War Rider Read online

  Charlie Bob withdrew the match from his mouth and took his time considering the request. He wrinkled his nose and looked hard at Ahlen over his father’s shoulder.

  “I guess not, pa. Going to stay here a while with my friends,” he turned to one of the silent men. “That alright with you. Tyrone?”

  Tyrone took a deep breath and sighed. “You do what you want, boy. I ain’t your keeper.”

  He was a lean, rawboned man with a wiry black beard and long unkempt hair swept back from a domed forehead. He watched Ahlen as he spoke, his eyes flat and cold, the color of lead.

  “Well,” said Len. “I’m telling you to come on home now. Supper’s ready and it ain’t right to keep your grandma waiting.”

  Charlie Bob shrugged indifferently, “I already ate.”

  “Go on, Charlie Bob. You hurry along, don’t want to keep your granny waiting now, do you?” teased one of the other men in a phony high-pitched voice.

  “I ain’t going,” snarled Charlie Bob as Len took his arm.

  “You’ll do as you’re told,” snapped Len, tugging at him.

  Charlie Bob pulled his arm away angrily. “Leave me be. I want to stay here.”

  “Get over here!” growled Ahlen. His voice low and full of warning. “You do as your pa says.”

  Charlie Bob looked at Ahlen, his eyes lowering as he met his uncle’s steady gaze. “I don’t have to go, do I, Tyrone?” he whined.

  “Never mind him,” cut in Ahlen sharply. “You mind your pa and do as your told.”

  Tyrone raised his eyebrows and slowly chewed his lip speculatively. “Who died and made you president, mister?” he asked.

  “Keep out of it, fellow. This is a family matter.” Ahlen was tense now; his body tightening as he prepared himself for what he knew was becoming inevitable.

  “Maybe I’ll make it my business,” said Tyrone, easing himself away from the bar.

  “Well, well, well!” said a cheery voice from behind. “Bless my soul. Langstrom told me you were back and here you are.”

  All eyes turned and Ahlen recognized Ty Fells standing behind him.

  He had aged some, Ahlen saw. Still a sturdy man, almost as tall as Ahlen, with slicked down center parted black hair that shone like oiled sealskin over a handsome smooth skinned face that was spread in a broad grin. He had the same self assured air about him Ahlen remembered but although he smiled, Ahlen could see the calculation going on behind the pleasant greeting.

  “Good to see you, Ahlen,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Likewise, Ty.” Ahlen noticed the figure coming up on Ty’s shoulder. The Negro guitar man he had met on the ferry. Ahlen nodded at him and the black man touched a finger to his hat in recognition, yet he kept back and stood silently behind Ty.

  “Now,” asked Ty, with a quick warning look at Tyrone. “What’s going on here?”

  “We just come to collect the boy,” said Ahlen with a nod at his nephew.

  “Why sure,” smiled Ty. “Must be getting near supper time for you anyway, Charlie Bob. You’d best get along now, your folks’ll be worrying.” He turned again to Ahlen. “Great to see you, Ahlen. We’ll have to sit down sometime when it’s quiet and chaw over old times.”

  “That would be fine, Ty,” said Ahlen agreeably. “Right now, we have to get this lad home.”

  “Sure, sure,” agreed Ty. “But you drop by anytime, place is always open to you. You know that.”

  “Thanks, I’ll remember,” said Ahlen, backing away with Len and Charlie Bob leading the way out.

  A last glance at Tyrone and the others, told him he had made a set of enemies there and he noticed the Negro, Keb Hawkins taking note of the looks that passed between them.

  As they walked back through the night, Len started in on Charlie Bob. Partly, Ahlen guessed, as something of a show for himself. To prove to Ahlen he was behaving as a worthwhile father.

  “What can you be thinking, Charlie Bob?” he began. “Associating with those men.”

  Charlie Bob shrugged, his whole attitude morose. “They’re my friends,” he mumbled.

  “Boy, they’re twice as old as you. Can’t you find kids your own age?”

  “That’s it,” snapped Charlie Bob. “Kids my age are just that, kids. They ain’t got an ounce of sense between them.”

  “And that fellow Tyrone has, I suppose?”

  Charlie Bob sniffled and jerked his chin up proudly. “Tyrone is alright. I’m telling you, pa. He’s all right. A real pal.”

  “He’s a stone killer,” Ahlen observed quietly.

  Both Len and Charlie Bob turned to look at him in a moment of surprised silence.

  “The whole bunch of them are,” added Ahlen.

  “There you have it,” said Len, picking up the thread. “Your uncle’s told you. If you don’t listen to me then at least hear him. He’s seen the world off this island and knows what’s happening out there.”

  “Nah,” chuckled Charlie Bob confidently. “Tyrone’s no killer. Just a mighty tough fellow, is all.”

  “He’d hang you out to dry, soon as look at you, Charlie Bob,” said Ahlen. “Hear what I say. That man intends nothing but evil. Best leave well alone.”

  “He’s my friend, Uncle Ahlen. Don’t be talking about my friends like that.”

  Ahlen shrugged. “Have it your own way, kid.”

  “I ain’t no kid either,” snapped back Charlie Bob out of the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  Ahlen was sitting on the front porch the next day with a blanket wrapped around him, when a shaded buggy came trotting up the road from town. The buggy pulled to a stop at the gate and a figure sat there and looked at him a long moment before waving a daintily gloved hand to call him over.

  He got up and holding the blanket around himself, shuffled his way down the front path to the gate and only then did he recognize Annie Caldense.

  “You look real fine today, Annie,” he greeted, surprised by her simple walking out clothes that bore no similarity to the feathered getup of the night before. Ahlen had to admit to himself that she looked a picture all right. A pretty, square-jawed, determined face with blue eyes that matched the little bonnet sitting on her brunette curls.

  “Without all of last night’s war paint, you mean? That’s just for work,” she explained. “But ‘looking fine’ is more than can be said for you. What you doing dressed in that blanket and very little else, by the look of it?”

  “Oh, this,” he grinned, fiddling with the edge of the rough cloth. “My ma is washing my army outfit. I’ve been wearing it so long she can’t stand the smell no more so she says. And everything I left here don’t fit me so well, I guess I growed some.”

  She laughed. “No sir, Mister Best, you couldn’t possible grow no more. You’d better go into town, there’s a tailor there, a Hebrew fellow he’ll fit you out in a couple of days. He does good work too.”

  “Mmm, I’ll think on that. Might be an idea. You want to step down a moment?”

  “I guess not,” she said. “Folks don’t take too kindly to my presence since I started up working at the saloon. Seems I’m tagged as some sort of scarlet woman now.”

  “And are you a scarlet woman?” Ahlen asked softly.

  Annie stuck her chin out aggressively. “Not so you’d notice. It’s hard though, with a kid. Lone woman and all that. It’s circumstances that make us do these things and the child and I went hungry for a long time with none of these fine folks around here lifting a finger to help. I do what I have to.” Her voice had taken a hard, defensive edge to it.

  Ahlen shook his head sympathetically. “I guess when the mill closed a lot of people went without.”

  “That’s for sure,” she agreed.

  “So what can I do for you, Annie?”

  “Nothing really,” she looked away, her eyes downcast. “I just wanted to explain ... for you to understand. You know.... why I was doing what I do in The Rolling Dice. I didn’t want you to get the worst end of it from somebody else be
fore I had a chance to say my piece.”

  Ahlen put his broad forearm up and rested it on the buggy’s armrest, the blanket falling away to expose his muscled arm. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Annie. It’s not my affair and I don’t make judgments. I’m just surprised there wasn’t someone on this island with enough sense to pick up on a pretty girl and treat her decent.”

  She nodded, her lips compressed. Her gloved fingers fluttered nervously on her lap and for a moment Ahlen thought she was about to reach out and take his hand. “Guess he went away,” was all she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

  Ahlen tilted his head and frowned, not quite getting her true meaning, thinking she might mean the father of her child. “Who was that, what was his name?” he asked.

  She slapped down the reins and clicked the pony on, turning the buggy on the road back to town. “Be seeing you, Ahlen,” she called back without answering his question.

  As she rode away Ahlen pondered on her words. It wrankled him to think of her selling herself in that place, rubbing up against whisky stinking drunks and oily card sharps. Despite his display of disinterest, for some reason the notion got under his skin and irritated.

  He gathered the blanket about himself and returning to the porch bench, had hardly sat down again when all these restless thoughts were brushed aside by another hail coming from the roadside. He looked up to see a trio of men standing there grinning at him. The tallest of them called out to him.

  “Ahlen Best, you look more Indian that I do in that there blanket!”

  “Jodie Little Cloud!” Ahlen cried, jumping to his feet in surprise and totally forgetting he had on nothing but a blanket, which promptly dropped to his feet leaving him standing there naked. The sight brought gales of laughter from the three, who pushed open the front gate and bustled in.

  “Lord a’mighty,” said Ahlen, clutching up the blanket with one hand and shaking hands with the other. “Loup, how y’doing? And, Pres, boy, you’ve got older. Jodie...” he laughed. “I swear I ought to bust you on the nose.”

  “You leave little there to the imagination, Ahlen,” said the young Loup, a small, cheerful fellow with yellow hair and a slight physique. “Must have been all that army life which taught you them daring ways.”

  “Ah, fellows,” said Ahlen. “It’s damned good to see you.”

  “We heard you were back,” supplied the serious looking Pres. “Thought we’d drop by and say hi there.”

  “Glad you did. I was going to come by you all when I got my duds cleaned up.”

  Jodie eased his powerful frame onto the porch with casual grace and patted Ahlen on the back. “Don’t you worry none,” he said. “We know how those tough old army folk will even take the shirt off your back.”

  “Ma!” Ahlen called, shouting into the house. “Will you look who’s here?”

  “I hear them,” came a voice from the kitchen. “Sounds just like it always did. You boys sit out there, I’ll have some coffee ready in a minute.”

  “Howdy, Mrs. Best,” hailed the three in unison.

  “You got any of those sweet cookies you make, Mrs. B.?” added Loup. “Could sure go some of those. Been a long while since I tasted them cookies of yours.”

  “Get along, Loup,” she called back. “I swear, you got more sass than a raccoon in a high hat.”

  “Aw,” smiled Loup. “Don’t be like that, Mrs. B. It’s just, I love them cookies of yours.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she answered. Ahlen could hear the pleasure in her voice and it pleased him that she should feel so comfortable with his old friends calling again.

  “So,” he said. “Everything’s closed down and you boys are all out of work now?”

  “That’s it,” said Jodie, sadly. Ahlen noted how that, even older, he still stood tall and moved with the same suppleness that had enabled him to scale the two hundred foot high white pines with ropes and iron claws and lop off branches along the way as he went. His origins showed in his face, his mother had been a Lakota Sioux and his father a white trapper who had moved to the island when the beaver trade died out. Jodie Little Cloud was a handsome man, with a hooked nose and proud features. Ahlen also noted, how he was still a man of few words and of a calm nature.

  “We’re getting by but it sure ain’t easy unless you want to take up with Ty Fells,” added Pres, the eldest and more serious of the three. Ahlen could see that Pres had lost even more hair from his head in his absence, a head that rose in a round shiny dome out of a ring of sprouting brown hair. They had often joked that Pres’ dangerous job as a choker, the man who set steel cable about the logs before they moved them riverside, had caused him to fret so much he had lost most of his hair in stress over his work.

  “I saw Ty last night,” said Ahlen. “He seems to have gotten in with a rough crowd alright.”

  “That’s a fact,” agreed Loup, scratching his straw colored head. He had grown a tuft of hair under his nose and lower lip, in an attempt to make his child-like features appear older. Yet, despite his youth, when they had worked in the woods, it was Loup who had what was probably the most important job of all. He was the whistle punk, the safety lookout for the crew and would call warning if something bad were about to happen. The job had needed a sharp eye and a quick wit, both facilities of which Loup had his fair share. “He ain’t the Ty you used to know, no more, Ahlen,” Loup went on. “Got somewhat above himself now. He did a lot of bad things here.”

  “Yes,” said Ahlen. “I’ve seen the state of the town.”

  “There’s been a whole lot of changes in the years you’ve been away,” added Pres.

  “And we don’t like any of them,” Loup said with a sour expression.

  “But it’s sure good to see you back again, Ahlen,” interjected Jodie, calming the general mood of aggravation. “We missed you here.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Loup. “But tell us about how you won that medal, we only got the bare bones. We heard how you took down a rebel general and won his battle flag. That must be some kind of story.”

  Just then Ahlen was grateful his mother arrived with a full tray of coffee and cookies.

  “There you are, Loup,” she said with a smile. “Special for you. A whole dish of them.”

  Loup lunged forward. “Why thank you, ma’am,” he said, cramming a cookie into his mouth without hesitation. “My, my! As sweet as ever. I do declare, you are a darlin’, Mrs. B., I swear it’s true.”

  “Hush up,” she chided in embarrassment, turning to go.

  “Thanks, ma,” said Ahlen. “My clothes ready yet? I feel like a dressers dummy in a shop window sitting here with every passerby commenting on how buck naked I am.” He frowned in mock annoyance at his grinning companions as he said it.

  “Sure are, I’ll bring them to you.”

  “You want to take a turn around town when you’re set?” asked Loup, his mouth full of cookie.

  “Why not?” agreed Ahlen. “I got to see me a tailor anyway.”

  The tailor proved to be a gnome of a man with a hamulkah on the back of his head, he sat cross-legged in a gloomy little shop full of stacked bolts of cloth. The dimly lit place was situated in one of the fishermen’s complexes of back streets that bordered the lakeside. Tall wooden house fronts and tar painted net drying sheds stood on each side of the narrow lane, so high were the structures that the sun did not reach down to street level and left the alley in permanent shadow.

  With barely a few words of introduction, the tailor soon had Ahlen’s big frame measured up and with obvious competence promised him supply of both jacket, pants and vest with a couple of fitted shirts within a few days. Ahlen took with him some ready-made denim pants and a wool work shirt to tide him over until his suit was ready. With the fee agreed upon and their clothes shopping done, the four set off to get some fresh caught lake fish for the evening meal as Ma Best had requested they do when they left the house.

  Backing out of the tailor’s shop, Loup was telling
Ahlen how there was a fish seller’s stall open daily on the dock and that they should head there. Not looking where he was going, he bumped into a passing pedestrian.

  Loup turned, full of apology and as he did so, Ahlen noted that it was one of the men who had stood next to Tyrone in the saloon bar the night before.

  “Watch where you’re going, punk,” growled the fellow aggressively. A lean faced man, who wore a low crowned Plainsman’s hat and a spotted red neckerchief below his unshaven chin.

  “Heck, I’m sorry, mister,” said Loup. “Didn’t see you there.”

  “I don’t give a hot damn what you didn’t see, fella,” the fellow said angrily. “Lookit, you stepped on my boots with your muddy feet.”

  “Well, like I say,” said Loup, a look of distress on his face. “I’m real sorry.”

  “Give me a buck to get it cleaned,” said the neckerchief, his eyes narrowing. “Or you’ll get down there and lick it off with your tongue.”

  Loup backed away getting the feel for how things were going. “I ain’t about to lick your boots, mister,” he said.

  “What’s your problem?” asked Ahlen, stepping forward.

  “Boy dirtied my boots,” said the man. “I ain’t about to let that pass.” His hand sidled down to his firearm as he spoke.

  “Leave it be, mister,” warned Jodie, coming up and standing close behind Ahlen.

  “Or what, breed? You want some of this?” he stepped back into the street as he spoke, hand hanging over his gun butt.

  “None of us is armed,’ said Ahlen. “You want to pull on unarmed men over a street accident. What kind of fool are you?”

  “A dangerous one, Best. You’d better watch how you walk from now on.”

  The man backed away down into the shadows of the narrow alley, his fingers still lingering over his gun. “Name’s Ly Bedstone,” he said. “Don’t you forget it, soldier boy. I’ll be looking for you.”

  “Luck to you,” called Ahlen after him.

  “What is it with these guys?” said Loup, when Bedstone was gone. “I said I was sorry.”

  “Forget it,” said Ahlen. “That kind’ll make something bad out of a preacher’s prayer. It’s just the way they are.”