Shadow on the Trail Page 8

  His first action was to saddle his horse. He did not miss the suggestive glance Bert shot over to Aulsbrook. Wade stopped short.

  “Bert, I reckon you’ll be damn sorry for that,” he said, bluntly.

  “For what?” queried the rider.

  “I saw the look you gave your boss. And it said as plain as print that the distrust you had at first has come back stronger than ever.”

  “Wal, I ain’t denyin’ thet. All the same, I ask you if yore saddlin’ up doesn’t look queer?”

  “Not queer enough to make me a dirty liar,” snapped Wade. “After we get through with this Catlin gang I’m going to call you out for it.” Then he turned to Aulsbrook. “I’m on the square with you. But if you don’t have faith in me I’ll return your rifle and make tracks north.”

  “Blanco, don’t take offense at Bert. He’s young an’ hothaided—”

  “Bert better take it back while he’s got a chance.”

  “Take what back?” demanded the rider.

  “You not only think I’m a low-down liar, but you believe I’m in with this rustler bunch.”

  “Wal, you’ll have to prove to me you’re not.”

  A hot retort trembled on Wade’s lips but he choked it back and turned to the other man. “Aulsbrook, do I need to tell you this Catlin bunch is a hard outfit?”

  “No, you needn’t. They’re comin’ right up to us, thet’s shore. I don’t know what to make of it. Sort of a new trick on me. They’re a shootin’ outfit, but hardly right out in the open.”

  “My hunch is they want to see if I fell in with you, and in that case to get rid of me. Suppose you let me call their hand?”

  “No. I’ll do the talkin’ ontil I see what it’s all about. I’m gettin’ riled at the gall of them,” said Aulsbrook testily.

  Aulsbrook stood out with Bert. The other riders began to open a pack, build a fire, spread a tarpaulin in preparation for a noonday lunch. Four Winchesters leaned rather conspicuously against the wagon wheels. Wade sat down in the background.

  The rustlers left their pack horses nibbling at the grass on the other side of the road while they crossed to halt before Aulsbrook. Hard but indistinguishable words were exchanged between Catlin and Nippert up to the last moment. The latter’s sallow visage did not invite civility.

  “What you men want?” demanded Aulsbrook before either of the rustlers spoke.

  “Wal, Aulsbrook,” drawled Catlin not unamiably, “as my wants are second hand in this deal they can wait.”

  “We don’t care a damn about yore wants or yore waitin’. What we want to know is why air you bracin’ this outfit?”

  “My pard, hyar, is het up about somethin’,” replied Catlin, and with a sneer he turned to his lieutenant. “Now—you talk!”

  Nippert did not immediately avail himself of that permission. His eyes gleamed like holes under his broad sombrero. He was slow to move his gaze from Aulsbrook to Bert and from Bert to the other riders. He could hardly see Wade yet. But Wade had a keen eye on him.

  “Wal, what do you want?” queried the cattleman transferring his attention to Nippert.

  “If I wanted a civil howdy I don’t ’pear to be gettin’ it,” snarled the rustler.

  “You won’t get thet from us. So you might as wal ride on.”

  “Western custom not observed, heh?”

  “I don’t savvy just what custom you refer to.”

  “When Texans meet on the range they usually share a bite an’ a drink.”

  “Texans, yes,” rejoined Aulsbrook, caustically. “But not with rustlers.”

  “Rustlers?”

  “Thet’s what I said.”

  “Wal now, who’n hell told you thet?”

  “Bah. We didn’t need to be told. We’ve known for three days thet Catlin’s outfit was trailin’ us.”

  “Ahuh. So you deny bein’ told?”

  “Deny nothin’. I don’t have to deny or affirm anythin’ to you.”

  “Wal, then maybe you wont deny thet a young fellar rode in on you this mawnin’.”

  “I don’t say yes or no. Thet’s none of yore business.”

  “Aulsbrook, I see his hoss. An’ thet’s him hidin’ back there.”

  Wade leaped erect and in two bounds cleared the others to face Nippert in the road. He let his sudden action suffice for words. But all his faculty of intuition focused on the possibilities of the rustler. Nippert was not in the least intimidated. His face wore a surly crafty look and his eyes hid little from Wade. This rustler would draw if given the slightest chance and that intention was forming in the back of his mind. Wade saw instantly that Nippert, drawing from the saddle, could never beat him to the gun. Wade grasped that probably Nippert wanted to learn how much Wade had known, what he had told, and then refute it. Which was to say that the wily outlaw thought he could carry a point and then do away with Wade. Catlin’s attitude seemed one of intense curiosity and comical doubt of the issue. Only one of his men remained along-side Nippert, a small fellow with a crooked nose and pale blue circles under fishlike blue eyes. His front was nothing if not menacing.

  After a full moment of scrutiny, Nippert rasped out:

  “Sneaked away on us, after breakin’ bread, huh?”

  “I didn’t sneak, Mr. Nippert,” retorted Wade.

  “Wal, you cleared out damn queer. An’ I’m thinkin’ thet you got a hunch from Catlin an’ aimed to worm in with these cattlemen.”

  “What are you aiming at?” queried Wade, tartly, now fully satisfied that he had read the rustler aright.

  “I’m aimin’ to make you swaller what you told Aulsbrook.”

  “Why you dirty-mugged rustler—you couldn’t make me take back anything!” ejaculated Wade, insolently.

  Nippert was not equal to a control of passion, which weakness relegated him to a lower order of gun fighters. A leap of muscular contraction ran along his frame.

  “Wal, you lied, whatever you told Aulsbrook. Bet you didn’t tell what you admitted to Catlin—thet you was on the dodge.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I’m talkin’ to you, young fellar, an’ pretty pronto I’m liable to get tired of shootin’ off my chin instead—”

  “Bah! That’s your game, windjamming. You can’t bluff me, Nippert. I can see through you. It’s not what I told Ausbrook that you’re keen about, but how much I know.”

  “Ahuh. You ain’t so pore at talk yourself.”

  “Take it straight, then,” cried Wade in cold finality. “I heard you and Catlin talking. Your plan was to rob me—kill me in my sleep, I reckon—then trail along after this outfit, ambush them at Horsehead Crossing—where by God I’ll gamble you have done the same trick before!—make off with the cattle and sell to Chisum without being asked any questions. . . . That’s what I heard and that’s why I rode on ahead to tell Aulsbrook. . . . Now, what do— you say?—”

  Wade slowed at the last, realizing that the moment was imminent. Nippert’s harsh curse preceded his spasmodic jerk. Wade was drawing from the instant Nippert’s thin lips opened. The flash of his gun caught Nippert’s hand on the jerk and the terrific impact of the heavy bullet knocked him out of the saddle, sending the gun spinning. His horse plunged among the others. Nippert’s ally had drawn. But his horse reared as he pulled the trigger, spoiling his aim. Hard on that followed Wade’s second shot. His adversary appeared hit, for his action broke and he could not hold the frightened horse. It galloped down the road with the rustler reeling in the saddle.

  Wade menaced Catlin and the others. They had made no attempt to draw. Catlin hauled down his mettlesome horse.

  “Hold, young fellar, hold!” he shouted, lustily.

  “Catlin, I’ve a mind to bore you,” rang out Wade in the grip of a fierce cold reaction.

  “Wal, it’ll be murder if you do,” replied the rustler. “I’m not backin’ Nippert. I was agin his deal. An’ I couldn’t change him.”

  Catlin gazed down at the man lying on his back, arms spread, his spurs d
eep in the dust, his sombrero beside his working face which all at once set icily.

  “I told him. I told him!” he rolled out, as if called upon to judge.

  “Throw him on his horse and move on with your outfit,” ordered Wade. “Catlin, you fed me when I was starved. I’m remembering that now. But look out if we ever meet again.”

  “You bloody gun slinger! I had you figgered. . . . Hyar, men, one of you fetch Nip’s hoss. An’ the rest of you drive the pack train after Bill.”

  “Boss, Bill is down. Slid off in the road,” replied one of them.

  “Haw! Haw! He was a damn fool, too. . . . I told them not to draw on this hombre.”

  They loaded the dead Nippert on his saddle, remounted and took the road toward the north. Watching them, Wade slipped shells from his belt to reload.

  “One of you pick up thet gun,” said Aulsbrook, breaking the silence. “Blanco, whatever their game was, you spoiled it. I’m in your debt.”

  “Hey you, Bert,” yelled Wade. “Come out here.”

  “I was—wrong,” replied the young rider, growing white.

  “Too late. You called me a liar and you classed me with that outfit. Now you’ve got to go for your gun.”

  “But I’m—sorry. I apologize.”

  “Blanco, thet’s no way to do,” interposed Aulsbrook, hastily. “Bert never threw a gun on a man in his life.”

  “Well, it’s high time he was beginning. Any man with a tongue as sharp as his has got to back it with a gun.”

  “Boss, what can—I do?” choked out the rider.

  “Hell, you’ll have to meet him if he insists. . . . But, Blanco, you struck me fine. Won’t you let my cottonin’ to you make up for his suspicion?”

  “All right, if you put it that way,” returned Wade, sheathing his gun. “Bert, you rubbed me wrong at a bad time. But forget it. . . . Aulsbrook, I’ll ride out by the herd and wait for you.”

  Wade patrolled the herd during the noon hour. Aulsbrook did not appear to be in a rush. No doubt he and his riders had a good deal to discuss. Wade felt a grim satisfaction that none of them could doubt his status any longer, so far as his sincerity toward them was concerned.

  Far up the road the rustlers halted and went out toward the grass, evidently to bury their dead. Wade knew where he had hit the second rustler and that he had ridden off mortally wounded.

  The killing of these two men, though really in self-defense, worked powerfully and differently upon Wade. The cold mood of iron remained with him. His gloomy pondering centered around his own self-preservation and little on the fact of having again snuffed out life. If Nippert’s ally had been a little quicker, a little better, he would have shot Wade. Beyond question Wade would meet quicker and better men out beyond the border. He would offend evil men and perhaps good ones; and it behooved him to realize that and to be prepared. Aulsbrook called him Blanco, a gunman. One name seemed as good as another, since he could not use his own. But he did not regard himself as a gunman. Nor had Bell’s gang so considered him. Nevertheless he had not yet met his superior with guns. But this would inevitably come. Wade realized that he had to enhance his speed, his accuracy, and to do so he must practice, practice, practice. And that had to be done in privacy. It was one of the things he had not calculated on. His dream had been to go far away from Texas, to some place where men did not need guns. He began to suspect now that the farther he traveled west the more he would have to depend upon them. The ranger captain had sworn, ride the man down! That meant Wade must ride and hide for years before he could feel safe. Yet this stern enforcement was entirely aside from the hard facts of everyday meetings on the trails of the West.

  In due time Aulsbrook came along in the wagon, and his riders pointed the herd once more up the road. Wade avoided close contact with any of them. Once he rode out to where he had observed the rustlers congregate; and as he had surmised, they had been engaged in burying two of their comrades. The remaining four had long since trotted north out of sight. Wade’s deduction was that unless Catlin fell in with more of his ilk, Aulsbrook had nothing to fear from him.

  The afternoon passed at the slow pace of grazing cattle. The riders drove until after dark before they came to water. Camp had to be pitched where firewood was scarce. Neither Aulsbrook nor his riders spoke unnecessarily that night, and Wade was not communicative at all. After supper he said: “Boss, I’d like to stand the night watch.”

  “All right. You an’ Nick,” replied the cattleman.

  Wade rode out with Nick, who asked: “Shore you’ve stood guard before?”

  “No. This is my first crack at cattle herding. What do I do?”

  “Wal, it’s easy along heah. Plenty of grass. No storms or buffalo to stampede the herd. But drivin’ is shore tough on the Old Trail from Santone to Dodge. Onct was enough for me. . . . All you got to do here is fork yore hawse an’ smoke an’ watch. Keep the stragglers in. Thet’s about all.”

  “Gosh! Gives a fellow lots of time to think. But I reckon I’ll like it.”

  “Fine if you like loneliness an’ night an’ stars. Or if you have a gurl to think about. Haw! Haw!”

  “A girl! . . . Oh, I see. . . . That would be a help,” rejoined Wade, thoughtfully, and spoke no more. It seemed here was something he lacked. He had never had a girl; he never could have one. And he remembered Jacqueline Pencarrow with a strange melancholy. He never would forget her big dark wide eyes, fixed upon him with an expression beyond his understanding.

  He rode to the far end of the herd, and drove in the few scattered longhorns. Most of them were lying down. The night was starry and cool. An intense solitude lay over the prairie like a blanket. A hum of insects enhanced the stillness. Wade listened and watched. These senses of sight and hearing had been marvelously developed in him. How good to exercise them as a cowboy instead of a fugitive train robber. In those first hours of standing guard, with the great herd indistinct in the starlit gloom and the enveloping lonely night all around him, Wade had born in him a love for such work.

  He was sorry when relieved of duty. And he slept as if something that magnified the hours had stretched between noon and midnight of that eventful day.

  By morning the strain had eased off Aulsbrook’s riders and they were merry. They accepted Wade as one of them, a little in awe, perhaps, but certainly with friendliness and appreciation. Wade met them halfway and the hard crux of the situation passed. After that they easily adapted themselves to one another.

  Days passed, long lazy solemn days, and short starry lovely nights, until Wade forgot how many lay back along the road.

  He grew ever more fascinated by the country through which they were passing. In the distance it appeared a broken waste of rock and sage, but near at hand there were always flats and meadows and plains of grass. The herd did not lose weight, which fact pleased Aulsbrook.

  At last the riders faced the long day’s journey to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos. Toward noon the grass failed and the country became more rough and barren. The scaly bleached ridges, the deep stony draws merged in the distance into a universal gray-green wasteland. Wade experienced a strong excitement at his first sight of the yawning canyon of the Pecos—the famous river with few fords.

  Along the road, skulls of cattle adorned points of rocks, and skeletons and dried hides littered the wayside. The hot sun glared in the faces of the riders, the dust rose in clouds, the weary longhorns quickened their step at the scent of water. The ghastliness of that approach to the river increased in all the features so appallingly suggestive of barrenness and gray-stoned barriers, and thirst and death and decay. At sunset the herd topped the rise above Horse-head Crossing and ran pell-mell for the river. It was a stampede, checked only by the cool and shallow water.

  Wade sat his horse a moment to absorb the character of that famous crossing in all its somber beauty and terrific solitude. Not even Comanches tarried there long. Wade caught the rude shape of the head of a horse in the bend of the river. All seemed so much gre
ater than he had imagined—the desert, the strange river, the austere atmosphere hanging over it, and the magnificent spread of rangeland toward the west. Across here lay the country famed as “West of the Pecos” and to the north the far-heralded grassy land of New Mexico.

  Aulsbrook crossed his herd before dark and camped beyond the western bank. After supper he, and Fred particularly, appeared to be in a jovial, not to say hilarious mood. Aulsbrook produced a black can-covered bottle from the depths of the wagon.

  They drank, and pressed liquor upon Wade.

  “I’ve sworn off,” objected Wade.

  “But just this once, Blanco,” insisted the cattleman.

  “Aulsbrook, I’ll need a steady hand and eye in this west-of-the-Pecos land.”

  “Shore you will, Blanco, an’ by Gawd!—you’ve got ’em. . . . I didn’t tell you thet I was goin’ west for good. An’ I reckon yo’re doin’ the same. Let’s drink to our good luck.”

  “That hits me deep,” responded Wade, heartily. “One more, Aulsbrook, and then I’m through with the bottle.”

  Aulsbrook sold out to Jesse Chisum.

  It was a difficult matter for a trail-driving cattleman to get past the great Seven Rivers Ranch. Wade recognized the cattle king’s strategic location. Not one herd driver in a hundred could refuse a good offer after that grilling trip across the badlands of western Texas.

  “Blanco, I’m takin’ Fred with me to Arizona. The other boys have got on with Chisum. Has he offered you a job yet?”

  “No. I’ve a mind to tackle him for one. Never saw such a wonderful country.”

  “I’d like you to go with me. I’d shore feel safer. This wad of money makes me sweat.”

  “Thanks, Aulsbrook. But I reckon I’d rather not.”

  “Why, Blanco? We’ve gotten along fine since—”

  “That’s it, Aulsbrook. Since! I’d rather be among strangers.”

  “Ahuh. I savvy. An’ good luck to you. But let me give you a hunch. Chisum is runnin’ ten outfits of cowboys. He always hires only the toughest nuts that ever forked a hawse. You won’t have a bed of roses heah. The Lincoln County Cattle War is on. An’ Chisum is part responsible for thet. He once had Billy the Kid an’ his outfit heah. If you don’t know, I’ll tell you thet Billy the Kid is the chain lightnin’ an’ poison of this frontier. Chisum is daid sore at Billy now an’ he had a lot to do with makin’ Billy what he is today.”