Return to Red River

by Johnny D. Boggs

  They were cramped inside the wagon, but that kept Tom from moving around too much. She had a canteen and constantly wet the rag she had placed over his forehead. He sweated feverishly. She bit her bottom lip.

  A rider loped up beside the wagon, and she heard Jess Teveler’s voice. The next thing she knew, Teveler had climbed into the driver’s box, muttered something to John Meeker Jr., and slipped through the canvas opening. He knelt, and grinned.

  “Just wanted to check on you, Tess.”

  “This bullet needs to come out,” she told him.

  “Tonight.”

  “Now.”

  His head shook. “Want to get a little farther from your ol’ camp, Tess. You don’t mind if I call you Tess, do you?” His grin widened.

  “You worried Laredo and Teeler will catch you?”

  “Nah.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “So . . . you want to get farther away so Lightning and I won’t hear the gunshots. When Reata rides back to kill them all.”

  He gave her a respectful nod.

  “After he kills your husband, Tess.” His voice had turned cold, deadly, and the eyes told Tess that he could easily kill Tom and her, too. He had all he needed, with Lightning riding with him, of his own volition.

  Tess refused to bend or buckle. “Which is why you wanted Lightning,” she said. Let him kill her. She wouldn’t show weakness to a man like him.

  Pulling himself through the opening, Teveler shrugged. “My pard’s fixed some things in Caldwell for us, but I figured it might be easier sellin’ Mathew Garth’s cattle with an heir with us. I think things through, Tess.”

  “Do you?”

  He shook his head, but relented. “We’ll doctor your boy tonight. Might need him in Caldwell.”

  Teveler told Meeker to keep glancing back inside the wagon, make sure Tess Millay didn’t find a knife to plunge into his back. Then . . . he was gone.

  * * *

  Fanning himself with his hat, wondering what would take Reata and Lightning this long, Mathew Garth heard the whinny of a horse and pushed himself to his feet. The sun was fairly low by this time of day, and since the rider rode in from the west, Mathew had to shield his eyes. He rested his right hand on the butt of his gun until recognizing both horse and man. Often, you could tell a rider by how he sat in the saddle, how he rode a horse.

  Reata.

  Mathew looked beyond, trying to find the outline of more riders. Or even dust.

  Nothing. Reata came at a slow pace.

  Something had happened. Panic briefly shot through his body. Lightning? No. No, he didn’t think that was it. The rider neared. No shovel. Not that Mathew could spot. And he didn’t think Reata would be bringing Dunson’s old Bible, either.

  The man road casually, confidently.

  He remembered during the war while riding with Forrest’s cavalry. Sometimes, a soldier came down with this paralyzing bit of premonition. He knew he would die in the next battle. Seven times out of ten, those forewarnings proved true. In all his years with the Confederacy, Mathew, himself, had never felt such a hunch. Yet now, something came over him. A feeling . . . but not of his own death.

  “Howdy,” Reata called out, waving a gauntleted left hand. Left hand. The old soldier was right-handed, and that horse wasn’t the bucking type.

  “Where are the others?” Mathew called out. He left his right hand on his Colt.

  “Comin’.” Reata reined his horse to a stop and tilted his head west. “Back yonder a ways.”

  “I see.” He did not take his eyes off the old horse trooper.

  Now Reata nodded at the blackened bodies on the scorched prairie. “Reckon that’s Joe, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, too bad. I can start diggin’ a grave.” He turned his horse around and began a slow dismount.

  It was the turning of the horse that raised Mathew’s awareness. Easiest thing in the world to do would have been to simply climb out of the saddle, but Reata had turned around and then started to dismount. The big horse would serve as a shield, hide his movements, so that Mathew would not see him pulling his revolver.

  He did not think how he would explain this to Reata if he was wrong. Mathew drew his revolver.

  Yet he reacted too slow. Reata brought the revolver up over the horse’s neck. The gun roared. The horse, well trained, stayed put. Mathew felt the bullet punch into his body and fell back, squeezing the trigger before he landed on the charred earth. He heard the horse scream, hooves pounding, Reata’s curse. Mathew’s bullet had grazed Reata’s horse. Another shot blasted, kicking up ash and dirt where Mathew had been.

  He rolled more, stopped, went backward, and loosed another shot. The horse, eyes wide with fright, galloped past him.

  “Damn!”

  Reata’s oath was the only word spoken.

  Lying on his back, Mathew raised his Colt, thumbing back the trigger. Reata leveled his own revolver. Their shots rang out as one, just before Reata’s horse loped right back, between both men. The big horse must have been running toward the pile of bodies that had been horse, cattle, and man. The scent, the sight, the fear turned the horse back. It galloped away from this black, violent world. Or tried to. The horse screamed, reared, and fell on its side.

  Mathew had pushed himself up. Sitting, he leveled the Colt, steadied it with both hands. When the horse collapsed, he was ready. If he missed, or even if he hit Reata but didn’t kill him, he figured he was dead.

  Dust and ash erupted from the ground as the horse hit. Reata screamed in rage, or maybe shock.

  Mathew squeezed the trigger.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  He didn’t know how he even made it this far.

  Thirty feet. It felt like three thousand miles. Mathew looked at Reata, spread-eagled on the ground, eyes open, his mouth locked in surprise, and death. Mathew fell against the horse, dead, already beginning to draw flies. Flies in a charcoal world. He leaned against the horse’s body, set his smoking Colt at his side.

  Reata’s heavy slug had torn into the fleshy part of his stomach, right side, maybe halfway between the bottom of his rib cage and his waist. It hadn’t hit any vitals, as far as Mathew could tell, but it had blown a hole in his back at almost a straight line. Blood already soaked both front and back of his shirt. If he didn’t get that bleeding stopped, he would soon be deader than the black man lying near him.

  First, he pulled out the makings and rolled a smoke, sticking the cigarette in his mouth, the paper bloody from his fingers. He didn’t light the smoke, though. Not yet. Instead, he pushed out one cartridge from his shell belt. Another. Two more. Next, he loosened his bandanna and laid it on the ground, unrolled, unfolded, a napkin on the dirt. With a groan, he shifted his weight so that he could draw the barlow knife from his pants pocket. That exhausted him, and he leaned back against the horse, lungs working like the pistons in a steamboat’s engine room. He dared not close his eyes. Fall asleep, and he would never wake up.

  Taking in a deep breath, he pushed himself up. The exertion made him turn his head, and he threw up. Wiping his mouth, he opened the blade of the knife and went to work on one of the bullets. Sweat poured out of him, burning the bullet wounds, stinging his eyes. He could taste salt on his lips and tongue. Eventually, he pried the lead bullet away from the brass cartridge and dumped the black powder onto the bandanna.

  Gunsmiths always made this look so easy.

  It practically killed him to get the powder out of four bullets.

  Again, he leaned back against the dead horse while finding the box of lucifers in his vest pocket. Now he struck the match and brought it with his bloody right hand to his cigarette. He drew in smoke, held it, let it out. That revived him more that a cup of Groot’s coffee or a shot of rye whiskey. Leaving the cigarette in his mouth, he brought his right hand down and carefully picked up the bandanna that held the gunpowder.

  He sat up. Thought he might vomit again, but the nausea passed. His bloody hand brought the
piece of silk to his back, for that wound bled the most. His left hand removed the cigarette from his mouth after another long pull.

  Think, and he’d lose his resolve. He leaned over, bringing the bandanna to his back, moving the cigarette across his body. At practically the same time, he packed the hole in his back with black powder, which the glowing end of the cigarette touched off.

  Mathew Garth screamed.

  He fought to stay conscious. Sleep meant death. The smell of burned flesh sickened him, and he retched again, but there was nothing in his stomach to come up. After the dry heaves passed, he found the cigarette and returned it to his mouth. The smoldering bandanna had a giant hole in it, so he knew it wouldn’t hold any gunpowder, and he tossed it aside, red embers devouring the threads. His skin burned, but the bleeding stopped . . . in his back. He still needed to plug the entrance wound.

  He lacked strength to separate bullet from cartridge and collect more black powder. He looked at his stomach. Now that wound became the spigot. Again, he leaned against the horse. Turning his head, he spotted Reata’s canteen. Throat parched, mouth aching, he groaned as he reached for it, had to push himself up, but at last his left hand grabbed the canvas strap, and he dragged it over the horse’s withers. He set it between his legs, pushed out the cork, and brought it to his mouth.

  It gagged him. Burned his lips, tongue, throat. Exploded with a concussion in his gut that he thought he might throw up again.

  Whiskey. The damned fool had ridden out with nothing but a canteen filled with the vilest rotgut that could be found in Spanish Fort. His eyes burned. Again, he fell against the horse and returned the cigarette to his mouth, hoping the smoke would ease the rawness.

  Which gave him another idea.

  Straightening, he looked at the canteen. He wasted no more time. Puffing on the smoke, he lifted the container and dumped the foul liquor onto the bullet wound, screaming at the fire in his belly, and bringing the cigarette to the wound.

  This time . . . he passed out.

  * * *

  The moon was rising by the time he reached the creek. He never thought he would have made it.

  Falling onto his knees, he reached into the water, brought it to his face, savoring the coolness, the freshness, the moisture. He knew better than to drink fast, but cupped his hands again and brought them to his cracked lips. The water cooled him. He knocked off his hat and ran water through his hair, and then drank again.

  Mathew Garth had never felt so alive. Instead of ash, he smelled the fresh grass on the other side of the creek. Those scents revived him more than the water.

  He refilled two of the three canteens he carried, then bathed the gunshot wounds with water before pouring a dab of forty-rod whiskey from Reata’s canteen onto the cauterized bullet wounds. He probed the wounds with his fingers, gently, feeling the coarseness of the skin, the tightness of the flesh around the scarred holes. His fingers came away without the tackiness of blood. The whiskey, raw as it was, might stave off any infection.

  Maybe he’d live . . . after all.

  For ten minutes, he rested, soaking his boots and those aching, swollen feet in the water.

  Get up, the voice told him.

  Mathew opened his eyes. He had not slept. Only seconds had passed.

  Get up. Move, boy. Keep walking, you gutless wonder.

  He recognized the voice. That voice had driven him across the fire-scorched earth for miles and miles. It had told him that he couldn’t bury Reata or Joe Nambel, not if he wanted to live. That Joe Nambel would understand, that he was in a better place now, and that Reata didn’t deserve a hole in the ground. The voice had reminded him that he had said words, good words, maybe more fitting words than something from Proverbs or Corinthians, to poor Joe Nambel. That Reata deserved no words, either. Let him rot.

  “Funny,” Mathew had told the voice. “Coming from you.”

  Get up, the voice had said. Start walking. Or lie down and die.

  So he had walked. And now, again, the voice told him to walk.

  He came to his feet, collected the canteens, and crossed the creek.

  Keep moving, the voice told him.

  The voice. Thomas Dunson’s voice.

  He walked.

  Feverish still. He had lost a lot of blood. Had crossed miles of blackened earth with only a few swallows of water. Sure, he knew the voice was nothing more than his own hallucinations, but the voice—Thomas Dunson—kept Mathew moving.

  He wondered: What voice drove you all that time? After we left you alone with a horse and took your herd? What voice drove you after us?

  He did not see Dunson, just heard the voice, though he did picture the iron-willed man: Dunson, blood spilling down his shoulder from a bullet Cherry Valance had put there. Cherry, wounding the big man instead of killing him, drawing his Colt because he had known Mathew would not, could not, have pulled on Thomas Dunson. Dunson had refused to let anyone look at the bullet wound, and Mathew had sent him on his way with a sack full of flour, salt, beans, salt pork, coffee, some whiskey to treat the wound, and fifty paper cartridges for his revolver.

  Walk, boy, the voice said. Walk, Mathew.

  He walked.

  Mathew did not ask the voice anything, though. He did not want to go mad. Just wanted to reach . . .

  Reach what? What would he find? A missing herd. He knew that much. And Reata made him think that maybe Jess Teveler was behind this all. Maybe he had been wrong, blaming those three Chickasaws for burning the prairie. Maybe that had been Teveler’s handiwork. He’d find out when he reached camp. If he could reach camp. Find camp. Four, five, six miles. Something like that. That’s what Lightning and Reata had told him. Maybe the herd would be there. Maybe . . .

  He walked.

  You damned fool, the voice told him. You know better than that, Mathew. Don’t get your hopes up, boy. I taught you better. Walk. Walk. There’s no herd waiting for you. No cup of that crap Groot Nadine calls coffee. Walk. Walk. Don’t think. You’ll find nothing but dead bodies there.

  He walked.

  The whirling of a rattle stopped him. Nothing like a rattlesnake to wake you up, make a delusion disappear. He located the direction of the rattling and gave the snake a wide berth, pressing on—although he had no idea if he were moving in the right direction.

  A coyote called out in the night, and others answered, until their yips and howls turned into a nightmarish opera.

  He walked.

  Until . . . he stopped.

  The voice had not spoken to him in a while. It hadn’t needed to. No longer had Mathew needed any encouragement. He had moved, maybe not in a straight line, but he had moved. Walking. Stumbling. Moving forward. He had no idea how long it had been since he had left the creek. Or how many minutes had passed since he had heard the voice.

  Five or six miles. That was the distance from the creek to the campsite. Even in boots, a man could walk a mile in twenty minutes, a half hour. Well, maybe, unless he had two plugged holes in his body, one the size of a four-year-old’s fist.

  Mathew panted, and lifted the canteen toward his mouth. Quickly, he realized it was the whiskey, and he let it slide back into place, and brought up another, Lightning’s canteen. He drank. Leaned forward. Stared.

  Another delusion. An apparition. Ghost? It looked like one. The grayish figure of a man. Two other figures, darker ones, he seemed to detect in the night. All three had stopped. Staring. The gray arm pointed. The figures spread out. Began approaching.

  Mathew drew the Colt from its holster and cocked the hammer back as silently as he could.

  The gray figure stopped. So did the others. Maybe twenty yards from Mathew.

  “Mathew? Is that you?”

  “Shut up!” Mathew heard himself answer, and he knew his sanity rested on some precipice. “You’re dead! You’re . . .”

  “Mathew!”

  No. It wasn’t the voice. The gray figure ran toward him. So did the darker ones at the ghost’s side.

 
But it was no ghost. Mathew dropped the Colt to the ground. He stepped toward the gray man and found himself falling to the ground.

  The gray man caught him, held him up briefly, and lowered him onto that sweet, tall, lush grass.

  “Mathew. By grab, it is you.”

  Mathew’s eyes fluttered. He wet his lips with his tongue. His heart raced, his lungs labored for breath, but he smiled.

  “Laredo, where’s . . . ?” But he was asleep before he could finish the question.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “I need some help getting my son out of this wagon,” Tess called out.

  Around the campfire, none of the bushwhackers—not even Lightning Garth—looked toward the Studebaker.

  “Then,” Tess shouted, “I’ll do it myself.” She climbed through the opening in the canvas onto the driver’s box, moved over, and leaped to the ground. She didn’t even fall, but kept her balance, pushed back to her feet, and walked to the back of the wagon and grub box. Quickly, she found two knives and moved to the fire.

  That’s when the Chickasaws and the man named Creede reached for their weapons.

  That’s when Jess Teveler chuckled.

  “She ain’t comin’ for your scalps, boys.” He nudged Lightning, who did not respond.

  Tess moved between two of the white men Teveler had hired, and they slid away as she knelt and placed the blades of the knives in the fire. “That bullet has to come out,” she said.

  Her eyes locked on Lightning. He tried to match her gaze, but just couldn’t do it.

  Jess Teveler laughed. “I reckon a chuck wagon’s clean as a hospital, ma’am.”

  “You weasel.”

  “Such salty language . . . Well, that’s what I’d expect from a riverboat wench.” He recrossed his legs at the ankles and turned to Lightning. “Fine mother you got raised by, boy.”