type of man or woman to make the trip and to stick it, once they arrived- and they were his kind of people. If the cars got to running they would bring all sorts of riffraff west ... all safe and secure.

I ain't much for progress, he said to his horse. That durned telegraph put an end to the Pony Express-never really had a chance to get goin'. Eighteen months ... what's eighteen months?

Officially, the Pony Express died in October of 1861, although a few packets of letters were being delivered until November. It had thrown Jethro out of work, along with many others, and it would be a long time before the country would see their like again.

Jethro had been running a stop-station for the company, and they had been good days. Why, he'd had friends all along the line, like young Bill Cody, the one they now called Buffalo Bill. Cody had started riding the mail when he was fifteen years old, and he was one of the best. Pony Bob Haslam and the Irishman Happy Tom Ranahan ... be a long, long time before they ever got together a lot like that.

Jethro started down the long slope, glancing at the line of ties that lay ready to receive the steel rails. As he rode up to the right-of-way, men were walking back to the rail car-a flatbed drawn by a single horse. Five men on each side would take hold of a rail and draw it off the front end of the rail car, two rails being taken off at once. The foreman's voice and the other sounds moved to a regular beat, a cadence that Jethro admitted he would have liked had he not known what they were doing.

The driver's shout would begin with a Whoa up! Then the foreman shouted, Rail, and the men would slide a rail from the car. The foreman shouted, Down! And it was dropped into place with a heavy clang. The car would roll forward, and after it came the bolters, dropping a clamp at each rail-joint, and two spikes at each tie. Clamps were then bolted to the rails, joining them together; and then came the spikers with their heavy sledges, driving the spikes into the ties and fixing the rails into place. The wonderful rhythm of their hammers was a thing to hear. Whoa up!. .. Rail! ... Down! ... Whoa up! .. . Rail! ... Down! ... Several men glanced around as Jethro Stuart walked his pack horses up to the right-of-way, and their eyes went to the burdens the horses bore. Slowly the pace of the workmen dwindled and came to a stop.

Where'd you find em? the foreman asked.

Bout a mile over yonder.

Know that one, one of the track-layers said, indicating the nearest of the dead men. He was a surveyor. Met him in California. Name's Prescott ... Sam Prescott.

The eyes of the men strayed from the bodies to look apprehensively toward the silent hills. There had been rumors of Indian trouble, but the two dead men were a fact.

Anger was never far from Mike King; it was a factor in his success and in the speed with which the railroad was moving westward. He was a hard-muscled young man with bold, hard eyes, who habitually wore a business suit. Now, seeing work halted and the men grouped around the horses, his anger blazed up. Followed by a harried young man with a briefcase, he started for the group. The foreman looked up, started to see King bearing down upon him, but before he could open his mouth to get the men back on the job, King pointed a stiff finger at him. You were foreman here. Now you're a track-layer, or you're fired-you take your choice. And if you're fired you get back to the settlements in your own way.

Abruptly, he turned his back on the foreman, dismissing him from his mind. You ... ! He indicated a stocky man with hard lines graven into his face. You're the foreman until I can find somebody better. Get these men to work! Yes, sir! The new foreman turned sharply around. All right, men! Roll em! With a quick gesture he started the one horse that drew the rail car, and then yelled, Whoa up! ... Rail! ... Down!

Mike turned on Stuart. Your name is Jethro Stuart?

It is.

Stuart, you were hired to hunt buffalo to feed these men, not to stop their work. Why'd you bring those bodies down here?