[Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line (27 page)

Rusty's leg burned as if he were standing too close to a fire, but he had no choice except to bear it. He feared it might collapse when he dismounted and stood on it.

He saw a lamp burning in a back room he assumed was the kitchen.

Purdy said, "He's probably havin' his breakfast."

"Maybe I can bring him out without stirrin' up a fuss. You stay here and hold the horses."

"You're liable to need my help."

More likely, Rusty thought, he would get the old man hurt. The Monahan family had suffered enough already. "You just keep the horses ready. We'll Put Dawkins up in your saddle, and you can ride behind me."

Rusty eased down from Alamo and tried his weight. The weak leg held, though it trembled a little. He drew his pistol and limped up the two steps to the back door. Just as he started to open it he heard a shout of surprise and an angry voice.

Damn it, James has gotten here ahead of us
.

He pushed on the door and found himself in the kitchen. Caleb Dawkins sat at a table, a plate of eggs and ham in front of him, a half-eaten biscuit in his raised right hand. James Monahan stood facing him, holding a rifle. For a man looking death in the eyes, Dawkins seemed amazingly calm.

Not only does he have no heart, he has no fear,
Rusty thought. He was at a loss to understand such a man.

He shouted, "James, don't do it!"

James involuntarily swung the rifle toward Rusty, his eyes widening in surprise. Dawkins took the momentary distraction as an opportunity to jump to his feet, knocking the chair backward to clatter against the floor. Instantly James moved the muzzle back to cover him. His eyes seemed afire.

"Don't you move, Colonel."

Rusty saw that Dawkins had no weapon, at least none within reach. He would not have expected trouble at his breakfast table.

For the first time Rusty noticed a gray-haired black woman standing in the doorway to the next room, a cloth draped over one arm, her eyes and mouth wide open. She wheeled and bolted out of sight. A door slammed, and he could hear her excited voice as she went running across the yard.

Rusty said, "Let's get out of here, James. It won't bring your daddy and brother back, killin' Isaac York."

"York?" James Puzzled. Rusty realized he had spoken the wrong name. James said, "It won't bring them back, but at least I can make Dawkins pay.

Rusty heard shouting out in the yard. The slave woman had roused the farm help.

Dawkins said, "You hear that, Monahan? My boys'll be here in a minute."

"There's still time for what I came to do."

Anyone else would show mortal fear. Dawkins showed nothing. "If you shoot me, my boys won't let you get away. Pull that trigger and you're a dead man."

James said, "No.
You
are."

He squeezed the trigger, and Caleb Dawkins buckled.

Dawkins fell forward across the table, tipping it, sliding to the floor, carrying the plate and cup and utensils with him. An agonized groan came from deep inside.

Rusty stiffened in shock. "James, for God's sake . . ."

The shouting from the yard grew louder. James grabbed Rusty's arm. "Come on, we'd better git!"

Rusty had no time to think. He acted by instinct, following James out the back door. His leg threatened to cave beneath him.

He heard a woman's piercing scream from inside the kitchen. He doubted that the slave woman had gotten back so quickly. The scream must have come from Dawkins's wife.

He had given little thought to the possibility that the colonel might have a wife and perhaps other family besides Pete.

Vince Purdy had brought the horses up to the steps. "What happened to the colonel?"

James declared, "He's halfway to hell. I tied my horse out yonder. We'd better ride fast." He sprinted away.

Rusty had trouble getting into the saddle. Purdy reached down and grabbed his arm, helping lift him. Angry voices arose in the kitchen. The door burst open, and someone fired a shot into the night. Rusty imagined he could hear the bullet whisper by his ear. He fired a quick shot in the direction of the house to discourage pursuit, then spurred Alamo into a hard run. Purdy was close behind him.

The woman's scream seemed to echo in Rusty's ears.

James cut in beside his grandfather. He said, "Let's ride north awhile. Lead them away from our place so they won't know it was a Monahan done it.

Rusty began to regain his composure, and with it came anger. "Don't you know you'll be the first one they think of?"

"If you've got any notion that I regret what I done, you're wrong. I've killed snakes and felt sorrier for it."

"You've left a woman a widow back there."

"My mother's a widow."

"What's more, you've outlawed yourself. You'll find every man's hand turned against you."

James's voice had a brutal edge Rusty had not heard in it before. "Anybody tries to stop me, they'll get what I gave Caleb Dawkins."

As the sun appeared, they reached a creek. Rusty looked back. He saw no pursuit, but he sensed that it was coming.

James reined up. "I'm goin' north a ways to lead them astray. You-all ride in the creek to cover your tracks 'til it's safe to go back to the farm." He frowned at Rusty. "Unless you feel like you've got to try and take me in. I'd advise against it."

Rusty swallowed. If he let James go, he would have to lie to the company captain, or at least fail to tell him the whole truth. That went against everything Daddy Mike had drilled into him about duty. "What you did was wrong. I think the world of your mother and your sister"—he glanced at Vince Purdy—"and your granddaddy. But I've got a duty. I'm arrestin' you for shootin' Caleb Dawkins."

James brought the rifle around, pointing it at Rusty.

Rusty said, "You ain't had time to reload. That rifle's empty." He drew his pistol. "But this isn't."

James stared in dismay at Rusty's weapon, then at his own. "You wouldn't kill me, Rusty."

"I wouldn't want to. I'd try to wound you instead, but my leg's hurtin' so bad I can't guarantee my aim."

Vince Purdy's jaw dropped. "Rusty, if I'd ever thought you'd do this ..."

"I don't like it any better than you do, but I've got no choice. Hand me your pistol, Vince."

Hesitantly Purdy complied. Rusty removed the loads and handed it back to him. Purdy said, "James is a good man at heart. Had a good raisin'. He done what most anybody might do."

"I know. I came awful close to doin' the same thing myself once. But I was lucky. Somebody stopped me." Rusty pointed in the direction of the Monahan farm. "Like James said, you'd better ride in the creek for a ways. Whoever's comin', they'll follow me and James. Tell the womenfolks I'm sorry it had to be this way." He thought regretfully of Geneva. She would take this badly.

"Sooner or later your conscience'll commence to plaguin' you over this."

"It already does, but I've lived with a wounded leg. I can live with a guilty conscience. They're neither one fatal."

James argued, "If you turn me over to the sheriff, I'll be dead before dark. He can't stop Dawkins's people from draggin' me out and puttin' a rope around my neck."

"I'm not takin' you to the sheriff. I'm takin' you to the ranger camp at Belknap. I don't know what the court may do, but at least the rangers won't let a mob get you."

Purdy said, "I'm goin' along with you."

"That's not necessary. I'll see that nobody touches him."

"I'm goin' anyway, and you can't stop me."

The determined look in Purdy's eyes showed where Clemmie's stubborn nature had come from. Arguing with the old man would be like talking to a fence post.

"All right. But I have a job to do, and it's got a bad-enough taste as it is. Don't do anything to make it worse." He looked back. He still saw no sign of pursuit, but his skin prickled. "We'd better be movin'."

This was a poor way to repay the Monahan family, but duty gave him no choice.

James pointed out, "It's a right smart of a ways to Belknap."

"We'll make it."

James looked as if he had a secret he was not sharing. "Mama and Geneva told me about your leg. Reckon it'll hold up to that long a ride?"

"It's held up this far."

In the stress of the shooting and the escape, Rusty had given little thought to his healing wound. Now he became very conscious of its insistent aching. He knew putting this kind of strain on it was a risk, but he saw no option. He had to make it to Belknap. He did not point the pistol directly at James, but he motioned with it. "Let's go."

They pushed the horses as hard as Rusty dared. He could not ride fast enough to outrun the memory of the anguished scream from Dawkins's wife. The rest of her life she would carry the image of Caleb Dawkins sprawled in his own blood, just as Clemmie Monahan would have to live with the sight of her husband and her son lying lifeless in a wagon. War was hell on men, but in its way it was as bad or worse on women, he thought.

The first couple of hours went well enough, though the pain in the leg was increasing. By noon Rusty had to grit his teeth, cold sweat breaking out on his face.

James said, "I'm gettin' hungry. Ain't et nothin' since a midnight supper."

It had been longer than that since Rusty had eaten, but he doubted he could hold anything on his stomach if he had it. He was nauseous, the pain grown almost beyond endurance. "The sooner we get to camp, the sooner you can eat."

Sometime later he realized he was hunched in the saddle. He had difficulty focusing his eyes. Once he tried to throw up, but his stomach held nothing to yield. He had long since holstered the pistol for fear of dropping it.

He felt helpless when James drew up beside him and took the weapon from him. James demanded, "What makes you think you can keep somebody under arrest when you can't hardly even stay in the saddle?"

Rusty heard himself mumbling that James was still his prisoner, but he knew that was no longer true. He was James's prisoner, if James chose to take advantage of the situation.

James's voice stung. "When you needed help, my family took you in like their own. Now look how you paid them back. I ought to shoot you the way I shot Dawkins." He raised the pistol.

Purdy pushed his horse between his grandson and Rusty. He gripped the barrel of James's pistol and forced it downward. "No, James. You've caused grief enough already. Whether you can see it or not, Rusty was right in what he done."

James turned on the older man. "You didn't do me no favors either, leadin' him to Dawkins's place to stop me. My own grandpa."

"Yes, I'm your grandfather, and when you were growin' up I tried to teach you better than what I've seen from you today. I didn't teach you to kill people."

"There wasn't no war then. There is now, and it's all about killin'."

"You're not killin' Rusty."

James lowered the pistol. "No, I ain't. I ought to, but I got a feelin' from my sister that she kind of likes him. Damned if I can see why. So you can go home and tell her I let him live. He can go on to Belknap by himself."

"The shape he's in, he might not make it alone. He's liable to fall off that horse and lay there and die."

"It'd serve him right. I'm strikin' off west, across the country."

"I'll stay with him, at least 'til I can turn him over to somebody who'll see that he gets to Belknap." Purdy pulled his horse in close and embraced his grandson. "You've done wrong, but you're still family. You're still ours."

"Tell Mama ... well, hell, you'll know what to tell her." James's voice broke. "It won't be safe to write to you, but I'll let Preacher Webb know where I'm at. He can pass the word. Maybe when this damned war is over...

"I may not still be here."

"Sure you'll he here. You'll never die, you'll just turn into an old gray mule and keep on kickin'." James gripped his grandfather's thin shoulders, handed him Rusty's pistol, then turned quickly away.

The old man watched him a long time in silence. Rusty could not see his face, but he could see Purdy's body shake.

Rusty said, ""There's a lot of Indians the direction he's goin'."

Purdy wiped a sleeve across his eyes and cleared his throat. "There's worse the other way." He faced around to Rusty. "I'd best be takin' you someplace."

"I'm not as helpless as I may look."

"The hell you're not. You'll never make it to the ranger camp by yourself."

Rusty lacked the strength or the will to put up more of an argument.

They rode without talking for what must have been a couple of hours before Purdy said, "I see a wagon yonder, headin' in the right direction. Hang on tight, because we're fixin' to lope and catch up."

Rusty gripped the saddle horn. He saw the wagon ahead. It appeared to be loaded with freight. Purdy shouted, and the driver sawed on the reins, halting his mules. A black man beside him reached beneath the seat and brought up a rifle, which he held defensively in front of him. Wind lifted his torn, unbuttoned jacket.

Purdy asked, "You-all goin' to Belknap?"

The driver was dressed no better than the black man beside him. He gave the horsemen a long appraisal, slowly satisfying his suspicion. "Yep. Got a load of goods to deliver."

"I've got somethin' else for you to take there. This man belongs to the ranger camp.

The driver was a middle-aged man with a sun-browned face dark as an Indian's where his salt-and-pepper beard did not cover it. He gave Rusty a second close inspection. "Looks like he's got somethin' wrong with him. Ain't no catchin' sickness, I hope."

"He took an arrow in his leg awhile back. Keeps agitatin' it to where it ain't healed good."

The freighter regarded Rusty with sympathy. "At least he's still got all his hair on. Muse, spread my blanket roll on top of the load back there so he can lay down."

Purdy supported Rusty as he dismounted, then helped the black man boost him up over the wagon wheel. Rusty settled onto the blankets that covered several wooden crates. Purdy tied Alamo behind the wagon.

The driver said, "It won't be the smoothest ride you ever had, but we'll get you there."