The Outlaw Josey Wales (9 page)

Lone slowed the black.

“I count twelve,” Josey said as he rode alongside.

Lone nodded. “They are Choctaws, riding down to meet the trail herds. They will ask payment fer crossing their lands … then they will cut out cattle … permission or not.”

The Indians rode closer, but after they had inspected the two heavily armed men on the big horses … they veered off and slackened pace. They had ridden on for another quarter mile when Lone slid the black to a halt so suddenly that Josey almost ran his mount over him.

“Taketoha!” he shouted, “Little Moon…!” Simultaneously, they whirled their horses and set them running back over the trail. Coming to a rise they saw the Indians riding close, but not too close, to the paint horse. Little Moonlight was holding the rifle steady, and with it she swept the squad of Indians. The Choctaws saw Lone and Josey waiting on the rise and turned away from the Indian woman. They had gotten the message; that the squaw was, somehow, a member of this strange caravan that included two hard-appearing riders mounted on giant horses and a cadaverous-looking hound with long ears and bony flanks.

It was midnight when they camped on the banks of Clear Boggy Creek, less than a day’s ride from the Red River and Texas. An hour later Little Moonlight jogged into camp on the paint.

Josey heard her slip silently around their blankets. He saw Lone rise and give grain to the paint. She rolled in a blanket a little distance from them and did not eat before she slept.

Her movements woke Josey before dawn, and he smelled cooking but saw no fire. Little Moonlight had dragged a hollow log close to them, carved a hole in its side, and placed a black pot over a captive, hidden fire.

Lone was already eating. “I’m gonna take up tepee livin’ … if it’s like this,” he grinned. And as Josey stepped to feed the horses Lone said, “She’s already grained ’em … and watered ’em … and rubbed ’em down … and cinched the saddles. Might as well set yore bottom down like a chief and eat.”

Josey took a bowl from her and sat cross-legged by the log. “I see the Cherokee Chief is already eatin’,” he said.

“Cherokee Chiefs have big appetites,” Lone grinned, belched, and stretched. The hound growled at the movement … he was chewing on a mangled rabbit. Josey watched the dog as he ate.

“I see ol’ hound gits his own,” he said. “Re’clects me of a red-bone we had back home in Tennessee. I went with Pa to tradin’. They had pretty blue ticks, julys, and sich, but Pa, he paid fifty cent and a jug o’ white fer a old red-bone that had a broke tail, one eye out, and half a ear bit off. I ast Pa why, and he said minute he saw that ol’ hound, he knowed he had sand …. thet he’d been there and knowed what it was all about… made the best ’coon hound we ever had.”

Lone looked at Little Moonlight as she packed gear on the paint. “It is so… and many times… with women. Yore Pa was a knowin’ mountain man.”

The wind held a smell of moist April as they rode south, still in the Choctaw Nation. At dusk they sighted the Red River, and by full dark the three of them had forded not far from the Shawnee Trail. They set foot on the violent ground of Texas.

Chapter 11

Texas in 1867 was in the iron grip of the Union General Phil Sheridan’s military rule. He had removed Governor James W. Throckmorton from office and appointed his own Governor, E. M. Pease. Pease, a figurehead for the Northern Army under orders of radical politicians in Washington, would soon be succeeded by another Military Governor, E. J. Davis, but the conditions would remain the same.

Only those who took the “ironclad oath” could vote. Union soldiers stood in long lines at every ballot box. All Southern sympathizers had been thrown out of office. Judges, mayors, sheriffs were replaced by what Texans called “scalawags,” if the turncoats were from the South, and “carpetbaggers,” if they were from the North. Armed, blue-coated Militia, called “Regulators,” imposed… or tried to… the will of the Governor, and mobs of Union Leaguers, half-con trolled by the politicians, settled like locusts over the land.

The effects of the vulturous greed and manipulations of the politicians were everywhere, as they sought to confiscate property and home and line their pockets from levy and tax. The Regular Army, as usual, was caught in the middle and in the main stood aside or devoted their efforts to the often futile task of attempting to contain the raids of the bloody Comanche and Kiowa that encroached even into central Texas. These Tartars of the Plains were ferociously defending their last free domain that stretched from deep in Mexico to the Cimarron in the north.

The names of untamed Rebels were gaining bloody prominence; Cullen Baker, the heller from Louisiana, was becoming widely known. Captain Bob Lee, who had served under the incomparable Bedford Forrest in Tennessee, was waging a small war with the Union Leaguers headed by Lewis Peacock. Operating out of Fannin, Collins, and Hunt counties, Lee was setting northeast Texas aflame. There was already a price on his head. Bill Longley, the cold killer from Evergreen, was a wanted man, and farther south, around DeWitt and Gonzales counties, there was the Taylor clan. Headed by the ex-Confederate Captain Creed Taylor, there were brothers Josiah, Rufus, Pitkin, William, and Charlie… with sons Buck, Jim, and a whole army of a second generation.

Out of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama, they fought under the orders of the Taylor family motto, marrowed in their blood from birth, “Whoever sheds a Taylor’s blood, by a Taylor’s hand must die.” And they meant it. Entire towns were terrorized in the shoot-outs between the Taylors, their kith and kin… and the Regulators headed by Bill Sutton and his entourage. They were tough and mean; stubborn to defend their “propitty”; they had never been whupped, and they aimed to prove it.

Simp Dixon, a Taylor kinsman, died at Cotton Gin, Texas, his back to a wall… weighted down with lead… and both .44’s blazing. He took five Regulators with him. The Clements brothers went “helling” through the carpetbag-controlled towns and periodically rode up the trail when the Texas heat got too unhealthy. The untended ranches of four years had loosed thousands of wild longhorns in the brush. The Northeast needed beef, and the Southern riders filled the trails as they “brush-popped” the cattle into herds and angled them north.

First up the Shawnee to Sedalia, Missouri … then the Chisholm to Abilene, Kansas … the Western Trail to Dodge City, as the rail lines moved west. Each spring and fall they turned the railhead cattle towns into “Little Texas” and brought a brand of wildness that forevermore would stamp the little villages in history.

It would be a year before a young lad, John Wesley Hardin, would begin his fantastically bloody career… but he would be only one of many. General Sherman said of the time and the place, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.” Well, Sherman knowed where his fit company was at. For Texans… them as couldn’t fork the bronc had best move out, preferably in a pine box.

And now word flew down the Trail. The Missouri Rebel and unequaled pistol fighter, Josey Wales, was Texas bound. It was enough to make a Texan stomp the ground in glee and spit into the wind. For the politician it brought frantic thoughts and feverish action. Both sides braced for the coming.

Campfires twinkled as far as the eye could see. Early herds, pushing for the top market dollar after a winter’s beef-hungry span in the North, were stacked almost end to end. Longhorns bawled and scuffled as cowboys rounded them into a settling for the night. Josey, Lone, and Little Moonlight… riding close now… passed near the lead campfires, out of the light. The plink-plank of a five-string banjo sounded tinny against the cattle sounds, and a mournful voice rose in song:

“They say I cain’t take up my rifle and fight ’em now nor more,

But I ain’t a’gonna love ’em Now thet is certain shore.

And I don’t want no pardon Fer whut I was and am,

And I won’t be reconstructed,

And I don’t give a damn.”

They dry-camped in a shallow gully, away from the herds. Unable to picket-graze the horses and with the added appetite of the paint horse, the grain was running low.

It was chuck time for the cowboys of the Gatling brothers’ trail herd. There were three Gatling brothers and eleven riders pushing three thousand head of longhorns. It had been a rough day. Herds were strung out behind them, and immediately on their heels Mexican vaqueros with a smaller herd had pushed and shouted at them for more speed. Several fights had broken out through the day, and the riders were in an ugly mood. The longhorns were not yet “trail-broke,” still wild as they were driven from the brush; and they had made charges, all day long, away from the main body, which had kept the cowboys busy. Ten of them squatted now, or sat cross-legged around the fire, wolfing beans and beef. Half their number would have to relieve the riders circling the herd and take up first night watch. They were in no hurry to climb back in the saddle. Rough-garbed, most of them wore the chaparral leather guards … the cowboys called them “chaps”… and heavy pistols hung from sagging belts about their waists.

The voice came clear, “Haaallooo, the camp.” Every man stiffened. Four of them faded a few paces back from the fire into the darkness. They had “papers” on them, and though they were protected by the code of the trail… every rider of the trail herd would fight to the death in their defense … there was no sense borrem’ trouble from a nosey lawman.

The trail boss, for a long moment, continued chewing his beef, giving them as needed it “scarcin’ time.” Then he stood up and bawled, “Come on in!” They heard the horse walking slowly … then into the firelight. It was a huge black that snorted and skittered as the rider brought him close. He swung down and did not trust the black to rein-stand but tied him to the wheel of the chuck wagon. Without another word, he brought his tin plate and cup from a saddlebag, dipped huge portions of bean and beef from the pot, calmly poured black coffee into the cup, and squatted, eating, in the circle of riders. It was the custom. The chuck was open claim to any rider on the trail.

It was a fractious practice to ask questions in Texas. Whenever a man asked one, it was invariably preceded by “no offense meant” … unless, of course, he did mean offense … in which case he prepared to draw his pistol. There was no need for questions anyhow. Every cowboy present could “read.” The rider wore moccasin boots, the long, plaited black hair. He was Indian. The gray cavalry hat meant Confederate. Confederate Cherokee. There was the tied-down .44 and knife. A fightin’ man. He came from the Nations, to the north, and he was riding south … otherwise, if he had come from the south, he’d have chucked at the hind-end herd. The horse was too good for a regular Indian or cowboy, therefore he was on a fast run from somethin’ when a feller had to have the best in horseflesh. The “reading” required only a minute. They approved … and gave evidence of their approval by resuming their conversations.

“Onliest way they’ll ever git Wales is from the back,” a bearded cowpuncher opined as he sopped his beans with a biscuit.

Another rose and refilled his plate. “Whit rode with Bill Todd and Fletch Taylor in Missouri… he says he seen Wales oncet in ’65, at Baxter Springs. Drawed on three Redlegs…. Whit says ye couldn’t see his hands move… and na’ar Redleg cleared leather.”

“Bluebellies cut his trail in the Nations,” another said. “Say thar’s another rider… maybe two with ’em now.”

The trail boss spoke, “He was knowed to have friends ’mongst the Cherokees…” His voice trailed off… he had spoken before he thought… and now there was an awkward silence. Eyes cut furtively toward the Indian, who appeared not to have heard. He was busying himself over his tin plate.

The trail boss cleared his throat and addressed himself to the Indian, “Stranger, we was wonderin’ about trail conditions to the north. That is, if ye come from that d’rection, no offense.”

Lone looked up casually and spoke around a mouthful of beef. “None taken,” he said. “Grazin’ ought to be good. Day t’other side of the Red, ye’ll be pestered by Choctaws … little bunches of ’em, old rifles, muzzle load. Canadian ain’t up … leastwise, it wa’ant few days ago. If ye’re branchin’ off on the Chisholm, ye’ll strike the Arkansas west of the Neosho … ought not be runnin’ high … but I never crossed that fer west. East, on the Shawnee … she’s up a mite.” He sopped the remains of the beans, washed his tin plate with sand, and downed the last of the coffee. “Lookin’ to buy a little stock grain … iff’n ye got it to spare.”

“We’re grazin’ our remuda … ain’t totin’ no grain,” the trail boss said, “but fer jest the one hoss, mebbe..

“Three hosses,” Lone said.

The trail boss turned to the cook, “Give ’em the oats in the chuck,” and to Lone, “Ain’t much … no more’n fer a day ’er two … but we can eat corn fritters … cain’t we, boys?”

The cowboys nodded their big hats in unison. They knew.

“I’d be obliged to pay,” Lone said as he accepted the sack of oats from the cook.

“Not likely,” a cowboy spoke clear and loud from the fire.

As Lone swung up on the black, the trail boss held his bridle briefly, “Union Leaguers, twenty-five … thirty of ’em … combed through the herds a day’s ride back … headed west. Heard tell Regulators was poppin’ brush all through this here neck o’ country.” He loosed his hands from the bridle.

Lone looked down at the trail boss, and his eyes glittered. “Obliged,” he said quietly, whirled the black, and was gone.

“Good luck,” the voices floated to him from the campfire.

Josey and Little Moonlight had waited in the shallow wash. He sat, holding the horses’ reins, and Little Moonlight stood behind him, high on the bank, and watched for Lone’s return. Before he heard Lone’s approach, she touched him on the arm. “Hoss,” she said.

Josey smiled in the dark, a Cheyenne squaw, talkin’ like a leather-popper. He listened to Lone’s report in silence. Somehow … he had taken it for granted … that Texas would be as it was when he had wintered here during the War; everything peaceful behind the Confederate lines … but now, the same treacheries were present that had plagued Missouri all the many long years.