Matagorda (1967) (8 page)

He had a feeling that when she talked of this she was not using her own words, but words she had heard. From her father, perhaps? Or from somebody else? Had Tom any inkling of her doubts? Or that there might be some who lacked faith, someone close to Mady or himself?

He had no doubt that somebody had informed the Munsons that he and his men had ridden to Refugio the day before. Those hard-ridden horses were hard to explain in any other way.

Somebody had informed the Munsons in time for them to get some fighting men to Refugio.

That they had failed in their mission was largely due to the fact that they had failed to catch Duvarney and his men together in a single group.

Tap Duvarney had lived too long to trust anyone too much. It was his nature to like people, but also to understand that many men are weak, and some are strong. In the rough life of the frontier strengths and weaknesses crop out in most unexpected places, and there is less chance to conceal defects of character that in a less demanding world might never become known . . . even to their possessor.

Someone close to Tom Kittery, someone whom he trusted, was betraying him. It would pay to ride carefully and to study the trail sign before revealing too much to anyone.

Riding back to the hide-out in the brush, Tap Duvarney considered his moves with care, trying to foresee the moves the enemy would make, and to plan his own accordingly.

They must do the unexpected, always the unexpected.

Tom Kittery got up from the fire and approached as Tap swung down. "We'll drive for Kansas," Tap said, "and we'll start day after tomorrow."

Chapter
Six.

Over the sullen coals of a me
s
quite-root fire, Tap Duvarney told his men: "Roll out at first' light, bunch on Matagorda, and sweep south. Start about here." He drew a rough map of the island. "Push down and swim them over to here."

He turned to Kittery. "Tom, how about you taking your boys and sweeping kind of east by north from Copano Creek? Scatter out and gather what you can, but waste no time chasing the tough old ones.

"Darkly Foster can take Shannon, Lahey, and Gallagher over to the tip of Black Jack Peninsula and drive north. We'll work fast and we'll miss a lot of stuff, but we should rendezvous on Horseshoe Lake with a good-sized herd."

Kittery nodded. "Seems likely. How about you?"

"I'll take Doc, Lawton Bean, Spicer, and Jule Simms over to the island. Walker and Porter can work with you."

"You'll never make it. Not in the time you're givin* us. That's a whole lot of country."

"I know it is, and we can't make a clean sweep. Just start driving and keep moving.

What we get we'll take, and what's left we can get the next time."

"All right, Major," Kittery said ironically, "you're givin' the orders."

Breck and Lubec stared stubbornly at the ground, ignoring Tap. The Cajun showed no feeling one way or the other. Tap said mildly, "If we all do our part, this should be quite a drive. We'll slip out of here without a fight."

Lubec laughed contemptuously. "You don't know them Munsons, Major." Lubec emphasized the title. "They'll wait until you bunch your stock and they'll move. You'll see."

"I hope you'll be there shooting when they do, Johnny," Tap replied pleasantly. "Now I'm going to hit the hay. I'm tired."

Slowly, they drifted away to their beds, all but Breck, Lubec, and Kittery.

"They don't like it much, Major," Spicer whispered, "you takin' command like this."

The night was still. The crickets' chirping was the only sound. Tap clasped his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars, which winked occasionally through the black mantilla formed by the branches and leaves overhead. He liked the smell of the earth, the trees, the coolness of a soft wind from off the Gulf.

Despite his outward assurance, he was far from confident. There were too many things that could happen, too many things to go wrong, and there was too much that was doubtful about his own relationship with Tom Kittery.

The man was moody and solitary, and when not alone he kept close to those who had been with him from the beginning. The bitterness of the feud was upon him, the memory of good men dead, of his burned-out home, of the graves of his family. Nor could Tap blame him. In Tom's place, he too would have fought. But he was not in Tom's place.

His future lay in that herd of cattle they were to gather, his future and perhaps that of Jessica. He wanted to return to her without empty hands, and if he could not return that way, he made up his mind suddenly, he would not go back at all.

He was too proud to accept a position from her family, or from friends of either his family or hers. His father and grandfather had walked proudly, had made their own way, and so would he make his. He could return to the service, but he knew what it meant- fighting Indians or living out a dull existence on some small post on the frontier.

With the few men they had, they could not hope to make anything like a clean sweep.

They could only do their best, then move the herd; with luck they would get out without a fight. He was not at all as hopeful of that as he had sounded at the campfire.

Finally he slept. In the night he stirred restlessly, the sea in his bones responding to something on the wind, some faint whisper from out over the wastes of the ocean.

Something was happening out there, something he knew by his instincts. Several times he muttered in his sleep, and when he awakened he was not refreshed.

The Cajun was at the fire. Did the man never sleep at all? He looked up at Duvarney and, taking his cup from his hand, filled it from the coffeepot.

Brooding, the Cajun sipped at his coffee. Presently he glanced around at Duvarney.

He nodded to indicate a huge log that lay over against the edge of the clearing.

It was an old log measuring at least four feet through, and was perhaps sixty feet in length.

"He big tree . . . grow far off."

Tap Duvarney looked at the log. It certainly was larger than anything he had seen along the Gulf Coast, although there might be something as big in the piney woods to the north.

"How did it get here?"

The Cajun jerked his head toward the Gulf. "Storm. Big storm bring him on the sea."

Tap looked at the log again. They were at least five miles from the Gulf Coast. To come here by sea, that log would have to cross Matagorda Island and then be Carried this far inland.

"Have you seen the sea come this far in?"

"One time I see. My papa see, also. One time there was a ship back there." He turned and pointed still further inland. "Very old ship. It was there before my grandpa."

The Cajun relapsed into silence over his coffee. There was no light in the sky, but a glance at his watch showed Duvarney that the hour was four in the morning. When he had finished his coffee he went out and caught up his horse, then bridled and saddled him.

Standing beside the horse, he thought over the plans he had made. There was much about them he did not like, but he could see no alternative that would improve the situation.

The night coolness had gone. The air was still, and it was growing warmer. He led his horse back and tied him to a tree not far from the fire.

He accepted a plate of beef and beans from the Cajun, and ate while the others crawled sleepily from their beds. It was going to be a long, hard day.

There is no creature on the face of the earth more contrary than the common cow.

Not so difficult as a mule, not so mean or vicious as a camel, the cow beast can nevertheless exhaust the patience of a Job.

Duvarney and his men started on the island, and contrary to his announced intention, they did not drive south, but north.

It was not until they reached the island that Tap pulled up and hooked a leg around the saddle-horn. He pushed his hat back and got a small cigar from his pocket. "We're going to do a little different from what I said." He paused to strike a match. "We're going to drive the cattle north, cross from the tip of the island over to the mainland, at low tide or close to it, and take our part of the herd right into Indianola."

"Suits me," Spicer commented.

"Me too," Doc said. "We'll get to town that much sooner."

"Somebody," Duvarney went on, "has talked too much, or else somebody has too much confidence in their friends. So if you should meet anybody, don't let them get the idea we're driving north."

"That's marshy country," Jule Simms said doubtfully. "We're liable to bog down the herd."

Tap reached into his saddlebag and brought out a folded chart, now much crumpled.

"Look here," he pointed. "This is an old smugglers' trail. It was an Indian trail before that. We'll have to watch the herd, but if we keep them on that trail we can go right through."

They scattered out and began to work back and forth across the island, pointing the cattle north. Here and there other brands were found, and those they cut out and turned back. It was slow, painstaking work. The cattle were loath to be driven, stubbornly resisting, and a few were allowed to go.

The weather was hot and sultry. Not a breath of air circulated among the low-growing brush, or moved in from the sullen sea. Tap mopped his face again and again, fighting the flies, but he kept driving the cattle out. By noon they had a good-sized herd moving up the island ahead of them.

Jule Simms had gone back for fresh horses, and they took a long nooning by a brackish waterhole near Panther Point. Kittery was to have started horses to them, and with luck Simms would meet them halfway.

Lawton Bean held his cup in his gnarled, work-hardened fingers. "You figure this'll turn into a scrap?" he asked.

"Not if I can help it," Duvarney said. And then he added, "But Id say the odds were against us making it all the way without a fight."

"You figure to drive the other herd
this away
?"

Duvarney shook his head. "No . . . and this isn't to be talked about. We'll drive this bunch in and sell them right in Indianola. If things work the way I figure, they already know we've a drive under way over on the Copano; and unless I'm mistaken, that will pull all the Munson crowd out of Indianola."

The grass was good, and the cattle, fortunately, showed no inclination to go back.

When Duvarney had put out the fire and they had saddled up again, they merely nudged the cattle along. On the landward side of the island there were inlets and coves, and small scattered lakes, and the cattle took shelter from the flies in some of the thick brush there. But Duvarney led the way, working the reluctant cattle out of the brush and starting them north.

Welt Spicer met him at the end of one of the narrow necks of land that lay between the ponds and lakes. He mopped his face and swore. "Hotter'n hell," he said. "Cyclone weather, if I ever did see it."

"Jule should be along," Duvarney said. He stood in his stirrups, but it offered him no advantage. He could see nothing but the tops of willows. "My horse is played out," he added.

"So's mine. How far to the end of the island?" Spicer asked.

"Twenty miles."

"We ain't goin' to make it today. Maybe not tomorrow."

"Tomorrow. We should cross over to the mainland before noon. The brush thins out further along, and the island narrows down. I'm going to send you and one of the other boys ahead to keep the cattle to the Gulf side of the island."

Their horses started reluctantly. A big red steer lifted his head and stared at them defiantly. His horns would spread an easy seven feet; he would weigh fifteen hundred pounds if an ounce, and all of it ready for trouble. Both men started for him and he lowered his head a little, then thought better of it and turned away.

Spicer started a cow and a calf from the brush, the cow wearing the Rafter K brand, as the steer had. "We'll get that brindle calf in the roundup," Spicer said.

They had moved no more than two miles from their nooning when Simms caught up with them, bringing ten head of horses.

Tap Duvarney stripped his saddle from his own weary horse and saddled one of the new ones-a strawberry roan with three white stockings. It was a mustang, but there had been some good blood in it somewhere, for the horse had fine lines. It looked strong and tough.

Jule Simms sat his horse, studying Duvarney. "I heard some talk," he said at last.

"I'll listen."

"They're goin' to kill you-Breck an' them."

Tap rested his hands on the saddle and looked across the horse at Simms. "Do they know you heard this?"

"I was saddling a horse-they didn't even know I was around. They want you out of the picture. With you gone, they figure to fight the Munsons."

"Does Tom know this?"

"Not from the way they talked. Of course, I couldn't say for sure. Breck hates you for being' a Yankee-lover, and Lubec thinks you rate yourself too high. Mostly they think you're ridin' roughshod over Tom and keepin' them from killin' Munsons."

"Do you know just what they're planning?"

"I didn't hear that part, only it's supposed to come soon. Maybe at Horseshoe Lake, maybe somewhere else."