A whistle shrieked.
A bell clang-clang-clanged like doomsday.
Elizabeth’s mouth fell open in a scream of terror.
Smoke pouring, sparks flying, a big black locomotive barreled down on them.
She was still screaming as Chavez raced across the tracks in front of the train, shouting to the horse, “Go! Go! Go!”
18 Miles South of Fort Bliss
“Hey, Captain! Hold on a minute!”
The horseman’s voice cut through the thin air of the Texas desert, then faded quickly, the sound soaked up by the heat. A cloud of pinkish dust swirled behind him.
Jake Nelson lifted a hand and halted the team of men with him. He reined his horse to a stop near a stand of willow trees around a trickle of water. Not much of a stream, he thought, but enough for the horses and a little shade for the men.
The landscape of flat red dirt and broken rock shimmered in the heat. Jake raised his head when the rider called again, flailing his mount to run faster.
Sergeant Gus Dukker, straddling a big black and white Appaloosa, shielded his eyes and watched the rider. “He should know better. It’s too hot to ride a horse that way,” he said. “Who is that idiot?”
Jake grinned. “Must be an officer. Can’t tell yet; too far away, but he’s in uniform, which means he’s one of ours, so I’d rather you didn’t shoot him.”
An undercurrent of laughter rippled through the other men.
“I saw the uniform too, and that only makes it worse,” Gus said. He took off his wide-brimmed hat, smoothed a dark patch of hair from his forehead, and pulled his hat back on.
“The uniform guarantees whatever he wants from us, we ain’t gonna like it.”
“You’re probably right there. Still, we don’t look all that official ourselves. Maybe we should button our shirts.”
Gus snorted. “You first, boss.”
Jake looked as scruffy as they did. Perspiration slicked his face, and his shirt hung open, his chest sandy and sticky with sweat. But it was hot and a long-sleeved open shirt was almost standard. It looked sloppy, yet it allowed air to circulate while protecting them from the sun—important for him with his light hair, and for Fred Barkley, the redhead alongside Jake.
They were Rangers, part of the new Frontier Battalion charged with restoring law and order to Texas. Since they were considered the cream of the military, they dressed any way they pleased. They did not wear uniforms and were proud of it. Halfway between an army and a police force, they had nearly unlimited authority, including the power of arrest.
Though not U.S. Army, sometimes they worked together. Before they joined the Texas Rangers, Jake and several of his men had been members of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry and had worn uniforms identical to the one coming toward them. Since the approaching rider was wearing the same, Jake figured he was from Fort Bliss, eighteen miles north.
The military complex of Fort Bliss and the adjoining subpost lay three miles outside El Paso. Camp Annex had been a small U.S. Cavalry post thirty years ago when Indians were a problem. Once that lessened, the Army expanded Fort Bliss and abandoned Camp Annex and its half dozen buildings.
But the Texas Rangers saw the adobe and log buildings as infinitely better than their tents. They grabbed up hammers and saws and moved in with the blessing of Fort Bliss. There was now a good lane that connected the two. Relations were cordial and cooperative. Camp Annex provided extra stable facilities when Fort Bliss was full.
A few minutes later, sides heaving, the horse racing toward them plunged to a stop and its rider dismounted. He walked to Jake, snapped to attention, and saluted.
Jake returned the salute and swung off his horse. “Relax, Lieutenant, we’re not very formal out here.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Captain Jake Nelson. What can we do for you?”
“Lieutenant Taylor, sir,” he said, and handed Jake a small yellow envelope. “Colonel Gordon got the same telegram this morning from the adjutant general—”
Jake’s head snapped up. “Which adjutant general, Washington or Austin?”
“Both, sir. State and Federal.”
Definitely not good. Jake kept his face blank and ripped open the envelope. With both adjutant generals on it, there was a problem somewhere—a big problem. He took out a single yellow sheet and read it. He swore softly.
“Mexicans, again.” He handed the telegram up to Gus, who read it and then passed it around to the other men.
“Told you we weren’t gonna like it,” Gus said, shaking his head.
“Looks like Senator Madison got wind of trouble from Mexico heading for his son Lloyd out here,” Jake said. “Some of you haven’t met him yet, but Lloyd runs the newspaper in El Paso and prints all of General Diego’s dirty little plans. Nice man, smart, honest, and Texan to the core. Apparently, Diego doesn’t like that and wants Madison and his paper—the Grande Examiner—shut down. Permanently.”
“Shut down? You mean assassinated?” Gus asked.
“Reads that way to me,” Jake said.
The faces looking back at him were stone-hard. His men were Texas lawmen as well as Texas Rangers.
Jake shook his head. Confrontations with Mexican bandits were ramping up. Almost nightly the bandits slipped over the border and terrorized Texas settlers. Murder, rape, and stealing cattle were common. General Manuel Diego was trying to goad the U.S. to retaliate.
In the last ten days, Jake and his team had been in shootouts with four separate groups of bandits. As usual, the Mexicans ran for the border whenever the Rangers appeared.
And the U.S. Army was forbidden to go into Mexico after them.
Even so, the Rangers shot at them in the river before they could reach the other side. They’d chased into the water after them and tried to turn them back. Horses rearing, neighing, splashing, they fired with everything they had—pistols, rifles, shotguns—because once the Mexicans made it to their side of the Rio Grande, they were safe.
The boundary between Mexico and the United States kept changing. Officially, the international boundary was the center of the deepest channel of the Rio Grande. Since the river changed channels, dug new ones or dried up, depending on the season, the boundary was hard to determine. It frequently overflowed its banks, adversely affecting crops and homes and animals. Rangers had to settle for not setting foot on the Mexican bank.
Jake followed the order to the letter. Most of the time. Teams of Texas Rangers invading Mexico and shooting Mexicans on their own soil would be a serious international violation, a provocation that could lead to war. Nobody wanted another war with Mexico.
Except General Diego. The turmoil even a small war would create would make it easier for him to oust the current president and take over himself. He’d been stirring up trouble on both sides of the border for over a year.
One of the men passed the yellow telegram back to Jake. Standing close by, Gus asked, “How we gonna do this, Jake? We’re not due back on post till next week.”
Inside, Jake’s stomach tightened—a sixth-sense stirring almost too faint to recognize—warning him that time was a factor, and it was running out. And hard experience had taught him that sometimes his brain got it wrong. But his gut? Never.
He glanced at the sun directly overhead. “We can’t wait; we’re going back now. Let’s finish here and get started. If we hurry, we can be at Madison’s by three o’clock.”
Jake swung himself back into the saddle and turned his horse. “Lieutenant, you’re welcome to ride with us and take a personal report back for Colonel Gordon. The sooner Lloyd Madison knows what we do, the better.”
The Madison Ranch
It was midafternoon when Jake pointed to the open gate and white-fenced lane leading to Madison’s house, a large white Colonial with a wraparound porch. It was a rich man’s house, a two-story, and set well back off the road. He’d been there to dinner with Lloyd several times.
“That’s it,” he said, frowning, studying the chimney. Odd. No smoke.
As they rode toward the house, he noticed an unusual number of birds. They were everywhere. Eleven turkey buzzards coasted on the updrafts high over a barn beyond the house. The hair prickled on the back of his neck. A dozen more of the big black birds hunched in the trees around the barn.
“Something big must’ve died out here to attract that many,” he said. Chills ran down his back, and he rolled his shoulders to chase them. With their thick beaks and rubbery necks, he thought vultures were the ugliest wild things in nature.
Talking among themselves, the men rode closer. When they got to the corral, all conversation stopped. The gate was wide open. Inside, three dead horses, two dogs, and a dozen chickens lay in the corral, all recently shot.
Sickened, Jake slid off his horse. Gun drawn, he started for the open barn. “Let’s check inside.” Three Rangers climbed off their horses and joined him. The others walked their horses off to the side and pulled their rifles.
In the Cavalry, he’d been in Reconnaissance and had specialized in silent approaches and elimination of sentries. In the Frontier Battalion, he trained his men in the same techniques. As Rangers, they handled weapons better than almost anyone and were lethal in hand-to-hand fighting.
Those reports he’d written on reducing casualties by using the more highly trained Ranger teams instead of regular Rangers caught someone’s attention in Austin. Adjutant General Wilburn King, Frontier Battalion commander, pulled Jake and six Ranger companies out of the Nueces Strip and sent them to El Paso on the Mexican border to put a stop to the ongoing incursions there.
When it came to carrying out operations, Jake was a planner. He’d learned from experience that most plans go wrong. Because of his insistence on double backups, his Rangers had acquired a reputation for surviving all odds. It had reached the point that if the Battalion needed something done quick and dirty, they asked for one of Nelson’s teams.
He had an uneasy feeling this was going to be another one.
“Captain, can you use one more in the barn?” the lieutenant called.
Jake looked back and saw the eagerness in the young officer’s eyes. Twelve years earlier, Private Jake Nelson, a big fifteen-year-old kid who had lied about his age to join up, would’ve asked the same question.
He swept his hand. “Sure can. Bring your rifle, Lieutenant, and come on.”
When they came out of the barn a few minutes later, Jake stood in the middle of the corral, hands on his hips. He looked around at the well-kept ranch, the white rail fences around the pasture and the big barn. “Something is very wrong here,” he said. “Barn’s empty. Horses and dogs killed, gates open, and no one’s come out to see who we are.”
“Maybe they’re not home,” the lieutenant said.
Gus gave him a hard look. “Or maybe they were.”
Jake shrugged off his striped vest. “Don’t know what we’re going to run into here. So let’s look like what we are.” He buttoned his dusty white shirt up the front, tucked it in his trousers, and pulled on a black necktie. He shrugged his vest back on, the pockets bulging with bullets.
Ten Rangers and Lieutenant Taylor, who had long since shucked his uniform jacket and opened his own shirt, like the Rangers, dismounted and put themselves back together. They tied the horses to a hitching rail a short distance from the house. Pistols in hand, they spread out and approached the white house.
Without a word they separated and surrounded the house. Alert for anything out of the ordinary, Jake and Fred Barkley walked up the steps to the front porch. Standing off to the side, Jake leaned over and beat on the door.
No answer. He pounded the door again.
“Texas Rangers, open up!”
No answer.
He drew his knee up and kicked the door open.
The room was empty and had been vandalized. Sofa cushions lay strewn about the living room, chairs overturned, and every lamp in sight had been smashed. Some thrown against the wall. Broken glass covered the floor.
On their way to the kitchen, they checked the other rooms downstairs. A large house, it had a spacious dining room, an office, and a library with a piano. Many of its keys were broken, hit with something heavy. He pressed a key, the single note clear and sounding unusually loud in the silence.
In the kitchen, they let the others in through a side door. Remembering the smokeless chimney he’d seen from the road, Jake ran his hand over the top of the cast-iron cookstove. Cold.
“Whatever happened here happened hours ago,” he said. Doubting he would get any kind of response, he called, “Hello, hello. Anybody home?”
A high-pitched shriek from upstairs answered him.
“Daddy, Daddy, come get me!”
Three men broke for the stairs.
Upstairs in a child’s room, a little girl about three years old, tears streaming down her face, lay in a corner, sobbing, her hands and feet bound behind her. The small bed was torn apart, mattress and blankets tossed on the floor.
Jake set an overturned chair upright, then lifted her, and sat with her on his lap. Stroking her hair, he tried to calm her.
“Your daddy’s not here right now, but it’s all right, Ruthie,” he said, and steadied her elbows while Fred untied her wrists and ankles.
“Is Miz Annie here with you?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Yeth,” she lisped, and pointed to the hall.
“Jake, in here,” Gus called from a bedroom at the far end of the hall. “We found the housekeeper. She says Mexican soldiers broke in the house late this morning. She and the little girl are the only ones here. We’re untying her now.”
Jake, carrying Ruthie, her little arms clenched tight around his neck, walked down the hall, his heavy boots rapping the oak floor. From the doorway he looked in at the housekeeper. “They tore this room up, too.” Clothes were strewn on the floor, the wardrobes emptied.
“Miz Annie, you need a doctor?” he asked.
“Oh, Captain Nelson, thank God you’re here. I think we’re all right. The soldiers were in such a rush to get out, they didn’t touch me or Ruthie.”
“She seems fine. If she’d been hurt by a strange man today, she wouldn’t act like this. She won’t let me put her down. But then she knows me. Still, just to be safe, I want you both to see the doc.”
Later, in the dining room downstairs, Annie brought Ruthie a sandwich and a glass of milk and sat beside her at the table. Annie told them that ten soldiers forced their way into the house, demanding to see Lloyd.
“What color uniforms?” Jake broke in.
“Blue and white, with red neck scarves. They sounded Mexican.”
“They probably were.”
“When I told them Lloyd wasn’t home, they didn’t believe me and went all through the house yelling and throwing the furniture around. Not until they threatened to take Ruthie with them did I tell them Lloyd was at the courthouse in town.”
She drained her own glass and set it down. “He was giving a speech this morning. He and Elizabeth left early so they could talk to the sheriff before the meeting.”
Jake’s eyebrows pulled together. “Who’s Elizabeth?”
“His younger sister,” Annie said. “She arrived from Washington last week.”
“He mentioned he had a sister, but I don’t recall he said she was coming to Texas.”
Annie’s expression softened. “She and Lloyd are close. She came out here to look after him. When his wife died last year, Lloyd asked her to come live with him when she finished school. She’s a writer, and he needs family to help him get his life in order. In return, he’s teaching her the newspaper business.”
Ruthie slid off her chair and ran across the room to a group of family photographs on a mahogany chest by the window. She snatched up a small oval frame, ran back, and climbed up into Jake’s lap. She handed it to him.
When Jake glanced down at it, his heart gave a funny little bump that surprised him. “Who’s this?”
“Aunt ’Lithabeth. Daddy says she’s boo-ful.”
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br /> Boo-ful.
Her daddy was right. She certainly was.
A dark-haired young woman with laughing eyes and dimples smiled up at him—pretty. Nice, very nice. But then he always did have a weakness for long hair. He shook his head. Pretty as she was, he had no time for women now. Certainly not her kind. Elizabeth was a lady, a senator’s daughter. He smiled to himself. And probably spoiled rotten.
Jake had a company of sixty-five Rangers, six teams of men, each with meetings and training and desk work and never enough time. With all the paper work he had, he shouldn’t be here today. He should have stayed on post, instead of joining B Company for this unscheduled river patrol. But something was going on in Mexico, he told Colonel Gordon, and there were things they needed to see for themselves.
With what they’d found today here at Lloyd Madison’s, he was glad he’d come along. There was a lot more than what it looked like.
Fred, outside on Madison’s front porch, stuck his head inside the door and called, “Company coming.”
Men’s voices and the clatter of hooves sounded in the lane. Buggy wheels rattled to a stop in front of the house.
Jake slipped the little photograph into his shirt pocket, set Ruthie down, and walked over to the window. He pulled the curtain aside.
A male voice shouted, “You inside the house. This is the sheriff talking. Come outside now, and that’s an order.”
Jake frowned. “Miz Annie, who are all those people?”
“They’re from El Paso—the mayor, city councilmen, and the deputy sheriff.”
Jake let the curtain drop back and started for the door. Fred met him halfway and walked with him. Together, they stepped out onto the porch, past the sagging door. “Which one of you is the sheriff?” Jake said.
A tall man with a brushy mustache stared hard at Jake. Hand on the butt of his revolver, he said, “I’m Deputy Sheriff Morgan. Who are you and what’s your business here?”
“I’m Captain Jake Nelson, and this is Sergeant Fred Barkley. We’re Texas Rangers from Camp Annex—”
River to Cross, A Page 2
