The Trail Rider/Chapter 9
THE plan of patrolling the border against Texas cattle was at once simple and effective. Without any warrant of law for their measures of defense against the contagion of their herds, the Kansas drovers had established certain defined routes by which cattle from the Texas range could be driven to the railroad loading points within the confines of their state. For a hundred miles or more along the northern line of Indian Territory the trail-riders, of whom Texas Hartwell had become one, rode watching for the approach of Texas herds, to turn them aside from the forbidden land.
As Uncle Boley had explained to Hartwell, the ravages of Texas fever on the Kansas range had worked tremendous losses within the past few years. Proposed laws establishing a quarantine line against southern stock were before Congress, and they were passed in time, but not until the Texas drovers had spent every energy to prevent it.
True, the routes fixed by the Kansas cattlemen were through the most arid part of the State, where water was scarce sometimes in the summer months, and the grazing poor. The Kansas range always has been the fattening place for Texas range cattle, for there is no grass that equals Kansas grass. The plan of Texas drovers had been to drive immense herds into that rich country, graze them slowly toward the railroad, fattening them as they walked leisurely to market. But they dropped millions of fever ticks as they went along, and the bite of one of these tiny creatures was death to a northern animal.
So they were to be kept out at all costs, even the cost of battle and the penalty of death. The trail-riders had been keeping the Texans to the prescribed routes, but there was a spirit of defiance growing below the quarantine line which indicated trouble of serious proportions. For that reason the border guards had been doubled.
A man had to come highly recommended to get a job as trail-rider. It called for courage, and a good head in an emergency, ceaseless vigilance, trustworthiness beyond a doubt. It was the highest compliment that the hardy men of that country could pay Texas Hartwell when they made him a member of that trusted band. He might have fought a score of battles in the streets of Cottonwood and come out victor in every one of them, never to draw any recognition of his capabilities with a gun from them. But when he lifted his voice and hand in defense of the rights of a clansman's daughter, that was enough to pass him into the iron circle of their highest confidence.
Texas did not realize this, for he was altogether too ingenuous to suspect that a community should reward a man for discharging a gentleman's obligations. He thought that Winch had hired him because he had proved himself handy with a gun against odds, or as a personal appreciation of the thrashing he had given the mayor.
In the two weeks that he had been riding trail, nothing had happened to break the autumnal peace. At morning he met at one end of his beat the man beyond him, and at evening the man from the other side. He was responsible only for the territory that he covered, a front of not more than ten or a dozen miles. Often a wave of the hand from a hilltop to tell that all was well was the only interchange between him and his comrades of the trail for days together.
Thus the time passed in monotonous loneliness, nothing to break it except now and then some traveler in covered wagon on his way from Kansas to Texas with his family, or somebody who had tried the lure of the South and was returning, thinner of shank and more tattered and roped together than when he left.
The marvelous and cheering thing about it was that he never met one of these travelers, no matter which way he was headed, who was poor in hope. In the faces of all the ragged drivers there was something like the reflection of a far-away light, in their eyes the brilliant eagerness of souls upon an endless quest. If they had missed it in Kansas they were going to hit it in Texas; if Texas had failed of the bright promise, surely back in Kansas where the grass grew they would come into their own.
So the surprise of hearing a human voice, and a woman's voice at that, raised in song in the dusk of a certain evening as he rode his way, was almost startling to Texas. The singer was riding ahead of him, not in sight, and this was her song:
And the chimney solid gold,
On the double-breasted mansion on the square;
But I lost a lot at keno,
And I'll never more behold
The double-breasted mansion on the square."
Texas hurried on to overtake her, wondering why she should be riding in the same direction as he instead of across his trail. East and west travelers along the line of the Nation, as that part of Indian Territory inhabited by the Cherokees was commonly called, were rare, and nobody but cowboys was ever heard to go along singing in that land. She heard him coming, and reined up on a knoll, where she stood quite clear against the last light of the west.
"Hello!" she hailed, while he was still a hundred yards away. "Oh, it's you Mr. Texas?" she said, surprise and relief mingling in her tone.
"It most surely is," said he, his wonder enlarging to discover that she was Fannie Goodnight, the girl who had saved him from the humiliation of arrest by her interference with the mayor. "I wonder what in the name of time brought you away down here into this lonesome country, Miss?"
"I guess I'm lost, Texas," she said, with a short little laugh.
He looked at her queerly, but could not make much out of her face, for it was growing dark. But he noted that she was not wearing the elegant green costume on this unaccountable excursion, miles away from any human abode. Her dress was of some dark material; she wore a handkerchief round her neck in the cowboy style.
"It's funny for you to be singin' along that way and you lost," he said, more in the manner of speculation than address.
"Oh, I wasn't worried; I knew I'd come out somewhere, and I've got a sack of grub. I've been at Colby's ranch down in the Nation—you know where it is?"
"No, ma'am, I don't."
"It's twenty-five or thirty miles below the line. Colby married my cousin. She's part Indian, so am I."
"You don't tell me!"
"I guess that's why I wasn't worried when I lost the trail and got kind of turned around down there in the hills."
"Where were you headin' for, Miss?"
"Cottonwood."
"It's close on to sixty miles from here, due north. You was headin' east."
"Well, I knew I'd come out somewhere."
"Yes, I guess you would."
He didn't believe her, unsuspecting as his nature was. There was nothing at all uncommon in a woman of the range country undertaking a ride like that, through a section where there was little danger to be met, but a woman whom her relatives would trust to such an undertaking would not be the one to ride east when her road lay to the north. She interrupted his perplexing thought.
"Is there any water around here? I'm dying for a drink."
"There's a spring branch along a couple of miles. I was aimin' to camp there to-night."
"Do you mind if I stop there with you and cook my supper? When the moon comes up I'll ride on."
"I was just goin' to ask you to take a sup of coffee with me. But I'm afraid there won't be any moon to-night, miss; it looks like it might cloud up and rain."
"If it does I'll have to wait till daylight. Well, I've got my slicker."
"You provide yourself like a regular old-timer when you stir around."
"I am an old-timer, I used to ride after cattle down at Colby's. That's where I learnt to rope."
"You're mighty neat and handy at it, miss."
Texas felt that this compliment was due her, despite the underhanded scheme to defraud Sallie McCoy and the public in which she had borne a part. Some way he felt that she had been more of an instrument than a designer in that shameful steal. Perhaps this softening toward her came from the service she had rendered before Uncle Boley's door that evening the mayor had ordered his arrest.
"I'm not as good with a rope as I used to be, Texas," she said. But for all this modest disclaimer he could see that she was pleased by this compliment.
But what was she doing there? That was what troubled Texas for an answer as he rode beside her toward the stream. For a woman who had lost her way she was mightily composed and easy of mind. Perhaps that was her nature, having been around so much, and accustomed to meeting all kinds of people. It was the way, also, of one used to the life she said she had followed once. Yet he knew very well that anybody who had ridden after cattle on the range never would get turned around and drop the road in the broad of day.
It was her own business, he concluded. If a woman wanted to go roaming around that way, let her go. This was a bold woman, with a large experience among men, larger indeed, he feared, than had been good for her. She would take care of herself in her own way, no matter where she might make her bed. But she had no honest purpose there on the border. Texas was forced to admit that belief in spite of the promptings of gratitude.
Texas gathered dry sumac for the fire, and that was as far as Fannie would allow him to go in the supper preparations. If he had doubted before that she ever had lived a cowboy's life all misgivings were dispelled at sight of her deftness with frying-pan over the little fire. She belonged to the craft; the slightest doubt of that was a slander. Of course, she couldn't jide and throw a rope to compare with Sallie McCoy, but he knew that she could have done better than she did with that old trained steer.
She sat cross-legged like an Arab beside the fire, her hat on the ground, the light in her beautiful black hair, strong on the white and pink of her handsome bold face, turning the flapjacks with a flip of the pan, flashing them up like fish leaping in the sun. He stood by admiring her, for she compelled that as her due, no matter what secrets her heart carried, no matter what her adventures had been.
"Texas?" she said, not turning her eyes from her task.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Call me Fannie: they all do. Texas, where did you come from?"
"Kansas City, most recently, Miss Fannie."
"Oh, I mean where did you come from—where did you start? Here"—offering a tin plate of cakes and bacon—"sit down and begin your supper, and tell me about yourself. If you've got anything to hide, skip it. I'm pretty good on the guess."
"There isn't anything in particular to hide, Fannie," said he, thoughtfully, putting his hat down beside him as if he prepared for a ceremony. "I started in Taixas, and I come to the end of my rope in Kansas City. Father had a ranch down on the Nueces, and we got smart and begun to drive cattle up to Dakota to supply the government. They butchered them for the Sioux, you know."
"And you drove one time too many, I guess, didn't you, Texas?"
Texas twisted his head in combination of assent and expression of seriousness as he reached for another cake.
"You sure are good on the guess, too, Miss Fannie."
"Fannie," she corrected, with gentle firmness.
"Fannie," he repeated, like a dutiful boy.
"Go ahead, Texas; tell me about it."
"The last trip we drove in ten thousand. The Indians met us on the way and butchered them for themselves. But we got out of it right happily, you might say."
"Did they shoot you up any, Texas?"
"Not to amount to much, Fannie."
"How much, Texas?"
"Oh, three or four times, here and there."
"Three or four—which was it, Texas?"
"Four, Fannie."
Fannie appeared to be thinking the situation over. She sat with her head bent toward the fire a little to keep the glare out of her eyes, and turned out two or three cakes before she spoke again.
"I guess the government paid you for the cattle. What did you do with the money?"
"The government never paid a dollar. I hope to get it some time, if I live long enough to see a bill through Congress."
"Well, what become of the ranch?"
"We sold it and invested in real estate in Kansas City, on the advice of people we thought to be friends."
"Of course they skinned you."
"The Sioux Indians are gentlemen, Fannie, compared to them sharks back there."
"They rob you without any false pretenses," she nodded.
"Yes, you know who's cleaned you out when they ride off."
"So you left your father up there and struck out to make another stake, did you, Texas?"
Texas did not answer right away. He turned his head and looked off toward the south quite a spell, as if he considered this impertinence, and going into things a little too far.
"I took him back to the old place to bury him, Fannie," he said, simply, but with such pathos that it sounded like the cry of an empty heart.
She poured herself a cup of coffee, keeping her head turned so the light would not fall on her face. Her voice was low and soft when she spoke again.
"Your mother and the rest of them are still in Kansas City?"
"Mother went many years before him. My married sister lives in El Paso. And so you know all about me now, Miss Fannie, from the cradle to Kansas."
She rolled a piece of bacon in a pancake and ate it like a banana.
"You're a Texas cowman, ridin' trail for the association," she said. "What would you do, Texas, if somebody you knew from down there was to come drivin' a big herd up here and wanted you to let 'em through the quarantine line?"
"It isn't likely, Fannie, that anybody I know ever will come here doin' that."
"Well, if somebody you didn't know was to come from Texas and ask you to let them slip through this gap in the line you watch?"
"You oughtn't to ask me that, Miss Fannie."
She looked at him steadily a moment, reached out, touched his arm.
"No, I oughtn't. I know what you'd do without askin'. You'd fight till you had to prop your eyes open—you'd die before you'd let them through."
Texas seemed to be very much embarrassed by this expression of confidence. He looked round at the skies, his head tilted back as if he listened.
"It sure is goin' to rain, Fannie," he said.
"Texas"—her hand was on his arm again—"I'm not lost. I know right where I am, I know every inch of this country. I could go to Cottonwood as straight as a bullet."
"Yes, I suspected you could, Fannie."
"Texas"—earnestly, leaning toward him a little, the firelight in her bright eyes, her voice low—"there's a big herd of Texas cattle not three miles from here, and they're goin' to drive through to-night!"
He looked at her sharply, startled a little at first by the earnestness of her voice, but recovered himself almost immediately. He smiled as he threw a few small sticks on the fire to make a light.
"Did you come down to tell me?" he asked, treating it as if he considered it a joke.
"Tell you! That gang made me come—I was to hold you here, right here by this creek, till morning, so they wouldn't run into you. Tell you, hell!"
Texas was on his feet in a flash. There was no doubting the earnestness of her word, although he doubted whether she had given him the full truth of the scheme. She was beside him, looking appealingly into his eyes.
"Where are they, do you know?" he asked.
"I expect they're drivin' across by now, west of here, just far enough away to be out of hearing. There'll be somebody—"
He started for his horse, hobbled near by. Fannie stopped him, her hand on his shoulder.
"They'll kill me if they find out I told you, but I couldn't double-cross you, Texas. I like you, kid—you're clean—you're the kind of a man I'd go through hell for, clear up to the neck!"
He took her hand, with a swift look into her eyes.
"I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've done, Fannie, nor how much I'm honored by your confidence. Hurry—get your horse! If you'll start right now you can—"
"Listen!" she whispered, her voice choked with fear.
Texas had heard the slight movement beyond the small circle of their little fire, and had sprung away from her, his hand on his gun.
"Run for your horse!" he called to her, in alarm.
She stood hesitant, the light of the fire on her face, her eyes great, fear in every feature.
"They heard me—they'll kill me!"