[Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line (17 page)

Rusty had heard. He had also heard that the ranger company caught the murderer and made short work of him. "I suppose some of those rough boys pass this way from time to time?"

"I try to see very little and tell even less. If I was to peach to a ranger, somebody might come by here some dark night and blow my light out. If any of them was to ride up here now and see me talkin' to you, and they found out you're a ranger, they might get the same idea. So I'd take it kindly if you'd water your stock and move on."

Rusty pulled the mule's lead rope. "I'm obliged to you for the water and the words of wisdom."

"They never cost me nothin'. Watch out for yourself. I'd hate for your mother to have to grieve for you."

Rusty saw no point in saying that he had no mother, no father, no kin that he knew of. The farmer had his own problems.

* * *

He tried to be watchful, for he knew this could be dangerous country, but he missed seeing the band of horses until they came boiling over a hill and swept down toward him. A rider galloped along in front, pointing the way. Several others rode alongside and behind, keeping the animals moving at a fast clip. Rusty felt a wild jolt of apprehension, thinking the horsemen were Comanches. His fear eased as he saw they were white. He realized that Comanches were in the habit of taking horses north, not south.

He pulled to the left to be out of the way. The driven horses began spilling past him, though the man who rode point reined around and came directly toward Rusty. He was followed quickly by two men who had been riding swing alongside the remuda.

The point rider gave Rusty a close scrutiny without speaking. His hard gaze brought back Rusty's uneasiness.

Rusty offered a tentative "Howdy."

"I don't know you. Who are you?" The man was young enough that his several days' growth of whiskers looked soft and uneven.

Not much older than me
, Rusty thought. But he saw hardness in the eyes and the set of the jaw. "My name's Rusty Shannon. What's yours?" He extended his hand.

The rider did not answer the question or accept Rusty's hand. "Where you headed?"

"Up the country a ways." Rusty remembered the farmer's admonition about not revealing his mission.

"What for?"

"Lookin' for kin." That was not quite a lie. He always harbored a faint hope that he might run into kin somewhere, though he would have no way of recognizing them if he did. It was frustrating not to know what his real name had been.

The suspicious gray eyes had a piercing quality that compounded Rusty's discomfort. The other two horsemen had pulled up on either side of the point rider. Rusty sensed threat in all three. Whatever they were up to, it was not good.

The point rider asked, "You sure your kin ain't in the federal army? Or maybe the ranger spy company up there?"

"I don't know anybody in the army, or in any spy company either." It was true that Rusty didn't know anyone in the ranger company yet.

He strongly suspected these were Indian horses, stolen off the reservation. The threat of war had raised the price of horses enough to tempt even an honest man, much less one already inclined to be a thief. Rusty's life might not be worth a brass peso if these men knew his true business. He made an effort to keep his hand still, not to let it move down toward the stock of his rifle. He doubted he would live to bring the weapon clear of leather.

"I don't mean to hold you fellers up. You look like you're in a hurry."

The three men glanced at one another, indecisive. The last of the loose horses trotted past, two riders following. Another rider spurred up from far behind, his face flushed with excitement. "What the hell have you stopped for? "They're right behind us!" He pointed in the direction from which he had come.

That threw the others into a similar state of excitement. The point rider drew a pistol from his hip. He brought it up as if to aim it at Rusty, then changed his mind.

The man who had come up last shouted, "Shoot him, damn it, and let's get out of here!"

The point rider hesitated. The other drew his pistol to do the chore for him. The point rider pushed between him and Rusty. He said, "They might hang us for horse stealin', Pete. They'd sure as hell hang us for a killin'." He stared hard at Rusty. "Reckon you can forget what we look like?"

The muzzle of the pistol was leveled on Rusty's stomach. "I've already forgotten."

He had not, however. The images of the man with the pistol and the one named Pete had burned themselves indelibly into his memory.

Pete looked back, his voice desperate. "We'd better let the horses go. We can't save them and our scalps, too."

Reluctantly the point man said, "All right, there'll be more horses another time." He turned back to Rusty. "I wouldn't stay here if I was you. You're fixin' to meet up with a bunch of real mad Indians."

Rusty's anxiety over the horsemen was replaced by anxiety over what was coming next. He saw a thicket a couple of hundred yards away. "Don't let me hold you back."

The horsemen put spurs to their mounts and quartered south-eastward in a hard run. They motioned for two men who still rode on the near side of the remuda to quit the bunch and join them. The stolen horses at the rear realized they were no longer being pushed and slowed down. A few stopped and tuckered for their running mates. Rusty touched his heels to Alamo's sides and put him into a long trot. Chapultepec lagged so that Rusty had to turn loose of the lead rope to prevent being pulled from the saddle. He circled back to recover the animal.

"Damned mule, you're liable to get me killed."

The delay prevented him from reaching the thicket in time. More than a dozen riders appeared on the hill where he had first seen the stolen horses. As they galloped down the slope, several split off and came after Rusty while the others continued pursuit of the remuda. There was no doubt this time. These were Indians. Rusty saw that he had no chance to reach the thicket. He pulled hard on the reins and slipped the rifle from its scabbard, then stepped quickly to the ground.

Even as he did so, he knew he had no chance. He might shoot one, but the others would cut him down before he could reload. He held his breath until his lungs ached, then sucked in enough air to fill them and stood with the rifle at arm's length in a posture of surrender.

Daddy Mike had always said the worst thing a man could do was to give himself up to Indians, but the only other option he saw was to go down fighting. It seemed futile to kill just one when he could see half a dozen coming at him. He waited, his heart pounding and his mouth dry as old leather.

He wished Preacher Webb were with him. Preacher could charm his way into or out of almost any situation. Rusty whispered, "Lord, if You're really up there and payin' any attention, You'd better do somethin' quick."

The first Indian to reach him shouted furiously and pointed toward the horses still moving southward. Rusty did not understand the words, but the tone was unmistakable. The rest surrounded him in a hostile manner. He knew they assumed he was one of the thieves.

He pointed in the direction the real thieves had taken. They were still in sight but fading rapidly into the distance. "Yonder go the ones that stole your horses. It wasn't me."

He realized they probably did not understand what he was saying. He hoped they understood his gestures. He pointed again. "Yonder they go."

A voice came from behind him. "How come you didn't go with them, bub?"

He had not noticed that one of the men was white.
Lord
, he thought,
maybe You were paying attention after all
. "Because I wasn't with them in the first place."

Being white did not mean the man was friendly. He had a hangman's look about him, darkly suspicious eyes peering from beneath the drooping brim of a weather-beaten felt hat, his mouth a flat line barely visible through heavy brown whiskers. "You tryin' to make us believe you just happened into them?"

"Yes, sir, or they just happened into me. I was headed the other direction, to Fort Belknap."

Several sets of dark and glittering eyes stared accusingly at him. He suspected some of the Indians understood enough English to get the gist of what he had said. They argued among themselves. One pointed to the mule. Rusty feared he was claiming the animal, which would mean they had made up their minds he was a thief. He shivered, wondering how it felt to take an arrow in the chest or to have a war club smash his skull.

The white man listened intently to the Indians' conversation, which he seemed to understand. Rusty assumed he was some kind of scout or interpreter. When the talk dwindled away, the man told Rusty, "Walkin' Eagle says there wasn't no mules among the bunch that was stolen."

Rusty began to hope. "Not this one, for sure. I brought Chapultepec with me all the way up from the Colorado River. Alamo, too." He pointed to the black horse's brand. "That's the Shannon brand, an S with a bar under it. I'm Rusty Shannon."

The name meant nothing. The man pointed to the brand and said something to the Indians, part in spoken words and part in sign. They argued, but when the argument quieted down, Rusty was fairly sure none of them was claiming the brand. He breathed easier.

The white man demanded, "What's your business at Belknap?"

Rusty pondered his answer. Given what had been done to them in recent times, it was unlikely these Indians had any good feeling toward the rangers. He repeated the evasion he had offered to the horse thief. "I'm lookin' for some kin."

"Who are they? Maybe I know them."

"Our family's the Shannons." That was not a lie.

"I don't recall any Shannons up that way. You sure they're there?"

"I'm not sure of anything. But I thought I'd look."

Rusty could see that several Indians who had followed the thieves had abandoned that chase and were helping run down the loose horses. He saw a couple of army uniforms as well.

The interpreter said, "I don't like to call anybody a liar 'til I know for sure, but let's just say I ain't done wonderin'. Soon's the Tonkawas finish roundin' up their horses, we'll all head back toward Fort Belknap together. We'll see if we can find any Shannons."

Rusty was mildly surprised. "Tonkawas? I figured these were Comanches."

The man seemed short of patience. "That's one big trouble with you people in Texas. You never could tell one Indian from another. It's caused you no end of grief, and them, too. The Comanches are as wild as deer."

"These looked pretty wild too, comin' at me like they did."

"If they was the killin' kind of Indian, you'd already be halfway to hell and smellin' the smoke. The Tonkawas don't mean harm to anybody, except Comanches. They used to give you Texans a lot of help against the wild Indians. The reward you gave them was to kick them across the river."

Rusty remembered the sad exodus, but under present circumstances he had no intention of letting them know he had been there.

The Indians had turned back the leaders of the stolen horse herd and were pushing the bunch in Rusty's direction. The two army men rode ahead, reining up as they reached Rusty and the interpreter. One of the pair bore himself with exaggerated dignity, which led Rusty to assume he was an officer of some kind.
Probably a lieutenant
, he thought. Daddy Mike had always said lieutenants tended to have an inflated view of their importance. By the time they made captain, most had had their egos punctured often enough to let the excess air out of them.

The officer gave Rusty a study of the most negative sort. "I see you captured one of them, Harrison."

The interpreter had not introduced himself. Now, at least, Rusty knew his name.

Harrison replied, "We're inclined to believe he's not one of them. He says he was on his way north and just happened to run into the thieves. None of the Tonks claim his horse or mule."

The officer continued his hard scrutiny. "Perhaps. Not all have seen them yet." To Rusty he said, "If you are what you claim to be, I must say that I find fault with your choice of company."

"They weren't any company of mine. It looked for a minute like they were fixin' to shoot me." He considered showing the note Tom Blessing had written for the captain of rangers but decided it might be well to wait until they reached Belknap. He did not know the army's opinion of the rangers. If it was like the rangers' opinion of the army, he had better keep his mouth shut.

The officer said, "What matters most is that the Indians recovered their horses. To be on the safe side, we'll turn you over to the authorities as we pass Belknap. If they find no fault with you, they'll free you quickly enough." He scowled. "They do not seem to find much fault with people who steal from the Indians."

Rusty decided against continuing to proclaim his innocence. He had already said more than usual, and the lieutenant would keep doubting him anyway.

The officer asked, "Should the occasion arise, do you think you could identify the thieves?"

"One or two, maybe. Most of them were too far away." Under duress Rusty had implied a promise of silence to the thieves' point rider, though he did not feel honor bound to respect it. With luck he might never be called upon to face that moral decision.

Though technically not a prisoner, Rusty felt like one. Should he try to escape his mixed escort he suspected he would be run down or shot. He decided to make the best of the present situation inasmuch as he was being taken where he had intended to go in the first place.

The lieutenant rode on one side of him, Harrison on the other. The lieutenant had little to say. Rusty suspected he did not like talking to inferiors more than necessary, and it was clear enough that he saw Rusty as an inferior.

Harrison interested Rusty the most. "Where'd you learn how to talk to Indians?"

"Tonkawas, mainly. The only talkin' I ever done with the Comanches was with the business end of a gun. I ain't no Texan, but I lived there awhile, near the Tonks. They're good people if you overlook their eatin' habits."

"Like what?"