“Well, Mr. Brister, I think I’ll go get my supper. I hope you don’t mind stayin’ here by yourself for a little while.” Sam’s spirits could hardly get much higher. “Since you’re such a famous man, I might even bring you a plate.” He stood in the middle of the room, grinning broadly at his prisoner. When there was no response from Ike, he chuckled and turned to leave. Unable to resist one last taunt, he said, “The key to the cell door is right here in my desk drawer if you have to leave before I get back.” Content with himself, he went out, closed the front door and padlocked it, feeling confident that nobody would be able to get in before he got back. That done, he headed for the hotel and supper.
“Oh Lordy,” Ike moaned to himself. “Now what am I gonna do?” He went around the cell, checking the strength of the bars. They were all solidly in place. There was no window in the cell, so there was little he could do but sit down and wait with images of a dying boy to torment his mind.
* * *
Matt paced back and forth across the brow of the hill, watching for sign of Ike’s return with the doctor. It was now well past dark. Ike should have been back by now. Hearing a low moan from Crooked Foot, he moved quickly down to the cottonwood tree where the boy lay. The wounded boy mumbled a series of words barely above a whisper, speaking in the Cherokee tongue. Even though Matt spoke no Cherokee, he soon surmised that it was no more than senseless mumbling. Crooked Foot was still unconscious. He looked bad. Matt was at a loss as to what he could do to ease his pain. Crooked Foot suddenly cried out in pain, then appeared to sink back in sleep. Afraid that the boy had just passed, Matt bent close over him. Crooked Foot was still breathing. Matt got to his feet again. “Gawdammit!” He blurted in frustration. “Where the hell is Ike?” Climbing back up to the brow of the hill again, he watched the road below him for a few minutes longer before making his decision.
Something had happened. Ike wasn’t coming back. Matt returned to the cottonwood once again, his mind made up. Crooked Foot uttered no protests when Matt picked him up and placed him on the travois once more. After making him as comfortable as possible, Matt climbed aboard the buckskin, and led Crooked Foot’s pony down to the road into town. He could afford to wait no longer.
* * *
Only a few people noticed the silent procession that rode slowly down the middle of the darkened street, and these were mostly men talking outside the saloon. It was a curious sight, had anyone been sufficiently interested to take a close look—the somber and determined man on the buckskin, leading a body on a travois, a ghostly procession passing through the patches of light from the windows of the saloon. Though noticed, no one saw fit to make much of it, so Matt passed quietly by the hotel and the general store toward the doctor’s office at the end of the street.
He saw no sign of Ike, and as he approached Dr. Manning’s house, no sign of Ike’s horse. That observation worried him, and he again feared that something bad may have happened to his friend. He was determined to find out, but his first priority was to get Crooked Foot to the doctor.
He pulled up to the fence in front of the little whitewashed cottage, and stepped down. Crooked Foot had not made one sound of protest during the ride down from the hill. Matt only glanced at him before going up to the front door and knocking. He held his rifle in his hand in case the doctor needed convincing to look at the boy.
“Oh . . . you . . .” Manning sputtered, at once alarmed to see the broad-shouldered young man at his door again.
“I brought you a patient,” Matt said. “He’s bad hurt.”
Manning looked beyond him at the travois at the gate. “What happened to him?”
“Gunshot,” Matt replied.
“Well, can you bring him inside? I can’t see what I’m doing out there in the dark.”
“I reckon,” Matt responded.
“Put him on the couch there,” Dr. Manning said when Matt returned carrying Crooked Foot in his arms. He stepped back to give Matt room.
“John?” A voice called from the back of the house.
“It’s all right, Agnes,” Manning answered, “it’s just a patient.” He bent over the couch to examine Crooked Foot. “My Lord,” he gasped when he saw the wound in the boy’s chest. He worked over the boy for a few minutes, then straightened up and looked at Matt. “I don’t know what you want me to do. You bring a dead boy in here—there isn’t anything I can do for him.”
“Dead!” Matt was stunned. “Are you sure? Can’t you do somethin’ for him?” The doctor’s verdict hit him hard. He couldn’t help but feel that if he had not wasted so much time waiting for Ike, Crooked Foot might have been saved. “How long has he been dead?”
Manning shrugged. “I don’t know—quite a while, I guess. Rigor mortis is already starting to set in.” He could see the guilt in the young man’s eyes. “I don’t think there was much I could have done for him if you had brought him in any sooner—too much damage to the lungs and heart.” He paused, then asked, “How’d it happen?”
Matt just shook his head sadly, and continued to stare down at the dead Cherokee boy for a few minutes. Finally, he looked up at Manning and said, “The man I shot in here, he did it.” Only then did he remember to ask, “There was a man supposed to come fetch you before—a big man with a bushy beard—did he come here?”
“Was he a friend of yours? I should have known. He never got past my front gate. The sheriff arrested him, and took him to jail.”
“Jail?” Matt asked, startled. “What for?”
“I don’t know,” Manning answered honestly. “When I came out to see what the fuss was about, your friend just said that he wanted to see me. Sheriff Baldwin said something about asking him some questions.” He looked at Matt apologetically. “I think it was because he was dressed in animal skins like you.”
“Where’s the jailhouse?” Matt asked. When Manning told him, he said, “Much obliged,” and picked Crooked Foot up from the couch.
“John?” Agnes Manning called out again when she heard the front door close and the bolt locked.
“I’m coming, Agnes.” To himself, he muttered, “Wild men and wild times. It’s a wonder any of us survive the day.”
* * *
Still in a cheerful mood, and feeling a little more steady on his feet since he got some food in his belly, Sam Baldwin walked down the narrow side road to the jail. He carried a plate of beans and corn bread in one hand, and as he walked, he was thinking about the reward he was entitled to for capturing Ike Brister. Not to mention the horse he was riding, he thought. With ideas of his own for Ike’s horse, he had purposely left it tied up by the jail instead of taking it to the stable. Now as he approached his office, he was surprised to see two additional horses tied up to the post beside Ike’s and his own mare. One of them was pulling a travois. Curious, his attention was attracted to the horses, so he didn’t notice the man standing in the shadows of the porch until he stepped up to the door.
“Damn!” Baldwin exclaimed. “You gave me a start. I didn’t see you standin’ there.” He started to say more, but stopped short when he saw the Henry rifle pointing at him. Matt stepped into the light then, and Sam could guess at once that he was a friend of Ike’s. “Now, wait a minute, mister, you don’t wanna go makin’ a big mistake here,” Sam said.
“Open up,” Matt replied.
“I brought your friend a plate of supper,” Sam said, trying to sound as cordial as possible. “Hold it for me while I find my key.”
Matt couldn’t help but smile at the sheriff’s feeble attempt. “Just set it down on the floor.”
Sam did as he was told. “I just didn’t want it to get no dirt in it,” he muttered lamely. He worked the key in the padlock, and opened the door. Looking closely at Matt then, he asked, “You’re the feller that shot that man in the doctor’s office, ain’t you?”
Matt didn’t answer the question. He motioned toward the cell with his rifle. “Get him out of there.”
“I figured it was just a matter of time,”
Ike said in way of greeting to his partner.
Sam hesitated. He knew he was going to take Ike’s place in the cell, and was reluctant to do so. “I ain’t got the key to the cells here. I left it home.”
“It’s in the desk drawer,” Ike said. “What about Crooked Foot?”
“Dead,” Matt replied, then frowning at Sam, he warned the sheriff. “If you don’t quit wastin’ my time, I’m just gonna shoot you and be done with it.”
From the look in Matt’s eyes, Sam didn’t doubt he meant what he said. He went to the desk, and pulled the drawer open. Matt could not see if there was anything else in the drawer or not, so to be safe, he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and took point-blank aim at the sheriff. It was more than enough to discourage any slight of hand by Sam if, indeed, there was a gun in the drawer.
“The boy went under?” Ike asked as he stepped out of the cell. Matt nodded. “I swear, that’s a damn shame,” Ike said, shaking his head sadly. “Maybe if I’da been able to get back with the doctor in time . . .” He didn’t finish, knowing that things happened the way they were supposed to happen. Still, he needed some outlet for his frustration over the loss of the Cherokee boy. So he turned and administered a stout kick in the pants to the sheriff as Sam entered the cell.
“The doctor said Crooked Foot was too far gone to save, even if he had seen him earlier,” Matt said.
“I reckon that’s the way of things,” Ike said, reconciling it in his mind. He reached down and locked the cell door, and held the key up for Sam to see. “Well, sheriff, if you have to leave before we get back, the key’s in the desk drawer.”
“There’s a plate of supper outside the door,” Sam replied. “How ’bout leavin’ it here for me—there ain’t no tellin’ when somebody’s gonna get me outta here.”
“Why, shore,” Ike said. “It’s the least we can do to repay you for your hospitality.”
Outside, they paused long enough to remove Crooked Foot’s body from the travois. Then they dropped the travois poles, and tied the body across his pony’s back. “It’s a damn shame,” Ike repeated when the body was secured.
Ready to depart Topeka for good and all, they stepped up in the saddle, and prepared to ride. “What about the plate of food?” Matt asked.
Ike grinned. “He said to leave it for him. We left it. You don’t suppose he wanted us to slide it in the cell, do you?”
Chapter 17
They buried Crooked Foot under a walnut tree overlooking a winding turn in the river. The work was slow and tedious due to the lack of picks or shovels, most of it done with a short-handled mattock that Ike always carried on his saddle pack. They took turns digging and scooping until a suitable grave was excavated. Then the Cherokee boy was laid gently to rest, wrapped in his blanket, and the grave filled in. Ike laid some stones and a dead log across the grave to discourage predators, and that was that.
The burial complete, the two partners sat down beside the grave to decide what to do from that day forward. It was the end of the vengeance trail. They had done what they had set out to do. With the exception of one man who had evidently ridden off on his own, they had run to ground every last member of the gang that had killed and plundered Old Bear’s village. It was time for a new beginning—time to forget the sorrows of the past, and get on with the rest of their lives. There was a general sense of relief on Matt’s part. His sorrow was not as great as Ike’s. Ike had lost his mate of many years, a woman he was truly devoted to, as well as a father-in-law and a boy who was like a nephew to him. But Matt had developed a deep fondness for the confident Cherokee boy in the short time he had known him. He decided to keep Crooked Foot’s bow and quiver, determined to learn to use the weapon, remembering the cartridges it had saved them. Knowing the boy would want to be buried with his weapons, they had laid the Springfield rifle in the grave beside him. It was a difficult thing to do, because it seemed too good a rifle to bury in the ground. There was really no discussion about it, though. Neither man wanted Crooked Foot’s soul to enter the spirit world without a weapon.
The two friends sat near the freshly dug grave for a long time afterward, each man deep in his own thoughts. Finally, Matt broached the subject on both their minds. “Well, I reckon there’s nothin’ holdin’ me back from headin’ to the big country,” he said. “There’s a lot of land that I aim to see for myself.” There was another long pause while he waited for Ike’s response. When it did not come, he asked outright. “What are you aimin’ to do? You goin’ back to the Cherokee Nation?”
“I’ve been studyin’ on it,” Ike drawled. He tilted his head back and scratched thoughtfully under his bushy gray beard. “There ain’t nothin’ to go back to in Old Bear’s village. Hell, I don’t know if I could hack it with Broken Reed gone.” He pulled at his whiskers a moment more. “You’ll most likely get lost, or freeze to death if you start out across the high plains by yourself. And I’d hate to see that.” Matt could see that the grizzled old mountain man was hesitating to spit it out, but he finally said it. “I expect I’d go along with you if you’d have me for a partner.”
Matt’s face broke out in a wide grin. “Why, hell, I thought we were already partners. I was hoping you’d wanna go with me.”
His response brought an equally wide smile to the whiskered face of his friend. “Well, then, I reckon we’d best get started,” Ike replied. “Tell you the truth, I was gettin’ plumb stale holed up in that Cherokee village. Not that I’d take anything for the years I spent with Broken Reed,” he quickly added. “We could follow the old Oregon Trail, but I expect it would be best to follow this river west, past the Big Blue, to the Republican. We can follow the Republican for a ways, then head straight north till we strike the Platte and the Oregon Trail again. I don’t see why we can’t make Fort Laramie before hard winter sets in.”
Matt couldn’t help but laugh. For someone who wasn’t confident he would be invited along just moments before, Ike was quick to lay out a complete plan of travel. “Hell, let’s get started then,” Matt sang out, still chuckling at his oversized partner. With a final farewell to Crooked Foot, the two friends set out for new adventure in the vast untamed west, hoping to leave the label of outlaw behind them.
* * *
Every description of the plains Matt had heard in the past he soon discovered to be woefully inadequate. They rode from sunup to sunset with little change on the horizon, day after day. It seemed that when God was making the earth, He underestimated the number of trees He would need. And when He got around to shaping up the high plains, He discovered He had used up almost all of them in the hill country behind Him. The few that were left over, a handful of willows and cottonwoods, He had sprinkled along beside the banks of the creeks and streams, so the antelope and the buffalo could enjoy a little shade when they came in search of a drink.
Shade was not the issue, however, when Matt and Ike left the banks of the Republican, and headed due north. The days were already drawing up for winter, with chilly afternoons and cold nights. By the time they struck the Platte, and the old Oregon Trail, they had already seen the first snow flurry. Following the trail, another day’s travel brought them to the settlement of Nebraska City and Fort Kearny. It was an uneasy army post on that cold afternoon in early October, for there had been several unconfirmed reports of Sioux raiding parties between Kearny and Fort Laramie. Fort Kearny had never been attacked by the Sioux, but the threat of trouble had been enough to cause the army to build a small stockade on the embankment of the river. Throughout the Indian wars that started some five years before, the fort had served as a major staging point for army troops, as well as a center for freighters traveling the Nebraska City Road, or the Oxbow Road, as Ike remembered it. The two travelers decided to stop over in Nebraska City for a few days to rest the horses, and maybe visit a saloon or two. As Ike so eloquently phrased it, “We owe it to them bastards we killed to take a drink in their honor, since it’s their money that’s buyin’ the whiskey.” Matt was not oppose
d to having a shot of whiskey, but he was more interested in finding a place to get something to eat other than wild game.
Jonah Batson glanced up to spot the two strangers when they were still fifty yards from the stable. He paused to lean on his pitchfork while he studied the pair. Trappers or scouts, I expect, he thought, judging by their animal-skin attire. He figured they might pass his establishment by on their way to the fort, but they continued to head straight for his stable. He propped the pitchfork against a stall and walked out to greet them. “How do,” he said. “Lookin’ to board them horses?”
“That’s a fact,” Ike answered, “if the price ain’t too steep.”
“Fifty cents a day with one portion of oats, paid in advance,” Jonah said.
“How much do you charge for a man to sleep in the stall with his horse?”
“Same as the horse, fifty cents a day with no portion of oats.”
“That seems a mite steep, don’t it?” Ike complained. “Hell, all we’re talkin’ about is layin’ down beside the horse.”
“Hotel’s half a block up the street,” Jonah replied, unmoved. “It’ll cost you more than fifty cents, though.”
“We’ll sleep with the horses,” Matt chimed in. It was obvious to him that the man was not going to bargain with Ike.
“Still seems a mite steep to me,” Ike mumbled, but dismounted and followed Jonah toward the back of the stable, leading his horse.
Matt paid for both of them, and pulled the saddle off the buckskin’s back. “Where can we get a good supper?” he asked while he waited for Ike to unsaddle his horse.
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