Blood in Kansas by Jake Logan

Author:Jake Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

12

Uniontown could hardly be called a town. It was a settlement of sod houses and a single store built from clapboard planking weathered by wind and sun. A road running eastward from Fort Scott to the railhead at Wichita gave the settlement a reason to exist, for it had water, a few wood-bladed windmills rising from the flats providing a bounty for thirsty travelers and their animals. As Slocum walked on numbed legs over a swell in the prairie, he saw Uniontown and summoned the last reserves of strength he had as he stumbled down a gentle slope toward the flats and water. His mouth was so dry, his lips were cracked after hours walking under a merciless sun, bent into a northwesterly wind that never seemed to end and that blasted gritty particles into his eyes. His feet had begun to throb with deep stone bruises, and he wondered if he would be able to walk to Fort Scott and a telegraph, where he could wire Colonel Jim Thompson at Fort Lupton, just north of Denver, requesting assistance. He’d known Colonel Thompson for years, and Jim trusted Slocum from his stints as a scout for army patrols during the worst of the Indian wars there.

Slocum could see lumbering freight wagons moving westward and one or two heading east. Perhaps he could beg a ride on one of the wagons to Fort Scott ferrying supplies to the army. At the moment he didn’t think he could manage another twelve to fifteen miles on sore feet. His fate lay in the hands of an understanding teamster traveling east.

The small size of Uniontown left Slocum feeling sure that Jake and Pearl had moved on toward Kansas City, after watering their horses. Even with a poke full of money, a place like Uniontown offered nothing in the way of pleasant diversions for either the halfbreed or the girl. Thus he made his slow-footed approach without any particular caution, after making sure his big bay stud or the horses Willow and Pearl were riding weren’t in any of the corrals near the sod dwellings or behind the store. He was shading his eyes from the sun with his hand after leaving his hat on his saddlehorn before the bay was stolen. He remembered seeing Pearl wearing a hat as she rode off leading the stud, and he concluded it must have been his.

“They moved on,” he mumbled, running his tongue over split lips, rubbing dust from his eyes. “I’ll lose another five or six hours heading over to Fort Scott, but there ain’t no choice under present circumstances. I damn sure can’t walk to Kansas City on these legs.”

Following the ruts, he made his way down to the settlement with one eye on a water trough beneath a windmill. A short length of pipe dribbled water into a big circular tank fashioned from mortar and stone. Before he attended to the business of getting to Fort Scott, he meant to drink his fill and find a patch of shade where he could rest a moment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.