The adobe walls wouldn't burn very well, but the roof and everything inside the place would.
Including Jeff Hawley.
Braddock pushed himself up and looked at the inferno. Even if Hawley hadn't been crippled, he never would have made it out of there alive. He was bound to be dead by now...and he had taken his knowledge of Tull Coleman's whereabouts with him.
That realization put a bitter taste in Braddock's mouth. He climbed wearily to his feet and looked around for his hat and the girl. He spotted them both but picked up his hat first, slapping it against his thigh to get some of the dust off of it before he put it back on.
Then he took hold of the girl's bare arm and lifted her. "Looks like you won't be running this road ranch after all," he muttered. "Time that fire quits burning, there won't be much left."
She spat words at him, but they weren't in Spanish or English like he would have expected. They were German, he realized, the same as what the Dutchman had been shouting at him. She must have picked them up from the fat man while she was working for him.
When her fury finally ran out of steam, she demanded, "What will I do now?"
"Tell me where I can find Tull Coleman," Braddock said.
"Do you never think of anything else?"
"Not much," Braddock admitted.
They stood there glaring at each other while the building continued to burn. At last the girl said, "I will tell you what I know, but you must do something for me first."
"What's that?" Braddock asked warily.
"Take me back to the village where I came from. It's just across the border in Mexico, about forty miles south of here."
Braddock frowned. "I don't have time to—"
"There was a man who came to see Señor Jeff every week or ten days. A man lean like you, with reddish hair and a little beard, who was always smiling with his mouth but his eyes were cold like those of a snake."
That was Coleman, Braddock thought. There was no doubt of it in his mind.
"I will tell you which way he came from," the girl went on. "I will tell you everything I heard them talking about...but only after you have taken me back to my home."
"Are you sure you'll be welcome there?" Braddock asked. He knew it was a cruel question and didn't care.
"You mean because I was a whore for the gringos?" She shrugged, and that caused her blouse to slide down on one shoulder. "It doesn't matter. I have nowhere else to go...because of you."
"Hawley's the one who set the place on fire." Braddock grunted. "That Dutchman must have had a hell of a lot of whiskey stored in there."
The girl put her hands on her hips. "Do you want my help or not?"
"How do I know I can trust you?"
"If you take me back to my village, I will have nothing to gain by lying to you."
Braddock supposed that was true enough. What she was suggesting would take only a few days, and he had the time to spare. He had almost nothing but time.
And his duty.
"All right," he said. "We'll go to Mexico. But there's something you have to tell me first."
She frowned warily at him and asked, "What is that?"
"What the hell is your name?"
She looked a little surprised by the question, but she said, "Rosaria. And I know your name. You are Braddock." She paused. "Braddock the bastard."
Without intending to, he found himself smiling.
"As good a name as any, I suppose," he said.
Chapter 10
Rosaria didn't own anything except the clothes she was wearing, and all of Braddock's supplies were in his saddlebags or tied on behind his saddle, so they didn't really need the third horse as a pack animal. Braddock brought it along anyway, leading it with a piece of rope he'd found in the shed. There was tack in there, too, so Rosaria didn't have to ride bareback. She'd straddled the saddle without hesitation, pulling her long skirt up to mid-thigh to free her legs.
They rode side by side in silence starting out, but the quiet seemed to get on Rosaria's nerves. After a while she said, "Hawley told me the man who shot him was no longer a Ranger. He said he and his friend tried to use your own law against you."
"Well, it's pretty clear that didn't work, isn't it?" Braddock said. He was still upset that he hadn't been able to force any information out of Hawley before the outlaw died, so he wasn't in much of a mood for small talk.
Rosaria persisted. "How did you get the Rangers to take you back?"
"That's my business," Braddock said. He couldn't explain things to this whore. She'd never understand that it didn't really matter what the State of Texas said. He'd never had anything else in his life except being a Ranger, not really, and nothing could change that. The star-in-a-circle badge belonged on his chest. If he put it away, if he gave up the only thing that had ever meant anything to him, it would be the same as admitting that his old man was right.
After a few minutes, she said, "Nobody ever tried to stop me from being a whore. All the men in my village seemed to think that was what I should be, from the time I was twelve years old."
Braddock just grunted. He wasn't interested in hearing her life story, any more than he was in sharing his with her.
"My father is a farmer. All the men in my village are farmers. And they are all poor. I have many brothers and sisters, so my father told me since I was the oldest I should do whatever I could to help feed them. I did, but after a while I grew tired of it so I ran away."
"And wound up doing the same thing for the Dutchman," Braddock said, then grimaced because he hadn't meant to encourage her to continue, and he knew she would take his comment that way.
"Sí, only it was even worse. Augustus was a cruel man."
"That was his name?" She wasn't going to shut up, Braddock decided, so he might as well talk to her.
"Augustus Vanderslagen. A terrible name, and a terrible man. Do you know why he tried to shoot you?"
"I figured he was trying to help Hawley."
Rosaria shook her head. "No. It was because you woke him up. He always flew into a rage whenever anything disturbed his sleep, especially if he'd been drinking the night before. Once he chased me all around the place with a meat cleaver because I dropped some empty bottles and woke him. He would have killed me if I hadn't been fast enough to stay out of his reach."
Braddock had to laugh in spite of himself. "I'm glad I shot him, then. I was feeling a little bad about it."
"Were you? Really?"
"Well, no, not much," Braddock admitted. "Once he took a shot at me, I didn't care why. That made him fair game as far as the law's concerned." He paused, then asked, "Why did you stay there, if he treated you so bad?"
Rosaria shrugged, which made her blouse slip again. "Where else could I go where I would be sure of better treatment? Besides, Augustus wasn't always like that, just most of the time. Every now and then he could be nice. It wasn't like I had a lot of choices."
"Most of us don't," Braddock said. "Fate drives us on, wherever it wants us to go."
* * *
It was mostly flat, open country covered with scrub brush south of Dutchman's Folly all the way to the border, with only occasional ridges and knobs to break the monotony. Late that afternoon Braddock found a place to camp up against the base of one of those ridges. There was no water nearby, but he had a full canteen and most of another one. They would just have to be careful with their water.
Before darkness settled down, he built a small fire to boil some coffee and fry some bacon, then put out the flames. As far as he knew, no one was looking for them, but such caution had become an ingrained habit with him. When you were spending the night out in the open, there was no point in announcing where you were.
As they ate their meager supper, Rosaria sighed and said, "I suppose I will have to sleep on the ground tonight."
"I have an extra blanket you can use," Braddock said.
"Or I could share your blankets," she suggested.
He sipped coffee from the tin cup in hi
s hand, then said, "I don't reckon that'd be a good idea."
"Why? Because I'm a common whore? Because you're too good for me?"
"Because I'm not totally convinced you wouldn't try to get my knife and cut my throat while I'm asleep."
She looked at him expressionlessly for a moment, then laughed. "The big, strong Texas Ranger is afraid of a little Mexican girl."
"I just believe in being careful, that's all."
"You're taking me home. Why would I kill you?"
"I figure you know where you're going," Braddock said. "You don't really need my help to get there. If you rode into that village of yours with three horses and all my gear, I reckon that'd make you one of the richest people there."
She laughed again and said, "You are right about that, señor."
"So just to be sure, I'm going to keep my distance from you. No offense."
"No offense," she agreed with a smile. "You are the one who is missing an opportunity, not me."
"Won't be the first one," Braddock said as he looked down into his coffee cup.
* * *
"With some hard work, you could really make something out of your father's spread," Laura McElhaney said as she rested her head on George's shoulder. They were sitting on a bench on her pa's front porch, with silvery moonlight washing over the yard in front of them.
"I don't think I'm cut out to be a rancher," George said. "Pa wasn't, either. It was just a place for Ma and me to stay while he was off Rangering."
"That doesn't mean it has to stay that way," Laura said. "I...I could help you. If...if you had a good woman with you...a wife...Oh, George, I know I'm being mighty forward, but I don't want to see you throw your life away."
George stiffened. "Like my pa threw his life away being a Ranger?"
"That's not what I meant—"
"Good Lord, I only put him in the ground three days ago, and you're already telling me to forget everything about him. Forget what he was and what he wanted me to be."
Laura straightened and turned to look intently at him. "That's not what I meant and you know it, George Washington Braddock. But be honest. He bullied you into deciding to join the Rangers, and everybody around here knows it."
George stood up and stepped over to the porch railing. "I don't want to hear this."
Laura moved beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. "All I'm saying is your father is gone, rest his soul, and you don't have to follow the trail he laid out for you. You can make up your own mind what to do, George."
"I already have." He drew in a deep breath. "I'm riding up to Austin tomorrow to sign my papers with the Rangers."
"You don't have to do that. You can stay here and work the ranch. And if you were to ask me to work it with you, as your wife, I'd say yes."
He'd been courting her, off and on, for two years, and tonight was the boldest he'd ever seen her. She moved against him, slid one arm around his waist and the other around the back of his neck. He felt her body pressed intimately to his and couldn't help but react.
"You know it's what we both want," she whispered.
What she was saying might be true, George thought, but it didn't really matter. His course had been set for him long before. He had grown up seeing the fear and loneliness in his mother's eyes every time his father rode away, and he had sworn to himself that he would never inflict that pain on any woman. His own happiness didn't mean a damned thing when it was stacked up against bringing law and order to the Lone Star State.
He put his hands on Laura's shoulders and moved her away from him. "I'm sorry," he said as he turned toward the porch steps. "I just came by tonight to say goodbye."
"George, you can't just throw away—"
"Goodbye, Laura," he said.
He walked away and didn't look back, even though he heard her sobbing behind him. The easiest thing in the world would have been to turn around and run back to her.
But Rangers didn't do things the easy way.
They did things the right way.
* * *
Braddock gave Rosaria the extra blanket and told her to bed down on the other side of the dead campfire. While she was doing that he checked the horses one last time, then sat down with his back against a rock and the Winchester close beside him on the ground.
"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked from where she lay curled up in the blanket.
"Maybe later," Braddock said. "I thought I'd stay awake for a while."
"Why? There are no hostile Indians out here, and the odds of any bandits running across us are small."
"I just like to be careful, that's all."
"A man can be careful all his life and still have trouble come at him when he least expects it."
Braddock thought about what had happened in San Antonio when he brought in Tull Coleman and Jeff Hawley. There was no way he could have anticipated the news about the Rangers being disbanded or predicted the effects that development would have. So Rosaria might be right, he mused, but he still couldn't change what he was.
"Just go to sleep and don't worry about me," he told her.
"I don't worry about you," she said. She yawned sleepily. "I don't give a damn about you, Ranger."
Good, he thought. That was just the way he wanted it.
Chapter 11
San Antonio
Ranger headquarters was mighty quiet these days. The organization had been cut down to four "companies", if you could call them that, of six men each—three officers and three privates. Captain Hughes was still in command of Company D. His clerk had always been one of the Rangers in the company, but now the man was a civilian employee.
The clerk brought in a piece of paper and placed it on Hughes' desk. "Got a letter here for you, Cap'n, from the sheriff of Crockett County over in Ozona."
"He's not complaining because I haven't been able to give him any help tracking down those stagecoach robbers, I hope," Hughes said as he put aside the report he'd been reading and picked up the letter instead.
"Ah...no, sir. He's complainin' because the man you sent roughed up one of his citizens and threatened some more of 'em."
"What?" Hughes frowned. "I didn't send a Ranger to Ozona."
The clerk gestured toward the letter and said, "Not accordin' to that."
Hughes glared through his spectacles and his frown deepened as he read. His fingers clenched involuntarily on the paper, making it crackle.
"Braddock!" he said. "G.W. Braddock's going around telling people he's still a Texas Ranger?"
"Showin' folks the badge and everything, accordin' to the sheriff in Ozona," the clerk said.
Hughes slapped the letter down on the desk and came to his feet. "We can't allow this," he said. "He's not only pretending to be a Ranger, that says he pistol-whipped an innocent man! Braddock must have lost his mind."
"Sounds plumb loco, all right," the clerk agreed.
"He has to be stopped. He'll have to be brought in so he can't keep doing this." Hughes sighed. "The fool. The blasted young fool. I was afraid this would happen. Doesn't he realize that by adopting this...this masquerade, he's put himself on the wrong side of the law?"
"He's tryin' to hunt down Tull Coleman and his bunch, Cap'n. You said yourself when you heard about that stagecoach robbery and all the killin' that went with it, that it sounded like Coleman's dirty work."
"And I don't doubt for a second that it was, but Braddock has no legal authority to go after them. By doing so, especially the way he's doing it..." Hughes paused and shook his head. "I hate to say it, but G.W. Braddock has made himself an outlaw."
* * *
The man called Wiley was with Coleman as they approached Dutchman's Folly. Everything looked normal from a distance, but as they came closer Coleman noticed that some of the walls had a blackened look to them. A couple of poles had been knocked down in the corral, and the enclosure was empty.
Coleman reined in and said, "Something's wrong."
Wiley brought his horse to a stop as well and asked,
"What do you mean, boss?"
"It looks like there's been a fire inside the building. Let me get my spyglass out..."
Coleman took a brass telescope from his saddlebags and pulled it out to its full length. He had taken the instrument from the body of an army officer he had killed several years earlier. The two of them had gotten into a disagreement over a whore at a saloon in Sweetwater. Coleman had had to back down because the son of a bitch had some friends with him, but he'd bided his time and a couple of nights later had caught the man in an alley and put a Bowie knife in his back.
Now Coleman squinted through the glass for a moment and said, "Yeah, the roof's burned and fallen in, looks like. I don't see anything moving around the place."
"What do you think happened to Hawley?"
"I intend to find out." Coleman closed the telescope with a snap and stowed it away, then pulled his Winchester from its saddle boot and nudged his horse into motion again.
Both outlaws had their rifles out and were ready for trouble as they rode up to the building. A couple of black-winged buzzards rose from inside the walls, flying up through where the roof had been, and started flapping lazily away.
"Filthy scavengers," Coleman snarled. He brought the Winchester to his shoulder and fired. Feathers flew and one of the buzzards dropped like a stone. The other bird tried to wheel away, but Coleman worked the rifle's lever, shifted his aim, and downed it, too. The shots were loud in the silence that hung over the deserted and destroyed road ranch.
"I don't much like this, Tull," Wiley said nervously.
"Stay out here, then, if you want to," Coleman said. He swung a leg over his saddle and slid to the ground, landing gracefully with his rifle still ready for instant use. As he strode toward where the door had been, he said without looking around, "I'm going to see if I can figure out what happened here."
Tumbled heaps of ashes were everywhere inside the building. The fire must have been fierce while it was burning, but everything was cold now. Coleman figured the place must have burned days earlier. The smell still hung in the air, but that would take a long time to go away.
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