Outlaw

by Charles G. West

  Matt realized that the situation could get completely out of hand, touched off by no more than the smallest of sparks. It was obvious that the little town had suffered tragically from the outlaws’ visit, and they were determined not to be taken advantage of by a second visit. There were nervous fingers on the triggers, and any false move might set them off. Without turning to look at the men behind him, Matt answered the reverend’s question, “We were wonderin’ if we could buy some hard candy.”

  “What?” The preacher exclaimed, not sure what he had just heard. “Candy? All you’re wanting is candy?” The razor-thin face almost broke into a smile, and the shotgun was lowered a fraction.

  Ike looked at Matt, wondering if his young friend had suddenly lost his mind. When he glanced behind him to see the preacher and the carpenter step into the store, he realized that the explosive air of tension that had threatened moments before was suddenly defused.

  “We don’t generally greet strangers in this manner,” the tall dark man said. “We’ve just suffered a great loss to our town, and I reckon we’re kinda on edge right now. Myra’s husband and Bert Wheeler, our sheriff, were gunned down by a band of outlaws, and we weren’t sure you three weren’t part of their gang. I hope you fellows ain’t offended.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you,” Ike replied. “Just so happens we’re trailin’ the bunch that hit your town. A few days ago, they hit my village—killed my wife and her daddy. We’ve been trackin’ ’em for the best part of four days.”

  “Then we’ll share your sorrow along with our own.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “My name’s John Sewell. My farm’s the first one you passed coming in. I’m also the pastor for our little town.” He turned to nod to the man who had stepped up beside him. “This is Waymon Roberts. He’s the man to see if you need any carpenter work done. And this is Mrs. Bannerman. Her husband was one of the men we buried yesterday. That’s Barney Morgan in the door there. He’s Mrs. Bannerman’s father.” They were joined a few moments later by the other two men Matt had seen on the street.

  Ike shook hands with the preacher, then introduced Matt and himself. “Smith’s my name. This young feller’s Shannon.” He shot a glance in Matt’s direction to warn him. Matt understood Ike’s caution. This was Missouri. They were no longer in Indian Territory. He nodded, and Ike continued. “And this young pup is Crooked Foot. He lost some folks, too.”

  “Well, Mr. Smith, I’m right sorry you and your friends didn’t show up a couple of days sooner. We got hit hard. Ain’t nothin’ like that happened around here since the last years of the war when the Miller family was murdered by bushwhackers. Roy Bannerman is gonna be missed by the folks hereabouts. Barney and Myra are gonna try to run the store, but Roy was the man who got things done for the town. Bert was our sheriff, although it was only a part-time job. He was a blacksmith by trade. We’re really gonna miss him.” He paused to stroke the stubby beard on his chin, then continued. “Barney, where’s our manners? Why don’t we go in the saloon and get a little something to cut our thirst. These fellows have been traveling, and are probably a mite dry. I know I could use a drink. I don’t mind telling you, I had a touch of dry mouth when I saw these fellows ride by the church.” Remembering then that there was a lady present, he quickly said, “Excuse us, Myra.”

  “I never turn down a drink,” Ike responded, and led the way through the saloon door.

  Walking up to the bar, Reverend Sewell said, “Barney, how about some of the good stuff.” Feeling the need to explain himself, he said, “I never touch the stuff when I’m doing the Lord’s work, but I ain’t on duty now.” Then he shot a glance in Crooked Foot’s direction. “Is he a full-blood?” Ike said that he was. “Then I reckon Barney can’t serve him no whiskey.”

  “Don’t matter,” Ike replied. “He don’t drink, anyway.”

  The drinks were poured and downed. When the glasses were refilled, the conversation was quickly returned to the matter most pressing: catching up with the raiders. Ike explained that the three of them had nothing to go on beyond the tracks in the dirt that they had followed from Oklahoma Territory. In fact, Barney was the only one of them who had spent time in the presence of the outlaws. He tried to give them as much information as he could recall.

  “Brance was the name of the boss of the gang,” Barney remembered. “I heard the others call him that. I don’t remember if I heard any of the other names.” He paused while he tried to think of anything that might help. “One of ’em spit a lot. He wasn’t chewin’ tobacco. It was just spit.” Barney’s eyes brightened as he recalled one other that was unusual. “One of ’em was sorta peculiar-lookin’; tall and thin as the reverend here, but he was as peeled as an onion, didn’t have no hair on his face or the top of his head.” Barney glanced at Matt. “And he was kinda like Shannon there. He didn’t do much talkin’.”

  Ike laughed. “Yeah, Shannon don’t say much, but he listens like hell.” Serious again, he asked, “Can you tell us where they headed when they left here?”

  “They didn’t waste much time after they murdered Roy and Bert,” Waymon Roberts volunteered. “I was workin’ on a bedstead for Wilford Collins when I heard the shots. I wasn’t sure that’s what I heard for a few minutes. When I thought about it, I decided I’d best go see. By the time I walked out in the street, I saw the bunch of ’em ridin’ off past the stables.”

  Barney spoke up then. “Waymon’s right. They didn’t waste much time. They ransacked the store, takin’ everything they could load on their horses—coffee, flour, the little bit of money in the cash drawer, every forty-four cartridge on the shelf. We ain’t figured out everything that’s missin’ yet.”

  “My guess is they probably headed for Springfield,” Reverend Sewell said. “That’s about the most godless town around these parts, just right for the likes of them. Drinking and gambling, whoring and killing, Springfield’s got all the devil’s pleasures. Just last July, some fellow named Hickok shot it out with another gambler over an argument about cards over there. They gave him a trial, and the jury decided in his favor. Self-defense, they said it was, and let him go. And people are now talking about him like he was some kind of hero or something. Yessir, that’s the kind of place that would most likely attract this bunch of murderers.”

  “How many in the gang?”

  The question came as a surprise. They had almost forgotten Crooked Foot was there. Sewell had assumed that the Cherokee boy spoke no English. He looked at Barney for confirmation as he answered, “Five.” Barney nodded in agreement.

  The stoic expression did not change, but the Indian boy turned his gaze to settle on Ike. “Five,” Ike sputtered. “Five or six . . . can’t no man say for sure when you’re trackin’ that many horses . . . it’s mostly a guess.”

  Matt smiled, but the thought also occurred to him that it meant that one of the gang that hit Old Bear’s village was not accounted for. He would give it more thought later. At the moment, he was more interested in the whereabouts of the other five. It was possible the missing member of the gang may have been one of the many bodies stacked in the smoldering ruins of the cabin.

  Several more men of the town wandered in the saloon before the three strangers left, each one with an apologetic alibi for being too late to help when Brance Burkett’s gang gunned down two of their fellow citizens. Matt couldn’t help thinking that they would have been too late this time as well if Ike, Crooked Foot, and he had been part of the gang of cutthroats.

  Since it was too late in the evening to start out for Springfield, Ike and Matt decided to wait until morning. After a final round of drinks, they said good night to the preacher and his friends, promising to bring back any news of success in tracking down the murderers. They made camp by one of the many springs in the area about a half mile out of town, on the road to Springfield.

  With the first rays of the morning sun, the three were up and preparing to get underway. Crooked Foot searched the road for any recognizable sign that might co
nfirm the trail left by Brance’s gang. It proved to be a futile exercise. It had been too long. The tracks were old, and there were too many to distinguish one from another. Ike and Matt talked the matter over. The men they were after may have started out on this road—it was the only road out of town in this direction. The speculation that they were heading for Springfield was just that: a speculation. They could have decided to leave the road at any point, and head in any direction. With no trail to follow, the three were left with no option but to go to Springfield in hopes of finding the raiders there. According to Reverend Sewell, Springfield was a good sixty miles to the northeast of Neosho, and the road was little more than a narrow wagon track for a good portion of the way. “Whenever you come to a crossroads or a fork,” he had advised, “always hold to the northeast, and you’ll get there.” So they broke camp, and started out on a journey that should take two days at best, all three keeping a sharp eye on the trail in search of sign that might indicate the outlaws’ departure from the wagon track.

  * * *

  Matt poured himself a cup of coffee from the metal pot sitting in the coals of the fire. It had been a long day in the saddle, and as best he and Ike could figure, they may have covered half the distance to Springfield. Though late summer, the trees were already showing signs of an early fall. Cold weather was not far away, and he thought about how his plans had changed since his path had crossed that of a man whom he knew now by the name Brance. True, he had no particular destination when he left Virginia, only a notion to see the plains and the Rocky Mountains. Now it seemed likely he would spend the winter in the hills of Missouri or Arkansas. That possibility did not seem to be especially wise in view of the fact that he was wanted by the law in those states. Ike had warned him that winter on the high plains could be fatal, and no time for a man to be traveling west. Maybe, when this mission he had set for himself was completed, he would go back to the Cherokee Nation with Ike and Crooked Foot. The prospect was not particularly appealing. I’ll decide after this thing is done, he told himself, and turned his attention to the Indian boy seated across the fire from him.

  Sensing Matt’s eyes upon him, Crooked Foot looked up, meeting Matt’s gaze for a few seconds before returning his attention to the strands of sinew he was patiently weaving into a new bowstring. Ever stoic in expression, Matt wondered if the boy ever smiled. It occurred to him then that he was glad Crooked Foot had insisted upon riding with them. He was far and away a better tracker than Ike—although Ike would never admit it—and his deadly skill with a bow provided them with most of the small game they ate, saving precious .44 cartridges in the process. It was sometimes easy to forget that the boy was only fourteen.

  Hard luck, he thought, losing your parents at that age. It occurred to him then that he had not been much older than Crooked Foot when his mother and father were killed. He and Owen had ridden up into the mountains, hoping to kill a deer. Gone for two days, they returned to find the smoldering ruins of what had been the family home, the bodies of their parents trapped inside. The memory of it still brought a feeling of grief. He could imagine that the grief felt by Crooked Foot and Ike was even more devastating due to the circumstances surrounding their loss. The men who perpetrated these wanton murders had to be stopped. It was difficult for Matt to understand how men, no matter how depraved, could kill innocent people without cause or conscience. He would have been even more dismayed had he known that Crooked Foot’s parents and Ike’s wife had perished because of him. The men that committed these foul deeds were not simply raiding at random. They were looking for him when they rode into Indian Territory and happened upon Old Bear’s village.

  “We oughta be in Springfield tomorrow night,” Ike said, interrupting Matt’s thoughts.

  “I reckon,” Matt replied.

  * * *

  “Look at ol’ Nate,” Spit exclaimed, “dancin’ with that big ol’ woman.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Hell, she looks old enough to be his mama . . . and dancin’ him into the floor.”

  Brance looked up from his cards long enough to give Nate a glance. Then he returned his attention to the hand he had just been dealt, not really interested in the high-stepping shuffle Nate tried to pass off as dancing. “I’d like to see one decent deal tonight,” he complained, too disgusted to even think about bluffing. He glared intensely at his hand, trying to see something to bet on. One queen, one ten, and three low clubs—it was the kind of hand he had drawn all evening, and he was getting fed up with his cold streak. Spit, on the other hand, seemed to be drawing all the cards, and was accumulating a sizable pile of cash on the table before him. It galled Brance more than a little because he considered himself a much smarter poker player than the simpleminded Spit.

  Laughing cheerfully, Spit opened the bidding with five dollars. The man to his left, who claimed to be a dairy farmer, studied his cards for a moment before calling Spit’s bet. Opposite Brance, Eli nodded silently and pushed five dollars into the pot. He was not a winner like Spit, but he was breaking about even. This, too, irritated Brance a bit. He seemed to be the only one losing big. He shifted his eyes to the man on Eli’s left, the owner of the saloon. Brance wanted to say he was cheating, but if he was, he was cheating himself as well, for he was doing no better than breakeven.

  The bet around to him now, Brance bit his lip and tossed five into the pot from his rapidly dwindling pile. He thought about raising the bet, but Spit was too dumb to go for the bluff. “I’m in,” he mumbled, and tossed the three low clubs into the center of the table. We need to get some more money, he thought as he watched the discards tossed in, cursing silently when Spit only discarded one. Eli had visited the bank that morning to take a look at the layout. According to what he saw, it would be an easy job: two tellers, one gray-haired manager, and one old man in the inner office. Brance had planned to enjoy the stay in Springfield for a few more days, but his luck at the poker table was going to dictate an earlier departure.

  The son of a bitch drew out on us! He fumed silently when Spit picked up his new card and placed it carefully in his hand, making an effort to keep a grin off his face. Brance didn’t have to see the grin to know Spit had drawn the card he needed. The simple fact that the man had not spit in the last few minutes told him that in his excitement his mouth was dry. He barely glanced at his queen-high nothing before throwing it in, even before Spit bid again. Disgusted, Brance turned his attention to the dance floor, where Nate and Church were competing to see who could make the bigger fool of himself.

  Like two wooly-faced, awkward otters, the two outlaws stomped and whooped as they lurched to the razor-sharp notes of the fiddle. Their dance partners appeared to be stepping to a different rhythm as the ladies, both over-ripe and past forty, skipped daintily around the two sweating and puffing men. The fiddler, a bone-thin, silver-haired man, displayed no emotion at all as he sawed away at his instrument, oblivious to the antics of the dancers cavorting drunkenly before him. The scene struck Brance as amusing—watching the two bouncing around like children at play, their foolish grins belying the fact that either of them would slit his own mother’s throat for a paltry profit.

  His thoughts were distracted then, and his attention shifted to someone across the crowded room. Two men and what appeared to be an Indian boy stepped inside the front door of the saloon. White men, they wore buckskins and carried rifles. Brance was immediately alerted by the manner in which the two men surveyed the room. Forgetting the card game and the dancers for the moment, he studied the men’s faces, trying to remember if he had seen them before. They were obviously searching for someone, but he could not recognize them. He looked back at Eli, and Eli nodded to indicate that he, too, was curious about the three. One of them, the younger white man, carried a Henry rifle, and Brance’s thoughts went briefly to a rocky cliff in Arkansas when a single man with a Henry rifle damn near depleted his gang. That man, however, was not wearing buckskins, and he never got close enough to see his face plainly. They were not lawmen. That much
was obvious, so Brance decided they were probably of no concern to him. But he would keep an eye on them just the same. While he watched, the bartender walked over to speak to the three. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could guess.

  “Evenin’, fellers,” the bartender greeted them. “You fellers is strangers around here, so I’m gonna have to tell you we don’t serve no likker to Injuns.”

  Ike responded. “Me and him ain’t Injuns, so I reckon you can pour me one.” Nodding toward Crooked Foot, he said, “He don’t touch the stuff, anyway. How ’bout it, Matt? You want a little shooter?”

  Matt shook his head no. Like Crooked Foot, he did not come looking for a drink. “You go ahead. I’ll just look around.” This was the second saloon they had entered, and it was by far the busier.

  The bartender hesitated for a moment, stopped by the grim expression on the face of the broad-shouldered young man, before he said, “If it’s all the same to you fellers, we’d druther the Injun wait outside.”

  “He’ll stay with us,” Matt shot back. “We’ll only be a minute, and then we’ll all leave.”

  The bartender aimed a nervous glance in the direction of the poker table where his boss sat playing cards. “Listen, fellers,” he pleaded, “I don’t make the rules. If it was up to me, he could stay—and have a drink, but my boss is settin’ over yonder at that table. I’ll be in trouble if the Injun don’t go outside.”

  Matt turned his head to take a look at Crooked Foot as if considering the request. In a moment, he turned back to the bartender. “He stays,” he stated flatly.

  Deep inside, a cautious voice told the bartender that it might be foolish to even consider insisting. “I reckon it wouldn’t hurt for him to stand by the door here,” he conceded, “but if anybody says anything, he’ll have to go.”