Kiowa Trail (1964) (6 page)

They were gone, all right. They had headed out of the country, toward San Antonio.

I went back to our place, and when I had buried Mr. Sotherton, I followed them. But first I took the letter from its hiding place, and when I reached San Antonio I mailed it.

A few days later I located a man who had seen the three men headed northeast, and I went in the direction they had taken, picking up their trail and holding to it until I came up to their camp on the Leon River. Only one man was in camp and, leaving my horse tied, I walked up to camp holding my six-shooter in my hand.

When I came through the brush I saw that it was Bob Flange squatting beside a fire with a coffee pot on.

"You killed Mr. Sotherton," I said as I came up behind him.

His shoulders hunched as if I'd hit him with a stick, and then he turned his head around slowly to get a look at me. He got to his feet.

"Now see here, boy," he said, "you don't know what you're talkin' about."

"That's his rifle there. Those are his horses picketed yonder."

He was figuring his chances on going for his gun, and wondering whether he could get into action before I did. "You murdered him," I said, "and you tortured him. That gold you stole he got in New Orleans. I was with him there."

"There's a treasure," Flange said insistently. "What else was he doin' down there in that country?"

"He liked wild country," I said. "You killed a man, a good man, with no better reason than a foolish thought that he might know where there was gold."

His manner was growing confident. "What do you figure on doing, boy? If you want some of the gold" - he reached into a shirt pocket and took out a bright gold piece - "you can have this." He spun the gold coin into the dust.

Like a fool, I looked down at it, and he drew and shot at me. Only he was in too much of a hurry, and he missed ... I didn't.

I picked up that gold piece and took whatever else of gold was in his pockets, because it wasn't rightfully his and I might need it to trace the other men. Whatever was left I would send to Mr. Sotherton's folks in England.

Then I took the horses and rode in to the Fort and went to the commanding officer. He looked up from his desk when the corporal showed me in. "What can I do for you, young man?"

"My name is Conn Dury," I said, "and three men murdered my boss." And then I told him the whole story. I ended it by saying, "I came up with one of them this morning. He's in his camp down on the Leon River."

"We will go get him," the captain said.

"No need to take anything down there but shovels," I said. "I already saw him."

He looked at me very carefully, and then said, "And the other two?"

"I'm setting after them." From my pocket I took three hundred dollars in gold. "This is stolen gold. It was in his pockets. I also brought in ten head of stolen horses that belonged to Mr. Sotherton. I figured you might send this gold back to his family in England, and dispose of the horses for them."

He sat back in his chair and looked at me. "How old are you, son?"

"Fifteen," I said, "and I've been doing a man's work."

"So I see." From the pile of gold he counted out sixty dollars. "You will need some money if you expect to follow those men. You realize, of course, they will try to kill you?"

"Yes, sir. But Mr. Sotherton treated me well. He paid me, gave me as much education as we had time for, and no man should be treated as they treated him."

Captain Edwards rose from his desk and walked outside with me. "You have that address?"

"Yes, sir." I handed it to him.

He glanced at it, then looked at it again, and something about it seemed to surprise him.

"I see," he said. "So that is who your Mr. Sotherton was ... James Sotherton ... Major James Sotherton." He studied the address. "A very distinguished man, my boy, from a very distinguished family."

We walked to the corral where I had left the horses and he selected two of them, after a glance at my own horse. They were the two finest of the lot. "You take those horses," he said. "I will give you a letter showing right of possession."

He also gave me the weapons I had brought in from Flange's camp. "I shall write to his family," Captain Edwards said. Then he went on, "Did he ever mention his family? Or anyone else?"

"Never, sir."

"Let me know what happens." The captain hesitated a moment, and then he said, 'This is a remarkable coincidence. As a young officer I knew your Major Sotherton. He was a military attache during the war with Mexico."

Two weeks later I found out who the third man was. He was Frank Hastings ... a scalp hunter ... a man whom I had never seen.

When I came on Morgan Rich it was in Las Vegas, New Mexico, more than six months later.

He was in a saloon there, and I walked up to the bar near him and said bluntly, "You murdered Jim Sotherton. You tortured him worse than any Apache."

"You lie!" he shouted at me.

But at least twenty men were listening, and he looked worried.

"You stole gold money from him, and left a trail of it clear across the country. It was English gold."

Nobody was doing anything but listening as I went on. "Itraced Bob Flange by it, too."

"Flange?"

"He missed his first shot... I didn't."

"Get out of here, kid. You're crazy."

"That belt you have on," I said steadily, "is a British uniform belt you stole from his outfit after you killed him."

"You're a damned liar!" Rich said hoarsely, and as he spoke he drew his gun.

It was cold out on the hill the next morning, with a raw wind blowing, so they buried him in a shallow grave, wrapped in his blanket, then hurried back to the saloon for a drink.

Frank Hastings had dropped from sight, and I had never found him.

The coals were almost gone. "You'd best get some sleep, Kate," I said. "It is going to be a long night."

She was getting to her feet when we heard the shots. A sudden volley ... and then one more. The shots came from the town.

Kate turned sharply to me. "Conn ... where's Tom?"

Fear tore my throat like a rasp. I turned and ran in a stumbling gait toward the place where the men had bedded down. Tom's bedroll was there, and it was empty.

Priest rolled over and lifted himself on one elbow. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

"Tom's gone," I said, "and there was shooting in town."

His horse was gone, too. When I returned from checking the remuda, everybody was up and armed.

And then we heard the galloping of horses out on the prairie. The riders drew up well out in the darkness, at least a hundred yards off.

There was a thump of something thrown to the ground, and a voice shouted, "And don't come back!"

They rode off quickly into the darkness, and we went out there. Bending down, I lit a match.

It was Tom Lundy, and he was dead. He had been shot three times in the back, and then somebody had turned him over and shot him between the eyes from such close range that the wound was marked with powder burns.

We carried him back to the hill and laid him down on the ground, and Kate Lundy came and stood over him.

He was her last living relative, and he had been both brother and son to her. After her husband had been killed by Indians Tom was all she had left, and now he was gone.

His gun was in its holster, the thong still in place, evidence that he had not expected shooting trouble.

Standing there, we looked down at those bullet holes. Three shots in the back at close range that had ripped through his back, tearing great holes through his chest. And in case he was still not dead, a man had leaned over him and finished the job with a pistol bullet.

Suddenly Red Mike began to swear in a choked, horrible voice.

Tod Mulloy said, "If it's the last tiring I do, I'm going to burn that town."

"Let's do it now," Carson said. "Right now!"

"No." The word was flat, cold, in a voice such as I had never heard Kate Lundy use before. "No," she repeated.

"We're pulling out?"

"No."

That was all she would say, and the men were silent.

Nobody slept that night, but in the morning Naylor and Priest went out and dug a grave on a flat place at the very top of the hill. They dug it deep, and we buried Tom Lundy there.

Looking off toward town, using the field glasses I kept in my saddlebag, I could see the glint of rifles from the rooftops or corrals.

"They're waiting for us, Kate," I said. "They are waiting to get us as we ride in."

"We're not going in."

Rule Carson swore. "Now, look here, Mrs. Lundy," he began. Tom was -"

"Tom Lundy," she said, "was my brother. He took my husband's name, and my husband considered him his son." She paused. "We wanted children, but we never had any ... only Tom."

She turned to Red Mike. "Mike, I want you to saddle the steel-dust, and I want you to ride to Texas. I want you to find twenty-five men who can handle guns, and who can take orders." She looked over at the town. "Can you find that many?"

"I can find a hundred," he said. "Volunteers, if you want them."

"I want men who work for wages," she said, "and I've the money to pay them."

Red Mike turned to look at me. "Who do you think?" he asked.

"The Cuddy boys," I said, "and Harvey Nugent, Sharkey, Madden, and Kiel. Some of the Barrickman or Clements boys if they're around."

Kate stood there, looking toward the town, a tall, lonely woman, with high cheekbones and a face still lovely despite what sun and wind had done to it.

"You're going to fight, Kate?"

"Not the way they expect," she said. "Not at all the way they expect."

But it was that morning that it began, and it was a kind of warfare I had not expected, and was not prepared for. Nor were they.

She wrote three telegrams that morning, and she sent Delgado off on a fast horse to take them to the nearest station to the east. It was a water tank and saloon twenty miles away.

The day drifted slowly by and the men sat around playing cards. Toward sundown they drifted the horses to the nearest creek and watered them.

Riflemen still stood guard on rooftops and in the alleys approaching the town.

Kate remained in her ambulance most of the day, an the rest of us waited.

"They must be getting kind of nervous down there," Tod Mulloy said finally. "We've got the edge, because we know what we're doin' and they don't."

The thought seemed to cheer everybody up a little, and I noticed that every once in a while one of the men would go up the rise and stand there looking off toward the town. They could see us up there, and our inaction must be puzzling to them.

"They will not sleep much tonight," D'Artaguette commented. "Nor did they last night."

Kate looked over at him. "Nor will they for many nights to come."

At noon on the third day, a rider came toward us bearing a white flag. With my field glasses I could see it was Bannion, the one man in town - unless it was Hardeman - who might be allowed close enough to talk.

Bannion had always been fair. He had staked more than one busted trail hand to a final drink when his money was gone, and had even furnished a couple of riders with horses to get back to their outfits.

Kate, D'Artaguette, and I went down the slope to meet him.

"I had nothing to do with this, Mrs. Lundy," he said. "I want you and the boys to know that. Nothing at all. I didn't even know it was going to happen."

"Did they ask you to come out and look the situation over?" I asked.

"Yes ... they're worried. They can't figure what's happening. They've been laying for you, expecting an attack just any minute."

"Let them worry," Kate replied. "Mr. Bannion, you have the reputation for being a fair man. Now we're going to give you a chance to save yourself. You will have no time to consider this, but take my advice and do as I say.

"Go back to town. Tell them the truth, that we would not allow you into our camp. Then sell your saloon."

"Sell my saloon?" he repeated in astonishment

"Why, I can't do that! Anyway, they would think it mighty odd -"

"Would you rather sell at a loss - and you may have to - or come out with nothing at all?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Mr. Bannion," Kate asked quietly, "did you ever see a town die?"

He just looked at her, and after a minute he said, "Thank you, ma'am. Thank you." Then he turned his horse.

"Mr. Bannion," Kate added, "and this is for you, and you alone to know. One hundred miles west of here there's a creek that flows along the edge of a wide flat. There are hills to the north, and some cotton-woods there. It's on the main line of the railroad."

Well, I looked at her. Of course, I knew the place; we had camped there once. In fact, I myself had camped there several times, and had taken our herd there the season before.