The Pursued Read online

  Powers chuckled at the memory but his thoughts were interrupted by a light knock on his door.

  He opened it to find Pearl Dobbs standing in the hallway. “May I have a word, Mister Brent?”

  “Come on in.” He caught the look in her eye and realized that Glenn was not going to be seeing another sunrise. He showed her into the living room of his hotel apartment. “He’s gone?”

  She nodded sadly, her lips compressed tightly against the tears.

  “Here,” he said, pouring from the whisky bottle. “Take a drink. It’ll help.”

  “Thank you.” She sipped at the cup and wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Sorry,” she said, handing back the cup. “I’m not much of a one for strong spirits.”

  “Do you need anything arranged, Pearl? I can do it, if you wish.” Taking her arm he guided her toward a chair.

  She sighed. “No, it’s all taken care of.”

  “Well, if you need anything. Cash or anything at all, just ask me.”

  “No, it’s all right. Pa left me well provided for. One thing, though. . . .”

  “Just say it.”

  “His friends. The others. Like you. I had them traced through a detective agency. The agency managed to find at least two others.”

  “You know where they are?”

  “Here,” she said, taking a folded sheet out of her reticule. “I have their locations. Perhaps you would like to let them know. Pa said you were all good friends at one time. I don’t know but they might like to be told. And maybe it would be better coming from you rather than me.”

  Powers took the sheet of paper and unfolded it. He read the names in her tight tiny longhand. Bubba Jones and Andrew “Red” McArthur, with the addresses written underneath each name.

  In a strange way, he felt it had all been decided for him a long time ago. As if the whole thing was outside his control and he was just going through the motions. He was not a man for any belief in destiny but there was something about the inevitability of it all that gave him pause for thought. There was always an effect that followed any event and it appeared he was caught up in the inevitable forward movement of such an effect, the result of past deeds that he could not escape unless he tracked them down and confronted them in whatever form they might take. A bell had been rung in the past and the echo of it was chasing him down the years.

  “Okay, Pearl. I’ll go see to it,” he promised.

  Chapter Three

  Bubba Jones had been one of the few independent investors to come out of the depression of 1873 with his finances still intact. He had watched the international markets and seen how the effects of Germany’s reaction to the Franco-Prussian War would affect the world’s economies. Reading the signs, he had acted accordingly. Before September of that year, all his stock in the railroads had been liquidated. Over the next two years, he stockpiled his cash and, by selling all ownership in complementary trades well in advance of the arrival of the decline, his wealth remained safe whilst thousands of other businesses collapsed. The once-cautious young cowboy still retained his earlier monetary inhibitions and, in such a way, retained his fortune.

  Bubba wisely invested in the one great boom industry after the end of the Civil War — the growth of the railroads. He complemented that burgeoning development with a parallel investment in iron and steel. As the newfound post-war wealth of the northern states blossomed and industry developed, the foundries of America began to take away the steel trade from its earlier supplier, Great Britain. Bubba got in at just the right time.

  As a result, he was a very wealthy man and he lived in accordance with expectations of that wealth. He built himself a fairy tale mansion house. A pink and crenelated extravagance whose walls were constructed from an expensive and unique quartzite sandstone, with the entire frontage decorated in capitals and corbels of rare terracotta from Ashtabula County. The inside furnishings were custom-made from black walnut and they encompassed sweeping staircases, balustrades, and handrails. Every bronze fitting for the doors and windows had been manufactured to order from the select Russell and Erwin Company. Fireplaces of Italian milk-white marble warmed the rooms and prairie style stained glass windows shone down patterns of glorious color on exquisite Navaho rugs.

  Powers stood in the shade of a tall tree fronting the drive and felt somewhat out of place as he stared up at this edifice. It was hard to believe that Bubba had come to this.

  Eight high narrow windows looked down on him with an air of austere dignity while a filigreed overhang chased a curving slate roof that reached up to the sky like a giant ocean wave about to break and fall on lesser mortals like himself. Beside an extended front conservatory of stained glass windows, a pillared portico sheltered the cast iron grillwork of the heavy front doors, doors that impressed and obviously protected an immensely rich occupier. It was all a long, long way away from the bunkhouse of the Double O.

  The colored maid who showed him into the hallway was a study in chocolate. A tiny Negro girl, dressed in black skirt, white apron and cap, a wide smile and bright eyes.

  “Mister Bubba’s ’specting you, sir. He’s in the study now. You come along and I take you there. Missy Latetia, she be in the garden.”

  He followed the girl down a cool, dark, wood-paneled and mosaic-floored hallway. Tall exotic plants that Powers did not recognize rose in sentinel lines from large copper pots and lightly waved at him as he and the girl breezed past. When they reached a solid-looking doorway to the right of a sweeping central staircase, the girl stopped and knocked.

  “Mister Powers Brent be out here, Mister Bubba,” she cried at the door.

  “Well, come ahead, show him right in, you dumb girl,” came a shout from the other side.

  The girl swung back the door and Powers took his first look at Bubba Jones in thirty years.

  The change had been radical.

  The soft boyish face had deserted the creature coming forward to meet him and was replaced by lumpy features the consistency of bottled dough. A ballooned figure, sporting a bright red waistcoat, a satin lapelled smoking jacket, and an extravagant tasseled cap opened its arms wide in greeting.

  “Powers! Old pal, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” The fat little figure enclosed Powers in a circle its arms could not complete. Powers felt the spread of excess flab press and sag against him like the sac of an expired octopus. “Hell! It’s good to see you,” the voice rasped over vocal chords sandpapered by years of tobacco smoke.

  Bubba backed away, looking up at Powers with a movement of lips that appeared more smirk than smile.

  Powers was shocked by the ravaged image he saw before him. The stink of drink and cigar smoke was strong on the man and his grayish skin tone demonstrated a long association with liquor. But the face had changed, from naive and friendly child to the creased ugliness of a half monster. There was rouge on the cheeks and Powers thought he detected black kohl painted on the eyelids.

  “What is it, Powers? Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Bubba. Okay, so the years haven’t been that kind but it can’t be so bad.” He laughed, a movement of his mouth but with no light in the eyes, which remained as cold as a lizard’s on a hot rock.

  “Of course, of course, Bubba,” smiled Powers in excuse. “I’m just a bit overwhelmed.”

  “That’s right, me too. What’re you drinking?”

  “Ah, nothing for me right now, Bubba. It’s kind of early.”

  Bubba wrinkled his nose. “Never too early, I say. Don’t mind me if I do, will you?” He crossed to a polished black wood cabinet inset with beveled mirrors and poured a generous measure from a hefty crystal decanter into a large glass. Bubba waved Powers over to a padded leather armchair and sucked down half his drink in one swallow.

  “You’ve done well,” observed Powers, as he sank into the voluminous chair.

  Bubba stared blandly over Powers’s head as he seated himself opposite and seemed to consider the statement. He sighed. “Damn right I have. Better than the rest of you guys, I’ll
warrant.”

  “That’s for sure,” agreed Powers.

  “You know,” said Bubba, suddenly alert. “I can’t help but recall you and Red and those Saturday night bunkhouse fist fights. Were we that broke that you two would take on all comers for a few dollars and change?”

  “Not that I ever won many fights but at least it paid for our nights out in town.”

  “Have to say it, Powers, it was Red who was the real ring man. Boy, he was a bold fellow when he was roused.”

  “All I got out of it was a face like this,” agreed Powers, waving fingers in front of his beat-up features.

  They both chuckled.

  Powers remembered, it had been a big set-up at the Double O and with so many young and lively cowboys rubbing up against each other in the bunkhouse, there had been the inevitable friction. The fistfights were a way of relieving youthful tension and those that didn’t fight had regularly gambled on the outcome. That was the way Bubba made himself the famous forty dollar poke that Cole had talked him out of.

  Bubba rubbed his bulbous and veined nose. “So what’s the story, Powers? Can’t think this is just a social visit after all these years.”

  “Nope, I just left Glenn Dobbs in the hospital. He died there of the consumption. His daughter thought you might like to hear about it.”

  “Oh really,” Bubba swallowed some more liquor. “Well, guess we’ve all got it coming sometime. Old Glenn got there first is all.”

  “He asked me to —”

  Powers was interrupted by a flood of lavender-scented perfume and the smell of fresh cut roses that flowed in through the door behind him.

  “Why,” gushed a female voice redolent of the Deep South. “I did not know we had visitors. Bubba, my dear, why did you not call me? I should like to be here to greet our guest.”

  With a rustle of chintz, she came into view, a basket of long stemmed roses over her arm. She stationed herself in front of Powers, who quickly rose to his feet.

  “I am Letitia Bellevue Jones,” she breathed proudly with an overly extravagant drawl and offered Powers a small curtsey. “So pleased to meet you, sir.”

  “Powers Brent.” He decided to echo her style and bowed slightly in return. “Your servant, ma’am.”

  “I do declare, a gentleman! Bubba, dear, I had no idea you owned such a man among your acquaintances. Usually, Mister Brent, Bubba’s friends are of the lowest order. Really, they are quite unattainable.”

  She was a rare and slender beauty. A chignon of blonde curls framed her china doll features and the soft complexion of her smooth skin seemed to be made from strawberries and cream. A delicate pale flower dressed in a crisp white blouse and bustled skirt, she posed in a statuesque stance that could have easily fitted into a landscape artist’s painting.

  “You will stay for dinner, I trust, Mister Brent?” she asked. “Ah will not take no for an answer.”

  “Oh, give it up, woman,” snorted Bubba disgustedly, burying his nose in his glass. “Can’t we leave all the genteel southern pretensions behind? Powers, here, will not stand on such ceremony, I’m sure.”

  With a disdainful look at Bubba, Letitia excused herself. “Pray forgive me, Mister Brent. I shall prepare cook for one more at our table. And you, dear husband, might retain some dignity before your friend and swim up from the bottom of that bottle for just a little while.”

  “Hell!” said Bubba, getting up for a refill once she was gone. “You see how it is, Powers. Henpecked in my own house. Did you ever get married? No? Wise man. Stay away from the institution as if it were the plague. You see that pretty miss there? Well, once she could not do enough for me; whatever I wanted, she was at my beck and call to get. Those southern gals after the war were falling over themselves to get a rich northerner. None of them had a red cent and they were all too used to the easy life they owned before the war to give it up at any cost. Never had to get their hands dirty doing nothing at all, what with all those black folks slaving for them. Pompous, pretentious and just plain selfish.” He flopped down again in his chair, his glass slopping unnoticed over his waistcoat. “Lord, we did the right thing at Cabotsville. We surely did.”

  The hairs rose on the back of Powers’s neck at mention of the name.

  “I wallow in it, you know,” growled Bubba, from low in his seat, where he had slid and lay in reptilian gloom, his glass resting on his paunch. “It’s still there. Brightens my day. In fact, it’s the brightest part of my day. Every bloody moment is etched in fine movements for me like the precise motion of a good hall clock, you know?” He wagged his finger from side to side, as if marking off the seconds. “It repeats itself. I watch the hours go by as if they were new hours and new days and yet it’s the same, over and over again. The same hours, the same days. You know what I mean, Powers? I am there, I live it all again and again.”

  “It is hard to forget,” agreed Powers.

  “Sure is. But strange, huh? How we went through all the rest of that bloody war with none of it touching us so and yet it’s that part which stays with you. There, right at the end.”

  “There were some good times,” said Powers.

  “Oh, yeah. We had good times.” He snorted a laugh. “Why, I remember when we joined up, December of ’61 it was. All five of us together. I reckon that was my proudest moment, you know? Standing with you boys when we got our blues. I loved that outfit, my forage cap, those nine shiny brass buttons on my shell jacket and even the pale blue of them damned pants that showed up every mark and mud spot. Made me feel all filled up with a glow, you know? Like I belonged.”

  “I guess we all felt that,” agreed Powers. “We wanted to stand together and stand for something. A cause as well as friendship.”

  “Hell, yes!” snapped Bubba. “But where’d it all go to, huh? That’s what I want to know, where’d it all go to?” Bubba rubbed his mottled face in his hand, working and kneading the stale skin. Powers thought the man might burst into tears at any moment.

  “You wanted to know why I came,” he said, nudging Bubba’s memory.

  Bubba looked up, glassy eyes that had been filled with the sorrow of self-pity suddenly fixed on Powers with new clarity. He grunted and waved his glass, encouraging Powers to say his piece.

  “Glenn Dobbs asked me to find Cole. He wanted to make it right with him before he cashed in his chips.”

  “What?” snorted Bubba, his face twisting in disbelief. “You’re here to tell me you’re after finding Cole Loumis? Lord Almighty, Powers, do you think I want to have anything to do with that lowdown, slimy…” He paused and took a long pull on his glass. “Cole Loumis never did anything for me,” he said with evident bitterness. “All he ever did was ridicule and make a fool out of me.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Powers persisted. “I need to find him.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t care to, either. If I wanted to, I could have him hunted down. I have enough money and connections.” Bubba’s pale face flooded red with anger. “I could have him snuffed out like a candle.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that!”

  “I guess we almost did.”

  “He got no more than he deserved,” Bubba snarled.

  There was a gentle rap on the door. “Gentlemen,” said the maid, pushing the door wide. “If you can come along now. Mistress say, we’s ready to sit down at table.”

  It was an uncomfortable meal. Powers did not enjoy the constant sniping the husband and wife indulged in. He thought it was one of those situations where the advent of an audience only seemed to aggravate an already disastrous state of affairs. Bubba progressed deeper into more slurred drunkenness as the evening progressed and his wife continued to taunt him using an officious tone that verged on arrogance. Powers was glad to escape to his room.

  Fully clothed, he lay on his bed and forced his mind to set aside the unfortunate display he witnessed downstairs. He pushed his thoughts instead toward the younger Bubba he had known, the young point soldier leading the skirmish formation of their
patrol on that dreadful day in 1865.

  It was nearing the end of the war then. They’d been through the worst of it already and despite wounds and embitterment, the five had managed to stay together and keep themselves alive. Although then, as Powers recalled, they were nearing the end of their tether, as the prospect of it being over filled them with the additional fearful anticipation that they might not come through these final few days safely. It was an agitation, he now considered, that doubtless played a part in all that followed.

  They had moved down through inclined pastures, Powers remembered, the grass a fresh green and so lush it rose up to their waists, and it seemed as if they moved through a sea that waved around them while the breeze blew up the steep hill toward them. There were thick woods off to their left where the hills climbed and curved away in a high running wave, while the steep swelling mound they crossed successfully hid from view the valley into which they descended. Ten others accompanied the veterans. Young men, mostly eighteen-year-olds, newly recruited and full of misguided overconfidence. Many barely knowing their rifle drill but put under the care of Corporal Dobbs and his platoon as a guiding force.

  Powers winced and jumped and bucked on his restless bed as he heard again, loud inside his head, the first shot that smacked across the tranquil hillside. The unearthly rebel yell that came from somewhere in the woods. With its initiator hidden and unseen, the cry had all the terrifying effect of a lone wolf howling on a cold winter’s night. More shots, a ragged roll of fire from deep inside the wood. A blue tunic in front of Powers dropped his rifle and half spun before vanishing from view in the long grass. Powers remembered the glimpsed splash of blood on the man’s face as he turned sideways before falling. Powers dropped quickly to one knee, his Springfield breechloader pointed in the direction of the forest.

  He saw again the puffs of dirty gunsmoke discharged from among the trees. A few of the new recruits still stood, their mouths open as they gawked in stupefied surprise at their comrades dropping around them. Powers yelled at them to get down but they either could not hear him or were too stunned to respond. He watched as they were mown down, one after the other, their bodies jumping, as the lead minie balls thudded into their bodies and raised puffs of road dust from their uniforms.