“You ignernt fool! What the hell are you shootin’ at him for?” Newsome shouted to the ambusher. “There’ll be hell to pay now, and there’s women and kids in this house!”
Newsome’s admonition to the gunman bought Ned just enough time to gain the tree line. Barely. From the moment he dismounted there was more shooting from the house, and Ned heard the bullets snap and pop as the missiles flew through the limbs and leaves of the trees.
“You all right, laddie?” McKirk called.
“Yes,” Ned shouted back. “Tom...John Angus...spread out,” he called. “Don’t let him sneak out of there.”
Someone in the house opened up with a shotgun. The gun roared and smoke billowed, but the charge of shot was spent by the time it reached the wood line, and Ned could hear the pellets falling, rattling like sleet on dry leaves.
“Ned...should we shoot back?” Beck called.
“We can’t! There are women and kids inside,” Ned answered.
No sooner had Ned spoken than he heard McKirk’s rifle bark. At first Ned started to yell at him; then he saw what McKirk was doing. At the top of the chimney there was a rain damper, held up by four supports so that, though the Tain would be turned away, the smoke could escape. McKirk was shooting at the damper. His second shot carried away one of the supports, and one corner of the damper fell across the chimney.
“Tom!” Ned shouted. “The chimney!”
Ned and his two deputies began firing at the top of the chimney. From inside the house half a dozen guns replied. Clouds of birds lifted from the trees, while from the other side of the clearing a deer, startled by the shooting, bounded out of the woods. It ran for several yards before it suddenly realized it was in the open. The animal stopped for a moment, frozen in panic, then turned and bounded quickly back into the cover of the trees.
In less than a dozen shots, Ned and his deputies dropped the damper down onto the top of the chimney. The curl of smoke could no longer escape. The rifles of Ned and his deputies were quiet for a moment while they waited, watching the house.
“Son of a bitch!” someone called from inside the house. Ned could hear a cough, another cough, then a whole chorus of coughs. Smoke started coming through the windows and doors of the house.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Newsome called from inside the house. “We’re a-comin’ out!”
“Come ahead!” Ned shouted back. “Get ready,” he said to the deputies.
The front door banged open and men, women, and children, coughing and wheezing, ran outside. Two or three of them were waving white cloths over their heads.
“Everyone put your hands up!” Ned called to them. He stepped out of the tree line, holding his rifle in front of him.
“That were a hell of a thang for you to do!” Newsome gruffed. “Cain’t you see I got my daughters and their kids in this house?”
“I want Jake Newsome,” Ned said.
“I told you, he ain’t here,” Newsome replied. “Now you go on, get outta here and leave us alone.”
“Ned,” Beck called to him. “That’s Jake Newsome, back near the corner of the house, next to the woman holdin’ the baby.”
“You sure?”
“He’s the fella I seen in the knife fight down to Fort Smith.”
The man Beck pointed out was a big man, as tall as old man Newsome and forty pounds heavier. He wasn’t wearing a beard, but he did have a handlebar mustache and a shock of raven-black hair. His eyes were dark, and even from this distance Ned could see them flashing fire. He, like the others, had his hands up, but he was wearing a brace of pistols and they were still in the holsters.
“You,” Ned called to him. “Shuck out of that gun belt and come here.”
“You got the wrong fella, mister. Jake’s my brother,” the man said.
“I seen you before, Jake,” Beck said. “You got a couple sisters, but I know you ain’t got no brother.”
“This here’s my boy Haskel,” the old man said. “Most folks don’t know about him...he ain’t been around these parts too much.”
“You come with us anyway,” Ned said. “There are enough people in town who know Jake Newsome to prove it one way or another.”
Suddenly the man grabbed the woman holding the baby and pulled her to him.
“Jake!” the woman screamed. “What are you doing?” With her anguished shout the lie was exposed.
“I’m gettin’ the hell outta here,” Jake growled. “And you’re gonna help me.”
Ned and his deputies raised their rifles.
“Go ahead and shoot,” Jake challenged. “You can’t get me without you shoot my sister and her baby too.”
“My God, Jake, let the woman go!” Ned called. “She’s your own sister!”
“She don’t mean nothin’ to me, ’ceptin’ my way outta here,” Jake said. He started easing back toward the tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. By now he had a pistol drawn and was holding it in his right hand, while his left arm was wrapped around his sister’s neck, dragging her with him. The baby started to cry.
“Jake, the baby. Let me put down the baby,” the woman pleaded.
“Unh-uh,” Jake said. He laughed obscenely. “Be glad you got the brat. They want me so bad it might not make no never-mind to them whether you get plugged or not. But they ain’t gonna take a chance on shootin’ a baby.”
“Pa!” the woman screamed. “Pa, make him stop!” The old man saw at once that Jake was getting away with his ploy.
“You just quit your bellyachin’, Sue Ellen,” Newsome said. “Ain’t neither you nor the baby gonna get hurt none iffen you just take it easy.”
Ned and his deputies stood helpless as Jake dragged his sister into the woods, then up the side of a steep hill.
“There’s a cave up there,” McKirk pointed out. “That cave ain’t gonna do him no good,” Beck said. “I’ll flush the son of a bitch outta there if I have to chase him down to the caverns of hell.”
Ned and his deputies watched as Jake reached the cave mouth, then disappeared inside. Sue Ellen, free now, started back down the hill.
“Come on!” Ned called, and the three men started toward the cave on the run.
“Are you all right, lassie?” McKirk asked as they passed Sue Ellen on the hillside.
“What do you care? Why don’t you just go away? Go away and leave us alone,” Sue Ellen snapped.
Beck was the first one to the cave. Knowing that he would make a good target against the light of the opening, he stopped just at the entrance to the cave, then edged in cautiously along the side. Ned and McKirk were right behind him.
“Look, up there!” Ned said. “There’s another opening.”
“It’s a way to the other side of the mountain,” Beck said.
The men hurried toward the opening. When they reached it, Beck groaned and pointed toward the valley below. There, riding at a full gallop, was Jake Newsome.
“Damn!” Ned swore.
“Smart lad,” McKirk observed. “He had a horse picketed on this side all the time.”
“We’re five minutes from our horses,” Ned said, “and ten minutes getting around to this side. He’ll be three miles away by then, but we’re goin’ after him.”
“It ain’t gonna be no surprise now,” Beck said. “Not for any of ’em.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Newsome’ll tell the others we’re comin’,”
Beck mused as the three started back down the hill for their own mounts.
“I guess you’re right, but I don’t care if he tells every outlaw in Arkansas. We’re going to bring them back.”
McKirk said nothing.
Chapter 6
Ned and the others held their horses at a steady gallop for more than a mile. Then, because the horses were sweating profusely, they let them walk. The sun had already settled below the tops of the hills, and before long it would be too dark to track.
“At least the son of a bitch’ll be eatin’ cold
tonight,” Beck growled. “He won’t dare light a fire.”
“Aye, laddie, but we’ll be doin’ no less, and thut’s for shurre,” McKirk noted.
The next morning, they got under way with first light. From the bluff they could see Beaver River, gray and cold under the blankets of mist. As the sun gradually burned away the early-morning fog, the river turned from gray to shining blue. As the day progressed and the sun moved through the sky, the angle of light changed the color of the water from blue to green, and even the leaves and grass looked pale by comparison with the stream’s emerald color.
On and on they went, to the peak of one hill, down into the depths of the following hollow, then up to the top of the next bluff, doggedly staying on Newsome’s trail. They ate in the saddle and once filled their canteens at a small spring that poured out from a collapsed cave, then sneaked away through mossy boulders. Here, they found trees with blackened trunks where an ancient forest fire had scorched but failed to burn. When McKirk pointed it out Beck said he had seen such things before.
“A lightning strike will start a small fire, but the rain puts it out before it can take hold,” he explained.
They tracked Newsome through the rest of that day until the sun set and there was no light left. More anxious men with less experience might have been tempted to go on through the night, but Beck, who was the best tracker of the bunch, knew they could lose the trail and valuable time if they tried. They were frustrated by their failure to find him, but they made camp for the second night.
“I saw a turkey a wee bit ago,” McKirk said, stroking his red beard. He took off his black waistcoat, left on his boots. “Wouldn’t it be good roastin’ on a spit?”
From somewhere close a whippoorwill called.
“I’m that hungry I could even roast a whippoorwill,” Beck offered.
“It’s bad luck to kill a whippoorwill,” Ned said. “Anyway, I don’t think they’d be any good.”
A horned owl glided by overhead, slipping through the night air in absolute silence as it looked around for its prey.
“Now, there’s a creature who’ll not be missin’ his evenin’ meal, dinna ye worry about thut,” McKirk said, pointing to the owl.
Ned carved off a piece of jerky and began chewing. “Have we gained on him, Beck?” he asked.
“I think we’ll catch up with him by midmorning tomorrow,” Beck said. “He pushed his animal too hard yesterday; he’s had to rest it today to keep from breaking it down.”
“We’ll give him a little room, then,” Ned said. “I don’t want to take him now, until he’s led us to the others.”
“Do you think the mon will lead us to his friends, knowin’ we’re on his trail like we are?”
Ned chuckled. “Do you mean am I afraid he’ll lead us away to protect his friends? The answer is no. That son of a bitch has no regard for his sister, so I don’t think he’d care any more about his friends. No, he’ll go straight to them, begging for help. And when he does, we’ll be right behind him.”
By midmorning the next day, the trail was so strong that all three men could follow it quite easily. It was obvious to all of them that Newsome’s mount was struggling, because the outlaw had dismounted several times to lead his horse.
“Not too close,” Ned cautioned. “I don’t want him to realize how near we are. Let’s just hold back a bit.
Suddenly the unmistakable sound of traffic reached their ears. They heard a teamster’s whistle and the crack of his whip. They heard the heavy rumble of wagon wheels.
“What the hell?” Ned asked. He urged his horse ahead, and the others followed. A moment later they came to a wide, well-traveled road. There were three wagons in sight going west, another heading east. All the wagons were loaded with freight.
“Damn, laddie, I know this road,” McKirk said. “I’ve been down it many a time ridin’ shotgun for the Springfield Freight. I dinna realize we was comin’ up on it like this. That way lies Harrison.”
“About how far?” Ned asked.
McKirk rubbed the bald pate on top of his head and looked around for a moment; then he smiled. “Aboot fi’ miles I make it.”
They reached the road, and Beck got off and studied Newsome’s tracks where they came onto the road. He shook his head.
“Any idea?” Ned asked.
“Iffen I was to bet on it, Ned, I’d say he headed that way,” Beck said, pointing south. “But it’d be pure guess. They’s so many tracks on this here road—horse, oxen, wagons—they’s no way I can be sure.”
“If he’s going to join up with the others, this is the only way he can go,” Ned said. “Come on, let’s go to Harrison.”
Harrison, Arkansas, was larger than Hollister, Missouri. The town consisted of several streets, crossing at right angles to form blocks. The road they came into town on crossed Main Street, which ran east and west. There was a solid row of well- constructed wooden buildings along Main Street: general stores, leather-goods stores, a couple of laundries, even a library, and a disproportionate number of saloons and gambling halls.
“Let’s split up,” Ned suggested. “We’ll look through all the saloons and gambling halls. Don’t forget to check if there are whores working there. A whore’s bed might be a good place to hide.”
Beck chuckled. “We’ve ridden the son of a bitch pretty hard if all he can think to do in a whore’s bed is hide,” he said.
Ned checked four saloons, noticing the sameness of all of them. But then, he decided, they were pretty much alike everywhere. Maybe that was what made them so popular. A man could go into a saloon and feel immediately at home, no matter where he was. Even the songs from the piano sounded the same, and the players might have been the same man in each place, running down the alley from saloon to saloon, just beating Ned to each one.
As Ned came out of the fourth saloon he saw Beck and McKirk. Between them they had checked every other place in town.
“Not a trace of our mon, laddie.”
Ned sighed, then pointed toward a restaurant across the street. Pies made fresh daily, a sign read.
“If you wouldn’t be that opposed to it, we could get something to eat,” Ned suggested.
“Now, there’s an idea I can sink my teeth into,” Beck replied, chuckling at his own joke.
McKirk said nothing but was halfway across the street by the time the other two started.
All three men ordered steak with a side of potatoes. In addition, McKirk ordered half a dozen biscuits and as many eggs. Ned had seen McKirk’s appetite before. The Scotsman was tall, but he was thin and angular, and Ned wondered where he put all the food he ate. McKirk was just reaching for the biscuit Ned had left when a woman came into the restaurant and walked over to their table. She looked as if she might have been pretty at one time, though a life of dissipation had robbed her of her looks. Her hair was red...the kind of red that comes from a bottle. There was a bruise under her left eye.
“Are you the marshals?” she asked. “The ones come down from Missouri lookin’ for someone?”
“Yes,” Ned said. “Jake Newsome. Do you know him?”
“I don’t know him,” the girl said. “But I know a friend of his. A man named Gerner.”
“Gerner’s one of the four we’re lookin’ for,” Beck reminded Ned.
“Sit down,” Ned offered. He waved his hand toward the waitress. “You want some coffee?”
“If you don’t mind my sittin’ with you,” the woman said. “I might as well tell you...I’m what they call a soiled dove.”
Ned smiled. “What do people call you? Soiled, or Dove?”
“What?” the woman asked, not understanding at first. Then she realized he was teasing her and she smiled. The smile did a lot to soften her features, and Ned thought he would like to have seen her a few years ago.
“The folks over at the Peacock, where I work, call me Belle,” she said. “My real name’s Molly. Molly Butrum.”
“Is Gerner in town, Molly?” Ned wanted to know.
“No, not now.” Molly put her hand up to her face and touched the bruise, though Ned was sure she wasn’t even aware she was doing it.
“He give you that black eye?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “Last night.” She sighed. “I shoulda knowed better...I seen him around a few times before and I could see he wasn’t no gentleman. But he asked me to go upstairs with him last night and, well, I know it ain’t none of your problem, but I got me a sick kid and I needed the money for a doctor. I kept waitin’ aroun’, hopin’ someone else would ask me, but Gerner, he made sure nobody else did. Ever’ time someone would act like they was goin’ to, why, Gerner, he would scare them out of it. Finally the time come I didn’t have no choice, so I went upstairs with him. He, uh, likes to get rough with the women he’s with, and he give me this... and a few other bruises that I can’t show you here.”
“How did you know he was a friend of Newsome’s?” Ned asked.
“He got real drunk, started tellin’ me about some of his friends. One of the names he was sayin’ was Jake Newsome. He didn’t come right out and say anything they actually done. He said if I really knew he’d have to kill me to keep me quiet. I told him I didn’t want to know.”
“He and his friends murdered an entire family,” Ned said quietly.
“I...I thought it might be something like that,” Molly said. She took a drink of her coffee and stared straight ahead for a long moment. “I won’t lie to you, Marshal, I’ve laid with a lot of men...some were pretty good men, some were the scum of the earth. When, a man is layin’ with a woman, he don’t have no secrets. You can look down inside, into his soul, if you know what I mean. When I looked into Gerner’s soul I didn’t see nothin’ but pure evil.” She shuddered. “It was like as if I was layin’ with Satan hisself. And I don’t mean just ’cause he beat me. I been beat up before.” She shook her head as if trying to get him out of her mind. “Anyway,” she went on, “when I heard you three was checkin’ with all the girls to find Newsome, I figured I’d come over and tell you about Gerner. Maybe if you knew where Gerner was, you could find Newsome.”
Good Day For A Hangin' (Remington Book 2) Page 5