Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  Lorraine and Kane exchanged a surprised glance. Then the woman took her daughter in her arms and held her tightly, their tears mingling.

  “Nellie,” the marshal said, “I’m a mighty hard man to kill.” He smiled and laid his hand on top of the girl’s head. “Once this is over, we’ll go to Texas. Would you like that?”

  Nellie nodded and Lorraine’s eyes lifted to Kane’s. “All of us?”

  “Of course, all of us. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Vito finally coughed into the stretching silence that followed. He said, handing Kane his slicker, “If you’re all set on heading out there, Marshal, let’s go. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  Kane tore his eyes away from Lorraine’s face. “Step careful, Vito,” he said, the pain making him sick and tired beyond anything he’d ever known before. “I don’t know how much good I’ll be in a shooting scrape. It’ll be like drawing against a full house.”

  Vito nodded, grinning. “Know what this reminds me of, Marshal? We’re like the heroes in the dime novels they sell in the railroad station in New Orleans. You know, about stalwart frontiersmen who triumph over impossible odds.”

  “I’m a shot-up, poor excuse for a lawman and you’re a city slicker who shoots fair to middlin’ with a belly gun. Where do we fit in?”

  “Why, right there on the cover. You and me, looking stalwart.”

  Despite the tormenting ache in his side, Kane managed a smile. “Let’s go, Dan’l Boone.”

  Lorraine’s cries of protest still ringing in his ears, Kane walked into the rain-lashed darkness. Lamps were lit in the Alamo and Bucket of Blood saloons, spilling rectangles of yellow light on the soaked boardwalks that glistened like wet paint. Driven by hunger, the coyotes were yipping close to town, a dreary counterpoint to the snake hiss of the rain.

  The body hanging from the gallows swayed in the wind, the hemp rope creaking. Frank Dawson had strangled to death, his swollen, black tongue sticking out between pale lips. His eyes were open, staring accusingly at Kane.

  “Look,” Vito said. “A message for you.” He was pointing to a board nailed to the gallows platform beside the steps. The writing was done, badly, in white paint.

  KANE

  YURE

  NEXT

  “The spelling leaves something to be desired,” Vito said. He was consciously keeping his tone light, but his face was grim. “However, the intent is clear enough.”

  Kane, almost dead on his feet, felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

  And the unnatural, derisive laughter that rose from somewhere in town did nothing to make him feel more at ease.

  Chapter 29

  Logan Kane swayed on his feet, looking around him into rain and darkness. “Vito!” he whispered urgently.

  The man knew what was expected of him. He took the marshal’s arm and draped it over his shoulders, taking as much of his weight as he could. “You’re going back to bed,” he said.

  “No,” Kane said. “Help me to the livery. Katie Gordon is there.”

  A proud, stiff-necked man, Kane would have asked no other person alive for the help he demanded of Vito Provanzano that night. But Vito, a proud man himself, was aware where the parameters of another man’s pride lay and he would not step over the line. To Kane, that made the difference.

  Half dragging the marshal through the mud, Vito managed to get him to the livery stable. The place was in darkness.

  The marshal disengaged himself from Vito and stepped to the door, supporting himself by a hand on the frame. He drew his Colt and yelled, “Katie!”

  No answer.

  Rats rustled restlessly in the corners, rain rattled on the roof and a horse blew through its nose, then fell silent. The tin-rooster weather vane on the gable turned this way and that, uselessly trying to point out the shifting direction of the squalling wind and screeching in flustered protest.

  “Katie!” Kane called again. And again the answering stillness mocked him.

  Beside the marshal a match sizzled into flame and Vito lit the oil lamp he was holding. He held the lamp high, casting orange light into the barn, deepening the angled shadows.

  Katie Gordon lay on her back, half in, half out of a horse stall. She was naked. Kane lurched toward her, stooping to his left against the biting pain in his waist. Lost in the uncertain lamplight, the woman’s face was in shadow. He stepped into the stall.

  “Vito,” he said, “bring the lamp closer.”

  A moment’s hesitation, then, “That might be difficult, Marshal. I’ve got a gun pointed at my head.”

  “Turn real slow, Kane. And keep your hand away from the iron.”

  Kane straightened up, his back stiff. He turned and saw Hulin Green standing next to Vito, the muzzle of the man’s Colt screwed into his temple. “I see anything fancy, anything I don’t like, and I scatter his brains,” Green said.

  “Why are you here?” Kane asked. “Come back to admire your handiwork?”

  “Her? I didn’t kill her. A man called Amos Albright did that. He likes to strangle the ladies while he’s about his business.”

  “You’re a liar, Green,” Vito snapped. “I put a bullet in that man.”

  “You grazed him, is all.” Green pushed on the Colt, forcing Vito’s head to the right. “And listen, you damned dago, you call me a liar again and I’ll blow your head clean off.”

  Roughly, Green opened Vito’s coat, slid out the Smith & Wesson from the shoulder holster and tossed it into the dirt. “Buff told me you carried a hideout there. Now, lay the lamp at your feet and get over beside Kane. After me and him have it out, maybe I’ll let you live.” He shrugged. “But, again, maybe I won’t.”

  Vito did as he was told and the marshal said, “I’m callin’ you a liar as well. You murdered Katie Gordon an’ before that, Lily LaBelle.”

  Green smiled. “Kane, you stupid hick, I’ve never killed a woman in my life. I told you, Albright killed Katie. And Lily was murdered by . . . well, why don’t you guess.”

  Kane was desperately trying to hold on, battling pain, dizziness and waves of nausea. “I don’t have to guess. It was you.”

  Green shook his head. “Wrong again. Katie murdered Lily, and I helped cover it up for her, repaying old favors you might say. Besides, Katie owned the livery and she’d be missed. Frank Dawson, now who would miss him?”

  “Katie had no call to kill Lily LaBelle,” Kane said.

  “Had a sheltered upbringing, huh, Kane?” Green took a single step back, a gunfighter seeking his comfortable distance. But he was still talking. “Katie didn’t like men, at least not in her bed. But she didn’t have the same feelings about women, especially Lily. When Lily told her she was leaving her and heading east to Boston town, Katie couldn’t take it. If she couldn’t have Lily, then no one would. So she strangled her.”

  Green moved his frock coat away from his holstered gun. “I took some things from Lily’s cabin and said I’d found them on Dawson. All but a sweet little pepperbox revolver. That I kept for myself.”

  Now Green’s smile slipped. “Kane, I’m all through talking and I don’t much care if you believe me or not, on account of how you’ll be dead real soon anyhow.”

  “Like I told you afore, Green, don’t make me draw down on you.”

  “Big talk from a man who’s half dead already. You’ve been stepping a mighty wide path since I wouldn’t fight you in the saloon,” Green said, his eyes luminous in the lamplight. “Men talk, and there are some saying you put the crawl on me. Well, I’ve never enjoyed killing a man before breakfast and that’s all there was to it, why I let it go.” His gaze hardened from gray to ice blue. “It’s way past breakfast now, Kane.”

  “Damn you, the man is dead on his feet,” Vito yelled.

  “You shut your trap! He’s getting an even break.”

  Kane was falling apart. He was so weak his knees trembled and he saw Green through a haze of glimmering yellow light and purple shadow. He had to hold on, just a minut
e longer. . . .

  “Any time you feel like it, skin the iron,” Green prompted. His face had a grinning, predatory cast, like a lobo wolf that has just hamstrung an elk. “I want this thing done right.”

  “Hulin,” Kane pleaded, “please be reasonable. I’m not in any condition to—”

  He drew and fired.

  The bullet slammed into Green’s belly, low down, an inch under the navel. But the man was fast, very fast. He fired a split second later and the big hunk of .45 lead struck the cylinder of Kane’s revolver. The slug caromed off the gun, flattened and tumbling, then slammed into the upper part of the marshal’s chest. The deformed bullet smashed its way across ribs and exited through the top of Kane’s left shoulder, exploding out of the collarbone in a ragged spray of scarlet blood.

  Green’s face was ashen, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grotesque grin. Gut-shot, knowing he was a dead man, he dropped to one knee. He shot again—a miss.

  The cylinder of Kane’s gun was loose and out of line. He held it in place with his left hand, thumbed the hammer and fired, hitting Green in the belly again. The gunman got off a shot, into the floor. He tried to get up, his eyes, terrible with hate, meeting Kane’s, then just rolled over.

  Kane limped to Green’s side and stood above him, his arm with the shattered gun hanging at his side. “Damn you,” the man whispered, “you are fast.”

  “Faster than you’ll ever live to be,” the marshal said, no pity in him, his anger a red and black fog in his mind.

  Green struggled to talk through the blood that filled his mouth. “I hanged Dawson, me and Buff. You couldn’t save him, Kane. I beat you . . . you . . .”

  Then Hulin Green died.

  Vito Provanzano’s gray face betrayed his shock. “Marshal, you’re hit again.”

  “Seems like.”

  “I have to get you to bed and then find a doctor, or what passes for one around here.”

  Kane shook his head. “No. Hell, I’ll probably be dead afore sunup. It’s got to be finished tonight.” He tossed his mangled revolver aside and nodded to Green’s body. “Give me his gun.”

  Vito picked up his own revolver, wiped it off, then did the same with Green’s Colt.

  Kane reloaded the gun, filling all six chambers, and shoved it into his holster. “Rip that shirt off’n him an’ see if you can use it to stop my bleeding.” Vito hesitated, looking at the dead man. “Hurry up,” the marshal said. “We’re running out of time. I don’t know how long I can stay on my feet.”

  Vito bent to the body, but stopped, his alarmed eyes on Kane.

  From outside came the sound of booted men running through rain and mud.

  The marshal drew his gun and staggered to the door of the barn. Four men were charging toward him, the bulky shape of Buff Stringfellow in the lead. Kane shot rapidly, fanning the Colt. He knew his chances of hitting anything were remote, but the flying bullets had the desired effect. Stringfellow and the others broke and ran.

  Vito was beside him, his revolver in his hand. “Watch them!” Kane yelled. He could see nothing but a cartwheeling blur of darkness and rain. After a couple of minutes, he said, “Well? Where?”

  “The Bucket of Blood.”

  “Good. Then that’s where I’ll find them.” He looked at Vito and even managed a smile. “I took ’em by surprise. I reckon they thought I was dead.”

  “And I reckon that was a real good guess on their part,” Vito said, looking Kane up and down . . . a tall, grim lawman, shot through and through and drenched in blood that was all his own.

  The thought came unbidden to Vito’s deeply troubled mind that Deputy Marshal Logan Kane was a dead man who hadn’t fallen over yet.

  Chapter 30

  Vito Provanzano ripped the shirt off Green’s body and helped Kane out of his slicker. He bandaged up the wounds on the marshal’s chest and shoulder as best he could and was shocked by what he saw.

  “I’ve seen wounded men before,” he said, looking hard into Kane’s eyes. “But I’ve never seen an injury like this. Nothing like this. Marshal, it’s”—he fished through his mind for a word—“savage. Savage . . . like raw meat.”

  “You know how to cheer a man, don’t you?” Kane said. “Button me into the slicker again to hold the bandage in place.”

  “It’s not a bandage,” Vito said. “It’s just a dead man’s shirt soaking up blood.”

  A hay rake hung from a hook on the barn wall and Vito took it down and smashed off the pegged wooden tines. He looked it over, nodded and offered it to Kane. “I’d say this is a pretty fair imitation of a crutch,” he said. “I can’t have you hanging on me when the shooting starts.”

  The marshal took the rake and propped it under his left arm. His eyes sought Vito’s in the gloom. “Vito, before it’s too late, saddle your hoss an’ run fast an’ fur, all the way to the New Orleans docks.”

  Vito shook his head. “I’ll see this job through.”

  Logan Kane was a man born without the ability to back up or back down, combined with a harsh drive toward sudden, wild-eyed violence. He recognized those traits in others, and although Vito’s lay hidden under a glossy veneer of city slicker sophistication, it was there nonetheless. The man would stick, no matter the consequences, and there could be no talking him out of it.

  “I’m beholden to you,” Kane said.

  Vito smiled. “I know.”

  “Then let’s get it done,” Kane said.

  He shuffled toward the door, trailing a spoor of blood behind him. His face was ashen under his tan, his blue eyes burned out, revealing his battle with pain and the waves of weakness that kept washing over him.

  Kane had been weathered by a thousand difficult trails and he had known much of hardship and doing without, whether of food, water, sleep or the scented companionship of a woman. All that was not bone or muscle in him had long since melted away and the soul within his body was scarred by many wounds, most too deep to ever heal. But that night, shot to ribbons and barely able to stay on his feet, all that had gone before helped him endure and, despite his feebleness, made him dangerous, fast and deadly with a gun as few men are.

  Had a man used to soft living and civilized ways taken the hits, he would already have been dead, his life ebbing away on the dirty floor of the barn. But Kane was a tough man to kill, rugged as the Western lands that had tested him time and time again and had never found him wanting. He had been bred hard, lived hard and now he was determined to die hard.

  He was at the door of the barn. And he had it to do.

  Lorraine, running through mud and rain, desperately tried to stop him.

  “I heard the shooting and I thought you were dead,” she cried.

  She threw herself against him, heedless of the blood that stained her dress. She begged, pleaded, cajoled and wept bitter tears, and later Kane couldn’t remember what he said to her in reply.

  “Logan, you’re in no shape to go up against Stringfellow and three other gunmen,” Lorraine said. “We’ll leave, now, tonight. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

  She read her answer in Kane’s eyes and she swung on Vito. “For God’s sake tell him!”

  The man shook his head. “Ma’am, I can’t tell the marshal what to do.”

  “There’s blood everywhere,” Lorraine cried, looking at the scarlet shreds hanging in strips under Kane’s slicker. And again she asked Vito, “How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad, ma’am. Real bad. Ribs broken, shoulder broken.” He looked at the ground between his feet. “I don’t know what else is broken inside.”

  “Lorraine, go to the hotel and wait for me,” Kane said. “I’ll be back for you and Nellie.”

  Lorraine was intelligent enough to realize that she’d used every womanly weapon in her arsenal, including tears, and that Kane would not budge. Ten yoke of oxen would not move him and it was pointless to attempt the impossible. “I’ll be at the hotel,” the woman said, her voice flat as she accepted what was now inevitable.

 
Lorraine turned on her heel and walked into the lashing rain. Kane called out after her, but she did not turn and soon became one with the night.

  The Bucket of Blood glowed in the gloom, needles of rain spiking into its spilling rectangles of yellow light. A slight haze hung in the air, gray as winter smoke, and around Kane and Vito the muddy street hissed. The saloon crouched on the boardwalk, silent and waiting, hung with an aura of dread so real a man could reach out and grab it and come away with a handful of blackness.

  Vito turned uneasily to Kane. “How are you holding up, Marshal?”

  “I’m still on my feet.”

  “Yes, but barely.”

  “I’ve got a few minutes left in me. Then I’m done.” He looked at Vito, his face drawn, haggard and suddenly old. “I don’t have time for anything fancy. We walk inside and I ask for their surrender.” He reached down, undid the tin star from his gun belt and pinned it to the front of his slicker. “About time I showed I’m proud of this.” Kane reached out and laid a hand on Vito’s shoulder. He said, “I’m sorry about getting you into it. It could all go to hell real fast.”

  “Your few minutes are running out, Marshal,” Vito said. “Let’s get it done.”

  Kane adjusted the hang of his gun, settled his crutch under his arm, then nodded. “I’m ready.”

  The younger man smiled. “No you’re not, but I’m all through trying to tell you that.”

  The two men walked slowly through the mud to the saloon. In the darkness the rain fell around them like liquid silver.

  Kane opened the door and stepped inside.

  Buff Stringfellow and Jack Henry sat at a table opposite the door, a bottle between them. Amos Albright, the woman killer, stood at the corner of the bar, his sly eyes glittering with the thrill of the hunt. He held Sam Shaver’s Greener against his side, half hidden by his ragged coat. Reuben Largo had taken up a position behind Stringfellow. Largo was wearing a holstered Colt, but the man was a knife artist and he’d have a bowie about him somewhere. Largo called himself a preacher, but his cold, black eyes gave no hint of any religious fervor.