THE FOOT OF THE TRAIL
THE sun-drenched landscape of the Southwest lay warm, indolent, full
of somber fire. The home buildings rested in the arm of a great live-oak
grove, opposite whose opening appeared a wide land of rolling contours,
now almost in the thin green of coming spring. Six miles away the tree
lines showed a stream, and beyond that, as most folk knew, lay the great
lake which originally had led Burleson Lockhart to take up this range.
This side and that ran miles of mesquite, stretching south, tall
cactuses showing betimes among the twisted thorny trees.
It was a little-known corner of America, in what one day was to be known
as the great breeding range, last of the holdings above the Rio Grande
to fall from the lax hand of Spain. The lack of rain left the vegetation
anguished. A thousand distorted souls in torment lived in these gray
trees. Soon the direct sun rays would again be searing into brown the
new and tender grass, though it scarce had had its one annual chance to
gasp in green.
A lizard scuttled across the dust of the dooryard. A road-runner sped
along the fence of poles and rawhide, bent on its own mission. War was
marked in every sign and token of Texas from its very first. No manner
of pest and curse ever lacked in its cynically indifferent confines.
Starvation, thirst, filled these mud-thickened bayous every year with
hundreds of dead horses. The bones of cattle lay uncounted for a
thousand miles, each dried hide and rack of whitening bones enriching
soil that had no answer to its own fecundity in animal life. To live, to
breed and to die—that was all that animal life there could do. Nothing
to the dead creature that it had never known the shambles. The rack of
bones was good enough for Spain.
But now had come Saxon men. Texas, savage, abounding, multiplying
undisturbed, was now for the first time seeking outlet for her
superabundant life, which for fifty years had increased undisturbed.
Texas owned millions of worthless cattle; how many, no owner knew, nor
could any man tell how far his cows ranged. He did not care. Unbranded
cattle still ran in thousands. No one hunted strays, and the increase of
strays belonged without reservation to the land that fed them. There was
no cattle association, no general rodeo; and the home gatherings never
claimed to be complete. Title, whether in land or cattle, was much a
matter of indifference.
Of law there was little. A vast and unknown empire was controlled by a
rude baronry whose like the world has never seen; who later were vastly
to extend that empire and its ways.
These men set up the one great law of custom. The custom of the range
was based on the natural habits of the cattle and the natural
peculiarities of the grazing lands. The accepted brand, the right of the
finder to an unowned range or water front, the tendency of cattle to
cling to home, the law of natural probability in all things—such were
rigid natural laws which no man might ignore with safety. As animal life
ran wild, so also did human life, one no more restrained than the other.
Only the saving grace of the Saxon instinct for some sort of law brought
Texas, literally born in the wilderness, up to what she is to-day.
There was no market. At least, rambling and unconcerted attempts had
found none till now. After the Civil War a seething unrest passed over
all Texas. The demand for some sort of market was first in the thought
of all men who owned nothing but cows and reasoned only in terms of
cows.
* * * * *
“She’s going to drive!” said Jim Nabours to his new-found friend as they
crossed the Del Sol dooryard. “That’s her pap’s old idee. What you’ve
said cinches it!”
“Yes? When can you begin the herd?”
The old cowman’s face clouded.
“Listen here! Keep what I tell you. That girl knows a lot about cows,
but a heap of things about her own cows she don’t know. She knows how
many her father had and she thinks she’s got more. She hain’t.”
“Combed?”
“Yes, combed! We’re too close to Austin! Hide hunters and calf hunters
and plain thieves and politics—that’s since the war. The damn Yankees
are trying to run a country they don’t know nothing about. All Central
Texas has took to hunting cows. This here’s a good place for thieves—or
for men who can see ahead a little ways.
“We didn’t know it till just now, but there must of been a band of
skinners and slick hunters working our range all last winter and winter
afore. She ain’t got one cow now where she thinks she’s got fifty. What
could we do? We didn’t know, and don’t know, who done it; but we didn’t
durst to let her really know it was did. Now, she’s going to find out.”
“But surely you can make up a mixed herd anyhow!”
“Oh, yes, maybe. But if we do hit a market, where’ll we round up the
next herd for her? Some one else has got our cows. There’s a big steal
been going on in Central Texas.
“You see, we done our damnedest to take care of her and not let her
know. God ha’ mercy on me! I’m the worstest perjured liar in Texas, and
that’s a big claim. We’ve had a rodeo now and then, here at the home
place, but she didn’t know how fur we driv some of them cows!
“But how could we fool her if we put up a big herd? She kin read a brand
as well as us. We’d road brand, I reckon—yes; but that wouldn’t change
the facts none. She’d ketch on. She ain’t no fool, that girl. What do
you say, then?”
“Why, I say start your round-up to-morrow! Keep in the T.L., the Del Sol
brand, or do the best you can. It will come to a show-down anyhow before
long, so why wait? Let hers be the first herd north of the Red this
spring. While the others are thinking it over, let’s be up the trail!
Believe me, all Texas will be moving north before long!”
“She pops!” said Jim Nabours suddenly. He had decided.
“How long to make the herd?” McMasters also kindled.
“Two weeks. We could brand out within another two, only we’ll have to
rope and throw. Our pens won’t hold. We got no chute.”
“Build one to-day. It will pay you.”
Nabours looked at the newcomer curiously with an eye not free of
suspicion.
“You taken a mighty interest.” He spoke slowly.
“I have! I want to go up the trail with you-all. I’ve reason for going
north again. My business there wasn’t settled.”
“But what’s your reasons for being so brash about coming in with us? I
dunno’s I’ve give you leave, and I know the boss didn’t.”
“Two reasons. One I’ve told you—the business that took me north and
brought me south will take me north again. Never mind what that is. I’m
a captain of Rangers, and we can’t talk. The other reason you can
guess.”
“I reckon I do guess.”
“_Muy bien!_ Our families both came in with Stephen Austin. They both
had men massacred with Fannin at Goliad. They both had men in the Alamo.
Her father and mine were both killed up the trail. Do you think any
McMasters would let any Lockhart starve? Listen! You say she’s poor; say
her range is skinned. Tell her nothing—but please let a McMasters help
a Lockhart. Let me send you fifty horses and two wagonloads of grub. You
needn’t let her know. Make it a loan or gift, either way you please. And
let me ride with you.”
A surprising irrelevancy marked Jim Nabours’ next remark.
“That girl can marry twenty-seven men to-morrow morning. She ain’t going
to marry no one until she knows who killed Burleson Lockhart. ‘Bring me
the man that finds my father’s murderer,’ says she, ‘and I believe I’d
marry him.’”
“She said that?”
“_Si, señor._ Maybe meant it, or thought she did. You can’t tell much
about no woman, and least of all about Burleson Lockhart’s daughter. One
thing, she’ll be slow to quit anything she starts. She’s sot now on
driving. I reckon she will.”
By now they had approached the cook house and the corral. McMasters had
his bridle from the saddle that straddled the pole near the bunk-house
door. Soon he had his horse under saddle. His pistol belt was now in
place again.
The foreman looked at it curiously as the two walked toward the rawhide
gate. Nabours pushed it open. As he did so a warning rattle sounded
almost underfoot. He sprang back with an oath. With the word came a
shot, not from his own weapon. The brown body of the serpent was flung
writhing, headless. McMasters’ pistol was back at its belt when Nabours
turned.
“Who done that?” he demanded.
“I did,” said McMasters. “You’d have stepped on him.”
“Well, if I want to step on a rattler, that’s my business, ain’t it?
Maybe I like to step on them. You shooting made me jump. Still, quick
work, huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a good shot?”
“I was elected sheriff of Gonzales. I am a captain in the Texas
Rangers.”
His face was grave as he spoke, sad rather than boastful.
“What’s that?” suddenly exclaimed Jim Nabours. “Listen!”
The sound of hoofs had come suddenly from around the bend of the trail
that wound through the mesquite thicket screening the gate; hoofs of
more than one animal, not coming but going.
“Wait!”
The sound of the young man’s voice deterred Nabours as much as his hand.
He stood, absorbed, frowning, listening to the receding hoof beats. The
rhythm told him the horses had riders. At last he beckoned to Nabours.
The two set out down the trail.
“Look here!” said Dan McMasters at length as they rounded the bend.
At a clump of huisache the tracks of six horses could be seen making a
trampled spot back of the bushes. It all was plainly visible to eyes
experienced as these.
“They was tied!” said Jim Nabours.
McMasters nodded, bending over the bruised stems which the reins had
covered.
“They must have closed up a lot last night,” said Dan McMasters
cryptically, as though to himself. “They couldn’t have been far off this
morning.
“Thank you, Mr. Rattler!” He smiled grimly as he kicked at a crooked
stick for substitute of the dead snake. “You served me a good turn!”