The Chuckwagon Trail Page 5

  When he realized the water rose above his ankles, he turned toward the nearest riverboat. Work crews finished loading mountains of crates and bales on the deck. From the way the ship rode low in the water, he knew it carried a full cargo. He inched his way closer and stared up at the texas deck. The dark kept him from seeing if anyone prowled along. He couldn’t even be sure if this was a passenger boat, although almost all the steamboats carried passengers. Some were set up for fancy trips with high-class passengers. Others crowded them on shoulder to shoulder.

  He stood a better chance of escaping if this one—the St. Louis Maiden was emblazoned on the prow—carried hundreds of passengers. He would never be noticed. If the boat catered to passengers willing to pay premium ticket prices, he’d stand out like a sore thumb.

  Sloshing under the dock, he took a quick look around and didn’t see any police. He stripped off his filthy clothing and donned the barely cleaner everyday clothing he had taken from his saddlebags, taking special care to move the box of .44 cartridges from the now-discarded dress coat to one of the pockets in his riding coat. Although he had no intention of shooting it out with the New Orleans police, he wanted to be ready.

  “There might be a shot at Pierre Leclerc,” he said to himself. The soft waves breaking against the pilings muffled his words.

  He looked up as heavy boots tramped along the dock just over his head. Turning, he followed them to the end of the landing where the stern-wheeler started chuffing and snorting huge puffs of black smoke from its twin stacks. The St. Louis Maiden was preparing to leave, on its way somewhere else.

  That destination was fine with Mac. He slipped around and clambered up the rough piling and saw the crew throwing off mooring ropes. The pilot used the steam whistle almost constantly to warn that the riverboat was entering the current in the mighty Mississippi and for all others to give him clear berth.

  Without hurrying, Mac walked to the end of the dock. The dockhands had already moved on to other jobs while the crew aboard the boat worked to coil the hawsers that had held it securely to the dock. He judged the distance and realized he was seconds too late to jump aboard. Cursing under his breath, he turned to find the end of the pier blocked by four policemen.

  One of them spotted him and warned the others. They ran straight for him.

  He took three quick steps toward the charging coppers, spun, and ran as hard as he could. When he reached the end of the pier, he kicked with all his strength. As if walking on air, he kept his legs pumping. The shouts of the police were drowned out by the riverboat’s whistle. Then he crashed down to the deck and fell flat on his face.

  Bullets whizzed above him the instant before the stern-wheeler felt the rush of the river current and swung about, taking him out of the line of fire.

  Mac lifted himself on his hands and saw the police waving their fists in the air and berating each other for letting their quarry escape. One of them shouted toward the boat, no doubt ordering it to come back. Whoever was up in the wheelhouse either ignored the command or never heard it. The boat continued its swing and applied full power, kicking up froth in its wake and pushing upriver. Mac sat and stared at the dark shoreline, laughing. The sound had a hysterical edge to it.

  Somehow, against all odds, he had escaped New Orleans, Pierre Leclerc, a bogus murder charge—and Evangeline Holdstock.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I saw someone, I tell you, Captain. He jumped aboard just as we were pulling away from the dock.”

  “I swear, if you’ve been drinking again, Thornton, I’ll toss you overboard.”

  Heavy footsteps came in Mac’s direction as he heard the voices. He looked around for a place to hide and pressed against a pile of crates taller than his head. A heavy tarpaulin kept water off the crates, giving him an idea. He tugged up a corner, squirmed underneath, then climbed to the top of the pile. Anyone looking down from an upper deck would see a huge lump atop the tower of crates, but he wanted to avoid the captain and whoever had spotted him when he’d boarded so suddenly back at the dock.

  Pressed into the top of the crate, he couldn’t see but heard everything as the footsteps approached.

  “Sloppy work, Thornton. You left the edge of the tarp unsecured.”

  Mac stifled a grunt as the tarp over his back pulled taut. He imagined the deckhand securing the end down below.

  “It’s them new hands, Captain,” Thornton said. “They don’t have experience, and you don’t pay ’em enough to tend to details.”

  “Lose these crates to the river and I’ll keelhaul the lot of you.”

  “What’s that?”

  The captain snorted in disgust.

  “You whippersnappers never been to sea like real sailors. I rounded the Cape six times and ported across Panama twice taking the damned fool Forty-niners. Saw two men keelhauled in that time. Ropes fastened to their scrawny middles and then pulled under the ship. While we were underway. One survived and never gave any lip to an officer again. The other must have banged his head on the first trip under the keel. He drowned.”

  “A riverboat’s mighty broad of beam. Ain’t no man what could hold his breath long enough to be pulled from port to starboard.”

  “That’s my point, Thornton. Get on the hands and have them check the way all the crates are lashed down. I’ve got to see if the pilot’s drunk yet.”

  “The last one was snockered before we got to Natchez.”

  “The cargo, Thornton. Get to it!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mac heard footsteps swallowed up by the steady thrashing of the stern wheel turning against the river current. He understood enough of how a riverboat ran to know that the captain’s duty in port was buying, selling, and handling the cargo. Once the boat was on the river, the pilot assumed responsibility for steering and avoiding the ever-changing sandbars and debris, and navigating the river’s course as it meandered from week to week, leaving the captain free to socialize with the passengers.

  He stretched out, thinking to catch a few winks before deciding what to do. He wasn’t likely to offer much in the way of trading work for passage. Better to rest now and deal with his problem refreshed.

  Head resting on his crossed arms, Mac tried to get comfortable, but the constant swaying kept him off balance. He finally got into the boat’s rhythm, only to be awakened by gunfire. Jerking up, he strained his neck as he pressed against the tarp. He had forgotten he was under the canvas cover.

  He sank back, drew his knife, and cut a long slit so he could look out. The riverboat slipped sideways a little in the water, then the pilot applied full power to the engines. The night filled with glowing cinders, giving him a surreal look at the riverbank. A dozen men lined up along the shore fired rifles into the air. The foot-long tongues of flame from the muzzles caused him to panic. The police had signaled the pilot to turn him over to them.

  They waited for him on shore!

  He tore a larger hole, preparing to fight to the death. He was glad he had retrieved the box of cartridges from his saddlebags before jumping aboard this boat. Then he heard a loud shout from the prow, where a man held a long, knotted rope high over his head. With a heavy weight on the end, the crewman took depth readings.

  “Mark two fathoms!” His cry was relayed to the pilothouse. “We’re nearing Twelve Mile Point shallows. One fathom!”

  The boat lurched as the flat bottom scraped over the moving sandbar. Mac twisted around and saw the men on shore still firing their rifles into the air. It began to make sense to him. Those weren’t police out to arrest him. They signaled the pilot where the last oxbow above New Orleans started, where the shallows were, so the St. Louis Maiden wouldn’t run aground. A signal fire or a lighthouse would have worked better, but with less fanfare.

  The boat continued to slew around, and the engines almost stopped. The riverboat continued to swing about, caught in the current. Then the entire vessel shuddered as if it were a dying beast. The paddle wheel gained speed as power was applied. The huge pist
ons turned faster and faster, and then the boat exploded forward like a racehorse out of the starting gate. The grating of sand and silt across the bottom of the hull changed to the hiss and pop of cinders racing skyward and the thrashing of the wheel against the river.

  Mac settled back down, pulled shut the slit he had cut in the tarp, and again drifted off to sleep, now lulled by the steady throb of the engines and the constant swishing of the stern wheel not a dozen feet aft of him.

  * * *

  He came awake instantly when the tarp was yanked off him, letting in bright sunlight. Rubbing his eyes got the sleep out of them. Then he was sorry he’d bothered.

  He saw all too clearly the captain and two deckhands standing below him.

  “Get the hell down off your throne, your majesty.” The captain started to order his crew to pull Mac down, but there was hardly any reason to argue.

  “On my way down, sir.” Mac stood and looked around. The boat wasn’t too far from shore, still driving hard against the strong Mississippi current. He tried to guess how long he had slept and how far the riverboat had traveled. They bucked a strong current, and with such a heavy cargo, he doubted the riverboat had gone more than thirty miles. But that was good enough to take him away from New Orleans and all the sorrow there.

  “I’m going to throw you into irons. I won’t have stowaways, not on my boat.”

  “Are you planning on keelhauling me?” Mac stared down at the officer and his men.

  “If I find a hawser long enough, damned right! And I’ll do it with you in shackles.”

  “We turn him over to the marshal at the next port?” one of the men asked.

  “What else, Thornton?”

  “I could work for my passage,” Mac suggested.

  The deckhands laughed. The captain turned livid.

  “Like hell. Let one of you landlubbers do that, they’ll be lined up for a mile to take advantage of my charity. Get him. Drag him down, and don’t be gentle about it.” The captain shoved the mate, Thornton, forward.

  Mac’s hand went to his gun when he saw Thornton had a gaffing hook and used it to climb the mountain of crates like a monkey up a banana tree. He jumped to avoid a nasty cut with the hook.

  “There’s no call to do that,” he said. Mac gripped the revolver’s butt but didn’t draw. The vicious expression on Thornton’s face warned him he ought to pull the gun and try to avoid serious injury.

  Thornton swung again with the hook, this time catching the edge of Mac’s pants leg and ripping off a piece.

  “That’s the ticket, Thornton,” the captain bellowed. “Skewer him!”

  If it had been one of the crew making that demand, Mac would have tried to talk his way out of it. When the boat’s captain ordered his men to impale him, Mac knew it was time to leave.

  He backed away, then sprinted the few feet along the top of the crates and leaped to land on another stack. He didn’t try to catch his balance but rather used his momentum to gather speed. He leaped to another stack and then sailed into space. Even in the air he realized he hadn’t jumped far enough away from the side of the boat.

  He hit the water and immediately felt the undertow back toward the spinning paddle wheel. Sucked downward, he fought to keep his breath and not be battered against the hull. He got his feet up and kicked powerfully against the side of the ship. He swam a few feet before being spun around and sucked back into the deadly paddle wheel. All he could do was grab one of the paddles and hang on for dear life as it lifted him.

  The paddle wheel lurched to a stop as it caught for a second on a sandbar. Mac took advantage of the change to kick away from it and drop into the river again. The boat slid over the bar and sailed on, leaving him behind. On the side deck, the captain shouted, and then even those loud curses disappeared in the thrash-thrash of the stern wheel.

  Mac had landed on the sandbar. He came up on his knees and began to sink. Realizing this was almost as dangerous as quicksand, he flopped back flat and let himself float over the sandbar. Dog-paddling toward shore, he was glad to see he was coming out on the western shore rather than the east.

  He got to his feet and walked a dozen paces from the river, then shook all over like a wet dog. Water flew in all directions. He sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, pressed out more water from his clothes and, relatively drier than when he had been dunked in the river, looked around for his flat-crowned black hat.

  He found it about fifty yards away, where it had floated ashore, and wrung water out of it, noting that the dunking had washed away some of the muck that had gotten on the hat during his adventures in the back alleys of New Orleans. He settled the still-wet hat on his head and started walking.

  Where he headed hardly mattered, but he thought going west suited him better than going in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  “I do declare, if I never take another step, it’ll be a day too soon.” Mac sat on a log, worked his boots off, and rubbed his sore feet. “That’s got to be ten thousand miles I’ve walked since I tried to drown myself in the Mississippi.”

  He moaned softly, wiggled his toes, then pulled his boots back on. Getting soaked in the river had caused his boots to shrink. After a week of walking, he was finally getting them back into their proper size, but that did nothing to ease his aching muscles and blistered feet. With a sigh, he heaved himself to his feet and started walking again.

  He had lived off the occasional trapped rabbit and more than his share of squirrel since escaping the New Orleans police. Living off the land wasn’t too hard, but it took time. He felt the need to be . . . somewhere. Where that might be was a mystery, but the more miles he put between himself and the beautiful but traitorous Evangeline Holdstock the better he liked it.

  He had barely gone a quarter mile along the westbound road when he heard a sound that was pure music to his ears. Coming up from behind, a wagon rattled, creaked, and clanked along. He waited impatiently for the driver to notice him and pull up.

  “What’s your trouble, sonny?” The old man sitting on the wagon’s seat and handling the reins had gray muttonchops and peered at him through eyeglasses thick enough to come from the bottoms of medicine bottles.

  “My horse up and died under me,” Mac said. That wasn’t a lie, but the truth was a bit more complicated, what with the cause being a lawman’s bullet.

  “You leave your gear on the horse?”

  Mac took off his hat, wiped sweat from his forehead, and instead of answering the question finally said, “I don’t even know where I am. Is this Louisiana?”

  “Your horse died in Louisiana? Then you have been hoofin’ it for a spell. This here’s Texas.”

  “Wherever you’re headed, I’d appreciate a ride. I can help you unload once you get there.” The back of the wagon was full of wooden crates. “It looks as if you have quite a chore ahead if you have to do it all yourself.”

  “I don’t mind a little work. Glad to hear you don’t, either.” The old man squinted. “That six-shooter on your hip? You know how to use it?”

  “I don’t shoot men with it, if that’s what you’re asking. It takes me a couple shots, sometimes more, to bring down a rabbit. By then there’s not much left for the stew pot.”

  “So you’re not a gunslick?”

  Mac laughed and shook his head.

  “I’m just a poor, lost soul looking for a decent job. And by that I don’t mean shooting anything—or anyone.”

  “Climb on up. I’m headin’ for Waco to deliver equipment shipped all the way from Boston. I picked it up from a dock along the Mississippi and contracted to freight it into the heart of Texas, more’s the pity.”

  “Why’s that?” Mac settled down on the hard bench seat beside the man. His nose wrinkled. The old man hadn’t bathed in quite a while. He knew he wasn’t a fragrant rose himself, but he tried to bathe whenever he came to a stream. Without soap, the best he could do was soak off the dirt and stink.

  “I’m gettin’ too old for this kind of
work. Truth is, I’m gonna settle down when I get to Waco.” He snapped the reins and got the mule team pulling. From the way the wagon moaned under the load, it might take a miracle to get as far as the Texas town.

  “What’s available in Waco in the way of jobs?”

  “Well, sir, you got the rangy, stringy look of a wrangler. There’s always more’n one outfit getting ready for a trail drive this time of year.”

  “Trail drive? Where do they head?”

  “North, to Abilene, Dodge City, some of them newer towns that spring up like toadstools after a spring rain. Ellsworth, maybe. A few of the bigger ranches hire upward of fifty men for the drive. Even the smaller spreads use twenty or thirty men. You any good with horses?”

  Mac could ride. Other than that, he knew next to nothing about taking care of horses, breeding them, training them, or even picking healthy ones for purchase.

  “Can’t say that I am, but I’m a quick learner.”

  “Them drives need wranglers for their remuda. Some have a couple hundred horses for their cowpunchers.”

  “You’re skirting around saying I could get a job actually working as a cowboy.”

  “Sonny, you need skill and determination and maybe bein’ kicked in the head once or twice to take on that job. Mostly, you need experience that you don’t have.”

  “Even the best must have started out as a greenhorn.”

  “That’s true, but times are real hard, and takin’ on a cowboy who don’t already know his craft is a stretch for the ranchers.”

  “I haven’t heard. Why’s it so hard for the ranchers right now?”

  The old man laughed, snapped the reins, and got a dirty look from his lead mule.

  “The damned railroads, that’s why. It used to be hard getting a cow back east. When it was, cattle fetched big prices. Now the railroads can take entire herds to Chicago and even farther east. That drives down the price for every head delivered. There’s always somethin’ of a race to get to the railhead first to get the best price. Show up too late with your herd and, well, let’s say you not only ate everyone’s dust on the trail but you’re eatin’ something even less tasty tryin’ to sell into a market already glutted. You comprende?”