A Land Remembered, Volume 1, page 13
“We’ll go a bit further. If it gets deeper, we’ll turn back.”
The dogs were now having to jump to stay above the water level, and they were useless in herding the cows. Suddenly the lead cow plunged downward, went under and came up bellowing; then it seemed that dynamite was being set off beneath the surface. Violence came from everywhere, all at once without warning, tails slashing and jaws popping. One cow was snatched under instantly; then it came up fighting to break free, its head firmly locked in an alligator’s mouth. It bellowed and went under again as blood bubbled to the surface and spread out in a widening circle.
“’Gators!” Tobias shouted, clinging to the saddle as his horse reared up. “Turn back! Turn back!”
Nip was already swimming toward high ground, but Tuck went straight ahead, heading for the panic-stricken cows. Zech kicked Ishmael in the flanks and plunged after the dog, the water now almost over the saddle.
Tobias watched, frozen with fear; then he managed to shout frantically, “No, Zech! No!”
The small horse swam right into the death orgy, staining its hide with blood; then Zech grabbed the dog and pulled it onto the saddle and turned back. Water exploded all around him as Ishmael churned desperately, gradually moving away.
Skillit had already snatched Nip up and was galloping through the water. Tobias continued to watch, unable to move, as the black surface turned solid red; and it was only after Zech rushed by him that he wheeled his horse and followed.
When they reached the edge of the woods, they stopped and put the dogs down. Tobias said weakly, “You could ’a got killed back there, Zech. You shouldn’t ought to have done it. A dog ain’t worth the chance you took.”
“I wasn’t going to let no ’gator eat Tuck, Pappa. I knew Ishmael could do it. I could feel it.”
“Lord, what I could have caused,” Tobias sighed, putting his hand on Zech’s shoulder.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Skillit said quickly, concerned by the stricken look on Tobias’ face. “Wasn’t no way to know that place is a ’gator den.”
“I knew. I knew before we went in there. He warned me, and I didn’t pay heed. He told me there is only death in there, and I went anyway.”
“You ain’t making sense, Mistuh Tobias,” Skillit said. “Who warned you?”
“Back there. In the swamp. He said not to enter, to go around.”
“You want to go to the wagon and take a rest? Maybe we ought to stop here for a day or two.”
“No! Get the herd started. We’ll go east as far as we have to and go around the rest of this swamp. I should ’a listened.”
“We’ll move on then,” Skillit said, still looking at Tobias strangely. “But don’t blame yo’self for anything. At least we know not to come this way again. It was worth something. Best we lose a few cows than a whole herd.”
“Next time we’ll know,” Tobias agreed. Then he watched the two dogs as they streaked through the grass toward the herd, Zech and Ishmael close behind them.
***
When they rounded the tip of the swamp and turned westward again, they came into open prairie land. The herd moved lazily, grazing in one spot until it was cleaned, then drifting on.
Tobias gradually dismissed the Timucuan from his mind, and all of the men seemed to regain confidence after the experience of being boxed into the dead-end swamp. Tobias also made mental notes of the route they should take the next time.
One morning they approached a lake with a dense hardwood hammock on the east side. Tobias was riding right flank, and he saw the rider come from the woods and head in his direction. He left the herd and met him halfway.
This man said directly, “I got a few cows to sell. Are you interested?” He was an older man, around sixty, with solid white hair and a beard to match.
Tobias responded, “Well, yes and no. I don’t have money to pay cash. I picked up sixty-five head from a man named Lowry back at the Kissimmee for three dollars a head and promised to pay him on my way back. I could do the same for you. How many you got?”
“A hundred and ten. And I ain’t got no help to move them. What’s your name?”
“Tobias MacIvey.”
“Windell Lykes.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Both men looked at each other as if sizing each other up, and then Lykes said, “How do I know you’ll come back and pay me?”
“Same way as Lowry. You got my word, and I’ve never broken it to no man. So far we’ve lost near on forty cows and Lowry will get paid for every one of his. What we lose is mine. And like I told Lowry, next trip through I’ll take whatever you got and pay cash.”
The man scratched his head for a moment, pondering a decision. “You coming straight back here after the drive?”
“Straight back. I live over on the east bank of the Kissimmee.”
“Well, O.K., it’s a deal. Where you taking the herd? Tampa?”
“Nope. Punta Rassa. I’ve been told the price is better there.”
“You’re too far north for Punta Rassa. You need to cut south.”
“You been there?”
“Several times, but not driving a herd. Is this your first trip there?”
“For a fact, and we done got lost on several occasions. Maybe you could give us directions.”
“Well, best thing you can do is go due south till you hit the Caloosahatchie. It’s the first river you’ll come to. It goes into Punta Rassa, but you’ll have to cross the river to get there. It’s on the south bank, right at the Gulf. There’s a ferry about four miles north of there that can take your wagon across, but you’ll have to swim the cows.”
“Is there ’gators in the river?”
“Mister, there ain’t no water in Florida without ’gators, less you got a tub of it in your house. And one’s liable to get in there too if you leave the door open. But I ain’t heard of nobody losing cows to ’gators on the Caloosahatchie. It’s pretty deep water, and ’gators lay up mostly in shallows.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
Tobias unfurled his whip and cracked it two times; then he saw Skillit and Zech ride away from the wagon and come toward him. He said, “They’ll go with you and bring in your cows.”
“Don’t you want to count them first and sign a paper?”
“If you say you’ve got a hundred and ten, that’s good enough for me. You get paid for a hundred and ten. And I don’t need a paper if you don’t.”
“Fair enough. I hope we get to do business again.”
Tobias turned his horse; then he looked back and said, “Thanks rightly for the directions. I was beginning to believe there ain’t no such place as Punta Rassa. I’ll see you again soon, and we’ll take good care of your cows.”
Four days later they reached the Caloosahatchie and then followed its bank until they found the ferry. It was late afternoon when the last cow staggered from the river, but they made the crossing without incident.
Tobias could not believe they were within four miles of their destination. Although this close, Punta Rassa still seemed to him to be as distant as China, and just as unreachable.
He also had a strong feeling that something bad would happen yet, a storm, a flood, wolves, alligators, something. Or Thompson’s information about the Cuban market would be in error, and there would be no buyers on hand who wanted the cattle. The long path to this point had been too filled with disappointment, disaster and grief for him to feel premature joy.
They moved the herd a mile down the river and then circled them for the night. Tobias would ride on alone the next morning and seek a buyer, then return and share the news with everyone, good or bad.
At supper that night everyone seemed strangely quiet, as if they too did not yet believe. Tobias had surmised that Frog and Bonzo would try to get advance pay and ride off to the village, leaving the rest of them alone to protect the herd; but they made no mention of this. Even Zech showed no boyish enthusiasm of reaching trail’s end, and he spent an hour after dark quietly rubbing Ishmael’s neck and talking to him.
Tobias noticed all of this, thinking that perhaps they were all tired beyond realization and it was just now hitting them, like hunters who pursue the prey through the woods relentlessly for an entire day, and after the kill is finally made, fall down exhausted. Whatever the reason, it was the quietest night the camp spent.
They still posted the same guard as they had in the wilderness, and an hour before midnight Tobias was still awake, awaiting his turn. He sat on the wagon seat as Emma aroused from a fitful sleep and came to him. She sensed at supper he was restless, anxious for the night to pass and the dawn to come, that he would not lie down and rest either before his watch or when it ended.
She sat beside him silently, watching a full moon come over cypress trees lining the banks of the river. Spanish moss swayed from limbs like blobs of cotton and absorbed the moonbeams, changing the dull gray beards to glowing yellow. The cattle were visible in the distance, quiet now, standing deathly still, resembling not flesh and blood creatures hounded by predators but miniature statues on a kitchen shelf. The herd was all together now for the last time, a mass rather than individual fragments, and she thought of all those days and weeks and months Tobias and Zech and Skillit struggled to assemble what stood on this small plot of ground and would soon be no more. They had survived only to come to an end, and the cycle would begin anew when they returned to the homestead.
She finally said, “Don’t be too disappointed if this doesn’t turn out right, Tobias. It’s not the end of everything.”
For a moment he made no answer, and then he said, “I was going to say the same thing to you, and ask you not to be disappointed. You beat me to it.”
“I would be disappointed only for you and Zech. You’ve worked too hard to fail now. I know what it means to you.”
“I’m not sure I know myself what it means,” he said, putting his hand on hers. “All those times me and Zech chased some scrawny cow through the woods and didn’t catch it, it wasn’t the money. I want the money now for you and Zech. For me, I guess I just been trying to prove something to myself. All my life when I tried to do something worth anything I never made it, not here or back in Georgia. It was the same with my daddy, and he finally gave up and quit trying. When he did, it killed my mamma, just as sure as those ’gators killed the cows back in the swamp. And it was just as awful to see. Then it got Daddy too. We almost made it in the scrub, me and you and Zech; then somebody comes along and burns it all for no reason. Ever time I try, it seems somebody burns it or floods it or kills it. Maybe this time the Lord won’t throw a roadblock in front of me. But if He does, I’ll just stumble over it and try again. I’m not ready to give up yet, and I ain’t going to quit no matter what happens tomorrow morning.”
She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “I’ve known that all along, Tobias. And whatever happens, we’ll work it out together. That’s the way I want it to be.”
“Emma . . .” he said hesitantly, unsure of his words; then he started again, “Emma, . . . I’m not always a gentle man, and I know it. I guess it’s because of the things I seen growing up. I want to be, but I don’t know how. You could have done better than me, a fine woman like you, and I always knowed that too. I ain’t much to look at, but someday I’m going to make you proud, and Zech too. I’m not going to quit trying till I do.”
She reached up and kissed him. “You’re the most gentle man I’ve ever known. I’m proud now, and Zech is too.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tobias passed several large holding pens and then turned down a rutted road leading to the waterfront. There were two stores, one containing a café and a post office, the other general merchandise. Between them was a saloon, and behind this a livery stable, feed store, and blacksmith shop were housed together in a barnlike structure. Across from one store a two-story clapboard house offered rooms for rent. The whole area reeked of cow manure, and Tobias wondered how the people who lived and worked here could stand the constant odor.
At the end of the street a dock ran one hundred feet out into the bay, and adjacent to the dock there was a cattle chute. A small shack on pilings was at the left of the dock, and at the end, a sidewheel steamer belched smoke from its two stacks. Two more steamers lay at anchor further out in the bay.
The village had a desolate look, almost forbidding, peppered with fierce-looking Spanish bayonet and clumps of salt-burned palmetto. Sea grapes covered large sand dunes to the right and left of the dock. Tobias had pictured it differently, the name Punta Rassa conjuring visions of something exotic, things he had never seen before. But except for the cattle dock and the more numerous buildings, it was no different from Kissimmee. He was more than mildly disappointed.
Several men were sitting on the porch of one store, and Tobias rode up to them and dismounted. Two one-gallon jugs of Cuban rum were on the floor in front of them. He said, “I’m looking for a cattle buyer. You know where I can find one?”
“Down yonder,” one of the men said, pointing. “The shack on the dock. You want to see Cap’n Hendry.”
Tobias tied the horse to a hitching post and walked to the dock. He knocked on the closed door and a voice came to him, “It ain’t locked. Come on in.”
There were three men inside, two sitting on tall stools at shelves containing ledgers, the other in a rocking chair with his feet propped on a desk. The man in the rocker was dressed in black leather boots, brown canvas pants and a blue chambray shirt. He wore a large straw hat with turkey feathers on one side.
Tobias said, “Name’s Tobias MacIvey. I was told I could find a cattle buyer here.”
“You come to the right place,” the man said, getting up from the rocker. He was a tall, slim man of about fifty. “I’m Sam Hendry. Where’s your herd?”
“Three miles up the river.”
“How many you got?”
“Can’t say for sure. We lost some on the drive, and ate a couple. I figure it to be around eight hundred and fifty, maybe a few more than that.”
“They in good shape?”
“Real good. We moved slow coming here and let ’em eat all they wanted. They ought to go over five hundred pounds each.”
“That’s the kind we need,” Hendry said, showing interest. “Some men run them yellowhammers down here like they was rabbits instead of cows, and time they get here they’re not much more than skin and bones. Then we have to fatten them ourselves. If yours are in good shape like you say, we’ll pay sixteen dollars a head. If not, twelve is tops.”
Tobias felt a faintness flush through him, causing his throat to turn dry. Even after hearing it, he still could not believe that the cows were actually worth cash money. To him they were still just stubborn critters they had popped out of swamps and chased across prairies. He finally managed to croak, “Sounds fair to me. When you want to see them?”
“Drive the herd on down here and put them in one of the holding pens. We’ll take a look and make a head count. We pay in Spanish gold doubloons worth fifteen dollars each, five hundred and twenty-five dollars to a sack. You better go to the store and buy a trunk to carry it in, unless you’ve got a big wooden box with you.”
“Yes sir, Mister Hendry, I’ll do that. And I’ll go back right now and move the herd.”
“Captain Hendry,” the man corrected. “If I’m not here when you get done with it, I’ll be in my office in back of the general store.”
Tobias had an overwhelming urge to run, but he walked casually up the street to his horse. He moved slowly until out of sight of the men. Then he let out a whoop that could be heard back at the dock and put the old horse in a gallop.
When he reached the wagon he was breathless. He jumped from the panting horse and said in gasps, “We done it! We done it! Sixteen dollars a head! Spanish gold!”
“Calm yourself down a bit,” Emma replied, “and then tell us what happened.”
“Captain Hendry. He’s the buyer. He said if they’re in good shape, he’ll pay sixteen dollars each. If not, twelve is tops. You know how much money that is, Emma?”
“Not really. I’m not sure I can count that high.”
“It’s a bunch. I’m going to buy a steamer trunk down at the store just to haul it back to the hammock. But right now we got to move the herd. He said bring them to a holding pen so he can look and make a head count. Ride on out there, Skillit, and tell everybody to start moving the cows. I’ll come on later with Emma. I’m going to tie the dogs in some bushes and leave ’em a pan of water. They follow us into town, somebody is liable to take them for wolves and shoot them.”
Skillit leaped on his horse and said, “We’ll have them cows down there in no time at all, Mistuh Tobias.”
“No!” Tobias exclaimed. “Walk ’em slow. Real slow. They need to keep ever pound they got. Just take it easy.”
***
Tobias sat in a chair in front of the desk, watching Hendry make figures with a pencil. He scratched for a moment more; then he looked up and said, “Well, MacIvey, you’ve got eight hundred and sixty-five head, all in good shape, so the price is sixteen. That comes to thirteen thousand, eight hundred and forty dollars. You want to count all of the money?”
“No sir, Captain Hendry, that ain’t necessary,” Tobias replied, overwhelmed by the figures. “I trust you to do the right thing. But if you got one of them gold coins on you right now, I’d sure like to keep it separate. It’s the first I ever earned.”
Hendry took a doubloon from his pocket and handed it to Tobias. “You want the rest of the money now?”
