[Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line (31 page)

One of the girls said eagerly, "We saved a lot of the clothes."

"And the Bible," the smallest put in.

Clemmie managed to control her voice. "Is everybody all right? Nobody hurt?"

Geneva said, "We made it out just fine. Rusty helped us."

Now that he had time to think, Rusty began to suffer from a worrisome conscience. If he hadn't fallen asleep ...

Clemmie murmured, "Everybody is here. Thank God for that."

Out past the barn, two stacks of hay went up in flames. The raiders had taken time to touch them off before they left. Clemmie lamented, "The house is gone, and now we've got no winter feed for the stock."

If the animals had to, they could survive on grass until the spring greenup, Rusty thought. But the prospect of the family spending the winter without a roof was much more troubling. "Clemmie, we'd better see after that wound."

He started to tear the gown where the bullet had ripped through, but she shoved his hand away. "Ain't proper. Geneva can see to it."

It struck him odd that at a moment like this she should let modesty take precedence. Only the direst of emergencies had caused her even to let him see her in her nightgown.

One of the girls asked fearfully, "You think they'll come back?"

Purdy stood hunched, staring at the blazing ruin that had been their home. "Ain't much to come back for, unless they take a notion to burn the barn and shed, too."

Rusty thought they probably would have had they not encountered more resistance than they expected.

"He ought to've killed us," Clemmie said bitterly.

"He?" Rusty asked.

"Caleb Dawkins. Who else? If he wanted to be shed of us, he ought to've killed us, because we ain't givin' up. We may have to go somewhere else for a while, but we'll be back."

Geneva asked, "Where could we go?"

"I don't know, but we ain't about to roll over and die. We'll build it all back big as it ever was."

"Dawkins would just burn it down again."

"Not if he's dead. He'd be dead now if I'd just been able to get him in my sights."

Rusty looked around sharply. "Did you see him here tonight?"

"No, because if I had, I'd've shot him. He must've managed to stay back out of the light."

Thunder rumbled, and lightning streaked the northern sky. Rusty could smell moisture in the air as the wind carried the smoke away from him. He said, "Everybody better get into the shed before it starts to rain." He supported Clemmie, helping her move under the roof. Geneva and the girls brought the clothing they had managed to salvage.

A downpour began. Even under the shed, Rusty could feel the cold mist as the wind drove it inside. "Pity it couldn't have done this an hour ago. They wouldn't have been able to light the fires."

Clemmie said grittily, "
What if
is a fool's game that nobody wins. We've got to deal with things the way they are. Come daylight we'll take stock of what's left and figure out what we can do, where we can go."

Rusty knelt in front of her. "I've already thought some about that. I've got a place down on the Colorado River. It's a pretty good ways from here, far enough that Dawkins isn't apt to follow. House isn't near as big as yours was, but it'll keep you warm and dry through the winter. Ought to be grass enough for at least some of your stock, too."

Clemmie seemed not inclined to accept. "James wouldn't know where to find us."

"Preacher Webb can tell James where it's at. Could even bring him. Nobody there would know James. He wouldn't have to sneak around in the dark."

"You were all set to turn him in once. Why wouldn't you do it again?"

"If I don't see him, I won't know he's around. And I won't be there. I'll be in camp at Belknap."

Geneva pressed, "Maybe by spring the war'll be over, and we won't have to worry anymore about men like Dawkins."

Glumly Clemmie said, "Sometimes I think this war never will he over with. I can't understand the men that started it. I don't understand what they were thinkin' of."

Rusty watched the rain pounding down, drowning the fire. It had come too late. Daylight would reveal nothing of the house but blackened timbers and sodden ashes.

He said, "They sure wasn't thinkin' of the women and children, and how much it was goin' to cost them."

Clemmie held her hand against the bound-up wound. Pain put a raspiness in her voice. "If women were in charge of all the governments, there wouldn't never be no more wars."

Rusty doubted that. He had read about queens running countries in Europe, yet Europe had wars. War seemed to be part of nature, whether man, bird, or animal. He had seen stallions in vicious combat and enraged bulls trying to kill one another. Once he had happened upon two male wildcats ripping each other with fang and claw, and had watched them battle to total exhaustion. One bled to death. The other slowly limped away the winner, yet barely alive.

It seemed to him that human beings ought to be smarter than the animals, but in some ways they weren't.

* * *

The sheriff grimly surveyed the damage, a silent anger in the stern set of his jaw. "Useless. Stupid."

Rusty limped along beside him, taking stock of what had been lost and what remained. "All because of the war, I guess."

"There are some people who use war as an excuse to do what they otherwise wouldn't have the nerve for. Recognize any of them?"

Rusty shook his head. "It was dark, and things were movin' too fast."

"I know for a certainty that you didn't see Caleb Dawkins."

"No, but he must've been here. Those had to've been his men."

The sheriff grunted. "Probably were. But he wasn't with them. He was in town all night."

"How do you know?"

"Saw him myself early in the evenin'. He was playin' cards. I asked around this mornin'. They said he stayed in the game 'til way after midnight, then went home with some folks I know who wouldn't lie."

Rusty did not know what to say. He would have bet all he owned that Dawkins had been here.

The sheriff said, "He ain't normally much of a card-playin' man. Ain't got the time or the patience. He did it to make sure plenty of people saw him and could vouch for his whereabouts."

"Just the same, he arranged for the raid. You know he did."

"I'd bet my best horse on it. But unless somebody tells off on him, no court will convict him. Not now, the times and politics bein' what they are. And nobody who really knows anything is goin' to talk. Dawkins will pay them off or scare them off. He can be a scary son of a bitch."

"Scares me, sure enough. A man who'd have a house burned down around women and kids, there's no limit to what he'd do."

"And not much way to stop him, short of murder. James Monahan tried that." The lawman walked to the shed where Clemmie sat with her children. "Mrs. Monahan, I think you folks ought to get away from here for a while."

Clemmie nodded woodenly. "We've talked about it. Ain't likely we can go to any neighbors. Been a couple come to see about us, then left real quick. They're afraid of Dawkins."

Rusty said, "I've offered them the use of my farm down on the Colorado."

The sheriff stared hard at Clemmie. "You goin'?"

"Don't look like we've got much choice. The cattle can take care of themselves if we leave them here. We'd need to take the horses along because there's some people'd steal them soon as they found out we're gone.

"I know a couple of boys who'll help you make the move."

Rusty asked the sheriff, "Would you get word to the captain at Belknap that I'm takin' leave of absence while I show the Monahans to my place?"

The minutemen organization was so loose and perpetually in need of help that even a private had considerable latitude in setting his own terms.

The sheriff said, "They won't pay you for the time you're gone."

"They haven't paid me half the time as it is. I didn't join for the money.

"I figured you joined to stay out of the Confederate Army."

"Not at first. But it's a good reason to stay in."

The Monahans had two wagons, one strong and heavy, the other old and broken down so that it was used only for light work around the farm. Most of the household furnishings had been lost in the fire. The two wagons should be enough to haul whatever remained, provided the oldest did not collapse.

True to his word, the sheriff sent two schoolboys to help gather and drive the loose horses. Rusty guessed them to be fourteen or fifteen. They were too young to be conscripted into the army, though he had seen some of that age volunteer or lie about their birth dates to get in.

He felt that the boys should be warned of the possible consequences. "Caleb Dawkins may not like it, you-all helpin' the Monahan family. He might take it out on your fathers."

One boy said, "I don't see how he can. My pa is off in Tennessee someplace, fightin' the Yankees."

The other said, "My folks are dead. Worst thing he can do to them would be to knock over their tombstones. He's a little bit tetched, maybe, but not that crazy." An eagerness came into his voice. "You reckon we're liable to run into Indians? I'd sure like a chance at an Indian fight."

Bad memories stirred like a supper gone sour and rising back up. "Goin' south, it's not likely we'll see any." For the first time in a couple of days, Rusty felt a dull ache in his leg. "Fightin' Indians ain't as much fun as it sounds like."

He rode out with the two boys to round up as many of the Monahan horses as they could find. After two days of combing the country for miles around, they were still at least a dozen head short by Purdy's reckoning. "You never can be sure what-all has happened to horses," Purdy said. "Some stray, and now and then one will die on you. And then there's the wolves, them with four legs and them with two."

Rusty said, "Maybe the same wolves that got off with some of Colonel Dawkins's horses."

"Dawkins can afford the loss. We can't."

Since the war had shut off eastern markets, cattle had become dirt cheap, hardly worth a thief's efforts. Horses were far more valuable. From reports Rusty had heard, dry weather had set in down on the Colorado, so grazing was likely to be limited. His home place would probably do well just to accommodate the Monahan horses. The cattle would stay behind to shift for themselves.

"If anybody steals
them
," Purdy declared, "it'll be his own fault."

During the course of gathering the horses, Rusty was aware of riders watching from a comfortable distance. He suspected they were Dawkins's men, though they never came close enough to recognize. Dawkins would know the Monahans were leaving. "Their destination would not likely be of great interest to him, so long as he knew they were on their way out. Rusty doubted he would pursue the vendetta to the Colorado River. He might if he thought James was there.

Despite the hard downpour the night of the fire, rainfall had been scarce in recent weeks, and grass showed the effects of deprivation. It would probably benefit the range to remove the horses for a while, regardless of the family's other problems.

Clemmie stood beside the wagon, her shadow stretching far across the yard in the winter morning's early sunlight. She stared at the ruins of her home. "It wasn't nothin' but a house," she said tightly. "Just a lot of wood and a little bit of glass. Wasn't no great effort to burn it down. But it won't stay down. We'll be back, and we'll build it just like it was, only bigger and better. And Caleb Dawkins can burn in hell."

Rusty supported her as she climbed up onto the seat. Geneva was already there, holding the reins. Vince Purdy sat on the older wagon, ready to leave. The youngest girl sat with him. The other was on a horse alongside the two schoolboys.

"If we're goin'," Clemmie said, "let's be gettin' at it."

Rusty sensed that she would not need much persuasion to stay here and face Dawkins down with a shotgun. But the family was without menfolk now except for Purdy. In the short run she had to do what seemed best for her young ones. There would be time enough in the future to return and make a stand, to face the challenge of the land and Caleb Dawkins.

Clemmie shouted at the team, and Geneva flipped the reins to set the mules into motion. Rusty watched the two wagons set out on the dim trail southeastward. He rode back to where the boys waited. "We'll give them time, then fall in behind. No use in them havin' to breathe the dust these horses raise."

One of the boys pointed. "We've got company yonder."

He saw a man on horseback and a man in a buggy. They made no move to approach but watched from afar. Though at the distance he could not see the faces, every instinct told Rusty, the man in the buggy was Caleb Dawkins.

"Come to watch the Monahans leave," he said. "He probably feels like he drew four aces. But these folks'll be back, and we'll see who laughs loudest then."

Familiar landmarks set Rusty's pulse to racing. He came to a place where he and Mike Shannon had camped once while searching for unused grazing land during a dry year much like this one. He imagined he could hear his foster father's voice telling him about the Mexican War, well-remembered old stories Rusty had heard before and wished now he could hear again.

Vince Purdy pulled his wagon up close. "Kind of early to be campin'."

"Just studyin' about better times. We'll travel a little farther before sundown."

"Thoughts of Daddy Mike led him to Isaac York and the terrible day Mike was shot. Stationed far from home, away from the familiar places that triggered old memories, Rusty had managed most of the time to relegate the past to a far-back corner of his mind. Now as he returned to the land he knew so well, the memories came in a rush, resurrecting an old bitterness he had not managed to overcome.

He hoped he would not encounter Isaac York. He would stay no longer than was necessary to get the Monahan family placed. He would avoid the settlement, where he was most likely to see York. On no account would he go near the York farm for fear of arousing an impulse he might not be able to control.