Chapter 8 The Harbingers Make a Decision

As the rain began to fall, they heard the splashing of horses' hooves in the low places behind them. Riding the single mare, both rain and sweat leaping off its flanks, the Mavericks pushed hard, their only hope, and it was a forlorn one, being to outpace their pursuers. On fresher horses, the Harbingers were not far behind, but Bret and Bart had to try. They couldn't go down without a fight. Then inspiration struck Bret.

He pulled the jaded mare to a sudden stop on a high bluff overlooking the river. Lathered, its sides bursting with the effort of trying to keep two men afloat on its back in the dripping trees, it threw up its head in protest and nearly took the bit out Bret's control.

Bret shook the rain off his face and turned in the saddle to catch Bart's ear. "Bart, get down and run hide somewhere. They won't catch you. You'll still be able to go for help, maybe a U.S. Marshal, or the governor. I don't know. Get down! Quick."

Bart slipped down and they shook hands. "I don't like leavin' you to them, Bret. Will you be okay?"

"As okay as I ever am with Charlie, if that's him."

"I hope, for your sake, it's not."

Bart crouched and ran away into the trees. He slid down the muddy bank towards the Missouri, grasping for handholds to stop his steep fall, and not go end over end. The tall bluff would hide him from the posse.

It began to rain in earnest.

Bret rode on, then about fifty yards away, he stiffened in the saddle. He heard a shot, but whether directed at him or not, he wasn't sure. It sounded closer to Bart than to himself. Could he have been seen sliding down the bank? Bret reined up again, puling the mare's head around with a stiff jerk as he looked at his back trail.

Who had they been shooting at? He didn't have long to ponder it as the Harbingers, along with a brace of their men, five in all, caught up. Two grabbed his reins from either side, while Charlie flew off the horse and strode around to Bret's left.

He pulled him out of the saddle and thrust him to the ground. Bret, soon up again and ready for a fight, took a swing at Charlie's jaw. Charlie reared back out of the way and Bret tried again. This time he landed a solid left on Charlie's huge cleft chin. Charlie fell back, but not off his feet. It would take a ton of bricks to knock that man off his pins, Bret reckoned as he waited for Charlie to seize the moment and lay him out.

Clancy came up behind Charlie and arrested his brother's arm from striking Bret in the face. "Leave 'im be!" Clancy shouted over the downpour. "You want to kill 'im?"

Charlie laughed and straightened up, adjusting his clothes. Glaring at Bret, who was breathing hard and half-doubled over, he turned his head to the side and asked Clancy, "Isn't that the idea?"

Bret took a deep breath. "I heard a gunshot," he said. "Who were you shootin' at? Me?"

"No, at that brother of yours," said Charlie. "Clancy here recognized him. Saw him once on his boat, on a visit to you. What a fool deception!"

Bret rubbed his hand on his muddy pants leg, totally distracted by events. He looked down and away and then up again. "Did you hit him?" he asked.

"He jumped in the river, Bret," said Clancy. "That's the last we saw of 'im. We'll go back if you like."

"Let's go."

With help, Bret got on board the melancholic mare, under Clancy's lead. When they got to the spot where Bart had stumbled down the bluff, they saw nothing of him. The mud at the edge of the river oozed below, but that was all. Even though the Missouri was heavy with flood waters, the channel was narrow and he could have swum to the opposite bank. He could have been in the trees over there, bleeding, dying even, and on this side, Bret had no way of reaching him.

"We're not goin' any further," said Charlie. He fingered his six-shooter's trigger. "He'd be as good as dead if we caught 'im anyhow."

Bret looked sourly over at him, realizing at last that Charlie Harbinger was a brute killer. He himself had been lucky up to then. Two wounds, a few knocks, but he was still alive. For Bart, who was not married to Corrie Harbinger, the future would have been grim, and short. It was a good thing, really, that they left Bart behind and rode back upstream.

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At the Harbinger ranch, Bret reentered the barn, sat down in the straw of an empty stall and awaited events. A couple of men stood watch outside. He felt so tired, he didn't care. Leaning back on the wall of the barn, he closed his eyes, his every thought about Bart and where he could be. On his way to the law, law outside the Harbingers' orbit, or face down in the cold, rapid Missouri, floating with the last chunks of winter's ice?

Hours into the new day, Clancy came in, alone this time, with a tin bucket and a canteen of water. Bret, sleeping, at first started, staring wildly around and calling out for Bart. When he came to himself, he saw Clancy, took the food he offered him, removed the tin lid and ate the stew with a spoon Clancy handed him.

"Have you heard anything about Bart?" he asked, around mouthfuls. "Did he get away?"

Clancy squatted down on the balls of his feet. "If he did, what can he do now, Bret? You're lawfully a Harbinger man now. You have family responsibilities. No judge is going to set you free."

"I was kidnapped, don't forget," said Bret, replacing the lid and setting the pot between them.

"Any judge with a daughter would think we had just cause."

Seeing Clancy's pale face in the light of the open barn door, Bret eyed him for a long moment. Finally, he broke his silence. "I'll tell you once and for all, I'm not the father of that child. Corrie lied. I don't know why, but she did. Believe me, Clancy, I wouldn't lie to you."

Clancy seemed taken aback for a second, then steeled himself again to Bret's earnest words and searching eyes. He stood up, towering over Bret in the straw.

"Later this afternoon, around four, we're going to have a family talk. Hang Wan will bring you some hot water, soap and a towel. I'll fetch you when it's time."

Bret had to go along with them, for now, but he didn't have to like it. "Alright," was his short, cheerless reply.

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Cleaned up, and in a worn, but still good set of work clothes, Bret approached the porch steps of the house, Clancy at his side but one step behind, like a guard in a prison. He thought about this family 'meeting.' What fate was in store for him now?

Charlie came out and pulled him up the steps into a shady parlor. Bret's eyes took a moment to adjust, the dark house leaving him groping to see. Charlie forced him down into an easy chair beside the fireplace. It was unlit now as after the morning's rain, the sun was out again and it was a scorcher outside. Charlie took the chair opposite. Leaning back, Bret watched for Corrie to appear.

Swaying to and fro like a ship in a strong gale, her belly protruding far beyond her dainty shoes, she came down the stairs with a grim face. Bret stood up in his charming way, but Charlie, not liking his southern customs, growled, "Sit down, you."

Bret turned and looked at him, mystified even yet by Charlie's uncouthness, but without arguing the point, he took his seat again, being very ginger of his leg.

"Does that old wound hurt much, Bret?" asked Clancy, leaning forward where he was sitting on the hearth, hands clasped at his knees.

Bret was short with him. "It's not that old, and yes, it does."

Clancy faded back into the fireplace again while Corrie took a seat on the sofa facing it. Old Mr. C. came down next. With his cane and bent posture, his coming down was more of a rigmarole than Corrie's ship-in-rough-seas descent. He stood on the landing looking for a short space at all his assembled kin, shaking his head. He grumbled something Bret couldn't catch, then came all the way down.

Again, Bret stood. Again the others stayed where they were.

"Didn't I just tell you to sit?" asked Charlie, and Bret sat down again, giving him a scornful look.

Old Mr. C. went to stand by Charlie's chair and looking at Bret he said, "You caused my boys a lot of missed time with the herd this morning, Bret. They ran their horses into the ground in all this rain and muck. What've you got to say for yourself?"

"That Charlie may've killed my brother Bart."

"Is that right, Charles? Did you shoot this man's brother?"

"I shot at him, pa. Don't think I hit 'im none."

"Then that's that. No more talk about shootin', Bret. No one's dead—yet. I have something to tell you that can't wait."

"What is it?"

"I know you, Corrie, me and the boys don't always see eye to eye. We can't seem to make you feel like you fit in. Though you are family." Bret smirked loudly at that. "But—and here's the thing—the Missouri needs you, especially right now with the spring thaw."

Bret looked up at him, an older, bent and humbled copy of Charlie. "What're you getting at?"

"A friend of mine has a packet, the Dells. He'll show you the ropes of working on a steamer. For a few months at least."

"What!" shouted Bret, incredulous.

"You'll be paid. Or rather your wages will be paid to me. And don't think you can get off the boat so easily." Here, Charlie laughed. His pa knocked him in the shoulder, making him get up. Old Mr. C. took his place. Except for the age difference, they looked so much alike, it was as if Charlie had never moved. "My friend," continued Mr. C., "Mr. Talmadge, Master of the Dells, has had convicts before and his regular men know how to handle 'em."

"I'm not a convict," Bret stammered. "You can't do that to me."

"And when—and when," said Mr. C. over Bret's rising objection, "when you are steadier, you can come back here, back to the ranch, and see your child. We'll decide then if you go back to Talmadge or remain."

Bret stood up again. He seemed to have a spring under him. "I think you're all mad. You force me to listen to this babble about steamboats, then tell me you might remit my sentence for good behavior?"

"It's only fair."

"And this friend of yours gets my labor for free for months on end, while you collect my wages!"

"It will be done."

"Not to me, it won't. I'm goin' out there and see if I can find my brother. If you won't lend me a horse, then I'll just have to walk," he finished, nearly screaming.

"Bret, simmer down. Sit with us for a while."

Corrie had spoken. Bret looked over at her, his pulses racing and not for her lips this time. He looked from her father's hunched body to where she sat demure, pretty and very pregnant on the scallop-backed, highly-varnished, tapestried sofa.

"It's time someone used some sense, Corrie. Tell your pa the truth. I've never wanted to embarrass you, but you'll be happier if you come out with it now, rather than wait until somethin' worse happens to me."

"What truth, Bret?" she asked, all lovely lashes and girlish purity. "That you aren't the father to my child?"

"That's right."

"I can't say what isn't true."

"You've been doin' a good job of it up to now, Corrie girl."

Charlie finally found his legs. Towering over Bret, who was in normal times a tall, robust man, he said, "Sit down, you mongrel, and stop callin' my sister a liar!"

"I'm not—not calling Corrie a liar. Understand me. She's just not tellin' the truth. We did not know each other."

Bret had been raised from a pup with old-fashioned, southern respect for ladies, instilled in him by his card-playing, womanizing father, Beau Maverick, and by his own notions of delicacy in matters such as this. A coarser man would have shouted that it was impossible to father a child through a kiss (or two), but he merely said, "We did not know each other."

Clancy smiled at Bret's Texas courtesy. He knew then why, in the years since their first acquaintance on the Helena, Clancy's old boat, he had almost come to worship his slightly older gambler friend.

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"Watch 'im well, Hank," said Old Mr. C. to his friend, Master Talmadge of the Dells. "He's inclined to be the least bit tricky. Maybe you ought to tie him down at night for a while."

"We'll see," said Hank Talmadge, a ruddy man of short stature but broad of beam, a corncob pipe sticking out of his lips. He walked over to Bret, who was guarded by Harbinger men, while Clancy and Charlie stood close by, but Corrie had stayed home with Hang Wan. Hank pulled the corncob out of his mouth and stared at Bret for a few seconds. He made the gambler uneasy.

"How much trouble you goin' to be, young man?"

"Oh," said Bret through gritted teeth. "Plenty." He stared rapt-eyed at the shorter man, already planning his escape before he was even on the boat, swearing that first chance he got, tied up or not, he was jumping off.

Charlie eyed him, dislike and disfavor curling his upper lip against his bull nose. He gave Bret a nudge up the gangplank, one of two that had been lowered to the wharf to load cargo.

Bret was obliged to go up it, and as he did so, he looked at the Missouri flowing fast in front of the Dells, not quite sensing—not yet—that it was the river, not any particular boat, or man, or crew, that imprisoned him. It was the river. With strong bonds.

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On the Dells, he worked just like any other rooster, or roustabout. Lifted bales, rolled barrels, threw wood into the fireboxes under the boilers, occasionally wielding a towline when the Dells got stuck on a sandbar. Days, then weeks passed. Bret's hands callused. His face became ruddier. He filled out with all the heavy lifting.

While the Dells rocked at its moorings at night, he slept in the wide open lower deck with the other roosters, weathering flash storms, or the blinding sun during the day.

His clothes hadn't been washed, nor had he, in weeks, save for dips in the Missouri. The other roosters, similarly unwashed, had no qualm sharing quarters with him. None asked who he was, or if he was a free man or not, for most of their number, if not all, had at one time or other been sentenced to labor on the packets.

Local law was scarce in these parts, so landowners and settlers saw to it that wrongdoers were punished with work, not jail-time. And work there was!

And while he lay, or worked, or pulled a towline, he thought of Bart. Nothing had been heard of him since the day he tumbled down the bluff a few miles out from the Harbinger ranch. Asking every man if he knew of his whereabouts, Bret even approached the passengers. Since it was odd for a roustabout to be asking them anything at all, most moved away before he could speak.

He didn't even care, his busy mind was too full of Bart, escape and just surviving the mate's club. The mate seemed to have no other job but to wield his club or brandish his pistol at the roustabouts, Bret included. It was all part of life aboard the steamers, and he adjusted as best as he could.