Farmer Across the Red

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9904389-9-1
Verlag: Timber Creek Production, LLC
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 149 Seiten

Bass Reeves and the US Marshals Service team with the Texas Rangers to combat rustlers along the Red River. How good can it get?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Farmer, Ken

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE

COOKE COUNTY, TEXAS
DELAWARE BEND

Texas Ranger Bodie Hickman instinctively ducked when he saw a puff of rifle smoke from across the Red River. Approximately one second later he heard the crack of a bullet just as it clipped the top of his gray center-creased Stetson and took it from his head—followed immediately by the boom of a big gun.

The big rawboned redhead dove from the back of his line-back dun mustang, Lakota Moon, rolled to a crouch, still holding on to the reins and tapped the horse’s left front foot in the signal to lay down. Moon dropped to his knees and rolled over on his right side.

“Git down, Billy!” he shouted at the young posseman behind him as he reached over and jerked his brand-new ‘86 Winchester lever action rifle from its boot. The warning came too late as the second booming report of the distant big gun was followed by the sickening twack of the round striking flesh.

Bodie turned just in time to see a cloud of red explode from Billy Malena’s chest as the young man flipped backwards out of his saddle and fell to the ground. His panicked horse lunged up the side of the draw and into the woods on the south.

The two lawmen had been riding single file—tracking some rustlers moving a small herd of horses—down a shallow three foot deep wet-weather wash that headed west toward an area known as the breaks along the Red River, still some three hundred yards away.

The heavily wooded section close to the wide, but usually slow moving border river between Texas and the Indian Nations, had become a sanctuary for the lawless, allowing the malefactors to head into the Chickasaw Nation if the Texas Rangers got too hot behind them.

The sweeping six square miles of the bubble-like Horseshoe Bend on the west side of the much larger Delaware Bend of the Red was ten miles south east of Marietta, IT and twenty miles northeast—as the crow flies—from Gainesville, Texas. It had been a past haven to the likes of the guerrilla chieftains of the south, Charles Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, as well as the James gang and now was a crossing point for stolen cattle and horses bound for the Nations—especially in early summer when the water level was going down.

“Billy!” Bodie shouted in vain at the motionless body of his young friend and brand new posseman four yards behind him in the gully. Another boom sounded and a slug slapped the sandy bank just above his head a half-second later. “Son of a bitch!”

He raised his head just enough to see over the edge of the gully and could make out a small cloud of gunsmoke coming from atop a forty foot bluff just across the river. “Damnation! Purtnear a quarter mile…Gotta be .45-70…Got a shooter up there, Moon. Stay down…That bastard don’t know I got a little surprise for him.”

He belly-crawled forward—his rifle cradled across his arms—in the wash as quickly as he could about fifteen feet to a low scrub bush over the northern lip of the bank. Bodie adjusted his Lyman tang sight up to where he saw the four hundred yard range notch was marked and took a deep breath. He levered in a long .45-90 round and brought the rifle snugly to his shoulder. He rose up slightly, found the desired sight picture on the slowly dispersing cloud of smoke, concentrated on the front sight, exhaled half his air and fired.

The big round—originally created for taking buffalo at long distance—bucked hard, but he paid it scant heed as he quickly cranked another into the chamber and shot again. Both rounds were discharged in less than a second with the distinctive roar of the big bore echoing up and down the Red River valley. “Bet you weren’t expectin’ that, were you, asshole?” Not like I had a chance of hittin’ anything, but maybe I scared ‘em off.

The cloud of his own gunsmoke gradually drifted away, but not before he had smelled the pungent aroma of burnt sulfur from the black powder load. Bodie drew a pair of the cigar-sized cartridges out of his custom-made gun belt and shoved them past the loading gate as he contemplated his next move.

He waited for return fire for a good five minutes—nothing. White man…Injun would have the patience to wait me out. Just to be safe, he crawled back to his horse. “Git up, Moon.”

The big mustang got to his front feet, followed quickly by his back—he shook, as horses will do after getting up from the ground. The young ranger led him over to the woods on the side near Billy’s mount, ground-tied him so he could graze a bit and solemnly walked back to his friend’s body.

His hat lay near Malena. He picked it up, slapped the dirt off on his thigh and stuck his index finger through the hole in the top of the crown. “Yep, .45.” He jammed the Stetson firmly back on his head and knelt down beside Billy and caressed the side of his face.

“God, I’m sorry, boy…Yer first day, too…What in the world am I gonna tell yer mama?” He slipped his arms under the still warm body, easily lifted the wiry teenager and carried him over to the horses.

DEXTER, TEXAS

Bodie slowly walked Moon—leading Billy’s blood bay with the young man draped across the saddle—down the dirt main street of the dying little north Texas town.

At one time, Dexter had been larger than Gainesville, the county seat, until the highly anticipated Santa Fe Railroad went south through Woodbine, instead of Dexter, to Gainesville.

He passed by Ed Stein’s Sugar Hill combination store and saloon with two cowboys leaning against the porch posts smoking roll-your-owns. One—a reed-thin man in his twenties—touched the brim of his dark Montana pinch hat, gave the young ranger a surreptitious grin and blew a cloud of smoke in his direction.

The two working cowboys sported batwing chaps—as opposed to the shotgun style preferred in Montana and Wyoming—because they were cooler and gave greater freedom of the lower leg when mounting—each wore store-bought white boiled cotton work shirts without vests. The thin one had a Colt Peacemaker strapped to his hips and his shorter, heavier friend sported a Smith & Wesson Schofield in a cross-draw.

Bodie noticed the two out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t acknowledge or even look their way. He was able, however to see that both the horses tied to the hitching rail in front of the saloon were lathered. Hmm, interesting. He knew who they were and would bet money they were involved in the rustling ring that was plaguing north Texas and the Indian Nations across the Red. He just couldn’t prove it—yet.

Every step Lakota Moon took increased his dread, not of the two ne’er-do-wells he just rode past, but of having to tell Billy Malena’s mother what happened. Damn, I’d rather git whipped with a wet rope…but I ain’t got no choice.

He drew rein in front of a small, but well-kept, white painted clapboard house—with a galvanized standing-seam roof and flowers along the front porch—on the outskirts of Dexter. Bodie stepped down and quickly moved to Billy’s body. Hope I can git him down ‘fore she comes out the door…Don’t want her seeing her son draped over his saddle.

He slid the young man down and cradled him in his arms like a baby, turned and stepped toward the porch only to see the widow Millie Malena standing on the stoop, both hands to her mouth. She was a very attractive, 5' 2" brunette in her late-thirties—widowed at the age of twenty-eight when her bank teller husband had been killed in a robbery.

“I’m powerful sorry, Miz Malena, we was bushwhacked near the Red…”

She dropped her hands and said in a soft, but steady voice as her eyes filled, “Bring him in the house…Need to get word to Father Miller…He’ll need…need his rites read…proper.” She choked back a sob and held her head up as she opened the screen door for Bodie.

“Yessum, I’ll see to it right away.”

“Lay him there.” She directed him to place her only son on his bed against the wall and then grabbed Bodie’s arm after he gently laid Billy on the patchwork quilt cover. Millie lifted her chin in resolve even as the tears continued to course down her cheeks. “You find who did this, Bodie Hickman…You hear me?…You find them.”

He nodded.

“I want them punished…he was just a baby…my only baby. But he was a man…Wanted more than anything in this world to be a Texas Ranger…You catch ‘em…and I want to be there when they put the noose around their neck.”

A lump built in Bodie’s throat and he rasped out, “You can count...