Читать книгу West of the Pecos - Zane Grey - Страница 4

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LAMBETH traveled leisurely. He meant to make this long-wished-for journey an education. Most of his life he had lived in that small part of Texas which adjoined Louisiana, and partook of its physical and traditional aspects. Now he wanted to find the real Texas—the Texas that had fallen at the Alamo and that in the end had conquered Santa Ana, and was now reaching north and west, an empire in the making.

To that end he traveled leisurely, halting at the occasional hamlets, making acquaintances on the way. Sometimes when sunset overtook his little cavalcade on the march he would camp where they were, usually near grass and water. Terrill grew to love this. Sambo made her bed in the wagon under the canvas, where she felt snug, and safe from prying eyes. To wear boy’s clothes had once been fun for Terrill; now it augmented a consciousness that she was not what she pretended to be, and that sooner or later she would be found out. Otherwise as days and leagues lengthened between her and the old home she began keenly to live this adventure.

They stayed only one night in Austin, arriving after nightfall and departing at dawn. Terrill did not have much opportunity to see the city, but she did not like it. New Orleans had been the only large place she had visited, and it, with its quaint streets and houses, its French atmosphere, had been very attractive to her.

From Austin to San Antonio the road was a highway, a stage line, and a thoroughfare for travelers going south and west, and Terrill found it tremendously interesting. So long as she could be astride Dixie and her contact with people confined to the rôle of a looker-on, she was happy. To ride through the long days and at night to creep into her snug bed in the wagon brought her an ever-growing joy. She could have gone on this way forever.

When they arrived at San Antonio, however, Terrill seemed plunged into a bewildering, bustling world, noisy, raw, strange, repellent to her, and yet strangely stirring. If only she really were a boy! How anyone could take her for a boy seemed incredible. Her masculine garb concealed the feminine contours of her form, almost to her satisfaction, but her face discouraged her terribly. At the hotel where they stayed Terrill regarded herself in the mirror with great disapproval. Her sunny curls, her violet eyes, above all her smooth girlish skin—these features that had been the joy of her mother, and which somehow in the past had not been distasteful to Terrill—now accorded her increasing embarrassment, not to say alarm. She must do something about it. Nevertheless, reflection relieved her, inasmuch as it made clear there could be no particular annoyance while they were traveling. She would never see the same people twice.

She had to remain in her room, next to her father’s, unless she was accompanied by him or Sambo. Lambeth was tremendously keen on the track of something, and he went everywhere; but he took Terrill along with him whenever she wanted to go. Or he would send her to a store with Sambo. This pleased Terrill, for she had money to spend, and that was a luxury vastly pleasant. Only Sambo was disconcerting. Boy’s boots and pants did not change his adored young mistress to him.

“Sambo, stop callin’ me Miss Rill,” protested Terrill. “Call me Master Rill.”

“I sho will, Missy Rill, when I thinks aboot it. But you is what you is an’ you can’t nebber be what you ain’t.”

One morning, accompanied by Sambo, she went farther down the main street than usual. The horsemen and wagons and the stage-coaches accorded Terrill an increasing delight. They smacked of the wild, vast open Texas land, about which she had heard so much.

A little store attracted her, but she did not go in the first time she passed it because it stood next to a noisy saloon, in front of which shaggy, dusty saddled horses gave evidence of riders within. But finally Terrill yielded to temptation and entered the store, very soon to forget all about Sambo. When she had indulged her fancy to the extent of compunction, and had started out, she suddenly remembered him. He was nowhere to be seen. Then loud voices outside augmented anxiety to alarm. She ran out. Sambo was not waiting for her.

Terrill started hurriedly down the street, aware that several men were moving violently just ahead of her. As she got even with the door of the saloon it swung open and a man, backing out, collided with her, sending her sprawling. Her packages flew out of her hands. Terrill indignantly gathered herself together, and recovering her belongings, stood up, more resentful than alarmed. But suddenly she froze in her tracks.

The man had a gun in each hand, which he held low down, pointing into the wide open door. All the noise had ceased. Terrill saw men inside, one of whom was squirming on the floor.

“Reckon thet’ll be aboot all,” announced the man with the guns, in a cold voice. “Next time you deal crooked cairds it shore won’t be to Pecos Smith.”

He backed by Terrill. “Kid, untie my hoss.... Thet bay. An’ lead him heah,” he ordered.

Terrill obeyed clumsily. Sheathing one of the guns the man retreated until he bumped into his horse. He had a young clear-cut cold profile, set and ruthless. From the high curb he mounted his horse in a single step.

“Smith, we’ll know next time you happen along,” called a rough voice from the saloon. Then the door swung shut.

“What you shakin’ aboot, boy?” queried Smith, in a cool, drawling voice, suggestive of humor.

“I—I don’t know, sir,” faltered Terrill, letting go the bridle. This was her closest contact with one of these tawny stalwart Texans. And this one had eyes too terrible for her to look into. A smile softened the set of his lean hard face, but did not change those light piercing eyes.

“Wal, I only shot his ear off,” drawled Smith. “It stuck out like a jack rabbit’s....Much obliged, sonny. I reckon I’ll be goin’.”

Whereupon he rode off at a canter. Terrill watched the lithe erect figure with mingled sensations. Then she stepped back upon the pavement. At this juncture Sambo appeared. Terrill ran to meet him.

“Oh, Sambo!—I was so frightened,” she cried, in relief. “Let’s hurry....Where did you go?”

“I’se done scared myself,” replied the negro. “I was waitin’ by dat do when one of dese wild Texans rode up an’ got off. He seen me an’ he sed, ‘Niggah, move away from mah vecinnity.’ An’ I sho moved. He got into a fight in here, an’ when he come backin’ out wid dem big guns I was scared wuss.”

“Santone,” which was what its inhabitants called San Antonio, appeared crowded with Texans and hordes of other men. Terrill took the Texans to be the rangy, dusty-booted youths, tight-lipped, still-faced, gray-eyed young giants, and the older men of loftier stature who surely were the fathers of the boys. Terrill was suddenly crestfallen when she became aware that she had several times been interested at sight of handsome young men. And this Pecos Smith had strangely thrilled her. Despite the terror and revulsion he had roused, his memory haunted her.

The Mexicans, the teamsters, the soldiers, the endless hurrying, colorful throng of men, gave Terrill a vague and wonderful impression. These were men of the open, and according to her father they had come from everywhere. Buffalo-hunters on their way out to the plains to catch the buffalo herds on their spring migration north; horse-dealers and cattlemen in from the ranches; idle, picturesque Mexicans with their serapes, their tight-legged flared-bottom trousers, their high-peaked sombreros; here and there a hard-eyed, watching man whom Lambeth designated as a Texas Ranger; riders on lean, shaggy, wild horses; tall men with guns in their belts; black-coated, black-hatted gamblers, cold-faced and usually handsome; and last, though by far not least, a stream of ragged, broken, often drunken men, long-haired, unshaven, hard and wretched, whose wolfish eyes Terrill did not want to meet. These, according to Lambeth, were the riff-raff left of the army, sacrificed to a lost cause. He also remarked emphatically that he desired to put such men and such reminders far behind him.

“Rill, I’ve an hour now,” said her father, on their third day at San Antonio. “Reckon I won’t let you miss the Alamo. As long as Texas exists the Alamo will be sacred. Every boy should stand once on that bloody altar of heroism and country.”

Terrill knew the story as well as any Texas boy. She tripped along beside her father, whose strides covered a good deal of ground. And soon they were on the threshold of the historic edifice. Lambeth had been there before. A distant relative of his had fallen in that battle. He took Terrill around and showed her where and how the besiegers had been repelled so long and with such deadly loss.

“Santa Ana had four thousand Mexican soldiers under him,” explained Lambeth. “They surprised the Americans by charging before daylight. But twice they were repulsed with terrific loss, and it looked as if the greasers would retreat. But Santa Ana drove them to another attack. They scaled the walls, and finally gained the top, from which they poured down a murderous fire. Then the Alamo doors were forced and a breach opened in the south wall. Hell broke loose.... In this room heah Bowie, who was ill, was murdered on his bed....Over heah Travis died on his cannon.... And heah Davy Crockett went down with a ring of daid aboot him....Rill, I could ask no more glory than that for my son....The Texans perished to a man. One hundred and eighty-two of them. They killed sixteen hundred of Santa Ana’s soldiers. Such were Texans of that day.”

“Oh, how splendid!” cried Terrill. “But it horrifies me. I can see them fighting....It must be in our blood, Dad.”

“Yeah....Never forget the Alamo, Rill. Never forget this heritage to Texans. We Southerners lost the Civil War, but we can never lose the glory of freein’ Texas from Spanish rule.”

Pensive and roused by turns, Terrill went back up-town with her father. Later that day she experienced a different kind of stimulation—something intimate and exciting. Lambeth took her to the large outfitting store, where he purchased a black Mexican saddle with tapadores, a silver-mounted bridle and spurs, riata, gauntlets, bandanas, and a sombrero so huge that when Terrill donned it she felt under a heavy cloud.

“Now you will be a vaquero,” said Lambeth, proudly.

Terrill observed that he bought guns and ammunition, though he had brought along his English arms; also knives, belts, axes, a derringer for her, and in fact so many things that Terrill had her doubts that the wagon would carry them all. But she was to learn, presently, that he had acquired another and larger wagon which Sambo was to drive with two teams.

“Rill, I may as well tell you now,” announced her father, “that I’ve given up the plan of followin’ the stage road. Too many travelers, not healthy to meet west of Santone! We’ll start out with some buffalo-hunters I’ve met and travel with them for a while. You’ll get to hunt buffalo with me. We’ll see the country.”

Two days later Terrill rode out with a fair-sized cavalcade, there being six wagons besides her father’s, and eight men, none of whom, however, were mounted. They were experienced buffalo-hunters, knew the country, and hunted buffalo for meat and hides. Much to Terrill’s relief, there was not a young man in the party.

They traveled in a northwesterly direction, along a stream where beautiful pecan trees lined the banks. These Texans were hard drivers. When sunset came the first day they must have made thirty miles. Sambo with his heavy wagon did not get in until after dark, a fact that had worried Lambeth.

The hunters took good-natured notice of Terrill, but she was sure none of them suspected her secret. This night she had courage to sit back at the edge of the camp-fire circle, and listen. They were a merry lot, mostly ranchers and horse-raisers. One of them had been a Texas Ranger, and he told bloody tales which made Terrill’s flesh creep. Another of the group, a stockman from the Brazos River, talked a good deal about the L’lano Estacado and the Comanche Indians. On a former hunt he, with comrade hunters, had been camping along the Red River, and had narrowly missed losing their scalps.

“Them Comanches air shore gettin’ bad,” he said, shaking a shaggy head. “An’ it’s this heah buffalo-huntin’ thet’s rilin’ them. Some day Texas will have to whip off not only the Comanches, but the Arapahoes, the Kiowas, the Cheyennes, mebbe all the Plains Injuns.”

“Wal, I reckon we’re too early an’ too fer south fer the Comanches at this time of year,” remarked another. “Buffalo herds comin’ up from the Rio Grande won’t be as far as the Red River.”

“We’ll strike them this side of Colorado,” replied the red-faced hunter. “Which is a darn good thing, fer thet river ain’t no slouch to cross. Our friend Lambeth heah would have hell.”

“No, he could haid the Colorado. Fair to middlin’ road. But I don’t know the country west.”

Terrill might indeed have been a boy, considering the sensations aroused in her by this casual talk of hostile Indians, the Staked Plains, dangerous rivers, stampeding buffalo, and the like. But sometimes the lamentable fact that she was a girl forced itself upon her when she lay in bed unable to sleep, prey to feminine emotions that she could never dispel, yet all the while tingling with the wonder and zest of her existence.

Several days later, Terrill, riding with Sambo, somewhat behind the other wagons, imagined she heard something unusual.

“Listen, Sambo,” she whispered, turning her ear to the south. Had she only imagined that she heard something?

“I doan heah nuffin’,” replied the black.

“Maybe I was wrong....No! There it comes again.”

“Lud, Massa Rill, I sho hopes yo doan heah somethin’ like thunder.”

“That’s just it, Sambo....Rumble of low thunder. Listen!”

“I doan heah it yet. Mebbe storm down dat way.”

“Sambo, it cain’t be ordinary thunder,” cried Terrill, excitedly. “It doesn’t stop. It keeps right on.... It’s getting louder.”

“By gar! I heahs it now, Massa Rill,” returned the negro. “I knows what dat is. Dar’s de buffalo! Dat’s de main herd, sho as I’se born.”

“Main herd!—Oh, that hunter Hudkins was wrong, then. He said the main herd was not due yet.”

“Deys comin’ an’ dey’s runnin’, Massa Rill.”

The rumble had grown appreciably louder, more consistent and deeper, with a menacing note. Lambeth and the saddle-horses had vanished in a dusty haze. Terrill thought she noted a quickening in the lope of the buffalo passing, closer pressing together of the lines, a gradual narrowing of the space around the wagons.

“Oh, Sambo, is it a stampede?” cried Terrill, suddenly seized by fright. “What has become of Dad? What will we do?”

“I dunno, Missy. I’se heahed a stampede, but I nebber was in one. Dis is gittin’ bad. It sho is. We’se gotta be movin’.”

Sambo ran and turned Mauree’s team in the direction the buffalo were moving. Then he yelled for Terrill to get off her horse and climb into Mauree’s wagon.

“What’ll I do with Dixie?” screamed Terrill, as she dismounted.

“Lead him so long’s yu can,” yelled Sambo, and ran for his wagon.

Terrill thought she would have to mount Dixie again to catch up with Mauree. But she made the wagon, and vaulting high she got on, still hanging to the bridle. Fortunately it was long. Dixie loped behind, coming close so that Terrill could almost reach him. Then she saw Sambo’s team gaining at a gallop. He did not pull them to accommodate Mauree’s gait until at the heels of Dixie.

Then fearfully Terrill gazed from one side to the other. The streams of buffalo had closed in solid and were now scarcely a hundred yards from the wagons. The black and tawny beasts appeared to bob up and down in unison. Dust rolled up yellow and thick, obscuring farther view. Behind, the gap was filling up with a sea of lifting hoofs and shaggy heads. It was thrilling to Terrill, though her heart came up in her throat. The rumble had become a trampling roar. She saw that Sambo’s idea was to keep his big wagon behind Mauree’s smaller one, and try to run with the beasts, hoping they would continue to split behind it. But how long could the horses keep that gait up, even if they did not bolt and leave the wagons to be crushed? Terrill had heard of whole caravans being flattened out and trodden into the plain. Dixie’s ears were up, his eyes wild. But for Terrill’s presence right close, holding his bridle, he would have run away.

Soon Terrill became aware that the teams were no longer keeping up with the buffalo. That lumbering lope had increased to a gallop, and the space between the closing lines of buffalo had narrowed to half what it had been. Terrill saw with distended eyes those shaggy walls converging. There was no gap behind Sambo’s wagon—only a dense, gaining, hairy mass. Sambo’s eyes rolled till the whites stood out. He was yelling to his horses, but Terrill could not hear a word.

The trampling roar seemed engulfed in deafening thunder. The black bobbing sea of backs swallowed up the open ground till Terrill could have tossed her sombrero upon the shaggy humps. She saw no more flying legs and hoofs. When she realized that the increased pace, the change from a tame lope to a wild gallop, the hurtling of the blind horde, meant a stampede and that she and the two negroes were in the midst of it, she grew cold and sick with terror. They would be lost, smashed to a pulp. She shut her eyes to pray, but she could not keep them shut.

Next she discovered that Mauree’s team had bolted. The wagon kept abreast of the beasts. It swayed and jolted, almost throwing Terrill out. Dixie had to run to keep up. Sambo’s team came on grandly, tongues out, eyes like fire, still under control. Then Terrill saw the negro turn to shoot back at the charging buffalo. The red flame of the gun appeared to burst right in the faces of the maddened beasts. They thundered forward, apparently about to swarm over the wagon.

Clamped with horror, hanging on to the jolting wagon, Terrill saw the buffalo close in alongside the very wheels. A shroud of dust lifted, choking and half blinding her. Sambo blurred in her sight, though she saw the red spurt of his gun. She heard no more. Her eyes seemed stopped. She was an atom in a maelstrom. The stench of the beasts clogged her nostrils. A terrible sense of being carried along in a flood possessed her. The horses, the wagons, were keeping pace with the stampede. Dixie leaped frantically, sometimes narrowly missing the wagon. Just outside the wheels, rubbing them, swept huge, hairy, horned monsters that surely kept him running straight.

The agony of suspense was insupportable. Terrill knew she soon would leap out under the rolling hoofs. It could not last much longer. The horses would fall or fail, and then—. Sambo’s gun burned red through the dust. Again the wall on each side moved ahead, faster, and appeared to draw away. Little by little the space widened. Terrill turned to gaze ahead. The herd had split. Dimly she saw an X-shaped space splitting, widening away from a high gray object.

Terrill lost the clearness of her faculties then and seemed clutched between appalling despair and hope. But surely the wagon slowed, careened, almost upset. Then it stopped and Terrill closed her eyes on the verge of collapse.

But nothing happened. There was no crash—no pounding of her flesh. And again she could hear. Her ears registered once more the fearful trampling roar. She felt the wagon shaking under her. Then she opened her eyes. The wagon stood on a slant. Mauree had driven into the lea of a rocky knoll. Sambo’s team, in a lather of froth and dust, heaved beside her, while Sambo, on foot, was holding Dixie. To Terrill’s left the black woolly mass swept on. To the right she could not see for the knoll. But she sensed that the obstruction had split the herd and saved them. Terrill fell back spent and blind in her overwhelming reaction.

The roar rolled on, diminishing to thunder, then gradually lessening. The ground ceased to shake. In an hour the stampede was again a low rumble in the distance.

“De good Lawd was wif us, Missy Rill,” said Sambo, leading Dixie to her. Then he mounted to the seat of his wagon and calling to Mauree he drove back through the settling dust along the great trail. It was long, however, before Terrill got into the saddle again. At last the dust all blew away, to disclose Lambeth far ahead with the horses.