Читать книгу West of the Pecos - Zane Grey - Страница 6

Table of Contents

THOUGH Lambeth had struck away from the Colorado River he did not get rid of the buffalo.

During that day the caravan was frequently held up by strings of the great, shaggy beasts. They grazed as they traveled. When the horses and wagons approached a bunch they would swerve ahead or behind, at a lope, and then drop back to feeding again. But when a large number barred the way there was nothing to do save halt and wait until they had passed.

A hundred times buffalo were within easy rifle range and showed less concern at sight of the travelers than the travelers did of them. They were not wild. The inroads of desultory hunting showed no effect whatever.

The horses grew accustomed to the great beasts and ceased to shy or balk. Dixie was the only one that stuck up his ears at every new straggling line. Sambo almost went to sleep over the reins. Lambeth rode out in front, ever watchful, at last a scout in reality. Terrill rode Dixie for some hours, then returned to the wagon seat beside Sambo.

It was while she was on the wagon that the largest contingent of buffalo met them. “We’se a-gwine to get corralled,” observed Sambo. “An’ if dat Kuhnel doan’ be keerful he’ll lose us.”

“Sambo, is there still danger?” asked Terrill, anxiously, as she surveyed the straggling lines, with a black mass behind. “They are so tame now.”

“Wal, I reckon we doan’ need to worry. De main herd is back an’ south.”

“Golly! If this isn’t the main herd, what must that be like?”

“Black as fur as eye kin see....Dar! Dat is jes’ what I sed. Yo’ Dad is bein’ cut off.”

Lambeth, with the saddle horses, was far in the lead, and a line of buffalo intervened between him and the wagons. Then another line swerved back of the wagons, and presently Terrill saw they were surrounded. The belt of black, bobbing backs between her and Lambeth broadened until it was half a mile across. Sambo got off to step back and assure Mauree that there was no danger. Terrill, however, could scarcely accept that. Still her fears gradually subsided as nothing happened except a continual passing of buffalo to the fore and rear. The herd split a couple of hundred paces below the wagons and the two streams flowed by. Terrill could not help shuddering at the prospect of a stampede. But the gentle trampling roar went on uneventfully. Dust filled the air and a strong odor prevailed.

It took an hour for this branch of the herd to pass. Sambo drove on. When the dust blew away Lambeth was seen waiting with the horses, and the plain ahead appeared clear. Behind and to the south rolled the slow dust cloud, soon settling so that the stringy, black horde once more showed distinct against the gray.

Thereafter only occasional lines of buffalo were crossed, until at last, toward sunset, the herd appeared to have been passed. The undulating prairie appeared the same in every direction, except that there was a gradual uplift to the west. Lambeth disappeared over a ridge, and when the wagon topped it Terrill saw a willow-bordered swale where he had elected to make camp that night.

Twilight was stealing over the land when Sambo hauled up beside the willows where Lambeth was hobbling the horses. Terrill sat a moment longer on the seat. The perils of the day were past. Coyotes were barking at the far end of the swale. A melancholy solitude enfolded the place. Behind Terrill the weeks seemed years. They were dimming old associations. She sighed for them, yet she welcomed the future eagerly. What work and life lay ahead for her! Terrill leaped off the wagon, conscious of a subtle break as of something that had come between her and the old house. It was time she set brain and hand to help her father in the great task he had undertaken.

The ring of Sambo’s ax in the gray dawn was Terrill’s signal to arise and begin the momentous day. Sambo rolled his ox eyes at her. “Now what fur is yo’ up so early, Miss Rill?”

“To work, Sambo. To help my Dad be a pioneer. To become a vaquero....Nigger, never you Missy Rill me again. I’m a man!”

“Yo’ is! Wal, dat am funny. How is yo’ come aboot bein’ a man?”

Terrill was abashed at the approach of her father, who had heard. His eyes took on a dark flash, burning out a sadness that had gloomed there. The kiss he gave Terrill then seemed singular in that it held an element of finality. He never kissed her again.

The rosy sunrise found them on their way, headed toward the purple horizon. There was no road. Lambeth led a zigzag course across the prairie, keeping to the best levels, heading ravines and creek bottoms.

Summer had come to the range. The bleached grama grass rose out of a carpet of green. Flowers bloomed in sheltered places. Deer trooped in the creek bottoms, and there was a varied life everywhere in the vicinity of water.

That day the vastness of Texas and the meaning of loneliness grew fixed in Terrill’s heart forever. On all sides waved the prairie, on and on, in an endless solitude. The wild animals, the hawks and ravens, the black clouds of passenger pigeons that coursed by, the faint, dark lines behind in the Colorado valley,—all these only accentuated the solitude.

Hour after hour the wagon wheels left tracks in the rich soil, and the purple beckoning distance seemed ever the same. Terrill rode Dixie, drove Sambo’s wagon, and she even walked, but nothing changed the eternal monotony of the Texas plains. She forgot the Comanches and other perils about which she had heard. And at times she caught a stealing vacancy of mind that had entranced her, for how long she could not tell. It was a strange and beautiful thing. But for the most part she watched and listened and felt.

The next day was like the one before, and then Terrill lost track of days. She could recall only events such as a rain that drenched her to the skin, and what fun it was to dry in the sun, and a hard wind which blew in their faces all one day, and the doubtful crossing of a sand-barred river that Lambeth was sure was the Llano, which Red Turner had claimed was a tributary to the Colorado, not many days south of the San Saba.

On the north side of the Llano they had crossed a road that ran east and west. Lambeth vacillated long here. It troubled him. A road led somewhere. But he had at length pushed on toward the San Saba.

Dry camps alternated with those at which water and grass were abundant. At night, round the camp fire, Lambeth and Sambo would discuss the growing problem. As they climbed out of the vast valley the springs and creeks grew scarcer. It would soon be imperative to follow rivers and roads, and that meant a greater risk than they had been incurring. The Comanches lived up on the Staked Plains, and the Kiowas farther north, and the Jicarillo Apaches west.

“Yas, suh,” agreed Sambo, in relation to an unavoidable peril. “‘Mos’ a matter of luck, Kuhnel. But Texas done be as big as de whole Yankeeland.”

It was July when they struck the San Saba, a fine river watering a beautiful country Lambeth did not want to leave. Pressing on on the left bank, they came to a crossing. This was the road Red Turner had informed Lambeth he would find. There were wheel tracks in it. He followed that road for days, and at last, where the forking of creeks with the San Saba indicated the headwaters, he sighted cattle on the plain.

They camped near a ranch that sunset. Lambeth made the acquaintance of the settler before night. His name was Hetcoff and he hailed from Missouri. He had neighbors, but they were few and far between. Their cattle had been unmolested, but it was hard to hide horses from the marauding Comanches. Lambeth was advised to pick his range somewhere along the San Saba. It had possibilities. At Menardsville, a day’s ride west, there was a junction of roads and that point would be thickly settled some day. The Staked Plains to the north was a barren plateau, known only to the savages, and decidedly to be avoided by white men. A road staked out by the Spaniards across its sandy wastes had been the death of many a settler. Hetcoff knew little of the Pecos country, but the name Pecos itself had a sinister significance.

Terrill was excited at the prospect of entering a town again. But Menardsville was disappointing, as it consisted of but a few adobe houses surrounded by ranges. A Texan named Bartlett maintained a post there, freighting supplies at infrequent intervals. He was also in the cattle business, which at that time had only a prospective future. Cattle were plentiful and cheap.

Lambeth camped at Menardsville for a week, resting, buying supplies, mending harnesses, gaining information. When he left there he had both wagons loaded to capacity—a fine haul for Comanches, Bartlett averred.

Terrill still occupied the smaller canvas-covered wagon, but she had less room and comfort. She had ceased to suffer from sun and wind, and had become hard and strong. She did not lose weight because she was growing all the time. Increased height and a widening of her frame favored her disguise. Often she gazed in rueful wonder at her hands, still shapely, but hardening from work, growing callous of palm and a deep gold tan on the back. At intervals she cut her rebellious curly locks, though never very short. And she was troubled at the thinning of her cheeks and coarsening of her skin, which she had once desired; at the look in the dark blue eyes which watched her gravely from the little mirror.

West of Menardsville the road Lambeth chose to travel headed northwest over an increasingly difficult country, barren and fertile in patches. Settlers had drifted into this region, and a few ranches established before the war were accumulating more cattle than they took the trouble to brand.

Lambeth decided to buy cattle enough to make the nucleus of a herd. Wakefield, a rancher who did not know how many long-horn cattle he owned, sold Lambeth what he wanted at his own price, and to boot lent him a couple of vaqueros. He advised against the Pecos country. “Best of cattle ranges,” he said; “but wild, hard, an’ lonely, shore to be a hotbed of rustlers some day.”

Terrill sustained a peculiar feeling at her first close sight of a Texas long-horn steer. The enormously wide-spreading, bow-shaped horns had inspired the name of this Mexican breed, and they quite dwarfed the other characteristics of the animal. Terrill was destined to learn the true nature of this famous Texas stock. All in a single day she became a vaquero.

At every ranch Lambeth added to his herd; and after every night stand some of them eluded the guards and departed for home. Nevertheless, the herd grew, and the labors of driving a number of long-horns increased in proportion. Necessarily this slowed down their daily travel to less than a fourth of what it had been.

The end of August found Lambeth’s wagon train and cattle drive encroaching upon the bad lands of west Texas. They rimmed the southern edge of L’lano Estacado, a treeless, waterless, sandy region faintly and fascinatingly indicative of its impassable and destructive nature.

They encountered a wandering, prospective settler and saved his life. He had come across the arid plateau from the Panhandle, how or where he could not explain. He was glad to throw in with Lambeth and help drive that growing herd. For now Lambeth’s steers, leisurely driven and as carefully looked after as was possible, had begun to pick up cattle along the way. Lambeth could not prevent this. He had no brand of his own. He could not pick out from his herd all stock he had paid for and all that had joined it of their own accord. So he became an innocent rustler, something which Wakefield had seriously warned him against; and had then removed the sting of his words by a laughing statement that all ranchers, at some stage or other of their careers, appropriated cattle not their own.

The two borrowed vaqueros had to work so hard that Terrill seldom came in direct contact with them. The Mexican was a sloe-eyed, swarthy rider no longer young, silent and taciturn, with whom conversation, let alone friendliness, was difficult. The white vaquero was a typical Texan who had been reared on the plains. He was rough and uncouth, yet likable and admirable to Terrill. She learned much from watching these two men. At the last ranch Lambeth had added a boy to the caravan, whose duty it was to drive the large wagon while Sambo helped with the herd. There was never a day dawned that Terrill did not expect to see the last of the herd. But they drove on and on into the west, always finding grass at the end of a day’s travel, and seldom missing water. The frequent rains, summer storms they were, favored travel over this increasingly arid land.

September came. At least that was how Terrill calculated. And with it cooler nights and dawn with a nip in the air. Terrill often stood hours of the night guarding the herd with her father. These were wonderful hours. The Mexican vaquero sometimes sang to the herd, strange, wild Spanish songs of the range. While the cattle rested and slept, the guards took their turns of four hours on and four off, Sambo and Steve, the white vaquero alternating with Lambeth and the Mexican. Terrill did her share, which, however, had so far been only guarding. As luck would have it, nothing stampeded the long-horns.

For days on end dim blue hills had led Terrill’s gaze on to dimmer and bluer mountains, like ghosts above the hazy horizon. Steve said those mountains lay across the Pecos, that they must be the Guadaloupes. The blue hills, however, were the brakes of the Pecos.

The white-and-yellow plain undulated on to meet these rising uplands. And the naked slope of the Staked Plains imperceptibly receded. Lambeth had been most fortunate in finding stream beds to follow. He grazed the herd along only a dozen miles a day, gradually slowing up as the harder country intervened.

October! Lambeth’s caravan was lost in a forlorn and desolate country. They had no landmarks to travel by—no direction except west. And half the time that was impossible to follow, owing to the character of the country.

The blue hills they had sighted from a distance were the rock-and-ridge region through which the Pecos cut its solitary way. Lambeth had been told to strike the river wherever he could and then to travel west to Horsehead Crossing, a ford that had been used by the Spaniards a hundred years before.

When the situation began to be very serious they stumbled upon the Flat Rock Water Holes, and were thus accorded another reprieve. Two dry camps brought them to Wild China Water Holes. From there the dim road faded among the rocks. But the Mexican vaquero, upon whom had evolved the responsibility of getting them through, had his direction, and led on with confidence.

Grass grew plentifully over the scaly ridges, but so scattered in little patches that stock had to range far to get enough. That further slowed the caravan. Nevertheless, Lambeth pushed on with relentless optimism. He had a vision and it could not be clouded. He cheered on his hands by promise of reward, and performed miracles of labor for a man who had been a Southern planter. The adventure could not recall his youth, for that was irretrievably past, but it rehabilitated his strength and energy.

As for Terrill, the seven months in the open had transformed her physically. She was at home in the saddle or on the wagon seat. The long days under the blazing sun, or facing the whipping wind with its dust and sand, rain and chill, the lonely night watch when the wolves mourned and the coyotes wailed, the hard rides over stony ridges to head refractory old long-horns—these all grew to be part of the day to Terrill Lambeth.

Again the Mexican lost his way. Washes to cross, sandy and dragging, cattle that must graze, ravines deepening to gorges, which had to be headed, all these confused the guide. Lambeth preferred to corral the stock at night in one of the gorges or a bowl between two ridges. Ridge tops were less favorable places.

They drove two days without water, except enough for the horses. The cattle began to suffer. They grew harder to hold. The riders had little rest and no sleep. Next day they dropped down over a ridge into a well-defined trail coming up from the south. Rain had almost obliterated hoof tracks which might have been so very old.

Lambeth wanted to turn south. The vaquero shook his head. “Mucho bad, Señor. Ver seco. Water mañana. Rio Pecos,” he said, and pointed north.

But the following night found them in a precarious predicament. Two canteens of water left! The horses were in bad shape. Cattle had fallen along the wayside. Another hot day without rain or water would spell the doom of the stock. And that meant horrible toil and suffering, probably death, for the travelers.

Terrill remembered her prayers that night and her mother’s face came to her in a dream.

Lambeth had the caravan on the move at break of day, hoping to find water before the sun got high.

The road penetrated deeper into this wilderness of stone and cactus, greasewood and gray earth. Still there was always grass. The stock now, however, no longer grazed.

Notwithstanding the dangerous situation, Lambeth’s luck seemed not wholly to have departed. Before the sun grew hot, clouds rolled up to obscure it. The riders, grasping at straws, mercilessly drove the cattle on.

A gloomy canopy overhead fitted the strange, wild country, which every mile appeared to take on more of its peculiar characteristics.

Terrill, driving the smaller wagon, noticed a developing uneasiness in the long column of cattle. They had been plodding along wearily, heads down, tongues out, almost spent. Suddenly a spirit seemed to run through the whole herd. Here and there a cow bawled. They quickened from a crawl to a trot. The Mexican and the other vaquero, far in front, were not succeeding in holding them back. Apparently they were not trying. They waved wildly back to Sambo and Lambeth, who had the rear positions. Something had gone wrong, Terrill feared. How would this terrible drive end?

Then the cattle, as if actuated by a single spirit, stampeded in a cloud of dust and disappeared. Lambeth rode on with drooping head. Sambo approached him as if to offer consolation for the loss.

It was a downgrade there. Terrill had to hold in the team, that had also become imbued with some quickening sense. Ahead where the dust cloud hung, a rugged line of rocks and ridges met the gloomy sky. Terrill could not see far. Where had the cattle gone? What had frightened them? They were gone, and hope was, too. It was over, the suspense of the endless weeks of driving longhorns. A sterner task now confronted her father—to save the horses and their own lives.

Terrill was plunged into an abyss of despair. Somehow she had kept up, believing her prayers would be answered. But now she succumbed. Theirs would be the fate of so many who had wandered off into that God-forsaken wilderness, lured on by the dream of the pioneer. It would have been better to meet a quick and fighting death at the hands of Comanches.

Terrill had caught up with her father and Sambo when she saw the Mexican turn in his saddle to cup his hands and yell. But she could not understand. She did not need to understand his words, however, to realize that some new peril impended. Then several strange riders appeared out of an arroyo. At first Terrill feared they were Indians, so dark, lean, wild were their horses.

It was only when the leader advanced alone that Terrill made out they were white men. But how sinister! The leader was suspicious. He had no rifle over his pommel. The vaquero, riding beside Lambeth, halted his horse.

“Massa, dat’s a rustler, if I ebber seen one,” said Sambo. “We’se held up, we sho is.”

The rider approached to halt some paces from the wagons. Suddenly, with a violent start, Terrill recognized him. Pecos Smith! The young Texan who had backed out of the saloon in San Antonio with a gun in each hand!

“Who air you an’ what you doin’ heah?” he queried, curtly, his piercing eyes taking in all of the travelers, to go back to Lambeth.

“My name’s Lambeth. We’re lost. An’ my cattle have stampeded,” replied Lambeth.

“Where was you goin’ when you got lost?”

“Horsehaid Crossin’ of the Pecos.”

“Wal, you’re way off yore direction. Horsehaid is east from heah.”

“We were told to travel north whether we lost the road or not.”

Evidently the rider had his doubts about this outfit. Finally he called to Sambo: “Niggah, you get down an’ come heah.”

Sambo obeyed precipitately.

“Where’d I ever see you?”

“I dunno, sir, but I’se sho seen you,” replied Sambo.

“Santone, wasn’t it?”

“Yas, sir. I was standin’ in front of a saloon an’ you told me to move along.”

“Reckon I remember you,” returned the rider, and then directed his attention to Lambeth. “But thet don’t prove nothin’. Lambeth, you may be all right. But this vaquero is not. I know him. How’d you come by him?”

Lambeth explained how the Mexican had been lent to him for the trip across the Pecos. And he added, stiffly: “I’m Colonel Templeton Lambeth. What are you takin’ me for?”

“Howdy, Pecos Smith!” spoke up Terrill, feeling at this moment that she might well ease the situation.

“Wal!...An’ who’re you?” exclaimed the rider, amazed, as he bent eyes that bored upon her.

“He is my father.”

“Ahuh. An’ how’d you know me?”

“I was the—the kid you knocked over that day in Santone—when you came out of the saloon....You made me fetch your horse....And you said you’d only shot the man’s ear off—that it stuck out like a jack rabbit’s.”

“Wal, I’ll be dog-goned!” ejaculated the rider. “I remember, but you’re shore changed a lot, boy.” Then he turned to Lambeth. “We’ve been trailin’ a rustler outfit up from the Rio Grande. Reckoned mebbe they’d run across somebody with wagons. Sorry to annoy you, Colonel. Turn yore wagons an’ I’ll lead you to the crossin’.”

“Is it far?” asked Lambeth, anxiously.

“Wal, it’s far enough, considerin’ yore hosses. I reckon you’ll just aboot make it.”

The ensuing drive, short though it might have been, proved to Terrill that if they had not been led out of this maze of hot draws and ridges they would have been irrevocably lost. As it was, the weary horses were barely goaded to the gap in a summit of gray bluff. The rider sat his horse, waiting for the caravan to come up.

“Rio Pecos!” he called, and pointed down.

The riders galloped forward at his call. Terrill, with a wild start and a sob of thanksgiving, urged the team ahead. Sambo dismounted and turned back to wave at Terrill. She had all she could do to pull the horses up beside the riders.

“De good Lawd am delibbered us,” said Sambo, and hurried back to meet Mauree.

“Rill—he has led us—to the river!” exclaimed Lambeth, with deep emotion. “Look! Heah is Horsehaid Crossin’—of the Pecos. And look there—the cattle!”

Terrill gazed down from a height. Just on the moment pale sunlight filtered through the drab clouds, to shine upon a winding silver river that formed a bend like the shape of a horse’s head. It flowed out of gray and green wilderness, and probably came through a gap in the distant stone bluff.

The foremost cattle had reached the water. It had been the scent of water that had stampeded them. Sand bars gleamed white.

Terrill caught her breath. The joy of deliverance had momentarily blinded her to something that struck her like a blow, but which she could not yet grasp. She stared at her father, at the other riders. Pecos Smith was riding by. “Adios an’ good luck!” he called, and galloped away. Sambo’s deep voice pealed from behind, where he was rejoicing with his wife.

All along this trail, surely once a traveled road, lay skulls and bones of animals. Horses, cattle—a line of bones! From a rock stuck up the ghastly skull and weirdly long horns of a Texas steer—fit guidepost for that crossing. The place was desolate, gray, and lonely, an utter solitude, uninhabited even by beasts of the hills or fowls of the air. It stretched away to infinitude. In the east rose a pale streak—possibly the slope of L’lano Estacado.

But it was to the west that Terrill forced her gaze. West of the Pecos! How, for what seemed a lifetime, had she lived on those words, with an added word—home! Could home have any place in this strange and terrific prospect?

The river changed its course with Horsehead Crossing, but soon veered back to its main trend southward. It dominated that savagely monotonous and magnificent scene. Miles were nothing in this endless expanse. The green and the gray along the river were but delusions. Back to the west and south mounted the naked ridges, noble and austere by reason of their tremendous size and reach, and between them gloomed the purple gorges, mysterious, forlorn, seemingly inaccessible for beast or man. No grassy pasturelands such as had existed in Terrill’s hopeful dreams! All that was not gray stone, gray earth, were mere specks of cactus, of greasewood on the boundless slopes.

Terrill’s heart sank. After all, she thought bitterly, she was only a girl. She had loved the open rangeland of Texas, over which she had ridden nearly a thousand miles, but could she ever do aught but hate this deceitful desert? She had loved the river bottoms of the Red, the Sabine, the Brazos, the Colorado, and the San Saba. They had openness, color, life, beauty. But this Rio Pecos, for all its pale silver gleam, its borders of white and green, seemed cold, treacherous, aloof, winding its desolate way down into the desolate unknown.

“Oh, Dad!” cried Terrill, voicing her first surrender. “Take me back!...This dreadful Pecos can never be home!”