Ralph Compton The Convict Trail Read Online Free

feeling the strain and his voice was sharp. “Leastways, if a certain feller ever gets the creek dammed up.”
    Kane touched his hat to Lorraine and stepped downstream a few feet. He walked through bladed moonlight, looking around to see what he could find. He wanted rocks or large pieces of fallen tree branch.
    The night was cool, a stiff breeze riding point for a thunderstorm rumbling to the north over the craggy peaks of the Ouachita Mountains. Already probing fingers of black cloud were reaching into the violet sky, slowly blotting out stars, and the moon was threatening to take a header into darkness.
    Kane smelled the coming rain and the ozone tang of lightning that flickered in the distance. The night seemed fragile as crystal, as if a single blast of thunder would shatter it into a million shards that would catch the blue fire of the lightning and fall to earth like diamonds.
    He intensified his search and soon had an armful of small rocks that he dropped into the creek, then tried to arrange into a dam. The water bubbled over his hands and the rocks, heedless of his attempt to halt its flow. He rose and found more rocks and some thick branches. This time his rickety dam held better and suddenly the water began to pool behind it. But after a few minutes the force of the pent-up stream swept the wood away and the creek chattered over the pebbles as before.
    Kane rose, defeat slumping his shoulders, and looked at Sam. “I can’t dam it. The wood won’t hold.”
    The old man was still pouring water over the girl with his hand. His head lifted. “Wash out the coffeepot. I’ll use that.” As Kane turned to leave, he said, “Logan, we don’t have much time. Best we ain’t a-squatting out here in a lightning storm.”
    As thunder growled to the north, Kane realized the urgency. He stepped to the fire and grabbed the pot.
    â€œHey, don’t take the coffee away,” Hook said.
    Kane ignored the man. But a moment later he paid heed to the twin shotgun barrels pointed right at his belly. “I said, don’t take the coffee away.” Hook’s eyes gleamed in the firelight like hot coals and there was death in his voice.
    But Logan Kane was not in an accommodating mood. Without a second of hesitation he threw the boiling-hot contents of the pot into Hook’s face, then reached down and wrenched the scattergun from the man’s grasp.
    Hook screamed and his hands flew to his already-blistering face.
    â€œMister, if you wasn’t a family man an’ crippled an’ all, I’d a drawed down on you and put a bullet in your belly,” Kane said, his hard blue eyes lending truth to the statement.
    Hook took his hands from his fiery, blistered face and looked at them intently, as if he expected to see blood. His eyes lifted to the marshal. “Damn you to hell, Kane. Someday I’ll kill you for this.”
    The marshal smiled. He broke open the shotgun and removed the two red shells, then dropped the weapon at Hook’s feet. “I’d like to cuss an’ discuss that with you, Hook, but I got to be going,” he said.
    Hook’s swollen, blistered lips looked like stained pillows. “Heed me well, Kane,” he yelled at the marshal’s retreating back. “One day soon I’ll kill you.”
    After washing out the coffeepot in the creek, Kane handed it to Sam. “What happened to Hook?” the old man asked. “We couldn’t see from here.”
    â€œNothing,” the marshal said, his face bland. “He just wanted more coffee.”
    Sam filled the pot in the water and poured it over Nellie. The girl’s eyes fluttered open and she looked into her mother’s face. “Ma, what—what are these men doing to me?”
    â€œMaking you better, child. You have a fever an’ we must chase it away.”
    â€œMa . . . Ma . . . I don’t want . . .”
    Nellie’s eyes closed and Sam said