Читать книгу Snake River Slaughter - William W. Johnstone - Страница 8

When Poke Terrell rode into King Hill a train was sitting at the depot. The engine, painted green and trimmed in red, was glistening in the golden light of the setting sun. The engineer was leaning through the window of the cab and holding a long-stemmed pipe clinched tightly between his teeth. He watched from his lordly position as arriving passengers left the train and departing passengers boarded.

The restaurant Poke was looking for was next door to the depot, an adobe building that had recently been given a fresh coat of whitewash. There was a sign hanging in front of the restaurant that identified it as Delmonico’s and a hitching rail that ran all the way across the front of the building. Poke dismounted, tied his horse to the rail, then climbed the two wooden steps to the porch.

Poke was a relatively short man, but he was powerfully built, with a barrel chest, and muscular arms. His head was bald and round, and because one could almost imagine that Poke had no neck, it looked rather like a cannon ball resting on his shoulders.

He was greeted by an employee of the restaurant as soon as he stepped inside.

“May I help you sir?”

“I’m supposed to meet someone here, only I ain’t never met him so I’m not…”

“Would you be Mr. Terrell?” the restaurant employee asked.

“Yeah.”

“Your party is back here.”

When the waiter took Poke back to the table in the corner of the restaurant, Marcus Kincaid stood to greet him. There could not have been a more dramatic contrast in the appearance of the two men. Terrell was wearing denim trousers and a white stained shirt. Kincaid was wearing a brown tweed suit. Poke was the rough-hewn log on the fireplace hearth; Kincaid was the cut flower in a vase.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Kincaid said, as the two men sat down.

“Do you have the money?” Poke asked.

“Yes, I have the money. Half now, as we agreed,” Kincaid said, taking an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handing it to Poke.

Poke took the money from the envelope and began counting.

“Don’t count it here!” Kincaid snapped.

Poke looked up with a frown on his face, as he continued to count the money.

“All right, it’s all here, seven hundred fifty dollars,” Poke said as he finished counting. He put the money back into the envelope, then put the envelope into his pocket. “What do you want me to do?”

“Have you heard of a ranch called Coventry on the Snake?” Kincaid asked. “It’s near Medbury.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Owned by a foreigner,” Poke said.

“It was owned by an Englishman named Thomas Wellington. Now it’s owned by an American woman. When Wellington died, it became the property of his widow. She has invested heavily into the operation and is badly in debt. She needs, desperately, to sell some horses, and she has to do it soon, or she will lose the ranch.”

“And you want me to help her sell the horses? I don’t know what you thought I could do for her. I’m not a salesman.”

Kincaid shook his head vehemently. “No, no, it’s just the opposite. I don’t want you to help her save the ranch. I want you to make sure she loses the ranch.”

Poke laughed. “I’m glad to hear that. I think that might be easier to do. Do you have an idea as to how I need to do it?”

Kincaid shook his head. “No, use your own initiative. I don’t care how you do it, as long as you do it.”

“You don’t care how I do it?”

“Well, I don’t want you to burn any of the buildings, or anything like that,” Kincaid said. “I don’t want the ranch destroyed. All I want is for it to fail.”

Poke chuckled. “That’s all you want, huh?”

“That’s all I want. Do you think you can handle that without too much difficulty?”

“Yeah,” Poke said. “As long as you stay out of my way and let me handle things.”

Kincaid held up both his hands. “Trust me on this, Mr. Terrell, you shall have free reign. In fact, I would be very pleased if we never even saw each other again.”

“Except for the final payment,” Poke said.

“Yes, except for the final payment,” Kincaid agreed.

When Poke Terrell stepped inside the Sand Spur Saloon in Medbury for the first time, he looked around the room until he saw the table that he wanted. It was slightly more than halfway back in the room and sitting close, but not uncomfortably close, to the stove. It was also situated so as to give him a good view, both of the front door and the side door, and this was important to him. A person in Poke’s business, and with his reputation, made enough enemies that it was always a good idea to know who was coming and going.

There was a cowboy sitting at the table, and he was joking with one of the bar girls. Poke walked up to the table, then stood there, staring at the cowboy. The cowboy glanced up at him briefly, then turned his attention back to the young woman.

Poke didn’t move, and his presence was obviously making the young woman nervous. She had been laughing and teasing with the cowboy, but now she couldn’t take her attention away from this brooding man who stood inches away from the two of them.

“Can I help you, Mister?” the cowboy finally asked.

“You have my table,” Poke said.

“What are you talking about, your table? I ain’t never even seen you before.”

“I’ve just arrived,” Poke said. “I want this table.”

“What if I don’t want to move?”

“Prew, come on, let’s go to another table,” the young woman said.

“I’m not goin’ to let some son of a bitch just come in and order me away from this table,” Prew said.

“Prew, please,” the young woman said. “If you want me to talk to you, you’ll change tables.”

Prew stared at Poke for a moment longer, then he got up. He pointed at Poke. “All right, I’m movin’,” he said. “But it ain’t none of your doin’. I’m movin’ ’cause of Jenny.”

Poke didn’t answer, but as soon as Prew left, Poke sat down, then took out a deck of cards and dealt himself a game of solitaire.

“Mister, you want anything to drink?” one of the other girls asked.

“Beer,” Poke said, as he began playing.

Poke stayed at the saloon until it closed that night, drinking beer and playing solitaire. Except for his initial confrontation with the cowboy, and occasionally ordering a beer, Poke spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. When he left, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and offered up a quick prayer that the strange, brooding, and frightening man not return.

To the chagrin of everyone, Poke returned the next day. This time the man who was sitting at his table got up and moved without being asked. By the third day, Poke had clearly established a proprietary right to the table, and nobody sat at it, even when Poke wasn’t present.

On the third day Marshal Sparks came to see him.

“I’ve done some checking up on you, Terrell,” Marshal Sparks said. “That’s who you are, isn’t it? Poke Terrell?”

“That’s me,” Poke replied. He continued to play solitaire all the time the marshal was talking to him.

“What I want to know is, what is a member of the Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse doing in Medbury?”

“I ain’t a member no more,” Poke replied.

Marshal Sparks nodded. “Yes, that’s what I found out. At least you are honest about it.”

“Marshal, I have not violated any of your laws since I arrived, and I’m not wanted. So what do you want?”

“Nothing, I’m just curious as to why you are here, that’s all.”

“I think you have a nice little town here,” Poke said. “I just thought I’d visit here for a while. Like I said, I have not broke none of your laws, and I am not wanted.”

“I hope things stay like that,” Marshal Sparks said.

For the first few days, Poke Terrell was the talk of the town.

“He used to be a member of the Peace Officers’ Posse. Did you know that? Leastwise, that’s what the marshal says.”

“Yeah, but the marshal also says he ain’t a member no more.”

“You know why he ain’t a member no more? Because he was too violent, that’s why. I mean, can you imagine someone who is too violent for the Peace Officers’ Posse? The Posse makes Quantrill’s Bushwhackers seem like Sunday School boys.”

By the end of two weeks, though, Poke was no longer the center of conversation or even attention. Because he sat at “his” table playing solitaire he became as ubiquitous as the heating stove. He wasn’t always alone, though. Gradually Poke began to make a few friends, or at least acquaintances. Sam Logan was the first to come sit at the table with him. Al Madison and Ken Jernigan came as well, and sometimes all three would come.

The telegraph office was located in one end of the railroad depot, so located because Union Pacific Railroad provided the Western Union office in Medbury with at least ninety percent of its business.

When Poke stepped up to the telegraph window, he could hear the instrument clacking, and he saw the telegrapher writing on a tablet. A sign on the telegrapher’s desk identified him as William S. Tate and, though Poke had no way of knowing, Tate was recording all the latest changes in train departures and arrivals. This was absolutely necessary in order to schedule the use of the track to avoid wrecks.

Poke waited until the clacking stopped, then saw Tate send a message. Finally Tate turned to him.

“I need to send a message.”

Tate gave the man a tablet and pencil, and Poke wrote the message, then handed it back.

Found three men to work for me. Will pay from profits.

“Where does this message go?” Tate asked.

“To Colonel Clay Sherman, Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse in Boise,” Poke said.

“That will be one dollar and twenty cents,” Tate said.

“Damn, that’s kind of high, ain’t it? Only cost three cents to send it by mail.”

“A letter will get to Boise sometime tomorrow. This will get there in thirty seconds,” Tate said.

Grumbling, Poke paid for the telegram, then went back to his table at the Sand Spur.

That night when Poke’s three new friends were at the table with him, speaking animatedly but too quietly for anyone to hear what they were saying, Prew was standing at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and looking toward the table. Jenny, one of the young women who worked the bar, was with him.

“Logan, Madison, and Jernigan,” Prew said contemptuously. “Those are three of the biggest polecats in the entire county. There can’t any of them hold a job anywhere. It stands to reason they would become friends with someone like Poke Terrell.”

“You’re just mad because Terrell ran you away from the table the first night he was here,” Jenny said.

“He didn’t run me away,” Prew insisted. “You did. I would have fought him for it.”

“I know you would have,” Jenny said. She smiled at him. “But I didn’t want to see you get your face bruised.” She put her hand up to his face and rubbed her fingers, lightly, across his cheek. “It’s such a handsome face.”

Prew, who’s real name was Jason Prewitt, was a ranch hand at Coventry on the Snake, a huge, 20,000-acre horse ranch that belonged to Kitty Wellington. The ranch was approximately five miles south of Medbury, and it was nearly midnight by the time Prew arrived back at the ranch. Most of the others ranch hands were already asleep when he sat down on his bunk to pull off his boots, and the cacophony of their snores filled the room.

When he first came to work at the ranch, the snoring sometimes kept him awake. Now it was just a part of the background, a part of his life on the range.

“Prew?” Tyrone called, quietly from his private room at the end of the bunk house. Tyrone Canfield was the ranch foreman.

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to make sure it was you. Better get to sleep as early as you can. The field where the Arabians are being kept is getting grazed out and first thing tomorrow we are going to move them to fresh grass.”

“How’m I goin’ to get to sleep with you yapping at me?” Prew teased.

By any means of measurement, Kitty Wellington was a beautiful woman. Tall and statuesque, she had blond hair and blue eyes, naturally long lashes, high cheekbones and full lips. She was a widow, still young, because when she married, she had been thirty years younger than her husband.

After her husband died, Kitty inherited the ranch, a parcel of land that was bordered on the north by the Snake River and Castle Creek, on the east by the Bruneau, and on the west and south by a network of interconnecting creeks; the Blue, the Bottle, and the Mill. It was this ready availability of water as well as a plentiful supply of good grass that made Coventry on the Snake so valuable.

It was not by mere coincidence that the name of the ranch, Coventry on the Snake, had an Old World flavor. Kitty’s husband, Sir Thomas Denbigh Wellington, the Seventh Earl of Buckinghamshire, had named it after his ancestral home, Coventry on the Wye, in Buckinghamshire, England.

But Kitty was not just a beautiful woman who happened to inherit a lot of land. She had turned Coventry on the Snake into one of the finest horse ranches in the country, and she had done it all since the death of her husband.

This morning Kitty was sitting in her study working on the books when someone knocked lightly on the door frame. The door to her study being open, when Kitty turned in her chair, she saw Tyrone Canfield standing there, holding his hat in his hand.

“Yes, Tyrone,” Kitty said, greeting her foreman with a smile. “Did you want to see me?”

Tyrone rolled his hat in his hand and cleared his throat, obviously not wanting to say what he had to say. The expression of concern on Tyrone’s face caused Kitty to give up her smile.

“What is it, Tyrone?” she asked. “What is wrong?”

“I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Wellington, but we’re missin’ seventy-five head of Arabians,” he said.

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m positive. We’ve been keepin’ a real good count of the Arabians, especially since they are the ones you are sellin’ to the army. Last count we had eight hundred and eighty-five. This mornin’ we only had eight hundred and ten. And we counted them twice, just to make sure.”

“This is a big ranch, with a lot of range land,” Kitty said. “Maybe they just got out of the field where we were holding them.”

“No, ma’am, we’ve looked all over the range,” Tyrone said. “The horses are gone.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes, ma’am. There’s no doubt in my mind, but that they were stolen.”

“Seventy five horses?” Kitty sighed, and leaned back in her chair. “Oh, Tyrone, that seven thousand five hundred dollars,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, I know it is. Mrs. Wellington, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to put out night riders to keep watch from now on.”

“No, I don’t mind at all. I think that’s a very good idea,” Kitty replied.