The Outlaw Josey Wales (11 page)

Chapter 13

Josey and Lone let the big horses out. Running with flared nostrils, they beat the dim trail into a thunder with their passing. One mile, two … three miles at a killing pace for lesser mounts. Froth circled their saddles when they pulled down into a slow canter. They had headed north, but the Brazos curved sharply back and forced them in a halfcircle toward the northeast. There was no sound of pursuit.

“But they’ll be comin’,” Josey said grimly as they pulled up in a thicket of cedar and oak. Dismounting, they loosed the cinches of the saddles to blow the horses as they walked them, back and forth, under the shade. Josey ran his hands down the legs of the roan … there wasn’t a tremble. He saw Lone doing the same with the black, and the Indian smiled, “Solid.”

“They’ll beat the brakes along the Brazos first,” Josey said as he cut a chew of tobacco, “be looking fer a crossin’ … cal’clate they’ll be here in a hour.” He rummaged in saddlebags, sliding caps on the nipples of the .44’s and reloading charge and ball.

Lone followed his example. “Ain’t got much loadin’ to do,” he said, “I was set to work on my end of the blues … but godamighty, I never seen sich greased pistol work. How’d ye know which one would go fer it first?” There was genuine awe and curiosity in Lone’s voice.

Josey holstered his pistol and spat, “Well… the one third from my left had a flap holster and wa’ant of no, itchin’ hurry… one second from my left had scared eyes… knowed he couldn’t make up his mind ’til somebody else done somethin’. The one on my left had the crazy eyes that would make him move when I said somethin’. I knowed where to start.”

“How ’bout the one nearest me?” Lone asked curiously.

Josey grunted, “Never paid him no mind. I seen ye on the side.”

Lone removed his hat and examined the gold tassels knotted on its band. “I could’ve missed,” he said softly.

Josey turned and worked at cinching his saddle. The Indian knew… that for a death-splitting moment… Josey Wales had made a decision to place his life in Lone Watie’s hands. He fussed with the leather… but he did not speak. The bond of brotherhood had grown close between him and the Cherokee. The words were not needed.

The sun set in a red haze behind the Brazos as Josey and Lone traveled east. They rode for an hour, walking the horses through stands of woods, cantering them across open spaces, then turned south. It was dark now, but a half-moon silvered the countryside. Coming out of trees onto an open stretch, they nearly bumped into a large body of horsemen emerging from a line of cedars. The posse saw them immediately. Men shouted, and a rifle cracked an echo. Josey whirled the roan, and followed by Lone, pounded back toward the north. They rode hard for a mile, chancing the uneven ground in the half-light and ripping through trees and brush. Josey pulled up. The thrashing behind them had faded, and in the far distance men’s shouts were dim and faraway.

‘These hosses won’t take us out of another’n,” Josey said grimly. “They got to have rest and graze… they’re white-eyed.” He turned west, back toward the Brazos. They stopped in the brakes of the river and under the shadows of the trees rope-grazed the horses with loose-cinched saddles.

“I could eat the south end of a northbound Missouri mule,” Lone said wistfully as they watched the horses cropping grass.

Josey comfortably chewed at a wad of tobacco and knocked a cicada from his grass-stern perch with a stream of juice. “Proud I stuck this ’baccer in my pockets… leavin’ all them supplies layin’ in thet town. And Little Moonlight’s saddle…” Josey’s voice trailed off. Neither of them had mentioned the Indian woman… nor did they know of her dash into the horses that had delayed pursuit. Lone had anxiously marked their progress north and had felt relief when Josey had led back south. Little Moonlight would remember the trail, drawn with the stick on the ground, southwest out of Towash. She would take that trail.

As if echoing his thought, Josey said quietly, “We got to git south… somehow ’er ’nother… and quick.” Lone felt a sudden warmth for the scar-faced outlaw who sat beside him… and whose thoughts wandered away from his own safety in concern for an outcast Indian squaw.

They took turns dozing under the trees. Two hours before dawn they crossed the Brazos and an hour later holed up in a ravine so choked with brush, vine, and mesquite that the close air and late April sun made an oven of the hideout. They had picked the ravine for its rock-hard ground approach that would carry no tracks. Half a mile into the ravine, where it narrowed to no more than a slit cleaving the ground, they found a cavelike opening under thick vines. Lone, on foot, went back along their path and moved the brush and vines back into place where they had passed. He returned, triumphantly holding aloft a sage hen. They cleaned the hen, but set no fire, eating it raw.

“Never knowed raw chicken could taste so good,” Josey said as he wiped his hands with a bunch of vines. Lone was cracking the bones with his teeth and sucking out the marrow.

“Ye oughta try the bones,” Lone said, “ye have to eat ALL of ever’thing when ye’re hungry… now, the Cheyenne… they eat the entrails too. If Little Moonlight was here …” Both of them left the sentence hanging… and their thoughts brought a drowsy, light sleep… while the horses pulled at the vines.

Near noon they were aroused by the beating of horses’ hooves approaching from the east. The riders stopped for a moment on the lip of the ravine above them, and as Josey and Lone held their horses by the nose… they heard the riders gallop south.

Sunset brought the welcome coolness of a breeze that shook the brush and brought out the evening grouse. Josey and Lone emerged cautiously onto the prairie. No riders were in sight.

“East of us,” Josey said, as they surveyed the land, “it’s too heavy settled… we got to go west… then turn south.”

They headed the horses westward toward a gradual elevation of the land that brought them, as they traveled, to a prairie more sparse of vegetation, where the elements were more rugged arid wild.

In 1867, if you drew a line from the Red River south through the little town of Comanche… and keeping the line straight… on to the Rio Grande, west of that line you would find few men. Here and there an outpost settlement… a daring or foolhardy rancher attracted by that unexplainable urge to move where no one else dare go… and desperate men, running from a noose. For west of that line the Comanche was king.

Two hours after daylight Josey and Lone sighted the squat village of Comanche and turned southwest… across the line. They nooned on Redman Creek, a small, sluggish stream that wandered aimlessly in the brush, and at midafternoon resumed their journey. The heat was more intense, sapping at the strength of the horses as it bounced back off a soil grown more loose and sandy. Boulders of rock began to appear and stunted cactus poked spiny arms up from the plain. At dusk they rested the horses and ate a rabbit Lone shot from the saddle. This time they chanced a fire… small and smokeless, from the twigs of bone-dry ’chollo brush. Coarse grass was bunched in thick patches that the horses cropped with relish.

Josey had lived in the saddle for years, but he felt the weariness, sapped by lack of food, and he could see the age showing on Lone’s face. But the rail-thin

Cherokee was eager for pushing on, and they saddled up in the dark and walked the horses steadily southwest.

It was after midnight when Lone pointed at a red dot in the distance. So far, it looked like a star for a moment. But it jumped and flickered.

“Big fire,” Lone said, “could be Comanches havin’ a party, somebody in trouble, or… some damn fool who wants to die.”

After an hour of steady traveling, the fire was plainly visible, leaping high in the air and crackling the dried brush. It appeared to be a signal, but approaching closer, they could see no sign of life in the circle of light, and Josey felt the hairs on his neck rise at the eeriness. Still out of the light, they circled the flames, straining eyes in the half-light of the prairie. Josey saw a white spot that picked up the moonlight, and they rode cautiously toward it. It was the paint horse, picketed to a mesquite tree, munching grass.

Josey and Lone dismounted and examined the ground around the horse. Without warning, a crouched figure sprang from the concealment of brush and leaped on the half-bent figure of Lone. The Cherokee fell backward to the ground, his hat flying from his head. It was Little Moonlight. She was holding Lone’s neck, astride him on the ground … giggling and laughing, rubbing her face on his, and snuggling her head, like a playful puppy, into his chest. Josey watched them rolling on the ground.

“Ye damn crazy squaw … I come near blowin’ yer head off.” But there was relief in his voice. Lone struggled to his feet and lifted her far off the ground … and kissed her fiercely on the mouth. They moved to the fire, where Josey and Lone extinguished it with cupped hands of sand while Little Moonlight chattered around them like a child and once shyly clasped the arm of Josey to her body and rubbed her head against his shoulder. An ugly, deep gash ran the width of her forehead, and Lone examined it with tender fingers. “Ain’t infected, but she could have shore stood sewing up a day er two ago … too late now.”

“By the time that’n scars over,” Josey observed, “she’ll look like she stuck her haid in a wildcat’s den … ast her how she got it.”

Little Moonlight told the story with her moving hands, and as Lone repeated it to Josey, he listened, head down. She laughed and giggled at the confused Regulators, the running crowd, the stupefied people. Her own actions, which caused the hilarious scene of comedy, came out as an afterthought. She saw nothing extraordinary in what she had done… it was a natural action, as proper as pot-cooking for her man. When she had finished, Josey drew her to him and held her for a long moment, and Little Moonlight was silent… and moisture shone in the eyes of Lone Watie.

“We’d better git away from where this house fire was at,” Josey said, and as they walked to the horses Little Moonlight excitedly ran to a brush heap and drug forth the new saddle that Josey had dropped in Towash.

“Supplies, by God!” Josey shouted, “she got the supplies.”

Lone gestured to her and made motions of eating. “Eat,” Lone urged. She ran and picked up a limp sack and from it extracted three shriveled, raw potatoes. “Eat?” Lone asked… and she shook her head. Lone turned to Josey, “Three ’taters, looks like that’s it.”

Josey sighed, “Well… reckin we can eat the damn saddle after Little Moonlight tenders it up… bumpin’ her bottom agin it.”

Only after an hour’s riding was Josey satisfied with their distance from the fire …. and they bedded down. Noon of the following day they crossed the Colorado and lingered there in the shade of cottonwoods until sundown. Sun heat was becoming more intense, and it was in the cool of dusk before they saddled and continued southwest.

Their southwest direction would not take them to San Antonio, but Josey knew that after Towash they must avoid the settlements.

Chapter 14

The Western outlaw usually faced high odds. Beyond their physical, practiced dexterity with the pistol and their courage, those who “done the thinkin’” were the ones who lasted longest. They always endeavored an “edge.” Some, such as Hardin, stepped sideways, back and forth, in a pistol fight. They would draw their pistol in midsentence, catching their opponents napping. Most of them were masters of psychology and usually made good poker players. They concerned themselves with eye adjustment to light … or maneuvering to place the sun behind them. The audacious… the bold… the unexpected; the “edge,” they called it.   

To his reckless men Bloody Bill Anderson had been a master tutor of the “edge.” Once he had told Josey,

“Iff’n I’m to face out and outlast another feller in the hot sun … all I want is a broom straw to hold over my head fer shade. A little edge, and I’ll beat ’em.” He had found his greatest student in the canny, mountain-bred Josey Wales, who had the same will to triumph as the wildcat of his native home.

So it was that Josey was concerned about the horses. They looked well enough, though lean. They ate the bunch grass and showed no lack of spirit. But too many times in the past years his survival had hung on the thread of his horse, and he knew that with two horses, given the same blood, breed, and bone, one would outlast the other in direct proportion to the amount of grain, rather than grass, that had been rationed to it. The wind stamina made the difference, and so gave the edge to the outlaw who grained his horse … if only a few handfuls a day. The “edge” was an obsession with Josey Wales, and this obsession extended to the horse.

When they crossed the wagon tracks in late afternoon of the following day Josey turned onto their trail. Lone examined the tracks, “Two wagons. Eight… maybe ten hours ago.”

The tracks pointed west, off their course, but Lone was not surprised at Josey’s leading them after the wagons. He had learned the outlaw’s concerns and his ways, so that when Josey muttered an explanation, “We need grain… might be we could up-trade thet paint,” Lone nodded without comment. They lifted the pace of the horses into a slow, rocking canter, and Little Moonlight alternately popped and creaked the new saddle as she bobbed behind them on the rugged little pony.