The Restless Land

By John H. Culp

This is the follow-up novel to John H. Culp’s highly successful Born of the Sun, containing many of the central characters of the earlier novel—particularly the Kid, and the rough-and-ready crew of the Tail End, Ranch of North-west Texas. Readers will be taken on more wild-and-woolly adventures and are in for an even more exciting, dramatic spree in the thundering, danger-filled pages of The Restless Land.

“Piles dramatic scene upon dramatic scene until the reader is left breathless”—Chicago Sunday Tribune

“THE RESTLESS LAND should be a pleasure to readers of.”—Kirkus Service

“Like its predecessor, THE RESTLESS LAND is agreeable to read...an entertaining story of cowhands, Indians, and other members of a frontier community with its abundance of roughhousing, murder and ‘legitimate’ killing in range and Indian conflicts.”—Library Journal

“Crowded with stirring conflict and colorful characters, THE RESTLESS LAND finishes with ‘a spectacular climax that will bring readers to their cheering feet.’”—Dallas Morning News

“THE RESTLESS LAND IS A GRIPPING TALE.”—Nashville Banner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787201705

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE RESTLESS LAND

BY

JOHN H. CULP

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

I 6

II 16

III 27

IV 39

V 51

VI 60

VII 69

VIII 78

IX 87

X 102

XI 115

XII 123

XIII 133

XIV 142

XV 157

XVI 169

XVII 182

XVIII 194

XIX 209

XX 220

XXI 231

XXII 244

XXIII 262

XXIV 276

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 287

DEDICATION

For SCHENLEY

who put in the periods and commas

I

YOU MIGHT wonder why an old Texas cowhand, one pretty well beaten down by all the vicissitudes of the Kansas cow trails, sits on a log in a valley of frontier Concho County to ponder his future.

You might, and so do I—for all the good it does.

I was fifteen years of age on that log, but I felt like an old man of eighty, his teeth out and a frazzled rope beside him. A spunky pinto browsed nearby, content in the warm sun which shot through the yellow leaves of the pecan and cottonwood trees, but that meant nothing to me. It didn’t matter for all the problems of my life had begun to stack up again.

But first, maybe you should know who I am. That’s the real joke. My name is Martin Cameron.

I’m an orphan—a double orphan—that is—one who took two licks and came out with nothing—nothing but the Tail End ranch, you understand. I’m under the iron thumb of my stump-legged guardian, Pegleg Murphy—meanwhile being brought up by him and a passel of cowhands. The best cure for anything on a cold frosty morning is to be dunked in a horse trough, whether you want it or not.

After the war, when my parents died in Lavaca County, I was put on a stage for this country to live with my Uncle Martin and Aunt Maybie. They were fine people—I’ll never forget them.

But it was frontier land, so after a few years when Uncle Martin was scalped by Indians while beginning a cow drive to Abilene, and when later Aunt Maybie died of sickness, I found I had been willed forever to that iron thumb, James Aloysius Murphy, Not that Pegleg ever harmed me with malice—it was just with pleasure.

But while Uncle Martin lived, he started me in life the hard way—he put me in my own hog and cow business in this very valley. I’d been known as Kid back in those days, but so long as it wasn’t Button, it hadn’t mattered. Whenever I lost the argument, I got dunked in the trough by one of those cowhand characters—Poco, Hash, or Clendenning, who had served with my daddy during the hostilities.

Well, why should a young man in the prime of life, with all my advantages of land and cows and a good education from Cowbell Schoolhouse, sit downhearted in a bright morning of early autumn?

One reason is that the Tail End is land-rich and tax-poor. I can’t make headway in or out of the matter. Pegleg says not to worry—to let him do it. We’ve still got the old ranch down in Lavaca County, the land here, and more land and improvements Uncle Martin bought in Coleman County, across the Colorado along the old cow trail.

The state house in Austin wants money every time we turn around. In spite of my argument, Pegleg says, No, we’re in good shape. We’re making money on cows. Taxes are a necessary evil.

But what does it go for? With all the carpetbag graft and military government we’ve got around our necks, it just feeds the man with a hand held out behind his back.

Well, Pegleg says, if we don’t pay, they take the land. It’s that simple.

So, as I sat there and thought, I knew that this was one problem I couldn’t whip. And there was the frontier country itself—the thousands of miles of land which spread from the cap rock of the wild Indian plains and south from the reservations in the Wichitas. There wasn’t anything I could do about this, either, or the raiding Indians. What could you have done? Or done about the immigrants in covered wagons who pushed their way down the Texas Road through the Territory to seek new homes after the war?

All of those things were bad enough, but in a personal way there was something else—girl trouble. It was that sultry-headed Mattie Mae Watkins at Cowbell. She was a mess, but maybe something would happen to stop her short. Maybe I’d meet another girl. This was the only thing I could halfway see through, because a long time ago I concluded that there wasn’t just one side to a man—he had two sides, or maybe half a dozen. That’s why so many women were put in the world. But the truth was, I didn’t know what I could do about anything—taxes, girls, or Indians.

But I had to do something. Through no fault of mine, I owned this ranch. I’d made two trail drives. I couldn’t sit idle and let someone else bear the burden. And even though I was a fair cowhand, Pegleg still thought I wasn’t dry behind the ears.

I heard a noise among the trees, and the pinto raised its head. Black Colt and Mexican Joe walked their horses beneath the branches. They were about my own age, and when they saw me sitting on the log they began to laugh. Colt wore a pulled-down straw hat and Joe a high-peaked sombrero. Colt had been on the ranch before I came. Joe had come the year after Charles Goodnight’s first drive to Horsehead.

They stopped in the open and looked down.

Howdy, I said. Pull up a log and sit. This one’s taken.

Sho’. Colt climbed off his horse and hunkered, an old butcher knife sticking up from his boot. I wouldn’t want to disturb a man as deep in thought as you are. He looked around. This is the most silent spot under these trees. I always liked Little Valley. I like it so well I’m going to sleep here awhile. He stretched out and pulled his hat over his face.

When Uncle Martin had been scalped on the Colorado, we three had run off from the Tail End to help get the herd through to Abilene. That was our first cow drive. This spring we’d gone again on one which had beaten and maimed the outfit but had made history in Texas cow business—the Old Red River Herd, it had been called.

Joe still sat his horse. I’m riding up to the rim rock, he said. I’ll be back after a bit. I’ve seen panther tracks up there.

I watched Joe ride off, and listened to Colt begin to snore. Then I got down to thinking about the real thing which had brought me here—something I still couldn’t admit even to myself. No one else on the ranch would admit it, either—not yet. It was cowhand trouble—trouble we all dreaded to think about. It concerned Tex Blatt. And Tex was tied in with another cow drive.

No sooner had the Tail End boys come back from Abilene after the Red River Herd made history fighting floods and tornadoes and Indians up in the Territory than, as quick as you could draw a bead on a jack rabbit, Pegleg sent Tex into New Mexico—over Charles Goodnight’s old Horsehead trail to the Pecos—with a fall herd to fill a government contract.

Tex was made trail boss for the fine work he did with the Red River Herd, since most of the boys who survived that drive were still too halt to go along, anyway. Tex Blatt’s trail hands were made up mainly of Slim Whitby’s home boys and some new hands we picked up elsewhere.

Pegleg had said in the bunkhouse one night, When the herd gets there, we still don’t know if we will deal direct with government buyers or a go-between. It’s been unlawful for Texans who opposed the Union to sell to the government, but some buyers’ eyes in New Mexico have winked at irregularities like stars twinkle at night. And they always have a way to get over a creek without getting their feet wet—just like our cows do. Which— Pegleg grinned—is where both frequently might meet with old Confederate cowmen.

Pegleg had got co-operation from a slip-legged contractor who had sold to the Army before, but one way or another, Tail End cows would end up at the Army posts or agencies to feed soldiers and the reservation Navajos and Apaches—which had been the purpose of Charles Goodnight’s first drive.

The night before Tex Blatt’s herd left for Horsehead, me and Joe and Colt rode up to the bunkhouse from the hacienda to tell him good-by. The hacienda was a stone hut Mexican Joe had built on Dead-Man Creek, and which we had added another room to and where me and Colt hung out with him. Since coming back from Abilene we stayed in the bunkhouse some, but mostly at the hacienda, where we had lived to ourselves last winter.

We came from the fresh, clean air of Dead-Man that night into the door of the close-smelling bunkhouse, even the broke-out-as-usual windows not helping the pervading atmosphere any. What we saw when we came in were Dead-Eye Dick novels and sock feet sticking straight up from bunks, and empty boots and britches on the floor. We did a lot of heavy boot stomping so the hands would know we had arrived and would take notice.

Curly-haired Tex was inside, big and easy-going, playing poker at the table with Poco and Hash and Olney. That seven-foot-tall Clendenning was stretched out, whistling up at the Kiowa scalp lance stuck at the foot of his bunk, next to the one I used to have. Tex glanced at us when we came in the door, and his big face grinned up beyond the lamp on the table.

Does this mean I got company to Horsehead? Tex said, throwing down his poker hand as we came to the table. He raked in chips from Poco and Hash and Olney.

I reckon not, I said. We’ve missed too much school at Cowbell by coming home late from Abilene. But we want to wish you well, Tex. After all you did on the trail this year, it’s only right you come by this job.

While you’re heaping praise on his broad shoulders— Hash grinned sarcastically—you might express some sympathy for the poor boys who he has just cleaned out of two months’ wages. Hash had a new rattlesnake band on his hat, and he was so proud of it he was playing poker with his hat on.

Kid, you got any money? Poco said. He finished making a cigarette and rose to draw on it above the top of the lamp chimney, the light hitting his high cheekbones. I’m so broke I’d play you a game crooked and not bat an eye.

Meaning? Tex said suddenly, standing up and knocking his chair to the floor.

Meaning? Poco looked at him calmly. He picked up the cards and slid them between each other, and then his long fingers cut the deck and flicked the slapping cards in and out, over and over again. Meaning absolutely nothing, he said, his eyes unwavering. I was talking to the kid.

Sorry, Tex muttered.

Sure, Poco said steadily. Any time at all.

Tex Blatt flushed and walked out of the bunkhouse.

A few days later, word came that Tex and the New Mexico herd had made it safely across the desert, through Castle Gap in the mountains and on to Horsehead. He was trailing on up the Pecos to cross the river at Pope’s Ford, near the New Mexico line, getting into good rattlesnake and hard-back-turtle and waylaying-Comanche country. The news was brought by a rancher coming back from farther up the Pecos at Fort Sumner. But even that word didn’t do anything but worsen my worry.

I came upon Poco at the corral one evening at sundown. He was sitting on the top rail flicking the end of his rope at a blue kissing bug crawling in the dust. I climbed up and sat beside him. Poco turned and grinned sideways from one corner of his mouth, but there was something in his eyes that didn’t rightly belong there. There wasn’t any use to beat around the bush.

I been thinking about it, too, I said. It came over Tex so sudden—that night in the bunkhouse—like it was something maybe he never did in his life before, but was just then thinking about doing. When you kidded me, he felt he’d really done it.

In my mind there ain’t a doubt, Poco said. My unthinking words proved it. But more than Tex being in a good way to go wrong, I’m thinking of the outfit. We’ve had good men on this ranch. Some bad ones, sure—but we’ve found them out in time to waylay trouble, and they’ve walked off toting their saddles. But a man we’ve known like Tex—it can shoot a big hole in you. I tried to talk to him later, but he was plumb uncommental.

When he comes back, he may be different. Maybe he was just off his feed that night.

Yes. Poco snapped the bug out of the dust with a sudden flick of his rope. When he comes back, he may be different. When he comes back—maybe.

And then I knew—as sure as God made goslings.

Tex Blatt wasn’t coming back.

Colt was still snoring when Joe rode down from the rim rock. He sat his horse, looking at me and Colt. I should have mentioned Pegleg wants you, he said. Why did you run off this morning?

We had a few words, I admitted. But nothing serious. I just wanted to do some good around here. We don’t see some things alike.

Colt sat up and grunted. Why do you ask for trouble? Don’t you know you got the best place in this valley to sit?

Why does Pegleg want me? Why didn’t you tell me before?

No use to, Joe said. He’s got a job for you. He wants you to go to Huddleston Groc.

The settlement had been named that because Ma Huddleston had tried to paint HUDDLESTON GROCERY on a sign in the road and had run out of space.

Why does he want me to go? I asked Joe.

McMasters is back. He just rode in from Wyoming.

He’s not far behind what was left of us, I said.

By the fire McMasters brooded. On his bearded face the flickering flames cast lines of heaviness, like deep gullies revealed in a recurrent play of light through the movement of the sodden mist and river wind. A blanket-shrouded figure lay nearby. In the river brush a panther screamed.

Where he stood beside McMasters, Poco said, Mrs. Hunsucker didn’t yell any louder than that when she was scalped.

McMasters said, turning his head, I don’t see how she did it. But by making a good run on the horse she put off the end awhile. He looked at me—and from thinking back over the last two days, I wasn’t too steady myself under the black flop hat I wore. Kid, you nearly got it.

I ran into the second bunch, I said. They came out of the brush so fast me and Colt both got raked. We had started to the settlement to get Nairobi.

Nairobi was our chuckwagon. On the spring cow drive to Abilene, we’d swum our cows across Red River in flood and had left the wagon on the Texas side with McMasters, who got it to Kansas later with his own cows, but he ended up with it in Ogallala, Nebraska, and later in Wyoming. He’d just got his own outfit back to the Concho and had left the wagon for us at Red-Whiskered Red’s livery stable.

Watkins said, Mrs. Hunsucker may be lucky. She could have been sold.

It was the Comanchero—Strain! a weak voice cried. Another shape lay in the shadows, a wounded man, wizened and small. Strain, he whispered. Strain and his redskins. I saw Strain—in Santa Fe. He trades on the high plains—no one knows his home. Water— the man sighed from his blankets.

Wallowing to his feet, Mr. Derryberry grunted. He bulged upward with his canteen and moved toward the river shadows, dwarfing Watkins, who also stood up.

Beyond your frontier, there are the places of tents on the plains, the voice whispered. Where the Comancheros trade....Las Tecovas....Atascosa....and wherever the far trails wind. The canyon of the Palo Duro, where Indian ponies run. And where the lands of Texas reach for their water, there is the river of tears—Las Lágrimas—where your women are sold. And the river of tongues—Las Linguas—because of the many languages of the men who trade in women there. I have seen the tents and the rivers.

From under his black hat and from the folds of his blanket, the somber, seamed face of Indian Charlie, Ma Huddleston’s pigtailed Caddo, spoke.

I have seen the rivers, and the canyon. From over a thousand feet its red walls plunge to the creek. At times the canyon is narrow, with the creek close to the walls. Then the floor is wide again, and grassy for the villages and the stolen horses. Like climbing goats the green cedars cling to the walls, and no wind from the plains drops to the lodges.

McMasters and Clabe Burdette arose. On his way to the river for water Derryberry had paused. He turned his head, watching them bend above the wounded man.

This man said ‘your women’, Clabe Burdette said. Like he didn’t belong to our people.

From his long palaver before he was shot by the white man, I’d say he might be a renegade Comanchero himself, McMasters said. Maybe they settled a score.

He told us nothing we didn’t have an idea of, Derryberry said. He moved closer to kneel at the side of the blanketed figure. Did you know this Comanchero? There was no answer. Derryberry’s big hand shook the man, but he was unconscious. Derryberry walked on to the river.

It had been a long chase, and a cruel murder. The Comanches had raided a ranch for horses, kidnapping Mrs. Hunsucker. The pursuit had led over the divide between the Concho and the Colorado, but some of the posse whose horses had gone lame had camped while Pegleg and McMasters led the other men on. After a day up river they had returned with the wounded man and Mrs. Hunsucker.

The sudden hoof sounds of plodding horses came from the trees. Three men pulled up before the fire. One was Mathias Kilbank. He had a long lantern jaw and white teeth that clicked when he talked. The two other men were old, dismounting shadowy from their horses, as if they had stepped from the pages of an ancient book.

Old Man Feedle had the ague, and a tremor in his left arm, and he stood by the fire watching McMasters. His left hand jerked across his middle as if he tried to unbutton his fly. When he went to the settlement with his daughter-in-law, she tied his hand to his belt so he wouldn’t embarrass people. Standing beside Feedle, Old Man Spivey grinned, his buckskins rank-smelling.

You’re a day late, McMasters told Feedle. In the firelight a smile broke the mask of his dark beard. I thought you couldn’t ride a horse nowadays.

When the word came, I was steaming on my vessel, Feedle said. My hops and tansy and poke leaves.

Colt and I left the fire to look at Mrs. Hunsucker. We drew back the corner of the blanket. She had always been fat, with a big stomach and a simple face, and being in death and scalped didn’t help her appearance.

Now, what’s he coming to about? Poco pointed to the wounded man. The man had thrown his blanket off. Now he moved his hands in the air.

He was dressed in a fringed buckskin shirt and tight leggings that fitted his thin legs almost like stockings. His face was shrunken like a mummy. As we watched, some meaning came to the rhythm of his moving hands. At first they had been folded across his chest, but now they moved in unison from one side to the other as if they picked up various objects to put them down again. Another mumble of words came from his lips. Once more we made out the words Lágrimas and Linguas as his hands continued their restless movement.

It’s got me beat, Hash said. I think he wants to put things in his knapsack to go some place.

A gust of wind swept along the river and rain began to fall. We went back to sit by the fire as dead leaves sogged down.

Pegleg said, putting his slicker on, Texas is heaven for men and dogs, but hell on women and oxen. God knows, women don’t get much in this country—starved every day of their lives for the things a woman wants, their menfolk gone all day and half the night with cows and Indian chases.

Talking with Mathias Kilbank, Feedle and Old Man Spivey sat morosely, grumbling between themselves for coming late on the useless chase.

Charlie Goodnight was right about one thing, Clabe Burdette said. After he led his first herd to New Mexico over the Horsehead trail, he learned that thousands of cows and horses had been stolen from Texas during the war. Several hundred thousand—more than anyone imagined. Somebody opened the western markets before he did, and across the Comanchero plains. Goodnight said that General Carleton issued so many trading permits his office looked like a race track. And most traders’ caravans ended at one place-Comanche land.

We’ve got Fort Concho now, McMasters said. Maybe that will help.

Listen, Hash snapped from his slicker. Forget the fort. One reason they built it was because they ran out of water at Ford Chadbourne. All the Army knows of Indian fighting is just what old Kirby-Smith did when he led a charge. The braves covered their bare chests with their hands and yelled ‘Me squaw!’ And what happened? Kirby-Smith ordered a cease-fire to protect the noble ladies and got filled with arrows. Now, that’s what I call brains. That and blowing a bugle for two hours before sunup to tell every redskin within a hundred miles that the almighty Army is on his trail-riding velocipedes. That’s what they talked of doing, to save horses and fodder.

Cool down, Pegleg said. Those Concho boys do carry a guidon pretty, even if the Army did lose its best men after the war. That’s something we’ve got to face, which means we do our own Indian chasing—and that leads back to your tirade.

Eat hell, Hash muttered. He stalked off to the wounded man.

Farther up the river a second panther screamed.

Those are cowardly varmints, said one-eyed Clabe Burdette.

You get one treed, they ain’t, Colt said.

Are you telling that yarn again? Burdette said.

Not if you heard it, Colt said.

It was gloomier in the rain, and Pegleg said, Get ready. When it’s good dark, we’ll tail out.

Hash, bending over the hurt man, called back to Pegleg, This fellow’s repeating a name to himself—saying ‘Strain’ over and over again. I think he’s crazy. Even his feet are running. Restless, Hash came back to the fire.

Mathias Kilbank knelt beside Mrs. Hunsucker. He was a tenderfoot hoe man who came to the country two years ago. He got his first blood in the settlement when he killed a cattle rustler. Now he drew the blanket off Mrs. Hunsucker’s face. His head bent forward and as he peered down, his long lantern jaw move spasmodically, his teeth clicking together.

I don’t trust that man, Colt whispered. He take up too much with dead people.

All he thinks of is wanting to kill somebody, I said. That’s why he comes on Indian hunts.

Mathias pulled the blanket over Mrs. Hunsucker’s face. He came back to sit beside Hash. Hash got up and walked to the river. Other men arose. They stood in the gloom, dark and ghost-draped in their slickers. Kilbank moved off after Hash.

Get saddled, Pegleg said. We’ll move.

Hash came back.

Help get Mrs. Hunsucker mounted, Pegleg told him.

Sure, Hash said.

Hash and three other men slung Mrs. Hunsucker in a long-poled kayak between two horses, tied head to tail, then covered her with another blanket. Even under the sagging blanket, Mrs. Hunsucker’s stomach rose up high. The horses stomped restlessly.

We’ll take that hurt man, too? Poco said, glancing toward the trees.

We’ve no choice, Pegleg said. We’ll fix another kayak.

The way he jerks, he’ll bounce plumb out, Colt said.

We sure can’t drape him over a horse, Pegleg said. Any more than we could Mrs. Hunsucker.

When the kayak was ready to be slung, Hash moved over to the far trees to the wounded man. Where’d you move him? he called back to Pegleg.

Move what? Pegleg said, tightening his cinches.

The hurt man, Hash said, coming back to stand by Pegleg’s horse. Where’d you put him.

Put him? Pegleg turned his head. I didn’t put him nowhere. Ain’t he there?

Now, listen, Hash said. I’m wore down to a nubbin from Indian chasing and I’m out of sorts with everybody in the outfit. It’s a hell of a time to be pulling pranks. Now, where did you put the man—and we’ll get him mounted.

My God! Pegleg left his horse and moved toward the tree. You mean he really ain’t here? He peered about, dumfounded.

Yes, Hash said patiently. He really ain’t here. Even his knapsack’s gone. I told you that man wanted to go some place. Where’s Mathias Kilbank?

Who called me? Mathias moved from the trees.

Did you kill that man—haul him off somewhere?

Hash’s words startled all of us.

I ain’t seen the man, Mathias said. I came back and found him gone and went looking for him.

Why didn’t you call somebody? Pegleg said.

Mathias ducked his head, then looked back into the dark trees and licked his lips, and his teeth clicked.

Well, we didn’t move him, Pegleg said. And no Indians did. He’s got no horse, so if he left he must have done it on foot, with a knapsack on his back.

Hash said, I’ve had enough. I’m going home. And I dread to see the sun come up on that kayak.

Mount up, Pegleg snapped. We’ll reach the Tail End by daylight.

Suddenly the night grew strange-just starting home alone with Mrs. Hunsucker trussed up made us feel that way. We moved off at a slow walk, she like a big rising mesa among us, Poco riding ahead. The wind quickened and more wet leaves blew down. We came to the scattered tree border and rode through the deep grass of a sodden prairie. For hours we cut our way over long slopes and prairie and across canyons. At midnight we came to more trees. They fringed a steep-banked creek. A sudden commotion on the opposite side stopped the horses. The men ahead dismounted.

What’s up? Hash called, his horse not starting across the water.

A dark shape lay beneath the far bank.

Mrs. Hunsucker fell off her kayak! Pegleg called back.

When Mrs. Hunsucker had first been found, the men had brought her to the Colorado mounted astride her horse, in the way Comanches carried their dead chiefs to burial, a man riding on each side to support her, for they thought it beneath dignity to drape her over a saddle. Now even the kayak hadn’t helped.

The men splashed about in the mud and got Mrs. Hunsucker settled on the kayak again. They tied her down better. We moved on from the creek, the men riding closer when the trees and brush allowed it to keep her from falling again.

The rain beat heavier. We threw another blanket across the kayak and continued the dark march.

II

AS SOON as things got back to normal after the Hunsucker murder, Hash and Ace-of-Diamonds and I rode to the settlement to pick up the chuckwagon. I was soaking up the sun on the plank walk in front of Ma’s Place, waiting for them to come out the door, when a horseman appeared on the crest of the cedar ridge.

As I stuck my thumbs in my belt and leaned with my back against the window, feeling the hot sun prickle beneath my flannel shirt, it may have occurred to me that here was just another rider and here was just another cedar ridge on the frontier, but as the man rode from the ridge toward Red-Whiskered Red’s livery stable, I knew differently.

I cannot tell now what made me straighten so to view him, for at that distance he was unreality itself, and his mounted figure seemed to drift like a gray fog from the green of the cedars. Nor did I know what impelled me to watch him so closely, unless I must have sensed that something strange and indefinable rode with him into the settlement of Huddleston Groc.

Moving to the edge of the walk, I saw him better. Red-Whiskered Red stepped from the livery stable, and bald-headed Nat Munger came from his saloon across the road to watch. As I stood waiting, all the life of the settlement seemed suspended—the empty road, the stockade Derryberry had built, the dull sound of the morning bells of wayward milk cows lingering in the air, and our three figures standing in the road, intent eyes on the ridge.

Behind me, Hash and Ace came from Ma’s door. Under Ace’s big hat his black face was sweating, and he lifted the red bandanna tied at his throat to mop his heavy cheeks. Hash, not seeing the horseman, glanced down the walk toward the general store. Kid, Ma says there’s trouble in town, and it’s down there.

But whatever trouble there was could wait—for Hash, turning his own gaze to follow mine, saw the rider, and while I stood motionless, my eyes on the horseman, Hash moved to the edge of the walk.

My God! he said. It’s General Lee coming back from Gettysburg!

By this time the rider had reached the livery stable where Red still stood, and at Red’s closer sight of the mounted apparition which passed him so steadily, completely ignoring him, I could imagine his surprise and the dribble of tobacco juice from the corner of his mouth, and his bug eyes popping above his scabrous cheekbones.

I saw the rider clearly now. He was gray and spectral, dressed in a Confederate uniform, and his white mustaches flowed from beneath his black service hat. He led a loaded pack mule behind his black horse, but he was a colonel—not a general. There was sedateness in the movement of the horse, in the steady beat of its hooves and the slow spread of powdery dust which rose and drifted behind them.

Hash shoved the wide-brimmed sombrero back on his forehead. I see the whole beaten army of the Confederacy riding behind that man. The war’s been over for four years. What does he mean by that rigging?

From this distance there was a hawk-like fierceness to the stranger’s face, and the plod of the horse’s hooves continued to sound rhythmically. But as the fine head of the black approached the watering trough and the sign which hung between its upright poles, announcing the name of Huddleston Groc to the world, his stern features seemed somehow to dissolve and fade, to weaken and run together all at once, and instead of power and sternness, only the gray ghost of a broken, pale-eyed old man sat in the saddle.

For it was incredible, the change that the last few yards of the road had made, and when the horse reached the hitch rack, the man climbed wearily off and walked toward us. It was as though the strength of his features—when he reached the sign of Huddleston Groc—had collapsed and run together and were now seen through a gold fish bowl.

He was tall, but slightly stooped. His eyes were penetrating and blue, but weak with weariness and hesitation. In spite of the heat the coat of his uniform was tightly buttoned at the collar, and heavy gauntlets covered his arms almost to the elbows. His boots were black and long, and the bullet-riddled remnants of the yellow sash were knotted about his waist. On his side, in its holster, a long black-handled pistol hung.

I had never seen such utter weariness in a man, such hopelessness and defeat, as if in coming to us he had first lost all he valued of himself, and had come here debased—for a reason he could not tell, nor we divine.

Hash muttered, Kid, take out your french harp and play Dixie. Maybe he’ll straighten up. Fly the Stars and Bars over the stockade. I’m back in the cavalry.

I never saw anything like him, I said.

And then the colonel’s eyes passed over and beyond me, and he stopped at the walk before Hash and Ace. He brought a gauntleted forefinger to his wide hat brim. Sir, he said to Hash, I am Colonel Leonidas P. Rountree. I would like lodgment.

Well, Colonel— Hash brought his hand up and thumbed his own hat farther back. If Indians ain’t got there first, you can throw your blanket roll in the stockade and take your chances, or you can put up with Red and his lice at the livery stable. You can sleep on the floor of Nat Munger’s outlaw saloon across the road or stay here at Ma’s. One place is as good as the other. The only difference is Ma’s is the only one with beds—straw cots, that is.

Ma did have a few cots in the hall behind the bar, but Colonel Rountree hadn’t seen Ma yet. She wore men’s trousers, and two pistols at her hips, and she was as rough as a chipped-up coffee grinder. She combed her hair straight back, and her face was as hard and tough as creased rawhide—but it looked sweeter after you’d known her awhile. When I came to this country from Lavaca County, Ma had set me up to my first brush jacket, on credit.

Hash studied Colonel Rountree, a malicious grin on his lank face. I’d heard Poco and Hash and Clendenning—the Inveterate Confederates, they called themselves—carp about the rip-snorting know-it-all officers they had known in the war, and it was giving Hash a genuine pleasure to stand as an equal before the colonel, even if the war was as outdated as his uniform.

Some inkling of Hash’s feelings got through to Colonel Rountree. His eyes grew even more weary as they met Hash’s taunting gleam. Then he touched his hat brim and said, almost humbly, Sir, I thank you. He turned and went into Ma’s.

You sure don’t put yourself out for strangers, I told Hash. Hash pulled his hat down over his eyes. I don’t aim to. Even if they do wear uniforms. Colonel Rountree knew all about Ma’s Place. He knew she had cots when he came here. Did you notice he didn’t bat an eye toward the stockade or Red’s? He came to Ma’s as straight as a crow flies. If he stays here long. I’ve got a hunch we’ll have to figure him out.

On the walk the sun was hot. Up the road toward the ridge heat waves shimmered. They made horizontal rails across the distance. Under them Dim Dot, the crazy boy, had come into the road from the stockade. He was bare above the waist, tousle-haired and open-mouthed. And he bent double above a rope he flung about in the dust, watching its frayed end flick as he would the moving tail of a snake.

Ace sighed in the heat and again wiped sweat from his face. Red-Whiskered Red still stood in the road in his faded overalls, gazing at the Colonel’s black horse and the pack mule tied to the hitch rack. He stood behind Dim Dot, dwarfed against the green of the cedar ridge, as if trying to decide whether to take the pair to the stable for a feed and then bill the Colonel later, but at last he turned and hurried back into the plank shack which was his office.

You talked about trouble, I said to Hash, looking through the shimmery heat at the dusty trees on the ridge. Is that what Ma was fussing about? Is that why you told me to get out here and watch?

It’s buffalo soldiers from Fort Concho. They’re in the general store, and pretty well liquored. That’s why the road is empty. Ma said they aim to take the settlement apart. He nodded toward Ace. Some of his friends.

Big Ace said in his thick, growly voice, White folks, them apes ain’t in my family tree.

Hash said, Let’s talk to Red—now that he’s back. Ma’s pretty excited, so maybe we’ll get more sense out of him. Anyway, I want to see Nairobi again.

We stepped into the road and walked toward the livery stable. Gol’durn will be happy now, I said. A cook’s plumb miserable without his wagon. He’d have come for her himself if it wasn’t for that diarrhea he picked up.

We tried to open the front door of Red’s shack, but he had locked it when he returned from the road. We walked around the side of the shack and gave Nairobi the once-over above the corral rails, the name old Gol’durn had painted in red across the front showing up as proud as a flag. She was some bunged up from her trip to Wyoming, but it wasn’t anything Gol’durn couldn’t fix. Dim Dot sat in the seat, his frayed rope hanging beside him, hell-bent, driving his horses.

Ace put his boot on the bottom rail of the corral and spat into the dust. No wonder McMasters didn’t keep this fancy wagon, he chuckled. His boys would be so spoiled they’d never work cows.

Well, we’ll talk to Red about how bad this trouble is, Hash said. "Then we’ll go buy