Then two more shots sounded, first one and then a second blast a couple of heartbeats later, and Three Horses thought, no, now they have killed everyone.
The shooting from the jail stopped as well. An echoing silence hung over the settlement. A minute went by. Two. Three.
Then Clete and Riggs and the other two ran out of the bank. Clete had a gun in each hand, but the others each carried a pair of canvas sacks. Three Horses knew the bags were full of money.
He frowned as he forced his brain to work. Was payday coming up soon? It was, he decided. The bank usually had plenty of cash on hand for that, since there were a number of large ranches in the area with big crews that collected wages once a month.
Working quickly, without any wasted effort, the outlaws tied the money bags to their saddles and swung up. Clete, who seemed to be the leader, was the last one in the saddle. He pouched his left-hand iron and grabbed the reins, swinging his horse around and jabbing his boot heels in its flanks.
The entire gang galloped toward Three Horses.
He was convinced they were going to shoot him as they raced past. Terror gnawed at his guts.
Then he felt something different and realized it was shame burning inside him because he was afraid. There had been a time when he felt no fear, even when he was facing many enemies. If he was truly a warrior, truly a man, he told himself, he would take that rifle and stand up and fight...
The outlaws veered into the open space between the blocks, making the turn with the skill of expert horsemen, and charged out of town as if they intended to head north along the Caprock. As they did, the steel-shod hooves of their mounts chopped and pounded the body of Deputy Hal Vickery until it looked like a heap of bloody rags instead of something human.
Then they were gone, the swift rataplan of hoofbeats fading into the distance.
Three Horses heard someone weeping. He had to think about it for a while before he realized the wretched sounds came from him. He didn't know if he was crying for Deputy Vickery and everyone else the strangers had killed in Dinsmore on this hot Tuesday morning, or for himself because they had humiliated him and he had done nothing about it except lie there and wallow in his own fear.
It was a bad day for the once-proud Comanche people when their last war chief acted that way, he thought. The latest bad day in a very long line of them.
Chapter 4
G.W. Braddock was a long way from the border. Too far for safety, really. Despite the badge pinned to his faded blue bib-front shirt, he was a wanted man on this side of the Rio Grande.
An outlaw, not a Texas Ranger anymore.
But that didn't mean he could stop enforcing the law. It was the job he had been raised to do, after all, and no amount of political shenanigans designed to cripple the Ranger force could change that.
These days, he had a home of sorts in the Mexican village of Esperanza, just across the border. The priest at the mission there had nursed Braddock back to health from the wounds he had received defending the village from marauders. The little brown-robed padre was the closest thing Braddock had to a friend in this world, he supposed.
From time to time, when word reached the village of trouble in Texas, Braddock pinned on the star-in-a-circle badge carved from a Mexican cinco peso coin, and rode back across the river to the land of his birth, the land he had been raised to serve. The most recent occasion had been several weeks earlier. One of the farmers from the village had ventured downriver to Del Rio to sell some crops on the Texas side, and he had returned to Esperanza with the tale of how a gang of vicious outlaws had robbed the bank there while the farmer was in town.
The leader of the gang, it was said, was a man named Clete Fenner.
Braddock knew the name, even though he had never crossed trails with the desperado. He remembered seeing it in the Doomsday Book, the Ranger "bible" that listed all the known lawbreakers in the state.
It was time that name was crossed out of the book, Braddock had decided. When he heard how wantonly Fenner and his men had shot up Del Rio, that made up his mind for him. That group of mad dogs had to be stopped.
Braddock had picked up the trail without much trouble, but closing in on Fenner's gang was a different story. Somehow, the outlaws managed to stay one or two jumps ahead of him, even when they stopped long enough to hit a bank or rob a stagecoach or steal some fresh horses from a ranch.
They left a trail of bodies behind them as well, and each brutal, senseless death added to Braddock's resolve. He would bring the killers to justice no matter how far he had to follow them.
That was how he wound up several hundred miles north of the border, riding northwest as he approached the Caprock, the line of rugged bluffs that ran in irregular fashion through this region, dividing Central Texas from the windswept plains that stretched all the way from here to New Mexico Territory. Fenner and his men had been spotted heading in this direction, following the wagon road.
Wherever they were bound for, they wouldn't have anything good in mind when they got there.
The trail dropped down into a little depression just this side of the escarpment, then started up. The rocky bluff was dotted with brush, but lots of bare ground showed through as well, and in the midday sun the red clay common to this area was vividly bright. Up on the plains, it would be a different story, Braddock knew. The soil there was sandier, more thickly covered with vegetation lying close to the ground. It was good grazing land, although it became more arid the farther west a man went.
The climb was steep in places as the trail twisted back and forth, but not too steep for a horse. Braddock reached the top and reined in as he saw a settlement lying less than half a mile away. A lot of people were moving around in the single street, he thought as a slight frown creased his forehead. More than seemed normal even though it was the middle of the day and folks might be out and about.
He heeled the dun forward.
Braddock had the broad shoulders and lean hips of a born horseman. A lot of time spent in the saddle as he chased badmen around Texas had allowed the sun to bestow a brown, leathery look to his face. It had faded his hair and mustache to a sandy color. A scar on his forehead disappeared up under his darker brown hat. A saber belonging to a crazed rurale capitan had left the mark there.
Like the hat, his clothes were typical dust-covered range garb. He wore a Colt .45 in a holster on his right hip, and the well-worn wooden stock of a Winchester repeater stuck up from a sheath lashed to his saddle.
The only bright thing about him was the Ranger badge. It glittered in the sun. When people saw it, they recognized the authority it carried and tended not to notice the small, neat bullet hole in the center of it, a souvenir from another encounter with a killer. They assumed that Braddock was still an official lawman, not an outlaw, and it suited his purposes not to correct that assumption.
He had to be careful about other star-packers, though. Often they were more alert and suspicious than civilians.
But not the one Braddock found in this settlement. This one was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
The man was a little below medium height and stocky. His round face had what looked like a permanent sunburn. That went with the blue eyes and the fair hair under a thumbed-back hat. He had a badge pinned to his shirt.
When he spotted Braddock, he stopped hurrying around among the various groups of townspeople in the street and on the plank sidewalk. A look of relief came over his face. He started walking toward Braddock and was almost running by the time he got there.
"You're a Ranger?" the man said. "A Texas Ranger?"
"That's right," Braddock said. In his heart he would always be a Ranger, no matter what the official records in Austin said. Now that he was closer, he could read the words DEPUTY SHERIFF etched on the tin star. "What happened here, Deputy?"
The man took off his hat and scrubbed a pudgy-fingered hand over his flushed face. He heaved a sigh, as if exhaustion were catching up to him.
"Bank r
obbers," he said. "A gang of outlaws hit the bank about an hour ago."
"Anybody hurt?" asked Braddock.
"They killed seven people, including Sheriff Warner and Deputy Vickery," the man replied. "My name's Andy Bell. I'm the only law left here in Dinsmore. At least, I was until you showed up, Ranger...?"
"Braddock," he introduced himself curtly. "Dinsmore is the name of this settlement?"
"Yeah."
"I've heard of it, I reckon. Never been here before, that I recall." Braddock nodded toward the stone courthouse. "It's the county seat, I see."
"Yeah. The biggest town in the county. And the only one with a bank." Deputy Bell made a face. "I reckon that's why those sons o' bitches came here."
"How many of them were there?"
"Eight or ten. I've gotten different answers from people. It's hard to keep count when something like that's going on. They shot Deputy Vickery first." Bell pointed to a blanket-shrouded figure lying in the street between the two blocks of businesses. A couple of booted feet stuck out from under the blanket. "Then some of them opened fire on the sheriff's office and jail while the others shot through the bank's front windows until everybody inside was either dead or wounded. They went in then and cleaned out the cash drawers and the vault and...and finished off the wounded."
"The vault was open?" Braddock asked.
Deputy Bell shrugged and said, "This is a little town. Nothing like this ever happened here. Nobody figured it ever would." Bell paused and swallowed hard. "They didn't have to kill everybody. They could have gone in, held up the place at gunpoint, and gotten the money if that was all they were after. It was like they...they wanted to slaughter innocent people."
"This gang...was the leader named Fenner? Clete Fenner?"
Bell's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.
"Mister, I just couldn't tell you. I don't know if anybody heard any of them call the others by name. I've been askin' questions, but it all happened so fast, and like I told you, nobody ever expected anything like this..."
Braddock held up a hand to stop Bell before the deputy could force himself to go on. Bell might be fine for serving legal papers or guarding prisoners, but when faced with a real catastrophe, he didn't seem like much of a lawman.
But maybe he shouldn't judge people, Braddock told himself. After all, at least Bell had a legal right to wear his badge.
"You say the sheriff was killed?"
"Yes, sir. When he heard the commotion going on outside, he stepped through the door to find out what it was all about and caught a couple of slugs in the chest right away. He fell in the doorway and I was able to get hold of his shirt and drag him the rest of the way back inside without getting shot myself." Bell shook his head. "Wasn't anything I could do for him, though. He was already gone. All I could do was fort up at one of the windows and try to wing some of that bunch, but I don't know if I did or not. They made it pretty hot for me."
"Who else was killed?"
"Like I said, the folks in the bank. Mr. McLemore, the president, and Ben Horton, the teller, along with a couple of customers. And Mr. Denning, who owned the drugstore. He came out and took a shot at 'em, and they gunned him down, just shot him like a dog."
Braddock said, "I'll bet nobody put up a fight after that, did they?"
"No, sir, they did not. And I, for one, don't really blame 'em."
"Didn't say I blamed them. They just would have gotten themselves killed if they had, without doing anybody else any good. From the sound of it, that was the Fenner gang, all right. I've been on their trail for weeks. I could count up the number of people they've killed, I suppose, but it would make me a little sick."
"So you're going after them?" Deputy Bell asked. Braddock heard an almost pathetic eagerness in the man's voice. If a Texas Ranger took over the pursuit, that would relieve Bell of the responsibility for doing so.
"Like I said, I've been on their trail. This just makes me more determined than ever to catch up to them. You haven't put together a posse yet, have you?"
"No, I was just thinking about gettin' around to doing that..."
"Don't," Braddock said.
Bell frowned and said, "I beg your pardon?"
"I'll go after them alone. I don't need a posse."
What Braddock meant but didn't say was that he didn't need a posse slowing him down and cluttering things up. He could move faster alone, and he wouldn't have to worry about a bunch of inexperienced townies getting themselves killed when he finally caught up to Fenner's bunch.
"Are you sure? I mean, it was our town they hit, our bank they robbed. Our people they killed—"
"They've done the same thing across a wide swath of Texas. Don't worry, they'll get what's coming to them."
"But...but it'll be eight or ten to one..."
"Long odds never bothered me," Braddock said.
An outlaw Ranger couldn't expect to live forever.
Chapter 5
The long journey had depleted Braddock's supplies, so he figured it would be a good idea to replenish them here in Dinsmore before setting off after Clete Fenner and his gang. If his pursuit of the outlaws had taught him anything, it was that he couldn't predict how long it was going to take him to corral them.
Several of Dinsmore's citizens came up to him while he was in the general store and offered to come with him. Word had gotten around quickly that there was a Texas Ranger in town who planned to go after the bank robbers.
Braddock refused the offers of assistance as diplomatically as he could, but he knew he was a little curt to some of the men. He couldn't worry about that. Time was a-wasting. With every minute that passed, the bloodthirsty gang would be getting farther away.
So he was in no mood to be delayed when he stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the store with a canvas sack of supplies in his hand and an old-timer waiting there lifted a trembling hand to stop him.
"Ranger," the man said. "I must talk to you."
With the old man blocking his path, Braddock had no choice but to stop. He saw that the man was an Indian and realized he might not be as quite as old as Braddock had thought at first. Or he might be older. With all those wrinkles in the weathered skin, it was hard to tell. The fellow might have been anywhere from fifty to eighty.
"I'm in a hurry—" Braddock began.
"You are going after the man called Clete?"
That question made Braddock frown for a second. He said, "How do you know one of them was named Clete?"
Of course, he had mentioned the name to Deputy Bell, he recalled, and he didn't know who Bell might have told. The old Indian could have heard it that way.
"I heard one of them say it," the old-timer replied. "And Clete called that one Riggs."
Braddock's interest quickened. This leathery old cuss might know something useful after all.
"You heard them talking to each other?"
"They spoke...to me." The old man rested his right hand against his narrow chest with the fingers splayed out.
"What did they say?"
"The one called Riggs, he asked me to do a war dance."
"Why would he do that?" asked Braddock.
"Because I am Three Horses, last war chief of the Comanche."
Braddock managed not to snort in disbelief. The old man was short and wiry. Scrawny might have been a better description. He wore a ragged work shirt and trousers and scuffed shoes that probably had holes in the soles. Shaggy gray hair hung over his eyes and ears. He looked about as far from being a war chief as anybody could get.
"Did you hear them say anything about where they were headed from here?"
Three Horses, if that was really his name, shook his head.
"No. Riggs slapped me, to try to get me to dance, and then the one called Clete, he hit me, too, and knocked me down so Riggs would leave me alone. Clete was angry and told him they had to get on with their business."
Yeah, the business of robbing the bank and murdering half a dozen innocent people, thought Braddoc
k.
"I saw what they did," Three Horses went on. "After Clete knocked me down, I was lying on the sidewalk, there, in front of the drugstore where Mr. Denning was killed. I did not get up."
Braddock grunted and said, "Good thing you didn't. They probably would've shot you, too."
"I looked at the rifle Mr. Denning had. I thought about fighting them. I could have done it." Three Horses looked down at the sidewalk. "But I did nothing."
"Well, that's all right, old-timer. Fighting outlaws isn't your job. It's mine."
Braddock moved to step around him, but once again the old Indian lifted a hand to stop him.
"Among my people, I was always one of the best trackers. On the hunt, I could follow prey across many miles." Three Horses made a sweeping gesture with his hand, like a Wild West Show Indian putting on a show. "No enemy ever escaped me once I had found his trail. I will come with you, Ranger, and help you track down these evil men."
The offer took Braddock by surprise. The Indian looked like he was barely strong enough to walk down the street, let alone trail a gang of vicious killers across the plains.
"I appreciate that," Braddock said, "but you don't need to—"
Three Horses moved closer and said, "They struck me. They knocked me down and then they kicked me, like I was a mongrel dog that had slunk in their way. They did this to me, Three Horses, last war chief of the Comanche." He drew himself up straighter and glared. "They must be punished."
"Yeah, well, I plan to see to it," Braddock told him. "You can count on that. But I don't need any help."
"There are eight of them," Three Horses said with conviction.
"You're sure of that?"
"I counted them. Four attacked the bank, the other four attacked the sheriff's office."
That jibed well enough with what Deputy Bell had told him, Braddock thought. He was willing to accept what Three Horses said about how many outlaws there had been, although it didn't really change things one way or the other.
The Last War Chief (Outlaw Ranger Book 4) Page 2