[Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line (8 page)

Preacher Webb said, "I'll wait and ride with you-all." He dismounted and stepped up to Mother Dora. His voice was full of concern. "How do you feel, Dora? Any improvement?"

She attempted a faint smile that never quite came to life. "I know better than to lie to a preacher."

Webb turned to Mike. "I wish you'd stay and watch over Dora. It's time you left the fightin' to younger men."

"I ain't any older than you are."

"I've got no sick wife at home."

Dora said, "He's set his mind to go, Preacher Webb, so let him he. I can take care of myself. Always have." She turned toward the cabin's kitchen door. "I'll sack up some vittles. And you-all had best take blankets. The nights can get chilly out in the open."

Mike nodded. "Go fetch them, Rusty."

Rusty was so excited at riding with the volunteers, at calling himself a ranger if only for a few days, that a small thing like blankets would not have crossed his mind. But he rolled up a blanket apiece for himself and his foster father.

Dora Shannon came out of the kitchen and handed Rusty a bulging cloth sack. "'There's coffee and some bacon and salt. And the biscuits from breakfast. You be real careful, son." She hugged him, and he felt the wetness of her tears when their cheeks came together. Many a time she had bid Mike good-bye this way.

Mike said, "The young'un'll do his duty."

"Duty." She spoke the word with irony. "Duty'll be the death of you someday." She put her thin arms around her husband. "Don't take any chances tryin' to get our stock back. We can buy more somehow. Just bring yourself back in one piece, and make sure nothin' happens to David. He's the only son we'll ever have."

Mike tried to dismiss her concerns. "We probably won't catch up to them anyway." He turned. "We'd best be movin', Preacher."

Webb gave Dora Shannon one more worried look. "God bless this house, and all who live in it." He swung into the saddle and spurred his brown horse into a trot.

Rusty waved his floppy old felt hat and shouted back over his shoulder to his foster mother, "Don't you worry. We'll be comin' back."

If she answered, he could not hear her for the wind.

"We
will
be comin' back," he repeated, softer now, and more to himself than to Mike or Preacher Webb.

* * *

For years he had worked the farm without anything exciting happening to him. Following the plow and the mules day after day, year after year, he had dreamed of joining a minuteman ranging company as Mike had so often done. He had seen himself riding boldly into action, making Mike and Mother Dora proud of the raising they had given him. Now his backside prickled with anticipation.

The three did not press their animals to catch up quickly. Mike said they had plenty of time because they were unlikely to overtake the Indians before tomorrow or next day at the earliest. They moved along in a stiff trot, gradually closing the distance between them and the other volunteers without breaking into a run that would tire their horses. The hooves of the stolen animals had beaten down the grass and left a wide band of tracks that anyone could have followed.

Most members of Blessing's little band had fought Indians, and several had seen action in the Mexican War and border skirmishes.

It felt natural to Rusty that he ride alongside Preacher Webb. Several times he had accompanied Webb on his preaching circuit when he had no pressing responsibilities at home. The minister had always been pleasant company and a good teacher without blatantly appearing to try. He was widely read and could talk at length on subjects totally foreign but fascinating to Rusty. Moreover, he withheld his sermons for the pulpit. His best preaching was done by example, living the kind of life he urged upon others. If the man had any vices beyond a little affinity for horse races and a bachelor's way of staring wistfully at good-looking ladies, Rusty had not seen it.

He had long marveled at the man's stamina. The minister would sometimes ride until fatigue dulled his eyes and he could barely stay in the saddle. Yet once Webb reached his destination and found a crowd waiting to hear him, his shoulders straightened and his weak voice took on the power of the Word.

"The Lord never gives us a job to do without He gives us the strength to carry it out," Webb often said.

His left arm was crooked, having healed that way after being broken by an Indian club at Plum Creek, so Rusty had been told. The arm was always subject to the miseries when weather changed, but the minister never let it handicap him if work needed to be done.

He and Mike and Rusty caught up when Blessing's men stopped for a noon rest. The trail was still plain. Rusty thought, though he did not say so, that it was a mistake to pause while the Indians rode on. But the pursuers' mounts could only be pushed so far and so fast. The Indians could switch to fresh horses from among those they had taken. Blessing's men had to make do with what they had. If a mount gave out or went lame, its rider was out of the chase.

The ranger captain walked out to meet the three incoming horsemen. "Better get down and let your mounts blow a little." He waited for Rusty to dismount. "Your daddy has been sworn in so many times there don't seem any point to it. But I'll swear you in if you want me to. You'll not likely see a dime of state money, but at least you can put in a claim ... for whatever that's worth."

Rusty had not even considered that he might be paid. Mike had always told him that a man owed it to his neighbors and to his country to serve when duty called, and he should never ask about reward. "You just ask what they want you to do. It's your way to pay for the privilege of livin' in Texas and the United States of America."

Rusty had been no more than seven or eight years old at the time, but he remembered how joyfully his foster father had celebrated when Texas gave up its status as a free republic and became a state in the union. Mike had declared, "If it hadn't been for my daddy comin' over from the old country when he did, we'd still be in Ireland today, workin' a shriveled-up potato patch and starvin' to death, 'y God."

Indeed, the Shannons had come near starving a time or two when they first broke out their present farm. But determination and helpful neighbors had allowed them to survive.

Rusty told Blessing, "I don't worry about pay, but I'd take it kindly if you made me a ranger, even for a few days. So would Daddy Mike, I think." His foster father had always been proud of the times—some short, some long—he had served in a ranging company.

Blessing administered a brief oath that officially made Rusty a member of his company for whatever time his service might be deemed necessary. He stated that Rusty was obliged to furnish his own firearm and horse and was to be paid a daily allowance from the state treasury should such monies be available. "The state insists on the first part," Blessing said. "It's a lot more flexible as to the last. I'm sorry I can't give you a badge to wear, but I don't have one myself. Badges wouldn't impress a Comanche much anyhow."

From Mike's stories, Rusty knew the rangers did not stand on ceremony. They had no official uniform, no official badge, not even an official title. They were most often called simply rangers or ranging companies, minutemen, and sometimes spies. Their rules were mostly made up as they went along, based on common sense and the realities of the moment. The main requirement was that they do the job or bust themselves trying. Sometimes they did indeed bust themselves, but more often they did whatever they thought it took to get the job done. If they happened to maim or kill a few more people than was really necessary ... well, that was just too damned bad. It was ranger logic that such casualties resulted from folks being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were probably guilty of something anyway.

Blessing did not call a halt until dusk faded into darkness. He stopped where the steep banks of a near-dry creek bed would hide their meager campfire from view should the Indians send scouts to survey their back trail.

The men needed rest, especially Mike and Preacher Webb. Mike rubbed his bad leg and winced with pain when he thought nobody was looking. The minister seemed wrung out like a freshly washed shirt. He gripped his crooked arm as if the miseries had set in deep.

Blessing offered, "Oscar Petrie had the foresight to bring a bottle of whiskey if that would help you, Mike."

Mike accepted with gratitude. "Oscar Petrie is the smartest man I know."

Blessing turned to Webb. "How about you, Preacher?"

"After I have made whiskey the subject of a hundred sermons?"

"It has medicinal properties."

Rusty remembered that Mother Dora had put coffee in the sack of grub she had given him. "I'll boil you some coffee, Preacher. I never heard you sermonize against that."

"And you never will. When the Christians drove the Turks from the gates of Vienna, the Turks left their stores of coffee behind. I feel sure that was the Lord's notion of a proper gift to His faithful."

Rusty had no idea where Vienna was. Probably not in Texas, or he would have heard about it.

He noticed that Isaac York kept pacing back and forth atop the creek bank, staring toward the north. Blessing called, "Isaac, you'd better get some rest while you can."

York's voice was harsh. "I doubt that woman and boy they stole are gettin' any rest."

"You can't do them any good if you're too worn out to keep up."

"Moon's risin'. Plain as the tracks are, we ought to be able to follow them pretty soon."

"We'll never catch up on dead horses. Come on down." Blessing poured a tin cup almost to the brim with steaming coffee and held it high as enticement. York descended from the bank. A black man who always accompanied him took the coffee Blessing offered and handed it to him as if it were his place, and his only, to serve York.

York said, "Go get you some sleep, Shanty." He squatted near the fire, a towering man with a slight hunch to his broad shoulders. Rusty studied the brooding face, made blood-red and fearsome by the flickering reflection of the coals. He knew the man mostly by reputation. He was said to be a ferocious fighter in any scrap with Indians. Mike had fought side by side with him in the Mexican War. He said York seemed to take that conflict as a personal crusade and killing as many enemies as possible a personal obligation. Back home, York was known as a heavy drinker and dramshop brawler always looking for a new war to fight.

Though Mike Shannon was a good scrapper himself, he gave York room except when duty called them together.

Rusty was intrigued by the man's intensity. He eased himself down at Preacher Webb's side and asked, "What do you think of Isaac York?"

Webb considered the question gravely. "He's been to the edge of the pit and looked down into the fires of hell. He's a good man to have at your side in a fight, but some dark day the fire will draw him in. You'd not want to be at his side then."

Rusty stared at the troubled face and shivered.

* * *

It seemed he had barely gone to sleep when Mike shook his shoulder. "Time to saddle up and go, young'un. Tom Blessing's given the word."

Rusty's body resisted at first. He was painfully stiff from lying on the ground, and his stomach was uneasy because of the need for more sleep. But he felt a renewal of yesterday's excitement at riding with these men. Moreover, he was ashamed to lag when he saw that the minister, much older than he, was up and moving. So was Mike, limping heavily as he saddled his horse. Looking to the east, Rusty saw no sign of sunrise.

Webb seemed to read his thoughts. "Moon's still up. The Lord has given us light enough that we should be able to follow the trail, plain as it is."

The sun was three hours high when they came upon the place where the Comanches had spent the night. Buzzards had already found what remained of a horse they had slaughtered and roasted. They led the pursuers to something else as well.

Rusty took one look at the naked, bloody corpse of the woman and quickly turned away. The exhilarating sense of adventure vanished. He almost lost his quick breakfast of coffee and cold biscuits. He leaned far out of the saddle in case it all came up.

Isaac York went into a frenzy, spurring toward the buzzards, firing his pistol at them, cursing them and all the Indians that ever lived. The birds rose sluggishly into the air. One of York's bullets struck home, and black feathers exploded. The buzzard fell to the ground and flapped one wing, futilely trying to rise again.

Fowler Gaskin stared at the body with bold curiosity as if he had never seen a woman naked before.

Preacher Webb's voice had a sting. "Have you no decency in you, Fowler?" He dismounted and untied the blanket from behind the cantle of his saddle. He shook it out and covered the woman with it, removed his hat and began a quiet prayer. The other men bared and bowed their heads. Rusty sensed a quiet fury rising among the group, though no one spoke while Webb prayed. Even York managed to contain himself, but barely.

The prayer finished, York faced Blessing and took an accusatory stance. "They probably done this to her while we was takin' our rest last night."

Blessing seemed stunned by the sight of the dead woman. That surprised Rusty, because he had always regarded Blessing as a man who could not be shaken. Blessing said, "We couldn't have gotten here in time to stop it if we had ridden straight through." He turned to the other men. "Look around. The boy may be here somewhere, too."

No trace was found. The boy evidently was still with the Indians.

"Damn them!" York's eyes were wild. "The only way to stop them is to kill them all—every last red-skinned heathen for a thousand miles!"

"You know we can't."

"Why not? Who'd stop us?"

"The United States Army. They'd stop us at the reserve."

Rusty was aware that a reservation had been set up on the Brazos River in North Central Texas for those Indians who would come to council and formally agree to peace. He knew from what he had heard around the settlement that even some southern Comanche bands were there. Other Comanches remained unfettered, ranging at will across their accustomed hunting grounds and beyond, occasionally raiding southward all the way into Mexico. Most Texas residents would not have minded—might even have cheered—