[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (3 page)

James stared at the boy and grunted. "It was a mistake takin' him back in the first place. He never belonged with the Comanches."

"It was what he wanted."

"A boy his age don't know what's best for him. That's the reason there's mamas and daddies."

"Andy tried to fit into white-man ways, but he'd been with the Indians too long."

"Think it'll be any easier for him now?"

"Maybe not, but the bridges are burned down behind him."

James turned to the sad-faced boy, and sympathy edged into his eyes. "Sorry things didn't work out, Andy. You're welcome to stay with us Monahans as long as you want to. My sisters were considerable taken with you. So was my mother."

Rusty said, "We'll stay a few days to rest our horses, then we'll go on down to my place. The farther I get him away from the Comanches, the better."

"You think they'd come for him?"

"Several of them were itchin' to cut his throat. We had to leave there in a hurry."

"What could a kid like him do to make them that mad? It's not like he would've killed anybody."

"That's the whole trouble. He did."

James blinked, staring hard at the boy.

Rusty said, "He did it to stop one of them from killin' me."

James's expression turned to approval, something Rusty had found that he did not give lightly. "Then I reckon he'll do to keep." He surprised Andy by gripping his hand. "You're not the first who's had to come runnin' to help Rusty Shannon out of a tight spot. He's got a knack for fallin' into holes he can't climb out of by himself."

Rusty said, "I've pulled
you
out of one or two." He nodded in the direction of the herd. "What're you doin' with those cattle? You couldn't swap the whole bunch for a sack of tomcats."

"Not here, but we're figurin' to take them where they are worth somethin'. We're gatherin' as many as we can, me and Granddad and Evan Gifford. Come spring I'll get some help and drive them to Missouri. They ought to fetch a bucketful of Yankee silver."

Rusty admired the spirit. Some people were content to sit around and bemoan what the war had cost them. James Monahan was not. Even if the plan did not work out as hoped, it was better to be busy doing something constructive than to idle away the coming winter indulging in self-pity and recriminations.

James said, "The boy's goin' to need a lot of learnin'."

"I'll school him the best I can."

"Teach him all you know. That oughtn't to take long."

"Mainly what I know is rangerin', and I'm a fair hand with a plow. I'll teach him what Daddy Mike taught me."

"You think you can turn an Indian boy into a farmer? I can't see you bein' content to stay on a farm yourself, not for the rest of your life. You've spent too much time on horseback."

"There's no call these days for rangers, so I'll be a farmer."

"The day the call ever comes, you'll drop that plow like it was on fire."

Rusty did not argue the point, but he could not foresee that call coming anytime soon. To the authorities his ranger service branded him a Confederate, though a strong reason for his being in that service had been his loyalty to the Union. To have declared that loyalty at the time could have caused him to be lynched, as James Monahan's Unionist father and brother had been lynched early in the war.

James said, "If you're not in a hurry, you're welcome to ride along with us to the farm. These cattle move slow, so we'll be out another night."

Rusty looked back. He saw no one. "It'll do our horses good to slow down."

"Won't hurt you none either. You look like a hundred miles of washed-out trail." James turned toward the cattle. Rusty and Andy followed.

They came first to Vince Purdy, James's grandfather, a Texan carved out of the old rock of revolution and the Mexican War, bent now from years of labor and hardship but stubbornly refusing to let anything break him. His knotty old hand still took a steely grip that threatened to crack Rusty's knuckles. "I'd given up on you," he said. "Figured the next time I seen you we'd both be playin' a harp."

"I can't even play a fiddle."

Purdy's pale eyes fastened on Andy. "Couldn't you find his people?"

"We found them, but we couldn't stay. It's a long story."

The old man looked southward. "We'll have plenty of time to hear it before we get these cattle home." Several had their forelegs hobbled with rawhide strips so they could not run. "They're wild. They want to turn and go back to where we brought them from."

Like Andy, Rusty thought. "It's a wild country."

"It won't always be. I'd give a lot to be a young man again ..." Purdy stared off toward the horizon, his aging eyes reflecting youthful dreams still alive and stirring.

The other man was Evan Gifford, married to James's sister Geneva. Rusty had wanted to marry Geneva himself but had waited too long to ask her. Seeing Gifford always stirred up an aching sense of loss. Still, he would reluctantly admit that her choice had been a good one. Gifford, badly wounded in Confederate service and sent home to Texas to die, had fought his way back to his feet. The Monahan family had come to regard him as one of their own. Like them, he accepted hard work and frontier hazards as challenges to be met head-on. Rusty could understand how Geneva had become attracted to him. In his defiant outlook and unflinching convictions, he reminded Rusty of Geneva's murdered father. James and Evan Gifford could have been brothers instead of brothers-in-law.

Rusty forced the regrets aside and shook hands. "How's the baby, Evan?"

"Stout. You can hear him holler for half a mile." He glanced at Andy, but unlike James and Purdy, he asked no questions. He accepted what his eyes told him. "Geneva was uneasy about you ... we both were. Preacher Webb and us, we prayed for you and the boy."

Rusty feared Evan could read in his eyes what was in his mind. "I didn't ask James about the rest of the family." It was an oblique way of asking about Geneva without directly mentioning her. Evan had never shown signs of jealousy, and Rusty did not want to stir up any.

"They're fine. We're about finished gatherin' the crops. Gettin' fixed for the winter."

"So now you're puttin' the Monahan brand on these cattle."

"It's better than sittin' around worryin' about the Yankee occupation."

"Maybe you're so far out on the edge that the Yankees won't bother you much." Rusty doubted they would trouble the Monahans anyway. Their loyalty to the Union had been well known during the war. Too well known, for it had killed the father and one son and had driven James into exile west of the settlements. Evan was potentially vulnerable, however, because he had served in the Confederate Army.

* * *

A horseman alone could travel forty or fifty miles in a day, depending upon how hard he wanted to push and how much he was willing to punish his horse. A herd of cattle did well, however, to move ten or twelve. The day was well along when Rusty and Andy joined the drive, but James pushed a few more miles before he called a halt.

"If we get them wore-out enough, maybe they won't feel like runnin' tonight," he said. "By tomorrow night we'll have them at home."

Rusty asked, "Once you get them there, what's to keep them from driftin' right back where you found them?"

"Hired a couple of ex-soldiers to see that they don't go far."

"How can you afford to pay anybody?"

"Can't. Times are so hard that some people are glad to work for three meals and a dry place to roll out their blankets. I promised them a share of whatever we get for the cattle next year."

"And if you get nothin'?"

"They won't be any worse off than we are."

James's shirt was a case in point. It had been mended so many times that it was hard to discern which parts were original material and which were patches. "Stupid damned war," James said. "All them fiery speeches, all them bands a-playin'. Look what it brought us to."

Rusty countered, "I was no more in favor of it than you were. I thought Texas already had war enough."

James cast a glance toward Andy, riding beside Vince Purdy on the other side of the herd. The boy and the old man had struck up a friendship during Andy's brief stay at the Monahan farm before going north to seek his adopted people. "How likely are those Comanches to come huntin' for Andy?"

"I think we threw them off of the trail. They'll have no idea where to look."

"You said he killed somebody."

Rusty shifted in the saddle, resting one hip while he placed extra weight on the other. The old arrow wound in his leg often pained him when he became tired. "You remember me tellin' you about the raid he went on with his Indian brother and some others down to the Colorado River country? There was a warrior by the name of Tonkawa Killer. He hated Andy for bein' white. When Andy's horse fell on him and broke his leg, Tonkawa Killer tried to finish it. Thought he had done it.

"In the scatteration after the raid, they couldn't find Andy. Tonkawa Killer told them he had seen the kid turn coward and run away. When Andy showed up with me at the Comanche camp he made Tonkawa Killer out a liar. You never saw a madder Indian. Andy had no choice but to put an arrow in him. Now he's got Comanche blood on his hands. It's like he's been orphaned a second time."

James listened soberly. "He'll feel better after Mother Clemmie fills him up with hot vittles and fresh milk."

"It'll take more than good cookin'. What he really needs is family."

"You can play big brother to him."

"I'll try, but I'm not sure how. I never had a brother before."

James said, "I did." Bitterness pinched his eyes. "The rebels took him away from me."

"Those that did it are gone now."

"Into the hottest fires of hell I hope. I'd be willin' to go there myself if I could get at them again. I'd keep pokin' them with the devil's pitchfork til I knew they were well done."

"Don't rush it any. We'll all get there soon enough. I want to stay around awhile and see what happens to Texas."

* * *

One of James's younger sisters opened the corral gates, then moved back toward the main log house to avoid spooking the cattle with her long skirt that flared in the wind. They balked anyway, suspicious of the opening. A brown dog came running through the corral, barking, and almost spilled them all. James shouted at him to go back, and the dog retreated. A young heifer saw him as a wolf and instinctively chased him. The rest of the cattle followed her into the corral. Evan Gifford closed the gate before they realized they were trapped. They milled around the fence, stirring dust, slamming against the logs and looking in vain for a way out. From a safe vantage point, the dog kept barking. The heifer hooked at the fence, trying to reach him.

James growled, "I've got half a mind to kill me a dog. He ain't worth two bits Confederate."

Vince Purdy warned, "If you hurt that dog, Clemmie and the girls will burn the beans for a month."

Rusty's gaze followed Evan Gifford as Evan tied his horse and strode toward an older, smaller log cabin where Geneva waited in the roofed-over dog run between the structure's two sections, holding a baby in her arms. Envy touched him as the couple embraced. The emotion was futile, but he could not help it.

She ought to've been mine, he thought darkly. That baby ought to've been mine.

It would be easy to resent Evan, but he could blame no one. Duty had called upon him to neglect Geneva in favor of his ranger service. Duty had called upon her to tend a badly wounded soldier. Nature had ordained the result.

The girl who had opened the gate started back now that it was closed. She walked at first, then picked up her stride. She called, "Rusty? Is that really you?"

He felt buoyed by the sight of her. Her smile was like sunshine breaking through a cloud. "It's me, Josie."

She seemed unsure whether to laugh or cry. "I couldn't tell for certain, all those whiskers." A tear rolled down a smooth cheek spotted with tiny freckles. She reached up and gripped his left hand in both of her own. "We'd begun worryin' you wasn't comin' back."

"For a time, it looked that way to me, too." He found himself compelled to stare at her. Josie was looking more and more like her older sister Geneva, the same bright eyes, the same tilt of her chin.

She glanced toward Andy, riding beside her grandfather. "You brought him back." It was less a statement than a veiled question.

"Things didn't work out for him."

"I'm sorry, and then again I'm not. He's probably better off."

"It's hard to convince him of that."

She asked hopefully. "You stayin' with us awhile?"

"Long enough to rest the horses." He rubbed his face. "And to shave my whiskers. I feel like a bear fresh out of its winter cave."

"You look fine to me. You always look fine to me."

Rusty's face warmed. Josie had a forward manner that disturbed him even as he admitted to himself that he liked it. He said, "These cattle are raisin' a lot of dust. Oughtn't you go back to the house?"

"A little dust won't hurt me. I'm not so fragile. Someday, when we're married, you'll see that."

Rusty's face warmed more. She meant it. He felt a little guilty, wondering if the interest she aroused in him came only because she reminded him of someone else.

A tall man with slightly bent shoulders moved out from the main house, limping a little as if each stride hurt. He stopped beside Josie and extended a wrinkled hand to Rusty.

Rusty said, "Howdy, Preacher. Didn't know if you'd still be here." For all the years Rusty had known him, bachelor Warren Webb had ridden a long and punishing circuit, testifying to his faith and carrying messages of hope wherever scattered settlers had no regular church. He never had accumulated much for himself. He was always giving it away to someone needier. During the war he had remained impartial, serving staunch Confederates and Unionist brush men alike. He had retained the respect of them all, assuring them that heaven still existed despite the hell they found on earth.

The minister smiled. "I live here now. It may surprise you to know that I've married Clemmie Monahan."