[Texas Rangers 02] - Badger Boy (9 page)

He stood with hat in hand, waiting for the remainder of the crowd to gather. The two women clutched their husbands' arms and wept. Many men knelt while Barlow said his prayer. His voice gained strength as he spoke.

"Lord, Thou hast watched over us and brought us through four long years of misery. Now we bow to offer our gratitude. Thou hast brought us deliverance from the evil that has rent families asunder and torn our country apart. We ask Thee now to give us errant children guidance as we undertake to bind up the wounds. We beseech Thy blessings upon the widow, the orphan, the soldier crippled. Bring us together and make us whole again, we ask in the name of Him who died for our sins, Amen."

Rusty shivered as he pondered the significance of the old man's news. He had sensed the end coming, yet it seemed unreal that the years of agony had come to an end.

Barlow asked Timpson, "Does this mean we can go home?"

"It means there's no Confederate government to say you can't."

Tanner gripped Rusty's shoulder, jubilation in his eyes. "That high-and-mighty Lieutenant Billings can't have got halfway to Austin yet. Wouldn't you love to see his face when he finds out?"

Rusty felt more awed than jubilant. "This means we didn't really have to quit the ranger company."

Clearly, that idea had not occurred to Tanner, but it did not give him pause. "There may not be a company left anyhow. If there's no more Confederacy, there's no more government."

"If there's no government, there's no law." The thought brought a chill to Rusty. He could visualize criminals banding together, ranging over the country with impunity, taking what they wanted, smashing anyone daring enough to stand in their way. "There's got to be law."

"It's just so much paper if there ain't nobody to carry it out."

Rusty wished they had not quit the rangers. "Len, we've got to go back."

"Where?"

"To the camp at Fort Belknap. Captain Whitfield may need us now more than ever."

Tanner's face fell. "I was countin' pretty strong on goin' home and seein' my folks."

"Duty, Len. I don't see we've got a choice if we ever want to hold our heads up again."

"I never saw anybody so hell-bent on duty."

"Then go on south without me. I know what I've got to do."

"I've already had to save your life once or twice. You'll probably get yourself killed if I'm not around, so I'll go with you. But damn it, Rusty, that sense of duty will be the death of you someday, I swear it will."

Rusty felt a strong hand grip his arm. He turned to a grim-faced James Monahan.

James said quietly, "Now's your chance to get out of camp while everybody's mind is on somethin' else."

A quick glance showed Rusty that nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him and Tanner.

"We'll catch our horses and go. But first I want to ask you ..."

Impatiently James declared, "You ain't got time to ask questions, and I ain't got time to answer any. Git while the gittin's good."

Reluctantly Rusty had to acknowledge the wisdom in James's advice. He was bursting with questions about Geneva, but they would have to wait.

"All right, let's go, Len. But I'm takin' Daddy Mike's old mule."

James jerked his head toward the place where the two rangers' horses were tied. "Take him and be damned. But whatever you do, do it quick."

A
t first the ranger camp appeared deserted. Captain Whitfield's tent was still standing. The others had been struck, the canvas folded and stacked on the ground. Wooden stakes lay in a pile.

Riding in, Rusty saw only a few ranger horses grazing free. He gave a quick, happy shout as he recognized Alamo among them. The horse nickered at Chapultepec. Rusty slipped the loop of a rawhide reatta around Alamo's neck and petted the black horse before leading him into camp with the mule. "Old friend, I was afraid somebody with light fingers might've taken a fancy to you." To Rusty, a thief was a thief, whether he decorated his head with a hat or a feather.

Tanner grunted. "Place looks like everybody died."

"Bound to be somebody around."

"We might've come for nothin'. But at least you got your horse back."

That in itself was justification enough for returning, Rusty thought. "Maybe the captain's still here."

He found Whitfield taking his rest on a cot inside the stained old canvas tent. It struck Rusty that he had never seen the captain idle in the daytime. But he had never seen Whitfield take an arrow in the hip before, either.

Whitfield arose slowly, wincing in pain from the wound. He seemed drawn, his eyes dull as he shook Rusty's hand, then Tanner's. "I thought you boys took off for the tall timber."

Rusty said, "We heard about the surrender. What's happened to the company?"

Whitfield made a sweeping motion with his hand. "You can see about all that's left. Billings and the sergeant took most of them away before word came about the war. The others didn't see much point in stayin' around after we got the news. If you-all came back with any hope of gettin' paid, forget it. Even if they gave it to you, a barrelful of Confederate money wouldn't buy you a plug of tobacco."

Rusty said, "We gave up on pay a long time ago. We just thought you might need us."

"If somebody was to commit cold-blooded murder on the street in Fort Belknap, we couldn't do anything about it. We've got no authority."

"We could still turn back Indians if any tried a raid. We wouldn't need anybody's authority for that."

"We'd need more manpower. It's all finished, boys. If you've got a home to go to, you'd just as well head thataway. I'm goin' myself, soon as Oscar Pickett fetches a wagon so I can load up the state's property and keep these rascals around here from stealin' it."

The prospects were troubling. Rusty said, "I don't see how a country can get along without law."

"Texas was part of the Confederacy. That's gone. It'll take the Federals awhile to set up their own government. 'Til then, except for maybe a little local law, everything is left hangin' between the devil and the deep blue sea."

Rusty felt cold. "So it's every man for himself."

"If I was a robber or a horse thief, I'd be pickin' in tall cotton right now.

Rusty told the captain about the brush camp, now in the process of breaking up.

Tanner said, "There's men in that bunch would skin their grandmothers for six bits a hide."

"Not much we can do about them now."

Tanner pointed his chin at Rusty. "He done somethin'. Shot one of them, he did."

"By accident?"

Rusty shook his head. "I did it on purpose. Had to. But I'm hopin' he lives."

Tanner said, "You better hope he don't. He may come after you someday. Even with one arm, he could still blow a hole through you."

Whitfield frowned. "There was a time we might've broken up a camp like that, but I didn't want to. Most of them were just tryin' to stay out of the army. Now they're not my problem anymore. As long as they don't bother me or mine, I won't bother them."

Rusty asked Whitfield, "Do you think you can travel with that wounded hip, even in a wagon?"

"As long as it's in the direction of home, I can grit my teeth and keep goin'."

Home
. The word held the warmth of spring sunshine.

"It'll be safer, travelin' in a bunch. Me and Tanner will wait here with you 'til Oscar Pickett gets back. "Then we'll ride along with you as far as we can."

* * *

Rusty could see in Whitfield's eyes that the wagon's jolting hurt him, but the captain voiced no complaint. Rusty had once suffered through the ordeal of a long ride after a Comanche arrow had driven deeply into his leg. Tanner had cauterized the wound with a red-hot blade. It still pained him to remember, though the searing probably saved his leg. Healed now, the scar was still large and ugly, and it sometimes itched enough to drive him to distraction. He could imagine what the captain was going through.

Oscar Pickett hunched beside Whitfield, his age-spotted, arthritis-knotted hands gripping the reins. Two of Whitfield's horses and the mule Chapultepec trotted behind, tied to the wagon by long reins. In the wagon bed were folded tents, what few supplies had remained in camp, and Whitfield's and Pickett's personal possessions. These were too meager to strain the capacity of the canvas war bags in which they were stowed.

Rusty and Tanner rode beside the wagon, Rusty leading the unclaimed dun horse he had used before recovering Alamo. They came to a burned-out cabin, its blackened ruins slumped in a heap near a seeping spring.

"Good place to water and rest the horses," Rusty observed. He was more concerned with giving the captain a rest, but he knew better than to say so. Whitfield's pride would make him insist on traveling farther.

The captain offered no complaint. He said, "I remember the folks who lived here. Jackson was their name. Indians kept wartin' them 'til they decided to go back to East Texas. Then the Comanches came and burned the cabin. Figured that would keep the family from ever comin' back."

Rusty figured the Indian victory would be short-lived.

"If the Jacksons don't," he said, "somebody else'll claim this land. Once the soldiers start comin' home, this country will settle up again, heavier than it was before."

Whitfield made no comment.

Rusty said, "They'll need law to protect them."

Whitfield shook his head. "I've been the law long enough. I just want to go back to whatever's left of my own place and enjoy some quiet for a while."

Tanner put in, "Them's my sentiments, too. We ought to think of our own selves for a change. All the work we done, all the ridin' we put in, and what's it got for us?" He held up his left arm. His bony elbow poked out through a long tear in the ragged sleeve. "Ain't even got a decent shirt."

So far as Rusty knew, Oscar Pickett had no home to go back to. At his age, his prospects appeared limited. Rusty took it for granted that the captain would see to the old ranger's welfare, giving him a place to stay in return for whatever work Pickett was able to do. Otherwise Pickett was likely to end up in some demeaning job like swamping out a dramshop just to feed himself and have a roof of something more substantial than leaky canvas to turn aside the rain.

Rusty felt a hollowness inside as he contemplated his own future. He had the farm. He could pick up a handful of its rich soil and know it was something substantial, something that was his. And he was confident that Geneva would stand by his side. But everything else was an unanswered question. Texas, along with the rest of the Confederacy, had lost the war. It was only a matter of time until the Federals moved in troops to take over whatever remained of a government. Where would the defeated Confederates fit in, or would they fit in at all? What punishments might they suffer at the hands of the victors?

Rusty had never taken up arms against the Union, yet in his own way as a ranger for the state of Texas he had been an agent of the Confederacy. Would he be subject to punishment? If so, what would the punishment be? These nagging questions ran through his mind, seeking answers but only stirring up more questions.

He voiced some of his concerns to Whitfield, who lay in the shade of a tree beside the slow-yielding spring. The captain said, "They can't line us all up and shoot us; there's way too many. Ain't enough jails between here and Cape Cod to put us all behind bars. We'll make do somehow as long as we're livin' and breathin'. Even if they burned us out like Sherman did in Georgia, there's always the land. They can't burn that up."

They had unhitched the wagon team and led them to the water. Rusty took them back for a second chance to drink after their rest, then hitched them to the wagon again. "We'd best be gettin' on. It's a long ways to the Colorado River."

He began seeing familiar landmarks he associated with the Monahan farm. They brought memories rushing back. He tried to concentrate on Geneva, but thoughts of her led to the chill of remembered violence. He relived the brutal lynching of Lon and Billy Monahan and a frightening nighttime raid that had culminated in the Monahan house going up in flames.

Tanner said, "I'll bet you're thinkin' about that Geneva girl."

Rusty had been struggling with bitter memories of Colonel Caleb Dawkins and his son Pete, but he did not feel like arguing with Tanner over technicalities. "Didn't know it showed."

Len suggested, "We could swing by the old Monahan farm, maybe spend the night there."

Rusty dreaded the feelings such a visit would inevitably stir up. "It'd add some miles, maybe cost us an extra day. Wouldn't likely be much left there anyway. Dawkins and his bunch left a lot of it in ashes."

"Been a right long while since we heard anything about Caleb Dawkins." Tanner smiled hopefully. "You don't reckon somethin' awful might've happened to him?"

"I doubt it. But he may not be gettin' much sleep."

"On account of the Federals comin' in?"

"On account of James Monahan. Now that the war is over he's free to come and go wherever he wants to. If it was me that hanged his daddy and brother, I'd have a crick in my neck from watchin' over my shoulder."

"The captain said there won't be much law for a while. James could dice old Dawkins up into little bitty chunks, and nobody could do a damned thing to him."

"There's always his son Pete and the rest of the Dawkins people. Once a thing like that gets started, it's hard to stop 'til everybody's sick of it ... or everybody's dead."

Tanner pondered that proposition in unaccustomed silence awhile. "If I was you, the first thing I'd do when we get to your farm would be to unsaddle my horse. The second thing would be to ask that girl to marry me. Come to think of it, I might leave the horse saddled."

"It's been more than a year since I saw her. Me and her have got a lot to talk about first."

"You've got the rest of your lives to talk."

"A thing like marryin', you've got to work up to it. You don't just ride in after a year and say, `Howdy, girl, let's go find Preacher Webb.' "