by Bill Crider
TEXAS VIGILANTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 Bill Crider
ISBN-10: 1941298265
ISBN-13: 9781941298268
Published by Brash Books, LLC
12120 State Line, #253
Leawood, Kansas 66209
www.brash-books.com
ALSO BY BILL CRIDER
Outrage at Blanco
Piano Man (short story)
CONTENTS
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE
ONE
By Angel Ware’s reckoning, it had been two years, two months, and two days since he’d decided to kill Hob Bowman. He was beginning to think he was never going to get the chance.
Patience wasn’t one of Angel’s virtues. To tell the truth, he was pretty sure he didn’t have any virtues at all. His mother had named him for his looks, not his nature. He had hair so blond that it was almost pure white and eyes of such a light blue they might have been chips of ice—ice that could have been no colder or harder than Angel’s heart.
Prison hadn’t noticeably improved Angel’s character, but he had at least learned a little about patience. What he’d learned, he didn’t like, and it had only made him more impatient to kill Hob Bowman.
“Hob will be coming for you in a minute,” Abilene Jack Sturdivant said, his voice as low and as flat as the Kansas prairie.
Abilene Jack sat on the floor with his back against the stone wall and his knees drawn up under his chin. He had bad teeth and a bad disposition, and he was one of the two men with whom Angel shared a cell in the state prison at Huntsville.
The cell was five feet wide and seven feet long. It was hot and dark and it smelled like spoiled meat, unwashed bodies, and the contents of the slop bucket that sat back in the corner where Hoot Riley had thrown the carcass of the rat he’d killed earlier that morning.
Hoot Riley was the other occupant of the cell. He was quick with his hands, and he’d grabbed the rat and broken its neck quicker than a cat could lick its ass. Riley claimed that he was seventeen years old, but Angel didn’t believe him.
There were plenty of kids in the prison that were younger than Hoot, and Angel didn’t know why Riley claimed to be older than he was. He had red hair and freckles, and he probably wasn’t much more than fifteen. But he was mean enough to be a hundred.
Hoot claimed to have killed three men, one of them with a hammer and the other two with a knife. Angel saw no reason to doubt him. He was quick enough with his hands to gut a man and then skin him out before he hit the ground.
“That Hob,” Riley said. “He’s a scutter.”
“He’s more than that,” Angel said. “He’s a lying bastard. One of these days I’ll kill him.”
“How?” Riley said, looking around the shadowy cell. “Hit him with a dead rat?”
Abilene Jack laughed softly and said to Angel, “After you ride the Horse a while, you’ll be a dead rat yourself.”
Angel didn’t like to think about the Horse. Bowman had put him on it more than once, and it was after the first time that Angel had decided to kill him.
Bowman, of course, had only been doing his job, but he’d enjoyed it too much to suit Angel. He’d smiled the whole damn time. It seemed like he was always smiling, but Angel was going to put a stop to that if he ever got the chance.
Someone in the next cell was moaning. There was nothing unusual about that. It seemed like someone in the prison was always moaning, usually someone who’d been striped by Hob Bowman’s bullwhip. Bowman was a man who enjoyed his job, all right. It was no wonder that he smiled so much.
“Here they come,” Riley said.
On down the row, men were singing, coughing, talking, yelling, and crying. Angel didn’t now how Riley could hear anyone coming, but Riley could hear a lot better than most people could.
“You going to put up a fight?” Abilene Jack asked Angel.
Angel didn’t bother to answer. If he put up a fight, Bowman’s trusties would just throw him down and beat him senseless.
Either that, or they’d kill him. Either way, it didn’t matter much. They’d hoist him up on the horse, living or dead, and let him roast out there in the hot sun until they figured he was done. Then they’d take him down, carry him back inside, and throw him in the cell. If he was dead, they might take him back out in a day or two.
Of if they were feeling mean, which wasn’t unlikely, they might leave him for a week. There wouldn’t be much left of him by that time. Even Hoot, quick as he was, wouldn’t be able to fight off all the rats that would come a’running.
Thinking about the Horse, Angel decided that being dead might not be so bad. He felt a phantom pain shoot through his shoulders and legs.
The Horse didn’t look like much, just a thick post set in the ground, with a peg that could be moved up and down. The first time Angel saw it, he almost laughed in Hob Bowman’s fat face to think that so many men feared it.
Then they’d set him up on the peg with his back to the post, tied his hands up high behind him, and started stretching his legs down. It wasn’t too long before Angel knew that he wasn’t nearly as tough as he’d thought he was.
His arms felt as if they were being torn from their sockets, and the pain in his legs was so intense that he almost screamed.
He didn’t scream, however. He would have choked on his tongue before he gave Bowman that satisfaction. They left him up two hours before he passed out.
He’d ridden the Horse a couple of times after that, both times for minor infractions of the rules, infractions that were as much a creation of Bowman’s imagination as real, just like the latest one. Whenever Bowman needed entertainment, he’d report Angel for some transgression against the rules, and up on the Horse Angel would go.
There was a loud clanging from down the row, and a harrowing scream ripped through the thick air. Someone had broken one of Bowman’s rules, put his hand through the bars most likely, and one of the trusties had slammed it against the iron with the hickory club that he carried. The trusties, being prisoners themselves, delighted in using their special status to abuse their fellow inmates, something of a habit that Bowman encouraged. After the echo of the scream died away, Angel could hear Bowman’s r
aucous laughter.
The trusty ran his club along the bars, making a clanging sound as he moved along the corridor.
“That Hob,” Riley said again. “He does like to have a good time.”
“So do you,” Abilene Jack said.
Riley grinned. “Yeah. I don’t blame the man.”
“You would if it was you going up on the Horse,” Angel said.
“Hob don’t have it in for me like he does for you. What did you do to him, anyhow?”
“Nothing,” Angel said. “Touched him up a little.”
It had been more than that. The first time they put Angel in his cell, he’d broken Hob’s nose, gotten in a solid smash with his elbow and torn free of Hob’s grip.
He’d been halfway down the corridor before the trusties caught him and clubbed him to the floor. He’d known he didn’t have a chance of getting out of the prison, but it had been worth a try.
Or so he’d thought. The next day they put him up on the Horse and changed his mind.
“I am going to fight them,” Angel said to Abilene Jack. “To hell with getting back on the Horse. Let ’em kill me if that’s what they want to do.”
Jack unfolded his legs and stood up. “Bastards can kill me, too, then. I’ve been in this place long enough. How about you, Hoot?”
Riley moved to the back of the cell to stand by the slop bucket and the dead rat.
“You fellas can do what you want to,” he said. “I’m a young guy, and I’m plannin’ on a long life after I get out of this place. Y’all go ahead and bust ’em up. I’ll just watch from back here.”
“Don’t blame you none,” Jack said, and Angel nodded.
“You can have the trusties,” Angel told Jack. “Hob, though, he’s mine.”
Jack nodded. “You’re welcome to him.”
Hob and the two trusties reached the cell. Bowman was short and fat and sassy, a man who obviously ate much better than the prisoners. He was sweating profusely. He smelled worse that most of the prisoners, too.
Two trusties stood on either side of him. They were at least a foot taller than Bowman, lean and hard as the hickory club that one of them carried.
A fourth man stood a good ten feet away. He was a guard, and his name was Rankin. He wore a black patch over the place where his left eye had been. Angel had always heard that one-eyed men weren’t very good shots, but that didn’t matter in Rankin’s case. He didn’t use a pistol or a rifle. He carried a sawed-off shotgun.
According to stories that Angel had heard, Rankin had killed at least ten prisoners during his years at the prison. That was more men than Angel himself had killed, and sometimes he thought about the injustice of it all. The difference between him and Rankin was so small you couldn’t slip a poker card in there, but the guard got to leave the prison any time he wanted to.
Angel didn’t pay any attention to Rankin or the trusties. He was looking at Bowman, and there was obviously something wrong because Bowman wasn’t smiling. Angel motioned to Jack to let him know that plans had changed. Something was going on, and maybe it wasn’t the time to resist Bowman.
Jack nodded imperceptibly.
“This is your lucky day, Angel,” Bowman said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
“Why’s that?” Angel asked.
“Because you’re due to ride the Horse.”
One of the trusties, a man everyone called Gut, smiled at Angel and swung his club into the palm of his hand, where it hit with a muted thud.
“What’s so damned lucky about riding the Horse?” Angel asked.
“Not a thing,” Bowman said. “The lucky thing is that you won’t be riding after all. You’ve been assigned to a work detail.”
Angel felt tension flowing out of his shoulders and back, but he didn’t let his relief show. Or his surprise. He knew that prisoners in Texas were slaves of the state, and the state wanted its prisons to pay their own way. As a result, the prisons were run by private interests, and a great many of the prisoners worked on the plantations of private landowners. Convicted killers like Angel, however, were seldom allowed outside the walls.
Bowman obviously wasn’t happy about the fact that Angel had been assigned outside work.
“There’s a shortage of workers on the Fisher plantation,” he said, looking as if he had a bad taste in his mouth and wanted to spit. “There’s more to do there than we thought, and besides that, a couple of your friends made a run for it yesterday. Naturally the guards had to shoot ’em. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doin’ this. I just hope you try to escape before we get you there. That would give me a chance to kill you.”
Or me a chance to kill you, Angel thought, careful to keep his face free of all expression. It would be dangerous to let Bowman know the elation he was feeling.
“Riley and Sturdivant are going with you,” Bowman said. “And Jephson.”
Jephson was in the next cell. He was a thin man with narrow eyes who reminded Angel of a rattlesnake, except that Angel didn’t think Jephson would give any warning before he struck. Angel had talked to him but didn’t much like him, and he certainly didn’t trust him. But then he didn’t much like or trust anybody.
“Sturdivant, you come out first,” Bowman said, and Angel noticed for the first time that the trusty on Bowman’s right, Yankee Tom, was carrying manacles.
Bowman unlocked the cell door with a heavy key and swung it open. The two trusties beside Bowman backed away so that Jack couldn’t jump them. Rankin didn’t move except to bring up the shotgun, ready to shoot if he had to.
Abilene Jack looked at Angel, who nodded. Jack stepped out the door, which Bowman re-locked.
“Put your hands out,” he said to Jack, who obeyed without speaking.
Yankee Tom locked on the manacles, which were linked by a short chain that also joined them to another pair of handcuffs.
“Now you, Riley,” Bowman said, opening the door again.
Riley was locked into the manacles along with Jack. Then Jephson and Angel were cuffed together.
“We’re gonna fix up your feet after we get you to the wagon,” Bowman said. “I don’t think you’ll be doin’ any running in here. Walk on along in front of us now, and don’t take any chances. Rankin there doesn’t have a thing against any of you, but if he had to take a shot, all four of you’d end up full of lead. Most likely one or two of you’d be dead, too. Maybe all of you if justice was served.”
Angel didn’t say a word. He started walking. He gave a little jerk with his left hand, and Jephson came on along with him. Abilene Jack and Riley fell in behind them.
Angel wasn’t going to take any chances on getting shot. Not there, not inside. All he could think of was that it had been two years, two months, and two days, but he was finally going to get his chance at Bowman.
And he was going to get it outside in the open air and sunshine. He hadn’t seen sunshine for two years, except for the times they’d had him up on the Horse. It would be good to see it again.
It would be even better to kill Bowman. Angel could hardly wait.
TWO
Ellie Taine listened to the rain drizzle on the roof, thinking that it had come just in time. The front had moved in from the west just before daylight, and it had been raining steadily ever since.
It had rained hard at first. It had pounded on the roof like mallets, so hard that it almost seemed as if it would break on through. It was coming down too hard to soak in the dry, cracked earth of the ranch, but that was all right. There would be other good results of the torrential downpour. Ellie imagined the nearly dry creeks and waterholes filling up as the rainwater rushed in.
After about an hour, the rain had slowed down considerably. Now it would be penetrating the parched ground and getting down to the roots of the dying grass. In a day or so, the cattle would have plenty to graze on, with abundant water to drink besides. She wasn’t going to lose any of them after all, or have to sell them for next to nothing, but it had been a near thing. Being the owner of a big ra
nch was just as hard and precarious a way of living as she’d thought it would be.
It wasn’t as if she’d asked for it. Jonathan Crossland had given her the ranch and everything on it before he died, but he hadn’t been able to leave her any money to get started or to take care of the place. He’d told her that it would be up to her to handle that part.
She was trying her best, but she’d never owed anyone in her life. Now she found herself in debt to a bank in San Antonio and worried about making her payments on time. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, especially when rain was so chancy.
But Ellie was tough. The men who’d raped her and killed her husband a little more than a year ago could have testified to that. If they’d been alive, that is.
They weren’t alive, however, and the main reason for that was Ellie Taine. She’d gone out after them, and only one of them had lived to make the trip back to Blanco. He’d made the mistake of thinking that Ellie, being a woman, would rather let him escape than shoot him. It was the last mistake he ever made.
Ellie heard a knock on the door and started toward it, but Juana got there first. It was hard for Ellie to get used to having someone do things for her. Juana had worked for Jonathan, cleaned and cooked for him, and she had insisted on doing the same for Ellie. Unlike Jonathan, Ellie joined right in with her as often as not, sharing in all the housework. Juana had objected at first, but soon she’d seen that there was no way to keep Ellie from helping and given in with good grace.
The door opened, and Lane Tolbert came into the front room, rain dripping off his slicker. He and his family had come along several months after Ellie had inherited the ranch. He’d been looking for work, and Ellie had hired him at once, not just because he seemed to know something about ranching but because she liked his wife, Sue, and his daughter, Laurie. Especially Laurie.
Laurie was with Lane now, laughing as she shook rainwater off her hat. She was ten years old, with bright blue eyes and blonde hair that seemed shinier than hair had a right to be. It was almost like sunlight in the room. Her mother’s hair was the same.