Bannerman the Enforcer 3

by Kirk Hamilton

With his good looks and solid build, Harwood made a striking figure as he walked the decks, giving orders to his sailors. Kate admired the way he operated. She had seen him spattered with river mud as he had hung over the bow, reaching out to guide the winch line with a tangle of logs and deadwood in the grab that was being used to dredge a boat channel. Harwood bought his men drinks at the saloons on shore, too, making a point of it, sometimes buying for the barroom of townsfolk as well. He knew he needed goodwill and the bar of the local saloon was as good a place as any to start.

  In the last port but one, he had been challenged to a fight by one of the trail-drivers, a huge bear of a man whose barrel chest seemed to burst out of his stained shirt. It was no ordinary fight: the man figured he would put Harwood down in such a manner that he would be the laughing stock of the Texas river towns. So he had drawn a broad-bladed Bowie knife and slammed it point-first into the dirty floorboards where it quivered for a long minute.

  “See that there knife, plantation-man?” the trail-driver had growled. “Well, you and me, we’re gonna kinda Indian rassle, down on the floor there, inside that circle my pard’s drawin’ with his boot toe. Now the man whose hand is underneath, the one that gets forced down in other words, is gonna have hisself sliced open ’cause we’re gonna be close enough to that blade for it to happen. My pard’ll toss his knife into the floor on the other side so we each got a blade to watch out for. And when that happens, we can both make a grab for the knife. The feller who gets the knife can use it on the other one to finish the fight.”

  Harwood listened with blank face then asked, “What happens if the loser of the Indian-wrestle manages to pick up the other knife?”

  The trail-herder had blinked: obviously it had never happened in the past and so hadn’t been considered a possibility. It should have told the man he was up against someone who knew how to use his intelligence against brute strength, but it didn’t.

  No doubt the hard case changed his mind a split-second before Rupe Harwood, the back of his right hand laid bare to the bone and bleeding profusely, had lunged across the circle, grabbed the second Bowie from the boards and hurled it into the trail-driver’s thick chest. The blade had gone all the way in and the trail-herder dropped to his knees, coughing blood as he fell back, wide-eyed, on his back on the saloon floor ...

  Harwood’s reputation had sped on ahead of his riverboat and he was known now as a tough rooster and a man prepared to fight for what he believed in. He was prepared to negotiate too, but the trail-men never gave him a chance to do this. They saw him as their enemy and began to gather their forces against him.

  He ran up against the first real opposition in San Augustine.

  The Texas Queen deepened the boat channel near the landing and then nosed into a berth, the experienced hands leaping ashore and making lines fast to trees growing on the riverbank. Before the last hitch had been tied, Kate Dukes appeared on deck with Harwood beside her and they looked over the rail at the town. It was like most other river towns: a medium sized place, with warehouses giving way to saloon and stores further up the crooked main street leading away from the wharf.

  But now, as they looked, men began to appear from the shadows of those large warehouses and clapboard buildings, and they formed into a tight bunch and came down towards the riverboat’s berth. Kate’s hands tightened on Harwood’s right arm. “They’re carrying guns and clubs, Rupe!” she exclaimed.

  He nodded, eyes narrowing as he watched the mob approach. “The trail-herders have organized ’em, I guess ... You’d best go back to your cabin, Katie. I don’t want trouble, but I can’t afford to walk away from it right now.”

  “But some of your men might well be killed, Rupe! Mightn’t it be better to pull out into midstream and continue on upriver at daybreak?”

  Harwood smiled ruefully. “We couldn’t anchor out in the river tonight without a swarm of canoes or punts coming out after us, not until we’ve been tested, anyway.”

  “But surely you proved yourself against that man with the knives!”

  “Sure. Now they want to see what kind of men I’ve got to back me up. No, my dear, I’m afraid this showdown is unavoidable. It’ll be best if you don’t watch.”

  Kate frowned but made no more protests, allowing him to escort her back to her cabin. Ten minutes later, after all the heated words and cusses and the challenges had been laid down, Kate couldn’t bear to sit in her cabin and listen to the sounds of the battle being fought on the shore. She just had to see what was going on and ran back up the ladder to the deck between the gilt-painted smoke stacks. Her hand went to her throat when she looked down into the mass of tangled, brawling, bleeding men.

  Wooden pickaxe handles swung ruthlessly, cracked against skulls and ribs and kneecaps. Men shouted in pain and anger and fear. There were grunts and snarls and the sound of retching and a high, keening noise made by a youth not yet twenty, doubled up with his knees pulled up under his chin, lying on the wharf edge, face gray with pain, contorted in agony. Kate felt sick and looked away. But there was violence everywhere. Men went down under fists and stayed down under boots. There was no quarter, none asked, none given. Bones were broken; flesh laid open; men were hurled into the muddy river waters and she heard one man screaming in terror that he could not swim and was in time to see him disappear under the surface, clawed hands vainly reaching up into the air for support that wasn’t there. Then the hands, too, slid beneath the waters and, after a brief boiling, the surface smoothed over again.

  It wasn’t long before the first shot was fired. It was inevitable, with men taking severe punishment like this. A shot rang out. A man lurched from the melee, hands clawing at a face that streamed blood and he fell to the ground, threshing about briefly before dying. The gunfire momentarily stopped the fighting, then the brawl continued with renewed violence. Guns crashed in a ragged volley and the crowd broke up, scattering.

  Everyone hunted cover, including the white-faced Kate Dukes, as she crouched beside one of the smoke stacks, feeling the metal hot to her touch. She ducked lower as a bullet clanged off the stack somewhere above her head. She heard other bullets thudding into the hull of the Texas Queen and, somewhere below, the shattering of glass. She looked over the rail cautiously, saw both parties of combatants withdrawing from each other, shooting as they went. Men dropped in their tracks; some merely staggered as lead struck, but not mortally. She caught a glimpse of Rupe Harwood, blood smeared across one cheek, supporting a wounded sailor with his left hand as he backed up the gangplank, the Smith and Wesson in his right hand, hammering its swift tattoo of death. It fired faster than the single action weapons of the other men, for it was double-actioned, which meant that pulling the trigger automatically cocked the hammer and aligned the chamber with the barrel. The single-action weapons had to have their hammers manually cocked by pulling them back with the thumb.

  Kate ducked back, stayed in a crouch, and worked her way to the ladder that led to the deck below, her heart pounding. When she got down there, other riverboat men were leaping on board, helping companions, nursing wounds. Rupe was hurrying about, reloading his pistol, shouting orders to cast off the stern and bow lines. Bullets from the trail-men clipped splinters from the boat and Kate stayed out of the way during this wild, urgent business of getting the boat out from shore.

  The engines began to throb and the deck beneath her feet trembled. The giant paddle-wheel began to churn the waters and a trail-man, leaping to get aboard, let out a blood-chilling scream as he missed, fell into the boiling water and was crushed by the massive paddle-wheel. The other trail-men who had been about to follow him, held their fire, staring in horror at the reddening water boiling out from the Texas Queen’s stern. They made no further attempts to prevent the boat from moving out in mid-river.

  The men on the riverboat were silent too, as the Texas Queen nosed away from the bank and out into the middle of the river. Kate, pale and shaken, ran to Rupe and slipped an arm about this waist, clinging to him tightly
. Her eyes moved over him swiftly, making sure he wasn’t badly hurt.

  He grinned and ruffled her hair with one hand while he wiped blood from a cut on his jaw with the other. Kate was surprised at the amount of relief she felt when she realized that he had only minor wounds and that most of the blood covering his clothes had come from the wounded sailor he had helped on board.

  “It seems your shipping scheme is not popular, Rupe,” she said, stepping back from him and trying to hide the concern she felt for him. “In fact, you could say there is definite resistance to the idea!”

  “You could say that,” he allowed. “But they were all liquored-up, likely on booze paid for by the trail-herd bosses. The time to see them is when they’re sober and able to listen. Maybe they’ll be more reasonable up at Tyler’s Landing.” He grinned briefly. “Anyway, we’ll find out in a week or so ... If they don’t sink us before then!”

  Kate smiled fleetingly. She couldn’t joke about it the way Rupe did.

  Chapter Six – The Mexican

  The letter that Ike McCabe left by way of explanation for leaving the ranch proved to be of little help in the search for the origin of the coins. McCabe had obviously been more concerned with letting Julie know why she was without a ranch-crew than the exact location of her father’s death. In part, the misspelled and laboriously written letter said:

  “ ... an Brodie catched me on the range an give me such a workin over as I’ve ever had. He wanted to know where yore father was kilt and I new he reely wanted to no where them old coins come from so I told him a place that was way way from where Abe got hisself shot. Bleeve me mam it was a long way from the gravel bend. I’m sorry I coodn hold out but I’m hert reel bad and still coffin some blood. Nate Cross is behind it all. I figger he thinks there is more coins on your land.

  I am

  your obed’t foreman (ex)

  Ike McCabe.”

  “He doesn’t give the location where pa was gunned down,” Julie said with a sigh when she had read the letter and passed it over for Yancey and Cato to look at. “Poor Ike. He was obviously feeling bad about having to run out ... I wish I could find him to try and make things up to him.”

  “I guess all you can get out of that is that your pa was shot on some gravel bend of the river,” Yancey allowed, handing the letter back to the girl.

  “And I’d like a dollar for every such bend in the Sabine!” Julie said, her mouth tightening.

  “Well, the odds are cut down some,” Cato pointed out. “Your father was shot on your land. How many gravel bends in the river where it crosses your land?”

  Before the girl could reply, Yancey said, “You know, from the story you told Governor Dukes, that the cannons were pushed off a high trail in the Spanish Peaks, the vital spot must be in the section of river that winds through the foothills.”

  He could see that the girl was trying to contain a rising excitement. The first real hope was starting to show in her face.

  “Of course! You’re both seeing this much clearer than I am. I—I keep thinking about pa. It’s being here, amongst his things and the—the house I grew up in. Too many memories keep flooding back, drowning out the present … ” She straightened in her chair. “The Sabine crosses the north-western corner of our land, where the first of the foothills begin to rise.” Her hands moved restlessly. “Trouble is, I don’t think there are any high places directly above the river on that section ...”

  “Maybe some of the earth has fallen away over the years,” Yancey said. “Landslides happen. What was a straight drop forty or fifty years back could be a gentle slope now, overgrown so you’d never know. We need an old survey map or else we’ve got to locate the old trail used by the Mexican soldiers when they were trying to outrun Burden’s troops.”

  “That makes sense,” allowed Cato.

  The girl, frowning, suddenly got to her feet and hurried from the room. They heard the door open in the hall outside and guessed she had gone into her father’s ranch office. There was the sound of drawers being opened and closed as she searched.

  “She’s been a lot quieter since we arrived,” Cato said. “Not so tetchy.”

  “Well, like she said, memories are all around her here. Seems she’s been away for quite a spell, studying. She’ll be seeing her pa everywhere. His things are all around her, those that Brodie and his pards didn’t smash up when they were going through the place.”

  “Those rannies will be watching us, I guess.”

  Yancey nodded, took a tobacco sack from his shirt pocket and began to build a cigarette. “They haven’t found anything yet, that’s for sure. Cross is the type to bide his time, watch us and what we’re about, let us do all the work and then move in ... I figure we won’t have anything to worry about until we actually find something. And it’ll need to be more than just a few coins this time.”

  Then the girl came hurrying back into the room, carrying an armload of rolled-up papers covered in dust and spiders’ webs. She dumped them on the table and blew some of the dust away. Cato coughed.

  “These are the old survey maps that the Land Agency and the Army have drawn up over the years. Each time they added new features or defined the boundaries, pa got a copy and kept the map on hand. These could go back thirty years or so ...

  “Should be long enough,” said Yancey, starting to unroll one of the maps, using care.

  They each took a map and rolled it out for study, glancing first at the survey date. If it had been drawn in recent years, the map was set aside for later reference, and an older one chosen. It was obvious to Yancey and Cato that the contours of the range as marked on the early maps did not correspond to the range as they knew it today, at least where it crossed Bar S Bar land. The course of the river did not seem to match up with the Sabine, either.

  The girl frowned in puzzlement at the men. “I don’t understand this at all. These are survey maps of our land but the features just don’t seem to be the same.”

  Cato turned down one corner of the map he was studying, to look at the survey date. “March, 1865. Let’s check the next map and see if the river’s course matches up. Maybe there was a big flood or something to change its course.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed the girl. “The Sabine often floods in spring when the snows melt in the Spanish Peaks, or when there are heavy storms in the ranges. Sometimes a flood cuts straight across a bend and carves an entirely new course for the river.” They found the next map, dated 1871, and the course of the river had changed. Also, the contours of the foothills had been altered, possibly through being undermined by floodwaters.

  “Well, there we are,” Julie said. “That’s much closer to the way the river is today where it crosses our land, but it’s still not quite the same.” She looked thoughtful. “I seem to remember getting a letter from pa only a few years back in which he mentioned there had been a big spring thaw that had flooded the lower pastures. It’s possible it also made a new course for the river then as well.”

  “Looks to me like our best bet is to locate the old trail used by the Mexicans when they dodged into the ranges,” Yancey said slowly. “We’re not going to find any precipices above the river as they were in the old days.”

  The girl looked at him, disappointment in her face. “It’s possible that the cannons are buried under the mountain where there’s been a landslide, I suppose.”

  Yancey nodded. “Possible.”

  “Then where did those coins come from?” Cato asked. “They had to be washed down there from someplace.”

  The girl brightened immediately. “Of course!”

  Yancey scratched at his ear. “Don’t want to dampen things, but these coins could’ve come from that cave you said the old Mexican mentioned. It could have been in a section of mountain that slid down into the river.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” she said, still bright-eyed. “There was a cannon left there, too!”

  “Yeah.” Yancey dragged smoke thoughtfully. “Well, I reckon we should look aro
und the river section where it flows through the foothills and check out every gravel bend we come across. It’ll be slow work, but it’s the only way, I figure. And it’s possible that we’ll find some tracks that’ll let us know if we’re in the right place or not ... If we draw a blank, then somehow we’ve got to get hold of more ancient maps that might show the location of that old mountain trail.”

  “The Dallas university has some old maps,” Julie Summers said. “I’ve used them often enough in my research for my thesis. I wasn’t looking for the old trail through the Spanish Peaks, but I’m sure I’ve seen it marked in somewhere.”

  “Can you get a hold of the maps?” Yancey asked.

  “I don’t see why not. It will be to the university’s advantage for us to locate those guns. I’ll get a wire off right away to my professor. I’m sure he’ll send us the maps.”

  “Okay,” Yancey said, “and in the meantime, Johnny and I will take this survey map and check out the river for a gravel bend that might have some old Spanish coins amongst the pebbles on the bottom.”

  “Fine,” Julie said, “and when I get back from sending the wire to Dallas, I’ll do some more research. I brought a lot of books with me that cover the era we’re interested in, and old records from Sam Houston’s files. There could be a report from Colonel Burden amongst them.”

  “That ought to help some,” Cato opined and began to sort through the survey maps, looking for one with a date that would be most useful.

  But right at that moment there was a man riding into Tyler’s Landing who knew a lot more about the jettisoned cannons and the treasure than anyone could ever hope to learn from maps or old records ...

  His name was Luis Romero and he was a Mexican from Nogales down in Durango Territory. Tall, slim, darkly handsome like many of his race, Romero was in his mid-twenties. He wore leather trousers, with matching vest, adorned with silver conchos set with turquoise stones, and a leather hat with a broad brim. His trouser belt was narrow but intricately carved with an entwined leaf and vine pattern, ending in a bunch of acorns. His gunbelt was one of the rare buscadero rigs, a single wide belt with twin rows of cartridges and a bolstered gun hanging from each side. His halfboots were highly polished, plain soft black leather with a narrow design picked out in white stitching down each side. If a man looked closely enough, he could get the impression that that design made up the shape of a knife-blade that could well be concealed inside the boot top ...