That was why he and Henry Pollard were miles north of Alpine now, riding through the Davis Mountains toward the town of Fort Davis. The settlement was the county seat of Jeff Davis County and had a nice sturdy jail. That was where Pollard would be locked up until the judge could come up from Alpine and preside over his trial, which would take place on schedule in another couple of days, only in a different location than originally intended. It was called a change of venue, Braddock had said, and was perfectly legal.
As soon as it was dark, Braddock had had four horses brought to the back door of the jail. A couple of them were extra mounts that Tom and Pollard would switch to later, because Braddock expected them to ride all night and reach Fort Davis by morning.
"As soon as things have settled down here, I'll come after you if I can and try to catch up," Braddock had said. "But I know you'll get Pollard through even if I don't, Tom."
"How can you know that?" Tom had asked. "You barely know me."
The Ranger hadn't hesitated before saying, "I trust my judgment, and it tells me you're up to the job. You're the one who brought in Pollard in the first place, after all."
Tom considered that mostly luck, but he hoped Braddock was right. Anyway, there wasn't much choice. Getting Pollard out of Alpine was the safest course of action, not only for the prisoner but also for the people who might try to bust him out of jail and lynch him. If that happened, innocent men would be killed. Well, maybe not entirely innocent, if they'd joined a lynch mob, Tom mused, but he still didn't want them to die.
This way, they wouldn't have any reason to.
As the two of them sat there letting the horses blow, Pollard said, "You know you'll never get me to Fort Davis, don't you, Deputy? My brother will come after me. He'll find out where you're taking me, and he'll set me free."
"I wouldn't count on that," Tom said. "Braddock was pretty careful. I don't think anybody saw us leave the jail, and as we were riding out of town, we were just a couple of drifting hands, nothing special for anybody to pay attention to."
Pollard's hands had been tied to the saddle horn and his ankles were roped together under the horse's belly. A gag had been shoved into his mouth and tied in place so he couldn't yell and draw attention to himself as they were leaving town.
He didn't have any reason to want to do that since the lawmen were trying to save him from a necktie party, but with somebody as loco as Henry Pollard you couldn't ever predict what he might do. It didn't have to make sense to anybody else as long as his fevered brain told him it was the right thing to do.
"I don't care," Pollard insisted. "You'll see. You'll never get me there. You'll die out here. Die screaming."
"Shut up or I'll gag you again," Tom muttered.
Pollard laughed. He said, "You like bein' a hero, don't you, Deputy? You're the big man who brought in the loco killer. I'll bet all the girls think you're something to swoon over now." Pollard paused, then went on, "But you don't really care about them, do you? You're only interested in one special girl."
"I warned you, you better shut up," Tom said.
Pollard cackled and said, "Hell, I remember now! I remember how at the socials in Santa Angelina, you were always hangin' around June Castle and making eyes at her. You were sweet on that teasin' little bitch, weren't you, Deputy Tom?"
"That's enough, damn you!"
"Bet you wouldn't be sweet on her now if you saw her face," Pollard went on. "Bet you wouldn't be able to look at her without pukin' your guts out! But I guess you could always put a tow sack over her head while you were lovin' on her—"
Tom was too furious to think straight. He turned his mount and crowded it against Pollard's, and the back of his hand cracked across the other man's face as he swung his arm in a vicious blow. The impact jerked Pollard's head to the side. His body swayed in the same direction, but he couldn't fall off the horse because of the way he was tied into the saddle.
"Shut up!" Tom yelled. "Shut your filthy mouth, you cold-blooded bastard!"
Pollard righted himself and grinned in the starlight. He said, "I'm just tellin' you what you already know. But you don't know this, Deputy...That time she cut me, before she got her hands on that piece of broken glass...I had her." Pollard's mouth twisted in a sneer. "That's right. I got what I wanted from her—and she loved it. You should'a heard her screamin' my name, boy! It was only afterward she realized what she'd done and got mad at me. That's why she came after me. She was trying to cut my throat so I could never tell anybody what she done, the prissy little—"
With a bellow of rage, Tom went after Pollard again. This time he used his fist, slamming several punches into the prisoner's face as he yelled, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
Then the horses, spooked by the commotion, shied apart, and Tom couldn't reach Pollard anymore. He grabbed the saddle horn to steady himself and sat there with the pulse pounding in his head like an artillery bombardment.
A few yards away, Pollard sat on his horse laughing thickly with a black smear of blood around his mouth. He said, "You can whale on me all you want, Deputy, but it ain't gonna change the facts. That pretty little gal you were sweet on is ruined in more ways than one!"
"She'll never be ruined to me," Tom panted.
"Well, it don't really matter. Before this night is over, my brother is gonna kill you."
* * *
Vince Franklin still looked stunned and angry as he and Braddock emerged from the jail. Franklin had insisted on checking every nook and cranny on both floors of the jail before he was forced to admit that Henry Pollard wasn't there.
At the sight of Franklin, several men from the lynch mob came out from the trees where they had taken cover. One of them asked, "How about it, Vince? Is Pollard really gone?"
"He's gone, all right," Franklin admitted. "They snuck him out of town, just like the Ranger said." He turned his head to glare at Braddock. "It ain't right! This is where he should've been strung up!"
"He'll still get what's coming to him," Braddock said. "In the end, isn't that what matters?"
And even then, it wouldn't change anything or bring any of the dead back, he thought.
One of the townsmen said, "Hell, if Pollard's not here, we might as well go home."
"That's the first smart thing you've said all night, Bob," Dearborn told the man.
There was considerable grumbling, but the remaining members of the former lynch mob started to disperse. Franklin looked around wildly, probably sensing that his temporary hold on power was gone, and exclaimed, "Hold it! Wait a minute, fellas, we can't let them get away with this."
"There's nothin' we can do, Vince," one of the men told him. "It's over."
"That's right," Braddock said. "It's all over."
"No!" Franklin said. "No, there's gotta be a way to find out where they've taken Pollard..."
None of the other men paid attention to him. They didn't look back as they drifted off into the night.
Dearborn said, "You should go on home to your wife and kids, too, Vince. And be damned glad tonight didn't turn out any worse than it did."
Franklin looked around. He was alone now—and one man couldn't make up a lynch mob.
He wasn't quite ready to give up, though. He pointed a finger at the sheriff and blustered, "This county's had enough of your high-handed behavior, Dearborn! Come the next election, you're gonna be out of a job!"
Dearborn's laughter had a bitter edge to it. He said, "What the hell makes you think I'm gonna want it anymore?"
Franklin didn't have an answer for that. He glared some more but then finally trudged away.
Dearborn sighed and said, "We'd better go around back and see who tried to get in that way. I'm afraid of what we're gonna find."
"That it was Amos Pollard and his men?" Braddock asked.
"Amos is an important man in this part of the country. If he's dead, it'll cause quite a stink."
However, it took only a minute to determine that all of the dead men littering the rear hallway of t
he jail and the grounds behind it were strangers to the sheriff. He studied their faces in the light cast by the lantern he held up and said, "Don't reckon I ever saw any of them before. They're not Triangle P hands, that's for sure."
"More than likely the hired killers who attacked Santa Angelina with Pollard," Braddock said. "I figured they might try to bust him out. Either he still owed them money, or they planned to sell him back to his brother—or both."
"You said some of them got away?" Dearborn asked.
"One or two."
"Then we don't have to worry about them anymore."
Braddock hoped that was the case, but he couldn't be absolutely certain of it.
"What are you gonna do now?" the sheriff went on.
"Try to catch up to Deputy Nation and his prisoner," Braddock said. "I'd like to make sure that they get where they're going safely."
"I meant what I said about not running for sheriff again, Ranger. I've had it with this job. I'm too old for it."
As if to prove that he no longer cared, Dearborn slipped a flask from a pocket inside his jacket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow from it.
"That's your business, Sheriff, not mine."
"I appreciate everything you've done here, Braddock," Dearborn said as he lowered the flask. "If it wasn't for you, there's a good chance a heap of innocent men would have died tonight."
"The night's not over," Braddock said.
Chapter 13
By the time Santiago Quintero made it to the jail from the Methodist church, after climbing down from the bell tower, everything had gone to hell. The fighting was over, and the plan he and Robinson had hatched had fallen apart.
Quintero stayed in the shadows of an alley behind the jail, looked at the bodies sprawled between him and the building and just inside the blasted-out entrance, and wondered if all of his compadres were dead. That would be a shame...
But he was alive, and that was all that really mattered, after all.
He was about to fade back into the alley, deeper into the shadows, then go back to his horse and leave Alpine behind him. There would be another job somewhere else for a man who was good with a gun and didn't care who he used it on.
Before he could go, a voice hissed at him. Quintero's gun was halfway out of its holster before the man he couldn't see said his name.
Quintero relaxed a little and whispered, "Robinson? Is that you?"
"Over...here."
Quintero followed the voice over to the nearest building, a shed of some sort. His keen eyes picked out a deeper patch of darkness that turned into a shape huddled against the wall as he approached. Just in case, he slipped his iron from leather.
"Robinson?"
"I'm...hit," came the rasping reply.
"How bad?"
A humorless chuckle. Robinson said, "Bad enough."
Quintero dropped to one knee. He leaned closer and smelled something he recognized: the coppery scent of freshly spilled blood.
"The lawmen shot you to pieces, didn't they, amigo?"
"Yeah...The sons of bitches...were ready for us. We got inside...without any trouble...but they caught us in...a crossfire. Somebody...was smart."
"That damned Ranger, I'll bet."
"More than...likely."
"Maybe I'll kill him for you someday."
"I'd be...obliged." Robinson groped in the darkness for Quintero's arm, found it, clutched it with desperate strength. "Don't let me die," he begged. "Don't let..."
He sagged back and his hand slipped off Quintero's arm. Quintero heard the final breath rattle in Robinson's throat. He stood up, hoping that Robinson hadn't gotten blood on his sleeve.
Again he started to leave, figuring it was time for him to drift, but something stopped him. Some instinct that made thoughts stir in his brain. The effort to free Henry Pollard had been a spectacular failure, but some good might come of it yet. Now that the jail's defenders had defeated Quintero's compadres and, from the looks of it, routed that lynch mob as well, they were bound to relax. They would think that the trouble was over for the night.
He was safe here in the dark for the time being, Quintero told himself, and it wouldn't cost him anything to wait and see what was going to happen next.
Who knew...only El Señor Dios...there might still be something that he could turn to his advantage.
* * *
The wait for Harper to return was probably the longest wait of his life, Amos Pollard thought as he sat there on his horse, dreading the news that his old friend might bring him.
The sound of hoofbeats approaching made his back become rigid. His heart clogged his throat. He was anxious to find out what Harper had to report, but at the same time he wished he could postpone the knowledge longer.
He had suffered through all manner of hardships in his life, he reminded himself. Whatever happened he would get through it, even if he had to call down death and destruction on his enemies to make things right.
"It's me," Harper called a moment later when he was close. "You boys keep your fingers off the trigger."
"Come on in," Pollard told the foreman. Harper loomed up out of the darkness, a tall shape on horseback. "What did you find out?"
"Henry's alive," Harper said, delivering the most important bit of news first. Pollard felt a surge of relief start to go through him, but then Harper went on, "He ain't in Alpine anymore, though."
"Not in Alpine? What the hell are you talking about, Ray? They've got him locked up in the jail."
Harper shook his head and said, "Not anymore. That Ranger slipped him outta town. Sent him off somewhere with that kid deputy from Santa Angelina."
"Then what was all that shooting we heard? And the explosion?"
"I slipped up alongside the courthouse and stayed in the shadows," Harper said, not answering the question directly. "They couldn't see me, but from where I was I could make out most of what Braddock and Sheriff Dearborn were sayin'. As far as I could tell, the fellas who tried to get in the jail and bust Henry out were the ones who went with him to Santa Angelina. You know, the gun-wolves he hired to..."
"I know what he did," Pollard snapped as Harper's voice trailed off. "Nobody has to remind me." He sat there frowning in thought for a long moment, then asked, "Where did they take Henry?"
"Don't know. Braddock didn't say. But he did tell the sheriff he was gonna try to catch up to the deputy. As soon as I heard that, I headed back here right away. Seems to me that if we trail the Ranger, he'll lead us right to Henry."
This time Pollard's brain worked swiftly as he considered what Harper said. He concluded almost immediately that the foreman was right. Braddock was now the key to finding Henry and saving him from his fate.
His well-deserved fate, most would say...but Pollard wasn't going to dwell on that.
He nodded abruptly and said, "All right. We'll follow him. You, me, and Bert."
One of the riders said, "What about the rest of us, boss?"
"Go on back to the Triangle P," Pollard ordered. "There's no telling how long this chase will last, and I won't leave the ranch with only a few men there."
"You're liable to need our help," another cowboy protested. "The spread ought to be fine. The Apaches are all down in Mexico, the border's been quiet—"
"And there's no way to know how long it will stay that way," Pollard cut in. "I've devoted decades of my life to that ranch. I won't leave it unprotected. Ray and Bert and I can handle a couple of lawmen, especially since one of them is an inexperienced boy."
"Yeah, but the other one's a Texas Ranger," Luttrell said uneasily. "You're the boss, though—boss."
"Damn right I am," Pollard snapped. He lifted his reins. "And there's no time to waste. Ray, Bert, come with me. The rest of you light a shuck for home."
He nudged his horse into a lope toward the lights of town and didn't look back to see if his men were following his orders.
They'd damned well better be, he thought.
* * *
Brad
dock went to the hotel to gather the rest of his gear before setting out after Tom Nation and Henry Pollard. Sending the young deputy by himself to take the prisoner to Fort Davis was worrisome, but Braddock had thought it would be easier for them to get out of Alpine without being noticed that way. As it turned out, that seemed to have been the right decision. There hadn't been any commotion around their departure.
There was also the chance that Henry would try to escape, but Braddock trusted Tom to be as careful as possible. The biggest risk would be when it came time to switch to the extra horses.
Braddock came down the stairs with his saddle bags draped over his shoulder and the Winchester in his left hand. He spotted June Castle, unmistakable in the hat and veil, sitting in a chair on the other side of the lobby. She stood up and moved to intercept him as he started toward the hotel's entrance.
"Ranger Braddock," she said.
"Ma'am." This wasn't a conversation Braddock particularly wanted to have, but it seemed there was no avoiding it.
"The talk is all over town that you let Henry Pollard go."
"If that's what people are saying, they've got it wrong," Braddock replied.
"He's not locked up in the jail anymore, is he?"
"No, but he's still in custody. He's still going to be put on trial to answer for what he's done."
"Do you really think Tom Nation can handle a man like Henry?" A bitter laugh came from under the veil. "Henry Pollard is a monster, Ranger Braddock. He's more animal than human. And Tom is only a boy."
"Deputy Nation is a grown man," Braddock said. "He'll do fine."
"If you honestly believe that, you're a fool," June lashed at him. "You might as well have unlocked his cell and let him waltz out, free and clear. And now he's out there somewhere. He's going to come back and...and there's no telling what he'll do..."
Her hands came up, went under the veil, and covered her ruined face as she began to weep.
Braddock grimaced. Like most men, he would have rather faced a war party of Comanche or a gang of owlhoots than a crying woman. He said, "I had to stay in Alpine and deal with the trouble here, but that's over now. I'm going after them. I'll see to it that Pollard gets what's coming to him. You have my word on that, Miss Castle."
Hangman's Knot (Outlaw Ranger Book 2) Page 7