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Authors: Bill Brooks

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BOOK: Vengeance Trail
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She wept and he tried comforting her. He told her it was all necessary and the worst was simply that he had relieved somebody
of a few dollars and that no one would be the worse for it.

“Johnny, I don’t know if I can live this way,” she said after the first time she waited in the bushes while he stepped out
in front of the horse man and robbed him.

“It’s only a temporary thing,” he told her. “Only until we get to Texas. There’s lots of opportunity in Texas and I won’t
have to do this sort of thing anymore.”

She wanted to believe him. He had won her heart so completely, and she wasn’t the kind of person just to give up on the man
she loved, so she stayed with him and sometimes cried because of her loneliness for her papa back in Tallapoosa County.

They crossed country and made it to Ft. Smith, Arkansas. She didn’t care much for the place, it was full of rough men, smelly
air, and wildness. She urged that they keep moving.

“You said you wanted to go to Texas,” she told him, but it was just the sort of place he took to. He rented a room and put
her in it.

“I think I can double our money, and if so, we’ll go to Texas in style,” he said. She knew what he meant. Aside from road
agentry, Johnny was a gambler.
He lost everything that first night and they had to sneak out of the hotel in the dark because he had no money to pay the
bill.

It was later that same day, several miles outside of Ft. Smith, that Johnny paused and said he thought he heard someone coming
down the road. He took out his silk handkerchief and laid it on the ground and put his ear against it.

“Somebody’s coming for sure,” he said. “Climb off into those weeds yonder and wait.”

A man came riding a beautiful Arabian horse with a dish face. The man was well-dressed and wore a broad beaver hat. Johnny
stood there holding his arm as though he had been hurt. She watched the whole thing from the tall grass she had gone to stand
in.

When the man reined his horse up to where Johnny was standing, she heard the man say, “Are you alright, mister?” And then
Johnny pulled out his pistol and told the man to throw up his hands because he was being robbed.

Instead of putting his hands into the air, the man started to reach for something inside his coat, and Johnny shot him. She
saw the man slump from the saddle and drop to the ground, heard him groan once and try to get up.

“Damn fool!” Johnny shouted as he grabbed the reins of the Arabian in one hand before it could run off. He had aimed his pistol
at the man’s head by the time she came running out of the weeds.

“Don’t you shoot that man again, damn you!” she shouted at him. Her horror over what she had witnessed left her angry beyond
belief.

She saw how he looked up at her, his face a mask
of confusion, of uncertainty at the hellcat that was running out of the bushes toward him, screaming and waving her arms.

“You shoot him again,” she shouted, “I’ll leave you and go back to Ft. Smith and tell them what you have done!”

He didn’t quarrel with her. Instead, he lowered his pistol and told her he was sorry any of this had happened. She wasn’t
sure whether to believe him or not.

“If you was watching,” he said, “you know I didn’t shoot him on purpose. He was reaching for his gun to shoot me!” He said
it like a little boy scolded and trying to defend himself. She looked from the dark smoldering eyes of Johnny to the ashen
face of the man lying on the ground.

“We have to do something,” she said.

“Ain’t nothing we can do except get out of here fast,” he ordered.

“We can’t just leave him, he’ll die out here—look how he’s bleeding.”

“Someone will come along and help him. It can’t be us. They’d put us both in jail, sweetie. That’s something you don’t want
to have to experience.” The whole time, he searched the man’s pockets, producing a wallet and a small nickel-plated pistol.

“See, I told you he was going for his gun!”

The revolver was a .36 caliber Navy Colt pocket gun with fancy scroll work and the words
Presented To The Hon. W.F. Gray
engraved on the butt strap.

There had been nearly one hundred dollars in the wallet.

“I guess we lucked out,” said Johnny. “This fellow must’ve been important.”

Later, Johnny sold the horse for five hundred dollars, and after that, they took a river boat up the Sabine River. Johnny
gambled and spent freely, so that by the time they landed in Magnolia Springs, they were nearly broke again.

He spent what little they had left on a pair of poor saddle horses. Texas was what Johnny had wanted, and she hoped that now
that they had arrived, things would be different. He had talked it up so much.

But as they travelled west, it seemed as though Texas was a lot more of the same, only hotter and more desolate.

One night they stole crabapples from back of somebody’s homestead and got cramps from eating them. A day later, Johnny robbed
a man waking his mule along the dusty road they were on. The only valuable the man possessed was a nickel-plated Elgin pocket
watch and two dimes.

Three days later, in Boleweevel, Texas, Johnny walked into a Chinese Laundry and stuck the fancy pistol in the sallow face
of the Celestial that worked there. Again, the pickings were poor: a jar-full of Indian head pennies and some boiled shirts.

She thought Texas was the worst place she had ever been.

As the days wore on, and the nights turned black and cold as they lay on bedrolls on the ground, she began to feel sorry she
had ever taken up with Johnny Montana. But it all seemed too late to change, and in spite of her remorse, there was still
something about him that drew her to him.

But most of the time, it was hard for her to just keep drifting, and one evening as they sat around a
fire of cow pies he had gathered, she felt forced to say something to him.

“I’d like it if you were to find a regular job, Johnny. You know, so we could settle down. I’m plain weary of always wandering.
Even if you was to get some sort of cowboy work, I wouldn’t mind so much.”

“Cowboys!” he yelped. He had been trying to pull off his boots when she said it. Now, he ceased that effort and stared at
her across the flickering firelight.

“Honey, I ain’t no cowboy! Working for wages, looking at the back end of a cow—that ain’t what Johnny Montana was born to
do. If I had a been a cowboy to start with, you wouldn’t have given me a second look the first time we laid eyes on one another.
So don’t talk to me about cowboys!”

Three days later, Johnny Montana robbed a small bank in Rawly of three hundred dollars. She would have to leave him soon.

She got up from the bed and walked to the window. The light was a soft gray, the air silent and still. She thought of her
papa and wondered what he must be doing. What would he think of her, if he knew where she was at and what had happened in
the space of the past few months? It made her sad to think of him.

“Come on back to bed, sweetie. Let ol’ Johnny bring you some comfort, bring us both some comfort.” Now that the tequila had
washed away the last remnants of the dream, he was feeling better.

“I’m thinking that New Mexico territory is the place to go,” he said. “Santa Fe, maybe. Lots of charm in Santa Fe. Pretty
country I hear. Maybe I was wrong
about Texas. It don’t seem like we’ve had much luck at all.”

She only half listened as he talked in that loose rambling way of his. She had grown weary of that, too. The dreams, the idle
talk of better things ahead. She told herself that she could have even accepted the fact he was loose-footed and a dreamer.
But, she could not be with a man who shot and robbed people and probably always would find it easier to take from others than
to earn his own way.

In that sudden instant, she decided to tell him to go on without her. She turned away from the window just as a chunk of adobe
casing blew up. Instinctively, she fell to the floor. A second shot whizzed through the open window and slammed into the wall
just above the bed knocking pieces of mud plaster down into Johnny Montana’s dark hair.

“Come on out with your hands empty!” shouted a voice from outside. “We are Texas Rangers, and you are completely surrounded!
You’ve got about a minute before we cut loose!”

Johnny Montana had taken refuge under the bed, his pistol in his hand.

“What are we going to do, Johnny?” she cried.

He looked at her with his dark dark eyes and said, “I guess we finally been caught.”

They were tough leathery men who escorted them into the Ranger station at Pecos.

They were marched in and stood before a white-haired man sitting behind a desk. He had a snowy moustache that flowed downward
past the corners of his mouth. His faded blue eyes lifted to gaze upon the couple standing before him. He had an
instant of regret at seeing such a young woman wearing iron handcuffs.

One of the flanking rangers announced them.

“Trailed them from Rawly up to a line shack near Bad Water flats, Cap’n. Feller here says his name is Johnny Montana. Claims
he’s from Kansas. Claims he’s innocent, too.”

The ranger laid the nickel-plated Navy on the lawman’s desk.

“He was carrying this, Cap’n. Got the name W.F. Gray on it.”

The lawman’s gaze came to rest on that of the woman. He held a wanted poster in his hand.

“I guess that seals it,” he said. She was surprised at the softness of his voice.

“This is a wanted poster from Arkansas for the killing of a state senator.” He glanced once at the engraving on the pistol.
The senator’s name was Willard Gray. “I hope you got more than this fancy pistol from him. It seems little to hang for.”

She felt the sudden closeness of the room, the hard stares of the man around her.
It had all come to this.

“You are also being arrested for the bank robbery at Rawly. And, I have received reports over the last few weeks that a couple
fitting your description has robbed one Joe Turner in Wise County of his watch and twenty cents. And, a Chinaman was robbed
in his laundry of a jar of pennies and some shirts.”

Motes of dust danced in the light entering the room through open windows.

The lawman’s gaze was unyielding.

“It pains me to see a woman in irons,” he said simply.

She felt herself falling, felt the strong steady hands holding her. She was carried to a cot in one of the cells.

Ben Goodlow turned his attention to the man.

“What sort of a man would drag a young girl like that along with him while he robs and kills people, is what I’d like to know?”

Johnny stared into the unflinching eyes of the lawman and knew instantly not to irritate this man.

“You are a bad piece of work, mister—I’ve hunted down trash like you my whole life.” The ranger’s words were strung taut as
strained ropes.

“Soon as I can get you in front of the circuit judge, I’m requesting you get sent back to Arkansas for the killing of that
state senator. I got a feeling that Judge Parker, back there in Ft. Smith, will make sure your wild days come to an end.”

“You can’t do that!” shouted Johnny Montana. “This is Texas, this ain’t Arkansas. The jurisdiction’s different.”

“Sounds like you studied the law some?”

“I have.”

“Then you didn’t study enough. Here in Texas, I represent the law, and so do my men. I say you go back, you go back.”

“That’s something the judge’ll have to decide.”

“Don’t get sassy, son. The judge is a brother-inlaw of mine. I reckon he’ll take under advisement any suggestions I have to
make.”

“This is a damn sorry thing,” said the outlaw.

“No, boy, this is Texas.”

Chapter Three
Autauga County, Alabama

Wes Biggs had been the most successful hog farmer in Autauga County clear up until the day Johnny Montana shot him once in
the forehead during an argument over a card game.

He died wearing bib coveralls, a green shirt, and a scuffed pair of brogans that had dried pig muck on them.

In spite of the success he had known as a hog farmer, Wes Biggs’ funeral was a simple affair. The only extravagance was a
custom-built coffin cut of cedar; Wes Biggs was a big man and there wasn’t a ready-made coffin in all of Autagua County big
enough to hold him. The coffin had cost seventy dollars and sported brass handles.

The dead man’s two grown sons, Lowell and Carter, wept like babies when the heavy coffin was lowered into the grave of sandy
loam.

A great crowd had gathered for the funeral at the Biggs farm. And once, during the graveside prayer, the wind shifted in a
fashion that brought it from the direction of the pig lots. The smell got embarrassing, but no one put up a fuss on such a
solemn occasion, even though the odor caused
eyes to smart. Some of the women lifted tiny white hankies to their noses, pretending to dab at their eyes.

Three of Wes Biggs’s prize blue shoat hogs were butchered and roasted over pits of hot coals in order to feed the crowd.

Cooking the hogs had begun the night before, and by the time the burying was over, the meat had burned black on the outside
but came off in pink moist slabs when cut and laid on plates.

Lowell and Carter thought that everyone was enjoying themselves at their daddy’s expense, but Southern upbringing had taught
them to refrain from showing their displeasure.

“I guess we got enough hogs that eating three won’t make that much a difference,” said Lowell over a mouthful of the sweet
tasting pork.

“I guess not,” said Carter. “I just wish Daddy was here to enjoy it with us.”

It seemed like a long time before everyone finally drifted off. All the men came up and shook Lowell and Carter’s hands, and
most of the women kissed the boys on their cheeks before heading off to their buggies and horses.

When the last of the crowd had left, Lowell and Carter sat on the steps of their daddy’s house and watched it grow dark; they
could hear frogs croaking down in a pond below the house—the croaks sounded like questions:
Now what! Now what!

BOOK: Vengeance Trail
8.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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