into some of the lightning bolts. At times there seemed to be a
continuous sheet of fire along the grass tops towards the west. This
later was broken by balls of fire which rolled along the ground,
exploding like bombshells. There seemed nothing in the air except light;
sparks and whirls and wheels of light, like so many pin wheels. A
strange, alarming, oppressive feel, as though of a settling fog, came
upon them all. If a man reached a hand to his hat brim the electricity
literally dripped from it.

Rarely, even on the high prairies, did the tremendous electrical
disturbances ever reach such violence; not one of these hardened range
men had ever seen the like of this. But to the wonder of all the cattle
did not at once make any break. They seemed stupefied themselves. They
now all were on their feet, but in the continuous succession of blinding
flashes on every side, the crash of thunder coming from all quarters,
they could form no course for running and stood rooted in sheer terror.
Nor was there a man who did not think his own end had come.

The climax came in a straight bolt from above, which struck and exploded
directly in the middle of the herd. The detonation was as though a giant
shrapnel shell had dropped. Twenty cattle were killed outright. Two
horses dropped. A rider was smitten dead, another came out of the shock
dazed and for some hours stone deaf. The old Mexican, Sanchez, had a
fashion of wearing a pair of ancient spectacles. They were burned from
his ears, only the bow between the rims remaining, and that burned deep
into his nose. Len Hersey boasted a fancy tie with a stickpin, once
bought in better days. The gold was melted from it, the stone dropped in
the grass. The nap of his sombrero was singed smooth. A score of
unbelievable phenomena, a series of miraculous escapes came all at once.

This last exploding bolt, so disastrous in its effect, was more than any
herd could stand. The cattle started like a covey of quail. The universe
seemed in dissolution. There was nothing for the men to do but follow as
best they could. It was as safe in one place as in another, and of
shelter there was none. Never was a wilder ride than that night; for
now, with a rush and steady roar, came the wind and the slanting rain.
The encampment at the bed ground was afloat, deserted. Old Milly put out
her head.

“Miss Taisie! Miss Taisie!” she called. She got no answer. “My Lord! she
done killed!” she called out to Anita.

Then arose her lamentations continuously as she lay in her drenched
blankets. They two were all that remained. Even Buck was gone.

The run in a general way had headed north. A couple of miles ahead,
between them and the Canadian River, lay a little boggy creek lined with
thickets. Suddenly enlarged by the rain, it overflowed and made very
soft footing for fifty or a hundred yards. Into this boggy trap the
animals plunged in their madness. Within a few moments a third of the
herd was bogged down. An inexplicable confusion took place among the
others. No man could do anything here. The riders only followed such
strings of cattle as they could hear farther down the stream. They all
knew that when daylight came they would have their work to do in
salvaging from the quagmire. Most of them tried to find their way back
to camp, and those who made it sat huddled, drenched, as the weird
flame-edged clouds passed on. Until dawn, they never knew there was a
dead man lying in the grass on the bed ground three hundred yards from
the camp, among the dead cattle and horses. Well, it was another grave;
and this made the first duty of the day. They put up the third little
headboard. So passed Al Pendleton. Though crippled by his gunshot wound,
he had insisted on taking saddle.

Now the work of snaking out bogged cattle—the most unwelcome of all
range work—must go forward along the muddy stream, hour after hour, as
soon as the depressing dawn gave light for the beginning. The waters
falling, some of the cattle struggled ashore as soon as they could see.
Others needed but little help, a few had to be abandoned. In this work
of roping and dragging, it took two men to handle a steer. As soon as
one of the wild creatures got his feet he was certain to charge his
rescuer. Hard work, dirty work, dangerous work; slow, utterly
disheartening. But it was here to be done. Once more, slowly, a battered
and begrimed cohort of broad horns began to assemble, watched by tired,
muddy, cursing men.

“Sinker,” called Nabours to the boy as he came by coiling his muddy rope
in the gray cold dawn, “you go on and find Dalhart, and ride back to
camp. I don’t know where the rest of the horses went. Drive in what cows
you find. It ain’t so far. Tell the cook we’ll be in for a little
coffee, some of us, right soon.”

These two, so commanded, came into camp only to learn the news from
Milly. The bed of Taisie Lockhart was empty. Her horse was gone.

“I’ll bet I know!” said Cinquo. “I’ll bet she follered the remuda in the
dark!”

He was off, following the plain trail of the running horses, Dalhart at
his side. They rode hard for a mile. The horses had struck timber,
slowed up and scattered.

“I see her!” called out the boy at last. “That’s her zebry horse
anyway.”

The white-banded son of Blancocito was not to be mistaken. But the
saddle was empty! At the foot of a near-by tree lay the object which
they sought.

She was alive, was sitting up, propped against a tree trunk; indeed, was
on the point of mounting. So much they saw with sudden joy as they flung
down and ran to her.

The man pushed the boy away roughly. Kneeling, Dalhart caught the girl
in his arms, uttering impetuous words. What he saw filled Cinquo with
shame and horror. This man had touched the divinity of Del Sol! He was
holding her in his arms! He was going to kiss her! Sacrilege!

Cinquo saw flame points. He sprang forward, his long revolver in his
hand.

“Say, you! You let go of her, mister! Stop now, or I’ll stop you for
shore!”

The boy was blubbering in his excitement, but as Dalhart turned he saw
that the aim of the weapon was true. Taisie beat at him with her hands,
weakly, pushing him away.

“I’ll wring your neck!” began Dalhart, starting toward the boy. Only the
girl’s voice saved them one or both.

“No! No!” she called. “He means well! Cinquo, come here!”

Dalhart turned to her almost savagely.

“You promised me!” he said. “You gave me your word down there! Is this
how you keep your promise?”

But between the two of them, the girl with her tears and the boy with
his revolver, Cal Dalhart got on very ill with his wooing.

“I can wait,” said he slowly at last.

In his sobbing excitement the boy was dangerous as a rattlesnake, and
Dalhart was wise enough to know it. Only one voice could calm him.
Taisie spoke with decision.

“Throw down your gun, Cinquo! Drop it, I tell you!”

Cinquo obeyed. His tears came freely now. He trembled.

“Trouble with me is, ma’am,” said he, “I got chills and fever. To-day I
got ’em both. I been up all night. I don’t give a damn for that man, but
this here is awful hard for you.”

“Cinquo,” said Taisie, putting her hand on his grimy shirt sleeve as she
drew him beside her, “you are as good a man as I’ve got. Listen now! I’m
not hurt. I just ran into a tree in the dark and got knocked out of the
saddle. For a long time I didn’t know anything—my head’s bruised; but I
was going to get up and ride right soon. Now go and find the horses;
they’re not far. I saw the bell mare just below.”

The boy, shivering in his saddle, racked by the native ague, went off
dully about his duties. He cast an eye over his shoulder, saw Dalhart
riding close to the side of the mistress of Del Sol.

“The trouble with you is,” broke out Dalhart moodily, “you don’t know
how a man can love you—you don’t know how I love you!”

He reached out a hand to touch the bridle of her saddle horse, which
flung its head impatiently.

“I think I do,” said Taisie slowly. “You love me like a man. They’re all
alike.”

“I believe you do love that damned Gonzales renegade. He’s gone again,
and he may come back, or he may not. What you need is a man to take care
of you; some one better than that cold-blooded killer that ain’t got a
heart for either man or woman!”

“Stop! I tell you I want to hear no more of this!” The girl’s voice had
in it a quiet fury. “At least I never have heard that man say a word
against you or any one else. If he’s a killer he’d face his man, I’m
sure of that, and not curse him behind his back.”

“He’d better not say anything about me,” Dalhart blustered.

But Taisie Lockhart’s contemptuous laugh at that was the cruelest thing
he had ever heard in all his life. She spurred on and left him.

Dribbles of the herd continued to come in. The draggled encampment was
slow to take on even a little order. The men had begun to lose
confidence, to dread their luck. And now was time for a repetition of
the scene on the south bank of the Red—another rider must find burial
in his blankets. Never had the spirits of the men been so low, the hope
of success so faint, the savage irritability of all so unmistakable.

It took a day and a half to finish the unhappy duties of the last camp
below the Canadian and drive forward the remade herd. It was necessary
to follow down the boggy stream to find a sound crossing. Beyond, within
a mile or so, lay the main Canadian. Here at least they met no trouble.
The spongelike sands had swallowed up the torrents until only an
occasional thread of lazily trickling water marked the wide expanse from
bank to bank. The cattle, warm and thirsty, seemed disposed to break
ranks and explore these little trickles of water, so that the men had
enough to do. Dalhart rode moodily, indifferently, on his point.

“Damn it, man!” called Del Williams to him, approaching him after one
more chase after a wisp of stragglers. “I’d think you could ’tend to
your own end part ways somehow!”

It was the first time he had spoken to Dalhart in days. Their enmity was
smoldering.

“I don’t need any help from anybody about handling cows,” retorted the
other; “least of all from you.”

Del Williams rode straight up to him at what seemed a challenge.

“I don’t see you for no cowman, myself,” said he.

They sat face to face midway of the dry river bed.

“I want to know what you mean,” said Dalhart. “I’ve been as good a hand
on this trail as you have.”

“I don’t think so. Nothing but luck kept you from drownding that girl
crossing the Red. More than that, it was you that let logs come through
the cattle when they was swimming the day before. That started the mill.
Four hundred cows lost and two men drownded. You was upriver side of the
herd.”

This was mortal affront, as Del Williams was willing that it should be.
At the time both men were unarmed.

“You know I won’t stand that,” said Dalhart.

“You heard it plain,” rejoined Williams quietly. “Make your play any
time you like.”

“All right, I will make it! We both said we’d hold off till we struck
Abilene. We’ll not both ride south together,” said Dalhart savagely.

“I hope not,” smiled Del Williams. “I have got plenty of grief riding in
sight of you going north.”

Neither man liked to be the first to back his horse. Their actions
caught the sight of Nabours, who started back.

“Look here!” he began. “What are you two doing here?”

“Well,” began Dalhart, “he told me I wasn’t doing my work.”

“Then he told you plumb right. Look at you now, both of you. You two
give me your word, both of you, that you’d quit this quarreling till you
got to Aberlene. Now quit it or else get out. If a little more happens I
am going to get on the prod my own self.”

They separated. Del Williams later approached Nabours, both moody, sore.

“Jim,” said he, “look at the luck! Could anything more happen to us? I
tell you, there’s a Jonah somewheres on this herd.”

“There shore is!” rejoined the harried foreman. “There shore is! And
it’s got red hair.”

                             CHAPTER XXXII
                             LAZYING ALONG

UPON even the most seasoned outdoor men the weather has undeniable
influence. Came now a bright sun and gentle winds. The prairie lay like
a silver sea. The surliness of the men vanished, they were children
again. Once more the force of custom, of duty, made itself felt.

One more camp brought them to the North Fork of the Canadian, a more
serious proposition than had been the main river of that name. The
channel was narrower and deeper, and the banks, especially upon the
south side, much more steep. There was only a narrow channel of swimming
water, but not a man in the outfit would have consented to see the
mistress of Del Sol undertake to swim her own horse across even the
narrowest channel. The entire herd was held up for half a day while the
men make a rude raft sufficient to cross the carts and their occupants.
They dug down the bank on the farther shore so that better egress might
be offered for the cattle.

“By the time a cow has swum a river,” said Jim Nabours to expostulating
men, who did not like shovel work, since that, at least, could not be
done on horseback, “he’s plumb tired, like enough. Make him climb a
steep bank and he may fall back in. The worst place for them to get
crowded is on the far side of a river. Now you fellows go on and dig a
nice path, or else maybe we won’t have no cows a-tall before long. I’m
scared to make a tally, way it is.”

So they passed yet another unknown river and swung on out, their own
trail makers.

“I wish to God I knowed where we was,” grumbled the trail boss to Len
Hersey, carefree cowhand, to whom he happened to be talking. “Unless’n
that wagon tongue has got warped we’re still heading north. I done set
her on the North Star last night my own self. But a trail scout had orto
have a watch and a compass, and there ain’t nary one of either in this
whole outfit.”

Hersey took a chew of tobacco.

“Heap o’ things in life ain’t needful,” said he; “just only folks gets
used to them, that’s all. That lead steer Alamo’s all right if nobody
don’t move the North Star. He’s got his eye sot on that. I seen him
standing up the other night about one o’clock, looking at that star with
one eye. He done wink at me with the other one. He shore knows where
we’re at, Jim. You’d oughtn’t to worry. This suits me, although I will
say that this here shirt I got now might be a little better around the
elbows. I hate to go to meeting in it.”

“When I was a boy,” said Nabours reminiscently, “the onliest kind of
church we had was camp meeting. I ain’t saw one of them for quite a
while.

“Them big meetings used to bring in everybody from all over. The
preacher’d throw the camp in some nice grove, and folks would build a
shed with a brush roof and make some seats out of slabs. That was the
church. I’ve saw a bearskin used for a pulpit cover. If there was extra
ministers on hand, sometimes they’d have rawhide-bottom chairs made for
them. The mourner’s bench, it always had a good rawhide bottom too.
There used to be plenty straw scattered around between the benches for
the sake of them that got conviction right strong and begun to throw
fits. What with horses and dogs and babies, there was quite a settlement
to a good camp meeting, while it lasted. The men didn’t always have hats
and the women couldn’t always afford calico, but I can’t see but what we
got along all right.

“Them days a feller had to load a rifle at the front end exclusive—no
Henry rifles then. It was perlite for to lean your shooting iron against
a tree and hang your powder horn on it before you went in to get
religion. My pap always taken a drink of corn licker afore he set in;
but he always put down a gourdful of cold water on top of it, so it
didn’t hurt him none, he told me.

“I recollect when we built the first log school in the valley. It was
about ten foot square. But come to style, the courthouse up to Sherman,
twenty years ago, it made a ree-cord. I was there when that house was
built. It was twenty foot square. That and a few furrows of plowed
ground was all there was to the county seat. We dedicated her with a
barbecue; a barbecue was the only thing Texas could afford then. Huh!
It’s the only thing she can afford now. We all sot under a brush shed
and everybody felt right good. There was a barrel of whisky and a tin
cup and a nigger with a fiddle. That’s the way to start a county seat
right.

“There wasn’t a foot of railroad anywheres in them days. Yet in Texas
we’ve got over a hunderd miles of railroad built already. The Lord knows
what’ll happen next.

“You talking about shirts, Len! Enduring of the war, three or four years
ago, all my folks had to make their own shirts. The women folks had to
weave and spin the woolsey. First thing I can remember was helping to
braid hide and horse-hair ropes. Everybody tanned their own leather with
oak bark. We made our own saddle trees out of forks and rawhide, and we
covered them with our own leather—_lastro_, _rosaderos_, taps and all.
We didn’t have no wells; we drunk out’n the creeks. Some neighbor had to
make all the shoes we got. We ground our corn meal in a hand mill and we
made our own wagons and ox yokes. If we got a loom or spinning wheel we
had to make that too. Folks used to make hats out of palmetto; they
braided them theirselves. What we got done we had to do; there wasn’t no
one to hire nor nothing to pay them with.

“Shirt? Why a shirt, now, Len—a shirt in the old times used to last a
feller for years. Has yores?”

“It shore has,” replied Len Hersey. “She’s been a plumb good one, too,
and I’m sorry to see her go. My mammy made her for me, I don’t know how
long back, but quite some time. Trouble about shirts is, anyways
boughten ones, it takes so much for spurs and boots and saddles a feller
ain’t got much left to buy a shirt. I wouldn’t be no ways contented with
one of them homemade saddles of yourn no more. It don’t leave much for
shirts atter you got a cow outfit paid fer.

“But as I was sayin’, I’m happy just to drift along over this here
country. Ain’t she fine? This morning, along when the sun was shinin’ so
perty, you’d orter seen old Sanchez’ fighting rooster! He natural flewed
up on the cart and crowed to a fare ye well, he felt that good!”

“He’d ’a’ been a lot better off if he’d ’a’ sot on top the cart every
night,” commented Nabours. “Anita, old Sanchez’ woman, she starts out
with three roosters and eight hens, allowing, I reckon, to start a hen
ranch somewhere up north in case we got busted and couldn’t get home.
She can’t no ways start one now. The skunks and wildcats and coyotes has
got ’em all excepting old Mister Gallina, and he shy part of one wing.

“Ain’t that rooster like a fool Texan? He’s lonesome and broke, and
don’t know where he’s at, and part of his comb is tore, and he can’t fly
much; but, ‘Praise God,’ says he, ‘I got both my spurs!’”

“Shore he does,” nodded Len Hersey. “All the whole state o’ Texas ever
has owned has been a pair o’ spurs.

“Funny how time changes,” he went on, lolling on his saddle horn as he
spoke. “When my pap moved into Ulvade County cows wasn’t worth nothing.
The only thing to do was to kill them for their hides, and if you got
four bits for a hide that was big money. Lately people got a dollar
apiece fer hides. I wouldn’t be surprised ef we got two dollars a hide
in Aberlene. We’ll like enough have to sell ’em fer the hides. Ain’t no
money in cows.

“I was on a herd oncet that driv to Shreveport time of the war. We got
into cockleburs so heavy the cows’ tails got like clubs. They’d hung up
by the tails in the piney woods over in Louisiana. You could hear ’em
bawl bloody murder. I don’t know how many we left hanging in the piney
woods. There wasn’t no money in that drive and the cows got thin as
rails. We couldn’t even skin ’em.”

“Huh!” commented the older man. “The longer you live the nearer you’ll
come to learning how many things can happen to folks that trails cows,
son. Give us two or three more acts of God on this drive, and we’ll be
lucky ef we hit Aberlene with fifty head of cows to skin. We-all may
have to sell our saddles to get home.”

“Then I wouldn’t get no new shirt?”

“I ain’t promising you none.”

“Well,” said Len Hersey philosophically, reaching in a pocket for loose
tobacco, “so long’s a man has got his spurs he don’t need a thousand
shirts nohow. I don’t see nothing to worry about.”

                             CHAPTER XXXIII
                               THIRTY-SIX

ONE delay after another, one disaster with another, the Del Sol
adventurers now were far into their second month on the trail. The
summer was approaching, although they had as yet made scarce more than
three-fourths of their entire distance to the railroad. Day after day
they advanced over a wholly unsettled country that lay for nearly its
entire length between the more settled civilized tribes on the east and
the buffalo range toward the west. Clinging in their wavering line
fairly close to the ninety-eighth meridian, without a guide, watch,
calendar or compass, they now had reached a region beautiful as a
wilderness, but soon to be the seat of a later and undreamed
civilization.

They had been in wilderness practically all the way. At that time Austin
was little more than a straggling country town. The herd cast dust into
the one street of Fort Worth, then boasting not over one hundred
inhabitants; and that was the last of the upper Texas towns. But what a
line of cities was to follow their path on ninety-eight!

In the Indian Nations they had crossed the Washita, where now stands the
thriving town of Chickasha, Oklahoma. El Reno, of Oklahoma, was
grassland then, near the ford of the North Fork of the Canadian.
Kingfisher was not dreamed of on the trail from the North Fork to the
Cimarron; and beyond that the city of Enid was to wait until long after
cattle days were gone and the cattle trail had moved itself much farther
to the west. Above them they aimed for Caldwell, just across the Kansas
line then but a ragged frontier town. Thence the wagon tongue pointed
toward Wichita, when Wichita was hardly more than a furrow in the
ground, “a mile long and an inch wide.” A railroad was still unforeseen
in any of these vicinities in 1867; but railroads soon were to follow,
almost in the footsteps of the earliest herd to Abilene. So much, to
make understandable the exultation of these men as they discovered for
themselves a country, or a succession of countries, absolutely virgin so
far as the white man was concerned; a pastoral empire that never has had
a parallel.

Whether by accident or design, the location of their northbound path was
a lucky or a shrewd one. Scarcely anywhere else would there have been so
few Indians to disturb them, nor could their experience easily be
repeated. The depredations of the tribesmen, their begging of the
drovers, their demands of tribute of all the northbound herds were still
in the future, since as yet the Indians had not learned of the northern
passing of the white men which was to come in a great wave in the
ensuing years; and since not many tribes knew this herd was passing. The
Del Sol men were pioneers.

How rich, how wildly alluring, this unsullied world which now was all
their own to enjoy! Their wild cattle now advanced quite usually in
sight of an almost continuous spectacle of wild buffalo, wild horses,
wild deer. At times the herd had to be held while a body of buffalo was
parted by rifle fire to let them through. There seemed no end to the
animal life of the region into which they came. It was all so different
from Texas now that they felt themselves strangers in a foreign land.

Their next river was the Cimarron, one more stream heading down from the
high, dry buffalo plains of the Panhandle to the sandy reaches and the
flat loam lands to the eastward. Making down out of the strip of scrubby
timber which they encountered below their crossing, the herdsmen made
short work of the Cimarron, which was at so low a stage that the carts
were driven through and the cattle did not have to swim at all.

Their start had been approximately at the thirtieth degree of latitude.
They had now reached, just above the Cimarron crossing, the parallel of
thirty-six, which later represented, as well as any arbitrary
delineation, the vague dividing line between the southern and the
northern ranges.

Above them now by one degree of latitude lay the south line of Kansas;
between, the narrow unsettled and unorganized east-and-west tract so
long known as the Cherokee Strip or the Cherokee Outlet. The existence
of this strip of land was proof that the greatest range of the buffalo
lay yet farther to the west, in the short-grass land; for forty years
before this time the Cherokees had fought the Osages to secure an outlet
over their land to the buffalo range beyond. But of all these things
also the Del Sol men were ignorant or careless. They did not know where
they were.

Roll along, little dogies, roll along! You broke one of the greatest
paths in all the world! You carried the South into the North! It was you
who ended the war!

“Roll along, little dogies, roll along!”

The lazy song of half-somnolent riders, ragged, lean, brown, rose on the
afternoon air of one more sunny day after sunny day. By this time the
herd had but one more considerable stream, the Salt Fork of the
Arkansas, between it and the main stream of the Arkansas. The men now
all were studying geography as best they might, for gradually they all
had concluded that Texas was far behind them, and that they were in a
world they knew not.

“She’s shore a perty country, Miss Taisie,” said Jim Nabours when they
paused for their noonday rest, the first stop north of the Cimarron. “It
looks to me like folks could almost live here, some day, though I don’t
see no cows nowheres.”

He could not dream that within a few short years there would be cattle
under fence in all that country; that long before that time abundant
strays would run wild as wild horses; that even then stretched
illimitedly the great upper range, wholly undiscovered, soon to be
clamoring for cows, to carry on a business which was then an unsuspected
thing.

“Come along here, Miss Taisie,” he continued, inviting her to take a
seat beside him on the grass and spreading down a crumpled sheet of
brown paper. It held what cannot be bought to-day for any money—a more
or less precise map of the first old cow trail from Texas north,
although only his rude amateur hand had drawn it. The clumsy finger of
the trail boss pointed out to his employer their locality as near as he
himself could guess it.

“Dan McMasters and me talked this over afore he quit us,” he explained.
“I’ve drawed it the best I could, and it’s sort of helpful too. Near as
I can figure it, we’re just about to cross thirty-six north. My pap told
me that thirty-six-thirty was where slavery ended and the damn Yankees
begun.”

“Yes; the Missouri Compromise,” nodded Taisie.

“Anyways my pap told me that thirty-six, along in there, was about where
cotton wouldn’t grow so well nohow, and where the ticks probably would
fall offen the cows in the wintertime. The line must come right about
here.”

“What line?” demanded Len Hersey, who was listening in and who now bent
over the rude map curiously. “I kep’ a clost look all the time we’ve
been on the trail, an’ so fur from seein’ any thirty-six lines atween
here and where we all started, I ain’t seen nary line a-tall.”

“They ain’t marked on the ground, man,” replied his leader gently; “it’s
only on the paper. But what can I expect of a boy raised on squirrel and
corn pone, like you was? Yes, sir; thirty-six is just in and around
right here.”

He made on this soiled paper a little cross, using a gnawed stub of a
pencil which in its time had tallied perhaps a hundred thousand cows.

“There ain’t no moss on the trees no more,” mused Len. “The grass ain’t
the same here. My law! did you ever see so many greenhead flies in your
borned days as we’ve had all the way from the Red River north? And as
for mosquitoes, Miss Lockhart,” he added, “a feller don’t darst get his
arms out of his blankets at night.”

He looked ruefully at his elbows, entirely visible through the sleeves
of his only shirt.

“Like enough a man could make some corn up here,” mused Jim Nabours,
sagely, looking around him over the rolling prairie. “He couldn’t raise
no cows; it’d be too cold. No, nor of course he couldn’t raise no
cotton. Well it’s a right purty country; but can’t never be settled,
even if the Osages was gone.”

“I wonder how big a place is Aberlene, anyhow,” queried the ragged
cowhand. “Me, I never seen a railroad. Down at Fort Worth several men
been saying there’d be a railroad there some time. That’s all
foolishness.”

“Shore it is,” said Nabours. “Well, we got no railroad here neither.
Let’s move along.”

They were now, although they were not aware of it, to pass up the course
of Turkey Creek towards the Salt Fork for two days’ march above the
Cimarron. When they came to the heads of that stream and of Mulberry
Creek, which ran thence southeast—also a stream unknown to any map at
that time—they reached a pleasant rolling plain where it seemed as
though the entire country was alive with moving game. It was a spectacle
which awakened even their blasé souls, used to wild game all their
lives.

Northward appeared a vast herd of buffalo, usually a most welcome sight
to the plains traveler, but one always dreaded by the drover, who
sometimes had to start a road through them at cost of much ammunition.
Antelope, wild horses, all the great game of the unfrequented plains
were visible also. But all this game was on the move and not feeding
peacefully, as naturally it should be. Why was this?

Nabours came back as soon as he sensed the nature of what lay ahead.

“Throw ’em off, boys!” he called hurriedly. “Hold ’em in here and don’t
go a foot further, or we’ll lose every hoof we’ve got. That country’s
full of buffalo and everything else, and something has set them going.”

Leaving his best men to keep the cattle under control, he took with him
two or three men and rode rapidly on ahead. They pulled up at a little
eminence.

“Great Snakes!” said one of the men. “Just look there!”

The entire country was dotted with scattered black masses of moving
buffalo. The numbers seemed endless, uncountable. Something had pushed
them east of the more abundant short-grass range far to the westward.

“We’ll have to break that up or we’ll never get through,” said Nabours.
“Yet I was thinking this country up here wouldn’t feed cows! Just look
at the game!”

They could see also band after band of wild horses, magnificent animals
with high heads and heavy manes and tails; creatures that never failed
to awaken keen enthusiasm among even the most experienced plainsman.
Now, also, they were in an elk country, and herds of these creatures
trotted off, following the same general drift to the east and south.
There was such an immeasurably vast blending of wild life as not any one
of these men ever expected to see again.

“Look! Look, men!” called Nabours, who was studying the sight eagerly.
“If that ain’t cows I’m a liar!”

He was entirely right. Caught in the general drift, there were two or
three score of domestic cattle, of no man might tell what origin; no
doubt outcasts or strays of some Osage Indian settlement to the east.
The sight of these especially caused the blood of the range men to leap.

“Don’t tell me this ain’t a good country!” exclaimed Nabours. “Them’s
cows!”

“They’ve got right funny horns,” said Lem Hersey critically; and
forsooth these cattle, descendants of some Eastern stock, even then
lacked the wide horns of the old Texan breed.

“I ain’t particular about their horns,” remarked Nabours. “They got hide
enough to hold the Fishhook brand, and they look like strays to me. Any
of ’em comes around here too clost I ain’t going to let his horns stand
in the way. We need some more strays.

“But ef once our herd gets in there they’ll be strays too. We’ve got to
hold ’em back, boys, and wait till this thing gets by. This is a general
movement of the range stuff, plumb out of the country, and if our cows
begin to drift with this it’ll be worse than anything we’ve run into
yet.”

“Hark!” A man threw up his hand. “What’s that? Shooting on ahead?”

They sat their horses, uncertain. The sound of rifle fire in their
experience was usually a signal of danger.

“Wait! Wait, men!” Nabours in turn raised a hand.

The sound of rifle fire was unmistakable. The heavy reports were borne
by the prairie winds across what might be a mile of open space. The
detonations were spaced almost mathematically alike.

“That’s not Injuns!” exclaimed Jim Nabours. “That’s a white man! He’s
got a stand on a bunch of buffalo: I’ll bet a horse that’s what it is.”

                             CHAPTER XXXIV
                            THE TRAIL MAKER

THE reports came steadily—ten, fifteen, twenty. It was easy for the
trail men to locate the rifleman. They advanced rapidly in his
direction. As they topped a little ridge there lay before them the last
scene of one of countless similar tragedies of the Plains then going on
all over the country a thousand by fifteen hundred miles in extent.

Within the circle of a shallow swale stood a huddled group of black
figures of buffalo still on their feet. Among them, around them, over a
space no larger than a half acre, lay motionless or struggling two score
other dark figures—the bodies of the fallen.

The drovers saw the rifle smoke, two hundred yards from the game. The
killer lay concealed back of a wisp of grass which topped a near-by
ridge. He lay flat, his heavy rifle supported by two cross sticks, his
wiping rod and another hickory wand held together by the fingers of his
left hand as a rest for the barrel. His hat was off. His hair tossed,
blending with the waving grasses. He never had shown himself at all.
Mercilessly, carefully, he placed one shot after another. At each shot a
dust spot spurted out on a dark hide. An animal staggered, made a little
run; but, shot through the lungs, soon lay down. The survivors smelled
at it, made short rushes, returned, stood confused. Each time one of the
victims headed out, it fell before the white puff of smoke which came
from the hidden death engine.

The killer had the range perfectly. He paid no attention to the result
of any shot, for he knew that it was fatal. Each heavy bullet tore
through the lungs of a buffalo. It would not go far. The ground was
black with them already. Some day the bone pickers would rejoice, for
here they would find fifty skeletons packed close together.

It was the “stand” of the professional or the expert buffalo hunter. The
skin hunters were even then pushing out into the Plains on their unholy
calling.

But the skin hunter did not belong to the Indian lands, and no Indian
hunted buffalo in this way. The Del Sol men therefore were not sure as
to the identity of this man. They rode off to investigate, not showing
themselves at first. But at length they did sharpen on the sky line. The
staggered remnant of the befuddled animals caught their scent in the air
and at last nerved themselves for a saving rush away from this slaughter
hole.

When he saw the intruders the rifleman himself drew back to safety.
After a short mutual reconnaissance he rose and held up his hand in the
sign of peace. The Del Sol men approached in like fashion.

The marksman might now be seen to be a man of anywhere from forty to
sixty years of age, wrinkled of face, crowned with stubbly hair. His
dark, thick skin showed him to be of mixed blood. His garb was that of
the white man, save that he wore no hat. He leaned on his deadly rifle
with unconcern and in silence as the trail men approached.

“How, friend!” saluted Nabours.

“How do you do?” replied the other in fair English. “Which way you go?”

“North. We’ve got a herd of cows, three thousand head, five miles south
of here.”

“Three thousand head! Ha! You go Ab’lene—Caldwell—Wich’ta?”

“Yes, if we can ever get through here. I was wondering what had drifted
the buffalo.”

“I kill ’em few for hides,” grinned the half-breed. “My man come pretty
soon for skin. My camp over, there, maybe so two mile. Where you come
from?”

“Caldwell County,” answered Nabours. “Our brand is T.L. You’re headed
south? Are you buffalo hunting?”

“No, got wagon train—Army supplies. Take ’em south from railroad across
Nations, for Caddoes, Wichitas, Wacos. I just laying out road for
wagons. Army forts got to have supplies.”

“Well, the country needs a road all right,” commented Nabours. “We
started to find what they call the Chisholm Trail. There ain’t no such a
thing.”

“No?” The oldish face wrinkled into a smile. “No find ’em trail? Too
bad! You don’t know me,” he added after a time.

“No, we don’t know nobody.”

“I’m Jesse Chisholm. My ranch is in Nations, south long way. I bring
plenty horses up from Texas. I know your people. I been all across Texas
from Palo Pinto to Double Mountain Fork, Buffalo Gap, Estacado; all the
time I make trails.”

“And you have left one behind you now?”

“Sure! She’s easy from here to Caldwell. I got fifty wagon, plenty
horse, plenty mule; make ford, sometime make bridge, sometime make raft.
I got some wagons for Colonel Griswold. He’s going to make big
reservation for Kiowas and Comanches. Fort Sill, he’ll call ’em.”

“So you’re Jesse Chisholm?” remarked Jim Nabours after a time. “I didn’t
know for sure there was no such person. Tell me, is there such a place
as Aberlene?”

“Sure! I trail up Arkansas River from east, pass Wichita. I hear Ab-lene
up north. Sure!”

“All the Injuns know Jesse Chisholm,” he continued. “Osage, Cherokee,
Choctaw, Chickasaw—I trade ’em horse all through there. I know Shawnee
Trail, through Choctaws.”

“Then tell us, friend, since you know this country pretty well, how far
is it out of the Nations from here?”

“Maybe so fifty-six mile. Caldwell, he’s on line above Osages. Always
grass. So you go Ab’lene?”

Nabours nodded.

“We don’t know where it is.”

“You come my camp with me. I got a man in my camp, he come from Ab’lene.
He come down here to find you people.”

“Find us? He never heard of us!”

“I dunno. He say he come south till he meets cows. He show you Ab’lene
all right.”

“Len, ride back to the men and tell them to hold the herd till I come,”
said Nabours, turning. “I may be late. I’ll go over and see what there
is in all this.”

Without further speech, the famous half-breed trail maker led them back
for a quarter of a mile or so to where he had picketed his horse. Soon
they passed another uncommunicative half-breed, driving a wagon team. A
few words between him and Chisholm, and the driver passed on to begin
his share of the work—skinning the dead buffalo, for their hides alone.

In time they found the wagon encampment, its band of horses and mules
hobbled or picketed near by; a pleasant though extraordinary sight in
these surroundings. Chisholm led the way to a point a few yards distant
from the main camp.

Lying on his saddle blankets under the shade of a scrubby bush, there
was a white man—a bearded man of middle age, with clothing not much
worn and of distinctly Northern cut. Caught by a severe attack of fever
and ague, he now was in a raging fever. But at the sight of these
newcomers—who presentiment told him were the very men he sought—he
sprang to his feet and held out his hand.

“I knew you’d come!” said he. “I know you are drovers! Where is your
herd? I told them I’d find a herd coming up to Abilene this spring.
McCoyne’s my name.”

“Well,” said the trail boss, “they call me Jim Nabours. We’re people
from Caldwell County, Texas—thousand miles south of here for all I
know, or anyway six hundred. We’re in the T.L.; Fishhook road brand. We
was headed for Aberlene.”

“That’s my town,” said the stranger. “And I’ll tell you, friend, she is
a town! We’ve got the railroad, and I’ve got the stockyards, built and
waiting. Don’t let no one talk to you about Baxter Springs; don’t you
think of stopping at Caldwell or Wichita. Abilene is the only town in
Kansas with a railroad and a stockyards and a real market. There’s
buyers five deep a-waiting for you up there. How many cattle you got?”

“Say three thousand.”

“Great Scott! Abilene’s made! You’re made too!”

“How much did you pay for cows when you started north?” he asked.
Nabours was looking at his eyes.

“You ain’t so sick!” said he. “Well, we didn’t pay nothing for ours. We
raised them by hand from calves. How much can a man get for fine fours
in your neighborhood?”

“Well, that depends; but all they’re worth. Do you want to contract
yours as they come, straight fours at ten a head?”

“Ten a head!” said Jim Nabours with well-feigned surprise. “What? Fours
like them? Fat and ready for market? Well there may be a little
she-stuff in here and there, but we couldn’t help that. Us Texans always
figgers one cow’s as old and as fat as another.”

“As good as any,” asserted the stranger. “There’s millions of acres of
range north and west of Abilene, a-weeping and a-wailing for stock
cattle. There’s millions of pounds of beef that’s got to be raised on
Army contracts to feed the reservation Indians. There’s all America and
all Europe east of here. Market? Why, man, we can take five million
cattle, in five years, if you can bring them in! You’re the first, and
you didn’t know it! You didn’t even know where Abilene was!”

“We don’t yet,” replied Nabours; “but we’re willing to rock along with
you and have you show us.”

“I’ll be glad to! What d’you say to three cents a pound on the hoof?”

Nabours looked at him with astonishment in his eyes.

“Mister, you talk like them cows was sugar or coffee. I never did hear
of ary man selling a cow that way. No man can tell how much a cow weighs
by looking at him, and I never did see one weighed. Of course, I could
make a scales by swinging a pole and putting a few men at the other end
of it to balance up a cow—you can guess how much a man weighs pretty
clost. But all that’d take too much time. No, a cow is a cow where I
come from, whether he’s big or little.”

“Well, what d’you say to eleven dollars a head?”

“I don’t say nothing. These here cows is family pets, and we don’t like
fer to part with them. But like enough this is the only herd that ever
will come up from Texas, anyhow this year.”

“You wouldn’t say twelve dollars?”

“Straight count, a cow for a cow, as she tallies out?”

“Well, I’d sorter like to see the herd first.”

“It ain’t no trade,” said Nabours calmly. “If I’d sell them family
favorites of ours the owner of Del Sol would feel sore—she shore
would.”

“You say ’she’ would. Are you working for a widow?”

“She ain’t a widow yet, but she may be a’fore long.”

“Married?”

“The same answer. Not yet, but right apt to be.”

“How old is she?”

“Why, I don’t know. Plenty of cows we got in that herd is a heap older
than she is.”

“And you’re taking a girl through to Abilene!”

“What’s wrong with Aberlene, friend?”

“Well,” admitted McCoyne, “we got eight saloons and five gambling
palaces now; a good many railroad men and skin hunters and people like
that hang around. It might be a little bit swift if you ain’t used to
traveling fast.”

“What you say sounds cheerful. We’d like to wet the dust in our throats
and play a few cards in a innocent way.”

“I wouldn’t say that Abilene ain’t safe,” argued the market man. “We got
the best town marshal in Kansas, or are going to have if we can get him
away from Hays City. Wild Bill Hickok is his name. He’s the best shot in
Kansas.”

“He may be in Kansas, but he ain’t in Texas,” replied Nabours. “We had
him along ourselves. You didn’t happen to meet up with a man named Dan
McMasters in Caldwell, did you?”

McCoyne drew himself up.

“I don’t go to Caldwell. But since you mention it, that name sounds
familiar. I met a McMasters over in the Baxter Springs country last
winter; tall fellow, with a little mustache. He was the man that told me
he was going to send up a Texas herd when he got back home.”

“He done so,” replied Nabours. “Here it is.”

“He certainly done us both a good turn. I was saying McCoyne—Joe
McCoyne’s my name. I come from Indianny. I’m president of the stockyards
up to Abilene. The whole Eastern country is out here hunting cattle.
There’s a thousand miles of range north and west of us that’s got to
have cattle. Why, cattle will be gobbled up as fast as you can drive
them in.”

“You must be running a kind of cow heaven, friend,” said Jim Nabours.
“Well, come and see our boss. You needn’t be scared, even if she ain’t
married. I will pertect you against any designing female that might be
smit by your looks.”

                              CHAPTER XXXV
                            IN THE BEGINNING

THE Del Sol men with their new-found friend turned back to bid a
temporary farewell to Jesse Chisholm and his wagon train, departing
thereafter for the herd, which had been held some miles below. The
Eastern man sat his horse somewhat strangely to the eyes of the Texans;
but no matter what the speed, he ceased not joltingly to sound the
praises of his community.

“Every time he come down in the saddle he says, ‘Aberlene! Aberlene!
Kerchunk! Aberlene!’” explained Len Hersey to his fellows.

When they came into view of the great herd, held closely by the riders,
Nabours pulled up with the enthusiasm of the natural drover.

“Look at ’em!” he exclaimed, waving a hand. “If that ain’t a perty sight
I don’t know what is!”

“Great glory!” exclaimed the Abilene man. “I didn’t know there were that
many cattle in the world! Sir, my fortune is made! Where’d you get them
all?”

“In Texas we don’t ast no man that. I told you we done raise them cows
by hand, every one of them.”

The Abilene man gave a deep sigh.

“You don’t know what that means!” said he. “The first herd up from
Texas!” He babbled, speaking of revolutions, epochs, swift changes.

One by one he met the wild crew of the Del Sol men, who wore a garb and
spoke a language unfamiliar to himself. Praying for trail herds from the
South, the Northern men never really visualized the new personnel which
was pushing north from the lower range. Indeed at that time of the
American civilization there had been but little actual interchange of
population between the North and the South. The natural expansion of the
republic had been westward. As to the old cruel line of Mason and Dixon,
it never fully was broken down by the Civil war. But here was the first
break—the penetration of a peaceful, natural commerce, here on the
Western plains. Through that opening, in the years immediately to come,
flowed values greater than those of barter and trade in horned kine. A
manly understanding passed back and forth, and out of that a tacit
union, a concord in all young strong impulses. That union of North and
South built the West overnight. The world has never seen a better
country.

That empire gave us our first and only true American tradition—the
tradition of the West. Great as that American tradition is, grotesque as
we have rendered it, far as we have carried from dignity and truth the
tradition of the West, “the Range” still is a word to conjure with
to-day, and will be to-morrow. Here, then, was the very beginning of
that great tradition. It was no more than a generation ago.

“My Lord!” repeated the Northern man. “Just look at them! I guess that’s
all the cattle in the world.”

“No, I don’t reckon so,” replied Nabours. “We got sever’l left down in
Texas. Come along; you must meet the owner of them all.”

They approached Taisie Lockhart’s camp where the giant carts—things of
wonder to the stockyards man—stood gaunt and grim in the twilight.
Taisie was superintending the preparation of the evening meal, her women
busy at the fire. At first the Northern man took her to be one of the
young riders of the herd. She stood straight and free of
self-consciousness as any of the men; as brown of face and hand, much
like them in apparel. She wore the universal checked trousers, stuffed
into her boots. But the boots apparently had been made by loving hands,
so neat were they, so sewed with countless little seams. And at their
tops, in red, was the Lone Star of Texas.

Taisie’s cotton shirt, a man’s shirt, was open at the neck. Above the
high-water mark of the ardent sun, protected by her hat brim, flowed
back the mass of her bright hair, which for sake of comfort she wore
now, as customarily, in a great queue wrapped with thong, as though she
were some Indian woman. True, she might have been the forerunning
arbiter of woman’s ways of costume fifty years later in the West; but
Taisie Lockhart’s dress was not done in any imitation or any
affectation. She had chosen it for two reasons—firstly, because she was
broke; secondly, because it was convenient.

“Miss Lockhart,” remarked Jim Nabours in the formula which he best knew,
“shake hands with Mr. ——. What did you tell me your name was?”

“McCoyne—Joe McCoyne, of Abilene, ma’am. I’m pleased to meet you.”
Which also was in conformance with ineradicable formula.

Taisie held out her hand in silence, with her usual straight glance.

“You didn’t expect to see me down here from Abilene, did you, Miss
Lockhart?” began the stockyards man.

“Why, no sir; are we almost there?”

“Right there. It ain’t much over two hundred mile. I knew there’d be a
herd up this year. I was telling your foreman that I met a Mr.
McMasters, Daniel McMasters, a while back, over around Baxter Springs.
He said he was going down to Central Texas. You don’t happen to know
him?”

The swift blood surged up to Taisie’s forehead.

“Why, yes; he rode with us for a time.”

But the Northern man was all for business. He cleared his throat.

“Miss Lockhart,” said he, “I’ve been offering your man twelve dollars a
head straight through. I’d contract for them at that right here.”

Taisie Lockhart gave a sudden gasp. Twelve dollars a head meant riches!
But she turned toward her trail boss, who had emitted an ominous cough,
audible a quarter of a mile, and began now to wink so portentously that
even the blind must have given him attention. She hesitated, her eyes
dubious. The stranger laughed.

“I see you’ve got to talk it over together.”

But his zeal for Abilene overcame even his own disposition to do a turn
in personal trade. Besides, the personality of this young woman produced
its usual effect, on him as on most men.

“I want to buy your cattle, Miss Lockhart,” said he, “and maybe I will;
but let’s not talk price any more down here. This is the first herd to
come to Abilene, and I’m going to see that you get the best price
possible, so when you carry the news back to Texas that’ll bring more
herds up next year. I don’t want to rob as young and fine-looking a
woman as you are; and besides that, the first one to come up the trail.”

“And the last!” said Jim Nabours conclusively. “You don’t know what I’ve
been through!”

The stranger smiled humorously, his eyes once more turning to the young
girl, of unmistakably gentle breeding. “In a way, you don’t belong
here,” said he.

“Come an’ git it!” came the supper call of Buck, the negro cook, now
rising at his fireside.

The men not engaged on the herd straggled in toward the fire. The
distant crooning of the hands at the bed ground came through the
twilight. The stockman threw back his shoulders, drew a deep breath.

“I been having a little fever and ague, ma’am,” said he; “but come to
think of it, it’s quit. I’d rather be here than any place else in the
world.”

“We have quinine,” said Taisie Lockhart, “and coffee and boiled beef,
and some very good bread that Milly has made. Won’t you please sit down
with us?”

They all sat upon the ground around the little fire, children,
contented. The world still was young.

                             CHAPTER XXXVI
                       ROLL ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES!

LATE at night the leaders of the herd sat talking, but the start on
the next day was early. The country ahead was now open and free of
buffalo. Once more the great herd trailed out. They left the camp of
Jesse Chisholm with his wagon train a little at one side, but the
leaders rode over to say farewell to the taciturn old half-breed.
McCoyne promised him many things if he would load his next cargo at
Abilene instead of Wichita. And so they parted, as ships sailing seas
but little known.

Thence on there was no need for the wagon tongue or the North Star. One
Chisholm Trail, of many mythical ones, was now really begun. The marks
of the wagon wheels were unmistakable. The giant steers of the Del Sol
vanguard swung out along the main traveled road as though this was what
they long had sought. McCoyne expressed wonderment at seeing so few men
handle thousands of great animals.

“You’ve been doing ten or twelve miles a day?” said he. “We can make
fifteen or twenty. Push them along. All Abilene is waiting for them.”

It was plain sailing and the weather was good. No tribute-seeking
Indians appeared, and the cattle were as peaceable as though they never
had dreamed of a run. The Del Sol outfit put mile after mile behind it,
rapidly, steadily, the work oxen on the carts sometimes almost on a
trot, the sore backs exempt in the remuda, every man feeling that
trail’s end was not so far.

Between them and the Arkansas River now ran only one considerable
stream—the Salt Fork, spoken of with respect by drovers, for quite
customarily it offered swimming water. But now, even if the advanced
season had not left the water low, the Salt Fork would have been by no
means an insuperable obstacle, for Jesse Chisholm had left here a good
raft which he had built for his own purposes. It was better than a
bridge. The cattle swam the stream readily, confidently, and in brief
order the carts were jerked across at the ends of spliced reatas. The
entire crossing went forward methodically and without the loss of a
single head.

“So that’s the way you do it?” commented the man of Abilene. “You had
some rivers below here too?”

“Almost. This here is play compared to it,” said Nabours. “But you can
go anywheres with cows if you know how. That’s the only thing us Texans
does know. Yes, we got sever’l cows down in Texas. And I don’t see why
this country here wouldn’t raise cows—in the summer anyhow.”

They advanced through the Osage country, over as beautiful grassland as
a man ever saw, the prairie covering wavering knee-deep and spotted with
many flowers. Wild game was in sight much of the time. There was not a
weed. No plow had been here.

“Roll along, little dogies!” came the lazy voice of a swing man. “Roll
along, roll along!”

Fifty miles more of happy, lazy, carefree loafing along the trail, and
they left the straggling village of Caldwell on the right, just at the
Kansas line. Nabours would not let his men go into town, but headed
twenty miles to the westward across the grasslands of lower Kansas,
making for the crossing of the Arkansas which Chisholm had established
with his wagons.

Heretofore the advance had been happily and singularly free from
annoyance at the hands of the Indian tribes whose great domain had been
crossed. When well over the Kansas line, however, they were caught up by
a little band of Osages who had followed along their trail, ignoring
reservation limits for reasons of their own. In stature they were
gigantic men, their heads partly shaved, leaving a high roach of dense,
stiff hair after the traditional Osage custom. They were painted bravely
enough in red and ocher, and all were armed with fine buffalo bows of
_bois d’arc_. Their leader and his band seemed friendly enough and
disposed to parley. Not caring for such hangers-on, Nabours and a few
other men stopped for a conference. The chief began with a request soon
to become usual along the trail.

“You got plenty wohaw,” he began. “This Injun country. You give wohaw.”

He held up all the fingers of his hand.

“Give you ten cows?” exclaimed Jim Nabours. “I ain’t give a cow to
nobody all the way up the trail, and I won’t give one to you. You go on
back.”

“Good Injun!” said the leader of the Osages. He handed out a folded
piece of paper. “Caldwell. Him send.”

He was a message bearer. Nabours took the letter.

“Why, this is from Dan McMasters!” said he. “Five days ago he was in
Caldwell. Says he has gone on now to Wichita,” explaining to McCoyne and
the others. “He may be at Aberlene by the time we get there.”

“Say, you, here!” he remarked to the chief. “We’ll give you one wohaw.
You set down and wait a while. We’ll ride on up to the wohaws.”

“All right,” said the Osage partisan in good humor. “Him say you give
wohaw. We bring you paper.”

They disposed themselves on the grass, their bows unstrung.

“You seem to be all the time hearing from this man McMasters,” said
McCoyne. “How come he’s on ahead of you so far?”

“That’s a long story,” said Jim Nabours. “He did ride with us for a
while.”

“I knew that man over at Baxter and on the Missouri border,” ruminated
the man from Abilene. “Quiet sort of fellow—mysterious—never did say
much. I was figuring on a market over there for Texas cattle. But I
learned about a gang of raiders in there that had been cutting every
herd that came up from Texas bound for Missouri or Iowa or Illinois.
Those border ruffians killed probably a dozen men altogether. They tied
up and whipped maybe a dozen more. They terrorized every trail outfit
that came through there, and the natural result was that they kept off
St. Louis from ever becoming a real cow town. Nothing could get through.
A little thing sometimes makes a heap of difference later on in big
things.

“The leader of that gang was a ruffian by name of Rudabaugh,” he added.
“The Missourians finally run him south.”

“Yes,” said Nabours quietly. “The Texans have finally run him north
again.”

“And this man McMasters was after him?” McCoyne turned suddenly.

“He might be. He is now. He’s been keeping ahead of us, and that’s the
reason.”

He now explained at length the machinations of the trail pirates and the
untimely end of them in the night battle on the Washita.

“He mostly plays a lone hand,” Nabours concluded. “He’s an officer in
the Rangers. That’s putting law into Texas—the Rangers.”

“Well, we’ve only got one man to put law into Abilene. I’m going to hire
Wild Bill Hickok for our town marshal. Wild Bill has got these bad
people buffaloed. Counting in his work as a Union sharpshooter, under
Curtis, in the Missouri country, he’d have to have a long gun stock to
carry all his notches. It’s sure he’s killed somewhere between
seventy-five and a hundred men. In 1860, when he was taking care of the
stage stock over in east of Abilene, he was jumped by McCandless and his
gang—ten men there were in all. You’ve heard of that fight? They were
going to run off the stage stock for the Confederate Army. They tackled
Bill in his shack, ten of them, and he was alone. He killed nine out of
the ten by himself. Not so bad, eh? I don’t know as I ever knew Bill to
serve a warrant or make an arrest. But I’ll bet one thing—if we get him
for town marshal, Abilene will be first in graveyards, the same as she
is first in everything else.”

“It shore looks like Dan McMasters has a pleasant time a-waiting for
him,” commented Nabours. “But he’s usual able to take care of hisself.

“Now, I’ll have to cut out a beef for these yellow-bellied friends of
ours,” he added. “We’ve picked up a shorthorn stray or so a couple of
days ago, and put a Fishhook on him to keep him from catching cold. Like
enough it was a Osage steer, anyhow, so I reckon I’ll let ’em have that
one. Go cut it out, Len, when we come up with the herd.”

Osages and all, they rode along. Easily, lazily, as though he knew
precisely where the animal was, Len Hersey found it, rode it out of the
herd and drove it back close to the Indian group.

“Here’s your wohaw,” he said.

The Osage chieftain smiled amiably. A bow twanged. In five minutes the
ribs of the beef were broiling on a prairie Osage fire. The dust of the
great herd of spotted cattle was lessening to the north.

                             CHAPTER XXXVII
                                ABILENE

IN THE front room of a raw board building, on which carpenters still
were laboring noisily, sat a tall man at a table, pleasantly humming a
tune to himself as he bent over his task.

In appearance he was a Viking; a very strong man, bulky, above six feet
in height, and yet lithe, easy, graceful, with perfect coördination of
physical faculties. His eye was very blue. His yellow hair was long,
like that of ancient warriors; so long that it fell in ripples on his
shoulders; and, as hair of any warrior should be, it was admirably kept.

The garb of this striking-looking man—one of the handsomest men that
ever crossed the Missouri in the days of the frontier, which is much to
say of males—was on the whole devoid of pretentiousness. His dark
clothing was ready-made, but his boots never were ready-made. He showed
the influence of the South, where a man may be slouchy in all things
save as to his feet. This man’s boots were of fine calf, closely cut to
cover a small foot. A pair of gloves lay on the table, the best of
buckskin. His hat, of the finest felt, was wide of brim and low of
crown—the hat of the upper range, distinct from the steeple-crown
Mexican sombrero.

Had the entire border been combed, a finer example of the better type of
border man could not at that time have been found than this one. In any
corner of the world his appearance would have called attention. Two or
three men sitting across from him against the wall in the hotel
office—for this building was no less than the Drovers’ Cottage of
Abilene, soon to be famous across the Western world—eyed him with
silent respect as he sat busy, humming his carefree melody. They very
well knew Wild Bill Hickok, whom rumor reported to be sought for as the
new town marshal of Abilene, first of the cow camps.

The famous marshal of Hays City—as he then was—now was engaged in the
daily task which he never neglected and never gave to hands other than
his own—that of cleaning his two heavy revolvers. No hand but his ever
had been allowed to touch one of these weapons, even in the slightest or
most friendly way. He himself never failed to examine them every
morning.

They were very long-barreled revolvers, and their owner’s artistic fancy
was indulged in them to the extent of ivory handles. The metal work was
dark. The front sight on each had been filed down low. That was just
before the day of fixed ammunition, and all revolvers still were
muzzle-loaders as to the cylinders. Under the barrel of each piece
worked a hinged ramrod, and the backs of the cylinders were indented and
tubed to permit admission of the percussion caps. They handled a large
round ball. Some of these, with the small flask of fine rifle powder,
lay on the table near at hand. With a short, well-polished round stick
of hickory, Mr. Hickok was now engaged in cleaning barrel and cylinder
so thoroughly that not a speck of dust remained. His boots and gloves
were clean; his shirt was clean; his face and hands were clean; and, be
sure, his guns were clean.

He finished his task at length, replaced each cylinder and pushed down
the pin on which it revolved. Then, with eyes narrowing and lips pursed,
he poured into each cylinder barrel an exact—very exact—charge of the
fine powder, gently jolting each charge home, and on top, with the
utmost care, seating the round ball and pushing it home with the hinged
ramrod. Each load was precisely like every other load. Then he capped
each nipple of the cylinder, held back each hammer and rolled the
cylinder with ear intent to see that the click of the lock came
absolutely even. After this he slipped the long weapons into the greased
holsters at his heavy belt. His coat tails unobtrusively covered the
equipment. He walked to the new washbasin at the new sink, cleansed and
wiped his hands on a towel not absolutely new; and so was ready for the
duties of the day, whatever these might be.

“Well, Bill, going to get somebody to-day?” one of the loafing skin
hunters against the wall guffawed, trying to be offhand, friendly and
humorous. The tall man looked at him steadily, his own face absolutely
emotionless, and made no reply at all. His dignity was that of a lion
among small animals. He was a man of few confidences and no
familiarities.

When Wild Bill Hickok stepped out into the street he saw coming across
the railroad track a stranger, a young man tall as himself, though not
so heavy of build. The newcomer was clad much like himself, in dark
clothing, with neat boots. His coat swung easily free, but to the
specialized eye of Wild Bill it covered something on either side.
Moreover, he presently noted that the young man wore his guns in an odd
way—the right-hand stock pointing back, the left-hand one pointing
forward. This peculiarity he had never seen in the equipment of any man,
cowman, gambler or professional bad man. He asked himself, if this man
should happen to be left-handed, or if he were a two-handed man, which
gun would be used first? That constituted, as Wild Bill admitted then
and there, a sort of mental problem which it might take the thousandth
of a second to decide.

There was no pretentiousness about the newcomer, more than there was
about Wild Bill Hickok. They both were simple, quiet men, low of voice,
pleasant of address. Two more typical killers did not then stand west of
the Missouri stream, although they were from widely separated countries.
The range, north and south, upper and lower, ran well-nigh two thousand
miles in its longer dimension, and covered wide variations in all types.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the young man, advancing. “I know this is
Marshal Hickok. I am McMasters, sheriff of Gonzales County, down in
Texas.”

The blue-eyed man put out his hand readily.

“I know about you,” said he. “You are in the Rangers, too, down there.
That’s a good body of men. I reckon they need to be good.

“Well, it’s a lovely morning,” he continued. “I’ve not had a drink yet
this morning.”

They walked down the ragged street, if street it could be called,
passing over the railroad track, whose rails as yet hardly had been
burnished by any wheels; a track which ran but a few hours’ journey west
of Abilene at that time. There was a switch which would accommodate
perhaps twenty cars, some pens which would hold perhaps five hundred
head of cattle, some chutes which never yet had been used. Like all the
rest of Abilene, the yards presented an aspect of raw newness. The
residential portion of the city consisted largely of sod houses, dugouts
and canvas tents, although it did not lack unpainted pine in its more
ambitious structures. The broken expanse of high-fronted wooden
buildings along its single main street offered the appearance
conventional in the new railroad town of the frontier of the West. There
was a Golden Eagle Clothing Store; two or three offering general
merchandise. There was no drug store, but there were two barber shops
and the Twin Livery Barn. There was no church or school. But, as the
apostle of Abilene had said, there were many saloons and free
dance-halls, each in its way openly advertising its wares.

Toward the saloon of his choice—which also apparently offered
dance-hall accommodations at seasonable hours—Wild Bill bent his steps.
The interior still presented a certain dishabille. A sleepy negro was
sweeping out the corks. A barrel in a corner held empty bottles in
careless profusion. The chairs presented an order apparently not
preconcerted, and the legs of some were broken. There was no billiard
table in all Abilene, and mahogany was not yet known in any bar of
Abilene. None the less, here was a goodly plank, and back of it were
arranged shelves still holding bottles of liquid contents in spite of
the late obvious demand. The interior was not, to any imagination, howso
violent, a lovely thing to see in the ghastly light of day. The light
now was rather dim. Two or three kerosene lamps still were burning,
yellow and sickly, not devoid of fumes, which joined the other fumes.

“I usually come here for my liquor,” said Wild Bill, “because I know
Henry Doak has a barrel of real bourbon, besides what he sells. It ain’t
poison. I never go against the liquor game very hard myself.”

“It isn’t best,” said McMasters. “Still, the oldest man I ever knew told
me he’d lived so long because every morning before breakfast he took two
or three fingers of bourbon—when he could get it—and rubbed his chest
with a fresh corncob.”

“As good a way as any,” said Hickok. “A man never dies till his time
comes—and then he does.”

He was humming to himself as he searched for the bottle which suited
him.

“No three or four fingers for me,” said he. “Too much, especially if you
have got anything particular to do.”

A short gray man with white mustache and goatee shuffled in, not
vouchsafing any speech at all. He brought them glasses and motioned Bill
to a quiet corner of the room, where at the hour they found themselves
quite alone.

“Well, Mr. McMasters,” said Bill, “I am glad to see you in Abilene, and
I wish you were going to live here. It’s not just the healthiest place
for a peace officer. It maybe won’t be any healthier if the Texas herds
ever do begin to come in.”

“I know of one on the way,” said McMasters. “It will be in now almost
any day.”

Hickok nodded.

“They used to drive up the Neosho in towards Sedalia, a few years ago.
Those toughs in there used the trail men mighty rough. Dougherty,
Ellison, Hunter, McMasters, Lockhart—they were all good men that tried
to drive in there from Texas. It would have paid St. Louis to have sent
her whole police force down there and cleaned up that gang of cattle
bandits. They’ve just headed off all the Texas cattle that came up that
way.”

“Yes, I know about that pretty well,” assented Dan McMasters. “You say
McMasters. Calvin McMasters was my father. They killed him. He was a
friend of Colonel Burleson Lockhart. They killed Lockhart too. I’ve been
in there since, once or twice, on business of my own. That gang were
very largely friends of Dave Tutt.”

Their eyes met silently. Dave Tutt was a man whom Wild Bill Hickok
killed in a street duel on the public square of Springfield, Missouri,
in the presence of his friends, all of whom had threatened to kill
Hickok on sight.

“Well, those people couldn’t seem to make a living any way except by
robbing folks,” said the border man after a while. “The real brains of
that outfit was a fellow called Rudabaugh—Sim Rudabaogh. I heard that
he went South; to Austin, I think.”

“Yes, he got some sort of Northern political pull back of him I don’t
just know how. He has given us a fine example of organized
Reconstruction politics. He has put on foot the biggest plan of
wholesale cow stealing and land stealing and general highway robbery
that ever was started even in Texas.”

“Using his old trade, eh? Working large?”

“Yes. Just now he’s getting hold of all the land scrip the state ever
issued—you know Texas retained her own lands when she came in. His plan
is to get hold of about all of Texas north of the Buffalo gap, and then
to steal cows enough east of that to stock the whole Staked Plains.”

“That sounds like a pretty large order!” smiled Hickok.

“It is a large order. The man is crazy who would ever think of it. I
don’t doubt that Sim Rudabaugh is crazy—crazy with his own egotism and
his success in deeds that no sane man ever could have thought of doing.”

“Have you got any personal quarrel?” asked Hickok of him quietly.

“That word doesn’t cover it, sir! Mr. Hickok, I have said that Rudabaugh
killed my father and Colonel Lockhart. That is, I am practically sure of
it. My father was sheriff of Gonzales before they put me in. I could not
refuse. I knew I was elected to end the Rudabaugh gang.

“Quarrel? I can’t call it by so small a name. For every reason in the
world I have got to have that man dead or alive. And you’ll think I am
crazy myself,” he added, “when I tell you I want him alive. He is worth
much more to Texas alive than dead. The fact is, the whole peace of
Texas—and the whole end of the big steal in Texas—depends on my
bringing that man in, not dead but alive.”

Hickok looked at him in silence for a time.

“You have had to shoot sometimes.”

“Several times. I have made a good many arrests as sheriff in my county
and as a captain in the Rangers in other counties.”

Hickok shook his head. A light drinker, he pushed his glass aside not
much more than tasted.

“No good in making arrests. There is only one way with a man like
that—let him make his break.”

McMasters went on to explain the circumstances of Colonel Griswold’s
talk with Yellow Hand, below the Washita, giving the details of the
fight.

“We put a pretty stiff crimp into them there,” he said. “I don’t think
Rudabaugh has more than two of his best warriors with him—Baldy Collins
and Ben Estill. He got Estill at Caldwell. He’ll maybe pick up some more
recruits over toward the Missouri line. He’s been trailing our herd ever
since we started out, maybe a thousand miles and he’ll never quit if he
can help it. As I have explained to you, it has been all to his interest
to break up this herd. If word of its success got back to Texas this
season, that would end his dream of cheap land and cheap cows. All Texas
would be on its guard. You see why I want to arrest Rudabaugh. You will
see, too, I’ve got to have him alive if possible.”

“Then why do you want to see me? I’m not living in this town, though I
may later. Besides, my specialty is not taking people alive.” Wild
Bill’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I don’t believe in arrests for
that kind of people.”

“I’m not so particular about any of those men being alive except
Rudabaugh,” replied McMasters. “I haven’t got any warrant for him, and
can’t get one, and couldn’t stop to prosecute him if I had. I couldn’t
prove that he killed any of the drovers of the old Shawnee Trail. I
don’t want to prove anything. I’ve got no warrant and no requisition
papers. All I want is to get my hands on him.

“But I can prove that he killed the two Indian women down near the
Arbuckle Mountains. There is no white jurisdiction down there, and in
Kansas it’s no crime to kill Indians. But there won’t be any habeas
corpus if he is ever brought before the court of the Comanches. That’s
the court I want! That’s what Griswold wants, and he wants that because
it means peace with the Comanches. Don’t you see? It means that they’ll
come in out of Texas and go on their reservation. That will open up
everything. There’ll be any number of cattle cross at Doan’s Store, and
even further west, as quick as the drovers know it is safe against the
Comanches, in further west than where this herd crossed the Red.

“So you see, Mr. Hickok, just why I want Sim Rudabaugh alive. That’s why
I came to Abilene. I heard you were here, and I thought maybe
Rudabaugh’d come here. If you don’t mean the law here, there’s going to
be no law in Abilene.”

Hickok sat for a time in silence.

“Well,” said he at length, “I suppose I am generally intended to keep
the peace. If I help you to get Rudabaugh in Kansas I am helping keep
the peace in Kansas. And if they want me for town marshal here maybe I’d
better give them a sample of the goods. Every town marshal in the world
ought to help a Texas Ranger.

“But listen, friend,” he continued; “when two men go into a business of
this kind each puts his life in the other man’s hands. Mostly I’d rather
risk my life in my own hands. Are you a married man?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you a good shot with a revolver?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hickok rose lazily, leaving the liquor in his glass.

“Let’s take a walk out of doors,” he said.

They stepped to the front of the saloon and stood looking up and down
the street. Some forty yards away a sign hung out over the walk: “Dance
Hall and Saloon.”

“I’ll take the right-hand O,” said Hickok quietly.

With the ease of great practice and native genius—and all the Army men
rated Hickok as the best shot with rifle or revolver that the West ever
saw—he raised one of his weapons to a high level and fired the six
shots of the single-action piece with unspeakable rapidity. He carefully
returned the gun to its place. He did not look at the sign. He knew!

“That’s fine work, sir,” said Dan McMasters with undisguised enthusiasm.
“Your reputation is deserved. Quite often I doubt a man’s reputation as
a shot until I see him shoot.”

“How about your own?” demanded Hickok. “I myself never shoot in public.
I don’t want anybody to know how I shoot.”

“Nor I. My reputation? I haven’t any this far north.”

“Well, there’s the left-hand O. Can you see the one I shot?”

“Perfectly,” smiled McMasters.

“You’ve a good eye. Can you hit it one time out of six?”

“I can hit it six times out of six, sir.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t think so—I know it.”

“Cut loose!” said Bill succinctly.

For an instant McMasters stood facing his mark, both hands poised above
his heavy guns after his invariable fashion, which had swiftly become a
tradition on the lower range. Hickok did not really see which gun he
chose, his own eye for the time being fixed on the signboard. But a gun
did rise in Dan McMasters’ right hand. And once more, with perfect
spacing, came six reports.

By this time a crowd had poured out in the streets. Men were at their
heels as the two walked close to the signboard. Wild Bill saw the six
bullets grouped close, splintering one into the other at times, not one
touching the outer rim of black.

His own eyes narrowed. He looked curiously, studiously, at the face of
the first man he had ever been obliged to credit with pistol work
approaching his own. The face had changed. It had not lost its
concentration. It was a mask, expressionless. Hickok studied the mask
for a moment. He saw in it his own face also. He put a hand on
McMasters’ shoulder.

The two turned down the street, Hickok flinging back his long yellow
hair in a gesture habitual with him.

“Take a good look at the work on them two signs, men,” said he,
accosting the curious followers. “You ain’t apt to see better. This man
and I are going to see peace and quiet in Abilene. He’s my friend and my
deputy.

“I didn’t think the man lived that could do it,” said he to McMasters as
they walked away together. “Your six are bunched as good as mine, and
your time is perfect. Come on down to the Cottage and let’s sit around
for a while.

“Hello, what’s that?” he added. A group of men was coming up at a fast
gait from the southern edge of the town. Among them was one, apparently
a leader, whose rapid discourse occasionally was broken by wild whoops.
“Who’s that?” laughed Hickok. “Some more wild men from down the trail?”

In effect, it was Mr. McCoyne, explaining to the citizens of Abilene
that beyond a peradventure he had met and traveled with an actual herd
of cattle, actually bound for Abilene. Moreover, the said herd was then
and there camped just below the Solomon, within easy reach of town.

This certainly was news of interest to McMasters as well as to Wild Bill
Hickok. McCoyne was too much excited to identify any one, did not
remember McMasters, whom he had not recently seen and never had known
well.

“Listen, men!” he shouted. “We’ve got to have a celebration. Get all the
Eastern men together. Go see if our new band is sober enough to play any
sort of tune. Get ’em down on the portico at the Drovers’ Cottage in an
hour or so. When I bring the herd into town, and we get right opposite
the Cottage, tell ’em to strike up. We’ve got to show these people what
a real live town is.

“Now, come on,” he resumed. “I own a interest in the Spread Eagle
Saloon”—it chanced to be the one whose sign had served for a target
just now, later a matter of much pride to the owner—“but I’m going to
change the name to Lone Star. Come on and have a drink with McCoyne,
president of the Abilene Stockyards!”

By magic, from their tents and dugouts, their sod huts and log hovels
and their residences of raw pine board, the men of Abilene
assembled—border men, skin hunters, loafers, gamblers, thieves,
citizens and aliens, merchants and cattle buyers; a throng sufficiently
motley for a total population of a very hundred. They crowded into the
saloon, formed an overflow meeting upon the outside; primitive men in a
primitive day.

Around this primitive scene stretched a wide and primitive world. The
blue sky, flecked with fleecy clouds, bent over an endless sea of
grasses growing to the very edge of Abilene. The flowers nodded and
beckoned in the gentle wind. Not a furrow of plow was there. These rude
men of Abilene were forerunners of an inland empire soon to come but not
yet over the horizon.

Hickok and McMasters did not go beyond the edge of the crowd. The former
seemed now, as so often he was, absorbed in the sheer beauty of the
prairies.

“It’s pretty,” said he, waving his hand. “I hate to think of its
changing.” A tinge of his occasional melancholy fell upon him. “Of
course, it will change and change fast,” said he. “Well, I was a part of
this.”

Without affectation, he spoke in the past tense. There never was a
killer who gave himself a long life.

Inside the saloon, mounted on a chair, McCoyne, president of the Abilene
Stockyards, was addressing the multitude.

“They’re a strange-looking people, them Texans,” he was saying. “They’ve
got no wagons; only some carts, each with two yoke of oxen. There ain’t
a whole pair of breeches in the outfit, nor a decent hat. Every morning
when a fellow wants a horse, where his rope lands, that’s his—and he
has to ride to stay with it. They can ride any horse in the world.
They’ve got a fighting chicken on top of one cart and they say they’ll
bet the herd on that rooster—and here us folks ain’t got a single one
in Abilene! They’ll bet anything you like they’ve got the fastest horses
in Kansas. They say they’ve got a man they’ll back in a shooting match
against anybody in the world.”

“They must mean Wild Bill,” said a voice.

“No, his name is McMasters—Dan McMasters. But he ain’t with them now.
Besides that, they got something else; you can’t guess. They’ve got a
woman!”

“Aw, go on!” A voice.

“Yes, they have. Young woman, too, and prettier’n any picture you ever
saw in a frame. She owns all the herd. She’s rich as she is pretty. Her
name’s Lockhart, Miss Lockhart from Caldwell, County, Texas, but not
Caldwell, Kansas, gentlemen. She owns the Del Sol ranch down there. They
raised this whole herd on that ranch; or anyhow that’s what they say.
Men, here’s to Miss Anastasie Lockhart, the finest girl in the world and
the first one up the Texas trail!”

Two men of the crowd who had been listening quietly stepped out at the
door, looking at one another but not speaking. They passed close at
hand; the future town marshal of Abilene and his deputy.

[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture._      _North of 36._
 RUDABAUGH (NOAH BEERY) AND DAN McMASTERS (JACK HOLT).]

                            CHAPTER XXXVIII
                             ALAMO ARRIVES

FOR the last two hundred miles of the long trail up from Texas, life
was less eventful for the Del Sol men. The cattle now were shaken down
to the daily routine of marching and gave little or no trouble. They
took the smaller streams almost in their stride; and as to the last
large waterway, no problem of note existed, for at the Arkansas River,
the trail maker, Jesse Chisholm, again had provided passage in the scow
he had left moored not far from Wichita after it had served his own
purposes. It was merely a procession north of the Arkansas to Abilene,
across beautifully undulating country whose attractiveness would have
been hard to match in all America.

Arrived now at the Solomon River, however, almost at the environs of
Abilene, they found that civilization had prepared a bridge—the first
and only bridge of the entire journey of perhaps a thousand miles. It
was a structure of raw pine, well meant enough, but done by men in
ignorance of the actual nature of Texas steers. It served well enough
for the carts, but the herd would have none of it and insisted on
swimming, as they had crossed so many other streams. It was after they
had crossed that, yielding to the supplications of McCoyne, a halt was
called until the latter could go into town and complete certain
arrangements of his own. He asked Nabours to bring on the herd later.

For some anxious moments the apostle of Abilene stood in the street
looking southward. At last he waved his hat.

“Here they come!” he cried.

Tears ran down his face, perhaps alcoholic tears, but not unworthy, and
pulled up in his straggly beard. He had verified his prediction. Here
came the cows!

A cloud of dust approached, blown by the prairie wind. By and by the men
could see the heads of the herd advancing steadily, a mingling sea of
longhorns in a procession interminably long. The word passed now and
even the saloons were emptied. All Abilene came to see and welcome the
first herd up the trail. It seemed a large event to them. Not a man of
them, not the wildest dreamer of them all, ever guessed that it was the
opening of one of the greatest epochs in American history. Men even
would have scoffed at the assertion that thirty-five thousand cattle
would reach Abilene that year, seventy-five thousand the year following;
that soon the state of Texas would be trailing north over a million head
a year.

Ahead and alongside, mounted on wiry little horses, rode men ragged,
coatless, long of hair, bearded; tall men, sinewy, insouciant. The
saddles of these men had double girths, wide low horns and deep leather
flaps hanging low over the feet of the riders. Each man had a thin hide
reata coiled at his saddle horn. Each man wore a heavy belt at which
hung a heavy revolver, and a few carried rifles under their legs. They
came easily, steadily, ahead, their own eyes full of wonder but not of
fear.

Well to the front and paralleling the column to windward came the great
wheeled carts with white tops, each drawn by two yoke of oxen. On the
front seat of one sat a black woman, with a long musket across her lap.
Upon yet another was an old woman, dark, wrinkled of face, attending
strictly to her own business.

The tilt flaps of the lead cart were closed. The cattle which drew it
followed the horseman who rode just ahead—an old man, of face also dark
and wrinkled, who wore a very tall conical sombrero, the first of the
like ever seen in Abilene, the only one of all his company. His cotton
clothing was meager, he himself was meager, his horse was meager. Upon
his saddle horn there was perched what proved to be a bird whose plumage
bore a luster of its own; a bird somewhat battered and bedraggled, with
certain feathers of wing and tail missing and a crest somewhat torn and
dragging; which none the less raised its head from time to time and
emitted a loud and defiant crow. At times Sanchez ran a thin brown hand
over Gallina, his sole surviving fighting cock.

Back of this cart marched, saddled and bridled, a singular horse,
beautiful of head and crest, its dark yellow body coat broken by white
markings, a broad band of white from side to side across its hips.

In the vanguard of the herd proper marched a great gaunt steer, a giant
in stature, long of limb and wide of horn, a yellow dun in color. It now
was coming on with a rapid sidewise shuffle, not dissimilar to the fox
trot of a Southern riding horse, alertly looking from side to side. Back
of him the wide sea of other longhorns showed, tossing in the dust. It
might all have been some circus caravan, so wholly out of human
experience it all seemed to the observers.

At the points of the herd rode two stalwart men, one at either side, men
who never looked at one another. Back of them at long intervals, every
four or five hundred cattle, came the swing men; and at last the dust of
the drag—the weak, the maimed and the halt. Back of these yet again
showed the darker colors of the remuda—some scores of horses easily
handled by a ragged, thin-shouldered, tallow-faced boy, who wore the
only pair of _chaparajos_ in the company, for sake of trousers no longer
fit to see.

In all their lives these Texas cattle never had seen a town even so
great as embryonic Abilene. It took a quarter of an hour to get them to
enter the cross street. As McCoyne had admitted that the new corrals
would hold only a fraction of the cattle, it was the new intention to
drive through the town and hold the herd a mile or two to the north;
Nabours himself assenting thus much to the idea of a triumphal entry
merely to oblige his guide. He rode back to the lead cart and leaned
over.

“For God’s sake, Miss Taisie, get on Blancocito and ride in front, why
don’t you? Get on your own horse and ride in front of your own cows.”

But Taisie was not for triumphal entry. She stood out for closed
curtains on her cart. Through a narrow crack she gazed out. There were
countless men, but not a single woman.

Once headed for the cross street and crowned up by the riders, the head
of the herd, with much clacking of horns and cracking of hoofs, advanced
until it came opposite the gallery of the Drovers’ Cottage. Now came
climax in welcome. Here the town band of Abilene lay in ambush.

Came a sudden blare of brass—a cataclysmic thing in its results,
generously intended and not lacking precedent in welcomes, but failing
in all understanding of a herd of Texas cattle.

Probably each musician was playing the air which pleased him best. It
made no difference. With one tremendous rush and roar the herd surged,
broke, ran. The wildly rolling tails betokened one of the sharpest
stampedes of the entire trail. Simultaneously the great majority of the
saddle ponies began efforts to disencumber themselves of their riders,
in whom they now apparently had lost all confidence. Had the population
of Abilene sought a circus, they needed now no more than to look about
them.

The band played on, as those having engaged in an undertaking which they
did not like to discontinue. But they played on to an empty house. The
Del Sol herd was gone!

The riders leaned once more into the work, headed by Nabours, profoundly
cursing all brass bands, in a run the worst they had seen, even in their
abundant experience. The men of Abilene had the first and finest
opportunity of their lives to see a herd of wild Texas cattle handled as
no men other than these could have done the work. Even for these it took
time and distance.

The sudden burst of melody had left the cattle without concertedness.
They broke into different bands, even deserting their vanguard. Of the
latter, old Alamo, the giant steer that had paced the herd for a
thousand miles, alone held to the proper course. Alamo laid back his
horns and raised his muzzle like some wild elk. He dashed past the mob,
past the band at the Drovers’ Cottage, past everything of Abilene except
the railroad and the stockyards.

“Pore old Alamo!” said Jim Nabours later. “He shore knowed which way was
north, but he didn’t seem to know nothing else.”

The head of old Alamo with its immense sweep of horns in later years
long was known in the general freight office of a Western railroad,
where, had he then retained his faculties, he might at every hour of the
day and night have noted sight and sound of railway activities. But at
the time then current, Alamo had never seen a bit of railroad iron in
all his life. Perhaps to his startled gaze the two twisting lines of
steel were two giant snakes. In any event, Alamo swerved suddenly,
trying to evade them. His hard hoofs slipped on the metals and he fell.
His right foreleg, doubled under him, snapped below the knee under his
own weight and that of two other steers which had made bold to follow
him. So there he lay, much like other figures in completed destiny.

Engaged in opposite directions, not many of the men of Abilene or of Del
Sol noted what happened. There came out of the dust, spurring forward,
only one slim ragged rider—who even had left his beloved horses—the
boy Cinquo Centavos who, so it seemed, had some sort of admiration and
understanding of the lead steer of Del Sol.

Excited, tears streaming down his dusty face as always in his moments of
tension, Cinquo spurred up to the railroad track and sprang down where
the great steer lay struggling. His was the first rope that ever sang in
Abilene streets. It caught the great steer over the horns and laid him
flat, the pony setting back even as his rider left the saddle.

“Oh, Alamo!” wept Cinquo, seating himself on the steer’s muzzle to quiet
his plunging. “You done busted that laig plumb off!”

“Now, ain’t that too bad!” said one of the more sober musicians, who now
strolled over from the Drovers’ Cottage.

“Here, you!” commanded Cinquo. “You go back to that cart where the
nigger woman is at and get her to give you the hide of that yearlin’ we
killed yesterday.

“Gentlemen,” continued Cinquo, drawing himself up to his full height,
after he had the victim properly strung out, “this may be a cow town,
but you-all don’t know nothing about cows. Now look at that! Just
because it’s Fourth of July, you think you got any right to bust the
best damn steer that ever come out of Texas?”

Alamo and Cinquo were to take the first curtain call. The boy was no
theorist. Under his direction they brought him some pieces of barrel
staves. Around these he wound again and again strips of the green hide,
stretching it tight—perhaps the first surgery on a Texas steer, if not
the last, ever known on the long trail up from the Southern lands.

“Rawhide,” explained Cinquo to the gathering group, “is the holdin’est
thing there is. Once that dries, that steer’s laig will be a lot
better’n new—if it don’t dry too tight. Is them the pens over yon?” he
continued. “Well, swing a pole acrost the sides of the chute. Some of
you-all go and git some grass or hay. We’ll make a belly-band o’ the
rest of the hide and swing him up offen the ground so it won’t hurt his
sore laig.

“This here steer’s name is Alamo,” he explained to his audience. “He’s
the onliest Texas cow or horse I ever knowed to have a name. But he
started through. What us Texans starts we finishes. Git back now and
leave me if he can stand up.”

Old Alamo, relieved of rope and with no weight on his neck, proved his
mettle by springing to his feet as though nothing had happened, and only
the strange feeling in his foreleg prevented his charging the crowd as
an evidence of good faith. But Cinquo impressed Sanchez, who was visible
coming up, and Alamo yielded to the force of numbers and of skill. A man
flung open the gate of the Abilene Stockyards. Alamo entered in.

“He’s one game steer,” said McCoyne, when later he found him there in
place, in solitary grandeur. “If five hundred dollars will buy that
steer he’s mine right now, and I’ll keep him as long as he lives. Hurrah
for old Alamo, the first steer up the trail! Strike up some more music
again, fellows; he can’t get away now. Show my friends from Texas what a
Fourth of July can be in Abilene.”

But a certain thought came to the mind of Mr. McCoyne upon the instant.

“We’ve forgot about that young lady in the cart,” said he. “Anyhow, she
ain’t stampeded. I told you we had a woman along, and now I’ll prove it.
Come on, men, march in front and play your damnedest. I’m going to fetch
her up to the Cottage.”

The landlord and manager of the Drovers’ Cottage was an Eastern man
imported for this special purpose of running a hostelry devoted to trail
men, and now on his trial trip. His name—which so far as he is
concerned is of no consequence—was Gore. His wife’s name, which for
years was of very great consequence in all Kansas, was Lou Gore. A
portly woman she was, with a heart as large as that of any ox that ever
came up the trail. Of Lou Gore’s countless acts of charity, of her
unceasing ministrations to the ill and the afflicted, the wounded and
the impoverished men of the old trail, history has written all too
little. She was known sometimes as the Mother of Abilene, sometimes as
the Mother of Kansas; more often as the Mother of the Cowboys.

As yet Lou Gore had small acquaintance of those mad scenes which so soon
were to become a regular experience with her. But now the carpenters had
her new hotel almost completed, nearly ready for occupancy. Somewhat
flustered that she had not quite finished sweeping out after the
carpenters, not quite put up all her curtains—for curtains she insisted
upon at the cottage—the landlady of that edifice came to the front door
in time to see some of the incidents above recorded. Therefore, duly, as
she hid her hands under her apron, she heard the reassembled musicians
once more essaying sweet sounds, saw the procession of pedestrians
advancing toward her door.

And then Lou Gore saw, after a second and more careful look, what she
had not expected to see—a tall and beautiful young girl, an
astonishingly and strikingly beautiful young girl, who now for the first
time parted the curtains of her conveyance and sprang lightly to the
ground.

Taisie Lockhart, in men’s clothing—a thing then almost equivocal for a
woman—stood looking about her as though about to fly. She seemed so
much alone, so helpless, so appealing, that the only other real woman of
Abilene ran to her and took her into her hospitable arms.

“Why, you poor dear!” said she. “You poor dear! You’re a girl, ain’t
you! Of course, I knew! Now you come right on in!”

So Taisie Lockhart, the first woman ever to cross the doorstep of the
Drovers’ Cottage, with the exception of Lou Gore herself, came right on
in. And as she passed the door and started toward the hall which opened
from the front-office room she saw standing before her the man she had
hoped and feared she would never see again—Dan McMasters.

                             CHAPTER XXXIX
                               THE WOMAN

ON the flat prairie, whose solid turf offered good footing to the
ponies, the Del Sol riders, cursing their luck, finished rounding up
their stampeded cattle.

“I’m willing to admit there is such a place as Aberlene now,” grumbled
Nabours, “but it ain’t inhabitated by no human beings. This here idea of
meeting a herd of cows with a brass band ain’t no ways according to no
kind of Hoyle.”

“I ain’t taking no more chances about going through town,” he added.
“We’ll throw them around the town and stop about three mile north. Ef
anybody wants to see them cows they’ve got to come out there to our
camp, and not bring no brass band neither.”

Wherefore, with exception of the few head already penned in the Abilene
Stockyards, the Del Sol herd circumvented Abilene and all its
attractions, and finally turned out on good grazing ground north of
town. When at length the cattle were quiet and grazing the men pulled up
with a feeling of vast relief, which each expressed in his own way.

“Well, boys,” said the trail boss to those nearest him, “here’s where we
lean our saddles on the ground for a while. Tell Buck to pitch about
here. The other cart’ll likely stay in town.”

It was the last camp at the end of the road, farthest north for any
Texan longhorn at that hour. The long days and nights of trail work now
were over.

Anita helped the cook to unload the cart which nominally was his,
although he rarely had driven it. Strange and complex seemed the cargo
as it was heaped up on the prairie. The three saddles of the lost men,
their bridles and others; bed rolls and saddle blankets, kettles, pots
and pans; ox yokes and trace chains; spurs, hair ropes and hide reatas;
collapsed sacks of meal and flour and beans; some slabs of side meat, a
mess box and a coffee mill, sections of several dried rawhides—all
mingling with the meager war bags of a score of men. There were even a
pair of horns of giant size, detached from the head of an aged steer
whose neck had not proven able to withstand the pull of two reatas when
it was attempted to haul him out of a quicksand crossing where he had
bogged down. Len Hersey had chopped them off and put them in the cart,
declaring that he wanted them for a “soo-vee-ner.”

“We got all the comforts o’ home now,” remarked that insouciant soul as
he rode by. “Maybe I kin trade them horns fer a shirt.”

Nabours waited until he saw the cattle well scattered and disposed to
feed, and until he saw the dust of the remuda coming in at a run, Cinquo
Centavos and Sanchez by this time having completed their surgery on
Alamo. He straightened in his saddle and drew tighter his belt, pushing
his hat back on his furrowed forehead. Even now the burden of his
responsibility was on his shoulders, and would be until the herd was
sold; and the proximity of town brought certain problems.

“Del”—he turned to his point man, whom he found seated on the ground
engaged in wiping and reloading his revolver—“you ride on down to the
hotel and tell Miss Taisie I want her to stay in town to-night at the
hotel. She’ll be safe with Milly along. The rest of us will come in when
we can; maybe some to-night. This is the Fourth of July by the almanac,
but there ain’t going to be no Fourth of July so long as there is any
chance of this here bunch of cows taking another run; and, of course, we
can’t tell just when we’ll make any kind of sale.”

Some of the men were disposed to grumble at the restriction of their
range liberties, but the trail boss remained firm. Del Williams, quiet
as usual, mounted and rode off toward town. He looked over his shoulder
as he rode off alone toward the town, whose smoke was distinguishable
across the prairies. Most of the other men were off at edges of the
herd, all of them intent on gentling them down, with the exception of
one.

Cal Dalhart knew that an agreed truce now had terminated. Up to this
time both he and Williams had stood by their promise to let their
quarrel wait until they had reached Abilene; and, truth to say, both
scrupulously had refrained from word or act of hostility till now. But
at the suspicion that his rival intended to forestall him, the pent-up
wrath of Dalhart blazed high upon the instant. Without asking consent of
any one he spurred out from his own place on the herd a quarter of a
mile away. Nabours saw him, but could not or did not attempt to call him
back. He shook his head; a sense of impending trouble came to him.

“Who was that man rid off yan just now, boy?” Dalhart demanded of Buck
the cook.

“Who dat? Why dat’s Mister Del. He rid pint wif you all summer—you doan
know him?”

Dalhart spurred off, but did not overtake his man outside the town
limits. He saw Williams’ horse standing with the reins down in front of
the door of the Drovers’ Cottage, near to Taisie’s cart; a sight which
filled him with rage. A few moments later he himself flung off and also
entered.

Williams had found the office room empty. Hearing voices, as he thought
on the floor above, he passed upstairs, ignorant of the ways of hotels
and looking for some one who might tell him where he might find Miss
Taisie Lockhart.

He exulted in the success of their experiment as though the herd were
all his own. His eyes were filled with a glorious picture. In fancy he
saw her triumphant, as though swimming upon a cloud, radiant, scarce
touching the earth. He had seen her thus in camp a hundred times,
himself standing apart, distant, hungrily regarding. No actual interview
between them had taken place since they had left the home ranch of Del
Sol. He never had declared himself actually, never had spoken a word of
his love. She had seemed always a divinity too far off for his
aspirations. But now he was about to see her. He swore now he would
touch her hand, would stand face to face with her alone. The thought of
this was too much for Del Williams. Suddenly he began to tremble in his
fear of her and his great and terrible love for her, as reverent and as
loyal as any love man ever bore a woman. His courage left him. His limbs
grew weak. Seeking a temporary truce with the situation, he turned into
one of the little rooms which made off from the narrow hall and seated
himself upon the bed, intending to pull himself together before he
sought her further.

Dalhart, following up his quarry, also found the office empty. Hearing
footfalls on the floor above, he also ran up the stair, looking for the
man whom he knew to be somewhere in the house—the hotel was not yet
really fully open for business. He found himself also in the upper hall,
a long Marathon course between rows of doors all just alike, leading
into rooms all just alike, all furnished just alike and each divided
from the others by a shackling raw board partition, of ceiling loosely
tongued and grooved. In each room was a single chair, a single washbowl,
a single towel, a single bar of soap, a single coat hook on the back of
the door. In each room sat a single bed, in each precisely at the same
place—against the partition near the single window and facing the
single door. Hotel making and hotel keeping still were in their infancy
in Kansas.

Seeing no one in the hall, and still seeking for the sound he had heard,
Dalhart, moody and blood mad—a more ruthless and dangerous man than
Williams—entered one of these rooms to peer about. He found no one,
flung himself down upon the bed. He leaned against the partition,
causing it to rock somewhat.

Del Williams heard him but did not know who he was. He sat up,
listening, his hand on his revolver, for a situation of doubt was
usually one of danger in that border country.

The two men now were but a few yards apart, though separated by three of
the thin board partitions.

Dalhart called aloud, “You Williams! Where are you? You are hiding, you
damned sneak! Come on out if you dare!”

Williams heard his call. He rose eagerly to meet the challenge, fear of
any man unknown in his heart, his weapon in his hand ready to meet this
man. A swift thought came to him that he had been riding hard, so that
the caps on the cylinder tubes might have become disengaged. He pulled
up the revolver and overran the cylinder rapidly to see that the piece
was in perfect order, as now it needed to be.

Dalhart heard the movement somewhere beyond him. He stepped to his own
door just as Williams was about to emerge at his. Then came a report.
Immediately upon it came a grunt or groan, the fall of the body of a man
upon the floor.

Del Williams was himself in a flash. He fully had intended to shoot
Dalhart deliberately. Now he had shot him practically by accident. The
barrel, which happened to be just at the level of the man’s body as
Williams whirled the cylinder, discharged the heavy ball as fatally as
though by intent. The hammer must have been hit with his thumb. He never
knew how it happened; no man ever does know how these things happen. The
bullet pierced one partition after another. It had force enough left,
driven by the heavy charge of fine rifle powder, to penetrate also the
chest wall of a man’s body.

Dalhart fell, nor was it given to him to see the man who had killed him.
If ever he heard the running feet of that man, or saw his glance cast
into the room as he ran, no one ever could tell. He was dead the instant
after the ball struck him.

A man met Williams in the front room, at the foot of the stair.

“What was that?” he demanded. “Who shot?”

Williams smiled.

“I reckon some fellow up there must have let off his gun by mistake.
Maybe he has got too much liquor on board. Leave him go; he won’t hurt
nobody.”

He passed out deliberately; deliberately gathered the reins of his
horse; deliberately swung into the saddle and turned down the street.

Dan McMasters and Wild Bill Hickok, a block away, both had heard the
sound of the shot and were walking toward the door.

“How are you, Del!” called McMasters. “I’m glad you got through all
right.”

Del Williams stopped, leaned over and shook hands with McMasters, whom
he had not seen north of the Washita crossing.

“Why, everything’s fine,” said he. “We’re holding the herd about three
miles north. Come on out and see us. So long. I got to be going now.”

He waved his hand, passed on at a gentle trot.

But Del Williams did not hold his trot. He did not ride to a saloon,
neither did he swing northward out of town to join the herd. To the
contrary, he jerked his horse’s head around to the south, sunk home the
spurs and left town, heading south, as fast as a good cow horse could
carry him.

Many men saw him cross the town of Abilene at speed, but a cowman on a
running horse was no new sight on that busy day. Liquor was flowing at
every bar. Del Williams, coatless, penniless, ragged, bearded, unkempt,
not a dollar in a pocket and without a morsel of food, had no one to say
him nay as he headed back down the long trail which just now had found
its end. Plenty of men remembered how he looked. But no man, friend or
stranger, ever looked on him again in that part of the world. He
disappeared as though some quicksand had engulfed him.

So passed poor Del Williams, as good a cowman as ever crossed the Red
River. Poor Del Williams, for after all he had not seen the face of the
woman whom he adored, had not touched her hand, had never spoken to her
a word of the love he had given her since his own boyhood. He knew that
a murderer might never look into her face. True, he knew that the record
of the shot, piercing the several partitions, would have been a perfect
alibi as an accidental case of homicide. But he knew also that he had
been a murderer in his heart. So he never looked into Taisie Lockhart’s
eyes and never touched her hand at all. And to this day no man knows
what ever became of Del Williams, for no word ever came back from him.
Perhaps he got into Old Mexico; perhaps he disappeared somewhere in the
Indian Nations; perhaps he lived to old age and perhaps he did not live
twenty-four hours.

Dan McMasters and Wild Bill Hickok, quasi officers of the law, after
their hurried investigation, looked one into the other’s eyes and agreed
that it would have been absolutely impossible for a man to kill another
man in that way except by accident. In that case, and in Abilene at that
time, there remained no need to question the killer or to pursue him.
Neither of them asked or mentioned the name of the rider heading south,
and if either had a suspicion, neither voiced it.

                               CHAPTER XL
                         MR. RUDABAUGH APPEARS

LEN Hersey, one of the swing men, condescended to converse with Cinquo
Centavos, the fourteen-year-old horse herder. They sat their horses in
the sunshine, watching the distant herd contentedly grazing. The wind
was very soft and the sky very blue. Life would have been a pleasant
thing for them both had they not been so close to town. They planned
metropolitan conquest, both of them.

“I want to take a ride on the railroad kyars afore I go back home,”
resumed Cinquo. “If I didn’t, my folks wouldn’t think I wasn’t much
noways.”

“Them kyars probably don’t go nowheres near where you live at,” replied
Len. “I don’t feel like taking no chances. Ef I am on a horse I’m all
right; but ef a man’s on the kyars, where is he?

“If you was in town what would you advise fer to buy first, Cinquo?” he
continued.

“Some onions and some fried potatoes and pie first, I reckon,” replied
the boy. “Then some ammernition. Then maybe I’d get my hair cut. I had
orter have some new pants. I mean ef I had any money.”

“And then a shave?”

The boy blushed red.

“I reckon I can get shaves if I pay the man,” said he, “and I reckon I
am going to have plenty of money afore long. What’re you going to do?”

“Fust thing I am going to do when I get to town,” replied Len, “I am
going to get a drink.”

“Then what?”

His companion gazed in deep thought.

“Then I think I’ll get another drink. Fur as I can see now, that’s about
how I’m going to perceed. Of course, I may take both drinks at oncet. I
can take other things under advisement, as the justice of the peace
said. Maybe I would buy me a new pair pants; maybe I’d work around to
the barber atter a while. When I got fixed up I might go and see what
kind o’ dancin’ was in this town. Oh, yes! I did fergit about my shirt.
I may buy me a shirt—ef there’s any kind of monte played in Aberlene.”

They both saw approaching across the prairies to the eastward a
low-lying cloud of smoke. It was the first railroad train either of them
had ever seen. They became very much excited.

“Look at her come!” said Cinquo. “Bet I ain’t skeered to ride on that
thing! Now you see!”

“You’re a long ways off when you say it!” scoffed Len Hersey. “She’s
goin’ to look a heap bigger and dangerouser, clost up. I bet we’d have
to blindfold you and put two ropes on you afore we could put you on that
there train, and then you’d be so skeered you’d shake your spurs off.”

“I ain’t got no more shakes than what you have,” said the boy. “You
ain’t saw any more railroad kyars than what I have. But I don’t reckon
I’ll go to town untel we sell our cows.”

“Nor me,” nodded Len. “But did you ever see such a town like this here
one, now? They don’t savvy dobe none, it seems like; they don’t dry no
mud; they just cut slabs of grass roots and build ’em up into a house,
and put on a dirt roof. I looked inside of one as I rid by. It was lined
with red caliker, walls and ceilings; no gypsum to white it up, nor
nothing. Yet humans was livin’ in it. They live in them dugouts,
too—just push a hole back into a bank an’ crawl in atter the hole like
badgers. An’ there ain’t no trees; an’ when they do have trees, hain’t
no moss on ’em. I ain’t saw a cactus nowheres, an’ as fer mesquite, I’m
a notion to ride into one o’ these plum thickets an’ stick some plum
thorns in my laigs, so’s’t a feller kin feel more nache’l.”

Meantime the continuous shriek of the locomotive whistle had brought to
the station practically the entire population of the city of Abilene. It
was a great day—a trail herd and a railroad train all in one day.

From the four coaches which made up the train there now descended an
astonishing number of men, comprising all sorts and conditions of
humanity. Some obviously were Eastern, and as many bore the imprint of
the border. All of them pushed on toward the head of the train. There
was no station building. The Drovers’ Cottage stood then for all of
Abilene, and in that general direction the newcomers made their way. The
ubiquitous McCoyne was first to greet them.

“Right this way, gentlemen!” said he. “Let me lead you to our hotel, the
finest in the West. Welcome to Abilene, my friends! Yonder is the
stockyards. I suppose some of you are looking after cattle. There is
some in there now, and there is three thousand more right north of town.
If you’re looking for cattle, we’ve got them and don’t you never doubt
it! Gentlemen, you certainly have come to the right place. Boys, where’s
the band?”

With some sort of instinct of his own McCoyne more especially addressed
a quiet-looking sandy-bearded man in dark clothing, who seemed to be a
man of distinct purposes and direct methods in life.

“How’d you like to ride out this evening and see our herd? They’ve just
got in from Texas this morning.”

The stranger made a noncommittal reply to the effect that he was hungry.
The crowd of newcomers began to disintegrate. Men looked after their
hand bags, their rifles. Picturesque, certainly, was the personnel of
every westbound train in Kansas at that time, when the head of steel was
but little beyond the boom town of Abilene, first cow camp of Kansas.

Hickok and McMasters stood near the door of the Drovers’ Cottage,
looking at the stirring and curious scene before them. The man of the
Northern border was quiet after his fashion, moody. He turned suddenly
to Dan McMasters.

“Look at them come!” he said. “Next year they’ll be here in thousands;
and there’ll be cattle here in thousands too.”

McMasters nodded. The older man went on:

“Let me give you some advice. There is going to be big money in raising
and selling cattle right up in this country; more money than there will
be in trailing them north and selling at the road. If you’ll listen to
me, you’ll get some land of your own up here. I’ll tell you where you
can get a ranch, and a good one, over on the Smoky Hill, with all
outdoors for your pasture. Put some cows on there. They’ll get fatter
here than they ever will in Texas, though you don’t believe it. I’ve
seen cattle up here, around the Army posts—and fat too. There’s no
money in selling thin cattle. You’ll find that out if you keep at it.
I’ve lived up here, north of the tick line, longer than you have.”

McMasters nodded.

“I’ve been studying this country now for quite a while,” said he. “I’ve
seen some wintered cattle up in here, and as you say they were heavier.
There’s a lot to be learned by Texas men. They don’t know that there is
any world north of thirty-six. They’re still fighting the war, down in
my state.”

“Huh! Well, this trial outlet for your cattle’ll end the war quicker
than all your speech makers ever will.

“Of course,” he continued, “if you settle down to ranching you’ve got to
get married some time. It’s a hard life for a woman here on the front,
with the Indians not so far away. They tell me you have brought a young
woman up here with this herd. I haven’t seen her. Lou Gore took her in
charge and I’ll bet she’ll keep her close. She’s young? She can ride?
Why don’t you marry her and settle down up here?”

He laughed at his conceit.

“You can bring up cattle from below as fast as you need more stock.
Marry and settle down, son, and go into the sheriff business up here.
I’ll give you my recommendation that you’re the best pistol shot I ever
saw, unless it’s myself, and I’m not any too damn sure of that last.

“I’d bring Agnes out here if I was in a little different line of work
myself,” he added. “That’s my wife.”

No man ever heard him speak in other but terms of gentleness of the
woman who had married him, knowing what he was.

“I have got to finish my work first before I can settle down,” said Dan
McMasters, almost as sad and moody as his companion here—indeed,
singularly like to him.

Suddenly he touched the arm of Wild Bill, spoke in a low voice.

“Look!” said he, “Don’t move! There’s our man! That’s Rudabaugh down
there by the last car! So that’s the way he took to get here!”

“Yes,” smiled Hickok, only amusement on his face. “He’s got here too
late to stop that herd from making Abilene.”

“Yes; but he got here at just the right time, for all that!”

McMasters’ face was cold. The mask of expressionlessness again was
covering it. His eyes, narrow, the skin of the upper eyelids drawn
triangularly down, never left the man for whom so long and patiently he
had been waiting.

                              CHAPTER XLI
                            EASTERN CAPITAL

THE passengers who descended from the train left the coaches nearly
empty. The head of steel was to the westward and new towns were
projected for thirty miles; but the greater fame of Abilene, the city of
the future stockyards, capital of a coming cow trade, still acted as
magnet for a majority of the traders and buyers, adventurers, hunters,
all the curious-minded gentry then eagerly exploiting a West which never
yet had lived. The rumors of northern drives of Texas cattle had in some
way gone abroad; this first arrival was a news event of the first water.

Before these arrivals now spread the vastest, sweetest empire that ever
fell to gaze of any adventurers of new fortunes. The very feel of it was
in the warm but vital air that blew across the waving prairies; lay in
the far horizon that swept untarnished by any settler’s smoke, far as
the eye might reach. The flowers here also had not yet known a bee and
there was not a weed. At times the edge of the buffalo grass was east of
the Western border. The bluestem had not yet fully got to Abilene. The
buffalo that year moved a little farther west. Their wallows dotted the
surface of the earth thereabout for years to come. The great
checkerboard of the gods, four vast spaces in the corners of the
greatest crossroads of the world, still lay out as the Range—mesquite
and grama in the Southwest, bunch grass and buffalo grass in the
Northwest; native—and later bluestem—grasses in the Northeast; redtop
and its fellows in the Southeast; all lapping, encroaching, passing,
augmenting as the swift years altered the range. From Spanish-moss lands
to the sagebrush steppes, from the scant grama to the waist-high green,
lay the country of the cows. At that time it was but imperfectly known.
The original, the aboriginal titles had not yet been extinguished.

The raw little village of itself meant not so much to most of these men,
who had seen such villages before, east of the Missouri. The scanty
edifices were accepted at least as sufficient. There were saloons,
stores, a hotel. The travelers looked to their weapons and their
luggage, and then, each after his own fashion, headed out toward the
signs which made offerings to civilized man. Most went to the saloons, a
few moved toward the Drovers’ Cottage, where even now, before her formal
opening, Lou Gore was making mankind comfortable on the frontier. Others
wandered up and down the street, gazing this way or that. None passed
the corrals of the Abilene Stockyards without a curious gaze at the
gaunt, long-haired creatures which now marked a renaissance of the
entire cattle trade in America. It all was crude, young, new and
unspeakably alluring—this strange new world, offspring of time and the
whim of the immortal gods at play on their great four-squared
checkerboard.

McMasters called Hickok aside, spoke to him quietly, after a time.

“Our men have gone over to the new saloon,” said he. “I see one is
headed for the Twin Livery Barn. They’ve probably got horses there, or
are looking for some.”

“Well,” said Hickok, “you know them best. They haven’t made any break
yet and I’ve got nothing on them. None of them ever harmed me. What’s
the game?”

“I want you to watch them for a little while,” replied McMasters. “I’ll
not leave much to you except the watching. I’ll be with you very soon.
Just now I want to find out what’s going to be done about the sale of
this herd. McCoyne has got some man in tow; and yon’s Nabours, the Del
Sol trail boss—he’s just come in. I think I ought to know what goes on
there.”

McCoyne, the exuberant and irresistible prophet of Abilene, indeed now
was bringing forward a stranger, a bearded, stocky, self-contained man
of nondescript dress, yet rather of Western look himself. The three
little groups now joined.

“Mr. McMasters,” begun McCoyne, “and you, too, Mr. Nabours, and Marshal
Hickok, this, now, is Mr. Pattison, just come to town. He’s in the
market to buy some range stuff. He’s been in the packing business in
Indianapolis for several years, and he has just come out to Junction
City, a couple of hours over east, to start a packing plant of his own
out here; though I don’t see why he didn’t pick on Abilene for that.
Anyhow he has to come here for his cattle.”

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the stranger thus introduced, smiling
humorously. “I am glad to meet you. Yes, I am looking for some cattle. I
don’t know how you guessed it.”

“Where’d you want them delivered?” inquired Jim Nabours, coming to the
thing on his own mind. “We got some cows. I can testify they’re good
travelers.”

“Well, not far,” replied Pattison. “That some of your cattle over in the
pens? Junction City is just over here a couple of days’ march. I am
going to try to pack a few cattle in there this year. I shouldn’t wonder
if we started some stockyards in Kansas City before long. My friend, old
Mitch, has been talking of it a long time. If they get the yards it
won’t be long until a packing house is started there. That would save a
lot of distance in shipping East.

“I know that two Milwaukee and Chicago men—Plankinton is the name of
one and Armour, I think, is the other man—well, they are figuring on
going into the packing-house business in Kansas City. They’ve got a man
out there now, looking things over.”

“Then where does it leave you at Junction City?” demanded McCoyne.

Pattison spread out his hands with a shrug.

“Of course, their man is crazy. He’s talking of using a hundred thousand
cattle every year. I shouldn’t wonder if they did put down half that
many. All this Western country is going to take a mighty jump since the
railroad has gone West. That’s why I am here, of course. I’ve come out
to look over this whole business myself. If it’s all the same to you I’d
like to look over your herd. Mr. McCoyne says it isn’t far out to where
you are holding it.”

“How’d right now do?” asked Nabours calmly. “How much time do you want
to look over our cows? With me it’s sharp’s the word and quick’s the
motion.”

“About five minutes. I’ve seen your sample in the corrals here. How much
a pound do you figure you ought to get?”

“How much a pound? I don’t know nothing about that. I don’t know how
much a cow weighs.”

“Well, I can tell you. One of your sample steers will weigh about nine
hundred pounds. They look like greyhounds crossed on a window shutter.
Two cents a pound would be a lot for them. Now, a fat steer will weigh
twelve hundred instead of nine hundred, and he’ll bring four cents
instead of two. Say I give you eighteen dollars for your lean steers,
right off the trail. I could give you thirty-six dollars if they was
fat; say if they’d been wintered up here and fed north.”

“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, “you’re talking foolish, though pleasing. I
don’t know how much nine hundred pounds is, nor twelve hundred pounds;
but when you tell me any Texas steer is worth more than thirty dollars
you make me think you ain’t got no money to buy nothing. You don’t mean
to say that in the presence of witnesses?”

“I certainly do mean to say it,” rejoined Pattison. “But that isn’t all.
Your Texas steers will bring a good deal more than thirty dollars when
you have taken time to move them up north of the edge of winter and
ranged them and fattened them and bred the horns off of them. That can
all be done in five years.”

“I ain’t got no five years,” said Jim Nabours. “You allowed five minutes
will do. Well, let’s climb on top our broncs and ride out and see; it’s
only about two miles or so north.

“Come on, Dan.” He turned towards McMasters. “Ride along with us. I rely
some on your judgment.”

McMasters turned toward Hickok with a quiet word or so, and waving his
hand strolled off to pick up his own horse. McCoyne, anxious as he was
to see a trade effected, did not dare forsake the city of Abilene at so
critical a time. The newly christened Lone Star was full. Besides, he
was mayor of the town.

“Bill,” said he, accosting Hickok, “I got you here now, and I’m going to
have you elected town marshal. We can’t hold any election right now, and
we may need a town marshal right soon. I appoint you marshal right now,
and Mr. McMasters as your deputy.”

Hickok looked at him lazily and smiled.

                              CHAPTER XLII
                     TWENTY STRAIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE

THE great herd, scattered over a mile of grazing ground, by now was
well quieted. Wearied by their own exertions, some of the animals were
lying down, as though aware that the end of their journey was at hand;
the remainder scattered, grazing contentedly. Men were on guard here and
there at the edges of the herd; others were at the fire, eating. A
sudden excitement arose among the cow hands when word passed that a
buyer was on the scene, for so they interpreted the advent of Nabours
and his companions. Nabours waved a hand with genuine cowman enthusiasm.

“Look at them!” he exclaimed. “Did you ever see a finer outfit of cows
in your borned days, Mr. Pattison?”