North To The Rails Page 3

  French Williams’ expression had tightened a little as Chantry talked, but his eyes had never left Tom’s face.

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I do not. That is why I am offering you one-third of the sale price of the herd if you will drive my cattle to the railhead.”

  For a moment there was silence in the saloon, and then French Williams chuckled. “Sit down,” he said. “I want to buy you a drink.”

  “All right, and I’ll buy you one.”

  Chantry sat down, and Williams’ black eyes glinted with amusement.

  “You don’t think I’ll rook you?”

  “No. I think you’re a man of your word.”

  French eyed him curiously. “You’re either a damn fool or you’re pretty smart. Well, we’ll see who’s smart and who isn’t. You think I’m honest and I think you’ve got sand, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do.

  “I will take your herd to the railhead for expenses … if you will come with us and stay all the way through. If you don’t stay with it, I take it all … every last steer.”

  French was smiling, his black eyes taunting.

  “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  Chantry pushed the bottle toward him. “Pour your drink, French. We’re in business.”

  “You’ll take it?”

  “Of course.”

  Chantry turned toward the bar. “Mr. Dauber? Let’s talk about cattle.”

  Lee Dauber walked over to the table, a glass in his hand. “I can deliver. How do I know you can pay?”

  Tom Chantry placed his letter of credit on the table. “There it is.”

  Dauber dismissed it with a gesture. “A piece of paper. I go by a man’s word. You backed down for Dutch Akin. How do I know your word is good?”

  French Williams looked up. “Lee? I say his word is good. Any argument?”

  Lee Dauber shrugged. “Your funeral, French. All right, we’ll dicker. I’ve got a thousand head, give or take a few.”

  For an hour the talk went on, and at the end of it Tom Chantry held title to twenty-two hundred head of cattle, stock for which he had paid with sums drawn from his letter of credit. Of the money behind that letter of credit only a little of it was his own; the remainder belonged to Earnshaw and Company.

  With luck the drive would take them thirty days, perhaps a bit more or less; and if he made it through, he would have a herd whose price would not be less than fifty thousand dollars, of which two-thirds would be sheer profit. On the other hand, if he failed he would lose everything, and Earnshaw would take a heavy loss.

  He was guessing on the time it would take to get the herd to the railhead, for he had never made a drive with cattle, although he knew something of the problems involved. Moreover, the railroad was moving west … he was not sure French Williams knew that, and he did not intend to tell him.

  The railroad had been stalled at Dodge City for several years because of the financial depression and the inability to raise money for the investment. Now the rails had started moving again, and when he left the railroad he had been assured they could hold to a speed of about a mile a day, laying track. That might be optimistic … what he was going to need was information, information for himself alone.

  There was always the chance of some casual traveler relaying the knowledge, for it was certainly no secret, but rumors had been flying during all the time since construction stopped, and many western men had simply given up believing anything until they saw it.

  Alone that night in his room, Tom Chantry stretched out on his bed, hands clasped behind his head, and thought the thing through.

  He was under no illusions about French Williams. The man was hard as nails and dangerous as a rattler, but he was a man of fierce pride, and Chantry knew he had touched it when he called him a man of his word.

  Obviously French was a gambler. It was a game of winner-take-all, and French was not the kind of man to enjoy losing. What he was gambling on was, in essence, Chantry’s staying quality. Tom Chantry was no fool, and he knew that French Williams would make it very rough.

  Did Williams believe him a coward? That remained to be seen. More likely than not he had no thoughts on the matter, and cared less. He would test Chantry’s nerve with sadistic pleasure … and would be an interested observer of Chantry’s reactions.

  Actually, French Williams was risking only his time. And he might like a ride to Dodge anyway. The risk was all for Tom Chantry; the gain, if he won, would be great. But had he any right to take such a risk with another man’s money?

  They needed beef badly if they were to continue operations as planned. Tom Chantry considered the gamble he had taken and admitted, reluctantly, that he had been foolish. He had been challenged, and like any green kid he had accepted the challenge.

  Now he must plan. He must try to foresee what French would do. The most obvious thing was the old western trick of giving him a bad horse to ride, and this he had every right to expect. It was usual for any tenderfoot on a cow ranch or a cattle drive to be given a bad horse just as a joke.

  Well, let them try. He had been riding horses since he was a child, and even back east he had never quit riding. He had handled some pretty bad ones, but he doubted that he had tangled with anything like what they could give him out here, and he was sure they were even now planning on that.

  He knew it was going to be rough, especially as he had taken water for Dutch Akin. No cowhand would consider that anything but cowardice, and they would have nothing but contempt for him.

  At daybreak he was up, and after a quick breakfast he went to the livery stable and bought two horses. Both were tough and well-seasoned, and he paid premium prices for them. He bargained, but the horse dealer knew he wanted horses and knew what he wanted them for. He got good horses, and the price he finally paid was not as bad as he had expected. One was a line-back dun, the other a blue roan, both bigger than the usual cow horse, but agile enough. The dun was an excellent cutting horse, the blue roan was fair; both had the look of possessing staying quality. “Which I’d better have myself,” he said to himself.

  He bought a used saddle, a blanket, and all the essential gear. At the general store he bought a slicker, a bedroll, and a little other equipment.

  “You better have yourself a gun,” the storekeeper suggested.

  Chantry shook his head, smiling. “I doubt if I’ll need it. I will have a Winchester, though. I’ve never killed a buffalo, and we might need the meat.”

  He bought a Winchester ‘73 and four hundred rounds of ammunition. “If I am going to use this,” he commented, “I’d better have some practice.”

  “Better not try it near a cattle herd,” the storekeeper said dryly, “or you’ll have a stampede.”

  They all thought him a tenderfoot, he reflected, and in one sense it was true, but he was western-born and a lot had soaked in that stayed with him. One did not live in the environment during the impressionable years and not retain something from it.

  His father had been a man who talked of his work and his life, and he was a man who had known men and stock, who had pioneered in wild country. Had he been trying, even then, to instruct his son? After all, what did a father have to pass on to his children but his own personal reaction to the world? Of what use was experience if one could not pass on at least a little of what one had learned?

  For the first time Tom Chantry thought of that, and suddenly he was seeing his father in a new light. Like many another son, he had failed to understand the true nature of the man who was his father until he himself began to cope with the problems of which life is made up.

  They were to make their gather and pool the cattle on the Vermejo River, east and a bit north of Cimarron, and their drive would begin from there.

  He would go there and join them. He would ride his own horses, but if they suggested a bad one, he would try it. He could be thrown, but he could also get back on. Tom Chantry decided he knew what to expect, and he was prepared for it. The trouble was, h
e did not know French Williams.

  He knew little enough about the Vermejo River. Only that it began somewhere in the Sangre de Cristos and flowed down from the mountains, across the old Santa Fe Trail to lose itself, so far as he knew, somewhere in the open country beyond.

  Riding the blue roan and leading the dun, he started for the camp on the Vermejo. He told himself he was ready for anything, and he was still telling himself that when he spotted the camp under some cottonwoods.

  There was already a good gathering of cattle, and he could see various riders bringing in more. He passed near one rider, a tall, lean man with red hair, but the rider seemed not to notice him, although Chantry spoke.

  He rode up to the chuck wagon and swung down. French Williams was leaning back against his bedroll, smiling. And it was not a pleasant smile. It was taunting, challenging, showing, something that might be contempt, and might be curiosity. As Tom Chantry walked forward and started to speak, a man came from behind the chuck wagon. He stepped out and stopped, waiting.

  The man was Dutch Akin.

  Chapter Four

  FOR A moment all action was suspended. Tom Chantry could feel the heavy pounding of his heart, and his mouth was dry, but when he spoke his voice was clear and steady. “Hello, Dutch. Want some coffee?”

  This was what Chantry had not expected, yet it was what he might have expected from French Williams. And it was an indication of the extent to which Williams was prepared to go.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Dutch said.

  Chantry picked up the pot and filled

  Dutch’s cup, then his own. “Sorry about the other night, Dutch,” he said, “but I had no reason to kill you, and I had no wish to die.”

  Dutch shrugged uncomfortably. Sober, he was not a belligerent man, nor was he given to talk. If you had a job to do, you did it. If you had a man to shoot, you shot him. But talking about it made him uneasy, wanting to be away and finished with it. “’So all right,” he said, gulping the coffee. “I got no argument with you.”

  French Williams sat up. If he was disappointed it did not show, and Tom Chantry doubted that he was. It had been in the nature of an experiment, and had they killed each other he would have been no more disturbed.

  Chantry indicated the cattle. “They’re in good shape. Some of your stuff?”

  “Uh-huh,” French said. “They’ve been held in the high meadows where there’s lots of good grama.” He glanced toward the horses. “I see you got yourself some horses. Two won’t be enough, you know.”

  Chantry’s expression was bland. “I had an idea you’d already selected some mounts for me, French, so I only bought two.”

  “You’d ride a horse I’d pick for you?”

  “Why not? Well, let’s just say I’d try.”

  The other hands who had been loafing about, obviously to see what would happen when he met Dutch Akin, now drifted off about their work. Tom Chantry drank his coffee slowly, studying the various men, watching the work, and enjoying the brief respite from what was to come.

  He was no cowhand and would not attempt to compete with them on their own ground. He could round up cattle, he could read brands, and so could make himself generally useful. He would not be an idler. It would be wise to move slowly at first, to see who could do what, and generally become acquainted.

  He had gained no ground by facing Dutch. He had simply done what had to be done, and he knew the hands would be waiting to see what kind of a man he was—and most of them, he felt sure, had made up their minds about that.

  As he watched the cattle the enormity of what he had undertaken slowly came over him. His own capital he was free to do with as he saw fit, but he had gambled a large sum that belonged to Earnshaw and Company. Therefore there was no choice. The herd must go through, and it must arrive in good shape and be sold to advantage … no matter what the cost to him.

  Riders were bringing in small bunches of cattle from draws and breaks. Saddling the dun, he rode out and helped here and there, at the same time noting the brands. All of those being held had come from French Williams’ own outfit. Some of the brands were fresh, but he saw no evidence of reworking.

  At daybreak he was on the range with the others, and was there when Lee Dauber’s cattle began to arrive. They came divided into three herds for easy handling, and Dauber moved them along at a good clip. These were big, rangy steers, older than most of Williams’ stuff, and in not as good shape.

  During the following days while the cattle were being brought together for the drive to the railhead, he worked hard, harder than he had ever worked before. He was up before the first streak of light in the morning sky, and tumbled into his bedroll when supper was over. With the others he stood night guard, and in many ways that came to be the best time.

  Only three men rode night guard at a time, and they were scattered, meeting only at intervals as they rode around the sleeping herd. It was a time for thinking, a time for remembering. Yet, oddly, he rarely thought of Doris, and rarely of his home in the East. His thoughts kept reaching back into his boyhood, before his father was killed.

  He remembered the hot, still hours in the town, walking barefooted up the dusty street, seeing the tall, still-faced men in boots and spurs sitting along the boardwalk in front of the hotel, or seeing them leaning on the corral bars, watching the horses.

  The parched brown prairie, long without rain, the tumbleweeds rolling before the wind under dark, rain-filled clouds, the blue streaks of a distant rainstorm viewed from far off … the call of quail at sundown … his father washing his face and hands in the tin basin outside the kitchen door, sleeves rolled up, showing the white of his arms where the sun never reached.

  He remembered the Indians who came to the ranch, squatting around near the corral, and his father feeding them, carrying the food to them himself … and the night the wounded brave had ridden up to the house, clinging one-handed to his horse’s mane. That was on the old ranch, before Pa lost it in the big freeze … where had that ranch been, anyway? His memories were mostly from the later period when Pa was marshal.

  They had gone back to the ranch once, all of them, driving in a buckboard. “There it is, Helen,” Pa had said, “fifteen years of brutal hard work and a lot of dreams, all gone in one freeze.”

  Tom Chantry remembered the tall old cottonwoods around the house, the log cabin his father had built, then added to … the cold water from the hand-dug well. “I planned all this for you, Tom,” his father had said, “but I reckoned without the snow and the cold.”

  The old ranch had been somewhere east of here, he believed. A boy doesn’t have much sense of location when he is six.

  Suddenly, he remembered The Hole. At least, that was what he called it.

  There had been a small spring about a mile from the ranch, and he had ridden over there once when he was about six. The spring came down from under an overhang of rock, about two feet off the ground, and the water fell into a rock basin, trickled over its lip and down into the meadow below, where it was again swallowed up.

  Some dirt had fallen into the spring from one of the overhanging banks, and he was scooping it out with his hands when at the back of the spring where the water ran down from the darkness under the rock, he saw The Hole.

  Actually, it was where the water came from, but the opening was much bigger than the space taken up by the trickle of water. Peering back into the deepest shadow, he could see the hole was about three feet across and almost that in height. He stood barefooted in the cold water, and could look back into the hole, but could make out nothing. Looking down at his feet, he could just see the light across the water.

  Evidently spring rains had shot out of the hole with some force and had gradually worn the rock back until there was space enough for a boy to stand. With a long stick he poked into the darkness. There was a pool of water where it trickled over the edge, but his stick could not reach either wall or roof. Later, with a longer stick he probed the darkness and succeeded in touching roc
k on the right side of the stream. Overhead he could find nothing, but there was a rock floor on the left of the stream.

  From outside there was no indication of anything like the cave. There was only a dip in the prairie, a natural runoff for water, and a slab of rock was exposed from under which the water ran. Anyone stopping by for a drink would suspect nothing. Although a man might enter the opening once he knew of it, only a child or a small animal would be likely to find it.

  He named the place The Hole, and told his father about it.

  All that was long ago … he had not thought of The Hole for twenty years that he could recall.

  Tom Chantry gave no orders. If he saw anything that needed doing he did it himself, or reported it to French. He had no friends in the outfit, although French talked to him occasionally. Chantry was puzzled by him. Of French’s background he knew nothing, but somehow the man gave him the impression that he had education, and a better background than most of the men in the outfit, but French volunteered nothing, and Tom Chantry knew better than to ask.

  In general, the men ignored him. Oddly enough, when he did begin to make a friend it was Dutch Akin, of all people.

  It began casually enough. He was riding back to the chuck wagon when he saw another rider following a route that would bring them together. Not until they were too close to turn aside did either recognize the other. It was Dutch.

  “Beautiful country, Dutch,” Chantry said.

  Dutch merely grunted, then after a few minutes of silence he said, “You better not rest too easy. French is a holy terror. He’s a good man to work for, gen’rally speakin’, but he’d rather stir up trouble than eat. You let down one minute an’ he’ll be all over you.”

  “Thanks. He’s not an easy man to understand.”

  “That he ain’t,” Dutch agreed dryly, “but he knows cows and no man alive is better on a trail than him.” Then he said, “Mr. Chantry, I ain’t one to stick my nose in, but if we all come up to trouble, you’d best run it. French will shoot you right into a range war … he’s quick and he goes hog-wild an’ mean. I’ve seen it.”