Bannerman the Enforcer 16

by Kirk Hamilton

  “Yancey, this is madness,” Dukes said curtly. “I’ve got the town’s lawmen and a whole troop of Rangers out searching. You’d be better off taking things easy like Doc Boles wants you to do.”

  “You don’t always do what Doc Boles tells you,” Yancey pointed out, knowing of a dozen instances when Dukes had deliberately ignored the medic’s instructions after he had had a heart attack.

  “That’s different,” Dukes said gruffly. “I’m head of State. I have to take some chances. But you don’t have to, Yancey.”

  Yancey looked down at him soberly. “Yes, I do, Governor. Cato’s my friend, as well as my partner. With some luck I’ll be back in time for Vardis’ trial. If not, I reckon you can stall things off for a spell.”

  Dukes nodded grimly. “Yes, I can do that. All right, Yancey. You’ve got a roving commission. Learn what you can. Find Cato and bring him back. You’ve got a month.”

  Yancey smiled faintly, leaned down from the saddle and shook the governor’s hand, fighting back dizziness. He threw a brief salute and put the big gray forward at the beginning of his long, dangerous trail.

  Within a couple of hours, Yancey was feeling a whole lot better. And it wasn’t just because he had downed a couple of stiff whiskies before he started.

  One of the frustrating things about this mission was the fact that no one seemed to know anything much about Storm and his men. The woman was obviously in with them but, apart from the fact that she had married someone named 'Duke’ Early, there was little else known about her. Yancey had asked Dukes to have someone find out what they could about Early over the last couple of days but it didn’t amount to much.

  He was a rancher somewhere down south, some folk said, in the brasada, others said along the Nueces River. There were rumors that he hid outlaws on his spread for a cut of their take, and some said he dabbled in gun-running and the wetback trade, but these things were said about most ranchers along the border who kept to themselves. People knew nothing much about them so they made up these things to fill the gaps. Storm might or might not have worked for Early. Yancey figured more than likely he did. It seemed too much of a coincidence otherwise that Storm should be around the same place as Duke Early’s wife.

  That shoot-out as Storm and his men were taking Cato off, implicated the red-haired woman as well. Cato’s wrists had been bound but the woman’s hadn’t. In Yancey’s book that made her an accessory to the abduction of Cato. It confirmed his suspicions that Cato had been tested for some reason and that Jeannie Devon had set Cato up.

  Then it hit him; the horses! Six horses, four for Storm and his three men, one for Cato and one for the woman. They had been outside the cabin on Castle Hill, some of the men mounted, Cato tied up. He had thought about it for a long time before he realized it was something that everyone would likely overlook as being too obvious. And that was, where had that bunch kept the mounts while they had been in town? They surely hadn’t stalled them at the trail-drivers’ rooming house or left them roaming the streets! Those horses must have been at a livery and cared for during the time Storm and his men were in town. The surrey the woman had been driving had been hired, so he wouldn’t get anything there, but he might be lucky enough to find a stable hand who recalled the brands on those mounts.

  He found the man, but it took him most of the day and then he had had to go hunt up the stable hand outside of town, spending the day fishing in Shoal Creek. He was due to go on duty the next day and had a nice pile of catfish beside him under a wet sack when Yancey rode up and told him what he wanted.

  “Your boss says you strapped some broncs for a wild bunch under a hombre named Storm,” Yancey said after introducing himself and admiring the catch of fish.

  “That’s right,” the stable hand told him, reeling in his line and taking a long-bladed knife from his belt. He began to skin the catfish expertly.

  “You know this fellow Storm?”

  “Never seen him before till a few days ago.”

  “He say where he was from?”

  The man shrugged. “Just ‘south’, I guess. Don’t rightly recollect.”

  “Didn’t happen to notice the brands on those mounts, I s’pose?”

  The stable hand paused in his chore, looking narrowly at Yancey. “Might’ve.” He held up a large catfish. “Want to buy one?”

  “Not right now. Try to remember those brands, will you?”

  The man looked dubious, starting on another fish. “Guess not. You sure you wouldn’t like a catfish? Fine eatin’ and they’re fresh-caught as you can see.”

  “No, I reckon not. I’m just interested in those brands.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry, can’t recollect. Look, these fish are really somethin’ when they’re cooked right after they’re caught.” He looked steadily at Yancey. “You could have ’em for a dollar a piece.”

  “Kind of expensive!”

  “I could spare five of ’em.”

  Yancey got it, then.

  “All right, I guess I’ll take five,” Yancey said.

  The man grinned as he scooped up the money. “Finest-eatin’ fish you’ll get around here.”

  “I’ll look forward to tasting ’em,” Yancey said sourly. “Now, you figure you can remember the brands on those horses that belonged to Storm and his pards?”

  The man made a big thing out of it, screwing up his face, making out he was thinking hard. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, I think I recollect now. It might’ve been a Broken T.”

  “Might’ve been?”

  “We-ell, guess it was a Broken T.”

  Yancey frowned. “Ever heard of a ranch that uses that brand?”

  “Nope. And I got no more fish to sell. Mebbe the brand’s in the sheriff’s brand register.”

  Yancey looked surprised at the practical suggestion and nodded slowly. “Obliged. Say, you can keep those fish. I prefer a beef steak any day. Adios.”

  The man stood there with a half-gutted fish in his hand as Yancey mounted up slowly and rode back towards Austin. He held up the fish.

  “Dunno what you’re missin’!” he called after him.

  Yancey lifted a hand briefly and rode on.

  The sheriff of Austin was a middle-aged man, starting to run to fat but still with plenty of muscle packed around his big body. He sat at his desk, overflowing his chair, thick legs thrust straight out. He shook his massive head slowly and closed the battered brand register with a dull thud.

  “Not listed, Mr. Bannerman,” he told Yancey in his deep voice. “Don’t mean much, though. Lot of brands don’t get into the book. They’re changin’ all the time. Why don’t you go see one of the agents? If they’re sellin’ the cattle in Austin likely he’ll have some idea where the ranch is.”

  Yancey thanked the lawman and went out to look for a cattle agent who had bought a herd carrying the Broken-T brand.

  He didn’t find one. All next day he rode around Austin checking every cattle agent in town, even double-checking and then going down to the railroad shipping yards and the meat works, but no one had bought a Broken-T cattle herd. There was one man who remembered seeing the brand on some steers but it had been vented by the trail-driver who had bought them and he couldn’t recall which one it had been. As he dealt mainly with men who drove their stock up from the border ranches, he hazarded a guess that the Broken-T spread could be down south.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but Yancey had a feeling that Duke Early was going to be involved in this. And then Harlan came looking for him and told him that the Rangers had been working out from Austin in an ever-widening circle, checking every inch of ground, and they had tracked down a definite sighting.

  “This young couple have been meetin’ on the quiet away from town and their parents,” Harlan told him. “They were down by the river bank under some willows when they heard riders. They stayed dead still, hopin’ it wasn’t anyone lookin’ for ’em. They spotted a bunch of riders: five men and a red-haired woman. One of the men had his hands tied behind his bac
k and he was smaller than the others. Not much doubt it was Cato and the Storm bunch.”

  “Where was this?”

  “South.”

  Yancey nodded. “Just as I figured. Well, thanks, Harlan I’ll stock up and head out.”

  “How’s the wound?”

  “Better. Headache’s down to a tolerable mule kick now.”

  Harlan’s thin lips twitched in that ghost of a smile and he nodded, turned and strode away.

  Yancey mounted up and headed his horse towards the nearest general store.

  He lost the trail between Lockhart and Gonzales; south of Austin. He spent two days in the area before he picked up a faint hint of an unconfirmed sighting and this led him out towards Vance. This way, they would be going in the direction of the Gulf Coast and he wondered about the rumors of Early being involved in the wetback and slaving trade.

  But so far there was no real proof that the elusive Duke Early was connected with Cato’s abduction. This was just Yancey’s hunch, and he figured to follow through on it. He had been right about Jeannie Devon and he could be right about Early.

  In Vance, he went to the local Ranger headquarters but was told no bunch of riders fitting the description Yancey gave had passed through the area. The captain had men out looking for them and Yancey spent an impatient night in the small adobe town. He was considering his next move the following morning when the captain came to his room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You’ve got the luck of the devil, Bannerman,” the officer said and smiled slowly when he saw Yancey tense in anticipation. “My men have found a trail. A Mexican shepherd spotted the bunch cuttin’ across the Sierras when he was chousin’ some of his lambs. But they split up—three goin’ one way, three the other. He wasn’t close enough to see who went where when they split up.”

  “Which direction did they take?”

  “One bunch headed due south, the other southeast.”

  “Due south could take ’em to the Gulf, right?”

  “Yeah, but due south could also take ’em down to Corpus Christi. Good place for stoppin’ off for lots of places. Or pickin’ up a ship.”

  Yancey considered it. “How about southeast? That’d go back towards the Nueces country wouldn’t it?”

  “It would. And the Nueces also flows into Corpus Christi Bay.”

  Yancey nodded and got to his feet. “That’s it, then. They’ve only split up to throw pursuit, but they’re all headed for the same place. And I’ll bet it’s the Nueces and the brasada country.”

  “Brasada? Man, that’s bad-luck territory. Mean and miserable. And the spreads in there are run by men as ornery as the snakes in them thickets and swamps. Wouldn’t want to be you if you’re figurin’ on headin’ into that neck of the woods, Bannerman.”

  Yancey began gathering his gear. “That’s where I’m headed, captain. If you don’t hear from me in a couple of weeks, I suggest you send in a troop to look for a ranch run by Duke Early. I think the brand is the Broken-T.”

  The Ranger shook his head slowly. “You’re plumb loco, you know that?” As Yancey went on packing his warbag the Ranger sighed. “All right. But your best bet will be to leave word at the nearest Ranger Post to where you’re operatin’. I’ll give you a list of places where you can find outposts.”

  “Obliged,” Yancey said and headed for the door, impatient to be on the trail. “Let’s go.”

  Five – Brasada

  The Brasada was a loose term used to describe a vast area of country with no clearly defined borders. A man knew when he was in the brasada country, all right, for almost without warning he was in a land that alternated between swamps, thick, tangled brush thickets and heavily-wooded flats and gulches. The muddy Nueces twisted and writhed its way through and served several small towns on its journey to the Gulf.

  Lost in the midst of the hundreds of square miles of thickets and swamps and woods were isolated ranches and cabins, inhabited by men who made a living from the wild, horn-raking brush cattle. The beef was tough and stringy when it came directly from the brasada country, but let those hardy steers have a month on lush pastures and the beef steaks they would yield would be amongst the tenderest and juiciest to be found anywhere. It was no easy job working cattle and it called for a special breed of men. Among these tough beef-raisers were outlaws, men on the dodge, who reckoned they were safe once they hit the brasada. Few survived, and if they did it was alone and without kin, for if it took a tough breed of man to stay alive in the brasada, doing things his own way, making his own law, it took a woman of rare courage to follow her man into such an area. It called for courage ... or a powerful motive, like the promise of riches beyond imagining. For there was one persistent rumor that enticed many people into the brasada, some to leave their bones there, others to stagger out, fever-crazed, babbling about swamp-devils and the terrible snakes in there.

  That rumor was the story that the Conquistadors of Salvador de Cristobal had fled into the brasada after sacking a lost city in the high reaches of the Nueces. Legend had it that the band of ten conquistadors had gone into the thickets, tracked by vengeful Indians, and that, one by one, they had been slaughtered. They had ridden in with horses and packs weighted down with gold and silver, a mule train that could hardly move for the weight of gold. Yet no more than a handful of gems and a long gold chain was ever found. Some claimed the loot had been dumped along the way in the swamps and sinkholes; others said the mules were driven into a huge hidden cave, shot on the spot, and then the cave mouth sealed with a rockslide. If the story of the sacking of the ancient city were true ... and traces of Aztec culture had been found around the high reaches of the Nueces ... then the lost treasure must be worth millions.

  Many an expedition and groups of adventurers, sure they possessed a genuine map, had searched for the gold over the years, but it had never been found.

  It had been tales of this fabulous treasure which had first drawn Richard ‘Duke’ Early to the brasada. He had an ancient map drawn, on old hide, supposedly handed down from a descendant of one of the original Indian avengers who had tracked and killed the Spaniards, and he had wanted to outfit an expedition to search for the treasure. When he realized how much it would cost and how many he would have to share the treasure with, he had decided on a one-man expedition. He still needed considerable capital for supplies and mules, at least five thousand dollars. He did not like work of any kind and he was not lucky at cards. He had only ever been successful with women.

  And so he had gone to the Barbary Coast, searched out his mark, not aiming too high on the social scale for he did not want there to be too much of a hue and cry later should things not work out according to plan, and he had ended up marrying Jeannie Devon, a young naive woman who had had almost ten thousand dollars left to her in a legacy not long before he arrived on the scene.

  The treasure expedition had failed, but Early had seen how the few cattlemen in the brasada were a law unto themselves, having absolute power of life and death over their workers, be they Mexican laborers, wetback slaves, or white men who had reasons for not wanting to return to civilization.

  The set-up appealed to him immensely: he could be a king in his own right. He realized now that power meant more to him than money: he only wanted gold for the power it would give him. But here he could take what land he wanted, lay claim to it and defend it any way he chose. No one would argue with him. Not even Jeannie Devon, who had accompanied him on the treasure hunt despite everything he could do to keep her away. But she had been wise enough to keep control of the money, only handing over to him what he needed immediately. She had intended to have her share of the treasure. When it was not forthcoming, she stubbornly stood by, aiming to get back her original investment ... and more. She did not intend to return to her ’Frisco social circle with a sad tale about the husband who had run off with her money. When she went back, she wanted it to be in triumph, as a rich woman who could lay claim to being the wife of a rich Texas landowner.
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  Duke Early had seen that she could be useful to him, once they understood each other. They didn’t have to love, or even like each other, just understand what they were about and work for their mutual benefit. So far, it had worked out well and Early had pulled off several successful ‘jobs’ with Jeannie’s aid, for he was contemptuous of the law.

  Now, as he paced the long porch of his remote ranch, looking frequently towards the trail that led in from Santa Rosa, he wished he knew for sure if she had been successful this time. For this would be their biggest job yet and, if it came off, they would be rich, rich enough for Jeannie to go back to ’Frisco while he stayed here and expanded his kingdom.

  Already, folk around the brasada and on both sides of the border, were saying that a man didn’t count the miles to the Broken-T, as he had called his empire, he counted the graves.

  People were beginning to realize that Early was a power to be reckoned with and he would be even more so when this job was finished.

  Duke Early, tall, lean, elegant in broadcloth and white silk shirt, jammed his cigar into a corner of his mouth and continued to stare at the faint trail across the saddleback, beyond which the snake thickets began. Storm should be appearing there with his small cavalcade within the next day or so. If he didn’t, they would be too late. He just hoped they had found the right man for the job.