The Prairie Man, page 1
The Prairie Man
I. J. Parnham
Published by Culbin Press, 2024.
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in 2011 by Robert Hale Limited
Copyright © 2011, 2024 by I. J. Parnham
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prolog
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Sign up for I. J. Parnham's Mailing List
Further Reading: The Search for the Lone Star
Also By I. J. Parnham
Prolog
“The Prairie Man is coming!” Hank Pierce screeched. He grabbed Temple Kennedy’s shoulder and tried to move him on along the top of the bank.
Temple dug in his heels while wondering how to glean some amusement out of the situation, but as Hank’s shocked eyes were glistening with moisture in the moonlight he took pity on him.
“He isn’t,” he said. “The Prairie Man’s not real. He’s just a story your ma made up.”
Hank gulped, showing that he wanted to believe him, but that he was genuinely scared.
“But it wasn’t like she said. This time he was real. We should never have sneaked out.”
Temple shook his head. The two years he had on the ten-year-old Hank had let him work out that they’d been told scary stories about a dark shadow that flitted through the darkness to stop them sneaking out late at night.
That hadn’t stopped them, but right now Hank clearly wished it had. Beside them the narrow creek’s water was an inky mass with the steep banks on either side keeping the low moonlight from penetrating. The shrouded banks held the promise of adventure, but their home was in the only direction Hank wanted to go.
Temple gestured ahead. “We’ll go home, then, but be quiet or we’ll be in deep trouble.”
“We are already. The Prairie Man is after us.”
Hank wailed and then hurried on. His voice sounded so worried that Temple turned around. Other than the tall grass that was waving in the light breeze there was only the lone oak thirty yards away, its stark and gnarled form perhaps providing a clue about what had fueled Hank’s active imagination.
Temple set off after him, but in his haste to catch up, his bare foot slipped on a patch of mud and he fell at full length. Worse, he rolled to the side and tumbled over the edge of the bank.
Then he bumped down the steep side, his vision filled with whirling stars until with a gasp he hit the cold water. Silence and darkness hit him and he felt strangely serene. He flapped his arms and the motion moved him to the surface where he shook the water from his eyes.
Hank had stopped and he stood at the top of the bank, making Temple’s heart thud with embarrassment. Once Hank had calmed down he would have been able to rib him about how scared he had been, but after falling into the water Hank could easily rib him back about his foolishness.
Temple was a good swimmer, so he kicked off toward the side. He didn’t move, so he tried again, but this only succeeded in dragging him backward. He slipped under the water and he had to fight to get back to the surface, where he needed to crane his neck to keep his head above water.
“Help,” he gasped before he again went under.
This time he gathered his strength and kicked out, but that showed him what his problem was. Vegetation had snagged his right foot and the more he kicked, the more the weeds wound around his ankle. He again reached the surface, but Hank hadn’t moved.
“Stop playing around and get out,” Hank urged in hushed tones.
“I’m trapped,” Temple shouted, uncaring of who heard him now. He waved his arms frantically, but still he couldn’t move forward. “Something’s caught me.”
“Is it the Prairie Man?”
“Weeds,” Temple managed to gasp before he went under.
He hadn’t gathered a strong breath and the urge to open his mouth for air tore at his lungs, but he fought back the panic that made his guts churn and ran his hands down to his legs. He felt the loops of weed that infested this slow-moving part of the creek and he yanked them away, but there were so many and he felt so tired.
A hand touched soft silt and his side rested on the bottom. The feeling wasn’t as worrying as he’d expected. He could curl up here and sleep just as comfortably as back in his bed. He opened his mouth and yawned.
He gasped in a huge gulp of air. He coughed and spluttered, and then retched. That made him feel better and when he raised his head he found that he was no longer in the water. Hank had put aside his fears and had dragged him out of the creek.
“You’ll be fine, won’t you?” Hank asked, concern for him having driven away his childish fears about a specter in the night.
“I will be, thanks to you.” Temple sat up. “Let’s go home.”
Later that night, wrapped up in a blanket with their warming bodies pressed up close and with their wet clothes drying on the windowsill, the two excitable boys found sleep hard to come by.
“Temple, tell me the truth,” Hank said. “You don’t believe I saw the Prairie Man, do you?”
“I don’t.”
“I saw a shadow gliding along on the other side of the creek. I did, I really did.” He gulped. “That makes me a child, doesn’t it?”
Sometimes it was all right to poke fun at his younger friend, but Temple had heard the fear in his voice.
“No. What you did tonight makes you a man. You saved my life. If it hadn’t have been for your bravery, I’d be dead, just like my parents.”
Temple’s parents had died last month and Hank’s family had taken him in, but Temple hadn’t spoken about this matter before with Hank or with anyone else. Silence somehow kept alive the hope he’d been told a lie and they’d come back for him.
“I wouldn’t want that.”
Temple detected the stronger tone of his friend’s voice. Even if they weren’t brothers by blood, they were treated like brothers now, and that thought made Temple feel determined that something should change tonight.
They had acted like silly children, but they had also been through something that was very adult. It was a secret thing they could never tell Hank’s parents and especially not Hank’s talkative younger sister Kate.
Temple picked up the oil-lamp beside the bed. Beneath was the knife he was allowed to whittle with but which Hank wasn’t allowed to touch yet, even if he had done so from the first day he’d moved here.
Temple took the knife and sat up in bed. Hank shuffled around to face him. Temple raised a thumb, steeled himself and pricked it. He bit his lip to avoid squealing and then passed the knife to Hank who, without being asked, did the same.
While Hank gulped to avoid showing it’d hurt, Temple took his hand and held the thumb up to the light beside his, showing the bright bubbles of blood. He pressed the two thumbs together and although the cut made him wince it felt the right thing to do.
“Now we’re brothers in blood, too,” he said.
“We are,” Hank said happily.
Temple felt he should say something more, so when Hank moved to suck his thumb he held it firmly.
“Tonight you saved my life, so one day I must save yours. When we grow up we might travel far away from here, but no matter where we go, you will always know that however much trouble you are in, I owe my life to you.”
Hank rubbed his nose with the back of his hand while fighting back the tears that had never been far away tonight.
“You won’t go away, will you?”
Temple turned to the window. Beyond the grass undulated in the moonlight. The urge to explore that had dominated his thoughts since last month’s events and which had led to tonight’s adventure overcame him again, but he shrugged.
“I don’t know, but I do know that no matter where I go, if you ever need me, I will find you and I will save you.”
Chapter One
“How much longer will they be?” Temple Kennedy said while gesturing down the trail toward Bear Creek.
“Patience,” Cad Miller said. “They’re probably being careful.”
Temple laughed, acknowledging that Luther Duval and Burton Sibley were the kind of men who were good at riding into town a-shooting and a-hollering, but not sneaking in and out of town quietly.
“You reckon this’ll end in trouble?”
Cad frowned. “Why else do you think they promised us both fifty dollars if we waited here?”
Temple shrugged. “I don’t know. I needed the money, so I didn’t ask too many questions.”
“I needed the money, too, but I still asked. Luther heard a rumor that a mercantile owner Bill Ellis hides his money in a hole at the back of his store. Burton’s been working for him and he now knows where it is. They’re digging it up tonight.”
Temple gulped. “You mean they’re stealing it?”
The question made Cad open his eyes wide in surprise and, with a lurching feeling in his guts, Temple accepted he’d been stupid. He should have asked questions, no matter how much he’d needed the money and, either way, he should have worked out that they would be committing a crime.
Why else would he and Cad be waiting fifteen miles out of town with fresh horses? As it turned out, when he first caught sight of them they were riding fast with nobody in pursuit. When they came closer both men displayed sour expressions that said something had gone wrong, even if a bulging corn sack lay over Luther’s saddle.
“Give me the reins,” Luther said the moment he’d drawn up. “We haven’t got time to waste.”
“Is someone after you?” Cad asked.
“There will be,” Luther said with a sigh that said they had a story to relate, even if they weren’t prepared to tell it just yet.
Temple and Cad didn’t ask what the problem was and instead they mounted up. In short order they shooed away the tired horses. Then they turned away from the westward route the two men had been taking and headed north.
At high points they checked behind them, but there was no sign of pursuit. Darkness came and still they rode on. It was long into the night when they fetched up in the small town of Big Springs.
There was nowhere to sleep here other than the stables, but apparently Luther and Burton had stopped here before. Big Springs was a settlement that asked no questions and more important, it would provide no answers to anyone who might later ask where they’d gone.
They would have to leave before first light, and split up to confuse any pursuers, but tonight they had enough time to relax their frazzled nerves with a few whiskeys. Cad smiled when he was shown that the sack contained several hundred dollars, but Luther and Burton maintained their sour moods. Temple waited until they’d each knocked back two large whiskeys before he broached the subject of what was troubling them.
“What happened back there?” he asked.
They were sitting in a quiet corner of a quiet saloon where nobody was interested in anyone else’s business, but even so Luther checked that nobody was near before he replied.
“It went wrong,” he said, drawing the men into a conspiratorial huddle. “We dug the hole quietly, but not quietly enough. While Burton was keeping watch Bill found me.”
Temple and Cad both winced before they leaned forward to hear the rest.
“How badly hurt is he?” Cad asked.
“It wasn’t Bill,” Luther said while Burton frowned.
“I broke a plank over Bill’s head,” Burton said. “He went down, but he was breathing all right, so I headed around to the front with the sack. Luther didn’t follow.”
“This young lad had found us,” Luther added with a pronounced gulp.
“His nephew stays with him sometimes,” Burton said with another gulp. “But not anymore.”
“You couldn’t have killed him,” Temple said.
“I didn’t intend to,” Luther said. He knocked back a whiskey and poured another. “He shouted for help, so I put a hand over his mouth and carried him to the storeroom. I meant to gag him, but I took a while to find a rag. When I took the hand away. . . .”
“He was a weak lad and he had trouble breathing,” Burton said while Luther curled his upper lip in horror. “The shock would have been too great for him.”
Nobody said that this fact meant Luther shouldn’t blame himself. He was to blame for this. They all were. For several minutes the four men sat without saying a word, but when Cad broke the stillness by moving to refill everyone’s glasses, Temple shook his head and stood up.
“Not for me,” he said.
“Where are you going?” Cad asked.
“The whiskey doesn’t taste too good no more. I’m getting some fresh air.”
With that, Temple turned on his heels, walked out of the saloon and headed to the stables. Five minutes later he was riding out of town. He didn’t have a destination in mind, but he was several miles out of Big Springs before he realized that Luther had slipped his payment into his pocket. He had to stop to vomit.
Three days after the disastrous robbery Temple was holed up in another dead-end town. It was so neglected it didn’t appear to have a name and he didn’t feel inclined to talk to anyone to find out if it did in fact have one.
He still had all the money he’d been paid and the sight of it made him feel like the lowest snake in the world. He had led a drifting life that had avoided responsibility, but he had never been involved in a criminal act before and he didn’t like the man he now felt he’d become.
He was tempted to throw the money away, but somehow that felt too easy. He had to spend every dollar he’d helped to steal and feel the shame every time. So he embarked on a mission to drink his money away.
He devoted two days to steadily consuming liquor, but he still failed to spend all his funds. Then a fight over something he’d been too drunk to remember resulted in him being thrown out of town, so he moved on and sought other ways to lose the rest of his money.
The next town was Redemption City, an imposing settlement with saloons catering for the lowest as well as the best. Temple had had enough of slinking around with his fellow dregs, so he headed to a lively gambling house.
He got into a poker game with the most purposeful looking players he could find, and then proceeded to see how fast he could lose the last of his money. He failed at that, too. Betting without care or logic worried the other players into believing he was using a clever system, so quickly did he accumulate funds.
So he bet heavily on a hand where he didn’t even look at his hole and river cards. Nobody spotted his reckless behavior, so he was able to lock horns with a sweating businessman who was trying to give the impression he had a full house.
The confrontation drew a small crowd, who murmured their delight when at the showdown it turned out that the businessman had a full house, after all. The trouble was, when Temple turned over his cards he found he’d been dealt two kings giving him four of a kind.
He’d never had that kind of luck before, but he knew when he was beaten, so he stood up from the table. The businessman accepted his play with good grace and Temple walked out of the saloon with $500 in his pocket.
He walked away slowly, but nobody followed him out to steal the money. At a loss to figure out how he could get rid of money he didn’t want, he stopped outside a mercantile. He admired a shiny saddle and a new set of clothes, but that got him thinking that there was one hard-working man who wouldn’t be enjoying selling such items anymore.
Feeling wretched again he resumed walking. When he reached a hotel he decided he would sleep in a decent bed tonight. In the morning, after a full night’s sleep, he might be able to decide what he should do next, but the hotel turned out to be fully booked and the owner turned him away.
When he was back out on the boardwalk two well-dressed men went in, giving him a wide berth, and they had no trouble getting rooms. Temple looked down at himself. His clothes were torn and stained, and when he rubbed his chin he found a straggly beard.
Somehow more time had passed than he’d thought, but his ragged clothing shouldn’t have been enough to make the hotel owner treat him with so much contempt that he wouldn’t let him sleep in a decent hotel. He stood before the hotel window and sought an angle that would reveal his reflection.
The light was bright enough to expose his face, but not the eyes. They were deep-set and he knew they were haunted. He looked like a desperate man, a man people avoided.
“What’s happened to me?” he asked.
His statement made two passing men stop and turn to him, so he moved away across the main drag. A church was on the opposite side. He hadn’t been in one since he’d left his childhood home ten years ago, but he felt an urge to do so now.
The church door was locked. He did, though, find a banner plastered to a notice board. It said: Seek the Redemption Trail and Ye Shall be Saved. Temple smiled.
Chapter Two
“Don’t you remember me?” Temple asked.
“I don’t,” Philip Stiles said with a weary air. “How much do I owe you?”
