CHAPTER XXX

MANY TRANSACTIONS

THE cattle, full fed and well-watered, had bedded down in their compact oblong, willing to rest after two days’ hard march. Nabours had doubled the night guard. The men in pairs rode in reverse around and around the herd, passed and repassed slowly, regularly, singing the cradle song of the cows.

Nabours, worn by long hours, early pulled his blankets over his face. Cinquo Centavos himself dozed under his ragged quilt, in his dreams comforted with the subconscious tinkling of the gray mare’s bell. In the cavalry camp, a half mile away, all was quiet save for the methodical tramp of the sentinels.

Midnight. Jim Nabours felt a strong hand laid on his shoulder.

“Hush!” whispered a voice. “It’s McMasters.”

“What’s wrong?” demanded the foreman, flying off his blanket.

“Rudabaugh’s gang will jump us in less than half an hour. Get all the men up. I am going to tell the soldiers.”

The loud challenge of a sentinel halted him, but soon he was admitted in the cavalry camp. Griswold was up at once. McMasters put before him a hurried report.

“They’re ahead about four or five miles,” he explained; “camped on the Washita. One of their hunters saw us to-day. He had just got in when I made the edge of their camp. I was close enough to their camp to hear them talking. But I don’t think he knew the soldiers were here. He must just have seen some of our cattle. Of course they know what herd it is. There are about twenty of them. They’re going to try to surprise us. You’ll help us surprise them, won’t you?”

Griswold rubbed his chin.

“Well, I don’t know that the U. S. Army has any special cause to act as a police posse in a family row; but I suppose I’ll have to throw in with you. Fine place for a woman, isn’t it?”

He had no reply to that. But a few moments later Taisie Lockhart heard steps approaching her cart. She put out her head to answer Nabours’ hurried call; saw McMasters and Griswold also standing close. Nabours announced the plan already made by these three.

“There’s danger, Miss Taisie. The Rudabaugh gang is coming. They’ll come right to your cart the first thing, like enough. Hand us out that chest. We’re going to hide it under the beds by the fire. Come on with us. The men are all up now. Crawl into any bed you see and get all the blankets and saddles around you that you can. You’ll be safer there than here. They want what’s in that box.”

An instant later, fastening her jacket, she ran, but turned back. McMasters was not coming.

“But you,” she began—“where are you going?”

“I am going back to get in your cart,” said he. “That will probably be where they’ll head in.”

Apparently he did not hear her speak again.

Under Griswold’s military orders now, two long curving lines of soldiers and trail men were spread out, leaving a wide opening at the end where the attack was to be expected. The orders were that each man was to lie flat in the grass and not to fire until the invaders were well inside the lines.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, a half hour. The herd still slept well. The riders, duly warned, kept up their crooning. The embers of the fire smoldered.

Suddenly the strain of vigilance was broken. The night air was rent by the shrill yell of the Comanche war whoop!

It was no war cry of the attacking party. It was only the devilish fashion that old Yellow Hand, close guarded, had chosen to appraise approaching invaders of his own presence and of his defiance of the men who held him captive. Whatever he expected to gain by his bravado, the wily old Iago got quick results in a swinging blow at the side of his head from a cavalry carbine which laid him out for the rest of the fight.

The fight, of course, was on at once; the keen ears of the savage had detected the presence of the enemy between the two lines of guards. The night went alight in slanting streaks of rifle fire. There was general mêlée. The Del Sol men and the troopers could make out little, except that their enemy was between the jaws of the trap that had been set for them.

One man of the assailants, unsuspected, had crawled close to the cart where Taisie Lockhart had slept. When the yell of the reckless savage broke the air—followed by the general rattle of musketry—there came the roar of the startled herd once more stampeding in the night. No cattle could stand under this. In this increase of the confusion the crawling invader arose and made a rush toward the cart. There came two red flashes from the front flap. The man fell forward and lay motionless. For a second time Rudabaugh had failed to get his coveted title to uncounted Texas acres. At the same hands, another of his boldest men had fallen.

From the rear of the cook cart came the roar of a Sharpe Berdan. Cinquo had gone into action.

“I got him! I got one!”

The boy began to crawl out from under the cart, hastening to where he saw something lying in the grass. He had lain close to the spot where the mistress of Del Sol lay bundled up in blankets; and he had thrown around her a barricade of every saddle he could find, combined with every roll of blankets.

A bugle sounded, the signal for the two lines to close in. When they heard the rush of many feet on both sides of them Rudabaugh and his men knew that they were trapped by vastly superior numbers. Not many of them were left standing. Of these, all now sought quarter. There came cries of, “Don’t shoot! We surrender!” But the Del Sol men, fearing treachery, were merciless. When they had crowded together the remainder of the bandits the trail men rushed upon them with pistol butts and quirts and rifle barrels. The few left alive were roped and bound.

Of the score of assailants only two remained alive and uncaptured—Rudabaugh and the crafty man known as Baldy. Crouching low, they got off in the grass at the best speed they could muster, and until tally was made at the camp fire no one missed them. Not until daylight, indeed, could the full list of fatalities be determined. For the defenders there was but one casualty—Al Pendleton, who had got a shot through the leg and was disabled for the time.

What had been a trail camp was now anything but that. The men gathered their prisoners closer to the fire, built it up. A trooper dragged up Yellow Hand, barely conscious, sullen and silent.

“Here is your friend, gentlemen,” said Griswold grimly to the surviving men of the attacking party. “He did all he could for you. I ought to blow his brains out, and yours out, too, and I’ve a damned good mind to do it.”

He turned toward Dan McMasters, who had come to the fireside.

“Now about these men,” he said, “I am going to take them out with me on a charge of killing those Indian women down near the Arbuckles. They’re accessories anyway. I’ve got no jurisdiction and no warrant, and it isn’t my business; but what’s the Army for? Now about this old thief, I’m going to ask him a few questions.”

He jerked Yellow Hand roughly to his feet.

“Come here, Danny,” he called out to his interpreter. “Tell this old liar I want to ask him some questions.”

“Says he don’t want to talk,” began the interpreter, as the savage grunted a few sullen syllables.

“Tell him he’s got to talk. Ask him this: Ask him, suppose white man come into camp and shoot two women, what does Comanche warrior do?”

“Says Comanche warrior catch white man some day.”

“Tell him the chief of these people that came into our camp ran away like a coyote in the grass. Tell him that man, last week, he shoot two Comanche women, just to see them kick. Yellow Hand tried to be the friend to-night of the man who shoots Comanche women. Yellow Hand acts not like a chief but like a foolish person.”

Rapid and excited conversation for some time between the interpreter and the warrior.

“Says Yellow Hand and his men shot a few buffalo. The Kiowas said all right. Says he’s good Indian. Says white man tie him up and knock him in the head. Says holler just now in the dark because he feel good. Says he don’t know who come. Says if it’s all right for white man to try Comanche, then all right for Comanche to try white man. Says suppose if that man killed two Comanche women, then white man catch him for Comanche. Then Comanche try him plenty.”

“How! How!” exclaimed Griswold. “Then they’d be willing to forget that I asked Yellow Hand to ride with me a while?” Griswold’s face was animated. He was working out some plan.

The interpreter replied, after translating some Comanche and Spanish mixed:

“Says, yes, sure. Comanches like this country. Comanches no want to fight. Says his young men will have bad hearts if they find two of their women killed. Says s’pose warrior gets killed—all right. S’pose woman gets killed, that’s plenty bad shame.”

“Ask him what people this?”

Griswold suddenly held up before Yellow Hand’s face the two moccasins which McMasters had brought with him from the Arbuckle Trail.

The old savage looked once, twice, closely. His face underwent an astonishing change—was convulsed with surprise, grief, anger. He gave but one ejaculation and drew his blanket across his face.

“Says his people! Says his family—his squaws! He know them shoe!”

“Yellow Hand! Yellow Hand!” The officer shook the old chief roughly by the shoulder. “Listen to me! Chief of the Comanches, this is our council now! Me, I talk!” The soldier stripped back the blanket from the Comanche’s face.

“Yellow Hand, for years we have been trying to get you to stop killing our people on the Staked Plains. The Great Father has always fought you fair. The Great Father never killed your women. The Great Father will put his blanket over his face when he hears of this thing.

“Listen Yellow Hand! Chiefs do not break their word. If we follow the man who did that—that man who ran away—and bring him to you and give him to your people to try him in your village will you think that the Great Father is just in his heart?”

“Says yes, he would.” The interpreter had made it plain.

“Listen, Yellow Hand! I have been trying to make treaty with you. I have been trying to get a great piece of land here where the game is plenty for the Comanches and the Kiowas, a place where they could sit down. You have not answered me about that. I have followed you. I have fed you. I have not killed your women.

“Listen, Yellow Hand! The white men are going west into your hunting country. The white men are coming north here. You see them. My young men with long knives are coming out too. They will surround you, as many as leaves on the trees. You can never kill them all. They have guns that shoot seven days.

“Listen, Yellow Hand! When the buffalo are gone you will be hungry. I gave you a great piece of land. I asked you to sit down. I gave you a treaty. I make no war now on the Comanches or the Kiowas. I will give you a good place, many miles, down by the mountains of the Wichitas, where there is much game.

“Listen, Yellow Hand! Tell him to answer me, Danny! If I do all this for you, and if I bring that man back who killed your women, will the Comanches come in and sit down by the side of the Kiowas in this country where all around them are the men of the other tribes, who have taken treaty with the Great Father? Tell him to answer, damn him, Danny!”

Yellow Hand himself sprang to his feet, cast off his blanket and stood now the Indian warrior and orator. Chief of a people, he spoke to an audience who understood him not, an audience who sat about him in the dark; but the fire of his words showed his conviction, made him understandable.

“Says he is ready to be killed. Says he tells the truth. Says his heart is sad because his women have been killed. Says if you will bring him in the man that did that, then he will be good Indian. Says he will make treaty. Says he will sit down by the side of his friends, the Kiowas. Says he will do nothing now without asking the Great Father. Says he has nothing more to say.”

“How! How!” exclaimed the officer.

He reached out and took the hand of the Comanche in his own. Then he turned toward McMasters.

“Dead or alive, we’ve got to have that man Rudabaugh. Do you know what that means? The man who can do that will be of more use to Texas than almost any man Texas ever produced. That means the end of the Comanche war. That means the Comanches will take a reservation in the Nations. Even Indians have some idea of actual justice. Dead or alive, I want Rudabaugh!”

“Take him away, men.” He nodded to his top sergeant. “Feed this man well. Give him coffee, give him sugar, give him anything we’ve got. Build up the fire. This is one good night’s work!”

He continued his talk to McMasters, pacing up and down in his excitement.

“If we could make peace for Texas, if we could clear the western border for settlement—why, we’d be preparing a cattle trail clear across the Staked Plains! Other herds? You can be sure more are going to follow yours, farther west, as soon as the road is clear. I’d rather fight Indians than feed them any day, but if I’ve got to do both I am going to do them both on the square.

“Now I want Rudabaugh. When we’ve brought him in we have done more for the cowmen of Texas than all the railroads and all the United States Government ever yet have done. Little things sometimes run into big ones; good may come out of an evil deed. I want to see that low-down brute who killed those women. The sight of his face is a thing right dear to me.

“Yellow Hand,” he said, once more addressing the Comanche, “your hands are no longer tied. In the morning go back to your people. You shall ride alone if you wish. Tell your people that I am going back to my own village at the Wichita hills and sit down. Tell them I will not follow the Comanches this summer. Tell them that my young men are following the men who killed the women of the Comanches. All these men are going on the war trail. They will not rest until they bring back that man.” And thus spoke Danny to the chief.

“Well, sunny days and starry nights to you, my dear!”

The old soldier turned to Anastasie Lockhart. Her troubled eyes looked into his an instant. He would not listen to her stammering attempt at thanks.

A bugle sounded. The troops took formation, rode away, jaunty guidon at the head; a waif of silk in a buckskin land, themselves waifs of fortune, doing their duty unseen on the far frontier, with thanks of no one and criticism from all. They were men of the Army which had saved a country and now was finding one—our Army—never understood; one day, to-day, our day, ignorantly to be despised.

* * * * *

“It looks like you was riding, too,” commented Nabours. He nodded to the saddled horse of McMasters, the additional horse with light pack, whose lariat was thrown over the saddle horn.

“Yes,” said McMasters in his cold and noncommittal way.

“I wish you didn’t have to go. The men don’t want to see you go. It’s only kind of hard for them to say so. But afore you do ride north—and I reckon I know why you do—I wisht you’d sort of give me some idee of the country ahead. You’ve heard or seen more of it than I ever have.”

McMasters took a stick and began to make a map in the smoothed ashes of the camp fire.

“I’d like to help you over the Washita,” he said: “but you won’t find that a very bad crossing—steep banks, and swift, but narrow. You’d better make some sort of raft and get the carts across.

“The next big river is the main Canadian, not so far above here. It’ll be dry, always very little water in it. It’s bone-dry sometimes for a hundred miles.

“The North Fork of the Canadian—it runs here—is the crookedest river out of doors. It carries more water than the big river. You will probably have to swim some there, but you ought to make it all right.

“You’ll get through the blackjack country, and then you’ll come up to the Cimarron-easy fording. Just beyond that you’ll be somewhere close to latitude thirty-six. You might then almost say you are getting out of the South and into the North.

“My father and old Colonel Lockhart always used to talk to me about wintering all their cattle just under that line. They said that would make them free of sticks for the next season. Some longhorns took fever even as far north as Illinois. It didn’t make Texas popular.

“Now, when you get north of 36—here’s where it runs—you have only got the Salt Fork of the Arkansas between you and the main Arkansas. It comes out of Kansas not so very far from where you’ll hit the Kansas line.”

“It sounds right far,” said Jim Nabours.

“Yes: when you get up in there you’re coming into the edge of a thousand miles of open range, the best cattle ground out of doors; and there isn’t a cow in it from one end to the other. That country’s waiting for cows. It needs them as much as our cows need a market.

“Well, you’ll find out all these things as you come to them.”

Always scant of speech, he turned away, swung into the saddle. Reaching down he held out a hand to Cinquo, the boy herder, who had followed him.

“We done saved her, Mister Sher’f,” said the boy.

But Dan McMasters did not cast a glance back of him to the white-topped cart which made the only home of Taisie Lockhart.

“Now,” said Jim Nabours, turning to his own horse, “everybody can start like he pleases except us. Afore I need a map I need some cows. Come on, men, we got to foller out one more run. Lucky if we get seven and a half cows to Aberlene.”