“It’s all right, MacRae,” Le Fevre said. “Don’t blame yourself. Just do what I say. Everything’ll work out fine.”
I studied his face again through the bars. “You love her,” I said. The truth of that had finally settled over me, too.
He laughed. “Yeah. Don’t ask me how that happened. Because neither one of us is good enough for her. You love her, too.. He stepped away from the bars, lowering his voice, and saying: “Now, if you really want to make amends, you could just let me out of here. Maybe turn your back. I’d just light out for Colorado and neither you nor the major would ever lay eyes on me again. Nor would Star. You could court her again. Probably the way things would have turned out, anyway, if I hadn’t been such a jackass to you. How about it, Mad Carter. Do me this one little favor?”
I couldn’t tell if he were serious or not, but I never got the chance to decide.
The door opened, and Acting Sheriff Tracy Grace walked into the jail.
“Got a chore for you, Mad Carter,” he said, and handed me one of those sheets of paper. As I reluctantly took the paper and read the notice, he said: “You still got them tacks and my hammer in your saddlebag, don’t you?”
“Where is this ... Howard’s Trading Post?”
“Just northeast of here on East Spring Creek,” he said as if he were talking to an idiot. “Don’t give me that look, kid. It’s in the county, and we’re county law. I don’t think Howard will give you no trouble. Word is he hightailed it back to Illinois.”
I sighed. Like I said before, I despised this part of the job.
“Run along,” he said. “I’ll mind our murderin’ prisoner here. I’ll take good care of him. Besides, it’s a nice day for a ride. Weather’s coolin’ off, but could be a Norther’s blowin’ in, so you best not tarry.”
* * * * *
Tracy was right about that. The wind felt crisp, like fall had finally arrived, and it was a nice day to give Sad Sarah plenty of rein, let her take me up the Elkhorn Trail to East Spring Creek. The place wasn’t hard to find at all, but, when I got there, I had to scratch my head.
Indeed Vernon Howard had abandoned his trading post, which was a sod hut, with an empty corral, root cellar, two-seat privy, and a lean-to that the wind had blown down. A coyote raced out of the hut through the open doorway and skedaddled when he heard me coming up. I rode straight up to the hut, swung down, wrapped the reins around a rock, and walked to a rotting cottonwood post leaning against the soddy. I didn’t go inside. Didn’t have to. Tacked to the wood was a copy of the same notice I had inside my vest pocket. Some other deputy had delivered it, from the looks, at least three or four days earlier. By thunder, there had been enough notices handed to us over the past week to keep a posse of sheriffs and deputies busy.
“Now what would Sheriff Grace ...?. I stopped, the answer causing me to grind my teeth together and shake my head. “No,” I gasped, pulling the notice out of my pocket and letting the wind carry it away. Grabbing the reins and leaping into the saddle, I spurred Sad Sarah, and kept spurring her all the long way back to Ellsworth.
* * * * *
I found him at the livery where I’d been boarding Sad Sarah.
They had left him there, hanging from the rafters, hands bound behind his back. From the looks of his face, they hadn’t done a good job of it, hadn’t broken his neck, had just let him choke to death when they lynched him. Estrella was on the floor on her knees, face buried in her hands, wailing the most piteous cries I’d ever heard. Over in the shadows, hands clasped in prayer, his head shaking, was Fenton Larue.
“Fenton,” I said. I had to repeat his name, louder.
He opened his eyes, craned his neck fearfully, and burst into tears himself. “Lordy, Mad Carter, they hanged André. They hanged him.”
“Who?. I knew. I just had to hear it.
“The major. Phineas.. He shook his head. “Boys from other outfits. That big sheriff of yours. He was there. And Perry.. His voice choked. “And I reckon ... me.”
“Mister Justus?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, sir. Mister Justus, he took the train to Kansas City days ago. Trying to save his herd. His ranch.”
That made sense. I hadn’t seen Mr. Justus either at the inquest or the arraignment.
Anger seized me. “And the town marshal, Freeborn. He just let this happen?”
“No, sir. They ... well, we ... we barged into their office, see ... marched them to the jail, locked them up. Reckon they’s still there.”
“Where are they now?”
“The laws. I just said ....”
“No. I mean Major Canton!”
I knew that answer, too, before he told me.
Feeling chilled, and not just by that cold wind, I stood in silence, looking at André Le Fevre, listening to poor Estrella’s sobs. I’d hear them forever. They haunt me to this day.
“Star,” I whispered. I moved to her, kneeled down beside her, put my hand on her shoulder.
She just cried.
“Star.”
This time she looked at me with that same blank expression I’d seen back at the mercantile, after Tommy had .... I shook off that thought.
“Come on,” I said. “Fenton will take you home.”
When Fenton heard this, he immediately rose, and came over, waiting, refusing to look at the dead body swaying as the increasing wind blew in through the open doors.
“I’ll see to André,” I told Estrella.
Then just like that, she recognized me, and those wonderful eyes burned with hatred.
“You!. Her voice was savage. “You!”
I couldn’t respond.
“You did this. You wanted this to happen.”
She slapped me, and stood up, reeling, and it was Fenton who caught her before she fell. But he immediately released her, fearing how the townfolk of Ellsworth would react to a Negro cowboy touching a white woman.
I rose and told Fenton where Estrella lived, told him to see her home, then said he should keep riding, back to Texas.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll see her home.”
Before she left with Fenton, Estrella O’Sullivan spit in my face.
chapter
28
Sad Sarah was still winded after my ride to and from East Spring Creek, but I didn’t have far to go. So I walked along the vacant streets, feeling the wind, now savage and cold, sting my face, my hands. The smart play would have been to go to the jail and release Marshal Freeborn and his deputies, but I wasn’t too smart. I’d never been smart. Or I could have headed to the Masonic Lodge, tried to talk those vigilantes into backing my hand, but I figured they would see no sense in getting killed. Let Texas cowboys kill Texas cowboys, they’d likely say. It would save them the trouble.
So I walked alone to Nauchville and the Lone Star Saloon.
Nauchville was dead, too. The building next to Sean Ronan’s gambling parlor and watering hole was closed. The one across the street had been torn down, and, if memory serves, the owners had headed, wood and all, to try Wichita. I spied a few horses tethered in front of other saloons and cribs down the street, but at this end of The Bottoms, the only place busy was the Lone Star.
I recognized the major’s buckskin. And Perry Hopkins’s zebra dun. I also saw Larry McNab’s old Studebaker, and that got me thinking. Crossing the street, I made a beeline for the chuck wagon, climbed up on the wheel, and found that old Westley-Richards shotgun resting on the floor. I picked it up, opened the breech, saw two shells, and clicked the barrels into place. Thumbing back both hammers, I walked into the Lone Star Saloon with the scatter-gun to face down an angry mob one last time.
* * * * *
No one was talking. The place was deathly quiet. Nary a head turned as those batwing doors popped behind me. Maybe they were too busy contemplating what they had done.
&nbs
p; Perry Hopkins sat alone at a table, a half-full bottle and a Winchester on the felt cloth. No glass. He reached over, without even noticing me, picked up the bottle, and pulled hard, then set the rye near the carbine.
Two tables over, Phineas O’Connor cleaned his fingernails with a pocket knife. An empty mug of beer rested in front of him.
Everyone else leaned against the bar, heads down, staring at their drinks. Few actually drank.
One man, standing at the far end of the bar, right boot hooked on the brass rail, grinning, holding a tumbler in his left hand, his right thumb hooked in his waistband, said: “I wondered if you’d come.”
It was Sheriff Grace. I ignored him, and stared at the broad back of Major Canton, who was looking into the backbar mirror. Our eyes met, held briefly, and he slowly turned around to face me. The other lynchers, most of whom I truly did not know, eased away, noticing the deadly barrels of Larry McNab’s Westley-Richards twelve-gauge.
“You got gumption,” the major said.
“You’re under arrest,” I said.
Sheriff Grace snickered. “Now, Mad Carter, I’m the county sheriff. I say ....”
“How much did he pay you?” I asked Grace, but I didn’t take my eyes off Major Canton.
The county sheriff snorted. From the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head, unhook his thumb from his waistband, and ease his hand toward his left hip, where I knew he carried a little Smith & Wesson.
“You want to keep that hand, Sheriff, you best stop moving,” I said.
He froze. Suddenly he didn’t look so confident.
“You think Ellsworth will let you stay on as sheriff?” I said. “I don’t think the Masons will even bother giving you a white affidavit. They’ll just give you what you let him ...”—I nodded at Major Canton—“give André Le Fevre.”
“Le Fevre murdered my son,” the major said.
“You know better than that,” I said. “You lynched André to shut him up. So that nobody would ever know that it was Tommy who murdered that farmer’s daughter down in Holyrood. Or that he killed that Bertha girl down here. That he ..... I couldn’t finish.
Major Canton’s face turned crimson. He stepped away from the bar, and his hand dropped near the revolver belted on his hip.
“Touch that gun,” I warned him, “and I’ll kill you.”
“You ain’t that foolish,” Major Canton said. “Think you can arrest us all?”
“Just you.”
He made himself grin, but he was shaking. With rage, I warrant. Not fear. “You think you can get out of here ... alive?”
“You’ll never know.”
* * * * *
The rest of that scene plays out slowly, every second, every detail, etched into my memory.
Phineas O’Connor rises, overturning the table, reaching for his own revolver, screaming something that I can’t understand. I take just a second to swing the Westley-Richards at him, telling him not to move, that I don’t want to kill him, then I notice the major drawing his own revolver, and I’m turning back, triggering both barrels, watching the glass behind the backbar and several bottles explode, spraying whiskey and shards, and seeing slivers of the mahogany wood fly off from the bar.
The major’s chest explodes in a fury of crimson. His revolver flies over the bar and shatters more bottles and glasses, and he drops, wordlessly, into the sawdust, into the bits of glass, oozing a pool of blood. His legs stretched out before him, leaning against the bar. His eyes are open, and his head is tilted toward the left, and he is dead. Dead. Dead. And I’m holding an empty shotgun, and my ears are ringing, and I feel nothing. Not redemption. Not justice. Not even sick.
The table Phineas has overturned rolls gently from the right, to the left, and, for that instant, he has forgotten his pistol, and is staring in horror at the lifeless body of Major Luke Canton. The other cowboys are looking, too, uncertain. One is on his knees, gripping his left arm, where he has been hit by either shot or the flying glass or wood splinters, but that’s his own fault for not getting farther out of my line of fire. Sheriff Grace is blinking, licking his lips, spilling his glass of whiskey onto his britches. The only people in the saloon not really moving, seemingly not affected by what has just happened are me and, behind me, Perry Hopkins.
Next, Sheriff Grace drops his empty tumbler, and he’s moving toward me, speaking to me, having recovered from the shock of it all, and I just manage to hear his words through the ringing in my ears.
“We’re gonna call that murder, boy,” he is saying. “Every man here will testify that Luke Canton was not carryin’ a gun. That you shot him without cause. That you lynched that murderin’ cowhand and killer we had in the jail. So you just better hand me that shotgun. Or we’ll carry you out of here, too.”
He must not have realized that I had fired both barrels of the Westley-Richards. Because when I turn toward him, and he sees that scatter-gun aimed at his belly, his face turns ashen, and he starts backing up to the bar.
But by that time Phineas O’Connor has recovered, rage has engulfed him, and he’s turning toward me, drawing his pistol, swearing savagely, tears blinding him. “You killed the major,” he is yelling, “so I’ll kill you!”
And as I’m turning to face him, I see another cowboy reach for his gun, and I just drop the empty Westley-Richards but make no move to draw the Griswold and Gunnison .36 I’m wearing. I wait for the bullets to take my life.
Only Perry Hopkins is standing, and he’s levering a round into his Winchester, and he’s shouting something at Phineas. And now Phineas is turning away from me, facing Perry, and both men are firing at each other. And Phineas is falling back, a hole in his forehead, and the cowboys are diving behind the bar, or behind tables, or simply flattening themselves on the floor. Sheriff Grace is wetting his britches. Then Perry is screaming at me, shooting the lamps on the back walls, and fire is engulfing the place like a tinderbox.
But one cowboy, the one who drew his own pistol, is shooting. And I’m shooting back, though I don’t remember ever drawing that .36 from its holster. We both miss, and he’s diving over the bar. And Perry is gripping my shoulder, shoving me toward the batwing doors, working the lever of his carbine, spraying the place with lead. The smoke is so thick I can hardly see, and suddenly we are outside, and Perry is boosting me into the major’s saddle, and he’s mounting his dun, and we are galloping out of Nauchville.
As we thunder into Ellsworth proper, people on the boardwalks stare in horror, in fear. The body of André Le Fevre’s body had been discovered in the livery. As we gallop past, I reach out and grab the reins of Sad Sarah, and, tired as she might be, she races after us. We leap over the K.P. rails. Ride past the empty stockyards. We are leaving Ellsworth. We are moving south at a high lope.
* * * * *
The wind had turned brutal. Bitter. I bet the temperature dropped thirty degrees by the time we forded the frigid waters of Turkey Creek, and another fifteen when Perry slid off his horse after crossing Plum Creek just shy of Holyrood.
It was dark by then, but the moon shone brightly, although the way the skies were clouding up, that wouldn’t last much longer.
I eased off the major’s horse, and hurried over to Perry, who gripped his left side. Blood trickled between his fingers, and his whole shirt felt wet and sticky.
“Perry,” I said.
He pushed my hand away. “Reckon ..... He gasped. “Phineas and me killed each other.”
“No, Perry. You can’t ....”
“Hush up.. He swallowed down the horrible pain he must have been feeling. “You need to ride, Madison. Get out of Kansas. Take my horse, the major’s. And that was smart thinkin’, grabbin’ Sad Sarah on the way out of town.”
“I’m taking you back,” I said.
“You ain’t takin’ me nowhere, Madison. I’m done for. Hell, son, I’d be dead before you got me bac
k on that horse.”
I sank to my knees, and bowed my head. Tears cascaded down my face.
Perry laughed again. “I told the major I had a bad feelin’ about Ellsworth.. A cough. “Should have lit out like I wanted to.”
We were silent. The wind howled.
“Best ride, Madison,” he said softly. “They will post you for murder, and the major had a slew of friends in Ellsworth. Kansans and Texas cowboys will be looking for you, and they won’t bring you back to stand trial. Even if they did ..... He coughed again. “You take it easy with those horses ... I don’t think anyone will catch up with you if you ride smart.”
“Perry ....”
“Go. Now.. He held out his hand, and I took it. His grip was firm.
“Summer’s over,” he said. His jaw jutted toward the horses behind us. “Ride on.”
First, I rolled him four cigarettes, then shook his hand again. By that time, clouds blocked the moon, so I couldn’t see his face after he fired up his first smoke. My tears had dried. I swallowed down the bile, used Perry’s lariat to lead his horse and the major’s, and I swung into my saddle on Sad Sarah.
“You’re a good pard, Mad Carter MacRae!” Perry called out. “A man to ride the river with.”
I looked back, but now couldn’t see anything except the red glow as he pulled on his smoke.
“So are you, Perry,” I said, but I don’t know if he heard me because of the roaring wind.
* * * * *
The major’s horse went lame before I crossed into the Indian Territory, and I was forced to turn Perry’s horse loose after leaving Kansas. By that time, I was tired, hungry, freezing, and sick. So when I found a trail herd camp, I decided to risk company, and rode toward the chuck wagon and campfire.
I didn’t recognize anybody, and they sure didn’t know me, but the cook was a sour-faced man who dished up some fine beans and the best biscuits I’d ever tasted. Then the ramrod, a wiry man with a steel-gray mustache and wearing wooly chaps, squatted down by me with a cup of coffee.
Summer of the Star Page 20