The ruffian leader had no more than twenty men in his band. He had recruited these from classes naturally unscrupulous and restless under any law. But all criminal tendency is in its way a sort of individual initiative, self-assertiveness, after all; so that Rudabaugh found his men not always wholly submissive to any man’s will. They were less so now than ever. Repeatedly Rudabaugh had to explain to them again and over again that they were after large game, that the division would be large per capita. They were more like Coronado’s men—wanted mineral in hand; minted mineral.
“Well, I don’t mind saying,” remarked one of the bolder of his men at the second night of encampment at the Washita crossing—a city lies near there to-day—“I’ll be free to say that I don’t noways like the look of things.”
Rudabaugh turned to him savagely.
“Why don’t you? What’s the matter with you, Baldy?”
“There wasn’t no cause to kill them Indian women. If we don’t keep moving, them Comanches may run into us any time.”
“Where’d we move?” sneered Rudabaugh. “What are we after up here? Have I got to make a picture-block map to show you? Don’t you see, you damned numskull, if that herd gets to the railroad the whole jig is up for us? We’ve got to make our clean-up right now, this season or not at all, I keep telling you. We’ve got to get our scrip and get our lands, and get our surveyors out to locate them; and we’ve got to do it all now. Next year will be too late if that herd gets through. I’ve told you all this a dozen times. Now if you don’t like my way of leading, you know what you can do. If I hear any more grumbling I know what I’ll do.”
None the less this spreading doubt and dissatisfaction on the part of his followers did begin to make impression upon even so hardened a soul as Rudabaugh’s. He could do nothing if left alone. Looters always organize. In spite of his bravado, in spite of the quantities of fiery liquor which he had consumed, he began to feel a sudden uncontrollable chill creeping over his heart. Just now he began to pace up and down, restlessly endeavoring to work himself into one of his berserk rages. But he looked over his shoulder once in a while. No one knew what he saw, unless they themselves also saw the picture of the two naked women lying in their blood at a bathing pool.
“Damn it!” said Rudabaugh now, petulantly. “I don’t see why that bunch of buzzards should pick a tree so close to light on!”
He caught up his rifle. A great black bird dropped dead from a limb a hundred yards away. The others rose clumsily, wheeled in dark caravan; but they alighted on another tree not even so far away.
“That ain’t luck, I tell you,” repeated the first speaker of Rudabaugh’s men. “Me, I don’t like the look of things.”