Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1944-04-14
CHAPTER XII

The mules baked at the wa
ter's edge. Clay leaped up on the
footboard. The heavy wagon showed
the mules on and they we're out in
the flood in scrambling tangle.
Quarternight and Joe Wheat got
there first. They grabbed the mules
brides, Strengthening them out, then
dashed them on across the river. 1t
had been bad moment, threatening
to spill the outfit into the water. Aft
erward, coming back to help with
the cattle, Quarternight growled,
Lew, one of these times and let
1t 60.
He shrugged. 1t didn't matter now.
Owl-Head jackson had followed with
the commissary, taking time to let
his own team feel their way. The
real job was ahead.
He saw that all the longhorns had
risen and turned to watch, their
dumb brains growing more and more
suspicious. They were back a mile
from the river, far enough for him
to string his men behind them and
start the pool gently at first in
walk. But when they we're aimed
right, with the arrowhead taking
shape, he waved a signal to Rebel
John. On either side they sent their
horses racing forward to the point,
while behind them and along the
TANKS all the others crowded in sud-
denly, slapping their rope ends
against their chaps.
Four thousand closely punched
longhorns were instantly running;
and to trail mans eye no sight
was ever prettier than that brown
wedge, truly flying arrow now,
as it hit the river, carried on by its
own momentum, unable to stop or
turn aside.
Guiding the point with Quarter
night, he drew his first easy breath.
And when the last steer had risen
up the bank and the herd began to
Craze out with their fright gone he
shook his head and grinned. That
much was over with. They had
crossed the Red.
An hours travel took them wind
ing through low bald hills on this
side of the river. A little later, point
ing onto fiat plain beyond them,
he rode around to Quarternight.
John" he said, I'm leaving you
for while. There's something I
want to look at. You wave Joe
Wheat up here when I'm gone, and
if l don't get back by dark choose
your own bed ground" He pulled
off, adding, keep it out in the open
away from creek-bottom trees. But
you know that" This was Indian
country now
Lew turned his horse east, keeping
deep in the hill folds out of sight of
the river. The trail was Immediately
beyond the mesquite, not in one rib
bon of tracks, but miles wide from
the hoofs of millions of longhorns
bound north. But no herds moved
there now, and running his gaze
along south two or three miles to
Doan's Crossing, he saw that an
earlier speculation had been right.
A darkly massed pool of cattle
spread over the fiat shelf with little
streams trucking into it from the
distant hills. A dozen outfits too
close together had run and mixed in
last nights storm. 1t would take
time to part them out He was
lucky.
Darkened by the late afternoon
sun, the Wichitas showed nothing of
the maze of broken canyons and
scrubby forest and looked wholly
tame. But he knew of the tribes
swarming in there, in that last land
of the Comanches, with the Dakota
Cheyennes added now. The North
Fork was bloody stream. The
Texans had made it so, following it
with their herds across a country
which had been guaranteed forever
to the Indians.
Those attacks were no longer in
open warfare. They had settled
down to trail raids from the Wichita
canyon mouths. For what chance
did the Indian have against the
white man now? Poor devils, he
thought, not much.
He was back in the mesquite belt
again, almost through it toward the
bald open hills, when some alert in
stinct warned him. He halted.
1t seemed minutes before he first
heard the distant talk of mems
voices and still more time before
there came the thud of hoofs. Their
pace was quick trot and by the
mingled beats he judged five or six
riders in the bunch. He moved a
little, not to be caught at close quar-
tiers in the mesquite, until, past the
thin screen of fernlike leaves, he
saw the men.
There were only two. But they
were leading four heavily packed
horses. They were coming out of
the southwest, and seeing that direc-
ton, he wondered. From the Cross
rs last camp? He had his answer
In a moment.
Down in the fold between the hills