The thing was, she was avoiding me without any need. I’d trouble enough, without giving them excuse to shoot me. If they did shoot me, I was determined that I wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
The next morning we took the herd across the Canadian. It was low water, and we had to swim only a short piece. Mostly it was just crossing a wide, sandy wash. Now we were moving up onto the plains. The grass was brown but there was plenty of it; and because of the recent rains there were pools of water.
Noah Gates was riding point when I came up to him. “The Chisholm Trail’s not far ahead,” I said to him. “We can ride north for Abilene.”
There were nine of us, and the girl. Or should I say there were nine of them and one of me? For I stood alone. I knew it and they knew it. I’d thought that maybe I might win them over by hard work and doing more than my share, but their minds were closed against me. I had come among them a stranger. I had bargained when they were desperate and afraid, and they hated me because I had not been afraid, and because their fear had driven them to surrender. But my willingness to fight had been my only stock in trade. It was all I had to sell, and had I been killed not one of them would have wasted a thought on me.
It worried me now to consider what lay before us. We were riding into Indian lands, and there’s nobody quicker to spot weakness in a man than an Indian. A brave man might ride through the middle of an Indian band, where a frightened man wouldn’t get twenty feet. And there wasn’t much doubt that we were going to meet Indians.
It was almost noon when a brindle steer cut for the brush. I was riding the buckskin, which had proved to be a top cutting horse, and the buckskin went after that steer like a coyote after a jack rabbit. No matter which way he turned, the buckskin was right on him, so the steer headed back for the herd.
Pulling up on the edge of the brush, I started to reach for my tobacco. There was a clump of brush nearby, and some cottonwoods. I was lighting a smoke when I heard a low voice call from the brush. It was the redhead. She was standing beside a big cottonwood, her horse alongside. “Come over here,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
Curious, I glanced around. The herd was grazing along, moving a few steps at a time. We’d come upon good grass, and Gates was letting them make their own pace. Turning my horse, I walked it over to where she stood.
“Get down. I have to talk to you.” Swinging down, I took off my hat and went up to her. She came even closer. She was an almighty pretty girl, with the kind of a body that could have made even some of those oldsters feel like a boy. But I didn’t trust her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked me. “Don’t you even have time to talk to me?”
All of a sudder she threw both arms around me. Not around my neck but around my arms, and even as she grabbed me I heard a stir behind me, and as I struggled to throw her off, something crashed down on my skull. The next thing I knew I was on my face in the dusty grass and somebody was fumbling in my pockets.
“It ain’t there, damn it!” someone said. The voice was not familiar.
I started to move, but it was the wrong thing, because whoever it was clobbered me again, and I heard the girl laugh.
The next thing I knew was the sound of rain falling on a hide tent, and the crackling of a fire. My eyes opened on a smoky firelight. I must have tried to move, for suddenly there was a face leaning over me, and I heard some muttered words in Shawnee. Then another face was there—this was the young Indian from whom I’d traded the buckskin.
“You feel better?” he asked.
“Where am I?”
“Near the Washita.”
It came bad to me then—the redhead grabbing my arms, and somebody—a young man by the sound of his voice—clobbering me.
“Where’s my hat?” I asked.
I started to sit up but pain hit me like a shot in the skull, and I felt bad holding my head with both hands.
The young Shawnee brought me a hat. “That’s not mine,” I told him.
“Pretty poor hat,” he said. “Maybe somebody took yours?”
“You found me. What did the tracks look like?”
He squatted on his heels, chewing on a chunk of jerky. “A girl waited. You rode up and got down. Somebody was behind a tree, waiting—he hit you—maybe two, three hours later we found you.”
Carefully I sat up, my head swimming. I looked over at him. “Thanks,” I said.
Grinning, he said, “Thank your hard head,” and we both laughed.
“And you?” I said. “You are with the Shawnees, but your English is good.”
“My full name is Jim Bigbear, and I am a full-blooded Indian. Trouble is, when I was only a boy I hired on with a cattle outfit as a horse wrangler. I’ve worked for cattle and freight outfits ever since, except one time when I scouted for the army for a few months. Anyway you look at it, I’m a maverick. I’m not a white man, but I don’t fit in with the Indians any longer, either.”
“You belong with me,” I said. “We’re cut from the same hide. And now,” I asked, “who was it hit me?”
Jim helped himself to my tobacco and answered my question. “One of the men who followed your herd. A young man who rides a black horse.”
I contemplated that. No young men were with our outfit, nor any black horses. Jim had said one of the men who followed the herd, and I knew of no such men.
“Four men followed you,” he went on. “At night one comes up close, and sometimes talks with the girl.”
Evidently at one such meeting they had decided to steal my contract with the drovers.
Had they any connection with Noah Gates and his crowd? The more I considered the situation and their actions, the more I doubted it.
“You will go after them now?” Jim asked.
Then I explained to him about the cattle, and he listened with attention. “It seems to me you could use some help.”
“I’d not turn it down if it comes, but I’d ask no man to buy in with me. If there’s trouble, it will be gun trouble.”
“I’ve worked with cow ranches since I was knee-high,” he said, “so whenever you’re ready to ride …”
“We’ll eat,” I said, “then we’ll go.”
We took a pack horse and two spare mounts and made our start, riding steady and hard until noontime. Then he made coffee and swapped horses. A little short of sundown we shifted our saddles back to the original horses and rode on until midnight. By the time we rolled into our blankets it was safe to say we had covered as much ground in one day as the cattle would in four.
But there was no question about it. I was in no shape to ride. Three times I’d had to pause to throw up, and my head drummed all day long. Half the time I was only partly conscious, but I stayed in my saddle and kept moving.
On the second day we eased the pace a mite, but started early and took a two-hour break to let the horses graze on some good grass. By sundown we had gained two more days on the herd.
No sooner had we started on the third day than we saw the graves. Thev were fresh graves, and the names were familiar. Earl Williston had been the youngest of the crowd with our herd, and he had died here. Gene Brash I scarcely knew, but I remembered the name. There had been nine men and the girl. Now there were only seven left, and likely some of them were wounded.
Jim was scouting around. “Kiowas—eight or ten of them, and they ran off some stock. Twenty, twenty-five head.”
“Will they go far?”
“Kiowas? Not on your life. They’re not worried, so they’ll ride off to camp by water and they’ll roast some beef. They know the cattle drivers will need every man they’ve got to hold the cattle.”
We trailed the Kiowas west about six, seven miles before we smelled smoke. The cattle were grazing on a small meadow, and the Kiowas had butchered a steer.
“I’ll spook their horses. You go after the cattle.”