The Tall Men (4 page)

“It’s a long way to Texas,” he nodded half aloud, “and only ten minutes to Montana.”

“Meaning what? asked Clint, holding up on his mouthful.

“Meaning,” Nathan Stark answered swiftly for Ben, “that you can be back in the Black Nugget before midnight. And with more money in your poke than twenty men could squander before the spring thaw.”

Clint looked uncertainly at Ben.

“We gamble his word against our piece of a threesplit chance to make suthin’ of ourse’ves,” said the latter quietly. Then, still more quietly and laying it finally in front of Clint to raise or call. “It’s dealer’s choice,
hermano,
with Stark’s joker stacked and wild.”

“I pass,” said Clint, his voice for the one, rare moment as straight as Ben’s. But the inevitable, tailswitch grin could not be kept out of it.

“You’re still shuckin’ ’em, Sam. What do we do?”

Ben looked a long time into the valley below. He hunched the thin fray of his Confederate collar against the building cold in the icy whoop of the wind across the divide. He hefted the moneybelt, not looking at it, nor at Clint, nor at anything. At last
he pushed his black up to Stark’s Kentucky studhorse, peered, narrow-eyed, for a long three seconds into the expressionless face of its rider.

“We
gamble,”
he said, and handed the moneybelt to Nathan Stark.

The three riders topped the divide. The horses of the first two, beginning to know the place, slowed their gaits. Their sole reward for the foresight was a twitch of the reins, a soft, southern “Hee-yahh, there. Git along, hoss—”

The knowing mounts responded, moving quickly across the exposed spine of the ridge, as glad perhaps as their riders to be out of the whipcrack of the north wind. The third rider followed them. None of the three looked back. Their figures, bolt upright and big and black, loomed for an instant against the four o’clock skyline, then were swiftly gone.

Thus, on the morning of February 29, 1866, Nathan Stark turned his back on Montana.

Accompanying him were the two Texans remembered by Virginia City only and even then but vaguely, as “Sam Allen” and “Tom Pickett.”

It was an ill-assorted trio, scarcely suited by varying natures to travel together, yet destined by history to share a three-thousand mile journey which has no parallel in frontier memory. And to share the perils of that unmapped hegira under the terms of a contract still without peer or counterpart in all the peculiar records of western financial understandings.

In the day and place it was not uncommon to settle matters involving thousands, even millions of dollars with a few words and a firm handshake. The
language was simple, the men who used it even simpler. They understood one another. There was no room among them for a man whose word was not the easy equal of his bond, no time among their number for the long talker or the Philadelphia lawyer.

Still and all, the agreement between Nathan Stark and his two Texas confederates was unique.

In the saddlebags of the Virginia Citian’s bay stallion reposed $10,000 in Yankee currency. Behind him, in the green-doored vault of Esau Lazarus’s Black Nugget strong-house, was deposited the remaining $30,000 of the Texan’s original loot. The name on the deposit slip was Nathan Stark’s, and his alone. In the worn jeans of the two cowboys riding ahead of him jingled not a nickel more than jingled there the night of their arrival above Alder Gulch. Yet the Texans were satisfied, the one by personal conviction, the other by fraternal persuasion, that they were equal partners in a corporate if crazy scheme to flood the Gallatin Valley with bawling, longhorn gold. Neither for a minute questioned the legality of their two-thirds claim to the waiting fortune, and only the latter withheld total judgment on the given word of their Virginia City associate.

Unique, indeed, was this western “gentleman’s agreement.” There had not been even the standard handshake to confirm it!

As has been said, Ben and Clint Allison, the former by slowness, the latter by indifference, were simple men. Just how simple, they had at the moment of their departure from Virginia City no way of knowing. A single fact remained, rock-certain. They had picked the one man in Montana best suited by dangerous combination of brains and ambition to show them.

He had stolen the first pot with his bold raise atop the stage road divide the night of the robbery. He had won the second by convincing his cowboy fellow gamblers that the bulk of their capital must be left behind in his own name, since to bank it with Lazarus under any other would have been certain to arouse curiosity and, ultimately, suspicion of the newcomers. The third and final pot now lay ahead. It would necessarily be a long time in the playing. The cards must be held close, the checks and raises made with the utmost, indirect caution.

As he rode south behind the two men from Lampasas and points west, Nathan Stark had no more doubt of his ability to rake in the last pot than he had shown in taking the first. Simple men had no business drawing cards at his table.

He began the cutthroat process of proving it, at the noon coffee halt.

They had ridden the morning away in silence and slowness, the bitterness of the weather and the force of the prairie-scouring wind saving all talk for the shelter of the noonhalt. Now, resting in the windbreak of a thickly willowed creek-bottom, the scalding coffee working inside them, the driftwood warmth of the fire, outside them, even the tactiturn Ben was ready to pass the time of afternoon.

Sensing the moment, Stark eased into it.

“Boys,” he announced casually, “we’ve got it half made. Only fourteen hundred and eighty-five miles more and we’re in business.”

It was the first time Ben had seen him smile, or heard him speak in other than dead-straight terms. Somehow, to the big Texan’s mind, it all at once made him one of them. It took a Westerner to refer to fifteen measly miles, out of fifteen freezing hundred,
as half the job already done. And to put back of it a good, dry grin at the same time.

“Well, now, Mr. Stark, I allow you’ve paced it about right. Leastways, we’re on our way.”

“And far enough on it,” smiled the other, “to drop that ’mister.’ I reckon it’s time we knew some first names. Real ones, for the best results, I’d say. Mine’s Nathan—”

It wasn’t a statement, it was a question. Ben knew it.

“You a’ready know ours,” he said.

“Do I—?” The smile was still at work, Ben noticed, but maybe straining a little to stay there. Clint didn’t miss the effort, either.

“That a question, mister?” he asked flatly.

“Sort it to suit yourselves,” shrugged Stark, still slow and friendly. “We’ll be calling each other something or other from now till fall. It’s a long time to listen to a name you’re not used to hearing.”

The two Texas riders looked at him a long time, the dying driftwood popping three times before Ben at last nodded. “Mine’s Ben Allison,” he said quietly. “He’s Clint. We’re brothers.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. He broke his glance from Ben, shifted it to Stark. “Yeah,” he breathed softly, “brothers.” Then, acidly. “I allow you kin tell which is the big brother. The one with the big mouth.”

Ben returned his look, saying nothing. Nathan Stark shrugged easily.

“All right, Ben and Clint, now we know each other. It’s the best way, you’ll see.” He slowed, putting it with patent sincerity. “Any name you give is safe with me, remember that.”

Ben nodded. But Clint didn’t quite buy it.

“We’ll remember it,
Mister Stark,”
he said deliberately. “See that you do.”

Stark watched him a moment longer.

Under the circumstances only one construction could be put on the younger brother’s reply. In the West when a man had been offered your first name, then “mistered” you on purpose, friendship was already out the window. He had been unsure of Clint from the beginning. That unsureness had just been removed. Young Allison’s cards were on the table, face up. It was only a question of time before they would have to be called.

With the decision, he turned to Ben, waiting for him to speak. Thoughtfully, the big Texan obliged him.

“I reckon we’ve a’ready tooken your word, or we wouldn’t none of us be here,” was all he said. “Let’s mosey along. Wind’s risin’ agin and we got some miles to make ’fore sundown.”

Stark nodded, came to his feet, started for the horses. So far, so good. The older brother had used neither the requested “Nathan” nor the rejected “Mister.” He was still playing a dumb, open hand. One that could be bet into and built up gradually until all the chips were in the middle of the blanket.

Clint was slower to leave the fire, hanging back to catch Ben.

“You out’n your mind, you crazy bastard? We’ve knowed this son of a bitch twenty-four hours! And by God for a friendly pat on your dumb butt you’ve give him information a sheriff couldn’t beat out’n you with a gunbarrel in six weeks. What the goddam hell you thinkin’ of, Ben?”

“Texas,” said Ben. “And three thousand head of San Saba steers. What’s yours?”

“A rope,” growled Clint. “And a nice handy span of yeller pine rafters.”

Ben said nothing, only began to kick the fire into the snow. Clint, starting for his mare, held up. “Now what the hell?” he snapped irritably. “You Injunjumpy a’ready? For Christ’s sake we ain’t twenty miles shut of the settlements yet!”

“Never knew the Injun,” said Ben softly, “that could count past ten."

For ten straight days they rode south, following the base of the Rockies down past the Three Tetons, crossing below them and over Wind River Pass to come out at Fort Bonneville on the headwaters of the East Fork of the Green River. Tracing the East Fork they hit the main Green, followed it south and east until they struck the old Fort Bridger cutoff on the eighteenth day. Here, Ben wanted to angle east, heading over through the North Park country of Colorado to feel out a trail route for their cattle along the east slope of the main divide. It was the way he and Clint had come north and he wanted Stark to see the good water and grass it made for the whole of the way to the Arkansas, and beyond.

Nathan Stark had other ideas.

No one had ever run a trail down the dry west slope. If they could route one over there, it figured to be freer of Indians and Army alike than any passage east of the mountains.

For eight days they were lost in the arid wilderness of eastern Utah. On the ninth day they cut the valley of a major stream running nearly due east. Ben had had enough of Nathan Stark’s leadership. He studied the river and the hazy mountains beyond its eastern vanishing point for a full five minutes, saying nothing. Finally, he looked at Stark.

“This’ll be fur enough south. You want to search
out your dry-hole route past this water, you’ll do it with two other Texans. Me and Clint are swingin’ east.”

At the headwaters of the stream, three days later, they rode into the fur camp of a Taos fox hunter. The stream, he informed them, was the Eagle Tail River. They were a bare hundred and fifty miles north of the New Mexico line, a shade over the same distance west of Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas. It was as much as Ben cared to know, or needed to. He spoke short and he spoke quick, not wanting Stark’s opinion and not waiting for it.

“We’ll head for Bent’s and the short grass,” was all he said.

There was no argument from Nathan Stark. By now the Virginia City man was no longer thinking in terms of who was in
real
charge. He swung up and followed Ben and Clint without a word.

Late in the afternoon of the twenty-ninth day from Alder Gulch, they came into the broad valley of the main Arkansas seventy-five miles above Bent’s Fort. There was little enough cause for celebration. They had been on the trail a month, had covered little more than two thirds the distance to Fort Worth. And worse, they were out of meat, had no flour and no coffee, had seen no game for three days. Their mounts were nearly used up, were grassbellied and sorefooted, would need at least a week on soft ground and good grain to be fit to travel.

It was agreed a layover had to be figured at Bent’s Fort.

The following morning, an unusually clear and warm one for the date, they set off down the Arkansas. The day wore on soft and balmy as only such
days can in the perverse spring of southern Colorado. By ten o’clock Ben’s and Clint’s spirits were considerably uplifted by the continuing brightness of the March sunshine on the homeground of their beloved short-grass country

The uplift lasted until an hour after noonhalt, when the sky to the north and east began to lead-up ominously and the wind to whine softly and nervously up the sweeping valley of the Arkansas from the south and east.

Within twenty minutes the grass was lying flat and due southwest and the wind, having switched compass completely was hammering at them with the unimpeded force of its eight-hundred-mile march across the Kansas and Colorado plains. Seconds later the snow began and the darkness shut down around them blacker than a Montana mine pit.

In the ten-foot lee of a riverbed shelfbank, Ben pulled the black gelding in.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. A man on horseback could not be seen thirty feet away. It was time for a talk—and in the unprotected sweep of the open prairie a man couldn’t hear you if you were yelling in his near ear with a deaf-horn, four inches away and downwind.

“We cain’t stop here.” He leaned in the saddle, cupping his hands toward Stark. “Got to drift with the river till we hit timber. That’s Timpas Crick at Ludlow’s Bend this side the fort. ’Nother fifteen, twenty miles mebbe.”

The wind caught his words, whipping them across Clint’s hunching shoulders, drumming them ominously past the white-faced Stark.

“How far is the fort itself?” he called.

A vicious drive of sleeted snow trapped his question,
flung it away from Ben, out across the turgid Arkansas. Clint heard it.
“Too far,
little man!” he consoled, then handcupped its relay to Ben. “The gentleman from Virginia City rises to request the official distance to Mr. Charley Bent’s second-hand store.”

“Forty miles, mebbe forty-five,” shouted Ben.

Stark waved stiffly, signifying he had heard. “I say we stay right here! We’ve no chance in this weather!” Nathan Stark had drifted out his share of north plains blizzards, had no stomach for adding this southern specimen to his successful record.

“You say like hell!” bellowed Clint. “This here’s a blue Texas norther, mister. Not no Montana chinook. Ain’t nobody sets out her dance agin no cutbank. Not and stays spry for the promenade home.”

“Clint’s right.” Ben was shaking out his rope with the shout, flipping its noosed end to Clint. “We got to go on, right now. There’s like to be five foot of snow on the level come daylight.”

Clint caught the rope, looped it over his mare’s head, passing the reins free of it. In the same motion he uncoiled his own rope, shot it, hondo first, toward Stark. The latter caught it, made it fast around his bay’s neck. “I hope to God you boys know what you are doing,” he shouted to Clint.

Clint laughed, turned his Comanche-dark face to the belly of the blizzard above them.

“Ka-dih!”
he yelled, calling harshly upon the Southern Comanche’s Great Spirit. “You hear the man? Listen to your white brother from Montana, you no-good Injun bastard! Leave off that infernal howlin’, you hear?”

“You leave off of it,” warned Ben. “It ain’t funny to even
play
crazy in a tight like this.”