The Pursued Page 8

  “Just whisky.”

  “That’s a road to Hell and you know it.”

  “It’s my road, white man.”

  Powers shrugged and went out as Moore opened the door. He followed the sheriff past the stacked columns of paper into the front office.

  “You get what you wanted?” asked Moore.

  “He never did it,” said Powers, taking a few coins from his pocket and placing them on the cluttered desk. “Buy him a bottle, will you?”

  “What do you mean, he never did it. He say that?”

  “In so many words. He found the body before anybody else and took the Bible to sell for liquor.”

  “What about the Colt, he say anything about that?”

  “Did you find a deer carcass at his place?”

  “There was a skin there. A young one, stretched out on a drying rack.”

  “That’s where he claimed his bullet went.”

  “But he did take the Bible?”

  “He says he did.”

  “Then it’s theft, if nothing else.”

  “Indians don’t see it that way. Everything is a gift to them. It’s nature’s way, they reckon.”

  “He’s half-white, ain’t he?” asked Moore.

  “I believe so.”

  “Then we’ll prosecute the white half.”

  Chapter Ten

  Cole Loumis lit the stub of candle and checked through the flat iron bars of the cell, searching the darkness beyond. Things were quiet out there and only the lanterns in the guard tower high above the water deposit could be seen in the gloom of the yard.

  “Okay,” he said. “Gather round.”

  His five companions slid down from their stacked narrow bunks and squeezed together in the small space between their bed-tiers and the cell door. Except for one of them, Cole did not rate these five very highly. They were pliable and easily led, though and that served his purpose.

  Two of them were Mexicans, Rodrigo and Luis. The other three were Americans; Joe Packer, Bill ‘Little Willy’ Wise, and Del Tate.

  Of the three, Joe was his closest companion, his right hand man; a stocky fellow with a grim and scarred face that never broke into a smile. They both knew the score as soon as each set eyes on the other. It was a simple equation. Joe was the muscle that watched Cole’s back while Cole was slick enough to use his brains and his charm when he could control his vicious temper.

  “Here’s what it is,” whispered Cole. “We’re getting out of here. We’re going to make a break for it.”

  There was a collective whisper of astonishment.

  “But, señor Cole,” said Luis, a tall and slender man with a bald head and long bushy mustache that dripped down his chin. “You already wear the ball and chain, how do you do this?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Cole. “It comes off tomorrow. I had to do some exploring, that’s why I lit out for a spell.”

  “I don’t know,” said Little Willy Wise. He was the most fearful and always had a negative take on whatever Cole planned. “It’s risky, I don’t want to go back in that Dark Cell again. You know what those guards did just for the hell of it? They dropped a snake in there with me. A damned rattler. Hell, I don’t want that no more. Pitch black, with that thing sliding around.”

  “Oh, stop your whining, Bill,” snarled Joe, nudging the other prisoner hard in the ribs. “You start up right away and you haven’t even heard the plan yet.”

  “Now, here’s how it is,” said Cole, ignoring Little Willy’s complaints. “Come Sunday, these outside folks that are paying twenty-five cents to get in here to air their curiosity are the way we do it. I’ve made an arrangement with a certain young lady.”

  There were grins all around at this and a few mumbled lewd comments.

  “So that’s the kind of exploring you’ve been doing,” leered Little Willy.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Cole. “None of that matters. This lady has fallen for it. She thinks we’re running off into the sunset together but it won’t be that way. We’re heading for this place at the mouth of the Colorado River. You Mexicans will know it.” He looked at the two questioningly and they nodded vigorously. “Anyway, down there at Port Isabel, the army has a Quartermasters’ supply depot, a big warehouse. They bring in clothing and ammunition to supply the forts from Arizona to Texas. They have ships coming and going and the return journey is around the Baja Peninsula up into California.”

  The five leaned forward, keen to hear Cole’s whispered words. The candlelight lit up their unshaven faces and burned with pinpoints of flame in their eyes.

  “So we stowaway on a boat, is that it?” asked Del Tate quickly. Normally a handsome young man, if not the highest card in the deck, his face now was grimed with dirt from the construction work and the heat in the cell was bringing a slick of sweat to his brow which mixed with the dust to form tidemarks of filth. “I worked some boats out of San Diego once.”

  “Well, that’s right good to know, Del,” said Cole cynically, irritated at being interrupted. “Anything else you want to share with us?”

  “No,” said Del, humbled. “Sorry, Cole, you go on.”

  “We have options once we get there,” Cole continued. “If a boat appears and we can get on her, we’ll do it that way. Or there are mule trains and supply wagons leaving that place all the time. Either way, we take what we can get and just light out.”

  “But how do we get out of here?” asked Joe.

  “Right, it’s this way,” said Cole. “It has to be Sunday, because that’s when the lady can come visit. She’ll come in a covered flatbed and bring clothes. We have to make it out through the sally port gate as if we’re just visitors on our way home. That’s the tricky part but once we get through there, she takes us to the river where a sailboat will be waiting, then we take a pleasant ride down the Colorado and run ashore before we get to the river mouth.”

  “Sounds good,” said Joe. “But how is she going to get all them clothes through to us without the guards getting suspicious?”

  “Why she’s going to buy up all our handmade goods is how.”

  “What goods is those, Cole?” asked Del.

  “The ones you’re going to make, dummy. You’ve seen how everything is carried out of here under guard once folks have bought it. The big stuff, I mean. Rocking chairs and baby cradles and such. Well, we take out our offerings covered in a sack or a tarp and we come back with the empty bag, right? Only it ain’t empty, it’s got all our new civilian clothes in it.”

  Little Willy Wise blew a long low whistle. “Have to say, Cole. That sounds like a swell plan.”

  Cole looked at him with raised eyebrows.“Coming from you, Little Willy, that must be praise indeed.”

  “When do we go?” asked the hard-faced Joe.

  “Sunday next. But hear what I say now.” He looked around at them all steadily, his eyes piercing. “Not one word between now and then. Nothing. Any of you say anything to anyone else and I swear I’ll see them with their tongue split, you hear me? One whisper of this gets out and we’re done for. They’ll put us in that black hole for the rest of our time here.”

  They all mumbled promises of loyalty and silence while trying to disguise their excitement at the promise of escape.

  “Tomorrow,” Cole went on, “we make things. I don’t care what they are as long as they’re on the large size. Something that’s going to need a sack to carry it in. Small tables, baby chairs, that sort of thing. You boys get to work bright and early. We only have five days.”

  The sudden wave of enthusiastic construction work by Cole Loumis and his cronies surprised the guards. Until now the men’s apathy had been a thing that the guards had watched with caution, believing in it lay the seeds of revolt. But now they were pleased to see Cole and his boys busy. It implied that they had accepted their lot and were beginning to fit into the regime of the jail at last. They even commented on it to Cole when he had his ankle bracelet with the ball and chain removed.

  The following Sund
ay, the main exercise yard baked under a hot sun and was full as usual with spread blankets and tented stalls. The local folks arrived, paid their quarter dollar and moved in cautious parties among the convicts.

  Cole watched the arrivals carefully. The young and impressionable girl he had convinced to help them was the daughter of a local storekeeper and so had access to a wagon. The girl was no more than seventeen and thought Cole Loumis the love of her life. In her young and innocent way, she was devoted to him.

  His team had done well, he thought. Their offerings were not the sort of joinery that would grace the homes of gentry but then they were not intended to. Crudely made furniture, and even a painting of sorts that Little Willy Wise had attempted, all lay on a bed of the blankets taken from their cell.

  He saw her then. A fair haired, winsome girl, her golden locks tied in twin pigtails showing from under a round flat brimmed hat. She wore a waisted jacket too large and fastened at the middle with a man’s leather belt. It was obvious she was dressed for travel and not for dancing. Cole sighed and fastened a pleasant grin on his lean face as he approached the girl.

  “Howdy, Caroline, honey,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  She looked back at him wide-eyed, top teeth biting her lower lip. “I don’t know, Cole,” she said. “I’m awful nervous.” He could see she shivered under her jacket, as if cold.

  “Hey, don’t tremble so,” he said with a broad smile. “We’re the ones taking all the risks, you’ll be fine.”

  She looked down at the ground. “I just ain’t so sure about coming now, Cole. Leaving my folks and my little brother, it seems an awful big step.”

  “But I love you, darlin’. You know that, you’re my world,” Cole murmured in reassuringly soft tones. “You can’t let me down now. I can’t make it without you.”

  He led her over to their display of simple woodwork. “Look, Caroline. We’ll have everything I promised you once we’re out of here. I have money laid by, enough to get us a small property once we’re married. It’ll be a dream home. I see it with cream painted woodwork and a proper shingle roof. We’ll have two towers, one at each end. You and me, we’ll have the right hand one as our bedroom and the left hand one, why that’ll be the nursery. You’re going to want to have children, ain’t you, Caroline?”

  He saw the change light up her eyes as his fantasy took hold and became the shape of reality in her mind.

  “You make it all sound so good, Cole. Will it really be so?”

  “Why not, baby girl? If we have each other, anything in the world can be ours.”

  She sighed and clasped her hands together on her breasts. “Oh, Cole,” she said. “I do love you so. You will be true, won’t you?”

  Cole held her eyes convincingly with his own. “Only death will separate us, honey.”

  “I have the wagon,” she said hurriedly. “It waits in the yard outside, right next to the flag pole.”

  “Good girl,” he said. “Then make like you’re buying everything you see here and ask the guard at the yard gate there if we can help carry it out. He’ll come with us but when we load up this junk here, we’ll pick up the clothing. When we get back inside, we’ll change our prison stripes and amble out with the others when the market closes. You’ll wait for us, won’t you? It won’t be long.”

  “I’ll be there, Cole.” She smiled. “You know, I’ve lived here all my life but never seen the sea yet. This’ll be a real adventure.”

  Cole gave a nod to the others and they quickly scooped up the goods, wrapping them in grain sacks and blankets. Following behind with everything slung over their shoulders or borne in their arms, they trooped after the girl as she made her way over to the guard at the entrance to the yard.

  “My, my,” said the guard, stepping in front of their column. “What you got there, girl? Seems like you’ll be furnishing an entire house with all that.”

  “That’s it.” She nodded vigorously. “That’s just it. We’re furnishing a house.”

  “You seem a mite young to be setting up house, little lady.”

  Cole frowned as the guard adopted a casual stance, obviously wanting to make a hit with a pretty girl.

  “It’s my Pa’s place,” Caroline said.

  “Okay.” The guard grinned, looking around. “Your daddy here today?”

  “No, he ain’t. He’s working.”

  Cole sweated. He could see that Caroline was beginning to fall apart as she nervously twitched and played with the end of her leather belt.

  “Well,” said the guard, “working on the Lord’s Day, he must be an awful busy man, your Pa. I see you ain’t in your go-to-meeting dress either and I guess you’re a hard working girl all right. But maybe you’d like a spell of relaxation at a dance place I know later on this evening. I get off from here around five o’clock, we could meet up if you like.”

  “Hey, boss!” called Cole. “It’s sure is hot out here, can we get these things in the lady’s wagon now?”

  The guard looked around with irritation. “You shut your mouth, convict, I’m busy.”

  But Caroline took his lead and added. “He’s right though, I’m boiling up here.”

  “Can’t have that.” The guard grinned. He turned to the column of men and picked up his rifle. “All right, you boys. You follow on and take care of those items there. Don’t worry none, miss, I’ll see all this is stowed away properly.”

  He walked on ahead, proudly escorting the young woman and glancing up at his friends in the guard tower with a satisfied grin. The guards up there leered back and began calling out joking comments of a borderline content.

  The distraction worked perfectly, the guards continued their banter as Cole and the rest of them began to load the wagon, disappearing under the wagon’s canopy and stuffing clothing into their empty sacks and blankets as they did so.

  “All loaded, missy,” said Cole, jumping down.

  “Thank you kindly,” answered Caroline, her young face tense and white.

  “That’ll be three dollars all told,” said Cole, giving her a knowing look as in her tension she had forgotten to pay them.

  “Of course,” she said, fumbling in her pocket and handing over rolled notes.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Cole touched his forehead in salute as he felt the razor and scissors wrapped in the notes. It was important that they were all clean shaven when they left and looked like regular visitors and not a bunch of shaggy convicts.

  An hour later, when it came up to the midday dinner bell, the market closed and prisoners and visitors were ushered out of the yard. With hair hacked back and beards gone, Cole and his men, dressed in ill fitting but civilian clothes, mingled with the departing visitors. Caroline waited, seated up on the driving seat of the wagon. It seemed a long walk once through the sally gate and crossing the yard toward the flagpole and the wagon that promised freedom. Cole knew it was hard for all of the men not to run, that not one of them wanted to be the last for fear of being left behind. Cole let them scurry on. Calmly, he followed behind and waved convincing parting farewells to other visitors as he went.

  When they were all loaded, Cole climbed up next to Caroline.

  “Well done, lady girl. That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m one lucky man all right. Huh, boys? Who could do better than a girl like this?”

  There was a chorus of approval from inside the wagon as Cole patted Caroline’s hand and nodded her to drive on.

  Caroline whispered as they drove off, “I didn’t know they were all coming.”

  “Oh, it’s just for the beginning, they’ll be going their own way soon. I couldn’t leave them, darlin’, they would have given us away if I didn’t take them now.”

  “I don’t like them much,” she confided.

  “Don’t fret, we’ll be parting ways soon enough. Just get us to that boat you have tied up on the river bank.”

  Cole glanced over his shoulder and gave a knowing look to Joe Packer, who nodded back. The thin twine woven f
rom hide and fastened to two crudely-cut wooden sticks was swiftly in Joe Packer’s hands. Tensely, he waited for Cole’s signal, whilst the wagon cleared the prison perimeter and approached the empty riverbank, where a small rowing boat lay beached.

  “That our vessel, girl?” asked Cole.

  “Sure is,” Caroline answered brightly.

  Cole nodded imperceptibly and Joe quickly knocked aside Caroline’s hat and dropped the twine loop past her pigtails and fastened it in a tight cross draw around the girl’s exposed neck.

  Caroline jerked with shock, her eyes widening as she tried to draw breath.

  Cole caught the reins as they fell from her hands and the others in the rear of the wagon grabbed Caroline’s kicking body and pulled it out of sight over the back of the driving seat and into the covered flatbed. Her heels drummed on the wooden boards as Joe dug his knees into her back and tightened his grip, pulling on the twine garrote with all his strength. The hardened escapees watched indifferently as the girl’s features distorted, her swollen face purpling and eyes popping as the life finally quivered from her.

  There was now one unfortunate passenger on the wagon that would never know a cream painted house with twin towers or ever see the mouth of the Colorado River and the sea beyond.

  Chapter Eleven

  Powers saddled up and prepared to take his leave of Mary. “I’ll be back in three weeks or so,” he promised. “This whole thing for Glenn has kept me too long away from the ranch. I must get back there and attend to business for a while. I just hope my top hand has kept things going for me.”

  She stood, one hand on the closed picket gate to her house and nodded understanding. “It’s all right, Powers. I have plenty to do here. A house full of memories to pack away, in fact.”

  “There’ll be some alterations I want done at the ranch before I pick you up. I want it to be perfect for our wedding. You’re going to have the grandest wedding party ever seen in the Territory.”