Ride the Panther (24 page)

Five men on horseback arranged themselves in a semicircle in the front yard. Pacer had watched them ride up, and made every effort to appear unconcerned. He didn’t want to greet his former saddlemates with a rifle in his arms. But the Colt at his side and the D-guard knife riding hilt-forward in a sheath beneath his left arm offered assurance that he could handle his share of any trouble.

Sawyer Truett, the oldest of the lot, sat astride his mount and leaned forward with his forearms crossed on the saddle pommel. Pacer noted Sawyer seemed a little stiff. Chris Foot and Buck Langdon certainly looked worse for wear. Chris had a puffed lip and bruises about the face and neck. Buck was favoring his bandaged right leg. Sam Roberts sat astride his gelding like a warrior prince. He had quarreled with his father earlier in the day and rebuked Tullock for agreeing to attend Jesse McQueen’s conciliatory meeting in Chahta Creek. The Knights of the Golden Circle had agreed to meet this night, and nothing in heaven or earth was going to keep Sam from accompanying his friends. Despite his coughing spasms, he was determined to prove himself to the Knights.

Johnny Teel sat in Sam Tullock’s shadow, a few paces back from the other four men. Johnny, for all his bravado, was a follower. He would fight for the Confederacy because his friends wore Rebel gray. That reason alone had shaped his decision. He was not the sort of man to break from the pack: he lacked the courage to follow his conscience and walk a lone road. Perhaps that was the reason why he had come to hate a man like Pacer Wolf McQueen.

“Good morning, Pacer,” Sawyer said with surprising cordiality. “Appears Raven has kept you busy.”

“The place needs working,” Pacer admitted. “Thought I’d see to it before heading out.”

“I don’t blame you. I’ve come to do a bit of mending myself.” Sawyer said, stroking his goatee. He glanced around at the farmhouse and barn. He could see some of the fall garden. Ironically, Sawyer wore a uniform identical to Pacer’s: the gray blouse and black trousers and black boots of Quantrill’s guerrillas. To Sawyer his garb reflected a cherished ideal. To Pacer they had become merely work clothes. “Pacer,” Sawyer continued. “You and me have always been close. Ever since your grandma took me in. Why, I’ve thought of you as my own flesh-and-blood kin.”

Pacer studied the hard-set faces of his visitors. Each man had been a friend, someone he had played with and hunted alongside. Sawyer spoke the truth. On the McQueen farm, it had always been the three boys—Sawyer, Pacer, and Jesse. A quarrel with one was a quarrel with all three.

“My friends are welcome here,” Pacer said.

“Good. It ain’t right, all of us not being together. We want you to join us,” Sawyer said. “Don’t we?” he added, turning to his companions.

“Come on, Pacer. Saddle up. We’re gathering men for tonight,” Buck Langdon blurted out. “The Choctaw Kid has a place in the Golden Circle.”

“We even got a hood to cover that ugly face of yours,” Chris Foot said with a grin. He held up a saffron-colored hood. The black eyeholes made for a macabre effect in his hands.

Sam Roberts walked his mount forward and handed Pacer a copy of the front page of the
Chahta Creek Courier.
An announcement dominated the page. It called for a gathering of all the Choctaw, both pure-blood and mixed and anyone who made their homes or owned land in this southeast corner of the Indian Territory to come to the Council House in town Sunday evening, three days hence.

“Your brother, Jesse, is trying to start trouble,” Sam said.

Pacer read the announcement Carmichael Ross had so enthusiastically placed in the center top half of the page. “It says here folks of either Union or Confederate persuasion are welcome in a spirit of peace. Sounds like he’s trying to
stop
something to me.” He handed the page back to Sam who crumbled it up and tossed it in the dirt at Pacer’s feet.

“He even got my pa to agree to show up at the Council House. And there’s plenty of others who will follow my pa’s lead.”

“The way we see it,” Sawyer interjected, “the time for talk ended at Fort Sumter. What’s needed here are men of action.”

“Like the Knights of the Golden Circle,” Pacer said.

“Exactly,” Sawyer said. “We’ve revealed ourselves to you, Pacer, as a sign of good faith. We want you to ride with us. I can put aside what happened at Lawrence and offer my hand in friendship. What do you say?”

Pacer looked up at Sawyer’s outstretched hand. Was this a place then for the Choctaw Kid? Among night riders waging a campaign of wanton destruction and terror against the innocent? He could picture Quantrill standing in the farm yard and laughing. Laughing.

“No,” said Pacer. “We disgraced the Confederacy and ourselves at Lawrence. When I join battle again, it will be against soldiers, not defenseless farmers or innocent storekeepers. You wear the hoods not to conceal your identity, but to hide your shame.”

Sawyer’s hand slowly lowered. His dark eyes grew livid. He scowled, and drew himself erect.

“Nobody talks to me like that,” Sam Roberts growled.

“Everybody talks to you like that,” Pacer retorted, on the prod, his bronze eyes flashing fire.

“You got no call to insult me,” Buck Langdon said. Sunlight glittered off a watch chain stretched across the roll of fat padding his midriff. He’d brushed his coat back and freed access to the gun holstered high on his left hip.

“Buck…you gave me call when you joined this bunch.”

“Appears to me you’re running away and hiding just like you did from the Yankees in Lawrence,” Sawyer Truett declared.

“I ran from myself that day and from what I feared to become,” Pacer replied in a quiet voice as if he were having a dialogue with himself instead of confronting five armed men.

“You aren’t with us, then you be agin’ us,” Sawyer told him. “The line’s drawn.”

“So be it,” Pacer said.

“Maybe we ought to settle things here and now,” Chris Foot, the full-blood, suggested. He dropped a hand to his gunbelt. Sam Roberts and Buck Langdon concurred and lowered their hands to their gun butts. Sawyer made no move and that had the others puzzled. They halted in midaction.

“What the hell’s the matter, Sawyer?” Sam asked. “There’s five of us and one McQueen.”

Pacer was poised, ready to react. His attention was centered on the young men who had been the friends of his childhood. He was devoid of emotion now and prepared to take the lives of as many of his attackers as he could before their bullets cut him down.

“Better make that two.” The voice came from off to Pacer’s right. He recognized his brother without bothering to turn and see for himself.

Sawyer and the others were taken completely by surprise as Jesse appeared on the porch, his gun drawn and leveled at the Knights. Sawyer gave Pacer a look of betrayal and bitter accusation.

“How’s the leg, Buck?” Jesse asked.

“The knee’s been swollen since you…” Buck realized he should not have been answering. He’d been tricked into confessing his part in the attack on Jesse. “…and it hurts like the devil,” he finished.

“Good,” said Jesse.

“It looks like it’s your call,” Pacer said to Sawyer.

Tullock Roberts’s overseer shook his head. “Another day,” Sawyer said. “My time will come.”

“Pray it doesn’t, old friend,” said Pacer. He heard footsteps behind him and saw Sawyer touch the brim of his hat. He sensed his grandmother’s presence. Then Raven was past him and moving through the line of fire, placing herself in danger and wholly unconcerned with the standoff. Tension permeated the air. Like smoke from a brushfire, it made breathing difficult and left the mouth dry.

Raven walked right up to Sawyer and handed him a basket of sweet corn. “Take this to Arbitha for me, she’s partial to the sweet corn we grow here.” She fumbled with the basket and almost dropped it. Sawyer managed to catch the gift with both hands and eventually tucked it under his left arm. Raven looked around at the other men. “Why, Johnny Teel, how’s your sister?”

“Ma’am?” the young man squirmed in the saddle. “Didn’t know she’s been ailing.”

“She took a fall off a ladder at your father’s store and hit her head against the counter. It bruised her pretty bad and gave her dizzy spells. I left Albert a poultice to ease the swelling.”

“Mighty nice of you, Missus McQueen.”

“There’s chicken and biscuits if you boys have finished your visit,” Raven continued.

“Thank you, Raven, but we aren’t hungry,” Sawyer spoke up, attempting to humor what seemed to be an oblivious old woman.

“Oh, very well,” Raven said, and started toward the house. She turned and smiled beatifically. “Pacer…Jesse…we’ll finish these boys, then eat. We can bury them after dinner.” She lifted a Navy Colt and aimed the weapon at Sawyer, who recognized his own gun. Still holding the basket, he glanced down at his empty holster and realized the sweet corn had been a ruse to occupy the man while Raven disarmed him.

“Damn!” he muttered, and threw the basket to the ground, scattering the ears of freshly picked corn as he glowered at the medicine woman who had outsmarted him. The other Knights found the odds had grown increasingly unacceptable. Sam Roberts touched the brim of his hat and backed his horse out of the yard. Christ Foot and Johnny Teel bid farewell to Pacer and their regards to Raven and followed Tullock’s son out of the yard. Buck Langdon hesitated. The idea of biscuits and chicken was pretty enticing.

“You’re welcome to dinner,” Raven said, training the Navy Colt on the chunky young night rider. She cocked the gun. “But you may find the dessert rather difficult to swallow.”

“Yeah. I reckon so,” Buck said. He looked at Sawyer and then swung his horse around and beat a hasty retreat. Sawyer Truett made a point of being the last to leave. He glanced around at the barnyard and house with its deep porch, the signal-fire hill rising above the homestead, the sun-dappled creek bordered by the heavily wooded hills of the Kiamichis. Kit McQueen had taken Pacer, Jesse, and Sawyer into the mountains and taught them the lore of the woods and the power of silence. Sawyer lowered his gaze to Pacer and Raven. The medicine woman approached Sawyer and returned the gun to its rightful owner. The horseman felt a twinge of remorse, then wrapped his conscience in his own righteous anger.

“You shouldn’t have shamed me, Grandmother Raven,” he said.

“It is better to lose face than your life,” she replied.

“Bold talk won’t stop the Knights of the Golden Circle. Ours is a noble cause you once subscribed to, Pacer McQueen, before you cut out on your friends.” He turned his smoldering gaze on the youngest of the McQueens. “We’re all after you now, Pacer. Confederates and Federals alike. You and me were like brothers once. But a bullet has no kin.” Sawyer hauled back on the reins and reared his mount, forcing Pacer to leap out of reach of the horse’s flashing hooves as the last of the Knights of the Golden Circle galloped down the winding road that followed the undulations of Buffalo Creek toward the mouth of the valley.

Pacer looked at his brother and grandmother and beyond them caught a glimpse of Lorelei, brandishing a pair of pistols and standing, partly concealed, in the shadow of the doorway. Then he returned his attention to the medicine woman who had single-handedly defused the situation.

“Grandmother?” he began, exasperated. She might have been killed. Raven cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“You boys wash up. Jesse, it’s about time you quit your bed and pitched in to help around here.” She marched out of the barnyard and headed for the house. “Pacer, you take care to bring in the corn Sawyer dropped. Arbitha’s loss shall be our gain.”

Pacer nodded and started to obey Raven’s instructions. But there was his older brother standing before him, battered but willing to back the Choctaw Kid’s play.

“Why’d you come out here, Jesse?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Jesse said.

“Maybe you figure to save me for some Federal hangman.”

“Go to the devil!”

“I’m on my way,” Pacer replied, and touched the brim of his gray felt hat.

“It’s just like you,” Jesse growled, “to turn everyone against you.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Pacer answered.

“You’re like the man who trapped a panther,” Jesse said. “One day he decided to ride it.”

“Yeah? What happened?” Pacer asked, braced for the story’s moral, resentful, yet naturally curious.

Jesse didn’t keep his brother waiting. “He found out the man who chooses to ride the panther can never dismount.”

T
HE MEDICINE WAGON WAS
doing a brisk business. The spacious gambling hall was crowded with townspeople eager to forget, at least for a while, these dark and troubled times. A wagon train of settlers fleeing the war had arrived, bound for Denver. Several of the settlers were enjoying one final night of celebration before pressing on to Colorado Territory. China and the other girls were doing a brisk trade; the staircase was crowded with an assortment of anxious patrons who climbed the mahogany steps that led to the sporting parlors upstairs. The faro table dominated the center of the gambling hall. Enos Clem was handling the crowd around the table and bringing in a fair share of the winnings for the house. Mean-tempered Shug Jones, behind the bar, kept the glasses filled while Hud Pardee and his protégé, young Dobie Johnson, watched over the throng like shepherds guarding their flock. At the first sign of trouble—surly behavior from a drunk, threatened violence between two gamblers, or a quarrel over a girl’s favors—and Hud Pardee was there. The gunman’s reputation and his menacing presence had a decidedly calming effect. Dobie was always standing off to the side, backing the gunman and adding an extra element to Pardee’s considerable threat.

Cap Featherstone was making money tonight and he should have been delighted. But the news Hud Pardee had brought from the gathering of the Knights had left Cap in a dour mood. Only a half hour ago Pardee had returned from the gathering of the Knights with news that Tullock Roberts had agreed to attend the meeting Jesse had called for Sunday evening. Worse still, when several of the older heads among the Knights heard of Tullock’s willingness to attend the council, they had quickly voiced their own desire to follow the plantation owner’s lead. Only the younger bucks demanded more raids, urged on by Pardee but unsupported by the landowners who were loath to continue the raids without first talking things over with Tullock. Most of the Knights knew one another beneath their robes, while Pardee had purposefully kept his identity a secret. He was not one of their own. Over the course of several weeks, Pardee’s authority had begun to slip in the face of Tullock’s popularity. The Knights respected Pardee’s wish to keep his identity concealed. But the price of secrecy was a shift in allegiance from Pardee to Roberts.