by Jory Sherman
“What about Sheriff Colfax? Did Zane have to kill him, too?”
“I heard what Billy Jim said to Lew, Marshal. He came in that store to kill Lew.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Blackhawk paused for a moment. He looked at Ed, then back at Seneca.
“Did you know Zane was planning to leave Osage before the night you were kidnapped, Seneca?”
She frowned.
“He never told me about it, if he was,” she said.
“I think the reason he rode up here that night was to tell you he was leaving. Maybe the next day. Did you know that, Mr. Jones?”
Ed shook his head. “I knew he come up to see Seneca. I don’t believe he said why.”
“But you didn’t know he was leaving town?”
“Nope.”
“What makes you think that, Marshal?” Seneca asked.
“I spoke to Edna and Twyman Butterfield on the way into town. They own that store Zane’s parents had when they were alive, where they were murdered by the Pope and Canby boys. They said Zane deeded the store to them because he was going to leave Osage.”
Seneca gasped.
“He left the store to them?”
“And all the stock and furnishings at his home. Yes’m.”
Seneca and her father exchanged glances.
Blackhawk stood up, as if to signal that the conversation was over.
“It looks like Zane didn’t tell you much about his plans, Seneca. It looks to me like he planned on killing those men up in Alpena before he left town.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “He went up there because I was kidnapped.”
“That was his excuse, maybe.”
“Look, Marshal,” Ed cut in, “it seems to me you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions here. Lew had no way of knowing Pope and Canby were going to take my daughter. They’re the culprits. They were using Seneca as bait so’s they could kill Lew.”
“Maybe. But fact is, Zane took the law into his own hands. He should have reported the kidnapping to Sheriff Swanson and let him go after Pope and Canby.”
“Swannie wouldn’t have done a damned thing. I know. I told him about the kidnapping that very night. I told him Lew was on his way up there.”
“And what did he say?” Blackhawk said.
“Don said he’d look into it. I wanted him to go up there right away, get my daughter, keep Lew out of trouble.”
“Was Swanson willing to do that?”
“Not right then. He said Alpena was out of his jurisdiction. He said Billy Jim Colfax could handle it and he’d ride up there the next day and check with him.”
“That sounds right to me, Mr. Jones.”
“Well, it damned sure don’t sound right to me. Hell, all Swannie would have found was a dead sheriff who was helping two kidnappers.”
“It might look that way to you, Mr. Jones. But in my book, Zane’s been acting like a one-man vigilance committee. A vigilante. Breaking the law.”
Blackhawk started for the door. Seneca got up and so did her father.
“Are you going to arrest Lew?” she asked.
“I’m going to do my best to find him and bring him before the court. He’s got to answer for his crimes.”
“What crimes?” Ed asked.
“Murder,” Blackhawk said.
“That’s so unfair,” Seneca said, her voice rising in pitch. “Lew was doing what the law wouldn’t do.”
“Unless he was duly sworn and had a badge, Seneca, he was breaking the law. We have laws against people acting like vigilantes. We can’t have every Tom, Dick, and Harry go out and pretend to be lawmen. It’s what the law calls anarchy. Zane broke the law. He’s got to answer for it. I’m leaving now. Good day and thank you both for answering my questions.”
Before either Ed or Seneca could say anything, Blackhawk was out the door and walking down the steps of the porch.
“You don’t really know that boy,” Ed called after Blackhawk had mounted his horse. “He’s not a criminal.”
“Good day, Mr. Jones,” Blackhawk said. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat in a farewell salute. “Seneca. You take care, hear?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Blackhawk had put spurs to his horse and was already out of earshot, his horse heading down the hill.
“I hope Lew gets as far away from that man as he can,” she said, wrapping an arm around her father’s waist.
“You’re not mad at Lew anymore, honey?”
“I’m mad at him,” she said. “For not taking me with him.”
“But . . .”
“I know. I told you I was mad at him the night he left me at the bridge. In the rain. But after listening to Marshal Blackhawk and thinking about things, I’m not mad about that anymore.”
“What were you so mad about that night? That Lew shot those men? Killed them?”
She looked up at her father and smiled. The two of them stayed there until the sound of hoofbeats faded into silence. They turned and walked back inside the house. It was quiet and cool in the front room. There was a cross-breeze blowing through the front and back windows.
Ed sat in his chair, the one where Blackhawk had sat. Seneca sat on the couch, curled up, tucking her legs up off the floor.
“When I saw those dead men, Daddy, I just got sick to my stomach. I hated them for what they did to me. I knew why they did it, too, and that made me even madder. They took me so that they could kill Lew.”
“But you got mad at Lew for fighting back in self-defense?”
“I guess I was thinking about how ugly it all was. I wanted Lew to be punished for what he did. He broke one of the Ten Commandments. I wanted him to show some sort of regret at what he had done, at what he had been forced to do.”
“That’s understandable, honey. I guess.”
“Then, I wanted him to punish himself in some way. For what he had done. But . . .”
“But what?”
“But he acted as if nothing had happened. I know he was just trying to get me back home, get me away from all that death. At the time, I thought he should have, oh, I don’t know, said a prayer, or taken his hat off, shown some respect for the dead.”
“Did you talk to Lew about your feelings on the ride back to Osage?”
“No. I just sulked.”
“And what about Lew? Did he try to talk to you?”
“No, he just rode off. We both fought the rain. We were wet and both probably mixed up about what happened. I thought he would ride me all the way home. Instead, he just left me on the bridge, saying you were probably at Swannie’s.”
“Well, I was. Lew was right.”
“Then, he should have gone there with me. Oh, I was so mad.”
“And now you’re not mad at Lew anymore?”
She drew in air through her nostrils, set her feet down on the floor.
“Why didn’t he tell me he was going to leave Osage? He knew it that night. He knew it before he came up to Alpena.”
Ed shrugged. “I guess he was just waiting for the right moment.”
Seneca dropped her head and began to cry. She put her hands over her face and then just let the tears come.
“Oh, Daddy, I miss him so much.”
“I know. I know.”
“Why did he have to leave like that?”
Seneca was on the verge of hysteria.
Ed sat there, shaking his head, unable to put his feelings into words.
He let her cry.
And every sob tore at him like a wildcat’s claws.
Finally, she stopped and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“I love him, Daddy,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry he’s hurt you so, darling.”
“He hasn’t hurt me. I hurt myself. What is it they say? ‘True love never runs smooth’?”
“That’s what they say.”
“I know Lew loves me, too, Daddy.”
“Yes. And I’m sur
e you will see him again one day.”
She didn’t answer because she wasn’t sure she would ever see him again. She shuddered to think what would happen to him if Blackhawk caught up to him. Lew was already a criminal in the eyes of the law. What had Blackhawk called him? A vigilante? Well, maybe he was, but he had not chosen to kill anyone. The law had forced him to become a criminal. A vigilante.
Justice, she thought, was indeed blind.
And then she began to weep once more, not for herself, but for Lew Wetzel Zane.
11
LEW COULD NOT ERASE THAT LAST IMAGE OF SENECA FROM his mind.
Her face emerged out of the darkness, wet with rain, sad and lonely, lost. A face etched in pain and sorrow. The face of a stranger, finally. A face fading from memory with each passing mile, replaced by other images of her in other times, happier times. Then, even those fleeting pictures began to dodge him at every turn of thought, blurring together in a dizzying rush so that he could not pin down a single one of them.
Jeff’s horse started walking better the second day as the wound in its hoof began to heal, and by the third day, the gelding was putting its full weight on the injured hoof. Jeff was content to let Lew take the lead until they were well into Oklahoma Territory, when Lew’s course became erratic. Jeff began to grumble under his breath until Lew asked him to speak up.
“If you’ve got something to say, Jeff, just say it out loud. I know you’ve got something stuck in your craw, but unless I know what it is, you won’t ever be able to spit it out.”
“Seems to me we been ridin’ in circles a lot. You lost?”
“I don’t know. You check our course by the stars every night. You tell me.”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. Why do you wander us off the trail so much? Gets me all confused. I try to keep my directions straight in my mind, but the way we been goin’, I just lose all track of where anything is until I see where that afternoon sun is every day.”
“Don’t you ever look at the ground, Jeff?”
“Sure, I look at the ground. Why?”
“Ever since we got into Oklahoma Territory, I’ve been seeing pony tracks. Unshod pony tracks. Sometimes I double back to see if any new ones have crossed our trail. Sometimes I see the tracks and go in the opposite direction just so we won’t run into any hostile Indians.”
“I never seen none.”
“Well, I’ll point them out to you, next time I see any.”
“You think we’re being follered?”
“Oh, we’re being followed all right. Every day. Why do you think I let you sleep while I stay awake and then get you up so I can get some sleep?”
“That’s just common sense on the trail, I reckon.”
“Especially this trail, which is hard enough to follow. I know people have come this way, but it’s awful lonesome out here and it gives my skin the crawls when I think about there only being two of us, and maybe whole tribes of Indians watching where we go and what we do.”
“You put it that way, I reckon my skin’s got the crawls, too.”
“Well, keep your eyes open, Jeff.”
There were wagon tracks on the trail they were following. Lew figured they were at least a week old. He had reckoned there were three wagons, heading west. Never any sign of anyone heading east, which gave him pause more than once.
He was beginning to like Stevens more each day. The man was good company and he had shared some of his life with Lew. None of his story came out all at once, but gradually, Lew was getting a picture of the man and his circumstances. He was even getting to like and respect his daughter, Carol. But the tale of what happened to Jeff’s wife before Carol left and got married nearly broke Lew’s heart.
“Alma was the sweetest lady you ever saw,” Jeff had said one night. “Hardworkin’, not too religious, and nary a complaint in twenty-odd years of married life and workin’ a hardscrabble farm, the war, and all.”
“What happened to her? Is she still alive?” At the question, Jeff’s facial muscles shifted beneath the skin, and sadness cast a shadow over his features.
“No, Alma’s gone. Choked on a chicken bone one night at supper. Carol was about seventeen at the time. One minute we were just sitting there, enjoying Alma’s chicken and dumplings, when Alma kind of coughed and her arms stretched way out. I heard a big wheeze and then a kind of gasping sound. Alma pointed to her throat and her eyes got real wide, like she was in a panic. Carol gave out an unholy screech and my blood turned cold as winter ice.
“I jumped up and started beating Alma on the back. Carol just sat there, her hands over her mouth, face white as a bed-sheet. I couldn’t dislodge that bone in Alma’s throat and her lips started to turn blue. I lifted her out of her chair and Alma kept wheezing, trying to draw breath into her lungs. She convulsed and I held on, but after a time, she just slumped over. I put her down on the floor, on her back, and opened her mouth. I reached way down in her throat and thought I felt something. I wrestled with it and it just kept going deeper. Carol was screaming at her mother, telling her not to die, but Alma was plumb gone and I couldn’t bring her back.”
“How horrible,” Lew said.
“It was horrible. I turned Alma over on her stomach and started whacking her on the back. All over. She just lay there all slumped and lifeless. Carol got up and shook her mother. We turned her over again and I tried to fish out that bone. It was stuck pretty good, but I could feel it crossways, way down in her throat.”
“Then, what happened?” Lew asked “Did you get the bone out?”
“Never did. Alma was dead and I just went kind of to pieces. Carol was crying her little heart out and I was crying and I told her to fetch a doctor. He came and pronounced Alma dead, and took her to the undertaker’s. Far as I know, that chicken bone is still stuck in Alma’s throat. Carol upped and married Wayne Smith pretty soon after that. I reckon she just couldn’t stand to be in that empty house, what with me moping around and all, bawling all the time when I got to thinking of poor Alma.”
Lew had said nothing and Jeff was quiet the rest of the evening. Lew walked off by himself and looked up at the stars for a long time. When he got back to the campfire, where Jeff sat, Jeff’s eyes were rimmed red as if someone had rubbed shaven onions in them.
The two men did not talk about Alma again, but Jeff talked about Carol so often that Lew began to think that he almost knew Jeff’s daughter.
One day, Jeff asked Lew a question that startled him.
“Want to read that last letter I got from Carol?”
“I don’t know. Likely, it’s private.”
“It is, but I been tellin’ you about that daughter of mine and I thought you might like to see what she wrote. Can’t never tell. You might meet up with her one day.”
“I doubt if she’d like me reading her letter, being a stranger and such.”
“Oh, you’re not a stranger to me no more, Lew. Carol wouldn’t mind.’Sides, you can’t never tell.”
“Tell what?”
“Something might happen to me before we get to Colorado. I’m no spring chicken, you know.”
“You’re not that old and you seem to have your health, Jeff.”
“Says you.”
“Something wrong?”
“I feel my age. I feel time ticking away every livelong day out here.”
“Maybe seeing your daughter again will cheer you up,” Jeff said.
Jeff didn’t reply. He just looked out in the distance and that sad look came over his face again. Lew had noticed that it was hard to wake Jeff some mornings, and when he did get up out of his bedroll, it took him a long time to get to his feet. Lew could hear the bones in his knees cracking and popping until the man had taken a few steps or flexed his legs.
They began to see other folks on the road, and for the past several days they had reined their horses off the road to let the Overland Stage pass them. The drivers never waved, just scowled at them, as did the shotgun men who sat beside them. None of
the people on horseback or pulling wagons or carts spoke to them, either. They just eyed them with suspicion and hurried on by as if Jeff and Lew carried some communicable disease.
A couple of days after his conversation about Indians with Jeff, Lew halted his horse at the top of a rise. Before them stretched more road and more gently rolling terrain. A blue sky, pocked with a few puffs of clouds, gave him the feeling of being lost in the immensity of the country. But that was not why he stopped.
“What’re you stoppin’ for?” Jeff asked. “Not anywhere’s near noon yet.”
“You wanted to see tracks. Look down at the ground here.”
Jeff looked down at the ground.
“I see a lot of tracks,” he said.
“Pony tracks,” Lew said. “Unshod.”
“Yep.”
“They milled around here, stopped. The way the tracks are facing, I’d say they were looking down the road. It’s like a ribbon, a wavy ribbon.”
“Uh-huh, disappears with each fold of the land.”
“Chances are, the Indians saw something.”
“How do you figure that?” Jeff asked.
Lew rode a few feet down the road. Jeff followed him.
“Here,” Lew said, “they split up into two groups. Their tracks straddle the road.”
“Funny. Maybe they don’t like white man’s roads.”
“Look at the way the tracks drift off, one right, one left. They are going to follow this road, but stay out of sight of anyone on it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Why else would they split up and widen the gap between their course and the road, yet keep the same heading?”
“Seems to me you’re figuring a whole hell of a lot over some stray pony tracks.”
“We’ll see,” Lew said. He loosened the Winchester in its scabbard.
They rode down the slope, following the road.
“You stay on the road, Jeff. I’m going to roam both sides, see if those tracks still hold. They’re pretty fresh.”
“Now you’re giving me the crawls again, Lew.”
Lew knew his hunch had been right when he saw that the tracks were heading west, but for a while he lost sight of Jeff, so he knew the Indians were trying to catch up to whatever was on the road without being seen.