Louis L'Amour - Lonely On the Mountain

Cap came to me, mopping his brow. "We got to find water, Tell. We've got too few horses, and they're about played out. On a drive like this, we should have three or four horses per man, at least." "I wish we had them." All day they struggled through the sand hills, and only as dark was closing in did they find a small lake that was not brackish. Many of the cattle walked belly deep in the water to drink.

Lin had a fire going when they bunched the cattle on a nearby flat. Leaving Cap and Brandy with the cattle, I headed in for camp with Gilcrist riding along. The boys had done a great job with the cattle, and they deserved credit.

Even Gilcrist had done his part, and I said so.

He glanced at me. "Didn't know you noticed." "I don't miss much," I said. "You did your share." "You've got some good hands." "Cap's worth two of any of the rest of us.

He's forgotten more than the rest of us will ever know." They were pulling up at camp, and as I swung down, Gilcrist asked, "You serious about goin' all the way through?" "Never more serious." "You'll never make it, Sackett.

Nobody's ever taken cattle into that country.

Nobody can." A moment there, I stopped, my hands on the saddle, and I looked across it at him. "There's some folks who hope we won't make it, and they want to keep us from making it, but they don't know what they're up against." "Maybe you don't." "We had a run-in with some of that outfit.

Let me tell you something, Gilcrist. If they want to stop us, they ought to stop sending a bunch of tenderfeet to do it. Just because a man can shoot, it doesn't turn him into a fightin' man. If we had started to fight back, there wouldn't be a man of that bunch alive. It scares me to think what would happen if that bunch of thugs happened to run into a war party of Blackfeet!" Gilcrist dismounted. He started to speak, then changed his mind. Walking along, I picked up sticks for the fire, then walked around gathering what fuel I could.

Lin glanced at me when I dropped the fuel.

"The Indian boy came in. He says there is somebody following us. A big outfit." Lin was picking up the western lingo. He started slicing meat into a pan for frying, and he said, "The Indians had not seen the outfit, just heard them and seen their dust." "Dust?" "A lot of it." Gilcrist came in and sat down. "You say somebody was coming?" "Indians," I told him.

"Somebody saw some Indians." I surely wasn't lying about that. How much he'd heard, I didn't know. Soon the boys started coming in.

Gilcrist was looking across the fire at me.

"I'd no idea you were the Sackett who rode with the Sixth. They used to say you were good with a gun." "You hear all sorts of stories." Cap spat into the fire. "Them ain't stories. You can take it from me, Gil, an' I've seen 'em all! There ain't anybody who is any better!" Gilcrist started to speak, stopped, then said, "You ain't seen 'em all. You ain't seen me." "I hope I never do," Cap said dryly.

Gilcrist stared at him. "I don't know how to take that." Cap smiled. "I just hate to see a man get killed," he said. "You or anybody else." "I ain't goin' to get killed." Cap smiled again. "I helped bury twenty men who thought the same thing." It was a quiet night. We ate and turned in, all of us dog tired. The stars were out, bright as lanterns in the sky, but nobody stayed awake long. Those days, when a man works from can see to can't see, he just naturally passes out when he hits the bed. It was long days of hard work and no chance for daydreaming when the cattle were dry and wanting water.

Only Cap and me, we set late by the fire. I was thinking of what was to come. As for him, I didn't know what he was thinking about. Or didn't until he said, "You want me to ride back and see who that is? It may be trouble." "Not you. Anybody but you. A body can always find another cowhand but a good cook? No way you can find another cook without a miracle." There was a-plenty to consider. We were down to our last coffee, and as for other grub, we'd been making do on what we could rustle for days.

Looked to me like we would have to strike north for Fort Carlton and lay in a stock of grub. It was going to throw us back, but I saw no way out of it.

Carlton was due north. Thinking of that, I wondered, but not aloud, about trying to go west from there.

Traveling in strange country like this, where I knew nothing of the rivers. If there was a practical route west from Fort Carlton, we might lose no time at all.

"All right," I said to Cap, "we'll swing north." "You want I should have a look at who that is comin' up the line?" "I'll go." "You're tired, man. You need rest." "Why, you old buffalo chaser, you say I'm tired? What about you?" "You lose me, you ain't lost much. You get lost, and we're all up the creek." Well, I got up and roped me a horse.

"Stand by for trouble, Cap," I told him. "I think we've got it coming." With that I rode off west. It was dark when I started, but that was a good night horse I had between my knees, and we found a trail that left the creek and went up on the bluffs. Off to the east, I spotted a campfire.

Down a trail through the forest, winding down where darkness was, winding among the silent trees.

Only the hoof falls of my horse, only the soft whispering of night creatures moving. Now I was riding where danger might be. I was riding where a man's life might hang in the wind, ready to be blown away by the slightest chance, yet I will not lie and say I did not like it.

That horse was

easy in the night, moving like a cat on dainty feet. He knew we were riding into something, he knew there might be the smell of gunpowder, but he liked it, too. You could sense it in the way he moved. A man riding the same horse a lot comes to know his feelings and ways, for no two are alike, and I was one to make companions of my horses, and they seemed to understand. They knew we were in this together.

Time and again, I drew up to listen. A man can't ride careless into wild country. The banks of the river had an easier slope below the elbow, and some grassy tongues of land pushed into the river.

There was a rustling of water along the banks and a dampness in the air near the river. My horse pricked his ears, and we walked slowly forward.

I heard no unnatural sound, smelled nothing until I caught a faint smell of wood smoke, and then a moment later an animal smell.

Cattle! I drew up again. There was much brush, almost as high as my head, but scattered. Suddenly, sensing something near, I drew rein again.

There were cattle near, and a large herd. I could smell them and hear the faint sounds a herd will make at night, the soft moanings, shiftings, click of horn against horn when lying close, and the gruntings as one rose to stretch.

Well, right then I had me a healthy hunch, but what I wanted was to locate the fire. I reined my horse over and rode him around a bush, speaking softly so's not to startle the cattle, which, after all, were longhorns and wild animals by anybody's figuring.

The fire was off across the herd, and I glimpsed a faint glow on the side of some leaves over yonder, on a tree trunk. So I let my horse fall into the rhythm of walking around the herd, just as if we were riding night herd ourselves, which we'd done often enough.

From the way my horse acted, I didn't figure these were strange cattle, so when I saw the fire ahead, I rode over and let my horse walk up quiet.

Tyrel, he was a-settin' by the fire, and he never even raised up his head. He just said, "Get down, Tell, we've been a-missin' you." So I got down and shook his hand, and we Sacketts was together again.

Chapter XIX

"You got yourself some cows," I said.

"Seems as though. We've had some losses.

Right now we're a few shy of having nine hundred head. We lost cattle in the stampede, and we lost a few head in the sand hills. All of them are worn down and beat." "We've got thirty-two head, last count," I told him. Then I asked, "How you fixed for grub?" "A-plenty. Orrin came along with his carts.