Powder Burn

by William W. Johnstone

  “Whatever you say,” Jim said. “I’ll go pick up their horses at the stable.”

  “’Preciate it. I might be a while, but I’ll be along. Ain’t no hurry.”

  After Jim left, Will saddled Buster and Hannah’s horse and loaded the pack saddles on his packhorse and the packs that belonged to Lynch and Hannah on one of the other two. He was ready then to take charge of his prisoner again. Mary followed him to the smokehouse and stood aside while he unlocked the door. “I feed, but she not eat much,” she said. Will nodded, gave the key for the padlock to her, and told Hannah to come outside. He watched her closely as she walked out, squinting to adjust her eyes to the early morning light.

  “Time to get goin’,” Will said to her, and waited for her defiant response, but there was none.

  Without a word, she dutifully put her hands behind her back to be handcuffed, her head bowed slightly. When Will had clamped the hand irons closed, she looked up briefly at Mary and said, “Thank you.”

  Mary nodded and replied, “Good luck to you.”

  All the while, an astonished deputy marshal stood silently witnessing the quiet exchange between the two women, still finding it hard to believe the transformation that had seemingly occurred in Hannah Cheney. Evidently, talking with Mary had caused Hannah to take stock of where her life choices had taken her. Thinking he was wasting time then, he took Hannah by the arm and led her to the horses saddled and waiting. Mary stood in the yard, watching them ride away, Will leading with Hannah’s reins tied to his saddle, and the packhorses following behind. It’s going to take them a long time to get to town, going in that direction, she thought.

  Mary was right, it would indeed take them a long time to reach town, had they continued on that course, but Will had another stop in mind. Hannah felt some concern, for she had a notion that Atoka was not due west from the cabin. She had watched through a crack in the smokehouse door when Jim Little Eagle had departed, and she was certain that he did not ride in this direction. She figured it would do her no good to point that out to Will, however.

  Will continued for over an hour in the same direction, holding Buster to a fast walk, until coming to a shallow creek. He pulled the buckskin to a halt and dismounted, then reached up to help Hannah. Unsure, but knowing she was helpless to resist, she allowed herself to be helped down. “Stay there,” he ordered, then he untied one of the packhorses and retied it to Hannah’s saddle. When that was done, he came back and freed her hands. “Your mama’s alive?” he asked. Hannah nodded slowly. “In a cabin on Blue River?” She nodded again. “You think you can find that cabin?”

  Her eyes suddenly lit up in surprise. “Yes, I know where it is. It’s my aunt and uncle’s place.” She hesitated before asking, “Are you gonna let me go?”

  “I reckon,” he said. “But I don’t know why. I reckon your mama’s lost enough of her family, and she most likely needs your help now. As far as I’m concerned, you never rode with your pa and your brothers. Now, get goin’.”

  She didn’t waste any more time, but climbed up in the saddle immediately. Giving him one long look, she said, “Thanks, I’ll never forget you for this.” Already feeling like a softhearted fool, he made no reply and instead slapped her horse on the rump. As she galloped away, she thought, I knew he had a conscience.

  Will turned Buster back toward Atoka, turning his actions in the last couple of hours over and over in his mind. Right away, he was undecided how he was going to explain to Jim Little Eagle. He had always been honest with the Choctaw lawman, but he was reluctant to admit to him that he had just decided to set Hannah free because he had destroyed her family and her mother needed her. And yet, he didn’t care for the idea of making up a story about how she somehow escaped. Maybe I’ll just tell him she tried to run and I had to shoot her, he thought. Jim would never believe that. Another thought struck him then. I wonder if I had given her a gun if she would have tried to shoot me? He shook his head, trying to rid his brain of the troubling thoughts. “Well, ain’t nothin’ I can do about it now. What’s done is done.”

  * * *

  Seeing the horses tied in front of the jail, Will turned Buster’s head toward them. Inside the small room on the side that served as an office, Jim saw Will approaching, so he walked out to meet him, a look of surprise on his face. “You change your mind?” he asked when Will pulled up and dismounted.

  “No,” Will replied. “I’m headin’ out as soon as I can get those two ready to go. Did they eat yet?”

  “Yeah, I had Lottie fix ’em some biscuits and gravy,” Jim said. “What happened to the woman?” He saw the hesitation in Will’s eyes and came to a quick assumption. “Did you have to shoot her? Did she try to run?”

  Again he hesitated. It would have been easy to simply say yes to both questions and maybe that would be the end of it, if Jim didn’t press for more details. “No,” he finally said. “She didn’t run. I put her on her horse and sent her to find her mama on Blue River. I need to get Jack Lynch to Fort Smith as soon as possible, and I don’t need to have a woman on my hands while I’m doin’ it.”

  Jim didn’t comment right away, taking a few moments to think about it. When he did speak, it was with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. “You think maybe she didn’t really have anything to do with the robbing and murdering?”

  Will shrugged in reply. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe not. I just don’t wanna be slowed down by a woman.”

  Jim nodded. It was easy to see that Will was not completely sure about the decision he had made. “The woman talked to Mary. You know, women talk to other women. Mary thinks the woman didn’t do the bad things her brothers and father did. Not much different from Choctaw, Cheyenne, Comanche, any Indian tribe; wives and daughters have no say in what warriors do. They got no choice.”

  “I reckon you’re right,” Will said, feeling somewhat better about his decision to let Hannah go free. “Well, it’s done, anyway, so let me load up my prisoners, and I’ll get on the trail before I burn any more daylight.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Where’s Hannah Cheney?” Lynch wanted to know when she was not waiting with the horses in front of the jail. Will ignored the question while he prepared his prisoners to ride. So Lynch started to protest. “She’s as guilty as me and Tater. Why ain’t she goin’ with us?” He looked from Will to Jim Little Eagle as if demanding an answer.

  Will locked the hand irons on Lynch’s wrists before pausing to reply. “Because she tried to get away and I shot her,” he finally said, thinking that might influence Lynch’s ambitions for escape, and Will was sure he had them. He glanced at Jim and noticed the faint trace of a smile on the Choctaw lawman’s face. “Climb up in that saddle,” Will said to Lynch, and stepped back to give him room. Since it would be a great deal more comfortable for his prisoners, he didn’t bind their arms behind their backs. He figured there wasn’t much they could do with their wrists handcuffed before them because he intended to lead their horses with their reins tied to his saddle. Even with both hands to grasp the saddle horn, Lynch complained that it was too painful on his wounded shoulder. “Well, if you can’t, I reckon there’s nothin’ we can do about it,” Will said. “You’ll just have to walk till your shoulder heals enough so it doesn’t hurt to get on your horse.” He turned his attention to Tater. “Climb on that horse. We’re fixin’ to leave. Lynch is gonna walk.” The simpleminded outlaw immediately grabbed his saddle horn and stepped up into the saddle. Back at Lynch then, Will said, “You’re gonna have to keep up. Come to think of it, I’d best tie a rope to your horse, so you won’t fall behind.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Lynch muttered under his breath, and reached up to grasp the saddle horn. Emitting a grunt of pain, he placed his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over to flop heavily in the saddle.

  “What I thought,” Will remarked. “Might as well tell both of you, the easier you are on me, the easier I’ll be on you. And just so you understand, my job is to arrest you and deliver you to the
court. Dead or alive, it’s all the same to me, so if you try to run, I will shoot you and save the federal district court the expense of a trial.” He stepped up on Buster and wheeled the buckskin toward the east. With a tip of his index finger to the brim of his hat, signaling a salute to Jim Little Eagle, he started out, his two sullen prisoners trailing behind. Taking a trail he had traveled more than a few times before, he set out for the Sans Bois Mountains, planning to stop to rest the horses at a spot he had also used before.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when they approached the narrow creek that had served him as a campsite once before when transporting a prisoner back to Fort Smith. The sight of the shady creek caused Will to recall that time. Maybe on this occasion, his prisoners wouldn’t attempt to escape. Men and horses were both ready for a stop. By Will’s reckoning, they had covered about twenty miles since leaving Atoka, and he planned to give the horses a good rest, then make another fifteen or twenty miles before camping for the night. By that time, it would be approaching darkness, and they could cook their supper then. For now, he would let them build a fire for some coffee while the horses rested. “It’d sure be a lot easier to build this fire if I had both hands free,” Tater commented.

  “I expect it would at that,” Will replied, but gave no thought toward accommodating him.

  * * *

  There was barely enough daylight left to unload the horses and gather wood for a fire before Will called for a halt by a stream at the easternmost foothills of the Jack Fork Mountains. He purposely picked a campsite at the point where he had parted company with Perley Gates some days before. He remembered that there was good water there as well as a grassy slope for grazing the horses. There was also a stand of young pine trees that provided a handy place to secure his prisoners for the night, and that was his first priority. Once they were bound hand and foot, he proceeded to take care of the horses, then went about making a fire and fixing something to eat.

  “I thought we was gonna ride all night,” Tater grumbled to Lynch, who was tied to a tree a few yards away. “I’m ’bout to starve to death.” He tried to shift around to a more comfortable position on the pine needles, in order to watch their captor better as Will went about the business of frying some bacon.

  Lynch, who was also watching intently, responded gruffly. “He’s gotta get careless sometime. He ain’t gonna be able to watch us every damn minute. If he keeps ridin’ like we done today, we ain’t gonna have more’n two days to figure out how to get him. So we’ve gotta be ready to jump him when we get our chance.”

  “How we gonna get a chance to jump him?” Tater asked. “We can’t do nothin’ tied up like this.”

  “I don’t know,” Lynch said. “When we eat, maybe, if he frees our hands like he did when we stopped back yonder. You just make sure you’re ready when we get the chance.”

  “Just be sure you don’t do somethin’ dumb and get us both killed,” Tater said. He was not sure Will would ever be that careless. “You heard what he done to Hannah.”

  “If he takes us into Fort Smith, we’re gonna hang sure as hell,” Lynch replied impatiently. “If you ain’t figured that out yet, you’re dumber’n I thought. So you better be figurin’ you’ve got two days to live or die.”

  “I reckon you’re right,” Tater conceded.

  Kneeling by the fire, Will was aware of the whispered conversation between his two prisoners. Although he could not hear what they were saying, he could well imagine the topic. Their situation was desperate, and he had no doubts that they would try to escape—it was only a matter of when. This was a clumsy way, and a risky one, to transport two dangerous outlaws, so the outcome depended upon whether or not he became careless. With that in mind, he decided to feed them one at a time, so he wouldn’t have to be concerned with watching them both at the same time.

  When the meat was done, he dropped a couple of pieces of hardtack in the bacon grease without bothering to break off the moldy edges. He figured that eating a little mold was the least of their worries, and frying it in the bacon grease disguised it, anyway. When he was ready, he called out, “Which one of you wants to eat first?”

  “What the hell you mean?” Lynch retorted. “Ain’t you gonna feed both of us?”

  “Why sure,” Will replied, “but only one at a time. So which one wants to eat first?”

  “I do!” Tater responded immediately, causing Lynch to scowl at him.

  “We’re both hungry,” Lynch complained. “Lord knows you ain’t give us much to eat. You ain’t got no worry. We ain’t gonna try nothin’.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Will said. He went to Tater and untied the ropes binding his hands and feet. Then he propped his rifle against the tree, since he needed both hands to unlock the chains binding Tater’s wrists together. As soon as the key turned in the lock, he released it and drew his handgun. “Shake ’em off,” he instructed. Somewhat confused by the process, Tater nevertheless shook his hands free and let the manacles drop to the ground. “All right, walk over to the fire and sit down, Indian style,” Will said. Knowing what he meant, Tater settled himself beside the fire with his legs folded underneath him. Will holstered his pistol and picked up his rifle again. Then he sat down on the other side of the fire where he could watch Tater eat.

  Back at his tree, still fuming, Lynch watched the careful procedure. It was obvious that the deputy intended to take every precaution to minimize their chance of escape. He decided that it was going to be up to him to make the move and take the first opportunity that came along, no matter his odds. “You ain’t the only one that’s hungry,” he yelled at Tater after his partner appeared to be in no hurry to finish his coffee. It was clear to him now that the slow-witted Tater was not going to initiate any attempt on his own. In fact, he seemed content to go along peacefully to his hanging. The thought was enough to cause a sharp stab of pain in Lynch’s shoulder, reminding him of his wound again and the handicap it might be. I don’t give a damn, he thought, I ain’t going to no hanging.

  When Tater finished his supper, Will let him answer a call from nature, holding his rifle on him, even though he complained that he couldn’t “go” with somebody staring at him. Will shook his head impatiently, unwilling to go through with the procedure he had followed to accommodate Hannah’s reluctance. “Just turn around and pee,” he ordered, “or wet your pants later.” Tater did as he was told. When he was finished, Will returned him to his tree and secured him for the night. Then he repeated the procedure with Lynch, and unfortunately for the outlaw, there was no opportunity for an escape attempt. When Lynch was put away for the night, Will ate his supper. When he was finished, he led Buster up near the fire and tied him to a tree. Then with his rifle beside him, he settled down for the night, knowing the big buckskin would alert him if anyone was moving around him.

  The night passed without incident, and Will had the two stiff and complaining outlaws in the saddle soon after daylight. “We’ll ride till the horses need rest, then we’ll eat,” he said, and they were on their way toward the Sans Bois Mountains to the east. It was obvious to Jack Lynch that Will was going to continue working the horses long and hard in order to reach Fort Smith as soon as possible. And every mile traveled brought him closer to Judge Isaac Parker’s court and the gallows that awaited.

  Will didn’t want to push the horses too hard, in spite of his desire to complete the journey as soon as possible. But he had a specific spot in mind that he wanted to reach before stopping. There was a tree-lined ravine leading down from the southern side of the mountains with a strong stream in the center of it. It was an ideal camping site, as evidenced by several old remains of fires. In this case, it suited Will’s needs for a rest stop. There was good water and good grass, plus a stand of oak trees that provided plenty of dead limbs for a fire.

  It was past the middle of the morning when they finally reached the ravine, and Will decided he had best allow plenty of time for the horses to rest. When he had taken care of the horses, he
allowed Lynch and Tater to have their hands free to eat their breakfast, as he had done the day before. And, as before, he made coffee and cooked their food before he cooked his. When they were finished, he walked them downstream to take care of business, then tied them to a couple of trees in a clump of young pines on the other side of the creek. With a little distance between him and his prisoners, but not so much that he couldn’t watch them, he sat down to have his breakfast.

  * * *

  “Looks like there’s somebody in our campin’ spot, Merle,” Winona Sylvester said to her husband.

  Merle rose up a little from the wagon seat and stretched his neck in an effort to see better. “Sure is,” he agreed. “Feller by hisself, looks like, but he’s drivin’ a lot of horses somewhere.”

  “He’s just settin’ there by the fire,” Winona said. “Wonder who he is?”

  They usually stopped by this stream to rest the mules on their trip to Tom Beamer’s trading post north of the Sans Bois Mountains. They made the trip only twice a year, and on this day they were on their way back to their farm ten miles south of the mountains. “Ain’t no tellin’,” Merle said, answering her question. “Don’t look like nobody I’ve ever seen before. Might be a good idea to keep on goin’ and stop somewhere else.”

  “He’s spotted us,” Winona said, for the man by the fire stood up at that point, a rifle in his hand.

  “He’d have to be blind not to,” Merle said, then called out at once to his mules, “Gee up there.” With a slap of the reins, he turned the wagon to the right. But the man was walking at an angle to meet them. “I don’t know what he’s got on his mind. He wouldn’t be the first outlaw on the run to find this part of the territory.” Merle thought about whipping the mules up and making an effort to keep going, but he was afraid that might cause the man to use that rifle in his hand. He reached down beside the wagon seat to reassure himself that his .44 and holster were in easy reach. “I reckon we’ll see what he wants.”