Scorched Earth - a Fort Smith series classic western novel adventure chapter

"I must confess Marshal, you are not the man I expected you to be."

Eldridge turned his head to take in the room. Empty whisky bottles liked the shelves like glass flytraps. Judging from the number of black bodies crawling and buzzing around them, they were effective at that task.

"Not a Marshal," Eldridge answered. "Not anymore."

He pointed to an empty spot on his chest where a tin star might have been.

"I was misinformed," the women's lips compressed into a thin line of determination. "Never the less, I have heard of your reputation."

Eldridge blinked away some of the cobwebs gumming up his eyes, but he could do naught for the ones that fogged up his mind. He wondered for a brief moment how the woman came to be in his room and glanced over her shoulder to the open door leading out to a hallway beyond.

She walked right in.

Some alarm bell went off in the back of his skull. If she could walk right in while he was indisposed, then any old ruffian could do the same and with intent other than to bring up his old career.

he struggled to sit up, but his limbs were taking too long to cooperate.

"What shall I call you?" the woman asked.

He blinked up at her again. She was on the short side, a thin woman, with hard lines on her face framed by gray hair pulled tight into a bun. Her small bonnet was new, tied with a shiny ribbon under her neck wattles.

The pattern matched the vest on her dress, custom made he supposed. Her long skirts ruffled against the dirt on his plank floor and for a moment, he felt embarrassed at his housekeeping skills.

Or the apparent lack thereof.

The incessant buzzing of flies intruded on his ears, and as if hearing them for the first time in a long while, he glanced at the empty row of bottles.

She followed his gaze but kept her lips compressed in disapproval.

He sat up and rubbed his face.

"Food," he announced.

"That would be a strange name for a man," she said.

He snorted despite himself and pulled himself off the sweat stained bed.

"Sample," he said. "Or Eldridge if you like. I answer to either."

He sloshed tepid water from an iron pitcher into a wash basin and splashed it on his face. The tips of his fingers rasped against the stubble on his cheeks, but he ignored it as he ran his wet hands through his dirty hair.

"Sample," she said. "I have need of your services."

He turned a bleary eye toward her and glanced from head to toe.

"Aren't you a little old to be soliciting, granny?"

She harrumphed as color flooded her pale cheeks.

"I can just as easily find another for the task I had in mind," she said.

Eldridge noticed the velvet bag clenched in her hands and the distinctive clink it made when she clenched it.

"What task?"

"I'm sorry to have bothered you Marshal," she turned to go.

Sample took two steps toward the door, his long frame moving with the grace of a ballet dancer that belied his size. His speed always took people by surprise as if their expectation of him was based on some scarecrow perched on a pole in a field.

Even now, impaired as he was by the vestiges of drink and the low of a hangover, he was fast.

The door she had left open shut, alleviating one worry of being ambushed for him and setting upon the gray haired woman a new worry of her own.

"I will scream if you touch me," she cowered back, an arm crossing the flat expanse of her chest.

"There's no need of worry of that," he assured her. "Just tell me your tale and we'll see about getting you gone."

He couldn't help but eye the bag in her hand. She noticed and tucked it under one of the sleeves of her vest close to her chest.

"How much?"

"It is really none of your concern," she said. "I can seek assistance elsewhere."

Eldridge snorted and moved to the stone fireplace. He poked the ashes to reveal an orange ember, and broke apart kindling to lay on top of it.

In a few moments, he had a small blaze going and placed a blackened tin pot of old coffee on the edge to reheat.

"I think if you could have had help elsewhere, you wouldn't have taken the time to find me," Eldridge said as he worked.

Her lips crimped into the tight line again, but she took a deep breath and sighed it out.

"Among men who know about these kinds of things," she said after a moment. "You have a reputation as a tracker."

"I have tracked in my day."

He grabbed the handle and whipped his hand back with a muffled curse, as he blew on his fingers. Eldridge used his sleeve to grab the hot handle and pour steaming thick black coffee into two dirty mugs.

He offered one to the old woman, which she declined.

"I am in need of a tracker, and if you are successful, a killer."

Sample held the cup to his lips and blew across the steaming coffee. Then he took a sip and gulped it down.

He watched the woman while he finished half his cup. The warm liquid started working fast. Fire spread from his belly up toward his head, bringing with it a sense of clarity as it pushed back the remnants of sleep.

"What do you want killed?" he finally asked.

"Indians," she answered.

Eldridge shook his head.

"I don't kill Indians," he said.

"Not even killers?"

He raised an eyebrow in curiosity, which she took as a sign to continue.

"My daughter and her husband were killed by Shoshone. They kidnapped the two children," she told him. "The army won't do anything, the law can't do anything and I am at the end of my line of inquiry, Marshal."

She reached into her vest and produced the bag again.

Eldridge watched as she spilled twenty gold coins into the palm of her hand.

"I need your help," she pleaded.

The gold glinted in the firelight and reflected in her sad, tired eyes.

He wanted that gold.

It could buy more than a few nights of forgetting, more than a few nights of warm arms and warm legs wrapped around him to help with the forgetting.

He could use it to clean up and clear out too, he thought. Use it to get someplace new and get back on track.

He could get a horse and ride off for a couple of days, camp out under the stars and use the trail to clear his mind.

Come back and tell the old woman that it was no use, the kids were gone, and send her on her way to bury the dead and live with the ghosts.

He picked up her untouched cup of coffee and sipped it as his own.

"Shoshone prisoners don't last long," he told her. "Probably nothing to find."

Damn it, he cursed himself at the sabotage. If he told her the truth, that the kids were dead too, she could take that payoff and disappear.

"I consulted an expert with the Army," she bit back a hitch in her voice. "He said this particular group of savages are slavers. Sell stock to fur traders in the Dakota territories."

Eldridge grunted.

He hated slavers. Hell, they had fought a whole war against the act, a war that made him the man he had become and still, no good sons of bitches out here were trying to keep up the practice.

He glanced around at the room of the man the war had made and shook his head.

"Are you refusing me?" the old woman asked.

"Food," he answered. "Let's get something to eat and I'll hear your whole tale."