Killoe (1962) (8 page)

We saw little game. There were the usual prairie dogs and jackass rabbits, and when we camped that night Zeno caught us a mess of catfish which offered a change of diet.

Out on the plains away from the river there was prickly pear, greasewood, and sage brush, but mighty little else. Here and there in a bottom or at a creek crossing we found a few acres of grama, and we took time out to let the cattle eat. It was a scary thing to think of the long marches ahead of us with grass growing less and less.

We all knew about the eighty miles of dry march ahead of us, but we preferred not to think of it. Each night we filled our barrels to have as much water as we could for the day to come. But all of us knew there might be a time when there would be no water, not even for ourselves and our horses.

We nooned at a pool, shallow but quite extensive, but when we left, it was only a patch of muddy earth churned by the feet of our cattle.

While there, I went up to the Mexican's wagon to see how he was . . . or at least, that's what I told myself.

When I spoke, the redhead drew back the curtain, and her smile was something to see.

"Oh, please come in! Miguel has been telling me how it was you who found him."

"Just happened to be first," I said, embarrassed.

"If you had not found me," Miguel said, "I should now be dead. That I know. Nobody else had come to see what lay out there, even if they heard me."

"Your name is Dan Killoe?" she asked. "I am Conchita McCrae. My father was Scotch-Irish, my mother a Mexican." "You had nerve," I said.

"You must have ridden for days." "There was no one else. Miguel's father is dead, and there is only our mother ... his mother. She is very old, and she worried about her son."

Well, maybe so, but it took nerve for a girl---or a man for that matter--to ride into Comanche country alone. Or even to drive through it, as we were. She had a fast horse, but that isn't too much help when the Comanche knows the country and is a master at
ambuscade
. There was very little about hunting or fighting that the Indian did not know, and what he did not know, he learned fast.

Conchita McCrae stood tall in my estimation, and I liked the way she looked straight into your eyes and stood firmly on her small
bet
. That was more of a woman than I had ever seen before.

"The Comancheros," Miguel said, "I do not approve of what they do. They are some of my people who trade with the Comanche, and it is a profitable trade, but they sell the rifles with which to kill, and they kill our people, and yours also."

He paused to catch his breath, and then said, speaking more slowly, "They believed I was spying when I was only hunting wild horses, for they knew me as one who did not approve. I had hoped to avoid trouble with them, but there are men among the Comancheros who are worse than the Comanches themselves."

"The man with the scar?"

The skin around his eyes seemed to draw back. "He is the worst of them. He is Felipe Soto. You know of him?"

I knew of him. He was a gunfighter and a killer. It was said he had killed more than twenty men in hand-to-hand battles with knife or gun. How many he had killed in fights of other kinds, no man could guess.

In a few short years the man had become a legend, although so far as I knew he had appeared east of the Pecos on only one occasion. He had crossed the Rio Grande from Matamoras and killed a man in Brownsville.

He was an outlaw, but he was protected by many of his own people, and among them he had been guilty of no crimes. A big man, he was widely feared, and even men who might have faced him with some chance of winning did not care to take the risk such a meeting would involve.

"Where did they find you?"

"Ah! There is the trouble, amigo! They find me just as I have come upon their.., shall we say, rendezvous? It is a word you know?

"There is a canyon to the north, a great, long, high-walled canyon, and in the bottom there is rich, green grass. They were there ... the Comanches and the Comancheros.

This place I have seen is a secret place, but I had heard of it. It is the Palo Duro Canyon."

"They will
follow
him, Mr. Killoe," Conchita said. "They will not let him live now.

The Comancheros are men of evil. If they do not find him now, they will come searching for him when he is home again."

"What they do then is no business of mine," I said, "but we won't let him be taken from us. I promise you that."

There was a movement behind me. "Don't make any promises you can't keep."

It was Tap Henry. His features were hard, and there was a kind of harsh impatience in his eyes that I had seen there before this.

"I'll keep the promise, Tap," I replied quietly. "I have made the promise, and it will stick."

"You'll listen to me," Tap replied shortly. "You don't know what you are walking into."

"I have made my promise. I shall keep it."

"Like hell you will!" Tap's tone was cold. "Look, kid, you don't know what you're saying."

He paused, taking a cigar from his pocket. "We've got enough to do, getting our cattle west, without borrowing trouble."

"Please," Miguel had risen to one elbow, "I wish no trouble. If you will loan me a horse, we can go."

"Lie down,
senior
," I said. "You are my guest, and here you will stay."

"Who's leading
this outfit
, you or me?"

"I thought Pa was," I said dryly. "When it comes to that, we're both working for him.

His face stiffened a little. "Well, we'll see what Pa has to say, then!" he said sarcastically.

We walked together toward where Pa stood by the fire. Zeb Lambert was there, squatting on his heels, and Zeno Yearly was there too. Ira Tilton had come in from his guard for coffee and I saw his eyes go quickly to Tap Henry.

"Pa," Tap said, "the kid here has promised those Mexicans that they can have our protection all the way into New Mexico. Now, we know the Comancheros are hunting them, and that means trouble! They can muster fifty, maybe a hundred white men and more Comanches, and we're in no shape to stand up to that kind of a crowd. I say we let them shift for themselves."

Zeno glanced up at Tap, but his long horse-face revealed nothing.

Pa glanced at me. "What do you say about this, Dan?"

"I told them they were our guests, and they were safe with US.

Pa looked at Tap. "What's wrong with that?"

Tap's face darkened, and his eyes were cold. "Pa, you don't know what you're saying.

Neither you nor the cattle nor any of us will get through if that outfit tackles us! I heard that Mex say he knew where their hide-out was, and that's the best-kept secret in this part of the country. They dasn't let him live."

"We will try to see that he does," Pa said quietly.

Pa was a square-faced man with carefully combed gray hair and a trimmed gray mustache. No matter how bad times got or how busy we were, Pa was always shaved, his hair was always trimmed. And I do not recall ever seeing Pa lean on anything--he always stood on his own two feet.

He looked steadily at Tap now. "I am surprised, Tap. You should know that I would never leave a man--least of all a man and a woman-out here on the plains alone. If we have to fight to protect them, then we shall have to fight."

Tap Henry stared at him with sullen eyes. "Pa, you can't do that. These folks are nothing to you. They are--"

"We took them in. They needed help. So long as I live, they will have it from me. I have never turned a man from my door, and I never shall."

Tap Henry drew a deep breath. "Pa . . " He was almost pleading. "These Comancheros... they're worse than Comanches. Believe me, I know--"

"How do you know, Tap?" Pa asked mildly.

Tap shut up and turned sharply away. That he believed us all to be a pack of fools was obvious, and maybe he was right. Pa yeas not a man who ever preached to anyone, least of all to his boys, but he had taught us always to stand on principle. I say taught us, but it was mostly example.

A man always knew where Pa Killoe stood on any question, and no nonsense about it.

Not that we had any doubts about the trouble we were in. The plains were alive with Comanches, and the Comancheros were as bad, if not worse, and Tap was right--they would be hunting Miguel.

An idea that was sheer inspiration came to me of a sudden. More than likely they already believed Miguel to be dead, but suppose they wanted to see the body before they believed? "Pa... I think we should bury him. Miguel, I mean."

Pa glanced around at me; and Conchita, who had come down from the wagon, stood stock-still, listening. "We should bury him right here," I said, "and put a marker over the grave."

Zeno Yearly walked over to the wagon and took a shovel from the straps that bound it to the wagonside where it would be handy. Without any further talk, he walked off to one side and stuck the spade into the ground. Getting another shovel, I joined him.

We dug the grave four feet deep then dropped in a layer of big rocks, then another. If they were curious enough to open the grave they might not*be curious enough to lift out all those rocks. We filled in the dirt and put up a marker.

"'Name?" Yearly asked.

"No," I said, "we don't want them to think he talked. Just make it: Unknown Mexican Died on This Spot April 16, 1858."

After a short nooning, we rolled our wagons again, and the herd moved on.

Tap had nothing to say, but he was short-tempered as a rattlesnake in the blind, which is the way they refer to a snake when he is shedding his skin. At that time a rattler won't rattle----he simply strikes at anything that moves.

But Tap was wary. He rode far out much of the time, scanning the hills. The word got around, of course, and most of the hands went out fully armed and loaded for bear. We kept the herd moving late, and five miles further on we crossed the South Fork, sometimes called the Boiling Concho. This was real water--deep, clear, and quite rapid in some places, and the herd spread out along the banks for water while we hunted a place to ford it.

Tap found the spot he was looking for--a ledge of rock under the water that gave sure footing for the cattle and was wide enough to take two wagons abreast. We crossed over, moving them slow, and started across some flat country dotted with mesquite and occasional live oak. The grass was good. We crossed Dove Creek, filled with rushes, and pushed on to Good Spring Creek.

The water was clear and cold, the grass good, and there was plenty of wood and buffalo chips. It was coming on to dark when we rounded the cattle into position and circled our few wagons.

Zeno Yearly got out his tackle and threw a bait into the creek. By the time the sun was gone he had six black bass, all of them good. Those fish were so hungry and so unfamiliar with fishhooks that they could scarcely wait to grab.

The fish tasted good. Nobody was saying anything but our grub wasn't holding up like we had hoped. We had figured to kill more game, and we just hadn't seen any, and we didn't want to kill a steer because we would need all we had. Aside from the steers, we were depending on the rest for breeding stock.

Nobody talked very
much
, and we ate quickly and turned in for a rest. Ben Cole and Zeno Yearly took the first guard, but Tap Henry was awake, too. He smoked near the fire for a while, then got up and walked out beyond the wagons. He was still standing out there alone when I dropped off to sleep.

Tom Sandy woke me. He looked thinner, and he was rough waking me. I got out of my blankets into the cool night and put on my hat, then my boots. Tom had walked off to the fire without saying anything, but he looked mean and bitter.

Zebony was at the fire, and he glanced up at me. "Did you see Tom?"

"I saw him."

"Trouble's riding that man. Something's chewing on him." Glancing over at Tap's bed, I saw him there, sleeping. We mounted up and rode by and out to the herd. We were relieving Kelsey and Squires.

"Quiet," Kelsey said.

They rode off toward the fire and Zebony started away. From where I sat by the edge of the herd I could see Tom Sandy huddled in his blankets near the wagon. My eyes strayed to Tap's bed, but somehow it did not seem occupied. Bushes obscured it somewhat, however, and it was none of my affair.

Slowly, I started around the herd. I was riding a big roan horse that was hard-riding but powerful, and for his size, quite fast.

My mind went suddenly to the blond gunman who had accompanied Webb Holt on the day Tap killed him. That man worried me. He had takin the whole affair too calmly, and I had a feeling we would see more of him. And Bud Caldwell, too, for that matter.

It was almost an hour later and the cattle had gotten to their feet for a stretch, and some had begun to graze a little, when suddenly a big longhorn's head came up sharply. Looking where he looked, I saw only the blackness of a patch of live oak.

With the Patterson ready in my hand, I walked the roan toward the trees. Trust a longhorn to spot trouble, for although they were considered domestic cattle, actually they were wild things, reacting like wild things, and most of them lived wild all their lives.