Kiowa Trail (1964) (10 page)

"What will they do, Conn?" she asked.

"It isn't what they will do. It is whatwe must do. We've got to stop that train before it gets here. We've got to turn it around and send those boys right back to where they came from."

"They'll fight."

"Sure - if we give them the chance."

That outfit we had, they were ready for it, I could see that, and man for man I'd match them with any bunch of fighting men anywhere. Only we were spread out too much. Priest and Naylor were over at the new town. Red Mike was off down the trail somewhere, rounding up more fighting men. Our fence ran down both sides of the town, so my force was split in two by the enemy. And that wasn't good at all, for the fence must be guarded or they'd get out there and cut our wire.

So far, we had turned away several herds, and I could imagine what they were thinking down there in town. Some of them would quit and go, especially the ones who had never favored McDonald or his ways, but there was no quit in Aaron McDonald himself.

"I'm going to head them off, Kate," I said. "I'm going to take a few of the boys and head them off before they are ready for us."

D'Artaguette I wanted. That Frenchman would stand hitched, come hell or high water. Red Mike wasn't here, but I'd take Meharry, Rowdy Lynch, Gallardo, and Battery Mason. That should do it.

Yet the whole setup worried me because we were spread so thin, and those men down there in town were not fools. Most of them were fighting men, and many of them had bought lots or built houses and so had at stake something more than merely a desire to fight.

"Kate," I said, "we're going to get some wire cut; and we're going to have to stand for it."

Her face hardened, for Kate Lundy was a fighter, too, and there was no more give in her than there was in McDonald.

"While I'm gone they might mount a real attack," I went on, "and we're outnumbered, so I want you to pull the men off the wire. On this side of town, bunch them here, well dug in and ready to make a stand.

"Over on the other side they can pull back to that pointed hill where the rocks are. By day the wire can be pretty well covered from those two places, so let them hole up and keep to those places until I get back."

The trouble was, of course, that we did not know what McDonald was thinking, and I knew better than to lowrate the man.

By day Kate Lundy missed nothing. She left the direction of the struggle in my hands, but her suggestions when she made them were good, and to the point. For as long as I had known her, I had never seen her quite like this, and much as I had respected her before, I felt even greater admiration now.

Bedded down as I was, night after night, not far from the ambulance where she slept, I knew that she lay awake, her light burning into the small hours, and sometimes I heard those low sobs as she wept alone.

For she was truly alone now - her husband killed so long ago, and now Tom gone.

These had been her family, these had been her all, and around them she had built her world. If she managed to make her ranch from nothing into a great success, it was more for Tom than for herself ... and now Tom was gone.

Within me there grew a tiny fear, but it was one that grew as the days went on: what would she do, what would become of her when this battle was over?

She had always been strong. Her slender body, shaped as beautifully as a man could imagine, was nonetheless like whipcord and whalebone. During those first years there had been only two of us, although Tom made a riding hand very quickly. Together we rebuilt the burned cabin, we built parapets of defense and cleared a field of fire around us. We cleaned out the spring, dug a stone-lined trench to bring the run off nearer the cabin, and built a stone corral.

There were both wild horses and wild cattle in the country around, and we worked from early morning until late at night rounding them up, roping and branding. We held one small herd in a grassy valley close by, trying to select from all we found the best breeding stock.

At night she gave Tom his schooling, to which, in a small way, I contributed.

Now, sitting off to one side of the fire, we talked over the tactics of the coming days. We would ride to the small station and water tank where Delgado had sent off his messages, and attempt to intercept the train there, or just beyond. We would be gone three or four days and, because we were undoubtedly spied on, the people of the town would know we were gone and would choose their time to attack.

Harvey Nugent shrugged. "Don't worry, we'll handle it."

I cannot say that I particularly liked Nugent, but he was a fighting man, and one I preferred having on my side. Every one of them had sand ... they would stay the fight through.

Only during a lull in the talk, while we ate, I kept wishing I'd see Red Mike show up over the hill with the rest of the men we had sent for. We were going to need them.

It was an hour shy of daylight when I drew up outside the ambulance to say good-bye to Kate. She was standing beside her wagon, and she held up her hand to me.

"Conn ... Conn ... I can never tell you how much I owe you. I could never begin to tell you how much it has meant to me to have you with me."

We'd known each other a long time, and only once before had she said anything like that. For a moment I could not answer her.

"I'll do my best, Kate," I said then, and added, "Be careful, Kate. McDonald would kill a woman as soon as a man. Like John Blake said, he's a witch-burner, and there's no sentiment in him."

"All right, Conn."

Nugent was there, standing by, tough, battle-scarred, a man who lived to fight. I knew that, once he'd accepted a job, he rode for the brand. There was no sell-out in him.

"Don't you worry none, Dury," he said now, "we'll hold up our end."

"You always have, Harvey," I said, and there was a flicker in his eyes at the praise.

"You know," I said in a low voice, "I'd not want to leave here if I didn't know you were here."

He threw me a look of astonishment, and then he spat, and said roughly, "You boys ride along. We're all right."

We took two head of horses per man, so we could ride harder and faster, and we went off up a draw that led away from the camp. Then we held to low ground so as not to sky-line ourselves against the horizon stars. When we were a couple of miles off we came out of the low ground and headed off across country, toward the east.

We went quietly, to leave no dust to mark our passing, for they might have scouts in the country around, and even if dust cannot be seen, the smell of it hangs in the air. We rode off to our own small destiny, six battle-hardened men, to meet an enemy whose numbers we could not know except that they were sure to be greater than our own.

How many times had western men, men such as we, ridden off to their forgotten, unwritten battles? There was a stone I had seen once, a stone in which was scratched the small story of five men who dared the western mountains in search of gold, five who went where no one had dreamed of going before, and when the final message was scratched, three were already dead and two were dying.

The names were scratched there, but who ever heard of any of them? Had they relatives, friends? Who waited for their return? Did anyone ever know what happened? And how many other such stories were there, stories never found on stones, of men who had no time to write messages?

These men who rode beside me were such men as had fought the ancient wars, such men as had followed their loyalties to bloody death or bloody victory since time began. If this was my time to die, then I could go in no better company.

The rolling hills and the prairie lands over which we rode were wide, and we rode the night away, until the red dawn came in the sky. At noon, when the sun was high above us, we drew up in a tiny hollow among the hills, and while one man watched for the Indians that might come upon us, we switched our saddles and remounted again.

The place toward which we rode was a lone stop on the railroad where there was a station, a telegrapher, and a saloon, a few cars standing on a side track - and nothing more.

This was the place where I hoped to learn something from the telegrapher about the train that would bring the fighting men for McDonald and Shalett.

By mid-morning we were coming up to the station. We had stopped, scouting the place from a distance and out of sight. Nobody seemed to be around, but I was worried.

McDonald was no fool, and by now he must know we were gone, and he would attack before the day was out, or would make some move. He had the men. He had the fire power.

He might do more than that, he might attempt to cut us off, to destroy us. He must have guessed where we were going, although I doubted that he knew why. He was not the sort of man to expect six men to attempt to stop fifty or more.

Rowdy Lynch cut away from us and started a wide ride around the station. Gallardo started in the opposite direction to head off anyone who might try to circle away from Rowdy.

The rest of us waited to give them a start, and then rode down to the station.

The telegrapher, I saw, was a slim, wiry young Irishman whose face looked like a map of the island itself. He was in his early twenties, and had a tough, hard-bitten, devil-may-care air about him that I liked.

"Meharry," I said, "it looks like a job for you." Meharry got down and strolled into the station, and we rode to the stable back of the saloon, where we left our horses.

The place was built like a fort. The stable itself was half a dugout, half a sod house, but it was strongly made. The second story of the saloon overhung the lower like a blockhouse, so nobody could attack doors or windows without being exposed from above. There were portholes in the second-story floor so that a gun might be fired directly down at anyone attacking the doors below. From a spike near one of those portholes, a withered, dried-up Indian's hand hung by a wire, and I recalled hearing the story of that hand on my last trip up the trail.

The saloon had been attacked, and one Indian, thinking there might be a door, had thrust his hand through the porthole, grasping for a hand-hold. It had been promptly lopped off, and then hung there as a reminder to others. Nobody had ever attempted that again.

The big room of the saloon was empty except for the saloonkeeper himself, who was bartender as well. He was leaning on the bar reading a month-old newspaper.

"Third time I've read that," he said, "but there ain't anything else to read. I've memorized all the labels on the cans, and on every bottle in the house."

"I've a book in one of my saddlebags," I said. "I'll leave it with you."

"Ain't one of them pony express novels, is it? I sure like to read them. Makes it seem mighty exciting out here."

He placed a couple of bottles on the bar. "Fact is, it was reading them books started me out here. So far I've had no chance to save nary a white woman from the redskins. Come to consider it, I ain't seen but one white woman, and no Indian would have her."

"It's a history," I said regretfully.

"Hey, now that's fine!" He was genuinely pleased. "By the time I figure out what they're gettin' at, and how it really must have been, this here will be a settled-up country with kids walking to school."

"Do you think that will ever be?" D'Artaguette said.

"Why not?"

"How's business?" I asked.

"You makin' jokes? Ain't been a dozen people in here this month. There just ain't no business, none a-tall. But it'll pick up ... time the cattle start movin'."

"I haven't seen a soul in the country around," I commented, casually. "Who comes to a place like this?"

The bartender touched a finger to his mustache. "Mostly folks to use the wires ... right now my guess would be there's a war startin' west of here. You boys want to use those guns, you head west.

"Man in here t'other day, askin' about fightin' men. Flanagan, down to the station, he told me he wired for riflemen."

D'Artaguette shook his head in a puzzled way. "Me, I'm just a cowman," he said, "headin' south to meet a herd that's overdue, but I wouldn't know where to get a lot of fighters if I wanted them. Maybe back in Texas."

"Hell, you don't need to go that far! Missouri, Arkansas ... eastern Kansas ... there's plenty of men who don't care who they shoot. You take Missouri, now. Those squirrel shooters over there, they'd shoot anybody, you pay them enough.

"Take that James outfit, now. James and them Youngers - they've got a lot of men around them, men who run with them now and again. You could hire that lot. Times are bad, dry year, and that bunch don't take much to honest farmin'. That Jesse, now. Don't know as he ever earned an honest dollar. Took to horse-thievin' even before he joined up with Quantrell."

D'Artaguette traced circles with his glass on the bar, and I kept silent. If we just listened, this man was going to tell us all we needed to know.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. "Get you that book," I said, and walked outside.

Meharry was standing outside the station talking to Flanagan. Going out to the horses, I took the battered copy of Carlyle'sFrench Revolution from my saddlebag. Books were hard to come by, and I'd brought this one from England, but I'd read it twice and it might be a cheap price to pay for a friend in the right place. While I was out there I took a careful look at the hills around. They seemed innocent of trouble, but I trusted them not at all.