The Badger's Revenge (34 page)

“Me either. What do you think the Mexican was up to bringing us here?”

“Don't know, really. The sheriff said Juan Carlos stopped in just as a courtesy, letting him know we were in town. Nothing more than that.”

“That don't make a lot of sense to me,” Scrap said.

“Me, either, but you've been around Juan Carlos enough. He rarely tells you anything, and he never tells you everything.”

“Surprises me you trust him.”

“He saved my life once.”

“Guess you're even, and I'm one up on him.”

“If he lives.”

Both men grew quiet then, the thought of losing Juan Carlos troubling—at least to Josiah.

“What are we gonna do now?” Scrap finally asked. It didn't take a loud voice to carry inside the limestone cell, and it was cool, too. Just about right for a thin blanket.

“Juan Carlos told me to look up a man named Dixie Jim. He's a scout at the fort. It's the only reason I can think of why we're here. Maybe this Dixie Jim fella knows the spots around Laredo better than Juan Carlos and can take us in so we can find O'Reilly and do what needs doing.”

“I ain't real comfortable bein' around half-breeds.”

“You can always stay here,” Josiah said, his voice firm as was befitting the sergeant he was. Scrap didn't answer, so Josiah assumed the message had come across loud and clear. “Good, that's the last I expect to hear about that subject.”

“I ain't gonna trust him.”

“Nobody said you had to.”

 

 

The rising sun quickly warmed the jail cell. Harsh
light beamed through the window across from the bunks and bounced off the nearly white walls, rousing Josiah awake long before he was ready.

He had been lost in a dream, one with dead people who could speak and living people who couldn't. No matter how hard he tried to stay asleep so he could remember what the dead people said, he couldn't hold on to their words. His mother was there. A soldier that had died next to him in Georgia during the war, a bullet hole squarely in the center of his forehead, the blood caked and old, dirt on his hands, like he had crawled through the earth, out of his grave, just to speak to Josiah in his dreams. Josiah couldn't even remember the man's name.

Pearl was there, too. And Juan Carlos was standing on a hill alone, with storm clouds gathering behind him.

It was futile trying to stay asleep, so Josiah sat up in the bunk, wiping the night away, taking a deep breath, trying as hard as he could to see his mother again in his mind's eye. There was no use in that, either. He couldn't hang on to the image of his mother, her eyes open, life in them, words coming out of her mouth. All he could remember about her now was seeing her lying in the coffin he'd built with his own hands.

He didn't try to apply any meaning to dreams, and for a moment, now that he was awake, he had to get his bearings and remember where he was and why.

First thing he did after putting his feet on the ground and seeing Scrap still sleeping away in the other bunk, was go out and check on Juan Carlos.

It didn't look like Juan Carlos had moved from the last time Josiah had seen him. The Mexican was asleep, or so Josiah assumed, a blanket up to his neck.

Luke was sitting behind a desk in the office section of the jail, and the smell of coffee permeated the room. A pot sat on top of a Franklin stove in the corner.

“There's coffee there for you, Ranger Wolfe,” Luke said.

Josiah was standing at the cell door, looking in at his friend. “Thanks,” he said.

“Sheriff'll be in in a little while.”

“I imagine we'll be gone by then.”

“Headin' out to the fort?”

Josiah nodded yes. “I think we are.”

“Your friend ain't goin' anywheres soon,” Roy said. “Doc worked on him hard, told me to keep his lips wet with whiskey all night. Ain't heard a peep out of the fella, though. He's a tough one.”

“That he is. A good friend, too.”

“He and my grandpa go back a long ways. Used to come through town ever once in a while with another Ranger, a short little wiry man who was always up for a game of faro down at the saloon.”

“That'd be Captain Fikes,” Josiah said. “He was killed last spring.”

“Heard about that. Glad they hanged the man that did it.”

“Me, too.”

Josiah poured himself a cup of coffee and offered the pot to Luke.

“No, thanks, I don't touch that stuff. Never acquired the taste for it or tobacco.”

“I like a cup of coffee now and again, myself.” Josiah took a sip. “For not drinking it, you sure know how to make a good pot of it.”

“Sheriff gets cranky if it's too thick. I learn quick.”

Josiah exhaled. He was glad Juan Carlos was still alive, but knew he and Scrap needed to get moving on, so he turned and started to walk back to the cell he'd spent the night in.

“You gonna meet up with those other Rangers?” Roy asked.

Josiah stopped in his tracks and turned around. “What other Rangers?”

“About ten of them rode in yesterday afternoon, 'bout three or four hours before Juan Carlos came through the door.”

“They stopped here?” Josiah asked. He could feel his entire body tensing up.

“Nope, rode right on by.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before now?”

“I figured you knew. Rangers bein' Rangers and all.”

“Did you get a good look at them, know who was leading them?”

“Sure did. A man I never saw before. He had a big ugly scar on his forehead and a hard, angry look in his eyes.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Josiah said.

The gate to Fort Clark stood wide open. As
Josiah and Scrap strode through on their respective horses, it looked to Josiah like most all of the buildings had risen up out of the limestone ground and shaped themselves accordingly, with windows and fancy wood doors.

The buildings were the same sandy yellowish color as the ground, and there was hardly a tree or stretch of green vegetation to be seen inside the fort.

A mockingbird sat on the nearest rooftop, spouting a mixture of hawk calls and bluebird and sparrow songs.

“Used to have one of them birds that lived in a scrub tree next to our house when I was a young'un,” Scrap said. “Drove me crazy then, but I kind of like listenin' to'em, now. They remind me of home.”

“That can't be all bad then,” Josiah answered, his eyes searching for familiar signs in the fort. Being on army ground provoked old memories for him, too, but he was not as fond of his military memories as Scrap was of his bird memories.

Josiah eased Clipper to a slow trot and pointed the horse toward the open door of a building that Josiah was almost sure held the duty sergeant. Scrap followed right alongside him, not questioning him at all. It was still morning, the drills over, and the fort was relatively quiet. A few men looked up as Josiah and Scrap entered, but the men didn't seem the least bit concerned about their presence. Fort Clark was a long way from the troubles with the Comanche and Kiowa up north at the Red River. Still, Josiah found the openness of the fort a little curious.

“Bad thing is,” Scrap said, “you can't never go home when it ain't there no more, but you know how that goes.”

“I do,” Josiah said, bringing Clipper to a stop in front of another clean, recently constructed limestone building. “Wherever Lyle is, is home for me now.”

Scrap smirked. “Last I heard he was down in Little Mexico forgettin' how to speak English.”

“He's safe there,” Josiah said, his voice hard and void of any emotion.

The mockingbird fluttered off, the white on its wings flapping like thin rags spiraling off in the wind.

“Stay here,” Josiah said as he tied Clipper to the hitching post. “If you speak to anyone, make sure and say ‘yes, sir' and ‘no, sir.' ”

“I ain't no child, Wolfe.”

“You're no soldier either. This is their world. Respect it.”

Scrap scrunched up his mouth and fought back saying the first thing that came to mind. “Yes, sir.”

Josiah shook his head and walked inside the building.

The duty sergeant, a middle-aged man with thick black hair, a fair complexion, and a hairless face, looked up from some serious writing. There were scads of papers scattered all across the desk.

“What can I do for you?” There was a lilt to the man's voice, Irish or Scot, Josiah wasn't sure which.

“I'm looking for a man named Dixie Jim.”

The sergeant set down the pen he was writing with and looked at Josiah curiously, cocking a thick black eyebrow. “Dixie Jim, you say? You're sure about that?”

“I am,” Josiah said.

“Well then, ya might find him out there cleanin' the stables. He's a horseman when he shows up. Likes to take more than a nip now and again. Can't blame a man for that. Especially one like Dixie Jim.”

Josiah shrugged. “Don't know the man myself.”

“Well, don't say I didn't tell you so, but 'tisn't too reliable.”

“Thanks, I'll keep that in mind,” Josiah said. He turned to go, but hesitated, then turned back. “There hasn't been a troop of Rangers come through here in the last day or two, has there?”

Josiah had yet to figure out what Feders was doing in this part of the country—Roy's description of a captain with a well-defined scar had to be Pete.

It was entirely possible that the company was involved in McNelly's plan to stop Cortina and O'Reilly, but something just didn't feel right. Especially with Juan Carlos getting shot and taken out of the picture. Surely the two things couldn't be linked, but they sure seemed to be . . . somehow. The presence of the Ranger company helped explain why Juan Carlos had brought them to Brackett. He had to know he was on Feders's tail. Josiah found it interesting that Feders was on O'Reilly's tail, unless he had been sent by Major Jones to make sure the union with Cortina could never be formally bound. But why would Jones send another company, when McNelly wanted the small troop—Josiah, Scrap, and Juan Carlos—to act in secret? Unless there was more that Juan Carlos was unable to tell him.

The sergeant shook his head no to Josiah's question about Feders's company. “Not that I can say. I haven't seen any Rangers come through, but I was off duty for a few days, spent a little time in Brackett blowin' off a wee bit of stream, myself, if you know what I mean.”

Josiah smiled. “I know what you mean. Thanks.”

The answer didn't help him relax and didn't clear anything up. At the very least, he would have thought that Feders would have stopped at the fort to resupply the boys, get them freshened up for the ride to Laredo—if that's where they were heading. But the fact there had been no sign of them added to the uncomfortable gnaw that was growing in Josiah's stomach and didn't promise to go away anytime soon.

 

 

The stable was easy to find, it was down the road
about a hundred yards, on the opposite side from the duty sergeant's office.

“Wait here,” Josiah said to Scrap as he slid off the saddle and planted his feet solidly on the ground.

“Why do I always have to wait?”

Josiah didn't answer Scrap, he just plodded off inside the stable, a large wood-frame barn capable of holding at least a hundred horses. Just inside, he stopped to look around, to see if there was anyone moving about. There was a new smell to some of the wood, but the rafters were full of swallow's nests made of mud, empty now since winter was coming on. For the most part, the barn looked empty, until he heard a loud snore rumble out of one of the tack rooms.

He went to investigate and found a Negro settled in the corner, lying on a bed of straw, sleeping away even though it was nearing noon.

“Excuse me,” Josiah said, standing at the door.

The man continued to snore.

Josiah walked into the room and kicked the man's boot. “Excuse me, are you Dixie Jim?” He asked louder this time.

The man roused, rolled off his side, opened his eyes, then sprang up, reaching for his gun—which wasn't there since he didn't have a gun belt on. It was only then that Josiah noticed that he only had one foot. A crutch was propped up in the corner.

“Whoa,” Josiah said, throwing up both hands like he was getting held up. “I don't mean you any harm. Juan Carlos sent me.”

The man was about half a head shorter than Josiah and maybe ten years older, it was hard to tell, but there was white starting to mix in his wavy black hair. His skin was ten times darker than any Mexican Josiah had ever seen, and he assumed the man was one of the Negro-Seminole scouts that worked out of Fort Clark. His face, with a bold straight nose and blue eyes, was more Indian than Negro. The clothes the man wore were little more than rags. It looked like he had lost his foot just above the ankle, and his pant leg was tied in a knot, just barely raking the ground when he moved.