Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) (15 page)

“Somebody set us up like pigeons,” Barlow was saying.

“Thorne, he figures he don’t need us no longer.”

“No, not Thorne,” Barlow replied, but he didn’t sound very convinced

“Let’s get out of here,” Bravo suggested. “Come daylight they’ll shake this patch down like they was huntin’ coons. We better be far off come daylight.”

There was no sign of Mike at the cabin. Packing up some grub, I slipped away from the cabin and hid in the brush near the hidden stable. From where I lay I could observe the cabin and the road approaching it. The way I saw it I needed to talk to Mike before I moved, I needed to know whatever he’d found out about the others. There was no possibility of going home now, and somehow I wasn’t sorry. Both Lacy and Katy had been right all along, for they’d give me no chance here. Out West, well I could find a place for myself and make my own way, maybe in the mines or the cattle business. Maybe I could, with Katy’s help, even learn to read and write better and make something of myself.

With Katy’s help? I blushed there in the darkness. Who was I to think a girl like that would go on the dodge with me? The more I thought of it the more I figured she did indeed like me. But maybe I was wrong, and I’d no right to ask her, anyway.

To go West I had to go through the country I’d just come out of, or skirt around it, which was mighty near as bad, so whatever Mike could tell me would help. But most of all, I had to know those who helped me got clear; it just wasn’t in me to go scot-free and leave a friend in the lurch.

Suddenly two riders came down the trail and drew up nearby, far enough away to hear them talking. “Why waste our time? No matter what the sergeant says, they’re gone. That wasn’t Cullen Baker, anyway, that was the Barlow crowd. You think I don’t know that bunch? I used to run in the Thickets my ownself.”

There was a mutter of voices I could hear, and then the first man spoke out again. “Six Barlow men dead and nine wounded or captured. It was a good haul.”

“Who d’you suppose that was who yelled at us?”

The first soldier chuckled. “Who d’you suppose?”

When daylight came again I went to the stable to saddle up, but before I could get the saddle on the horse, I heard the dogs barking and knew from the sound they were welcoming someone they knew.

It was Caddo Mike. And he was alone.

Chapter 7

R
IFLE CRADLED IN the hollow of my arm, I stepped from among the trees.

“You got to git from here.”

“Did you see Miss Katy?”

“You know Willow Bluff? West of the old ferry in Bowie County? She gonna meet you there.

Few people lived in that remote pine-covered area across the Sulphur, and there was a chance to reach the place unobserved. And it was on the way out of the country where I was known.

“She shouldn’t be riding there alone.”

“I don’t figure she gonna be alone.” Caddo Mike did not enlarge upon the statement, but went on, “They huntin’ you. The sodgers huntin’ you, the sodgers huntin’ Sam Barlow, Sam Barlow huntin’ you.”

“What about Bob Lee?”

“He had a runnin’ fight with sodgers. Joe Tinney, he dead. Buck ride back to pick him up, he dead.

It would be like Buck to ride back for his brother. It was the end for them all. The feeling was on me that I would never reach Willow Bluff, nor see Katy again. Their luck had played out.

The urge was on me to ride into Jefferson and kill Chance Thorne. Deeply, bitterly. I felt he was the cause of all that had happened, and that until he died there could be no peace for me, no matter where I went or what I did Had it not been for his hatred of me Bob Lee and Bicker-staff might now be at peace with the Union Leaguers.

No, that was untrue. They were men who would fight and alone if need be, for whatever they believed. They were men who got their backs up at tyranny.

“You ride careful, ride skeery,” Mike advised. “They bad people.”

Mike insisted I take his dapple-gray mare, and she was a good horse, a better horse than Jane Watson had found for me. Still, I was wishing I had that ornery buckskin mule of mine. He could eat a handful of grass, drink a cupful of water, and he was already to go again.

Stepping into the saddle I looked down at Mike, reluctant to leave. “S’long. Mike,” I said, and walked the horse away, not looking back.

From this point every step was a danger, every mile an added risk. Right then I was sure I was going to be killed, it was a feeling I had not had before, and one that I could not shake. I should never have returned after the war, but to abandon the land would take all the meaning from the years of labor Pa and Ma had put in. Come to think of it, Pa himself had moved on a couple of times, and in such a case, he would move, too.

The mare was a good one with an urge to travel. She stepped out with her ears pricked forward like she knew she was going into new country, like she wanted to see what was beyond the hill and around the bend. This was a traveling mare.

So north we rode, away from Jefferson, away from Caddo Lake. I was in Louisiana with the Arkansas line somewhere to the north and the Texas line just to the west, only a few miles away. When I crossed into Texas I would be in Cass County, which was my home county, but I had just to hope that I’d see nobody who knew me. After crossing Baker Creek, I turned west.

Avoiding roads I kept to old trails the Caddoes used and that Cherokee hunting parties had used when they came down from the Nation. When I forded the river and rode up to Mush Island I took it almighty cautious to see before I was seen.

A broken branch with green leaves lay across the path ahead of me, so I walked the mare along until I saw the three stones beside the trail. The triangle they formed pointed into the woods.

They were signs our outfit used, but they might also be a trap, so I reined the mare over and hooted like an owl, waited, then hooted again.

After a minute or so a frog sounded back in the woods, and only Matt Kirby could do it so natural-like.

So I sat my horse and kept my eyes open for trouble, and waited for him to come up to me, but when he came he had a stranger with him. “It’s all right,” Kirby said, “This here’s a cousin to Buck and Joe. I know him.”

The stranger was as large as either Kirby or me, and he was almost in rags.

Mike had said Katy was bringing some clothes to their meeting at Willow Bluff so I dug into my saddlebags. “You could use a shirt,” I said, and hauled out my old checkered shirt and a pair of homespun jeans made by a Mormon woman near Cove Fort. They were none too good but better than what the fellow had on. “You take these,” I said, “I’ve had my wear out of them.”

“Thanks.” The big fellow was mighty embarrassed. “I’m beholden. We uns are fresh out of cash money up on the Red. Man gits mahty little for his crops nowadays.”

“What are you down this way for?”

He looked up, honest surprise on his face. “Why, they kilt my cousins. Somebody kills our’n, we kill them. That’s the way it is up on the Red.”

“You go home,” I told him, “you just go back up there. You’ll catch nothing but trouble down here.”

“I got it to do,” he said soberly. “Pa says so an’ I got a feelin’ he’s raht. Them Tinney boys. I growed up with Buck an’ Joe. Can’t hear of them bein’ laid away without the men who kilt ’em laid away, too.”

“You go home,” I insisted.

Bob Lee came up through the woods, Longley a length behind, and both of them grinned when they saw me. “Figured you for swamp bait,” Bob said, “figured they’d tacked up your hide.”

“Take some doing,” I said.

“Bickerstaff went to Johnson County.”

We squatted on our heels and talked commonplaces while Kirby and his new partner rustled wood and started some coffee. Bob Lee looked tired and even Longley, the youngest of the lot except for this new man, looked beat. Bob Lee, he looked around us. “I never liked this place; makes a man spooky.”

“You going to Mexico?”

“Uh-huh. I figure to ranch down there.” Bob Lee took the broken stub of a cigar from his pocket. “Down in Chihuahua I have friends. I’ll send for the wife later.”

“I’m riding West.”

It was on us now, the feeling that we were leaving was riding us, and a man could feel the uneasiness among us. All of us had been riding elbow to elbow with death for months, and yet now that we had a chance to get out we were more scared than ever.

I never figured it was a cowardly thing to be scared. It’s to be scared and still to face up to what scares you that matters. A man in our way of life faces guns many times, and he knows a gun can kill, but now we had our chance to get out and away and we were ready. No sense in prolonging it. Taking the coffee Matt offered me I drank a mouthful. “I’m pulling out,” I said. “I’m getting shut of this place.”

Lee glanced up at me as I straightened up. Longley got up, too. Matt poked at the fire, and the youngster sat there and looked at us like he couldn’t understand. All of us knew that we weren’t about to see each other again, and we had shared troubles.

“Wait a spell,” Lee told me, “and I’ll ride as far as Fannin County with you.”

My clothes itched me and I felt cold and lonely. A little wind came through the trees and I shivered. The feeling was on me that there was death in this place and it was my death that was coming. “Bob, I wouldn’t go to Fannin County if I were you.”

“I’ve got to see the wife.”

“Don’t go! Write to her. You light out for Mexico and don’t stop until you’ve got Laredo behind you. I’m telling you, Bob, we should all get shut of Texas. You ride out, Bob, and you keep going. You’re a good man, one of the best I ever knew, and there’s no sense you spilling blood of yours for a cause that wasted itself away. You keep riding.”

“Never saw you jumpy before.”

Turning around I looked at that long, tall, handsome Bill Longley. “You hang up your guns, Bill. They’ll get you killed, believe me.”

“A man has to die,” he said.

Holding out my hand to Bob, I said, “So long, Bob. Easy riding.”

“Adios, compadre.”

Longley got up. He looked awkward and embarrassed. “See you out West sometime. You watch for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Throwing the rest of my coffee into the dead leaves I looked into the empty cup, then I turned and dropped the cup and stepped into the saddle. For a long moment I sat my saddle unmoving, my back turned to them, for we all knew it was the last time, and the sickness of leaving was on me. Then I rode away.

“He should have waited to eat,” Longley said.

Kirby glanced up. “A doom’s on him, can’t you see it? My old grandma told me when the doom’s on a man and he knows he’s going to die, he’s like that.”

“That’s fool talk.” Bob Lee dropped his cup. “I’m not waiting. I’m riding to Fannin County. Coming Bill?”

When they were gone the tall young man rubbed his eyes and looked sheepishly at Kirby. “You sleepy? I’m raht tard.”

Only a a few yards away I’d stopped again, almost afraid to go on, yet feeling like Bob Lee that there was something about this place that gave me a bad feeling. I’d sat there, listening to them talk, hearing the retreating sounds of the horses of Lee and Longley, and then I heard Kirby say, “Sleep, I’ll wake you to take watch when I’m sleepy.”

So I rode away under the trees, sitting easy in the saddle and shaped up for a long ride West.

At daybreak I was still riding, but the mare was dead tired and we both needed rest. There was plenty of time to get to Willow Bluff—but that was the trouble. A man always thought there was plenty of time, and there never was.

When I awakened and pulled on my boots I checked my guns and then scouted around. By the sun I judged I’d slept a couple of hours, and after a scout around I put together a small fire in a hollow place near a tree where the rising smoke could lose itself in the branches, and made coffee. Broiling a chunk of beef, I took a couple of swallows of coffee and then with the beef in my left hand, taking occasional bites, I strolled over to where the trail went through the trees.

There was no evidence that the trail had been used by anyone else, although I saw where an inquisitive deer had been checking my tracks. This was an old Caddo trail, and kept to high ground under the trees, dipping only occasionally to lonely springs or to the river. The days of Caddo wandering were almost a thing of the past, so the trail was unused. It was the same trail I’d taken out of the country once before. My camp was south of the Sulphur near Whiteoak Creek.

Both Barlow and the soldiers would be hunting me now. I’d escaped from prison now, and for that alone they’d be after me. But I was out of Cass County, and pretty much beyond Barlow’s zone of action.

There was a mockingbird doing tricks in a treetop some distance away, but no other sound. At the fire I finished eating, finished my coffee and put out the fire with great care. I’d seen too much damage done by carelessly put out fires, or those left burning by some damn’ fool.

It was a lazy, sunlit morning, and I was about three miles from Willow Bluff. In the silent woods a sound can be heard from quite a distance, so when I heard a sound I straightened up and listened.

It could have been a branch breaking, but animals do not break branches, and if broken deliberately it must be for a cooking fire. If otherwise, then somebody was sneaking around and I wasn’t ready for that.

Moving easy-like, I saddled up and put my stuff together. Mounting up I walked the horse off under the trees, keeping away from my lonely little trail until some distance from the night camp. The main trail, such as it was, was several miles away, but there was another used occasionally that would touch at Willow Bluff. There was not a chance in a million anyone would guess my trail was here. Fact is, it would take a sharp man, just stumbling on it, to judge it a trail at all.

At no time had I failed to practice the technique of drawing a gun fast. Each day except when in jail I’d spent some time working at it, and I knew I’d become a sight faster than when I killed Dud Butler in Fort Worth. Accuracy had never been a problem. From boyhood I’d been skillful with all sorts of weapons.

At intervals I drew up to judge the silence of the woods, to sort out the sounds, and the closer I was to final escape the more jumpy I became. The very fact that I was getting out made every move more careful because I wanted nothing to go wrong at the last minute.

About noontime I rode down to the bank of the Sulphur. It was a dangerous river, many ways. Under the surface there was an entangling mass of roots, old snags, and masses of dead and long-submerged water lilies, sudden shallows or depths. The old ferry was several miles downstream, and the place where I now sat my saddle was an old Caddo crossing almost two miles upstream from Willow Bluff.

Approaching the bluff from the north seemed a likely idea, and I’d circled around, cutting for sign, and checking the country. Right about then I’d an uneasy feeling the woods weren’t at all empty. Could be I was jumpy, but the feeling was on me.

Katy might come at any time, and she might not be alone, so I’d want to check whoever was with her before I showed up in plain sight. Also, there was always the chance she’d been followed. A man on the dodge can’t rule out anything as unlikely. Walking the dapple into the water I waded him and swam him across the Sulphur.

The old trail divided here and a branch went northwest toward a couple of shacks called White Cotton. The other branch went northeast to intersect with a very poor trail running north to Dalby Springs and southeast toward the ferry. Turning off the trail before it reached the road, I worked a cautious way through the forest toward Willow Bluff.

Willow Bluff was one of several bluffs that were actually little more than high banks covered with willows as was much of this bottom in 1869. On the edge of a thicket near some pines I got down from the saddle. There was no reason I could think of for feeling like I did but there was panic in me. The silence of the forest was suddenly oppressive and I had to fight back an urge to climb into the saddle and light out of there and run like I never had in my life until I was far from here, far from Texas, and far from anything I ever knew.

Easing the girth on the dapple I squatted on my heels and lighted my pipe, and then I stayed right there, listening, making myself easy. The earth smelled of decayed leaves and rotting timber. Along a fallen log walked a big red ant, and a bumblebee bumbled lazily among the wild flowers—no other sound came through the trees.