For my much-appreciated cousin June Bach who always pulls my books out an extra inch on library shelves to tempt borrowers
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the Same Author
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
She waited until she could stand its crescendo no longer. She touched her elbow to his ribs, disturbing his slumber. Her body might be rounded with a first child, but her elbow was still sharp.
‘Angus,’ she whispered, ‘stop snoring. Turn on your side.’
‘Wasn’t snoring,’ he argued, only half-awake. ‘Must’ve been the crickets you heard.’
‘You were snoring, as God is my witness.’
He reached across and rested the work-roughened palm of his hand on her belly, and beneath his touch he felt the tiny stirring of life. He murmured his satisfaction and turned on to his side.
Here, at their remote ferry-house home, both Leah and Angus had taken to sleeping naked these hot Kansas nights. She said it was sinful, but secretly she liked it, revelling in his caresses and gentle whisperings. He’d said that a little sinfulness did no harm, what they did was their own business, and anyway there was nobody out here to concern themselves about it.
She had smiled, murmured: ‘Only God,’ but she had not pushed the matter further.
Now, quite without warning, their intimate world was shattered. From the external porch their old collie dog, Jack, raised an alarmed bark.
Then three distinct gunshots sounded, vicious whiplash cracks, coming from the outside meadow. Husband and wife snapped to full alertness and sat up in bed, their patchwork quilt cast aside.
‘Who’s shooting!’ Leah cried.
Angus thumped his feet to the rough floorboards, rising in haste, stumbling beneath the low rafters in the darkness. There was no time to make light. He scrambled across the loft-bedroom, catching his shin on a stool, stifling the curse that rose to his lips. He felt for the ladder-top, got his bare feet on to the rungs, and half-fell into the ground-floor living-room. Apprehension broiled inside him, causing his throat to constrict and his breath to come in rasps.
Who was out there, ripping the night asunder with bullets?
Groping through the gloom, he lifted his Spencer rifle down from its wall pegs, aware of the tremble in his hands. The weapon was a .30 calibre Civil War model, a repeater converted from carbine to rifle. He always ensured it was charged, for fear of Osage Indians or any other unwelcome visitors. He would never rely solely on the cup of Cayenne pepper that Leah kept on the dresser as defence.
Had the gunfire been further away, he might have concluded that it was some lonely hunter blasting off in the woods, but these shots had been too close for that.
He drew back the bolts on the door and, still naked, stumbled outside into the hot night, Leah’s concerned: ‘Be careful, Angus!’ in his ears.
His index finger curled inside the Spencer’s trigger-guard; he gazed around at the landscape, silvered by the moon and fringed by black forest. The collie Jack came to his heel, growling, nose raised to sniff for alien scent on the night air. Angus could see the river, the Peigan, its ripples and whirlpools flecked with white glints, giving the dark water an odd frostlike appearance in the August night. The roar of the current was backed by the scratchy rasp of humpbacked crickets in the grass.
His senses sought some scurry of movement, but there was nothing beyond the familiar. The ferry-barge, moored at the small wharf, was as a shadowy hulk, the adjacent cottonwoods stirred only by the breeze. He hurried past the water-trough, around the side of the white-timbered house towards the meadow, passing the hog-pen and the patch where Leah had worked so diligently with neat lines of squash, onions, cabbage and herbs for her remedies. Exactly a week ago some night interloper had trampled everything to pulp, ruined the crop. Who had done it?
And now another intrusion.
Ahead, the meadow, bathed in moonlight and shadow, seemed like a flat lake. It should not have been. At least the up-standing shapes of his Jutland draught-horses, Cain and Abel, should have been visible.
He climbed over the meadow-fence, his nakedness forgotten. A moment later, he discovered that the heavy animals were still in the meadow, but their massive bodies were slumped unmoving on the ground, the smell of fresh blood tainting the air. He dropped to his knees, peered close. Both beasts had been shot in their heads, Abel once, Cain twice. Two old friends who for years had patiently plodded countless miles up and down the towpath, providing the power to pull the ferry-barge across the river, enabling it to fight the swift current. Now they had been callously killed, granting satisfaction only to the deed’s perpetrator and the growing swarm of bluebottles already drawn by the carcasses.
Angus Troon had been the only child of Scottish immigrants. And he had learned how to ride a horse; how the ferry-barge worked; how to tend farm animals; milk cows and goats. All before other children had learned how to play hopscotch. Sadly, his mother had been stricken with the diphtheria and, despite Doctor Elliot treating her throat with a solution of nitrate of silver, she died. Angus was just fourteen years old. Thereafter, he and his father had worked the ferry together.
Troon’s Ferry had been constructed by Angus’s father, George, in 1857, following the designs created by the Scottish engineer Duncan Fey and involving four iron stanchions, set in a square, two on each bank of the river, fifty yards apart. All the stanchions had huge cog-wheels, which were linked by two sets of hawsers, one set to haul the flat-barge across the water, the other to bring it back. The power was provided by the sturdy-legged draught-horses.
The house was built next, shaped like a big wedge of cheese, a strong but simple structure. Of stout timber, it boasted two ground-floor rooms and a kitchen, with a fine porch at the front. From the living-room, a ladder led up to the big loft-bedroom.
Across a yard a barn, a stable and shed were erected.
In 1861, Kansas was granted its statehood and settlers flooded in from far and wide, the government being anxious to populate the land. The ferry was busy, providing a continuous trail north from the town of Pawnee Bend, with access across the Peigan River before it narrowed into the two-mile gauntlet of white-water rapids.
The Civil War years came, and Kansas was aflame with violence and death, but fortunately the conflict swept past Pawnee Bend, leaving it unscathed.
Six years after the death of Angus’s mother, with rain drawn on a bullying wind, came the October day when his father George seemed out of sorts. He had left aside his breakfast of corncake and bacon and Angus noted there was a blue tinge to his bearded face. He had suffered shortness of breath recently. But George Troon, full of Gaelic stubbornness, insisted on taking six early-morning travellers across the river – seventy yards wide. With rain growing heavier, he was half-way over when Angus, tending the hawser on the near bank, heard the shrill scream of a woman passenger. Glancing up, he shouted with anguish. His father had toppled from the ferry-barge, falling into the wild current, his head disappearing beneath the surface, but showing again, briefly, some ten yards off
. He was being swept towards the rapids, a scant half-mile downstream.
Angus had shown no hesitation. He dived from the bank into the torrent, scarcely noticing its iciness in fear for his father. He allowed himself to be drawn by the immense power of the water, beating it impatiently with his arms for even greater haste, aware that the white smudge of his father’s head no longer showed. Behind, he could hear the cries of the people stranded mid-stream on the barge, too afraid to come to his aid.
Still pulled by the current, he glanced around for sight of the old man, but saw nothing beyond the mud-coloured river, puckered here and there into whitecaps as it rushed between the wooded banks. Once father or son was drawn to the rapids, there would be little chance of survival. Angus had always viewed the Peigan as their livelihood, as an old friend. Now he fought it as his bitterest enemy.
His sodden clothing was growing leaden, constantly dragging him under, ducking his head. Each time, he resurfaced, spluttering, gasping for breath, refusing to be beaten.
And then an apparent miracle occurred. He saw his father’s white head, bobbing above the surface barely two yards ahead. Crying out with joy, he made a supreme effort to grab the old man – but missed and was drawn under. When he came up, his father had seen him, was reaching for him in desperation. Their hands linked, fingers entwined in a grip that not even the river would break.
Afterwards, Angus had little recollection of how he dragged his father ashore. All he knew was that time had passed. He had sat sodden in the pelting rain, a gloomy grove of cottonwoods offering little shelter, his spirits plummeted to their lowest ebb. The old man’s head was cradled in his lap. Angus was only dimly aware when the travellers from the ferry-barge came hurrying along the bank, having somehow contrived the crossing.
As they reached him, Angus’s downward gaze remained on his father. His voice came as a sob. ‘Died in my arms … just lived long enough to thank me for pulling him out of the river.’
Next day, Doctor Elliot from Pawnee Bend diagnosed that George Troon had died of a combination of heart attack and drowning.
CHAPTER TWO
Now touching twenty, Angus was hard-bodied and lean, well endowed with broad shoulders and biceps. Six feet tall, he weighed some 195 pounds. He had inherited the softness of his father’s Scottish tongue. His high-boned features were tanned. He was considered somewhat dour by his friends, but he was hard-working, bristling with male vigour, and let his sweat speak for him.
In sole charge of the ferry, he took on a local man, Ed Mullins, as assistant. Mullins was about fifty, placid-natured, and blighted by a harelip which gave his face the look of an unmade bed. A cleft palate rendered his speech difficult to comprehend. But he was a reliable, industrious man and proved a good friend to Angus, sometimes staying overnight at the ferry.
Two and a half years went by, business was steady, then another event occurred that was to have a life-changing impact on Angus’s future.
One late summer’s evening a half-dozen riders arrived at the crossing and demanded to be ferried over. They were a coarse-mouthed and arrogant crowd, with a worn, predatory look about them. Their horses were jaded and slick with lather. As the men dismounted and led their animals on to the flat-barge, they all retained their saddlebags over their shoulders, saddlebags that looked heavy. This was borne out by the way the barge lay deeper than usual in the river.
As was his custom Angus asked for payment before the crossing was undertaken. ‘Fifty cents for pedestrians, fifty cents for horses. Six dollars all told.’ He addressed himself to the swarthy man who was obviously the leader of the group. Angus was to remember the face for ever. Pale eyes set deeply beneath hooded lids, peering from a face tanned ebony enough to belong to a black man. A curling moustache fell in silver-grey waves down into a beard of the same colour. He was wearing a mackinaw that was russet-coloured, giving it the appearance of being stained with blood.
The man unleashed an oath in French: ‘Sacrebleu!’ expressing unjustified shock at the amount he was being charged, his accent confirming his nationality, but one of his companions said: ‘Pay up. I guess you can afford it now!’
The Frenchman silenced the speaker with a withering stare, but he reached into his vest pocket and counted out the fare.
Angus accompanied the party on to the barge and signalled to Mullins to lead the horses along the towpath. As the ropes tightened the big crank-wheels creaked into motion, taking up the strain, easing the flat-barge into the current.
Angus was attending to his duties, ensuring the hawser ran smoothly. He noticed how one man with dark brooding eyes, braided hair and pockmarked face, had remained with his horse, a black Morgan, and he was smoothing its withers. Then another of his clients caught his attention. The voice came strangely high-pitched and on glancing across Angus realized that its owner was a tall youngster with chipmunk cheeks, probably no more than sixteen. Angus just caught his final words … Beacken’s Butte.
It was the reaction this aroused that focused Angus’s attention. A hissed ‘Tais toi!’ from the silver-bearded leader, and pointedly disapproving looks from the others. The boy lowered his eyes.
Angus turned away, busying himself with a pulley, feigning complete indifference to anything that had been said. He sensed that he was the target for some hard stares, but he kept his own eyes lowered, hummed a tune and assumed an attitude that implied his thoughts were a thousand miles away. After a moment, he no longer felt himself to be the object of attention. However he was thankful when they reached the opposite bank, the horses were led off and their heavily laden owners heaved themselves into their saddles and rode up the woodland trail, disappearing into the trees.
A storm had been building, and next morning the clouds burst open and spat heavy raindrops, making a drumming sound on the earth.
When old Marshal Ringrose from the town of Pawnee Bend called in, dawn’s light was illuminating the eastern skyline. He was accompanied by a posse of some dozen townsmen, all hunched in yellow slickers. Angus greeted them from the porch of his house. The overweight marshal’s florid face bore an expression of extreme stress. He removed his hat, shook the rain from it.
‘Bank’s been robbed,’ he growled. ‘They looted a fortune in gold. Guess they must’ve crossed over here. Trouble is the rain’s wiped the tracks out.’
‘Ay, they did,’ Angus confirmed. ‘They were only customers so far as I was concerned, paid up their dues and rode off. But they were a rough-looking crowd.’
Ringrose leaned forward in his saddle, easing the weight on his buttocks. ‘How many?’
‘Six. And their leader was a dark man and sounded French.’
The lawman nodded sagely. ‘That was them OK. I know that damned Frenchman. His name’s Duquemain, Henri Duquemain. He’s wanted for murder and robbery across four states.’
Angus pondered for a moment, then said: ‘I heard them mention Beacken’s Butte.’
Ringrose perked his ears up.
A posse rider turned to one of his companions, a newcomer to the area and explained, ‘That’s a mountain twenty miles beyond Oakley Gap.’
‘You reckon that’s where they was heading?’ the marshal asked.
Angus scratched his jaw. ‘Can’t be sure, but they looked mighty worried when they figured I’d heard.’
‘Well, that’ll be the first place to look, I guess,’ the lawman said. He glanced at Angus. ‘We come over to ask you to ride with us. We need all the able-bodied deputies we can get. Will you come?’
Angus frowned but nodded.
‘Then raise your right hand while I swear you in.’
Minutes later Angus informed Mullins of events as he saddled his stocking-footed sorrel, Judas. Afterwards he fetched his Spencer from the house, pulled on an oilskin slicker, mounted up and joined the posse. They crossed over the Peigan on the barge.
They followed the forest trail through the morning, the rain gaining muscle by the minute. Travelling briskly, their horses raised great spray
s of water as they splashed through puddles. They rode via the small township of Oakley Gap, a scattering of shacks with the saloon its most noteworthy establishment. Here the posse paused for refreshment. As they stood around the stove and drank coffee, their clothing steaming, Ringrose questioned the locals regarding strangers passing through during the last day or so, but none had been seen. It seemed that, if they had come this way, the outlaws had bypassed the settlement.
Angus felt decidedly uneasy. He wondered whether heading towards Beacken’s Butte was a big mistake. The posse could be heading the wrong way; the mention of the place might have had nothing to do with the direction the outlaws were headed. They might even have mentioned the place to put the law off-track. If so, Marshal Ringrose had swallowed the bait like a hungry mackerel.
In the early afternoon they followed the trail through meadows of tall bedraggled sunflowers which were now turning to seed. Their horses were lathered and weary. Eventually, the dark hump of Beacken’s Butte showed, its flattened summit shrouded in cloud. It was in reality a small mountain, or butte, left standing in an area reduced by erosion. At the beginning of the century it had been used as a landmark for pioneer migrant trains. Angus knew that it concealed a multitude of caves and gulches that were ideal for hideaways.
At the base of Beacken’s Butte a creek curved between high-ferned banks. Heavy rain had turned it into a freshet. The surrounding ridges offered good vantage points to see if anybody was coming up the main trail, and Marshal Ringrose suspected that if the outlaws were in residence, they’d have a lookout posted. On the other hand, somebody pointed out, with the rain continuing and pursuit not anticipated, their quarry might be holed up in shelter. This would give the posse the advantage of surprise.
Ringrose called a halt well back from the creek, concealed in cottonwoods, and sent Angus and Nathan Fitzsimmons, the lanky Pawnee Bend undertaker, forward on foot for a scout-see.
Fury at Troon's Ferry Page 1