Kill McAllister (2 page)

How long they ran, he had no idea, but it seemed an eternity, but at last the pace started to slow. The flat run came down to a trot, the trot reduced itself to a walk. He did nothing except what Boss had told him to do. He stayed with them and before long they had stopped and one or two of them started grazing. Dawn found him cold and miserable with something like five hundred head of cattle, a bushed horse, no weapon of any kind but his knife and the rope on the saddle. He knew from the direction he had taken that he was now far into the state of Kansas. Which didn't comfort a man much. He couldn't hope to drive this many cattle and all he could do was wait there till some of the boys came and gave him a hand.

By noon he was hungry as hell and thinking that he would never see any of the boys again. Every time he saw a movement it was a Jayhawker. Finally, however, in the middle of the afternoon Curly Bent and Ike Doan came loping up.

McAllister was pretty glad to see them instead of a bunch of Kansas men. They told him they'd been rounding up strays and had only hit on his trail a short while ago. He thought they must have been stupid or blind, but he was too glad to see them to say so. Together, they got the cattle on the move back toward camp. Boss or no Boss, they moved them along. They wanted out of Kansas and to be well below the Nations line. Although McAllister questioned the two men, they could tell him nothing about what had happened back there at the camp. They had lit out with a bunch of running cows and had stayed with them with a couple of other fellows. They were driving them back to camp when they struck McAllister's sign. They decided to divide up and here they were.

It was three hours of hard driving, keeping the cows at the trot and damn the tallow they ran off them, before they sighted camp. There seemed to be a couple of thousand other cows on the bedding ground, all looking rather the worse for wear and as if they hadn't got another run in them. But McAllister wasn't fooled. These cows would run again at the slightest excuse. They had found out it could be done. He helped the men throw their animals in with the main herd and looked around for Boss and couldn't see him. He rode up toward the wagon. There were three men around it. Gus, the cook, was busy preparing food which he would have done under any circumstances. The wagon and Gus looked as though they had been through an osage hedge backward.
The other two men were a cowhand named Jim Young with his arm in a sling and a Negro tophand named Sam Bostle.

As McAllister walked up, the cook handed him a mug of coffee. McAllister took it gratefully and sipped. Sam looked up at him. He was a tall gray-haired man in his middle-years and had been Boss Harding's right-hand man for many years. It was said that before the war Sam had been his slave. Certainly there wasn't a better man with cows in all Texas and that was saying something.

“Where's Boss?' McAllister asked.

Sam pointed with his chin. McAllister turned and saw the tarp, body-shaped and still.

Shock hit him.

Boss was dead.

“Trampled?” McAllister asked gently. He knew what Boss had meant to the Negro.

Sam nodded. McAllister walked across the camp, leaned down and lifted the tarp. He inspected the dead man closely. It was not a pleasant task, for there wasn't much left of Boss that was recognisable. But there was something he noticed. He covered the body, straightened and walked back to the wagon.

“Sam,” he said, “Boss was trampled, but that wasn't what killed him. He was shot twice. Once through the body and once in the head.”

Sam sighed.

“I didn't think it possible the cows could have got him like that,” he said.

McAllister squatted, sipping the hot bitter coffee.

“What do you aim to do, Sam?” he asked.

The Negro raised his eyebrows.

“Me? Why, do whichever Boss would of done,” he said. “First thing, us hands'll take things over and choose a corporal. Then we'll work our way around east then head north for Combville, jest like Boss would of done.”

McAllister said: “We ain't pickin' no corporal, Sam. You're tophand. Whatever Boss did you can do.”

“I'm a black man, boy,” Sam said.

“You never heard tell of a black trail boss?”

“I did.”

“Then you're bossin' this outfit. You know cows like nobody ever did. If there's a man among us can get these critturs to Combville,
you can. I ain't puttin' it to no vote. I'm tellin' the boys you've took over an' I'm backin' you.”

Sam stared at him hard for a moment, then he said: “All right. I'll do it.” He stood up. “Maybe we should ought to drift these cows back over the line. These Kansas men ain't finished with us'ns yet.”

“Sam,” McAllister said, “I know you're short-handed, but I don't aim to go along with you.”

The Negro frowned.

“Rem, I need ever' man I have.”

“Sure, I know that like I said. But I reckon we owe old Boss somethin' too. I'm goin' to pick my own horse outa the remuda an' I'm goin' to find the man that killed him.”

Sam said: “I know how you feel. I feel the same way. But there ain't nothin' you can do. There was a round dozen of them buzzards. An' there's more where they come from. You're up against a hull state, Rem. You can't do nothin'.”

“Look, Sam,” McAllister said, “if I want to go to hell, I'll go in my own way. That fancy talkin' son-of-a-bitch that come in an' told Boss what was what he took our cows an' he has to sell them some place. Quickest sale he can make is in Combville or some other burg along the line. That's where I'll find him. An' when I do, I'm goin' to plant him.”

He turned away and called to the remudero, a young farm boy on his first trip up the trail. The youngster caught up McAllister's canelo horse and brought it over. McAllister quickly changed the bridle, blanket and saddle from the weary little bay he'd been riding onto the back of the California horse. He mounted and rode back toward the camp. He halted well clear of the cook and Gus called: “Got some chow for you to take along.”

McAllister took the rough parcel from Gus and stuffed it in the saddle-pocket. Gus stood watching him. When he had tied the pocket, Gus walked across to him.

“I'm going to push south with what I have, Rem,” he said. “Then I'm going to come back for the rest. I'm five hunnerd short. When I have them, I'll head east thirty-forty miles, then going around north till I hit Combville. If I can't reach there I'll hit some other town. Take me maybe two-three weeks.”

“If I can hire some new hands, I'll send 'em down to look for you-all.”

“You do that.”

They shook and McAllister mounted. He rode down to the herd
and spoke to the boys guarding it. He talked to them one by one, telling them that Sam had taken over. Nobody argued; they all knew that he was the man with the most cow-savvy. He went on north, telling them he'd see them at the shipping point.

It was strange being in Kansas. McAllister was a Texan, but he felt at home in New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado. In Kansas, he felt like a foreigner. He knew that here he was hated and he was fair game for any local man. From now on he was on his own and it gave a man a mighty lonely feeling. That first day he rode clear of the timbered country and came to a rolling plain; he had expected to see farms patchworking the countryside, but he saw none. All he saw was grass and some occasional timber, some water flowing in the bottomland and ridges that he scouted with great care. He saw no sign of man at all. Sign of cattle he came on in plenty, some going north, some going south. Sign of the cattle stampeding out and being driven back. He cut across country to his right, going east, and spent the rest of the day investigating tracks, but hitting none that interested him. In his mind he noted numbers, identifying the different bunches of cattle and ticking off whether they had been driven back south again or not. It was an uncertain business at best and he could never be sure that he was absolutely right in his estimates. But it was the only way he could work. He travelled at an easy pace, wanting to keep his horse as fresh as possible.

He found water before nightfall, watered the canelo and then camped several hundred yards from it, camping dry and cold without a fire. He hobbled the horse on grass and just rolled in his single blanket. He arose stiff with the dawn, ate a little of the food Gus had given him, watered himself and the horse at the creek, then cut across toward the west. Again he met a fair amount of sign and checked it off in his mind, making sure that the cattle that had run north or roughly in that direction had been returned to the Nations' line. But toward the end of the day, he found the sign of two fairly large bunches and the north-going and south-going sign was so mixed up that he could make neither head nor tail of it. This might or might not be the clue he wanted. He decided to swing north and see what he could see.

Again night caught him out. Now his grub was running low
and he found that he had precious little to eat. Somehow on the following day he would have to get hold of some supplies. Which wasn't going to be easy in this country.

Again he slept cold and this time he dreamt of hot coffee and steak an inch thick. Again he rose cold and stiff in the dawn, saddled up and went over the ridge to see a house in the distance. It looked as if the sign of the cattle he was following went almost past the house. As he went on he saw that the farm was fenced-against cattle. As timber was scarce in this country, the farmer had fenced most of his fields with hedges of orange osage. The house was a soddy and looked a pretty miserable affair. There was a woman and three ragged children in the yard and they all seemed to be suffering from colds. As he rode up a man came out of the fields.

McAllister touched his hat to the woman and said howdy to the man. The children gawped and McAllister waited to be asked to get down but nobody asked him.

The man went into the house and came out with an old single-shot rifle. It was a plain hint.

“You a cattle drover?” he asked.

“I'm with a trail-herd going north,” McAllister told him. “We had a stampede two-three days back and I'm hunting strays. Looks like I'm on the tracks of a fair-sized bunch right along your fence there. Did you see 'em?”

He must have done if he had eyes in his head.

The man said sullenly: “We see your Texas cattle all the time. We try an' keep 'em clear. Our cows get sick after they been through. You know that.”

“Were the last bunch drove?”

McAllister knew they must have been driven. Cows didn't run this far on their own.

“Of course they was drove.”

“Were the drovers Texas or Kansas men?”

“What would Kansas men be doin' driving Texas cattle?”

“They need to eat and they need money like anybody else.”

The children caught the strained note in the men's voices. The two little ones clung to their mother's skirts.

The man said: “You won't do yourself no good askin' questions here. We're poor folk an' we don't know nothin'.”

There was hatred in his voice, but he didn't express it too clearly because of the Henry in McAllister's boot under his leg and the Remington at his hip. Every Kansas farmer had heard
how wild the Texas boys were and how they would shoot an innocent man without thought.

“You didn't see the brand on the cows?”

“I didn't see nothin'.”

McAllister lifted the lines and walked the canelo away from the house. He would have liked to beg a drink from the pump in the yard, but he'd be damned if he did. He went on a couple of miles till the soddy was out of sight, then he knew that he was after the right cattle.

He knew because he was shot at.

He was approaching a high ridge, going right along the tracks of the cattle still trying to see if he could make out the marks of horses' hoofs among the trampled cow sign, but he could not.

The marksman made one mistake. He was nervous and he didn't allow McAllister to get near enough to be a dead sure target. He fired and the range was too long. The lead raised dust in front of the canelo.

McAllister didn't waste any time. Only a fool stood around with a man shooting at him from good cover. He spun the canelo on the space of a pocket-handkerchief and went back the way he had come. No sooner had he done so than a half-dozen shots sounded and showed him that there were at least two marksmen up on the ridge there.

He got the canelo behind the last ridge he had come over and peered over. So the cow-thieves had watched their back-trail. This almost proved that he was on the right tracks. Right or wrong, he had to do something about it. There was something fundamental in McAllister's nature that objected to being shot at.

He turned his horse and trotted east under cover of the ridge. He waited until it petered out, then he turned north and raked the startled canelo with the spurs. The animal got its legs under it and ran as only it knew how. The riflemen spotted him almost at once and fired several shots but the range was either too long for them or McAllister was moving too fast because none of them came closer than several feet. He hit the ridge behind which the men were sheltering a good way to the east of them, rocketed up it, and as soon as he hit the crest, turned west and headed directly for them.

Old Chad McAllister had once advised his son: “When you don't know what to do, son, charge. It surely does disconcert a man to be charged when he thinks he has you fixed.”

He saw two men crouched at the crest of the ridge, rifles in
their hands. As soon as he hit the top of the ridge, they sighted him, swung their weapons and cut down on him. Their shooting was wild, but he knew that as he came nearer their chances of hitting increased. He turned the canelo slightly to the right, slipped his feet from the stirrup-irons, swung himself over and clung for an instant to the left side of the horse and then dropped to the ground. Now he had his Henry repeater in his hands and as soon as he hit dirt, he levered and fired.