[Texas Rangers 02] - Badger Boy (8 page)

Riding, Rusty studied Geneva's brother. James had been forced to leave home early in the war and live by his wits in a wild area where the only people he encountered were Indians and fugitives like himself. The strain had put a haunted, desperate look in his eyes. Rusty knew him to be near his own age, mid- to late twenties, but James had the appearance of a man closer to his forties.

Rusty wanted to ask him a dozen questions, most having to do with Geneva, but this did not seem the time.

James broke the silence. "You still a ranger?"

"Not since yesterday." He explained the circumstances under which he and Tanner had left the company.

James said, "You took a long time about doin' the smart thing."

"It wasn't smart. We just didn't see where we had any choice. We were tryin' to explain that when Buddy-Boy decided to commence firin'."

Clyde Oldham said bitterly, "He couldn't have hit you. He never could shoot worth a damn."

"I wish I'd known that."

Oldham seemed to be making an effort not to cry. "I brought him out here to protect him, to keep the war from takin' him. And now this ..."

Rusty had no answers left. A thousand of them would not change what had happened. He asked James, "Are you the chief of this camp?"

"This camp ain't got no chief. Every man is free to come and go, to do what suits him as long as he don't hurt somebody else. We stay together for mutual protection against the Indians, the army, and the rangers." His eyes narrowed. "Especially the rangers."

"You don't need to be concerned about the rangers anymore. There's not enough left to guard a jailhouse, much less to raid a brush camp. I'd worry a lot more about the Indians."

"Worst they've ever done is make a try for our horses. Raidin' parties ride a long way around a camp as big as ours."

Rusty had heard talk about a large gathering of brush men far west of Fort Belknap, near the ragged breaks that marked the eastern edge of the staked plains. He supposed the fugitives moved camp from time to time for security.

Tanner muttered, "We've got ourselves into a dandy fix. We ought to've fought when we had the chance."

Rusty said, "I'd've ridden fifty miles extra to stay out of their way. All we can do now is keep our eyes open."

The brush men rode ahead but watched lest Rusty and Tanner turn and run. The situation reminded Rusty of two fighting bobcats locked in a sharp-clawed embrace from which neither dared try to break away.

Tanner asked, "What'll we do when we get to wherever we're goin'?"

"We'll dance to whatever tune the fiddler plays."

Rusty smelled wood smoke before he saw the camp. A number of horses grazed on a rolling stretch of open prairie, accompanied by a slack-shouldered boy who appeared to be asleep in the saddle. Rusty's attention went to a long-legged mule. Recognition brought a surge of pleasure that for a moment shoved aside his concern over their trouble. "Yonder's old Chapultepec."

Tanner said, "Looks like him, all right."

The mule looked up as the horsemen rode past, but he went back to grazing.

Tanner shrugged. "Didn't recognize you. I suppose old mules are forgetful, like old people."

"He'd've noticed if I'd been ridin' Alamo. They always got along good together." Rusty thought about the deserter who had stolen the animal from the ranger camp. "Lancer must be here, too. I owe him a busted jaw for stealin' Daddy Mike's mule."

James Monahan stopped and waited for Rusty to come up even with him. "You know that mule?"

"My old daddy brought him home from the Mexican War. A deserter named Lancer stole him awhile back. Me and him are fixin' to talk about that."

James frowned. "It won't be much of a conversation. Lancer is buried where we had our last camp." He pointed northwestward. "He was a hard man to get along with. Every time somethin' didn't suit him, he threatened to go fetch the rangers. One of the boys got a bellyful of it."

Rusty said, "I'm goin' to want my mule."

James did not reply. Rusty took that as a sign James was not sure he and Tanner would ever leave this place.

He had seen ranger camps and army camps. This looked like neither. It was a haphazard scattering of canvas tents and rude brush shelters strung along the banks of a creek. Half a dozen campfires sent up their smoke, and the smell of roasting meat made him aware that he was hungry.

Hell of a thing, Rusty thought, thinking about my stomach when I ought to be thinking about my hide.

Tanner remarked to James, "It don't look like you-all's cup has run over with prosperity."

"At least we ain't takin' orders from Richmond, or Austin either. We're still free men."

Free
seemed a questionable description. The brush men were free in the sense that they were neither in the army nor in jail. But their situation hardly met Rusty's definition of freedom. Hostile Indians roamed to the north and west. To the east, the Confederate government considered them traitors. The only relatively open course was to the south, toward a distant foreign border. Those willing to flee to Mexico had done so much earlier in the war. In a sense, those who remained here were confined to a huge prison without walls. They were refugees, hiding, moving periodically lest they be discovered and overrun.

Almost immediately Rusty and Tanner were surrounded by more than a dozen men. He knew his rifle would be useless. At best he might shoot one man before the rest swarmed over him. Tanner's expression said he was still willing to fight if Rusty gave him the sign. Rusty shook his head.

Somebody demanded, "James, where'd you find these rangers?"

Rusty did not know the speaker's name, but he remembered the face from among the men who used to loaf around the dramshops at the Fort Belknap settlement. He looked about, hoping to see other familiar faces. Surely some of the men he remembered deserting from the rangers would be among this group.

Clyde Oldham pointed to his brother and said Rusty had shot him ... shot him down in cold blood. Someone grabbed Rusty's rifle, jerking it from his hand before he could react. Tanner tried to hang on to his, but two men dragged him from his saddle, landing on top of him as he hit the ground. They took his rifle and his pistol.

Rusty felt hostility radiating from the men who surrounded him. He was reminded of the hatred Caleb Dawkins and other Confederate zealots had shown toward the Monahan family, hatred that had culminated in two hangings. His pistol was still in its holster on his hip, but if he tried to draw it he would not live to pull the trigger.

It would be useless to argue that the army had become too small and too weak to indulge its time searching the wide Texas wilderness for a poverty camp like this. It was likely that most of these men had hidden out through a major part of the war. Many had probably suffered during the early period when fanaticism had inflicted injustice upon those whose loyalties were suspect. They would not easily believe that the long war had sapped the energy and resolve of even the most extreme, like the hangman Caleb Dawkins. Most Texans now simply wanted to put the conflict behind them and rebuild what they could from the wreckage of war.

James stood in front of Rusty's horse. "You'd just as well get down. I'll see that nobody does anything to you."

Though hostility was strong in the faces Rusty saw uplifted toward him, the men seemed willing to accept James's leadership. James extended his hand. "Just for safety, maybe you'd better give me your pistol."

Rusty grasped it stubbornly. "I believe I'll keep it."

He expected an argument, but James made what in other circumstances might be regarded as a faint smile. To the men around him he said, "Leave him hold on to it. He knows better than to try and do anything." To Rusty he added, "I'll give you ranger boys credit for guts, even if not good sense."

Rusty was surprised to see a couple of women and half a dozen children in the camp, families uprooted by the war.

James said, "First thing, we'd better see what we can do about Buddy."

Young Oldham was carried into a tent and laid down on some blankets. James went to his knees beside him and gave the wound a closer examination. He loosened the tourniquet to let the blood flow. It had slowed considerably from before. His face was grave as he looked up at Clyde Oldham. "Ain't nothin' holdin' that arm together but a little skin. The bone is busted into a dozen pieces. It needs to come off."

Oldham's voice went shrill. "Amputate? But what can he ever do with just one arm?"

"Live, maybe. Otherwise, he ain't got a jackrabbit's chance. If I was you, Clyde, I'd go out yonder and find somethin' to drink. You don't want to watch this."

Oldham's stricken gaze fastened on Rusty for a moment before he walked away from the tent. A friend put an arm around his shoulder and said, "Come on, Clyde. You need a shot of whiskey."

James beckoned to Rusty. "You did the shootin'. It's your place to do the cuttin'."

Rusty had treated bullet and arrow wounds, but he had never cut off an arm or leg. James held the blade of a skinning knife over a campfire, then handed it to him. Sweat trickling down his face and burning his eyes, Rusty severed what remained of the arm.

Young Oldham screamed. His brother turned to come back, but his friend held him. "We both need a drink, Clyde."

Rusty felt sick at his stomach. He fought to keep everything in it from coming up.

James said, "You'll need to tie off those veins."

"I'd better let you do it." Rusty walked out of the tent and leaned against a tree while his stomach emptied itself. Barlow joined him, kicking dirt over the vomit. "There's a spring down yonder. You can wash the blood off. Then I know where there's a jug. It ain't good whiskey, but there ain't no good stuff to be had."

Rusty doubted he could keep the whiskey down.

Barlow said, "The kid ought to live, if shock don't kill him, or blood poisonin'. Or he don't bite himself like a rattlesnake."

Kneeling by the spring, actually just a slow seep in the bank of the nondescript creek, Rusty dipped his hands into the cold water. The blood would wash away, but not the memory. "Why did that button have to play the fool?" he demanded. "This damned war ..."

"Some people are bound to be fools, war or no war. Buddy-Boy never did have brains enough to pour water out of a bucket. You said somethin' about headin' for your farm."

"We were, 'til we ran into this outfit." Rusty looked to the west, where the sun was rapidly sinking toward the horizon. "Are we prisoners?"

"Depends on how you look at it. Some of the boys probably wouldn't want to see you leave just yet."

"Clyde Oldham might decide in the middle of the night to shove a knife between my ribs. Especially if his brother takes a turn for the worse."

"I'll keep an eye on Clyde. Anyway, if he wanted you that bad, he could follow and kill you the first time you stopped."

Rusty clenched a fist. "He could've sat on that little brother of his if he'd tried to."

"It's like I said about fools. Those two tried to kill an army recruiter. That's when they skedaddled to the brush."

James came out of the tent, his hands bloody. Rusty started to approach him, but an angry look in James's face turned him back.

Damn it all, Rusty thought, I didn't ask for this.

He wanted to ask James about Geneva and the rest of the family, but he decided it would be prudent to wait.

Somebody shouted, "Yonder comes Old Man Timpson."

Rusty squinted. He made out the figure of a rider leading two pack horses a quarter mile from camp.

Barlow took joy in the sight. "The old man brings us supplies. People here have got folks back in the settlements. They send what they can ... flour and salt, powder and lead. And news ... the old man is our main way of keepin' up with what's goin' on back yonder. Him, and now and again Preacher Webb."

"This is a long way for Preacher Webb to travel."

"He answers his callin'. There's some people here who need a strong dose of preachin' any time they can get it."

Rusty agreed. "There's been a right smart of raidin' and horse stealin' laid at these men's door."

"There's a few sour apples like them Oldham brothers, but you can't blame everybody. Most of these are decent people. The war put them in a bad situation, that's all. When it's over they'll go back to where they came from and tend to their own business."

"
Most
. But what about those who use the war as an excuse, the ones who would've been renegades even without it?"

"Time'll weed them out. They'll rob the wrong citizen or steal the wrong horse."

"You could've weeded them out yourselves."

"We need them. When the war is over we won't need them anymore."

Men of the camp surged forward as Old Man Timpson rode in. He flipped the pack horses' lead rein to one of them.

Somebody shouted, "I hope you brung us some coffee."

The old man's voice was hoarse. He was weary from a long ride. "Sure enough, along with flour and salt and such." He coughed, trying to clear his throat of dust. "But I brought somethin' a lot better than any of that."

Barlow spoke up, "I don't know nothin' better than coffee."

"I brought news." The old man took off his hat and bowed his head. "Praise God ..." He paused, taking a deep breath. "The war is over."

Shouts erupted among the men, moving through the camp like a whirlwind as the message was relayed from one to another. Timpson dismounted slowly and carefully, then clung wearily to the saddle, his aging legs stiff. He explained that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered and the Confederacy was no more.

Rusty had sized up Barlow as a farmer, for he had the strong, broad shoulders of one used to hard and heavy work, his large hands probably accustomed to gripping the handles of a plow. Yet this big man stood without shame and let tears roll down his whiskery cheeks in front of everybody. He murmured, "I had begun to think we never would live to see this day."

He turned toward the crowd. "Friends, looks to me like we ought to join together and give thanks ... thanks to Him who has delivered us from this terrible ordeal."