Of course, they hadn’t survived yet, he reminded himself when a bullet screamed past his left ear, only inches away. Twisting in the saddle, he saw a Rurale coming up fast behind him. Frank ducked as the Mexican fired again. His hand flickered to the Colt, palmed it out of the holster, and fired it in one smooth move. The Rurale rocked back as Frank’s bullet slammed into him.
Then, with almost shocking suddenness, Stormy was in the clear and running freely through the night. Guns still barked and roared, but none of them seemed to be near Frank. He looked around, saw darting shadows here and there that he recognized as men riding hell-bent-for-leather. The ranchers and the men from San Rosa had broken through the screen of renegade Rangers and Rurales, and now they were scattering across the south Texas plains, spreading out as widely as possible so that even if the enemy caught up to a few of them, the rest would get away.
There was a bitter taste in Frank’s mouth. Running away from trouble went against everything in his being. All through his long, eventful life, he had made a habit of standing straight up against whatever danger came his way.
But tonight he wasn’t the only one involved. There were dozens of other men who had to be thought of. Not only them, but their families, too, back on the other ranches and in the settlement. Doc Ervin had summed it up when he said that this battle might be over, but the war would continue.
And it was a war that Frank Morgan intended to win.
34
Frank rode long and hard that night, circling far to the east and then riding north, steering his course by the stars. By morning he estimated that he was a good fifteen miles from the Rocking T. He hadn’t seen any of the other men, but hoped that most of them had gotten away.
As the sun rose he angled southwest, figuring that would bring him by midday to the vicinity of the coulee Doc Ervin had mentioned. He didn’t push Stormy, but let the Appaloosa set his own pace after the hard run during the night.
When he spotted another rider ahead of him, he reined in and pulled the Winchester from its sheath. The man’s path was converging with Frank’s. They approached each other warily, but then Frank relaxed as he recognized one of the men who had been at the meeting in Cecil Tolliver’s barn the night before. The man raised a hand in greeting.
Frank returned the rifle to the saddle boot and rode forward. “Howdy,” he said. “Good to see somebody else made it through.”
“Damn right,” the man said. “You’re Morgan, aren’t you? I’m Pete Carson.”
“Glad to meet you, Pete,” Frank said as he reached over to shake hands with the cattleman. “Seen any of the others yet?”
Carson shook his head. “Nope, but Doc Ervin told me we were supposed to meet at Grant’s Coulee. I’m headed there now.”
“I didn’t know the place had a name,” Frank said with a tired grin, “but that’s where I’m headed, too.”
The two men rode on together, and about an hour later they came in sight of a long, shallow ridge that ran east and west as far as the eye could see. Pete Carson pointed out a notch in the higher ground.
“That’s the coulee,” he said. “A long time back a creek must have run through there, but it’s been dry as far back as I can remember.”
Doc Ervin had said that the coulee would be easy to defend, but as Frank and Carson approached, Frank decided he didn’t much like the looks of the place. True, both ends of the coulee were relatively narrow and could be held by a small number of defenders, but if riflemen were able to get on the rims of the slash in the earth, they could fire down into it and the coulee might become a death trap. If this war against Wedge and Estancia turned into a long struggle, the Texans would have to find a better location for their headquarters.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, Frank thought. If Hardy had gotten through to Laredo and mailed that letter to Austin, help might soon be on the way.
When they were within a few hundred yards of the northern end of the coulee, Frank saw sunlight flash on something inside the cut. They were probably being watched through field glasses. A minute later, several riders emerged from the coulee and trotted toward them. Frank recognized the tall, hatless figure of Doc Ervin. When the men came closer he saw that one of them was Cecil Tolliver, seemingly recovered from being knocked out by the dynamite blast the night before.
“Frank, it’s good to see you,” Tolliver said as he and the others came up to Frank and Carson. “You, too, Pete. Are you fellas all right?”
“Made it through without a scratch,” Frank said.
“I wish we could say the same for everyone,” Doc said. “Come on in. Welcome to our new home.”
There was a bitter edge to the physician’s voice, and as he rode into the coulee, Frank saw why. There were barely a dozen men there, and several of them were wounded, with crude, bloodstained bandages wrapped around heads, arms, and legs. Darrell Forrest’s broken arm had been roughly splinted with mesquite branches.
“We’re hoping more of the boys will show up later,” Tolliver said as he saw the bleak expression on Frank’s face. “After all, you and Pete just got here, Frank.”
“That’s true,” Frank said with a nod. “We’ll hope for the best.”
A few patches of grass dotted the floor of the coulee, but there was no water. They would definitely have to relocate, Frank thought. As soon as everyone had shown up that they could reasonably expect to, they would have to start scouting for a better place to lick their wounds and figure out what to do next.
When Frank said as much, Doc Ervin nodded in agreement. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a tactician when it comes to warfare,” the sawbones said. “This was just the first place I thought of that everyone might know.”
“That’s fine, Doc,” Frank assured him. “We had to have a place to regroup, and this is as good as any.”
As the day went on, men continued to show up at the coulee, some of them wounded, a lucky few having come through the fighting unscathed. Doc tended to the ones who were hurt.
Late in the afternoon, Walt Duncan rode in. The former marshal had a bullet crease on his upper left arm, and a slug had bitten a chunk out of his left thigh. His face was deeply trenched with lines of pain. Frank and Ben helped him down out of the saddle.
“Thank God you made it, Walt,” Cecil Tolliver said as Duncan sat down on a rock and Doc Ervin knelt beside him to examine the leg wound.
“You may not be so glad to see me once you hear what I’ve got to say,” Duncan responded. “I’ve been to town.”
Frank asked sharply, “You went back to San Rosa?”
“That’s right.” Duncan winced as Doc probed the bullet hole. “I wanted to see what was going on there. Once I got close, though, I realized I couldn’t go all the way into the settlement.” Duncan swept his grim gaze around the group of men who had gathered to listen to his report. “Wedge has taken over the town.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tolliver asked, his voice taut with worry.
“I guess he’s declared martial law. Those so-called Rangers of his are all over the settlement, standing guard with rifles and shotguns. All the citizens are staying off the streets, and the road in and out of town is closed.”
“He doesn’t have enough men to do that, does he?” one of the ranchers asked.
Duncan said, “He does when you count all the Rurales he’s got helping him. They’re right in there with the Rangers, working side by side with them.” The former marshal added bitterly. “Just like this was Mexico, not Texas!”
Frank nodded. “I saw enough Rurales at the Rocking T last night to know that Wedge has to be working with Captain Estancia of the Rurales. They’re both as crooked as they can be, and they’ve gone partners in trying to take over the border country.”
“They’ve damned near done it, if you ask me,” Duncan said. “You ain’t heard the worst of it, though.”
Tolliver groaned. “It gets worse?”
“It does, for a fact. While I was watching, Wedge and some of
his men brought in some prisoners. I had my field glasses, and I got a good enough look to recognize them. Three of ’em were ranchers who were at the meeting last night: Finn, Andrews, and Gruber. I guess they got rounded up after we busted out of the barn.”
“Who was the fourth man?” Frank asked.
Duncan looked at him and said, “That young cowpuncher named Hardy. The one who was carrying the letter to the governor.”
Frank’s jaw tightened. “They must have been holding him prisoner for a couple of days. No way of knowing if they caught him while he was on his way back from Laredo . . . or if he never got there.”
In a hushed voice, one of the men asked, “You mean there may not be any help comin’ from Austin?”
“There’s no way of knowing whether there will be or not.” Frank looked around at the group, now about two dozen strong. “We may be all that’s left to fight Wedge and Estancia.”
“A handful of men, and some of them shot up,” Tolliver muttered. “Not very good odds.”
Frank turned back to Walt Duncan. “What did they do with the prisoners?”
“Remember I said you hadn’t heard the worst yet? The bastards hung them.”
“What?” Doc Ervin exploded, his head jerking up from his examination of Duncan’s wounded leg.
“They strung those poor boys up,” Duncan said. “They didn’t go to the time or trouble to build a gallows, just threw some ropes over the second-floor railing on the false front of the Border Palace and hauled ‘em up in the air.” Duncan’s voice trembled a little as he went on. “Took ’em a long time to die that way, choking and kicking. And then Wedge left their bodies hanging there, I guess as a warning to everybody else in town that they’d better cooperate with him.”
Thinking about Roanne Williamson and the Tolliver women, Frank asked, “Did you see them bothering any of the townspeople?”
Duncan shook his head. “No, like I said, everybody is staying off the streets. Maybe Wedge ordered ’em to, I don’t know. All I know is that he’s got San Rosa locked down tighter’n a drum.”
Frank wasn’t the only one concerned, of course. Doc Ervin was worried about his wife and son, and the other men from San Rosa who had survived the attack at the Rocking T also had families in the settlement. One of the townsmen said, “We’ve got to get in there and run Wedge out!”
Walt Duncan shook his head solemnly. “I hear you, Luther, but I don’t hardly see how we can do it. Wedge has at least thirty men guarding the town, and if we ride in shooting, some of our loved ones are bound to get hurt.”
“Marshal Duncan is right,” Frank said. “When it comes to a fight, we’ll have to figure out some way of drawing the Rangers and the Rurales out of San Rosa so that things can be settled away from innocent folks.”
“I wish you’d quit callin’ those sons o’bitches Rangers,” Tolliver groused. “They don’t deserve the name anymore.”
Frank nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Cecil. They’re outlaws, and we all know it.”
Doc said, “All right, we’ve heard the news from San Rosa, bad as it is.” He looked at Duncan. “That was all of it, wasn’t it, Walt?”
“Yeah, I reckon.”
“Everybody move on and let me get these bullet holes patched up,” Doc ordered.
The men spread out across the coulee floor again. Frank gathered with Tolliver, Ben, Nick, and Darrell near one of the walls of the coulee. “I’ve been thinking about what happened to Hardy,” he said.
“I know it,” Tolliver grated. “Hangin’s too good for Wedge and his bunch after what they did to our boys.”
Frank shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. We can’t assume that Hardy got through to Laredo and sent that letter. It’s entirely possible that no one outside of this area knows what’s really going on in these parts.”
“What are you gettin’ at, Frank?”
“I think I need to see if I can get out and send word to Austin.”
“You mean you’re gonna run?” Darrell said.
Frank frowned, but Tolliver burst out, “Damn it, boy, you know better’n that! Frank Morgan is no coward. Hell, he’d be takin’ a big chance just tryin’ to get past Wedge’s men. That son of a bitch has probably got patrols out all over.”
“Yes, but they’re bound to be spread pretty thin,” Frank said. “I’ve got a fast horse, and I think I’d have a chance.”
“There’s a telegraph office in Laredo,” Nick pointed out.
Frank nodded. “Yes, if I send wires to the governor and to some other influential men I know, I think I can stir up enough of a hornet’s nest to get either the army or some real Rangers down here.”
“It’d have to be pretty quicklike to do us any good,” Tolliver pointed out.
“I know. That’s why I’m leaving tonight. If I can make it through and back, where will I find you?”
Tolliver scratched his beard and frowned in thought. “There’s a place north of here called Sand Mountain. More of a big hill, really. But there are some springs at the foot of it, and a little canyon where we can fort up if we need to. I reckon we’ll move up there tonight, when it’s dark and Wedge’s patrols won’t be able to spot us as easily.”
“Sounds good,” Frank said with a nod. “I reckon I can find the place.”
“You mean to say that if you make it to Laredo, you’re gonna come back?” Darrell asked.
“That’s right,” Frank said quietly.
The young man with the broken arm looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier, Mr. Morgan. I should have known better.”
Tolliver snorted and said, “You damn sure should have.”
“Don’t worry, Darrell,” Frank said with a smile. “No offense taken.”
“When are you leaving?” Ben asked.
“As soon as it’s good and dark, before the moon rises. Stormy’s had all afternoon to rest, so he ought to be ready to go.”
“Good luck to you, Frank,” Tolliver said as he held out a hand. Frank clasped it, and the rancher added, “Could be the fate of each and every one of us will be ridin’with you.”
Frank didn’t need Tolliver to tell him that. He already knew it.
35
Once he had made up his mind what he was going to do, the time for action couldn’t come soon enough to suit Frank Morgan. Impatience grew inside him as he waited for the sun to go down and darkness to settle over the plains. He told himself he was too old to be feeling like that, but he knew it really didn’t matter.
He gnawed on some jerky. That was all anybody had to eat. If the men had to stay out here for very long, they would have to hunt for food. There were deer in the area, along with prairie chickens and wild boars. But they didn’t have any ammunition to waste, either, so anybody who went hunting would have to be very efficient with their bullets.
The sun dipped below the horizon and the sky deepened in color from blue to purple to black. Stars glittered from horizon to horizon, but the moon was still down. Frank shook hands all around and then swung up into the saddle, ready to ride.
He headed east, using the stars to guide him. He planned to follow an easterly course for most of the night and then cut due south for Laredo.
As he rode, thoughts of Roanne Williamson went through his mind. He recalled that Nathan Wedge had seemed interested in Roanne. Now that Wedge was running San Rosa like his own little kingdom, would he decide to force himself on Roanne? That possibility made Frank’s jaw tighten with anger, and his hand on the reins clenched into a fist. It would have felt mighty good, he thought, to smash that fist right into the middle of Wedge’s face.
Roanne was smart, Frank told himself She would figure out a way to keep Wedge at bay without infuriating him to the point that he lost control. But Frank’s instincts told him that Roanne would only be able to dodge trouble for so long, and then Wedge would take what he wanted.
With any luck the showdown would come before that time. Frank was going to do everything in his powe
r to see that it did.
He kept Stormy moving at a fast, steady pace, stopping only to let the Appaloosa drink from a puddle in a mostly dry streambed. Frank estimated that he had covered more than ten miles by the time the moon began to rise. It was orange, what folks up in Parker County had called a harvest moon when he was a kid. The night air now had enough of a chill to it that Frank was glad for the denim jacket he was wearing.
The moon was pretty, but it also represented an added risk. Frank thought he was far enough away from San Rosa that he was beyond the range of any patrols Wedge might have sent out. But he couldn’t know that for sure, and as the moon rose higher and the orb faded to a paler shade of orange, he suddenly caught sight of some dust in the air, revealed by the moon glow. Frank reined in to study it.
He figured at least half-a-dozen riders would be necessary to kick up that much dust. Tonight, the chances were good that meant an outlaw patrol. Frank turned Stormy and looked to the south. That way appeared clear. He hadn’t intended to turn south just yet, but the enemy was right in front of him and he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
Frank kept casting glances over his left shoulder at the dust as he rode toward the Rio Grande. He didn’t think Stormy’s hooves were kicking up enough dust so that the patrol would spot it, even in the bright moonlight, but there was always a chance they would notice. If the outlaws swung toward him, he would have to make a run for it. If need be, he could try crossing the river and working his way toward Laredo on the Mexican side of the border.
Suddenly, so close at hand that it was shocking, somebody yelled, “Madre de Dios!” Frank jerked back on the Appaloosa’s reins as dark figures seemingly began to rise up out of the ground itself right in front of him, like dead souls leaving their graves.
These hombres weren’t dead, though, just mad and well armed. Muzzle flashes split the darkness as somebody yelled commands in Spanish.
Rurales!
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