Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (27 page)

Vito was beside him, his revolver in his hand. “Watch them!” Kane yelled. He could see nothing but a cartwheeling blur of darkness and rain. After a couple of minutes, he said, “Well? Where?”

“The Bucket of Blood.”

“Good. Then that's where I'll find them.” He looked at Vito and even managed a smile. “I took 'em by surprise. I reckon they thought I was dead.”

“And I reckon that was a real good guess on their part,” Vito said, looking Kane up and down . . . a tall, grim lawman, shot through and through and drenched in blood that was all his own.

The thought came unbidden to Vito's deeply troubled mind that Deputy Marshal Logan Kane was a dead man who hadn't fallen over yet.

Chapter 30

Vito Provanzano ripped the shirt off Green's body and helped Kane out of his slicker. He bandaged up the wounds on the marshal's chest and shoulder as best he could and was shocked by what he saw.

“I've seen wounded men before,” he said, looking hard into Kane's eyes. “But I've never seen an injury like this. Nothing like this. Marshal, it's”—he fished through his mind for a word—“savage. Savage . . . like raw meat.”

“You know how to cheer a man, don't you?” Kane said. “Button me into the slicker again to hold the bandage in place.”

“It's not a bandage,” Vito said. “It's just a dead man's shirt soaking up blood.”

A hay rake hung from a hook on the barn wall and Vito took it down and smashed off the pegged wooden tines. He looked it over, nodded and offered it to Kane. “I'd say this is a pretty fair imitation of a crutch,” he said. “I can't have you hanging on me when the shooting starts.”

The marshal took the rake and propped it under his left arm. His eyes sought Vito's in the gloom. “Vito, before it's too late, saddle your hoss an' run fast an' fur, all the way to the New Orleans docks.”

Vito shook his head. “I'll see this job through.”

Logan Kane was a man born without the ability to back up or back down, combined with a harsh drive toward sudden, wild-eyed violence. He recognized those traits in others, and although Vito's lay hidden under a glossy veneer of city slicker sophistication, it was there nonetheless. The man would stick, no matter the consequences, and there could be no talking him out of it.

“I'm beholden to you,” Kane said.

Vito smiled. “I know.”

“Then let's get it done,” Kane said.

He shuffled toward the door, trailing a spoor of blood behind him. His face was ashen under his tan, his blue eyes burned out, revealing his battle with pain and the waves of weakness that kept washing over him.

Kane had been weathered by a thousand difficult trails and he had known much of hardship and doing without, whether of food, water, sleep or the scented companionship of a woman. All that was not bone or muscle in him had long since melted away and the soul within his body was scarred by many wounds, most too deep to ever heal. But that night, shot to ribbons and barely able to stay on his feet, all that had gone before helped him endure and, despite his feebleness, made him dangerous, fast and deadly with a gun as few men are.

Had a man used to soft living and civilized ways taken the hits, he would already have been dead, his life ebbing away on the dirty floor of the barn. But Kane was a tough man to kill, rugged as the Western lands that had tested him time and time again and had never found him wanting. He had been bred hard, lived hard and now he was determined to die hard.

He was at the door of the barn. And he had it to do.

Lorraine, running through mud and rain, desperately tried to stop him.

“I heard the shooting and I thought you were dead,” she cried.

She threw herself against him, heedless of the blood that stained her dress. She begged, pleaded, cajoled and wept bitter tears, and later Kane couldn't remember what he said to her in reply.

“Logan, you're in no shape to go up against Stringfellow and three other gunmen,” Lorraine said. “We'll leave, now, tonight. I'll go anywhere with you.”

She read her answer in Kane's eyes and she swung on Vito. “For God's sake tell him!”

The man shook his head. “Ma'am, I can't tell the marshal what to do.”

“There's blood everywhere,” Lorraine cried, looking at the scarlet shreds hanging in strips under Kane's slicker. And again she asked Vito, “How bad is it?”

“It's bad, ma'am. Real bad. Ribs broken, shoulder broken.” He looked at the ground between his feet. “I don't know what else is broken inside.”

“Lorraine, go to the hotel and wait for me,” Kane said. “I'll be back for you and Nellie.”

Lorraine was intelligent enough to realize that she'd used every womanly weapon in her arsenal, including tears, and that Kane would not budge. Ten yoke of oxen would not move him and it was pointless to attempt the impossible. “I'll be at the hotel,” the woman said, her voice flat as she accepted what was now inevitable.

Lorraine turned on her heel and walked into the lashing rain. Kane called out after her, but she did not turn and soon became one with the night.

 

The Bucket of Blood glowed in the gloom, needles of rain spiking into its spilling rectangles of yellow light. A slight haze hung in the air, gray as winter smoke, and around Kane and Vito the muddy street hissed. The saloon crouched on the boardwalk, silent and waiting, hung with an aura of dread so real a man could reach out and grab it and come away with a handful of blackness.

Vito turned uneasily to Kane. “How are you holding up, Marshal?”

“I'm still on my feet.”

“Yes, but barely.”

“I've got a few minutes left in me. Then I'm done.” He looked at Vito, his face drawn, haggard and suddenly old. “I don't have time for anything fancy. We walk inside and I ask for their surrender.” He reached down, undid the tin star from his gun belt and pinned it to the front of his slicker. “About time I showed I'm proud of this.” Kane reached out and laid a hand on Vito's shoulder. He said, “I'm sorry about getting you into it. It could all go to hell real fast.”

“Your few minutes are running out, Marshal,” Vito said. “Let's get it done.”

Kane adjusted the hang of his gun, settled his crutch under his arm, then nodded. “I'm ready.”

The younger man smiled. “No you're not, but I'm all through trying to tell you that.”

The two men walked slowly through the mud to the saloon. In the darkness the rain fell around them like liquid silver.

Kane opened the door and stepped inside.

 

Buff Stringfellow and Jack Henry sat at a table opposite the door, a bottle between them. Amos Albright, the woman killer, stood at the corner of the bar, his sly eyes glittering with the thrill of the hunt. He held Sam Shaver's Greener against his side, half hidden by his ragged coat. Reuben Largo had taken up a position behind Stringfellow. Largo was wearing a holstered Colt, but the man was a knife artist and he'd have a bowie about him somewhere. Largo called himself a preacher, but his cold, black eyes gave no hint of any religious fervor.

“Been expecting you, Marshal Kane,” Stringfellow said. “You don't look so good.”

“Last I saw of you, Buff, you wasn't lookin' so good either. As I recollect, you was a-runnin' through the mud like a buckshot coyote.”

Stringfellow smiled. “Yeah, well, we ain't a-runnin' now, are we?”

Kane nodded. He looked around the bar. The bartender had disappeared and there were no other patrons. Probably they'd been run off by the convicts.

“I don't have much time, so I'm going to talk plain to you men,” Kane said. “I want you to surrender your guns and then come with me peacefully. I guarantee you a fair hearing in Fort Smith on multiple counts of murder and a crackerjack hanging with new hemp ropes.”

Stringfellow turned, looked at Henry and both men broke into guffaws of laughter. Albright and Largo joined in the mirth, neither of them aware that they'd soon be dead men.

Logan Kane looked dreadful, like a walking corpse. But, covered in blood, his eyes burning with cold, green fire, that night he was probably the most dangerous living being, human or animal, on earth.

Jack Henry knew it. A killer himself, he recognized it in others and he showed it by the way his skin tightened like parchment against his cheekbones. Standing tall and terrible in the trembling, orange lamplight, Logan Kane was a man to step around, a man to let be. But Henry had been there many times before. There was no going back from this and there could be only one end . . . and that would be when dead men were stretched on the floor.

Henry rose to his feet, the scrape of his chair scratching across the silence.

“Kane!” he yelled. “The hell with you!”

Jack Henry, man killer, named gunfighter, drew—and died.

His gun had cleared the leather, his thumb on the hammer, when Kane's bullet crashed into the bridge of his nose. Henry's head snapped back and he did an odd pirouette on his right foot, staggered to the side and sprawled across Stringfellow. The rickety chair collapsed under the weight of both men and Stringfellow fell on his back, Henry's limp body on top of him.

Amos Albright had stepped away from the bar and he was bringing up the Greener. Beside him, Kane heard Vito fire twice. Albright staggered back, blasting the shotgun into the timber ceiling. Vito fired again and this time the man went down. In his dying moments Albright learned he'd made a fatal mistake—an abuser of women should never seek a fight with men.

Terrified, Reuben Largo took himself out of it. His gun still in the leather, he screamed and made a dash for the back door. He almost made it, but Kane cut him down with two fast shots. The man died with his boots in the saloon and his face in the mud.

Through the gray, sullen drift of gun smoke, Kane saw Stringfellow try to rise. His crutch thumping rapidly on the floor, the marshal stepped beside the outlaw. Stringfellow looked up at Kane and shrank back, like a man seeing a frightful ghost.

Stringfellow's Colt had slipped out of the holster and lay beside him. The man eyed it and Kane, out of his mind with pain and rage, roared, “Pick it up, damn you! Get to your work!”

Stringfellow jerked back his hand as if the gun were suddenly red-hot. His scared eyes lifted to Kane's face and he shook his head, struck dumb by fear.

“Pick it up!” Kane yelled. His boot crashed into Stringfellow's ribs. “Pick it up!”

At that moment, Logan Kane was no longer human. He had reverted to something that had existed a long time before in mankind's past, a creature primitive, brutish and savage. His boot thudded again and again into Stringfellow's body and face. The man writhed and shrieked, blood on his lips, his wild eyes already swollen shut.

Vito stepped in front of Kane. “Stop, Marshal!” he said. “See him hang, but don't kick the man to death.”

Kane's lips were pulled back from his teeth, his face murderous. “Get away from me!” he roared.

“Damn you, Kane, he's had enough!” Suddenly the muzzle of Vito's gun was pressed into the marshal's throat. “Back off or I swear I'll blow your head off.”

Like a man waking from a nightmare, Kane stared into Vito's eyes for a long moment, blinked, then looked down at Stringfellow as though seeing the man for the first time. “I'm all right,” he said after a long while. He breathed hard, steadying himself. “Let somebody else kill him.”

Vito waited, his gaze searching Kane's face for any sign of an untruth; then he took his gun away. He managed a weak smile. “You do get a tad overwrought by times, don't you, Marshal?”

The door opened and a grizzled head of a miner poked inside.

“You,” Kane said to the man. “Bring me the blacksmith.”

“Huh?”

Louder this time. “Bring me the damned blacksmith!”

The old miner backed out and his running footsteps sounded on the boardwalk.

Kane looked through the curling gun smoke at the three dead men, then the groaning man at his feet. He wanted to lie down and sleep, close his eyes and lose himself in oblivion for hours. Forever. No, not that, not forever. He had thought himself dying, but death was a luxury he could not afford. It was his duty to take Buff Stringfellow to Fort Smith to be hanged. This was what Judge Parker expected. That he was returning without his driver and five of the escaped convicts would not sit well with the old man. It would probably cost him his star.

Kane nodded to himself. No matter, he was done with all of it anyway, the shooting and the killing. The smell of blood and powder smoke acrid in his nose, he vowed that he would never again turn a gun on any human being.

The door opened. The blacksmith, a burly man, stepped inside and looked around anxiously.

Kane pointed to Stringfellow. “Make an iron collar for him. Make it thick and strong, a padlock on one side, a ring on the other. I want it by first light.”

“That fast”—the blacksmith swallowed hard—“it will cost you ten dollars.”

Kane turned to Vito. “Pay the man, then help me back to the hotel.” He glanced at Stringfellow. “We'll take that with us.”

“What's left of it,” Vito said, without even an attempt at humor.

Chapter 31

Logan Kane pulled out of Baines Flat at sunup. Lorraine rode next to him and Nellie, and Vito took up the rear. Kane dragged Stringfellow behind him by a rope looped through the ring welded to his iron collar. The man staggered through the mud, his breath hissing through his teeth. Every time he stumbled and fell, Kane jerked him to his feet again.