Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (78 page)
I
T HAD BEEN A LONG
trail from Mexico City. A hungry trail, a thirsty trail, a lonely trail.
Most of the time Micah wondered if he’d ever see Texas again. Sometimes he thought it might be best if he never went back. Too much water under the bridge, as it’s said. Life had been too hard and grim in the last year since his capture. The filth and privations of prison, the struggle to survive were enough to change any man. Add to that the last couple of months since he and a handful of others had finally made good an escape.
This time they had hoped to increase their chances of getting home by splitting up. But it had been hard going trekking alone on foot through wild lands where, if there were people, he was the enemy. And because he was a fugitive, he often had to hide from danger or fight his way from place to place.
He didn’t make directly for home because at first he hadn’t been certain if he wanted to return to Texas at all. He had nothing there, nothing but failure and sour memories. So Micah wandered aimlessly about the Mexican countryside, and if he appeared to be heading north, it was only unconsciously, until finally the loneliness became more crushing than his fears about home. Tom was there, and the rangers. They had been like a family to him and could be again. They would accept what he had become. Many of them had suffered similarly.
Funny, though, when he thought of going home and what he would do there, it never occurred to him to return to his former life of crime. Well, the idea might have flickered across his mind briefly, but he’d never risk seeing the inside of a prison again if he could help it.
Yet even with a purpose, it was difficult getting to the Rio Grande. He had no money and no weapons, except a knife he had stolen along the way. If he had to justify that act, he reminded himself that he was in enemy territory, and anything he took to survive was merely contraband. He became quite adept at stalking animals and killing them with only a knife. He also had been without a horse for much of the time. Only in Laredo was he accepted enough to be able to find a steady job sweeping and cleaning up in a cantina. He stayed only until he had earned enough to buy a few supplies. He got some clothes, used but in far better shape than the rags he’d been wearing since prison. They were mostly Mexican, including a sombrero and a striped serape. But more importantly he was able to purchase a cheap pistol and a mount and tack.
Micah let a bitter smile slip across his brown weathered face. It wasn’t rightly a horse he ended up with, but rather a mule, and a poor excuse for one at that. He was the color of the blasted desert earth, and Micah called the beast Stew, because once when the animal was being particularly obstinate, Micah had yelled, “You mangy, no-good churn-head. Ya ain’t good for nothing but a pot of stew!”
It indicated the extremity of Micah’s solitary condition when he began to converse with Stew often and even started to take a liking to the creature. At least when he didn’t want to kill the mule. Micah figured they deserved each other, and if there was a God, He was surely feeling mighty pleased at the circumstances.
The blast of a gunshot interrupted Micah’s thoughts. Instinct alone made him dig his heels into Stew’s flanks. He forgot about the tender place in Stew’s stomach where the beast had once, before Micah’s ownership, been mauled by a cougar. The crazy animal reared, and Micah fought to get him under control as another shot split the air several feet away. If he could get to some cover, he could dismount and make use of his pistol. But the land surrounding him was pretty open, tall grass and nary a tree in sight. As the mule sprang into a very reluctant gallop, Micah ventured a quick glance back. There were three riders, and they appeared to be gringos. They might be rangers, but why would they be shooting at him without cause? Then he remembered his appearance. If they were looking for banditos, he certainly looked the part.
“Hah, Stew!” he yelled over the heavy beating of the mule’s hooves. Though the animal was stubborn and mean spirited at times, he could be fast when he wanted, and with shots blasting in his ears, he definitely wanted to now!
Micah led a good chase. He broadened the distance between him self and his pursuers so that they no longer took shots at him. A dry riverbed spread out before him, and he scrambled down its moderately steep bank. He quickly jumped from the mule and took up a position near some rocks, the only cover to be found. When the riders crested the rise, he fired over their heads.
He’d chosen his spot well for making his stand, because the lowering sun was in the pursuers’ eyes at the top of the bank, and by the time they oriented themselves as to the direction of the shot, Micah had reloaded. As he took aim, he got a better look at the three riders.
“My pistol’s aimed right for your heart, Tom Fife!” Micah shouted. “I sure don’t want to kill you the first time I seen you in over a year.”
“Mercy me! I sure recognize that voice,” Tom said.
“It’s me, you dunderhead! Micah Sinclair. Promise ya won’t shoot, and I’ll give ya a look.”
“Go ahead,” agreed Tom.
Cautiously Micah stepped out into the open, flicking off his sombrero as he did so. Tom’s grin made him drop all further cautions. He strode up to the three. Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch were riding with Tom. They all dismounted. Tom crushed Micah into a breath-stealing bear hug. The others slapped his shoulder until he was sure he’d be bruised. But if he’d had doubts before about returning home, they were gone now. He did indeed have friends.
“What you doing traipsing around looking like a bandito?” Tom asked.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Hays said. “If he was a bandito, we’d be done for now. I’m glad to see prison hasn’t dulled your edge, Micah.”
“I got plenty of edges. And as for the clothes, I had to take what I could get.”
“You coming back to San Antonio?” Tom asked.
“That was in my mind.”
“Well, we can use you,” said Ben. He glanced at Hays. “That right, Jack?”
“No doubt about it,” Hays concurred. “Say, I think we have earned a bit of a rest. Let’s sit a spell and talk.”
There were cottonwoods on the other side of the riverbed that provided some shade, so the men let their horses graze while they sat beneath the boughs of the trees. Stew wandered back and joined the horses.
The men broke out jerked venison and hardtack from their packs, sharing what they had with Micah, whose supplies had run low since Laredo. As they ate, Micah related briefly about his escape and trek across Mexico. He omitted much detail, and the others seemed to understand because they asked few questions. On the other hand, he freely quizzed them on their activities in the last year, and they were just as free to talk.
“Had quite a time keeping the rangers together all year,” Hays said. “Funds, as usual, were low. Sometimes there was as few as fifteen of us to patrol the entire Nueces-Rio Grande region. As much as Houston wants to make the borders safe from raids by Mexicans, he also wants to keep a lid on us raiding them. He wants peace so as to help his efforts to join up with the United States.”
“Things did quiet down a mite last year,” Tom said. “A few Indian raids and some harassing by banditos, but it could’ve been worse. The final two months of last year we were out of action completely.”
“Jack even took a vacation,” McCulloch said.
“He went acourting, is what he did!” Tom added with a grin.
Steely-eyed Jack Hays, “Devil Jack” as the Comanches called him, looked about as close to blushing as he ever would. “Well, a man’s got a right to a vacation once in a while, now, don’t he?” he sputtered gruffly to hide his embarrassment.
Everyone laughed, even Jack. And Micah realized what these men meant to him. He was laughing, really laughing, for the first time in a year. He was truly with amigos, and he had forgotten what that meant.
When the joke had played itself out, Micah asked, “Well, since you are out on patrol again, are things better?”
“In February Congress authorized the formation of another ranger company,” Hays said.
“And for the first time ever, they did it right!” added Tom. “They specifically designated Jack to be the commander, not that we wouldn’t have voted for him anyway, but they finally are giving credit where credit is due. We voted for Ben here to be lieutenant. They allowed for forty rangers in the company. We up to that yet, Jack?”
“Nearly, but we got room for you, Micah.”
“Count me in, Captain. I’d be honored to serve.” In one sense Micah was growing tired of fighting and violence, but stronger than this was the sense that he didn’t know what he’d do without the rangers right now. He needed them, if only because he had nothing else to turn to.
“Pay’s fairly regular, too. Thirty dollars a month, paid every two months.” Hays glanced at the grazing horses. “Looks like you got a good mount.”
Micah shrugged. “He’s learning, if mules
can
learn. But he did outrun you fellows.” Then he remembered another important piece of equipment he was lacking. “I only got this here beat-up old flintlock pistol.”
“We’ll fix you up,” Hays said.
“We have finally been issued Colt revolvers,” Tom said with a gleam of delight in his squinty eyes. “I know it don’t matter much to a crack shot like you, Micah, but for the rest of us, them revolvers are pure heaven.”
The men talked for a few more minutes, then mounted up. After three hours they joined up with the rest of the company, then Hays told Micah to go on back to San Antonio so he could get his equipment squared away before officially joining the company. Tom was to go with him.
It was a two-day ride back to town. Neither he nor Tom were great talkers, but it was hard to avoid all conversation. Not that Micah wanted to, but he knew that with Tom alone, talk might get more personal.
He was right.
“I still can’t believe it about Jed,” Tom said as they rode the next morning. “It was hard on you, wasn’t it, Micah?”
“It was a heck of a lot harder on him,” Micah said glibly.
“You know what I mean. You two was close, like brothers.”
Micah nodded. His chest tightened. He still could not think about Jed without deep emotion, much less talk about him.
“I liked that boy, annoying laugh, slow wits, and all!” Tom said.
“Wish there was some way to make them Mexicans pay.”
“I reckon it won’t bring Jed or the others back.”
Tom’s brow arched. “Don’t sound like you, Micah.” He peered more closely at his friend. “You’ve changed some, haven’t you?”
Micah sighed heavily. “I guess I have, but mostly . . . I don’t know . . . mostly I’m just too tired to hate right now. Maybe later it’ll come back to me.”
“Maybe it won’t, and that’d be good. The hate was eating you up.”
Micah thought of the last person who had expressed a similar sentiment to him. It wasn’t the first time this past year he had thought of her, though he had tried mighty hard not to. But Lucie Maccallum had always been the sweetest, most pure thing in his life, and it had been especially true in the last year. Thinking of her had been both agony and delight. Sometimes he had needed delight so badly he had been willing to risk pain and agony to find it.
“So, Tom . . .” he tried to sound casual, but he could think of no way to broach the subject that was on his heart in an offhand or casual way. “You ever catch that Joaquin Viegas?”
Tom gave Micah a skeptical glance, then a slow smile inched across his whiskered face. “No, but it was him we was chasing yesterday when we ran into you. But I don’t reckon you want to know about him as much as about his sister.”
Micah shrugged. “How is she?”
“Last I heard she is fine. Her pa is still ailing, hardly leaves his bed is what I’ve heard.”
“He’s no doubt glad she is securely married.”
“Married? Where you hear that?”
Micah took off his hat and wiped a sleeve across his sweaty brow. “I assumed she would have married that young Carlton fellow by now.”
“Ha!” Tom spit into the dirt. “She’d have nothing to do with him. Why, it was his pa that fired up the ranchers against them after the invasion.”
“That so?” Micah tried not to think anything of this news, yet his thumping heart betrayed him. Lucie was free! But he harshly reminded himself that free or not, they had said good-bye over a year ago, and for very good reasons—reasons that he clearly knew had not changed. He was wilder than ever and far less fit for a woman like that.
“You ought to go see her,” Tom said.
Micah almost laughed at that. “Look at me, Tom! You said I’d changed, and I have, but not all for the good—very little, in fact. I’ve got scars inside me that a gal like that just should never have to look at.”
“I’ll bet that gal has a real knack at fixing wounds and such.”
“Not mine. They’re too deep. I’m just too far gone and wild.”
The conversation waned, much to Micah’s relief, as they came to a stream and had to concentrate on crossing it. The water was deep with spring runoff, and Stew was in no mind for a swim that day. A distaste for water was another of the critter’s faults and now he fairly screeched to a stop and refused to move. Finally Micah was forced to blindfold the creature before he’d test the water. Once they reached the other side, as the sun beat down upon their wet bodies, warming and drying them, Tom spoke again.
“Micah, you don’t know much about women,” he said as he removed his bandanna and squeezed the water from it.
“And I suppose you are gonna teach me? You, who’s been a confirmed bachelor all your life!”
“I know a sight more’n you give me credit for! I know that women were made for taming men. It is the natural way of things. The men come west to fight, to hunt, to raise Cain. And the women come with the cookstoves and the china and the pretty calico to make curtains on the log cabin windows. And we’re glad they do, too, even if we complain about getting tied down, because down deep, part of us wants peace as much as them. We want it, but we only know the way of violence to get it unless the womenfolk show us another way. Oh, I reckon it ain’t as simple as all that ’cause I ain’t one of them philosophers. But it is still the basic truth that women want to tame men, and men want to be tamed—by women at least.”