When he got up to leave, though, he leaned over and whispered in Red’s ear.
“Red, you’re one of the finest people this town has ever seen. I know where you’re at, and I know why. I know your thoughts are lost deep in the way of how it used to be. You’re with Russell and Rusty and reliving the things you once did together.
“Just understand something, sweetheart. They’re in a different place now. A way more permanent place. You’ll be in that place some day, but this is not the time to go there. You enjoy the time you’re spending with them now, and then you come back to us. Bid them farewell and tell them you’ll see them again someday, but not for awhile. Tell them you love them, but that you still have work to do here.
“I knew Russell before you did, sweetheart. I remember how he thought. He’s proud of you for the way you’ve behaved, how you’ve tried to avenge him.
“And he knows you’ve missed him. He knows you want to be where he and Rusty are.
“But listen closely to me, honey. He would not want for you to rush there. He wants you to live a long and rich life before you’re with him again.
“So you enjoy your visit and then return to us. And when you come back to us, you put any foolish thoughts about harming yourself out of your mind.
“We won’t have any of that nonsense. This town loves you too much to lose you.”
He kissed her on the cheek and stood to go.
He’d never swear to it, but he thought he saw the corners of Red’s mouth turn up a bit in just a hint of a smile.
She understood.
-36-
Jesse and Luis Martinez returned to Blanco with two heavy backpacks while the town vigils were ongoing. They were chomping at the bits to talk to John Savage but didn’t dare.
They arrived in the late afternoon, when it was easy to see the hoard of men sitting in lawn chairs and on boardwalk steps directly across the street from the bank.
The brothers were known about town, but not well. For years they’d lived on the outskirts, coming into town on the weekends to shop or to have a beer or two at Blanco’s only bar.
Since the blackout they’d kept mostly to themselves. Some of the town knew they’d done odd jobs for Savage, but they weren’t suspected of any nefarious activity.
They weren’t about to go barging up to the bank’s doors while it was being so closely watched and risk changing that.
Instead, they played dumb to find out what was going on.
“Hey,” Jesse said. “I guess we’ve missed something big. What’s up?”
“Waiting for Savage to come out so we can hang him,” one of Luis’s high school buddies proclaimed.
“Really? How come?”
“Red Poston captured him. Shoulda shot him, in my estimation. But she let him go. Now she’s stuck in her house. Some kinda breakdown, I hear. Most of the women-folk are standing watch over there. Most of the men-folk are over here.”
Luis shook his head and said, “Well, fire a couple of shots when you drag him out to hang him, will ya? We hate him as much as anybody else. We’d like to see him swing too.”
The brothers left the scene and went to the warehouse to consider their options.
“Well, that complicates things just a bit.”
“Damn sure does. How do you want to play it now?”
“I don’t see how we have a lot of options. We can keep what’s in these bags. It’s worth a pretty penny. But I’d rather find out how much more of it’s out there, and see if we can get our hands on all of it.”
“My thinking exactly. So why don’t we hide it here, in the back of the warehouse? It should be safe here. If Savage somehow survives the lynch party we’ll meet up with him. If he doesn’t, we’ll settle for that and open the store ourselves.”
“What do we do in the meantime?”
“Heck, there’s not much else to do. Might as well keep hauling cargo. If it turns out to be our store, we’ll be able to sell it later on. If Savage survives we’ll keep collecting our silver bars until we can get the big payout.
“At least it’ll give us something to do.”
“Yeah. I guess that beats sitting in a lawn chair all day long waiting for somethin’ interesting to happen.”
By the fifth day most of the townsfolk had gotten bored. The women, one or two at a time, visited Red to wish her well and then walked back home to resume their normal lives.
Red had shown some progress by then and was able to converse to most of them, albeit in short sentences and for short periods of time.
She was still in bad shape.
Across from the bank, only a couple of diehard standouts still stood watch on the bank’s doors.
One of them was sleeping soundly on the boardwalk and snoring softly. The other was starting to nod off when Tad Taylor walked up the street.
“Now where in hell are you going, Tad?”
“To the bank.”
“Now why in tarnation do you wanna do that?”
“Because Mrs. Montgomery asked me to get his lunch order.”
“Why? We got the polecat holed up. Sooner or later he’s gotta come out. And when he does we’re gonna have him try on his fancy new necktie.”
He held up a slip-tied noose.
It was made from new rope obtained from, of all places, Butch Poston’s hardware store.
Irony at its best.
“I tried to talk sense into her,” Tad countered. “But you know how hard-headed she is. She said we’ll doom this whole town to hell if we take the law into our own hands.
“She said God won’t like it, and she doesn’t want to feel His wrath just because you guys are a bunch of hotheads.”
“She called us hotheads, did she?”
“Yes, sir.”
It gave the men pause. While they were mulling over the innkeeper’s words Tad walked up the steps to the bank and pounded on the door.
“Mr. Savage, it’s Tad, here to get your food order.”
But there was no answer.
-37-
Inside the bank Savage was a mess.
He hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours since Jacob cut him loose several days before.
He hadn’t bathed either, and had eaten only a couple of items from his pantry of junk food.
He was convinced someone had somehow broken into the bank while he was under Red’s control, tainted his foodstuffs, then left again without leaving any signs they’d been there.
For days he’d gone back and forth between pacing on his office floor and sitting at the desk worrying. Several times he’d relaxed on one of the couches in the bank’s lobby determined to get some much-needed sleep, but only managed to doze off for a few minutes at a time.
Each time he woke up in terror, convinced the men across the street were attacking the place and coming through the windows after him.
Once, he could have sworn he smelled smoke and thought they were trying to burn him out.
He was a miserable wretch of a man, unloved and all alone in the world.
His runaway paranoia made his situation ten times worse.
He’d pulled the heavy curtains to one side and peeked out a thousand times since his ordeal began, each time hoping the men were gone.
And each time cursing because they were still there.
It wouldn’t have bothered him so much if they merely stayed there and watched the bank. He could wait them out, for he was a stubborn old cuss, as hard-headed as any of them.
No, what worried him was the belief that at some point they’d get tired of waiting. That they’d eventually rush the bank and try to drag him out.
Red had taken his .25. The Ranger had confiscated his Ruger as evidence and conveniently forgot to give it back to him after he was released.
Damn them both.
He had a third gun, a .38 revolver. He’d had it for many years, before revolvers were deemed outdated collector’s items. And yes, it only held six bullets. He’d be at a disadvantage during a shoot
out. But it was better than nothing.
The ammunition was the big problem. For while the revolver was fully loaded, he only had half a box of .38 ammo. It was an inexcusable oversight.
He dumped the bullets onto his desk and counted them.
Forty two shots, including the ones in his gun.
It would be enough, provided he made most of the shots count and could reload fairly often and quickly.
Enough to kill off all the aggressors who assaulted the bank.
Blanco was a small town, and he didn’t reckon there were more than a dozen men who’d be brave enough to participate in such an undertaking.
Of course, Savage was at heart a cowardly man. Such a shootout would almost certainly culminate in his own death, so he would avoid it if at all possible. If they brought the fight to him he’d try his best to hold his own. But he wouldn’t go looking for it himself.
Savage was pacing when Tad pounded on the bank’s doors.
He heard Tad’s calls. Even went to peek out the windows and saw him there.
But he didn’t answer.
Tad could no longer be trusted. Tad had been the one who’d let Red sneak up on them before. How in the world could he just come back to the bank and expect Savage to let him in, as though nothing had ever happened?
But then again, Savage was incredibly hungry.
For a few moments Savage debated with himself. Part of him, the paranoid side, tried to convince him Tad was there to trap him. To get him to open the door again so the men across the street could rush him.
Another part of him reminded him his stomach wasn’t constantly growling just to carry on a conversation with him.
He was hungry, and the only thing in the world he loved perhaps as much as money was food.
Tad was just about ready to give up and walk away. To go back and tell Mrs. Montgomery he’d given it his best try, but that Savage was just too afraid to open the door. Just as he turned and started to leave, Tad heard a squeaky voice from inside the bank.
“What do you want, Tad?”
He stopped short.
“Mrs. M wants to know if you want a sandwich.”
There was a short pause.
“Two of them. Ham and cheese. And tomato if she has any. And jalapenos and onions.”
It was the oddest sandwich Tad had ever heard of. But then again, it was pure Savage. The man had the oddest of tastes.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
“Oh, and Tad?”
“Yes?”
“Tell Mrs. M I said thanks.”
Tad was surprised. The gesture was totally out of character for Savage. Tad had heard the man bark orders a thousand times. He’d never heard him say “thank you” not even once.
Or “please” either, for that matter.
Tad padded off and Savage resumed his pacing.
The two men across the street reassessed their even being there.
“If Mrs. Montgomery’s gonna start feeding him again, there ain’t no reason for him to ever come out of there,” said one.
“You reckon we’re just wasting our time here?”
“I reckon. If things are getting back to normal again, I reckon we are.”
“We gotta do somethin’. Wanna go fishin’ instead?”
“Sure. Why not?”
And suddenly Main Street was completely deserted for the first time in almost a week.
-38-
“He said ‘thank you?’ Seriously?”
“Yes ma’am. I swear he did.”
“Well I’ll be darned. Maybe there’s just a tad bit of humanity in that man after all, although I never thought I’d see the day.”
Tad stood in the den of the boarding house as he waited for her to prepare the sandwich order. He watched several of her older guests playing a game of dominoes with Widow Carey. Widow Carey was, at 91, the oldest resident of the town, and some believed the oldest in all of Blanco County.
She was beloved by all. A school teacher by trade, she’d taught reading and writing to Tad’s mother and father. As well as most of the other people in town. She never taught Tad, though. He started grade school the year after she finally retired.
Blanco was a town which took care of its own. When Mr. Carey died several years before the widow swore she was capable of living on her own. But someone from the Baptist church still knocked on her door each and every day to check on her.
The first time they found her fallen they let her convince them she was still fine.
“My goodness,” she insisted. “Everybody is a bit clumsy now and then.”
The second time it happened Mrs. Montgomery stepped in.
“You’re coming to live with me,” she told the old woman. “You taught me much more than math and social studies. You taught me to love thy neighbor. You taught me right from wrong. And it would be wrong to leave you here all by yourself, with no one around to assist you if you fall again and aren’t able to get up or call for help.”
The old woman gave in and made the move, and it turned out she was a great fit at the boarding house.
She was terrible at dominoes, though in her younger years she was quite good.
Despite that she still seemed to win every game. Jacob smiled as he stood behind two players who were willingly passing up point plays so she could keep her lead.
It dawned on Tad that small town life was like that. People took care of their own, and they respected their elders enough to cover for them when their faculties started to diminish.
Small towns stood up for their own in other ways too, like when the whole town turned out in support of Red.
Bullies like Savage often found homes in places like Blanco, where residents sometimes seemed easy marks.
But when the chips were down, the bullies usually got what was coming to them.
Savage would too.
For now, though, he’d have to settle for two sandwiches, ham and cheese, onions and jalapenos.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Montgomery said as she walked into the room and handed Tad a paper bag.
“Tell him we’re out of tomatoes. I’ve got a couple on the vine that’ll be ripe in a few days.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And tell him I said he’s welcome. If he can make an effort at civility I can too.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Tad came across Luke not far down the road.
“Hey, Luke. Where you coming from?”
“Just left Red’s. I’m glad to see the crowds are all gone from there. Now maybe she can get some rest.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s getting a bit better each day. She was able to say hello to me today and gave me a smile. I told her that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in awhile and she blushed. I tell you that girl’s downright beautiful when her cheeks match the color of her hair.”
“I’ve noticed,” Tad said. He blushed just a bit himself.
“That’s right. I forgot you’ve been sweet on her for awhile.”
“Awhile? Try since high school, Luke. Shoot, I was too bashful to ever ask her out and it seemed every other boy in the school had their eye on her too.”
“You gotta go for it boy, when it feels right.”
“I know that now. By the time I got over bein’ bashful she was already in love with Russell.”
“She’ll probably be ready for another husband when she feels the time is right. Red’s too good a woman to spend the rest of her life alone.
“Don’t make the same mistake twice, Tad. A man’s a fool when he don’t learn from his errors. You wait too long that Jacob might just convince her he’s the man for her. He’s sure tryin’ hard.”
“Really? What’s he doing?”
“Today, mostly sitting by her bed and holding her hand for two, three hours a day. And reading to her. He’s up there right now reading Gone with the Wind. She’s hanging on every word. Said she doesn’t remember ever reading it herself. I suspect she does, but Jacob bought
into it and told her he’d read it cover to cover.
“There’s a lesson in that you might oughta learn yourself. Whether you catch Red someday or not, it’ll come in handy.”
“What’s that, Luke?”
“Men seem to think they can win over a woman’s heart by dressing fancy or by driving fancy cars. Or by giving them jewelry and other expensive gifts.
“And I suppose they can win over a certain kind of woman by doing that.
“But any woman who’ll be attracted to those things will be attracted to them again when a different fella comes along with a fancier car or bigger gifts.
“No, to catch a good woman, you have to give her your time.”
“Your time?”
“Exactly. To catch a quality woman like Red you have to give her all your attention. Spend time with her doin’ the little stuff those fancy fellas would never think about. Like reading to her and holding her hand when she’s sick. Taking her on picnics. Lie beneath the stars with her and ask her about her childhood dreams and your future together.
“To catch a good woman like Red you have to make her feel she’s the only one in the world that matters to you.
“Right now that Jacob guy has already figured that out, and he’s a step ahead of you. Don’t lose her a second time because you wait too long to make your play.
“But be mindful at the same time she’s a widow. Don’t push her into another relationship before she’s ready. That’s a mistake Jacob’s making, and it might be something you can capitalize on.”
“Thanks for the advice, Luke. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, my friend. Good luck with that…”
-39-
A few miles north and east of Blanco a solitary figure sat on a bluff overlooking a central Texas valley.
He was fingering an arrowhead made from black shale. A bird point left by the Comanche Indians two hundred years before. It stood the test of time. Had outlived the brave who’d once sent it flying toward its prey, and many generations of his offspring as well.
No Help From Austin: Red: Book 5 Page 12