Prairie Fire, Kansas

by John Shirley

  Bettiger shook his head. “Nope. I took some money off a man who owed it to me and wouldn’t pay. Shot him in the leg to do it. I shouldn’t have done it. But I sure did. And I took my money back, too. They called it robbery, so I’m in the willows with you fellers.”

  “You done more than shoot that welsher,” Briggs observed. “You helped us rob that freight wagon.”

  Bettiger shook his head in disgust. “Come out of it with forty dollars apiece and an extra pair of boots!”

  “Boots aren’t cheap,” said Briggs. “That crate of boots was worth getting. I sold most of ’em to a trading post in Sedgewick. The trader didn’t ask no questions.”

  Bettiger sighed. “Anyhow, for me it started with shooting that crooked varmint in Sweetwater. May as well hit a bank, I do suppose, and try to get enough to start over in Old Mexico.”

  Unsure of Bettiger’s trustworthiness, Fisher prodded him with “Be a funny thing if you were chased down by your own pappy!”

  Bettiger’s head snapped around, and he scowled at Fisher. “He’s retired.”

  Diamond chuckled grimly. “Texas Rangers never quite retire, way I hear it.”

  Bettiger shrugged. He looked toward Gaines, who seemed to be dragging something through the grass to his horse, and let his silence speak.

  I shouldn’t have done it, Bettiger had said. Fisher had taken special note of that remark. He was thinking that Bettiger might quail at some of what needed to be done. He might decide to change sides. Luke Bettiger might be one man too many for this expedition.

  It just might be necessary to arrange for that gloomy young man to die.

  * * *

  * * *

  The jail cell was windowless and so hot that Seth removed all his clothes except his underdrawers. He lay on his back atop the rough blanket, staring into the darkness, sometimes wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. Marshal Coggins had said the judge could give him as much as thirty days. How would anyone bear thirty days and nights in here?

  Over and over Seth ran through the events that had brought him to the jail cell, and he couldn’t see he’d had a lot of choice, this side of sheer cowardice. He wasn’t usually so hot tempered. But it was Josette. . . .

  He slept little till close to dawn. Around eight in the morning, the marshal came in and woke him by clacking a key ring on the bars. “Get dressed, Seth. You’re going before Judge Twilley.”

  Grateful to be out of the cell even for a visit to the justice of the peace, Seth hurriedly dressed, splashed his face with water from the bucket in the corner of the cell, and was soon standing in the city hall before a judge seated behind an oaken table. The justice wore a linen sack suit, a mite too big for his spindly frame, and it seemed to Seth this Judge Twilley was at most in his late twenties. A chestnut beard and stately mustache did little to disguise the judge’s youth. Seth felt a little put out at being judged by one so young.

  A middle-aged clerk with a short graying beard and an alcohol-reddened nose sat at a small table to Seth’s right. He was likely the clerk for many jobs in the city hall. There was no one else in the small courtroom—Heywood Kelmer was noticeably absent.

  In a voice that seemed as callow as his unlined face, Twilley said, “Why, here’s the desperado!” He quirked his mouth to one side, enjoying his own wit. “And yet he’s not shackled, Marshal?”

  Coggins chuckled. “Somehow, I think I can keep Mr. Seth Coe reined in, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Kelmer would seem to be less certain of that,” the judge remarked, looking at the papers before him. “He describes the man as having ‘viciously assaulted’ Mr. Francois Dubois, and he demands that Mr. Coe be given the maximum sentence, to be followed by an escort out of this county and preferably out of the State of Kansas entirely. But Mr. Kelmer did not think he needed to be here today, once he gave me what he conceives to be my orders, and I dislike having my judgments determined by high-handed landowners. In the matter of Mr. Francois Dubois, I remember when he was up before my father a time or two, and I suspect there’s more to the story. Well, Mr. Coe?”

  Seth cleared his throat. “Well, sir, Your Honor, Heywood Kelmer was treating the lady like a bar girl and worse. Then Mr. Dubois, who wishes Josette to . . . well, to please Heywood, he gave her a shove and like to’ve knocked her down. The lady said she was not going to take it and made to leave, and he took her by the wrist and fair threw her at Heywood—he was hurting that girl, Judge! And—” He cleared his throat once more. “I could not bear to see her mistreated so. I know Josette—she is the friend of my childhood. I expect it’s true I acted more on instinct than on good sense. But if you’d been there . . .”

  “I wasn’t, Mr. Coe, and must rely on testimony. The lady being unable to testify—” He looked at the marshal with lifted brows. “That it, Slim? She’s unable?”

  “As to that, Your Honor, I cannot rightly say. Dubois wasn’t willing to let me speak to her, and he says she refuses to testify. That’s his story. I will just add that I could see no evidence of injury on Francois Dubois. It would help if we could speak to Miss Josette.”

  “I am unwilling to compel the lady’s testimony,” said the judge a little regretfully.

  “I will just add,” the marshal went on, “that when I came back to the store to interview her, I spied Dubois ushering her into the back. And I saw bruises on her arms. He told me she didn’t want to talk to me. She did not call out anything different.”

  “She’s afraid of her papa,” said Seth.

  “I’ll let you know when I want anything further from you, Mr. Coe,” said the judge, squinting down at the paperwork. “I have Heywood Kelmer’s statement and the marshal’s here . . . and I’ve heard your side of it.” He looked at Seth speculatively. “I understand that you’re working at the Hamer farm?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Marshal Coggins spoke up. “Your Honor, I’ve spoken with Sol, and I told him the story—both sides of it—and he’s decided he believes Mr. Coe. He has said he will be responsible for him so long as he works on his property.”

  Seth blinked, touched by this gesture from the gruff old farmer.

  Judge Twilley shrugged and picked up his gavel. “I find you guilty of minor assault. The court orders that you spend one night in jail—you have already done so—and the court fines you fifty dollars. Pay your fine, and you will be discharged. You can remove yourself to Mr. Hamer’s property, as it’s outside town limits. You will absent yourself from town for three days.” He struck the table with his gavel and nodded toward the clerk.

  Carried along by a wave of relief, Seth went to the clerk, quickly paid his fine, and hurried from the courtroom, deciding that this young judge was wiser than some older ones he’d seen at work.

  Outside, Slim Coggins walked Seth to the livery. It was a hot morning—it had been getting hotter every day—and the sun flashed off the street’s windows with a malicious brightness.

  “Marshal,” Seth said, “the judge said Dubois had been up before him.”

  “Some years back, he was seen smacking his wife about—and was drunk as he did it. Two of the town’s ladies witnessed this and asked that something be done.”

  “And was it?”

  “He was fined. But neither I nor the court can spend our days pursuing such matters. The common law allows wife beating most places. It’s thought to be good for wedded bliss and all. Not that my wife would stand for it. I understand it was outlawed in Alabama this very year. But there’s no state law ag’in it in Kansas. We do have an ordnance here in town calling for the just treatment of women, and we applied that in fining Dubois twenty-five dollars. This was most of nine years ago, when I was first hired on. The lady died the next year from pneumonia. I sometimes wish—” He broke off, shaking his head. “I guess it don’t matter what I could wish for.”

  “How about the case of a man whupping on
his grown daughter? That common law, too?”

  “Not as such. But there’s tradition—and it holds that townsfolk do not usually interfere in family matters, less’n it’s a case of murder.”

  Seth shook his head. It all went against his grain.

  They reached the livery, and the marshal watched as Seth paid the stableman and saddled Mazie. He led her out into the bright sunshine and mounted. “Marshal, thanks for speaking up to the judge.”

  “Don’t make me regret it, Seth. Stay out of trouble.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest. But—there is something I should mention.”

  Coggins frowned. “What would that be?”

  “That wanted poster—that Hannibal Fisher. I know that man. At least, one time, not long ago, I played poker with him in Abilene. He was caught cheating, and Wild Bill posted him out of town.”

  “I see. Must’ve been soon after that he was jailed in Newton. Seems to have killed the jailer and run off. You know where he might be?”

  “No notion of it. Just one card game between us. But I know him by sight. And the poster said he might be in Southern Kansas. If I see him . . . I’ll tell you.”

  With that, he touched his hat to the marshal and rode out of town for the Hamer farm.

  Seth was glad to be out on the prairie where there was a bit of a breeze. But the high grass crackled when the horse brushed it; it was sere, he noticed, going yellow, sometimes brown.

  As he rode along, Seth tried to figure just how he was going to see Josette. Her pa surely would not allow it. Would she even want to see him after what had happened in the store? Maybe she thought of him as nothing but trouble now. . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  I’ve heard the rumbling,” said Sol Hamer as Seth climbed down from the saddle, “and I know what it means. Maybe heat lightning coming or a dry thunderstorm. We could be in for a fire!”

  Seth had found him plowing out on the edge of his property, wearing a big droopy hat to give him some protection from the fierce sun. He was steering the plow behind his big draft horse, deep furrowing in close rows as a firebreak.

  Despite the heat, Seth felt a chill, hearing a rumble himself from the north. Picketing Mazie in the shade of a young oak tree, he peered at the northern horizon and saw sickly yellow-brown clouds accumulating there and a flash of lightning. He knew what Sol feared. Many a wildfire was caused by a dry-thunderstorm lightning strike.

  “Sol, I thank you for speaking up for me to the court,” Seth said.

  “Why, I only did it because my Daisy imagines you’re like our son, and she has a sweet spot for you.”

  Seth hadn’t seen anyone else but Sol and Daisy on the farm. “She misses him some, does she?” he asked, bringing a canteen to the farmer.

  Sol took the canteen and said, “Yes, and we haven’t seen him since Christmas! We have a few letters, however. He stayed in the Army after the war. He’s a sergeant in the Cavalry, down in Oklahoma, chasing renegade Cherokees.” Gazing to the south, as if to see Oklahoma, he took a long, meditative drink from the canteen.

  “Sounds like a son to be proud of,” said Seth, taking Sol’s place at the plow.

  “That’s a fact. Served with distinction under General Frémont in the war.”

  Seth commenced plowing. As he wrestled with the plow to keep it on course, he thought of his own family’s experience of the war. His father, being against both slavery and secession, had refused to enlist in the Confederate Army and forbade Seth joining in the fight, though many of his young friends did. Nor did Pa Coe wish to be set against his own neighbors by joining the Union. Feelings running high during the war, it had been touch and go around the Coe spread down in Chaseman. A neighbor whose son had died at Bull Run had called Pa Coe a coward, and Pa had called him a liar. A duel was fought, and Seth’s father had been greatly saddened at having to kill poor George Finch. He had undertaken financial assistance for Finch’s widow afterward.

  Seth plowed on, his hands aching. He felt blisters arise, but he kept on. Sol came behind him with a shovel to remove the dry-grass fuel the plowing missed. The rumbling quickened, and there were more flickers from the sulfurous clouds, occasioning uneasy glances from the two men.

  The sun was relentless, and plowing ground dried to iron hardness was backbreaking. The two men took turns resting in the shade, and Seth was glad when Mrs. Hamer came out on the mule, bringing refreshments.

  Daisy Hamer was a wiry woman with graying brown hair. At least six inches taller than her squat husband, she had a lined face but a cheerful expression. Her calico sunbonnet was sweat stained on the sides, and the long skirts of her yellow dress snapped in the rising hot wind as she slid off the mule, bringing them a basket of molasses biscuits and a jar of homemade beer. They gathered under a tree for the biscuits and beer. “Why, the two of you look plumb worn to a nub!”

  “Hot day and hard ground,” said Sol. “But we’re near to finished.” Taking a biscuit in one hand and the jar in another, he added, “I did most of it yesterday, Seth, when the marshal had hold of you.”

  “I’m surely sorry I couldn’t be here to help, Sol.”

  “You did some good work yesterday, the way I heard it from Josette,” said Daisy, “protecting her from that drunken fool of a father!”

  Seth looked eagerly at her, suddenly feeling better than he had all day. “That how Josette said it?”

  “Lord yes! She thought you were her white knight!”

  “So—she might be willing to see me, do you think?”

  Sol gave him a crafty sidelong look. “So that’s what it’s about? More than childhood friends, Seth?”

  “Oh, Sol, don’t pry so!” Daisy said, feeding crumbles of biscuit to the mule. “Seth—I spoke to Josette across the fence this morning. She was aggrieved that you were jailed on account of her. That’s just how she put it! She asked me to tell you that you mustn’t come into the store, but she might come to see you here. Fu’thermore, she said you truly must stay out of her papa’s way!”

  Seth was wondering if this was too good to be true. “She said she’d come to see me?”

  “Ho ho!” said Sol. “The boy’s smitten!” He drank some beer and said, “Might be good if you took her away from that Heywood. He’s been sniffing around her like a—”

  “Lord in Heaven, look at that!” Daisy burst out, pointing to the north. A line of billowing black clouds gripped the sere prairie. The three of them could just make out red flames flickering where the clouds met the plain. It was still some distance off, but that didn’t offer much comfort. Wildfires could travel fast—and the hot breeze was blowing toward them, driving the blaze their way.

  “There’s no time to finish here, Seth,” said Sol, unhitching the plow horse. “I will commence making a counterfire.” He tugged the horse over to Seth. “I’ve got six barrels of rainwater in the barn—they’re in that old wagon along with a shovel and some sacks. If you’re willin’, hitch Goliath to the wagon, wet those sacks good—maybe that old horse blanket—and beat out the fire where you can! There’s rope and an ax. Daisy, you take the mule, quick as ever you can, and make sure the neighbors know what’s coming.”

  Seth took hold of Goliath’s reins and turned to scan the prairie. The fire was visibly closer, marching ravenously toward the town that had named itself after the very thing that could now burn it down.

  He cursed under his breath, unhitched Mazie, mounted up, and with Goliath’s reins in his hand, he tugged the draft horse as fast as he could get him to go across the fields toward the barn.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The damn prairie’s on fire,” Briggs observed, leading his horse into the camp. “It’s burning like hellzapoppin’ off to the west.”

  Fisher nodded. “I saw the smoke. Most likely we’ll be all right here.” He was squatting by the stream, a heavy stick in hand, hoping to clout one
of the trout he sometimes glimpsed in Black Creek. His father had taught him to catch creek fish that way, and he was pretty good at it. “We’re north of the fire line. Wind is blowing south.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Diamond. He was sitting on a rock, cleaning his shotgun. He glanced up at the sky. “Getting smoky here.”

  The sky was indeed dulled by smoke. It itched at their noses and stung their eyes.

  They’d camped about six-and-a-half miles north of the town, where the creek cut through a tree-clustered outcropping of rocks. This was the only good cover anywhere near Prairie Fire. The nearest farm was two miles away.

  “Leastways,” Gaines said, “the local yokels will be too busy to take any notice of us.” He was using a hunting knife to cut a steak off the antelope carcass hanging from a sugar maple.

  Sweeney, who was lying on his back in the grass, hands folded behind his head, said, “Less anyone knows of us, the better.” He tilted his hat back and looked up at the darkening sky. “Trouble is, I’m known around here. Anyhow, them Kelmers have my name.”

  “When you go after the bank, you’ll keep your face covered,” said Fisher. “Maybe a flour sack with holes cut for the eyes.”

  “If we’re going to rob that bank,” said Bettiger, going to the creek, “we ought to do it today.”

  “Why’s that?” Fisher tossed the stick in the water and stood up.

  Bettiger picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the stream. “Because most of the men in town, probably including the marshal, will be busy trying to set up firebreaks and such. They won’t even be close into town.”

  “If that’s so,” Fisher said, “the bank will be closed. We need the banker to open the vault.” He was not at all sure that the bank would be closed—hard to imagine a banker fighting a fire—but he had to find out where Seth Coe was before the robbery. While the gang was robbing the bank, keeping the marshal and any deputies occupied, he would be free to kill Seth Coe without interference from the law. He had told the men that he would plan the robbery; then he’d get the additional money from Coe while they were pulling it off. Too many men at a bank robbery, he said, was just inviting a stumble.