by Jory Sherman
“Why?”
“Because, Jed Brand, what I’m going to ask you to do has to be done in secret. Just between you and me. Even Judge Harrison doesn’t know anything about this. Neither does Tom Smith nor anybody else. And you cannot tell a soul, all right?”
“I guess so. What is it?”
“Jed, I want you to ride the owlhoot trail. I want Colter to think you’re being hunted the same as he is. He might even ask you to join him. Now, I’ll be following you and I’ll give you help where I can. But you’re on your own as far as Colter is concerned. And, as an outlaw, you must stay clear of the law at all costs. That means you’re going to have to sleep in roach-infested flophouses, wander the West like a beggar, and act as if there was a price on your head.”
“There is a price on my head.”
“And it’s going to get bigger. Starting today. Any questions?”
“Lester Amory thinks Colter is heading for Waco.”
“So do I. And that’s where you’ll be going tomorrow. Now, I’ve got a hotel room for you, money, clothes, food for the trip. Your horse is out back, with your saddle on it, your rifle, and your saddlebags. I’ll give you back your pistol when we leave here by the back way. You go to Waco, and you find Colter. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Will I see you there?”
“I don’t know. If you find Colter, you will. Are you with me in this?”
Jed looked up at Garner’s face, trying to read any deception that might be in his eyes or on his features. The marshal was asking a lot of him.
“My mother—”
“Jed, you can’t even tell her. From now on you’re an outlaw. And only you and I know that you really aren’t. It’s got to stay that way.”
Jed stood up when Garner offered his hand to seal their agreement. He stared at the outstretched hand for a long moment.
Finally, he shook it.
“Welcome to the Owlhoot Trail, Jed Brand,” United States Marshal Lucas Garner said. “It’s a lonely trail. It’s a trail through hell.”
CHAPTER
29
THE ROOM JED TOOK IN ABILENE WAS AT THE DROver’s Cottage, under a different name that Garner had registered him under earlier that day. He rode there the back way, his pistol in his saddlebags so that he adhered to Smith’s “No Gun” law. There was a small livery in back of the hotel where he left Jubal, who had been glad to see him again. He gave the horse corn and oats, saw to it that he had plenty of water in his trough. He did not have to check into the hotel since Garner had given him his room key. Jed just carried his saddlebags and rifle through the back door and up to his room on the second floor.
He found new clothes there, and found that he could take a hot bath down the hall. When he undressed, the two letters fell out of his shirt. He picked them up and laid them on the bed. He wanted a hot bath more than anything.
When he took off his boots, he placed the money he had hidden there atop the bed and added the fifty dollars Garner had given him. He would be able to give his mother a tidy sum when he got back home. He had made Garner promise to see to it that Wilbur Simpson was exonerated in the bank robbery. Garner had agreed.
Jed soaked long in the tub, letting the heat from the water seep through his flesh to his bones. He felt the weariness wash away in the suds, along with the grime and dust that had covered him on the trip to Abilene in the jail wagon. He washed his hair, for the first time in months, and, after he dried himself, he started breaking in his new clothes, good denim trousers, a light chambray shirt, even new socks of woven cotton. When he was finished, he felt like a new man. Except he knew that he was still a wanted man.
He looked at the letters lying on the bed. He picked up the one he hadn’t read yet, sat down at a table by the window and opened it, his senses bristling with anticipation as if the paper were magnetized.
He glanced down at the signature and his heart seemed to jump in his chest, skip a beat or two. He shook his head in disbelief.
Dear Jed:
I saw your mother at church last Sunday and asked her where you were. I had not seen you sneaking around here in a long time. She told me that you were in jail, accused of murdering someone, including your brother. She said the charges were false and that you would be coming back home soon.
I have missed you and I know you are not guilty of any crime. You are too sweet to kill or harm anyone. I know you have watched me. I hope when you come back you will ask my father if we can talk. We can sit on the porch or ride in his buggy some evening.
I have been writing some poetry and trying my hand at painting. I like to do both. When I see you I will show you what I’ve been doing.
I hope you do not mind that I’m writing you. Your mother, dear soul, said you would not. I just wanted you to know that I believe in your innocence, as does your mother, and I look forward to seeing you again. You do not have to sneak around to see me or talk to me, dear Jed. I hold a fondness in my heart for you, if I may be so bold.
Affectionately,
Felicia
Jed’s heart beat fast when he read the last words. Affectionately. That meant that she liked him. And she knew that he had been watching her from afar. Now her face came back into focus. Reading her letter had made him long for her once again and remember her sitting on the porch, or serving supper to her parents in the evening. He lifted the paper to his nose and sniffed it.
He closed his eyes and smelled the sweet perfume. Lilacs, he thought. Some kind of fragrant flower. The scent made his heart ache for her. Did he dare to see her face-to-face when he returned home? He could offer her little, or nothing. He was still considered an outlaw. And he could not explain to her that he was really innocent and working for the U.S. government. He had made a promise to Garner that he would not reveal their arrangement.
He put the letter away and sat there, looking out the window. He could smell the cornfields, picked clean now, and see the wheat stubble all golden in the distance, and the cabins and dwellings of the town close by, with people in them, strangers, Kansans who could not read his heart or know that he was not a murderer.
It was going to be hard, he knew. Garner had told him that he would be chased, shot at, cursed, and hunted down like an animal.
Until he got Silas Colter. Only then would his name be cleared. Only then would he be free.
Jed left the next morning, before first light. He saddled up Jubal in the dark, with only a lantern for light, a lantern with the wick turned down low. The horse whickered the whole time Jed was cinching him up, pawing the ground with impatience.
“You know we’re going home, boy,” Jed whispered. “Don’t you?”
Jubal tossed his head and snorted, his rubbery nostrils spouting a thin spray of steam.
Before Jed blew out the lantern, he saw a piece of paper on the ground. He picked it up and read it, a grim expression on his face. He folded the flyer and stuck it under his shirt. He wanted to look at it again in the daylight, when he was far from Abilene, heading south to Waco.
He rode out onto the deserted street. Somewhere, a rooster crowed and he saw bullbats with the silver dollars on their wings flapping overhead, snaring insects out of the air. As he rode beyond the town, past the wheat stubble fields, a gaudy cock pheasant flushed with a whirring of wings and sailed over the gray fields, gliding, finally, out of sight. His heart pumped with a feeling of exhilaration.
He thought of his mother and of Felicia Stevens. Both were waiting for him. That made him feel good.
He would not think of Colter yet. Not this fine September morning with the sun just beginning to push up over the horizon, lighting the far clouds with golden rays. After the sun was full up, and Jubal was walking at a brisk pace, his tail flicking at flies, he pulled out the flyer in his shirt and looked at it again.
He read the legend in bold black letters:
WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
FOR MURDER
JEDEDIAH “JED” BRAND
And, be
low the woodcut of his bearded face, there was more, and it was in a bigger type than the top part. Jed felt of his jaw. It was smooth and clean, for he had shaved off the beard.
REWARD $500.00
Jed crumpled up the flyer in his hand and tossed it down on the road. Jubal shied at the wad of paper as it struck the ground.
Jed laughed.
“Hey, Jubal, I ought to turn myself in and collect the reward, give it to my ma. What do you think of that?”
Jubal whickered in his throat as if he understood.
Jed stood up in the stirrups and turned around to look back at Abilene. The houses had all disappeared. But he could see thin tendrils of smoke rising from the chimneys, thin and dark in the airless morning. And, soon, too, these disappeared as Jed and Jubal set forth that day on the Owlhoot Trail toward an uncertain destination.
