slow.”
41
“YEAH, I KNEW of a bunch like that,” Riley Fordham admitted, casually. His eyes held steadily on Jonah.
Either he’s telling the truth about all of this and he don’t have nothing to hide, Jonah thought to himself, or the man is a downright cold-blooded liar.
“You know of ’em in southern Missouri?”
Fordham nodded. “Seems I recollect hearing they rode through down there too. Like some others. I hear Missouri was a bad place during the war. Why you so interested in that one bunch of bad characters?”
“I got family mixed up in it.” He watched Fordham cleaning his pistols at the small table against the wall.
Jonah sat on the edge of the bed in the tiny room. Both of them were waiting for Shad Sweete to return from Fort Larned, where the old mountain man had been summoned by the post commander early that morning, red- eyed and plagued with a hangover, swearing he was too old to be drinking that way with young guns like Hook and Fordham. Official business, the messenger from Larned had said.
But this was family business for Jonah. Because of it he felt he was walking on eggshells with the man rubbing the oilcloth back and forth, in and out that .44-caliber pistol barrel.
“Looking for a bunch I understand rode into Indian Territory not long after end of the war come to that part of the country.”
Fordham kept on polishing. “Lots of bad folks always run off to the Territories when it gets too hot for ’em elsewhere. How are you so sure the fellas you’re looking for went down there?”
“I was told.”
The oilcloth stopped. Then after a moment, began polishing again.
“Told, huh? Somebody knew where they were going?”
“I s’pose,” Jonah said, beginning to sense a growing tension from the man at the table. “I guess they didn’t figure on this fella having any reason for talking.”
Fordham cleared his throat. “But sounds like he did—talk that is.”
“Said the man who hurt him bragged that they was going to the Territories—where no one would find them. He said that just before his men burned my friend’s eyes out.”
Fordham gazed at Hook steadily, then finally looked back at his pistol, slipping the cylinder back into the frame. “Pretty cruel torture, I’d say. Knew a couple men once like that. Loved to hurt. One of ’em loved to hurt for a purpose. The other just because he loved hurting.”
“You might know the fellas I’m looking for.”
“What makes you say that, Jonah?”
“Those two you talked about sound an awful lot like the men who burned my friend’s eyes out are the same ones you said you knowed of.”
“Didn’t mean to make you think that now. What makes you figure the ones I heard of are the same ones burned the sheriff’s eyes out?”
Hook leaned forward, almost coming off the edge of the bed, startling Fordham. “You do know ’em! Where they’ve been—where they’re going!”
Fordham licked his lips gone dry, watching Hook ease the pistol from its holster and lay it on the bed beside him. “How—how you so sure—”
“I never said anything about a sheriff. You’re the one just come up with that all on your own. You was there when they did it to him, weren’t you?”
The man stared a moment at Hook’s pistol on the bed, then found Jonah’s eyes.
“I damn well had to get out. You’ll never understand what it was like being in that bunch.”
Jonah sagged. “I don’t give a damn about you or how you come clean about what you done. God knows there’s enough hell for all of you to spend more than one eternity with the devil for it. All I want to know is where you took my family.”
Riley Fordham was about to speak when the door burst open and Shad Sweete filled the doorway. In the next heartbeat Fordham shot to his feet, lunging toward that door, when Jonah pulled up the pistol and caught him midroom.
“What the hell, Jonah!”
“Lemme go!”
Hook shoved the muzzle backward into the man’s belly, driving Fordham back to his chair. “Let’s talk some more, Riley.”
“What’s this all about?” Sweete stepped into the room, glanced both ways down the narrow hall and closed the door.
“Fordham here was with the bunch took my family.”
“Now listen, Jonah—”
“You shuddup, Fordham,” Hook snapped.
Shad chuckled. “Jonah Hook. If that don’t beat all. You’re having some fun with this new friend of ours. But from the looks of it you got him really scared. Time to put that six-shoot away and—”
“You best believe me, Shad.”
Sweete’s face drained of color. “This for real, Jonah?”
Hook didn’t answer. The old man looked from Jonah’s face to Fordham’s.
“What he say is true, Fordham?”
The deserter finally nodded. “I run with ’em. And I figure I know who Jonah Hook is now.”
Shad took a step toward Fordham. “You know ’bout his family?”
“We took ’em. The others wanted to use up the woman and the girl—then and there and be done with ’em. But for some reason, Usher took a shine to the woman.”
“Usher?”
“Jubilee Usher. Big fella. Every bit as big as Sweete here.”
“He’s got my wife and children?”
Fordham’s head sank, his hands working, finger in finger. “The boys … Usher and Wiser sold ’em to someone down in the Territories.”
“Sold …” Jonah swallowed hard on the pain of it. “Sold my boys?”
“Who? Where they go?” Sweete wanted to know.
He shrugged. “Someone out of Texas.”
“I oughtta kill you just for the—”
“Hold it, Jonah!” Sweete said, snagging the pistol barrel.
“Don’t blame you if you do, Jonah,” Fordham said. “Took me long enough to decide to leave. I ain’t got anyone else to blame but me for staying long as I did.”
“Why did you?”
“I believed Usher, that he was the new Prophet. Believed God was talking to him—that this was part of our plan against the folks that drove our people out of Missouri.”
“Your people?”
“Latter-day Saints—most of us.”
Jonah looked up at Sweete, shaking his head in confusion.
“Mormons,” Sweete explained. “Usher sold the boys to comancheros, didn’t he?”
Fordham said, “Seems I remember that word being used, yes.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“You said Usher took a shine to her?” Sweete asked as he took another step and towered over Fordham.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t let any of the rest touch her. Keeping her for himself.”
