O’Connor, if Fallon wasn’t mistaken, had wetness in his eyes, but he nodded as they shook, stepped back, and snapped a salute at his boss. “Thank you . . .” He even managed a smile as he added, “Hank.” Before turning away he said, “I’ll see you boys when you get back.”
* * *
After crossing the ferry into Missouri, Fallon and Lawless rode in silence. An hour east, Lawless twisted in the saddle and studied the warden for a long while. Finally, he spit tobacco juice, wiped his mouth, and said, “You ain’t concerned that I might just blow you out of the saddle and skedaddle?”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Fallon said.
“Why not?”
“Because you know I’d blow you out of the saddle before I died.”
The killer chuckled, and another hour passed.
This time it was Fallon who broke the silence. “Where exactly are we headed?”
“Sni-A-Bar.” Lawless shifted the chaw, snorted, and scratched his chin. “Or around there.”
“What makes you think we’re on their trail?”
“We ain’t.” He kicked free of the stirrups and stretched his legs. “You ain’t got no idea, Fallon, how long it’s been since I been in a saddle. And, hell, we got sixty, seventy or so miles to go. Hope I ain’t crippled by the time we meet those bad boys.”
Fallon took time to grab his canteen and drink. It was hot. Miserably hot.
“Before you ask,” Lawless said after spitting to his right. “We got no idea where ’em boys got off the Big Muddy. My guess is it wasn’t too far south. And they’d take to the woods, the swamps and cricks, to make it hard going for anyone who follows ’em. Make it hard goin’ for themselves, too. So here’s what we got goin’ for us, boss. They’ll be lookin’ over their shoulders, watchin’ the back trail. They ain’t likely to expect someone headin’ ’em off, catchin’ ’em in front.”
His feet returned to the stirrups, but now he dropped the reins over the horse’s neck and began rubbing his shoulders. “I figure we’ll get close to Liberty. Ride in to that burg in the morn. You telegraph your pals back home, see if they’ve caught the bastards—which then won’t have—then we turn southeast. Cross the Big Muddy ag’in the next day. Find you another place to telegraph, while we rest our horses. Make our way to the Sni-A-Bar. Be there . . .”
“Three days.” Fallon heard the anxiety in his own voice.
“And a little more.”
Leaning back in his saddle, Fallon felt sick to his gut, and figured he was sweating even more. Three days. Three nights. Janice and Christina would have to spend that long with those murdering scum—if they didn’t kill them long before they ever reached the Sni-A-Bar.
Ahead of him, Ben Lawless looked comfortable in the saddle despite his constant stretching and spitting and shifting his butt. But then, what did the killer have to worry about? He was out of prison, riding free, with nothing—certainly not a wife or friend—to lose.
“Fallon,” Lawless said without looking back.
It took a while before Fallon answered. “Yeah.”
“You served a long while in Joliet, didn’t you?”
“Long enough.”
“And before you even went to trial, there was a long stay in the hell they had for a jail at Fort Smith. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“And how many days did you spend behind the iron workin’ for that crook MacGregor?”
“Enough.”
Now the killer turned back and grinned. “Then you know how to survive. You know better than count the days or count the hours. That drives the fresh fish crazy. Why so many are broke in a week, sometimes just after that first night. You need patience to survive in the pen, boss. Patience of an oyster. That’s what you need right now. Those two ladies, they’re safe. They’re alive. Bowen Hardin done a lot of bad things, Fallon, but you look at his record and you’ll see that he never harmed no woman. Indianola Anderson, he ain’t got that reputation. But Anderson, well, he ain’t no Bowen Hardin.”
Maybe. Fallon let out a sigh. But there were also snakes, wild animals, and, for all Fallon knew, other hardcases between the Missouri River and the Sni-A-Bar. Anything could happen in three days. Still, Fallon knew that Ben Lawless was right. You could not worry. You had to find that resolve, that patience, and you had to focus on getting to the Sni-A-Bar first. The first obstacle appeared on the path about a hundred yards ahead.
Six men, farmers by the looks of them, four on horses, one on a mule, one afoot. But all of them carried shotguns, and those were aimed at Fallon and Lawless.
Fallon eased his horse alongside Lawless, who rode without concern toward what Fallon figured would be a local posse.
“Who are ya?” one of the shotgun-wielding farmers hollered.
Fallon answered with his name and title, and they kept riding until they came to where the posse blocked the trail, reining up, and allowing Fallon the opportunity to say, “Who are you?” Though he had a pretty good idea.
“You got any proof of that?” the leader asked.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Fallon said.
The men shifted, and the one with the mule spit out a well-chewed cigar, and grinned. “We’re citizens. Protecting our families.”
“If I were you,” Fallon said, “I’d be home. If you want to protect your families, stay close. Because the killers that broke out of the Leavenworth pen surely won’t be riding on a trail in broad daylight. Don’t you think?”
“Then why are you?” said the one on foot, a man wearing decades-old Confederate-gray trousers, well frayed and patched here and there with calico. He was barefoot. But his left hand gripped an old Enfield, and his right hand was hooked in the waistband, near the butt of an old horse pistol that bulged down his pants.
“We figured to get ahead of the killers.” Fallon stressed the word killers, hoping it might help convince the men that their best bet—if their families came first and they weren’t out here hoping to reap some massive reward the state of Kansas and the U.S. government would issue for the capture and return, dead or alive, of the fugitives—would be to go home. Look after the families there.
The leader did not seem interested in going home. He shifted in the saddle, spit, and said, “Now we’ve answered your questions. So how about proving to us that you is who you say you is?”
“As a warden, I don’t carry a badge,” Fallon said.
“And if I had a card, I’d have to reach into my pocket. That would mean my hand would be away from the Colt I’m packing. And, well, boys, you fellows don’t look all that trustworthy.”
“But there’s six of us.” The leader grinned.
Then Ben Lawless spit out his wad of tobacco, and grinned. “You boys is rude. You ain’t asked who I be?”
“Well,” said the former Rebel from the ground. “Who the hell be you?”
“I be Ben Lawless.”
Fallon’s shoulders relaxed, for he saw the fear, the dread, in the men’s faces, although the ex-Confederate with the .44 horse pistol laughed. “Like they’d let Ben Lawless out of the pen.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Fallon said. “If you were after Bowen Hardin and Indianola Anderson and some other hard rocks, wouldn’t you bring along the best tracker and the best killer with you?”
Lawless scratched the scars under the eyeless socket. “You boys think anybody but Ben Lawless has a face like this?” He smiled.
“You gonna p’i’s’in ’em, Ol’ Ben?” the one on the mule said with a laugh.
“Hell,” Lawless said. “You poison a passel of Cherokees and folks forget of how many Rebels I kilt in the Rebellion. How many lawbreakers I brought in for the courts over a packsaddle. Ruins a fellow’s reputation. Sometimes, I wish I’d kilt all ’em red scum faceup, like I’m about to do you white scum.”
The leader’s face had paled, but he managed to ease down the hammer of his single-shot sixteen-gauge, and he said, his voice higher than it had been. “I think these men are who
they claim to be,” he said, trying to make it seem that he was still in command. “Let’s . . . umm . . . let’s give them the road.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
When Fallon stepped out of the telegraph office on the Liberty town square, Ben Lawless, leaning against a column to a business across the corner, began untying the reins to Fallon’s horse. He was in his own saddle by the time Fallon crossed the street. Lawless leaned down from the saddle and handed Fallon the reins.
“I figured it was pointless,” Lawless said. “What did they say?”
Fallon pitched the telegraph paper into the trash can. “No trace,” Fallon said and mounted his horse and looked at Lawless. “On either side of the river. How’d you know?”
“Your face.”
They backed their horses out and left the bustling city.
Lawless began working on a new plug of tobacco. “So, boss, you didn’t tell ’em law dogs in Kansas about the Sni-A-Bar and what Calloway tol’ you.”
“They were set on the assumption that Hardin would make for the Indian Nations by way of Kansas. But Missouri officials are on the lookout, too. You saw that with those farmers yesterday afternoon.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You could be wrong, too. They could be in Kansas.”
“Yep. That’s a fact.”
They rode side by side, and Fallon turned and looked the killer in the eye. “Their posses are too big. If they did the same in Missouri, and Hardin got surrounded, Christina and Janice would be dead. You know that better than I do. I think the two of us have the best plan—even if it’s a long shot.”
“All right.”
“Besides,” Fallon added. “They escaped from a federal pen. All four of them are my responsibility. And since this man Tully’s helping them, he’s my responsibility, too.”
Lawless spit, shook his head, and laughed. “Like ever’body in Leavenworth keeps sayin’, ‘You ain’t like no warden we’ve ever seen before.’”
“Like I keep telling all you cons, I’m the only warden you’ve ever seen who knows what it’s like behind bars and walls.”
They rode southeast.
* * *
From the edge of the woods on the other side of the ditch, Christina watched in fear. Just beyond the small pasture, where four cows and three goats grazed, a family sat at a table outside their hardscrabble home, taking their noon meal. Well, it was likely hotter inside the log cabin than outside.
The girl, though likely a few years older than Rachel Renee, reminded Christina of her daughter. A puppy yipped around while the coonhound mother lounged without paying attention. A teenage boy came down the road in a wagon pulled by two mules and stopped between the barn and a corral.
“What are we waiting here for?” Indianola Anderson said, then swatted at a buzzing horsefly. “Let’s kill them now, get that wagon, make haste for the Sni-A-Bar.” Then he laughed. “But maybe we won’t kill them all . . . just yet.”
An older girl, red hair flowing, wearing a Sunday dress, stepped out of the cabin. And the boy in the wagon whipped off his straw hat and waved it back and forth, shouting, “Hey, Lucy. You look real pretty in that dress. Is it Easter already?”
The girl laughed, and the bearded man at the head of the table yelled, “Don’t unhitch them mules, Connor. Food’ll be cold by then. Let them blow and cool down. We can take care of ’em after we’ve et.”
“I don’t see no guns on any of them,” the river rat, Tully said. “But I’m of the same mind as Anderson here. Kill . . . most . . . of ’em. First.”
“Shut up,” Bowen Hardin said in a hoarse whisper.
They had shed the woolen blouses of their Army uniforms, and they now wore muslin or linen shirts. The pants were still Army, but no one would recognize those filthy garments as belonging to soldiers.
Sean MacGregor sidled up next to the killer. “We’ll make better time on that wagon,” he said. “And they likely have more animals inside the barn.”
“You want us to just ride right through Richmond or some other burg, bold as brass?” Hardin said in an icy voice.
“It’s a right far piece to Sni-A-Bar,” the old detective told him. “And we spent enough time—too damned long—in those thickets and swamps. The posses are behind us now, most likely. Hell, most of them are in Kansas, just like we thought.”
“And when we don’t show up, they’ll start looking at Missouri—and not east of Kansas City.”
MacGregor nodded his head. “Which is why we need to make better time now.”
The killer looked at the revolver in his hand, frowned, and watched the family and the boy—obviously a beau to pretty Lucy—stand around the rough-hewn table and hold hands. Their heads bowed. Christina couldn’t hear the prayer, but she could make out the one Janice Jefferson was whispering on Christina’s right.
“They’re out of range for a pistol,” Hardin said. “And we don’t know how far the neighbors are.”
“Right.” Anderson grinned. “So here’s my plan. Me and big ol’ Aaron Holderman, we come out of these thicket. I’m leaning on the big boy, dragging my leg. Aaron, he waves at them, and says something like I been hurt . . . snakebit . . . yeah, that’ll do it. We was looking for them cutthroats that . . .”
“No,” MacGregor said. “That’ll make them nervous, suspicious. And hicks that these folks are, they might not have heard of the breakout.” But MacGregor liked the concept of Anderson’s plan. “So you were trapping. Lots of critters in these woods. Remember that big trap that Tully almost stepped on yesterday?”
“Trappers.” Anderson nodded. “I like that idea.”
Hardin rolled over and listened. Christina knew he would agree to the plan. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice. These men would follow him only so far. And even Bowen Hardin couldn’t take on four men by himself.
“I’ll say, ‘We mean y’all no harm,’” Holderman said, liking this kind of detective work. “That we just need some help.”
“Yeah,” Anderson said. “And once we get close enough . . .”
“The knives,” Holderman said. “Quieter that way.”
Anderson nodded his head and grinned. “Yeah. But the girl, the ripe one, we let her live . . . for a while anyway.”
She knew Bowen Hardin was about to say fine, so Christina said, “I have a better idea.”
All of them, even Janice, looked at her in amazement.
“You kill them,” Christina said, “and there’s still the problem of neighbors. What are you going to do? Throw their bodies in a well?”
“That is,” Anderson said, “exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Then neighbors see the buzzards. Or they come calling. That boy . . . he doesn’t live here. Young enough, I’d say he has a ma and pa around. When he doesn’t come home for supper, they’ll come here. Then you’ll have every lawman in this part of Missouri coming after you. Is that what you want?”
Hardin seemed to be looking at Christina with newfound respect. “How would you go about it?”
She turned to Anderson. “Take off your shirt.”
“Why, ain’t you a forward little tart,” he said with a lecherous grin.
“Take it off,” she said.
“Ladies first.”
“Take it off,” Bowen Hardin said, and cocked the hammer on the revolver. “I’m curious to hear her plan.”
The killer frowned but slipped off the linen shirt that had once been white. Christina took it, detesting the smell and the man who had handed it to her, and refused to look at the shirtless killer. Instead she tied the sleeves tight around the neck, then stuffed leaves into the shirt, leaves and straw—as much as she could—before tying the tails together. After untucking her own filthy blouse, she rammed the ball of linen and straw and leaves under her shirt, tucked her own back in, and began smoothing the bulge in her belly. Janice stared at her in disbelief. Bowen Hardin tilted his head and waited for her to explain.
Indianola Anderson sniggered and said, “Did
n’t know a gal could get in the family way just like that. Damn, I’m like a stud hoss.”
“I’m pregnant,” Christina said. “I’m coming down the road. About to deliver. Have to get to the doctor . . . he’s waiting for me . . . it’s twins.”
“I don’t get it.”
“They loan us the wagon. It’s already hitched.” Christina studied the faces.
“Us?” Tully said.
“You’re not going to trust me to go down there by myself,” Christina said. “And they’d wonder where my husband was.” She looked at Aaron Holderman. “Well, he’ll be with me.”
“What if they ask to come along?” Hardin said. “The man. The boy.”
“They might, but Aaron will say no, no, just the wagon. This nice family should finish their dinner. Aaron will get the wagon back.”
“But they don’t know you . . .”
“Because we just moved in. Other side of the creek. We have to get to that doctor.” She feigned anxiety. “I couldn’t stand to lose another child like this.”
Holderman laughed. “She always was a real fine detective. Good actress. Ain’t that how you come to . . .”
“We’re wasting time,” Christina said and looked directly at Bowen Hardin. “Either my way. Or Anderson’s. Which do you think is likely to lead to more lawmen on your trail?”
“What happens,” said Anderson, “when that wagon ain’t returned, when the doc in the nearest settlement says he ain’t delivered no baby since November?”
“They won’t know which way we’ve gone,” she said.
“I don’t like it,” Anderson said. “What do we do with the wagon? Take it all the way to this river rodent’s hideout where he’s got our horses? The laws’ll be on us quicker than I can spit.”
“Didn’t you see what’s in the back of that wagon?” Christina said.
“Yeah. Straw. Or hay. I ain’t blind, hussy.”
“Shut up,” Hardin said. But he knew what Christina was getting at.
“One man bringing hay to his farm in a wagon,” Hardin said. “They’ll be looking for a man and a woman. And that man and that woman will be in the hay. With all of us but . . .”
A Knife in the Heart Page 27