Texas Fever Page 7

  “I’m George Kincaid,” he said. “I’m sheriff here. How do you feel, McAuliffe?”

  Chuck licked his lips. It was an effort to speak. “Don’t seem to be any pieces missing.”

  The grayhaired man smiled briefly. “Guess it’s like the Doc said after looking you over: you can’t kill a Texan by kicking him in the head, not even when it’s a horse does the kicking.” His smile died. When he spoke again, his voice was crisp. “How do you like your bad news, son, short or long?”

  Chuck looked at him for a moment. “Short,” he whispered.

  “Your pa’s dead.”

  He’d known it, of course, but it was a shock to hear it in words, nevertheless. He had a moment of pure grief; then bitterness and anger went through him like fire.

  He whispered, “Got to hand it to you Yankees! It took you a while, but you finally got him, didn’t you?”

  The man above him made a quick gesture. “Ah, don’t start that, boy! Nobody in these parts is fighting the war any longer.”

  Chuck laughed. It hurt his head, but rage was hot inside him, and he pushed himself up in the bed. His voice came strongly now: “I sure appreciate your telling me, sir. I was kind of beginning to have my doubts, what with the bushwhackers, mobs, blockades, and quarantines we’ve been running into, just trying to find a place to sell a few head of cattle at a fair price. . . .Yes, sir, I certainly am glad to hear you say that, Sheriff.”

  Kincaid said gently, “I’m making allowances for your feelings, but don’t get too sarcastic with me, young fellow.”

  Chuck stared at him grimly. “A bullet’s a bullet, and dead’s dead. The only difference is, your Yankee army never got a shot at the Old Man’s back. It took a civilian with a badge to manage that!”

  Kincaid winced and was silent briefly. Then he said grudgingly, “Granted that my deputy was a little hasty—”

  “Hasty?” Chuck laughed again, harshly. “Sheriff, you do your man an injustice! Not hasty, not that one. He’s a real careful gent. Oh, he’s got his faults—he’s not what you’d call the best horseman in the world—but hasty’s not one of them. He’s right cool and deliberate about his murdering, your Mr. Reese is!”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I wouldn’t talk like that around town, if I were you, McAuliffe. There’s considerable feeling against you men already. You’re lucky nobody was badly trampled or gored by those wild Spanish cattle of yours, but several citizens present lost some skin and all lost a good deal of dignity, the way I heard it. . . . Personality, I’d have liked it better if Will Reese had kept his pistol holstered, and I’ve told him so; but he had plenty of provocation, and you won’t find many folks around here blaming him for what he did. In fact, when they brought you fellows in here this afternoon, there was a good deal of sentiment in town for finishing the job by stringing up the lot of you.” The sheriff paused, and went on: “You don’t have to worry. They’re cooling off, and I’m not in the habit of letting my prisoners be lynched, in any case.”

  “Prisoners?” Chuck murmured.

  “What did you expect, son, after what you fellows tried to pull out there? You’re under arrest. The rest of your outfit’s in jail, but you can stay on here until the trial tomorrow. I don’t figure you’ll be going anywhere with that head; besides, you don’t look like the kind to run out on your crew.”

  Chuck thought this over. “What about the cook and the wrangler?” he asked. “They had nothing to do with it”

  “In that case, they’ve nothing to fear. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they were brought in, just the riders who were with the herd.”

  “And what happens to the herd?”

  “Your cattle have been rounded up. They’re being held down on Spring Creek against whatever fines and

  damages Judge Thomson will find against you in the morning and I wouldn’t gamble on their being light The judge has lost some fine stock to Texas fever the past year, and he looks with considerable disfavor on anybody who tries to break the quarantine. . . . I had your pa taken down to Bothwell’s undertaking parlor. You can go down there and see about making arrangements as soon as you feel up to it tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Chuck whispered.

  “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” Kincaid said shortly. “I’m sorry for what happened. If I’d been there. . . . Well, there’s all kinds of ways of enforcing the law, but some take patience and experience, and Will Reese is young and hotheaded. Maybe I put a little too much responsibility on his shoulders too soon. But you remember this: Will was my deputy when he fired that shot He was a duly sworn officer of the law, which you men were engaged in breaking. Don’t try to make a personal feud of it, understand? I’ll have no young Texas firebrands starting gunfights in my jurisdiction. I know what you’re thinking—it’s plain on your face—but if you kill Will Reese, son, on any excuse whatever, I’ll see you hang!” The sheriff turned on his heel and strode to the door and stopped. After a little pause, he looked back over his shoulder. “McAuliffe?”

  “Sir?”

  “What the hell was your pa trying to do, anyway? Surely he didn’t expect to ram a herd of cattle illegally through the sovereign state of Kansas by brute force.” Chuck shook his head. He thought for a moment. It seemed inadvisable to mention the bearded man they’d known as Netherton; if he was around, he’d have made himself a safe position here somehow. These Yankees all hung together, anyway.

  Chuck said slowly, “The Old Man only failed at two things in his life, Sheriff. First off, he couldn’t manage to win the war for Jeff Davis, even though he lost an arm trying. That hit him hard. And then it began to look like he wasn’t even going to get this herd to Sedalia. When a man who’s been successful all his life suddenly finds everything going bad that he sets his hand to . . . Well, after a while, I reckon, something kind of snaps inside him.” After he’d said it, he saw that it was very nearly the whole truth.

  The sheriff frowned. “Did anything snap inside you, son?”

  Chuck grinned briefly. “No, sir, but it sure was a pretty sight, those longhorns going up the hill shaking the ground like thunder, and that posse busting apart like a bunch of scared rabbits.” He grimaced. “If you’d been pushed around by mobs of farmers like we have, Sheriff, you’d have got pleasure from it, too.”

  The sheriff stroked his mustache, perhaps to hide a slight, betraying quirk at the comer of his mouth.

  He said hastily, “Well, you’d better rest. You’ll need a clear head in the morning, if you’re going to do the talking for your outfit in court. And you’d better see to it that your men keep their tempers. The way they were carrying on when I was there just now—threatening to take our jail apart—isn’t going to do any of you any good.”

  The door closed behind him. Chuck looked at the painted panels for several seconds, then sank back to the pillow. Suddenly he was aware of a feeling of utter loneliness. One by one they’d been lost to him, his brother Jim, his mother, Dave, and now the Old Man himself. There didn’t seem to be much left of what he’d known as a kid, only the ranch, which would soon go for taxes if no money was forthcoming, and a crew of men all considerably older than himself, and a bunch of feisty steers that the Yankees would no doubt find a legal way of taking from him now, after what had happened. . . .

  He awoke abruptly, aware that he’d drifted off to sleep again, and that someone had entered the room. He looked up to see a girl standing by the bed.

  “Your supper,” she said, adding curtly: “I’m Jean Kincaid.”

  “Why,” he said, sitting up, embarrassed by her presence, and very grateful that he’d been left his shirt, even though his trousers, boots, gun, and Bowie knife seemed to have vanished, “why, thank you, ma’am.”

  Her voice was cool. “Save your thanks, Mr. McAuliffe. It wasn’t my idea, you may be sure, turning our house into a rest home for roughnecks who get themselves hurt trying to terrorize decent people!” She set the tray down on a small table beside the bed, and started to turn a
way; then she swung quickly back to face him. “You had no right to say that!”

  Chuck frowned, bewildered. “Say what, ma’am?”

  She said breathlessly: “I was in the other room. The door was open; I couldn’t help overhearing . . . You’ve no right to call somebody a murderer just because he has the courage to stand up against a crazy old . . .” She checked herself abruptly.

  Chuck looked at her for a moment. She was a tallish girl, he saw, with fine blond hair neatly coiled about her head. She was in the neighborhood of his own age—not much over twenty, at least. Her mouth was too long for beauty, and you might say her nose was, too; and she had a determined jaw to boot. She had long legs, like a colt, and she walked like she was impatient with her gingham skirts, and her hands and feet were by no means tiny. Her eyes were blue.

  After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean—” Her voice trailed away. When he didn’t speak, she said quickly: “I really don’t think you should go around calling people murderers, Mr. McAuliffe, just for doing their duty!”

  “No, ma’am,” Chuck said. He took the bowl from the tray, placed it carefully on the blanket between his knees, and began to spoon up the hot soup it contained.

  She said, “Of course, we’re all sorry it happened, and I can understand how you might feel that . . . Well, it is dreadful that Mr. Reese was forced to shoot a man, and I know he’s regretting it terribly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chuck said.

  The unimpressed tone of his voice seemed to infuriate the girl. She cried, “Ma’am, ma’am, ma’am! Like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! Stop agreeing with me and tell me what you’re really thinking!”

  He put his spoon down and looked at her. “Why,” he said deliberately, “if you really want to know, ma’am, I’m thinking just what I have right along. I’m thinking your deputy sheriff is a cold-blooded, cowardly, backshooting murderer hiding behind a little tin badge. Of course, you can call me prejudiced, and I can’t rightly deny that I am, but you asked for my opinion and there it is.” There was complete silence in the room when he finished speaking. The girl’s face had turned pale.

  She whispered, “You have the effrontery to call another man a murderer, Mr. McAuliffe? You who come riding into our country with a big pistol on your belt, with your wild cattle, bringing destruction and disease—” Chuck laughed shortly. “Disease! It makes a handy excuse for turning us ex-rebels away from market, doesn’t it? Ask your deputy sheriff just how sickly those cattle looked to him, coming up that hill!”

  Her eyes widened with amazement. “You call yourself a cattleman! Are you trying to claim there’s no such thing as Texas fever?”

  “We call it Spanish fever, or Mexican fever where I come from,” Chuck said. “I’d be foolish to claim it doesn’t exist. Maybe you’ve even lost a few head of stock to it now and then, up here in Kansas. But I find it mighty peculiar, ma’am, that every time we get turned back there’s some Yankee fellow trying to get our poor ailing cattle away from us, somehow. If they’re so damned—excuse me, ma’am—if they’re so diseased and worthless, if there’s no way of getting them to the railroad, why do these folks want them so bad: the bushwhackers who jump us in the night and try to stampede the herd, the sanctimonious gents who come offering two and three dollars a head, like this Paine who’s a friend of your Mr. Reese’s? Do you know what I think, ma’am? I have a hunch that once a Yankee gets hold of those steers, you’re going to see a miraculous cure. They’ll be the healthiest cattle in the state, all of a sudden. And they’ll go marching up to Sedalia with the full sanction of the law, to be sold for twenty dollars a head—”

  She gasped, “Why, you’re quite mad! Do you think my father would stand for anything like that?”

  “I wasn’t referring to your father, ma’am. He looks like an honest man, for a Yankee. But I can’t say the same for his murdering, yellow-bellied deputy.”

  She said, in a tight little voice she was obviously trying hard to keep quiet and reasonable: “Mr. McAuliffe, I can understand your hatred for . . . for the person who killed your father. It’s only natural, I suppose. But you’re being terribly unfair. Whatever you may think of our quarantine law, Mr. Reese is sworn to uphold it. What was he supposed to do when you and your father and your hardbitten riders came charging at him yelling like madmen and shooting off guns . . . ?” She drew a ragged breath. “Oh, he’s told me all about it!”

  Chuck said angrily, “He was entitled to try and stop us, sure! If he’d stood his ground up there and had his posse fire a volley into us when we came within range, he’d have been within his rights, and I’d have nothing to say against him, no matter who got hurt. We were asking for it, Miss Kincaid, I don’t deny it for a minute. But Reese didn’t do it like that. When he saw us coming at him, he rode off and left his men to shift for themselves. He took shelter in a draw on the flank. Then I reckon he must have realized there’d be questions asked later by the fellows he’d deserted. He had to make himself look good, somehow, so he waited until we were well past, and came riding out behind us, shooting—” He checked himself, watching the girl’s face. He had a sudden, sick understanding that he’d been a blind fool, and a cruel one as well. In the silence, he cleared his throat and asked clumsily: “Is this Will Reese . . . I mean, do you have a special reason for asking about him, ma’am?” “Yes,” she said. Her voice was quite calm now. “Yes, I do have a reason for asking. I’m going to marry Mr. Reese.” She walked quickly to the door and looked back. “And I don’t believe a thing you’ve told me!”

  He cleared his throat again. “That’s fine, ma’am,” he said heartily. “Don’t you believe a word I’ve said. All us Texans are terrible liars.”

  She looked at him for a moment longer. Her blue eyes were wide and dark and wondering. Then she turned and ran quickly out of the room.

  CHAPTER 13

  Anne Netherton lifted her skirts discreetly to negotiate the steps leading up to the Kansas Union Hotel, facing the central square of Jepson. Crossing the veranda, she was aware that the loafers comfortably disposed in chairs along its length were watching her, but their glances, while interested, were wholly respectful. This was the frontier, she reminded herself, where women could work themselves to death without protest from anybody, but where they were thoroughly safe from molestation, even from too-bold stares—good women, that is.

  Seemingly unconscious of male scrutiny, as custom demanded, she swept through the hotel lobby and down the corridor beyond, head high, eyes modestly downcast. A man coming along the corridor breathed an apology and stood close to the wall to let her pass; she made the briefest murmured acknowledgement of his courtesy. She paused in front of the door to Room 11. The sound of men’s voices reached her through the flimsy panels.

  She hesitated, suddenly reluctant to enter. Out here she was still the pretty, decorous wife of a traveling cattle-buyer named Bristow. People might discuss, in an idle way, the disparity between their ages; but it was a hard country, and the sight of a forty-year-old man with a twenty-year-old bride was no great novelty: either Bristow had been too busy to get married before, or he’d buried his first wife and maybe even his second. It was nobody’s business, and nobody would give it much thought; nor would anyone dream of challenging young Mrs. Bristow’s claim to respectability, as long as she dressed and behaved like a lady.

  Inside the room, on the other hand, she’d be a common woman consorting with thieves and murderers, receiving no respect from anyone, least of all from herself. Standing there, she made a face, and told herself firmly: You're warm, honey, you're well-dressed and well-fed, you're even clean—well, as clean as soap and water will make you. There may be a few small spots on your soul that won't scrub out; but what did your soul ever do for you when you were cold and hungry? In any case, it's a little late for you to get finicky now.

  She knocked lightly on the door. The Preacher opened it. She had for him the same contempt she had for all men these days, and it ple
ased her mildly to see that the side of his face, scraped when he fell from his horse in the general melee south of town—she wished she’d been there to see it—looked even worse now than it had earlier in the afternoon. He’d fashioned a sling for his sprained wrist. It was his gun arm, but with the Preacher that didn’t matter greatly. No man dependent on the bottle could be trusted with firearms. He was just a lackey and errand boy, someone with an air of faded gentility who could move about in public without attracting attention or arousing suspicion.

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Paine,” she said, curtseying prettily as he stepped back to admit her. She moved past him, her skirts whispering, and deposited her armload of bundles on a chair. Jack Keller was sprawled on the bed with a glass in his hand, still in the dusty clothes he’d worn for his ill-fated morning’s ride, except for the boots, which she’d helped him remove. His stockinged foot was propped on a pillow to ease the ache in his half-healed leg. “And Mr. Bristow,” she said, dropping him a curtsey as well. “I hope you took no permanent harm, running from those terrible Texans, Mr. Bristow,” she murmured wickedly. “It must have been a harrowing experience. But I forgot, you’re accustomed to it; you’ve done it before.”

  She watched his face darken. It wasn’t wise to devil him, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to keep proving to herself that she still had the courage to stand up to this man, even though he frightened her—he was the first man she’d known who had none of the instincts or traditions of a gentleman. Somehow the beard made it worse. There were just the hard brown eyes and the big, bony nose—like the beak of a hawk or vulture —showing through the luxurious growth of curling brown hair, carefully clipped and groomed now, of course, but an effective mask nevertheless. What could you do with a man who never showed you his face? Even his lips were almost invisible.