the Man from Skibbereen (1973) (3 page)

Out of the tail of his eye he caught movement, and turned. Far out on the grass, a black dot. Then there were two... no, there were four... five.

They came in dozens then, huge things with shaggy heads. Big, black cattle they were, like none he'd seen before, and all matted from rolling in the mud. All day long they kept coming, some of them brushing against the shack, and when night lowered they just bedded down where they were, paying no mind to the building or the men inside it.

Little it was that Crispin Mayo slept that night, for the great creatures muttered and moaned, sometimes their horns clashed, and several times one arose to stretch and scratched himself so vigorously against the corner that the shack rocked on its base.

It was after midnight when the wounded man awakened, and Cris sat down by him. "It's all right now. It's a grand hearty lad you are, and you'll be up and about soon."

The muttering stopped, and clear and sharp the voice said, "Who is it? Who is there?"

"It's me. The Irish lad left behind by the train."

"Train!" His voice shrilled until Cris feared he would frighten the beasties out yonder. "It's the train they're after. It's murder they plan!"

He muttered, cried out loudly a time or two, and only the fact that the great herd of beasts was now lying several hundred yards away kept them from milling about and perhaps knocking down the little station.

Cris Mayo paced the floors of the two rooms. All was still. He was worried, knowing nothing he could do for the wounded man, and no way in which he could tell anyone of the trouble they were in. He could only wait for the next train to arrive and hope that the man would live that long, and that the bad ones, whoever they had been, would come no more. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, but could not sleep.

Hours later he was startled by a shot. He lunged up from the floor, then dropped to his hands and knees, groping for the rifle. Suddenly, some distance off, there was another shot, then a thunder of hoofs. He threw open the back door and by moonlight he saw them coming.

Rushing out, he waved the red lantern he had kept lit in order to stop any train that might come through, and he shouted. Then, drawing the pistol, he fired it at the approaching mass. A big bull went to his knees not thirty paces off, started to scramble up, but another shot dropped him.

Cris fired again, saw another stumble but recover. Waving the red lantern and shouting, he managed, with the help of the fallen bull, to turn some of them. Backing up, he paused at the door to fire again. He scored, and a second animal fell.

Holstering the pistol, he grabbed the rifle from its place by the door, and wasted at least six shots that had no effect on anything. A big bull leaped one of the fallen animals, hit the corner of the station with a shoulder, jarring it to its foundations, then charged on.

Again he fired, point--blank, but the beast crashed by as though Cris had but breathed in its face.

The herd thundered on, parted now by the fallen bodies as well as by the building. Cris fumbled with the pistol, reloading it. When he looked through the door into the other room the wounded man was up on one elbow. "What is it?" he asked.

"Those black cows. They rushed upon us after somebody shot at them."

The man lay back down. "Buffalo. They're buffalo. The building shook. I thought it was going." The man lay still, breathing hoarsely. "Who are you?"

"The train left me. I told you."

"Can you handle a key? We've got to send word."

"I can't, but it makes no difference. The wire's destroyed and silent. I think it was cut."

"Likely. Likely they've torn up some track, too."

"It was my own thought," said Cris. "Who is it behind the trouble? Is it you they're after?"

"No." He looked at Mayo, trying to make up his mind.

This man was a stranger, yet he looked like what he said he was. He wore a square derby, a shabby but neatly brushed suit, heavy brogans. Certainly he was no Western man. "They're a bloody lot of renegades. They're going to take the train. I heard some talk after they'd caught me in bed and beat in my skull, and thought I was dead." He paused. "They shot me out back there, when they found I was still alive, and dragged me a ways off to hide me. They want to kill somebody on the train, and I believe it's General Sherman."

"Why, is he important?"

"He is. And he led the march from Atlanta in Georgia to the sea, burned plantations, tore up railroads, wrecked the country; but it broke the back of the South and helped to end the war."

"Is he on the train?"

"They think so. He's supposed to be coming west. It's an inspection tour, or something of the kind."

The wounded man closed his eyes and lay still, thinking. There was nothing he could do, no matter how much he worried over the situation. If the wires were down... and he had heard no sound from the instrument... they were helpless. Nor had he any idea just where or how the renegades hoped to seize the train. He tried to run over the possibilities in his mind, and he was still thinking of it when he fell asleep.

Crispin Mayo went to the door and peered out. It was very dark. There were stars enough, and he could see the dark bulk of the two buffalo he had killed. They represented meat, and as he looked at the hugeness of them he thought briefly of what such a vast mound of food would have meant to him at various times in the old country.

There he would have known what to do, what to do about everything; but all was strange here. The menace of "they," whoever they were, worried him. He had no part in this fight, and wanted no part in it. They had tried once to kill the man within, and when they stampeded the buffalo they were probably meaning to wipe out all trace of the telegrapher and perhaps of the station. But what had that to do with Cris Mayo?

The few moments of mental clarity on the part of the agent had helped him none at all, and it was gradually coming to him that nothing was going to help. He was caught in the midst of something that could mean the death of him and of all those fine dreams of going home to Maire Kinsella with her pert nose and freckles.

Ah, those fine, foolish dreams! He had thought to return wearing fine clothes, with a great golden ring on his finger, and driving a flashy pair of blacks... he'd show them! Well, now he'd be lucky if he got out of this alive.

He would fight. Naturally he would fight. It was never truly in his mind to do anything else, however he grumbled over it. That was the only way he knew, and he looked at the great dead black beasts yonder with a kind of pride. He had fired at them, and he had hit them. At the same time a wary little something in his mind warned him that they had been coming in a mass and how could he have missed? Be sensible, boyo, he warned himself, do you not be betrayed by a bit of luck.

Morning came again, and with it a renewed sense of vastness, of the enormous dome of the sky, of the sweep of the endless grass bowing before the wind. He recalled his village in Ireland, which could be dropped into this grassland and lost. Indeed, the whole of Ireland could be lost here.

He backed away from the thought, and glanced around the shack's rooms, where things were small, confined, easily understood. When he looked outside, the sheer size of it all overwhelmed him, yet there was also the fact that the soil was good. He had run it through his fingers... you could grow barley here, or rye or wheat, and you could grow potatoes...

He was looking at the wounded man when he heard the pound of hoofs coming. His pistol was belted on under his coat, the rifle stood by the door. He walked to it, started to step outside, and then did not. Why let them know he was alone? Or that he was there at all, till it came to the moment of necessity?

There were three; unshaven, dirty--looking men, one of them in an ill--fitting gray uniform coat like those that (Mick Shannon had told him) the Confederates had worn. They drew up a few yards off, seeing the faint smoke from the chimney. They looked at the dead buffalo in the space behind the station, and then one of the men rode a slow circle around the place. Mayo held himself out of sight, and waited.

Finally one called out, "Hallo, there!"

Mayo crouched near a window, watching them, but did not reply. They called again, and then one started forward, but another called him back.

"... dying," Cris caught the one word, and then, "... you saw... got to be."

There was more talk, of which he could distinguish nothing, and after a moment the three turned their horses and rode away to the east. He watched them go, and only when they had been gone for several minutes did he rise from his crouch.

He found a butcher knife and went outside to cut up a buffalo. Butchering was no new thing, for at home in Ireland they often slaughtered and dressed their own animals. Inside, he hung some of the meat, then began frying a steak.

He scowled, trying to think what he should do. These men who had nearly killed the telegrapher--agent would surely kill him and Cris both, if given the chance, and perhaps anyone who was on the train, too. He knew nothing of Sherman, but they'd no right to gang up on the man. What could Cris do?

A thought came to him, and he puzzled over it, considering all aspects. In the heap of tools he found a shovel and a scythe, and went out across the tracks and cleared a wide space in the dry grass. In the center of it he piled some of that grass, then took a chance and went to the cottonwoods for small branches, bark, and dried wood. With these he prepared the makings of a fire. From a stack nearby he dragged some railroad ties

... sleepers, some called them. The roof of the shack had been covered with tar paper and there was some left, fragments and trimmings. He gathered this and took it inside, where it at least would remain dry if there were a sudden shower.

He lit several of the red lanterns, and kept them lit. The oil from one of the others he poured over his kindling, and some of the ties he placed near enough to throw on the fire once it started, if so be it that it ever started at all.

The place he had chosen for the fire was across the main line and the sidetrack from the shack--he did not wish to risk burning himself out--and upon slightly lower ground. From the window it was invisible.

He ate his buffalo steak and found it not at all bad. He went inside, but his patient was asleep. Cris Mayo sat down on the chair near the useless telegraph key and stared out at the empty plains, f eeling lost and lonely. He was tired from nights with little sleep, worried about the hurt man and about the renegades. That they would come back he had no doubt.

Finally, bored with nothing to do, he pulled out the drawers of the desk and ruffled through the papers he found there. One of them was a map like none he had ever seen before, but finally he realized that it was a cross section of the roadbed, indicating, among other things, elevations. As he was about to push the map away, he saw something that stopped him.

East of the cottonwoods the railroad started to climb; and level as it looked, it actually had a definite grade. He recalled then that the locomotive had slowed some time before they reached the station, until when it passed the cottonwoods it was moving scarcely faster than a man could walk. From there on, according to the figures, the railroad levelled off for some distance.

If riders were going to catch up to a train and board it, that would be the place, where the train had slowed to a walk. He had no doubt they knew all about that and had planned for it.

There were soldiers to the east and to the west, and these renegades would know that once word reached them of General Sherman being taken from the train there would be pursuit, pursuit far beyond anything ever tried on the Western plains.

So what then? If they were desperate enough to attempt such a thing they must be prepared for a fight, but undoubtedly they also had planned an escape. That meant they would need time, and that meant first that the telegraph line be put out of action, and second that the train be unable to carry the news, because of the tracks being ruined or the crew killed. This would give them perhaps a few days of flight, in which they might scatter to reassemble elsewhere.

He butchered as much of the meat as he could, then tying a piece of rope to the carcass he tugged and pulled until he had hauled it away out of smelling range. The other was too heavy, so he had to let it lie there for a time until he could find some other means to be rid of it.

Crispin Mayo turned again to the plains and stopped, staring. A rider with a led horse was coming toward him. The led horse dragged something behind it.

He stood waiting, standing very still. The rider came on toward the station, and he saw it was an Indian woman, a woman with a small child. The led horse dragged two poles behind it, the ends trailing through the grass. She drew up when she saw him.

She looked from him to the buffalo. "Eat," she said, indicating the child and herself.

"Sure," Cris said. "I got some grub inside."

For the first time he saw there was a man lying on a blanket across the poles, an Indian man. His eyes opened when Mayo came toward him and he made a slow move toward a tomahawk in his belt.

"Lay off," Cris said, waving his hand, "you'll not be needin' that. We got one hurt man already."

The woman had been watching him, and he turned to her. "One inside," he said, "hurt."