[Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail (17 page)

She said, “We just had one other horse. I heard them run it into the pen and shut the gate. When I went out to see what they were up to …” She dropped her head even lower.

Rusty walked to the door and stared out, trying to bring his rage under control. Tom comforted her the best he could.

She cried, “My husband … what’s he goin’ to say?”

Tom said, “If he’s any kind of a man he’ll know you couldn’t help what they did. Wasn’t none of it your fault. You got any neighbors, somebody we could send to be with you?”

She said she did, a couple of miles southwest. Tom promised, “We’ll swing by and let them know. And don’t you worry about them men comin’ back. We’ll stay on their trail ’til we catch them.”

Rusty burned inside and knew it was not because of the whiskey. His hands trembled as he untied his horse. “I’ve seen some bad men in my time. I’ve known some that would murder a man without battin’ an eye and steal anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor. But I’ve never known any that would do a thing like this to a woman.”

Tom grunted and climbed into the saddle. “It’s a new world. I liked the old one a heap better.”

They found the farm Mrs. Plumley had described and told a middle-aged farmer and his wife what had happened. The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “That poor girl. Hitch up, Walter. Let’s be gettin’ over there.”

Riding away, Tom said, “With all the new world’s deviltry, there’s a lot of the old world left. You can still find kindness when you look for it.”

Rusty could not reply. He could not shake the image of terror he had seen in the young woman’s face. As he reviewed the scene in his mind, her face became Josie Monahan’s.

“
We’ve lost time, Tom. Let’s be makin’ it up.”

Dusk came too quickly. Rusty knew they would soon be unable to see the tracks. “They’ve got to stop sometime. They’ve got one fresh horse, but the other one has been pushed all day.”

“
Ours, too. We set off in such a hurry that we forgot about one thing.”

“
What’s that?”

“
We haven’t got anything to eat.”

Rusty patted the blanket roll tied behind the cantle of his saddle. “We’re not plumb out of luck. I brought along some jerky left over from our trip down from the Monahans’.”

“
Jerky.” Tom said the word with distaste.

“
It’s better than nothin’.”

“
Just barely.”

Rusty said, “Indians can get by on it for days. And I ate a heap of it when I was with the rangers.”

“
Me, too. I always hoped I’d never have to again.”

The tracks were hard to see as daylight faded. The fugitives had stopped to water themselves and their horses at a spring some early settler had rocked in but later abandoned. The remains of a picket cabin leaned precariously, threatening to fall over if given a fair push.

Tom asked, “Feel like sleepin’ under a roof tonight?” He said it with a touch of humor, but Rusty was in no mood to appreciate it. Hatred simmered for the men they pursued. He said, “That roof would likely cave in on us. Anyway, I’ll bet the place is full of snakes.”

Reluctantly he conceded that they had no choice but to stop for the night. After watering the bay he staked it on a long rawhide rope so it could graze within a wide circle. Tom did the same, then said, “How about that jerky?”

Rusty unrolled his blanket and took out a bundle wrapped in oilskin. Jerky was strips of meat dried in the sun, usually tasting more of salt and pepper than of beef. Rangers had often carried it with them on long scouts because they had no guarantee of finding fresh game. Though far from sumptuous, it could sustain life until a man found better.

Tom chewed hard. “I’ve known of men losin’ a tooth on this stuff, but I never saw anybody get fat on it.”

Rusty realized Tom was trying to jolly him out of his dark mood, but he was not ready to give it up. There was justice to be done. From the description he tried to imagine the fugitives’ faces. He could see only one. In his mind they both looked like Corey Bascom.

He said, “I don’t understand men like that. What do you suppose gets into them?”

“
Hard to say. War soured some of them. Then there’s some raised that way by folks that had coyote blood in them. And some are just born with a deep streak of mean. Somethin’ missin’ out of their brain or their heart. They’re hard to cure.”

“
There’s one way. Kill them dead and bury them deep.”

Tom frowned and pulled his saddle blanket around him.

Rusty awakened long before daylight. He rolled onto one side, then the other, trying to find a comfortable position. There was none. He felt as if he would willingly trade a good horse for a cup of strong coffee. He dared not light a fire that the fugitives might see. It irritated him to hear Tom snoring peacefully. He itched to be on the move but knew it would be futile to set out before he could see tracks.

At last Tom sat up, throwing back the blanket. Only the faintest hint of light showed in the east. The first thing Tom did was to look around for the horses. That instinct was deeply ingrained into men used to living along the frontier, where a good horse was always a temptation to the light-fingered breed, white or red.

Rusty said, “They’re still where we staked them. I’ve been watchin’ them for hours.”

“
You didn’t sleep much?”

“
Kept seein’ that poor woman, and then I’d think of Josie. I kept thinkin’ of her in that woman’s place.”

“
At least that woman is still alive.”

“
And probably half wishin’ she wasn’t. There’s not much worse a man can do to a woman short of leavin’ her dead.”

Tom threw his saddle onto his horse’s back and tightened the cinch. “Sooner or later you’ve got to come to grips with what happened to Josie. Otherwise it’ll drive you crazy.”

“
I’ll come to grips when I find Corey Bascom. But those two renegades will do for a start.”

Rusty chewed on a strip of jerky as he set out impatiently in a stiff trot. It should have been Tom’s place to pick up the tracks, but Rusty did not give him time. Once when they lost the trail, Tom was the one who picked it up. Rusty was adequate as a tracker, but he had never considered himself in a class with Tom and other frontiersmen of Tom’s generation. Or even with Andy.

As the sun moved upward toward midday and the morning warmed, Rusty became uneasy. He could not put his finger on the cause. It was instinct, a feeling that all was not as it should be. “Tom,” he said, “let’s wait up a minute.”

“
You see somethin’?”

“
I feel somethin’, like cold wind on the back of my neck.”

“
You sure you haven’t been listenin’ to Andy too much? He’s always got a hunch about somethin’. Hears voices talkin’ to him. The Indian upbringin’, I suppose.”

“
I don’t hear any voices, and there’s nothin’ I can see. But I’ve been around Andy enough to know I’d better pay attention. Do you suppose those renegades could’ve doubled back? They could be comin’ up behind us.”

It was an old Indian trick. He had used it himself on the two younger Bascom brothers.

Tom’s expression showed he took the possibility seriously. He drew the rifle from beneath his leg. “I should’ve thought of that. It’s been done to me more than once.”

Tom jerked in the saddle, dropping the rifle. Almost simultaneously Rusty heard a shot from behind. Whirling the bay around, he saw a puff of smoke behind a small clump of low-growing brush. Without taking time to consider, he drew his pistol and put the horse into a run toward the shooter’s position. He fired three quick shots into the brush.

A heavyset man screamed and staggered out into the open. He stared with wide, unbelieving eyes before he buckled. He pressed both hands against his chest, trying to stop the flow of blood seeping between his fingers.

Rusty caught a movement from the corner of his eye. He swung down from the saddle, keeping the horse between him and a bearded man who raised up from behind another bush. Rusty dropped to one knee and knelt low, sighting his pistol under the bay’s stomach. His shot and the fugitive’s seemed to overlap.

Startled, the bay jerked the reins from Rusty’s hands and trotted away, leaving Rusty exposed. He felt a searing along his ribs as he heard the man’s second shot. He winced from the burn but leveled his pistol and squeezed the trigger. He caught the man squarely in the chest. The fugitive gasped and went down.

Rusty heard Tom’s shout. “Look out.”

The first man was up on his knees, both bloody hands gripping his pistol. Rusty shot him before he could fire. The man hunched, the pistol sagging in his weakening grip. His dying eyes were fixed on Rusty. His lips moved as if he tried to speak.

He could say nothing Rusty wanted to hear. Rusty stared into the contorted face, and somehow it became the face of Corey Bascom. Rage overwhelmed him. He had emptied the pistol. In his belt was the one he had taken from little Anse Bascom. He drew it and fired once, twice, three times.

Tom spoke behind him, his voice brittle. “For God’s sake, how much deader do you think you can kill him?”

The fury that had swept over Rusty slowly receded. He stared at the dead man lying almost at his feet. “I must’ve gone crazy for a minute.”

“
I never saw you like this. You scared me.”

“
I’ve scared myself a little, I think.”

“
Have you sobered up now?”

“
Sober enough to remember that you got hit by the first shot. How bad is it?”

Tom gripped his right arm below the shoulder. His sleeve was red, his hand bloodied. “Missed the bone. But I need to get this blood stopped or you’ll be carryin’ me home like a baby.”

Tom squatted while Rusty cut the sleeve off at the shoulder and wrapped it tightly around the wound.

Rusty said, “I’d better get you back to that Plumley place where you can be tended to good and proper.”

“
And soon. I can feel sickness comin’ on. Before long I may not be able to stay in the saddle.” Tom jerked his head toward the nearest of the two fugitives. “Somethin’ needs to be done about them.”

“
Let somebody else come bury them, or leave them for the varmints. They’re kin to the coyotes anyway.”

Rusty gave Tom a boost up onto his horse. The effort brought a sharp pain to his side and reminded him that a slug had grazed his ribs. The bay had trotted off a little way and stepped on the reins. There he had stopped. Rusty fetched him, then looked around for the horses the renegades had ridden. He found them tied to a bush, out of sight from the ambush spot. He checked the saddlebags and found a considerable amount of money. Loot from the store robbery, he assumed. He tied one horse’s reins to the other’s tail and led the pair back to where Tom waited, slumped in the saddle.

“
Feel like you can make it?”

Tom looked pale, but he gritted his teeth. “I’ve had a wasp bite worse than this.”

Setting out, Rusty reached inside his shirt to feel his ribs. The slight blood flow had stopped. The wound was sore to the touch, but he doubted that a rib had been cracked. He would heal.

They had ridden perhaps a quarter of a mile when a horseman appeared. He approached them warily. He was young, a farmer by the look of him. He eased when he saw the badge on Tom’s shirt. “I heard shootin’. You-all catch up to those bandits?”

Rusty said, “We caught them.”

The young man nodded toward the two led horses. “One of them is mine. They stole him from my place.”

Tom asked, “Your name Plumley?”

“
Yes sir.”

“
How’s your wife?”

His face darkened. “Fair, considerin’ what they done to her. Some neighbors came to help. I thought I’d try to catch up with you-all and be there for the kill. Since you have their horses, I reckon you caught them already.”

Rusty said, “If it’s any satisfaction to you they’re layin’ back yonder a little ways. We didn’t have time to bury them. The sheriff needs attention.”

“
I’ll help you get him to our place. Later on I’ll take a shovel and do the buryin’. It’ll pleasure me to throw dirt on them.” Riding along, he brooded in silence. Finally he said, “They don’t deserve no Christian ceremony. I’ll make sure they won’t see Resurrection mornin’, either. I’ll bury them facedown.”

A
pproaching a neat row of canvas tents lined beneath the protective branches of huge pecan trees fronting the San Saba River, Andy Pickard felt apprehensive. “We’ve come a long ways for me to get turned down. Are you sure the rangers aren’t lookin’ for somebody with more experience?”

Rusty had always said Len Tanner had the faith of the mustard seed, whatever that meant. Tanner declared, “They’ll be tickled to have you. How many fellers your age can brag that they’ve been as far and seen as much as you have? Time I get through tellin’ them about you they’ll be rollin’ out a red carpet and beggin’ you to sign up.”