Saddler's Run Read online

  Stock had fallen from his horse and was lying stunned on the ground. His horse had skittered off, spooked by the gunfire and was standing off about forty feet from her owner. A dark stain was spreading across Stock’s shirt, just beneath the ribs, and he was panting for breath. Saddler squatted down to see if there was anything he could do for the man he had shot.

  ‘You shouldn’t o’ jumped me, Stock,’ he said. ‘You know it wasn’t the smart move.’

  ‘We was desperate,’ said the other. ‘We hadn’t ate for nearly two days. Had to do somethin’.’

  ‘Something, yes, but not robbing me. You might o’ knowed it would turn out like this.’

  The wounded man closed his eyes and his breathing became more rapid and shallow. Then he opened his eyes again and, looking over Saddler’s shoulder, said, ‘Hey, little lady.’

  Saddler looked round and found that Abigail had left the wagon and was standing behind him, gazing down at the dying man.

  ‘Get along back to the wagon,’ he told her roughly. ‘This ain’t a sight for little girls!’

  ‘Let her be, Saddler,’ said Stock faintly. ‘She looks a nice little thing.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you have been shot,’ said the child in her high, clear voice. ‘But from what I saw, your friend brought it on. He went for his gun.’

  Stock coughed and a little blood escaped from his mouth. ‘Joe always was hasty,’ he said. ‘It’s how we lost our money. But that don’t seem to matter overmuch now.’ He closed his eyes again and didn’t reopen them. As Saddler and Abigail watched, his breathing stopped and he died.

  ‘Next time I tell you to do something, you do it,’ said Saddler. He stood up and looked at Abigail, who in turn was looking down at Stock. ‘You hear what I tell you, child?’

  ‘He doesn’t look like a bad man,’ observed Abigail.

  ‘That’s a lot of nonsense,’ said Saddler brusquely. ‘You can’t tell by looking at a man’s face whether he’s good or bad or will play you false. It’s what he does that makes him what he is, not having a nice smile, or white, even teeth.’

  ‘Was he bad?’ asked Abigail.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. He was desperate and that can drive men into evil ways. I rode with him once and he played fair with me. I’m sorry I shot him, but there it is.’

  Chapter 3

  Saddler flat refused to bury the man he had killed, on the grounds that the sooner they were moving the sooner they would reach Kansas and be able to find Abigail’s grandfather. He consented to the child saying a prayer over Stock’s corpse, but refused to join in, even to the extent of merely saying ‘Amen’ at the end of the prayer.

  Once they were on the move again, Saddler said, ‘I don’t rightly know how we’re going to manage this. I have only a quarter or so in cash money and no chance of gettin’ more for now.’

  To Saddler’s surprise, Abigail said, ‘I have some money, if it would help.’

  ‘The hell you do! How much?’

  ‘My father gave my mother two gold coins to sew into my bodice.’

  ‘You kept that quiet.’

  ‘My father said that they were for emergencies.’

  ‘Well,’ said Saddler, ‘I don’t know what you’d call this, other than an emergency. We are apt to go hungry and thirsty without money.’

  Abigail didn’t speak for a minute or so and then said, ‘I mind you are right. If you let me have a knife, I will unpick the threads and remove the coins.’

  Reaching behind him, Saddler pulled out the knife which he kept in a sheath at the back of his belt. He handed it to Abigail, who said, ‘I must get in back of the wagon and take off my dress. Don’t look.’

  He kept the wagon moving along at a steady pace, while the girl clambered from her seat and got into the back of the cart.

  It was a funny thing about Abraham Stock. Saddler had known him vaguely for a couple of years and then last year he had ridden with Stock and a few others in a raid on a stage. That had gone off as smooth as you like, with nobody killed and not a single shot fired. Stock had struck him as an amiable enough fellow, if not overly endowed with brains, and Saddler regretted that he had ended up killing the man. Still and all, once people began trying to rob him, it stood to reason that things would get ugly. He had not gone looking for trouble today and so Stock’s blood was upon his own head; leastways, that was how Saddler saw the case.

  Abigail scrambled back into the seat next to him and shyly offered Saddler the two coins which she had unpicked from her clothing. He examined them curiously.

  ‘These are Baldwin horseman ten dollar pieces,’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘They made ’em in California ’fore the war.’

  ‘Would you like to look after them?’ asked the girl.

  ‘I’ll take care of them, Abigail,’ he told her. ‘I think these should keep us goin’ for a bit. I might even be able to get rid of those crates back there, with luck, which means that we wouldn’t need to break into these. We’ll see.’

  None of the roads passing through the Indian territories were in a particularly good state of repair and the one along which they were currently travelling was no exception. It was perhaps being overly generous to dignify any of the tracks which ran through the district with the name ‘road’, they being more in the nature of what would be termed dirt tracks anywhere else.

  This track led north, in the general direction of Kansas. Even under ideal circumstances and with no delays, it might take a week to reach the border and the Lord knew how much longer after that to track down Abigail’s family. Still, Ben Saddler was a man who, once having taken on a task, would stick at it to the bitter end.

  ‘What will we do about food this evening?’ asked the girl.

  ‘There’s a place some miles north of here, as would fit the bill there,’ said Saddler. ‘It’s an outpost of the Indian Bureau and some other buildings. There’s a store and suchlike. Happen we’ll be able to get vittles there. Jackrabbit’s all well and good, but we don’t want to be eating nothing but for a week.’

  ‘Do you think there will be a bed there for us?’

  Saddler gave the child an amused look. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t say. Like as not there’ll be nothing o’ the kind.’

  They travelled for a space in silence and then Abigail said, ‘Where do you live? Don’t you have some home of your own?’

  ‘Not since I left the army I haven’t. I’ve lived hither and thither, but not more than two or three months in one spot.’

  ‘Don’t you feel you’d like to have a house of your own?’ asked Abigail, a little wistfully. ‘It must be awful nice.’

  ‘From what you say,’ replied Saddler, ‘you been livin’ the same way, meaning that you moved here and there.’

  It seemed to Saddler that he and Abigail were getting on quite sociably and that she was losing somewhat of her aloofness with him. The afternoon wore on to early evening before they reached the little hamlet that clustered around the office of the Indian Bureau.

  In theory, at least, the Indian territories were like an independent nation, or more precisely a confederation of five nations, a quite different category from the reservations. In reality though, Washington was determined to keep a watch on the area and so the federal government made sure that they had their agents scattered here and there so that they could keep a finger on the pulse, as it were.

  The place where Saddler was heading was on the western fringes of the Chickasaw Nation. The territories were divided up into what were nominally the nations of the five civilized tribes; Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. The Chickasaw nation was on the edge of the Indian Territory, right next to the stretch of country whose citizens hoped one day to achieve statehood as Oklahoma.

  Saddler and his young companion reached the crest of the high ground overlooking the Chickasaw office of the Indian Bureau and he at once received a shock. There were the rambling wood and stone buildings of the Indian Bureau and the other, smaller buildings that had
grown up alongside it, as though sheltering in its lee. But when last he had passed this way there had not been an encampment of US cavalry, with rows of tents pitched right by the little hamlet. Saddler pulled up and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Abigail. ‘Why have you stopped?’

  ‘This ain’t good, child. Not good at all.’

  ‘Why? Those soldiers won’t trouble us, will they?’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Saddler, slowly. ‘But I aimed just to pass through here an’ pick up one or two things without drawin’ overmuch attention to us.’

  ‘Does that mean we are not going down there?’

  ‘Hush now,’ he said, ‘and let me think.’

  Saddler counted the tents and did a rough calculation. By his reckoning there was maybe half a company of soldiers camped out next to the bureau offices: say fifty men or so. They weren’t after him, that was for sure. It was most likely some raid by a party of Indians that they had been called in to deal with. The more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that this might not be so bad after all. He might even be able to unload that whiskey in back of his wagon.

  Then it came to him that he could maybe get shot of the wagon too. It was a broken-down old rattletrap anyway and like to fall to pieces by itself if he forced it too hard along some of the tracks in these parts. He could see if anybody would trade it for a little pony that Abigail could ride. It would not be hard to sell such a beast once they hit Kansas and he couldn’t see that he would lose on the deal.

  Saddler turned to Abigail and asked, ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Yes, I had my own pony for a spell.’

  ‘I have it in mind to get rid of this cart, so we can both ride. We’d make faster time so.’

  ‘What about all those boxes in the back?’

  ‘I aim to dispose of ’em. Let’s go down and see what’s brewin’. Listen up, though. I don’t want you drawin’ no attention to yourself or anything. Is that clear?’

  ‘I’m not given to showing off and suchlike,’ said Abigail, a little affronted.

  ‘I only meant that we’re to be inconspicuous and blend in. You get me?’

  Ranged along the dusty track which passed for the main street of the area, were a blacksmith’s and livery stable, a couple of stores, a poky eating house and a chapel. The proprietors of these enterprises lived over the premises and their customers were passing travellers, rather than folk actually living in the neighbourhood. Dominating the ‘street’ was the impressive bulk of the Indian Bureau. It was built partly of stone and had a more solid and substantial look about it than the other buildings.

  As they drove along, Saddler explained to Abigail how things stood.

  ‘The Chickasaw sided with us in the late war,’ he told her. ‘That’s to say, they joined with the Confederacy. Which irked the Unionists, and after the war ended they took a heap of the Chickasaws’ land to punish ’em. So the Indians hereabouts ain’t none too fond of Uncle Sam, to put it mildly.’

  ‘Did you fight in the war?’

  ‘From beginning to end,’ he said proudly. ‘Joined up the day we shelled those rascals out o’ Fort Sumner an’ I was with Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox.’

  ‘My family were abolitionists. I suppose you owned slaves?’

  ‘Me? No, we were dirt-poor. I never owned a slave in my life. You think I look like some rich plantation owner?’

  They parked up the wagon and Saddler unhitched his horse and took her over to the livery stable. Abigail stood watching for a while, but didn’t stay to listen to the conversation that Saddler had with the owner of that place. By the time they had finished talking and the conversation had ended with the two men shaking hands, she had wandered off.

  Not wishing to spend one of Abigail’s gold pieces, Saddler had agreed to pay in whiskey for what he wanted, which suited the owner right well. The territories were technically ‘dry’ and although it was possible to buy liquor, there was a high premium on it. This was, of course, why Saddler had thought it worthwhile bringing crates of whiskey into the district. The owner of the livery stable had an interest in the eating house too, and was keen to do business with Saddler over the whiskey. With a heap of cavalrymen camped near by, there was a stiff demand for intoxicating liquor.

  After they had shaken on the deal Saddler turned, only to find that Abigail was no longer at his side. He heard raised voices across the street and when he looked, found to his dismay that the girl was at the centre of some kind of dispute. Cursing silently, he went over to see what was happening.

  While Saddler was dickering with the man from the livery stable, Abigail walked over to where a young Indian boy, about the same age as her, was selling snacks to the soldiers. He had a leather bag slung over his shoulder, which contained little parcels of cold, spicy meat wrapped in cornpone. As she watched, Abigail saw to her disgust that one of the soldiers snatched the bag from the boy and was evidently intent on making off with his stock of food without paying a cent.

  The Indian boy was almost in tears, and quite unable to tackle the man who had taken his wares from him, and who towered above him like a giant. A group of a dozen or so soldiers were laughing and jeering at the boy’s fruitless attempts to regain his bag. She went up to the man and said loudly,

  ‘You are a coward. You would not dare do that to a grown man.’

  The spectators to the scene stopped laughing and watched to see what would happen next. The man who had taken the bag from the Indian said, ‘You run along, little britches and tend to your own affairs.’

  ‘This is my affair,’ said Abigail hotly, ‘You are a thief and a bully. You think I will turn my eyes from that? I will not. Give that bag back to its owner at once.’

  The Indian had stopped grabbing at his bag and was looking in amazement at the little girl who stood there reproving a grown man in this way. The other men who had been egging on their comrade had also fallen silent.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked the girl. ‘Give him back his property.’

  The hulking bully who had snatched away the boy’s bag made as if to strike at Abigail. The blow was not given in earnest and was most likely only a feint, intended to make her jump back, but if so, his hand did not have the opportunity to make contact with the child. As he made as though to deliver a backhanded cuff to this irritating little girl, the soldier’s arm was seized from behind in a vicelike grip. A bony hand, backed by tough sinews and an indomitable will, grasped his arm painfully, just above the elbow. At the same moment, a man behind him said,

  ‘You mind what you’re about there. I wouldn’t lay a finger on that child, were I you.’

  The man holding the Indian’s bag tried to jerk his arm free, but it might as well have been caught in a gin-trap. Saddler said to the girl, ‘What’s to do?’

  ‘That man stole the bag of food from the Indian boy. He was hawking snacks round and that man just took his bag from him.’

  The cavalrymen who had been amused to see a little girl berating their brother in arms were considerably less tolerant of a grown man catching hold of one of them. There were murmurs of discontent, which Saddler took to be indicative of the first stirrings of trouble. He asked the man whose arm he was still holding,

  ‘Is that true, what she says? Did you take that there bag from the boy?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ asked the man angrily. ‘You best let ago of my arm there.’

  Saddler released the fellow’s arm and stepped back at once.

  ‘It’s this to me,’ he said. ‘I can’t abide bullies. If you took that from the boy, you can just hand it back and then if’n you feel like doin’ some bullying, try your luck on me. If you ain’t afeared to get crosswise to a grown man, that is.’

  The man in front of him tossed the bag to the ground, whereupon the boy eagerly snatched it up and hugged it to his chest. He didn’t leave though, but stood and waited to see how matters would develop. The fistfight that everybody expected,
never had a chance to begin, because just then their officer, a fresh-faced young captain, came striding towards the group and demanded to know what the Sam Hill was going on.

  None of the soldiers seemed keen to explain the matter and Saddler was content to let things rest. It was Abigail who piped up,

  ‘One of your men stole something from that boy and my friend here made him give it back.’

  The young captain turned to Saddler and asked, ‘That right?’

  ‘Pretty well. Looked like looting to me, which is to say stealing from the civilian population. We shot men for that during the war.’

  ‘I don’t need instruction in military law,’ said the officer curtly. ‘You men fall in and follow me now.’

  When once the soldiers had left, Saddler turned to Abigail and said, ‘Didn’t you hear when I told you we wanted to be inconspicuous here? Why’d you go roamin’ off like that?’

  ‘I don’t like bullies. That food was like as not all this boy has and he needs to make money by selling it. It was wicked to try and steal it.’

  The Indian boy was still standing there, staring at them, so Saddler said, ‘Alright son, you can run along now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the boy. ‘Thank you.’ He smiled at Abigail and then left them. Saddler was gazing thoughtfully after him. He said,

  ‘Something’s not right here. That boy ain’t a Chickasaw. He’s Chiricahua. What’s he doin’ in this here town?’

  ‘How do you know he’s a chiri— what you said?’ asked Abigail.

  ‘His people mark their sons as babies, make little scars on their cheeks. I wonder the Chickasaw put up with a Chiricahua Apache working in this place. Unless . . .’