West Texas Kill (18 page)

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Authors: Johnny D. Boggs

BOOK: West Texas Kill
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“I'll give you a bill of sale if you want. Won't be legal, but I'll do it.”
“Not what I'd call a fair trade, Ranger Chance. Your captain stole my Andalusian.”
“It wasn't your horse. You stole that stallion at Fort Stockton. That's why I can't send you there. But Sanderson . . . It's just a short ride south to Mexico—after you send that telegraph.”
He took Savage's note, and shoved it in his vest pocket. “I'll need this to show the C.O. at Fort Stockton. You need me to write down Savage's demands for you to give the telegrapher?”
“I got a good memory, too, Ranger Chance. I can remember.”
“William E. Thomas, colonel, Texas Rangers, Austin.”
“Got it.”
Chance pulled the Smith & Wesson from his back, offering it butt forward to Albavera, who stared at the small pistol.
“Like Captain Savage said, Don Melitón won't think to have his men there. That's a bit off his range, anyhow. But Savage knows I'll have to go to Sanderson to send that wire. No choice in the matter. He cut the wires here. Closest telegraph office is Sanderson. He wants me to send that wire. He knows I won't take the train. Knows there's not enough time, that I'll have to wait for a reply from Austin. But after I send that telegraph, he'll want me—or whoever sends that telegraph—dead.”
“Why would he want you dead? If he wanted you dead, he could have killed you today.”
Chance shook his head. “He needed me to send that telegraph. Needed me to deliver a message. But once that's done, he'll want me dead.”
“Why?”
Chance grinned. “He knows me. Knows what I'll do. Same as I know him.”
“So he'll have a couple of his Ranger boys waiting for you—or rather, me—in Sanderson?”
“Just one. He only has fourteen men. He can't afford to spare more than one. For whatever it is he's planning.”
“Which is?”
Chance shook his head. “I don't know.”
With a heavy sigh, Albavera took the double-action .32 and stuck it in the pocket of his buckskin jacket. “This isn't a fair trade, either. This little popgun . . . I'm not sure it would kill a fly. Now, with Miss Vickie, when I hit somebody, that body stayed down.”
“Bill Carter didn't. Remember?”
Albavera laughed. “Damn, Ranger, you and your memory. But do you remember Fort Stockton?”
Rubbing his throat, Chance nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice lacking any emotion. He walked to the gate, opened it.
Albavera leaped into the saddle. “You think this horse'll get me to Sanderson?”
“He'll have to.” Chance led the sorrel out, grabbed the Winchester, shoved it into the scabbard.
“Good luck, Ranger Chance,” Albavera yelled as he loped out of the corral, and hit the road that ran east, parallel to the railroad tracks.
“Good luck,” Chance said, and thought to add, “Moses.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They didn't head to Presidio.
Two miles south of Marathon, once Hec Savage was certain they weren't being followed, a tall, barrel-chested Ranger with a sugarloaf sombrero, left the group, and took off at a high lope east. He rode that strong gray Andalusian stallion, the horse Dave Chance had been riding.
The only place he could be going, Grace Profit figured, was Sanderson. The same town where Chance was to catch the train, and then deliver Savage's demands personally to the Ranger colonel in the state capital.
Two other riders, one named Eliot and the other called Taw, cut out a short while later. They rode northeast. Back to Marathon? Grace wasn't sure.
That pared the group down to three—Savage, Doc Shaw, and a third Ranger called Newton—and for a moment, Grace wondered if she might risk an escape, but decided against it. She couldn't get away, and besides, Linda Kincaid might need her.
After another mile, Savage turned his gray horse off the road and led his command west, then northwest, through the Del Norte mountains, and across the desert flats. No sound, except the clopping of hooves and the rustling of the wind. Savage put his gray into a hard trot, and they followed, Grace cringing, gripping the horn, trying to stand in the stirrups and lessen the jarring her spine took. The bay horse she rode was hell on her back.
At least she wasn't riding a sidesaddle. Shortly after they had left Marathon, Savage had apologized that he had no sidesaddle to offer her, but Grace didn't mind. Hell, she hadn't ridden sidesaddle since she was fourteen. She was a pretty good rider, but, damn, she hated a trot, and the bay had no easy gait.
They rode most of the afternoon, trotting and bouncing in the saddles, until Grace thought she'd either fall off the bay, or throw up from all the torment her stomach, let alone her back, kept taking. They'd slow down, walk their horses for ten or fifteen minutes, and start trotting again.
She lost track of time. They kept riding.
For November, the day had turned warm. The clouds had moved off, the sun burning her face, neck, and hands. She hadn't thought to wear a hat—hadn't expected to be going for a long ride—and no one had offered her his headgear, not even a bandana to turn into a bonnet.
By mid-afternoon, the top of her head felt like a burned hotcake.
They slowed their horses again, letting them walk across the stone-filled prairie. To the north, she could see the southern edge of the Glass Mountains, and wondered if that's where Captain Savage was taking her. Or beyond there. To . . . Murphyville?
Her horse stopped. A moment later, she heard its urine spraying the rocks.
Doc Shaw rode point, Hec Savage having spurred his gray to check their back trail. She heard a horse loping behind her, and Savage called out, “How you faring, Grace?”
He reined in beside her, holding out a canteen. She wasn't too proud to accept. Smiling, he watched as she drank greedily. She would have kept right on drinking had he not taken the canteen from her worn hands. “Best go easy on that, girl.” He corked the canteen, and wrapped the strap around his saddle horn. “I've been meaning to apologize for torching your saloon.” He pulled off his hat, and wiped his brow. “Had to do it.”
“For serving bad whiskey,” she said.
“Nah. You know better than that, Grace. Your whiskey had nothing to do with it. Besides, I think it's pretty good hooch. But I had to let everyone know I mean business.”
“After ten or twelve years, Hec, I think everyone in West Texas knows you mean business.”
He laughed. Leaning over, he slapped the bay's rump. The horses started walking again. “What would you say if I offered to buy you a new saloon? One without canvas walls. Maybe a fancy mahogany back-bar. You could serve the finest whiskey and wines, good beer, even sell some expensive cigars. What would you think of that, Grace?”
“You gonna buy that on what you make as a Ranger?”
He shook his head.
“Then maybe that hundred thousand you're extorting from the Southern Pacific.”
He studied her, curious.
“I was sitting at that table, Hec, when you were writing your letter. I can read upside down. Even someone with as lousy penmanship as you.”
He looked ahead. “Likely, you wonder where we're going.”
She brushed her hair off her face. “I figure you're taking me wherever your men took Linda Kincaid. I mean, you're following the same trail they did.” She pointed at a pile of horse apples near a broken stem of a long-dead ocotillo.
Savage reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the makings. “You missed your calling, Grace. You should have been a scout instead of a peddler of forty-rod whiskey.”
Actually, that had been a guess. Oh, she had seen the dung here and there, and the occasional print of a horseshoe, but she wasn't certain Linda Kincaid had come that way. She remembered the note Savage had written, his articles of secession or whatever he had called them. He had said Kincaid, and others, were being held in Fort Leaton. But they weren't going to Fort Leaton. She wanted to ask if those soldiers, that priest, and the others were prisoners down near the Rio Grande, but decided she had better not press her luck. She had been serving whiskey in saloons long enough to know when a person wanted to talk, and when a fellow just wanted to drink.
Savage had talked himself out.
A match flared. Cupping his hands, Savage lit the cigarette he held tightly between his lips. He rode silently beside her until he had finished the smoke, then pitched it to the ground. He told Grace, “We'd best cover some territory,” and spurred the gray into another backbreaking trot.
They were climbing in elevation, heading toward Cathedral Mountain, a limestone ridge, almost like a flat-topped mesa, except for the chimney, or cathedral-like point that shot out on one edge. Rising close to two thousand feet over the flats, it sloped down toward the foothills that surrounded the peak.
The grass had thickened, and Grace could make out the live oak, piñon, and juniper. Her horse, along with the others, snorted, and picked up the pace. They smelled water.
Before crossing Calamity Creek, they stopped to let the horses drink their fill. The water flowed richly, cooly, and turned the desert into an oasis. That far north, fed from streams and its headwaters near the dead volcano called Paisano, the creek ran year-round. Farther south the stream became intermittent as it wound its way deeper into the Big Bend, through the Santiagos, eventually flowing, when there was water, into the Rio Grande.
Willows, soapberry, and cottonwoods grew along the banks. Birds sang. Floating overhead, a red-tailed hawk watched the travelers with suspicion. Across the rocks that lined the far bank of the creek scurried a lizard. Cliffs rose above the creek, offering shade.
Rugged country, but lovely.
Grace tried to find her bearings. They were a few miles south of Murphyville. On Don Melitón Benton's range. Still, she couldn't figure out where Savage was taking her.
When the horses had slaked their thirst, Savage kicked his gray into a walk, and the others followed, traveling along the creek, northwest, through the canyons, toward Cathedral Mountain.
A few minutes later, she saw the turkey buzzards circling overhead. Ewes and rams scattered, and at first Grace figured the buzzards were after a dead sheep, but after they had gone another mile, she realized her mistake.
The sheepherder, a white-bearded Mexican in muslin rags, lay on a flat boulder stained by a lake of dried blood, his eyes staring sightlessly at the buzzards overhead. The front of his shirt was also stained with blood that had seeped from three bullet wounds in his chest.
A dog lay beside a cairn of rocks, having bled out from a belly wound. Beyond that, she spied a young boy, barely in his teens, shot in the back, apparently as he tried to run away.
Sheep scattered, running frantically toward the rocks, their bleating sounding like a fingernail being scraped across a blackboard.
The Rangers rode on silently, barely glancing at the corpses, ignoring the pitiful cries of the sheep. Grace had trouble holding down the water in her stomach.
When they reached a clearing, they turned away from Calamity Creek, and Grace saw the compound—several buildings and a couple corrals. A couple men, sitting in the shade, rose from their chairs, rifles held in the crooks of their arms.
La Oveja
.
She knew the place. Oh, she'd never been there, but she had heard of Don Melitón Benton's sheep-raising operation in the Glass Mountains. It did not resemble any sheepherder's camp. It was more fortress than home, built for protection and comfort. A five-foot-high stone fence with a big wooden gate surrounded the perimeter. Cottonwoods and Mexican walnuts, even without any leaves at that time of year, offered shade.
Beyond were the corrals, a few lean-tos, and an adobe barn. A two-seater privy, a smokehouse, and two wells built over natural springs were closer to the house. A couple adobe buildings reminded Grace of those old dogtrot cabins she had seen far east of there. They were joined by cottonwood vigas that stretched from roof to roof, and cast lines of shadows on the flat rocks that formed a porch. The buildings were square, except for a circular
torreón
that rose a good eighteen feet at the corner of the eastern building. As they rode toward the corrals, a man stuck his head from the opening in the top of that watchtower, calling out, “
Hola
,
mi capitán.
”
Savage wearily dismounted, pulling a shotgun from the saddle scabbard, handing the reins to one of those men who had been sitting in a rocking chair. He looked up at the man in the torreón.
“Demitrio,” he said, “you damned fool. I told you not to draw any attention. Those buzzards are sure to do that.”
“
¿Por qué?
” The Ranger looked at the sky. “But we have done nothing. I did not notice those birds.”
“Nothing?” Savage spit. “A dead old man, a dead kid, a dead dog. That sound like nothing to you?”
“But . . .”
Savage stepped toward the nearest well, his attention turned toward a figure walking out of the west-facing adobe building. Thumbing back both hammers on the shotgun, Savage muttered an oath underneath his breath.
“Amigo,” a black-mustached Mexican said, grinning widely, revealing four gold-capped teeth. “It is good to see you, no? Do not blame your
rinches
for those poor souls I sent to their maker. Your hombres trusted that old man and his grandson to tend sheep, and not run to Don Melitón. Me? I decided dead men mind their manners a lot better than living ones. Besides, it seemed to me that they would make good witnesses against you and your men, and me and mine.”
He looked younger than she had expected. He had slicked-back black hair that touched his shoulders, and a waxed mustache, with piercing dark eyes and a bronzed face. He wore an unbuttoned, red silk shirt, revealing a silver crucifix hanging against a muscular chest. His fancy black boots had silver spurs with giant rowels, and his black
calzoneras
were trimmed with gold French braid and studded with silver conchos down the sides. A brace of ivory-handled Colts were stuck in a yellow sash around his waist. Grace knew who he was before Savage said his name.
“Lo Grande,” Savage said icily, “I told you to stay put in Ojinaga.”
“
Sí. Es verdad.
But you know Juan Lo Grande. ‘No,' I tell myself, ‘it is not right. It is not right to let you and your
rinches
take all the risks. It is not what good partners do.' As Shakespeare wrote in
Julius Caesar
, ‘I love the name of honor more than I fear death.' On my honor, I could not let you take all the risks, señor.” Laughing, he snapped his fingers, and several men, brandishing repeating and bolt-action rifles, appeared in the doorways to both buildings, in the entrance to the barn, around the corners of the lean-tos, and one alongside Demitrio Ahern in the torreón.
“So I bring many hombres with me,” Lo Grande said. “We share in the risks. We share in the spoils. Equally, amigo. And I thank you.
Mil gracias, mi capitán.
It was so good of you to bring that puta from Terlingua to this place. I missed her so.
Adelante
, amigos. Adelante. Come in. Come in. There is much wine, and plenty of mutton, and frijoles. You must be tired from your long journey.”
He brought a cigar to his mouth, but lowered it, spotting Grace Profit for the first time. Quickly, he swept the sombrero off his head, and bowed slightly. He spoke to Hec Savage, but his eyes never left Grace Profit.
“But where are my manners? You bring another woman here? Ah, Capitán Savage, you are a true friend. She is more woman than that frail, bony
puta
from Terlingua. Much more woman. It will be good to make her acquaintance.”
He walked closer, bowed, straightened and, like a great thespian, recited a line from
Antony and Cleopatra
with not a trace of his Spanish accent.

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