North to the Salt Fork

by Ralph Compton

  “Get your feet forward.” He laughed, holding the horse in check as he danced underneath them. Her arms closed tight around his waist. They left out the back way and headed north. Her arms locked around him, her firm form pressed hard to his back, she whispered, “Take me away.”

  Dawn’s pink rose touched the sky as Jack and Lucy sat on the wagon seat, wrapped in a blanket against the chill. Trying to get as close as they could to each other, they inhaled each other’s short breaths.

  “How long will you be gone?” she whispered.

  “I have no idea. It may be a year before I go to trial.”

  “I can wait. I can wait. It won’t be like the last time for you.” They kissed, lips pressed together, hard and desperate.

  “There’s a rig coming. Must be them.”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “I’m not wearing a gun.”

  “I know, and that worries me.”

  “Lucy, stop worrying. This is going to turn out fine.”

  She sniffed, but too late; tears streamed down her face. She blotted them with a kerchief. “I’ll be coming down to see you in jail.”

  “I’ll be out in no time.”

  “Oh, Jack, I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

  “Smell the roses. I’ll be back.”

  She laughed through her tears. “I’ll try.”

  Hale stepped off the buckboard and introduced U.S. Marshal Tim Harris.

  Jack shook the marshal’s hand.

  “These men are duly sworn-in deputy U.S. marshals,” Harris said with a sweep of his arm toward the rest of the men. “We have more authority than the Texas State Police. We will go as directly to Austin as we can, sir.”

  Jack nodded. “I’ll be in your debt, sir.”

  “No, we are in your debt for recovering those horses and successfully saving those two women.”

  Jack kissed Lucy good-bye. “I’ll be fine with them.”

  “I’ll still worry.”

  He was half sick to part with her and cause her the pain of separation, but he turned to go. It was the hardest thing—to turn his back on the woman in his life. A knife stabbed him in the heart. If they didn’t clear him he might never see her again except through bars or from the gallows scaffolding. There had to be justice somewhere.

  If it had not been for her he might have rode on west after recovering the girl. Gotten lost in the madding crowd swarming into this part of the country. He’d come back to his own possible demise, but as he climbed on the buckboard beside Everett he had no regrets. Fate sealed or not, he had friends and the love of a woman. He couldn’t turn his back on them and he knew they felt the same. Maybe they could deliver him from this mess.

  With a cluck to the horses they set off for Austin.

  He was surrounded by seven men with rifles. But how safe was he really?

  Chapter 11

  The jail in Austin looked as bleak as most places like it. Jack felt the police desk sergeant look him over like a man ready to exterminate a stray dog with his hand-gun.

  “This man is wanted for murder?” the desk officer asked as he shuffled the arrest papers.

  “Yes, sir,” Marshal Harris replied.

  “Is he crazy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do I need to restrain him?”

  “No, his lawyer plans to ask for a bond hearing in the morning.”

  The jail official scoffed at his words and said, “He can get on the list, but it’ll be days before he gets his turn. Judge Hefner does all them hearings, and his list is longer than my arm. And I can tell you right now, he ain’t letting no gawdamn reb loose that done killed a federal judge.”

  “That’s not my concern,” Harris said. “The man is in your custody now.”

  “Tell me one thing. You brought him in here with a large armed guard. Any reason for that?”

  “His safety.”

  The official laughed and shook his head in dismay. “I swear this gawdamn world is screwed up when the safety of a killer headed straight for the gallows has to be accommodated.”

  “No, Sergeant, it’s not. When an official in charge of preserving our law and order assumes a man is guilty until proven innocent, that’s when I worry,” Harris said curtly.

  The desk sergeant’s large ears and face turned red. He scowled over the high desk at Marshal Harris. “Well, personally, I hope they hang the rebel son of a bitch. Good day, Marshal, uh”—he looked down at the sheet for his name—“Harris.”

  To Jack the Austin City Prison stank so badly of unwashed bodies, piss and fecal odors that it made most outhouses seem by comparison as if they were refined places to hold celebrity dinners. In a cell by himself with one blanket and a small window offering little light on his iron bunk, he decided that if he didn’t mentally adjust to this horrific situation he’d soon go mad.

  A black man came by with beans and stale bread on a tin plate, which he handed through a slot to Jack, along with a spoon and a cup of what the man called coffee.

  “You’s be alright today, sir?” the man asked.

  Jack nodded.

  “Sure be hot in dis place, huh?”

  “Yes. Very hot.”

  “I’s be back for them plate and spoon after a while. They done run out of most everything else when they told me to feed you,” the black man with gray whiskers said under his breath. “You must be a special prisoner.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, ’cept for the crazy ones, rest goes to mess to eat.”

  Jack shook his head. “I have no damn idea.”

  The man nodded, then shuffled off down the hallway. Jack took his plate and went over to the bunk to sit and eat. In his mind he’d expected prison to be physically bad, but he had underestimated its effect on his mental state. He needed something to take his mind off his surroundings or he might end up with the crazy ones.

  Sleep never came for long. Wails, screams and bangs on the bars woke him in a cold sweat numerous times. But when he did manage to sleep, he dreamed of the war. Men dying under cannon fire. Their bodies exploding into flying parts by incoming rounds. He finally sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed with his eyes shut to try and block out the bad nightmares he’d relived over and over again.

  Everett came to see him on the second day. Only an hour before some old man with a shotgun-bearing guard had emptied his overflowing night jar. Jack was grateful, although the odor lingered and a few flies buzzed as he talked to his attorney.

  “I have spoken to the judge about your case.” Everett began. “A man called Hefner. He seems like a judge with actual experience. That sad truth is, most of these appointees aren’t. One I recently dealt with was a former postmaster. No bench or law experience at all.

  “I managed to set your bond hearing for next Thursday.” Everett rose and began to pace the cell with his hands clasped behind his back. “I’m going to have to raise some money.”

  “For my bond?” Jack asked.

  The man looked around furtively to be certain they were alone. Then in a stage whisper he said, “No, to pay him off.”

  Jack was startled. “How much will that be?”

  “Two thousand, I suspect. He hasn’t said, but that’s the going price for murder cases.”

  “Why, I have no idea where we could find that much money except by robbing a bank.” No way I can raise it sitting in this stinking prison, he thought.

  Everett shook his head. “No, we can raise money without holding up banks.” He smiled back at Jack. “I can get it. But that might lengthen your stay in here, of course.”

  “Of course. You think it will happen on Thursday?”

  “Yes, I do,” Everett said confidently. “I sent word to the Frank brothers that I need an affidavit from them swearing you were in Kansas that July.”

  “But they’re up there now taking cattle to market.”

  “Yes, they are. Albert Frank’s wife, Hailey, said she’d come down and tell the judge that yo
u were up there with their cattle that July.”

  “Will that help?” Jack recalled the woman. She looked proper enough to him to impress a judge. At least he hoped so anyway.

  “I think so. I asked her to be at the bond hearing. I also arranged for a clean suit, tie, starched shirt and a bath and shave the night before.”

  Jack gave Everett a warm look of appreciation. “Thanks, sir. I’ll be in your debt.”

  “No, you won’t. The entire state of Texas owes you, and men like you, more than you’ll ever get from them.”

  The nights were easier on Jack. He finally had something to look forward to. The night before the hearing, a man who called himself a barber came by and shaved him; then a black man and a guard hauled in two pails of water, a bar of lye soap and a towel—well, a flour sack, but it was good enough.

  “I’m coming back in an hour for all of this. You be done bathing by then,” the guard said, relocking the cell door.

  On Thursday morning Jack wondered if they would ever come for him. But at last they arrived and put him in shackles, and with several other prisoners he was loaded into a prison wagon and hauled across town to the federal courthouse.

  “What’cha in for?” a big, unshaven guy in filthy stripes, seated on the wagon bench beside him, asked.

  “Murder,” Jack said curtly.

  “Hmm.” He turned up his nose. “They sure got you fancied up. What chance have I got in these dirty stripes with an appointed law clerk? Bet you’ve got a real lawyer.”

  “I do. But I didn’t kill the man.”

  The man scoffed. “Rich sumbitch like you won’t ever do time. Prison’s plumb full of dumb, poor bastards like me.”

  “What are you in here for?” Jack asked curiously.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Jack shrugged. Whatever the man had done he wasn’t proud of it. He decided to pay him no mind and enjoy his first breath of fresh air in five days. A cool breeze swept away most of the stink from the other prisoners’ bodies.

  The men in the caged wagon whistled at hussies strolling on the sidewalks and shouted about how badly they needed them.

  One of the women yelled back in a French-sounding accent, “You come by Mrs. Carrie’s House when you get out.”

  “Oh, we will! Oh, we will, darling,” the men whooped and hollered.

  At the building on the second floor an officer took him to a holding cell adjoining the courtroom and undid the chains. “We can shoot your ass down here as well as we can going over the fence,” he muttered and showed him through the door to the courtroom, pointing out Everett at a front table.

  “Good morning. You look much better,” Everett said.

  “I feel much better.” He looked over the crowd and when he saw Hailey Franks sitting in the first row behind the fence, he nodded to her. Thank God she was there.

  Jack eased himself down in the spring-loaded wheel-back chair. Damn, it felt wonderful after five days of iron bunk.

  “All rise,” the bailiff announced. “His honor, Judge G. P. Alcott.”

  Jack stood up beside Everett and then they were seated.

  “What do you think?” Jack asked.

  Everett nodded in approval. It stirred a little hope in Jack’s heart. Just maybe he would get out of there.

  The particulars were read and the judge invited the prosecution, a man called Trimble, and Everett to the bench. Jack heard him allude to Mrs. Franks’ appearance to the judge. Trimble made a fuss about her testifying, but the judge waved him aside and invited her to come forth and speak to him off the record.

  “This man Starr worked for your husband, ma’am?”

  “Yes, in July 1866, your honor, Jack Starr was in Kansas with a herd of our trail cattle. My husband, Albert, would be here to testify, but he is up there now.”

  “When will he be back, ma’am?”

  “September, if he don’t get lost.”

  The judge smiled. “I thank you so much for taking your time to come here today, Mrs. Franks.”

  “Your honor—”

  “Yes?”

  “Jack Starr is a good man,” Hailey Franks said. “You know, at Shedville he recovered two white women from the Comanches before he came here and turned himself in. No one paid him to save those women either.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I have that under consideration as well.”

  There was more talking among the parties at the bench. At last Judge Alcott spoke to Jack.

  “Please rise.”

  He stood.

  “It is the ruling of this court that you are to be released on five thousand dollars bond. Are you prepared to provide that?”

  “Yes, we are, your honor,” Everett said.

  “You must understand that you are not to leave the state of Texas or the region that you are currently residing in without express permission of this court.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said.

  “Your trial has been postponed until a later date.”

  Everett nodded and thanked the judge. When Everett came back to the table the judge dismissed them.

  “Thanks,” Jack said to his lawyer as he grasped his hand in a firm shake. He turned and thanked Mrs. Franks. She nodded formally, leaned toward him and said under her breath, “You need work, come see me. I could find lots for you to do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t any problem,” she said, and he could swear she winked at him before she left the courtroom.

  He could hardly wait to be outside and draw a deep breath. Going down the stairs he asked Everett how much it would cost his organization.

  “The judge got two. But that damn prosecutor got a thousand as well.”

  “Justice ain’t cheap, that’s for sure.”

  “I doubt they’ll ever try you, but we need to heed the bond.”

  “I will,” Jack said. “But I’m going to need an outfit and a stage ticket to get out of here.”

  “That’s where we’re going right after lunch. I figured you’d be ready for some real food first.”

  “Amen to that.” He pulled his tie loose, looking out the front doors at the traffic in the street. “Lead the way, my friend. I feel a hundred percent better already.”

  Their lunch in the Armstrong Hotel Restaurant included slices of tender roast beef, potatoes, gravy, green beans, rolls and butter. With a china coffee cup nestled in his hands, he studied the great red drapes on the windows and put out of his memory the taste of the hot-water crap they’d served in the Austin jail. He felt fortunate to be out of there and never wanted to go back.

  “How do I repay these sons of Texas for all of this?”

  “Your debt is settled.” Everett wiped his mouth on the linen napkin.

  “I was a rather expensive case to handle.”

  “We’ve had higher-priced ones.”

  “I’d hate to have been any pricier.”

  “Jack, Texas will have to be restored to full statehood—someday. Then we can drive these corrupt officials out of town.”

  He agreed. It couldn’t take place fast enough. Every judge and prosecutor on the take sounded scary. There were more poor folks in Texas that would never see justice done for them because they couldn’t afford the cost.

  After lunch Everett took him to a mercantile and he was fitted with new canvas pants, suspenders, a collarless cotton shirt, wool vest, silk rag and a wide-brimmed straw hat. A new pair of stub-toed boots that actually fit him, a holster and an oily smelling .44 caliber army-model Colt with a pouch for bullets and caps completed the look.

  Jack tried to protest, but Everett insisted that a free man needed to look the part.

  A man came over as they were paying up and introduced himself as Sam Sterling. “I own this store, and, Mister, I say you can have anything I have in stock. James, get him out one of those good steel hunting knives and a sheath. He may need that too.”

  Jack looked at the tin ceiling for help. His bill would be well over forty dollars. Everett l
aughed aloud at his discomfort.

  It was midafternoon when he rode his gray Kentucky horse out of Austin. The horse was worth a fortune and it came from a Mrs. Grady, a war widow whose husband had been killed in Mississippi in the last battle. She said she wanted a real son of Texas to have her husband’s favorite horse and had hugged him hard at the transfer. Under the wide-brimmed straw hat, he short-loped along on the open road, passing freight wagons and farm rigs. It’d take him two days to get back to Lost Dog Creek, but he had plans when he got there. Big plans.

  He went to Austin flat broke, sat in jail five days and came out smelling like bluebonnets in spring. No way he could beat that. I’m coming home, Lucy, he thought.

  Chapter 12

  In the predawn chill, he sat on his haunches beside the fire. The pungent smell of the burning mesquite and oak filled his nose as he coaxed the flames back up to boil water for coffee. Lucy, wrapped in a blanket, joined him.

  “You sleep any?” she asked.

  “When?”

  She elbowed him hard. “Last night, silly.”

  “Well, you didn’t let me sleep for long,” he said with a laugh. “I got some water from the spring to make coffee.”

  “I can do those things,” she protested.

  “Let me help,” he countered. As she tried to take over, he twisted around to lean over and kiss her.

  She flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed this much in my entire life.”

  “You want me to stop?”

  “No. I was just saying—”

  “You never had a big fool before to pick on you.”

  “I never said you were a fool.”

  “Good, because I never felt the impulse to kiss any other woman as much in my entire life either.”

  She looked sideways at him and then shook her head as if dismayed. “I’ve been feeling this way since that first night you walked in that schoolhouse.”