Day of Independence

by William W. Johnstone

He avoided the hotel and the alley where he’d dumped the boy’s body, and crossed the street and walked into another shady passage between buildings.

  He lit a cigar with a trembling hand and considered his options, which were few. Finally he realized that there was really only one course of action open to him.

  He must cross the river and fall in with Sancho Perez.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Ephraim Slough’s eyes smarted from the glare of the sun, and he was dry enough to spit cotton.

  He considered it a grave fault in the character of Ranger Cannan that he’d left him out in the broiling heat without a bottle of whiskey to wet his parched lips.

  Inconsiderate, that’s what it was, no regard for another person’s welfare.

  It never occurred to Slough that he could sneak into town and buy a bottle. Such an action would be a gross dereliction of duty and it didn’t enter into his thinking.

  He picked up his telescope and ranged the glass across the desert. He saw nothing.

  There was no bandit scout, no dust cloud, only a barren, empty, and sun-scorched landscape of sand, cactus, and brush.

  Slough shook his head.

  Damn, kicking his heels on the riverbank was a waste of time.

  What was it Lord Nelson said before the Battle of Trafalgar?

  “Frigates forward, seek out the foe.”

  Yeah, that was it. Seek out the foe.

  Slough’s horse, in fact Mrs. Maude Morrison’s spotted mare Sophie, stood hipshot and miserable, head and tail lowered, wilting in the heat. “Frigates forward, Sophie,” the old sailor said. “We will cross the river and seek out the foe like Nelson done that time.” His peg leg a hindrance, Slough clambered into the saddle, then kneed the reluctant mare into the river.

  Overjoyed to be taking an active role in the defense of Last Chance instead of waiting passively for the Mexicans to act, Slough threw back his head and burst into song.

  When the Alabama’s keel was laid,

  Roll, Alabama, Roll,

  ’Twas laid in the yard of Jonathan Laird,

  O Roll, Alabama, Roll.

  Hate-filled eyes watched Ephraim Slough closely. It looked like the drunken gimp was heading out in search of Sancho Perez.

  Abe Hacker smiled to himself.

  Well, let him. He’d die all the sooner.

  ’Twas laid in the yard of Jonathan Laird,

  Roll, Alabama, Roll,

  ’Twas laid in the town of Birkenhead,

  O Roll, Alabama, Roll.

  Hacker had stripped to his shirt, brocaded vest, shoes, and pants and had dumped the rest in the alley beside the hotel. He stood a ways to the east of the river crossing, hidden from view of the street by a projecting toolshed attached to the rear of the Jenkins Bros. hardware store.

  And bided his time.

  The riverbank was deserted and as soon as the gimp was out of sight he’d make his move.

  Down the Mersey way she rolled then,

  Roll, Alabama, Roll,

  Liverpool fitted her with guns and men,

  O Roll, Alabama, Roll...

  Slough’s raw-edged tenor faded into distance as he was absorbed into the rippling heat haze, and Hacker watched him go.

  Hacker was not a swimmer, but judging by the liveryman’s horse, the water should only reach as high as his waist. Once into the desert he’d dry quickly.

  Sweat beaded his forehead like condensation on an olla, and he had a ferocious headache brought on by stress and fear. As he stepped to the riverbank his earlier feelings were replaced by outrage that a man in his position should be subjected to this indignity. This damned inconvenience.

  That he’d killed two people did not enter his mind.

  A boy and a whore were nonentities and easily replaceable, but he was not, and that was the crux of the matter.

  Abe Hacker, millionaire confidante of presidents, was now running for his life... and America should hang its head in shame.

  Hacker waded across the Rio Grande without incident but he was exhausted by the time he reached the far bank. Wallowing in the depths of self-pity, he’d noticed Cannan’s newly dug trench but its significance didn’t register with him. His passing thought was that it was a mantrap and he dismissed it totally as a futile defensive gesture.

  Hacker had no canteen, so the immediate need was to tank up with water.

  Fearing that he would not be able to rise again if he bellied down to drink, the fat man stooped and used a hand to cup water into his mouth. He drank until he could hold no more, wiped his mouth with his great chubby paw, and began his trek to the south.

  He was confident he’d meet up with Perez and the others soon.

  And then he would make Last Chance pay... and nail the meddling Texas Ranger to a cross hung with red, white, and blue.

  Happy Independence Day!

  The fat man grinned.

  Damn him, Hank Cannan would soon rue the day he was born and curse the two-dollar whore that bore him.

  As the hour of the attack on Last Chance grew closer, Mickey Pauleen rode point, a mile ahead of Perez and the Mexicans.

  He wanted no unpleasant surprises.

  The Texas Ranger might well be a fool, and crippled, but he was a fighting man and such men were hard to kill.

  Pauleen’s eyes scanned the desert ahead of him. Every square inch sizzled like hog fat in a frying pan and gave off heat that undulated in the distance like a line of dancing cobras. A town animal, Pauleen hated the wasteland with a passion and saw no beauty in it.

  Once he spotted a thin dust cloud trail into the air to the west but dismissed it as a stray Mexican making for the river, and gave it no further thought.

  A few minutes later Pauleen rode up on what he took to be a large boulder, then realized it was no boulder but a fat man down on all fours.

  To his surprise it was Abe Hacker, red-faced, panting like a lizard on a hot rock.

  Pauleen drew rein but stayed mounted. “Howdy, Abe,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Hacker lifted his head. “Mickey, thank God it’s you. I’m dying here.”

  “Where’s Nora?” Pauleen said.

  Hacker couldn’t see the gunman’s eyes in the shade of his hat. “She’s safe, Mickey. Real safe.”

  “Where safe?”

  “Back at the hotel getting packed. You know how women are.”

  “Yeah, I know how women are. Why did you leave her alone?”

  Hacker moved his immense bulk and half-lay, half-sat on his side.

  “The Ranger was on to me, Mickey. I had to run before they strung me up.”

  “You’re too fat to hang, Abe. Why did you abandon Nora?”

  “They’ve got nothing on Nora, Mickey. She’ll be safe at the hotel until we get there.”

  “I hope for your sake that’s the case,” Pauleen said. He tossed his canteen to Hacker.

  “Drink,” he said.

  “Thank’ee Mickey,” the fat man said. “I knew when you found me you’d take good care of me.”

  Pauleen let that pass and swung out of the saddle. “Get up on the hoss and I’ll take you to Perez,” he said. “He’s close.”

  “Mickey, a man with my portly figure can’t ride a horse, you know that,” Hacker said. His whine sounded like an out-of-tune violin.

  Pauleen grinned. “Seems like you have three choices, Abe. Ride the hoss, stay where you’re at, or I pull you behind me with a rope.”

  The fat man’s anger flared. “Mickey, a man like you doesn’t force Abe Hacker to choose anything. Not a damned thing.”

  Pauleen’s face was ugly. “Abe, never try to corner a man who’s a sight meaner than you. Now make your choice.”

  Hacker read Pauleen’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw.

  “I’ll ride the horse,” he said.

  “Good decision,” the gunman said.

  “Señor Hacker, I am overjoyed,” Sancho Perez said. His face took on a concerned frown. “But what brings you into the
desert?”

  “They planned on hanging me, Sancho,” Hacker said. “I only just escaped with my life.”

  “Is that so, my fren’? That makes poor Sancho ver’ sad. Many will die for such a wicked plan.”

  Perez had pulled his horse over to one side as his men drove the peons forward with whips. Dead and dying Mexicans littered the churned-up trail behind them, dust sifting over the bodies as though the desert wished to cover up the atrocity.

  At Perez’s command, three of his men helped Hacker from his horse. Then they stopped one of the donkey wagons bringing up the rear of the column and removed a small tarp and four poles.

  “Sancho will give his good fren’ shelter from the sun,” the bandit said. “Señor Hacker does not look well and Sancho fears he must weep from heartbreak at such a sight.” Perez gave Hacker a canteen, a couple of cigars, and a bottle of mescal.

  “You are a good and loyal friend, Sancho,” Hacker said. He then spoke to the bandit but stared at Pauleen. “Such loyalty will not go unrewarded.”

  “Alas, Sancho must go now,” Perez said. “But when the town is taken I will come back for you and we will return to my hacienda and celebrate with wine and women.”

  “And afterward, I must return to Washington,” Hacker said from the thin shade of his shelter.

  “Of course you must return to where your destiny lies, and Sancho will help because you are his very best fren’.” The bandit turned his horse and rode after the wailing column.

  Pauleen lingered long enough to say, “I hope I find Nora alive and well.” The expression on the gunman’s face was so malevolent, so dangerous, that Hacker was shocked into silence.

  Later, as a hot breeze tugged at his meager canopy, the fat man realized that he was all alone in the middle of the naked desert... and very afraid.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Horace Wilcox, the stage depot manager, greeted Hank Cannon with a face even sadder and longer than his own. “Not an auspicious day for your lady wife to arrive, Ranger Cannan,” he said. “Oh, I don’t mean Independence Day, I mean—”

  Cannan nodded. “I know what you mean. Yes, she could have chosen a better one.”

  Cannan stood on his own feet, the wheelchair parked outside, big Simon Rule keeping close and stern guard lest some unscrupulous thief try to steal it.

  “Will the stage arrive on time, you think?” the Ranger said.

  “My dear sir, the Butterfield stage always arrives on time, give or take a day or two,” Wilcox said. He glanced at the solemn railroad clock on the wall. “It’s noon now, Ranger Cannan. I can say with some confidence, but not with certainty, that we will welcome the arrival of your bride in short order.”

  “How short?” Cannan said.

  “That, I cannot say. But short order is short order in the busy world of the Butterfield stage line.”

  “If I don’t see the stage pull in, you’ll let me know, huh?” Cannan said.

  “Indeed I will, sir. I am your obedient servant.”

  Cannan touched his hat. “Much obliged,” he said.

  “And a happy Independence Day to you, Ranger Cannan, if it’s in keeping with the doleful circumstances.”

  “You’ll come a-running when the bell rings?” Cannon said.

  “Depend on it,” Wilcox said. The man nodded to a corner where a Winchester leaned. “I have my rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition, Ranger. I plan to aim well and do great execution once the battle starts.”

  Cannan smiled. “Good man. You’re true blue.” Then he wound it up, “About the stage...”

  “I won’t forget,” Wilcox said.

  Hank Cannan stepped down from the stage depot into the street. He felt like a ninety-year-old with arthritis.

  “Chair?” Simon Rule said.

  “Hell, I can’t walk.”

  “Then chair it is,” Rule said, his usually dour face cheerful.

  Cannan sat and the blacksmith said, “Where to, master?”

  “Damn it, Simon, have you been drinking?” Cannan said.

  “God forbid.”

  “Then quit being so all-fired cheerful. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Anything you say, master.”

  Cannan sighed.

  He studied the street, now thronged with people and children. They were doing their best, the Ranger decided. To a casual observer it would seem that the folks of Last Chance were enjoying their Independence Day.

  Firecrackers snapped like mousetraps and smoked like fog. Tin-panny pianos jingled in the saloons and men stood in the street and sampled fruit pies that covered their mustaches with crumbs.

  But the celebrations lacked spirit. Lacked joy. Lacked life. And Ranger Cannan felt the loss deeply and blamed it on himself.

  Cannan swiveled his head and said to Rule, “Think we should go check on Ephraim?”

  “No,” the blacksmith said.

  “How come?”

  “We’re planning a surprise party, aren’t we? We don’t want a bunch of folks stomping all over the riverbank and giving the game away.”

  Cannan thought about that, then said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Ephraim will stick,” Rule said.

  “If he don’t, I’ll shoot him.”

  “If he don’t, we’ll both shoot him,” Rule said.

  “Ranger! Ranger! Ranger!”

  Half a dozen kids ran toward Cannan, the girls hiking up the skirts of their go-to-Sunday-school dresses.

  “Slow down,” Rule said, his voice stern. He pointed to a small boy with sandy hair and round glasses. “You, Cad Price, what’s going on?”

  “It’s Andy Kilcoyn,” the boy said.

  “You found him?” Cannan said.

  A pretty, pigtailed girl in a sky blue dress answered. “We... we...”

  “We think he’s dead,” Cad Price said.

  “Where is he?” Cannan said.

  “Behind the Cattleman’s Hotel among a pile of boxes.”

  Rule needed no bidding from the Ranger. He immediately pushed the wheelchair in the direction of the hotel, the excited, yelling kids running alongside.

  Attracted by the commotion, people tagged along behind, speculating about what was amiss. Cannan and Rule, their faces like stone, said nothing.

  But the children, eager for attention, let the cat out of the bag, and the crowd’s speculation turned, first to concern, then to wonder.

  Little Andy Kilcoyn dead? What on earth happened? Oh, his poor mother.

  Rule pushed the chair into the alley and scraped Cannan’s elbows along the walls until he pulled them closer to Andy’s body.

  The kids said they’d been searching for empty pop bottles they could trade for candy sticks, and had dragged away most of the crates and boxes, exposing the boy’s body. He’d been stuffed into a tea chest that was labeled CEYLON.

  Cannan almost leapt from the wheelchair, an effort that cost him dearly in pain, and kneeled beside acting, unpaid Texas Ranger Andy Kilcoyn. He took the boy from the chest, cradled his head in his arm, and helplessly stared at Rule.

  The big blacksmith looked like a man lost.

  Andy’s face was as white as marble, his eyes wide open in death, a death that had not come easily or without fear. “Bruises all over him, the side of his face smashed from a blow,” Cannan said. “And then he was strangled.”

  “Seems like,” Rule said, his voice broken.

  “Who?”

  Rule said nothing.

  Yells of sympathy rose from the people who’d crowded into the alley as Edith Kilcoyn, accompanied by Dr. Krueger, pushed her way through. The woman took in the scene at a glance.

  She screamed and ran to her son’s body and took him into her arms.

  “I’m afraid he’s dead, Mrs. Kilcoyn,” Cannan said. “I’m real sorry.”

  Andy’s mother said nothing. She hugged Andy close and her tears fell on his shattered face.

  Dr. Krueger got as near to the boy as Mrs. Kilcoyn would allow. He spen
t a few minutes examining the body, at the same time trying to calm the hysterical mother, then rose to his feet.

  “He was strangled, Hans,” Cannon said.

  The doctor shook his head. “No, Ranger Cannan, the boy suffered a terrible blow to his face and was then suffocated.”

  “Dr. Krueger, you mean by a pillow or something?” Rule said.

  “Or something,” the physician said.

  A couple of women kneeled to comfort Mrs. Kilcoyn, and Krueger said, “I’ll take care of things here. You’ve got other matters that demand your attention, Ranger.”

  Cannan nodded. “Thanks, Doc.” He glanced at the crying women and Mrs. Kilcoyn, who was quiet now, but was in a state of profound shock, numb. “This is a terrible thing,” he said.

  “Find out who did it,” Krueger said.

  “The killer was strong enough to cause the boy terrible injuries, and he took the pillow with him,” Cannan said. “Are those clues or not?” He turned joyless eyes to the doctor. “Damn it, Hans, I’m not a Pinkerton.”

  “Speak to the hotel guests,” Krueger said. “Maybe somebody heard or saw something.”

  “I don’t have time for that,” Cannan said. “You know what we’re facing.”

  “And this heartless murder could be part of it. Who might have had an interest in what happened at the riverbank?” Krueger said. “For some reason did he figure Andy knew?”

  Cannan frowned, reaching deep. Then, “Andy wore a Ranger’s star I gave him. It was found near the alley.”

  “The star may have attracted the killer,” Krueger said.

  “I deputized Andy as an acting, unpaid Texas Ranger,” Cannan said. “He may have told his killer that.”

  “And the man wanted information from him,” Krueger said.

  “Andy was tough,” Rule said. “He wouldn’t spill.”

  “And that’s why the man murdered him,” Cannan said. He was silent for a while, deep in thought.

  Then he threw back his head and yelled, “HAAACKER!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The door to Abe Hacker’s hotel room was locked. “Simon, kick it down,” Hank Cannan said.