The Chisholm Trail Page 17

  Chris and Lou rode in at sundown, followed by Marty and Wes. Chris was pale and shaken, Lou still flushed with anger.

  “Daddy begged us not to leave,” said Chris.

  “Sure he did,” snapped Lou, “and you saw how quick he shut up when that woman lit into us. She told us to get out and not to come back.”

  By first light they were prepared to ride upriver for the 150 longhorns Chris and Lou had gathered. Much against their wishes, the girls were being left to secure the camp.

  “Remember,” said Ten, “I told Brady Ward this is our herd. Besides, we must protect the camp. Keep your rifles handy while we’re gone.”

  In a little more than two hours they reached the holding pen. Warily, they scouted the area, but saw nobody. Marty had some last minute advice.

  “Once we loose these critters, everybody’s goin’ to get a taste of trail driving. Remember, this is just about a tenth of the herd we’ll drive north, so you’ll have some idea as to what we’re in for. I can promise you this bunch will scatter from hell to breakfast if we ain’t careful. Wes, you lower the rails, get behind then, and get ’em moving. Hern, when they come out, you ride flank on the far side, and I’ll flank ’em on this side. We’ll head. ’em for the river. Ten, you’ll be ahead of ’em, and when they reach the river, it’ll be up to you to turn ’em south. As they turn, I’ll be right behind you. Hern, you’ll have to ride the outside flank by your lonesome. Double your lariat and swat the hell out of any bunch-quitters. Wes, push ’em hard from the drag. Keep ’em bunched so’s they don’t scatter.”

  The freed longhorns exceeded Marty’s prediction. Prepared to run, they needed little urging. The leaders headed for the river. Marty and Herndon rode hard, swatting potential deserters back into line. Ten reined up fifty yards from the Trinity. He began waving his hat and shouting at the approaching herd. Just when it seemed the charging longhorns would trample him and run into the river, the leaders began to turn. Marty turned with them, swatting their flanks and yelling like a Comanche. Herndon had managed to hold the other flank, and Wes kept them bunched at drag. Except for an occasional bunch-quitter, the herd seemed content to follow the river. It was a controlled stampede, and as the longhorns began to tire, they slowed to a trot. Soon Wes was popping the behinds of the stragglers to keep them moving. The river became shallow where it flowed through their fenced canyon. Marty and Ten crossed to the west bank, while Herndon forced the lead longhorns into the river. Chris and Lou had removed the rails, allowing the herd to enter the canyon.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” said Wes when they had dismounted.

  “We won’t always have a river for them to follow,” said Ten, “or a chance to get ahead of them.”

  “Not much predictable about a cow,” said Marty. “We was lucky with this bunch, gettin’ ’em headed the way we wanted ’em to go.”

  “We had a visitor while you were gone,” said Chris. “Bodie Tomlin.”

  “So he knows you’re with us,” said Ten. “Did he say or do anything?”

  “He just looked at us,” said Lou, “and rode away. I can’t stand him.”

  “He’s taking our measure,” said Marty. “He wanted to see how much of an outfit we have.”

  “That’s why two of us will be staying in camp from now on,” said Ten. “It’ll slow down our gather some, but not as much as losin’ our horses and grub.”

  “I hope you’re not leading up to what I think you are,” said Lou. “Well, I don’t aim to spend all my time in camp, fetching wood for the fire and cooking.”

  “There’s six of us,” said Ten. “That means you’ll be here every third day. You and Chris will never be here alone. Wes will be with you, and Marty with Chris. I reckon Herndon and me are stuck with each other. Now, that don’t mean you get to rest every third day. These longhorns have to be trail-branded, and besides keepin’ an eye on the camp, that’s what two of us will be doing every day. We’ll build the branding fire right here and keep our rifles handy.”

  “What brand?” Lou asked.

  “The X Diamond,” said Ten. “I had it made in Natchez.”

  “A curious brand,” said Chris. “What does it mean?”

  “The X is ‘Ten’ in Roman numbers. The diamond covering it means that some hombre with a running iron won’t have much luck turning the X into something else.”

  After breakfast they cut the cards. Ten drew a card, Marty another, and Wes a third. Wes drew the low card, Marty the highest.

  “Wes and Lou will spend today in camp and start the branding,” said Ten. “Tomorrow, it’s Herndon and me, and the day after, Marty and Chris. After that, we start over with Wes and Lou.”

  Twice a day the four riders hunting wild longhorns changed horses. The first week they added sixty cows to their gather, and the second week, seventy-five.

  “This is too good to last,” said Marty.

  He was right. Ten and Herndon had just left one hogtied, struggling longhorn and were in search of another when they saw the seven riders. Unobserved, from a stand of cottonwoods, Ten and Herndon watched the men ride across the river and along the west bank, heading south.

  “Bodie Tomlin and his bunch,” said Herndon. “We’re rid of them for a few days, but somebody in the settlements will catch hell.”

  “All the hell-raising may not be in the settlements,” said Ten. “You can bet your horse and saddle the Comanches will know there’s seven less whites up here in the brakes.”

  It happened the fourth day after Tomlin’s gang had ridden out. Marty and Chris had been left to defend the camp and brand captured longhorns. The rest of the outfit had ridden downriver at first light, in pursuit of more wild cows. They were no more than an hour from camp when they reined up, reading a grim message on the river’s sandy banks. The water was shallow, and eleven riders had crossed. They rode unshod horses.

  “Comanches!” said Lou.

  “But they’re riding east,” said Wes. “Maybe they’ll keep going.”

  “We can’t risk that,” said Ten. “They crossed here about the time we rode out. We may already be too late. Let’s ride!”

  They kicked their horses into a gallop, and almost immediately they heard the distant thunder of rifles.

  “They’ll expect us from downriver,” shouted Ten. “We’ll ride east and double back.”

  They tied their horses almost a mile from the besieged camp.

  “On foot from here,” said Ten. “Some of them will be on the east wall of the canyon, overlooking our camp. Don’t shoot until I do. Make every shot count.”

  As they ran through the woods, one of the rifles in the canyon camp went silent. They were halfway through a scrub oak thicket when somewhere to their left a horse nickered.

  “Spread out and belly-down,” said Ten. “They know we’re here.”

  He went down just as an arrow thudded into an oak, chest high. Leaves long since fallen, the scrub oak was bare, offering little cover for the attacked or the attackers. The Comanches couldn’t advance, and their only retreat was along the sparsely wooded banks of the river. So they turned and fought. Ten cut loose with his Henry, and rifles roared on either side of him. There was no time to aim, to select a target. The Comanches were coming too fast, moving from tree to tree, utilizing what little cover there was. While they’d lost the element of surprise, they were laying down a deadly fire. Ten began raking the woods with .44 slugs as fast as he could cock and fire the Henry. Within his field of vision two Comanches fell, one of them victim to his Henry. Suddenly there was no movement, nothing to shoot at. The firing from the camp had ceased. Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

  “Ten?” shouted Marty. “We got a couple of the bastards, but Chris is hurt.”

  Cautiously, Ten got to his knees. When his movement drew no fire, he looked around him, seeking his companions. He found Herndon and Lou waiting for him to make a move, and Wes with the left sleeve of his shirt bloody.

  “We’re here, Marty,” he called. “They nicked We
s, but we got some of them.” He turned to the others. “Be careful getting back to the horses. I aim to be sure they’ve gone, and to see how many we took out of the fight.”

  Ten knew his force had accounted for three Comanches, and Marty was claiming two more. Having half their number shot down should have convinced this bunch their medicine was bad. It was a superstition common to most tribes, and a war party whose luck had gone sour might simply withdraw from a fight. Ten found where the Comanches had fallen, but the dead had been taken away. Only patches of dried blood on the ground attested to the accuracy of their fire. Ten followed the sign of their retreat to a thicket where their horses had been concealed. They had ridden away, making no effort to conceal their tracks. Ten hurried back to his own horse. His concern was for Wes and Chris. The worry in Marty’s voice had told him the girl’s wound was serious. He found Wes with his shirt off, and Lou tying a bandage around his upper arm. The fire had been stirred to life, and water was starting to boil. Chris lay on her back, her head on a saddle. From the inside of her right thigh protruded the ugly shaft of a Comanche arrow. Marty was kneeling beside her. When Ten reined up, she opened her eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not much good in a fight.”

  “You did your best,” said Ten. “There was just the two of you, against eleven of them. Not very good odds for us, but we killed five and wounded another. If there’s any fault, it’s mine. I didn’t take the Comanche threat serious enough. Marty, one of us will have to drive that arrow on through.”

  Chris looked at Ten, then at Marty.

  “Sorry, Chris,” said Marty. “There’s a barb. It’ll have to be driven out, pushed on through.”

  The girl’s face paled, but when she looked at Ten, she blushed. It was an awkward place for a wound, especially an arrow wound. Her Levi’s would have to be cut away. Marty came to the embarrassed girl’s rescue.

  “I’ve done this before, Ten. You and Hern will have to drift off down the canyon a ways. Lou can stay, if she wants.”

  “No,” said Lou. “I’ll take a walk with Ten and Hern.”

  “Chris is goin’ to be the first to sample that jug of whiskey we brought from Natchez,” said Herndon.

  “Ugh!” said Chris. “Do I have to?”

  “No,” said Marty, “if you can stand having that arrow driven the rest of the way through your leg. The whiskey will put you under for a while. It’s all we got.”

  “Get the whiskey, then,” said Chris.

  Herndon brought the jug.

  “Give me an hour,” said Marty, “but don’t go too far. This kind of thing is hell on a man’s nerves, and I can’t think about anything else. I don’t hanker to have an arrow in my back while I’m drivin’ this one out of her leg.”

  “They won’t be back,” said Ten, “but we’ll be close enough to see the east rim and the fence at the head of the canyon.”

  When the others had gone, Marty stirred the coals under the boiling water. Chris sat there holding the jug of whiskey. She looked up at him.

  “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

  “No,” he said, “but it was me or Ten.”

  “How much of this stuff do I have to swallow?”

  “Enough to put you out cold. Even then, this is goin’ to be hard on me.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I know why. Thank you.”

  She choked and gagged on the whiskey, losing as much as she swallowed.

  “I’m afraid I’m…going to…be sick,” she gasped.

  “Try to keep it down,” he said, “else you’ll have to do it again.”

  She forced down as much as she could, then lay back gasping. Marty took the blankets from her bedroll and, with her help, managed to get them under her. When the ordeal was over, he would cover her with his blankets.

  “I’ll have to cut your Levi’s,” he said.

  “I—I only have one other pair. Is there no way to…take them off?”

  “Not with that arrow in your leg. I’ll have to leave most of the shaft in place, so there’s enough length to push it on through.”

  “Drive the arrow on through, out of the way,” she said. “Then just take them down as far…as you need to.”

  Wrapping his bandanna around his hand, he turned to the fire for the pan of boiling water.

  “Marty.”

  She spoke so softly, he barely heard her. He left the water to boil and knelt beside her. She reached her arms for him, and he leaned to meet them. For a long moment she held him close, and he could feel the fever in her flushed face. He could feel her arms trembling. He held her until he felt her going limp, then gently drew away. Her eyes were closed. The time had come.

  He removed the shells from his Colt. With his knife he weakened the feathered end of the arrow’s shaft until he could break it. Finally there was nothing left but to drive the rest of it on through. He had seen it done only once, and had never done it himself. He had to get on with it, before he lost his nerve. He began the grisly chore, and each time the butt of the Colt struck the shaft of the arrow, Chris groaned. He clenched his teeth in response to her pain, and the pistol barrel became slippery in his sweating hands. He paused just long enough to wipe them on his Levi’s. Her painful responses became more intense, and he feared the effects of the whiskey might wear off before he was finished. Finally he was able to feel the barbed tip, and he drove it out with a final blow from the butt of his Colt. Emotionally and physically drained, his shaking hands could barely draw the arrow’s shaft through the cruel channel he had prepared for it. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and he sleeved more of it from his burning eyes.

  Now he must cauterize and bandage the wound. He felt a moment of guilt as he unbuttoned the unconscious girl’s Levi’s. She wore nothing under them. But once he saw the wound, and the swollen, purple flesh, his concern for her overcame everything else. Infection was the killer they had to contend with.

  He tore one of his undershirts in half, making two bandages. The first he soaked with whiskey, using it to cover the torn flesh where the arrow’s barb had been driven out. Then he tipped the jug, pouring whiskey into the wound where the arrow had gone in. Over this wound he placed the second bandage, soaking it with the whiskey. Finally he bound the bandages in place, so that the restless girl’s movements wouldn’t loosen them. He took the blankets from his bedroll, covered her, and tucked them in around her. She was feverish, and would have to swallow some more of the detested whiskey. He folded her torn, bloody Levi’s and put them under her saddle. Somehow, he didn’t want the others knowing she was naked beneath the blankets.

  The outfit spent the rest of the day in camp. Chris had developed a raging fever. Until her condition improved, nobody was of a mind to ride out. Marty forced her to swallow more of the whiskey, until only a little remained. Supper was a silent, cheerless affair. Marty left the girl’s side only to go for more cold water. Time after time he bathed her fevered brow. Sometime after midnight her fever broke. In the dim light from the fire, they could see the sweat on her face. She opened her eyes, and when she spoke, they held their breath.

  “I don’t ever want any more whiskey.”

  Lou was the first to laugh, and the others joined in.

  Two days after the Comanche attack, Ten made some decisions and some changes.

  “Marty, you and Chris will stay here until her wound heals. Forget the branding for a while. So we don’t lose any time with the gather, the rest of us will ride the brakes as usual. But we’ll do one thing we haven’t been doing. When we ride out every morning, we’ll scout the area to the south, for Indian sign. If trouble comes from another direction—from Brady Ward and the Tomlin gang—grab your rifle and fire three shots. We’ll come on the run.”

  Chris was out of the saddle for two weeks, but insisted on hobbling about the camp, doing all the cooking. By December 15, 1865, their gather had grown to six hundred head. A week before Christmas the weather turned chill and wet. Rain, a steady drizzle, hounded
them for seven straight days. A continual west wind added to their misery, making the chill seem more intense than it actually was. All they had in their favor was a dry camp. The west wall of the canyon jutted out over the river, the overhang protecting them from wind and rain.

  “If I could have one wish,” said Lou, “it would be for a whole day of just being dry, next to a big, warm fire.”

  “You’re going to get that wish,” said Ten. “Tomorrow’s Christmas. We’re going to spend it eating, sleeping, and staying dry.”

  Just the prospect of a single day’s respite from the miserable weather cheered them, but Ten’s mood remained somber. He found himself envying Wes and Marty. They had Lou and Chris to share their feelings, their worries, their troubles. Wes and Lou, Marty and Chris. They were always together, while he spent all his time with Herndon. He was unable to talk to Herndon, because it was his concern for Herndon that troubled him. The man was sick. He needed a warm, dry climate, and the winter months in Texas were anything but that. Ten was constantly recalling his first conversation with Herndon, aboard The New Orleans. Herndon had spoken lightly of his release from the Confederate army, and Ten recalled his exact words:

  “…I was lucky. I got lung fever, and they kicked me out after a year.”

  Ten had witnessed some of Herndon’s agonized coughing fits. They had become more frequent in the chill, rainy weather. They spared him while he rested, troubling him most during the brutal days in the saddle. Herndon would cough until his breath came in short, painful gasps. His face had the pallor of death, and his hands shook. On the ground, following the seizures, was a sprinkling of blood.

  Tenatse Chisholm and Maynard Herndon shared an uncomfortable secret. They both knew Herndon was dying.

  16

  Despite André LeBeau’s questionable conduct, the LeBeau name still had some social clout. While Priscilla LeBeau detested social climbers and their pretensions, she wasn’t above using them when the need arose. She started by learning the names of the men who claimed to have ridden down and killed Tenatse Chisholm. While custom forbade her going directly to these men, their wives were fair game. The truth, at least some of it, began to emerge. The so-called “posse” didn’t know who they had killed. The dead men had been ex-Confederates, not one of them young enough to be Tenatse Chisholm! Somehow, somewhere, he was alive, and she had to get word to him that she was in New Orleans. She toyed with the idea of writing to Jesse Chisholm, but something Ten had told her came to mind. She doubted Ten would be coming back to New Orleans with Chisholm’s trade goods, and if he didn’t, then who would? Perhaps Chisholm himself. The day after Christmas, she prowled through the commercial buildings and warehouses until she found the offices of Roberts and Company.