Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Kane opened his mouth to speak, but Carmine held up a hand. “Hear me out. I have said hard things about you. Now I will add that I believe you to be honest with your own, shall we say warped, code of honor. I knew you would eventually lead us to the money because you would not think about keeping it for yourself. That’s why Vito shot the fast gunman who threatened you at the cow camp. We could not afford to lose you.”

  Kane shook his head. “I didn’t lead you to the money. I was going after the escaped convicts when I happened to come across Lorraine and Nellie on the trail. Sooner or later you would have found it yourself.”

  Carmine smiled. “We followed you, and now you are here and the money is here. It is enough that it will be returned to my family. By this time I am sure they are growing increasingly anxious.”

  “You already have the thirty thousand in your pack?”

  “No, not yet. We waited to see if you would indeed part with it.”

  “Provanzano, Lorraine is out of this. She didn’t want to keep the money either. She says it’s blood money and she wants nothing to do with it.”

  “Blood money soon launders clean, my friend. But I harbor no ill will against the woman. She is not responsible for her husband’s actions.”

  Kane nodded. “Good. If you’d felt otherwise I would’ve taken it hard.”

  The marshal turned on his heel and walked to the wagon. Without looking at Lorraine and without a word to Carmine, he handed the man the burlap sack.

  Kane accepted the cup of coffee Lorraine poured for him, sat by the fire and built a smoke from his dwindling supply of tobacco. Carmine joined him.

  “Marshal Kane,” he said formally, “you have done me a favor and my family will honor you. Among us, a favor must be repaid and that is why I am leaving Vito behind. He is the best of us with a gun and he will help you recapture the convicts who escaped you.”

  Kane began to protest, but Carmine stopped him. “Please,” he said, “do not dishonor me by refusing what I give freely.”

  “Vito is all right with this?”

  “My brother realizes the honor of his family demands that he stay. Yes, he is all right with this.”

  Kane stuck out his hand. “Then I accept. And thank you.”

  Carmine took the marshal’s hand and smiled. “If you are ever in New Orleans . . .”

  “I know. Sure, I’ll look you up.”

  The man rose to his feet and dropped to one knee beside Nellie, looking at her intently. The girl seemed not to notice him. Carmine reached behind his neck and undid a silver chain with some kind of pendant. He fastened the chain around Nellie’s neck and she immediately took the pendant in her fingers and bent her head to look at it.

  “She is the Holy Virgin, little one, the Mother of God,” he said. “She will protect you from all things harmful.”

  The girl’s eyes met Carmine’s and she smiled. “Pretty.”

  Carmine nodded. “Yes, she is very pretty indeed.”

  He rose to his feet and his head turned to Kane. “I have no medal for you, Marshal. But I leave you with Vito and he will be your guardian angel.”

  “Much obliged,” Kane said. “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need one.”

  Chapter 21

  When they moved out, Logan Kane took the point and Vito rode beside the wagon, smiling now and then when he saw Nellie admiring her new necklace.

  Kane kept just to the east of Phillips Mountain, then led the way into rolling country that stretched ahead for several miles, some of it low-lying marsh-land, teeming with wading birds.

  By noon they’d reached the south bank of the Kiamichi River and stopped to rest the horses among a forest of pine, hardwood and beech that grew all the way down to the water’s edge.

  At this time of the year the river channel was low and narrow, and the wagon would make the crossing fairly easily, barring an encounter with deep mud.

  Vito began to build a fire and Kane took the coffeepot to the river’s edge. He kneeled and dipped the pot into the water . . . and the mud bank erupted around him, kicking up sudden Vs of dirt. Three shots, close together, had come from the other tree-lined bank.

  Kane dropped the pot, drew fast from the leather and rolled to one side. Firing from a prone position he pumped a couple of shots into a drift of smoke on the opposite bank. Then he rolled again and fetched up against the base of a pine, painfully jarring his wounded thigh into a projecting root. A bullet chipped bark an inch above his head and another drove mud into his face.

  From his left he heard the spiteful crack! crack! crack! of Vito’s .38.

  Shots rattled into the trees around Kane and he fanned his gun dry, intent only on laying down a field of fire.

  “Kane,” Vito yelled, “you hit?”

  “I’m all right. You?”

  “I’m not hit, no.”

  “Can you see them?”

  “I can’t see a damned thing.”

  Kane reloaded from his cartridge belt, scanning the trees opposite for a target. But the gun smoke had drifted away and only the wind stirred the pine branches.

  His gun in hand, the marshal rose to his feet. “They’ve gone, skedaddled,” he said.

  Vito walked toward him, feeding shells into the open cylinder, his head bent over his revolver. He closed the gun and slid it into the shoulder holster.

  “Who do you think?”

  “My guess is that a man called Jack Henry was leading them. He’s kin to Buff Stringfellow, one of my prisoners. It was Henry who broke them loose and killed my driver.”

  “Well, they know we’re close.”

  Kane nodded. “They’ll run for a while, then stop and try to bushwhack us again. From now on ride with eyes in the back of your head.”

  The man smiled, showing remarkably white teeth. “Sicilian boys are born that way, Marshal.”

  “You’re handy with the hideout gun. You were also born knowing how to shoot?”

  “Not that, no. But when the family business is at the New Orleans docks, a man learns the way of the gun and the knife very quickly. If he doesn’t, then he soon dies.”

  Kane smiled. “Your brother was right. You’re a handy man to have around.”

  The marshal meant that sincerely. Vito could have left him to his fate when the shooting started, but he’d exposed himself to fire and stood his ground. The kid had sand.

  “Logan, are you all right?”

  Lorraine was at his elbow, her face concerned. He nodded. “Someone took a few pots at me from across the river.”

  “A few pots? It sounded like a war,” the woman said. She had the warm tips of her fingers on the marshal’s arm.

  Kane shook his head. “Lorraine, I got a feelin’ the war is just about to begin.”

  The sun was beginning its slide into afternoon when Kane led their climb over Rich Mountain, three thousand feet of pine and hardwood-covered slope with treacherous outcroppings of sandstone and shale. He took a switchback route that spared the Percheron but was hard on the wagon. Several times the wheels slipped off shallow ledges of hidden rock among the trees, abruptly tilting the wagon at a precarious angle. When that happened, Lorraine and Nellie had to cling desperately to the jolting seat.

  A few narrow game traces wound through the pines, but these were impossible for a wagon and Kane, like a man lost in a maze, had to blaze his own trail, a slow, laborious process with a deal of backtracking.

  The marshal had spent much time among rough, profane men and he knew three dozen spectacular curses, but even these seemed inadequate to express his feelings about the climb up Rich Mountain.

  Vito was riding higher up the slope, his rifle across the saddle horn, but his horse was not bred for mountains and was finding the going difficult. All his attention was given to his unruly mount—none of it to his watch for Jack Henry and the convicts.

  But worse was to come.

  Kane noticed the mist drifting through the trees like a gray ghost and at first ignored it. But within a few m
inutes an ashy pall cloaked the mountain and around him, one by one, the surrounding trees were vanishing.

  “Marshal Kane!” Provanzano’s voice, hollow in the fog, sounded from higher up.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m coming down. I can’t see a thing. Keep yelling so I can find you.”

  “Lorraine, are you all right?” Kane hollered. He was damned if he was going to stand there shouting pretties at Vito.

  “I’m all right.” The woman’s voice was behind him and closer than Kane expected.

  “Stay right where you are. I’ll come to you,” he yelled so Vito could hear him.

  Kane stepped out of the saddle and, like a blind man, felt his way forward, leading his horse.

  “I can hear you, Logan,” Lorraine cried. “You’re real close.”

  Kane heard a crashing in the brush and Provanzano emerged from the mist, almost bumping into him. He was also leading his horse. “Hell, couldn’t you sing or something?” he said, trying to make out Kane through a curtain of gray. “I damned near got lost up there.”

  “I don’t sing, and anyway, you found me. I was making enough noise.” He lifted his head. “Lorraine, where are you?”

  The answering silence looped in the motionless trees like Spanish moss.

  “Lorraine!” Alarm had crept into Kane’s voice.

  There was only the quiet and the mist.

  The marshal drew his Colt and stepped into the somber fog that coiled close around him. Behind him, he heard Vito’s breathing, coming quickly.

  “Lorraine!”

  Nothing.

  “Nellie!”

  Kane walked closer and, like a man parting a gray curtain, he made out the square outline of the prison wagon. The Percheron was gone from the traces. He moved nearer, every nerve ending tingling. There was no sign of Lorraine and Nellie. It was as though they’d vanished off the face of the earth.

  Kane scouted around the wagon. He kneeled and saw the tracks of boots and parallel gouges in the grass where someone’s feet had dragged.

  Stringfellow!

  Vito stepped beside Kane, leading both horses.

  “They’ve been taken,” the marshal told him. “They came out of the mist and grabbed them before they could even cry out.”

  “The convicts?” It was plain from the tone of Vito’s voice that he already knew the answer.

  Kane forced himself to remain calm. “Seems like.” Vito walked to the wagon and looked around. “At least they left the food,” he said.

  The marshal sounded bitter. “Know what that is, Vito? That’s what’s called mighty small comfort.” Then with contempt he repeated what the man had just said. “ ‘At least they left the food. . . .’ ”

  “Sorry. I just thought you’d want to know that.”

  Kane knew the food was important and that he should apologize for his rudeness, but he let it go. He and Vito were both under strain. He looked around, seeing nothing. “As soon as this lifts, I’m going after them.”

  “We’re going after them, you mean.”

  Shaking his head, a gesture Vito couldn’t see, Kane said, “From now on, this could get downright nasty and it ain’t your fight.”

  “I made it my fight, remember,” Vito said. “I’m not backing away from it now.”

  It took an effort, but Kane managed it. “Thanks. I sure appreciate it.”

  “When do you think—” Vito’s question broke off abruptly as a man called from higher up the slope.

  “Logan Kane, you hear me? This is Stringfellow.”

  “I hear you.”

  “We got the woman an’ the kid.”

  “Stringfellow, if you harm those—”

  “Listen, Kane.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Nellie screamed, a shriek of pain that set the marshal’s teeth on edge.

  “You hear that?” Stringfellow had a laugh in his voice and another man close to him guffawed. “That’s only a taste, Kane. We got an Apache up here with us and by the time he’s finished with the woman and the girl, they’ll be begging me to kill them and cursing you for bringing them here.”

  “What do you want, Stringfellow?”

  A rifle shot rattled through the trees. “Damn your eyes, Kane, I’ll do the talking. Now listen, you back off or I’ll set the Apache to work. You give us three clear days. If I see hide or hair of you before then, the women start screaming so you can hear.”

  The marshal made no answer, his mouth under his ragged mustache a tight, hard line.

  “Did you hear me, Kane?”

  “I heard you.”

  “After three days we’ll leave the women at a one-horse settlement on the Poteau River called Baines Flat. You know the place?”

  “I know it.”

  “Three days, Kane. A minute less and the Apache gets a gift of the women.”

  “Stringfellow! If Lorraine and Nellie are harmed I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

  Another shot chipped its way through the trees, this one closer. Somebody up there was shooting at the sound of Kane’s voice.

  “Three days, Kane! Say yea or nay.”

  “Yea, you got three days. And damn you to hell, Stringfellow, and those with you.”

  There was a shot, a mocking laugh and afterward only a ringing silence.

  Chapter 22

  “You think that’s true, I mean about the Apache?” Vito asked. “I read in the New Orleans papers that all those feathered fiends were dead or locked up.”

  “Apaches never favored feathers,” Kane said absently, thinking. “I don’t know. They could have picked up a renegade somewhere, or a breed.”

  “What do we do, Marshal? Stay on this mountain for three days?”

  “Hell no, we’re going after them.”

  “But—”

  “They’ll be slowed by Lorraine and Nellie. We head for Baines Flat and get there before Stringfellow does.”

  “If that’s where he’s really going. He could be lying.”

  Kane shook his head. “He’ll go there all right. There will be guns and horses in Baines Flat, and Stringfellow and the rest want to kill me real bad. They’ll lay up for me in town fer sure. He won’t miss that opportunity.”

  “How do we follow them without being seen?”

  “Stringfellow will want to make the most of his three days, so he’ll head due north. If he does have an Apache with him, he’ll know this country. My guess is he’ll guide them over Black Fork Mountain”—Kane pointed into the mist-shrouded slope—“about three miles thataway. After that, he’s got the Black Fork River to cross, then miles of open country where he can make good time.”

  Vito, city bred, looked confused. Then he said, “Wait, I’ve got it. We follow them over the . . . whatever it’s called . . . and keep out of sight, huh?”

  Kane smiled. “No, we go around. Two men on good horses can cover ground in a hurry. We take the Eagle Gap valley between Black Fork and Shut-in mountains, then ride hell-for-leather north until we reach the Poteau.”

  “Sounds easy.”

  “It’s not. There’s a fur ride and some mighty rough, unforgiving country ahead of us. And when we reach Baines Flat we still have to take Stringfellow and the rest into custody. And them boys will be a handful.”

  “Then we’ll gun them and be done.”

  Kane lifted his head and looked into the mist creeping above his head for a long time. Finally he said, “Vito, if you’d said that a couple of weeks ago, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, that’s what we’ll do, gun ’em.’ ” He turned to the man. “Now I’m not so sure anymore. I’m no longer sure of stuff I was dead certain of when I started out on this trip.”

  “Men change,” Vito said.

  “But maybe not always for the better,” Kane said.

  If anything, the mist had grown thicker and it was impossible to see more than a couple of feet in any direction. “We’ll make camp here,” Kane said. “The fog should be lifted by morning.” Vito was just a vague shape.
Kane talked to it. “Think you can find us some wood without getting lost?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Unsaddle the horses and see if there’s enough water left in the barrel for coffee.”

  “Well, if I don’t come back soon, sing.”

  Despite the worry eating at him, Kane smiled. He threw back his head and started in on “Brennan on the Moor.”

  Brave Brennan on the moor,

  Brave Brennan on the moor,

  A brave, undaunted robber,

  Was Brennan on the moor . . .

  “Enough!” Vito yelled. “Oh Blessed Mother, please, no more. If I need help I’ll yell.”

  “But that’s only the chorus.” Kane grinned. “I can give you at least a dozen verses.”

  But Vito was already crashing through the brush, his hands over his ears.

  Kane shook his head and stepped beside his horse. “Well, at least you like my singing, don’t you big feller, huh?”

  The sorrel pretended it didn’t understand.

  Kane and Vito ate a supper of coffee and bacon and shared the last sourdough biscuit. The mountain grew colder; they spread their blankets close to the fire and slept in mist-wreathed darkness.

  An hour passed, then two, then more. The night grew colder and the fire glowed dull red, without flame.

  “Logan . . . Logan . . .”

  The marshal’s eyes fluttered open and he lay still, listening.

  “Logan . . .”

  His mother’s voice, calling out to him from somewhere along the shadowed tunnel of the fog. Kane sat upright. He looked at Vito. The man was sound asleep, a forearm over his eyes.

  “Ma! Where are you, Ma?”

  “We’re lost, Logan. We’re lost in the mist. Come for us, Logan. Come for us.”

  “I’ll come, Ma.” Kane rose to his feet. “Wait for me.”

  “Come to us, Logan . . . come to us. . . .”

  Kane stumbled forward into the gray wall of darkness. Ahead of him he saw crows hunched on the tree limbs, orange beaks gaping as they watched him with black, glittering eyes.