Matagorda Page 2

  “I will have to find Tom.”

  “Don’t you go asking for him. I’d say you’d best hire yourself a rig…or a horse.” She looked up at him. “Do you ride?”

  “I was in the cavalry.”

  “Then get a horse and ride south. Take your time. Ride south toward Mission River. If nobody stops you keep on riding, but don’t be in a hurry. Tom will find you.”

  “It doesn’t seem a very good time to gather a herd for a cattle drive,” Duvarney commented.

  “Tom usually does what he starts out to do,” Mady said. “I’ll have to say that. Like the business with the hides.”

  At his questioning look, she went on. “The Munsons have been branding Rafter K stock. The Rafter K is the Kittery brand, but the law is a Munson and there wasn’t much Tom could do, or so folks thought. Then one morning they woke up and found fresh hides tacked up where everybody could see them. They were nailed up with the hair side against the wall so any western man could see the Rafter K had been changed into a Munson Circle M.”

  She smiled, and suddenly her face was changed. “Everybody in the country was laughing about that, and telling the story, until Jim Hart killed a man over to Beeville. Since then nobody feels much like talking, but the hides are still going up. Tom has nailed up hides in Beeville, Indianola, and Victoria, and even clean down to Brownsville. The Munsons are mad enough to eat nails.”

  Tap chuckled. “No wonder they’re mad.” He straightened up. “How about you? Do they know you’re a friend of his?”

  “They know it. But mister, nobody bothers a woman in Texas. They may not like me, but they won’t do anything or say anything. Even if they weren’t afraid of Texas people, they wouldn’t say anything because of Jackson Huddy.”

  “But I thought he was one of them?”

  “He is. Jackson Huddy is probably the quickest man alive with a gun…quicker than Tom, some think. But whatever else he is—and he has the name of being the coldest killer this country ever saw—he respects a woman. He respects women and the church, and very little else. You look out for him.”

  Duvarney tipped his hat and moved away from her. It would never do to invite trouble for her by staying near her. The possibility that they knew about him was slight, yet somehow they had known that Johnny Lubec and Tom were coming home, and they had been waiting for them. Somehow they might also know about him.

  He stood by the gangway and watched the lines go out, and then the gangway. Captain Wilkes came down from the pilot house to bid his passengers good-bye. One by one he saw them down the gangway and onto the pier.

  Several rigs were waiting there, and in turn they drove away with passengers and their luggage. Only one remained behind.

  Warily, Tap Duvarney studied the men on the dock. There was the usual collection of loafers who gathered to see any boat or train arrive. But there were three who drew more than his casual attention. He had lived too long on the frontier not to know trouble-hunters when he saw them, and two of these seemed to be in that category. The third man was a tall, high-shouldered man with a clean-shaven, hard-boned face and small eyes. Once, briefly, his eyes met Duvarney’s.

  The others on the dock were familiar types. In most towns there are men or boys who want to try their strength, usually against somebody they feel confident they can whip. Often the man they choose is a stranger—if a well-dressed stranger, so much the better. Such men he did not mind, for they started their fights and they took their medicine, learning their lesson as all must do.

  But there was another kind, the real bullies, those with a drive to meanness and sadism. These three, he felt sure, were of that sort. He had been the butt of the joke before, knew the dialogue, and was ready.

  Only he had not wanted it to happen here, when he had just arrived in the town where Tom Kittery had enemies. A fight he would not mind, and might even welcome as a way to initiate himself into the local scene, but he did not want a bullet in the back because of it.

  When the last of the passengers had gone, he lifted his sea chest to his left shoulder, then picked up his carpetbag with his right hand, following the last man by a few steps.

  The buckboard with the two paint mustangs was still standing at the end of the pier. If the driver was around, he was not in sight.

  Duvarney walked along to the end of the pier and put down his sea chest and carpetbag near the buckboard. He glanced around, hearing the boats of the two young men as they came up behind him. He turned slowly when they were still several feet off.

  They had moved apart a little, so he waited, somewhat bored by the familiarity of the pattern. “You fixin’ to ask that man for a ride, mister?” one of them asked.

  “I might at that. Is he around?”

  “Name of Foster. Got a way of comin’ an’ goin’, Foster has. He might be around, and he might not. Thing is, have you got any right to be here? Seems to me a man comin’ to a strange town should have some money, and if he has money he should stand up for the drinks.”

  “That’s fair enough. You boys carry my trunk up to the hotel and I’ll buy you each a drink.”

  “Carry your—What do you think we are, mister? Beggars?”

  “No,” he said, “only I figured you could earn money enough for a bath and a shave. Might seem nice to be clean again…after so long a time.”

  They stared at him, then the taller one took a step nearer. “You tryin’ to be smart, mister? You sayin’ we’re dirty?”

  Duvarney widened his eyes. “I wouldn’t think of such a thing. I’m not a man who stresses the obvious. I just offered you a chance to earn the drink you asked for.”

  “We never asked for no drink,” the tall one argued. “We figured a gent like you, so dressed up an’ all, we just figured you might have money enough to treat the boys up yonder. Suppose you let us see how much you got.”

  “Sorry. If you intend to rob me, you’ll have to try it the hard way.”

  Duvarney stepped back, as the tall one started for him, but as he stepped back he kicked the carpetbag into the other’s path, tripping the young man so that he fell to hands and knees. As Duvarney kicked the carpetbag, he shifted his feet and met the lunge of the second man.

  He was coming in low, and Tap jerked his knee up hard into the man’s face, smashing nose and lips. Catching him by the hair, he jerked him upright and swung a right into his belly. The man went down hard as Tap wheeled and caught a wild right on the shoulder from the first man, now on his feet. Tap looked at him and laughed, then he feinted and the man’s hands flailed wildly. Tap stabbed a left to the mouth, then three more as fast as he could jab. He feinted again, hitting him in the wind, and when he bent over gasping, a hammer blow on the kidney stretched him out.

  Calmly, Duvarney straightened his coat. Captain Wilkes was standing by the rail of the steamboat, watching. The tall, lean man who had apparently been with the two he had just beaten, looked on without emotion, or evidence of more than casual interest.

  “That there was mighty neat,” he said. “Looks to me like you’ve fought some with your fists.”

  “A little.”

  The man gestured toward the two on the dock, who were groaning now, and beginning to stir. “Don’t let that set you up none. They never was much account.” He started to turn away toward town, then paused. “If you’re huntin’ the man who owns that rig, you’ll find him yonder. You can tell any who ask that he just kept the wrong company.”

  “How does a man choose his company around here?”

  The tall man looked at Duvarney with cool, almost uninterested eyes. “He chooses any company he likes, just so it ain’t Kitterys. We don’t cotton to Kitterys.”

  “Afraid of them?”

  The man looked at him. “I am Jackson Huddy,” he said, and walked away up the street.

  Chapter 2

  *

  DUVARNEY WATCHED JACKSON Huddy walk slowly away and his eyes went beyond him to the weather-beaten frame buildings, the signs hanging out over the streets,
the hitching rails. It looked not at all like a port on the Gulf of Mexico, but rather like a cow town in the Plains country or the Rockies.

  The two roughnecks were getting up. One, whose face had had a hard encounter with Tap’s knee, had a badly broken nose, by the look of it; the swelling had already almost closed his eyes, and his lips were a pulp.

  Neither of them had known anything about fist-fighting. As for Duvarney, he had served a harsh apprenticeship when he made those two trips to the West Indies as a deck hand, to say nothing of two trips as a mate. In those days no man could hold down a job aft unless he could fight. He was expected to be ready and able to whip any man in the crew, and any three if necessary.

  Duvarney stood watching the two, but as they got up they backed off. He was wary of a shot in the back, but neither man seemed to remember that he carried a gun.

  When they had gone he glanced reluctantly at the stack of cotton bales toward which Jackson Huddy had gestured.

  When another glance up the street, Duvarney walked over to the bales. A man lay behind the pile, sprawled on his face, and there was blood in the dust where he rested.

  Duvarney turned him over. The man had been stabbed twice in the belly, the long blade striking upward. He was dead, the body not yet cold. On his holster was burned a Rafter K, the brand of the Kitterys.

  Returning to the buckboard, Duvarney made a space in the back for the body, then brought it over and laid it out in the back, covering it with an old tarp that lay there.

  In the buckboard was a nose bag for the horses and a sack of oats, as well as two sacks of groceries. He saw that the mustangs also carried the Rafter K brand.

  He stepped up to the seat and turned the buckboard around. He drove up the street, aware of the eyes that followed him. He drove to a sign that said Hardware, got down, and went inside. A small group congregated around the buckboard, and more than one of them lifted the tarp to look at the dead man.

  “Is there an undertaker in town?” Duvarney asked.

  The gray-haired man behind the counter shook his head. “Nobody will lay out a Kittery man,” he said “and Foster was a Kittery man. And there ain’t nobody will dig a grave for him, either. Nor pray for him.”

  “It’s that kind of town?”

  The man shrugged. “We live here, mister. We live here all the time, and that Munson crowd are here. I’m sorry, right sorry.”

  “Is there a Kittery lot in the cemetery?”

  “Two…maybe three of them.”

  “I’ll need a pick and a shovel.”

  “You’ll need more than that, mister. You’ll need a rifle.”

  “All right, hand me down one of those Winchesters, and I’ll want about five hundred rounds of ammunition.”

  “Five hundred rounds? That would fight a small war.”

  “You can pass the word for me that I have no part in this feud, and I want no part in it; but if they ask for any kind of trouble they can have it.

  “You can also pass the word around that I am going to bury this man, and that I am asking for no help. I will read over him myself.”

  The storekeeper was silent, putting the order together swiftly. When Duvarney paid him, he said, “Don’t think we’re unfeeling. This fight has been going on for nearly forty years now, and a lot of good men have been killed. Nobody wants to get involved anymore. It’s their fight, so let them have it.”

  “All I want to do is bury a man.”

  “You won’t do it. They won’t let you.”

  The crowd moved back for him when he put the pick and shovel into the wagon beside the body. They stood back even further when he loaded the ammunition and a few items in the way of food. Then he got up on the buckboard and spoke to the team. They started with a rush.

  At the cemetery he drove the buckboard through the gate and closed it after him. He scouted among the graves until he found the Kittery lot; then he peeled off his coat, which he put over a tombstone beside him, one of his guns hidden beneath it. The other he left in its holster. The Winchester he leaned out of sight near the buckboard. Then he went to work.

  He worked swiftly down through the top soil for a good two feet. Then it became slower work, but he kept on. He was a strong man, in good condition, and used to hard work, but he realized that he would be lucky to finish before dark. He had the grave less than half dug when the riders began to come. He slipped the thong from his six-shooter and continued to dig.

  There were three of them. All the horses wore the Circle M brand of the Munsons. Within a few minutes there were four more, then others, some of these hanging back, obviously come to see the fun.

  “You diggin’ that grave for one or two?”

  Duvarney ignored it, managed three more spadefuls of dirt before the question came again. He straightened up, leaned on his shovel, and looked at them. He was waist-deep in the hole with a parapet of dirt thrown up in front of him. Three large tombstones formed almost a wall along his route to the buckboard.

  “I asked was you diggin’ that for one, or two?”

  The speaker was a wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered man with a narrow-brimmed hat.

  “For one,” Duvarney replied. “You’ll have to dig your own, if you want one.”

  Somebody among the spectators snickered, and the man turned sharply around. The snickering stopped.

  “When you get that grave deep enough, you’ll find out who it’s for. We aim to bury you right there.”

  Jackson Huddy had ridden up, and he was watching and listening. Duvarney leaned on the shovel. “You boys aren’t very smart,” he said. “I’ve got a lot more cover than you. I figure to get three or four before you get me…if you ever do.”

  For a moment that stopped them. He had only to drop to his knees to leave only head and shoulders in view. There was no cover for them outside the fence, and a man at that range should do pretty well. Nobody spoke, and Duvarney resumed his digging.

  Suddenly the man with the narrow-brimmed hat started to crawl through the fence.

  “Shab,” Huddy was saying, “you come back here. That man is buryin’ the dead. There’ll be no botherin’ him. Anyway, he ain’t a Kittery.”

  “That’s a Kittery man he’s buryin’!”

  “Leave him be. I like a man with nerve.”

  There was no more talk, but nobody walked away.

  Slowly, Duvarney completed his digging; then he wrapped the body in the tarpaulin and placed it in the bottom of the grave. He filled in the grave, while the men stood quietly. After that he went to the buckboard for his carpetbag and took out a Bible. He removed his hat, and began to read, and when he had finished the funeral text he had chosen, he sang Rock of Ages.

  His voice was fairly good, and he managed to sing it well. Here and there a voice joined in. When he had finished the hymn he picked up his tools and went back to the buckboard, then returned for his coat. As he lifted it his right hand gripped the six-shooter. He brought it up, and walked back to the buckboard and placed the coat and the pistol on the seat. As he started to get up he lifted the rifle from where it had been hidden and with an easy motion swung to the seat.

  He gathered the reins with his left hand, his right holding the Winchester. He drove to the gate, and when he reached it he pointed the Winchester at the nearest man, smiling as he did so. “Friend, I’d be pleased if you’d open the gate for me.”

  The man hesitated for a moment, then he walked over and opened the gate, standing back with it until Tap Duvarney had driven through.

  “Thank you,” Duvarney said. “Thank you very much.” He glanced at Huddy, still sitting his horse, and regarding Duvarney with an enigmatic expression. “And thank you, Mr. Huddy. It hurts no man to respect the dead.”

  He spoke to the team and they moved forward down the road, but at the point where the road to the cemetery reached the main trail he turned sharply and took the trail south from town.

  There was no sound behind him, but he did not turn his head to look back. He had a stra
ight quarter of a mile before there was any cover, and despite the bouncing the buckboard was giving him, he could be hit by a good shot. He held the good pace at which they had started, wanting as much distance as he could get. He had no doubt he would be followed, and a buckboard leaves a definite trail.

  When he had two miles behind him he drew up, and with a wry grin he loaded the rifle. “You damn fool,” he muttered. “Forgetting a thing like that can get you killed.”

  The sun was down, the breeze cool off the Gulf, which lay some distance off on his left, beyond Powderhorn Lake, close by. He had a good memory for maps and charts, as a result of both his early training at sea and his years in the army. To go south he must first go inland, find the Green Lake road, and let it take him past the head of San Antonio Bay. Beyond that there stretched a wide piece of country, but between here and there he knew of no place to hide.

  The twin tracks of the trail were plain enough, even at night, so he pushed on. The paint mustangs seemed to be glad to be moving and he held them to a good trot, which seemed to be the pace they liked. From time to time he drew up to listen for sounds of pursuit.

  He was under no delusions about Jackson Huddy. Whatever else he might be, the man had a code of ethics of his own, and only that had prevented a bloody gun battle in the cemetery. He was sure that under other circumstances Huddy would never hesitate to kill him…if he could.

  He had studied the charts in Wilkes’s wheelhouse and had a fair understanding of the country, so after a while he took a chance and left the trail, cutting across toward Green Lake. By day they would find his tracks, of course, but by then he hoped to be far away.

  Several times he drew up to give the mustangs a brief rest, but they seemed tireless and impatient to keep going. Give them their heads, he thought, and likely they’ll take me right where I want to go.

  It was well past midnight when he saw the shine of water on his right. That would be Green Lake. The mustangs were tired now, trotting only when they started down a slight grade…which was rare enough. But they had held the pace well.