EIGHT
On Danny’s yell, he and the two Commanche had dropped promptly down the leeward sides of their horses, to each hang there with a heel hooked over the back of their mounts, and a hand clasping the braided loop, which hung under each of their horses’ necks. Mary-Lou and Johnnie could only crouch low, and spur away from the hidden marksmen.
Two further shots, coming close together, showed that there was more than one.
Well out of effective range, another half mile back, the five of them pulled up, and looked back at the place the shots had come from.
‘Those were buffalo rifles,’ Johnnie noted. ‘I think we’ve found our cattle drovers. They don’t seem to be coming after us.’
‘They just want us to keep away from ’em,’ Danny said. ‘Whoever they are, they’re not anxious to show themselves, and give us a target to fire back at.’
‘Suits me for now,’Johnnie nodded. ‘We’ll circle wide, and come in again ahead of them.’
Several miles further on they found another rise that would give them a view eastward. Tiny in the distance, three riders were on a line that matched their own. Away back, over the horizon, a cloud of dust was drifting lazily, marking the expected passage of the herd.
‘What do you think?’Johnnie asked. ‘Rustlers or Cheyenne?’
‘Still can’t tell,’ Danny answered. ‘The rustlers are just as likely as the Cheyenne to have scouts out.’
They moved on, and when they judged they were far enough ahead of the trail drive, they cut eastward across the line the herd was taking. Right on that line they found fresh wagon tracks. Though they rode on another couple of miles, there were no other tracks out ahead of the herd.
‘That’s it then,’ Johnnie summed up. ‘The Cheyenne would have no use for a chuck wagon going ahead of them, so it must be the rustlers still with the herd. The Indians must have given up on them; decided to go looking for easier prey.’
‘Or,’ Mary-Lou cautioned, ‘decided, like us, that they can find the rustlers again whenever they want to. Perhaps they’re leaving the rustlers only until they’re better prepared to deal with them.’
‘Which is what we’d better concentrate on too,’ Johnnie agreed. ‘Preparing a reception for them some place further up the trail.’
‘Such as?’ Bobcat asked.
‘Well,’ Johnnie reasoned, ‘now that we know it’s the rustlers still, probably both lots combined, we know they’ll be heading for a trail, and it’s got to be the Santa Fe Trail one way or the other. They could head east on that trail, if they’ve got some way of bluffing their way through with cattle bearing our brands. Neither of them are easy brands to blot, so I can’t think how they’d manage it, but it’s obvious that they know something that we don’t. The only other thing they can do is head west on one or other of the two branches of the trail. It’s possible, that if they’ve got somewhere in the unorganized territories to take those cattle, they, or somebody who’s promised to buy the cattle on the cheap, might be planning just to start their own ranch with them, and make their money out of them from the calf crops from future years.’
‘So what we have to do,’ Mary-Lou said, ‘is organize reception committees for them whichever way they go.’
‘What if the rustlers think along the same lines, and do go overland to avoid the trails?’ Danny suggested.
‘Then we’ll just have to organize to cover all the possibilities.’
‘Apache villages that way,’ Bobcat said, pointing to the north-west. ‘Start there.’
‘The Apache won’t be keen to get mixed up any further in the white man’s battles,’ Johnnie demurred.
‘No, they’re willing to help against other Indians, especially ones encroaching on territory they themselves have an interest in,’ Mary-Lou agreed, ‘but we can’t expect them to get involved with the rustlers again.’
‘They watch though,’ Bobcat argued.
‘True,’Johnnie growled deep voiced, causing the other men to laugh at his imitation of Bobcat’s usual taciturnity.
Three days later they were stopped by the outer sentries, and led into one of the Kiowa Apache villages, a dozen or so earth lodges in the bottom of a wooded canyon.
The headman was there to greet them, standing beside a smokeless fire. He was dressed in buckskin, bright with beading across the chest and around the wrists. A blanket hung like a cloak from his shoulders, and a flower-patterned cloth was twisted around his head for a headband. Eagle feathers hanging behind his head denoted his rank. Bobcat and Little Hawk had met him before.
‘He makes us welcome,’ Little Hawk translated, the chieftain having no English, or at least not admitting to having any. Johnnie had learned some of the Commanche dialect, and, helped along with a bit of sign language, could make himself understood to most of the tribes on the plains, but not to the Apache, who had only their own tongue. They, like the Navajo further west, spoke versions of a quite different family of languages.
‘Please express our gratitude,’ Johnnie asked, tendering a shiny horse brass he had taken from his bag of knick-knacks. The present was accepted graciously, but with a complete lack of expression. The score of braves looking on, however, particularly the younger ones, allowed a glint of approval to show.
They were invited to sit by the fire. Squaws, wearing their best abalone shell pendants, their broad faces framed in black, black hair, brought them corn hotcakes in small woven baskets. There were also small pottery goblets. They contained neat whiskey. Mary-Lou, who had been given one, even though she had taken a place sitting behind the men, had to hold her breath to avoid spluttering. That raw, rotgut whiskey said much. The Apache shouldn’t have been in possession of it, for American law forbade taking spirits into the Indian Territory. Being offered it was a declaration of trust, and Johnnie wondered what he had done to deserve it.
It was a measure of his thinking that it never crossed his mind to attribute it to his relationships with Danny and the two Commanche, the way he spoke with them, rather than to them. To Johnnie, the three men were his partners. The Apache had seen white men treat Indians otherwise.
After an exchange, in which sign language was used freely, for even Little Hawk found these Apache very difficult to communicate with, the chieftain undertook to keep a watch on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail. He did anyway, but now he’d keep his eyes open for stock bearing either the winged spur of Dryfe Sands, or the JQE brand. If the rustlers took the stock west along that trail, he’d send word to the Bell ranch.
When they rode on, parting with many expressions of mutual goodwill, they set a course overland for Bent’s Fort on the northern branch of the Santa Fe Trail. To get there they’d cross the Cimarron Cutoff at a right angle. Not using a recognized route or trail suited them, for the Commanche preferred not to travel anything in the nature of a road if they could help it, and going straight across country enabled them to supplement their supplies with small game found along the way.
Their next encounter, two days later, was with a band of Kiowa, who were cutting cane on a tributary of the Canadian. They were preparing arrow shafts, selecting the best shoots from the vigorous spring growth, and treating them so that they’d dry straight and true. Bobcat had relatives among them, and had no problem in obtaining a promise that they’d watch for the rustlers trying to drive through their territory on a direct line for the Raton Pass, which they’d have to use if they wished to take the cattle further west. Again, it was arranged for any news to be sent to Ding Dong.
Soon afterward a known landmark, the distinctive outline of the Black Mesa, began to rise over the horizon ahead of them. The short grass prairie still stretched away for ever in all directions except west, where distant mountain tops continued to keep them company, so sighting the mesa was a welcome change from the same scenery day after day.
Another day’s riding brought them to the first of the well-beaten trails they were to see so much of during the next month. At that time none of them had any idea h
ow long they’d have to spend in the saddle in a frustrating search for a counter to the rustlers’ guns.
The Cimarron Cutoff, at the point they came to it, was seven or eight sets of more or less parallel wagon tracks cut deep into the turf. Between them, and to either side of the tracks, the grass was beaten down, ground down under the passage of thousands of hooves, cattle, horses, mules, donkeys, whatever would carry the thousands of settlers to the new lands opening up in the west. They could see for miles in both directions. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
‘The way I heard it,’ Danny said, ‘the settlers are normally just about nose to tail along thisaways.’
‘The Cheyenne have choked off the flow,’ Mary-Lou answered.
They crossed the trail, and continued on toward the Black Mesa, angling to leave it to their left. On two occasions Kiowa scouts came out to see who they were, but otherwise the land seemed empty of people. Not so the game animals. There was no need to devote any time to hunting to fill the pot. All they needed bobbed up right in front of them somewhere along their day’s trek.
As they by-passed the Black Mesa, further peaks showed over the horizon ahead, the Rockies, the ultimate western boundary of the plains all the way up into Canada. A special peak, far away, had to be the one named Pike’s.
In time they came to streams flowing down into the Arkansas River, their banks lush with spring growth, but on the plains above the canyon rims, the grassland grew steadily poorer and more sparse as they moved nearer and nearer to the mountains. When they came to the Purgatoire, the last major tributary before the Arkansas itself, the river was flowing fast and sandy with snow melt. It took some time to find a place where they could swim their horses across it, and be sure of coming out on a shelving beach on the other side. To have been carried down to meet with bluffs would have been fatal. The river was well named. It was a hell of a river to cross.
Wet and bedraggled, they found the last day down to the fort comparatively easy going.
Bent’s Fort hadn’t originally been an army fort, but had been established by the traders Bent, St Vrain and Company about a quarter of a century earlier. Other traders, Indians, and fur trappers who worked the Rocky Mountains, had made up their clientele. Then about a dozen years ago the army had taken it over to give them a presence between the Kiowa and Arapaho lands. Traders and trappers still made good use of it, though, and so the sentries took little notice of them as they rode in.
The stockade enclosed a large area of weed-choked gardens and patches of young corn. Collapsed haystacks still held the last mouldering remnants of the previous year’s grass. Among the higgledy-piggledy scatter of cabins, barns, and rough shelters the dragoon barracks stood out only by its size. The building next to it, with the flagpole out front, and whitewashed boulders lining a path to the door, had to be the headquarters.
Nobody stopped them entering. The oak logs forming the walls were adzed to give almost flat walls, with posters and notices tacked to them. The floor was bare dirt. A sergeant snoozing in a tilted-back chair was the only occupant.
‘Eh, what?’ he exclaimed, as his chair legs hit the dirt with a thud. ‘Where’n bloody hell have you folk come from? I mean...’ he spluttered as he realized that Mary-Lou wasn’t just another cowhand.
‘We’ve just come across the high plains from Texas,’ Mary-Lou cut in before he could apologize for his language. ‘We need to speak to an officer.’
‘There’s only the lieutenant,’ the sergeant said, in a tone that implied they’d be wasting their time talking to him. ‘Everybody else has gone down river. There’s Indian troubles.’
‘That’s partly what we’re here about,’ Johnnie told him. ‘We’ve also got rustlers operating.’
‘I’ll fetch the lieutenant. Jest don’t expect much.’
The warning was justified. The lieutenant was hardly more than a boy, and his appearance wasn’t helped by having to stand next to his sergeant. There being only one chair, he couldn’t sit in it in Mary-Lou’s presence.
‘I can record your problem,’ he agreed, when he had listened to them, ‘but I can’t take any men out to go and deal with these rustlers. I’ve only got a few left, and with those I have to stay and garrison the fort. I can guarantee,’ he offered, while the sergeant behind him rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, ‘that they won’t take your cattle past here though. We’ll stop them doing that.’
‘They won’t come this way,’ the sergeant said. ‘You know what they’ve done? Those rustlers have done a deal with the Cheyenne. Why do you think the Cheyenne have left them alone? What’s goin’ to happen, is them beeves are goin’ to be driven right up through Cheyenne country, where part of them will be left in payment, while the rest of them are taken down somewhere near Westport Landing, and loaded on to river boats somewhere along the Missouri. So long as the Indians keep stirrin’ up trouble, we’re not goin’ to have the men free to go after them rustlers, and you settlers your ownselves ain’t goin’ to find the manpower to take on the Cheyenne. I reckon you’ve lost them cattle.’