Vengeance Trail (8 page)

It was a chore trying to get the wounded brother down the rickety steps. Lowell’s legs had lost their steadiness.

By the time they had made the courtyard and come through the iron gate, a crowd had gathered in front of the building, their
interest drawn by the sound of gunfire.

Carter, half-carrying his wounded brother like a scarecrow, pushed his way through the on-lookers. Someone said: “Look, that
fellow’s bleeding like a stuck hog!”

And it was true. Lowell’s blood was splattering on the wet cobblestones in jagged, crimson patterns.

They reached the horses, and, with one great effort, Carter flung the wounded brother into the saddle.

“Hold on tight, Lowell.”

“It feels like my back is set afire,” groaned Lowell as he slumped forward in the saddle, feeling the horn press into his
gut.

Carter made his own saddle and, gripping the reins of Lowell’s horse in one hand, he drove his heels into the flanks of the
dun, spiriting the powerful animal into a dead run.

Lowell’s hat went flying; he could feel the warm fluid of blood draining down his spine, soaking his
trousers. A numbness was setting in. He felt the wind against his fevered face. The yellow flames of the gas lights suddenly
disappeared behind them and into the darkness they rode.

Royal Curtiss was busy staining the front of his shirt with the grease drippings from a fried chicken; a pile of gristly bones
lay piled on a plate in front of him. Next to that, a stein of beer. The leg of the chicken was the last of it, a big fryer
that Maybelle had delivered him for his lunch.

He was working down into the double bone of the chicken leg with his teeth when the door to his office rattled open.

“You City Marshal Curtiss?” asked the big man standing in the frame of the door. Wind blew in behind him and upset a stack
of papers on the chicken eater’s desk.

“You mind closing that?” said the man over a mouthful of bone, his lips and chin greasy.

Henry Dollar closed the door behind him and stepped farther into the room. What he saw was the slovenly man sitting behind
his desk, a plate of chicken bones, and a pair of protruding, suspicious eyes.

“Yeah, I’m the city marshal,” said the chicken eater. “Who’s asking?”

“Name’s Henry Dollar, Texas Ranger.”

“Didn’t know there was any rangers in the area,” said the man behind the desk, teasing the last sprig of meat from the chicken
leg and then dropping it on top of the others.

Henry watched as the man wiped his greasy fingers on the cracked leather vest he wore. A brass badge was pinned to the vest.

“I got word that there was some trouble up around here,” said Henry, not liking the man all that much. “Was over in Mobeetie
on some business when I was told about a rustling problem. Decided to have a look into it.”

The rotund lawman placed both hands on the edge of his desk and pushed himself back in his chair. His mouth gnarled up into
a stupid grin.

“Well hell, that must have been some story to get ’em to send a ranger over here.” The man’s grin turned sour.

“Where the hell are you rangers when I got drunks to corral at night, or wild cowboys who like to shoot their pistols off
at anything that moves?”

“I rode over here to help put an end to your situation, mister,” warned Henry, “not to be abused by you.”

“Wal, maybe you ought to just get back on your horse and ride out again—we don’t need no strangers coming in and dictating
how things is going to be.”

Henry stepped close to the man’s desk, and bent slightly at the waist before speaking.

“You’re walking awful close to a line you don’t want to cross with me, marshal. I didn’t ride here for nothing, and I’m not
riding out for nothing. I came here to do a job, and I plan to see it through. You don’t
want to cooperate, you stay the hell clear. You get in my way, try to interfere, you’ll pay a hard price.”

City Marshal Royal Curtiss stared into the eyes of the big man, saw no promise of anything good, saw no cause to challenge
this man.

The color drained from the chicken-eater’s face.

“Okay…go ahead and do your investigatin’…nose around…who cares.”

“Fine. Now take a pencil and write down the names of the nearest ranchers around here and directions on how to reach their
spreads.”

Henry waited until the city marshal had completed the list and then took his leave of the squat useless man.

The first name on the list was a man named Clave Miller. His was the nearest place on the list as well: three miles west of
town, first road to the left.

Out upon the open grassy plain, he saw a herd of cattle grazing, their white faces and reddish brown hides moving slowly.
Their long horns rose and dipped as they lifted their heads to watch the rider pass by and then resumed their graze.

A mile or so down the wagon trace he had taken off the main road, he saw in the distance a windmill, its blades spinning in
the wind, saw too the metal roofs of several small buildings.

He spurred the buckskin to a dog trot until he came within shouting distance of the main house, a house that needed a painting.

“Hallo inside,” he called out. It didn’t pay to just walk up to a man’s door and knock, not in this country it didn’t.

There was a long slow moment of silence before the
door opened and a woman stepped into its framework. The wind billowed the bottom of her dress. She put one hand to her brow
to shade her eyes.

“What do you want here, mister?” The question rang strong and clear.

“My name’s Dollar. I’m with the Texas Rangers. Came to see your man, Clave Miller, if he
is
your man?”

“What’d he do?”

“Nothing I know about.”

“Then why you here to see him?”

“Looking into cattle rustling hereabouts. Wanted to see if he had been a victim of said crimes.”

“Rustling ain’t nothing new in these parts, mister. Rustling’s been going on for years. How come you to just now be showing
up?”

“Just now heard, sister.”

She dropped the hand down away from her face. She had a stark face, hair pulled back tight, plain and unattractive—much like
the land itself.

“Might as well step down, Mr. Dollar. Come on up to the house. Water your horse over there at the tank if you want. It’s a
hot day all around.”

He loosened the cinch on Ike’s saddle and lifted it up from his back for a few seconds allowing air to pass between horse
and blanket, after which he led him to the water tank and let him drink. He scouted the layout of the place as he did so.
A few buildings, a couple of corrals with good-looking horses in them, a chicken coop. Not a bad spread.

He removed his Stetson and dipped a hand down in the water, bringing up enough to splash on his face and neck and head.

Turning back to the house where the woman still
stood in the doorway, he gave idle thought to what it would be like to have his own spread, a few hundred cattle; quiet, steady
work laid before him that did not call for dealing with bandits, horse thieves, rustlers or killers. It was difficult to imagine.

There was still no sign of a man around the place.

He stopped within easy distance of the woman. She had the stark suspicious
gaze of a woman alone on the plains.

“Your husband, is he about, ma’am?”

“He’s off checking the herds, him and the other hands.”

“You reckon when he might be back?”

“Hard saying. Depends on where the cattle are at.”

The lawman stood staring out at the vast flat sweep of land, at the long
straight horizon where the faded blue sky and the brown earth were seamed together. He stood there listening to the wind,
and listening to the silence that was left whenever the wind stopped.

“You hungry mister?”

He was. Hungry and near wore out after a ride that had begun before sunup.

“Yes, ma’am. I surely am.”

“Then come on in the house, wipe your feet if you don’t mind.”

He scraped the soles of his boots on the bottom of the door frame and stepped inside.

The warm scent of fresh baked bread caused his hunger to instantly increase. She pointed to one of the four chairs around
a square, scarred oak table that would have taken two men to lift.

He hung his Stetson on the back of the chair and sat down.

She glanced disapprovingly at his spurs. He started to remove them.

“No, that’s okay,” she said. “Do you drink tea, Mr. Dollar?” He didn’t, normally.

“Yes ma’am, tea is fine.”

“Good. It’s hard to find a man that drinks tea. Hard to find anybody that drinks tea out here.” She sat a copper tea kettle
on a big iron stove that had ornate nickel plating along its edges and porcelain handles. Several fresh-baked loaves of bread
sat in pans along the window sill.

He studied her as she prepared the tea, taking it from a tin can and placing the leaves into a small metal basket: A large
woman. Rawboned hands, reddened knuckles. The hair, brown and faded, streaks of silver. The eyes, tired.

It seemed a great effort to do so, but when she turned to bring him the tea in a china cup, she smiled. The lines around her
mouth creased deeply—Texas sun was no good for a woman’s skin.

She took one of the loaves of bread out of a pan and cut it in two. She reached on a shelf and took down a jar of apricot
preserves. She laid both in front of him. A pot of stew was simmering on the stove. She ladled him a tin plate full and put
that in front of him as well. He thought for a moment that he might faint from hunger.

“You go ahead and eat, I already have earlier,” she said.

She sat across from him and drank her tea while he did his best to restrain himself from simply shoveling the food in as fast
as he could.

“You are a handsome man,” she said after several long minutes of watching him eat.

He was not sure what to say to such a comment.

“How about some more?” she said when he finished sopping the last of the stew’s gravy from the plate with the partial loaf
of bread he held onto the whole time.

He nodded his head and remained silent.

The second plate tasted as good as the first and was chasing all the hungry wolves out of the cellar of his stomach.

“Where’d you say you come from?” she asked. He swallowed a potato and said: “Originally from Pecos, but most lately from Mobeetie.”

“You have law business over there as well?”

“Not there exactly—but over in Big River.”

“Mobeetie ain’t much of a town,” she said, renewing the tea in her cup. “Bought a dress there once. It was a pretty dress.”

He wasn’t sure if she was speaking directly to him or not; her eyes were looking up at the ceiling when she spoke.

“Clave, he likes to ride over to Mobeetie now and again. They got the only cat house in this part of the Panhandle,” she said.
“You know how men can be, Mr. Dollar.”

“No ma’am.”

“Well, they can be plum awful sometimes. Would you like some more tea? I’ve got plenty.”

“No ma’am. I sort of hoped your husband would have come in by now. I think I need to talk to him about this rustling business
around here.”

She shrugged and cupped her chin in the palm of her hand and stared at him until he dropped his eyes down to his empty plate.

“You married, Mr. Dollar?”

“No ma’am.”

“Ever been?”

“No ma’am.”

She sighed, stood, and went to a basin near the window. He watched as her shoulders rose and then dropped again in deep sigh as she stood there staring out the window.

“Being married can sometimes be hard,” she said. “Living out here in the middle of nowhere, listening to the wind blow all
the time, hearing the bawl of cattle can be hard. It makes me cry sometimes, Mr. Dollar.”

He could understand her loneliness. The frontier was a rugged place for women.

She turned and faced him.

“Do you think me an attractive woman, Mr. Dollar?”

The question caught him off guard.

“Well, ma’am. I guess I shouldn’t be the one to judge,” he said.

“Why not? You’re a man. Surely you can see for yourself whether or not a man would find me interesting to look at.”

“I would say that most men would find your looks to be agreeable,” he said. In a way, he had not lied to her. Even though
plain and somewhat large as females went, with a little fixing and a little care, he could see where she could draw a man’s
attention to her.

“You are a kind person for having said so,” she replied. “Would you like more to eat?”

“No ma’am. I reckon I’d best be going,” he said, the poor light in the room indicated that the sun was sagging in the west.

“Then how about a cup of coffee before you go? I can see that you are not a fancier of tea,” she said, glancing at his half
empty cup, “but it was kind of you anyway. Coffee won’t take but a minute. If you like you can smoke outside while I make
it?”

He knew that she was holding on to his company, not wanting to be left alone. Well, maybe if he lingered a bit, her man would
show. He could see no harm in a few more minutes.

He stepped out into the long shadows of the house, shadows cast by a setting sun. The wind had died, the windmill stood silent
and still. He pulled his makings and rolled a cigarette and struck a match off the heel of his boot.

He thought about the woman inside, thought about her loneliness, about his own. The smoke tasted good after the meal. A man
should feel this way most of the time, he told himself.

He imagined the spread being his, the buildings, the cattle, the land, the woman inside. He imagined stepping outside the
house after a fine full supper and having a cigarette and watching the sun sink red and feeling the coolness of evening start
to come on.

She came outside, handed him a steaming mug of coffee and leaned against the wall next to him.

“What do you see, Mr. Dollar? Can you understand how a body could go crazy?”

“I reckon it must be hard on you, ma’am.”

“Cows and cowboys,” she said. “I don’t see it. I was born in Ohio. There, we had trees and green grass and rivers…oh
my, we had lots of water.” She fell silent thinking about it. He crushed out his cigarette, not wanting to offend.