Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (26 page)

The woman smiled her thanks and Vito said sourly, remembering his own meal, “What happened, Mr. Pitt, you run out of elk?”

The cook was not fazed. “I always push game meats. If'n you wanted beefsteak an' taters, you should have asked fer beefsteak an' taters.”

Kane smiled. “Vito, never start an argument with a woman or a ranch cook. You can't win against either one.”

For his part, the marshal was happy with his soup, a broth of beef, onions and some kind of wild greens. Lorraine was right; it would give him strength. But the question was, when?

Heavy, booted feet sounded in the hallway outside, then stopped. “Marshal Logan Kane!” A man's voice, made rough with years of whiskey and tobacco.

“Who is it?” Vito yelled, bringing up the Winchester.

“Got a message fer Kane. Who I am, don't matter.”

Vito pushed the blanket aside and stepped into the corridor. Kane heard him say, “What's the message?”

“Buff Stringfellow says for him to look at the gallows.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

Vito stepped into the room just as Kane was lowering the hammer of his Colt. “I heard what he said. You ever see that man before?”

Vito shook his head. “No. A miner maybe? That's what he looked like.”

The wound in his side had slowed Kane, not only physically, but mentally. Cursing himself for not asking the question earlier, he said, “Where's Dawson?”

“At the livery. He said he always slept there and Katie Gordon wouldn't let anything bad happen to him.”

“Give me my hat and my clothes,” Kane said. He swung his legs out of the bed and immediately the room around him spun wildly.

“Logan, you're not fit to go anywhere,” Lorraine protested.

“Damn it, woman, do as I say.”

Vito shook his head. “Ma'am, you can't argue with a woman, a cook or a mule. Better do as he says.”

Kane put on his hat, then his clothes, and stomped into his boots. He buckled on his gun belt, swaying like a sailor on the deck of his ship in a storm. The left side of his waist bulged with the thick pad Lorraine had placed under the bandage. He saw blood seeping through his shirt. His head was throbbing and the pain from his wound chewed at him.

“For pity's sake, Marshal, you're shot to doll rags,” Vito said. “You got to find a hole to crawl into until this is over.”

Kane gritted his teeth. He was aware of Nellie looking at him, her eyes huge. “It will not be over until I get Buff Stringfellow, Jack Henry, Amos Albright and Reuben Largo to Fort Smith.” He looked at Vito. “Then I'll find that hole.”

“Logan . . . please . . . don't get killed like Sam did.” Nellie was looking at him, her eyes damp.

Lorraine and Kane exchanged a surprised glance. Then the woman took her daughter in her arms and held her tightly, their tears mingling.

“Nellie,” the marshal said, “I'm a mighty hard man to kill.” He smiled and laid his hand on top of the girl's head. “Once this is over, we'll go to Texas. Would you like that?”

Nellie nodded and Lorraine's eyes lifted to Kane's. “All of us?”

“Of course, all of us. I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Vito finally coughed into the stretching silence that followed. He said, handing Kane his slicker, “If you're all set on heading out there, Marshal, let's go. I don't want you out of my sight.”

Kane tore his eyes away from Lorraine's face. “Step careful, Vito,” he said, the pain making him sick and tired beyond anything he'd ever known before. “I don't know how much good I'll be in a shooting scrape. It'll be like drawing against a full house.”

Vito nodded, grinning. “Know what this reminds me of, Marshal? We're like the heroes in the dime novels they sell in the railroad station in New Orleans. You know, about stalwart frontiersmen who triumph over impossible odds.”

“I'm a shot-up, poor excuse for a lawman and you're a city slicker who shoots fair to middlin' with a belly gun. Where do we fit in?”

“Why, right there on the cover. You and me, looking stalwart.”

Despite the tormenting ache in his side, Kane managed a smile. “Let's go, Dan'l Boone.”

Lorraine's cries of protest still ringing in his ears, Kane walked into the rain-lashed darkness. Lamps were lit in the Alamo and Bucket of Blood saloons, spilling rectangles of yellow light on the soaked boardwalks that glistened like wet paint. Driven by hunger, the coyotes were yipping close to town, a dreary counterpoint to the snake hiss of the rain.

The body hanging from the gallows swayed in the wind, the hemp rope creaking. Frank Dawson had strangled to death, his swollen, black tongue sticking out between pale lips. His eyes were open, staring accusingly at Kane.

“Look,” Vito said. “A message for you.” He was pointing to a board nailed to the gallows platform beside the steps. The writing was done, badly, in white paint.

 

“The spelling leaves something to be desired,” Vito said. He was consciously keeping his tone light, but his face was grim. “However, the intent is clear enough.”

Kane, almost dead on his feet, felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

And the unnatural, derisive laughter that rose from somewhere in town did nothing to make him feel more at ease.

Chapter 29

Logan Kane swayed on his feet, looking around him into rain and darkness. “Vito!” he whispered urgently.

The man knew what was expected of him. He took the marshal's arm and draped it over his shoulders, taking as much of his weight as he could. “You're going back to bed,” he said.

“No,” Kane said. “Help me to the livery. Katie Gordon is there.”

A proud, stiff-necked man, Kane would have asked no other person alive for the help he demanded of Vito Provanzano that night. But Vito, a proud man himself, was aware where the parameters of another man's pride lay and he would not step over the line. To Kane, that made the difference.

Half dragging the marshal through the mud, Vito managed to get him to the livery stable. The place was in darkness.

The marshal disengaged himself from Vito and stepped to the door, supporting himself by a hand on the frame. He drew his Colt and yelled, “Katie!”

No answer.

Rats rustled restlessly in the corners, rain rattled on the roof and a horse blew through its nose, then fell silent. The tin-rooster weather vane on the gable turned this way and that, uselessly trying to point out the shifting direction of the squalling wind and screeching in flustered protest.

“Katie!” Kane called again. And again the answering stillness mocked him.

Beside the marshal a match sizzled into flame and Vito lit the oil lamp he was holding. He held the lamp high, casting orange light into the barn, deepening the angled shadows.

Katie Gordon lay on her back, half in, half out of a horse stall. She was naked. Kane lurched toward her, stooping to his left against the biting pain in his waist. Lost in the uncertain lamplight, the woman's face was in shadow. He stepped into the stall.

“Vito,” he said, “bring the lamp closer.”

A moment's hesitation, then, “That might be difficult, Marshal. I've got a gun pointed at my head.”

“Turn real slow, Kane. And keep your hand away from the iron.”

Kane straightened up, his back stiff. He turned and saw Hulin Green standing next to Vito, the muzzle of the man's Colt screwed into his temple. “I see anything fancy, anything I don't like, and I scatter his brains,” Green said.

“Why are you here?” Kane asked. “Come back to admire your handiwork?”

“Her? I didn't kill her. A man called Amos Albright did that. He likes to strangle the ladies while he's about his business.”

“You're a liar, Green,” Vito snapped. “I put a bullet in that man.”

“You grazed him, is all.” Green pushed on the Colt, forcing Vito's head to the right. “And listen, you damned dago, you call me a liar again and I'll blow your head clean off.”

Roughly, Green opened Vito's coat, slid out the Smith & Wesson from the shoulder holster and tossed it into the dirt. “Buff told me you carried a hideout there. Now, lay the lamp at your feet and get over beside Kane. After me and him have it out, maybe I'll let you live.” He shrugged. “But, again, maybe I won't.”

Vito did as he was told and the marshal said, “I'm callin' you a liar as well. You murdered Katie Gordon an' before that, Lily LaBelle.”

Green smiled. “Kane, you stupid hick, I've never killed a woman in my life. I told you, Albright killed Katie. And Lily was murdered by . . . well, why don't you guess.”

Kane was desperately trying to hold on, battling pain, dizziness and waves of nausea. “I don't have to guess. It was you.”

Green shook his head. “Wrong again. Katie murdered Lily, and I helped cover it up for her, repaying old favors you might say. Besides, Katie owned the livery and she'd be missed. Frank Dawson, now who would miss him?”

“Katie had no call to kill Lily LaBelle,” Kane said.

“Had a sheltered upbringing, huh, Kane?” Green took a single step back, a gunfighter seeking his comfortable distance. But he was still talking. “Katie didn't like men, at least not in her bed. But she didn't have the same feelings about women, especially Lily. When Lily told her she was leaving her and heading east to Boston town, Katie couldn't take it. If she couldn't have Lily, then no one would. So she strangled her.”

Green moved his frock coat away from his holstered gun. “I took some things from Lily's cabin and said I'd found them on Dawson. All but a sweet little pepperbox revolver. That I kept for myself.”

Now Green's smile slipped. “Kane, I'm all through talking and I don't much care if you believe me or not, on account of how you'll be dead real soon anyhow.”

“Like I told you afore, Green, don't make me draw down on you.”

“Big talk from a man who's half dead already. You've been stepping a mighty wide path since I wouldn't fight you in the saloon,” Green said, his eyes luminous in the lamplight. “Men talk, and there are some saying you put the crawl on me. Well, I've never enjoyed killing a man before breakfast and that's all there was to it, why I let it go.” His gaze hardened from gray to ice blue. “It's way past breakfast now, Kane.”

“Damn you, the man is dead on his feet,” Vito yelled.

“You shut your trap! He's getting an even break.”

Kane was falling apart. He was so weak his knees trembled and he saw Green through a haze of glimmering yellow light and purple shadow. He had to hold on, just a minute longer. . . .

“Any time you feel like it, skin the iron,” Green prompted. His face had a grinning, predatory cast, like a lobo wolf that has just hamstrung an elk. “I want this thing done right.”

“Hulin,” Kane pleaded, “please be reasonable. I'm not in any condition to—”

He drew and fired.

The bullet slammed into Green's belly, low down, an inch under the navel. But the man was fast, very fast. He fired a split second later and the big hunk of .45 lead struck the cylinder of Kane's revolver. The slug caromed off the gun, flattened and tumbling, then slammed into the upper part of the marshal's chest. The deformed bullet smashed its way across ribs and exited through the top of Kane's left shoulder, exploding out of the collarbone in a ragged spray of scarlet blood.

Green's face was ashen, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grotesque grin. Gut-shot, knowing he was a dead man, he dropped to one knee. He shot again—a miss.

The cylinder of Kane's gun was loose and out of line. He held it in place with his left hand, thumbed the hammer and fired, hitting Green in the belly again. The gunman got off a shot, into the floor. He tried to get up, his eyes, terrible with hate, meeting Kane's, then just rolled over.

Kane limped to Green's side and stood above him, his arm with the shattered gun hanging at his side. “Damn you,” the man whispered, “you are fast.”

“Faster than you'll ever live to be,” the marshal said, no pity in him, his anger a red and black fog in his mind.

Green struggled to talk through the blood that filled his mouth. “I hanged Dawson, me and Buff. You couldn't save him, Kane. I beat you . . . you . . .”

Then Hulin Green died.

 

Vito Provanzano's gray face betrayed his shock. “Marshal, you're hit again.”

“Seems like.”

“I have to get you to bed and then find a doctor, or what passes for one around here.”

Kane shook his head. “No. Hell, I'll probably be dead afore sunup. It's got to be finished tonight.” He tossed his mangled revolver aside and nodded to Green's body. “Give me his gun.”

Vito picked up his own revolver, wiped it off, then did the same with Green's Colt.

Kane reloaded the gun, filling all six chambers, and shoved it into his holster. “Rip that shirt off'n him an' see if you can use it to stop my bleeding.” Vito hesitated, looking at the dead man. “Hurry up,” the marshal said. “We're running out of time. I don't know how long I can stay on my feet.”

Vito bent to the body, but stopped, his alarmed eyes on Kane.

From outside came the sound of booted men running through rain and mud.

The marshal drew his gun and staggered to the door of the barn. Four men were charging toward him, the bulky shape of Buff Stringfellow in the lead. Kane shot rapidly, fanning the Colt. He knew his chances of hitting anything were remote, but the flying bullets had the desired effect. Stringfellow and the others broke and ran.