Cherokee Trails/Chapter 16
Day seemed to drag between dusk and nightfall a long time, a kind of gray twilight which had not thickened perceptibly when Simpson reached the ford of the Salt Fork and plunged into the woods. Here the gloom deepened, yet night seemed a long way ahead to a man who felt that its cover would bring him a measure of security.
It could not have been much past five o'clock, Simpson believed, although a guess was certain to be wide of the hour in weather like that, when a man's day had been stacked with events which seemed to make it long. He had no watch, that being a luxury sacrificed to honor along with his other possessions. It would have been useful on this journey to estimate distances by, a man knowing about how far he travelled in an hour with a band of horses as big as that.
There was no commotion of pursuit. The horses which had escaped must have belonged to the ranch, however, and headed for their grazing ground. The thieves would recover them with little trouble or delay, and soon would be hot after him, even though they had no others nearer at hand.
Simpson's scheme was to leave that muddy trail through the woods if he was not overtaken before dark, and cut for the open prairie. Unless they trailed him with lanterns, which he did not believe they would do, they would continue on in the belief that he had followed the road. In a country of shallow streams, there could be no great barriers between him and the Kansas line, even though he might strike rough going in cutting across.
Doubtless the road was the shortest way and the best, or the thieves would not have taken it. His chance reposed in the unusual, the unexpected. At the first break in the tangled woods that presented about dark, he would head that lead mare for the prairie, which he believed could not be many miles away.
The horses had worked off their exuberance of being freed from the close stable, something they were unused to and did not like. They had settled down to a trot which they could hold for hours. Simpson felt that he would be more than half way to the Kansas line, his danger diminished by just that much, if he could keep them at it that way until midnight, when he might stop for a few hours, even until daylight, then make a spurt for the finish.
Of course the line would not be any barrier against his pursuers, but there would be some chance of running across a cow-camp or a ranch where he might take refuge and find help. Down here in the Nation there was no likelihood 'of help from the cowboys handling the cattle on the leased lands. They would consider him a horsethief, very likely, and throw their lead at him rather than for him, according to what the sheriff had told him of the animosities and prejudices existing between ranchers and cowpunchers on the two sides of the line.
It would be a bad place, that timber, for a man's pursuers to overtake him, night or day. In the shooting that would have to come off in that event the horses might be stampeded, scattered and lost. In the open a man would have a chance. There he could run and see his way.
Simpson was strained as tight as a wet rope as he rode. It was raining hard, and promised to come harder; the slicker around his sack of grub would be of more use on his back, but he could not stop to get it now. It was going to be a long night if he ever lived to the end of it, and a cold one, but the sun might be shining in Kansas tomorrow.
The thought picked him up with a new hope. Then as the slow accumulation of gloom settled over the dripping land, fold on fold, blending the tree trunks in the dark, leaving only their tops outlined here and there dimly against the gray clouds, Simpson glimpsed an opening in the woods leading off in the direction he wanted to go. A trail, he took it to be, probably used by wood-haulers, perhaps leading off to some sequestered ranch.
He rode around the plodding band of steaming horses and turned the lead mare back. He had some difficulty in doing so, as she was stubbornly set on following that road. She had come that way; she knew it was the trail back home. The suspicious creature did not like the deflection from the beaten trail. She shied and bolted, starting back to the old road. Simpson was almost on the point of yielding to her instinct when she suddenly took a notion to do as he wanted her to, and trotted off up the unknown trail, the rest of the band trailing confidently after her, Simpson bringing up the rear.
It was only then, jogging along after the horses seen dimly through the thickening darkness, that Simpson began to marvel on his escape from the ranch with a whole skin. He did not know how long that man and woman continued shooting at him, but he recalled now a good deal of yelling out of the man and siren shrieking from the woman as they ran after him toward the road. He had made a quick departure, the only break in its smoothrunning success being the split in the band and his pause to cut his own horse loose.
Luck surely had been with him that day. He had not fired a shot, although he had jerked the rifle out of the scabbard when that raging, cursing fellow came tearing after him, throwing lead so close it seemed a miracle he missed. Simpson's loss had been one horse, and he was not certain it was his loss, strictly speaking. He could not say it was one of the Block E brand; just as likely an animal belonging to the rascals themselves, as nearly as they ever had honest title to a horse. From the way that cuss raged, Tom inclined to the opinion that it was one of his horses. The thought brought out a grin, which Simpson felt that he had coming. That surely had been his lucky day.
Doubly fortunate that he had not been obliged to hurt anybody. Of course he applied the range definition to the word. To hurt a man, in the parlance familiar to Simpson these past several years, meant to put him out of business for good. It was a delicate way of saying that subject had become a coroner's case. The charge of killing would not stand against him in that foray; at least, not yet. He hoped night, and endurance and luck, would put him beyond the possibility of that necessity.
Before long Simpson had reason to regret leaving the trail. It grew so dark he could not see the leader of his band; the trail was narrow, bordered by brush and brier; branches of trees hung low over it. He rode with one hand up, to encounter these barriers in time to duck and dodge. Nothing big enough to drag him from the saddle, pendent branches which had grown since the road was last used, the forest closing up the gap in its inevitable way, but always the uncertainty of a thick limb. And there were dangling greenbrier vines which scratched like catamounts, their venomous thorns leaving burning wounds. It was a worrying, perilous, tiring ride.
After what seemed to Simpson a long while—but could not have been more than an hour, if so long—he emerged in a little break, like the clearing of an old field. This seemed to be several acres in extent, as marked by the confining walls of trees, brush-grown and abandoned. It was light enough here to see that the horses still followed the lead mare in good order, few of them, if any, having parted from the band in the woods.
Simpson was satisfied now the horses would hold together unless something gave them a sudden scare. Even then they would reassemble if possible, according to horse nature, for that is an animal which likes the company of its kind above all others.
Tom considered seriously making a halt in this old clearing until daylight. It was unlikely those trailing him—and they must be out hot and in force by now—would be able to see where he had left the road. They would take it for granted he would hold a straight course, and a swift one, for the border along the plainest, surest, easiest way. When daylight revealed their mistake they would turn back until they picked up his trail. So he reasoned, feeling more secure than his short distance from the horsethieves' lair warranted.
A little reflection on this phase of the situation set up that feeling of rising bristles along his back as he rode through the old clearing. He could not have been more than two hours on the road; at the outside he had not made more than seven or eight miles. And perhaps a good deal of that was thrown away in this divergence, which he questioned the wisdom of now. It would not do to stop. He must crowd on clear of that infernal, dripping forest, get out to the prairie where he could see a few rods at least, and draw an unhampered breath again.
There was a creek at the farther edge of this clearing, the road pitching down into it sharply. Simpson had no warning of it until he heard the horses splashing through it and the noise of the increasing waters from the downpour of rain among the stones. The stream was swift at the ford, but shallow. Lucky for him he had not come an hour later, Simpson knew, when it would have grown into an unfordable torrent. His horse lurched up the bank tight after the rest of the bunch, and there on his right was the light of some woods-dweller's cabin winking through the dripping trees.
The sight of that gleam gave Simpson an alarming start. The house stood near the creek; he was upon it before he knew it was there. It was not more than a hundred feet from the road; which was better here and gave evidence of more frequent use. Simpson had little hope of getting by without being heard. He cut in between the horses and the fence, riding forward to speed them up a little, thinking of the fool propensity some horses had for entering every open gate or bars they ran across.
At that juncture several hounds began to whoop from their shelter under the house, and came pouring out with their mouthy clamor. The door opened as Simpson rode by, revealing for an instant a man. This householder, taking no chances, shut the door after him quickly as he stepped outside. From the glimpse Simpson caught of him he knew the man was an Indian.
"Who's that?" the man inquired, his hail a challenge.
Simpson made no reply. The dogs were at the heels of his horse, setting up a savage yowling. Simpson heard the man, this time much nearer the road, demanding who he was and where he was going. He rode on in silence. All the information he could give that man would not enlighten him, and any he might get from the Indian certainly would not do him any good. Here the road was clear, the landscape open, and it was fairly light in comparison with the hampering blackness of the woods.
On past the place the horses galloped, splashing through puddles, setting up a racket that would give an experienced ear a very good estimate of the number in that outfit. The dogs followed, giving their tongues full liberty and, altogether, it was rather a lively event for a rainy night on that forest-smothered road. Simpson knew he was leaving a suspicious, unsatisfied Indian standing beside the rail fence in front of his little log hut, and one who was not likely to remain in passive speculation on the meaning of that troop of horses, urged on by a silent driver, passing his door along that unfrequented way.
The noisy charge of the hounds had thrown the horses into a panic. They went galloping headlong into the dark, Simpson tight after them, thankful the animals had some other sense than sight—which experience had proved to him was little, if any, superior in the dark to man's—to keep them on the trail and hold them together. The dogs dropped behind, too indolent to follow far, although the horses held their excited gait for a mile or two. They gradually settled down to a swinging trot, and Simpson's heart lifted when he noted he was riding clear of the woods.
Directions were all one without the gleam of a familiar star or constellation to mark the way, but Simpson was not greatly concerned over that. He relied on the sense of the mare to lead her home. The trees blended down to the prairie border of shrubs; in a little while he rode clear of them, relieved to feel the prairie sod under his horse's feet. Here was elbow room; here a man could give them a run for their money, let them come when they might. Simpson was drenched to the skin; the roadside bushes had sopped his legs and poured several pints of water into his boots. But that was a condition he had been broken to long ago; it gave him no more concern nor discomfort than it would have given the average cowboy. A man learned early in that life to take a bootful of rainwater and ride on, letting it seep out and dry out as it would. It was one of the things which romancers did not stress when they discussed the wild free life of the range.
Just beyond the edge of the woods there was another cabin, dark, silent. The occupants were either in bed or the place was abandoned, but the sight of the house gave Simpson a mighty jump, and almost fixed him in the belief that he was fast relapsing to the primitive and growing a fine crop of bristles on his back. On and on, for hours; saddle-galled from the rain, chilled to the bone, hungry, longing for a smoke. On and on, until the horses began to lag, dropping from a trot to a drooping walk, some of them now and then stopping to snip a bunch of grass, the spirit of adventure gone out of them, the long hard drive they lately had been put to telling on them all too soon for the desperate chance of the man who herded them over this trail that led he knew not where.
Simpson knew he would only be crippling his luck to push them on, tired as they were. It might come to the pinch when they'd have to travel for all that was in them. He decided to stop, let them graze and rest, and go on again with daybreak.
Here the landscape was open. Dark as the night pressed down on the prairie, there was a little lightness in the clouds, a little horizon, just about at arm's length, it seemed. Immediately he stopped the march the horses began to graze. He could hear their soft muzzling, the crisp snapping of rain-freshened grass which was both food and drink to the winded beasts.
Simpson rode around and around the little band of horses, keeping them together, listening for the sound of pursuit, unable to get out of his imagination the picture of that shaggy-haired Indian saddling and mounting, dashing away in hot lather to carry the news of this challenged and unanswering marauder passing his door. He had felt the suspicion of that man vibrating in his voice; the Indian had suspected, from the first unanswered hail, that a horsethief, as Simpson realized he would be classed in that country, was passing. That band of horses was going in the wrong direction for any honest purpose, as honest purpose was defined on the Cherokee trails.