“I’ve got to say I’m grateful. Surprise, but grateful,” Blanchard admitted. “Can you tell me what this hombre I downed looked like?”
“Dark of hair and eyes, both so brown as to appear black,” Blue Hawk described. “Tall and heavy, with a scar under his left eye. Your bullet struck him just under the heart.”
“Blue Hawk, did you happen to recover my horse and saddle,” Blanchard asked.
“I did,” Blue Hawk confirmed. “Your horse is staked outside, along with my pony. Your saddle is cached in the back of this cave.”
“There’s a leather-bound book in my saddlebags. Would you please get it for me?” Blanchard requested. “I believe I know who that man was, but I want to be certain.”
“I will do that,” Blue Hawk agreed. He disappeared toward the rear of the cavern, beyond the fire’s light. He returned shortly, with the book in his hand.
“Here you are, Ranger.”
Blue Hawk handed Blanchard the book, which had leather covers loosely held together by a length of string.
Blanchard quickly thumbed through the book, his copy of the Ranger’s Fugitive List, otherwise known as the Ranger’s Bible. It contained the descriptions of every known wanted man in the state of Texas. Blanchard stopped about a third of the way through the book when he found the listing he sought.
“Sure enough, that was Mack Duquesta,” he said. “He was one of the Horton outfit. That means there are five of ‘em left.”
“I do not know their names,” Blue Hawk softly answered, “But I do know the spirits of my wife and children cry out for justice, and they will not rest until it is obtained. And my own soul cries out for revenge on the men who murdered my family.”
“I can tell you their names,” Blanchard stated. “Holt and Bob Horton, the cousins who lead that bunch. Then there’s Dave Smith, Ryne Durant, and Sledge Bascomb. There’s not a decent bone in any of ‘em.”
“We will be on their trail soon enough. And they will not escape me again,” Blue Hawk fiercely declared.
“How soon can we get ridin’?” Blanchard asked.
In response, Blue Hawk took the now-empty plate from Blanchard and set it aside. He hunkered alongside the Ranger and removed the bandages from Blanchard’s chest and belly.
“Your wounds are healing very quickly,” the Comanche noted. Indeed, the bullet holes were now merely puckered scars, still livid but beginning to fade. “You do need some more time to recover your strength. I would say within two days.”
“That’s too long,” Blanchard objected. “Those renegades already have a better’n two week jump on us.”
“That is true. However, I have been studying their habits and following their trail for nearly two months now,” Blue Hawk replied. “I will know where to find them.”
“Reckon I don’t have much choice,” Blanchard conceded. “I guess a couple more days won’t make much difference.”
“That’s right,” Blue Hawk concurred. “Now, you should get more rest.”
“I don’t need rest as much as I need coffee,” Blanchard retorted, adding as he ran a hand over his whisker- stubbled jaw, “And a bath and shave.”
“I can get your razor and soap from your saddlebags. There is a pond right outside this cavern where you can bathe,” Blue Hawk offered.
“I sure appreciate that,” Blanchard answered. He tossed aside his blankets and came to his feet. The Ranger swayed only slightly as he stood up, then steadied himself.
Once Blue Hawk handed him the razor and bar of yellow soap, Blanchard headed outside. T, his paint gelding, nickered a greeting when he saw his rider standing in the entrance of the cave.
“Sure is good to see you again too, ol’ pard,” Blanchard called to the horse.
“Ranger, I mean Jack.”
Blue Hawk spoke from where he stood alongside Blanchard.
“Yeah, Blue Hawk?”
“That is a fine pony you ride. I must admit, had our trails crossed under different circumstances, I would have killed you for your horse. You would have died with my arrow in your belly, for killing a white man to steal a horse as fine as yours would bring great honor to any Comanche warrior.”
Blue Hawk chuckled as he glanced at Blanchard’s unruly thatch of thick blonde hair.
“And taking a yellow scalp such as yours would bring even more honor, as well as being powerful medicine.”
“I might have had something to say about that,” Blanchard disagreed with a laugh of his own. “Mebbe I would’ve put a bullet in your guts instead. But I’m sure glad things didn’t happen that way. We’ll ride as partners until we catch up to the Hortons. Once that job is done we can go our separate ways.”
“That is the Great Spirit’s will,” Blue Hawk agreed.
“Seems so,” Blanchard concurred. “Meanwhile, I’d better take that bath.”
“I will have coffee ready by the time you are done,” Blue Hawk announced.
“You know how to brew coffee?” Blanchard asked in surprise.
“I learned many of your white man’s ways while living on the reservation, including how to speak your language,” the Comanche stated. “I found your Arbuckle’s in your saddlebag, so it will be waiting for you. I will also have a cup. By the way, don’t bother looking for the peppermint stick. I’m taking that for myself.”
3
True to Blue Hawk’s word, at sunup two days later the unlikely pair, a Texas Ranger and a Comanche warrior, rode away from the hidden cavern.
For nearly two weeks they followed the trail of the Horton gang, swimming their horses across the Red River numerous times as they pursued the desperadoes from Texas into Indian Territory and back. It was late afternoon on the twelfth day after leaving the cave when they pulled their horses to a halt atop a low ridge.
“We’re gettin’ closer to those hombres. I can feel it in my gut,” Blanchard declared. He pushed back his Stetson to scratch his forehead.
“We’re gonna catch up with ‘em by tomorrow at the latest.”
“We are even closer than you think, Jack,” answered Blue Hawk. “Do you see the mouth of that arroyo in the distance, say about nine miles off?”
“I do indeed,” Blanchard replied. “You sayin’ that’s one of Horton’s hiding places?”
“It sure is,” Blue Hawk confirmed. “And my ‘gut’, as you put it, tells me they are in there now.”
The Comanche slid from the back of his tough pinto war pony. He dug in his saddle pouch and removed several items, then pulled off his deerskin shirt and leggings, stripping to only his breech clout.
Blanchard also swung from his saddle.
“What’re you doin’, Blue Hawk?”
“Preparing for battle.”
The Comanche brave broke into a singsong chant as he began to smear crimson and black war paint on his face and chest.
When Blanchard rummaged in his own saddlebags, then peeled off his shirt, Blue Hawk broke off his chant and stared at the Ranger in puzzlement. Blanchard had taken off his good spare shirt and was shrugging into the shirt he had been wearing when he was shot, the shirt that was now bullet-torn and bloodstained.
“Now it is my turn to ask. What exactly are you doing, Jack?”
“Simple,” Blanchard explained as he pinned his badge to the shirt. “When we ride up on the Hortons and their men, I want those renegades to think they’re seein’ a ghost, my ghost, the ghost of the man they thought they’d killed back in that canyon.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Three hours later, Blanchard and Blue Hawk were bellied down under the cover of thick scrub, from where they studied the Horton gang’s well-concealed hideout.
“Looks like there’s still only five of ‘em,” Blanchard observed. “There’s six horses in the corral, one for each of those hombres, plus Duquesta’s cayuse.”
“It appea
rs they are all in the cabin,” Blue Hawk added. “There seems to be no back way out.”
The only building in the arroyo was a ramshackle structure built right against the draw’s steep wall. They arroyo itself was a box, ending in sheer bluffs not many yards beyond the shack.
“You’re right about that,” Blanchard agreed. “However, there’s also no cover for at least a hundred yards around that cabin, which means we’d be easy targets if we tried to rush that shack. We’d be cut down before gettin’ halfway across the clearing.”
“That is not much of a problem,” Blue Hawk disagreed. He set aside the Winchester he carried, the rifle which he’d taken from alongside Mack Duquesta’s body when he’d found the dead outlaw and the wounded Ranger. He pulled the bow from over his shoulder and an arrow from his quiver, then twisted some oily creosote branches around the arrowhead.
“You want I should make like a primitive savage and strike some flint on rock to make a spark, or do you have a match, Jack?” Blue Hawk asked with a grin.
“I’ve got a match right here,” Blanchard replied. He dug in his shirt pocket and came up with a lucifer. He struck the match on his belt and handed it to the Comanche.
Just as Blue Hawk lit the arrow and notched it to his bow, one of the outlaws stepped from the cabin’s doorway, and stood rolling a quirly.
“Blast it!” Blanchard exclaimed. “That’s Sledge Bascomb. Blue Hawk, he’ll spot us before you can hit that cabin,”
“Don’t worry,” Blue Hawk calmly answered. “I’ll light that cigarette for him.”
He pulled back the bow’s string to release the arrow.
Bascomb gave a shriek of shock and pain when the flaming arrow ripped into his stomach, driving him back against the cabin’s front wall. He slumped to the ground, his shirt still smoking where the blazing missile had pierced through the garment to bury itself in the outlaw’s vitals.
“Guess I missed. That’s a real shame,” Blue Hawk said.
Instantly, yells and curses of surprise came from inside the cabin. The door was flung open.
“Keep them inside the shack while I get another arrow ready,” Blue Hawk ordered Blanchard.
The Ranger swept the cabin with rifle fire, one of his bullets tearing into Dave Smith’s gut as the outlaw stood framed in the doorway. Smith clutched his belly and jackknifed across the sill, writhing and moaning in pain. Unseen hands dragged the gut-shot renegade inside the cabin and slammed the door closed.
Blanchard tossed aside his now-empty rifle and grabbed Blue Hawk’s Winchester to keep the outlaws pinned down, while Blue Hawk swiftly made and shot three more fire arrows into the cabin’s front wall, yet another onto the roof. The tinder-dry logs quickly caught, and aided by a stiff breeze blowing up-canyon the flames spread rapidly. The entire front wall of the shack was soon a mass of flames.
“That should smoke ‘em outta there real quick,” Blanchard noted with satisfaction. He handed Blue Hawk’s rifle back to the Comanche and picked up his own Winchester. They quickly reloaded the weapons.
“You men inside!” Blanchard shouted. “This is the Texas Rangers. Toss out your guns and come out with your hands up, or else you’ll roast in there. Come out shootin’ and we’ll cut you down before you can run ten feet!”
The only response was a fusillade of bullets from the shack’s two windows. Lead sliced through the brush sheltering the lawman and Indian.
“There’s no point in wastin’ our cartridges until that fire drives ‘em outta there,” Blanchard said.
He dropped to his belly and sighted his rifle on the cabin door. Alongside him, Blue Hawk did the same.
As the flames climbed the cabin’s walls and began licking at the roof, the heat and smoke soon became too much for the outlaws to bear. Their curses faded to strangled coughs and their gunshots trailed off.
“They will be coming out at any moment,” Blue Hawk stated.
Four minutes later the cabin door was flung open and three men emerged, stumbling in their attempt to flee the burning building, still firing their rifles in a desperate attempt to down the Ranger and Comanche.
Blue Hawk took careful aimed and shot. His bullet plowed through the center of Bob Horton’s chest, slamming the outlaw against the flaming cabin. Horton screamed in terror as his clothing caught fire. The dying renegade pitched to his face, managed to drag himself a few feet, then gasped, shuddered, and finally lay unmoving.
Blanchard levered and fired his rifle three times, all three of the slugs ripping into Ryne Durant’s belly.
Stopped in his tracks when the bullets tore through his middle, Durant folded, then dropped to one knee before toppling onto his side, hands clamped to his gut.
Holt Horton, still shooting, charged at the Ranger and Comanche. Blanchard and Blue Hawk fired as one, Blanchard’s bullet hitting Horton in the face, Blue’s Hawk’s in the chest, where it stopped in a lung. Horton was smashed flat on his back, dead.
“I guess that takes care of all of ‘em,” Blanchard muttered. He came to his feet. “Smith sure ain’t still alive inside that shack.”
Virtually the entire cabin was engulfed in flames.
Cautiously, Blanchard and Blue Hawk approached the cabin. Neither man speaking, they removed the dead men’s gunbelts and holsters, then dragged the bodies to the cabin and tossed them inside. The blazing structure was now the Horton gang’s funeral pyre.
Silently, Blanchard and Blue Hawk watched the cabin burn until it was merely a pile of smoldering timbers, a few sparks and wisps of smoke curling into the dusk.
“My family has been avenged,” Blue Hawk whispered.
4
Blanchard and Blue Hawk spent that night in a shallow draw, about two miles from where the Horton gang had met its fate. They had driven the outlaws’ horses before them, and picketed them to graze on a good-sized patch of grama grass. Now, early the next morning, the pair was readying breakfast before preparing to ride on.
“I’d best write up my report for Austin before we head on out,” Blue Hawk,” Blanchard explained. “I’d also better write you a receipt sayin’ those horses are rightfully yours.”
He dug two sheets of paper and the stub of a pencil out of his saddlebags.
The Ranger and Comanche had agreed Blue Hawk would receive possession of the outlaws’ horses as some compensation for the loss of his family, and as a token of appreciation for his assistance in nursing Blanchard back to health and helping him track down the renegades. The outlaws’ weapons would be taken back to Austin by the Ranger.
Blanchard thought for a moment, then added, “In fact, I’d best ride along with you until you’re back across
the Red and into the Territories. Anyone who sees a lone Comanch’ herdin’ six shod horses on this side of the river is liable to shoot first, without botherin’ to check the ownership of those broncs until it’s too late.”
“You are right,” Blue Hawk agreed. “So we will ride together for one more day, then tomorrow I will cross back to the reservation.”
While Blanchard wrote a brief report and the receipt, Blue Hawk made a scant breakfast of jerky and cornmeal. Once they had eaten and cleaned up, Blanchard handed the receipt to Blue Hawk.
“Don’t let anything happen to this, at least until you get back home,” he warned.
“I will make sure of that,” Blue Hawk assured him. He tucked the document into a pocket of his shirt.
A short while later the pair pointed their horses northwestward, back toward the Red River some twenty- five miles away.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Ranger and Comanche rode steadily all day, the six horses they were herding slowing their pace. Sundown found them still a few miles short of the river. They reined in alongside a clear creek, which watered a grassy glade.
“This is as likely a place as any to spend the night,” Blanchard observed. “Ther
e’s plenty of grass and water for the horses.”
“You are right, Jack, since we can’t make the Red tonight,” Blue Hawk agreed. “We can get a good night’s rest, and finish our journey in the morning.”
Blanchard swung out of his saddle, then yawned and stretched. He slipped the bridle from his horse’s head, then loosened the cinches and pulled the saddle from the gelding’s back.
“Reckon that feels good, eh T, Boy?” he asked the paint as he scratched the paint’s ears.
“I reckon it’s high time I got rid of this shirt, too,” the Ranger chuckled. He was still wearing his bullet- torn, bloodstained shirt.
“I agree.” Blue Hawk smiled as he climbed from his pony’s back. “Frankly Jack, you smell.”
Blanchard pulled his badge from his shirt, peeled off the ruined garment, and tossed it in the creek, watching until it floated out of sight. He turned away from the stream, then whirled, his hand dropping for his Colt, too late. An arrow hissed across the clearing and thudded into the middle of the Ranger’s belly, burying itself deep in his gut. Blanchard grasped futilely at the arrow’s shaft. He staggered back against his horse’s side, doubled over, then spun to the ground, landing heavily on his back.
When the Ranger fell, a war-whooping Comanche burst from a clump of redberry juniper, with a knife in his hand. He raised the weapon high to plunge its blade into Blanchard’s heart. Blue Hawk raced to Blanchard’s side and grabbed his fellow warrior’s wrist, wrenching the knife from his grasp to stop the fatal thrust.
“Dark Bear, no!” In his native tongue, Blue Hawk screamed in grief and rage.
“Blue Hawk, why did you stop me?” Dark Bear asked, puzzled. “I have freed you from your captor and killed our enemy. Now I will take his scalp.”
“This man is not my enemy, but my friend,” Blue Hawk replied. “Did you not see he wasn’t holding me as a prisoner? Instead, we were riding together. He helped me find the men who murdered my family. Without his help, their deaths would not have been avenged.”
“But he is a white man, and a Texas Ranger,” Dark Bear objected. He had seen Blanchard pull the badge from his shirt before tossing it in the creek.
The Faith and the Rangers Page 22