Dead Man st Snake's Creek

by Rob Hill

  ‘Old Henry Milton still sheriff?’

  ‘Sure is.’ Pearl laughed fondly. ‘Just about to retire though. Place won’t be the same without him. Did you know he arrived on the same wagon train as my ma and pa?’

  Hartford smiled; he had heard the story often enough. Milton and Pearl’s family were some of the first settlers in this part of the county. Pearl had been born here. Milton had taken charge of law and order while her pa built the saloon with his own hands and named it after his baby daughter on the day she was born.

  ‘Old Henry knows every stick and stone in the place, all the people too, inside and out. Kind of glues the place together, what’s left of it.’

  ‘Never thought he’d retire,’ Hartford said.

  ‘Arthritis in his knees. Can’t hardly climb up into the saddle now.’ Pearl put the blanket down on the bed. There was something she had to know. ‘Does your pa know you’re back for the wedding?’

  ‘Nope.’ Hartford continued staring out of the window. Greely had almost reached the end of the street. ‘I know. You’re going to tell me to be careful.’

  ‘He’s sick, Hart. Been sick a long time. It’s good that you’ll see him, even if you ain’t exactly welcome.’

  ‘Him and my brother, Boone, I don’t expect either of them will be pleased to see me.’

  ‘Best get out to the farm then. Catch your pa on his own. Boone ain’t there right now.’

  ‘No?’ Hartford turned to her.

  ‘He’s taken a job in Dallas. There’s so much building going on, they’re taking on guys from all over. Pay good money too.’

  ‘Who’s looking after the farm?’ Hartford was taken aback.

  ‘Your sister, Annie. Who else?’ Pearl stared at him trying to gauge his reaction. ‘Boone’s fiancée, Mary May Dunmore, keeps her company out there. Boone comes back when he can, at least that’s what he says. You can imagine what old man Dunmore thinks of that.’

  Hartford looked for Greely out in the street but he was gone.

  ‘You’ve been away a long time, Hart.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The farm where Hartford grew up was five miles south of town. After he had eaten the plate of eggs and cornbread Pearl made for him, he let her persuade him that he should head out there without delay. She insisted that even if Hartford couldn’t make peace with his pa, at least the sick man wouldn’t hear about his son’s presence in the area from someone else.

  Pearl was right, ten years was a long time. Hartford realized that there was good chance that she was close to guessing the real reason why he had suddenly turned up back in his home town. She hadn’t asked him a single question about Chicago, what he had done in the war or how he had spent his time since. She would have remembered the local reaction when he had been due to leave just as clearly as he did. She would have heard the gossip about what Joe Hartford’s boy was doing up north and would certainly have heard the rumours about his war service. She would know that his father had forbidden him to set foot in his house ever again. Hartford could imagine his sister, Annie, with no one to talk to out on the isolated farm except her ill, widowed pa, riding in to town to confide in her.

  The morning sun climbed the china sky and a few threads of cloud stretched high overhead. Along the trail, saguaro cactus flowers were bunched as tight as fists against the daylight and the smell of sagebrush was overpowering. In the distance, the shimmering air fractured the line of the horizon. Hartford smiled at the sight of a family of jack rabbits, which bounced ahead of him for a while before veering off the track to take cover behind the safety of a bunch of turkey foot.

  The heat burned Hartford’s shoulders as he let the appaloosa amble along. Was he deliberately letting his horse walk slowly? With the farm so close, he was aware of a sick feeling lying in his gut. For years, he had known this day would come, the day he attempted to make peace with his pa. Annie’s letters had kept him in touch with the course of his father’s illness, his decline from the strong, fit guy who had arrived in this part of Texas with his young wife, staked his claim, created a farm out of untamed land and built a house for his family with his own two hands. Now Pa Hartford contemptuously referred to himself as a lunger. He was a shadow of the man he had been, emaciated and bitter-tempered. His wife had worked herself to death and now TB sat like an anvil on his chest. He had to fight for every breath, barely able to summon the strength to raise himself out of the chair on the porch where he spent his days to stumble indoors to the couch where he spent his nights. In spite of this, he had forbidden Hartford, the son for whom he had had the highest hopes, from ever returning home again.

  Annie’s letters were quite clear that his pa had not changed his mind nor was he ever likely to. But Hartford had to come; he had to try. Since their mother died, he was well aware of how hard Annie worked, taking care of Pa, the house, farm chores and dealing with Boone’s excitable nature, even though Annie’s letters never referred to her own struggles. They were full of Pa’s illness and the domestic ups and downs of living with Boone. Although recently, after passing on the news about Boone’s engagement to Mary May Dunmore, Annie had barely mentioned him. Hartford judged there was a lot she wasn’t telling him.

  Another mile, Hartford knew he would be able to see the farm. Up ahead from a ridge where he and Boone used to trap rabbits when they were boys, there was a view over the whole spread. He remembered watching his pa in the far distance out mending fences or herding his few sheep and once observing him and men he had hired from the town raise the barn. At the time, this simple construction seemed to him like a miracle that promised hope and prosperity. As Hartford thought about these things, he was aware of the sick feeling returning to the pit of his stomach.

  The news Pearl had given him didn’t add up. Boone working on a construction site in Dallas, Annie running the farm, Boone’s fiancée keeping Annie company and old man Dunmore furious about his daughter’s engagement to his good-for-nothing neighbour, a sodbuster’s son. Then there was his desperately sick pa, too stubborn to let bygones be bygones. Only Annie would be pleased to see him. Boone and his pa held him in various degrees of contempt. Hartford reined in the appaloosa, unhitched the canteen which Pearl had filled for him and unscrewed the cap. The fresh water tasted honey-sweet and ran cool down his throat.

  Once Hartford had replaced the canteen, his hand instinctively slipped inside his jacket to check for his badge. If his pa hadn’t been sick, then, yes, he would have worn it for all to see. But even though it was the single thing in his life of which he was most proud, he knew it would get his pa riled like nothing else. Now was not the time to draw attention. The badge Hartford was so proud of was a silver shield embossed with the words Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

  When Hartford was a teenager, his mother read a profile of Alan Pinkerton in an out-of-date copy of Harper’s Weekly she bought from an itinerant trader. Pinkerton was a Scots immigrant whose North Western Police Agency had established a reputation for integrity and fairness. He was just about to start a new Detective Company under his own name headquartered at number 80 Washington Street, Chicago. Having struggled to maintain her own high standards for years whilst living amongst the ill-educated ranch hands, cowpokes and drifters who came and went on her husband’s farm, Rose Hartford wanted something better for her sons.

  Rose loved her husband and, true to her marriage vows, would have followed him anywhere, but the way of life he had chosen for them had worn her out. Pinkerton’s crusading zeal, as it was reported in the article, made a deep impression on her. For one thing it reminded her of her own father, also a Scot, a Presbyterian minister of iron-clad convictions, who had set sail for the New World with the intention of creating a better life for his family and spreading the Word of the Lord.

  Tragically, the bronchitis Rose’s father contracted on the voyage from Liverpool turned to pneumonia and he died before the ship docked in New York. Within a few months, Rose accepted an offer of marriage from Joe Hartford, an hones
t, hardworking man who had made up his mind to travel to Texas, establish his own small farm and raise a family.

  Years later when Rose read the Harper’s Weekly description of The Pinkerton Code, it reminded her of her beloved father’s idealism. She read and reread it: accept no bribes, never compromise with criminals, turn down reward money, refuse cases that could initiate a scandal. It was like music to her. It was obvious that her younger son, Johnny, should be the one to make the long journey to Chicago, seek out Mr Pinkerton and offer his services. Johnny was the quiet one: intelligent, thoughtful and strong. She saw her own father’s upright nature in him. This was the way in which at least one of her sons could create a better life for himself, far removed from the daily grind of the farm. Anyway, the farm was too small to support all five of them now the boys and Annie were grown up, so her husband would be bound to agree.

  Her elder son, Boone, was erratic. Wild and handsome so that he caught the eye of the girls in town, she suspected his reckless nature made the boys his age secretly afraid of him. Boone resented his chores on the farm and argued with his father. He got into fights in town and on more than one occasion Sheriff Milton had brought him home.

  Rose Hartford made the case to her husband that, with Johnny gone, Boone would see the farm as his birthright, settle down and work hard. Joe Hartford agreed. Although he barely shared her confidence in Boone, he could see that farm could not support all five of them. Secretly he had always hoped that Annie would be the one to go. Married to a local rancher, he hoped she might bring a modest dowry in the form of some discount on a livestock purchase or at least a deal over winter feed. But Joe knew better than to incur his wife’s wrath by mentioning this, so he kept quiet and agreed that Johnny should make the trek to Chicago and join the Pinkertons.

  Johnny Hartford was nineteen. His quiet determination and clear sense of right and wrong were immediately obvious to Allan Pinkerton. In addition, Pinkerton was deeply impressed by the fact that Hartford had travelled all the way from Texas to join his new agency. He took him on. Hartford found cheap lodgings round the corner from the Washington Street office and went to work. His enthusiastic letters home described exciting assignments guarding freight shipments on the new mid-west rail network. His mother was thrilled because it was clear to her that her precious son was doing good in the world. His father basked in reflected glory and took the opportunity to regale anyone in town who would listen with the contents of the latest letter. Annie was excited. Boone was jealous.

  One Christmas, a letter arrived on Agency notepaper which bore the legend ‘We Never Sleep’ underneath an etching of a wide open human eye. Rose, Annie and Joe had never seen an image so dramatic. The notion that they had a direct personal contact with a member of the Pinkerton Agency dazed them with pride; they could hardly speak. There was even more thrilling news to come.

  In February, their Johnny, in the company of Alan Pinkerton himself, was assigned to protect President-elect Lincoln on a rail journey to Washington when a plot to sabotage the track and derail the train as it passed through Baltimore was uncovered. Members of the agency, including Hartford, worked up a plan which involved Lincoln switching trains, passing through Baltimore at night and cutting telegraph wires to ensure that the plotters were not able to communicate. When Rose and Joe received details of this in their next letter, they were beyond excitement. Their younger son, their Johnny, was a national hero.

  But in their small Texas cattle town, the reaction to Johnny Hartford’s latest exploits was muted. Political tension was mounting across the country and President-elect Lincoln wasn’t popular down here. Neighbours who had previously listened keenly to the Hartfords’ news turned away. The townsfolk they had known for years listened politely to Joe and Rose, but eyebrows were raised. So Lincoln had slipped away under cover of darkness? In their eyes, that branded the President-elect a coward. Later, when no assassins were actually arrested, let alone charged, they didn’t know what to believe.

  Then the war came and everything changed. Johnny Hartford had joined the Pinkerton Agency eighteen months before the outbreak. To his parents, it was perfectly logical for him to continue working for them while the politicians got things sorted out. But as the months passed, the conflict snowballed and the enormity of what was about to happen became clear, they could not help wanting their son back home.

  At this point, neither Joe, Rose nor Annie had heard from Johnny for months. No mail could get through, so they pretended to themselves he was still guarding freight out of Chicago. But they heard the rumours: Allan Pinkerton’s agency was supplying secret intelligence for General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac; Pinkerton agents infiltrated groups of Southern sympathisers in the north; they had even set up spy rings behind enemy lines here in the South.

  By this time most of the local men were away fighting. When Rose made one of her trips to the store, she was shunned by the other women. They were used to Rose proudly passing on news about Johnny, but now they were worried sick about their husbands and sons, with danger in the air and all the rumours flying around, it was too much for them to take. For months, they had put up with being reminded that Rose’s beloved Johnny, who, unlike their own men folk, was too good for farm work, was making a success of his life beyond anything they could ever hope for their own children. But now, as news of the first casualties filtered back to Credence, rumours about Johnny Hartford ripped through the little town like wildfire: he had been overheard in a saloon in Abilene trying to buy dynamite for heaven knows what purpose; he had masterminded a spy-ring which had led to the deaths of good Southern men; he had been captured and was being held in Andersonville waiting to be shot as a spy.

  Boone also heard these rumours. To the approval of the townsfolk, he declared grandly that he was leaving to join the Texas Brigade under General Hood. The hired hands had already been seduced by the recruiting sergeant’s promise of adventure and army pay months ago. Alone on the farm with his wife and daughter, the recruiters’ dire warnings rang in Joe Hartford’s ears: if he failed to join up, the Yankees would ride in one day, kill him, slit his wife and daughter’s throats, steal his farm and there would be nothing he could do about it. They also promised him regular pay which he could send home. Joe Hartford left his scattergun with Rose and joined.

  The good news was that, unlike so many of their neighbours, both Joe and Boone survived the war. Boone was wounded at Gaines’ Mill, which allowed him home leave, but somehow the wound didn’t heal so he never made it back to the line. Joe, having endured the horrors of Manassas and Sharpsburg, was taken prisoner after Devil’s Den and spent the rest of the war in Elmira Prison in New York where the death rate due to hunger and disease was as bad as any battlefield. If it hadn’t been for his skill in catching prison rats, he would have starved.

  While the men were away, Rose died. Worn out by work and worry, with a meagre diet and ostracised by her neighbours, she only had Annie to rely on. The farm fell to rack and ruin. Broken fences remained unrepaired because the storekeeper’s wife refused to sell them any wire; one night, someone stole all their sheep; neglected longhorns from a neighbouring ranch got in and trampled their vegetable patch. The one thing that would have sustained Rose through all this misery would have been a letter from Johnny. It did not come.

  On her own, Annie was powerless to prevent her mother’s decline. When Rose died, Annie was unwilling to risk asking anyone in the town for help, dug the grave herself and read the twenty-third psalm, Rose’s favourite, over the body. She then lived in the house with the chickens to make sure they couldn’t wander off, slept with the shotgun Joe had left behind in her bed and waited for the men to return.

  Hartford dismounted when his horse reached the top of the ridge. Far below, a handkerchief of irrigated land stood out emerald green against the surrounding scrub. From here it looked as though the house, the old barn and the fences were all in a decent state of repair. There was an extensive vegetable patch and he could see rows of
melons and potatoes lining the bank of the stream that ran through the property, the reason Joe had settled here in the first place. A single goat was tethered further down the bank where his pa had once let sheep graze and a hen house still stood in the yard. Hartford smiled to himself at the sight of the old place. He half expected to catch sight of his ma weeding between the rows of vegetables, while his brother Boone set up a row of tin cans on the fence to knock down with his catapult. South of the farm lay mile after mile of open plain. In the distance, a dust cloud kicked up by a herd of longhorns hung in the air. The Hartfords’ immediate neighbour was the Lazy D ranch.

  After he had spent a few minutes taking in the view, Hartford made his way down the slope to the farm. The heat on the south side of the ridge was more intense. It burned his shoulders and the sunlight bounced off the prairie floor, almost blinding him. His heartbeat quickened as he approached the farm, but he kept the appaloosa at the same measured walking place.

  There was someone sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. Asleep, Hartford assumed. But as he drew closer, the man reached down beside him and picked up a scattergun, heaved himself out of his chair and took up a position leaning against one of the porch posts. He raised the gun to his shoulder, pointed it straight at Hartford and called out.

  ‘Stop right there.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Who are you?’ Joe Hartford kept his aim steady.

  Dressed in clean work clothes, his shirt hung loose over his narrow shoulders where he had lost weight, his face was pain-lined and pale. Leaning heavily against the porch post while he pointed the shotgun at Hartford’s chest, he looked as though he was set on defending his property to his last breath.

  ‘It’s me, Pa.’