Vengeance Is Mine

by William W. Johnstone

  That first time Chaco had witnessed the stunt, he had sat on the other side of the draw and hollered about how Newt was a crazy old man and could’ve killed himself. If Biscuit hadn’t been able to make the jump, Newt would have broken every bone in his body when he and the horse crashed down into the draw, Chaco claimed.

  Newt just set fire to a gasper, nodded toward the draw, which was eight feet wide and six feet deep, and said, “It ain’t like we’re jumpin’ over the goddamned Grand Canyon, now, is it?”

  That shut Chaco up. Now whenever he was around when Newt let out a whoop and took off for the draw, he just rolled his eyes and crossed himself, saying a prayer for his crazy gringo friend.

  The coffee was almost ready. Newt turned on the little radio on a shelf over the counter. It was tuned to a station that played country oldies: George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Hank Snow, Porter Waggoner, Buck Jones, Hank Williams Jr., Roy Acuff . . . the real stuff. He fixed himself a bowl of Post Toasties with a banana sliced up on it and a piece of toast, the same breakfast he had eaten for more than sixty years. He was what they called a creature of habit and didn’t give a damn if he was. He knew what he liked. Black coffee with that dollop of bourbon in it, cereal and toast, a few cigarettes, good music on the radio . . . that was the way a fella ought to start the day.

  And so he did.

  The sun still wasn’t up when Newt walked out to the corral carrying his rope. He didn’t really need it, since Biscuit would come right up to him if he just held out his hand and made a little clucking noise. But Newt liked the feel of shaking out a loop and twirling it over his head, and he liked to test his hand and his eye, too, by casting out that loop so that it sailed straight over Biscuit’s head and settled down around the buckskin’s neck. Maybe it was just a game, but he enjoyed it and Biscuit seemed to as well.

  The sky blazed orange over a shallow butte to the east. A cool breeze blew as Newt got his old saddle on Biscuit. The summer heat would hammer down on Texas before the day was over, as usual, but right now the temperature wasn’t bad. This was just about the most pleasant time of day, in fact, and so Newt always made sure that he was out and about by now, so that he could enjoy it.

  Chaco came out of the bunkhouse and greeted Newt with a soft-voiced “Hola, amigo. Buenas dias.”

  “Mornin’ to you, too,” Newt said. “Ready to ride? I thought we’d take a paseo up north today.”

  “Of course,” Chaco said with a smile. He knew what Newt had in mind. It would be a good day for jumping over that draw and feeling fully alive again.

  Chaco saddled a roan gelding from his string and swung up onto the animal’s back. He was a spare little man with a narrow mustache and iron-gray hair cut short under his straw Stetson. He was probably the neatest sumbitch Newt had ever known, with his shirts and jeans always freshly laundered and pressed and a shine on his boots. Cowboyin’ was dirty work, no doubt about it, and Chaco didn’t hesitate to get right down in the mud and shit when that was needed, but all the rest of the time he was downright spiffy.

  The two old men rode out just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. They headed northeast, working around in a wide circle that brought them to the boundary of the Diamond S. Then they cut west, checking the fences and making mental notes of the number of cattle and the condition of the animals they passed. They worked mostly in silence. They didn’t need a lot of words. Men who rode together as long as Newt and Chaco had got to know each other almost as well as if they could read each other’s mind.

  In the middle of the morning, as was their habit, they stopped and ate some tortillas that Chaco had brought along in his saddlebags, rolled in tinfoil so that they had stayed warm. Newt had a thermos of coffee laced with bourbon. It was a good snack and would tide them over just fine until they got back to the house for lunch. They ate in the shade of a scrubby mesquite tree, hunkered on their heels. Their horses cropped peacefully at some grass that grew nearby.

  When the break was over they rode west again, and Newt felt a familiar excitement stirring in him as they approached the draw. It had been more than a week since he’d been out here. So much had been going on, what with the Fourth of July celebration and then Tommy Carranza’s terrible murder, that Newt hadn’t been able to follow all of his usual routines. Now it was time.

  Then Chaco had to go and ruin it by saying, “Some smoke over there, amigo.”

  Newt reined Biscuit to a halt, hipped around in the saddle, and looked where Chaco was pointing. Off to the southwest, a quarter of a mile or more distant, a narrow plume of smoke rose against the blue Texas sky. Newt frowned. As far as he knew, none of the other ranch hands were working in that area today. Even if they were, there was no reason for them to have built a fire. They weren’t doing any branding at this time of year.

  “We’d best go check it out,” Newt said as he lifted the reins. “Whoever set that fire didn’t have no right to do it. They’re trespassin’ on Diamond S range.”

  There had been no storms; the sky was clear and had been all night. So lightning strikes couldn’t be blamed for the fire. Humans had to be responsible for it. Newt had a bad feeling about this, a mighty bad feeling. He heeled Biscuit into a trot.

  Chaco rode beside him as they headed for the smoke. Newt hoped it wouldn’t take too long to run off the varmints, whoever they were. Then he could get back to jumping his horse over that draw, like he had intended.

  They came to a little creek, its banks dotted with mesquite and cottonwood, and followed it for a few hundred yards. The trail led around a bend, and there on the other side Newt and Chaco came in sight of the fire. A big red SUV was parked nearby, its tailgate open with a boom box sitting on it blasting out Tejano music. Four men stood by the fire, roasting large chunks of beef that still dripped blood. The blood sizzled as it dropped into the flames.

  As if all that weren’t surprising enough, Newt reined in sharply as he spotted the source of the beef. It was a freshly slaughtered cow, a Diamond S cow, that lay on its side by the creek, its throat cut. The steaks had been crudely hacked from its carcass. The gruesome wounds were covered with a black, roiling carpet of flies, as was the cow’s slashed throat. Clearly, the trespassers meant to make a meal off the cow and then leave the rest of the carcass to rot.

  “Madre de Dios,” Chaco muttered as he brought his horse to a stop alongside Newt. “What have they done? Who are they?”

  “Goddamn rustlers, that’s who they are!” Outrage filled Newt. The idea that anybody would dare to come onto Diamond S range, slaughter a Diamond S cow, and then stand there calmly roasting hunks of it was almost too much for him to comprehend.

  The strangers were Hispanic, all of them wearing Stetsons and jeans and khaki work shirts with the sleeves rolled up. They didn’t seem surprised to see Newt and Chaco. One of them turned and grinned at the two old range riders. “Hola, amigos!” he called. “I would invite you to join us for lunch, but as you can see . . .” He waved a hand toward the slaughtered cow. “There is only enough for us.”

  “That ain’t your cow, you son of a bitch,” Newt barked. He was vaguely aware that beside him Chaco was making worried noises and trying to motion him away, but Newt ignored him. “You had no right to kill it!”

  The spokesman, a short, stocky man with bulging muscles under the sleeves of his shirt, shrugged and said, “Go to hell, viejo. We do what we want and take what we want.”

  Newt’s pulse pounded heavily inside his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this mad. He wished he had his Colt double-action Peacemaker. The revolver was over a hundred years old but worked just as well as the day it had been manufactured. It had belonged to Newt’s grandfather, and Newt had kept it in perfect condition. If he had it now, he’d do some damage, by God! But the Colt was back at the house. Newt never carried it anymore. It had seemed to him that the time for such things was past.

  He had a .30-30 carbine in a saddle sheath, though, and so did Chaco. Any man with sense carried a varmint
gun when he rode out on the range. Newt didn’t think he’d ever seen any bigger varmints than the ones standing around that fire, laughing at him with shit-eatin’ grins on their faces.

  Before Newt could reach for the carbine, Chaco took hold of his arm and said urgently, “Come, Newt. We must get out of here.”

  Newt jerked his arm free from his friend’s grip and said, “Damn it, I ain’t goin’ anywhere until I settle things with these sorry-ass rustlers!”

  “Hey, I am insulted!” the spokesman said. “You keep calling us rustlers, old man, but we didn’t steal no cows. It’s no crime when you got to butcher a cow to eat.”

  “You don’t look like you’ve missed many meals, fattie,” Newt snarled.

  The man glared. “You call me names now. I am getting tired of this, old man. You want to know who we are?” He thumped a fist lightly against his chest. “We work for El Bruitre. You know him?”

  “I know who he is,” Newt replied. “He’s a piece of shit, and so are you. Now get off this range, and make it pronto!”

  “We are not going anywhere until we finish our lunch,” the man said coolly. “But you are.”

  “Newt . . .” Chaco said warningly.

  Suddenly, Newt saw what was happening. While he’d been talking with the stocky drug runner, one of the other men had drifted over closer to the SUV. Now the man reached inside the back of the vehicle and took out a rifle, some sort of military weapon. He swung it toward Newt as the old cowboy made a lunging grab at the stock of the carbine.

  The rifle cracked while Newt was still trying to pull the carbine from its sheath. He felt a heavy blow against his chest that knocked him backward. Before he knew what was happening, he had tumbled out of the saddle and thudded to the ground. His left foot was still in the stirrup, but Biscuit didn’t bolt. The horse was too well trained for that.

  “Newt! Amigo!” Chaco cried.

  The Mexican ranch hand didn’t try to pull his carbine. He leaped down from the saddle instead and ran around Biscuit to reach Newt’s side. He jerked Newt’s foot from the stirrup and dropped to one knee beside him.

  Newt was aware that he had been shot, but he didn’t feel much pain. Instead he was just sort of numb and shocked, with only a few little jabs of pain beginning to creep in around the edges of his consciousness. His hat had come off when he fell, and he missed its broad brim shading his face. The sun was bright and shone in his eyes, annoying him. It was a relief when Chaco leaned over him, blocking out the glare.

  “Lie still, Newt,” Chaco said. “I will get help.”

  “You will get nothing, viejo,” said the stocky drug runner, “except perhaps a grave next to this worthless old fool.”

  Chaco came up out of his crouch, turning as he did so. But as soon as he came around, a shotgun roared and a double charge of buckshot tore into his chest. The impact of the terrible blast threw him backward. He landed next to Newt, his chest shredded and blown open. His back arched once as a gurgling, incoherent cry came from his throat, and then he sagged loosely into death’s embrace.

  The four men gathered around Newt and Chaco. “You ruined our lunch, old man,” the spokesman said. “You got what you deserve. You’ll be dead soon, and as you die, remember who killed you.”

  Newt’s tongue came out and rasped over dry lips. “You . . . polecats,” he husked. “Go to . . . hell . . .”

  He tried to get up but couldn’t do it. A vast weakness had stolen over him. He knew he had only minutes, perhaps just seconds, to live.

  Dying wasn’t so bad. He’d made his peace with that prospect a long time ago. But it bothered the hell out of him that he’d let himself be killed by low-class trash like these drug runners. He had always figured he’d be crushed by a maddened bull or bit by a rattlesnake or trampled in a stampede or hit by lightning on some lonely range. To be shot by a common criminal . . . well, it just wasn’t fittin’.

  And even worse, they had killed Chaco, too. His oldest and best friend in the world. Newt had heard Chaco’s last breath and recognized it for what it was.

  Well, he thought, the world wasn’t worth livin’ in anyway with Chaco gone. What really worried Newt now was what was going to happen to John Howard and Elaine. Ramirez must have sent his boys up here to strike at the family on account of what John Howard had done down in Acuna the night before. He had been listening from the shadows and had heard enough of what the boy had told Elaine when he got back. That had taken cojones, goin’ after those three killers like that. But at the same time, maybe it hadn’t been the smartest thing in the world to do. It had made the Stark family a bad enemy. Muy malo. Killing him and Chaco was probably just the start of Ramirez’s vengeance.

  But Ramirez might have broke off a bigger chunk of hell than he realized. Being a criminal and a thug, Ramirez had no respect for a common, ordinary, law-abiding man. He didn’t know just how dangerous such an hombre could be when he was riled up enough.

  Newt heard coarse laughter, followed by the sound of the SUV’s engine starting up. It drove away with a spurt of gravel and dirt from the wheels. Where had the sun gone? Newt couldn’t see it anymore. And the midday heat had vanished as well, to be replaced by a creeping coldness.

  He laughed. “This is what it feels like to die, you dumb old coot,” he said aloud. Or maybe he just thought it. He really didn’t know.

  Something nudged his arm. With an effort, he turned his head and looked up to see Biscuit standing beside him, head lowered. The horse nudged him again with its muzzle.

  “Sorry, fella,” Newt rasped. “We ain’t gonna . . . jump the draw today.... I got a heap bigger . . . jump to make . . . all the way outta this world. . . .”

  Fifteen

  Stark was on his way out to the barn when he heard the distant crack of a rifle shot. It wasn’t that unusual to hear such a shot; one of the hands could have killed a rattlesnake or chased off a coyote—the four-legged kind. But something about the shot didn’t sound quite right to Stark. He knew from talking to some of the hands that Newt and Chaco had set off in that direction early that morning, and both of the old-timers carried .30-30s. The shot Stark had just heard sounded more like it came from a higher-powered weapon.

  When it was followed after about a minute, while Stark was still staring off to the north with a frown, by the dull boom of a shotgun blast, he knew something was wrong. Nobody who had any business being up there would have fired off a shotgun. As far as Stark knew, Newt and Chaco were the only ones on that part of the ranch this morning.

  Fear stabbed him in the chest like a physical pain. Something was wrong, bad wrong.

  He turned and ran for the house, yelling, “Elaine! Elaine!”

  She slammed out the front door before he got there, wearing jeans and a sleeveless blouse. Her eyes were wide with surprise and worry. “John Howard!” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Stark was thinking rapidly. Elaine was just as good a driver as he was, if not better. “Get the truck!” he said as he bolted past her. “Somebody’s shooting up in the north pasture!”

  Calling the northern reaches of the ranch a pasture was putting it mildly. The Diamond S covered a lot of square miles. But Stark knew every foot of it, and he thought he could drive to within a few hundred yards of the place those shots had come from. He could navigate, rather, since he wanted Elaine to drive.

  He figured he might be too busy to handle the wheel . . . too busy with the guns he grabbed from the rack in the den.

  He took down the pistol his father had carried as an officer in World War II, the standard-issue Colt Model 1911A, which was still one of the best handguns ever made. Stark kept it in excellent working condition and had practiced with it ever since he was a young man. He took a loaded clip from a desk drawer and rammed it home but didn’t work the slide, leaving the chamber empty. He stuck two more clips in his pocket. Then he grabbed a couple of shotguns and a box of shells and ran outside with them just as Elaine pulled up in the truck, stopping short in front of the ho
use so that dust billowed up from the wheels.

  Stark ran through the dust, yanked the passenger door open, and piled in. “You know where that draw is that Uncle Newt likes to jump Biscuit over?” he asked.

  Elaine nodded.

  “Head for it as fast as you can!”

  Chaco had told them about Newt’s antics, probably hoping that Stark would somehow put a stop to them. But Stark knew his uncle too well to think that anything he could say would stop the old man from doing what he wanted to do. That just wasn’t the way Newt operated. He was too stubborn to be bossed around, and that was how he regarded even a suggestion that he might change his behavior. He was as stiff-necked as any mule Stark had ever seen.

  But that didn’t mean he was crazy, despite the fact that he sometimes acted like it and even seemed to revel in that perception. Newt was hardheaded and practical at heart, and he wouldn’t attempt anything he knew he couldn’t do.

  Stark loved the old man and hoped he was all right. But those shots were mighty worrisome. They hadn’t come from Newt and Chaco, so the most logical explanation for them was that somebody was shooting at the old-timers.

  Elaine knew the ranch trails as well as Stark did. She had ridden all of them herself, almost as much at home in a saddle as her husband and his uncle. Some of them were more difficult to negotiate in the pickup than they were on horseback, but she managed. They came to the creek that meandered through that part of the ranch, and Stark said, “Turn right. Follow the creek.”

  Elaine jabbed the brake, spun the wheel, stomped on the gas. “What’s going on, John Howard?” she asked. “Why are we doing this?”

  “I think somebody was shooting at Newt and Chaco a while ago.”