Vengeance Trail

by Bill Brooks

“You are also being arrested for the bank robbery at Rawly. And, I have received reports over the last few weeks that a couple fitting your description has robbed one Joe Turner in Wise County of his watch and twenty cents. And, a Chinaman was robbed in his laundry of a jar of pennies and some shirts.”

  Motes of dust danced in the light entering the room through open windows.

  The lawman’s gaze was unyielding.

  “It pains me to see a woman in irons,” he said simply.

  She felt herself falling, felt the strong steady hands holding her. She was carried to a cot in one of the cells.

  Ben Goodlow turned his attention to the man.

  “What sort of a man would drag a young girl like that along with him while he robs and kills people, is what I’d like to know?”

  Johnny stared into the unflinching eyes of the lawman and knew instantly not to irritate this man.

  “You are a bad piece of work, mister—I’ve hunted down trash like you my whole life.” The ranger’s words were strung taut as strained ropes.

  “Soon as I can get you in front of the circuit judge, I’m requesting you get sent back to Arkansas for the killing of that state senator. I got a feeling that Judge Parker, back there in Ft. Smith, will make sure your wild days come to an end.”

  “You can’t do that!” shouted Johnny Montana. “This is Texas, this ain’t Arkansas. The jurisdiction’s different.”

  “Sounds like you studied the law some?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you didn’t study enough. Here in Texas, I represent the law, and so do my men. I say you go back, you go back.”

  “That’s something the judge’ll have to decide.”

  “Don’t get sassy, son. The judge is a brother-inlaw of mine. I reckon he’ll take under advisement any suggestions I have to make.”

  “This is a damn sorry thing,” said the outlaw.

  “No, boy, this is Texas.”

  Chapter Three

  Autauga County, Alabama

  Wes Biggs had been the most successful hog farmer in Autauga County clear up until the day Johnny Montana shot him once in the forehead during an argument over a card game.

  He died wearing bib coveralls, a green shirt, and a scuffed pair of brogans that had dried pig muck on them.

  In spite of the success he had known as a hog farmer, Wes Biggs’ funeral was a simple affair. The only extravagance was a custom-built coffin cut of cedar; Wes Biggs was a big man and there wasn’t a ready-made coffin in all of Autagua County big enough to hold him. The coffin had cost seventy dollars and sported brass handles.

  The dead man’s two grown sons, Lowell and Carter, wept like babies when the heavy coffin was lowered into the grave of sandy loam.

  A great crowd had gathered for the funeral at the Biggs farm. And once, during the graveside prayer, the wind shifted in a fashion that brought it from the direction of the pig lots. The smell got embarrassing, but no one put up a fuss on such a solemn occasion, even though the odor caused eyes to smart. Some of the women lifted tiny white hankies to their noses, pretending to dab at their eyes.

  Three of Wes Biggs’s prize blue shoat hogs were butchered and roasted over pits of hot coals in order to feed the crowd.

  Cooking the hogs had begun the night before, and by the time the burying was over, the meat had burned black on the outside but came off in pink moist slabs when cut and laid on plates.

  Lowell and Carter thought that everyone was enjoying themselves at their daddy’s expense, but Southern upbringing had taught them to refrain from showing their displeasure.

  “I guess we got enough hogs that eating three won’t make that much a difference,” said Lowell over a mouthful of the sweet tasting pork.

  “I guess not,” said Carter. “I just wish Daddy was here to enjoy it with us.”

  It seemed like a long time before everyone finally drifted off. All the men came up and shook Lowell and Carter’s hands, and most of the women kissed the boys on their cheeks before heading off to their buggies and horses.

  When the last of the crowd had left, Lowell and Carter sat on the steps of their daddy’s house and watched it grow dark; they could hear frogs croaking down in a pond below the house—the croaks sounded like questions: Now what! Now what!

  “We’ve got to make a choice, Lowell,” said the older of the two brothers.

  “What sort of choice?”

  “It’s been eatin’ at me ever since that sumabitch, Johnny Montana murdered Pa!” Carter’s face was full and pink like his daddy’s had been, like the pinkness of cooked hog meat.

  “We can stay here and raise pigs the rest of our lives, and make out like nothin’s happened, act like the old man’s blood being spilt don’t mean a thing…or, we can go after that sumabitch and bury him in the ground!”

  Lowell stared off into the dark purple haze of dusk, and saw a shadowy landscape that no longer felt familiar.

  His words came out thick and slow, like the land itself, like the sluggish rivers, like a hound dog walking down a dirt road on a summer’s day.

  “I’m with ya, Carter, you know that. Family has to stick together. But, we ain’t gunmen. Ain’t neither one of us ever killed nothin’ but a hog in all our lives. We catch hold of Johnny Montana, he’s liable to be more than we can stand.”

  Lowell was a leaner, taller man than his brother. His face was ridged with bone. His knuckles and wrists and elbows were ridged with bone. He was bone and sinew and black restless eyes. His ridge of jawbone worked under the knotted muscle as he sat there contemplating the darkness, contemplating Carter’s suggestion.

  “Well, if you’re with me then I say good. I can’t see just doin’ nothin’. Raising hogs don’t mean a thing to me anymore!”

  “Maybe we could hire us a man to go after Montana,” said Lowell.

  “Hire somebody! Like who would we hire?”

  “Maybe we could hire ol’ Knife Davis,” said Lowell, shifting his long bony legs stretching his back. “Everyone knows that ol’ Knife killed some boys down around the Gulf. Killed them over liquor, or some such. A man like that don’t mind killing so much. Probably could get ol’ Knife to do the job for a hundred dollars, maybe less.”

  “Knife Davis is a drunkard and can’t be trusted,” said Carter. He could smell the pigs now that the wind had shifted, could hear their rooting and squealing. Pigs, he thought. God damn hogs! It felt like a fire in his belly.

  Carter swung his bulk down off the porch and stood in the yard staring off at something Lowell knew wasn’t there. Without turning to look at his brother, Carter said: “Besides, I won’t pay any man to take care of our family business. Either we do this thing ourselves, or we just let it go!”

  “What about the farm?” asked Lowell. “What about the hogs?”

  “We’ll get cousin Ed to tend to it.”

  “How we going to find Johnny Montana, Carter?”

  “We’ll find him. He bragged around about how he was goin’ to go to Texas. Hell, Texas can’t be all that big.”

  “He’s got a week’s start on us.”

  “Yeah, but he don’t know we’re even after him, probably never figure in his life that a couple of hog farmers would try and track him down.”

  “Probably not,” said Lowell. “Least not us.”

  The body of State Senator Willard F. Gray lay in a black mahogany casket that had silver handles and silver palm leaves on the lid. His hair had been combed and parted with rosewater; his gaunt, stone face had traces of white powder in the hollows of his cheeks. He wore a boiled shirt with a paper collar and pearl buttons, a black suit with velvet lapels and black silk trim; his hands looked as though they had been sculpted out of wax.

  There was no evidence whatsoever of the small black hole that Johnny Montana’s bullet had made just below the senator’s right nipple.

  Constituents, friends, and strangers came to view the body as it rested on a catafalque directly beneath the dome of the state capitol building; thei
r footsteps echoed on the marble floor as they passed by.

  After three days of Lying-In-State at the capitol building in Little Rock, a train carried the senator’s body to his home in Montgomery County for burial in the misty beauty of the Ozarks.

  His widow and two grown daughters watched as the ornate casket was lowered into the ground. All three women wept beneath their black veils, and they were given the state flag that had draped his coffin by a uniformed member of the Little Rock Militia who had accompanied the senator’s body home.

  And then, just as the coffin was lowered into the dark shaft of grave, it began to rain a light cold rain that chilled the skin and splattered darkly against the clothes. All the food that had been placed on long wooden tables and covered with white linen had to be taken inside the big house.

  “It’s as though the Lord himself is shedding tears,” said one woman whose black bonnet withstood the first drops of rain.

  “He was a good man,” replied a neighbor. “He did a lot for us back here in Montgomery County.”

  “Seems the country ain’t safe for anyone anymore,” said another man, who was working a chaw of tobacco inside his jaw and looking for a place to spit that wouldn’t offend any of the mourners or the family.

  “Seems like if they can shoot a man like Willard Gray, a state’s senator, off’n his horse in broad daylight, they can damn near shoot anybody,” continued the man, and then spat straight down between the toes of his boots.

  “You ought not to chew at such an occasion,” said the man’s wife, looking consternated.

  And then everybody went inside the big house to eat and to get out of the rain.

  “Mrs. Gray,” said a man in a checked suit. She knew the man to be George Kimbel, a local banker and trusted friend of her late husband’s.

  She stared at him through the veil. He could see her eyes were red from the crying.

  “Mrs. Gray, if I might have a word with you in private?”

  She led him into a small sideroom where the senator’s favorite rocker sat empty; doilies rested on the rocker’s arms.

  “There are some of us who wish to assure that justice is served in this terrible tragedy. Will was a trusted friend to all of us. Me and several others who wish to remain discreet have decided to post a reward for Will’s murderer.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Mr. Kimbel. But, as I understand it, the state of Arkansas has already posted a reward.”

  The banker coughed, cleared his throat politely and said, “Yes ma’am, we’re well aware of that. Thing is, even if the guilty party is captured and returned, there is no way of assuring that justice will be served. Lots of guilty men have been set free, even under Judge Parker’s court.”

  “I see, Mr. Kimbel. You think that maybe Will’s killer might find a way to get off?”

  “Anything’s possible, Mrs. Gray. Our little, hmmm…, committee, would like to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know a man that would probably be interested in the reward.”

  “You mean bounty?”

  “Well, I reckon you could call it that. However, if you’re opposed to the idea, we’ll respect your wishes.”

  “No, Mr. Kimbel,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Maybe once all the sorrow has passed from me, I will find our conversation troubling. But right now, I’m about as full of anger and hate as I reckon I can be. And to tell you the truth, it would trouble me more to see Will’s murderer go without punishment. You have my approval, sir.”

  “I’ll see to it then.”

  “Hello in the cabin!”

  Eli Stagg lifted his bearish head, the whiskers of his beard tangled about his face, his fierce wet eyes searching the sound outside.

  “Who might it be?” he yelled out, reaching for the Hawkins rifle.

  “Faustus, Eli. It’s me, Faustus!”

  The big man sat up on the side of his cot, reached for the Creedmore rifle leaning against the wall.

  “What you want, coming around here?”

  “Brought someone to see you, a gent. He’s got some business he wants to discuss!”

  The big man approached the door cautiously, cracked it open far enough to see. The morning light gathered in the reddish whiskers, giving them the color of dried blood.

  “What sort of offer?”

  “Well hell, if’n you’ll let us come up to the cabin, I’ll reckon you’ll find out!”

  Two men shared the wagon seat. The one doing the talking was Faustus Greenbush, a mountain man like himself. He and Faustus had shared camps and grub together, and now and then their liquor. But that was as far as it went. Eli Stagg maintained no friends.

  The other man was well-dressed—a checked suit and a dandy little hat perched atop his head.

  “This is Mr. Kimbel,” announced Faustus with a mouth smeared and stained by tobacco juice.

  He saw the man Kimbel eye him, eye the rifle in his hands, whisper something to Faustus.

  “Got no secrets around here,” said Eli Stagg sternly, his fierce stare leaving no allowance for humor.

  The man in the checked suit stiffened.

  “I just told your friend here that you didn’t seem prepared for company and that maybe we ought to return another time.”

  “Depends on your business.”

  “Like I told you, Eli. It’s a money deal.”

  “Step on down then.”

  Eli Stagg produced a jug of sour mash from within the cabin and sat it on a stump. The three men stood around the stump and shared the liquor and talked about why Mr. Kimbel had come.

  “Mr. Greenbush tells me you are very, very good at tracking and hunting,” said George Kimbel.

  “Let’s cut to it, Mr. Kimbel. What is it you need doin’ and how much you willin’ to pay?”

  Kimbel explained it.

  “A thousand dollars just to find this feller and kill him?”

  “That’s correct. Of course, I’ll want my name left out of the matter, and that of Mrs. Gray. As far as anyone else is concerned, we’ve never had this discussion.”

  “How much a reward is the state offerin’?”

  “Five hundred, but only paid upon trial and conviction of the accused. Those whom I represent, Mr. Stagg, are not so much interested in trials as they are seeing that justice is served.”

  “I ain’t a blind man, mister. I can see your point!”

  “I am prepared to offer you one hundred dollars in advance, for travelling expenses if you will. The rest to be paid upon proof that the task has been carried out.”

  “Proof! What sort of proof!”

  “We can find something that will be acceptable to all concerned, I’m sure.” Kimbel reached within an inside pocket of his suit coat and handed Eli Stagg a folded piece of paper:

  $500 REWARD FOR THE CAPTURE OF THE KILLERS OF SENATOR WILLARD FRANCIS GRAY. THE RESPONSIBLE PARTIES ARE DESCRIBED AS A DEADLY OUTLAW CALLED BY THE SOBRIQUET “HANDSOME JOHNNY.” HIS ACCOMPLICE IS WOMAN DESCRIBED AS SWEET AND INNOCENT IN LOOKS AND SMALL IN STATURE. HER NAME IS NOT KNOWN. THE PAIR Were LAST SEEN IN FT. SMITH WHERE THEY SOLD THE MARE THAT SENATOR GRAY WAS RIDING ON HIS FATEFUL DAY. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE COUPLE ARE ON THEIR WAY TO TEXAS. THE REWARD WILL BE PAID UPON THE CAPTURE AND CONVICTION BY THE STATE OF ARKANSAS.

  Above the description were the drawings of a dark-haired man with a black moustache and a woman with a narrow face but attractive features.

  The mountain man’s features bunched as he read the poster and studied the drawings.

  “Soon enough,” said Kimbel, “I suspect the law will learn their identity. A smart man looking for them would be well advised to keep close company with the marshall’s office in Ft. Smith.”

  Eli Stagg looked up from the paper, his breath souring the air between the two men.

  “I reckon I know how to find what ever it is I’m lookin’ for, mister.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose you do, Mr. Stagg.”

  “I’ll take that hunnerd dollars now.”

  He
did not bother to count the money. “I take a man at his word,” he said. “A bond is a bond. I’ll see that your man don’t come to trial. You see that the rest of my money’s waitin’ when the job is done. I ain’t a patient man when it comes to collectin’ what’s due me. You remember that, Mr. Kimbel.”

  There was a dark warning glowing in the bearish eyes that caused George Kimbel to loosen the knot of his tie.

  Chapter Four

  Circuit Judge Homer Oliver Price took his seat behind a small claw-foot table borrowed from Mabel Nortrum’s boarding house. He rapped the maple gavel on a block of wood so as not to scar Mabel Nortrum’s table. The judge’s rapping sounded like pistol shots and drew everyone’s attention.

  Court, as usual, was held in Moody Baker’s Gentleman’s Club because there never had been a consensus on spending money for a real court house, even though the law had long since come to Pecos. At least in the form of Texas Rangers it had.

  When Judge Price had hammered the court into session, Moody Baker shouted that the bar was now closed and would be until court was dismissed. A groan went up from the spectators, who were mostly men, but a few women—some of questionable reputation—had also come to the trial, drawn by the dark handsomeness of the man on trial.

  The judge appeared frail in his black suit of clothes, but boasted a full mane of snow white hair and shocking blue eyes—an appearance that drew comment from one of the spectators to remark how much he thought the judge looked like Moses.

  “How would you have any idea what Moses looks like?” asked the man sitting next to him.

  “I seen a painting of him in a museum in Dallas once.”

  “You are a damn fool,” said the second man, and then each one laughed, but not loud enough to disturb the proceedings.

  The judge’s voice was deep and resonant and commanding.

  “What have you got for me, Ben?”

  Texas Ranger Captain Ben Goodlow stood and said, “Your honor, the state of Texas presents for trial, Johnny Montana and Miss Katie Swensen.”

  “What are they being charged with?” The judge frowned slightly over the indigestion of this morning’s breakfast: eggs and chili.