Outlaw Train by Cameron Judd Page B

House Hotel. Jakey had been recruited by Ben tofeed, while Ben was away, the three stray cats that Ben allowed to live under his porch. That Jakey was still doing so lent support to the notion that Ben was not in fact back in Kansas. Luke said as much to Dewitt.
    “I seen what I seen,” Dewitt replied stubbornly.
    “Let’s go down and ask Jakey if he knows anything.”
    Jakey, distracted by his efforts to lure a recalcitrant feline from beneath the porch for a pan of milk-soaked bread, did not see the two lawmen riding down toward the house. When he realized they were there, he bumped his head soundly while trying to get out from beneath the porch. The cat he’d been trying to lure followed him but ignored its food and raced around the house to the barn.
    “Ow! I felt that clean over here, Jakey!” Luke said as the boy rubbed his injured head. “You didn’t break skin, did you?”
    “No…don’t think so.” Jakey examined his hand for blood and found none. “Howdy, Luke. Dewitt.”
    “Didn’t mean to startle you, son,” said Luke. “Dewitt and me were just riding out this way and I wanted to check and see if you’d heard anything about Ben getting back.”
    “He’s back ?”
    “Well, Dewitt believes he caught a glimpse of him the other day. But he was looking through some trees and never really saw his face. The horse looked to be Ben’s, or it least one just like his.”
    “If he’s back, he ain’t come around here,” Jakey said. “I been coming every day and bringing scraps to these danged cats just like he wanted me to. ButI’m tired of it, and what he paid me before he left wasn’t enough to cover me still taking care of these cats for all this time.”
    “You’re a good boy to do it, Jakey,” Dewitt said.
    “Thank you, Dewitt. How’s Eric the Mighty doing?”
    “Still pokey, but he’s making it. Ain’t limping so much as before.”
    Luke said, “I kind of know how you’re feeling about Ben, Jakey. I’ve been left doing a job for longer than I expected, too. I was looking for Ben to come back weeks ago.”
    “Yeah. Hey, Luke, is it true what my brother told me?”
    “If it’s something Jimmy said, there’s no telling. What was it?”
    “He says that Kate Bender is in Wiles, living in the hotel and pretending to be somebody else.”
    Luke raised his brows. It was the first time that anyone had spoken aloud the name he and others had been talking around and thinking about for the last little while: Kate Bender. Hearing the name said out loud knocked him back to his nightmare of sitting in that prairie inn before a stained fabric curtain. He shuddered and hoped the other two did not notice it.
    “Who’s Kate Bender?” Dewitt asked.
    “You haven’t heard about the Bender family, Dewitt?” Luke asked.
    “I think maybe I’ve heard the name. But I don’t remember nothing about them.”
    “They was bad, bad people, Dewitt,” said Jakey. “Lived over in east Kansas, in Labette County. Oldman and his wife, plus a son and a daughter. Daughter’s name was Kate. Real pretty woman, by all accounts. They say she was the heart of the family and the one who led in the crimes they did.”
    “Robbers?” Dewitt asked.
    “Yep, and worse. Killers.”
    “They get hung for it?”
    “Nope. They got away, that’s what they done,” Jakey continued. He was growing into his story, speaking with increasing energy. “They was killing folks who came to a little inn they was running in a house out on the flatlands. Bashed folks in the head with a big hammer after they’d set them down to eat with a curtain behind them. The son of the family, he acted kind of half-witted, they say, but he’d be behind that curtain, and when Kate or one of the others would give him a signal, he’d bring that hammer around, right through the curtain, and smash in the brain of whoever was at the table. Kill them dead. They’d drop them down through a place in the floor into a pit, and finally they’d clean