Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (11 page)

Kane ground out his cigarette butt on the grass beside him, then immediately began to build another.

“You riled at me, Marshal?” Sam asked.

“No, Sam. I asked you to speak your mind an' you spoke it. But I'm studying on something. Stringfellow, Joe Foster an' them others, when you get right down to it, I'm no different from them, am I?”

The old man said nothing.

Kane thumbed a match into flame and lit his cigarette, his eyes distant. “Afore I signed on with Judge Parker, I killed men for money. The better the money, the more men I killed. I didn't give a damn about their wives or children or if they was in the right or in the wrong. I was hired for gun work an' I did it to the best of my ability.

“One time, down to Old Mexico, I gunned a man at the door to the mission where he was about to get hitched. His bride was a-standin' there, watching, wearing a veil an' a white dress. She looked at me like I was some kind of animal. To my dying day I'll never fergit her eyes, how they judged and condemned me.”

“Logan, you don't—”

“Wait, Sam, let me finish.” Kane spoke through a cloud of blue smoke. “Oncet, when I was ridin' the grub line for the first an' only time in my life, I held up a Bain and Company stage down on the Concho. This gambler feller objected to bein' robbed of his money an' watch an' drew down on me.” Kane dragged on his cigarette. “I killed him too.”

He turned his head to look at Sam. “I've been sitting here thinking that I'm no better and maybe a sight worse than the men in the cage over there. A tad luckier maybe, but no different.” Now Kane's gaze searched the old man's face. “Is that how it be, Sam?”

He could see by the still pools of Sam's eyes that he was not hunting in his mind for an answer. The old man rose to his feet. “I only drive the wagon, Marshal.” He looked down at Kane for a moment. “Stretch out, get some sleep. I'll keep watch for a while.”

“Sam, I reckon that's how it be.”

“Get some sleep, Marshal.”

 

The dream came to Logan Kane that night, while Sam kept watch and the tossing trees were alive with wind.

The four of them stood outside the old sod cabin where he'd been born and raised: Ma in the patched calico dress she always wore; Pa in his overalls, his black beard fanning over his chest; his twin sisters, the way he remembered them, two years younger than he, Patience and Prudence, both pretty as pictures.

But they were all dead these twenty years, taken by the cholera.

They stood still, looking at Kane, eyes accusing in faces as white as bleached bone.

As always it was Ma who spoke. “Logan, why did you leave us?” she asked. “Why did you just ride away?”

“I was scared, Ma, scared of the cholera.” Kane tried to walk toward his mother and take her in his arms, but he couldn't move. A gray mist was gathering, coiling around him.

“We don't lie in the earth, Logan,” Ma said. “It ain't right for Christian people not to lie in the earth.”

“I'm sorry, Ma,” Kane said. He felt like he was tightly bound with rope. “You were all dead, Ma. I didn't know what to do no more.”

“Son, you should have buried us decent,” Pa said. “Our bones lie on top of the ground, scattered by coyotes. We will be forever denied our eternal rest until we sleep in the good Texas earth.”

The mist drifted over Pa, then all of them. From somewhere in the shifting grayness, Kane heard his mother's voice calling out to him. “Logan . . . don't leave us. . . . Don't leave. . . .”

“I'll be back, Ma!” Kane yelled. “I'll find you! I'll find you!” The echoes of his last shouted words still echoed around camp as Kane jerked upright, his heart hammering in his chest, sweat hot on his face.

He looked around him. Mae St. John had been saddling her horse and now she was looking at him, her eyes wide and startled. Over by the chuck wagon, Buck was propped on one elbow, staring across camp, a man just rudely wakened from slumber.

Kane saw Sam stride toward him, concern on his face. “Marshal, you were callin' out in your sleep again like the gates of hell had just opened up fer you.”

With trembling fingers, Kane reached into his shirt pocket for the makings. “I'm fine now, Sam. Thanks. Yeah, just fine.” He'd tried to keep his voice steady, but he knew he'd failed.

The old man squatted and took paper and tobacco from the marshal's trembling hand and quickly built his cigarette. He handed the rolled paper to Kane and said, “All you got to do is lick it.”

Kane did as he was told and Sam lit the smoke for him. “Sit quiet, Logan,” he said. “You weren't asleep for no more'n an hour afore you started hollerin'.”

Across camp, Buck had rolled in his blankets again, but Mae was still looking at Kane, the look on her face hard to read. Then she swung elegantly into the saddle and headed out for the herd at a canter. She had not said a word.

“You got demons haunting you, Logan,” Sam said. “I'm only the driver, but this much I'll say to you: find your folks, anchor them deep in the earth an' you won't search for them in your sleep no more.”

Kane nodded. “I will, Sam. One day soon I will.” Sam smiled. “I bet ol' Buck will be glad to hear that. He's a mite tetchy about his rest gettin' disturbed, an all.”

Chapter 11

At first light Ed Brady rode in from the herd and he, Buck and Kane buried the dead. Mae St. John, as was her right and duty as trail boss, read the prayers from the Book. No one had anything to say, good or bad, about either man. Mae sang “How Firm a Foundation,” the hymn sung at the funeral of General Robert E. Lee, then noted that both men were now with God. Then it was over.

After Sam fed the prisoners, Kane poured himself coffee and stepped over to Mae, who was standing near the chuck wagon talking to Buck.

He had thought about apologizing for crying out in his sleep, but had dismissed the idea. What was done was done, and in any case he didn't have the words to explain it.

The marshal touched his hat. “Mornin', ma'am.”

Mae's eyes were cool, so distant they were unreachable. She said, “What can I do for you, Marshal?”

“Me an' Sam figgered we might throw in with you, at least until we reach the Ouachita peaks. I guess you're planning to head west an' drive the herd around them.”

“No, I'm going over all the mountains in my path between here and Fort Smith, Marshal. As to throwing in with us, it's a free country and you can do as you please. But I'd rather you didn't. I can't afford to lose my remaining hands.”

Kane let that slide. “Ma'am, you're headed for some rough country filled with road agents, rustlers and outlaws of every stripe. You might be grateful for an extry rifle by the time you reach Fort Smith.”

“We can make it alone, I assure you, Marshal,” the woman said. “Both Buck and Ed are accomplished marksmen, so I really don't think we have anything to fear from road agents and cattle rustlers.”

Kane recognized defeat when he saw it and his talking was done. He touched his hat. “Well, good luck to you then, ma'am.”

“Wait,” Buck said, his old eyes shrewd. “You ever work cattle, huh?”

“Some. I went up the trail for the first time with Charlie Goodnight when I was fourteen and twicet after that with different outfits. One time ol' Charlie his ownself told me he reckoned me a fair hand.”

Buck turned to Mae. “Boss, you an' Ed will have problems aplenty driving the herd. If this feller is even half the puncher he claims to be, we can sure use him.” He looked at Kane. “You willin' to ride drag?”

Punching cows was not quite what Kane had in mind when he offered to ride with the herd, but with the Provanzano brothers and Jack Henry somewhere along his back trail, there was a measure of safety in numbers, few though they were. “Me an' Sam was going to do that anyway, drop back and keep our eyes on what's behind us, like.”

Mae bit her lip and thought that through. Kane believed she was a practical woman who was already well aware of the problems facing her. She was headed into the high plains, and beyond soared the rugged barrier of the Ouachita Mountains. She must know that, shorthanded as she was, the herd could get strung out for miles crossing high rim country and in the end she might lose most of them.

The woman lifted her eyes to Kane. Even at this early hour of the morning she was enough to take a man's breath away. Her full breasts pressed against the thin stuff of her shirt and morning sun was tangled in her hair.

“What about your”—Kane saw her momentary reluctance to use the word, but then she said it—“prisoners?”

“Sam Shaver keeps a Greener scattergun up on the box. He ain't likely to be troubled.”

Mae made up her mind. “A dollar a day, Marshal. To be paid in full when we reach Fort Smith. Take the drag and keep the herd closed up. If a cow gives birth, shoot the calf and drive the cow back to the herd. Any questions?”

“No, ma'am. I've rode drag afore.”

“Good. You can ride Hyde Larson's string.”

The woman dismissed Kane with her eyes. “Buck, Ed, let's move 'em out. Buck, keep the remuda on point with you. From time to time I'll check in to see how you're doing.”

Sam had been standing by the wagon and Kane told him of his arrangement with Mae St. John. The old man's only comment was to look glum.

“Out with it, Sam, what's eatin' you?” the marshal said.

The old man cocked his head like a bird. “You really want to know?”

“That's why I'm askin'.”

“First thing, riding drag ain't no job fer a white man, and it sure ain't fer one of Judge Parker's deputy marshals an' his teamster.”

“It's necessary, Sam. A necessity under the circumstances, you might say.”

“An' second thing,” Sam said, as though he hadn't heard, “this is a bad-luck outfit. I'm tellin' ye, Logan, there something in the air, something wicked that's new aborning, an' it's comin' up on us fast.” The old man pointed to the south. “It's headed from there and it's on its way.”

Sam Shaver was a hard man to scare, but the dread in his eyes infected Kane like a disease and the marshal shivered. “Jack Henry?”

The old man shook his head. “Not him, and not them furrin'-lookin' New Orleans fellers either. This is worse, Logan, much worse. What's a-headed our way is hell on horseback.”

“Sam, let it go,” Kane said irritably. “Your crazy talk is startin' to clabber my blood.”

“It ain't crazy talk, Marshal. An' if you're scared, well, you got every right to be.”

 

Mae St. John planned to make twelve miles the first day.

The cattle crossed rolling plains that were constantly in motion, like waves on a sea. Shadows cast by passing clouds chased one another over the restless grama grass and for most of the long afternoon the sun hung like a molten ball, burning the color out of the sky.

Recent rains had settled the worst of the dust and Kane rode the drag without choking or spitting black grit or getting an inch of the stuff between his clothes and skin. Mae St. John was paying him a dollar a day to outthink a cow, and he earned his wages, keeping the herd bunched and tight. The Herefords were fat and lazy, already trail broke, and they moved along placidly enough. But the longhorns were ornery and wild as deer. Kane cussed them loudly and with gusto each time he had to bust one out of the brush between the nearby pines or drop back to round up a straggler.

Three times that morning, when he'd passed Mae on his way to the point to throw his saddle on a fresh pony, the woman had studiously ignored him, looking straight ahead, her face like stone under the brim of her hat. Kane had tried waving, but not once had she waved back.

The sun had reached its highest point in the sky when Kane returned to check on a Hereford that had been in the process of giving birth to a calf. Sam was a mile behind the herd and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder as the marshal drew rein beside the wagon.

“If you're lookin' fer a Hereford, she's back there, Logan. Got a bull calf on the ground.”

Kane nodded. His eyes moved to the cage, where the prisoners were sitting with their knees drawn up, looking miserable. “Behavin' themselves?” he asked.

“When they ain't talkin' about what they're gonna do to you when they get free, they're complainin'. Another few miles, an' I'll water them.”

“Keep the scattergun close,” Kane said.

“Always do, Marshal.”

Kane kicked his horse into motion, but Sam's voice stopped him. “Passed some Apaches back there a ways, Mescaleros by the look of them. Old man, three young women an' a couple o' boys. They don't look like much. Hungry-lookin' bunch though.” Sam smiled. “I'd get that fat Hereford movin', Logan.”

The Apaches were trudging north alongside the tracks of the herd. The young women were bent over, carrying heavy loads of firewood on their backs. The old man and the two boys were wearing the blue headband of the Mescaleros.

Their clothing had long since disintegrated into rags and all were gaunt with hunger. By then the Apaches were a defeated people, and even old Geronimo, the last and the most stubborn of them, was gone, locked up in the middle of a Florida swamp.

As Kane rode past, the women and boys ignored him, but the old man stopped and laid a blue-veined hand on his skinny chest. “God bless,” he said, his voice thin and dry with age. “I love Jesus. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.”

In the presence of a white man, the old Apache was paying lip service to the religion that had failed to prevent his destruction.