Brutal Vengeance

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Oh, Lord ... I thought maybe ... we hoped ...”

  “But we knew all along it had to be them,” the other one said, “as soon as we saw the graves.”

  “I’m sorry, boys,” Culhane said. “I can’t tell you how sorry we all are.”

  He glanced over at The Kid and moved his head, indicating The Kid should come out from the cover of the barn wall. The Kid did so, but only after holstering his gun.

  “This here is Morgan, another fella from the posse,” Culhane went on. “He can tell you more about it than I can. Him and another fella ridin’ with us caught some of the varmints who did this.”

  The Ranger pointed at the mound of dirt that marked the mass grave. “That’s the four bastards lyin’ over there.”

  “You killed them?” one of the young men asked. Both of them were crying now, too.

  The Kid nodded. “They didn’t give us much choice. They must have been members of Latch’s gang.”

  The man lying on the ground finally stopped sobbing enough to look up and say, “Latch? Warren Latch?”

  “You know him, mister?” Culhane asked quickly.

  “No, I ... I’ve just heard of him. The newspapers say he’s a madman.”

  “I reckon they’re right,” Culhane said grimly. He started forward. “Lemme give you a hand. We’ll get in out of this sun.”

  “My wife and my girls can’t,” the man said, his voice bitter and hurt. “They have to lie out here in it.”

  “I know it ain’t much comfort, but they’re past hurtin’ now.”

  The man struggled to his feet and pawed at his eyes with the back of a work-roughened hand. He was an older version of the two young men, with graying fair hair and a mustache.

  “I’ve forgotten ... my hospitality. Come on in my house. I’ll see if we can ... rustle up something to eat.”

  “That ain’t necessary,” Culhane assured him. “But we’ll go in and talk about this.”

  Culhane put a hand on the man’s arm. He didn’t pull away. The Ranger led him toward the house.

  One of the two young men asked The Kid, “What happened to old Tip? Looks like he was shot pretty recent-like.”

  The Kid answered the question honestly. “One of our men put him down. We didn’t know if anybody was coming back, and he didn’t want to leave the dog here to starve. It was his idea. Ranger Culhane didn’t order it. But the hombre was just trying to ... do a kindness.”

  He didn’t mention Reilly’s other comment about how the dog had nothing left to love.

  Reilly had been wrong about that.

  The young man knelt beside the dog and stroked a hand over the shaggy coat. His voice was choked as he said, “So long, Tip. I know you did everything you could to protect Ma and the girls.”

  “Come on, Thad,” the other young man said. “We ought to go with Pa and make sure he’s all right.”

  Thad nodded, forcing himself back to his feet.

  They started toward the ranch house with The Kid. Thad said, “My name’s Thad Gustaffson. This is my brother Bill. Our pa’s Abel.”

  “Morgan,” The Kid introduced himself.

  As they passed the open barn door, he called to the men inside. “The trouble’s over. See to your horses. We’ll be riding soon.”

  Ed Marchman stepped into view, crading his rifle. “Mighty quick to start giving orders, aren’t you, Morgan?” the man asked in an unpleasant tone.

  “It’s not an order, Marchman,” The Kid said. “Just common sense.”

  Nick Burton stepped out of the barn and nodded. “We’ll do what you say, Mr. Morgan.” He turned and called to his grandfather’s hands. “M-B Connected, let’s go!”

  It wasn’t the strongest tone of command The Kid had ever heard ... but it was a start, he thought with a faint smile.

  “My wife’s name was Molly,” Abel Gustaffson said. “The twins were Helen and Paula.” He took a gulp from the glass of whiskey in front of him as he sat at a rough-hewn table in one side of the double cabin. He had taken the bottle from a cabinet. “They were seventeen.”

  “I’m sure sorry,” Culhane said. “For what it’s worth, which I know ain’t a whole hell of a lot, I don’t reckon any of ’em suffered much.”

  “They weren’t ... mistreated?”

  “No, sir, not a bit.”

  That was a bald-faced lie, The Kid thought ... but he would have answered Gustaffson the same way Culhane had. It wouldn’t change a damned thing for the man to know the sort of hell his daughters had gone through before they died.

  And at least it was true about Molly Gustaffson. The Kid had found a pitchfork in the barn with dried blood on the tines and assumed she had been killed with it. He figured she had died fairly quickly.

  “The boys and I drove some cattle down to the shipping pens on the railroad, about thirty miles south of here,” Gustaffson went on, obviously feeling the need to explain why the three women had been alone. “I knew we’d only be gone for a few days, and we’ve never had any trouble before. It’s not like we have to worry about Comanches or anything like that, the way folks used to.”

  “No, sir, that’s right,” Culhane said from the other side of the table. “There was no way you could have known what was gonna happen. No way on God’s green earth.”

  “Molly is ... was ...” Gustaffson had to stop and draw a breath before he could go on. “She was cool-headed, and a good shot. She’d killed wolves with that old Henry before. I thought ... they would be all right.”

  “We all did, Pa,” Bill Gustaffson said.

  The rancher looked across the table at Culhane. “Did you say proper words over them?”

  “I tried, sir. I did my level best. We all did. They was laid to rest with respect.”

  “Thank you for that,” Gustaffson murmured. He looked over at The Kid, who had turned around one of the chairs and straddled it. “And thank you for killing the miserable scum that did this.”

  “They got what was coming to them,” The Kid said. “Probably more mercy than they deserved, because they died fast.”

  Gustaffson nodded. “But the rest of that bunch of devils ... they got away.”

  “Not for good,” Culhane promised. “We’re fixin’ to get on their trail again, Mr. Gustaffson. We’ll see to it they’re brought to justice.”

  “You won’t go alone,” Gustaffson declared. “We’re coming with you.”

  “That’s right,” Thad said, and Bill nodded.

  “Now hold on.” Culhane said. “You can’t—”

  “Why not?” Gustaffson cut in. His face was still streaked with dried tears, but his terrible sorrow had settled down into a deep and abiding rage.

  The Kid recognized that. He had experienced the same thing more than once in his life.

  “Are you gonna say we can’t go with you, Ranger?” Gustaffson asked. “Why in blazes shouldn’t we?”

  “I know you want vengeance, Mr. Gustaffson, but you should leave that to us,” Culhane insisted.

  “Didn’t you say half the men in your posse came along because Latch and his men burned down their homes and businesses and killed their loved ones? My house is still standing, but the pain these boys and I feel is just as deep as anybody else’s in that posse!”

  “We’re not out for vengeance any more than they are, Ranger,” Thad added.

  Culhane couldn’t argue with that. After a moment, he nodded. “All right. You’re welcome to come along, and I’ll be honest with you, I’ll be glad to have three more guns. But what about your ranch?”

  “You’re headed east, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll pass a neighbor’s spread a few miles from here. I can get him to look after the place while we’re gone.”

  Bill Gustaffson suddenly looked alarmed. “Doris!” he exclaimed.

  “That’s the gal my brother’s been courtin’ on that other spread,” Thad explained. “He’s worried Latch and his men might have stopped there, too.”

  Culhane p
ut his hands on the table and shoved himself to his feet. “We’d best get a move on then, so we can find out. You fellas best pack some supplies, if you got ’em. Do you have any fresh horses?”

  Gustaffson nodded. “We’ll be ready to ride in a few minutes, Ranger.”

  Thad said, “I’m burying Tip before I go anywhere.”

  “Put him next ... next to your ma, son,” Gustaffson choked out. “He was always her dog more than anybody else’s.”

  “I’ll help you, Thad,” The Kid offered.

  Thad started to refuse with a stubborn shake of his head. Then he said, “I’m obliged, Morgan. Let’s go.”

  As they walked out of the cabin and started toward the gravesite, Thad went on, “Which one of the posse shot him?”

  “You don’t need to know that,” The Kid replied. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  Thad glared at him. “Was it you?”

  “No. I don’t think I would have done that.”

  After a second, Thad shrugged. “No, I don’t reckon you would have.”

  Nick came out of the barn to join them. “Can I give you a hand, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I think that would be fine, Nick.” The Kid performed the introductions. “Nick Burton, Thad Gustaffson.”

  “I’m sure sorry about ... about everything, Thad,” Nick said.

  “Thanks. We’re gonna bury our dog.” Thad drew in a deep, ragged breath. “You have a dog, Nick?”

  “No. I did for a while when I was a little kid, but he got sick and died.”

  “Sorry,” Thad muttered.

  The Kid hung back a little to let the two youngsters talk. Tragedy sometimes brought people together and made them friends. It had happened in his case, and those friendships had helped him get through some mighty rough times. Maybe it would be like that with Nick and Thad.

  Less than half an hour later the posse, stronger by three, rode out and took up the trail of the outlaws.

  Chapter 13

  “How long do you think it’ll take Cooper and the others to catch up to us?” Duval asked as he and Latch rode at the head of the big group of riders.

  “They had better catch up by the end of the day,” Latch snapped. “All they had to do was finish off those girls, kill all the livestock they could find, and burn everything to the ground. That shouldn’t have taken them more than an hour or two.”

  If that was all they had done, Duval mused.

  Cooper was a pretty good man, but Rattigan was one of the four Latch had assigned to handle the mopping up. Like the creature that formed part of his name, Rattigan was a particularly loathsome vermin, even for that bunch of cutthroats. He was sly, too, and had a way of wheedling other men into going along with what he wanted.

  The other two outlaws who’d been left behind at the ranch, Fellows and Clark, were easily led. Duval could easily see Rattigan persuading them they ought to have another go at the twins before they killed the girls, and with the three of them united, Cooper would have had to go along with them.

  But maybe he was worrying for nothing, Duval told himself. Maybe the four men would do exactly what they were supposed to do and nothing more, and by nightfall they would have come galloping up to rejoin the rest of the gang. It didn’t make any sense to go borrowing trouble.

  By late afternoon, though, when Latch and Duval began looking for a good place to camp, there had been no sign of Cooper and the others. Duval saw familiar sparks of anger in Latch’s eyes, a bad sign.

  The plains through which they had ridden for the past several days were starting to peter out into a stretch of rugged, wooded hills and canyons. Several more days of riding through the rougher terrain lay between them and San Antonio, which was situated where the landscape became flatter again and started to turn into the coastal plain running all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

  Latch found a hollow he liked the looks of and announced, “We’ll camp here for the night.”

  The rest of the men immediately dismounted and set to work tending to the horses, gathering wood for a fire, and setting up camp.

  Latch stalked to the top of the ridge that formed one side of the hollow and stopped, peering back to the west, the direction from which they had come.

  Seeing that, Duval went up to join him. “Looking for Cooper and the others?”

  “They should have caught up to us by now,” Latch snapped. “They’ve disobeyed my orders.”

  He wasn’t worried about the possibility that something had happened to the four men, Duval realized. The thing that bothered Latch was the chance somebody hadn’t done exactly what he’d told them to do.

  “Maybe they decided they’ve had enough of riding with us and went off on their own,” Duval suggested.

  “Without their share of the loot?” Latch shook his head. “I don’t think so. One thing all my men have in common is greed.”

  He was probably right about that, Duval had to admit.

  “No, it’s more likely they lingered there to enjoy themselves some more with those girls,” Latch went on. “I told them not to waste any more time. But that man Rattigan is scum. Clever scum, but still scum.”

  Latch was thinking along the same lines Duval had, earlier in the day.

  But so much time had passed, he didn’t think that was a satisfactory explanation anymore. “Even if they had, it wouldn’t have taken them all day, boss. They still should have caught up to us by now.”

  Latch jerked his head in a curt nod. “Yes. Something has happened to them.”

  “Maybe that posse from Fire Hill is still after us. Maybe they rode up to that ranch while Cooper and the others were still there and caught them.”

  Latch frowned. “Those men should have turned back by now. We’ve never had a posse chase us for this long.”

  “We never burned down a whole town before, either,” Duval pointed out.

  Latch stroked his beard and smiled in obvious pleasure at the memory of all those buildings going up in flames as the crackling roar was accompanied by shrill screams. “That’s true, Slim,” he said softly. “We never did.”

  He straightened and took a deep breath. “We need to find out for certain. Can you follow our back trail at night?”

  “I reckon I can,” Duval said.

  “Take three men with you and scout behind us,” Latch ordered. “I want to know if that posse is back there, and if they are, how close they are. Can you do that, Slim?”

  “Of course I can,” Duval answered without hesitation. He didn’t particularly relish the job, but if that’s what Latch wanted him to do, he would try his best. To do otherwise would be too dangerous, and Slim Duval was a cautious man.

  “Good. I assumed they would turn back after we hit them before. Men like that get worked up and join a posse, but as soon as they realize it could get them killed, their courage evaporates. If this bunch is being particularly stubborn, we may have to take steps.”

  “Steps?” Duval repeated.

  “That’s right. We may have to stop long enough to wipe them out.”

  By nightfall, Abel Gustaffson and his sons had settled into an attitude of stoic, stolid grief. It matched what the other members of the posse from Fire Hill had felt a few days earlier when their homes had been destroyed and their loved ones killed.

  That pain had dulled slightly for them with the passage of time, but it was still fresh for the father and his two sons.

  That was the thing about pain, The Kid mused as the men went about the work of setting up camp. It never went away completely. For days at a time, you might not think about everything you’d lost in life, but then something unexpected would remind you and you’d feel that all-too-familiar twinge deep inside, like somebody had just poked you in the vitals with a knife.

  Maybe by the time thirty or forty or fifty years had passed, those feelings finally went away. The Kid hadn’t lived that long yet and didn’t really expect to, the way he kept getting mixed up in things where people shot at him.

  But somehow h
e doubted that grief ever really died.

  Nick was hanging around with Thad Gustaffson, and his brother Bill had joined them. The Kid figured it was probably good for all of them.

  Some of Bill’s worries had been eased when the posse stopped at the neighboring ranch and found that Latch’s gang hadn’t been there. Doris Horton, the pretty brunette eighteen-year-old Bill had been courting, was fine.

  She and her mother and her sisters had all cried when they heard what had happened at the Gustaffson ranch. Doris’s father J. W. Horton had shaken Abel Gustaffson’s hand, slapped him encouragingly on the back, and solemnly promised to look after Abel’s place for as long as necessary.

  “If we’re not back in a couple weeks, consider it yours, J.W.,” Gustaffson had told him. “You’ve been a mighty good friend and neighbor to us, and I don’t know anybody else I’d rather see take over the place.”

  “Now, don’t be talkin’ like that,” Horton had told him. “You’ll be runnin’ your own ranch again before you know it. You and the boys are gonna come back and be just fine.”

  Gustaffson hadn’t had anything to say to that. They might come back, The Kid mused, but he doubted if they would ever really be fine again.

  After that side trip to the Horton ranch, the posse had picked up the trail of the outlaws again and put quite a few more miles behind them.

  As The Kid sat beside Culhane at the campfire that evening, the Ranger said, “Another day, maybe less, and we’ll start gettin’ into the hill country. Ever been there, Morgan?”

  The Kid shook his head. “Like I told you, I’ve been to San Antonio, but I don’t know that much about the rest of Texas.”

  “It’s a land of ... what do you call it? ... infinite variety,” Culhane said with the note of pride in his voice common to people who had been borned and raised in the Lone Star State. “Just about any kind of country you’re lookin’ for, you can find it here. Just about every kind of people, too. Most of ’em are good, hard-workin’ folks. For them that ain’t ... well, that’s why we got the Rangers.”

  “Where did Latch come from?”