Cherokee Trails/Chapter 22
As Waco had foretold, that was an anxious day for the women. Tom had gone off at dawn with his load drawn by the partly-broken horses, which were frisky and frivolous, inclined to lunge at the collar and throw their heels somewhat too high for earnest work. Waco was on hand to give some parting advice.
"Keep 'em steppin' lively for the first hour or two, Tom, and don't let 'em git their tails over the lines or straddle the tugs. You'll soon take the ginger out of 'em. By sunup they'll be as gentle as house cats."
Tom promised to watch the slack of the lines and the frisking tails, and keep them stepping so fast they wouldn't have time to hoist a leg over a tug. He also made Waco do a little pledging on his own account to the effect that he wouldn't attempt to do any hauling that day.
"You lay off of it till I come back, old man," Tom advised. "You've been overdoin' it already from the way you're cripplin' around this morning."
"I got a crimp in my leg, guess I must 'a' slep' crooked on it," Waco explained his limp. "But I'll wait till you come home if you say so, Tom, even if I could run a shanghai rooster down when my leg gits limbered up a little. You sure you don't want that shotgun?"
This subjoined question he whispered, turning a cautious look toward the kitchen windows. Mrs. Ellison and Eudora were up, quietly as Tom had made ready and attempted to drive away without disturbing them.
"No, I'll pass it up," Tom replied.
Mrs. Ellison and Eudora came out as Tom was mounting to the high seat to wish him good luck and say goodby. They attempted a sprightliness which they did not feel, and which carried no deceit to the man on the load of bones. He drove away with their unvoiced anxiety tingeing the promise of a bright day with gloom, a foreboding of trouble ahead of him which his quick spirits could not allay.
All that morning Mrs. Ellison went around the house restlessly. She would go to a window and peer down the road, which could be seen to the point where it passed over the hill since Tom mowed the orchard and cut away the low-hanging limbs; then to the kitchen porch, where she would stand listening, her head turned as if she expected the sound of distant shots, her face furrowed by the concern that would not let her rest.
"I shouldn't have let him go," she said time and again as the bright morning passed.
Waco was busy with something in the barn; Eudora slipped into the men's quarters and came back big-eyed and white, to report that Tom had taken the rifle, the revolver he had captured in the raid, her father's pistol, and no telling what else that Waco had supplied.
"I knew it! I knew it!" Mrs. Ellison said fatefully. "I never should have allowed that boy to go."
"We couldn't have stopped him—nobody could," Eudora said, in the voice of utter futility.
"Waco knows all about it, I can tell by his actions. He's as restless as a wet hen. For two cents I'd have you hitch up the buckboard and I'd go after Tom and make him come back."
"We couldn't." Eudora shook her head slowly, in deep and somber conviction. "He'd make us feel as little as two pins the way he'd hold his head up and bite off his words. He can look worse insulted and say less about it than any man I ever saw."
"I guess it's the English style; they're said to be cold-hearted folks, although that's the last thing anybody could say of Tom."
"We ought to be the last to think that of him, all he's done for us. I wonder if he thought I blamed him for that horse gettin' killed?"
"A smaller man might 'a', the way you said it, but not Tom Simpson. He's quick to feel and know—quicker than any man I ever saw. He's a—I guess what you might call a gentleman, whatever his past may be."
"Mother! I don't believe he's got any past."
"Every man has, if he amounts to a hill of beans. I'll bet that Waco feller's got a history a mile long, and he's so downright honest it does a person good to look at him. Of course we can't blame him for keepin' Tom's trouble from us: he was told to. And men'I'll stick together—they will stick together—whatever other faults they've got."
If everything was all right with Tom he'd be about at this creek or that hill, Mrs. Ellison anxiously logged his progress through the day. At evening she computed the distance he had made if all had favored him, and the dreaded, unknown danger had not overtaken him on the road. He would be camping at this branch, or that stock well with the windmill, or in a named piece of timber where he'd have wood for his fire.
It had been a long time since she had felt this disturbing anxiety for one of her men abroad, not since Ellison used to laugh at her fears in the old Pawnee days. And he had lived through those perils, healed of many a wound taken in battles with those swift-riding raiders who swept up from the south. She had not worried much about him when he spent day and night for three weeks on the blizzard-bound prairies trying to save some of his cattle from the disastrous winter kill, for the woman at home is not so much afraid of nature at its worst as she is of man at his meanest.
The winter storm had done what the Pawnee raiders, the horsethieves and rustlers of the Cherokee trails had failed to do. It had taken Ellison's life. And yet, there was nothing in the sound of the rising storm to make her face blanch, her heart drag with the slow pain of apprehension, that there was in the beat of galloping hoofs on the road at night. So many messengers of danger and disaster, so many appeals for help in extremity, had come on clattering hoofs to her door through the hampering, shudderful, villainy-shrouding dark.
All of those old ghosts of dead fears had risen with this unknown peril into which Tom Simpson had driven away from her gate. She arraigned herself for permitting him to go, when she knew neither command nor persuasion would have restrained him. All night she lay in that hot state of unrest between wakefulness and sleep, straining for the sound of a galloping horse. She had yielded to the weary strain at dawn, and was asleep when the rider came.
Wallace Ramsey was the man who came riding hard as the sun was rising. Mrs. Ellison's heart gave one great bound of apprehension, then seemed to stop as she heard the rider halt at the gate. She was at the window as he rode through. Waco Johnson, his pancakes fried in the fat of his bacon, his scalding coffee drunk, was coming from the corral to meet him.
Wallace had come directly from Coburn's ranch, having been an incredibly short time on the way. By the time Mrs. Ellison and Eudora had dressed, quickly as prairie women can accomplish that feat, Wallace had told what he had come riding to bear.
Coburn had returned home from Drumwell between midnight and morning after a forced ride. There was a gang of squaw men and mongrels up from the Nation, drinking and carousing at Kane's, making no secret of their intention to wait there until Simpson came in with another load of bones, when they intended to kill him. The toughs of Drumwell, notably the marshal, were lined up with the friends and relatives of Wade Harrison's gang who had lost their lives in Simpson's recent foray against them.
Wallace had hopped his horse at once, at Coburn's request as well as his own inclination, in the hope of reaching the Ellison ranch before Simpson left. He was greatly concerned when he learned that he was twenty-four hours too late.
Mrs. Ellison turned on Waco with severe censure for keeping the facts from her when he knew Tom was going out against such great odds. Waco did not shrivel in the hot blast of her wrath, although she gave it to him unsparingly and without a chance to defend himself until she had said a great deal more than her temperate disposition would have betrayed her into speaking if she had not reached the breaking point of strain. Waco heard her to the end of the raking-down, then calmly told her what he knew.
Tom had experienced trouble with the marshal on his last trip, the hang-over of a former row, to which Wallace could testify, and to which Wallace did add his confirming word. Tom had not known anything about this graver development which Wallace had come to report.
Ashamed of her outburst of unfounded charges, Mrs. Ellison attempted to say she was sorry, but Waco put up his large hand, which seemed to shut her off like a closed door, turned and hurried toward the barn, going as nimbly as if it was somebody else's leg the bullet had gone through a little less than two weeks ago.
Wallace, big-eyed and white around the end of his nose as if somebody lately had let go that member, was all in a froth to start to his friend's assistance. He told the two women how Tom had stood up for him when he needed help, and swore he'd wade through wildcats to pay off what he still felt to be owing on that debt. But how to do it was the question. Eudora suggested the sheriff, giving up the thought almost at once when the element of time was considered. Tom must have made twenty-five or thirty miles yesterday; he would reach town around noon, and it would be all over before the sheriff, or anybody else, could do him a bit of good.
"Give me another horse and turn me loose!" said Wallace.
Wallace was sweating in the pressure of his desire to speed to Drumwell; he began to strip the saddle off his horse as he spoke, and Eudora went tearing to the barn after Frank, never turned out to pasture at night with the other animals, to drive up the horses for Wallace to select his remount.
Waco came out of the barn as she ran up to the door. He was leading his tall lean horse, the one that had carried Simpson on the long ride south trailing the horsethieves. He was carrying the shotgun over his shoulder; his gun was buckled around his lank body, and he was a grim and determined man, ready to ride on a grim and determined business, with a good deal of lead available for delivery.
"Where are you goin', Waco?" Eudora asked, a question that her own eyes had answered the moment she saw him in the door.
"Down the road a piece."
"Wait. That man wants a fresh horse—he'll go with you."
It wasn't much of a job to find the horses, as they always wandered up to the corrals in the morning, where they stood around in the way of horses, putting their necks over the fence, waiting, it seemed, to learn if they were wanted and, if not, to have it off their minds so they could enjoy the day. Eudora had them in the corral in less than fifteen minutes, and her mother, steady as a clock now, had a pot of coffee on the stove, biscuits in the oven and bacon and eggs in the pan, by the time Wallace had a fresh horse saddled.
Eudora had hopped her horse barebacked to go to the pasture. She saddled him now, and came to the kitchen gate with him as Wallace was settling his feet under the table to eat a hasty breakfast. She chafed under this delay, but was as polite as Wallace was wise. He knew that ten minutes more meant little in the job ahead of him, and a full man was worth more than a hungry one for a long, hard ride. Waco was loading shotgun shells in the bunk-house: he was through by the time Wallace came out wiping egg from his chin.
Eudora, her face looking pinched and very pale, came bursting out of the house dressed for the saddle, having made the change in two swipes. Her breast was heaving as if she had been under water. She said she thought they could get some help down the road among the homesteaders, who all felt deep gratitude and obligation to Tom. She said she was going at once to see what could be done.
"You've got a good head," Waco approved. "Come on."
"Waco Johnson, you get right down off that horse!" Mrs. Ellison called sharply from the kitchen porch.
"Ma'am?" said Waco, twisting around in surprised comicality, the shotgun in his hand.
"Do you want to lose that leg?" she demanded.
"If I lose both of 'em clean up to my na—my belly-band, I don't give a cuss!" Waco replied.
They were off, the three of them starting with a bound, leaning like jockeys, their resolution made and acted on with celerity that promised badly for the gang at Drumwell if they should have the luck to get there in time.
The long lean veteran of Jo Shelby's brigade was tinkering around his wagon, which stood in the yard loaded with bones, when the three rode up. When Waco, who assumed the office of spokesman, laid the case before him in few words, the homesteader did not say anything; simply turned and disappeared in his little board shack, which was already beginning to bulge with the customary overflow of towheads.
Eudora looked at Wallace; both turned to Waco. There was disappointment in the girl's eyes, through which the fire of indignation blazed. Wallace let his jaw go slack in the moment of unuttered contempt. He had his machinery in hand almost at once, however, and started to express himself according to his feelings. Waco put up his big interdicting hand. The homesteader was in the door, buckling a very competent and experienced-looking gun around his middle.
"Where do we meet?" he inquired.
Waco turned to Eudora.
"Where?" he repeated. "You know this country better than I do."
"Down the road where the old cattle trail crosses," she said.
They rode on.
Three had been added to their forces when they reached the house of the old soldier who had been with Grant at Appomattox. Yes, by heavens! he said; wait till he got his horse and gun. He was a cavalryman—his name was Kerns—and the cunning for quick saddling had not left his hand. He was up and with them, the eager light of adventure in his blue eyes, although his only weapon was a single-barreled, breech-loading shotgun of the type called Zulu.
Eleven men gathered at the crossing of the old cattle trail, including Wallace and Waco, within an hour of the first appeal for help. They were all fairly well mounted; all were accustomed to the saddle, and if luck was with them they could make the thirty-two miles, more or less, between that point and Drumwell in five hours. There was scarcely a man among them that had not suffered some insult or humiliation at the hands of the Drumwell roughs. One's wife had been affronted; another's daughter. One had lost a son in a gambling brawl there; all were bitter against the conditions which made the town a place to be avoided.
Added to this was the recent terrifying ordeal they had experienced in being stripped of the very means of existence by the thieves from the Cherokee trails. Simpson had restored their property, by a feat of admirable heroism in their eyes; their gratitude was as great as their relief, and most of them were steady brave men who had faced death in more than one guise before that day.
Eudora would have gone with them, but Waco, who had taken the lead by a kind of inherent generalship which all appeared to recognize, lifted his hand sternly and said that was where she turned back. But he lowred his hand slowly, until his finger-tips touched her hair as in a benediction. Then he wheeled his horse, set himself at the head of the little force, Wallace tight beside him, and the girl was alone at the crossing of the trails, the cold track of tears on her white face.