Ralph Compton The Cheyenne Trail Read online

  “The Flying U,” Argus said. “Chip wants ’em.”

  “Oh yeah, your friend, boss. He’s buyin’ up your herd?”

  “Yep, Roy. He sure is. And we’ve got to move fast. I want a thousand head runnin’ south in two days.”

  “Two days?”

  Roy looked around at the scattered cattle. It would take a day just to round up those that he saw in the north pasture. No telling how long it would take to gather up the herds out of the south and east pastures, some seven or eight hundred head, at least.

  “Can’t be done, boss,” Roy said. He stretched a bony finger to tilt his hat back on his head. He scratched a grimy fingernail against his scalp as if to stir the thoughts inside his skull.

  He was a stubby mass of muscle and sinew, with a game leg that he broke in a stampede when he was a boy, skin turned leathery and brown from hours in the saddle, close-set blue eyes, and tallow hair, crooked nose from more than one bar fight, and lips stained brown by the tobacco he chewed day in and day out. His hands were gnarled and cracked, rough as sandpaper and scarred from those same fistfights in dim-lit saloons all across Nebraska and Kansas with some Colorado thrown in for good measure.

  “Got to do it,” Reese said. “Otherwise we’ll be swarmed over by hungry redskins and start losin’ cattle right and left.”

  “Huh?” Roy said.

  Argus told him about Silver Bear and his threats.

  Roy squared his hat and tightened up on his reins.

  “That’s different,” he said. “I’d better get started right away.”

  “Can you do it, Roy?” Reese asked.

  “I can do it. We got enough hands if I can beat the laziness out of ’em, put a burr under their blankets.”

  “Get to it,” Argus said.

  Reese and Argus watched Roy ride off toward the south pasture, weaving his way through clumps of bunched cattle that eyed him while they chewed their cuds.

  “If anyone can get the hands to put their noses to the grindstone, it’s Roy,” Argus said.

  “You’d better pitch in, Argus. We’re goin’ to move these cows out in two days.”

  “I’ll go get Jimmy John and Lonnie,” Argus said. “They should be cleanin’ out that tank in the home pasture. I’ll settle the gather in the south pasture and be ready to move ’em in two long, hard days.”

  Reese smiled.

  “I’m countin’ on it,” he said. “I’ll tell Checkers to stock up the chuck wagon for the trip to Cheyenne.”

  “I’ll get the stomach remedy when I get to the bunkhouse,” Argus cracked.

  Reese knew what he meant. Orville Birdwell, the man they called “Checkers” because he was fond of the board game, had come with two dozen head of cattle looking for a job. And he had a chuck wagon that he said he’d driven and cooked from on a drive from south Texas to Salina, Kansas. He had done some cooking during roundup, and only a couple of the men had gotten sick. Seemed Checkers had used a soapy bowl when he made up a stew. One of the hands found a dirty sock in his bowl and promptly threw up his supper.

  Reese rode off to the ranch house to tell Louella that she’d be alone for a few weeks. He wondered if she could manage without his help. She had broken her hip in a fall and was in constant pain. Limped around the house and had to lie down a lot. He had promised her that he would hire a maid to take care of her sometime, but he had not found one willing to leave Bismarck and live on the lonesome prairie. And the ones he had talked to were either too young or two old.

  He hated to leave her alone while he helped drive the herd to Cheyenne, but she would want to keep an eye on the place.

  He would not tell her about Silver Bear and his band. No need to worry her about a bunch of renegade redskins.

  He should have killed Silver Bear while he’d had the chance. It was something he hoped he would not live to regret.

  He looked to the west and saw puffs of smoke rising from a mesa. He wondered what the smoke said. And on the same level, he saw something else. The glitter of a mirror flashing in the sunlight.

  There was sure a lot of talk, and he didn’t understand one word of it.

  Chapter 3

  Speckled Hawk read the smoke signals and the mirror as he and the others rode toward the mesa. He knew that Silver Bear was angry and not paying attention to what the smoke was saying and what the signaling mirror was telling him. That would be White Duck with the mirror.

  Yellow Horse deciphered the coded messages too. His impassive face did not reveal his emotions as the messages sank in. He pulled his own mirror from a small leather pouch attached to his loincloth. He held it up so that the sun’s rays struck it an angle. He moved his wrist to spell out a message.

  “Go back to camp. I will tell Silver Bear what you have said.”

  One of the braves at the top of the mesa smothered the fire with a blanket and kicked sand onto it. The other man put his mirror in a pouch. The two walked off the mesa to their horses, which were ground-tied at the base of the limestone bluff.

  Silver Bear looked up at the mesa and saw that there was no more smoke and that the men atop it were gone.

  “We will gather at the camp and speak to one another of what to do,” Silver Bear said to his fellow braves.

  “Yes,” Yellow Horse said. “It will be good to talk of these things.”

  “We will smoke the pipe and make offerings to the four directions.”

  “Yes. We have tobacco,” Yellow Horse said.

  “We do not have food,” White Duck said. “We will have to eat our moccasins.”

  “We will get the food we need,” Silver Bear said. “We will take some cattle from the White Eyes.”

  “Yes,” Yellow Horse said.

  They passed the mesa that rose from the prairie like some ancient monument. Tendrils of smoke still hung in the air and rose until it disappeared.

  “There is bad news, Silver Bear,” Yellow Horse said as they came within an arrow’s shot from their camp above a deep arroyo beyond the mesa.

  “Is there? Where did you hear bad news?”

  “The shining glass. The smoke.”

  “What is this news, Yellow Horse?”

  “Your woman, Bright Bead.”

  “Yes?”

  “She is dead. She died of the empty stomach sickness. There is much wailing in camp.”

  Silver Bear said nothing. His stoic face did not show any emotion.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Bright Bead. She had become very thin and her eyes had filled with water. She moaned in pain every night when they lay on the blanket together.

  A deep sadness engulfed Silver Bear as he rode toward the Cheyenne camp. No more would he have his woman’s tender touch when they lay down in their blankets at night. No more would he hear her soft voice as she spoke words of admiration for him. No more would he feel her warmth on cold winter nights when they clung to each other, their breaths intermingling as they whispered love words to each other.

  He heard the women keening as they approached the branch-covered lean-tos of their camp. The women sang the death lament and poured handfuls of dirt over their heads and into their hair.

  The trilling tongues of the women continued to shriek their grief as Silver Bear and the others dismounted.

  He saw the body of his wife lying on a buffalo robe under his lean-to.

  One of the women, the oldest one of the females, approached him. It was Little Basket and her face was smeared with dirt, her hair clogged with sand and twigs.

  “Silver Bear,” she said. “I have sorrow for my sister, who lies in your shelter. She is with the Great Spirit now and no longer has hunger.”

  “That is so,” Silver Bear said. “She is in the sky now, on the star path. She is going back home.”

  The women washed and painted the face of Bright Bead and
then she was taken to a platform constructed of rocks piled upon one another. This would serve as her scaffold where she would allow her body to return to the earth as her sightless eyes stared up at the sky where her spirit made the trek along the star path to where the Great Spirit dwelled.

  That night there was much chanting as the men and women vocalized their grief and expressed their sadness at losing a little sister. Through it all, Silver Bear remained impassive, thinking of the woman he had loved who was now gone, leaving a big emptiness in his heart.

  Then the pipe was passed around as the women retired to their lean-tos. The campfire blazed high and spewed its sparks into the dark night sky so that they looked like golden fireflies winking their lights on and off as they died in flight.

  “We must not have more of our women die of the hunger sickness,” Silver Bear said. “There is plenty of food waiting for us on the white man’s land. We will get that food and we will drive the Long Knife from his land.”

  “How will we do this, Silver Bear?” asked Whining Dog, who passed the pipe to the man sitting next to him.

  “There is one thing the white man fears more than all other fearsome things,” Silver Bear said.

  “We have no rifles,” Yellow Horse said. “We have only bows and a few arrows.”

  “We have knives and tomahawks,” Iron Knife said as he blew a plume of smoke over the dancing fire.

  “It is the cattle we want,” Silver Bear said. “Not the scalps of the Long Knives. We must have cattle and we must chase them and catch them.”

  “So, we do not kill the Long Knives,” Black Feather said. “We just steal their cattle. They are many. We are few.”

  Silver Bear listened to the talk and he thought about what they must do to get the cattle. He listened and he waited until the words died away and he had both their silence and their attention.

  “There is a way,” he said. “It came to me in a vision. I know how to drive the white man away from his land and take his cattle into our camp.”

  “Tell us, Silver Bear,” Black Feather said. “Tell us of your vision and how we will drive the white man off his land and return the land to our people.”

  “Yes,” Yellow Horse said, “when the Long Knives are gone, the buffalo will come back and blacken the prairie once again.”

  “We must do this fast and be careful,” Silver Bear said. “In my vision, I saw the fires of the underworld, burning the grasses and running wild across the prairie until all the white men were running and all the cattle running right into our waiting arms.”

  “Fire?” Black Feather said.

  “Yes. We will burn the White Eyes from their land. We will capture their cattle as they run away from the fire. The White Eyes will die. They will burn to death in their houses and on their horses.”

  “I have seen the prairie on fire,” Yellow Horse said. “It was a terrible sight. I saw rabbits and prairie dogs caught by the hands of the fire and I saw antelope running and buffalo gallop for miles to try and escape the flames.”

  “Yes, that might work,” Whining Dog said. “Fire. That is the way to drive the White Eyes from our land.”

  “We must carry the fire to the grassland and wait for the wind,” Silver Bear said.

  “How do we make the fire to burn the grass?” Yellow Horse asked.

  “We will gather the bulrushes at the creek and dry them in the sun. They will give us fire.”

  Silver Bear’s reply was acknowledged by grunts from the other men.

  “The women can cut the reeds and lay them out to dry,” Black Feather said.

  “Yes. That is the way,” Silver Bear said. “We will need many of the bulrushes.”

  “Two suns to dry,” Yellow Horse said. “While we starve.”

  “Two suns, yes,” Silver Bear said.

  And in the morning, the women went to the creek with their knives and tomahawks. The cattails swarmed with redwing blackbirds. The birds screeched in protest at being driven from their meeting place along the creek.

  The women laid out the cattails. The stalks with their fuzzy crowns began to dry. The warriors checked their arrows and bowstrings.

  “We must know what the white eyes are doing with their cattle,” Yellow Horse whispered to Silver Bear.

  “Remember, Yellow Horse, we have eyes and ears in the white man’s camp.”

  “But can you trust him?”

  “I trust him, Yellow Horse. He will tell us all that we wish to know.”

  The warriors were hungry and weak.

  They were tired and hungry.

  But they were ready.

  Chapter 4

  The night birds were calling when the first riders rode out to the north pasture and began the gather. There was a chill in the air as the hands began to drive the cattle from their beds and head them south over the silvered prairie.

  “Hard to see ’em all in the dark,” George Billings hollered to Johnny Whitfield, who was driving two head into a black clump of cattle who were balking about leaving their night beds.

  “You have to guess where they are,” Lonnie Willets said. “Just look for something big that’s blacker than the ground.”

  George laughed, and yelled at the cows as his horse danced back and forth behind them.

  “Where in hell is Avery?” Johnny asked when the two cows were added to the bunch. “That half-breed bastard’s always disappearin’ when there’s work to be done.”

  “He was just here a few minutes ago,” said Lonnie.

  “Likely he’s chasin’ after a lone head up at the crick,” Johnny said.

  But Vernon Avery was not tending to the gather. Instead he rode toward the Cheyenne encampment with news of the roundup and the cattle drive.

  Reese had hired him on when he turned up one day saying he was down and out. It was only later that Reese found out that Vernon Avery had a Minneconjou mother and was, supposedly, an outcast from the Lakota, or Sioux, tribe.

  Little did Reese know that Vernon was still in contact with several renegade warriors, rogue bands of Cheyenne and Lakotas, and that his loyalty was not to his father, a mountain man, but to his mother, Little Bird, who was still alive and living up in Minnesota.

  Louella Balleen walked as if she was disjointed. One hip was higher than the other and she looked as if she were aboard a tilting ship at sea. It was painful for her, and painful for Reese to watch.

  She carried two cups of coffee on a tray to their chairs in the front room after he had watched her painfully serve them both supper. And he knew that she would wash and dry the dishes without allowing him to help.

  “Of course I’ll miss you, Reese,” she said as she set their cups on a small table in front of the cowhide-covered sofa. “I like to take care of you.”

  “I know you do, Lou,” he said as he reached for his cup. “I just think you ought to let me get you help in the house.”

  “I won’t have another woman in my house,” she said. “I enjoy taking care of the house and you.”

  “But you take on too much, Lou. And you’re in pain all the time.”

  “So do you take on too much, Reese. You’re going on a cattle drive when you ought to be lying in a hammock and sipping a mint julep.”

  He laughed. “I’m not ready for that quite yet,” he said.

  They were comfortable together, Louella and Reese. They had been married a good long while and genuinely respected each other and enjoyed each other’s company when they shared a final cup of coffee at the end of a day’s hard work.

  “Doesn’t have to be a woman,” he said.

  Louella’s face took on a blank look.

  “What?” she said.

  “I could have one of the hands come in every day and sweep up, wash clothes, dust, and all that.”

  “Pshaw, Reese. You know I wouldn’t stand for that.
A man just doesn’t know what to do in a house full of dust, dirty dishes, and clothes.”

  “You could train one.”

  “Like I would train a dog or a monkey? Don’t be silly. The time I spent supervising a cowhand to clean my house would drive me bats. We won’t talk any more about this. I make do and I’m happy.”

  Reese smiled.

  He admired her for her determination and loyalty to him. It just pained him to see her suffer from that hip injury and limp around the house. She was a cripple, but she never would allow him to use that word or to acknowledge her disability.

  She looked past him at the dark window and sighed. “I keep thinking of all those men out there, trying to round up cattle in the dark.”

  “They can do it,” he said.

  “Will you take all the hands with you, Reese?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to leave you all alone, Lou. I thought I’d leave two men back here to look after the place.”

  “You mean look after me.”

  He chuckled. “We’re not taking all the cows to Cheyenne. There will be a few head left here. For seed.”

  “Who will you leave here?” she asked.

  “Maybe that kid, Tommy Chadwick, and Vernon Avery.”

  “Vernon Avery? Why him?”

  “You don’t like him?” Reese asked.

  “I don’t know him. But there’s something about him that’s not quite right. He doesn’t seem to fit in. Like the other men.”

  “He’s a half-breed.”

  “I know. But he seems, well, distant whenever I speak to him. As if he’s off in some other place.”

  “I know what you mean. He takes some getting used to.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving him here?” she asked.

  “Partly. I want harmony and cooperation on the trail. Vern, well, he lives in his own world, like you say, quiet, reserved, almost . . .”

  “Almost what?”

  “Well, distant. I just don’t think he’ll fit in with the rest of the bunch.”

  “But you trust him enough to leave him here. With me.”

  “Oh, I think Vern’s harmless enough. He’s not part Cheyenne. His mother was a Sioux, I think.”