[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (6 page)

The first face he saw was that of Fowler Gaskin, longtime neighbor, perpetual thorn in the side of Daddy Mike and now of Rusty. Old Fowler called himself a farmer, though he farmed just enough to stave off starvation. Rail-thin and sallow-faced, he was perpetually hungry-looking. For miles around, neighbors dreaded his visits because he seldom left without taking something with him whether it was offered or not. Nothing he borrowed ever seemed to find its way home unless the owner went and fetched it. Half the time it was not to be found, even then. Gaskin would have broken it, sold it, or traded it for something else.

Gaskin was shouting, "Git him, Euclid! Git up and show him. We don't let no damned halfway Indian come to town and act like he's as good as a white man." Tobacco juice streamed from Fowler's lips and glistened in his gray-speckled beard.

Though Euclid Summerville was several years older than Andy and forty pounds heavier, he lay pinned on his back. Andy sat astraddle and pounded on him while Summerville waved his hands futilely, trying to ward off the blows.

He was Gaskin's nephew. Rusty used to believe that Texas could never produce specimens of humanity as worthless as Gaskin's late sons, but Summerville had proven him wrong. He was as lazy as his uncle, sharing the old man's bad habits and contributing a few of his own. Rusty had heard speculation that he had been more than friendly with Gaskin's homely daughter. If that was so, he hated to think what manner of offspring the inbreeding might produce.

"How I wear my hair is my business," Andy declared. "Now say you like it just the way it is."

Summerville choked as he tried to answer. "Damn Indian son of a bitch!" He face was red enough to suggest he was about to go into some kind of slobbering fit.

Andy gave Summerville's arm a strong twist. "Say it."

"All right, all right. I'm sayin' it."

Gaskin stepped in closer to protest. "Git up from there and whup him, Euclid. You can do it."

Obviously Summerville could not. His dusty face, already pudgy, was beginning to swell from the punishment. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Andy pushed to his feet and stepped back. Stooping to pick up a pocketknife, he started to close the blade, then reconsidered and broke it off against a hitching post. He pitched the ruined knife to Summerville.

"Next time you try to cut off my hair, I'm liable to cut off somethin' of yours.

Gaskin shouted, "Where's the law when you need it? This damned Comanche needs to be throwed in jail."

A bystander said, "Euclid started it. You'd better tell him to pick on people his own size from now on. The smaller ones can beat the whey out of him." Several onlookers laughed.

For the first time, Gaskin took notice of Rusty. "You Shannons! Damned Unionists and Indian lovers, the lot of you."

Rusty managed to contain his rising temper. "You'd better go home, Fowler, and take Euclid with you. He's liable to pick a fight with some schoolgirl and get beat up again."

Gaskin could see that none of the crowd showed sympathy for his nephew. He muttered to himself and jerked Summerville's arm. Near exhaustion, Summerville almost fell. "Come on," Gaskin said. "We got better things to do than furnish entertainment for the town loafers."

Summerville mumbled some halfhearted excuse, but it was not intelligible. The community did not have a high regard for his mental abilities.

Watching them leave, Andy dusted himself off, then sucked at a bleeding knuckle.

Rusty said crisply, "Haven't you ever seen a fight you could back away from? You're lucky Euclid didn't stick that blade between your ribs."

"He tried to cut off my braids."

"You'd save a lot of trouble if you'd cut them off yourself."

"I've told you before, I won't do that."

Rusty had not pressed that argument much. For most of six years Andy had been resolute against giving up this remaining symbol of his life among the Indians. He wore the same plain clothes as most other farmboys, but the braids and moccasins remained, marking him as someone different.

Turning to leave, Rusty saw a man striding in his direction, his expression stern. The badge on his shirt marked him as a member of the recently organized state police force.

"You two!" the lawman said curtly. "You ain't goin' nowhere 'til I've talked to you."

Rusty bristled but tried not to show it. "Talk. We're listenin'." He regarded the man as having been misled into an exaggerated view of his own importance.

"I heard there was a fight in the street just now." The policeman glared at Andy. "By the looks of you, you was in the middle of it."

Andy held stubbornly silent. Rusty said, "There wasn't much to it, just a little difference of opinion. No blood spilled, hardly."

"It's my job to keep the peace. Looks to me like the war ought to've given you rebels enough fightin' to last you for twenty years."

By that, Rusty guessed the man had not fought for the Confederacy. He had probably either dodged conscription or had gone east and served with the Union, which in the eyes of most old Texans branded him as a scalawag. Since the reconstruction government had organized its own police force it had tried to obtain officers free of Confederate connections. Some were well-meaning and honest citizens. Some were not worth the gunpowder and wadding it would take to send them to Kingdom Come.

Rusty had a gut opinion about this one. He said, "You know how it is when you throw a couple of bull yearlin's together. They've got to see who's the toughest. Wasn't no harm done."

The officer demanded, "Who else was involved?"

"I believe he's already left town. Anyway, he learned his lesson. I doubt he'll pick on Andy Pickard anymore."

The officer scowled at Andy. "Boy, you look old enough to get acquainted with the inside of the jailhouse. Remember that the next time you come to town." He walked away.

Relieved to see him go, Rusty warned, "Next time it's liable to be a troop of soldiers instead of one state policeman. We'd best be gettin' home. I'm lookin' for Len Tanner to come back most any day now."

* * *

Rusty and Tanner had ridden together as rangers before and during the war years. They knew enough about one another to earn each a medal or to put them both in jail.

The lanky, freckle-faced Tanner bit the end from a ragged, home-rolled cigar and lifted a tallow candle from the table to light it. His gaze followed Andy Pickard, walking out onto the dog run of Rusty Shannon's log cabin. He said, "I'd swear that boy's grown a foot since last I seen him. Next time I look, he'll be a man."

Rusty argued, "Look again. He just about is. Anyway, you've only been gone a couple of months."

Tanner had ridden to East Texas to visit his kinfolks, which he regarded as duty more than pleasure. "What you feedin' him?"

"Same as what I eat, and I ain't growed a bit. Just get a little older every day."

"How old is Andy now?"

"Old enough to beat the stuffin' out of Euclid Summerville, and him a grown man.

"Grown, maybe, but not much of a man."

Tanner stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back in his wooden chair, which squeaked under the strain. Rusty had braced it with rawhide strips because dryness had loosened its joints. "First time you brought Andy here I didn't think you could ever make a white boy out of him. But damned if he don't talk pert near as good as me and you."

"He reads faster than I do, and writes better, too."

"That ain't sayin' no hell of a lot." Tanner grinned, enjoying his little joke. Rusty saw no reason to spoil his fun. He knew Tanner did not mean it maliciously.

Having no home of his own and no evident ambition toward acquiring one, Tanner spent much of his time with Rusty and Andy. He came and went as the whim struck him. He helped with the farm and the cattle enough to earn his keep. He was a good hand when he wanted to be, but he never put his heart into work with plow and cow as he had done while serving as a ranger.

Tanner said, "Wish I'd seen the fight. Looks like there'll always be some Comanche in him."

"I'd like to have a Yankee dollar for every scrap those braids have got him into. Reminds me some of Daddy Mike. He was bad about fightin', too."

"Mike finally got killed."

Rusty sobered. "Yes, he did."

He contemplated that possibility for Andy but rejected the notion. He could not allow such a thing to happen, not so long as he had breath in his body.

Andy came back into the room, visibly disturbed. "Rusty, come look. Somethin's happened to the moon."

"How could anything happen to the moon?"

Andy's voice quavered. "Looks like it's burnin' up. Come see."

Rusty and Tanner exchanged dubious glances, but both arose from their chairs and followed Andy outside. Andy pointed upward. His voice was shaky. "There. See?"

The moon had dulled and turned the color of red clay, all except for a silver rind on one edge.

Andy shivered. "Maybe it's an omen. Another war, or somethin'."

Rusty laid a comforting hand on the youngster's shoulder. "It's just an eclipse."

"What's an eclipse?"

"'They say it happens when the earth throws its shadow across the moon. And once in a while the moon passes in front of the sun. I've seen chickens go to roost in the middle of the afternoon. It don't mean anything."

"The medicine men would say—"

"Medicine men see omens in just about anything that's out of the ordinary."

Tanner stared at the moon. He had let his cigar go out. "Looks kind of spooky to me, too."

Half the time Rusty could not tell whether Tanner was joking or not. He glared at his friend, wishing he wouldn't reinforce Andy's misgivings. "Maybe the schoolhouse has got a book that tells about things such as that."

Andy argued, "Books can't tell you everything. I remember one night an owl lit on top of Raven Wing's tepee. The medicine man wanted to do a ceremony and take the curse off of him. Raven Wing said he'd have to wait because he needed to go and find a lost horse. Turned out an Apache had it, and he killed Raven Wing. Books don't tell you that about owls." Andy looked at the moon again. "If it burns up, the nights'll be awful dark."

Rusty perceived that the silver edge was growing larger. The shadow was slowly passing from the moon. "Look. It's comin' back."

Tanner said, "You're right. Appears the fire is goin' out."

Rusty started to argue. "There never was any fire. It was just . . ." He realized Tanner was pulling his leg. The skinny former ranger enjoyed a practical joke almost as much as he enjoyed a good meal or a lively fight.

"Someday, Len, the Lord is goin' to smite you hip and thigh."

"The yeller-leg Yankee government has done smote me. Made me pay a tax on my horse and even charged me two dollars just for bein' alive. Poll tax, they called it, and I ain't got to vote even once."

"Two dollars must've come hard for you."

"Too hard. I didn't have it to give them, so they made me work on the road for two days. I thought they made slavery illegal."

"Not when it's for taxes."

The Federals had imposed their own handpicked government on the state. They had agreed to let most Texas men vote provided they take an oath of allegiance to the Union. But when the election did not go the way they wanted they nullified the results. Now the graft-ridden state government was spending three times more than its predecessor and had raised taxes to an alarming degree.

Texas had three political parties. The Democrats were mostly former Confederates, many still disenfranchised. A group of Union loyalists called themselves Moderate Republicans. They tried to live up to the name through reconciliation with former enemies. However, a larger group known as Radicals dominated state politics, holding the governor's mansion and a majority of the legislature. They were more intent on punishing Confederates than on rebuilding the war-weakened economy. Governor Edmund J. Davis had legal power verging on dictatorship.

Rusty said, "There's too many people on both sides who won't admit the war is over. They've never given up fightin' it."

Tanner agreed. "Neither side trusts me and you very much. One bunch is down on us because we didn't go into the Confederate Army. The other thinks bein' rangers was the same as bein' Confederate soldiers."

"I just try to mind my own business and not mix into quarrels that don't concern me. The mess will straighten itself out sooner or later."

Tanner argued, "How do you mind your own business when people keep tryin' to draw you into a fight? I ran into a bunch of old rebels the other night. They accused me of bein' a Unionist because I didn't go into the army. I had to talk fast to keep them from takin' a whip to me."

"I know. Some Union men stopped here last week. Said they were lookin' for Ku Klux. More than likely they'll come again."

Tanner shook his head. "In some ways it was better when there was an honest-to-God war. At least you had a pretty good idea where people stood. You wasn't bein' whipsawed by politicians and wonderin' when somebody was fixin' to shoot you in the back."

Andy put in, "It's like that with the Comanches. About the only friends we've got are the Kiowas, and we're not always sure about them. Old men say even the Kiowas used to be our enemies."

Rusty caught the
we
and
our
. Andy often let things like that slip without realizing it. "When're you goin' to decide that you're not a Comanche? You never were."

He tried to guess what Andy was thinking. The boy's face was often a mask, revealing little in his eyes or his expression. It worried Rusty that much of the time he had no clue to what was going through Andy's mind.

He had just as well
be
an Indian when it comes to hiding his feelings, Rusty thought.

Andy returned to the dog run to look again at the moon.

Tanner asked, "You ever get to feelin' maybe you done the wrong thing, that you ought to've left him to be a Comanche? Now he's betwixt and between, not quite one and not quite the other. Like me and you."

Rusty could not argue. "Hell of a shape for anybody to be in."