He was a sullen man on being awakened in the night and wanted to talk to nobody. In the night I always felt good and took to awakening at any hour with no problems. I also could do a fair job of sleeping at any hour, given the chance, which was rare.
Charlie Farnurn never talked much at any time so he and Nick were suited. And I had sense enough to keep my trap shut. We all sat around the fire staring at it with blank faces like so many bumps on a log, slowly letting the coffee take the kinks out of us. After a while I got up and went out to throw my kak on a little buckskin I was using for a night horse.
It could move like a cat and see like one, and was a horse I trusted for night work, and she seemed to take to me. It nuzzled at me and I fed it a chunk of carrot I had swiped from the chuckbox.
In the western lands a man had best be good friends with his horse or he may never have another friend or need of one. A man afoot in wild country is a man who may not live out the day … which is why horse-stealing was the major sin. In many cases if you stole a man’s horse you condemned him to death, a much less pleasant death than if you’d just up and shot him.
The buckskin humped its back a couple of times to show me it was in good shape and ready for work and also that it would take no nonsense from its rider. That horse wanted to know I was wide awake, and after those bumps she gave me, I was.
Shadow and Farnum followed and we rode out, checking in with the riders we relieved and saw them drift off to the fire. They’d probably have coffee, chew the fat a little and then hit the sack, for they were a tired lot. Cattle drives don’t leave a man much in the spirit of playing the night owl. There’s nothing like a long cattle drive for making a good Christian out of a man … for at least as long as the drive lasts.
That little buckskin taken out, moving around the herd. Things look different at night, so on the first couple of trips around I was mostly locating landmarks and spotting the known troublemakers among the steers. This being a mixed herd it was more apt to stampede than had it been one or the other, but we had a couple of steers and one cow that were plumb flighty, ready to jump at the slightest noise.
We sang to ’em. Then they hear your voice coming and aren’t startled by you. Ride up quick on a steer and he’s liable to jump right off the ground and run clean out of the county. My voice isn’t much, but I often used to tell folks I was a singer, and that I’d sung for crowds of up to three thousand. I didn’t tell them I was talking of cows, but they had heard my voice and probably guessed. Galloway might have made ’em believe it, he was that much of a singer.
Shadow stopped to talk when we met the second time around. “The breed was telling me he thinks its too quiet. Nothing stirring out in the brush, and there should be.”
“Well, let’s play it that way,” I said. “Let’s stay on our toes.”
“What do you think about it?”
“Look,” I said, “if something starts them running we got to keep them off the boys so they won’t get tramped. Let’s make it so each time we pass the camp we slow up so there’s somebody in position most of the time. Then if the cattle start to run, try to keep them headed east and out of the canyons. If they get into those canyons and up into the breaks we’ll never get them out before snow flies, and that means we’ll never get them out.”
It was still over an hour before daylight when all of a sudden somebody stepped out of the trees and stood there. Rifle ready, I rode up, although waiting for me like that he wasn’t apt to be an enemy. It was an Indian.
“Powder Face say tell you man come … maybe ten, twelve man.”
“Thanks,” I said, but the Indian did not fade into the brush.
“Powder Face say he thinks they try Indian trick. Use mountain-lion skin.”
And that time he did disappear, but it was a comfort to know they were close by.
Nick Shadow closed in. “Was that you talking?”
So I told him. He knew the trick as well as me. The Indians used to do it with a fresh puma hide. They’d get in close and wave the skin and the cattle would get that smell of cat, and then one of the Indians would imitate the scream and those cattle would be gone.
We started on and I was almost to the camp when I heard that scream, and those cattle came off the ground with a lunge. They made a break toward the camp and I jerked out my pistol and let go with a shot into the air and a wild, Comanche yell. Some of them veered, but some of the others I couldn’t reach and they went through camp just a hellin’. Pots and pans went every which way. I heard a pistol shot and then another and then a scream, and all of a sudden that herd was gone.
All that was left was dust and the sound of thundering hoofs.
They were headed for the Mancos River and that was one of the reasons I’d stopped where I had. If they had a run of several miles and then reached the river they might stop to drink. This bunch was pretty fat anyway, and they weren’t like a bunch of wild longhorns all hungry for water who might run for hours.
Wheeling around I rode into camp. It was a shambles. First off I saw a man on the ground or what had been a man. It was one of the Tyler boys. The only, way I could tell was by the silver conchas he wore on bis belt.
Even as I swung up, Parmalee came down out of a tree. The cook came out of the rocks, and the other two had taken shelter behind the wagon. My pistol shot had come just in time to give them a split second.
“Tyler,” I said, “you and Cookie take care of him.” I indicated the dead man. “Farn, you’d best go help with your cattle.”
“What about you?” he asked.
‘Tm going to ride up the canyon. I want to read some sign.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. I’ll take Charlie Farnum. Unless I’m mistaken you’ll find your herd at the river and my Indians will be there too.”
Nick Shadow had gone down after the cattle, but I’d heard Farnum’s horse slow down and I figured he had the same idea I had. I rode out from the camp and he was a-settin’ there waiting for me.
“Figured you might like to look around,” he said, and we started walking our horses slow, keeping to the open ground where we made less sound. Once we drew up to listen, and after a moment Charlie said, “Why you do that for those Indians?”
“They’re good folks,” I said, “and this was their country. It’s nobody’s fault as to what’s happened. Wherever there’s open country there’ll be people coming hungry for land, and it wouldn’t have made much sense to let a lot of folks in Europe starve to death when there was miles and miles of unused land awaiting.
“The Indian would have had a better deal, and should have but for a lot of greedy white men and because of a few scalp-hungry Indians. There was right and wrong on both sides. I’m doing no crying for the Indian. He made his fight but he never could get enough guns and ammunition and the white men kept moving in, but when old Powder Face came to me he came honest, and he told me who he was and what he’d done, and I made him welcome. I figure those boys will make good hands and as far as I’m concerned they’re here forever.”
After that we shut up and rode on, and pretty soon we noticed our horses ears go up like they saw something or smelled something, and sure enough there was a fire, and a half dozen men around it, and one young feller had that cat hide in his hands and he was laughing at the way the herd took off. The rest of them must have been off following the herd. I figured Powder Face and Nick Shadow would take care of them.