Devil's Kin

by Charles G. West

  “Who the hell was them two?” Roach demanded in a gruff voice that did little to calm Tommy’s frazzled nerves. “They was askin’ a helluva lot of questions. What did you tell ’em?”

  Still shaken by Roach’s sudden appearance from the shadows, Tommy stammered his reply. “They was just askin’ if I’d seen any other strangers in town—that’s all. I think they were lookin’ for some friends of theirs. I didn’t tell ’em nothin’,” he pleaded.

  Roach considered the boy’s answer and decided he was probably telling him the truth. Having earlier seen a couple of fair-looking ladies enter the saloon on the first floor of the hotel, he had returned to the stables to retrieve his razor from his saddlebags. Being a natural thief, he had been rummaging around in some of the other tack he found there when he heard the two riders approach the boy at the front of the stables. Remaining in the dark, he had tried to hear the conversation, but could only catch a word here and there—enough to determine there were questions about other strangers in town. This was sufficient to alert his suspicions. “All right, boy,” he finally said in an effort to calm the still shaken stable hand. “No harm done, I reckon.” He patted Tommy on the back, and walked out the front of the stable.

  * * *

  Too late for supper, Jordan and Perley settled for a plate of cold beans and cornbread from the hotel kitchen, provided for them by a cordial bartender and delivered to their table in the back corner of the saloon by a benevolent saloon girl. “Now this is what I call first-class service,” Perley said, eyeing the lady as she placed the plates before them. He was hoping the atmosphere of the saloon might serve to lighten Jordan’s mood somewhat. So intense upon his quest, Jordan was seated as taut as a steel spring, staring at every man who walked in or out of the saloon. Perley was apprehensive that his young friend might go off half-cocked before he knew for sure who he was attacking. “I swear, I believe that pretty young thing was eye-ballin’ you somethin’ fierce,” he said, making another attempt to jar Jordan’s mind from deep thoughts of immediate revenge.

  If Jordan heard him, he gave no indication. His mind was focused on a tall, heavily bearded man standing at the far end of the bar. Slowly nursing a glass of beer, the man seemed to be watching the door of the saloon, peering at everyone who entered, as if searching for something or someone. The longer Jordan stared at the man, the more suspicious he became. There was just something about the look of the man that alerted something inside Jordan’s gut. His hand dropped to rest on his empty holster, just then remembering that he and Perley had been required to leave their firearms at the front desk before entering the saloon. Foiled for only the moment, he slowly rose from his chair.

  “Where you goin’?” Perley asked anxiously and turned to follow the direction of Jordan’s gaze. “What the hell are you fixin’ to do?” Perley demanded when he saw the object of Jordan’s concentration.

  Jordan didn’t answer, his passion for revenge having already fanned the burning coals in his gut. He pushed the chair back and started toward the bar. The tall, bearded man paid him no mind, as he continued to stare at the door. When Jordan was halfway across the room, a short bald man pushed through the saloon doors, and made for the bar. The tall man immediately moved to meet him. “Now, Pete, you know damn well you ain’t supposed to come in here with that pistol,” he said.

  The bald man flushed slightly. “I plumb forgot I was wearin’ it, Dan.” He immediately started unbuckling his gun belt. “It ain’t loaded, anyway.”

  The tall man grinned. “You ain’t either, yet. I don’t want you to get a snoot full and hurt yourself with that thing. Give it to me, and I’ll take it out front.”

  Feeling like a fool, Jordan did an about-face and returned to the table, where he was met with an impatient look from Perley that could only be described as parental. “I was just aimin’ to find out who he was,” Jordan offered lamely.

  “Well, I reckon now you know,” Perley replied impatiently. He watched while Jordan took his chair again before continuing. “Hell, boy, you can’t go around askin’ ever’body you see if they killed your wife and son. You’ll end up being locked up. We ain’t gonna spot them two we’re after just by their looks. Hell, half the men in this town look like outlaws. We’ll go down to the stable early in the mornin’. We know which horses them two strangers rode in on, so we’ll keep an eye on them horses.”

  Feeling even more like a fool, Jordan nodded his head to signify he agreed with what the old man said. Patience was a hard lesson to learn with a live fire smoldering inside, but he knew he was going to have to master it.

  * * *

  Upstairs in a room at the end of the hall, Leach was busy cautioning his partner to restrain his primal urges to find a woman. After hearing Roach’s report regarding the two strangers at the stables, he was as suspicious as Roach had been. He and Roach had wasted little time in traveling from Fort Smith to this little western outpost. He would be surprised if a marshal was nipping at their heels in this short a time. Not as reckless as his partner, however, Leach deemed it always the best policy to proceed with caution whenever there was a possibility of a brush with the law. “What did they look like?” He asked Roach for the second time.

  Roach shrugged. “I told you, one of ’em looked like an old man. I couldn’t really see that good. It was dark in that stable. The other feller mighta been younger—hard to tell.”

  “You think he mighta been a lawman.” It was not a question. Leach was speculating to himself.

  “I didn’t say he was a lawman. He mighta been. All I know is they sure seemed mighty interested in who was new in town.”

  Leach thought that over for a long moment. A suspicious nature had served to help him avoid the gallows more than a few times before. Maybe he was concerned over nothing, but he decided it best to find out just who these two strangers were. It could be mere coincidence that they arrived practically on the two outlaws’ heels. But maybe it wasn’t. “We’ll go down to the stables in the morning and see what we can find out.” He cocked his eye at Roach. “It wouldn’t hurt you none to stay outta sight until we find out what’s what around here. We’re mighty close to that damn army post. We might have to skedaddle outta here in a hurry.” Roach wasn’t particularly happy with the suggestion, but he gave in as usual. Leach always called the shots.

  * * *

  “You boys is out mighty early,” Sam Irwin said cheerfully when Roach and Leach walked in just as the sun peeped in the open end of the stables.

  “That’s a fact,” Leach replied. “But you can’t make no money layin’ around in bed. Right?” He fashioned as friendly a smile as he could manage.

  “I reckon that’s so, all right,” Sam agreed. “You want me to cut your horses out?”

  “No,” Leach quickly replied. “We was kinda expectin’ a couple of our friends to show up, so we thought we’d just see if you mighta seen ’em. Roach here was talkin’ to your son last evenin’. He said a couple of strangers came in last night.”

  “Yes, sir. Tommy told me he put up four more horses last night. They’re in the corral with the rest of ’em. I was just fixin’ to put out some feed when you come up.”

  “You ain’t seen the two that brought ’em in?” Leach asked.

  “No, sir. Tommy seen ’em.”

  “Where’s Tommy?”

  “He better be gettin’ hisself ready for school.”

  Leach nodded. He could see that he wasn’t going to find out much about the two men from Sam, and he didn’t want to exhibit more than a casual interest. “Well, maybe they’ll show up sooner or later,” he said, and walked out to join Roach, who had gone out to the corral.

  Roach turned to meet his partner when Leach approached, his face reflecting grave concern. But he said nothing until Leach was beside him. Then he turned his head back toward the horses. “Do you see what I’m lookin’ at? If I ain’t crazy as a coot, that’s that scruffy lookin’ nag of Snake’s.”

  Leach was immediately alert. H
e stared at the horse Roach pointed out, looking it over thoroughly. “It’s Snake’s, all right.” He quickly shifted his gaze back and forth across the corral before settling upon a blue roan near the far rail. “And that roan over yonder looks a helluva lot like the horse Johnny Spratte rode.”

  “Goddam,” Roach exclaimed, “they musta got Snake.”

  Leach didn’t reply at once, but his mind was already working hard, and the picture it created was not to his liking. There was no way to affix coincidence to this. They had to have a couple of lawmen on their trail, and the shooting they had heard a couple of days before must have meant those men had done Snake in. Perplexed at how quickly the law could have caught up to them, he nevertheless spent little thought on it. The important thing now was to shake the dust of Fort Gibson from their heels. His concentration was distracted for a moment when Sam Irwin came from the stable. Leach turned to question the man again. No longer concerned with maintaining a casual facade, he asked, “Did your boy say they was wearin’ badges?”

  “No, Tommy didn’t say nothin’ about no badges.” He thought for a moment before adding, “He did say one of ’em was an old, gray-haired man wearin’ buckskins.” His description confirmed what Roach had seen in the half-light of the stable on the night before.

  Leach turned abruptly to his partner. “What does that sound like to you, Roach?”

  Roach nodded agreement. “Sounds like maybe one lawman with a guide.”

  Leach turned toward Sam again. “I changed my mind. We’re gonna need our horses right away. We’ll be back in a few minutes to get ’em.”

  There was no need to discuss it with Roach. Both men had been on the run from the law long enough to know when a town was no longer healthy for them. Keeping a cautious eye, they hurried back to the hotel to collect their belongings, wary of even the few early risers who were preparing to open their shops for the day. The only scrap of information they had was that one of the men was old and wearing buckskins. To their advantage, however, was the fact that the lawman had no way of knowing what they looked like, either.

  * * *

  Sleep had not come easily for Jordan Gray, and when it had, it was from sheer exhaustion from nerves stretched as tight as a bow string. Even then it had come in short intervals, with him waking again and again to the steady drone of Perley’s snoring in the bed next to his. Sarah’s murderers were sleeping under the same roof! He couldn’t say this for a fact, but he felt in his heart that it was so, and the knowledge was enough to almost drive him crazy. Had it not been for Perley’s calming influence, Jordan might have suddenly lost control of his emotions and stormed from room to room, battering in every door in the long hallway, until he had found the men.

  He awoke with a start. The light through the window told him that he had slept past sunup. Angry with himself for oversleeping, he came out of the tangle of sheets and blanket still groggy from a night of fitful tossing and turning. As he pulled his pants on, he gazed at Perley in the other bed. Still dead to the world, the old man had at least turned on his side, so the snoring had ceased. The picture of perfect peace, Jordan thought. According to what Perley had told him, this was the first time the old man had slept in a bed for at least six or seven months. Gazing at his grizzled partner now, his white hair and beard almost the same color as the dingy pillow his face was buried in, Jordan decided to let him sleep while he answered nature’s urgent call.

  Disdainful of using the porcelain chamber pot provided by the hotel, Jordan preferred to go down the back stairs to the outhouse behind the building. The sun was already casting long shadows in the early-morning light when he started back to the hotel. He paused for just a second to consider what kind of day it was going to be. No more than a few wispy gray clouds etched the rapidly changing sky. Soon the sun would clear the hills to the east and start its climb. He had a feeling this was to be a fateful day in his life. Feeling the urgency to finish the business that had brought him to this little Western town, he hurried up the steps to get his rifle.

  When he opened the door at the top of the stairs, he encountered Perley in the hallway. The old man was still in nothing but his long underwear. “There you are,” Perley greeted him, a look of relief on his face. “I thought you’d gone off and left me.”

  “I was goin’ to,” Jordan replied, “if you were still . . .” He was interrupted when a door farther down the hallway opened suddenly and two men, carrying rifles and saddlebags, stepped out into the hall. One was a large man, a head taller than his companion. Tommy Irwin’s comment that one of the strangers was a big man flashed through Jordan’s mind. With Perley partially blocking his view, he craned his neck to look around the old man and reached for the pistol he had stuffed in his belt. “Hold on there, mister,” he called out.

  Although taken by surprise, Leach was lightning-fast. Turning at the sound of the voice behind him, his pistol already drawn as a natural reflex, he found himself confronted by two men. One of them held a gun in his hand, although it was not pointed at him. The other, an old, gray-haired man, had his back turned to him. In an instant, the description of the two men who had been asking questions impacted upon his mind’s eye. It was no time for introductions. Leach seized the advantage, firing point-blank in the narrow hallway, he emptied his pistol. The first two shots were wild, ripping into the floor as he was still raising the weapon. The other four slammed into Perley’s back, knocking the old man into Jordan’s arms. Only a second or two slower than his partner, Roach fired his pistol, sending another bullet into the already lifeless body of the old trapper.

  Taken by surprise and unable to get a clear shot when Perley’s body fell into his arms, Jordan tried to shoot around the old man. Perley fell to the floor just as Jordan felt a stinging blow like a solid punch in his chest, followed immediately by a second. Knowing he had been hit, he managed to get off one shot before his head started spinning, and the light in the hallway became dimmer and dimmer until total darkness shrouded his brain. He was not aware of anything after that, not even when he slumped to the floor. The last vivid image that was seared into his brain before consciousness left him was the sneering faces of his two assailants.

  Though it had seemed to be longer, the entire incident was over in seconds. Stepping past the crumpled bodies on the floor of the hallway, Leach and Roach quickly made their way out the back door and were already halfway down the steps by the time the startled hotel guests were aroused from their beds.

  “By God,” Leach crowed as they ran behind the buildings toward the stables at the end of the street, “I reckon that’ll stop ’em from followin’ us.”

  Even though confident that the two men behind them were dead, Roach wasn’t ready to gloat. “We’d better do some hard ridin’. We’re gonna have the army after us now.”

  “Hell,” Leach panted as they slowed down to a walk so as not to rouse suspicion at the stable, “that don’t bother me a’tall. All them soldiers will do is ride around the prairie like they was on parade. We’ll give them the slip in two shakes.”

  When they walked around to the front of the stable, they met Sam Irwin standing out in the middle of the street, staring anxiously toward the hotel. “What was all the shootin’?” Sam asked upon seeing Leach and Roach.

  “Some drunk fool,” Leach was quick to explain, “shootin’ off his pistol.” He winked at Roach.

  “Yeah,” Roach said, “I expect it’s all over now. Me and Leach figured we’d better get outta there before we got hit with a stray bullet.”

  “Well, I’ll be!” Sam exclaimed. “Who was it?” He continued to stare up the street toward the hotel, where a few people could already be seen running toward the building. “Did anybody get hit?”

  “Nah,” Leach replied, impatient with Sam’s questions and anxious to get out of town, “nobody got hit. We don’t know who the drunk was. Now how much do we owe you? We’ve got to be on our way.”

  Distracted by the sight of money, Sam accepted payment for boarding t
he horses. “I saddled ’em up for you. You’re ready to ride.” He stood back while they threw their saddlebags on behind the saddles. “Where you fellers headed?”

  “Fort Smith,” Roach replied, stepping up in the saddle, and wheeled his horse to follow Leach, who was already under way.

  “Much obliged,” Sam called after them, as they loped away. Under his breath, he muttered, “But you’ll play hell gettin’ to Fort Smith thataway.”

  Chapter 9

  The second floor hallway of the Cherokee Hotel was filled with alarmed and horrified residents in various states of undress. Rudely awakened by the sudden explosion of gunfire reverberating through the confines of the narrow passage, most were afraid to open their doors until a considerable period of quiet had passed. Then one, and then another, chanced to peek out into the hallway, until they were sure it was safe. Soon everyone emerged to gawk at the bodies lying before the back door. A couple of the bolder men stepped forward to examine the bodies.

  “They’re deader’n a stump,” one said, kneeling beside Perley’s body, the old man’s underwear soaked crimson with blood.

  “They’re both dead,” the other man said, staring down at Jordan and seeing no sign of life. “This one’s got two bullet holes right through the chest—looks like he got grazed on the side of his head, too.”

  At that moment, Marvin Sawyer, the owner of the Cherokee Hotel, pushed his way through the crowd, which was growing by the minute as curious outsiders came to investigate. “Oh, my Lord,” he exclaimed when he saw what had happened. As he looked around him at the people shouldering one another for a better look at the bodies, it was obvious that the shooter was not among them. “Does anybody know what happened?” he asked.

  No one did, but one boarder who was in the room by the back door was certain he had heard someone running down the back steps right after the shots were fired. Marvin turned to peer at the faces of the folks crowded in the narrow hallway. The two strangers who had checked in the day before were missing. “Somebody better get the sheriff,” he said.