Saga of Sam JonesChapter 5
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The cowhands were busy chasing the cattle back into line. Most of the animals had never been driven before and hated to leave the home range. In the days and weeks ahead they soon would come to expect moving and fall into line quickly. For now though, it was a tussle to keep the herd together and headed north. I waved to my wife and soon was covered with dust as I was across from the windward side of the drag.
The second day we doubled our distance of the first day and this was what we measured our progress by. My thoughts were always with Jessie and I was wishing I was with her. I worried about her getting started okay on the day I expected her to leave town in the coach. Three days from now, though, I would leave the river and meet up with her in the nearest town. The day came as all things do.
I rode into town and the first thing I saw was the coach parked at the livery stable. There was no hotel, but I knew she must have found quarters somewhere. A rooming house, maybe. "Where will I find the travelers who came in the coach?"
I was pointed to a large house and walked in slapping the dust from my hat. Jessie was there across the room. We saw each other at the same time and she flew into my arms. I bussed her soundly even though there were several strangers in the room. Gramp was there and so was George. Both were smiling. George was holding Felicity. Food was to be served in twenty minutes.
Jessie said, "Come with me Sam. I have a room and a change of clothes for you. Oh you look like you did when I first met you. Loved you then and love you now."
I took time to shave and wash up the best I could before going down to supper. I gave a report on the progress of the herd. All at the table were interested. I informed George that one of his ex-cowhands had lost a finger when a rope had wrapped around it. When the steer he had on the end, took off on him, his finger went as well. Hazard of the work! The cookie had cauterized the stump and disinfected it with some liniment. He should be okay after the wound healed. "I'll give him an extra month's pay." George thought that was more than fair.
Alone in our room, Jessie filled me in on her get-away from home. "I feel like a queen riding in the coach. Some different than a buckboard. George does most of the driving and he is so careful. He thinks Felicity is the best thing going. I think he will find some place to live near us, just so he can be with her. Gramps feels about the same.
"Dad is officially sparking Miss Sylvia. He has changed. He even kissed me when we left and told me to take special care of his granddaughter. Another thing. All of those cattle that were cut out from yours, he told the owners to go ahead and leave them where they were if they wanted to. They could stay as long as the owners didn't push more cattle onto the range. Do you think Dad is getting soft?"
"I doubt it. Sounds as if he is letting the other ranchers watch his new ranch while his attention is on Miss Sylvia. That will change when the range comes back and will handle more cattle."
"I think that is true. Oh, George told me he and Sarah had a big row before she left. It was something she said about me and Felicity, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. He'll never go out where she is going now. You know, it is almost dark. Don't you think we should go to bed?" We slept late and had to go across the street to the diner for breakfast. I swear Felicity was smiling at me. Gramp and George sat in some chairs waiting, just drinking coffee.
I finally had to say good-bye. Jessie was staying here in this town for two days and even then she would be ahead of the herd. I would see her in a week. The day after that, I would be letting George's old cowhands go--except for the drover. George was planning on coming down to the river to the herd and say good-bye to the men who had worked for him, some for many years. My Indian hands would then take over and trail the herd the rest of the way to their new range.
Every time I had to say good-bye, it hurt more and more. Felicity was getting some personality and I was hoping that soon I would be around her enough so she would recognize me as someone who belonged to her. I had a word with George before leaving. "Bring something to drink and I'll join you in having a good-bye party before I come up to see Jessie next week."
"What about the Indians? They'll get drunk and go on the warpath."
"These won't. They are under the control of a very powerful medicine woman. In fact I have been inducted into her clan. When they are with me, I speak for her. There won't be any problem."
"You got faith, Sam, but I guess I'll trust you. See you next week." The hard part of leaving was waving to Jessie who was standing waving back to me as I started down the three-mile ravine that ended at the river. The herd had moved on when I reached the river and I kicked my horse in the ribs and headed north to catch up.
There is always something you don't expect when on a trail drive. This day opened hot and oppressive. You could feel trouble in the air. You just didn't know from what direction it was coming. It was mid-afternoon when the clouds to the west started to get thicker and higher with the bottoms turning black. The drover came back along the river yelling at us to move the cattle faster.
"Kick 'em in the ass and we'll try to make it to where the canyon widens out. If we make it, hold the cattle against the east wall the best we can. I have a feeling we are in for some high water and this is the worst place to be. There has to have been a cloudburst north of here by the way it is thundering. If that happens, the river will rise in minutes and nothing will survive when the water overtakes us."
We heard the water coming with a roar before we saw it. Luckily we were on the inside bend of the river and the wall of water hit the far banks with a crash, sending a plume of water thirty feet into the sky. The herd was within sight of where the river canyon widened and the hands in the rear started firing their guns to stampede the cattle. Everyone almost made it.
The water crashed into the far bank and circled the bend coming across and catching the hand who was riding drag and twenty cows in the current. The cows went over like ten pins, one hitting the cowhand's horse and knocking it off its feet. Those ahead had no idea this was happening. The majority of the herd made the high ground and now heads were being counted.
Two men were missing. One named Johnny Oats was the drag man that day and a kid by the name of, Keith Brannigan was the horse wrangler. Within minutes the water slacked down and the drover sent hands to look for the missing men. A mile back down the river one horse could be seen with the kid standing over a cowhand lying on the rocky river bank. The body on the ground raised a hand to let those coming know he was alive. A cheer went up.
Johnny Oats had a broken leg and was half drowned. The kid was the hero of the day and maybe would be the one for the whole drive. He had seen Johnny go down into the swift water and had turned and followed along the bank until Johnny got hung up momentarily on a snag. Keith's rope was at the ready and even though in the water himself, had managed to get a rope over Johnny's raised arm. Johnny lost his purchase and slid into the swift water again, but Keith managed to drag him to shore.
Johnny's leg was broken in two places, but he was thankful to be alive. I didn't know the hands all that well and found out that his wife had been the wet nurse for Felicity. It was decided that the trail drive was over for him and as I was the least needed, I would head up to the road with him. I'd find a place for him in a ranch house or village to wait for Jessie's coach to come by. If it hadn't got here yet, I would flag it down as it came along. If it had already passed, I would get George to come back for him when I met him in two more days.
We were easing along the road as Johnny was in bad pain, when we heard the coach coming behind us. Jessie cried when she first talked to Johnny. He gave all credit for being alive to the seventeen-year-old Keith who had rescued him. It was decided that those in the coach would take care of him until my Indians took over in two days. Some of the Wilcox crew would be going back to where the drive started from and take Johnny home to Marie, his year-old son and six-year-old daughter.
I directed Jessie, who was carrying my funds, to pay Johnny six months wages. This should get him well and back into the saddle again. I kissed my wife and would see her in the next village as scheduled. The drover had compiled the damage from the wall of water and I considered myself lucky. I had lost twenty-one head of cattle, three horses and one beat up cowpoke who had survived. No one dead, so all in all we came out of this extremely well.
Two days later at ten in the morning we drove the cattle into a bowl beside the river. The grass was good and the cattle were glad of the short drive for the day. They laid down. I wondered when my Indians would arrive. Camp fires were built and a calf butchered. We would lay over the rest of the day and maybe one more if my crew was late.
"What, no guard out Son? Might be some Indians around." He was grinning. Kenny Ryeback had come into camp while I was leaned back against a tree dozing. I said nothing as I clasped this man to me, I was that happy to see him again. I looked to where there were fourteen braves sitting their horses. I walked over and gripped forearms with them all. They dismounted, folding their legs near where I had been sitting.
Kenny and I had few words for each other at first, but soon I was telling him about the trail drive. I mentioned the trouble we had had in losing the cattle and how Keith had rescued one of the other cowhands. Kenny rattled off Indian words, telling the Indians about it and pointed out Keith. This was bravery of the finest kind in their book and soon Keith was shaking hands as Indians went to him uttering congratulations. He couldn't understand any of them, but it didn't matter.
An hour later George Wilcox came down the trail and joined his former crew, bringing both my pay box and several bottles of whisky. We ate at six that evening and the crews were exchanged, my Indians in full control now of the cattle. The only two white hands that didn't intend to get drunk, and had come up the trail this far, were me and the drover.
Kenny and I sat down and went over much of what had happened since we had last seen each other. "Sam, Mary Eustis told all about what you found at the ranch when you arrived. God, I'm so glad I partnered up with you back at territory prison. I'd a shot Pete for what he did to my ranch. It's bad enough now, but she said you just went about getting things organized. She said you can sense the strengths in a person and give them a chance to improve on them to everyone's advantage."
"Maybe, but you wouldn't have had diddley-squat if it wasn't for her working on your behalf all of the years you were locked up. Kenny, I tell you right now if you don't treat that woman right, I'll kill you. She is some kind of wonder. Look what she has done for me and my wife? My kid too, for that matter."
"What do you mean, wife?"
"Yeah, I got me a wife and she has a baby only a couple of months old. You remember me getting letters from Jessie Comstock who married up with a Brad Wilcox? She is my wife now. See George over there getting drunk with his cowhands? That was her father-in-law. Between him, his wife and the boy, he is the best one of them.
"Tell you all about him and his troubles sometime. He came around being decent to Jessie finally and thinks the world of his granddaughter. I can't see how he has done me no harm so I'm pretty satisfied to have him going north with me. Your sadness is over now you are home, but I'm afraid his will be with him a long time."
"Well, we'll have to see that he finds some happiness then, won't we? What's your plan now?"
"Kenny, as long as you're here with the Indians, I think I'll go up and see my wife. Do you think you'd mind if I traveled the rest of the way with her? I've got a cowhand up top that's got him a busted leg. George is going to arrange to send him back south to his wife when the rest of the hands sober up. There's no need for me to hang around. The drover has been over this trail before, so that part is no problem. You can talk to the Indians if it is something out of the ordinary."
"Go for it. I'll see you in about six days. The trail eases up some from here on in so we'll make time. It only took the Indians and me one long day to get here coming down." I shook Kenny's hand and went around saying so long to the cowhands I had traveled with for the past two weeks. I had got all their names in my memory, but I think it was Keith Brannigan, the kid, that would be the one that would stick there the longest.
It was turning dark when I found my wife and baby in a private home where an old couple had put her up for the night. She was asleep, so I hunkered down in a chair on their verandah. She came outside to nurse the baby a little past one where it was cooler than in the bedroom. I surprised her some as she heard me say her name when she came through the door. Wonder the chair held me, her in my lap and the baby suckling away to beat the band at her breast. Happy--you bet.
Gramp found us there entwined in the morning as he came looking for Jessie. We saw him coming up the path and before he reached us, Jessie whispered in my ear, "Sam, just as soon as we find a room of our own, I'm fixed to consummate our marriage. That is if you want to, that is." Foolish wife!
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