Her raven-haired daughter stared daggers at Beaumont with her beautiful blue eyes. She bit her full bottom lip to keep from crying.
Whitehead smiled smugly and let his gun hand relax. “Turn around, Morgan, and get out to your horse. Don’t do anything foolish and you might live long enough to go to trial. One false move and I’ll blow that fool head off your shoulders.”
“Oh!” Beaumont smiled, stepping up again to hand the sheriff a folded sheet of paper. “It’s a little thing really—almost slipped my mind. I got a writ here signed by Judge Kelly over in Palo Pinto County. It says you need to turn over one prisoner by the name of Frank Morgan safe and sound to the Texas Rangers.” He pointed at his five-peso badge and whispered. “That means me.”
“What the hell is this?” Whitehead unfolded the document and read it, moving his head from side to side as he took in the meaning. When he finished, he wadded it in a huge fist and threw it back to Beaumont.
“You got a choice to make, Sheriff,” Beaumont said. Now he was the smug one. “You can defy this court order, in which case you can consider yourself under arrest. Your career would be done. Or, you can turn the prisoner over to me and go on with your job—which I assume includes seeing to the business of finding Judge Monfore.”
Whitehead’s deep chest heaved under his black leather vest with undisguised hatred. His eyes blazed when he shot a look at Morgan. “This isn’t over.”
“I never thought it was, Sheriff,” Morgan said. “Never thought it was.”
The sheriff slammed his hat down over his head and glared. “You better not so much as spit on a sidewalk or I’ll have your sorry hide in jail. One false move, Morgan, and you’re mine. Do you hear me?”
Frank gave a smiling nod. It was best to let the man fume a little.
“It would have turned out a damned sight different if you didn’t have your sawed-off Ranger friend around to protect you.” Whitehead didn’t move.
Beaumont gave Morgan back his Peacemaker by the barrel. “You’re right about that, Sheriff,” the Ranger said simply. “If I wasn’t here, you’d be dead by now.”
17
Sheriff Whitehead slinked off and left Morgan and the Ranger alone with the grief-stricken womenfolk.
“My Lord, but you showed some spunk,” Beaumont said, openly admiring Victoria after she filled them in on the events of the previous night.
Dark blood stained the thick green rugs in the living room. The sheriff had been is such a rush to leave, he’d forgotten the two fingers Victoria had liberated from one of her attackers, and they lay like two pieces of German sausage popping out of their casings in a bowl on the piano. Beaumont promised he’d take them away when he left.
Morgan sat beside Mercy on the couch. He was just as impressed as Beaumont with the girl’s bravery and quick thinking under fire. Had the story come from a man, Morgan would have chalked most of it up to bravado and exaggeration, but Victoria told it with a calm indifference that said she really didn’t care what anyone thought of her—she’d done what she’d done, and that was that.
He wondered where all that fortitude came from—certainly not from the girl’s mother. Mercy had always been a quivering bird in the face of adversity. It was lucky for her she’d never had to fight her way through a Comanche raid like some of the women in Parker County. She was a fine woman, but bravery and a calm demeanor in battle had not been added to Mercy’s makeup when the Good Lord was handing out personality traits.
“I’m certain the sheriff already asked this,” Frank said. “But was there anyone in particular who might have a reason to kidnap the judge?”
Mercy sniffled in her hankie and shook her head. She worked to choke back more tears at the mention of her husband.
Victoria spoke up. Her voice was strong and matter-of-fact. “Mr. Morgan, my father is a district court judge for the state of Texas. During his time on the bench he has sent dozens of men to prison or the gallows. I’m sure there are an equal number of people who’d like to see him . . .” The girl looked at her mother and stopped herself. “See him gone.”
“Anybody in particular lately?” Beaumont did not even try to talk to Mercy, but kept his eyes glued to Victoria’s face.
“The whole county’s embroiled in a wicked dispute over the railroad proposition. It’s all coming to a vote a week from yesterday,” Mercy said before blowing her nose. “My husband was . . .” She peered over the top of her hankie at Morgan. “Is very vocal in his opposition to the proposal.”
“And Tommy Crowder is in jail for what he did to the Smoot girl,” Victoria said. “The Crowders are the most vocal people on the other side of the stockyard issue.”
“Miss Monfore,” Tyler said. “I wonder if you would mind showing me where the outlaw kicked the door in. He might have left something behind that would help us track them.”
“Certainly.” The girl didn’t appear to mind all the attention Beaumont threw her way. “We’ll be right back, Mother. Will you be all right?”
Mercy nodded. She dabbed at her pink nose with the hankie.
Victoria rose and pinned Morgan to his chair with a look from her deep blue eyes. It was a look of accusation, gone in a flash, but it still made his insides crawl. Frank told himself it was just his imagination, but he knew better.
“It’s this way, Ranger Beaumont,” she said, with just a touch of her mother’s accent.
When they were alone, Frank turned to Mercy and smiled wearily. She looked much as he remembered her, only thinner, with a few more lines around her eyes. He wondered if most of them came from laughing or crying. He found he could not pull out any words to fit the occasion.
It was Mercy who broke the awkward silence. “You’re looking thin.”
Frank looked down at the rug. Up until now, he’d forgotten why he’d been taken with Mercy so, all those years ago. She had a way of taking care of him, mothering him and seeing after his every need.
“I got in a little scrape with a bandit up in Colorado, then again with the same bandit out in the Panhandle.”
Mercy’s eyes were wide and her lip trembled the way it always had. Memories flooded Frank’s mind.
“From what I hear,” Mercy said, “bandits who have a scrape with Frank Morgan don’t usually have a chance to have another.”
Morgan shrugged and toed at the thick Persian rug. “This one was a particularly nasty kind.”
“I heard about it. I’m so awfully sorry about your poor wife.” Mercy’s drawl dripped with genuine concern.
Frank felt his neck burn. The bitter taste of boiling acid churned up from his stomach. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. Lately, all talk about him seemed to lead straight to Dixie. He needed to change the subject.
He looked around the well-furnished home. It was comfortable enough, but a little dark to suit his way of thinking. The deep mahogany furniture and pine-colored rugs gave the place the shadowed air of a cave.
“You seem to be doing well for yourself. You got a huge house and more nice paintings and furniture than I thought there was in all of Texas. The judge is taking good care of you and I’m glad.”
“He does take care of me,” Mercy said. She looked up at Frank, but when he tried to meet her gaze, her eyes darted back to the safety of her lap. “Isaiah provides a very comfortable life for Victoria and me.” She toyed at the white lace corner of her handkerchief.
Morgan knew it would take some time for her to work up to whatever it was she intended to tell him. Mercy had never been one to let everything out all at once. He sat quietly beside her, close enough to feel her body move when she breathed. If rushed, she was the type who might bottle it up inside forever.
Mercy’s warmth and the smell of her hair brought back a thousand tender memories, memories of another life, before the war. Frank had never felt more awkward. He coughed to give himself time to think.
“Mercy,” he said softly. “I need you to tell me a little more about the judge. That way we can
get to work locating him and take care of the men who took him.”
* * *
Victoria sat at the kitchen table and watched as Beaumont took a closer look at the damage done to the kitchen door. She could see the muscles of his powerful shoulders as they bunched and moved under his thin cotton shirt. Watching him made her mouth feel dry.
“How long have you known Mr. Morgan?” Victoria had always found it easier to relax when she was talking, as if the words helped bleed off some of her tension.
“Met him a few months back,” the Ranger said, still looking at the door. “We were after the same bold killer and he took the time to save my worthless neck. Thought we were going to lose him for a spell there. He’s a tough old bird, but don’t let him fool you. He’s got a soft spot in there somewhere. All those books about him are nothin’ but a pile of horse sh—”
She laughed and Beaumont caught himself.
“Sorry,” he said. “I about forgot my manners. In my line of work, I don’t get to spend much time around too many upstanding women.”
She let him off easy. “There are books about Mr. Morgan?”
“Ten or twenty, I reckon. None of ’em worth the paper they’re printed on if you ask me.”
“You’re not like any Texas Ranger I ever met,” Victoria said. She had to fight the unsteady feeling she was getting from being so near the handsome Ranger.
He seemed particularly interested in a bit of cloth stuck in the splinters of the door frame, and worked to free it with the point of his jackknife.
“You’ve met a lot of Rangers, have you?” He spoke without looking up.
Victoria shrugged. “My fair share, I suppose. My father is a judge after all.”
“Hmm,” Beaumont grunted. “I reckon that’s so. What’s so different? All those other Rangers over five feet tall?”
“You hush.” Victoria chuckled despite herself. “You’re well over five feet tall.”
“Depends on what you mean by well. I’m not quite halfway to six.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you.”
He looked up and grinned. His eyes sparkled in the light that poured in from the open door in front of him. “I can’t say that it does.”
“Me either,” she said. And she meant it.
18
“Keep those heels down, ye blasted no-ridin’ sons of bitches,” Sergeant Percy Cleary yelled at the top of his merciless lungs. A bright sun beat down on top of his bald head as he stood rooted to the middle of the open parade ground. There were twenty-three other men in his column, but Lieutenant Isaiah Monfore knew the tough Irish master of horse was speaking directly to him.
Monfore’s head ached as though he’d been stepped on by a mule. At times like this, the young lieutenant cursed his father for making him join the military. He’d studied law and intended to pursue it as a career, but with a war between the states looming ever closer on the horizon, the elder Monfore was insistent. “Lawyering is all well and good,” he would say. “But if a man were to want himself a judgeship someday, he would need to be a military veteran. Connections are what it’s all about, my boy. . . .”
Isaiah couldn’t understand what a connection to anyone like this Irish loudmouth could get him besides a sore back.
“Column of fours! Left face, at the walk! Hooo!” Sergeant Cleary’s voice had only two volumes: silent and full-bore, red-faced, purpled-veined screaming. “Monfore, fall out,” the sergeant barked. “And don’t ye quit ridin’ just because I call ye over! Shoulders back, lad!”
Monfore kept his heels pressed down in the iron stirrups and his eyes forward as he drew up alongside the ranting teacher.
“Ye ride like ye got a broomstick stuck up your arse, Leftenant.” Sergeant Cleary’s voice was loud enough for the rest of the riders to hear. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“No excuse, Sergeant.” It was the only answer allowed, but it was never accepted.
In truth, Monfore rode just as well as or better than anyone else in his class; it just happened to be his day under the sword of Sergeant Cleary. The focus of wrath from the tough master of horse was something each student dreaded—even officers like Monfore. Cleary was on loan from a prestigious cavalry school in Europe, and thus not constrained by the structures of normal command. Rank indeed had no privilege when it came to his classes in equitation.
“It’s a wonder your nag can still stand with all the bouncin’ nonsense you’re doin’ on his poor back.”
The insults stung, but experience had taught the junior officer that when Cleary called attention to you, he generally let you prove him wrong.
The students had been hard at work on what the sergeant called “correct seat” for two weeks solid. Each day they listened to the scolding rants and personal jibes as they walked, trotted, and cantered in circles and figure eights. Each night they fell asleep on weary backsides with cries of “Heels down!” “Quiet those blasted hands!” or some other barked curse or order ringing in their ears.
Cleary believed that no soldier deserved the privilege of a saddle until he earned it by completing a series of contests, the most difficult of which was a bareback jump over a four-rail fence.
“Column halt! Ho!” Sergeant Cleary bellowed lest the obedient class carry on all the way to the Okalahoma line without another order. “Lieutenant Donaldson, form the men up along Parade Ground B.”
“Aye, Sergeant!” A lanky cavalryman at the rear of the column squeaked out the orders to return the men.
Cleary focused a blazing eye on Monfore. “I’m disinclined to give ye this opportunity, but I feel it’s a waste of the government’s resources to put you through any more drill. Let’s let ye have a go at the fence so we can go ahead and send ye back to the line as a foot where ye belong.”
To call a cavalryman a foot or infantryman was the worst insult of all.
“I’m ready, Sergeant.”
“We’ll see about that.” Cleary glared. “We’ll see about that.”
In Sergeant Cleary’s way of thinking, nothing was ever the horse’s fault. If an animal stumbled, the rider was too heavy-handed. If it shied, the tentative soldier on board was to blame.
Monfore had no one to blame but himself when the tall black gelding refused the jump and sent him flying into the fence. His leg snapped like a piece of kindling, twisting backward at an absurd angle and ending his career in the military forever.
“Well, my boy.” The sergeant looked down at him as he hung upside down between the rails of the fence. “Knew right off you’d never be a horseman. Now you won’t even make a good foot. I’ll get the paperwork started to make you a judge. . . . I have connections, you see. . . .” Cleary smiled.
That was all wrong. Sergeant Cleary never smiled....
Judge Isaiah Monfore woke with the pain in his leg as fierce as the day he broke it. The bouncing horse ride, tied across the saddle like a sack of grain, had ground bone against bone in the old wound and his right knee was swollen to half again its normal size.
His head was on fire. For a moment he thought his neck might be broken. He dismissed the notion when he realized he’d not be able to feel such pain if that were the case.
He was lying on his side, his hands tied in front of him with stout pigging strings like cowboys used to tie up calves for branding. The bonds were tight and his hands had begun to turn a sickening purple. His boots were gone and though he couldn’t see his feet, the fact that he couldn’t feel them either told him they were bound the same way.
A shaft of sunlight cut through the single window on the south side of the stuffy log cabin. As far as Monfore could tell, he was alone. He’d heard men’s voices earlier—the sounds of drinking and a riotous card game. The stench of old whiskey and human sweat filled the room.
The judge prayed that the men hadn’t harmed Victoria. They’d been in his house, but he clung to the hope that she had somehow escaped by running out the back as they came in.
The thought of anythi
ng happening to her made him sick to his stomach. Without him there to protect them, his whole family might be in danger.
He struggled against the ropes, but they wouldn’t budge. Falling back in exhaustion, he looked around the room. He was surprised they’d left him alone—and even more surprised when he saw a broken whiskey bottle on the floor five feet in front of his nose.
The judge strained his ears to listen for anyone approaching. When he heard nothing, he inched his way across the dirt floor like a worm, fighting the pain in his leg and neck as he went. His hands were all but completely numb, and five minutes later, when he’d cut through the ropes around his wrists, he found he’d shredded his own fingers in the process.
Wincing at the hot spasm that shot up his knee, he bent to cut his feet free. That done, he tried to stand, using the edge of a wooden table to aid him.
His head spun and he found his leg would not hold him. He fought back the urge to vomit, and collapsed writhing and clutching his injured knee with blood-soaked hands.
When he caught his breath, Monfore looked at the door to his right. Light shone through the many cracks in the rough slab wood. He half-crawled, half-dragged himself across the dank earthen floor. He hadn’t gotten where he was in life by waiting for conditions that were easy.
He used a stick to push up on the latch above him. It was unlocked. Luckily for Monfore, he’d been kidnapped by brainless imbeciles.
The door groaned open with painful slowness, and creaked loud enough to call in any nearby guards. The judge poked his head over the roughhewn threshold and chanced a look outside. A dozen yellow butterflies danced on a warm breeze in the otherwise-vacant clearing between the cabin and a dense line of trees and vines that looked like it might be a creek bed.
It took him ten minutes to cross the twenty yards to the tree line. Every inch gained came at tremendous cost as he pulled himself forward on tufts of grass and clumps of rock and dirt. The journey left him panting and bilious. He collapsed in a tangle of grapevines and poke salad in the cool shadows.
He watched a brown dog tick shinny up a green stem in front of his nose, felt it drop down on his neck. He was too tired to care.
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