Longhorn Empire (3 page)

The incident between Brant and the ambitious tinhorn seemed to have an exhilarating effect on the gathering in the Deadfall.
Voices grew louder and more raucous. The fiddlers back of the dance floor sawed more vigorously. The dancers whirled with a
wilder abandon. Even the roulette wheels developed a sharper clirk and whir. Somebody started bawling what was intended for
song. Others took it up and the hanging lamps flickered to the din. Brant shook his head as the hectic hours passed.

“Trouble in the making,” he declared to himself. “It’ll bust loose any minute.”

Trouble did bust loose, and Cole Dawson started it. The Running W poker game had fizzled out from lack of competition. The
losers borrowed back from the winners and the players joined their companions at the bar. They mingled with the punchers of
a returning outfit, the Tree L. Dawson and a lanky Tree L hand got to discussing brands and their altering. The argument grew
heated. Suddenly, with a bellow of anger, Dawson knocked the other down. One of the cowboy’s companions hurled Dawson sideways
against the bar with a swinging blow. A Running W hand sent Dawson’s attacker off his feet with a hard punch to the mouth.
Another Tree L waddie returned the compliment, and there were three men on the floor. Instantly the whole section of the bar
was a hitting, wrestling, cursing tangle. The barkeeps howled to stop it. Doran and Pink Hanson uttered soothing yells and
tried to pull the battlers apart. Chairs and tables went over splintering and crashing. The dance floor girls screamed. The
dealers and floor men bellowed for order, and didn’t get it. Folks who really weren’t concerned in the row got hit by accident
and immediately became enthusiastic participants. The whole room boiled and seethed like a giant pot.

Austin Brant streamed across the room, dived into the mess and got Cole Dawson by the collar. He jerked him back out of the
shindig. Dawson writhed around in Brant’s grasp, roared a string of cuss words and swung a blow at the foreman. Before it
had travelled six inches it was blocked. Brant whirled Dawson about and levered his arm behind his back and up between his
shoulder blades. He ran Dawson on tiptoe through the door.

“I’ll bust your arm for you, Cole, if you don’t behave,” he warned. “What’s the matter with you, anyhow? You know we got work
to do. The Old Man would hand you your time if I told him about this. Now head for camp and sober up. You can raise all the
hell you want when we get to Dodge and turn over the herd. Now get going.”

Rather to Brant’s surprise, Dawson obeyed
orders. When Brant released his arm, he lurched off through the darkness, mumbling and muttering.

Brant returned to the saloon. Doran and Hanson and the floor men had managed to restore order. There were some bloody noses
and discoloring eyes, but no serious damage had been done. Brant saw Norman Kane still sitting at his table, smiling his thin,
cynical smile. He glanced toward where the girl and the old man sat. The girl was hunched back in her chair, her red lips
slightly parted, her face rather white. The oldster was unconcernedly stuffing black tobacco into a blacker pipe. Brant walked
over to the table.

“Not exactly the place for a lady, suh,” he remarked pointedly.

The old man nodded. “Reckon you’re right, son,” he agreed without rancor. “Sort of new and rambunctious for my little niece
here—she’s from back East—but I don’t pay it no mind. I’ve seen the elephant before.”

“How come you to be in this section?” Brant asked curiously.

“We’re just passin’ through,” the other replied. “We’re headin’ for the Texas Panhandle country. Our wagons are over east
of the ford.”

“What part of the Panhandle?” Brant asked with interest.

“South Canadian River country,” the other said. “Town near where I got title to a spread is call Tascosa. The spread, the
Bar O, is about twenty miles to the northwest.”

“I remember it. Used to belong to old Clifton Taylor,” Brant remarked.

“That’s right. Taylor came back to Oklahoma,
where he was brought up. I made a deal with him. Traded my holdings in Oklahoma and some hard money for his Texas outfit.”

“You’ll sort of be neighbors to the Running W, the outfit I work for,” Brant observed. “We range to the south and west of the
Bar O.”

“That’s nice,” said the oldster. “Be glad to know somebody in a new section. My name’s Loring, Nate Loring. My niece’s name
is Verna Loring. Her Dad was my younger brother. Went East and died there last year.”

Brant uspplied his own name and they shook hands. Verna glanced up rather timidly through the silken veil of her long lashes,
but gave him a slim little hand. Apparently some of her fear was evaporating.

Old Nate stood up. “Well,” he said, “reckon we’ll be moseyin’ along. Want to get an early start in the mornin’, if that dadblamed
river behaves. Hope to see you down in Texas, son.”

“You will,” Brant promised emphatically. “We’ll be glad to have you for neighbors and we’ll send over some of the boys to
help you get located as soon as we get back from the drive. Yes, I’ll be seeing you.”

Old Nate nodded, and headed for the door, Verna swaying gracefully beside him. At the door she glanced back for an instant,
her blue eyes met Brant’s gray ones, held. She turned quickly and vanished into the night.

Austin Brant drew a deep breath. He glanced around at a sound and saw Norman Kane at his elbow. Kane was staring toward the
door, the glitter in his black eyes intensified.

“You see interesting things in this hangout,” he remarked.

“Uh-huh,” Brant agreed absently, “you do.”

The first beams of the rising sun found the Running W trail herd streaming north. Some distance ahead was a dust cloud that
marked Norman Kane’s Flying V critters, which had gotten under way first. Still farther ahead another cloud denoted a herd
that came from north of the Cimarron to hit the Dodge City trail.

To the west and south a third cloud spotted still another outfit rolling in behind the Running W. The longhorns were on the
march, as they had been for nearly ten years, as they would be for close to another de cade, in the course of which they would
change the face of the land, the habits of the people, and the aims and history of the West.

Nothing could stop the onward march of the long-horns. Cholera, Spanish fever, swollen rivers and other difficulties of the
trail, loss of riders and loss of cows, rifles in the hands of angry grangers, prohibitory laws—all made the attempt, but the
horns continued to clash, the wild eyes to roll, the shaggy backs heave, with the north and the towns of the north ever in
view. The territories were filling up with land seekers who needed untold thousands of cattle to stock their ranges. The cities
and the towns demanded cheap meat. Boom towns like Virginia City, Gold Hill and Deadwood were willing to pay any price for
it. The government needed millions of pounds for the Indians herded onto the reservations and no longer able to supply their
needs from the buffalo.

All these provided the necessary incentive for the great drives that began on the watersheds of the Brazos, the Colorado,
the far-off Nueces and the mysterious Pecos and thundered north. There was a golden harvest to be reaped. The cattle owners,
large and small, were out to get their share. Nothing should stop them. Nothing could stop them. The great barons of the open
range lived like feudal lords on this golden flood. Small owners and individual cowboys sensed opportunity. The herds grew,
the drivers became larger, more frequent. The bawling of worried cows, the blatting of frightened calfs, the rumblings of
disgruntled steers rose with the cursing, the song, the crack of six-shooters and the shouting of orders in a pandemonium
that disturbed the silence of nature from the Gulf to Kansas, and beyond.

It was the wild, unordered, triumphant song of marching empire. Born of economic necessity plus the challenge of the wilderness,
the vast migration brought a dozen great states into being, made of Chicago the granary of the world and left an impress that
would be plain half a century later, and more. The march of the Texas long-horns! The saga of the individualist! The very
spirit of America laughing at the wilderness, setting to naught the problems of distance and terrain, accelerating the wheels
of progress, creating a legend, a literature, turning dreams into realities and merging the impossible with the possible in
a common pattern of fact.

Twenty to twenty-five miles a day were covered in the early days of a drive, so that the cows were tired when night came and
less liable to stampede. Later this was cut down to an average of
more like ten. But with Dodge City still some seventy miles distant, Austin Brant stepped up the speed of the drive until
the cows were travelling nearly as fast as they did when started north across the Texas Panhandle.

“It’s gettin’ close to our deadline date,” Webb had told him when they left the crossing. “If things go along smooth, we’re
okay, but if somethin’ should happen to delay us, the loop will be drawn mighty tight.”

So Brant took no chances and pushed the herd along at top speed.

“Looks like Norman Kane has a deadline to meet, too,” he observed to Webb on the morning of the second day from Doran’s Crossing.
“He’s keeping ahead of us right along.”

“Uh-huh, it does look that way,” Webb agreed. “I’ve a notion that young feller is a mighty smart cowman, Austin, and a sort
of cold proposition along with it.”

“I figure you’re right on both counts,” Brant nodded. “He’s the sort of jigger who makes a first class general when a war busts
loose.”

“Uh-huh, and when things bust loose wrong, the sort that makes a fust class—anything,” old John predicted. “I wouldn’t want
to get tangled up with him. I’ve a hunch he would take any short cut that worked well for him.”

“Mebbe,” Brant temporized, “but I’ve a notion he’s got too cool a head to go off half-cocked.”

Old John grunted, but made no further comment.

Scouting far in advance, Brant looked back at the moving mass of cattle, spread out like a great arrowhead, the point to the
front, the base more
than a mile wide. It was a big herd, even for those days, nearly three thousand head. Brant had twenty cowhands riding the
herd, some six or seven more than the usual number for a herd that size. He was taking no chances.

There had been trouble a-plenty on the trail to Dodge City. The great herds afforded fat pickings for ruthless and daring
bands that would swoop down on the bedded cattle at night, stampede them and cut out a sizeable bunch that they would run
into some hidden canyon or gorge. The wrathful cowboys would be too busy for some time getting their scattered charges together
to attempt pursuit, and even after the cows were rounded up and quieted once more, they did not dare leave them unguarded.
Knowing this, Brant had made a plan which he hoped would foil any attempt on the Running W herd. For it he needed extra men.
So far, except for the mishap at the Cimarron crossing, the drive had been singularly uneventful.

“Too darn easy,” Brant told himself. “I got a feeling something is liable to bust loose. Sure wish we were at Dodge City.”

He rode to the crest of a rise and glanced back. Everything looked to be in perfect order. The herd was rolling forward at
a good pace. The hands were in their proper places. Near the head of the lumbering column and a little to each side were the
point or lead men. This was the position of greatest responsibility, for it was they who must determine the exact direction
taken. When it was desirable to veer the herd, the point man on one side would ride in toward the cattle, while his partner
on the other side would edge away.
The cows would swerve away from the approaching horse man and toward the one that was moving away from them.

About a third of the way back were the swing riders, where the herd would begin to bend in case of a change of course. Another
third back rode the flank riders. It was their duty to assist the swing riders in preventing the cows from wandering sidewise,
and to drive off any stray cattle from other outfits joining up with the marching herd.

Last of all, cursing the dust and the poky and obstinate critters that always drift to the rear, came the drag or tail riders.
This is the most disagreeable chore of the trail, but on this particular drive, Brant had chosen his drag men with the
utmost care, for he was taking no chances on a sudden foray on a lagging portion of the herd. Cole Dawson, alert, vigilant,
and capable had the drag riders and the rear of the herd under his personal supervision. Some distance back was the remuda
of spare horses.

Following up the remuda came the two lumbering chuck wagons, the drivers sitting with Winchester rifles ready to hand. As the
day drew to a close, the wagons would speed up and pass around the herd, so that the cooks could get busy at the camping site
chosen by the Trail Boss and have supper ready by the time the herd was bedded down for the night.

A mile or so west of the trail was a range of low hills, their slopes covered with dense growth. The growth straggled out
onto the prairie in a shadowy tangle. Suddenly Brant’s eyes caught a gleam amid the bristle, as of reflected sunlight on shifted
metal. A moment later he saw it again. His
brows drew together and he tensed in his hull. He sent Smoke down the sag at a slow pace. Apparently he was facing to the
front, but his slanted eyes studied the dark tangle at the base of the hills. A third time he sighted the tell-tale gleam,
and once, where the growth thinned somewhat, he was sure he sensed movement amid the chaparral.

“There’s a hellion over there riding herd on us, sure as shooting,” he growled. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

As evening drew near, Brant grew anxious about a bedding-down site for the herd. They were passing over an exceedingly dry
stretch of prairie. Not since morning had he encountered a stream or a spring. He knew that by now the cows must be badly
in need of water. From time to time he could hear the querulous bleating of the tired and thirsty critters as they slogged
wearily across the prairie.