Give Me A Texas Ranger (24 page)

A familiar voice hailed from outside. “Get water from the stream and empty all the buckets on the path between the cornfield and the shed,” Sheriff Oldham’s voice boomed. “Bucket brigade.”

“On the count of three.” Baldy’s distinct words dwarfed the sheriff’s orders. “One. Two. Three.” Bodies hitting the door shook the walls of the old building.

Ella looked back at Hayden. “If anybody can break down the damn thing, it’d be those two lugs.”

Someone shouted something in the distance, but Hayden couldn’t make out the words.

Baldy yelled, “To hell with the saloon. Protect this shed.”

Ella rushed back to Hayden and dropped to her knees.

“Begin pulling the wire out,” Hayden choked out.

“I’ll try, but it’s gonna leave a whole lot of cuts and punctures, Hayden.”

“Just do it, Little Woman!” He fired back, knowing if anything would make her mad enough to forget how much it’d hurt, those words would certainly do that. He conjured up his best smile. “And, Ella, just in case they don’t make it in time…I’ve figured out something else sitting here…I love you.” He clenched his teeth.

“And I’m damn sure going to get you out of here because I want you to have to repeat that in front of the world.” Ella took a deep breath. “Before I do this, I love you too.”

Ella closed her eyes and pulled with all she had in her.

Hayden thought he was about to pass out, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to give Sheriff Oldham and Baldy the satisfaction of finding him that poorly.

“One. Two. Three.” The sheriff and Baldy counted in unison.

It sounded like a boulder hit the door. It barely budged, but the walls shook like a cyclone had hit them.

“Again…” Three times.

On the fourth try, the door buckled and sunshine rushed in, causing Hayden and Ella to blink until their eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness.

Sheriff Oldham and Baldy came charging in with their sidearms drawn like they’d come across a bank robbery.

In the distance, flames caterwauled toward the sky, gobbling up the cornfield on the way.

“Guess you came to finish me off?” Hayden roared. “I’m probably not worth the bullet it’d take.”

“Damn it, McGraw,” Sheriff Oldham thundered, and holstered his Colt. “You’re givin’ yourself too much credit, you egotistical, arrogant snipe.”

“There’s nobody in here but us,” Hayden stated.

The sheriff motioned for Baldy to put away his weapon.

“Get us outta here, you sonofabitch!” With Ella’s help, Hayden ripped away the severed wire tangled around his legs, as though it were nothing but hemp webbing. “You hit me from behind and hauled me in here, you bastard.” Hayden tried to wiggle out of the wire. “It had to be you. You’re the only one big enough to carry me.” Hayden spat his words directly at Baldy.

“It doesn’t take big, you honyock. It takes strong,” Baldy charged back.

“Let’s get them out of here and then you two can have a cuss fight, duel, or what in the hell you want,” Sheriff Oldham ordered, stomping out the opening where the door once stood.

Flames lapped at the path between the cornfield and the shed, racing against time, hungry. Sated only by the taste of dried wood.

“Run!” Baldy ordered. “Run like hell!”

Knowing her dress would slow her down, Hayden grabbed Ella into his arms and ran for the saloon.

As if orchestrated, just yards from reaching the porch, Baldy, Sheriff Oldham, Hayden, and Ella fell to their knees and rolled to safety. A deafening explosion rocked the prairie. Cinders plummeted to the sky and flames engulfed the shed. Another angry outburst followed. A third and a fourth, until all the barrels were consumed.

Folks came from out of nowhere hauling buckets of water to put out the fire. Dixie and Audrey Jo broke through the throng of people and grabbed Ella. “We didn’t know where you were. I promise, girl.” Dixie hugged her again.

“You get those wounds some attention,” Sheriff Oldham ordered as he picked up a pail. “I’ve got a lot of questions for you, Ranger.”

“I have some of my own. Beginning with, where in the hell is Calvin Mullinex?” Hayden shouted over the noise.

Sheriff Oldham turned, and with a tone in his voice as serious as any Hayden had ever heard coming from a lawman, he asked, “You don’t know?”

One year later

Sipping a glass of milk, Ella sat at her regular table in the Three Sisters Café. She tapped a swollen foot. For the first time that she could ever recall, she rested and let others do the work. From the day she told them she was expecting, everyone had been pretty protective of her. Especially her husband.

She smiled, thinking back over the last year.

The shed had been replaced with a barn and horse stalls where Stewball shared his time with Ella’s filly, Puddin’ Cake. A garden was now lush and green where the cornfield had once stood, leaving a majestic view of the stream and prairie from the new window added to the enlarged kitchen.

Audrey Jo and Dixie had both become quite the bakers. So what had started out as a way to keep Ella busy and out of Muley’s hair so he could help crack the bootleggin’ operation had ended up making money, lots of money, for the three women who shared and shared alike in the ownership of the newest café in town, the Three Sisters.

Hayden placed a
CLOSED
sign in the window, after Emma Watson and Mrs. Oldham left, clutching their weekly orders of bear claws to their chests, as though they were gold. They’d both wished Ella good luck and gave Hayden a “we know how she got that way” look.

Hayden laid his hand on Ella’s shoulder, lightly rubbing her neck. “Tired?”

“Tired and happy, Hayden.”

The couple watched the corner table where twice a day Sheriff Oldham, Baldy, and Muley drank coffee and spun war tales with little or no ring of truth to them. Some had been so far-fetched that no doubt someday reality would become legend.

Muley still complained about how long it took Sheriff Oldham and Baldy to get him out of the hoosegow in Wagon Mound, where he was arrested along with Willard Porter—after he had gone back to Buffalo Wallow and trapped Ella and Hayden in the shed and then returned to Wagon Mound—by the U.S. Marshal for bootleggin’. One story started at a week, but now it was somewhere around a month, because Muley had had to walk all the way back to Buffalo Wallow.

The only fact that stayed consistent: Willard Porter was locked up for assault and kidnapping a Texas Ranger.

Then add attempted murder and bootleggin’ to Willard’s charges and they’d thrown away the key to his cell. Seems the government didn’t give a hoot about a little moonshine being made, as long as it didn’t leave the premises. But they didn’t take kindly to the drummer profiting from and taking advantage of the railroad workers over in New Mexico.

Muley’s only atrocity, besides taking the steps he thought best to keep his promise to Ella’s father that she’d be safe, was trying to make some money to keep her business afloat. Cookin’ up a batch of homebrew every now and again for the customers seemed a good idea. The rough and tough patrons of Molly Lou’s knew the difference. They didn’t give a damn if the saloon carried the good stuff or not, because the homemade brew was cheaper and stouter. That’s what put Muley and Willard at odds in the first place. The more profit Muley made from the saloon, the less bartering needed.

There had always been a difference of opinion on how Ella’s ledger had gotten on the porch.

Hayden knew exactly how it’d played out. Willard thought Muley was too drunk to remember the peddler hitting Hayden and taking him to the shed. That gave Muley, before Hayden was attacked, time to plant the two clues—the ledger and the badge—before Willard changed his mind and decided he’d better haul Muley, drunk or not, with him to New Mexico. Hayden had seen the truth in his eyes when he returned the retired Ranger’s badge to him.

There are just parts of a Texas Ranger’s character that another Ranger would recognize without question. A tough-as-nails Texas makeup, with guts and skills that allowed them to stand alone between society and its enemies with a spirit of independence and a bond shared only by a courageous and bold outfit of men known as Texas Rangers.

The part of the story everyone agreed upon: if Hayden hadn’t got his Warrant of Authority wet and stopped in Buffalo Wallow to pick up his replacement, the plan to bust Willard Porter would have run smoothly.

The scheme was simple. Thanks to the first book of marriage records coming to town, Sheriff Oldham knew if they held a town meeting, Ella would be the first to show up and voice her opinion against the law, creating havoc. Sheriff Oldham would detain her for a while for inciting a riot, and that’d give Muley and the town’s new undercover deputy enough time to blow Willard’s operation sky-high. Well, it blew sky-high, but not exactly as they had intended.

There was no contingency plan for a little ruckus turning into a riot and requiring one Ranger to defend one woman’s honor.

“Ella, you’ll see him again. Your father will be back.” Hayden noticed the faraway look in his wife’s face when she went to the place in her heart that held her memories. “You know he will.”

“I know. I know.” Ella patted Hayden’s hand still resting on her shoulder. “He can’t afford to leave tracks and won’t put us in jeopardy.” She rested her other hand on her stomach.

“When it comes—”

Hayden hardly got the words out of his mouth before Ella broke in.

“We aren’t having an ‘it,’ Hayden. It’s a boy. I can feel it, and he’ll grow up to be a fearless Texas Ranger just like his father, his grandfathers, and his great-grandfather.”

“I think you need some rest, darlin’.” Hayden took her hand and helped her to her feet. “You’re going loco on me.”

Halfway up the stairs, she turned and looked back at their friends sitting around the café rehashing the day.

Ella and Hayden looked at one another and exchanged knowing smiles.

Night after night, they lay in the big four-poster bed and heard Muley slewfootin’ it down the hall to Dixie’s bedroom.

And Audrey Jo joined Deputy Harry Jackson, who most folks knew better by his nickname, Baldy, every evening for supper and a stroll.

The gamblers and the gossipers.

The quaint and the inquisitive.

The renegades and the righteous.

It only took the love of one woman and one Ranger to bring a town together.

D
E
W
ANNA
P
ACE

To my sister, Teresa Rose,
and to my niece, Dortha Hall.

To life’s battles, win or lose.

All worth the effort when it’s
love you’re fighting for…

El Paso
February 1896

The alkali dust of the desert sandstorm swirling along the streets of El Paso, Texas, forced Thomas Longbow to pull his Stetson low, further sheltering his eyes. Walls of dirt hundreds of feet high masked the Franklin Mountains, which formed the eastern edge of the border town. The dusty cloud blotted out the sun and made it more difficult to follow his assignment. Even the weather seemed to conspire against him in getting the job done quickly and moving on.

A glance at the adobe and brick businesses that lined the plaza revealed that most of the citizens who had swollen the city to more than three times its size the past month were smart enough to stay indoors and out of the pelting sting of Chihuahuan dirt. A few strangers hurried past, not bothering to look his way and, for the moment, were apparently not trailing Maher along with him. The sports enthusiasts who had tracked the prizefighter from the moment Pete Maher stepped out of his door each morning to train until he called it a day had been nothing but pure aggravation for Thomas. Though Thomas had wanted to simply mix in with the crowd of fight fans, he had been tempted to show his star a time or two just to cull the herd.

Making sure Maher and his opponent, Bob Fitzsimmons, didn’t find a secret location in which to fight was taking a hell of a lot longer than anyone thought it would. Personally, he hoped the two would just battle it out on a sandbar in the middle of the Rio Grande. That would satisfy all the bickering between Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico about whose territory the prizefight couldn’t be held on.

Trouble was, every sports fan, newspaperman, and gambler from New York to Juarez was betting that the fight between the two heavyweights would take place, and they were ticked as hell that the authorities had called in the Texas Rangers to stop the fistic carnival from happening. For the first time in Ranger history, the entire force of what some called “the wrath of God” had been called to El Paso to enforce Governor Culberson’s and President Cleveland’s legislation against prizefighting in the territories. As far as Thomas was concerned, there was one Ranger too many in the mix. He could think of a dozen other legitimate squabbles along the border that needed taking care of.

Just as Maher turned the corner, dirt blasted Thomas’s eyes. He yanked up the red bandana he wore around his neck and wiped away the grit, swearing as he wondered what kind of business had brought Maher out on such a miserable day. The boxer wasn’t dressed in his running regalia; instead he looked like he was on some secret mission, dressed in a low-slung hat and yellow slicker that covered him from head to foot. He’d taken the Silver City Special in from Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he had his training quarters, leaving his manager behind. Thomas hoped like sin that this sudden need of Maher’s to investigate the streets of El Paso would lead to some inkling about the fight’s planned location. The sooner the Rangers found out where it would be held, the faster Thomas would be done with this slow drip of an assignment.

Impatience lengthened his stride as he hurried to catch up to his quarry.

In Her Corner

The bell jangled, announcing a customer had entered the shop. Laney O’Grady set down the mallet she’d been pounding to stamp the cowhide and dusted her hands upon her apron. She walked through the curtain that separated her workroom from the display room and offered the newcomer a smile. “How can I help you?”

The tall man took off his hat, dusted it on his thigh, then offered a quick apology. “Sorry for the mess, lass.”

When she caught sight of his eyes, Laney almost gasped. Only good manners kept her from asking what in the world had happened to him. One was swollen shut, the other deeply red and matted.

He didn’t flinch at her appraisal; instead he moved closer to the counter that separated them. “Can you keep a secret?”

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected the customer to say, but his question caught her off guard. All of a sudden she was very much aware that she was alone and that he was a man of broad shoulders and extremely powerful-looking hands. “What do you mean?”

“The question’s simple, lass. You know who I am, I presume, and I need to know if you can keep a secret.”

Laney stared more intently and realized, with a start, she did know him. Or rather, of him. Standing before her was the Irishman whose picture had been in every paper from Chicago to the local editions and had all of El Paso buzzing. Pete Maher, the fighter. No wonder his eyes were so bad. She’d read in the
El Paso Herald
just yesterday that the fight between him and the other boxer would be delayed because of Maher’s eye infection. Everyone thought it was simply a ruse urged on by the Dallas promoter, Dan Stuart, to allow time to find a location for the fight and ultimately outwit the Texas Rangers. No one really believed Maher was suffering. “I’m sorry to hear about your problem.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Laney thought she saw someone’s shadow stop at the shop door, halt, then move past. Poor man. Maher must be constantly followed. Ever since he and Bob Fitzsimmons hit town, the two fighters had suffered an entourage of hundreds. Everyone wanted to ride the wake of fame following the two heavyweights. Even on a day like this he apparently couldn’t shake his shadows.

“I’ve kept a secret or two in my time,” she answered truthfully, sensing maybe the man just needed something from someone who didn’t want something back from him.

“Good.” He held both fists up on the counter. “I need you to measure my hands and make me a new pair of boxing gloves. The deal is, though, you can’t let anyone know how you’re going to design them.”

Laney motioned to the leather wares displayed in the room. “I’m a saddle maker, Mr. Maher. Sometimes I make a pair of boots or chaps, but I’ve never made boxing gloves before.”

The challenge of making them appealed to her, but she had to be honest with the man about her lack of expertise in the area.

“I’ll pay whatever your fee is, plus a bonus of a thousand dollars, if you can have them done in a week. That’s how long the doc says I need to rest these eyes.”

A thousand-dollar bonus. Money that would have taken her years to save. Money that would be hers alone and didn’t have to go back into the shop. An answer to her prayers. Laney couldn’t believe that luck had just blown in with the wind and landed on her counter. Still, she didn’t know a thing about making boxing gloves. She wasn’t even sure what they looked like. Using gloves to fight was something new in Texas. The few fights she’d ever witnessed were always bare knuckled. “All I can promise is to do my best.”

“That’s why I’m here. I was told you’re the best leather-goods maker in the Southwest. I’ve written the specifics on this…” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he’d provided a sketch of gloves, instructions on the material to be used, and several symbols. One of the designs was a shamrock with a silver harp inside it. “My good luck charm. I’m superstitious about it. Won’t fight unless I got it on each glove seven times.”

A frown furrowed his brow and made his dark mustache bracket the grim line of his mouth. “My trainer left the baggage that held my gloves in Dallas. No telling where they’ll end up. The press gets wind of it and they’ll have a field day. I want them replaced before anyone knows they’re missing.”

“I’ll get my tape.” Laney excused herself long enough to grab her measuring tape and writing ledger from the workroom. She quickly measured Maher from wrist to fingertip and wrote down the figures. She started to check the other hand, but Maher waved her off.

“They’re a perfect match. Not an inch of difference in either,” he announced proudly. “And one swings as good as the other.”

The shop door opened, jangling the bell. Maher slipped his hands away from the counter and pulled his slicker closer around him. He started to turn away, but Laney stopped him. “I’ll need to know when you intend to—”

Maher didn’t let her finish. “Ten o’clock tomorrow. We’ll talk more then. I’m due at the Gem Saloon. I can count on you not to say a word?”

“Not a word. Ten o’clock tomorrow then.”

The boxer put his hat back on, tipped it in a polite, silent good-bye, then started to pass the newcomer entering the shop. The tall, ruggedly handsome customer directed his steel gray gaze at Mr. Maher, giving Laney the distinct impression that he was gauging the boxer in some odd way.

He turned for a moment and watched Mr. Maher go, then swung around abruptly and asked, “Just what have you promised not to say?”