Until Darkness Disappears (A Saga of Texas)

by Will Cook

  The question had been directed at Hinshaw. He said: “Yes, ma’am. The other gentleman is a Texas Ranger.”

  “I’ve seen Mister McCabe once or twice in Laredo,” she said. She turned to the conductor. “Do you have a coach with a compartment?”

  “Yes, but there’s a colonel in it. You know how the Army is, lady.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” she said a bit tartly. “What about the caboose?”

  “That’s for railroad folks,” he said.

  “We’ll use the caboose,” Hinshaw said. He stared at the conductor. “Care to argue about it?”

  “I guess not,” the conductor said.

  Miss Sanders looked at McCabe’s wound. “How long has he had that?”

  “Two days now.” Hinshaw bent forward and went through McCabe’s pockets until he found the handcuff key. He unlocked the half around McCabe’s wrist and snapped it closed on his own. “The prisoner’s got to come along. You might say that I’m minding him for a while.” He turned to die conductor. “Bear a hand with the ranger and don’t get rough with him.”

  McCabe was not a small man, and the conductor had to ask two male passengers to help him. They took him to the rear of the train. Hinshaw got Vargas to his feet and propelled him groggily down the aisle and into the rear coach. Vargas was just regaining enough of his senses to know where he was going, and he tried to turn on Hinshaw and got hit for it, a blow that drove him to his knees.

  “I’m getting tired of belting you, Mexican. The next time I’m going to lay my gun barrel right across your hair oil.”

  “A thousand dollars if you unlock the handcuffs,” Vargas said. “You would not be blamed.”

  “Get up,” Hinshaw said, jerking on his arm. He shoved him on ahead and met the conductor at the door to the caboose. Vargas was forced inside, then Hinshaw unlocked the handcuff from around his own wrist, made Vargas get down on the floor, and locked him to some handrail pipes around the potbellied stove.

  McCabe was placed on a bunk, and the conductor thanked the two passengers and shooed them out. He got the tin box containing the medical supplies, and Miss Sanders examined it.

  “I think we can make do here,” she said. “There’s no need for you to remain if you have other duties.”

  The conductor hesitated, then stepped out. She spoke to Hinshaw. “Would you drop his trousers, please.”

  There was a bottle of ether and some cotton, and she made a mask of this. When McCabe breathed easily, she took out the bullet with the sharp point of a small pair of scissors. Hinshaw was impressed with her efficiency and the way she made do with the few instruments she had.

  “Will his leg be all right?” he asked.

  “It’s infected, but I think it will drain all right.” She went to the sink and washed her hands. “Are you a peace officer, too?”

  “No, I just happened along,” he said, looking at McCabe. “There was a time before in my life when I had a chance to stand by a cranky old man, and I didn’t. Afterward I wished I had, but I never thought I’d get another chance.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It’s all right. My name’s Marty. What’s yours?”

  “Ella. Marty what?”

  “Hinshaw,” he said. He looked at Vargas. “Guess we’re stuck here a while. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said, and smiled.

  Major Carl Manners was in his adobe office, cleaning up some loose paperwork. A lot of his spare time was spent in this manner for the major was thirty, very young for so much responsibility. And he was driven by a desire to succeed, to prove to those older men who resented his position and youth that he was, indeed, more capable than any other man. He owed his job to a political appointment, and he was new to the Texas Rangers, having served only six years.

  He regarded them as impressive years and his contributions to the corps not without value. With some success he had introduced standardization, at least to the degree where rangers shaved regularly and didn’t wear outlandish armament like a pearl-handled pistol on each hip and knife at the belt. His goal was uniforms, anything to make them stop looking like down-at-the-heels cowpunchers. He knew that would be some time coming.

  A ranger came into his office with a telegram in his hand. “Sorry to bother you, Major, but the telegrapher got this ten minutes ago. The ranger station over at Sweet Wells picked it up and passed it along.” He placed the message on Manners’s desk, then stood there waiting. “It’s nearly twelve hours old, but I knew you’d want to see it.”

  “Thank you,” Manners said, then glanced at it. Instantly his attention was caught, and he read it twice before he broke down and swore. “Get Jennings in here! And Ackroyd!” The ranger ran out while Manners sat there mumbling about fools past the age of good sense.

  The two rangers appeared a few minutes later, and Manners flung the telegram at them. “Look what McCabe has done! I gave him three weeks’ vacation to go fishing on the Nueces, and he goes to Louisiana and arrests Pedro Vargas in some . . . some prostitute’s nest!” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “God, I’ll hear from the governor about this. He had no warrant except that old horse blanket issued three years ago.”

  “Well, Major, he did arrest him. That’s something,” Jennings said.

  “Don’t change the subject. I know what McCabe is thinking. He figures I’ll be so glad to see Vargas under lock and key that I’ll overlook this breech of law. Well, he’s sadly mistaken. I’m going to have him dismissed from the service. Blast it all, times have changed. This is Nineteen Five! It’s about time he found a porch to sit on.”

  “McCabe and the governor are old cronies, Major, and….”

  “Don’t recite the man’s lurid past to me,” Manners said. “Well, he’s got Vargas, and he’s let everyone know it. That southbound will be blown up before it reaches Brownsville. Wire all the battalions near enough to reach the railroad. We’ve got to stop that train before it reaches Kingsville and take the prisoner off.” His expression turned bleak. “That gallant old man alone….”

  Ackroyd grinned. “Thought you was mad at him, Major.”

  “I can froth at the mouth and admire his guts at the same time, can’t I? How do you deal with an institution? Go on, get those wires sent. We’ll try to save McCabe’s life.”

  Chapter Nine

  The caboose was old and drafty, and the night was cold now. McCabe lay on the bunk, asleep, drugged by the pain-killer the nurse had given him. The Mexican sat on the floor, his head wedged in the ell formed by the bunk and the coach wall. Ella Sanders sat on a small seat near the sink while Hinshaw hunkered down, his back to the door.

  There was no talk, and he wanted it that way, for somehow all this brought up a bile of memory, and he had to taste the bitterness of it. He’d wintered out his first year in Wyoming, working for a transplanted Texas cattleman, and, in the spring, he’d joined a rodeo in Casper because he’d met a trick rider that had taken his fancy. Funny, but he couldn’t remember her name, just that she had given him a merry, hellish year and left him broke and unable to decide whether he regretted any of it or not.

  In Chicago, he had left the rodeo for a while. This girl’s father was a big man in the stockyards, and Hinshaw had felt that here was a girl with whom he could be happy. As it turned out, she’d just been having fun and he wasn’t, so he hopped a freight for Kansas and joined up with another show.

  He didn’t like to think of all the prize money he had won, or how much he had thrown away on women and poor poker hands. Every time he’d get a stake something made him throw it away, as though he knew deep down that he did not deserve good fortune.

  He raised his head and looked at Ella Sanders sitting there so pretty and composed. Hinshaw asked: “Did you ever go for a canoe ride with a fella?”

  She looked at him as people will when they think they have heard incorrectly. “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve missed something.”

/>   “Have I? What?”

  He hesitated, thinking about it. “I don’t know. When you’re young, people are always pulling at you, telling you to do this or that, and to be good. But when you push that canoe away from the shore, they can’t reach you, and you can be what you want to be, bad or good, and, either way, it’s an accomplishment.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” she said softly. “I suppose a nurse’s cap is my canoe.”

  He brightened. “That’s it exactly. You’re on your own, and, no matter how it turns out, it’s your doing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “What’s your canoe?”

  “I just stepped off of it a couple days back,” he said. Then he grinned to ease the seriousness of it all. “Couldn’t stand the rocking.”

  “Stormy ride?”

  “Blew a duster all the way,” he said, and rolled a cigarette.

  Pedro Vargas smelled the burning tobacco and raised his head. Hinshaw hesitated and then tossed him the sack of tobacco.

  After Vargas made his cigarette and pushed the tobacco back with his foot, he said: “I heard you speak, yanqui. Why do you concern yourself with me?”

  “Maybe it’s because I hate Mexicans,” Hinshaw said. “That wasn’t something I was born with, but something I was taught. And I ain’t sure yet who did it, my pa or the Mexicans.”

  “It is not so with me,” Vargas said. “I was born in the dust of the street while a crowd of yanquis stood by and laughed at my mother’s labor. The hate was a taste in my mouth from the moment I uttered my first cry, and the years have made it more bitter.” He turned his head and looked at McCabe. “He does not hate me. To him I am just game testing the hunter’s skill. He brings me back as a trophy of the chase, nothing more. One day I will kill him, but I will have respect for him when I do it.”

  “Somehow,” Hinshaw said, “it’s hard to imagine you having much respect for anything since you’ve raided four or five towns, raped a hundred women, and left several hundred murdered men in your path.”

  Vargas studied him at length. “The name you are called by seems familiar to me, as though I had heard it before.” He smiled. “It will come to me.”

  “Your life will be richer for it,” Hinshaw said, and put out his cigarette in the sink. He ran some water to wash out the black spot, and Ella Sanders looked at him.

  “You’re cynical, aren’t you? Did you lose faith in a woman or in yourself?”

  He stopped and stared, then gave her an honest answer. “With myself. Are you interested?”

  “I guess not,” she said.

  He went back to his hunker by the door. “I’ve done some thinking along the line, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re pretty cruel toward other people because we can’t bring ourselves to be cruel toward ourselves, where likely it belongs.” He looked at her. “We don’t like being ashamed, and we all are . . . of something.” He put his head on his crossed arms. “If you want to sleep a while, I’ll watch the ranger.”

  “I’ll stay awake,” she said. “It’s my job.” She smiled. “And I’m not doing this one well because I fell down on another. I’ve learned not to spend my life making things up. You really can’t, you know.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “I think you are,” she said. “And I think it’s right.”

  Colonel James Gary waited thirty minutes with great patience, then he waited fifteen more with a mounting irritation. Finally he pushed his dispatch case full of papers aside and opened the door of his private coach. He was a tall, straight-bodied man in his mid fifties, still strong and handsome and commanding in manner.

  He found the conductor approaching and buttonholed the man. “Confound it, I asked you to have someone fetch me a headache powder nearly an hour ago.” He frowned. “What kind of service do you offer on this line?” A bit of the drill field came into his voice, and the conductor looked at him with round, concerned eyes. He fingered his watch fob nervously and straightened his cap.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” the conductor said. “But there’s a ranger on the train who’s been shot. I’ve been pretty busy.”

  Gary frowned. “I heard no shot.”

  “No, no. He was shot before he got on the train.” The conductor smiled. “It’s a little involved, sir, but the ranger has a prisoner, and the nurse took the bullet out of his leg. Never mind. I’ll get your headache powder myself. It’s in the caboose. I’ll fetch it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gary said. “I want to hear more about this. Who’s the prisoner?” He frowned. “You don’t explain clearly, you know.”

  “Some Mexican bandit. Pretty famous around Laredo. They call him El Jefe.”

  “Pedro Vargas!” Gary said explosively. “What a stroke of luck. Where is the prisoner now?”

  “In the caboose, I tell you, two coaches back,” the conductor said. Gary ducked inside for his hat, and, when he reappeared, the conductor took his arm. “Colonel, I don’t think you can get in.”

  “Nonsense,” Gary said. “I represent the United States government.” He walked briskly down the length of the coach, now and then catching himself as the train swayed along.

  Marty Hinshaw stood because Guthrie McCabe was resting peacefully on the couch, and Ella Sanders sat in the only remaining chair. He was beginning to feel weary, but he couldn’t give in to it for he had taken McCabe’s place, and he had McCabe’s prisoner and McCabe’s troubles.

  “He’ll sleep a long time,” Ella Sanders said, rousing Hinshaw from his own train of thought. “He’s a strong man who’s run on nerve, and now he’s run out of steam. By morning he’ll have a fever and won’t know where he is.”

  “I’ll know,” Hinshaw said. “So it’ll be all right.”

  She looked at him. “You stepped into his troubles. You must have a reason.”

  “We all have reasons,” he said. “My pa was a bull-headed cuss. Never knew when to quit. Many times I cussed him for being a mule, but there never was a time when I didn’t bust my buttons being proud of him. But when he needed me most, I ran off and left all my troubles behind. I never got a chance to make it up to him. He died before I ever saw him again. He was fifty when I was born. Three generations apart, he always said, and he never blamed me because I didn’t understand him.”

  “I see,” she said. “So you’re paying him back now, in your own way.”

  “Put it that way, if you like,” Hinshaw said.

  “I’d say that it was a good way to put it.”

  He looked at her and wondered how long she’d been a nurse for the railroad, where she lived, and whether or not she had some slick-haired crackerjack waiting for her at the end of the line.

  A firm step passed their door, came back, then a solid fist rattled the panel. Hinshaw drew his .38-40 and said: “Who is it?”

  “Colonel James Gary, United States Army.”

  “You’re in the right church but the wrong pew,” Hinshaw said. “The smoking car is forward.”

  “Confound it, I want to see the ranger,” Gary said impatiently. He rattled the knob of the door, and Hinshaw cocked his pistol.

  “Do that again and I’ll bust your hand.”

  “Very well, I’ll get the conductor.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hinshaw said. He stepped back so that, when the door opened, he would be shielded, then motioned for Ella Sanders to slip the bolt. Pedro Vargas watched all this in silence, and Hinshaw held a finger over his lips as a warning to stay that way.

  Ella opened the door, and Gary stepped in. “This is outrage "He stopped when Hinshaw pressed the gun into his back and searched him for weapons. “Who are you?” Gary demanded.

  “Teddy Roosevelt in disguise,” Hinshaw said. “All right, put your hands down. Lock the door again.” He looked at Gary, who was staring at McCabe. “Something the matter with you?”

  “McCabe!” Gary said. “By all that holy, it’s Guthrie McCabe.”

  “Just keep back,” Hinshaw said. “He needs the rest. Are
you really a colonel?”

  “Yes, and you can put that blasted pistol away before it goes off,” Gary said. He looked at Pedro Vargas. “I can’t say that this is a pleasant coincidence, seeing you chained to the radiator, but it makes me happy. President Roosevelt sent me here to look into this bandit situation. He’s about ready to bring in federal troops and put this thing down once and forever.” He glanced at Martin Hinshaw. “Will you put that weapon away?”

  “It’s not heavy,” Hinshaw said. ,

  “You’re an obstinate young man,” Gary said. “All right, have it your way but let the hammer down easy before we have a nasty accident in confined quarters.” He studied McCabe with an expression tinged with affection and respect. “We worked together many years ago. Kept in touch for a long time… then I went East, and we just drifted apart. Quite a man, then and now.”

  EUa Sanders said: “Colonel, wouldn’t you like to sit down?”

  “Thank you, no,” he said. “But I would like a headache powder.” He explained how the headache had led him to this compartment. She mixed the powder in a glass of water, and he drank it, then glanced at Hinshaw. “The conductor only mentioned one ranger on the train.”

  “I’m a friend of McCabe’s,” Hinshaw said. “Colonel, it’s a little crowded in here, and since this ain’t visiting hours… .”

  “Of course,” Gary said. He turned to the door, then paused. “Say, I have a coach to myself. Why don’t you remove the prisoner? We’ll take turns guarding him.”

  Martin Hinshaw shook his head. “Mister McCabe wouldn’t like that. When he wakes up, he’ll want to see Vargas chained like a dog.”

  “Your offer is kind,” Ella Sanders said, “but Marty’s right. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes. I trust I can return in the morning?”

  “Just don’t rattle the knob,” Hinshaw said, and slid the bolt back. After he closed the door, he said: “When the conductor comes by, I want to ask him about this colonel.” He holstered his pistol and looked at Pedro Vargas. “If the Army ever marched on you, they’d clean out your bunch like rats from a cellar.”