Journey into Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “You witnessed a murder?” Kate said.

  “Yes, Ma, it was a murder all right, and I saw it happen . . .”

  * * *

  “Hey, Jesse, man leaving the wagons, headed this way.” With a grin peppering his voice, Zebulon Magan said, “He’s got hisself a gun and grown a pair of cojones.”

  “Is it Scanlon? Is it Newt Scanlon?” Jesse Dobbs asked.

  “I can’t tell yet. Looks like him. Hell yeah, it’s him and his Pima woman is running after him, grabbing him by the coattails.”

  “Hell, the man is a pest,” Dobbs said, rising to his feet. He smoothed his black, spade-shaped beard and adjusted the lie of his Remington. “I’ll go talk to him. Give me your Winchester. I got to keep that bird at a distance.”

  Dobbs walked away from his wagon until he and Scanlon were separated by a hundred yards of rock, sand, and sun glare. “Stop right where you’re at, Scanlon, and state your business.”

  “Damn you, Dobbs, you’re my business. I’ve got people dying from the cholera and now what’s left of the others are starving.”

  “What’s that to me?”

  “Dobbs, when you cleared out you took all the grub and clean water.” Scanlon was tall, gaunt, and bearded and carried the death stench of the wagons on him.

  “Scanlon, I’ll say this to you for the last time so listen up. There are plenty of ranches west of here where you can get grub and help for your sick,” Dobbs said. “I ain’t your damn nursemaid.”

  Scanlon’s wife, a tall, elegant woman with coal-black hair to her waist, pleaded with her husband to return to the wagons. She spoke the complex Pima tongue, a language Dobbs did not understand, but he took advantage of the woman’s tirade.

  “Listen to your wife, Scanlon. Go back to your wagon and then head west.”

  “West is where Nirvana lies, but we already brought death to one ranch. We will not do it to another,” Scanlon said. “We have talked about this and will stay where we are until the cholera has run its course.”

  Dobbs shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “Brother Nathanial Miller found a spring with good water, but we need food to sustain us while we clean and refill our barrels.”

  “Turn around, Scanlon, go back to Jonesboro where you belong. Plenty of grub there.”

  “In Jonesboro you promised to lead us to Nirvana. You lied to us.”

  “Hell, I didn’t know you were all gonna get sick,” Dobbs said. “Besides, there is no Nirvana. There’s nothing across the Mexican border but sand . . . hundreds of miles of sand, thornbush, and buzzards.”

  “You told us that with your own eyes you’d seen a land of milk and honey just twenty miles south of the Rio Grande,” Scanlon said.

  Dobbs grinned. “Yeah, well I lied, didn’t I? That country down there ain’t Nirvana. It’s Hell.” He lowered his rifle. “Well, been good talking with you, Scanlon, but me and Zeb Magan got to be moving on, headed for the New Mexico Territory.”

  Scanlon’s face purpled with anger. “Damn you, Dobbs!” he roared. “You’re going nowhere unless you leave behind the grub and whatever medicines you have.”

  Newt Scanlon made bad mistakes one after another.

  His first was that he underestimated just how vicious and uncaring a career criminal could be. The second was not to heed his wife, who begged him in tears to return to the wagons. His third and fatal blunder was to try to run a bluff with a rusty .32 revolver he’d never fired before.

  The three bullets that Jesse Dobbs slammed into Scanlon’s chest could have been covered by a playing card and summed up the man’s mistakes nicely, dropping him stone dead on the ground.

  The Pima woman screamed and lunged for her husband’s gun. Dobbs raised his rifle and an instant later yelled, “What the hell?” as bullets kicked up exclamation marks of dirt around his feet. His head swiveled around on his shoulders. Who was taking pots at him?

  * * *

  Kate said, “Hank grabbed your rifle from the boot under your knee? Trace, you couldn’t stop him?”

  “No, Ma, it happened too fast. He rode forward onto the rock ledge in front of the wild oaks and cut loose at the man called Dobbs. I guess the range was maybe fifty yards, but Hank wasn’t trying to kill him. He was trying to stop him from shooting the Indian woman.”

  “Damn stupid thing to do,” Frank said. “Why didn’t Lowery just put a bullet into him, for God’s sake?”

  “Because he’s made some kind of vow not to take another human life and I guess he’s determined to stand by it,” Trace said.

  “Holy Joe. That ain’t much good in West Texas,” Frank said.

  “That will do, Frank,” Kate said. “Hank Lowery has become a man of peace and we must respect him for that.”

  “And look where that got him,” Frank said. “Men of peace don’t last long in West Texas.”

  “No sir,” Moses said, grinning. Then, as Kate glared at him, he wished he hadn’t said it.

  “How was Hank wounded?” Kate said after one last glare at Moses.

  “Dobbs spotted him and fired. Hank slumped in the saddle and I dismounted to help him. He dropped my rifle after he was hit and I used it to drive Dobbs and the other man into the cover of their wagon, but they were still shooting. After I saw the woman dragged back into the wagon circle I knew I had to get Hank out of there. I led his horse into the oaks and then we lit a shuck for the KK.”

  Kate glanced at the front window, still a rectangle of darkness. She lifted the coffeepot and held it up. “Anyone?” She refilled Frank’s cup and then her own. “We ride out at first light. I will hang this Dobbs person for murder and if, despite my ministrations, Hank should die, I’ll cut him down and hang him twice.”

  Frank smiled. “Not one to hold a grudge, are you, Kate?”

  “I will see justice done, Frank. In this part of Texas I’m the only law.” The little calico kitten she had rescued in Dodge sprang onto her lap, opened her pink mouth in a yawn, curled up in a ball, and promptly fell asleep.

  Frank glanced around the table. “Anyone else put away their guns and become a man of peace? How about you, Captain Delaney?”

  “You won’t live long enough to see that day, Mr. Cobb.” Delaney slapped the revolvers thrust into his sash. “These cannons have loosed many a broadside and are minded to loose a few more should the need arise.”

  “It will arise, Captain,” Frank said. “You can depend on it.”

  “Then, says I, Black Barrie Delaney stands ready to run out his guns.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The dawn threw wide the curtains of the night and welcomed the morning sun as Kate led her small posse into the badlands.

  Behind her rode Frank, Trace, and Delaney. Quinn had been left behind to help Moses with hay cutting while Jazmin and the girls did chores and cared for Hank Lowery. Kate, never an enthusiastic housekeeper, relied on Ivy and Shannon to keep the cabin swept and clean, the beds made, and the pots, pans, and dishes washed and put away. Those tasks and others like ironing and cooking were totally alien to Kate and she made no secret of that fact. She could handle a Colt and a Winchester as well as, if not better than, most men, but she threw up her hands in despair at the prospect of boiling an egg. When she set her mind to it, she could bake a tasty sponge cake, and most folks agreed that was to her credit.

  Kate drew rein. “The rifleman’s wagon should be here. Where is it?”

  Frank stepped out of the saddle, got down on one knee, and studied the rocky ground. After a while he rose and scouted the area and then stepped back to Kate and the others. “My guess is that they pulled out during the night and are headed due south. A team of big horses is pulling that wagon, Kate, and the wheels dig in mighty deep.”

  Kate was only half-listening. Her gaze stretched out across a wilderness of sand, scrub, cactus, and scrawny wild oak to the circled cholera wagons, smoke from several fires rising into the air like sooty thumbprints against the blue sky. Finally she said, “Frank, is there anything w
e can do for those people?”

  “No, there’s nothing, but if they don’t come any farther west they present no danger.”

  “I can smell those wagons from here, same as I’ve smelled plague ships from half a league away,” Delaney said.

  “It smells like rotten fish,” Trace said.

  “Aye, lad, that’s the stench of the Asiatic cholera that comes to our shores from foreign lands,” Delaney said. “I’ve seen it kill a ship’s crew in a single day and I saw that same ship run herself aground on a lee shore with a dead man at the wheel and corpses hanging in the rigging like rotten fruit.”

  Kate said softly, “Frank . . .”

  “I see him.” Frank drew his gun. “If he tries to get any closer I’ll kill him.”

  But the man had stopped when he was still a fair ways off. He cupped hands to his mouth and yelled, “Last night, two dead out of the same family, a young girl and a six-year-old boy. This morning before sunup sister Edith Chigwell died of the cholera and brother Elisha Hardy is mighty sick. We have no grub. The fires are burning to keep the flies and the carrion crows away from the hurting dead.”

  Kate put a hand to her mouth and yelled, “We will bring—” She realized her voice was not equal to the task. “Frank, tell the man we will bring him food.”

  Frank hollered that promise and the man waved.

  He called out, “We may all be dead soon but I appreciate your concern.”

  Then from Trace came, “Rider coming.”

  “Where away?” Delaney said. “Scrub around that. I see him.”

  Fall was cracking down but stubborn summer heat still seared the badlands. To the west the rider came on at a walk through a rippling haze that elongated both horse and man like a skinny frontier Don Quixote astride Rocinante.

  “He’s headed straight for the wagons,” Kate said. “Trace, go warn him away.”

  “Right, Ma.” Trace kicked his mount into motion and galloped in the oncoming rider’s direction.

  “I hope that ranny is a right trusting feller,” Frank said.

  He wasn’t.

  The rider drew rein and slid a rifle out from under his knee. He placed the butt on his right thigh, held the Winchester upright, and waited . . .

  Trace was young, but he was danger savvy and he reined in his horse to a walk.

  “That’s far enough,” the rider said when Trace got within twenty-five yards. “I’m not a trusting man, and this here Winchester gun is wife and child to me. You don’t want to hear it speak.”

  Trace bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of his tongue and said, “Cholera in the wagons.”

  The rider lost a little of his composure. He was a tall, gloomy-faced man with a big Texas mustache that drooped under his nose like something dead. He turned his head and glanced at the wagon circle. “The hell you say?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I say. And hell is right over there.”

  “You don’t scare worth a damn, do you, kid?” the rider said.

  “Nope.”

  “That your kin on the ridge?”

  “My ma, Kate Kerrigan, owner of the KK ranch. Got Frank Cobb, her segundo, with her and Captain Barrie Delaney.”

  “A soldier or a sailorman?”

  “Sailorman. He’s building a house for my ma.”

  “Is that a fact? I never afore cottoned to the fact that sailormen build houses.”

  “That one does ... after a fashion.”

  The rider fell into silence for a few moments, then said, “My name is JC Brewster. I’m a Texas Ranger, and why they call me JC is because my folks couldn’t come up with anything better. And you?”

  “Trace.”

  “Your folks couldn’t come up with anything better, either, huh? Here’s your ma and she looks like she’s mad at somebody.” JC seemed even gloomier. “Probably me.”

  “Who are you and what is your business here and why are you threatening my son?” Kate was flanked by Frank and Delaney.

  “Ma, this gentleman’s name is JC Brewster and he’s a Texas Ranger. He didn’t threaten me ... much.”

  “I’m in pursuit of a couple outlaws who robbed a Fort Stockton army payroll and murdered the paymasters and the two guards.” Brewster slid his rifle back into the boot. “They go by the names of Zebulon Magan and Jesse Dobbs. Magan is a killer, but he isn’t a patch on Dobbs. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, ma’am. They won’t come back this way. They know I’m tracking them.”

  “Ranger, my name is Kate Kerrigan and I can take care of myself. Yesterday, my son exchanged shots with the criminals you describe after they shot one of my hands.”

  “Is he dead?” Brewster said.

  “No, he is not. He’s severely wounded, but I will nurse him back to health.”

  “Frank, that’s why the wagon wheel ruts are so deep,” Trace said.

  “You’re right about that, son.” Brewster looked to be in his early forties, but he could have been years younger or older. “Thirty thousand in gold, silver, and scrip weighs a considerable piece.”

  Kate told Trace to describe the events of the previous day, including the murder of Newt Scanlon and Dobbs’s attempt on the life of the Pima woman.

  Brewster listened attentively. When Trace finished speaking, he said, “Then Dobbs will hang for murder.”

  “Tracks head south, Ranger,” Trace said.

  “I know, but then they swung west.” Brewster saw the questions on the faces around him. “I already scouted the country south of here. I found the wagon, but the money and the horses were gone. I figure Jesse decided the wagon was slowing him down and he and Zeb loaded the money sacks onto the team.”

  The Ranger’s eyes moved to the wagons. “I heard Jesse had hooked up with a bunch of folks looking for serenity and salvation, but I never paid it much mind until now.”

  “All they found was cholera,” Kate said. “And now they’re starving. I plan to feed them.”

  “It’s a good Christian’s duty to feed the hungry and nurse the sick, Mrs. Kerrigan, but when it comes to cholera, those rules don’t apply.” The Ranger rubbed the stubble on his throat. “There’s a complication here.”

  “And what’s that?” Kate said.

  “I got a telegram in San Angelo that Jesse plans to meet up with his brother Seth and a pair of lowlifes by the names of Ben Lucas and Bob Corcoran who just broke out of Huntsville. The five plan to cross into Old Mexico at Eagle Pass, but I don’t think they’ve got together yet. Young feller, you said you saw only one man with Jesse, right?”

  “There were only two of them,” Trace said.

  “Then I got to stop them from joining forces,” Brewster said.

  “Seems like you need help,” Frank said. “Are there other Rangers to back your play?”

  Brewster shook his head. “Hell no. I don’t need help. One Ranger is a handful, two is an army, and I don’t need an army.” He glanced at the sky and then said, almost bashfully, to Kate, “Ma’am, I’ve been doing some long riding and for the past three days all I’ve eaten is a piece of jerky and my own dust. If your ranch is close, I’d surely like to belly up to a mess of bacon and beans.”

  “My ranch is close and I’m sure we can do better than bacon and beans,” Kate said. “Ranger Brewster, you’re welcome to join us for supper.”

  Brewster touched his hat. “Much obliged, ma’am. I took ye fer a fine lady the first time I set eyes on you and I wasn’t disappointed.”

  Frank said, “Ranger, I don’t want to stand between a man and his grub, but—”

  “Why am I not following them wagon tracks?”

  “That was my general way of thinking.”

  “A couple of reasons, Mr. Cobb. For one, when Jesse and his boys meet up, the payroll money will be burning a hole in their pockets. There’s whiskey and women in Eagle Pass, just what Seth and them need after three years in Huntsville. Jesse figures he shook me off his trail a while back and he’ll linger in town for a spell before he crosses the Rio Gra
nde into Old Mexico.”

  “Then it’s time we got back to the KK,” Kate said. “Jazmin and I still have enough daylight left to load up supplies for the people in the wagons.”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan,” Brewster said, his long face as gloomy as a bloodhound with a bellyache, “them folks are already dead. I was scouting for the army when the cholera struck Ellsworth and folks died in the hundreds. There’s nothing we can do for them pilgrims. We can’t even bury them.”

  “Perhaps, but I intend to do what I can,” Kate said. “With God’s help, of course.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  When Kate Kerrigan returned to the ranch, Hank Lowery’s condition had not improved, but he was no worse and she took that as a positive sign.

  Despite Frank’s protests she refused to take him along to the wagons as a guard. He and Trace were needed on the range. With winter so close, cutting hay, a tedious, laborious task, was not a job that could wait.

  “Jazmin and I will drop the supplies and come right back,” Kate said.

  “Take Captain Delaney or one of his crewmen along,” Frank said.

  “No, Frank. I want Barrie and his men working on my house before the colder weather hits.” She smiled. “We’ll be quite safe, you know. You heard what the Ranger said. The outlaws are headed for Eagle Pass, miles from here.”

  “Kate, I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Frank, you have bad feelings about everything and nothing ever comes of them.”

  “Can you say that about Drugo Odell, Kate?”

  “I think we all had bad feelings about him.” She climbed into the seat of the ranch buckboard beside Jazmin. “Don’t worry about us, Frank. We’ll be home well before dark to make sure Ranger Brewster gets his supper.” She passed her Winchester to Jazmin and slapped the team into motion.

  “Marco made this for the sick people.” Jazmin picked up a large cross of forged iron. “He says it might comfort them.”

  “Your husband is a thoughtful man and a fine blacksmith,” Kate said. “I feel so lucky to have him.”