“Don’t you think it’s about time we get about the business o’ gettin’ married? I mean you been livin’ here in my house goin’ on half a year. We’ve shared about every color o’ sunset there is. I’ve heard all about your dreams. Spring’s come. It’s time to plant.”
“I’d never make much of a farmer,” Rat muttered.
“Farmer?” she cried. “Who’s talkin’ nonsense? Have you forgotten all about that ranch you described?”
“It might not make a Iivin’, Becky.”
“Well, you could still work for Pa. Henning Lewis is off soon, and you know Pa expects you to take his place. We’d have enough to live on. You could use the reward money to buy a house and some land. That way you’d have a chance to add the horses a few at a time.”
“It costs considerable to buy even a small place, though,” Rat pointed out.
“Not more than five-hundred dollars.”
“Ain’t got five hundred,” he said, frowning. “Only half that. Two-hundred fifty.”
“What? I swore Pa said the reward was five hundred.”
“It was,” Rat said nervously.
“Then what became of the other two-hundred and fifty dollars?”
“I give it to Mitch Morris.”
“For safekeepin’? Oh, Rat,’ she said shaking her head in disappointment. “He’s a notorious gambler, you know. He surely threw it all away playin” cards.
“No, it was for payin’ his debts,” Rat explained. “Had a pair o’ fellows after him. The money squared him.”
“At the cost of our … your dream.”
“Ranch can wait,” Rat declared. “Mitch couldn’t.”
“I don’t know what to say, Rat Hadley,” Becky said, rising to her feet and pacing along the porch rail. “Sometimes I don’t even know you. To throw away half a year’s wages … “
“Weren’t half a year’s wages,” he argued. “It’s money come o’ shootin’ Curly Bob Clark. Wasn’t earned by choppin’ wood or roundin’ up cattle. Come to me out o’ nowhere.”
“And you gave it away.”
“No, I paid a debt,” he told her. “Not Mitch’s, either. Mine.”
“You were playin’ cards?”
“No, Becky. I give Mitch his life. Why not? He give me mine.”
“That’s nonsense, Rat. Pure nonsense. Mitch Morris never in his life did a thing for anybody. He’s driven his folks past worry, shamed ’em in the eyes o’ friends and neighbors. You don’t owe him a thing, Rat.”
“Yes, I do,” he argued. “You say you don’t know me. Well, maybe nobody in this world save Mitch really does. Ain’t let many people inside me.”
“Would you let me in?”
“There’s a world o’ pain there, Becky. You might not like what you find.”
“I love you, Rat Hadley. That means sharin’ whatever there is, be it pain or joy.”
“Then let’s find ourselves some horses. There’s a place you ought to see.”
So it was that Rat Hadley took Becky Cathcart out to the Brazos. It was country she, too, found familiar. As they passed cowboys riding fence Jines or chasing steers out of hollows, Rat recounted his own cowboying days.
“Here’s where that fool mustang pony rubbed the britches off me,” he explained. “Same horse that kilt Pa.”
They passed by a band of children swimming in the river. Rat stared hard at them, half expecting to recognize Alex or little Marcus. The faces all resembled Coley Hanks too much for comfort, and Rat led the way south toward the line cabin that had once been home. Rat paid little attention to the house. Instead he visited J. C. Hadley’s lonely grave. Then he swung around and headed for the old Plank place.
“Maybe we’d best avoid this,” Becky suggested. “Pa told me a frightful tale about old man Plank. You know his own son finally killed him.”
“Efrem,” Rat mumbled. “Gone outlawin’ now. I heard Peter was runnin’ the farm, but I don’t see the fields planted. Miz Morris took in the littler ones.”
“Peter left just after Christmas to try his luck in California,” Becky explained. “I thought you knew.”
“No. Guess I’m not the only one to see ghosts here.”
“Tell me about it.”
He frowned heavily as he stared at the old barn. It seemed as if Otto Plank stood there scowling, swinging a leather strap, and yelling Rat’s name. Painful memories flooded his mind. And as he shared the nightmare tale, Becky alternately covered her eyes and gasped.
“I knew it was bad,” she commented when he finished. “But how can a man beat his own children over such trifles? What manner o’ devil locks boys in a barn?”
“Otto Plank did, Becky. And I guess in the end he paid for it. Me, I was lucky. I got away with only a few scars on my back.”
“And others underneath?”
“Yeah, there’s that,” he confessed.
“I still don’t understand how you could throw away two-hundred fifty dollars on Mitch Morris, though.”
“You don’t?” he asked. “Becky, you know why I’m not buried up here someplace?”
“I certainly do. It’s because my pa rode up here and got you away from Otto Plank.”
“The sheriff didn’t come by himself, Becky. And he didn’t come the first time at all. It was Mitch rode here, risked his hide to see I was well. Was his folks promised Ma to check, but they’d come on Sundays and leave when old man Plank got riled. Was Mitch who spied on me, come back with yer pa.”
“You did things for him, too,” she argued. “I recall him tellin’ how you shot up a band of rustlers on the Cimarron River, saved the both of you. And there were times chasin’ ponies …”
“Those were shared dangers, Becky,” Rat said somberly. “They only tightened the bond. But I was here alone, with the Planks. Sure, yer pa took me into town, but it was the Morrises come and offered to take me in. It was his folks spoke, Becky, but a blind man could tell the offer was Mitch’s. I owe him my life.”
“You worked for your keep, didn’t you?”
“Never as you’d know it. Truth is Mitch and I were often up to nonsense. Half a dozen times Miz Morris’d sent me on my way but for Mitch. And who else’d give a boy leave to run cows half the spring and take him back when Orville Hanks had no more use o’ him? They sent me to school, and if I squawked ’bout my lessons, Miz Morris or Mitch’d sit me down and help me through ’em. Elsewise I’d never learned to read.”
“It seems to me any debts incurred were long since satisfied,’ Becky said, gazing scornfully at Rat’s tormented features.
“Not before,” he answered. “Now, well, I bought Mitch his hide, so I guess we’re even.”
“And the ranch?”
“There’s time for that,” he assured her. “I make a good wage ridin’ guard for the stage, and if you add what yer pa’s promised for deputyin’ on my off days, I’ll have a fair sum saved again in no time.”
“And when Mitch comes next time and needs another stake?”
“He won’t,” Rat declared.
“Won’t he? I’ve watched how it is with gamblers, Rat. When their luck turns sour, they rarely stop playin’.”
“What do you want me to do, promise I won’t offer him money?”
“Yes, Rat, that’s exactly what I want,” she told him. “If we’re to have a future, you can’t drag leg irons around. That’s what Mitch Morris has become, you know. To his family first. And now to you.”
Rat frowned heavily. How was it Becky couldn’t understand? Hadn’t he explained what he and Mitch had shared? Didn’t she know what it was like with brothers?
They returned to town shortly before dusk. Rat hadn’t spoken a dozen words on the way back, and Becky had given up trying to stir up a conversation. She could read the pain on his face, and she said as much. “All that was long ago,” she grumbled. “It’s time to move on.”
Rat left his horse at the Western’s corral, then escorted Becky down Main Street to the livery. Halfway there a voice called out from the
Lucky Lady. Mitch Morris stepped through the swinging doors, grinning broadly and waving a handful of fresh bank notes at his old friend.
“Rat, don’t,’ Becky pleaded. But Rat returned Mitch’s greeting nevertheless.
“Let go the bridle,” Becky then demanded. She turned the horse and galloped away.
“Been ridin’, I see,” Mitch observed as he stepped over beside Rat.
“Was out to the river,” Rat explained. “Past the Plank place.”
“Didn’t figure that’d be a place to bring you smiles.”
“I took Becky. She wanted to know why I gave you the money.”
“Oh,’ Mitch said, frowning. “Then I guess I’m to blame for her frown. Sorry, Rat.”
“Not yer doin’.”
“Sure, it is. I come to you for the money to pay my debts. Don’t you worry, though, Rat. I got the cards goin’ my way again. I swear to you. I’ll pay back that money—and soon, too. Take that for a promise.”
“Doesn’t need repayin’,” Rat grumbled.
“Sure, it does,” Mitch argued. “Don’t you think I see it in your eyes? I do believe I could live with anybody else in this world save you thinkin’ ill o’ me, Rat.”
“I couldn’t do it for long, Mitch. Too many recollections.”
“I’m glad to hear that. It weighs on me how you looked when you give me that money. I’ll earn it back real fast. Just you wait and see. Just you wait and see, Rat.”
Rat tried to erase the doubt from his face. He wasn’t entirely successful.
Chapter Eighteen
It seemed to Rat Hadley that trouble had a way of coming in full flood sometimes. His eye was still swollen from the fight with Coley Hanks, and Becky was in an ill humor to boot. He should have expected problems on the run to Albany and back.
The westbound leg went without a hitch. Of course Henning Lewis was aboard, finally off west for better pickings. Two of the company’s other guards were passengers, too. Colonel Wyler had sent them up to help expand the company’s Albany operations, what with the railroad spur near finished and cattle shipping certain to begin.
“Makes you feel downright comfortable,” Pop Palmer declared as he nudged the horses along the trail. “Like to see them Oxenberg boys hit us today! Be a fine surprise for ’em, all right.”
“I expect those fellows’s off somewhere gold’s easier to come by,” Rat muttered. “If they depended on the Western for their livin’, they’d be starved, the whole bunch o’ them.”
“Oh, they ain’t so particular, Rat. Robbed a bank down at Weatherford last week. Blew one whole wall o’ the place to kingdom come.”
“I thought they were road agents.”
“A thief’ll be found round money. Them Oxenbergs ain’t particular. Rob farms even. Kilt an old woman up on the Trinity back in February.”
“You keep mighty close tabs on ’em,” Rat observed.
“They been after me once, Rat. I take that personal. Best know the enemy, ’specially if it’s a bunch likes to shoot folks.”
Rat nodded. And when the coach finally pulled into Albany, he made a point of dropping by the town marshal’s office to have a look through any posters that might warn of trouble.
“Anybody in particular you interested in?” the marshal asked after passing Rat a stack of wanted posters.
“Yessir,” Rat admitted. “The Oxenberg gang.”
“They’d be on the wall yonder,” the lawman explained. “Trouble there is those boys take in new hands all the time. It’s hard to catch ’em ’cause they know the country. And if they send out scouts, it’s always the newest faces—ones we don’t know.”
Rat nodded. He gazed at the vague descriptions. The only faces sketched were the two Oxenbergs and a cold-eyed Efrem Plank. A fourth face was covered by a large X. The marshal had scrawled “shot in Jacksboro, March” alongside.
“Ain’t far from here to Jacksboro,” Rat observed.
“Got themselves spotted not half a week ago right here in Albany,” the marshal grumbled. “But by the time I got some men to head ’em off, they’d up and vanished. You spot any signs comin’ up from Thayerville?”
“Not a one,” Rat answered.
“ ’Course, they’s clever. Wouldn’t be leavin’ tracks so just any fool could spot ’em.”
“No, they’d keep to the shadows,” Rat agreed. “Shame we cain’t do the same. A stagecoach needs a wide trail.”
That night Rat joined a half dozen Western employees in the saloon for a farewell drink with Henning Lewis.
“Joinin’ the Rangers and marryin’ yerself off in the same week,” Rat said, laughing. “That’s a man with an appetite for hard times sure.”
“Me?” Lewis asked. “I ain’t the fellow’s got one side o’ his face purple from fightin’ that Hanks kid over Becky Cathcart!”
The others turned their laughter on Rat, and all he could do was grin and laugh along with them.
Rat didn’t plan on staying more than a minute. The stage left early next morning on the easterly leg of the trip, and he was tired. Pop Palmer blocked his escape, though.
“Guess we ought to drink a farewell to Rat here, too,” the driver declared. “He’s sure to land Hen’s old job, and I’ll have another guard to break in.”
“Well, now, that’s news,” the others cried, slapping Rat’s back. “You sure know how to finish up a job, though.”
“How’s that?” Rat inquired.
“Don’t you know?” Pop asked. “We got a special pay box to haul back. Thousands o’ dollars in it.”
“What?” Rat cried, gazing warily around the crowded saloon.
“Money pledged to the railroad,” Lewis explained. “They had a bit o’ trouble with outlaws o’ late, so they switched it over to us so’s to fool people.”
“I expect that’d work better if you didn’t go tellin’ everybody in Albany o’ it,” Rat complained.
“Word’s pretty much out already,” Pop replied. “How do you figure we knew? The colonel sure ain’t spreadin’ the word.”
“Somebody’s sure done it,” Rat muttered. “Best I get myself to bed early, Pop. Tomorrow’s run seems like an invitation for trouble.”
“That’s why I got you along with me,” the driver boasted. “Best shot around, and steady, too.”
Palmer began to pour Rat another shot of whiskey, but the young guard declined. He was still grumbling to himself when he reached the Western stable where he planned to pass a peaceful night.
It didn’t work out that way. Lurking gunmen haunted his dreams. He awoke to find himself fumbling around, searching for his rifle.
“Sorry I bothered you, Rat,” a stableboy called. “Thought to open the shutters and let in some air.”
Another time two stock handlers came in from a night of drinking and card playing. Finally Rat abandoned the loft and set off for the outskirts of Albany. He stretched out beneath a scrub mesquite and finally found some rest.
He returned to the stage office at dawn. After gobbling a hurried breakfast, he grabbed his rifle and stood watch while a pair of railroad men hauled the heavy chest atop the coach.
“Looks heavy,” a familiar voice observed from the street. “Not carryin’ the U. S. Mint, are you, Rat?”
Rat turned to gaze at Mitch Morris’s easy smile.
“Lord, what’s brought you so far west, Mitch?” Rat asked.
“Heard there was a game to be had hereabouts. Just about have enough to pay you back, old friend. Tomorrow should see it done. Hang around and I’ II settle up.”
“Be back in Thayerville tomorrow,” Rat explained.
“On the coach?” Mitch asked. “Ma told me Deputy Lewis was leavin’ and you’d been hired to take his place. Thought you’d be finished with all this other foolishness.”
“It’s a fair livin’,” Rat argued. “Anyhow, the deputy’s job ain’t official exactly.”
“I see,” he said, frowning. “Well, you watch out, eh? I passed a pair o’ susp
icious characters comin’ into town. Hard times bring out the worst in men, you know.”
“Or the best,” Rat argued. “Tests a man, I’ll admit.”
Mitch nodded, then turned to leave.
“Mitch, I got half an hour ’fore we pull out,” Rat called. “Care to nibble a biscuit and talk?”
“I would,” Mitch replied. “But I promised a fellow a game over at the hotel. He’s got money just waitin’ for my pockets, Rat. And later on yours.”
“Well, good luck to you.”
“Good luck yourself, Rat Hadley!”
Rat read rare concern in Mitch’s eyes. Or maybe it was just reluctance-envy, even. To hear others talk, Mitch’s luck was as elusive as ever. The cards hadn’t brought much favor. But then things could change. Rat hoped the fellow at the hotel was not averse to losing.
Soon enough Rat set aside his concerns for Mitch. He busied himself loading trunks and cases atop the coach. He then assisted the passengers a moment. There were six of them in all. George Haslett, a well-known gambler, had worn out his Albany welcome, and a young cowboy named Bob Grant was off to Thayerville so Doc Jennings could have a look at a festering toe. Boyd Lambert and his wife Louise brought their two little girls in last. Pop Palmer then climbed atop the coach, and Rat followed. Moments later the eastbound was bouncing along toward Thayerville.
Almost from the first Rat felt eyes on his back. After a bit he detected two trailing riders.
“Maybe we ought to turn back,” Rat suggested.
“Ain’t likely to set ill on the colonel’s stomach if we do,” Pop mumbled.
“I suppose they can hit us just as easy goin’ that way as any other,” Rat grumbled.
“ ’Fraid so,” Pop said as he hurried the horses along. Five miles later two more riders joined the pursuit. One took station on the left flank, and the other chose the right.
“I’ve had friendlier company,” Rat observed, pointing to the flour sack masks the outlaws wore.
“Me, too,” Pop declared. “Won’t be long now, you know. We’re closin’ on the hills.”
“Cain’t help that,” Rat replied, “but I can whittle on the odds some.’ He climbed back amid the valises and boxes, then made himself a makeshift parapet. The Winchester swung over at the left-hand rider, then exploded. Its bullet sped across the rocky landscape and slammed into the rider’s chest. He toppled from his pony, and the other raiders instantly increased the range.
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