The Lawless (8 page)

C
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WENTY

Kate Kerrigan slept fitfully, her sleep haunted by dreams of dying men, but come morning she felt stronger and the scars of the bear claws across her chest looked less angry and were not as painful. When she rose from her blankets, coffee simmered on the fire, but there was no sign of Mary Fullerton.

Kate stepped outside and heard a man's voice. Her heart sank. Surely it was not another rootless, violent renegade seeking to steal what he was unable to buy. She was about to go back into the hogan for her rifle, but then she heard Mary's laugh and decided that all was well. A woman does not laugh so lightly if she is frightened.

The man talking with Mary was a peddler of some kind. He stood in front of a small, crammed wagon drawn by a fierce-looking mule. When he saw Kate, he swept off his hat and made a low bow. Straightening, he said, “My name is Count Ivan Boleslav Andropov, late financial adviser to His Imperial Majesty Alexander the Second, Czar of all the Russias.” He bowed again. “At your service, dear lady.”

“How do you do. My name is Kate Kerrigan.”

“Ah yes, Karina in my native tongue,” the count said. “In Russian or English, it is still a pretty name.”

Andropov was a small, potbellied man with dark hair and intense brown eyes. He wore a black frock coat, striped pants, and a colorful waistcoat of Chinese silk adorned with a massive watch and chain. “I am sorry we meet at such a sad time,” he said, nodding in the direction of the dead man. “Alas, death comes like a thief in the night.”

“He was the thief who came in the night,” Kate said dryly. “That's why I shot him.”

Count Andropov seemed at a loss for words, but Mary filled in the silence when she said, “Did you bring the medicines I ordered, Count?”

“Indeed I did, Doctor,” the little man said, relieved to change the subject. “Including the laudanum. It's becoming hard to come by since so many wounded soldiers returned from the war.”

Mary nodded in understanding. “So many amputees in pain.”

Andropov agreed. “War is a terrible thing. Now I'll get the medicines and the precious book.” He glanced at the dead man. “On second thought, perhaps we should do something with the deceased first, even though my most singular illnesses are of the greatest moment.”

“I'll put a rope on him and drag him away from the hogan,” Kate said. “My sons may soon be here searching for me and we can bury him then.”

It seemed that Count Andropov was a great one for bowing. After bending low again, he said, “I'll do it, dear lady. As one who suffers from constant ill health, I readily recognize miseries in others. You are very pale and your fair bosom is quite bloodstained.”

Deciding to have a little fun with the Russian, who could be quite pompous, Kate said, “I fought a bear a couple days ago. He laid one on me with a left hook.”

Andropov took a step back in amazement and bumped into his irritable mule. He'd obviously been in a similar situation before because he stepped aside with alacrity and the mule's long yellow teeth snapped like a mousetrap on thin air. “Karina, you are a remarkable woman. You wrestle a bear one day, kill an outlaw the next. Should you ever think about leaving this country, Mother Russia could use a woman like you.” His patriotism asserting itself, he added. “Of course, we already have many fine, strong women in the homeland.”

“Why did you leave Russia, Count?” Kate asked.

“Ah, Karina, to hear my tragic story would curdle your young blood. Let me just say, in short . . . an indiscretion with a chambermaid . . . a missing royal jewel . . . discovery . . . and a mad sled dash across the snowy steppes to safety in Prussia.” In a paroxysm of grief, the count threw up his arms, dropped to the ground and wailed, “Mercy! Mercy for poor Count Andropov the peddler! Let him return to Moscow!” Then he launched into a torrent of Russian interspersed with agonized moans and howls.

Dr. Fullerton turned to Kate. “I believe no other language communicates the melancholy spirit like Russian. Don't you think?”

“Will he be all right?” Kate asked, frowning her concern.

“Oh, yes. The count will be just fine in a little while.”

And indeed that was the case.

The wailing stopped and Andropov jumped to his feet, yelled something in Russian, and did a few kicking steps of a wild Cossack dance. “Now, I must remove the deceased,” he said, breathing hard. “I think you ladies should retire to the
dacha
while the deed is done. Drink coffee. It restores the troubled soul.” He shrugged. “Or vodka.”

 

 

Thirty minutes later, Count Andropov returned to the hogan. He didn't mention the dead man. He passed Mary Fullerton a package of medicines wrapped in brown paper tied with string. “And now we will consult the book, Dr. Fullerton.”

“Only five ailments, Count,” Mary said.

“I will honor our agreement, dear lady. Five of my afflictions in return for the medicines. Or was it six?”

“It was five.”

“Very well. I have marked the relevant pages in”—he spoke in a tone of deep reverence—“the book.”

The front cover of the massively thick tome under the count's arm read
1,000 Maladies That Plague Mankind,
written by someone who called himself
Dr. Ebenezer Snoad, late of Mannheim University.

Kate decided that the thousand miseries in the book must be very important indeed to merit such a prodigious volume. She suffered through two of the count's diseases and his list of symptoms, but when he got to
Adenosine monophosphate deaminase deficiency
and complained of breathlessness and a lack of energy, she threw in the towel and stepped outside . . . just in time to see Trace and Frank ride out of the trees and wave to her.

C
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WENTY-ONE

“His name was Hobson, and he was of the same breed as Hack Rivette,” Kate said. “He was just a wild animal who wanted nothing better than to rape and pillage.”

“He ran into the wrong ladies.” Cobb acknowledged.

Kate nodded. “He was notified, but he didn't heed the warning.”

“He underestimated you, Kate,” Mary said.

Kate smiled. “And you most of all.”

“Well, we buried him deep where the sun don't shine.” Cobb stared hard at Kate as though gauging how much more stress she could take. “The Apaches are out. We need to get back to the ranch in a hurry.”

Trace answered the question on his mother's face. “We met a patrol of Yankee soldiers just north of here who told us the Apaches had been raiding into Chihuahua and were headed for Texas. They already attacked an isolated homestead down on the Nueces and the word is that the Rangers buried what was left of eight people, five of them children.”

Cobb said, “Of course, they probably won't come this way.”

Kate smiled. “Thank you for trying to spare me, Frank.” She turned to Mary. “You better come with us.”

“I've had no trouble with Apaches in the past.”

Cobb said, “The Apache buck is the most notional creature on God's green earth. He can be your friend on Saturday and try to cut your throat on Sunday. In other words, Dr. Fullerton, it's a mistake to put your faith in an Apache's good nature.”

“Come with us, Mary,” Kate said. “I'll feel a lot better if you do. And you too, Count.”

“Damned Cossacks,” Andropov said. “It seems that every country has them. Yes, dear lady, I'll join you. As we say in Russia, there's safety in numbers.”

Cobb's gaze moved to the wagon and its clanking, clattering load of pots and pans, cheap crockery and samples of just about every item a prairie wife might need, from needles to nightdresses. “The wagon will slow us, Andropov.”

“Then I will bring up the rear guard,” the count said. “I have a fine Berdan army rifle that served me well on the Russian steppes and it will do the same against Apaches.”

Small, dark and portly though the count was, Cobb pegged him for a fighting man and he acknowledged that fact by a nod. “Keep a good watch, Count. If the Apaches come at us, they'll come a-running.”

“You can depend on me, Mr. Cobb,” the little man said.

“I aim to do just that.”

Despite her wounds, Kate refused to ride in the wagon. She and Frank took the point and Trace rode drag. Dr. Mary Fullerton rode with Count Andropov in the wagon, which pleased the Russian greatly. Not only was the woman quite beautiful, he had plenty of time to reel off his symptoms and then listen intently to her suggested treatments, especially surgery, for which he had a morbid fascination.

Riding across the grass and mesquite country east of the Brazos meant that the Apaches had little chance to surprise them . . . but a band of three belligerent teenagers decided to cause trouble.

One of the young warriors had a brass telescope and he used it to scan the party of whites. He wanted the horses, guns, the goods in the wagon, and the two women. The three riflemen gave him pause. An Apache would fight only when the odds were in his favor, and evens didn't signify as
favorable
.

The Apaches talked among themselves for a while and then took a few ineffective pots with their rifles. The one with the glass got off his pony, bent over, waggled his bare butt, and mounted again. Yipping in derision, the three rode away and were soon lost from sight.

Kate and Cobb rode back to the wagon.

Andropov said, “That was a Cossack trick. Those barbarians show contempt for their enemies by baring their rears.”

“I guess that Apache studied in Russia, huh?” Kate said, tongue in cheek.

“Do you think so?” Andropov frowned.

“No, Count, I don't.”

“Then you made a joke?”

Kate nodded. “Yes, something like that.”

The Russian smiled. “It was a good joke.”

Cobb swung his horse away from the wagon. “Let's go. Those Apache kids might come back with their big brothers.”

Another mile across the range, the three Apaches returned. They dismounted on a shallow ridge and resumed their long-range sniping. Cobb and Trace returned fire, but at a distance of a hundred yards, their shooting was wildly inaccurate.

“I think they're trying to pin us down here while they wait for the rest of the raiding party to show up,” Cobb said. “We may have to make a run for it.”

Kate frowned. “Maybe that's what they want. If we run, we'll be spread out, and they can pick us off.”

“Count, if you have any ideas, this would be a good time to air them.” A bullet spit the air a scant yard over Cobb's head.

“Take away their horses and they're finished. That's how it works with Cossacks.” Revealing surprising alacrity for a plump man, the Russian jumped from the wagon and shouldered the .42 caliber Berdan. He took careful aim and fired. On the rise, a paint pony dropped and lay kicking on the ground. Andropov fed another round into the Berdan's chamber, worked the bolt, and fired again. A second horse fell.

A moment later, the Apache youths were gone, vanished like puffs of smoke. All that was left on the ridge were two dead war ponies.

Trace Kerrigan whistled between his teeth. “That was good shooting.”

The count accepted the compliment with a little bow. “When I was a young man not much older than you, I won a gold medal for marksmanship at the Imperial Military Academy in Rostov.”

“You could have killed the Apaches just as easily as the horses,” Cobb said.

“Yes I could, but I don't make war on boys, even Cossack boys,” Andropov said. “Now, shall we proceed, this time in an orderly fashion?”

Cobb nodded. “That sets fine with me, Count. I don't make war on boys, either.”

C
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WENTY-TWO

Two years after her brush with the black bear, Kate Kerrigan wrote a letter to Cornelius Hagan, the man who helped her escape a life of poverty in Nashville and brought her and her family to Texas. He had loaned Kate money to start the ranch, a favor she never forgot. With the letter, she enclosed a bank draft.

Three days after Kate wrote that letter, Jason Hunt and his segundo Kyle Wright brought more details of Steve Keller's death.

There was no sponge cake that day, but Jazmin's cherry pie was deemed to be an excellent substitute.

After he'd eaten and Kate poured his third cup of tea, Hunt said that Keller was shot by a man named Hickam at a saloon in the Panhandle, close to the New Mexico border.

When he heard this, Frank sat up and took notice. “Would that be Jack Hickam out of Yuma County in the Arizona Territory?”

“Could be,” Hunt said. “You know him?”

“If it's Jack Hickam, yeah, I know him. He's bad news.”

“He a gun?” Wright asked.

“Draw fighter. He's fast, very fast, and he's a scalp hunter. Killed eighteen men, or so I heard.”

“Mr. Hunt, why did this Hickam person choose to murder Steve?” Kate asked.

“I don't know how it come up, Mrs. Kerrigan,” the rancher said. “But I was told that Hickam was holding a herd of ten thousand cattle fifty miles west of the Pecos. Maybe that had something to do with it.”

Cobb shook his head. “I can't see Jack Hickam in the cattle business. That sounds way too much like hard work. He must be selling his gun to whoever owns the herd. Mr. Hunt. Ten thousand head need a lot of graze. I'd hate to think they're headed this way.”

“I don't know where they're headed, but I plan to send a rider to find out,” Hunt said.

“All the land west of the Pecos is already taken,” Wright said. “My guess is those cattle are headed for Old Mexico.”

“We have a claim on the land, but it is open range.” Kate said. “That's enough to make me uneasy.”

“What you say is true, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Hunt said. “I aim to find out the right of the thing. I'll send a rider out today.”

“Lowery is a good man, boss,” Wright pointed out. “He's a youngster, but he's smart and fast with the iron when he needs to be.”

Hunt nodded. “Then that's who we'll send.” He rose to his feet. “Don't worry. I'll get to the bottom of this, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

“I'll say one more thing. Jack Hickam never made an honest dollar in his life and only somebody as crooked as he is would hire him. Don't ask me how, but I got a feeling big trouble is coming down.” Cobb pointed west. “Just over the horizon.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the saints in Heaven protect us.” Kate shivered. “I have that feeling myself, like a goose just flew over my grave.”