Cougar's Prey (9781101544846)

by Sweazy, Larry D.

  “You know where we’re going?” Josiah asked, riding up alongside Scrap.

  Scrap nodded. “Ingleside. We can get word out to Austin, then ease in the rest of the way. I, for one, am darn glad to be free of Corpus and that spy business. I like bein’ a Ranger with a company a heck of a lot more than I like playin’ like I’m somebody else.”

  Josiah didn’t respond, he just settled back, giving Scrap the lead again, and watched the little village come into full sight.

  He wasn’t so sure the spy business was over with . . . at least for him.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ingleside was a much bigger town than it looked from the distance. It sat inland, not right on the shore, but close enough to enjoy the gentle night breeze off the water. Three wide streets, cut off with intermittent alleyways, made up the commercial district. Simple frame houses made up the rest of the town, situated under canopies of live oaks and the occasional palm tree. Most of the houses were dark, as were most of the businesses.

  A dim lamp sat burning in the sheriff’s window, a small white stone building with heavy bars on all of the windows.

  Scrap pulled Missy up to the hitching post, tied her off, dismounted, and stood in wait. “You comin’ in, Wolfe?”

  Josiah sat solidly in the saddle, staring down the street at the brightly lit saloon. Music and laughter flooded out into the street, along with a good deal of light, cutting into the night like a flare set high in the sky. In an odd way, a way that was unusual for Josiah, he was drawn to the light, to the liveliness. He knew if there was one place to numb his mind and body, he was looking at it.

  “No, I’ll wait. Things didn’t go so well with Sheriff McLane. You tell him what you need to. Maybe he can rustle up the telegraph operator and make the morning in Austin a lively one.”

  Scrap stared at Josiah with a curious look on his face. Innocence still showed on the boy’s face, even at night, but there was a knowing consideration in his eyes that was surprising. “You’re gonna wait for me, right, Wolfe?”

  Josiah ignored the question. “Go on, now. Do what you came to do.”

  Scrap shrugged and loped inside the jail, checking over his shoulder twice before disappearing behind a closed door.

  Josiah waited until he heard voices before easing Clipper down the street. The saloon was two blocks south.

  Ingleside shared a lot of the same construction techniques as Corpus—most of the buildings were made of shellcrete or wood; the hard shell made the buildings more durable and able to withstand the massive storms that billowed ashore in the summer and fall of the year. There was only one two-storey building that Josiah could see, a hotel, welcoming even in the dark. It was whitewashed, and the sign over the double doors was gilded with gold lettering and fancy leaves, announcing that the Stratford House was a place of fine comfort. Most all of the windows were dark, but a few, the ones closest to the saloon, still burned.

  The buildings in between the hotel and the saloon consisted of a hat maker, a mercantile, and a newspaper office. Josiah could see a clock on the wall in the newspaper office, from the light emitting out of the saloon. It was nearly midnight.

  There had to be a livery close, but Josiah decided to wait to stable Clipper. He hitched up the Appaloosa and patted the horse’s neck. “Don’t go causing any trouble now, you hear.”

  Clipper didn’t respond, just stood motionless, his nose pointed toward the batwings of the saloon.

  The ground under Josiah’s boots was soft, pliable, but not muddy. He’d had trouble getting his footing on sand from the day he arrived in Corpus Christi. It just seemed harder to walk on, to get where he was going.

  He gladly made his way to the boardwalk, hopped up on it, then walked into the saloon without a second thought. Elliot would have no trouble figuring out where he’d gone—even though he didn’t know Wolfe as a drinking man, or a man who partook in libations on a regular basis. Now that he thought of it, the boy had never seen him smoke, cuss, or take enough whiskey to his tongue to make him the least bit . . . drunk.

  The noise and light were overwhelming, and it took Josiah a second to adjust his vision and get his bearings. He stopped just inside the door.

  It was a long, narrow, single-level room, and every lamp was burning as brightly as possible. The bar took up a whole wall, a mirror reflecting the action on the floor. Bottles were heavily stocked, and there wasn’t an empty stool to be had. Cowboys mixed with ranch hands. Gentlemen gamblers sat at the tables, which were jam-packed tight in the room so that it was difficult to navigate the floor without rubbing or bumping into someone. Women, brightly and provocatively dressed, flittered about, pouring beer, hanging on to men, hoping to bring some luck or a customer after the last faro card had been dealt.

  Smoke hung in the air like storm clouds forming on a spring day, the bite of the tobacco stinging Josiah’s nose. There were other smells—whiskey, perfume—mixed in with the smoke, the business of rowdiness and relief creating an aroma all its own.

  Josiah pushed his way to the bar and stood patiently behind a man already waiting his turn for a refill of beer.

  “You’re off da trail awful late. You pushin’ in dem woollies?” The man was short, wore a grizzled beard that was gray, like his eyes, and was dressed in shepherd’s clothes, a loose-fitting sack shirt, tied at the waist with a rope. He wore a black felt hat with a hawk feather stuck in the band.

  Josiah shook his head no. “Just coming in for a drink, that’s all.”

  “You see any of dem damn Meshicans?”

  “No.”

  “Two fellas traded shots earlier. Won’t be long and dat der trouble will make its way here, I tell you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Josiah watched the barkeep, a thin rail of a man, his black hair thick with pomade, move behind the bar with grace and purpose. There was not a wasted move to be witnessed. The pull of a draft with one hand brought the other hand around to an empty glass in anticipation of the next drink to fill. Obviously, the saloon was consistently busy. That or the man was a dancer of some kind; he orchestrated drinks for a thirsty crowd like a performer on a stage.

  Josiah was leery of barkeeps. Had reason to be. He knew of their shooting skills firsthand. He was sure there was a cache of weapons under the bar, within quick reach of the talented barkeep.

  A beer and an open hand appeared almost out of nowhere, taking the shepherd by surprise. The barkeep’s demanding eyes were close behind. Time was being wasted.

  “Der, der, you go . . .” the short man said, dropping his coins into the barkeep’s outstretched hand. “You watch out for dem damn Meshicans, now.”

  The barkeep scowled at the shepherd, as the hand with the money in it disappeared behind a short apron. He pointed at Josiah with the other hand. “What is it for you, mister?”

  The shepherd quickly disappeared into the crowd, leaving the smell of wet wool to linger a bit longer just behind him.

  “Whiskey,” Josiah said. “Rye whiskey. And make it two.”

  CHAPTER 21

  A stool emptied at the opposite end of the bar, and Josiah made his way through the crowd of men. He’d downed the whiskeys one right after the other. His nostrils flared, his throat burned, but he didn’t feel invigorated. The problem was, he still felt every bit of the guilt and anger that he’d tried to rid himself of in the first place. There was no immediate numbing of his heart or memory, and that unsettled him more than his inability to move through the saloon without bumping into someone or catching an elbow in the side himself.

  He’d drunk more whiskey since arriving in Corpus than any other time in his life. Being young and away from home, when he’d first gone off to fight in the War Between the States, had presented many temptations. Drinking whiskey was one of them, and women, of course, was another. But the enjoyment of drunkenness had never taken hold with Josiah. Whiskey left him feeling sick, made his head hammer with pain even before the anguish of the next day set in. Losing all sense of his common facul
ties was not something that appealed to him, either, even at a young age.

  Over time, as his life changed, and the reality of drinking whiskey made itself known to him, there would be months in between a swig of the alcohol, then years, especially after he married Lily. There was no desire to live a rowdy life then, if there ever had been before. There was no temptation to avoid because the desire was just not there.

  His father had never taken a liking to whiskey, either, so Josiah supposed it was a family thing—maybe it didn’t agree with them the way cabbage or milk disagreed with some people.

  Life as a spy and Ranger seemed to be changing everything, and Josiah was growing accustomed to the taste of fire and ferment, though he still couldn’t say he enjoyed it. Enough whiskey just eased certain parts of his mind to a quiet, or unrecognizable, place, made him forget for a brief moment that he still had responsibilities in the world, like a son waiting at home, growing up quickly without the presence of his father. That thought, missing out on Lyle’s childhood, was harder to swallow most of the time than the burning whiskey. Add on the dizzying emotional torrent unleashed by the senseless death of Maria Villareal, and whiskey sure seemed like a quick cure for a haunting memory, even for a man like Josiah Wolfe.

  He could still hear the woman’s dying wish, Tell Juan Carlos I have always loved him. And that made him push harder to the bar, made him hunger for another drink of whiskey so he could rid himself of that ghostly voice.

  The vacant stool faced toward the door, which was a good thing. Keeping an eye out for Scrap was not a priority, but never having his back to the door was. It was a mistake that he would not make, even in a nearly inebriated state. Josiah was also in direct sight of the barkeep and signaled his desire for another glass of whiskey as he settled onto the seat.

  The barkeep nodded and, within a matter of seconds, produced the desired drink without asking how much, or what kind of whiskey.

  Josiah had adjusted to the smoke in the large room and the loud noise, the laughter, and the ping and chink of the piano, which probably had metal taps installed on the keys, from the sound of things. It didn’t matter; the louder the music the better as far as he was concerned. It was typical saloon fare—fast and wordless—the piano player an obvious professional who knew what he was doing.

  The crowd in the saloon was a surprise so late, packed as it was, and through the week. Most men looked like cowboys, probably readying for a long ride north. Others were woollies—sheep men—fewer in number, wary of the cowboys, and all huddled together in a far corner, either keeping together by choice or maintaining their safety in numbers, much like the animals they served as guardians to.

  The whiskey had taken its course and warmed Josiah from head to toe. As it was, he was sweating.

  “Hey, there, brother, you look familiar,” the thin, balding man sitting next to Josiah said. “You ever get up Fort Worth way?”

  “I’ve been through there.”

  “We all been through there, brother. Have you spent any time there? Put your boots under the bed a time or two? Lived there, son, or just punched through?” A cigarette dangled from the man’s lips. Scrap called them quirlies, and the man’s cigarette smelled similar to what the boy hand-rolled and smoked, like a sheaf of useless weeds, all bound together and set afire.

  “No, can’t say that I have. That where you’re heading?” Josiah asked.

  The man drew hard on the cigarette, then exhaled, exposing a mouthful of yellow teeth. “What makes you think I’m heading anywhere?”

  Josiah smirked. “We’re all heading somewhere, brother,” he said, mocking the man’s original tone.

  The man flashed a cockeyed look at Josiah. Anger rippled across his thin face, then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a look of knowing in his beady eyes. He nodded. “I suppose we are. Or coming from some place else, like Corpus. That your story? You take a fight to them Mexicans who sought to invade that peaceful city on the bay?”

  “Could be. I’m just looking for relief, I guess,” Josiah said.

  “Well, it looks like all the doves are spoken for; you’re gonna have a long wait if female comfort is what you’re after, brother.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll take companionship with my drink, if you don’t mind.”

  As with whiskey, Josiah had never taken a liking to rambling, searching out one woman and then on to the next. He understood Maria’s claim of true love for Juan Carlos more than he could admit, but his one true love was dead, buried in the family plot on the little farm outside of Tyler. Now his temptation was to love again, whether it be Pearl Fikes, Billie Webb, or temporary female companionship. It wasn’t like he’d never purchased time with a woman—his first time was like that, in the war. But that was different. That was a mountain to climb, a rite of passage. Now he was just lonely, unwilling to allow another woman to get close to him like he had Lily. At the very least, he could have his way with a dove, as the man had called the whores, and then leave. There would be no memory or requirement of emotion, the bill paid in full, left on the table after the deed was done. It was always an option for Josiah—but thinking about it was as far as he ever got these days.

  The man shrugged off Josiah’s comment. “Like I would care about your choice of companionship.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t.”

  The man motioned for the barkeep. “Two. One for me, and one for my new friend here.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Josiah said, but it was too late. Two whiskeys appeared in front of them, like they had been conjured in a magician’s show.

  “Too late now.” The man picked up his glass and downed the whiskey in one hungry gulp. For a thin man, it looked like he could hold his drink.

  Josiah followed suit, the whiskey traveling easier into his gullet this time around, the warm buzz growing, and the numbness that he was seeking when he first arrived in the saloon slowly taking over, but taking over nonetheless.

  The man reached down and tapped out the cigarette on the well-worn heel of his boot, then stuffed the remainder of it in a pouch he pulled from his pants pocket. “My name’s Edgar Leatherby, by the way.”

  Josiah nodded, extended his hand, and didn’t miss a beat with his response. “Zeb. Zeb Teter. Nice to meet you, Edgar.” They shook hands cautiously, then Josiah returned to staring at the bottom of the empty glass in front of him. His ears were starting to ring.

  “My friends call me Leathers. Used to be Father Leatherby, but that was a lifetime or two ago.”

  “You don’t look like a preacher man.”

  “I’m not now. But I was once. I spent the best years of my life in the New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Trappist monks. You know about them?”

  Josiah shook his head no. “I don’t know much about religion. Can’t say I ever met a monk. Wouldn’t know one if I saw one.”

  “Perhaps you’re better off,” Leathers said, motioning for another drink. He poked his index finger in the air, ordering just one drink this time around, leaving Josiah to buy his own—which he was not inclined to do, at the moment.

  “What are you now?” Josiah asked.

  “Just a drover, setting off north like most of these fellas. Working the trail, making money, still wandering, but still seeking, too. ‘For then are they monks, if they live by the work of their hands.’ A Rule of St. Benedict. I guess I can’t escape my past. How about you?”

  “I’ve never been a monk,” Josiah laughed. For some reason he found his own response funny. It had been ages since he’d cracked a smile and let out a laugh. It was a foreign sound to his ears, and there was no question that the laugh was provoked by the amount of alcohol he’d drunk.

  Leathers laughed, too. But it was a short laugh. His face grew serious faster than Josiah’s. “Well, Zeb Teter, you never did answer my question about Fort Worth. You ever spend much time there? I swear I’ve seen you somewhere before, brother.”

  Josiah shook his head no, again, and studied Leathers a little
closer, looking to see if he looked familiar, too. He didn’t like being called “brother” and was sure he would remember that if he’d met the man before.

  Edgar Leatherby was as tall as Josiah, but thin as a hitching post. He smelled of tobacco and whiskey, and his clothes were worn, not quite rags but not store-bought and green with hard creases, either. A black felt hat lay on the bar. It looked like a surviving relic of the man’s past life; a padre’s hat to cover up his balding head. Josiah had seen men wearing the hats and black robes before, in and around the churches and missions of every town he had visited, but never paid them much attention, or wondered about the meaning or use of the attire.

  “I grew up near Tyler,” Josiah said. “Spent all my life there until I left out for the war. Came home to it, then moved on to Austin not so long ago. Been on the trail since, but I get back to the capital from time to time. I’m not sure I’m cut of the cloth that will allow enjoyment of city life. Was up Fort Worth way nearly a year ago, but that was for the matter of a day. Not much more than that prior, maybe passing through a few years back, too. I think you must be mistaking me for somebody else.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Trading hides.”

  Leathers chuckled, took the drink from the barkeep, downed it, then looked Josiah square in the eye and said, “You’re a terrible liar, Zeb Teter.”

  “Now, why would you go and say that?”

  “I’ve known hide traders, been friends with them, and you don’t have the fingers or the smell they did.”

  “Ever cross your mind I was new at it?”

  “No. It crossed my mind that you’re saying you’re something you’re not.” Leathers put his hand on Josiah’s shoulder and stared directly at him, a hard, penetrating look in his eyes. “It’s all right, brother, you can be anything you want to be. I don’t mind, but you’re fooling yourself, not me.”

  Something stirred deep in Josiah’s stomach; rage quick to rise, an uncontrollable feeling that was as alien as the taste of salt air on his tongue and his belly full of whiskey. “My name is Zeb Teter. I am what I say I am. Now, take your damn hand off me.”