Ralph Compton Comanche Trail (4 page)

“Gonna be mighty slow going, I'm afraid,” the marshal said as the newly deputized men sat along the boardwalk, scraping mud from their boots.

“This here's my deputies,” he said after a brief nod to Taylor. “Tater Barclay here, he's kinda my full-time, part-time deputy when he ain't drunk or tending his place.” The burly man with oversized arms that strained against the sleeves of his flannel shirt nodded at him. “These boys are
Jason and Mason Weatherby, fairly good for nothing mostly, but they'll have to do.”

The twin brothers flashed identical smiles. “Reckon you get what you pay for, Marshal,” Mason Weatherby shot back.

“And this,” Thorntree continued, “is Brother Winfrey. He does our preaching.”

Though surprised that a man of the cloth would be riding with them, Taylor only nodded in the direction of the slightly built man whose long, prematurely silver hair reached to his shoulders.

Brother Winfrey stood to extend a handshake. “I've not always had the calling,” he said. “Rode with Sterling Price and the Missouri State Guard back in the day.” He tapped a hand against the handle of a ten-year-old army-issue Colt that hung at his side.

“Now that we've made our proper acquaintances,” the marshal said, “we'd best mount up and be on our way.”

He rode point, followed by the twins, Barclay, and the preacher. Taylor brought up the rear.

“Anybody rides hisself off into a gully and gets drowned,” Thorntree yelled back at his posse, “we ain't stopping for you.”

The six riders remained in their saddles, staring toward the ramshackle cabin's open doorway, the sign that had promised food and lodging swinging in the gentle breeze from the one nail that still held it in place. The snorting of their mounts was the only interruption to the silence.

“Hello, the house,” Marshal Thorntree called out.

When there was no response, he instructed Barclay and the twins to check the barn. He, the preacher, and Taylor headed toward the cabin.

Inside, debris was scattered across the dirt floor. Footprints of scavenging coyotes crisscrossed the room.

“Don't look like there was much for the critters to find here,” the marshal said as Taylor pulled back the canvas that separated the single room. “Cleaned out back here too,” he said. Only the frame of the bed remained.

Barclay joined them. “Only thing out in the barn is a milk cow badly in need of tending. I give her some hay and seen she had fresh water. By the looks of tracks, there was once a wagon there, but it's gone.”

Thorntree looked around the deserted cabin. “Appears to
me these folks took their leave in a bit of a hurry.” He pointed toward the shelf where rows of Kate Bender's canning jars were still in place. “Me, if I'm planning to move on, I'd figure on taking some food along.”

Taylor called out from the opposite side of the curtain, “Something here you need to see, Marshal.” He'd pushed the bed aside and was standing over a hole that led to what appeared to be a cellar. A ladder disappeared into the darkness below.

“I seen a lantern out in the barn,” Barclay said.

“Go fetch it,” the marshal said.

Even before the deputy returned, Taylor was aware of the metallic odor he'd been unable to recognize on his earlier visit. Now, though, it was stronger, more cloying. Once he and the marshal had made their way into the cramped cellar, the stench was so strong that both men placed a forearm against their faces. Thorntree was holding the lantern above his head when the preacher joined them. The three stood shoulder to shoulder, filling the small earthen room.

“I know that smell all too well,” Brother Winfrey said. “It's not one you'll likely ever forget.”

Taylor looked at the preacher. “From your soldiering days?”

He nodded, silently pointing to dark spots on the wall and floor that were visible even in the lantern's faint glow. “The Devil's work has been done in this godforsaken hole,” he whispered. “Folks have died here.”

Bile rose in Taylor's throat as he hurried up the ladder and away from the cabin. Outside, hands against his knees, he heaved as the muscles of his stomach knotted and the ground around him spun.

•   •   •

The Weatherby twins had made an even more chilling discovery. Their boots caked with doughy mud, their faces suddenly white, they urged the marshal to follow them to the orchard located no more than a hundred yards from the cabin. “We was trying to follow the tracks of their wagon,” Jason said, “when we come upon something strange.”

“Yessir, mighty strange,” Mason added breathlessly.

The deluge had washed soil away, baring the roots of many of the trees. Pears and peaches lay scattered, knocked from limbs by the pelting rains. In several places there were sunken areas where loose dirt had settled.

“Right yonder.” Jason pointed toward one of the indentations. A decaying arm reached up from a shallow grave, its discolored hand wrapped into a clenched fist.

Brother Winfrey fell to his knees and began to pray.

The marshal tugged his hat tighter as he began to count the number of low spots that were visible. “Looks like we're gonna be needing us some help,” he said. He helped the preacher to his feet and instructed him to ride back to Thayer. “Gather up some folks for digging. And alert Doc Libby we'll need his wagon and some burlap for wrapping soon as he can get it here.”

Taylor was already walking toward the barn to see what tools old man Bender might have left behind.

In the following days word spread quickly of the horrific discovery on the Benders' place. In addition to a dozen men from Thayer who had returned with Brother Winfrey, neighboring settlers began arriving on horseback. Some came by wagon, bringing picnic baskets and spreading blankets wherever they could find a dry spot that afforded a good view of the gruesome drama being played out.

Joining those who returned with the preacher was Ashley Ambrose, editor of the
Thayer Observer
, who mingled among the onlookers and workers to gather information for a story he was sure would be unlike any he'd ever written.

By the end of the third day, ten bodies had been exhumed. Among them was that of Dr. Taylor, the back of his skull shattered and his throat slashed. In another grave, workers found a man an onlooker identified as George Loncher, who had last been seen a month earlier, leaving for a trip to the nearby settlement of Harmony Grove. Most of the bodies examined by Doc Libby as they were brought to him in the barn were so badly decomposed that it was unlikely they would ever be identified.

Before their grim chore was completed, workers also found skeletal remains of several body parts in a brush pile in a nearby ravine. In an abandoned water well, a human skull floated among a tangle of water moccasins.

•   •   •

It was nearing sundown when Marshal Thorntree found Taylor seated near the barn. His face caked with dirt, he looked out onto the nearby prairie with a dazed expression. Thorntree placed a hand on his shoulder. “I'm mighty sorry, son,” he said as he crouched down beside him. “Don't rightly know what else to say.”

Taylor turned to look at the grizzled old lawman. “I've never seen anything like this. Never even imagined . . .”

“Ain't nobody could have imagined civilized folks doing this kind of evil. I reckon we're all in for a long spell of night terrors 'cause of what's been seen here.”

He explained that the bodies, each wrapped in burlap, were being loaded onto Doc Libby's wagon and would soon
be on their way to Thayer. “You got any thoughts on what you want to do about your pa?” the marshal asked.

Taylor closed his eyes. “It was my sister's wish that I find him and bring him home,” he said. “I suppose that's still my duty.”

“In that case, you'll be wanting the doc to prepare him for the trip.”

With the twins out front, carrying torches to light the way, the somber procession made its way northward deep into the night.

The marshal and Taylor rode side by side behind the slow-moving wagon. Thorntree said, “Soon as everybody's had fair time to get some rest and see their families, we'll form up a posse and be on our way. This matter won't go unattended, I can promise you. Likely as not, they're headed south and I doubt they can get too far what with all the mud and flooded creeks. We'll catch up to them soon enough.”

“And when you do?”

The marshal looked straight ahead. “We can hope they decide to make a stand and put up a fight,” he said. “That way we won't have to bother bringing none of them back to waste good hanging rope on.”

“I'm still deputized, ain't that right?”

“I reckon so.”

“Then, soon as I get my father home, I'll be catching up to the posse. Never in my life have I been of a mind to claim revenge, much less to take a life, but given the chance now, that's what I'd dearly like to do, be it man or woman or a laughing half-wit.”

Thorntree didn't respond. The two men made the remainder of the journey in silence.

•   •   •

The headline on Ashley Ambrose's article in the
Observer
spared none of his flair for the dramatic. D
EATH AT THE
D
EVIL'S
I
NN
, it read.

A horror so unspeakable that it caused some who discovered it to fall faint in disbelief had been played out just a short distance from our own community. It happened at a cabin way station south of Thayer. The property belonged to folks known as the Bender family and had been the darkly evil site of many murders and the desecration of bodies of unwary travelers along the Osage Trail for an unspecified amount of time.

Ten dead have been discovered, and it is believed there might be that many more who fell victim to the murdering ways of the family.

It is the speculation of Marshal Brantley Thorntree that the Benders would take quick measure of those who stopped in to determine if they had any sizable amount of money or valuable goods worth stealing. If such was the case, the likelihood of their surviving the visit was slim. Otherwise, if travelers were seen as ordinary poor folks, they were allowed to go on their way unharmed after making payment for their purchases.

This reporter, who witnessed firsthand the horrific sights that Thorntree and his deputies were forced to deal with, wishes never again to view such ungodly carnage.

Brother Noah Winfrey was seen praying over the lifeless bodies as they were being removed from shallow graves located a short distance from the deserted cabin.

The Bloody Benders—a mother and father, son and daughter, all who are assumed to not be right in the head—had taken flight before the arrival of Thorntree and his men, leaving behind only a single cow badly in need of food and bawling to be milked.

The marshal says that a posse will soon be formed to hunt them down and return them for hanging, which, to this reporter's thinking, is the proper justice due.

The one-room cabin, apparently built by the father upon settling there, was divided by a canvas taken from his wagon. In the front portion, this reporter observed a cookstove and table where visitors were invited to sit. In the event they were folks with money or other valuables, they were urged to take their place on the side of the table that would cause their backs to be to the canvas.

While the Bender women served and entertained the customers, father Bender and his grown son, claiming need to tend to livestock in the barn, would sneak around to hide themselves away behind the curtain, one or both wielding an ax handle that had been used to knock the victims in the head.

Once that foul deed was accomplished, they would drag the unconscious bodies down into a cellar that was dug beneath the cabin, and there the innocents' lives would be ended by a quick knife slash to their throats.

Marshal Thorntree supposes that once they were dead and their valuables taken, they were carried out to their final resting place, most likely under the cover of darkness. With apologies for the vileness of this report, it must be said that some of the bodies had been
cut into pieces, apparently to make the chore of carrying them from the cellar a bit easier.

It was a gentleman named Taylor from Independence, traveling in search of his missing father, who alerted Marshal Thorntree that something was amiss at the Benders' place, causing the lawman's visit that resulted in the gruesome discovery.

Sad to say, Taylor recognized his father among the deceased and says he now plans to return him to Independence for proper burial.

•   •   •

Thad Taylor stayed drunk for two days in an effort to wash away the sights and smells of the Bender place and forestall thoughts of what he would say to Sister when he returned home. Tater Barclay, dealing with what he called “memory tantrums,” matched his new friend, whiskey shot for whiskey shot, and saw to it that Thad made it back to the livery once the saloonkeeper had sent them on their way.

Though he had not yet been asked, Doc Libby had taken it upon himself to order the building of a casket. “I cleaned and wrapped your pa as best I could,” he told the finally sobering Taylor. “The casket is made of a good, sturdy wood and the top's nailed down tight. There's enough salt and charcoal covering him so that you won't likely be offended by foul smell as you make your trip.

“My condolences to you, my good man, and it is my sincere hope we meet again under more pleasing circumstances.”

Taylor shook the doctor's hand and paid him for the casket and care with the last of the money Sister had provided him, grateful that Barclay had offered him free use of his horse and wagon.

“My ol' mare ain't likely to get you anywhere in much of a hurry,” Tater told him, “but she pulls a wagon more steady than your own pony is likely to. Axles been fresh greased, so I 'spect you're ready as you're gonna be.”

“I'll get your horse and rig back to you soon as I can,” Taylor said as they lifted the casket into place and tied it and his saddle to the side rails. He gently scratched behind Magazine's ears, then tethered him to the back of the wagon.

“All you'll need to do this time is follow along and see to it you keep the doctor company,” he whispered.