Smoke Wagon by Brett Cogburn

Author:Brett Cogburn [Cogburn, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2021-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

A storm front blew up right after sundown; the wind whipping through the cracks in the boxcar door made the lantern in the middle of the table between them flicker, and the tiny flame hissed as if it were whispering stories of its own. Morgan leaned back in his chair and waited for Dixie to reply to what he had told him.

“How could he be sure it was the Traveler?” Dixie asked.

“Hank wasn’t making much sense, but he swore it was him.”

Dixie reached for the whiskey bottle beside the flickering lantern, as if he needed another belt upon hearing the news. “They say he notched his rifle for two Yankee generals and a captain at Gettysburg alone. I don’t know if it was true, but us Southern boys believed the story about General Meade himself offering five hundred dollars to the man that could take down the Traveler.”

“Old Death,” Morgan said absentmindedly.

“What?”

“Old Death, that’s what we called him.”

The gaze Morgan put on Dixie was more than a little glassy with the whiskey he had consumed since they sat down together. The rain outside was coming down in bucketsful, beating on the roof of the boxcar like a drum.

“I guess a man like that might get hooked on hunting men for sport,” Dixie added. “A thousand dollars a head, that’s what he’s supposed to get if you hire him to kill a man.”

“There’s a lot of talk around a man like him. Hard to tell truth from made-up stories.”

“You don’t seem too awful excited about a known drygulcher for hire being seen outside camp.” Dixie raised his voice as if he needed to wake Morgan up.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Morgan straightened in his chair and tapped the rim of the whiskey glass with a forefinger thoughtfully.

“You know how you can tell when the Arkansas Traveler does a killing?” Dixie asked. “He sticks a feather up the nose of every one of his victims. Always works from long range with a rifle. Moves like an Indian. Sets up an ambush, does the deed, and then he’s gone.”

“What’s he look like?”

“What’s a damned ghost look like?” Dixie asked. “Some say he’s short and bald, and some that he’s tall with long yellow hair that he braids like an Indian. The only thing all the stories agree on is that the Traveler is an Arkansawyer, and that he can shoot like no man alive.”

“I think I’ll catch some shut-eye.” Morgan went to his cot.

“You’re awful damned calm, considering how many enemies you have, and now the Traveler might be wanting your hide pinned up on a barn door. If I didn’t know better I would think you didn’t care if you were dead or alive.”

Morgan lay down and pulled the blanket over him. “Been that before.”

“You’ve been what?”

Morgan rolled over with his back to Dixie and his face against the wall. He mumbled something that was said too quiet to hear or that was muffled by the blankets.

“What’s that? You’ve been what?”

“Dead.”

The sound of Morgan’s deep, slow breathing said that he was asleep before Dixie could ask anything else.

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