Three – Trail Town
The cattle and freight train rolled slowly into the yards at Smoke Hill and already the railroad men were gathering with wooden billies shaped like clubs, running alongside the cars, opening doors, looking underneath on the bogies for any sign of men riding the rods.
Smoke Hill was a trail town, railhead for the rich grazing lands around the Sabine River, miles to the north of Houston. The herds came in from north, west and east, cramming into the yards, and then were shipped down to the Harris and Boyd Meatworks in Houston. Many a man who couldn’t find work in the big town tried to save a few dollars by riding the rods or an empty freight car on the daily run from Houston to Smoke Hill. The railroad figured they weren’t in business to help freeloaders, and so they had gathered together a bunch of tough, big-muscled men, armed them with clubs and told them to drag off every hobo they found and make sure he would never again try to ride one of their trains without paying his fare.
The law in Smoke Hill looked the other way when battered and bloodied men staggered into town, complaining they had been half-killed by the railroad men. The railroad company saw to it that the lawmen and their families were well-provided for. So a man arriving in Smoke Hill the free way, was on the losing end from the start, and any man with a busted arm or nose, maybe a cracked kneecap or fractured ribs, found it hard to get work with any of the trail herders who were still in town. They lost out to those who were sound in wind and limb.
When the big, brutal-looking railroad man found Buck Harlan crouched in a dim corner of an empty freight car, he grinned in anticipation when he saw how lean the ex-convict was and climbed into the car, carefully sliding the door closed after him. He hefted the long hickory club as Harlan scrambled to his feet and backed off, groping for his old cap-and-ball Navy Colt. The holster had slid around to his back and he was still trying to get the gun free when the railroad man struck out with the club. Harlan yelled as the hickory slammed against his left shoulder and sent him reeling along the car wall.
His gun was still hidden from the railroad man and because the belt held no cartridges, the man probably reasoned Harlan was unarmed. The big man charged in, slashing with the club and sending Harlan leaping around the car, weaving and ducking, jerking his head back as the club whipped past only inches away. Then the end of it caught him just above the belt buckle and the breath ‘whooshed!’ out of him and he doubled up. The railroad man grinned and lifted the club above his head, aiming to smash it down and break Harlan’s shoulder. But Harlan got his gun free and brought it around and up, driving the muzzle deep into the thick midriff of the other man. He lifted to his toes, the club poised, eyes bulging in surprise, his breath driven from him. Then he saw it was an antique pistol and a crooked grin spread across his unshaven features and he groped with his free hand to get a strong, two-handed grip on the club.
Buck Harlan dropped hammer but the percussion cap failed to explode. He cocked the hammer again swiftly, figuring the old powder load had corroded the nipple, blocking it with rust so the flash from the cap could not reach the bullet chamber. He rolled, going right down to the floor and felt the tip of the club brush the top of his head.
Harlan squirmed around as the railroad man swore and swung the club up again. Harlan hacked out suddenly with the Navy Colt, the barrel tip slamming into the railroad man’s shin. The man yelped and danced back, hopping on one foot. Harlan rolled towards him, reversing his hold on the Colt, thumping the butt down savagely onto the man’s toes. The man cursed and danced back again. Harlan smashed the butt down on the other foot, hearing the bones in the instep crack, then banged him across both shins. The railroad man fell to the car floor, dropping his club, hugging his injured legs. Harlan grabbed up the club and leapt to his feet.
The blood drained out of the railroad man’s face as the ex-prisoner hefted the club and looked down at him mercilessly. The big man started to shake his head slowly, in a silent plea, but Harlan snarled at him and struck him across the face with the full butt of the club. The man crashed back, yelling.
Harlan grinned. No one would take any notice. There were other yells and screams coming from the train and everyone would figure it was only some freeloader getting what was coming to him. Buck Harlan, the urge for self-preservation long drilled into him by the jungle of the Territorial Prison system, swung the club freely and dispassionately, reducing the guard to a bloody, blubbering heap. Then he threw the red-spattered club aside, picked up his gun and his hat and slid back the door slowly. Cautiously, he looked out and saw a group of men gathering at the far end of the trail. Likely they were the railroad guards conferring after they had done their brutal work. He figured now was as good a time as any to quit this train and see if he could get into town with a whole skin. He dropped to the track and ducked under the car swiftly, coming out on the other side and seeing only two men working on the depot platform. They glanced towards him but didn’t seem to pay him much attention, and he pulled his hat down over his eyes and hurried on out of the rail yards, across the rear of the depot building, and moving on across the big open area that separated the siding from the town proper.
Steers bawled restlessly in the pens and there were a few cowpokes yelling and rousting cattle still, shrouded like ghosts in a pall of yellow dust. It looked like at least one trail outfit was in town, Harlan thought, as he walked on towards the distant buildings, his muscles stiff from the long uncomfortable ride from Houston in the freight car. He hadn’t especially wanted to come to Smoke Hill, but riding the rods seemed a good way of quitting the big town in a hurry after he had slugged Warden Harris and left him counting his front teeth in a dark alley behind a Houston saloon ...
Still, men who worked the trail herds were usually a restless breed and most of them had travelled far and wide across Texas. They might well have the information he wanted, so maybe something had guided his feet here after all to put him on the right trail.
There were several saloons in the main street and by the sounds of them, they were all doing a roaring trade. Buck Harlan turned into one called the Trailman’s Rest. It was crowded with trail herders and there were painted women and a man with half one ear missing, sitting at a bullet-scarred piano, smashing his thick fingers onto the yellowed ivory keys and managing to make some semblance of a tune come out. Other men played poker with, serious faces and drinks all around the table, one with a painted girl sitting on the arm of a chair, hoping some of the winnings would stick to her fingers before the evening was over ...
Harlan stiffened as a hand gripped his left forearm and he dropped his right hand to the butt of the old Navy Colt as he turned, starting to lift the gun a little clumsily. But he stopped the movement when he looked into the over painted features of one of the saloons ‘fallen doves’, the quaint frontier name for the whores who plied their trade in the trail towns. Her hair was frizzy and carrot-colored and her flesh, where he could see it under the paint, was pasty and kind of sick-looking. Her eyes were a muddy sort of green and there was no warmth in them as they looked him over, though a stiff smile was pasted on her thick, rouged lips.
“Don’t be so jumpy, cowboy ... You need to relax a little. And Ginger’s just the gal to show you how.” She winked ponderously. “In ways you’ve never even thought of. Come and buy me a drink, Shorty!”
She laughed at what she figured was a humorous nickname and tugged at his arm. He resisted and the smile got a trifle stiffer around the edges. She tried to urge him to the bar again.
“Aw, come on, handsome! Help a gal out.” She winked again and lowered her voice to a grating whisper which she probably thought sounded seductive. “I’ll be glad to show you my—appreciation.”
“Sounds like a good offer to me, feller.”
Harlan turned to look at the man who had spoken. He was obviously a saloon lackey, dressed in cheap, ill-fitting suit, with high, stiff collar, and his hair was plastered with heavily scented oil, parted in the middle and curled up at the edges.
Harlan returned his hard stare, flicked his gaze to the girl. “Go to hell! Both of you!”
A sudden silence spread through the room, the noise rippling away like water down a drain. All eyes turned to the trio standing a few feet from the zinc-topped bar.
The girl opened her mouth and cursed Harlan in most unladylike language and lifted a hand to swing a blow at his face. He blocked it easily, grabbed her fat wrist and twisted her arm up her back. She yelped as he applied brief pressure before sending her staggering into a table where she stumbled and finally fell to the floor, sitting down with a thud on her ample backside. She began to cry, wailing as much in anger as pain. The saloon lackey came wading in on Harlan, but staggered back as the flat side of the Navy Colt smashed his nose across the middle of his face. He weaved drunkenly and fell over the redhead’s fat legs. She wailed louder.
Then Harlan realized the other men in the saloon were closing in on him and he started to lift the Colt, thumbing back the hammer. Several men closed in fast and he felt steel grips on his wrist, fighting him, wrenching the old gun from him. Then he was yanked upright onto his toes, arms twisted up behind his back.
“Dunno where you learnt your manners, feller,” someone growled, slamming a fist into Harlan’s belly, “but you got to learn you don’t treat ladies like that in Texas!”
“Damn it, I’m Texas born and bred!” Harlan shouted. “And she’s nothin’ but a whore!”
“There you go again!” growled the man in the crowd and more fists thudded into him, driving the breath from him.
“These here ladies are ‘fallen doves,’ mister ... Whores are Mexes or ’breeds. These are white women and they got a job to do and you just don’t treat ’em the way you did. Okay, boys! Give him his lesson!”
Then it was all pain and thudding fists and the occasional boot and he was lifted over the heads of the yelling crowd, passed from hand to hand, slugged, beaten, slapped, kicked, drenched with beer dregs, maybe worse, his clothes were ripped and consciousness gradually slid away from him.
There was a sensation of movement, his boots dragging over rough boards, down a few steps, and he felt the chill of the night air on his wounds before he went sailing through the air and then crashed heavily into woodwork that splintered and gave beneath his weight. His last conscious sensation was one of pain before he plunged into blackness.
It was full dark when he came round and he was aware of pain in every part of his body. He moved an arm experimentally and groaned aloud as his shoulder grated agonizingly. Seemed to him that what the railroad man had failed to accomplish with his club, the trail herders had managed with bare fists and boots. He still didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. To him, the painted girl was a whore, no matter what polite name they called her and she had been trying to get him to buy her a watered-down drink at jacked-up prices. He wasn’t green: he had learnt about this kind of thing from inmates of the prison.
What they had neglected to tell him was that women were in such short supply on the frontier that even the saloon girls were shown respect, especially by the trail herders who paid for their ‘comforts’ when they hit town. A man simply didn’t cuss out a woman, be she whore or respectably married woman. If he was loco enough to do it, well, Harlan knew now what could happen ...
He got slowly to a sitting position, managed to locate his old Navy Colt that someone had thrown into the alley after him, and then began to crawl away, hugging his bruised ribs, moaning softly. He moved away from the sounds of the saloon and came to a muddy, rutted lane behind a row of buildings. Harlan crawled along it laboriously, and finally found an old store shed with partly eaten sacks of grain swarming with rats. There were loose planks in the wall and he dragged himself through and climbed away from the rats, flopping, finally, onto the top of a stack of grain.
He felt spiders’ webs against his face but was too beat to worry about them. He sagged back onto the sacks with a final, long, fading groan and passed out again ...
Just like in prison, a man had to take care of his own hurts ...
And it was just as well Buck Harlan kept that convict axiom, for the railroad man he had beaten was on the prowl, looking for him. And this time he carried a sawn-off shotgun in his hands instead of a club and he was not alone: he had three other railroad guards with him and a deputy sheriff who had been sent along with instructions to find something to keep himself busy when the railroad men finally caught up with this ranny with the old Navy Colt. If the ranny was shot or beaten up badly, the deputy would see to it that it went down on the books as ‘self-defense’. The railroad was aiming to collect on all the money they had paid out on Smoke Hill lawmen.
The injured railroad man was called Brody and he wanted Harlan bad. He had lost standing amongst his own kind and it was bad for the railroad for a rod-rider to get away. The group soon learned about the tall stranger who had insulted the whore and been beaten up by the trail herders and tossed into the rear alley. But by the time they got there he had gone and a long search through the town proved fruitless.
But the cattle train wasn’t loading and pulling out till morning, after the next train arrived from Houston, and no outfit quit town that night. Men had been watching all the exit trails and the livery and there had been no horses stolen during the night. So, when daylight came, Brody knew his man must still be around somewhere in Smoke Hill.
He would find him today and he would blow the son of a bitch apart. That was a promise he made to himself. He picked up his sawn-off shotgun and went to get his two companions and the deputy ...
Buck Harlan was feeling better when he awoke on top of the pile of stacked grain. He was stiff and bruised and sore, but he felt better than he had last night. He had a couple of dollars that had been due to him at the prison and he figured to go and buy himself a slap-up meal before walking down to the cattle yards. His intention was to fix himself up with some trail outfit so he could get himself enough for a stake to at least buy himself a modern handgun.
He found a horse trough made out of a cut-down rain barrel in the yard to one side of the grain store and washed up there, gasping as the cold water hit his flesh. He straightened up his clothes as best he could, soaked his swollen hands in the numbing water for ten minutes, then, with a last hitch at his ancient gunbelt, jammed his hat onto his head and moved out of the yard into the side street.
It led him out into Main Street not far from the edge of town, on the rail depot side. That suited him well enough, and he ambled across the wide street towards a diner that was just opening up. The man who was setting out the menu cards and prices on the diner’s outside wall, paused in his work to crane his neck and look out over the rail yards. Frowning, Buck Harlan looked to see what the man was so interested in and he saw the plume of thick black smoke way out there and knew another train was due in. He even heard the faint whistle as it called for a clear signal.
“Early, ain’t it?” he said to the diner man, more for something to say than anything else.
“Train from Houston,” the man replied. “One that came in yesterday afternoon didn’t have enough cattle cars. They had to wire back to Houston and get the train movin’ out right away so’s it could get here with some more and not hold up the loading. Time’s money to the railroad.”
Harlan’s face straightened. “A lot of things mean money to the railroad,” he said curtly and went into the gloomy diner.
The counterman frowned after him, pressed in the last thumbtack in the day’s menu card, then went in after Harlan, wiping his hands on his stained flour sack apron.
“What’ll it be?”
“I been dreamin’ of a thick steak with lots of yellow fat round the edges, smothered with onions and tomatoes, and a couple of fried eggs on the side. You do that for me?”
“Sure, but ...”
“And a wedge of apple p
ie this thick and plenty of sweet black coffee,” continued Harlan. “Man, you fix them things for me and you’ll have one satisfied customer.”
“No trouble,” the man said, frowning a little. “But that’s normal grub for cattle country like this, mister. Ain’t many men dream about them things. Have ’em most any day of their lives.” His look suddenly sharpened. “Unless they ain’t got seventy-five cents ...”
Harlan smiled coldly and felt the splits in his lips. He tossed a silver dollar onto the counter top. “Just get the grub. Never mind why I got a hankering for it.”
The man nodded and moved back into the kitchen, looking thoughtful. As he set about preparing the meal, he watched Harlan through the serving window in the kitchen wall. The man had been beaten recently, but battered cowpokes were nothing out of the ordinary in Smoke Hill. But there was something that set this ranny apart from others who came into the diner. He stiffened abruptly as he realized it was the pallor of Harlan’s skin. It wasn’t the usual mahogany, weathered skin of a man who spent months in the saddle in rain and wind and sun ...
“Tommy!” he called suddenly, but not too loud and he had to call the name three more times before a chubby, red-faced boy of about thirteen poked his head into the kitchen.
“Yeah, Pa?”
The diner man went to him. “You know Cam Brody ... He got beat up yesterday which won’t do him no harm, but he’s lookin’ for the feller who done it and I figure that’s him sittin’ outside there on the counter stool. If Brody finds out he’s been here and I didn’t say nothin’, he’ll smash in my front window again like he did that other time. So I ain’t riskin’ it this time. You go fetch him. You’ll likely find him at the law office. And tell him your pa sent for him just as soon as he seen the hombre outside was wearin’ a Navy Colt and looks like he’s just got out of jail ... Now, get movin’, pronto!”
Bannerman the Enforcer 20 Page 3