Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (19 page)

“Remember me? Name's Carmine Provanzano.” The oldest of the three waved a hand. “My brothers, Teodoro and Vito.” The man leaned forward in the saddle, staring at Kane. “Last time we met was in the dark and you looked different, Marshal,” he said. “Bigger, maybe, and younger. Better looking too.”

Kane said, “Darkness makes every star shine brighter.”

Carmine absorbed that, then smiled. “Then that must be the reason.”

He looked around, missing nothing, including the empty prison wagon. Then his stare fixed on Lorraine. “If I don't miss my guess, you must be Mrs. Hook.” His tone was not friendly, but neither was it threatening. “Where is your husband?”

“He's dead,” the woman answered, with a defiant tilt to her chin.

Kane saw the face of Vito, the youngest brother, stiffen, his skin drawing tight against his cheekbones. The young man had a wild, reckless look, and the marshal figured that if this ended up in a shooting scrape, Vito would be the first to draw. He filed that away, for later.

Kane had thought Carmine's next question would be about the money, but the man surprised him. “I don't know what the laws of hospitality are in the West, no, but in New Orleans we usually invite visitors to set and eat.”

“Please to step down,” Kane said, “but as you can see, we don't have any coffee or grub. When the convicts escaped they took everything with them.” Then, sensing that he might appear shiftless, he added, “Shot a deer a few days back, but a bear stole the meat.”

“Never seen a bear,” Carmine said. He turned his head. “Vito!”

The young man immediately stepped out of the saddle. He walked to the packhorse and began to untie canvas-wrapped bundles. He filled his arms with a slab of bacon, a sack of coffee, another of flour and some smaller packages wrapped in wax paper. Vito dropped the food beside the fire, then returned with a coffeepot and a skillet.

Carmine nodded his approval, then looked at Kane. “I'm happy to accept your kind invitation.” He stepped out of the saddle and behind him his brother Teodoro, a saturnine, lean-cheeked man, did likewise.

Holding the reins of his horse, Carmine looked over at Nellie, who was sitting by the fire, her knees drawn up to her chin, taking an interest in nothing. “What ails the
bambina,
Marshal?”

Kane didn't understand the Italian word, but he caught Carmine's drift. He sought for a way to answer him, then said simply, “The convicts caught up with her and Mrs. Hook.”

Carmine Provanzano took a quick breath. “How many?”

“All of them.”

“And now she casts a dark shadow that will stay with her a lifetime.”

“I'd say that's how it shapes up unless something changes.”

“Marshal, some men should never have been born. What do you do with men like that?”

“You find them and kill them.”

Carmine nodded. “Yes, that is our way also.” He looked at the girl again and shook his head, then said, “I must see to my horse.”

The brothers had removed their coats and Kane saw he'd been correct. All three wore a Smith & Wesson .38 in a shoulder rig and he had no doubt they knew how to use them well.

The marshal felt no threat, at least not yet, but he stayed on alert, his nerves tangling themselves in tight knots.

The brothers carefully folded their coats and laid them on the grass and then began to strip their saddles. Kane noticed that the men spread out in a semicircle around him, making sure they could catch him in a crossfire should the need arise.

The Provanzano boys were careful men, and Kane had the feeling that in a gunfight they wouldn't back up and would be hard to kill.

Vito filled the coffeepot and brought it to Lorraine. She had found sourdough starter in a package and was baking biscuits in her own deep skillet, frying bacon in the other. Soon the wonderful smell of boiling coffee added to the odors that were making Kane's empty stomach rumble.

The day had shaded into night and stars scattered across the sky. A wind off the plains danced with the flames of the fire and a pair of hunting coyotes were calling to each other in the darkness, scenting the cooking food.

Kane was on edge for two reasons: the close, uncomfortable presence of the Provanzano brothers and the worry that Stringfellow and the others might come back to see what had happened to Joe Foster. He thought it would be inhospitable and a sign of distrust to keep his Winchester close. He also unbuckled his gun belt but kept it near him, something he was sure Carmine had noticed. The man had looked, but had said nothing.

After they'd eaten and the brothers had graciously declared Lorraine's biscuits the best they'd ever had, Carmine rose and reached into his pack. He returned with a bottle of bourbon and held it out to the woman. “A shot in your coffee, ma'am, to keep out the chill of the evening?”

Lorraine gladly accepted and so did Kane.

As they drank, Vito seemed to be moved by the beauty of the night. He tilted back his head and sang a song in a fine, tenor voice. Kane didn't understand a single word, but the tune was plaintive and touching, and it pleased him immensely.

After the last note died away, Carmine smiled at Lorraine and said, “He sang an old Sicilian folk song called ‘Ciuri Ciuri.' It is about a girl who chides her sweetheart for not loving her enough, but the young man says, ‘I have taken all the love you have given me and returned it to you.”'

“It's beautiful,” Lorraine said. “And very sad in a way.”

“Sometimes love is a sadness in the soul,” Carmine said. “The saddest thing of all is to still love someone who used to love you. That I have known, and I have remembered it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Lorraine asked, a womanlike question.

Carmine eagerly went on talking pretties about the heartbreak of unrequited love and Kane grew numbingly bored. Horses, guns and bad men he understood, but all this talk of romance and moonlight and roses had stranded him on an island of his own ignorance. In the past, he'd taken women wherever and whenever he could find them and love had never entered into it. But he liked women and they seemed to like him, and that was enough for any man.

Finally he spread his blankets, laid his Colt on his belly under the blanket and tipped his hat over his eyes, questions troubling him. Why had Carmine Provanzano not mentioned the money? Was he waiting for morning, planning to start shooting and then search the wagon? Kane didn't know and the not knowing was a worrisome thing.

He drifted off to sleep, the musical murmur of Carmine's voice lulling him.

 

The morning light pried Kane's eyes open and, his pulse pounding, he sat erect, looking wildly around him. Nearby Carmine was saddling his horse. He looked at Kane and smiled. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

Coffee was smoking on the fire and Lorraine was bent over, cooking breakfast. Nellie sat close to her, looking very calm and pretty.

How long had he slept?

Kane's gun had slid off his belly when he jumped up. He holstered it, put on his hat and gun belt and rose to his feet. Behind Carmine his brothers were loading the packhorse.

“Pullin' out?” he asked Carmine.

“Heading back to New Orleans.”

Now it was time to say it. “Then you'll want to take your money with you.”

“Yes. Most of it is there, Teodoro assures me.”

“You knew it was in the wagon?”

“Yes, I knew it would be there if the convicts hadn't taken it.” Carmine looked at Kane with something akin to a perplexed admiration. “You're a remarkable man, Marshal, a police officer who believes the law should be enforced only with the gun and the boot. Watching from afar, I had come to think of you as just as cruel, cold-blooded and reckless as the outlaws you hunt.” The man waved away Kane's unspoken protest. “But above all, reckless. You would have died the night you attacked the Texas drovers who had hanged the lady rancher. Don't be so surprised. We shot men off your back that night—two, three men.”

Kane was stunned. “You were shooting?”

Carmine smiled. “From the trees. In the darkness and confusion everyone was firing. The drovers had their hands full with you and were not even aware of us.”

Kane opened his mouth to speak, but Carmine held up a hand. “Hear me out. I have said hard things about you. Now I will add that I believe you to be honest with your own, shall we say warped, code of honor. I knew you would eventually lead us to the money because you would not think about keeping it for yourself. That's why Vito shot the fast gunman who threatened you at the cow camp. We could not afford to lose you.”

Kane shook his head. “I didn't lead you to the money. I was going after the escaped convicts when I happened to come across Lorraine and Nellie on the trail. Sooner or later you would have found it yourself.”

Carmine smiled. “We followed you, and now you are here and the money is here. It is enough that it will be returned to my family. By this time I am sure they are growing increasingly anxious.”

“You already have the thirty thousand in your pack?”

“No, not yet. We waited to see if you would indeed part with it.”

“Provanzano, Lorraine is out of this. She didn't want to keep the money either. She says it's blood money and she wants nothing to do with it.”

“Blood money soon launders clean, my friend. But I harbor no ill will against the woman. She is not responsible for her husband's actions.”

Kane nodded. “Good. If you'd felt otherwise I would've taken it hard.”

The marshal turned on his heel and walked to the wagon. Without looking at Lorraine and without a word to Carmine, he handed the man the burlap sack.

Kane accepted the cup of coffee Lorraine poured for him, sat by the fire and built a smoke from his dwindling supply of tobacco. Carmine joined him.

“Marshal Kane,” he said formally, “you have done me a favor and my family will honor you. Among us, a favor must be repaid and that is why I am leaving Vito behind. He is the best of us with a gun and he will help you recapture the convicts who escaped you.”

Kane began to protest, but Carmine stopped him. “Please,” he said, “do not dishonor me by refusing what I give freely.”

“Vito is all right with this?”

“My brother realizes the honor of his family demands that he stay. Yes, he is all right with this.”

Kane stuck out his hand. “Then I accept. And thank you.”

Carmine took the marshal's hand and smiled. “If you are ever in New Orleans . . .”

“I know. Sure, I'll look you up.”

The man rose to his feet and dropped to one knee beside Nellie, looking at her intently. The girl seemed not to notice him. Carmine reached behind his neck and undid a silver chain with some kind of pendant. He fastened the chain around Nellie's neck and she immediately took the pendant in her fingers and bent her head to look at it.

“She is the Holy Virgin, little one, the Mother of God,” he said. “She will protect you from all things harmful.”

The girl's eyes met Carmine's and she smiled. “Pretty.”

Carmine nodded. “Yes, she is very pretty indeed.”

He rose to his feet and his head turned to Kane. “I have no medal for you, Marshal. But I leave you with Vito and he will be your guardian angel.”

“Much obliged,” Kane said. “I've got a feeling I'm going to need one.”

Chapter 21

When they moved out, Logan Kane took the point and Vito rode beside the wagon, smiling now and then when he saw Nellie admiring her new necklace.

Kane kept just to the east of Phillips Mountain, then led the way into rolling country that stretched ahead for several miles, some of it low-lying marsh-land, teeming with wading birds.

By noon they'd reached the south bank of the Kiamichi River and stopped to rest the horses among a forest of pine, hardwood and beech that grew all the way down to the water's edge.

At this time of the year the river channel was low and narrow, and the wagon would make the crossing fairly easily, barring an encounter with deep mud.

Vito began to build a fire and Kane took the coffeepot to the river's edge. He kneeled and dipped the pot into the water . . . and the mud bank erupted around him, kicking up sudden Vs of dirt. Three shots, close together, had come from the other tree-lined bank.

Kane dropped the pot, drew fast from the leather and rolled to one side. Firing from a prone position he pumped a couple of shots into a drift of smoke on the opposite bank. Then he rolled again and fetched up against the base of a pine, painfully jarring his wounded thigh into a projecting root. A bullet chipped bark an inch above his head and another drove mud into his face.

From his left he heard the spiteful crack! crack! crack! of Vito's .38.

Shots rattled into the trees around Kane and he fanned his gun dry, intent only on laying down a field of fire.

“Kane,” Vito yelled, “you hit?”

“I'm all right. You?”

“I'm not hit, no.”

“Can you see them?”

“I can't see a damned thing.”

Kane reloaded from his cartridge belt, scanning the trees opposite for a target. But the gun smoke had drifted away and only the wind stirred the pine branches.

His gun in hand, the marshal rose to his feet. “They've gone, skedaddled,” he said.

Vito walked toward him, feeding shells into the open cylinder, his head bent over his revolver. He closed the gun and slid it into the shoulder holster.

“Who do you think?”

“My guess is that a man called Jack Henry was leading them. He's kin to Buff Stringfellow, one of my prisoners. It was Henry who broke them loose and killed my driver.”