Duggan did, though. “One of Rawlings’ bunch, all right,” he said. “Name’s Bert something-or-other, I think. Get him on his feet. We’ll take him back to the ranch, patch him up, and turn him over to the law tomorrow.” He looked around. “Any more still alive?”
The answer came from Pitch Carey. “Over here, Boss.”
Duggan lit another match and examined another wounded man, this one with a bullet through his thigh and a deep crease on his side. Nearby, two more dark shapes lay in the grass, but they were motionless in death.
“The rest of them made it back into the trees and took off after shooting it out with us for a few minutes,” Carey explained.
“Any of our boys hurt?” Duggan wanted to know.
“A few bullet burns.” Carey sounded worried as he added, “But we can’t find Warren.”
“He’s back over there on the other side of the fence,” Frank said. “I ran into him when I rode up.”
Carey started toward him. “You son of a bitch! What did you do to him?”
“Take it easy,” Frank told the chunky cowboy. “I had to wallop him, but when he wakes up he’ll be fine except for a headache.”
Grimly, Duggan said, “I reckon we’d better go have a look at what’s left of the fella who cut the wire and set off that dynamite.”
Frank’s jaw was set tightly as he walked with Duggan and the other men over to the site of the blast. He didn’t know if enough of the poor bastard would be left to identify him.
It was bad, all right, about as gruesome as anything Frank had ever seen . . . and he had fought in the war. But only one man had been caught in the explosion, and he had been turned so that the force of it struck him mostly on the right side of his body. His arm and leg on that side had been blown off, along with his clothes, and most of his skin was charred and blackened. Enough of his face remained, though, so that Duggan was able to recognize him.
“It’s Vern Gladwell,” Duggan said. “Reckon he never knew what hit him.”
“That’s what you hope, anyway,” Frank said.
Duggan turned sharply toward him. “Gladwell wasn’t a bad sort. I didn’t want this, damn it! I didn’t want anybody to wind up dead. But it was their own choice to come over here and try to cut my fence. Nobody made ’em do it.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Duggan.”
For a second Frank thought that Duggan was going to take a swing at him, but then the cattleman turned away and said to MacDonald, “Go back to the house and get the wagon. We’ll put Gladwell and the two wounded men in there.”
“I don’t know that those fellas will want to ride in the same wagon as Gladwell,” MacDonald said.
“Then they can lay out here in the rain all night,” Duggan snapped.
Despite Duggan’s protests, Frank could tell that he had been shaken by the sight of Gladwell’s mutilated body.
“In the morning I want men out here first thing to replace that post and restring the wire,” Duggan went on. He faced Frank. “As for you, Morgan, I want you off the Slash D by the time we get there. I’ll send your wages wherever you want ’em sent.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Frank said.
“The hell I don’t! When I fire a man, I give him what he’s got comin’. You just let me know where to send the money.”
Frank didn’t bother arguing with him. He turned away and went to look for Stormy.
As bad as the night had been, it could have been worse, he told himself. At least Tyler Beaumont hadn’t died.
At least Beaumont hadn’t died here, Frank amended.
But he didn’t know what was going on wherever the young Ranger was.
31
Al Rawlings had split everyone up and also sent messages to those Brown County ranchers who hadn’t attended the meeting at his place the night before. The whole thing was planned with military precision, even though Rawlings had never been in the army. The men who fanned out across Brown County on this cool, misty autumn night knew what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to do it. The fences would be cut at approximately ten o’clock.
Beaumont found himself going with Rawlings and a rancher named Thad Briscoe to cut the fences on Calhoun’s Diamond C spread. Beaumont suspected that Rawlings didn’t fully trust him, and that was why Rawlings had insisted that Beaumont come with him.
Callie Stratton had wanted to come along, too, but her brother had put his foot down about that. She was back at the ranch, where she wouldn’t be in any danger.
Calhoun’s range bordered Rawlings’s land, so it didn’t take them long to reach the spot Rawlings had chosen for them. The fence ran through a stand of trees for about half a mile. “We’ll cut it at every post,” Rawlings had said before they left. “It’s hard working in those trees and brush. It’ll take them a week or more to replace that wire.”
“What about guards?” Briscoe had asked.
“We have plenty of time to watch for a while before we do anything,” Rawlings had explained. “We should be able to tell how often they come by.”
That was how it had worked out. The three men left their horses about a quarter of a mile away, tied to some post oak saplings, and approached the fence on foot. They waited in thick brush, watching and listening. A few minutes later, a rider came along on the other side of the fence. He skirted the trees and moved on. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he came back the other way.
“We’ll wait until he’s gone by again,” Rawlings decided, “and then we’ll get that damn fence cut. Tye, you ready?”
Rawlings had given Beaumont the wire-cutters, probably as a test to see if he would actually go through with it. Beaumont nodded and growled, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
The question now was whether he could bring himself to go ahead and break the law he was sworn to uphold.
The sentry on horseback passed by and moved on out of sight again, his mount’s hoofbeats sounding faintly in the damp air. Briscoe nudged Beaumont in the side. The young Ranger took a deep breath and started to straighten up and move out of the brush’s concealment....
A dull boom, sounding almost like distant thunder, rolled through the night. Beaumont wasn’t sure, but he thought he felt the earth tremble a little under his feet. It wasn’t unheard of for there to be thunderstorms in Texas at this time of year, but it was uncommon. Beaumont hadn’t seen any lightning, either.
“What the hell was that?” Briscoe asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Rawlings replied. “How about it, Tye? You gonna cut that wire?”
Beaumont took a step toward the fence but then stopped. He shifted the wire-cutters from his right hand to his left. Then he turned back toward Rawlings and Briscoe and dropped his right hand to the butt of his gun. Palming it out smoothly, he said, “No, I’m not. You two step out of that brush and drop your guns. You’re covered.”
“You son of a—” The startled exclamation ripped out of Rawlings. “I knew you were a double-crosser. I knew it! How much are the cattle barons paying you?”
“Nobody’s paying me but the State of Texas. Now drop your guns and elevate!”
Under the threat of Beaumont’s revolver, Rawlings and Briscoe reluctantly complied with the order. As Briscoe unbuckled his gun belt and lowered it to the ground at his feet, he asked, “What do you mean about the State of Texas?”
“I’m a Ranger,” Beaumont said tersely. “And as of now, fence-cutting is over in Brown County.”
“The hell it is,” Rawlings snarled. “It’s just getting started, Tye, or whatever your name is.”
“Tyler Beaumont,” the young Ranger introduced himself. He felt the need to explain. “Look, Rawlings, you’ve got me wrong. I’m just trying to put a stop to the trouble. I’m not working for the big ranchers or anything like that. In fact, I think what they’re doing is wrong. But you can’t right that wrong by breaking the law.”
“The law doesn’t give a damn about anybody who doesn’t have
money, and a lot of it!” Rawlings said bitterly. “The law’s never gonna side with the little fella, and you know it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Beaumont told him. “I’ll prove it, too. Now back off from those guns.”
The two men backed away and Beaumont stepped forward to retrieve their guns. He kept his Colt trained on them as he bent to pick up the weapons from the ground. A light rain had begun to fall.
He was convinced that the boom they had heard earlier had been an explosion of some sort. Beaumont wasn’t sure, but he thought he had heard some gunshots following the blast, too. Something had happened, sure enough, and from the sound of it he thought it had taken place along the fence line of the Slash D.
Beaumont wondered if Frank Morgan had been involved with it, whatever it was.
“Mount up,” he told Rawlings and Briscoe. “We’re going back to your place, Al, and you’re going to call another meeting. I need to tell everyone that there won’t be any more fence-cutting.”
There was a sneer in Rawlings’s voice as he said, “You’re a mite late for that, ain’t you, Beaumont? Fences are being cut all over the county right now.”
“I know it,” Beaumont said grimly. “I should have put a stop to it earlier. I thought maybe if I let things play out, Duggan and the others might be willing to bargain.”
“But then you couldn’t do it.” Rawlings laughed humorlessly. “The Texas Ranger couldn’t bring himself to cut a fence.”
“Shut up and go get on your horse,” Beaumont told him.
He kept the two men covered as they walked back to the spot where they had left their horses. They mounted up and rode toward Rawlings’s ranch house. The rain began to fall harder.
As they came in sight of the house a half hour later, Beaumont knew something was wrong. Even through the mist he could tell that every lamp in the place must be lit, including in the barn. As they came closer he saw a lot of riders milling around. Callie Stratton stood on the covered porch, her red hair bright in the light from inside the house. She was talking to the men gathered in front of the house. As Beaumont and the others approached, she saw them and cried, “Al! Al, come quick!”
It wasn’t until the three newcomers rode up to the group that anyone noticed Beaumont’s gun pointed toward Rawlings and Briscoe. They saw as well that the two men were unarmed and knew something was wrong. “What the hell’s going on here?” a man shouted.
“We’re under arrest, I reckon,” Rawlings said scathingly as he reined to a halt. “Tye’s really a Texas Ranger!”
“A Ranger!” The startled exclamation came from more than one man.
“Take it easy,” Beaumont said sharply. “Nobody’s under arrest. I just couldn’t let any more fences be cut.”
“How about a fence having a hole blown in it?” one of the riders asked.
So that boom had been an explosion, Beaumont thought. “What happened?” he asked.
“Vern and the fellas who went to the Slash D ran into a trap,” one of the men choked out. “Duggan had dynamite rigged to the fence. It blew Vern to hell when it went off!”
Beaumont felt sick inside at the awful news. He had liked Vern Gladwell a lot. The man was actually one of the more reasonable members of Rawlings’s bunch. But now he was dead.
“What about the others?” Beaumont asked tautly.
“Duggan and some of his crew were lyin’ in wait. As soon as the bomb went off, they opened up on the other fellas. A couple of our boys were hit bad enough they had to be left behind. Don’t know if they’re dead or not. The others were able to throw some lead back at the Slash D and then light a shuck out of there. Got some creases and bullet burns, but nothing too serious.”
So one man, Vern Gladwell, was dead for sure and two more might be. The sickness inside Beaumont intensified, but it was joined by a surge of anger. The whole thing never should have gotten this far. Both sides should have been more reasonable, more willing to work things out. He was angry at himself, too, for not finding a better solution.
Well, his cards were on the table now, he told himself. By morning everybody in the county would know that he was a Ranger.
“Look,” he said, “I’m going to try to persuade Sheriff Wilmott not to arrest anybody for cutting fences tonight. This needs to be settled in court, not over the barrel of a gun.”
“The courts’ll just put us in jail for standing up for ourselves!”
Beaumont shook his head. “No, I intend to testify on your behalf—”
“Don’t do us any favors, Beaumont,” Rawlings said coldly. “Not when you’re sittin’ there holding a gun on us.”
Beaumont hesitated for a second and then holstered his gun. “I said nobody was under arrest, and I meant it. But this is the only time I’ll tell you men: The fence-cutting stops tonight!”
“You’re only one man, Ranger,” one of the riders said ominously.
“There are plenty more where I came from. The governor can send a whole troop of Rangers in here if he needs to.”
“Tye’s right,” Callie said. “We can’t fight the Rangers.”
“They bleed like anybody else,” Rawlings snapped. “Like Chris Kane and Vern Gladwell and everybody else who runs up against those power-hungry range hogs!”
Callie stepped up to him and took hold of his arm. “Come on inside, Al,” she urged. “All of you, come in out of the rain. We can’t do anything else tonight.”
“We can’t do anything for Vern at all,” Rawlings said bitterly. But he went with his sister, stepping up onto the porch and moving slump-shouldered into the house. The others began to dismount and follow them. A couple of the men gathered up the reins and led the horses toward the barn.
That left Beaumont sitting there alone in the rain. They had all ignored him as they went inside. He wondered what, if anything, they would cook up in there to answer the hideous violence with which Earl Duggan had met them tonight. He wondered as well how Duggan had found out what Rawlings and the others planned to do. That subject hadn’t come up, but Beaumont had thought of it. Maybe the men were in such a state of shock over Vern Gladwell’s gruesome death that it simply hadn’t occurred to them yet.
But sooner or later it would. Beaumont was sure of that. Just like he was sure that no matter what he said, the trouble in Brown County wasn’t over yet.
With rain dripping off the brim of his hat, he turned his horse and rode toward the little double cabin on Blanket Creek. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
32
Frank heard the hoofbeats of a horse approaching. Dog lifted his head from where it had been resting on his paws and growled. The rain still fell, but Frank was under the roof of the dogtrot between the two sides of the cabin, so he was relatively dry. He stood up from the stool he had found there and tossed the butt of the quirly he had been smoking out into the rain. Then he picked up the Winchester he had leaned against the wall of the cabin and waited.
A dark, looming figure on horseback came out of the darkness. “Hold it right there,” Frank called to him.
Tyler Beaumont’s voice came back warily. “Frank? Is that you?”
Frank lowered the rifle and said, “Yeah. Come on in out of the rain.”
Now that Beaumont was here, Frank didn’t mind opening the door and stepping into the cabin. Earlier, when he had first got here, he’d felt a little like he was trespassing and so had decided to wait in the dogtrot after putting Stormy in the barn. He found a lamp sitting on a table and snapped a match into life with his thumbnail. A moment later the yellow glow from the lamp filled this half of the cabin.
Beaumont came inside, shaking water off his hat. “What are you doing here?” he asked as he hung the hat on a nail. The light rain had gotten his clothes pretty wet, but he wasn’t quite soaked.
“Duggan found out you and me have been working together,” Frank said. “He told me to get off his range, just like we knew he would if he ever found out.”
“And you didn’t have
anywhere else to go. I know the feeling.”
Frank shrugged. “I thought about riding into Brownwood, but I figured we needed to talk.”
“About Vern Gladwell, maybe?”
“So you know about that.”
Beaumont slumped into a chair, rested his elbows on the table, and put his hands over his face for a moment. When he lifted his head, his expression was haggard and haunted.
“I know about it. So do Rawlings and all the others. I guess the men who made it out of Duggan’s trap didn’t waste any time spreading the news.”
“I didn’t know what Duggan planned to do,” Frank said.
Beaumont waved a hand. “I know you wouldn’t be a party to anything like that, Frank.” He clenched the hand into a fist and thumped it down hard on the table. “Why? Why did Duggan do it?”
“He got tired of Rawlings and the others harassing him. He’s always fought back, all his life, whenever anybody threatened him or his range. That’s all he knows how to do.”
“But damn it, things are different now! There’s supposed to be law and order. . . .”
“Maybe civilization hasn’t got quite as strong a foothold in Texas as some folks think it does,” Frank said.
Beaumont just shook his head in despair.
Frank sat down on the other side of the table and started to roll another smoke. After a few minutes Beaumont asked, “Do you know how Duggan found out about what was going to happen tonight?”
“One of the farmers sold out to him. Don’t ask me which one because Duggan never said, and I doubt that he’d tell either one of us.”
“It doesn’t matter. The damage is already done.”
As he thought about Vern Gladwell, Frank could only nod. After a moment he said, “One of Duggan’s punchers has been trailing you. He saw the two of us meeting at the cave. That’s what tipped off Duggan that I was working with you. They slipped off and left me at the ranch tonight when they went to set their trap. I didn’t find out about it in time to stop them.”
Violent Sunday Page 24
