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  McCaleb climbed into the back of the wagon, finding barely enough room to stand. He took the ten-stick bundle of capped and fused dynamite from the saddlebags and shoved it between two wooden cases near the floor of the wagon bed. After setting all but a dozen feet of fuse, he hunched down, took a match from his oilskin pouch and popped it alight with his thumbnail.

  The fuse caught, sputtered and died. From somewhere in the Indian camp came the exploratory yip of a dog. Time and luck were running out for McCaleb. He lighted a second match, and when the fuse caught, swung off the wagon’s tailgate. The dog now yipped excitedly, and McCaleb knew they were in for it.

  An arrow whipped out of the darkness, slashing into McCaleb’s right thigh. Goose caught his arm and pulled him down a creek bank. No sooner had they dropped to their knees in the water than a fusillade of rifle fire shattered the silence, the deadly slugs whipping the air barely above their heads.

  McCaleb drew his Colt. At least he would find the Comanche position. Where was that explosion?...

  THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Ralph Compton

  The Trail Drive Series

  THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL

  THE WESTERN TRAIL

  THE CHISHOLM TRAIL

  THE BANDERA TRAIL

  THE CALIFORNIA TRAIL

  THE SHAWNEE TRAIL

  THE VIRGINIA CITY TRAIL

  THE DODGE CITY TRAIL

  THE OREGON TRAIL

  THE SANTA FE TRAIL

  THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL

  THE GREEN RIVER TRAIL

  THE DEADWOOD TRAIL

  The Sundown Riders Series

  NORTH TO THE BITTERROOT

  ACROSS THE RIO COLORADO

  THE WINCHESTER RUN

  THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL

  Ralph Compton

  To Nancy Wilson, principal of the St. Clair County High School in 1954

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  In 1821, Mexico declared its independence, ending forever any Spanish claim to the American West. William Becknell, a trader from Missouri, was already near the border, preparing to trade with the Indians. Instead, he drove his pack mules to Santa Fe and returned to Missouri, his packs bulging with silver dollars. He made another trip four months later, this time with three loaded wagons. His wagon route became the Santa Fe Trail.

  In 1822, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company began sending trappers up the Missouri to the Yellowstone River country. Avoiding hostile Blackfeet and Arikaras Indians, the trappers crossed the Rocky Mountains into a friendly Wyoming. South Pass, as they named it, was to become the Oregon Trail.

  By 1840, the beaver hat had gone out of style and the country had been trapped out. Grizzled mountain men put their knowledge of survival and Indian lore to use by guiding wagon trains across the prairies and mountains. West of Independence, Missouri, the trail divided. The Santa Fe swung off to the southwest, to Texas and New Mexico. The other route, going northwest, was the Overland—or Oregon—Trail.

  Before the Civil War, and again in 1866 and 1867, the Shawnee Trail was the principal route used by Texas cattlemen seeking northern markets. The trail crossed three hundred miles of Indian Territory—which is now eastern Oklahoma—and after moving into Missouri, bore almost exactly northeast to Sedalia. Immigrants from Missouri and other points north and east of there referred to it as the Texas Road.

  After the battle of San Jacinto—which assured Texas independence—cattle were driven to New Orleans, Shreveport, and New Iberia, to be shipped north by boat. During the forties and fifties, small herds were trailed into many midwestern states. Some were driven to Chicago, and at least one herd was taken as far north as New York.

  For all its notoriety, the Chisholm Trail didn’t become a cattle trail until 1867, when the railroad reached Abilene. This was more than a year after Goodnight’s first herd of longhorns had blazed a new trail to Denver.

  Four long years of war had left the southern states not only destitute of cattle, but bankrupt. But Texas had an advantage: There were millions of wild longhorns. Goodnight believed Texans would lose no time in getting them to market. In doing so, he expected them to converge on the old trails established prior to the war, so he avoided these trails, driving through eastern New Mexico and into Colorado. There, on unspoiled range and lush graze, he established ranches where he could “hold” his herds at the end of the drive until he was ready to sell. He found a ready market; it was mining country, untouched by the ravages of war, and the miners had money to buy. On the Chisholm Trail many a Texas herd was confronted with a problem that Charles Goodnight had already foreseen. There was simply no grass on which the longhorns could be fattened after the long drive.

  Goodnight’s mother and stepfather moved to Texas’ Brazos River country in 1845, when Charlie was nine years old, and he rode bareback all the way. By the time he was thirteen, he was riding a mustang and hunting with the Caddo Indians. At twenty he went into the cattle business, and at twenty-four he served the Confederacy as a scout for the Texas Rangers. Before he was fifty, Goodnight was dominating almost twenty million acres of range country. He possessed an “edge” that most of his Texas counterparts lacked. He rode with the daring of Fremont and with a knowledge of the frontier equal to that of Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. Fighting Indians, outlaws, and cattle thieves, he blazed the Goodnight Trail across two thousand miles of untamed, uncharted frontier and into the pages of the history of the American West.

  PROLOGUE

  Benton McCaleb kicked out of his blankets and sat up on his hard bunk. The first gray light of dawn crept in through the musty room’s one window. Fully dressed except for his boots, he swung his bare feet onto the cold dirt. He shivered as the chill December wind found its way through the cracks and crevices of the old Fort Belknap barracks. Fully awake now, he listened. Something had awakened him.

  Whap! It came again, sounding like an alarmed beaver swatting the waters of Hubbard Creek with its broad tail. But the agonized scream that followed could have been human. McCaleb upended his rough-out mule ear boots and shook them. Dragging them on as far as he could, he stood up and stomped his feet the rest of the way into them. From a peg on the wall at the head of his bunk, he snatched his wide belt and holster. He kicked the flimsy door open and, on his way out, buckled the rig around his lean middle, the .44 Colt revolver riding butt forward on his left hip.

  At first the sight that met McCaleb’s eyes made him sick to his stomach. And then killing mad! Shag Oliver was beating a horse! The chestnut mare had been snubbed to a heavy corral post. Oliver had doubled a rawhide lariat and then doubled it again, and in his huge left hand it was a formidable weapon. Welts crisscrossed the trembling flanks of the terrified mare. McCaleb caught the burly arm on its backward swing and threw Oliver flat on his back in the dusty corral. For a few surprised seconds Shag didn’t move. Then he crabbed around until he faced McCaleb. He weighed three hundred pounds. Tangled, crow-black hair covered his ears and a shaggy beard hid most of his face. He had little pig eyes, like a
grizzly. He had his pistol half drawn when McCaleb’s boot smashed into his hand, sending the weapon skittering away in the dust. Bawling like a fresh-cut steer, Oliver lurched to his knees, swinging the doubled rawhide at McCaleb’s head. Stepping back, McCaleb caught the lariat, dragging the big man toward him. His right knee smashed Oliver under the chin and again he was thrown flat on his back, raising a cloud of dust. This time he didn’t get up. Behind McCaleb, the cocking of a pistol seemed unnaturally loud in the Sunday morning stillness.

  “Leave him be,” said a cold voice. “I’ll drop the first man that pulls a pistol.”

  Slowly McCaleb turned. Scoggin and Kincer stood facing him, their hands hovering near their holstered pistols. Behind them stood the scout, Charles Goodnight, his Colt cocked and ready. With him were two other Rangers, prepared to side him. Scoggin and Kincer lifted their hands shoulder high. Shag Oliver sat up, blood dribbling from the corners of his smashed mouth. McCaleb had his back to the fort, but he knew who and what was coming. He could see it in the faces of the other Rangers; even Scoggin and Kincer. There was amusement and disgust, but no respect. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel A. T. Obenchain had arrived.

  “Mr. Goodnight,” snapped Obenchain, “holster your weapon. If you men can find nothing better to do with your free time than brawl among yourselves, perhaps it will be better spent in close-order drill. I will speak to First Lieutenant Woolfork about it. Your lack of discipline and the total absence of respect is appalling and I won’t tolerate it. By God, I will court-martial the next man who creates an unwarranted disturbance in this camp!”

  Scoggin and Kincer boosted Shag Oliver to his feet. He spat blood and bits of broken teeth, glaring at McCaleb with all the hatred he could muster.

  “Nex’ time,” he snarled, “when it’s just me an’ you, I’ll kill you.”

  McCaleb said nothing. He stood six feet four and weighed two hundred pounds. He had pale blue eyes and his sandy hair curled down over the collar of his denim shirt. The other Rangers, following the Obenchain outburst, had drifted away. Only Goodnight remained. He spoke.

  “I’m Charles Goodnight. My friends call me Charlie. It’s Sunday, so I can’t tell you what the others call me.”

  He offered his big hand and McCaleb took it. Goodnight’s smile began in his eyes and worked its way down to his lips. He was a bear of a man with a neatly trimmed dark beard and short hair, topped with a wide-brimmed, high-crowned gray Stetson. He wore moccasins instead of boots. Benton McCaleb had grown up on the Texas border fighting Indians, outlaws, and other thieves. So had Charles Goodnight. McCaleb found himself liking the man.

  “I’m Benton McCaleb. Nobody ever called me ‘Benton’ except Ma. Everybody else calls me Bent, or just McCaleb.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the scout. “I’ve been out since Thursday. Had to ride one of the old man’s dispatches to Captain Joe Ward at Victoria Peaks. Rode in late last night.”

  “I rode in the day you left,” said McCaleb. “I’ve been with the detachment at Hubbard Creek, but the commander asked for another scout. Me and him just seemed to rub one another the wrong way. Now there’s Obenchain. That fracas with Oliver won’t help my chances here, but I can’t abide a man that mistreats a horse.”

  “Neither can I,” said Goodnight. “You should have let him clear leather and then gut-shot him. If I’m any judge, he’s the kind that’ll lay up in a thicket and back-shoot you at the first opportunity. I’ve had my doubts about that trio since they rode in. You ever seen them before?”

  “No, but I’m going to remember them. I’m obliged to you for buying in.”

  “I like your style, Benton McCaleb. If I’d gotten there ahead of you, I’d have done exactly what you did. Come on; I want you to meet a pair of Texans you can trust with your life.”

  Federal troops had abandoned Fort Belknap in 1857, and in March 1862, Ranger Company B had taken it for a main camp. Rangers, for the sake of mobility, carried bacon, coffee, salt, flour or hard biscuits. Each man made his own meal, boiling his coffee and broiling his bacon over an open fire. Goodnight led the way to a clearing where his friends already had a fire going. On two sides of it a forked stick had been driven into the ground, and by its bail, from a cross-member, a huge blackened coffeepot hung over the fire. The two Rangers hunkered down, drinking coffee from their tin cups. McCaleb recognized them as the friends who had stood ready to side Goodnight against Scoggin and Kincer. They rose to their feet as Goodnight and McCaleb approached.

  “Boys,” said Goodnight, “this is Benton McCaleb. McCaleb, meet Brazos Gifford and Will Elliot. When you’re on the trail scouting, with Obenchain in command, you’ll need them to watch your back. I swear, a Kiowa could steal that man’s horse from under him before he suspected a thing.”

  These Rangers were the same caliber of men as Goodnight himself, and as McCaleb shook their hands, he felt a kinship with them. Brazos Gifford was redheaded and green-eyed. He wore a gray flat-crowned hat, denim shirt, Levi’s pants, and rough-out, high-heeled boots. Will Elliot had curly black hair and gray eyes. Except for a wide-brim, pinch-crease black Stetson, he wore the same garb as Brazos. Each man wore a tied-down .44 Colt low on his right hip. They were all big men—over six feet—and McCaleb judged the three of them to be, more or less, within a year of his own age of twenty-eight. He and Goodnight had brought their own tin cups, and after downing some of the scalding black coffee, set about broiling strips of bacon skewered on long sticks over the hot coals.

  “I hope,” said Brazos, “Obenchain was just blowin’ off his mad, with that talk about close-order drill. Take a Texan off his hoss, put him to walkin’ in high-heeled boots, and you’d just as well take a pistol and shoot the poor bastard, ’cause he ain’t gonna be no account to nobody.”

  “I ain’t one to desert after I’m committed,” said Will, “but damned if I’m spendin’ another two years fightin’ Indians, bandits, and rattlers just so’s that old fool can play soldier. This military stuff he’s always yellin’ about—court-martial, formations, drillin’—don’t mean nothin’ out here on the border. What really gets my goat is when he says it’s ‘undignified’ for an officer—meanin’ him, of course—to associate with his men. Wait’ll he’s surrounded by two or three hundred screechin’ Indians; then he can decide which he’d rather part with—his dignity or his hair.”

  “Thank God,” said Goodnight, “we haven’t had any real Indian trouble since he’s been in command, but it’s coming. Obenchain’s a Virginian; he doesn’t understand the frontier or its people. God only knows why he was assigned this command; politics, I suspect. Unfortunately, he isn’t the only misfit. Noble as it sounds, this Frontier Regiment—the Rangers—has become a means for some men to avoid conscription. Men like Shag Oliver and his two gun hands. Are we really serving the Confederacy, camped here on the Texas border, while other men are being shot to doll rags by the Union Army?”

  “I didn’t join the Rangers to serve the Confederacy or to avoid the draft,” said McCaleb. “There are some men I have to kill, and I don’t expect to find them wearing Yankee blue.”

  They observed him in silence. An unwritten code entitled them to know only as much about him as he was willing to reveal. Poking a stick under the suspended coffeepot, he tilted it enough to refill his cup. They waited, willing to hear him out if he chose to continue. He finished his coffee, put down his cup and got to his feet. The only sound was the sigh of the wind in the cottonwoods and the cawing of a nearby crow. Finally he spoke.

  “One of the men I’m after is Cullen Baker. Know anything about him?”

  Will Elliot whistled long and low.

  “He’s a curly wolf,” said Brazos, “and the pack ridin’ with him is every bit as bad as he is.”

  “He’s a disgrace to the Confederacy in general and to the state of Texas in particular,” said Goodnight. “He’s using the war as an excuse to loot and kill. He’s mighty sudden with a pistol. The Cass County sheriff says he’s the fastest m
an alive, that nobody’s his equal.”

  “I am,” said McCaleb.

  Afterward, none of the three could swear they had seen him draw. His Colt spoke once, and twenty yards away a cloud of crow feathers drifted from the upper branches of a cottonwood. Later, when Brazos Gifford and Will Elliot found the dead bird, its head had been shot away clean.

  Benton McCaleb holstered his Colt, refilled his coffee cup from the big pot and hunkered down to face his three friends.

  “Cullen Baker is my cousin,” he said, “on my mother’s side. He taught me to draw and shoot.”

  “So you aim to track him down and kill him,” said Goodnight.

  “I have my reasons,” said McCaleb. “Personal reasons.”

  “Suppose you find Baker and kill him,” said Goodnight. “What do you aim to do then? What plans do you have?”

  “None, I reckon,” said McCaleb.

  “Benton McCaleb, you’re too good a man to waste your young years tracking a no-account bastard like Cullen Baker. I’d be the first to admit he needs killin’, but let somebody else do it.”

  On the frontier, a man didn’t involve himself in another man’s business, nor did he offer advice without being asked. Goodnight had stepped over the line, and they all knew it. Brazos Gifford and Will Elliot said nothing. Their eyes were on McCaleb. A man’s natural inclination would be to tell Goodnight to mind his own damn business. But Goodnight cared about his friends, and something in his blunt appeal got through to Benton McCaleb. When he spoke, it was without a trace of anger.

  “I won’t be out of the Rangers until ’sixty-five, Charlie. Neither will you. What plans do you have? What does a man do with his young years, when the war’s tore everything to hell and gone?”