by Jory Sherman
“Who are you, stranger?”
The voice broke into Dan’s thoughts and he looked up, shaking now, all over, as if he had the ague.
He saw the Ranger then, standing up, his face bone-white under his hat as if he had emerged from a vat of boiling water.
“Huh?” Dan said, almost bewildered to be asked such a question.
“I want to thank you for coming to help us,” the Ranger said. “Them rascals had us in a tight spot.”
Dan holstered his pistol. He would reload it later. He eased the hammer down to half cock.
“Do you know who those drygulchers were?” Dan asked. He took a step in the Ranger’s direction, but was too wary to walk right up to him. He wondered where the other two were, and he especially wondered where Jerico Jones was. He felt a sense of dread that perhaps the eyewitness had been killed.
“I damn sure do,” said the Ranger. “Come on over. I got dead men here. Might need help in buryin’ them. And those bastards might come back.”
“I’ll wait for my friend then come over,” Dan said, looking around to see if Pete was coming. He didn’t want to walk into a trap. Maybe the Ranger recognized him, too. He could just see that flyer posted at the Ranger fort in Waco.
“Well, hurry up,” the Ranger said, then disappeared as he bent down inside the hollow where he and the others had taken cover during the ambush.
Raskin rode up, leading Dapper.
Dan took the reins from him, strung them past Dapper’s neck on both sides, and hoisted himself into the saddle.
“Be careful what you say, Pete,” Dan said. “That Ranger wants us to come over and help him bury the dead.”
“You killed that Dooley feller.”
Dan detected a tone of awe in Raskin’s voice.
“Never mind that. If that Ranger recognizes me, he’ll clap me in irons.”
“Maybe he’ll arrest us both,” Raskin said.
“Just keep your mouth shut, Pete. Let me do all the talkin’.” Dan rubbed his face. There was enough beard stubble there to disguise his identity, unless someone looked real close. “Maybe I can bluff my way out of this.”
“That’s fine with me.”
The two rode over to where the Ranger had reappeared. There was blood all over his tan shirt. Another head popped up and he wasn’t wearing a uniform.
“I’m Vernon Tyler,” the Ranger said. “And this here’s Jerico Jones.”
Dan’s heart seemed to soar in his chest. Jones was alive and it looked as if he didn’t even have a scratch on him. He was a tousle-haired, blond man about Dan’s age, early twenties, and his face was chalk-white. His gaze darted everywhere as if he expected outlaws to come boiling out of the brush from all directions.
Tyler was a stocky man, with a face burnished by the sun, a slightly aquiline nose, thin brown hair that jutted from under his hat like wires. His lips were slightly pudgy, pooched out as if he had been bee-stung. The badge on his chest gleamed in the sun like an accusing eye.
“You can call me Jason,” Dan said. “And this here’s my pard, John.”
“Those two men on the ground are Texas Rangers, like me,” Tyler said. “We don’t have time to bury them proper, so if you’ll just help me get them laid out and covered with rocks, I’d be obliged.”
“Sure,” Dan said.
As they lifted the men, Tyler, in between grunts, told Dan what he wanted to know.
“We were escorting Jones to San Antonio to sit before a grand jury. He’s a witness to some murders by the feller who jumped us, one Jake Krebs. The man you shot was Max Dooley—good riddance. And, another man was Lonnie Bartlett.”
“I saw a fourth man,” Dan said.
“I know. He was a surprise. I mean I’m surprised to see he threw in with Krebs. I know him as a deputy marshal from up in Abilene. He’s huntin’ a man down here in Texas. His name’s Frank Gaston. Well, he’s an outlaw now.”
They laid the dead men out. Tyler said their names were Larry Earl Davis and Joe Willoughby.
“These were good men,” Tyler said. “Taken down by bad men, damn it.”
He picked up a pistol belonging to one of the men. Its cylinders contained spent shells, the firing pins all dimpled.
“Jerico,” Tyler said, “help me get their gunbelts off. You other men can strip their horses of rifle scabbards.”
Dan worked on one horse, Pete the other, after Tyler pointed out those that belonged to the dead men.
“Either of you need a rifle?” Tyler asked. “This was Joe’s Winchester. It’s a ’73.”
“I do,” Raskin said. “But, I hate to…”
“Pay it no never mind, son. Joe can’t use it any more and you boys might as well take these pistols. Jerico, you can have that other rifle. Larry Earl’s.”
“Thanks, Mr. Tyler,” Jones said. His voice was quivery and Dan could see he was still shaken over the incident.
Tyler held out the holsters and gunbelts. Raskin took one and the pistol that went with it.
“I’m obliged,” he told Tyler.
“I just hope we won’t have to use all this firepower on the way to San Antonio,” Tyler said. “But we might.”
Raskin attached the rifle scabbard to his saddle and sheathed the ’73, after Tyler gave him cartridges. He put some of them in his saddlebags and dropped a half-dozen in his shirt pocket, within easy reach.
“Anybody need a slicker?” Tyler asked.
Raskin raised a hand.
“You ain’t got no bedroll, neither. Take this’un.”
Tyler handed a slicker and one of the dead men’s bedrolls to Pete.
“It’s a damned shame,” Tyler muttered as he took off his hat. “Damn that Krebs.”
Tyler said some words over them, asking God to take their souls, and then he, Dan, Jones, and Raskin gathered rocks and piled them high so that there were two mounds where the Rangers had been.
The whole process took the better part of a half-hour.
“Have to leave their horses to fend for themselves,” Tyler said. “I can’t be slowed down. Maybe they’ll find their way back to the fort in Waco. I’m bound to get this man to San Antonio. Where are you two fellers headed?”
Raskin opened his mouth, but Dan pierced him with a daggering look and he closed it quickly.
“We’re goin’ to San Antonio, too,” Dan said, “but we’re in no particular hurry. If you want us to ride with you…”
Tyler beamed. “Would you? I can deputize you both right here and now if you like.”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll back you, Tyler. You have my word.”
“Call me Vern. Shake on it?”
Dan shook the Ranger’s hand.
“Let’s get mounted up, then. Goin’ to change course, though.”
“Oh?” Dan’s eyebrows arched.
“Let’s get moving,” Tyler said. “I want to put some distance between us and Austin. We’re going to go through some rough country.”
“You think this Krebs is heading for Austin?”
“I know he is,” Tyler said.
A few minutes later the men were riding westward, skirting Austin, heading, Raskin thought, toward Dripping Springs. He whispered as much to Dan as they followed behind Tyler and Jones.
When Dan caught up with Tyler, the Ranger was ready to talk.
“Krebs hit us back there with three men,” Tyler said. “He didn’t have much to lose, and probably a lot to gain. But he knows where we’re going and he means to see that Jones never reaches San Antonio.”
“How do you know all this?” Dan asked.
“Krebs has a long history here in Texas,” Tyler said. “Not only here, but all over the West. He’s a born outlaw. He started robbing folks when he was still wet behind the ears. I hate to say it, but he was once a Ranger. Before the war.”
“Krebs was a lawman?”
“He sure was. And a good one, too, until he went bad. All that time he rode with us, I think he was preparing himself to be a crimin
al. He caught some bad ones for us, but he also made a lot of friends among the men we were after.”
“How do you know all this?” Dan asked again.
Tyler chuckled. “Because he threw a wide loop and tried to haul me in with it. Krebs and I both rode with Rip Ford in the Cavalry of the West. He stayed on until right after we fought the battle at Palmito Hill, the last battle of the Civil War. The war had been over for a month, but we didn’t know it. Leastways, Colonel Ford never told us, if he knew, and then Krebs told me how much money could be made while the South was in ruins.”
“But, you didn’t go with him?”
“No, because I found out he was riding both sides of the fence even before the war.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was stealing army property and selling it to the Yankees and the Mexicans, and the French in Brownsville. He had men working for him even back then. The man’s a magnet for attracting scoundrels and brigands.”
“I wish I could just go back home,” Jones said. It was plain to see he was still scared. He was looking everywhere, as if expecting Krebs to rise up out of the earth and come at him with blazing guns.
“You were pretty antsy back there when we passed close to Belton,” Tyler said. “If I let you go home, Krebs would just find you and put your lamp out.”
“I saw the way he killed those drovers,” Jones said. “He showed them no mercy and those men were begging for their lives in Spanish and English.”
“Well, he wouldn’t show you no mercy, neither,” Tyler said. “He’s a killer, that’s for sure. I sure don’t know why some men go bad, but I think Krebs was born bad.”
Dan said nothing. He couldn’t. He just wondered where in hell Marshal Alexander was. He must have known that Krebs would jump the Rangers when they took Jones out of the fort and started for San Antonio. He was beginning to lose confidence in the man who had asked him to help get Krebs. There had been no sign of him since he left Abilene. The only indication he had that Alexander was still on the case was the money he had left for Dan at the hotel in Waco.
Beyond that, Ben Alexander was a phantom. About as useful as a rubber crutch, Dan thought. But he said nothing.
He just glowered in the darkness of his thoughts.
Chapter Eighteen
Tyler was worried. Jones was scared. Raskin was nervous. And Cord was apprehensive.
Tyler kept looking at Dan, studying his face as a man would stare at the pages of a book, carefully weighing each word as if trying to decipher the meaning of a particular passage.
Dan tried to avoid letting Tyler see his face from the front view. He always kept his head turned slightly when the two were talking, and he stroked his beard stubble to further confuse the Ranger.
“I keep thinking I’ve seen you someplace before,” Tyler said, after they had forded a small river, two days after leaving the site of the battle with Krebs. “Your face looks familiar.”
“I have that kind of face, I think,” Cord said. “People keep mistaking me for somebody else. Happens all the time.”
“Yeah, well, maybe. I got a pretty good memory for faces. In my profession, it’s an asset.”
“I volunteered to help you, Tyler. Would I do that if I was worried that you might recognize me from somewhere?”
“You got a good point, Jason. I guess I’m just jumpy is all. Krebs is like a danged octopus. He has tentacles all over Texas and Kansas, maybe Oklahoma and Louisiana, too.”
“I never heard of him,” Dan lied. “I just saw somebody in trouble. Just trying to help, I reckon. And we were goin’ to San Antonio anyways—in no particular hurry.”
“I’m mighty obliged. If you hadn’t come by when you did, I reckon me and Jones would be buzzard bait. Krebs had us ringed in and he’s one smart hombre. I didn’t even see Dooley sneakin’ up on us. I was busy shootin’ it out with them other three gun slicks.”
“Well, it’s good that they’re gone,” Dan said.
“I’ll tell you something, Jason. We haven’t seen the last of Jake Krebs. He’s like stink from a skunk. You just can’t get rid of him that easy. When we see him again, he’ll have reinforcements. You can bet on that.”
“What makes you so sure? He won’t know which way we’re going.”
“I’ll tell you why he’s going to show up again. Krebs has a reputation among lawmen.”
“What’s that?”
“Krebs don’t leave no witnesses to what he’s done. This man, Jones, is like an answered prayer. That’s why I got to keep him alive, so’s he can testify in a Federal court. If Krebs gets indicted, he’ll not only have Texas Rangers after him, he’ll have U.S. marshals to boot.”
Dan slowed Dapper and let Tyler take the lead. Jones, perhaps sensing a friend, rode alongside Cord, eager to sound Dan out on what he thought their chances were. It had been a lonesome trail they had followed, skirting Austin, heading now for the Colorado River. They were on open range and the few longhorns they had seen were as wild as Mexican cattle. They hadn’t seen a single cowhand. Just the seldom seen roadrunner or armadillo, a bunch of lizards, jackrabbits, and a rattlesnake or two.
Raskin, who had been hanging back, rode ahead to catch up with Tyler.
“How come you and your pard are riding out of your way with me and the ranger?” Jones asked.
“Just bein’ neighborly,” Dan said. “I was brought up that way.”
“I guess I was, too. But we almost got killed back there at Round Rock.”
“Maybe you’d have done the same for us.”
“I reckon.”
“So, you saw this Krebs feller kill somebody, is that right?”
“Yeah, I saw it. And I’m right sorry I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, now I can’t help my daddy and I can’t be with my wife. I gave the sheriff in Belton a sworn statement and I gave another one to the Texas Rangers. They wrote it all out and I signed both papers. I don’t see why I have to go way down to San Antonio to testify against them scalawags.”
“I don’t either.”
“I guess it’s the legal way.”
“What do you and your daddy do? Farm? Raise cattle?”
“We dig wells. I’m a water witcher.”
“Find water, do you?” Dan asked.
“Yep. I use me a willow wand.”
“That how you come to see those murders?”
“Yeah. I was over in some trees. Heard the cattle herd come up and walked over to see what was what. I saw Krebs on that black horse of his and some men with him. They just executed those Mexican drovers, took the cattle somewheres else, and I never saw any of ’em again. I told the sheriff what I seen and he wrote it all down. Then, a lot of lawmen came and went, askin’ me all kinds of questions and next thing I knew, I was up in Waco at the fort. I feel like a prisoner myself, what with not bein’ able to go home and all.”
“I know what you mean,” Dan said, meaning it. Because he felt the same way and he was riding free, compared to Jones, who was really under guard by Tyler.
“I get the feelin’ you really do know how I feel,” Jones said.
Dan didn’t say anything. He wanted to close that door before he had to lie some more. Lying was coming too easy for him, but he didn’t like the way it felt, like a hair coat making him itch all over.
They came to the Colorado River. Vern Tyler rode along it for a ways, looking for a ford. The river was swollen from recent rains and they found nothing to the east. They then rode westward. Finally, Tyler came to a place that looked promising to him.
“We ain’t going to be able to walk across,” he said. “We’ll have to swim it. You boys up to it? This looks to be the shallowest place.”
Dan gazed at the spot Tyler had picked. The river took a bend just above it and there was a stretch where the opposite bank jutted out, making the bend, and he could see riffles that showed it was shallow there. Little pebbles beneath the water, just in that one spot. From the near bank to the eddy loo
ked pretty deep, though. He didn’t know how strong Dapper was as a swimmer, but this was a good place to find out, he supposed.
“One at a time?” Dan asked. “Or roped together?”
“I think one at a time,” Tyler said. He looked at the others for agreement.
Raskin nodded. So did Jones.
“I’ll go first,” Dan said. “If I get knocked out of the saddle, I think I can swim it.”
“All right,” Tyler said. “I’ll go last. Once you get to the other shore, Jason, ride downstream a ways and wait for the others to cross. That way, you might be able to save anyone who gets washed downstream.”
Dan clucked to Dapper, eased the horse down a narrow cut to the bank. The horse balked at the rushing waters. Dan spoke soothingly to him, but held the horse in check until he got used to the sound of the water.
“Just calm down, Dapper,” he said. “It’s just a short swim and then a short wade.” He patted the horse on its withers and waited.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Tyler said, a note of impatience in his voice.
Dan drew a breath, steeling himself to ride into the water. He couldn’t see beneath the muddy surface, but hoped there wasn’t a steep drop-off when Dapper stepped out.
“All right, Dapper,” he said. “Let’s go.” He dug spurs into Dapper’s flanks and slapped his rump with the trailing edges of the reins. The horse backed up, then plunged forward, straight into the water. The current swept into the horse’s legs, and then Dapper was swimming. Water came up to Dan’s knees as Dapper bobbed and pumped his forelegs, pulling them forward through the stream.
The men on the bank yelled their encouragement and that seemed to give Dapper extra strength and courage. They drifted off course in the center of the river, but found their way back as they reached the shallows. Dapper stepped on gravel and hardpan, rose from the water, and lunged for the opposite bank.