Every now and then Dury would call out a complaint but Hart ignored him, wanting to make as much ground as they could before stopping.
When finally they did dismount it was on the edge of some brush, a steep hill immediately to the right. Hart told Drew to fetch kindling for a fire, loosening the knot about his leg so that he could step out of it.
‘What about me?’ moaned Dury.
Hart laughed: ‘What about you?’
‘I need to piss.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘How can I with my hands tied behind me?’
Hart laughed again: ‘Drew can hold it for you.’
‘You bastard! You think that’s real funny, don’t you?’
Hart admitted that he did.
‘Well, I need to do more than piss. I been in the saddle a long time.’
‘So he can help you with that as well.’
Dury came to where Hart was standing, walking bow-legged, his bonds exaggerating his barrel chest. ‘If I ever get the drop on you, you miserable son-of-a-bitch, I’m goin’ to take the sharpest knife I can find and carve little bits off you until you bleed to death like a pig in a slaughterhouse.’
Hart nodded. ‘Sure. I believe you. Only thing is, there ain’t no way you’re ever goin’ to be in that position.’
Dury lowered his head and charged. Hart saw the beginning of the movement and held himself ready, at the last moment he swayed aside, like a bullfighter teasing the bull. As Dury went past him, Hart chopped downwards with his elbow, catching the outlaw on the back of his thick neck. Dury’s momentum carried him on, though the force of Hart’s blow deflected him sideways and down.
Before Dury could roll over Hart was on him, grinding one knee down into his kidneys and hammering his clenched fist hard into his face. Blood spurted from Dury’s nose as something like cartilage seemed to give beneath the blow. Hart hauled Dury to his feet and held him there with his left hand while he hit him several more times with his right. When he finally let go Dury slumped to the ground and didn’t move. His face was masked in blood.
Hart poured water from his canteen on to his hand to wash the knuckles clean; in places the skin had been skimmed right away.
‘When you’ve got that fire goin’,’ Hart called to Drew, who was standing there with both arms full of kindling, ‘you can get some of that bacon and beans we fetched from the cabin. Get us somethin’ fixed to eat. An’ when he comes to ...’ Hart pointed at Dury, who still hadn’t moved. ‘... you get him over in the brush and get his pants down. We don’t want him ridin’ along stinkin’ of his own damned shit.’
White-faced, Drew nodded and did as he was told while Hart saw to the horses. When the slices of bacon were beginning to sizzle in the pan, Dury sat up and shook his head. One eye was almost closed, a dark swelling above and below it. He avoided looking at Hart with the good eye remaining. Later he ate what Drew fed him, but he made no attempt to speak.
Dury didn’t say anything until they had camped that night and Hart was sitting cross-legged cleaning his Colt .45. The flames from the fire crackled and hissed and shot up into the black, almost starless sky.
‘I been thinkin’,’ he said, squinting across at Hart. ‘That no-good bitch, she traded us in.’
Hart pulled the oiled cloth through the barrel and said nothing.
‘She gave us over to keep you from goin’ against her and her man. That was it, weren’t it. Weren’t it, damn you?’
Hart looked at Dury’s scarred face. ‘Does it make any difference?’
Dury scowled. ‘You bet it does. You wait till you get us to Fort Smith. If you get us there. I’m goin’ to sing so loud about Belle Starr every lawman in the territory’s goin’ to ride down to Younger’s Bend and hang all that damned bunch of double-crossers till their tongues poke purple from their lyin’ mouths. You see if I don’t.’
Hart pushed the chamber back into place. ‘Dury,’ he said, ‘you talk too much.’
‘When I tell that judge how you an’ her done a little deal of your own, you’ll reckon I talk too much.’
Hart got up. ‘You want for me to lay this thing alongside that fat, fool head of yourn again?’
Dury spat sideways into the grass, but he stopped talking.
Before stretching out his bedroll, Hart strewed twigs all around where he was going to sleep. Then he tied Drew’s hands behind him as well.
That night Wes Hart was undisturbed by dreams. When he awoke in the morning, a cold sheet of dew covered his blanket and dampened his hair. He got up immediately and went across to Dury kicking him awake.
‘C’mon, you fat bastard! We got a long way to ride.’
Chapter Thirteen
Fort Smith was no two-bit town. The streets were broad and set out in regular patterns, the largest of them being lined with avenues of specially planted trees. Soundly constructed sidewalks led to prosperous-looking stores, their goods displayed behind wide expanses of plate glass. There were saloons, large or small, at every corner. Dining-rooms. Boarding houses. Bordellos.
Everywhere there seemed to be people.
As Wes Hart rode through the town, his prisoners roped together before him, folk stopped in their tracks to stare. Women with feathered hats and bustles and bags filled with packages; men in shiny striped suits and scuffed shoes or wearing wide suspenders over bright check shirts; children cast aside wooden hoops or balls fashioned from rags and ran into the street, chasing one another between the slow-walking horses.
‘Mister! Mister! Who you captured, mister?’
‘ Jesse James? You got Jesse James?’
‘Cole Younger? That Cole Younger?’
A tousled-headed boy of no more than seven or eight grabbed hold of Drew’s boot in the stirrup and swung from it, making the young outlaw lean sideways in his saddle.
‘Hey!’ the boy shouted up at Drew. ‘You Billy the Kid? You him?’
Hart shouted and the boy let go and ran back on to the boardwalk, where he grabbed hold of his mother’s skirts and looked, eyes shining, up into her face.
‘Ma, that’s Billy the Kid! It is, ma. Really it is. I touched him. I touched his leg. Billy the Kid!’
The mother reached down her hand and set it, none too kindly, over the boy’s mouth. ‘Hush, child. That isn’t him. I’m sure it isn’t. Why, he’s no more than a...’
She stopped, biting her lip; then she moved her hand away from her son’s mouth and ruffled it through his hair.
Mother and son watched the three men ride away down the street, other children still chasing after them and calling out.
The boy tugged at his mother’s skirts again. ‘Ma, will they hang him? The one I climbed on.’
‘It’s not for me to say. That depends on the Judge, I guess. But... ‘And she looked down. ‘…but I surely hope not. He looked so young.’
Hart recognized the young deputy sitting outside the marshal’s office as one of the two who had been riding with Fagan back in the Outlet.
The deputy got up and took the reins of the prisoners’ mounts, tying them to the hitching post.
‘Didn’t take you long.’
Hart grunted noncommittally, flexing the muscles in his legs after the long day’s ride.
‘Dury, ain’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Thought so. Recognized him from his poster. Ugly-lookin’ bastard, ain’t he. Not that your treatment’s made him any prettier. He try to get away?’
‘No. He just talked too damned much.’
Jed Kimball glanced at Hart sharply to see if some of the strength of that remark was meant for him, but there was nothing to be read in Hart’s expression. Kimball scratched at his sandy hair and pushed Dury and Drew up and into the office.
‘There’s coffee on the stove,’ said Kimball. ‘Help yourself. I’ll see to these two.’
The deputy marshal changed the ropes for handcuffs and took them through a door at the side and across a narrow alley into the jailhouse. When he came back Hart
was sitting with his feet propped on the edge of one of the two desks.
‘The marshal around?’
Kimball poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘He’s over at the courthouse,’ he said glancing around. ‘Should be done inside an hour.’
Hart looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Kind of late for legal business, ain’t it?’
Kimball laughed. ‘Judge Parker, he keeps the jury locked away till they bring a verdict of guilty. Sits there all damn night if he has to!’
Hart set down his cup and stood up. ‘I’m goin’ to get me a bath and somethin’ to eat. I’ll be back.’
Kimball nodded. ‘Okay. If you want somewhere to stay we got an arrangement with the Lowell House. They’ll let you stay a week for four days’ rent. Pretty good too.’
‘A week!’ echoed Hart. ‘I ain’t aimin’ to stay no week. Thought I’d be ridin’ out tomorrow.’
‘Without waitin’ for the hangin’s?’
‘That’s right. I don’t...’
Kimball lifted his hands. ‘You’ll have to be here for the trial anyhow.’
‘There ain’t no need for that.’
‘That won’t be the way the Judge sees it. Marshal Fagan neither.’
Hart cursed and turned towards the door, wrenching it open.
‘It’s the Lowell House,’ Kimball said to his back.
‘To hell with it!’
Hart slammed the door shut and stomped across the street, almost knocking an old man off the opposite boardwalk as he went. Three shots of whisky later he was calming down and feeling ready for something to eat; after a steak that overlapped the plate by a few inches at either end he was ready for a shave and a bath. He was in his room on the first floor of the Lowell House when Marshal Fagan knocked on the door.
‘Yeah, come in.’
Fagan pushed the door open and stepped through. He was wearing the same buckskin coat and the black boots into which his pants had been tucked shone the way they had before. This time there was no sign of his old Stetson.
He stared at Hart’s Colt and nodded. ‘You goin’ to put that up or what?’
Hart slid the gun down into his holster.
‘You ain’t out in the middle of Indian Territory now, you know. This here’s civilization.’
‘Yeah. Maybe that’s all the more reason for taking no chances.’
‘Maybe.’ The marshal pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down. ‘Jed Kimball seemed to think you might be pullin’ out right off. Thought I’d step over an’ see what was happening.’
Hart shook his head. ‘I didn’t take to hangin’ round here for a week, that’s all.’
‘Think yourself lucky, Wes. Some towns you’d be waitin’ more like a month. Judge Parker, he gets through ‘em pretty damn quick.’
‘Sure. I keep hearin’ how all-fired efficient he is.’
Fagan raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothin’ wrong with that.’
‘Maybe not.’
Fagan flicked at an imaginary speck of dust on his boot. ‘ You want to tell me about it here or over at the office?’
Hart looked around at the flowered paper on the walls, the striped curtains and the quilted cover on the bed. ‘Let’s get out of here, anyhow.’
They sat in the marshal’s office, Hart talking and Fagan listening, every now and then stopping him with a gesture of the hand and asking a question. When it was over Fagan scratched at his chin and nodded to himself a few times.
‘You know what Dury’s goin’ to holler if he gets the chance, don’t you? He’s going to claim you did a deal with Belle Starr to let her be, took a nice fat bribe from her and only went to get him on account of a personal grudge.’
‘Shit! There ain’t no personal grudge.’
‘You took that money when you weren’t wearin’ a badge. You shot and killed his partner.’
‘Hell, he was ridin’ after him to kill him himself.’
Fagan smiled ruefully. ‘I know that. I ain’t the jury.’
‘I thought Parker had all the juries eatin’ out of his hand.’
‘Most often. Depends if Dury’s got anything to pay for a good lawyer or not. If he ain’t they’re going to stand some deadbeat half-drunk up in front of the court to defend him and he’s goin’ to be railroaded all the way to the scaffold whether he deserves it or not.’
‘Which he does.’
‘Amen to that.’
Hart hesitated, uncertain.
‘Something on your mind?’ Fagan asked.
That youngster. Drew. He ain’t like Dury at all. He’s just a fool kid who thought bein’ an outlaw was all high-livin’ and excitement. We let him go I reckon he’ll likely sneak back to his folks with his tail between his legs an’ never look at a sixgun again.’
Fagan snorted disbelief. ‘Folks prob’ly said the same about Billy the Kid once. No, it’s born in ‘em. They’re rotten all the way through. Just bein’ raised to give you an’ me a bad time.’
‘You know Billy Bonney?’ Hart asked. ‘Ever met him?’
‘No, but...’
‘I met him. Rode with him. Know him pretty good. I been watchin’ this Drew as well. They ain’t nothin’ alike. Not a bit. What you said might hold for Billy but not for this boy, not at all.’
The marshal stood up and walked across the room, pulling open one of the desk drawers and riffling through a pile of papers.
‘You’d best make a written report. No need to go into too much detail. Put down what you know about the Belle Starr place, how the gang operates, stuff like that.’
He stopped and looked hard at Hart.
‘You sure there wasn’t nothing you could have done to bring her in?’
Hart shook his head. ‘I told you. We were never alone for any time at all. I couldn’t go against half a dozen guns. These two bein’ cut off the way they was, they were my only chance.’
Fagan pushed a sheet of paper across the desk.
‘Okay. I believe you. Once we’ve got this thing wrapped up, we’ll ride down to Younger’s Bend and round that little gang of rustlers up for good. You ridin’ with us, you can guide us right in.’
Hart nodded agreement but there was something in his face that gave Fagan doubts.
‘What’s eatin’ you? You do want to see that thievin’ bitch where she belongs, don’t you? Hangin’ from the end of a long rope.’
Hart looked Fagan full in the eye. ‘Sure,’ he lied. ‘Sure do.’
Judge Isaac C. Parker lived in an imposing three-storey building next to the federal courthouse. Both were built of brick and gave an impression of permanence and solidity which said we represent the law and the law is here to stay. The United States flag flew from the top of a pole attached to the roof of the court and stayed there whatever the time, whatever the weather.
No matter how many times he walked the short distance between the two buildings, Isaac Parker never failed to glance up at the flag and give it a mental salute.
Parker’s parents had emigrated from England and settled in Ohio, where the judge had been born. After training for the bar in that state, he’d set up practice in St Joseph, Missouri in 1859. Nine years later he was a circuit judge and earning such a reputation that he was elected to Congress only two years afterwards. In 1875 he quit politics and was appointed federal judge for the Western District of Arkansas. This gave him jurisdiction over the previously lawless territory to the west of Fort Smith known as Indian Territory or the Cherokee Outlet.
Parker appointed Fagan as his Marshal and George Maledon as his hangman and set to work with relish.
Two days after his arrival in Fort Smith, Wes Hart walked across the grassed square before the judge’s house, having been summoned to meet Parker in person.
He passed the buggy in the broad graveled drive and went up the four white steps to the front door. The knocker was brass and heavier than a handgun.
The maid who showed Hart into the carpeted hallway was an octoroon wearing a black uniform with a white frilled apro
n. The smell of furniture polish seemed to fill the air.
‘The judge is in the library.’
Hart nodded curtly and followed her down the hallway. She opened the door to a room that was strong with cigar smoke. Hart mumbled a quick thank you and stepped inside.
The judge was sitting in a leather-upholstered chair, resting the arms of his black linen suit against its broad sides and his oiled and slickly brushed hair against its high back. There was a thin cigar with an inch of ash on it between the fingers of his right hand, a slim glass of sherry balanced close to the left.
To the judge’s right and leaning forward in a chair that was smaller and less sumptuous was Marshal Fagan. He, too, was smoking a cigar and enjoying the judge’s sherry. Only he didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as the judge. Whatever Judge Parker had been telling him before Hart had come in didn’t seem to have been going down well either. Fagan’s face looked as sour as week-old milk.
Parker stood up, slowly, carefully; he set the cigar down on a glass ashtray and shook Hart’s hand. His grip was firm and his fingers thin and white, the nails clean and neatly clipped.
‘Good to see you, Hart. Allow me to get you a drink.’
‘Thanks.’
While the judge was pouring a glass of sherry, Hart glanced at Fagan, who looked away.
‘Here. Pull over that chair.’
Hart did as he was told and sat on the edge of it almost as uncomfortably as Fagan.
‘Smoke?’
Hart shook his head: ‘No, thanks.’
‘Fine.’
The judge drew on his own cigar and exhaled an almost perfect smoke ring. The sherry was dry and had an aftertaste that made Hart cough.
‘I was discussing our efforts to bring the Indian territories under law and order with the marshal here. He seems to be more impressed by our successes so far than myself. At least, he was.’
Fagan fidgeted and swallowed some sherry hastily.
‘What is your impression, Hart? How far do you think we have gone in civilizing this unruly land?’
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