the Daybreakers (1960) (7 page)

"Tom," he said mildly, "you're wrong, an' what's more, you know it. This here outfit is four-sided and I vote with the Sackett boys. You ain't agin democracy, are you, Tom?"

"You know darned well I'm not, and as long as you put it that way, I'll sit down! Only I think we're damned fools."

"Tom, you're probably right, but that's the kind of a damned fool I am," said Orrin. "When the cows are rounded up if you don't feel different about it you can have my share of the cows."

Tom Sunday just looked at Orrin. "You damned fool. Next thing we know you'll be singing hymns in a church."

"I know a couple," Orrin said. "You all set down and while Tyrel gets supper, I'll sing you a couple."

And that was the end of it ... or we thought it was. Sometimes I wonder if anything is ever ended. The words a man speaks today live on in his thoughts or the memories of others, and the shot fired, the blow struck, the thing done today is like a stone tossed into a pool and the ripples keep widening out until they touch lives far from ours.

So Orrin sang his hymans, and followed them with Black, Black, Black, Lord Randall, Barbara Allan and Sweet Betsy. When Orrin finished the last one Tom reached over and held out his hand and Orrin grinned at him and shook it.

No more was said about the gold money and it was put away in the bottom of a pack and to all intents it was forgotten. If that amount of gold is ever forgotten.

We were getting into the country of the wild cattle now. Cap Rountree as well as others had noticed these wild cattle, some of them escaped from Spanish settlements to the south, and some escaped or stampeded by Indians from wagon trains bound for California.

No doubt Indians had killed a few, but Indians preferred buffalo, and many of these cattle had come south with buffalo herds. There was no shortage of buffalo in 1867, and the Indians only killed the wild cattle when there was nothing else.

The country we were going to work lay south of the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail, between the Purgatoire and Two Buttes Creek, and south to the Mal Pais. It was big country and it was rough country. We rode south through sage plains with some mesquite, with juniper and pinon on the hills.

Cap had in his mind a hidden place, a canyon near the base of a mountain where a cold spring of sweet water came out of the rocks. There was maybe two hundred acres of good grass in the bottom, grass belly-high to a horse, and from the look of it nobody had seen it since Cap Rountree stumbled on it twenty years back.

First off, we forted up. Behind us the cliffs lifted sheer with an overhang that provided shelter from above. Right out in front there was four or five acres of meadow with good grass, edged on the far side by trees and rocks. Beyond that was the bowl with the big pasture as we called it, and in an adjoining canyon was a still larger area where we figured to trap the wild cattle and hold them.

We spent that first day gathering fuel, adding a few rocks to our fort, and generally scouting the country close around our hideout. Also, I killed a deer and Cap got a buffalo. We brought the meat into camp and started jerking it.

Next morning at daybreak we started out to scout the country. Within an hour's riding we'd seen sixty or seventy head. A man never saw such cattle. There was a longhorn bull in that crowd that must have stood seven feet and would have weighed sixteen hundred pounds. And horns? Needle-sharp.

By nightfall we had a good bunch of cattle in the bowl or drifted toward it. By the third day we had more than a hundred head in that bowl and we were beginning to count our money.

It was slow, patient work. Push them too fast and they would stampede clear out of the country, so we tried to move them without them guessing what we planned.

We had two things to accomplish: to catch ourselves some wild cattle and to stay alive while doing it. And it wasn't only Indians we had to think about, but the cattle themselves, for some of those tough old bulls showed fight, and the cows could be just as mean if they caught a man afoot. Of a night we yarned around the fire or belly-ached about somebody's cooking. We took turn about on that job.

We kept our fires small, used the driest wood, and we moved around only when we had to. We daren't set any patterns of work so's Indians could lay for us. We never took the same trail back that we used on the way out, and we kept our eyes open all the time.

We gathered cattle. We sweated, we swore, and we ate dust, but we gathered them up, six one day, twelve another, nineteen, then only three. There was no telling how it would be. We got them into the bowl where there was grass and plenty of water and we watched them get fat. Also, it gave them time to settle down.

Then trouble hit us. Orrin was riding a sorrel we had picked up in Dodge. He was off by himself and he started down a steep hillside and the sorrel fell. That little sorrel got up fast with Orrin's foot caught in the stirrup and he buckled down to run. There was only one way Orrin could keep from being dragged to death, and that was one reason cowhands always carried pistols. He shot the sorrel.

Come nightfall there was no sign of Orrin. We had taken to coming in early so if anything went wrong with any of us there would be time to do something before night.

We set out to look. Tom went south, swinging back toward the east, Cap went west, and I followed up a canyon to the north before topping out on the rim. It was me found him, walking along, packing his saddle and his Winchester.

When he put down the saddle on seeing me, I rode up to him. "You took long enough," he grumbled, but there was no grumble in his eyes, "I was fixing to cache my saddle."

"You could have fired a shot."

"There were Indians closer than you," he said.

Orrin told us about it around the fire. He had shucked his saddle off the dead sorrel and started for camp, but being a sly one, he was not about to leave a direct trail to our hideout, so he went downhill first and stumbled on a rocky ledge which he followed sixty or seventy yards.

There had been nine or ten Indians in the party and he saw them before they saw him, so he just laid right down where he was and let them pass by. They were all warriors, and the way they were riding they might miss his dead horse.

"They'll find it," Cap told us, "it's nigh to dark now, so they won't get far tonight. Likely they'll camp somewhere down the creek. At daybreak they'll see the buzzards."

"So?"

"That's a shod horse. It isn't likely they'd pass up a chance to get one man afoot and alone."

Any other time we could have high-tailed it out of the country and left them nothing but tracks, but now we were men of property and property ties a man down.

"Think they'll find us?"

"Likely," Cap said. "Reckon we better hold to camp a day or two. Horses need the rest, anyway."

We all sat there feeling mighty glum, knowing the chances were that if the Indians didn't find us they would stay around the country, looking for us. That meant that our chance of rounding up more cattle was coming down to nothing.

"You know what I think?" They waited for me to speak up. "I think we should cash in our chips. I think we should take what we've got and hit the trail for Santa Fe, sell what we've got, and get us a proper outfit. We need three or four horses per man for this kind of work."

Tom Sunday flipped his bowie knife into the sand, retrieved it and studied the light on the blade while he gave it thought. "Not a bad idea," he said. "Cap?"

"If Orrin's willin'." Cap hesitated. "I figure we should dust out of here, come daybreak."

"Wasn't what I had in mind," I said, "I meant to leave right now ... before those Indians find that sorrel."

The reason I hadn't waited for Orrin to speak was because I knew he was pining to see that yellow-haired girl and I had some visiting in mind my own self.

Only it wasn't that ... it was the plain, common-sense notion that once those Indians knew we were here, starting a herd might be tough to do. It might take them a day or two to work out our trail. Chances were by the time they found we were gone we'd be miles down the trail.

So I just picked up my saddle and headed for my horse. There is a time that calls for action and when debate makes no sense. Starting a herd in the middle of the night isn't the best thing to do, but handling cattle we'd be scattered out and easy picking for Indians, and I wanted to get started.

We just packed up and lit out. Those cattle were heavy with water and grass and not in the mood for travel but we started them anyhow. We put the north star at our backs and started for Santa Fe.

When the first sun broke the gray sky we had six miles behind us.

Chapter
VI

We had our troubles. When that bunch began to realize what was happening they didn't like it. We wore our horses to a frazzle but we kept that herd on the trail right up to dusk to tire them out as much as to get distance behind us. We kept a sharp lookout, but we saw no Indians.

Santa Fe was a smaller town than we expected, and it sure didn't shape up to more than a huddle of adobe houses built around a sunbaked plaza, but it was the most town I'd ever seen, or Orrin.

Folks stood in the doorways and shaded their eyes at us as we bunched our cows, and then three riders, Spanish men, started up the trail toward us. They were cantering their horses and staring at us, then they broke into a gallop and came charging up with shrill yells that almost started our herd again. It was Miguel, Pete Romero, and a rider named Abreu.

"Ho!" Miguel was smiling. "It is good to see you, amigo. We have been watching for you. Don Luis has asked that you be his guests for dinner."

"Does he know we're here?" Orrin was surprised.

Miguel glanced at him. "Don Luis knows most things, senor. A rider brought news from the Vegas."

They remained with the herd while we rode into town.

We walked over to the La Fonda and left our horses in the shade. It was cool inside, and quiet. It was shadowed there like a cathedral, only this here was no cathedral. It was a drinking place, and a hotel, too, I guess.

Mostly they were Spanish men sitting around, talking it soft in that soft-sounding tongue of theirs, and it gave me a wonderful feeling of being a travelled man, of being in foreign parts. A couple of them spoke to us, most polite.

We sat down and dug deep for the little we had. Wasn't much, but enough for a few glasses of wine and mayhap something to eat. I liked hearing the soft murmur of voices, the clink of glasses, and the click of heels on the floor. Somewhere out back a woman laughed, and it was a mighty fine sound.

While we sat there an Army officer came in. Tall man, thirtyish with a clean uniform and a stiff way of walking like those Army men have. He had mighty fancy mustaches.

"Are you the men who own those cattle on the edge of town?"

"Are you in the market?" Orrin said.

"That depends on the price." He sat down with us and ordered a glass of wine. "I will be frank, gentlemen, there has been a drought here and a lot of cattle have been lost. Most of the stock is very thin. Yours is the first fat beef we've seen."

Tom Sunday glanced up and smiled. "We will want twenty-five dollars per head."

The captain merely glanced at him. "Of course not," he said, then he smiled at us and lifted his glass. "Your health--"

"What about Don Luis Alvarado?" Orrin asked suddenly.

The captain's expression stiffened a little and he asked, "Are you one of the Pritts crowd?"

"No," Tom Sunday said, "we met the don out on the Plains. Came west from Abilene with him, as a matter of fact."

"He's one of those who welcomed us in New Mexico. Before we took over the Territory the Mexican government was in no position to send troops to protect these colonies from the Indians. Also, most of the trade was between Santa Fe and the States, rather than between Santa Fe and Mexico. The don appreciated this, and most of the people here welcomed us."

"Jonathan Pritts is bringing in settlers," Orrin said.

"Mr. Pritts is a forceful and energetic man," the captain said, "but he is under the false impression that because New Mexico has become a possession of the United States ... I should say, a part of the United States ... that the property rights of all Spanish-speaking people will be tossed out the window."

There was a pause. "The settlers--if one wishes to call them that--that Jonathan Pritts is bringing in are all men who bring their guns instead of families."

I had me another glass of wine and sat back and listened to the captain talking with Tom Sunday. Seems the captain was out of that Army school, West Point, but he was a man who had read a sight of books. A man never realizes how little he knows until he listens to folks like that talk. Up where I was born we had the Bible, and once in a while somebody would bring a newspaper but it was a rare thing when we saw any other kind of reading.

Politics was a high card up in the hills. A political speech would bring out the whole country. Folks would pack their picnic lunches and you'd see people at a speech you'd never see elsewhere. Back in those days 'most every boy grew up knowing as much about local politics as about coon dogs, which was about equal as to interest.

Orrin and me, we just set and listened. A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn't learn anything else I was learning how much I didn't know. It made me hungry to know it all, and mad because I was getting so late a start.