A Running Man E-Book

H. Berkeley Rourke

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A heinous murder of a young girl breaks the peace of a community in Yuma, Arizona.

It's 1890. The town is growing and changing, with many emerging farms and ranches. But some of its people are not changing in concert with the times. After the brutal murder of a young girl, the killer escapes from prison with the help of his father.

Determined to bring Jenny's killer to justice, Ralph Forney and his best friend Ross Hendershot enter into a deadly chase to capture the killer. But even at the 19th century, the West is a dangerous, unforgiving place. Can the law keepers catch the criminals before it's too late?

A Running Man is the third novel in H. Berkeley Rourke's Hendershot Series.

Leseprobe

A Running Man

A Ross Hendershot Novel II

H. Berkeley Rourke

Copyright (C) 2015 H. Berkeley Rourke

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

eBook Cover Design by The Illustrated Author (www.theillustratedauthor.net)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Prologue

This tale of the west of the 1870's through a period up to about 1890 is, in part, about a man named Ralph Forney. Other people impacted or were part of his life. They included family members, his wife, his daughter, and dear friends, and one of his companions, Ross Hendershot. Much of the rest of the tale is about a young man, a man named Jason Grant. Jason, the son of a rancher in the Yuma, Arizona vicinity, turned out to be a rapist and a murderer. After being in prison for approximately a year he escaped, and Ross Hendershot and Ralph Forney tried to track him down. The tale cannot be told without reference to Ralph's wife, Georgianna, his son Jonas, and his daughter Jenny. It is, in a way, a tale of endings, and new beginnings, of living and dying in a difficult time in history. The historical narrative telling his story was created by Ralph, and written by Flora Hendershot.

Ralph and his wife Georgianna came to Yuma, Arizona in about 1875. Yuma was not a large town when they arrived there. The reason they came was very important to them both. They came to Yuma where Ralph had been hired to do a job. They lived in Bisbee prior to the time they moved. They arrived in Yuma along with their infant son to be, and yes, she became pregnant during the month or so it took them to move from Bisbee to Yuma. They moved so Ralph could take the job of Sheriff in Yuma. It paid more money than he was making doing the same kind of work in Bisbee. They were married shortly before the move.

The Conestoga wagon in which Ralph and Georgi arrived in Yuma contained all their belongings, her hope chest, and all the things they had received as gifts because of their marriage. They struck out across the desert even though there was some danger from Apache, and they made it to Tombstone, then Tucson and finally to Yuma after what seemed to be an eternity of traveling through rough desert. There were a few small places along the way where it was possible to renew their supplies of water and feed for the horses. Every night they slept under the stars, under the wagon, next to a small camp fire, and made love. Along the way somewhere she became pregnant with their son who would be named Jonas. He was born a few months after they arrived in Yuma. Jonas went to work for the U.S. Army as a tracker and guide. He was born about four years before Jenny, and left home at age sixteen.

Ralph had been born in about 1844, and grew up in the Denton County, Texas area. Though the Commanche raids which came almost every month grew less frequent while Ralph was growing up they would increase after the War of Aggression (the Civil War some call it). Ralph served the Confederacy with the Texas Cavalry in 1863, and was captured and released. Being captured and released probably created more danger for him than he would have had if he had stayed in the confederate army. He made his way home to Texas as soon as he could. It meant hiding out part of the time while the war was still going on. Hiding out was necessary to escape those who rounded up and shot deserters. Any Confederate soldier who signed a letter of allegiance to the Union was considered a deserter, and shot when discovered. There were many who sought after so-called deserters, and those who found them showed little mercy.

Ralph left Denton County shortly after the Civil War. There was no work in Texas so he headed north and then west. He tried being a buffalo hunter, but the Buffalo were killed out in Kansas and Nebraska too quickly. He had no desire to go to Wyoming or Montana to hunt them. He took the first lawman's job he ever held in Eastern Texas before going north. There he learned a tremendous amount from a patient man about how to handle drunks and belligerent people who were being taken to jail. As he moved on, heading north and west into the Panhandle of Texas he went into a town called Claude. There he learned another lesson. As the story goes he went into a saloon and was finishing a drink when a man said to him, “Where are you from boy?”

Ralph said he was from northeast Texas and asked the man if he knew where Denton County was. The man immediately became angry, or appeared to be angry, and took a swing after yelling, “Are you calling me stupid?” Ralph managed to defend himself well even though the man who assaulted him was bigger. Then Ralph got hit in the head with what the Sheriff later called a bung starter. The sheriff told Ralph about the bung starter after he wandered out of the cell in which he had spent the night, waking up with a horrible headache. The man with whom Ralph had fought turned out to be a local who picked a fight with any new man he saw in the saloon. The lesson learned? Stay away from the bar, and the bartender, when you get into a fight so you don't get hit in the head with something. It turned out the sheriff was a great guy, and so was the guy with whom Ralph fought. He too had spent the night in the jail. Both laughed about the entire thing the next morning.

Ralph lived with a woman in New Mexico for a time but she left him one day for no apparent reason. After she left Ralph moseyed on down the road to Silver City, and took a deputy's job there. In a short time he had the wander lust again, and headed for Arizona. He didn't cotton much to the people in Silver City, New Mexico so he moved on to Globe, Arizona, deep in the heart of Apache land. Ralph was very lucky regarding riding from Silver City to Globe because he did not encounter any hostile Apaches. In those times, the 1870's, it would have been easy to run into a raiding group of Apache around Globe, Arizona. Little quarter would be given to any white man by any Apache if such a chance meeting occurred.

Ralph found a wonderful Sheriff in Globe named Huddleston who gave him a job as a deputy right away. Ralph worked there for a while until the Sheriff was killed by a jealous husband. The killing is, in and of itself, quite a tale. The jealous husband was having a drink in a local watering hole. He was talking about his wife and mentioned her name. A stranger had come into the bar and overheard the conversation. Like a lot of women of those times she had worked as a prostitute, married and left the New Mexico town in which she had been working to take up the life of a “normal” married woman. The stranger said something about her being a whore. The husband went and got a gun. The Sheriff tried to get his friend, the man who had done the killing, to give up his gun, and ended up getting killed himself. The husband shot the drummer, and shot the sheriff. He killed both because the drummer had called his wife a whore. Once, before they married, she had been a whore. She returned to her time-honored profession after her husband went to jail. It is wacky world sometimes. It always seemed to Ralph there ought to be a better way to solve problems than with a gun or your fists. Many seemed to disagree, and those sometimes tried to solve their problems with guns. In a way, the tendency of some men to have problems which end up in fights of one kind or another, are a boon to men like Ralph since they provide them with jobs.

After working in Globe for a time, Ralph went to Bisbee, and there he tried to get hired on as a miner. He wasn't really cut out for the kind of work miners do, and when he heard the Constable's job was open in Bisbee he applied for it, and was appointed to fill the position. It was a good place, Bisbee. It was quiet, without Apache attacks, and without a lot of criminal conduct. Mostly what Ralph ended up doing as a lawman there was putting drunks in a cell to sleep it off after a fight in a bar. Then he saw an ad for the Sheriff's position in Yuma. Georgi and Ralph were courting at the time, and she had accepted his proposal of marriage. He left Bisbee for long enough to go to Yuma, apply for and be hired for the job, set up a time when he would be there for sure, arranging for the current Sheriff to stay on until then, and went home to marry, and bring his bride to their new home. It was an adventure for both in loving as well as the travel across the breadth of the Territory of Arizona.

When Ralph and Georgi arrived in Yuma they rented a small place in town. By the time the two of them had been there for several years they had settled on, and created, a small ranch just northwest of town in the rich soil of the river bed. There was some danger of flooding from the Colorado River, but they planned well, built their home high enough off the ground so it would not be flooded, putting it on a small hill. It was a sweet existence for them, and their children. The two of them were able, Georgi (short for Georgianna) and Ralph, to buy the land and build on it in part because he left the job as Sheriff, and went to work with Ross Hendershot, and his wife Flora, in the Palace Hotel, Bar and Fancy House. Ralph became a third partner in the place by investing with Ross and Flora from the generous wages they paid him. It was the most money he had ever been paid for his work.

Ross came into Yuma about a year or so before Ralph went to work with he and Flora. A young man named George Martin tried to kill Ross one day. Ralph was a little better shot and got to Ross a little before Martin did, and shot and killed the Martin boy before he could kill Ross. From the very moment after Ralph shot Martin, Ross and Ralph became close friends. They discovered, while Ross was working for Ralph as an investigator as to the activities of a man named George Bonhomme, they had grown up in the same area of Denton County, Texas, only lived some ten to twenty miles apart and had many similar experiences as young men. George seemed to be fortunate as a gambler, or maybe he brought in gamblers to his place of business who were more than just lucky. People who owed him money because of gambling seemed to leave town or disappear. Ralph asked Ross, after they became acquainted, knowing Ross was going to be employed by Bonhomme, if he would keep an eye out as to what was going on with those who seemed to disappear. Ross said sure and Ralph put him on the county payroll. The kinship between Ross and Ralph had already begun for sure. It grew with their connection as Ross dealt with issues caused by George Bonhomme. Ross also had to deal with issues concerning his love for the woman who became his wife, Flora. As time passed Ross's son, Manny, and Ralph's son Jonas became good friends as boys even though Jonas was a few years older.

Georgi and Ralph made their home into a small farm and ranch. The ranch had chickens which the young children tended for eggs, and when one seemed to be unproductive, or in times of need, for food. They kept several cattle for milk and for beef. Jonas tended the several pigs which they also kept for meat. Their garden, which Georgi tended with the help of the children, and occasionally even Ralph, was very productive. At first the garden only held flowers, but the ground was good and eventually it grew vegetables and herbs. A small barn was built for their horses and to shelter the other animals in bad weather. The chickens sheltered and laid eggs in the same building. As the family of animals grew it was necessary to add space onto the barn.

Ralph and Georgi's daughter, Jenny, was born in their little home with a midwife attending. It was the same way Ralph was born in Texas, just as it had been for Georgi when she was born in Bisbee. Ralph's lovely wife Georgi also left the world in the same home. She contracted a fever of some kind which just wore her down, wore her out and finally took her life. The disease, whatever it was, moved slowly through her, consuming her a little at a time while all the family watched. It was sad and frightening. It was also lucky for the rest of the family not to have contracted the same feverish illness, because they all shared caring for her during the time in which she was ill.

After Georgi died Ralph was a lost soul for a while. In all his years of wandering, working as a cowhand now and again, working bars and working as a lawman, he had never been much of a drinker. When Georgi became sick, and then died, he sought refuge in the bottle. Ralph never thought it would happen to him but it did. His closest friends, Ross and Flora, spent a lot of time with the Forney kids and Ralph in those dark, lonely, drunken days. Flora helped Ralph's little girl to grow up, taught her many things about cooking, about housekeeping, women's secrets of which Ralph had no knowledge. Flora was a godsend for the Forney children. Ross, his dearest friend, helped him to begin to climb out of the doldrums of the pain over Georgi's death. He helped Ralph to escape the need for the bottle. They rode together, practiced shooting when Ralph could hold a gun without the feeling of the need to turn it on himself, and the two of them spent much time talking about Georgi. Ralph met her in Bisbee when she was only sixteen. When she was seventeen Ralph asked her parents to allow him to court her. Ralph and Georgi courted for nearly a year before they were married. She was everything he ever had thought a woman should be, and so much more. The daily steps of recovering from being a drunk were difficult, the loss was too much for Ralph to bear sometimes. He fell back into the bottle on several occasions. When Ralph got drunk again, Ross drug him out of the gutter, cleaned him up, fed him, sobered him up again and then he started anew. Finally, he began to see the error of his ways and picked himself up as well. He began to work again, fulfill my duties in the business venture, to live again in some respects though with tremendous grief over the loss of his lovely wife.

Ralph's daughter, Jenny, was strong, resilient and even though she too was grieving she helped him so very much during the months of his indulgence in alcohol. She fed him when she could persuade him to eat. She took care of the home, kept it clean, kept the animals in good shape. She had help. Ross and Flora spent much time with her, even kept her at the hotel from time to time when Ralph was on a bender. They were strong for Ralph, strong for her, loving friends without whom Ralph could not, and probably would not have lived. Jenny was his rock, his connection to her mother, his vision of the loveliness of her mother in the flesh.

Then, without warning, probably the worst moment in life he would ever experience, outside the death of his lovely wife, occurred. The events, which unfold in the rest of the story, brought Jason Grant to prison for the rest of his life, or so it was supposed to be. But Jason had been in the Yuma Territorial Prison for only about a year when he escaped. That brings us to the end of the introduction to the story of The Running Man, the story of Jason Grant and many others. This, then, is A Running Man, a story told by Ralph Forney.

Run, little rabbit, run he thought. Run as fast as you can, run as far as you can, run hard, run for your life, run for your freedom.

1 The Run Begins

The man ran, the rough desert bushes catching at his clothing, scratching him, ran some more, stopped momentarily, and caught his breath, and then began running again. He was not used to running, not used to any continuous exercise of any kind. It was exciting though, and even if he had to stop frequently to catch breath, to allow his legs to rest a moment he was determined. He was heading north of Yuma, Arizona Territory, in the State of California, not the expected direction for a man to run who had escaped from the Yuma Territorial Prison. He decided, when he managed to get away, he would follow his father's advice and try to confound those who would eventually follow him by taking a direction they would not expect. It worked as it had been planned. The group of followers, the posse, was striking out toward the south looking for sign which might tell them the direction he had taken. The posse consisted of local law enforcement people, a couple of interested people of some wealth, and some trackers.

The trackers with the posse had no idea what they were looking for, because it was unknown if Jason had a horse or was on foot. It was also unknown whether, if he was on foot, he would be wearing boots or perhaps some native moccasins. Everyone in the posse, apart from Ross Hendershot and Ralph Forney, were convinced he would head south toward the Mexican border. Moreover, his father, Jeremy, had a ranch to the south of town. The location of his father's ranch loomed large in the mind of most of the followers, reinforcing their beliefs he would head south. Everyone in the posse, again apart from Ross and Ralph, thought the young man who was running might go to his father's place. It was a place to start the search. Neither of them were convinced Jason would go to his father's ranch, or for that matter to Mexico. They went along with the posse though as a starting place in the search for the young lad. Regardless of the failure of the posse, which both Ross and Ralph thought would occur, they would continue the hunt until they tracked the boy down.

The runner was Jason Grant. He was a native of Yuma, grew up there to the ripe old age of seventeen before he found himself taking up residence in the dreaded Yuma Territorial Prison. He killed a young woman, a girl, named Jenny Forney. She was Ralph Forney's daughter. Jason did not mean to kill her but she struggled a little too much when he was raping her. He put his hand on her throat to calm her down, to keep her from screaming. She continued to fight and shortly she lay on the ground very still. It was a great surprise to him and a tragedy for Ralph. Jenny, after Ralph's wife Georgi died, became the center of his world. To him the sun rose and set on her. Everything he did in life was to take care of her, to make her life better. The escape of Jason made him furious but did not stop him from thinking. As the posse rode, stopping from time to time for the trackers to see if any sign of the passage of the young man existed, Ralph said to Ross, “This may be a futile exercise Ross. He may not have come this way at all.” Ross nodded but said nothing. There was no need. They would look to the south, look to Jeremy's ranch, and if their search there paid no dividends they would think about it, reorganize and look again elsewhere. Both were angry about Jason escaping the prison. Both wanted him returned to serve out his term of life in prison.

Jason had already been in prison for a year or so when he escaped. He was afraid he was going to die there. His family, meaning only his father, was a rancher who owned or controlled a lot of land near Yuma. His father arranged Jason's escape. It was a simple ruse which worked very well. The staff member of the prison who assisted Jason getting out left Yuma the same day and went deep into California where he would stay the rest of his life. The money Jason's father, named Jeremy Grant, paid the staff member would hardly last a lifetime, it being only five thousand dollars, but it would give him opportunity when he got to San Diego. He headed there immediately and was never seen in Yuma again.

When Jason ran out of the open gate of the prison he went directly to the Colorado River, swam across, a short swim in fact, and began to run. It was several hours before dawn when the escape occurred. By the time dawn broke on the horizon he was near to the small lake north of Yuma that in time would become known as Senator's Wash. The going was hard, it being a very dark night. He had to struggle through trees and sometimes through heavy brush. He was worried sick about snakes when he first began to run into the brush along the banks of the Colorado River. Being in the trees next to the river some of the time was courting danger with the snakes. They loved to seek the shade of the Tamarisk trees in the heat of the day, and sometimes made their dens in the spaces under the low hanging branches. He encountered one rattler just after first light but the snake was far enough away to make it easily avoidable. Though he thought about doing so for a moment, he didn't kill it. He hated the damn things, but he didn't want to leave any kind of indication he had been in that area and passed it by. He was trying to be careful about leaving tracks or sign of his passing through the terrain in which he was running. No man goes into the desert without leaving some sign of his passage, though. He was doing his best to avoid leaving signs, but his best was far from perfect.

The terrain through which Jason was running during the day was not as difficult as the trees and brush he had encountered earlier. Even several hundred feet from the banks of the river the sandy, loamy soil made his running rather easy. There were few rocks to stumble over or step on, and bruise his already sore feet. The soil was firm, not sugar sand, and did not seem to be disturbed by his passage. He could not see scuff marks in the sand as he ran. The tracks were not definitive, but could be seen by a practiced and knowing eye. It remained only for a tracker to look in the direction Jason was traveling. The desert trees along the area several hundred feet from the banks of the Colorado River, were sparse, but a few Mesquite and Palo Verde trees existed. There were no concentrations of “arrow weeds” as those were closer to the river, but there were small bushes which could hide spikes of cactus or exposed sharp edges of roots.

Jason's trek was not easy for him in large part because he was not in good physical condition. His time in prison had wasted away his muscles, had taken away his natural ability to run long distances. He had never been particularly athletic, was not a great bronc rider, could not do trick riding on his horse. His personal strength had never been nearly as evident among the cowboys with whom he worked on his father's ranch. After all, he was the “owner's son,” and was not expected to do some of the normal muscle producing chores necessary for a drover every day. Even before the end of the first day he was already getting sore muscles, already feeling the strain and the tension of running several miles.

He had a small hoard of food which was given to him by the staff member of the prison. There was water aplenty along his trail. He was told to stay close to the river. At some point as he headed north he would be met by a man with several horses, but it would be at least a day or two after the escape and many miles up the river. The staff member with whom Jason had discussed the escape was clear about the timing of meeting his father's hired hand. He needed to put as many miles between Yuma, and where he would be met as he could, by running as fast and far as he could.

Jason knew he could not and would not go back to Yuma for a long time if ever again. The first place he would be sought would be at his father's ranch. It was south and a little west of Yuma almost to Mexico. The posse went there right away. He was right about the direction the posse took. He would try to make it to La Paz, or Ehrenburg, two small towns about 90 miles north of Yuma. He might get on a steamer there, a river boat, and if he did he could go as far north as Needles, California on the boat. If he got to Needles, he could escape into northern California, and never be seen again under his current name. Who knew? Maybe he could get into the gold mining business. It was still flourishing in the area around Sacramento he had heard. He also heard from the staff member there was a new mining town out in the desert northeast of Ehrenberg/La Paz in which he would be likely to find work.

Jason was not well enough informed about his father's plan yet to know all the details of where he might go or how long he had to stay away. It was all guesswork for him when he escaped, but the man with the horses would have more information. The plan was created by his father. If he could just get to the man with the horses, whoever it might be, he would learn what his father wanted him to do next.

Jason was smart and experienced enough to know he could be spotted more easily from the river. He wanted to stay close by so he could drink plenty of water, but often small steamers headed to La Paz, or Ehrenburg, or even Needles went up the river. The steamers had to be wary of sandbars and always had lookouts. If Jason was careless he might be spotted by one of the lookouts. He had no idea what would happen then but he did know it was to be avoided if possible. His abundance of caution led him to go slowly to the river, listening, watching, making sure no one was there to see him.

Jason had heard years earlier there was some gold being found near La Paz. It was a kind of kicking off point for the town of Blythe, California, and Needles further up river. He was unaware that by 1890 La Paz was all but dead, a ghost town but for a very few die hard residents. He thought La Paz would be a good place to start looking for work. He hoped La Paz would be the place his father wanted him to go. Jason thought a man could get lost in one of the small western towns dotting the landscape of Arizona Territory. A familiar face, a man who went to work every day and bothered no one, could live a quiet and full life “out there.” La Paz was, as far as he knew, one of those places “out there.”

Jason also knew he had to drink plenty of water all the time. It was hot in the daylight hours and very hot in the afternoons. He stopped frequently the first day after his escape and hid out under mesquite trees or Palo Verde trees that hung low to the ground and the banks of the river. He watched carefully and listened. When he heard no sounds, and saw no boats he took water from the river. It was not wise to run in the heat. Without plenty of water he could die easily in the desert where it would be unlikely anyone would ever find his body. The river was close by though, and most of all he needed to get as far as he could.

Sounds carry well in the desert air because it is a quiet place in general. There is little in the desert which disturbs its quiet, causes noise which can be heard at a distance. Jason tried to be as quiet as he could as he ran. He tried to stay on solid ground rather than running in the sand along the river itself. The sand slowed him, and of course his tracks were more evident in the sand than on the hardpan of the desert. Since the hardpan was only a short distance from the river he chose to run along its edges. He learned as he went, seeking a better feel on his feet a little further away from the water. When he was too far out into the open desert he encountered stones, which hurt his feet a lot. He moved back toward the water until there were not as many rocks in the soil. There were more obstacles to avoid as he moved closer to the river, but it was not a problem for him to jump over small bushes, or veering away from trees.

Jason stayed well away from the salt cedar trees, or Tamarisks, which also provided cover and shade along the banks of the river. Those trees seemed to be magnets for rattlesnakes who apparently wanted out of the sun during the heat of the day. The arrow weeds along the bank made for difficult walking or running and made for difficult entry to the banks of the river in many places. They also provided good cover from anyone seeing him as he went to the river to drink. Once in the second day he nearly had a heart attack when a covey of Gambel's Quail flew out of the arrow weeds in front of him. It was coming up on evening at the time.