Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  Early clung to the steering wheel with one hand while he held tight to his hat with the other, the ride across the hay field and into a distant pasture like that of a bucking horse in a rodeo ring.

  He topped the high ground and stopped, the end of the woods a couple hundred yards below. Early leaned on the steering wheel as he scanned the open fields to the north of the woods. No horse and rider. No horse without a rider. Not even a man on foot.

  Early could see a mile across the valley and, to his right, almost four miles, up toward where the waters of the Black Vermillion mixed with the Big Blue and flowed this way. Cattle country up here on the bluffs, some of the richest soil for farming in the valley below. Memories of his grandfather flowed back to Early. The old man loved the bottoms, called it the garden lands of the state. He had one of the finest peach orchards and grew melons the size of bushel baskets there, down by Bigelow, closer to Manhattan, the county seat town, the college town, home to Silo Tech, as the kids over in Lawrence called Kansas State.

  Early stepped out to stretch. He rarely went armed, preferring talk to weapons. Yet there were those times. So he had the Winchester in the scabbard and his pistol, a military Forty-Five he'd taken off a dead lieutenant in Tunisia's Kasserine Pass and had carried through the war. That pistol usually laid in a holster belt beneath his seat. Early could not have said why, but he took out the holstered gun and strapped it on.

  That done, he got back in his Jeep. Early let out the clutch and guided the machine on a meandering journey back down into the valley. As he approached the Kansas & Nebraska's tracks, a steamer sounded its whistle. Early glanced toward Randolph and a ten-car freight rumbling up the tracks, bound for Maryville in the next county north. He stopped.

  He waited.

  He liked trains.

  In the Dirty 'Thirties, he'd hoboed some, ridden the rails under, in, and on top of boxcars, had crossed the country a couple times before Pearl Harbor. He was in Georgia when the Japanese sank half the Navy. Word traveled through the hobo jungles with the speed of a prairie fire. The next day, Early made his way to Minnville. There he enlisted in the Army along with a hundred sixty-three others, eighteen men, like himself, from the camp under the trestle.

  Early rode the rails some more, this time in troop trains, home after basic training and to NewYork to board a troop ship bound for North Africa. Desert country. He'd never had much use for sand, even less once he got there.

  Early waved to the engineer as the Baldwin I-One-S “hippo” rolled by. He gazed at the engine and the cars with no particular interest until a movement caught his eye, someone waving a hat from the open doorway of a boxcar.

  The cowboy.

  The bank bandit.

  “Sumbitch!”

  Early seethed, waiting for the last cars and the caboose to trundle by. When they did, he bucked his Jeep across the tracks and raced up through the gears, slowing to slide onto State One-Seventy-Seven. Early let out the string. The Jeep's speedometer needle topped seventy-five on the dirt road as he raced after the freight.

  The sheriff paralleled it in three miles. When the fireman and engineer did nothing more than wave in response to his frantic wig-wagging, Early sped on by. Two miles on, where the tracks crossed the road, Early skidded his Jeep to a stop. He grabbed a flare from beneath his seat, lit the flare, and dashed to the tracks. He waved the blazing, spark-showering thing in great arcs, an arm's length over his head.

  This time the engineer responded. Early was sure of it, for the train began to play off speed as it neared the crossing. And then he heard it, the screech of steel on steel, the engine's drive wheels locked up.

  Early jumped to the side as the hippo slid through the crossing, the engineer bellowing, “What the hell's the matter with you, Cactus?”

  “Sorry, Lukey. You got a bandit back in the second boxcar.”

  “The hell you say.”

  But Early didn't hear that. He had his Forty-Five out as he galloped back along the train. When he came to the second boxcar, he stopped. He poked his pistol ahead of him as he eased around the open door. He leaned in.

  “Damn.”

  Empty, except for bags of sugary-sweet-smelling dried beet pulp stacked in a far corner.

  He hunkered down. Early scanned beneath the car, and the cars behind, and the one ahead.

  More of nothing, other than a winged grasshopper that took to the air, green against blue.

  He scrambled up the boxcar's ladder to the roof, but there was nothing on top of the train for the length of it other than a meadow lark that had flown down to the roof of the next boxcar. The bird puffed his speckled chest out and sang of the glories of the day.

  Early holstered his pistol. With disappointment showing in his face and his frame, he slid down the ladder to the gravel of the rail bed.

  There stood a giant of a man, the engineer, smelling of coal dust and lubricating oil, Luke Blackwell. He'd driven the hippo on this run for almost as many years as Early was old.

  “Well?” Blackwell asked.

  Early pulled off his hat. He slapped it against the leg of his tans. “Back there at the crossing outside of Randolph, this guy who tried to stick up the bank, he was sitting in the door of this railcar. The damn yahoo waves at me.”

  “Maybe he made his way back to another car.”

  “It's possible.”

  “Tell you what,” Blackwell said, helping himself to a club wedged behind the ladder of the boxcar, “you go down this side and I'll go down the other. If he's here, we'll catch him.”

  The engineer hefted himself over the coupling between the boxcar and the car ahead of it.

  Early hunkered down again. When he saw the striped legs of the engineer's railroad britches opposite him, he moved out and down the length of the train, peering under and into boxcars. When he came to the two hopper cars, he climbed up their ladders and gandered in to see whether the cowboy might have tried to bury himself in the cargo of grain. The surface would be disturbed. It would show.

  Nothing.

  Just a lot of nothing.

  Blackwell came around the end of the caboose. “He gave you the slip, huh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The engineer put his meaty arm around Early's shoulders as they walked back toward the head of the train. “I won't tell nobody if you won't tell nobody.”

  “Why's that?” Early asked.

  “We railroad men are supposed to catch the bums who hop our trains.”

  “This was no bum, Lukey. Damn, he's familiar. . . . Must of jumped off somewhere in the last five miles.”

  Gravel crunched beneath the men's boots as they ambled on.

  “Well,” the engineer said, “he'd get beat up some if he did because I was doing a good clip. If he didn't break himself a leg though, he's gone.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Cactus, if I were you, I'd call it a day an' go home to that wonderful wife of yours.”

  “Just might do that after I write up the paperwork.”

  “As for me, I got to get this here train up to Maryville an' bring the Nineteen back to the big little city of Manhattan. I won't be done until after ten o'clock.”

  At the cab, Blackwell's fireman leaned out, Oscar Miller, as burly a man as the engineer. He spat a gob of chewed tobacco to the side. “Didn't find nobody, huh?”

  Blackwell grabbed hold of the ladder. He pulled himself up. “False alarm. What say you and I git?”

  “Fine by me.”

  The two railroaders disappeared inside the cab of the hippo. Moments later, the engine snorted as Blackwell put the power to the drive wheels. The knuckles of the couplers banged hard against one another along the length of the train as the freight hauler started to move. Then it became quiet, except for the rumbling of the trucks and an occasional squeal when a wheel flange rubbed against a rail.

  And the train rolled on, disappearing around a bend as it made its way to the northeast.

  Early kicked at the gravel
as he shuffled across the tracks to his Jeep. There he stooped to pull his flare from the dirt where he had jammed it to extinguish the flame. He tossed the flare under the seat, figuring he might use it another time.

  The sheriff did not hurry back to Randolph. He drove slowly, gandering across the way to the railroad tracks, scanning the gravel and the weeds beyond for a crumpled body in case the cowboy killed himself when he bailed out of the boxcar. Early picked up his microphone. “Hutch, you on?”

  “Go ahead, chief,” a voice came over the Motorola.

  “Where you?”

  “Coming up on Randolph from the south.”

  “I'm north, coming in. Meet you at the bank in a couple minutes.”

  “Roger that.”

  Early leaned his windshield forward as his Jeep rambled along. He kicked his right foot up over the glass and rode at ease the last three miles. When he rolled up in front of the bank, there stood Hutch Tolliver, Early's chief deputy, leaning against the back end of his own Jeep, holding the reins of a saddled horse. A paint.

  “Found him out in the field beyond the depot,” Hutch said, nodding at the beast.

  Early came alongside. He ran his hand over the paint's haunch, his fingers stopping on the brand burned into the hide. “Sumbitch. I know who the bandit is.”

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  August 15—Monday Afternoon Late

  The Rocking Horse

  Early slapped the paint's haunch, and the horse hunched up. “See that brand? The Rocking Horse E.”

  “Yeah, Walter Estes's place over by Leonardville,” Tolliver said. “Not the old man.”

  “No, his boy, Sonny. Wiry little guy. Does that Audie Murphy bit with that whispering voice.”

  “You're sure?”

  “Hutch, it all fits. If it weren't for that stocking over his face, I'd of known him right off.”

  Rance Dalby came roaring out the door of the bank, Mavis Anderson half a stride behind. “Well, you catch him?”

  Early let off with a weak laugh. “No. . . . How'd you get out of the vault?”

  “Mavis let me out.”

  The sheriff turned to Dalby's teller. “I thought you told the bandit the vault was on a time lock.”

  “I lied.”

  Early leaned an arm on Dalby's shoulder. “You wouldn't happen to be holding a mortgage on the Estes place?”

  “Yeah, I got the paper.”

  “There isn't anything about it I should know, is there?”

  “Well, old Walter's two years in arrears. Called on him the other day and said we had to work something out or I was going to have to foreclose.”

  Early winked at Tolliver.

  “What's this got to do with anything?” the banker asked.

  “The bandit's Sonny.”

  Dalby's jaw went slack.

  “Uh-huh, Hutchy's got his horse. Look, if Walter's got troubles, they've just doubled. How about you find it in that shriveled-up, old cold heart of yours to let him skate awhile?”

  Dalby swung around, nose to nose with Early. “After his boy tried to rob me?”

  “Come on, Rance.”

  “I don't like this.”

  “There's a lot of things you don't like.”

  “I s'pose,” Dalby said, shrugging.

  “Good enough. You got your horse trailer parked around back?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “We gotta haul Sonny's beast home to the Rocking Horse.”

  Early sent Tolliver west on Sixteen, then south while he hauled Dalby's trailer and the bandit's paint toward the southern climes, then west on County Nine. The lawmen drove the perimeter of a block of farm and ranch land five miles square on the off chance Sonny Estes might try to thumb his way home. Over their radios they filled the air with idle talk as they rolled along, hardly anyone other than themselves out on the county roads as the sun dipped to the west, forming itself into a fireball that grew in size the closer the sun came to the horizon, shimmering the evening air.

  A quarter of the sun had slipped below before Early drove into the lane that led to the Rocking Horse E, Tolliver's Jeep parked beside a gate twenty yards up.

  Early keyed his microphone. “Been here long?”

  “Couple minutes. I'll get the gate.”

  Tolliver killed his Jeep's motor and hopped out. After he opened the ranch gate, he held it while Early drove his Jeep and the horse trailer through, then hitched the gate closed and slid his long frame into Early's passenger seat. “How you want to handle this with old Walter?” Hutch asked.

  Early got the Jeep and trailer rolling while he thought about that. “Oh, I guess I'll dance a little,” he said, clawing at his mustache.

  The lane dipped through a dry wash that ran full in the spring, during the snow melt, and at other times when a stray thunderstorm parked itself close by and dumped a load of water. On the far side of the rise laid a corral and a rough collection of outbuildings. In a grove of cottonwoods beyond stood a low-slung house, its roof swayed from age.

  Early followed the track around the buildings and the corral smelling of dust and dried cow flop. On the back side, the biggest, blackest Newfoundland dog the sheriff had ever seen loped out as a greeting committee of one. He turned parallel to the Jeep and continued along, just beyond Early's reach. When the sheriff stopped in front of the house, the dog parked himself, and his tail stirred the dust.

  “The boss home?” Early asked the dog, his hand out. The dog sworped it with his raspy tongue.

  “Just what I need, a handful of dog spit.” Early rubbed the dog's ears, then went on toward the house. “Walter? Nadine? You home?”

  The screen door squalled open. Out stepped a slightly stooped man and behind him a woman who, from her heft, appeared to enjoy her own cooking. While worry tended to cloud Walter Estes's face, smile lines marked his wife's. She wiped her hands on her apron as she came on down the porch, her arms coming out to embrace the world. “Jimmy, so good to see you,” she said, and hugged him hard.

  Early, struggling for breath, forced a smile. “Nadine, before you say it, I know I should come by more than I do.”

  “But you got your work.” She turned back to her husband. “Don't he look good, Walter? I tell you, him gettin' married to that little Thelma Nelson was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  Walter nodded his agreement, his gnarled hand coming out to shake with his company.

  “So you going to have a mess of children now?” Nadine asked.

  Early blushed through his tan. “Got one on the way.”

  “Oh, Walter, you hear that? Jimmy and Thelma got a baby coming. . . . When's it due, Jimmy?”

  “A little after Thanksgiving. . . . Sonny around?” Early asked, shifting the subject.

  Nadine's face shifted too. Her smile fled. “Oh, you don't know, do you? I'm afraid he's left us.”

  “When this happen?”

  “This morning. Said he was going to go some south in the Flint Hills, get on with a bigger ranch. Said he'd send his pay home, his way of helping out after that barn fire last year.” Nadine put a hand on Early's arm. She looked up in his face. “Why you askin' about Sonny?”

  Early motioned to Tolliver.

  The deputy opened the gate on the back of the trailer. He squeezed in past the horse, then pushed him back out.

  “That's Sonny's,” Nadine said.

  “Kinda thought so.” Early glanced at Walter, the worry lines visibly deepening in the old rancher's sun-crisped face. “Can we set here on the edge of the porch?”

  Tolliver led the horse away toward the corral while Nadine sat down, Walter beside her. It took him longer. He hung onto a porch post and eased himself down, grimacing as his knees and hips bent.

  When Early sat down, the Newfoundland plopped himself in front of the sheriff's boots. He put his head on Early's knees, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.

  Early stroked the big dog's muzzle. “Walter, Nadine, Sonny didn't go south.”


  “How do you know?” Nadine asked.

  “We found his horse in Randolph. Sonny stuck up the bank.”

  What joy remained in the old couple's souls fled. They turned to one another, Nadine reaching for her husband's hand. She squeezed it hard. “Where's our boy?” she asked, a quiver in her voice.

  “He got away.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No. No, not really. . . . If Sonny's smart, he won't come home. Now I know you don't have a telephone out here, but if he does come home, I want you two to promise you'll get word to me. Sonny's got that Forty-Five pistol and, if someone else was to try to catch him, it could go all wrong.”

  Early sat in his Jeep for the longest time when he got home that night—home, a little shotgun house on the edge of Keats. The yard backed up against Wildcat Creek, and the neighbors had warned him away from the house. “You'll get flooded out in the spring,” they said. “Happens about every year.”

  But that made the place cheap, all he could afford when he lost his own small ranch after two bad years.

  It hadn't flooded this year, and Early and his wife counted themselves lucky, but luck wasn't what kept him from going inside. He watched the lightning bug show around the mulberry bushes and the trumpet vines, the air sweet with the smell of the flowers' nectar. Some fireflies even rose up with their winking lights to the lower reaches of a catalpa tree.

  A hand reached out. It tipped his hat forward. “ 'Scuse me, big boy,” a husky female voice said.

  Without even looking, Early reached over for Thelma's hand. “Didn't hear you come out.”

  “Hon, I gave up on you coming in. It's been twenty minutes.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “You and clocks don't have a sympathy for one another, do you?”

  Early went silent. His wife of a year joined in that silence. She was a sprite of a person, the way Early imagined Nadine Estes must have been when she was young. They both had a joy for living that he found remarkable. Nadine had dragooned Early into going to the picnic at the Leonardville Christian Church. He wouldn't have gone on his own for he'd grown up a Baptist over on Troublesome Creek. But there at the picnic he met Thelma—Thelma Nelson, one of the new teachers at the Leonardville school, fresh out of K-State and more than a decade younger than he.