Day of Independence

by William W. Johnstone

  “A trench right here, boys,” Cannan said. He placed his open hand at his mid-thigh. “This deep. You comprende?”

  “Yes, my general,” the oldest brother said.

  He said something to the others in Polish, and then dirt flew as the three began digging.

  One by one, then in twos and threes, the men of Last Chance, some accompanied by their womenfolk, emerged through the marbled moonlight, shovels in their hands.

  A few complained about the earliness of the hour, but thanks to a talk from Mayor Curtis all understood that the town would soon be fighting for its very existence and the lives of its citizens. There would be plenty of time for sleep later.

  Cannan sent only one man home, a deranged old coot, his wife tugging at his coattails, who thought he was manning the trenches at the Siege of Vicksburg and saw Yankees everywhere.

  The rest remained and with no further complaint worked until the trench was dug. The earth mounds were then carried away and scattered so that the ground looked undisturbed from the far bank. The trench ended up a hundred yards long and three to four feet deep.

  There was already some seepage into the trench from the river, but Ben Coffin the undertaker, who had an intimate knowledge of such things, said the water would present no major problem for at least the next twenty-four hours.

  And then he said, adding his habitual sense of gloom. “If Last Chance has that long.”

  The moon dropped lower in the sky and the night grew a little darker.

  Beyond the far bank of the Rio Grande lay a great ocean of blackness, but a far-seeing man could have detected a faint red glow to the southeast had he looked hard enough—though he may well have decided it was all in his imagination.

  “Well, Ranger Cannan, what next?” Frank Curtis said.

  The mayor leaned on his shovel and his shirt was transparent with sweat.

  “I count fifty men I can depend on,” Cannan said.

  “There’s twice that many here,” the mayor said.

  And indeed the riverbank seemed crowded with groups of men talking and smoking, leaning on their shovels.

  “Half of them are too old or too young,” Cannan said. “When the shooting starts, I don’t want boys and graybeards.”

  Curtis said nothing, but stared fixedly at the Ranger in the half-light, his eyes questioning.

  “I won’t bury boys, Frank,” Cannan said.

  “Fifty. It hardly seems enough.”

  “It’s a force I can handle.”

  “How do I know, Cannan? Hell, how does this town know what you can or can’t handle?”

  “It doesn’t. I don’t know myself.”

  “There are men in Last Chance who could maybe do better. Men who fought Apaches like Billy Brennan and—”

  “Frank, we do it my way or we don’t do it at all,” Cannan said.

  Curtis opened his mouth to speak, but the Ranger yelled, “Billy Brennan! You here?”

  A voice from the darkness.

  “I’m here.”

  “It’s Cannan. I need to talk with you.”

  Brennan, a tall, heavy man with blond hair and blue eyes, had an arrogant look about him, like an authoritarian foreman on a building site.

  “What can I do for you, Ranger, apart from digging ditches?” Brennan said.

  Cannan smiled tightly and said, “Mayor Curtis says you fit Apaches.”

  Brennan hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, I didn’t exactly fit them, but I seen plenty of them red devils when I was a civilian contractor with the army.”

  “Where did you see them, Mr. Brennan?” Cannan said.

  “Fort Apache, the San Carlos, places like that.”

  Cannan nodded. “How would you save Last Chance?”

  Brennan grinned. “Glad you asked me that, Ranger, because I’ve been studying on it.”

  “Go ahead, Billy,” Curtis said.

  “Well, sir, I’d get everybody out of here. Take all the water we can carry and head north until we reach a settlement. Like in the old days, when the men form an armed guard around the women and children and the wagons. But before we leave, we burn the town, the fields, the orchards, leave nothing behind for them thieving Mexicans.”

  “You mean abandon the town?” Curtis said. “Destroy everything we’ve worked for?”

  Brennan saw the doubt in the mayor’s face. “Hell, you asked me and that’s how I see it, Frank.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Brennan,” Cannan said. “You’ve given us something to think about.”

  After the man left, Curtis said, “Do it his way and we’d all be dead by sunset.”

  Cannan said, “Anybody else fit Apaches that you’d care to recommend, Mayor?”

  Curtis shook his head. “We do it your way, Ranger.”

  Cannan sat on the bank and gathered the men around him. He sat because he no longer had the strength to stand.

  As briefly and simply as he could, he laid out his plan and then, as in any gathering of Americans, he waited for the cussin’ and discussin’ that was bound to follow.

  To Cannan’s surprise, Billy Brennan’s scorched-earth policy attracted no support and the only objections raised to his own plan were from the oldsters and boys left out of the fighting unit.

  And they were noisy ones at that.

  But Mayor Curtis, with a politician’s gift for placating an angry crowd, raised his hands and spoke.

  “You didn’t give Ranger Cannan a chance to finish what he was saying.”

  Cannan, who was all talked out, looked up at the mayor in surprise.

  “The younger and older men will form themselves into a reserve regiment under the command of”—Curtis picked a name out of the hat—“Ephraim Slough.”

  The old sailor stumped his way forward, his wooden leg muddy, and knuckled his forehead. “Thank’ee kindly, Mayor,” he said. “’Tis a great honor, I’ll be bound.”

  “When the church bell rings the alarm, where will your regiment muster, Colonel Slough?” Curtis said.

  “Oh... ah... that will be outside the Last Mile Saloon, an’ beggin’ your pardon, Mayor.”

  “Did the soldiers of the reserve regiment hear that?” Curtis said.

  One urchin blew a raspberry but there were also shouts of “Good ol’ Stumpy,” and one gray-haired rooster did a passable imitation of Slough’s strange, rolling walk to the amusement of all.

  His voice covered by the general mirth, Curtis leaned over and whispered to Cannan, “Well, that worked a charm.”

  The Ranger smiled. “You get my vote, Frank.” Then, “Send the men home so they can get a few hours rest.”

  But Cannan had his eye on the boy who’d blown the raspberry, an impudent-looking creature with carrot-red hair and a pugnacious face freckled all over like a sparrow’s egg.

  He guessed the child to be about twelve but his eyes were older by at least a hundred years.

  “Hey, you!” Cannan yelled. “Stay right there.”

  “You talkin’ to me?” the boy yelled back.

  “Yes, you. Come here.”

  The child stuck his hands in the pockets of his ragged knee-pants and strolled over, whistling.

  He stopped in front of Cannan and truculently demanded, “What the hell do you want?”

  The reward for his impertinence was a pinched ear from the horny finger and thumb of the returned Mayor Curtis, a wheelwright by trade.

  “You watch your tongue, my buck, when you speak to a Texas Ranger,” the mayor said. He looked over the squealing child to Cannan. “His name is Andy Kilcoyn and his widowed mother is a respectable sewing woman, but she can do nothing with him.”

  “Well, let him loose, Frank. And you, Andy, quit that caterwauling. I need to talk with you.”

  The boy rubbed his offended ear and said, “What about?”

  “Tomorrow—or is it today already?—whatever it is, stay close to me during the celebrations.”

  “For why?” Andy said, looking sullen.

  “Can you ride a hor
se?” Cannan said.

  “I should say I can.”

  “He’s stolen enough of them,” the mayor said.

  “Only borried,” Andy said.

  “Then come sunup, you’ll stay close to me and keep my horse close to you,” Cannan said.”

  Andy cast a wary glance at the scowling Curtis and said, “The big American stud in the livery?”

  “Yes him. Can you stay on him?”

  “Better than you can,” Andy said, “Ma says every time you ride into town you fall off your hoss.”

  The boy nimbly ducked the cuff Curtis aimed at his head.

  Cannan grasped Andy’s arm. “Tomorrow, when the Independence Day celebration is in full swing, Sancho Perez—you heard me talk of him?”

  “You’ve talked about him all night. I’m not stupid, mister.”

  “No,” Cannan said, “you’re a real bright boy. Now listen, before the attack on Last Chance starts, Perez will send a rider with a glass to scout the town. Got that?”

  “You want me to shoot him? I don’t have a gun.”

  “No. I don’t want you to shoot him. But after the spy is gone, you’ll ride across the river on my horse and keep watch.”

  “For what?”

  “A dust cloud. As soon as you see a dust cloud rising into the air, you light a shuck back across the river and ring the church bell.”

  “I should hope I won’t,” Andy said, horrified. “Pastor McRae will kick my butt.”

  “No, he won’t. I’ll tell him what to expect.”

  Cannan looked into the boy’s green eyes.

  “Can you do what I’ve asked you to do? It might be dangerous, Andy.”

  Without any hesitation, the boy nodded. “I can do it.”

  “Good, then we’ll meet tomorrow morning about eight outside the Big Bend Hotel.”

  “See that you do, boy,” Curtis said. “And if you do exactly what Ranger Cannan told you I’ll promise you’ll get paid two dollars.”

  The flicker of hurt pride that crossed the boy’s face surprised Cannan.

  “Mayor, I’ll do my duty like everyone else, for my mom and all the other people in Last Chance. I don’t want money.”

  Cannan and even the flinty-eyed Curtis were much affected by the boy’s comment.

  Then Cannan remembered the unofficial Ranger’s star he’d had made in El Paso. He reached into his pocket, then said, “Andy, raise your right hand.”

  The boy did so.

  With great solemnity, Cannan said, “Do you, Andy Kilcoyn, swear to uphold the duties of an acting, unpaid Texas Ranger?”

  “I do,” the boy said.

  Cannan pinned the silver star on the threadbare cotton of the boy’s shirt.

  “Welcome to Company D of the Frontier Battalion, Ranger Kilcoyn.”

  “Grows like a weed, that boy,” Curtis said looking after Andy as he left.

  “Frank, seems to me he sprung up a foot in just the last few minutes,” Cannan said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Abe Hacker was too excited to sleep.

  The clock in the hallway struck two, then tenaciously ticked away the seconds of the new day.

  The fat man rolled like a soft slug and struggled out of bed onto his feet. His great, white belly hanging in front of him like a flour sack, he shrugged into his robe and took the chair beside the window.

  Hacker gazed out at the moon-dappled darkness and smiled to himself, his face smug.

  Today... yes, it was really today! Huzzah!... Last Chance and all it stood for would be history.

  Then the Big Bend river country, say thirty-five linear miles of fertile floodplain, would be the basis for his son’s vast cotton plantation. The gin would be where the school now stood and the big, four-pillar plantation house would be built nearby.

  Hacker saw himself smoking a cigar of a morning, standing on the porch beside his tall, stalwart son. Together they’d gaze out on cotton fields stretching as far as the eye could see, white and smooth as a December snowfall.

  He nodded to himself.

  It was good for a man to have a dream, especially one he makes come true.

  Nora lay in bed asleep, her hair spread across the pillow like a fan.

  Hacker glanced at the woman and grimaced.

  He didn’t want her there. He wanted his teenaged bride in his bed, wide-eyed awake, waiting, and preferably pregnant.

  A little thrill of anticipated pleasure ran through Hacker as he directed his attention to the window again. Ah, well, the girl and all that went with her would come soon enough.

  “What the hell?”

  Hacker’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  Men moved in the street, rubes carrying shovels, walking back from the river.

  The fat man cursed under his breath. What mischief was this? Surely the idiots weren’t digging in for a fight?

  Questions without answers irritated Hacker. If there was something going on he must know about it, then, with Mickey gone, he could pay some local hick to carry the word to Sancho Perez.

  Hacker stuck his feet in his slippers then patted the breast pocket of his robe and made sure the derringer was still there.

  If anyone questioned him, he would say he couldn’t sleep and was out for a breath of fresh air.

  The rubes were a suspicious bunch and wouldn’t tell him anything. He’d have to find out for himself.

  By the time Abe Hacker made his way out of the hotel, the street was shadowed and empty and streamers of mist crept ghostlike between the shuttered buildings. A large flying insect thudded into the window to his right, dropped to the timber floor of the porch, and spun in circles, buzzing.

  Hacker tapped the derringer again, then stepped into the street, his small, porcine eyes searching into the distance.

  Nothing moved and there was no sound.

  The air smelled of damp earth and the orange and grapefruit trees down by the river, their odors released by the heat of the day.

  His doctors had warned Hacker that night air was bad for the heart and lungs, but the men he’d seen were coming from the direction of the Rio Grande and he must go there.

  Hacker was halfway across the street when a high, shrill voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “Hey you, stay right where you are.”

  A ragged, red-haired boy stepped toward him from an alley opposite, then demanded, “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  The urchin walked closer and his freckled face wrinkled into a pugnacious frown.

  “You weren’t down by the river,” Andy Kilcoyn said. His face cleared and he grinned and pointed. “I know. It’s because you’re too fat.”

  “And who are you, boy?” Hacker said, his voice like silk.

  “Texas Ranger Andy Kilcoyn, that’s who.” He pointed to the star on the front of his shirt. “So watch your step, mister.”

  “Is that so?” Hacker said. “And a fine Ranger you are, keeping such a strict night watch.”

  “Why are you out in the dark when you should be in bed?” the boy said.

  “I could ask the same question of you.”

  “I’m on duty. Ranger Cannan needs me by his side first thing in the morning and I mean to be on time.”

  “Ah, dutiful indeed,” Hacker smiled. “Admirable dedication, my boy.”

  He looked around him. Only the mist moved and the town was as silent as a cobwebbed tomb.

  “Well, off to bed with you, mister,” Andy said. He wished he had a big, bone-handled Colt in his pants like Ranger Cannan.

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Hacker said.

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t sleep so I took a walk to get some fresh air,” Hacker said. “But I’m a very sick man and I need your help getting back to my hotel.” He smiled. “Would you be so kind?”

  “I should think a Ranger would,” Andy said. “Here, mister, just you lean on my shoulder and you’ll be fine.”

  Hacker put his hand on a thin shoulder that spoke of too many missed
meals and felt mightily pleased with himself. He’d question the boy and save a walk to the river, which could only be bad for his heart. And perhaps the boy could be persuaded to carry a message to Perez.

  The space between the Cattleman’s Hotel and the adjoining store was too narrow to be called an alley, but it was dark, misty—ideal for Hacker’s purpose.

  With surprising speed and strength for a man of his massive bulk, he grabbed the back of the boy’s neck and pushed him into the narrow passageway.

  He slammed Andy so hard against the wall of the store the boy let out a gasp of pain and surprise.

  “Listen to me, you little worm,” he growled. “I want some questions answered.”

  Hacker’s fat forearm rammed into the side of Andy’s head, forcing the right side of the boy’s face into the rough timber wall of the store.

  “What was going on by the river?” he said. “And what is the plan?”

  “I don’t know,” Andy gasped.

  The pressure of the fat man’s forearm made it hard for him to talk, and blood trickled from his abraded mouth and oozed down the wall.

  “Cannan. It’s Cannan, isn’t it? What does he plan to do?”

  “A... Texas... Ranger... never... tells...”

  “Tell me, you little dung heap. Tell me the plan.”

  “Go to hell,” the boy whispered.

  Insane with anger, Hacker pulled Andy toward him by the front of his shirt and backhanded him across the face. It was a vicious, brutal blow with a half-clenched first by a man of immense strength and it smashed the boy’s right cheekbone and eye socket.

  Andy’s shock and the unbearable, smashing pain from the blow manifested itself in a terrible scream torn from his throat.

  Horrified by the boy’s sudden and massive eruption of blood and panicked that someone might hear him shriek, Hacker grabbed the boy’s head and pulled his face hard into his belly.

  “Shh... shh...” Hacker whispered. “There now... there now...”

  Andy Kilcoyn, the newest acting, unpaid Ranger in Texas, smothered to death in Abe Hacker’s sweating fat.

  Hacker felt the boy go limp as all the light and life that had been in him fled like the shutting off of a gas lamp.