Coleman jerked back, jolted by the bullets' impact. His gun hand sagged. His Colt blasted again, but the bullet went into the dirt at his feet. His mouth opened, and he rasped, "You...damn...Ranger," before blood welled out over his chin. He pitched forward and landed on his face.
"You got that right," Braddock said.
His strength was finally gone, drained completely from him, and he felt like he might never get it back. The guns still held two bullets each, but he couldn't hang on to them anymore. They slipped from his fingers and thudded to the ground in front of his feet. He reeled backward and the only thing that stopped him from falling was that his back hit one of the church doors, which had rebounded shut after he kicked them open and stepped through. He leaned against it and waited for the rest of Coleman's men to kill him, but nothing happened. The echoes of the shots rolled away, and Esperanza was silent.
Braddock's legs wouldn't hold him up. He started to slide slowly down the church door until he was sitting in front of it with his legs stretched out in front of him. His head drooped, and as he saw the dark bloodstain on his chest he realized the sky had gone gray with the approach of dawn.
There were worse places to sit and wait for death to claim him than the doorstep of a church, he thought. He'd never been a particularly religious man, and after everything that had happened he figured God wouldn't want anything to do with him, if there was a God, but Braddock took comfort in where he had wound up, anyway.
He started to close his eyes, but then something made him struggle to lift his head again. He looked along the street and saw a tall, imposing figure striding toward him through the gloom. Even though the sun wasn't up yet, the star on the man's chest seemed to glow with the reflection of the onrushing day. Braddock's lips were dry and cracked and his tongue was swollen, but he forced himself to whisper, "Pa?"
The man kept coming, tall, so tall, with high-crowned hat on his head and duster sweeping around his legs, and now there were two more men flanking him, just behind him, and they looked much the same, all with badges on their vests, and Braddock realized they weren't ghosts or angels or even demons come to drag him down to hell.
They were Texas Rangers.
That was the last thing Braddock knew for a long time.
Chapter 18
He came to his senses nine days later in a room at the mission with the brown-robed priest tending to him. Braddock figured the padre was going to give him the last rites, but the mild-faced, balding man smiled and said in barely accented English, "You are well on your way to recovery, Señor Braddock."
"I'm not...gonna die?"
"We are all going to die sooner or later, señor. But my feeling is that El Señor Dios is not yet ready for you to depart this earth."
Braddock had a feeling El Diablo would be a lot more interested in his final whereabouts, but it seemed wrong to argue with a priest inside a church so he didn't say anything about that. Instead he asked, "Is this Esperanza?"
"Sí."
"What happened...after Coleman and I shot it out?"
"Three men brought you here and asked that I care for you. Tejanos. Rangers. Like you."
Not like him, Braddock started to say, then stopped himself. Maybe it was because he'd been hurt so bad and had been unconscious or at least out of his head for so long, but he was having a hard time wrapping his brain around what the priest had just told him.
"Rangers...here?" he asked.
The padre nodded. "One of them asked me to tell you that Captain Hughes sent them to find you. To...arrest you. But he said that since you were in Mexico, he and his friends had no jurisdiction, no right to take you in."
That legal nicety wouldn't stop most Rangers, Braddock knew, when they felt like they were in the right. He was certain of that because he had bent a few rules himself along the way. But being on the wrong side of the border...that made a good excuse when you didn't really want to carry out your orders. When you weren't sure you'd be doing the right thing if you did.
"They're the ones who helped me," he said in a half-whisper. "When I was fighting Coleman's gang. There really was somebody giving me a hand."
"Sí, señor. They trailed you here from a place called..." The priest sounded doubtful. "Dutchman's Folly?"
Braddock leaned back against the pillow behind him and said, "That's right." He could see now what had happened. Word of what had happened in Ozona had reached Captain Hughes, and he'd dispatched a trio of Rangers to bring him in. As limited as the number of men at the captain's disposal was, Hughes must have really wanted him found. The trail had led from Ozona to Dutchman's Folly and then to Esperanza, and the Rangers had arrived just in time to take a hand in the fight, borders be damned.
But then, instead of taking him in, they had left him and asked this priest to nurse him back to health.
He was curious about that, but he wanted to know something else first. "The village," he said. "How bad...?"
"Very bad," the priest said with a solemn expression wreathing his face. "There are many new graves in the churchyard. But those who are left will go on. These are poor people, señor. They are accustomed to life handing them more than their share of bad fortune. Their reward will be in heaven, in the time to come someday."
Braddock hoped that was right, for the sake of the villagers of Esperanza. He said, "I'm surprised they don't hate me. I brought all this on them."
The padre shook his head. "No, señor. Capitan Mata and his Rurales were evil men. So were Señor Coleman and his men. You opposed them. This means you are a good man."
Braddock wished it were that simple. But again, he didn't want to argue with a priest...
"You said I was healing up."
"Sí. You needed rest more than anything else. And for the wound on your head to be cleaned and stitched. I'm afraid it will leave quite a scar. Your hair may never grow back there."
Braddock shook his head and said, "I don't care about that." He frowned. "I thought Coleman shot me in the chest."
"The bullet barely penetrated. I was able to dig it out. The wound was not a bad one."
That didn't make any sense, Braddock thought. But that was true about a lot of things in his life recently.
"What am I going to do now?" he mused, sighing as he looked out the window.
The priest hesitated. "The Ranger who asked me to care for you...he gave me a message and requested that I pass it along to you when you were in your right mind again."
Braddock wasn't sure that would ever be the case again, but he looked at the priest with interest.
The man went on, "The Ranger declared that he would not arrest you because you were in Mexico, as I told you before, and also because you killed this bandit Tull Coleman, who was very bad and deserved to die. But he told me to make sure you understand...if you ever set foot across the border in Texas again, the Rangers will be waiting for you. He said you should stay in Mexico, if you know what is good for you."
"I can't do my job in Mexico," Braddock growled. "As soon as I'm on my feet again, I'll need to get back to my work."
"I am just telling you what he said, señor," the priest said with a shrug and a smile. He started to turn away. "Now I should bring you some soup. You must get your strength back, and that will help." He paused at a little table beside the door. "Oh, yes. The Ranger said you would want this. Actually, he said he was afraid you would want this."
Braddock held out his hand, and the brown-robed man dropped something on his palm. As Braddock stared down at the object, he felt a chill go through him. Now he knew why Coleman's bullet hadn't penetrated deep enough into his chest to kill him.
What he held in his hand was his Texas Ranger badge, with a bullet hole punched neatly in the center of the silver star.
About the Author
James Reasoner has been a professional writer for nearly forty years. In that time, he has authored several hundred novels and short stories in numerous genres. Writing under his own name and various pseudonyms, his nove
ls have garnered praise from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as appearing on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. He lives in a small town in Texas with his wife, award-winning fellow author Livia J. Washburn. His blog can be found at http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com.
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