[Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line (16 page)

"Her and all of them. They're good folks."

Webb nodded. "Good people, caught up in bad times. I'm afraid that's been the way of the world since the first days. We won't see the end of it in our short span upon the earth."

The family filed into place at the table. Rusty waited until everyone else was seated, then took the position he had been given at the end of a bench across from Geneva and the younger girls. Lon Monahan's eyes were tired, his shoulders sagging. After Webb said grace, Monahan gulped half a cup of coffee. He tore a biscuit in half, started to eat it, then laid it on his plate. His face was grim.

"I didn't sleep none last night," he said. "Caleb Dawkins kept runnin' through my mind. Ain't there somethin' in the Scriptures, Preacher, about handwritin' on the wall?"

"It foretells things to come."

"The handwritin' is on the wall here. Texas is about to pull out of the union. When it does, all hell is liable to bust loose. Fanatics like Dawkins will run wild and free, for a while at least. "They'll be comin' after folks who've talked against Texas pullin' out."

Clemmie protested, "Everybody around here is your friend, Lon, even if they don't agree with you. They wouldn't let him—"

"He won't ask them. He'll just go ahead and do it, or try to."

James's voice was confident. "You've always been able to take care of yourself, Pa. And we'll be with you, all of us."

"I couldn't ask for a better family. But anything that puts me in danger puts you-all in danger, too. The way I see it, we've got two choices. We can stay and tough it out, or we can leave here before the trouble starts."

Geneva cried, "Leave? But where would we go?"

"I hear that a few folks've already gone south to Mexico. Or we could move west out to Arizona or California. Maybe even to Oregon, where there ain't no north nor south, where there won't be no war."

Clemmie demanded, "What about the farm? We've worked so long and so hard—"

"The Vanderfords've been after me a long time to let them buy it. We could be halfway to Arizona before Dawkins and his crowd even know we're gone."

James stood up, fists clenched. "Turn tail and run? That ain't like you, Pa. It ain't like us."

"You're way too young to remember the runaway scrape, when Santy Anna marched across Texas, bent on wipin' us all out. A lot of brave folks packed up and ran because they didn't see any other way to survive." He looked at Webb. "You know what I'm talkin' about, Preacher?"

Webb nodded sadly. "I'm afraid I read the handwritin' on the wall the same way you do."

Rusty saw anguish in Geneva's eyes and wished he could do something to ease it. He said, "There ought to be somebody who could do somethin'. The rangers, maybe. There's more to the rangers than fightin' Indians. Aren't we supposed to keep the peace?"

Webb said, "When Texas secedes there won't be any peace to keep. Not likely to be much of a government, not for a while. May not even be any rangers."

James declared, "To hell with Caleb Dawkins. We'll fight him. We'll kill him if we have to."

Webb cautioned, "You shouldn't speak of killin'. Don't even think of it."

Rusty imagined he could hear Clemmie's teeth grinding. She declared, "This place is ours. We built it from nothin'. We're not goin' to Mexico or Oregon or anywhere else. We're stayin' right here."

Lon Monahan's gaze moved to the other members of the family—Billy, Geneva and her sisters, Clemmie's father. "You-all say the same? Even knowin' the risk, you're bound to stay?"

Geneva looked at Webb. "There'd be risk on the trail too, wouldn't there, Preacher Webb?"

Webb's eyes were sad. "Indians. Sickness. Outlaws. No tellin' what-all."

Geneva said, "Then we'd just be tradin' one risk for another. Maybe a bunch of them."

Clemmie folded her arms, her eyes stern. "Here at least we know what the danger is. It's got a face, and that face looks like old Caleb Dawkins. There never was a time, on the sickest day of your life, that you couldn't beat the whey out of that son of a bitch. Pardon me, Preacher."

Monahan's eyes brightened. "I just wanted everybody to know what we're up against and to let you have your say." He turned back to Webb. "I've told you before, and I'll say it again. I've got the best damned family of anybody I know."

Webb still looked sad. "I envy you your family, but I do not envy the position you're in."

Monahan shrugged as if his worries had largely evaporated. "Long as we stick together, ain't nothin' can whip us." He turned to his breakfast.

Webb ate little. Monahan's renewed cheer had not transferred itself to him. Rusty finished his eggs and biscuits and pushed to his feet. "I wish I could stay longer, but I've still got a ways to travel." He shook hands with Monahan and with each member of the family, including the smallest of the girls.

Geneva said, "You'll be comin' back this way sometime, won't you?"

"That is my intention." He lingered a moment, held by the sparkle in her eyes.

Webb said, "I'll walk out to the barn with you."

They strode in silence to where the horse and the mule were tied. Rusty asked, "You sure you can do anything here?"

"There is no certainty in this life. I'll do what I can to keep the peace. The rest is up to a greater power than ourselves." He grasped Rusty's hand. "Be careful. The Indians have been given a bad bargain, and they're mad. You had nothing to do with it, but you're white. That makes you fair game."

"I'll watch out."

"I'm proud of you, Rusty. You were a good boy, and you've grown up to be a good man. Now go and be a good ranger."

Riding away, Rusty looked back. He already missed the comforting presence of Preacher Webb. Except for the farm itself, Webb was the only remaining strong tie to his life with Mike and Dora Shannon. He saw the Monahans scattering, each to his or her own chores, and regret was a wrenching pain. For a while he had warmed himself in the glow of this closely knit family. Now he mourned anew the loss of his own, for he was alone again, rootless and adrift.

It was not a lot farther to Fort Belknap, and Rusty did not push hard. He did not want to wear down his animals. Tom Blessing had not indicated there was any particular hurry. His main concern had been to put distance between Rusty and Isaac York until feelings cooled down. Rusty stopped occasionally to allow the horse and mule to graze and to give himself an opportunity to study the land. He had counted the rivers and streams he had crossed and knew there were more than Blessing's rough map had indicated. But good water made for a good country.

From time to time he came upon scattered small gatherings of buffalo, their winter hair rough and matted. He was tempted to shoot one just for the hell of it, but Daddy Mike had taught him long ago to kill only for meat, not for pleasure. If he shot one of these shaggy animals he would have to leave most of the carcass to spoil. Mike would say that was wasteful of Nature's gifts, and not pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

Despite his edgy feeling of aloneness and vulnerability, he found pleasure in traversing the rolling plains after breaking out of the cross timbers and its scrub-oak country. They were different in many ways, both in terrain and in vegetation, from the Colorado River region of his upbringing. It was not entirely new to him. He had seen the area before, going and coming back from following the Brazos reserve Indians on their reluctant march to new and less desirable country north of the Red.

It required no stretch of his imagination to understand why they so hated leaving after having set down roots near the Clear Fork of the Brazos on land pledged to be theirs forever. Forever had proven to be painfully short. Though most had no cultural inclination toward being farmers, many had put forth an honest effort to learn, to break out fields and plant crops the way the white agents showed them. Then they had been hurried away under military escort, obliged to leave most of their livestock for the whites who moved in behind them.

Yet Rusty understood the other side of the argument. Warfare was an integral part of Indian life—at least for the horseback Indians who roamed the plains. Warrior status was coveted by every ambitious young male. Only through war and the hunt could he prove himself worthy of being regarded a man. A life without war would be idle and pointless, too dreary to contemplate. Sometimes war was fought against nearby tribes. More often the targets were American settlers and Mexicans, whoever came handy.

To these people of European extraction and vastly different culture, it was intolerable to live in constant fear of potentially hostile neighbors. Most could recall violent deaths of kin and acquaintances at Indian hands. In many a home, chilling family stories were told and retold about depredations against forebears in the Alleghenies, the Mohawk and Ohio Valleys, the Southeast, or down in Mexico. A rumor of Indians could panic a community or arouse it to arms.

Coming into the region that had been the reservation before removal, Rusty saw a few new cabins. Some structures built by or for the Indians were occupied. Settlers had not wasted time moving into the vacuum after the former residents were dispossessed. He knew there had been political string-pulling well ahead of the removal and that hunger for land had been at least as potent a motive as fear in breaking up the Brazos reserve.

His opinion about these new settlers was immaterial, whether favorable or otherwise. As a ranger, paid or not, he would have to defend them against reinvasion by the displaced Indians. Since removal, any Indian found inside the borders of Texas was assumed to be hostile and subject to being shot on sight unless accompanied by federal or state officials. Even then he would be regarded with suspicion and kept under watch lest he try to take back by force that which he regarded as having been his.

Rusty came to a creek he thought too narrow to be the Clear Fork. He was sure it was not on Blessing's crude map. Nearby stood a new picket cabin built of upright oak logs and covered by a sod roof that he doubted would keep all the rain out. The sod was thick enough and heavy enough to pose a hazard if it became saturated with water. Its weight could collapse the cabin into a heap of ruin and bury anyone unlucky enough to have sought shelter inside. But perhaps its owner was better at farming than at carpentry.

A man was stacking stones, building a rock fence around a garden plot. He was so intent on his work or whatever else was on his mind that he remained unaware until Rusty was almost close enough to reach across the fence and touch him.

"Howdy," Rusty said.

The man jumped backward, bringing a large rock up defensively as if to brain Rusty with it. A trickle of brown down his chin showed he had been chewing tobacco. He swallowed most of it. "My God!" he exclaimed after a moment's startled silence. "You could've been an Indian. Why don't you make a little noise before you slip up on a feller?" He dropped the stone and spat out what remained of the tobacco, coughing in an effort to bring up some that had lodged in his throat.

Rusty said, "This old mule sloshes like a water barrel on a wagon. You must've been studyin' hard not to've heard us."

It took the farmer a minute to get rid of the tobacco and calm down. "Maybe I was. I need to pay more attention if I'm to keep livin' in this country. Just because they've moved the Indians out don't mean they might not come back."

"Could you blame them? They were given this land, and then it was taken away from them."

"It wasn't me that gave them the reservation, and it wasn't me that told them they had to leave. Damned government never did ask my opinion about anything. If I hadn't took up this place, somebody else would've. Can't blame me for that, can you?"

Rusty shook his head. "Seems like it doesn't do much good to blame anybody. It's a mess, and we have to live with it the best we can. Mind if I water my stock at your creek?"

"The creek ain't mine, just the land that runs up to it. If you and your animals drink it all up, them fellers downstream will just have to take care of theirselves." The farmer had recovered from his momentary fright, though Rusty suspected it would take longer to get over the tobacco he had swallowed.

"I'm on my way up to Fort Belknap. I've been through here before, but I'm a little hazy about the distance."

The farmer studied the horse and mule, satisfying himself of their soundness. "You'll make it in another day easy enough. Less if you lope up a little. What kind of business draws you to Belknap?"

"I'm reportin' for duty there."

The farmer's eyebrows went up. "You look kind of young to be one of them minuteman rangers."

"Captain Blessing thinks I'm old enough."

"You're liable to age in a hurry. Some hard old boys hang around in the brush outside of Fort Belknap. They don't take kindly to the law messin' with their business."

"What kind of business?"

"Some peddle whiskey up north of the Red River, on the Indian reservation. Others go up there and steal Indian horses. When the Indians get mad enough or drunk enough to start raisin' hell, it's always somebody innocent that gets hurt. They don't try to find the ones that's actually caused their trouble. Anybody white will do."

Rusty decided the farmer was not going to invite him to break bread with him or to spend the night. It was early in the afternoon anyway. He could make several more miles before time to camp.

The farmer said, "I don't ordinarily give advice where it ain't been asked for, but you look like some mother's nice young son. If I was you I wouldn't advertise too high about bein' a ranger. Some of them rough boys might decide to leave you layin' out on the prairie and pretend like the Indians done it."

"Once I join the company I'm assigned to, there won't be any secret about who I am."

"Rangers up in this country generally travel in packs, or at least in pairs so one can watch the front while the other watches the rear. Indians ain't the only danger around here, not by a long ways. You heard about agent Neighbors gettin' murdered in Belknap? Just because he tried to help the reserve Indians."