Ralph Compton The Convict Trail Read online

  Kane dropped the butt of his cigarette into the fire. “If he makes any fancy moves on the trail to Fort Smith, I’ll gun him fer sure.”

  “Trouble is, Marshal, if’n he makes a fancy move, you could be the last to know. Buff is fast, mighty fast, an’ sneaky as a hound in a smokehouse.” Sam thumped the bread with his knuckles. “She’s ready,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  Logan Kane lay back on his blankets and said from under the hat tipped over his face, “A fine meal, Sam’l. Now I think I’ll turn in.”

  The old man was scouring the skillet with sand. He stopped and glanced at the sky, where dark clouds chased across the face of the moon. “I’m smelling rain, Logan. Maybe you should spread your blankets under the wagon.”

  Kane raised his hat and looked at the sky. “Clouding up, right enough. An’ I thought I heard thunder a minute ago, but it was a fur piece away.” He wriggled his shoulders into a more comfortable position. “I reckon I’ll stay right where I’m at, at least for the time being.”

  “Suit yourself,” Sam said. “I’m all through telling marshals they should at least show enough sense to come in out of the rain. Why, I mind the time when I was drivin’ fer big ol’ Heck Thomas an’—”

  “Hello the camp!”

  The voice sang out of the darkness—a woman’s voice . . . and she sounded troubled.

  Chapter 2

  Kane rose to his feet, and not being a trusting man, he kept his right hand close to his holstered Colt. “Come on ahead!” he yelled. “Slow an’ easy, like you was visiting kinfolk.”

  The gloom parted and a woman stepped into the clearing, holding a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. Behind her Kane heard the creak of a wagon and the fall of hooves.

  “I need help,” the woman said. Her voice was frightened, cracking around the edges like thin ice. “My daughter is sick, Mister. She’s awful sick.”

  Gun trouble Kane could handle, but a child with a misery was a thing beyond his experience. He stood speechless for a moment, but Sam Shaver filled the void.

  “Bring her over to the fire, ma’am. What ails her?”

  “She has a fever,” the woman said. “Mister, she’s burning up.”

  Kane found his voice. “It ain’t the plague, is it?”

  Sam answered for the woman. “No, Marshal, it ain’t the plague. There’s a wagon out there in the dark an’ I’m guessin’ she an’ whoever is with her are travelin’ folks. Bad food and bad water probably done it, but it’s not the plague.”

  The old man laid his palm on the girl’s head. “She’s hot as a burning stump, all right.” His eyes lifted to her mother’s face. “How long has she been like this?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I figured she was asleep in the back of the wagon. I found her like this an hour ago, maybe longer than that.”

  “Come a fur piece?” Sam asked.

  “From down Fort Worth way.” The woman hesitated a heartbeat. “My husband had . . . business there.”

  The skin of Sam’s face stretched thin over his cheekbones. “Ma’am, if’n we don’t get this fever broke, your young ’un will die.” He shook his head. “I don’t mean to be rough of speech, ma’am, but what I just spoke was a natural fact.”

  “Help her, Mister,” the woman whispered. She looked like she’d been slapped. “Save my child. She’s all I’ve got.”

  Kane had kept his eyes from the fire, fearing temporary blindness if he had to shoot into the dark. Now he stepped closer to the edge of the clearing. His hand was still close to his gun. “You in the wagon,” he yelled. “Drive on in at a walk.”

  “Scared, huh?” came a man’s voice, as high, harsh and cutting as the cry of a screech owl.

  Kane talked into the wall of blackness between the trees. “You don’t want to get me scared, Mister. When I get scared, I get violent an’ bad things happen.”

  A few moments passed. Then a pair of huge gray Percherons emerged from the dark hauling a box wagon, the rear half of the bed sheltered by a hooped canvas cover.

  “I reckon now I don’t scare you so bad after all, huh?” the driver said. He was a small man, thin, and his wasted legs seemed too short and spindly for his body.

  Kane ignored the remark. He said, “Your daughter is mighty sick, so sick she could die. We have to see to her.”

  The small man shrugged. “She ain’t my blood. I don’t care one way or t’other.” He grinned. “Name’s Barnabas Hook, by the way. I’m headed for the Territory.”

  The coldness of Hook’s reply hit Kane like a bucket of ice water. The marshal liked to say that by nature he was not a particularly caring man. But those who knew him soon realized that this claim was undercut by a fondness for children and a sincere, if bungling, respect for women.

  Kane’s voice held level, the Westerner’s obligation to hospitality overcoming his revulsion. “I’m Deputy Marshal Logan Kane and the mean old coot by the fire is Sam Shaver. Light an’ set. Thar’s coffee on the bile.”

  “Lorraine! Chair!” Hook’s demand slashed across the fire-stippled darkness like the crack of a bull-whip.

  The woman’s eyes lifted to Hook, a tangle of emotion on her face, a quiet desperation uppermost. “Barnabas, Nellie is sick.”

  “Chair!”

  Lorraine shoved her daughter into Sam’s arms and hurried to the back of the wagon. In the fleeting glimpse he caught of the woman, Kane saw fear, and something more . . . hatred maybe.

  Husband and wife this pair might be, but happiness was obviously not a part of their marriage agreement.

  “Marshal, will you step over here?” Sam asked.

  Kane stepped beside the old man and looked down at the girl. Nellie was older than he’d thought, a small, pretty child with lustrous dark hair, and long lashes lying on her cheekbones like Spanish fans. She was unconscious, her face flushed as the fever ravaged her, and her breathing was fast and shallow.

  Kane took a knee and laid the back of his hand on the girl’s cheek. His glance met Sam’s and he saw his own concern mirrored in the man’s eyes. “She’s hot,” he said. “Her skin’s burning.”

  “If we don’t get the fever down, she’ll die, Logan. That is, if she ain’t dying already.”

  “You seen this afore?”

  “Oncet. When I was scoutin’ for the Army I seen it in a Comanche village north of the Mogollon Rim after the cholera hit.”

  “Well, what happened?”

  “For a lot of them, nothin’ happened. They just died. The youngest of them was buried in Arbuckle coffee boxes.”

  “Hell, did any of them live?”

  “A few.”

  Kane’s exasperation showed. “I swear, Sam’l, sometimes talkin’ to you is like talkin’ to a shadow. How come some of them survived?”

  “Well, it had been snowin’ up there. So along comes this young army doctor an’ he packs the young ’uns that are still alive in snow until their fevers break. Some of them lived after that.”

  The marshal’s face fell. “We don’t have no snow.”

  “I reckon. But we have the creek an’ the water’s cold.”

  “Then let’s get it done,” Kane said.

  He looked around for the woman. To his surprise, Lorraine was pushing a wicker wheelchair toward the front of the wagon. She stopped and waited until Hook edged over on the seat. Then she reached up and lifted him in her arms. She laid him gently into the wheelchair, placed his feet in supports and covered his wasted legs with a blanket.

  “Shotgun. Then push me to the fire,” Hook said.

  Lorraine reached into the wagon and dragged out a shotgun from under the seat. Hook laid the gun across the arms of his chair as his wife pushed him close to the fire. He turned his head to her and said, “Coffee.”

  A small rage flaring in him, Kane rose to his feet. “The coffee can wait. There are other, more important things to be done here.”

  Hook ignored him. “Lorraine, coffee. Now!”

  The woman saw Kane’s rising anger and s
he shot him a beseeching look, her eyes pleading with him not to judge her husband harshly. The marshal recognized the look for what it was, took note of its intensity and said only, “I’ll bring you a couple of cups from our wagon.”

  Kane returned with the cups and handed them to Lorraine, who immediately poured coffee for Hook. She handed the cup to the man, then rushed to Sam Shaver’s side.

  “How old is the young ’un, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Twelve years,” the woman answered. Then by way of explanation she added, “She’s small for her age.”

  “Twelve, good. Then she ain’t quite reached the age o’ modesty yet. Get her clothes off, ma’am. We’re going to lay her in the creek an’ see if we can get the fever broke.” Sam lifted cold eyes to Hook, who was sipping his coffee, staring into the fire. “Seems to me we’ve wasted enough damned time already.”

  Lorraine didn’t question the old man. She quickly removed Nellie’s clothes, then stood, the naked child in her arms. Hook did not even glance in their direction.

  “Let’s get goin’,” Sam said. He looked at Kane. “You comin’, Marshal? If you are, better grab our slickers. It’s goin’ to be a wet one.”

  Kane nodded, still on a slow burn. He very much disliked Barnabas Hook and with Logan Kane, that much dislike often led to a killing. But the man would leave a widow and an orphan behind. That very thing had happened so often in Kane’s past that he could not bring himself to consider it now. Still, as he retrieved his and Sam’s slickers from the prison wagon and followed the old man and the woman to the creek, his ill feeling for Hook rankled, and set his jaw at a jut.

  The little girl moaned softly as Sam placed her naked body in the stream. The grassy banks were a couple feet apart and the cold water ran fast and shallow over a bed of sand and small pebbles.

  “Water’s got to be deeper,” Sam said. He was using his cupped hand to pour water over the child’s chest and stomach. His eyes lifted to Kane. “Logan, see if you can dam her up downstream a little ways.”

  Kane looked at Lorraine, who was holding her daughter’s small hand in hers. “Woman, how you doin’?” he asked.

  “I’m breaking all to pieces, Marshal. I never knew fear like this. I swear, if Nellie dies, I’ll lie right down beside her and die myself.”

  “She won’t die,” Sam snapped. The old man was feeling the strain and his voice was sharp. “Leastways, if a certain feller ever gets the creek dammed up.”

  Kane touched his hat to Lorraine and stepped downstream a few feet. He walked through bladed moonlight, looking around to see what he could find. He wanted rocks or large pieces of fallen tree branch.

  The night was cool, a stiff breeze riding point for a thunderstorm rumbling to the north over the craggy peaks of the Ouachita Mountains. Already probing fingers of black cloud were reaching into the violet sky, slowly blotting out stars, and the moon was threatening to take a header into darkness.

  Kane smelled the coming rain and the ozone tang of lightning that flickered in the distance. The night seemed fragile as crystal, as if a single blast of thunder would shatter it into a million shards that would catch the blue fire of the lightning and fall to earth like diamonds.

  He intensified his search and soon had an armful of small rocks that he dropped into the creek, then tried to arrange into a dam. The water bubbled over his hands and the rocks, heedless of his attempt to halt its flow. He rose and found more rocks and some thick branches. This time his rickety dam held better and suddenly the water began to pool behind it. But after a few minutes the force of the pent-up stream swept the wood away and the creek chattered over the pebbles as before.

  Kane rose, defeat slumping his shoulders, and looked at Sam. “I can’t dam it. The wood won’t hold.”

  The old man was still pouring water over the girl with his hand. His head lifted. “Wash out the coffeepot. I’ll use that.” As Kane turned to leave, he said, “Logan, we don’t have much time. Best we ain’t a-squatting out here in a lightning storm.”

  As thunder growled to the north, Kane realized the urgency. He stepped to the fire and grabbed the pot.

  “Hey, don’t take the coffee away,” Hook said.

  Kane ignored the man. But a moment later he paid heed to the twin shotgun barrels pointed right at his belly. “I said, don’t take the coffee away.” Hook’s eyes gleamed in the firelight like hot coals and there was death in his voice.

  But Logan Kane was not in an accommodating mood. Without a second of hesitation he threw the boiling-hot contents of the pot into Hook’s face, then reached down and wrenched the scattergun from the man’s grasp.

  Hook screamed and his hands flew to his already-blistering face.

  “Mister, if you wasn’t a family man an’ crippled an’ all, I’d a drawed down on you and put a bullet in your belly,” Kane said, his hard blue eyes lending truth to the statement.

  Hook took his hands from his fiery, blistered face and looked at them intently, as if he expected to see blood. His eyes lifted to the marshal. “Damn you to hell, Kane. Someday I’ll kill you for this.”

  The marshal smiled. He broke open the shotgun and removed the two red shells, then dropped the weapon at Hook’s feet. “I’d like to cuss an’ discuss that with you, Hook, but I got to be going,” he said.

  Hook’s swollen, blistered lips looked like stained pillows. “Heed me well, Kane,” he yelled at the marshal’s retreating back. “One day soon I’ll kill you.”

  After washing out the coffeepot in the creek, Kane handed it to Sam. “What happened to Hook?” the old man asked. “We couldn’t see from here.”

  “Nothing,” the marshal said, his face bland. “He just wanted more coffee.”

  Sam filled the pot in the water and poured it over Nellie. The girl’s eyes fluttered open and she looked into her mother’s face. “Ma, what—what are these men doing to me?”

  “Making you better, child. You have a fever an’ we must chase it away.”

  “Ma . . . Ma . . . I don’t want . . .”

  Nellie’s eyes closed and Sam said to her mother, “I’m worried, ma’am. She’s still way too hot, burnin’ up something fierce.”

  “Pour the cold water over her,” Lorraine said. “We must keep trying.”

  Thunder banged, closer now, and skeletal fingers of lightning scrawled across the dark sky. Sam looked up for a brief moment but said nothing. His face was like stone.

  Lorraine took her eyes off her child for a moment. “Marshal,” she said, “I heard what my husband said to you—about killing you, I mean. Be on your guard.”

  Kane smiled. “Lady, I’ve heard that a passel of times.”

  The woman shook her head. “Don’t take Barnabas lightly. He’s killed men before; more men than you could ever imagine.”

  Lightning flared on the woman’s face and Kane saw that her eyes were wide—and very frightened.

  Chapter 3

  The storm struck with tremendous power, earsplitting thunder, sheeting rain and venomous lightning. Suddenly it seemed to Kane that the whole world was on fire, that when the new day came aborning, it would see only a wilderness of smoke and ashes.

  He kneeled opposite Sam and the woman, rain running in torrents off his hat brim and the shoulders of his slicker. Nellie looked pale blue in the flame-streaked darkness, her head supported in Sam’s right hand. The girl’s hair was plastered across her face and every now and then she moaned softly.

  Sam splashed a pot of water across the child’s chest, then another. “If the fever don’t break soon—” The rest of what he said was drowned in a clap of thunder, but his meaning was clear.

  Over by the dead fire, Barnabas Hook was screaming for his wife, mouthing curses and threats. Searing white lightning flashes shimmered around him and the racketing rain pounded him mercilessly.

  Sam laid his hairy cheek against Nellie’s forehead and held it there. Finally he lifted his eyes to Kane, then to the woman. “She’s gettin’ cooler. I think maybe she is.”<
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  Hope flared in Lorraine’s eyes. “The fever is breaking!”

  “Wait!” the old man yelled over the thunder. “I said maybe she is. I don’t know fer sure.”

  The strain of being outdoors in the middle of a dangerous storm and the sight of the child’s pale-lipped face was getting to Kane. “Then don’t speak again, old man, until you know fer damned sure!”

  “Doin’ my best, Marshal Kane,” Sam said. It was a small rebuke, but it stung.

  Kane swallowed his irritation. “I know you are, Sam. It’s just that . . . well . . . I know you are.”

  “I reckon maybe it’s the cold rain that’s a-coolin’ her,” Sam said. “Comin’ down hard enough, a reg’lar duck drencher, you might say.”

  Kane put the back of his hand in the middle of Nellie’s chest. “I think you’re right, Sam. She don’t feel as hot.” He looked at Lorraine. “What do you think, missus?”

  Lightning raked the sky with skeletal fingers of silver flame, and thunder bellowed as the woman cupped her daughter’s forehead in her hand. After a few moments she said, “Yes, she’s cooling down.” Then, with a note of desperation she added, “I jes’ know she is.”

  Only then did Kane notice that the woman’s dress was soaked. He unbuttoned his slicker and spread it over her shoulders. “It won’t make you dry, ma’am, but it will he’p you from getting any wetter.” He smiled. “About now you look wet enough to bog a snipe.”

  Lorraine threw Kane a grateful smile, then glanced toward her wagon where Hook was screaming her name into the night, cursing her for leaving him to die in the storm.

  “Logan, we can attend to the young ’un,” Sam said. “Maybe you should see to that bellyachin’ man. I already got half a mind to walk over thataway an’ gun him.”

  “Hell, let him fry.” The words came unbidden out of Kane’s mouth and he instantly regretted them. Lorraine looked at him, but said nothing. He sighed and shook his head. “Hell, I’ll get him into the back of the wagon.”