Ride the Panther (15 page)

“What the hell are you doing, Cap?” Hud glanced in Clem’s direction. “You start cutting people in without my say so? I don’t hold with it. You divvy up your share of the pie any way you want, but leave mine alone.” Cap shook his head and good-naturedly gestured for Hud to follow him back to his office. Hud stepped around the bar and followed Cap, who seemed disarmingly ebullient, as if without a care in the world. His steps were spry and his cane tap-tapped upon the floor as if keeping time with the music Tandy Matlock continued to play.

Inside the office, Cap whirled around as Hud closed the door. With surprising speed, Cap changed course and barreled into the gunman, pinning the man to the door. Three hundred plus pounds of gristle and bone held the one-eyed man immobile. With a flick of the wrist, the gator-head cane came apart and freed a slender, fourteen-inch-long razor-sharp blade. Cap held the double-edge blade against Hud’s throat. In the blink of an eye, Cap Featherstone had gone from a congenial huckster to a stone-cold killer. With the point of the blade lightly pricking his jugular vein, Hud had no intention of reaching for his guns.

“Listen to me! Pardee, you’re the best I’ve ever seen with a gun. For as long as you been trick shootin’ with Cap Featherstone’s Linamints and Medicine Show, I always said there ain’t no one better than Hud Pardee. But good as you are, I could kill you in my sleep.” Cap’s knife drew blood. A droplet of crimson formed on the tip of the blade. Hud Pardee winced as cold steel pricked his skin, just above his jugular. Cap withdrew the knife and licked the droplet of blood from the tip of the blade. “Don’t forget, I’m running things.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Hud replied, hoping to save face. Color returned to his cheeks. And when Cap removed his crushing weight, the one-eyed gunman was able to catch a breath once more. “But I still can’t see what’s to be gained by dealing the gambler in.”

“Because it takes more than table stakes for a man to commit murder,” Cap said. “But as a partner, with a chance at wealth and power, I doubt there’s anything a man like Enos Clem wouldn’t do.” Cap Featherstone maneuvered his great bulk over to a rack of clay and wooden pipes. Though Cap had his own back to the door, Hud still had the feeling the big man was watching him or at least keenly aware of Pardee’s every move. Cap filled a pipe with tobacco and lit it, then turned to face the trick shooter once again. “I’ve spent enough time on the trail to know Jesse McQueen is no fool. He’s every bit the man his father was. And he could be a lot more trouble than I figured. If we have to kill him, I want Clem around to shoulder the blame.”

“But what if the gambler should talk?”

Cap flashed his conciliatory smile, and with a curl of tobacco smoke wreathing his head the big man slowly sheathed the length of steel blade back into his cane. “Dead men don’t bite.”

“A
IN’T RIGHT, YOU LOCKING
us up,” Moses Tellico called out. His crooked nose poked between the iron bars of the cell at the rear of the marshal’s office.

“It were Minley who did the stealing. Only he calls it banking,” Theotis spoke up. He scratched at his scruffy black mane a moment and produced another sliver of glass. “Damnation, Jesse, what would your pa say if he were to find out you went and tossed me through a window? Why, we’re kinda like family…I mean, ain’t the Tellicos always been around when your grandma Raven needed anything?”

“I have heard quite enough out of both of you,” T. Alan Booth replied. He passed a couple of blankets through the bars of the cell. “You boys sleep it off. You’re just lucky we got you out of there before one of you red-necked peckerwoods went and killed someone, because then you’d be in here awaiting the hangman’s pleasure instead of sleeping off a drunk.”

Talk of hanging had a quieting effect on both brothers. Moses even seemed contrite when he spoke again. “How long you aim to keep us, T. Alan?”

“A week ought to satisfy Lucius Minley. Then we’ll have to find some way for you to make restitution for damages.”

“Galls me to think of having to pay that little weasel anything after what he did,” Moses grumbled. He could sense Marshal Booth was about to explode again with anger. “But we will if you say so,” he quickly added. Jesse had to grin.

Booth led the way into the front room of the office. The windows were thrown open, and sunlight washed across a wall of posters, a gun rack, a battered desk and chair, and, on the opposite side of the room, a well-padded cot and an iron stove with a blue-enameled pot riding one of the hot plates. Two cups were set close by. A couple of extra shirts and a pair of brown Levi’s hung from wall pegs above the head of the cot. Booth always kept a pot of coffee on the stove, but he took his meals at Mary Lou Gude’s on the south end of town; hardly convenient but well worth the walk. He considered his own cooking as deadly as venom, an opinion shared by any of the jail’s inmates who had sampled the parson marshal’s fare.

Booth scratched at his white beard as he appraised the Union captain standing before him.

“What the hell are you doing here, Jesse? I wrote to your father and asked
him
to come.”

“He sent me instead,” Jesse replied. He didn’t bother to elaborate. There seemed no point to telling the peace officer a lie about Ben’s death.

“This town and the whole countryside are coming apart at the seams. Your father might have brought them all together. He might have been a balm to the wounds this damn war has opened up.” Booth sighed, and crossed the room to the stove where he filled a cup with coffee. He tasted the contents and made a wry face. “I’ve swallowed better creek water.”

“The washbasin still outside?” Jesse asked.

“Where it’s always been.”

Jesse walked through the front door and around to the east side of Booth’s office which faced the town, looking directly down Main. The jail marked the northern edge of town. The wooded slope of Turtle Mountain rose sharply from the grassland, and beyond lay the steeper ridges and hidden hollows of the Kiamichi Mountains.

The stand and washbasin were shaded by a lean-to roof. Jesse peeled off his vest and his pullover cotton shirt. His torso was streaked with sweat and trail dust that somehow always worked beneath a man’s clothes. A shiny silver coin, an English crown sterling, dangled from a leather string around Jesse’s neck. Parson Marshal Booth knew the story behind the McQueen “medal.” It had been passed from father to son since the days of the Revolutionary War, when General George Washington had scrawled his initials, “G.W.,” across the image of the English monarch and presented the coin to Jesse’s great grandfather, Daniel McQueen, for his acts of courage and self-sacrifice in support of the thirteen colonies’ noble cause.

“So you wear your father’s medal. But can you fill his shoes?”

Jesse McQueen studied the town marshal and considered reeling off his exploits behind the Confederate lines in Vicksburg and Jackson. He’d run a gauntlet of Rebel troops, one step ahead of a firing squad. His neck still bore a scar from a hangman’s rope, a parting gift from some of New Orleans’s citizens who had tried to lynch him as a spy.

“I reckon we’ll just have to find out together.”

Booth reached out and touched the livid white scar tissue, the mark of the noose that Jesse would always wear. “By heaven, lad, where have you been?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.” Jesse fished in his vest pocket and brought out a shiny silver-plated star set in a circle of silver. The word
RANGER
was imprinted on the underside of the circle while the initials
I.T.
were etched in the center of the star. He handed Booth a document issued by the government in Washington appointing McQueen to act as a temporary territorial ranger until such time as the conflict in the southeast quarter of the Indian Territory was satisfactorily resolved. The document empowered Jesse to organize all the Union sympathizers if need be and bring them north into Kansas. However, this was to be a measure of last resort.

Booth tilted his hat back on his head and audibly exhaled as he finished reading McQueen’s papers of authority. The marshal frowned and looked away. Several of Chahta Creek’s inhabitants had followed Jesse and the marshal as they brought the Tellicos up the street from the bank. Most of the same crowd continued to linger at the end of the street. A half-dozen gossiping ladies buzzed excitedly among themselves about the shameful state of law and order although it didn’t seem right that the Tellicos should lose their land and oh doesn’t Jesse Redbow McQueen cut a handsome figure, and they giggled and laughed and shushed one another.

Al Teel came forward. He was a round, jovial little man with a kind word for everyone and anyone. He was middle-aged and wore his brown hair long in the manner of the old ones, shoulder-length though unadorned. The stub of a handrolled cigar was clenched firmly between his teeth. The cigar wasn’t lit. With the war raging through the South and ravaging the tobacco crop, Teel was determined to make his meager supply of cigars last until the cessation. He tended to chew on them rather than smoke them. The loosely rolled leaves tended to burn rather quickly. It was a waste of his precious supply.

Teel held out his hand, and Jesse dried himself off and shook it.

“By heaven, if you were taller I would have figured it was Ben himself come home from Washington.” He winked at the younger man. “From the looks of things, the way you handled Moses and Theotis, you’re cut in the same image, my lad. Yessiree, cut in the same image.” He clapped Jesse on his naked shoulder.

“I was there, too,” Booth said, somewhat miffed.

“Of course you were, T. Alan, of course you were.” Teel placed a hand on the marshal’s forearm in a conciliatory gesture. Then he noticed the badge Jesse had brought with him from Kansas City. “Well, well, well, what have we here? A territorial ranger?”

“It’s a temporary assignment,” Jesse said.

“Unless the Knights make it permanent,” Booth glumly added.

“What do you plan to do?” Teel asked.

“Keep moving and keep low.” Jesse grinned. He found his straight razor and shaving soap and proceeded to lather his face. He noticed a couple of children standing behind him. The boy was probably no more than ten. His little sister was a couple of years younger. Studying their reflection in the mirror, Jesse thought he remembered their names.

“John Medicine Fox, you think you’re big enough to bring that gray of mine from in front of the newspaper office up here to the corral in back of the jail?”

The boy flashed a toothy smile and hurried forward to stand alongside McQueen. “Howdy, Jesse. I seen you ride in. Is the war over?”

“No,” Jesse told him, a tinge of regret in his voice.

“Good!” the boy enthusiastically said. “Then maybe I’ll still be able to jine up and win me some medals. Whoo-eee. I’ll bet you’ve seen just about everything.”

How do you tell the young about war? Jesse thought. What words can hold the stench of death, the terrible suffering, watching friends die one after the other, the awful waiting, severed limbs and maimed bodies? Where to begin, and how to make the young understand that which numbs the senses and sickens the soul?

“Maybe not everything,” Jesse answered. He handed the boy a quarter and watched him scamper off toward the center of town. He felt a tug on his trouser leg and looked down into the depthless eyes of another child, a little girl called Keila Medicine Fox.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

“Hmm,” Jesse teased, apparently deep in thought and struggling to recall her name. The little girl’s eyes widened. She was not about to be fooled.

“Jesse McQueen, you know exactly who I am!” The girl folded her arms across her chest and tried to look her sternest.

“Ah yes, you’re the little one who likes sugar sticks.” Jesse smiled and, reaching in his saddlebag, brought out a small sack of peppermint sticks he’d kept safely tucked away and out of sight of Cap Featherstone, who had an insatiable sweet tooth. The girl squealed with delight and hugged Jesse around the neck.

“I’m gonna show John,” she said. Keila turned to run after her brother, then stopped. “Jesse, I thought you’d come back a general or something.”

“No, Keila,” he told her. “The world has enough generals. I’m just plain old me.”

“I like plain old you just fine, Jesse. Maybe even better,” she said, and trotted off down Main.

Several other townsmen came forward to welcome Jesse home. He greeted each man in turn. His presence seemed to buoy their spirits. The tensions dividing those sympathetic to the Union and those who favored the Rebel cause had taken a toll on the citizens of Chahta Creek. Neighbors had grown suspicious of neighbors. And the sound of mounted horsemen at night filled the Federalists and abolitionists whether in town or in the countryside with dread. Al Teel, who could contain gossip about as long as a sieve holds water, had gone off to spread the word that Jesse was in town with the authority to invite the factions to come together and help bring peace to the embattled countryside and perhaps an end to the Knights of the Golden Circle and their reign of terror. By the time Jesse had pulled on a clean shirt and pinned his badge to his vest, the onlookers had dispersed and returned to their shops and homes, anxious to pass along to friends and relatives the news of Jesse’s arrival and the reason for his return. John Medicine Fox returned with the gray gelding and placed the animal in the corral behind the jail. The boy and his sister unsaddled the animal, found a pair of brushes, and went to work on the horse.

“Does Henri Medicine Fox still run the hotel?” Jesse asked.

T. Alan Booth nodded. He was struggling with the idea of Jesse McQueen’s appointment as territorial ranger. He had been the law in Chahta Creek for a mighty long time. And though what happened beyond the town limits was none of his concern, he frequently made it so. Given time, he was certain he could bring the situation under control. He didn’t like to think the years were telling on him. Booth wasn’t getting any younger but damned if he’d admit that fact to anyone else.

“I’ll see about acquiring lodging at the Choctaw House,” Jesse said.