Rule was horrified. “Ranger, this is private property,” he said.
“Kick it down,” Cannan said, his face grim.
Rule said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
He raised a great, booted foot and smashed the door at the lock. Timber splintered and the door crashed open.
Gun drawn, Cannan limped inside.
And smelled death.
A woman’s slender arm, the hand lying beside a towel, stuck out from under the bed. Cannan pushed the cloth aside and his breath caught in his throat.
The hand had been stamped into a blue-black claw, the index finger bent and beckoning, demanding that the living draw closer to the dead.
“Simon,” Cannan said, “get her out from there.”
The blacksmith bent and, gently for a man of his size and strength, pulled Nora’s body into the middle of the floor. She was wrapped in a man’s bloodstained robe.
Her horror at the manner of her death frozen on Nora’s face, the woman’s slim neck showed the deep bruises of strangulation.
“Hacker murdered her,” Rule said.
“Yeah, he did,” Cannan said. “And Andy Kilcoyn.”
“But why his woman?” Rule said.
“Did she know he’d killed the boy and accused him?” Cannan said. “By the size of it, that’s Hacker’s robe. There’s blood all over it.”
“And then he silenced her like he did Andy,” Rule said.
“Seems like,” Cannan said.
“Where is he?” Rule said.
“I don’t know.”
“Still in town?”
“Damn it, I told you I don’t know.” Cannan regretted his snappishness and said, “Simon, go bring Doc Krueger. It’s one of the law’s traditional death rituals, and we’ll observe it.”
“Poor lady,” Rule said, glancing at Nora’s body.
Cannan holstered his gun and leaned against the wall. He looked as exhausted as he felt. “Poor lady. Poor town. Poor Andy. Poor you. Poor me. We’re all poor, Simon, every last one of us,” Cannan said.
After a while the blacksmith said, “You’ve got to hold it together, Ranger Cannan. The enemy is at the gates and if you give up, then we’re lost.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not giving up, especially not now,” Cannan said. “I’ll stand on our ground.” He managed a smile. “Now go get the doc. Maybe he has the courage I need in a medicine bottle.”
A search of the town proved fruitless. Hacker had flown the coop.
“He must have crossed the river,” Mayor Frank Curtis said.
“And the only spot shallow enough for miles in either direction is guarded by Ephraim Slough,” Cannan said.
“Maybe Slough has him,” Curtis said. He waited until a string of firecrackers banged to silence. “Ephraim is not a man to desert his post to drag Hacker into town.”
“Simon, roll me down to the river,” Cannan said. “We’ll go talk with Ephraim.”
When a man expects to see someone at a certain place and time and that someone isn’t there, the empty space seems even emptier. So it was with Ranger Hank Cannan.
It was as though the absence of Ephraim Slough had left a huge hole in the fabric of the day.
“Where is he?” Simon Rule said.
“Not here,” Cannan said.
“Hacker?”
The Ranger shook his head. “We heard no gunshots. Hacker wouldn’t go up against a tough old coot like Ephraim with his bare hands. It’s never wise to pick a fight with an old-timer. He won’t fight you, but he’ll kill you.”
“A club?” Rule said.
“A man the size of Hacker wouldn’t get close enough to use a club. Or a knife.”
“Well, that means Ephraim was gone when Hacker got here.”
“Seems like,” Cannan said.
Cannan’s eyes reached out across the white-hot inferno that was the Chihuahuan Desert. Nothing moved but a far-off dust devil.
“Any sign of him?” Rule said.
“Not that I can see,” Cannan said. “Damn the man. Where the hell did he go?”
There was no answer to the question, and Rule stayed silent.
Finally Cannan said, “We’ll stay here, Simon. When we spot a dust cloud in the distance fog it for town and ring the church bell.”
“And leave you here alone?”
“Yeah, only I won’t exactly be on a high lonesome.”
Cannon built himself a cigarette. Then, “Listen up, Simon, as soon as the bell rings I want a half-grown boy with a rifle, a couple of white-haired old-timers, a woman with sand—Polly Curtis the mayor’s wife would be ideal—and you. Stash your rifle until the shooting starts. I want you to be armed only with a hammer.”
“I’m not catching your drift,” Rule said.
Cannan smiled. “You will if my brilliant strategy works,” he said. “Just make sure Mrs. Curtis and the rest get here before Sancho Perez attacks.”
Rule was a slow-thinking man. But finally he said, “Suppose your brilliant strategy don’t work. What then?”
“Then we’ll all be dead and it won’t matter,” Cannan said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
To Ephraim Slough the dust cloud looked like an approaching fog bank drifting across a yellow and tan sea. He blinked, looked again, but the dust remained, rising thick into the blue denim sky like smoke from a fire.
Slough told himself that he’d never before seen the like, but he had. He’d seen such on the Grand Banks off the Newfoundland coast when the fog rolled in like thunder and chilled many a poor mariner to the marrow of his bones.
Now a similar sight scared Ephraim Slough.
It looked like the whole population of Mexico was on the move, marching on Last Chance and its golden fields and orchards.
He swung his tired mare around and kicked her ribs, urging her into a canter. But all Sophie would do that day was walk, and kicks be damned.
Slough cursed the mare, cursed himself for leaving the Rio Grande, and cursed his lack of whiskey.
His best curses, in several different languages, he reserved for the latter.
Hank Cannan caught a flash of sunlight on metal. He stared harder, longer, eyes burning.
There it was again.
But not metal. Glass. The dazzling sun blading off the lens of a telescope.
The Ranger said nothing to Rule and waited for the spy to ride closer.
The glass made a man long-sighted and he might well stay far back. But he did not. The horseman came on at a trot, covered several hundred yards, then drew rein again.
“Simon,” Cannan said. “Get to the water’s edge and gather pretty pebbles.”
“Huh?” Rule said.
“Then bring the pebbles over to me and let me examine them one by one.”
“Ranger Cannan, have you gone tetched in the head?” Rule said.
“Do it, Simon. Do it now,” Cannan said. “There’s not a moment to be lost.”
“Whatever you say, Ranger, pretty rocks it is. But in my opinion, you sure ain’t playing with a full deck.” The blacksmith stepped to the water’s edge and gathered pebbles, taking little time to see if they were pretty or not.
“Bring them here, Simon,” Cannan said. “Show them to me. And grin as wide as a wave in a slop bucket.”
Rule’s dramatic sigh was worthy of the great Edwin Booth himself.
When the blacksmith returned and revealed the rocks in his hand, Cannan said, “We’re under observation—no, don’t look—and we need to appear as harmless as possible.”
“Damn it all, Ranger, shouldn’t we show our strength?”
“No, Simon. I want to reveal only weakness and lack of preparation.” He chose a pebble from Rule’s hand and studied it closely. “When the spy reports back to Perez he’ll tell him that the rubes are collecting seashells.”
“There ain’t any seashells in the Rio Grande,” Rule said.
“Well, rocks then. Just so long as the bandit thinks we’re fiddling while Rome
burns.”
Rule looked puzzled. “I don’t get it.”
“So he thinks we’re sitting on our asses while Perez gets ready to attack.”
“Now I get it,” Rule said. “Is he still there?”
Cannan angled his head slightly, gave a sidelong look, and scanned the far side of the river. “I think he’s gone,” he said. “Seen enough, I reckon.”
Rule straightened and did his own looking.
He watched a thin pillar of dust rise above the desert floor and said, “He’s on his way back to the bandits to tell them how weak we are.”
Cannan smiled. “Then we’re going to surprise them, ain’t we?”
The last thing Ephraim Slough wanted was to get into a shooting scrape with a Mexican bandit... the one he watched in the middle distance.
Slough dismounted, stood beside Sophie’s head, and tried to make himself invisible. He saw no future in trading shots with a pistolero. Since the old mariner knew he’d be the one to die, gunplay wasn’t even a consideration.
But as it happened, Slough and the little mare were invisible, at least to the casual observer. A layer of yellow, windblown sand covered both horse and rider and made them look like a badly painted child’s toy, unseen against the desert floor.
And to Slough’s relief, the Mexican rode on. Apparently he’d more important business on hand than to gun an old codger with a wooden leg and a fifty-dollar mare.
“We need to make our report, Sophie,” he told the bay. Slough clambered into the saddle and kicked with his good leg. “Sophie, run like the wind,” he yelled.
The mare plodded forward and all Slough’s kicking and hollering couldn’t induce her to walk any faster.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Mickey Pauleen and Sancho Perez listened as the scout made his report. It was short and to the point.
“The gringos gather things at the riverbank.”
“What kinds of things?” Perez said.
“I do not know, patrón,” the young bandit said. “Little fishes, maybe so.”
Perez turned to Pauleen and his eyes asked a question.
The gunman shook his head.
“Damned if I know why. Is it possible they don’t expect an attack? Or has the Ranger cooked up some kind of trap?”
“Two men, one of them crippled, are not a trap, Mickey,” Perez said.
“I don’t know, Sancho, there’s something strange about the whole beach business.”
He stared hard at the young bandit. “You’re sure they were catching fish?”
“Gathering something,” the man said. “Fishes, rocks maybe.”
“Mickey, my fren’, it is simple,” Perez said. “The gringos will throw little stones or little fishes at us. This makes Sancho laugh. It is ver’ funny.”
Pauleen was silent for a spell, thinking. Then he said, “Sancho, send the peons across the river ahead of your men. Let them take the first fire from any defenders. So we lose a couple of hundred, the rubes will use up most of their ammunition shooting people that don’t matter.”
Perez asked a question of the young scout, a man with a tough face and coal black eyes. “What do you think of my fren’ Mickey’s plan, Roberto?”
“Patrón, I beg the honor of taking the town of Last Chance. Such glory is for caballeros, not dung-covered peasants.”
“And it will be so, Roberto. I will lead the charge myself,” Perez said.
The young man grinned. “Viva Perez!” he shouted. And those bandits close enough to hear took up the cry.
“Viva Perez! Viva Perez!”
The bandit chief smiled and bowed his head, but Pauleen felt sick to his stomach.
The Ranger planned something unpleasant. Of that, he was sure.
“Rider coming,” Simon Rule said. “It’s the damned spy again.”
Hank Cannan’s gaze reached out and lingered on the rider for a long while. “No, it’s Ephraim Slough,” he said finally. “Nobody else but him sits a horse like a ruptured sailor.”
“Is he sober?” the blacksmith said.
“He’s upright, more or less,” Cannan said.
Baptiste Dupoix would have said the Ranger looked as irritated as a stick-poked walrus.
Slough began waving and yelling when he was still a ways off, and Sophie, realizing she was headed for the barn, broke into a shambling trot.
The old sailor urged the mare into the river. Halfway across he yelled, “They’re a-comin’.”
“How far?” Cannan yelled.
“An hour. Maybe less.” Slough rode onto the bank and rolled off the horse, his usual dismount.
“Here,” Rule said, “have you been drinking?”
“Not a drop,” Slough said. He held out a hand. “Lookee, steady as a rock.”
“Did you see one of the bandits? A scout?” Cannan said.
“I surely did.”
“Did you engage him?”
“Hell no.”
“Good. His report to Perez will do more harm than good.”
“We hope,” Rule said. Then, “Why did you desert your post, Ephraim?”
“I figgered I’d see better if’n I was closer. Beggin’ your pardon, Ranger Cannan.”
“No harm done. In fact, you’ve bought us time,” Cannan said.
“That there’s a big dust,” Slough said. “A lot of people and horses moving.”
Rule said, “Should I go ring the church bell?”
“No, not yet,” Cannan said. “I don’t want the men stuck in the trenches for too long before the action starts. They might start considering stuff.”
“Like bullet wounds an’ sich,” Slough said, looking wise.
“Yeah, and widowed women and orphaned children,” Cannan said.
“I catch your drift,” Rule said. “All of a sudden I’m studying on the same things my ownself.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Ranger Hank Cannan first saw the oncoming dust cloud at two forty in the afternoon of Independence Day.
By then, the Butterfield stage was almost two hours late.
And there was no sign of Baptiste Dupoix and the ranchers.
Both these things were uppermost in Cannan’s mind as he stared at the rapidly advancing dust like a man mesmerized by a hooded cobra.
“Ring the bell?” Simon Rule said.
Cannan said nothing. He stared into the searing desert.
“Ranger,” Ephraim Slough said. “Ring the bell?”
Cannan turned bleak eyes to the man. “It begins, Ephraim, huh?” he said.
“Seems like, Ranger.”
“A Texas Ranger never turns his back to the enemy and runs,” Cannan said. “That’s always been how it is, I reckon.”
Slough’s voice was quiet. “So I’ve heard.”
Cannan smiled. “Then I’m in a hell of a fix.”
“We’re all in a hell of a fix, Ranger,” Slough said.
“There’s only us,” Rule said. “I mean the citizens of the town of Last Chance. With or without you, we got it to do.”
“Citizens of the United States of America, you mean,” Cannan said.
“That goes without saying, Ranger Cannan,” Slough said. Then, “You scared?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then that makes two of us,” Slough said.
“Three of us,” Rule said.
“Rangers are not supposed to get scared,” Cannan said. “I bet that’s written down in a rule book someplace.”
“A Ranger can get as scared as any other man,” Rule said.
Cannan smiled and his long, sad face brightened. “I guess I’m proof of that.” He looked at Rule. “Go ring the bell, Simon, and don’t forget what I told you about the old men and boys. Ephraim, get your rifle from the saddle and send the mare back to the barn. I want you here.”
Cannan drew his Colt, loaded the empty chamber under the hammer, then laid his Winchester across the arms of the wheelchair.
He was as ready as he was ever going to be.
Like a great uncoiling snake they broke ranks and staggered in the direction of the river, young, old, babes in arms in headlong flight for the shores of the Promised Land.
Perez waited until the last of the donkey carts passed, then ordered his men forward to take the point.
“Sancho, damn it, man, I’m begging you, let the peons take the first volleys,” Pauleen said. “Hell, then you can charge over their dead bodies right into Last Chance.”
“Mickey, my fren’, Sancho is dressed for war and he will lead the charge. The Madonna of Guadalupe came to me in the night and she smiled at me and said, ‘Onward, Sancho, onward to victory.’ She is a very powerful Madonna and this makes Sancho ver’ glad.”
Pauleen, dealing with arrogance and superstition, realized this was an argument he couldn’t win.
“Come, Mickey, why so glum?” Perez said. “You will ride at Sancho’s side and have your pick of the women, huh?”
“There’s only one woman I want,” Pauleen said.
“Ah sí, the señorita named Nora. Then soon she will be in your arms, my fren’. This is a mighty promise from Sancho.” He kneed his horse forward.
“Come, let us join our compañeros!”
The desert wind shook Abe Hacker’s canopy and drove fine sand over him that sifted into his eyes and every fold of flesh in his huge body, gritty, irritating, maddening.
The Mexicans had vanished to the north, into the distant heat shimmer, and he was alone under the inverted blue bowl of the sky, marooned like a castaway surrounded by a burning sea of sand. Hacker’s bottom lip trembled. “Come for me soon, Sancho,” he said aloud, talking into a great silence. “Don’t leave me in this dreadful place.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Forty-seven riflemen filed into the trench dug along the bank of the Rio Grande. Good men as far as Hank Cannan could tell. But silent. Stonily silent.
Day of Independence Page 23
