The Outlaw Josey Wales Read Online Free PDF Page A

patted cold water over Jamie’s face.
    The boy opened his eyes. He grinned tightly up at Josey and from behind set teeth he whispered, “Whupped ’em agin, didn’t we, Josey?”
    “Yeah,” Josey said softly, “we whupped ’em agin.”
    He rolled a blanket and placed it under Jamie’s head and stood facing southward. The posse had disappeared into the closing darkness. Still he watched. After a long time he was rewarded with the flickering of campfires from the woods to the southwest. The posse was encamping for the night.
    Had he been alone, Josey would have drifted back toward the Blackwater and with the morning followed the posse south. But Josey had seen mortification wounded men before. It always killed. He figured hundred miles to the Cherokee’s medicine lodge.
    Jamie was sitting up, and Josey lifted him onto the mare. They continued southward, passing the lights of the posse’s camp on their right.
    Though the sky was dark with clouds Josey calculated midnight when he brought the horses to a halt. Though conscious, Jamie swayed in the saddle, an Josey lashed his feet in the stirrups, bringing the rope under the horse’s belly to secure the boy.
    “Jamie,” he said, “the mare’s got a smooth single-foot gait. Nearly smooth as a walk. We got to mat more time. Can ye handle it, boy?”
    “I can handle it.” The voice came weak but confident. Josey lifted the roan into a slow, mile-eating canter, and the little mare stayed with him. The undulating prairie slowly changed character … a small, tree-bunched hillock showed here and there. Before dawn they had reached the Grand River. Searching its bank for a ford, Josey picked a well-traveled trail to cross and then pushed on across open ground toward the Osage.
    They nooned on the banks of the Osage River. Josey grained the horses from the corn in Jamie’s saddlebags. Now, to the south and east, they could see the foothills of the wild Ozark Mountains with the tangle ravines and uncountable ridges that long had served the outlaw on the run. They were close, but the Osage was too deep and too wide.
    Over a tiny flame Josey steamed broth for Jamie. For himself, he wolfed down half-cooked salt pork and corn pone. Jamie rested on the ground; the broth had brought color to his cheeks.
    “How we goin’ to cross, Josey?”
    “There’s a ferry ’bout five mile down, at Osceola crossing,” Josey answered as he cinched the saddles on the horses.
    “How in thunderation we goin’ to git acrost on a ferry?” Jamie asked incredulously.
    Josey lifted the boy into the saddle. “Well,” he drawled, “ye jest git on it and ride, I reckin.”
    Heavy timber laced with persimmon and stunted cedar bushes shielded them from the clearing. The ferry was secured to pilings on the bank. Back from the river there were two log structures, one of which appeared to be a store. Josey could see the Clinton road snaking north for a half mile until it disappeared over a rolling rise and reappeared in the distance.
    Light wood smoke drifted from the chimneys of both the store and the dwelling, but there were no signs of life except an old man seated on a stump near the ferry. Josey watched him for a long time. The old man was weaving a wire fish basket. He looked up constantly from his work to peer back toward the Clinton road.
    “Old man acts nervous,” Josey muttered, “and this here would be a likely place.”
    Jamie slumped beside him on the mare. “Likely fer… reckin things ain’t right?”
    “I’d give a yaller-wheeled red waggin to see on the other side of them cabins,” Josey said… then, “Come on.” With the practiced audacity of the guerrilla, he walked his horse from the brush straight toward the old man.

Chapter 6
    For nearly ten years old man Carstairs had run the ferry. He owned it… the store and the house, bought with his own scrimped-up savings, by God. For all of that time old man Carstairs had walked a tightrope. Ferrying Kansas Redleg, Missouri