by Tim Champlin
He came toward her. “OK, but this has got to be quick.” He dragged the tin bathtub from under the sink in the kitchen and set it near the stove.
She watched as he pumped four buckets of water at the sink, then poured them into the tub, slopping water on the hardwood floor in his haste. He stoked up the fire and set a pot of water on to heat.
Catching his eye, she gave him a bold look and began unbuttoning her blouse.
He licked his lips and swallowed as he worked, fear and desire in his eyes. “Takin’ a big chance,” he said, splashing another bucket of water into the tin tub.
The water on the stove began to steam, and she slipped off her top and dropped it on the floor. Pointed breasts bouncing, she walked closer as he poured in the hot water to temper the bath. She pretended not to notice him gaping at her as she unbuttoned her riding skirt and let it fall, along with her pantaloons, and stood naked before him. He seemed mesmerized by the sight. Now for the coup de grâce.
“You know, Otto, you’re a good-looking man. Johnny never treated me like a real woman. I’ll bet you would.”
“Yeah…yeah!” He seemed to have trouble getting his breath. Edging toward her, he put out a calloused hand to touch her left breast.
“Not yet,” she said, stepping back. “Let me take a quick bath first. We have plenty of time.” She lifted a leg and tested the water daintily with one foot. “Might be good if you cleaned up a little, too. Maybe scrape those whiskers off.”
He seemed to wake up suddenly. “No, no. They’d wonder why I was shaving in the middle of the week.”
“Then rinse off under the pump. You smell sweaty.” She wrinkled her nose.
He stripped off his shirt and let it hang from his belt while he began working the pump handle on the edge of the sink. He thrust his head under the gushing water, continuing to pump with one hand as the water streamed over his tangled black hair.
While his eyes were closed and the pump clanking, she slipped to the woodbox, gripped a heavy stick of split oak, and came up behind him. Holding her breath, she took careful aim and struck a solid blow just above his right ear. He fell as if he’d been tackled at the knees, rolled limply onto his back, and lay still. She snatched the .38 Smith & Wesson from his holster and drew back, wary, lest he wake up. But the pale, wet face didn’t move, and she had a sudden qualm. Had she hit him too hard, perhaps killed him? She bent down and felt his throat for a pulse. It was steady. She fished in his pockets, found a ratty billfold, and extracted the $11 it contained.
Still naked, she grabbed him by one foot and dragged him to the open cellar door and tumbled him down the four steps. She tilted the heavy door and let it fall into place.
Breathing quickly with fear and excitement, she dressed again, regretting she had no time to enjoy a good bath. Thrusting the stolen gun under the waistband of her skirt, she ran out the back door. At the stable, the only saddle horse left was Otto’s. She snatched the bridle off a nail and slipped it over the horse’s head, buckling it. Then she tied the reins to a stall post while she threw on the saddle blanket, smoothing it into place. Within another minute she had the gelding saddled and led him outside. All clear. No one on the road. She mounted, kicking the horse into a run out the gate, then turned west. This animal was no endurance runner, and could never carry her as far or as fast as she wanted to go.
The horse quickly worked up a lather, his withers heaving. Not wanting to tire him, she slowed to a walk for a mile. Thank God, no one was on the road. She urged him to a trot him for two more miles, until she sensed him laboring again.
A train whistle sounded off to her right. A half minute later, it wailed again—a little closer. Her heart leaped. It was the daily westbound express from Springfield. That was her escape! The train was no more than a mile away, blowing for a crossing. She turned off the road and started through the woods to intersect the tracks. On a tired horse, she had no hope of catching the train if it was moving at full speed. She was roughly thirty miles west of town by now, and the steam locomotives usually stopped at a water tank not far from here. Maybe that would allow her just enough time.
She heard the wail of the steam whistle no more, but pushed her horse as fast as she dared through the rough undergrowth, over rotting logs, around deadfalls and thickets of blackberry bushes. Luckily she encountered no wire fences. Unlike most of the Ozarks, the terrain here was reasonably level.
Could she intercept the train? Surely she deserved a break. Somehow, she must get aboard, whether it was a passenger or freight. The railroad was the quickest and surest way out of this part of the country. It was about the right time for the express that left Springfield every day at 10:50.
Through the trees ahead, she glimpsed a stationary train, and breathed a prayer of thanks. Reining up just where the woods had been cleared for the right of way, she saw the locomotive panting quietly beneath a gushing water spout. She dismounted and slapped the horse on the rump. “Hyah! Git!” The horse lunged away. He’d find his way back to the stable.
Where was the conductor? She’d go aboard and buy a ticket for as far as $8 would take her. The remainder of the $11 would be saved to buy food. Dirty, and with no luggage, a pistol in the waistband of her riding skirt, he’d look askance at her, but what the hell…? If she encountered any local people, it was likely they’d know of the kidnapping. Would they try to interfere with her, or would they welcome her back? Time to find out.
She stepped out, waded through the weeds, and climbed up the sloping rail bed. The counterbalanced water spout was being swung upward. They were about to get under way.
Behind the mogul locomotive and tender was hitched the baggage car, then the Pullman, followed by a dining car, two day coaches, and the caboose.
Nellie walked along the roadbed to the first day coach. The train jerked into motion as she grabbed the handrail and jumped aboard.
Apparently the conductor had seen her approaching, and now accosted her as she mounted the iron steps to the platform at the end of the car.
“You got a ticket?”
She felt his eyes taking in her grubby appearance. “I want to buy one,” she answered quickly, pulling the folded bills from the pocket of her skirt.
“Where to?”
“How far will eight dollars take me?”
He appeared to be making mental calculations. “Sapulpa…a little way beyond Tulsa in the Territory.”
“Is that all?” Her stomach fell.
“When we get on down into the Nations, maybe we could work out some other arrangement so you can go farther,” he said.
She pretended not to see his knowing smile.
“How much is this worth?” she asked, pulling Otto’s .38 revolver.
He looked startled until she turned it, butt first, to him.
“Company can’t take goods in trade for tickets,” he said. “But you and I might make some arrangement between ourselves. I could put in the cash for you. How far you want to go?”
She thought quickly. “New Mexico.”
“Santa Fé?”
“Yes.”
He took the $8, and pulled out a book of tickets, ruffling through them until he found one he wanted. He wrote something on it in pencil, punched both ends, tore it in two, and gave her half. “Here’s a oneway ticket to Sapulpa.” His curiosity was not yet satisfied. “No luggage? No handbag?”
“This was an emergency.”
“Appears so.” He went back inside and she followed, hesitating at the door to scan the faces of the passengers. They were all strangers to her. She sighed with relief for the first time in several days, and took the first empty seat next to a window.
She would not have been so relaxed had she entered the Pullman, two cars ahead.
Chapter Fourteen
“You recognize this hat?” Walter Clayton held out the brown felt headpiece for the clerk in his mercantile to examine.
“Can’t say as I do.” He took it and looked inside at the sweatband. “We don’t c
arry this brand.” He looked at the frowning face of his big boss, the owner of a third of the businesses on this street. “It’s not one we usually stock. It might’ve been part of a special shipment we ordered for a spring sale. But I can’t say for certain it’s one we handled. Exeter is a common brand. As you know, sort of low-end quality.”
“When did we stop marking every piece of our merchandise with my initial?” Walter demanded.
The clerk made a show of looking inside again. “We only ink our regular stock with your tiny C, sir,” he said.
“So you don’t know for a fact that our store handled this particular hat?”
“Well…it looks like one we might’ve sold,” the clerk hedged. “Except, of course, for the hole in it.” He grinned.
Walter Clayton was in no mood for jokes. “You were on duty every working day for the past two or three weeks?”
“Yes, sir. Every day that we were open.”
“By yourself?”
“Most of the time.”
“And you don’t remember selling a hat identical to this one in that time…since the sale last spring?
“Well…it’s hard to recall every piece of merchandise I’ve sold.…”
“Think, man!” Walter thundered.
The clerk jumped.
“This hat looks new,” Walter went on, noting the blank look on the clerk’s face. “Unless the owner put it away somewhere and didn’t wear it, it had to have been bought within the last week or so.”
“Uh…there was that old hermit in here yesterday…what’s his name? I don’t recall.”
“I know who you mean. Go on.”
“Well, he bought a few things…dried beans and such, a shirt and our best pair of leather boots. I wondered at the time how he had enough to pay eighteen dollars for them. But it’s rumored he’s found some buried coins in.…”
“Never mind all that!” Walter snapped. “What about him?”
“Besides some staples and a shirt and pants and boots, he bought a hat like that. Now as I think on it, it was identical. I remember, ’cause he tried it on first and it came down over his ears. Looked like a clown.” He grinned at the recollection. “Thought he’d pick out another one, but he said that one was perfect, even though it was ’way too big for him.”
Walter looked at the size—73/4 What if the old hermit wasn’t buying the hat for himself? For whom, then? Did one of the Newburns have a head that big? But why would the recluse be shopping for them? It didn’t make sense.
* * *
“He goes by the name Uncle Billy,” Johnny informed his grandfather when Walter put the question to him outside on the street a half hour later.
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing much. Hear tell he came here a few months ago to hunt for treasure.”
“Oh?”
“The old man’s a little cracked,” Johnny said. “Nobody pays him any mind. I see him in town now and again.”
“Maybe he’s half cracked,” Walter said, thrusting a finger through one of the bullet holes in the felt, “but somebody wearing this hat he bought was at our place last night. And I mean to find out who it was.”
“Let’s take a ride out to see him. His shack is a few miles east of town.”
Walter hesitated. Did he really want to make that ride right now? He hated to admit it, but his wellpadded posterior hadn’t protected him from feeling sore as a result of the ten-mile ride into town from his farm. He should have brought the buggy, but didn’t want to let his grandson think he wasn’t still up to forking a frisky Quarter horse when there was work to be done. As a diversion from responding to the suggestion, he said: “I thought you were going to have the doc look at your hand.”
“I did. That’s where I’ve been for the last hour. There were three ahead of me in his office.” He grimaced. “This town is gettin’ too damned big. People everywhere. Have to wait to see the doc. Before you know it, he’ll get so busy, he won’t make house calls any more. Patients will.…”
“What did he say?” Walter cut in.
“My hand’s healing pretty well. He took the bandage off, and said I should wear a big glove for another week or two to protect it.”
“At least that’s good news. And the bastard who shot you’s been plowed under, so that score is settled.”
“Maybe it is,” Johnny said, holding up the hand. The thumb was curled in toward the palm and the barely-healed flesh still bore a bluish cast.
“What do you mean…maybe?”
“Doc says I might never get back the full use of this hand. Something about the tendon being damaged. He doubts surgery would help.”
“Rasmussen…that son-of-a-bitch!” Walter spat.
“Wish he was standing here right now so I could have the pleasure of putting out his lights myself.”
“It’s over, Grandpa. No need gettin’ riled at him. The man’s dead. Black Rogers took care of him.”
“Rogers never found the body,” Walter said, pursing his lips.
Johnny dismissed this with a shake of his head. “You know these hills. He was probably dragged off by coyotes or mountain lions, and eaten. Whatever varmints got him must ‘a’ spooked his horses, too, ’cause Rogers didn’t find them, either.”
Walter let it go. “Nobody hurts me or mine and gets away with it,” he said. “If Rasmussen’s dead, so be it. So’s that Newburn who shot you in the knee back when you ran off with Nellie.” He ground his teeth, staring down the street toward the depot where the daily westbound express was clanging and puffing to a stop. But his mind was filled with hate at everything and everyone connected with the Newburns. They’d been the bane of his existence, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until every last one of them, from the oldest to the youngest, was under the sod, or being plucked by the buzzards and crows. He’d damned sure put a few of them down himself, he thought with grim satisfaction.
This brought to mind his oldest, most formidable enemy, Silas Newburn. But he had that skinny old bastard by the short, white whiskers for sure, now. If Silas didn’t come through with the location of the treasure, his granddaughter Nellie would be added to the list of the late Newburns. Walter didn’t care if she was a female. Like scorpions, they were often more dangerous than the males.
“Do you want to ride out there or not?”
Walter was jolted out of his reverie by Johnny’s question.
“Out where?”
“To find that Uncle Billy character.”
Walter drew a deep breath. “I’m gonna get me a haircut and shave first. Then something to eat. No rush. He’s not going any place.”
“If he raided our place last night, he might be on the run already,” Johnny said, a look of urgency on his face.
“I doubt if that old hermit was one of the raiders. But he very likely knows who was. Probably has no idea we’re after him, so he has no reason to run. We can afford to take our time.”
He hitched up his pants that were sagging under the unaccustomed weight of his gun belt. He shouldn’t wear his hardware when he had on suspenders. “The express just pulled in. While I’m at the barber, run down to the depot and get me a copy of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch before they’re all sold.”
Walter Clayton had always had a fondness for barbershops. A modest drinker himself, he preferred them to saloons. There were no loud-mouth or sick drunks, no raucous laughter or shouting or music, no perfumed whores to wheedle money from a man who wanted only to relax with a pint. While a man awaited a haircut or refreshing shave, he could discuss anything and everything—from the vicissitudes of women to horse racing or boxing, crops to politics. And there were always the latest jokes.
Sam had already trimmed the fringe of hair around Clayton’s ears and neck and had wrapped his face in a steamy towel to soften his whiskers. Tilted back in the chair, Walter was nearly dozing when Sam carefully removed the towel and began to apply hot lather with the brush. Walter opened his eyes in time to glance at a man walking in the do
or.
“Sam, hand me my specs.”
“Walter, you don’t need to watch in the mirror. I know what I’m doing.” The mustachioed barber grinned. But he obliged.
Walter donned the glasses and sat up in the chair. No doubt about it. Here stood the one he was looking for—Uncle Billy himself. This would save him a long ride. As Walter pricked up his ears, he heard Uncle Billy and the other two customers discussing the kidnapped girl and the abortive raid that had happened only last night. How had this news reached town ahead of him? It hadn’t come from him or Johnny. The story must have been spread by one or both of the raiders.
“Sam, I’ll be back later for the shave,” Walter said, climbing laboriously from the chair and wiping the lather from his face with the drape. “Go ahead and take that next gent.”
He approached Thorne. “You’re the fella goes by the name of Uncle Billy?”
“That’s me.”
“Mind if we step outside and talk a minute?”
Walter snatched the brown felt off the hat tree as he exited. “Think I found something you lost,” he said, facing Thorne in the bright sunshine.
“And what might that be?” The bewhiskered hermit peered at him from under the brim of his ratty straw.
Walter held out the hat with the hole in it.
“Don’t know where you found that, but it ain’t mine. Looks a mite big for me, anyway.”
“Who’d you buy it for?” Walter wasn’t going to play games with this old fellow.
“I didn’t buy it.”
“The clerk at the mercantile says you did.”
“There’s lots of hats look like that. I reckon he’s mistook.”
“I don’t believe so. The clerk is an employee of mine, and he’s got a very good memory for faces. Yours is a face he wouldn’t forget…especially since he saw it yesterday.”
“Mister…?”
“Walter Clayton. And you know damned well who I am.”
“Mister Clayton, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I reckon you got me mixed up with somebody else.”
“Maybe you’d like me to shoot off one of your toes…unless you decide to tell the truth….” He put a hand to his revolver. Uncle Billy didn’t appear to be armed, but one had always to look for a hideout gun.