Ralph Compton The Convict Trail by Ralph Compton Page B

you’re up on a hoss. If it comes down to it, how fast do you think can you skin them Remingtons from there?”
    â€œFast enough. For somebody like you, anyways.”
    â€œI’ll give you some advice,” Kane said evenly. “Backin’ up hard words with gunplay is dangerous business, unless you’re a top hand at it. Miz St. John says you’re a top hand with cattle—she didn’t say nothing about guns.”
    â€œEnough!” Mae said. She left Kane and Sam standing at the fire and stepped beside Larson. “Hyde, Buck says the grub is nearly ready. Come to the fire and eat.” She laid the tips of her fingers on the young man’s knee. “There will be no gunplay. I’m depending on you to get the herd to Fort Smith.”
    The woman could have read uncertainty in Larson’s eyes, because her voice suddenly hardened. “Do as I say!”
    Larson made no answer, but he touched his hat to Mae and rode into the blue darkness beyond the circle of firelight.
    Mae stepped back to Kane and the old man. “I’ll feed your prisoners tonight, Sam,” she said. “And you and the marshal. What have you been giving them? They look kind of sharp set.”
    â€œSalt pork, ma’am, an’ pan bread. An’ coffee of course, though I just bile up the grounds fer them.”
    Mae turned to the man called Buck who was standing over the fire, stirring a blackened pot. “What’s for supper?”
    â€œBacon an’ beans,” answered Buck, a sour-looking man in his mid-forties. “Like always.”
    â€œI’d say it’s a step up from salt pork,” Mae said.
    Kane thought she looked too eager to please, like a woman who was not by nature or inclination friendly but was going out of her way to be pleasant.
    Sam missed that, or appeared to. “Haven’t had bacon in a coon’s age, ma’am.” He grinned. “Thankee fer the invite.”
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    Kane sat with his back against a tree where he could keep an eye on the prisoners. When Sam brought him a plate, he propped his rifle upright beside him.
    â€œFixin’ to storm again, Logan,” the old man said. “Looks like.”
    â€œAn’ it smells like. Sure as shootin’ there’s sulfur in the air.”
    But Kane was only half listening. His gaze was on Mae St. John. Sam had fed the prisoners, including Albright, who had apparently decided he could sit up and take nourishment, but the woman had insisted on fixing Stringfellow’s plate.
    â€œOnly for old time’s sake, you understand,” she’d said.
    Now the marshal watched Mae as she carried food to the outlaw. Stringfellow was at the end of the line and the woman sat beside him. She handed the man the plate and for a moment Kane saw their fingertips touch, like furtive lovers.
    Stringfellow began to eat. Then he bent his head close to Mae and whispered something in her ear. The woman listened intently, but her expression did not change. She looked across at Kane and smiled.
    Whatever she was, or had been, the marshal decided that Mae St. John was a woman who would play her cards close to her chest. What had Stringfellow just said to her? Kane had no way of knowing and the woman would not tell him.
    The sky flashed with blue electricity and a wind was rising, setting the cottonwoods to whispering. Something big plopped in the creek, and out on the high plains the coyotes were talking back and forth.
    Over by the fire, Hyde Larson was drinking whiskey steadily, a bad omen that set Kane on edge.
    After scraping up the last of his beans the marshal set the plate aside and began to build a smoke. But he stopped when Mae left Stringfellow’s side, walked past the fire and sat beside him. Up close she was a handsome woman. Her hazel eyes were large and lustrous and her auburn hair was thick, hanging over her shoulders in glossy curls. The woman’s mouth was too wide for true