by F. M. Parker
He found a bath house and for the price of a dime bathed. After finishing, he put on his new garments and washed his dirty clothing in the bath water. With the wet clothing hanging over an arm, and leading his horse, he returned to the railroad tracks.
The horse was staked out to graze. The wet garments were hung to dry on the limb of a big chestnut tree. Levi lay in the grass and leaned against the bole of the tree. Now and again he dozed as the sun crossed over its zenith and inched down the heavens.
* * *
The couplings holding the cars of the railroad train together rattled and clanked and the speeding iron wheels emitted an endless series of rapid click-clacks as they crossed the joints of the rails. Levi liked the sounds for they measured the ever increasing distance he was being taken from the Union and Confederate armies locked in their deadly battles in the East.
When the train stopped at towns to unload and pick up passengers, he sometimes made hurried trips to stores located along the nearby streets to purchase food for himself and to livery stables for grain to feed his horse. There was a bucket in the box car, and water for his horse was easily obtained from the overhead tanks that supplied the boilers of the locomotive. He slept in his seat. At night, when the passengers were few in number, he would spread his blanket in the aisle of the car and sleep stretched out full length. On the third day as darkness settled upon the swaying cars, the train swept out of Illinois and entered Missouri.
* * *
Levi awoke in the morning to a world lashed with rain and wind. Lightning, bright as exploding suns, flashed in the gray dawn. The burst of thunder could be heard easily above the noise of the train. Every stream Levi could see from the train window was a rushing torrent of brown water.
In midmorning the storm began to slacken. Within an hour, the wind and rain ceased, only the heavy clouds remained behind.
Levi started to settle back for a nap, when abruptly the train began to slow. The big wheels of the cars screeched as they ground on the iron rails. The train came to a shuddering, jerking stop.
Levi went to the door and climbed down to the ground with the two dozen or so other passengers. Men and women from the remaining cars were also unloading. Levi, wondering why the train had stopped, joined with several men moving toward the locomotive.
He stopped in front of the steam engine and looked down into a flood-swollen creek. The middle supports of the railroad trestle were gone, washed away. The two rails still attached to their wooden crossties, hung in a sagging loop between the stone abutments on each bank of the creek.
“Damn lucky that I saw the bridge was washed out,” said the engineer as he nervously wiped his sweating face with a red bandanna. “Telegraph lines are gone too.” He pointed at the broken wires hanging from poles on both sides of the creek.
“What do we do now?” asked a passenger.
“We must get a message to the station manager in St. Joe,” the engineer replied. “That’s about twenty miles ahead. There’s horses on board the train. Where’re the riders?”
“I’m one of them,” Levi said.
The engineer turned to Levi. “The creek’s falling fast so you can ford it on horseback. Will you ride to the station manager in St. Joe with a message?”
“Sure.” Levi wanted to hurry on to St. Joe, and far beyond that town.
“Good. Tell him what’s happened here and to stop the east-bound train. We sure don’t want it to wreck by running into that.” He gestured at the deep channel of the creek. “The washout is bad so he’ll need to send a big work crew to repair the track and trestle.”
“You’d better write down what you want so the agent will know I’m telling the truth.”
“I’ll do that while you saddle up.”
Levi hurried back to his car. He packed his belongings and went to the box car. Shortly he had saddled, unloaded his horse from the box car, and returned to the locomotive.
“Move that horse along,” the engineer said, handing Levi a folded piece of paper. “That east-bound’s got to be stopped and the agent in St. Joe can do that.”
“Twenty miles won’t take long,” Levi said.
He rode down the slanting bank and forded the creek. The engineer was correct, the water was falling fast. The horse scampered up the far bank and broke into a run along the tree-lined railroad tracks.
A mile later a muddy road angled out of the woods and ran parallel to the railroad tracks. Levi swung onto the road. He saw not one person. He hurried on, splashing through the puddles of water that lay like dull pools of lead on the dirt road.
* * *
Levi held his mount to a gallop as the woods that crowded the road gave way on the right to a farmstead, a cleared area of about five acres. A moderate-sized log house sat up a short lane from the road and in the center of the clearing. Behind the house a field of shoulder high corn was beginning to tassel.
Levi saw a boy of twelve or thirteen years kneeling beside some object lying in the grass of the front yard of the house. At the sound of Levi’s horse, the boy leapt to his feet and whirled around. He leaned forward, seemingly on the verge of springing away. Even at the distance, Levi saw the strained, fear-filled face of the youngster.
The boy hesitated, poised, his eyes sweeping over the strange rider on the road. Then he straightened and began to wave both arms frantically above his head. “Mister, please come and help me,” he cried, his voice shrill, hysterical. “They’ve killed both of them. My mother! My sister!”
Levi reined his black off the road and ran him up the lane to the house. As he drew closer, he saw the body of a girl perhaps eleven or twelve years old lying at the feet of the boy. She had that still, slack look of the dead. Levi knew that posture very well.
Tears filled the boy’s eyes and his jaws trembled. He wiped at the tears with the back of his hand. “Look what they’ve done to my sister,” he sobbed. He pointed at the body of the girl, but did not look.
The girl lay on her back. Her thin cotton dress had been ripped apart and pulled aside exposing her young body just starting to bud to womanhood. There were bad bruises on her pretty face with blood on her mouth and Levi knew she had bravely fought her attacker. A gaping knife wound penetrated her chest into her heart.
Levi was certain the girl was dead, still he knelt and placed his ear close to the bloody mouth. There was not one whisper of breath. He arose shaking his head and feeling his own deep sadness at the awful crime.
“She’s dead,” Levi said.
“I know,” sobbed the boy. “They did the same thing to my mom. She’s on the porch.”
“What happened? Where’s your dad?”
“He’s off in the army somewhere fighting the Yankees. He should’ve been here taking care of us.” The boy became racked with sobs. With an effort, he controlled himself.
“Three men came riding out of the trees over there.” The boy pointed. “One of them ran Sis down. Two of them caught Mom. They did those awful things to them and then killed them.”
“Why didn’t they catch you?”
“I stayed overnight with my grandpa and grandma who live over the hill about a mile away. I was almost home when I saw the men come out of the woods riding fast toward the house. I hid. I saw what they did.” The boy again broke into heavy sobs.
“I’m sorry this happened to your family,” Levi said.
The boy stifled his crying, his wet eyes fastened on Levi. “Mister, I see you’ve got a rifle. Go after them and shoot them. They’ve only been gone a little while. I can show you their tracks. If you hurry you can catch them easy. One’s riding a skinny mule that I bet can’t run very fast.”
Levi shook his head in the negative. “Better you go tell your grandpa what happened. He can get some neighbors and they can catch the men. Or you can ride with me to St. Joe and get the sheriff.”
“That’d take time and the killers would be long gone. Are you afraid?”
“No. I’m just telling you what you should do.”
“You’re afraid. You’re a coward.” The boy’s voice was full of contempt. “Just give me your gun and horse. They took all of ours. I’ll catch them. I’m not a coward.”
“You’ve had a bad loss so I’ll overlook you calling me a coward. Do you want me to help you take your sister’s body into the house?”
“I don’t want your help for anything,” the boy exclaimed angrily. “I’ll take her in the house. You just go away and let us alone.”
The boy knelt and pulled the torn dress over his sister’s violated body. He lifted her limp form up in his arms and started toward the house.
He halted and his anguished face turned back to Levi. “Get the hell off our property, you Goddamn coward.”
Chapter 8
Levi mounted his horse and rode across the clearing in the direction the boy had pointed. He quickly found three sets of hoof prints in the damp earth and followed them to where they entered the woods. One set of tracks was considerably smaller than the other two and more rounded in shape. Those would be the ones of the mule.
He turned aside from the trail, for he would not pursue the raiders, and went to the road. He would notify the sheriff in St. Joe of the attack on the farmstead. The town was not more than ten to twelve miles distant and the law officials could ride back to the farm before dark and pick up the trail.
Levi raised the horse to a swift gallop toward St. Joe. The clouds were lowering and threatening more rain. The forest closed in tightly and the limbs of the giant trees, every leaf hanging motionless, arched out to span the road. In among the trees of the damp woods, tendrils of fog were rising up from the ground like gray spirits. To Levi it seemed he rode down a dank, murky tunnel watched by ghosts.
The way climbed a hill and then descended a long grade into a valley. There it wound a course through a downfall of twisted and broken timber where a tornado had touched down.
As Levi came round a bend, three riders broke from the woods and rode into the road some one hundred yards in front of him.
The horsemen were facing in the opposite direction, toward St. Joe, and did not see Levi in the gloomy woods, or hear his horse’s hooves on the soft earth. Then one of the men looked to the rear and spotted Levi. He called a sharp warning to the other two men and jerked his mount around.
Levi pulled the black to a halt. His eyes locked on the men on the road. By their sudden reaction to one lone rider and the way they now evaluated him, he judged them rogues and scoundrels.
The man who had first seen Levi began to speak swiftly to his two cohorts. The two nodded agreement and all three moved, fanning out to completely block the narrow road.
A lump of ice formed in Levi’s gut, for as the men separated, he saw one sat upon a tall, skinny mule. The image of the ravaged and mutilated body of the young girl at the farm flashed in Levi’s brain. He felt the tingle and slither of his anger and hatred swell like the uncoiling of a great snake in his stomach.
He must get past the raiders and speed on to St. Joe and inform the sheriff of what these men had done and where their sign could be found. The thought died as quickly as it was born. The three men were walking their mounts toward him. They were not going to allow him to pass. Their desire to prey upon those weaker than themselves was not satisfied. He was alone and they planned to make him their next victim.
He glanced at the dense woods, close by and dark under the heavy overcast. With two jumps of the black, he could be into that protective tangle of tree trunks and brush. He had an excellent chance to elude the men there, but he didn’t kick his horse and run. Instead he was remembering the boy kneeling over the body of his dead sister. She had lain so very still, so innocent and undeserving of the horrible crime committed upon her. He seemed to hear a young girl’s frightened, pain-filled cry for help. Levi was startled by the clarity of the voice for he knew it was entirely within his head. Crimes did not die silently with their victims.
The raiders were now within eighty yards and moved steadily closer. Two of the raiders were reaching for their pistols. Fools, the distance is still rifle work, thought Levi. The man who had spoken to the others drew his rifle from its boot.
Levi yanked his Spencer from its scabbard, swung a leg over the neck of his horse, and slid to the ground. He stepped quickly away from the horse. He needed the animal and it must not be injured by any return shots.
He raised the Spencer and pointed the black eye of the barrel at the man with the rifle, who seemed to be the leader. He must be killed first.
Levi fired his rifle, and instantly levered another cartridge into the breech of the gun. He swung the weapon onto a second rider before the first one had fallen from his horse.
The remaining two raiders were taken by surprise by the speed with which Levi had dismounted and fired and killed one of their group. They were men who survived by stealth and trickery, and then only against the weak. They had not expected one man to bravely attack three.
Levi’s rifle bucked against his shoulder a second time. The man on the mule was slammed backward onto the rump of his animal. The pistol he had started to lift fell from his lifeless hand. The mule bolted, dumping the rider’s body.
The third man spun his horse on its hind legs and hit it a savage blow across the ribs with his pistol. The horse plunged away from Levi and along the road. Never had the raider seen a man move so fast and shoot with such accuracy. The frightened man struck his horse again with the heavy iron pistol driving it away from that hazardous place.
When Levi had first touched his rifle, he was determined to shoot all three of the men who had raped and killed the girl. Even if they had given him a mortal wound, he would not fall until he had finished what he had set out to do. The effort of the last raider to escape him was as useless an action as trying to bring the girl back to life. For Levi knew, with the assurance that only truly competent men ever know, that he could send a bullet to hit the raider at any place he chose.
Levi shot the man through the center of his back, shattering his spine. The man tumbled from his running horse. He bounced and rolled with a jumble of legs and arms upon the soggy ground. The frightened horse raced on along the road.
Levi gripped the Spencer and stared at the crumpled forms of the three men. Two of them lay so close together that they were touching each other. The third man was but a short distance away. Levi sucked a burning breath into his lungs and then cried out. “To hell with every one of you!”
He clamped his jaws shut. Words had no importance. His wildly beating heart slowed as he stood in the gloomy forest and looked at the corpses, and the blood that had raced so hot through his veins became chilled. His hands trembled as he began to insert fresh ammunition in the cartridge tube of the Spencer. Even killing murderers was a fearful thing to do. A deep, dark melancholy fell upon him.
He caught the mule and securely tied it to the belt of its dead master. The mule would identify the men as one of the murderers once the boy at the farm described the attackers. Perhaps the boy would know who had taken the full measure of revenge on the slayers of his family, and that Levi was no coward. Levi hoped he would for somehow that was important to him.
The horse of the leader was an excellent animal, strongly built and clear-eyed. It would make a good packhorse for Levi’s long trip across the plains and through the mountains to California. He tied a rope around the beast’s neck. With the animal in tow, Levi set a fast pace for St. Joe.
* * *
The ferry gave a shrill blast of its steam whistle, spun its big, side, paddle wheels and pulled away from its berth at the wharf in St. Joseph. Once clear of the wharf, the paddle wheels bit more swiftly into the water. The ferry swung to settle on a course west across the Missouri River.
Levi stood with his horses near the bow of the vessel. The craft was single-decked and broad, with a single smokestack spouting smoke. It was crowded with men, women, and children, and buggies, wagons, and horses. All manner of freight in boxes, barrels, and crates were jammed
into every inch of spare space.
Levi, upon his arrival in St. Joe, had immediately delivered his message to the railroad agent. He had also informed the sheriff of the attack upon the farm family, but said nothing about his own battle with the raiders. Surely should he have done that, the sheriff would have detained him in St. Joe for days, possibly weeks, while an investigation was conducted. That was the last thing Levi wanted for he was driven to hurry on to California.
There was a second reason Levi wanted to speedily leave St. Joe. Missouri was a Confederate state. As he had talked with the sheriff, a company of Confederate artillerymen, with their cannon and howitzers drawn by sweating horses, came rumbling into St. Joe. They had gone directly to the bluffs overlooking the river and begun to construct emplacements for the big guns. The artillery captain told the citizens that a full company of infantry was but two days behind. The Rebels meant to hold St. Joe with its railroad and to prevent the Union Army from using the Missouri River to transport military supplies. The war was traveling swiftly west. Levi hoped it had not reached California.
He had traded the slain raider’s saddle for a pack saddle. Then searching quickly through the stores of the town, he had bought food, a section of waterproof tarpaulin, and other items sufficient to round out an outfit that would get him to the Pacific Ocean. Once he had finished, he had less than ten dollars left for the nearly two thousand miles yet to travel.
Levi looked about the ferry and noted that there were none of the big covered wagons that immigrants used to haul their possessions overland to California or Oregon. The season of the year was already too late to begin a trip to such far away places. The people on the ferry were returning to their farms located west of the river on the Nebraska plains.
Once he was beyond the rim of the outlying settlements, he would have to journey alone. He had acquired a map of the overland trail to California. The way had been heavily traveled for years and was deeply worn and littered with discarded furniture, broken wagons, the bones of horses and oxen, and the graves of those immigrants who had not survived the difficult miles. He would have no trouble finding his way.
