Ride the Panther (19 page)

“Jesse?”

The bed looked slept in. His carpet bag was unpacked and a Federal uniform had been set aside. Though the territory was neutral ground, the fact remained that the woods were thick with Confederate sympathizers who wouldn’t hesitate to ventilate that blue jacket and ask questions later. However, it was common knowledge that Jesse was a Union officer. His life was in danger no matter what he wore.

She would have told him that very thing had the room not been hopelessly empty. She must have missed him by a matter of minutes.

“Carmichael Ross, you are a damn fool,” she said. There was a chair by the window overlooking the street. The sunlight drew her to the grainy glass. She glanced down at Main Street, devoid of all but a couple of drifters on their way out of town. They left nothing in their wake but tracks in the dirt that the next rain would wash away. Nature had a habit of reclaiming what men left behind, footsteps or temples, which sooner or later became just so many patches of dust. It was the way of the world, thought the newspaperwoman as she morosely returned her attention to the vacant room. She set the tray on the chair nearest the window. A fly cut a series of hasty spirals over the platter and eventually alit on the biscuits.

“Help yourself,” she muttered to the insect, and left the room. The devil take the man, she had a newspaper to publish.

Enos Clem was the last person Jesse expected to see in this part of the world, but the gambler was the first person his eyes settled on as he entered Cap Featherstone’s Medicine Wagon Saloon. Enos Clem nodded and continued playing solitaire as Jesse checked the spacious interior of the room for any sign of threat. The smell of coffee, cigar smoke, and spilled whiskey caused him to wrinkle his nose and stifle a sneeze.

“Small world,” Clem commented without a trace of animosity, which only further aroused the Union officer’s suspicions.

“What brings you here, gambler?”

“A lame horse, said Clem.

“And an ill wind,” Jesse commented. He was interrupted before he could further question the gambler.

“We’re closed,” another voice interjected.

Jesse turned toward the sound and came face to face with Cap Featherstone’s one-eyed gunman.

“The name is Hud Pardee. Maybe you’ve heard of me, if you’ve ever been down the Natchez Trace.”

Indeed, Jesse McQueen knew the name, for it was synonymous with gunplay and a “short fuse” temper. Pardee had the reputation as a duelist and a first-rate pistoleer who had killed seven men on the field of honor before heading west. He’d never seen the man until now.

“I know who you are,” Jesse told the ashen-haired gunman. His voice was cool and without a trace of emotion.

“And from the look of you,” Pardee said, “you must be Jesse McQueen. I’m Cap’s partner in the Medicine Wagon. He spoke of you the other night.”

“Partner?”

“Sure,” Pardee explained. “Cap has the brains to bring in the money and I’ve the skill to see we keep it.” Pardee crooked a thumb in his sash, parting his frock coat to reveal the guns tucked at his waist. He stood taller than Jesse, but if he hoped to overpower McQueen, he failed. True, Pardee was dangerous. But Jesse had known dangerous men before and had sent under a few of them, himself. Pardee was a man to bear watching but he wasn’t about to run from him.

“Jesse, my lad,” Cap good-naturedly called from the doorway to his office. He held up a pot of coffee and a cup and motioned for McQueen to join him.

“You and me will have to play another hand or two,” Clem said. He gathered his cards, shuffled them, and set the deck face-down on the table. He tilted back in his chair and looked up at the officer. At their last encounter, Jesse had worn the blue woolen coat and trousers befitting a Yankee horse soldier. Returning to Indian Territory had certainly worked a change in the officer, now garbed in Levi’s and faded buckskin shirt and scuffed boots. He’d pinned the dull silver star to his brown vest. An army-issued Colt Dragoon and gunbelt circled his waist.

Jesse studied the gambler’s chalky features. The man’s cordial airs were about as out of place as a grin on a cadaver. So Clem wanted to resume the game that had cost him money and pride aboard the riverboat.

“Reckon your luck has changed?” Jesse asked. Enos cut the deck and held up an ace of clubs in his long fingers. He chuckled and continued balancing on the back legs of his chair.

“What do you think?” he answered.

Jesse left the table, allowing the gambler to have the last word. He heard a woman’s laughter ring out from upstairs.

“Young Sam Roberts is having himself a good time,” Pardee said aloud, and headed for the bar where Shug Jones was filling an assortment of bottles labeled Whiskey, Aged Bourbon, Rye, and Kentucky Mist from the same keg. Freckle-faced Dobie Johnson stood alongside the bartender. It was Dobie’s task to doctor the different “spirits”—putting a dash of bitters in one bottle and a dollop of chili peppers in another. The rattler in the glass bottle on the bar hissed and threatened as Jesse crossed the room.

Cap Featherstone filled the doorway to his office. Black woolen trousers strained to contain his heavy thighs; his solid round belly concealed by a blousy white shirt protruded between the folds of his brocaded brown vest. He scratched at his bearded jaw and stepped back into his office.

“Soon as Tandy shows up with a basket from Gude’s you bring me a plate of biscuits, hear?”

Dobie Johnson looked up from the whiskey bottles and waved. “Sure thing, Cap,” he replied.

Again laughter drifted down from the rooms above. Jesse paused and glanced up as Sam Roberts appeared at the top of the landing. The planter’s son wavered, then gripped the balustrade with his left hand to steady himself. A slim doe-eyed girl in a robe trimmed with faded white lace arrived at his side and began tugging at him and giggling. Her tousled brown hair hung in ringlets and wayward strands, framing her thin oval face. Her lips were smeared with rouge, and a black beauty mark dotted her cheek.

“Hack Warner is looking for you, son,” Hud called up to the nineteen-year-old. “Says you helped burn him out.”

“Talk’s cheap for his kind. Has your colored returned with the food?” Sam called down, seemingly unconcerned.

“Not yet, my young friend,” Hud replied. “But when he does, I’ll send him to your door.”

“See to it.” The only son of Tullock Roberts was accustomed to having his breakfast at a certain hour. And after the previous night’s activities, he was famished.

The girl at his side whispered in his ear. Sam laughed, coughed a moment, then laughed again and waved the girl back to her room. He noticed Jesse for the first time and halted in midturn.

“Jesse McQueen?”

“Hello, Sam.” Jesse touched the brim of his hat. He remembered Sam as a young boy, frail, shivering in a thicket alongside Jesse, Ben McQueen, and Tullock Roberts. Trembling from the cold and the strain of having to measure up to his father’s expectations, Sam Roberts, all of eleven years old, tried to bring the single-shot percussion rifle to bear on the white-tailed deer that Ben had successfully stalked. Jesse remembered how his own father had talked soothingly to the boy, calmed his fears, steadied his aim. Sam made his first kill that day. His father had blooded him and beamed with pride as they returned to the plantation, and afterward, over venison steaks, Ben and Tullock had toasted each other’s health with Kentucky whiskey before a crimson sunset.

“I’ll be out to see your father today,” Jesse said.

“You might find the reception uncomfortably warm,” Sam warned.

“I won’t wear a coat,” Jesse quipped, and continued into Cap’s office. The owner of the Medicine Wagon stood back and welcomed him with open arms. On Jesse’s part, discovering Enos Clem and a man like Hud Pardee in Cap’s employ tempered his enthusiasm for the likable rogue. He said as much as Cap filled a coffee cup and set a blue-enameled pot back on the Franklin stove at the rear of the room.

“Clem, huh?” Cap asked, and offered his visitor a cup. Jesse refused. He’d drunk enough of the coal oil that Cap called coffee on the trip south from Kansas City. “Hud said he showed up the other day. He was down on his luck and figured the Medicine Wagon was as good a place as any for it to change. He can run a game of faro better’n any man I ever seen. He plays a proper hand of poker, too. Clem’s turned the house a tidy profit. I’d like to keep him around. But if you’re set on running him out of town…”

Jesse shrugged. “Let him stay.” There was no love lost between him and the gambler, but it wasn’t for McQueen to drive the man out when he hadn’t broken any laws.

“What about Pardee? Trouble clings to him like ticks to a hound. He’s a dangerous man.”

“And these are dangerous times, what with the damn war and night riders chasing good folk from their homes and property,” Cap explained. He sat on the edge of a large black safe set against the back wall, which displayed one of Cap’s posters from his wagon. The poster touted Cap Featherstone’s Miracle Elixir and the benefits to be derived from consuming the potent tonic on a regular basis. According to Cap, the elixir cured grippe, ague, fatigue, numbness, sore limbs, and all manner of blood disorders. Indeed the tonic could do just about everything except make the blind see and the lame walk, although Cap’s prose was quick to remind the would-be customer that benefits derived from the elixir continued to be reported from Texas to Ohio.

“A man would be a fool not to keep the likes of Hud Pardee around. I don’t intend to wind up like Hack Warner, burned out and nothing to show for my efforts,” Cap concluded. “But speaking of fools, just what kind of play are you up to, lad?” The big man took a moment to sip his coffee, then added, “Tullock Roberts is a hard man to whom you are no better than a traitor for turning against your neighbors and friends. He’s liable to shoot you on sight.”

“I don’t think so. But just in case something happens,” Jesse said, “get word to Major Abbot for me.”

“Why don’t you just forget the whole thing, Jesse? It’s not worth it. I found that out, months ago.” Cap tasted his coffee and wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “Sheep to the slaughter, that’s how men like Abbot see us. I left many a good lad behind in Georgia who knew the truth, mark my words.”

“You’re wrong, Cap.”

“He sent you here alone, didn’t he?”

“Abbot’s hoping to avert a war here. That’s why he sent me and not a regiment. By the time he had one to spare, the territory might already be lost.” Jesse noticed a territorial map on the wall behind the desk Several circles had been drawn on the map, ringing Chahta Creek. He could not imagine their significance. More important to him was the bitterness he sensed in Cap Featherstone. Jesse was beginning to question how much he could count on the man.

“Ride clear of Old Man Roberts,” Cap warned. “Now that be sage advice, the kind I’d render to my own flesh and blood.”

“Tullock is bound to be one of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or at the least he’s someone the Rebels will listen to,” Jesse said. “Through Carmichael’s paper I’ve called a meeting, this Sunday evening, for all the people, Confederates or Union Loyalists. If I can get both sides talking instead of shooting, maybe I can hammer out a truce that will put an end to the raids. If Tullock will agree to come, a good many of the Reb sympathizers will follow.” Jesse took a moment to consider his options and Cap’s warning, then he shook his head and added, “Tullock’s the man I must first talk to. After all, there was a time he and my father were friends.”

“You’re as bullheaded as Ben, God rest his soul.” He sighed in resignation and crossed the room to stand behind his desk. He’d noticed how Jesse had briefly studied the map. “This is a good land, Jesse. A shrewd man can make something of himself here.” He patted Jesse’s shoulder. “The Medicine Wagon is only the beginning for me. I aim to cast a long shadow before I’m through.” He took up his gator-head cane and rested his hands, one upon the other, on the silver hilt as he leaned forward, his gaze as sharp as a scalping knife.

“To hell with Major Abbot. When you leave Chahta Creek, keep going. Don’t look back.”

“I can’t just ride away,” Jesse said.

“What’s stopping you, son?”

Jesse reached inside his shirt and held up the initialed coin, his family’s legacy. “This.”

T
ULLOCK ROBERTS HAD BLOOD
up to the elbows as he stood amidst a group of children and young men who had waited in respectful silence like acolytes as he slit the hog’s throat and hung the poor creature up by its heels to bleed dry. The animal lasted but a few seconds. Then it shuddered and died. As the last of the crimson fluids welled from its ripped flesh, Sawyer Truett and a couple of his friends built a fire beneath a large black kettle. The carcass was suspended by a chain around its hind legs hung over an A-frame Tullock had built for the yearly slaughtering at Honey Ridge. It was a good-size hog and would dress out to about a hundred and twenty pounds of meat, less what the children and Truett and his friends managed to lop off and roast over the open fire. But before any sampling took place, the carcass had to be scalded to remove the bristly hair from the animal’s flesh. Sawyer played out a little slack as his companions guided the hog into the kettle which rode a pyre of burning tree limbs alongside the A-frame. A few minutes in the kettle was all the carcass needed. Truett and the others hauled the animal out of its bath and tied the rope off and began scraping the loosened hairs and blanched hide from the remains. As soon as a patch of meat showed, Sawyer or another man would carve a hunk of pork and toss it to one of the black children underfoot or take a piece for themselves and hold the morsel by knifepoint over the flames lapping at the sides of the kettle. Grease dripped and sizzled into the fire. The aroma of freshly roasted pork set every stomach growling despite the fact it was barely midmorning and dinner was several hours away. The only man not affected was Tullock Roberts, who stood aside from the young men and seemed transfixed by the stains on his hands and knife.

Sawyer Truett noticed Tullock’s distraction and left his friends to saunter over to the preoccupied man.