The Outcasts (9 page)

The spectral-faced man thudded a stone onto Nate’s horse. “Hey, I believe your back may be broken. Hell of a fix. I’ll shoot ya if you ask me to. No? All right, then.”

The faces of the raiders disappeared from sight, and Nate lay panting and staring at the sky, his legs caught beneath the horse, in a hot agony of pain the center of which seemed to be in his middle, and yet when he put his mind to any one part of his body, the pain seemed to swell like a grinding of glass into the flesh and muscle down to the marrow of his bones.

Another face appeared over him and Nate threw up a defensive hand until he saw it was the older cousin, Owen. The boy had a bullet hole low in the crown of his hat. He was crying, and a thin trickle of blood ran onto his forehead.

“Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn, but they like to’ve shot me in the head.”

It took a rope tied to the dead gelding’s legs and then wrapped around a tree for leverage for the boy to pull the animal off Nate. He could move all his limbs but he was certain from the pain that he had broken his hip. The younger cousin had not been so lucky and had taken a bullet in the chest. They covered him over with rocks and branches so they could find him again and pressed on, with Nate riding the dead boy’s horse.

After a day’s ride, they discovered the raiders at an encampment on the Forche la Fave River; the rushing waters masked the sounds of their approach. Hours after the three men had settled under their sleeping rolls, Owen whispered to Nate, “Blood for blood.”

He showed Nate his hunting knife and his determined, vengeful face, and then he crept toward the man sleeping closest to them. Nate watched the boy crab-crawling slowly over the ground and held his revolver ready, uncertain he could hit the other two men in the dark at that distance if they woke, uncertain as well if he could again stand after lying on the ground for so many hours, his broken hip tyrannizing his legs to jerks and spasms. The sky was clear; the three-quarter moon shone with unnatural brilliance off the river, and it revealed Owen’s profile in sharp detail.

The boy bent over the closest bedroll and, with little hesitation, made a jab and then a hard sweeping motion with his knife over the man’s neck. The man kicked his legs as though in restless sleep and then lay still, and Owen waved his arm for Nate to come on. The boy then pulled his cap-and-ball pistol from his belt, and when the second raider stirred and sat up, Owen shot him.

Hettrick reared from his blanket like he’d been yanked vertical by a rope. He pulled from his heavy coat two pistols and began firing blindly at Owen, who scrambled across the ground towards cover, the bullets carving out pieces of dirt and rocks surrounding him.

Nate pulled himself up to standing, and, supported by a tree, he took aim. Some sound, the creaking of wood or the cocking of the pistol or Nate’s own agonized breathing, brought Hettrick’s attention away from Owen, and he jerked a shooting arm towards Nate. Nate fired once, and the remaining raider fell as quickly as he had risen.

Nate collapsed to the ground, his hip no longer able to support him, and crawled cautiously to where the leader lay motionless, facedown, his coat spread out around him like shabby wings. Nate turned the body over and saw that his one shot had hit the man squarely in his forehead; he figured he would probably never be able to make a shot like that again, not even at half the distance and in full daylight.

A brief, exultant surge from the most primal part of himself, fueled by fear and pain, made him yelp out a call, a poor rendition of the rebel yell he had heard from men in the battlefield but a tribute all the same to the reflex that had moved his arm to fire at the exact killing spot.

In the morning, the two gathered together the stolen horses, and after giving Owen’s cousin a more fitting burial, they rode for days back to the herd and the drovers waiting for them at the Oklahoma border. They traveled south to Texas through Indian territory unhindered, and were even accompanied some distance by the First Choctaw Regiment of the Confederate army.

On the twenty-seventh of August, the hottest day anyone could remember, the drovers, led by Nate, entered Dallas and herded the two hundred and ninety-eight horses down the main street. And every boy who had made the ride and could boast of surviving stampedes and snakebites and horse-thieving raiders rejoined the war when he was able.

Nate’s broken hip, further fractured by a week more in the saddle, took a year to heal, and after that he was considered unfit to serve. He stayed in Lancaster training Steel Dust horses but heard from returning Texans of the fates of his friends, and every young drover to a man was killed in some battle or another.

McNally fell at Vicksburg after serving with the Nineteenth Cavalry for two years. Owen was downed at Blair’s Landing in Louisiana while firing his old cap-and-ball pistol on a Confederate gunboat run aground on the Red River, the same gun he had used to kill the horse thief.

When Nate finished talking, he was certain Dr. Tom must have nodded off. He had surprised himself speaking for so long, in so much detail, and he’d spent the last half hour staring at his boots, too self-conscious to look the ranger in the face. Dr. Tom had not said a word for over an hour, but when Nate finally looked up, the ranger was gazing at him, his arms crossed, his mouth curled in a smile. Nate realized that prior to this, he had not told the story in its entirety to another soul besides his wife.

Nate stood abruptly, suddenly shy in the too-quiet room, and said, “Well, I guess I’ll see what use I can put myself to.”

He walked to the door but turned when he heard his name called.

“Nate,” Dr. Tom said. “You’re going to make one hell of a good lawman.”

The following morning early, the three left Austin, stopping first at Hillyer’s Photographic Studio at Dr. Tom’s insistence. “Hell, I’ve got on a new shirt, thanks to Nate. Might as well capture the day.”

Hillyer posed them in different configurations, finally settling Nate in a chair between the two rangers, his new Winchester across his lap. Dr. Tom placed one hand on Nate’s shoulder and held his Colt aloft with the other. Deerling stood to the other side, giving a heated stare to the photographer as he took his time adjusting the boxy camera. In the moment before Hillyer removed the lens cap, and while he was admonishing the men to stay perfectly still for the count of a full minute, Nate felt Deerling’s hand come slowly to rest on his other shoulder.

The photographer nodded to them when the image had been captured and they could move again. He said, “I’ll have the prints made from the glass negative within the hour, gentlemen.”

Deerling shook his head, already walking to the door. “We don’t have time to wait. We’ll take receipt of the prints when we return.”

The trip to Houston would take another fifteen days, and they hoped to bypass the main city, riding for the small settlement of Frost Town on Buffalo Bayou to the north. There, Deerling would speak to the woman who had been shot and whose family had been killed by McGill’s men.

The journey began favorably, the weather mostly dry and temperate, so that sleeping outside at night was a pleasure, though the first few evenings Dr. Tom began to run a fever and coughed his way through till dawn. He had quickly pitched into the bushes the respiratory cure given to him by the doctor in Austin, saying that there were enough opiates and alcohol in the syrup to stun a horse. Deerling and Nate slept little themselves, listening to the wet rumbled hacking that sounded ominously like pneumonia settling in.

Deerling asked after his partner’s health so often that once, when the captain handed Dr. Tom his morning coffee, he responded by saying, “Thank you, dear.”

The Blackland Border, as Dr. Tom called it, was hilly at first, then gave way to gently rolling pastures abundantly watered with streams and aquifers. On the banks of lakes were farmhouses and barns made of chalky white stone and timber collected in tight, defensive formations against Indian attack, like mushrooms sprouting after the rain.

They followed the path of the Colorado River southeast through sycamore and willow, carefully easing around the giant cutbacks, the eroded earth chopped away from the banks during the recent flooding. As the land flattened, the sky opened up with only a few wisps of clouds, stretched to near transparency with strengthening gusts of wind.

Dr. Tom sat in the saddle with his head down, one hand supporting his lower ribs, his face drawn and pale.

Nate rode closer to Deerling and asked, “Is he all right?”

Deerling turned briefly to look at his partner and frowned. “He’s fine.”

“He doesn’t look fine.”

Deerling craned his neck around once more, but kept riding. “He’ll tell us if we need to stop. We’ll find a doctor in Columbus.”

But the townspeople there informed them there was no doctor, only a retired quartermaster living a few miles away who had had some field-hospital experience during the war and who, it was rumored, kept a stockpile of grain alcohol in his barn from which he was known to sample frequently.

They camped on the outskirts of town. Deerling rode away to the south and returned an hour later leading a squalling, unhappy man tied to a horse. The man had the bulbous, pocked nose of a lifelong drinker, and when he was untied and pulled from his horse, he commenced complaining to Nate how he had been roused from his bed, hit over the head, and kidnapped.

Deerling put a finger in the quartermaster’s chest. “You’ve been paid for your time.” He then pointed to Dr. Tom, shivering under a blanket. “Mr. Odum, there’s your patient. If you don’t want another rap on the head, I’d suggest you see to him.”

Odum bent over Dr. Tom, blowing his sour-mash breath into his face, and poked around the ranger’s middle, feeling under tender ribs until Dr. Tom waved him away, saying, “Hell, George, a horse doctor would have done me better.”

“The patient has pleurisy,” Odum announced. “He’ll need a mustard plaster under flannel.” He then walked to his horse and pulled a bottle from his saddlebag. He handed it roughly to Nate and, after a few missed tries, got his boot into a stirrup and rode off in the direction of town.

The following morning, at Dr. Tom’s insistence, they continued on, following the road due east to Houston. At night, Nate gave Dr. Tom his extra blanket, and he did what he could to provide food the sick man could easily swallow, simmering cornmeal to mush and boiling dried jerky in water for a soup. Five days after leaving Austin, they camped at the crossing of the Brazos. Dr. Tom was barely able to sit in his saddle from the fever shakes.

Nate watched him that night as he huddled under a blanket close to the fire. Dr. Tom’s usual banter had ceased the day before, and the ride was silent except for the sound of labored breathing. Deerling pulled Odum’s bottle from his pack, uncorked it, and made his partner drink.

Dr. Tom swallowed and gaped. “That’s pure grain alcohol. I may go blind.”

“Tom, if you don’t get some sleep tonight, I won’t either, and I may just be mean enough tomorrow to put you out of your misery myself.”

When Deerling went off to find more wood, Dr. Tom gestured for Nate to come closer. He took Nate by the arm and said, “We get to Houston, I’m staying. You go on with George. Don’t let him quit on my account. I’ll catch up later, if I can.”

Nate nodded and Dr. Tom handed him a folded piece of paper. “The damnedest thing about having some medical knowledge is knowing how sick you are when you do catch something. I have pneumonia bad. In both lungs, most likely. I’ll either get well fast, or not at all. Take this letter. If I’m dead when you get back to Houston, give it to George. But don’t tell him you have it in the meantime. He’s got no patience for waiting, and he’ll want to read it right away. And then, if I’m still alive, I’ll have to live with him bein’ awkward and stony-faced all the time.”

Nate took the letter and tucked it into his coat. “What’s driving all this, Tom? Why are we riding all this way for some man-killers that the county sheriff could just as well chase after?”

“We have our reasons. George most of all.”

Nate opened his mouth to speak but Dr. Tom held up a hand. “It has to do with family and that’s all I’ll say about it. It’s up to George to tell you, when he’s ready.” He curled away into his blanket and promptly fell asleep.

In Houston, Nate and Deerling helped Dr. Tom into a physician’s home, where he was placed in a sickroom in a clean bed with a fire built up to bring on the sweats. Nate sat, and Deerling paced awhile, restless and breathing through his nose impatiently, uncertain what to do. He finally pulled the old newspaper from Dr. Tom’s pack, which had been thrown into a corner of the room, turned to the page with the Dickens story, and placed it on the bed.

Dr. Tom wiped a hand over his sweating face. “You are about as much help as a pig on fire. Either read it to me or get gone.”

Deerling pulled a chair over to the bed and positioned the paper in the lamplight and began reading in a slow and halting way, as though he were having difficulty seeing the words. “‘And yet, proceeding now, to introduce myself positively, I am both a town traveler and a country traveler, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there.’”

“George,” Dr. Tom said, “you need glasses.”

Deerling put the paper aside. “My eyes are as good as they’ve ever been…”

Nate listened to the back-and-forth for a while, the rangers’ voices sounding like smoked bees, all buzz and no sting, and then he stood quietly and left the room. He saw to the horses and then bedded down at a boardinghouse, waking only to the sound of Deerling coming in for the night. But Deerling walked to the window, leaned against the sill, and remained there as Nate fell back to sleep. When Nate woke the next morning, Deerling was still in the same place, looking out over the street, his face lined and pale with worry, his chin unshaven for days.

“Tom says to go on without him,” Deerling told Nate. “We’ll ride to Frost Town to talk to that woman that survived McGill’s last shooting. There’s not much we can do here today.”