Manhunt

by William W. Johnstone

  “She did send for me.” Frank shrugged. “I reckon I coulda treated her some better . . . back then.”

  “You know she married?”

  Morgan stared into his cup. “Yeah, I know. You told me that a long time ago. But you never told me she had a daughter.”

  “Didn’t figure it was any of my business.”

  “How old is she, this daughter?”

  “Mercy married Isaiah Monfore only a few weeks after you left town. He was just a young attorney then, new in town and without many prospects. The baby came sometime later—close enough it could go either way if that’s what you’re wonderin’.”

  Frank didn’t speak for a time. This was a lot of information to try and digest. He’d heard from Mercy Monfore a grand total of three times in the last two-plus decades. If the girl was his, why hadn’t she mentioned it?

  “She’s older than you’ll remember her,” Luke said interrupting his thoughts.

  “I’m getting a little long in the tooth myself.” Frank grinned.

  “Do you remember that soft way Mercy used to talk with that Southern belle drawl—like she was fresh off a plantation in Alabama?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, it’s as soft a drawl as ever and I believe her daughter has inherited it. If you can pass on such a thing as an accent.”

  Morgan felt uncomfortable talking anymore about Mercy and such things, especially on the heels of so many fresh thoughts of Dixie. He needed to change the subject.

  “What did you mean about how things are around here? Ever since I got the telegram from Mercy, all I hear is how something sinister is going on in Parker County.”

  Luke leaned on the table and wrapped both hands around his own coffee cup. “Remember when we was kids and all there was to worry about was getting scalped by Comanche or drownin’ in the Brazos River?”

  “Don’t forget the whiskey peddlers from Arkansas.”

  Luke took a drink of coffee to wash down the last of his oatmeal cookie. “The thing is, a man used to know who his enemies were. Nowadays it could be anybody—even someone you’ve known for years who puts the spurs to you.

  “The railroad wants to put a spur through the county seat so they can situate a stockyard. They’re tryin’ to decide between here and Ft. Worth. There are those who would kill to have it and others who are just as fiercely against it. The two sides have done everything short of declaring open warfare on each other.”

  Frank put down the coffee and rubbed a hand across a week’s worth of new beard. “I guess you’d be one of the ones all for it then. Stockyards in Parker County would sure make it easier for you to get your cattle to market.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Luke produced a corncob pipe with a short stem from his vest pocket. He tamped the bowl full of fresh tobacco, then used a burning splinter from the woodstove to puff it to life. Sweet smoke, the flavor of cherry wood, filled the dining room. He pointed at Frank with the pipe stem while he spoke.

  “A stockyard and a railroad would make things a hell of a lot easier, but I’m against it. Ft. Worth is plenty close for me. Cow towns just aren’t the kind of places to raise a family in my way of thinking. They bring in all sorts of riffraff.” He winked at Frank and put the pipe back in his mouth so he had to speak around it. “Too many of those damned cowboys and drifters. Besides that, you know how I like the trail. A week or so just seems like a vacation.”

  “I see what you mean.” Morgan drained the last of his coffee. It was good to get some of the real homemade stuff. “There are two sides to this, but none of it should be enough to get people’s blood boiling.”

  “It’s always about money,” Luke said. “The land the railroad is considering is smack on a chunk of otherwise worthless rock and snake pasture owned by an old patriarch named Silas Crowder.”

  “Never heard of him,” Frank said.

  “You wouldn’t have. He moved in with his family about ten years after you took to the trail. A real rank man, that one—meaner than a rabid badger. He runs his sons, and everybody else for that matter, like he’s the Almighty himself. If the railroad chooses Parker County, he stands to double his net worth overnight—and he’s already worth quite a bit. For some folks it’s just a debate. For Crowder, it’s enough to kill over.”

  “So what’s all the fuss about if the railroad hasn’t even chosen where they wanta put it yet?”

  “Parker County has decided to vote on the issue to see if we will even allow the railroad to consider us. You’d think we were talkin’ secession again the way everybody’s worked into a lather over this.”

  “Anybody on the opposing side as vocal or stand to lose as much as this Crowder?”

  Luke shrugged. “There’s all kind of good folks besides me against the sudden boom the stockyards would bring. The Baptist church has spoken out strongly in favor of keeping Parker County stockyard-and sin-free. Course they’re against near everything—dancin’, gamblin’, and even liquor by the drink. So far no one of them have gone anywhere past a little fisticuffs. Mercy’s husband, Judge Monfore, is the most outspoken of what everybody’s callin’ the anti crowd. Crowder’s youngest boy, Tom, has got himself in a speck of trouble misusing one of our local girls. He ended up in jail and Crowder’s makin’ it seem like it’s all about the stockyards.”

  “How about the sheriff?” Frank filled Luke in on the incident with Mrs. Neff in Springtown.

  When he was finished, Luke whistled low, under his breath. “That’s not good, Frankie. Whitehead’s a bad one. Crowder backed his campaign and helped him get into office. He’s in the old man’s back pocket, that’s for certain. If I was you, I’d make sure that Ranger friend of mine was with me when I went in to explain everything. Whitehead’s the type to shoot you, then figure out a reason later.” Luke’s eyes narrowed and he began to nibble at the corner of his thick mustache. “He’s smart, Frankie. He’s smart and he’s got a lot to lose. Besides that, he’s meaner than you by a long shot.”

  “Meaner than me?” Morgan wiggled his toes again and grinned. “That ain’t likely—but even if it is, first he has to beat me to the draw.”

  12

  Ronald Purnell tugged at his high collar and wrung his hands together in his lap. He tried to keep them quiet, but found it hard to sit still. From the time he was a fidgety little boy, Purnell had been uncomfortable around people with money. His own family hadn’t had much, and he’d always felt like the rest of the world looked down on him because of it.

  He knew the Crowders were well-to-do ranchers with enough money to buy him ten times over. Money wasn’t the only thing about the family that set the lawyer’s nerves on edge. Old Silas Crowder had a reputation for staring people to death with his one good eye. The story was that a black crow had swooped down out of a crepe-myrtle bush and pecked out the old man’s eye. The way Purnell heard it, Silas Crowder caught the bird and strangled it to death with his bare hands to try and get his eye back. Local legend had it that Crowder cooked up the offending bird and ate it for supper. He was a hard man—and hard men with money were the worst.

  Crowder land stretched nearly to Tarrant County. Except for the poor parcel that the railroad wanted to buy, the whole place was covered with fat cattle grazing on the grassy hills.

  Native grasses sprang up in a vast blue-green carpet, with bright patches of bluebonnets scattered between groves of post oak and cedar. The land looked bright and alive.

  The ranch house was a different story. From the outside, it looked all but abandoned. Paint peeled and split on the wood siding. Several weathered boards on the front porch had creaked badly when Purnell arrived, and he’d been afraid he might fall through. A large piece of oilcloth replaced a broken windowpane in one of the upper dormers. Faded shutters hung on by only one hinge. Except for the thin curdle of smoke coming out of the crumbling stone chimney and the telltale glow of lamplight through the dusty windows, the dilapidated house looked like it was about to fall down on its own foundatio
n.

  The lawyer supposed it was because the place was kept up by the old man and his boys without the benefit of a feminine touch.

  In the parlor, Purnell found himself surrounded by the tintype photographs of a half-dozen dour members of the Crowder family. The women, dressed in high collars and severe hairstyles, looked as stone-faced and dangerous as the bearded men in Confederate gray. A layer of dust did nothing to dull the harsh stares coming from each of the stern portraits.

  Cobwebs hung unnoticed by the all-male household in every corner of the high-ceilinged room. The hardwood floor in the parlor was cloudy and streaked from a lack of waxing. It was uncluttered, if not swept, but a silver spoon, encrusted with particles of some food Purnell couldn’t identify, hid just under the edge of a well-worn leather couch. No female would have abided such a thing.

  Mrs. Crowder had once been a beautiful woman from what Purnell understood—shy and withdrawn around others, she’d always kept a tidy house.

  Now he could hear her quiet babbling through the peeling white door that connected the parlor to the kitchen. The incomprehensible noises sounded like a gurgling infant.

  Purnell jumped like a guilty child when the door suddenly swung open.

  Pete, the oldest Crowder boy, stood there staring and let the door swing shut behind him. He had hard brown eyes and a thick brow that ran together into one fuzzy line above his pug nose. He was ham-fisted and clumsy, with a lumbering walk that shook the house to the timbers with each plodding step.

  “Pa says you should come in the kitchen and talk to him in there.”

  Purnell swallowed hard. He had hoped to avoid this. Mrs. Crowder was known for throwing tantrums now and again. When she did, it embarrassed the old man. When Silas Crowder was embarrassed, there was no telling what he might do.

  Pete stomped impatiently, driving up a small puff of dust from the threadbare rug at his feet. “My pa wants to see you in the kitchen so you best get yourself movin’,” he said. “He don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

  Purnell gathered up his hat and coat and followed Pete into the kitchen. He tried to keep his eyes off the swaying, gurgling Mrs. Crowder, and focused instead on the old man who sat at a long oak table feeding—or attempting to feed—his wife some sort of cornmeal mush.

  Silas Crowder was dressed in tan canvas britches and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal a thick rug of hair on his massive forearms. The hair on his head and face had gone white as ash, and was swept back as if he’d been riding into a hard wind without a hat. A black leather patch covered his left eye. A bit of jagged pink scar was still visible underneath. His right eye remained free to burn a hole straight though Purnell’s chest if that was what he decided to do. Luckily for the lawyer, the old man was in a talkative mood.

  “Having trouble getting her to eat this evening,” Crowder said without looking up. He used a small wooden spoon to push the mush into Mrs. Crowder’s mouth. Purnell could hear it thumping against her clenched teeth.

  The poor woman sat mute in her straight-backed wooden chair. Cold, gray eyes stared blankly into space, but her mouth was clenched shut in a tight line. Her lifeless yellow hair hung damp from a fresh washing around frail shoulders. Purnell noticed a large galvanized tub beside the woodstove where Crowder must have bathed her. Bits of the mush dribbled down her chin and fell on the ragged red woolen shawl draped across her lap. He thought how much smarter it would have been to attempt to feed the poor woman before trying to bathe her—but kept the idea to himself.

  There were worn spots around the uprights on the chair back, as if someone had been tied there with a rope. Purnell looked away and willed himself not to think about such a thing. He was certain things went on inside this house he did not want to know about.

  “What did His Honor have to say?” Crowder spit the words the way his wife spit out her mush. He set the spoon on the table and used a cloth napkin to wipe away the mush on his wife’s chin. Some of it had fallen down onto her bosom, and Crowder blocked the lawyer’s view with his broad shoulders while he cleaned her there.

  Purnell coughed and scuffed at the hardwood floor with the toe of his shoe. “Mr. Crowder,” he said, turning his head slightly like a dog that expected to be hit. “The judge will not give an inch. He’s firmly entrenched with his own views.”

  Crowder drummed strong fingers on the table and ran a rough hand through his thick beard. It was flecked with the grainy remnants of yellow mush Mrs. Crowder must have spit in his face.

  “Entrenched, you say? That figures. I can’t say as I expected anything different from the pompous old son of a bitch.”

  Purnell found himself staring at the pitiful woman, and quickly cut his eyes back to the old man before he was caught. Staring was enough to get a man killed. “I can promise you, I’ll give your boy the best defense possible.”

  Crowder waved that off with his dirty towel. “Tommy would still hang.” The old man looked up suddenly, his good eye focused sharply on Purnell. “You know that, don’t you? He’d hang because he’s a damned idiot. Sometimes, I think it’s a blessing that my Rebecca is unaware of how truly ignorant her boys are.”

  As if she’d recognized her name, Mrs. Crowder began to buzz, pursing her lips together and spewing mush in a sort of forced hum. She rocked back and forth slowly in her seat. Her dull eyes stared at nothing.

  “I tell you what I’d like to do,” Crowder went on, seemingly oblivious to his wife’s antics. “I’d like to whip him bloody for that fool behavior—especially right now with so much at stake. But I can’t let him hang. That would break his poor mother’s heart for sure whenever she does come around.”

  Pete took a step forward. He was braver than Purnell when it came to his father—but just barely. “You want that me and Pony should go and bust Tommy outta jail?”

  The old man shook his head. “Any other time and that would be fine. But not now. We need to be quieter about it all. We gotta convince the judge it would be in his best interests to let the boy go. This family has too much riding on the stockyard vote to stir the whole town up with a jailbreak.”

  Mrs. Crowder began to smack her mouth like she was ready for some more mush. At first Purnell thought she might be smiling. If she had anything to smile about, he couldn’t see what it was.

  The old man took up his wooden spoon again and stabbed it into the bowl of congealed cornmeal mush. “Judge Monfore, he’s got hisself a daughter, don’t he?”

  Purnell nodded. “He does.” Deep down he’d known it would come to this. He carried so many terrible secrets as a lawyer, sometimes he thought he might burst at the seams. “But Mr. Crowder, I . . .”

  Crowder looked up at his oldest son. “You know where this high-and-mighty judge lives?”

  Pete shrugged. “I can find it.”

  “Purnell will point it out to you. Now listen to me, Pete. Try not to hurt the girl if you can help it. Once you have her, you and Pony carry her out to the line cabin along Little Cottonwood Creek.”

  Purnell took a deep breath. He attempted to choose his words carefully to keep from getting shot. “Mr. Crowder, I don’t see how I can be a party to a kidnapping. If I’m in jail, I won’t be able to help with Tom’s trial.”

  Crowder laughed out loud. His wife laughed too, a forced, mechanical giggle, as if she were trying to copy the old man.

  “When we have the Monfore girl, there won’t be any need of a trial.” He turned his attention back to his cackling wife. “Now get moving. Both of you.”

  Purnell opened his mouth to continue his protest, but Pete glared at him from under a bushy forehead.

  For whatever reason, Mrs. Crowder chose that moment to begin a song. She clapped her hands on the table in front of her. Her eyes stared blankly into space, but she crowed the words in a raucous monotone chant.

  “Oh, do you remember? Do you remember? How you used to love me true?” She’d been holding some mush in her mouth, and it dribbled down the front of her face. “Do y
ou remember? Oh, do you remember? I do. I do. . . .”

  Old Man Crowder sat slumped in his chair, wooden spoon in hand, staring forlornly at the pathetic figure of his damaged wife.

  Purnell stood dumbfounded, not knowing what to say or do. He felt a pang of pity for the old man. No one deserved this, even someone as hard and cruel as Silas Crowder.

  “We need to leave them alone. Let’s go,” Pete whispered. His voice was tight with urgency. He kept his eyes toward the floor. “Now!”

  Old Man Crowder put his face in his hands and began to sob. His shoulders shook with grief while his wife kept up her song. Purnell tore his gaze away, turned on his heels, and fled through the door to the parlor behind Pete.

  “Pa don’t like it when anyone sees him get all down like that.” Pete shot an accusing glare at Purnell, as if the whole incident was his fault. “He don’t like it one bit. Now move your ass. We got us a girl to steal.”

  Purnell followed slowly, shuffling along without any will of his own, like people he’d seen in an opium daze. He was clinging fast to a runaway train that was moving much too fast for him to jump off—at least not without breaking his neck. This was all wrong.

  Watching Mrs. Crowder’s fits had turned the lawyer’s insides into jelly, and he felt a pressing need to visit the outhouse.

  13

  Judge Isaiah Monfore made it his habit to work late on Wednesdays because his wife attended her weekly women’s auxiliary meeting on that particular evening.

  Although Victoria got along well enough with her mother and enjoyed lively debates with her father, she guarded her time home alone on those evenings like a precious treasure. For as long as she could remember, she had preferred her own company to that of anyone else. She’d yet to find a man who interested her remotely enough to make the prospect of marriage seem at all appetizing.

  Often, when she was out for a ride by herself, she had to fight the urge to just keep riding—if only to see what was over the next rise. It wasn’t the dangers that kept her from leaving, or any sort of fear of the unknown. If anything, these were the things that beckoned to her the loudest. The only thing Victoria Monfore feared was hurting her parents. They’d be heartbroken if she just wandered away the way she dreamt of doing.