Power in the Blood (40 page)

“Throw that piece down, son,” the driver advised Drew.

Drew lifted his Colt slowly from its holster. “I had nothing to do with this,” he said. “They told me if I didn’t come with them and let them use my horses, they’d kill me.”

“Expect us to believe that!” screamed the woman inside the coach. “Get him!” she instructed the men in the driver’s seat. “Get him before he does it again, like those Ruckers!”

“Calm down there, Mrs. Christy.…”

“I won’t be! I won’t! Get that one too, why don’t you!”

“Boy,” said Middlebusher, carefully reloading his weapon, “you drop that pistol and get off the horse.”

“Better do it,” the driver said.

The days he spent behind bars at Croker Flats were not uncomfortable, the regimen being considerably more relaxed than that of the Houston jailhouse. Drew’s wound was slight, and adequately dressed. He was allowed whatever reading material was available, principally a series of school readers and a battered Bible. He surprised himself by browsing among the passages he had rejected following the attempt on his life by Morgan Kindred. It helped pass time that would otherwise have moved with the speed of dripping molasses.

His jailer was not unfriendly, nor overtalkative. Drew was awaiting the arrival of the circuit judge, who would decide his guilt or innocence on the charges brought against him by the stage line. A number of citizens had paid him visits in his cell, curious to see the well-spoken boy accused of attempted robbery. Most of them went away convinced by his cherubic face, his earnest manner and his story of intimidation by the Rucker brothers, who were known as misfits and troublemakers and plain fools. Drew’s prospects for dismissal appeared fair to middling, and he did not despair at finding himself again in the circumstances he had so recently escaped from. Judge Craven, he was told, was not an unreasonable man.

Middlebusher came to call, and smoked his pipe awhile.

“Reckon you’ll get away with it?” he asked Drew.

“I’m not looking to get away with anything. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You say.”

“That’s right—I say.”

“Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“On account of I say different.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“That’s another lie just come out of your mouth.”

“You sound very sure about that, Mr. Middlebusher.”

“Got good reason to.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pants and held it up for Drew to see. “Happened to see a few of these posted up around Fort Stockton. That’s where the line ends up, in case you didn’t know.”

Drew recognized himself in the drawing reproduced under the banner REWARD. It was worth a hundred dollars.

“Got nothing to say?” inquired Middlebusher.

“No.”

“Drew Dugan, otherwise known as Drew Gentles. Says here you shot a man’s arm off.”

“I shot him, then a doctor took the arm off.”

“Is that right. Figure you’ll stand much of a chance if I show this to Judge Craven? He’s a tough old son. Hates to ride the circuit on account of his piles. Bad-tempered feller because of the pain. No time for outlaws at all. Hangs ’em outright, generally.”

“Does he hang innocent people?”

“What’s that to you? You’re guilty as hell.”

“You say.”

“And I’ll say it to old Craven, sure.”

“I can’t stop you.”

“That’s right, you can’t.”

Middlebusher left, and Drew began to worry. With his true identity revealed, he would almost certainly be found guilty, and even if he wasn’t, he would be returned to Houston to face charges there. Drew began trying to think of ways in which he might escape, but without a friend like Marion de Quille on the outside, there seemed little hope.

Three more days passed, then Judge Craven arrived in Croker Flats. He disposed of petty disputes first, then ordered Drew brought before him. Drew was fetched from his cell and brought across the street to the hotel that substituted for a courthouse, where he found a considerable audience gathered to witness his trial. Several young ladies among the audience gazed at him with open sympathy. He took his place on the chair of the accused.

Testimony was taken from the stage driver and from Middlebusher, and the woman passenger as well, since she was a local citizen, therefore still available for an appearance in court. Drew wished some of the other passengers were present to offer a potentially less damaging version of events, but they had all passed through to Fort Stockton.

Middlebusher and the woman told the judge it was abundantly clear that Drew was in cahoots with the Rucker boys. The driver was less sure, and ended his testimony with the unverifiable claim that “The boy looks honest to me.”

All relevant witnesses having been heard from, the judge allowed Drew to tell his own story, which he did with succinctness and not a little humor, directed mainly at the Ruckers’ stupidity. The judge had to call for quiet several times during Drew’s testimony. While defending himself, Drew had to avoid distraction in the form of a girl in the front row of chairs, who insisted on waving her fingers at him, despite her mother’s frequent slaps on the wrist.

When Drew was done, the judge eased himself back and forth on his chair, adjusting the cushion he sat on, then cleared his throat to address the room.

“I find the defendant not guilty by reason of everyone in this county knows the Ruckers. They’re mean and dumb enough to do exactly what the defendant described. This young man is a victim of circumstances, and lucky to be alive, being as Lew Middlebusher is a more than fair hand with a scattergun. Case dismissed.”

The girl in the front row swooned. There was general whistling and applause. Drew stood up, dazed with relief. The judge beckoned him over.

“Son, you and I have to talk in private. Go through there.”

He indicated a door nearby. Before leaving the room, Drew noticed Middlebusher scowling in the direction of the judge. Drew waited less than a minute before he was joined in what appeared to be the hotel proprietor’s unused front parlor. The judge produced the reward poster Middlebusher had given him before the trial began.

“Son,” said the judge, “is this you?”

“It is, Your Honor.”

“So you aren’t John Bones at all?”

“Nossir.”

“Well, now, Mr. Dugan, or Gentles, or whoever, that puts a whole different complexion on the case, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.”

“This crime you’re accused of, dismembering an individual in a gunfight—you did that?”

“Not exactly, Your Honor. A surgeon took the fellow’s arm off after my bullet smashed the elbow to where it wouldn’t have worked again, and infection would’ve set in fast, so he took it off.”

“Says here he’s related to the state’s congressman.”

“Yessir, but he pulled his weapon first.”

The judge studied the poster in his hands, then looked at Drew for a long moment. “I have to tell you I regard politicians as the lowest form of life. This congressman is a liar and a cheat and as crooked as a snake’s backbone, I know it for a fact. You shot in self-defense?”

“Yes I did.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear he pulled his gun first.”

“Son, you’re a good boy, I believe, but you’ve strayed from the straight and narrow path. I’m going to let you go, but before I do, I’m going to extract from you a promise. Will you keep the promise I ask you to make, in exchange for freedom?”

“Yessir, I will.”

“The minute you get back on your horse, you ride for wherever you were headed, which I presume is anywhere outside of Texas, but as soon as you get clear, you go to the nearest army post or recruiting office and get yourself enlisted. You serve your country for a few years, and this incident can be put behind you. Do you so swear?”

“I so swear.”

“God heard you, and I did too. You do it.”

Drew saw Middlebusher once more, as he rode out of Croker Flats. Neither spoke.

A urinating dog greeted the stranger at the outskirts of Poloma, Wyoming. The dog inspected its puddle, then turned to the rider and two horses approaching. Its barking attracted the eye of Poloma’s mayor, taking his ease on the porch of his brother-in-law’s general store. From the cane seat of his favorite chair the mayor could take note of anything that happened, since his view extended about a hundred yards in each direction, which effectively encompassed the entire town. A war veteran, he was used to unusual sights, and counted what he saw ambling along the town’s only street as worthy of attention.

The rider looked like Abe Lincoln, so tall his legs were bent, even with the stirrups set at their lowest. His face was hollow, like Abe’s, and about as sorrowful. The mayor had seen Abe Lincoln up close at Gettysburg, so he knew. This rider coming along the street slow as Sunday even wore a shabby suit, like something Abe would have woken up in after a three-day drunk, but the illusion was spoiled by the hat; Abe habitually wore a tall stovepipe, and the long man coming nearer all the time had a hat wide as a wagon wheel. The rider was interesting stuff, but the load on his packhorse was even more so. The packhorse carried two dead men across its back.

The mayor decided it was time to exercise his authority, and so lifted himself from the chair, stretched pleasurably and stepped down from the porch, planting himself alongside the rider’s projected path. He could see a sawed-off shotgun cradled in the man’s arms now, and deep craters or scars in both cheeks; it was these that had created the lean and hungry Abe Lincoln look from afar. This fellow was really nothing like Abe, now that he had arrived.

The mayor raised his hand. “Afternoon to you.”

The rider reined in his horse. “Law,” he said, or rather croaked. His face was dusty, his throat doubly so.

“Pardon me?” asked the mayor.

“Sheriff, marshal, either one. Deputy’ll do.”

“Well, now, we’re a little on the small side, so we don’t have any of them. Got a mayor, though. That’s me.”

“I’ve got two men here, wanted on federal charges made out in Denver. Bank theft, murder, also rape, one of them.”

“Mister, you’re in the wrong place. Denver’s about two hundred miles due south.”

“I know where I am. I can’t take them anywhere near the Colorado line, let alone Denver. They’re two days dead already, and ripening nicely. You have a boneyard hereabouts I can plant them in?”

“Got one, but it’ll cost you three dollars apiece.”

“That can come out of the reward money, two hundred for each man.”

“I’d do that, I sure would, but I don’t see the actual money in front of me.”

Clay suppressed a sigh. His teeth hurt him, every single one of them, it felt like, and he was not in the mood for bargaining and explanations, but the smell of his quarry made such things necessary.

“Here’s how it’ll be, Mr. Mayor. You see to it that these flyblown sons of bitches get buried at county expense in your pleasant little town here, but first you verify they’re who I say they are, which won’t be any kind of a difficulty seeing as I’ve got official descriptions, right down to the scars and tattoos. You write a letter stating they’re the ones, all right, and you sign it and put the mayoral seal or some such on it, and I go to the federal marshal’s office in Cheyenne and collect my cash money for apprehending and disposing of these aforementioned dead fellows. When it’s in my hand, sir, I’ll mail the burial fee, plus twenty dollars for you personally, as my way of appreciating your trouble in this matter.”

“What you’re saying is, you want me to trust you.”

Clay nodded.

“Well, I might,” said the mayor. “Let’s see the descriptions.”

Clay dismounted, pulled some much-folded reward fliers from his saddlebags and handed them over. The mayor gave them a cursory reading, and attempted to match the drawings on paper with the upside-down faces of the men tied to the packhorse. They were swollen and blue, their eye sockets infested with flies, tongues protruding from blackened lips. They smelled so bad the mayor cut short his inspection and stepped back.

“Peel back the big one’s sleeve,” Clay told him. “There’s a tattoo in bad taste on his arm, same as in the description.”

The mayor decided to accept this bounty hunter’s word. If he didn’t, the man would simply dump his kill somewhere out in the wilderness, and the mayor would get nothing. If he allowed a double burial and corroborated the hunter’s claims to the identities of the dead men, there was a chance for reimbursement, if he was dealing with an honest man.

“All right, sir, you’ll get your burial.”

“I thank you. Any place in this town I might find a drink of water?”

“Step right inside here. Water and a little something else to cut the dust, on the house. You can tell me how it was you came upon these outlaws and got the drop on them.”

Clay took his water, and watered whiskey besides, but the mayor couldn’t get him to elaborate on his success beyond a terse “Tracked them, warned them to give up, had to kill them when they wouldn’t.”

Put out by this churlish display, the mayor rounded up two volunteers for the gravedigging and, when they were done, suggested to Clay that he hand each of them three dollars.

“Burial fee?” asked Clay. “I’ll be sending that to you, like we arranged.”

“Diggers’ fee,” corrected the mayor.

“I guess I can’t just add it to the bill?”

“Nossir. These boys have already gone and done half their work under the noonday sun and need their payment now, in hard cash. That’s right, ain’t it, boys?”

“Worked for it,” said the first man.

“Worked damn hard,” said the second.

Clay decided he didn’t like the mayor after all, but if he didn’t do as requested, the letter of certification he needed would likely not be forthcoming. He dug in his pockets and produced a five-dollar bill.

“Gentlemen, my worldly wealth, and I don’t lie. Take it, and be happy in the taking. The other dollar will have to wait until your leading citizen here collects from his Uncle Sam.”

“Sounds like a righteous deal to me, boys,” said the mayor, and the bill was plucked from Clay’s fingers.

The dead men were hastily rolled into their graves and covered with dry soil. Clay asked for, and received, a note of certification from the mayor: