NINE
There was nothing for it. The sergeant’s contention was the most sensible anybody had yet come up with. They had to go all the way out to Westport Landing, or Kansas Town as many were calling the growing township nearby, and do what they could to foil the rustlers getting the cattle out that way.
Most of the next month for them all, then, consisted of days of hard riding, and little satisfaction from any of them. They visited Camp Dodge, Kansas Town, Fort Leavenworth, and even went far to the south to Fort Gibson, sealing as best they could every outlet the rustlers might find for their stolen beef. Officials everywhere were free with their promises. Perhaps some of them would be kept.
Along the way they managed to buy, at much inflated prices, an extra horse each to help out their badly overtaxed mounts. Johnnie also treated himself to an extra revolver, one of the new point four four calibre Remingtons with a removable cylinder that was loaded from the front.
Finally they came back to the high plains, and the tracks of their cattle still shown to be plugging stolidly northward.
‘We’ll get ahead of them again and see what they’re doing,’Johnnie said tiredly.
It took another two days to safely find a vantage point from which they could look down on the cattle then fording a branch of the North Canadian River. They were not in fact ahead of them at that time, but the place gave them a good view. There was also plenty of cover along the river banks, so Bobcat was able to creep down much closer without the rustlers suspecting his presence.
‘Both herds are together,’ he reported on his return. ‘Did not see grey man though.’
They crossed the river themselves higher up, choosing a stretch with a shingle bottom, so as not to send dirty water downstream to warn the rustlers. Again they made use of dry stream beds to keep below the level of the plain, while they angled across country looking for further good vantage points.
One of the best was a high mesa from which they could see the cattle as a dark smudge spreading across the short grass many miles below them. By looking half left they could see down into the Cimarron, where a tiny far-off streak was a part of the Santa Fe Trail.
‘Tomorrow they’ll be there,’ Danny commented.
‘I think we should check for any advance guard that might have been sent ahead,’ Johnnie suggested.
Accordingly he and Bobcat went down to examine the country a mile or two in advance of the cattle. To avoid leaving their own tracks, they covered the last stretch by walking their horses down a shallow stream, and by doing so, they chanced upon another set of marks which they had come to know well.
They dismounted and looked closely at them. Seven riders and two packhorses, according to Bobcat, had cut across the stream at an angle heading almost north. The marks were a little over a day old.
‘Grey man,’ Bobcat said.
Johnnie nodded. He had already seen that.
The fellow, with just half-a-dozen of his men, had left the rest to bring on the cattle, while he went ahead on some mission that Johnnie would very much like to know about.
‘You follow his marks,’ Johnnie ordered. ‘I’ll go fetch the others, and we’ll catch up on you. Wait for us on the Cimarron Cutoff, if that’s where they’ve gone.’
By the time they caught up with Bobcat, it was coming on evening. The Commanche had indeed reached the trail. He was walking along, leading his horse, while he studied the churned-up ground. There had been a lot of recent traffic on the trail, and it was covered in a mass of hoorfprints, all headed west. There were, however, no wheel marks.
‘The settlers have started moving again, now that the Cheyenne have cleared off,’ Danny read. ‘The faster people have gone through already, and the wagons will be along in a day or two.’
‘Have you lost the grey man’s tracks under all that?’ Mary-Lou asked Bobcat.
‘Grey man went that way,’ Bobcat replied, pointing east.
‘What, you can see his tracks under all that mess?’
‘No,’ Bobcat allowed himself a rare smile. ‘Grey man turn off trail a mile along. Tried to use stream trick, but forgot packhorse not follow straight. They still go north.’
They all looked north to where the Black Mesa was lifting above the horizon. They had already been that way several weeks before.
‘I hope we’re not going round in a circle,’ Mary-Lou said.
‘All we can do is follow on,’Johnnie told her.
After camping a couple of miles up the small stream, they picked up the grey man’s tracks again the next morning, and continued to follow them for the next four days. At the start they thought their quarry was making for the northern branch of the Santa Fe Trail with the intention of heading east along it. When his marks drew them more around to the west, as they worked around the bottom of the Black Mesa, they began to think he was making for Bent’s Fort. Then on being led further west still it looked as if he was planning to take the trail heading west.
‘It doesn’t make much sense,’ Danny complained. ‘He could have just stayed on the Cimarron Cutoff.’
At the Purgatoire, much higher upstream than they had crossed it last time, the grey man’s tracks were covered by those of a large Indian band. The Indians had camped near the river crossing, and Bobcat and Little Hawk went and poked around among their leavings.
‘Arapaho,’ Bobcat diagnosed. ‘They look at grey man’s tracks, but not to follow.’
‘If these ones were with the Cheyenne, perhaps they’ve had enough of white men for a while,’ Mary-Lou suggested.
‘True,’ Bobcat agreed. ‘They gone upstream. Maybe hunting.’
The grey man, though, had continued westward, to reach the Santa Fe Trail about twenty five miles or so above Bent’s Fort, and had then crossed it to still continue westward.
‘Where in...’ Danny started, before glancing at Mary-Lou and changing to; ‘I mean, where’s he going?’
His question had no answer then, and still didn’t when they came down to the Arkansas River, which they swam to follow the grey man’s tracks to the other side. There they lost them.
On the north bank of the Arkansas a new and much travelled trail had been formed. Even as they climbed up to it from the river, a mounted party of twenty or more men rode past headed west. They waved, from about a mile away, but otherwise made no attempt to communciate. They, and others before them, had smothered all sign of the rustlers’ party.
‘West, eh? We follow those fellows,’Johnnie said. ‘East will just take us back to Bent’s Fort.’
Two hours later, with the mountains rearing higher and higher above them, they rounded the end of a spur and found themselves entering a small township.
‘Where are we?’ Johnnie asked. ‘I didn’t know there was any town up this way.’
His friends were unable to answer, for they were no wiser.
As towns went, it was raw and rough. Obviously it had been a trappers’ camp, and many dilapidated framed tents were still standing. Some adobe buildings had been added to them, as had also a few of pit-sawn lumber. There was a main street, the only street, but many of the buildings were nowhere near it.
The folks who had just arrived ahead of them were unsaddling in a livery stable built of planks standing on end. Next to it was an odd structure with a boarded front, skin-covered windows, and a roof of sagging canvas. A dozen or more horses were tethered to a rail in front of it. A banner strung above them said, ‘Welcome to Pueblo’.
‘Well, I know what that place is,’ Danny observed cheerfully.
‘And I know one of those horses,’ Mary-Lou said. ‘It’s got my brand on it.’
So it had, as they could all see when they got closer. They nudged in among the other horses, trying to see any more familiar brands.
‘Here! Stand away from my horse!’
The savage snarl came from a range-grizzled man who had appeared from the door of the makeshift saloon. He was a stranger to them. A revolver handle stood out from his hip.
‘That
one?’ Mary-Lou demanded, not in the least cowed by him, and pointing to the one she had identified.
‘What’s it to you?’ he growled, sounding a bit uncertain.
‘My horse!’ Mary-Lou replied determinedly.
Suddenly, without any prior warning, the man went for his gun.
Johnnie’s dive from the back of his horse carried him across the back of Mary-Lou’s, and he scooped her off it on the way. They landed sprawling in the dust on the sheltered side.
There was a loud bang, shockingly loud, for neither of them had ever before been so close in front of a gun when it was fired. The bullet whacked up dust beside them.
Three answering shots from Danny and the two Commanche sounded almost as one. Splinters showered off the open saloon door, but the stranger had already dived back inside.
Dusky, running loose, was up on his hind legs, pawing the air, and screaming. The rest of the remuda went into a bucking, screeching frenzy, and the two packhorses showered all their carefully-packed possessions across the ground in front of the saloon.
After firing, Bobcat and Little Hawk reached down and grabbed Mary-Lou, an arm each, and not waiting for her to regain her feet, hauled her away with her heels dragging, to the shelter of an adobe building about twenty yards back. Danny methodically emptied the other five rounds from his Colt into the doorway of the saloon. By the time he had finished, his companions were all back in the shelter of the adobe building, somebody’s home. Their other horses had scattered in all directions.
Danny rapidly joined them.
‘I think we’ve finally caught up on some of the rustlers then,’ he suggested brightly.
‘I think you’re right,’ Johnnie agreed, reaching round the corner to place another shot through the saloon door. ‘What are we going to do about it?’
The horses tethered outside the saloon had torn the hitching rail loose from its posts, and while some had broken away, the rest for a while still stamped and bucked around it, a shrieking melee, with several horses bruised and bleeding where they had been hit by the thrashing rail. Every now and then another horse came free, and bolted away between the buildings. One of the last was a flea-bitten grey that bucketed off, taking the rail with it.
In the meantime men were pouring out the back of both the livery stable and the saloon, and those heading to the right were making for a stand of aspen where the ground sloped up toward the beginning of the hills. Which were the rustlers, if any, and which were the innocent patrons, remained to be seen. The man who had first fired at them wasn’t among them. Nor was any of them clearly the man in grey.
To the left of the livery another adobe house was partially obscured, leaving a hidden way for anybody to get to it unseen. Obviously the rustlers had to be going that way. Johnnie tried to snatch glimpses from around the corner, while the three who had fired hurried to reload. Not much could be achieved until they had. In the meantime, the rustlers were getting an opportunity to scatter.
‘Mary-Lou, Danny, you two stay here/ Johnnie directed. ‘Try to stop any of them from coming out of the saloon around this side to our right. The rest of us will go to meet them coming around the other way.’
‘How will we know which ones they are?’ Mary-Lou asked.
‘They’ll be trying to kill you. There isn’t anything else they can do, now that they know we’ve followed them here.’
Mary-Lou was pale, but her lips had set determinedly.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll cover her,’ Danny offered.
‘Don’t fire unless they try to rush you,’ Johnnie advised. ‘Just remember, they’ll be waiting for you to stick your head around the corner of this building.’
With Bobcat and Little Hawk, Johnnie circled to the left, aiming to find whoever had run from the saloon in that direction. The single street, and all the open ground, was deserted. Some townsfolk were looking out of windows and doorways in several places. None attempted to interfere.
Their first opposition was a shot which seemed to come from nowhere, until they observed the line of it as it skittered away through the dust. Back down that line was the open doorway of the plank-built livery stable. The gunman had to be in the deep shadows inside, where his gunsmoke would be lost in the gloom.
Little Hawk dodged back. Johnnie and Bobcat dived for the corner of the next building, a rickety construction of uneven pine logs. More lead urged them on their way. Not all of it came from the stable. Gunfire echoed and re-echoed off the hills, overlaying the loud neighing of the horses, the anxious voices of townsfolk yelling at their children.
‘They’re spreadin’ ahead of us,’ Bobcat observed, while he tried to locate the several places the fire was coming from.
Little Hawk had taken a position at the corner of their first building. He would stop anybody attacking Mary-Lou and Danny from behind, Johnnie and Bobcat moved on around the log cabin.
Almost immediately Bobcat fired past him. His target was a man who was trying to catch a horse, which had one of its forelegs caught up in its trailing reins. The man abandoned the attempt, drew, and fired back. Only then did Johnnie recognize him. He had been one of the party that had stolen Mary-Lou’s cattle, one of the men who had been chasing Mary-Lou when he had first met her.
Johnnie raised the Lefancheaux, and hesitated. He had never before fired directly on a man, face to face, in a gun duel. It was different to what he expected. It was certainly nothing like a longdistance stand-off with a rifle, where enemies are largely anonymous.
Bobcat saw his hesitation, cursed, and fired again.
The outlaw had no such qualms either. He threw one wild shot at Bobcat, one at Johnnie, and raced back toward the stables, seeking cover. Before he could reach it, Bobcat’s third shot bowled the fellow head over heels, and left him heaped up against the stable wall. He didn’t move again after that.
Johnnie looked at his unfired gun, and went pale. The chips were down, and he was being found short.