CHAPTER XVI

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!”