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Authors: Elmer Kelton

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BOOK: Texas Rifles
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Another Indian drove at them, but Cloud fired on him and forced him to pull away. He knelt by the captain's side, the smoking pistol in his hand, his anxious eyes peering through the smoke for signs of another threat.
As suddenly as they had come, the Indians were gone. The smoke drifted away and the dust settled. Cloud turned the captain over and saw the spreading stain on the man's dusty shirt. He ripped the shirt away to get at the wound. The captain gritted his teeth.
“How many dead, Cloud?” he wanted to know. “How many?”
“Don't know yet, sir. You just lay still.”
“Dammit, find out how many!”
“Captain, you ain't in no shape to be worryin' yourself about it one way or the other.”
He saw Miguel Soto walking up with Cloud's horse. “Thanks, Miguel,” he said. “Figured I'd lost him.”
“Por nada,”
shrugged the Mexican. “I share with you my coffee, but I don' share with you my horse.”
Cloud found the captain's wound to be low in the shoulder. “Close, Captain,” he said. “A little lower and it'd have been in the heart.”
“Well,” the captain breathed tightly, “it wasn't, so let me up. I've got to see about the company.”
Cloud shook his head. “Captain, the company's goin' to have to do without you, or else turn back. You've gone as far as you can go.”
The doctor, Walt Johnson, showed up with his bag. He glanced in dismay at the captain, then forced a thin smile. “They told me you were dead, Captain. No such luck, eh?”
“Patch me up so I can ride!”
“Shape you're in, Captain,” Johnson said, “you'd be lucky to ride in a wagon.”
“We have no wagon.”
“Sort of narrows it down, doesn't it, sir?”
The captain seemed to give up then. He sank back, hopelessness in his eyes. “Damn them, what were they after? They knew they couldn't whip us all. What did they come for?”
Cloud said, “Fun, maybe. Thought they'd hit us a lick and get the hell out. And they probably figured they could get away with some of the horses, too. Been spyin' on us a spell, more'n likely. Seen us stop for supper and thought they'd bust in and run off all the horses they could. Leave enough of us afoot and there'd be nothin' left but for all of us to turn back.”
“Did they get many horses?”
“No, sir, not hardly a one.”
“And men … I asked you once about men.”
“Just one dead that I've seen, sir.”
Barcroft's face fell. “Elkin?”
Cloud nodded. “Yes, sir, Elkin. Way he went down, I don't reckon he hardly felt a thing.”
Barcroft shut his eyes against a surge of pain that stiffened him hard as a rock. When it passed, he opened his eyes again. They were glazed now. He spoke tightly: “Elkin … best man I had. Always figured if anything happened to me … he'd be the one to take over.”
The doctor broke in, “Captain, that bullet's got to come out, and pretty soon. Longer we wait, the worse it'll be.”
Barcroft whispered, “Get on with it, then.”
The doctor warned, “It'll hurt pretty bad. I've got some whiskey along—brought it for just such an emergency. Drink enough of that and maybe it won't seem quite as bad.”
“No whiskey,” Barcroft said flatly. “I can't be drunk and command.”
“You can't command now anyway,” said the doctor.
He glanced at Cloud. “Get me some hot water started, will you?”
The doctor went after the whiskey, and Cloud got some water on to boil over a fire. The doctor brought the bottle and handed it to Barcroft. “I'm the doctor,” he said firmly, “and I'm telling you to drink it!”
The captain took a long pull at the bottle and swore at the fire of it. “Where'd you get this?”
“Just drink it … sir!”
Even with the whiskey, the captain fainted before they got the bullet out. He spent a restless night, tossing in fever. By morning, though, the fever had subsided to some extent. The captain's eyes seemed to be sunk far back into dark hollows. He tried to sit up, but he couldn't make it.
The doctor told him, “You've got to go back, sir, there's no alternative.”
Barcroft said in a thin, fevered voice, “I vowed we wouldn't stop this time. I promised to follow the Indians all the way.”
“The company might be able to go on, but
you
can't.”
The captain's pain-ridden eyes studied the worried men gathered around him. At length his gaze settled on Cloud.
“Cloud,” he said, “Likely as not those Indians'd throw you off the trail sooner or later, and you'd have to go by instinct. Could you find the watering places you told me about?”
Cloud frowned and looked at the other men. “I think I could, sir.”
“Thinking isn't enough. You'll
have
to do it.”
Cloud shrugged. “All right, sir, I
will
find them.”
“Have you ever led men? Commanded them, I mean?”
“Never no bunch like this.”
“You'll have to do it now. I'm turning the company over to you!”
Cloud rocked back on his heels. “
Me
, Captain?” He took a deep breath. “Why
me
?”
“It's not that I want to, Cloud. If I had a choice, any choice at all …” He scowled. “I've watched you. Unionist or not, you know what you're doing, and you've got an advantage over everyone else here. You've been up into the edge of the high country where these Indians are heading. It just seems to fall into your lap, doesn't it?”
“Captain,” Cloud pleaded, “why don't you turn it over to somebody else? Just let me be a guide—a scout—like I've always been. I never figured to be no officer, never had no trainin' thataway.”
“You know what you need for
this
job, probably better than any man here. It hurts me worse than it does you, just having to give it to you. So take it and go on. That's an order!”
Cloud rubbed the back of his neck, still unable to accept what had happened to him. “Captain, I don't know much about the military, but I thought I was under arrest. You sure don't turn a command over to a man who's under arrest.”
Barcroft scowled again. “Then you're not under arrest anymore. You forget about it and I'll try to.”
Cloud looked around him, worriedly studying the faces of the men, wondering how they would accept him, especially those strongly Confederate. “Boys,” he said, “I don't really want this job, and if you-all don't want to follow me, I won't take it. It's up to you.”
The captain protested, “It's not up to them.
I
gave the order.”
Miguel Soto grinned thinly and nodded. Red-haired Quade Guffey said, “All right, new captain, you just tell us where you want us to go to.”
Cloud looked at Seward Prince, the staunch Confederate.
Prince frowned and dug his toe into the ground. He finally said, “This ain't no time to be fightin' over politics. Them Indians don't know one side from the other. Later, maybe, I'll fight you to hell and gone. But right now I'll follow you.”
Cloud expected some vocal opposition, for he could see it in a few of the faces. But when Prince accepted him, the rest of the opposition seemed to dissolve.
“Just lead out,” somebody spoke, “and let's go.”
Cloud couldn't just ride off and leave the captain alone. He had a couple of men who had received slight wounds in the sudden raid last night. These he detailed to take the captain home. An hour's ride back, he had seen a grove of trees late the day before. He told the men to go there and cut a couple of long ones, then make a travois to carry the captain home.
As Cloud started to leave, the captain waved him over. “Cloud,” he said, “the main thing now is to try to get that little girl back. I don't expect I'll ever find mine anymore. But get
this
one!”
Cloud promised, “We'll sure try, sir.”
T
HEY FOUND WHERE THE INDIANS HAD STOPPED TO rest briefly during the night. On the run, Indians seldom rested any more than they had to. From this point, the single trail splintered into half a dozen.
Cloud cursed under his breath and said to Miguel Soto, “Been afraid all along they'd do this. When they couldn't run our horses off, they figured to get rid of us by splittin' up. We can't follow them all.”
Quade Guffey suggested, “We could split up ourselves.”
Cloud shook his head. “Mighty little I know about soldierin', but one thing I
do
know is that you don't want to divide your forces. We'll just have to pick one trail and stay with it.” He turned to Miguel. “Reckon they'll all meet again farther along?”
Miguel said, “Sometimes they do. Not every time. with Comanche, is nothing ever sure.”
Quade asked, “How we goin' to know which trail to stay with?”
“We don't. Just shut your eyes and pick one.”
Quade took one that appeared most nearly to follow in the same direction as they had been riding. It was the one Cloud would have chosen.
They followed the trail an hour or so before this one split, too.
“Indians,” Guffey growled. “They'll wear you to a nub, just makin' decisions.”
Cloud gritted his teeth. Anybody could follow a hundred horses moving in a bunch. But it might not be easy to follow three or four ridden by men who knew how to hide their trail.
The late-summer sun built to a deadening heat as the riders moved along, the main body of horsemen staying to one side of the trail to prevent obliterating it in case Miguel and Cloud lost it and had to do some backtracking. They jogged in silence across this open, rolling prairie of brown grass that stretched on to infinity, fading from sight in waves of heat that writhed in ceaseless torment on the vague, brassy horizon.
As the day wore on, Cloud found himself looking back often at the men. He saw their shoulders begin to droop. He saw some of them turning for a wistful look over the back trail. At times the trail was so dim that the men had to ride along in a slow walk while Cloud and Miguel bent in the saddle, straining for sight of something to go by. Now and again they had to halt altogether and circle back for another try, picking up the trail somewhere behind and following it again, careful lest they lose it once more.
Finally, late in the day, the trail played out altogether. Miguel tried hard to pick it up, even got on his hands and knees and probed with his fingers at what he thought might be a horse track. It wasn't.
Until dark they hunted, but the Indians had covered the trail too well. Cloud felt a momentary wave of despair. “Led us right out to the thin edge of nothin' and then dropped us off.”
He signaled the men to stop and fix supper. Sharing a fire with Miguel and Quade Guffey, he morosely stared into his coffee cup.
Guffey said, “No use blamin' yourself. Wouldn't have been any different if the captain had been in charge.”
“Wasn't blamin' myself, or anybody. Just wonderin' which way to jump next.”
“Don't look like we got much choice. We lost them. We'd just as well head home.”
Cloud frowned. “Maybe we could find them again.” To Guffey's questioning glance, he said, “I got a hunch where them Comanches might be headed. I been thinkin' about just goin' there ourselves, as fast as we can.”
Guffey and Miguel straightened with interest. Guffey asked, “Where's that?”
“A spring Easter showed me. Best, she said, anywhere down on this part of the plains. Said the Indians use it a lot as a jumpin'-off place when they sashay south to plunder, and they meet there sometimes when they come back after a raid.”
Guffey pointed out, “You don't know that they'll use it
this
time. That bunch we followed when we rescued her—
they
didn't meet on no spring. Why don't we go back to the place where we first found her?”
“They know
we
know where it's at. They
don't
know we know where the spring is.”
Some of the men had begun to gather around and listen. Finally Seward Prince spoke up: “Cloud, how far is it to that spring?”
“Can't rightly say. It's a far piece yet.”
“How do you know you can find it? You don't even know how far it is.”
Chewing his lip, Cloud said, “I can find it, that's all. I've always had a good sense of direction. Ever I'm at a place, I can find my way back to it. Kind of an instinct, I guess.”
“You feel sure of yourself, but how can we be sure of
you
?”
Cloud sought an answer but didn't find it. “The Lord gave me an instinct, and I've got faith in it. You'll just have to have faith too.”
Prince grumbled, “I got faith in what I can see—a good horse, a gun. I ain't keen on somethin' I
can't
see, like somebody else's instinct.”
Guffey stood up and heatedly faced the man. “You got somethin' better?”
Cloud held up his hand to stop the argument. “Boys, ain't no use us gettin' in an argument over this thing. I'm not takin' anybody someplace where he don't want to go.” He stood up and looked around. By this time all the men were close enough to hear him. He drained the coffee cup and dropped it.
To all of them he said, “I'm not Captain Barcroft, and I won't even try to act like him. I got a proposition to make you. Them that don't want to go with me can turn around and head home, and no hard feelin's. Them that does choose to stick with me, I want them to know what the odds are. We've lost the trail. Chances aren't good that we'll pick it up again. Ahead of us, way off yonder, is a spring where I think the Comanches may be figurin' to meet up with one another. I can't guarantee to find it, but I
think
I can. And even if we find the spring, we can't be plumb sure that's where they're headed this time. All we can do is rely on the odds. And the odds are, that's where they'll go.
“Another thing: we know the Indians left a rear guard to spy on us last night. That's why they hit the camp the way they did. Now, they may still be out yonder watchin' us, seein' which way we're goin' to go. So if we do cut out across this prairie and head straight toward the spring, I think we ought to start in the night. With a little luck, we can be a long ways before any spies they've left catch on. That way, we'd be in better shape to surprise the bunch when we do find them.”
Dr. Johnson said, “Sounds reasonable to me. If the captain had enough confidence to leave you in charge, I'll go with you.”
Other men agreed with the doctor. In a minute almost no one was left except Seward Prince. Cloud stared levelly at him. “How about it, Prince?”
Prince looked around him and saw how the temper of the others seemed to be. He shrugged his heavy shoulders and said, “Well, it's a cinch I don't care none about goin' back by myself. I ain't got your instinct, Cloud; I'm
already
lost. So it looks like I got no choice.”
Cloud warned him, “If you go, you'll take orders like everybody.”
“I'll take orders. I'm liable to whip you later, but right now I'll take orders.”
Cloud nodded in satisfaction. “Fair enough. Whip me later, if you can. Right now we better try to get a little rest. After a while we'll get up and head out in the dark.” He paused and added, “And this time we'll do what we came for, boys. I can feel it in my bones.”
 
They rode in starlight. It was barely bright enough to see each other and not become separated in the night. Cloud felt the weariness weighing in his own body and could see it in the sag of the other men. They hadn't rested
long enough. Before long they would feel the horses giving out too.
They jogged along in silence, no one talking lest voices carry. They denied themselves the comfort of smoking tobacco, lest the glow be seen from afar. Some men who normally smoked were chewing their tobacco now, trying to defeat the craving that gnawed at them.
Cloud picked a course by the stars and followed it arrow-straight across the gentle roll of the dark prairie. He listened to the muffled thump of hoofbeats in the blackness behind him and was reassured. He knew he was riding across land he had never seen before, land east of the route he had ridden with Easter. Yet within him burned a certainty that he knew how to reach the spring. It was an instinct which came to many frontiersmen who spent their lives in a land beyond trails, beyond civilization. He never questioned the source of it. His faith was simple. As he saw it, the Lord put the instinct in a man with the intention that he use it. Either the man believed in it or he didn't. Cloud believed in it.
After long hours the sun came up, breaking across the right shoulders of the men. There had been no visible change in the prairie. The land over which their long shadows lanced in the golden glow of dawn was the same as they had seen at sundown, the same as they had ridden across all day yesterday. There seemed to be no end to this open land. Its unbroken sweep stretched out all around them, even seemed to move along with them, boundless as the rolling sea. Just grass—the short brown grass of the buffalo range—as far as man's vision reached.
Riding in moody silence, Cloud could not help wondering if eternity itself might not be like this, like a great endless plain of grass stretching on and on, a plain upon
which a man might ride and search forever and never find a way to leave it.
He shook his head and tried to put his mind on something else. Just sleepy, he thought, and tired.
Letting my imagination run away. Got to keep my mind on my business.
All day they rode like this. Occasionally Cloud stopped for a glance over the back trail, as if he expected to find Indians following them. He knew he wouldn't see any, even if they were there. Yet he couldn't keep from looking—looking and wondering.
By midafternoon he could see worry nagging at the men, too. He could feel dust-burned eyes turned upon him, could sense the doubt that began to build in the riders. Tired now, and thirsty, their canteens light because most of the water was gone, they were beginning to wonder if Cloud had led them astray.
The strain began to tell upon Cloud, too. It wasn't that he doubted himself, for he did not. He felt sure the spring lay somewhere ahead, and that he could find it. But he was afraid the men might give up—might turn against him before they reached it.
What would he do if they did? He knew what Captain Barcroft would have done—draw a gun and force them on. But Cloud could never do that. It wasn't his way. From behind him he began to hear grumbling. It wasn't general yet. It was scattered among the same men who always grumbled first. But like rottenness in a barrel of apples, it could soon spread.
The voice he feared most was that of Seward Prince, for he knew there were many who would follow Prince in whatever the man decided to do.
And at last, late in the day, he heard that voice.
“Well, Cloud, how about it? You still sure that instinct is workin'?”
Cloud turned, his face as calm as he could force it. “You haven't seen me alter my course any.”
The answer was not one Cloud expected to hear. Prince said, “Then just keep a-ridin'. We'll stay with you.”
After that, the grumbling quieted. Cloud felt a gratitude to the big rebel, and at the same time a wonder. If there was to be trouble, he had fully expected it to originate with Prince.
 
The buffalo trails were the first sign of water. Somehow, sight of it lifted Cloud's shoulders, and he wasn't so weary anymore. It had the same effect upon the men. They followed one of the trails awhile, and the horses began to get the scent of water.
Warily the men balanced rifles and shotguns across their saddles, ready in case there should be Indians at the waterhole. But they found the place clear. Cloud looked it over a moment, and his spirits soared.
“I know this place,” he said to Miguel Soto. “I was here.” He turned back to the men. “Boys, I'd go kind of sparin' on this water. It's all right in small doses, but too much of it'll sure bust the puckerstring.”
This wasn't the spring he sought. It was the somewhat gyppy seep he had found on his way south after leaving Easter.
The men drank sparingly, twisting their faces and swearing at the sharp taste of the water, but filling their canteens anyway. Last they brought the horses up, a few at a time, and watered them. The sun was setting, and Cloud called a halt. He figured they had gone far enough for one day. A little more of this and neither men nor horses would be much good in a fight.
They scattered out around the water to fix their suppers. Cloud ate silently, watching the men and listening to Quade Guffey give his appraisal of this country.
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