The Ellsworth Trail Page 10

  Clutter grinned and stuck out his hand. Torgerson took it.

  “Stop by the chuck wagon and draw yourselves some grub. Tell Cookie you’re going hunting,” Torgerson said.

  “You got yourself two bounty hunters, Mr. Torgerson,” Clutter said. “See you in a week.”

  Torgerson smiled as the two men rode off to the south.

  “That ought to slow Chad up,” he said to himself, without the slightest twinge of conscience.

  Chapter 17

  The wind began with a whisper.

  The grasses trembled as faint zephyrs jostled them. A meadowlark on a mesquite bush huddled as fingers of air rustled its back and wing feathers, and still it sat on the branch, blinking its yellow-brown eyes. Little tendrils of dust spooled up in miniature whirlwinds in a wallow where quail were preening their wings like feathered bathers learning to swim. Calico Sal, the lead cow in the X8 herd, lifted her boss and swung her horns as her nostrils flexed like rubbery diaphragms to pick up any alien or intrusive scent.

  The sun had slid over the horizon, gilding the western clouds, bleaching the edges of the larger ones to a silver sheen before rusting the thin ones close to the earth, turning them golden in some kind of mysterious alchemy. The sky that morning had been drenched in blood, so scarlet that it lingered in Jock’s retinas long after it evaporated into a moil of gray cloud clusters.

  Now, Jock looked at Calico Sal and at the gigantic quilt of the herd as it billowed and flowed over the dusking land, headed for the water he had found a mile or two ahead. Their mottled bodies surged as a single tide, their horns like white-capped ripples in a sea of light and shadow, bobbing colors smeared on rolling combers.

  Jock looked to the west and felt dismay as the sky began to darken and he saw the elephantine clouds blowing toward them. He looked up and saw the big white thunderheads sailing across the dissolving blue of the sky like galleons and caravels pushed by a trade wind from some far-off region of a darkening sea.

  “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” Jock intoned, thinking of that crimson sky at dawn. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”

  But there was no red sky that afternoon and the western sky was already blackening with ominous thunderheads. He turned his horse and rode back until he spotted Dewey Ringler, who had been riding point. Dewey was now ordering the hands to bunch the herd up behind Calico Sal, perhaps sensing that the cattle were getting as jumpy as Sal.

  Jock gestured to Dewey, beckoning to him so that he would ride over and they could talk.

  Ringler barked orders to the drovers and wove his way through the stream of cows until he was in the clear.

  “What’s up, Jock?”

  “I see you’ve got a handle on this spooky herd,” Jock said. “One clap of thunder might throw them into a panic.”

  “I can smell something,” Ringler said, “something I don’t like to smell.”

  Jock turned his head to the west, sniffed at the tug of breeze that seemed to be rising above the ground. The smell was faint, but it was there.

  “Dust?” Jock said.

  “See them high clouds? That’s a high wind pushing them across the sky. We can’t see it yet, but there’s something behind that blowing up yonder. I’d say we’re in for a hell of a storm.”

  “A rainstorm?”

  Jock turned his horse out of the wind and pulled the makings from his pocket. While Ringler talked, Jock rolled a cigarette, perhaps knowing it might be his last chance for a while.

  “Maybe not rain right off,” Ringler said. “Something a hell of a lot worse.”

  Ringler paused while Jock lit his cigarette. The match blew out as soon as Jock uncapped his hand and exposed it to the air.

  “Looks like a dust storm to me,” Ringler said.

  Jock shuddered inwardly. He had been in dust storms before. He remembered, as a child, when his mother had hung wet blankets over the windows to keep the dust from blowing into the house. When they took them down, they weighed a ton, and the house was filled with fine dust that took weeks to sweep out from every corner.

  “That could be bad,” Jock said. “We’ll lose some head.”

  “It’s like drowning in dirt,” Ringler said.

  Chad rode up, his eyes wide with alarm.

  “Jock,” Becker said, “it don’t look good.”

  “Ringler thinks we’re in for a dust storm.”

  “Oh, God.” Chad wet his lips as if to ward off the coming dryness.

  “The San Antonio River is just ahead,” Ringler said. “We could bed the herd down somewhere near Goliad. String them out all along it. Maybe the river will take their minds off the blowing dust.”

  Jock shook his head as he puffed on his dangling cigarette. Smoke spewed from his mouth and nostrils.

  “If we get a dust storm, we could also get rain right behind it. We’ll water the cattle and move the herd past the river. I don’t want to get caught in a flash flood.”

  “God, no,” Chad said.

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Jock said. “Water them, then push on beyond the river another three miles or so.”

  “It’ll be a job,” Ringler said.

  “Let’s get to it. I look for those scouts to come in if they’ve got any sense at all. Keep an eye out for them.”

  “You’re not worried about Apaches?” Chad asked.

  “They read weather better than we do,” Jock said. “They’ll hole up somewhere until this blow is over.”

  Chad nodded with the eagerness of hope.

  The wind picked up a short time later as the sky turned to ashes in the west and the black clouds mushroomed in size, blowing their way. The sky turned to carbon, and the wind began to whip at the herd and the men with savage gusts. Then there was a momentary pause, as if the earth was holding its breath. The cattle moved on to the river and fanned out. Drovers began searching for fords in the darkness. Many cut mesquite branches and trimmed them into long poles. They used these to test the bottom and, when they found the fords, they drove the cattle across in small bunches, the animals groaning and protesting until the din rose to a high pitch and men had to shout to be heard.

  The dry, musty smell of the cattle changed to a clinging, wet aroma of musk as the herd crossed the San Antonio River in pitch darkness. Jock had some of the men light torches, after dipping mesquite branches in coal oil. The torches, he told them, would serve as a beacon to the scouts. The wind whipped at the flames until they flapped like beaten rugs on a clothesline.

  Horky and his men were the first to ride up and find Jock, who was now riding swing to keep the herd from straying too far to the west after they crossed the river. Jock was eager to see him.

  “We did not see any Apaches,” Horky said.

  “I didn’t expect you would.” Jock’s cigarette had gone out long before, and he knew he could not smoke in that wind. The dust was now stinging his face and scouring his clothes, becoming embedded in the fibers of his shirt and trousers. He held his head down to keep the dust from blowing up his nose.

  “But we did see two men riding this way,” Horky said. “When they saw us, they pulled their rifles out. I think they were going to shoot at us.”

  “What made you think that?”

  Beeson crowded his horse in close as if he wanted to say something. Jock could barely see him through the dust and the inky blackness of the night.

  “Horky’s right,” Beeson said. “They cocked them rifles soon as they plucked ’em from their scabbards. They was hunters, Jock.”

  “Hunters? What do you mean?”

  “They were damned sure looking for something to shoot. We lit a shuck and hightailed it out of there, but I heard them levers on their rifles squeak loud as a pair of barn doors swinging open.”

  “Do you know who they were, Horky?” Jock asked.

  Horky shook his head. “I never see them before.”

  “Beeson?”

  “Nope. Young fellers, they were.”

  “Did y
ou get a good look at them? Either of you?” Jock looked closely at each man, putting his face close to theirs.

  “No time,” Beeson said. “But they looked like a couple of hardcases to me.”

  “Horky?”

  “They were too far away,” he said.

  “What about their horses?” Jock asked. “Did you get a good look at their horses?”

  “One of ’em was riding a claybank mare,” Beeson said. “The other was on a dun gelding. Five- or six-year-olds, I’d say.”

  A klaxon warning sounded in Jock’s brain. “They look like cow ponies to you, Beeson? Small, chunky horses, maybe fourteen or fifteen hands high?”

  “Yeah, I’d say.”

  “The claybank,” Jock said. “Cropped mane?”

  “Yeah, come to think of it,” Beeson said. “Bobbed mane and tail.”

  “That is true,” Horky said. “And the dun, it had a black mane and tail.”

  Jock didn’t say anything right away.

  “Do you know those jaspers?” Beeson asked Jock.

  “I don’t know them,” Jock said. “But I think I know who they are.”

  He wasn’t going to tell Horky and Beeson, but he knew that those were the two men his brother Abel had been associating with for the past several months. Both were troublemak ers, ne’er-do-wells, always in hot water with the law.

  “Randy Clutter and D.F. Fogarty. I think Fogarty’s name is Dan, but he goes by D.F.” Jock spoke aloud, not expecting a reaction. But Beeson spoke up.

  “I heard of them two, all right,” he said. “Cattle rustlers, horse thieves.”

  “Maybe even killers,” Jock said.

  “I think those two wanted to kill us,” Horky said. “That is the way they acted.”

  “I think so, too,” Beeson said. “You can tell.”

  “How’s that, Amos?” Jock asked.

  “First off, they didn’t act like they was on the run. They was riding toward our herd. Like they had a purpose, you know? And when they spotted us, they didn’t try to run or hide. They just kept coming on and pulled them rifles from their boots. I think they was hunting X8 men and knew who the hell we all were.”

  “What about you, Horky?” Jock asked. “That the way you see it?”

  Horcasitas nodded with a vigorous movement of his head. “Yes, I think Amos is right. That is how they looked. Like hunters. Hunters of men. They wanted to kill us. I had the feeling in my stomach that these men were going to kill us. If we do not run away, they shoot us.”

  “Chad told me my brother was with those two,” Jock said. “And he said that Abel is working for Torgerson, driving the Cross J herd up to Ellsworth. You didn’t see another man did you? My brother?”

  Both men shook their heads.

  “Well, nothing we can do about it now,” Jock said. “You were lucky. I’m glad you didn’t get into a fight with those two.”

  “What do you make of it, Jock?” Beeson asked.

  “I think Torgerson sent those two down here to pick us off, Amos. Pick us off one by one.”

  Beeson swore. “Then we got big trouble,” he said.

  “Yeah, we do. But nothing we can’t handle. You keep a sharp eye out, all of you. Let’s see if we can’t pick those two off before they spill any X8 blood.”

  The wind picked up then, and it seemed like a sheet of sand rose up and enveloped them. There was a wolfish howl to it, and grit stung their faces and blinded them, turned them into voiceless mutes. In seconds, none of the men could see their own hands in front of their faces.

  And the X8 cattle began to bawl. To Jock they sounded like the voices of lost souls screaming from the depths of hell.

  Chapter 18

  Jock slipped his bandanna from his neck, wet it down with water from his canteen, then tied it over his face like a mask. Still, he could barely breathe as the air filled with dust. His eyes stung as if salted, and his lungs burned with the effort to breathe.

  The cattle were suffering, he knew. The ones on the western fringes of the herd caught the brunt of the wind, but the dust was everywhere, and the cattle moaned and groaned, bellowing and roaring, like beasts in a slaughter pen. He and the drovers did their best to keep them from stampeding, and the dust and darkness probably helped. The cattle could not see where to run, so they stayed huddled together in the herd.

  Chad rode nearby and, suddenly, Jock saw his boss double over in the saddle, rip off his bandanna, and begin to retch. The sound was more horrible than the wind, than the bellowing roars of the cattle. Jock put a hand on Chad’s shoulder, finding it in the darkness by some unexplained miracle, it seemed to him.

  “Chad, what’s wrong?”

  More coughing and horrible retching. Jock could hear something come up through Chad’s throat, tearing tissue as it rumbled from some dark and sour place deep inside him. Chad leaned over and vomited onto the ground. A rider rode up out of the heavy mist of dust, bearing a torch that sputtered and whished like some angry whisperer, its flames leaping to escape the oil-soaked branch.

  “You got some trouble here?” Earl Foster asked. Jock barely recognized the man. The voice helped him with his identification.

  “I don’t know, Earl. Stay with us a while.”

  Foster nodded, ducking his head as if to avoid the wind.

  It was then that Jock saw flecks of red on Chad’s shirt, and when he erupted again, bright splotches of blood spewed forth, mingled with black bile from his stomach.

  “Chad,” Jock said, tightening his fingers into talons on the man’s shoulder.

  Chad waved an arm in the air as if to ward off Jock’s words or drive him away. He gulped in air, fighting for his breath.

  “Medicine,” Chad gasped. “Pocket. Shirt pocket.”

  Jock patted the front of Chad’s shirt with his left hand and felt a bulging glass shape in one pocket. He reached in and pulled the bottle out. He jerked the cork, then shielded the opening from the lashing dust.

  “It’s open, Chad.” Jock handed him the bottle.

  Chad straightened up and swallowed a gulp of the murky brown medicine, then handed the bottle back to Jock. Jock corked it and replaced it in Chad’s pocket.

  “What’s wrong with you, Chad? You see a doc about this?”

  Chad nodded, still unable to speak. He tied the bandanna on and pulled it tight to his chin. Jock could hear him wheezing beneath it.

  “Ulcers, I think,” Chad croaked.

  “Ulcers? Stomach ulcers?”

  “That’s what Doc Fordyce thinks.” Chad’s voice was a loud, raspy whisper close to Jock’s ear.

  “Fargo? In Corpus?”

  “Yeah, Ford Fargo. He gave me that medicine.”

  “He’s a quack,” Jock said. “And a drunk.”

  “He’s a good medico, Jock. He delivered my daughter. My wife, Rachael, swears by him. She made me go.”

  Jock knew Fordyce Fargo from the visits he made to treat Jock’s mother when she had the fever. He knew him by his whiskey breath and his rumpled clothing, his soiled shirts and his bedraggled mustache. But he also knew that Fargo’s hands, especially his fingernails, were always clean, as if he continually washed them in lye soap and scalding water. He supposed Fargo had been a good enough doctor when he was a young man, but the years of drinking and carousing with immoral women had taken their toll on the physician. When Jock had last seen him, he had been repulsed by the man, and by the reek of alcohol that was like a cloak around his unkempt person. He had heard a story in Corpus Christi about Fargo and his wife, Livia. Apparently Livia disapproved of her husband’s drinking, and wouldn’t let him bring John Barleycorn into the house. So Fordyce would camp out with his drinking cronies and they’d all sit around the fire and swap lies, getting blind drunk. When Fordyce went back home, he told his wife that he had been on a house call. She saw through this, though, and always remarked to him, “I know you’ve been to the campfire, Ford, so take a bath and sober up before you come to bed in my house.”

  Ford Fargo�
��s campfire had become quite a legend in that part of Texas. Now, whenever a cowhand was out at night and saw a campfire, he’d say, “I wonder if Ford Fargo is a-settin’ there, a-passin’ the whiskey bottle.”

  “How much of that stuff have you got?” Jock asked.

  “Two cases,” Chad said. “Jubilee’s packing it in the chuck wagon.”

  “You ought to go back home, Chad. Go back to Rachael and your daughter, Victoria. They can take care of you. You’re spitting up blood.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m not going back home, Jock. I’m riding all the way to Ellsworth with this herd.”

  “Your wife know about this?” Jock asked, with a sudden stab of intuition.

  Chad hesitated, then finally shook his head.

  “Well, before we get to the Red, everybody in the outfit will know about it. Go on back home. I can take the herd to Kansas.”

  “Jocko, let it go. I’m going all the way. I can ride this out.”

  “All right, Chad. Suit yourself. But if you become crippled, or get in my way, I’ll send you back home if I have to hogtie you.”

  “You won’t have to worry about me.”

  Chad’s words rang false on Jock’s ears, but he nodded and clapped his friend on the back, then rode ahead, the horse balking at every step. Chad followed, gasping and choking on the dust, the sounds muffled in the blowing wind.

  One by one the torches blew out, and Jock knew there was no way any of the men could light them again. The darkness was almost total, and the wind did not lessen.

  Jock fought his way along the edge of the herd, the sand stinging his face, arms and legs. He knew the horse must be suffering intolerably, and the cattle were protesting with loud bellows and moaning growls.

  Out of the darkness, a rider appeared, a shadow on horseback, looking like some phantom risen from the ground itself.

  “Captain, it’s me, Ed Purvis.”

  “Good. You got back, all of you?”

  “I seen Quist, so he’s come back, and we all did. Been at the leading edge of the herd, and Naylor says they’re trying to turn east, keep the wind at their rumps.”