Читать книгу Texas Man - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 6

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DAY or night the guard at the buffalo camp was never relaxed. The fact that no Comanches or Kiowas had been seen was no evidence that they were not watching the hunters from the cap rock or the brakes. Men never left the wagons, even to go as far as the drying grounds, without carrying their rifles as a matter of course. They had their revolvers strapped on while they sat at supper. Weapons were within reach as they slept.

One morning Boone returned from the creek with a barrel of water on a lizard.^[1] Keener walked beside him as a guard. The boy drove the mule to the end of the wagon where the cooking was done.

[1]	A lizard was a fork of a tree used as a sled to haul stones or water. When employed for the latter purpose, a crosspiece held the barrel and four standards kept it from tipping over.

Lemley called to him after he had unhitched: “How’d you like to go home, son?”

The boy’s heart leaped. Every night now he had to remember that he was a man to keep from crying himself to sleep. He longed passionately to see his mother. His conscience reproached him for having left her in the way he had. He knew now, by some intuition denied him at the time, how much she must have suffered, how greatly she must have feared for his safety.

“I’d be right glad to go, seh,” he said in a quiet voice that belied the tumult in his breast.

“I’m sending back two of the wagons to-morrow loaded with hides. You can go along if you like.”

“I sure would.” Boone’s lips trembled. He felt a surge of emotion well up in him. In order that nobody might see the quick tears spring to his eyes, he stooped, took off one boot, and pretended to shake out of it a pebble.

Lemley strolled closer. “Son, don’t ever do a thing like that again—runnin’ away from home, I mean. You’ll never know how you’ve torn yore mother’s heart. I wouldn’t give a barrel of shucks for a boy who is not good to his mother. Mrs. Sibley is a fine woman, one of the very best. I hope yore father will whop you proper when you get back, an’ if I know Jim Sibley, he’ll do his duty.”

“Yes, seh, I reckon he will,” Boone agreed.

“You’re not an ornery boy, Boone. You work an’ you do what you’re told. You’re not sassy. That’s why I don’t want you to grow up ugly as galvanized sin.”

“I—I aim to be good to my mother,” Boone said, a catch in his voice.

“Well, see you do.” Lemley desisted from further preaching. “Better not ride yore pinto to-day. You’ll be using him pretty hard for two-three days.”

The wagon outfit started for the river at dawn. Three men went with it, in addition to Boone.

“I don’t reckon you’ll have any trouble with Injuns,” Lemley said to Keener, who was in charge of the party. “We haven’t seen hide or hair of any since we’ve been out. But you want to be watchin’ all the time.”

The old Confederate nodded. “I ain’t forgettin’ the old scout’s advice, ‘When you see Injun sign, be keerful; when you don’t see any, be more keerful.’ No, sir, I don’t aim to throw down on myself.”

“Push on the reins right lively an’ you had ought to reach the river late to-night. Well, I wish you luck. So long, Boone. Tell yore father I gave you a good blacksnakin’, an’ maybe he’ll go easier on you.”

The wagons moved away across the prairie, one following the other closely. Keener led the way on horseback, both to keep a lookout against attack and to pick the best road for the teams. Boone also was in the saddle. He was not in the least worried about Indians. He had heard about their atrocities all his life, but he had never seen first-hand evidence of these. Probably there were no Kiowas or Comanches within a hundred miles.

Keener did not stop the party to eat at noon. He wanted to get across the Brazos as soon as possible. They made good time until the middle of the afternoon, when the trail became very rough and jolty. Both drivers complained that their loads were slipping.

To carry hides a long distance it was necessary to fold the hides, hair side in, before they became flint dry, to load with the legs lapping in the wagon, and to tie the whole down with ropes. These hides had become too dry to fold and had been piled into the wagon flat.

The old soldier called a consultation. It was decided to hold the loads down with boom poles. About a mile to the left of the wagons ran a creek lined with cottonwoods.

“The kid an’ I will ride over to the creek an’ cut some poles,” Keener said. “We’ll take a single tree and chain with us to drag ’em back. While we’re gone you two had better reload the wagons.”

Boone rode with Keener to the creek. They had to drop down through a hackberry thicket to its banks out of sight of the wagons. The ex-Confederate swung from the saddle, laid his rifle against a log, and chopped down a couple of springy poles.

The sound of a shot reached them, of a second, then of half a dozen.

Boone never forgot the sight of Keener’s face. He looked as though Death had reached out and touched him. A wave of terror engulfed the boy.

“Injuns!” he cried.

“Stay here!” ordered Keener. “I’m going to the brow of the rise. Back in a little while.”

Keener moved swiftly up through the hackberry thicket. He knew that the Indians must have been watching the wagon outfit and must have seen him and Boone ride away. Even before he reached the ridge the firing had died down. When he saw the wagons, one glance confirmed his fears. More than a score of mounted warriors surrounded the outfit. Keener believed the teamsters were dead. They were old frontiersmen, and given time to put up a fight would never let themselves fall alive into the hands of the savages. But, dead or alive, he could do nothing for them. He had to think of the boy’s life and his own.

That they were in imminent danger he knew. Not for a moment would the raiders forget them. Through the brakes he caught sight of a party of riders heading for the creek, swinging a little to the west in order to cut them off from the camp left that morning.

Keener turned. Frightened eyes, set in the boy’s white face, stared at him.

“I couldn’t stay back there,” Boone whispered.

“We’ll have to light out an’ shove for the river,” the old soldier said.

They ran back through the thicket to their horses. Keener flung the lad into his saddle to save time. Boone’s heart was beating wildly. He would be caught and killed. If they could, they would take him alive and torture him.

“D-don’t leave me,” he begged of his friend as they rode up the hillside on the other bank of the creek.

The voice of the old Arkansan came evenly to him. “Don’t you get skeered, son. I’ll be right with you. We’ve got a head start, an’ we’ll beat ’em from where they laid the chunk. We cain’t fly, but we can catch birds.”

They caught their first sight of the pursuing Indians from the top of a little draw. At the same time the savages saw them and let out the yell that has shaken many a soul. There were perhaps a dozen of them, still on the far side of the creek, about three hundred and fifty or four hundred yards distant.

The sound of that yell, the swift glance he took at the naked riders behind, melted the boy’s courage. He began to whimper.

“None of that,” ordered his companion curtly. “You got to go through. We’ll cut the mustard if you’ve got sand in yore craw.”

They were riding for the river, still twenty miles away, over a very rough country. Keener watched his chance, guided with his knees, and fired his “big fifty” without slackening the pace. A pony stumbled and fell. The Indians answered the shot, but they were out-ranged, and their bullets fell short.

Boone was riding in front. He lifted his rifle from the saddle.

“No, son,” Keener told him. “Right now I’ll do all the shootin’ is necessary. You ‘tend to yore ridin’.”

“There’s more of ’em—over to the right,” Boone cried.

“I ’lowed there would be. We’ll keep right on for the cap rock—won’t let ’em drive us back if we can help it.”

To Boone this looked suicidal. They and the Indians were converging toward a common point.

“We’ll beat ’em to it,” the plainsman said.

His voice rang out more confidently than the facts justified. They would beat the natives to the cap rock if let alone. But how close would those coming up from the right be when they passed? If he and the boy won through it would be by a narrow margin, Keener knew. But he dared not let himself be driven into the open country to the left. Their one chance was to outride the Comanches trying to intercept them.

Keener rode on the right side of the boy, between him and the Indians. Twice he fired, riding at full speed. Presently bullets began to throw dirt in front of and behind their horses.

“We’ll make it. They can’t shoot for beans,” the old-timer shouted. “Ride hell-for-leather, son. We’ll be past in a minute now.”

Even as he spoke, a bullet struck his horse. Keener was flung over its head as it went down. Boone pulled up, hardly by conscious volition, but rather by automatic instinct. The unhorsed man snatched up his rifle, ran toward the boy, and vaulted on the back of the pony behind the saddle. Instantly Pinto struck into a gallop again.

The rock rim was less than half a mile from the fugitives. The Comanches were pressing them closely. During that wild ride Keener’s buffalo gun did deadly execution. It dropped two horses. It sent one brave flying from his mount.

As they drew close to the rock rim, Keener gave instructions. “Listen, son. We got one chance—just one. I’ll jump off above the rock rim. You keep on going. Head for the low ford. Get to yore father’s place an’ bring me help.”

“But——”

The voice of the old soldier was harsh and final. “Don’t argue. Do as I say. An’, boy, ride like the Watsons.”

They rode straight for a break in the rampart of rocks. Keener dropped from the pony, and it clambered up the rock fault like a mountain goat. Hard on its heels came the buffalo hunter.

Boone obeyed orders. Without stopping, he rode forward across the mesa. Once he looked back. No Indians were in view, but he could hear their blood-freezing yelps down below. Keener lay on his face. The boom of his buffalo gun sounded once and again. Then, borne clear on the thin air, came the defiant Rebel yell the old fellow had learned when he rode with Kirby Smith’s raiders.

The boy did not know it at the time, but that ringing yell was Wesley Keener’s gallant challenge to Death. He had come to the end of the trail and was going out like a soldier.

Steadily Boone covered the miles. A thousand times he looked back, fearful lest his eyes fall upon a line of bobbing riders. Once, in the shinnery, he started some antelopes, and the sound of them crashing through the oak bushes gave him a moment of panic.

The pinto was labouring heavily. His feet began to drag. The little paint horse had answered every call upon his strength made by Boone, but as he dragged through the sand now his feet stumbled. Dusk was falling. The river must be near, but the boy doubted if the horse could make the crossing.

He dismounted, to relieve the pinto in the heavy sand. The pony’s head drooped more and more. He staggered and fell, never to rise again.

Boone walked toward the river. Darkness came. He ploughed doggedly forward. The moon rose. At last—the river. He had struck the Brazos within a half mile of the home crossing. Following the bank, he came to the ford.

The water was low. At another time Boone might not have attempted it. But he thought of Keener, fighting for his life on the rock rim. He must get help to him. Soon.

The boy waded in. He knew the tricks of the current at this point, for he had been across the ford twenty times with his father and brothers. Here there was a sand bar. There the current ran deep. By bearing to the right one found the place where the stream was wider and therefore shallower.

Water rose to his waist but no higher. He reached in safety the farther shore. At once, exhausted though he was, he turned toward the hollow where lay his home. He reached the head of the hollow and looked down. They were there, the house, the clearing, the worm fence surrounding the pasture. The hounds were barking. He could see them running into the open, half a dozen of them, yelping a warning that someone was coming.

A lump swelled in the throat of the boy. Home at last! Home after many wanderings!

He moved down into the clearing. The dogs recognized him, ran forward, and leaped at him joyfully in a din of yelpings. He pushed through them to the house, past the ash hopper from which lye was dripping.

From inside the cabin his father’s voice called: “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Boone,” the boy answered.

The door was flung open. James Sibley, half dressed, caught Boone in his arms with a little sob of relief. He had given up his son for dead, and he was alive and close.

Callie ran out. “What is it? What is it?” she cried, sure somehow that there was news about the little boy who nowadays was never out of her mind. At sight of Boone she stopped.

“Mother!” he cried, and flung himself upon her.

She caught him to her bosom. When she spoke it was in a voice he did not recognize. “My boy! My li’l’ baby!”

The older sons joined the group.

Presently, the first burst of emotion past, James Sibley asked, “Where have you been?”

“With the buffalo hunters. Mr. Lemley sent me back with the wagons.” The boy’s voice broke. There had come back to him, forgotten for a moment in the joy of his homecoming, the tragic story of his return. “The Injuns jumped us. They—killed the drivers. Mr. Keener, he stayed to fight them.”

“With the other men?”

“No—alone. They killed his horse. He said for me to bring help.”

“How many Injuns?”

“A lot—thirty-forty, maybe.”

Sibley roused himself to instant action. He sent his sons on horseback to gather the neighbours. Three hours later, a small rescue party crossed the river headed for the rim rock. In all there were nine of them, heavily armed. Boone was at home in bed, safely tucked up by his mother. His protest that they could not find the place without him had been summarily dismissed.

“I’m sending yore father an’ the three boys. That’s enough of the family for one time,” Callie said grimly.

She knew they were going on a forlorn hope. Keener had chosen to give his life that her little boy might live. He had held back the Indians long enough for Boone to escape. But she had no expectation that the rescuers would find him alive. Moreover, there was always the chance that James Sibley’s party would be ambushed and wiped out. The Indians were in far greater numbers. They were wily warriors. The mother waited all through the night and most of the next day in an anguish of dread, and while she waited she sat in the cabin with weapons ready in case the Indians should cross the river and attack.

It was late afternoon when the posse rode into the clearing. They were tired and hungry and caked with dust. The dry lather on the horses showed how hard they had been ridden.

Callie made dinner for them while her husband told the story of their adventure. They had seen no Indians from first to last. At the rim rock they had found the body of Wesley Keener. Around him, on the rock where he lay, were dozens of shells flung out from the buffalo hunter’s gun after he had emptied them. There were no dead Indians in sight. The raiders had taken their casualties with them, as was their custom. But Keener was a dead shot. It was certain the attackers had paid heavy toll before the old soldier had sent the last shot crashing through his own brain.