IN THE NIGHT
THAT night the stars, indeed, almost tallied with Cinquo’s description
in their pointed brilliances. The wind was nothing now, the silence,
save for a few quavering coyotes, was deep and full of peace.
Contentment sat on the wild bivouac. On a gentle slope well-nigh four
thousand cattle were lying close packed in a vast oval, less than a
fifth of a mile in extent, half that distance across on the lesser axis.
Bedded on high, dry grass, in the path of the breeze, themselves full of
grass and water, they lay, heads high, level with their cover, blowing
and chewing, eyes closed and happy.
The fire points of the cook’s evening meal now barely showed. Afar came
the faint sound of men’s voices, singing—the night watch riding slowly,
two men in one direction, two in the opposite, fifty feet or so back
from the bedded animals. These latter in some vague way knew they were
protected. They lay and grunted dully, having ended one more day of
their march toward fate.
“Ain’t that enough to make a cowman happy?” said Nabours to Del
Williams, nodding toward the herd as they lolled by the fading fire.
“You couldn’t kick ’em up.”
“We ain’t started yet, Jim,” said the young Texan.
“How come we ain’t? It couldn’t be much over four hunderd mile to Red
River Station from Del Sol. Them cows is plumb gentle already.
“I’m going to roll in, Del. You and Dalhart better go on at midnight, I
reckon. Watch the Dipper.”
Afar, at the established distance from the watchers, the tiny fire at
Taisie’s tent fell flickering into absorption by the night. Taisie lay,
wide-eyed, looking out through the tent front at the myriad-pointed sky.
She told herself that it was the coffee taken late, but she knew that
was not why she did not sleep. Or, if she slept, she wakened always with
the picture before her of a ring of men, one facing her, his eyes calm,
although he was being tried on the point of honor dearest to any man. It
was worse than trying him for his life, she knew that. Had she, Portia,
_provocateur général_, judge, jury, been just?
Restless, confined by the oppression of the tent, Taisie drew her
blankets beyond the flaps and tried the open air. Came the stertorous
sounds of Milly’s sleep, the cough of the few animals picketed near by.
She raised on elbow and looked to the tiny row of brush, piled as
windbreak by old Sanchez. He and his wife Anita always slept so, with
one scant serape above them. But they slept. She could not sleep.
She raised higher on her elbow, looked up at a sudden sound. Blancocito
was standing, ears pointed toward the fringe of mesquite that flanked
their little eminence. He had flung up his head, snorting. She turned,
would have risen, for she was a fearless soul and reared on the border.
Could it be Indians?
At that instant she felt a powerful hand close over her mouth. An arm
forced her to the ground. She looked up into the face of a man! He was a
tall man, a strong man. Suddenly she ceased struggling. She knew what
man this was!
But why, as he crouched beside her, holding her down, stifling her
voice, did he, too, look with eyes fixed where those of the plunging
horse just had been, toward the edge of the thicket?
“Hush!” She heard his voice, though he kept his head up. “Don’t call
out! Where is the little trunk? Have you got it?”
She nodded, under his stifling hand, or would have done so.
“You thief!” she tried to say. “Oh, God curse you!” For now she felt her
sentence had been just. “Oh, you thief!” she said, or thought she said.
But though again she writhed and tried to call, no sound came save the
hard whistling of her nostrils, coveting air.
Then she almost tore free—did tear free. Crouching almost over her, his
body above hers, one hand holding her down, suddenly she saw him go to
one knee, saw a move of his free arm. Her eardrums were almost shattered
by a double explosion just above her head. He had fired at something in
the dark.
Came medley of night alarm—horses snorting, men calling. Taisie’s
senses could give no sequence to all the varied sounds. She caught the
rush of hoofs toward the mesquite, thought that her horse had been
stolen; heard a man’s scream in the night, where she supposed the thief
had shot one of her own men.
But concurrently she heard another sound, one which terrified every man
who also heard it—the rumble and thunder of four thousand cattle,
wakened by vague terror.
The sounds of shots in the night were not usual, not understood by them,
hence ominous of ill. Jumping to their feet, addled by the slumber in
their eyes, their tails high and rolling, their horns rattling, the herd
by instinct turned in the direction opposite the sounds of terror. Then,
swayed by the one blind instinct left to them, they broke.
Two of the night watch, caught by the storm of horns, were pushed away,
barely keeping ahead in the night. The dreaded run was on. In the night
was no peace at all. No, nor peace in this girl’s soul.
* * * * *
With the first burst of the herd every man in the camp was on his feet
and hurrying for his night horse. Each knew what to do. There was no
oriflamme, but the ominous roll and clack ahead made command, guidance.
The one thing was to ride.
The first salvation for any man meant leaving everything to the horse.
To check or attempt to guide him meant death. Of better night sight than
his rider, and no more eager than he to be trampled into a bloody pulp,
the horse would put out unasked his limit of speed and care of footing.
Trust him, also, to edge ahead or outside of any enveloping part of the
herd.
But after a mile of this madness in the dark, the master intelligence
began to assert its purpose, to control brute terror. Those at the
flank, at the rear, began to see points and streaks of flame. The two
men ahead, at last free on the edge of the run, were crowding their
horses against the front ranks of the cattle, jostling into them the
best they could in a perilous give and take, firing their six-shooters
across the faces of the leaders, trying to force them into a mill; such
being the proper psychology in cows.
The pistol lightning dwindled to firefly points, ceased. The reports had
not been audible over the roar of the run. No one could reload the
cap-and-ball revolver, and six shots left the pursuer reduced to quirt
and spur. To the few who remained at the encampment, there passed a
lessening storm of sound. So at length came silence and suspense.
Thinking that the first two shots had been fired by some of his own men,
or possibly by a frightened woman, Nabours left no guard at the camp.
The side encampment alone had tenancy.
The two women of Taisie sprang from their sleeping places and ran to the
little tent, not to protect their mistress but to seek
protection—Sanchez was gone with the others. They saw her, in the dim
light, standing close to a tall man. This was certainly not a true man
of Del Sol, for he was not riding now. They ran back, undecided; could
not see or hear what went on in the gloom.
A voice spoke low to Taisie’s ear—a voice she knew.
“The little trunk—is it in your tent?” The hateful question, itself an
accusation for the asker, was repeated.
“No!” she got strength to say, clutched by her fears, her anger, her
sudden hatred.
“Where is it, then? Quick!”
“I’ll not tell you!”
“All right! But watch out for it! They’re after it!”
They were after it! Who were “_they_”? And who was this? Under which
flag, all along, has been Dan McMasters, sheriff, captain?
She did not hear his voice again. Suddenly, as though he sensed her
indecision, she felt herself swept to his body as she stood, her own
strong body helpless under strength of his. No hand was on her mouth,
but she could not cry out. She felt his cheek laid against her
cheek—for one half instant; heard a sigh, a gasp, felt at her temple
then a kiss as light and gentle as the embrace had been ruthless and
savage. Then she was free.
She stood alone. He was gone. Yes, he went that way, in the direction
the flame of the two shots had lined out. He went lightly, swiftly.
And in the morning, when first they sought why the great buzzards were
hopping, they found a man, a dead man, with his hands crossed on his
breast and his hat drawn down over his face. It was not Dan McMasters.
None of them knew who it was. But Taisie Lockhart knew that Dan
McMasters had killed this man. Why?
It was Sanchez, first back from the run, who first saw this dead man in
the daylight, and he knew him.
“_Nombre de Dios!_”
Sanchez crossed himself. He knew the man’s feet, his boots, his spurs.
Not so long ago he had tied those feet under a horse’s belly.
Sanchez coursed like a questing hound for the sign. Many tracks of
horses. A loose horse without the Fishhook brand. All of which made
mystery enough.
“Miss Taisie,” demanded Milly, “You’se all a-trimble, chile! Who dat
man? Who him were standin’ thah?”
She caught the hand Taisie had against her bosom, the hand that covered
her temple.
“No! I don’t know!” she heard her mistress say.
But Jim Nabours was harder to satisfy when he came in soon after sunup,
his face lined as though he had lost pounds in the night ride. He cursed
openly as he snatched loose his cinches and turned off his trembling and
sweat-stained night horse. Then he turned to Taisie, who had come over
to the men’s camp.
“Who done it?” he demanded. “You a-shooting at some shadow? Look what
you done! We get this run, just when they was gentling. I thought you
was a cow hand!”
The girl was on the point of saying that, yes, she had shot; that she
was sorry. She put a hand to her temple. . . . He had kissed her there.
“Jim, I did not shoot.”
“Who did, then? That fool nigger woman? You—Milly?”
“Me? I never didn’t. My gun only shoots oncet. Two shoots come, right at
Miss Taisie’s tent. So help me on my Bible, Mr. Jim, I never did shoot
not none. No, sah!”
“Who was it, Taisie?” He used her as a child now, but his voice was sad.
“The shots was right at this place. Who was it—one of our men?”
“No, Jim, no!”
“Who was he? Tell me now! You’re hiding him? You know who he was?”
A very long silence. The man’s face was fronting her, streaked with the
dust. He was a loyal man.
At last, “Yes!”
And now she faced him. Nabours guessed.
“McMasters! You know why he came? Ah, Taisie, girl!”
“I don’t know! I think it was the trunk. He said something about it—I
don’t know.”
“It’s the scrip, Taisie! He’s following that still? What did he say? Ask
where it was?”
“Yes. But he said to look out for it, to watch it. I don’t
understand——”
“I understand that that renegade McMasters is a thief and a scoundrel.
We never orto of let him go!”
She could not make reply. The world was getting too much for her,
overcoming.
“Sanchez!” she said pointing.
An exclamation broke from Nabours when he saw Sanchez fling an arm,
heard his faint call. He got on a horse, galloped over to where Sanchez
stood, dismounted. Then he also saw the dead man.
“I know-a-dis-a _hombre_, Señor Jeem!” Sanchez was excited. “We send-a
heem to jail. I tie-a da foot. How come-a heem here while he’s in jail?
_Nombre de Dios!_”
“But who killed him, Sanchez?”
Nabours saw the two wounds, an inch apart.
“_Quien sabe_, Señor?” replied Sanchez gravely. “I just find-a heem
now.”
But the tired brain of Jim Nabours, up all night and strained to his
limit over the scattered herd, only grew more muddled.
“Let him lay!” he ordered savagely. “That’s one more, anyhow, no odds
who got him. Buzzards is too good for him!”
“Miss Taisie,” he began again as he found her at the cook fire, “that’s
one of the Rudabaugh gang, all right. If it was Dan McMasters killed him
he done it by mistake; he thought it was one of our men. Afore he went,
he folds this corp’s hands and covers up his face with his hat. What
more could he do?”
The girl sat silent, her face cold as some cameo in ice.
“Taisie Lockhart”—the old foreman’s voice was hard now—“one thing at
least—you don’t need no more proof now! That’s over, anyhow!”