Chapter 30
He was still worried he’d done the wrong thing by leaving Tate at his daughter’s when someone knocked on the door of his hotel room that evening. He wasn’t expecting any trouble, but habit put a gun in his hand anyway as he went to answer the summons.
When The Kid opened the door he found a man he had never seen before standing in the corridor. The man wore a brown tweed suit and had a mustache, bushy side whiskers, and a harried look about him. He didn’t seem threatening.
“Mr. Morgan?”
“That’s right,” The Kid replied. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Timothy Edwards. My father-in-law is Jared Tate.”
“Of course,” The Kid said with a nod. “How do you do, Mr. Edwards?”
“Not too well right now. Have you seen Jared?”
The Kid shook his head. “Not since leaving him with your wife at your house this afternoon. Isn’t he there?”
“No, the old—” Whatever Edwards as about to say, he stopped himself and took a deep breath. “He’s run away again. My wife claims she was watching him the whole time, but somehow he got out of the house and disappeared.”
“Have you gone to the police? He couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Well . . . he took his horse with him. Bertha searched the neighborhood, but by then he was long gone.”
The Kid realized he was about to smile and managed not to. He was sort of pleased Tate had lit a shuck out of there, but some legitimate reasons to worry about him wandering around by himself came to mind.
“We thought maybe he might have come here, since the two of you seem to be friends,” Edwards went on.
“We rode some tough trails together, that’s true. But I haven’t seen him. He wouldn’t have known where I was staying, anyway.”
“No, I guess not.” Edwards chewed worriedly at his drooping mustache. “I’ll have to go to the law. They’ll find him, and when they do, I’m afraid we’re not going to have any choice but to . . . to lock him up somehow. We can’t have this happening all the time.”
“Hold on a minute.” The Kid suppressed the surge of anger welling up inside him at the idea of the valiant old lawman being locked up in a little room. “He’s got it in his head he still lives in Copperhead Springs. Maybe he headed for there again, like he did before.”
“Well, that makes sense. But we still have to find him.”
“Of course. I’ll start trailing him at first light.”
“You really think you can pick up his trail?”
“I know the way to Copperhead Springs from here, and so does Marshal Tate. I can catch up to him. I don’t think he would travel through the night. He probably stopped and made camp. He’ll be a few miles ahead of me, but it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to close that gap.”
“But in the meantime something could happen to him,” Edwards said. “I don’t want my wife put through that.”
“You can go to the authorities here, of course. That’s probably a good idea. They can search here in town. But I don’t think they’ll find him. My hunch is he’s somewhere out on the trail, like he would have been in the old days.”
Wearily, Edwards scrubbed a hand over his face and then sighed. “Thank you. I know this isn’t your problem, Mr. Morgan. I can pay you for your help.”
“Like I told your wife, just forget about that. Marshal Tate saved my life twice. I’m glad to do anything I can to give him a hand.”
“It’s funny the way you call him Marshal Tate. He hasn’t been a lawman for a long time.”
“I reckon Jared Tate will always be a lawman where it counts,” The Kid said. “Inside.”
He left at first light in the morning, heading west out of Wichita on the road that would eventually turn into the trail leading to Copperhead Springs. He had no way of knowing for sure that Tate had gone that way, but it certainly seemed likely. The Kid’s gut seldom steered him wrong, and it was telling him he would find Tate by going in that direction.
About ten miles west of town he found something supporting his theory. The smell of ashes led him off the road to a small pond where someone had camped the night before. The Kid could see where the traveler had built a fire. He dismounted and hunkered on his heels to study the hoofprints left by the horse that had been picketed nearby. He thought they looked like the prints left by the horse Marshal Tate had been riding for the past few weeks.
The ashes of the campfire were cold. Tate had gotten an early start, too. The Kid swung back up into the saddle and rode on, keeping the buckskin moving at a steady, ground-eating pace.
The first settlers in that part of Kansas had been farmers, and the lack of trees had led them to build their homes out of blocks of sod, usually against the side of a small, rolling hill they had hollowed out. The roofs, which extended out from the hill crest, were of sod and thatch. Those dwellings were cold in the winter, damp always, but not too bad during the summer. As the decades had gone by, the successful farmers had been able to afford to build real houses of lumber, and most of the so-called soddies had been abandoned. Given the materials of which they were constructed, it was no surprise many of them had collapsed, going back to the earth from which they had sprung.
Some of the more sturdily built soddies were still standing, and that afternoon The Kid noticed smoke coming from the chimney of one of them a couple hundred yards north of the trail.
His keen eyes spotted something else, and he reined in. A horse was tied to a hitching post in front of the homestead, and unless The Kid was mistaken, it was the same animal Marshal Tate had been riding.
Tate must have stopped here at this farm,
The Kid thought as he swung the buckskin toward the soddy. He hoped they had treated him kindly.
As he came closer and got a better look at the horse, he was certain it belonged to Tate. The chore had turned out to be considerably easier than he’d expected. He could have Tate back in Wichita by nightfall, if they hurried.
A frown creased The Kid’s forehead as that thought crossed his mind. Did he really want to take Tate back to his daughter’s house? That was what he’d set out to do, of course, when he agreed to accompany the old lawman from Copperhead Springs back to Wichita.
But he had carried out that task, he reminded himself. His responsibility was over. It sure as hell wasn’t his job to make Tate stay somewhere he didn’t want to stay.
What else was Tate going to do, though? He couldn’t be out on his own. Sometimes he couldn’t remember even the simplest things. Something was bound to happen to him.
The logic of that realization warred with the revulsion The Kid felt at the idea of Tate spending the rest of his days locked in a room, not understanding where he was or why he was stuck there, never seeing anyone except two people who might as well have been strangers to him. Bertha Edwards might actually love her father, The Kid thought, but she also resented him and had no patience with him.
And he’d never had to walk in her shoes, The Kid reminded himself. He couldn’t judge her.
But he didn’t know if he could take Tate back to her, either.
With those thoughts racing through his head, he almost didn’t notice the fields around the soddy were overgrown, gone back to nature. A plow sat off to one side of the dwelling, but it was covered with rust and obviously hadn’t been used for years. The place had been abandoned.
But if that was the case, why was smoke coming from the chimney? Why was Tate’s horse tied up outside?
Those questions had just crossed The Kid’s mind, causing him to grow wary when a man stepped out of the soddy, pointed a rifle at him, and fired.
The man had rushed his shot, and The Kid heard the bullet pass by his ear with a flat
whap!
He leaned forward in the saddle and drove his heels into the buckskin’s flanks to send the horse leaping ahead. At the same time he drew his Colt.
The rifleman worked the gun’s lever and fired again, but The Kid charging at him threw off his aim. The slug whined high over The Kid’s head. Up close, The Kid recognized the man as the smaller of the two moonshiners he and Tate had encountered on the trail from Copperhead Springs.
“Drop it!” The Kid yelled as he brought up his Colt.
The man didn’t heed the warning. He desperately fired again, and a split second later The Kid squeezed off a round. The bullet struck the rifleman and knocked him halfway around, but he managed to stay on his feet.
The Kid left the saddle in a rolling dive that carried him off to the side of the soddy’s entrance. The rifleman, swaying from his wound, tried to track him with the barrel of the Winchester. The rifle cracked again and the bullet kicked up dirt uncomfortably close to The Kid’s head.
Tilting his gun barrel, The Kid triggered another shot as he scurried to the side of the abandoned building, but the wounded rifleman was already ducking back through the soddy’s door. The slug thudded harmlessly into the thick earthen wall.
The man inside couldn’t fire at The Kid . . . but he didn’t have a shot, either.
“Morgan! Morgan, you hear me?”
The man’s voice was thin with strain, and The Kid figured it was from the pain of that bullet wound.
“We got the old marshal in here!” the man went on. “Figured you’d come lookin’ for him, and sure enough, you did! Throw your gun away and come out where I can see you, or we’ll kill him!”
The Kid didn’t say anything. The rifleman had revealed he wasn’t alone in there. The Kid figured the man’s heavyset partner, the one whose foot the wagon had fallen on, was inside the soddy, too.
“I ain’t bluffin’, Morgan! You do what I say, or you can listen to the old man squeal while we’re killin’ him!”
The Kid said, “How do I know he’s not dead already ?”
The fact that he had responded brought a crazed laugh from the rifleman. “Take your hand off his mouth and let him talk, Benny.”
A moment later, The Kid heard Jared Tate’s voice. “Kid, don’t pay any attention to what these two polecats say. They’re not going to hurt me. They know they’ll swing for it if they do.”
The marshal’s voice was strong and confident. The Kid wasn’t particularly surprised. Tate seemed to be at his best in times of trouble, as if he was able to reach down deep in his heart and soul and mind and find the man he used to be.
“You better not listen to him, Morgan,” the rifleman warned. “You’re the one we really want. Do like I told you, and we’ll let the old man live.”
The Kid didn’t believe that for a second. The men intended to kill both of them.
“You two are lucky goats.” The rifleman went on. “I told those gunslingin’ brothers where to find you, and I figured they’d kill you for sure. But you come out of that alive, and I hear you beat a whole gang of outlaws, too. Well, your luck’s run out, you hear me? Today’s the day you . . . the day you die . . .”
The words trailed off into a strangled cough.
The Kid called out, “It sounds more to me like you’re the one who’s dying, amigo. I hit you pretty hard, didn’t I? Think you can hang on long enough to get your revenge?”
“Shut up!” the man yelled. “I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think so. I think you’re losing blood and you’re going to pass out soon. Benny’s not a killer. I remember that from when we met before. As soon as you’re gone, he’s going to surrender because he doesn’t want to hang.”
“Shut up! Benny, I . . . I want you to snap that old man’s neck. Wring it like he was a damn chicken!”
The Kid heard the rumble of the other man’s voice say, “Selmon, I don’t know . . .”
“By God!” Selmon screamed. “Do what I tell you!”
The Kid charged up the side of the hill while Selmon was yelling at his partner. If the soddy had been unused for quite a while, the roof was bound to have been weakened by the elements. The beams were probably rotten. The Kid braced himself for a second, then jumped, coming down as hard as he could near where the stovepipe chimney stuck up through the roof.
Just as he’d hoped, it collapsed underneath him.
The roof crashed down, taking The Kid with it. He slammed into someone as dirt showered around them. His hat protected his eyes from most of the grit, enabling him to see the man called Selmon struggling to get up from under the collapsed roof. Thrusting the rifle at The Kid, he pulled the trigger. Flame erupted from the barrel.
The Kid caught his balance and fired twice. Selmon’s head jerked back as both bullets bored into his forehead and blew the back of his skull off. The Kid wheeled around, searching for Tate and Benny.
Benny loomed up in front of him like a bear, roaring like an enraged grizzly. His hands locked around The Kid’s throat as his weight bore the smaller man backward.
The Kid had no other choice. He jammed the Colt’s barrel against Benny and pulled the trigger until the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Benny sagged against him, a final breath rattling grotesquely in his throat.
With a grunt of effort, The Kid rolled Benny’s corpse off himself and sat up. “Marshal?” He called as he looked around. “Marshal Tate!”