Lassiter Tough (14 page)

He rode hard, wind searing his eyes, making them tear. As he came within sight of the herd, spread out across flat country, he saw no sign of strange horsemen. There was no tangle of brush to obstruct his view, just barren ground. It had been his intention to push on until reaching the grass he remembered from the previous trail drive.

It was like a tableau he beheld, every one of the thousand head of cattle standing tensed as if statues carved from reddish wood, topped with a forest of great horns. When there was no further firing, he began to wonder.

He slowed his horse because a hard-running animal could send the herd into the scourge of all cattle drives.
Stampede!

Lassiter fired a question at a slender rider named Leon Monjosa.

“Rafael thinks he sees riders.” And Monjosa gave a great sweep of his arm to the west. Rafael Guiterrez had fired his rifle. Others had joined in. But so far as was known, they had hit nothing.

“There are riders over that way, for sure,” Lassiter
said. Monjosa stiffened and peered to the west where the sky was acquiring long streamers of reds and yellows as the sinking sun was hidden behind a cloud bank. There was no water or grass. Slowly, Lassiter circled the herd and cautioned the other vaqueros about firing at shadows.

“Wait till we run into the real thing,” he told each of them.

Alert for trouble, Lassiter rode at point, peering tensely ahead into the growing shadows. He knew, as well as he knew that the day was Tuesday, that there were horsemen out there somewhere. And instinct told him they were the enemy.

Shorty Doane had appointed himself boss of the group. And because of his enormous size, none of the others protested. Even Pinto George, who had a waspish temper, let it pass.

In a deep canyon where shadows already were thick, Doane turned in the saddle of his big Morgan. It was the only horse available that could support his weight over long distances.

“I want Lassiter for myself,” he announced.

“What'll you do when you get him?” the bony Jeddy Quine asked slyly.

“Aim to use this.” Doane slapped at the bone handle of a knife that had been jammed into his boot top. “When I get tired of playin' with him, I'll cut his throat.”

“Been thinkin',” Chuck Hale mused, “why didn't Brad come along with us?”

Joe Tige rubbed the back of his hand across a nose that had once been broken. “Yeah, I wonder about that. Brad's so all-fired set to put Lassiter under. You'd think he'd want a hand in it himself.”

“The boss has got other things on his mind,” Doane snapped.

They were riding single file along the bottom of the narrow canyon. Scrub cedars jutted from sand walls. Doane finally told them that he was going to have a look and started up a long, slanting trail that led to the highlands above. “Watch for my signal,” he warned.

The lip of the bluff was well screened with brush, so he felt he would be protected. Besides, he knew the area well, having helped trap a small band of Co-manches suspected of stealing horses when he was in the cavalry. Later, they had learned the Indians were innocent, but by that time it was too late. Doane and three other troopers had been kicked out of the service for taking the law into their own hands, instead of bringing the Comanches in as ordered.

As a result of that experience, Doane hated the cavalry almost as much as he did the law in general, which he had flaunted for some years.

His horse moved quietly in deep sand up the slanted trail. At last he reached the lip of a bluff and through thick brush saw the approaching herd. It was about a quarter of a mile away. There was still enough daylight to reveal Lassiter's tall, erect figure at point. Doane grinned. Perfect.

He turned in the saddle and gave an arm wave to those waiting below. Immediately, they started climbing the trail. Doane waited impatiently until the last man was riding up. They sat in their saddles, watching the approaching herd through the screen of brush. The animals were close enough now so they could hear the click of touching horns, the muffled sound of many hooves on the hard-packed earth.

A full moon to the east was dim now but taking on color as the world began to slide toward darkness. The west was ablaze with rainbow colors and the first star winked against drifting clouds.

“Each one of you pick a man,” Doane hissed to the group gathered around him and now peering at the herd that was less than fifty yards away. “If Lassiter even looks like trouble, I'll shoot his horse. Then I'll have the bastard. Let 'em get a little closer.”

From the tracks he had followed for a ways, some miles back, Lassiter knew there were six riders. He was hoping to reach water and grass before the riders made their move. He was under no illusions; they weren't just riding to see the countryside.

He had already sent the chuck wagon on ahead so a fire would be laid and food cooking by the time they arrived at Cedar Creek, the spot chosen for the campsite. By now the lumbering chuck wagon was only a hundred yards away. If he could only get the herd onto decent grass, he thought.

With full bellies, they would be less inclined to run if startled. But at best they were unpredictable, Lassiter well knew. He had hoped to make it to Tiempo without incident; only one more day would do it. They had been on the trail just under two weeks. He felt a tautness across his shoulders that so often was a prelude to disaster.

He rode with his rifle across his thigh, scanning the shadowy terrain ahead. His hand was slick with sweat on the metal. There was a coldness in his gut. Two of his men rode at swing on either side of the herd. Monjosa was still at drag with another man. And he had a man driving the chuck wagon.

Lassiter had just turned his head right for a long
scan ahead, swinging it left. Where thick brush bulged at the lip of a canyon he saw something move. He was lifting himself in the stirrups for a look down into the canyon. It was already in shadow. But his eyes snapped back to the movement. He squinted, his heart pounding.

Then he saw it again, plainly this time. It was the crown of a hat he saw, a tall man in the saddle of a big horse, he judged from the height.

He was just lifting his rifle when a man sang out, “Grab the sky, Lassiter! You're covered!” It sounded like the booming voice of Shorty Doane.

Instead of obeying the command, Lassiter spun his horse. An orange-red wink of flame appeared in the brush. And to the right, just behind his position of a moment before, a huge steer reared up on its hind legs, uttering an unearthly bellow. Blood streamed from a hole in its neck. Then it crashed to the ground. Other rifles were opening up. A man screamed, then uttered a Spanish oath.

Lassiter fired at the spot where he had seen the hat crown, but there was no answering cry of pain. It had all taken no more than four seconds. Suddenly there was a roaring, as if the earth itself was shaking loose. One moment the cattle were maintaining their plodding walk, but with the sudden death of the big bull in their midst, they were running. The ground shook from the awesome roar of hooves pounding the hardpan, the sound like that made by a hundred loaded ore wagons at runaway speed down a steep mountain grade.

Lassiter danced his horse away from a phalanx of leaders. They swept past, but a great wave of reddish-brown hides was roaring toward him. He spurred the black horse into a gallop.

“All right, you bastards!” he yelled at those in the brush. He put the shoulder of his hard-running horse into the side of a big lead bull with a bunch of speeding followers at his heels. Finally he was able to turn the lumbering animal and held his breath until certain that the others followed. They sped straight for the area where he had spotted the movement of the hat crown. A man yelled a warning. “They're comin' right for us!”

It ended in a hoarse scream as the leaders, heads down, plunged through the brush and disappeared over the lip of the canyon. A cacophony of bellows followed as doomed cattle plunged to the rocks below, probably twenty or thirty head of beef in the bunch Lassiter had peeled off from the main body of the stampeding herd.

Now he was swinging back in front of the oncoming storm of maddened cattle. It was either that or be swept over the edge himself. But he was barely able to keep ahead of the front runners. And as he leaned over the neck of the speeding horse he prayed there would be no rodent holes that could snap a leg. Lassiter well knew that if he were thrown, it would only be a matter of seconds before he was pulverized by the flashing hooves.

On and on they raced, with Lassiter in the lead. Gouts of lather from the mouth of his valiant horse struck his face. He glanced back. It was if a great moving wall was seeking to engulf him. A forest of clicking horns bearing down. To his horror, he saw the chuck wagon overtaken. It disappeared from sight.

A lead cow stumbled, its hind quarters flipping into the air. Instantly five others roared into it before
the herd parted, animals flashing past the pileup on either side.

Looking back, he saw Tony Buscar on the right flanks, flogging his Spanish pony with the reins to gain more speed.

After what seemed like an hour, the animals began to tire. The stampede was slowing, thank God. Lassiter, his mouth dry, gauged their speed and at the right moment waved an arm overhead and made a pushing gesture.

Buscar understood. And between the two of them they gradually turned the herd, pushing the weary leaders into an ever-tightening circle. They finally halted, tongues lolling, their sides heaving. Only then did Lassiter draw an easy breath. His hat hung on his back by a chin strap. He was coated with dust. His horse stood straddle-legged.

He saw two more of his men, Guiterrez and Monjosa, who had helped to get the herd circling until the stampede was halted.

“Where are the others?” Lassiter asked hoarsely, dreading the answer.

Monjosa reported that from his position at drag he had seen one or two of them cut down by rifle fire from brush by the canyon edge.

“Sanlee, sure as hell,” Lassiter said angrily. “I recognized Doane's voice.”

They pushed the tired herd on another half mile to Cedar Creek. It was now full dark, but the moon was up. By then, Alex Rinaldo had appeared, which meant three were missing.

Leaving his men with the castle, Lassiter retraced the two miles or so the herd had run. He didn't know whether any of Sanlee's bunch had survived
or not when he had turned a segment of the raging herd into the brush that hid them.

Upon reaching the spot, he found that the thick brush had been chewed off at ground level by the flailing hooves as if by a giant machete. He peered over the lip of the canyon and could barely make out the bodies of twenty-five or so dead cattle. But because of deep shadows out of reach of the climbing moon, he couldn't tell whether there were horses and riders among them. The only chance any of them would have had was to flee down a slanting trail he could see, far enough to escape the avalanche of flesh.

Where the stampede had started, he found one of his men, shot through the head. It was Bricido Maldonado.

“Lassiter?” a voice called weakly.

“Yeah, it's Lassiter.” He led his horse over to Rudy Ruiz, who had a bullet hole in his thigh. Lassiter tore off his own shirt and used it to plug the bullet wound and tied it in place with the sleeves. With Ruiz hopping on one leg, he managed to get him onto the rump of the black horse. The Mexican's mount was gone—God alone knew where—probably smashed into the ground.

One man was unaccounted for. He found him a few minutes later, unrecognizable as a human body. Who was still missing? He was so weary he couldn't even think straight. All he could think of was Sanlee, beating in his brain like an Apache war drum. By process of elimination, he realized the man trampled to death by the herd was Eddie Rios. He had been driving the chuck wagon. Yesterday he had sprained an ankle and to give it a rest, Lassiter had pulled Monjosa off the chuck wagon and given the job to
Rios. By such a trick of fate, Monjosa lived and Rios was dead.

Nearby he came to the pulverized chuck wagon, the team also unrecognizable as once-living creatures on God's green earth. The last Lassiter had seen of the chuck wagon was Rios standing up in spite of his bad ankle, like a charioteer, urging the racing team to top speed. But the next minute everything had been engulfed. He had heard nothing above the roar of the cattle. But there must have been screams of agony as Rios went down.

It was one more score to settle with Sanlee. One more.

All they had for supper that night and breakfast the following morning was jerky.

There was no trouble from the herd, for they were completely spent. But there was always the chance that Sanlee's men would make another attempt. Lassiter set out guards, each of them taking turns. But there was no trouble. Lassiter had one hope: that the cattle storming over the cliff edge had carried every Sanlee man to the canyon floor.

The next day he and Monjosa rode back to the ruins of the chuck wagon. With a bent shovel found in the wreckage, they dug a grave for Rios and Maldonado. A quick tally showed they had lost forty-five head of beef in the stampede, counting the one that had been shot when Lassiter spun his horse out of danger.

It was a grim Box C crew that, short-handed, drove the herd onto the holding grounds at Tiempo a day and a half later. There Lassiter collected for the cattle and then told Sheriff Doak Palmer about the herd being jumped. Palmer, a tall red-faced man with an
Adam's apple big as a knuckle, gave Lassiter a sour look when Brad Sanlee was mentioned.

“But you got no proof,” the sheriff said, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of a green vest. Cattle cars were being shunted onto a siding with a great clatter of couplings.

“I heard Shorty Doane's voice,” Lassiter said, beginning to feel heat in his face. “And Doane works for Sanlee.”

“I can say for a fact that Brad Sanlee is one of our most respected citizens of Tiempo County,” Doak Palmer said in his drawling voice. “I knew his daddy well. Brad wouldn't be a party to such a dirty business as you claim.”