don happened to see that and spoke of it.
Sometimes his granddaughter would mount her horse and ride alongside the wagons,
and one day when we’d been out for about a week, she cantered up on a ridge
where I was looking over the country ahead of us.
A man couldn’t take anything for safe in this country. From the top of a low
hill that country was open grass as far as you could see. There might be a
half-dozen shallow valleys out there or ditches, there might be a canyon or a
hollow, and any one of them might be chock full of Indians.
This time that Spanish girl joined me on the ridge, I was sizing up the country.
She had beautiful big dark eyes and long lashes and she was about the prettiest
thing I ever did see.
“Do you mind if I ride with you, Mr. Sackett?”
“I sure don’t mind, but what about Don Luis? I don’t expect he’d like his
granddaughter riding with a Tennessee drifter.”
“He said I could come, but that I must ask your permission. He said you would
not let me ride with you if it was not safe.”
On the hill where we sat the wind was cool and there was no dust. The train of
wagons and pack horses was a half mile away to the southeast. The first Spanish
I learned I started learning that day from her.
“Are you going to Santa Fe?”
“No, ma’am, we’re going wild-cow hunting along the Purgatoire.”
Her name it turned out was Drusilla, and her grandmother had been Irish. The
vaqueros were not Mexicans but Basques, and like I’d figured, they were picked
fighting men. There was always a vaquero close by as we rode in case of trouble.
After that first time Drusilla often rode with me, and I noticed the vaqueros
were watching their back trail as carefully as they watched out for Indians, and
some times five or six of them would take off and ride back along the way we had
come.
“Grandfather thinks we may be followed and attacked. He has been warned.”
That made me think of what Jonathan Pritts had told Orrin, and not knowing if it
mattered or not, I told her to tell the don. It seemed to me that land that had
been granted a family long ago belonged to that family, and no latecomer like
Pritts had a right to move in and drive them off.
The next day she thanked me for her grandfather. Jonathan Pritts had been to
Santa Fe before this, and he was working through political means to get their
grant revoked so the land could be thrown open to settlement.
Rountree was restless. “By this time we should have met up with Injuns. Keep
those rides closer in, Tye, d’ you hear?”
He rode in silence for a few minutes, then he said, “Folks back east do a sight
of talkin’ about the noble red man. Well, he’s a mighty fine fighter, I give him
that, but ain’t no Indian, unless a Nez Perce, who wouldn’t ride a couple
hundred miles for a fight. Folks talk about takin’ land from the Indians. No
Indian ever owned land, no way. He hunted over the country and he was always
fightin’ other Indians just for the right to hunt there.
“I fought Injuns and I lived with Injuns. If you walked into an Injun village of
your own will they’d feed you an’ let you be as long as you stayed … that was
their way, but the same Injun in whose tipi you slept might follow you when you
left an’ murder you.
“They hadn’t the same upbringin’ a white man has. There was none of this talk of
mercy, kindness and suchlike which we get from the time we’re youngsters. We get
it even though most folks don’t foller the teachin’. An Injun is loyal to nobody
but his own tribe … an’ any stranger is apt to be an enemy.
“You fight an Injun an’ whup him, after that maybe you can trade with him. He’ll
deal with a fightin’ man, but a man who can’t protect hisself, well, most Injuns
have no respect for him, so they just kill him an’ forget him.”
Around the fires at night there was talk and laughter. Orrin sang his old Welsh
and Irish ballads for them. From Pa he’d picked up some Spanish songs, and when
he sang them you should have heard them Spanish men yell! And from the far hills
the coyotes answered.
Old Rountree would find a spot well back from the flames and set there watching
the outer darkness and listening. A man who stares into flames is blind when he
looks into outer darkness, and he won’t shoot straight … Pa had taught us
that, back in Tennessee.
This was Indian country and you have to figure, understanding Indians, that his
whole standing in this tribe comes from how many coups he’s counted, which means
to strike an enemy, a living enemy, or to be the first one to strike a man who
has fallen … they figure that mighty daring because the fallen man may be
playing possum.
An Indian who was a good horse thief, he could have the pick of the girls in the
tribe. Mostly because marriage was on the barter system, and an Indian could
have all the wives he could afford to buy … usually that wasn’t more than two
or three, and mostly one.
Orrin hadn’t forgotten that Laura girl. He was upset with me, too, for leading
him off again when he was half a mind to tie up with Pritts.
“He’s paying top wages,” Orrin said, one night.
“Fighting wages,” I said.
“Could be, Tyrel,” Orrin said, and no friendly sound to his voice, “that you’re
holding something against Mr. Pritts. And against Laura, too.”
Go easy, boy, I told myself, this is dangerous ground. “I don’t know them. Only
from what you’ve said he’s planning to horn in on land that doesn’t belong to
him.”
Orrin started to speak but Tom Sunday got up. “Time to turn in,” he spoke
abruptly, “gettin’ up time comes early.”
We turned in, both of us with words we were itching to say that were better
unsaid.
It rankled, however. There was truth about me having a holding against Pritts
and his daughter. That I had … she didn’t look right to me, and I’ve always
been suspicious of those too-sanctimonious men like Jonathan Pritts.
The way he looked down that thin New England nose of his didn’t promise any good
for those who didn’t agree with him. And what I said to Orrin that time, I’d
believed. If Pritts had been so much back home, what was he doing out here?
We filled our canteens at daybreak with no certain water ahead of us. A hot wind
searched the grass. At Mud Creek there was enough water in the creek bottom for
the horses, but when we left it it was bone dry. It was seven miles to the Water
Holes, and if there was no water there it was a dry day’s travel to the Little
Arkansas.
The sun was hot. Dust lifted from the feet of the horses and mules, and we left
a trail of dust in the air. If any Indians were around, they’d not miss us.
“A man would have to prime himself to spit in country like this,” Tom Sunday
remarked.
“How about the country we’re heading toward, Cap?”
“Worse … unless a man knows the land. Only saving thing, there’s no travel up
thataway except for Comanches. What water there is we’ll likely have to
ourselves.”
Every day then, Drusilla was riding with me. And every day I felt myself looking
for her sooner than before. Sometimes we were only out for a half hour, at most
an hour, but I got so I welcomed her coming and dreaded her going.
Back in the mountains I’d known few girls. Mostly I fought shy of them, not
figuring to put my neck in any loops I couldn’t pull out of … only I had a
feeling I was getting bogged down with Drusilla.
She was shy of sixteen, but Spanish girls marry that young and younger, and in
the mountains they did also. Me, I had nothing but a dapple horse, a partnership
in some mules, and my old Spencer and a Colt pistol. It didn’t count up to much.
Meanwhile, I’d been getting to know the vaqueros. I’d never known anybody before
who wasn’t straight-out American, and back in the hills we held ourselves
suspicious of such folk. Riding with them, I was finding they were good, solid
men.
Miguel was a slim, wiry man who was the finest rider I ever knew, and maybe a
couple of years older than me. He was a handsome man with a quick laugh, and