Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (12 page)

The marshal smiled and nodded and rode on. The Apache called out after him, “I love Jesus.” They were probably about the only words of English he knew, but he had been taught them well.

One of the more disagreeable tasks drag riders faced on a long drive was to shoot calves dropped by pregnant cows. No outfit, large or small, had the time or inclination to take care of an animal that couldn't keep up with the rest of the herd.

Kane found the Hereford with her bull calf nursing at her side. He started to push them north, the calf running to keep up. When the Apaches came in sight, he dabbed a loop on the calf and handed the end of the rope to the old man.

The Apache's face lit up. “God bless,” he yelled. Even the women and the sullen boys were smiling.

Kane nodded and pushed the Hereford forward. The cow was bawling for her calf and continually tried to cut back, but the sorrel anticipated her every step and kept her moving.

The marshal had few principles, but those he had were uncomplicated and direct: do not abuse a woman or child, feed the hungry and never ignore the pleas of a man with the tobacco craving and no makings. They were the simple principles of a plain man, but in as much as he could, he had tried to live by them.

As he reached the drag, he smiled to himself. It had been tough on the mama cow, but the Apaches would sleep with full bellies that night.

 

At dusk they made camp in the open on a patch of good grass cut across by a wide, muddy stream. Despite being heavy with silt, the water was sweet and good to drink. A single oak, its ancient, gnarled roots sunk deep, stood close to the stream bank and night birds were already rustling in its branches. As he unsaddled the paint he'd been riding, Kane figured the creek had its origins to the east, running off the Little River, in turn a tributary of the Red.

They would have to cross the Little late on the next day or the day after that. Sometimes the river showed white water, other times not. He fervently hoped it would be one of the other times. If it wasn't, the Little could play hob with a herd.

The cattle were downstream, about two hundred yards beyond the camp. They milled around the water for a while, then settled down to graze. Most of the herd had bedded down by the time the moon came up, but throughout the night they would rise restlessly to their feet and graze some more.

Kane sat at the fire and accepted the coffee Sam poured for him. Opposite, Buck had beans simmering and was frying bacon. Mae sat under her awning, a book in her hand. Ed Brady was already with the herd and in the distance Kane could hear him crooning “Bold Sam Bass.” The marshal was not much of a one for singing, but he liked to listen when it was done well, and Brady was a hand at it.

The sky was clear, dusted with stars, its breadth vast. A rising wind stirred the long grass and set the flames of the fire to dancing. The coyotes were talking, but far off in the darkness.

Kane's eyes lifted to Sam, who stood with the coffeepot in his hand, listening into the night. “Still boogered, old-timer, huh?” He had made light of the question, but a part of him dreaded the answer.

Sam said nothing. Then he said, “I'll have me some coffee an' then feed the prisoners.” The old man's eyes moved to Mae St. John. “That's a right handsome woman over there.”

Kane nodded, a half smile on his lips. “That she be. She's made it plain enough that she doesn't want anything to do with me though.”

“Oh but she will. Soon, Logan, soon. See, a man can set an' calculate what's ahead o' him on the trail. But one thing he can't do is calculate on them who will cross his path an' make their troubles his, especially purty females with a hex on them.”

Kane's grin was genuinely amused. “Sam, you fixin' to start in on some more o' that talk about haunts?”

“Logan, I'm no longer a young man an' I know you reckon it's a mite late for me to be boogered by fancies,” Sam said. He squatted beside Kane and lowered his voice so Buck, who always seemed engrossed in his cooking chores anyway, could not hear.

“My ma, an' her ma afore her, were mountain folk, them black-eyed witchy women who can look into the fire an' see pictures of the future as clear as though they was printed in a book. It's a gift, Logan, or a curse, dependin' on how you care to look at it.”

“An' you have the gift, Sam? Do you see pictures in the fire?”

The old man shook his head. “Just sometimes, but mostly I see them in my mind.” He rose to his feet, his knees cracking. “See the woman over there?”

Kane nodded and Sam said, his voice hollow, “She'll be dead before we reach the Little River. And others with her.”

 

The prisoners ate in silence, now and then lifting their heads to glance at the starlit sky as though its blazing, crystal beauty had the power to touch even their calloused souls.

Mae took her plate and sat next to Buff Stringfellow. Sam was standing close by with his shotgun, and the woman's move made his long body tense. The old man's eyes fixed on the outlaw and did not shift from him. Alone in the darkness, Brady was softly singing the plaintive “She's More to Be Pitied Than Censured,” a song Kane thought appropriate for the occasion.

The woman and Stringfellow had their heads close, whispering quietly to each other, and once she kissed him lightly on the lips, a transgression that brought a warning growl from Sam.

Kane finished his food and rose to his feet, picking up the rifle that lay beside him. He strolled across camp to Sam and said, “It's time to lock 'em up.”

“Hey, we've haven't finished eating yet, Marshal,” Stringfellow said. Beside him Mae smiled and said, “Just a few more minutes.”

“Finish the grub or I'll throw it out,” Kane said. His eyes shifted to the woman. “Ma'am, I'd appreciate it if you'd get back to your wagon.”

Joe Foster chewed on a mouthful of beans, then spit them over the scuffed toes of the marshal's boots. “This pig swill ain't fit for a man to eat anyhow.” The gunman's insolent grin held a challenge. Stringfellow and the others sat in tense, amused anticipation, anxious to see what would happen next.

It was not long in coming.

Briefly, Kane glanced at the mess on his boots, then at Foster. His kick, driven by all the raw power of his lean, muscular body, slammed into Foster's face, just below the man's left cheekbone. The sound of boot meeting flesh was like a gunshot; Foster's grin vanished as his head snapped back and he smashed onto the grass behind him. For a moment the man lay stunned, his bruised face already swelling. Then he rolled on his side, drew up his knees and began to whimper softly.

Kane didn't spare a glance for the moaning Foster. His eyes quiet but hard as blue steel, he said, “I won't take sass, back talk or impertinence. This man should have remembered that, or if he did, he chose to ignore it.” He turned to Sam. “Put the prisoners back in the wagon.”

Mae threw her plate aside and sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing. “It's you who should be locked in a cage, Kane! You're a whole sight worse than the men you're planning to hang.” The woman opened her mouth to say more, but the words choked in her throat and she dissolved into tears. She brushed past Kane, ran to the awning and threw herself on her blankets.

Her sobs were loud in the quiet.

“Pick that up and carry it inside,” the marshal said to Stringfellow, nodding at Foster. “He racked a round into his Winchester. “An' I'll kill any man who makes a move I don't like.”

Stringfellow put his arm around the waist of the whimpering Foster and helped him stagger to the back of the wagon. He turned his head. “Mae is right, Kane. You're no better than me, damn you, no better than any of us here.”

“Tell that to the Cherokee farmer whose wife and daughter you raped and murdered, Stringfellow,” Kane said. “I wonder what he would say.”

Chapter 12

Logan Kane spread his blankets away from the circle of the firelight. He dozed, fearful of a deep sleep that would bring the return of the dream and the demands of the dead.

He woke to full darkness. The fire was guttering, burning the last of the wood, and a brooding silence hung over the camp. Somewhere a horse stamped and blew through its nose. The wind had dropped and the moon sailed high in the sky, ringed by a halo that looked like blue mist.

Kane put on his hat, then tugged on his boots. He picked up his rifle and stepped to the fire where he threw on a few more pine branches. The flames immediately licked around the wood and a thin column of smoke rose into the air, straight as a string. He hefted the coffeepot, then tested its temperature with the flat of his hand. It was still warm. The marshal poured himself a cup and stood, a nagging restlessness riding him as he sipped the coffee.

Right then, unshaven and grim-faced, Kane looked what he was, a rough-hewn, hard-grained man who had led a life where nothing had come easy and lessons had not been cheap. Behind him lay only violence and blood and little tenderness. No one had ever been glad at his arriving or sad at his leaving. Ahead, looking into the scowling night, he saw nothing. He was a man who owned a horse, a rifle, a revolving Colt and nothing else. It was not much of a foundation on which anyone could build dreams of the future.

Across the fire from Kane, Ed Brady lay in his blankets, snoring softly, his hat over his face. Mae was asleep under the awning, so Buck must be on night herd.

Kane tossed away the dregs of his coffee, his mind made up. He was on edge, and his instinct told him the cause of his unease was behind him, somewhere on his back trail.

As he walked to the remuda, irritated, he wondered about that. Was it really instinct, or had Sam's talk of haunts and folks dying got to him and scared him worse than he cared to admit? The old man had said death was coming from the south, and that's where Kane was headed.

As he threw his saddle on the sorrel, the marshal shook his head. He would scout to the south because he was wary of enemies on his back trail, Jack Henry and the Provanzano brothers. There was no other reason.

Kane covered nearly four miles in the first hour, keeping to the trail that was a wide scar across the virgin landscape, clearly visible in the moon-splashed darkness. To the east lay the unbroken forests of pine and hardwoods, and once he heard the howls of a hunting wolf pack as they moved like ghosts through the trees.

Another hour passed, and Kane began to think he was on a fool's errand. Around him there was endless, empty prairie, the only sound the rustle of the wind bending the grass. The moon was sinking in the sky and long shadows were darkening the land.

He drew the sorrel to a halt and stood in the stirrups, listening into the night. Nothing. It was time to go back and tell Sam his phantoms were all in his head.

Kane swung his horse around, but drew rein immediately. He lifted his nose to the wind that was blowing warm from the south. There! He smelled it again, the fleeting tang of wood smoke.

Were the Apaches he'd seen earlier that day camping nearby? He immediately dismissed that idea. You seldom caught scent of an Indian fire, and besides, they would have covered more ground by this time.

Then where was the smoke coming from?

Kane rode south again at a walk. After ten minutes the sorrel swung up its head and its ears pricked forward, aware of something ahead. Wary now, the marshal slid his Winchester from the boot and propped the brass butt plate on his thigh. The horse nickered softly and the marshal stroked its neck. “Easy boy,” he whispered. “Easy now . . .”

The smell of smoke grew stronger and Kane's eyes tried to penetrate the darkness ahead of him. He was a far-seeing man, but the moon was hidden behind a cloud and he was riding into the black wall of the night.

Following the musky odor of the smoke, Kane left the trail but found his way blocked by pines. He swung west, following the tree line. The moon reappeared and a faint, opalescent light spread across the plain and touched the pine branches and long grass. The wind was rising, talking, and the long grass murmured back. High above Kane the star-filled sky looked like splintered ice, impossibly cold and remote, giving him no counsel.

A haunted sense of unease tugged at him, as though the eyes of the night were watching his every move. His restless fingers opened and closed on the Winchester as the tree line thinned, then petered, giving way to empty prairie. The marshal swung south again. The sorrel was nervous, its ears twitching, the bit chiming as it tossed its head.

Then Kane heard what had been alarming the horse.

The rough voices of men carried in the wind, rising often into laughter, and a growing sense of danger warned Kane to ride no farther. He turned the sorrel, backtracked the way he had come for a hundred yards, then stepped out of the saddle. He looped the reins around a pine trunk and walked south again, his rifle slanted across his chest.

He kept close to the trees that now stretched ahead of him, stepping carefully. Here many of the pines and hardwoods were scorched, evidence of some recent prairie fire, and a few had fallen, sprawled on the ground like stricken giants. The voices were louder now, and close enough that Kane heard the clank of bottles.

Whoever those boys were, they were celebrating late—or working themselves up for something.

The timber line began a gradual curve to the east and the marshal followed it. His mouth was dry as chalk and the pounding of his heart was loud in his ears. Gradually the curve grew sharper. Kane stopped and looked behind him but saw only darkness. He walked on, then halted again. The trees continued to curve, describing an arc around a clearing. Three large campfires flared a few yards out from the very middle of the bend. Kane dropped to one knee, watching.