THE TRAIL
AN EMPIRE in embryo lay threading out vein filaments, insentient,
antenatal—Texas, not having an identity, not yet born, but soon to be a
world. What a world! How rich a world!
Above, for two thousand miles, nigh a thousand miles right-angled across
the needle’s path, swept another unknown world, the Great West of
America, marked till now only by big-game trails and pony paths and
wagon tracks. The road to Oregon was by then won. The iron rails that
very year bound California to the Union. But nothing bound Texas to the
Union. Unknown, discredited, aloof, a measureless wilderness herself,
she did not know of the wilderness above her, and until now had cared
nothing for it.
In this central part of the great, varied state the grasses grew tall,
the undergrowth along the streams was rank. The live oaks were gigantic,
standing sometimes in great groves, always hung with gray Spanish moss.
Among and beyond these lay vast glades, prairies, unfenced pastures for
countless game and countless cows. It was a land of sunshine and of
plenty.
A cool haze, almost a mist, lay before dawn on the prairie lands. Now,
when morning came on the Del Sol range, a sea of wide horns moved above
the tall grass. With comfortable groans the bedded herd arose one by
one, in groups, by scores and hundreds, stretching backs and tails. The
night riders ceased their circles, the cattle began to spread out
slowly, away from the bed ground, a little eminence covered with good
dry grass and free of hillocks, holes and stones, chosen by men who knew
the natural preferences of kine.
A clatter of hoofs came as the young night herd—the boy Cinquo
Centavos, vastly proud of his late promotion—drove up his remuda to the
rope corral. A blue smoke rose where the cook pushed mesquite brands
together again. It was morning on the range. Aye, and it was morning of
a new, great day for unknown Texas and the unknown West that lay waiting
far above her.
The two great trails—that running east and west, that running north and
south—now were about to approach and to meet at a great crossroads, the
greatest and most epochal crossroads the world has even seen. Here was
the vague beginning of a road soon to be bold and plain; almost as soon
to be forgotten.
Slow and tousled, men and boys kicked out of the cotton quilts which had
made their scant covering, each taking from under his saddle pillow the
heavy gun and such hat as he had. Few had need to hunt for boots, for
most had slept in them. Bearded, hard, rude, unbrushed, they made a wild
group when they stumped up to the morning fire, where each squatted on
one knee while using tin cup and tin plate. Cutlery was scanty, but each
man had some sort of knife. Sugar there was none, but a heavy black
molasses did for sweetening to the coffee, which itself largely was made
of parched grain. A vessel of great red beans had been hidden in the hot
ashes overnight; there was plenty of bacon aswim in the pans for
spearing; and of corn pones, baked before the fire, many lay about. Of
this provender Buck, the negro cook, made them all free by his call to
“Come an’ git it!” Of the regular chuck wagon of the well-appointed
later trail outfits, of the rough but better abundance, there was no
more than faint prophecy here in the rude high-wheeled Mexican cart. In
truth, the Del Sol outfit was poor, bitterly poor. Here was a
_noli-me-tangere_ assembly of truculent men whose adventure into unknown
lands bordered close upon the desperate.
Of the later accepted costume of the trail and range, there was no more
than indication. The hats were a dozen sorts for a dozen men. The neck
scarf of each man above his collarless tow shirt was a scanty plain red
bandanna, for use, not show. Spurs, saddles, bridles, boots—these
things were good, for the Spanish influence lingered in Texas a
generation after the “dead body of Coahuila” had been shaken off. The
saddles were heavy and broad of horn, each with double cinches. The
stirrups were without exception covered with heavy tapaderos. The reata
at each horn was thin, of hide close braided, pliable, tough as steel.
Of chaparajos, or leggings, as these men always called them, perhaps a
half dozen pairs were owned by older men; the young could not afford
them. Now, freed of the necessity of riding chaparral in the round-up of
the herd, the leggings were cast into the cook wagon along with the
ragged bed rolls. So now they stood or kneeled or squatted, coatless,
collarless, unbrushed, belted and booted, without exception thin, almost
without exception tall, each with his white-and-black checkered pants in
his boots, his garb light, insufficient, meager. They were poor.
But of good weaponry these men of the border were covetous. The older
men had each a pair of the army Colts—cap and ball, for fixed
ammunition was not yet on the range. His pistol flask, his little
cleaning rod, his bag of round balls, each man guarded with more care
than his less weight of coin. The rifles were nondescript as the men
themselves. One man had a revolving Colt rifle, a relic of the New
Mexican expedition of ’42. Of the new Henry rifles, repeaters, many had
found their way thus far south; and of the heavy Sharpe rifles, such as
were used by Berdan’s sharpshooter corps in the Civil War—with the
great Minié ball and its parchment cartridge and the lever breech
action—a half dozen survived. Most prized by some, execrated by others,
were the Spencer repeating carbines, throwing their heavy ball with at
least approximate accuracy if one could guess the distance of the shot.
The Yager and the Kentucky rifle, which won Texas, now had disappeared.
The first trail men had yet to wait seven years before the Winchester
and the Frontier Colt ushered in the general day of fixed ammunition.
The first wild cavalcades of the Texas trail certainly were
unstandardized.
Of the Del Sol men, all alike were silent now. Jim Nabours, a long leg
bent up, knelt over his plate on the ground. Del Williams, bearded,
young, comely, sat on a cart tongue. Sanchez, old and gray, was under
the cart itself. Cinquo Centavos, name and family unknown, called Sinker
by his fellows, slim, eager, boyish, stood as he ate, shivering in his
cottons. A reticent, ragged, grim, unprepossessing band they made, ill
matched and wild as the diverse cattle which now began to edge out from
their bed ground.
Nabours, shutting his jackknife and putting it in his pocket, paused as
he saw a man ride out from the cover of the mesquite. He knew
him—McMasters, who had not been seen since the affair of the Rudabaugh
herd cutters.
“Huh! There’s Gonzales at last! He’s powerful searchy about his work.”
McMasters came in, the last at the fire, and was hardly welcomed. About
him hung still the indefinable difference that set him apart from these
whose lives were spent in the saddle, and this now had grown
intensified. He was dressed as they were, but his garments fitted
better, he was neater, trimmer. His eye, gray and narrow, was calm, his
tongue silent as ever. A slow ease, deliberate, unhurrying, unwasting,
marked his movements. Still he seemed with them, not of them, and they
held their peace of him.
“I ask your pardon,” he said at length to Nabours, “but you see, I’m a
cow hand and a sheriff both. I had a little business overnight. I’m
ready to make a hand now if I can.”
“Well, we’re ready to pull out,” replied the foreman. “Del, didn’t
Sanchez tell you the two carts was ready?”
“_Si Señor_,” nodded his segundo.
“Old Milly went to bed in hern last night, to get a good start, she
said,” volunteered Len Hersey. “She taken her old Long Tom musket to bed
with her. You see, enduring the war, Milly’s husband, Tom, he done jine
a Yankee nigger regiment and never did come back home a-tall. That’s how
come Milly to go north—she’s lookin’ fer Tom. ‘Ef Ah ever kotch sight’n
dat nigger,’ says she, ‘Ah sho gwine blow out his lights fer him.’”
“Well, don’t let Milly talk war too much, so’s to spoil her cooking for
the boss,” said Nabours. “They’ll make a separate camp. Put Anita on
Miss Taisie’s cart, for when she gets tired of the saddle Milly can ride
in the cook cart.”
“Is Miss Lockhart really going?” asked Dan McMasters suddenly.
“She shore is going. I told her to pull out late in the morning from the
big house and follow our trail. Lord help the girl! There ain’t no woman
belongs on a fool trip like this here one.
“Move ’em out, boys,” said he at length, quietly. “Mr. McMasters, I want
you on point, with Del Williams.”
And so, unemotionally, there began one of the wildest and strangest
journeys ever made in any land.
* * * * *
Under the ancient art of handling cattle, known to each of these men,
the herd began slowly to move. McMasters and Del Williams, a couple of
hundred yards apart, gently threaded out the farther edge of the loosely
grazing cattle, along whose flanks a dozen hands sat loose in saddle,
ready to take their appointed places on swing and drag. A few old
steers, rangy, tall, wild, sunburned, trotted out ahead—the natural
vanguard, pacemaking, electing itself then and there, and holding place
for a thousand miles. The point almost formed itself, as should be; for
the art of trailing cattle was to use their instincts, not to alter
them; to follow them and not to crowd them; to let them feed and travel,
and never to take a back track on the road.
Gently, intoning a comfortable bar or so now and then, the swing men
spread and gently pushed additional numbers back of the front wedge. The
column began to form, to stretch, loose, indefinite, not close packed,
stopping, hurrying, turning to look back, lowing, no set purpose having
yet been developed in the vast band. A pair of swing men, no more, must
serve to control each three or four hundred head of cattle on the march.
The rangy vanguard were kept moving out, heading north, still on their
own native range. Soon they struck a steady walk, in which they were
encouraged.
“Roll along, little dogies! Roll along, roll along!” chanted Len Hersey,
on the head swing, as the great motley herd got form.
Far at the back came the unhappy drivers of the drag—the old, the
maimed, the halt and the blind, steers bowed down with weight of woe.
Here were gaunt cows, heavy with young, calves newborn trotting with
their dams, all in a vast pastoral hegira.
Young Cinquo Centavos, hustling his caballada together, wailed in a high
thin treble. “Neeter, Neeter, Wah-a-hah-neeter, ast thy-y-y so-o-oul ef
we mus’ part!”
Came shufflng of hoofs, crack and creak of joints, rattling of wide
horns not yet shaken down into good spacing in the march. At times the
great remuda, a hundred and fifty head of saddle stock, would thunder
off in a brief side break, and Cinquo must cease in his appeal to
Juanita. Forsooth, to his young soul Juanita was a tall maid, of red
hair that curled up only at the ends.
In less than an hour after they first moved, the lone herd of Del Sol
was made and trailed. Sinuous among the tall grasses, it rolled out and
on, northbound. It made a vast historic picture, in a vast forgotten
day; a day when a new world was made and peopled overnight.
Jim Nabours rode ahead of the herd as general guide and forelooper. From
his place, a half mile in advance, he turned back in his saddle, looking
at the long cloud of dust; the rolling sea of backs, the pale swing of
wide horns above. His fierce soul exulted at the sight. He shut his
teeth, his eyes gleaming, as he faced north and settled down into a
plodding walk.
Ten in the morning, and the last of Del Sol’s drag, little calves and
all, misfits, ignorant mistakes and all, had rabbled off and away, sore
under the fly-bitten road brand fresh on every hide. The dust cloud was
hours old at the upper edge of the flat, when at the opposite edge, on
the rim that divided the flat and the big house of Del Sol, another and
lesser dust cloud appeared over the broken turf.
It was made by two rude two-wheeled carts, each drawn by a double span
of oxen. The roughly spoked wheels, stiffened by slats lashed on with
rawhide thongs, emitted shrieking protest at each revolution on the
axle. Each carreta had a tilt of canvas stretched above its rough bows,
and each had certain cargo. On the front seat of the first vehicle sat
old Anita, brown and gray and wrinkled. The rear cart was handled by a
vast negro woman with a long musket at her side—Milly, as usual
grumbling to herself.
These two women, old beyond love and life, doggedly loyal, passionately
affectionate, made the bodyguard of Anastasie Lockhart, educated and
dead-broke orphan, setting out into the world at twenty-two on one of
the most impossible adventures any woman ever knew.
Just now Anastasie Lockhart, trousered, booted, gloved and hatted like
some slim, curiously eye-arresting young man, rode alone on her
crossbar, Blancocito. Her mass of heavy hair was down her back, burned
tawnier beyond the shade of the sombrero. Her eye moody, she gazed on
ahead at the procession that held every friend she had on earth and
every dollar that she owned.
She dropped back and rode alongside the leading cart.
“Anita,” she said, “if I only had my stolen trunk, I’d not be leaving a
single thing on earth behind me!”
Anita vouchsafed nothing for a time. She understood English.
“Tronk?” said she presently. “What-a tronk, _señorita_?”
“The one that was stolen from my parlor—you know very well what one.”
“That-a-tronk? He is not stole. He’s back. I setta on heem now.”
“What? What’s that, Anita?”
“_Si, Seguro._ I gotta heem under seat, serape on top. Sanchez, my man,
he bring. Las’ night he got heem back.”
“The lost trunk? Where? Where did he find it?”
“Sanchez, he look in waggone, he look in corral. In one waggone, come
from Gonzales, he find-a thees-a tronk. Sanchez, he tak-a heem and put-a
heem in here. You like-a heem, dose tronk?”
The hand of Anastasie Lockhart fell lax at her saddle horn.
“Anita, tell me, was it in his wagon—Mr. McMasters’, the Gonzales wagon
that went back yesterday? Was it in the wagon of Señor McMasters, the
sheriff of Gonzales?”
“_Oh, si!_”
“Ah!” A long sighing breath.
“_Vamenos!_” exclaimed Anastasie Lockhart after a long time. She looked
straight forward, not turning, as one who left a used-out world behind.