To the camp of the enemy; but it was not his enemy.
That was Bill Dunham's thought as he crossed the river and headed south, keeping to the old cattle trail. There was no loyalty owing to those behind him, not even as citizens of his native state. They were to him as strangers in a strange land, and he had contemptuous doubt on the loyalty of any one of them to anything in the soil of Kansas but the grass. They were exploiters, out to profit on a range they did not own, lease or pay tribute for the use of to the extent of one lone dime.
They had insulted him, put affronts on him, and hurt him as cruelly as he ever had been injured in his life. It was worse that he had the means within the reach of his hand to salt their hides, but had restrained his passions out of respect to himself and consideration for his own internal peace. He didn't want to kill anybody else. It was better to bear insult and injustice than to face the agony and self-crimination, and the sweat of remorse in the night.
He had a grudge to pay those Kansas cowmen, and the shortest cut to it was to ride down until he met the Texas drover, offer his services, pay or no pay, in helping get his cattle to Pawnee Bend. He knew there was no law to sustain the action of the Kansas cattlemen, while he felt that justice and fair-dealing made a strong plea for the Texas drover who had herded his cattle more than a thousand miles to come to a market outlet.
It was base injustice to turn him back. If one man's arm and gun could be of any use to the Texan, Dunham was in the proper frame of mind to serve.
Dunham encountered the Texas cattle much nearer the line than he had expected. From the lolling, unconcerned, unprepared attitude of the men who had gathered at the line to repel them, he had thought the Texans at least a day or two away. They were not more than five miles south of the river, where they apparently had ended that day's march. The cattle, to the number of many thousand, it appeared to Dunham, were spread out grazing, cowboys on the edges of the herd holding them in compact formation, which the luxuriant grass of that section permitted.
Bill headed for the nearest of these herdsmen, who faced his horse around to watch his approach with suspicious attention. This young man returned a civil reply to Bill's friendly greeting, although he was bristling with hostile suspicion. On Dunham's inquiry for the boss, he pointed out a man riding toward the chuck-wagon, which was anchored on a knoll a quarter-mile or so to the south of the trail.
This man also squared around in the same suspicious fashion when he saw Dunham making a line for him. He passed greetings reservedly, a look of stern inquiry in his direct gray eyes.
Dunham introduced himself, to be told by the boss of the outfit that his name was Hughes. There was a carriage of authority, a careworn wariness, about the man that made it unnecessary to inquire whether he was owner of the herd or boss of the outfit. Like Garland, he was the type of man whose actions were not determined by somebody else.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Dunham?" he inquired, civilly enough, but coldly, as the leader of one hostile force addressing the emissary from another.
"I don't hardly know how to get at it, Mr. Hughes," Bill confessed, bending his head cogitatively, to look up presently with a timid grin. "But I guess I might as well tell you first as last that one man hired me in Pawnee Bend yesterday to ride this quarantine line of theirs along here, and when I got down here to-day another one fired me. I'm out scoutin' for a job."
Hughes looked him over silently, but with no offense in his grave measurement, his exact weighing, as it appeared to be. He was a man well past fifty, broad in the shoulders, straight, hard-muscled, brown. He wore a mustache clipped close t6 his lip, which added to the naturally stern lines of his features.
Not an unkindly man in appearance; unmistakably a firm one. His coat was unbuttoned, showing his pistol carried in shoulder holster; a weather-beaten, broad-brimmed hat that once had been white, was settled firmly down to his ears. The crown of it was pushed up to its full height, every wrinkle and dent smoothed out of it with meticulous care, it seemed.
"If they've sent you over here to find out how many men I've got, bud, I'll tell you, and you can trot on back," he said. "I've got thirty besides the cook. That's not a big force to handle a herd of four thousand cattle on the trail, but we've handled 'em, and we expect to go right on handlin' 'em up to Pawnee Bend. You can go on back and tell your folks that."
Hughes spoke kindly, without inflection of sarcasm or hostility. He made a gesture toward his grazing cattle as if to say "there they are; count them for yourself."
"Blamed if I know how to get at it!" said Bill, in genuine perplexity. "I'm not one of that crowd; I owe 'em a grudge I'd travel a thousand miles to pay, but danged if I know how I'm to get at it to convince you I'm straight."
"Maybe the best way to do it would be to tell a straight story," Hughes suggested, his careworn features relieved by a smile.
Bill told him a straight story, leaving nothing to his discredit, or what might set him up for ridicule, out of it, down to the shooting at his new boots and Moore's contemptuous refusal to allow him to go to work. He said nothing about his fight with Kellogg, fearing it might sound like a boast.
"How long have you been in this part of the country?" Hughes inquired.
"I'yve been here—I've been here—why, only three days!" Bill replied, amazed that calculation proved it to be no longer, so much had piled up on him in that time.
Hughes looked at him kindly, appearing to understand and sympathize.
"Go over to the wagon and turn your horse out," he directed. "You'll find an old Mexican feller there; he'll give you something to eat if you're hungry. I'll be along direc'ly and we'll talk it over."
"I don't care anything about pay—I'll help you drive your cattle to Pawnee Bend without a damn cent of pay!" Bill declared passionately. "There's something between me and that man Moore wider than the Cimarron."
"We'll talk it over later on," Hughes replied.
He rode away, leaving Bill to go to the wagon as directed, or to any other place that might suit his inclination better.
Bill spent the rest of the afternoon at the wagon, making indifferent headway with the Mexican cook, whose English vocabulary was not wide, such as he was master of being altogether too emphatic and passionate for a man of Bill Dunham's disposition. Hughes did not come to the wagon until nearly sundown, after the cook had sounded a long blast on a conch-shell. He was accompanied by a young man of about Dunham's age, whom he introduced as his son.
Young Hughes was an alert, lithe man, fresh and boyish in appearance. He was shingled and shaved in striking contrast with the other men of the outfit who began to ride in for supper. He shook hands with Dunham, but with something of reserve in his manner, in the expression of his eyes, not in keeping with the ingenuous frankness that Dunham believed naturally was his. They had discussed the presence of this stranger in their camp, Bill knew. Suspicion attached to him in their eyes. Dunham rightly divined they considered him a spy who wished to attach himself to their force for some dishonest purpose.
They did not appear to think it necessary to introduce Dunham any farther to the company, although the cowboys addressed him civilly as they sat around with their well-filled tin plates, including him in the conversation as if he belonged. But there was an air of restraint over them, the elder Hughes being especially silent and thoughtful, as if the troubles which lay ahead of him at the Kansas line wore on him'wearily.
Dunham had the appetite of a clear conscience, in spite of the cloud he knew himself to be under. He contrasted the courtesy they extended him in this camp, suspected of no honest purpose that he was, with the treatment he had met at the hands of the Kansas cattlemen and their employees. If there was anything ridiculous in his appearance or behavior, these strangers were gentlemanly enough to keep it to themselves. There was not even a covert grin or a sly wink passed, as far as Dunham saw, and his observation was more than passing keen.
As they finished supper some of the cowboys rode off to relieve their comrades who were drawing the herd together preparatory to bedding down for the night, the elder Hughes issuing brief orders. A few remained in camp, these stretching out to relax their saddle-weary limbs, smoking and passing the usual chaff that goes among a crowd of young fellows, even when they stand with one foot on the brink of trouble, as these were situated that placid evening on the south shore of the Cimarron.
"You've changed your appearance since I saw you in Pawnee Bend yesterday evenin'," young Hughes remarked, quite affably, offering Dunham his tobacco as he spoke.
"Yes, I got this set of harness to suit a job I thought I had," Dunham explained, easy of conscience and free of embarrassment, quite an illumination falling upon his affairs.
"I couldn't see,why you didn't grab that job they offered you in town," young Hughes, whom the others addressed as Bob, seemed to wonder. "Nothin' to do but loaf around, with free drinks as long as a man could stand up under 'em, I guess, and everything his own way. City marshal is another name for king in a little town like Pawnee Bend."
"I guess I was born common," Dunham laughed, but with indifferent success, trying to appear easy when he was beginning to squirm in the discomfort that is the plague of true modesty. "Well, I wasn't cut out for a lazy man's job, anyhow."
"You didn't say anything to me about killin' Ford Kellogg up in Pawnee Bend yesterday," Hughes said. "Maybe that was such a triflin' occurrence in your daily life you forgot it."
Hughes was a little sarcastic about it. At the mention of Ford Kellogg, and the part Dunham had borne in bringing his notorious career to a close, the cowboys rolled over to lean on their elbows and stare, some of them sitting up with startled suddenness to look at this unassuming stranger who had accomplished a feat so incredible. Ford Kellogg was as well known to them, in his far-reaching notoriety for putting men out of the world, as Jesse James.
"I didn't want you to think I was travelin' around to advertise it," Dunham replied, looking down in the habit that had made more than one person take him for a thick-headed slow fellow before that day.
"How does it come Moore and them fellers let a slick gun-slinger like you leave 'em?" Hughes asked, accusation of duplicity and low designing in his words.
"You've got me wrong," Dunham protested almost indignantly, looking frankly into Hughes's eyes. "I never slung a gun on but one other man before in my life."
"I don't see why a man that could beat Ford Kellogg to his gun would stand still and let a bunch of cowboys shoot dirt all over him, or why they'd have the nerve to try it if they knew how handy he was with his iron."
"They didn't know it, Mr. Hughes," Dunham assured him gravely. "The man that hired me—you must have heard him offer me a job if you were at the hotel with the crowd?" Dunham appealed suddenly to Bob Hughes.
"Yes, I heard him say he could give you a job and saw you walk away with him," Bob honestly admitted.
"He was to meet me down here—his name's Hal Garland—but I arrived ahead of him. The news of my—of that—business with Kellogg hadn't got down that far. I could 'a' stopped them boys peggin' at my boots"—the cowboys grinned when he mentioned them, all eyes on the offending tight leather—"and I'm here to tell you, Mr. Hughes, it's a whole lot harder to keep from shootin' than it is to shoot, sometimes."
"You said something, kid!" a gray-haired cowpuncher said, nodding in friendly endorsement through the smoke of his cigarette.
"And I'm goin' to tell you why I didn't pull my gun and stop their fun," Dunham said.
The cowboys leaned to hear him, some of them moving nearer. The Mexican cook, who had appeared to have such an indifferent ear for Dunham's conversation earlier in the day, stopped rattling his pans to come up behind the group and hear the tale this stranger, who seemed about to turn out somebody after all, was to tell.
Bill Dunham gave them the true story of the death and miraculous resurrection of Ira Ingram, described by Shad Brassfield as the fittified man. He told how Moore had laughed down his aspirations to a job with the revivified Ira's demand to be told who had numbered him with the dead, and how he had been met with the sally at the camp across the river. They heard him through with straight faces, although it cost them a mighty effort to make it, as Dunham could see.
"They throwed it up to me like I was the one that said the damn fool thing!" Bill complained.
There they let go and laughed, the younger ones rolling on the ground, even sedate, troubled Hughes shaking under the violent irruption of his mirth. Dunham felt so relieved to have it out of his craw, and so warm and friendly toward them all for their respectful restraint, that he laughed with them, more comfortable and at home among them than he had felt anywhere since coming to the land of short grass.
"I was so blame glad," he resumed when the gale of laughter passed, "to hear that dang fittified man wasn't dead, I made up my mind right there I'd never lose my temper and hit the first lick over anything like that again. That's why I let 'em go to the end of their string."
This frank recital of his adventures appeared to put Dunham on better standing with Hughes, who asked him how many men were gathered on the other side of the river. Twenty-five or thirty, Dunham said, but more were coming. It was their intention to assemble a hundred men, Garland had told him. Let 'em come, Hughes said; he was bound to go on to Pawnee Bend and load his cattle even if they assembled the whole male population of the state to stop him. Bob had been to Pawnee Bend to order the cars, which were to be on the siding, with engines to pull them, five days from that day.
He had to get his cattle to Pawnee Bend by that time, Hughes said, or lose heavily in demurrage on the cars and head tax to the Indians if he kept his cattle in the Cherokee Nation. Under the arrangement by which cattle were allowed to pass through these Indian lands the herd must move toward its destination at least ten miles a day. Hughes had only one more move; his time would be up to be clear of the Indian country the day after tomorrow morning.
It would mean bankruptcy to him if he was forced to turn back. He could not drive eastward to the railroad that crossed the Indian Territory; there would be no course open to him but to return to Texas. He had a herd of young beef cattle, especially bought up on a speculative venture for the drive. If he could hit the market within ten days it meant five or six dollars, or maybe ten dollars, a head more to him than his beef would bring three weeks later, when Kansas stock would begin to pour into the yards.
Hughes was bitter against the Kansas cattlemen, whose action in establishing a quarantine line at the border of their state had been spread far down the Texas trails. He could not believe that healthy Texas cattle spread disease; he denied that such a thing ever had been proved. Any plague that had carried off Kansas cattle was purely local, he contended, and he would appeal to the federal court for relief if he felt that he could get action in time to do him any good, which was a hope without foundation. So he had to get through to the railroad on his own resources, and he was bound to do it.
He wasn't going to recognize their authority by seeking a parley with them, Hughes said. Up to that hour they had not sent him any word of their intentions; as far as he was concerned he had no official information, if it could be dignified by such a name coming from a band of ruffians, that any quarantine had been established against Texas cattle. His intention was to drive to the river in the morning and start across. If it had to be a fight, he'd give them the best he had.
Texas men had made that trail, Hughes said; it belonged to them. He had driven over it twenty years ago, delivering cattle to Custer at Fort Hays, before ever a Kansas man thought of putting a herd on the range. It was too perilous for them in those days; they had to wait till Texas men made the country safe, and now they showed their gratitude, as well as their valor, by coming down to the line in overwhelming force to deny honest men their rights. If they wanted a fight they could have it, and he'd give them the best he had.
He repeated that declaration pointedly, as if to drive it into Dunham's understanding. Bill knew he was talking in the expectation that he would sneak away during the night and carry all this back to the Kansas guards.
This evidence of distrust made Dunham uncomfortable, although he was not troubled by any upbraiding of conscience for his act in crossing the river and offering his services on the Texan's side. There was something between him and John Moore far wider than the Cimarron, indeed. Youth is generous in its forgiveness of injuries, injustices and slights, but ridicule will fire its resentment so fiercely that all the placative oil in the cruse of hypocrisy will not ease the brand.
The cattleman wound up his frank presentation of the situation with a sigh. It pressed upon him heavily, as it touched with a troubled shadow even the lightest mind in the company. The stars were out above the herd, which had settled down to the night's repose. All was quiet down there, where vigilant riders circled the satisfied cattle. Hughes stood looking down at the dark blotch the big herd made on its bedding-ground, dim through the night.
"So, if you're on the square, Dunham," he said by way of finality, "and want to prove it, figure out some way to get that herd across the river and on the trail to Pawnee Bend."
Hughes said this in a grim jesting way, as if proposing what he knew to be at once beyond the inclination and limitations of the man addressed. Dunham felt it as a taunt and a mockery, as if Hughes had said: "You're crooked, and I know it, but we are gentlemen. We scorn you, and let you go your way."
But that proposal, mockingly made, set the wheel of Dunham's thoughts turning. He got out his new blankets and stretched himself on a cowboy's bed for the first time in his life, to lie for hours looking at the stars, planning and plotting, scheming and devising, not toward any undertaking that might add to his own fame or profit, but to some bold stratagem or shrewd maneuver that would humble the loud arrogance of John Moore and make his name a jest on the tongues of men.