The Badger's Revenge (6 page)

A lynch mob was quickly formed, and most of Hardin's family was taken into protective custody—to save them from the angry townspeople. But a group of men, supposed loyal, law-abiding citizens hiding under the cover of darkness, broke into the jail where the family was being held and pulled out Hardin's brother, Joe, and two cousins. All three men were hanged without the luxury of a trial, and it is said they were all hanged with a rope too long, the promise of a slow, strangulating death more than certain, since all three men had grass between their toes when they were discovered the next day.

So Josiah was more than surprised when their trio topped a slight, treeless, rise, and the town of Comanche sat in the middle of the road, about a mile away.

Embers from the troubles in the spring still burned among the townsfolk, even though Hardin had fled, reportedly out of Texas, to Florida. But there were rumors of revenge from the remaining Hardin family, against the ruthless tyrants of so-called justice, for the senseless killing of Joe and the cousins.

The town was small, a supply base for the surrounding ranches. There was a courthouse built of hand-hewn log; a small post office since the town was the county seat; a dry goods, and a general store; along with the expected livery, blacksmith, and jail. Several wood frame houses sat along a couple of dry, dirt streets. Rain was obviously an event of long memories—perhaps winter would be a relief and bring a spattering of much needed precipitation to the parched town. Snow was shared only in imaginations and once every hundred years or so, this far west.

A dog barked in the distance. The sun fell below the horizon, and a wind picked up, swirling dust into tiny, harmless, cyclones. A chill touched Josiah's face, and he shivered from the sudden burst of cool air—a reminder that it was November, that a change in seasons was under way, no matter how brief or unnoticeable that change would be.

Little Shirt pressed his mustang paint closer to Josiah's mare. “Listen, Ranger, one wrong move and I'll kill you. Right in front of the sheriff. He's not going to do nothing. You understand?”

“He's warning you not to shout out, Wolfe. He won't kill you.” Big Shirt cast an angry glance at Little Shirt. “But we know your name—you remember?”

Josiah nodded.

“We also,” Big Shirt continued, “know of your little house in Austin, and the wet nurse, Ofelia, who tends to your only son.”

“I will kill
you both
the first chance I get if anything happens to my family,” Josiah said through clenched teeth. Instinct demanded that he reach for his gun and end this game now, but the ropes were so tight on his wrists that he could barely wiggle his fingers. He felt a throbbing pulse from his fingernails to his toes.

Little Shirt laughed. “Mexicans are not family, Wolfe. You are Anglo through and through. What are you thinking?”

Josiah ignored the taunt. His mouth was foaming like that of a rabid dog.

“You will be free of us soon enough, Josiah Wolfe,” Big Shirt said. “We will collect our reward and be on our way.”

“Your reward?” Josiah demanded. “Why is there a reward?”

This time Big Shirt laughed—only it was a slight, knowing laugh with the turn of a lip instead of the deep antagonizing laugh of his brother. “You did not know that you are a wanted man, Josiah Wolfe? What a shame. You do now.”

Evening was settling in as the trio eased into the
town of Comanche at a slow gait, taking full advantage of the falling shadows and thick gray light.

It would have made sense for them to ride right down the main street to the sheriff's office if what Big Shirt had said was true, that Josiah was a wanted man, but that was not the track that the Indian brothers took leading their prisoner into the quiet, almost dead, town. They avoided the main street and cut down the first alley they came to, coming to a stop directly behind the Tall Gate Saloon.

The thought of being a wanted man played heavily on Josiah's mind—but not as heavily as remaining a captive of the two Comanche, who he figured were loyalists to the Badger. Whether they wanted to admit it or not.

He'd encountered Liam O'Reilly, briefly, at a distance, in Waco in July, riding with a posse of deputies. Word was the sheriff had been bought out, was operating at the will of an outlaw gang, most likely O'Reilly's. Hiding behind the badge was not an unusual ploy for the despicable and unworthy—so it came as no surprise to Josiah that O'Reilly had worked his way into Waco after Charlie Langdon's demise.

When Josiah was a marshal himself, Langdon had taken up a lawman's position as a deputy, taking advantage of their friendship and the bonds that had been created fighting together in the Texas Brigade—all for the power, or the perception of power, that being a lawman offered.

Charlie had quickly twisted that power into an ugliness that led to the deaths of four innocent people—and from there he had gone on an all-out rampage, with disregard for the law and justice itself. Charlie had been a great soldier, excelling at killing the enemy. So it was entirely possible that Langdon had clued in his protégé, O'Reilly, to use the badge and hide behind it, as well.

But what if there was an unknown warrant, a wanted poster with Josiah's face on it? he wondered silently to himself. Would being a member of the Texas Rangers save him from prosecution?

He knew the answer to that question before it had completely vanished from his mind. The answer was a resounding no.

There would be no protection against the law, not if a crime was provable—even though Josiah could think of nothing that he had done in the recent past for which he would be considered culpable. He had plenty of enemies, though, enemies who would see him harmed any way they could—and, of course, O'Reilly fell right into that bunch.

“You get down easy, now, Josiah Wolfe,” Little Shirt said.

Josiah sneered at the Indian. He could smell the sour yeast permeating from the kegs sitting along the back wall of the Tall Gate Saloon. “How much am I worth to you, little man?”

Big Shirt swiftly intervened, saying something to Little Shirt in a calm but forceful voice, in their native Indian tongue, then: “As for you, Wolfe, we are finished.”

“You didn't have to kill Overmeyer,” Josiah said, again, trying to get Big Shirt to tell him why the tracker had been killed.

“You do not know what I had to do, or why. Perhaps you never will. It does not matter to you. My duty is done, and I can get back to my own life now.”

“Back to stealing cattle and killing white men?”

“You think too little of the Comanche.”

“A war is coming.”

“It is already here,” Big Shirt said, pulling his rifle, a war-era model 1865 Spencer .56-50 carbine, out of the scabbard and pointing it at Josiah's head. “Get him down off the horse, brother, before I decide to end his war myself, with a pull of the trigger.”

Josiah took a deep breath but tried not to show any movement.

He was sitting stiffly on the back of the angry chestnut mare, watching everything around him, scanning for an opportunity and a way out of the mess he'd found himself in—other than a swift death.

A ramp led up to the entrance of the back of the saloon. Lamps already burned brightly in the cathouse windows upstairs—business was slow. There were three floors, and all of the windows on the top floor were encased in heavy iron bars.

The building wasn't a jail. The windows were barred so the whores wouldn't flee after they had completed their nightly routines. A lot of the women did not choose to stay in the occupation they found themselves in. They were forced into a kind of slavery that Josiah thought was far worse than just about anything he could imagine. Some women were even chained to their beds after their work was done, so they could not escape.

For a brief second, Josiah let his mind wander, forgetting for a moment any opportunity for his own escape, as he thought of two whores he'd known in the last few months.

One he'd slept with, Suzanne del Toro, dead now, killed at the hand of her own brother—she was a victim of greed and jealousy. Suzanne had shown Josiah a moment of comfort and offered herself to him as a woman, not a professional, when he needed it the most. He was still troubled by her death, but only because he knew he could have loved her in a way he had never thought possible. But that was never to be, now that her charred bones lay buried in a cemetery outside of Austin.

The other whore, Maudie Mae Johnson, was a woman Josiah and Scrap had rescued on their way to the Red River camp to join up with the Frontier Battalion, in July, when Josiah had encountered Liam O'Reilly the last time.

Mae, as she liked to be called, was a mad cat full of sharp claws, but she also had a tender side that showed when you least expected it. She was one of the most confounding women Josiah had ever met. He suspected the girl was sick—sick with the disease of whores—but he wasn't sure.

As far as Josiah knew, and hoped for her sake, Mae was still in Fort Worth where they'd left her, at the boardinghouse Scrap's aunt Callie managed. Mae had told Josiah she could have loved him, but he doubted that was true. At least not the kind of love that he understood and knew.

An out-of-tune piano started to play, banging loudly from inside the Tall Gate Saloon, and it recaptured Josiah's attention from the third floor.

There wasn't any singing, and the roar of the usual crowd did not exist. There were no horses or wagons to be seen in the alley behind the saloon—maybe they were all out front.

The town was a quiet one, not like the cow towns that grew up next to the cattle trails, the populations exploding with the drives north and cowboys seeking ways to quickly rid themselves of hard-earned wages on women and whiskey. But it was entirely possible that the earlier incident with John Wesley Hardin had cast a dark and fearful pall over the place. Josiah had seen the effects of violence strangle the life out of a town, drain every man, woman, and child who had seen it of hope or promise.

A cantilevered roof covered the back entrance to the saloon. The shadows were even denser here since there were several buildings built within a few feet of one another. All of the buildings were three to four stories tall. Night had not completely fallen, but it might as well have been midnight in the alley.

Josiah slid off the back of the horse and planted his feet firmly on the dry ground.

The rope loosened a bit at his ankles, and Little Shirt let the rope that bound Josiah's wrists briefly go slack—but just briefly enough to give Josiah a bit of room to put all the force he could into a double pump of the elbow to Little Shirt's face.

If ever there was a time to make a move and try to escape, now was that time.

Josiah's elbow caught Little Shirt directly under the chin the first time, then square in the nose, sending the Indian tumbling backward.

The blow allowed Josiah to yank free from the Indian's grip on the rope that held his hands.

The Comanche screamed, and a mass of blood spurted from his mouth and nose—the sudden blows having broken his nose and causing him to bite his tongue.

Josiah jumped back with all of his might, pulling the rope that was holding his feet from Little Shirt's hand, then dove under the chestnut mare, hoping to avoid a shot from Big Shirt's trusty Spencer rifle.

“You are a fool, Josiah Wolfe!” Big Shirt yelled.

But he did not shoot. Josiah was too close to the horse, lost on the other side of a deep shadow that he had seen from atop the mare.

He scrambled to his feet, all the while pulling at the rope, trying to free himself of his confinement so he could run full out into the dark alley next to the saloon.

It only took Josiah a few seconds to free his feet from the rope—but he knew that he couldn't completely unbind his hands. The rope was loose enough for him to work his fingers and wrists, but that was it.

He hated to do what he was about to do, but he had no choice—and there was no time for hesitation.

He cold-cocked the chestnut mare, punched her square in the mouth twice for good measure, making sure his goal was accomplished.

The horse screamed, then reared up on her two hind legs. Big Shirt had to whirl his horse around, sending him halfway out of the alley, to avoid the screaming, bucking horse.

Josiah dove away from the mad horse, then rolled across hard ground and came up to squat with his back against the saloon.

Big Shirt fired the rifle, and the bullet pinged off the side of the building, a foot over Josiah's head.

Even though the air was cool, sweat poured down Josiah's face.

He could hear Little Shirt moaning. His hand hurt like hell, and his knuckle was bleeding from catching a few of the horse's teeth with the hard punch.