Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (5 page)

     The shorter of the two men happened to be the one who hid Tom’s horse in the north barn after Jack Payton took him hostage. He didn’t notice the brown spot the Ranger was referring to. But then again, he wasn’t looking.

     And everything else checked out.

     “Say we see this guy, Ranger, how do we get ahold of you to give you his body and collect the reward?”

     “Oh, don’t shoot him. If you shoot him you won’t get the reward. The family wants him alive. They want to let justice be done so they can enjoy seeing him standing atop the gallows begging for his life the same way his victims did. Then they want the pleasure of watching him swing by the rope and soil his trousers as he draws his last breath. They say they won’t pay the reward unless he’s still alive.”

     “Okay, then. Suppose he wanders along and we get the drop on him. Say we tie him up and hold him for you. How do we get ahold of you?”

     “Oh, I’ll be around town for a couple of days before I head on. I’ll tell you what. I’ll come by this way again tomorrow about this time, maybe a bit later in the day. If you haven’t seen him I’ll drop by the following day. If you or your neighbors haven’t seen him by then I’ll assume he headed north and I’ll light out that way myself.”

     “Fair enough, Ranger. And you said the reward is five thousand?”

     “Yes. In gold coin.”

     “You got that much on you, do you?”

     Randy laughed.

     “Heck, I wouldn’t be alive for very long, riding alone in this part of the country and advertising I was carrying five thousand in gold.”

     “No, I reckon you wouldn’t.”

     “If you boys find this guy, you can ride with me when I take him back to San Antonio to turn him in. You can claim your gold from the family, and I’ll vouch for you as the ones who found him.”

     The tall one grunted again.

     The short one wasn’t happy that he couldn’t just shoot the Ranger in the back and take gold from his pockets. But then again, a three day ride to San Antonio was worth five thousand in gold.

     Randy rode off to the east, presumably to continue spreading the word about the fugitive he was looking for.

     Actually, once safely out of sight of the two men at the gate, his plan was to double back and check in on Sara.

-8-

     Randy found Sara’s campsite deserted. She was nowhere in sight.

     He wasn’t a man to panic, but came close to it.

     Then he heard rustling in the woods fifty yards away.

     He drew his sidearm and prepared for a battle.

     But it wasn’t a bad man who broke through into the clearing. It was Sara, her rifle in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Over her left shoulder, connected by their hind feet by a short section of rope, were two dead rabbits.

     She saw the gun in Randy’s hand and remarked, “Boy, that’s a hell of a way to greet someone who went out shopping for your supper.”

     He put it back into its holster and said, “I thought you were going to stay here in camp.”

     “I never said that. You said that. I never agreed to it. I told you I wasn’t some punk kid who wasn’t capable of pitching in. I got hungry and decided to go get some food. If you don’t want any I’ll eat your share.”

     He softened a bit.

     “I never meant to imply you were a punk kid. I merely said that your presence wasn’t needed to carry out my plan. That you’d have been an unnecessary liability. And it so happens that I’m hungry too. And I happen to love rabbit.”

     He could have left it there, since no more words were really necessary. But he went one step farther.

     “Thank you for getting us some grub.”

     That made her smile.

     “Well, well… a cowboy with manners. Fancy that. I thought good manners died when all the lights did.”

     “Hardly.”

     “How did it go? Your plan, that is. Any sign of Tom or his horse?”

     “No. But I got the sense that at least one of the men has seen him. Just something about the way his eyes lit up when I described Tom and his horse. The other one I got no reading on one way or the other.”

     “So, you told them you were going back tomorrow to ask if they’ve seen him?”

     “Yes ma’am.”

     “So that means what? For the rest of the day you’re just gonna lay around the camp and do absolutely nothing? While I cook and clean and do the dishes?”

     He smiled.

     “Funny.”

     “Yeah. That’s what I was going for.”

     “Actually, I was going to ride out to the perimeter of the ranch. Scout it out. Do some surveillance and get the layout of the place, in case we have to go in and get him. It would be nice to know what building he’s in, how many men they’ve got, where the other friendlies are located. Do you want to go?”

     Her jaw dropped in a feigned expression of shock.

     “Why, Ranger Randy. You’re inviting me, a helpless little girl, to go along on a dangerous mission? Why, who’s gonna protect me from all the big bad boogeymen of the world? And I have so many dishes to wash and so much laundry and dusting to do around here. I just don’t see how I can spare the time to go on your silly old mission.”

     Randy chuckled. It wasn’t so much her words he found amusing, as it was her voice. She did a spot-on impression of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
, complete with southern charm, heavy southern accent and constantly batted eyelashes.

     “Suit yourself. I’ll go by myself then.”

     “You most certainly will not. Let me gut and wrap these guys and we’ll head out. I figure when we get back I’ll cook one of them for supper and turn the other one into jerky for later.”

     “Can I have a cup of coffee first?”

     “There’s some still in the pot. It’s cold, but I’m sure the Texas Rangers taught you how to rekindle a still-warm campfire. Of course, if they didn’t I can help you with it.”

     “That’s okay. I can probably manage.”

     While he waited for his coffee to boil he watched Sara skin the rabbits and remove their organs, then wrap them tightly in a small tarp to keep the flies off them.

     “So, tell me about your husband and son.”

     “Why do you want to know?”

     “No particular reason. Just trying to make small talk. And maybe I’m a little curious about who would want to settle down with a wildcat of a woman like you.”

     She smiled.

     “I wasn’t always a wildcat. Once upon a time I was quite timid. I was dependent on someone else for pretty much everything.”

     “So what happened to change all that?”

     “The blackout. The blackout happened. I was so much in love with Jordan I ran away from home to be with him. I lied to him and his parents. I told them my family was out of town and I was stranded all alone. They took me in and taught me how to take care of myself. Now I can hunt and fish and butcher a hog. I can use a gun and actually hit things with it. Before I was afraid to even touch one.”

     “Your husband… he’s not threatened at all, knowing you’re quite capable of surviving without him?”

     “No. That was his goal, I think. He wanted me to be strong, for my sake and for Christopher’s sake. That’s our son. He said as unpredictable as the world has become, he can’t say for sure that he’ll be around to watch out for me and Chris ten years from now. And he’s right. The world has become a dark and dangerous place, and none of us know whether we’ll still be alive next year or even next week.

     “He wanted to make sure that if something happened to him, that Chris and I would make it without him.”

     “That’s very mature of him. A lot of men would have wanted you to stay weak, to keep their thumb on you, so you wouldn’t feel the urge to wander away.”

     “Not Jordan. He’s not that way. I loved him when he was a boy, and now that he’s a man I love him ten times more. He’s the finest man I’ve ever known, and I’m lucky to have him as my husband.”

     “I suspect he’s just as lucky as you are and knows it too. I say good for him.”

     “Wow. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

     “It was. Coffee’s done. Do you want some?”

     “Sure. My cup is over there. It’s still half full, but I stopped drinking it when it cooled off. I hate cold coffee. You can warm it up for me.”

     He walked to the far end of the campsite and picked up her bright pink Hello Kitty cup from atop a boulder.

     “So, why does a strong woman like yourself continue to use this?”

     “I don’t know. I just like it. I guess because it reminds me that I’m still a little girl inside. And outside too, in some ways. And I guess because it also reminds me of how far I’ve come.

-9-

     Sara hadn’t thought to bring binoculars with them. She wished she had. But then again, she and Tom hadn’t planned on doing any long range surveillance when they’d struck out in search of her mother.

     And binoculars would have taken up some of the already limited space in one of their horses’ saddlebags.

     For Randy, however, binoculars and long range surveillance were a part of his job. The Bushnells he had weren’t fancy. But they were very effective. He couldn’t count the flies buzzing around a man’s head two hundred yards away. But he could plainly see the man’s lips move as he cursed them.

     “Can I see too?”

     Sara was annoying him, she knew, by asking every thirty seconds or so to borrow the binoculars and get a peek at what he was looking at.

     But she didn’t care. She had an interest in what was going on too. She was worried sick about Tom and what might have happened to him. During the night she’d dozed off for a few minutes and had an ugly dream. A dream where Tom and her mother were lined up against a tree and executed. At the vision of Tom falling dead, a bullet to his head, she’d gasped audibly. When her mom suffered the very same fate she was instantly wide awake. With tears in her eyes.

     They passed the binoculars back and forth for more than an hour, surveying the ranch from several vantage points.

     Sarah grew frustrated.

     “I guess this was a big waste of time. Why don’t we just ride in there and say we’re the law and demand to search the place?”

     Randy turned to look at her.

     The look on his face was that of a father, dealing with a petulant child.

     “We’ll keep that in our back pocket as an option,” he said. “But only as a last resort. People don’t regard the law in the way they once did. Many people have the attitude of invincibility. That they’ve managed to survive the greatest crisis in the history of mankind when few others did. A lot of them think that gives them the right to do whatever they want, to ignore the rules of polite society.

     “These men are that way, if they have indeed taken Tom hostage. Riding in there will get their attention, but not their respect. And not necessarily their cooperation.

     “As for thinking this was a waste of time, you obviously didn’t see the same things I did.”

     Sara was curious.

     “I don’t know what you saw, Randy. But all I saw was a bunch of people walking around, wasting my time. I didn’t see Mom, or Tom, or Tom’s horse. Did I miss something?”

     “We didn’t come here looking for any of those things. If they have them, they’re certainly not going to parade them around in the open for all the world to see. What we came here for were clues. Clues as to how many people we’re dealing with. Which ones are the leaders. Exactly where Tom and your mom and being held. What kind of firepower they possess. And most importantly, any chinks in their armor we can exploit to our advantage.”

     “Okay. I get your point. Are you gonna tell me what you saw that I didn’t, or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”

     He smiled.

     “Ah, the impatience of youth. Did you see the man who took a plate of food and a bottle of water into the barn?”

     “Yeah. So?”

     “So who carries their food into a barn to eat it? A barn presumably full of horses and maybe cattle. With manure all over the floor and certainly dozens of flies who’d love to share that lunch? Why not sit under a tree and eat it? Or better yet, why bring it out of the house at all? If it was on a plate, it was prepared in a kitchen. Why not eat it in the kitchen?”