Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (2 page)

Kane rode back to the road, waved Sam forward, then returned to the clearing and swung out of the saddle. He was a tall, lanky man who moved with an easy, loose-limbed grace. A blue Colt hung on Kane's right hip and his marshal's star was pinned to his cartridge belt, left of the buckle and covered by his black leather vest. None of Judge Parker's deputies wore their stars in plain sight. In the Indian Territory a man with a badge was a prime target for bushwhackers, and there was no point in hunting for trouble.

As Kane stretched a kink out of his back, Sam Shaver drove into the clearing and looked around. “Good a place as any to make camp, Logan.”

“It'll do,” Kane said. “Unhitch the mule team and I'll rustle up a fire.”

It was fully dark by the time the coffee bubbled and salt pork sizzled in the skillet. The crescent moon had risen higher in the sky, horning aside the first stars, and the coyotes were talking.

“How's the coffee, Sam?” Kane asked.

The old man lifted the lid off the pot, peered inside, then said, “Let 'er bile fer a spell longer.”

Kane rolled himself a cigarette, lit it with a brand from the fire, then stretched out, leaning on one elbow. Shifting scarlet light played over the hard, lean planes of his face, and his eyes were lost in the shadow of his hat brim. “Back bothering you any?”

Sam shrugged. “It comes an' goes. All depends on where that dang Comanche arrowhead decides to shift. If she digs into my backbone, she do punish me some until she moves again.”

“Well, if it gets bad, you ride and I'll drive the wagon.”

The old man shook his head. “I don't trust that big American stud o' yours. If I get th'owed, I could be in a heap o' trouble. Besides, you're the deputy an' I'm the mule skinner. That's how the old judge set it up.”

Kane managed a rare smile. “And I'm glad to have you along, Sam.”

The compliment was sincerely given. Sam Shaver had been an army scout, buffalo hunter, saloon owner and sometime mule skinner. He was in his early seventies but was still a man to be reckoned with. A year before, back in the Nations, he'd out-drawn and killed the Texas gunman Elijah Hawks, a man nobody considered a bargain.

When he wanted a man to work for him, Judge Parker had few qualms about overlooking the odd killing. He had been impressed enough with Sam's toughness to sign him up as a wagon driver and camp cook at the same salary as a deputy, six cents a mile to the place of arrest and ten cents a mile for the return trip. The old man had since transported prisoners for famous marshals like Bass Reeves, Frank Canton, Zeke Proctor and Heck Thomas. Kane didn't know if Sam included him in that elite bunch and he'd never asked.

As tall as Kane, and just as lanky, Sam checked the coffeepot. “She's biled, Logan.” He poured a cup for each of them, then removed the salt pork from the fire, forking the meat onto a plate. He mixed flour, sourdough starter and salt into the pork fat, then added water. When the bread mix was ready, he laid it near the fire to bake.

“Grub will be up soon,” Sam said.

Kane was building another smoke. “I can sure use it,” he said. His eyes angled to Sam's bearded face; he was hesitant to ask the question on his mind lest it imply fear, or at least apprehension. Finally he asked it anyway. “Sam, you're around the other marshals a lot. What do they tell you about Buff Stringfellow?”

The old man looked surprised. “You don't know about him your ownself?”

“Only what the judge said, and he's not an explainin' man. He said Stringfellow and five others were arrested for murder, rape and robbery, and sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor at the Little Rock penitentiary in Arkansas. Along the way Stringfellow led an escape in which two guards were killed. Then he and the others lit out for Texas, riding double for a spell until they murdered a rancher and stole horses.” Kane licked his cigarette closed. “Five days ago rangers captured the fugitives without a fight at a brothel in the Boggy Bayou red-light district in Dallas.”

Sam turned the skillet so the bread would bake evenly. “Rangers don't give up prisoners easy, but they reckon there's a chance Stringfellow an' the others might escape the rope in Texas. But they know fer sure them hard cases will hang in Fort Smith. Judge Parker is not a forgiving man when it comes to the killin' of his deputies.”

“How come they didn't swing the first time around?”

Sam shook his head. “Don't know. But the judge can be notional by times. Maybe he figgered that twenty-five years in that Little Rock hellhole was worse than hanging. Men are sent there to be forgotten by other folks and smell the stink of their own rot.” He watched Kane's eyes. “You ever been in prison, Logan?”

The marshal smiled. “No, I can't say as I have.”

“A penitentiary is a wheel within a wheel, a prison within a prison. Them wheels turn real slow and they steal a man's youth, and then his soul.”

“How come you know so much about it, Sam?”

“I did three years in Detroit when hard old Zebulon Brockway was prison governor.”

“What fer?”

“A shootin' scrape an' a killin'.”

“Was it fair?”

“Was what fair? The three years or the killin'?”

“The killin'.”

“A man was coming at me with a Greener scattergun in his hands an' death in his eye.”

“I'd say it was a fair fight.”

“So would I, but the jury didn't see it that way. Happened that I'd gunned the town's only blacksmith, an' that cut them boys up considerable.”

“Three years is a long time. But I don't see no scars on you, Sam.”

“Maybe so, but I got them just the same, deep inside where they don't show. Maybe Stringfellow knew about Little Rock and decided the rope was better.
Quién sabe?
”

A restless wind rustled among the trees and set the fire's flames to dancing. The coyotes were yipping closer, drawn by the smell of cooked meat, and far out in the moon-slanted darkness an owl asked his question of the night.

“As to Buff hisself, he's not a man—he's a dangerous animal,” Sam said. “And them with him are just as bad. I guess that's why we're taking them back in an iron cage. Them boys can't be around civilized folks. Over to the Ruby Mill Canyon country ol' Buff shot a Cherokee farmer. Then he and the others raped his wife and daughter. The girl was only fourteen and she didn't live through it. They murdered her mother afterward. Last I heard, Buff had killed eighteen men, including them two deputies, and I believe it. He's one bad hombre an' a dangerous combination—a born killer who's slick with the Colt.”

Kane dropped the butt of his cigarette into the fire. “If he makes any fancy moves on the trail to Fort Smith, I'll gun him fer sure.”

“Trouble is, Marshal, if'n he makes a fancy move, you could be the last to know. Buff is fast, mighty fast, an' sneaky as a hound in a smokehouse.” Sam thumped the bread with his knuckles. “She's ready,” he said. “Let's eat.”

 

Logan Kane lay back on his blankets and said from under the hat tipped over his face, “A fine meal, Sam'l. Now I think I'll turn in.”

The old man was scouring the skillet with sand. He stopped and glanced at the sky, where dark clouds chased across the face of the moon. “I'm smelling rain, Logan. Maybe you should spread your blankets under the wagon.”

Kane raised his hat and looked at the sky. “Clouding up, right enough. An' I thought I heard thunder a minute ago, but it was a fur piece away.” He wriggled his shoulders into a more comfortable position. “I reckon I'll stay right where I'm at, at least for the time being.”

“Suit yourself,” Sam said. “I'm all through telling marshals they should at least show enough sense to come in out of the rain. Why, I mind the time when I was drivin' fer big ol' Heck Thomas an'—”

“Hello the camp!”

The voice sang out of the darkness—a woman's voice . . . and she sounded troubled.

Chapter 2

Kane rose to his feet, and not being a trusting man, he kept his right hand close to his holstered Colt. “Come on ahead!” he yelled. “Slow an' easy, like you was visiting kinfolk.”

The gloom parted and a woman stepped into the clearing, holding a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. Behind her Kane heard the creak of a wagon and the fall of hooves.

“I need help,” the woman said. Her voice was frightened, cracking around the edges like thin ice. “My daughter is sick, Mister. She's awful sick.”

Gun trouble Kane could handle, but a child with a misery was a thing beyond his experience. He stood speechless for a moment, but Sam Shaver filled the void.

“Bring her over to the fire, ma'am. What ails her?”

“She has a fever,” the woman said. “Mister, she's burning up.”

Kane found his voice. “It ain't the plague, is it?”

Sam answered for the woman. “No, Marshal, it ain't the plague. There's a wagon out there in the dark an' I'm guessin' she an' whoever is with her are travelin' folks. Bad food and bad water probably done it, but it's not the plague.”

The old man laid his palm on the girl's head. “She's hot as a burning stump, all right.” His eyes lifted to her mother's face. “How long has she been like this?”

“I don't rightly know. I figured she was asleep in the back of the wagon. I found her like this an hour ago, maybe longer than that.”

“Come a fur piece?” Sam asked.

“From down Fort Worth way.” The woman hesitated a heartbeat. “My husband had . . . business there.”

The skin of Sam's face stretched thin over his cheekbones. “Ma'am, if'n we don't get this fever broke, your young 'un will die.” He shook his head. “I don't mean to be rough of speech, ma'am, but what I just spoke was a natural fact.”

“Help her, Mister,” the woman whispered. She looked like she'd been slapped. “Save my child. She's all I've got.”

Kane had kept his eyes from the fire, fearing temporary blindness if he had to shoot into the dark. Now he stepped closer to the edge of the clearing. His hand was still close to his gun. “You in the wagon,” he yelled. “Drive on in at a walk.”

“Scared, huh?” came a man's voice, as high, harsh and cutting as the cry of a screech owl.

Kane talked into the wall of blackness between the trees. “You don't want to get me scared, Mister. When I get scared, I get violent an' bad things happen.”

A few moments passed. Then a pair of huge gray Percherons emerged from the dark hauling a box wagon, the rear half of the bed sheltered by a hooped canvas cover.

“I reckon now I don't scare you so bad after all, huh?” the driver said. He was a small man, thin, and his wasted legs seemed too short and spindly for his body.

Kane ignored the remark. He said, “Your daughter is mighty sick, so sick she could die. We have to see to her.”

The small man shrugged. “She ain't my blood. I don't care one way or t'other.” He grinned. “Name's Barnabas Hook, by the way. I'm headed for the Territory.”

The coldness of Hook's reply hit Kane like a bucket of ice water. The marshal liked to say that by nature he was not a particularly caring man. But those who knew him soon realized that this claim was undercut by a fondness for children and a sincere, if bungling, respect for women.

Kane's voice held level, the Westerner's obligation to hospitality overcoming his revulsion. “I'm Deputy Marshal Logan Kane and the mean old coot by the fire is Sam Shaver. Light an' set. Thar's coffee on the bile.”

“Lorraine! Chair!” Hook's demand slashed across the fire-stippled darkness like the crack of a bull-whip.

The woman's eyes lifted to Hook, a tangle of emotion on her face, a quiet desperation uppermost. “Barnabas, Nellie is sick.”

“Chair!”

Lorraine shoved her daughter into Sam's arms and hurried to the back of the wagon. In the fleeting glimpse he caught of the woman, Kane saw fear, and something more . . . hatred maybe.

Husband and wife this pair might be, but happiness was obviously not a part of their marriage agreement.

“Marshal, will you step over here?” Sam asked.

Kane stepped beside the old man and looked down at the girl. Nellie was older than he'd thought, a small, pretty child with lustrous dark hair, and long lashes lying on her cheekbones like Spanish fans. She was unconscious, her face flushed as the fever ravaged her, and her breathing was fast and shallow.

Kane took a knee and laid the back of his hand on the girl's cheek. His glance met Sam's and he saw his own concern mirrored in the man's eyes. “She's hot,” he said. “Her skin's burning.”

“If we don't get the fever down, she'll die, Logan. That is, if she ain't dying already.”

“You seen this afore?”

“Oncet. When I was scoutin' for the Army I seen it in a Comanche village north of the Mogollon Rim after the cholera hit.”

“Well, what happened?”

“For a lot of them, nothin' happened. They just died. The youngest of them was buried in Arbuckle coffee boxes.”

“Hell, did any of them live?”

“A few.”

Kane's exasperation showed. “I swear, Sam'l, sometimes talkin' to you is like talkin' to a shadow. How come some of them survived?”

“Well, it had been snowin' up there. So along comes this young army doctor an' he packs the young 'uns that are still alive in snow until their fevers break. Some of them lived after that.”