Ride the Panther (5 page)

“To quit this place, I’d ride with the devil himself,” the gambler said.

Hud Pardee merely laughed and led the way out of town.

J
ESSE MCQUEEN’S FIRST IMAGE
of Cap Featherstone was one he would remember all the days of his life. He found his father’s friend in the stable of the Excelsior Hotel. A wide, thick-necked individual with a black bandanna covering his skull and clad in dark green trousers and boar-hide boots, Cap Featherstone seemed to dominate whatever space he chose to stand in.

Cap had stripped away his coat and shirt and was loading a wagon with barrels of Kentucky bourbon and burlap sacks of malted barley and hops. He’d been at it for the better part of an hour and his hairy torso was matted with sweat. Though he seemed preoccupied with his work, the big man sensed the arrival of Abbot and McQueen, and after manhandling a keg of bourbon onto the flatbed wagon, Cap grabbed up his alligator-head cane and whirled around, ready to cave in the skull of the nearest intruder. Jesse dropped a hand to his revolver, then relaxed as Cap recognized his late-night visitors and lowered the lethal-looking walking stick.

“Damnation, Major. You give a man a start creeping up on me like that. A man can’t be too careful.” Cap squinted at Jesse. “By golly, you must be Jesse.” The big man lumbered forward. His thighs were as big as some men’s waists. His belly jostled with every step. Yet there was uncommon strength in his sloping shoulders, as evident in the way he had cavalierly tossed hundred-pound grain sacks onto the wagon bed.

“I’m proud to meet you, lad. Ah, your father spoke highly of you, God rest his soul.” Cap held out a gloved hand, thought himself rude, and stripped off the glove. The back of his hand was covered with coarse brown hair. He gripped Jesse’s hand in his viselike paw and ground the younger man’s knuckles together. The pain was startling. Jesse had the distinct impression he was being tested. He endured the handshake in silence and tested himself against Featherstone’s solid grip. At last Cap released Jesse’s numb fingers and stepped back to appraise the officer. Any ordinary soul would have yelped at the good-natured punishment Cap had served up. Jesse’s silence had spoken volumes. It appeared young McQueen was cut from the same cloth as his father. That could mean trouble.

“An honor, sir,” Jesse said, flexing his hand. “The story of Andrews’ raiders and their exploits in Georgia are legendary.”

Cap frowned. “Legend?” He glanced at Abbot. “The truth is somewhat less dramatic, my young friend. And eminently more painful to recall.”

“Jesse will be accompanying you back to Chahta Creek in his father’s place,” said Peter.

Cap glanced at the major. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning one dead makes the other a target,” Cap replied. “I’d hate to be responsible for the younker.” Cap shook his head.

“I can take care of myself, Cap,” Jesse flatly interjected.

“You think so, eh?” Cap retreated a step to appraise the younger man whose dark eyes seemed to smolder with defiance. After two years of blood and thunder, Jesse felt he didn’t have anything to prove.

“I’m riding into Chahta Creek and I don’t give a good goddamn whether you approve or not,” the captain said.

Cap grunted, squared his shoulders, and looked past McQueen to Major Peter Abbot. “Well, the lad is his father’s son, right enough,” the big man drawled. “Run along, Major. I’ll fill his head with what I’ve learned over the past few months. Maybe I can keep Jesse here from stopping a bullet.”

“See to it,” Peter replied. “I have business elsewhere in town.” He patted the straw and dust from his sleeve and, hesitating, took the opportunity to confiscate the jug of whiskey Cap had left on a nearby bale of hay.

“Ah, Major…” Cap moaned.

“You’ve greased that throat of yours quite enough,” Peter said. “And no telling what mischief your wagging tongue has caused.”

“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Cap blurted out to the major’s departing back. Peter disappeared through the doorway and closed the double doors after him. A few seconds later there came a crash, the sound of a jug being hurled against the outside wall of the stable. “Bastard!” Cap raised his fist to the empty stalls, then sighed and, turning, winked at Jesse and crossed the aisle. He stepped inside a stall where he kept one of his matched roan geldings. He returned with a canvas bag stenciled
OATS
on the side. He opened the bag and retrieved a silver flask, which he promptly unscrewed and tilted to his lips.

He offered a drink to Jesse, who declined. Cap shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He took another drink and leaned on the wagon. “Abbot’s a hard man. Fair, but hard.” Cap looked at McQueen. “But he doesn’t see the faces.”

“I don’t understand,” Jesse said. He crooked a thumb in his gunbelt and waited for the explanation.

“Eighteen…twenty—I’ve lost count. Andrews’ raiders.” Cap glanced up at the rafters. A barn rat scampered across an open beam and vanished into the loft. First came a rustle of straw, followed by a couple of brittle yellow blades of grass drifting down from above. “We ran like frightened rats. We were alone. They told us what to do, wreck the Confederate rail lines. But nobody ever told us how to get back. We thought Andrews and the major had put some kind of plan together. Wasn’t until we showed our colors and stole the train that we learned just how expendable we were.” Cap tucked the flask into his coat pocket and exchanged the whiskey for a cigar of Virginia tobacco that he had rolled and dried himself. A pair of silver snips suddenly came into his hand and he trimmed the end of the cigar, returned the snips to his trousers, and leaned forward to light the cheroot from a nearby lantern. Cap puffed a cloud of smoke that billowed before his face, obscuring his features. Wisps of tobacco smoke clung to his thick brown beard and curled over his upper lip like tusks. For a moment he resembled some savage beast, half man and half wild boar.

“But you returned,” Jesse said, studying the man his father called friend.

“Yes. And I promptly quit this damn war. After all, I wasn’t a real soldier. Just one of Abbot’s spies. I bought a panel wagon and headed into the Indian Territory where I hoped to escape the fighting. Cap Featherstone’s Elixirs and Medicine Show.” Cap patted the barrels of bourbon. “Never had a bottle returned yet,” he chuckled. “Of course, I don’t sell off the pure stuff. I dilute this nectar with a little gunpowder and snake poison.” Cap Featherstone grinned. “Yessir. I came to Chahta Creek to look up your pa. Didn’t know he was gone. And I seen a little place in town just waiting for me to hang a sign outside and rest my wandering soul. Why not? I got me some mixed blood, part Choctaw, a little Cherokee, and some Cajun.”

“What about the Knights of the Golden Circle?” Jesse said.

“Nobody knows who they are for sure. They’re always hooded. And they strike under cover of darkness. They sprang up a while back and been plaguing the countryside ever since. Folks are being driven off their homesteads. The major heard about it—somehow—and paid a visit to Chahta Creek. He recognized me and talked me into helping out. He didn’t have to twist my arm, not when I learned your pa was involved.” Cap Featherstone lowered his head. “I should have never let him go to the warehouse alone, no matter what the note said. But whoever left it for him claimed to have information about your brother and that was all Ben needed to know. ‘News of your youngest son. Come alone.’ And signed ‘A Southern Friend.’” Featherstone tossed the cigar in the dirt and crushed it beneath his boot. “I should have followed him,” Cap added in a voice thick with regret. He looked up at Jesse. There were tears in the big man’s eyes. “I feel almost to blame.” Cap sighed, and his powerful shoulders sagged as if burdened by the weight of his assumed guilt. Then he straightened and stroked a hand across his beard and crossed around to the front of the wagon. He reached beneath the seat and brought out the handbill Pardee had pilfered from the town marshal’s office. Jesse watched with curiosity as Cap lumbered toward him.

“Since you’re coming along, perhaps you’d better look at this. You may be riding into more trouble than you can handle.”

Jesse turned cold as he read the handbill. Its message was simple and direct and damning.

“Wanted dead or alive for the barbarous raid on Lawrence, Kansas, and the murder of its innocent citizens, these guerrilla leaders are hereby charged.

William Quantrill—Will Anderson alias Bloody Bill—Creole Tom Carrington—and Pacer Wolf McQueen, alias—”

“T
HE CHOCTAW KID!” EXCLAIMED
the guard on the Neosho stage. He brought his shotgun to bear on the lone highwayman blocking the bridge over Waterfall Creek. “I seen a poster on him up in Independence.”

Pacer Wolf McQueen snapped off a shot from the gun in his left hand and sent the shotgun spinning out of the guard’s grasp. The man sitting next to the guard on the coach, a mean-tempered, whiskey-soaked “four-up drier,” cracked his whip in an attempt to blind the Confederate holdup man. The Colt in Pacer’s right hand thundered and left the stage driver staring down at the wooden handle of his whip. The “black snake” had been shot clean away. The guard dropped a hand to the pistol tucked in his waistband. Pacer walked his skewbald pinto toward the four-horse team. Behind him, the rain-swollen river was ready to overflow its banks. It pounded the bridge supports and threatened to sweep the structure away.

“That would be a fool play,” Pacer softly counseled.

“Givin’ up my gun to one of Quantrill’s butchers don’t make any more sense. I heard all about what happened in Lawrence. You’d as soon shoot us as spit,” the guard retorted.

Pacer leaned over the side of his horse and spat pointedly in the dirt, then looked up at the men on the seat box. He waited, allowing the guard to reconsider his actions. He didn’t want to kill the man if there was any way around it.

“I’ve come to take up a collection for the Confederacy, my friends,” said Pacer. He fixed his eyes on the guard’s fingers already curled around the walnut grip of the revolver. Pacer’s features hardened. Indeed, his very appearance was that of a cutthroat. He carried a brace of Colt Dragoons; a D-guard knife with a broad heavy blade rode in a scabbard on his left side. He was garbed in the gray shirt and black trousers of a guerrilla fighter. A gray felt hat shielded him from the onslaught of the hot Missouri sun.

Pacer was as tall as his father, well over six feet, but was built leaner than Ben McQueen. His eyes matched the color of the burnished gold wedding band worn by his grandmother, Raven. His shoulder-length red hair, shaggy as a lion’s mane, was unbraided according to Choctaw custom. A beaded medicine pouch dangled from around his throat, a gift from Raven, the medicine woman who had raised him. A beaded leather shot bag hung from his belt. A pair of eagle feathers had been braided into the brown mane of his pinto stallion.

“I don’t have the time to dally, mister. Drop your gun or make your play,” Pacer called out.

The guard sighed, his expression soured, and though he still expected to be shot dead, the man removed his gun with thumb and forefinger and tossed it aside in the dirt.

“Are you a religious man?” Pacer asked.

The guard licked his lips and gulped. “Why?”

“You just brought two dead men back to life,” said the Confederate guerrilla.

Pacer walked his mount forward until he was alongside the coach. The canvas sides were rolled up and it was plain to see there were no passengers. This was strictly a mail run. All the better.

“I believe you’re carrying draft funds for the Neosho Bank.” He had learned from a Confederate sympathizer that the bank had been authorized to distribute a supplementary payroll for the Yankee troops quartered in and around the town. Indeed, Federal troops had occupied Missouri soil since the outbreak of war. Their presence had been a boon to the economy of several small towns like Neosho. Hundreds of miles from home and hearth, lonely soldiers spent their money on liquor and women and the few pleasures to be had in a frontier town. Fresh meat and farm products from the outlying farms commanded high prices but were considered a necessity by soldiers weary of army fare.

“Payrolls are transported by train. Every jackanapes knows that,” the driver growled.

Pacer Wolf cocked his revolvers and centered them on the man with the reins. He didn’t bother to repeat his threat. Time was running out and he wanted to make it clear his patience was wearing thin.

“Of course, now and then folks make an exception,” the driver added, and reached below his seat for a heavy-looking canvas bag that he handed down to McQueen. Pacer holstered a revolver and then hooked the mailbag’s leather handle over his saddle horn.

“The Confederate States of America are in your debt,” Pacer said with a flourish of his hat. He bowed to the men he had just robbed. A bullet plowed a furrow in the road, several yards from the pinto. The accompanying gunfire alerted Pacer, who whirled about and spied a troop of Federal cavalry on the crest of a wooded ridge a couple of hundred yards from the bridge.

“Now we’ll see who has the last laugh, you goddamn renegade,” the driver exclaimed. The Union escort had held back on purpose, hoping to surprise and capture any rebel raiders who might be in the vicinity. Their officer, a fresh-faced lieutenant from Baltimore, had watched the robbery unfold through the lens of his spyglass and thought he recognized McQueen from the poster he had seen. Here was a prize indeed, none other than the notorious Choctaw Kid.

Pacer glared at the men on the coach and raised his revolver. The driver’s grin faded as he stared into the black, unblinking eye of the gun barrel. But Pacer held his fire, eased the hammer down, and started back toward the bridge. The road was slick and muddy and the pinto momentarily lost its footing in the mud. Pacer kept a firm hold on the reins, brought the animal’s head up, and darted past the coach and its four-horse team and trotted down to the bank of the rain-swollen creek. He seemed almost cavalier in his retreat, as if unwilling to be chased from the battlefield.