Ralph Compton The Convict Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Ma?” he yelled into the gloom. “Where are you, Ma?” The crows hopped and flapped and screeched. “Maaa . . . maaa . . . ,” they mocked him. The fog pressed against Kane’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

  “Marshal!”

  Kane heard Vito crashing toward him. The man emerged from the mist. “Where the hell are you going? You were yelling like a crazy person.”

  Kane turned, blinking. “Going? I—I don’t know where I was going.”

  “Look,” Vito said. He pointed above him where the mist was clearing, slim tendrils of gray fading in the morning light.

  “Coffee’s on the fire,” Vito said. There was an odd uncertainty in his voice, as if he were confronting something he did not understand. “Then we have to ride.”

  Like a man in a daze, Kane allowed himself to be led back to the fire, Vito’s steadying hand on his elbow. He didn’t realize it then, but he would later: it was the only time in his adult life that he’d allowed another man to touch him.

  Kane sat by the fire, accepted the coffee Vito handed to him and built a smoke from his thin sack of tobacco. “Mist is almost completely gone,” he said.

  The other man nodded. The ridge of the mountain was already visible, a line of stunted oaks revealing their struggles with cold, wind and thin, rocky soil. “Sun’s coming up,” Vito said.

  Warm light was blading through the pines, and flying insects danced among them like tiny scraps of white paper.

  After a tremendous struggle with himself Kane said finally, “I reckon I was sleepwalking, huh?”

  To his surprise, Vito shook his head. “I heard it too, I think. In my sleep, I heard a woman’s voice calling out for you. I thought maybe it was Lorraine, but it didn’t sound like her.”

  “The crows?”

  “I didn’t hear the crows, no.”

  “It was my ma’s voice. She . . . died when I was fourteen.”

  Vito hurriedly crossed himself. “Marshal, when we are awake or asleep, we are surrounded by spirits. Some come from heaven, others from hell, but the ones that disturb us the most are the ones born of our own conscience.”

  “You think my mother is one of those?”

  “That is for you to know, not me.”

  Kane looked at Vito over the rim of his cup. “My ma and pa and my two sisters died of the cholera. I left them lying, unburied, in the cabin and ran away.” He drew deep on his cigarette. “We lived in a valley back in east Texas where my pa tried to farm. It was cattle range, an inch of soil lying on top of bedrock. In the end the land killed him, and Ma as well. When the cholera came, they were too wore out from hard work to fight it.”

  “And your sisters?”

  “They were frail little things from the beginning. They couldn’t fight it either.”

  “And now your mother calls out for you.”

  “Yeah. She and the others want to lie under the ground. A proper burial with the words said over them. See, the farm was in a place nobody ever visited, except maybe a Comanche passin’ through. Ain’t a living soul going to go there and see to a burying. Only me.”

  “You’ll go back one day?”

  “I was thinkin’ maybe right after I deliver my prisoners to Fort Smith.” Then, as though the words had a will of their own, Kane said, “I was also thinking of askin’ Lorraine and Nellie to come with me.”

  Had he actually said that? He must have, because Vito was smiling at him.

  “You could do worse. Lorraine is a fine woman, and her daughter needs love and care.”

  Kane threw his cigarette butt into the fire. “Damn it, you city folks get into a man’s head. I haven’t talked this much since I was a younker.”

  Vito laughed. “I’m Sicilian, and that’s what we do best, talk. Of course we like to eat and sing and fight and lie with women, but most of all, we love to talk.”

  “Must be right lively, that family of yours back in New Orleans, with all that talkin’ and singin’ and fightin’ an’ lyin’ with women.”

  “It is.” Vito grinned. “And I have a large family.” Kane rose to his feet. “Let’s ride, talkin’ man. We got ground to cover.”

  “Feeling better now, Marshal?”

  “Right now, I’m feelin’ about as good as I ever get.”

  Kane and Vito Provanzano rode down from the mountain under a broken sky where storm clouds were gathering. The rising wind that had dispersed the mist was blowing hard and cool from the north, and a few drops of sleet tumbled in the air. Despite the morning light, the land around the riders was a uniform dull gray, streaked with black shadows, like a smeared watercolor.

  Kane shrugged into his slicker and Vito retrieved a wool coat of dark blue with caped shoulders. The garment was, he assured Kane, an English coach coat tailored by Simpkins & Sons of Bond Street, London. It had been given to him by his family for services rendered at the docks, and was expensive, even by New Orleans standards.

  “Suits me just fine, doesn’t it?” Vito asked, looking down at himself as he preened the fine cloth against his chest.

  The marshal wanted to tell him that he looked like an Eastern dude who’d come to the West for his health. But he contented himself with a vexed harrumph that said nothing but implied everything.

  “Well, anyway,” Vito said defensively, “I think it looks just dandy.”

  Kane led the way around the great southern loop of Rich Mountain, crossing the Arkansas line, then swung north. An hour later they rode through Eagle Gap, the looming, forested bulk of Shut-in Mountain rising to their east, its ridge hidden by low clouds.

  Drifting northeast across rolling, long-riding country, Kane fretted about the worsening weather. From horizon to horizon the sky was iron gray and there was more sleet cartwheeling in the wind than rain. The marshal reckoned the temperature had plunged twenty degrees since they’d left Rich Mountain and fingers of icy air probed inside his slicker. The healing wound in his thigh was throbbing, from cold he guessed, and his cheeks and lips were starting to chafe, rubbed raw by the wind.

  Despite his thick coat, Vito seemed chilled and uncomfortable, and when he turned questioning eyes to Kane, he looked what he was—a city boy completely out of his element.

  There was a time when Logan would have kept silent and let the man suffer, but now he was moved to say, “We may have to find a place to hole up until this blows over.”

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” Vito said, shivering. He looked at Kane. “What kind of godforsaken country is it that can be sunny one day, freezing the next?”

  Kane smiled, unwilling to bend any further. “The West ain’t easy—it’s hard, and it sure introduces a man to himself. Fact is, the only easy place you’ll find in this country is the grave.”

  “Well, Marshal Kane, that cheers me up to no end,” Vito said. “You got any more words of wisdom?”

  “Yeah, I do. I been smelling smoke in the wind for the past five minutes. And smoke means people, and not too fur away either.”

  Vito’s voice sounded a note of alarm. “You reckon it could be the convicts?”

  “I doubt it. We’re way to the east. Like I said earlier, I’m sure Stringfellow and his bunch will head north, strike direct for the Indian Territory.”

  Kane drew rein, pointing to his left. “And lookee there. If that ain’t a settlement, then I’m seeing things.”

  Chapter 23

  The two men rode closer and Kane realized that calling the place a settlement was a gross exaggeration. Two adobe-fronted structures, which looked to be a saloon and a small general store, were dug into a steep hillside. A pole corral sagged out front and a screeching windmill pumped water into an open ditch that ran too close to an outhouse and a few storage sheds. A lean-to stable with a tar-paper roof stood beside the corral, and under its lean protection there were already four saddled horses, mustangs by the looks of them.

  During the Apache wars the saloon may have prospered since army supply wagons and cavalry patrols often passed this way. But now,
in a time of peace, the place looked seedy and run-down, an impression that grew stronger as Kane rode nearer.

  The wind drove stinging sleet into their faces as Kane and Vito rode up to the front of the saloon. A balding man wearing a filthy white shirt, open black vest and a surly expression stood in the doorway, a matchstick bobbing in the corner of his mouth.

  “Howdy,” Kane said, prepared to be civil. “We need a place to put up our horses, an’ hay if you got it, an’ oats.”

  “Stable’s over there.” The man indicated with a slight movement of his head. “Surprised you didn’t see it as you rode in. It’s big enough.”

  Kane held his temper. “How about the feed?”

  “I don’t have no oats, but there’s a bale of hay in there.” The man’s sly eyes had run over the two good horses and booted Winchesters, and it seemed he’d decided to be friendlier. “Name’s Ben Levering. I’m the proprietor of this establishment. I got whiskey inside and three young Lipan gals. Take your pick, boys, or take ’em all. I guarantee there ain’t one of ’em older than fifteen.”

  Kane ignored that. His gaze moved to the general store where its buffalo skin door was swaying in the wind. “We need supplies, coffee, sugar, bacon an’ flour, enough for three, four days. Oh yeah, an’ rolling tobacco.”

  Levering elbowed off the door frame. For the first time Kane noticed the Remington stuck in his waistband under the vest. “Can do ye tobacco, salt pork an’ coffee. There ain’t nothin’ else. It’s the same grub I serve up inside.”

  “Then it will have to do,” Kane said. He glanced at the angry sky. “We’ll rest here until this clears an’ then ride on.”

  Levering shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He vanished inside, the rough, unplaned pine door slamming shut behind him.

  “Friendly place,” Vito said.

  “It’s out of the sleet an’ cold,” Kane said. “It’ll do.”

  They put up their horses in the lean-to, threw them a generous amount of hay and walked back to the saloon.

  The inside of the saloon was as unprepossessing as the front. It was small and narrow, the roof beams hung with rusty bear traps and scraps of mildewed horse harness. The bar, a pine plank thrown across a couple of barrels on the dirt floor, was opposite the door. A shelf behind the bar held several bottles, all without labels, and an embroidered sign in a frame that read HAVE YOU WRITTEN TO MOTHER?

  Four bearded hard cases, dressed in long fur coats and battered hats, crowded around the only table, playing poker with greasy cards. A bottle sat in the middle of the table and glasses filled with raw whiskey stood at every elbow.

  The three Lipan girls huddled together in a corner, their hair filthy and tangled, and their dead, black eyes looking at Kane and Vito without interest.

  The place was rank with the smell of sweat, spilled whiskey and the green wood smoking in the potbellied stove to the right of the door.

  But, Kane told himself, it was warm and dry. No—it was downright hot. He opened his slicker and flapped it back and forth.

  Beside him, Vito looked stunned, as though he’d died and had caught his first glimpse of hell.

  The marshal smiled to himself. Vito Provanzano was a long way from the fancy women and luxurious restaurants and bars of New Orleans.

  “Now, what can I do fer you gents?” Levering had his palms on the counter, looking at them. He was smiling, showing a few blackened stumps of teeth. “If’n you want the girls and desire some privacy, take ’em into the store.” His smile widened into a grin. “Cost you two dollars American per girl. Should you kill one, accidental like, it will cost you a hundred dollars or a horse.”

  “Just coffee,” Kane said. He was beginning to nurse an intense dislike for Ben Levering.

  “Ah, very good. Coffee it is.”

  That set the marshal back. He’d expected a surly comment at least, but the man seemed too cheerful and accommodating. Kane felt a tingle of alarm, sensing a threat. Levering didn’t come across as the accommodating type. What was the man up to?

  Levering reached behind him, found two tin cups and looked inside each. He shook his head and tilted out what looked like a dried-up moth from one of them. Then he set the cups in front of Kane and Vito.

  A coffeepot steamed on the stove and Levering brought it to the bar and filled the cups. “Anything else, gents?”

  “Smoking tobacco,” Kane said. “An’ papers if you got them.”

  “Sure do,” Levering said. He was smiling, a network of wrinkles forming around his mud brown eyes.

  The man seemed friendly, but the marshal knew he was taking his measure, maybe summing up in his mind Kane’s likelihood of meeting violence with violence.

  Levering disappeared into the store, and Kane became aware that one of the card players at the table was watching him intently. The man was huge, made bigger by the bear fur coat he wore. His eyes were steel blue, cold and calculating, and a deep, knife scar ran from his left ear to the corner of his mustache. The man’s coat was open and the marshal noticed the black, scalp locks decorating the front of his buckskin shirt.

  Kane had met the big man’s type before, frontier riffraff who lived by plunder, murder and rape. A few years ago, the man and the three others with him had likely been scalp hunters, avoiding Apache warriors but killing women, children and old men for the bounty the governors of Sonora and Chihuahua paid for Indian hair. The going rate had been a hundred dollars for a boy’s scalp, half that for a woman and twenty-five for a child. Since there was little difference between Apache hair and that of Mexican peons, gringo scalp hunters had wiped out whole peasant villages in Sonora, sparing neither old nor young.

  Now the scalp trade was gone, Kane had the feeling that Scar Face was hunting for another line of work.

  Levering laid a tobacco sack and papers in front of Kane, then moved down the bar. The man seemed tense, waiting for something to happen.

  It wasn’t long in coming.

  Kane had just lit a cigarette when the big man rose from the table. The others got to their feet with him. Dirty, shaggy and coarse-skinned with knuckles the side of silver dollars, they looked as though they’d been spawned by the same wild animal. The three men spread out behind Scar Face, their coats open, revealing Colts in crossdraw holsters. All four were staring at Kane, grinning, with no more than a dozen black teeth between them.

  “Kane . . .”

  The marshal nodded, acknowledging Vito’s whispered warning.

  Sleet drifted through the closed shutters of the saloon’s only window and the two oil lamps hanging from the roof beams swayed in an intrusive wind, a string of smoke rising from guttering orange flames. The day had grown dark and parts of the room were lost in shadow. The three Apache girls still stood in the corner, motionless silhouettes in the gloom.

  Logan Kane smiled, looking at the big, scarred man. “What can I do for you boys?” he asked.

  He heard Levering laugh.

  “Mister,” Scar Face said, “my name is Zeke Clum. Mean anything to you?”

  Kane shook his head. “Not a damned thing.”

  The man grinned. “Well, no matter. Here’s how it’s gonna work anyhow. You two leave them Winchesters right where they’re at on the bar, and beside them you lay your belt guns. Then, nice as you please, you walk out of here an’ keep on walkin’.” Clum’s jaw tightened, muscles working under his beard. “Now, I spoke real slow an’ laid it out plain, so there would be no misunderstanding.” He hesitated a heartbeat, then said, “Now, set them irons on the bar.”

  Kane heard Vito’s feet scuff on the dirt floor as he opened distance between them.

  Slowly, Kane moved his slicker away from the star on his gun belt. “You understand this, Clum,” he said. To his relief his voice was steady. “My name is Logan Kane, deputy marshal out of Fort Smith, Judge Isaac Parker’s court. Now, back off or I’ll arrest you for threatening a peace officer.”

  “I don’t give a damn who you are,” the man answered.

 
; A man standing to his right laughed. “Hey, Zeke, it’s been a while since we gunned a lawman, huh?”

  “A fair spell I’d say,” Clum said. His voice hardened. “Put your belt gun on the bar.” His eyes shifted to Vito. “You too, pretty boy. I know you got iron under that fancy coat somewhere.”

  Clum’s thumb was tucked behind his belt, his hand close to his holstered Colt.

  This was the last thing Kane wanted, meaningless death in a dugout saloon that had turned out to be an annex of hell. Desperately, he tried to make it go away.

  “Levering,” he pleaded, “can you do something?”

  The man was grinning. “None of my concern.”

  Kane said, “Yeah, I had you figgered for a no-good tinhorn.”

  “Ah, the hell with all this talk!” Clum went for his gun.

  Kane drew and fired, and a black hole appeared in the middle of Clum’s forehead. The man still stood, dead but on his feet, swaying, a thin trickle of blood running over his nose. Clum’s eyes turned back in his head, showing yellow traced with fine lines of red.

  Vito’s .38 barked spitefully. The man to the right of Clum fired, his bullet kicking up dirt at Kane’s feet. Then he staggered and took a step back, Vito’s lead in him. Kane fired again and again. Clum crashed his length on the floor, and the wounded man next to him, this time hit hard by Kane, threw up his arms and went backward over the table, its spindly legs splintering under him.

  The concussion of the guns had put out one of the oil lamps and Kane saw Levering’s Remington flame in the smoke-streaked gloom. The man’s bullet split the air beside the marshal’s ear. Levering stood behind the bar, his gun two-handed at eye level. Kane and Vito fired at the same time, and Levering slammed against the shelf, smashing bottles, and fell, screeching.

  Three men were down, and the other two wanted no part of it. If they drew, they’d die. It was a simple premise to understand. The men had backed into a corner, their hands high. One of them screamed, “No, no, don’t shoot no more! For God’s sake, we’re out of it.”

  His ears ringing from the gunshots, Kane motioned with his Colt. “Unbuckle them belts an’ let them fall to the floor. Now, damn you! Or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”