Cherokee Trails/Chapter 4
Coburn learned on arriving at the livery stable that the chuck wagon and three men who had helped over with the cattle had gone back to the ranch in due form, according to orders, taking all extra horses along. The boss said Simpson would have to go on to the ranch with them that night if he expected to go on wearing a hide that would hold water. He could use Waco Johnson's horse.
Trouble would pop in that town, the boss said, as soon as Eddie Kane heard of Simpson's escape. Kane had two or three handy gun artists to supplement the city marshal, who was as mean as a warthog himself when he got going right. They'd turn over every blanket in town looking for Simpson. It was time to saddle and ride.
The boss put his little handbag in a sack, along with several packages which he had brought from Kansas City, wrapped his slicker around it and tied it to the back of his saddle, working fast. He was more concerned about protecting the contents of the sack from the weather than his own back. The liveryman, seeing him about to ride off in the rain, said hold on a minute: he had a slicker back in the barn somewhere that had belonged to a man they hung down on the Salt Fork last spring. If Coburn didn't mind a little thing like that, he was welcome to the coat.
Coburn said he didn't have any delicate feelings in such things, but he was pushed for time and thought they'd better go. It would only take a minute, the liveryman said, going off to rummage around for the coat. Coburn sent Simpson out with the two horses to wait in the dark beside the barn along with the three cowboys, who were already in the saddle, all set to go.
There was a dim light in the broad barn door, coming from a lantern in the office; beyond it black night and the rain, and the three cowboys around the corner of the building waiting for the boss to come.
As Simpson crossed this little dim beam from the office window and hit the cool damp air outside, somebody across the street took a shot at him. The bullet slapped hard against the planks, pretty close to his head. Others rattled after it as Simpson crouched between the horses and ran along the front of the barn toward the corner where the cowboys waited.
A bullet struck the steel horn of the saddle on his right, glancing with a mean whang so close to the animal's ears that it lost its nerve and attempted to bolt. In a moment the other horse was involved in the stampede, giving Simpson all he could do to hold them. He was whirled and twisted until he didn't know horse from horse in the dark, in peril of being trampled as well as shot.
Coburn burst out of a side door, which was a man door and not a horse door, just as his men, burning under the imposition, began to give the shooting crowd back the same hot brand of lead they were delivering. The boss jumped into the tangle of horses and Simpson, yelling unheard, or at least unheeded, orders to his men to stop shooting and go. Simpson hopped what he took to be Waco Johnson's horse and streaked out after the gang, who set off with a whoop, shooting defiance as they rode.
Waco Johnson was a good judge of a horse, Simpson thought, whatever his failings in other directions might be. That certainly was a hummer. Not knowing east from west in the obscuration of night and rain, Simpson gave the animal its head.
It seemed to Simpson that in five jumps and a snort his horse was past the bunch of three cowboys, and he was happy enough to have it split the wind that way, for some of the outraged friends of the city marshal evidently had taken horse in pursuit. One of them appeared to have a keen eye or a sharp scent, for he had singled Simpson out and was pushing him hard, yelling between shots for him to stop.
Stopping was the farthest thing from Tom Simpson's thoughts just then. He made himself as little as he could in the saddle and let the long-necked racer go. It would head for home, he reasoned, not greatly concerned over his separation from the Bar-Heart-Bar men, whose shots and whoops he could no longer hear.
Tight after him that persistent reprobate came, banging away with deadly intention but poor aim. None of his shots came near enough to be heard or, if so, their whine was drowned in the whistling wind of his speed. The horse was following a road, from its even gait, and a pretty good one at that. It was so dark there was no skyline, yet not a shade darker than Simpson would have ordered it if he had been arranging the night for the occasion. There was a little grayness in the clouds now and then; on the earth not a thing but the dungeon blackness into which the horse bored with the confidence of a well-known way.
The whooping behind Simpson stopped, the shooting popped for a little while thereafter, when that also ceased. Whoever it was that made the spurt after him, Simpson thought, had charged with the bristling courage of a housedog, which a little effort and a dash of rough weather quickly cools.
He pulled up to listen. The world seemed as empty as it was black. There was not a sound. The lights of Drumwell were lost; his late companions seemed to have ridden into the black mouth of that silent mystery and disappeared.
Granted that his horse had taken the right road, it was not likely that the others would follow. They would have jumped off some other way when the gang rode out after them and began to shoot; it would be useless to draw to one side and wait in the hope of their passing. The horse would go home, according to the sagacity of its kind. He gave it the reins again.
It was a good while later, perhaps an hour or more, when Simpson, considerably cooled from the excitement and strain of his dramatic dash and escape, realized that he was drenched. He had been too much centered in getting out of that town to think about putting on a slicker, and if he had thought of it his hands were so full of horses it couldn't have been done.
A slicker would not do him much good now, except to keep the steam in and warm him up a little. He didn't even recall whether he had seen a slicker behind Waco Johnson's saddle when he slung it on the horse. He put his hand back to explore.
There was a roll, and a pretty good chunk of a roll, behind the saddle, done up in a slicker, to be sure. But it was not Waco Johnson's slicker; it was not Waco Johnson's roll. In the tangle of things while that shooting was going on, he had jumped the boss's horse and the boss had taken Waco Johnson's.
Not that it mattered, Simpson thought, since they were all heading for the same place. Only he remembered a package which the boss had handled tenderly all day, and put it into the sack with careful bestowal. It looked like a five-pound box of candy, going home to the missus. Simpson hoped he hadn't made a mess of it, which was about what had happened in that jouncing ride if they chanced to be chocolate creams. That was about what Sid Coburn would buy, at a dollar a pound, judging from the domestic look that lay back in his eyes.
Let it rain; the slicker should stay right where it was. He was neither sugar nor salt, nor chocolate creams; it was a cinch he wouldn't melt. Even though most of them must be squashed, some would come through whole, and as long as they were dry they'd be welcome at the ranch-house on the Medicine Lodge River, where the kids would lick the paper and save every smack of the oozing delicacy.
Simpson did not give the little brown bag which he had seen the boss carrying around much thought. He knew it was in the sack, and he had not a spark of curiosity about what it contained. Certainly if he had been put to it to gness the contents, money would have been the last thing he would have chanced. Nothing would have been farther from his own habits, or from the procedure of the well-regulated society in which those habits were formed, than the carrying of money around in any such loose and hazardous way. He was no more cognizant of the fact that he was adrift in the night with a fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars at his back, than he was that Sid Coburn was riding that hour in the frenzy of his loss, raising a posse comitatus to hasten in pursuit.
Whatever it was the brown bag contained—presents for missus and kids, or only the boss's extra shirt, shaving mug, razor and strop—Tom Simpson had no other thought in his entirely honest head than delivering it dry and safe into the hands to which it belonged. He believed the horse was a sensible creature; he was relying, with faith founded on experience, on its homing sense to carry him safely through that adventure which, to Tom Simpson, was rather a mild one, to be sure, and nothing to worry about at all.
Things with and appertaining to Tom Simpson were pretty much as Sid Coburn had guessed. It did not call for an expert in the national characteristics of men to classify him as he belonged. That he was an Englishman was as plain as apples in a schoolboy's pocket. As Coburn had reflected, the western cattle ranges were very well acquainted with Tom Simpson's type. Many young fellows came over in those times to try it out in the rough, some for the experience upon which they expected to build later, others for the adventure of it, but good sports mainly, whatever their motive, and mainly good, sound men.
There were plenty of wild fellows among them, at least wild in the old home standards of conduct, if not so very boisterous according to the morals of the range. Most of them received money from home, and were known as remittance men on the range, as they were similarly designated elsewhere, and the majority of them blew it in one big spree when it came, taking the thick and thin of a cowpuncher's life between checks without a sigh. If they did not always win to close comradship and understanding with the natives of the range, they invariably achieved a certain standing of respect in the rough ethics of that life.
Simpson rode on through the impenetrable night, surrendering full guidance to the horse, which appeared to be confident of its way. From the footing which was becoming muddy, Simpson knew the horse was following a road bearing traffic enough to keep the grass down. That it would lead him duly to the Bar-Heart-Bar ranch he had no doubt. His one concern was the length of time it would take to get there, as the travelling was heavy and slippery, and wearing on a horse.
The rain was increasing, bearing out of the quarter he was facing, driving on a dreary wind that chilled him to the bone. It would be wise to turn in at the first shelter offering, he decided, keeping a sharp lookout for a light. But there was no light. It seemed as if he had ridden beyond the bounds of civilization when he left town.
At a creekside, where there was a windbreak of cottonwood trees and undergrowth, which he sensed, rather than saw, for it continued black as vengeance, the cold clouds fairly raking the earth, Simpson dismounted to blow his horse. He got his pipe going without difficulty, and considered a fire to warm his shins, giving it up after groping around among the wet branches and soaked twigs.
It was going to be a long pull—he reckoned it only about midnight then—in the saddle until morning, and he'd have to stick to the saddle to give the horse its way. When a man took to his feet and led his horse, the horse yielded guidance to the hand on the bridle. Sit in the saddle and give him his head, as before. That was all a stranger abroad in an unknown land could do.
Meanwhile, Sid Coburn was stretching leather to overhaul the man who had grabbed his horse and made off with his money. At least he thought he was riding in the most likely direction to either overtake or get ahead of him, close in and trap him when daylight came.
There was but one direction a thief would take with refuge so close at hand: south, into the Indian country, where the chances would be ten to one in his favor of getting clean away. That was the direction Tom Simpson had taken, Sid Coburn tight after him on Waco Johnson's horse, banging away with his cannon, yelping himself raw with impotent commands and curses. When the chase became hopeless, Coburn returned to town to report his loss, gather a band among his friends of the range who happened to be in Drumwell that night, to comb the country in the slim hope of ever feeling the heft of that thirty-five thousand dollars again.
The three cowboys, separated from their boss in the get-away, came back to look for him, hearing the shooting, making a cautious exploration, Wallace keeping well back in the dark, close to his horse, fearing somebody would identify him if he rode in with his companions and start everything all over again. Pete and Joe ran into Coburn, who was in a froth of rage and desperation.
To think he had been played for a sucker that way, Coburn belittled himself. It was a put-up job, from the very start, that damn Waco Johnson at the bottom of it. That accounted for Waco's absence; he'd arranged it with his side-partner to get on the train and play broke, work himself in with them and grab the money.
It looked reasonable to the gang. Waco Johnson was a new man, unknown to them. He had been around the Bar-Heart-Bar only a month or two, coming from nobody knew where. It was an easy matter for them to work themselves up to a hot state of bitter denunciation, and cook up a plot that had no more foundation than public denunciations generally have.
Simpson would hit for the Nation, of course, where Waco would join him and split the easiest piece of money that ever fell into crooked hands. On that reasoning, Coburn telegraphed the federal authorities in the Indian country a description of Simpson, and sent Pete Benson to the county seat to inform the sheriff and enlist his help. Then Coburn rode off in a blind pursuit with Wallace and Joe Lobdell, his friends taking other roads, all agreeing to make for a certain point of rendezvous the next day, where they would report on anything seen or heard.
Coburn was in a wild state of desperation. The loss of that money meant dishonor and ruination. More than half of it was owing to a Wichita bank, the mortgagor having such faith in his honor as to permit him to ship his cattle and make his own collection, something unusual in range procedure. The general program was for a representative of the mortgagor to accompany the shipment, collect the returns, take his cut and hand the remainder, if any, to the cattleman.
Sid had been gloating over the pleasure and dignity that would be his when he deposited that money in the morning, wrote a check for twenty-one thousand dollars, scratched a brief line and mailed it to the Wichita banker who had trusted him to the limit because he had trusted his father before him in the days when the old man speculated in cattle driven up the Chisholm Trail from Texas. In his gloomy rage Coburn overlooked everything that had gone before the moment of excitement and peril at the livery stable which would tend to disprove his sudden and vindictive opinion of Tom Simpson. He even believed the row in the saloon, and Simpson's arrest and escape from the marshal, all a part of the plot. That wall-eyed little lizard of a marshal was in on it, he easily convinced himself, making a mental reservation of a day of reckoning in that quarter.
All night they rode southward, following the cattle trail most used by cattlemen in that section of the Cherokee leases, stopping at cow-camps to roust out sleepy punchers, who became alert and avid for the news with the first eager inquiry; clamoring at the doors of Indian and negro cabins to demand information of a wild rider who might have stopped to refresh himself or enforce a change of horses.
With every mile of the hard-pressed journey, every passing hour of the long, dragging, blank-dark night, Sid Coburn's hope sank lower. His courage died in him and his heart turned cold, but he held on southward to the appointed place of meeting, not dreaming, certainly, that Tom Simpson's horse had circled back when given the rein, and was heading at the same time in a direction almost exactly opposite that of the supposed pursuit.