Ride the Panther (4 page)

Jesse glanced sharply at the major. “Something already has.”

“Yes,” the major concurred as he stepped off the porch and headed for the barn where he’d kept his horse out of sight.

Jesse watched the officer depart. The shadow of a cloud glided soundlessly over the house and garden as Peter Abbot proceeded through the shifting sunlight and at last disappeared inside the barn.

“Don’t be too hard on him, son,” Ben called out.

Drawn by his father’s voice, Jesse returned to the room and his father’s bedside. The curtains ruffled by Ben’s bed and a breeze fanned his cheek. The open door created a refreshing cross-draft.

“It’s not right, you being alone and hurt,” Jesse said.

“I’ve Sam Colt for company,” Ben said, patting the Dragoons beside him on the bed. “And one of my sons, until it’s time for you to hit the trail south.”

“How do you know I’ll go? I might just stay here and look after you,” Jesse said.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need you. And your country does.”

Jesse slumped defeatedly in the chair next to the bed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know. Uh!” He winced as a white-hot jolt of pain flashed across the small of his back.

Jesse looked on, helpless as his father struggled with the pain. Ben refused to allow it to best him. His eyes closed; his countenance grew pale and chalky. The whole spell lasted no more than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like hours. Ben’s color gradually returned, and he sighed and unclenched his fists.

“See. No problem,” he weakly chuckled. “Easy as falling off a log, as Cap would say.”

“Is that Cap Featherstone, of Andrews’ raiders?” Jesse asked. In April of 1862, Abbot had dispatched twenty-one men under the command of James Andrews to travel undercover into Georgia, steal a train and drive it north, tearing up Confederate railroad lines from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Most of the raiders were eventually caught and hanged. A few escaped. Cap Featherstone had been one of the lucky few.

“One and the same,” Ben said. “I knew him during the Mexican War. We trailed together. He’s a man to ride the river with. Just steer him clear of whiskey and women. Both have been his undoing more than a few times.”

“But you trust him?” Jesse asked.

“With my life,” said Ben.

“I
PAID YOU TO
kill Ben McQueen, not hang around town getting into trouble,” said Cap Featherstone to the one-eyed gunman he had just paid Deputy Hiram Hays to set free.

Cap was a robust, burly individual standing just under six feet tall and topping the scales at three hundred pounds. His immense girth was firmly encased in a dark green frock coat and trousers, and a bandanna covered his head where streaks of pink scalp showed through his thinning brown hair. In his early forties, Cap Featherstone sported a thick brown beard shot with silver, and he walked with a cane that had a silver grip molded in the shape of an alligator’s head and long jaws. His right knee had a touch of arthritis but he had grown accustomed to the nagging discomfort. Some days he limped more than others. It depended on his state of aggravation. This evening he was fuming. Even more so because the man beside him in the deserted alley seemed so all-fired amused.

“Relax, Cap. A man’s got a right to celebrate his birthday, eh? Why, I’m thirty-one today,” said Featherstone’s companion.

A dog had mauled Hud Pardee as a child and left him blind in the left eye. He kept the scarred, sightless orb covered with a black patch. His good right eye was as blue as ice. He was perhaps an inch taller than Featherstone, elegantly attired in a blousy black silk shirt and a waist sash and black woolen trousers and Spanish boots. His gray hair was swept back from his forehead in ashen waves to reveal clean-cut youthful features and a winning smile that most women found irresistible.

But whatever warmth and charm he exhibited lasted only long enough to get what he wanted out of the people he met. Cap understood such behavior. He knew where he stood with a man like Pardee. The two were bound by a mutual desire for power and gold. Greed could be as strong as blood and as dangerous as a rattler, but the profits to be made with a man like Pardee were worth the risks.

“Relax, Cap,” Pardee said again. He rested his hands on the walnut grips of the Navy Colts jutting from the sash at his waist. “I didn’t kill anyone. It was just a misunderstanding between me and that little waterfront dove. She wasn’t worth near what she claimed. Paris Kate has taken on some lame excuses for a whore. I don’t take lip from anyone.”

“Beating women is hanging offense to some folks. You’re lucky the deputy had a price. And you’ll by God pay me back,” Cap blustered.

“Sure I will,” Pardee said. “And right now. With some news I think you’ll find interesting.” He reached out and grabbed Cap by the arm, halting the big man in his tracks. Cap glanced up and down the alley. They were standing behind a law office and stage line, well out of sight of the street. An abandoned shed stood behind them, its broken, empty windows as blank as a dead man’s eyes.

“Well?” Cap said.

“While I was at Kate’s, the captain of the
Westward Belle
came to pay a visit and try out one of the new ladies. I heard him tell how a Captain Jesse McQueen got the better of a gambler named Enos Clem and beat him at his own game.” Pardee stroked his chin, then gestured with his finger as if he were standing in the parlor of the whorehouse. “Not ten feet away, there’s a poker game going on with none other than Clem. He slams his cards down, grabs his money, curses the captain, and tells us all that if he ever sees McQueen again there’ll be a reckoning.”

“Ben’s son,” Cap muttered. “Abbot told me the lad was in town. We’re supposed to meet tonight in the stables behind the Excelsior Hotel.”

“You want me to do him? I brought down the curly wolf. His pup ought to be no problem,” Pardee said.

“No! Leave his son alone.”

“Seems kinda late for you to be developing a conscience,” said the marksman.

“Abbot’s no fool. Killing Jesse might throw suspicion on me,” Cap explained. “Anyway, Ben was the dangerous one. He could have pulled the factions together. But his sons ain’t Injun enough.”

“Tell that to the Choctaw Kid,” Pardee said, and unfolded a handbill he had lifted from a stack on the deputy’s desk.

Cap’s eyes widened. He took the wanted poster and tucked it in his pocket. “Leave tonight. There’s nothing more for you here. You’ve celebrated enough. But before you go, I want you to find this Enos Clem…” Cap lowered his voice and led the way into the abandoned shed. The plans he had in mind were best revealed in the dark of shadows and dust. They could not bear the light.

S
INCE HIS FIRST ENCOUNTER
with Captain Jesse McQueen aboard the
Westward Belle,
Enos Clem’s life and fortune had gone to hell in a hand basket. Nothing had turned out right. Lady luck had not only abandoned him, she’d thrown him to the wolves. Unable to win honestly, he’d palmed a couple of face cards in hopes of salvaging a disastrous run of bad fortune at the gaming tables and had been caught with a pair of kings up his coat sleeve. The reaction of the men at the poker game came swift and brutal. He’d tried to elude their grasp, and had lunged from the table and scrambled toward the rear of the Stern Wheeler Saloon only to find his escape route blocked by a crowd of swarthy rivermen anxious to mete out punishment to a card thief. Trickery was something no man could abide.

It was fast approaching eleven o’clock, and this warm summer’s night was about to become even hotter if Clem’s drunken captors had any say in the matter.

More than a dozen of the Stern Wheeler’s patrons had formed a circle around the gambler and carried him out of the saloon and down River Street, past other gambling houses, emporiums, and bordellos, attracting revelers from along the boardwalk, men with too much drink and not enough money and looking for something—anything—to take their minds off the hard work of living.

Marched for three blocks, struggling in vain against his captors, Enos Clem was borne away from the glare of the lantern lights to an empty corral where a bucket of black pitch tar was quickly produced from a lean-to shed. A rum-soaked harlot in a sweat-stained scarlet silk dress fought her way through the throng. She carried a feather pillow overhead for all to see and the men cheered her arrival. Now and then a hand groped for her ample bosom. The woman, Penelope by name, didn’t seem to mind.

“Now wait!” Enos Clem pleaded to the faces surrounding him. Boston seemed a lifetime away. He drew himself up, his innate sense of superiority giving him the strength to defy his tormentors. “See here. I won’t stand for this.”

“O’course you won’t, ya bone-headed fool.” One of the mob’s leaders, a muleskinner named Poke Howard, stepped forward. “You’ll be ridin’ a rail!” Crude laughter sprang up from the rough-looking crowd.

Enos gazed disdainfully across the lot of them, soldiers, freight haulers, trappers, rivermen, and the whores in their warpaint and silks. He hated them all, but none more than the one who soured his luck and brought him to this cruel pass. Enos pictured the dark-haired captain who had faced him down and humiliated him. The faces in the torchlight paled, a mere blur compared to the image in his mind.

The stench of tar filled the air and a few feathers fluttered past like snowflakes in the warm humid night as Enos was lifted up and over a twelve-foot-long oaken rail. Straddling the timber, he continued to lash out at his tormentors, all to no avail. Poke Howard, the harsh-voiced, heavyset muleskinner, caught the gambler’s wrists and another man quickly bound Enos’s hands. The bucket was passed from man to man until it reached Poke, who made a show of churning the tar with a short heavy paddle. Another cheer rose up when he hoisted the bucket and pillowcase above his head for the crowd to see.

A couple of shots rang out and bullets cut the handle loose. The bucket fell and dumped tar on the muleskinner. A third shot split open the pillow and gave Poke a faceful of feathers. The mob turned toward the gunman.

Hud Pardee, astride a blaze-faced bay gelding, led a second horse through the crowd. Poke struggled to clear his vision and cursed his unseen assailant. His fists lashed out at the men around him, striking at friend and foe alike until Hud rode up alongside the muleskinner and rapped him on the skull with the barrel of his Colt revolver. The tar-covered man dropped to the ground. A few men from the throng surged forward angrily. Hud Pardee dropped the reins he held and filled his left hand with a second Colt.

“Keep clear,” he ordered.

“You’re only one man,” a voice from the crowd shouted out.

“True. But I’ll make the ground run red,” Pardee replied. “Now, back off.” Then he began to chuckle. “Or make your play.” He thumbed back the twin hammers of his Colts.

Enos Clem looked up in amazement. He had no idea who his benefactor could possibly be. He had never set eyes on the gray-haired gunman in the blousy black shirt and woolen trousers, his features shaded by a broad, flat-brimmed hat. The eye patch gave the man the look of a pirate, someone not to be trifled with, and if his image did not cool the temper of the hostile crowd, there was something in the gunman’s laugh that transformed the whiskey-bravest heart into a cold and sober coward.

“The hell…” a man muttered, and turned away and headed back toward River Street. He was the first but not the last. The throng began to grudgingly give way. However, the brassy whore named Penelope was not about to be cowed. She lifted her hem clear of the dirt and hurried forward scolding as she came.

“Now see here, you one-eyed good-for-nothing son of a mule, what gives you the right to interfere?” Her red hair had come undone in back, and strands of carrot-colored curls splayed out from behind her ears. Crimson streaks of rouge dipped down her cheeks the angrier and the more animated she became. “I’m not afraid of you. These others may be, but not me. Why if I were a man…”

Pardee’s hand shot out and cracked her across the head with the Colt as he had done to Poke. The woman groaned and fell back on her ample derriere, then slumped onto her side in the dirt. A trickle of blood mingled with the rouge.

“If you were a man you’d be dead,” Pardee told the unconscious whore. The savagery of his blow impressed the remainder of the crowd, who dispersed as quickly as they had gathered, leaving two of their own lying senseless in the dirt.

Pardee returned his guns to his waist sash. He produced a straight razor from his saddlebag and quickly sliced apart the ropes binding the gambler’s wrists.

“I am in your debt, sir,” Enos said, more than a little unnerved by the conduct of his benefactor. He climbed down off the rail. To his surprise, the one-eyed man offered him the reins to the brown mare standing alongside the bay. Enos glanced up, a questioning expression on his face.

“The
Westward Belle
left this afternoon,” Pardee said.

“Well, no matter. I’ll catch on with a wagon train bound for California.”

“Too late in the year for that. Better to wait until next spring than risk an early snow in the mountains.” Pardee dropped the reins, returned the razor to his saddlebag, and, doffing his flat-crowned hat, ran a hand through his ash-gray hair. “Of course, there’s more than one place a smart man like yourself could turn a handsome profit—with the help of a friend.”

“I’m new here. I don’t have any friends,” Enos scowled, gathering up his torn coat and retrieving a string tie from the mud.

“You do now,” Pardee said in a silky voice. “The name is Hud Pardee.” He gestured to the horse. “Mount up.”

Enos Clem considered his options. It didn’t take long. The future in Kansas City looked bleak. He swatted at the insects that began to buzz his sweat-streaked face. And besides, he couldn’t stand the mosquitos. No doubt Pardee was a very dangerous man.
No matter,
Enos thought,
so am I.

The gambler swung up astride the mare. The animal shifted its stance and whinnied, as if sensing its rider’s uneasiness. Enos was hardly a confident horseman.