Vengeance Trail

by Bill Brooks

  “It’d be mighty easy for me to say yes. But, I guess if we did it that way, I wouldn’t ever be able to feel right about it, and, I don’t think you would either. Not in the long run.”

  They both knew that he was right.

  They rode back to the ranch at a slow, reluctant pace, each silent in their thoughts, each wanting to say something to the other that would offer hope.

  She had just finished putting away the picnic supplies while Henry leaned against the house smoking a cigarette when three riders appeared on the east road.

  “That will be Mr. Miller,” she said coming outside to stand next to the Ranger. The hour had grown late, the sky had turned brassy.

  “The two men with him are occasional hands that share their time between spreads around here. Tip Wymans and Ollie Hunt.”

  The trio reined in.

  “Who might you be, mister? And what are you doing here alone with my wife?”

  Clave Miller was a common looking man, the only physical exception being that his ears stuck out like the doors of a barn left open.

  “I’m a Texas Ranger,” replied Henry, crushing the cigarette under the heel of his boot. He lifted back the flap of his duster enough for Clave Miller and the two that rode with him to see the badge he wore.

  “Josie, you know how I feel about strangers hanging around here—you know what I’ve warned you about.”

  Maybe because of his feelings toward the woman, his opinion of the man was colored, but he instantly did not care for Clave Miller.

  “Like I said, Mr. Miller, I’m a Texas Ranger. Your missus is not the reason I’m here. I came on official business.” The explanation did not seem to appease the man, however. He continued to glare at his wife.

  “You care to inform as to exactly why it is that you have come here, Ranger?”

  “Was reported that cattle were being rustled, enough so as to have a formal request made to investigate,” said Henry, doing his best to maintain some official decorum with the man.

  “Well sir, cattle rustling is about as old a profession as there is around here. That, and whorin’. Ain’t that right boys?” It seemed to Henry that the man enjoyed being crude in front of his wife.

  The two men at his side grinned their approval.

  “Then I take it, Mr. Miller, that you have not suffered any stealing from your herds?”

  “Hell yes I’ve had stock stolen. But, so what? So has everybody else in the Panhandle. What you don’t understand is that we take care of our own problems up here. We don’t need the Texas Rangers, or anyone else for that matter. Now if you don’t mind, get the hell off my property or else I will be forced to have you shot!”

  The lawman stiffened at the challenge. All three riders were wearing sidearms, and all three had Winchester stocks showing from saddleboots. Whether they were true gunhands or not, he could only guess.

  “Why are you being so mean-minded, Clave?” Josie, full of scorn, stepped between them, and said, “You’ve been drinking!”

  “You keep your mouth shut, woman! Stay clear of men’s business!” Her entry into the fray had only provoked the rancher. Henry Dollar had been a lawman for a long time and he knew when small matters got out of hand, they could turn dangerous, more dangerous than they ought to be.

  Gunplay wasn’t called for here. He didn’t think the cowboys were gunfighters and Clave Miller looked more bark than bite. But still, there was Josie to consider.

  “There’s no need, ma’am,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I’ll be on my way.” He could see the look of disappointment and doubt in her eyes.

  He turned his attention to the rancher.

  “I’ll be around these parts for a few days,” he said more as a warning than as plain conversation.

  “Ain’t no concern of mine, mister. You just watch whose property you’re tramping on.” The double meaning didn’t escape the lawman’s notice.

  “Don’t push your luck compadre!”

  He turned to go, paused and said, “Ma’am, if I might have a word with you in private for a moment.” Clave Miller started to speak, but the lawman’s glance warned him off.

  He walked her out of earshot.

  “Josie, I’ll be back around this way. I haven’t figured everything out yet—about you and me. I haven’t figured out how it is we should say our goodbyes to one another.”

  She glanced once over her shoulder, saw that her husband was watching them, straining, as if to hear the conversation.

  “I’m not ready to say goodbye to you, Henry. I’m just not.”

  “I guess I’m not so ready, either.”

  “I could go with you now. I’d be willing.”

  “A few days,” he said. “Let us both think about it for a few days.”

  “A few days then, Mr. Dollar.”

  “Yes, Josie. A few days.”

  She watched him ride away, and her heart rode with him. And even after he had disappeared she could still feel his presence.

  Chapter Eleven

  They had ridden into the blackness of the night. The dank smells of the swamp filled their nostrils. Something with great flapping wings flew across the road before them. A chorus of night creatures rose and fell from the brackish waters.

  They had ridden for the better part of an hour since having fled the house in New Orleans. A full moon was just beginning its ascent above the tangled tops of cypress trees.

  Lowell Biggs rode slumped over the horn of his saddle; each jolting step of the animal brought him greater pain. He struggled for every breath. The place in his back where the knife had gone in burned and squeezed at his lungs. He could feel the last of his strength draining away. Twice, he had nearly tumbled from his horse, but was held in the saddle by his brother.

  But now, the last of him was bleeding out, and the pain had grown so terrible that he no longer cared if he went on. If he could only lay down and close his eyes and sleep for a little while, he told himself, everything would be fine.

  Something blinked yellow in among the trees. The light of a cabin.

  Carter saw it, pulled up alongside his brother and put his hand on the wounded man to steady him. “There,” he said, pointing toward the small frame of light. “We’ll get you some relief there!” Lowell was too weak to reply. His body ran hot and cold with chills and fever.

  As they approached the cabin, a dog came off the porch, its hackles raised, its snapping bark echoing into the night.

  “Shut up!” yelled Carter at the hound as it stood its ground in front of the cabin. Carter reached for his pistol and was about to draw it and shoot the dog when the door of the cabin sprung open.

  “Who be out there!” The voice was that of a woman; the accent, Cajun.

  “Call off your hound, woman, or I’ll shoot him!” demanded Carter. “I’ve got a wounded man that needs help!”

  The dog’s bark intensified at the sound of the stranger’s voice. Carter lifted the pistol out of his holster and aimed it at the cur. The click of the hammer being thumbed back seemed insignificant but the barking gave way to a sudden low growl. The dog clearly recognized the sound of a revolver being cocked.

  The woman said something in French or Cajun, Carter couldn’t be sure which, something short and hard, something commanding. The dog eased back to her, came to stand by her feet switching its attention between her and the strangers.

  Carter holstered the weapon, dismounted and eased Lowell from his saddle. Lowell whimpered in pain. Carter felt the coldness of his flesh.

  Without bothering to ask permission, Carter half carried Lowell toward the cabin, up the few steps of the porch, past the woman, and brought the wounded man to rest upon a small cot in the corner of the single room.

  “What is this you do here, eh?” she asked, falling in behind them. Reflected in the yellow light coming from an oil lamp on a table in the center of the room, the woman saw the bloody trail on the floor.

  Carter turned his attention to her. She looked to be of color, but not
exactly Negro. He had heard tell of the Cajun people in this part of the country, knew that many were of a mixed blood. He guessed her to be one.

  She was a decent looking woman, he thought, eyes black as pitch, hair the same color—long, touching past her shoulders—skin the color of creamy coffee. She wore a simple cotton dress, no shoes.

  “My brother’s been stabbed in the back. He’s nearly bled to death. I can’t help it your’s is the first place we come to. But he can’t go no farther. I’ll need clean water and rags to pack the wound, and whatever else you got to stanch the blood.”

  He saw her staring at him, staring at Lowell and where the blood was already soaking into the blanket that covered the cot.

  “I’ll pay for the convenience,” he said.

  “He is young,” she said.

  “Too damn young to die like this,” said Carter, his impatience growing. “I could use that water and clean rags now!”

  Without further comment, the woman went to a pitcher and poured water into a tin basin. She brought it to him and then opened a small trunk and removed a man’s white shirt. She tore it into strips and gave them to him as well.

  She stood aside and watched as the man cut the clothing from his brother’s back with a small jackknife he produced from his pocket. After swabbing the wound with a dampened rag, she could see the place where the man had been stabbed high on the back.

  The wound glistened bloody in the light, the flesh around it dark purple. Small clots of bloody tissue oozed from it. The water in the pan swirled pink.

  “I’ll need to cauterize it,” Carter said, his face knotted in sweat. “Do you have a flat piece of iron around here?”

  She nodded toward a poker standing near a small open fireplace whose fire was little more than glowing embers, remnants from an earlier fire. “It’ll have to do,” he said.

  He rekindled the fire and laid the blunt end of the poker on the burning chunks of wood until the metal glowed orange.

  Lowell had lost consciousness, and Carter was glad that he had done so. “Hold his arms, sister,” he ordered the woman. “Even though he’s out, soon as I lay this iron on him, he’ll come out screaming!”

  The cabin filled with the smell of burning flesh and the horrible screams of a man being burnt. The pain had brought him to, and then sent him back to that deep dark place of unconsciousness.

  Afterwards, Carter dressed the wound with a clean pack of white cloth and covered him with the blanket—the part that was not already bloody.

  The whole time the woman had stood watching him in measured silence.

  Carter stood, paced the room for a time, and then settled his gaze, first upon his brother’s shallow breathing, and then upon the woman.

  “He’s going to die, I can feel it,” he said.

  The woman crossed in front of him, went to the bed and stood beside it, looking down on the wounded man.

  “Maybe I can save him, eh?” she said.

  “Don’t know how, sister. The blade’s broken off inside him. He’s been bleeding for an hour or better already. Don’t see how.”

  “I will need to be alone with him,” she said. “To invoke the Spirits. They will not come if an outsider is here with us.”

  “Oh no, sis. He’s in the shape he’s in because I left him alone once already with a woman. I’m not leaving him alone with anybody!”

  “Then he will die, as you have predicted,” she said simply and turned away from the bed.

  She looked strange, talked strange, and acted strange. He did not trust her. But still, Lowell was a goner as far as he could determine. He recalled hearing how people down in this country had strange ways, strange beliefs. Maybe she had some potion or some strange medicine that these people used to cure themselves. She surely must know something to do if she offered in the first place. Lowell was dying, and quickly it looked like.

  “Alright! Alright! You do what you know how to do to help him. It works, I’ll be owing you.” A burst of unexpected emotion caused him to consent to the strange, spooky woman.

  “Okay.”

  He waited outside. The air was warm and humid. The dog eyed him suspiciously, growled once, and skulked away into the darkness.

  He sat on the edge of the porch and made himself a cigarette and smoked it. He could hear the croak of what seemed a thousand frogs off in the night. Back and forth they called across the black soupy waters of the unseen swamp. There came a heavy splash in the water and the frogs all fell to silence for a few moments and then slowly began again, like a creaky wheel starting up.

  A second sound began to come from within the cabin itself. A sound like no other he had heard before. A low moaning sound that rose steadily in pitch. It was the woman’s voice, but not a voice so much as a wailing, a mourning cry. The sound made his skin crawl.

  The sound brought him to his feet. He crossed the porch and peered in the window. Lowell’s bed was completely surrounded by lighted candles, the many tongues of flames casting his sallow features in ghostly stillness—a halo of peacefulness.

  My God, he has died, thought Carter.

  The woman held something in her hand, something that appeared to be the talon of an owl. It was attached to a gourd rattle. She shook it vigorously over the supine form of the wounded man and chanted something unintelligible.

  Her head was cast back, her eyes closed, her body trembling as she stood over the bed. The perspiration on her dark skin glistened in the candles’ glow. Her upper body began to sway back and forth, her head tossed the raven black hair into flying streamers. She sang and sang, but in a language he could not hope to understand.

  He felt a strangeness come over him as he watched her through the window, felt himself being roused by the gyrating brown body, by the unnatural sounds coming from her throat. He was mesmerized by the flicker of candle flames, by the peaceful stillness of Lowell’s youthful face.

  With great effort, he pushed himself away from the window and toward the edge of the porch, drank in the night air and steadied himself. He made another cigarette and smoked it.

  “God damn your soul, Johnny Montana,” he said to the darkness. “Damn your soul for bringing my family all this misery!”

  He rested his back against the wall of the cabin and felt the heavy weight of the day descend upon him. The woman’s voice had ceased to wail, but still, he could hear her inside, mumbling something, something in a low soothing voice.

  He was bone-tired. He closed his eyes and saw the events of the day there in the dark warmth of his skull.

  He awakened to the trilling of birds, to the warmth of sun upon his face. He had fallen asleep there on the porch of the cabin. His eyes cracked open. He saw a pair of brown feet, then the hem of the woman’s skirt.

  He sat up. She had been standing there watching him; for how long, he could only guess. He shook off the mantle of sleep, rubbed it from his eyes, worked it from his joints by stretching.

  “How’s Lowell?” he asked, dreading the answer he would receive.

  “He is breathing easier,” she said. “But, all danger has not left him yet. “I have done all that is possible to do. I have called upon the Spirits. I have invoked the Power. But, his wound is mighty bad.

  “I’ll have a look-see for myself, sister.” He entered the small cabin and went to the cot where Lowell lay belly down, his arms dangling off the sides. His breathing was steady but shallow, and once he moaned. For Carter, it seemed a pitiful sight.

  He turned his attention to the woman who stood in the doorway.

  “He’s in poor shape,” he said, looking at her as if for confirmation. When none was forthcoming, he said, “This could take some time—him getting better, or…passing on.” Still, the woman made no comment.

  “I’m sorry this all had to fall upon your head,” he told her. “But, like I explained last night, there wasn’t any other choice.”

  She moved to the small wood stove where she had been brewing a pot of coffee. The smell was strange.
<
br />   “Chicory,” she said.

  “Look sister,” he said. “I have to ride out after a man I’m looking for. The longer I wait, the less chance there is to find this feller. There’s already been a long enough delay as it is.”

  She offered him sugar for his coffee. He held off.

  “I’m willing to strike a bargain with you, sis,” he said, looking around the small spare cabin.

  “I’m willing to pay you good money, if you’ll keep Lowell here until he can heal up. It sure looks like you could use some good money.”

  “I’m am not a physician,” she said. “I am only poor Marie, who lives in the bayou, eh. Does what she can, catch the fish, cook crawdads, eh. What you want from Marie anyway?”

  “Like I said,” he continued. “All I want is for you to see to him, change his bandages, take care of him, until he gets better.”

  “What if he die, then what?”

  “Then…get somebody to help you bury him. Pay them if you have to, I’ll leave you enough money.”

  “I don’t know.”

  For the first time, she took the time to study this man who sat across from her and demanded so much. He was not a bayou man, that was easy enough to see from his color. Bayou men were dark, like the swamps—lean, and hard like cypress roots. This man was big and pink-skinned and had hair the color of old straw. This man did not speak like a Cajun, but his tongue was thick with accent.

  Mostly what she noticed about the man who sat sipping the chicory coffee was that there was no smile to him, no fire down in his belly.

  Her reluctance was beginning to fray his nerves. He was not accustomed to bargaining with women. Still, she held all the cards, he knew that much. If she refused to care for Lowell, he had little choice but to put him on a horse and find some sort of sanctuary—but where?

  “I could shoot you for refusing to help,” he said, but without conviction.

  “You can kill Marie, that’s for sure. But, I’m not afraid of you.”

  She saw the helplessness in his expression, the dogged creases around the eyes, the unsteady mouth.