by Zack Wyatt
“You’re a fool Joshua Sands!” Ann’s arms were about him as he walked into the cabin, hugging him tightly. “Only a madman would have done what you did!”
“Like I said, I didn’t have a choice.” Sands grinned down into one of the most beautiful faces he had ever seen. Then his arms encircled that slim waist and his head tilted forward until his lips touched, then covered hers.
For one very wonderful moment, his swamp angel’s body melted against his, her feminine contours snuggling naturally against his muscular frame. In the next moment, he felt the harsh prod of a gun barrel in his ribs, and Ann pushed herself from his embrace.
“And like I said.” Ann glared up at him, her eyes brimming with suspicion. “I’m not a woman of easy virtue. I suggest you just keep your hands and your kisses to yourself. Understand?”
“Understood.” Sands nodded, deciding it would make no difference to the young blonde if he pointed out that it was she who had thrown herself into his arms. Besides, there wasn’t time to argue the point, not if he intended to get them out of the swamp by dawn.
“Ann, did you hear all that Haskell said to me?” he asked as she retrieved the quilt from the floor.
“Yes ... and I think he’s right,” she answered without looking at him. “You’ve gotten your strength back, and your wound isn’t going to reopen. If you stay here any longer, ol’ man Tye will kill you.”
Sands didn’t argue; she was right. The Haskells could pick him off easily here in the swamp. “I was thinking about leaving tonight—and taking you with me.”
Her head came up, and she stared at him with a myriad of questions in her aquamarine eyes. Sands hastily outlined the scheme he was still piecing together in his mind while she listened without uttering a word.
After the shock of all he said subsided, it took Ann only fifteen minutes to throw the things she wanted to take with her into a burlap bag and toss it to Sands. It felt light; he looked at her with eyebrows raised in question.
“Nothing but what little clothes I have and a few keepsakes that belonged to Ma and Pa.” She knelt to pull a small box from beneath the bed. As she opened its lid and extracted a leather pouch, she said, “Expect we’d best take this too. Not much, just a few gold pieces. Enough to buy a horse or a mule if we ever get out of this swamp.”
“When—when we get out,” Sands corrected as he hustled her from the cabin to her swamp boat, which was tied at the end of the pier.
“One of the Haskells is watching us. You know that, don’t you?” she asked as she took her place at the front of the boat, rifle in hand.
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping,” he replied as he untied the boat, stepped in to lift the pole, and thrust it in the water. “By the time he gets his pa and brothers, we’ll be ready for them.”
“If they aren’t waiting for us already,” Ann said with a definite lack of confidence in his plan.
“They won’t be.” Sands reassured himself as much as he did her. “Now just point the way out of here.”
“Head west, to the right,” she answered, her gaze searching the swamp’s blackness. “Keep a sharp eye for submerged stumps. They’ll tear the bottom out on you if you’re not careful.”
Sands pushed off, lifted the pole, and thrust again, moving the small boat westward. He glanced back over his shoulder at the old cabin, then turned his attention to the water ahead of them. Ann never looked back.
The smoke rolled from off the center of the swamp, boiling over the tops of the cypress trees in a black, greasy cloud that was sucked upward by the morning breeze. Sands crouched on the bank and stared as the smoke smeared across a cloudless blue morning.
“Didn’t realize that old cabin would make such a fire,” Ann said as her own gaze moved to the smoke for an instant, then returned to the water below them. “Ol’ Tye and his sons will be coming out soon. I don’t reckon they waited around too long after they set the cabin afire.”
“Long enough to make certain the flames engulfed it,” Sands said.
“And we’re just sitting here waiting for them?” Ann stared at Sands. “It doesn’t make sense. We should be making a run for it.”
“He’d only follow.” Sands had seen the hatred in the old man’s eyes. The thought of Haskell or one of his sons breaking in on Ann one night and murdering her in her bed didn’t sit well with him. “It’s better this way.”
Ann sat silently for a few moments. “You won’t be able to talk him out of it this time. He’ll be out for both our blood.”
“I’ll try talking, first,” Sands answered. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll take them before they reach the bank. We’ve got the high ground and the advantage.”
Without an answer, Ann rechecked her brace of pistols. Sands did the same with her old rifle he carried. Now wasn’t the time to get themselves killed because of wet powder.
The sound of splashing water came from within the swamp.
“Here they come.” Sands stretched belly down on the ground and trained his rifle on the swamp.
Ann pushed herself from the ground, scurried about twenty feet to Sands’ right, and crouched behind a willow trunk. She glanced at him and nodded, then stared back at the swamp.
Trying to ignore the race of his heart and the pounding of his temples, Sands carefully inspected his chosen battlefield one last time. He had selected the clearing in which Cotton Blue had killed Dub Ferris and tried to murder him, because of the steep, muddy bank that dropped down to the water and the broad stretch of water that led from the embankment to the swamp. Tye Haskell and his sons had to cross that open water. Sands planned to make certain they never reached the bank.
“Here they are,” Ann called softly to Sands.
He glanced to the trees to see three boats slide from the swamp toward Ann’s boat, which they had left conspicuously tied below. Doubt niggled at the back of the ranger’s mind. He had seen four boats last night. Now there were only three. He glanced about searching for the fourth. Nothing. He turned to Ann questioningly.
“Frank,” she whispered. “Frank’s not with them.”
His attention returned to the three flat bottom swamp boats. Tye Haskell stood in the prow of the foremost with rifle in his crossed arms. One of his sons was behind him poling; the other two were poling the remaining boats. Again doubt darkened Sands’ thoughts. Where was the other boat and the missing son?
Sands didn’t have time to think about the errant Frank; the boats were halfway across the open water, just where he wanted them. His thumb rose and cocked the rifle, and then he took careful aim on the elder Haskell.
“That’s far enough,” Sands called out to the approaching men. “Unless you’ve got a particular wish to die this morning, Haskell, throw your guns into the water and pole right back the way you came!”
The poling stopped immediately. Tye’s head jerked around, searching and finding Sands lying in the grass atop the bank. Sands could see the old man’s eyes narrow.
“Mr. Texas Ranger, I hoped you had more sense than to go and pull somethin’ like this.” Haskell pushed back his hat and swiped at his forehead with a sleeve. “I was certain you liked livin’. No need of you gitting yourself kilt for that Sharp girl. Why don’t you just hand her over to me and my boys, and we’ll forget about all this foolishness?”
“I said to toss your guns into the water,” Sands repeated. A dry, humorless laugh rumbled from Tye Haskell’s throat. “Now you know I can’t do that, Mr. Texas Ranger. I think we better jaw this over a bit. It don’t make no sense for a couple of growed men fightin’ over a piece of trash like that Sharp girl.”
Haskell was stalling for time. Why? Sands’ eyes darted over the swamp, searching for that missing boat and son. Haskell was acting like a man with an ace as a hole card. But when did he intend to play it? And where was that ace going to come from?
“The rifles, Haskell,” Sands said with a glance to Ann, who had both her pistols sighted on the men in the boats.
“I alre
ady said I can’t do that,” Haskell answered. “Why don’t you let me pole over the shore and talk this over with you?”
“You’ve got a ten count, then I open fire,” Sands replied. “One ... two ... three ... four ...”
The rustle of brush and the snap of twigs came from Sands’ left. His head jerked around. Haskell’s ace hit the table! Standing fifteen feet away with rifle aimed at the prone ranger was Haskell’s missing son.
There wasn’t time to swing his own rifle around. All Sands could do was roll as Frank squeezed the trigger.
Thunder rent the air as the hammer fell and ignited the black powder. Sands felt rather than heard the thud of the lead ball meant for his head slam harmlessly into the ground a mere fraction of an inch from his cheek. Swinging his rifle about, he leveled it at the younger Haskell.
The distinct bark of a pistol sounded from behind him. A small round hole appeared in the blue cloth of Frank Haskell’s shirt directly over the heart. An instant later blood blossomed, spreading through the fabric like a purple flower.
Confusion spread over the man’s face—an expression Sands had seen a hundred times in his life on the faces of white men and red—the total disbelief that death had come to claim them, that life ended this quickly, this simply.
Sands didn’t watch the man fall; his head jerked around to Ann. His young angel of the swamp was busily replacing the charge she had spent on Haskell’s son.
“Frank!” Tye Haskell shouted from the water below. “Frank, did you git him, boy? Frank, answer your pa!”
Sighting on Haskell once more, Sands called out, “Frank’s dead, Haskell.”
“Wha ...” Silence reigned over the swamp for a long moment as the realization of what had happened sank into Haskell’s brain. Then the man roared out his rage. “Dead? Frank’s dead? Then join him in hell, you sonofabitch!”
Haskell’s rifle swung about, its barrel homing in on the head that poked above the grass. Behind him, his three sons went for their rifles.
Sands had given the old man his chance to settle this peaceably, and Haskell had cast it aside. Now the ranger calmly pulled the trigger. The rifle spoke, and black smoke billowed. From Sands’ side, Ann’s two pistols fired.
No answer came from the swamp. When the haze cleared, Sands saw the reason. Tye Haskell floated face down in the water beside the body of one of his sons. Behind the two, in a lazily drifting flat bottom boat, lay the body of his second son. The sole remaining son of the Haskell clan had tossed aside his rifle and now poled for the safety of the cypress maze as though the demons of hell were on his tail.
Wearily, Sands pushed himself from the ground and turned to Ann. She already stood, her face pale. A contained tremble shuddered through her body as she surveyed the carnage they had wreaked in a matter of a few seconds.
Sands opened an arm to her, and she came, her own arms encircling his waist as she buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He held her tight and close until the quaking passed, then they began to walk westward to find a farm and horses.
Behind them the voices of the swamp rose again, caring not that four men had died that morning.
Chapter Seven
Captain Matthew Caldwell burned his way through a long, black cigar as he listened to Sands’ detailed report of Beau Dupree’s extradition to Louisiana and the subsequent murder of Dub Ferris.
“What did you say this patent medicine man’s name was?” The ranger captain flicked the gnawed butt of the cigar out the open window of his office.
“The name on the side of his wagon was Professor Jonathan Peoples,” Sands replied. “The wagon was painted green with lettering and trim in bright yellow.”
“Jonathan Peoples, hmmm,” Caldwell mused aloud as he drew two cigars from a shirt pocket and passed Sands one.
Sands accepted the smoke and stuck it in his own pocket to be enjoyed later. He watched Caldwell bite the end from his own, then lean forward for a light from a candle atop the small table that served as his desk. Sinking back in his chair, he stared at Sands for a few seconds before glancing out the window.
Unable to make heads or tails of the man’s reaction to his report of the Mexican ship and rifles, Sands simply sat and waited. Months ago, he had briefly served beside Caldwell at the Battle of Plum Creek. The man’s reputation as a fierce fighter had proven true when the rangers and a ragtag army of buckskin-clad Texians had faced, and defeated, the war chief Buffalo Hump and his Comanche army.
Other than his reputation for few words and a quick temper, Sands knew little of the man. He hadn’t even been aware that Caldwell had been assigned to the ranger post here in Bastrop.
Sands glanced around the small room with its walls constructed of mismatched pieces of sandstone and limestone. Calling the cubicle an office was being generous. It was no more than a converted tack room attached to the stable that housed Caldwell’s command’s mounts.
Bastrop. Sands resisted the urge to shake his head disparagingly. The town was no more than a series of thirty dusty homes and buildings built on the edge of the Texas hill country. Sands would have bypassed the town had Ann Sharp not been traveling with him.
Rather than taking a direct southwestern route from Lake Sabine to San Antonio, he had traveled west through the more populated regions of the republic to avoid Comanche attack. At Bastrop he had intended to rein south and ride hard for San Antonio. And he would have done so except for the fact that Bastrop was the first town large enough for a ranger post that they had passed through. Instead he stopped to report all that had happened.
Caldwell pushed himself from his chair and strode to a door behind Sands, opened it, and called out, “Jake, gather up your writing materials and get your backside in here!”
“This here’s Jake Macklin, one of the few men hereabouts who can read and write,” Caldwell introduced a young ranger who followed at his heels when he returned to his desk-table. “This is a mite unusual, Sands, but I want you to repeat everything you just told me. Jake’s going to write down all you say. I want a formal report on this Mexican ship to send to Austin.”
“A report to the Congress?” Sands stared at Caldwell, while Macklin arranged his materials on the desk. “Why?”
“Bear with me for a while. I want your report first,” Caldwell said, holding out an open palm to indicate Sands should remain patient. “Then I’ll show you something that just might be of interest to you.”
Why would the Congress be interested in the murder of one ranger? The written report didn’t make sense, but Sands didn’t argue. He shrugged and began again, speaking slowly so that Macklin’s quill could keep up.
An hour later, Caldwell had his written report. When the captain rose from his chair, he motioned for Sands to do likewise. “Jake, write out two more copies of that. Then send a rider to Austin with one and bring the other two to me.”
Caldwell looked at Sands. “I promised you something that might interest you. Come with me.”
Sands’ mouth fell agape when Caldwell opened the barn’s double doors. Within stood a wagon painted green with bright yellow letters that read PROFESSOR JONATHAN PEOPLES. “Where? How?” Sands turned to Caldwell in disbelief.
Caldwell grinned. “Then this is the same wagon you and Ferris followed from the coast up to Lake Sabine?”
“One and the same.” Sands nodded, stepping closer to examine the medicine-show wagon.
“You’ll find your guns inside the wagon.” Caldwell pointed to a small door at the rear of Peoples’ rig. “Your horses and saddles are back at the stable. Had no idea they belonged to rangers when we took them. My men have been using them, but they’ve been cared for.”
“But how?” Sands opened the door. Dub’s and his pistols and rifles lay on the bed of the wagon among an assortment of other firearms that had been arranged in a neat line. Beneath them was another line—this of knives. Sands found his, slid it into the empty sheath hung on his belt, then picked up his Colt and rifle. “There was a watch; its
case had a picture of English lords on horseback chasing after a fox. And they took my money pouch; two twenty-dollar gold pieces in that.”
“The watch is there by that crate.” Caldwell pointed to an open crate of rifles, the same ones the Mexican marines had loaded into the wagon, although half of them were missing now. “Don’t know anything about a money pouch. I can issue twenty dollars in emergency funds if you’re in need. Jack Hays can make good for it later.”
“I’m in need,” Sands replied. “Flat broke. Ann Sharp bought the bay mare we rode in on.”
“Can’t do anything about reimbursing her for that, but I can up your emergency funds to forty dollars, and you can handle the matter.” Caldwell spat a flake of tobacco from the tip of his tongue.
“You still haven’t said how the professor’s wagon ended up here,” Sands reminded the Bastrop captain.
“We ran into Professor Peoples about a week ago,” Caldwell replied. “He was camped in a cedar break north of here, palavering with a war party of eight Comanches.”
A week ago, Sands thought, Ann and he had been faced off with Tye Haskell and his sons.
“When we tried to get them to surrender, the Comanches attacked my men,” Caldwell continued.
This wasn’t surprising to Sands. A Comanche brave preferred death to the white man’s chains.
“Six of the braves were killed along with Peoples and a man who fit the description of the one you called Pumpkin,” Caldwell said. “A tall, hulking blond man and two of the warriors managed to make it to horses and lose themselves in the cedars.”
“And the blond had a birthmark running down the left side of his neck?” Sands watched the ranger captain nod. “Cotton Blue.”
“If we’d known who they were, we wouldn’t have given them the chance to surrender,” Caldwell said, leaving no doubt that he would have had his men shoot the party down without warning.
“Can’t be helped now,” Sands said. “If we get the word out, someone will run into him again.”
