Ralph Compton The Convict Trail (7 page)

One of the other men spoke. “We're hunting a man. We think you might have seen him.”

Despite himself, Kane was interested. “What man might that be?”

Carmine waved a dismissive hand at his brother. “Later, Vito. I'll tell him when the moment arrives. First a little background on our . . . ah . . . problem, Marshal. After hearing me out, you may be more inclined to help.” He leaned forward in the saddle. “Have you ever heard the word ‘Omerta'?”

“Can't say as I have.”

“It's the code my family lives by. It is a strict rule of honor that is never taken lightly. But one of our family recently broke that code.”

“And now you're lookin' to get even, huh?”

“No, that man is dead, but not at our hands.”

Carmine's horse tossed its head, the bit chiming. The mounts of the other brothers moved restlessly, perhaps scenting coyote or bear in the wind. Lightning shimmered, illuminating the planes of Carmine's face, making the shadows pooled in his cheeks and eye sockets darker.

For an instant, Kane thought he was looking at a skull. “If the ranny who broke your rule is dead, why are you huntin' another man?”

“The man who shamed us was married to our sister. He used this relationship to steal a considerable amount of money from the family, thirty thousand dollars to be exact. He left our sister and fled New Orleans, then headed for Texas, thinking he could lose himself in that vast land. But he was wrong. A man like him, dressed as a gentleman and spending money freely, is always noticed and commented upon. Before long, word got out, all the way to New Orleans, and when he was told of this, the man panicked and made his way to a dung heap called Fort Worth.”

Kane picked up the coffeepot, a signal that he was no longer interested. Carmine saw this and spoke with more urgency. “In Fort Worth, the man was befriended by a cripple named Barnabas Hook, an executioner by trade.”

Now Kane was listening intently, the coffeepot in his hand.

“Hook, if that was his real name, promised the man he would protect him, that he could travel with him to a place of safety in the Indian Territory. Later, the local constabulary found the man dead, cut in half by a shotgun. His money and all his possessions were gone and there was no sign of Hook. All this we were told in Fort Worth.”

“So now you're hunting this man, Hook?”

“We want our money back. It belongs to the family.”

The man called Vito said, “Did you meet Hook on the trail? He's already a dead man from the waist down and he travels with a woman and young girl.”

Kane had made up his mind about two things: the three men facing him had a killing in mind, and he would say nothing to endanger Lorraine and Nellie.

“There are many trails in and out of the Territory,” he said. “I never came across a man who fits your description.”

A sudden flare of anger in his face, Vito opened his mouth to speak again, but Carmine cut him off. “Then we will take up no more of your time, Marshal. You have your duties and we have ours.”

But the man didn't leave right away. He kicked his horse into motion and rode up to the cage. “Are any of you men
Siciliani
?” he asked.

The six convicts were silent, their faces puzzled. Kane guessed they were probably trying to figure out what “
Siciliani
” meant, as was he.

“No? Then that's too bad. There's nothing I can do for you.”

Carmine swung his horse away from the wagon, touched his hat to Kane, then led his brothers into the black cavern of the night.

The marshal was uneasy. He had the feeling he'd meet the Provanzano brothers again, and their next meeting would not be so civil. He was certain they knew he'd lied to them about Hook and they were not men to forget such a slight.

Chapter 7

Kane fed the prisoners two at a time, herding them into the cabin under a sky splintered by lightning and heavy with rain. Later he spread Sam's slicker over the top of the wagon cage and added some fallen pine branches. It was a meager shelter, but it kept out the worst of the downpour.

Stringfellow and the others made no complaint, a fact that bothered Kane. He was more troubled still when the prisoners huddled together after they were returned to the wagon, Stringfellow's whisper thin as a razor in the darkness.

Standing as close as he dared to the wagon without seeming to listen, Kane could hear nothing. But then Stringfellow's voice rose a little and he heard the man say, “Joe, you're gold dust, true-blue.” He looked around the circle of shadowed faces. “Ain't that so, boys?”

A murmur of agreement . . . then silence.

The rustling pines were alive with wind, and rain hissed on the grass like a snake. Despite the constant shimmer of lightning that filled the clouds with golden fire, there was no thunder and the quiet night closed around Kane, mysterious and oppressive. The air was thick, hard to breathe and smelled of decay and the memory of ancient death.

The marshal walked back to the cabin through a wind-tossed darkness that slapped at him and gave him no peace.

Sam Shaver looked up when Kane stepped inside. “Get them boys bedded down for the night?”

Kane nodded. “They'll be snug enough, I reckon.”

“Got your plate ready. Set and eat.” The old man's eyes wandered over Kane's rangy body. “You're soaked to the skin, Logan. Get that vest an' shirt off'n you and I'll be dryin' them at the fire.”

“I'll be all right.”

“For oncet do as I say, Marshal. Last thing the old judge needs is a deputy with the rheumatisms.”

Kane crowded beside Sam, under the token shelter of his spread-out slicker. He was suddenly tired and didn't feel like arguing with the old man tonight. He stripped off his vest and shirt, revealing the roped muscles of his wide shoulders and the flat planes of his chest. His upper body bore the white, puckered scars of three bullet wounds, and, unseen under his canvas pants, there were two more.

He took the coffee and plate of salt pork and bread Sam passed to him and set the cup on the floor between his legs. He had no appetite for food, but ate quickly, just to put it away and please Sam. After he'd eaten, Kane built a cigarette and lit it from the fire. He dragged deep, then laid the back of his head against the wall, tendrils of blue smoke curling slowly from his nostrils.

Sam had spread out Kane's steaming shirt near the fire, and now his eyes angled to the marshal. “Something bothering you, Logan?”

Kane did not make light of it. “Heard Stringfellow whispering to the others. He's up to something, and I think it involves Joe Foster.”

“Two of a kind,” Sam said. He held the shirt up to the feeble flames of the fire. Without lifting his eyes, he said, “We got our hands full, Logan, an' no mistake. Men like Buff Stringfellow and them others, they weren't born with a sense of what's right and what's wrong. They see themselves as the strong an' they figure they have a God-given right to prey on the weak, an' they exercise that right often. A man like ol' Buff, he'll kill a man, woman or child with nary a twinge of conscience. Destroyin' a human being means no more to him than gunnin' a jack-rabbit.”

Sam's eyes sought Kane's in the shifting, scarlet gloom. “Men like them out there, they don't know the meaning of mercy. They don't give it an' they don't expect it for themselves. We can't try to understand them, because men like us can't begin to comprehend what they do and why they do it. Up in the Territory when they raped that Cherokee farmer's wife and daughter, they kept using the girl's body even after she was dead. Amos Albright an' Joe Foster did that. Reuben Largo, the one who calls hisself a preacher, used his knife on the mother and hung what he'd cut off'n her in a tree where she could see it while she lay bleeding to death.”

Kane tossed the stub of his cigarette into the fire and immediately began to build another. “What do you do with men like that, Sam?”

“Just what we're doin'. You hang 'em if you can, an' if you can't do that, you put them away in jail until they rot.” He smiled slightly. “Hell, I'm philosophizin' so much, I sound like the judge.”

 

Often God's tender mercies seem so small, they go unnoticed. But when he woke, Kane whispered a prayer of thanks that the dream had again not haunted his sleep. Despite the rainy discomfort of the cabin, he felt rested and refreshed as he buttoned into his damp shirt and vest and stepped outside for the coffee water.

The prisoners were fed breakfast and loaded in the wagon without incident. Kane helped Sam hitch the mules and an hour later, under a gray sky, they reached the Red.

Kane was still smarting over the dollar-ninety-seven the ferryman had charged him and he planned to lower that price considerably on the return trip.

The ferryman's name was Bill Young, but his regular customers called him Fat Willie and he didn't seem to mind. He was a beached whale of a man with pouched slits for eyes and a shaved head that looked like a bullet.

“River's high,” Sam said to him from his perch on the wagon. “Ain't that unusual for this time o' the year?”

Young, wearing only filthy red long johns tucked into a pair of untied work boots, scratched his belly and said, “Yeah, it's unusual, an' so is the rain we've been having. It's getting so a man can't even depend on the weather no more.” He looked up at Sam. “You crossing?”

“Don't that seem obvious?” Kane growled, the very sight of the fat man irritating him beyond measure.

“I long since learned that nothing about folks is obvious,” Young said. His eyes wandered over the prisoners in the back of the wagon, revealing speculation, greed maybe, but no surprise.

Kane decided that a man in Young's line of work must have seen everything, good and bad, of which the human race is capable. He leaned forward in the saddle. “I'll pay you a dollar-fifty to take us across.”

The fat man laid one of his chins between his thumb and forefinger and frowned. “That don't cut it, Marshal. What we have here goes under the category of dangerous cargo, I mean them prisoners an' all. I charge a premium for that.”

“How big a premium?” Kane felt his anger simmer somewhere under his hatband, but it was quickly coming to a boil.

“Well, I'm always one to help the law. Let's say two-dollars-fifty-cents, an' that's with the regular customer discount, since you crossed afore.”

Kane tried to speak, but his tangled words sputtered to outraged silence on his lips and he fell silent. He swallowed hard, then tried again. “Mister, that's out-an'-out robbery.”

Young shrugged. “Suit yerself.” His smile was unpleasant. “Maybe that iron wagon will float accrost, but I doubt it.”

Kane lurched back in the saddle, rage in his eyes. “Mister, get haulin' on the rope of that scow and take us across for one-fifty or get a bullet in the belly. The choice is your'n.”

“Figured you might say something like that, Marshal, an' that's why my woman is over there at the cabin with a Sharps .50 aimed right at your brisket.”

Kane turned his head and saw an Indian woman wearing Cheyenne braids at the door of Young's ramshackle cabin. He'd been telling the truth about the Sharps, and the woman was holding it to her shoulder as though she knew how to use it.

“We had you pegged as a troublemaker the first time you crossed,” the fat man said, a smug walrus in long johns. “And I'm a cautious man. Live longer that way.”

“Logan, maybe we should just pay him his blood money,” Sam said. “Hell, you're bound to ride this way again. You can shoot him then.”

“Yeah, Marshal,” Stringfellow yelled. “Pay the man his money!”

The others laughed and Kane felt his face burn. He was well and truly buffaloed and he knew it.

“Mister, the next time I'm down har, I'll gun you fer sure,” Kane said, the taste of yet another defeat at the hands of the bandit ferryman like dry ashes in his mouth.

Young smiled. “Me an' my woman will be waiting.” He slapped his hands together. “Now, are you ready to cross? Cash in advance, Marshal, if you please.”

Kane's shoulders slumped. “Sam, get the wagon on board.” He stood in the stirrups and reached into his pocket, his breath sighing through his lips like a mournful wind.

After he paid Young, Kane led his horse onto the ferry. He stood at the side of the wagon, watching Young with resentful eyes as the man took up the slack on the rope and prepared to haul. The hole the missing two dollars and fifty cents had left in his pocket made Kane's pants feel light and he nursed his anger to keep it warm.

The Cheyenne woman, not pretty but lithe and slender, had moved closer to the ferry. The Sharps was now slanted across her breasts, but her black eyes never left Kane's face. She was obviously ready for anything that might happen.

As the ferry pulled away from the gravel bank, Amos Albright pushed his face against the iron straps of the cage and yelled at the woman, “Come on over here, li'l squaw. See what I got fer you.” The others laughed and hooted. Emboldened, a grinning Albright stuck his arm through the bars and wiggled his fingers in a suggestive manner. “Come here, honey. Just a li'l closer now.”

Kane's gun cleared the leather fast and he brought the barrel down on Albright's wrist. The man yelped and pulled his arm back. “What the hell did you do that fer?” Albright demanded, his lips pursed as he clutched at his bruised wrist.

“I get seasick,” Kane said. “Makes me a might testy.”

The Cheyenne woman lowered her rifle and held it across the top of her thighs. Kane wasn't sure, but she didn't seem as ready anymore. There might even have been a hint of a smile on her lips.