Outlaw Ranger

by James Reasoner

  The bartender swiped a rag over the hardwood and said, "Well, it's none of my business."

  Sensing the man was about to turn away, Braddock said, "I heard you had some trouble around here not long ago."

  "Here in Ozona, you mean? I don't recollect any."

  "I'm talking about the stage holdup between here and Comstock. It's got folks in this part of the country stirred up."

  "Oh." The bartender nodded. "Well, that's true enough, I suppose. That was a bad thing. A mighty bad thing."

  "Outlaws killed the driver and all the passengers on the stage, is that right? Something like six people in all?"

  "Yeah." The bartender blew out his breath in a disgusted sigh. "Took a while for the sheriff's posse to find the body of the gal they carried off, and when they did I reckon they wished they hadn't. Those bastards tore her up real bad, I heard. Finding her didn't do a thing for her, just gave some of those possemen nightmares."

  "They were able to give her a decent burial," Braddock pointed out.

  "Yeah, there's that, I suppose. But I wouldn't have wanted to see what they did to her."

  "The sheriff couldn't trail the men who were responsible for what happened?"

  "He tried, but to tell you the truth, after seein' the way they slaughtered those folks, I'm not sure he was too keen on catchin' up to 'em, if you know what I mean."

  Braddock nodded and sipped the beer, which was surprisingly cool.

  The bartender grinned. "Good, ain't it? We've got an ice house here in town. I keep my kegs sittin' on a block of ice all the time. Coldest beer between San Antonio and El Paso."

  "Splendid," Braddock said dryly. That just made the bartender's grin get bigger. It disappeared, though, when Braddock went on, "Have you heard any rumors about who might have pulled that stagecoach robbery?"

  "Say, you're mighty interested in that, ain't you?" the bartender asked. "What business is it of yours?"

  Braddock reached into his shirt pocket and then laid his hand on the bar. When he turned it up a little, he revealed his badge lying on the hardwood.

  The bartender's eyes widened. "Ranger, huh?"

  "G.W. Braddock." There was a note of pride in Braddock's voice as he introduced himself.

  "I heard the Rangers got put out of business."

  "In this world, you hear a lot of things that aren't necessarily true," Braddock said. His tone was flat and hard now. He covered up the badge again and then slipped it back into his pocket. "I know Tull Coleman has put together a new gang and is operating around here. If you have any idea where I might be able to find him, you'd better tell me if you know what's good for you."

  "Why in the hell would I know where Tull Coleman is?" the bartender asked. He tried to put some bluster and bravado in his voice, but the attempt wasn't very successful. His words were loud enough, though, to draw some attention from the men down the bar.

  "I imagine folks from all over this part of the country drink in this saloon. If you keep your ears open, there's no telling what you might hear."

  With a surly frown, the bartender said, "A man who keeps his ears open is smart to keep his mouth closed."

  Braddock sighed. He had just about run out of patience. He said, "If you've heard anything—"

  The bartender didn't let him finish. "Sorry, Ranger. I don't know a damned thing."

  If that was the way he wanted to be...

  Braddock's left hand shot across the bar. He grabbed the front of the bartender's shirt and twisted, tightening his grip. Then he jerked the man halfway onto the bar, upsetting the mug of beer that sat there. The bartender wasn't a small man, but Braddock had taken him by surprise.

  The bartender shouted in alarm. Braddock pulled his gun with his other hand and slammed it across the bartender's face, stunning him. Several of the men in the saloon yelled angrily. Braddock maintained his hold on the bartender as he turned and swung his Colt to cover the other patrons.

  The two men who'd been drinking at a table were halfway to their feet. The ones playing poker just stared in surprise and confusion. The four men at the bar looked like they wanted to rush Braddock, but staring down the barrel of a Colt put a damper on their enthusiasm in a hurry.

  "Just stay where you are, gents," Braddock warned. "This is law business."

  "Better do what he says," the bartender mumbled. His voice was thick because his lips were swelling where Braddock had hit him. "He's a Ranger."

  That brought murmurs of surprise from several of the men. Braddock supposed they had heard the rumors about the Rangers being disbanded, too.

  One of the men at the bar said, "I didn't think a Ranger would pistol-whip an innocent man for no good reason."

  Braddock let go of the bartender, who slid off the hardwood to the floor behind it. He didn't lower the revolver as he said, "When I'm on the trail of murderers, there are no innocent men. I'm looking for the animals who butchered everybody on the Comstock stage, and anyone who gets in my way better look out for himself. Best way to do that is to help me find the men I'm after."

  The bartender used his rag to wipe blood from his mouth. He said, "Listen, Ranger, a man could get hisself killed telling tales about Tull Coleman."

  Mutters of agreement came from some of the other men.

  "So he and his bunch have been seen around here," Braddock said.

  "Nobody's gonna tell you a damned thing," the bartender snapped. "We've all got wives, families."

  "What about the men on that stagecoach? Did they have families? What about that woman? She may have been a whore, but does that mean she deserved what they did to her?"

  Surly silence met Braddock's angry questions, but a few of the men at least lowered their eyes as if they were a little ashamed of their reluctance to help him.

  That was all right. Braddock hadn't really expected any answers. That wasn't why he'd asked the questions.

  Putting a tone of disgust in his voice, he said, "I can see I'm not going to get any help here. I'll just have to find Coleman on my own. But I will. You can damned well count on that."

  He backed toward the door and through the batwings before holstering his gun. He jerked the dun's reins loose from the hitch rail and stepped up into the saddle, then turned the horse and rode at a fast lope out of town.

  Braddock didn't stop until he was at the top of a small hill just north of Ozona. From here he could see the entire settlement and the area around it. He dismounted and waited, and less than half an hour later his patience was rewarded by a thin column of dust curling upward west of town. One rider, by the looks of it, and Braddock could tell that the man was in a hurry.

  That was exactly what Braddock expected.

  News of the stagecoach robbery had spread quickly, probably because the actions of the bandits had been so bloody and brutal. As soon as Braddock had heard that one of the murdered passengers was a well-to-do cattleman who'd been on his way to El Paso with a considerable amount of cash to conduct business, his instincts had told him that Coleman knew Rudolph March would be on that stagecoach.

  That meant Coleman had a confederate in Ozona tipping him off. Such an arrangement wasn't uncommon at all. Outlaws ruled by fear, and they also had friends and relatives scattered across the country who helped them out. That had been proven time and time again, going all the way back to the days of Jesse James and Sam Bass.

  Confident that was the situation here, too, Braddock had gone into Ozona, thrown his weight around, announced that he was a Ranger, and declared his intention of finding Tull Coleman, all for the purpose of spooking whoever was working with Coleman. Braddock had no doubt that the rider he saw raising the dust in the distance was that man.

  He reached into his pocket and took out the Ranger badge, pinning it to the front of his shirt. He didn't want anybody mistaking who he was or what he was after.

  He was the law, and justice was his goal.

  He swung up onto the dun and set out after his quarry.

  Chapter 7

  The
road ranch belonged to a man called Augustus Vanderslagen, who had given it a name too long and foreign for most folks to remember. So they just called it Dutchman's Folly. Nobody thought the place would last long, out in the middle of nowhere between Ozona and Fort Stockton.

  But its sheer isolation proved to be advantageous for those who wanted a place to stop over while they were riding lonely trails and didn't want to draw attention to themselves but desired a drink of decent whiskey, a hot meal, an actual bed, and maybe some female companionship, depending on whether Vanderslagen had any whores working for him at the moment.

  Jeff Hawley had been here for several weeks. He spent his days brooding over a chess board set up on a table in one of the back corners of the low-ceilinged room. He had learned to play as a youngster, before the lure of easy money had seduced him into a life of outlawry.

  Yeah, easy money, he sometimes thought bitterly. All it had cost him was half of himself. The half that was dead from just above his waist all the way down to his toes, which might as well not have even been there for all the feeling he had in them.

  The chess set was missing a black knight and a white bishop. Lord knows what had happened to them. Hawley had talked Rosaria, the young, half-Mexican, half-Comanche whore, into finding a couple of distinctive-looking rocks he used in place of the missing pieces. He leaned forward in his wheelchair and hunched over the board, setting up problems and then working them out, all the while sipping from a glass of tequila that Rosaria refilled now and then. The fiery liquor kept the pain at bay and allowed Hawley to concentrate. At least he thought he was concentrating. He wasn't sure but what he was really in a drunken stupor and just didn't know it.

  Today the pain in his back was worse than usual, so he'd been drinking more than he normally did. Rosaria watched him from behind the rough bar, which was nothing more than planks laid across whiskey barrels. She was leaning forward so that the low neckline of her blouse drooped enough to reveal practically all of her smooth brown breasts.

  Hawley knew she wasn't really trying to be provocative. He might have appreciated the view if he could do anything about it, but just like walking, that had ended the day G.W. Braddock put a bullet through his spine. Rosaria had tried every trick she knew to make him a man again—and she knew a lot—but nothing worked. Hawley had given up on that.

  A man missing so much from his life had to have something to hang on to. With Hawley it was the determination that one day he would kill that bastard Braddock.

  After staring at the chess board for a while, he reached out and moved the pink rock that took the place of the white bishop. He was trying to figure out black's best move in response when he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats approaching the low, sprawling adobe building.

  Behind the bar, Rosaria heard the horse, too. She straightened and looked worried. She and Hawley were the only ones in the barroom. Vanderslagen was in a back room, sleeping off the previous night's sodden binge.

  Hawley didn't blame Rosaria for being concerned. A fast horse usually meant trouble. An eighteen-year-old whore and a cripple might be tempting targets for that trouble. It sounded like only one rider was galloping toward Dutchman's Folly, so there was that to be thankful for, at least.

  Hawley reached under the blanket that covered his useless legs and brought out a .38 caliber top-break Smith & Wesson revolver with ivory grips. All five chambers in the revolver's cylinder were loaded. Unlike some men, Hawley never worried about carrying the hammer on a live round. If he accidently shot himself, hell, he'd never feel it, would he? And if he bled to death he wouldn't be losing much...other than the chance to have his revenge on the man who had crippled him, and it seemed pretty unlikely that would ever come about.

  He set the gun on the table next to the chess board. As bleak as his thoughts were, his situation hadn't completely eroded his natural defiance. If somebody wanted a fight, by God, Jeff Hawley would give him one.

  He jerked his head at Rosaria and told her, "Get on in the back."

  "I can get the Dutchman's shotgun—"

  "No. Just go on back there, and don't come out no matter what you hear."

  "You're sure?"

  "Go, damn it," Hawley told her as the running horse came to a stop outside.

  Rosaria scurried out from behind the bar, went past him, and disappeared through the beaded curtain over the rear hallway.

  Hawley glanced down at the chess board one last time, muttered, "Oh, hell, of course," and moved a black rook. He put a finger on the white queen and tipped it over. Checkmate.

  A man stepped into the open doorway, starkly silhouetted by the late afternoon sunlight behind him.

  Hawley relaxed slightly. Anybody out to kill him who was any good wouldn't have made himself such an easy target.

  "Hawley? You in there? Good Lord, it's dark as a bear cave in here. Smells about as bad, too."

  Leaning back in his wheelchair, Hawley said, "Damn it, Jennings, I nearly shot you. Don't you know better than to come rushing up to a place like that?"

  The newcomer walked on into the room. Hawley could see him better now and recognized the stocky figure, the beefy, flushed face. Edgar Jennings owned one of the stores in town. He drank too much, ate too much, and liked money too much. He was also one of Tull's distant relatives by marriage, all of which explained his willingness to help out the gang by providing information. He was the one who had told Hawley about Rudolph March's business trip to El Paso.

  "What are you doin' out here?" Hawley went on. "If you've got some other tip you want me to pass on, it's too soon. Tull said he wanted to lay low for a few weeks after hittin' that stagecoach."

  Jennings shook his head and said, "No, it's nothing like that. A man rode into town today looking for Tull. He started asking questions in the saloon, and he roughed up Brodie and waved a gun around."

  "Who the hell would do something like that?"

  "He said he was a Texas Ranger."

  "That's—" Hawley began. He'd been about to say that was crazy before he stopped. He resumed, "There aren't any Rangers anymore. The state did away with 'em." Again he paused. "Well, all but a few..."

  Hawley's frown deepened. The Rangers had been chopped down to practically nothing, that was true enough...but from what he'd heard, a few of them remained on the job. He supposed it was possible one of them was trying to pick up Tull's trail.

  "What did this fella look like? Did you see him?"

  "Yeah, I was playing poker in the Splendid when he came in. He was tall, sort of long and ropy, but tough looking. Had light brown hair and a mustache."

  That could have described a lot of men in Texas, but it sounded like one in particular to Hawley, one he had very good reason to know—and hate.

  "Now I'm sure this is loco," he said. "That's G.W. Braddock. He's not a Ranger anymore. I am pure-dee certain of that, Edgar."

  Jennings shrugged and said, "I'm just telling you what happened." He frowned. "Braddock...ain't he the one who—"

  "Yeah," Hawley cut in. He gripped his chair's wheels and rolled it back from the table. "If he's going around telling people he's a Ranger, he's lying. That damn grand jury wouldn't indict him, but he lost his badge, no doubt about that."

  "Brodie says he saw the badge."

  Hawley scrubbed a hand over his face. Thoughts wheeled crazily through his brain. This didn't make any sense. Had Braddock gotten back into the Rangers somehow? Or was he just pretending to be a lawman?

  And the most important question of all...

  Where the hell was he now?

  "What happened after that dust-up in the saloon?" Hawley snapped. "Where did he go?"

  "Hell, I don't know. He rode out of Ozona heading north."

  Hawley thought about the terrain around the settlement, and as he did, his worry grew.

  "There's a hill up there where Braddock could watch the town," he said. "If that's what he did, there's a good chance he saw you ride out, Edgar."

  Jennings' eyes got big wi
th alarm. "You think that's what he did? Son of a bitch! He could have followed me. He could have...could..."

  As his voice trailed off, Jennings started shaking his head and backing away.

  "Yeah," Hawley said coldly, "he could have."

  He picked up the Smith & Wesson, and as rage flooded through him he fired the revolver five times, emptying its cylinder. Jennings jerked every time one of the .38 caliber slugs punched into his chest. He took a step back, then another, then swayed from side to side as crimson threads of blood trickled from both corners of his mouth. He whimpered once like an animal in pain before he toppled over, upsetting an empty table and a couple of chairs. His face scraped along the rough, splintery planks of the floor, leaving a bloody welt on his cheek, but he never felt it.

  Because of the low ceiling, the shots sounded even louder than usual. Hawley's ears rang. He looked down at the empty gun in his hand and realized how his anger had made him stupid. He couldn't hear very well, and the revolver was just a useless hunk of metal when it didn't have any bullets in it. He broke it open from the top, dumped the empty brass on the table, and fumbled in the pocket of his vest for fresh rounds.

  "Bad idea, Jeff," a voice said, sounding muffled because Hawley's ears were still affected by the shots but clear enough to understand. Two figures moved around the table into Hawley's line of sight. One of them was Rosaria.

  The other was G.W. Braddock, and he had his left arm looped around the whore's neck, holding her tightly against him. His other hand held a Colt pointed at Hawley.

  "You're not..." Hawley began. "You can't be..."

  Braddock pulled Rosaria to the side enough to reveal the star-in-a-circle badge pinned to his shirt.

  "That's right," he said. "A Texas Ranger."

  Chapter 8

  Once Braddock was reasonably sure the man he had followed from Ozona was heading toward the lonely adobe building, he swung off the trail and circled wide to come up on the place from the rear.

  It looked like the center part of the building had been constructed first, with a few extra rooms added on around it in a haphazard fashion. There was a pole corral in back, as well as a long, crude shed where any horses in the corral could get out of the brutal sun. Set at an angle away from the rear corner of the building was a privy.