A Lesson Learned: Red: Book 3

by Darrell Maloney

  “Okay, so what happens if I get bit? Your snakebite kit won’t do me any good way over there.”

  “If you get bit I’ll suck as much of the venom out of you as I can. Then I’ll put a tourniquet on you.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know, my friend. I’m not a frickin’ doctor, okay?”

  “I don’t want to die, Red.”

  “I’m going to do my best to prevent it, I assure you.”

  Red looked to the east. The sun was rising, a brilliant orange against a perfect blue sky.

  “Just a few more minutes and I can stand up without them seeing me.”

  She was already on her knees, and peeked over his body to get a better look at the snake. It was awake and looking around.

  “Crap.”

  “Crap? What do you mean, crap? Please don’t say ‘crap’ when there’s a rattlesnake against my back.”

  “Shhh. Don’t speak. Don’t even twitch. If you startle him he’s likely to strike.”

  Red was impressed. He had to be scared half to death, yet he didn’t panic. Didn’t tremble, didn’t move a muscle. He resisted the urge to roll away from the creature and hope for the best. It was a bet he almost certainly would have lost.

  Jacob aged ten years over the next two minutes, and didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Red whispered some good news in his ear.

  “He feels the morning sun. He’s starting to move. I think he’s getting ready to go hunt for breakfast.”

  As if on cue, the snake slithered away from Jacob, then stopped and looked back. It seemed as though he was studying the warm creature to try to determine whether it was too big to eat.

  “Steady. Hold still. He’s not gone yet.”

  Jacob slowly exhaled, then drew in another deep breath.

  Red worked her way to his head, so she wouldn’t be in his way.

  “Okay, now roll to your left a couple of times and get up on your knee.”

  He followed her instructions and looked to his right, just in time to see the rattler disappear beneath some shrubs twenty feet away.

  “Red, thank you so much. If you hadn’t been here, I…”

  “Oh, don’t be a drama queen. You’d have done exactly the same thing for me.”

  “Yeah. I guess I would. But now it’s over. I can breathe again.”

  She brought him back to reality.

  “Don’t get too cocky. You still might not survive the morning.”

  She nodded to the cowboys, still huddled together and watching their campsite to the west.

  “We’ve still got them to worry about.”

  Chapter 52

  It was time to make their move. The cowboys were mounted up and were ready to head out.

  Red said, “Let’s go, my friend. If you’re the praying kind, I hope you said a silent prayer about whatever’s about to happen.”

  “Actually I said three or four.”

  “Well, let’s hope they work.”

  The four cowboys rode gingerly toward the spot where Red’s and Jacob’s horses were tied.

  The campfire had burned itself out a good two hours before.

  The riders had assumed that since nobody rekindled it, their prey had both fallen asleep.

  Had they turned around, they’d have seen a brilliant sunrise, blinding them to anything or anyone east of them.

  They wouldn’t have seen Red and Jacob, afoot and following them as they slowly neared the tiny camp.

  The riders got to the camp, with Red and Jacob not far behind them. Red could see the confusion on the men’s faces as they looked around, then back and forth to each other, and processed what they saw.

  One of them, a tall man on a big horse who from Red’s viewpoint seemed to be twenty feet tall pondered aloud, “Where in heck did they go?”

  She answered his question in a loud and fearless voice.

  “Looking for us?”

  The four men, almost in unison, wheeled their horses around to face her.

  It wasn’t easy for them. They were staring directly into a blazing sun. None of them had sunglasses. They squinted and dipped the brims of their cowboy hats low, trying to help. But it did limited good. They could barely make out two dark and mysterious figures standing in the central Texas dirt forty feet in front of them.

  Forty feet. The traditional distance which separated two gunfighters in the old west.

  The men could tell, from the way the two figures positioned their hands, that each of them cradled a rifle in their arms. A rifle at the ready.

  Red and Jacob, on the other hand, could see the men’s faces very clearly, lit up the way they were by the rising sun.

  Red saw no anger nor animosity in their faces. On the face of the tall man she thought she saw a slight grin. And what appeared to be a look of approval. As though he’d been outsmarted and knew it, and was impressed.

  She continued.

  “You’ve been stalking us. Why?”

  The tall man countered, “You’ve been cutting our fences. Why?”

  She’d seen it coming, halfway expecting it. There was no anger in the man’s voice. No hostility. It seemed to be a question borne solely of curiosity.

  So she tamped down the tone of her own voice a bit.

  “We apologize for that. We believe we are being pursued by some very bad men. Men who aim to kill us and steal our horses. We could no longer travel by road, so we struck out cross country. If we’d had mending tools and some extra barbed wire we’d have mended your fences as we went through them. But we weren’t given the opportunity to plan for our trip. We had to leave in a hurry.”

  “Fair enough. We don’t mind mending the fences. It’s an easy chore and doesn’t take a lot of time. Time is something we seem to have a lot of these days. Our concern was that you might be rustlers or poachers.”

  “Feel free to look at our gear, mister. Go through our saddlebags if you wish. We have no spare rope to wrangle cattle with, no knives or saws to butcher them with. Our horses are unbranded and obtained through honest means. All we ask is permission to travel through your spread in peace. If you loan us tools to mend your fences we’ll mend them along the way, and leave your tools at the last fence we mend.”

  “No need. I believe you. We’re missing no steers that I know of and haven’t come across any poached carcasses. We followed you mostly out of curiosity, and to repair our fences in your wake. As for your traveling through the rest of the spread in peace, we’ll certainly allow you the chance to do that. But may I make a suggestion?”

  “Sure.”

  “I know you’re night travelers. But you’re less than a day’s ride now from the end of our ranch. If you’re being pursued by bad men, six guns are better than two. If you’re able to stay up a few more hours, let us escort you to the highway eight miles from here. That way we can make sure you make it there safely. We’ve buried way too many strangers lately. It’s not something we care to do any more of, if we can avoid it.”

  Somehow, Red felt she could trust the man. He seemed kindhearted and genuine. Neither was a trait she’d seen much of lately.

  She walked directly to the man, displaying no fear or apprehension. She held her right hand high, and he leaned over and shook it.

  “I’m Tom Waits. I’m the foreman at the Twisted Seven Ranch.”

  “I’m Red. Red Poston. My partner’s name is Jacob. Is that where we are? The Twisted Seven?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve heard of it. My dad used to buy a couple of calves from you every spring. I grew up with your beef filling our freezer.”

  “Poston, you say? You’re Butch Poston’s daughter?”

  “Yes, sir. The one and only.”

  He leaned down close to her and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Does your daddy know you’re out here gallivanting around the countryside being chased by men who want to shoot you?”

  “My father is dead, sir. He was murdered going on four months ago.”


  His face instantly took on a look of concern.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Red. The men who are chasing you… are they the ones who did it?”

  “No, sir. The ones who did it are back in Blanco. But trust me, Lady Justice will be paying them a visit very soon.”

  She turned back to Jacob, who was starting to feel a bit out of place.

  “Let’s do it, partner. Let’s take these men up on their kind offer and let them escort us to the highway.”

  The tall man had another option.

  “How long’s it been since you and Jacob have had a decent meal?”

  “It’s been a few days now. We’re on a jackrabbit and beef jerky diet.”

  “Well, that won’t do. We’ll pass within half a mile of the ranch headquarters. You folks are welcome to come by and meet the owners. They’ll remember Butch too and I’m sure they’ll invite you to stay for supper.”

  Red and Jacob packed up their bedrolls, mounted their horses and rode southeast along the same course they’d been following.

  Tom dispatched two of the riders to head back in the direction Red and Jacob had come from.

  “Trail us by half a mile or so, and watch the horizon behind you. First sign of riders, you fire off two shots, then hightail it back here. That’ll give us a chance to get dug in before the shootin’ starts.”

  He turned back to Red and said, in sincere admiration, “That was pretty smart of you two, to sneak around us in the dark and put the sun at your back. The Indians used to do that, you know.”

  “Yes, sir. That was one of the things my dad taught me when I was growing up.”

  He looked at Jacob and asked, “Are you two married? Boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  Red started to answer but Jacob cut her off.

  “No, sir. She’s way too mean for me. Meaner than a rattlesnake on a bad day. I’ll leave her for a man with a lot more patience than I’ve got.”

  He didn’t fool either one of them. They could both tell he was smitten with her.

  Red couldn’t help but be grateful the men they’d found were kind and decent.

  She was getting used to the fighting and the killing now. But she still wanted to avoid it whenever she could.

  Chapter 53

  One hundred and ten miles away, Gomez stretched before tramping into the open doors of the First Bank of Blanco.

  He expected to find the vault door open and John Savage there by himself. Savage had as much as told him that would be the case.

  Only it wasn’t.

  Savage was there, all right. Sitting at his desk like a squat and bloated toad, chewing on tobacco in much the same way that toad might be chewing on a fly.

  But the heavy vault door was closed.

  Gomez had debated with himself off and on through a mostly sleepless night.

  And as the sun rose above the rooftops and shortened the shadows in the streets, he still wasn’t sure what his course of action would be on this particular morning.

  Would he just shove his Bowie knife into Savage’s heart, then lock the banks’ door while he rifled through the vault and collected his treasure?

  Or would he carry out his word and begin a business arrangement with the ugly fat man, to see where it went?

  He still didn’t know, but the sealed vault would make the first option infinitely harder.

  “Still too early to get our gold out of there?” he asked Savage while nodding toward the vault’s door.

  John Savage wasn’t the brightest man in the world. Sometimes he underestimated the evil of men like himself or put himself in danger by not thinking through the circumstances.

  But he’d woken up early that morning and the thought occurred to him that his new business partners might not be as willing as they appeared to do work for him. That maybe, just maybe, they’d find it easier to kill and rob him instead.

  It was a rare clear-headed moment for John Savage, and one which might well have saved his life.

  The way he dealt with his dilemma was to make his way to the bank half an hour before he expected Gomez or Duncan to return.

  And to move their gold coins from the vault to his desk, then reseal the vault again.

  “No,” he said to Gomez while gesturing for him to sit down.

  “It’s got a time lock which allows us to open it once in the morning, to take out cash for our tellers, then again in the afternoon at closing time, so we can put the teller trays back in for the night. I’ve already got your money out, and can’t open it again until five p.m.”

  “I see. And I’m curious. How is it your time lock still works when everything else is shorted out?”

  By now Savage had learned a little bit about prepping from Crazy Eddie Simms. Before he unfortunately died. Eddie had told him how he and other preppers had protected a limited number of electronics from the EMPs by locking them in steel boxes called Faraday cages.

  He thought he could use that limited knowledge to bluff his way out of the pointed question.

  “The time lock mechanism is on the inside of the vault, which is essentially a massive steel box. The vault protected the time lock from being destroyed. And it doesn’t run on electricity. It has its own battery system which also survived the blackout.”

  Savage opened his drawer and took out a small stack of gold coins, then placed them on the desk in front of Gomez.

  “All pristine, none of them shaved. Is your partner already set up on the highway?”

  “He’s out there scouting around for a good place to set up. We thought we’d find the nearest unlooted Walmart truck and claim it as our own. Set up our camp there. That way we can stay on watch instead of wasting time hunting and fishing for our food. How will we know the woman when we see her?”

  “She’ll be easy to spot. She’ll likely be the only red-headed woman in ten counties. She be atop a big Morgan. A brown one. She typically wears a bone-colored Stetson, and she’ll have a tongue sharper than a straight razor. I don’t reckon she’ll be easy to miss. In fact, if you find your truck on a straight section of highway you can probably spot her a mile away. She’s a damn good shot, so my advice is that you pick her off at a distance, before she can get her rifle out and shoot back.”

  Savage was full of himself for providing such a detailed description of Red. He had no clue how wrong he was.

  He didn’t know that Red had left her horse with her best friend Lilly before she set out for Lubbock. She was on another horse now, a bay Savage had never seen and couldn’t have described to save his life.

  He wasn’t aware that Red had been given night vision goggles by a man she met along the way. And was no longer traveling by day. He didn’t have a clue that Red’s five year old hat had finally bit the dust in Lubbock. Or that Red had replaced it with a spanking new Stetson, this one brown in color.

  And he didn’t know that Red was no longer traveling alone. That she now had a companion at her side. A young but capable friend who would willingly give his life to save hers.

  No, Savage wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

  But one thing was without doubt. Red was indeed coming for him.

  These two drifters, Gomez and Duncan… they were his last hope at avoiding having to face the wrath of Red Poston.

  He hoped they were up to the task.

  I hope you enjoyed

  RED, Book 3:

  A Lesson Learned

  Here’s a preview of the next installment of the series,

  RED, Book 4:

  Return to Blanco

  A bead of sweat rolled from Savage’s expansive forehead and down his cheek. Red thought that rather odd, for the room was relatively cool.

  “Are you nervous, Mr. Savage?”

  “Um… no. Not at all. I’m just… isn’t it hot in here?”

  “Only for you.”

  Jacob busied himself walking around the first floor of the house, closing the drapes. He suspected that Savage didn’t have any friends, as he disliked the man from the
moment he laid eyes on him.

  Of course, his first impression was probably jaded by the stories Red had told him. About what kind of man John Savage was, the vile things he’d done.

  Even if he didn’t have any friends to come to his aid, though, he might have hired guns. And those hired guns might feel a need to protect the hand which fed them.

  But they couldn’t rush the place if they couldn’t see inside. The sun was starting to set. It would soon be dark, and that meant the generator would have to be cranked up to run the house’s lights.

  It was imperative that the curtains be drawn to make… whatever actions Red decided to take on this particular evening… safe from prying eyes.

  It was while Jacob walked through a regal dining room that he saw something terribly out of place on the room’s mantle.

  It was nestled between two candelabras and beneath a painting by Renoir. In any house, it would have been an odd piece indeed. Here, in what most in the county would consider a mansion, it was even more so.

  Made of metal that was once a brilliant yellow, it was now mostly charred a hideous black. The raised letters in the body survived the fire, and still read “TONKA,” But the toy dump truck’s plastic tires had melted away. Only two wiry steel axles stood testament that the tires had once been there.

  Jacob almost passed it by. But something he didn’t understand made him pick it up and take it with him for the rest of his rounds.

  Curiosity, maybe. For he knew there was a story behind the artifact and why it came to be where it was.

  Or maybe he felt it had a kinship to Red in some form or fashion.

  He carried the toy truck in his left hand as he finished his rounds of the house and returned to the living room.

  The room where John Savage sat on a Victorian love seat, hands tied behind his back, muttering and sweating profusely.

  And where Red sat across from him in an oak rocking chair, her handgun on her lap and pointed in his general direction.

  Both their heads turned when Jacob walked into the room.

  Both sets of eyes spied the object in his hand at about the same time.