Folks sometimes ask me why I called it the Wild Onion Mining Company.
*
END OF THE DRIVE
We came up the trail from Texas in the spring of 74, and bedded our herd on the short grass beyond the railroad. We cleaned our guns and washed our necks and dusted our hats for town; we rode fifteen strong to the hitching rail, and fifteen strong to the bar.
We were the Rocking K from the rough country back of the Nueces, up the trail with three thousand head of longhorn steers, the first that spring, although the rivers ran bank full and Comanches rode the war trail.
We buried two hands south of the Red, and two on the plains of the Nation, and a fifth died on Kansas grass, his flesh churned under a thousand hoofs. Four men gone before Indian rifles, but the death-songs of the Comanches were sung in the light of a hollow moon, and the Kiowa mourned in their lodges for warriors lost to the men of the Rocking K.
We were the riders who drove the beef, fighting dust, hail, and lightning, meeting stampedes and Kiowa. And we who drove the herd and fought our nameless, unrecorded battles often rode to our deaths without glory, nor with any memory to leave behind us.
The town was ten buildings long on the north side of the street, and seven long on the south, with stock corrals to the east of town and Boot Hill on the west, and an edging of Hell between.
Back of the street on the south of town were the shacks of the girls who waited for the trail herds, and north of the street were the homes of the businessmen and merchants, where no trail driver was permitted to go.
We were lean and hard young riders, only a few of us nearing thirty, most of us nearer to twenty. We were money to the girls of the line, and whiskey to the tenders of bars, but to the merchants we were lean, brown young savages whose brief assaults on their towns were tolerated for the money we brought.
That was the year I was twenty-four, and only the cook was an older man, yet it was my fifth trip up the trail and I'd seen this town once before, and others before that. And there were a couple I'd seen die, leaving their brief scars on the prairie that new grass would soon erase.
I'd left no love in Texas, but a man at twenty-four is as much a man as he will be, and a girl was what I wanted. A girl to rear strong sons on the high plains of Texas, a girl to ride beside me in the summer twilight, to share the moon with me, and the high stars over the caprock country.
For I had found a ranch, filed my claims, and put my brand on steers, and this drive was my last for another man, the last at a foreman's wages. When I rode my horse up to the rail that day, I saw the girl I dreamed about ... the girl I wanted.
She stood on the walk outside the store and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes, her hair blowing light in the wind, and her figure was long and slim and the sun caught red lights in her hair. Her eyes caught mine as I rode tall in the leather, the first man to come up the street.
She looked grave and straight and honestly at me, and it seemed no other girl had ever looked so far into my heart. At twenty-four the smile of a woman is a glory to the blood and a spark to the spirit, and carries a richer wine than any sold over a bar in any frontier saloon.
I'd had no shave for days, and the dust of the trail lay on my clothes, and sour I was with the need of bathing and washing. When I swung from my saddle, a tall, lonely man in a dusty black hat with spurs to my heels, she stood where I had seen her and turned slowly away and walked into the store.
We went to the bar and I had a drink, but the thing was turning over within me and thinking of the girl left no rest for me. She was all I could think about and all I could talk about that afternoon.
So when I turned from the bar Red Mike put a hand to my sleeve. 'It's trouble you're headed for, Tom Gavagan,' he said. 'It's been months since you've seen a girl. She's a bonny lass, but you know the rule here. No trail ^ hand can walk north of the street, nor bother any of the citizens.' , 'I'm not one to be breakin' the law, Mike, but jit is a poor man who will stop shy of his destiny.'
'This is John Blake's town,' he said.
The name had a sound of its own, for John Blake was known wherever the trails ran; wherever they came from and where they ended. He was a hard man accustomed to dealing with hard men, and when he spoke his voice was law. He was a square, powerful man, with a name for fair dealing, but a man who backed his words with a gun.
'It is a time for courting' I said, 'although I want trouble with no man. And least of all John Blake.'
When I turned to the door I heard Red Mike behind me. 'No more drinking this day,' he said. 'We've a man to stand behind.'
When the door creaked on its spring a man looked around from his buying, and the keeper of the store looked up, but the girl stood straight and tall where she was, and did not turn. For she knew the sound of my heels on the board floor, and the jingle of my Spanish spurs.
'I am selling the herd this night,' I said, when I came to stand beside her, 'and I shall be riding south with the morning sun. I hope not to ride alone.'
She looked at me with straight, measuring eyes. 'You are a forward man, Tom Gavagan. You do not know me.'
'I know you,' I said, 'and know what my heart tells me, and I know that if you do not ride with me when I return to Texas, I shall ride with sorrow.'
'I saw you when you rode into town last year,' she said, 'but you did not see me.'
'Had I seen you I could not have ridden away. I am a poor hand for courting, knowing little but horses, cattle, and grass, and I have learned nothing that I can say to a girl. I only know that when I saw you there upon the walk it seemed my life would begin and end with you, and there would be no happiness until you rode beside me.'
'You are doing well enough with your talk, Tom Gavagan, and it is a fine thing that you do it no better or you'd be turning some poor girl's head.'
She put her money on the counter and met the glance of the storekeeper without embarrassment, and then she turned and looked at me in that straight way she had and said, 'My uncle is Aaron McDonald, and he looks with no favor upon Texas men.'
'It is my wish to call on you this night,' I said, 'and the choice of whether I come or not belongs to you and no one else.'
'The house stands among the cottonwoods at the street's far end.' Then she added, 'Come if you will ... but it is north of the street.'
'You can expect me,' I replied.
And turning upon my heel I walked from the store and heard the storekeeper say, 'He is a Texas man, Miss June, and you know about the ordinance as well as anyone!'
Once more in the sunshine I felt a strength w. Ithin me that was beyond any I had ever known, and an exhilaration. Lined along the street were fourteen riders. They loitered at the street corners and relaxed on the benches on the walk in front of the barber shop. A group of them waited for me before the saloon. They were my army, battle tested and true. With them I could take on this town or any other.
Then I saw John Blake.
He wore a black frock coat and a wide-brimmed black planter's hat. His guns were out of sight, but they were there, I had no doubt. /
'Your men aren't drinking?' he commented.
'No.'
'Red Mike,' Blake said. 'I remember him well from Abilene, and Tod Mulloy, Rule Carson, and Delgado. You came ready for trouble, Gavagan.'
'The Comanches were riding, and the Kiowa.'
'And now?'
'I will be going north of the street tonight, John, but not for trouble. I was invited.'
'You know the rule here.' He looked at me carefully from his hooded eyes. 'It cannot be.'
'There are other ways to look, John, and I am not a trouble-hunting man.'
'The people who live here have passed an ordinance. This is their town and I am charged with enforcing their laws.' He stated this flatly, and then he walked away, and I stood there with a lightness inside me and an
