[Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail (15 page)

Alice knew Andy’s background, but she had never been here before. Seeing the grave brought the old tragedy to a reality she had not quite grasped earlier. She offered a prayer, spoken so softly that Rusty could not hear most of it. She asked Andy, “Do you remember any of what happened here?”

“
A little.” He grimaced. “A little too much.”

She reached out and touched his arm, then drew her hand away.

Rusty felt impatient. “We can still make some distance before dark.” They moved on.

They reached the farm just at sunset. Rusty said, “It’s too late to go on to Tom’s tonight.”

Alice surveyed the place with keen interest. “You’ve built it up some since we stayed here durin’ the war. Broke out some more land and built another cabin.”

Rusty said, “The new cabin is Andy’s. I thought he ought to have a house of his own when Josie and me …” He did not finish. He cleared his throat. “Wonder if Len Tanner is around. Be like him to’ve gone off on another
pasear
.”

Tanner appeared on the dog run of the larger cabin, stretching his long frame as if he had been napping. “Howdy. You-all are just in time for supper. All you’ve got to do is fix it.”

The garden showed signs of fresh work. Evidently Tanner had kept himself at least moderately busy. He had no real obligation to do so because he was not a hired hand. He was not drawing wages. He simply had a home here whenever he wanted it, and in return he contributed a share of the work when he was around. He was free to tie his meager belongings behind his saddle and ride off at any time he felt like it, which was fairly often.

Sight of Tanner momentarily lifted the melancholy that had fallen upon Rusty. “Len, I was afraid you’d be off to hell and gone again.”

“
I would’ve been if you hadn’t got home when you did.”

“
Where to this time? Thought you’d seen all you wanted of your kinfolks.”

“
I have. But now I got other things to do.” Tanner looked up in surprise at the girl on the wagon seat. “Alice? Is that you?”

“
It’s me.” She gave him a tentative smile. He had flirted with her and her sisters in the past but had shied away from anything more serious than a stolen kiss, which once had earned him a quick slap in the face.

He said, “You’re gettin’ to where you look more like your sisters every time I see you. How’re they gettin’ along?”

Rusty had to look away. Andy said quickly, “Josie’s dead. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Tanner’s jolly mood was gone. He stared as if struck by a club. “Damn but I’m sorry.” He reached to help Alice down from the wagon.

Andy asked, “You seen any strangers around here?”

Tanner set Alice on the ground. “Gettin’ to be a lot of traffic around this place. Sometimes two or three people a day goin’ one direction or another. Country’s settlin’ up to where it don’t hardly seem the same anymore.”

Andy persisted, “These people would likely have asked about Rusty or Alice.”

Tanner shook his head. “Nary a soul.”

Rusty said, “The Bascoms couldn’t have gotten here ahead of us even if they’d known where we were goin’. For all they know we headed north for Colorado, or east for Arkansas, … if they’ve even found out we’re gone.”

Andy said stubbornly, “That old woman knows.”

Tanner looked from one to another, confused but content to wait until someone saw fit to explain.

Rusty asked, “Know anything about Tom Blessing’s wife?”

Tanner said, “She’s still poorly. Shanty was here yesterday, helped me plant some tomatoes and okry. He’d been by to see the Blessings a couple of days ago.”

Shanty was a former slave. His little place lay between Rusty’s farm and the Blessings’.

Rusty said, “I brought Alice to stay with Mrs. Blessing and try to help get her back on her feet.”

Tanner nodded his approval. “She’s a grand old lady. She’ll perk up just from havin’ the company.”

Rusty knew that Tanner had been smitten by Alice for a long time. He was not sure about Andy. He was aware that Andy had been watching women. For a while he had become somewhat attached to a neighbor girl named Bethel Brackett. That involvement seemed to have faded, probably because of his antipathy for her brother Farley.

Rusty told Alice she could have the bedroom side of the double cabin. As she went inside Tanner said, “I told you to tell her hello for me. I didn’t mean you had to bring her all the way here.”

Rusty told him as much as he figured Tanner needed to know for the time being. Tanner nodded gravely. “I
am
mighty sorry about Josie. If any of them Bascoms come pokin’ around here lookin’ for Alice, I’ll blow a hole in them you could put a wagon through.”

Andy said, “Just a little hole would be enough, long as it’s in a place to do the most good.”

A hundred times Rusty had imagined himself confronting Corey Bascom. He thought he could probably shoot him in the heart without flinching once. Someday, some way, he intended to do just that.

Tanner said, “Fact is, though, I won’t be here. I’ve just been waitin’ ’til you got home. I’ve joined the rangers.”

The word brought Rusty and Andy both to full attention. Rusty said, “The rangers?”

Tanner nodded. “You probably ain’t heard. Governor Coke is callin’ up a lot of the old hands. The Morris brothers brought the word to me. They’ve joined up, too.”

“
Those Morris boys are liable to get you shot.”

“
I’m too skinny to be hit. I can hide behind a fence post. Anyway, them boys have got their hearts in the right place.”

“
It’s not their hearts that worry me. It’s their heads.”

Andy spoke up. “How old do you have to be to join?”

Tanner shook his head. “Can’t rightly say. If it’s the way it used to be, you’re old enough now. Got to furnish your own horse and your own gun.”

“
I have those.”

“
Don’t know what the pay’ll be. It doesn’t matter much anyhow. I’m used to not findin’ anything in my pockets except my hands.”

Rusty felt uneasy about Andy’s eagerness. “You’d better take a long look before you jump, Andy. It can be a hard life.”

“
I’ve never had no featherbed.”

Rusty decided upon the wagon to take Alice to the Blessing place. The things she had hastily gathered from home were already in it. That would save having to pack them on a horse. He left Andy with Tanner to clean up the place. Tanner’s housekeeping had been of the lick-and-a-promise variety.

They went by Shanty’s farm; it was but little out of the way. Shanty had no real last name, though when he had to put his X on legal papers he adopted the surname of his late owner, Isaac York, who had willed him the farm.

Shanty was in his garden, hoeing out shallow trenches and planting seeds, then covering them lightly. His years weighed heavily upon his thin shoulders. He straightened slowly, with obvious back pain. Recognition of his visitors brought him to the garden gate. He removed his hat in deference to Alice, or perhaps to both of them. Old slave habits died hard.

“
You-all git down and come in the house,” he said.

His house was a cabin built of logs to replace one burned by night riders who had resented the idea of a black man owning a piece of land in their midst. Firm talk by Rusty, Tom Blessing, and other friends had put an end to that kind of devilment. A few neighbors still did not like his being there, but they had been buffaloed into silence.

Rusty said, “We’re headed for the Blessing place. You remember Alice?”

Shanty smiled. “I do, but it was a long time ago, and she weren’t much more than a thin saplin’. She’s growed into a fine-lookin’ young lady.”

“
Alice is goin’ to help Mrs. Blessing.”

“
The Lord will smile on her for that. I been worried about Miz Blessing.”

“
But one thing, Shanty, … if some stranger should come askin’ about Alice, you haven’t seen her. You don’t have any idea where she’s at. You don’t even know who she is.”

Shanty’s smile faded into a frown. “Hard to believe somebody’d mean harm to this young lady.”

“
They do. That’s why I’ve brought her all the way down here.” He explained briefly about the Bascoms and Josie’s death.

Shanty nodded sadly. “I’ll just act like I don’t know nothin’. They generally figure that way anyhow.” Long years in servitude had taught him how to tell white people what he thought they wanted to hear or to pretend total ignorance, whichever the circumstances called for.

Rusty thought Shanty looked more tired than usual. That concerned him. “You feelin’ all right? You haven’t been workin’ too hard and gettin’ yourself too hot?”

“
Work and me been friends all my life. And friends know not to crowd one another too much.”

Rusty took the remark as a sign that Shanty thought he had been working too hard and not getting enough rest. “We’ll be gettin’ on to the Blessings’.”

“
May the Lord walk ahead of you and smooth the road.”

T
om Blessing’s dog announced the wagon’s coming and trotted to meet it, tail wagging vigorously. Tom stepped out onto the opening between the two sections of the log cabin and shaded his eyes with his big hand. “Git down,” he shouted. “Git down and come in.”

Alice looked a little apprehensive. She had gotten to know the Blessings when the Monahan family stayed at Rusty’s farm during part of the war years, but she had been only half grown. She had not seen them since. “What if it turns out they’ve already got somebody to stay with Mrs. Blessing?” she asked.

Rusty suspected that question had been on her mind for some time, but this was the first time she asked it. He remembered the way Tom had answered a question once. He said, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

His comment served only to increase her concern.

Tom raised his strong arms to help her down from the wagon. “Is this Josie?” he asked, smiling. “Lord how you’ve changed.”

“
I’m Alice, Mr. Blessing. I’ve come to stay and help take care of your wife.”

“
Alice? Then you’ve
really
changed.” He looked expectantly at Rusty. “You left here aimin’ to get married. Leave the bride at your place?”

Even after all these days, Rusty still found it difficult to speak about her. “Josie’s dead. I’ll tell you about it in a little while.”

Tom’s face fell. His eyes pinched in sympathy. He seemed about to say something to Rusty, but he could not bring it out. He turned back to Alice. “Come on in, girl. Mrs. Blessing will be tickled to see you.”

Rusty busied himself unloading Alice’s few belongings, placing them in the dog run. He could hear her voice from inside the cabin. It sounded like Josie talking. He leaned against a wagon wheel and stared across Tom’s field, but the image was blurred.

Tom came outside in a few minutes. He said, “Alice and the Mrs. are goin’ to hit it off real good. It was mighty thoughtful of you to bring her.”

“
I had a reason. She needs you-all right now as much as you need her. More, maybe.” Painfully Rusty explained what had happened to Josie and why he had felt it necessary to bring Alice so far from home.

Tom nodded, his eyes sad. “I reckon this is about as hard a thing as man ever has to take in this life.”

“
Another hard thing is knowin’ that the man who did it is runnin’ loose. But he won’t stay loose forever. I’m goin’ to hunt him down like a hydrophoby dog.”

“
How you goin’ to do that? You’ve got no idea where to start. He could be ten miles from here or a thousand.”

“
I’ll just give up everything else and hunt ’til I find him.”

“
That could take years.”

“
I don’t know what else to do.”

Tom frowned, deep in thought. “Did Len tell you he’s signed up for the rangers?”

“
He told me. Andy’s itchin’ to do the same thing.”

“
It’s not a bad idea. The rangers could be the answer to your problem.”

“
I don’t see how.”

“
Think about it. You’re just one man, lookin’ for another man who could be anyplace. If you were a ranger you could put him on the fugitive list. Instead of just one man lookin’ for him there’d be a hundred or two, however many rangers there are. And I can send word out to sheriffs around the state to be watchin’ for him.”

“
But I want to be the one who gets him. I want to look him square in the eyes and tell him he’s fixin’ to die.”

Tom frowned. “What’s more important, bringin’ him to justice or takin’ your own personal revenge?”

“
The way I feel, I want to do it myself.”

“
Revenge can poison the soul, Rusty. The man on the receivin’ end dies just once, and generally quick. The man out for revenge may die a little every day as long as he lives. Remember after Daddy Mike was killed? You almost let it get the best of you that time.”