Read The Rattlesnake Season Online
Authors: Larry D. Sweazy
The Rattlesnake Season (11 page)
There were few men in the world Josiah really considered true friends, though he didn’t feel envy, or regret for that matter, when he saw it. He had always been more comfortable on his own. But watching McClure hustle around the fire, tending to a pot of boiling vegetables, all the while baking a round of biscuits and warming a fresh pot of coffee, was comforting to Josiah. The smells made his stomach growl.
The grumbling noise brought a quick smile to McClure’s face. “You got a wee bit of hunger in you there, Wolfe?”
Josiah smiled. “A bit, yes.”
“Won’t be long now.”
“You sure seem to know your way around the fire. It’s good to have a cook among us. If I was on my own, it’d be a jerky supper.”
“My sweet mother, bless her heart, taught me to cook. Said a man needed to know how to fend for himself out on the land. Not too many womenfolk are likely to stick around a wandering oaf like myself, and I suppose she knew that. Course I’d be a lot more comfortable with a pile of sheep innards than the cow beef, but I’ve learned to make do.”
Josiah grimaced at the thought of innards, but said nothing. “Is she in Scotland?”
McClure looked at Josiah questioningly. “My ma?”
Josiah nodded.
“No. Heaven.” McClure made a cross from his forehead to his chest and across. “She came to this country with me in her belly. I spent the years of my boyhood in Kentucky. The war was a hard time for us. Both my parents are dead and gone now. My poor ole dad was a soldier, killed at Gettysburg. I think my ma died of a broken heart after that. I was nearly grown, but not old enough to go off and fight . . . though I wanted to. I ran away as many times as I could. Darn near got myself killed a few times. When I saw how that affected my ma, I just planted my feet and waited to leave when it was the right time. Guess a man can’t run into nature. Nature has to run into him. Just wasn’t my time to fight. I left three days after she journeyed to Heaven. I’ve never been back to Kentucky since. It was a land of death and destruction as far as I was concerned, and I wanted to be as far away from the memories of war as possible.”
Josiah nodded again. The war had been a hard time for most everyone he knew or met. It was hard to believe that the fighting had ended nine years prior. It seemed like yesterday that he was in Suffolk. And some men still carried the fire of the war with them. It wasn’t over for everyone. Not even Josiah on some days.
McClure continued to fuss around the fire.
“There’s going to be hell to pay if my biscuits burn,” Charlie said.
The big Scot stopped and glared at Charlie. “If I was you, Mr. Langdon, I wouldn’t be so certain on getting a bit of supper.” He paused and cast a glance over to the captain, and then added, “Especially if you’re going to continue to be such a disagreeable man.”
Josiah ignored Charlie, who seemed surprised that he might be deprived of food.
“So, you’re a Ranger now?” Josiah asked McClure.
“I am. I met Sam in my travels, and he hails from near Austin. This is the most beautiful country I ever saw. I hope to never leave. We were working the cattle lands for a while, but the Comanche were always causing us grief. We figured joining up with the Rangers would be a good thing for us both. I never plan on leaving Texas.”
“It’s good to have a home. A place where it feels like you belong.”
“’ Tis. Most certainly ’tis. I plan on buyin’ a piece of land outside of Austin. Start a family of my own someday.”
“You should have joined up with the Travis Rifles. You wouldn’t have to travel so much.”
The Rifles, a small but formidable militia in Austin, was getting a lot of press in the newspapers lately. They had physically escorted Governor Davis out of the capitol, making way for Coke to take his duly elected seat. If Josiah had been a betting man, he’d have put down a week’s wages that a lot of the men in the Rifles would become Rangers sooner or later.
“Well, you see, Sam is my best mate, and he has known the captain for a long time. There’s no other man I’d rather be ridin’ with. If this is where I’m meant to be, then that’s that. ’Tis a better day at the side of my friend than on the trail alone. Rangering is going to be an adventure, and the Rifles aren’t Indian fighters. I’m anxious for my first trip into Indian Territory with a group of like-minded men.”
Josiah nodded that he understood.
McClure was not the first Ranger he had met who did not originally come from Texas, but he sure seemed like one of the most interesting. The Scot was confident in his movements, his voice was musical, and he really took pleasure in cooking. Josiah was enjoying being in camp with Vi McClure.
It was a good way to end the day, he thought, as the big man handed him a plate of steaming food that looked fit enough for a king to feast on.
“That ought to take the bite out of your stomach,” Vi McClure said with a huge a smile crossing his face.
“I believe it will,” Josiah said. “I believe it will.”
Scrap Elliot nudged Josiah’s boot cautiously with the butt of his rifle. Being a light sleeper had always been a dependable trait for Josiah, but he was as much out of the habit of sleeping on the ground as Clipper. The trip had taken more out of him than he’d anticipated.
He barely roused at the nudge.
Scrap had to put a little more persuasion against his boot the second time around.
Josiah sat straight up, reaching for the carbine at his side. “What?” He had been in a dreamless state. At least he thought so. There was no memory of anything other than a full, satisfied belly as he quickly fell asleep. Vi McClure’s supper was about the best food he’d ever tasted on the trail.
“It’s your watch,” Scrap said.
Josiah wiped open his eyes, caught a whiff of lingering smoke from the coals in the fire pit. The embers glowed orange. The sky was black and cloudless. Stars with pulsing silver tips filled Josiah’s gaze—they did not give enough light to navigate away from the bedroll, so he sat for a moment gathering his bearings.
It was clear it was the middle of the night. The moon was nowhere to be seen.
“Been pretty quiet, with the exception of a few coyotes yipping about,” Scrap whispered.
Charlie Langdon snored loudly, capturing their attention for a second. Satisfied the outlaw was still sound asleep, and was no threat, Josiah slipped on his boots. “Good,” he said. “Didn’t figure you’d have any trouble.”
“I’m worried that Langdon’s gang is laying in wait.”
“Did you hear something?”
Scrap hesitated. “It was probably a critter, but I thought I heard a horse at the bottom of the hill. I only heard it once.”
“How long ago?’
“ ’ Bout an hour ago. Might have been a stray.”
Josiah stood and wiped the chill off his arms. “I doubt there’s any chance of that.” There hadn’t been any sign of a ranch or farm since they left the torn-down old town by the stream . . . and even there there’d been nothing living or even any sign of anything recently.
With that thought in mind, he headed off to the bushes.
Scrap kept whispering, keeping a good amount of distance but talking in a low tone nonetheless. Josiah couldn’t hear a word the kid was saying, nor did he care. He finished up his business and came back to grab up his carbine. “You better get some shut-eye. Captain will want to ride as soon as he can in the morning.”
“But . . . ,” Scrap said.
Josiah stopped. “No buts. Get some shut-eye. If there’s a gang out there, we’d know it by now.” Without waiting, he headed up the hill to take his post. The last thing he was in the mood for was a long, drawn-out conversation with a greenhorn about things that might or might not happen.
The spot Captain Fikes had chosen as a lookout took about five minutes to get to. It didn’t take long for his eyes to fully adjust to the darkness and to see that the trail around here was lined with rocks all about as big as cow heads.
Josiah was careful with his steps. He’d kicked up a snake more than once at night, and the last thing he wanted to do was draw any undue attention to himself . . . especially if they were being tracked.
He settled in on top of the hill, propping himself against an old fallen tree. The view, given the limitations of the darkness on the moonless night, was more than he’d anticipated.
A valley swept out below him, and if he turned all the way around in a circle, he could see hills reaching to the mountains in front of and behind him. There were shadows of trees—limbs with tender new leaves that were so soft they made little noise in the slight breeze—spattered about, but not thick enough to even be considered a stand. He couldn’t make out much detail in the distance. The trail was not visible, nor was any water source, which he had hoped to find for the morning ahead.
The smoke from the dying campfire touched at his nose, but it was far enough away to just be sweet, not pungent.
Dew had formed on the tree he was leaning against, and it was dampening his shirt. He had not lost the chill from sleeping.
Oddly, he found that he was still tired—sleep had not refreshed him at all.
It was at times like this that Josiah wished he had taken up the habit of tobacco—either chewing or smoking. But neither habit had ever agreed with him. Letting his mind wander would only take him on a journey into the past, and that was the last place he wanted to visit in the middle of the night. So he got as comfortable as he could, satisfied himself that Scrap had been hearing things, and began to whistle again—so softly he could hardly tell the difference from the song in his head to the song that was twittering out of his lips.
Minutes turned to hours. The stars twinkled. A coyote yipped a good distance away. How many miles away was hard to tell. And the sky started to fade to gray on the eastern horizon.
Josiah stood up when he heard some movement down in the camp, glad that his shift at watch was nearly over.
He was certain the captain was waking up the men—until he heard the first gunshot shatter the calmness and promise of the rising dawn.
CHAPTER 10
Josiah didn’t take the time to consider that Scrap Elliot, in all of his eagerness and insistence, might have been right about Charlie’s gang lying in wait. There would be time enough for second-guessing himself later.
After the first gunshot, a sudden volley of shots erupted almost simultaneously, accompanied by a thundering of horse hooves.
A rush of wind delivered the whinnies and neighs, the shouts and commands, to Josiah’s ear quicker than he would have liked. Even though it was still dark, the quiet world of only a minute before had exploded into a storm, a sneak attack born in the early dawn hour. There was just enough light coming from the camp that Josiah could see shadows dancing on the cliff face—though he couldn’t make out any faces.
Any sense of fear or physical discomfort from the morning cold left Josiah as quickly as his feet would move.
The flashes of gunfire in the camp continued rampantly. He could hear more yelling—and his own heartbeat raced rapidly, adrenaline pumping into his veins like a dam had been unleashed, adding to the sudden bursts of sound. He was numbed, felt nothing, couldn’t even hear himself think.
Josiah wanted to stand with his fellow Rangers and fight off the attackers, whoever they were. His wartime senses had come home without any begging. He scuttled down the trail, crouching as low to the rocks as he could, hoping that no one had been sent to kill the lookout.
But anyone planning a surprise attack would know where the lookout was, and somehow, they had got past him, sneaked into camp from another way—under the cover of darkness, or in the shadows.
Josiah had been able to see every way in and every way out of the camp. How had he failed? The questions came unbidden, rising over the shouts and gunfire. Surviving meant pushing away every doubt. There was too much on the line to fall victim to doubt.
A bullet glanced off a rock just at his knees. The spark briefly lit the trail, made him blink and stop to gather his breath and thoughts, then he dove to the right, off the trail, to gain some cover. It was barely light, so he knew he was taking a chance, gambling with his own life that he would be safe since the shot came from the opposite direction.
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