Stagecoach Read online

  “It is.”

  “And them gullies and ravines is all slithering with horse thieves, old son.”

  “You don’t mean it,” Sammy said.

  “Don’t I, though?”

  “But why doesn’t the law . . . ?”

  “The law is a thousand miles away, son. Didn’t I lose eight head of good horses six weeks back?”

  “And you never could get a trace of em?”

  “Trace of ’em? Sure I did. I bought four of ’em back.”

  “Good heavens,” Sammy said. “You knew the men who stole them and didn’t . . . ?”

  “Didn’t what? Try to chase them?”

  “Perhaps . . . with help.”

  “Where would you get the help? Besides, you chase these crooks away into the hills and they’re plumb gone. You could hide twenty thousand head in any square miles of them badlands. And then, after you’ve got back home, somebody all unbeknownst sneaks up to your window and puts a bullet into the small of your back.

  “‘Murder by men or man unknown,’ says the jury.

  “‘Poor old Bill,’ says my friends. ‘He wouldn’t let well enough alone.’

  “No, sir, the best way is to keep hands off of them thieves. They’s too many of ’em, and they got this advantage . . . they hang together and work together, and the honest folks don’t.”

  “But suppose that one hired a strong guard to herd the mustangs across the hill country . . . ?”

  “Herd it across a hundred miles of mountains? A guard for a few hundred mustangs? Son, you’re talkin’ mad. You’d need a whole company of soldiers to watch every mustang, and even then you’d come in with only the tail of your horse in your hands. Them thieves are that slick that they would steal your horse right out from under your saddle and leave you ridin’ along on a one-eyed maverick that you never seen before.”

  By this time Sammy began to wonder not that the price of horses in Crumbock was $75 a head, but that it was not a $175. He went off by himself and sat down for a cigarette and a think.

  The first idea is as good as the last, Sammy thought to himself. As good as the last, most of the time. So lemme see what I can make out of the horse idea.

  He turned it back and forth.

  In the first place, it was plain that Mr. Storekeeper had exaggerated somewhat. According to him, a man was a fool who tried to drive horses to Crumbock, and yet horses were certainly there—great numbers of them. Some people, then, were making money by sending livestock there. How did they manage it? Simply by doing what his friend the storekeeper swore could not be done—guarding their horses through the mountains, and herding them successfully across the great Texas plains.

  And what others could do, Sammy could do—if he only knew where to hire the right men—the right Mexicans, if they were the best.

  The thought of large profits will lead on like the thought of a Promised Land. And so it was that they led Sammy. For two long hours, with the map in his hands, he made his calculations. He knew that $10,000 is a great deal of money to make. And six months is a short time to make it in—and the penalty of failure, as he saw it, was the loss of the hand of pretty Susie Mitchell. It was, indeed, a great deal. And when he thought of Susie, he vowed to himself that somehow he would find the inspiration to carry him through—the inspiration to handle even such devilish brutes as Texas mustangs.

  Besides, he was beginning to feel lucky. He had never played even in thought for such stakes as these. To win or lose all was a great thing; a fever was beginning to burn in Sammy and how could he tell that it was the gambler’s world-old fever?

  Before that day ended, he was on board a train away from Munson, and the next morning he had changed trains and was shooting in a roundabout way toward the southland of cheap horses.

  Six months to go when he left New York City. Five months and three weeks when he left Munson. Could he make it? Yes, confidence arose in Sammy as he computed the distance. A month, say, to gather the herd. That left four months and a half. Then an eight-hundred-mile drive. Suppose they journeyed only twenty miles a day. Still, at the end of forty days they would be at their destination.

  It seemed simple. Allow a month for mistakes. Allow another month for unknown bad luck. Still he would have time to get back in Brooklyn under the wire of the six months with some $20,000 weighing down his pocket.

  He was in San Antone now. He spent five desperate days trying to interview Mexican cowpunchers and getting no further than: “Sí, señor. Mañana.”

  Always, they would meet him tomorrow, but tomorrow they did not appear. What was wrong with him?

  Finally, in a San Antone hotel, he confided his troubles to a sharp-eyed man with a fighting face. A man too stern to be trivial.

  He said to Sammy: “You’re bound for a losing game if you’re bound to drive horses to Crumbock. But if you want a man to handle your herd . . . there’s one now.” He pointed to a dark-faced man in a corner of the room.

  “He!” Sammy gasped. “He looks like the king of Mexico more than like a cowpuncher.”

  “You go talk to him,” said the stern-faced man. “And tell him that I sent you. He’s a crook and a scoundrel. He’ll either rob you or else he’ll see that you don’t get robbed. It’s six of one and a half a dozen of the other. If you can trust Manuel, you can put your life in his hands with perfect safety. But if he decides to trick you . . . well, as good be done by him as by a dozen others.”

  So thought Sammy, and, sitting beside the handsome young Mexican, he poured forth his plans and his desires, while Manuel, stiff with gold-laced jacket and collar, listened, smiling, and dreamed over the idea through a thin blue-brown cloud of smoke.

  He said at last in good English: “I hire the right men . . . men who can ride and who know horses. I buy the right horses for you. I drive those horses to Crumbock. You pay me five hundred dollars. But if I can’t drive those horse to Crumbock, you don’t pay me a cent. Do you like this idea, señor?”

  The thought of $500 in wages to a single man was a staggering thought to Sammy Gregg. And yet, the more he pondered, the more it seemed to him that this was his only solution for the problem.

  So he closed with Manuel on the moment, and went up to his room and wrote out a careful contract and offered it to Manuel.

  “Ah, no,” Manuel said, still smiling through a mist of smoke. “I do not wish it in written words. If I fail . . . so! But if I succeed, then I shall trust myself to get the money . . . not a piece of paper.”

  Chapter Five

  There was only one fault that Sammy was inclined to find with Manuel. He was everything but swift in his motions and in his appearance, but nevertheless he accomplished a great deal. He spent three days sorting over his acquaintances until he picked out a pair of villainous-looking rascals—in the eye of Sammy Gregg—of the roughest peon class. However, they could ride anything and anywhere. They could shoot well, and they were willing to obey orders from the mouth of Manuel. Also, they knew horses.

  After the assistants had been chosen, a central corral was picked out and toward this, presently, Manuel and his men began to drift horses by the score and by the fifty. It was all Manuel. Very soon Sammy Gregg found that he might as well stop worrying and simply submit to the thorough management of Manuel, who went straight ahead doing what he wanted to do, and if Sammy made suggestions, Manuel received them, always, with a beautiful smile that showed his flashing white teeth. That smile might have meant anything, but before Sammy was through with this Mexican, he knew that it meant: You are a fool and all of your ideas are worthy of a child only.

  This did not trouble Sammy. He was not interested in the scorn of Manuel. He was only interested in the speed with which he gathered horses.

  And what horses they were. At first, when he saw a section of the brutes driven in, Sammy threw up his hands in despair and asked Manuel if it were not a joke. Manuel assured him that these were selected animals. Selected from what? Lump-headed, roach-backed, thick-legged, pot-bell
ied creatures were these, with Roman noses and little wicked eyes that glared tigerishly out from beneath a shag of forelock. One could believe nothing about them, at first glance, except tales of evil temper. But when Manuel saw that his boss had no opinion at all of the purchase, he simply had the most tractable of the lot saddled and gave it to his boss to ride. Although Sammy had already learned to ride, he spent three days struggling with this “well-broken” animal, but after that his eyes were opened. He discovered that the ugly little monster could rock along all day at an easy canter that ate up mileage as swiftly as the gallop of a wolf. The bronco could stop in his own length while going at full speed, turn his body faster than a man could turn his head, and be off in a new direction. He found that the body of the mustang was like his temper—as tough as rawhide, than which there is nothing tougher. He discovered, too, that there was no gentling these creatures. They remained to the end enslaved barbarians always hungering for the moment when they could plant their heels in the stomach of the master and then knead his body soft and small with their sharp hoofs while he lay on the ground.

  These were the animals that Manuel and his two assistants collected, but not at $10 a head. The price had risen. It was almost a $12 average that Sammy had to pay, so he contented himself with a herd of two hundred, and with these he started out with the three cowpunchers on the long trek north toward the mountains.

  They had luck enough across the great Texas plains. For mishaps they had half a dozen stampedes that lost thirty horses and cost them altogether a good additional three hundred miles of going. But by the time they got to the hills, the herd was in fairly good shape for traveling. The running edge had been taken out of their temper and they had learned to troop along obediently enough. Manuel had turned out to be the king of herdsmen, and his two assistants were masters of the same work—delicate, delicate work indeed. Whoever has ridden herd on a bunch of wild mustangs knows that above the mind of the brute there is the mind of the whole mass of animals, blind and deaf and enormous, and sensitive. Ready to stampede straight over the face of a cliff at a moment’s notice, or just as ready to trample down a town.

  Sammy had come to be of a little use before the trail was ended. And he was even trusted with the dangerous work of riding night herd on the horses, which is that portion of the work that requires the most skill.

  By this time they were looking forward to the end of their trail. Munson was a scant march of thirty miles away. Beyond Munson was another hundred miles of mountains, and then the end of their labors. So Sammy, from time to time during the day, could not help letting his thoughts run ahead of him. A hundred and seventy horses at $75 a head made $12,750.

  Just enough, just enough. And so to return to his Susie Mitchell not in six months, but in two. He would appear before her startled eyes like a hero, indeed. He would be invested with a veil of glory. Yes, even in his own eyes.

  They had bedded down the herd in a sort of natural corral. It was as though some great hand had scooped a basin among the hills. There was a broad, flat-bottomed meadow in the midst, and around the sides half a dozen throats of cañons yawned black upon the little amphitheater. They could not have found a more ideal location, and to make perfection a gilded wonder, there was a little shallow stream of water, glimmering in the starlight as it trickled musically along over a bed of hard gravel. No danger of broken legs on steep banks—no danger of horses bogged down in quicksand here.

  “We won’t even need to ride herd tonight,” Sammy Gregg observed. “This place is so made to order.”

  “Ah, señor,” murmured Manuel, “you are full of trust. Perhaps it is well in some places, but not here. Here . . . even the mountains are watching you and hating you, señor.”

  That was a sentence that young Sammy Gregg did not forget. And, that night, he prepared for riding herd as a token that he was willing to take advice. But Manuel was also in the saddle.

  “Why?” asked Sammy Gregg. “Surely at the worst, one man is enough here.”

  “If they should shoot off up one of those canons . . .”

  “They are not as restless now as they used to be . . .”

  “They are always restless . . . in their hearts . . . no matter how tired and how quiet their bodies may be.”

  Before that night was over, Sammy had to agree with this hired man. A nervous devil seemed to have possessed the herd. Once, at the hoot of an owl, every one of the beasts started to their feet. There they stood poised and ready for everything. But the voices of the men soothed them.

  They rode clockwise and counterclockwise around the edges of the herd, and their voices were never still, talking, talking, or singing softly all night long—a weary work. And, at length, the herd sank down again on the ground as though at another signal.

  When Sammy reached Manuel on the next circle of the herd, he paused to ask: “What could have made them jump up at the same minute?”

  “There is something in the air, tonight,” said Manuel. “You and I cannot tell, but the broncos certainly can tell.”

  For his part, Sammy was willing to believe. He had seen enough of these wild animals to begin to have an uncanny respect for them. In a way, they seemed to be as full of wisdom as they were filled with meanness. So he rode on in his work, still singing—it did not matter what, so long as the song was soft. As he passed, the pricked ears of the prone horses would flatten in recognition of the human voice that they hated, but which nevertheless reassured them.

  Give a horse something to occupy his mind and you can do anything with him. If it is only a bit to chew on and champ and worry while you are giving a colt his lesson. But don’t try to occupy the whole attention of a dumb beast with your teaching. Sammy was beginning to understand this, too.

  After all, there was something charming about this scene. He had a vague wish that Susie Mitchell might be riding by his side, here, looking at the black, gaunt, treeless hills, or watching the faint shine of the running water, with the lumpy forms of prone horses dimly silhouetted against it here and there—and always the broad, bright beauty of the stars overhead. The alkali scents and sharpness were taken from the air now that it was night. The wind was cool, almost cold. It touched the hands and flowed across the face like running water. It brought peace to the heart of Sammy Gregg.

  Day was not far off now. There was no coming of light, but there was a change in the air, which Sammy was beginning to know as the forerunner of the sunrise. And just when he told himself, with relief, that there would be only another hour of darkness to watch through, the horses leaped suddenly to their feet again.

  There had not been a sound this time—not even the hoot of an owl, and yet here were the horses bolt upright, heads raised, and all turned toward the west where the black mouth of one of the cañons yawned wide upon the meadow land. Out of that cañon, at last, Sammy heard a noise like a far-off clapping of hands. Then he heard a thin sound of a horse neighing, and after that five horses shot out of the blackness into the light of the stars—five horses with a man on every back—and the crashing of the flying hoof beats rang and echoed in the ears of Sammy.

  The thieves—the horse thieves of whom Manuel had spoken so often—of whom the storekeeper had warned him.

  There was a shrill, universal squealing that broke from the herd. Then they whirled and fled at lightning speed from this sudden horror that had leaped out of the heart of the dark night. They ran with heads stretched forward, ears flattened, tails streaming straight out behind them—they ran blind with speed. And in an instant the meadow was swept as bare as the palm of Sammy’s hand. And on the heels of his disappearing herd, five riders were spurring along—not mounted on broncos, but upon tall, long-legged blood horses that sprang across the ground with a tigerish grace and swiftness.

  Sammy himself spurred wildly in pursuit. Up to his lips rose a harsh cry—such a sound as he had never uttered before. Here was Manuel close beside him, his teeth glinting, but not in a smile. Sammy reached across and tore a Colt
from the saddle holster nearest to him. Another weapon gleamed and spoke from the hand of Manuel.

  For answer, there was a blasting volley from the scurrying shadows far up in the ravine—first the brief, wicked humming of bullets, wasp-like, in the air about the ears of Sammy, and after that a rattling of long echo above the thunder of the flying herd.

  But what was that to Sammy? They had missed him. He felt that he had a charmed life—that it would be given him to ride through a steady rain of bullets until he came up with these villains, these robbers. He raised his Colt and with the heavy weapon wobbling in his weak, untrained hand, he fired, and again and again.

  There was no more shooting from the riders before him. No, they were drawing farther away at every moment, and now they rushed around a corner of the ravine and were beyond his sight. But what was this beside him? A riderless horse—the horse of Manuel.

  The madness was brushed from the mind of Sammy Gregg, and suddenly he saw himself as he was—a foolish child riding down on a band of five practiced warriors of the frontier—warriors as cunning and as merciless as Indians, if indeed they were not Indians. Here in this fight in which poor Manuel had fallen already, how could he, a tenderfoot, hope to succeed? He drew rein.

  And Manuel?

  He galloped back as fast as he could and he found that Manuel’s two Mexican friends were already at the spot. It occurred to the bitter heart of poor Sammy that these fellows might have been riding on the trail of the thieves rather than waste their time here. But no, they squatted beside Manuel, not in any agony of grief, but calmly smoking their cigarettes. Manuel himself had his head pillowed upon a rock, and he was trying to smoke, but his fingers were thick with numbness, and the cigarette kept falling from his hand.

  He greeted his employer with a flash of his eyes.

  “Why do they try to do nothing for you, Manuel?” gasped Sammy. “Where is the wound?”

  There was so little breath in Manuel that he had to collect it through a long and deadly pause before he could answer: “I am shot through beneath the heart. I have not long to live, señor.”