Shadow on the Trail Read online

  “Bless you—girl!” he whispered, huskily, and slipped out to glide into the shadow of the trees.

  Then he straightened up to peer around. The huge wagons gleamed weirdly in the moonlight. Fires were long dead. Nothing stirred. By straining his ears Wade caught a tinkle of running water. Beyond the camp he could slake his thirst. Stealthily he glided for the left wall close by, and as he moved, the tip of the moon sank below the rim of the opposite wall. Before he stepped he made certain where to place his foot; there would be no snapped twig, no imprint in dust, no disturbed tuft of grass. He had progressed a few rods when a perceptible shade darkened the canyon. The moon had gone down. Dawn was not far away. One by one Wade passed the gray prairie schooners. The canyon opened wide, the left wall sheering south, black with timber and thicket. The creek turned away from the road in the direction Wade had chosen.

  He halted to breathe deep of the cold air. He felt a wondrous exaltation. Free! And that dark life lay behind. He gazed back toward the camp, trying to pierce the gloom and see once more that little tent and his dark-eyed savior. The rangers who rode men down sank into insignificance beside a slip of a girl. If his fate had been for them to catch him, his steps would never have led to her.

  Wade glided on and left no tracks. He accepted Jacqueline Pencarrow as someone more spiritual than real, as a barrier against hatred, as a reward for his promise to his father and the strength to withhold his gun from rangers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WADE’S great task was to travel on yet leave no trace. This proved to be a job for an Indian, not a white man used to boots and horses. Fortune favored him in that the grass was thick and short, and devoid of dew.

  At a spring which poured from a crevice in the bank, Wade refilled the canteen, and then drank all he could hold. He went on refreshed.

  The morning broke, sunny and bright. Mocking birds and wild turkeys, deer and rabbits gave music and movement to the cool spring morning. Wade noticed these things but took no pleasure in them. He was a somber, vigilant man, bent on saving his life.

  Mahaffey would scour the immediate vicinity of the caravan camp in an endeavor to strike Wade’s tracks. The chances were that he would not find them. If he did Wade would know before the sun stood overhead. Failing that, the rangers would have recourse to their old habit of circling ahead through the country, touching at all settlements, ranches, camps, everywhere a fugitive might go for food. They would never guess that Wade had food enough for a week, salt for a month, and need never approach a house or town. But Texas Rangers were not to be gainsaid. If he did not get out of the state they would capture or kill him eventually. And the vast stretch and heave of western Texas had to be traversed.

  Wade followed the creek to its headwaters. There in a shady spot he drank again and ate sparingly of his food. By this hour he would have traveled fifteen or eighteen miles from his starting point. He did not know the immediate country, but he had a general idea of the direction he should take to work south of the arid slopes of the Staked Plain, a region few men ever crossed on foot. He must keep off roads and avoid the habitations of men. No railroad crossed the country south of the Texas Central. Every step he took would lead him into more unsettled country. By keeping high up along the plains he would be able to ford the rivers where they emerged from the plateau. Eventually he could strike west for the Pecos River, west of which there were no laws, no rangers, nothing but wild cattle and wild men, rock, cactus and sagebrush.

  He camped that night on a stream many miles farther on, and if he left any tracks they would be obliterated by a remnant of the last great herd of buffalo. Wade recalled then the fact of the rapid extermination of the buffalo by hide hunters. If he remained on this broad track he soon would be among the camps of these butchers. That year, 1878, would see the end of the great shaggy beasts of the plain.

  Wade slept that night like a man whom neither pursuit nor worry could keep awake. Next day the wound on his arm burned and throbbed. He untied it and removed the bloody pad, remembering it to be the folded garment he had appropriated in the girl’s tent. It was not then a thing of beauty but he kept it. Then he washed the wound which had healed over but was swollen and painful. Binding it loosely, he went on his way.

  Three days later he entered a grassy zone despoiled by the ghastly carcasses of skinned buffalo. Hundreds lay in plain sight. Wolves and coyotes, vultures and buzzards swarmed everywhere. The stench was sickening. Soon Wade heard a distant boom, boom, boom of buffalo guns. Below him, along a river bottom, black moving patches and clouds of dust from which came the continuous boom was a scene of carnage that he wanted to avoid. At sunset he fell upon a camp of hunters. There were a dozen or more burly, bearded men, some dust-begrimed and bloody-handed from the day’s work, others emerging wet and hairy-breasted from the creek. Wagons loaded with hides stood ready to be hauled away; horses and oxen grazed along the creek; buffalo hides pegged to the ground half surrounded the camp.

  These hunters asked Wade no questions, but they invited him to eat with them. A wayfarer on foot meant little to them. There were thousands of hide-hunters on the Texas plains.

  Wade was glad to rest and eat with them. They appeared to be merry fellows, from all over the country north and east, among whom Wade recognized no Texans. They were making money which no doubt accounted for their jovial hospitality.

  “Want a job skinnin’ buffs or peggin’ hides?” asked the leader. “Two bits a hide.”

  “Thanks. I don’t believe I do,” replied Wade, resisting a desire to accept.

  “Did ye ever skin a buff?” asked another.

  “No.”

  “Wal, if you haven’t, you’d make about two bits a day for a month.”

  They all laughed at the joke.

  “Got a horse you’d sell?” asked Wade casually.

  “Lots of ’em.”

  “And a saddle?”

  “Yes. I can oblige you. How much’ll you pay?”

  “I couldn’t afford more than twenty-five dollars.”

  “Sold.”

  Next morning Wade found himself mounted on a staunch horse with a pack of buffalo rump, biscuits, salt, sugar, coffee and a few utensils tied on the back of his saddle.

  “Where bound, young fellar?” asked the buffalo hunter with a shrewd and kindly look of interest.

  “Fact is, I don’t know where I am,” admitted Wade.

  “Two hundred miles west an’ a little south of Waco. Where do you want to go?”

  “West of the Pecos.”

  “Long ride, stranger. Cross the next river an’ strike west along it. Avoid direct south. Thet country is overrun with hide-hunters and Injuns. Leave the river where it comes out of the bluffs an’ travel southwest. It’s rough goin’ an’ water scarce. Somewhere you’ll cross the cattle trail for the Pecos.”

  “Thanks, hunter,” replied Wade, gratefully.

  “You’re welcome.” And as Wade rode off he added, “I never seen you atall!”

  Day after day Wade rode west, always alert and keen-eyed, ever looking backward on his trail. But as the days multiplied and he never saw a settler’s cabin or a horse, or crossed a road, something began to ease off him like a gradual lessening of a burden. He had always wanted to be alone but now he knew loneliness as he had never before experienced it.

  The river forked at the foot of the hills. Such a beautiful spot Wade had never seen. Wonderful trees spread green canopy over glades where deer and turkey did not run from him. Bear and panther followed him curiously. The deep pool where the streams joined was full of fish. Wade spent a day there, cooking venison for his jaunt into harsher wilderness. Early summer had come to this part of Texas.

  Next morning Wade arose to make an early start. Some days he had had to spend time finding his hobbled horse. But that did not occur in this camp. The sides of the horse were full and round. He would need that in the days to come. Wade left the lonely sylvan spot with regret. How wonderful to have had a ranch there! But sure de
light was not to be his in Texas.

  He headed away from the river, just enough south to keep to the foot of the slope. When he emerged from the river valley he saw the real Texas spread away to infinitude, gray and vast, a rolling barren of sagebrush.

  His chief concern now was water. But at this season, along the bulge of the western plateau, there could hardly be a day when he would fail to find a stream or water hole. His horse was a walker, covering three miles and more an hour. Soon he left the game trails and the birds and rabbits behind. The solemn noon hour found Wade a moving dot in a wasteland of green. The hours passed insensibly. His habit of looking back had become fixed, but it never yielded sight of living things. Before sunset he crossed several little willow-lined threads of water, and before dark he selected a grassy swale for a camp. That time Wade did not hobble the horse. He had long since established friendly relations with this meek and stout steed. They were dependent upon each other. His camp tasks were simple. He built a fire to make coffee and heat a piece of meat. He had allowed himself one biscuit a day. His freedom was so glorious, the strange companion he had found in himself so intriguing, that the sameness of his simple fare never palled upon him.

  He ate and afterward waited the passing of the hours to twilight and night. For years he had camped in secluded places. But this was different. No drinking, quarreling, gambling, garrulous companions! No sense of incomprehensible loyalty to his chief or fear for him! All that seemed long ago, gone into the past of which only the one memory crystallized.

  That night Wade was free of the mourning of the wolves, the yelping of coyotes. He had grown to love these sounds and felt lonesome in their absence. He lived in the present. His desire to escape from Texas was so strong that it absorbed what time he gave to calculations. The past was fading. The future did not intrude. That would take care of itself. The moment, the hour, the night occupied him. He slept on his saddle blanket with his saddle for a pillow.

  In the rosy morning, when Wade took stock of supplies, he found that he had ten biscuits left and enough coffee to last with them. He headed into the gray beckoning distance.

  When those ten biscuits were gone Wade knew he had traveled ten days.

  By imperceptible degrees the character of the plant life changed. From sagebrush he passed to dwarf mesquite and other thorny growths, excepting cactus which he saw rarely. The ground grew scaly with scant grass and a little mixture of sand. Wade entered this zone with misgivings. It was not the treacherous braseda of southern Texas, yet it might well check his progress and eventually take toll of his horse and himself. By standing in his saddle Wade could see how the vast thicket gradually sloped away from him toward a darker line of green. That would be a stream. And from there the brush-darkened land appeared to rise slowly toward dim ghosts of gray bluffs in the west.

  This was a crucial moment for Wade. He could not turn back. Southward the dense growth thickened. To go north was forbidden by the barren plateau in that direction. To travel westward was his only course. Grim and fully aware of his danger Wade rode into the brush, taking the sun for a guide.

  And at once he appeared plunged into a labyrinth of lanes, aisles and glades surrounded by impenetrable thickets. He could not ride in a straight line. He had to zigzag, double upon his trail, break through thin barriers of brush, and go around. The soil was too barren to support a complete covering of brush, which fact was fortunate for Wade, as otherwise he would not have been able to make any headway.

  He kept on and the sun mounted hot. From time to time he wet his dry mouth and throat, but he was sparing of his water. The horse sweat copiously and by and by the perspiration began to pour down Wade’s face. He tied his coat on the cantle. Relently he pressed westward, indomitable and resourceful. He rode until darkness forced him to stop. His horse went without grass and water at that camp.

  Wade slept a few hours, then lay awake, a prey to worry. When it was light enough to see the opening in the thicket he saddled and addressed himself to a critical day.

  The morning was cool and sweet. Wade’s horse nipped at dewey tufts of scant grass and at occasional tips of bushes. Hope resurged in the fugitive. He would get through. Jack rabbits, few and far between, were the only living creatures that crossed Wade’s sight. He husbanded his horse’s endurance and was more sparing of his water. The sun grew hot and by the time it was directly overhead, Wade felt it almost unendurable.

  Then the brush seemed to close in on him, so that the avenues grew scarcer. This fact had one good side—the denser it grew, the closer it came to water. But he had to break through wherever that was possible. The thorns tore at his legs and the heat and dust told mercilessly upon him. As he toiled on, his thirst grew almost maddening. Half his water was gone. He took a good swallow and determined he would save the remainder for the next day. He could last two more days without being in an extremity. But could the horse hold out? Wade was finding this beast enduring and game. And once again he was learning what it was to be dependant upon a horse.

  All obstacles increased. By midafternoon he was a ragged and begrimed man, lost in this wilderness of thorn, beginning to feel near the end of his mental and physical resources. His horse labored in distress.

  By sunset a horror of his predicament beset Wade. His passion to live mounted to a frenzy. And this infernal wall of tangled branch and thorn, the suffocating dust, presented such brutal terrible barriers to life that Wade sometimes doubted the sanity of his unabated spirit. His intelligence told him that he was still a long way from physical collapse. The thing to fear was the effect of the heat on his mind. And it seemed that the sun was burning a hole through the top of his sombrero. He filled the crown full of leaves. He rested in a shady place, pondering the situation. Soon night would intervene again. He decided to give the horse free rein and keep on.

  As Wade pondered thus, the horse gave a snort, scattering caked frother from his nostrils, and started on of its own accord. Wade took that as an instinct of self-preservation. He let the animal make its way through the brush. Then followed hideously long and racking hours till the sun set. Relief did not come, so great had been the effort and the strain. Wade was fighting terrible discouragement when the horse plunged out into a wide road.

  Wade stared incredulously. It was not a delusion or a mirage. A wide yellow road bisected this appalling maze of thorn. Wade looked down in thanksgiving, as if he had not before had solid ground under his feet. Cattle tracks! He studied them, here, there, across the road. He bent down in the saddle. Horse tracks! Fresh upon the cattle tracks! He deduced that a big herd of cattle had passed there a day or so before, and not later than an hour ago horsemen had ridden in the same direction. Wade was an expert on horse tracks. His profession had taught him that hard lesson.

  This was the road the buffalo hunters had spoken of—a cattle trail leading to the Pecos. Wade rode on, profoundly struggling with a change of mood. Something unknown, big and vital, lay ahead in the future.

  Sunset had not long yielded to the gloaming hour when Wade heard the ring of an ax. It made his heart leap. Then he became aware that his horse scented water. Turning a bend he came almost abruptly upon a camp set in an opening where a creek gleamed, running over rock. A camp fire blazed. Men rose at his advance.

  “Hullo, thar,” called out a rough voice that was a challenge as well as greeting. A burly man, gun in hand, would have blocked Wade’s progress.

  “Niggah or white man?” he queried.

  “Wait. . . water,” replied Wade in husky choked voice, and fell out of his saddle to bend to the stream. He drank, his horse with him, and the thought came to him that if he had ever appreciated water before, it had been nothing to this. Then he got up like one cramped from long riding. The big man who had accosted Wade stood by, reinforced by two companions. Wade had sees enough hard characters in his day to recognize these.

  “Come to the fire. Let’s hev a look at you,” said the leader.

  “Reckon I’m in luck,” replied
Wade.

  There were six in the group, all matured men, significantly different from the robust hearty hide-hunters. These men were mostly lean, dark-garbed, clean-shaven, with hungry glittering eyes. The leader stood hatless, a man of lofty stature, wide-shouldered and heavy, his visage like a crag with slits of fire for eyes and a thin hard line for lips.

  “What’s yore handle?” he asked.

  “No matter. It changes as I rustle west,” said Wade with a laugh. He had the ease which intimacy with such men gave him.

  “Lost in the brush, hey?”

  “Yes. Two days. I came from the head of the Blanco.”

  “Ahuh. Been with the hide-hunters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Air you a buff hunter?”

  “No.”

  “Trail-driver, mebbe?” queried the leader, with an appreciative survey of Wade’s lithe build.

  “No. I’m on the dodge, if you must know,” retorted Wade, crisply, with an edge to his voice that did not invite undue curiosity. “I’m worn out and starved. Will you feed me? Or must I go on?”

  “Stay, stranger. We got plenty of grub. An’ if you’re on the dodge our hand is not agin you, thet’s shore.”

  “Thanks a lot,” replied Wade, gratefully, and hastened to relieve his horse of saddle and bridle. He carried these to an open spot not obtrusively far from the campfire, and untied his coat and pack from the cantle. Then with soap and towel he repaired to the creek for a much needed wash. He removed his shirt, which was wet and torn and as black as if it had never been light. When he had washed it, and himself, there came a call to supper. Wade made tracks for the fire, to hang his shirt on a stick to dry and present himself with alacrity at the spread tarpaulin.

  “Fall to, stranger, an’ help yorself,” said the leader. “This ain’t no Santone dinner but there’s plenty of what we got.”