The Goodnight Trail
Page 35
“Come in,” she said, so softly they barely heard her.
They entered and she closed the door. There were chairs, but such was the state of their minds, none of them thought of sitting. They stood there woodenly, at a loss for words.
Finally Rebecca spoke. “I—I’m sorry I…wasn’t here when you came. Jon took me to St. Louis to see a play, a melodrama called Under the Gaslight. A New York playwright—Augustin Daly—wrote it, and it opened there last summer….”
It was a pathetic attempt at small talk; aware of the futility of it, her voice trembled.
Monte had taken all he could. “For God’s sake,” he blurted, “what’s he done to you? Them clothes…”
She tried to laugh but it came out a whimper.
“It’s—It’s not what you think. Oh, it’s not. He’s been…Jon’s been a perfect gentleman. This dress and these shoes belonged to his wife. She’s dead and he says I’m so much…like her.”
“So much,” said McCaleb, in a voice that hardly sounded like his own, “that you’re takin’ her place.”
She wrung her hands as though in anguish and the tears began. McCaleb and Monte stood there gripping their hats with both hands. When she finally spoke, between sobs, it was in a whisper. Every word seemed torn from her.
“He asked me…begged me…said he needed me. Dear God, I didn’t know what to do. He already had the…the ring. He slipped it on my finger and begged…begged me not to take it off. He’s already told everybody…the newspapers…that I…I—”
Her sobs again took control and she said no more. She bowed her head and tears rolled off her cheeks onto the bosom of the expensive green gown. It was more than Monte could stand. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“When?” he growled. “When did you promise to marry that bastard?”
It was the wrong thing to do. McCaleb had warned him. Rebecca tore herself from his grasp, her green eyes blazing.
“The first Sunday in June,” she snapped, “but I’m going to ask him to make it sooner. Maybe next Sunday!”
Before Monte could respond with a similar burst of anger, McCaleb took control. He shoved the kid aside and spoke to Rebecca as kindly as he could.
“Rebecca, part of the herd belongs to you. I reckon we won’t be able to square it with you until we sell, and nobody in this town will pay us a fair price….”
She responded to his kindness and again tears welled up. For just a second or two there was the old softness he remembered so well, but it faded, leaving only a thousand years of heartache and sorrow. After those few gut-wrenching seconds, she couldn’t bear to look into his eyes, nor he into hers. She calmed herself enough to speak, head bowed, in a whisper.
“I don’t want any part of the herd. Monte, you…they’re…yours. Please take them.”
McCaleb couldn’t stand another minute of it. He stumbled to the door, taking Monte with him, but the kid would have none of it. Leaving McCaleb in the dimly lit hall, he turned back.
“I don’t want your damn cows,” he snarled. “I’ll tally ’em out and shoot ever’ last one. You’ve give me hell all my life. You taught me to be honest, walk straight, and I always looked up to you, even when you was the hardest on me. You made me somebody because I believed you were somebody and I wanted to be as good as you. You’re all the family I had, and now you’re gone. You’ve sold out to a slick-tongued old man with money. Daddy would of sold his soul to the devil for a gold eagle and a jug of moonshine, and for all your highfalutin preachin’, you ain’t no better than he was. He sold his soul and you’re sellin’ your body.”
Monte slammed the door and stalked toward the lobby, McCaleb following. Jonathan Wickliffe stepped out of his room and stood looking down the hall after them. He knocked on Rebecca’s door and, getting no response, tried the knob. The door was locked.
When Monte and McCaleb reached the boardwalk, Monte was still white-faced with anger, while McCaleb was sick at heart. The very last person Benton McCaleb wished to meet was that pushy bastard from the newspaper, but there he was. Bascom had seen them enter the Tremont House and had patiently awaited their departure. A spark of excitement in his eyes overcame his reluctance and he approached them.
“Dobie Hobbs swears he’ll meet you here at one o’clock, McCaleb. What do you intend to do?”
“Gut-shoot you,” snapped McCaleb, “if you don’t quit following me.”
“They’re taking bets in the saloons,” said Bascom slyly, “and the odds favor Hobbs. He says if you ride out, he’ll follow.”
“McCaleb,” said Monte, “why don’t we just ride out? You can outshoot that loudmouth blindfolded. We don’t have to prove anything to this town.”
McCaleb looked around. Some of the curious had gotten close enough to hear the conversation. Why didn’t he simply ride away, leaving Hobbs to strut and bluster to his heart’s content? Then he became aware that some of the onlookers were staring past him, and he turned. On the boardwalk outside the Tremont House stood Jonathan Wickliffe, arms folded across his chest and a look of satisfaction on his handsome face. McCaleb turned to the eager young reporter and spoke loud enough for everybody—including Wickliffe—to hear.
“One o’clock, then.”
Those who had heard hurried away to tell others. From a saloon across the street came the tinkling of a piano and a rising crescendo of voices, like the buzzing of excited bees.
“I’m takin’ bets,” somebody shouted.
Wickliffe had gone back into the hotel. Bascom fished a dollar watch from his coat pocket.
“Fifteen minutes of one,” he said.
McCaleb turned back to the Tremont House, went into the lobby and took a chair near the door. Monte knelt beside the chair, his back to the wall. At the front desk Wilkerson pointedly ignored them.
“I’ll side you,” said Monte.
“You’ll stay out of it,” said McCaleb. “I can take Hobbs, but if some of his compadres buy in, there’s no sense in both of us gettin’ shot. If I don’t come out of it clean, you’ll have to ride back to camp and tell the others.”
Monte swallowed hard and said nothing. He was all too aware of the big grandfather clock that slowly, grimly, ticked away the minutes. There was a silence, a waiting; even the piano across the street was still. Somewhere there was a single gunshot, and on the heels of it the grandfather clock chimed once.
“You’re sure—” began Monte.
“I’m sure, kid,” said McCaleb. “Thanks. I know you’ve got the sand, but I’ll likely need you more when this is finished. However it ends.”
He got up, tilted his hat over his eyes and checked his Colt. Pausing at the door, he surveyed the street before stepping out on the boardwalk. Through the swinging doors of the Bull’s Head saloon, three hundred yards away, stepped a solitary figure. McCaleb stood in the street before the Tremont House, thumbs hooked in his belt. Monte remained on the hotel porch, out of the line of fire. The town held its breath as Hobbs began his slow walk. So intent was McCaleb on the advancing figure, he never saw Rebecca’s frightened, tear-streaked face at an upstairs window, nor was he aware that Jonathan Wickliffe stood on the second-floor balcony of the hotel. Waiting.
Benton McCaleb didn’t know—nor would he have approved if he had—that just minutes before his showdown with Dobie Hobbs, Rebecca had made a last desperate appeal to Jonathan Wickliffe.
“Please, Jon,” she had cried, “don’t let this happen. Can’t you stop Dobie Hobbs? He’s one of your men. McCaleb won’t fight unless he has to, but he’s not afraid. Please, please don’t make him go through with this!”
“Your compassion for McCaleb is touching,” Wickliffe had replied, “but I have no control over Hobbs. I have dismissed the man; if he kills or is killed, it’s no concern of mine. I’ve grown weary of people expecting me to muzzle Dobie Hobbs. I would suggest that you remain in your room until the wretched spectacle is over.”
However wretched the spectacle, she dared not miss it. Whatever h
orror she might witness, not knowing if McCaleb were alive or dead would be all the more terrible. As the dreaded hour approached, she heard Wickliffe’s door open and close. She crept down the hall and found the lobby crowded; people pushed and shoved, seeking favored positions at door or window. She climbed the stairs to the second floor and, to her dismay, found Wickliffe on the balcony overlooking the street. She pushed through the double doors until she stood behind him. So absorbed was he in the unfolding drama below, he didn’t know she was there. While she could see Hobbs, she couldn’t see McCaleb. Moving closer to the balcony rail brought her to Wickliffe’s attention. He turned to her with a grim smile.
“There is a little barbarian in all of us, eh?”
She ignored him. Her eyes were on McCaleb, and so great was her concern that she wasn’t aware that Wickliffe’s attention was focused on neither of the men in the street. Instead, his eyes darted to the roofs and false-fronted saloons and shops that lined the street directly ahead of McCaleb.
Rebecca wondered where Monte was. She had half expected to find the kid in the street, preparing to side McCaleb. Immediately she was ashamed for having had such thoughts. Sure as she was that McCaleb wouldn’t run from a fight, she was even more sure that he would neither expect or permit someone else to shoulder a responsibility he regarded as his own.
McCaleb waited as Hobbs approached. To a stranger unfamiliar with the frontier, they might have been old friends, about to meet after a prolonged separation. Hobbs drew nearer. A hundred yards. Ninety. Eighty. Seventy. Fifty. Benton McCaleb’s eyes weren’t on Hobbs, but on a second-story window to the left of the gunman. It was an insignificant thing, no more than the wink of the westering sun off a windowpane. Or a rifle barrel. Then, to the surprise of everybody—including Hobbs—McCaleb drew and fired once, twice, three times! But he was shooting high, over Hobbs’s head, and his first shot took the glass out of a window with a tinkling crash. Before the echo of McCaleb’s last shot had died away, Hobbs had a blazing Colt in each hand. The first slug burned its way through the fleshy underside of McCaleb’s upper left arm, the second snatched the hat from his head, and a third took him just below the collarbone. The force of the slug turned McCaleb half around, dropping him on his back in the dusty street.
“No,” cried Rebecca. “No, no, no!”
As much as she yearned to go to him, she couldn’t move. Heart pounding, she silently prayed for some sign of life. McCaleb lifted himself to his elbows, and two more shots sang over his head, dangerously close. McCaleb fired once. For a long second or two, Dobie Hobbs seemed frozen in place. His reflexes triggered a blast from each of his Colts into the dust at his feet. Then he went down on his back and a playful breeze sent his hat skittering away. He lay there unmoving, a circle of crimson spreading over the breast of his white shirt like the unfurling of a rose.
Freed from the shock that had imprisoned her, Rebecca sprang for the door, only to have Wickliffe grab her about the waist.
“He’s alive, my dear, and that’s as far as your interest is allowed to go. Our engagement has been announced and I’ll not have you down there making a fool of yourself. Or of me. Now let’s return to our rooms, shall we?”
In the aftermath of the shooting, the spectators quickly lost interest and drifted away to the saloons, the losers to pay and the winners to collect. Nobody had been more shaken by the fight than Monte Nance. While he was concerned with McCaleb’s wounds, something far more troublesome was dogging his mind. McCaleb was lightning quick with a Colt, and never once, that Monte recalled, had he missed. Yet he had drawn first, fired four times, but hit Hobbs only once. Why had he allowed Hobbs to get a slug into him first, and then needed a fourth shot to cut the man down? Unassisted, McCaleb got to his knees and then to his feet. Blood had soaked the left side of his denim shirt from shoulder to waist. Monte looked at him and swallowed hard.
“How bad?”
“Worst one just below the collarbone,” said McCaleb. “Another burned off some hide under my left arm. Time for a doc, I reckon.”
But the doctor came second; the next man they saw wore a badge. Sheriff Langdon Simmons had a surprise for them. An unpleasant surprise.
“Mr. McCaleb, for your safety, I’m lockin’ you up for the night. Now, I ain’t chargin’ you with nothin’, understand. Man’s got a right to defend himself, and you done that. But Hobbs had friends, and I ain’t puttin’ it past them to get juiced up and come after you. Come on; I’ll get the doc to come around and patch you up.”
“Sheriff,” said McCaleb, “while I appreciate your concern, I have an outfit just south of town. Soon as a doc looks me over and plugs this hole, I aim to ride out. I doubt Hobbs’s friends will follow me to Wyoming.”
“Well,” said Sheriff Simmons, “you can’t leave until after the hearin’ and the inquest. Legal enough, you punchin’ Hobbs’s ticket, but I got a dead man on my hands. Won’t take more’n a few minutes to get the legal part of this took care of, but it can’t be done ’fore nine o’clock in th’ mornin’.”
“You won’t settle for anything less than me spendin’ the night in jail, then,” said McCaleb.
“That’s it.” Simmons grinned. “It ain’t entirely for your benefit. I got my reputation as sheriff at stake. I ain’t had a lynchin’ yet, and I don’t aim for you to be the first. While I can’t watch all the likkered-up rowdies in town, I can keep an eye on you. When you ride out tomorrow, I want you in one piece, without a stretched neck.”
The jail—three cells on each side of a long corridor—was in the basement of the courthouse. Three hungover, disconsolate cowboys sat on cots in the first cell on the right, and McCaleb was given the cell next to theirs. Monte was allowed to remain with McCaleb for a few minutes, and as soon as the sheriff left them alone, McCaleb had instructions for him.
“Take my horse to the livery and see that he’s cared for. Then ride to camp and tell the others what’s happened. I want either Will or Brazos to ride in after dark and stake out the jail, just in case Hobbs does have friends with lynching on their minds. And tell Will or Brazos—whoever rides in—to bring me another two hundred dollars for that court appearance in the morning. I’m not sure I won’t face some trumped-up charge with a stiff fine. But I only want one man in town tonight. I want the rest of you to round up the herd and move them out at dawn. Drive them west of town, then north across the South Platte River, and hold them there. Now get going; they’ll be wondering what’s happened to us.”
Monte had been gone only a few minutes when the doctor arrived. He was a businesslike little man who spoke not a single word. McCaleb peeled off his shirt, ripping the fabric loose where it clung to his wounds, starting them bleeding again. By now he had the undivided attention of the three men in the adjoining cell. In turn, McCaleb studied them while the little doctor cauterized his wounds, setting them afire with some kind of venomous liquid. When the doctor had bandaged his wounds and departed, McCaleb sat there looking at his ruined shirt. Why hadn’t he thought to have Monte send him another with Will or Brazos? He felt a bit self-conscious as his captive audience studied his bare torso with its impressive mass of scars. Most of them had resulted from lead, arrows, and knives. But there was one—an ugly gash from a Comanche lance—that began near his navel and half circled his right side.
“Pardner,” said one of the admiring trio, “you must be a Texan. Anybody else would of just took the easy way out an’ died.”
They all chuckled at this macabre cowboy humor, and McCaleb grinned. He reckoned the oldest of the three wasn’t more than twenty-five, if that.
“The world’s a mite hard on Texans,” said McCaleb.
“Amen, brother,” said another of the trio. “We heard some Colts a-poppin’ a while ago; was you in the midst of that?”
“Considerably,” said McCaleb. “Had to shoot an hombre that wouldn’t have it any other way. He returned the favor, in part.”
“You’re in the calabozo for defendin’ yourself?”
“Onliest protection you can count on in this town, friend, is a loaded-to-the-chamber repeatin’ rifle or a hair-trigger Colt six-shooter.”
McCaleb was an impulsive man and he liked these affable cowboys. He got up off the cot and put his hand through the bars that separated their cells.
“I’m Benton McCaleb, Red River County, Texas.”
“My God,” said one of the trio, “no wonder you look like you just come from an Injun war; you near ’bout growed up in the Territory. I’m Pendleton Rhodes. My friends call me Pen. I’m from Waco and part Injun myself.”
Rhodes had high cheekbones, jet-black hair, and deep brown eyes. McCaleb shook his hand and then turned his attention to the other cowboys. They were obviously brothers, towheaded and blue-eyed.
“Jediah Vandiver,” said the oldest of the two, “and this is my brother, Stoney. We’re from San Antone, and my God, how I wish we was there now—even with all the blue bellies and carpetbaggers.”
McCaleb shook their hands. These Texans were his kind of people. In his mind an idea was taking hold, and he needed to know more about these cowboys.
“If it ain’t too personal,” he said, “what are you accused of?”
“Drunk and disorderly conduct,” said Jed.
“Disturbin’ the peace,” said Stoney.
“Destruction of private property,” finished Pen.
McCaleb said nothing, waiting for them to continue. Having divulged that much, they proceeded to tell their story.
“We come up the Chisholm Trail with a herd,” said Pen. “Had nearly a hundred dollars apiece, never been out of Texas before, never rode a train.”
“We should of gone back to Texas,” said Stoney, “but we wanted to ride the train. You can’t ride the train without goin’ somewheres, so we come here.”