She sighed. “I don’t know. Just like I don’t know what I’m going to do now. But I’m going to be gone from here before the Rangers show up, I can tell you that.”
“Good luck to you, then. And thanks again for your help.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime, Mr. Something Like a Ranger.”
“Maybe,” Braddock said, but he didn’t really believe it.
Chapter 33
Half an hour later, Braddock knocked softly on the door of Elizabeth Jane Caldwell’s room in the Camino Real.
With a bloodstain showing on his side where the bandages had soaked through to his shirt, and his face and hands grimy from powdersmoke, he didn’t look like the usual denizen of the fancy hotel. Because of that, he had snuck in through a service entrance and hoped he wouldn’t encounter anyone on his way up to the room.
He hadn’t. Now he hoped the reporter would answer the door pretty soon, since someone could still come along. He knocked again and said, “Miss Caldwell?”
She opened the door and peered out at him in shock. Her tousled blond hair and the blue robe she had wrapped around her told him she had been in bed.
Well, why wouldn’t she be? It was well after midnight, after all. Most self-respecting people were asleep by now, even journalists.
“Mr. Braddock,” she said. He could tell she tried not to sound shocked.
“I’m going to make an improper suggestion and ask you to invite me in.”
“Wait...you mean...Yes, of course.” She stepped back. “Come in.” She caught sight of the blood on his shirt. “You’re injured!”
“Shot, actually,” he said as he stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. “But it happened more than twenty-four hours ago and it hasn’t killed me yet, so maybe it won’t for a while.”
“I...I didn’t expect you to get hurt.”
“You sent me after people who hold up trains, steal rifles, and wipe out army escorts, not to mention other things just as bad you don’t even know about. What the hell did you expect to happen?” Braddock laughed humorlessly. “Never mind. I get cranky when people try to kill me all the time.” He held out a key he took from his pocket. “This opens the door of a warehouse down by the river.” He told her exactly where to find the place.
She took the key and asked, “What’s in there?”
“A thousand Krag-Jorgensen Springfields, and the body of one of the men responsible for stealing them, along with a few of the varmints who worked for him. I dragged one of them who was still alive outside into the alley before I locked the place up, but he may well have bled to death by now.”
“Good Lord, you’re...you’re cold-blooded.”
“Just trying to get the job done,” Braddock said. “It’s possible you and I are the only ones still alive who know the rifles are there...Well, one other person,” he added, thinking of Elise, “but I don’t reckon you have to worry about that. You’ve got contacts at Fort Bliss, you said. I know it’s the middle of the night, but you’d better get dressed, hire a buggy, and get out there as quick as you can so you can tell them where to find the guns.”
“Of course. You can stay here. I’ll summon a doctor for your wounds—”
“Not hardly,” Braddock said. “Once this is all over, I’ll write you a letter and explain everything, but for now, just get those Krags back where they belong.”
He turned toward the door, but she caught his sleeve and stopped him.
“I still owe you—”
“Send whatever you think is fair to the mission in Esperanza, where you sent that letter to me. The padre there will put it to good use if I don’t get back to claim it. Hell, even if I do, I’ll probably give most of it to him anyway.”
“Because you don’t really work for money, do you?” she asked, her blue eyes peering up at him. “You do what you do—”
“Because it’s my job,” Braddock said harshly, “and it’s not over yet.”
Chapter 34
Braddock didn’t know how the battle at Casa de Palmer had turned out, but he didn’t give in to his curiosity and steered clear of the saloon instead. After a small-scale war like that, the El Paso police had probably swarmed the place, and he was still a wanted man, after all.
Instead he reclaimed his dun from the livery stable, annoying a sleepy hostler. Some of his gear remained at the boarding house where he had barely stayed, but nothing he couldn’t live without. This time he rode across the Rio Grande on the bridge he had fallen from a night and a day and most of another night earlier, then headed for Hernandez’s place.
Dawn wasn’t far off by the time he got there. Establishments like this never really closed, but usually by this time of the morning they had settled down to a pretty drowsy state. Braddock counted on that to help him get what he had come here for.
He left the dun by the stable behind the building and walked toward the rear door. Steel whispered against leather as he drew his gun. The Colt had a full cylinder, and Braddock would use every one of the bullets if he had to.
He was lightheaded again and felt somehow outside of himself. Exhaustion, strain, and loss of blood would do that to a fella, he supposed. But as he had told Elizabeth Jane Caldwell, he hadn’t finished the job.
By now, the young woman might have notified the army about the location of the stolen rifles. Braddock knew the warehouse’s thick walls had muffled the shots inside it. Anyway, nobody paid much attention to gunshots in that part of town. Those Krags would sit there undisturbed until the proper authorities came for them.
Nobody was going to help Carmen, though, and he had promised the women at the mission he would get her out of here.
Not only that, but Hernandez was still alive, and he was partially responsible for the deadly raid on Santa Rosalia. He had to pay for that.
He would settle up with Martin Larrizo some other time, Braddock told himself. Hell, one man couldn’t take on the whole world at the same time, now could he?
The back door of Hernandez’s place was locked.
Braddock muttered a curse and fished out his knife. After a few minutes of working the blade at the lock and the jamb, he put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It popped open. He stepped inside and found himself inside a pitch-black room.
After pushing the door up behind him, he fished a lucifer from his pocket and snapped it to life with his thumbnail, squinting against the sudden glare. He was in some sort of storeroom, with crates of empty bottles sitting around. A door on the other side of the room let out into a short hall that ran toward the front of the building.
Close by at Braddock’s right hand, stairs rose to the second floor. They would lead just about to where Hernandez’s living quarters were located, Braddock recalled.
He went up, staying close to the wall so the steps wouldn’t creak as much. When he got to the top, he saw a door he remembered and knew it led into Hernandez’s rooms. Braddock closed his hand around the knob and twisted it silently.
He stepped inside quickly, gun up and ready. A lamp on a side table was turned down low, but it cast enough light for him to see Hernandez sprawled in an armchair, legs outstretched, a glass of what was probably tequila in his right hand. He was bare from the waist up and his left arm was wrapped in bandages.
Hernandez stared stupidly at the intruder. Braddock realized the man was drunk. He could have put a bullet in Hernandez right then and there and ended his evil, but that would rouse the rest of the place and wouldn’t help Carmen.
“You!” Hernandez said. “Palmer’s man! Have you come to betray me, too?”
“Palmer’s dead,” Braddock said flatly. “I’m nobody’s man and never have been. As for why I’m here, I’m taking Carmen.”
Hernandez frowned and looked confused for a moment before his expression cleared.
“The little whore from Santa Rosalia?” he said. “She’s why you risked your life coming here?”
“That’s one reason.”
Hernandez must have
figured out what Braddock meant. His face clouded. Then, even though he didn’t appear to have any weapons, he suddenly flung the glass of tequila at Braddock and launched himself after it in a desperate dive.
The fiery liquor hit Braddock in the face and stung his eyes. He chopped at Hernandez’s head with the gun but couldn’t stop the man from ramming into him. They both went down with a crash that shook the floor underneath them and jolted the gun out of Braddock’s hand.
He swung a fist at Hernandez’s head and connected with a glancing blow. Hernandez seemed to have sobered up in a hurry, though, because he shook it off and slammed punches of his own at Braddock. Braddock tried to fend them off, but his head jerked from side to side under the impacts. He knew if Hernandez hit him many more times, he would pass out.
His hands shot up and grabbed Hernandez by the throat. Braddock mustered all the strength he could and rolled over, putting Hernandez underneath him. He hung on for dear life as he dug his thumbs into the man’s neck.
Hernandez bucked and thrashed and flailed at him, but Braddock ignored it. He knew if he let go, he was a dead man, so he bore down harder. Hernandez’s eyes grew wide and began to bulge out until it seemed they were about to burst from their sockets. His handsome face was ugly now as it turned a deep shade of purple.
Hernandez bucked a couple more times, then a sharp stink reached Braddock’s nose. Hernandez’s bowels had emptied as death claimed him. The wide, staring eyes began to turn glassy.
Braddock let go. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath.
Something crashed into his injured side, filling him with agony until it seemed he would explode. He rolled over, looked up, and through pain-blurred eyes saw a tall, burly man with a heavy black mustache looming over him, ready to kick him again. The man wore only the bottom half of a pair of long underwear, but he looked powerful enough to tear Braddock apart with his bare hands, especially considering the shape the outlaw Ranger was in at the moment.
“You’ve killed Paco,” the man rumbled. Braddock realized he meant Hernandez. “No matter. The revolution will go on, as soon as I find those damned rifle—”
The man stopped short and gasped. He stumbled a step forward, twisted and tried to reach behind him. He couldn’t reach whatever he tried to grab. Slowly, he kept twisting around until Braddock saw the handle of what must have been a long, heavy knife protruding from his back.
Then, with a gurgling moan, the man collapsed and died. With him out of the way, Braddock saw Carmen standing there, nude, hair disheveled, bruises and scratches on her face.
“They both took out their anger on me,” she said in a voice that trembled slightly. “First Hernandez, then Larrizo. But now they are dead, and I live.”
Braddock pushed himself up on an elbow and looked at the man Carmen had stabbed. “That’s...Martin Larrizo?”
“Sí. The revolution...is over.”
Until some other would-be dictator tried to seize power for himself, Braddock thought, even if it meant the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
He wanted to lie back and rest, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he struggled to climb to his feet and told Carmen, “Get dressed. I’ve come to take you out of here. To take you home.”
“But you are hurt!”
“I’ll make it,” he told her. “I’ll see that you’re safe.”
“After all that has happened...how can I ever be safe again?”
Braddock didn’t have an answer for that. Time would heal Carmen, or it wouldn’t. He had done all he could.
At least, he would have once he had delivered her and the other women back to Santa Rosalia.
“We’ve got to go,” he said. “I don’t know if anybody else heard that commotion, but we can’t risk it.”
She swallowed and nodded. “You are sure you can make it?”
Braddock wasn’t sure of anything, but he put a smile on his face and said, “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 35
Braddock moved one of the knights on the chessboard and said, “Check.”
The padre moved his king out of danger for the moment. Braddock slid a rook across the board to close in on his royal prey, and his opponent angled a bishop into position and said, “I believe that is checkmate, my friend.”
Braddock looked at the board for a couple of seconds, then said, “Huh. You suckered me. I didn’t see that coming.”
“You are off your game. But don’t worry. You’re still recovering. You will be your old self again in no time.”
Braddock wasn’t sure about that. Two weeks had passed since that hellacious couple of days in El Paso and Juarez. He had lost weight, making him more whip-like lean than ever, and he hadn’t regained his full strength yet. Luckily, things had been peaceful in Esperanza.
He wondered how things were in Santa Rosalia, as the people there tried to recover from the damage wreaked on their lives by Palmer, Hernandez, and Larrizo. At least he had seen all the women safely home as he had promised, including Carmen, before heading back to Esperanza and practically collapsing on the padre’s doorstep.
“Another game?” the priest asked.
Braddock shook his head and said, “Not now. I reckon I’ve had all the beating I can take for one day.”
The padre laughed and started to put away the board and the pieces. Braddock stood up and went to the door of his little house, which stood open to let in the breeze.
He frowned as he looked across the arid landscape and saw a rooster tail of dust rising from it. As he watched, the dust moved closer to the village.
“Somebody coming,” he said.
“A harmless traveler, no doubt,” the padre said, but a worried frown creased his forehead despite the words.
“We don’t get many of those around here.” Braddock took a Winchester down from a couple of pegs set into the adobe wall. He wasn’t wearing a Colt, but he figured the rifle would do in case of trouble.
The padre sighed and said, “If it is someone else who wants you to go off tilting at windmills again, I wish you would tell them no, G.W. You are in no shape to be risking your life again so soon.” He stood. “Let me go out and meet them, see what they want.”
“No. You go on back home while you can, Padre.”
The priest still looked worried, but he tucked the chessboard and the bag with the pieces under his arm and hurried out. Braddock stood in the jacal’s doorway, leaning against the jamb, and watched the rooster tail come closer.
The dark speck at the bottom of it resolved itself into a buggy being pulled by a couple of horses. At least it wasn’t an army of gunmen come to kill him and wipe out the village, he thought.
In fact, there seemed to be only one person in the buggy, and as the vehicle rolled closer, Braddock thought he caught a glint of sunlight shining on fair hair.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth Jane Caldwell pulled the buggy team to a stop in front of the jacal and waved a gloved hand in front of her face to swipe some of the dust away.
“You already sent the money you owed me,” Braddock said, “and I sent you that letter telling you everything that happened, like I promised. What are you doing here, Miss Caldwell? How’d you even find the place?”
“I’m a journalist,” she told him. “I have ways of finding things out. And that’s not a very friendly greeting, Mr. Braddock.”
“Most of the time, I’m not a very friendly man.”
She climbed down from the buggy, brushed her hands off against each other, and said, “Well, despite that, I began to feel guilty and decided to come and check on you. I’m the one who got you into that dreadful mess. In a way, it’s my fault you were injured so badly.”
Braddock shook his head. “Not really. I think the fellas who actually tried to kill me deserve more of the blame.”
She came closer and looked up at him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right. Some days are better than others. Still got a ways to go, I reckon—”
“Am
igo, is there a problem?”
The question made Braddock look over to where the padre stood with several of the men of the village beside him. A couple of them carried machetes, and one had an old blunderbuss in his hands.
Elizabeth glanced nervously at them. “You have friends here,” she said.
“They look out for me,” Braddock said. He chuckled and told the priest, “It’s fine, Padre. Señorita Caldwell didn’t come here to kill me.” He looked at her again. “Although I’m still not sure why you are here.”
“I’ve come to take care of you while you recuperate. I told you, I’m a good journalist, but in a pinch I’m a damned fine nurse, too.”
“You know,” Braddock said as he smiled and moved aside to let her come in, “I’ll bet you are.”
About the Author
James Reasoner has been a professional writer for nearly forty years. In that time, he has authored several hundred novels and short stories in numerous genres. Writing under his own name and various pseudonyms, his novels have garnered praise from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as appearing on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. He lives in a small town in Texas with his wife, award-winning fellow author Livia J. Washburn. His blog can be found at http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com .
More great Westerns by James Reasoner!
OUTLAW RANGER
G.W. Braddock was raised to be a Texas Ranger and never wanted anything else. But when he's stripped of his badge through no fault of his own and a corrupt system turns the vicious killer Tull Coleman loose on the people of the Lone Star State, Braddock has to decide if he's going to follow the law—or carry out the job he was born to do, even if it means becoming an outlaw himself!
OUTLAW RANGER #2: HANGMAN'S KNOT
Hell came to Santa Angelina on a beautiful morning, as the Texas settlement was practically wiped out by vicious outlaws led by the bloodthirsty lunatic Henry Pollard. Now Pollard is in jail in Alpine, waiting on his trial and an all but certain date with the hangman. The only real question is whether an outraged lynch mob will string him up first. Not everyone wants to see Pollard dance at the end of a rope, however. His gang of hired killers would like to set him free, and so would his older brother, a wealthy cattleman who has always protected Pollard from the consequences of his savagery. Riding into the middle of this three-cornered war is the Outlaw Ranger, G.W. Braddock, who may not have a right anymore to wear the bullet-holed star-in-a-circle badge pinned to his shirt, but whose devotion to the law means he'll risk his life to see that justice is done!
Gun Devils of the Rio Grande (Outlaw Ranger Book 5) Page 11