Mark of the Hunter (4 page)

It was already late in the afternoon by the time Cord and Lem rode into Ogallala, and judging by the number of horses tied up in front of the Crystal Palace, they figured that was the place to find the posse. When they walked into the noisy saloon, they saw a group of men standing around one who appeared to be in charge. “That's J. G. Hughes,” Lem told Cord. “He was given the job of sheriff after the last one left last spring.”

“Lem,” Hughes acknowledged when he noticed the two latest arrivals, “'Preciate you and your partner there joinin' up with us.” He paused only a few seconds to consider the man with Lem, since he had never met Cord. “We was just talkin' about it bein' too late to start out this evenin', so I think it best if we bed down here in town tonight and start out for Big Springs in the mornin'.” He raised his voice then, so that all could hear. “And I'm talkin' about first thing in the mornin', first light, so don't spend half the night in here drinkin' whiskey.”

From behind the bar, Clyde Perkins, always concerned about business, called out, “He don't mean you ought not have yourself a little bedtime toddy to help you sleep good.”

“I'm ridin' with whoever shows up at first light,” Hughes repeated. “Might be a good idea to make camp by the river so we'll all be ready to go, come mornin'.”

“Me and Cord need to pick up some supplies before we head out,” Lem said.

“Homer's still open,” Hughes told him. “He said he'd stay open later, in case anybody needed supplies.” When Cord and Lem started for the door, Hughes walked over to the bar for another glass of beer. He took a drink from the glass, then asked Clyde, “Who's the young feller with Lem Jenkins? He ain't the feller who damn near beat one of them boys from Texas to death, is he?”

“He is,” Clyde said, and chuckled. “And from what I saw that day, you just need to turn him loose on that Bass gang. You might not need the rest of the posse, if you get him riled enough.”

Hughes thought about that for a moment. “Maybe he might be more trouble than I need to deal with,” he remarked.

“Nah, I wouldn't think so,” Clyde said. “He didn't seem the kind to give you any trouble—quiet, don't hardly say a word. It just don't pay to make him mad. Anyway, I doubt Mike Duffy woulda kept him on this long if he was a troublemaker.”

“I reckon you're right,” Hughes said. “Funny I ain't ever run into him in town. What's his name?”

“He don't ever come to town. That time a couple weeks ago, when he gave that feller a lickin', was the first time I'd seen him all summer. His name's Cord Malone, says he's from some little place in Kansas.”

•   •   •

Early the next morning, the posse set out for Big Springs Station on the South Platte. Sixteen strong, they arrived well before noon to find there was very little trace of the train robbers except for tracks leaving the station and heading south across the prairie. There was some disagreement over the number of men that made up the gang. It was hard to tell from the tracks alone. Some might have been left by packhorses, but at the least, there were six bandits, according to J. G. Hughes, and maybe as many as eight. Stationmaster and telegraph operator Quincy Johnson listened until Hughes's speculation was finished before stating, “There were six.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Hughes asked.

“I counted 'em when they held up the train,” Quincy said. “Then they rode off across the tracks that way.” He pointed toward the south.

“Why in hell didn't you say so to begin with?” Hughes asked.

“You never asked me how many,” Quincy replied. “The word has been wired out to every marshal's office in the territory and Union Pacific has already got their detectives on the job.”

Perturbed to be wasting time, Hughes asked, “Any other information you can offer to help us track down the robbers?”

“Well, Sam Bass and Tom Nixon was two of 'em.”

“How do you know that?” one of the posse asked.

“I've seen 'em around here before. I ain't ever seen the others.”

“I reckon ol' Bass got tired of holdin' up stagecoaches,” Lem remarked. He turned to Hughes then. “Whaddaya aim to do now, J.G.?”

“Hell, whaddaya think? Go after 'em, follow that trail south, and we'd best get started right now. We've wasted enough time.” When no one moved immediately, he raised his voice. “Let's go! Everybody in the saddle.”

“Hold on a minute, Sheriff,” one of the ranch hands from H. V. Redington's spread interrupted. “Those fellers have got a pretty good head start on us. It could take a helluva long time to track 'em down—if we ever do. And my boss only figured on me bein' gone for a couple of days. Maybe we just oughta let the law and the Union Pacific take care of this.” His words were echoed by a few others in the posse.

“Well, I'm aimin' to track those bastards down if I can. Anybody else wantin' to quit with Ed here?” To his disappointment, several others were of a like opinion. Disgusted, he looked at Lem and Cord. “What about you boys? You gotta run home to Daddy?”

Lem looked at Cord for his reaction, which was nothing more than an indifferent shrug. “No,” Lem told Hughes, “I reckon me and Cord will ride along with you.” So the posse set out following the train robbers' tracks with eight of their number heading back to Ogallala.

•   •   •

They were fortunate to have no rain for the two and a half days it took them to follow the gang's tracks from Big Springs. The robbers seemed to take no real efforts to hide their trail. On the morning of the third day, the posse struck the Republican River, and from the signs they found, it appeared Bass and his gang had camped there for a couple of days. That meant the posse had gained a day on them, which would have been encouraging news except for one thing. After they'd studied the tracks around the camp, it was obvious that the gang had split up in three pairs when they left the river, heading out in three separate directions. The decision had to be made as to how to split the posse. Hughes suggested that he should follow the trail leading southeast, and invited Lem and Cord to ride with him. The other posse men seemed reluctant to continue deeper into Kansas, their numbers reduced by the three-way split. A couple of them grumbled that they should have turned back with the others at Big Springs. When it became clear that any enthusiasm they might have had for capturing the train robbers was now waning, Lem asked Cord if he was still willing to stay in the hunt. “Ol' Hughes seems to have his mind set on catchin' some of these outlaws, so I figured somebody oughta go along to keep him outta trouble.” He cast a broad grin in Hughes's direction, knowing the sheriff could hear his remark.

“It's all right by me,” Cord said. “We told Mike we'd most likely be gone a week.”

“'Preciate it, Cord,” Hughes said, looking at him while aiming his next comment at Lem. “I might need your help to keep Lem from fallin' off his horse.”

Lem chuckled. “Hell, you're lucky to have me along on this little picnic.”

While the others turned back north, the three lone posse men followed the trail left by the two outlaws heading southeast. “I hope to hell one of these riders is Sam Bass,” Hughes remarked.

After almost four days following a trail left by two horses, losing it half a dozen times before finding it again, the three-man posse pushed their horses close to a hundred miles over flat Kansas prairie. Finally Lem asked Hughes just how far he was planning to follow the outlaws. “Hell, them boys is long gone. If we ain't caught up with 'em after this long, we ain't likely to catch 'em before they get clean to Texas.”

“We'll call it quits if we don't overtake 'em before they get to Buffalo Station,” Hughes said. He was reluctant to end the chase, since a reward of ten thousand dollars had been offered by Union Pacific for the capture of the robbers and recovery of the money, a small detail he had neglected to tell any of his volunteer posse.

Late in the afternoon of the fourth day, they spotted a strange object on the distant horizon looming up from the flat landscape. “Look yonder,” Lem exclaimed. “What the hell is that?”

“Buffalo Station,” Hughes said, “couldn't be nothin' else. That's gotta be the water tank at Buffalo Station—train stops there. I heard that water tank is a hundred and twenty feet high, so we're still a long way from the station.”

“I just hope they've got a saloon there,” Lem said. “My throat's a little dusty.”

“They got a general store with a saloon built on the back,” Hughes told him. “Least they did the last time I was there. They may have more'n that by now. That was over four years ago, but there was folks comin' from miles around to trade there at that time.”

“Well, good,” Lem remarked, “maybe these two jaspers we're trailin' decided to stop there awhile and wait for us.”

“Maybe so,” Hughes said. Then he glanced over at Cord, riding silently beside him, his gaze focused on the water tower that now seemed to be rising higher as the three riders steadily closed the distance. “Damned if you ain't the gabbiest feller I've ever rode with,” he joked. Shifting his gaze back to Lem then, he asked, “Does he ever say anythin'?”

Lem chuckled. “Once in a while he'll say somethin' if he's got a good enough reason. Ain't that right, Cord?”

“If you say so,” Cord answered, unperturbed by Hughes's attempt to jape him.

A little closer to the water tower now, the rooftops of a handful of buildings pushed up out of the prairie. “I believe they
have
added some folks since I was here,” Hughes remarked. “Maybe those outlaws mighta stopped here awhile to spend some of them gold coins they stole.” Thinking then of the possible confrontation that might occur as a result, he asked Cord, “You any good with that old Henry rifle?”

“Fair, I reckon,” Cord replied. “Least I most times hit what I'm aimin' at if I'm huntin' deer or antelope. Course a deer ain't ever been shootin' back at me,” he answered honestly. “Once in a while it misfires. I think I need a new firin' pin.”

“Well, you might get a chance to find out if we catch up with these two,” Hughes said, shaking his head in astonishment.

“I wouldn't worry about Cord,” Lem felt compelled to comment, having seen how he responded to danger before.

As it turned out, there would be no occasion to test Cord's proficiency with the old Henry rifle, for the little settlement that had risen around Buffalo Station appeared as peaceful as a town could be. There was no activity on the short, dusty street when the three riders pulled up before a newly constructed building that proclaimed itself to be the Water Hole. “What'll it be, boys?” Wally Simon, the short, rotund bartender asked when the three strangers walked into his establishment.

“Somethin' strong enough to cut the dust in my throat,” Lem replied.

Wally laughed and set three shot glasses on the bar. “Come a long way?” he asked as he poured.

“A piece,” Hughes answered. “We're lookin' for somebody we think rode through here a couple of days ago.”

Aware immediately what the strangers' business was in his sleepy town, Wally informed them, “You're a day late on the excitement, if you're chasin' them train robbers.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Hughes asked.

“Two of 'em, Joel Collins and Bill Heffridge, was here, all right, right here in my saloon, but the sheriff from over in Ellis County and ten soldiers from Fort Hays came and arrested 'em. They was peaceful enough at first, went along with the sheriff with no trouble a'tall. I reckon they figured they was done for, though. And one of 'em, I think it was Collins, pulled his pistol. He didn't get off a shot. Them soldiers cut down on the both of 'em, killed 'em deader'n hell.”

“Well, I'll be . . . ,” Lem started, never finishing. Hughes, obviously disappointed, said nothing, as did Cord. “Looks like we just rode a long way to get a drink,” Lem said then. “Might as well have another'n. We got a long ride back to Ogallala.”

“How'd the sheriff and the soldiers know it was them two?” Hughes asked. “Somebody know 'em?”

“Yeah,” Wally replied, “feller named Levi Creed—been hangin' around here for about a week—I think he was a friend of Collins. They sat down at that table in the back corner and bragged about the train holdup. I reckon they didn't think anybody could hear 'em, but Danny Green—young feller who works for me—was sweepin' out the storeroom and he overheard 'em talkin' about holdin' up the Union Pacific. When he told me what he'd heard, I sent him to Fort Hays to get the law.”

Far too engrossed in Wally's account of the apprehension of the two outlaws they had trailed, neither Lem nor Hughes noticed the immediate tensing of their young companion when the name Levi Creed dropped from the bartender's lips. Shocked, as if struck by lightning, every muscle in Cord's body was clenched, his heart pounding. He forced himself to calm down enough to control his emotions while Wally went on with the story. When finally able to speak calmly, he asked, “Levi Creed, is he still here?”

“Levi? No. He took off as soon as the soldiers showed up. He didn't have nothin' to do with the train robbery, but he was wanted for a bunch of other things, so I reckon he figured it weren't too healthy to hang around. Collins and Heffridge musta figured those soldiers hadn't come for them.”

“Do you know which way he ran?” Cord asked, his face expressionless, giving no indication of the fire burning inside him.

“Why, no, I ain't got no idea,” Wally answered, “but I'm damn glad he did. He's a right mean son of a bitch when he's drunk, and he stayed drunk most of the time.” He paused for a moment to study the young man with the jagged scar across his forehead. “You thinkin' 'bout goin' after Levi?” Cord didn't answer, so Wally continued. “'Cause if you are, you'd best be awful damn careful. That man's got a mean streak a mile wide. There's some men that's best just to step around, like you would a rattlesnake.”

Lem was alerted now to the sudden pall over Cord, and was prompted to ask a question. “You know this feller Creed?”

“Yeah,” Cord replied, his voice low, almost in a whisper, “I know him.” He turned his attention back to Wally then. “You have any idea where he might have been headin'?”

“Well, come to think of it, the first day Collins and Heffridge came in and saw Levi, he told 'em he was fixin' to head out to Cheyenne,” Wally said. “But, hell, I don't know nothin' about the man, and like I said, I sure as hell wasn't sorry to see him go.”

“Cheyenne, huh?” Cord echoed, his mind already working on how far and in what direction Cheyenne was from where he now sat. Like an old wound, the memory of his mother's tragic death was throbbing in his brain, and the demand for justice flamed anew in his soul. There was no decision for him to weigh. He had no choice. There was only one way to free his mind of the burden of guilt he carried for not protecting his mother. He turned to Lem and said, “Then I reckon we can head for home right away.”

“I reckon,” Lem replied, still waiting for an explanation for Cord's sudden sense of urgency. When there was still none forthcoming, he asked, “What's workin' on your mind so heavy?”

“Nothing,” Cord answered. “Just no sense wastin' time around here when there's plenty to do back home.”

“It'll get done without us,” Lem insisted. “We can take a little time to rest up our horses before we start back.”

“Suit yourself,” Cord told him. “I'm headin' back right now. It's a good four days' ride back and we've got about two more hours of daylight today. I'll rest my horse when I make camp.”

“All right,” Lem conceded. “We'll start back tonight. Just give me time to finish my drink. No sense in you ridin' back alone.” His real concern was that Mike Duffy might want an explanation for his late arrival if Cord showed up alone. “What about you, Sheriff?” he asked Hughes. “You ready to go back now?”

“I don't think so,” Hughes said. “I don't see no reason for me to start back before tomorrow mornin'. But I 'preciate you boys ridin' with me, even if we didn't get the credit for capturin' any of that gang of train robbers.”

•   •   •

It was not easy to break through the wall of silence Cord had built when it came to talking about his quest to find the man who killed his parents. Lem, being older and almost like an uncle to the younger man, knew there was something eating away inside Cord's brain, and he was determined to find out what it was. The story came out gradually over the four full days of hard riding, and in the last camp before reaching the ranch, he finally found out what was driving his young friend. It was a terrible burden for any man to carry, and in his opinion, the odds of Cord finding the killer were slim at best. “How do you know you'll recognize this Levi feller?” Lem asked. “It's been a lotta years since you saw him. He most likely changed a lot since then. Hell, he's a lot older. Men in his line of work sometimes have to change their whole appearance when the law gets on their tails, anyway.”

“I'll know him,” Cord replied confidently. “I don't care how much he's changed.”

“Maybe so,” Lem allowed, stroking his chin thoughtfully. He was not comfortable with the idea of Cord going after a hardened criminal like Levi Creed. He decided to make one more attempt to dissuade him from the task he had set upon. “Look here, Cord, you're about as tough a young feller as I've ever seen, but you're talkin' 'bout goin' after somebody who kills for a livin'. Might be best to just let it go. I expect your mama would tell you the same thing if she could.”

“If I was to listen to you, I might as well shoot myself in the head right now, 'cause I sure as hell wouldn't be worth the price of a horse turd,” Cord told him. “I've already told you more than I ever intended to, so I'd appreciate it if you just keep what I've told you to yourself. All right?”

That was the reaction Lem pretty much expected from his determined young friend, but he figured it was worth the attempt to change his mind. “All right,” he said. “I reckon it's your business and none of nobody else's.” He didn't bring the matter up again.

•   •   •

“Why?” Eileen Duffy asked when she overheard her father telling her mother that Cord was leaving.

“I don't know for sure,” Mike said. “You know how Cord is. He don't say much, anyhow, and all he would tell me is that he had somethin' he had to do, somethin' important by the way he sounded, and he didn't seem to wanna talk about it.”

“But I thought he was satisfied here, working for you,” Eileen insisted.

“I thought so, too,” Mike replied, “and he said so himself—said he hated to give up his job, but he didn't have any choice—said he'd like to have it back when he got done with whatever it is he's got to take care of.”

“You said he was a hard worker,” Eileen reminded him.

“He is at that,” Mike allowed. “I told him to come talk to me after he's done with it.”

Muriel Duffy stood listening to the conversation between her husband and her daughter, the plate she had been drying still in her hand. She had felt a sense of relief when Mike told her Cord was leaving. Now she wondered if there was any cause for her to be concerned over Eileen's apparent distress over the young man's leaving. “Just like most of the drifters,” she finally commented. “Nothing ties them to any place for very long before they're itching to try a new spot. He must be up to some mischief if he won't tell why he's going. I'm surprised he stayed this long.” As she spoke, she watched Eileen closely for her reaction, not sure how deeply infatuated with the young man her daughter had become.

Eileen, however, seemed not to notice her mother's pointed comments, addressing her comments to her father instead. “I bet if you asked Lem Jenkins he could tell you where Cord was going. Lem's the only one that Cord says much to, anyway.”

“Maybe so,” Mike replied, “but I reckon if Cord wanted me to know, he'da told me. It's his business if he wants to quit.” He glanced at Muriel and her stern expression told him to end the speculation. “Anyway, he's leavin' in the mornin', and that's that. At least he ain't quittin' to go to work for one of the bigger outfits.” He grabbed his hat from the back of his chair and went out the kitchen door.

“Well,” Muriel said cheerfully when the door closed, “we'd best finish up the dishes. I was thinking that tomorrow would be a good day for you and me to get out that material I bought at Homer's store and cut out a new dress for you.”

Eileen, her mind somewhere else, stood staring at the kitchen door. Aware then of her mother's comment, she turned to her and said, “Oh, Mother, don't worry yourself so much over things that don't matter. I'm not going to run off to follow Cord Malone.” With that, she turned and went to her room, leaving her mother to finish the dishes.