Authors: Louis L'amour
Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the blackness, and caught a gleam of light on a gun barrel.
Somebody else was searching that patch of woods, somebody from our camp. Stepping the roan around a patch of brush, I took him into the darkness. He was curious, and he could sense danger as any mustang would, so he stepped light and easy.
There was a stir of movement, a low murmur of voices and then a woman's soft laugh.
An instant there, I stopped. I could feel the flush climb up my neck, for I knew what I would find in there . . . and in the same instant I knew who that other man was.
Instantly, I pushed the roan through the brush. It crackled, and I saw the man across the small clearing lift his rifle. Slapping spurs to the roan, I leaped him ahead and struck up the gun before it could be fired. Grasping the barrel, I wrenched it from the hands of the startled man.
There was a gasp of alarm, and then a cool voice said, "Turn him loose, boy. If he wants to come hunting me, give him his chance."
"Give me the rifle, Dan." It was Tom Sandy. Only he was not the easygoing man I had known back on the Cowhouse. This was a cold, dangerous man.
"Give me the rifle," Sandy persisted. "I shall show him what comes to wife-stealers and thieves."
"Let him have it," Tap said coolly.
Instead I laid my rifle on Tap. "You turn around, Tap, and you walk back to the herd.
If you make a move toward that gun, I'll kill you."
"Are you crossing me?" He was incredulous, but there was anger in him, too.
"We will have no killing on this outfit. We've trouble enough without fighting among ourselves." I saw Tom Sandy ease a hand toward his shirt front where I knew he carried a pistol. "Don't try it, Tom. That goes for you, too."
There was silence, and in the silence I saw Rose Sandy standing against a tree trunk, staring at the scene in fascinated horror.
Others were coming. "Turn around, Tom, and walk back to camp. We're going to settle this, here and now. You, too, Rose."
She looked up at me. "Me?" Her voice trembled.
"What--?" "Go along with him."
Tap Henry stood watching me as they walked away. "You'll interfere once too often, boy. I'll forget we grew up together."
"Don't ever do it, Tap. I like you, and you're my brother. But if you ever draw a gun on me, I'll kill you."
The late moon lit the clearing with a pale, mysterious light. He stood facing me, his eyes pinpoints of light in the shadow of his hat brim.
"Look, you damned fool, do you know who you're talking to? Have you lost your wits?"
"No, Tap, and what I said goes as it lays. Don't trust your gun against me, Tap, because I'm better than you are. I don't want to prove it ...
I don't
set store over being call
ed a gunfighter like you do. It'
s a name I don't want, but I've seen you shoot, Tap, and I can outshoot you a
n
y day in the week."
He turned abruptly and walked back to camp. Pa was up, and so were the others--Tim Foley and his wife, Karen, her face pinched and tight, and all of us gathering around.
"Free," I said to Squires, "ride out and take my place, will you? We've got a matter to settle."
Pa was standing across the fire in his shirtsleeves, and Pa was a man who set store by proper dress. Never a day but what he wore a stiff collar and a necktie.
Tap walked in, a grin on his hard face, and when he looked across at Tom Sandy his eyes were taunting. Tom refused to meet his gaze.
Rose came up to the fire, holding her head up and trying to put an impudent look on her face and not quite managing it.
Pa wasted no time. He asked questions and he got answers. Tap Henry had been meeting Rose out on the edge of camp. Several times Tom Sandy had managed to see them interrupted, hoping Rose would give up or that Tap would.
Karen stood there listening, her eyes on the ground. I knew it must hurt to hear all this, but I could have told her about Tap. As men go he was a good man among men, but he was a man who drew no lines when it came to women. He liked them anywhere and he took them where he found them and left them right there. There would have been no use in my telling Karen more than I had . . . she would believe what she wanted to believe.
Worst of all, I'd admired Tap. We'd been boys together and he had taught me a good deal, but we were a team on this cow outfit, and we had to pull together if we were going to make it through what lay ahead. And every man jack on the drive knew that Tap Henry was our insurance. Tap had been over the trail, and none of us had. Tap knew the country we were heading toward, and nobody else among us did.
Tap was a leader, and he was a top hand, and right now he was figuring this was a big joke. The trouble was, Tap didn't really know Pa.
Tom Sandy had heard Rose get out of the wagon, and he knew that Tap was gone from his bed, so he followed Rose. If it hadn't been for that old longhorn spotting something in the brush, Sandy would have unquestionably killed one of them, and maybe both.
He would have shot Tap where he found him. He said as much, and he said it cold turkey.
Tap was watching Sandy as he talked, and I thought that Tap respected him for the first time. It was something Tap could understand.
"What have you to say for yourself?." Pa asked Tap.
Tap Henry shrugged. "What can I say? He told it straight enough. We were talking"--Tap grinned meaningly--"and that was all."
Pa glanced over at Rose. "We're not going to ask you anything, Rose. What lies between you and your husband is your business. Only this: if anything like this happens again, you leave the drive . . . no matter where we are. Tom can go or stay, as he likes."
Pa turned his attention back to Tap. His face was cold. "One thing I never tolerate on my drives is a troublemaker. You've caused trouble, Tap, and likely you'd cause more. I doubt if you and Tom could make it to the Pecos without a killing, and I won't have that, nor have my men taking sides."
He paused, and knowing Pa and how much he cared for Tap, I knew how much it cost him. "You can have six days' grub, Tap, and a full canteen. You've got your own horse.
I want you out of camp within the hour."
Tap would not believe it. He was stunned, you could see that. He stood there staring at Pa like Pa had struck him.
"We can't have a man
on our drive, which is a family affair, who would create trouble with another man's wife," Pa said, and he turned abruptly and walked back to our wagon.
Everybody turned away then, and after a minute Tap walked to the wagon and began sorting out what little gear he had. "Sorry, Tap," I said.
He turned sharp around. "Go to hell," he said coldly. "You're no brother of mine."
He shouldered his gear and walked to his horse to saddle up. Ira Tilton got up and walked over to him, and talked to him for a minute, then came back and sat down.
And then Tap got into the saddle and rode off.
Day was breaking, and we yoked up the wagons and started the herd. The river became muddy and shallow. We let the cattle take their time, feeding as they went, but the grass was sparse and of no account.
We had been short-handed when we started west, and since then we had buried Aaron Stark and lost Tap Henry. It wasn't until the wagons were rolling that we found we had lost somebody else.
Karen was gone.
She had slipped off, saddled her pony, and had taken off after Tap.
Ma Foley was in tears and Tim looked mighty grim, but we had all seen Tap ride off alone, and so far as anybody knew he had not talked to Karen in days. But it was plain enough that she had followed him off, and a more fool thing I couldn't imagine.
Pa fell back to the drag. "'Son, you and Zeb take out and scout for water. I doubt if we will have much this side of the Pecos. There's Mustang Ponds up ahead, but Tap didn't say much about them."
We moved out ahead, but the land promised little. The stream dwindled away, falling after only a few miles to a mere trickle, then scattered pools. Out on the plains there was a little mesquite, all of it scrubby and low-growing. The few pools of water we saw were too small to water the herd.
The coolness of the day vanished and the sun became hot. Pausing on a rise where there should have been a breeze, we found none. I mopped my neck and looked over at Zebony. "We may wish we had Tap before this is over." He nodded. "Your pa was right, though."
At last we found a pool. It was water lying in a deep hole in the river, left behind when the upper stream began to dry out, or else it was the result of some sudden, local shower.
"What do you think, Zeb?"
"Enough." He stared off into the distance. "Maybe the last this side of Horsehead."
He turned to me. "Dan, that Pecos water is alkali. The river isn't so bad, but any pools around it will kill cattle. We've got to hold them off it."
Suddenly he drew up. On the dusty earth before him were the tracks of half a dozen unshod ponies, and they were headed south. The tracks could be no more than a few hours old.
"As if we hadn't trouble enough," Zeb commented. He squinted his eyes at the distance where the sun danced and the atmosphere shimmered.
Nothing...
"I wonder what became of Tap?"
"I've been wondering if that Foley girl caught up with him," Zeb said. "It was a fool thing for her to do." He glanced around at me. "Everybody thought you were shining up to her." "We talked some . . . nothing to it."
We rode on. Sweat streaked our horses' sides and ran down under our shirts in rivulets.
The stifling hot dust lifted at each step the horses took, and we squinted our eyes against the sun and looked off down over the vast empty expanse opening before us.
"If the women weren't along..." I said.
We had come a full d
a
y's drive ahead of the herd, and there was water back there,
w
ater for a day and a night, perhaps a little more, but ahead of us there was no sign of water and it was a long drive to Horsehead Crossing.
"We'll lose stock." Zeb lit a cigarette. "We'll lose aplenty, unless somewhere out there, there's water."
"If there is, it will be alkali. In the pools it will be thick, and bad enough to kill cattle."
Removing my hat to wipe the hatband, I felt the sun like a fire atop my skull--and I carry a head of hair, too.
Once, dipping into a hollow, we found some grass. It was grama, dead now and dry, but our horses tugged at it and seemed pleased enough.
From the rim of the hollow we looked again into the distance toward Horsehead.
"Do you suppose there's another way to drive?" I asked.
Zeb shrugged. "It ain't likely." He pointed. "Now, what do you think of that?"
In the near distance, where the road cut through a gap in the hills, buzzards circled.
There were only two or three of them.
"First living thing we've seen in hours," Zeb commented. "They must have found something."
"If they found anything out there," I said, "it's dead, all right."
We walked on, both of us shucking our firearms. I held the Patterson with light fingers, careful to avoid the barrel, which was hot enough to burn.
The first thing we saw was a dead horse. It had been dead all of a day, but no buzzards had been at it yet. The brand on the shoulder was a Rocking H, the Holt brand.
Topping out on the rise, we looked into a little arroyo beside the trail. Zebony flinched, and looked around at me, his face gray and sick, and Zeb was a tough man.
My horse did not want to move up beside his, but I urged it on.
The stench was frightful, and the sight we looked upon, even worse. In the bottom of that arroyo lay scattered men and horses . . . at first glimpse I couldn't tell how many.
The men were dead, stripped of clothing, and horribly mutilated. That some of the men had been alive when left by the Comanches was obvious, for there were evidences of crawling, blind crawling, like animals seeking some shelter, any shelter.
We walked our horses into the arroyo of death, and looked around. Never had I seen such a grim and bloody sight. What had happened was plain enough. This was some of the outfit that had followed us from the Cowhouse---some of the bunch that had stolen our cattle, and from whom we had recovered the herd.
They must have circled around and gotten ahead of us and settled down here to ambush us when they were attacked. Obviously, they had been expecting nothing. They would have known they were far ahead of us, and they had built fires and settled down to prepare a meal. The ashes of the fires remained and there were a few pots scattered about. There were, as we counted, eleven dead men here.
What of the others? Had they been elsewhere? Or had some of them been made prisoners by the Indians?
Hastily, we rode up out of the arroyo, and then we got down and pulled out rocks and one way and another caved in the edge of the arroyo on the bodies to partly cover them.