[Texas Rangers 06] - Jericho's Road (26 page)

Farley muttered, “That boy needs a good whippin’ with a wet rope.” Andy said, “He just ain’t finished growin’ up yet. Maybe he’ll get better.”

“
If he don’t get himself killed before that. I’ll say this for him, though, he’d poke a bear in the eye with a willow switch and then try to skin him.”

Teresa kissed her brother and told him, “We’ll be back to see you real soon.” She looked hopefully at Farley. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?” She added as an afterthought, “You and Andy?”

Farley seemed a little flustered. “If you want us to.”

“
I do.”

As he and Andy mounted their horses, Farley said, “You know how close we came to gettin’ buried on this place?”

“
The McCawleys saved our bacon. Them and Tony.” He had to give Tony that much credit, at least.

Farley stole a glance at Teresa. “I swear that little girl gets to lookin’ prettier all the time. If only she wasn’t half Mexican.”

“
If it was me, I wouldn’t let that make any difference.”

“
It oughtn’t to, but it does.”

Chavez sent an escort of vaqueros along to see the McCawley party safely to the river. None of the Chavez men would have dared molest them, but the region was infested by bandits over whom Chavez had no control. Several of McCawley’s cowboys had camped on the north bank, waiting for their employer’s return. They would pick up the escort duty. Andy and Farley were not really needed, but they had nowhere else in particular to go.

The procession crossed at a shallow ford. Chavez had sent a messenger to alert the McCawley crew, so the cowboys were waiting as the buggy and the horsemen pulled up out of the water. Andy’s horse shook himself like a dog, startling the buggy team. McCawley had to draw hard on the lines.

Andy saw that the reception committee was more than the McCawley cowboys. Sergeant Donahue was there with several of his Rangers, including Hewitt. He touched the brim of his hat in deference to the women and told Big Jim, “From what folks say about you and Lupe Chavez, I wasn’t sure you’d come back alive.”

McCawley acknowledged him with a nod. “Folks say a lot of things that aren’t true, Sergeant. Lupe and I are kinfolks, sort of.”

“
Some of the worst fights I ever saw was between kinfolks.” Donahue turned a stern face toward Andy and Farley. “Don’t you two know that you had no legal right to go into Mexico?”

Andy said, “That was when we were Rangers, but we’re just citizens now. You fired us.”

“
I sometimes say things in the heat of the moment that I do not mean.”

“
You hirin’ us back?”

“
I never took you from the rolls. The company is too far under strength.”

Farley’s eyes took on a calculating look. “Maybe you could see clear to give us a raise in pay.”

“
The pay scale is set by the state. I have nothin’ to do with it.”

“
It was worth a try.” Farley glanced at Andy. “What say, Badger Boy? Want to give the Rangers another chance?”

Andy was not sure what his reaction should be. He said, “I don’t see where I’ve got anything better to do.”

Jericho Jackson brushed away the marks of the saddle from his favorite gray horse as it cooled down from the afternoon’s riding. Working with his hands helped him relieve some of his tension. He fretted, “I don’t know what’s become of that old man Gonzales. I’d sure like him to tell me what’s goin’ on down at Chavez’s.”

Burt Hatton stuffed a wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth. “He probably took hisself up to Laredo and got drunk. You know these Meskins. Put a little money in their pocket and you won’t see them again till they drink it all up. It takes twenty of them chili pickers to make a dozen.”

“
I’d give a thousand dollars to know what Chavez is up to.”

Hatton said, “For a thousand dollars I’d go down there and ask him.”

“
Even if you got close enough to listen, you couldn’t savvy what they said.”

Jericho had not been among those who tried to ambush Tony as he left the McCawley house. Always leery of Big Jim McCawley, he had put Hatton in charge of that project. It had gone awry, as too often happened with Hatton. Jericho had come with the reinforcements who tried to stop Tony just short of the river, but he had been frustrated by the arrival of three Rangers.

For a time now Jericho had been on the lookout for a new lieutenant. When he found one he would send Hatton off on some mission likely to get him killed. The best thing to do with mistakes was to bury them.

Jericho said, “I can’t help feelin’ like that damned bandit is plottin’ some kind of strike against me. He’s bound to’ve figured out that we laid a trap for him with that herd of cattle. He’ll be achin’ to square up.”

“
Too bad we missed gettin’ that nephew of his. At least we bloodied him up a little.”

“
All the more reason to wonder what Chavez may do next. I can’t afford to leave here right now.”

“
Why would you want to?”

Jericho’s eyes pinched. “That good woman of mine is still grievin’ over her nephew. I been thinkin’ about takin’ her back to Missouri to spend some time amongst her kin. Maybe the change would ease her mind and set her to dwellin’ on other things.”

Jericho was about the strongest man Hatton had ever known, but he had one outstanding weakness in Hatton’s view: he was excessively devoted to his wife. As unyielding as he might be to the men around him, he seemed almost subservient to her. Hatton believed women were emotionally unstable, so it was the man’s responsibility to make the decisions. A woman’s place was in the kitchen and the bedroom. She should keep her opinions to herself. That was little enough to ask if a man was expected to work and support her.

Hatton had been married once when he was young and foolish. He had left that nagging woman years ago and never looked back. He could not understand why Jericho bent backward to please his wife. Hatton would have told her to quit whining and get back to her knitting.

He knew that Jericho’s fixation on avenging his nephew was prompted by his wife’s grief even more than any of his own. Because of it, several Jericho men had died, and more might yet do so. Hatton would like to stop it, but he was boxed in. It might cost his life if he told Jericho who had really killed his nephew. He was not prepared to die for anybody, man or woman.

Jericho rubbed his red beard. “I’ve about made up my mind to hit Chavez before he can hit me again. I’ll gather me a bunch of bold men, cross the river, and wipe out that Chavez outfit for good and all.”

Hatton shook his head. “McNelly tried that once. Found himself up against a whole company of Meskin soldiers and come within an inch of gettin’ slaughtered.”

“
Because he hit the wrong ranch and lost the element of surprise. By the time he got to where he meant to go in the first place, they were ready and waitin’ for him. The way to handle Chavez would be to hit fast, hit hard, and leave nobody standin’.”

Including some of us, Hatton thought. He did not relish being caught up in any such reckless venture. If need be, he could get along without Jericho. He had been skimming off some of the proceeds from cattle he had driven north for Jericho. He had a secret account salted away in a San Antonio bank. It would see him to a new life in some distant place beyond Jericho’s reach.

He asked, “When you figure on doin’ all this?”

“
I don’t see any reason to wait. Send out the word. We’re hirin’ fightin’ men.”

“
Some of them will get theirselves killed.”

“
We won’t have to pay the ones that don’t come back.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
ndy was trying to decide if he had made a mistake, remaining a Ranger. Sergeant Donahue’s attitude toward him seemed no better than before. He realized he would not have been retained had Donahue not been too shorthanded to patrol the river properly. He sent Andy the farthest of all the Rangers, way upriver from the base camp. Given a pack mule to carry supplies, he had to set up his own rude camp west of Len Tanner’s appointed area of responsibility. Every second day he rode east until he encountered Len, then turned back to the west.

He had cooked for himself before, but it made eating more a chore than a pleasure. He lost weight. Only his coffee had any appealing flavor. After a few days he became acquainted with several Mexicans who lived near the river. He communicated mostly with an improvised sign language. What he recalled of plains-Indian hand talk was of little use, for the Mexicans did not understand it any better than they understood his English. In spite of the language barrier he managed to arrange for a couple of the women to cook a meal for him each time he passed by, though it was costing him most of his meager Ranger salary.

His assignment was to watch for sign of any major movements across the river from either direction. So far he had seen none. After a time he was just going through the motions, riding his appointed circuit as ordered but expecting to find nothing. In his loneliness he found himself spending more and more time visiting with residents who farmed along the Rio Grande. He began picking up fragments of Spanish. He found that some of these people worked hard to scratch out a living from a land that was grudging in yielding up its gifts. Others did only as much as they had to. Some were cheerful; some were moody, distrustful, and made little effort to communicate, especially with a Ranger. In short, they were much the same as people he had known elsewhere, white, red, or brown.

The one characteristic almost all had in common was that they considered themselves to be Mexicans rather than citizens of American Texas. To them the border was a political concept that they usually ignored. He was conscious of small-scale smuggling in both directions, mainly of liquor and tobacco, horses and cattle. He saw no significant harm in it so long as it did not involve raiding and violence. Some small farmers worked land and raised livestock on both sides of the river just as they had done when Texas was part of Mexico and the boundary was only an imaginary line.

So what, he asked himself, if Austin or Mexico City lost a little tariff revenue? Politicians could waste more in a day than penny-ante smugglers might cost in six months. If Donahue wanted such small-scale traffic stopped, he would have to send somebody else.

One day as he paused at the river’s edge to let his black horse drink he saw two men approaching from the east, one riding, one walking and leading a horse that limped. He took them for local Mexicans until they came close enough that he could see they were Americans, one tall, one short. The tall one, on horseback, raised a hand in greeting. His round, sunburned face looked genial. Andy responded in kind.

“
Hell of a thing,” the man said, “havin’ a horse come up lame way out in this nowhere country. My partner’s gettin’ footsore.”

The shorter man was limping about as badly as his horse. His weary face was lined in misery.

The tall one said, “We been lookin’ for somebody who might make a trade with us. A good horse for a lame one.”

Andy replied, “Might be hard to come by without you’re willin’ to pay some boot.”

The walker came up even with the man on horseback. He rubbed a dusty sleeve across his face and blinked the sting of sweat from his eyes. He had a scraggly beard of uncertain color, longer in some places than in others, like a garden with a spotty crop. He asked, “Do you know Jericho Jackson?”

Andy was instantly wary. “I’ve met the gentleman.”

“
Maybe you can tell us where his place is at. We’re thinkin’ we’ve come too far upriver.”

Andy gave both men a long study. He saw nothing in their appearance that would brand them as criminals. Their clothing was dusty and worn, holes unpatched at the knees. They looked like any number of working trail hands he had seen. Everything about them bespoke short rations and low pay. But he had to distrust anyone looking for Jericho. “You’ve come farther than you had to. From here you’d travel north and bear a bit to the east.”

“
How will we know when we’re on his land?”

“
You won’t have to find him. He’ll find you, or his men will.”