Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “North, Logan. They got a heap o’ friends in the Indian Territory.” Sam let out a long, pained sigh. “My talkin’ is done, Logan. Hey, know what I’d like?”

  “What’s that, old-timer?”

  “A cup o’ coffee.”

  Then all the life that had been in Sam Shaver left him, and he died quietly and without fuss as was the way of the Western men of his generation.

  Kane struggled to his feet, a hot, killing rage in him. He fought it back. That was not the way. He was a sworn lawman, not a good or admirable one, but a lawman nevertheless. It was time to step up. He’d arrest Jack Henry for murder and throw him in the cage with the others. Let Judge Parker kill him. Kane was done with it.

  The marshal led the horses into the trees and unsaddled the sorrel. There was a patch of good grass close to where Mae had bathed and he turned them loose to graze. He stood near the stream and remembered how lovely the woman had looked that morning. Now, buried at the base of the oak, she would no longer be beautiful.

  Here the trees kept out the worst of the sleeted rain and Kane managed to scrounge up some dry wood. He built a small fire in the hollow base of a massive boulder a ways back from the creek and then limped back to the camp.

  Kane removed his slicker from under Sam’s head and spread it over him. He checked the wagon, but all the food had been taken, along with the spare rifle, a box of shells and the scattergun. For some reason, the prisoners had not taken the coffeepot that was still sitting on cold ashes. The pot was full. The old man must have been making coffee before he was shot.

  Kane took the pot back to his fire, set it to boil and built himself a cigarette, then another. Only then, afraid of what he was about to see, did he slip his suspenders off his shoulders and shrug down his pants to look at the wound in his thigh.

  It was bad. He could tell that, and immediately he felt a twinge of fear. He was in a hell of a fix.

  The bullet had entered the front of his thigh and exited at the back, a few inches under his hip, but had missed bone. The wounds looked raw and red, like the open lips of a hog ranch whore. Kane wished Sam were at his side. The old man had patched up dozens of marshals and he would have known what to do with an injury like that.

  The coffee bubbled, and Kane poured two cups. He pulled up his pants and slipped one suspender over his shoulder. Then he lifted Sam’s cup. He hobbled to the old man’s side and carefully laid the steaming cup beside him.

  “Here’s your coffee, old-timer,” he said, smiling. “An’ I sure hope you know I brung it.”

  Kane returned to the trees and drank his coffee. He built a smoke, then poured himself another cup. He was in no hurry to do what had to be done.

  An hour before sunup the sleet and rain stopped and the clouds parted. The morning was cold; Kane shivered and threw a few more sticks on the fire. The effort left him gasping and he huddled closer to the flames for warmth.

  He glanced through the tree canopy at the brightening sky, turquoise enamel rippled by bands of lilac and gold. A gusting wind talked among the branches and set the fire to guttering.

  It was time. He’d have to get it done and then move on.

  Kane slipped a shell from his cartridge belt and pried the bullet out of the brass with his pocketknife. He poured the fine-grained black powder onto the wound in the front of his thigh, figured he didn’t have enough and did the same thing with another cartridge.

  He’d heard the old mountain men had done this to cauterize wounds, but he didn’t know if that was true or not. He’d find out soon enough.

  Kane reached for a brand from the fire, gritted his teeth and applied the flame to the powder. It flared, sizzling, sending up a cloud of greasy, white smoke. The pain was a living entity that clawed viciously at Kane’s leg. His body slammed into a rigid board and he hissed through his teeth as he desperately tried to hold on. But then darkness took hold of him and he knew no more.

  Kane drifted back to consciousness. The fire was burning cheerfully and the morning light was still the same. He had only been out for a few minutes.

  The pain in his thigh was now a dull ache and he looked at the wound. The skin had been blackened and it was difficult to tell if the burning powder had made a difference. Maybe it seemed a little less inflamed, but that may have been wishful thinking. The burn would probably have killed any infection and that could only be good.

  Now he had it to do all over again, this time on the back of his thigh, an awkward place to get at.

  Kane poured more coffee and smoked another cigarette. When he was done, he opened up a couple more cartridges, lay on his left side and poured a mound of powder onto the wound.

  It is said that pain leaves no memory, but Kane remembered. A lump in his throat, his heart pounding, he lit the powder. His bellow of agony sent the jays exploding from the trees and made the horses whinny in alarm. Kane’s open mouth grabbed at air like a drowning man and his fingers dug deep into the soft dirt. But this time he stayed awake, arching his back until the worst of the pain passed.

  He sat up again and with trembling fingers built a smoke. He puffed hurriedly, again and again, then lay back on the grass. It was done. He had no idea if the burn had really helped, but he hoped so. He was already wasting daylight and he had a burying to do. Then it would be time to ride.

  Reluctantly Kane struggled to his feet. To his relief, his leg was stiff but not overly painful. He doused the fire with the last of the coffee, then, with a pang of regret, remembered that he had no Arbuckle and little chance of finding any. It was a depressing thought.

  It took a tremendous effort to dig a grave for Sam. Kane had not realized how much his wounds had weakened him and he had to pause often and rest on the shovel. After an hour, he judged the hole deep enough to keep out coyotes and he laid the old man to rest.

  The marshal stood at the side of the grave and in a tuneless baritone sang “Shall We Gather at the River?” His singing was not great, but his respect and affection for Sam Shaver was.

  Shall we gather at the river,

  Where bright angel feet have trod;

  With its crystal tide forever

  Flowing by the throne of God?

  His voice cracking with emotion, Kane struggled to finish the rest of what he remembered of the hymn.

  Yes, we’ll gather at the river,

  The beautiful, the beautiful river;

  Gather with the saints at the river

  That flows by the throne of God.

  He had, he decided, given Sam a crackerjack send-off and if the old man had kin and he ever ran into them, he’d be sure to tell them so.

  Kane led the horses from the trees and hitched the mustang to the prison wagon.

  Only Jack Henry had a horse; Stringfellow and the others would be walking. Men wearing boots didn’t cover a lot of ground fast, and even with the wagon he’d catch up with them before they reached the mountains.

  He saddled the sorrel and tied it behind the wagon. Then he climbed stiffly into the driver’s seat and moved out. The Little River lay just to the north, and the marshal figured the convicts would have already crossed, unless it was running white water. They would then be in the southern reaches of the Ouachitas. By the end of the day, if Kane was lucky, the higher peaks and ridges of the mountains should be in sight.

  It all depended on the current mood of the capricious Little.

  Chapter 17

  Kane was lucky, and that meant the convicts had been too.

  The heavy summer downpours had ended and the fall rains had not yet begun in earnest. No longer swollen by flood waters, the river was slow moving and sluggish. Heavy vegetation grew down to the banks, including cottonwoods, hardwoods and a few enormous bald cypress trees, some of them a hundred feet high. Mallards and wood ducks floated in the sloughs and oxbows, and Kane caught sight of a huge tom turkey that waddled out from the brush, spotted him and dashed into cover again.

  His leg had stiffened up badly and he climbed down from the wagon
with difficulty. He untied the sorrel and swung into the saddle. At this point the riverbank was high and deeply undercut and ran with maybe four feet of water. Kane rode downstream and after a few minutes found what he was after.

  Here the water flowed only through a central channel, hemmed in on both sides by wide sandbars. The banks sloped gradually to the river and although the channel churned with a stretch of white water, it was shallow and would not impede the wagon.

  Kane rode back the way he’d come but stopped and slid his Winchester out of the scabbard when he sighted a deer picking its way through the brush to drink at the river.

  He shot the deer at the water’s edge. It meant he’d have to drag the carcass back through thick brush, but he needed meat and had to take the shot when it was presented to him or go hungry.

  It took Kane twenty minutes to drag the deer onto flat grass and by then he was used up. His wounded leg throbbed and he felt dizzy and sick. No question now of heaving the carcass behind his saddle. He’d have to dress it right where it was and pick up the meat when he returned with the wagon.

  The marshal skinned and butchered the deer and wrapped the meat in the hide. He rode back to the wagon, tied the sorrel and climbed into the seat. There were coyotes lurking around when he loaded the venison into the back of the wagon.

  “You’ll get your share,” he yelled. “Plenty left for everybody.”

  Then he drove the wagon down the shallow bank and crossed the Little. The river gave him no trouble and even the sandbars held firm under the wheels. Behind him the coyotes were already quarreling over what was left of the deer carcass.

  The marshal drove north for three hours, keeping in sight a wide creek to the east. Through a screen of cottonwoods and pine he caught glimpses of white rapids, but mostly the water was smooth and shallow, eddying into narrow sloughs and small, oxbow lakes.

  The sky was clear and a long-sighted man like Kane could look ahead for miles. Already the Little Cow peak was in sight, and beyond that, the thin blue spine of Walnut Mountain rose eighteen hundred feet above the flat. These mountains had once rivaled the Rockies in height and majesty, but, long since eroded into nubbins, were now only apologetic shadows of their former selves.

  Kane had seen no sign of Stringfellow and the others. It was as if they had vanished from the face of the earth.

  The sun had just begun its slow slide into afternoon when Kane pulled closer to the creek. He was tormented by hunger, something his growling stomach would not let him forget.

  He unhitched the mustang and let it and the sorrel graze. He lit a fire among the cottonwoods and to his joy discovered that at some time Sam had spilled salt in the supplies drawer. It was a small amount to be sure, a few grains, but enough to flavor the venison steak he broiled over the fire. Wishful for coffee, but having none, he drank muddy creek water.

  After he ate, Kane sat against a tree and smoked a cigarette. Much addicted to the habit Texas wad-dies had eagerly borrowed from Mexican vaqueros, he was immensely displeased that his tobacco was getting low. He might not be able to buy more until he reached Fort Smith. The unbidden thought came into his head, as though spoken by someone else: “If you reach Fort Smith, you mean.”

  Kane scowled. That thought didn’t please him either.

  Gloomy as he felt, he decided to compound his misery by checking his leg. To his surprise the wound was no longer as angry and red, and there were no maggots, which were always a sign of infection. The gunpowder had blackened the skin and burned him, but the pain was less and for that he was thankful.

  He rose, adjusted his gun belt and doused the fire with water. He hitched the mustang and tied up the sorrel, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Where were the convicts?

  He must surely be gaining on them—unless they had doubled back and were now hightailing it for Texas. Or they could have headed west, into the broken, hill country south of the blue-smoke Kiamichi Mountains. If they had, he’d never find them, not trying to cross rough country with a heavy wagon and a played-out mustang dray.

  An hour later, as Kane tried to remember the location of the thread of trail that led over a saddleback ridge on Walnut Mountain, his eyes scanned the rolling land ahead of him and the banks of the creek, anywhere men might camp or a bushwhacker might hide. He had hunted men before and he watched for signs—a sudden movement, a change in the shadow patterns, a glint of steel—but the marshal saw nothing, only the lonely tossing of the long grass and the movement of the cottonwoods. Ahead, he could make out the oak, hickory and pine forests on the slopes of the Walnut, a dark green mantle that allowed only a few glimpses of iron gray rock to show.

  He hoorawed the mustang up a gradual slope scattered with late-blooming wildflowers, and when he topped out on the rise he saw the wagon. It had been pulled up near the creek and beside it stood a woman and a child. The girl clung to her mother and they looked helpless, aimless, like people just standing around because they had nowhere else to go.

  Even at a distance Kane recognized them, Lorraine Hook and her daughter Nellie. There was no sign of Barnabas.

  Kane drove toward the woman, a flurry of quail scattering from under the mustang’s hooves. He waved, but Lorraine did not wave back. She and her daughter stood where they were, emotionlessly watching him come.

  The marshal drew rein on the mustang and looked down at Lorraine. He tried for levity and smiled. “Lost?”

  The woman just stood and stared at him, and Nellie’s eyes were wide and frightened in her pale face. Kane studied the wagon. It looked as though it had been thoroughly looted, a few items of women’s clothing scattered over the grass.

  “Six men,” he said, “only one of them mounted. Another missing a thumb. Am I right on that?”

  “The man on the horse was called Jack,” Lorraine said. “He killed Barnabas.”

  Kane climbed down from the wagon and stood opposite the woman. “How did it happen?”

  Lorraine’s face was like stone, her eyes steady, betraying no feelings of any kind. She looked tired, older. “They came down on us and said they would take our horses and whatever else they needed. Barnabas was always a hothead. He cursed them and went for his shotgun. The man called Jack threw a loop on Barnabas. Then he dragged him from the wagon. He rode up and down, dragging Barnabas behind him. Over there in the long grass. The others were laughing, slapping their thighs. They thought it was funny.”

  Lorraine’s voice was flat, almost disinterested, her face locked tight, like a company secretary reading the minutes of the last board meeting.

  “When Barnabas was dead, and it took a while, they unhitched the team and cleaned out my supplies. They took the shotgun and a revolver with them.”

  “Did they . . .” Kane searched for a way to say it, but his face revealed what he was thinking.

  “To me? No, Marshal Kane, they didn’t. They wanted to be cruel. They wanted so much to be cruel. A couple of them said they’d take me, but a big, bearded man with hollow eyes—”

  “Buff Stringfellow.”

  “—laughed and said, ‘Hell no, she’s too damn ugly to . . .’ Well, I’m sure you know the word. It was cruel, and the others thought it was funny, so they left me alone.”

  “Nellie?” Kane asked. He dreaded the answer.

  “Nellie doesn’t talk anymore. Nor does she know who I am.”

  Sickness, and a ferocious, clawing anger, crawled in the marshal’s belly. He did not want to know more. Like the endless killing, it was the path to madness. He looked around him, not trusting himself to speak.

  Finally he said, “Sam is dead. They killed him too.”

  Lorraine’s face looked hurt, her eyes showing sadness at the news.

  “Where’s Barnabas?” Kane asked. He’d been about to say, “the body,” but changed it to the man’s name at the last moment.

  “He’s buried over there, by the bend of the creek. They left a shovel for me to bury him, but I didn’t have the strength or the will, so
he lies shallow, and when the coyotes come they’ll find him.”

  Kane now asked the question he realized he should have asked earlier. “When did this happen?”

  “Just after sunup. We had broken camp and were about to ride out when they came down on us.”

  Kane glanced at the sky and the falling sun. It was about three in the afternoon. They were only six or seven hours ahead of him. “Which direction?”

  “North. They headed north for the mountains.”

  Kane looked toward the sharp backbone of the Walnut. The draft horses they’d taken were big, strong animals. They could ride two-up on the Percherons and with the fifth man up behind Henry they’d cover ground. There was no hope of catching them before they cleared the ridge and rode down into rolling country south of Rich Mountain, yet another rocky rampart that rose more than two thousand feet above the flat.

  Lorraine interrupted his thoughts. “You are going after them.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Kane nodded. “I’ll bury Barnabas deeper and camp here the night.” He looked at Lorraine. “I can’t leave you here. You and Nellie will have to come with me.”

  At the mention of her name the child looked up at Kane with blank eyes. Then she buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. Lorraine put her hand behind the girl’s head and held her closer.

  “We’d only slow you down. You’ll leave us here and go after them, Logan Kane, and you’ll kill every man jack of them.”

  Again, Kane hunted for words. Finally he said, “Ma’am, I intend to arrest those men and take them to Fort Worth. Judge Parker and the law will kill them.”

  Malice flashed in the woman’s eyes. “What’s the matter, Marshal, have you lost your belly for killing?”

  Now the words came easily. “Yes, exactly that. Lorraine, a few nights ago I killed men. One of them . . . I saw my bullets explode his face into blood and bone. I never want to see that again. I don’t ever again want to take a brave man’s life like that.”