He bought a used saddle, a blanket, and all the essential gear. At the general store he bought a slicker, a bedroll, and a little other equipment.
“You better have yourself a gun,” the storekeeper suggested.
Chantry shook his head, smiling. “I doubt if I’ll need it. I will have a Winchester, though. I’ve never killed a buffalo, and we might need the meat.”
He bought a Winchester ‘73 and four hundred rounds of ammunition. “If I am going to use this,” he commented, “I’d better have some practice.”
“Better not try it near a cattle herd,” the storekeeper said dryly, “or you’ll have a stampede.”
They all thought him a tenderfoot, he reflected, and in one sense it was true, but he was western-born and a lot had soaked in that stayed with him. One did not live in the environment during the impressionable years and not retain something from it.
His father had been a man who talked of his work and his life, and he was a man who had known men and stock, who had pioneered in wild country. Had he been trying, even then, to instruct his son? After all, what did a father have to pass on to his children but his own personal reaction to the world? Of what use was experience if one could not pass on at least a little of what one had learned?
For the first time Tom Chantry thought of that, and suddenly he was seeing his father in a new light. Like many another son, he had failed to understand the true nature of the man who was his father until he himself began to cope with the problems of which life is made up.
They were to make their gather and pool the cattle on the Vermejo River, east and a bit north of Cimarron, and their drive would begin from there.
He would go there and join them. He would ride his own horses, but if they suggested a bad one, he would try it. He could be thrown, but he could also get back on. Tom Chantry decided he knew what to expect, and he was prepared for it. The trouble was, he did not know French Williams.
He knew little enough about the Vermejo River. Only that it began somewhere in the Sangre de Cristos and flowed down from the mountains, across the old Santa Fe Trail to lose itself, so far as he knew, somewhere in the open country beyond.
Riding the blue roan and leading the dun, he started for the camp on the Vermejo. He told himself he was ready for anything, and he was still telling himself that when he spotted the camp under some cottonwoods.
There was already a good gathering of cattle, and he could see various riders bringing in more. He passed near one rider, a tall, lean man with red hair, but the rider seemed not to notice him, although Chantry spoke.
He rode up to the chuck wagon and swung down. French Williams was leaning back against his bedroll, smiling. And it was not a pleasant smile. It was taunting, challenging, showing, something that might be contempt, and might be curiosity. As Tom Chantry walked forward and started to speak, a man came from behind the chuck wagon. He stepped out and stopped, waiting.
The man was Dutch Akin.
Chapter 4
For a moment all action was suspended. Tom Chantry could feel the heavy pounding of his heart, and his mouth was dry, but when he spoke his voice was clear and steady. “Hello, Dutch. Want some coffee?”
This was what Chantry had not expected, yet it was what he might have expected from French Williams. And it was an indication of the extent to which Williams was prepared to go.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Dutch said.
Chantry picked up the pot and filled
Dutch’s cup, then his own. “Sorry about the other night, Dutch,” he said, “but I had no reason to kill you, and I had no wish to die.”
Dutch shrugged uncomfortably. Sober, he was not a belligerent man, nor was he given to talk. If you had a job to do, you did it. If you had a man to shoot, you shot him. But talking about it made him uneasy, wanting to be away and finished with it. “’So all right,” he said, gulping the coffee. “I got no argument with you.”
French Williams sat up. If he was disappointed it did not show, and Tom Chantry doubted that he was. It had been in the nature of an experiment, and had they killed each other he would have been no more disturbed.
Chantry indicated the cattle. “They’re in good shape. Some of your stuff?”
“Uh-huh,” French said. “They’ve been held in the high meadows where there’s lots of good grama.” He glanced toward the horses. “I see you got yourself some horses. Two won’t be enough, you know.”
Chantry’s expression was bland. “I had an idea you’d already selected some mounts for me, French, so I only bought two.”
“You’d ride a horse I’d pick for you?”
“Why not? Well, let’s just say I’d
try.”
The other hands who had been loafing about, obviously to see what would happen when he met Dutch Akin, now drifted off about their work. Tom Chantry drank his coffee slowly, studying the various men, watching the work, and enjoying the brief respite from what was to come.
He was no cowhand and would not attempt to compete with them on their own ground. He could round up cattle, he could read brands, and so could make himself generally useful. He would not be an idler. It would be wise to move slowly at first, to see who could do what, and generally become acquainted.
He had gained no ground by facing Dutch. He had simply done what had to be done, and he knew the hands would be waiting to see what kind of a man he was—and most of them, he felt sure, had made up their minds about that.
As he watched the cattle the enormity of what he had undertaken slowly came over him. His own capital he was free to do with as he saw fit, but he had gambled a large sum that belonged to Earnshaw and Company. Therefore there was no choice. The herd must go through, and it must arrive in good shape and be sold to advantage … no matter what the cost to him.
Riders were bringing in small bunches of cattle from draws and breaks. Saddling the dun, he rode out and helped here and there, at the same time noting the brands. All of those being held had come from French Williams’ own outfit. Some of the brands were fresh, but he saw no evidence of reworking.
At daybreak he was on the range with the others, and was there when Lee Dauber’s cattle began to arrive. They came divided into three herds for easy handling, and Dauber moved them along at a good clip. These were big, rangy steers, older than most of Williams’ stuff, and in not as good shape.
During the following days while the cattle were being brought together for the drive to the railhead, he worked hard, harder than he had ever worked before. He was up before the first streak of light in the morning sky, and tumbled into his bedroll when supper was over. With the others he stood night guard, and in many ways that came to be the best time.
Only three men rode night guard at a time, and they were scattered, meeting only at intervals as they rode around the sleeping herd. It was a time for thinking, a time for remembering. Yet, oddly, he rarely thought of Doris, and rarely of his home in the East. His thoughts kept reaching back into his boyhood, before his father was killed.
He remembered the hot, still hours in the town, walking barefooted up the dusty street, seeing the tall, still-faced men in boots and spurs sitting along the boardwalk in front of the hotel, or seeing them leaning on the corral bars, watching the horses.
The parched brown prairie, long without rain, the tumbleweeds rolling before the wind under dark, rain-filled clouds, the blue streaks of a distant rainstorm viewed from far off … the call of quail at sundown … his father washing his face and hands in the tin basin outside the kitchen door, sleeves rolled up, showing the white of his arms where the sun never reached.
He remembered the Indians who came to the ranch, squatting around near the corral, and his father feeding them, carrying the food to them himself … and the night the wounded brave had ridden up to the house, clinging one-handed to his horse’s mane. That was on the old ranch, before Pa lost it in the big freeze … where had that ranch been, anyway? His memories were mostly from the later period when Pa was marshal.