He had checked the train schedules and learned that his original idea to go first to Saint Louis constituted a waste of time. He had information that the Tuckers had gone to Illinois. He would have a long journey by coach or horseback from there to the area indicated. On the other hand, the Rock Island had tracks directly into Marion. He could transfer in Chicago and take the train due south to his objective. Change one.
Damien had insisted he keep Calzados, the big Spanish stallion. Griff would need the powerful animal’s stamina on his quest and, Damien added as an afterthought, the stallion had been trained as a war horse. That might come in handy, considering recent events, although the horse complicated his journey by rail. Accommodations, at extra cost, had to be made for Boots in a livestock car up by the locomotive tender. Change two.
Griff’s luggage, a single large portmanteau, had been scooped up by eager porters and taken off to the baggage car. All of his weapons went with it, except for the sword in his cane and a small Allen and Wheelock .28 caliber, three-shot pepperbox. All he could expect from the latter, Griff thought unhappily, was to anger anyone he used it on. If it provided only a distraction, though, that would give him time enough to get his sword into play. Change three.
Reflections on his horse made him conscious of another problem. With a conviction that his tongue had no facility for foreign languages – his lowest marks had always been in Latin and Greek – he had the stallion’s Spanish name rendered in English. Calzados became Boots. Depot routine and conditions in the city had left Boots in the hands of the hotel’s liveryman. He was supposed to deliver the animal to the loading area in ample time for departure. Change four … which bothered him more than all the others. Regretfully Griff rose and walked through the car, crossed the vestibule, and went forward to the last platform before making the awkward negotiation of the steps.
He leaned heavily on his cane as he walked along the train to the two livestock cars. A harried clerk and two hostlers worked frantically to load animals. Griff stood on tiptoe and gazed over the waiting creatures for sight of Boots. No sign.
“Excuse me, have you loaded a large roan stallion? He has a small blaze on his forehead.” Griff inquired
“Sorry, friend. We ain’t got time to look at ’em. Just shove ’em in the cars. What’s the passenger’s name?”
“Boots.”
“No. Your name.”
“Griffin Stark.”
The clerk consulted a list. “Nope. Shows you here for one horse. Hasn’t been checked off yet.”
Griff frowned. “Any way I can look over the stock in those holding pens?”
“If you want to take your life in your hands, there’s a catwalk along the top over there. I’d watch it, though. It’s rickety an’ the cheapskates who run this road ain’t about to fix it.”
“Thank you.” Griff walked over to the stock pens and examined the wooden slat ladder that led to the catwalk. The thought of climbing it made his joints ache. He caught a short breath and tested the first rung.
Pain ran through his left leg, but he persisted. The second one went a bit better, then the third. Five in all and he had reached the top. His legs ached and he swayed dizzily for a moment. Below, oxen, horses and mules milled about, snorting and shifting their weight in the confined space. He gazed over them carefully for some sign of Boots. Nothing. He went on toward the next pen.
Boards creaked noisily under his weight and he nearly lost his balance. The muscles of his legs still responded slowly to his commands. Thirty feet more and he would gain his objective. He took another step.
Rotted wood gave way and his right leg plunged down through the gap. Pinpricks of pain shot up from his calf as splinters gouged flesh. Griff threw himself forward to prevent a broken left leg. His hands slapped the walkway and he tasted dust and dry, powdered manure.
“Damn!” he exploded aloud. Of all the things to have happen. “Up here! Give me a hand, will you?” His call went unheeded. The railroad workmen all seemed absorbed in their duties. Griff yelled again. Still no acknowledgement. Gingerly he tried to work his leg free.
It wouldn’t move. “Hey! Up here. Bring a hammer and crowbar. I need a hand here.”
“You look funny down there, mister,” a squeaky voice spoke from in front of Griff.
Griff had been hollering back over his shoulder at the clerk and his busy assistants. Now he turned to see a wide field of freckles, under an unruly mop of curly red hair. A boy of ten or so, shirtless and barefoot, in bib overalls, stood looking down at him.
“I need some help, son. Can you run and fetch someone for me, have them bring a crowbar and a hammer?”
“Hey, Paw!” the lad shouted. “There’s another one caught up here.”
Below, the clerk looked up. “Be right there, Billy. Told him he shouldn’t go up in the first place.”
Ten minutes later, Griff was extricated from his trap. The splinter wounds stung and itched fiercely and it added to his limp. He gave the boy a dollar and the workmen five and hobbled off toward the train. His only satisfaction came from the sight of Boots being led in while the two burly yard workers dragged him out of the hole.
Cold cinders stung Griff’s eyes. The big diamond stack of the No. 4 Baldwin locomotive ground the ejected matter finely and eliminated live sparks efficiently enough that standing on the front platform of the first passenger car no longer put clothing at risk from fire. It only resembled a sandstorm, Griff thought. He jolted and swayed with the motion of the train and argued heatedly with the conductor.
“You cain’t get in there, mister, because the only doors are on the sides.”
“I only wanted to check on my horse. See he has feed and water.”
“He’s got the same as any other critter. Next coaling stop’ll be in the Warren Yards. You can look in on him then. Any extra feed you got for him, you better give it to him in a nose bag. Otherwise it’ll start a fight. Coal and water stop, fifteen minutes.”
Thanking the man, Griff turned and made his unsteady way through the first passenger car to the next vestibule. There he paused to gaze upward. Only a short distance from the crowded East, he pondered, yet the stars seem so much brighter. Like Georgia. The constellations appeared subtly different from the shapes he remembered seeing in his boyhood. The latitude and swaying train didn’t help his attempts at positive identification, either. He wondered what they would look like in Illinois. The door to the second car opened and a young woman stepped out.
Almost at once she began to cough, reacting to the strong odor of coal smoke, and she nearly fell, one hand reaching wildly for a grab iron. Griff stepped to her side and caught her gently by the shoulders.
“There you go,” he said close to her ear when he righted her.
“Why, thank you, sir. I surely would have fallen to my death if you hadn’t been here to rescue me.”
“You’re from the South,” Griff correctly identified her origins.
“However did you know that?”
“That lovely, lilting voice told me. The Carolinas?”
“Charleston. And you, sir?”
“Georgia.”
“Your family is in cotton?”
“And tobacco and goober peas and blooded horses. At least we were before the war. I have a place there, Riversend.”
“How nice. You didn’t lose it, then, to the carpetbagging tax collectors?”
“I did. Then I got mad and fought to get it back.”
“You’re an unusual man, Mister …?”
“Stark. Griffin Stark.” The moment he said it, Griff felt he had betrayed himself. That wanted poster must have had wide circulation.
“Griff ... I like that name. I’m Rhetta Lou Harrison.”
“My pleasure, Miss Harrison. You are traveling West?”
“Only to Chicago. My family has an interest in a stockyard there and I’m going to be with my daddy for a while. Ah, the Mid-West. So utterly flat and dull, don’t you think?”
“I’m hoping
to find it more pleasant than that. I’m searching for my son.”
“Your, ah, wife took him ...?”
“No. The war. He was … displaced. You understand,” Griff replied, avoiding the still-painful details.
“What terrible things it did to us all. It has been nice conversing with you, Mr. Stark … ah, Griff. I came out for a little breath of air. It seems there has been more smoke than air. A pleasant night to you.” Rhetta Lou offered her hand.
Griff took it and made an old-fashioned, courtly bow over the delicate appendage. “And to you, Miss Harrison.”
The coal-oil lamps had been lowered in all of the cars and almost everyone slumbered, the sleep of the exhausted after one noisy night since their departure. At Warren, Ohio, Griff had grained Boots, brushed soot and cinders from his glossy coat, and seen to ample water, then returned to his car. He drowsed, not fully able to surrender himself to oblivion. He jerked abruptly awake when two large, powerful men grabbed his shoulders and yanked him into the aisle.
One produced a short-barreled revolver and hissed a warning at him. “You’ll live a lot longer if you keep yer mouth shut.”
He and his silent companion took Griff out onto the vestibule. There, the young Georgian was slammed up against the end wall of the car. “There’s a fellow gonna pay us a five hundred-dollar bonus for bringin’ you in.”
“The wanted poster is a lie,” Griff protested. “All trumped up for some reason.”
“We get that money, too,” the garrulous one bragged. “You got some powerful enemies, friend. What we’re gonna do is truss you up like a pig for market and toss you off here at the next stop. Then we collect our money and go our way.” He shoved his face close to Griff’s. “Nothin’ personal, you understand, friend?” He had bad breath.
“How … did you find me?” Griff played for time, for the right opportunity. They had so far left him with his walking stick.
“We was on to you all the way from Philly. Then, tonight, we found out for certain.”
“Rhetta Lou,” Griff breathed out with disappointment.
“You talk too much, Ed,” the bounty man’s partner complained.
“S’pose you’re right, Wally.” Ed released Griff with one hand, stepped back a pace, and reached for a coil of rope he had tucked in the left side of his belt.
Griff’s move came with the flickering speed of heat lightning. The cane in his right hand shot up and outward. The heavy, silver-chased knob struck Ed under the point of his chin. Ed grunted with pain, toppled backward by the force of the blow. He took a step back to regain his balance and then screamed in terror when his heel contacted nothing but air.
Arms flailing wildly, Ed disappeared off the platform. His screaming ended and his body hardly disturbed the smooth roll of the wheels when the trailing truck ran over his midsection, dividing him in two. Griff did not pause to determine the results.
In the same instant that he struck Ed, Griff whipped the walking stick down and grasped the knob. A quick twist and jerk and the thin ribbon of finely honed steel appeared. Griff expertly snapped it into line and placed the point against Wally’s Adam’s apple.
“Talk,” he commanded.
“It wasn’t our idea. We was ordered to watch the Philly station. Knew you would be headed somewhere. That’s what we was told. Had a description. When you got yourself caught on that catwalk, it sorta drew our attention. The rest you know.”
“Who ordered you? Who said I would have to go somewhere?”
Fear filled Wally’s eyes. “It was … it was ...” The train swayed into a curve and Wally lurched forward. His words were cut off in a gurgling shriek and Griff felt the grate of bone on steel as the blade slid through Wally’s throat and out the back of his neck, scraping his spine.
“Shit!” He had lost his chance to learn who or what was behind the attempts on his life and the falsified wanted poster. Griff reached out with the scabbard end of his cane and shoved Wally off his sword and over the side of the rattling train. The two ruffians would be missed, he reasoned, but not for a while. He cleaned the blood off his blade, sheathed it in its hiding place and started to search for Rhetta Lou.
A careful check of every car produced no evidence of her. It was as though she had never been aboard. Not even the conductor could recall her by Griff’s description. She must have gotten off at Warren, he reasoned at last.
Griff spent the rest of the night with the butt of his Allan and Wheelock pepperbox in his right hand, the barrels up the left sleeve of his coat.
Marion, Illinois had been settled by immigrants of the same nationality and religion. They tended to look askance at outsiders who did not particularly share their own beliefs and had not been born in the community. Griffin Stark found them singularly uncommunicative. He had asked at the post office first for a family named Tucker, received only a grunt and a negative shake of the head in reply, then went on to the town constable. He received only slightly more of an answer.
“Not familiar with the name. They Brethren?”
“No. Presbyterians, high church. Originally from Georgia.”
The lawman scowled. “Then they wouldn’t be around here, friend. I’d advise you to move on. Look somewhere else.”
In Carbondale, the story seemed almost the same. Mostly Welsh and German miners had settled around there, the coal mines the big attraction. At every stop, Griff received blank looks or negative answers. The postmaster, though, did recall that he had handled some mail addressed to an E. Tucker.
After two fruitless days, a talkative old man at the livery stable, in for supplies for his farm, provided Griff with his first solid clue. “A blacksmith feller? Had his forge all rigged up in his wagon?”
“Y-yes. That could be. He... he had only one hand.”
“The right one, be it?”
“Yes.” Excitement mounted. “You know him, then?”
“Sure do. Had a little place ’bout five mile north of town. He an’ the Missus and two kids. A girl about nine and a boy seven or so.”
“That’s them,” Griff cried, his heart pounding. Jeremy was only five miles from him. “Evan and Julie Tucker.”
“Aye. Folded up and moved on, way I hear it. The little girl got took in the fever. The way it was told to me, that knocked the heart right outta ol’ Evan. They buried the girl and sold their place. Headed up Centralia way.”
Disappointment showed clearly on Griff’s handsome face. “Thank you. Thank you for your help.”
A two-and-a-half-day ride, interrupted by a violent thunderstorm and unbelievably powerful winds, brought Griff to Centralia.
“Evan Tucker? Yep,” the postmaster in Centralia told Griff. “Had a box here. Did some horse doctoring, right?”
“Yes … that’s the man,” Griff fought down defeat again. “How long ago?”
“Till a year ago last spring. We got lots o’ dairy cows around these parts. There’s not much business for a one-armed doctor among big animals like that.”
“Do you … do you have any idea where they went from here?” Griff had learned from experience not to hope for much.
“Said to forward any mail to Saint Louie. They was going to take a wagon train West.”
“To the … West. That’s a lot of territory out there. Did Evan say any place in particular?”
“Not that I recall. Say … he didn’t owe you money or anything like that? Kill your cow or something?”
“No. He’s my brother-in-law. He and his wife have been looking after my son since … since the war.”
“Hmmm. Rebel, were ye? No nevermind to me. I had a brother that fought with Grant, a son who followed Braxton Bragg to defeat. Me, I just tend the mail and let other people get all het up. You might find something in Saint Louie. Could be, even, that they’re still there.” He scratched the sparse strands of black hair that struggled to cover his scalp. “There’s a good ferry at Granite City. I’d take that, were I you, rather than the toll bridge or the flatboats from East St. L
ouis. And, good luck, feller.”
Saint Louis, Gateway to the West. Mid-summer had arrived by the time Griffin Stark reached the sprawling, riotous town. The mecca for westward-bound immigrants, it also provided a haven for reprobates of every stripe. Griff stepped Boots off the Granite City ferry into the midst of a free-for-all brawl that involved half a dozen men. He skirted their wildly flailing arms and legs and trotted up toward the center of the city. Gunshots sounded from several quarters while he stepped down and looped Boots’ reins over the tie rail in front of a modest hotel. Not the serious, controlled fire of a battle, he noted. It sounded more like celebrations on the Fourth of July. He pushed back the dusty brim of his faded gray hat, its gold, Confederate braid long since removed, and stepped up onto the plank walk.
“Rooms’er two bits a night. Bath extra. Meals in the cafe. You plan to stay longer, let me know. Special rates by the week or month,” the desk clerk briskly reeled off to Griff while the latter signed the register.
“I might be a week, maybe longer. Did you ever have a family named Tucker staying here? Evan Tucker, his wife and a boy about seven or eight?”
The clerk’s eyes narrowed, suspicion glittering in them. He’d been asked the same sort of question many times. Often it led to a shooting.
“What are you inquirin’ for?”
“He’s my brother-in-law. The boy is my son. The war, you know ...” The partial explanation came easy after hundreds of repetitions.
“Nope. No Tuckers stopped here. ’Course this is only one of two score hotels in town. Not to say rooming houses, campgrounds. They come here to settle?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Well then, mister …” he squinted at the signature on the register, “Stark, you’ve got yourself a job findin’ out anything. Did you serve the cause during the recent conflict?”
“I did, suh.”
“Name’s Pierce. If you need anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call on me. I lost two boys at Missionary Ridge. They may try to Reconstruct us, but sacrifices like that won’t be forgotten.” He made the word, ‘reconstruct’ sound like something from the pit under an outhouse.
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