October, 2010

Issue #13

Last Rider: Working the Line
Part 2 of 2
by J. B. Hogan

On the ride back to his line rider shack, Mose kept twirling and spinning the Navy .36. He didn't realize how much he had missed the pistol until he felt its balanced weight in his hand once more. It felt comfortable and made him feel relaxed and safe. He liked the Griswold fine, but there was nothing like his own, original .36. It was the best pistol he'd ever owned.

When Mose was maybe a half mile or so away from the cabin, just as he and Buster were entering a draw that led through some low, scrub-covered hills, Mose thought he heard something.

"Whoa, boy," he said softly to Buster, reining in the trusty animal.

Mose cocked his head to one side. Definitely someone up ahead. And it sounded like they were in trouble. Mose spurred Buster lightly, jogged him along the trail—not too fast, not too slow. Coming around a bend in the draw, the sounds got louder. The cries of a woman. The rough shouts of men.

By a stand of sycamores alongside the creek that ran near and beyond the shack, Mose saw two cowboys bent over a figure on the ground. Digging his spurs harder into Buster, Mose rode fast towards the men, his Navy .36 in hand.

"Let her be," he yelled, galloping up to the scene.

The cowboys had been so intent on their victim they did not realize Mose was coming until he was practically on them. One man turned, hand reaching for his sidearm. Mose leveled his Navy .36 at the man.

"Don't try it, mister," he warned the first cowboy, some fellow Mose had never seen before. The terrified woman, an Indian, scrambled into the brush beside the creek, her leather dress ripped on one side at the hip. When the other cowpoke turned around Mose was shocked to see it was Meador from the outfit. "Let that woman be. Right now. Both of you."

"You the 'Indun' police I suppose?" Meador laughed, facing Mose directly.

"Maybe he just wants to join in," the other cowpoke leered.

"You boys ain't got no right jumpin' that woman like that," Mose said, keeping his pistol trained on the first cowboy.

"What the hell's the matter with you, Traven," Meador demanded, making a production out of tucking his loose shirt back into his pants. "Me and Fuller here was just havin' some fun with a squaw. What's that to you?"

"Yeah," Fuller added, "and pullin' your sidearm on white men. Boy, you got yourself out of whack here." He took a step towards Mose and Buster.

"Stop where you are," Mose warned Fuller.

"Come on, Traven," Meador intervened, "stop acting like a damned preacher or somethin'. It was nothing but funnin'."

"You boys saddle up and go on now," Mose told the cowpokes. "This is my territory."

"You ain't the boss," Meador countered.

"Here on the line I am," Mose replied calmly.

"Git down off'n your horse, mister," Fuller growled at Mose. "We'll see who's boss."

"Step back," Mose said, keeping his left foot in the stirrup until he was carefully onto the ground. No sooner had the toe of his boot touched soil than Fuller went for his own pistol

Without hesitation, Mose fired the .36 at Fuller. The shot, loosely aimed—and luckily so for Fuller—hit the cowboy in the fleshy part of his left thigh bringing him down immediately.

"Damn it," Fuller cried out, dropping his weapon, "you shot me."

Before Mose could make another move, Meador rushed him, grabbing him around the shoulders, trying to drag him down. Mose struggled, fought back, managed to lift the .36 and with a short, hard swing cracked the pistol across the side of Meador's head. Groaning, Meador fell in a heap beside Fuller. Mose stood over the two men with his pistol still trained on them.

"You shot me," Fuller repeated, holding his leg. The wound was bleeding some but not bad. As for Meador, he held the side of his head and continued to moan.

"You boys get up on your horses," Mose told the two cowboys, "and get the hell out of here."

"We'll get you for this, Traven," Fuller said, when the two cowboys, wounded and beaten, had managed to drag themselves up into their saddles."

"You had no call," Meador said, through pain-clenched teeth. "It wadn't none of your'n."

"You're a dead man," Fuller told Mose. "You hear me?"

"Maybe," Mose said, as Fuller and Meador rode away cursing, "maybe so."

Just to be safe, Mose kept his pistol aimed at the two men until they were not just out of range, but out of sight. When he was sure they were gone, he went looking for the girl. He found her not far away, hiding behind some scrub brush beside a dry creek bed.

"Come out of there," he said to her, holstering his pistol and reaching towards her with his right arm. "I ain't gonna hurt you."

The girl grunted something that Mose took to mean no and she retreated further into the scrub.

"C'mon," he cajoled, "you're safe now. C'mon out."

Mose walked over to Buster, who had sidled back up to him after the fight with the cowboys, and reaching into his saddlebags came up with a big chunk of beef jerky. He unhooked his canteen from the saddle pommel and walked back towards the girl. After several more minutes and many entreaties from Mose, she finally came out of the bushes.

"Here," he said, offering her the jerky and water.

The girl grabbed them from Mose like he might be a tricky rattlesnake ready to strike.

"Easy now," Mose laughed, watching the girl tear at the food. "Nobody's gonna harm you now. Eat and drink. That's good."

After the girl downed the jerky and drank half the canteen of water she calmed down. Mose took the canteen from her and hooked it back on the pommel.

"Do you speak English?" he asked the girl, as he prepared to mount up. The girl shook her head.

"But you understood that?" She shook her head again.

Mose lifted himself up onto Buster and settled into the saddle then reached his left arm for the girl. She flailed her arms and jumped back.

"Suit yourself," Mose told her, "I'm goin' on to my cabin."

He shook the reins and Buster took off at a slow gait. Mose kept the horse at that pace for several minutes before looking back. The girl was following. She was about fifty yards behind but staying right on their trail. Mose smiled to himself and aimed Buster for the cabin.

Back at the shack, he unsaddled Buster, watered and fed him, combed him some and then put him in the corral with the pack horse at the back of the building. The girl watched every move he made, but from a safe distance.

"You still hungry?" Mose called to her when he was through seeing to Buster's needs. "I got me some scrawny rabbit stew left in the pot. Won't take long to get the fire goin' and heat it up. You're welcome to join me." The girl looked at him stone-faced. "Do as you please," he added.

Mose got some kindling and some small sticks of wood and in no time had the stove fire going and the rabbit stew heated up. He didn't bother to check on the girl but he got two plates and spoons and, after wiping the room's little table off, set them out. He poured clean water from a bucket into two metal cups and sat down to eat his leftovers. About two bites into his meal, he heard the shack door creak open and the girl stuck her head inside.

"Come in," Mose said, without even looking up, "got plenty for ya."

The girl pushed into the cabin and came up to the table but she wouldn't sit down. Ignoring the spoon, she lifted the plate and pushed the food into her mouth, drinking the stew juice as she went. All the while she simultaneously fussed with the tear in her clothes.

"I got some pins you can fix that with," Mose told her.

When he stood, the girl raised the plate up in one hand.

"Easy now," Mose chuckled. "You are a feisty thing. I'm just going over here to get you some pins to hook up that tear."

He pointed at the rip in her clothes and the girl seemed to understand. She nodded her head.

"Now we're getting' somewhere," Mose smiled.

Mose found a couple of pins in a little dish sitting on a small shelf near his bed and brought them over to the girl. She immediately backed away from him. He raised his hands as if in surrender and then held out the pins for her to see. She quickly grabbed them from him and hurriedly fixed the tear in her leather dress.

"Be careful you don't poke yourself," Mose told her. The girl felt the edges of the pins. "Now don't get all fidgety," he went on, "I got a tool here that'll bend those over so's they won't cut you."

To his amazement, the girl let him use the fencing tool to bend and crimp the pins so that they wouldn't stick her.

"See," Mose said, "I ain't such a bad feller after all."

"Feller?" the girl asked. Mose thought she might be thinking that was his name.

"Me?" he asked, pointing to himself. "Not feller. Mose. My name is Mose." He said his name two or three more times. The girl seemed to catch on.

"Mo..se," she said haltingly, then: "Mose."

"Yes, I am Mose. What's your name? Who are you? Are you Cherokee?"

"Aniawi," the girl said, pointing to herself. "Aniawi. Cherokee. Aniawi."

"Aniawi," Mose repeated. "Aniawi."

"Mose."

"Yes, I'm Mose. You are Aniawi. Good."

"Good," the girl said.

"You do speak some English, then," Mose said.

"Some English," the girl allowed.

"It's gettin' dark now," Mose told her, "you can stay here. You can have my bed."

When he motioned towards his little cot, the girl became extremely agitated again.

"Oh, no, no," Mose quickly tried to explain. "Just for sleep. For you."

The girl pointed at the depressed area in the dirt floor where apples and such had perhaps been stored.

"Sleep," she said.

"Okay," Mose said, "you sleep there. But I have an extra blanket for you. You use that."

The girl nodded and took the blanket Mose offered her.

Mose was completely surprised to find the girl still there when he woke the next day. He figured she would have slipped off in the night or early morning, but she hadn't. After he washed the sleep out of his eyes, he made flapjacks with blackstrap molasses for both of them and the girl was still hungry enough to wolf those down pretty fast. Mose figured she must've gotten separated from her people somehow and been lost for at least a couple of days when Meador and Fuller had come upon and tried to assault her.

When they were done eating, Mose got his gear and started out to saddle up Buster for the day's work. The girl followed him to the door but stopped before going outside.

"You can stay here, iff'n you want," Mose told her, not knowing how much she was understanding. "I won't be far. Them boys won't likely be back to bother you none for awhile anyhow."

Mose fixed wire until early in the afternoon but thought about the girl all the while he worked. He worried about Meador and Fuller. Maybe they would come back—to get him or her, or both. About two p.m. he decided he'd better get back to the cabin and check, just to make sure. To his surprise once again, the girl was still in the shack.

They ate an early supper and this time the girl helped with the preparing and cooking. She seemed relaxed now around Mose and he kind of liked having someone there—even if she didn't speak very often. They exchanged a few words in English now and again and she occasionally spoke Cherokee to him. She repeated the word Aniawi several times and Mose decided to shorten that and start calling her Ani.

When she wasn't looking, he admired her long, deep black hair that fell nearly down to her waist in back and he liked her brown skin and brown eyes. She was thin, what he'd heard people call lithe, and her buckskin dress couldn't completely hide her pleasant shape. At bed time she took her blanket and again slept in the recess on the cabin's dirt floor, but she slept looking at Mose. He couldn't help but look at her as well and fell asleep in his cot facing towards the girl.

The next morning after breakfast, which they cooked together, Mose went out to fix wire again and just a few hundred yards from the cabin looked back to see the girl following him. He walked Buster slow and the girl stayed behind them all day long, hanging a few feet away when Mose got down to work on fences. He quit early once more and when he offered his arm to the girl, she took it and he pulled her up behind him on Buster.

Back at the cabin, the girl took his boots and dusted them with a rag she found in a corner of the room and at supper she did all the preparing and cooking of the food while Mose gathered wood and kept the fire going good.

On the third morning, she again went with Mose to work, this time riding out and back behind him on Buster. In the cabin, they exchanged bits of English and Cherokee until they were beginning to actually communicate to some degree. For such a short time and from such an unusual beginning, Mose felt he and Ani were nearly becoming domestic, a couple as it were.

After so much time alone on the trail here and there, it was not an unpleasant sensation for him.

"More coffee?" Ani asked Mose, after she had made breakfast for them on their fourth morning together.

"Just a little," Mose said, indicating the amount by holding up his thumb and forefinger.

When Ani poured the coffee into Mose's cup she brushed against him. He restrained an impulse to reach out and take her by her slender waist. Looking up, Mose saw her smiling back at him—a sweet, unoffended smile. He went ahead and put his arm around her waist and she did not pull away. It had been so long since he had felt the affection of a woman, Mose simply laid his head against the side of Ani's hip and rested it there. She ran her hands through his tousled hair.

"Work today?" she asked.

"Yes," Mose said, admiring her pretty face. "Work today."

"Go with you?"

"Oh, yes," Mose said with a smile. "Go with me. Please."

With Ani nearby all the time, the work day flew by. Late in the afternoon, with shadows lengthening on the rolling hills around them, they headed back to the cabin. At home they gathered fire wood, collected water from the creek and made a satisfying supper of beans and cornbread. Mose even broke out a can of peaches as a special treat for the evening. He and Ani laughed and talked until it was dark and time for bed.

In his cot, with the light of day now gone, Mose was restless. He couldn't stop thinking of the girl just feet away from there on the dirt cabin floor. He tossed and turned, pushing his blanket away from his legs. He tried to calm himself but to no avail. Rolling away from Ani, he sighed deeply. He could hear her moving in her blanket there across the room. Then he heard another sound. The sound of her moving about. He held his breath, for an eternity it seemed. Then he heard her voice beside him in the dark.

"Mose," she said, "I sleep by you."

"Yes," he said, his voice catching as he turned to allow her into his cot. "You sleep by me."

Mose woke to sunlight. He knew he had overslept but he didn't care. He felt good, tired but good. It was a rare experience in his young, often difficult life. He sighed deeply and smiled to himself, luxuriating in the laziness of not getting up right away and heading out to ride the line. He rolled over to share his good feelings with Ani and was surprised, though not alarmed, that she was already up and gone.

Because the door was slightly open, he guessed she was out looking for firewood to get breakfast ready. Slowly sitting up, Mose pulled his pants up over his long handles and slipped into his boots to go help her. Smiling again to himself, he exited the cabin and walked right into the middle of a group of Indian men.

"Whoa," he cried out, as one of the Indians pushed a rifle directly into his gut.

Mose raised his hands and backed up. The man with the rifle jabbed it towards Mose again. Two other men moved towards him.

"Easy, boys," Mose said, slowly dropping his hands to his waist. No weapon at all, he thought, I got nothin' at all.

"Stand still," the man with the rifle ordered.

"Point that rifle somewhere else," Mose told him. The man raised it higher, aimed it at Mose's chest.

"You don't move," one of the others, a heavy set, thick-muscled man said.

"You got the drop on me, boys," Mose told the Indians, "but this ain't settled yet. Who are you?"

"We are Aniawi," the heavy set man said, "Cherokee. Aniawi."

"What have you done with Ani?" Mose countered, not understanding. "Where is she?"

"Stand still," the man with the rifle said.

"Go to hell," Mose spat back. "Where is Ani? Who are you?"

The Indian men moved at Mose and he dove into the one with the rifle, knocking him to the ground. But in a heartbeat, the other men pulled Mose off and with a flurry of punches sent him reeling backwards. The big man pulled a long knife and menaced Mose with it. Mose reached down and came up with a big rock in his right hand.

"Come on," he told the big man.

"You come," the big man said, holding up the long knife.

But just as they were about to fight, Mose knowing his chances of survival were very slim, a familiar voice called out from behind the group of Indian men.

"Stop. Stop now." Mose heard Ani cry desperately. "Don't fight."

"Ani," Mose said, pulling back from his assailants.

At the sound of the girl's voice, the Indian men stepped away from Mose and parted to reveal her standing behind them. She was being held by an older, graying man. A leader, Mose guessed by the dignity with which he held himself and the attitude of deference the other men showed him.

"What is it, Ani?" Mose asked.

"My people," Ani told him. "My father. My people. Aniawi. Cherokee."

"Your people. Aniawi?"

"Yes. They come for me."

"Come for you?"

"I must go. They are family. To home."

"You're going?" Mose wondered, feeling as if someone had just hit him hard in the stomach, without warning.

"Must go," Ani said. Mose thought he could see tears welling in her eyes.

"This is your father?" Mose asked.

"Yes, my father," Ani answered. The old man released his grip on his daughter's dress.

"But …," Mose began.

"Have to go," Ani said. "To my home."

"Yes," Mose said, taking a deep breath, "you must go to your home. To your people."

The old man signaled to the others and they began to back away from Mose, although the rifleman and the one with the knife kept their weapons pointed at the forlorn cowboy.

"Good … bye," Ani struggled to find the words in English.

Mose didn't reply. There was nothing more to say. Her people had come for her. She was going back to them. It was only natural, it was the only way things could be. It was all there was to it. That was that. Mose turned to go back into the cabin. There was nothing else for him to do.

At the door, he paused briefly to look at Ani one last time. She was being led off by her father and the others and she, too, turned back towards Mose with a final, sorrowful look. A look painfully sad to Mose, a look that seemed to say she would have rather stayed with him but could not. After a moment, Mose broke eye contact with her and went back into his empty cabin shack.

In the days after Ani left, Mose tried not think about her. He tried to throw himself into his work, but from time to time, he could not concentrate on it. At those times he would ride Buster hard through the distant countryside, going nowhere, pushing the animal until it and he were both nearly exhausted.

At night, Mose tossed and turned in his cot, remembering Ani's warm presence beside him, the gentle feel of her long, deep black hair. And those thoughts often mingled with a memory of Old Mexico. Specifically of the Hacienda Carlota where he had known a Mexican girl that, like Ani, he could not have either. A girl also protected by her family and one kept away, pulled away from her contact with Mose.

One morning Mose rose late and slow, saddled Buster and rode back to the ranch to see the boss. He traveled in silence, barely aware of his surroundings, lost in an unexpected haze of melancholy. At the big house, he walked straight up onto the porch and knocked on the front door. His boss, Ben Carson, greeted him.

"Traven," Carson said, smiling, "I been expectin' you. Thought you might've come in before this."

"Yes, sir," Mose said distractedly.

"I heard of your trouble, son," Carson said, not unkindly.

"I would imagine," Mose replied.

"Was a squaw, was she?" Carson asked.

"What?" Mose asked, taken aback. He figured the boss would have heard about the runin with Meador and Fuller, but not about Ani.

"A Cherokee?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't reckon it coulda worked out for you."

"No, sir," Mose allowed.

"I guess it was more than I thought it was," Carson commented, noting the pained look on Mose's face. Mose didn't say anything. "Well, that's neither here nor there. No concern to me. The other thing, though, is a problem."

"The other thing?" Mose asked.

"With Fuller and Meador," Carson said.

"Oh," Mose said.

"Son, I had to stop the law from comin' after you on that one. You shot Fuller, for God's sake and beat the tar out of Meador."

"They had it comin'," Mose said.

"That may be," Carson said, shaking his head, "but I can't have that kind of bad blood on my ranch. You understand, don't you?" Mose nodded. "You're the newest man and the most trouble we've had. Even if you didn't cause it. It may have come with you and not all be your fault, I won't argue that. But I have to let you go."

"I figured," Mose said softly.

"I have your pay here, Traven," Carson said, producing a sealed envelope. "It's your lettin' go money."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry, son," Carson added, "but you better move on, get out of the Territory. I won't be able to keep those boys away from you forever. They're lookin' for pay back."

"Let 'em come," Mose said, "it don't matter none to me."

"I know it don't," Carson said, "but you watch your back anyway, son."

Mose took the pay envelope and without another word turned and walked off the porch of the big house. Carson followed him down. Mose climbed back up on Buster and took the reins.

"Good luck to you, son," Carson said.

"The pack horse is still in the corral up at the shack," Mose advised Carson.

"We'll get him," Carson said. "You watch out for yourself."

Mose guided Buster away from the house and without turning around, waved goodbye with his right hand. He headed Buster to the northeast at a slow trot, heading for the last miles of the Shawnee Trail that would lead him out of the Indian Territory and into southern Missouri.

Along the way, he would pass by his original home outside Carthage, not stopping, and on into the state, past the little communities and villages of central Missouri, on to the old trailhead city of Sedalia. He had last seen Sedalia when he'd been a teenage soldier in the Confederate Army. He had liked the town then, he would try it again now.

Click here to be notified when each new issue comes out!