[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (7 page)

"Hell of a shape for
Texas
to be in."

* * *

Rusty reined his mule to a stop and turned loose of the plow, raising a hand to the brim of his hat to help shade his eyes. He was not surprised to see a dozen men riding in from the direction of the settlement. It was safer these days to travel with company. Groups of riders had become commonplace, some on legitimate business, some up to no good. He could tell from a distance that these were white, not Indian. "Stay there," he told the mule, though he knew it would not move a foot without being compelled to.

He walked to a rifle leaning against the rail fence that protected his cornfield from cattle. He cradled it across his left arm, trying not to appear threatening but letting them know he was of a mind to defend himself.

He recognized one of the riders and growled under his breath. Fowler Gaskin, and behind him his nephew, Euclid Summerville.

Some of the others were known to Rusty, but some were not. They were grim-faced as they rode up to the rails and stopped. Gaskin stared at Rusty with all the malice he could muster. He had hated Daddy Mike, and after Mike's death he had transferred that hatred to Rusty. The old man could not be happy without hating somebody.

Summerville demonstrated less hostility. It took energy to hate properly, and he was not one to put out that much effort without a pressing need.

Gaskin demanded, "Where's that Indian kid that likes to beat up on people?"

Rusty had sent Andy out with Tanner to look for two strayed mares. "You know he's not an Indian, so why don't you stop callin' him one? Anyway, he's not here."

"Damned good thing. He always makes me feel like he's fixin' to put an arrow in my gut."

Rusty said nothing that would dispel the old man's misgivings. Because of Andy, Gaskin seldom came around anymore. Rusty wanted to keep it that way.

A broad-shouldered man edged his horse forward. He was some twenty-five years older than Rusty and looked every day of it. Rusty had encountered Jeremiah Brackett many times in town, though he had never had occasion to visit the man's farm. "Shannon, we heard you had some Unionist visitors the other day. I'd like to know what they wanted and what you told them."

Brackett had been an officer in the Confederate Army and wounded more than once. Not all of his wounds had been physical. It was said around the settlement that no one had seen him laugh since the war.

Rusty said, "They wanted to know if I'm a member of the Ku Klux. I told them I'm not and don't know who is. They argued amongst their selves about whether to thank me or shoot me. Then they went on their way."

A couple of the Unionists had not believed him and had advocated burning down his cabin as an object lesson, but the more levelheaded restrained them. Rusty chose not to mention that. It might give some of these yahoos the same notion. Both sides occasionally burned the homes of those with whom they disagreed. It had become an almost-accepted method of expressing political opinion.

A younger man beside Brackett demanded, "Are you sure you didn't tell them anything?" A long scar on one side of his face marked him as Brackett's only surviving son, Farley. It was said he had taken a deep saber cut while riding with Hood's brigade. Like his father, he was reputed to be carrying internal scars as well.

Rusty said, "I didn't know anything to tell. I'm just tryin' to be a farmer and mind my own business."

Fowler Gaskin accused, "Everybody knows you kept a Union flag in your cabin through the war. That's how come you stayed in the rangers, so you wouldn't have to go off and fight like them two poor boys of mine."

Rusty declared, "Daddy Mike brought that flag home from the Mexican War. It had bullet holes in it, and some of them bullets were shot at him."

As for Gaskin's "poor boys," they had been killed in a New Orleans whorehouse fight. Rusty never had decided whether the old man knew the truth and was covering it up or if he actually believed his sons had died on a battlefield. The facts were well known in the community, but perhaps no one had ever felt mean enough to disabuse Gaskin of his illusions.

The elder Brackett said, "A man can't sit on the fence all his life. Sooner or later he has to come down on one side or the other."

Rusty shook his head. "The war's been over for six years. Ought not to be but one side anymore. We're all Americans."

"I have not accepted their damned Yankee oath, and I do not intend to. The war is not over, it's simply taking a rest. When the South rises again there will be no fence for you to sit on." Brackett started to turn his horse away but paused for a last admonition. "I suggest from now on you be very circumspect in your associations."

Summerville appeared disappointed. He waved a rawhide quirt. "I thought we was goin' to whup up on him a little. And that Indian kid, too."

Brackett gave Summerville a look of disgust and turned away. His son and the others followed him, all but Summerville and Gaskin. Rusty had a feeling they had not been invited to join the party; they were not the type Jeremiah Brackett would normally associate with. They had simply tagged along, hoping to participate with the others in what they dared not try alone.

Summerville lamented, "We come a long ways not to do nothin'."

Gaskin spat a stream of tobacco. Much of it fell back into his gray-and-black whiskers and glistened in the sun. "There'll come a better time."

Rusty had been a little apprehensive when the whole bunch sat there facing him. The apprehension was gone now. Neither Gaskin nor Summerville had the nerve to make a move against him without a lot of backing.

Summerville said, "Uncle Fowler, I thought they was goin' over yonder and talk to that nigger Shanty next. They ain't headed that way."

He pointed in the direction of a small farm that a former slave had inherited from his longtime owner. Shanty was well along in years but still managed to put in a good day's work. Quiet and inoffensive, he had tried to avoid trouble from those who objected to seeing a black man own a farm, even a small one like his. To people who had that attitude, a black was fit only to labor for someone white.

Rusty warned, "You leave Shanty alone. If you do anything to hurt him, you'll see more of me than you ever wanted to."

Gaskin said, "The nigger'll keep for another day." His voice dropped ominously. "Or some dark night."

Rusty raised the rifle a little. "You heard what I said."

"I heard. But I don't put much store in any white man who'll speak up for a darkey. Especially a white man who wouldn't go fight like my boys done."

More than once Rusty had felt a strong temptation to throw the truth in Gaskin's face, and that wish came to him now. But he held his tongue. He said, "You'd better whip up to a lope if you're goin' to catch your friends. You've wore out your welcome here."

Andy and Tanner rode in shortly before sundown, penning the two strayed mares they had gone out to find. Rusty looked the animals over, then bridled one of them.

Tanner said, "It's late to be goin' somewhere. Night's comin' on."

Rusty saddled the mare while he told about the visitors. "Fowler Gaskin let it slip that they're thinkin' of callin' on Shanty. I'll see if he'd like to come over here and stay with us for a spell."

It would not be the first time Shanty had stayed at Rusty's farm. Night riders had threatened him before.

Andy had developed a strong bond with the former slave. He had never understood how anybody could be hostile toward someone who kept to himself and caused no trouble. He asked, "What they got against Shanty? He never hurt anybody."

Rusty tried to explain. "He's not white. There's people who don't think anybody but a white man ought to own property. It makes them nervous to see somebody like Shanty able to do for himself."

"That don't make any sense."

"You're right, but there's no talkin' to folks who feel that way."

"The Comanches been makin' it on their own since the first grandfathers came up out of the earth. And some of the dumbest people I ever saw are white."

Rusty shrugged. "Bein' wrong doesn't keep them from bein' dangerous. Especially to somebody like Shanty, an old man livin' by himself. All his life he's been taught to hunker down like a rabbit and not fight back."

Shanty had been at Rusty's place when Rusty first brought Andy home with a broken leg. His was one of the first friendly faces the confused and frightened boy had seen since being left behind by a Comanche war party. Shanty had remained close while Andy's leg slowly healed. Though unable to read, Shanty had patiently coached Andy in the use of the language, reviving early childhood memories buried during his years with the Indians.

Andy's face twisted. "They'd better not do anything to Shanty. I'll kill them."

Rusty frowned. "You shouldn't talk so free about killin'. Some people might think you mean it."

"I do mean it."

The look in Andy's eyes disturbed Rusty. He
did
mean it.

Len's right, Rusty thought. There's still a streak of Comanche in him. He may never lose it.

Andy said, "I'll go with you."

"No, you stay here. Chances are there won't be any trouble. And if there
is
any, I don't want you in harm's way. Len, you keep him here."

A
pproaching Shanty's log cabin, Rusty wondered how anyone could begrudge the old fellow this humble home, this modest parcel of farming land. As the only slave of a hard-drinking Indian fighter named Isaac York, he had lived here longer than most people around him. No one had objected to his presence so long as he belonged to a white man. It was only after his dying owner had willed him this little place that objections had arisen. In recent times, as many whites lost their own land to punitive reconstruction measures, those objections had intensified. A widespread feeling had developed that the government favored former slaves, taxing them lightly if at all, while it tried to crush former rebels under the weight of confiscatory levies.

Though darkness approached, Rusty saw the old man still working in his small rail-fenced garden. Shanty grew almost everything he needed for subsistence, even a small plot of scraggly tobacco. He was not often indoors during the daytime except to eat or to get out of the rain. Age had slowed him so that it took longer to finish the work necessary even for a small place like his.

During the time he had spent at Rusty's, he and Rusty had swapped labor, alternating between the two farms. The main concern had been that someone always be nearby, that Shanty not be left to face potentially hostile visitors alone. For a time, that danger had seemed to pass. Now, like smoldering coals fanned by a rising wind, old animosities had flared anew. Rusty felt that it had less to do with Shanty as an individual than with general unrest stirred up by the seemingly endless Federal occupation that continued years after the cannons had fallen silent. Men feeling oppressed sought to vent their frustrations. Freed slaves became an easy target for their anger.

A brown dog of amalgamated ancestry wriggled through the rail fence and trotted out, barking either a welcome or a warning. Rusty was not certain which until the animal wagged its tail so vigorously that its whole body shook.

Shanty ambled to the gate rather than risk fragile limbs by climbing over the fence. "Hush up, dog. Mr. Rusty," he said by way of greeting, "you're travelin' late." His smile showed a wide row of perfectly white teeth. So far as Rusty could see, he had never lost one.

"Somethin' came up. You been havin' any company?"

"Company? This place ain't on the road to nowheres in particular. Nobody much ever comes by."

"The ones I've got in mind wouldn't come friendly. They travel in packs, like wolves."

"Oh,
them
. I don't count them as company. There was five or six by here a couple nights ago. Mostly wanted to know if I belong to the Freedmen's Bureau. I told them I don't belong to nothin'. I don't hardly ever leave this place."

The Freedmen's Bureau had been organized ostensibly to benefit former slaves. In Rusty's view it had been subverted to the ambitions of white opportunists exploiting the people they claimed to aid.

He pressed, "They didn't hurt you none, or threaten to?"

"A couple of them talked about burnin' down my cabin. The others said wait and see if I was goin' to be a good nigger or not. One of them offered me a hundred dollars in Yankee silver to sell him this farm."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't have no other place to go. How much is a hundred dollars, Mr. Rusty?"

"Not near enough. Not even in Yankee silver."

"That's what I figured. I'd probably use it up in a year or so, and then where'd I be?"

"Just another poor soul trampin' around the country. Isaac York didn't mean that to happen, and neither do I. You'd best stay at my place 'til this all blows over."

"But I got my field and my garden—"

"We can come over here every few days and take care of things like we did that other time."

Shanty shook his head. "I don't want to be a burden. I've tried not to be a bother to anybody. Most folks around here seem friendly enough to me.

"You'd be no burden, you'd be a help. Seems like there's always plenty to do."

Shanty patted the dog. "Ol' Rough here, he's used to this farm. I'm afraid if I taken him someplace else he'd up and run off."

"Keep him tied for a couple of days. He'll adjust to the change."

"I'll do some thinkin' on it." Shanty looked westward, where a red sunset was rapidly fading. "Gettin' on toward dark. Late for travelin'. You'd just as well stay all night."

Rusty considered. Given time, perhaps he could convince Shanty that he needed to get away from here. "I'm much obliged."

"Then I'll be fixin' us a little supper. You mind corn bread and sowbelly?"

"Long as somebody else is fixin' it, anything sounds good to me."

For years, Shanty had slept in a shed while his owner slept in the cabin. Now that he owned the farm, Shanty slept indoors. He offered to share the cabin with Rusty, but it was small. They would have to move the table and chairs out into the yard to make room for spreading his blankets on the floor.