Read The Rattlesnake Season Online
Authors: Larry D. Sweazy
The Rattlesnake Season (34 page)
“Is that you, Wolfe?” someone shouted from the darker reaches of the livery, a stall Josiah could not see clearly into.
A man walked out into the center of the livery, toward him, and Josiah nodded, relaxing the hand that had dropped to his side and gripped the Peacemaker when he heard his name called out.
“I heard you were coming this way, and I’ve been looking for you day and night,” Sam Willis said.
Willis put his skillet-sized hand on Josiah’s shoulder, looked at him woefully, and said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
CHAPTER 29
There was no time to give Clipper the proper amount of rest that he was so obviously in need of.
The cabin was half a day’s ride from Fort Parker, and the horse would just have to make the trip . . . or die trying, because there was no way Josiah was going to spend another minute at the fort once Sam Willis confirmed his worst fears: Charlie Langdon was holed up in the cabin outside of Seerville, with Ofelia and Lyle held hostage inside.
Before hitting the trail, Josiah sent word to Austin, asking Major Jones to send more Rangers than they had initially planned on needing. Feders and a handful of men were supposed to be behind him by half a day, not too close and taking a different route—just in case Charlie had spotters set along the trails leading to Fort Parker. They wanted it to look like Josiah was riding alone, just like Charlie had told him to. Only problem now was, there was no way to get word to Feders, no way to warn him except to leave a message with Colonel Gibbon, which Josiah did, before tearing out of the fort and heading north on Moscoso’s Trail as fast as he could.
There was no time to lose. No time for Josiah to reexamine Feders’s role in the captain’s death . . . He’d just have to hope he was wrong, that Feders was a model Ranger, doing his job this very minute.
The wind rushed at Josiah’s face as he and Clipper left the fort. He was pushing the horse harder than he could ever remember pushing him. The weather was not of consequence, other than that it wasn’t storming, raining. It could have been the most perfect spring day, and Josiah wouldn’t have noticed once he got on the trail and headed toward home.
Moscoso’s Trail dated back to the early expeditions of Hernando de Soto, the first European to discover the Mississippi River. It was not as widely used by cattle drivers as the Chisolm, but it was used by stagecoaches. The narrow, weedy trail connected South Texas with the Labahia Road and, north into Arkansas, with Trammel’s Trace. Josiah had ridden the Moscoso’s hundreds of times, knew it well enough to travel it blindfolded, which was a good thing . . . since his eyes were glazed with anger and dread, dosed with tears—which he attributed to the wind.
Sam Willis could hardly keep up with Josiah. His black horse frothed at the mouth, and its hard muscles glistened with sweat. Sam, who was a big man, nearly as big as McClure, was bent forward, riding as hard as he could, pushing the horse just as hard as Josiah pushed Clipper.
They had little time to talk. Josiah was not interested in much of anything else other than the news he’d been given, but Willis did tell him that he had followed Charlie and his gang north, lost them a few times, because they had split apart around Austin, which made sense to Josiah, considering his own encounters with O’Reilly and the Negro. Willis found Charlie’s tracks again just south of Round Rock, and followed them to Seerville, keeping a good distance, not willing to stop and send word for fear of losing them again.
By the time Willis realized the gang had settled at the cabin, it was too late to help Ofelia protect Lyle. Willis was outmanned six to one. His trip to Fort Parker, along with searching for Josiah, was to get some help and make it known to others where Charlie Langdon was and what he was up to.
Charlie knew the lay of the land in and around Tyler and Seerville just as well as Josiah did. He knew where the cabin was, and knew Josiah would not have thought to worry about the Mexican midwife needing to protect herself and Lyle with anything other than the shotgun that sat just inside the front door.
The familiarity of the land, of the trail, of the knowledge he held deep in his memory about everything that surrounded him, gave Josiah little comfort. He could only hope that he wasn’t too late to save Lyle, and ultimately, he was grateful that he wasn’t riding alone . . . no matter the risk.
Vultures circled just over the next ridge. Seven or eight ugly redheaded eaters of sour, dead flesh, they also served as a signal, a sign, that at some point, somewhere, a struggle had taken place and a life had been taken. How often did a badger or a deer die of old age? Nature didn’t work like that, and Josiah knew it.
Thankfully, they weren’t close enough to the cabin for the object of the vulture’s desire to be there. But they weren’t far, about four miles now.
Clipper didn’t slow. Willis and his horse lagged behind, running as fast as they could. It was as if Clipper could sense Josiah’s panic, his need to get home as quickly as possible.
Josiah kept his eyes peeled for any sign of movement, any shadow that might turn out to be one of Langdon’s men, hiding, ready to take a shot at him, but he could only worry for so long about being shot out of the blue. Each mile he rode was a mile closer to Lyle.
He crested the ridge, and looked up and saw that more vultures had joined the kettle. When he looked back to the trail he saw why.
A man, naked from the waist up, vacant of socks and boots, dangled from the limb of a towering southern red oak tree.
The tree was nearly eighty feet tall, its trunk three feet around, and the man had been placed so he was hanging square in the middle of the trail. He wasn’t moving; he was as still as a dead moth caught in a spider’s web.
A vulture was sitting on the dead man’s shoulder, tearing a piece of flesh from his cheek, helping itself to an easy meal. The big bird flushed upon seeing Josiah, lifting off silently with one graceful thrust of its wings.
Josiah brought Clipper to a stop about fifteen feet from the man. He was tempted to shoot at the bird, to run off the lot of them, but he knew it would be no use. They would soar in the sky until the man was six feet under, his scent buried, and then they’d be off, scavenging for some other victim of unfortunate circumstances.
Josiah recognized the man then, saw that he’d known him when he was living, and had questioned more than once what side of the law he truly stood on. That question wasn’t going to be answered anytime soon, but it was puzzling why the sheriff of San Antonio, J. T. Patterson himself, had been hanged on the Moscoso’s Trail, only a few miles from Seerville. The sheriff was a long way from home, but pretty darn close to where Charlie Langdon and his gang were holed up.
Willis eased up alongside Josiah. “Looks like he’s been there for a while, but I was just through here a day ago and didn’t see a thing then.”
Patterson’s face was gray, his head hung limply to the side, victim of a perfectly coiled rope. His bare chest and arms were covered with shallow slits in the skin from a sharp knife. Josiah had seen this before.
The wounds on his chest were not caused by the seekers of carrion. Slow cutting was a technique Charlie Langdon used in the war to get information out of a prisoner about troop movements, the inner workings of the ranks, or anything else he thought was relevant to win the next battle.
The technique was effective, and one that Charlie obviously still used to find out what he needed to know to survive.
The cuts had congealed . . . blood had stopped pumping through the sheriff’s heart after a quick snap of the neck. It had probably been a relief, the torture finally over.
Josiah exhaled deeply. “I expect we ought to cut him down.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Willis answered.
Josiah started to object, and turned to Willis, curious why he would protest such a thing. But he swallowed his question.
He was staring into the barrel of a Colt revolver, and he noticed at that moment that Willis’s eyes were black as a storm cloud, and held no emotion at all, other than cold, hard hate.
Josiah reluctantly dismounted from Clipper, his hands high above his head, realizing he had been tricked into leaving Fort Parker.
This was the third time in recent memory that he’d been at the barrel end of a gun, and he didn’t like the thought of it. Juan Carlos had saved his life at the Menger Hotel, and Suzanne del Toro had put a knife in the Negro’s chest outside of the saloon.
But there was no one to come to his aid on the Moscoso’s Trail. He was on his own and knew deep in his heart that he was as close to his own death as he’d ever been. His skin tingled, and his eyes were focused on Willis, waiting for him to make one small mistake. Like Charlie Langdon, Josiah had perfected a set of survival skills in the war.
“Now slowly unbuckle your belt and ease your gun to the ground,” Willis said.
Josiah did as he was told, quickly eyeing Clipper, and the Sharps carbine sticking out of the sheath. He was five feet from his horse, and the carbine was on the opposite side of the saddle. Willis could probably get at least one shot off, more than likely two, if Josiah rolled under Clipper to retrieve the Sharps. He was too far away. At the moment.
“Now,” Willis continued, aiming his Colt at Josiah and pulling his own rifle from its sheath, “take off your boots. Just in case you think you’re going to get a chance at me with a knife or a derringer.”
“Why are you doing this, Willis?”
Sam Willis squinted, his forehead pulsing with ribs of fatty skin. “Don’t go asking a lot of questions, Wolfe. We’re short on time. Charlie knows there’s a company of Rangers ridin’ in your shadow.”
Josiah nodded, acknowledging Willis’s confirmation that he was working with Charlie Langdon. He tried not to show any surprise that Langdon had somehow figured out the plan he and Feders had hatched back in Austin. They’d hoped to rescue Lyle with a swarm of men. Now it looked like Josiah might have to face down his former deputy one on one.
“You’re on the wrong side of things, Willis. It’s not too late to change that.” He pulled off a boot, and his Bowie knife fell on the ground.
Willis laughed. “It’s way too late for me to change anything. Kick the knife over to me.” He was still sitting on his horse.
Josiah thought back to the night the captain was shot. McClure told him that Willis slept away from the camp, like he always did. Scrap didn’t say anything about the man in the camp, but said Willis had gone after Charlie and McClure by the time Josiah had reached the captain.
He kicked the knife toward the black horse. “Your friend died with a murder on his shoulders. But I never thought he shot the captain. I think you shot the captain, killed him in cold blood. I just don’t know why you would do such a thing. Kill Hiram Fikes, then betray your best friend.”
“I ought to shoot you here and now, just get it over with,” Willis said.
“Why don’t you?”
“Charlie ordered me not to. I’m supposed to deliver you to him.”
“That’s a risky proposition.”
Willis rocked his rifle up and down in an urgent nod. “Take off the other boot, Wolfe.”
“All right.” Josiah leaned down, grabbed the toe of his boot, and tugged a little, but not hard enough to pull it off his foot. “Why’d you do it, Sam?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“I’d been off the trail awhile before the captain called me down to San Antonio.” The boot came off his foot, but he held on to it, not emptying it like he’d had the other one.
“Me and McClure and Patterson rode with Fikes and Feders in the State Police. For a short while things was fine. But there was always this Mexican with Fikes, and Patterson don’t like Mexicans, thought they all were liars and thieves, didn’t trust the one Fikes was so fond of one bit. Anyway, one night we was playing cards in a saloon down in Refugio. There’d been rumors that Charlie Langdon was out and about, but they didn’t pay much mind to the rumor. We’d heard it before and it turned out to be false. I did, though. I knew Charlie in the war, knew he’d come back and tried to live the straight and narrow, being a deputy of some sort, but he couldn’t quite live that way. A lot of us had that problem, adjusting back to the laws of ordinary men. War gives certain people a taste for things that never goes away.”
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