Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Kane tried to speak, but his tangled words sputtered to outraged silence on his lips and he fell silent. He swallowed hard, then tried again. “Mister, that’s out-an’-out robbery.”

  Young shrugged. “Suit yerself.” His smile was unpleasant. “Maybe that iron wagon will float accrost, but I doubt it.”

  Kane lurched back in the saddle, rage in his eyes. “Mister, get haulin’ on the rope of that scow and take us across for one-fifty or get a bullet in the belly. The choice is your’n.”

  “Figured you might say something like that, Marshal, an’ that’s why my woman is over there at the cabin with a Sharps .50 aimed right at your brisket.”

  Kane turned his head and saw an Indian woman wearing Cheyenne braids at the door of Young’s ramshackle cabin. He’d been telling the truth about the Sharps, and the woman was holding it to her shoulder as though she knew how to use it.

  “We had you pegged as a troublemaker the first time you crossed,” the fat man said, a smug walrus in long johns. “And I’m a cautious man. Live longer that way.”

  “Logan, maybe we should just pay him his blood money,” Sam said. “Hell, you’re bound to ride this way again. You can shoot him then.”

  “Yeah, Marshal,” Stringfellow yelled. “Pay the man his money!”

  The others laughed and Kane felt his face burn. He was well and truly buffaloed and he knew it.

  “Mister, the next time I’m down har, I’ll gun you fer sure,” Kane said, the taste of yet another defeat at the hands of the bandit ferryman like dry ashes in his mouth.

  Young smiled. “Me an’ my woman will be waiting.” He slapped his hands together. “Now, are you ready to cross? Cash in advance, Marshal, if you please.”

  Kane’s shoulders slumped. “Sam, get the wagon on board.” He stood in the stirrups and reached into his pocket, his breath sighing through his lips like a mournful wind.

  After he paid Young, Kane led his horse onto the ferry. He stood at the side of the wagon, watching Young with resentful eyes as the man took up the slack on the rope and prepared to haul. The hole the missing two dollars and fifty cents had left in his pocket made Kane’s pants feel light and he nursed his anger to keep it warm.

  The Cheyenne woman, not pretty but lithe and slender, had moved closer to the ferry. The Sharps was now slanted across her breasts, but her black eyes never left Kane’s face. She was obviously ready for anything that might happen.

  As the ferry pulled away from the gravel bank, Amos Albright pushed his face against the iron straps of the cage and yelled at the woman, “Come on over here, li’l squaw. See what I got fer you.” The others laughed and hooted. Emboldened, a grinning Albright stuck his arm through the bars and wiggled his fingers in a suggestive manner. “Come here, honey. Just a li’l closer now.”

  Kane’s gun cleared the leather fast and he brought the barrel down on Albright’s wrist. The man yelped and pulled his arm back. “What the hell did you do that fer?” Albright demanded, his lips pursed as he clutched at his bruised wrist.

  “I get seasick,” Kane said. “Makes me a might testy.”

  The Cheyenne woman lowered her rifle and held it across the top of her thighs. Kane wasn’t sure, but she didn’t seem as ready anymore. There might even have been a hint of a smile on her lips.

  The ferry ground to a halt on the opposite bank. Scattered pines and hickory almost reached the water’s edge, covering a gradual slope that rose from the river. This early in the fall, pink and blue flowers still showed among the grass and a few wild orchids were in bloom. The wind gusted cool from the north and carried a fragrant reminder of the wetlands and cypress swamps that clung close to Oklahoma’s eastern border with Arkansas. The sky had cleared and was now a hard blue, streaked with misty ribbons of white cloud.

  Sam slapped the backs of the mules with the reins and they scrambled up the grade, the wagon bouncing behind them.

  “Hey, you!” Stringfellow yelled, holding on to the cage with white knuckles as the others tumbled around him. “Slow down, damn you!”

  Sam grinned and ignored the man. He hoorawed the team onto the flat, then drew rein, looking behind him for Kane.

  The marshal swung into the saddle and put the sorrel to the slope. He’d reached the top when he heard Young call out after him, “Nice doin’ business with you again, Marshal. Hurry back now, y’heah?”

  Kane caught the note of mockery in the ferryman’s voice and something snapped inside him, so loud he heard it twang in his head. He swung his horse around and saw the fat man standing at the bottom of the rise, the self-satisfied grin on his face wide enough to make his slitted eyes disappear entirely.

  Kane kicked his mount into motion and hit the slope at a gallop, a wild, Southern yell ripping from his lips. Sudden panic gripped Young. The fat man’s mouth made a startled O, and he turned and broke into a waddling run, his enormous buttocks giggling.

  Young attempted to run to his right, along the bank, looking over his shoulder. But the sorrel was an excellent cutting horse, and Kane cut the fat man off and herded him back toward the river. For a moment Young stood at the water’s edge, uncertain, but Kane was bearing down on him, and the man turned and floundered into the Red.

  Kane went after him, his horse kicking up cascading plumes of foamy water. Terrified, Young waded deeper, then tripped and disappeared. He surfaced like a broaching sperm whale, spluttering, his face and bald head dripping slimy river mud.

  The marshal drew rein, the sorrel standing in water up to its knees. Kane grinned. “It’s about time you took a bath, Young. You stink like the business end of a polecat.”

  The man angrily slapped the water on each side of him. “Damn you, I won’t fergit this. You’re banned from my ferry for life. You hear that, law-dog? Banned for life!”

  Kane’s grin grew wider. Then he lifted his eyes from Young to the Indian woman on the opposite bank. She stood still, holding the Sharps over her right shoulder, her face impassive. The marshal waved, but the woman did not wave back.

  Kane swung his horse around and cantered up the rise. Behind him Young started to wade out of the river, fell, then waded again. He stumbled onto the bank and fell on his belly, his chest heaving.

  Sam looked at Kane, his eyes twinkling, and said, “Drownin’ is a sure cure for bad habits.”

  “Ain’t it, though,” Kane said.

  “Happy now?” Sam said.

  “As a kid pullin’ a pup’s ears,” Kane said.

  “That’s what I figgered,” Sam said.

  But Kane’s attention was suddenly elsewhere. On the opposite bank a rider sat his horse, his face shadowed by a black, wide-brimmed hat. A far-seeing man, Kane took note of the holstered revolver on the man’s hip and the booted rifle under his left knee. The guide rope of the stranger’s pack mule was in his gun hand and he seemed relaxed and unthreatening.

  But still, there was something about the rider that made Kane uneasy. It seemed Sam shared that feeling.

  “He’s a gun all right, Logan,” he said, as though Kane had asked him a question. “Ain’t nobody else but a named man sits that arrogant in the saddle, except maybe a Yankee cavalry colonel.”

  “Recognize him?”

  Sam shook his head. “Nah, I can’t peg him.”

  It was Buff Stringfellow who answered Kane’s question. The man had bullied his way to the door of the cage and his mouth was pressed between the bars. “Jack!” he bellowed. “It’s me, Buff!”

  For a moment Kane thought the man hadn’t heard, but then he slid his rifle from the scabbard and brandished it over his head.

  “I’ll be lookin’ fer ya, Jack!” Stringfellow yelled.

  Even from a distance, Kane saw the white grin on the face of the man called Jack.

  Sam turned all the way around in his seat and called out to Stringfellow, “Hey, Buff, who’s yer friend?”

  “That’s for me to know, old man.”

  “I know who he is,” Kane said. “He’s a drunken killer an’ tr
ain robber who goes by the name o’ Jack Henry.” The marshal’s eyes lifted to Sam. “It don’t come as too much of a surprise that him and Stringfellow are pea patch kin.”

  “Correct on all counts, Marshal.” Stringfellow grinned. “An’ if you ain’t boogered by now, you should be. Jack is a heller from way back. Why, I mind the time him an’ ol’ Jesse—”

  “Shut your trap, Stringfellow,” Kane said. “Another word o’ sass an’ you’ll be building your smokes with your left hand.”

  “Suit yourself, Kane,” the man said. He looked around at his companions. “Won’t be long now, boys.” Every man’s eyes turned to the marshal. All six of them were grinning, like cats who had just eaten the canary.

  Sam climbed down from the wagon and stepped beside Kane, his hand on the bridle of the marshal’s horse. “How you want to play this, Logan? You cain’t get lard less’n you boil the hog. Want to wait on this side for ol’ Jack, lay up for him an’ shoot him right out of the saddle?”

  Kane sat his saddle, his brow wrinkled. He said nothing.

  “Marshal?”

  “I’m studying on it, Sam. I’m studying on it.”

  Chapter 8

  Kane watched the sloshing wet Bill Young clamber onto the ferry and take up the rope. On the opposite bank Jack Henry had dismounted and stood by his horse.

  “Well, Logan, what do you think?” Sam prompted. “Do we stash the wagon someplace and bushwhack that feller?”

  Kane had already made up his mind. “Move ’em out, Sam.”

  “But—”

  “Henry won’t cross on the ferry until we’re gone, and a man in his line o’ work ain’t likely to ride into our rifles.”

  “Then how do we play it?”

  “For now, we watch our drag, left flank, right flank an’ point.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Atween us, we don’t got that many eyes.” Sam shook his head. “I sure hope you know what you’re doin’, Marshal.”

  Kane’s smile was tight. “So do I, old-timer. So . . . do . . . I.”

  After they left the Red, Kane dropped back, leaving Sam to follow any trail he could find. The marshal rose through rolling country, the ground thickly carpeted with buffalo and grama grass, and here and there patches of sand bluestem and prickly pear. Vast forests of pine, hickory and wild oak grew everywhere and sometimes glades of tumbled white boulders were visible through the trees. The sky was blue as carbon steel, the morning clouds burned away by the flaming sun. Kane saw where the tracks of Sam’s wagon swung wide around peat bogs and stretches of wetlands where water lilies floated on shallow ponds like ancient galleons. The old man was a first-rate teamster and his experienced eyes constantly searched the terrain ahead, wary of places where the wagon could get stuck or shatter a wheel.

  Three miles north of the river Kane rode up on the wagon. Sam had stopped at a slow-running creek bordered by cottonwood and elm. At first the marshal thought the old man was about to water the team, but the mules were standing head down in the traces and Sam was fifty yards downstream, looking around him.

  Kane rode closer and then saw what the old man was seeing.

  Sam looked up at him. “Small herd, no more’n five hundred head, headin’ north. Watered here, oh, maybe two, three hours ago.”

  At this point both sandy banks of the creek had been broken down by the passage of the herd. The smell of cow dung and dust still lingered in the air.

  Kane offered no response, and Sam said, “Safe bet they’re headed for the Territory. Army is always ready to buy beef to feed the Indians.”

  The old man stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked at the grass at his feet. He looked at Kane again and grinned. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “Sam, I never know what you’re thinkin,’ ” Kane said. “But if you’re thinkin’ we should fall in with them drovers, then you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’.”

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” Sam said. “Small herd like that should make ten miles a day easy. We could stay with them until we reach the mountains, unless they decide to go over instead of around.”

  Kane shifted in the saddle, then took the makings from his shirt pocket. There was safety in numbers, and Texas drovers were a tough bunch. The thought of Jack Henry on his back trail rankled him, to say nothing of the Provanzano brothers. He was sure they thought he was protecting Barnabas Hook, and in a way maybe he was. They might even figure Hook had given him the family money for safe-keeping.

  Kane thumbed a match into flame and lit his cigarette. “Water the mules, Sam, and let’s see if we can catch up to that bunch.”

  He finished his smoke, then swung out of the saddle and walked back to the wagon, where Sam was already unhitching the team.

  “Hey, Kane,” Stringfellow yelled, “we’re burnin’ up in here. Let us out so we can set in the shade fer a spell.”

  “You thirsty?” the marshal asked.

  “Hell no. We’re not thirsty—we’re hot. Look at that sun, you damned idiot. It’s scorching our hides.”

  Kane nodded. He got the water bucket from the back of the wagon and filled it at the creek. He walked back to the wagon, smiled at Stringfellow, then threw the contents of the bucket in his face. “That ought to cool you down some.”

  Stringfellow spluttered and shook his head, spraying water. “Damn you, Kane, you’re as mean as a curly wolf.”

  “Good thing for you to remember, Buff.” The marshal pulled his vest away from his gun belt. “When it comes to downright meanness an’ cussedness, the only thing that separates me from you is this here badge.”

  The day had begun its shade into night when Kane and Sam caught up with the herd. The cattle, Herefords mostly with a few longhorns, were bedded down along a creek surrounded on three sides by a shallow arc of pine and hardwood forest. To the west, the setting sun was a scarlet pool making its way down a draw between swollen, purple rain clouds. The air smelled of trees and the dusty heat of the dying day.

  The drovers had made camp about a hundred yards from the herd, on a bend of the creek where grew tall cottonwoods and a single willow that trailed its branches into the water. There was a small remuda and a chuck wagon, a canvas canopy rigged on one of its sides.

  As Sam swung in that direction, with the casual interest of a former cattleman, Kane took time to check out the herd. The cows all looked to be in excellent shape, fat and glossy with some yearlings among them. But one thing struck a jarring note in the marshal—even in the waning light he counted six different brands, and there were probably more.

  That meant nothing in itself. Small ranchers often banded their herds together to make a drive, though the railroads were rapidly making such arrangements a thing of the past. But the suspicion that this was a rustled herd was strong in Kane. He was going only on that sixth sense all experienced lawmen have, the little, nagging voice at the back of the head that warns them to be wary.

  When he was twenty yards from the camp, Kane drew rein, but it was Sam who took it on himself to observe the proprieties. “Hello the camp!”

  Four men, backlit by the flickering red glow of a fire, had watched them come. Now one of them called out, “Come on in, real easy an’ slow like.”

  It was not a friendly greeting, Kane decided, but it wasn’t all that unfriendly either. Kind of somewhere in between. He kicked his horse forward, then stopped when he was a few feet from the drovers. It was only then he saw that one of them was a woman. She was tall, angular, her hat hanging on the back of her shoulders from a string around her neck. She wore a split, canvas riding skirt, a white shirt and a black-and-white cowhide vest. It was the woman who spoke.

  “Passing through?” Her voice was light, pleasant, almost musical.

  Kane saw the woman’s head move as her eyes angled to the convict wagon. She took note of it but said nothing more.

  Kane ignored the woman’s question. “Name’s Logan Kane, Deputy Marshal for the
Indian Territory, out of the Honorable Judge Isaac Parker’s court.”

  “Did you say Logan Kane?” This came from a tall, rangy young man whose face was shaded by the wide brim of his hat. The man wore two Remingtons, butt forward in crossed belts. It was an unusual gun rig, the first Kane had ever seen. Whoever or whatever he was, he didn’t look like a thirty-a-month drover, that was for sure.

  “You heard the name right,” Kane said. For some reason a small anger was flaring in him. These were turning out to be right inhospitable folks.

  “We don’t much cotton to lawmen around here, Kane,” the young man said, “especially killers who hide behind a badge. But you might have guessed that already.”

  “You’re right. I done guessed that when I saw the brands on your herd,” Kane said.

  The man took a step forward and now Kane could see his face. He was flushed with real or pretended rage, his mouth a tight, hard gash under his mustache. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Kane smiled. “You know what it means.” The smile quickly faded and the marshal’s eyes iced. “A word of warning, boy, don’t sass me. You’re gettin’ mighty close.”

  “Hyde, let it go,” the woman snapped. “See to the herd.”

  The man called Hyde stared at Kane, a challenge in his eyes. But finally his gaze slid from the marshal’s face and he turned on his heel. “Ed,” he said to a short, stocky puncher as he walked away, “mount up. We’ll check on the herd like the lady says.” Then, to another man, older, with a mournful face split by a ragged mustache, he said, “Buck, start rustling up the grub.”

  The woman waited until the men had left, then said to Kane, “Marshal, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over again, shall we?”

  “Fine by me,” Kane said. His eyes were still on Hyde, who was swinging into the saddle of a paint. The kid was either a named man or a wannabe. Either way, it was worth keeping an eye on him.

  “My name is Mae St. John, a rancher from down around the Nacogdoches country, and I’m bringing beef to the Army,” the woman said. “I was instructed by letter to meet a military representative at Fort Smith—a Colonel Brennan. Do you know him?”