‘Aren’t you going to wait for the rest of your men back there?’ Mary-Lou asked early in the piece.
‘There’s enough of them there to deal with your two fellers,’ Dismal replied. ‘By the sounds of things they already have. They know where to come when they’re ready.’
The Cimarron, when they reached it, was carrying much less water than the Canadian, and there was a shinglebank along the near edge. Only a few inches of water covered it.
‘We’ll stay with that for a spell,’ Dismal directed. ‘We’ll put halters on these animals first though.’
A lariat was taken from the packhorse’s load, and cut into suitable lengths. Mary-Lou’s horses were then taken, a pair to each of the rustlers. Dismal transferred to Dusky, and took up the halter of the horse carrying Mary-Lou. His own flea-bitten grey was the only one left to run free.
They then walked the horses up the shallow edge of the river, keeping them all where the current would wipe out their tracks as they went. Several times they crossed the river and followed along the other side, when the first stream ran into a deeper channel. Eventually they came to a sidestream with a fair flow of water, the third such they had seen, and Dismal led them up it. After several smaller branches had split from it, the sidestream no longer held enough water to hide their passage, but by then there was a good three-mile break in the line of hoofmarks they had left behind them.
‘Why are you taking such precautions, if you’re so sure my friends have been killed?’ Mary-Lou enquired.
‘I always take precautions,’ Dismal informed her. ‘Your friends wouldn’t be the only ones as would like to know where I’m goin’.’
Where he was going, over the next several days, was some distance to the north of the Arkansas River, up one of its tributaries which drained down from the direction of Pike’s Peak, the high mountain that showed above the horizon even from far down the Santa Fe Trail. Dismal smuggled his prisoner across each of the branches of the trail by night, avoiding any chance that she might call for help from the settlers who were threaded along it like beads on a string. Their halting places were marked by sparkling camp fires, and the canvas covers of the great Conestogas candle-lit from within.
The outlaw took his little party on to the northern branch of the trail at a place where he could trek westward along it for some distance, before turning up the stream he wanted, a wide shallow stream with a sandy bottom. Again he made use of the shallow water to hide the place where they had left the trail. By the following noon their spoor to that point would be buried under the marks of the passing settlers.
It was two more days before Bobcat and Johnnie reached that place, and they passed it by with a dismissive glance.
They were riding horses borrowed from friends in Ding Dong’s citizens’ band. They had no spares, and these ones were tired and footsore. The mounts they had inherited from the rustlers who had died along the North Canadian all bore strange brands, and it was thought better that those animals should be kept with the main party in case they met anybody who wanted to debate their ownership.
Elements of the band were spread far and wide over many miles of country, with small groups seeking the continuation of the tracks they had found and lost time after time.
In the beginning the whole party had streamed across the Canadian, and followed Bobcat across the plains to where he had located Mary-Lou’s and the rustlers’ tracks. As they went Bobcat explained how the three rustlers had managed to find Mary-Lou in the dark. All they had had to do was trace the source of the strong smell of sage in the night air. Where it was strongest was downwind of where Mary-Lou had passed. Once they had a line on her general direction, it was only a matter of hurrying along it until they got close enough to hear her.
When they came out on to the banks of the Cimarron, and the rustlers’ prints couldn’t be found on the far bank, Ding Dong organized the first of the spread searches. He divided his people into three groups, the first and less mobile to stay with him at a more or less central point where the day’s cooking and some types of field maintenance could be done. The other two groups then went in opposite directions hunting for the rustlers’ sign, one group with Johnnie in charge of them, and the other led by one of the better known squatters, Caleb Moore, who had a ranch to the south of Dryfe Sands.
Each time one of the search parties came to some feature that seemed worth investigating further, some of the party members hived off, while the rest continued on the line they had already been following. By the time the parties split and split again, there was an expanding ring of men spreading away from their original starting point. Gunshot signals were arranged for when somebody found the rustlers’ tracks again, or for when Ding Dong wanted everybody back to the centre for a fresh start.
‘What happens ifn we run into them rustlers themselves?’ a young cowhand asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ding Dong told him. ‘We’ll hear you. You won’t need to give any signal.’
The device cut down on the tracking time considerably, but nevertheless the tracks got progressively older and older as first one day, and then another day passed. They soon learned to look for routes through shallow water. It was the one good trick that would work time after time, for everywhere else the ground was such that there was no way of avoiding leaving tracks. The grey man used the trick well, though, and played many variations on how far he’d go in the water, and which way he’d turn into sidestreams.
At the Cimarron Cutoff he had crossed straight over and continued north, giving the impression that the other branch was where he was making for. Between the two he abandoned subterfuge, and instead pegged his hopes on his speed of travel. Many times they found the places where the rustlers had switched horses. They could afford to do that more often than their pursuers.
While others were out front reading sign, Johnnie took several opportunities to talk with his father.
‘You got no help from the rangers,’ he commented on one occasion.
‘They sent a man up, but he had to pull out again when he found that the rustlers were already out of Texas.’
‘Just one ranger to a whole gang of rustlers?’
‘He was supposed to organize us into a posse to back him. It wasn’t his fault. He had strict orders not to cross into Indian country. Besides, they’ve got trouble down at the border.’
‘They’ve always got trouble down at the border.’
Another time, over a campfire, the conversation got around to Mary-Lou, and her situation once they had rescued her. Neither of them doubted that they’d rescue her in the finish. Any other alternative was unthinkable. What her condition might be when they did rescue her was another matter.
‘They can’t afford to do her much harm,’ Ding Dong said. ‘They need her for a hostage. When we close in on them, they’re going to need something to bargain with. They know they can’t shift those cattle fast enough to stay ahead of us for ever.’
‘I’ll hunt down every last one of the bastards if they do harm her,’Johnnie declared.
‘Getting a mite fond of her are you, lad?’
‘Ah, come off it, Dad. Her husband’s hardly had time to go cold yet.’
‘Out in this country, Johnnie, you can’t let such considerations weigh too heavy in the balance. You go after her if you want her. Your mother and I like the stamp of her.’
‘She mightn’t want me,’ Johnny replied. ‘If the rustlers treat her badly, she mightn’t want any man.’
‘Would you let that stop you trying for her?’
‘No,’Johnnie answered thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. ‘No, not at all.’
Bent’s Fort again was the assigned destination for Johnnie’s search party, which had been given the western part of the Santa Fe Trail to search, after they had last lost the rustlers’ tracks. By the time they reached it, only Bobcat and Johnnie were left of the fifteen men he had started with. The rest had been sent off in twos and threes to investigate every possibility, no matter how unlikely, for a
place where the rustlers might have left the trail.
Caleb Moore had taken a similar party in the opposite direction to do the same thing as far as Camp Dodge. With the rest of the men, Ding Dong was heading out on to the plains to try the lines that could have been taken if the rustlers were looping north across country toward Kansas Town and Westport Landing.
At Bent’s Fort there was still only the young lieutenant and his handful of men. They had seen no rustlers, nor unexplained mobs of cattle.
‘My men have looked at every brand, horses and cattle alike, that’s gone past here,’ the lieutenant claimed. ‘Neither of those brands of yours could be blotted without us spottin’ it.’
Danny was looking a much better colour, sitting up and cheerful, when they looked in on him.
‘I’ll be on my feet before you know it,’ he reckoned.
‘And helping us break in some fresh horses as well?’Johnnie joshed.
‘Well, at least I’ll be able to mosey around here, and find out what I can from the folks goin’ past. I reckon there could be things they’d tell me, as they wouldn’t tell that there young officer feller.’
Once more Johnnie and Bobcat headed east, picking up their men along the way. Sometimes the men were waiting for them at the side of the trail. At others they had to go out and look for them. One pair were just coming out of a shallow river.
‘How far up did you go?’Johnnie asked.
‘A good twenty miles or more,’ was the answer. ‘We stayed with it till we jest couldn’t believe no more that anybody’d stay in the water so long. You’d expect ’em to come out on the bank some place.’
‘Shallow all the way, was it?’
‘All the way whilst we were with it. O’course, she ain’t always like that. You can see where she floods some after a storm.’
‘Spreads out over the banks does it?’ Johnnie asked, with a sudden idea about how cattle tracks could be hidden. He remembered the storm which had followed them out of Pueblo, the township up the Arkansas, the place where Little Hawk had died in the gunflght.
‘Oh, yeah, way out to each side. You can see the driftwood lines where the water gets to.’
‘What’s the country like for cattle?’
‘Hopeless. Sandy and dry, and what growth there was hasn’t recovered yet from the prairie fires last fall. Didn’t see a sign of any kind of animals at all.’
Johnnie’s idea collapsed, as had so many others before it. Besides, he couldn’t think of anywhere out in that direction where the rustlers might want to take the cattle.
Two days later he met up again with his father, and soon after Caleb Moore appeared with his men. All had tales of frustration and failure to recount.
A camp site was found for the night some way back from the trail. They had to go a long way from it just to find any firewood. When the cooks served up a hash of wild pork and beans, they all sat around in the gathering dusk mulling over again and again every idea that anybody could come up with as to where the rustlers could possibly have gone.
At a touch on his shoulder, Johnnie, who was crouched over his plate, looked behind him, expecting to find one of the men about to tell him something. Instead he found his great black stallion, Dusky, skinny and saddle-sore, looming over him.
‘Where in hell did you come from?’ he burst, standing to his feet, and spilling beans in all directions.
He looked for Mary-Lou to be with the horse, the other horses too, but there was only Dusky, all alone. His mouth was raw around the bit. His reins, worn and ragged, trailed on the ground between his hooves, and the saddle had been days on his poor chafed back.
SIXTEEN