Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  The two men hurriedly did as they were told. “Right, out the door and start walkin’. An’ I’d advise you to walk real fast.”

  “Mister,” the man who’d done the talking said, “we need time to get our horses.”

  Kane’s smile was not pleasant to see. “You were gonna make me walk. Now you’ll find out how it feels.”

  “But it’s a long ways to anywhere from here.”

  “Yeah, it’s a fur piece, so you’d better get goin’, hadn’t you?”

  The writing was on the wall and the man read it clear. “All right, we’re leavin’, an’ be damned to ye,” he said.

  “You too,” Kane said to the other man who’d been very quiet, his face ashen. On his way to the door he glanced at Clum’s grotesque face. Then his eyes lifted to the marshal. “Zeke was fast on the draw an’ shoot. Always reckoned he was anyway.”

  “He wasn’t even close to bein’ fast,” Kane said. “You should find another line o’ work, the hardware business maybe.”

  The man nodded. “Yeah, maybe that. I sure ain’t makin’ it in the hoss-stealin’ business.”

  After the men left, Kane looked at Vito. “You done good. Stood your ground an’ got your work in.”

  Vito seemed to understand that this was high praise indeed from the big marshal. “Thank you,” he said, smiling. “I appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, well, afore you start gettin’ too uppity, bring them four ponies around front. I’ve got a purpose fer them.”

  Vito’s smile grew into a grin. It was just like Kane to tie a compliment on a man, then immediately undo the knot. “Sure thing, Marshal. Anything you say.”

  Kane waited until the door closed behind Vito and stepped over to the three men sprawled on the floor. They were all dead. The HAVE YOU WRITTEN TO MOTHER? sign had fallen from the shelf and lay across Levering’s chest.

  “She must be right proud of you,” Kane said.

  A tin box was lying beside the dead man and the marshal opened it. Inside were thirty-seven dollars in bills and some change. Kane tipped the contents of the box onto the bar, then stepped into the store. He found another ten dollars in a drawer and this he put with the rest of the money.

  The door swung open, letting in a gust of sleet and cold air. “Horses are outside,” Vito said.

  Kane nodded, picked up the money and walked to the Lipan women. They shrank back from him, their eyes wide and apprehensive. He reached out, grabbed the arm of one of the women and thrust the forty-seven dollars into her hand.

  He smiled, trying to put the women at ease, and pointed to the door. In his halting Spanish he said, “Hay fuera de los caballos.”

  Uncertain, the Apaches did not move, their unblinking stare on Kane’s face. The woman he’d given the money to opened her hand, looking at it. The marshal tried a smile again, reached out and gently closed her fingers around the bills. Again he pointed to the door. “Caballos.”

  Now the Lipan women understood. They walked to the door and, Vito holding it open for them, stepped outside. By the time Kane walked into the sleet and cold, the women were already mounted, one of them leading the spare horse. The Lipans rode away and were soon swallowed by distance and the brawling storm.

  Vito looked at Kane. “Think they’ll make it in this weather?”

  The marshal nodded. “Better than we will. They’ve got money and four horses and they’re going back to their people rich.”

  “Where are their people?” Vito asked, his eyes on Kane’s face.

  “Who knows. If any of them are still alive, the women will find them.”

  Kane stepped to the door. “We’ll load up with whatever supplies we can find. I don’t want to stay around with dead men.”

  Vito’s quick nod and the hurried cross he made on his chest were all the agreement the marshal needed.

  Chapter 24

  The storm was driving cold and hard from the north, and Kane and Vito Provanzano rode right into its bared teeth, heads bent against the brutal force of the wind.

  Five miles south of Walker Mountain, in rolling, forested country, they picked up a large pack of red wolves that kept pace with them for an hour, slipping through the pines like phantoms.

  Kane saw Vito look in the wolves’ direction and he raised his voice to be heard above the roar of the blizzard. “They’ll give us the road. They don’t usually tackle anything bigger than a jackrabbit.”

  “Yeah? Well just maybe they’re feeling a tad unusual today,” Vito yelled. Sleet had frozen on his mustache and eyebrows, giving him the look of a worried old man.

  The marshal laughed loud and long, and it felt good. Finally he said, “If they get close, the wolves may spook the horses, so ride careful.”

  The wolves left them when they crossed fast-running Jones Creek and rode into flatlands where the sleet storm loomed ahead, coming at them like a broken plaster wall. Kane swung to the west, toward the foothills of Walker Mountain, signaling his move by thumping Vito on the shoulder, since talk was impossible over the shrill shriek of the storm.

  It took Kane an hour to find shelter. He saw a deep hollow where the spreading branches of a couple of tall, twin pines were keeping away the worst of the sleet that was now mixed with wet snow.

  There was room enough for the horses, and wood aplenty among the trees. And Kane built a small fire in the overhang of the hollow where it would reflect heat. He filled the coffeepot with handfuls of the sleety snow that had piled up around them.

  “Soon be as comfortable as your grandmother’s parlor,” he told Vito, grinning. But the man merely shivered, pulled his coat closer around him and said nothing.

  Kane had found salt pork and a small sack of army biscuit in Levering’s store. The flat hardtack was as solid as iron and the marshal guessed it had been stored by the Army since the War Between the States and reissued during the Indian wars.

  He wetted down the biscuit and pounded it into crumbs with the butt of his rifle. He dredged slices of salt pork in the crumbs, then fried them in the sizzling hot fry pan.

  “This,” he promised Vito, “is going to be good eatin’.”

  The man glanced at the sputtering pork and shrugged. “If you say so, Marshal.”

  “Hell, don’t turn up your nose at good food,” Kane said. “What do you boys eat in New Orleans anyhow?”

  Vito thought about it, smiling at what could only be pleasant memories. “Lots of pasta of course, and minestrone soup often. Veal Sorrentina, Lobster Fra Diavalo, Shrimp and Portabella Crostini, focaccia bread.” Vito raised baleful eyes to the marshal. “Served by a waiter wearing white gloves and the key to the wine cellar around his neck.”

  Kane smiled. “Well, I don’t have none o’ that stuff, but I’ll be your waiter.” He lifted the pan off the fire and waved the smoking salt pork under Vito’s nose. “Shuck your knife an’ get dug into that.”

  The storm raged with increasing ferocity throughout the long, cold night. Kane and Vito huddled as close to the feeble fire as they could while the trees above them rocked in the wind and icy gusts of sleet splattered over them. The storm sounded like a passing freight train and the air smelled like a steel blade, razor sharp and cutting.

  Once Kane woke from a shallow sleep and thought he heard the haunting howls of hunting wolves among the pines. He sat up and listened into the night: nothing—only the clamor of the storm. Uneasy now, Kane lay on his back, his eyes staring at darkness. Had he heard wolves or the wails of the unburied dead?

  One, he decided, disturbed, was as likely as the other.

  Like a child’s tantrum that ends in tears, the storm blew itself out an hour before daybreak and only a steady, raking rain remained.

  The fire had long since sizzled into a tendril of smoke. Kane and Vito drank cold coffee, then took to the trail.

  Baines Flat was on the other side of the Poteau River, an hour’s ride to the north. A trellis bridge, built for a railroad that had never arrived, spanned a stretch of white-water narrows and now car
ried only horse traffic. Beyond the town rose the rugged barrier of Poteau Mountain and fifteen miles to the west lay the badlands of the Choctaw Nation.

  As far as Kane could recall, and this he told Vito, the population of Baines Flat was mostly hard-rock gold and silver miners, hoping to strike it rich along the sprawling ridge of the Poteau. Like the railroad, the gold had never materialized, yet a few hardy souls were still searching for the mother lode, but finding silver only in their hair.

  Talking above the angry-cat hiss of the rain, Kane said, “To the west, in the Choctaw country, there’s a standing stone on the Poteau with some kind of writing on it. One time Judge Parker talked to me about it. He said the letters were called runes and were carved by Viking men who crossed the big eastern ocean in ships hundreds of years ago.” He smiled. “I don’t know about that, but the writing is on the rock fer sure, an’ it wasn’t ciphered there by no Indian.”

  “You’ve seen it?” Vito asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it. Strange to find that rock in the middle of a wilderness where there’s nothing and nobody. Kinda like Baines Flat. It shouldn’t be where it is either.”

  The river came in sight through the shifting steel curtain of the rain, and in the distance Poteau Mountain shouldered hugely against the gray sky. As their horses’ hooves thudded across the pine bridge, Kane looked ahead, taking stock of the town as his eyes roamed restlessly for any hint of Stringfellow and the rest.

  Even by the modest standards of the West, Baines Flat was not much of a town. And it was made even shabbier by the glowering black sky and streaming rain that was gradually turning its only street into a river of mustard-colored mud.

  The centerpiece of the settlement was a false-fronted, two-story building that proudly proclaimed, TONTINE HOTEL and under that, BEDS & EATS.

  Flanking the hotel were a couple of saloons, the Alamo and the Bucket of Blood. A hardware store, livery stable and corral, a blacksmith’s shop and what looked to be an adobe jail were the only other buildings. On either side of the town, scattered tarpaper shacks and smoking, crooked iron chimneys poking through sod roofs appeared to have wandered into the plains and then lost their way.

  Adding to the dreariness of the place was a rickety gallows standing outside the jail, decorated with red, white and blue bunting that slapped against the rough timbers of the platform, wet and forlorn in the wind.

  “Friendly place,” Vito said, eyeing the gallows as he and Kane left the bridge and splashed through the mud of the street.

  “I’ve been here only oncet,” the marshal said, “an’ that was in summer. Didn’t look near so bad then.”

  “Making up for it now though, huh?”

  “I can’t disagree with that. But if they have decent grub and hot coffee, my opinion of Baines Flat might improve considerable.”

  They rode into the livery stable and dismounted. Apart from a few leaks in the roof, the stable was relatively dry and smelled of horses, dung and old leather. A wide-shouldered man dressed in buck-skins walked out of the shadows, and it took a minute for Kane to realize he was in fact a woman. Lank, blond hair fell over her shoulders, spilling from under a battered felt hat. She wore a holstered Colt on one hip and a huge bowie knife on the other. Her brown face was traced by wrinkles from the sun, but her blue eyes were bright and friendly.

  “Stalls for a couple of days, hay an’ oats if you got them,” Kane said.

  As rain ticked from the top of the door, the woman looked the marshal over, from the toes of his scuffed boots to the top of his hat. Then her eyes flicked to Vito.

  “You boys need a bath and a shave,” she said. “Winded you as soon as you rode inside. I said to myself, I said, ‘Katie, look what the cat just drug in.’ ”

  “The bath can wait,” Kane said. “Right now we need a place to put up our horses, then get grub an’ coffee.”

  “Suit yourself. It will cost you two bits a night, including the oats. That’s each. You fellers got two bits?”

  Nettled, Vito snapped, “Madam, where I come from, we don’t stop to pick up two bits lying on the sidewalk.”

  “Took ye fer some kind of Eastern dude,” the woman said.

  Vito drew himself up to his full height. “Madam, I’m from New Orleans, the fair magnolia of the Southern cities.”

  The woman called Katie screwed up her face, as though deep in thought. “Nope,” she said finally, “I’ve studied on it, but I don’t recollect that I’ve ever shot anybody from New Orleans.”

  Kane grinned. “Pay the lady, Vito.”

  Vito dropped four silver dollars into Katie’s open palm. “Tell me when we’ve gone through that.”

  The woman looked at Kane. “It ain’t none of my business, but I’d say you boys are here for the hanging tomorrow.”

  “First I’ve heard.” The marshal was surprised. “You got law here?”

  Katie shook her head. “Ain’t no law in Baines Flat. Well, unless you count Hulin Green. He kinda keeps the peace around here.”

  Kane was surprised a second time. “You talkin’ about Hulin Green out of Wichita?”

  “He rode into town about six months ago on a played-out hoss. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Big feller, wears his hair long an’ has a red beard down to his belt buckle.”

  Katie shook her head. “That don’t sound like Hulin.”

  Vito looked at Kane. “Do you know this man?”

  “I’ve heard of him. Robbed banks and stage-coaches for a while, then became a lawman. Last I heard he was a peace officer in Wichita. He’s good with a gun an’ he’s killed his share.”

  “This man who’s gettin’ hung,” Kane said to Katie, “he get a fair trial?”

  The woman laughed. “Bless your heart, stranger, Frank Dawson didn’t need a fair trial or any other kind. He was caught red-handed.”

  “How did it come up?”

  “We had a gal here in town, name of Lily LaBelle, at least that’s what she called herself. She hung out at the Bucket of Blood and entertained the miners in a shack out back, and anybody else who had two dollars. Well, four days ago she was found strangled. Hulin Green caught Frank Dawson here at the livery stable, trying to steal a hoss. When Hulin searched him, he found Lily’s silver locket, garter and gold ring in his pocket.”

  “Katie, were you here when Green caught Dawson?”

  The woman looked hard at Kane, apparently wondering why he was so interested in the murder of a two-dollar whore. “No, that night I was over to the hotel, eating supper.”

  “So we have only Hulin Green’s word for it.”

  “His word is good enough for this town,” Katie said. “That’s why we’re hanging Dawson tomorrow. Lily was way past her best and after Baines Flat her next stop would’ve been a hog ranch, but, even so, she didn’t deserve to die the way she did.” The woman rubbed the velvety nose of Vito’s horse. “Don’t feel bad about Dawson, Mister. He’s always been strange, a bit tetched in the head, you might say.”

  “He deserved a fair trial nonetheless,” Kane said.

  “He won’t get it, not around here. We don’t have a judge,” Katie said.

  “Marshal, I’m sure in need of coffee,” Vito said.

  And Kane threw him a look.

  Katie was taken aback. “Hell, have I been standing here talking to a man pinned to a tin star?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kane said. He pulled back his slicker. “Name’s Deputy Marshal Logan Kane out of Judge Isaac Parker’s court with jurisdiction over the Indian Territory.” He smiled. “Since we’re in the Territory, that would make me the law in Baines Flat.”

  Katie’s jaw dropped in her long face. “Here, what are you planning, Marshal?”

  “I’m takin’ Dawson back to Fort Smith to stand trial for murder.”

  The woman was dismayed. “What’s it to you? He’s as guilty as hell and he done it here, so let him swing here.”

  Kane nodded. “Maybe a couple of weeks ago, I’d have done just that,�
�� he said. “Now I’ve come to realize . . . well, I don’t know . . . maybe I’ve come to realize that I’m a sworn peace officer and I should start behavin’ like one.”

  Katie’s tone was skeptical. “You gonna start behavin’ like a peace officer around Hulin Green?”

  “I guess so.”

  “He’ll take it hard, an’ when Hulin takes things hard it always leads to a killing.”

  Kane shrugged. “I’m the law. I’ll tell him that an’ it will make a difference.”

  “Not to Hulin’s way of thinking, it won’t.”

  Katie led the horses to stalls at the rear of the barn and Kane followed her. For a few moments he watched her expertly unsaddle the sorrel, then said, “If five men and a woman with a young daughter ride in, let me know right away, huh?”

  “Are they outlaws? If they are, they might be friends of mine,” Katie said.

  “I doubt it. Ever hear of Buff Stringfellow an’ Jack Henry?”

  “Can’t say I have,” Katie said.

  “Then they ain’t friends o’ your’n,” Kane said.

  “And the gals?”

  “They’re friends of mine.”

  Katie thought it through. Kane could hear wind-driven rain raking across the roof.

  “I’ll let you know,” the woman said finally.

  “You won’t mistake Stringfellow and his men. One of them will be riding a Percheron and one of them”—he held up his right thumb—“is missing this.”

  “From the war?”

  “No, from me.”

  Katie began to fork hay to the horses and Kane said, “The girl is around twelve or thirteen an’ she don’t talk anymore. She was roughly handled by those men an’ it done something to her mind.”

  The woman straightened, her eyes level on Kane’s. “I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 25

  The front door of the Tontine Hotel opened onto the dining room, partitioned from the rest of the building by gray army blankets hanging from a sagging string. There were three roughly sawed pine tables and benches, the walls covered in old newspapers and, cut from mail-order catalogs, buxom women wearing corsets.