Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) Read online

  A.T.T.

  P.S. If there’s flowers about, put sum on the graves. She was a good woman. She done her best.

  There was a fire laid on the hearth and the floor was swept.

  Going outside, I stripped the gear from my horses and turned them into the corral. Then I went back to the house and bedded down for the night. Several times I awakened to hear the coyotes howling. It must have been a lonely place for the woman, too. He would have been gone much what with hunting for meat and working.

  At daybreak I was out and saddled the roan, led both horses outside, and tied them to the corral. Then I went in, laid a fresh fire, and swept the floor. After closing the door carefully, I looked for the graves. They were both on a low knoll somewhat shaded by a huge old cottonwood. The two graves were side by side and both were covered with withered flowers, obviously left by several different hands.

  There were a lot of yellow and some purple flowers about, I didn’t know what kind. I put them on the graves, stood beside them with my hat off for a few minutes, then I mounted up and rode out of there.

  The date on that notiss had been two years old. Had he made it out? Would he find his woman? I had an idea he would be back, and if not, another like him would come along eventually. Over thousands of miles of western lands where pa and me went riding, we saw their burned-out cabins, their burned wagons, their graves, and sometimes their bones, but nothing stopped them. There were always more. Not the wildest of the Indians nor the army itself could keep them back. There was a hunger in them to blaze new trails, to farm new land, to watch the sun rise up over their own acres.

  The Indians were magnificent warriors and they themselves had once come from out of nowhere to take the land from those who held it, and to hold it for a while themselves. Guns and arrows may stop an army, but they cannot stop men and women with their dreams.

  Three days later I rode into Dodge City and left my horses with Bill Tilghman, who was marshal there. “Turn them into the pasture,” he said. “They will be safe there.”

  “Tilghman?” I said. “My pa knew some Tilghmans back east. There was a Tench Tilghman who was an aide to Washington, back in Revolutionary times.”

  “We were related,” he replied.

  He was seated in a chair outside the office. I squatted on my heels. “I’m Kearney McRaven,” I told him, “and headed east to claim some property that’s been willed to me. There’s some coming along who would like to keep me from it, and they are kinfolk, but distant. I am wanting no trouble, but if they come hunting me, I got to stand up to them.”

  “You planning to be in town long?”

  “I’m riding out on the steam cars,” I said, “and it will be in the morning. Best I can do.”

  “Would you leave tonight if I can get you on a train?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  “I believe in avoiding trouble, Mr. McRaven. I will put you on the train tonight.”

  “They said—”

  “I know what they said. I know what they would say, but I also know a man who is going east who would just as soon leave tomorrow. One way to keep the peace in a town, Mr. McRaven, is to recognize the possibilities of trouble beforehand.”

  “Why I spoke to you. This here is your town, and I am of no mind to make trouble.”

  “Thank you.” He got to his feet. “Leave your horses here and take what you need with you. I’ll see they are cared for.”

  My blanket roll and saddlebags were what I needed. I slung them over my left shoulder, and carrying my rifle, I went along with him. In a matter of minutes I was fixed to leave on the evening train.

  “Buy you some dinner?” I suggested. “I am obliged.”

  “It looks like a busy night,” he said, “but thank you, just the same.” He turned away, but when he had gone only a few steps, he paused and turned. “McRaven?”

  When I stopped, he said, “Those men looking for you…what are they like?”

  “Those I know are tall, slim men. Favor black frock coats and black hats. Long-faced men who don’t smile very much, and they always stay together.”

  When the steam cars rolled out of town that evening, I was riding the cushions, setting back there like a king, letting the locomotive take me along. Last thing I saw as I rode out of town was three men riding in. Three long, tall men in black coats.

  They were riding side by side and they did not turn their heads toward the train.

  Maybe it was them.

  Chapter 15

  *

  WE HAD RIDDEN the steam cars a time or two when pa and me were traveling, but not enough for me to get used to it. When I came into the car, I dropped into one of the seats upholstered with red plush and I settled back for the ride.

  The train was mixed, two freight cars, four cattle cars, a mail car, and two passenger coaches. Hooked on behind was a caboose. The folks in the car with me were a plump young woman, very blond, and two younger versions of her, maybe six or eight years old. There was a stern-looking man with a chin whisker who looked like he had just bitten into something that tasted bad.

  A man of about forty sporting a heavy gold watch chain across his vest with an ivory toothpick dangling from it sat in a seat ahead of and just across from me. On the seat right opposite there was a sleeping cowhand. Like me he had a rifle stuck down beside him, and I suspected his belt gun was stuck into his waistband.

  There wasn’t much to see outside the windows but the wide grasslands and the smoke streaking past. After a while I dozed off. The train was going almighty slow most of the time. This was track that had been laid fast, so they were cautious with it. Once we stopped while several hundred buffalo crossed the track. The towheaded children stared wide-eyed, and even the sour-looking gentleman with the chin whisker leaned forward to see. The cowhand took a look to see what was happening, then went back to sleep. The train whistled and began to inch forward. Over on the trail I saw a stagecoach passing us. A few minutes later, we passed them, the engineer whistling derisively at them. Most places the stages had been put out of business by the railroad, but here and there they hung on, mostly serving off the right-of-way towns.

  Sometime during the afternoon we slowed again and stopped. I was half-asleep and did not open my eyes. After a bit the train moved on, bumping and groaning between whistles.

  We stopped at a station. There were three or four houses, a big tent with a hotel sign on it, and some large corrals. We ducked out of the train and ran for the eating place, first in, first served. I found myself sitting next to the cowhand.

  “Goin’ fur?” he asked.

  “Carolina…if I’m lucky.”

  He sized me up quizzically. “Expectin’ not to be?”

  I shrugged. “There’s some don’t want me to,” I said, “mostly back yonder.”

  “I’m with the cattle,” he said. “S’posed to be ridin’ the caboose, but what the hell? I never rode no cushions before, so I slipped in here.”

  “Conductor say anything?”

  “Naw. Hell, my boss ships five, six thousand head a year. He ain’t about to complain.”

  The food was antelope steaks fried in rancid grease, but I’d eaten worse. The coffee was good, the bread dry and crumbly. I gulped more coffee, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and sprinted for the train. It was whistling, and when we grabbed hold of it we had to run, for it was already moving. I was first on the steps and gave him a hand.

  “Thanks,” he said. “The boss will be waitin’ when we hit Kansas City. Wouldn’t want him to find me missin’.”

  “Tough?”

  “Tougher’n a boot. Pays well, feeds well, expects to get two days’ work for one day’s pay.”

  We both went to sleep. We rumbled over a bridge, slowed down for some reason, and I looked out to see the sun was down, the sky streaked with red, and a herd of antelope keeping pace with the train.

  The cowhand looked over at me. “They catch you, what’ll they do?”

  “Shoot me, or tr
y to. You see, there’s money in it for them.”

  We dozed, and the train rumbled on into the night. There was a smell of coal smoke and cinders in the car. I turned around, trying to find a comfortable spot on a seat that had long since ceased to be comfortable.

  He glimpsed the butt of my pistol. “Can you use that thing?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. And after a minute, “Hope I don’t have to.”

  We slowed down again, traveling no faster than a man could walk. “I’m Billy Jenkins,” he said suddenly.

  “Kearney McRaven,” I said, and we shook hands.

  “Punch cows?” he asked.

  “I have. Held a bunch in the mountains all last winter. Rode down out of the hills an’ found they’d killed my pa.”

  “Same fellers?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You get to Kaycee, you see my boss. He’s Ben Blocker. Tougher’n a boot, but a good man. You tell him about it. He’s tough but he’s square. Knows folks.”

  “Not much anybody can do.”

  “You just think there ain’t. You talk to ol’ Ben. He’s got him an answer for everything. Mostly he’s right.”

  “Thanks.”

  The train rumbled on, and we both slept. It was the same, slowing, stopping, picking up speed.

  We stopped at a station to take on water. “Got to see to my cows,” he said, lurching erect.

  “Give you a hand,” I said.

  We walked back along the cars. Only one was down, and with a couple of long poles we prodded it erect again so it would not be trampled.

  “I can’t afford to get in no fight,” Jenkins said. “I got to think of them cows.”

  “Ain’t askin’ you to. It’s my fight. Anyway, I think I’m ahead of them…unless they wired ahead.”

  “How many is there?”

  “Too many. Maybe a dozen. So far’s I know, there were only two or three out west. There’s some womenfolks, too.”

  “Young?”

  I shrugged. “Young enough. Beautiful…like a desert rattler is beautiful.”

  The train moved out and we dozed again. I awakened with the cold nose of a pistol against my temple, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a tall man in a black coat and black hat standing over me. “Get up,” he said. “Get up easy.”

  A moment I hesitated. Might as well be killed fighting as taken out and be butchered like a sheep. And then I thought of that blond woman and those two youngsters.

  “All right,” I said, “just take it easy.”

  Slowly I got to my feet. Billy Jenkins was asleep, or seemed to be. The woman was staring at us, wide-eyed. So was the man with the chin whisker.

  Carefully I got up. Another man stood in the end of the car and he had a shotgun in his hands. This was it, then. Even if I tried, they’d blow me apart with that scatter-gun and probably kill or injure the others as well.

  “Walk to the back of the car,” the tall man said, and when I turned my back to walk, he jerked my six-shooter from my belt and tossed it on the seat.

  The man with the chin whisker straightened up. “Here! What are you doing to that man?”

  The tall man’s voice was deadly. “Pull in your horns, granpa. We’re just takin’ him for a walk.”

  “An’ set still,” the other man commanded. “Set right still.”

  The train was slowing again. Teetering a little with the uneven movements of the car, I walked back toward where the man with the shotgun stood. He had piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a thin mustache. There was a scar on his chin.

  He stepped aside to let me go through the door to the platform that separated this car from the caboose. I stepped onto the platform at the very instant the train shuddered to a stop. Instantly, I moved. My left hand slashed back to hit the gun wrist of the man following me, and at the same moment my right shot up, taking the man with the shotgun under the chin and smashing his head back.

  Taking a wild leap, I sprang from the platform into the night. I hit the ground with my knees bent and went head over heels down the slight embankment. I rolled over and came up holding my waist gun, which they hadn’t got.

  “Kearney!” Jenkins yelled.

  I glanced up quickly, and he threw me my other gun. A deft catch and it hit my hand just as one of the men came down the steps. I shot him as he hit the ground. He threw his hands up, and I shot him again, and he turned halfway around and fell, rolling slowly down the bank not a dozen feet from me.

  Up at the front of the train I heard curses and the fall of something heavy, like a timber. Evidently the track had been blocked to stop the train, so that meant there was another man out there somewhere in the dark. The train whistled. In a moment I was going to be alone on the plains with one dead man and two who wanted me dead.

  Jumping up, I sprinted for the front of the train. A bullet whined past me, and I heard the report of a heavy rifle, and then the train beside me was moving. I shoved one gun into my waistband and then holstered the other, hoping they would stay where I put them.

  Another shot kicked up gravel under my feet. The train whistled, and I leaped at the ladder on the end of a cattle car. A bullet ricocheted off the car above me, but by then I had swung between them. Clinging with one hand, I drew a pistol with the other and waited. The train was rolling faster now, but somewhere up ahead there was another man.

  I caught a flash of white from a shirtfront and then the red-orange blast of a shotgun. Sheer reflex action saved me, for, seeing that fleeting glimpse of white, I had swung my back against the car following and shot.

  It was a waste shot. I hit nothing, but where I’d been that shotgun charge hit, and one of the cattle gave a frightened lunge, smashing against the side of the car. And then we were rolling down the grade ahead. Slowly I holstered my gun and felt for the other. It was still there, behind my belt.

  Clinging to the ladder, I tried to catch my breath and slow my heart from its pounding. The train rumbled on into the night.

  A long time later I climbed to the top of the train and walked along the top to the car behind. When I reached my car, I climbed down the ladder, swung to the platform, and went in.

  Billy Jenkins sat up when he saw me, and the blond woman turned around and stared, as did the two little girls. I walked back and dropped into my seat. “Thanks,” I said to Billy.

  “Thought you’d need that,” he said.

  “I did.” No need to tell him I carried a spare.

  “You get one of them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You didn’t see him after?”

  “Didn’t have time. Didn’t need to. I shot where I was looking. He’s dead…twice.”

  “One down,” Jenkins said.

  “Yeah…and too many to go.”

  “Like I said, when you get to Kansas City, you talk to Ben. He always knows what to do.”

  The man with the chin whiskers no longer looked sour. “That was fast work, young man,” he said, “mighty fast. Who were they?”

  “Doesn’t matter much,” I said. “The name they use isn’t their own.”

  I slipped out my gun and fed three cartridges into it to replace those fired.

  “Billy,” I said, “when we get to a station, wake me up, will you?”

  He nodded. “I will. You go ahead an’ sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

  “May have hurt one of your steers,” I said. “I think the crosspieces caught part of the shot, but not all of it. You may have a dead crittur on your hands.”

  “You get some sleep,” Jenkins said, “and don’t you forget that telegraph. We passed a station back yonder.”

  Suddenly I could scarcely keep my eyes open. I curled up in the seat, trying to make myself comfortable. Under me the car rumbled and bumped over the rails. The train whistled, a long, lonely call into the darkness.

  And then I was asleep.

  Chapter 16

  *

  HE WAS SEATED on the top of the corral watching his cattle when Billy Jenkins l
ed me to him. He wore corduroy pants stuffed down into laced boots, a corduroy jacket with the belt hanging loose, and a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His mustache was dark and streaked with gray. There was a touch of gray at the temples.

  “Mr. Blocker? This here is Kearney McRaven. He’s got problems, and I told him you could help him.”

  Blocker rolled his cigar in his teeth and glanced over at me. “Looks like a man who could take care of his own troubles,” he said. He motioned to a seat beside him on the corral. “Climb up and sit down.”

  He glanced down at Billy. “Your report says you’re one head short. What happened?”

  “That was my fault, sir,” I said. “That steer was shot with lead intended for me.”

  “You catch any of it?”

  “A couple of pellets. Done me no harm. Don’t know where they picked up that shotgun, but they taken it for granted it was loaded with slugs. It carried bird shot.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  So while Billy Jenkins went off about cattle business, I sat on the corral bar and told Ben Blocker about what happened and what I had to do about claiming my property. He listened, rolling his cigar a time or two but making no comment.

  “They’re a-hunting me, Mr. Blocker,” I said, “and I can handle the fighting part of it. Maybe I can handle it all. Trouble is, pa ain’t with me no longer and I’d nobody to sort of talk it over with. Billy, he surely sets store by you. He figures you can do anything.”

  “He’s wrong, Kearney. I can’t, nor can any man. Looks to me like you’re in trouble, all right. But maybe I can help. What you need is a good lawyer.”

  “Pa always fought shy of lawyers. Said they caused more trouble than they ever settled.”

  Blocker laughed. “Well…sometimes. But a good lawyer can save you a lot of trouble. For instance, I know one right here in Kansas City who was born in Carolina. He knows folks down there. More than that, he’s figuring on taking a trip home right soon. We’d better go see him.”

  “No, sir.”

  “What?” He looked around at me. “Did you say no?”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t want to get him killed. Or tangled up with them women, either. Maybe we could get him to come to you…not me. Maybe I could sort of drop in on you, like.”