Killoe (1962) (16 page)

We had a camp outside of Magoffinsville. It was a pretty place, with arching trees over the camp and a stream running near, and the Rio Grande not far off. It was a beautiful valley with mountains to the north and west, and there seemed to be grapes growing everywhere, the first I'd ever seen cultivated.

We sat around the fire until late, singing the old songs and talking, spinning yarns we had heard, and planning for the future. And Conchita sat close beside me, and I began to feel as I never had before. It was a different feeling because for the first time I knew I wanted a girl . . . wanted her for always, and I had no words to speak what I thought.

Soon we would be on the trail again, moving north and west into the new lands. Somewhere up there was Tap Henry, and I would be seeing him again . . . what would be our relationship, now that Pa was dead?

Tap had respected Pa ... I did not think he had such respect for me. He was too accustomed to thinking of me as a youngster, yet whatever we planned, Tap could have a share in it if he would do his part to make our plans work out.

I got up and walked out to where the horses were, and stood there alone in the night, looking at the stars and thinking.

Magoffln would supply us with what we needed, but the debt was mine to pay. We had few cattle to start with, and such a small herd would make a living for nobody. Whatever happened, I had to have the herd they had stolen, or the same number of cattle from elsewhere.

If Felipe Soto did not bring the cattle to me, I was going after them, even to Palo Duro Canyon itself.

Conchita came up to where I stood. "Are you worried, Dan?"

"They came with me," I gestured back toward the people at the fire; "they trusted my father and me. I must not fail them." "You won't."

"It will be hard."

"I know it will, Dan, but if you will let me, I want to help."

Chapter
Six.

We came up the valley of the Mimbres River in the summer of fifty-eight, a handful of men with a handful of cattle and one wagon loaded down with supplies.

We put Cooke's Spring behind us and trailed up the Mimbres with the Black Range to the east, and on the west the wilderness of the Mogollons. We rode with our rifles across our saddle-bows, riding
through the
heart of Apache country, and we came at last to our Promised Land.

The Plains of St. Augustine, a vast inland sea of grass, surrounded by mountains, made the finest range we had ever seen, with nothing in sight but a few scattered herds of antelope or wild horses.

Our camp was made in the lee of a cliff close by a spring, with a bat cave in the rocks above us. We turned our cattle upon the long grass, and set to work to build a pole corral to hold our saddle stock.

Cutting poles in the mountains, we came upon both bear sign and deer sign. Zeno Yearly stopped in his cutting of poles.

"It is a fair land, Dan, but I've heard tell this is an Indian trail, so we'd best get set for trouble."

"We're building a fort when we have the corral, but first we must protect our saddle stock."

The fort was not so much to look at, not at first. We made a V of our wagons, pointing it toward the open valley, and we made a pile of the poles for the corral along one side, and threw up a mound of earth on the other side, with the cliff behind us.

Though it was not much of a fort, it was a position that could be defended.

Three days later we had our Texas house built, with the Foleys occupying one side and the Stark family the other. We had also put up most of a bunkhouse, and had our cattle fattening on the long grass. We had scouted the country around, killed a couple of deer and a mountain lion we caught stalking a heifer from our herd.

We were settling in, making a home of the place, but it was time I made a move.

News was beginning to filter through to us. There was trouble down in the Mimbres Valley--a shooting or two, and the name we heard was that of Tolan Banks, the man Tap Henry had mentioned.

And then one day they came riding up the valley, Banks and Tap, and a third man with them. It was the blond man who had ridden with Caldwell.

Tap was riding a grudge, I could see that. He rode up and looked around. "What the hell is the idea? I thought you were going to settle down in the Mimbres with us."

"Before we talk about anything else," I said, "you tell that man"---I indicated the blond man--"to start riding out of here. If he comes around again, I'll kill him."

"He's a friend of mine," Tap replied. "Forget him."

"Like hell I will. He was one of those who ran off our cattle. He was in the attack on us when Pa was killed."

Tap's face tightened. "I heard about that. I couldn't believe it."

Zebony was standing by the corral, and Milo Dodge was in the door of the Texas with Jim Poor.

"You tell that man to leave, Tap."

His face stiffened. "By God, kid, you don't tell me what to do. I'll--"

My eyes held them all, but mostly the blond man. "'You," I said, "start riding. And keep riding. When I see you again, I start shooting."

The man touched his tongue to his lips. "You think you--" I shot him out of his saddle.

A moment before there had been silence, and then I was holding a gun with a slow twist of smoke rising from the muzzle, and the blond man was on the ground.

Whatever Tolan Banks might have done he did not do, for Zebony was holding a rifle in his hands, and so was Milo.

"Tap," I said, "you pick that man up and ride out of here. You're welcome any time, but when you come, don't come with a murdering renegade like him."

My bullet had gone a little high, and the man was shot through the shoulder, but from the look of it, he was badly hurt.
"

Tap Henry sat very still
on his
horse, and there was a strange look in his eyes.

It was as if he was seeing me for the first time.

"I'll come back, Dan. I'll come back looking for you. Nobody talks to me like this."

"You're my brother, Tap, by raising if not by blood. I want no trouble with you, but when you start traipsing around with men who have attacked us, it is time to ask where your loyalty lies."

"You'll be seeing me too," Banks said.

My eyes swung to him. "I was wondering when you were going to put your ante into this game," I said, "and I'm ready any time you are."

He sat his horse, smiling at me. "Not now ... not right now. You've too many guns against me."

"Ride out of here then."

Banks turned his horse and Tap got down to help the wounded man into the saddle. Jim Poor came down to help him.

"You come back when you want, Tap. But come alone or with Karen, and come friendly."

"Where is Karen?" Tim Foley demanded.

"She's in Socorro," Tap said sullenly. "She's all right."

Foley held a shotgun. "Are you two married?"

Tap glanced at him bleakly. "You're damned right," he said.

"What do you think I am?"

"Take care of her," Foley said. "I'm no gunfighter, but this shotgun doesn't care who it shoots."

Tap rode away, leading the renegade, who was swearing in a high, plaintive voice.

There I stood, in the sun of a bright day, watching them ride off down the valley. There went Tap, who had been my hero as a youngster, and there went the last of whatever family I had, and 1 watched him go and was lonely.

Ours was a hard land, and it took hard men to ride it and live it, and the rules had to be laid down so all could read, and the lines drawn.

Tap Henry was different. It seemed to me Tap was rootless, and being rootless he had never quite decided where he stood, on the side of the angels or against them. Well, today should force him to a decision. He knew where I stood.

If that blond man had been trying to sneak a gun on me, I was not sure ... nor did I much care. He had been there when my father was killed, and was as guilty as if he himself had fired the shot--and he might have.

One thing I had learned. It saves a lot of argument and trouble, and perhaps mistakes leading to greater violence, if folks know exactly where you stand. We came to a raw and lonely land, a land without law, without courts, and with no help in time of danger. There were men who wished the land to remain lawless, for there were always those who were unable to abide by the rules of society; and there were others who wanted schools, churches, and market days, who wanted homes, warm and friendly. Now I had taken my stand... I had drawn a line that no man could mistake.

After they had gone, nobody had any comment to make. The work picked up where it had ceased, and went on as it always must; for birth, death, and the day-to-day matters of living never cease. There are meals to be prepared, cattle to be cared for, meat to be butchered, fences to be built, wood to be cut. For while man cannot live by bread alone, he must have the bread before other things can become real. Civilization is born of leisure, and leisure can come only after the crop has been harvested.

In our hearts we knew that, for lonely men are considering men, given to thought to fill the empty hours of the lives they live. , Yet now the time had
come
to ride eastward, to be sure that we recovered our herd.

I doubted if it had yet been sold, and while my warning to Soto might cause him to deliver the herd, I doubted that it would. Even if he wanted it so--which I doubted--there were others involved.

"Tim," I said, "I'm riding after the herd. I'm leaving you in charge. Jim Poor and Tom Sandy will stay with you--and Miguel."

"I go with you, Dan." Miguel looked up from the tiara he had been mending. "It is better so. Soto, he has many friends, and we are a people who protect our own. If you go among them, a stranger, all will be against you, even if they lift no hand.

"If I go with you to tell what Soto has done, and that you are good people, your enemies will be only the Comancheros." He smiled. "And I think they are enough for trouble."

There was no arguing with him, for I knew what he said to be the truth. The Spanish-Americans of Texas and New Mexico were clannish, as they had a right to be, and I would be a stranger among them, and a gringo.

They would know nothing of the facts of my
c
ase
,
whether I was a true man or false.

In such a case they would either ignore me or actively work against me.

And then Conchita declared herself. She, too, was coming. She had much to do. She must go to Socorro. There were things to buy . . . in the end, she won the argument, and she came with us.

Zehony, Zeno Yearly, Milo Dodge, Miguel, and myself made up the group. It was a small enough party for what we had to do.

Socorro was a sleepy village on the Rio Grande, built on the site of a pueblo. A mission had been established there as early as 1628, but during the Pueblo revolt the people had fled south and established a village of the same name on the Rio Grande, returning in 1817 to reestablish the village. All this Conchita told me as we rode toward the village from the west.

Though we were a small number, we were veterans at the sort of trouble that lay before us. Growing up on the frontier in Texas is never easy, and Zebony had killed his first Kiowa when he was thirteen. He had spent a week dodging Comanches even before that, and had seen his family killed.

Zeno Yearly had come west from Kentucky and Tennessee, where he had lived at various places along the Natchez Trace and in the mountains. Most of his life he had lived by hunting.

Milo Dodge had been a Texas Ranger with Walker, and had served as a boy in the army during the War with Mexico, We rode into Socorro, a tight, tough little band. And there we would buy supplies and start east, for we had far to go to reach the land of the Comanchero.

It was cool in the little cantina where we went to drink and to listen. Conchita was in the store, and her brother had disappeared somewhere among the fiat-roofed adobe houses.

We four went into the cantina and ordered the wine of the country, for they were raising grapes and making wine at Socorro, as at E1 Paso and elsewhere. There were old apple trees here, too, planted long ago by the friars, or so it was said.

Zebony put his hat on the table and combed out his long brown hair, hair fine as a woman's and as beautiful. Yearly watched him, touching his long mustache from time to time.

There was a stillness within us, a waiting. Each knew what lay beyond this place.

For out there was a wild and lonely land where the Apaches roamed, and beyond that, where we were going, the Comanche--great horsemen and great fighters, and we were few, going into a harsh land where many enemies awaited us. But this was what we had to do, and not one of us would draw back. ;

The wine was good, and
after
a while the owner brought us each a huge bowl
of frijoles
, a stack of tortillas, and some eggs scrambled with peppers and onions.

Miguel came in, standing inside the door until his eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light, and then he crossed to our table and sat down. Leaning toward us, his eyes very bright, he said, "It is well that we came here, for my friends tell me something very interesting."