Duel at Low Hawk

by Charles G. West

  Within fifty yards of his garden now, the two riders were still unrecognizable to Jacob. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his eyes. As near as he could tell, the two were strangers to him.

  “Mr. Jacob Mashburn,” Boot announced as he pulled the bay to a stop before him.

  “Yessir,” Jacob replied, puzzled to find that the stranger knew his name.

  Boot chuckled, obviously amused. “It’s been a while, but you look pretty much the same as the last time I saw you.”

  Jacob smiled and scratched his head, trying to place the stranger. “I swear, mister, you’ve got the advantage on me. I can’t remember you. Musta been a while back.”

  “Twelve years and some,” Boot replied. “I expect I have changed a little. Prison’ll do that to a man.” His smile widened a bit when he saw the sudden look of concern in Mashburn’s eyes. “You was pretty damn sure you knew me when you pointed your finger at me in that courtroom.”

  Totally alarmed at this point, his blood freezing in his veins, Jacob recognized the cruel face of the half-breed bandit he had testified against in court. With no other recourse available to him, he turned and ran toward the house. Boot, still grinning, took his time to raise his Winchester. Sighting it on a spot between Mashburn’s shoulder blades, he squeezed the trigger. Jacob fell facedown in the row he had just plowed.

  With no knowledge beforehand of Boot’s intentions upon approaching the homestead, Lilly was almost thrown from her horse when the mare was startled by the rifle shot. Horrified by the wanton taking of life, she cried out uncontrollably, only to receive a menacing scowl from Boot. When the frightened girl was sufficiently cowed, he walked his horse up to the body lying in the garden. To be sure Mashburn was dead, he put another bullet in the body. Hearing a cry of alarm from the house then, he looked up to see Lucille Mashburn running toward them. In a move that was almost casual, he raised the rifle and shot her. After taking a half dozen steps more, she fell dead.

  Boot watched the house carefully, unsure if the man and wife were the only people there. When there was no response of any kind from the house or outbuildings, he returned the rifle to its saddle sling and nudged the bay forward. “Come on,” he said to Lilly. “Let’s go see what we can find in the house.”

  Just as he had done in his parents’ house, Boot ransacked the place, taking what was useful and destroying the rest. Finding a silver chain with a cross, he tossed it to Lilly and told her to put it on. “It’s a good luck charm,” he said, laughing. For himself, he took a gold watch and a handful of gold coins he found in a box under the bed. Rummaging through a trunk at the foot of the bed, he found a silk vest that delighted him so much he had to put it on immediately. “How you like your man now?” he asked Lilly as he strutted before her, preening like a peacock and laughing when she didn’t know how to reply.

  They spent the night at Jacob Mashburn’s place, sleeping in his bed. Lilly was subjected to another brutal attack upon her body. Knowing it was useless to resist, she made no attempt to fight him, suffering with silent tears while he satisfied his savage needs. When he was finished with her, he tied her wrists to the bedpost, leaving her to sleep as best she could. The following morning, Boot rigged packs for two of Mashburn’s mules and loaded them down with supplies and loot from the house. Deciding he favored Jacob’s saddle over the one taken from his father, he relegated Wendell Stoner’s saddle to Lilly. Making it a point to leave nothing of Mashburn’s unharmed, he methodically shot all the livestock that were not fortunate enough to escape his wrath. He spared one cow, which he tied to a lead rope and hooked onto the pack mules. “We’ll butcher this’un when we get up in the hills and make us a camp.”

  With a full belly and two pack mules loaded with food, cooking utensils, and ammunition, Boot was well supplied to hole up for a spell. In a final act of contempt, he set fire to Mashburn’s house and watched it burn for a few minutes while he thought of the twelve long years he had waited to extract his vengeance. There had been few nights when he had not lain awake thinking about the man who had testified against him. He had vowed that he would destroy the man completely, wipe him off the face of the earth, along with his family and livestock. That promise had been fulfilled now, but he felt no satisfaction that the debt had been paid for his years of incarceration. In a sudden burst of anger, he pumped three more slugs into Mashburn’s body before crossing back over the river and striking out east, toward the Boston Mountains near the Missouri border.

  Chapter 3

  Nothing about the man would cause a person to stare openly. On a public street, one might pass him by without so much as a casual glance. That is to say, unless you happened to notice him standing next to another man. Then you might possibly notice the width of his shoulders, or the discerning eye that quietly evaluated his surroundings. John Ward would hardly be regarded as a handsome man, but there was an honesty in his face that reflected a solid core deep inside him, evidence of an inner strength and patience. Patience—some on the wrong side of the law might call it relentlessness, for John Ward was well known among the rabble of fugitives who sought refuge in Oklahoma Territory.

  It had been a long hunt, almost two weeks since he had struck Rafe Wilson’s trail just north of the Winding Stair Mountains. Doggedly, John had followed Rafe through the Winding Stairs, across the Kiamichi River, and into the mountains of the same name. From camp to camp, he had tracked the fugitive from Judge Parker’s jail in Fort Smith all the way to where he now sat in the saddle, looking down at a shanty that served as a saloon on the banks of the Red River.

  In no particular hurry, now that his quarry was in sight, he studied the horse tied out front of the dilapidated cabin. It was without question the red roan Rafe had stolen when he escaped from jail. A wild young fellow, Rafe had only six months left to serve on an attempted bank robbery conviction. Now he could look forward to an extended stay in the jail below the courtroom in Fort Smith, with jailbreak and horse thievery added on. John grunted and shook his head in bored amazement at the antics of such hotheaded young men. He nudged his horse gently, and the big buckskin gelding took him down to the river.

  Pulling up beside the roan, he eased his Winchester out of the saddle sling and dismounted. He paused for a few moments, listening to the tormented sounds of a banjo inside, punctuated at odd intervals by some drunken whooping and hollering. The heavy frailing of the banjo would be the work of Skully Adkins, the proprietor of the seedy saloon. John was already familiar with Skully and his rotgut whiskey trade with the Choctaws. He assumed the whooping and hollering was the alcoholic release of the man he had come for, Rafe Wilson. He pushed the door open and stepped up into the room.

  Though still early in the evening, the inside of the cabin was bathed in darkness, relieved only slightly by a lantern on the end of the crude bar. John stood in the doorway for a few moments, unnoticed by the bartender and his inebriated customer. At the single table in the bar, Skully was entertaining with a few of his homemade licks on the banjo, while Rafe proceeded to empty a bottle of Skully’s worst. The deputy marshal walked up to Rafe, whose back was turned. “Rafe Wilson,” John said.

  Startled, Skully almost fell off the chair back he had been perched upon. Rafe, on the other hand, was too far into the bottle to react instantly. He turned around to scowl at the lawman. “Who the hell wants to know?” he slurred.

  “John Ward,” Skully answered for him.

  “Finish your drink, Rafe,” John answered calmly. “It’s the last one you’ll have for a while.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Rafe insisted.

  “I’m a deputy marshal,” John replied. “And I expect you know why I’m here. Now get on your feet.”

  “The hell I will,” Rafe shot back. “You can’t arrest me. I’m in Texas.”

  “You’re still in Indian Territory. Texas is across the river.” Without turning his head to look at him, he cautioned the bartender, “You just set yourself down in that chair, Skully.�
� Back to Rafe, he said, “I’m not gonna tell you again, Rafe. Get on your feet.”

  Rafe didn’t move right away, but said, “All right, I’ll go peaceable.” He shuffled his feet under him and started to get up. Halfway up, he made a sudden lunge and turned with his pistol in his hand. Expecting something of the sort, the deputy was ready with his rifle. He cracked Rafe across the head with the barrel of the Winchester, knocking him to the floor. When the barrel struck him, Rafe pulled the trigger of his pistol in reflex, the bullet whistling beside Skully’s left ear. Thinking he was shot, Skully fell out of the chair and rolled up under the table. Rafe tried to struggle up on all fours, but the effect of the blow to the head, on top of two-thirds of a bottle of whiskey, was more than his addled brain could handle. John reached down and took the pistol from his hand.

  “I expect we can get started back to Fort Smith now,” John said, his words dry and without emotion, “unless there’s some more tricks you’d like to try.” He reached down, grabbed Rafe by the back of his collar with one hand, and dragged him across the floor. “Get on your feet,” he ordered when he got to the door.

  “I’m tryin’ to, dammit,” Rafe pleaded as he grasped the doorjamb in an effort to help himself up. “You cracked my skull,” he slurred.

  “Hey, wait a minute, John Ward.” Skully, realizing now that he hadn’t been shot, scrambled out from under the table. “He owes me some money for all the whiskey he drank.”

  With little interest in the bartender’s plight, John replied, “I expect you just poured that rotgut into him outta the kindness of your heart. I doubt if Rafe, here, has two bits to his name.”

  “I ain’t got no money,” Rafe confirmed in a low grumble, his head obviously causing him pain.

  “Why, you low-down son of a bitch,” Skully spat. “And I even played the banjo for you. That whiskey cost me a lot of money.”

  “I doubt that,” John said as he helped a still-staggering Rafe Wilson up in the saddle.

  “How ’bout you, Marshal?” Skully inquired, searching for some way to cut his losses. “You could stand a little drink before you start back, couldn’t you?”

  “I reckon not,” John said as he tied Rafe’s hands together and secured them to his saddle. He tied the reins of Rafe’s horse behind his own saddle. Without another glance at the distraught bartender, he climbed up on the buckskin and headed back the way he had come.

  There were no more than a couple of hours left before dark, but John rode the horses hard until stopping to make camp. Glancing back at his prisoner frequently, he could see that Rafe was in no condition to give him much trouble for a while yet. Obviously sick as a dog, a result of Skully’s poison, the miserable young man lay on his horse’s neck for most of the two hours. When they finally stopped for the night, John noticed a sizable streak of vomit down the roan’s withers. Feeling more compassion for the horse than he did for the man, he dipped some water from the river and doused the horse’s side. “I’ll make us some coffee,” he said when he pulled Rafe from the horse. “Maybe that’ll cut some of that whiskey in your gut.” With another glance at the roan’s wet withers, he added, “If there’s any whiskey left in you.” Rafe responded with a tortured look and no reply.

  After a while, and some of John’s coffee, the prisoner regained a measure of stability, even to the point of trying to eat a little of the hardtack John offered.

  “I’d just as soon you shoot me instead of takin’ me back to that stinkin’ jail in Fort Smith,” Rafe finally uttered.

  “I expect I could do that,” John replied. “Make it easier to carry you.” He took a couple of sips from his coffee cup. “But Judge Parker frowns on havin’ to try dead men.” He could sympathize somewhat with Rafe’s objection. The jail at Fort Smith was in the basement of the court building, and there wasn’t much in the way of ventilation for the prisoners. With summer not far off, it would only get worse. The stench from the prisoners’ urine had gotten so bad during the past summer that the tubs they used for that purpose were placed in the big fireplaces at each end of the building in hopes the fumes would go up the chimneys. It didn’t help a great deal. John could remember smelling the stench in the courtroom above the jail.

  “I’ve heard ’em talk about you in Fort Smith,” Rafe said. “They said you was a reasonable man. You ought not send a man back to that hell on the border.” He paused, trying to determine if his words were having any effect on the imperturbable lawman. “You know, you was right. I ain’t got no money on me, but I know where I can get my hands on a bunch of it. I’d be willing to split it with you, fifty-fifty, if you was to just let me get on my way to Texas.”

  “Well, now that’s hard to pass up,” John replied facetiously. “I’ll think it over while we ride back to Fort Smith. Meanwhile, let’s get a little sleep. We’ll be ridin’ hard tomorrow.” With that, he tied Rafe to a tree for the night.

  Five days of hard riding found John Ward leading a sullen and subdued Rafe Wilson through the streets of Fort Smith. He made straight for the jail, where he turned his prisoner over to Seth Thompkins, the jailer. “I’ll tell the judge you didn’t try to cause any trouble on the way back,” he said as a parting gesture to Rafe. “Maybe he’ll go a little easier on you.” A few minutes later, John was sitting, hat in hand, patiently waiting outside Judge Isaac Parker’s office.

  After a considerable wait, the office door finally opened, and Judge Parker escorted two well-dressed citizens of Fort Smith out into the hall. The two gentlemen barely cast an eye in the direction of the weather-bronzed, trail-worn individual waiting to see the judge. After bidding his visitors good day, the judge held the door open and said, “Come on in, John. Glad to see you made it back all right. I assume you brought Wilson back with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” John replied respectfully. “He’s back in the jail.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “No, sir, no trouble. He came back real peacefully.”

  “Good job, John. I expect you’re probably ready to take a little time off. You’ve been going at it pretty steady for the past few months.”

  “Well, I have been thinkin’ about doin’ a little huntin’ and fishin’—maybe take a couple of weeks off if there’s nothin’ you’ve got for me right away.”

  “No,” Judge Parker said, signaling an end to the conversation. “You go on and enjoy yourself. I wish I could go fishing with you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” John grasped the hand extended toward him, shook it, and was on his way.

  The judge stood behind his desk and watched the quiet lawman until John carefully closed the door behind him. Then he sat down and started to look through the court docket for the following week, only to become bored with it after a few seconds. It had been a long and busy morning. He stood up and walked to the window.

  Looking down on the street below, he saw John Ward as the broad-shouldered deputy marshal descended the steps of the courthouse and walked toward his horse. A good man, he thought as he admired the bearing of the deputy. A big man, yet he moved with a certain animal grace that suggested the reflexes of a cat. Relentless was the word that always came to mind when Parker thought of John Ward, and John was always his first choice to handle the most dangerous assignments. Possibly he was being unfair when he singled out the quiet lawman for the most difficult and dangerous jobs. In his defense, however, he would cite the fact that John Ward was a loner. He had no family to worry about, no wife waiting at home to cause him to hesitate in a life-threatening situation, no children who might become fatherless if his reactions ever proved to be a bit too slow. John Ward was not burdened with a complicated mind. He saw the right of things, and acted accordingly—uncomplicated, but by no means simpleminded. Parker shook his head in admiration, thankful that the sometimes dispassionate lawman worked for him.

  John Ward laid the bridle he had been mending in his lap and glanced up toward the tiny trail that led to his cabin on the Poteau River, waiting to see who his visitor might be. He wasn�
�t accustomed to many visitors. Usually it turned out to be someone who had gotten lost and wandered off the road to Fort Smith. John spent very little time at the cabin himself. He only used it when taking a little time off from his regular duties as a deputy marshal.

  After a few seconds passed, a horse’s head appeared, pushing through the juniper bushes that lined the narrow path. John recognized the rider as Nate Simmons, and knew his little vacation was most likely about to end. He set the bridle aside and got up to greet Nate.

  “John Ward,” Nate called out, not seeing John at first.

  “Nate,” John greeted him and stepped out into the tiny clearing so Nate could see him.

  “Howdy, John,” Nate replied. “Didn’t see you there.” He reached up and wiped away a little blood from a scratch on his face. “Why the hell don’t you cut a decent road into this place?” John didn’t bother to answer, so Nate proceeded to state the purpose of his visit. “Judge Parker sent me after you. He said to tell you it was important, and he needs to see you right away.”

  The message didn’t surprise John, in spite of the fact that he had just left the judge no more than three days before. Whenever he was summoned personally by Judge Isaac C. Parker, it was always important, and it usually meant someone had to be tracked down. The judge had any number of deputy marshals he could assign to arrest somebody, but if the job was likely to be long and dangerous, John Ward was his preferred agent. This fact never impressed John. He accepted it as simple evidence that he was long on experience and diligent in doing his job. Nodding thoughtfully in response to Nate’s comment, John asked, “Know what the judge has got on his mind?”

  “I don’t for a fact, John,” Nate replied as he dismounted. “Have you got anythin’ to cut the dust in my throat? I swear that’s a dusty ride out from Fort Smith.”