The tall grass country around the campsite supported stands of oak, mesquite, and juniper. A single cottonwood grew on the creek bank. The Kerrigans ate a supper of fried bacon and pan bread, then settled down for the night. Massive ramparts of black thunderheads loomed above the mountains. In West Texas, more often than not, clouds did not always mean rain. Often, thunder banged and lightning flashed, but not a single drop hit the ground. For that reason, Kate did not think it necessary to bed the girls down in the wagon.
Exhausted from the trail, the Kerrigans slept soundly. Midnight came and went and the moon dropped lower in the sky. A gray fox approached the camp on silent feet, her eyes filled with firelight. She stopped and sniffed the air. Alarmed, she slunk into the night like a gray ghost.
And out among the mesquite, Malachi Jansen made his move.
CHAPTER FOUR
As always, Moses was first awake and he rolled out of his blankets ready to get the coffee started. He saw immediately that the three Comanchero horses were gone. The rawboned buckskin still grazed, but he and the milk cow were alone.
Moses woke up Kate Kerrigan. “Miz Kate, the horses are gone. Stole.”
Kate was awake instantly. She rose in her shift in the morning chill and held her blanket around her. “Coffee, Mose. And heat up last night’s bacon grease. I’ll dip some bread in it.”
Trace and Quinn got out of their blankets and stood in their long johns, lanky youngsters as yet lacking a man’s height and weight.
“The horses have been stolen,” she said. “I’m going after them on the buckskin.”
“And I’m going with you, Ma,” Trace said.
“No you’re not.”
“Ma, I’m almost man-grown. I’m going with you.”
“Riding double on the buckskin will slow me down,” Kate said.
“Then I’ll run alongside. And I’ll still be running when the buckskin quits.”
Moses, a big old man with a good face, said, “Boy’s right, Miz Kate. Let him grow up and become a man.”
Expecting argument, Moses was surprised when Kate said, “You can run alongside, Trace. But I warn you, when you can’t go any farther, I’ll leave you.”
“I’ll stick, Ma.” Trace looked at his brother. “And no, Quinn, you can’t go. This is Indian country. You stay behind and guard our sisters.”
“I can’t run those long distances like you can anyway,” Quinn said. “I’ll stay behind.”
Kate and Trace drank a quick cup of coffee and ate pan bread while Moses saddled the buckskin. “One man, Miz Kate, took off due north. And I got me a good idea who he was.”
“The man at the store in Menardville?” Kate asked.
“He wanted them horses real bad,” Moses said.
Kate nodded. “And we made him look small.”
“Ma, he wouldn’t drive the horses back to the settlement, would he?” Trace asked. “Is he that arrogant?”
“He might be,” Kate said. “But there’s one way to find out.”
Moses helped her mount, then handed her the Henry.
At that time in her life, she always rode sidesaddle and settled her dress over her legs “Well, Trace, are you ready to run?”
“Sure I’m ready, Ma.”
“Then let’s get it done.”
Moses stood with the girls and Quinn and watched them leave. His heart was heavy as he hoped for the best and feared the worst. “Your folks gonna be jus’ fine,” he said to Shannon and Ivy. “Old Moses, he knows these t’ings. Speaks to God all the time, him.”
He didn’t know if the girls believed him or not.
Kate Kerrigan drew rein. “What do the tracks tell you, Trace?”
“Same story, Ma. They’re headed right for Menardville.”
“He’s not even trying to lose us.” Kate shook her head in amazement.
“Maybe he has friends at the settlement. Do you still reckon it’s that Jansen ranny?”
Kate looked at the country ahead, her beautiful face thoughtful. “It’s him all right, and he’s not afraid of being followed to Menardville. I wonder why?”
“Like I said, he has friends there.” Trace held his rifle and wore a Colt Navy holstered in a gun rig he’d taken from one of the dead Comancheros. He’d owned such a fine revolver before, but that one was a bad luck pistol and he’d gotten rid of it. He’d never owned one since.
“How are you holding up, Trace?” Kate asked.
“I’m just fine, Ma.”
“When we get to the settlement, stay close, son. Let me do the talking and if it comes to it, I’ll do the shooting.”
“I can take care of myself, Ma. And you.”
Kate looked him in the eyes. “I know you can, but I don’t want to lose another son.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The thunderstorm that had threatened the evening before decided that rain was a viable option after all. As Kate rode into Menardville, Trace walking head-down at her stirrup, a downpour driven by a stiff north wind lashed across the open ground in front of the buildings.
As she’d expected, her horses were confined in a small pole corral between the blacksmith’s shop and the saloon. A shaggy old yellow dog lingered near the corral but slunk away as Kate rode to the grocery store and dismounted. She left Trace outside on the porch and stepped into the store, momentarily enjoying the familiar down-homey smells of molasses, dried apples, and freshly ground coffee.
She didn’t need to ask.
Right away, the storekeeper said, “He’s in the saloon, ma’am. Got Brick Larkhall and Dan Poteet with him. Ma’am, you don’t want to go in there. Jansen is with some mighty hard company.”
“No need for that,” Kate said. “I’ll just collect my horses and move on.”
“Ma’am . . .” The storekeeper’s face was alarmed.
“I intend to recover my stolen property.”
She stepped out of the store and stopped at the edge of the porch where rain fell from the roof like a waterfall. The street was already muddy. She’d need to lift her dress and petticoats to reach the corral and at the same time balance the Henry. It was well nigh impossible. “We’ll wait until this passes, Trace.”
The boy smiled. “I’ll get them, Ma. I’m wearing boots.”
“No. It won’t rain this heavily for long, then we’ll both go.”
The saloon door opened and a tall, heavy man with a spade-shaped beard stepped outside, a glass in his hand. “Still comin’ down,” he said to someone inside. Then he saw Kate. “Hey, pretty lady, come inside out of the rain and have a drink.”
“No, thank you.”
A voice came from the saloon and the bearded man answered. “I’m talking to a lady who don’t want to drink with me, Mal. Purty little thing with red hair, too.”
Malachi Jansen stepped through the door almost immediately and stopped when he saw Kate. “What the hell do you want?”
“I’m taking back my horses,” Kate said. “Just as soon as the rain stops.”
“I got a bill of sale for them nags,” Jansen said. “Ain’t that right, Dan?”
“Sure is,” Poteet said. “I give you that bill of sale my ownself.” He glared at Kate. “Go home now, girly. Mr. Jansen has his affydavey all signed, sealed, and delivered. Now git out of here afore I put you over my knee.”
“Don’t you talk to my mother like that, trash.” Trace was mad clean to the bone.
“Well, well, well, the hoss thief has a brat.” Poteet fancied himself a draw fighter and reckoned he could get two bullets into the skinny youth before he could get his rifle into play. The man would have shucked the iron, but a voice from the street stopped him.
“Hold up there, feller. Don’t draw that gun.” A man wearing a slicker, rain cascading off the brim of his hat, led a big palouse horse closer and then stopped, his eyes on Poteet.
“Who the hell are you?” Poteet glared.
“Name’s Luke Trent, B Company Texas Rangers. Who the hell are you?”
“Dan Poteet
. I was about to arrest these hoss thieves.”
Trent’s eyes shifted from Trace to Kate where they lingered for a moment. “Yup. They sure look like a couple desperate characters.” Long hair fell over his shoulders and he sported a great, sweeping cavalry mustache, the sort that made ladies’ hearts flutter. He was the kind of man who could cut a dash but seldom did.
To Kate he said, “Ma’am, did you try to steal horses from these men?”
Jansen said, “Yeah, she did and—”
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Trent said. “Ma’am?” His eyes flickered for an instant as Brick Larkhall stepped onto the porch.
“Those horses in the corral are my property.” Kate pointed to Jansen. “He stole them last night or in the early hours of this morning.”
“Do you have a bill of sale for the animals, ma’am? Those are thousand-dollar horses, first I’ve seen in Texas since I was a younker.”
“My bill of sale was written in lead, Ranger,” Kate said. “My bill of sale is the three dead Comancheros who attacked our camp and murdered my son, a nine-year-old boy. The horses they rode that day are mine by right and I’m taking them back.”
“I got a bill of sale,” Jansen said. “And I’m willing to show it.”
Trent glanced at the gunmetal sky. “I’ll come over there and read that.” He looped his horse to the hitching rail and stepped onto the porch of the saloon. A distant thunder rolled and lightning glittered.
“There you are, Ranger,” Jansen said. “As legal a document as was ever signed by an honest man like myself.”
“Is that so?” Trent glanced at the bill of sale and his eyes lifted, “You Poteet?”
Poteet nodded. “As ever was, Ranger. And a straight dealer through and through.”
“Where did you acquire three Thoroughbred horses, Poteet?” Trent asked.
“Huh?” Poteet frowned.
“It says here in the bill of sale that you sold three horses to one Malachi Jansen for fifty dollars. Where did you get them?”
Poteet hesitated, and his shifty eyes telegraphed his unease.
“Well?” Trent said impatiently. “Where did you get them?”
“My pa bred them horses and he give them to me.” Poteet said, proud he’d thought up the lie so quickly.
Trent nodded. “Your pa was Lucifer Poteet out of the Nueces River country, right? There ain’t two men in Texas with that name.”
“Yeah, that was my pa. His pa gave him that name on account of how he wanted a girl child and reckoned his new son was the seed of the devil.”
“The three horses in the corral are no more than four years old,” Trent pointed out. “Lucifer Poteet was hung in El Paso for rape and murder ten years ago. I know because it was my pa who hung him.”
“Ranger, I’m shocked,” Jansen said. “I had no idea the horses might have been stolen.”
Trent smiled at that, then said to Kate, “Ma’am, you can pick up your horses any time you want.”
“The hell she can! This is fer my pa!” Dan Poteet went for his gun.
Luke Trent shucked iron from inside his open slicker and shot Poteet before he cleared leather. In the moment of his death, Poteet learned he wasn’t even close to being a draw fighter.
Jansen thought he had a chance to get the drop and went for his gun. He died on the muddy porch floor, puking up scarlet blood. Brick Larkhall had his gun ready but decided he wanted no part of Ranger Trent. He shrieked and dropped his Colt as though it was suddenly red hot.
“You thought about it, mister, didn’t you?” Trent said. Then yelled, “Didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did, but I reckoned you were too fast for me.”
Trent shot Larkhall and watched him drop. “Then you’re just as guilty as the other two.”
Raised in New York’s Five Corners hellhole, Kate was used to violence in all its forms, and she’d killed with a gun herself, but the shooting of Larkhall troubled her. “That man had surrendered.”
“Not in his mind, he hadn’t,” Trent said, reloading a charged cylinder into his 1860 Army Model Colt. “Where I’m going, I can’t take a prisoner. He would have dogged my back trail until he got a chance to shoot me in the back.” The Ranger glanced at Larkhall’s body. “He had the option of staying inside the saloon but didn’t take it.”
Horrified as she was, Kate Kerrigan still realized the value of a real Texas fighting man like Luke Trent. The death and destruction he could inflict in the space of a few seconds was devastating. She made a vow then and there that when she established her ranch, she would hire only riders who could use a gun. Hard men like Luke Trent would be the pillars of her empire.
Trace had also seen what fast hands meant in a gunfight and he knew he could never come close to matching a man like Luke Trent. He also made a vow. Never again would he wear a belt gun. Even in dangerous times, his weapon of choice would be the repeating rifle.
Ranger Trent arranged for the bodies to be removed and paid in scrip for their burials. From the saloon, he brought a whiskey back out to the porch. The rain had lessened and Kate was at the corral. He followed her there. “Where are you headed, ma’am?”
“My name is Kate Kerrigan.” Her voice was cool. Although she admired the Ranger as a fighting man, she felt as a person he left much to be desired. “As for where I’m headed, my destination is west. I want to start out again on my own and not be beholden to other folks, no matter how well-meaning they may be.”
“About a month ago, I rode through the Llano Estacado down into the Pecos River country and camped at a place called Live Oak Creek,” Trent said. “To the east of there is some mighty fine grazing country that hasn’t already been took.”
“Are there Indians?” Trace asked.
“Plenty, young feller. Comanche mostly but some Apache.”
He frowned. “Are they friendly?”
“Nope. They ain’t the most amiable folks you’ll ever meet. But it’s good cow country.”
“Thank you for your advice, Ranger Trent. I’ll take it under consideration,” Kate said.
“If I’m ever passing that way again, I’ll look you up,” Trent said.
“It’s big country. I may be hard to find,” Kate said.
“No ma’am, you won’t be hard to find at all. All I’ll have to say is, ‘Where’s Kate Kerrigan?’ and a hundred male fingers will point in your direction.”
CHAPTER SIX
Kate Kerrigan’s direction was due west, but fate stepped in to do everything in its power to delay her journey.
After another week on the trail, the wagon’s rear axle broke, and it took Moses and the boys three whole days to replace it. A day later, Kate drove into a mud hole and the wagon had to be dug out, a full day of backbreaking toil. A band of Lipan Apaches trailed the wagon for a while until Kate bought them off with coffee, sugar, and a slab of bacon.
But as they drew closer to the Pecos, the graze got better. It had been a dry year in those parts, but the springs held water and the cottonwoods seem to be prospering.
Kate took Shannon and Ivy by the hands and showed them the first wild longhorn cattle they’d seen, a couple mature bulls with horn spreads of six feet tip to tip and a much older bull that Kate later swore had horns eight feet wide. It was rough, broken country, and the longhorns were holed up in mesquite thickets mixed with dense growths of prickly pear, through which some of the old mossy horns moved with the grace and quiet of deer.
Trace and Quinn were mounted and wanted to go into the thickets after the cattle and see if they could roust out a steer, but Kate would not hear of it. “You need good cutting horses for that, not Thoroughbreds. I don’t want to see a thousand-dollar stud gored chasing a steer he has no idea how to catch.”
“What’s a stud, Ma?” Shannon asked.
“A daddy horse,” Kate answered. “And no more questions. We have to move on.”
To Kate Kerrigan’s untutored eye, the Texas Ranger had not steered them wrong. As far as the eye could see,
the land to the east of the Pecos promised graze for hundreds, if not thousands, of cattle. Where the banks of Live Oak Creek narrowed was a spot about a hundred yards between bluffs. On the west bank stood a row of eight ancient cottonwoods, along with a few pecans and willows.
To her joy, the remains of a burned-out fieldstone cabin still stood in the center of a stand of wild oaks. Most of its timber roof was intact and the door, though hanging by one hinge, was of polished mahogany. It had a tarnished brass knocker, handle, and letterbox with the number twenty-seven still intact.
Though the land itself was breathtaking, the door was such a wonder that Kate, Moses, and the children gathered around it. Used to rough-sawn timber doors with rawhide hinges, they’d never seen such a beautiful thing.
Trace said, “How did it get here, Ma? In the middle of nowhere.”
Kate looked at her son. “This is not the middle of nowhere, Trace. Not any longer. The land you’re standing on is the Kerrigan Ranch and here it will prosper and grow. As to how the door got here, I have no idea.”
“I’ve seen doors like that, me,” Moses said. “Seen them in Louisiana when I was a boy. The big houses always had doors like that, all shiny brass an’ the like. But that’s not from a plantation house, no. It’s from a street where rich white folks lived at Number twenty-seven.”
“Then whoever built this cabin brought their front door with them,” Kate said. “All the way from . . . well, wherever . . . to remind them of better times.”
Moses looked around him at the ruined cabin. “Who done this, Miz Kate? Indians, probably so.” His eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. “I t’ink their spirits is still around, watching us, Miz Kate. I sure feel dead eyes on me.”
The girls huddled close to one another and little Shannon stuck her thumb into her mouth and shivered.
“Mose, don’t talk that kind of nonsense in front of the children. The dead are dead and they don’t come back.” Kate smiled. “Well, except for the banshee, but she isn’t really dead, is she?”
“What’s a banshee, Ma?” Ivy asked.
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