[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (17 page)

Horse Runner eased to a stop, patting his mount on the neck in recognition of a good though unsuccessful run. He said, "At least we gave them a scare. They will tell their grandchildren about it."

Except they will probably claim to have killed half the Indians, Andy thought. "They will keep running until dark."

"Were they the bad spirits you spoke of?"

"They were."

"It is unfortunate we did not catch them."

"It is," Andy said, though he felt more relieved than disappointed. He would have had no stomach for watching the warriors murder the Oldhams and the deputy. That would rekindle old and bitter memories of the brutal way his mother had been butchered near here.

He could not be sure Clyde and Buddy would give up and go home. Once they recovered from the scare they might well continue their quest for Rusty, though they would probably circle far around this place.

At least this incident had given Andy time.

The Indians straggled back toward the creek. The last holdouts gave up the chase and trailed behind. Horse Runner said, "Would you like to go with us?"

"To the reservation?"

Horse Runner snorted. "The reservation? We still live free, as our fathers lived free." He motioned toward the north. These warriors came from the open plains where few whites so far had penetrated much beyond the outer fringes. To Texans it was still an unknown land. The only outsiders who entered with little trepidation were Mexicans from mountains and valleys to the west. They came in great groaning two-wheel carts, carrying trade goods to exchange for buffalo hides and dried meat, as well as horses and mules and cattle taken from the Texans' settlements.

Occasionally these
Comancheros
had ransomed white captives. Andy remembered a time when one had tried to bargain for him, but Steals the Ponies had refused even to consider giving him up.

He said, "I cannot go with you. I still must go to my friend. Those who hunt for him will probably keep trying to do him harm."

"Look for us if you ever want to return to The People. You will be welcome, Badger Boy."

He waited until the Comanches had gone to sleep. It was a weakness of theirs as warriors that they often did not bother to post a guard at night. Andy managed to get his horses and slip away. He did not stop to rest until he had put many miles between him and the Indians.

He decided not to mention this encounter. Even Rusty might not understand how Andy could join hostile Comanches in pursuit of white men. Too, if he reported this horse-stealing party, Texans were almost certain to organize a pursuit. He might be responsible for casualties on both sides.

No, he would keep his mouth shut.

·
CHAPTER ELEVEN
·

R
usty kept rubbing his shoulder, trying to convince himself it had healed, but the wound was still inflamed around the edges and sore to the touch. He remembered it had taken a long time for his leg to recover from his arrow wound years ago. Even when the pain was gone, the shoulder would not soon regain full strength.

Damned poor farmer I am going to be, he thought.

He had been concerned about the farm, about how Andy and Shanty were getting along down there by themselves. He had wanted to send Len Tanner back to see about them, but Tanner had thrown himself into the routine here on the Monahan place and seemed in no hurry to go south again. Besides, he had taken down with a bad case of infatuation for the youngest Monahan daughter, Alice. She had blossomed into a pretty young lady with sparkling eyes and a laugh like music.

Tanner had expressed concern about several young men of the area who went out of their way to visit the Monahan farm more often than any legitimate business would seem to call for. "Somebody's got to keep an eye on Alice," he told Rusty. "She's too innocent to know what them young heathens have got on their minds."

"And you figure you're the one to keep her innocent?"

"Somebody has got to."

Maybe he
was
the one, Rusty thought. In some ways Tanner was about as innocent as any grown man he had ever known. As loyal a friend as anyone could hope for, Tanner had pulled Rusty out of tight spots more than once. But he was inclined to talk more than he listened and to jump into deep water before he considered whether or not he could swim. That had made him a good ranger when there was a necessity for fighting, but it also got him into some fights that need not have happened.

James Monahan had returned after being gone a couple of weeks, searching for cattle he might buy and put on the trail to Kansas. In the first years after the war he had been able to gather unclaimed cattle that had run wild, unattended during the conflict, but those had become scarce. Other men had observed James's success in converting them into cash and had followed his example. Now it was rare that an animal as much as a year old turned up without someone's brand already burned on its hide. James and brother-in-law Evan Gifford had turned more of their time and attention to breaking out additional land, expanding the farm's cultivated acreage.

The family's costly pro-Union stance during the war had finally turned to their benefit. The reconstruction government, often punitive in its relations with former rebels, treated the Monahans with respect in view of the heavy price they had paid for loyalty. It did not burden them with the high property appraisals and ruinous taxes often levied against others.

Rusty fretted over not being able to help with the physical labor. He spent his days finding small tasks he
could
manage such as mending harness and sharpening tools. He could not swing an ax, but he could fetch light armloads of firewood into the house after someone else cut it, usually despite protests from Josie Monahan. Clemmie Monahan's second daughter had appointed herself his nurse, his overseer, his guardian.

Josie took half the wood from his arms to lighten the load before he could dump it into a woodbox beside the cast-iron stove. She scolded, "Rusty Shannon, you'll never get well if you don't give yourself time."

"I don't like idlin' around. I want to earn my way."

"You earned your way with this family a long time ago. Now you go sit down in yonder and get some rest."

Rusty seated himself in a rocker in the front room. He could hear Clemmie in the kitchen, telling her daughter, "You treat him like you were already married. There'll be time enough to give him orders after you've stood together in front of Preacher Webb."

"I don't remember Papa ever takin' orders from you. For that matter, I don't see Preacher Webb doin' it, either."

"Your father did, and so does Warren Webb. I've just tried to give my orders in a way to where they think it was their own idea."

Rusty smiled. He was aware that Josie had set her cap for him years earlier, even when he was involved with her older sister Geneva, now Evan Gifford's wife. From things said and not said, Rusty knew several young men had tried to court Josie, but she had offered them no encouragement. At least a couple of these had transferred their attentions to the youngest sister, causing Len Tanner considerable loss of sleep.

Rusty would admit to himself, but to no one else, that he enjoyed Josie's attentions. Perhaps it would be easier if she did not remind him so much of Geneva, for he would know his feelings were for Josie herself. Yet, if she did not, he might have no such feelings. It was hard to be sure of his own mind.

Tiring of the rocker, he walked out onto the dog run. The log house was still relatively new, built after the war to replace an older one burned one night by Confederate zealots in a show of spite against the Monahans. A porch had recently been added to extend the dog run's shade.

A boy of six rode a pony into the yard. He swung a rawhide rope over his head and cast it at one of Clemmie's hens, missing by a foot but setting the hen into a squawking fit. This was Geneva and Evan's son Billy, named after the Monahan son killed years ago with his father for the family's Union leanings. The Giffords had a second child, a girl about two years old. Rusty suspected Billy had been sent outside to play so he would not awaken his sister.

The boy had been riding horseback as long as he had been walking. He was most often somewhere close to his great-grandfather, Vince Purdy, riding with him or walking alongside him when the old man worked in the field. The patient Purdy walked slowly to let the boy keep up with him, though Billy's short legs forced him to take a lot more steps. Sometimes Purdy pulled out a pocket watch James had brought him from a cattle trip to Kansas. He held it to the boy's ear and let Billy grin over a little tune it played.

Watching them together reinforced Rusty's acute sense of the value of family, and his own lack of one.

Vince is going to make a cowboy out of that kid, he thought. It was by no means the worst thing that could happen to him. Right now Texas was pulling itself up by its bootstraps from war's economic depression. It was doing so mainly with cattle and cotton. This was a little far west for cotton because of the cost of transporting it by wagon to distant railroads. If rails were one day laid across this part of the country, the arable lands would turn white with ripe bolls, he thought.

He watched Billy make a run at a cat. The loop went around it, but the cat was gone before the boy could jerk the slack.

Purdy walked up and patted his great-grandson on the leg. "You're doin' fine, Billy. Only what were you goin' to do with that cat when you caught him? He would've clawed you somethin' fierce. Come, let's see if you can rope the goat."

"If I do, will you let me hear the watch?"

"Sure. We'll find out if it plays Dixie." It wouldn't, of course. James had bought it in Kansas for his grandfather. That was Yankee country.

Billy laughed and rode off after Purdy, hunting for another target. The boy's got no fear, Rusty thought. The Monahan blood ran strong in him. He could imagine the pride crusty Lon Monahan would have felt in his grandson had he lived to know him.

A troubling thought came unbidden. Billy could have been his own. Rusty would have married Geneva Monahan had frontier duty not called him away too soon and kept him too long.

From almost as far back as he could remember, he had been acutely conscious of having no real identity. No one had ever been able to discover who his parents had been or if he had other kin. Mike and Dora Shannon had been like family, but theirs was not a blood tie. He had felt a strong attachment to the Monahans, yet they were not of his own blood either.

Andy Pickard was an orphan too, but at least he knew who he was. He had blood kin. In spite of the fact that they had rejected him, it must be a comfort of sorts to know they existed. Rusty would always have to wonder about his own.

Preacher Webb came in from the field, shirt darkened with sweat. He stopped at the cistern and drew up a bucket of water. After drinking liberally from a dipper, he joined Rusty on the porch and said, "The Lord has sent us another beautiful day."

Rusty agreed. "But sometimes I think he sends us too many. We could stand a little more rain."

"This has always been a one-more-rain country. It always will be. But most of the time He provides just enough. How's your shoulder?"

"Better every day. I feel like I'll be able to start back home most any time now."

"Are you sure you should? The trouble you got away from will still be there waitin'."

"I've been afraid it would come up here lookin' for me. I don't want it to spill over and hurt the Monahan family."

"You've helped them through their troubles in the past. They'd help you through yours now."

"It's better if they don't have to. After so much grief, the sun is finally shinin' on them. I'd hate to see them run afoul of the state police on my account."

Josie stepped out onto the porch for a quick look at Rusty. "Good. You're sittin' down. I was afraid you might've found yourself another job to do."

Webb smiled. "I'll keep an eye on him."

Webb watched her as she went back into the house. "I wonder if you know how much she thinks of you, Rusty."

"I think so. I just don't know what to do about it."

"She'd marry you in a minute if you asked her."

"What if somebody else was still on my mind? That wouldn't be fair to her, would it?"

He did not feel he had to be more specific. He was sure Webb understood the feelings he had long carried for Josie's older sister.

The minister said, "That's a question you might need to do some prayin' over."

"I've tried, but I've never heard the Lord say anything back."

"He speaks not to the ears but to the spirit. You'll hear Him when you're ready." Webb stood up. "I'd best return to the field. That plow won't move by itself."

"I wish I could do it for you. I feel like a broken wheel on a wagon."

"We all have an appointed place in the Lord's plan. It isn't always given to us to know just what it is. Yours will be revealed to you when it needs to be."

* * *

Concern about the Oldham brothers had everybody on the place watchful. Vince Purdy limped into the front room where Rusty was seated in the rocker, trying to read a romance novel Josie had handed him but making little headway. He did not relate to the genteel ballroom adventures of English society.

"Rusty, somebody's comin'. One man, leadin' a horse."

"Just one man? I doubt it's an Oldham. They generally ride together." Travelers had passed by the Monahan farm almost every day he had been here. Nevertheless he rose, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder. He reached for his pistol, hanging in its holster from a wooden peg.

He found Len Tanner standing protectively at the edge of the porch, rifle in his hand.

Rusty said, "I doubt you'll need that."

"Rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. You never know when you'll see a son of a bitch that needs shootin'."

Preacher Webb approached from the direction of the field. "You won't neither of you need a gun. That's Andy Pickard comin' yonder."