SIX
Hardly had the curious brave taken the first step, however, than he stopped to answer somebody calling him. The sound masked those which Mary-Lou and Johnnie had made. It appeared that the chief wanted that particular warrior, and there was no arguing with a chief. The hidden pair both sighed with relief as the brave went back across the river.
For a short while there was a conference among the older men surrounding the chief, and soon after about fifty of the Indians crossed the river, while most of those already there went back. The reorganization spread like ripples in a pond outward from the chief. The main body got themselves turned about and headed back down the river, while the smaller group continued the pursuit of the rustlers.
In about fifteen minutes the floor of the canyon had cleared. The last of the Indians down there disappeared into the trees, some upriver, and some down. Scouts on the far rim were also moving away, a few galloping off into the distance carrying word to the outlying patrols.
‘There’s still scouts above us somewhere,’ Johnnie cautioned. ‘They could be anywhere. We’d best stay put for a spell.’
‘Yes, but what are we going to do then?’
‘You’d better come back to Dryfe Sands with me,’ Johnnie suggested. ‘We can’t do anything about your spread, and now we can’t get back to Fort Washita. I think your best course is to throw in your lot with us. Our ranch will be the safest place for you until things settle down again. Perhaps we’ll be able to salvage something of yours later.’
‘Do you think those are the same rustlers who stole your cattle?’
‘Not that I could tell. I’ve only seen ours from a distance, but I don’t think they were the same men.’
‘It’s strange, then, how so many rustlers should all start operating at once. I mean, there’s always been the odd beast or two taken. Drifters butcher them on the range, but they haven’t before driven off whole herds. I can understand the rustlers making use of the disturbances caused by the Indians raiding, but how come so many rustlers just happen to be about at this time at all? Where are they coming from? How do they happen to be here right now?’
Johnnie nodded. ‘There’s got to be some way they can dispose of what they’ve stolen; some way of making those herds disappear until they can be turned into cash.’
When he thought enough time had elapsed, they crept around into the arroyo again, and peeped cautiously out over the top. The way seemed clear.
Further up the watercourse they found the others safely waiting for them. The Commanche and the Apache were settled in amiable conversation, a condition fostered by having a common enemy to contend with. Danny was hunkered just below the lip of the channel, keeping watch.
‘You’re probably wise,’ Barney McLay agreed, when Mary-Lou told him that she intended going with Johnnie to Dryfe Sands. ‘Safest place for you. These Apache folk want to get back to their village. They’ll be needed there with all these Cheyenne on the loose. I’d better go with ’em. They’ll know more of what’s happening, so I’ll probably get back to the fort sooner that way.’
‘Which way do you intend to go?’
‘We’ll try and get around to the west of where these Cheyenne are likely to be. This splinter group isn’t likely to go too far west, surely, with their main body having gone east again? I mean, they’ll be inviting trouble from the Commanche and the Kiowa if they go too far west.’
‘Don’t forget, some of them, the ones we first saw, were fairly high on the plains.’
‘The Apache reckon they know the line those ones’ll take. We can stay west of them again.’ Johnnie’s group stayed with the sutler’s party, keeping to the bottom of the watercourse, until
they came to a branching of the channel. Then while Barney took the westerly fork, Johnnie continued to bear away to the south, eventually, having crossed a wide sweep of grassland, to come out on the Brazos two days later. They were downstream from the ranch, and reached it that evening, without having seen another soul.
Warned by a watchkeeper, perched on the water tower, Betsy Bell and Jasmine were on the porch to greet them. Apart from the watcher, and Eb de Lange bedded down on the porch for the fresh air, the place seemed deserted.
‘Who do we have here?’ Betsy asked, smiling. ‘I wasn’t expecting Johnnie to bring a young lady home.’
She lost the smile when Johnnie introduced her, and added, ‘Her husband was killed by some rustlers a few days ago.’
‘Oh you poor thing. Come right in here,’ Betsy was all sympathy, and with Jasmine also clucking over her, Mary-Lou was whisked away indoors.
‘How are you, Eb?’ Johnnie asked the black cowpuncher.
‘Mendin’, Johnnie. On the mend. Ain’t goin’ to be wrasslin’ no steers for a time though.’
‘Where is everybody?’
‘Mostly takin’ all the beeves up country. Yo Maw, she’s fixed it for grazin’ out the month on Commanche land. There’s enough stock stolen already, without havin’ anybody come and take the rest. A couple of fellows are still here. They’re posted out on the high points to give a warning of any troubles cornin’ this way.’
‘I didn’t see them.’
‘They’ll have seen you.’
‘And what happens if more rustlers or hostile Indians do turn up?’
‘There’s horses ready saddled in the corral. Can’t defend the place, so yo Maw says ever’body, they just got to hightail it out of here.’
‘Are you up to that?’
‘Not likely. There’s a false wall made to go over the cheese cellar. I’ll hide out in there. Outlaws, Indians, iff’n they do come, they won’t stay around long whatever.’
When he asked after Cab Phillips and Little Hawk, he learned that they had not yet arrived, and Johnnie’s news was the first the people at the ranch had heard of the current Cheyenne raiding.
That evening, Johnnie and Mary-Lou saw each other without a coating of range dust for the first time. She had green eyes, he noticed, and her complexion was like cream. A tin bath in an outhouse had been filled and emptied several times while each of the new arrivals cleaned up. Clothing for Mary-Lou was a problem, Betsy being too tall, and Jasmine too stout. The best solution had been to give her some of the stored clothing belonging to one of Johnnie’s younger brothers, who was away at school in New Orleans. Apart from the way she filled out the front of the shirt, boys’ clothing went quite well on her slim, willowy figure.
‘How many brothers do you have?’ Mary-Lou asked, when they were seated for the evening meal. She was looking everywhere, but at Jasmine seated opposite her.
‘Two, both younger, both at school back east,’ Johnnie replied. ‘There was an older one, but he was shot down by Indians before we came here from Kansas. My two sisters, both married, are back there in Kansas.’
‘What about your relatives now?’ Betsy asked.
‘They’ll take me back,’ Mary-Lou continued, when she had explained who and what they were, ‘but they’ll not help me rebuild Jamie’s ranch. We’re squatters to them. They look down on squatters. I’m an embarrassment to them now.’
‘Yo go back, yo’ll be the widowed aunt the rest of yo life,’Jasmine said flatly.
‘Yes,’ Mary-Lou agreed, and flushed. She wasn’t accustomed to black women who spoke without being spoken to. ‘You know how these things work back there,’ she added, concerned not to offend Jasmine for her own sake, but also aware of her hosts’ attitude to the woman.
Later, when Eb had been carried in and installed back in the guest room, Johnnie and Mary-Lou stood out on the porch looking at the stars.
‘You’re not used to black folk?’Johnnie asked.
‘Not as people,’ Mary-Lou replied. ‘They were all around me while I grew up, but only to give orders to. You know their names, but you don’t know the people. I was never allowed to mix with anybody but the quality, always white, preferably rich, and certainly either Episcopalian or Presbyterian. Perhaps now I’ll be able to change that.’
‘Jasmine and her husband, and our other black man, Rastus, have taught us a lot,’ Johnnie told her. ‘Black folk were pretty strange to us too for a start, and we’re not plantation-bred like you. The Bells are fairly plain folk. We might meet your family’s requirements on the white, and the Presbyterian bit, but there’s never yet been any Bells could be described as quality.’
‘I don’t think the people who use the term really know what it means,’ Mary-Lou replied. ‘Your mother, the way she runs this place, I think she’s quality.’
‘Yes, her family all think that too, but I guess we might be prejudiced.’
‘Not half as prejudiced as my lot, and then in a better way. A lot of my opinions have changed radically in the last year. I’m finding that my mind is opening to a lot of things.’
Around noon the next day Cab Phillips arrived with Little Hawk. They too had seen nobody in the past couple of days, though they had seen more than they wanted before that.
‘We’d have been dead ducks without your horses,’ he said. ‘We ran smack bang into some Cheyenne scouts, and only the fact that we had guns and they didn’t saved us. We met them just above where we camped the other night. One of them got away from us, so we had to get out of there smartly. There was a whole parcel of ’em got in behind us, an’ blocked us from comin’ thisaway, or gettin’ back to the fort.’
‘I trust you didn’t lead them in this direction anyway.’
‘Not so far’s I know. We tried to make it look we’d gone up the Red.’
Four hours later Ding Dong himself appeared, bedraggled, and aged years in a week. The three hands with him were in little better case.
‘She’s all bad news between the Red and the Arkansas,’ he reported. ‘Three places burnt down along the Canadian, folks killed, horses run off by the Cheyenne and their Arapaho allies on the rampage, and some mention of other places losing cattle to rustlers.’
‘Well, you keep your dirty pants off my cushions, Jamie Bell,’ his wife responded, ‘and we’ll get you bathed and fed before anything else goes wrong.’
‘Some woman, your mother,’ Ding Dong observed to Johnnie with a grin. ‘Gets her priorities right. Who’s this?’
On being introduced to Mary-Lou, and told of her circumstances, he said, ‘You’ll have to figure on all your horses being gone. That’s what the Cheyenne have been after; horseflesh and guns. We won’t see those again. Your cattle just might be another matter. At the rate they move, it’ll take a couple of months or more to get them to anywhere that matters. The Cheyenne aren’t bothering with any they can’t eat on the spot.’
‘Are you going after yours again, Mr Bell?’ Mary-Lou asked.
‘Jamie, call me Jamie,’ he invited.
‘Oh, please, not Jamie,’ she protested. ‘Not from me.’
‘That was her husband’s name,’ Johnnie explained.
‘Oh, well then, I’m sorry. Something else. Not Ding Dong though. It doesn’t sound right coming from a lady.’
‘We’ll think of something, but what about your cattle?’ she persisted.
‘Now that there’s enough hands here, I’ll start out in the morning again, and see if I can find out what’s happening,’ Ding Dong answered.
‘You’ll do no such thing, Jamie Bell,’ his wife contradicted, towering over him, a Nordic Amazon to his string and bone frame. ‘If there’s hostile Indians about, I want you here to protect me.’
‘I’ll go,’Johnny said. ‘It’ll be just to keep a track on them. That’s all we’ll do; watch them until you can bring in the army, or whatever.’
By morning, after much argument, Mary-Lou had won her contention that she should go too. Her cattle were also out there somewhere. It was the same argument that Danny used with regard to his horses. That she was a female wasn’t a sufficient reason to keep her confined to the ranch house. She’d accompany Johnnie and Danny Long Knife, and they’d look for the stock stolen from both ranches, starting this time with hers.
With a free choice from the wardrobes of Johnnie’s younger brothers, she made herself up a range kit of boys’ clothing. Having already proven her ability to use Johnnie’s big Lefancheux revolver, even if needing two hands to do so, she was allowed to borrow one of their weapons also, a more manageable point three one calibre Colt, with a five-shot cylinder, and a barrel less than six inches long. Ding Dong punched another hole in the cartridge belt, so that she could tighten it around her waist, and not have the whole weighty contraption continually slipping down around her knees. There was a point three two breech loader the boys used for antelope and peccary hunting. She took that too. Even she had to admit that a Sharp’s buffalo rifle was more than she could handle.
When they saddled up, Mary-Lou taking a rig belonging to one of the boys, they found Bobcat and Little Hawk were also preparing to ride with them.
‘You fellows don’t have to come,’Johnnie said.
‘True,’ Bobcat agreed.
Little Hawk merely nodded. Having lost his wife, along with his honour, on the Chickasaw raid, Little Hawk was another looking for redemption. Only a respected warrior could hold a squaw.
So five of them went.
With them they took supplies for a month, a well-weighted money belt, and bag of the sundry knick-knacks it always paid to carry whenever travelling through Indian country. They were well-armed too, each with revolvers and Bowie knives strapped to their hips, and rifles and Commanche tomahawks attached to their saddles.
When they camped that first night, Mary-Lou laid out her bedroll, head to the fire, just like the men.
After a supper of beans and bacon, followed by hot black coffee, Johnnie found sleep slow to come. It wasn’t only the coffee affecting him, as after a long active day, he seldom failed to drop off quickly, no matter how much coffee he drank. The trouble was he was just too aware of Mary-Lou wrapped in her blankets a scant few feet away.
For a time he lay looking up at the stars, brilliant in the desert night. One by one he named fifty or more of them, magic names for other suns blazing so far away. Then he traced out the constellations, the Greek ones his father had taught him, the Commanche ones he had learned while sitting around other desert campfires. It was no use. He couldn’t blank out Mary-Lou nearby in the darkness.
She was crying. He knew she was. She was crying silently, grieving for her dead husband, keeping very still so as not to disturb her companions, but Johnnie knew... somehow, in a way he couldn’t explain, he knew.
Perhaps the other three men also knew. It was hard to tell with them. They always slept without making much noise. Their Commanche upbringing had trained them that way.
Wracked with sympathy for the young widow, but prevented by his own conventions from offering her any comfort, he could do nothing but let her cry it out.
There was another trick which sometimes worked for him, sometimes let him drift away into sleep in spite of the turmoil of his emotions: trying to decide which faint star was the farthest away. After that, morning was suddenly there, and he had no memory of having reached a decision.
Two hard days later they slipped in carefully through the trees, which grew in the gully behind the burnt-out buildings of the Edison ranch. The place, like the range all about it, was deserted.
‘They ain’t left much,’ Danny commented.
‘We’ll salvage anything we can,’ Johnnie directed.
They separated, and began poking through the sad wreckage. Some timbers, iron tools, wheel rims could be used again. Johnnie found a branding iron, a squashed circle with five unevenly radiating spokes like a buckled sunburst. He was about to take it across to where Mary-Lou was raking broken crockery from the ashes of her kitchen, when he saw that she was standing shaking, her face as white as snow.
He went to her. Danny saw her condition and came too.
‘I’ve found Jamie!’ she said tightly, her eyes rounded with horror. ‘Nobody’s buried him.’
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ Danny cried. ‘It’s been
near on a week.’
‘I know,’ she answered. ‘It shows. The coyotes have been.’