Texas Vigilante

by Bill Crider

  Sue sipped her coffee. There was a distant look in her eyes, as if she were seeing her brother again. When she set the mug back on the table, she said, “There wasn’t any trouble, not really. Angel wasn’t expecting anyone to come for him. Brady took him pretty much by surprise.”

  “I guess Angel wasn’t too happy about that,” Ellie said.

  Sue drank the rest of her coffee and set the mug on the table. She looked down into the mug as if she might be trying to read the future there. Then she looked up at Ellie.

  “Happy?” she said. “No, he wasn’t happy. He said that someday he was going to come back and that we’d all be sorry for what we’d done to him.”

  “So it was all your fault,” Ellie said.

  “That’s right. He was the one who’d killed a man, but we were to blame for him being arrested. That’s the way Angel always sees things.”

  “And you said he has a long memory for things like that.”

  “Oh, he does. I wasn’t exaggerating about that.”

  “Well, then,” Ellie said. “I’m not surprised you have bad dreams about him. But if you turned him in, you don’t have to worry. They put him in jail, didn’t they?”

  Sue nodded. “Oh, yes. They put him in the prison at Huntsville.”

  “That’s where he belongs,” Ellie said. “He won’t be getting out of there for a long time.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Sue said. “And it’s easy to think that way in the daytime. But sometimes at night, I start to worry. One of those stories I heard about Angel said that he killed two men up in Tascosa because they cheated him in a card game.”

  Ellie thought that anyone who got into a card game in Tascosa should have known he was going to get cheated, but she didn’t say so.

  “They put him in jail that time, too,” Sue went on. “Not in Huntsville, but in Abilene. Or that’s the way the story went. He was in about a week before he escaped, and then one night he shot both the men who’d supposedly cheated him. In the back.”

  “So he’s a coward, then,” Ellie said.

  “Oh, no. He’s no coward. He most likely shot them in the back because it was just more convenient for him that way. I’m sure he would have enjoyed watching their eyes when he had the drop on them and they knew what was about to happen.”

  Ellie thought that was a terrible thing to say about anyone, much less your own brother. She hoped she never met Angel.

  When she said as much to Sue, the other woman rubbed her hand over her face. Then she said, “I hope you never meet him, either. There’s not an ounce of good in him that I know of.”

  Ellie stood up from the table and smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile, but it was the best she could do.

  “I think I’ve heard enough about your brother,” she said. “Why don’t we go in and see what Laurie’s doing.”

  “Laurie,” Sue said. “You know, I was afraid to have a child at one time. I was afraid that if I did, it might turn out to be like Angel.”

  Ellie picked up the coffee mugs. “Laurie looks like an angel, for sure. You just go on in there with her, and I’ll take these mugs to Juana. And don’t you worry about your brother. He won’t be bothering you here.”

  Sue shivered as if a cold draft had blown through the room.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said, but she didn’t look sure at all.

  TEN

  Hoot Riley looked at the little farmhouse that stood off in the distance. It was about a half hour after dark, and there was lamplight flickering in the windows of the house. Hoot had no idea how many people were inside, but that didn’t bother him in the least.

  “There’s our supper,” he said.

  Jephson slapped at a mosquito that was buzzing around his head. “It’d be takin’ a big chance for us just to walk up there and ask for a handout.”

  “We’re not all goin’,” Angel said. “Just one of us.”

  “Which one?” Jephson asked.

  Angel inclined his head toward Riley. “Hoot. He looks like a farm boy.”

  “What about his clothes?” Abilene Jack asked. “You don’t see many farm boys wearing prison duds.”

  “He’ll be standin’ in the dark. Nobody’ll notice what he’s wearin’ till it’s way too late.”

  “There’ll be a dog,” Jephson said. “There’s always a dog or two around a place like that.”

  “I don’t care about any damn dog,” Hoot said. “He prob’ly smells the mules already. What’s he gonna do, bark at me and let ’em know I’m comin’? He’s gonna bark at the mules anyhow, and I don’t give a damn if they know I’m comin’.”

  “He’s right,” Angel said. “It won’t make any difference to them.”

  Hoot grinned and wiped the back of his hand across his dry mouth. “You gonna let me have the shotgun?”

  “That’s right,” Angel said. “We’ll be waitin’ out here in the trees till you do what has to be done.”

  “What if there’s too many of ’em in there?” Jephson asked.

  “Goddamnit to hell, you worry too much, Jephson,” Hoot told him. “You act like there’s gonna be a troop of soldiers layin’ in wait for us, but you don’t have to worry about it. I know all about farms like that. There won’t be nobody inside that house except some old man and his wife, and they won’t put any kind of a fight.”

  To tell the truth, Hoot wouldn’t have minded a little fight. He didn’t see much sport in killing some old coot and his wife. Maybe there’d be a young couple in there. Maybe he wouldn’t kill the wife until she’d showed him a good time.

  Angel handed him the shotgun and a couple of extra shells.

  “Whoever’s in there,” he said, “don’t waste any time with them.”

  When Brady Tolbert arrived at the big adobe building that served as Texas Ranger headquarters in Del Rio, he saw Northrup and Cody under a shade tree. They were playing checkers on a board set on an upturned water barrel.

  Northrup was a stocky young man in his early twenties. Cody was older and more experienced, one of the best Rangers that Brady had met. Like Brady, he was tall, lean, and toughened by long nights in the saddle and long days under the hot Texas sun.

  “Afternoon, Tolbert,” Cody said when Brady had tied his horse to the hitch rail. “You got a meeting with the Old Man?”

  Brady nodded. “He sent for me, all right. Any idea of what’s going on?”

  “Not unless you count me winnin’ six games in a row from young Northrup here. If you had to win a checker game to get in the Rangers, he’d still be walkin’ behind a mule back on his daddy’s farm.”

  “I almost got you that last time,” Northrup said. “You ambushed me with that triple jump.”

  Cody grinned. “You got to watch out for ambushes, boy. You too, Brady. No tellin’ what the Old Man’s got in mind for you today.”

  Brady agreed and went on into the headquarters buildings. A Ranger named Seth, even younger than Northrup, sat at the desk just inside the door.

  “Hey, Brady,” he said. “The Captain wants to see you right away.”

  “So I heard,” Brady said, walking past the desk. He tapped on the door of the Ranger captain’s office and went inside without waiting for an invitation.

  The captain stood up when Brady entered. He was a ramrod-straight man who dressed all in black except for the white shirt he habitually wore with his black string tie. He looked more like a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher than a Ranger, and in fact he had been a preacher at one time in his life.

  “Good afternoon, Captain,” Brady said. “You got something for me today?”

  “That I have,” the captain said. “Have a seat, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Brady sat in a hard straight-backed chair, and the captain settled himself behind his desk. He picked up a piece of paper and glanced down at it.

  “I have a telegram here that might interest you,” he said.

  Brady didn’t like the sound of that. In his experience, telegrams never
brought good news.

  This one was no exception.

  “It’s about someone you know,” the captain said. “I’m sure you remember Angel Ware.”

  Angel Ware, Brady thought. Mean as a rattler and twice as dangerous.

  “I remember him,” he told the captain. “He’s in the prison up in Huntsville, where I put him.”

  “Not anymore,” the captain said. “He’s escaped, him and three others. Ben Jephson, Abilene Jack Sturdivant, and a youngster named Hoot Riley. Killed a couple of guards and two trusties.”

  Brady wasn’t surprised to hear it. Three of the names weren’t familiar to him, but Angel Ware wasn’t the kind to stay behind bars if any chance to escape presented itself.

  “That’s not all,” the captain said. “Last night, Ware and the other three went into a farmhouse and killed two people, the owner and his wife. Used the guard’s shotgun on ’em, then took their food and an old pistol that the man had. They’ve probably picked up more weapons by now.”

  “You think Angel’s the leader?” Brady asked.

  “ ’Course he is. Those other three? They’re bad. Killers, every one of ’em. But they’re Sunday School teachers compared to Angel Ware.”

  “You think they’ll stick together?”

  “I’d bet on it. There’s something about a man like Ware that draws others to him if they’re of like mind.”

  “So I guess I should ask what you want me to do about it,” Brady said. “Is Ware heading this way?”

  The captain looked grim. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  “I don’t have any idea where he’s going,” Brady said. “He’s crazy, though, I can tell you that. He might go anywhere.”

  “I thought he might be going back where he went the last time,” the captain said.

  Brady thought about it. “You could be right, except that he won’t find his sister there. She’s moved away.”

  “That was a wise idea. Do you think Ware can find her?”

  Brady shrugged. “Hard to say. Texas is a big place.”

  “But you can find her, can’t you?”

  “She’s married to my brother, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You’d better go there then. It wouldn’t hurt to put a watch on her, just in case Angel shows up.”

  Brady stood up. “All right. She’s living up in Blanco these days, with my brother and their daughter.”

  “Blanco? Wasn’t there some trouble there a year or so back?”

  The captain looked down at the telegram he was still holding, as if the answer to his question might be there.

  “I remember now,” he said, looking back at Brady. “The bank was robbed, and a couple of men were killed. We sent a Ranger up there, but by the time he arrived, two of the robbers were dead, killed by the woman whose husband they’d murdered. The other robber had the money, I’m sorry to say. He got clean away. He’s probably in Mexico, and he’ll stay there if he’s smart.”

  “The woman’s name is Ellie Taine,” Brady said. “She has a ranch just out of Blanco. My brother’s her foreman. Do you want me to head up that way today?”

  “Right this minute wouldn’t be too soon,” the captain said. “You brought Ware in the last time without firing a shot. I don’t think you’ll be quite so lucky this time, should you meet up with him again.”

  For some reason Brady didn’t think so either. “We’ll see,” he said.

  ELEVEN

  Angel felt good with a knife in his boot again, even if the knife wasn’t a very good one and the boots didn’t fit him right. He knew that he’d get a better knife sooner or later, and Rankin’s boots, if a little too big, were better than what Angel had been wearing for the last couple of years.

  He also felt better after eating. They hadn’t taken the time to do that at the farmhouse, but after they’d stopped, they’d had some canned tomatoes and beans they’d brought away with them. It wasn’t much, but it was filling enough for the time being.

  Angel looked over at Abilene Jack, who was now dressed in a work shirt and some patched denim pants that they’d taken from the farmhouse. The clothes fit Jack about the way the boots fit Angel, but they’d do.

  Jack was talking to Jephson, who was also wearing some of the dead farmer’s clothes, as was Hoot Riley, who was sleeping in the shade of a youpon bush with his head on a saddle. Three pairs of pants and three shirts were about all the clothes the farmer owned, and not one of the men was exactly the farmer’s size. It didn’t matter, though. They’d needed the clothes, and the fit was close enough.

  They were a motley-looking bunch, Angel thought, but at least they didn’t look quite so much like escaped prisoners. They didn’t look like the town mayor, either, but then they weren’t going to be running for the legislature or trying to borrow money at a bank. So they didn’t exactly need church-going clothes.

  Angel stood up and walked over to Jack. “Did you feed the mules?”

  There were four mules now. They’d taken a couple that had until recently belonged to the farmer. They’d taken several bags of grain, too, along with the saddle that Hoot was using for a pillow.

  “I fed ’em,” Jack said. “They’re ready to go whenever we are.”

  Angel wasn’t quite as ready as the mules to be on his way, however. They had made camp by a little creek that was well-shaded by tall pine and elm trees and well away from any main trails. There was hardly a breath of wind, and the creek was almost perfectly still. Now and then a leaf from an elm tree would float down from and land on the muddy brown surface of the water.

  “We’ll stay here until dark,” Angel said. “Then we’ll be moving along. Better if we travel at night from now on. You two might want to get some rest.”

  Jack shot Jephson a glance. “Me and Ben have been talkin’,” he said.

  Angel squatted down beside them. “I could see that. What’s on your minds?”

  Jack ducked his head as if he didn’t want to meet Angel’s steady blue gaze.

  “Well, we’ve sorta been wondering about this family visit of yours. Not that it’s any of our business, but—”

  “You’re right,” Angel said, cutting him off. “It’s not any of your business.” He smiled, though the smile didn’t touch his icy eyes. “But if you’re going along with me, I’ll tell you about it.”

  “I guess we’ll be goin’ along,” Jephson said. “That’s what we’ve been talkin’ about, tryin’ to make up our minds.”

  “You can go with me or take off on your own,” Angel said. He didn’t much care one way or the other. “Up to you.”

  “It’s not that we don’t think you know what you’re doin’,” Jack said. “It’s just that…”

  Jack’s voice trailed off, but Jephson finished the sentence for him. “It’s just that we don’t like what Hoot did last night.”

  Angel relaxed and settled back against the trunk of an elm tree. “You afraid of a little killin’?”

  Jack shook his head. “That ain’t it. It’s just that it don’t seem too smart to be callin’ attention to ourselves that way.”

  “Those people had something we needed,” Angel said. “They weren’t gonna give it to us just because we asked pretty-like. So we took it the easiest way we could.”

  Jephson said, “Yeah, it was easy. But it let every lawman in Texas know where we were.”

  Angel laughed. “You think they didn’t know already? Those mules and us left a trail in that mud that even Hob Bowman could’ve followed with his eyes shut.”

  Jack and Jephson evidently hadn’t thought of that. They looked around them with jerky movements of their heads as if they were expecting some badge-carrier to step out from behind a pine tree and arrest them on the spot.

  Angel watched them for a couple of seconds, then said, “We covered up a lot better after we left the farmhouse. The ground was a good bit harder in places, so our tracks wouldn’t be so easy to find. And after we got into these piney woods it wasn’t so m
uddy.”

  The pine trees stretched for miles, and Angel had headed for them as soon as they’d left the farmhouse. It wasn’t going to be easy for anyone to track them in the woods.

  “Besides, we had a good start on any posse they get up,” he said. “They couldn’t have got after us until they found Bowman and Rankin. Then they’d have to get some men together. Prob’ly didn’t get started till this mornin’, if then. They might not be started yet.”

  Jack looked down at the creek where a snapping turtle was showing its mouth above the water.

  “You’re sayin’ we shouldn’t worry, then?”

  “Worry if you want to. Don’t matter to me.”

  “If we keep on killin’ farmers, we’ll be cuttin’ such a wide swath that they’ll catch up to us soon enough,” Jephson said.

  “We don’t have to kill anybody else,” Angel said. “We got enough now to get where I want to go.”

  Jephson nodded over to where Hoot was still sleeping peacefully under the youpon.

  “What about him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hoot’s not gonna want to stop killin’,” Jephson said. “I think he kinda likes it.”

  Angel thought about the previous night. Hoot had knocked on the door of the farmhouse and shot the farmer as soon as the door opened. Then Hoot had stepped inside and fired the shotgun again. He’d still been smiling when Angel and the others got there.

  “You could be right,” Angel told Jephson, with a smile of his own. “But there won’t be any chance for him to kill anybody else. I don’t want us to be callin’ attention to ourselves until we get where we’re headed.”

  “What’s in it for us if we stick with you?” Abilene Jack asked.

  “Not a damned thing,” Angel said. “Tell you the truth, it might be better if we split up. It’d give the law more trails to follow.”

  “What if they caught up with one of us, and that one told where you were goin’?” Jephson wanted to know.

  “Well, now,” Angel said. “That wouldn’t make me too happy. It’d sure be bad for the fella that did that if he and I ever wound up in the same jail again.”