Renegades (22 page)

A moment later the glow he had glimpsed through the window got brighter as someone approached the front door from inside with a lamp. A nervous voice that he recognized as belonging to Roanne called, “Who's out there? We're closed.”

“It's Frank Morgan, Roanne,” he replied.

Instantly, a key rattled in the lock, and a second later the door swung open. “Frank!” Roanne exclaimed. The light from the lamp in her hand revealed that she wore a thick robe belted tightly around her waist. “Is it really you? What in the world?”

“It's me, all right,” Frank told her. “I need a little help. Dog's been shot.”

“Oh, my God. Is he hurt bad?”

“I don't think so.”

She stepped back. “Come in, come in. I was afraid I was never going to see you again, Frank.”

“And here I turn up on your doorstep with a dog in my arms.”

“I'll take you any way I can get you, Frank Morgan.” She blushed as she said it, but she said it anyway. Frank carried Dog inside, and Roanne closed the door behind them.

Dog rested comfortably on the floor of Roanne's kitchen. Frank had cleaned the gash in his side and tied a bandage in place over it. Dog would be sore for a few days, but Frank was confident that the animal would be back to normal quickly.

Frank and Roanne sat at the kitchen table, sipping from cups of coffee Roanne had poured from the pot on the stove. While he was tending to Dog, Frank had told her a little about what had happened. Now she asked, “Who would want to kill you like that, Frank?”

“I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the most likely hombre is Nathan Wedge.”

Roanne frowned. “I don't like Captain Wedge, but he is a Texas Ranger. He swore an oath to uphold law and order, and lurking in an alley to try to kill someone isn't what I'd call enforcing the law.”

“To some men, an oath is just words,” Frank said. “It doesn't mean anything. They don't realize that words are what men live by. You can't go changing them to mean something they don't.”

“You're saying that Wedge and his men have become outlaws?”

“Three of the Rangers gunned down a rancher named Howard Longwell this evening, just because he wouldn't let them steal some of his horses.”

“Oh, my God!” Roanne gasped. “I know the Longwells. Is Howard dead?”

Frank shook his head. “No, just wounded. I sent Doc Ervin out there to patch him up. But as far as Doc or anyone else in town knows, Longwell accidentally shot himself while he was cleaning his gun.”

“Is Doris all right?”

“She's fine, just shaken up.”

“What happened to the men who shot Howard?”

“They won't shoot anybody else,” Frank said flatly.

Roanne looked at him for a long moment without saying anything. Then she sighed and said, “I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Frank. In fact, I didn't hear anything you just told me about the Longwells or Captain Wedge and the Rangers.”

Frank nodded and said solemnly, “I reckon that would be the smartest thing you could do, Roanne.”

“I'm touched, though, that you trusted me.”

“You strike me as a trustworthy sort of woman.”

A pleased smile tugged at her lips. “I'm glad to hear that,” she said.

“Good, because I'm going to ask you to look after Dog for me while I'm gone.”

“Of course. I'd be happy to. But where are you going?”

“I can't stay here tonight. That wouldn't be proper.”

Roanne laughed. “When a lady gets to be my age, Frank, she places less value on propriety than she might have when she was younger.”

Frank was tempted, but he wasn't going to take her up on the invitation that was implied in her words. His instincts told him that all hell could break loose at any time, and he wanted to be able to move quickly without having to worry about Roanne's safety.

“I think I'll ride on down to the Rocking T,” he said. “There's enough moonlight so that I can follow the trail with no trouble.”

“Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed. “All right. I'll take good care of Dog.”

“Before I go, though . . . tell me what's been going on around here while I was gone.”

Roanne hesitated before she answered, sipping her coffee in an apparent effort to put her thoughts together before she spoke. Finally, she said, “Things have gotten worse, no doubt about that. Captain Wedge seemed furious when he came back without catching the Black Scorpion. He seemed to think that the gang has supporters and informers around here, and he began interrogating people that he suspected of being connected in some way with the Black Scorpion. The questioning got pretty rough at times, from what I heard. But he never found out anything.”

“Reckon that made him that much more angry and frustrated,” Frank commented.

Roanne nodded. “That's right. He hasn't actually declared martial law yet, but things are heading in that direction. He relieved our town marshal, Walt Duncan, of his duties and said that the Rangers were completely responsible for maintaining law and order now. He told Heck Carmichael, the operator at the telegraph office, that no messages could be sent or delivered unless they were cleared through the Rangers first. So nobody's been able to get in touch with the county sheriff, and there's no deputy on duty up here. But everybody has sort of gone along with that. After all ... Captain Wedge and his men are Rangers.”

Frank nodded slowly. He knew what Roanne meant. The Rangers had such a long record of sterling public service, dating back to the days when Texas had been an independent republic, and they were so well respected that no one really wanted to believe the worst of them. Folks were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, just because they were Rangers.

That was probably the very thing that Wedge had counted on when he decided to go his own way.

If not for the incident at the Longwell ranch, Frank might have thought that Wedge was just being overly aggressive in enforcing the law. The shooting of Howard Longwell, though, was a definite step over the line into outlawry. Once that step was taken, there was no going back.

“Even if Captain Wedge has . . . has turned renegade, why would he want to kill you?” Roanne asked with a puzzled frown. “Why would he think that you represent a threat to him?”

“Other than the fact that he just doesn't like me, I reckon he knows I've got a reputation for sticking my nose in wherever there's trouble. He knows that I've worked with the Rangers—the
honest
Rangers—before. And I'm called The Drifter for a reason. I usually don't stay in one place for very long. Could be he's afraid that if I ride on, word of what he's doing here will get out and the governor might send in some other Rangers to investigate.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you'd better be very careful:'

Frank nodded. “I intend to be.”

He finished his coffee, scratched Dog's ears for a minute, and told the big cur to stay there with Roanne. As he straightened and started toward the back door, she stepped closer to him and put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Frank,” she said softly, “I meant what I said about being careful.”

“So did I,” he told her. And then, with her standing so close to him like that with her face tilted up to his, he did the natural thing.

He kissed her.

It was a sweet, warm kiss that grew in urgency. Frank stepped back before things got too hot and heavy. With a regretful sigh, Roanne let him go.

He slipped out the back door of the building that housed both her business and her home. The night seemed to be peaceful and quiet, but Frank knew that danger could lurk anywhere in the darkness. Whoever had tried to bushwhack him earlier, whether it was Wedge or someone else, might make another attempt on his life. Judging by the way the man had run off so nimbly, none of Frank's shots had wounded him.

Frank whistled quietly and Stormy came around the building to him. Taking the reins, Frank led the Appaloosa behind the other buildings along San Rosa's main street until he came to the one where the bushwhacker had lurked. He lit a match and looked for anything that might give him a clue to the gunman's identity, but he didn't see anything. Too many people moved along this alley during the day for any footprints to stand out among the welter of prints on the ground.

He did find the sombrero Don Felipe had given him, still lying where it had fallen after being shot off his head. He shook his head ruefully as he saw the neat hole drilled all the way through the high crown. A few inches lower and he'd be a candidate for the undertaker now.

After slapping the sombrero back on his head, Frank mounted up and turned Stormy to the east, riding out of town and circling for a mile or so before angling back to the main road. No one tried to stop him as he trailed south toward the Rocking T.

 

 

A low-voiced challenge came from the grove of cottonwoods beside the road. “Hold it right there, hombre,” a man called. Frank couldn't see him in the darkness, but the tone of menace in the voice told him that the words were backed up by a gun.

Something about the voice was familiar, too, and as Frank reined in, he cast his mind back and tried to figure out who it belonged to. The answer came to him, and he said, “Nick? Nick Holmes?”

This time the voice sounded surprised. “Who's there?”

“It's Frank Morgan.”

Cecil Tolliver's younger son-in-law stepped out from the trees. “Mr. Morgan!” he exclaimed. “What are you doin' out here in the middle of the night? Ben said he'd heard a rumor you were still in Mexico.”

So that was how Ben had explained it, Frank thought with a grin. The youngster couldn't come right out and say that he'd seen Frank at the Almanzar hacienda, because then he would have had to explain what he was doing there. And it was likely Ben wanted to keep his romance with Carmen a secret just like she did.

“I've been south of the border, all right,” Frank said. He thumbed back the sombrero. “That's where I picked up this big hat. But I'm back now, and I need to see Cecil.”

“Well, come ahead,” Nick told him. “Just ride a mite easy when you get to the house, so nobody gets trigger-happy.”

“What's going on, Nick?” Frank asked. “Has there been more trouble while I was gone?”

“Hell, there's been nothin' but trouble! I don't know if it's Almanzar's gunnies or the Black Scorpion's bunch, but rustlers have hit us nearly every night. And the Rangers don't do a damned thing to stop it! That Captain Wedge treats us like we're the lawbreakers!”

That didn't surprise Frank. He could have told Nick that neither Don Felipe Almanzar nor the Black Scorpion were to blame for the problems plaguing the Rocking T and the rest of the border country. If he'd had to guess, Frank would have said that the so-called Rangers under Nathan Wedge were responsible for the rustling. That would explain why they couldn't catch the wide-loopers: They would have had to chase themselves in order to do that.

It was a nice setup for the Rangers-turned-outlaws ... as long as they didn't mind betraying everything that their badges were supposed to stand for.

“That's why your father-in-law has extra guards out?” Frank said to Nick.

“Yes, sir. Every trail in and out of the ranch has men posted on it around the clock. There were a couple of rifles besides mine trained on you when you rode up.”

“Well, keep a sharp eye out for trouble,” Frank told him. “It's liable to come calling any time.”

With that, he rode on, heading for the ranch headquarters. He had known that he was getting close to the Rocking T boundary line, and the presence of Nick Holmes and the other guards had confirmed that Frank was now riding on the Tolliver range.

Quite a few lights were burning in the ranch house when he came within sight of it. Dogs began to bark when they heard Stormy's hoofbeats. Several men emerged from the barn and walked out to meet Frank. He saw the rifles in their hands.

“Take it easy, fellas,” he called to them. “It's Frank Morgan.”

The front door of the house opened and a stocky figure stepped out onto the porch in time to hear Frank identify himself. “Frank!” Cecil Tolliver said. He came to the edge of the porch as Frank rode up to the steps. Waving the rifle-toting cowboys back to the barn, Tolliver went on. “Good Lord, where did you come from? I didn't know if you'd ever get back this way. We heard you were down in manana-land.”

Frank swung down from the saddle and looped Stormy's reins around the hitching post beside the porch. As he came up the steps, he said, “That's right, I've been in Mexico for a while. They have the same sort of trouble down there that you do up here, Cecil.”

Tolliver snorted. “How can that be? All our trouble
comes
from Mexico!”

“That's where you're wrong,” Frank insisted. “We need to have a long talk.”

“Sounds fine to me. Come on inside. Peg will be glad to see you.” The rancher looked askance at the sombrero on Frank's head. “Where'd you get that Mexican hat?”

“Mexico,” Frank said. He was really starting to miss his old Stetson.

Tolliver ushered him inside. “The womenfolk have gone on to bed, but Ben and Darrell and I were chewin' the fat in the kitchen. You're welcome to join us.”

They went down the hall to the kitchen, where Ben Tolliver and Darrell Forrest were sitting at the heavy, butcher-block table. Ben looked especially surprised to see Frank—and none too happy about it, either. Frank nodded to the young man and said, “Ben, how are you?”

“I'm fine,” Ben said warily. He had to be wondering if Frank was about to spill his secret.

Frank thought about it. It might be better to get everything out in the open right here and now. But he decided to hold off and see what Cecil Tolliver had to say first.

The men had cups of coffee in front of them, and as Tolliver motioned for Frank to sit down at the table, he got another cup and filled it from the pot on the stove. Before this night was over, Frank thought wryly, he was going to have drunk enough coffee to keep him awake for a week. But that was all right, because there was a lot to talk about.

“First of all, tell us about the Black Scorpion,” Tolliver requested when all four men were sitting down. “We know the Rangers caught up to his bunch but let him get away. Captain Wedge said he thought you'd been killed in the ruckus, Frank.”

“Came close,” Frank said with a smile. “I even tangled with the Black Scorpion himself.”

Tolliver slapped a hand on the table. “By God, I hope you gave him a wallop for me!”