West of the Pecos Page 4

  Lambeth camped at Menardsville for a week, resting, buying supplies, mending harnesses, gaining information. When he left there he had both wagons loaded to capacity—a fine haul for Comanches, Bartlett averred.

  Terrill still occupied the smaller canvas-covered wagon, but she had less room and comfort. She had ceased to suffer from sun and wind, and had become hard and strong. She did not lose weight because she was growing all the time. Increased height and a widening of her frame favored her disguise. Often she gazed in rueful wonder at her hands, still shapely, but hardening from work, growing callous of palm and a deep gold tan on the back. At intervals she cut her rebellious curly locks, though never very short. And she was troubled at the thinning of her cheeks and coarsening of her skin, which she had once desired; at the look in the dark blue eyes which watched her gravely from the little mirror.

  West of Menardsville the road Lambeth chose to travel headed northwest over an increasingly difficult country, barren and fertile in patches. Settlers had drifted into this region, and a few ranches established before the war were accumulating more cattle than they took the trouble to brand.

  Lambeth decided to buy cattle enough to make the nucleus of a herd. Wakefield, a rancher who did not know how many long-horn cattle he owned, sold Lambeth what he wanted at his own price, and to boot lent him a couple of vaqueros. He advised against the Pecos country. “Best of cattle ranges,” he said; “but wild, hard, an’ lonely, shore to be a hotbed of rustlers some day.”

  Terrill sustained a peculiar feeling at her first close sight of a Texas long-horn steer. The enormously wide-spreading, bow-shaped horns had inspired the name of this Mexican breed, and they quite dwarfed the other characteristics of the animal. Terrill was destined to learn the true nature of this famous Texas stock. All in a single day she became a vaquero.

  At every ranch Lambeth added to his herd; and after every night stand some of them eluded the guards and departed for home. Nevertheless, the herd grew, and the labors of driving a number of long-horns increased in proportion. Necessarily this slowed down their daily travel to less than a fourth of what it had been.

  The end of August found Lambeth’s wagon train and cattle drive encroaching upon the bad lands of west Texas. They rimmed the southern edge of L’lano Estacado, a treeless, waterless, sandy region faintly and fascinatingly indicative of its impassable and destructive nature.

  They encountered a wandering, prospective settler and saved his life. He had come across the arid plateau from the Panhandle, how or where he could not explain. He was glad to throw in with Lambeth and help drive that growing herd. For now Lambeth’s steers, leisurely driven and as carefully looked after as was possible, had begun to pick up cattle along the way. Lambeth could not prevent this. He had no brand of his own. He could not pick out from his herd all stock he had paid for and all that had joined it of their own accord. So he became an innocent rustler, something which Wakefield had seriously warned him against; and had then removed the sting of his words by a laughing statement that all ranchers, at some stage or other of their careers, appropriated cattle not their own.

  The two borrowed vaqueros had to work so hard that Terrill seldom came in direct contact with them. The Mexican was a sloe-eyed, swarthy rider no longer young, silent and taciturn, with whom conversation, let alone friendliness, was difficult. The white vaquero was a typical Texan who had been reared on the plains. He was rough and uncouth, yet likable and admirable to Terrill. She learned much from watching these two men. At the last ranch Lambeth had added a boy to the caravan, whose duty it was to drive the large wagon while Sambo helped with the herd. There was never a day dawned that Terrill did not expect to see the last of the herd. But they drove on and on into the west, always finding grass at the end of a day’s travel, and seldom missing water. The frequent rains, summer storms they were, favored travel over this increasingly arid land.

  September came. At least that was how Terrill calculated. And with it cooler nights and dawn with a nip in the air. Terrill often stood hours of the night guarding the herd with her father. These were wonderful hours. The Mexican vaquero sometimes sang to the herd, strange, wild Spanish songs of the range. While the cattle rested and slept, the guards took their turns of four hours on and four off, Sambo and Steve, the white vaquero alternating with Lambeth and the Mexican. Terrill did her share, which, however, had so far been only guarding. As luck would have it, nothing stampeded the long-horns.

  For days on end dim blue hills had led Terrill’s gaze on to dimmer and bluer mountains, like ghosts above the hazy horizon. Steve said those mountains lay across the Pecos, that they must be the Guadaloupes. The blue hills, however, were the brakes of the Pecos.

  The white-and-yellow plain undulated on to meet these rising uplands. And the naked slope of the Staked Plains imperceptibly receded. Lambeth had been most fortunate in finding stream beds to follow. He grazed the herd along only a dozen miles a day, gradually slowing up as the harder country intervened.

  October! Lambeth’s caravan was lost in a forlorn and desolate country. They had no landmarks to travel by—no direction except west. And half the time that was impossible to follow, owing to the character of the country.

  The blue hills they had sighted from a distance were the rock-and-ridge region through which the Pecos cut its solitary way. Lambeth had been told to strike the river wherever he could and then to travel west to Horsehead Crossing, a ford that had been used by the Spaniards a hundred years before.

  When the situation began to be very serious they stumbled upon the Flat Rock Water Holes, and were thus accorded another reprieve. Two dry camps brought them to Wild China Water Holes. From there the dim road faded among the rocks. But the Mexican vaquero, upon whom had evolved the responsibility of getting them through, had his direction, and led on with confidence.

  Grass grew plentifully over the scaly ridges, but so scattered in little patches that stock had to range far to get enough. That further slowed the caravan. Nevertheless, Lambeth pushed on with relentless optimism. He had a vision and it could not be clouded. He cheered on his hands by promise of reward, and performed miracles of labor for a man who had been a Southern planter. The adventure could not recall his youth, for that was irretrievably past, but it rehabilitated his strength and energy.

  As for Terrill, the seven months in the open had transformed her physically. She was at home in the saddle or on the wagon seat. The long days under the blazing sun, or facing the whipping wind with its dust and sand, rain and chill, the lonely night watch when the wolves mourned and the coyotes wailed, the hard rides over stony ridges to head refractory old long-horns—these all grew to be part of the day to Terrill Lambeth.

  Again the Mexican lost his way. Washes to cross, sandy and dragging, cattle that must graze, ravines deepening to gorges, which had to be headed, all these confused the guide. Lambeth preferred to corrall the stock at night in one of the gorges or a bowl between two ridges. Ridge tops were less favorable places.

  They drove two days without water, except enough for the horses. The cattle began to suffer. They grew harder to hold. The riders had little rest and no sleep. Next day they dropped down over a ridge into a well-defined trail coming up from the south. Rain had almost obliterated hoof tracks which might have been so very old.

  Lambeth wanted to turn south. The vaquero shook his head. “Mucho bad, Señor. Ver seco. Water mañana. Rio Pecos,” he said, and pointed north.

  But the following night found them in a precarious predicament. Two canteens of water left! The horses were in bad shape. Cattle had fallen along the wayside. Another hot day without rain or water would spell the doom of the stock. And that meant horrible toil and suffering, probably death, for the travelers.

  Terrill remembered her prayers that night and her mother’s face came to her in a dream.

  Lambeth had the caravan on the move at break of day, hoping to find water before the sun got high.

  The road penetrated deeper into this wil
derness of stone and cactus, greasewood and gray earth. Still there was always grass. The stock now, however, no longer grazed.

  Notwithstanding the dangerous situation, Lambeth’s luck seemed not wholly to have departed. Before the sun grew hot, clouds rolled up to obscure it. The riders, grasping at straws, mercilessly drove the cattle on.

  A gloomy canopy overhead fitted the strange, wild country, which every mile appeared to take on more of its peculiar characteristics.

  Terrill, driving the smaller wagon, noticed a developing uneasiness in the long column of cattle. They had been plodding along wearily, heads down, tongues out, almost spent. Suddenly a spirit seemed to run through the whole herd. Here and there a cow bawled. They quickened from a crawl to a trot. The Mexican and the other vaquero, far in front, were not succeeding in holding them back. Apparently they were not trying. They waved wildly back to Sambo and Lambeth, who had the rear positions. Something had gone wrong, Terrill feared. How would this terrible drive end?

  Then the cattle, as if actuated by a single spirit, stampeded in a cloud of dust and disappeared. Lambeth rode on with drooping head. Sambo approached him as if to offer consolation for the loss.

  It was a downgrade there. Terrill had to hold in the team, that had also become imbued with some quickening sense. Ahead where the dust cloud hung, a rugged line of rocks and ridges met the gloomy sky. Terrill could not see far. Where had the cattle gone? What had frightened them? They were gone, and hope was, too. It was over, the suspense of the endless weeks of driving longhorns. A sterner task now confronted her father—to save the horses and their own lives.

  Terrill was plunged into an abyss of despair. Somehow she had kept up, believing her prayers would be answered. But now she succumbed. Theirs would be the fate of so many who had wandered off into that Godforsaken wilderness, lured on by the dream of the pioneer. It would have been better to meet a quick and fighting death at the hands of Comanches.

  Terrill had caught up with her father and Sambo when she saw the Mexican turn in his saddle to cup his hands and yell. But she could not understand. She did not need to understand his words, however, to realize that some new peril impended. Then several strange riders appeared out of an arroyo. At first Terrill feared they were Indians, so dark, lean, wild were their horses.

  It was only when the leader advanced alone that Terrill made out they were white men. But how sinister! The leader was suspicious. He had no rifle over his pommel. The vaquero, riding beside Lambeth, halted his horse.

  “Massa, dat’s a rustler, if I ebber seen one,” said Sambo. “We’se held up, we sho is.”

  The rider approached to halt some paces from the wagons. Suddenly, with a violent start, Terrill recognized him. Pecos Smith! The young Texan who had backed out of the saloon in San Antonio with a gun in each hand!

  “Who air you an’ what you doin’ heah?” he queried, curtly, his piercing eyes taking in all of the travelers, to go back to Lambeth.

  “My name’s Lambeth. We’re lost. An’ my cattle have stampeded,” replied Lambeth.

  “Where was you goin’ when you got lost?”

  “Horsehaid Crossin’ of the Pecos.”

  “Wal, you’re way off yore direction. Horsehaid is east from heah.”

  “We were told to travel north whether we lost the road or not.”

  Evidently the rider had his doubts about this outfit. Finally he called to Sambo: “Niggah, you get down an’ come heah.”

  Sambo obeyed precipitately.

  “Where’d I ever see you?”

  “I dunno, sir, but I’se sho seen you,” replied Sambo.

  “Santone, wasn’t it?”

  “Yas, sir. I was standin’ in front of a saloon an’ you told me to move along.”

  “Reckon I remember you,” returned the rider, and then directed his attention to Lambeth. “But thet don’t prove nothin’. Lambeth, you may be all right. But this vaquero is not. I know him. How’d you come by him?”

  Lambeth explained how the Mexican had been lent to him for the trip across the Pecos. And he added, stiffly: “I’m Colonel Templeton Lambeth. What are you takin’ me for?”

  “Howdy, Pecos Smith!” spoke up Terrill, feeling at this moment that she might well ease the situation.

  “Wal! … An’ who’re you?” exclaimed the rider, amazed, as he bent eyes that bored upon her.

  “He is my father.”

  “Ahuh. An’ how’d you know me?”

  “I was the—the kid you knocked over that day in Santone—when you came out of the saloon. … You made me fetch your horse. … And you said you’d only shot the man’s ear off—that it stuck out like a jack rabbit’s.”

  “Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated the rider. “I remember, but you’re shore changed a lot, boy.” Then he turned to Lambeth. “We’ve been trailin’ a rustler outfit up from the Rio Grande. Reckoned mebbe they’d run across somebody with wagons. Sorry to annoy you, Colonel. Turn yore wagons an’ I’ll lead you to the crossin’.”

  “Is it far?” asked Lambeth, anxiously.

  “Wal, it’s far enough, considerin’ yore hosses. I reckon you’ll just aboot make it.”

  The ensuing drive, short though it might have been, proved to Terrill that if they had not been led out of this maze of hot draws and ridges they would have been irrevocably lost. As it was, the weary horses were barely goaded to the gap in a summit of gray bluff. The rider sat his horse, waiting for the caravan to come up.

  “Rio Pecos!” he called, and pointed down.

  The riders galloped forward at his call. Terrill, with a wild start and a sob of thanksgiving, urged the team ahead. Sambo dismounted and turned back to wave at Terrill. She had all she could do to pull the horses up beside the riders.

  “De good Lawd am delibbered us,” said Sambo, and hurried back to meet Mauree.

  “Rill—he has led us—to the river!” exclaimed Lambeth, with deep emotion. “Look! Heah is Horsehaid Crossin’—of the Pecos. And look there—the cattle!”

  Terrill gazed down from a height. Just on the moment pale sunlight filtered through the drab clouds, to shine upon a winding silver river that formed a bend like the shape of a horse’s head. It flowed out of gray and green wilderness, and probably came through a gap in the distant stone bluff.

  The foremost cattle had reached the water. It had been the scent of water that had stampeded them. Sand bars gleamed white.

  Terrill caught her breath. The joy of deliverance had momentarily blinded her to something that struck her like a blow, but which she could not yet grasp. She stared at her father, at the other riders. Pecos Smith was riding by. “Adios an’ good luck!” he called, and galloped away. Sambo’s deep voice pealed from behind, where he was rejoicing with his wife.

  All along this trail, surely once a traveled road, lay skulls and bones of animals. Horses, cattle—a line of bones! From a rock stuck up the ghastly skull and weirdly long horns of a Texas steer—fit guidepost for that crossing. The place was desolate, gray, and lonely, an utter solitude, uninhabited even by beasts of the hills or fowls of the air. It stretched away to infinitude. In the east rose a pale streak—possibly the slope of L’lano Estacado.

  But it was to the west that Terrill forced her gaze. West of the Pecos! How, for what seemed a lifetime, had she lived on those words, with an added word—home! Could home have any place in this strange and terrific prospect?

  The river changed its course with Horsehead Crossing, but soon veered back to its main trend southward. It dominated that savagely monotonous and magnificent scene. Miles were nothing in this endless expanse. The green and the gray along the river were but delusions. Back to the west and south mounted the naked ridges, noble and austere by reason of their tremendous size and reach, and between them gloomed the purple gorges, mysterious, forlorn, seemingly inaccessible for beast or man. No grassy pasturelands such as had existed in Terrill’s hopeful dreams! All that was not gray stone, gray earth, were mere specks of cactus, of greasewood on the b
oundless slopes.

  Terrill’s heart sank. After all, she thought bitterly, she was only a girl. She had loved the open rangeland of Texas, over which she had ridden nearly a thousand miles, but could she ever do aught but hate this deceitful desert? She had loved the river bottoms of the Red, the Sabine, the Brazos, the Colorado, and the San Saba. They had openness, color, life, beauty. But this Rio Pecos, for all its pale silver gleam, its borders of white and green, seemed cold, treacherous, aloof, winding its desolate way down into the desolate unknown.

  “Oh, Dad!” cried Terrill, voicing her first surrender. “Take me back! … This dreadful Pecos can never be home!”

  Chapter V

  TO THE cowhands at Healds’ ranch he called himself Pecos Smith. They were not long in discovering that he was the best horseman, the best shot, the best roper that had ever ridden up out of Southwest Texas. But that was about all they ever learned about his past.

  Pecos had come up the river with a trail driver named McKeever, who had a contract to deliver cattle at Santa Fé, New Mexico. The Spanish towns of Santa Fé, Taos, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque furnished a growing market for beef. The Government forts added largely to this demand. Cattlemen, believing in future protection against the marauding bands of Indians, had followed the more adventurous settlers into southern New Mexico and western Texas. Most of the cattle at this period came from the Rio Grande.

  McKeever, on his return, stopped at Healds’ minus one of his rangy vaqueros, and it was observed that that rider was Smith.

  “We left Smith behind at Santa Fé,” explained the trail driver. “He pecosed another man an’, like he always does after a shootin’, he got drunk. We couldn’t wait fer him. But I reckon he’ll be along soon.”