[Texas Rangers 06] - Jericho's Road (17 page)

The sergeant showed up about the middle of the afternoon, checking each man’s position. He said gruffly, “I hope you ain’t been asleep and let somethin’ go by you.”

Andy’s answer was curt. “I’ve had my eyes open.”

“
Some people have their eyes open and still don’t see past their shadow.”

“
Nothin’ has crossed over except a couple of buzzards and a man on a burro.”

Donahue gave him a hard study. “Maybe. I suppose if that loudmouth Tanner had found anything he’d be up here by now to tell you about it.”

“
I expect so.”

“
Tonight’ll be another dark one. Get an early start in the mornin’. If you find that they crossed in your sector, fetch Tanner, then send word up the line to me. Each man will relay the message and then ride down to where you’re waitin’.”

“
You don’t want me and Len to start followin’ the tracks?”

“
No. Tanner’d be faunchin’ around wantin’ to fight. He’d likely spring the trap too early.”

Andy’s impatience got the best of him. He declared, “I can see that you don’t think me and Tanner can do the job. Why did you bring us with you?”

“
I can’t always have my pick. I make do with what I’ve got. Sometimes it ain’t much.”

Andy’s face warmed. Watching the sergeant ride away, he began thinking of comments he should have made in rebuttal. Such ideas usually came too late.

He rode downriver toward Len’s solitary camp. Len was at the halfway point, waiting. He lay in the meager shade of a mesquite. Andy told him what the sergeant had said. “He said me and you aren’t supposed to follow the tracks, just wait till everybody else gets there. He doesn’t want us gettin’ in a fight till everybody’s ready.”

Len said, “He doesn’t know how good a fight we can put up by ourselves, me and you. We’re as good as any he’s got.”

Andy voiced his doubt. “Donahue doesn’t seem to like me much. I don’t know why. He makes me wonder if I ought to be a Ranger at all.”

“
Leavin’ the Rangers wouldn’t get you away from people like him. You’ll run into his kind wherever you go.”

“
I guess. I remember a Comanche warrior—” Andy stopped himself before he spoke the name. He had never gotten past his Indian-taught reticence about using names of the deceased, at least those who were Comanche. For some reason that he did not understand, he had no such reservation in regard to white names.

Len asked, “You hungry?”

“
I fixed a little breakfast, such as it was.”

“
I happened onto a fat young kid goat runnin’ loose. He looked lost, so I declared him the property of the Rangers. Us two Rangers, anyway.”

“
Some people would call that stealin’.”

“
Looked like a stray to me. I didn’t see nobody claimin’ to own him. He probably swam across the river.”

Andy doubted that. He also doubted that Len had made much of a search for the owner. But the goat had already been butchered. It hung by its hind legs from a tree limb. He said, “Whoever it belonged to, he’d probably call it a shameful waste to let that meat spoil.”

After helping Len put away a good part of the kid, Andy made his way back to his own camp, then beyond to the point where he expected to meet Farley. Farley showed up after a time. He had a jug tied to the horn of his saddle. Andy asked him about it.

Farley said, “I found a Mexican comin’ across the river with a mule load of this contraband. Ain’t been no whiskey tax paid on it.”

“
Did you put him under arrest?”

“
No, a workin’ man has got to make a livin’ whichever way he can. I just fined him one jug and let him go on his way.”

“
You’re not a judge.”

“
He rode off happy as a pig in the sunshine. It was like I done him a favor by not shootin’ him.”

“
Some favor. You swindled him out of that jug.”

“
He was breakin’ the law. I had to do somethin’.”

Trying to understand Farley’s way of thinking could give Andy a headache. He said, “I’d best turn back. Sergeant says they’re liable to come across tonight.”

“
See that you don’t go to sleep in the saddle.” Farley took a corncob stopper from the jug and tilted it over his arm without offering any to Andy.

Guadalupe Chavez took a long drink of pulque and wiped his bushy black mustache with the back of his hand. He passed the bottle to his nephew. He said, “It would be my wish that you not go tonight, nephew. I had a bad dream about this.”

Tony Villarreal tipped the bottle upward and grimaced at the burn of the raw liquor. “I had a dream too, but it was a good one. I welcome a chance to poke Jericho in the eye. Besides, you are sending some good men with me. Why do you worry about me but not about them?”

“
They are not of my flesh and blood. You are.”

Tony stood nearly a head taller than his uncle. Despite his fierce reputation, Lupe Chavez was small in stature, not much over five feet tall but still as wiry as a half-grown boy. Some of his facial features resembled Tony’s mother’s, though the harsh demands of an outlaw life made him look older than his actual years. His hair remained black as a crow’s wing despite the furrows time and hardship had carved into his dark brown skin.

Tony said, “If God smiles on us I will bring you Jericho’s ears.”

“
Be careful that you do not lose your own. Jericho may have the
rinches
on his side. They are gringos, but they can be terrible when their blood is hot.”

“
Their blood spills as easily as other men’s.”

“
How would you know? How many have you killed?”

“
None so far, but I look forward to the chance.”

“
You know that your stepfather is a friend to the
rinches.
”

Tony’s face darkened. “I do not acknowledge any stepfather.”

“
But he is your mother’s husband, and half of your sister’s blood is his. It is gringo blood.”

“
Hers, not mine. If it were mine I would be willing to see half of it spilled to rid me of the taint.”

“
That is easy to say when you have not bled. But I have, and I found no satisfaction in it. I am satisfied only when I see the gringo bleed. He has caused all the problems of our people. He has murdered our kin and stolen our land and raised his own flag over it. I wish we could call down a pestilence that would cause him and all his kind to die in slow agony. I thought we had it once, in the time of the rebel Cheno Cortina.”

“
Uncle, perhaps you are the new Cortina.”

“
I could not polish his boots, nor those of my father. But I do what I can.”

“
And it is my pleasure to help you.”

Chavez smiled. “You are a good boy. We may yet see a day when not a gringo remains south of the Nueces. This country belongs to the Mexicans. We will take it back when the time is right. But not you, not today.”

Tony did not answer. No matter what Tio Lupe said, he was going.

As the evening light faded, Jericho Jackson held his fidgeting horse outside the corral and watched more than a dozen men saddling mounts. All were armed with a pistol and either a rifle or a shotgun.

Burt Hatton looked up at him, for Jericho stood taller and broader in the shoulders than any man who worked for him. Hatton asked, “You think Chavez will come tonight?”

“
Tonight, tomorrow night, it don’t matter. Gonzales told me they’ll be comin’, and we’ll be layin’ for them when they do.”

Gonzales was a spy, useful because he would do anything for money. He played the role of a harmless, poverty-stricken
curandero,
a faith healer, and moved freely wherever information was to be gathered. His information was always for sale.

“
I never trusted that sneakin’ Meskin. He may be lyin’ to you.”

“
He likes my money too much to take that chance. Besides, he knows I’d gut him like a catfish.”

Hatton worried, “What about the boys holdin’ the herd? They could get killed.”

Jericho shrugged. “I’ve told them to hightail it at the first sign of trouble. Let the raiders have the cattle. They won’t take them very far. Just when they think they’re gettin’ away, we’ll hit them like a hailstorm. There’ll be dead Mexicans layin’ all over the place.”

“
And maybe a few of our boys.”

“
They’re bein’ paid to take the chance. If any of them lets some Mexican kill them it’ll be because they wasn’t good enough to earn their wages.”

Hatton suspected that Jericho considered him as expendable as any of the other men. He resented that, though his loyalty to Jericho was equally shallow. It was simply bought and paid for like any other kind of merchandise. He said, “Maybe we’ll be lucky and get Lupe Chavez.”

Jericho shook his head. “He’s too cagey to go out on these forays himself. He sends other people to take the risks. But maybe we’ll catch his nephew, Jim McCawley’s stepson. If we do, I don’t want anybody killin’ him. That’s a pleasure I want to save for myself.”

Jericho’s grim eyes made Hatton feel cold. Jericho wanted to take revenge on Tony Villarreal for the death of his wife’s nephew. Nobody had dared tell him the truth, that the boy had died in an abortive raid on a travelers’ camp and not at the hands of Chavez’s men. Hellfire and brimstone would rain down if Jericho ever found out.

Hatton made up his mind that he would not stay to see that day. At the first good opportunity he would gather up whatever belonged to him, and whatever else he could easily lay his hands on, then leave this part of the country. He could not escape into Mexico, for too many people knew him there and had knives sharpened and waiting for his throat. The word
California
had a nice ring to it.

Jericho said, “Let’s try not to let none of them get away. I’d like to take a dozen dead Mexicans and pile them up for everybody to see, like McNelly done that time in Brownsville. Them people have got no respect for us, but they do respect force. I don’t see why the Lord don’t send down a plague to kill every one of them north of the Rio Grande, and maybe south for a hundred miles.”

“
They must’ve done somethin’ awful to make you hate them so bad.”

“
They made me an orphan when I was just a barefooted kid. Left me to root hog or die. Damn right I hate them. I been payin’ them back ever since, and I ain’t half done yet. I hope I can live to see the last of them gone.”

CHAPTER NINE

A
distant crackle of gunfire made Andy’s heartbeat quicken. It came from the north, but he was unable to judge how far. A Ranger named Bill Hewitt pushed his horse into a run. Sergeant Donahue called him back.

“
Hold up there. Don’t get in a rush.”

Hewitt protested, “The fightin’ has started and we ain’t in it.”

“
We’ll get there in our own good time. Let them have at one another awhile.”

“
There’s white men in trouble up there.”

“
And not a Sunday school teacher amongst them. It’s no great loss if some of Jericho’s outfit get dirt shoveled in their faces. They ain’t much better than Meskins.”

Andy had found the tracks shortly after daybreak. A dozen or so horsemen had crossed the river in the night between Andy’s station and Farley’s. He had hurried to let Farley know, then had backtracked to fetch Len while Farley sent word up the line. It had taken a couple of hours for all the Rangers to gather. Donahue had led them in an easy trot, following a trail so plain that a tenderfoot could not have missed it.

Andy understood Donahue’s lack of haste. The sergeant was letting Jericho’s men administer the bulk of the punishment and take some themselves. The Rangers would arrive in time to sweep up any remnants of the raiding party. Jericho’s losses would cause no regret except in Jericho’s camp.