Deerling engaged the operator for a while, listening to the gruesome particulars of the attack, the number of injured and killed. Finally, he asked the man to point out the best place for a meal and led him onto the porch. It took only a moment for Nate to peer over the counter and read the destination of the previous telegraph sent by the marshal.
The men thanked the operator, and when he called after them asking if they still wanted to send the telegram, Deerling shook his head somberly and said, “No. I don’t believe my friend will need it now.”
Twenty paces on Deerling asked, “Well?”
Nate said, “Lynchburg.”
“What did the message say?”
“Just three words. Texas law here.”
Deerling sucked air through his teeth and for the second time that day put a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “We’re close.”
They wandered in and out of the two saloons but it wasn’t until the beer hall that they got anything beyond cold stares and nervous tics. There were a few older men seated at a table; the rest of the room was empty.
Once the barkeep had heard their story, he looked grim. He rested his elbows on the bar, keeping his voice low. “I heard what happened to that family. The woman lived, you say? Well, I don’t know what kind of blessing that is, seeing her husband and children are dead.
“Listen, I was sheriff in Goliad before I opened this place. It steams me no end to see what’s goin’ on.”
The barkeep was quiet for a moment, letting two of the customers shuffle past and out into the street.
He then leaned over the bar towards Deerling again and said, “McGill was here, him and two others, a few months ago. McGill has more than a nodding acquaintance with our marshal. Prudone gives them protection and they give him a take. I tell you, one of these days someone is going to settle on Prudone with a bullet to the skull.”
“McGill have any keen interests the last time he was here?”
The barkeep walked to the far end of the bar, squatted down, reached behind a salt barrel, and pulled out a small sack. He put his hand in the sack and palmed something. Making sure the customers weren’t watching, he placed what he was holding on the bar in front of Deerling. It was a gold coin, larger than a quarter, nicked and slightly concave, as though something of great weight had rolled over it.
“A man came in here a few times. He was some kind of farmer, and not a very successful one. Drank a few beers and he started talking. Tellin’ everyone within earshot that he’d found gold on his land. I didn’t pay him any mind, but the story must have spread, because McGill showed up and started buying him whiskey at the saloon, trying to make him talk more. Something about it rattled the farmer, though, because he left town. But not before stopping off for one last beer. He didn’t have any money left except this. Well, he plops it down on the counter and I just about broke my jaw. I don’t know much about coins, but I know it’s old. He said it was just one of many. A whole treasure’s worth. He paid for that last beer with this.”
Deerling picked up the coin and turned it in his hands. He showed Nate the markings on the coin, and Nate said, “That’s not any Confederate money.”
Deerling asked the barkeep, “You gonna find some trouble over this?”
“Not if you don’t tell anyone.”
“What was the farmer’s name?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“Where’d he come from?”
“Not sure. I’d never seen him before.” The barkeep took the coin back from Nate. “But he might have told McGill where he was from. He was sure drunk enough. And in that case, if that farmer is still alive, it’s only because McGill hasn’t found his gold yet.”
They thanked him and walked a ways, looking for a place to eat their dinner. They found a small boardinghouse with a dining room, ate, and lingered for a while drinking coffee. It was growing dark as a man came in and sat at an empty table. From time to time he snuck a look at Deerling.
Nate started to say something, but Deerling said, “Yes, I see him.”
Nate angled his face away from the watching man. “How did you know Prudone was lying?”
“Just a sense.” Deerling took a drink out of his cup. “On principle, I don’t trust any man that would use the word adjudicated.”
“Are we leaving tonight?”
“I think we should.”
“We goin’ to Lynchburg?”
“No, we need Tom on this. We’ll ride back to Houston and start back as soon as he can sit a horse.”
“You think he’s going to be all right?”
“Why? You know something I don’t?”
“No. He just seemed pretty sick.”
“Tom’s a tough bird.”
They paid for their meal and, after retrieving their horses from the stable, rode for Houston. The night was clear, with the lingering kind of light that turns the sky turquoise before it goes black. A Roman sky, Dr. Tom had once called it, which to Nate’s mind sounded fanciful, a description Dr. Tom had probably read in one of his books.
There was no moon, but the brightest stars were beginning to appear, and the road was level and worn fine. A cold wind coaxed the horses to a fast walk, Deerling’s big bay straining at the reins to outpace Nate’s gelding. They would be in Houston before midnight.
Deerling said, “You did good back there.”
Nate felt his face redden, but he was pleased.
“That was quick thinking with the telegraph man. Saved me from having to bang him over the head to get what we needed.” He drew a pouch from his pocket and pinched some tobacco into his lower lip. He offered some to Nate, but Nate declined.
Deerling said, “Guile. That’s the way of the world now. Pinkertons and federal agents asking questions, stealthy-like. As if you could talk a John Wesley or a Mescalero Apache out of his gun.”
Nate watched Deerling’s profile, certain his sudden talkativeness had more to do with the excitement of being near to capturing McGill and less to do with his being impressed over Nate’s initiative. Dr. Tom had told him that bold action would go a long way towards salving the disappointment Deerling had felt over the horse-thief incident, but Nate figured that his sneaking over a telegraph counter was hardly enough to earn his way back into Deerling’s good graces.
As though he’d been reading Nate’s thoughts, Deerling asked, “I imagine you were too young to be caught up in the war?”
“Well, I didn’t fight, if that’s what you mean, but I did get caught up. I was sixteen when I volunteered with the Nineteenth Mounted Cavalry. I’d no sooner got to Arkansas when they sent us back to Texas. Me and a few other boys, and three hundred cavalry horses from the dismounted troops.”
“You herded them back to Texas?”
“Yes.”
“How many’d you lose?”
“Two.”
“Two?” Deerling reined up the bay and looked at Nate. “You lost only two horses out of three hundred? You drive them straight into Texas?”
“No, sir. I drove them into Oklahoma first, south of Fort Smith, and then down to Lancaster.”
“How many miles is that?”
“I don’t know. A couple hundred.”
Deerling stared at him for a moment, then spurred his horse into motion. He spit off to the side and was silent for a while.
Nate added, “The man I’d joined with was fatherly to me. Some of the best stock was his. There were rogue troops in Arkansas, Union and Confederate, and I didn’t want the horses taken.”
Deerling chewed on that for a while, along with his plug of tobacco. He asked, “You ever shoot a man, son?”
Nate looked at him and said, “Yes.”
“Did it have to do with losing those two horses?”
“Yes.”
“Then it comes as a surprise to me that you were so upset by my killin’ a horse thief. One, I might add, that would’ve made soup from your guts if he’d had a chance.”
“Would
you have shot him like that from the ridge if he weren’t Indian?”
“Probably not.” Deerling spit again, then backhanded his mustache. “That what bothers you?”
“It does.” Nate felt his jaw beginning to set.
Deerling grunted and shifted in his saddle impatiently. “And I guess you’d tell me why, if I was to ask?”
“Yes, sir, I would.”
“Yes, I bet you would. I see you’re just burstin’ to tell me why it’s wrong to kill an Indian, you bein’ from Oklahoma and all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“I think it means you’re diggin’ awful close to the bone with that stick you call your tongue. Go on, ask me about my mission-raised mother, and while you’re at it, why don’t you go insulting my wife too!”
“Hold on, Oklahoma—”
“No, you hold on. I went along with the mishandling of a prisoner, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about your shooting a horse thief, but you keep riding me about my people and, captain or no, I’ll knock you off that big bay. So you go ahead and ask me about my Oklahoma-reservation kin.”
A look of dawning understanding passed over Deerling’s face. “Whether or not you were raised on a reservation is no matter to me.”
“Well…all right, then.” Nate reined his horse abruptly to the far side of the road.
“All right, then.”
A good quarter hour passed with no words exchanged, but Nate kept watch on Deerling out of the corner of his eye. He was angry, still itching to confront the ranger, to bring it to balled fists on a flat piece of earth if need be, but he also felt brought down, deflated, and he thought it would probably always be this way with the ranger: three steps forward and two steps back. He struggled to calm his breathing, focusing his mind on the road ahead.
“I had a daughter,” Deerling finally said, surprising Nate with the suddenness of a statement that sounded more like a confession than a revelation. The ranger had slowly eased his horse to the middle of the road, and to Nate, Deerling’s words felt like the closest to a peace offering he’d get that night. Deerling’s face was composed, no longer heated, but Nate caught the whiff of remorseful sadness, the downturned mouth and hunched shoulders.
“It happened a while ago. But you never get past it. I regret now not being softer with her. I’m told I’m sometimes…” Deerling looked at Nate briefly, exhaling a breath through his nose. “Unyielding.”
Nate nodded sharply once in agreement, but said nothing. Talking to the widow must have stirred memories for the old man, but it came to Nate that neither Deerling nor Dr. Tom had ever made mention before of having wives or children, other than Dr. Tom’s saying that the hunt for McGill was for family reasons. It had seemed only natural to him that a life spent so long in rangering would mean forgoing such attachments.
He was going to ask Deerling how he came to lose his daughter when a pistol blast caused Nate’s horse to rear up, and he saw Deerling knocked back over the bay onto the road. As he struggled to keep his own horse under control, Nate heard a second blast, and then the gelding collapsed to his knees, pitching Nate to the ground. The fall sent a pain like a white phosphorus flare striking across his bad hip and the back of his head, and he lay on the ground stunned and half conscious.
The gelding’s hooves were flailing nearby, blood coursing from a wound in his side, and Nate rolled over, pulling himself away from the injured animal, trying to keep the horse’s body between himself and where he thought the shooter was. The only cover for an ambush was in a stand of trees nearby, and he pressed close to the ground, hoping their attacker would think them both dead and reveal himself. Nate pulled the pistol from his belt and cocked the trigger.
Two more shots were fired. The first bullet struck the gelding in the haunches; the second shot tore up the dirt close to Nate. He pressed his free hand over a gash at the back of his head to stanch the bleeding, and soon after, he heard the rider pounding past him on the road. Nate stood, taking aim at the assailant, recognizing the bulky rider as Prudone, the marshal from Harrisburg. But it had grown too dark, and his vision too watery and dim, for him to aim and shoot with accuracy, and he was afraid if he missed, the marshal would circle back and renew his attack.
He fell to his hands and knees, dizzy and sick, and then crawled to where Deerling lay. Hit squarely in the chest, his wound pumping blood, Deerling had torn open his shirt with both hands and was pedaling his legs as though trying to walk away.
Nate could see awareness in Deerling’s eyes, and he pressed both palms over the wound. His fingers were soon too slippery for traction, and he tore off his coat and used it as a bandage.
Deerling opened and closed his mouth a few times, blood from his lungs mixing with spittle. “Did you see…?”
“Yes,” Nate said, his breath ragged and hot in his throat. “I saw him.”
Deerling pressed his hands over Nate’s, as though their combined strength could stop the urgent bleeding, but soon Deerling’s fingers lost their hold, and his hands slipped from his chest and lay twitching on the ground.
When Nate looked into Deerling’s face again, he saw the man’s eyes were open and fixed, but he kept his weight on the coat in a momentary belief that some remaining reservoir of blood or wellspring of his own desperate vitality could reanimate the man. After a time, he realized that he had been pumping the dead man’s chest, straight-armed and mindlessly rhythmic, as though prodding a sleeping man to wake, and he stopped and sat back on his haunches.
The night had been quiet, no wind or foraging night creatures, and Nate, buffered by shock in the first moments of violence, had been unaware of any sounds around him other than his partner’s last utterances. But he heard the screaming of an animal in pain and he realized that his horse was still struggling to stand. Nate staggered up, almost falling, pointed his pistol and fired. He missed the first shot, the blood coating his hands slicking the grip, and he took a second, killing shot.
He pulled Deerling off the road and sat with him for a while, unable to move, gutted by fear, bewildered beyond a ready acceptance that the ranger who had survived hostile attacks for two decades had been killed in his presence by a single assassin who was himself a lawman. But even lifeless, the ranger’s face appeared unrelaxed, was still compressed into lines of wary reserve. Nate reached down and closed Deerling’s eyes.
Shivering from the cold and his own injuries, he managed after an hour to catch hold of the bay. He calmed the horse and then lifted his partner, facedown, over the saddle. He gathered the reins and began walking towards Houston, Deerling’s blood drying on his coat.
Chapter 13
A white vapor filled Lucinda’s head. She was conscious enough to know that her eyes were closed, but somehow she was unable to open them. A loud twanging made her stir, and in her disoriented state she thought the sound resembled the strings of a guitar being plucked unnecessarily hard. The noise seemed to come from over her head, and soon another metallic slapping noise jolted her, and her eyelids finally opened.
She was in a bed that she didn’t recognize; it certainly wasn’t in the Waller home. The room was in want of paint and new plaster, and, when she turned her head slightly towards the window, she saw the wisping threads of a cobweb in one corner. She turned her head away from the window and saw Jane standing at the bedroom door. The girl seemed to glow in the hazy light, and when Lucinda tried to speak to her, she found she couldn’t form the words.
Jane came to the bed and sat on the edge. She said, “You’re awake. You’ve been sleeping since yesterday.”
After a bit Lucinda managed to ask, “How…?”
“Tobias brought you here. He’s the Negro man who found you at the Wallers’ old storage house. He’s been here twice to ask after you.”
Jane seemed to glow brighter, like some pearl-white lantern with the gas key turned up high. The slapping sound came again and Lucinda’s gaze went to the ceiling.
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Jane patted her arm. “That’s the prickly wire Father has strung across the roof to keep the buzzards off. But they continue to roost. When they fly away, they hold the wires in their talons until the very last moment. May calls them the celestial choir.”
It seemed to Lucinda that the words being spoken had started to slow down like an overwound clock, and the brilliance from Jane’s skin was scalding her eyes. She felt a tremor beginning in her legs, her back arching involuntarily. Before she lost consciousness, she heard the slapping of the wires playing a tune she thought she recognized.
When Lucinda opened her eyes again, Jane was standing by the bed, holding a bowl and a spoon.
“How long have I been here?” Lucinda’s mouth felt dry and cottony, but the light had resumed its normal intensity.
Jane set the bowl on a bedside table and helped Lucinda prop herself up on the pillows. She picked up the bowl and began to spoon soup into Lucinda’s mouth. Lucinda thought her stomach would rebel against any food, but the warmth and saltiness sharpened her hunger and she sucked at the broth greedily.
Jane said, “Today is Tuesday. You’ve been ill since Sunday.”
Lucinda looked at her, startled. She had lost two days. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been so sick.
She maneuvered herself up onto her elbows and asked, “Why did Tobias bring me here?”
Jane’s face reddened and she looked down at the bowl. Lucinda’s mouth twitched and she said, “Ah, I see. Well, the Wallers aren’t the first to believe that what I have is catching.”
Jane fed her another spoonful. “It’s ignorance, plain and simple.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“You have fits, not the plague.” She fed Lucinda more of the soup. “The Caesars of Rome had the falling sickness.”
“The falling sickness. That’s a pretty phrase.” Bedford had said that there were twenty ways to die from one Sunday to the next in Middle Bayou—from alligators, poisonous snakes, the perfidy of men. And yet her greatest threat came from within her own body.
Lucinda shifted again, looking around. “Where’s May?”