Law of the Land, page 2
“Or maybe they favored strong drink and the name was supposed to be Bottles.”
“That’s possible. I doubt they were much hand at writin’ and spellin’.”
Battles was never one to eat heavily. He was used to long rides, and those were best taken on a lank belly. He leaned his chair back and watched the jailer finish everything on the table. It had been a stressful day. He was about ready to find a bed somewhere.
He heard the shots and knew instinctively where they came from. He jumped up, knocking his chair over, and took three long strides toward the door. He hit the dirt street on the run. Down toward the jail, people were shouting. Against the lamplight he saw two dark figures jump up on horses and spur away. One looked back just long enough for Battles to know he was Giles Pritchard.
He drew his pistol but realized a shot at this distance would be useless. More than likely he would simply hit some innocent bystander. There were not enough innocent people in the world as it was.
He saw that the second rider was slumped in the saddle. Pritchard brought his horse up even with him and held him in the saddle.
Battles ran for the jail, gratified that John Durham had hit one of them, anyway. It stood to reason that Pritchard’s helper on the bank robbery had broken him out. Send your brother, Pritchard had told his wife. Several townsmen were inside ahead of Battles. Two knelt over Durham, stretched out on the floor. Battles felt a chill as he saw blood pumping from a hole in Durham’s chest. He knew the sheriff had no chance.
One of the men saw Battles’s badge. “You a Ranger?”
“I am.”
“One of the boys went for the doctor. Don’t you think you ought to be out chasin’ whoever it was done this?”
“I’d just lose them in the dark.” He dropped to one knee and leaned over Durham. “How’d it happen, John?”
Durham struggled to speak. The words came slowly and painfully, with long breaks between as he struggled for breath. The gist of it was that Pritchard’s partner had burst in from the street, face covered by a neckerchief, pointed a pistol and demanded that Pritchard be set free.
“Anybody you ever saw before?”
Durham weakly shook his head. “Couldn’t tell.” He coughed. “I opened the cell … grabbed my gun … then he shot me.”
“Pritchard?”
“His partner.” Durham coughed again, spitting up blood. “But I hit … I know I did.”
Battles raised up, voice raw with impatience. “Where’s that doctor at?”
Even as he spoke, he knew a doctor could do little.
Battles clenched a fist. Outlaws. He wished he could string them all up, one at a time, slowly, letting them kick and choke to the last feeble heartbeat. He blinked away the burning in his eyes.
The doctor came, carrying a small black bag. Nothing in it was going to help much. A rattling sound came from Durham’s chest. His hands flexed, he groaned, and life left him. The doctor closed the sightless eyes and looked up. “Can some of you boys carry him over to the livery? I’ll rouse up the undertaker.” He turned to Battles. “What’re you going to do, Ranger?”
“I’ll follow their tracks as far as it takes, even if that’s plumb to Argentina.”
“You’d better get yourself some sleep, then. It’s a long way to South America.”
Battles considered rolling out his blankets on hay at the wagonyard, but he knew he would never go to sleep. The images of Durham and Pritchard and the woman Alicia would keep running through his mind, along with the imagined face of Alicia’s brother. If Durham’s aim had been up to his capabilities, Alicia would have two men to mourn—her brother and her husband. He wondered if she was aware of Durham’s feelings for her. If so, that made three.
Either by gun or by rope, Giles Pritchard would pay for this.
Several townsmen had chased after the fugitives. Battles reasoned that they had probably trampled out any nearby tracks that might have been helpful. Sleepy-eyed, his stomach in a turmoil, Battles played a hunch and rode in darkness, westward in the direction of Pritchard’s place.
He figured it was a good bet that Pritchard and his partner would head there to pick up provisions and, more than likely, the Waco loot. Pritchard would know he could no longer remain here. It was anybody’s guess where he would try to go. Mexico, perhaps, though it was far to the south. The Pecos River country, maybe, and beyond it the Davis Mountains. Or he might head north for the Red River and Indian Territory.
He would go to hell, if Battles had his way. Dawn’s first light revealed the Pritchard house ahead. Battles drew the rifle. It was more dependable than the six-shooter except at close range. He considered firing it into the house to try to rattle Pritchard if he were still inside. He decided that would present too great a danger to Alicia. This was none of her doing. She had made a poor choice in picking a husband. She had had no choice in her brother.
Battles bent low in the saddle to present as small a target as possible and let his horse plod on toward the house. The rising sun was at his back, a point in his favor. A rifle flashed in a front window, and he jumped to the ground, running for the protection of a large oak tree. He fired at the window, regretting the danger to Alicia Pritchard but seeing no alternative.
The tree’s trunk was not thick enough to hide him completely, though it made him less of a target. He waited for a second shot, then fired immediately upon seeing the flash. He heard a cry and hoped it was from Pritchard or his partner, not the woman.
Several long strides carried him to the small porch and into the house. Holding his arm, Pritchard sat on the kitchen floor amid shards of glass. Blood seeped between his fingers. “You busted my arm,” he screamed. “Busted it all to hell.”
Battles picked up the rifle Pritchard had used. The barrel was hot. “One arm’ll do you where you’re goin’. Where’s your partner?”
“My partner?” Pritchard blinked at him, eyes watering.
“The man who was with you. Your wife’s brother, if my guess is right.”
Pritchard cried in pain but jerked his head toward a doorway that led to the bedroom. Battles checked the load in his rifle, then dashed through the door, holding the weapon ready.
On the bed lay Alicia Pritchard, her oversized shirt soaked with dried and drying blood. He could not bring himself to touch her. The claylike color in her face told him she was dead.
Trembling, he returned to Giles Pritchard. “The blood’s too old. My shots couldn’t have killed her.”
Pritchard gritted his teeth, his voice bordering on a shriek. “John Durham, damn him. All he had to do was let me go. He didn’t have to grab a gun. Wasn’t nothin’ she could do but shoot him.”
Battles’s jaw dropped. “She shot him?”
“And then he shot her. I had to hold her in the saddle all the way here.”
“I don’t understand. Where was her brother?”
“She never had no brother. It was her all the time. Kept her hair hid under her hat. Covered her face before she went into the jail.”
The rest of it came clear to Battles without Pritchard having to tell him. Alicia had been his partner on the Waco trip, passing herself off as a boy. She had held the horses while he robbed the bank.
The irony of it made last night’s supper rise up in his throat, burning like Mexican peppers. John Durham had been in love with her, but she had killed him.
At least Durham would not have to live with the fact that he had killed her as well.
“Why did you let her do it?” he demanded. “How could you turn your wife into an outlaw?”
Pritchard’s face twisted in agony. He looked as if he might faint. “Let her? It was her fault all the time, wantin’ things this little old ranch never could pay for, whisperin’ about how easy it would be to rob a bank somewhere that we wasn’t known. A demandin’ woman, she was. But I loved her all the same.”
Battles started to say he was sorry, but the words stuck in his throat. Like hell he was!
He declared, “Every damned hoodlum I ever knew blamed somebody else for his troubles. I wish just one of you grubby sons of bitches would stand up like a man and accept the responsibility for what you’ve done.”
His hatred for the breed swept over him like a brush fire out of control. He did a rough job of wrapping the shattered arm while Pritchard whined and cried. He intended to save Pritchard’s life so the authorities in Waco could hang him.
When he got time, Battles would take pleasure in writing apprehended alongside Pritchard’s name in his fugitive book. When the hangman had done his job, Battles would add the word executed. Then, with the warmest satisfaction, he would scratch a heavy line through the name.
One more down. But there were still so many to go.
JAILBREAK
Some people claim they can tell a lawman as far as they can see him. Grant Caudell was not a lawman, but he had the look of one about him as he trotted his sorrel horse into the dusty, lamplit street of Twin Wells. It had been a long ride, a relentless search that had driven a deep weariness into his bones and put a heavy slump in his wide shoulders. But his stubbled jaw still kept a grim, determined set. And he sensed somehow that his search was done, that he had at last caught up with Slack Vincent.
An undefined tension hung in the air, taut and ominous. Grant Caudell caught its electric tingle as he eased his horse along among the scattered knots of men. He felt it in the way they stood together quietly, saying little to each other except in muttered undertones that did not carry beyond their tight circles.
Most stood with eyes fixed on the ground, or on their rough hands, or on the warped planks of the splintered, tobacco-stained sidewalks. Seldom did they look up into each other’s faces, made unnaturally grave by deep shadows from the lamplight.
Far up the street Caudell made out the shape of a frame jail, its barred front starkly illuminated by lanterns hung over its short porch. Before it three men stood with guns in their hands and stolidly kept watch on the street.
It was as if the whole town waited for some signal, some spark. A shudder worked up between Caudell’s shoulder blades, adding bleakness to a face already pinched and wrinkling from forty years in the hot sun and the dry wind of Texas.
He reined up at the livery barn and stiffly swung down. The old livery hand stood in the wide door, smelling of sour whiskey and dry hay and unwashed horse sweat.
“What’s happened here?” Caudell asked the whiskered, dusty man.
“Fixin’ to be a hangin’,” came the reply in a quick, eager voice. “Soon’s that bunch of folks from the L4 gits in here. Sheriff thinks he can stop it, but he’s got another think comin’.”
Dull dread settled in Caudell. “What’s it all about?”
A slight stir down the street made the little man step forward in expectation. The stir died, and he slumped back, disappointed. “Feller held up the bank today. Girl in there got hysterical and run for the door. He shot her.
“They caught him before he got a mile out of town. They’d’ve strung him up right there if the sheriff hadn’t been so quick. But they’ll git him tonight, don’t you doubt it.”
Grant Caudell’s heart quickened in dismay. “This robber—what did he look like?”
“Tall feller, stooped a little, got gray eyes that drive through you like a tenpenny nail. Scar low on his cheek. Regular killer if ever I seen one. And,” he added proudly, “I’ve seen a many of them.” The description couldn’t fit anyone but Slack Vincent.
Caudell felt sick at his stomach. For five months he had hunted Slack Vincent, trailing him up into Kansas, then all the way back into Texas, from cow outfit to cow outfit, from one gambling hall and fancy place to another. Now, at last, he had found him. And a lynch mob had first call!
Grant left his sorrel hitched to somebody’s picket fence near the back of the jail. If a mob did come, he reasoned, there was no use letting it booger his horse clear out of the country.
Quickly, his spurs ringing to the hurried strike of his boots, he strode around to the jail’s front. Instantly three shotguns were shoved into his face. Purposeful, worried-looking men stood behind them. Lantern light struck a reddish reflection from a badge.
“I’ve got to see the sheriff, quick,” Caudell said.
The shotguns eased back a little, but one of the men shook his head. “Now? Look, friend, you’d better drift before this pot comes to a boil.”
Caudell held his ground. “It’s about your prisoner. I think I know him.”
One of the deputies leaned forward to peer distrustfully into Caudell’s face. “Go on in, then, but leave us your pistol. And you’d better make it quick. When the L4’s hit town there’s goin’ to be hell. That was Old Man Longley’s daughter he killed.”
The sheriff was middle-aged, not many years older than Caudell. Troubled lines were etched deeply under his tired blue eyes, and his stubbled face sagged in weariness. He stared at Caudell with incredulity. “You say you want to speak to the prisoner? There’s a mob gatherin’ out yonder. They want to speak to him too.”
A clock was ticking in Caudell’s mind, and he knew it was almost time for the alarm to go off. “I’ll tell it to you quick, Sheriff. His name is H. W. Vincent. They call him Slack. I hired him to help me with a bunch of cattle we trailed up to the railhead. Everything I owned was ridin’ on those steers. Even my wife’s dad and mother had all their money in them.
“When I got the cattle sold, Vincent shot me in the back and rode off with the money. I was laid up in bed for sixty days before I could even climb on a horse. As soon as I could ride, I took up his trail. I’ve been on it for five months. Now I’ve got to talk to him before that mob gets here. If he’s still got any of our money left, hidden someplace, I’ve got to get him to tell me.”
The sheriff studied him thoughtfully, plainly not entirely believing. “All right,” he said, his reluctance strong, “but you’d better be quick. I’m afraid there ain’t much time.”
Caudell frowned. “You goin’ to let that bunch have him?”
The sheriff’s voice was bitter. “Not without a fight. But I ain’t goin’ to kill any of my friends to save him.”
He led Caudell back through a narrow, short corridor. He stopped at a cell door, hesitantly jingling the keys in his pocket. “Guess you better stay outside here and talk.”
Slack Vincent’s looks had not improved much. His eyes burned with a fearful desperation. “Thank God you got here, Grant. You know they’re fixin’ to hang me?” His hands trembled.
Caudell made no effort to cover his pent-up hatred. “I can’t do anything about that. I just came for my money.”
Vincent’s bearded jaw fell. His bony hands gripped the steel bars. His eyes were wild as he stared into Caudell’s face. “You’d just stand by and let them have me? My God, Grant, we was friends!”
“Friends? You shot me in the back and robbed me.”
“I didn’t kill you.” The wildness gave way to a look of cunning, like a trapped wolf seeing a way out. “Sure I’ve got your money, Grant. And more besides. Luck’s been runnin’ with me, till today. But I ain’t tellin’ you where that money’s at. Not as long as I’m in here. If you let them kill me, the secret dies too.”
Anger ripped through Caudell, and he grabbed the bars. He realized his anger was futile. “What do you think I could do, Slack? I’m just one man. There must be a hundred out yonder waitin’ to get their hands on you.”
Slack Vincent wiped a dirty, ripped sleeve across his sweat-beaded forehead. “That’s for you to figure out. It was you that figured how to get the cattle across the river when it was runnin’ high. It was you that outsmarted them nesters and their quarantine line. So you get me out of here. Save me from that mob and I’ll take you to your money. I stashed it away before I tried for this bank. It ain’t far.
“Fail me, and it’s good-bye to everything.”
Grant Caudell stepped back, half sick to his stomach. He knew Slack Vincent meant business. The outlaw had all his chips in the game, and he was playing for his life.
In the outer office Caudell desperately faced the lawman. “Sheriff, can’t you slip him out of here to someplace safe? You know you and those three deputies can’t keep him long.”
Wearily the sheriff threw up his hands. “We couldn’t get him out of this jail without gettin’ him shot. There’s men watchin’ out there from every side. If we was to make a run for it, chances are they’d shoot one or two of us as well.
“If there was any question he was guilty, I’d try it. But there ain’t. If somebody has got to die tonight, it’s goin’ to be him, and nobody else.”
Despairing, Grant Caudell looked through a barred window into the lamp-spotted darkness. He pictured Molly as he had kissed her good-bye that morning months ago, and as she had stood on the porch, lantern in her hand, watching him start his cattle herd north. Later she had traveled all the way in a wagon to be with him while he recuperated from the gunshot wound. She had tried to beg him off of Slack Vincent’s trail, even though it meant losing their ranch, their home.
“You’re a cowman, not a peace officer,” she had argued.
But he had been desperate, for the ranch was likely to be the only big chance of their lives. If they lost it, he knew he would work for cow wages the rest of his life, and she would cook and scrub for hands. “I’ll get our money back,” he had declared, “or I’ll put a marker on Slack Vincent’s grave.”
Now it looked as if he could start building that marker. He saw no answer.
Suddenly, he did. Upon the sheriff’s desk lay Caudell’s pistol, where one of the deputies had placed it. Caudell recoiled from his first impulse. But he considered, and he knew it was the only chance he had … the only chance Molly had.
He waited until a noise outside distracted the sheriff, then he picked up the pistol. The sheriff was looking through a rip in the window shade, trying to see what was happening down the street. Grant eased up behind him and poked him gently with the gun barrel.
