[Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail (8 page)

Andy was waiting outside. He indicated that he had heard everything so Rusty need not repeat any of it. Rusty said, “I’d ought to leave you here, only this is no place for a green young feller like you.”

Andy said, “Maybe those Bascoms aren’t as bad as he makes out.”

Rusty did not attempt a reply.

He had visited the site of Fort Davis while on ranger patrol, so he had no difficulty in finding it. Old cedar picket buildings, thrown up for temporary shelter, slumped in various stages of ruin. A stockade fence, started but never finished, leaned toward its final rest upon the ground. A hungry-looking coyote slunk away at the far end of the quadrangle, its ribs showing through a rough coat. Winter had not been kind.

Rusty said, “Folks here had a hard life. Carried water up from the river in buckets. The men, what there was of them, did their cow huntin’ in bunches. Had to watch for Indians all the time. They took care of their farms the same way. There were more women and children than men.”

Andy remarked, “The Comanches had just as hard a time of it. If they had ever really wanted to they could’ve cut through this place like a knife through butter.” He spoke with a touch of pride.

The saloon keeper’s map was vague. It showed a wagon road leading away from the ruined fort, but Rusty found there were several. He asked, “Which one do your Indian instincts tell you to take?”

“
I’m afraid my guardian spirits stayed back at Fort Griffin. I’m not hearin’ anything from them.”

Rusty chose one at random. “Let’s try this.”

A couple of miles proved it to be a bad choice. The road showed no sign of recent use. It disappeared where heavy rain had washed it away, taking a deep cut into the topsoil. Rusty decided to strike due east, hoping he might intersect a trail showing more sign of recent travel. He did, after a time, and followed it until he came upon a farmer breaking sod with two mules and a moldboard plow.

He asked if they were anywhere near the Bascom place.

The farmer eyed him suspiciously. “You a friend of theirs?”

“
I don’t even know them. I’m just carryin’ a message.” He saw no need to burden the man with details.

“
Well, if you don’t know them, and they don’t know you, it might be better if you don’t find them.”

“
The message is important.”

The farmer hunched his shoulders as if to say he had given fair warning. “You follow this road another mile or so, then take the first wagon trail that forks off to the right. Stay with it ‘til you get to a long picket house with dirt coverin’ on the roof. Better holler good and loud before you ride in so you don’t surprise anybody. Them Bascoms don’t like surprises. Don’t like neighbors much, either.”

Rusty thanked him for the information and the advice. He glanced at Andy as they resumed their journey. “Aren’t you glad you came with me?”

Andy smiled. “Beats plowin’. They sound like interestin’ folks.”

If it had not been for Clemmie, Josie, and Geneva, Rusty would not have undertaken this mission. Alice had made her bed, and it might do her good to lie in it a while. She resembled her two older sisters in appearance but not in personality. If anything she was prettier, and she was filled with fun-loving spirit. This in some respects had been to her detriment. It had brought her more adulation than was healthy from starry-eyed boys and young men of the area. As the baby sister she had been petted, sheltered, and catered to more than the others. Too young during the war years to realize fully what was going on around her, she had not had to develop the toughness and steadiness of purpose that marked Geneva and Josie. Much had come easily for her. Rusty could imagine how the dashing manner of a handsome stranger could have turned her head.

In due time he and Andy came to the picket house the farmer had described. Rusty paused for a long look. “I don’t see but one horse in the pen. Maybe most of the family is gone somewhere.”

“
That’s just as well. They sound like the kind of folks you’d want to meet one at a time.”

The farmer had said the Bascoms did not like neighbors. To Rusty that meant they were probably into some kind of business that did not welcome observation. The chaotic years that followed the war had spawned much of that kind of industry. The state police, often more involved with politics than with law enforcement, had done relatively little to stem such offenses as bank robbery and horse and cattle theft.

He said, “If we ever get the rangers back, this whole country is due for a big sweepin’ up.”

Andy asked, “Do you figure on joinin’ them?”

“
Like Tom Blessing said, the rangers is no place for a married man.”

“
You ain’t married yet.” As an afterthought Andy added, “Neither am I.”

“
You’re too young to be a ranger.”

“
How do you know?
I
don’t even know how old I am. If I told them I’m twenty-one they’d never know the difference. For all we know, I may be twenty-one.”

“
You’re some short of that.”

“
We don’t have to tell them so.”

Rusty had not suspected that joining the rangers had even crossed Andy’s mind. “We’ll talk about it when and if the time comes. The state’s broke. It may not have enough money to reorganize the rangers anyway.”

“
I’m bettin’ it will. You saw Rip Ford and Henry McCulloch with Coke when he marched up to the capitol. He didn’t pick old rangers like them for nothin’.”

Rusty remembered the farmer’s admonition to announce himself before he rode up to the Bascom place. He shouted, “Hello the house.”

He saw a movement at a window and had a quick impression of a face, though it was gone so quickly he could not be sure whether it was that of a man or a woman. He shouted again.

The door opened. A tall, raw-boned middle-aged woman stepped outside with a double-barreled shotgun pointed in Rusty’s and Andy’s general direction. The chill wind toyed with her long, stringy hair that showed no familiarity with comb or brush. “I don’t know you,” she hollered. “You got no business on this property.”

“
If this is the Bascom place, we’re carryin’ a message for Alice.”

“
You’re close enough. I can hear you from where you’re at. Deliver your message.”

Rusty disliked having to shout, but that shotgun did not invite a closer conversation. “It’s kind of private. It’s about her mother. Is Alice here?”

Rusty caught a quick glimpse of a girl coming up behind the woman in the doorway. The woman shoved her back inside. “You tell me, and I’ll tell her what she needs to know.”

“
Her mother is worried. Wonders if she’s all right.”

“
Of course she’s all right. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“
Her mother’s
not
all right. Alice needs to know that she’s awful sick.”

Alice pushed her way outside toward Rusty, but the woman grabbed her and pulled her back. Alice struggled to free herself. Momentarily distracted by her effort to control the girl, the woman turned the shotgun away from Rusty. He took the opportunity to spur the dun and close the distance. Without dismounting, he wrenched the weapon from her hand. He pitched it to Andy, who caught it and broke it open to extract the shells.

The woman’s face flushed with rage. “Who are you to come bustin’ in here like this? You’ve got no right.”

“
We just came to see Alice and tell her about her mother.”

Alice’s eyes said she was afraid of the woman. She pulled away. “What’s happened to Mama?”

“
She’s had a stroke. Paralyzed on one side. It’s a struggle for her to talk.”

“
She was all right when I left.”

“
It happened afterwards. It’d do her a world of good to see you.”

The woman’s eyes were the deadly gray of bullet lead. “You got no business goin’ anywhere. Your place is here with your husband.”

“
I want to see my mother.”

“
And ride off with two strangers? I won’t stand for it.”

“
They’re not strangers. Rusty and Andy are friends of my family.”

“
They’re men, and you’re a woman. A married woman. It wouldn’t be decent.”

“
Decent?” Growing indignation pushed Alice’s fear aside. “You call this family decent? You call robbin’ and stealin’ decent?”

The woman raised her hand as if to slap Alice. “Shut up, girl. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“
Oh, but I do. You think I don’t know where Corey and his brothers have gone?”

Rusty saw murder in the woman’s eyes. “You shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you. I told Corey he made a mistake bringin’ you here.”

Rusty felt a strong apprehension. “Alice, you’d better come with us. I already see that this is no place for you.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know what Corey might do.”

“
We’ll take you back to the protection of your family. There’s nothin’ he
can
do.”

The woman declared, “The hell there ain’t. He’ll be comin’ after you and draggin’ you back by the hair of the head.”

The girl wasted no more time considering. She said, “I’ll gather my things.” She went into the house.

Rusty said, “Andy, go saddle that horse yonder for Alice. I’ll keep Mrs. Bascom company.”

The woman seethed. Rusty was glad she no longer had the shotgun. She scolded, “It’s a mortal sin, comin’ between a man and his wife. My son and Alice taken the vows before a minister of the gospel and in the sight of the good Lord Hisself. The Book says what God has joined together …”

“
You don’t talk like somebody who’d know much about the Book.”

“
I know it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You carry that girl away and I’ll see to it that my boys take a lot more than an eye and a tooth.”

Rusty saw no point in arguing. He let her continue a malevolent harangue laced with profanities the likes of which he had never heard pass a woman’s lips and some he had heard from few men.

Alice brought a cloth bag out of the house. Rusty asked, “Is that all you’ve got?”

“
I didn’t come here with much. I haven’t picked up anything new except bitter experience.”

Mrs. Bascom shook a finger at her. “There’ll be hell to pay when the boys fetch you back here. And they will.”

Alice murmured, “Hell is all I’ve had since I came.”

“
You Jezebel!” The woman slapped Alice so hard that a red splotch arose where the flat of her hand had struck.

Alice made an angry cry and drove her fist into Bessie Bascom’s face. The woman rocked back, almost falling.

Rusty watched in pleased surprise. Maybe he had underestimated Alice. He said, “Looks like you’re your mother’s daughter, after all.”

Andy led a brown horse up from the pen, a sidesaddle on its back. He boosted Alice up into place. Mrs. Bascom held one hand to her jaw, her eyes blazing from shock and pain and anger.

Alice said, “I’ve wanted to hit that woman ever since the day I came here.”

Rusty asked, “Why didn’t you?”

“
She’d have killed me, or made me wish she had.”

“
Well, she can’t do anything to you anymore.”

Andy still had the shotgun. He pitched it up on top of the dirt-covered roof, raising a wisp of dust. He said, “I hope the law don’t get after us for takin’ this horse.”

Alice said, “It’s the one I came here on. It never belonged to the Bascoms.”

Rusty said, “Let’s git. I wouldn’t put it past that old woman to climb up there after that gun.”

They rode at a rapid pace for a mile or so, then slowed. Alice looked back with concern. Rusty said, “She wouldn’t chase us afoot, not this far.”

Alice was not comforted. “You don’t know Bessie Bascom. She’s liable to take a broomstick and come flyin’ after us.”

“
How long do you think it’ll be before her menfolks come home?”

“
Hard to say. They’ve been gone three days. Corey was talkin’ about a nice little Yankee bank over east that he said needed robbin’.”

“
So that’s what they do for a livin’, rob banks?”

“
Part of it. They burgle stores, steal cattle, horses, whatever comes easy to hand. I’m sure now that’s why Corey came to our farm in the first place. He had heard about the Monahan horses. But we took a shine to one another, and he carried me off instead.”

“
Against your will?”

“
Not then. I wanted to come with him. But when I got here I found things weren’t like he’d been tellin’ me. Nowheres near.”

Rusty had noticed a blue mark beneath her left eye. “Corey did that to you, I suppose.”

“
Not Corey. His mother. She reminds me of the wicked stepmothers I used to read about in fairy tales.”

“
How long has she been a widow?”

“
Several years. From what Corey told me, Old Ansel got surprised by the state police and tried to put up a fight. After that the Bascoms declared war against all authority. The only thing the boys are scared of is that old woman. Anybody who crosses her is fixin’ to bleed some.”

She plied Rusty with anxious questions about her mother and others of the family. He knew her concern was genuine.

There’s hope for her, after all, he thought. Maybe she’s smartened up. Perhaps this bitter experience would bring out the strength and will that was her rightful heritage from Clemmie and Lon Monahan.

They rode by Fort Griffin but did not tarry longer than was necessary to pick up a few supplies. Rusty suspected that pursuit would not be long in coming. Bessie Bascom would insist upon it.

They rode by the saloon where he had stopped for information. The barkeeper stood out in front, puffing smoke from an evil-looking black cigar. His eyes lighted with curiosity as he saw Alice riding with Rusty and Andy. He asked no questions, and Rusty did not pause to offer any answers. But he noted that the man looked hard in the direction from which they had come.