[Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail (26 page)

Sight of the ranger encampment brought back memories, most pleasant, a few painful. It looked much like the wartime camp he remembered far to the north near Fort Belknap. This one appeared better equipped, for the state’s Confederate government had always teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Necessities had been scarce, luxuries not even considered. Postwar Texas was hardly wealthy, but it was better off than ten years ago.

Jim said, “I’ll introduce you to the captain.”

“
I’m much obliged.”

Rusty remembered meeting the captain a long time back. The officer said, “Welcome to camp, Mr. Shannon. I hope you have come to enlist.”

“
No sir, I have other business here.”

Sergeant Holloway walked into the headquarters tent. Recognition was immediate, and he grasped Rusty’s hand. He said, “Captain, me and Rusty rode together up at Fort Belknap. Chased outlaws and Indians. Even caught a few now and then.”

The captain said, “If you have not come to join us, what brings you so far west?”

Rusty explained about his mission and showed Andy’s letter. The captain nodded grimly. “I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing. We interrogated the three prisoners at considerable length before we sent them away to jail. All we got out of them was that a man named Bascom was with them in the bank robbery. He left them before they made a try at our horses. I sent men out to try to pick up a trail, but evidently your man traveled a public road long enough to mix his tracks with a hundred others.”

“
What about the boy?”

“
He is still here in camp, to everybody’s regret. Private Pickard thinks he can redeem him. I had about as leave try to redeem a wildcat cub.”

“
Andy’s got a good heart.”

“
One that outweighs his judgment, I am sad to say. I’d have already sent that young heathen back east to the dubious mercy of the court if Pickard hadn’t put up such an argument for him. But the boy has pushed me almost to the end of my tether.” The captain glanced at Holloway. “Where
is
Pickard?”

“
Out on horse guard.”

“
Send someone to replace him and tell him he has company.” The captain gave Rusty a quiet and calculating study. “This company could use a man of your experience. Are you sure you would not like to enlist?”

“
It wouldn’t be fair to you. The first time I heard something new about Corey Bascom I’d be up and gone.”

Andy arrived at the headquarters tent, riding his sorrel. Rusty imagined he looked older and more mature, but only a few weeks had passed since they had last seen one another. After the howdies Rusty said, “I got your letter.”

Andy appeared troubled. “I didn’t realize how long it would take you to get it and how long it’d take you to reach here. I’m afraid you’ve wasted the trip.”

“
I’d still like to talk to that boy.”

“
Don’t judge Scooter too quick. He looks rough and talks rough, but he’s never had much chance to be otherwise. I’d like him to get that chance.”

Andy’s eyes looked so earnest that Rusty could only go along with him. “All I want to do is talk. Maybe there’s somethin’ he’s forgotten to tell.”

Andy led Rusty toward the cook tent. He said, “I hope you weren’t mad at me, leavin’ sudden like I did. Len was goin’ to report to the rangers, and it seemed like a good idea to ride along with him.”

“
You’re old enough to know your own mind. I wasn’t any older the first time I joined.”

Andy showed him a boy he took to be twelve or thirteen, peeling potatoes for the black cook. A dark scowl showed his opinion of the job.

“
Boy,” the cook said, “there’s too much tater goin’ out with them peels.”

The youngster flourished the knife as if threatening to use it for a weapon. “There’ll be an old darkey throwed out with them if you don’t leave me the hell alone.”

“
Captain says you’ve got to work if you’re goin’ to eat. Otherwise he’s fixin’ to send you where he sent them friends of yours. Be a long time before they see freedom.”

“
I’d be in better company than what I got here.”

“
I swear, youngun, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“
You don’t have to do nothin’, just let me be.”

Rusty gave Andy a quizzical look. “You really think you can reform that?”

“
You reformed me.”

“
I don’t remember you ever sassed me that bad.”

“
I’d about forgotten how to talk English. By the time I learned it again I’d smartened up.” Andy moved into the cook tent. “Bo, can I borrow your helper a little while?”

“
Borry him? You can
keep
him. He ain’t much help to me.”

Andy introduced Rusty. “Scooter, this is the man who raised me after I came back from the Indians.”

Scooter gave no sign that he was impressed. To Rusty he was a freckle-faced ragamuffin in donated ranger clothes so large they swallowed him up. His hair was badly in need of barbering. His eyes were his only outstanding feature. Brown and dark as coffee beans, they seemed to be searching for a fight.

Rusty said, “I want to ask you about Corey Bascom.”

Scooter’s voice was full of resentment. “I already told them all I know. They’ve asked me twenty times.”

“
Didn’t he give you any idea where he was goin’ when he left you?”

“
Didn’t even say he was leavin’. Just pulled out. Told Arliss and them it was a fool idea tryin’ to steal horses from the rangers. He wasn’t havin’ no part of it.”

“
What direction did he go?”

“
I didn’t watch.” The boy stuck out his chin in a challenging gesture. “For all I know, he went straight up.”

Andy gave Rusty a quiet look that said it was no use. Corey Bascom was too cagey to tell his plans to a kid he had just met. Even if the boy knew more, which was unlikely, he had no intention of sharing it.

Rusty sent him back to his potato peeling. In a show of rebellion, Scooter cut the first skin even thicker than before and flipped it at the cook.

Bo said, “Youngun, I’d like to get a preacher ahold of you. A fire-and-brimstone Baptist.”

Rusty and Andy looked at one another. Andy said, “Preacher Webb.”

After reflection, Rusty rejected the idea. “Preacher’s gettin’ too old to take on a wildcat like this.”

Andy said, “But you’re not.”

“
Don’t try to push that job off onto me. I’ve already been down that road once, with you.”

“
I turned out pretty good, didn’t I?”

“
This boy isn’t you. Like as not he’d run off the first chance he got. And if he didn’t, he’d make me wish he had.”

“
Think about it at least. Don’t be quick to say no.”

“
I’ve already said it.”

Andy accepted defeat, if only for the time being. He said, “I’d better go out and finish my turn on horse guard. See you about supper.” He untied the sorrel horse.

Rusty said, “I see that Farley Brackett hasn’t talked you out of Long Red.”

Andy leaned forward and patted the sorrel on the shoulder. “He knows he’d be wastin’ his breath.”

Rusty watched Andy ride out to where the rangers’ extra horses were loose-herded on grass.

The captain said, “I understand you raised Private Pickard.”

“
Mostly he raised himself, after the Comanches. I just tried to point him in the right direction from time to time and keep him from gettin’ killed.”

“
Now he has a notion he can do the same for that vagabond kid. I’m afraid he is letting himself in for a terrible disappointment. A tree grows as the sapling is bent. This boy has been bent the wrong way too long.”

“
I guess Andy feels that he owes me, and the way to pay the debt is to do for somebody else what I did for him.”

“
That speaks well for his intentions, if not his judgment. You’ll stay the night with us, won’t you, Shannon?”

“
So you can keep tryin’ to recruit me?”

“
You’ve already said no. I’ll not make a nuisance of myself.”

“
Then I’ll be glad to stay. Reminds me of old times.”

The cook rang the supper bell. The rangers gathered around, filling their plates from pots and Dutch ovens. The captain glanced about, then asked, “Bo, where’s your young helper?”

“
He ain’t no helper of mine. Sneaks off every chance he gets. Didn’t finish half the spuds I gave him to peel. You ever looked at his neck?”

The captain seemed puzzled. “Can’t say that I have.”

“
He’s got a ring around it. Born for a hangman’s noose, if you ask me.”

“
That’s just dirt.”

After supper Len Tanner and two other rangers rode out to bring the horses up close to camp and relieve Andy of guard duty. The horses came in, and the rangers, but Rusty saw nothing of Andy. He walked up to Tanner.

“
Where’s Andy?”

“
Didn’t see him. The horses was scattered more than they ought to’ve been. It ain’t like Andy to’ve rode off and left them.”

Rusty felt stirrings of concern. “No, it’s not. Wait ’til I get my horse. We’ll go out and look for him.”

Jim and Johnny Morris joined them without having to be asked. When they reached the area where the horses had grazed, Jim said, “Me and Johnny will split off and go around this way.”

Rusty jerked his head at Tanner. “We’ll take the other side.”

He had ridden about two hundred yards when he saw Andy rise up out of the grass and stagger to his feet. Rusty whistled to Tanner, who had ridden a wider outside circle. Tanner came in a run.

Rusty saw a bloody streak down Andy’s forehead, all the way to his jaw. Andy swayed as if about to fall. Rusty stepped down quickly from the saddle and caught him.

“
Did Long Red fall with you?” he asked. So far as he had ever seen, the horse was surefooted.

Andy turned and caught hold of Rusty’s saddle to steady himself. “Wasn’t Long Red. It was Scooter.”

“
That kid?”

Tanner and the Morris brothers rode up. Tanner dismounted and took a critical look at Andy’s head. “Looks like somebody gave him a six-shooter shampoo.”

Andy started to nod but raised his hand to his head and grimaced. “Twice. You wouldn’t think a boy that small could hit so hard.”

Jim Morris said, “I been warnin’ you about him. A little rattlesnake can bite you as bad as a big one.”

Rusty said, “Let’s get him back to camp. He can tell us about it there.”

Jim pointed northward. “We found tracks of a horse headed off yonderway.”

Andy said, “He took Long Red.”

Tanner spat. “Thievin’ little coyote.” He mounted his horse, then freed his left foot from the stirrup. “You-all boost Andy up here.”

Riding toward camp, Andy explained that Scooter had walked out around the horse herd. “Said the captain wanted to see me right away. He had stolen a pistol somewhere. Soon as I let him swing up behind me, he hit me over the head with it and shoved me out of the saddle. Then he hit me again for good measure. Next thing I remember was Rusty ridin’ toward me.”

“
Ungrateful little whelp,” Jim said. “He’d already be in jail if it wasn’t for you.”

Rusty said, “Not much chance of catchin’ him now. It’ll be dark pretty quick. By mornin’ there’s no tellin’ how far he’ll be gone.”

“
And on my horse,” Andy lamented.

A
ndy’s head throbbed so painfully that there were moments when he thought he might die. There were other moments when he feared he might not. He expected the captain to lecture him on his misspent sympathy for a wayward boy, but evidently the officer decided the experience was lesson enough in itself. At daylight the captain detailed the Morris brothers and another ranger to find Long Red’s tracks and determine if they could be followed. By late afternoon the men were back. They had lost the trail.

Andy had expected Rusty to start home, but instead he remained in camp. For the time being, at least, he was more concerned about Andy than about trying to find Corey Bascom.

Andy was sick at heart, partly from loss of the sorrel horse but more from the realization that his good intentions toward Scooter had gone for nothing. He felt betrayed. He kept wondering if he might have done more, or done better. In a way he could not analyze, he even felt that he had let Rusty down. Rusty had taken a chance on Andy against long odds a long time ago. What Andy had tried to do for Scooter had been meant as an oblique thank-you to Rusty.

Rusty seated himself on the ground near the spread-out blankets on which Andy lay, a wet cloth across his forehead. He said, “If it’s any consolation to you, Farley Brackett is mad as hell. He says if anybody deserved to steal that sorrel horse, it was him.”