“Get down and join us,” the man said. “We were just about to have coffee.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, swinging down, the horse between me and them. “This is mighty dry country.”
My comment brought no reaction from them, which unproved my hunch that they had no idea of the fix they were in. For there was no water anywhere around. They had two barrels slung to the side of the wagon, but I figured they weren’t anywheres near full, and the nearest water—if there was any there—was a good forty miles away.
“You folks got yourselves in a pack of trouble,” I commented. “You’ll be lucky to get out of here alive.”
They both looked at me, just looked, as if trying to understand me. “What do you mean by that?” the girl asked.
“Nearest water I know of is forty miles from here … if the creek ain’t dry, which it sometimes is. If it’s dry, you got twenty miles further to go. Even if you could haul the wagon—which you can’t—it would mean days from here. You’re way off the trail.”
“It’s a short cut.”
“Whoever told you that had no love for you. The only place this will shortcut you to is the dry side of hell.”
They both were looking hard at me.
“Your best chance is to try walking out,” I said. “At best you got a fifty-fifty chance.”
“But there’s your horse.” He gave me a cool look. “My sister and I could share it.”
Now, I’ve come up against some mean folks in my time, but nobody quite as cool about it as these. They were in trouble, but they either had no realization of how much trouble, or they were almighty sure of themselves.
“You ain’t got my horse, amigo,” I said, “and you ain’t about to get him. And if you had him, you’d not know which way to go. If you knew where to go, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
They exchanged a glance. They did not believe me, and they still wanted that horse of mine.
“You’ve got a chance,” I added, “if I ride out of here and send somebody back with a team to haul the wagon out. That’s if I can find somebody who’s willing to come out here.
“This here is Comanche country,” I went on. “Kiowas to the north, and Apaches west and south. Nobody wants to come into this country at all.”
All of a sudden I had a feeling. They were not worried, because they were waiting for something, or somebody. Something they knew would happen. Nothing I had said had impressed them in the least. They were simply waiting.
The afternoon was almost gone, and it lacked only a few hours until darkness. Was there somebody else out there? Somebody I had not seen or heard?
Suddenly the itchy feet of fear were crawling right up my back. Somebody was out there, somewhere, watching me.
“The closest place for you is Borregos Plaza,” I said, “or maybe Fort Bascom, over west of here.” All the time I was trying to figure which way trouble would come from.
They were eastern folk, but I wouldn’t think of them as tenderfeet. There was much they didn’t know of the West, if they knew anything at all about it, but they had a quality about them … they were ice-hard and without mercy. I had me a hunch that when in doubt they would kill, without rhyme or reason.
The company I’d known since leaving the mountains, and much of it before that, had been hard company. Feuding and fighting men, hard-working and hard-drinking men often enough, but they had fought from anger or for pay; and when they killed it was from anger or for pay, or perhaps, by blunder, but not as these two would kill.
The girl had poured a cup of coffee for me. I’d been making believe to loosen the cinch on the saddle, but had not done so. I had an idea that when I left out of there it would be of a sudden with no time to tighten a cinch.
Turning my horse, I walked toward her, keeping the horse between me and where I suspected their man to be, if man there was. Close to the fire I stopped and squatted on my heels, and glanced quickly over to where I thought he was at, and just as my eyes shifted I saw that girl shove something back in the pocket of her skirt.
Now, nothing in my life led me to be what you’d call a trusting man. Back in the Tennessee hills we did a sight of swapping and a boy soon learned that when it came to swapping he couldn’t trust even his own kin. It was a game, sort of, and we all swapped back and forth and the best stories told around the cracker barrel in the store at the crossroads or around a cabin fire were about swaps and swapping, and about who got taken. This just naturally made you grow up sort of skeptical. So when that dewy-eyed girl handed me that coffee I took it, longing for a swallow, but just a mite afraid it might be my last. So I held it, wondering how a man could keep from drinking it without arousing suspicions.
Back on Clinch Mountain there was an old-timer who could set and talk by the hour and not say a word a body could recall; he would just ramble on spreading words around like a man forking hay on a stack. Right then I decided to talk.
” ‘Bout the time I sighted you folks I was gettin’ fed to the teeth with my own company, and there’s just so much you can say to a horse. You never talked to a horse? Ma’am, you just ain’t ridden far in lonesome country. Why, I’d reach out to say the horses of this man’s territory know more about what’s going on than anybody else. Everybody out here talks to his horse. I’ve seen the time I hadn’t nobody else to talk to, weeks on end.
“You take this here country now. A man can ride for days and not seen even a hump in the ground, let alone a man or a horse. Maybe you’d sight some antelope, or a herd of buffalo, although they are coming up scarce about now. A body can just ride on and on across the country, watching far-off rain squalls or maybe buzzards. Not much else to see.
“And traveling in this area ain’t just what you’re expecting. Now you folks, for instance. You head west from here, and what do you find? A canyon maybe three, four hundred feet deep. It’s cap-rock country, so usually where the land breaks off there’s a drop of four to fourteen feet of sheer rock, then a steep slope off to the bottom, and you may go miles before you can find a spot to go down into the canyon, or a place to climb out.
“You never see those canyons until you’re right on top of them. Comanches used to hole up in them and wait for the Comancheros coming out from Santa Fe to trade with ’em. I come upon an Indian camp one time when there must have been seven or eight thousand head of horses there—fine stock, some of them.”
Both of them were watching me. I was holding the cup in my hand, gesturing with it once in a while, just running off at the mouth like that old coot back in the hills.
“You take Indians now, they’re all around you before you know they’re in the country. And women folks—if they know you got a woman along, they’ll hunt you for miles.
“You people here, you’re ripe for the picking. Any Comanche youngster could shoot you both before you even knew he were near. I’d say without help you ain’t got a chance of getting out of here.
“You figure on my horse? Why, he couldn’t carry the both of you even half the distance you got to go. And your wagon would have to be left where it is. Take a six-ox team to move that out of here, heavy like it is.”
“What makes you think our wagon is heavy?”
Me, I grinned at him, and shoved my hat back a mite with the lip of the cup. “Why, your tracks. The deep bite they take into the prairie tells a body that. Moreover, I’d lay a bet the Indians know where you are, and are closing in about now.”
“Don’t be silly,” the girl said. “If they knew where we were and wanted to attack they would have done it long since.”
I chuckled. “That’s your thinkin’, but it ain’t Injun thinkin’. You take those Indians now, to speak proper of them—they know you ain’t going no place. They know where that canyon is up ahead, and they know what you’ll have to do when you get there. Meanwhile you’re getting closer and closer to where they want you. They probably have a camp some place up ahead, and when you get close enough so they won’t have to pack all they take from you for any distance, why, they’ll move in.”