The Trail Rider/Chapter 11
WHEN Hartwell arrived at Duncan's along in the night he found a strong party of ranchers and cowboys gathered to ride against the Texans and drive them back across the quarantine line. He had recovered fully from the hard experience of the night before, but his horse was spent, for he had not spared it in the ride of forty miles.
Nobody among the men assembled knew him as he flung himself from his heaving horse in the light of the lanterns. He knew that the news of the Texans' invasion had beaten him there by many hours when he saw the preparations going forward. A dozen men or more were gathered round a wagon into which supplies were being loaded from Duncan's warehouse, their horses hitched along the fence.
Duncan came out of the covered chuck wagon when he heard Texas inquiring for him, a lantern in his hand. He stood at the tail of the wagon, his lantern lifted high to look under it, throwing its full light over Hartwell's mud-spattered figure as he hurried up to report.
"I've been a long time reachin' here, sir," said Texas, hardly knowing how to begin his tale of surprise, humiliation, and defeat.
"Yes, you have," Duncan replied, still holding the light aloft, looking sternly into the trail-rider's face.
The others drew near as Texas drove straight into his story. Out of gratitude for Fannie Goodnight's betrayal of the plot to him, although such betrayal had come too late, Texas kept her part in it to himself.
"They roped me while I was eatin' my supper by Clear Creek, sir, and tied me up so tight I almost died. I lost my senses and lay there thataway till the rain stretched the rawhide and eased it. I've come through to you, sir, as fast as I could come, but I realize I've made a mighty poor figure in the business, all the way through."
Duncan lowered the lantern, lifted it, looked again into the trail-rider's face.
"Yes, and you're either one of that Texas outfit or you sold out to them!" Duncan charged.
"That's right!" spoke a voice out of the dark.
"I felt that you might take it thataway," said Texas, almost suffocated by his great shame and the injustice of this charge which he was powerless to refute in any convincing manner by word or deed.
"What did you take the trouble to come up here for, then? Haven't you got sense enough to know you've rammed your neck right into the rope? We're not fools enough to turn a wolf loose a second time."
Duncan's manner was even more threatening than his words. It was plain that he believed Texas had betrayed his trust, and was so deeply set in that belief it would take something more than words to remove the conviction. The other men were ominously silent.
"If I'd been one of them, or even sold out to them, I wouldn't 'a' come, Mr. Duncan, sir."
Texas had expected to meet suspicion and distrust, but he had not looked for such cold prejudgment and unfair passing of sentence. There was not a spark of resentment or anger in him, even at that; only a desire that was almost frantic to save his honor and clear himself of what appeared in the eyes of the cattlemen a monstrous crime.
"We didn't expect you to," said Duncan shortly; "but now that you're here you've saved us a lot of trouble."
There was a short laugh at that. The sound ran through the little knot of men like a growl.
"I'll go wherever you say, and I'll do whatever you wish, to prove to you I'm square," Texas told them earnestly.
"You can begin by handin' over that gun," Duncan suggested, reaching out his hand.
Texas stepped back. There was a quick, uneasy movement among the others as they drew away from the wagon, as if to get out of the light, for Hartwell's reputation with a gun had spread over the range from his meeting with Johnnie Mackey's gang in Cottonwood.
"I'll go with you and help you turn them southern cow-men back, sir, or I'll go alone and do my best to turn 'em, but, gentlemen, I'm goin' to keep this gun."
Duncan did not speak for a little while. The others edged back into the circle of light, and drew near to where Duncan stood, judicial and gray, as if thinking the proposal over.
"All right," said he at last, "you can go with us. There's a little man by the name of Winch that wants to see you, anyhow."
They dismissed Texas with that, and left him to his own devices while they hurried on with the freighting of the wagon. From the look of things they were preparing to make a regular campaign of it. Rations for many days were being loaded, and Duncan's camp cook was hitching in two teams to haul the heavy wagon to the front.
Texas changed his saddle to a fresh horse from among the number in the corral, nobody paying the slightest attention to him. Even Mrs. Duncan, who came and went between house and wagon like a laboring and anxious ant, did not speak to him when she met him face to face.
It transpired that they were not waiting on the wagon, but for one of Duncan's boys to come with an addition to the fighting force. The lad arrived an hour or so after Texas, bringing with him five men. Duncan sought Hartwell, where he sat on the very bench that he had occupied one tenderly treasured night with Sallie McCoy, his saddled horse near at hand.
"You'll ride in front with me," said he briefly, and passed on.
Long since the rain had blown by, and the stars were brilliant in the washed, clear air. Like shadows the men were mounting and gathering for the ride. Texas leaped into the saddle and followed Malcolm Duncan to the head of the party. They rode forward without a word.
It was not an occasion for words, indeed. Texas realized that as well as the deepest concerned in the crowd. The fortunes of some of these men were menaced by that approaching herd of southern cattle. Between that night and the first killing frost, still several weeks off, disease might be spread by the ticks all over the range. Already miles of the finest grazing country had been infected. Grazing in the territory traversed by the Texas herd was at an end until next spring, and there would be a risk in it then. No wonder they were bitter against him, Hartwell thought.
Morning disclosed that the Texans had rushed their long-winded cattle forward with little pause. They had penetrated twenty-five miles into the forbidden country, and had come to camp now with their great herd spread wide, watched by double the number of herders usually employed to control that many cattle.
Dee Winch met the defenders of the range at sunrise, coming from his camp on the flank of the Texas herd, where he had hung like a wily old wolf waiting the arrival of his friends. He did not return Hartwell's greeting, but looked him straight in the face as he rode up to Duncan and made his report.
The Texans were defiant, he said. They held themselves to be within their rights, and they would defend such rights at any cost. So there seemed to be no way out of it but through a fight. They rode on to the place where Winch had camped, talking it over between them. Winch and Duncan had a few words apart, about him, Hartwell believed, for after that Winch avoided him, and did not even look his way.
Indeed, Texas felt himself as one considered of lower caste when the party dismounted at the little stream and set about getting breakfast from the emergency supplies which each man had brought behind his saddle. They ignored him so completely that he withdrew down the stream a little way and made his fire. He had no coffee, and very little flour, for the rain had penetrated his mess that night he lay bound in the Texans' thongs. But nobody inquired into his necessities, and he was too proud to make them known.
There he broiled his last few slices of bacon and cooked a wad of dough on a stick, and ate his breakfast in bitterness of heart over this unjust, if not altogether unreasonable condemnation. His tobacco had been soaked by the rain, and the bit of it that he had dried in his palm before the fire had a miserable taste. All through, life had a bad flavor to him that morning, and there was not much on the horizon to offer him cheer. He was tired and sleepy, and glad only that there was sun in place of rain. As he sat there reflecting on his uncomfortable situation all round, Winch approached.
Texas looked up at him, not forgetting the cold unfriendliness that he had seen in Winch's face a little while before, nor the ignored greeting that he had given him. He was in no mood now to risk another rebuff, so he held his peace and waited for Winch to unfreight his mind.
"That's a kind of a thin story you've come in with, young feller," said Winch. He had stopped off a few feet from where Texas sat, and stood looking at him, a little twitching in his mustache as if he were about to smile. But there was no smile in his eyes, small and gray, smaller now for the frown on his sharp, thin face.
Texas drew deep on his cigarette, tossed the butt into the fire, got up deliberately, turned and looked Winch straight in the eyes.
"Yes, I admit it is a purty thin kind of a story to come into a crowd of suspicious men with, especially men that have judged before they have heard any evidence at all."
"What do you call that if it ain't evidence?"
Winch pointed to the distant herd grazing on the forbidden grass.
"It does look bad for a stranger from Taixas, I'll admit, Winch."
"I didn't take you for a man that would double-cross a friend that had done you a favor, Hartwell."
"No, you didn't, Winch. And you measured me right, sir. I wouldn't double-cross a friend; I never did in my life."
"I look at this as a personal matter, Hartwell. I hired you; it all comes back to me to carry. That story of yours about bein' roped is a purty hard one for me to swaller."
"It hurts me more to confess it than it does you to hear it, Winch. It's the truth, and you can swaller it or you can spit it out, sir!"
Hartwell's slow anger was beginning to rise; the injustice of it looked bigger to him every moment. The scowl darkened on Winch's face; his big mustache twitched again as if he was about to smile.
"I'll spit it out, then!" he said.
There was a challenge in the cold glare that he gave Hartwell; he stepped back a little, shaking his shoulders like a cock.
"I didn't seek a qua'l with you, sir," said Texas, meeting him eye to eye, "nor with any man on this range. But I've got my name and honor to defend, sir, and I'll defend 'em the best way I know how to do it."
"It'll take a whole lot more than your own word to clear you, Hartwell."
"I've promised Duncan to help turn them cattle back over the line, and I'm goin' to do it. If you want to see me afterwards, I'll be at your service, sir."
"I'll want to see you, all right, pardner, unless this thing happens to turn out the way you tell it. If it does, I'll take off my hat to you and apologize."
"I wouldn't ask it of you, sir," Texas returned loftily, plainly conveying to the notorious gun-slinger that his opinion, one way or the other, mattered very little.
"We're goin' up there on the hill to call them fellers out for a talk and lay down the law. Duncan wants you to go along with me and him and two or three more. We'll be ready in a minute."
"I'll be on hand when wanted, sir," Texas said.
He looked after Winch as he walked away, his hairy chaparejos accentuating the curve of his ridiculous short legs until he looked more like a crab than a man. There was a feeling of hardness in him against this man Winch, more than against any other in the band. Winch knew him better than any of the others, and should be able to judge him with more justice. It looked as if prejudice had made him blind and unreasonable, or that he wanted to seize on this pretext of personal affront to add one more to his bloody toll of men.
Texas wondered what Duncan's purpose in having him go with the parleying party might be. He thought, with contempt for such smallness and distrust, that it might be to keep him under the eyes of Winch, whose name on the range was equal to twenty armed men. It seemed now as if they believed he had returned to Duncan's as part of his plan to assist his supposed comrades; they did not feel it safe to allow him out of sight of their official gunner for one minute.
What a contemptible thing it was to hold a man's word so worthless! He would rather believe the tales of five rogues, and lose by his trust, than wound one honest man by calling him a liar. But all men were not alike, he reflected, looking back over his own experiences. Mainly, he had suffered by being too ready to take men at their word. He would have been a good deal richer that morning if he hadn't gone so far on the bare statements of people whom he feared to hurt by requiring of them their references.
This he turned in his mind as he went for his horse, and came leading it back to where his saddle lay. After all, he couldn't blame Duncan and the rest of them. He had no reason for flying up that way as he had done with Winch, and challenging him to fight. He stood in a bad light, and it was a great deal to ask of them that they accept him on his unsupported word.
Things began to clear for him, and the surliness began to melt out of his heart. With its going the determination to do something to retrieve himself burned with a new flame. He would prove his loyalty to the men who had hired him to guard their country if he had to do it by riding single-handed and alone against that bunch from Texas. He would do it even at the cost of his life, for life was a mighty small thing when stripped of its habiliments of honor. So he thought as he mounted and rode to join Duncan and the others, and set out for the top of the hill.
Duncan rode ahead, carrying a white handkerchief tied to a sunflower stem. At the crest of the hill, half a mile or so from the Texans' camp, he waved it in signal for a parley. In a little while three men came riding up the slope.
The Texans had drawn the wagons of their outfit in a circle, making a corral for the horses, after the manner of men who were prepared for emergencies, and were ready for a fight. This camp was fully a mile in advance of the herd, and in a position that would be difficult to take.
Hartwell looked out over the great herd from the hilltop. It was scattered over miles of the range, with a rider here and there to hold it in some semblance of form and keep it moving slowly toward the north. But it was evident from the position of the camp that the southern drovers did not expect to advance beyond that point until the question of their right had been met and settled.
Duncan told the delegation from the camp that they must turn back and take the trails set by the association. He was calm and moderate in his words and manner, and made a good case, it appeared to Texas, no bluster or threat about him at all.
"The stand you Kansas fellers take might be all right in case a herd of diseased cattle come into your country," the southern invaders' leader replied; "but it don't hold water when it comes to a clean herd like this. Them cattle's as clean as any on this range. I'm sorry we can't oblige you, pardner, but we didn't drive eight hundred miles and more to turn back."
"It's unlucky for all concerned that you see it that way," Duncan told him. "We're going to protect this range; that's what we're here for."
"Yes, and we've got to ship our cattle, pardner. We've got our cars ordered, I expect some of them's in there at Cottonwood waitin' on us now. We're not goin' to turn back a head of these cattle, and we're not goin' to pay demurrage on them cars. Kansas ain't bigger than Uncle Sam. He ain't drawed no quarantine line along here and said we couldn't cross it."
"We're plenty big enough to do what we're here to do, my friend."
"Well, go on and do it." The Texan made as if the interview was at an end. He started to pull his horse around and ride off. One of his companions restrained him, and Duncan took up the argument again.
"I'm not here to chaw this thing over with you and get nowhere," he said. "We've given you your marching orders, and you'll march! We've got a big bunch of men down here, and more on the way, and you'll turn that herd and start back inside of twenty-four hours or you'll bite lead. Now, that's all there is to it."
"I don't care if you've got all hell and half of Kansas down here; we're goin' on to Cottonwood to load our cattle!"
In spite of his declaration that he wasn't there for argument, Duncan went deeper into the matter, still holding himself in hand with admirable control, it appeared to Hartwell, putting the case to the Texans in the light of justice between man and man. It was evident that he desired to avoid a fight if it could be done, and equally plain that he was firm in his intention to enforce the association's quarantine.
Not until the government drew a line against Texas cattle would they observe it, the southerner replied, getting hotter every minute as he recounted the wrongs, or alleged wrongs, that Texas drovers had suffered at the Kansans' hands.
"But the way you people look at it there's nothing wrong in coming in here and poisoning our herds," said Duncan. "Well, boys, I suppose we might as well go back."
"Here," Winch called to the Texans who were riding away—"this man belongs to your outfit, I guess."
The Texans turned. "Which?" the spokesman asked.
"This man," said Winch, pointing to Hartwell—"I guess he strayed away from your bunch. Take him along with you if you want him."
"If that's a Kansas joke," said the Texan, in marked contempt, "it's a damn poor brand!"
They rode on with the bearing of men who believed some kind of a trick had been attempted on them, which was a reflection on their common human understanding. Now and then one of them looked back, face eloquent of the disdain in which such clumsy performers were held.
This denial of Texas by the enemy did not appear to lift him any higher in the esteem of his companions. He believed that Winch had said that of him for the mere purpose of adding to his humiliation, or in the hope of forcing a fight.
This he was determined for the present to keep clear of. He knew that it would be harder every hour to bear the indignities which they would heap on him, the insults which they would offer; but he knew also that they would not shoot him in cold blood without more proof against him than they had. He would bear it until the expiration of Duncan's limit to the Texans, and then when it came to the test of turning the herd back across the line, he would show them what small-caliber people most of them were.
It came up cloudy again that afternoon, with the threat of a rainy night. A misty autumnal drizzle began a little before dusk, and through it the Texans could be seen closing up their scattered herd. Hartwell understood this move. It would require fewer men to girdle the herd, thus adding to the fighting force. The Texans were not going to turn back.
Duncan's wagon had come up with the supplies, and the camp cook had supper in abundance for all hands. Texas did not wait for an invitation, but presented himself and received his share. He had gone without dinner, and this generous hot meal was very welcome and cheering. He had caught a little sleep during the day, stretched out on his slicker, and now felt a whole lot better disposed toward the world, and all in it, even though they did not call him into the council that was going on around the camp cook's fire.
The night fell thickly, with a gentle wind blowing the warm mist. The lowing of the southern herd came faintly, telling of the unrest so characteristic of those beasts, known well to Texas from many a long night watch. Winch came to him where he stood listening to the long, plaintive calls of the cattle, something in them so expressive of lonesomeness and longing for their native plains that it was almost as moving as a human appeal.
"Hartwell, we've talked over your case, and some of them think maybe there's something to that story you told about them fellers ropin' you. We're goin' to give you the benefit of the doubt, as the old man says."
"All right," said Texas, not able to warm up very readily toward Winch, speaking rather crabbed and short.
"We're goin' to give you a chance to prove you're square with us and set yourself right, kid. You're a cowman; you know Texas cattle, I guess, better than any of us."
"I wouldn't set up any such wide claims, sir."
"That herd's uneasy; you can feel it clear over here. It was the same last night—I heard them turn the point of a stampede three or four times. If you want to square yourself, you go over there to-night and stampede that herd toward the line. Start 'em tow I ard Texas once and they'll go at a blind lope till they drop. Then you can come back—clean."
It was a wild and unreasonable proposal, almost mocking, coming from cattlemen. Texas knew that the chance a man had of stampeding a herd like that was not a thousand in one in his favor, and even though he might start a stampede point, he would have just as much control over the direction it might take as a cyclone. He stood considering it, choking down a hot reply.
"But I give it to you straight, kid, this ain't throwin' down the bars to you to lope off yourself. If you don't go out and try to do this job you'll stand convicted in the eyes of every cattleman on this range, and it'll rest between me and you the next time we meet."
"You might dispense with reference to our future meetin's, sir, if you please," said Texas haughtily. "In most any company I feel I'm able to hold up my head, and I'll not shame your reputation, sir, if you ever feel called to sling your gun down on me. Let it stand understood between us thataway, sir."
"I'm not tryin' to force a fight on you, Hartwell. Nothing would suit me better than to see you cleared of this. But I'm responsible to the men on this range for your bein' here, and if you fail to do what I'm linin' out for you to-night, you'll have to settle with me. And that's the last word, Hartwell."
"I can stand on my own feet, Mr. Winch, sir; I can carry my own blame, and take the consequences for all the wrong I do any livin' man. It's a plumb fool thing you gentlemen's set for me to do, but I'm just a big enough fool to try it, even if I lose."
Texas flung the saddle on his horse, Winch standing by making that peculiar little hissing noise through his slant teeth. It was as if he tried to whistle softly, but the slant of his teeth was too sharp to confine the steam.
"You'd better wait till it's a little later," he suggested.
"It's my expedition, sir; I'll start whenever I feel called on to start."
"And come back—when?"
"In time enough to meet you, sir, any time and place you pick."
Texas stood a moment with his toe in the stirrup, his face turned to Winch as if waiting his arrangement of the next meeting. The little bow-legged gun-slinger said nothing; only waved his hand aS if passing that along to a future time.
Hartwell rode away with the headlong suddenness of a bee striking a line for its tree. He was so indignant, so thoroughly angry, over the impossible thing they had laid out for him to do that he would have fought them all in a bunch. But he was reasonable enough to know that it was no state of mind for a man to rise up in and meet a great emergency. He must ride that mood out of his blood, and consider this thing from all the angles that experience had given him.
Impossible as the cattlemen's task appeared, it would speak better for his honor to attempt it and fall at the Texans' hands than to leave the country without having tried it, or return and kill Winch. Killing Winch would not vindicate him of the present charge. It would only make men a little more afraid of him, and perhaps darken the cloud of suspicion and distrust that had so unfortunately descended upon him.