the Daybreakers (1960) (2 page)

How many trails? How much dust and loneliness? How long a time until then?

Chapter
II

There was nothing but prairie and sky, the sun by day and the stars by night, and the cattle moving westward. If I live to be a thousand years old I shall not forget the wonder and the beauty of those big longhorns, the sun glinting on their horns; most of them six or seven feet from tip to tip. Some there were like Old Brindle, our lead steer, whose horns measured a fair nine feet from point to point, and who stood near to seventeen hands high.

It was a sea of horns above the red, brown, brindle, and white-splashed backs of the steers. They were big, wild, and fierce, ready to fight anything that walked the earth, and we who rode their flanks or the drag, we loved them and we hated them, we cussed and reviled them, but we moved them westward toward what destination we knew not.

Sometimes at night when my horse walked a slow circle around the bedded herd, I'd look at the stars and think of Ma and wonder how things were at home. And sometimes I'd dream great dreams of a girl I'd know someday.

Suddenly something had happened to me, and it happened to Orrin too. The world had burst wide open, and where our narrow valleys had been, our hog-backed ridges, our huddled towns and villages, there was now a world without end or limit. Where our world had been one of a few mountain valleys, it was now as wide as the earth itself, and wider, for where the land ended there was sky, and no end at all to that.

We saw no one. The plains were empty. No cattle had been before us, only the buffalo and war parties of Indians crossing. No trees, only the far and endless grass, always whispering its own soft stories. Here ran the antelope, and by night the coyotes called their plaintive songs to the silent stars.

Mostly a man rode by himself, but sometimes I'd ride along with Tom Sunday or Cap Rountree, and I learned about cattle from them. Sunday knew cows, all right, but he was a sight better educated than the rest of us, although not one for showing it.

Sometimes when we rode along he would recite poetry or tell me stories from the history of ancient times, and it was mighty rich stuff. Those old Greeks he was always talking about, they reminded me of mountain folk I'd known, and it fair made me ache to know how to read myself.

Rountree talked mighty little, but whatever he said made a sight of sense. He knew buffalo ... although there was always something to learn about them. He was a mighty hard old man, rode as many hours as any of us, although he was a mighty lot older. I never did know how old he was, but those hard old gray eyes of his had looked on a sight of strange things.

"Man could make some money," Rountree said one day, "over in the breaks of western Kansas and Colorado. Lots of cows over there, belongin' to nobody, stuff drifted up from the Spanish settlements to the south."

When Rountree spoke up it was because there was an idea behind it. Right then I figured something was stirring in that coot's skull, but nothing more was said at the time.

Orrin and me, we talked it over. Each of us wanted a place of our own, and we wanted a place for Ma and the boys. A lot of cattle belonging to no man ... it sounded good to us.

"It would take an outfit," Orrin said.

Tom Sunday, I was sure, would be for it. From things he'd said on night herd I knew he was an ambitious man, and he had plans for himself out west. Educated the way he was, there was no telling how far he would go. Time to time he talked a good deal about politics ... out west a man could be whatever he was man enough to be, and Tom Sunday was smart.

"Orrin and me," I said to Rountree, "we've been talking about what you said.

About those wild cows. We discussed the three of us and maybe Tom Sunday, if you're willing and he wants to come in."

"Why, now. That there's about what I had in mind. Fact is, I talked to Tom. He likes it."

Mr. Belden drove his herd away from the Kansas-Missouri border, right out into the grassy plains, he figured he'd let his cows graze until they were good and fat, then sell them in Abilene; there were cattle buyers buying and shipping cattle from there because of the railroad.

Anybody expecting Abilene to be a metropolis would have been some put out, but to Orrin and me, who had never seen anything bigger than Baxter Springs, it looked right smart of a town. Why, Abilene was quite a place, even if you did have to look mighty fast to see what there was of it.

Main thing was that railroad. I'd heard tell of railroads before, but had never come right up to one. Wasn't much to see: just two rails of steel running off into the distance, bedded down on crossties of hewn logs. There were some stock pens built there and about a dozen log houses. There was a saloon in a log house, and across the tracks there was a spanking-new hotel three stories high with a porch along the side fronting the rails. Folks had told me there were buildings that tall, but I never figured to see one.

There was another hotel, too. Placed called Bratton's, with six rooms to let.

East of the hotel there was a saloon run by a fat man called Jones. There was a stage station ... that was two stories ... a blacksmith shop and the Frontier Store.

At the Drovers' Cottage there was a woman cooking there and some rooms were let, and there were three, four cattle buyers loafing around.

We bunched our cows on the grass outside of town and Mr. Belden rode in to see if he could make a deal, although he didn't much like the look of things.

Abilene was too new, it looked like a put-up job and Kansas hadn't shown us no welcome signs up to now.

Then Mr. Belden came back and durned if he hadn't hired several men to guard the herd so's we could have a night in town ... not that she was much of a place, like I said. But we went in.

Orrin and me rode down alongside the track, and Orrin was singing in that big, fine-sounding voice of his, and when we came abreast of the Drovers' Cottage there was a girl a-setting on the porch.

She had a kind of pale blond hair and skin like it never saw daylight, and blue eyes that made a man think she was the prettiest thing he ever did see. Only second glance she reminded me somehow of a hammer-headed roan we used to have, the one with the one blue eye ... a mighty ornery horse, too narrow between the ears and eyes. On that second glance I figured that blonde had more than a passing likeness to that bronc.

But when she looked at Orrin I knew we were in for trouble, for if ever I saw a man-catching look in a woman's eyes it was in hers, then.

"Orrin," I said, "if you want to run maverick a few more years, if you want to find that western land, then you stay off that porch."

"Boy," he put a big hand on my shoulder, "look at that yaller hair!"

"Reminds me of that hammer-headed, no-account roan we used to have. Pa he used to say, 'Size up a woman the way you would a horse if you were in a horse trade; and Orrin, you better remember that."

Orrin laughed. "Stand aside, youngster," he tells me, "and watch how it's done."

With that Orrin rode right up to the porch and standing up in his stirrups he said, "Howdy, ma'am! A mighty fine evening! Might I come up an' set with you a spell?"

Mayhap he needed a shave and a bath like we all did, but there was something in him that always made a woman stop and look twice.

Before she could answer a tall man stepped out. "Young man," he spoke mighty sharp, "I will thank you not to annoy my daughter. She does not consort with hired hands."

Orrin smiled that big, wide smile of his. "Sorry, sir, I did not mean to offend.

I was riding by, and such beauty, sir, such beauty deserves its tribute, sir."

Then he flashed that girl a smile, then reined his horse around and we rode on to the saloon.

The saloon wasn't much, but it took little to please us. There was about ten feet of bar, sawdust on the floor, and not more than a half-dozen bottles behind the bar. There was a barrel of mighty poor whiskey. Any farmer back in our country could make better whiskey out of branch water and corn, but we had our drinks and then Orrin and me hunted the barrels out back.

Those days, in a lot of places a man might get to, barrels were the only place a man could bathe. You stripped off and you got into a barrel and somebody poured water over you, then after soaping down and washing as best you could you'd have more water to rinse off the soap, and you'd had yourself a bath.

"You watch yo'self," the saloon keeper warned, "feller out there yestiddy shot himself a rattler whilst he was in the barrel."

Orrin bathed in one barrel, Tom Sunday in another, while I shaved in a piece of broken mirror tacked to the back wall of the saloon. When they finished bathing I stripped off and got into the barrel and Orrin and Tom, they took off. Just when I was wet all over, Reed Carney came out of the saloon. My gun was close by but my shirt had fallen over it and there was no chance to get a hand on it in a hurry.

So there I was, naked as a jaybird, standing in a barrel two-thirds full of water, and there was that trouble-hunting Reed Carney with two or three drinks under his belt and a grudge under his hat.

It was my move, but it had to be the right move at the right time, and to reach for that gun would be the wrong thing to do. Somehow I had to get out of that tub and there I was with soap all over me, in my hair and on my face and dribbling toward my eyes.

The rinse water was in a bucket close to the barrel so acting mighty unconcerned I reached down, picked it up, sloshing it over me to wash off that soap.

"Orrin," Carney said, grinning at me, "went to the hotel and it don't seem hardly right, you in trouble and him not here to stand in front of you."

"Orrin handles his business. I handle mine."

He walked up to within three or four feet of the barrel and there was something in his eyes I'd not seen before. I knew then he meant to kill me.

"I've been wonderin' about that. I'm curious to see if you can handle your own affairs without that big brother standing by to pull you out."

The bucket was still about a third full of water and I lifted it to slash it over me.

There was a kind of nasty, wet look to his eyes and he took a step nearer. "I don't like you," he said, "and I--" His hand dropped to his gun and I let him have the rest of that water in the face.

He jumped back and I half-jumped, half-fell out of the barrel just as he blinked the water away and grabbed iron. His gun was coming up when the bucket's edge caught him alongside the skull and I felt the whiff of that bullet past my ear.

But that bucket was oak and it was heavy and it laid him out cold.

Inside the saloon there was a scramble of boots, and picking up the flour-sack towel I began drying off, but I was standing right beside my gun and I had the shut pulled away from it and easy to my hand it was. If any friends of Carney's wanted to call the tune I was ready for the dance.

The first man out was a tall, blond man with a narrow, tough face and a twisted look to his mouth caused by an old scar. He wore his gun tied to his leg and low down the way some of these fancy gunmen wear them. Cap Rountree was only a step behind and right off he pulled over to one side and hung a hand near his gun butt. Tom Sunday fanned out on the other side. Two others ranged up along the man with the scarred lip.

"What happened?"

"Carney here," I said, "bought himself more than he could pay for."

That blond puncher had been ready to buy himself a piece of any fight there was left and he was just squaring away when Cap Rountree put in his two-bit's worth.

"We figured you might be troubled, Tye," Cap said in that dry, hard old voice, "so Tom an' me, we came out to see the sides were even up."

You could feel the change in the air. That blond with the scarred lip--later I found out his name was Fetterson--he didn't like the situation even a little.

Here I was dead center in front of him, but he and his two partners, they were framed by Tom Sunday and Cap Rountree.

Fetterson glanced one way and then the other and you could just see his horns pull in. He'd come through that door sure enough on the prod an' pawin' dust, but suddenly he was so peaceful it worried me.

"You better hunt yourself a hole before he comes out of it," Fetterson said.

"He'll stretch your hide."

By that time I had my pants on and was stamping into my boots. Believe me, I sure hate to face up to trouble with no pants on, and no boots. So I slung my gun belt and settled my holster into place. "You tell him to draw his pay and rattle his hocks out of here. I ain't hunting trouble, but he's pushing, mighty pushing."

The three of us walked across to the Drovers' Cottage for a meal, and the first thing we saw was Orrin setting down close to that blond girl and she was looking at him like he was money from home. But that was the least of it. Her father was setting there listening himself ... leave it to Orrin and that Welsh-talking tongue of his. He could talk a squirrel right out of a walnut tree ... I never saw the like.

The three of us sat down to a good meal and we talked up a storm about that country to the west, and the wild cattle, and how much a man could make if he could keep Comanches, Kiowas, or Utes from lifting his hair.

Seemed strange to be sitting at a table. We were all so used to setting on the ground that we felt awkward with a white cloth and all. Out on the range a man ate with his hunting knife and what he could swab up with a chunk of bread.