Border Dogs Read online

  “All right, I’m guilty. But I figure if we’re crossing the border anyway, we might as well come back with something to show for it…if we come back at all.”

  “I plan on coming back.” Maria’s voice sounded resolved as she wiggled her hands a bit in the loosened rope, then reached over and took Prudence’s tied hands onto her lap. “There is a man waiting for me in Humbly. Believe me, I am coming home to him.”

  PART 2

  Chapter 6

  Three days had passed by the time the Ranger and Sheriff Boyd Tackett rode into town, leading the string of dusty sweat-soaked horses behind them. Between them, Willis Durant rode with his head lowered, his hands cuffed atop the saddle horn. Yet when the voice of a townsman called out, “There’s one of them bastards, let’s get him hung!” Durant’s dark eyes lifted up for just a second, sharp and alert, scanning the town, then lowered again and disappeared beneath the shadow of his dusty hat brim.

  Faces pressed forward from doorways. The man who cried out scuttled along the boardwalk toward other men who stood milling near the livery barn, one of them impatient, with a coil of rope resting on his shoulder. The small group of men grew close together and headed toward Tackett and the Ranger in a determined stride.

  “I hope your townsfolk understand my policy regarding prisoners,” the Ranger said to Tackett in a low tone. “Looks like we might have a little problem here.”

  “Dang it all,” Tackett hissed, watching the men come toward them. He gigged his horse forward a step, then drew it to a quick halt quarterwise, stopping it in the street between the Ranger and the coming townsmen. “Now listen up, you men,” he said to them. “We’re hot and tired and been out on the flats for over a week. Unless you’re headed out to lasso a jackrabbit, you better tote the rope back to where you got it.”

  “Guess what jackrabbit we’ve got in mind.” the man with the rope on his shoulder said, jiggling it in his hands. “We’ll take that black rabbit right there beside you, Sheriff.” Behind him the others nodded and grumbled their support. Some of them leaned to one side, looking past the sheriff, past Durant and the Ranger, toward the dead bodies across the saddles.

  “Put it out of your heads,” Tackett said, sawing his horse back and forth in front of them. “You elected me to sheriff this town, and that’s what I’m doing—now get on away before somebody gets their skull cracked.”

  As Tackett spoke to the crowd, Durant lifted a glance at the Ranger and said under his breath, “Makes you wish you’d shot me straight up, don’t it?”

  The Ranger just looked at him, then stepped his white barb up beside Tackett, leading the string of fly-ridden corpses. He called down to the men in the street, “While you boys aren’t too busy, take these bodies off our hands.” His gaze singled on the man with the rope on his shoulder. “You there, with your big mouth, you look like a person who can stand the smell long enough to get these bodies under ground.” He leaned down and held the lead rope toward the man.

  The man backed up a step, his hands coming up chest high. “Uh-uh! Not me. I’m a rail agent, not a grave digger. We came to hang that snake.” His finger pointed up at Durant.

  “Oh…” The Ranger looked down as if considering it. Then he looked back at him and said, “So, you’re only wanting to hang ole Durant here. You won’t be handling his earthly remains afterward?”

  “Well I—” The man’s words stopped short. He strained his eyes toward Durant in the sun’s glare. “Durant? You mean that’s—?” Again his words ran out on him.

  “Yep, it’s Willis Durant,” the Ranger said. He feigned a surprised expression. “I figured you knew who it was…coming on with your rope and all.”

  “Well, no, I just saw he was a—” He stopped again and looked around at the men behind him, then back to the Ranger, avoiding the cold stare from Durant, but giving a nervous shrug. “I mean, hell, you can’t blame me, can you?”

  “Not yet, I can’t.” The Ranger stared at him, his eyes cutting like sharpened steel.

  The man collected himself, looking less sure, but still determined. “Well…it don’t matter who he is, I suppose. The man robbed our bank. We’re going to jerk a knot in his neck. Ain’t that right, boys?” He flashed a glance around to the others, then added, “Don’t try to stop us, Ranger. We mean business here.”

  “In that case,” the Ranger said as he backed his white barb a step, opening a gap between him and Tackett, leaving Durant and the string of corpse-draped horses alone on the hot dusty street, “get to hanging him then.”

  “Huh?” The man looked surprised.

  “That’s right,” the Ranger said. “You heard me. I’m turning him over to you personally.“He pointed a gloved finger down at the man’s face. “Now get busy hanging him. Don’t mess up though. You’ve all heard of Willis Durant—he’ll be down your shirt like a rattlesnake.”

  Tackett saw what the Ranger was doing, and he stopped his horse wide of the crowd and sat with his hand on his pistol butt. Durant raised his sweaty face and stared at them from beneath his lowered hat brim. The men stood back, leaving the man in front alone now, the rope looking heavy on his shoulder, his face running freely with sweat. After a pause, Tackett said to him in a lowered tone, “Why don’t you get back to the rail office where you belong, Herschel? The longer you stand there, the worse you’re gonna look.”

  Taking one last shot at saving face before the other townsmen, Herschel the rail clerk swallowed back the dryness in his throat and said, “He robbed our bank, Sheriff. I can’t just stand by and—”

  “Hang him then and quit talking about it,” the Ranger dared, cutting him off.

  “Easy there.” Tackett raised a hand toward the Ranger as if holding him back. “Herschel, go on now. You’re just getting in deeper.” Two men behind Herschel eased farther back, then turned and moved away, glancing over their shoulders. Others seeing them leave started giving it serious thought themselves. They rubbed their jaws and winced, shooting one another dubious glances.

  “What’s it gonna be, Herschel?” The Ranger glared down at him now, his hand going to the butt of his big pistol. “You gonna hang this man on your own, or am I gonna come down there and pistol whip you into doing it?”

  “Huh? Now just a minute! Lord!” Herschel muttered, completely stunned.

  “That’s right,” the Ranger said. “You said you was going to hang him. I hate a proud-stepping peckerwood who can’t finish what he starts out to do.” The crowd thinned more, the men quickly moving away, not facing one another.

  “Sheriff, for God’s sakes! You know me! I’m a law-abiding man. Are you going to let him do this?” His eyes widened, seeing the Ranger rise as if to step down from his saddle. He pulled the rope off his shoulder and flung it away. “See…I ain’t no hangman!” He backed a nervous step. “Do something, Tackett!”

  “Can’t help you, Herschel,” Tackett said, shaking his head. “I warned you. That’s all I can do.” He turned to the Ranger. “Don’t whip him as bad as you did that last poor devil. You knocked his eye out of its socket.”

  “The hell kind of town is this turning into?” Herschel blurted, then broke backward into a run, turning to hurry off along the dusty street, raising more dust in his wake. “Wait till Donahue hears about it. He won’t stand for it!” he called over his shoulder.

  The Ranger settled back down into his saddle. “Who’s Donahue?”

  Tackett ran a hand across his sweaty brow. “Don’t you remember? He’s the one we butted heads with back when you was looking for Montana Red. You shot half his line crew.”

  “Aw yeah, him.” The Ranger pulled the string of horses forward, heeling the white barb off toward the jail. “What’s his stake in all this?”

  “Nothing, except he has a lot of money in the bank.” Tackett led Durant behind him.

  “Well,” the Ranger said over his shoulder, “we got his money back for him. You’d think that would be enough.”

  “Yeah, you’d think,” Tackett sai
d. “But Donahue likes for everybody to know he has a hand in running this town. If he can do something to make himself look good, you can bet he will.”

  “See why I don’t like working in town?” The Ranger nudged his white barb forward—“Come on, Black-eye”—toward the hitch rail outside the sheriff’s office, pulling the worn out string of horses behind him.

  * * *

  Once they had put Willis Durant inside a cell and taken off his handcuffs, Tackett stayed at the office while the Ranger led their tired horses to the livery barn. At the barn, the Ranger turned the other horses over to a young man who stood scratching his shaggy head, looking at the bodies across the saddles. “What am I supposed to do with this mess?” he asked, slapping away flies.

  “Get them off and into the ground,” the Ranger replied as he dropped the saddle from his white barb and moved it into a vacant stall. “The sheriff’s office will pay you a dollar a head to bury them.”

  “But I don’t want to handle them.”

  “Then you’ve got a problem. It’s going to be hard taking care of the horses with dead men on their backs.” He reached down, took up a handful of clean straw, and began wiping the white barb down with it.

  “Shit,” the young man grumbled. He took the lead rope and led the horses through the barn toward the back doors.

  The Ranger speculated that after cooling down his horse, watering and graining it, then boarding it here in a good clean stall, he would get himself a warm bath, a hot meal, and tonight, a good night’s rest in a feather bed. With a little luck and no bad weather, he’d head out come daylight tomorrow, ride the twenty miles, and meet Maria in Humbly when she rolled in on the afternoon train.

  But an hour later, when he’d finished with his horse and walked to the sheriff’s office, he spotted the small crowd gathered on the boardwalk and knew this was going to be a long day. Three dusty horses that hadn’t been there before now stood hitched to the rail. Walking past the horses, he looked at the marking on one of their hips—the Flying Cross brand. Running a gloved hand across the mark, he adjusted his pistol in his holster and stepped up onto the boardwalk. Townsmen parted to the side, looking him up and down, a sharp defiant gleam in all their eyes.

  Here goes…He hesitated only for a second, long enough to hear the raised voice from inside the office. Then he swung the door open and stepped inside.

  “You and I don’t need to have trouble over this, Tackett,” the Ranger heard an angry voice say. Even from behind, he recognized the broad-shouldered man as Donahue, as he leaned over Tackett’s desk, his big hands spread atop it. “This is all that blasted Ranger’s doings!”

  Two Flying Cross cowhands stood near Durant’s cell. They spotted the Ranger, and one of them said to Donahue in a cautious tone, “Uh, boss…”

  But Donahue ignored him until the Ranger slammed the wooden door behind himself. Startled, Donahue spun around toward the sound and stood staring at the Ranger from eight feet away. Durant watched from his cell as the Ranger took a step forward, his thumb hooked on his holster. “We figured you’d be here, Donahue,” the Ranger said. “Just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  “You stay out of this, Ranger,” Donahue boomed. “This is a town matter…between the sheriff and me.”

  “Once I hear my name spoken, I count myself in the game, Donahue. Now just to keep this short and to the point”—he let his glance slide across the other two men, then back to Donahue—“anybody makes a move to lynch Willis Durant, I’ll put a bullet in the most painful spot you can imagine.”

  “You’ve got no jurisdiction in this, Ranger!” Donahue’s face swelled red, his fists clenched at his side.

  “Neither do you,” the Ranger said. As he spoke, his hand came up slow and easy with his pistol in it. He leveled it at the two cowhands and gestured them away from Durant’s cell. “You boys make me nervous standing that close to the prisoner.” They looked to Donahue for instruction, but before he could offer it, the hammer on the Ranger’s pistol cocked. They moved away and across the office with their hands chest high.

  “Easy now,” one of them said. “We just follow orders here.”

  “Good,” the Ranger said, “because I’m ordering you out of here in the next two seconds.”

  “Go on, boys,” Donahue said, seeing the seriousness in the Ranger’s eyes. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  When they’d shuffled past the door and closed it behind themselves, Donahue started in again. “Listen to me good, both of you.” His finger swung from the Ranger to Tackett, then settled on Durant, who stood with his hands on the bars. “That thieving darky is going to hang…one way or another. I don’t give a damn about his bad reputation! I can’t afford to have every saddle tramp in the territory thinking they can rob my bank and get nothing but a slap on the hands.”

  “Ever seen the inside of the territorial prison?” the Ranger asked, then continued before Donahue could answer. “It ain’t exactly a slap on the hands.”

  “You know what I mean,” Donahue said, his voice tight with anger.

  “Yes, I do.” The Ranger moved in between Donahue and Durant’s cell. “What you mean is, the people of this town expect you to act a certain way, and you don’t want to disappoint them. But you’re going to this time. I don’t hold with lynching a man. If he hangs, it’ll be because a judge says so—not because you want to look tough for everybody.”

  Donahue fumed. “Oh? It so happens that Judge Gant is a personal friend of mine. We’ll see how this goes, once he gets here.”

  “Fair enough. But nothing happens until then.” The Ranger slipped his pistol down into his holster. Donahue was just blowing hot air, he thought, going from threats about taking the law into his own hands to boasting about his political connections.

  Donahue stepped toward the door, looking away from the Ranger, toward Tackett. “And as for you, Sheriff, there’s an election in three months. Don’t get too comfortable in that chair.”

  “I’ve never been too comfortable in it anyway,” Tackett replied curtly. The door slammed hard behind Donahue, raising a stir of dust. Tackett smiled, leaning back in his chair. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

  The Ranger stepped over to the dusty window and looked out. Donahue and his cowhands had stepped off the boardwalk and were now headed for the saloon across the street. Behind them, the small following of townsmen hurried along, like smaller dogs following the leader. “We’ll see what happens once they all get liquored up,” he said. Before turning back to Tackett, the Ranger noticed a slender young man hurrying from the telegraph office with a piece of paper fluttering in his hand. “Think Donahue will let it lay for now? Or will he get stoked up again…make one more run at us just for good measure?”

  “Naw, Donahue will stay in line now, so long as we keep out of sight. Don’t want to go around reminding him of how he didn’t get his way.”

  “I planned on heading out come morning,” the Ranger said. “Will you be all right here?”

  “Sure. The judge will be here in a couple of days.” Tackett folded his hands behind his neck. “Me and Durant will just sit tight here. I’ve got a part-time deputy I’ll call in—the kid that works at the livery barn. He’ll relieve me long enough to fetch vittles and water.”

  They turned toward the door as it swung open and the telegraph clerk came in with an excited look on his face. “I saw what’s going on out there, Sheriff,” he said, out of breath. “And I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news for you.” He pushed the piece of paper across Tackett’s desk.

  “All right, Robert.” Tackett snatched the paper. “This better really be something, you busting in here this way.”

  The Ranger stepped closer. “What is it?”

  “Dang it all…” Tackett words trailed off as his eyes read across the message.

  “It just came in, Sheriff. But you can see it’s two days late out of Humbly—they have the awfulest time keeping their lines up.” The clerk stepped to the side.
/>   “What is it, Tackett?” The Ranger asked intently again, seeing the expression on Tackett’s face darken.

  Tackett whispered something under his breath and turned his gaze to the Ranger. “Sam, this don’t necessarily mean the worst has happened—”

  “Let me see that.” The Ranger grabbed the paper from his hand, glanced at the clerk, then read it. His shoulders slumped, a dark expression moving over his face like a coming storm cloud.

  Tackett spoke quickly. “You know as well as I do how telegraph clerks can screw things up. This might all be a mistake.”

  The young clerk huffed and rubbed his toe across the dusty floor. “It’s not a mistake, Sheriff. I checked it out right away with a telegraph to the army post. It’s been sent everywhere, hoping somebody might spot these Mexican bandits before they do something else. Jameson Vanderman already knows about it all the way in New York. He’s posted a reward for the return of his daughter.”

  From his cell, Willis Durant’s eyes snapped to the clerk. “Did you say Mexican bandits?” But the clerk ignored him. Durant tightened his grip on the bars, a strange, knowing gleam coming into his dark eyes. “Ranger, listen to me!” He raised his voice, but still no one turned to him. His jaw stiffened.

  “They’ve got Maria,” the Ranger whispered under his breath, then glanced out through the dusty window and across the broad distant horizon.

  “Wait, Sam!” Tackett stood and stepped around the desk. “Don’t jump to conclusions here. Maria might not have been on the train. The message doesn’t give her name…just Prudence Vanderman’s!”

  “She was on board, Tackett. You can bet on it.”

  Chapter 7

  It took the Ranger no more than a half hour to prepare himself for the trek across the desert flatlands. While he laid out his shooting gear on Tackett’s desk, checking and cleaning it, Tackett had gone to the livery barn to get the white barb and a spare horse for him. “I think you’re making a mistake not taking me along with ya,” Tackett had said after a few minutes of bickering about it. But the Ranger had only stared at him, until Tackett finally gave up and left, shaking his head and grumbling under his breath.