 | Young Henry and the Old Man |  |
THE ranchman and I were discussing courage. I had that day seen young Henry Thomas mount and ride a horse which had bucked in a way to impress the imagination. I spoke of it.
"Was it the gray?" queried Brunner, and when I said it was, he scoffed. "That horse is trained to buck just the way young Henry wants him, and he hobbles the stirrups."
Brunner's scepticism was disappointing. I ventured to speak of another instance that seemed to illustrate the nerve of Henry Thomas:
"Didn't he help capture the 'Kep' Queen bunch of outlaws a few years ago? I've heard he showed nerve then."
"I reckon you have." Brunner glanced across at me, then stooped to dig a live coal out of the ashes. He held it for half a minute before packing it into the bowl of his pipe, shifting it imperceptibly in his toughened hand as he studied the backlog. When his tobacco was burning steadily, he spoke:
"I can tell you the truth about young Henry—and the old man, too." I thought his tone changed. "Twenty-four years ago I came to this Indian country. For twelve years I rode with the posses as a deputy marshal and for twelve years now I've been running cattle here on Cabin Creek. I've been all over the Territory. I know every man in the Cherokee Nation that ever handled a hot iron. And I know young Henry Thomas, too.
"It was in 1882 that Queen 'went bad,' and began to hold up trains on the 'Katy' and 'Frisco roads. All of that fall and winter we were after him and his gang, but we never got a sight of them. They were 'goers' all right, and when we came up to a two-weeks-old-camp-fire they'd built, we thought we were lucky.
"For six months after the first of the year they did nothing. We heard that Queen was in California. Then, in June, 1883, while I was at Muscogee, I got a telegram from 'Cap' White asking me to report at once to him at Red Oak. Paden Tolbert and I caught the eleven o'clock train up, dropping off at Red Oak at one in the morning. 'Cap' met us, told us he had two men ready, and that the five of us would start for Pryor Creek at once.
"It was a fifteen-mile ride. We planned to pick up four men from the ranches on the way down, and get to 'Kep' Queen's camp at daylight. We had been told that there were five men in the camp, that they had been in the Pryor Creek woods for two days, and that it was their plan to hold up the flyer from the north next evening. 'Cap' White was sure of his information, and he had decided upon the men he wanted from the ranches. The two Thomases—old man Henry and young Henry—were picked out, for there was no one else in the family except a younger brother of eighteen, who has since died. 'Bud' Ryder and Jim Kelso were the other two—both good on horses and handy with a gun.
"'Cap' was proud of his posse when he finally got us together. The Thomases came out and joined us like bees a-swarming. The young fellow was all up in the air with excitement, like a boy going to a circus. He was so brash that at first we couldn't keep him from riding on ahead of the rest of us; you'd think he wanted to bring in the bunch all by himself.
"That was all right; brash, eager young fellows ain't always so brave when trouble begins, but they steady into good fighters. It's hard enough to get 'em that want to go after a man like 'Cap' Queen at all."
Brunner told me then of the fight in the woods at daybreak. It was his summary of young Henry Thomas that interested me.
One of the men whom White took from Red Oak led the posse to the camp on Pryor Creek. It was on a ledge on a hillside. The fires had been built under a jutting rock. Only a bush wren could have hidden its nest more completely—Bruce had been lucky in spying it out. He told White that there was but one unprotected approach—a long unused trail that led down from the cliff-top and ended in a briar tangle fifty feet above the ledge. That trail, it was evident, 'Kep' Queen did not know existed.
Young Thomas had ridden with Brunner, seeking him out, as the novice always seeks out the veteran, to practise his valorous speeches
After a time the youngster's monologue became a sort of soothing hum, for which the other was grateful. "I was cross and sleepy and chilly and nervous," Brunner explained, "and the boy's gabble rested me."
I gathered that the young man was more excited than he cared to confess, even to himself. He talked, as others whistle, to "keep up his courage." Yet the implication that he needed distraction or stimulation would have angered him. Youth and courage are twins, or should be, and a man of twenty-two takes it for granted. At forty, a man may confess to turning tail and yet save his self-respect. I had heard Brunner tell of "back downs" that would have shamed a young village constable, and it had never occurred to me to question his courage.
It was only in the last mile of their ride that the chatter of young Thomas really became audible to Brunner.
"I woke up," he said, "and actually listened to him. I don't remember exactly what he was saying, but this was the idea: 'All of you fellows that chase outlaws make too much fuss about it.' Well, some of us do, though the newspapers and the wind-bags that follow us around make ten times the fuss we do. He went on to say that the only way to nab a horse-thief or an express robber was to go right up to him, don't you know, like the little boy went up to the sign-post that he thought was a ghost.
"It's a good theory and generally works. I told him so, and then apologized for doing any other way. The way I thought about this business of a deputy marshal's was the way an old soldier thinks about war. I was hired to get the criminals, and not to be caught by the criminals, to shoot the bad man, if I had to, but not to be shot by the bad man if there was any way to help it. One way to help it is to run and hide. It's a good way, too, for I've tried it."
The young man roused Brunner's curiosity. It was possible that he might be of the exceptional breed that puts a fine theory to the test of action.
"I decided to watch him," the ranchman told me, "and see if he would play up to his big talk. When we left our ponies, half a mile from the camp, I pretended to argue with 'Cap' White, told him he ought to leave young Thomas with the horses and not get such a boy as that all shot up. 'Cap' caught my point and begged him to stay, but, of course, he wouldn't hear of it. 'I'll stick to Brunner,' says he.
"'All right,'" says I, 'come on.'
"When we started afoot, we trailed out single file, and I noticed that old man Thomas waited for the boy and me to pass him, dropping in right behind his son. 'Cap' was in front, then Bruce, then Paden Tolbert, then Ryder and Kelso, and then I and the Thomases. The old man was at the tail of the procession.
"Old man Thomas was the kind that you never think about one way or the other. You said to yourself that he would do his share, whatever it amounted to, and you wouldn't have to bother about him. That's your notion of him, ain't it?"
It was my notion of the older Thomas. I don't think a more commonplace looking man ever lived. Brunner told me that he had not changed in fourteen years.
"'Young Henry swells around and talks big; the old man he says nothing and chaws tobacco.' That's the way people size 'em up around here." Brunner thus confirmed my own impression of the pair.
"What a man can see out of the back of his head," Brunner went on, "is a lot different from what comes in front of his eyes. He feels a lot that don't make a sound and that ain't visible. I did see, out of the corner of my eye, that young Henry Thomas was dropping behind me little by little, but I didn't see why it was he moved up again. I know why, though. The old man had ordered him up—not in words, you understand, for I could have heard a whisper in the still dawn, the way we were snaking it over the trail. From that time on, every foot of the way, the old man drove the boy. You ask me how, and I can't tell you. There wasn't a word, not a motion that I could see, but all the time it was one man driving the other as plain as could be. And it wasn't easy. I felt that young Henry was worse than balky, that he would have broke through the bushes and run off screaming if that old man had taken his eyes off of him for ten seconds.
"A quarter of a mile it was, and we went slow—twenty feet forward picking our way, then the eight of us would stop to listen. If you ever get a chance, ask young Henry how long that trail was. If he don't stop to think, he'll tell you we crawled through the bushes for five miles, but if he remembers his part as the hero of the fight, he'll say, 'Oh we sneaked a hundred yards or so before lighting into Queen's bunch.'"
The trail from above ended in a briar tangle
What had to be done, obviously, was to rouse the four outlaws without revealing the presence of the deputies above. It could be done by some one in the woods below the ledge. But the outpost was down there to reckon with. They could not all be trapped merely by waiting, for they would come out, after waking, one by one; and White wanted the whole bunch.
It was decided that three men should be sent, by a round-about trail, down to the creek; that they should follow it up until they got opposite to the ledge; and that they should then rouse the sleeping men. They were also to find the sentry and capture him. The risk was that the sentry might discover the three first and spoil the chance to take him. The detail might be dangerous, though with luck it should prove easy.
Brunner was assigned to lead the three. Young Thomas and Kelso were named by White as the other two, but Brunner, who had been aware of that duel on the trail, said he preferred the old man to Jim Kelso.
They beat back for a short distance, then, separating, dropped down the steep hillside to the creek. In open order, they went forward quietly, slowly; they might come upon 'Kep' Queen's outpost at any turn. Now and then they came in sight of one another. Each time Brunner saw that the old man was edging closer to his son. Still there was no word spoken—only a grim old man's gray eyes were fixed upon a young man's shifting, over-bright eyes, and the young man moved on, cautiously.
Brunner held close to the creek bank; the old man was twenty yards away and moving farther out as he approached his son. So they advanced abreast, until they came out upon the trail leading up to the ledge. Then Brunner saw old man Thomas run, with short, noiseless steps, to young Henry's side and point up the trail. Hidden from both and out of sight of what had attracted the old man's attention, Brunner yet knew what was happening. Farther up the trail was the sentry, half asleep in the chill dawn.
Brunner saw, as he himself came up cautiously, that the old man was whispering to young Henry. He grasped the boy's arm, half-shoving him forward and pointing with his rifle. The youngster moved a step, then turned with a look of utter panic on his face. His father's eyes glared; a sort of savage anger blazed on his face. From his grip on young Henry's arm, the old man's hand sprang to the boy's throat. There was one fierce, terrible shake, a sort of gurgling scream that expressed terror, and protest, too, but which was scarcely audible to Brunner, twenty feet away. In the tone of a man enraged to the point of madness, old man Thomas snapped out:
"Go on, you confounded whelp!"
Young Henry shook himself free, his terror replaced by a sudden, resentful anger. Fifty yards away the sentry nodded, his back against a tree and his gun across his lap. Brunner saw the man now, and stepped aside to cover him as young Henry approached. But there was no need of that. The boy was swift and noiseless; before the outlaw could wake or move, his gun was in Henry's hand, and he heard the command, "hands up!"
The sentry was quick-witted. He couldn't shoot, but he could yell. Brunner, however was ready for that. He began to bawl a reveler's song, popular with cowboys on a spree, and old man Thomas joined him. From above, it sounded as if a drunken riot had broken out, in which the outpost's warning shout became only a meaningless discord. The babel brought the four sleeping men out of their blankets. They listened a moment, then stepped out in view of the posse in the briars.
As Brunner came up, old man Thomas turned to face him. On his seamed face the sweat had almost dried, but when he shoved his hat up with his forearm, his sleeve came away from his forehead damp. The compelling glitter in the gray eyes turned to a challenging stare. Brunner met it, then glanced up the trail towards young Thomas and his captive.
"He got him all right," said Brunner.
"Yes," the old man triumphed, "my boy got him. He captured 'Kep' Queen himself."
"I reckon you've heard young Henry's story of how he got 'Kep' Queen," Brunner finished. "If you've ever talked with him when he was out of sight of the old man, I know you have. What I've told you to-night is what old man Henry could tell if he wanted to. But he never will. As I said awhile ago, 'young Henry swells around and talks big; the old man he says nothing and chaws tobacco.'"
| Young Henry and the Old Man | |