“Because I was able to handle those Indians?”
“No, sir. I don’t regard that. It was the
way you let Wolf Walker go. That shines, mister!”
The cattle passed over the end of the mesa in the last moments of light, all shades of hide lost in a uniform darkness. The hands circled them to a stop on the flat below Clay Creek Spring, and the chuck wagon lumbered over the rocks and swung into place. While Dutch unhitched for him, the cook lowered the back of the wagon to make his table, and began setting out the grub.
Tom Chantry gathered sticks from the remains of old campfires and, using dry grass and leaves for tinder, got a small fire started. He added buffalo chips and hunted out some dried brush.
It was a good camp—the best camp so far, Tom thought. Rugger was surly, and Kincaid still avoided him, but Dutch, Helvie, and McKay were friendly and easy. The fire burned brightly, and the food tasted good. For the first time in days, Tom was not hurting anywhere, and now he had a good feeling about the fight with Wolf Walker. He did not think about the two Indians he had killed. They had attacked him without warning, and his reaction had been immediate and instinctive.
French Williams was curious. “Now, that shootin’,” he commented, “surely didn’t look like the work of a man who never used a gun.”
“I never said I had never used a gun,” Chantry replied simply. “Pa was a good hand, as you know, and he started teaching me early. I’ve always had a knack … good coordination, I guess. I’ve hunted a good bit, and shot up a lot of ammunition at targets. Up there”— he jerked his head back toward the scene of the fight –“was the first time I’d tried to get a gun out fast in a long time.”
“We heard the shots,” McKay commented, “just boom-boom, almost like one sound.”
Chantry glanced over at Williams. “How far is it to Two Buttes?”
“Fourteen, fifteen miles, I’d guess.
I never did ride directly from here to there.
We’ll make a proper day of it.”
All the men were tired, but the last events of the day had excited them and stirred them to conversation. Chantry leaned back against his bedroll and listened to Helvie, who was telling of a famous fight back in 1867, a running battle between Indians and the riders of a stage headed for the Big Timbers station.
From that the talk continued—talk of cattle and buffalo, of the stage lines and the Santa Fe Trail. Finally Tom carried his bedroll into the shadows near the wagon, and pulling off his boots and his gun belt, he rolled in and slept.
His last memories were of the occasional crackle of the fire and the low murmur of conversation.
When he opened his eyes the fire was down to the last red coals. All the men were asleep except those with the cattle. He was about to turn over and go back to sleep when he saw Rugger slip from his bed and move off into the darkness. Something about his manner moved Chantry to watch him go—not toward the horses, but off into the darkness, obviously anxious not to be seen.
Where was he going? And for what reason?
Chapter 14
For a moment Chantry thought of following him, then decided the man was probably just going into the woods on some business of his own, and Chantry turned over and went to sleep again.
But in the morning he remembered this small incident, and when he had belted on his gun and stepped into his boots he glanced around.
Rugger was saddling a horse, as were Helvie, McKay, and Kincaid, getting ready to ride out and relieve the night guards. He saddled his own horse, and waited until they had gone. Then, leaving the dun at camp, he went into the woods where he had seen Rugger go.
He had no trouble in picking up a track. A heel print here, a kicked stone there … for a hundred yards he trailed him back into the brush and scattered juniper, and then across the slope of a hill. There the faint trail went down into the hollow beyond.
Here the trail ended. Near a flat rock there were two cigarette butts.
For several minutes Tom Chantry stood there, trying to puzzle it out. Rugger was not exactly a contemplative man, not the sort who would walk all this way to be alone with his thoughts. He had come for a reason.
Chantry looked around. Due east lay the trail to Two Buttes, an open stretch of valley two or three miles wide, and easy going, bordered on the south by Two Buttes Creek. About five or six miles away lay the Santa Fe Trail, or one branch of it. Two Buttes, the highest of which lifted about three hundred feet above the surrounding country, were dimly visible on the horizon.
Nothing else. …
He had turned away when he saw, in the
shelter of another rock, a place where a small fire had been built. Not for warmth, for the man had not sat near it, and it was built so that it would be visible only from the valley below.
A signal then. But to whom?
There were no other tracks, so if he had
expected anyone to meet him, that person had not arrived.
Had he left any word there?
Carefully, searching with this fresh idea in mind,
Chantry looked around, and suddenly he saw it,
near where the fire had been … a tobacco
sack. Picking it up, he felt something inside
and opened it … there was a page torn from a tally
book, and on it, written in a clumsy hand, these
words
2 Butes
Big Timbers
Kiwas at Big Timbers
He returned the note to the sack and replaced it. Then he walked back to get his horse.
The others had eaten, and the chuck wagon was packed and ready. The cook turned to glance at him, then gestured toward the seat. “I put some grub an’ coffee out for you. Figured you’d be hungry.”
“Thanks.”
The cook waited while he ate, and
presently he said, “I like your style,
Chantry. Can’t say I cottoned to you right off, but you’ve shaped up.”
“Thanks,” Tom said again.
“What’s goin’ on? I don’t like it
a-tall, the way things are. French ain’t like himself, an’ there’s hard feelin’ among the boys … like they were up to something they didn’t care for.”
Chantry finished eating, cleaned the plate with sand, and passed it to the cook. “You can’t lose, Cookie,” he said. “Either French or I will pay you boys off if we get through with the herd.”
“They tell me you’re figurin’ to drive right through Big Timbers.”
“Why not? Look, if the Kiowas want us they can ride up on us any time. By driving in any other direction we still couldn’t get away— cattle move too slow. If they mean to attack, we can’t avoid it. So why not take the quickest way, where there’s the best water and grass? Why not drive right at them so they know we’re not afraid? We know where they are, and they know we know, so they’ll be wary of a trap. They’ll be sure we’ve got reason for being confident. Anyway, I never found that a man could avoid trouble by running away from it.”
He waited while the wagon pulled out and started over the ridge. When it was lined out on the trail, he rode south to the banks of a creek that flowed into the Two Buttes almost due south of Clay Spring.
The banks were cloaked with shrub willows, many of them growing ten to fifteen feet high. He went in among them, drew up there, and stepped down from the saddle searching for a vantage point from which he could watch the rock on the hillside where the message had been left.
From time to time he looked toward the herd, now only a dust cloud down the long valley. He drank at the stream, and let his horse browse on the rich green grass along the bank.
An hour passed. Just as he was about to step into the saddle again, he heard the beat of hoofs. From over the ridge behind him came two riders, who cantered down the slope, splashed through the shallow stream, and went up the opposite slope to where the message had been left.
They were some distance off, but he needed no closer view to know who they were. The Talrims!
The Talrims and Rugger in this … and who else?
But the message? What did it mean? 2 Butes was obvious enough, and it was their next stop. After that they were going to Big Timbers, though not in one long drive. And at Big Timbers there were Kiowas.