Kiowa Trail (1964) (7 page)

What she had in her mind I did not know, but looking at her face - and never had I seen it so cold - I knew what was going to happen to the town.

That town, the town that had killed her brother, was going to die.

It was not a man, nor several men who were going to die, but the town itself.

Kate Lundy had given no instructions to Red Mike other than to hire fighting men, but we all knew that Red Mike would tell the story of what had happened. And it was such a tale as would be canted by the winds and the dust until it was the talk of every campfire and every ranch house in all of Texas.

We camped on the knoll under the Kansas sky, and we let the days drift by, but there was plenty to do. On the fourth day two riders drifted toward our camp, and both of them I knew.

They were fighting men encountered en route by Red Mike and sent on to us. Bledsoe was a former Ranger who had served with Big-Foot Wallace, and Meharry was a tough young Irishman who had fought in the French army at Sedan, a veteran soldier.

Priest and Naylor she sent off to the west to the place she had spoken of to Bannion, and they had their instructions. When she took them aside and told them what they were to do, they just looked at her, then at each other. Suddenly, both started to grin; and they were still grinning when they rode off to the west.

"Conn," Kate said to me, "mount the men, and just at dusk ride toward the town."

I waited. There were men with rifles waiting there in town, under cover. We would be riding up in the open.

"Ride until you are just out of rifle shot," Kate said, "and make sure you give yourself the benefit of the doubt, then ride around the town. Do not come back until after dark."

Smart ... she would have them alerted once more, all the night through. It was one more step in a kind of warfare that I'd never have thought of myself, but one look at Kate Lundy told me this was a different Kate. She was fighting ... fighting to destroy the town that had killed her brother.

Would they finally move out to attack us? If so, we were pitifully few.

That, no doubt, would come. But not just yet. Nonetheless, when I mounted up to ride out that evening I made sure each man carried fifty rounds of ammunition. Kate remained on the knoll alone ... but they could not know that... or could they?

We started out, riding around the hill in a tight bunch, but shifting around so that our dust made it difficult for them to estimate our number. We rode toward the town, keeping out of rifle range, then swung around it, taking advantage of the terrain to dip into valleys, then to emerge, to keep them guessing as to our intentions. We were on the far side of the town when it became completely dark, and at once we swung around and returned to our camp.

Kate challenged us as we drew near, and when I replied, we rode on in. Later that night she sent Meharry out to start a small campfire on a hill east of town, and to keep it burning for a while.

By now other herds should have appeared, but none came.

The days grew warmer. At night the coyotes howled. On the seventh day the train stopped a mile out of town and let a man out, and let a horse down from a flatcar. It was Delgado, coming back with replies to Kate's messages.

After he had started across country toward us the train went on into town.

The following day a dust cloud appeared to the south of the town, and a big herd of steers showed up. They went to a hollow among the low hills, and an hour later we saw two riders approaching.

One of them was Matt Pollock, who lived a hundred miles east of the Tumbling B. He was a square, powerful man with a quick, energetic way about him. As he rode up to camp we saw that the rider beside him was a man whom we also knew. It was Harvey Nugent, one of the men Bed Mike had been looking for.

Pollock swung down and thrust out his hand to Kate. "Howdy, Mrs. Lundy! Hear you're in trouble."

Briefly Kate recounted the story, mentioning the attitude of the town toward Texans. Take their money and get rid of them - that was the town's motto.

"What do you want me to do? Stampede my herd through their cracker-box town? Or burn it around their ears?"

"East of here," Kate explained, "a train will be unloading barbed wire. I have leased the railroad land on both sides of the tracks, and I'm going to fence the town in."

"What about the even-numbered sections? As I understand it, the railroad was granted only the odd-numbered sections."

"Not here, nor at several other points where there was an overlapping of grants for railroad building. I've leased it all at fifty cents an acre."

"You're fencing in the whole town?" Matt Pollock reached for the coffeepot. "Damn it, Kate, you've got to give them an easementl They've got a legal right to go in and out."

"Of course they have. There will be the railroad and a driving road right alongside, and I shall stop nobody from going in or out - except the trail herds. No trail herd can cross my land."

Squatting beside the fire, I watched Kate. I was curious, and a little shocked. Ours was a hard land, and it needed hard people to survive in it, but I had never seen that look on Kate Lundy's face before, except once.

That time was the morning after the Apaches had killed her husband, ran off their stock, and burned their outfit - the morning after I showed up.

When I came down out of the rocks at the end of the attack that I had helped to fend off, she was standing there, hands hanging, her face twisted in that strange, dry grief that was so characteristic of her.

I was to learn that she rarely cried; only her face seemed to go through the motions, but almost without tears, as if long ago she had shed all the tears she had to shed.

She stood there looking down at the crumpled body of her husband, and then the boy came out of the rocks and put his arm around her.

My horse was walking slowly, and I drew up opposite them, but it was several minutes before she looked up. "Thank you," she said simply.

"Ma'am," I said, "I'm sorry. Wish I'd come along sooner."

"There was no warning. They just came out of the desert like ghosts."

"They were Apaches, ma'am. There's never any warning. They'll be all around you before you can make a move."

I got down from the saddle and went around the place, sizing it up. The site was not bad. The spring beside which they had settled was a good one, and they had managed to irrigate enough to start a small vegetable garden. Also they had been clearing away rock to make land for a field.

The house had been built of native stone for the lower courses, and of timbers cut out of driftwood logs snaked up from the river for the upper part. The roof had been made of branches, brush, and earth, but the Apaches' fire had destroyed it, and charred the big timbers. Some of them still smoldered, and I got right at it putting out the fires.

Lundy's rifle was lying where it had fallen, and there were a couple of empty shells on the ground nearby.

He was a man of perhaps thirty-odd, with good features, maybe a trifle over-refined for this country. His hands showed evidence of hard work, but indicated this might have been the first such work he had done. His boots were good - the best, in fact. The same was true of his hat and belt.

Going through his pockets, I took out a couple of gold coins and some odd bits of change. These I placed on a rock with whatever else there was, and then I took the shovel and walked up to a small knoll where there was a mesquite tree growing, gnarled and ancient. There I dug the grave.

It puzzled me why they had come to such a place, for it was far west of any regular settlements and was in an area known to be traveled both by Apaches and Comanches. Not to say it didn't have a certain strange, wild beauty.

"When morning comes," I said, "we will start for San Antonio. You and the boy can ride the horse. I'll walk."

She didn't say anything at all, nor did she say much when I wrapped her husband in an old piece of blanket I found and lowered him into the grave, the boy helping. When I'd filled it in, I said some lines from the Good Book that I recalled - I'd buried a few men before this. Then I found a good place where there was soft sand for them to bed down for the night.

I had no certainty the Apaches would not return at first light, so, dog-tired as I was, I caught a nap, with the boy watching. When daybreak came, I was waiting, but the Apaches evidently figured their medicine was bad, for they didn't show up.

When Kate Lundy awakened I had a fire going and some coffee made. I said to her, "Better drink up, ma'am. It's a long way, and the sooner we start the sooner we will get there."

She stood up and shook out her dress and smoothed it down a mite, and then she looked all around. She looked at the ruins of her house, at the grave of her husband, and at the few, pitifully few things that belonged to them, and then, with that strange, hard expression on her face, she said, "I am not going."

"Ma'am?"

"We're going to stay. This was where we came to settle, and this is where we will settle. We are not going away. Thank you, Mr. Dury, for all you have done."

And that was how I met Kate and Tom Lundy, and how I came to stay with them.

Sitting there across the fire from Kate, I could not but wonder what they were thinking of down in the town. By now there had been time for second thoughts, for taking stock.

They had murdered a fine young man who was simply going to call on a girl. True, he was breaking the local rule by crossing the street, or rather, by going north of it. But he had done no harm to anyone, nor planned any.

Moira, the waitress in the restaurant, knew what sort of girl Linda McDonald was. So did John Blake. And others must know. They also knew what kind of man Aaron McDonald was.

They knew what they had done, and they had expected an attack with violence, and it had not come. Neither had we gone away.

The column of faint smoke that marked our fire and the white wagon-tops were in plain view of the town, and this would not permit them to forget what had happened. Nor would it allow them to keep from wondering what we planned to do.

For a week the town must have been an armed camp, ready to resist an attack, and the longer we held off the more worried they would become, and the more on edge. Business must be at a standstill down there, for there is a limit to the amount of business a town of that small size can do with itself.

Only one other herd had appeared, and by now they must be aware that they were to have no business from it.

What were they thinking down there? What did they plan? What were they expecting?

On the morning of the eighth day we saw two wagons rolling out of town, headed westward. Kate borrowed my glasses and studied them carefully. Then she returned them to me. "Bannion," she said. "He's moving out."

We saw several people standing in the street watching him go.

Matt Pollock sent his herd off to the west under half a crew. He kept the rest to lend us a hand, but he went with his cattle. He had left us a few beeves, and I killed a buffalo, so we had enough meat.

On the morning of the tenth day the first wagons arrived. One of them was filled with supplies - food, and a thousand rounds of ammunition.

There were three big freight wagons loaded with barbed wire and posts. One wagon went along dropping posts, and when the post holes were dug and the posts in place, a team pulled one end of the barbed wire out along the posts and the men followed with wire-stretchers and hammers. Eight or ten men with a couple of teams of horses and unbroken prairie on which to work can string a lot of wire.

And through the day they were watching us from the town.

It was mid-afternoon before John Blake rode out from town.

He rode a handsome black horse and he was dressed in his black broadcloth suit. He rode out and sat watching for a few minutes, missing nothing ... and nobody.

Harvey Nugent was there, a professional fighting man who had fought through three Texas feuds and a dozen brushes with Indians. He was a gunfighter, and his reputation was known to John Blake.

"Howdy, John!" Nugent said cheerfully. "Heard you were around."

"I never expected to see you throwing up fence, Harvey. What is this, anyway? A drift fence?"

Harvey gave him a slow grin. "John, you chose the wrong town this time. This here fence is on land Mrs. Lundy has leased from the railroad."

John Blake studied the fence, and he needed to ask no more questions. He turned his horse and rode up the hill to Kate's ambulance.

We'd rigged a sunshade of canvas for her, and she was sitting under that, watching the work.

"There's coffee on the fire, John," I said. " 'Light an' set."

He swung down and stood looking at the fence. "I suppose I don't have to ask if you have leased land on the other side of town?"

"Now, just one side wouldn't make much sense, would it? No, we've leased it on both sides, John. East and west, too."

"You can't bottle up a town like that," he protested.

"Bottle up a town?" My voice indicated astonishment. "Why, who would do such a thing? Anybody can leave who wants to go."