by J. T. Edson
Although most of its breed were noted for being open voiced and giving tongue freely when pursuing a quarry, a factor which made them so highly prized as hunters of nocturnal prey such as raccoons, Lightning was running mute as it rapidly closed upon the fleeing man. So great was Woodwedge’s eagerness to reach the safety of the vehicle he had left when accompanying Scargill on the reconnaissance, [37] he paid no attention to the far from noisy, but rapidly approaching patter of feet to his rear. So he was unaware of his peril until the last moment.
By then, it was too late!
On coming close enough, the blue-tick let out a roaring snarl and left the ground in a bound. Its powerful jaws closed upon the man’s right arm and its one hundred pounds of hard-muscled body crashed into him from behind. Thrown off balance by the impact, he pitched forward and might have considered himself fortunate that his head struck the trunk of a nearby tree with sufficient force to render him unconscious. Finding he did not struggle when he slumped to the ground, Lightning behaved as trained. Releasing the arm and jumping clear, the dog moved so quickly it would have avoided any kick which might have been directed at it. Having done so, it sat down and watched, ready to attack again if necessary.
‘Jubal, Alvin!’ Major Benson Tragg’s voice crackled from the radio in the Ford, the urgency of the information he was about to impart causing him to forget to employ the code names he had allocated to the two Rangers. On the point of setting out after Lightning, they paused as he continued, ‘Two of the gang gunned down the feller who informed on them, then ran into some police. The one that survived the shooting says three more of the gang could be headed your way.’
‘God-blast all new-fangled de-vices!’ the older of the sergeants ejaculated, directing a venomous glare at the radio. ‘We ’n’s for son-of-a-bitching certain sure know they’d headed our way!’
‘Maybe the Major should have sent up a smoke signal instead of using the wireless,’ the small Texan suggested, without taking his attention from the rim.
‘It’d’ve been quicker ’n’ a danged sight more certain!’ Branch asserted, returning his gaze to the top of the slope after having scooped up and donned his damaged Stetson. He went on as they started to walk forward, ‘They allus work mighty good, ’cepting when it’s too windy for the smoke to rise, too wet to light a fire, or too dark to see ’em.’
‘Or you can’t find any wood, have forgotten to fetch along any matches, or don’t have a blanket to spread over the fire to send them up,’ Alvin supplemented, guessing why his partner was speaking in such a fashion and taking no offence over the reason. ‘I tell you-all, Jubal, those smoke signals surely come up short on a whole heap of counts when you get to looking at them.’
‘That blasted wirey-less contraption ain’t a whole heap better,’ Branch objected, indicating the hole in the crown-of his head-dress. ‘If it had been, this wouldn’t’ve happened to my hat.’
Reaching the rim without the conversation—which both knew was intended to stop Alvin brooding over the possibility of, for the first time in his career as a peace officer, having helped to kill, or seriously injure, another human being—having caused them to relax their vigilance, the sergeants went cautiously towards Scargill’s sprawled out body. They did not need to make a close examination to assure them that he was beyond doing them any harm.
Watching his partner covertly, Branch saw little sign of change come to the tanned young face which he knew was being studiously retained in an impassive mold. For his part, the small Texan was telling himself that the body at their feet was that of a criminal who had been trying to kill them and had probably murdered other people with just as little qualm. The thought served to overcome the revulsion which he had started to experience as he first studied the consequences of his accurate shooting.
‘Where’s that fool dog got to?’ Alvin inquired, forcing himself to keep his voice steady and going to pick up the B.A.R.
‘Lightning, speak up, blast you!’ Branch bellowed. Hearing the steady chop notes of the blue-tick baying after the fashion of having treed its quarry, he deduced it had brought down and was guarding, rather than still either pursuing or fighting with the man who had fled, and he went on in a softer voice, ‘Could be he’s nailed the other son-of-a-bitch.’
‘Good for him,’ Alvin replied. ‘This fool thing jammed on the first shot, which’s lucky for us, seeing it’s set on automatic.’ Then his attention was diverted from the weapon’s breech and he continued, ‘This wasn’t done just now when he dropped it. I wonder when and how it happened.’
‘What?’ Branch inquired, satisfied that—although he was not thinking of the matter in the exact words—the young man was successfully coping with one of the most traumatic experiences which ever befell a peace officer.
‘This groove along the butt,’ Alvin explained, exhibiting the weapon.
‘Lemme take a look!’ Branch demanded, stepping forward. Surprised by the vehemence of the reaction from one who was generally so taciturn, the small Texan obeyed without question. Staring at the groove on the butt in a disbelieving fashion for a moment, he next looked at the serial number on the frame. ‘Well I’ll be damned!’
‘I’ve never doubted that,’ Alvin stated. ‘But how come you’ve suddenly found it out?’
‘This’s the same old B.A.R. I toted when your Daddy ’n’ me was fighting the Germans in France,’ the elderly sergeant explained, still sounding as if he could not believe the evidence of his eyes. ‘It was always right lucky for me.’
‘I’ll tell you something, amigo,’ Alvin drawled, reaching out to tap the empty case which was jamming the breech. ‘Was I asked, I’d say it still is.’
Case Three – The Deadly Ghost
‘Now me, not being one of you all-fired smart young cusses, I don’t see why us peace officers should go bothering good tax-paying citizens so long’s all they’re doing is cooking up a swatch of White Lightning on their own land,’ Sergeant Jubal Branch declared, sitting in his shirt-sleeves, bareheaded and with his right foot raised so the Kelly Tetmaker’s spur on its Justin boot threatened to add to the scratches left on the top of the table in the past by similar devices. ‘Moonshiners ain’t such all-fired bad hombres, took as a whole. Fact being, I can only mind ever running across one out-and-out mean ’n’. That was Ole Charlie Winthrop, so-called to make sure folks’d know you-all was wanting him and not his son, Young Charlie Winthrop.’
‘Well yes, admitting to being one of us all-fired smart young cusses, I reckon such would be a reasonable sort of way to name him,’ Sergeant Alvin Dustine Fog admitted judicially, being attired in much the same informal fashion as his elderly partner, but lounging with his legs astride a chair and its back turned towards the table. ‘Though his momma and poppa must have been more knowing than the average moonshiners to figure before he was christened that he’d have a Young Charlie one day who could confuse folks who wanted to see him.’
‘Folks might not’ve had the book-learning’s you young jasper’s been given,’ Branch conceded, with the air of one who was conferring a favor. ‘But they surely knowed a thing or four. Anyways, coming from Rio Hondo County like you do, I’d reckon’s how you’d’ve heard tell of Ole Charlie Winthrop.’
‘I can’t come right out truthful and say I have,’ the small Texan confessed, despite the name seeming to strike a responsive chord without his memory being able to supply any information as to why this should be so. ‘Nor about Young Charlie Winthrop either, comes to that.’
The comments were taking place in the bunkhouse of the small ranch, situated some fifteen miles south along the Colorado River below the city of Austin, which had been acquired as the secret headquarters of the Texas Ranger’s newly formed Company “Z”. Along with some of the other members, Alvin and Branch were relaxing after having completed a day’s work on fitting up some of the equipment which had been supplied to help in their unconventional duties. The small Texan’s remark about the possibility of them being given the task
of locating and halting the operations of illicit liquor stills as their first assignment had provoked his partner’s response.
The way in which the two sergeants had worked together during the breaking up of the Machine Gun Gang had cemented their friendship and partnership. It had satisfied Branch that Alvin was not only steady under fire, but could shoot another human being when the need arose. This was especially important to the elderly sergeant’s way of thinking, far exceeding the excellent exhibitions of gun handling he had witnessed on the National Guard’s Walk And Shoot range and along the little used road near Austin. He had seen one and heard of other young peace officers who—despite their theoretical training in matters pertaining to law enforcement—had lost their own lives and, in one instance, caused a partner to forfeit his, through hesitation over firing at another person. So he was pleased to have discovered that the young man he would be working with did not suffer from such qualms. Branch was not a bloodthirsty paranoiac hiding behind a badge, but he had long since accepted there were times when having to kill in the line of duty was unavoidable and, as in the case of Cranston Scargill, was even beneficial to mankind.
For his part, although the matter had not been mentioned by either of them, Alvin appreciated that the Machine Gun Gang affair had enabled him to take a major step towards gaining complete acceptance by his partner. It had shown in many ways, but most obviously through the increased banter—which was allowing Branch to pass on the knowledge of peace officer’s work he had acquired and state his sentiments on various matters while doing it—that passed between them. The repeated references to the disparity in their ages and Branch’s continual decrying of everything modern, particularly the educated younger generation, strengthened rather than weakened their relationship as the small Texan knew he would only do it with a person he liked. They were, in fact, rapidly welding into a smoothly functioning team. One in which each would be able to depend upon the other no matter what kind of peril they were facing, or how unexpectedly a dangerous situation confronted them. [38]
Although Major Benson Tragg and Branch had expressed their approval over the way in which the small Texan had behaved on the woodland road outside San Antonio, he knew that he had still not quelled the reservations of the other members of Company “Z”. They conceded that he had held up his end in that affair and had done well to bring about the conviction of the three young men at Austin, but each had been a piece of routine law enforcement. So all were wondering whether he had the experience needed to cope with the more specialized and unconventional work that lay ahead. However, he did not resent their attitude. Instead, he was willing to accept that time and his own efforts could cause it to change for the better.
‘Well, I’ll have to admit moonshiners don’t go to putting their names, addresses ’n’ advertical-ments saying: We-all make right good White Lightning in newspapers any too frequent,’ Branch drawled, throwing a look to where his big blue-tick coonhound lay sleeping by the unlit potbellied stove as if the ranch had been its home for years instead of just over a week. ‘And, top of that, both of them’d likely be dead ’n’ gone afore you-all was borned. Ole Charlie for sure was, seeing’s how it’s going back to not long after Sheriff Billy Bob Brackett first took me on’s his deputy.’
‘Land’s sakes!’ Alvin injected. ‘That would make it before my daddy was born.’
‘Anyways, Ole Charlie Winthrop had him a still on Whitetail Crick maybe a mile from Jack County’s east line,’ Branch continued, giving no indication of having heard his partner’s comment or the chuckles it raised among the other Rangers who were lounging at ease around the room. ‘Used to get tolerable riled should folks go wandering about in its vee-cinity. Which most folks’d got the good sense ’n’ perlite-icalness to stay well clear of it. Trouble was, this new Bomber Boy, [39] he’d be about your age, all fresh, green ’n’ eager comes down from the North and he didn’t have no good sense nor perlite-icalness. Which could maybe account for why we found him all shot to doll rags along that way one morning.’
‘Had he committed suicide?’ Alvin suggested dryly and, watching the exchange of glances passing among the other men, decided they too had heard of a similar verdict having been reached on very flimsy evidence at a coroner’s inquest for a Bomber Boy—who had been found dead as a result of a bullet wound—held in Diggers Wells, seat of Jack County and an area well known for the number of illicit liquor stills which contributed to its economy. [40]
‘Well now, being fair-minded duly ee-lected peace officers and mindful that voting time was close to hand, that’s just what we wondered if it could be,’ Branch replied, speaking as soberly as the way in which the question had been put to him. ‘Trouble was, we somehow couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to do it by sending three point forty-four rifle bullets into his back from maybe fifty yards off, ’specially as he only had a belt-gun with him.’
‘That’d be quite a feat,’ Sergeant Colin Breda declared, with a matching solemnity. ‘So what did you-all do?’
‘Now me, I’d allus reckoned’s how Bomber Boys was varmints’s could be shot all year ’round,’ Branch answered. ‘But Sheriff Billy Bob allowed’s they was like game critters and had an open ’n’ closed season on ’em. Which, being as how it was the closed season on revenuers right then, we’n’s was mortal duty bound to do something about it.’
‘Well, yes,’ Alvin said didactically. ‘I can see how there’s some who might say you should do, seeing’s how the law had been broken a mite.’
‘And that’s just how Sheriff Billy Bob saw it, in spite of ’lection time coming around real soon,’ Branch confirmed. ‘So, on account of where we’d found the body, we trails along to good Ole Charlie Winthrop’s cabin and out he comes, a Winchester Ole Yellerboy [41] in his two hands ’n’ looking a whole heap meaner’n a razorback hawg stood stropping its tushes again.’ the trunk of a post oak ready to go to fighting over some lil ole gal hawg.
‘“Howdy, you-all, Ole Charlie,”’ Sheriff Billy Bob says all perlite-like, Ole Charlie Winthrop being a right good tax-paying ’n’ voting citizen of Jack County. ‘“We ’n’s done found us a tolerable dead Bomber Boy down along the Crick a ways. Do you-all know anything about him?”’
‘“Well now,” Ole Charlie Winthrop ree-plies, only nowhere near so perlite-like. ‘“I just reckon’s I might do at that, seeing’s how it was me’s killed him!”’
‘And, as soon’s he’d done saying it, I’ll be ’ternally damned to perdition if he don’t up with that blaster Ole Yellerboy and start whanging away at us with it like he was getting the bullets free from the Winchester gun-making company.’ Pausing for a moment so as to look about him and see the effect of his words upon his audience, he went on, ‘I tell you-all, amigos, that was when we started to get just a mite suspicious of good Ole Charlie Winthrop.’
‘Why I reckon any of us just might have done the same in your place, hermano,’ Sergeant Carlos Franco asserted, without so much as a change of expression. Of something over medium height, almost as broad as he was tall and bulky, he wore the attire of a working vaquero and had such a villainous cast of features that his own mother might have found difficulty in loving him. His English was good, but with a suggestion of Hispanic birthright.
‘I know I for sure would,’ seconded Sergeant Hans Soehnen, being big, burly, blond haired and obviously of Teutonic origins. ‘What did you and Sheriff Billy Bob do, Jubal?’
‘There just didn’t seem like there was but one thing we could do under the see-cum-stanticals,’ Branch said, shaking his head in a manner redolent of sorrow. ‘So we’n’s just shot good Ole Charlie Winthrop’s cabin plumb full of holes ’n’ good Ole Charlie Winthrop along of it. Surely miseried Sheriff Billy Bob ’n’ me to’ve had to do it, though. Young Charlie Winthrop might’ve got to be Ole Charlie Winthrop, which pleasured him some seeing’s how he’d got him a Young Charlie Winthrop of his own by that time, but he couldn’t never whomp up a swatch of White Lightning nowheres near s
o good’s his dear deep-harted pappy. Say one thing about him, though. He wasn’t so all-fired ornery as his pappy had been about folks straying around the family still. Fact being, he’d let ’em come’s close’s maybe three-quarters of a mile off from it afore he started in to tossing lead their way and he allus made sure’s how he didn’t never wound nobody too bad.’
‘Now that’s what I’ve always admired,’ declared Sergeant Aloysius Bratton, who dressed like the carnival roustabout he had once been and spoke with a broad Irish brogue. ‘A right neighborly and considerate sort of a man.’
‘And me,’ agreed Sergeant Alexandre Frenchie Giradot, who was tall, slim, wiry, swarthily handsome and always contrived to appear dapperly dressed. He boasted that his ancestors had been Parisian apache [42] and his accent had a Gallic timbre. ‘But, mon ami, knowing something of how the good tax-paying citizens in Jack County feel about the making—and selling—of White Lightning, I would not expect them to take too kindly to what you and Sheriff Billy Bob had done.’
‘You’re not just whistling Dixie, they didn’t take kindly to it, mon hammy,’ Branch confessed. ‘Why, afore a week was out, Sheriff Billy Bob ’n’ me found our names’d become a by-word and a hissing all through Jack County. There was even some talk of having Judge Burtram Rothero heave us both out of office for extry-ceeding our legally appointed official duties. I tell you one and all, I was worried to a muck-sweat. Was I to’ve lost my badge, I’d’ve had to start working for a living.’
