Return to Red River

by Johnny D. Boggs

“She’s not my mother.”

  Tess came up, leaving the knives in the fire. “No, Lightning Garth. I’m not your mother. I’m just the woman who risked my life, made myself your mother’s midwife, helped deliver you. I was your mother’s best friend. Her only friend. Your mother died in Abilene. So, no, I’m not your mother. I’m just the riverboat wench who sat up with you after you had a nightmare. Who changed your diapers. Wiped your nose. Bottle-fed you from Abilene to the Rio Grande. Who kept you out of an orphanage in the state of Kansas. Who gave you a name. I was the woman who taught you to read, because there was no school. Who took you to San Antonio to be christened, because there was no church or preacher in Dunson City then because there was no Dunson City. I stayed with you and prayed—yes, Tess Millay prayed—when you were sick with the measles . . . and again during the diphtheria and cholera outbreaks . . . and even when you had the colic. I read stories to you. I sang to you. I cut your hair, bandaged your cuts, kissed your hurts, and set your arm when you broke it when you were nine years old. I baked your birthday cakes before we hired Janeen, because God knows Groot Nadine couldn’t make a cake if his life depended on it.” She sank back to the fire.

  Her last words came out as a whisper. “No, Lightning Garth, I’m not your mother. But I brought you into this world. And, so help me God, I can take you out of it.”

  * * *

  Groot held the steaming cup to Mathew, who took it and stared.

  “It ain’t nothin’ but broth made from beef jerky. Them rapscallions didn’t leave us with nothin’.”

  “Yeah,” Laredo said. “Horses gone. Only reason we got that cup is it was in Teeler’s saddlebags.”

  “They did leave us our saddles,” Teeler said. “Just nothin’ to put ’em on.”

  “And matches.” No Sabe smiled. “In case we wished to start another inferno.”

  As Groot tore away Mathew’s shirt to examine the wounds, Mathew sipped the broth. Weak, but even that little bit of liquid gave him some strength.

  “You done a passable job with your doctorin’, Mathew,” Groot said. “Give you that much.”

  Mathew set the cup, now empty, on the ground. Gray started appearing in the eastern horizon. He had slept through the rest of the night, meaning Laredo, Teeler, and No Sabe had carried him the final two hundred yards to camp. He had been lucky. Or maybe Thomas Dunson had been a pretty fair guide.

  “Let me see,” Mathew said, wetting his lips, “if I can wrap my brain around what all happened. Go over it again.”

  Groot and Laredo did. Jess Teveler had stolen the herd, wounded Tom, murdered Yago Noguerra and Bradley Rush, taken Tom and Tess hostage, and lit out for Caldwell.

  “Caldwell,” Mathew said flatly.

  “Laredo told him that burg was done as a cow town,” Teeler Lacey said, “but Teveler, he said somethin’ ’bout how somebody had worked out a special deal for’m.”

  Mathew scratched his nose, rubbed the beard stubble on his face. Maybe. Maybe it made sense. Two hundred miles to Dodge City, or seventy, maybe even less, to Caldwell. Rustlers generally didn’t like to do too much work, and if Teveler had some inside man to help out with selling stolen beef and getting it loaded and shipped out east quickly, Caldwell would be the best spot. Hell, the law and Caldwell hardly had ever been synonymous.

  “That sumbitch Meeker went with ’em,” Teeler Lacey said. “Yellow bastard. So did that kid wrangler.”

  “Hey,” Groot interjected. “I told Joey to go with him. You let up on that boy. He’s a fair hand.” Groot looked down at Mathew. “See, I figured they’d murder us all. Didn’t see no reason Joey ought to get kilt.”

  “They wasn’t gonna—”

  But Mathew cut off Lacey. “Yeah. They were. I figure Reata was coming back this way after he killed me.”

  He sighed. John Meeker Jr. The wrangler, Joey Corinth. And . . . Lightning. Mathew spit into the sand.

  “We looked around a spell,” Laredo said. “Me and Teeler. After they took off with the herd and Reata was gone. Made it to the creek. Filled up the one canteen they left us—and only on account that Tess must’ve knocked it out of the wagon when they pulled out. Wanted to keep lookin’ for you, but . . . well . . . thought it best to come back here. Had no idea where to start looking in that burned-out countryside. And didn’t . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain, Laredo,” Mathew said. “Or apologize. Sitting here. Waiting. That was the right thing to do.” He hooked a thumb at the old cook. “Groot wasn’t going to be walking much.”

  “But I reckons I’ll have to,” he said. “Nothin’ to eat here except a few bits of jerky. Ain’t got no guns. No hosses. Nothin’. Reckon we can try to make it back to Red Fork Station.”

  “Or Caldwell.” Mathew was looking north.

  * * *

  Well, Tess had to give Lightning that much. He had helped get Tom out of the wagon, had even insisted that the Chickasaw with the green coat and the man called Creede help. They had found a level place, near the fire, and everyone had moved away—except Jess Teveler—to let Tess go to work with knives, hot water, and whiskey that Green Coat had fetched.

  And Lightning. He had stayed. He said nothing and barely looked at Tess. But he had held Tom down as she probed the hole in his shoulder with the knife. He had sweated and paled, but Lightning had been steady, and strong when she needed him. He had poured whiskey over the knife blades. He had picked up the flatted lead slug that she had pried out of Tom’s body, examined it, and then slipped it into Tom’s shirt pocket. He had even cleaned out the wound with whiskey and water, and he had been the one to cauterize the hole with the red-hot blade from his own knife.

  And when it was all over, he had wiped the blade of his knife on his chaps, picked up what had passed for surgical instruments, and walked away from Tess as she bandaged Tom’s shoulder with the strips of cloth. Oh, yeah. Lightning had ripped up one of Tom’s shirts to use as a bandage.

  But during it all, he had said not one word. And now, he stood by the chuck wagon, sharing from a bottle with the man named Creede and another man in green-striped britches and a red and blue plaid shirt.

  “Ma . . .” Tom’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Tom.” She pressed a finger over his lips to keep him from talking. “Just be quiet, son,” she said. “You’re my son . . . you know that . . . don’t you?” She felt tears welling, but not for long, because she had decided she was done with crying. It didn’t accomplish a damn thing but make you look weak and pathetic.

  Tom swallowed. She gave him water and ran her fingers through his hair, humming some song—one she remembered singing to Lightning when he was just a baby. Tom was alive. Conscious for now, though he would soon be back asleep. And Tess would sleep at his bedside. Just like she had done when Tom had been young, and sick, and fragile. Just as she had done with Lightning, too.

  * * *

  Dawn.

  They ate the last of the jerky and drank water. Mathew sent No Sabe back to the creek to refill the canteens. They had emptied two last night, including Reata’s of his rotgut. And most of that had been poured out onto the ground or used again to clean Mathew’s bullet wounds.

  No Sabe hadn’t returned, but he had been gone only an hour. Now the men—Mathew, Groot, Laredo, Teeler—stood staring off to the south, at a line of dust. Too much for a dust devil. And not blowing like a dust storm.

  “Damnation,” Laredo said. “That’s . . . it’s gotta be . . .”

  “Cattle herd,” Mathew answered.

  “You reckon . . .” Groot said.

  Mathew did not reckon. He knew. Twenty years in this business? Damned right, he knew.

  “But . . .” Teeler Lacey started, but stopped.

  Mathew nodded. “Makes sense. Somebody went around the fire’s path. Probably lower downstream that creek. Cut up this way to reach the Cut-Out. Pure luck we just happen to be in their path.”

  “Iffen they don’t turn afore they get here,” Groot said.

  Mat
hew started, but stopped. Pain raced up and down his side. He had to catch his breath.

  “Teeler . . . ?” he said weakly.

  “I’ll walk,” the old scout said. “Goes agin my stripes. Walkin’. But I’ll do it. Catch up with ’em. Bring ’em up back this way if they wasn’t comin’ here already.”

  “Thanks.” Mathew started to sit, but now he stared off to the north.

  “You ought to wait till No Sabe gets back,” Groot said. “Take a canteen with you.”

  Lacey said: “Nah. They’ll have water in the chuck wagon. I’ll drink then. Is that . . . ?” He, too, stopped, staring at Mathew and then at what Mathew Garth had seen.

  “Dust,” Lacey said. “More dust.”

  “Yeah,” Mathew said. “But that’s no trail herd.”

  It was moving too fast, and not big enough.

  “Teveler?” Laredo asked.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Some son of a bitch kept screaming. Lightning Garth rolled over in his bedroll, brought an arm over his right ear, tried to block out that infernal racket. He knew he had drunk too much whiskey last night—compliments of the Chickasaws, known as great whiskey runners throughout the Nations—and wanted to sleep. But somebody kept yelling, and now others were joining in, and, despite the pounding in his head, he heard Jess Teveler’s voice.

  “The hell do you mean, Creede?”

  “They’s gone! All of ’em.”

  “Who the hell was on watch?”

  “That runt. What’s his name? Meeker?”

  Lightning’s eyes opened. He brought his arm, gently, off his head.

  “The darky’s gone, too.” That came from one of Teveler’s gunmen, a gent with a blond mustache who called himself Addison.

  Someone kicked Lightning’s boot, cussed, and kicked again.

  “I’m awake,” Lightning moaned, and pushed himself up. His mouth felt awful. Whatever the Chickasaws were smuggling, it had to be the worst Lightning had ever drunk.

  “Get up.” It was Teveler.

  Lightning rubbed his eyes, looked around for something close that would help reduce his swollen tongue.

  “What’s wrong?” he finally managed to choke out.

  “Everything, damn it. That punk Meeker found some spine after all. And that damned puny little wrangler. They made off with the horses—all the damned horses, even the mules—sometime last night!”

  His head no longer ached. At least, Lightning didn’t feel the throbs anymore. He swayed, caught himself, and pulled himself up, somehow managed to stand.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Teveler slapped his hat against his thigh. “How come nobody heard all that racket? A whole damned remuda? Horses and mules don’t tiptoe and—”

  “All of us was pretty liquored up,” Creede said.

  Yeah, Lightning thought, and since they had pushed the herd, already weary after running during the firestorm the previous night, Jess Teveler himself had said that they had no cause to worry. The cattle certainly wouldn’t stampede again, especially not after being driven ten more miles, and no one would be coming after them. It was, Teveler had bragged, reason for celebration. They’d tie one on again once they reached Caldwell in five days or so.

  “Shut up.” Teveler spun around, spit, cursed again, ran a hand through his hair. “Where the hell is Reata?”

  “He never come back, boss,” Addison said.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Lightning shook his head, trying to comprehend everything he heard, or thought he had heard. His brain still seemed befuddled by all the rotgut. And all that he had learned since yesterday.

  Suddenly, someone started laughing. A musical laugh. Far away, then closer, and familiar. Lightning knew that laugh. Turning, he saw his mother, sitting next to Tom, who lay asleep in his bedroll near the smoldering embers of last night’s fire.

  “How does it feel, Teveler,” she said, “to be afoot in this country?”

  Jess Teveler stepped toward her, his hand on his revolver. Lightning’s stomach seesawed. He bit his lip.

  “I promise you this, wench,” Teveler said. “If they catch up with us—which they won’t—you won’t be the first to die. No, lady. You’ll see your boy barkin’ in hell before I put a bullet between your eyes.”

  Teveler’s finger pointed at the sleeping Tom Garth.

  * * *

  A sea of longhorns, mostly dark but with many other colors, covered the hills, taking advantage of the breeze. Mounted cowboys circled the herd. Coffee boiled in a pot over a fire. Bacon fried in skillets. Dutch ovens cooked bread. Beans simmered in a big pot.

  Mathew Garth pushed extra shells into the belt. Beside him, Laredo Downs, wearing borrowed clothes, buckled a rig over his waist, then lifted the Schofield from the holster and checked the cylinder.

  “I appreciate this, A.C.” Mathew dropped the remaining slugs into his vest pocket. He, too, wore a clean shirt, compliments of a cowboy named Easy Reno, a fair to middling cowhand Mathew had fired two years back.

  A. C. Thompson handed Mathew a cup of coffee.

  “We Texians stick together, Garth.” The old cattle drover grinned.

  Mathew sipped coffee. He wanted to smile, but couldn’t. “I was born in . . .” He had to think. “Iowa.”

  Thompson chuckled. “Don’t worry, son. I won’t let the boys back home know.”

  The drover accepted a cup one of his cowhands brought over and shifted his hips, leaning forward as he spoke again to Mathew. “But, son, we’ll be ridin’ with you.”

  Joey Corinth was bringing Mathew’s blood bay from the remuda. The wrangler had put Bradley Rush’s saddle and bridle on the gelding.

  “Thanks, A.C.,” Mathew said. “But this is our fight.”

  “Which is why we’ll be ridin’ with you. Our fight. We stick together.” He held up the hand that didn’t hold coffee to stop Mathew’s protest before it could begin. “I’ll leave my greenhorns, my younger boys, with the herd. But you’ll need some help gettin’ your cattle back this way. And you might need some help with those rustlers. Bunch of my boys ain’t no strangers to gunplay, during the War for Southern Independence, and in tussles agin rustlers ourselves, Comanch’, bandits from the other side of the Rio, and guys they just didn’t like. Like I said. Texians like us stick together . . . no matter where one of us happened to be born.”

  The look on the drover’s face told Mathew that he had lost. A hollowness enveloped him. He stared at his cup of coffee for the longest while, and finally looked A. C. Thompson into his piercing blue eyes.

  “A.C. . . . about that stampede . . . about what I . . .”

  “Don’t do no apologizin’, kid,” Thompson said as he turned away. “From what I hear tell, that wasn’t you talkin’, but some man named Tom Dunson. Just know this: Glad to have you back, Garth. And proud to ride alongside you.”

  When Mathew turned, with Laredo Downs at his side, he saw other men waiting for him, holding the reins to their horses, with borrowed six-shooters and carbines. No Sabe . . . John Meeker Jr. . . . Teeler Lacey . . . even Joey Corinth. Groot Nadine, using a Winchester as a crutch, even stood there, waiting.

  “Groot,” Mathew said, “you can’t ride . . .”

  “Just watch me,” the old cook said.

  * * *

  Dust rose toward the south. Lightning Garth swallowed down the bile and tried to stop sweating. At the edge of camp, Jess Teveler used a spyglass to see who was coming. Teveler needed that telescope, but Lightning didn’t.

  “Damn.” The gunman collapsed the brass scope and handed it to Addison. “How’d they get them horses?”

  Addison had opened the telescope and brought it to his eye. “How’d they get that many men?” Addison asked.

  “Shut up.” Spinning on a boot heel, Teveler called out to Creede, “Any sign of those Indians?”

  When Creede’s head shook, Tess Millay laughed. “Did you really think those Chickasaws would come back?”

  Earlier that mo
rning, Teveler had sent the three Indians, afoot, to find the remuda or steal some other horses. They hadn’t returned, and Lightning had to think his mother was right. If they found any horses, those Indians would be hightailing it back to the Chickasaw Nation. They knew when to fold a hand.

  The two other white men, Benson and Kennedy, hurried in from the herd. Afoot, they had been trying to keep an eye on the longhorns. Now they checked their weapons.

  “They’ve stopped,” Addison said.

  All eyes went to the dust cloud that drifted with the wind. Now Lightning moved toward Addison and Teveler. He counted a dozen riders . . . before he stopped counting.

  “Maybe it’s . . . just . . . some . . . strangers passin’ through,” Kennedy said.

  “Only one of ’em’s coming in.” Now Addison collapsed the telescope and pitched it onto a bedroll.

  “Just one?” Creede strained his eyes.

  Lightning Garth shot a quick glance at his mother. He knew who it was.

  * * *

  Mathew Garth cringed as he slid from the saddle. Pain racked his body, and he wondered if he would have the strength, let alone the gumption, to finish the job. Reaching up, he drew the Winchester from the scabbard, deciding it would be easier to work a. 44-40 carbine than to try drawing the Colt from the holster. He patted the blood bay’s rump, and the gelding walked off.

  “Come to make us some deal, Garth?” Teveler called out.

  “We buried three of our men today,” Mathew said. “Joe Nambel, Yago Noguerra, Bradley Rush. There are no deals. Just a rope. Or lead.”

  “What about the darky, Reata?”

  “Didn’t bury him,” Mathew said. “Coyot’s have to eat.”

  “So you come here . . . to die?” Teveler asked.

  Mathew’s head shook. He studied the camp. Teveler and one man stood just behind Tess, who sat next to Tom, lying on a bedroll near what had been a fire. Mathew couldn’t tell if the boy remained conscious, but at least he was breathing.

  Another man, cradling a sawed-off shotgun, stood near the chuck wagon. Mathew spotted the barrel of a rifle between the canvas tarp and the wooden side of the chuck wagon, giving him the location of the fourth man. The fifth man, a lean, blond gent, so thin he had to be a lunger, stood at the far edge of camp. And the three Indians? Mathew didn’t see them and that troubled him. Finally, there was Lightning Garth, standing over slightly behind Tess and Tom.