Vengeance Trail (15 page)

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’d like to come back for you. I just don’t know that it will happen.”

“Because I’m married, or because of who you are?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

They both felt the disappointment of circumstance.

“Then you must go,” she said. “Go and decide whether or not to come back. I’ll be here for you if you want me.”

He kissed her gently, and for a moment, she put her arms around him and held him.

It had already grown late by the time he left Clave Miller’s spread. As things would have it, he camped near the confluence
of the Canadian and the Rita Blanca, the spot where he and Josie had had their picnic.

He built a small fire from some gathered deadwood that had fallen from a few cottonwoods along the banks. He rubbed down Ike
with handfuls of grass before putting on the hobbles and allowing the buckskin to graze.

Casting his bedroll several feet from the stream, he dug through the sack of victuals that Josie had prepared for him: fresh
baked biscuits, drumsticks of chicken, a can of peaches, and a jar of buttermilk.

He ate hungrily and thought of her as darkness descended over the land. He thought about her, and he thought about himself.
He lay back and looked at the stars and thought about how life had always been for him, how there were no fences in his life.

But, the old ways were passing, and, he wasn’t quite as up to waking up mornings after spending all night on the ground and
feeling like he’d been run over by a wagon. And trail grub was getting mighty gruesome.

The thought of bedding down every night in a sleigh bed with someone warm and special beside him seemed terribly appealing.
So did the thought of good hot grub and conversation and sitting out of the evening and smoking a cigarette and feeling at
peace.

He rolled up in his bedroll thinking that maybe after this matter of catching up to Pete Winter was over, he just damn well
might ride on back up to Tascosa and see a woman he knew.

Something brought him fully awake. The night as black as pitch, only the flowing waters made a sound. But, something had stirred
him from his sleep and now he could feel the thump of his heart.

His hand eased silently for the big Remington that lay near his head. The fire had all but burned off, only a few embers winked
in the darkness.

In the distance, a bolt of lightening splayed through the sky followed by the deep rumble of thunder. The buckskin whinnied
its nervousness, the ears came alert.

The lawman moved silently away from his bedroll. Bolts of lightening continued to flash, momentarily casting the landscape
in ghostly hues of light. He worked his way toward the small stand of cottonwoods near the river.

Drawing near the trees, the sudden flash of twin bolts illuminated the ground around him. In that instant, he saw the faces
of men kneeling beside the trees.

They seemed like statues, their faces ghostly. They were there, and then they were gone. He threw himself to the ground, expecting
at any moment a volley of gunfire from the trees.

The thick rumble of thunder rolled overhead, the air crashed with violence and slashed by electricity, and he was reminded
of the sound and fury of war.

Working his way along the ground, he retreated back to where the buckskin was growing desperate, fighting against the hobbles.
More lightening bolts, but this time, no faces appeared among the trees.
Where were they?

He reached the buckskin just as the first drops of rain began to fall. Stroking the animal’s neck, he managed to drop a rope
over its head and tied the other end off to a fallen log.

The rain increased in intensity, knocking down the brim of his hat and soaking his skin. He found the saddle that lay by the
bedroll and pulled the Winchester.

The seconds of waiting seemed eternal, but then, through the heavy pour of rain, he heard only what a man who lived by his
wits would have heard: the snap of a twig not more than thirty feet away.

He fired blindly toward the sound. Someone cried out in pain. He immediately rolled several paces toward his left just as
a flash of rifle fire sent a bullet whizzing past where he had been crouched.

He had counted three faces by the cottonwoods, but he knew there could be more. He figured them to be road agents.

He aimed the Winchester at the spot where he had seen the muzzle flash even though there was little chance the shooter would
have held his position.

Most men were right handed. If a man shot and then rolled away from his position, he most generally rolled to his right.

Henry swung the barrel of the rifle a few inches to the left of the spot of muzzle flash. Before he could squeeze the trigger
a second shot banged into the dark. The flash of light directly at the point he had been aiming.

He squeezed the trigger immediately, too quickly for the shooter to move away. Something thudded to the ground.

“Little Ray, you get that sumabitch?” he heard a voice call out from somewhere to the rear of his position. Henry turned,
laid the rifle down and drew his revolver. The voice was close.

“Kid, I am shot through the guts…the bastard shot me through the guts…blow his head off, Kid!”

Henry fanned the hammer of the Remington, the pistol banged six times. He could hear the
Kid
grunt and then, only the splattering of the rain sounded.

The Ranger quickly ejected the shells from his revolver and reloaded. The wait seemed endless. The rain fell in hissing torrents,
battered his hat, soaked his clothes, and he waited.

Waited like he had known Apaches to wait, silent and stock still.

The storm was marching away in the distant and eventually, the rain stopped altogether. Every muscle in his body was cramped
from the damp coldness of night, but still he waited.

After the darkest hour, came the first light of dawn. It crept over the land, pushing back the shaggy shadows as it came.
And when the light became enough,
he saw, directly in front of him, not twenty yards distance, the body of a man. Sweeping his gaze in a wide circle, he saw
another man slumped by one of the cottonwoods.

The third man was missing.

With caution he got to his feet, the cramped muscles unwilling to let him move too fast. He moved to the nearest body, examined
the face, saw the homely but youthful features frozen in a mask of pain.

Moving to the man slumped near the tree, he felt a strange foreboding as he drew near. There seemed something familiar about
the man, something about the clothes, the hat. When he tipped the man back to look at his face, he then knew what it was that
had given him that dark feeling: Dead as dust from a shot through the neck that had bled him to death was Clave Miller.

“Damn,” he muttered. In spite of the troubling revelation, the business at hand was unfinished. There was yet another gunman
to be found.

Upon further inspection of the killing ground, he found a blood trail leading through the tall grass that flanked the stream.
Checking the loads in his weapons, he followed it.

A half hour of trailing the blood smears brought him to the edge of where the bank dropped away several feet to the water.
He saw the fresh tracks of boot heels in the soft ground leading down the bank and along the shoreline and curving out of
sight around a bend.

He worked his way carefully down the bank and moved cautiously as he followed the trail. Just where the bank curved, he laid
the Winchester down and drew his pistol. At close range, he preferred a pistol.

Stepping around the curve of the bank, he found what he was looking for.

The wounded man turned his head at the sound, saw the big man coming toward him, saw the revolver in the man’s hand.

He closed his eyes and clutched at a place just above his belt buckle—a place that was sticky with blood. He saw the big man
coming and closed his eyes and swallowed hard several times.

Henry Dollar saw that it was just another boy, like the first one, not much older than twenty and with the same familiar homely
features as the first—he figured them to be brothers.

The kid was gut shot, his skin gone to gray from loss of blood. Henry had seen a lot of men in his time that had been gut
shot and instantly he felt sorry for the boy, for the terrible agony such a wound can cause.

The boy’s eyes fluttered open, came to rest on the large man standing over him. They were frightened, nervous eyes, eyes that
spilled tears down the sides of his dirty cheeks.

The wound was bubbling blood between his fingers.

Henry slid his pistol into its holster. The boy was no threat and never would be again.

“It wasn’t nothin’ personal against you…mister,” he said through gritted teeth. “Clave…he said…he said you
was nosing around about the cattle rustling…said he wasn’t going to be arrested for taking what he was entitled to take.
. . said….”

“Save your breath, boy. I know why you come. What’d he pay you to help ambush me?”

“Hun…hundred dollars, each. Me and Little Ray. Is little Ray…dead?”

“He is. So is Clave Miller. Cold as ducks, and you’re about to be. I guess you paid a dear price for one hundred dollars.”

The boy coughed and cried out in pain.

“You want to make peace with the man upstairs, I’ll give you some privacy. If you want, I’ll carry a message to your kin or
loved ones. I’ll write it down and see that it gets to them sooner or later.”

The boy wept. Henry rolled a cigarette and said, “Do you smoke, son?” And when he nodded that he did, the lawman put the cigarette
to his lips and let him smoke it.

For a time, the boy seemed peaceful, absent of pain and fright. Henry knew that death was near.

“I ain’t hardly lived at all,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I ain’t never had a chance to be with a girl…won’t never
have no kids of my own. I ain’t never even been out of Texas, mister.”

Henry kneeled by the edge of the water, took his bandanna and dipped it in the stream. He laid it across the boy’s brow.

“Any message you want me to carry to your kin?” asked Henry, knowing that the young man’s time was drawing near.

“I have a ma over in Paris Flats…her name is Emilia Bright…if you wouldn’t mind…tell her that her boys, Sandy
and Little Ray was killed in a stampede…I don’t think she’d mind the lie…”

“I’ll tell her son. You just lie back and rest now. I’ll track on back and get a canteen of water and a blanket to ease your
suffering.”

“Mister…I don’t know no prayers…Maybe
you could say one for me?” Tears streamed the boy’s face.

The request was a difficult one. But, looking at the sad and pitiful face of the dying boy, it seemed one that could not be
refused.

Henry removed his Stetson and held it to his side and cast his eyes to the blue peaceful sky.

“Lord, I’m not the one that should be representing this boy’s case, but right now, I’m all he’s got. It seems to me that he
is paying for the error of his ways and he’s been given about all he can handle. I don’t think anyone would find it wrong
to ask your forgiveness and ask that he be taken into your heavenly home. Amen.”

The youth coughed once, caught his breath, looked up at the lawman and smiled.

“Mister?”

“What is it, son?”

“Could…could you stay with me until…until it’s over?”

The lawman nodded.

“Sure. I won’t go anywhere until it’s over.”

It was not a long vigil.

Afterwards, he closed the kid’s eyes and folded his arms across his chest and rode away. There was no time to return and tell
Josie what had happened. Instead, he stopped at the next ranch, owned by a fellow name of McTeal. He told the man the story,
asked him to bury the men and to take word to Josie Miller that her husband was dead. Killed by a Texas Ranger. If things
worked out right, he would return some day and explain it to her. But right now, he had no time.

The whistling wind cut across the plains sweeping sagebrush and sand before it. The stalking darkness found the trio camped
within the old buffalo wallow.

Pete Winter could feel his strength oozing away from the hastily dressed shoulder wound. He fought the desire to close his
eyes and slip into a painless sleep, knowing that was exactly what Johnny Montana was hoping that he would do. To lose consciousness
would mean losing his prisoner, and more likely his life.

As soon as the Comanches had fled, he ordered the outlaw to replace the manacles on his wrists and ankles. Now he sat holding
the pistol in his left hand in order to keep guard over the prisoner, a guard he knew he could not maintain for long.

“I need your help, Miss Swensen,” he said against the rising sense of dread that was beginning to overtake him.

“You help him out, Kate, and it’s the same as you putting a rope around our necks—both our necks. Leave him be. There’s not
a thing he can do. Soon’s he goes under, we’ll take that trick horse of his and ride away. We’ll be free!”

She looked from one man to the other; from the
dark smoldering eyes of Johnny Montana to the narrow, pain-filled eyes of the Ranger.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, knowing that it she did nothing,
they
would be free, her and Johnny. But she knew that she no longer wanted to be with the outlaw, no longer wanted to be on the
run and fearful of being tracked down.

“Don’t do it, Katie, I’m warning you! Ain’t nothing going to save that boy if you don’t help. Let it be!”

“No, Johnny! I’m through listening to you. I won’t be party to letting him die!”

“You are a damn disappointment, girl!”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked the lawman.

“I need you to take my knife and cut some of those yucca stalks and help me build a fire, I need to try and cauterize this
wound. I’ve lost about all the blood I can afford to.”

She reached for the knife, when she did, Johnny Montana scrambled to his feet in spite of being manacled. His face was flushed
with anger, his mouth full of curses for her.