A Town Called Fury

by William W. Johnstone

  Now, he liked Jason and had admired his father a good deal, and he had a hard time believing that Jason had sent Matt’s daddy up that hill just to fall off it. Or that if Jason had taken the southern route over the little patch of Indian Territory, they wouldn’t have run into Quanah Parker and his murdering thugs. Or any number of other things that Matt MacDonald told him.

  The Reverend Milcher seemed to be a troublemaker, too. Bad-mouthing Jason every chance he had, that one, then invoking the name of the Lord, like that would make everything all right. And talking bad about those folks of the Hebrew persuasion. His woman was a bit of a snob, too. She seemed offended by Wash’s manner of dress. Also, his talk and his hair and, well, everything about him.

  He scratched at his neck. Well, there was no pleasing some women. Maybe she thought he was Hebrew, too. Hell, all he knew about Hebrews was that the Bible talked about them a lot, and that Jesus was one. You’d think that would be a good thing to a Bible-thumper like Milcher.

  They were about four days out of Santa Fe, and Jason had put him up front, as the scout. This was fine by him. He was up here all alone, with no women to pick at him or scold him for not taking baths. Nothing but the very faint rumble of wagons behind him, nothing but the warm air and skittering critters and soaring birds before him.

  It was good to get away from civilization again. To escape the hodgepodge that was Santa Fe, with its fancy Spanish self-proclaimed aristocrats and its riffraff. And everything in between. He had liked it at first, but the town had grown old on him.

  He thought of himself as a man of the wild places and a man of action, not some loiterer on the fringes of civilization. He had got to feel more and more like a camp dog.

  So now here he was, on the ramble once again, and with cash in his pockets, thanks to Jason Fury. He felt like a new man.

  He’d been jogging along, thinking and whistling, then thinking some more for about four hours, when he saw the dust up ahead. It was a good ways off, but it was in a line, the kind that a bunch of galloping riders might make. He stared at it a couple of seconds longer, then wheeled his horse and went back to the wagons.

  Better safe than sorry.

  * * *

  Jason gave the command to circle the wagons in tight. He figured that what Wash had seen might be Apache, but then again, it might have been a herd of wild horses or cattle, or a line of troopers. But one out of four chances was reason enough to be prepared, no matter how inconvenient for certain members of the wagon train.

  Milcher, for one. He had broken a buckle on his harness, and complained about having to untie the ends.

  “You should have taken care of that back in Santa Fe,” Jason said.

  “I couldn’t,” Milcher stated, in between working at the leather straps with his fingers and teeth. “It was Sunday.”

  This time, the circle was formed in no time, complete with the livestock in the middle, and the men also pulled the wagons snugly head-to-butt, once the teams were unhitched. Men armed themselves, women took their positions, and children and pets were tucked away in safe hiding places.

  And they waited.

  After what seemed a long while to Jason, the line of rising dust came into sight. It moved north of them, paralleled them for a bit, then turned north and disappeared.

  “Is that all?” Saul finally asked. “Are they gone? Are we free to move again?”

  Jason scratched the back of his head. He wanted to say that he was damned if he knew, but instead, he turned toward Wash. “What do you think, Wash? They go on past, or is it a trick?”

  “I think I’d wait a mite if I was you, Jason. They’s tricky.”

  “Who’s tricky?” called Milcher, who had just picked up part of his buckle-less harness again. “Comanche again?”

  “More like Apache,” said Wash. “Course, in this country, could be either kind’a redskin.”

  “Either kind?” Milcher’s face, already lower than a well-digger’s boot, fell even further.

  Salmon Kendall had walked up. “What’s the deal, Jason?”

  Jason straightened his hat. “Looks like we’re going to wait here a little longer, Salmon. You know, to make certain they haven’t circled around.”

  “You know best,” Salmon said, and headed back to his wagon.

  “Wish I did,” Jason muttered as he started toward the horizon where the dust cloud had disappeared. “I wish to hell that I did.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, there was still no sign of marauding heathen, and Jason decided to move on out again. They might wring another mile or two out of the day if they hurried. Each man or woman hitched his or her team once more, and off they set.

  This time, Jason rode up front with Wash. Not because he wanted to keep an eye on the horizon—Wash was capable of that—but because he wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the still-complaining Milcher. As if it was his fault that the reverend hadn’t replaced that lousy buckle.

  He supposed he’d have to hear about it until they reached Tucson. Which, he fervently hoped, would not be on a Sunday.

  “You’re awful quiet, boy,” Wash said.

  “Guess so.” The comforting creak of leather rode the silence, filling it.

  Wash asked, “Want I should shoot us somethin’ for supper?”

  “We’re still eating the steer we butchered last night.” And then he quickly added, “Thanks for the offer, though, Wash.” It was more than he was getting from most of the others.

  Silence again. It began to grow dark, and Jason reined his mount in. “Enough, Jason?”

  “Reckon.” They turned their horses around and began to walk back toward the wagons. “Wash, you figure those really were Indians in that dust cloud?”

  “Hard tellin’,” Wash said with a shrug.

  “Well, next time you see something suspicious, you just do exactly what you did today.”

  Half-hidden beneath his scraggly mustache, Wash’s mouth quirked up into a grin. “Even if it puts your Reverend Milcher out a mite?”

  “Even if it puts him out a whole bunch. Especially, in fact.”

  Wash said, “That’s the Jason Fury I recollect.”

  Jason didn’t remember having been so, well, petty before, but he didn’t say anything. He just let it pass, and tried to think kind thoughts about the Milchers. Maybe he was being too hard on them. Well, hard on the reverend, anyway.

  In fact, when the new camp circle was formed and everybody was busy uncoupling their draft animals, Jason made a point to go over to Milcher and let him know that Saul Cohen had the hardware and skill to fix his broken harness.

  As he had imagined, Milcher turned him down.

  The blamed idiot.

  Chapter 26

  They traveled down through Apache Pass, into the land that would one day be officially called Arizona but was still a part of New Mexico. The landscape grew more and more rugged, and the Reverend Milcher was overheard to say that the crags and spires of Apache Pass were surely the work of the Devil.

  A few miles after they traveled out of it, they came across signs of a massacre. They discovered the burned-to-charcoal remains of a wagon and three charred bodies, which apparently had been tied to the wheels.

  Apache arrows were stuck in the low scrub that ringed it.

  “Glad Chavez isn’t with us anymore,” Jason commented when they found a chunk of unburned board with a bit of a sign on it, in Spanish.

  “Who?” asked Wash.

  “They joined us on the other side of the Sangre de Cristos with Gooding’s group,” Jason answered. “They got off the trail in Santa Fe.”

  “Oh. The same Chavez what does the stained glass and ironwork?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Thought they both went back East to pick up stuff for glassmakin’. Him and his brother, I mean.”

  “They did. Comanches got the brother.”

  Wash shook his head. “Damned shame. Y’know, I got half a mind to take off
and go buffalo huntin’. Sooner or later, we’ll starve the bastards out if we can’t get ’em to play nice no other way.”

  Jason doubted it would make much difference to the Apache. You’d have to kill every steer, goat, hog, rabbit, badger, snake, horse, mule, and burro in the countryside to put a little bit of a rumble in their larcenous stomachs.

  He didn’t think much of the Apache race. Not as a whole, and not as individuals.

  He pulled up his horse and dismounted.

  “Whatcha doin’?” asked Wash.

  “Better bury these bodies,” Jason said, pulling the folding shovel from his saddlebag. The corpses looked like they’d died hideous deaths. Their blackened, shriveled mouths were stretched open in twisted, silent screams. He didn’t want Megan or Jenny to see them.

  Wash dismounted, too, and found his shovel. “Better hurry, then,” he said as he, too, drove his shovel into the hard caliche soil. “Wagons’ll be comin’ along pretty soon.”

  * * *

  Aside from the mystery riders and the hapless Mexicans, they had no more trouble with the Apache, and for this Jason was very glad. They rumbled through Goose Flats, which was little more than a collection of the tents and shacks of miners. They traveled north, the days growing hotter and the nights growing warmer, and came in sight of Tucson and its presidio a few days later.

  Jason had the wagons pull directly into the presidio, for safety’s sake, and there they set up temporary camp. Jason remembered Tucson as a place where the mosquitos were thick and the swampland even thicker, but it seemed the town had used up most of the old swamp water for irrigation. He didn’t even see a mosquito.

  By this time, he figured that Matt MacDonald had given up on killing him, since he was still breathing. In fact, he’d only caught a couple glimpses of Matt since Santa Fe. A coward was always a coward, he’d decided.

  Megan, on the other hand, was ever present. He’d taken to walking with her in the evenings. Those evenings when it was safe, anyhow.

  He’d also explained that he couldn’t stay. That he wanted to go back East, to college. To live back East and never see the West again.

  She said she understood, but somehow, he had a hard time believing her. He was having an increasingly hard time believing himself.

  His pilgrims took full advantage of Tucson, even if they didn’t speak any Spanish. Personally, he found it difficult to get around without speaking Spanish, but Wash spoke it fluently, and did the linguistic navigating for him and Saul and Salmon.

  Their first stop was Cantina de los Lobos, where Salmon had far too much tequila and Wash practically took a bath in beer, or cerveza, as the locals called it. They all partook of the cuisine, which turned out to be enchiladas, enchiladas, and more enchiladas.

  By the time they left, Saul and Jason were carrying Salmon between them while Wash staggered along behind, weaving and farting his way down the street.

  “Jason Fury!” Jenny scolded when they finally stumbled back into the presidio. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Wash and Salmon drank it all up before I had a chance,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed, as if she didn’t quite believe him. “Well, Megan’s been looking for you.”

  “Figures,” he said, and let Salmon slide to the ground.

  “Thank you,” huffed Saul, who’d been holding up Salmon’s other side and was plainly tired.

  “Welcome,” said Jason. “Where is she, Jenny?”

  “Over at our wagon.”

  “What’s wrong?” Jenny seemed nervous and upset, not at all like herself.

  But she said, “Nothing. Go see Megan, all right?” And then she turned from him and toward Salmon, on the ground. “Saul, you should have know better than to let him get like this. He’s going to feel awful in the morning.”

  As Jason walked away, he heard Saul say, “Better he should feel awful in the morning than I should have a broken jaw tonight.”

  When Jason reached the wagon, he called, “Megan?”

  Teary-eyed, she emerged from the tail end of the Conestoga and climbed down. She was still dressed, though she had pulled a quilt about her, like a cape.

  “What is it?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Matt. I’m so sorry to bother you with this. I mean, seeing as how the two of you are like water and oil.”

  “What about him?” he asked, without denying her charge. It was common knowledge, after all. “I haven’t even seen him, except for a snatch here and there, for days.”

  “He’s in jail, in town, and nobody will go and get him out.” She burst into tears, and he pulled her close despite his reservations to the contrary.

  “It’s all right, Meg, don’t cry,” he whispered into her setter-red hair. “I’ll get him out.”

  “But it’s serious.” She wept against his shoulder. “H-he killed someone.”

  Jason had no words to reply to her. He knew that Matt MacDonald would come to no good, but this was pretty early for him to turn from a schoolyard bully into a cold-blooded killer.

  At last, he said, “They’re wrong, Megan. I don’t believe it. Where is he?”

  * * *

  He took Saul and Wash with him. Wash was sobering up faster than anybody could have expected, and Jason thought they might need him to breach the language barrier.

  When they reached the jail, however, the sheriff turned out to be an Irishman named Clancy—or so said the little sign on his desk—and he sure enough had Matthew locked up in a cell. Matt didn’t look any too happy about it either. And neither did he act overjoyed to see Jason, Saul, and Wash come in the front door.

  “Can I be of assistance to you gents?” asked Clancy, rocking forward with a thump to put all four legs of his chair on the floor.

  “As a matter of fact, you can,” Jason said with the friendliest smile he could muster. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jason Fury, sir. Wagon master of the train parked over in the presidio?”

  The sheriff shook his hand. “Sheriff Clancy. I heard about you folks. Believe I’ve got one of your company under custody, as a matter of fact.” He nodded toward Matt’s cell. “You come to see me about him?”

  “What’s he charged with?” Jason asked.

  “Well, seems he picked himself a fight up at the Purple Garter. Picked it with the wrong fellow, too.” Clancy leaned forward and whispered, “Y’know, your boy here isn’t too smart. I’d be keepin’ him under lock and key if I were you.”

  Wash farted loudly, then collapsed into a chair. “’Scuse me,” he muttered.

  Nobody paid him any mind other than Saul, who turned red and cleared his throat.

  “How much is his fine?” Jason asked, pretending Megan hadn’t so much as breathed the word “murder.” He knew the MacDonalds were well fixed—although not so well fixed as they had been before Hamish came tumbling down the mountain—and Matt could pay him back later.

  “No fine,” said the sheriff. When Jason looked puzzled, he added, “See, he decided to knock out Jose Vasquez, then take a knife to him. The son of Miguel Vasquez? Oh, hell. The Vasquez family’s been the big muckety-mucks around here since who laid the rail.”

  “The big what-whats?” piped up a puzzled Saul. In the corner, Wash let loose another round of gas.

  “Well, what’s it going to take to get him out of here by morning?” Jason asked.

  The sheriff sat down again and folded his arms. “Sorry, boys. Can’t help you. Got to go to trial. Unless . . .”

  Jason leaned forward. “Unless what?”

  “Unless you can get him clean out of the territory. I don’t care much for the Vasquez bunch, myself. Old Miguel holds himself pretty damned high, if you ask me. But I think that’s going to be tough, considering that your friend here called him a stinking Mex and tossed a near-full spittoon over him before the fight even started.”

  Jason looked over at Matt, then back at the sheriff. “Aw, crud.”

  * * *

  With the sti
ll-half-drunken Wash along for linguistic support, Jason and Saul set out for the Purple Garter in search of Miguel Vasquez, father of the murdered boy. Try though they might, however, he was nowhere to be found.

  After going to the Purple Garter and four other saloons, they bumped into one of his cronies, a man who swore that Miguel had ridden home after the incident. And that furthermore, his compadre Miguel had still been angrier than a sack full of wet bobcats. He’d wanted to lynch Matt right then and there.

  From the tone of the speaker, Jason decided that he wouldn’t want Miguel mad at him. But what could he do? Like it or not, Matt was his responsibility. Additionally, he was Megan’s brother.

  He had no choice.

  He and Wash and Saul went back to the presidio, where Wash passed out, Saul went to be with his family, and after making sure the water barrels were all refilled, Jason went to his wagon, to face Megan and his sister.

  He had a feeling they weren’t going to be any too keen on his plan. He wasn’t, either.

  He got them together and urged them inside the wagon, where he joined them.

  “Listen up, you two,” he began. “I can’t get him out before we leave. In fact, I don’t think I can get him out at all. Legally, that is. He killed a man in a bar brawl.”

  Megan’s face fell, and Jenny didn’t look too good, either. He’d had suspicions that something was going on between Matt and Jenny, but then again, he didn’t really want to know. He’d just been hoping he was wrong, but Jenny’s face told him otherwise, damn it.

  “I’m going to break him out,” he said. But he tried to sound as if it didn’t even strike him as breaking the law, just as if Matt was his lifelong friend, just as if Jason was invincible.

  He sounded a great deal more secure than he felt.

  Chapter 27

  At four o’clock, he roused the camp. They were a little cranky about being awakened before the dawn, but he managed to get everybody moving. They started to hitch their teams and eat their breakfasts.

  He slipped into town, taking Ward Wanamaker with him. Ward had volunteered, saying that Jason was a fool if he thought anybody, man or women or sheriff, could see him once and forget him, and that was just the way it was.