by Zack Wyatt
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Josh Sands was far from his San Antonio station, but the fierce young Texas Ranger had sworn to protect the entire Territory from her enemies—including the Mexican warships unloading arms in the deadly swamplands along the Gulf of Mexico.
The last thing the hard-riding Ranger expected was to be corralled into Captain Isaac Burton’s mad scheme for capturing the warships himself—with a handful of men who had never so much as seen a rowboat.
But Josh had to pursue a private vengeance as well: to hunt down a death-dealing devil known as Cotton Blue; a vicious gunrunner who had killed Josh’s partner in cold blood; killed for the same pleasure other men found in a woman’s arms...
THE TEXIANS 2:
THE HORSE MARINES
By Zach Wyatt
First published by Pinnacle Books in 1986
Copyright © 1984, 2018 by Geo. W. Proctor
First Edition: September 2018
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Cover illustration by Gordon Crabb
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with Lana B. Proctor
For Lana – Thank you for being.
Chapter One
Joshua Sands forced himself to remain calm in spite of the danger he sensed. The heel of his right hand casually rested on the broad horn of his Mexican saddle, fingers lightly cradling braided reins. Unseen by the manacled man astride a bay to his right, the young ranger’s left hand inched to the handle of the .34-caliber Colt “Texas” snuggly tucked into his belt.
Sands’ head did not turn, but his steel-blue eyes shifted to the prisoner whose bay walked sandwiched between Sands’ buckskin gelding and the dappled gray mare his fellow Texas Ranger Dub Ferris rode. If Sands were in Beau Dupree’s shoes—facing a hangman’s noose here in Louisiana—he’d make a break for freedom now.
In another hundred yards, Dupree wouldn’t have a chance at escape. Nor would Sands have to worry about the accused killer any longer. As soon as Dub and he turned Dupree over to the United States Army, the prisoner was their concern.
If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen now. Sands took in the Louisiana terrain in a hasty glance.
Ahead, perched atop a cleared rise, stood the army’s camp. Canvas tents surrounded a weathered log cabin in which Colonel William Martin was headquartered. Around the single hill was dense forest that melted into a cypress bayou to the north.
Sands’ attention returned to Dupree. All the man had to do was throw himself on the neck of his horse, dig his heels into the bay’s flanks, and ride hell-bent-for-leather to the forest. Once in the trees, he’d have all the cover he needed from ranger pistols and army rifles.
If he made it to the swamp, he’d be so lost in ten minutes that only a Cajun could drag him out again, Sands realized. And Cajuns weren’t known for being neighborly, especially when it came to aiding lawmen. Which means Dupree doesn’t get a shot at making it to the bayou.
Sands’ sideways gaze returned to the prisoner as Dub Ferris nudged his gray mare toward the army bivouac. Dupree’s head turned to the right, then left, his gaze longingly lingering on the forest to the north. The young ranger could almost hear the thoughts running rapidly through the man’s mind.
Dupree’s hands tightened on his reins; he drew a long breath and held it. Tension shot through the man’s legs as he prepared to spur the bay forward.
“Thinking about those trees is all I’d do if I were you!” Sands punctuated his comment with the double click of a thumb-cocked pistol hammer.
Dupree’s head jerked around. His eyes went saucer wide as he stared down the barrel of Sands’ Colt.
“’Course you might prefer a bullet to a rope,” Sands suggested. “The choice is yours.”
Dupree’s chest deflated as he released a deep breath in a long sigh. Defiance flashed in his watery blue eyes for an instant, then faded in a shadow of resignation.
Dupree’s hulking frame made him a giant of a man, standing at six-foot-four, four inches taller than Sands’ own height. He outweighed the lanky young ranger by at least fifty pounds—all of which was muscle. One glance at the man’s tree-trunk-sized arms left no doubt that Dupree’s strength equaled his size.
Now, as Sands studied him, the twenty-five-year-old fugitive from Louisiana justice looked like a man crushed and defeated by the weight of centuries. A spring breeze whipped at the man’s pale blond hair, which resembled dry, barren sheaves of wheat.
“I think he’s decided to take his chances with the hangman, Josh.” Dub Ferris glanced at his fellow ranger, a grin flashing through the foliage of a thick red beard. That grin widened as Dupree’s eyes shifted to him. “Wise choice, Dupree. Who knows, a jury might believe your story. Doubt it, though. People don’t take too kindly to a man who kills women and children ... even here in Louisiana.”
“Sonsofbitches.” The curse hopelessly slipped over Beau Dupree’s lips without the slightest trace of venom. “Doesn’t matter how many times I tell you, does it? I didn’t kill those folks. It wasn’t me that did it!”
“Don’t make no never mind what we think,” Dub replied as they rode into the army camp. “It’s a jury you’ve got to convince now.”
Sands carefully eased down the hammer of his Colt and tucked the six-shot, revolving pistol back into his belt when they halted before the log cabin. The flatboard door opened and a blue-uniformed sergeant stepped out. He focused on Dupree’s manacles before looking up at two buckskin-clad men on each side of their shackled prisoner.
“S’pect you’re the two Texas Rangers we heard were coming,” the soldier said.
“Dub Ferris and Joshua Sands,” Dub replied with a nod as he reached into his shirt and withdrew a leather pouch that he handed to the sergeant. “Those are the extradition papers, and this here’s Beau Dupree, delivered courtesy of the Republic of Texas.”
The soldier flipped open the pouch, briefly examined the document inside, then glanced back at Dub. “Best bring him inside. The colonel will want to take a look at him and these papers.”
When Dub motioned him from the saddle, Dupree dismounted without protest. With his slumped shoulders, he looked like he had shrunk a foot since leaving San Antonio two weeks ago. Sands glimpsed tears welling in the man’s eyes as he stood with head hung low, staring at the ground.
Dub swung from his saddle, then handed Sands the reins to the gray and bay.
“Sergeant, think the United States Army could spare a couple quarts of oats and some water for these horses?” Sands asked as the soldier started for the cabin’s door. “We’d like to feed our mounts and give ’em a breather before heading back across the border.”
The sergeant hailed a nearby private, then turned to Sands. “Follow this man. He’ll show you where you can care for your stock.”
“Meet you back here soon as I’m done,” Sands said to his fellow ranger, then followed the private around the cabin to a small fenced pen fifty feet behind Colonel Martin’s headquarters.
“The folks who used to own this place kept a couple milk cows in here,” the private said while he opened the pen to admit ranger and horses. “Should hold your three horses for a couple of hours. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a sack of oats. There�
��s a bucket, and water is over by the well.”
Sands followed the man’s pointing finger to a well off to the left and nodded. While the private trotted off to get the oats, Sands dismounted and unsaddled and unbridled the three horses. As rickety as the pen’s fence appeared, it held the weight of the heavy Mexican saddles without a creak of protest. Sands then ducked under the single post gate and walked to the open well, found a bucket with a rope around its handle, and tossed it over the side.
Louisiana was a strange place for a ranger used to patrolling the rugged hill country around San Antonio. However, Sands had no complaints. The ride from Bexar County to Cameron Parish had been a pleasant break from the frontier and the Comanche raiding parties who reigned over the West Texas plains.
But Sands had no desire to make this portion of southwestern Louisiana his permanent home. A long line of settlers had streamed into Texas over the past couple of years, fleeing the land wars here in Cameron Parish. Land speculators, after unsuccessful attempts to buy the land they hungered for, had turned to acquiring new parcels with lead spat from the muzzles of pistols and rifles.
In self-protection the citizens had formed two vigilante groups. Trouble was, these two factions turned on each other, and real war broke out. A war that resulted in the murder of a farmer, William Vardeman, his wife, and three children.
Sands hauled the bucket from the well and walked back to the pen, giving each of the horses a series of shallow drinks. Even stranger than being in Louisiana was the reason that brought him here: Dupree, the man accused of killing the Vardeman family.
The Texas Rangers wasn’t a law enforcing body, but a series of ranging companies established to protect the frontier from Indian attack. Extraditing prisoners to the United States wasn’t within a ranger’s usual line of duty.
However, there was a strong movement within the republic to apply for statehood in Washington, D.C. So when the United States formally presented its request for the extradition of one Beau Dupree to the Texas government in Austin, the politicians decided to comply. Cooperation with the United States would help pave the way for statehood—if and when application was made.
Sands personally shied away from political issues—although he admitted to himself that he leaned toward statehood, in part because Sam Houston supported the measure. There was no man in all of Texas that Sands admired more than Houston, hero of the war for independence and Texas’s first president.
Sands didn’t question ranger Captain John Coffee Hays when he ordered Dub and him to capture a Louisiana fugitive who had taken refuge in San Antonio. Their orders were to return him to the United States Army, which had been sent to Cameron Parish to put an end to the land war there.
Dupree had been staying in a San Antonio hotel; Dub and Sands waited until the man retired for the night, gave him plenty of time to lose himself in dreams, then broke into his room. They had the massive giant of a man in chains before he could blink the sleep from his eyes. The man’s extradition might have been a matter of political back scratching to those in Austin, but for Sands it was simply another order that had to be carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“Here you go,” the private’s voice intruded into Sands’ thoughts. He handed the ranger a burlap bag, then walked back toward the bivouac before Sands could thank him.
With a shake of his head, Sands ducked back into the pen and poured three mounds of oats on the ground. He watched the horses for a minute to make certain none would try to run the others from their feed, then tossed the empty sack aside and walked back to the cabin. Reaching the flatboard door, he rapped on it with his knuckles.
There was no answer; he knocked again.
“The door’s open,” a voice called out from within.
Sands pushed the door inward, stepped over the threshold—and froze. He stared into the dark barrel of a Colt.
“Close the door nice and easy like. Then slowly lift your hands. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
Sands did as ordered while his gaze moved beyond that deadly muzzle. Beau Dupree glared at him, desperation in those pale eyes. Beads of sweat glistened on the man’s furrowed brow.
Behind Dupree, Dub, the sergeant, and an officer wearing the insignia of a colonel lay face down in a neat row on the packed earth floor.
“Not dead, just knocked ’em out,” Dupree said in a voice that threatened to break with each word. “I never killed anybody in my life, and I don’t want to start now. All I want is to get out of here before they hang me for something I never did.”
Sands didn’t answer. He looked back at the Colt and its fully cocked hammer. It would be suicide to go for his own pistol; Dupree would fire before his hand was halfway to his belt.
“Now just move away from the door and turn around.” Dupree motioned to him with the pistol. “You’ll have a headache when you wake up ... but you’ll still be living.”
“Can’t let you kill yourself, Beau. Those soldiers out there will empty a dozen rifles into you before you’re halfway to the woods,” Sands answered, forcing firmness into his voice while he took a cautious step forward. “Best give me that gun.”
“That’s far enough!” Dupree’s eyes narrowed.
Sands hadn’t expected the man simply to hand the Colt over, but it was worth a try—and he was closer to the pistol now. If he moved just as Dupree blinked, if he were quick enough, if he ... Sands shoved the myriad of “ifs” away. He had to act and act fast.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Dupree said, his voice still threatening to break. “But I’m not going to hang for something another man did. Now turn around!”
Sands stared at the man. There was a panicked desperation in his eyes—the terror of a frightened animal, not a killer. That desperation would eventually drive Dupree to pull the trigger.
“All right.” Sands nodded and started to turn.
He saw relief wash over Dupree’s face—the opening he had been looking for. While the man’s mind was momentarily occupied with relief and the belief that he had overcome the last obstacle blocking his escape route, Sands acted.
His left hand dropped—not for his own Colt, but for the one leveled at him. He grasped the pistol cylinder like a vise. At the same time, he thrust his thumb forward, beneath the falling hammer.
Pain flared as the firing pin tried to cut through the nail of his thumb, pain like a door slamming shut on a finger.
But there was no exploding thunder of black powder. The firing pin could not penetrate the fleshy digit to reach the cap beneath.
As the ranger jerked the pistol from Dupree’s grip with his left hand, his right dropped, then slashed out in a hard-swung uppercut that slammed into the prisoner’s chin.
Dupree grunted and went down like a felled oak. He hit the earthen floor and lay there unconscious.
For several seconds, Sands stood over the man, staring down in disbelief. One punch was all it had taken. Sands had run head-on into bar-room drunks who had taken five men to restrain them. He shook his head. In spite of being built like an ox, Beau Dupree sported a glass jaw. Thank God!
Sands then turned his attention to his painfully throbbing thumb. Slowly, carefully, he extracted it from beneath the Colt’s hammer; purple spread beneath the nail. He sucked at his teeth. He’d have a tender thumb and an ugly blood blister for weeks to come—a small price to pay for keeping his hide in one piece.
With a glance at the four unconscious men on the floor, Sands opened the door to the cabin and called for help.
“I know it doesn’t make sense ... careful there, soldier!” Colonel Martin winced as a medic gingerly washed a hint of blood from an egg-sized knot on the back of his skull. “But it’s not my job to make sense of Dupree’s actions. I’m just supposed to hold him until we can get a federal district judge down here for the trial.”
“But the fact remains he could have killed you—killed all of us, but he didn’t,” Sands said as he watched the medic tie a bandage about the colonel�
��s head. “That doesn’t sound like a man who’d murder a husband and wife and their three children.”
“And the fact remains that I’ve got five witnesses who swear it was Beau Dupree who did the killing,” Martin replied. “You’ve got to admit Dupree’s a pretty recognizable man ... his size and that almost-white hair.”
“Can’t see where it’s our concern, Josh,” said Dub Ferris, who sat with a wide-brimmed hat atop his bandaged head. “We’ve done all we were ordered. Dupree’s the colonel’s problem now.”
“You’re both right. It’s just a notion that Dupree’s the wrong man keeps churning up my mind.” Sands pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“The man could have gotten religion since he murdered the Vardeman family,” Martin said, looking at Sands. “It’s been known to happen before.”
“Still doesn’t make sense,” Sands replied. “I saw his face. He was scared and panicked. It wasn’t the face of killer.”
“If it will make you rest easier, I’ll have my men ask around and see if they can dig up anything new,” Martin said. “Though the investigation into the murders has been thorough. Still it should be at least two months, maybe three, before I can get a judge down here. Who knows what might turn up in that time?”
“I’d be obliged, Colonel.” Sands nodded. That was all he could ask for. Besides, Martin was right, it would be hard to mistake another man for Dupree. Men standing over six feet were rare, and men reaching that height and built like mountains were even rarer.
“I’d keep that bastard under chain and heavy guard during those months, Colonel,” Dub suggested.
“My thoughts exactly, Mr. Ferris.” Martin gingerly tested the back of his head with his fingers. “My thoughts exactly!”
Chapter Two
“Ever seen anything like it, Josh?” Dub Ferris grinned widely through his forest of a red beard.
He swept an arm toward the green water that stretched endlessly before them. Sands smiled at his fellow ranger’s enthusiasm. It was as though the burly bear of a man attempted to encompass all of the Gulf of Mexico and hug it to his chest in that one gesture.
