[Texas Rangers 05] - Texas Vendetta (14 page)

Lige cursed. “Everything was goin’ just dandy till some feller come stormin’ in with a six-shooter. Wasn’t nothin’ I could do but shoot him before he could shoot me.”

“That was a Ranger. He was a friend of mine.”

“When it comes to the law, us Tennysons ain’t got no friends.”

Scooter wanted to cry but couldn’t. “Did you kill him?”

“Things went too fast. I just know I hit him. He ought to’ve minded his own business. I was mindin’ mine.”

Scooter felt a measure of relief, but not enough. “That is his business, chasin’ robbers.”

“Don’t call me a robber again or I’ll take my belt to you. I swear, young’uns these days have got no respect.”

Scooter’s anger flared, the aftermath to his earlier fear. “If you ain’t a robber, what are you?”

“A rebel. They got too many laws in this country, and I’ve fought against damn near all of them. I was born free. I intend to stay that way.”

Scooter thought that might not be easy. “The Rangers will all be after us now, and they don’t stop at no county lines.”

The news from Kerrville brought all the off-duty Rangers to the headquarters tent. The report was that a bank robber had badly wounded Johnny Morris. A boy had been with him. The message did not offer any names, but Andy was sure Lige Tennyson was the culprit. Scooter was a witness at the least, perhaps even an unwilling accomplice.

Andy told the captain, “I had a bad feelin’ about Tennyson from the start. I want to go over there.”

“I don’t think I should let you. You’re too close a friend to the boy.”

“Everybody in camp was friends with Scooter. He’s liable to end up killed if we don’t get him away from that outlaw daddy.”

The captain’s face indicated that he was going to turn Andy down, but he said, “All right. I’m sending Sergeant Holloway and Rusty Shannon. You can accompany them. Saddle up. You’ll leave in twenty minutes.”

Rusty and Andy were sitting on their horses in front of the headquarters tent when Sergeant Holloway came out carrying his rifle. They had blanket rolls tied to their saddles, grub from Bo’s kitchen hanging in cloth sacks. The sergeant walked to where a Ranger had Holloway’s horse saddled and waiting. He said nothing. Conversation tended to be sparse on a serious Ranger mission.

The three Rangers rode far into the night, following a wagon road that wound through the valleys and between the hills. Andy judged that it was past midnight when they rode up to the jail in Kerrville. For the last couple of hours he had felt the horse gradually tiring beneath him. He doubted the animal had another hour of travel left.

The sergeant knocked on the door several times before a sleepyheaded deputy sheriff answered, holding a lamp so he could see the faces before he opened the door all the way. He recognized Holloway on sight. “I was sort of expectin’ you Rangers, but not at this hour of the night.”

Holloway said, “Rangers don’t get much sleep when outlaws are on the prowl. How’s Johnny Morris?”

“He’ll live, but he was hard hit. Goin’ to be a long time before he does any Rangerin’ again.”

Rusty asked, “Where’s he at?” He and the two Morris brothers had been friends for years.

“Over at the doctor’s house. I wouldn’t go beatin’ on the door now, though. Him and the doctor both need sleep. You can bunk down here till daylight. I got some empty cells.”

Holloway thanked him for his thoughtfulness. “We’ll need to put our horses away first. I’ll want to talk to witnesses as soon as we can. We’re pretty sure we know who the culprit is.”

The deputy nodded. “Your Ranger told us the boy’s name is Scooter Tennyson. The robber was the boy’s daddy.”

Andy asked, “Did Scooter help with the robbery?”

“The Ranger said it looked to him like the kid was holdin’ the horses. Said he hoped the young’un didn’t realize what was goin’ on.”

The sergeant frowned at Andy. “For the time bein’ we’ll give Scooter the benefit of the doubt. But if he knew what his daddy was doin’, and he helped, we’ll have to consider him an accessory.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“A kid can pull a trigger.”

Andy found a jail cell a poor place to sleep. The bunk was rock-hard. He had never given much consideration to the comfort of people he helped to arrest. He thought perhaps in the future he might be more conscious of prisoners’ rights.

Holloway had little use for a bed after sunup nor was he sympathetic with others who would rather sleep than meet the new day. He hollered, “Daylight!” at the top of his voice. He was not accustomed to saying it twice. Andy had slept in his clothes, all but boots and hat. He donned the hat first, then pulled on his boots.

The deputy soon emerged from his living quarters. “Got water and a wash pan out by the back door. I’ll see if I can scramble up some breakfast.”

Andy appreciated the fresh eggs, though the deputy cooked them too long and gave them a scorched flavor. The biscuits were soft and warm. He smeared them liberally with fresh butter and dipped them in blackstrap molasses. Good biscuits could make up for a lot.

His thoughts ran to Scooter. He wondered where the boy was now. Camped out along a trail somewhere, more than likely, possibly hungry and frightened. He thought of Johnny Morris lying in the doctor’s house, in pain from a bullet wound that could easily have killed him.

Damn Lige Tennyson. Andy wished there were a dozen of Tennyson, and every one of them was locked up in the Kerrville jail. Or better, buried at the back side of the Kerrville cemetery.

Andy kept glancing at the sergeant, wanting him to hurry his meal. Holloway took note of his impatience. “In due time. Johnny may still be sleeping.”

The deputy said, “The robbers headed east along the river road. We trailed them a ways, but we lost their tracks because they was mixed with so many others. There’s no tellin’ which way they went once they got plumb clear of the town.”

Johnny Morris was awake and propped up in bed. His face was pale, his cheeks drawn in, but his eyes lit up when he saw his fellow Rangers. He said in a thin voice, “I thought for a while I was fixin’ to go absent without leave.”

The sergeant smiled. “That’d be desertion. You’re too good a Ranger for that.” He quickly got down to business. “We figure the robber was Lige Tennyson. Are you sure it was Scooter you saw?”

Johnny said, “It was him, all right. I was surprised to see him sittin’ there holdin’ a second horse. When I asked what he was doin’, he said he was waitin’ for his daddy. I remembered that his daddy was supposed to be in the pen, so I figured he didn’t go in the bank to make a deposit.”

“And you set out to stop him?”

“The bank was dark. Comin’ in from the daylight, I couldn’t see much. The robber shot me before I got a good look at him.”

Andy said, “Reckon Scooter knew what his daddy was up to?”

“Maybe there wasn’t nothin’ he could do about it.”

The sergeant said, “He could have ridden away and left his father.”

Andy argued, “You couldn’t expect him to do that. He hadn’t seen his daddy in five years. He wouldn’t leave him so soon.”

“In the eyes of the law he’s old enough to make choices, even the hard ones.”

A visit to the bank filled in some extra details but did not change the cardinal fact that the holdup man was almost certainly Lige Tennyson. A quick-thinking teller had filled the saddlebags with low-denomination bills and a stack of blank counter checks so that the bank’s loss was minimal. Tennyson must have been sorely disappointed when he stopped to count the fruits of his labor.

Holloway said, “Comin’ up short, he’ll likely pull another robbery before long. I’ll wire Austin a description, and the adjutant general’s office will send it across the state. I doubt that Tennyson has any idea how the telegraph lines have spread durin’ the time he was in the pen.”

Impatience stung Andy like a case of hives. “Every time he does it he puts Scooter in danger. Sooner or later they’ll run into somebody who’s a good shot.”

“We’ll try to pick up his trail. Maybe we’ll have better luck than the townfolks did.”

Andy burned inside. He wished he had Lige Tennyson in front of him right now. He would gladly shoot him, even if Scooter hated him for it afterward.

Lige Tennyson had been in a dark mood since he had stopped to open the saddlebags and find out how rich he was. Scooter watched him uneasily, fearful that he might become the whipping boy for his father’s frustrations. So far he had not, but Scooter remembered harsh punishment inflicted long ago for minor infractions.

Lige had turned the air blue. “Damned teller with his clean white shirt and necktie. A dirty crook is what he is, cheatin’ me thisaway. I wouldn’t put it past him to’ve stuck the real money in his pockets and then claim I got it all.”

Scooter considered the implications. “That’d be double robbery, wouldn’t it, robbin’ you and the bank both? He could go to jail twice.”

Lige rumbled on, “I’d go back and blow his lamp out, but the town’ll be swarmin’ with Rangers by now. We got to keep movin’.”

Scooter figured his father was probably right about the Rangers. He wondered if Andy and the others were on the trail right now. Lige had been careful to stay on the river road at first so their tracks would be difficult to separate from the others. They had turned off at a place where the road crossed a field of gravel deposited by some long-ago flood. They had not left a track that he could see.

He was torn between a wish that the Rangers would catch up with them and a fear that if they did, they might shoot first and discuss consequences later. He had heard enough talk in camp to know that at times it was considered good judgment to bring a prisoner in dead rather than alive. Under stressful circumstances the Rangers were prone to be both judge and jury.

Lige muttered, “We ain’t got near as much money as I figured. We’re goin’ to have to find us another loan.”

Scooter said, “We don’t have to borrow money that way. We could find work and earn it fair and square.”

“Doin’ what? I never was no good at a town job. Tried clerkin’ in a store once. Pretty soon I was talkin’ to myself. I done a little work as a ranch hand, but I never saw an outfit that didn’t have a bunch of rank horses they expected you to ride. I’m gettin’ too old for that. Banks, now, that’s somethin’ I know a right smart about. You just walk in, get their attention in the right way, and they’ll generally loan you anything you ask for.”

“Sometimes they’ve got guards with guns.”

“If you want money, you’ve got to go where the money is at.”

They came in sight of a modest frame farmhouse. Lige signaled for Scooter to stop. He studied the place awhile, then observed, “Crops ain’t well tended. Weeds look to be doin’ better than the corn.”

Scooter smelled wood smoke and saw that it was coming from the backyard. A skinny middle-aged woman carried water from a steaming wash pot to a wooden tub, her thin back bending under the strain. She began scrubbing clothes.

Lige speculated, “Widder woman maybe. If she had a man the weeds wouldn’t be takin’ the field that way.”

Scooter worried, “We ain’t fixin’ to rob her, are we?”

Lige seemed scandalized that his son would think such a thing. “There’s no gain in holdin’ up poor folks. They’ve got nothin’ to give you anyway. But maybe we can get us a woman-cooked meal. You’re lookin’ a little drawed.”

Scooter had not had much to eat except for squirrel and somebody’s young shoat they had caught rooting for acorns. “Whatever you say, Pa.”

The woman raised up from her scrub board as they approached the rear of her house. She seemed unconcerned. Scooter supposed she reasoned that a man traveling with a boy at his side presented no threat.

Lige touched fingers to the brim of his misshapen hat. “How do, ma‘am. Me and my son are just passin’ through. We noticed that your garden stands in need of weedin’. We wondered if we might trade a little service for a good meal. The boy ain’t et proper in a while.”

Scooter thought the woman looked a little like his mother when she gave them a weary but grateful smile. She said, “That’d be a mighty welcome trade. My husband’s laid up with a broke leg, and things around here have got away from me some. Soon as I get these clothes on the line I’ll see what I can cook up for you.”

Lige nodded. “If you’ll kindly direct us to where your husband keeps his workin’ tools, me and the boy’ll get busy.”

She accompanied them to a small frame barn where a hoe, a rake, and smaller tools were neatly arrayed. She said, “You wouldn’t see things in this shape if my husband was able to work. Neighbors come now and again to help, but they got needs of their own to see after.”

Lige said, “We’ll do the best we can.”

There was only one hoe. Lige told Scooter, “I’ll pull up the big ones by hand. You foller along and cut down the littler ones.”

Lige worked faster with his bare hands than Scooter could with the hoe. “Pa, you act like you’ve done this before.”

“I got lots of practice while I was studyin’ at the state school. They expect you to earn your keep. When we get that farm of our own up in the territory, we’ll be doin’ a lot of this. Watch out you don’t cut them tater vines instead of the weeds.”

Scooter soon worked up a sweat. He was not sure he looked forward to that farm of their own, but maybe it would keep Pa happy enough to give up his forays into the banking business.

Between them they finished most of the garden before the woman called them to supper. The food made up in quantity what it lacked in variety. She said apologetically, “It ain’t fancy, but there’s nourishment in it for a growin’ boy. Lucky we still got ham and fatback and such in the smokehouse from last winter.”

Lige said, “It’s mighty fine.”

The woman’s husband had limped to the table, aided by crutches. One leg was immobilized by splints bound securely with strips of cotton cloth. He said, “I’m much obliged to you fellers. As you can see, I been about as much use around here lately as teats on a boar hog.”

It was obvious to Scooter that the place had been a long way from prosperity even when the farmer had full use of both legs. The little furniture he saw looked as if its best service would be as kindling to start a blaze in the fireplace. Newspapers had been pasted to the wall in lieu of wallpaper. They might block the wind that pushed between the siding’s raw pine boards, but they would do little to shut out summer heat or winter cold.