[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (9 page)

L
en Tanner stepped out of the lamp-lighted cabin and spread his blanket in the dog run. Straightening up, he shouted, "Rusty, you better come look."

Excitement in Tanner's voice brought Rusty to his feet and out into the open space between the two sections of his cabin. Against the night sky, just at the horizon line, he saw a red glow.

Tanner said, "I don't think
that
is any eclipse."

Rusty muttered an oath. "It's the right direction to be Shanty's place." He slammed the flat of his hand against the log wall. "They're burnin' him out."

"Good thing we brought him home with us."

Shanty heard the voices and ventured from his sleeping place in the shed. Andy had taken to sleeping there, too. Shanty looked at the glow, then hurried barefoot to Rusty's side. "Lordy, Mr. Rusty, they're burnin' down my place."

"I'm afraid that's what it looks like."

Andy came up, shoving his shirttail into his trousers. He wore buckskin moccasins. "If we hurry, maybe we can put the fire out."

Rusty shook his head. "By the time we got there, the cabin'd be burned to the ground. And whoever's done it, they might be waitin' to ambush Shanty or anybody else who rides in there."

Andy argued, "We can't just stand here and do nothin'."

Rusty stared at the glow, deploring his helplessness. "Best we wait 'til daylight so we can see what we're gettin' into."

Andy seemed more agitated even than Shanty. "One thing we
can
do. The people that done this, they've got houses, too."

Rusty knew what Andy was driving at. "A house for a house?"

"Seems fair to me."

"The law doesn't work that way."

"Don't look to me like the law works at all."

Shanty's shoulders slumped. Always thin and spare, he seemed to shrink even smaller. "I ain't never done nothin' against nobody."

Rusty said, "You're a free man. Nobody owns you, and some folks can't accept that."

"I ain't free if people won't let me alone. I wish Mr. Isaac was still livin'. They wouldn't burn the place if it was still Mr. Isaac's."

Rusty started to say Isaac York was white. But he knew Shanty was well aware of the reason for the hostility.

Shanty said, "They wouldn't do nothin' like this if you was to say you own me."

"The war settled that question. Nobody owns anybody anymore. That's the law."

"I wisht there hadn't been no war. I wisht things could go back to what they used to be. Them wasn't really bad times."

"You didn't have freedom then."

"Don't seem like I got much freedom now."

* * *

Rusty bade Andy and Shanty to stay back while he and Tanner circled around the blackened ruins of the cabin and made certain no one had set up an ambush. Tanner said, "Looks safe to me. They done their dirty work, then cleared out."

The chimney stood like a tall tombstone above the charred remnants. By contrast, the shed was only moderately damaged. Though it had been set afire, the flames had flickered out. Chickens pecked in the dirt, oblivious of the carnage about them. The shed had been their roosting place.

Len pointed. "Yonder lays Shanty's plow mule."

He gave vent to his anger as he rode up to the dead animal. It had been shot and left to die slowly, for the ground was torn up where it had lain and kicked in agony while its blood drained away. "Any man who would do this ought to be gut shot and left to fight off the buzzards."

Rusty nodded solemnly. "They didn't find Shanty. They had to take it out on somethin'."

He shivered, picturing Shanty lying here instead of the mule. On reflection, he figured they would more likely have shot Shanty at the cabin and burned him with it.

He signaled for Shanty and Andy to come in. Shanty stopped to study the cabin ruins, then came out and looked down at the dead mule. "Poor ol' Solomon.
He
wasn't black like me, he was brown."

Rusty said, "But he belonged to you."

"I ought to've been here. They wouldn't have done this to him."

"They'd have done it to
you
."

Andy clenched his fists, his face reddened. "Ought to be somethin' we can do about this."

Shanty said, "The Lord keeps a tally. Come Judgment Day, He'll call on transgressors to settle their due."

Tanner added, "He'll send them to hell."

Andy demanded, "Why wait on the Lord? Why don't we give Him some help and do it ourselves?"

Despite lectures on the subject from Preacher Webb, Andy had never quite grasped the white man's concept of a fiery hell. The vision of eternal damnation was not part of Comanche tradition. The Comanche preferred immediate punishment, duly witnessed. He said, "I've heard of the Kiowas tyin' a man to a wagon wheel and burnin' him alive. I can believe in that kind of hell."

Shanty dismounted and stood in anguish where the cabin door had been. "Me and Mr. Isaac, we built this with our own two hands." He raised his palms and looked at them. "Wasn't nobody else, just us. He'd be mighty grieved to see this."

Rusty thought Shanty was too old to be raising a cabin anymore, at least by himself. "We'll help you build it back, but we'd best wait awhile. They'd just burn it again."

Tanner said, "What this country needs is for Preacher Webb to do the honors at a few good funerals."

Rusty demurred. "There's been too many funerals already. The wrong folks got buried." He rode out to the dead mule and drew the loop of a rawhide reata tight around the animal's hind feet. He dragged the mule off a couple of hundred yards, out of sight from the burned cabin. There he found Shanty's milk cow, killed as the mule had been.

Shanty's dog Rough would probably have been shot too, had Shanty not tied him to a post at Rusty's place. The dog had kept trying to run off back to the home it knew.

The raiders had flung a few torches over into Shanty's garden, but the plants had been too green to burn.

Rusty rode back to where the others waited. He said, "You-all go on home. I've got to make a visit."

Tanner said, "You fixin' to call on Fowler Gaskin? This has got his earmarks all over it."

"Fowler can wait. There's somebody else who might listen to reason. I'll give him a try."

* * *

Like most farms in the Colorado River country, Jeremiah Brackett's had suffered hard times. Some of the old rail fencing that enclosed his main field had been replaced, but long stretches threatened to collapse, supported by temporary bracing that was makeshift at best. Recovery from the war had been slow and painful and was far from complete.

Rusty's acquaintanceship with the man was limited. Brackett apparently had brought some money with him when he settled on this land several years before the war. He had built a home larger than most in the area and had plowed a lot of grassland into fields. Fortune's warm smile had turned cold during the war, however. Becoming an officer himself, he had urged his sons to join the Confederate service. His wife had bitterly blamed him after two of them died in battle. The third son, Farley, had been so badly warped by the war that he rebelled against all authority. Toward the end he had deserted the army and taken up with fugitive brush men hiding beyond the western settlements. Now he rode precariously along the hazy-edged line that divided law and outlaw.

Brackett had paid heavily for his allegiance to the Confederacy. Rusty could respect that; the same had happened to many of his friends. But some, like the Monahans, had paid an even heavier price for their opposition.

Passing a field, he noticed a young black man guiding a moldboard plow drawn by a pair of mules. Rusty lifted one hand in a modest show of friendliness, receiving a nod and a white-toothed smile in return.

Evidently Brackett did not hate all blacks. Or, if he did, his hatred did not prevent his using them.

The house, of rough-hewn lumber, had gone for years without fresh paint. Remnants of white still clung, emphasizing patterns of grain in the exposed and darkened wood. Like much else he saw, it bespoke a long, slow fall from prosperity.

In front of the house stood a wooden carving of a boy in a jockey's uniform, holding a brass ring for tying a horse. Like the house, the carving had lost most of its original paint. Rusty dismounted and tied Alamo's reins to the ring after first checking to be sure the hitching post had not rotted off at ground level. One of the plank steps yielded under his weight. It was cracked and needed replacement.

Beyond the front door a woman stood in semidarkness just inside a hallway. He tipped his hat. "Miz Brackett?"

The woman moved closer, into brighter light. "I am
Miss
Brackett. Is there something we can do for you?"

"I'm lookin' for Jeremiah Brackett."

He could see now that the woman was actually a girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen years, too young to be Brackett's wife.

She said, "My father is somewhere out in the fields. He'll be home directly for dinner. You'd be welcome to stay and eat with us."

Rusty was hungry, but he felt his mission was too awkward for him to break bread with these people. "I'm much obliged for the hospitality, ma'am. I'm afraid I can't stay."

She said, "You'd be Mr. Shannon, wouldn't you? I've seen you over in town."

Rusty could not remember that he had ever seen the girl before, though he probably had. She was in that period of rapid change that comes just before womanhood. He found her face pleasant, her faint smile reinforced by friendly brown eyes.

He said, "I don't recollect hearin' that Mr. Brackett had a daughter." Unmarried ladies were scarce, even ones this young. They were outnumbered by unattached bachelors persistently striving to alter their marital status. Unless a woman was homely enough to frighten hogs and had a disposition to match, she stood scant risk of becoming a spinster.

"My name is Bethel," she said. "It comes from the Bible."

"Mine is Rusty. I don't expect you'll find it in the Book." He turned to look toward the fields. "I'll go hunt for your father."

She raised her arm to point, and he noticed that her sleeve had been mended, its cuffs fraying, the fabric faded. She said, "I think you'll find him over yonder-way, in that field past the oak trees."

Turning away, he thought there ought to be at least enough money to buy that girl a decent dress. But he knew the reality was otherwise. Six years after the war, much of rural Texas was still flat on its back. Or, at best, up on one elbow.

He had made a modest amount of money gathering unclaimed cattle and throwing them into herds that James Monahan trekked north to the railroad, but it had been extremely difficult to hold on to much of it. He bought little, but what he did buy was high in price. Taxes had risen to near impossible levels. He was convinced that reconstruction officials were deliberately taxing old settlers off their land so they or their friends could have it. The stronger the tie to the Confederacy had been, the higher the taxes were set.

Jeremiah Brackett stood in the edge of the field, watching a black man follow a plow and team of mules. He became aware of Rusty's approach. For a moment his gaze went to a rifle leaning against the rail fence, but it was some distance away. He gave Rusty a second look and evidently saw no imminent threat. He picked his way through rows of corn, careful not to crush any growing plants.

"Howdy, Shannon. You've come to see me?"

That seemed obvious to Rusty, but he guessed it was a strained way of being polite. He dismounted. "I have. Wanted to ask you where you went last night."

The question seemed to surprise Brackett. "Nowhere. I was at home. I am at home just about every night. Where would you have me be?"

"Thought you might've gone over to pay Shanty another visit."

"I rarely visit my white neighbors, much less one of so dark a hue." Brackett peered intently as if trying to read what was back of Rusty's eyes. "I suspect you are about to tell me that something has happened."

"Somebody burned down his cabin."

Brackett blinked as if the news was unexpected. "Was he in it?"

"No, I'd taken him home with me. But I figured you knew that."

"I had no reason to know."

"Figured your son Farley would've told you."

"Farley hasn't been there since the night your Indian boy fired a shotgun and got him thrown from his horse."

"Andy didn't shoot
at
him. He just wanted to be sure he had everybody's attention."

"He had it, and that is a fact. The boy is a menace."

"Some folks must figure Shanty to be some kind of a menace too, the way they keep tryin' to run him off."

"We don't need his kind in this country."

Rusty nodded toward the black man with the plow. "I've seen three of them in your fields."

"That's different. They're working for me. They have no claim on any of the land."

"Where do they live?"

"In a cabin out by my barn."

"Then they're livin' a whole lot closer to you than Shanty is. How come he puts such a burr under your blanket?"

Brackett's face twisted. "If you were any kind of a white man you wouldn't have to ask. Working for somebody is one thing. For a darkey to own land is something else. It is like saying he is equal to the rest of us. That, I cannot accept. Those people were brought here to serve. Let one become too independent and the others start thinking they should be, too. Worst thing Lincoln ever did was to free those people. Everybody was a lot happier before that."

"Except maybe the slaves."

"They had plenty to eat and a place to sleep, probably far better than in Africa. Now there are hundreds of them adrift without work, without a place to sleep or anything to eat unless they steal it. Do you think freedom has made
them
better off?" Brackett waved a hand toward the man with the plow. "Do you know why I'm out here watching him? Because if I don't, he'll stop at the end of the row and lie down in the shade. Left on their own, they'd not work enough for their own subsistence."

"Shanty has done all right on his own."