Reckoning at Lansing's Ferry

by Lauran Paine

  They skirted wide around the Connelly place, bearing southwest, and sighted no other horsemen in the pre-moon evening until they were close enough to Lansing’s Ferry to make out mounted men passing in and out of town on that north-south roadway.

  Ben knew this area and led them to an arroyo that lay a quarter mile west of Lansing’s Ferry. He dismounted to lead his horse down into this. Case saw him go ahead a hundred feet, then sink down with a groan, arise, dust his gloved hands, and curse. “They use this gully for a refuse dump,” he said irritably, and led off southerly to a spot where there was less litter. Here, they left their horses, passed over the arroyo, and climbed out of it on the far side.

  “Stay close and be quiet,” said Albright, walking confidently toward the dark bulking backs of buildings. Bass was behind Ben, and Case followed Templeton. In this Indian-file way of going they came to a back alley, and here again Ben stumbled, this time over a broken buggy wheel. He did not swear as he’d done earlier but Case could see a stiffness in his skylined shoulders and knew that he was thinking profane thoughts. Ben paused to study the nearest buildings. He raised a hand, beckoning the others, and started forward again.

  Wraith-like, they passed through the faint star light beyond a livery stable, a mercantile establishment that had brine barrels precariously stacked on both sides of a barred back door, and paused just beyond a third building. Set apart from this last building some three or four feet was their destination. Case Hyle, who had never before seen this place from the rear, nevertheless recognized its roofline.

  Ben motioned for his companions to remain where they were as he went forward, merging in the dim light with the building’s shadows, and remaining in an attentive listening position for a long time before returning to Case and Bass.

  “There is someone in there with Beal. I could hear them talking,” he told the other two.

  “One voice?” Templeton queried.

  Ben nodded and motioned with his head. They all moved forward cautiously, halting at the alley-way rear door. Ben rolled fisted knuckles over wood. Case heard those voices go silent. A chair scraped and after that booted feet struck hard upon a plank floor, coming closer.

  Case did not see Ben Albright draw his gun because Bass Templeton was between them, but he did see Conrad Beal’s face loom clearly in the lamplit door opening. Case saw how Beal looked quickly from Ben’s face downward, then up again. Beal’s expression said all Case had to know.

  “Come in,” the lawman said. “You won’t need that gun, Mister Albright. I’m alone.”

  “We heard voices,” Ben stated, remaining where he was.

  “That was Bill Bodine, a town councilman. He just left.”

  Ben stepped up into the light, and Case finally saw the gun in his fist. Bass Templeton pushed in and Case followed him. Marshal Beal closed the door. Case whirled to watch this, wanting to be certain Beal did not lock the door. Beal, correctly interpreting Case’s look, shrugged and walked on toward his desk.

  “I figured you’d come,” he told the Texans as he dropped down into the beat-up desk chair.

  “Then why have you got posses out hunting us?” queried Ben, still standing, still holding his naked gun.

  “They weren’t particularly huntin’ you,” replied Beal. “They’ve got orders to bring Mayor Connelly in, as well as to prevent you Texans from killin’ him...if you find him first. That’s all.”

  “Connelly’s homestead is crawling with ambushers,” growled Bass. “Don’t tell us that ain’t so, because we saw them out there.”

  Conrad Beal nodded. He looked tired and worn. “Not to catch you, though. To apprehend Connelly if he returns to his home. There are also guards at his three neighbors’ places, too. They’ve got the same orders.” Beal got up, crossed to a little iron stove where a coffee pot simmered, and made a motion toward some tin cups hanging from nails. When none of the Texans accepted this tacit invitation, he poured himself a cup. Walking back toward his desk, he said: “I don’t know how Connelly heard I was after him, but he did. When I got back from your camp, he and his runnin’ mates were gone. No one seemed to have an inklin’ about where they went or what they were up to.” Beal drank, put the cup down on his desk top, and sat down in his chair. “I got up some posses and sent ’em after him. Then I waited.” He looked straight at Ben. “I figured it wouldn’t be a long wait. I knew you three were after him, too. The odds against his gettin’ clean away are next to nothin’. But I’m mightily relieved to have you here with me, because now none of my people can say the Texans got Connelly, and that’s what’s been worryin’ me, Mister Albright. If you caught him...killed him...these here people would always feel like Connelly was some kind of a martyr. That’s the point I tried to make up at your camp when I asked you to let me get him my way. I want the settlers to do this thing themselves. That way they’ll feel better about it.”

  “Will they believe he is a murderer?” asked Ben.

  Beal arched his brows together over this. “I’ve passed the word amongst them that he is. I think most of them believed me. I know for a fact the posse men who rode to your camp with me are convinced Connelly is a murderer. They’ve done their share of talkin’, too.” Beal sighed. “I think if the settlers catch him, listen to him, see him tried by their own kind of law, and convicted, they’ll have no doubts about his guilt, Mister Albright.”

  “If,” said Bass Templeton, “he is convicted.”

  Beal looked at Bass through an interval of thoughtful silence. Then he said: “Mister, I’ve sensed how you feel every time we’ve met. I know why that is, and I won’t deny I got some of that same hatred in me, too, like all the rest of us ex-Yankee soldiers here at Lansing’s Ferry. But I’m strivin’ mighty hard right now to keep that feelin’ from influencin’ me. I wish you’d do the same, mister, because regardless of Connelly and his kind, we’ve got to live together here in Texas.”

  “Why do we have to?” growled Bass.

  Beal stood up. His face lost its tiredness, its reasonableness. “Because we’re not leaving Texas and neither are you,” he flung back at Templeton, his stare smoldering with exhausted patience. “That’s why, if we’re goin’ to live together, we better start actin’ like neighbors ought to act. You got any more to say?”

  Bass reddened even though he still glared at Beal.

  Case Hyle stepped forward, seemingly by accident, interfering with the view these two angry men had of one another. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions,” he said quietly to Conrad Beal. “First off, I’ll tell you we saw Patrick Connelly’s horse out where it was shot. What I’d like to know now is...do you have the gun young Connelly was wearing at the time he was killed?”

  Beal gradually relaxed. He looked at Case, still with the smoky glow to his eyes, and nodded. He took a few steps before he turned and sat back down in his chair. He pulled open a desk drawer and took up a six-gun that he offered to Case, butt first. “It’s been shot,” he said, “if that’s what’s botherin’ you. Pat must’ve gotten off a couple of rounds at his attacker. I’d guess he got off those shots after his horse fell under him.”

  Case opened the gate of that pistol, turned the cylinder, saw two spent casings and four unfired cartridges. He handed the gun back to Beal. “One more question. Did Charles Connelly take his son’s body home?”

  “No. Well, that is...he carried it on his saddle horse to his place, then he put it into a wagon and fetched it along to town.”

  “It’s here now?”

  Beal nodded, beginning to look puzzled. “Over in the embalmin’ shed. Why?”

  “Can we see it?”

  Beal’s puzzlement increased. “What the hell for?” he asked. “It’s not very pretty to look at, and no matter what you fellows say, the boy is plumb dead.”

  “Can we see it, anyway?” reiterated Case.

  Beal returned young Connelly’s gun to th
e drawer, closed it, straightened around, and shrugged. “No law against it,” he muttered. “Come on.” He paused at the door, looked at Ben Albright, and said in an altered tone: “No gun play. There’ll be folks on the walks who’ll recognize you Texans. But no arguin’ or gun play. All right?”

  Ben, who had been looking curiously at Case, finally put up his gun. “If they don’t start anything,” he told Beal, “neither will we. But, Marshal, it’ll be up to you to see that they don’t.”

  Beal opened the door, stood briefly filling the doorway opening, running his assessing gaze up and down the roadway. He turned back to say: “Quiet as a tomb. Come along.”

  Lansing’s Ferry had few pedestrians abroad as the Texans emerged from Marshal Beal’s office. The lawman, wise in the ways of his calling, took a circuitous route to the easterly back alley so that even these minimal few settlers caught only glimpses of four men hurrying about in the night. He led them to a combination lean-to, where a top buggy stood, and a ramshackle shed. Here, he led them inside, lit a lamp, and stood back, pointing to a sheeted silhouette upon a dingy table. “That’s Pat,” he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bass Templeton looked disapprovingly as Case went up, removed the sheet, and stood gazing down upon the dead youth. Ben went forward, also. For a full minute they stood there, then Case turned, saying to Marshal Beal: “What did your village doctor say?”

  Beal, not looking particularly pleased with this situation, answered: “He told me that there bullet in Pat’s temple was what killed him. He also said when Pat’s horse fell, he nailed Pat under him breaking both his hips.”

  Case replaced the sheet, walked to the door, and opened it to pass outside. The others followed him. The four men then returned to Marshal Beal’s office. There, Ben Albright stated his determination to resume the search for Charles Connelly. Beal shook his head over this.

  “If you do that, Mister Albright, you’ll probably not find Charles Connelly and you’ll very likely run into one of my posses. Remember, they have orders to stop you, too.”

  Ben turned toward the rear door. “I’ll run that risk, Marshal,” he declared.

  Beal went along to the rear of his office with the three Texans. There, he opened the door and said: “Mister Albright, if I was you, I’d go back to my camp.” As Ben started past, Beal put out a hand to detain him. “The reason I’d do that, Mister Albright, is because although my riders have searched Lansing’s Ferry from top to bottom, they haven’t found any trace of Connelly, at all.” Beal let his hand drop back to his side. “Other riders have combed the land south, east, and west...still with no sign of Connelly and his friends.”

  “That,” said Ben sharply, “leaves only the north. Is that what you’re telling me, Beal, that you think Connelly may have gone to my camp?”

  “He went somewhere, Mister Albright. And he’s not anywhere around Lansing’s Ferry.”

  Case pushed past these two older men. He said irritatedly to Bass Templeton: “Come on, dammit. I think Beal’s probably right.”

  Templeton rushed along behind Case. They got back to their mounts a full minute ahead of Ben, were in fact mounting up when Ben came on ordering them to wait. Case ignored this.

  He spun up out of the arroyo, loping overland. Bass waited, but impatiently, until Albright was astride, then he too led out northward.

  They swept along in a strung-out line, saying nothing to each other until, near the Trinchera, they all came together. Then Ben went toward the creek, exclaiming: “If that damned marshal knew Connelly and his crew were attacking our camp all the time, I’m going to come back here and skin him alive!”

  “I don’t think he knew that,” Bass said, easing his horse over into the water. “I think what he meant was that Connelly must’ve gone north, because Beal’s riders couldn’t find him in any other direction.”

  Case hit the water, roweled his horse, and kept its head downstream. He did not make any attempt to join this back-and-forth conversation. He had his own notion, which was simply that, even if Connelly did attack the Texan camp, Ruben and those three settlers up there would keep him off. What inspired him to hurry though, was a fear that those three posse men Connelly had left at the camp might not wish to fight their own kind, or might be induced by Connelly to leave the Texan camp.

  They strung out again, continuing north, after the Trinchera crossing — Case in the lead, Bass Templeton next, and finally Ben Albright, looking grim and determined. They had progressed some two miles from the fording when Case drew rein to let his companions come up. He was sitting twisted in the saddle, looking back. On his right was the creek and its tangled creek-side growth. The moon was now up, slightly fatter than it had been the night before, aiding vision, and behind them lay the broad, silvery sweep of empty plain. Here, where the Trinchera made one of its cutbank bendings, water rushed with purposeful power against an eroded bank making a deep sound.

  Bass Templeton, twenty feet east of Case and riding forward, had just raised his head as though to speak, or to see something near the undergrowth, when a slashing burst of rifle flame blossomed a bright red from that direction. Bass’s hat sprang away like a frightened bird and his horse gave a tremendous bound, then fell, its rider plummeting limply on a long ten feet, and coming to rest in an awkward heap without moving.

  Ben let off a roar and fought his horse around. Case felt the chill breath of a near hit. As he too spun away westward, he drew and fired three times, fast, dumping those bullets into the thicket from where that murderous fire had emanated. It was probably the swiftness of this action that caused the next fusillade to go wide. Although the bullets sang close, neither Ben Albright nor Case Hyle were hit.

  They spurred desperately for two hundred yards, then slowed, coming together far out to ride onward another hundred yards before reining down to look back for Bass. Ben’s hard breathing was very audible in the abrupt silence.

  “They got him,” said Ben. “God-damned bushwhackers...they got Bass.”

  Case lit down with his reins in one hand and his saddle gun in the other. He knelt, dropped two slugs into the far underbrush by shooting high, then waited. There was no response to this fire. Ben came alongside him, also dismounted, his Winchester gripped in his left hand. In that uncertain light, his face was a smooth, deadly mask.

  “Hold ’em,” he snapped at Case. “Watch for them to break out of there...and hold ’em.”

  Case considered this. They were now only two, their enemies were no doubt greater in number. In addition, they were out upon the exposed plain. He thought of alternatives to Albright’s idea but found none he liked, so in the end he nodded agreement.

  A solitary, low shot came from over by the creek. It sang past into the pewter night. “Can’t see us,” muttered Albright. “Shooting in the dark.”

  Case kept his gaze upon that low-held gun. He had an idea that shot had been discharged to draw return fire so those hidden men could be sure where the Texans were.

  He also considered it likely that the gunman, whoever he was, was crawling clear of the brush and creeping forward. There would be no other reason he could accept for that man to be down that low. He settled his elbow upon one knee, snugged back his carbine, and waited.

  Two simultaneous shots came at them, one from the south along the creek and one from the north. Ben Albright nodded over this, saying: “Attempting to flank us, Case. One above and one below us. They’ll come out around, if they can.”

  “All right,” Case responded, “that accounts for at least three of them, but are there more?”

  Albright made no reply. He settled lower upon the ground, swinging his head far left and far right. The silence ran on, distantly broken by that swift flowing of the cutbank creek. Finally, Ben murmured: “Watch close.” Then he half turned to consider the run of prairie to the south. “Like a band of skulking redskins,” he muttered. “Or Yankee snip
ers.”

  Case waited, widening the scope of his vision until, with that inherent frontier vigilance that was bred into men such as he, the smallest movement stood forth. It was futile to listen for sounds because of the Trinchera’s wet rushing, but his steady vigilance was rewarded when a quick winking of dull-toned metal, dead ahead, showed the location where a man was crawling. Case went low over his carbine, concentrating upon that spot.

  Far southward and well away from the underbrush a gun flashed. The bullet sang high overhead, and promptly thereafter a second rifleman opened up from the north.

  Ben Albright swore with hard feeling. “Like I thought,” he said to Case. “Coming at us from both sides.”

  Case ignored this, kept his watch for that belly-crawling gunman, and as this settler gently raised up to shoulder his carbine, Case fired. The settler gave a loud scream, sprang high, and went over backward. Ben swung around at this, and elsewhere there were angry cries. Case levered his gun and waited, but that sniper lay without moving, his weapon thirty feet away and thrown there violently by a dying reflex.

  Case now placed their encircling enemies, and after a time also located a fourth man. He was behind them!

  “Ben, we can’t stay here,” Case announced. “One of them used the first shots to keep us from guessing what he was up to. Now, I heard a boot strike stone to the west, and that means he’s behind us.” Case cast loose from his saddle animal. “Come on,” he murmured, and led off. Ben Albright followed.

  They crawled eastward for several minutes, then halted to listen. The night was deathly still. They crawled on, encountered that sniper Case had shot, and paused beside him only to determine two things — that he was not Charles Connelly and that he was dead. Then they went past, still bearing eastward.

  Back where they had abandoned their horses a man’s rough voice yelled out in angry disappointment. Case shot Ben a look. “That’ll be the one who was sneaking up from the west. From the voice, I’d guess it was Connelly himself.”