A Cold Hard Trail

by Robert J Conley

  She said howdy to him and set down with us, and I signaled the bartender to fetch us over another glass. I poured her a drink.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  “Aw, we just went up into the mountains,” I said. “Ole Zeb, here, he smelled us out some gold, so we come back down. That’s all.”

  I was glad I never had to tell her about no killings nor nothing like that. My life had plumb settled down, and I was satisfied with that. I didn’t want to be no gunfighter, and I didn’t want no one calling me no “regular Billy the Kid” no more. If I was to do anything besides just only hunt for the mother lode with ole Zeb, I reckoned it would be to find me another cowboying job somewheres. I hope you believe that.

  Anyhow, I was just setting there a-sipping at my whiskey and being real glad to be seeing ole Red again, and even thinking about how soon maybe I might be able to get her into a bed with me somewheres whenever I noticed that her eyes opened kinda wide and she was a-staring at something back behind my back. I looked back over my shoulder, and damned if it weren’t ole Jim Chastain, and I’d a been real glad to see him again too, but for one thing. Ole Jim, he had a real sternlike look on his craggy ole face, and he was a-holding a short shotgun what was pointed right at us.

  Chapter 2

  Well, I can tell you what, by God, I was never so surprised in my whole damn short life. Here I figgered ole Jim Chastain was a friend and all that, and I was kinda looking forward to seeing him again and maybe even getting drunk with him, and here he was with his badge just a-shining and that shotgun pointed right in our damn middle.

  “Jim?” I said.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Kid,” he said. “I know how good you are, so if I see your eyebrow twitch, I’ll cut loose.”

  “Get him, boy,” ole Paw said. “You can do it.”

  “Aw, shut up, Paw,” I said. “Even if I was to get him, that’s a scattergun he’s got there. He’d blast us all four a-setting here. I ain’t moving, Jim, but just what the hell is this all about?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “Red, you better get up and get outa the way, but stay over there where I can see you.”

  Ole Red got up and moved over to the bar, and she looked plumb astonished, I can tell you. Me and Paw and ole Zeb just set there, skeered even to take a drink.

  “Kid,” Jim said, “stand up with your hands held high.”

  I done what he said.

  “Now, real slow, reach down and unbuckle that belt and let your rig drop to the floor. Be careful now.”

  I done that too, and it sure was a empty feeling hearing the sound of my Colt rig hit the floor thataway. Then ole Chastain made Paw do the same thing and then ole Zeb. I was trying to figger out what the hell he was up to. Far as I knowed, even though I had kilt me all a them men, I wasn’t wanted for nothing. Fact a the matter is, all a the men what I had kilt was wanted men it turned out, and I had even been a depitty a ole Chastain’s for a short time there, and so we was killing the same men so to speak for a while. With all our guns on the floor, ole Jim had the barkeep come out and gether them up and take them behind the bar.

  “I’ll pick them up later,” he said. “All right, you three, head for the jail. You know the way.”

  Well, I led the way, but I was damn sure embarrassed walking through the streets a Fosterville with my hands up in the air like that and no gun strapped on me. I felt nekkid and foolish, and I could tell that my face was a-blushing red. I really hated that, and I told myself that I’d figger a way to get my ass outa this mess, and then I’d just kill ole Chastain for humiliating me like that. It seemed like a reasonable way to deal with the situation. All the way over to the jailhouse, I was sure for certain that ever’one on the street was a-looking at me.

  Once we made it over there, ole Chastain made us go into a cell and back up to the far wall, and then he come over to the cell, still holding that damn scattergun on us, and he slammed that door and locked it. I felt just sick. I had been chased all over the damn country and shot at, but I hadn’t never been locked in no jail cell like a sorry-ass criminal before.

  “Now maybe you’ll tell us what the hell this is all about,” I said.

  Jim walked over to the gun cabinet on his wall and put up the shotgun, and I was glad it weren’t pointed in my general direction no more. He walked around behind his big desk and set down in his chair. Then he rared back and propped his big feet on the desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You boys know anything about the stage being robbed up north of here about a week ago?” he asked.

  “Hell, no,” I said. “We only just come down outa the mountains. We ain’t heared nothing. That’s a hell of a thing to ask old friends anyhow.”

  “The driver was killed,” Jim said. “Gold shipment was taken. Stagecoach turned over trying to get away from the robbers. Couple of passengers got banged up a little.”

  “Well, so what?” I said. “I mean, I’m sorry for them and all that, but what’s it got to do with us?”

  “Anyone see you three over the last month or so?”

  “No,” I said. “It was just only the three of us up in the mountains. We was panning for gold.”

  “Got some too,” said Zeb. “You can check. We cashed it in right here in town.”

  “Gold dust?” said Jim.

  “That’s right,” said Zeb. “Several bags full. I got a nose for it.”

  “It was bags of gold dust that was taken from that stagecoach,” said Jim.

  “Well, damn it all, Jim,” I said, “you didn’t even know we had no gold dust till ole Zeb here just told you. How come you to go and throw down on us like you done?”

  Jim raised his feet up off the desktop and dropped them down onto the floor. Then he leaned forward and pulled open a desk drawer. He hauled a piece a paper outa that drawer and looked at it a minute without saying nothing. Then he started in to read.

  “Three white men, one young, skinny, scrawny one, one older, also skinny and needing a shave, the third one short, stubby, and old with gray whiskers. That’s the description we got on the three men that held up the stagecoach,” he said. He tossed the paper down. “Sound like anyone you know?”

  Well, I reckoned that I was kinda skinny and scrawny, and ole Paw did for a fact need a shave, and Zeb, well, he was stubby and bewhiskered, sure enough.

  “I guess there could be a whole bunch a young skinny fellers out there,” I said. “And could be there’s a few of them running around with a couple a old codgers.”

  “What do you mean, a couple a old codgers?” Paw said. “I ain’t a old codger like him.”

  “Don’t you go calling me no codger,” Zeb said.

  Just then the front door a the office come open and Red come a-flying in. She whirled right over to ole Chastain’s desk, stopped right quick and stood there a-glaring at him with her hands on her hips.

  “Jim Chastain,” she said, “what do you mean by putting these friends of ours into a jail cell? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. They just got into town, and you come a-sneaking—”

  “Hold on, Red,” Jim said. He picked up that damned paper again and handed it to her. “Read this before you go flying off the handle. I’m just doing my job is all.”

  Red tuck the paper outa Jim’s hand and read it. She looked over at us for a bit and then she read it again. She put down the paper and come right over to the cell. I was standing right up front a-hanging onto a couple a bars. She come right up to me so that our two noses like to a touched through the bars.

  “Kid,” she said, “did you pull that job?”

  “No,” I said. “I never. We never.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Kid,” she said, and I swear, the way she was a-looking at me, if I’d a wanted to I couldn’ta.

  “Red,” I said, “I ain’t lying. Me and Zeb and Paw has been alone in the mountains ever since we last seen you till just now. We didn’t rob no stagecoach. I swear it to you, Red.”

  She st
ared right into my eyes for what seemed like five minutes, but I bet you it weren’t, and then she whirled around and flounced back over to ole Jim’s desk.

  “They didn’t do it, Jim,” she said. “You got the wrong men.”

  “All I can go on is what they sent me on it, Red,” he said. “I got to hold them here till one of the witnesses can get down here and take a look at them. If they’re the wrong men, the witness will tell us, and I’ll let them go.”

  Well, Red fussed some more with him, but she never got nowhere, and final she left, a-stomping all the way out. Jim, he settled back down behind his desk. Ole Zeb come a-sidling up beside me.

  “Who’s the witnesses?” he said.

  “Who’s the witnesses?” I asked out loud.

  “Shotgun guard,” Jim said, “and two passengers.”

  “Them same passengers what got all jostled around when that there stage turned over?” Zeb whispered.

  “The same passengers what got all jostled around when the stage turned over?” I asked out loud.

  “I reckon,” Chastain said.

  “Hell,” said Zeb, “they’ll identify any skinny kid with two older fellers. They was likely seeing double anyhow.”

  I opened my mouth to repeat what Zeb had said, but then I changed my mind. I never said nothing out loud. Instead, I turned around the other way and walked back toward the back wall a couple a steps. I was thinking about what ole Zeb had just said.

  “You know, Zeb,” I said, “likely you’re right about that. I reckon it wouldn’t be the first time a innocent man got hisself hung to death.”

  “Three innocent men, you mean,” Paw said.

  I didn’t believe my ole paw had been innocent since the day he was borned, but I didn’t bother saying so. I did know he was innocent a that damn stagecoach robbery though. He had been in the mountains with me and ole Zeb. There just weren’t no way he coulda slipped off to rob no stage without us a-knowing about it, and even if he coulda, why, what was the chances a his finding another ole codger like Zeb and another skinny kid like me? It just didn’t make no sense atall. No sir. I knowed that we was all three of us innocent a the charges.

  “Well,” said Zeb, “what’re we going to do?”

  “You shoulda tuck him back there in the saloon,” Paw said.

  “Shut up about that,” I said. “I told you how come I never done nothing back there, and I was right. Why, even if I’d a shot him, his finger coulda twitched and he’d a blowed all of us straight to hell. Red too.”

  “You watch how you’re talking to your old man,” Paw said. “You ain’t wearing your fancy gun in here, and I might just take it into my head to whip your skinny ass once more before they hang us.”

  “You do it, old man,” I said. “You do it, and then you wait and see if they hang us up or if we get out, and if we get out, I’ll get my gun back, and if you whipped my ass, I’ll kill you dead. I don’t give a damn if you are my old man. You never acted like it but just only one time in my whole life nohow.”

  Zeb stepped in between me and Paw.

  “You reckon we might could get outa here?” he said.

  “There’ll be a way,” I said.

  I went over and laid my ass down on a cot what was against the wall, and I folded my hands behind my head and crossed my feet one over the other and commenced to thinking. I thunk about what ole Zeb had said that them folks might just up and say that we was the ones even if we really wasn’t, and if they was to say that, why, we’d get ourselfs hung up no matter if we was innocent or not. We’d be just as dead and wouldn’t nobody give a damn neither. Well, maybe ole Red would, at least for a little while, and then I wondered if Maw would give a shit that Paw never come home again. He was gone a awful lot as it was.

  “Paw,” I said, “if I can figger a way to get us outa here, will you go on back home to Maw?”

  “Well, sure I will,” he said. “Don’t I always?”

  “I mean right away whenever I get us outa here,” I said.

  “Well, now, I don’t like making no promises like that,” he said. “Who knows? Something might come up and cause me to break my word if I was to give it like that.”

  “Well, think about it thisaway,” I said. “If I was to come up with a way a getting us outa here, I mean, breaking us outa here, you know, then the law’d be after us ’cause they think we done that robbing and they’d be after us too ’cause we broke outa jail. Right?”

  “Right,” said Paw.

  “The safest place for you to be would be back home in Texas and not up here with all the laws looking for you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right about that.”

  I figgered I had him then.

  “Well?” I said.

  “You get us outa here,” he said, “and I’ll run back home to your maw faster’n you can say shit.”

  “All right,” I said. I smiled and laid back again the way I was. ’Bout then ole Chastain got up. I heared him shove his chair back, and I raised my head up a bit so I could take me a look at him.

  “I’ll bring you boys back some lunch,” he said. He was a-heading for the door.

  “Don’t bring no beans,” Zeb yelled.

  I heared the door shut, and I went back to my thinking. Now I had done tuck keer a one problem. I had figgered out how to make Paw go on back home. I felt real good about that. All I had left to do was just only figger out how to get us outa the damn jail. If I was to be able to get my hands on a six-gun, I knowed for damn sure that I could get us outa there, but I couldn’t figger how I was going to do that. I had heared about folks digging their way outa jail, and I didn’t know no one more experter than ole Zeb when it come to digging.

  “Zeb,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we dig our way outa here?”

  Zeb looked around at the floor and the walls, a-studying for a spell. Then he said, “Hell, no.”

  “Ain’t no way?” I said.

  “No way.”

  I laid back again and thunk harder. Seemed like to me I had heared about someone somewheres in a jail what had gouged the bars outa the winders and pulled them loose, just one or two of them, enough so he could squeeze hisself through and get out.

  “Can we pry them winder bars loose?” I asked.

  Zeb went over to the winder and tuck hold a two a the bars and tried to give them a shake but they never budged nor wiggled nor nothing. He kinda scratched around at the bottom a the bar for a minute.

  “Keep a-thinking,” he said.

  “No good?” I said.

  “No good.”

  Well, I couldn’t hardly think a nothing else ’cept only that ole Chastain was a-fixing to bring us something to eat. I set up and studied on the cell door and the front wall a bars there. There weren’t no way he could give us no food without he was to open the damn cell door first. I was thinking that maybe we could jump him when he done that.

  “Listen,” I said.

  Paw and Zeb both come up close to me.

  “You come up with something?” Paw asked.

  “I got it,” I said. “Listen keerful. Ole Chastain, he said he was a-bringing us some food, didn’t he?”

  “Sure he did,” Paw said. “It’s crawling on ’bout noontime. He has to feed us. It’s the law.”

  “What’s he going to bring that food on?”

  “Well, I reckon he’ll be a-bringing it in on a tray,” said Paw. “What else? And what has that got to do with getting our ass outa here?”

  “He’ll have to open that there door to get a tray in here to us,” I said, and then Paw’s eyes opened up some, and so did ole Zeb’s.

  “Oh,” said Paw.

  “Whenever he opens that door,” I said, “we’ll jump him. All three of us. And we’ll get his guns, if he’s got them on, and we’ll get outa here and lock him up, and then we’ll go get our horses and guns and get the hell outa town.”

  “That’s good,” Paw said.

  “It oughta work,”
said Zeb.

  “The important thing is,” I said, “to not go looking suspicious whenever he comes back in here. Don’t be looking sneaky like. Just stay casual, like you ain’t thinking a nothing in perticular ’cept maybe what’s to eat. You got that?”

  “Yeah,” said Paw.

  “I got it,” Zeb said.

  I heared footsteps then, and I said, “Here he comes. Watch out.”

  I laid back down, and Paw, he went over to the winder and kinda stared out, and ole Zeb went and set on the other cot across the cell from me. He commenced to humming some old song. Chastain walked on in all right, and he was a-carrying a tray with a rag throwed over the top of all the food to keep all the flies off, I guess. He walked over to his desk and put the tray down. Then he got the keys, and then the son of a bitch went to the gun cabinet and got the damned shotgun. He pointed that damned thing right at us.

  “Get over against the back wall,” he said. “All of you.”

  Well, we done that.

  “Face the wall,” he said.

  We done that too, and I could hear him unlocking the door. Then I heared him a-taking some steps, and I figgered he was fetching the tray, but I also figgered he was still a-holding that scattergun in one hand. I never moved a muscle. I heared it when he put the tray down on the floor, and then I heared when he shut and locked the door again.

  “Have at it, boys,” he said.

  Paw looked me right in the face.

  “Real bright idea you had there, son,” he said.

  Well, the best thing about it was that there weren’t no beans on the tray. We all of us went and et like we was at some fancy eating place and not in no jail, and the food was pretty good. Then we drunk some coffee. It was on the tray too, but only it was just one cup for each of us, and I wanted some more. We finished up ever’thing what was on that tray, and then I went and laid back down and Zeb did too.

  “I ain’t got no place to lay down,” Paw said.

  Chastain got up and got his gun and keys again. He come back over to the cell and unlocked the door.