CHAPTER XXI

THE RUBICON

NOW it was noon of the next day. The cattle had been pushed close to the south bank of the great mysterious river. The foreman sat with his employer on the steep crest of the ravine selected as the take-off for the ford. A bridge had never been, a ferry no man had dreamed of here. Flowed only the wide sweep of tawny waters, boiling and fretting, bearing rape of far-off flats, tree trunks rolling and dipping.

The Red was up! This was an ominous and savage scene, and one to depress even the boldest heart; for over this flood must pass each horned head ever to find a market in the north.

To Anastasie Lockhart, whitely looking out over the mad waters, this seemed the very end. It did not appear possible to cross. It never would have seemed possible to Nabours had he been of longer trail experience or less desperate in view of other dangers which might come again if they tarried here indefinitely. A freshet of less extent later was known to hold back a hundred thousand cows. But Jim Nabours now had made up his mind to take a chance.

“I’m going to throw the carts over first, ma’am,” said he. “Then I’ll cross the cows. I’m going to hold the horses back this time. Then, after the last head’s over, a lot of us’ll cross back after you. We’ll know the channel and the bars better then. Don’t you be a-scared. We’ll get you over somehow. That’s how I got it figgered, ma’am.”

“She’s up, Jim,” said Taisie quietly. She was trying her very best to be brave.

“Yep, some. But she’s fell a foot since last night. She shows a bar, a quarter below, and a low flat that edges in shaller on the fur side. I think that’s the real bank, and like enough hard footing.”

“We could wait a week, maybe. She might raise and she might fall. We’ll soon know how deep she is. I don’t reckon she’s not over two-three hunderd yards actual swimming—I can’t tell. I don’t want to wait here. You know why.”

“Can we make it, Jim?” asked the girl soberly.

“I think we can, ma’am,” said the old foreman as quietly. “Ef I didn’t, do you s’pose I’d throw ’em in? She has been crossed by cows, down below, for the Arkansaw market. Yore own paw has crossed her. Can’t we? If Jess Chisholm, or any of the Chickasaw whisky runners, could cross her with stock so can we. Huh? I’m a good cowman, ma’am, and I got the best bunch of hands ever pushed a foot in a stur’p.”

Taisie Lockhart turned on him the sober gaze of her steady eyes, but made no reply at the time.

“Jim!” Suddenly she turned on him.

“Ma’am?”

“Jim! I’ve got no one else—I’ve got to come to you. Cal Dalhart asked me to marry him—again, to-day.”

“Well, you didn’t, and you can’t. The last minister was at Forth Worth. There’s others of the same mind, Taisie. Has Del Williams spoke? Dalhart’s lied.”

She shook her head.

“Poor Del!” said she. “So quiet.”

“Well, he done spoke to me more’n oncet. He allows, and so do I, that no man had orto talk a word to you about no such thing until after he ain’t working for you no more. That’s until after Aberlene. That’s the way Del put it. I liked it of him. Cal Dalhart’s a leetle brash, to my notion.”

“Why do women always make trouble, Jim? I’m making trouble right here. I’ve made it from the start.”

“Well, ma’am, Eve, she begun it right at the real start. They always done so, since. I got to pass word again there can’t be no courting on the Fishhook herd, not till after Aberlene, ma’am. I told you to get married and go back home; but you wouldn’t. Now, see where you are! Time enough for marrying and giving in marriage, ma’am, ef we ever get to Aberlene. Ef we don’t we’ll not need study about that nohow. Huh?”

“I’ll be good, Jim,” said Taisie, smiling.

But when once more she looked at the river she did not hope ever to see Abilene. She classed herself now as the last of the Texas Lockharts. She would not disgrace the name.

* * * * *

Ticklish work it was, and asking alike resource and courage; but methodically as though they had done nothing else in all their lives, the men of Del Sol went about it now.

Under Nabours’ direction they got together long logs of cottonwood drift, dragging them in at the ends of their lariats, cowman fashion. Taking the cook cart for their first experiment, they lashed some of the longer logs under the body, unbolting the tongue. The clumsy vehicle was heavily loaded. How much of swimming water there would be none could tell; but their philosophy was wholly empirical. Nabours turned back at the edge of the water.

“Keep right after me, men, and keep her a-coming!” he called to the riders who now were in readiness to take the water. “Don’t try to hold her against the current. Let her slide down, and keep your horses swimming. Ef we make that bar we’re all right.

“You, Del, go upstream in front—Cal, get in front below. You’ve got the hind rope upstream, Len, and Sanchez, you go downstream. Keep her going just like it was on the ground. She’d orto float some anyway. Come on now!”

He spurred into the rolling discolored stream. His horse, snorting and trembling even at the brink, within five yards of the steep bank was in swimming water; but he headed straight across, gallantly, though carried steadily downstream.

Stripped to their underclothing, and minus their pistol belts, the men spurred in. With a sudden plunge the unwieldy craft took the water at the rear of the horsemen.

“By golly, she floats!” called out a voice on the shore.

Cal Dalhart flung up a hand with a yell. Old Sanchez crossed himself industriously. But all four of the horses, muzzles flat and nostrils blowing, followed as best they could the leader who swam ahead, his saddle horn still showing high. That it was all a mad endeavor, no sane man could have doubted. But Providence was ever kind to men who dare.

Those remaining on shore watched the strange procession in absolute silence. Taisie covered her eyes. The plan of the crossing had much good judgment in it, but only extreme good fortune ever could give it success. By some kind impulse of its own, the current began to carry the clumsy contrivance toward the head of the sand bar at midstream, scarcely more than visible above the surface, but offering great hope to the swimming horses. The silent watchers at last saw the horse of the leader plunge upwards and get footing. The two lead horses followed, all of them still belly deep. The length of the reatas of the rear men allowed them also to get footing while the great wheels of the cart, hanging below the edges of the raft, remained floating free. The power of five horses, even with soft footing under them, finally enabled the men to drag it to floating water beyond the head of the bar. To their relief it found temporary anchorage when the wheels caught bottom.

Nabours sat his half-submerged horse, looking studiously out across the remaining waterway.

“Hold on here, boys, till I try her out,” he commanded. “I think from here acrost she’s sorter flat. Ef she won’t float the cart, cut out the logs, splice your ropes and fetch one on acrost to me so we can yank her through.”

They got floatage for a little way out from the bar, but presently the raft became a liability and not an asset for them. They cut log after log free and let it run downstream. Nabours’ horse was no more than belly deep ahead of them. Four hide reatas, each of forty feet and all spliced, at last gave them connection with the solid shore. With a great shout they yanked the first cart up the farther bank.

Nabours rode up to the front of his amphibious vehicle and disclosed Buck, the negro cook, who had been praying on the floor of the cart, up to his knees in water part of the time, and now still of grayish complexion under his natural pigmentation.

“What’s the matter with you, boy?” he demanded. “Climb down out of there, now, and get things ready for a meal against we get the next cart acrost.”

It was necessary for the five men to recross the river. After a long study of both shores for a take-off, they concluded to wade down to the head of the bar, cross the swimming water from that point, and to land below the original take-off on the south shore, at a point where the high bank flattened. Two of the five men knew almost nothing of swimming. Each man put his life upon the strength and courage of his horse. Their work was there and it had to be done. They eased their mounts by slipping out of saddle, swimming downstream and taking tow, one hand clinging to a saddle thong.

It is enough to say that they did make the recrossing. Taking advantage of the rebound of the current from the bar, they found footing on the south bank perhaps a quarter of a mile below the original take-off. Wet, half-naked, they all whooped on up to the ford head, where all the remainder of their company were huddled.

“She’s all right, Miss Taisie!” yelled out Nabours. “We can do it plumb easy. You stay here where you are. I’m going to put Milly and Anita in the next cart. We’ll swim you over special, on horseback. That’s a heap safer’n any boat. All you got to do is just to set still on your horse and let him alone.”

The delay with the second cart was but short. Old Milly, on her knees in the sand hysterically supplicating her deity, was forcibly assisted to the seat where already Anita, patiently telling her beads, was seated, a-waiting fate.

Again they pushed out; once more they made the head of the bar; and this time, with even less difficulty than at first, finished the second half of the crossing. For the second time, wet to the skin, the men crossed back, cursing the luck which had brought them here to meet high water, but as yet meeting with no mishap. Nabours looked dubiously at the horses, which had made the crossing twice. The men refreshed themselves with hot coffee and a hurried bite to eat. The farther camp now was made, so there would be coffee at each end of the crossing.

But now they must address themselves to the tremendous experiment of crossing the herd. True, these had had swimming water at the Colorado, the Brazos, the Trinity; but in each case the farther shore was well in view of the take-off and the swimming channel narrow. What would the cattle do now, facing a moving sea of roily water?

“Ready with them fresh horses, men!” called Nabours. “Point the herd in here. Make them take water just back of me, and throw ’em in spreaded. All of you act just like it was on the ground. Take your points, you, Cal and Del! All you swings, ride right above and below just like you was on the trail. They’ll swing down plenty in the current. Take it easy and quiet. If any of you gets scared them cows’ll be scared too. Ef they begin to mill it’ll be hell for every one of us; so keep ’em spread out and moving. Here’s where we make a cap or shore spoil a coonskin.”

With cracking of horns and tossing of heads, the front of the herd came shuffling down the shallow draw to the edge of the water, led by a few lank and rangy steers, old Alamo, the accepted lead steer, still in front. They were creatures alert and wise as deer, true longhorn stock of the lower range. Something of the wild instinct blended with their recent practical education. Crowded by the numbers pushed against them from the rear, old Alamo shook his head for half an instant, then bent his knees and plunged in, following the swimming horse on ahead. Some men still rode the same mounts. Now and then a man lightened ship, by slipping out of saddle for a time.

One by one, by fives and tens and scores, the other cattle followed the lead thus established. The inshore leg of the long moving U passed out and down, the cattle swimming steadily, gently, their muzzles level, their tails spread. They knew well enough where they were to land.

The stream of the herd seemed almost endless, but when the great U once was established—the cattle finding footing on the bar at midstream and wading over the shallows beyond—the line of action was perfectly apparent to every animal as it was pushed up to the river brink. They took the water as had those before them, and formed a continuous living line across the river. It was a magnificent spectacle. It was a triumph of personal courage combined with knowledge of the art of cows. But surely fate aided in this first and riskiest crossing of the Red by any herd passing northbound to the rails.

There was little need of guidance after the first of the herd had reached the bar in midstream, and here some of the riders turned back to the south shore, riding up to the take-off. Again and again they took the water below the swimming stream of cattle. They could see the long line of the cattle elevate itself like a great parti-colored snake at the bar, thence writhing along as though upon the ground, and fully visible as it topped the farther shore. The great adventure seemed in a fair way to conclude itself upon the side of courage.

The old Del Sol foreman was a good cowman, as good as the next, and there were few phenomena in the trade of cows with which he was not familiar. One might have seen him all that day looking up anxiously at the sky. The heavens were dull and overcast; a bad day to put cattle at a ford. Rain portended; for long there was no glimpse of the sun. But had there been any glimpse of the sun the veteran foreman would never have pushed his herd into the river late in the afternoon, for a reason which any trail man would have understood.

At that point the river ran almost north and south, so that the course of the cattle was almost westward. In the evening any rays of the sun would lie like a path across the water.

But cattle will not swim into the sun. No good trail boss ever undertook to cross a herd into a sunset. The one hope of Nabours was in a continuous cloudiness of the evening sky. He did not want the sun to shine.

But now, as he turned his own anxious face toward the west, he saw a greater definition of the piling clouds. The lower edge of yonder heavy bank was tinged with silver. By and by the sun would drop through. Then its light would lie across the water, straight into the eyes of the swimming cattle.

The sudden oath of old Jim Nabours had many factors in it—pity for what he knew might happen, regret for his own hastiness, apprehension for the property which was not his, resentment at what seemed to him an unjust fate and a poor reward for the courage which his men had shown. Nature, always merciless, now seemed mockingly vindictive.

No act of man could affect that which was now to happen. The almost level rays of the sun did fling their burnished path across the yellow waters. It was cast straight into the eyes of the drag, some three or four hundred animals which had not yet crossed the swimming channel. It half blinded for a moment even the eyes of the men. A floating log came down among them, caught the upper cattle, swung crosswise.

The line broke. There was a great uptossing of horns, a jumbling of shoulders as some animals attempted to find floatage on the backs of others. The spaces were lost, the bodies were packed together in a mass, struggling, moaning—and steadily passing downstream. The dreaded swimming mill was on!

Little enough could the bravest or most skilled men do now. What men could do, the two riders now caught in the mill attempted. They did not try to swim free of the mass, but drove into it, attempting to break and point out the mill so that the cattle would find footing somewhere below. At times the head and shoulders of their ponies showed, climbing upon the shoulders of the swimming cattle, the men beating with their quirts, kicking, urging, shouting. But the cattle would not swim into the sun.

Those upon the nearer shore heard the sound of the rush of waters and a combined low moan, indescribable. It was hopeless. Not the best efforts of the entire company could have broken that fatal midstream mêlée. As though in a dream, Taisie Lockhart, wringing her hands, stood dumb and saw go forward one of the sudden tragedies of the trail.

“Leave them go, men! Come back! We can’t save them now! Come on out!” Nabours ordered back his men on the farther side of the bar.

They stood looking at the moving mass which made a dark blot below the bar, where the current once more headed for the east. Neither head of horse nor man long showed above the floating island.

“That was Dan and Billy,” said Jim Nabours, the first tears in his eyes any man had seen there. “I done it my own self! Look at that sun!”

It was dusk when he and half a dozen of his best men once more rode up the shore to the take-off. Taisie met him, sobbing unreservedly. The veteran herdsman himself could not speak.