Trail to Cottonwood Falls

by Ralph Compton

  Wade nodded his head in approval. “Give Judge Parker’s clerk the word too. He’ll adjourn court to attend it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ed had begun to realize that all the traffic and congestion going on in the outside hall was part of that man’s court session, being held down the hallway. Prisoners in chains and their lawyers paraded in and out of the courtroom. Marshals with fresh arrests lined them up at the clerk’s desk. Visitors and more quickly packed the hallway, each in some way involved with the federal court system.

  “Just a regular day here,” Wade said to Ed at a break in the deposition session.

  “What else will you need?” Ed asked when they were finished.

  Wade shook his hand. “We should be fine.”

  The mourners at Conway’s funeral were warmed by the afternoon heat. The red clay was piled high beside the grave, and the minister spoke quietly with Mrs. Schaffer on the side. Well dressed in black, she made an attractive widow. Several marshals came in their business suits. They shook Ed’s hand and spoke of their gratitude for him taking the time and effort to bring Conway’s body back for the services and recognition.

  “Most would have buried him there,” one man said, and shook his head.

  Heads swiveled when a buggy and driver arrived.

  “That’s Quince, his lawyer, and Conway’s ex-wife,” one marshal leaned over and explained.

  Ed thanked him, taking a place beside Mrs. Schaffer.

  “She came for the life insurance?” she asked under her breath.

  “Damned if I know.”

  “I’m ordering him a tombstone. She won’t be on it.”

  Ed nodded and looked up. A cab was coming.

  “That’s Judge Parker,” someone said and they waited for a straight-backed man with a goatee to get out with Marshal Wade and join them.

  The service was brief. Three women sang two hymns, and the minister closed it in prayer. Ed watched the judge go by and toss a handful of red clay in on top of the casket in the grave.

  “That’s Cherokee tradition,” she said under her breath.

  Then the judge talked to Wade, who pointed to Ed on the far side of the crowd. Parker came over to shake his hand and nod to Mrs. Schaffer. “Good to meet you, Mr. Wright. Marshal Wade told me of all you have done on this matter. We are all grateful. A very conscientious thing you did, bringing his remains back for interment here. Not many men would have done it.”

  “It was left to me.”

  “The federal court thanks you, and if we can reimburse you in any way . . . ?” He waited for a reply.

  Ed shook his head. “Conway was a good man.”

  “Thanks again.”

  When they were at last alone, Ellie grew teary and dabbed her eyes on the way to the wagon. “Why refuse his money?”

  “I didn’t do this for money. I did this for Conway.”

  “Ed Wright, you have convictions that few men possess.”

  He shrugged and halfway lifted her lithe body onto the seat. “I don’t know about that. I just wanted it right. He tried to lead me to those killers and I owed him.”

  She finished putting a blanket over her shoulders and clapped him on the leg. “If I can ever help you, holler.”

  “I will.” He clucked to the team, swung them around, and caught sight of two black men filling the grave. He couldn’t forget Judge Parker throwing in the handful of dirt—a Cherokee tradition.

  Later that evening as he and Mrs. Schaffer ate supper, Wade stopped at their table. “I wanted you to know that this afternoon Quince filed a petition for all the rewards and money coming to Bruce Conway for his wife to receive.”

  Ed raised up in the chair. “What did you do about it?”

  “I told him if he didn’t want to be slapped with a bigamy rap, he better withdraw it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Smiled like he does and took the papers with him.”

  Ed nodded at Ellie. “Mrs. Schaffer said she came today for his life insurance.”

  “She tried, anyway. I’m certainly pleased to meet you today, ma’am.”

  “Why, Marshal Wade,” she said in her finest Southern drawl. “You’re ever up my way, I always have a meal ready for a lawman.”

  “I shall. When do you leave, Ed?”

  “In the morning. Fort Worth stage leaves at six a.m.”

  “Will you be going home too?” Wade asked Ellie.

  “Yes, in the morning too. Ed arranged for Marshal Clark to show me home. Clark has business out west.”

  Wade smiled. “I bet he does. Both of you, thanks. You did Bruce Conway proud today.”

  Chapter 17

  The coach seats were leather-covered and filled with horsehair, and gave little padding for his butt or back as he slumped under his blanket and tried to sleep. A picture of Mrs. Schaffer remained in his thoughts, of when he gave her a final hug in the cold gray light of the alley. She had waved to him as she mounted the seat beside the lanky marshal for the trip home.

  He’d be in San Antone in four days, if he survived. No word around Fort Smith of the Bradys’ whereabouts, though Wade had promised to send him any news he heard about them. Only able to doze until a pitch of the coach awoke him, he wondered what was happening in Texas. How many had signed on with a woman to take their cattle north?

  He decided to stop over a night in Fort Worth when the stage reached there. Down in the livestock market district, where some local slaughter operations were carried out, horses, mules, and cattle were bunched for the trail north. Nearby, an element of tough thugs, gamblers and riffraff gathered in the saloons and brothels. There might be someone down there knew something about the Bradys. He watched the winter brown hills when the temperature warmed enough to put up the canvas covers and let some of the rank body odor out of the cramped coach. A stew of sweat, cigars, and bad whiskey mixed with infrequent farting made the air inside the coach resemble a raw outhouse and saloon combination. Then a drummer got sick and didn’t get his head out the window soon enough, and the sourness of puke only stacked on top of the rest. He’d damn sure be ready for Fort Worth.

  He was grateful there were none of the opposite sex on board this trip. His slovenly companions were mostly salesmen with small sample suitcases, and plenty of pints of whiskey in their boot vamps—original bootleggers, ’cause any whiskey in the Indian Territory was illegal. They also pissed close to the coach when the stop was made in the absence of any females. This saved them from a trip to hell into the violent-smelling, foul places called “facilities out in back” by the better-spoken drivers and crappers by the rest.

  Food was never good at such stopovers, and every fifteen miles or so they changed horses at one of these outposts. One look at the scruffily dressed, unbathed help, fly-specked tables, and grease-smeared plates turned most away, but for the iron-stomached ones. Ed kept to his diet of jerky from his pocket, only drinking some of the bad coffee, so he didn’t have to sip on the larva-infested water available. At least in the hot coffee they could no longer swim.

  It rained the last day of the trip to Fort Worth. The muddy ruts were deep and made the coach swing hard on its leather hangers. The tossing around of the passengers added to their upset stomachs and the vomiting grew worse. So bad that Ed finally rode on top, wrapped in his slicker against the drizzle and endured rather than stay down there.

  “You going on?” the gruff-talking driver asked him as he held the ribbons to the four horses in his gloved hands.

  “After a bath, and a night’s stay in a real bed.” He turned his head from the cold drizzle and pulled down his wet hat brim.

  “Can’t blame you. This the damndest bunch of drunks I ever hauled. For ten cents I’d leave them all at some isolated station, ’cept the damn swampers there would get back at me for doing it.” Then he gave a big belly laugh and leaned in to make the horses keep up the pace despite the mud wearing them down.

  His canvas coat’s collar turned up and bushy gray mustache twi
rled at the ends, he looked like the captain in charge, on the edge of the bench in the box, his goal getting there on time despite the uncooperative weather, horses, and mud occasionally flung at them.

  “What the hell do you do for a living?”

  “I used to be a trail drover.”

  The man turned and looked at him hard. “Well, what do you do now?”

  “Run some cows in the hill country. Near Banty.”

  “I’d like that a damn sight better than driving this rig.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “Guess you been on a cattle-selling deal.”

  Ed shook his head and gripped the iron railing to hang on as the coach swayed from side to side in the ruts. Someone below threw his head out a side window and loudly retched.

  “I had a partner who was murdered last fall by some outlaws. I was up in the Nation looking for them.”

  “Do any good?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got lots on your mind, I can see that. All you needed was a bunch of dumb drunks to share the damn coach with. Life’s hell at times—get over, damn you!” he shouted and leaned to rein the horses hard aside for a fallen tree in the road. His run-down boots planted on the dashboard, he fought them to the left and the stage lurched as if it might tip, then righted itself and he swung them back.

  “Good job,” Ed said, impressed.

  “Hell, that was easy.” He laughed again and then shouted at the slacking horses to hurry. Slapping them with the lines, he drove on. “It’s the real wrecks that are tough avoiding.”

  In Fort Worth, Ed found the too-hot, steamy bathhouse, and a small Oriental took his clothing to wash and iron while he smoked a cigar and lounged to his neck in hot water. At last, shriveled but clean, he climbed out, dried himself with the Turkish towel, and put on a robe to wait on his clothing. The place was devoid of any business and warm, so he soon dozed in the corner.

  “Clothes all clean—” The boy awoke him, holding his folded clothing, and he nodded. How they did all that in that short a time he never knew. But at last, dressed and back in his slicker and hat, he hitched the six-gun on his hip and headed for a real meal and a bed.

  A swish of moisture sprayed his face and every porch roof of the businesses along the street made small waterfalls off of their eaves.

  “Honey,” a gal gasped, and hung herself on his arm. A short young doxy, with her hair all wet and plastered to her head. She looked slender and less than twenty years old. Beside him she raised herself up and met his stride. “Where you going, darling?”

  “To eat.”

  She blinked her blue eyes at him and then turned back to dodging through the night full of barkers extolling the benefits of their various saloons to the cowboys, gamblers, fancy Dans, and more doves. “I know where you’ll like the food. Want me to take you there?”

  He felt her take charge of more of his elbow and ride familiarly on his arm. “Where’s that?”

  “On the corner. Amos’s.”

  “All right, we’ll eat there.”

  Her slender face lit up at his words. “You won’t regret it, either.”

  “I don’t regret much in this world.”

  “I mean it. Cross my heart.” She put her forehead on his coat sleeve and never missed a step in keeping up.

  “Good,” he said.

  They took a table on the side. He removed his slicker and hat to hang on the hook at the end of the booth. She indicated for him to go in first, then she slid up against him. With his left arm over her shoulder, she grinned like she had possession of him when the waiter came over.

  “What do you drink?” Ed asked her.

  “Beer all right?”

  He ordered two, and two steak dinners with the trimmings.

  “I can’t eat all that,” she said quietly after the waiter had left.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nell, short for Nelly.”

  “Nell, you eat what you want of it.”

  She drove a small breast into his side and rubbed the top of his pants leg with her palm. “I sure like you, mister.”

  “Ed, Ed Wright.”

  “Ed, you live around here?”

  “No, I live at Banty, west of San Antone.”

  “That sounds like a neat place.”

  Rather than explain the dried-up, dusty place tucked away in the hill country to her, he merely nodded, which must have satisfied her. The waiter brought their beers, and some fresh, hot rye bread and a bowl of butter.

  Ed buttered some and it melted in his mouth. He gave her a bite and she smiled like no one had ever done that before. Her wetness was seeping into his shirt and britches. It didn’t matter—she was fresh, and her youthful eagerness was flattering. Besides, he’d been under lots of pressure for several days, bringing back the dead that he wanted to escape from. The damn Bradys were gone again, like smoke. By the time he got back up there, their trail would be cold.

  “You got folks?” he asked.

  She wrinkled her nose. “My maw lives up in Carrol County, Arkansas, with my stepfather.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded and looked at her small, chapped hands. “I decided to come down here after Maw married him.”

  Ed nodded with his mouth full.

  “Kinda dangerous business, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I’s got to eat.”

  He agreed. He couldn’t save every waif. The notion knifed him. The food arrived and they ate it in silence. She consumed half her steak and fried German potatoes, then gave a sigh and sat back.

  “Was I right about the food?” she asked.

  “Good place,” he agreed, forking in a bite of the browned meat.

  She stretched her arms over her head. “I guess when we get done here, we can do business?”

  “What’s the price?”

  “A dollar.”

  He nodded.

  “Too much? I know you fed me.”

  “No.”

  “I’m ugly?”

  “No, Nell. I knowed the time I’d of paid a lot more’n that for a toss in the hay with you. Just sit tight,” he said as she started to scoot away. “I’ve got some problems and new things going on in my life. Things I can’t answer, and all I see this doing is messing it up more. You set to keep doing this business?”

  “Sure. They only pay two bits a day for dishwashers here and I tried it.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And then you can sleep with the cook if you want to keep your job.”

  He shook his head, and raised up to reach in his pants pocket. “Here’s two dollars.”

  “Gosh, mister, what do I need to do for you?”

  He smiled at her. “Just sit there and be yourself.”

  She hugged his arm. “If my daddy hadn’t died I’d be up there at home. He was a lot like you.”

  He wanted to say he wasn’t, but didn’t want to hurt her feelings as she looked downcast.

  She folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll be damned. I never figured this would happen.”

  “There’ll be stranger things than this. Someday you may run across two killers named Brady who I am looking for. They killed my partner on a riverboat. You drop me a line—Ed Wright, Banty, Texas, and I’d sure appreciate that.”

  “Brady?”

  “Yes. Marsh and Corley Brady. They’re killers so be careful. Just a line on where I might find them is all I need.”

  She scooted her butt up tight against his and clutched his arm. “I’ll sure write you, Ed Wright, if’n I ever hear about ’em.”

  After the meal, on a street corner in the drizzling rain, Nell kissed him good-bye standing on her toes. Then he watched her run off and disappear into the inky wet night. Under his reset, sodden hat, he went to find a hotel bed to catch up on his sleep. San Antone and the roan horse were still a few days away. Unita’d have to wait a little longer for his return.

  At dawn, he caught the stage for San Antone and
rocked his way there over the next two cold days. Huddled in his coat, he half slept under a blanket and tried to ignore the drummers passing a pint of whiskey around the coach to warm their inaards. Damn, he sure didn’t need any of that.

  In San Antonio, with his head down to the north wind, he hired a hack and rode out to the roan’s location at his ex-ranger buddy Nichols’ place. A handshake plus a refusal to accept any money for keeping his horse and he was Banty bound. At least he hadn’t gotten lost in some saloon, and he breathed a sigh of relief from the heights west of the Alamo. He’d missed that opportunity.

  He stopped and got his mail in town, then headed for Unita’s to return the roan. Sore and weary from a day and a half in the saddle with only a few hours’ sleep, he sat the roan and looked at the Bar U ranch headquarters on the distant brown slope. Ready for the bath he’d evaded taking in San Antone, so he wouldn’t be tempted to stay around, he reined up and grasped the saddle horn. He guessed she’d take him smelling like an old goat or turn him away.

  Why was he going back there? Besides returning the horse, maybe he was drawn to her by the pleasure he expected, like whiskey. If it wasn’t one thing in his life, it was another. But the thought of her had haunted him in Fort Worth the whole time that doxy Nell had clutched his arm. Strange for him to be admitting it, but he’d done dumber things.

  Dogs barking at him like it was a celebration, Unita came out on the porch drying her hands and squinting against the midday sun. He shook his head in defeat. She sure made his stomach roll around to simply look at her.

  “Ed, I guess you didn’t find them from the long look on your face.”

  He hugged her when they met, halfway to the house, then threw his arm over her shoulder. “It’s a long story. I’m filthy, more whiskers than a billy goat, and—”

  She stopped him on the porch and, after checking around to be certain they were alone, kissed him. Her ripe body squeezed up to him and, the sweet musk of her body filling his cold nose, he felt good for the first time since leaving Fort Smith. Maybe even before then.

  “Some hot food first, and we can heat water for your bath.” She led him inside. “Rosa, heat some water. The errant guy is back.”