Kiowa Trail (1964) (2 page)

"It is true, Mr. Blake," Kate said. He was not through. He knew as well as we did that when hands do not drink something is in the wind, and he wanted to know what to expect.

We were scarcely seated in the restaurant before she came in - a beautiful girl, cool, composed, and a bit older than I had first thought. She was perhaps nineteen, or even twenty, and few girls reached that age without being married. Kate glanced at her, then looked again, but before she could say anything to me the door burst open and Tom came in.

He did not see us. He saw nothing but the girl before him, seated alone at a table. He approached her, sweeping his hat fom his head.

"I saw you when I rode into town," he said. "Iam a poor hand for courting, knowing little but horses, cattle, and grass. I only know that when I saw you standing there, I knew that my life began and ended with you, and I would have no happiness until I knew you."

She looked up at him and said, "My father is Aaron McDonald, and a hard man. He looks with no favor on Texas men."

"If you will allow it, I shall call this evening."

"The house stands among the cottonwoods at the street's far end," she said, and then she added, "and it is north of the street."

"You can expect me," he said.

He turned and walked out of the restaurant, and he did not see us, nor look our way.

She sat very still after he had gone, and there was no change of color in her face, although I noticed a brightness in her eyes that I did not like.

The girl who brought us our food was young, a pretty girl with a pert, attractive face. She paused in passing by the other girl's table.

"That was no nice thing to do, Linda," she said, "and well you know it. He is a Texas man, and John Blake will allow no Texas man north of the street."

"What's the matter, Moira? Jealous?"

The waitress turned away sharply and brought our food to us.

Linda got up and, with a brief smile in our direction, walked out. Immediately, Moira stepped up to our table again. "If he is a friend of yours, that Texas cowboy," she said, "tell him not to go north of the street tonight."

"Thank you," Kate said. "He is my brother."

"Oh -" She flushed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have interfered, but it's awful, what she does! Why, if she really cared for anybody - I mean, if a girl really cared, she'd come south of the street to see him."

"Wouldyou ?" Kate asked.

Her chin lifted. "Yes, ma'am, I would! If a man wanted so much to see me - I mean if he talked to me like that - I'd go south of the street to see him!Any street!"

"I wish it were you he was going to see," Kate said.

We went on sitting there, and Kate looked across the table at me. "Conn ... what can we do?"

"I will see John Blake."

I saw the flicker of worry in her eyes. "Conn, be careful. I want no trouble."

"With Blake? Each of us knows too much about the other. We can talk without guns."

"All right."

"He's a good man, Kate," I said. "Tom, I mean. You've done a fine job."

"I have? You mean,you have, Conn. Whatever he is, you made him. He worshipped you, and he still does."

"It was you."

She put down her cup. "Conn? Do you remember that day? You saved us all then. It was like a miracle."

The only miracle was what happened to me, for I was running then, running wild and loose with nothing behind me but trouble, and nothing before me but the expectation of more.

Behind me lay the Rio Grande. My horse was scarcely dry from the crossing when I heard the hollow boom of the guns, and knew what it was, for I'd cut the Apache trail south of the border twice in the past few days, and each time had come upon the sort of hell that only an Apache could leave behind.

Lonely ranch houses burned, the stock run off, the dead and mutilated bodies left behind in the sun. Each time they had come upon people at work, people expecting no trouble, but from the sound of that gun I had an idea they had failed in another surprise attack.

There had been nine Indians in the party whose trail I had cut. From the rocks I looked out and saw the flames of a burning house, the rising smoke ... and nearer to me I saw the Apaches.

Near the house one lay sprawled in death, or what seemed to be death. Nearer to me still, one crawled with a broken leg.

The buffalo gun boomed again, and from the smoke I located the lone fighter... it was a woman!

And then behind her, the "dead" Apache moved. And when he moved, I fired.

There was no thought behind the action, no reasoning, no desire to help. The Apache was behind the woman, and he was rising up, knife in hand. My rifle simply came up and I fired.

He screamed, and threw himself blindly forward, but he was already dead even as he fell near the woman.

At least two of the nine Apaches were accounted for, which left seven, but my position was a good one. Before firing, I had already, almost automatically, located the positions of most of them. So with the sound of my own shot in my ears I knew I had declared war, and the only way out was victory. Turning swiftly, I fired three times, as rapidly as the gun could be triggered.

My attack was too sudden for them, too unexpected. My first shot took an Indian between the shoulders; the second splattered sand; the third caught a leaping, running Indian in full stride, and he fell, throwing his rifle out before him.

An Indian is not under any compulsion to fight to the last man. When the odds are against him, he simply slips away, if it is possible to do so, and waits to fight another day. Three men out of nine were dead, and at least one wounded. The spirits were not with them, so they faded away into the brush, taking with them their dead that they could reach.

Mounting up, I rode down to meet Kate Lundy for the first time.

"Maybe if I talked to Tom?" Kate suggested suddenly.

"Kate, the boy's riding a dream. He's seen a girl, and at this moment she looks to him like all the girls he's ever dreamed of. The fact that there's opposition only makes it seem more right. You can talk if you wish, but it will do no good."

After a minute, I added, "And I wouldn't give a tinker's damn for him if it did."

Taking up my hat, I got to my feet. "Hardeman will be ready to talk business," I said. "Do you want me there?"

"I can handle it."

"Then I'll see John Blake."

Tod Mulloy and Red Mike were loitering on the edge of the walk near the Emporium. They got up as I came near. Tod was twenty-two, and had been punching cows on Texas range since he was fourteen. He and Tom Lundy rode as saddle partners. Red Mike was a tough hand, a good man with a rope and with any kind of stock. He was also a very good man with a gun ... and he didn't scare.

"Conn," Mike asked roughly, "are they going to make trouble for that boy?"

"I'll talk to John Blake."

"He won't take any talk. You know how he is, Conn. With him a rule is a rule."

"I'll handle him."

"Well," Mike said, "if anybody can, you can."

"Not that way," I said irritably. "This mustn't run into gun trouble, so you sit tight."

"If you need us," Mike said, "we'll be here. And sober."

John Blake was in the Bon Ton. When I walked in the door he took his bottle from the bar and reached over for a couple of glasses. Together we walked to a back table and sat down.

"You sold your beef?"

"Kate's talking to Hardeman."

Blake filled two glasses. "Conn, do me a favor? When you get your money ... pull out."

"Kate's the boss. We move when she says we move."

"She'll listen to you."

"Maybe."

"Conn, you've got a tough crew. I know some of your boys. I knew them in Abilene and in Ellsworth, and I know when to expect trouble. When a crew like yours isn't drinking, there's something wrong. I want to know what it is."

"Were you ever in love, John? I mean when you were a kid?"

He looked startled. Come to think of it, I think it was the only time I ever saw John Blake startled by anything. He was suddenly embarrassed, too. "Hell, everybody's been in love. Or thought he was."

"Which amounts to the same thing." John touched his mustache with a finger and studied me, so I put it to him straight, right across the board.

"John, Tom Lundy's going north of the street tonight."

His face stiffened and his eyes became like marbles. "No," he said. "I will not permit it."

"There are other ways to look, John. You don't have to see it happen, and there'll be no trouble."

"You don't know what you're talking about. Hell, if I'd guessed that was what the trouble was, I'd -"

"Tom Lundy's Kate's brother, John. He's one of the very best. He's no wild lad. He's hard-working, he's serious, and he's a boy who's going to do well in the world. Believe me, any girl who wouldn't be interested in him would be off her head."

"Have you ever met Aaron McDonald?"

"No."

"Well ... meet him. You'll see what I mean. He's a hard man, a rigid man. There's no give in him anywhere, and there's only black or white so far as he's concerned. He's a witch burner."

"I don't get you."

"A witch burner. Like those people back in the old days. This is a man who could pass sentence and light the fires himself. Yet in his way he's a good, solid citizen. He was against hiring me, but he's pleased because since they hired me there's been no gun trouble in town, and everybody from the Texas crowd has stayed south of the street.

"He helped raised money for the church, and before we had a preacher he spoke from the pulpit. He's a hell and damnation man, and one of his sermons was about Texas men. He's rabid on the subject ... that, and making money."

"How does he figure to make money if he doesn't cater to the cattlemen?"

"Hell, Conn, where else can the cattlemen go? This is the best shipping point, and McDonald and his crowd know it. And remember this: he isn't alone. Two-thirds of the town stand right with him. Tallcott, Braley, Carpenter - all that crowd. Tallcott came west with McDonald, and so did Braley. They can muster forty men to stand against you, perhaps more."

"There will be no trouble with Tom unless somebody else makes it. He thinks he's found the girl he's been dreaming about, and maybe he has."

"He hasn't."

Something in his tone made me look right at him. "Care to make that clear?"

John Blake's pale, hard face colored a mite. "I'm not one to talk about a woman. Did this boy tell you what she said?"

"We heard it, Kate and me. She didn't say to come, she didn't say not to come."

"So, you see."

"What?"

"She's in the clear." John Blake shifted in his seat and leaned his thick forearms on the table. "Conn, I'd not want these words repeated, but that girl's going to get somebody killed. In fact, that may be what she has in mind."

"You're crazy!" I said. It was a foolish idea. I'd seen the girl, and she was as much of a lady as a man would care to see. Nothing flighty about her, and no question about it, she was lovely. Maybe a little cool ... but that kind sometimes are the most passionate, sometimes the most affectionate.

"I've seen the girl, John," I added.

"Don't take me wrong. There's never been a word against her. She doesn't go riding out with young men and get herself talked about. Why, I can count the times on my fingers when she's even walked down the street with a young man."

We were getting nowhere, and Kate might need me to talk to Hardeman - although she never had. Kate was a shrewd business woman, and no nonsense about her. In her own way, Kate could be as tough or as hard as any man. She'd had to be.

"And that's just the trouble."

"What?"

"Look, Conn. Here's a mighty pretty girl. She's twenty years old, although I don't think she admits to it. This here is a country where most girls marry at sixteen to eighteen, and believe me, she's had chances.

"Like I've said, she doesn't go riding with them, she doesn't walk out with them. She invites them home. Or lets them believe they were invited."

"So?"

"Then her father sends them away."

It made no kind of sense to me, and I said as much. John Blake pushed his hat back on his head, then took it off and put it on the table beside him.

"Maybe I'm not making myself dear. The point is, I don't think shewants to get married, and I think shelikes to have her father send these men away. And he does. Oh, believe me, he does!"

Blake paused, and then he said, "Conn, I don't know whether this makes sense to you or not, but I think she hates men."

Right then I began to wish Kate Lundy was here. When it comes to cattle, horses, or men, I can handle them. I know all about them, but I've never had much truck with women. Give me a good old fist fight; knuckle-and-skull in the street, and I'll handle my share. Or I'll take a herd over a bad trail and bring them through in as good shape as any man.