The Lawless (5 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

The badlands to the east of the Kerrigan Ranch had been pretty much picked clean of wild cattle, but over the next month Frank Cobb and Quinn managed to bring in another forty head of longhorns, most of them young stuff.

There was no news of Trace Kerrigan or the herd, but a passing drover said he'd not heard of bad weather on the Chisholm, though the Apaches were out and several small farms and ranches had been raided. “I ain't no hand to be causing you worry, ma'am,” he said to Kate, but it ain't like the Apaches to be raiding this late in the fall.”

“You think it's something to do with the cattle drives?” Kate asked, pouring the puncher more coffee.

“Might be, ma'am, but then Apaches are notional folks and it's mighty hard for a white man to take a stab at what they're thinking.”

Cobb said, “Trace is riding with some good well-armed and mounted men, Kate. I reckon the Apaches will give them a wide berth. They're notional all right, but not stupid.”

She set the coffeepot back on the stove. “I'll say a rosary for Trace tonight and ask the Virgin to keep him safe.”

The puncher rose to his feet and touched his hat. “I got to be riding, ma'am. I reckon them prayers will get the job done.”

Cobb was unshaved and dust lay thick on his range clothes. He touched the back of Kate's hand with the tips of his fingers. “He'll be all right, Kate. I know he will.”

A week later, he was proved wrong.

 

 

Trace Kerrigan was brought home in the chuck wagon. His left leg was heavily bandaged and under his trail tan his face was ashen.

Kate had him carried into the cabin and laid on her own bed. “What happened? Was it Apaches?”

Grimacing from pain after a bumpy carry into the cabin, Trace didn't seem much inclined to answer, so the rancher Jason Hunt did it for him. “Not Apaches, ma'am. It was a white man.”

“How did it happen?” Cobb asked.

Hunt looked uncomfortable and his words dried up.

His segundo Kyle Wright stepped into the silence. “It was over a woman, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

Kate had been attending to her son and looked like she'd been slapped. “Trace . . . a woman . . . I don't understand.”

Wright said, “Ma'am, she was a lady of ill-repute, sometimes referred to as a fancy woman. I have no wish to offend, ma'am.”

“Mr. Wright, I know what such a woman is,” Kate said. “In my time, I've known many. How did it happen?”

“Well, ma'am, Trace had never . . . ah . . . been with a woman before and the boys thought it would be fun if they put money into the hat to buy him one.”

“Fun? And was that also your idea of fun, Mr. Wright?” Her eyebrows met in a frown.

“No ma'am. I was not aware of such coarse behavior.” Wright's eyes met Hunt's, and he quickly looked away.

From the bed, Trace said, “I was set up, Ma. I was sitting at a table with the girl when a man stepped over and said she was his wife. He demanded my money, horse, and rifle to satisfy his honor.”

“Or what?” Cobb asked.

“Or he'd kill me,” Trace said.

Wright said, “It's an old trick, ma'am. The crook and the woman work as a team and usually they pick on a married man. But there's a shortage of such men in Abilene.”

Kate took Trace's hand. “What happened?”

Hunt cleared his throat. “I can tell you that, Mrs. Kerrigan. There was a shooting scrape. Trace refused to pay the man, his name was Curtis though some said it was Collins, and when words failed, the crook went for his hideout gun and put a ball into your son. Trace's rifle was on the table and he fought back. Ma'am, he worked that Henry so fast, he shot that feller all to pieces. It was a fair fight and all agreed that Curtis had drawn first.”

“Trace stood his ground and let no man bully him, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Wright said. “He didn't dodge the fight, and I reckon he proved himself a man.”

“Where is the ball that hit my son? Is it still in there?”

“No, ma'am. It was removed by a mule doctor, and last I looked, it was healing well. No smell of the gas gangrene or anything like that.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” Kate said.

“Of course you will, ma'am,” Wright said.

Shannon and Ivy had climbed onto the bed and were consoling their wounded hero with hugs. For his part, Trace looked as though all he wanted was sleep after his weeks of jolting misery in the back of the wagon.

“I know it's hardly the time to talk business, Mrs. Kerrigan, but it has to be done.” The rancher looked thin and worn, but everyone who went up the trail and back bore the traces of their hardship. “The count in Abilene was nine hundred unbranded Kerrigan cows. Beef prices are still low, but after shipping costs and agent's fees, I managed thirty dollars a head. I knew you'd prefer cash to a bank draft so”—Hunt took a paper sack from his coat pocket—“this here is twenty-seven thousand dollars in Yankee greenbacks and gold coin.”

Kate took the sack, her face thoughtful. “I've never had this much money before in my life.”

“I'm sure you'll put it to good use, Mrs. Kerrigan. It's the last money you'll see until after the gather next spring.” Hunt touched his hat brim. “I'll be going now, Mrs. Kerrigan.” With a small smile, he added, “You can be proud of your son. He played the man's part on the drive and proved his worth in Abilene. Trace will make his mark one day.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

September brought cooler temperatures and high winds. Trace healed with the season, but Kate saw a difference in him. He was quieter, more reserved, and less inclined to roughhouse with Quinn or play ring-around-the-rosy with the girls. He was still willing to do anything Kate or Cobb, recently made segundo of the Kerrigan Ranch, asked of him, but he kept to himself much of the time, his nose buried in a volume of the recently acquired
Complete Works of Charles Dickens
or Gibbon's
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
.

One afternoon when a raging east wind rattled the new glass windows of the cabin and made the stove chimney gust smoke into the living area, Kate took Cobb aside and asked if he could explain her son's change in behavior.

Cobb smiled. “Kate, he's grown from a boy to a man, that's all. It's nothing to worry about.”

“Is this how it was with you, Frank? Can you remember?”

“Sure I can remember. I was about Trace's age when I had my first woman and not much older when I killed my first man. Certain things happen in a boy's life that change him, mostly for the better, sometimes for the worse. Trace is one of the better ones, but he knows he still has to prove himself, prove that he's worthy of the manhood we've bestowed on him and he knows his greatest challenges are yet to come.”

Kate frowned. “You mean making our ranch a success, building a Kerrigan dynasty that will last for a hundred years and maybe two?”

“That's part of it, Kate. I can't read Trace's mind, so I don't know what else he thinks. Maybe just being expected to live the rest of his life as a man and not a boy scares him. This is a hard land, Kate. It tests a man . . . and a woman . . . constantly and never lets up.”

“What do I do to help him?”

“Nothing. Just let him be. Only Trace can work it out.”

 

 

Trace caught a drift of wood smoke borne on the wind that stirred the grass on top of the ridge. In the lonely hill country it could be a puncher riding the grub line who'd decided to make camp early or it could be trouble.

It smelled like trouble.

Trace swung out of the saddle and, crouching as low as his still hurting leg would permit, he stepped carefully to the edge of the windswept rise and looked down on the vast sweep of the land below. It was rolling hill country thick with scattered mesquite, piñón, and a few red oak. Coming in hard off the Gulf of Mexico, the south wind was strong enough to lift veils of dust from the dry ground and toss the branches of the mesquite and piñón into a frenzied dance. The smoke was rising briefly from behind a hill where the red oak grew before it was shredded by the wind.

He remounted and searched for a way off the ridge but everywhere he looked the rock face toward the smoke was thirty feet straight down. He decided to go back the way he'd come and loop around the base of the rise, a twenty-minute detour in a wind that tore at him and his horse. The big Thoroughbred weathered the storm and once among the mesquite, Trace slid the Henry out from under his knee and rode toward the smoke.

Squatters were a possibility and outlaws were another. He discounted the possibility of Lipan Apaches. They were unlikely to have a fire that smoked so much it gave away their presence. Only white men did that.

A few yards of the hill, Trace swung out of the saddle and went forward on foot. Not Indians or white men. Blanket-wrapped Mexicans—a man, woman, and three children—huddled around a mesquite fire that smoked better than it burned.

“Howdy.” Trace held his rifle across his thighs, a sight that made the woman afraid. “This is Kerrigan land.”

In truth, Kate claimed any land she could ride a horse over.

Trace didn't move. “What are you doing here?”

The man rose to his feet. He wore the shapeless white cotton garb of a peasant and the wind tugged at the sombrero he pulled low down on his head. “We're not here to steal, señor.” He spoke hesitant missionary-taught English. “We are lost. No food for the
niños
or ourselves.”

“Where are you from?” Trace asked.

“Chihuahua, señor. But there is no work at home and my wife and I seek employment.”

Trace shook his head. “It's a wonder you're alive to seek anything. The Apaches are out. Didn't you know that?”

The man shook his head. “No, señor. We did not know.” One of the children started to cry, and he said, “She is hungry.”

“Damn it. I took a ride for my health's sake, but I didn't count on meeting pilgrims.”

“I am sorry, señor. We will move off your land.”

“Wait. I have grub, probably enough for three hungry men.” Trace backed away to his horse and untied the sack his mother had tied to the saddle. She would not let him leave the cabin without his lunch.

He returned to the Mexicans with the sack. “What did I tell you? Beef sandwiches and a piece of dried apple pie. Maybe dried apple pie doesn't sound good, but it is.”

“To a hungry man, all food sounds good,” the Mexican said.

Trace passed the sack to the man. “I guess there's enough to feed all of you.”

“But you must eat, señor,” the man said.

Although he was hungry, Trace saw a need greater than his own. “I'll get something later. I ate a big breakfast.”

The adults fed the hungry children first—and this met with Trace's approval—before they shared what was left. The food seemed to help. The button-eyed children smiled shyly at Trace and their parents, though still thin and gaunt, were more animated.

“We will leave your land now, señor,” the man said. “Thank you for what you have done for us.”

“Where will you go?”

The man shrugged. “Wherever a good blacksmith is needed.” He smiled. “And a Mexican woman who can cook.”

“The fall is here. And next thing you know, winter will be cracking down hard. Your children could die in this country.”

“They will most certainly die in my own country if I can't feed them,” the man said.

“You better come with me,” Trace said, making up his mind. The Kerrigan Ranch could use a blacksmith and a good cook. A thought struck him, and he stared into the Mexican's eyes. “Any man can call himself a blacksmith who is not.”

“That is so, señor.” The little man reached into the sack his wife had carried and produced a foot-long bowie knife. He passed it to Trace.

He examined the blade closely and tested the edge. “It's a beautiful knife. The best bowie I've ever seen.”

The Mexican nodded. “Any man who can forge a steel blade from a piece of raw iron is a blacksmith. You may keep it, señor. It is my gift.”

Trace shook his head. “It is a fine gift, but it's too much. Perhaps one day you can make me one just like it.” He returned the knife. “Your wife and the little ones can ride my horse. The Kerrigan Ranch is not far.”

 

 

“He's a blacksmith, Ma,” Trace said. “Every ranch needs a good blacksmith.”

Kate glanced out the cabin window. “He looks a bit tiny to be a blacksmith.” She smiled. “‘Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he with large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands
.
'” Kate turned and frowned at Trace. “Mr. Longfellow tells us how a real blacksmith should look.”

She turned to the window again. “His wife is quite pretty. What can she do?”

Trace deadpanned, “She's a cook.”

“A cook?” Suddenly, Kate was interested. She could bake a mean sponge cake, but that was about the limit of her culinary skills. It was not for nothing that she so often praised the Good Lord for creating bacon and beans. “Can she cook for white folks?”

“I'm sure she can. Why don't you ask her, Ma?”

“I will. What's her name?”

“I don't know.”

Kate frowned. “You didn't ask?”

“No. It didn't seem important at the time.”

“Well, if she can cook, it's important now, isn't it?”

 

 

The Mexican woman's name was Jazmin Salas and her husband's name was Marco. Yes, she could cook for white folks and any other color of folks, come to that, and yes, Marco was a fine blacksmith and very good with horses.

“Can you bake Queen Victoria's favorite sponge cake?” Kate asked.

Jazmin was hesitant, then she said, “I have never heard of it, señora.”

Kate was pleased. “Good. Because that I will make myself.”

 

 

Since there was no accommodation for Kate's extra staff, Marco Salas said they could sleep outside under the shelter of a tree or some such.

Kate wouldn't hear of it. “Until a suitable house for you and your family can be built, you must live in the cabin.”

Trace pointed out that the cabin was already overcrowded.

Kate said, “Then we must make do, mustn't we?”

Trace wondered what Quinn and Frank would think of that, but they were out on the range . . . with troubles of their own.