CHAPTER XXII

“TILL ABILENE”

“WE can’t do nothing more to-night.” Nabours had joined his companions at the fire. “Find a critter if you can, and kill it for supper,” he added, turning to Cinquo, who white and silent, had stood at the side of his mistress through all the late tragic scene.

Stripped, wet and cold, the trail men sat in silence. The sound of a distant shot in the brush promised them food—a straggling yearling from the drag which had been lost among the willows; but they were so dulled with fatigue, regret, sorrow, that they hardly would have cooked for themselves had not Taisie and Cinquo taken a hand.

The night settled down with a certain chill along the water’s edge. The darkness held unusual terrors for the lone girl. Suddenly she dropped her face in her hands, huddling against the wet shoulder of the man who came nearest to being her protector.

“Jim! Jim!” she sobbed. “Take care of me! I am scared!”

“So’m I scared, Miss Taisie,” rejoined Jim Nabours truthfully. “Lord ha’ mercy on me!”

The men of Del Sol slept ill enough, close to the embers of their fire. Cinquo’s saddle blankets, partly dry at least, he gave to their mistress, for whom he had made a bower somewhat apart.

The boy was the first to move in the foggy dawn and to find his horse. He rode down the river bank in the direction of the last tinkling of the lead mare’s bell. He was gone for the best part of an hour before he brought up the remuda. By that time the other men had rebuilt their wastrel fire.

Something seemed on Cinquo’s mind. He approached Nabours, who stood apart, moody and depressed.

“Mr. Jim,” said he, “I met a man down there, and he was riding a blue-crane Fishhook horse.”

The foreman turned to him.

“You are sure?”

“I kin read a brand.”

“Did he say anything to you? What?”

“He was rather quiet. He was a tall man with a little mustache and a gray hat. He told me not to tell you who he was—and I hain’t told you. He told me he seen the place where the mill landed last night. There’s dead cows all along this side the river, and besides was two dead men—that was Bill and Dan. He said he pulled them out and covered up their faces. He said he knew a better crossing down below, and he wished we’d of knowed where it was at. Then he rid back down the river, when he left.”

“A damn good thing he did!” said the trail boss. “Ain’t I had enough without that set of thieves?

“Eat, men,” he added to the half-clad group of stiffened men around the fire. “We have got work to do.”

He made no comment on the news the boy had brought, but led the way. With knives and sharpened sticks, they dug two graves in the sand; stood with hats off for a little time, silent. Some men began to kick dirt in on top of two saddle blankets. They rode away.

In the draggled bivouac at the head of the crossing there remained then only the mistress of Del Sol and the boy Cinquo, who had been ordered to remain. The latter engaged himself in broiling some pieces of meat at the fire, not for himself. His divinity came out at last, having made such toilet as she could.

“Where are the other men?” she asked.

“They’re down a-burying Dan and Bill, ma’am.”

The not infrequent tears came again to Taisie Lockhart’s eyes.

“They come ashore nigh a mile below here, a man told me. He come up from down the river when I was down after the horses. A tall young fellow he was, with a dark mustache. He told me he had found where the mill landed, and the boys and everything.”

“You don’t know who he was?”

“I know he was a-riding a Fishhook horse, ma’am. I’ve saw him afore, yes.”

Taisie Lockheart turned quickly away, with no reply.

* * * * *

“Well,” began Nabours surlily, without much speech to his mistress or to any one of the company, “we’ve got to get the horses acrost. Throw them in, Sinker; drive that old gray mare in first.”

“I don’t have to drive her in; she’ll foller me,” replied the boy. “I ain’t going to let nobody point her lead for me and my remuder. They know me. Old Suze, she’ll foller right in after me. Ef you can swim it, I kin. Besides, she’s six inches lower than she was last night.”

“Huh, six inches would do a heap o’ good out there, wouldn’t it?” grumbled Nabours. “You ain’t running this herd.”

“No, but I’m running the remuder,” said the boy stoutly. His eyes began to fill with tears.

“Oh, well, get in then!” The trail boss looked at him kindly, his own eyes none too dry. “There’s only one way to make a cow hand. If he lives he lives!”

None the less, he and his two lead men flanked the horse herd close behind the plucky boy when he spurred in ahead, followed by the bell mare and the rest of the horse band. The course was much as it had been with the cattle. The horses swam strongly and confidently and in due time made the head of the bar, which now was more exposed.

“Take ’em on out now, Sinker; it’s safe from here on. We’ve got to go back oncet more, to get the boss. Come on, you, Cal and Del. This is the last trip. Hurry! She’ll be scared there by herself.”

To the primitive brain of the old Texan, who trusted nothing so much as a horse, the uncertain raftage of the previous day had made the carts seem riskier than the back of a swimming horse. For that reason he had decreed that Taisie Lockhart should remain until the very last. His plan now was revealed.

“Miss Taisie,” said he, when at length he had regained the take-off, “you’ve seen us all cross there time and again. It’s perfectly safe for a good swimming horse like yours. I’m a-going to cross you like we done everything else. I’m a-going on ahead my own self, and put Del and Cal above and below you, with ropes to your saddle, so’s to steady you if anything should happen. There ain’t no cows now. Just keep your hands off your bridle; don’t try to guide your horse none at all. You mustn’t look down at the water, for if you do you think you are going downstream, when you ain’t. Just you look on ahead, right at the top of my hat; then you’ll be perfectly safe. Us men ain’t going to let nothing happen to you.”

The girl was pale, but the family courage and the traditions of the border were her own. She got into saddle without a word and spurred the snorting Blancocito directly into the curling waters when Nabours gave the word. It seemed to her to be facing death. She resigned her soul.

But suddenly she felt under her a certain lightness, accompanied with a throbbing vibration—movement, progress. She knew her horse was swimming. On ahead, Jim Nabours sat as though upon the surface of the tawny water, the top of his saddle cantle showing over the streaming tail of his horse, which swam on, steadily and confidently, after the gallant fashion of the Texas strain. She looked right and left. Two other men were advancing also strangely over the water, only the upper portion of their bodies visible. It was like some fantastic dream.

In absolute silence they crossed the swimming channel, saw the face of the sand bar come nearer, as though it were approaching upstream across the swirling flood. Fifty yards, thirty yards, twenty yards—they would be safe! And then came one more jest of the immortal gods! It was an accident made more readily possible by the mistaken attempt of using guide ropes on a swimming horse.

A great tree, uprooted somewhere unknown miles to the westward, came rolling and dipping its snaggled branches. The men saw it perfectly well, and coolly made ready to meet the danger, each man with hand at his reata.

Impossible to predict the freak of the changing current! A bared root of the tree caught at the edge of the bar. The heavy trunk swung down toward Dalhart, who had the upstream side. Nabours was now ahead, on the bar. His back was turned. He was looking curiously at the man they all had seen approaching through the shallow water from the farther bank.

The cool-headed plainsman, Dalhart, gave length to his rope, flipped it to free it of the one menace, an upstanding snag which would not allow the rope to clear. But in some way, no one could tell how, a roll of the menacing leviathan threw the snag a little higher. The drag of the rope in the water did the rest. The rope fouled on the snag. As a consequence, the horse of Taisie was drawn directly in front of the log as it swept downstream. A scream, shouts. In a flash the girl’s pony was trying to get his forelegs over the log. The girl herself, thrown or slipping out of the saddle, was in the water; and all of them, horses, riders, with the giant log, were steadily swept down below the head of the bar.

The sudden disaster concentrated all the world into an immediate surface of eddying, onward water, coffee colored, and the narrow strip of wet sand edging it. The scene was not fifty feet across, so near were the swimmers to the one trace of land. Beyond that limit, for the participants existed no horizon and no use for eye or ear. Nabours had some indefinite, vague sense that the wet noise of a horse’s advance through the shallow back of him was close, now directly at his back; but to turn his head from the tragedy at his hand was not possible as even an instant’s thought; so that when the hurrying horseman appeared at his side, as though dropped from the sky, it seemed quite natural enough.

The quick cast of his own rope fell short from where he sat his horse, with footing on the bar. Those in the water had only their own powers now. There was no conscious plan on Taisie Lockhart’s part, or that of the two swimming men; no one could tell how it all had happened, or what now must happen. But suddenly the girl felt herself caught in the strong grasp of Del Williams, himself dismounted, swimming. He dragged her into the swinging branches—across them. By then Dalhart’s rope was free, and Taisie’s pony, dropping back from its struggle to surmount the log, also was free, as the ponderous tree trunk swept on by. So by renewed freak of fortune, all three of the horses made the edge of the bar before it was too late. By this very fact the lives of those caught in the current were set in more instant danger.

It all was in silence. No one called for aid, supplicated; no one shouted advice, instruction; there was not a sound to the advance of death. Nabours, perhaps, held his breath thrice the usual space as he jerked in his rope, cast again.

The loop fell wide, sank; but Williams missed it, was swept down, encumbered by the current, here very strong in its rebound. The water had cut off the slope of the bar a few yards below and left a gouged channel, sharp, swift. But Dalhart’s hand fell on the loop. With a groan, unable to cast again for the white face of the girl, Nabours returned, whirling his horse, gathering slack, feeling his whole life a failure now, since he had saved only a man.

Now into his consciousness came identification of the horseman who had plunged across the shallows to the harder footing of the bar, well trampled by the cattle which had passed. Of course, vaguely, generally, he had known at first loose sight that it was not any of his own men.

It was McMasters, his pistol belt wrapped around his saddle horn, his coat off and held under a leg, his reata free. He pushed down the bar—off the bar; but before his horse swam, a whirling back cast had spread the loop over the heads of the two swimmers, who, plainly, never could have made the bar.

He would have dragged them out by the neck, choked, yea or nay, had his horse held footing. As it was, he was the one of the three who had some plus power, even as his horse swam. With a desperate struggle the gallant brute got his feet on holding ground, floundered out, up. By then the loop had narrowed to the hondo. But the bit of rawhide there was gripped in Del Williams’ clutch. He still held in his other arm the heavy drag of the girl’s body. He did not know whether or not her eyes were closed; hoped only he had been able to keep her face high.

After that, it was quick, simple, silent. The essential thing had been done. McMasters used the horse to drag out the take of the rope. He saw Del Williams come to his knees on the wet sand, crawling, the limp form of the girl still supported by his arm as he staggered up.

He saw her stand alone, her arms feeling out, dazed, central figure now on a stage which was a wide sea of whirling water. Whether or not she knew him he could not tell. Taisie herself could feel little of definite plan. But what McMasters saw, result of her impulse to reach the one point of safety she could sense, was her stumbling, hurrying, arms spread, to the saddle skirts of Jim Nabours, who was on the narrow strip of sand exposed by the lowered waters, hardened by the trampling it had had.

The girl, scarce able to stand, flung an arm across the old foreman’s saddle front. Upon the other side Del Williams, following, suddenly reached out and caught her hand, even as Jim laid hand upon her arm to steady her. Her eyes, until now closed in terror, opened and looked straight into those of Del Williams, the man who from his own boyhood days had loved her, as she knew; who had risked his life for her now.

“I reckon you saved my life,” said she weakly.

She did not specify. The man who had done the essential thing was fifty feet away. But Dalhart heard the words.

Now the tense silence of the drama’s action was resolved into hurly-burly, horses plunging, splashing, snorting, men coiling ropes, all voluble in speech, undifferentiated calls, shouting, accusations.

“Come here, you!” Nabours called, beckoning to the tall rider, apart, who was coiling his wet reata, looping securely his pistol belt, pulling a latigo around his wet coat to hold it better. But McMasters flung a hand in salutation, deprecation, for what not, or for it all.

“But come on, man!” the foreman again commanded, with what intent was not plain. The laughing voice of McMasters came, clear and seemingly not much perturbed.

“See you at Abilene!” he called. Almost the next instant he had spurred bodily into the flood.

They watched him steadily carried out and down and across by the set of the current, following the same system Nabours had first used in crossing back to the south bank. None of them knew that McMasters had from his own chosen spot watched the whole crazy operation of crossing the Red in freshet, had crossed at a better ford below, and had within the hour taken position near the camp on the far shore, whence he had seen the last departure from the south bank—and done some thinking and reasoning of his own about it.

“He’ll make it all right, damn him!” said Nabours, in mixed emotions, as he watched the strange sight of a man’s body, half out of water, plowing across, following a small object dark and flat ahead, surmounting a dark broken line, a V of ripples, even so, visible in the tawny descending flood.

“Well!”

He did not explain. No one explained. No one made comment. Perhaps a sort of chagrin now held them more or less, a feeling that glory lacked, that life itself had lacked here, but for the casual, unrequited aid of a man who had come and gone after doing the essential thing.

“Help her up, Del,” said Nabours. “Can you ride, child?”

Taisie nodded, got into saddle when her horse was brought across the wet bar. So she was not yet to die? The thought was curious to her, bringing not elation but surprise. She had not once spoken, had never once cried out, appealed—not so much courage as resignment to the wish of fate. And now fate had selected a certain agency to give her back to life and its lackings. She had neither joy nor sorrow in such thoughts as came.

Nabours, his hand on Blancocito’s cheek strap, rode with face held down, his mouth grim. He sighed so deep it was well-nigh a groan, knowing that under his leadership two human lives had been lost, a third almost lost. Had that last consequence of his own folly ensued, what then? It had come so close he now had no perspective other than that it would have been the end of the world. And the draggled figure at his side, passive center of all the action, as woman is in all the great crises of the world, had no better perspective. The edge of the world lay at the south bank of the Red. Well, he had reached that horizon, passed once more beyond the edge of her world—that strange man.

The other two men dropped to the rear as Nabours led Taisie’s horse out at the landing place. Del Williams had ridden silent. Dalhart began to abuse him.

“That’ll do! The whole thing was your fault,” said Williams after a time. “You let your rope foul in that log. It’s a wonder you didn’t drownd her. If you say it was any part my fault, you’re a damned liar, and you know it! Even thataway she’d have drownded, and me, too, if it wasn’t for him.” He jerked his head toward the opposite shore.

Neither man was armed, both were nearly naked. They wheeled their horses head to head and sat looking each into the other’s face.

“The world ain’t big enough for both us two,” said Dalhart slowly.

“It shore ain’t,” answered the other man in even tones. “What you say suits me. We’ve all promised Jim there wouldn’t none of us make no break until we had delivered the cows. Does that suit you?”

“Yes, till Abilene!”

“Till Abilene!”