Randy read her mind.
“Hey, Jake. Why don’t we let these ladies talk? You can help me unload the wagon, okay?”
“Okay.”
As they walked out of the bedroom Jake looked up at him and asked, “Are you for real a Texas Ranger?”
Once they were out of earshot, Millie explained.
“I have medicine to ease my pain, but that’s not my biggest concern. I have cancer. Bad cancer. I was told I had six months to live. That was almost a year ago.
“The boys don’t know. Their mama, my daughter, was trying to get the nerve to tell them, when they went for food and never returned. The boys said they found them, shot dead.
“Since then I’ve been struggling. Part of me wants to tell them they’re going to find their Nana some day soon just like they found their parents. And part of me says not to make their lives any more miserable than they already are. To just enjoy every minute with them that I can.
“Every minute I’ve been praying for God to take control of the situation. That’s why you’re here. God sent you.”
Brandy felt a tightness in her throat.
She wanted to cry.
“Is there someplace for the boys to go? After…”
Somehow she couldn’t find the words to finish her sentence.
“I have another daughter. She lives in south Lubbock. I’m sure they’d have been here to help, had she known her sister and brother-in-law were gone. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you take the boys to her?”
“And what about you?”
“I’ll be fine just left here. The only reason I’ve fought it so far was to wait for an angel to come along to take care of the boys. You’re here now. God can take me anytime He wants.”
Chapter 56
Brandy found Randy in the front yard, walking Trigger in wide circles on the front lawn. On Trigger’s back were Jake and Tommy.
Their smiles told the tale. They were having what was probably their most fun since the blackout rained hell down upon them.
“Randy, can I speak to you a minute?”
Randy looked her way, puzzled. Then he said, “Sure,” and handed Dave the reins.
He walked onto the porch.
“What’s up?”
“Are you bound by the Rangers’ agreement with the college to escort us only to and from supermarkets?”
He stated the obvious.
“If that were the case, I’ve already violated the agreement by coming here. Why?”
“I want to deviate from our mission. These people need help, and we’re the only ones in a position to help them.”
“The only thing the Rangers told me to do was to ride along with you and keep you safe. Where we go and what we do doesn’t matter to me. Consider me at your disposal.”
“Wow. That was easier than I expected.”
“Where are we going and what are we doing?”
“We’re going to pack the wagon with as many of their belongings as we can carry. And you might as well put that food back on as well. Then across the top of the cargo we’re going to place a mattress.
“And on the top of that mattress you’re going to place a very fragile old woman who needs to see her only living daughter one last time before she dies.”
If she was expecting Randy to be flustered, she’d have been mistaken.
He merely asked, “Okay. Where we going?”
“That’s the other thing. She says her daughter lives off of Highway 87, south of town. Not far from Tahoka. That’s a two and a half day ride. Five days round trip.”
“So what are the people at Tech gonna do when you don’t make it back today?”
“They’re gonna freak out. That’s why I need to borrow your horse.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look. I’m a good rider. I rode for the Tech rodeo team. I’ll take good care of him, I promise.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
“Why?”
“I was directed to take care of you. All of you. I can’t keep you safe if you’re riding off by yourself.”
“Randy, I’d unhook one of the team, but I don’t have another saddle and gear. If I don’t tell the people at Tech, they’ll freak out and pull everybody else off the project and send out a search party. We’ll slow down a vital operation and waste a lot of peoples’ time. Please, let me borrow Trigger. I’ll be back in two hours and you can get everything loaded while I’m gone.”
But Randy was adamant.
“Look, the Ranger thing aside, even if I wasn’t tasked to protect you, I’d still say no. It’s not safe out there for a single woman on horseback. The two bodies those little boys found… the ones who used to be their mom and dad, are a good indication of how dangerous it is. I lost my partner to an ambush a month ago…”
The words slipped out. He hadn’t intended for them to.
She could see how affected he was by the secret he’d just told. She didn’t rush him.
She let him regroup.
“Look, Brandy. Even before you became my friend I wouldn’t have let you go out there alone. Now that you’re my friend I feel even more strongly. I’m sorry. I just can’t let you do it.”
She tried to lighten the mood by teasing him.
“Awwww, you’re sweet on me, aren’t you, Randy?”
He couldn’t help but smile.
“Hardly. You’re a big ol’ thorn in my side.”
“So you won’t leave us here unprotected out of a sense of duty, and you won’t let me go because it’s too dangerous for a single woman.”
“Right.”
“Then… how about if Dave went?”
Randy hadn’t seen that coming.
“Dave?”
“Yes. He’s an expert rider. Medaled in every rodeo he ever participated in. Grew up on a ranch. He’ll treat Trigger as well as you can. And he can ride hard too. He’ll be back before we get the wagon loaded.”
“And what will he tell the people at Tech?”
“The same thing I would have told them. That we’re going on a humanitarian mission. That we’ll be back in five days. And that if they don’t fire me, we’ll pick up where we left off when we return.”
“What if they say no? That they want you back?”
“Then again, Dave will tell them the same thing I would. Tough. Too bad. They have no choice. They can fire me when we get back, but they can’t keep us from going.”
In the end, Randy relented.
He had little choice. Brandy was as hard-headed as an old mule, but she had a pure heart. She was willing to help perfect strangers, even to her own detriment.
Dave took a few minutes to get to know Trigger, more for Trigger’s benefit than his own. He knew a horse needed to be comfortable with his rider. They had to be a team, Dave knowing the horse’s limitations and Trigger knowing his rider’s movements.
Once he was confident Trigger thought his new rider capable, Dave said goodbye and rode off at a gallop toward the Texas Tech campus.
Randy was a horseman afoot, which was never a comfortable feeling. But there was work to be done so at least he had something to do to occupy his mind.
“Okay, let’s get at it,” he said to the three women.
“Why don’t you ladies get everything packed on the inside? Us guys will haul it all out and load it into the wagon.”
Chapter 57
Dave made it back in a bit over an hour.
Trigger was winded but not overworked.
Randy was relieved.
And Brandy was just a bit worried.
“What did they say? Are they gonna fire me?”
“Well, I’ll just say they definitely weren’t happy. Not at all. But they asked if our Ranger was going to stay with us to provide security the whole time, and I said he would.
“Then they said they trusted your judgment. That they knew you wouldn’t deviate from the mission unless you had a damn good reason.
“Oh, and one last thing…”
“What?”
“Caleb says you’d better behave yourself. That he heard about the hot Ranger we’d been dealt.”
Brandy smiled.
“Did you tell Caleb not to worry? That my heart belongs to him?”
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. He said it wasn’t your heart he was concerned about.”
Randy interrupted.
“Who’s Caleb?”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
“So what do you think, fellas? We’re loaded up, except for Millie. We’ve got about four hours of light left. Should we set out today and make a dent in the miles, or make a fresh start in the morning?”
Dave shrugged. It made no difference to him.
It was up to Randy.
Randy said, “Well, to quote one of my favorite philosophers, an old cowboy named John Wayne… mount up, boys. We’re burnin’ daylight.”
The group skirted Loop 289, which encircled the city, on their way to Highway 87 south of town. They made it about three miles before they came upon a Motel 6 just before sundown.
It was nothing fancy. But it would be comfortable.
Their biggest problem was the electronic room locks.
None of the hotels in Lubbock, except perhaps some of the shadiest ones, used traditional door keys anymore.
And the electronic locks weren’t working without power.
Randy hated to break the windows. Despite the turmoil the world was in, it just went against his grain to damage other people’s property.
So Dave did it for him.
Dave had no such reservations.
Most of the downstairs rooms had already been broken into.
The upstairs rooms, on the other hand, were pretty much left intact.
Apparently the looters who swept through were too lazy to climb stairs.
Dave selected four adjacent second floor rooms overlooking the parking lot and smashed their windows, reaching inside each one and opening the doors from the inside.
He propped each one open as he went.
“One of us needs to stay with the wagon and keep watch,” he said. “I’ll volunteer.”
“I’ll relieve you at midnight,” Randy said.
“No, you won’t. You’ll have to ride all day tomorrow. And you have to be on your game to watch out for outlaws. If I get tired tomorrow I can crawl into the back and take a nap atop the boxes.”
“Okay, as long as Millie won’t mind that arrangement.”
“She won’t. I talked to her about it on the way over here. She said she don’t take up much space back there, and there’s plenty of room for the both of us.”
Randy looked to the others.
“Any objections to that plan?”
Nobody had any.
“Dave, can you keep an eye on the horses and the doors to the rooms at the same time?”
“Yep. That’s why I parked the wagon the way I did.”
“Okay. Keep your pistol ready. One shot in the air at the first sign of trouble, and I’ll be down here in a jiffy.”
Randy carried the old woman upstairs and lay her tenderly onto one of the beds.
Jake and Tommy turned down the covers to the second bed and started to crawl in.
Brandy stopped them.
“Didn’t you boys forget something?”
Jake looked at her warily.
“What?”
“Don’t you need to wash up, brush your teeth and put on your pajamas?”
And the most curious thing happened: Tommy finally spoke.
“Aw, do we have to?”
Jake seconded his brother’s reservations.
“Yeah. Do we really have to? I mean, we haven’t had a bath in three weeks.”
But Brandy wasn’t backing down.
“I noticed. That’s why you both smell like donkeys. You don’t have to get in the tub. There’s enough running water to just wash up in the sink. Just don’t drink any of it, since the pipes haven’t been flushed. And use bottled water to brush your teeth. Did you bring clean pajamas?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I packed some for you then, isn’t it?”
Tommy said, “Oh, man…”
As Brandy marched the boys off to the bathroom, Millie asked Randy to hand her the pen and memo pad from the night table between the beds.
She scribbled something onto the paper, then ripped it from the pad and handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“My daughter’s address. And directions to her house. Just in case…”
She didn’t have to finish her sentence. Randy understood.
And it made him incredibly sad.
Chapter 58
The night passed without incident.
Randy was up at the crack of dawn, and was relieved when he walked past Millie’s room to hear her talking to the boys.
He walked downstairs to the parking lot to check on Dave, only to find Shannon sitting in the wagon’s driver’s seat.
Dave was curled up in the back atop several suitcases, sound asleep.
“I woke up a couple of hours ago, and figured I might as well relieve him. I love this time of day, don’t you? Everything is so clean and fresh, with the promise of a great new day.”
“Yes,” Randy admitted. “I used to get up in the last hour of darkness and go run, just so I could enjoy the sunrise and hear the birds sing their morning songs.”
“Their morning songs?”
“Oh, yes. They sound different in the morning than they do at any other time of day. They sing different songs. My mom told me that when I was a young boy.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, I swear. I had to hear it for myself to believe it, but it’s true. They have different songs they sing only in the morning. My mom always said it was how they said good morning to each other.”
“I guess I’ll have to listen closer. In any event, it’s going to be a good day today.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw a shooting star. Just before the sky started to lighten.
“Hey, Randy?”
“Yes?”
“I overheard you tell Brandy that you lost your partner. What happened?”
“He was shot from behind in a Walmart on the other side of town. When he was on a humanitarian mission to get medicine for an old woman…”
He probably shouldn’t have, but he added, “…and it was my fault.”
“Why? Why do you say it was your fault?”
“Because we had always been a team. We always had each other’s backs. A few days before he was ambushed, I suggested we split up, so we could cover more ground. If I hadn’t done that, we’d have been together that day. I’d have had his back. He’d still be alive.”
The two of them sat through several minutes of silence, her sitting on the wagon master’s bench and him leaning against the side of the wagon.
Then she said, “Were you his supervisor?”
“No. We held the same rank.”
“So you didn’t order him to go it alone?”
“No.”
“So he could have refused if he thought it was a bad idea?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“And did he? Think it was a bad idea, I mean?”
Randy paused, as though looking back.
“No. Actually, he said it made sense.”
“And were you able to… cover more ground, as you put it? Were you able to help a greater number of people by splitting up?”
“Yes. I honestly believe we did.”
“What kind of man was your partner? And by the way, did he have a name?”
“His name was Tom. And he was a very good man. And a very good friend.”
“Why did he join the Rangers? Did he ever tell you?”
“He joined to help people. And to keep good people safe from bad ones.”
“So he knew there were bad people out there?”
“Of course.”
“S
o, he must have known the risks, then. When you suggested you split up, he knew there was a risk of it turning out badly?”
Randy hesitated.
Finally, she said, “Well?”
“I suppose.”
“Yet he still thought it was a good idea, and told you so.”
“I guess.”
He was getting aggravated, and she could tell.
“Randy, I’m trying to make a point here. I’m almost done, so just bear with me. If the situation was reversed… if you were the one who was killed, would you want Tom to feel guilty about your death?”
“No, of course not. But it wasn’t he who suggested it…”
“No, but he agreed to it, knowing full well what could have happened.”
Randy felt like a little boy being lectured.
“Are we finished yet?”
“Almost. Just answer one last question for me, okay?”
He said nothing.
She persisted.
“Okay?”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think Tom went to heaven?”
“You said one question. That’s two.”
“So I lied. Do you think Tom went to heaven?”
He sighed.
“Yes. I honestly do.”
“I’ve always believed that our loved ones who go to heaven can look down upon us. Do you believe that too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“So, if Tom’s soul is up there in heaven, and he’s looking down upon us right now, how do you think he feels about you beating yourself up and blaming yourself for his death?”
He sheepishly said, “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Oh, yes you do.”
“I do?”
“Yes, Randy. You do. You know darn well that if Tom is watching you now he wouldn’t want you to take the blame for his death. He was a Ranger. He knew when he took the job there would be risks. He accepted those risks. He paid a heavy price, but it was because of the business he was in. It wasn’t because of a suggestion you made.”
He grew quiet and she stepped down from the wagon and placed a hand on his shoulder.
What Randy did next was totally out of character for him.
He wrapped his arms around her and began to weep into her shoulder.
A Whole New World: Ranger: Book 2 Page 17