[Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail (24 page)

Arliss said, “We get blamed for things we didn’t do.”

“
Accordin’ to our information the boy’s name is Scooter. But Scooter’s not a Christian name.” He looked at the youngster. The boy said nothing.

Arliss was the one who had called himself John Smith. He said, “Ain’t heard no other given name but Scooter. His last name’s Tennyson.”

Holloway smiled. “That’s more like it. See, it’s not hard to talk to the rangers.”

“
We don’t have much choice when you got guns on us.”

Brackett growled, “At least we know what names to put on your headboards if you-all give us any trouble. Every man ought to have his right name on his headboard.”

Later, chewing on a half-broiled strip of meat, Andy studied Scooter Tennyson. He looked as if he had been brought up in a brush thicket. His hair was a-tangle. Someone had made a bad effort at cutting it, leaving a ragged job that looked more like the work of a butcher knife than of scissors. His shirt was too large for his thin frame. It hung on him like a partially collapsed tent. His trousers, also too big, had patches on both knees and holes in both patches.

Andy let his imagination run free. He could have been in the same situation at almost the same age had it not been for Rusty Shannon. Fate had been kind to him. It appeared that nobody had been kind to this boy.

In a quiet voice he asked Holloway, “What’ll happen to the kid when we take him in?”

“
The state has got a home for boys like this.”

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It’s like a junior penitentiary, isn’t it?”

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Pretty much, I guess. I’ve never seen it.”

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Doesn’t seem right. He’s never had much of a chance.”

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He’s old enough to know right from wrong. Some people set out on a crooked trail earlier than others. He said his daddy’s in jail. It’s probably in the blood.”

“
I don’t believe that. I’ll bet if he was among decent folks a while he’d straighten out.”

Holloway’s face showed his doubt. “Maybe. You want the job?”

“
I don’t know that I’m the one to do it. I’m not but a few years older than him. And I’ve got a job as a ranger.”

“
I’ll talk to the captain when we get back to camp. Maybe he’ll see his way clear to do somethin’ for the boy. What’s your interest in him?”

“
Maybe it’s because when I look at him I see what could’ve become of me.”

Talking to Scooter was like talking to a post. The boy turned away and made a show of ignoring Andy. His patience strained, Andy said, “I’m just tryin’ to help you, kid.”

“
Don’t need your help. Don’t need nothin’ but a good leavin’ alone.”

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You won’t get much leavin’ alone if they put you behind the bars.”

“
Maybe that’s what I was born for.”

“
Nobody’s born for a life like that. They choose it or get pushed into it. Looks to me like you’ve been pushed. I’d like to see you get a decent chance.”

“
You a preacher or somethin’?”

“
No, I’m just a ranger, and a new one at that. Mostly I guess you’d say I’ve been a farmer.”

“
Then go back to your plow and leave me alone.”

Andy caught a look from Holloway that said for him to ease off. The boy pulled away from Andy and closer to his outlaw friends. Holloway beckoned Andy away from the campfire, out into the darkness.

He said, “You’re wastin’ your breath.”

“
Maybe he hasn’t had time to understand the trouble he’s in. Once he does, he might be easier to talk to. It took me a while when I was where he’s at.”

“
I tried once to raise an orphaned coyote pup. Thought since I’d caught him young he’d train like a dog, but he never did. He never was anything but a wild chicken-killin’ coyote. I finally caught him killin’ a baby calf. Bad as I hated to, I had to shoot him.”

“
There were folks who thought the same thing of me, comin’ out of a Comanche camp.”

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From what Tanner has told me, some good folks took an interest and set you right.”

“
Maybe that’s all Scooter needs.”

“
I think you’re puttin’ yourself in for disappointment, but I’ll talk to the captain.”

Andy went back and sat down near Scooter, trying to think of an approach that might work. It was Scooter who made the approach. The boy said, “I heard some of what you were sayin’ out there. What’s this about you and the Comanches?”

Andy took the boy’s interest as a hopeful sign. “They killed my folks and carried me off when I was little. Raised me for several years. I was luckier than you. Some good people cared enough to take me in and give me a home.”

“
I never found no good people except Arliss and Brewster. Arliss was in jail a while with my daddy. He got a notion Daddy had buried money someplace and I might know where it was. But my daddy never had enough money that he could afford to bury any.”

“
Arliss and Brewster aren’t the kind you ought to be travelin’ with.”

“
They’re all I got.” The boy went pensive. “We come across another feller a few days ago. He was nice to me. Him and Arliss and Brewster robbed a little bank over at a burg called Brownwood. But he didn’t cotton to the notion of stealin’ ranger horses, nor of goin’ farther west. Said there wasn’t no banks out there, so he left us. I kind of wished he’d stayed. Seemed smarter than Arliss and Brewster. Maybe we wouldn’t have got ourselves caught.”

“
You were bound to get caught sooner or later.”

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I felt kind of sorry for him. Said his wife got shot a while back. He was still takin’ it hard.”

Andy felt a tingling along his spine. “Who was he? Did he give a name?”

The boy thought for a moment. “Bascom, it was. Yeah, Bascom. At least that’s what he told us.”

“
Corey Bascom?”

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I believe so.”

Andy’s excitement built. “Did he say where he was goin’?”

The boy looked at him as if he did not believe the question. “I don’t never ask a thing like that. Anybody wants you to know, they’ll tell you.”

So Bascom had been with these two-bit badmen as recently as the last day or two. It was a starting place, at least. Andy could hardly wait to write Rusty a letter. He would do it as soon as he got back to camp.

Sometime during the night he awakened to the sound of a running horse. Brackett shouted, “That damned kid has gotten away.”

Andy flung his blanket aside and pulled on the boots he had put beneath it to protect them from dew. He saw Brackett pick up a pair of handcuffs.

Brackett said, “Those cuffs were too loose on him. He slipped them off.”

Holloway declared, “Andy, you’re so interested in givin’ the boy a chance, go see if you can catch him and bring him back. Brackett, you’d better follow along.”

Wilkes and Pardo were handcuffed to the trunks of young trees. Scooter had been, too. Wilkes said, “Good for the boy. I hope he gets plumb to Mexico.”

Holloway took a quick inventory of the horses. “At least the kid has an eye for horseflesh. He took mine. You’ll have to ride hard to catch him.”

Andy could not see far in the darkness, but the hoofbeats had told him the boy was headed west. He wished he had Long Red with him. The sorrel had outrun almost everything Andy had ever pitted him against. He had not tested the gray for speed, but he gave it the spurs. He felt the rush of wind in his eyes and ears. Limbs whipped him across the face and shoulders.

Brackett shouted, “You’d better slow down. That horse is liable to fall and bust his leg.”

The horse had better night vision than Andy, for it leaped over fallen limbs and cut around trees Andy had not seen. He leaned low in the saddle and gave the animal its head.

He saw the dark shape of the fugitive ahead of him, making a crooked trail through the cedar brush and live oaks. “Scooter,” he shouted. “Stop.”

Scooter shouted a reply. Andy could not discern the words, but the tone left no doubt about their meaning. The boy was outlining Andy’s ancestry in scathing detail.

The chase came to a sudden stop as a low limb caught Scooter across the chest and held him while the sergeant’s horse ran on without him. By the time Andy reached him the boy lay curled up on the ground like a wounded caterpillar, gasping for lost breath. Andy demanded, “What the hell were you tryin’ to do? You’ve just added another horse-stealin’ charge to your record.”

Scooter tried a sharp answer, but he could only wheeze. Brackett went after the runaway horse. It stopped when it realized it had lost its rider.

Andy gave way to anger. “There I was, beggin’ the sergeant to give you a chance. Then you pull a stunt like this.”

The boy was not as helpless as he had appeared. He jumped to his feet, pushed Andy aside and made a grab for the gray horse. Andy caught his shirt and pulled him away just as the boy’s left foot hit the stirrup. He gave Scooter a hard shove that put the boy on the ground again.

Brackett came back, leading the sergeant’s horse. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Looks like that kid’s got some badger in him, too, Badger Boy.”

Andy’s anger subsided. He remembered that he had tried to fight back when he was first recaptured from the Comanches. The difference was that a broken leg gave him no chance of winning. He had tried once to run away, but the weak leg had betrayed him.

“
I guess we can’t blame him too much for tryin’.” He nodded at Scooter. “Get back on the sergeant’s horse.” He cut a long leather string from his saddle and tied Scooter’s hands to the pommel. “I’ll bet you don’t slip out of that.”

The boy tugged at the bonds, then began crying softly.

The last of his anger drained, Andy wanted to comfort him. “Maybe the worst thing you’ve done is fall in with bad company. They can’t do much to you for that.”

Brackett said, “He’s a horse thief.”

“
He’s just a little reckless about his borrowin’. Seems I remember you takin’ one of Rusty Shannon’s horses once.”

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But I left another one in his place.”

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One you’d ‘borrowed’ from the U.S. Army. Got Rusty into a lot of trouble.”

“
That was a whole other time. Things are different now. And this boy ain’t you. He’s somethin’ else entirely. Pretty soon you’ll be wishin’ you’d never seen him.”

Andy already wished that. But he
had
seen him, and he could not give up on him, any more than Rusty Shannon had given up on a half-wild kid named Badger Boy.

R
usty Shannon leaned on the hoe and looked across the field at the weeds still to be chopped out of his growing corn. It was a job without an end, for before he could get the last row finished, the first would need hoeing again. He missed Andy and Tanner. Andy had always been a diligent worker. Tanner could be, too, when the mood was upon him and he wasn’t fidgeting to go somewhere.

Old Shanty had ridden over here yesterday on his mule and offered to help, but Rusty had politely declined. Shanty had work enough of his own. A man of his age and frail constitution needed a lot of rocking-chair time.

“
Your eyes show the miseries,” Shanty had said. “This old place just keeps you studyin’ about the girl you was fixin’ to bring here.”

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I stay busy, but it doesn’t help much.”

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Swingin’ a hoe don’t tie up your mind. Leaves you free to think too much. You need to get away a while.”

“
I’d be thinkin’ about her no matter where I went.”

He had left here twice following false rumors that he had hoped would lead him to Corey Bascom. He had ridden for days, only to be left frustrated and sick at heart. So far as he knew he had never been anywhere close to Corey.

Shanty had suggested, “Everybody says you was a good ranger once. The man you been lookin’ for could be way down in Mexico by now or plumb out to the California ocean. But there’s a-plenty other sinners runnin’ loose. They need catchin’. Maybe you’d ought to be a ranger again.”

“
It wouldn’t be the same.”

“
Sometimes the Lord don’t hand us a full bucket. We give Him thanks for what we do get, even if it’s just half a bucket.”

Rusty recognized Sheriff Tom Blessing’s big horse coming in on the trail from town. He gratefully carried the hoe to the turn row and laid it down. Tom usually opened his conversations with either the weather or the state of the crops. He hollered, “Your corn’s lookin’ good.”

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Not as good as the weeds.”

Tom dismounted, and Rusty shook hands with him. Tom took another look across the field. “You need to go to town and hire a boy or two to help you.”

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I wouldn’t want to take anybody away from school.”

“
School’s out. And workin’ in the fields will teach them more practical stuff than studyin’ about the history of England and all them other places a long ways off from here.”