“They’ve done nothing of the sort, Hanson,” retorted the leader of the band. “There’s nobody gives Sim Rudabaugh the slip.”
“Well, they’re north of the Red by now, like enough.”
“Don’t you think it! The Red’s up, almost bank full. No herd could ford it. Besides, even if they was north of the Red, I reckon we know the Nations better than they do, and can do more with the tribes. If they get too far west they’ll hit the Comanches. They’re not done with this trail yet.
“Not that I want their damned cows now,” he added. “We’d make more by going back to Palo Pinto and working up the Brazos. But it’s not every herd that has a hundred miles of scrip along with it in a box. Once word comes down that a herd’s been sold at Abilene, that scrip’ll go up, and go up fast.”
“And then besides!” grinned another man.
“And then besides, yes! There never was a man I hated worse than Burleson Lockhart. I’ll follow him beyond the grave. Scrip I take from him now, or from his family, is worth to me five times over, even now he’s dead. And his daughter——”
Followed some low obscenities from his followers which did not abash the ruffian chief.
“Follow me and you’ll see yet,” he resumed. “I’ve never yet quit. It’s easy to cross here if we have to, and follow the Arbuckle Trail along the Washita. They go twelve miles a day. We can go fifty. We can head them when we please. I don’t intend that herd shall ever see Abilene. No, nor I don’t aim that any man on that herd’ll ever cross south of the Red again!”
The cold-blooded ferocity of the man silenced his followers, as always it did. They were all in one way or another allied in a vast and unscrupulous border conspiracy in a land to which little actual law yet had come. The dullest of them knew that their heyday would be brief, that events were moving fast. The swiftest horse and the surest hand, the boldest and most ruthless leadership—these were their hope. So they followed Rudabaugh, the real leading spirit of the predacious drifters who had seen in the disordered post-bellum political conditions a vast opportunity for gain in a dulled and disorganized land which did not yet suspect its own riches. Rudabaugh had imagination, saw far ahead.
“I swear!” he broke out in one of the half-epileptic fits of choler which sometimes marked him—he was only a pirate of old reborn in the blood of the Civil War—“I swear, some one’s got to suffer for some of this! Last night four Indians rode right into our camp and drove off six horses, and us needing every head we’ve got. You all hear me, now! I swear I’m going to shoot the first Indian I see north of the Red, I don’t give a cuss what sort it is. We’ve gone palavering along and letting a lot of longhorns shoot us up, and then we have the Chickasaws run circles around us.”