Ralph Compton Red Trail

CHAPTER ONE

Central Texas, April 1874

The ranch stretched out near far as the eye could see, flat and sun warmed below them, green with springtime, in places dappled light brown by the herd of longhorn cattle. Mase and Katie Durst sat astride their horses, poised on the bluff overlooking their ranch. The bluff was set amongst the San Vincente hills, just about the only elevation hereabouts, and Mason "Mase" Durst could see most of the 2,340 longhorns. He gazed upon them with considerable satisfaction, for they'd been hard-won. Years back he had hired Crane Williams, young Lorenzo Vasquez, and Pug Liberty to help him "scrape" the start of the herd from the underbrush around the Brazos River. There were said to be a hundred thousand such cattle, descendants of strays, free and legal for the taking in that wild region of Texas. Most of the cattle on Durst Ranch were the offspring from those captured by the Durst hands. It was dangerous work, driving the wild longhorns from the brush-choked oak mottes around the river into the ramshackle pens they'd set up to contain them. Herding the feral cattle back to Durst Ranch carried its risks, too. Mase had gotten badly gored in his right leg from one of the longhorns-but once the cattle were contained on his medium-small ranch, he'd bred them and built up his herd. For some years he'd sold off part of his herd every spring, but for the last four, he'd simply built it up.

They'd lived lean these last years, but Katie never complained. Not even when he'd signed on for other ranchers' trail drives, to be gone for months at a time for a hundred dollars and a chance to learn the trails. He glanced at her affectionately now. His wife was a sturdily attractive woman, the kind people called handsome due to the strong planes of her face, her piercing dark blue eyes, her strong chin. Her shoulders were wider than most women's, her hands a little bigger. He was six feet one himself, and she was five eight. An armful and a sweet one-but tough as leather when she needed to be. She wore buckskin riding breeches today, cut for a lady, and a tan top, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She had smooth, flawless skin, a contrast to his own craggy, weather-beaten features.

"There's Jim and Curly," Mase said, pointing to the south.

They could see their son, Jim, riding his small cow pony on the flatlands below and doing a good job of it for a nine-year-old boy. Riding alongside him on a quarter horse was the only full-time hand the Durst Ranch had, Carlos "Curly" Chavez. He was a kind of unofficial uncle for the boy, as well as a ranch hand. Curly lived with his family in a sizable cabin in the hills beside the ravine through which ran San Vincente Creek.

Katie grinned. "Look at Jimmy waving that lasso!"

"He's driving a cow back into the herd. Not that she needs it. She's just looking for sweeter grass."

"We're lucky we got those early rains," Katie remarked. "Gave us the good grass, the extra grazing."

"Lucky in some ways, darlin'," Mase said. "But it's flooded a good deal of the trails north. And that's not all we'll be facing. . . ."

"You're still fixed on driving the herd up north this month, Mase? There's that trouble with the Comanches. Railroad north of Dallas is cut by the Indians-won't be running for another month or so . . ."

He nodded. "The Chisolm Trail's so overrun with Apaches and Comanches and Comancheros, the Army's shut it down for a good while. Same with the Shawnee Trail. Anything west of that's a long distance out of our way. Was I to wait for those trails to open up, we'd be competing with the big herds for grazing, for trail headway, and they'd get the jump on me with the buyers."

"You already have that buyer. Mr. Osgood seems a decent sort. He said he'd buy every steer you've got if you could get 'em to the railhead-and I believed him. Why not just take his word for it?"

"I do believe he's reliable. But he's practical, too. He's got only so much money to spend, and if the other herds get there first with good beef, he'll buy from them. He's offered me top dollar-I want to get that herd to him."

"We've got no choice but to wait, Mase, unless you want to herd them east to Louisiana."

"Wouldn't get as good a price there. No, I'm for Wichita. You know, Crane Williams found another trail a couple years back. I'm going to talk to him about it. . . ."

You make this work for me, Fuller, and IÕll cut you in,Ó said Tom Harning. ÒHell, that ranch should have been mine all along. Mase Durst horned in and moved in with the help of his Yankee friends!Ó

Ralph Fuller squirmed in his chair. He was sitting behind a small desk in an office that was barely larger than the desk, in the back of the Clinton Bank, the only bank in the county. He was a man whose pallid, round-cheeked face was softened even more by indoor living, whose small mustache twitched from side to side as he considered his reply.

"I don't know about that, Tom. The government men did say the land was his, but the way I heard it, Durst got there first and legally staked his claim."

"That's what they tell you-but they're lying!" Harning said, standing up and leaning vulturelike over the desk. He was a wide-bodied man of forty-five, with a square-cut beard to hide his jowls and bristling eyebrows that seemed to bristle even more when he was angry. His small gray eyes got smaller as he narrowed them at Fuller and went loudly on. "I'll not have you naysaying me on that or anything else, Fuller! I know what you did, and you know what you did!"

Fuller winced. "Now, these allegations-they come from a man who drinks too much, and we had to let him go-"

"You let Barney Kaper go because he saw you pay that gambling debt off with the bank's money!"

Fuller licked his lips. "That's . . . I have sat over the books with the accountant and-"

"Oh, you juggled things around and made it work, and I hear that you put that accountant in for a raise! But your boss, Mr. Gaffell, will be interested to have a closer look-if I give him the clue!"

"He'll just misunderstand it all, Tom, if you go putting a bee in his bonnet-"

"You will do as I say, or that bee will be buzzing right in his ear!" With that, Harning slapped his right hand flat and hard on the desk, making the bank manager recoil in his chair.

Fuller gulped and spread his hands. "I can't just call in the loan on that ranch when it's hardly in arrears! Why, we give all these folks a good while to sell their beef so's they can pay us, Tom! That's how it's understood! It pays off, too."

"Doesn't have to be that way! You call it in-and you see the bank sells that place to me!"

Fuller looked desperately at his blotter, as if it might offer some way out. "It's not that easy to get people out of a place they've been rightfully established in-"

"I'll deal with that, Fuller! Now"-Harning stood up straight and crossed his arms over his chest-"are you going to do it, or am I going to get in touch with Mr. Gaffell?"

Fuller closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "I . . . Yes, all right. Very well. I seem to have no choice."

Mase Durst and Crane Williams sat out on the broad farmhouse porch, drinking hard cider and watching the moon rise over the flowering Texas plains. A biting breeze was sweeping down from the north, making Mase shiver. The Williams farm was eighteen miles south of the Durst Ranch. Mase had come here hoping to recruit Crane as a partner and work out the substitute trail with him.

Crane was fifteen years older than Mase. Once a cowboy, he was now settled on his own quiet farm, which mixed sheep, a few hundred steers, twenty dairy cows, and a great many chickens; and he was doing well enough with it. He was a major supplier of dairy, eggs, chicken, and steaks to two nearby towns. He had a gray-streaked brown beard, long graying hair because he didn't bother to cut it, and a crooked nose because when it was broken, he hadn't bothered to set it. Four years ago he'd gone on what he swore was his last drive. He and his wife, Azalea, had two kids left of the three-little Judd had died of the galloping ague-and Crane was reluctant to be far from his homestead.

"And that's why I'm telling you, no, I cain't come with you, Mase," Crane was saying. "Hell, I lost four men on that trail-and two hundred twenty head of cattle. It's dangerous! There are outlaws aplenty up there, and you may run into hostile Cherokees. The route takes you through canyons twisty as an angry rattler. And it's a fair narrow way, too. That land is as rugged as anything you can squeeze a cow through. Why, we had to dodge a landslide-lost poor Henry Domingo to them rocks!" He took a pull on his can of cider and went on. "Also, you're probably going to have to stop in Leadton for supplies. Never met such a pack of scoundrels."

"You make it sound like it ain't passable at all, Crane."

"I proved a drive can pass that way and come out the other side. Anyhow, maybe you'll have better luck than we did. I do think your Katie's right-it's better to wait and choose one of the marked trails. But if you're of a mind to go right quick, it sure looks like Red Trail is your only way to get where you're goin'. And it does seem the other trails are closed for now."

"It was another drive that forced you on the Red Trail, wasn't it?"

"That SOB Charles Goodnight. Got it into his head we were stealing his stock. Wasn't ready to take his drive north and didn't want us to go either-said we'd use up all the graze. Made a deal with the Choctaw to close the trail to us. Being as we couldn't get through on the Chisolm, we struck west, lookin' for a way around. . . . A band of Chickasaw told us about a trail through the canyons north. Chief name of Cloudy Moon. Not a bad sort. You run across him, give him my regards. We paid him fair, and he let us through and pointed the way."

Mase grunted. "Not sure I can even find this Indian."

"If you listen close and look at the map I made, you'll find your way to the trail all right. It ain't so hard to get to." Crane gave Mase a gap-toothed grin. "It's just hard to get through with all your fingers and toes!" He puffed his pipe alight, then passed a hand-drawn map over to Mase.

Mase unfolded the paper and held it out to catch the lamplight. "Looks like the route starts where the Shawnee Trail crosses the Red River."

"Sure enough. Y'all can take the Shawnee up to Denison and across the river into the Indian Nations. Ten miles north and you'll come to an old buffalo trail heading northeast"-he leaned over and tapped the map with his pipestem-"there. Now, you'll be crossing two rivers, and then you follow this one northwest, and you'll find the entrance to the canyons-and Red Trail. See it? Right there. That's where you got to start watching your back. . . ."

Katie Durst was sitting by the fire, reading to her son, but her mind kept wandering to places north. She wanted to go on the drive with Mase, just to help him get through it. They had been partners in everything, and she wanted to be a partner in that, too. She knew herself to be capable of it. But he was worried about the ranch, the stock-though Curly would stay here and look after all that. There was Jim to think of. He didnÕt want the boy to be left without his mother, though heÕd be fine with the Chavez family; heÕd stayed with them before. True, itÕd be an awful long time without his ma.

But she knew there was something else. Though Mase placed a lot of trust in his wife, he was scared for her to go. The Red Trail was especially dangerous. Of course, every trail to the railhead was tough. She had heard the stories: men swept away by floods, trampled by stampedes, caught in unseasonal blizzards and frozen to death, attacked by Indians and rustlers, blasted by lightning-the cause of a surprising number of cowboy deaths. Endless long, very long days in the saddle. And if you took sick in those harsh conditions, you were very far from a doctor.

She'd be willing, anyway. But she admitted to herself that if she went along, she'd start in worrying about Jimmy after a day or two.

"Ma?"

"Yes, Jimmy?"

"You stopped reading about Robin Hood and all."

"Oh-I'm sorry. But you know what? I was just coming to the part about Maid Marian. I thought you said you didn't care about that part!"

"Well-I'd like to hear that'n, too."

"I thought so! Thinking about maidens at your age!"

He snorted and shook his head. Katie closed the book on her lap and looked at him, a tanned boy with his father's sandy hair and the eyes he'd inherited from her, so dark blue they were almost black. That endearing spray of freckles across his nose was all his. "Maid Marian can wait. It's time for you to hit the bunk."

Jim yawned. "Where's Pa?"

"He's gone to Crane Williams's place to talk some business."

"How long's he gonna be gone on that drive?"

"Oh, upward of two months."

"We could go with him. Or anyhow I could. I could help! I'm pretty good on a horse, Ma. I can catch the fence post every time with a loop."

"That's true. You're more than half a cowboy already, Jim. The time will come when you'll go with him. But Pa says this time you got to stay here and take care of me and the ranch."