by Bill Crider
“You can let the Ranger know, then. It wasn’t more than two hours ago that the boy was here.”
“I’ll let him know, all right,” Mr. Wallace said. “If I can find him. I just hope it’s not too late.”
The Ranger’s name was Wilson, and he was in the Salty Dog Saloon trying to talk to Kincaid. The place was more crowded than it had been earlier in the day. There was some loud talk and a little laughter now and then. And the piano player had come to work. He was playing “Buffalo Gals” and not missing more than one note out of every five.
Wilson wasn’t having much luck with Kincaid, who had been drinking steadily for several hours and had spent just about every penny that he’d gotten from Angel Ware.
“Red hair,” Kincaid was saying, or something like that. And then he said something that might have been “big ears.”
That would describe Hoot Riley pretty well, Wilson thought, but maybe he could get more from Kincaid if he tried another tactic. So instead of asking questions, he provided a little information.
“The man that was with him,” he said. “Did he have long, fair hair? Nearly white?”
“Tha’s ri’,” Kincaid said. “Looked almos’ li’ a ang-, ang-, ang—” He couldn’t get the word out. Finally he said, “One-uh them things with a harp.”
“An angel,” Wilson said.
“Tha’s it. You got it. A sweet li’l ang-, ang-, hell, you know what I’m tryin’ to say.”
Wilson nodded to show that he knew, but he doubted that Kincaid noticed.
“ ’Cept this ’un wasn’t so sweet,” Kincaid continued. “Tell by ’is eyes. Meaner’n a snake.”
That was about as good a description of Angel Ware as Wilson could thing of, and there wasn’t much doubt in Wilson’s mind now that Angel had been the one behind the questions asked at the Wallace place. It was a good thing that Mr. Wallace hadn’t told Kincaid anything useful.
Wilson stood up and flipped a silver dollar onto the table. He watched until Kincaid had managed to corral it by covering it with both hands, then said, “You’ve been a big help, Mr. Kincaid. But you should be more careful of the company you keep.”
Kincaid kept one hand firmly atop the silver dollar, but he moved the other to touch the brow above his good eye, as if to assure himself that the eye was still there.
“Tha’s ri’,” he said. “Be more careful. Damn sure will. You betcha.”
Wilson knew that Kincaid wasn’t going to be careful. He was just going to continue to drink, for as long as his money lasted. That wasn’t Wilson’s problem, however. His problem was finding Angel Ware. He pushed his way through the saloon’s batwing doors and nearly walked right into Mr. Wallace, who was on his way inside.
Wallace stumbled back, caught himself, and said, “I’m glad I caught up with you. Somebody else has been by the house asking questions about the Tolberts.”
“Who?” Wilson asked.
“Don’t know. Some redheaded kid, my wife said. Freckle-faced, looked like he was right off the farm. She said he was lookin’ for a job and he’d heard the Tolberts needed a hand.”
“Who would he have heard that from?” Wilson asked, already knowing the answer. “The Tolberts haven’t lived there in a long time.”
“That’s what the wife told him. But she also told him that the Tolberts had moved down around Blanco.”
“Damn,” Wilson said, certain that the redhead had been Hoot Riley. “How long ago was that?”
“Two hours or so. I been lookin’ for you ever since.”
Wilson thanked Wallace and told him that most likely there wouldn’t be anyone else coming around to ask questions.
“I’m glad to hear that, then,” Wallace said, but Wilson didn’t hear him. The Ranger was already half a block away.
By five o’clock that afternoon, Wilson was pretty sure that Angel and Hoot were no longer in town. He’d located the hotel where they’d been staying, not far from the Salty Dog, and the desk man said they’d left a couple of hours earlier.
“Looked like they was in quite a rush,” he said. “But I didn’t ask ’em why.”
Wilson wasn’t surprised. He figured that plenty of folks left that particular hotel in a rush.
“I don’t guess they mentioned where they were headed,” he said.
“Nope,” the clerk said. “And I didn’t ask ’em. Wasn’t any of my business, and besides, they’d paid their bill. All four of ’em.”
“Four?”
“That’s right. There were the two you asked about and two others.”
Wilson asked what the two others had looked like, and the clerk described them. He didn’t do a very good job, but Wilson was sure the two were Abilene Jack Sturdivant and Ben Jephson. So they were all still together.
That was all well and good, but it was no longer Wilson’s job. He’d been told to check on a bank robbery in Dallas after he’d finished in Ft. Worth. There was supposed to be another Ranger already on the way to Blanco. Wilson figured that one Ranger was probably enough against somebody like Angel, but even a Ranger could use a little help now and then. Wilson decided he’d better get off a telegram to what passed for the law in Blanco, let whoever was in charge know what was heading his way.
For a minute or two, Wilson regretted that he wasn’t going to Blanco himself. Things were likely to get mighty interesting in those parts before too long.
FIFTEEN
Shag Tillman, Blanco’s town marshal, didn’t like telegrams any better than Brady Tolbert did. His experience had been pretty much like the Ranger’s: telegrams brought bad news. You never got one from the governor, telling you what a fine job you were doing. You never got one telling you that some relative you never heard of back East had died and left you a fine home and plenty of money. Instead you usually got one that said some kind of trouble was on the way.
Shag wasn’t a man who liked trouble. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid it. He’d never wanted to be the marshal. He’d been perfectly happy to serve as Rawls Dawson’s deputy and let Dawson make all the decisions, face any danger that came along, and do most of the work.
But then Dawson had gone and got himself killed, something that Shag didn’t plan on having happen to him, not if he could help it. He was going to stay alive just as long as he could, no matter what he had to do to, even if that meant passing some of his responsibility along to someone else.
So when he got the telegram, he took it and rode straight out of town to let Ellie Taine know that trouble was on its way and heading in her direction.
Ellie was sitting in the front yard in a swing, enjoying the last of the daylight when Shag rode up. The sun was reddening the clouds in the west as it dropped down behind them.
“You’re just in time for supper,” Ellie said, walking out to greet Shag. “Get off your horse and stay awhile.”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Shag said. “I won’t be stayin’ for supper, not that I wouldn’t enjoy it, mind you. But I come to bring you some bad news.”
He leaned down from his horse and handed her the telegram that he’d received from Ft. Worth.
Ellie read it quickly. When she’d finished, she said, “Do you know anything about these men?”
“Nothing but what it says in that telegram,” Shag told her. “They’re all fresh out of Huntsville prison and they’re likely headed here because your foreman’s wife is the sister to one of ’em.”
Ellie handed the telegram back to Shag, who reached down and took it.
“We don’t know for certain that they’re coming here,” she said, wishing that she believed it. “They might go anywhere, especially if they know the Texas Rangers are after them.”
“Speakin’ of the Rangers,” Shag said, folding the telegram and sticking it in his shirt pocket, “I ain’t seen hide nor hair of the one that it says here is comin’ to help us out. He should’ve been here already, the way it reads.”
“Maybe he’s here and you just don’t know about it.”
Shag shook
his head sadly. “Now I know you and some other folks around here don’t think I’m much of a lawman, and maybe I’m not. But I keep up with the strangers that come into town. I can name you ever’ one that’s come in the last two weeks, which ain’t many, and not a one of them’s a Ranger.”
Ellie had to admit to herself that Shag was right about her opinion of his abilities. And of course she wasn’t alone in that opinion. But Shag’s shortcomings hadn’t mattered much in the past. Blanco wasn’t exactly a place where you needed a real gunhand in charge of the peace-keeping. The bank robbery in which her husband had been killed was the only thing like that ever to happen in the area as far as she knew, and she’d lived there all her life.
Because of what Sue Tolbert had told her about Angel Ware, however, Ellie suddenly found herself wishing that Rawls Dawson were still around. Or better even than Rawls, Jonathan Crossland.
But it was no use wishing. They were both dead, and what she had was Shag. And Shag was about as useless as the tits on a boar hog, as her grandfather used to say.
Ellie sighed. “I appreciate you riding all the way out here to let me know about this, Shag.”
“Glad to do it,” the marshal said. “All a part of the job. But what’re we gonna do about it?”
Ellie knew that “we” meant her. Shag had been after her more than once, asking for her help with some little problem or other that he didn’t want to handle on his own. It was all because she’d gone after those rapists and killers who’d robbed the town bank. And because of what had happened when she’d gone after them.
She shook her head. All that was in the past, and it wasn’t something she liked to think about. She didn’t want to get mixed up in anything like that again.
“These fellas, they wasn’t in prison for talkin’ back to a sheriff,” Shag said. “They’re killers. All of ’em. If they come here, they’ll cause trouble.”
Ellie thought of what Sue had told her about Angel’s holding a grudge. Shag could be right about the trouble.
“That Ranger,” she said. “The one that’s on his way here. Did it say what his name was?”
Shag looked at the telegram. It was getting harder to see as the sunlight faded from the sky.
“Nope. What difference would that make?”
“Lane Tolbert’s brother is a Ranger. I thought it might be him.”
“Well,” Shag said, “I don’t care whose brother he is, just as long as he gets here. I don’t much like the idea of us havin’ to deal with a bunch of killers.”
Ellie noted the us. “They might not come here,” she said, knowing that she was wrong.
They’d come, all right. Ellie wasn’t one to put much stock in dreams, but it was beginning to look as if Sue’s bad dream of a few nights ago had been an omen.
“They might, though,” Shag said, as if he was reading her mind. “And if they do, you’d better be ready for them.”
Ellie pushed her hair back and looked up at him. “We’ll be ready,” she promised.
But, as it turned out, she was wrong.
PART TWO
SIXTEEN
Sue and Lane were understandably upset when Ellie told them the news about Angel. Or maybe upset was too mild a word. Sue’s face twisted as if she might be in pain, and Lane swore.
“He’ll come here,” Sue said. “I’m sure of it. He’ll want to strike back at us. It’s the way he is.”
“He’d better not,” Lane said. “If he does, he’ll be sorry. We’ll make him sorry.”
Ellie felt the same way. She liked the life she had now, and she didn’t want anyone upsetting it. More than that, she didn’t want anyone she cared about to get hurt.
“He might not come,” she said. “He might think it’s just not worth the trouble.”
“It’s worth the trouble to him,” Sue said. “You don’t know what he’s like.”
Ellie might not have known, but she was getting the idea. She said, “We’ll just have to keep our eyes open. Be on the alert. We can handle him.”
Sue shook her head and repeated her earlier statement: “You don’t know what he’s like.”
“You’re right,” Ellie said, but she was afraid she was going to learn.
They came two nights later, a couple of hours after midnight, when nearly everyone on the ranch was asleep. So much time had passed since the telegram that Ellie had convinced herself that they weren’t coming at all.
They must have been watching for at least part of the day because there was a method to their attack. They seemed to know that Ellie was in the big ranch house with Juana, that the Tolberts were in the foreman’s house, and that the other hands were in the bunkhouse.
They went straight to the foreman’s house and ignored everyone else. They figured to be in and out before anyone really knew what was happening. They almost succeeded, and probably would have, except that Lane Tolbert wasn’t really asleep. He was keeping watch, or he had been until he’d dozed off in a chair tipped back against the wall by the bedroom window.
Lane had spent all his life on ranches of one size or another. He wasn’t a gunfighter in any sense of the word, but he owned a pistol, as every ranch hand did. You never knew when you’d need to kill a snake, and a man might run across some bad types on the trail, the kind of folks who’d take advantage of an unarmed man but be a little bit shy about bothering a man with a gun.
So that night, as he had for the past couple of nights, Lane had sat up in the chair with his gunbelt hanging within easy reach. If Angel showed up, Lane planned to be ready for him. And he would have been if he hadn’t drifted into a light sleep.
But when he heard the noise at the window, it was as if he hadn’t been asleep at all.
He sat up straight up bringing all four legs of the chair to the floor, and drew the pistol smoothly from its holster. Then he rolled to his right, out of the chair. He could see a dark figure silhouetted in the window. There was no one on the ranch who had any reason or excuse to be in that place at that time, and with no hesitation at all, Lane pulled the trigger.
The pistol roared. Lane’s ears rang, and the muzzle flash blinded him temporarily. He thought he heard Sue screaming, but he wasn’t sure. Then something hit him high on the left shoulder. It was as if he’d been kicked by a mule. Two mules.
He fell back against the bed and discovered that he could no longer raise the hand that held the pistol.
And then that he couldn’t hold his head up.
And then that he couldn’t do anything at all.
As soon as the pistol shot exploded, Sue sat bolt upright in the bed. Something had jolted against the bed, too, and she knew that something was terribly wrong. But she didn’t know what. Her first thought was for her daughter. She jumped out of the bed and stumbled over someone on the floor.
Lane. She knew it was Lane, and that the noise she’d heard had been a gunshot. She wanted to do something for Lane, but she thought of her daughter and ran toward the little room where Laurie slept.
She didn’t get there. A man grabbed her. She smelled rotten teeth and sweat, and she clawed at the man’s face and screamed.
The man wrapped up her arms and held her close. She twisted and struggled as hard as she could, but he was too strong for her. She knew that she couldn’t break his grip, so she bent her head to his shoulder and bit him.
She tasted sweaty cloth, but she hardly noticed. She tried to make her teeth meet through the shirt and the flesh.
The man howled and threw her across the room. She stumbled awkwardly. Her heel caught on something soft, and she fell backward. Her head slammed against the wall, and her teeth clicked together.
That was all she knew.
Laurie, too, was awakened by the gun blast. She sat up straight and called for her mother, but the words had hardly passed her lips before someone clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “Shut up, kid. Your uncle Angel is going to take you for a little ride.”
Then she was being lifted and carried away from h
er bed and outside into the night.
The gunshot roused the men in the bunkhouse, too, but as soon as old Jim Colburn opened the door to see what was happening, he was shot in the leg. There was another shot, but it hit the door frame. Colburn fell back inside the bunkhouse, and no one else tried to go out.
Everyone scrabbled around in the dark and found a weapon, but there wasn’t any more shooting. They all figured that as long as they stayed inside and stayed away from the windows, they’d be all right. Since they didn’t know for sure what was going on, nobody moved except for Harry Moon, who tried to do something about Colburn’s leg. Nobody tried to light a lantern. They had a feeling they’d all be safer in the dark.
Ellie didn’t know what was going on, either, but she had a pretty good idea. She found that her mind was perfectly clear, not dulled at all by sleep, and she went straight to the gun cabinet and got out the shotgun that had been Jonathan Crossland’s and which now belonged to her. It shot a tight pattern and would be effective even at a little distance.
She would have been just as happy never to pick up a gun again, and in fact she’d tried to avoid it. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that now.
She loaded the shotgun with two brass shells and went to the kitchen door. She could hear yelling outside, and there was a second gunshot. Then another one.
Ellie pushed the door open and looked out. The moon was low, and the clouds were thick. All she could make out were some dark forms that looked like men on horseback.
She raised the shotgun and was about to pull a trigger when she heard a girl’s muffled scream.
Laurie. Laurie was out there.
Ellie’s stomach turned over. She lowered the shotgun. She couldn’t take a chance on hitting Laurie.
Someone yelled in an unfamiliar voice, “I’m shot, goddamnit! Gimme a hand! I’m shot!”
Ellie walked forward quickly and pointed the shotgun in the direction of the yell. A dark shadow staggered around the corner of the Tolberts’ house about ten yards away. In the darkness, Ellie could see that it was a man who seemed to be waving a pistol around feebly.
