# Cherokee Trails/Chapter 15

There was a pole manger running along the front of the stalls, a feed-box for grain in each horse's compartment, a partition of poles the height of the manger separating stall from stall. Simpson recognized in the occupant of the stall into which he had lowered himself from the window, the horse he had been trying to break to harness on the morning of Waco Johnson's advent. It yanked back on its neck-rope desperately as if it meant to hang itself when he plumped through the hole at its head.
Tom attempted to assure the horse, which didn't appear to have any recollection of him, or at least any friendly remembrance. It eased off on the rope, but stood squatting as if to make a jump for the hole in the wall, its eyes bulging, blowing wild whoofs of alarm through its distended nostrils. Tom felt there never could be any lasting friendship between himself and that animal. He gave it a dig in the floating ribs, jolting a grunt out of it that cut off its frightened blowing, which he could not help believing was all a vindictive pretense. He believed that cuss was better pleased to be stolen than left at home.
While he didn't want to get very far away from that hole, Simpson knew the fool horse would surely betray his presence to anybody who might come into the stable. That fellow driving the horses into the corral might bring ​his saddle in, or come rummaging around after something. In addition to the danger of betrayal by the traitorous horse—he gave it another dig with knuckle and thumb at the thought of its treason—it was too light in that stall.
He crouched to see if the shadow of the manger would hide him, discovering that it was possible to slip from stall to stall between the bottom of the sloping manger and the stall divisions. Accordingly, he wormed through into the adjoining stall, where it was darker. The occupant was another Block E horse. It gave him a sidelong look of curiosity and turned indifferently to nosing its hay.
Unfriendly outfit, those Block E horses, Simpson thought; apparently not a particle concerned whether they ever saw the old home place again. But business, not sentiment, was the motive for rescuing stolen horses, as well as being the actuating factor in their thieves' design. Whether those indifferent, hostile animals wanted to be taken home or not, he was there to return them if the desperate contrivance of one man could acomplish it.
It looked like a cloudy venture to Tom Simpson as he stood in the gloom of that big stable running his eye over the horses. How many of them belonged to the Block E, how many to the homesteaders in the neighborhood, he did not know. Those near enough to be seen distinctly were splashed to the withers with mud. They had been on the road, a long road and a heavy one. If there were any more of the Ellison horses among them he could not see the brand.
Simpson waited developments with nerves drawn as ​tight as fiddle strings, all set for a fight or a break for the hole in the wall. It was not the time for attempting to cut out the Block E horses and heading them back to Kansas. His daylight business was to locate them, which he had done. Night must bring the solution or the failure of the problem ahead of him, if luck held for him and that horse wrangler didn't come in there, discover him and bring the whole thing to a premature break.
The fellow was banging around at the end of the stable as if hanging his saddle in the shed. There was no talking going on; Simpson concluded that he must be alone. Now the door in the corral end of the stable opened. Simpson dropped back against the manger, to avoid discovery in the sudden flood of light, gun out, all set for something to pop.
"Noahy! Dan! Noahy—Noahy!" the person at the door called. "You lunkheads up there goin' to sleep all day? Git out o' there, I tell you! Noahy, Noahy!"
Simpson, crouching so low he could neither see nor be seen, was more troubled than surprised to discover the horse wrangler to be a woman. It was a rough, jarring, unlovely voice, contemptuous and commanding, but unmistakably a woman's. It would be dev'lish awkward for a chap if she came prowling around and discovered him. Tom Simpson lacked any precedent in his varied experience for the manner of procedure in such a pinch.
She shouted again, repeating her formula except for a slight trimming of profanity, bumping the ladder against the hayloft to increase her awakening summons. Simpson could see the top of the ladder in the dark hole with hay spilling over its edges.
​"All right, Jinny," a yawning voice answered. "What time's it gittin' to be?"
"Nearly four," Jinny replied.
"It's a rainin', ain't it?"
"Yes, it's a rainin',"—mockingly imitative of the gaping, stretching question. A laugh above rewarded her mimicry. "I brung the horses up—pile out and git something to eat, you two."
"Al-l-l right, Jinny," another voice drawled.
Jinny banged the door shut and went away. Simpson could hear the two men in the loft talking as they moved about, stamping and swearing over their damp boots, but they were too far away for him to get anything out of their conversation. That it was pleasant to them, and reminiscent of their recent foray, their frequent laughter indicated.
Simpson did some fast thinking while the two horsethieves were kicking around overhead. It seemed as if the big chance he had hoped for had come. If they were the only men around the place, if he could be sure of that, his business was to pick them off as they came down the ladder, cut the horses loose and light out. If he could be certain they were the only men around the place! It all hung on that. If they were not, starting things prematurely would be a disastrous blunder; if they were——
He crept to the back of the stall, close against the partition, ready to knock them off as they came down from the loft. Let both of them get on the ladder, and then—if he could be certain there were no more men around! There was a jangling of tin pails outside as somebody went by with them on his arm bound for the spring at ​the head of the ravine. One of the men in the loft roared a hail.
"That you, Henry?"
"Yea-a, that's me Henry. Come on out o' there, you two bums!"
Henry replied with the cheerful bandiage of a man who had risen thriftily before his mates, and Simpson thought that was rather a humorous bunch to be engaged in such sordid business. Anyway, there was at least another man on the place, and that plan for picking them off the ladder would not do. There were three of them, at least, and that woman, who sounded as if she might be the best man among them, as well as boss of the ranch. The one thing to do was trust to luck, wait till they went to the house to eat, then go back to his horse.
Noah and Dan came down the ladder presently, Simpson scarcely breathing as he watched them, his heart beating low. He already had identified Noah by his name and voice as one of the gang who had followed him to the ranch; now he also recognized the one called Dan as a member of the same distinguished company. While it would not have been exactly the sportsmanly thing to do from cover, Simpson thought, he had no reservations of conscience which held him from putting an end to their activities where they stood. Only policy restrained him. It would not be the wise thing to do.
Simpson was near the center of the stable, thirty or forty feet from where the ladder ran up to the loft. He backed into the stall, crouching under the horse's neck, hoping the two men would not precipitate a crisis by coming down the line to inspect their stolen goods.
​"It's beginnin' to rain like hell," said Dan, the two of them standing at the foot of the ladder, looking around the gloomy stable, now quite dusky in the lowering evening.
"Open the door a minute—le's take a look at 'em," Noah directed.
The open door lighted up fairly well the immediate vicinity of the two, even relieving the gloom in the stall where Simpson crouched.
"Purty damn fine bunch of 'em this time," Dan said.
They came slowly down the aisle between the rows of stalls, looking the horses over critically.
"Yeah, but some of them homesteader plugs won't bring more 'n thirty dollars. I thought two of 'em'd peter out before we got 'em here."
"Them Block E horses 'll fetch sixty to sixty-five—two of 'em down there 'll shave nearer seventy-five apiece," Dan said. "That bay mare and the geldin' next to her—damn his old eyes! he's a wild devil—he's the feller that made all them breaks to turn back. He's the hardest horse to drive I ever drove in a bunch of horses."
"I'll cool him; I'll slap a saddle on him after I eat and ride over to the ranch and let the old lady know we're here. We can take the bunch of 'em over in the morning—give 'em time to blow a little. That was a damn hard drive we made, pardner."
"You know it!" said Dan. "This is the cuss that wanted to go back to Kansas."
They came loafing along, stopping at the stall into which Simpson had dropped through the window, next to ​the one where he now crouched under the mare's neck. His back was wedged into the slope of the manger, for he was trying to make himself smaller than a medium-size, healthy man can be reduced without some process of desiccation that even the strain of suspense cannot equal.
The men entered the stall, joking on the attachment of the horse for his home state, a quality that Simpson would not have given him credit for if the evidence had not been so direct and disinterested. They ran their hands over the horse, admiring his points, Dan declaring he was good for seventy-five dollars of any man's money. Noah grunted a horse-wise assent. Then they turned their attention to the mare.
Simpson felt his hair crinkle with apprehension. He was gripping his gun as tight as if he had been frozen to it, elbow against his side, all on edge to pump lead if they came prowling into that stall and found him.
"She's a good 'n," Dan said. "I wouldn't mind keepin' them two myself if I could afford it. How old do you take her to be?"
"About five, or goin' on," Noah replied. "I'll take a look at the hollers of her eyes; I can tell you in three months of her age."
Simpson felt a cold prickling run over the skin of his back and up to the edge of his hair. It was like a draft of wind on a sweating skin, vestigial sensation of bristles rising, inheritance of horror, anger and defiance from the arboreal days. He pressed his back against the slanting vertical poles of the manger—the tops were nailed to a horizontal timber, the bottoms to the wall, the manger ​being about two feet wide at the top, at the bottom a point—at a desperate disadvantage, in a cramped, mean place for quick work.
Both men were armed, something Simpson had not been certain of before they entered the mare's stall. They went lazily to the animal's head, luckily on the side of her opposite Simpson, Noah taking her by the nose-hold common to horsemen, turning her head for a look at her eye. The mare resented the treatment; she began to squirm and back away. Noah, cursing her lights and livers, ducked under her neck to get the light on her face and, head below the top of the manger, dived into Tom Simpson crouching in the shadow.
Before Noah could squawk, Simpson laid him a blow across the flat of the head with his heavy gun, plunging it with a quick jab into Dan's belly as he leaned to inquire if that double-damned mare had struck Noah with her foot. Noah was flat on the ground, and Simpson was up as quick as a bent sapling.
"Keep still!" he growled, boring the gun hard into Dan's vitals.
Dan had his hands aloft, not knowing any more than the next man what was coming, or what had happened even then. That was the safe posture for a gentleman of Dan's profession; it was habitual with him from long practice. Simpson jerked the gun from Dan's holster and stuck it under his own belly-band.
"I don't want to kill you—but one squeal!" he warned.
It had come, and there was nothing for it but to go the limit, work fast and make the best of it. Noah appeared to be out for the moment; he was lying limber ​under foot and still. Simpson wanted to reach down for the fellow's gun, but dared not take his attention from the conscious, active rascal standing on his feet before him, backed up against the manger. Dan was staring at him in surprised malevolence. The mare had backed the length of her rope, where she stood snorting, the line stretched tight between the two standing men.
Seconds were precious to Tom Simpson; he had not even the small change of one to gamble away. While the surprise of the situation numbed Dan's faculties for the moment, Simpson ducked under the taut rope, gun pressed into the horsethief's belly, and, employing foot and hand in a sudden and astonishing maneuver, tipped the surprised man backwards into the manger.
Dan plumped down into the wedge of the manger as if he had been measured and cut out for it, back against the wall, legs doubled up until his knees were at his chin. Simpson wedged him farther down, quieting his struggles and curses with the cold smell of the gun-barrel against his nose. Dan was wedged there in a ludricrous situation that held him secure for the moment, heave and struggle as he might.
Simpson told him his life hung on absolute silence, and the horsethief had lived long enough to believe him. Dan didn't give vent to a peep while Tom slipped his gun into the holster, pulled out his knife and cut the mare loose. Working swiftly and deftly with part of the mare's rope, Simpson tied Dan's hands to the pole of the manger, one on either side of his feet, in spread-eagle fashion to take the slack out of his long arms.
Before this was accomplished Noah began to stir under ​foot. Simpson drew the last slip-knot on Dan's wrist tight with no gentle hand, gave him a dig in the chest with the gun and a caution to keep his mouth shut. The mare had dashed out of the stall when Simpson cut the rope; as he bent over Noah he saw her making for the corral through the open door, ears forward, head up, as if she saw the road home open before her.
Simpson stripped Noah of belt and gun, picked him up and slammed him into the manger, doubling his limp body into the V-shaped receptacle in undignified but effective wedge. Noah's feet were considerably higher than his head as he reposed in the manger, his jolted senses slowly reassembling.
There was the sound of a death warrant in Simpson's low voice as he admonished silence. He groped among the corncobs in the bottom of the manger until he found two pieces long enough for his purpose. One of these he bound into Dan's open jaws with the thief's own gaudy silk handkerchief, gagging him effectually. Noah he treated in like manner, stripping the vilely perfumed adornment from his neck to twist around the cob.
Noah was just getting enough sense back to understand that something had happened; Simpson was obliged to pry his mouth open with his knife. He stared at Tom with confusion in his eyes, face against his boot tops, wedged down in the manger so hard it must almost have unhinged his joints. Tom had something to pay that man, and this was the day it came due.
To make sure of Noah, Simpson used the remainder of the hitching-rope to bind him as Dan was tied, all of which required not above five minutes, if so long, Simpson ​worked in such a pitch of haste, accurate in every movement, deft with long practice in trussing up wilder creatures than these. With the last knot drawn on Noah's bonds, Simpson ran to the door in search of the saddle he had heard the woman hanging there. Several hung under the shed beside the door. He grabbed the nearest, returned to the stable and saddled: the horse that had given Dan so much trouble to drive away from his native pastures.
Not knowing how many horses belonged to the Ellisons, how many to the neighbors, Simpson went down the line and cut every animal in the stable loose. There was a general bolt for the door, Simpson urging them along. When the last animal was out of the stable he followed to the corral, shut the stable door and threw down the corral bars.
There were between twenty-five and thirty horses in the corral, including those the woman had driven in a little while before. Simpson, mounted and ready to go, waited beside the bars as the horses rushed out led by the Block E mare whose rope he had used to tie her thieves.
At that moment, doubtless having heard the rush of freed horses and puzzled to know what the two men in the barn were about, a man came bolting out of the front door of the house, in shirt sleeves, bareheaded. He stopped short at sight of Simpson herding the horses out of the corral, momentarily paralyzed by astonishment at seeing a stranger where he had expected to see his friends. He let out a wild yell and jumped for the door.
As the man disappeared on the jump for his gun, Simp​son rode out of the corral after the last horse. He looked back, calculating his chance of getting down toward the road a little way before the fellow, with perhaps others, began to throw lead. At that moment a woman appeared in the dog-run and began to peg away at Simpson with a rifle.
He was then about half way between corral and the road, a matter of a hundred yards from the house. By the wild way the woman was shooting Simpson knew she was mad clear through. Anger and indignation at his bold move made her judgment poor; she didn't come near enough to even hit a horse. But she was doing some tall yelling and screaming, her voice splitting in high, wavering shrieks.
The man was cutting loose now, doing somewhat better work. He brought down a horse that ran beside Simpson. It stumbled headlong, and rolled over, its back broken by the shot.
Bullets were almost singeing his hair as Simpson galloped after the herd to the road, not troubling to do any shooting of his own, the distance being too great for any certainty with a revolver, and he had no ammunition to throw away. When she struck the road the Block E mare turned in the direction of home, as Simpson had confidently expected her to do, most of the others in the band trooping after her.
A number of the animals appeared to have a preference for the opposite direction, however, and a break in the ranks began, which Simpson had some trouble to stop before it drained away the bigger part of the herd. He got them going in the right direction with the loss of six, ​which went galloping southward as if they belonged down that way.
Simpson rode into the timber, snatched his rifle from the saddle of the horse he had left tied there, cut the animal loose and started it on the jump after the others. Then on, toward home, with little hope in him of ever getting there.
The Kansas line must be thirty-five or forty miles away, he knew. He had taken every horse on the place, but there doubtless were others available near at hand for the thieves to mount and pursue him. He could not expect to go far without a fight. When it came, he could do no less than give them the best he had, and trust to the luck that had been kind to him this day.
He had his revolver and rifle, and Dan's gun was uncomfortably evident between his trousers waistband and his tank. Noah's gun and belt hung over the saddle-horn, where it swung with a chance of being lost in that hard riding. Tom put the belt over his shoulder in the fashion of a bandolier, the gun under his arm.
So he galloped after the band, early dusk and thickening mists making the road ahead obscure, the Block E mare leading the bunch in a race as desperate as a man ever rode on the Cherokee trails.