Blood and Gold

Now, as I looked out on their bleak vastness, the Staked Plains were empty of life. The long shadows of the buffalo were gone and with them those of the Comanche and neither had left a mark on the land.

I finished my coffee, threw the dregs on the fire and swung into the saddle.

By midafternoon I was riding back along the trail we’d made in the spring, crossing the divide between the Red and the Wichita. This was hilly country, the black soil heavy with salt, and I let my horse graze on a clump of salt weed for a spell before urging him on again.

I found wagon tracks in the mud a few minutes later.

The tracks were heading due south, and I figured they were of a four-wheel wagon drawn by two oxen. Judging by the way the iron wheel rims had dug deep into the mud, it was heavily laden.

Teamsters sometimes traveled this route, carrying supplies to Fort Worth and other places, but they always cut across the Western Trail, heading west, not south.

I swung out of the saddle and checked the footprints by the tracks, trailing the black behind me. The wagon was not far ahead because, despite the rain, the prints were still fresh.

One set was small and neat, obviously made by a woman, the others those of a booted man.

Bullwhackers don’t ride on the wagon, but walk alongside the oxen with a whip to urge them on, and these two were no exception.

What a man and a woman were doing in this country in the middle of an Apache uprising I could not guess. But something, maybe the way the man’s prints now and then suddenly veered away from the wagon and slipped and slid all over the place, told me these were pilgrims and the husband, if that was what he was, seemed to be either staggering sick or staggering drunk.

If there were Apaches close, they would have seen those tracks and would know there was a woman with the wagon, a valuable prize they would use to while away a few pleasant hours before they killed her.

I swung into the saddle and followed the tracks. Ahead of me they led into a narrow valley between shallow hills before disappearing into gray distance and rain.

Heavy drops hammering on my hat and slicker, I reined in the black and looked around. The surrounding hills seemed empty of life, but that was no guarantee the Apaches weren’t around. It’s when you don’t see them you worry, and right now I saw nothing but the rain on the hills and the lowering blackness of the sky, lit up now and then by the flash of lightning.

The past weeks had taught me caution, and I eased my Winchester from the boot and laid it across the saddle horn.

A few yards ahead of me a covey of scaled quail, soaked and unable or unwilling to fly, ran from one mesquite bush to another, rattling the plants’ stick arms with their small bodies. Then the land fell silent again but for the hiss of the rain.

I leaned over, patted the black’s neck, and urged him forward. He tossed his head, his bit ringing like a bell in the quiet, took off at a canter, then settled back into an easy, distance-eating lope.

My eyes constantly scanning the hills and surrounding stands of oak and mesquite, I rode into the mouth of the valley. A quick glance at the sky told me there were at least four hours until nightfall. Until then, me and the two people who were walking with the wagon would be out in the open and dangerously exposed.

I slowed the black to a walk and rode alert in the saddle, my nose lifted, testing the breeze, but smelled only wet grass and rain and the dank, menacing odor of the dead silence.

Five minutes later, as I cleared the valley and rode into a mesquite-studded flat, I found the wagon.

I reined up when I was still a hundred yards away and stood in the stirrups and studied the wagon, the two people beside it and the lay of the land, not wishing to blunder into trouble.

My first glance told me this was a tumbleweed outfit and my second confirmed it. The wagon was old, the planks warped, the whole sorry wreck held together with baling wire, biscuit tin patches and string.

Off to one side two huge oxen trailed a broken wagon tongue as they grazed, still hitched together. A young girl in a hooded cloak stood by the front of the wagon, looking down helplessly at the shattered, raw stump of the tongue.

A small, bearded man, a jug in his hand, had his face upturned to the rain and sky, his arms spread, yelling words I couldn’t hear.

My first instinct was to shy clear of this pair and their troubles, but there are some things a man can’t ride around, and I knew deep within myself that this was one of them.

I kneed the black forward and rode to the wagon, the teeming rain running in sheets off the shoulders of my slicker.

The girl stepped toward me as I drew closer and I reined up and touched the brim of my hat. “Ma’am,” I said, my voice suddenly unsteady.