ROLL ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES!
LATE at night the leaders of the herd sat talking, but the start on
the next day was early. The country ahead was now open and free of
buffalo. Once more the great herd trailed out. They left the camp of
Jesse Chisholm with his wagon train a little at one side, but the
leaders rode over to say farewell to the taciturn old half-breed.
McCoyne promised him many things if he would load his next cargo at
Abilene instead of Wichita. And so they parted, as ships sailing seas
but little known.
Thence on there was no need for the wagon tongue or the North Star. One
Chisholm Trail, of many mythical ones, was now really begun. The marks
of the wagon wheels were unmistakable. The giant steers of the Del Sol
vanguard swung out along the main traveled road as though this was what
they long had sought. McCoyne expressed wonderment at seeing so few men
handle thousands of great animals.
“You’ve been doing ten or twelve miles a day?” said he. “We can make
fifteen or twenty. Push them along. All Abilene is waiting for them.”
It was plain sailing and the weather was good. No tribute-seeking
Indians appeared, and the cattle were as peaceable as though they never
had dreamed of a run. The Del Sol outfit put mile after mile behind it,
rapidly, steadily, the work oxen on the carts sometimes almost on a
trot, the sore backs exempt in the remuda, every man feeling that
trail’s end was not so far.
Between them and the Arkansas River now ran only one considerable
stream—the Salt Fork, spoken of with respect by drovers, for quite
customarily it offered swimming water. But now, even if the advanced
season had not left the water low, the Salt Fork would have been by no
means an insuperable obstacle, for Jesse Chisholm had left here a good
raft which he had built for his own purposes. It was better than a
bridge. The cattle swam the stream readily, confidently, and in brief
order the carts were jerked across at the ends of spliced reatas. The
entire crossing went forward methodically and without the loss of a
single head.
“So that’s the way you do it?” commented the man of Abilene. “You had
some rivers below here too?”
“Almost. This here is play compared to it,” said Nabours. “But you can
go anywheres with cows if you know how. That’s the only thing us Texans
does know. Yes, we got sever’l cows down in Texas. And I don’t see why
this country here wouldn’t raise cows—in the summer anyhow.”
They advanced through the Osage country, over as beautiful grassland as
a man ever saw, the prairie covering wavering knee-deep and spotted with
many flowers. Wild game was in sight much of the time. There was not a
weed. No plow had been here.
“Roll along, little dogies!” came the lazy voice of a swing man. “Roll
along, roll along!”
Fifty miles more of happy, lazy, carefree loafing along the trail, and
they left the straggling village of Caldwell on the right, just at the
Kansas line. Nabours would not let his men go into town, but headed
twenty miles to the westward across the grasslands of lower Kansas,
making for the crossing of the Arkansas which Chisholm had established
with his wagons.
Heretofore the advance had been happily and singularly free from
annoyance at the hands of the Indian tribes whose great domain had been
crossed. When well over the Kansas line, however, they were caught up by
a little band of Osages who had followed along their trail, ignoring
reservation limits for reasons of their own. In stature they were
gigantic men, their heads partly shaved, leaving a high roach of dense,
stiff hair after the traditional Osage custom. They were painted bravely
enough in red and ocher, and all were armed with fine buffalo bows of
_bois d’arc_. Their leader and his band seemed friendly enough and
disposed to parley. Not caring for such hangers-on, Nabours and a few
other men stopped for a conference. The chief began with a request soon
to become usual along the trail.
“You got plenty wohaw,” he began. “This Injun country. You give wohaw.”
He held up all the fingers of his hand.
“Give you ten cows?” exclaimed Jim Nabours. “I ain’t give a cow to
nobody all the way up the trail, and I won’t give one to you. You go on
back.”
“Good Injun!” said the leader of the Osages. He handed out a folded
piece of paper. “Caldwell. Him send.”
He was a message bearer. Nabours took the letter.
“Why, this is from Dan McMasters!” said he. “Five days ago he was in
Caldwell. Says he has gone on now to Wichita,” explaining to McCoyne and
the others. “He may be at Aberlene by the time we get there.”
“Say, you, here!” he remarked to the chief. “We’ll give you one wohaw.
You set down and wait a while. We’ll ride on up to the wohaws.”
“All right,” said the Osage partisan in good humor. “Him say you give
wohaw. We bring you paper.”
They disposed themselves on the grass, their bows unstrung.
“You seem to be all the time hearing from this man McMasters,” said
McCoyne. “How come he’s on ahead of you so far?”
“That’s a long story,” said Jim Nabours. “He did ride with us for a
while.”
“I knew that man over at Baxter and on the Missouri border,” ruminated
the man from Abilene. “Quiet sort of fellow—mysterious—never did say
much. I was figuring on a market over there for Texas cattle. But I
learned about a gang of raiders in there that had been cutting every
herd that came up from Texas bound for Missouri or Iowa or Illinois.
Those border ruffians killed probably a dozen men altogether. They tied
up and whipped maybe a dozen more. They terrorized every trail outfit
that came through there, and the natural result was that they kept off
St. Louis from ever becoming a real cow town. Nothing could get through.
A little thing sometimes makes a heap of difference later on in big
things.
“The leader of that gang was a ruffian by name of Rudabaugh,” he added.
“The Missourians finally run him south.”
“Yes,” said Nabours quietly. “The Texans have finally run him north
again.”
“And this man McMasters was after him?” McCoyne turned suddenly.
“He might be. He is now. He’s been keeping ahead of us, and that’s the
reason.”
He now explained at length the machinations of the trail pirates and the
untimely end of them in the night battle on the Washita.
“He mostly plays a lone hand,” Nabours concluded. “He’s an officer in
the Rangers. That’s putting law into Texas—the Rangers.”
“Well, we’ve only got one man to put law into Abilene. I’m going to hire
Wild Bill Hickok for our town marshal. Wild Bill has got these bad
people buffaloed. Counting in his work as a Union sharpshooter, under
Curtis, in the Missouri country, he’d have to have a long gun stock to
carry all his notches. It’s sure he’s killed somewhere between
seventy-five and a hundred men. In 1860, when he was taking care of the
stage stock over in east of Abilene, he was jumped by McCandless and his
gang—ten men there were in all. You’ve heard of that fight? They were
going to run off the stage stock for the Confederate Army. They tackled
Bill in his shack, ten of them, and he was alone. He killed nine out of
the ten by himself. Not so bad, eh? I don’t know as I ever knew Bill to
serve a warrant or make an arrest. But I’ll bet one thing—if we get him
for town marshal, Abilene will be first in graveyards, the same as she
is first in everything else.”
“It shore looks like Dan McMasters has a pleasant time a-waiting for
him,” commented Nabours. “But he’s usual able to take care of hisself.
“Now, I’ll have to cut out a beef for these yellow-bellied friends of
ours,” he added. “We’ve picked up a shorthorn stray or so a couple of
days ago, and put a Fishhook on him to keep him from catching cold. Like
enough it was a Osage steer, anyhow, so I reckon I’ll let ’em have that
one. Go cut it out, Len, when we come up with the herd.”
Osages and all, they rode along. Easily, lazily, as though he knew
precisely where the animal was, Len Hersey found it, rode it out of the
herd and drove it back close to the Indian group.
“Here’s your wohaw,” he said.
The Osage chieftain smiled amiably. A bow twanged. In five minutes the
ribs of the beef were broiling on a prairie Osage fire. The dust of the
great herd of spotted cattle was lessening to the north.