Tennessee Renegade

by Hank J. Kirby

  He stepped forward and his boot encountered a dry twig from the roofing materials. It cracked dully. He froze.

  Instantly, the shape against the wall spun in his direction and a six gun blasted, the powder flash lighting the room for an instant. Even as he flung himself outside and the bullet tore a spray of adobe from the damaged frame, he glimpsed Renny Pardoe.

  The kid had blood streaking his face. Dark rivulets had crawled down from under the red-spotted bandanna he had tied around his head. The echoes of the shot were slamming at Buck’s ears as he called:

  ‘Renny! It’s Buck! Hold your damn fire!’

  He heard the gun hammer cock and flattened against the wall again but no shot came. Instead, he heard Renny’s hoarse voice: ‘You took your damn time getting here!’

  ‘You had a good lead. Lucky for me you did your business at Diego’s rancho first, then headed this way. I was already halfway here by then. …’ Enderby knelt beside the kid and eased him around. ‘How bad’re you hit?’

  ‘Whacked me in the head, feels like a mule kicked me. Can’t see all that well.’

  ‘Better than being dead, like they told me you were.’

  ‘Yeah, it knocked me out and there seems to have been a great deal of bleeding. They rode out and left me.’

  ‘Taking Rina with them.…’

  Renny’s breath sighed out and Buck helped him to his feet. His boots dragged as he took him out the door to the hollow where he had left his horse. He gave the kid water, propping him with his back against a rock.

  ‘Why the hell did you come back here?’

  Renny was silent a short while, then he shrugged. ‘Had to shoot my way outta Don Diego’s. You’d’ve been proud of me. Remembered all you told me.’

  ‘You fanned your gun back in Chaco Flats and I told you it was too dangerous to do that when you don’t have much experience.’

  ‘Aaah … it worked.’ He looked sharply at Enderby. ‘You really been working at trailing me, huh?’

  ‘Renny, you shot your father who happens to be a State Senator and … what’s wrong?’

  ‘The Senator’s been shot?’ Buck hadn’t yet heard the kid call Pardoe ‘Dad’ or ‘Pa’.

  ‘You shot him according to Brewster.…’

  ‘Who’s Brewster?’

  ‘Don’t give me that, kid! You know him, Captain of Rangers.’

  Renny shook his head. ‘Only know Cap’n Nathan Cord.’

  ‘That’s him. Brewster’s his real name. Now the Sen …’

  ‘The Senator had him fired, with some of his men,’ Renny cut in. ‘He found out they were taking graft and working a few other deals with bounties s’posed to be paid over and they put ’em in their own pockets, he’s under pressure. Lot of his rivals want to close down the Rangers and revert to the old State Police. The Senator did some investigation and fired Cord, or Brewster, whatever his name is, and a lot of others so his political enemies wouldn’t have reason to expose them and so get the Governor’s OK to disband the Texas Rangers entirely. He wanted to get rid of the bad eggs first.’

  Buck was very still now. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Before I left, the Senator had just received confirmation that the men had been fired.’

  ‘And he was OK? There was no argument and you didn’t shoot him?’

  ‘Hell, no. But there was an argument. About me going back East to an art college. I got mad and told him to go to hell, I’d make my own way. I tore up that sketch and stormed out, him yelling all the time.…’

  Enderby tried hard to get a good look at Renny’s face but there wasn’t really enough light. Still, he felt the kid was telling the truth: his tone sounded sincere. ‘Someone shot your father, Renny. He’s in a coma in Painted Rock according to Brewster.…’ Buck paused. ‘Brewster! He let me think he was still a Ranger and that I have to serve out my time! He’s a mean cuss. He just might’ve ridden in on the Senator to square with him for having him fired … we’d better move.’

  ‘I’m not going without Rina.’

  ‘Hell, they’ll’ve taken her back to Don Diego by now. Or be well along the trail.’

  Renny shook his head, ‘No. Seems the Don’s coming up to meet them. Something to do with Rina. Heard them say when I was playing dead. They’re camped a couple of miles from here, in a canyon with a spring. They don’t like to be too far from water out here.…’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Let’s see, I killed two, winged another. Be six still in fighting condition.’

  ‘And just you and me go after them? Kid, you’re weak as a new fawn … and we’ve only got one horse between us.’

  ‘You can easily wideloop another, you did it before. And I can shoot all right. Set me up with a rifle and I’ll pick off every one of those damn Mexes!’

  Buck pursed his lips. ‘Got a taste for killing, have you?’

  He thought Renny flushed. The kid shook his head. ‘Not really, but I want Rina.’

  ‘You’ll have Don Diego’s men stalking you for as long as you’re together.’

  ‘We want to be together. I know, we’re only a couple of kids, but what’s that got to do with it? You’re twice my age but, tell me, what makes it better for you to marry than for me?’

  ‘Marriage, huh?’

  ‘The works, look, she said she was pregnant and I came here to take her to an old woman I knew who could get rid of the baby. But along the way I had a change of mind. I like the idea of a kid … but she …’

  Buck shook his head. ‘Kids bringing up kids!’

  ‘How old was your mother when she had her first kid?’ Renny snapped, sounding like his old spoiled self.

  Sixteen, according to family lore, but Buck didn’t aim to tell Renny that. Instead, he sighed, helped Pardoe towards his horse and said, ‘Let’s go, I’m too damn tired to argue and I’m in a hurry to get back to Kim. Brewster was still at her place when I left.…’

  The Mexicans were gathered around the rock pool fed by the spring, still eating. Enderby and Renny Pardoe could smell the beans and chili and their mouths watered. Renny picked out the girl, a slight figure sitting at one end of a log by herself, eating desultorily.

  ‘She don’t look pregnant!’ allowed Buck.

  ‘She’s not, she only told her father that so he’d disown her, throw her out. Figured it would make it easier for us. She loves me that much … but she never told me until we were well on the trail to Gallatera. Now gimme a gun and I’ll rake the camp.…’

  ‘They’re only men doing their job, kid.’

  ‘They left me for dead, for Chrissakes!’

  ‘Obeying orders. Daren’t not to. These rancheros make their own law.…’

  ‘We can’t give ’em any kind of a chance! They’ll kill Rina!’

  ‘With her father supposedly on his way to see her? Talk sense, kid.’

  Renny narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re back to calling me “kid”!’

  ‘Play this my way and I’ll start calling you “Renny” again.’

  ‘You know what you can do!’

  ‘I know I’ll put a bullet through your gunhand if you don’t follow orders.’

  He heard Renny swallow: the kid knew he meant it and nodded jerkily, muttering, ‘All right, damn you!’

  For once, Renny did as he was told. At the prearranged signal he opened fire, shooting into the group, sending their tin plates spinning, scattering the coals of the fire, lead ripping into the pool. The Mexicans yelled and jumped up and ran for their guns which they had left near a big flat rock. More of Renny’s lead spat amongst the weapons, kicking two into the air. The Mexicans stopped dead.

  The girl had had enough sense to drop behind the log. Then Buck Enderby rode slowly into the camp, six gun cocked. One man snatched at his waistband and Buck shot him through the shoulder. The others lifted their hands high.

  ‘Amigos, no need for anyone to die, Rina, climb up on one of them horses and bring a spare, for Renny.’

  Her hair wild, pale face no
more than a blurred oval, she gasped. ‘Renny! He lives?’

  ‘That’s him up on the rim. And he’s itching to drop these men one by one.’ He grinned at the Mexicans who had rolled their eyes towards the dark rim. ‘I think you men should remove your trousers and boots. Rina, you ride up to Renny while I tend to these fellers. They’re about to take an unscheduled bath.’

  ‘You will die a horrible death, gringo!’ hissed a man Buck figured to be the leader as he awkwardly started to remove his boots.

  ‘You’ll have to catch me first, amigo.’ And hard on his words, as Rina came out of the canyon, leading a horse for Renny, Enderby rode in amongst the remaining mounts shouting and loosing off two shots. As they whirled and raced out of the canyon, he herded the pantless caballeros into the pool and made them squat down up to their necks. Then he laughed, yelled, ‘Adios, pescados!’

  Their curses and threats rang from the canyon walls as he rowelled his mount away.

  The return ride to the Rio was not without its excitement.

  Some of the more courageous Gallatera ruffians were waiting even as they came back from the canyon. Obviously, they figured it would be easier to try to take the back-from-the-dead Renny and the young girl from a lone gringo rather than from a band of Don Diego’s caballeros.

  They were wrong. The girl had taken a rifle and a pistol from the Mexicans’ weapons pile before riding out with the spare mount for Renny. She surprised Enderby when they were chased by the impatient Gallatera men who broke cover instead of allowing the trio to ride into ambush.

  Renny and Buck tried to protect her by keeping her between them, but then she slid the rifle from the scabbard on the large Mexican saddle and began shooting. She wasn’t too accurate but she was game. She brought down two horses that Buck witnessed and when one of the dismounted men ran to grab her leg, trying to pull her out of the saddle, she had slashed her spur rowel across his face. He dropped away screaming and bloody, and she brought the rifle around and shot him, the blast blowing him clear off his feet.

  Buck accounted for three men, one wounded, two dead. Renny said he shot four but Buck didn’t figure that kind of a count and wondered if the kid was trying to impress the girl.

  Not that it mattered, because they broke free and hit the flats where they gave their mounts their heads. Renny and the girl drew ahead of Enderby because his mount was weary from the long trail down and the hard country didn’t make it any easier.

  Buck liked Rina Diego. She was sixteen, she said, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a nose a shade too acquiline for his liking, but her mouth was just right and her friendly smiles transformed her face into something he could only think of as being radiant. She seemed to have more maturity than Renny although he was almost a year older. Her upbringing had been stricter and more confining. No doubt Don Diego and his institutriz, the several governesses he employed to teach Rina the various aspects of the life she would be expected to live, had been too rigorous and straitlaced. Being high-spirited, she had rebelled and when the swaggering young Renny had appeared with his sweet-talk and winning ways … well, it must have been one hell of a shock to Don Diego.

  The ranchero would have imposed even nore restrictions on her in the Old Spanish way but found he was banging his head against a stone wall. Buck didn’t know Diego but had heard of him and if the daughter was in any way like her father, then it would be two mighty stubborn people at loggerheads.

  Inevitably, she had been won over by Renny and then the real trouble had started.

  But she had pined for him, had never forgotten him, and had waited for him to keep his promise to return, which, while having been made in haste, he did try to honour. They seemed a happy, well-suited pair to Buck, although he still found himself baulking at their tender ages. However, both had shown they were ready, willing, and able to tackle adult problems and he felt no guilt about leading them away from the Mexican pursuers in a deadly game of hide and seek amongst some of the roughest and most dangerous country on the North American continent.

  There was one bunch of bandidos close to the Rio that they out-manouevred but had to trade some shots with before they were safely out of danger. Then it was an almost clear run to the Rio.

  They reached it just after high noon on a hot, bright day but Enderby held them back when they made ready for the final short ride down to the wide, muddy river.

  ‘We cross at night. This is where I brought you across before, Renny, but it’s best done at night.’

  ‘You took me across in broad daylight,’ Renny snapped, maybe putting on a show for Rina, letting her see he didn’t jump through hoops just on Buck’s word.

  ‘Had no choice then and we were lucky. There’re few patrols out here because it’s so rugged and isolated, but I know just where the ford is. You go plunging in and miss, you’ll be in water forty feet deep with ugly currents. We’ll make it over tonight and then head for Del Rio in Texas, skirting Villa Acuna on this side. They sometimes have rurales stationed there.’

  The girl gave him a quizzical look, one he had noted she used pretty often. She didn’t always follow through with questions, but this time she did. ‘You seem to know the border well, Señor Buck … Yet Renny tells me you came from a long way off.’

  ‘Tennessee, ‘Buck admitted. ‘Yeah, long way from here, but I did a lot of border work after the war ended.’

  She looked at Renny and smiled, her face softening. ‘Then I think we should not argue with Buck, Renny, querido mio.’

  Renny looked a might sullen but nodded in bad grace. ‘If that’s the way you want it, Rina. ‘He slightly emphasized the “you” and her smile looked mischievous.

  They followed Buck Enderby and he led them safely across the river. They reached Del Rio sometime after nine o’clock and went into the Rialito diner on a street that ran down towards the river. A tall man, eating at a table with another man and two women, glanced up, paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. He wore a Van Dyke beard and moustache, nodded slightly, but no one in Buck’s group seemed to know him.

  They were eating well enough when they heard the stomp of heavy boots coming down the room.

  Several other customers watched as a small, tight group of dusty men came towards the table where Enderby and his friends sat.

  It was Brewster, Chip Riley, and Trapper.

  CHAPTER 12

  HOME ON THE RANGE

  They were all wearing their Texas Ranger badges and the other customers murmured amongst themselves, setting down knives and forks, watching, wondering if there was going to be trouble.

  Buck Enderby was wondering the same thing and he set his own cutlery down quietly. The girl didn’t know Brewster or his men but immediately sensed danger from the way Renny and Buck were acting.

  Brewster smiled, touched a hand to his hat in Rina’s direction and lifted his other hand in friendly gesture.

  ‘No need to get excited, folks. Just a friendly call.’

  But as he held their attention for a few seconds, Trapper swung a sawn-off shotgun into view from behind his back and the double hammers ratchetted back, the sound loud in the hushed diner. Chip Riley brought up his six-gun, hammer cocked.

  ‘Your idea of friendly and mine don’t seem to match up, Cord,’ Buck said slowly, aware of the other diners staring, frozen in their chairs.

  Brewster made a ‘sorry, but what can you do about it’ gesture with his hands and then his Colt appeared in the blink of an eye. ‘Renny Pardoe, I arrest you for the attempted murder of your father, Senator Pardoe, of Painted Rock, Texas. By now it could even be a “murder” charge.’

  ‘I never shot him!’ Renny shouted, jumping to his feet in his excitement, but Rina’s calming hand reached up for his and tugged gently. Slowly, he sat down, eyes hot and wild. ‘Will … will the … Senator make it?’

  Brewster shrugged. ‘Buck, old pard, I’m gonna have to take you in, too, for aiding and abetting this young hellion.’

  ‘I brought him back to Texas for you,
didn’t I?’ Buck said. Shock and anger washed over Renny’s face, but Rina spoke quietly in his ear and he calmed down some, though still on edge, raging for action.

  Brewster shook his head at Buck. ‘Sorry, it don’t work that way. If I didn’t know from your earlier report which part of the Rio you were gonna cross, you’d have taken the kid to Painted Rock and then, likely, wherever he wanted to go if the Senator didn’t make it. You’re in this deep, amigo.’ He touched the old scar on his cheek and his face hardened. ‘Things you’ve done go back a long way and it’s about time they caught up with you.’

  Enderby watched him coldly. ‘You’re fooling no one, Cord. I know the Senator fired you and these two snakes, as well as Brosnan and Conner.’

  ‘Well, I was you, I’d behave myself anyway, Buck – Bud an’ Con’re still out there with Kim, keepin’ an eye on things, you might say … we’ll be joinin’ ’em soon. Good place to hole-up while we I negotiate with Don Diego and the Senator.’

  Renny snapped his head up. ‘Thought you said he was dying?’

  ‘Did I? Well, he could be, but I don’t think he’ll die before we make some arrangements about payin’ a big ransom for you, and Diego will no doubt pay a bigger one for the senorita here.’

  Rina’s eyes were cold as she levelled her gaze at Brewster. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, senor. My father has disowned me. He will not now acknowledge my existence, so I think you will not collect any ransom, big or small.’

  Brewster frowned, something in the girl’s tone and her confidence shook him. He looked at Buck. ‘What’s she talkin’ about? Them old rancheros’ll rip the world apart if it means savin’ one of their precious off-spring, specially a gal, and a looker like her.…’

  ‘There’s a complication, Cord,’ Enderby said calmly and told Brewster about it in a low voice. The other tensed customers, afraid to move, strained to hear.

  When Buck had finished, Brewster swore, he knew Enderby wasn’t lying. Then he brightened.

  ‘Well, I can still do some kinda deal, I’ll collect from the Senator first, then tell Don Diego I’ll throw in Renny’s head, long as he pays up for the gal … bet he’ll be glad to see the kid dead.’