Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

by Johnstone, William W.

  The town of Haganville provided further pleasure for the Kerrigans.

  There were stores and markets aplenty, and dealers in guns and horses and domestic goods.

  In this town Trace could roam openly and freely, with none of the hiding that had become part of his later Nashville days.

  It was walking with their mother on one of the boardwalks of Haganville that Quinn and Trace approached their mother about the mystery surrounding Cornelius Hagan.

  “Ma, me and Trace are old enough to remember pa’s face quite well. Mr. Hagan looks very like him, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do, very striking.”

  Trace said, “So we’re telling you nothing you don’t already know. In fact you were the first to notice it. But there are things we think you know that we don’t.”

  “You mean the reason for the resemblance?” Kate said.

  She was not surprised by the question and had been anticipating it sooner even than it had come.

  “There is a reason,” she said. “But I have to leave you disappointed. I’m not free to tell it to you. In time I think you will know, probably from Mr. Hagan himself. Until then, I can only leave you in frustration, and I’m sorry. I can tell you only that the resemblance you see is real, and has a reason. I can’t yet tell you what that reason is, since Mr. Hagen wishes to keep it secret for the moment.”

  Kate smiled. “Forgive me, boys. I only wish I could ease your curiosity right away.”

  “But Ma . . .”

  “Leave it be, Quinn,” Trace said. “When she is free to do so, Ma will tell us. Or maybe Mr. Hagan will.”

  And so the matter was dropped and allowed to lie dormant.

  Trace, with the advantage of a year’s maturity over Quinn, was able to accept the lack of understanding with less frustration than his little brother.

  Quinn kept asking the same questions for a while, but eventually lost himself in the plans for their impending departure.

  The deceased driver was replaced, horses and saddles obtained for the travelers, and the wagons outfitted.

  Brock Davis was allowed to hire two Texas gun hands to accompany them for added security.

  Concern over the family furnishings that had to be abandoned when the family fled Nashville were allayed by Hagan’s assurances that he would have replacement items, and better, shipped to them, and that indeed he’d already sent out a wagonload of tables, chairs, beds, and the like to the cabin under construction near the head of the Brazos River.

  Contrary to expectations, given Hagan’s obvious love of the flamboyant, the actual departure of the two-wagon train and its band of travelers happened without much ceremony.

  Hagan saw them off, improvising a brief speech intended to inspire them while reminding them they had his support should difficulties requiring his intervention arise.

  Good-byes were said, Quinn and Trace vainly hoped that their questions about Hagan would be given answers, and Ivy bawled at having to turn her back on the luxuries of the mansion.

  Oxen plodded, wheels turned, hooves tramped dirt, and wagons rolled southward toward the Nations.

  The Kerrigan clan, Kate in the lead with her faithful Henry, headed for Texas.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The renegade called himself Rain Horse. His father, hung by Texas Rangers for a rapist and murderer, had been called Rains On His Horses, and his son had adapted the name and took it for his own.

  He greatly venerated his dead pa.

  Rain Horse, a murderous brute who stood barely five foot tall, was the terror of the Nations.

  He cut a bloody swath across the territory, killing, torturing, punishing without mercy those whites he found intruding onto what he considered Indian lands.

  He also raided into Texas and Kansas to plunder, rape, and kill.

  To the Rangers he was a marked man, but to his followers he was a hero, a human manifestation of Ocasta, the dark Cherokee god who wears a stone coat and stalks the earth causing endless turmoil.

  Rain Horse was small and frail, with coal black eyes and the face of a vicious ape, and he lived life on his own terms.

  He believed that, for each life he took his own vitality increased and strengthened. And the younger the slain, the greater the stolen life force for Rain Horse to enjoy.

  Among his band were two white/Cherokee breeds.

  The bald one was known only as Steel for his love of the machete as a weapon, the other a hulking savage who hailed from Illinois and was named Bill Bodine. Those two were the worst of the worst, as cruel, violent, and lustful as Rain Horse himself, and men even the wild Cherokee renegades who rode for him stepped around.

  Rain Horse and his riders sat their ponies on the rim of a high limestone and shale ridge and stared down at the broad and slightly rolling flat.

  A train of four wagons crawled along through knee-high grass, only four men armed with lever rifles to guard it.

  Rain Horse glared at the moving vehicles and the people in and around the wagons.

  “Looks promising to me,” Bodine said to his leader. “We can have them guards down and scalped afore they know what hit them.”

  “There are maidens among them,” Rain Horse said. “I am of a humor for maidens.”

  “Then I say we go get them,” Bodine said.

  “You forget that what you say does not matter, Bodine. It is Rain Horse who decides.”

  “Well, what do you say, boss?”

  “We will bide our time,” Rain Horse said.

  It had not taken long for the journey to grow laborious.

  Ivy was so annoyed by the incessant creaking of a wheel and the heavy plod of the oxen that she squeezed her hands hard over her ears and squinted her eyes closed, too, as if by blocking vision she could also eliminate noise.

  But the squeaking went on.

  Finally one of the hired Texas guns, noticing Ivy’s distress, produced from his saddlebags a Jew’s harp and set out to cover the squeaking sound with his twanging music. The harp, though, was worse than the wheel, and Ivy was more punished than ever.

  Trace, riding beside Kate, flicked his eyes toward Ivy for a moment and said, “I wonder sometimes if she’ll ever grow up to be nice, or just stay this ornery her whole life.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Kate said. “Give her time.”

  “I suppose you are right, Ma. But I could more easily listen to ten wheels squeaking than to hear Ivy wail about it.”

  “Patience, Trace. Patience is a cardinal virtue.”

  They passed into the Indian Nations with no discernible change in the landscape, a vast, ocean of grass that stretched as far as a tall man on a tall horse could see.

  But day-by-day, Brock Davis’s demeanor grew more somber and tense.

  He constantly scanned the terrain around them, particularly the horizon, and conferred often with his hired guns, as stone-faced and wary as he was.

  Kate noticed, and finally said, “Brock, are we riding into trouble?”

  He was clearly hesitant to answer.

  Then finally: “It may be so. I have no wish to stir fear, Mrs. Kerrigan, but this is dangerous territory. There are many bandits and renegades here, white men, Mexicans, and Indians.”

  He swallowed hard and abruptly stopped speaking.

  “I have been scared before,” Kate said. “It won’t be a new experience.”

  “Well, Ma’am, the worst of them is a man who calls himself Rain Horse. What we don’t want is to meet up with him or any of his posse. We have females with us. You understand?”

  “I understand,” Kate said. “I understand very well.”

  A chill settled on her and her eyes turned to her girls.

  “I think we should have the girls ride inside one of the wagons while we’re in the Nations. Keep them out of sight.”

  “Not a bad idea, Ma’am. In fact I reckon a very good one. Easier to guard them that way.”

  The girls were not eager to comply, so without specifics, Kate told them th
ere was particular danger to females from some of the criminals who haunted the Indian Nations.

  Shannon had no understanding of what her mother meant, but Ivy grasped enough to stop protesting and hide away beneath the canvas.

  They moved on without incident, though Davis gave Kate a battered man’s hat and she tucked her flaming hair under it.

  With her womanly shape the effort did little to disguise that she was a woman. But it could work at a distance, or so she hoped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The next day, after a tense night camped in the open, two different but equally alarming signs of trouble presented themselves to the travelers.

  The first was a subtle, then blatant, shift in the weather.

  The sky took on an odd, yellowish tint and the wind grew erratic, gusting then dropping again, and the air had a charged, electric feel and smelled of ozone, as though a lightning storm was close.

  “We may be in for a bad time,” Brock Davis told Kate and Trace. “This is prime weather for tornadoes.”

  “I’ve never seen a tornado,” Kate said. “What would we do if one appears?”

  Davis thought for a moment, his face troubled.

  “Abandon the wagons, look for gullies or low spots to lie in, or hide ourselves among rocks if there are any to be had. Turn the oxen and horses free so they have a chance to watch out for themselves. Best thing is to hope we don’t run into one in the first place.”

  He glanced at the sky.

  “Damn it, seems like the whole world is turning yellow. This could go bad on us, or it could just blow over and break up.”

  Moving along, opting not to tell the younger children and give them a fright perhaps unnecessary, they kept their eyes on the sky and horizon, and constantly gauged the way the wind felt against their skin.

  It was then that Kate saw something that, at a glance, looked like it might be a distant funnel cloud. A closer look, and a conference with Davis, revealed it was instead a line of rising smoke.

  “What might it be from?” Kate asked.

  “I hate to say what I fear it could be,” Brock replied. “But I’m obliged to take the gun hands and go for a look-see.”

  “I guess I should I keep the Henry close, huh?” Kate said.

  “You should keep it real close. Trace is here and he’s capable. If you see trouble, fire three fast shots in the air. We’ll hear and ride back fast.”

  After Davis and the Texans rode out, the wind rose again and a strange and ominous tingling charged the atmosphere.

  The canvas of the wagons began to flap crazily in the rising wind with the sound of damp battle flags.

  Kate moved closer to the wagon the girls were riding in.

  Quinn and Trace circled around to join her, concerned expressions on their faces.

  “We’re about to have a storm,” Quinn said. “And look how those clouds are moving.”

  To the west, a dark cloud bank appeared to be playing shape games, swirling and moving strangely, compressing at places and thinning in others.

  The now roaring wind, coming, it seemed from everywhere, drove stinging grit into Kate’s face and tugged at her hat.

  “Get the girls out of the wagon, Trace,” she yelled above the relentless racket. “We’ll put ourselves among rocks over there by the ridge. I think we may be in for a tornado and a big one, if I’m any judge.”

  “Where are Brock Davis and the Texans?” Trace said, shouting above the noise.

  “They went to investigate some smoke rising to the southwest. I think he fears a prairie fire or bandits or both.”

  In the few moments it took the girls to clamber out of the wagon, the weather had intensified and worsened. Roiling dark clouds covered much of the sky, and there was movement there, disturbance.

  The tornado was the bastard child of a thunderstorm that had formed a hundred miles to the west. They could not know that, driven by a wind that reached almost two hundred and fifty miles an hour, its destructive path was a mile wide and forty long.

  The twister’s name was death . . . but Kate was still unaware.

  “Brock said we should free the animals so they can fend for themselves,” she said. “But we won’t free them yet, not until we know—”

  “Look there!” Quinn cried out, pointing.

  A black, V-shaped column reached down from the clouds like an obsidian arrowhead.

  They watched as the inky vortex slithered across the land like a rattlesnake waiting to strike, dancing first toward the wagons and then away.

  “Where’s it going?” Quinn yelled. “I can’t tell where it’s going.”

  The storm’s track was impossible to anticipate, but it was moving fast and Kate had to take action.

  “All of you, run for the rocks,” Kate said.

  Quinn looked hesitant.

  “Now!” Kate screamed.

  She and Trace moved to free the oxen from the wagons, but the funnel cloud veered toward them and then there was no time.

  The oxen, terrified, stampeded and dragged the wagons with them.

  Now the tornado, as fickle as a teenager at her first ball, made a fortunate turn away from them and roared across the flat with the sound of a thousand runaway locomotives.

  A storm’s hoarse bellow was a primitive, savage thing, as though the earth itself spewed its hatred.

  Kate and the others cowered among the tumbled limestone rocks, but the vindictive wind found them and tore at hair, skin, and clothing.

  Kate crawled close to Shannon and protected her with her own body. The child, scared stiff, clutched her ragdoll close and whimpered.

  Kate reached out and closed her hand around Shannon’s ankle, holding fast. “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Kate said, but her voice was carried away in the tornado’s roar.

  Later Quinn said that the funnel cloud came so close he saw a line of telegraph poles cartwheel past, then a tin rooster wind vane, and finally a red velvet sofa.

  What happened next was so fast, and so horrible, that Kate never was able to fully put it together afterward.

  Holding tight to Shannon’s waist while keeping her own face as low and shielded against flying grit as possible, she felt her body grabbed by the wind and lifted six inches off the ground.

  Then Shannon flailed her arm, her fingers grasping, as something blue flew from her hands and into the sky. The ruthless, roaring wind had taken her doll.

  “Katie!” Shannon yelled.

  She pushed against Kate, ready to run out into the open to save her doll.

  Kate gripped the child even tighter. Her hat blew off and her red hair tossed around like flames from a log fire.

  Shannon continued to yell, but exactly what she said Kate could not tell.

  And then in a moment of nature’s barbarity, Shannon’s body catapulted into the air, jerked upward by a physical force stronger than any Kate had ever fought against.

  She heard Shannon shriek and saw her youngest child, arms and legs spread wide, tumble through the air like a withered leaf in a fall storm.

  Shannon’s cries faded away into silence as she caught up by the whirlwind and dragged inside the spinning column.

  Kate tried to get up and go after her, but the wind was too strong.

  She was thrown to the ground, pummeled unmercifully when she was down, and was forced to crawl back into the rocks, her teeth bared as the wind stole her breath.

  Kate sank down into a space between the rocks and pushed her face into the dirt. From somewhere Trace yelled something, words she didn’t understand. Ivy cried out and then fell silent.

  The tornado, satisfied at the destruction it had wrought, spun its way to the east. Overhead the clouds thinned and the sky cleared and was blue again.

  The roar of the wind gave way to an ominous calm. Crickets again made their small music in the warm grass.

  Kate rose, pushed her hair out of her face, and her eyes reached out across the plain. Nothing moved.

  Ivy came to her, trembling.
“Mother, did Shannon. . .”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “I saw the storm take her and then I saw no more.”

  Ivy’s face was ashen.

  “Oh God, Ma, is she . . .”

  “I told you, I don’t know,” Kate said.

  Then aware how sharp she’d sounded, she said, “We can hope for a miracle.”

  Trace clambered onto the tallest rock and studied the landscape.

  “Ma, riders coming in.”

  Kate climbed up beside him and followed his pointing finger.

  Moving toward them slowly was a man on horseback, a bundle in his arms.

  Beside him rode one of the Texas guns. He led a horse that carried a man draped over the saddle.

  Sunlight glinted on spurs and Kate realized that the dead man was the other guard.

  As the riders drew closer, Trace yelled, “It’s Brock Davis and I think he’s carrying Shannon.”

  Kate scrambled down from the rocks so fast she fell. She picked herself up and, her skirts flying, ran toward the slowly advancing riders.

  When Kate was close enough to shout, she said, “Is it Shannon?”

  “It surely is, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Davis said.

  The little girl stirred, then squealed and held out her arms to Kate.

  “Ma,” Shannon said. “I’ve come home.”

  Davis drew rein and Kate took her daughter in her arms and hugged her close, covering her dirty little face with kisses.

  “We found her, on the way back, Ma’am,” Davis said. “She lay on the ground where the tornado dropped her as gentle as a feather on a snowbank, almost like it had laid her down to rest.”

  “The storm took her. Picked her up, and up, and . . .”

  “Tornadoes are notional, Mrs. Kerrigan. They do unexpected things, blow down one house, spare another.”

  “God was looking out for her,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, I reckon so, though He’s mighty notional His ownself,” Davis said.

  Only then, as Shannon clung to her, did Kate approach the dead man.

  She looked up at the surviving Texan, a taciturn man with a long, hound dog face, and said, “What happened, Ben?”