Abilene Gun Down

by Jory Sherman

  He looked toward the stockyards, knowing where they were, but was unable to see them. He crept along the boardwalk, staying as close to the darkened jail as he could. He passed another building and then he was out in the open, walking toward the stockyards.

  His heart was pounding as he crossed an open plain, and then he saw the railroad tracks glistening dully under starlight. The moon was behind a cloud as he crossed the tracks and, ducking to keep his profile low, walked rapidly toward the stock corrals.

  He saw no one and kept on, his feet treading fast in a brisk walk along the fence line. He went clear to the end. Then he heard a soft whicker and his heart leaped with quickened beats.

  He rounded the last corner of the fence and there was his horse as Trent had promised. He approached it warily, not wanting to alarm the animal. When he came up on it, he touched its muzzle and spoke softly to it in a reassuring tone.

  “Good boy,” he said.

  He untied the reins and slipped them around the horse’s neck, held them together with one hand as he lifted his gun belt from the saddlehorn. He strapped on his six-gun and then put a foot in the stirrup. He climbed up into the saddle. He saw his rifle jutting from its boot.

  Jed felt behind him. The saddlebags bulged, and, as Trent had said it would be, his bedroll was tied in back of the cantle over the horse’s rump.

  “Let’s go, boy,” he said, and turned the horse away from the fence.

  The cloud drifted away from the moon and bathed the land in soft silver as Jed guided his horse toward the road out of town.

  Then he heard something that stopped his heart cold.

  Loud voices, coming from town. Horses neighing and men shouting in loud whispers.

  “Come on, let’s go get him,” someone said.

  He recognized the voice as belonging to Bear River Smith, the town marshal.

  Jed clapped his heels into his horse’s flanks and took off at a gallop.

  He knew what the sounds in town meant.

  There was a posse forming. And they were coming after him.

  Someone, he thought, had betrayed him.

  And now, he must flee for his life.

  Jed knew that the odds were that he wouldn’t make it.

  The moon sailed overhead as bright as a lamp. He stood out, he knew, like the proverbial sore thumb. But his horse was fast and sure-footed. However, he was riding over flat Kansas ground. There was no cover to be seen anywhere.

  He might as well have been riding down Texas Street, smack-dab in the middle of Abilene.

  He wondered if Smith was a tracker, or if he had trackers in his posse. If so, and that moon stayed high, he didn’t stand a chance.

  He could only run the horse so far before he would have to slow to a walk.

  Now he rode with fear clutching at his throat, his stomach in knots, and all of Kansas stretching out ahead of him like a dark tabletop where he could be seen for miles under the glaring light of the summer moon.

  CHAPTER

  11

  JED KNEW HE COULD NOT STAY ON THE ROAD, BUT HE already knew that he was heading east. He took his bearings by the stars to make sure. The pole star in the Big Dipper was plainly visible in the night sky. Just outside of town, he had passed a road sign pointing east. The sign read: Junction City.

  As soon as he took his bearings, Jed turned Jubal away from the road at a right angle. He rode far enough so that he knew his silhouette had dropped below any horizon visible from the road. Then he turned eastward again, walking Jubal, staying quiet, listening. Less than an hour later, he heard horsemen on the road. Sounds carried far on the night air and he heard men’s voices. He pulled Jubal to a halt and cupped a hand to his ear.

  To his surprise, the riders halted, as well. They were probably trying to find his tracks, Jed thought.

  “Hoyt, hold up,” a voice called.

  Jed recognized it as belonging to Bear River Smith.

  “No use goin’ on,” another man said. “It’s just too damned dark.”

  “Then, he got away,” another said.

  “Boggs, I ought to string you up in his place,” Smith said.

  “I told you what I done, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. After you let the bastard escape.”

  “I figured he wouldn’t get far,” Boggs said.

  “Let’s turn back,” Smith said. “No use wearing out good horses on a lost cause.”

  Jed heard the men arguing among themselves for a few more minutes.

  “We’ll go after him in the morning,” Smith said. “Hoyt, do you think you can track him?”

  “I can try.”

  “Shit,” Smith said. “Hoyt, you get two men and ride to Junction City in the morning. See if you can pick up Brand’s track.”

  “Will do,” Hoyt drawled.

  More arguing. Then Jed heard them turn their horses and start back toward town. He tried counting the number of men who were after him, but from the sounds of the hooves, it was difficult. Five or six, probably. And Hoyt was the tracker. He would have to keep his eye out for him once he got to Junction City. He had no idea how far it was, but if his hunch was right, that’s where Colter would be. In the morning, he would be able to track him, perhaps, unless too many people had used the road since Colter left.

  Jed knew that he was a pretty fair tracker himself. His father had taught him and Dan how to hunt and track game, and they both had learned well. Before their father left so suddenly and mysteriously, they had done a lot of tracking under their father’s tutelage.

  Jed thought of those things now as he rode through a land of shifting shadows, the grasses glistening with moondust as far as he could see, a strange nightscape filled with the fragrance of wildflowers and the cloying scent of cattle dung drifting from the stockyards, with wisps of clouds floating under the stars like silent wraiths and the moon beaming down at him like some watchful eye as the constellations spun in their slow and silent mystery as the midnight hour drifted off into memory toward the distant dawn.

  His father would catch turtles, mark each one with a dab of paint, and keep them under a box. In the mornings, before the boys were awake, his father would release the turtles. As the sun was coming up, he would awaken the boys and tell them to track the turtles through the dew. If the turtles they returned had no markings, their father would send them back out and they were not allowed any breakfast until the correct turtles had been captured.

  He had shown Dan and Jed how the wind would drift sand into a horse’s track, or a cow’s, and what the rain could do to animal spoor. He made them track bugs and lizards and snakes on hot, dry days, and they learned to sneak up on quail and trail them from their dusting places on long, lazy, summer afternoons. Sometimes, their father would blindfold them and take them far from the ranch on windy days and then make them count to a thousand or more while he rode a zigzag course back home, and the boys would have to track him to return in time for their supper.

  Jed remembered all those things now as he fought against sleepiness and fear. He drank from his canteen, grateful that Trent had thought of everything, and before dawn, he fished through his saddlebags until he found hardtack and jerky, and chewed on those hard, dry foods until his stomach stopped growling and the nightjars went silent. Once, a floating owl passed overhead on muffled pinions and he nearly jumped out of the saddle as it whif-fled past, ghostly in the pewter glaze of the moonlight.

  Over the years, Jed had gotten into the habit of reading tracks everywhere he went. All kinds of tracks. Tracks of horses, dogs, cats, goats, coyotes, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes, lizards, quail, dove, buzzards, mice, rats. He developed ways to distinguish one hoofprint of a horse from another, looking for nicks, marks, the way a horse walked, ran, trotted, galloped. In his mind, he measured the gait of a horse and noticed where the hooves landed at each speed. He could tell if a horse was lame or how much weight it was carrying, or whether it was sick or tired, just by its hoof-prints.

  Now, he thought of these things
because he knew if he saw the track of Colter’s horse, he would recognize it. He would be able to separate that particular track from all others as long as he could see the impression of a hoof on any kind of ground. He was counting on that ability to lead him to Colter.

  “Who was this Hoyt?” Jed wondered. A jailer. A tracker. But now it was no longer a matter of going after Colter. Someone was coming after him. Hoyt and two other men. Killers? Maybe. Probably.

  Jed’s mind traced through all the possibilities of what might lie ahead if Hoyt and the other two deputies found him. Would he have to shoot it out with them? What if he had no choice? What if he ran and they shot him? In the back? What if he killed them? All three? Could he live with that? How many others would Smith or someone else send after him then? He wandered through a maze of the intellect, with questions popping up like armed ambushers and answers shot down like silhouettes at a carnival.

  As Jed rode on, drifting parallel to the road, close enough at times to see its faint ribbon slashing through the tall prairie grasses, his problems seemed to mount until he wondered if he should even try to escape the law. And if he did manage to escape the law, should he just dig himself a hole, crawl into it and pull the hole in after him?

  What would happen to his mother? What would she say when she heard one of her sons was dead, the other accused of murdering him? Or, what if she learned that one of her sons was dead and the other a wanted outlaw? She would die. She would die of grief and of shame. That’s what would happen to his mother, the poor soul. And how could he live with that? Knowing he had been the cause of her death? And was he responsible for Dan’s death, even though he had not killed him? He had asked Dan to go with him on the cattle drive. So, in a way, indirectly perhaps, he was responsible for Dan’s death.

  It seemed, at times, that Jubal was plodding through heavy quicksand and that Jed was struggling along with his horse. He felt the weight of all these things on his shoulders and, as his eastward journey continued, they got heavier and heavier. He started to fall asleep. His head dropped down to his chest and then Jubal would step on something and change gait, jarring him awake. At times, he didn’t know where he was and thought he might be back in Texas. He knew, then, that he had not merely dozed, he had actually fallen asleep.

  He stopped at one point and got off the horse and walked for a while, fighting to stay awake. He lost his bearings another time and his mind was so befuddled he could not bring himself to consult the stars. And when he did look up at the constellations, he couldn’t make any sense of them. He couldn’t isolate the Big Dipper or the Little Dipper, or Orion, or any of the others. He had to shake his head and pinch his cheeks, and pry up his eyelids to keep from falling off the horse dead asleep.

  He wanted to sleep. He wanted to just lie down and close his eyes and rest, even if it meant giving up his life to a trio of trackers.

  But Jed didn’t do that. He kept going, on and on through the long night, into the chill of it that at least made him shiver and helped to keep him awake. At those times, he wanted to stop and build a fire and lie down next to it and just sleep and dream the good sweet dreams he had dreamt as a boy back in Texas.

  Jubal was tiring, too. His gait slowed to a dull plod. But he, too, kept going on, like a tired old plow horse in harness. The horse never balked, never stopped on his own. And Jed drew courage from the gelding, touched his muscles as a man would touch a healing stone and drew strength from them.

  After Jed had crossed through the dreamscape of night with all its terrors and doubts, he saw a thin streak of light on the horizon and when he looked up at the sky, the black had paled to a thin pale blue and the Milky Way had vanished. Soon, all the stars winked out, leaving only Venus, the morning star, sparkling in the wan sky and then it, too, vanished. The eastern horizon opened up like a rent in a black sheet and the grasses took on definition and he saw the road and headed toward it, gaining a second wind, the haziness in his mind brightening some. And when the road lit up as the sun edged up over the rim of the world, Jed glanced down at the road and saw tracks. Horse tracks.

  A few moments later, he saw the track he was looking for.

  The track of Colter’s horse.

  As plain as day.

  CHAPTER

  12

  COLTER’S HORSE HAD A HABIT OF SCUFFING HIS right front shoe when he walked slow. This left a furrow behind the print, a faint one, but one that Jed recognized. The left front shoe was worn slightly more on one side, and the right rear shoe left a deeper impression. The left rear shoe had a nick in it that was distinctive, since twigs and pebbles often got stuck in it, producing another distinctive track that Jed could read with ease.

  It took Jed the better part of three days to reach Junction City, and by that time, Colter’s tracks had been obliterated by cavalry patrols, farmers, and other travelers. He saw troopers from Fort Riley more than once, but they rode off in the distance and he never spoke to any of the soldiers. He rode into Junction City at night so that he would not attract attention. To himself, he said, “I’m already acting like a criminal, like a wanted man.”

  Before he got to his destination, Jed went through his saddlebags and found that Trent had left him four hundred dollars in cash, which surprised him. That was more than he and Dan would have earned from Colter on the drive. He tucked some of the money in his boots, kept a small amount of cash in his pocket. He also found that Trent had given him plenty of .44 caliber pistol ammunition and he spent some time getting used to the Colt that had once belonged to Colter.

  He liked the feel of the weapon in his hand. The forty grains of powder behind the projectile made a lot of noise, but the pistol didn’t kick as much as he thought it would. It had a blade front sight and no rear sight, so that it slipped in and out of the holster easily. He practiced drawing it and cocking it with his thumb. He found that he was both fast and accurate as he shot at dirt clods and stones, shattering them with every pull of the trigger. And it had a hair trigger on it, which took some getting used to, even though he could see why a man might want such a feature. He figured that Colter must have done some filing of the sear. Just a mere touch of the finger would release the hammer. For safety’s sake, he kept only five cartridges in the cylinder and dropped the hammer on the empty chamber so that the gun would have little chance of going off accidentally.

  He put Jubal up in one of the livery stables he found on a side street near the eastern edge of town. The sign on it read: Wilbur’s Livery, Feed, Shoeing & Freight. It was a half a block from the railroad tracks and near the road to Topeka.

  “Are you Wilbur?” Jed asked.

  “Ayair, Wilbur Simpson,” the stableman said. “Board?”

  “For a few days. I want the horse shod, too.”

  “Grained?”

  Jed nodded, as he stripped Jubal of his single-cinched saddle, his bedroll, rifle, and the saddlebags, which he piled in a heap next to an empty stall.

  Simpson was a thin, wiry man who looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He wore a battered felt hat that had never seen better days. His face was clean-shaven and he stood no more than five and a half feet in his low-heeled work boots that hadn’t seen a shine in five years or more. His fingernails were black under the rims, his hands gnarled and bony from hard work.

  Brand walked along the stalls, looking inside each one. Down at the end, on one side, he stopped, his heart pounding with excitement.

  “This bay mare,” Brand said. “I think I know the man who owns it.”

  “Her name’s Rose, he told me,” Simpson said, leading Jubal into a stall. He took off the bridle and hung it on a dowel driven into one of the posts outside. He closed the stall door and walked toward Brand.

  “How long’s Rose been here?” Jed asked.

  “Oh, a good two days, I’d say.”

  “And the owner?”

  “Traded the horse to me. Picked him another’n. A big gelding, sixteen hands high, with good bottom, black as the ace of spades,
with a small blaze on its forehead. A five-year-old named Satan, yairup.”

  “Where did he go, this man?” Jed asked.

  “Said he was a-goin’ to Lawrence.”

  Jed’s heart fell.

  “When did he leave, Mr. Simpson?”

  “Call me Wilbur. Or Wil, if you like. Left here early this mornin’.”

  “Too bad. I was hoping I might see him before he left.”

  “Oh, he’ll be back. Said he would, uhyair. Gave me money to board a couple more horses he said would be ridin’ in this week.”

  “Two more men are coming here?”

  “Uhyairup, that’s what the man said.”

  “Colter?”

  “Don’t know that name. Man who got Satan from me said his name was Brand. Dan Brand.”

  Jed cursed under his breath. The gall of Colter to use his brother’s name.

  “Did he tell you the names of the men coming in this week?”

  “Yairup, he did.”

  “What were their names?” Jed asked, his impatience beginning to creep into his voice.

  “Uh, well, sir, let’s see. One of ’em’s name was Ralph something. Morton. No, Norton, I believe. Yairup, that’s it. Ralph Norton and the other’n he said was called Fred Burns. That’un’s a easy name to remember.”

  “When did this Col—I mean, Brand, say he’d be back?”

  “Didn’t say. Long ride to Lawrence and back. I don’t figure him back here for a week or two, maybe three. Dependin’.”

  “Thanks, ah, Wilbur. Will you let me know when those other men ride in? But don’t tell them I asked. I want to surprise them.”

  “You know them, too?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of them, from Dan Brand.”

  “Where will you be stayin’, young feller?”

  “I don’t know. Can you recommend a place that’s close? Quiet?”

  Simpson laughed.

  “With the army right close ain’t no place that’s real quiet. But, they’s a hotel right up the street from here where travelers like yourself make themselves to home while they’re in Junction City. Yairup, a right nice place and they got a kitchen and a saloon. Pretty gals, if a man’s got the itch.”