Manhunt

by William W. Johnstone

  Whitehead took up his reins. “Neither will I.”

  Ferguson relaxed and turned his horse back down the Poolville road. “Sheriff, that’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

  37

  Jared Crowder opened the door and gave Purnell a drawn look. The whole damned family had that same pitiful, used-up look, Purnell thought, but especially this one.

  “Yes?” The boy sighed as if he expected bad news was always waiting just outside his door.

  Purnell was out of breath from a hard ride and he found it hard to speak. “I need to talk to your father. It’s urgent.”

  “He’s in the kitchen with my mama.” The boy looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. Purnell knew how he felt. Jared stepped back and motioned him into the parlor. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  The lawyer took a seat in the chair across from the tattered sofa. There was a small writing desk next to him with a dusty coal-oil lamp and a pile of papers. He turned the knob on the lamp to add a little light to the otherwise dreary room. The rows of photographs along the wall took on a frightening appearance in the long shadows cast by the smoky glass chimney.

  Purnell wondered how he was going to break the news to the old man that most of his family was dead. Three boys in one night. He’d watched Frank Morgan put a bullet in Pony’s head, and he’d seen Tom’s body as he fled the Monfore house. He could only guess what had happened to Pete, but he’d heard the Ranger brought the girl back and the only live prisoner was Reed Whitehead.

  Silas Crowder came out of the kitchen drying his hands on a frayed dishrag made from an old pair of red flannels.

  “Have you got ’em both?” His white beard flowed back around his round face. In the flickering yellow light he almost looked like he was smiling—until Purnell opened his mouth to speak.

  “I . . . uh . . . There’s been a new development. . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear about any damned developments,” Crowder fumed. “You get your ass back out there and bring in those women. I want my boy out of jail. . . .” Anything that ever resembled good nature fled from Crowder’s face. He glared down at Purnell.

  The lawyer hung his head and stared at his lap. Out of the corner of his eye, he searched for an avenue of escape.

  “What?” Crowder bellowed. He threw the rag on the floor and stomped up. “You sniveling little bastard. What is your important development?”

  Purnell blurted it all out like a penned-up sickness. He wanted to purge himself of all the news at once.

  “Someone let Tom out of jail earlier tonight, Mr. Crowder. It wasn’t part of your plan, but somebody let him out and now he’s dead. A man named Frank Morgan killed him. The same man killed Pony and R.D. We were there to take Mrs. Monfore, but he showed up and killed them both before we could finish. I only just escaped with my own life.”

  “But you did—escape.” Crowder’s face was as flat and expressionless as one of the yellowed photographs on the wall behind him. “And Pony’s dead?”

  Purnell could only nod. “I’m not sure what happened to Pete.” He was certainly dead, but the lawyer saw no reason in telling the old man now.

  Just then, Jared came in from the kitchen with his mother. She was wearing the same yellow dress she’d had on the last time Purnell saw her.

  “Everything all right, Pa?”

  Crowder helped his wife take a seat on the sofa. He swayed a little on his feet, then took the spot beside her. “Jared, Mr. Purnell here says Tom and Pony went and got their fool selves killed tonight. For all he knows, Pete’s done in as well. I need you to hitch up the wagon and go into town and fetch the bodies for me.”

  “Yessir,” Jared sighed as if he had known all along this was going to happen and the recovery duty would one day fall to him. He took his hat from a peg on the wall and went out the door without looking back.

  “It was a tricky plan to begin with,” Purnell said, putting his hands on his knees to stand.

  Crowder motioned for him to stay seated. “I’m obliged to you for comin’ all the way out here to tell us about our boys.” His face had become blank—like his wife’s.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Mr. Crowder.”

  The man shook his head slowly back and forth. His eyes peered right through Purnell as if he wasn’t even there. “Keep your seat if you don’t mind. I got some legal papers I need you to take a look at.” Crowder rose, patting his wife’s shoulder. “I keep ’em in a box in the other room. With the boys gone, I need to change my will so Jared will get it all.” He muttered as he half-shuffled out of the parlor, more to himself than to Purnell. “Got to settle our accounts. I have to make certain Rebecca is taken care of.”

  Purnell knew he should get up and run right then and there. There was no reason to stay. Crowder owed him money, that was a fact, but in his present mental state, the old man was more likely wanting to kill him than pay him.

  The lawyer felt for the pistol at his side and gave it a reassuring pat on the wooden grip. He’d not fired the gun in years. When he had, it had only been to scare some cows out of the middle of the road so he could pass with his buggy. He knew he could have never taken Frank Morgan, but an old man like Crowder, that was a different story. Without his sons around to do all his dirty work, what was he anyway? Nothing more than a pitiful old man with a crazy wife.

  Alone with the blank-faced Mrs. Crowder, Purnell couldn’t keep from staring. She sat no more than ten feet away. It was impossible not to see the thin trickle of clear drool that ran down her chin. Her hands were relaxed in her lap, but she rocked back and forth slowly in time with the tick of her head.

  Purnell wondered if she was aware of anything around her—if she’d somehow understood when he’d told her husband three of her sons were dead.

  He jumped when he heard the creak of Crowder’s footsteps as he came back in to the parlor. Any of the bravado he’d conjured up fled as the steps drew closer.

  The old man was no more animated than when he left, and hardly took time to look at him when he dropped a pile of crumpled and yellow papers on the small desk next to the lamp.

  “My will’s in there somewhere,” Crowder grunted. “Look it over and then you and I can settle up.”

  Purnell took a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses out of his vest pocket and took up the papers. Most were yellowed by time; some were so brittle they fell apart in his hands when he touched them. The top few pages appeared to be handwritten letters from Crowder’s wife. Love letters written in a different time, when the two were young and vibrant.

  “Mr. Crowder, I think you may have given me the wrong set of papers. . . .” He glanced up over the rim of his glasses and gasped. “Wh . . . what are you doing?”

  Crowder sat next to his wife, a wan look of fatigue crossing his ashen face. The long-barreled black pistol in his steady hand was pointed directly at Purnell.

  “Don’t be fooled by this rusty old horse pistol,” the old man said. “Still shoots as good as it did when I was makin’ my grubstake with it.”

  “Mr. Crowder.” Purnell licked his lips and tried to think of something to say. He thought of the pistol at his own side, but it seemed foolishness to think he could outdraw someone who already had a pistol pointed at him. “Please, let’s think all this through.”

  “Please?” Crowder bellowed. It was the first emotion he’d shown since his outburst right after Purnell had delivered the news. “Is that all you can say is please? If you’d at least show a hint of backbone, I’d . . .”

  “You’d what?” Purnell stammered.

  “I’d nothin’,” the old man spit and fired the pistol.

  The gun barked with a deafening roar and sulfurous smoke filled the small parlor. Purnell felt a terrible blow as if he’d been stomped by a mule. He instinctively put a hand to his belly. When he brought it up again it was covered in dark, almost black blood.

  The horrible realization that he’d been shot washed over him slowly. Oddly enough he felt
no pain, but when he tried to get to his feet, he found he had no feeling at all below his waist.

  “This thing’s a brute,” Crowder said, waving the gun around in front of him to help clear away the smoke. “Big ol’ chunk of lead likely tore your whole spine out.”

  Purnell couldn’t speak, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open. The old man fired again. Purnell flinched, but heard the crash of glass and realized it was the lamp and not him that received the second round.

  Coal oil from the lamp’s reservoir covered the pile of papers on the desk and flames jumped up immediately, spreading to the carpet and across the floor.

  Crowder sat beside his wife and gazed into the flames. “Everythin’ I worked for has done and gone. Jared ain’t got no head for business and no stomach for the gritty work. He can sell the land. That ought to be enough for him alone.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

  Purnell could see that his pants legs were on fire, could smell the odor of his own burning flesh, but he couldn’t feel a thing.

  “No one’s left who’s tough enough to take care of my Rebecca,” Crowder droned on. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but the boys are dead and they’ll surely put me in prison or worse.”

  Mrs. Crowder continued to rock slowly, oblivious to the flames at her feet. Purnell looked on in horror as Silas Crowder kissed his wife gently on the cheek, then shot her in the head. The old man turned before he could see what he’d done to his poor wife. He saluted with the smoking horse pistol before putting it to his own gray temple.

  “I’ll see you in Hell,” he said and pulled the trigger.

  Purnell gasped to keep from crying at his situation. He wondered if Jared would see the smoke, but decided the boy was likely long gone. The old man had given him plenty of time to get down the road. By the time he got back, the dry old house would be nothing but ashes, and him along with it.

  The lawyer blinked his eyes to look through the smoke, and tried to make out the slumped bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Crowder. Flames already licked at the blood-soaked couch.

  He hadn’t thought he’d go out like this. He’d always believed he might have been hung for his crimes, but he didn’t think he’d burn to death. At least this way he wouldn’t have to face the condemning eyes of the judge.

  He thought again of the pistol at his side. The flames moved up his chair and scorched his arms and face. He wished he had the guts to put the gun to use the way Crowder had.

  Purnell’s hand rested on the wooden grip and he began to sob. He just couldn’t do it. The smoke was so thick he couldn’t see anyway. It wouldn’t be long.

  38

  Judge Monfore was as tough as a fighting rooster and, though he still had trouble walking, refused to miss the county vote on the stockyard proposition the following Thursday. His head remained bandaged and his right eye was swollen shut. He had to lean on Mercy to cast his vote at the post office on Spring Street.

  Rance Whitehead had not been seen in town since the rescue, so Morgan and Beaumont both stayed nearby and kept a watchful eye on the Monfore family. Stories and rumors about Whitehead ran through the area like a stampeding herd after his wife came covered with blood and bruises driving into town in her buggy. The battered woman refused to talk to anyone about what happened except the Reverend Armstrong, and he was one of the few in the county who could keep a confidence.

  Some folks said Whitehead had left the area to go back to Galveston, where he was from. Others swore they’d seen him sleeping in this barn or that, acting mad as a cow on loco weed.

  Morgan could believe the man had gone crazy. It wasn’t too big a leap to think any man who’d lost everything was only one short step from losing his mind as well. Frank knew that all too well. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe Whitehead had gone very far. No, he had a score to settle, and if Frank knew any thing about human nature, Rance Whitehead was not the kind of man to let a job like that go unfinished just because he went insane.

  “Mr. Morgan,” the judge said as he stepped down from the post office steps. “Would you do us the honor of allowing me to buy you and your friend a decent lunch? I have a small proposition I’d like to pose to you.”

  Monfore blinked his open eye and rested against his wife’s shoulder, smiling a sincere smile. Frank wondered if the man had any idea of the things that had gone on between him and Mercy all those years ago.

  “Come, Frank, you simply must accompany us to lunch.” Mercy smiled, her voice dripping with Southern charm. She looked up at her husband. “He is a judge, you know. I’m not certain you’re allowed to turn him down on a request like this.”

  “We’d be honored,” Beaumont piped up from behind them. He was hand in hand with Victoria. In the hours after the rescue, the two had hardly spent a minute apart.

  This is going to be one hell of an uncomfortable lunch, Morgan thought to himself, but he couldn’t think of any way around it.

  * * *

  “You know,” the judge said a short time later over a bowl of noodle soup, “of course I have my views, but I’m not so much concerned about the outcome of this vote as I was about the dialogue that led up to it.”

  “You could have fooled me two weeks ago, Papa.” Victoria sat across the table between Morgan and Beaumont. “You were . . .”

  “Victoria!” Mercy lowered her eyes to get as menacing a look as she could muster—which wasn’t very menacing at all. “Your father has been through a great strain. Why don’t we keep the conversation light for a change?”

  The girl opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. She smiled softly and put her hand on Beaumont’s, which rested on top of the table beside his soup bowl. It was an extremely forward move, but no one—least of all Beaumont—said anything in protest.

  “Morgan.” Judge Monfore pointed with an empty soup spoon. “I need to be honest with you. When I learned my wife sent for you I had grave reservations to be sure. I’ve heard stories about you that would curdle a decent man’s blood.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Morgan said.

  The judge put down his spoon. “Now you let me finish. We judges aren’t used to being interrupted. I heard you were a hard killer with a quick temper and ruthless personality.”

  “Sorry to interrupt again, sir, but all those things are true to a degree,” Frank said. He wasn’t upset, but he wasn’t about to be ordered around by a judge anywhere but a courtroom.

  “Well, that’s just the point, man.” Isaiah Monfore pounded the table hard enough to make Mercy jump. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but those are the qualities we need around here, provided they reside in the heart of an otherwise honest and law-abiding man.”

  The judge felt around inside the breast pocket of his frock coat and pulled out a silver six-pointed star. He set the badge on the table between them. “Morgan, what would you say if I offered you a job? Now that Whitehead has stuck his foot in the sty, so to speak, we are in need of a capable sheriff.”

  “I appreciate this vote of confidence, Your Honor.” Frank was already shaking his head. “But I’m not interested. I don’t really need a job.”

  “Damn it, man.” The judge pounded the table again. The badge and all the soup bowls bounced in unison. It was easy to see the man wished he had his gavel in hand the way he kept banging on things. “Parker County was your home once. Don’t you ever think about settling down and giving something back?”

  Morgan shrugged. “You said it yourself, Judge. I’m a hard man—but I am honest—and to be honest, I’m just not interested. You got good men aplenty around here who would make you a fine sheriff.” He chanced another glance at Mercy, and caught her looking sadly at him. She, of all people, knew what he was going to say. “The fact is, I was planning to move on this afternoon.”

  Monfore nudged the silver star forward an inch with his knuckle. His voice grew quiet and sincere. “I’m asking you to reconsider. The people around here could use a man like . . .”

  He was interrupted by a com
motion out in the street. Beaumont was first out of his chair and to the front window in the café.

  “It’s Whitehead,” the Ranger said over his shoulder. “And he’s buzzin’ like a stomped rattler.”

  Rance Whitehead looked like he’d been dragged through a mud bank along the Brazos River by a runaway horse. A jagged purple gash, crusted with dried blood, creased his right cheek from the corner of his mouth to his ear. His dark hair was matted and filthy across a furrowed brow as he stood hatless in the bright noonday sun.

  “You reckon his wife did that to him?” Beaumont whispered into the glass.

  “Morgan!” Whitehead’s voice was a hoarse screech that held the jagged edge of broken glass. It sounded as though he’d been yelling at the top of his lungs for hours. “Frank Morgan!” he said again as he stalked down the empty street. Everyone with any sense at all had long since found somewhere else to be. “Morgan, you stinkin’ bastard. I know you’re in there somewhere. Are you gonna get out here so I can square with you?” The sheriff’s eyes raged with the predatory fury of a wolf on the hunt.

  Beaumont watched him from the window. “He’s been through the mill, that one has. Look at that. His shirt’s about ripped to shreds. I reckon those stories folks are tellin’ about his wife and him having a knock-down-drag-out are true enough.”

  “Frank Morgan!” Whitehead croaked again. He was less than a half a block away now. “Moooorgan! I’m gonna start taking heads off everybody I lay eyes on until you get your worthless ass out in this street!”

  The Ranger hitched up his gun belt and released a deep breath. “Well,” he said matter-of-factly. “I reckon I better get out there and take care of this.”

  Frank watched lines of fear streak across Victoria’s face as Beaumont drew his Colt and calmly checked the cylinder. The gun clicked quietly as he turned to see that each chamber was loaded. He showed no sign of apprehension.

  Outside, Whitehead stood alone under the blazing sun and continued to rant and rail into the windless air.