OUTLAW RANGER
James Reasoner
Outlaw Ranger by James Reasoner
Copyright© 2014 James Reasoner
Cover Design Livia Reasoner
Rough Edges Press
www.roughedgespress.com
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
South Texas, 1900
Demons roamed the chapparal.
Not the sort that came from Hell, of course, although some might say this South Texas brush country bore a distinct resemblance to Hades, especially in the summer. It was hot as hell today, G.W. Braddock thought as he knelt with a Winchester in his hands and listened intently. He was a lean, sandy-haired man with a thick mustache of the same shade. A cloudless, brassy blue sky arched above him.
Somewhere out there in that brasada were Tull Coleman and his gang. Braddock had trailed them north from Corpus Christi where they had held up a bank and gunned down a young teller foolish enough to try to tackle one of Coleman's men. Then, as if for good measure, they had ridden down a young woman during their getaway, trampling and breaking her under their horses' hooves, leaving behind a grief-stricken husband and an 18-month-old daughter without a mama.
Braddock wished he could kill every one of the sons of bitches.
That wasn't his job, though. The star-in-a-circle Texas Ranger badge pinned to his faded blue shirt meant he just took them in. It was the responsibility of a judge and jury to mete out justice.
Of course, if he had to put bullets through a few of them in the process of making that arrest, it wasn't going to break his heart. There was also a little matter of self-defense. They wanted to kill him as much as he wanted to kill them—they had already shot his horse out from under him—and he had a right to try to stop them.
So come on, Tull, he thought. Where the hell are you?
A faint crackling sound drifted through the hot, still air. Something was moving in the brush to Braddock's right. It might be a javelina, he told himself...or it might be an owlhoot bent on shooting a Texas Ranger. Slowly, Braddock swiveled toward the sound and lifted the Winchester. His finger curled around the trigger.
One of the wild pigs that roamed this area burst out of the chapparal and lunged at Braddock, squealing. He didn't want to shoot and give away his position unless he had to, so he flung himself aside. The javelina rammed his left shoulder and he felt the animal's tusks tear through his shirt and scrape his hide. He was already a little off-balance, and the impact of the collision knocked him to the ground.
Several men charged out of the brush and whooped with excitement. One of them, a chunky hombre with a square head and black beard, kicked the Winchester out of Braddock's hands. Another tried to stomp his chest and cave in his ribs. Braddock caught hold of the man's boot just in time to save himself from that. He heaved on the outlaw's leg and toppled him over backward.
The fallen man got tangled up with the other two and that gave Braddock time to roll away from them and get up on his knees. He reached for the Colt on his hip, experiencing as he did so a split-second's worry that the gun might have fallen out of its holster while he was thrashing around on the ground.
Then his hand closed around the walnut grips and he felt the immense comfort of knowing that he was still armed. He pulled the Colt and shot the big, black-bearded man in the chest. The man rocked back a step as his eyes widened in surprise and then bugged out even more in pain. He felt of his chest where blood was welling out of the bullet hole as if to convince himself that he really was wounded.
Then he pitched forward on his face.
Before the bearded man hit the ground, Braddock had shifted the Colt and fired again, this time at a man with a fox-like face under a straw Stetson with a tightly curled brim that drooped down in front. Braddock's bullet struck him in his weak chin and angled up through his brain before blowing out the back of his skull. He dropped straight down, already dead.
That left the man who had tried to stomp Braddock. He scrambled onto hands and knees and then lunged to his feet and turned his back on the Ranger as he tried to flee. Clearly, all the fight had gone out of him now that his two companions were dead.
Braddock aimed this time instead of letting luck and instinct guide his shot. The third outlaw stumbled in his flight as Braddock's slug struck him in the small of his back and broke his spine. He tumbled to the ground and lay there screaming until he passed out about ten seconds later.
Braddock sat there breathing a little hard as he looked at the bodies scattered around him. He knew good fortune had been with him. Most men didn't survive three-to-one odds.
Unfortunately, there was a good chance three more outlaws still lurked out there in the thick brush...and one of them was Tull Coleman.
With the efficiency born of long practice, Braddock broke open the Colt and shook out the three empties, then thumbed fresh cartridges into the cylinder. He snapped it closed and pouched the iron. On hands and knees he crawled over to where his Winchester had landed. He picked it up and made sure the sandy ground hadn't fouled the barrel.
Fully armed again, Braddock resumed sitting and waiting. His pulse had slowed down a little now. A few minutes earlier, in the aftermath of the fight, it had been pounding fit to beat the band.
Every instinct in his body told him that Tull Coleman had been close enough to hear the three shots, followed briefly by the wounded man's screams. Coleman would be too curious to just let that go. He would have to come see what had happened.
The man with the bullet in his back groaned as he regained consciousness. When he fell, he had landed facing away from Braddock. Now he said, "Ranger...Ranger, are you there? I can't see you."
Braddock didn't reply. He didn't have anything to say to the outlaw right now.
"Ranger, I...I'm hurt mighty bad. I think my back's broke. I need help. You got to get me to a doctor."
That poor woman down in Corpus Christi had had her back broken, too, along with plenty of other bones, when Coleman's gang stampeded over her. They could have swerved around her, but according to the witnesses Braddock had talked to, it had looked like Tull Coleman, who was in the lead, had ridden toward her on purpose. It was hard to believe that anybody could be that lowdown.
Braddock could believe it of Coleman, though. The outlaw had a reputation for violence and brutality, as did those who rode with him.
"Ranger? Ranger?...Oh, Lord, he shot me down and left me here to die. That star-packin' bastard." The wounded outlaw sobbed a couple of times, then raised his voice and called, "Tull! Tull, he ain't here no more! He shot me in the back and run off! I need help, Tull. I'm hurt bad."
The brasada was quiet. Even the little animals were silent, gone to ground because of the shots. The javelina that had knocked Braddock on his butt was long gone. The tusker hadn't even slowed down. Braddock was convinced that the three outlaws had spooked the animal and sent it charging through the brush in an attempt to flush him out.
That idea had backfired on them.
"Tull? I...I think Franklin and Tillotson are both dead. That damn Ranger bushwhacked us! We never had a chance."
Well, that was one way of explaining how come he'd been shot in the back, Braddock thought with a faint smile.
"Please..." The man's voice was weakening. He'd lost a considerable amount of blood and might well be on the verge of passing out. "Tull..."
Somebody or something moved in the brush.
The noises came closer. Braddock took advantage of them and retreated farther into the chapparal. The crackling covered any sounds his own movements caused. He stopped when there was a nice screen of mesquite branches between him and the wounded man.
A figure stepped out of the brush and bent over the fallen outlaw. He was short and stocky, a Mexican with his sombrero hanging behind his neck by its chin strap. Not Tull Coleman. Raul Gomez, Braddock decided. Gomez was on record as being one of Coleman's bunch.
"Jeff, you gone and got yourself killed," Gomez said.
"No, no, I'll be all right," the wounded man babbled. "I...I just need a sawbones."
"I don't think so. I seen men shot like that before. Even if you don't die, you won't never walk again, amigo. Better to go ahead and put you out of your misery right here and now."
Gomez shucked his Colt from leather and pointed it at the back of Jeff's head, clearly intending to blow his fellow outlaw's brains out. Braddock knew he ought to let Gomez go ahead and pull the trigger, but instead he stepped out of the brush, leveled his rifle, and said, "Hold it, Gomez."
The Mexican was turned half away from him. Gomez tried to twist around and bring up the revolver. Braddock squeezed the Winchester's trigger and sent a .44-40 round ripping through Gomez's lungs. The outlaw's Colt boomed as his finger contracted on the trigger, but the bullet tore harmlessly through the brush. The shot spun Gomez off his feet. He lay on the ground struggling to drag rasping, bubbling breaths into his body as he drowned in his own blood.
With a crash of brush, another man appeared to Braddock's left. He had a gun in each hand and fired both of them as fast as he could thumb the hammers back. He sprayed a lot of lead around, but rushing his shots like that, he failed to hit the Ranger with any of them. Braddock loosed another round from the Winchester, levered the rifle, fired again. Both shots punched into the outlaw's chest at close range. They lifted him off his feet and threw him backward.
With his ears ringing from all those shots, Braddock couldn't hear much of anything. So it wasn't a noise that warned him but rather instinct. He sensed someone coming at him from behind and tried to turn.
That movement was enough to cause the knife to merely rip a gash along his left collarbone instead of plunging into his back and skewering his heart. It still hurt like blazes and the pain drew a yell from Braddock's throat. He struck upward with the rifle butt and dug it under Tull Coleman's jaw. Coleman grunted but continued bulling against Braddock. The Ranger couldn't stay on his feet. Both men went down.
Coleman was wiry and fought like a wildcat. He slashed at Braddock with the Bowie knife in his hand. According to the reports the Rangers had, the heavy blade was Coleman's favorite weapon and he was good with it. Braddock had all he could do to block the knife with the Winchester's barrel, steel ringing against steel as he did so. The rifle's length made it awkward to handle in these close quarters, though, and Braddock knew it was only a matter of time before Coleman slipped past his guard and buried the Bowie in his guts.
Braddock let go of the Winchester with his right hand and shot that fist forward in a short but powerful blow that landed squarely on Coleman's nose. He felt cartilage crunch and flatten under the impact. Blood squirted hotly across his knuckles. Coleman's head rocked back from the force of the punch, and Braddock hit him again before he could recover.
While Coleman was half-stunned, Braddock cracked the rifle barrel against his wrist. That made Coleman drop the knife. Braddock lifted the Winchester and brought the butt down into Coleman's face, doing even more damage to the outlaw's bloody, battered features. Coleman went limp. He was either unconscious or dead, and at the moment Braddock didn't give a damn which.
Braddock planted the rifle butt against the ground and used it to help lever himself to his feet. With his chest heaving from all the exertion, he looked around at the six outlaws. Four of them were dead, he was pretty sure of that. Jeff was still alive. Braddock could hear his strained breathing. Coleman's chest rose and fell raggedly, so he was alive, too.
This had been a hell of a fight, Braddock thought. Six against one, and he was still alive and relatively unharmed. The gash on his back from Coleman's Bowie burned like fire, but Braddock didn't figure it was serious. If he was the sort to brag or be full of himself, he would say this was a legendary battle, the kind of fracas that folks would talk about for a long time to come.
But he didn't care about anything like that, only about bringing these killers and thieves to justice. That was his job, and he did it as well as he could.
However, he did allow himself one moment as he was reloading the Winchester to smile grimly to himself and say in a quiet voice, "How about that, Pa? That good enough for you?"
Chapter 2
Two days later, Braddock drove a wagon into San Antonio. He had commandeered it from a farm at the edge of the chapparal with a promise that it would be returned. Jeff Hawley, the outlaw he'd shot in the back, was still alive somehow and lay face down on a pallet of blankets in the wagon bed. Braddock had patched him up as best he could. Hawley was in and out of consciousness, incoherent much of the time when he was awake and cursing bitterly the rest of the time.
Tull Coleman was in the wagon bed, too, wearing shackles and leg irons. He didn't waste his breath cussing. Anyway, his jaw was still swollen from Braddock clouting him with the rifle butt, so it probably hurt to talk.
Braddock had left the bodies of the four dead outlaws with the marshal in the nearest town. The lawman had promised he would see to it that the men were buried, although the State of Texas would have to foot the bill, he'd warned. Couldn't ask the local undertaker to work for free. Braddock had agreed to that, although he didn't know if the request would be honored. All he knew was that he wanted the corpses off his hands. They would have stunk to high heaven if he'd had to take them all the way to San Antonio.
Braddock brought the team to a halt in front of the adobe building in Military Plaza that housed the headquarters of Company D. A couple of Rangers lounged near the entrance, puffing on quirlies and joshing with each other. They straightened and looked with interest into the back of the wagon.
"What you got there, Junior?" one of them asked.
Braddock's jaw tightened. He hated to be called Junior. Hadn't liked it when he was a kid, didn't like it even more now. But there was no denying that a lot of his fellow Rangers thought of him that way. It was unavoidable when he had the same name as his father.
The elder Braddock had been a sergeant in the Frontier Battalion under Major John B. Jones, the battalion's first commander. Sergeant George Washington Braddock Sr. had made a fine name for himself twenty-five years earlier, fighting outlaws and hostile Indians from San Antonio to El Paso. That was quite a legacy to live up to.
"Good Lord," the second Ranger exclaimed. "That's Tull Coleman, big as life."
"And twice as ugly," the first Ranger agreed. He let out a whistle of admiration. "Looks like you did a good job, Braddock. Lawmen have been lookin' for this varmint all over South Texas."
Braddock set the brake and climbed down from the wagon seat. His movements were stiff and awkward because his back still hurt where Coleman had cut him. He had started to wonder if the wound had festered.
"Captain Hughes inside?" he asked. When the two Rangers nodded, he went on, "Reckon you could see to locking up these boys? You'll have to take the wounded one over to Doc Sullivan's house and put a guard over him."
"Sure," one of the men said. "Say, Junior, have you heard the news?"
"News?" Braddock frowned. "What news?"
The other man nudged his companion and shook his head.
"You just go on in and report to the captain, Braddock. If he wants to tell you anything, he will."
Braddock didn't like the sound of that. Something was wrong, and he figured the quickest way to find out what it was would be to go inside and talk to the captain. He pointed to Coleman and told the other Rangers, "Keep a close eye on him. He's a t
ricky son of a bitch."
Braddock's boot heels rang on the polished wooden floor as a clerk showed him to Captain Hughes' office. Normally, the thick adobe walls meant it was cooler inside the headquarters building than out, but that didn't seem to be the case today. The air was hot and stifling, and Braddock had trouble getting his breath.
Captain John R. Hughes was built solid as a rock. His face was broad and sported a neat mustache. His brown hair was parted in the middle. When Braddock came in, Hughes stood up and reached across the desk to shake his hand.
"Private Braddock," Hughes said. "I got a telegram informing me that you were bringing in Tull Coleman and one member of his gang."
Hughes didn't ask him to sit, so Braddock remained standing. He nodded and said, "That's right, Captain. The other fella is Jeff Hawley. He's wounded, but he seems bound and determined not to die. Stubborn critter."
"What about the others who robbed that bank in Corpus?"
"They didn't want to come along peacefully," Braddock said, not offering any other explanation.
Hughes nodded slowly. "I see," he said. "That'll all be in your report?"
"Sure," Braddock replied with a shrug. He didn't care for writing reports, but he supposed it was just part of the job.
"That's good. Turn it in to me as soon as you're done." Hughes paused, drew in a deep breath, and went on with obvious reluctance, "I'm sorry to say that'll be your last official act as a Ranger, Private."
Braddock thought the air in here had gotten even hotter, and it made him so uncomfortable that for a moment he didn't comprehend what Hughes had just said. When the captain's meaning finally sunk in on his brain, he stared at Hughes and said, "You're kicking me out of the Rangers? What the hell for?"
Hughes' features tightened. Braddock knew the captain didn't like profanity, and his tone had been disrespectful, to boot. He felt too bad and was too angry to care. Hughes said, "This isn't my idea, Braddock. The Rangers are being disbanded."
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