The Tall Men (12 page)

In any event and in somewhat less than three seconds after Ben’s first shot spread Jennison’s sneer by the precise dimension of forty-four one hundredths of an inch, eight good Texas hands were filled, and the fire going across the campsite into the packed ranks of the stunned guerrillas was assaying about thirty ounces of lead to the foot.

There was a scattered, wild sprinkle of shots from the outlaw band, but with their horses pitching and jamming into each other and with their three leaders dead and down in as many blinks, they never got into effective action.

Ben hastened their inclination to depart by kicking the campfire into a shower of flying cottonwood embers, plunging the battleground into the questionable shooting light furnished by a bad combination of starlight and stringy wood-smoke. Abetting his quick-booted decision, and using the time it gave them to change their votes, the negative thirteen who had stuck by Stark now sought to make up for their treason to the Lone Star cause by working overtime and without wages.

Their combined talents were several too many for the scattering guerrillas. Stark & Company were shortly left to tot up their casualties—three bulletholes in the chuckwagon, two in the canvas of the wood rig, one through the treasured, indignant felt of Chickasaw’s twenty-year-old beaver hat—and to assemble forthwith for another quorum on the question before the house.

In the swift melee, Nathan Stark had seized Nella, shoved her behind the wood wagon, gotten back out only in time to stumble across a saddle in the darkness
created by Ben’s kicking the fire out, and fall heavily against the iron-bound hub of the wagon’s rear wheel.

He was still rubbing the side of his head and not talking when the new vote went against him, twenty-six to nothing, with Nella Torneau, slant, violet eyes all for Ben Allison, abstaining.

In the darkness, the men ran swiftly for their saddled night horses. The wagon teams were run in, backed and cursed hurriedly into the trace chains. Not a man argued Ben’s chilly prediction that daylight would bring Alvah Jenkins and his two hundred Kansas Jayhawkers down onto them and their cattle. The idea right now was to put as many miles between their half starved herd and the Old Sedalia Trail as could be brought off before first light.

There was one direction those miles could be made in, and only one. Ben Allison had called it for them, as short and hard as he had called Carter Jennison.

West—and due west.

Straight as a Texas crowbait pony could fly, fast and far as a scared San Saba steer could run.

The guerrillas did not follow. The notorious Jenkins may have had several reasons, any or all of them adding up to business acumen: his profession was headtaxing Texas cattle, not getting his tangible assets killed off by unreconstructed Southerners.

As far east as Ben could see the following, sunbright morning, not a dust cloud disturbed the fair Kansas skies.

And the good luck held.

Once safely away, Stark resumed unquestioned command of his herd. He held it for five days, at which time he proposed a continuing direct route for Denver, then north along the Rockies, up and across Wyoming. Once more, Ben bowed his sun-burned neck. This time Stark reasoned and flattered to no avail. His tall trailboss would not budge. And for reasons he had picked up en route from the guerrilla clash.

The scattered settlers they encountered driving west along the state line were unanimous in the warning: the northern Sioux were out, raiding as far south as the Smoky Hill stage road, and had succeeded in persuading their southern cousins, the Arkansas Valley Cheyennes, to join them in their unholy war. Cause of the outbreak was a chain of new forts the army was building north of Fort Laramie, straight across the Sioux Treaty Lands.

Though Ben had a Texan’s normal unhealthy contempt
for the average Indian, he had had a slight taste of these northern redbirds at Timpas Creek. He felt he could comfortably do without a second helping.

Countering Stark’s suggestion, he insisted they drive, roundabout, back to Fort, Leavenworth, Kansas, start all over again from there. While it meant taking the cattle six hundred miles to gain two hundred north, he got Stark to agree. They were on wonderful grass now, and the herd was picking up tallow fast. The time lost in going back to Leavenworth would be gained back in hard pounds of good beef made on the way. Leavenworth was the main army post west of the Missouri. Stark had freighted from there five years, knew every officer above second lieutenant in the state of Kansas. They could get help and outfitting there that would not be possible on the Denver route. They could move the herd as far as Laramie under army protection, getting at least that far without worrying about the Sioux.

These were tall arguments. Stark had no glib answers for them.

Two hundred miles west along the Kansas line, past the last settlement marked on the Montanan’s army maps, they swung the herd north. Another two hundred miles and they turned the cattle east again, retracing the original two hundred miles to arrive at Leavenworth six weeks after leaving the Sedalia Trail. There had not been a stampede, nor a single high stream to swim. The cattle were putting on weight, getting beautifully broken to the trail. The morale of the entire crew was high, the friction between Clint and Stark had worn away to a minimum.

But irreplaceable time had been lost.

They had been on the trail one hundred and forty
days since leaving Virginia City. It was late May and fifteen hundred long, hot miles still faced them up the scorched valley of the Platte, along the old Oregon Trail and across the divide into Idaho Territory, then back over the mountains again to Montana and the Gallatin Valley.

Stark sensed the need for pushing ahead as certainly as did Ben.

In two weeks at Leavenworth, he worked the crew around the clock, buying and breaking new teams for the wagons, acquiring additional supply wagons and loading them to their topbraces, culling the herd for the long pull ahead, mending every piece of worn gear, shoeing each last head of work-stock in both the saddle and draft strings.

Ben listened and watched and thought. And on the last day went to see Nathan Stark.

He found him supervising the loading of the last wagon. This was the “camp rig,” a spanking new, lightweight Conestoga which would carry all the “personals” of the herd owners, and travel first in the long wagonline.

Swinging off the black, he nodded to Nella, who was watching the loading from the back of the beautiful paint pony Stark had bought for her from a wandering band of Pawnees. He thought the smile she flashed him was a little quick, but he had other things on his mind. He gestured to Stark, motioning him away from the wagon. When the big man came over, he put it to him.

“Leave a fair-size hole in that load, and leave me have a draft for a thousand dollars.”

Stark laughed. He owed this long, tall cowboy plenty. But didn’t mean to pay him off quite like that. “Ben,” he smiled, putting his hand to the broad
shoulder, “I sometimes suspect that behind that cigar-store Indian scowl of yours, you’ve got the best sense of humor of any of us.”

“Could be. Right now I ain’t exercisin’ it.”

Stark sobered. “All right, what’s on your mind?”

“Life insurance. Got a hankerin’ to buy some.”

“You’re not serious, man!”

“Somewhat. Gimme the draft.”

“Who to?”

“Robinson and Petty.”

“The hardware firm at the post?”

“Know any other Robinson and Petty?”

“What are you buying, Ben? What is it you want?”

“Rifles.”

“Oh, good Lord, man, we’ve got more than we’ll ever need, now.”

“Not like these, you ain’t. Not you nor anybody else. There’s none been seen like these out west. Neither by whites,
nor
Injuns.”

At the slight emphasis, Stark’s eyes narrowed.

“Go ahead, Ben. Make sense and the money’s yours, you know that.”

“We ain’t talkin’ about what
I
know. It’s what
you don’t.”

Stark shrugged. “As you’ve taught me to say in the words of your heathen Comanche ancestors,” he smiled quickly,
“my ears are uncovered.”

Briefly, Ben told him about the new guns.

They were breech loading, single shot Remingtons, built to a new patent developed by Philo Remington himself. The breech was opened by a rotating block system, called the “rolling block,” which brought the block back and down to make reloading far faster than even the latest Civil War Spencers. And they used a new brass, integral cartridge, which was a
vast improvement on the Spencer load. Enough of these trim new pieces in hands that knew how to hold on a galloping north plain’s paint, ought to be just the medicine for dosing ambitious hostiles along the way.

“They cost twenty-eight dollars each,” concluded Ben. “Robinson and Petty has got thirty of ’em, and I want all thirty. That and two thousand rounds of that new brass ammunition. It tots to jest one thousand dollars, even.”

Stark looked at him. He had not known Ben had even been to the post since their arrival. Much less taken time to cover it thoroughly enough to dig up the new Remington rifles and all the information about them which he clearly possessed. This thin, pale-eyed Texas boy, with all his slow, soft talk and dumb, easy way of going about things, was something disturbingly more than the simple cowboy he let on to be. A man would have to refigure him, and watch him. And he should have done so, and been doing so, long before now.

To Ben, he only smiled again, stepped to the tailgate of the camprig, made out a blank draft to Robinson and Petty. When he gave it to Ben, he was no longer smiling, and his blue eyes were in their old, expressionless set.

“You know, Ben,” was all he said, “you’re not quite the man I thought you were…"

They did not follow the Oregon Trail as a matter of so many wagon ruts. Ben knew better than that. He had never been out the Old Road but a man had a fair idea what emigrant draft stock could do to a piece of grass from the time him and Clint had worked along the Denver route. And that was a pretty
new trail. Given the twenty years since ’48 and 49 that the goldrushers and landgrubbers had been using the Platte Valley to head out for Sutter’s Mill or Whitman’s Meadows, you didn’t have to guess much. There wouldn’t be a blade of decent graze nor a stick of matchwood kindling left within ten miles of the river, north or south.

He held the herd on a rough course between twenty and thirty miles south of the stream, found good grass and wood and water the whole way. Laramie was reached without incident. One or two bands of apparent hostiles were seen, far off and not hanging around long, and that was all. Nothing but hard work marred the drive, nothing but drudgery distinguished it.

Another eight hundred miles and ninety days were gone, that was about all you could say, with the latter figure being the only fault in the fair sky of their luck so far.

The day they struck the Laramie River, swinging the lead steers north along its east bank for the last eight miles up to the fort, was the 17th of September. When they bedded the herd three miles past the fort, at sunset, a man could know just one thing for certain: October, with its warning frosts bearding the sunrise grass and its six o’clock scum ice rimming the water barrels, was staring them in the face; and they were still seven hundred miles from Montana.

Yet a halt and rest were imperative. The trail cattle and workstock, alike, would need at least two weeks of open graze and clean Platte water to fit them for the last high drive over South Pass and the distantly frowning Rockies of western Wyoming.

That night, Ben rode with Nathan Stark to the fort, the latter to renew old acquaintances among the
military staff, the former to mix with the post bullwhackers and enlisted scouts—and keep both ears open.

The question both herd owner and trailboss proposed to put was a hard one, dictated by the fact they were driving thirty days late, with summer gone and fall wearing frostily away: what were the chances of short-cutting the herd up the Bozeman Road, square across the Sioux’s Powder River Treaty Lands? This, of course, was the route originally envisioned by Stark, but abandoned by him on advice of officer friends at Leavenworth in favor of the longer, safer route of South Pass and the Oregon Trail.

When, nearing midnight, he and his taciturn trailboss rode back toward the herd camp, they had both heard different expressions of the same bad news.

For Stark’s part of the report, they had the unofficial good wishes of the U.S. Army, as indeed he had guaranteed the Texas brothers the night above Alder Gulch. But beyond the
sub rosa
extension of the wish, he got only a field-grade frown and the professional opinion that his chances of getting through were highly questionable.

Ben, receiving it from a less formal source, had been given a more colorful diagnosis of the same disease.

“You got,” was the synthesis of opinion from the government teamsters and cavalry scouts, “about as much chanct of takin’ three thousand steers and thirty men past the Powder as a mule has of brayin’ without raisin’ his tail.” In delivering this, his version, to the scowling Stark on the ride back to the herd, Ben tailed off with an eloquently shrugged, “I seen many a mule bray in my time, mister.”

Stark nodded, only adding glumly. “So have I, Ben.”

For once, unequivocally, there was unanimity of Texas and Montana opinion. North or south, panhandle, Gallatin Valley, or waypoints in between, the much cursed, hybrid jackass son of Old Missouri always exercised his brasslined lungs with his shavingbrush tail aimed in one bullheaded direction—skyhigh.

“Well, Ben,” said Stark quietly, “what do you say? Colonel Lamine, in command here, tells me Lieutenant Colonel Carrington is in charge up on the Powder. I know Carrington well. But Lamine says the Bozeman is shut down, airtight, north of the Powder. He said he himself won’t stop me from using the Bozeman as far as Fort Reno, but that beyond that, Carrington’s command takes over.”

He paused and Ben said, “So—?”

“Lamine showed me Carrington’s orders, right from old General Hancock and the Department of the Missouri Headquarters: positively no civilian traffic across the treaty lands. Ben, I said I knew Carrington—”

“Well?”

“There’ll be no traffic.”

“Thet ringtailed, eh?”

“A martinet, Ben. Garrison officer. Knows nothing about Indians or fighting Indians. Lives by the good book and for him that’s not the Bible. It’s
Field Service Regulations, Opertions. Serial FM 305-58.”

“You’re real sure about that serial number, now?” grinned Ben.

“And the colonel that goes with it,” replied Stark, not smiling. “Ben, I think we’re licked. Maybe for good, north or south, but for the Bozeman, out-and-out.”

“Uh-huh, could be. Where’s this Carrington at right now? How fur north?”

“He’s building a fort just beyond the Powder. Fort Kearney, I think Lamine said. It’s about seventy miles north of Fort Reno, which is right around one hundred and seventy from Laramie. Call it two hundred and forty, all told.”

“Interestin’,” was the total of Ben’s noncimmittal grunt. Then, thoughtfully. “This fort at Kearney about done, you reckon?”

“About. But he’s got Fort C. F. Smith and two more to build yet north of Kearney, to garrison the Bozeman, Lamine tells me, right through to Virginia City. But until they’re all done, nobody but army uses the road.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I reckon we cain’t wait on him and his forts, likely.”

“Nor on the weather,” said Stark uneasily. “Ben, we’re getting into October.”

The big Texan ignored him. “Now, accordin’ to them army maps of yourn, the Bozeman is near three hundred mile shorter than South Pass, and considerable lower. That right?”

“Between two hundred and three hundred miles, yes. Lower by up to four thousand feet in places.”

“And you still aim to take the long way round? And the high? Over South Pass, inter Idaho Territory and back acrost?”

“What else
can
we do, man!”

Ben looked at him, put it into one simple word.

“Fight,”
he said quietly.

Stark missed the softness of the way he said it. His thoughts were his own, and were turning on a phrase that had no place in Nathan Stark’s history—
financial failure. It was as though to lose money were an unclean, indecent thing. As Clint had sourly observed, after watching him haggle for the cattle with the Fort Worth ranchers: “He ain’t got no more morals than a stray dog. I reckon he’d ruther see his sister raped than spend a dollar as wasn’t guaranteed to git him back ten.”