''Bring Me His Ears'' by Clarence E. Mulford (story reading txt) 📖

in wandering around. He maintained that picketed animals would eat more in the same time, and so each wagoner was given a stretch of prairie as wide as the space occupied by his wagon and reaching out about one hundred yards, fan-wise, from the corral. Picket ropes of from twenty to thirty feet in length let each animal of his team graze over a circle of that radius, the center being a stake of hardwood two inches thick and about two feet long. Some of the pickets were pointed with iron and had a band of the same metal shrunk around the upper and near the top to keep them from splitting under repeated axe blows. Many of the others had their points hardened by fire, and a pointed hickory or ash picket so treated will stand a lot of abuse. Before dark the pickets were shifted to new places and the animals left to graze all night, for Indian visits still were a matter of the future.

After they had finished their supper and washed and put away the few utensils, Tom as usual drifted off to spend an hour or two with Uncle Joe and Patience. He had not been gone long before Hank got up to loosen a pack to get a fresh plug of smoking tobacco, and caught sight of Pedro, the Mexican, sauntering toward him. The visitor grinned cheerfully and sat down by the dying fire, acting as though he had every reason to be accorded a cordial welcome.

"Hah!" exclaimed the self-invited guest in rare good humor. "Eet ess good to get out on thee gr-reat pr-rairie; but eet would haf been better eef we had went weeth thee fir-rst tr-rain. Weeth that tr-rain was thee tr-roops. We would be better pr-rotect."

Hank was undecided whether he should turn his back on the visitor and walk away, or grab him by the collar and the slack of his trousers and throw him from the fire, when habitual cunning made him grunt his endorsement of the other's remarks. He never was above acquiring what information he could get, no matter how trivial it might be.

"Yeah," he replied, passing the plug to his guest. "Fill yer pipe, or make a cigarette," he invited. "Them danged settlements air all right fer a change, but this hyar is a hull lot better; an' th' mountings air better'n this. As fer th' dragoons with th' fust train, it's plumb welcome to 'em. Thar more trouble than thar worth; an' they allus will be till they larn ter fight Injuns in th' Injun way. Th' idear o' usin' th' right hand fer a sword an' th' left fer a pistol! I'd ruther be with a passel o' mounting boys, fur's fightin' Injuns air consarned. Anyhow, jest when they git whar they're needed most, down on th' edge o' th' Kiowa an' Comanche country, th' danged dragoons has ter stop."

"But señor; they must not tr-read on Mexican soil," protested Pedro.

Hank grinned and choked down the retort he was about to make, nodding his head instead. "Shore; that's th' trouble. Now, if that danged Governor o' yourn would meet th' train at Cimarron Crossin' an' go th' rest o' th' way with it, thar'd be some sense ter troop escorts. Thar ain't a sojer along th' worst stretch o' th' whole trail. I'll bet ye we won't see hide ner hair o' 'em this side o' Cold Spring, when th' danger from raidin' Injuns is 'most over."

Pedro spread his hands helplessly. "That ees but too tr-rue, señor. Theese time we weel not see thee br-rave tr-roops of Mexico befor-re we r-reach thee Wagon Mound."

"Thar!" triumphantly exclaimed Hank. "What did I tell ye? They used ter git as fur as Cold Spring, anyhow; but now thar waitin' at th' Wagon Mound. Next thing we know they'll be waitin' at San Miguel fer ter see us safe th' last fifty miles through th' settlements!"

"Eet ees thee Apaches that ar-re to blame theese time," explained Pedro with oily smoothness. "They ar-re ver' bad theese year along thee Rio Gr-rande del Norte. Ver' bad!"

"Yeah," grunted Hank, puffing reflectively on his pipe. "Mexico an' Texas both claim all that country east o' th' Grande, but th' Apaches shore own it, an' run it ter suit theirselves. Bad Injuns, they air."

"Thee customs they ar-re ver' str-rict theese year," commented Pedro, closely watching his companion. "They ar-re ver' har-rd on my poor countrymen. They keep thee pr-rices so high on all theese goods."

"Tarnation bother," grunted Hank, beginning to get the reason for the Mexican's interest in him. "Too bad we don't know somebody that kin git us past 'em," he suggested, hopefully.

Pedro rubbed his hands complacently and helped to maintain a prolonged silence; which at last was broken by small talk concerning the caravan and its various members. After half an hour of this aimless conversation he arose to leave.

"Thee customs, as you haf so tr-ruly said, ar-re ver' gr-reat bother, Señor Hank. I know thees ver' much, for I haf a br-rother in thee custom house. We ar-re ver' close, my br-rother an' me. I weel see you again, señor. Eet ees good that we get acquaint, weeth so ver' many milla yet to tr-ravel together. Buenos noches, señor."

"Good night," replied Hank, carefully pulling the unburned wood out of the fire to serve for the cooking of the breakfast. He glanced after the dapper Mexican and grinned, re-roped the pack, and wandered off to join his trapper friends at their fire.

"Grease is slippery; an' so is greasers," he chuckled. "Wall, thar's plenty o' time to figger jest what he's arter. Might be cheatin' th' customs, an' then ag'in it might not."

CHAPTER X

EN ROUTE

Tom's duties as a lieutenant were to supervise his column, ride ahead of the train on lookout for possible obstructions or dangers, go on ahead to creeks and see that the banks sloped enough to permit the wagons to take them safely, to hunt out and bridge morasses and quagmires that could not be avoided. If the banks were too steep he and others of the caravan were to ride ahead with axes, shovels, and mattocks and cut a sloping road through them; if a morass or a treacherous creek bed had to be crossed they had to cut great numbers of saplings, branches, and brush and build up a causeway of alternate layers of wood and dirt. This would not take long and if properly done, every wagon could cross in safety.

The caravan in movement should have presented a formation of wagons in orderly array, preceded by the captain and officers, flanked at a good distance on both sides by well-armed riders, and followed by a fairly strong rear-guard; but no such ideal formation could be maintained except under the discipline of a military or paid force. The flankers rode far and wide searching endlessly for game and usually wound up with the advance guard, a mile or more ahead. The rear guard dwindled rapidly and soon joined the others far in advance, leaving the crawling wagons entirely unprotected from any sudden attack by Indians who might have lain concealed in one of the numerous prairie hollows.

There were four conditions every twenty-four hours especially liked by the savages. One was during the night, between midnight and dawn; another as the caravan got under way, when there was more or less confusion and the wagons had broken the corral formation enough so it could not be re-formed quickly; a third was during the day when every man who did not have to drive was galivanting a mile or more away, blazing at rattlesnakes or prairie dogs and making a fool of himself generally, his thoughts on everything except the safety of the train he had deserted; and the fourth was in the evening just as the animals were being staked outside, when most of the men were busy with them and some distance outside the wagon ramparts, many of the more careless being unarmed. To offset these conditions so favorable to surprise attacks on the caravan was one of the captain's most important duties, and the urgent consideration of water and good grass many times complicated his problems.

Captain Woodson at one time had been a trapper, and his early experiences with the fur expeditions here stood him in good stead, especially his knowledge about Indians. He continually hammered at the men to flank properly and to scour the country on each side of the caravan for a mile or more and to investigate every hollow and rise capable of hiding horses. Before he called the halt for the "noonings" or the encampments in the evenings, he urged that the surrounding country be well scouted over and everything suspicious reported. For the crews of the two cannons, which had been changed the morning following the narrowly averted calamity of a few days back, he had picked men who appeared to be calm and resourceful, and these weapons trundled along on their wheeled carriages in a strategic position, their crews ordered not to leave them unattended at any time during the day's march—but who cared for orders?

The trail here being easy and plain, the banks of the streams cut by the previous caravan, Tom dropped back after a brief exploration along the flanks, which he made because the flankers would not, to join his partner and their pack train, plodding along on the left-hand side of Joe Cooper's wagons.

Hank was a placid, easy-going individual and cared little whether or not he had company. For the last few days he had been highly amused by watching several pack animals owned and led by tenderfeet, who had learned neither to follow them nor to load them right. These green travelers were continually in trouble. If they were not arguing with mules gone balky because of unevenly distributed loads, or chasing some running and kicking animal that scattered the contents of its pack far and wide over the plain, they were collecting their possessions piece-meal from a score of acres of prairie and hurriedly re-packing somewhere behind the caravan, cursing, perspiring, out of breath, and murderously savage. Some of them re-packed more than a dozen times a day and were hard put even to keep the caravan in sight. Their natural anger at their misfortunes was turned into a simmering or a coruscating rage, that ever and anon burst out with volcanic force as they realized the utter hopelessness of their position. This was for the first few days, for the wiser ones used their eyes and ears and mouths to good advantage, and soon got the knack of packing; but there were some who seemingly were too dumb to learn.

Hank never obtruded any advice, but cheerfully explained the art of packing to any man who sought him. He and his partner's animals never shifted a pack on this smooth going, and this fact began to sink into some of the tenderfeet, and they eagerly took lessons from the veteran. It was not long before a spilled pack in that column of the train was an uncommon occurrence. These eight mules behaved in an admirable manner and there was a good reason for it. When they had been selected, only those showing the unmistakable signs of the veteran pack mule were chosen. The marks of the crupper, aparejo and girth never would disappear. Tenderfeet scornfully would have passed them by and chosen sleek, smooth-haired animals of far better appearance; but Hank and Tom did not make this mistake, realizing that here, indeed, beauty was only skin deep.

Hank judged that it was about time to take full advantage of the mules' early training and the results were regarded as downright miracles by the greenhorns, who attempted to duplicate the system,