Read The Rattlesnake Season Online
Authors: Larry D. Sweazy
The Rattlesnake Season (8 page)
Josiah heard the words “fair trial” come from the sheriff’s mouth. “And that’s the final word, unless you want to take it up with the circuit court judge in the morning.”
The captain spit on the ground, just missing Sheriff Patterson’s mud-caked boot, and threw up his arms. “Let’s move out of here before I shoot somebody and get myself thrown into that poor excuse for a jailhouse.”
Sheriff J. T. Patterson shook his head, smirked, and watched his deputy lead Charlie Langdon to the waiting horse. The deputy unshackled Charlie’s feet, then another deputy came and helped Charlie mount the horse.
Fikes watched, his arms folded. Josiah knew it was a stubborn move, not taking responsibility for Charlie until he had to, not ordering one of his Rangers to help Charlie mount the sad-looking mare the sheriff had provided. There’d be plenty of helping Charlie Langdon up and down off the horse on the trail—if the horse made it to Tyler alive. It was the most haggard, swaybacked creature Josiah had ever seen.
Charlie settled in on the saddle as best he could, and cast a sidelong glance back to Josiah. “Surprised to see you here, Wolfe.”
“Bet you are.”
“Heard Burly met his maker at the hand of a Mexican. Why doesn’t it surprise me one bit that you’d have a Mexican watching your back?”
Josiah glared at Charlie. His stomach was rustling about like there was a swarm of bees let loose inside him. He wasn’t scared—maybe nervous, maybe anticipating whatever it was that was coming next, because it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
It was, he knew instinctively, going to be a long ride north, and he couldn’t let Charlie see one buzzing bee of discomfort in his stomach or he’d be a dead man . . . sooner rather than later.
“Shut up,” Captain Fikes said, as he mounted Fat Susie in one swift blur of movement. The captain’s spryness never ceased to amaze Josiah, as did his directness.
Not one minute into the ride, and Josiah had already broken one of the captain’s rules. He wasn’t quite sure what had caused it . . . other than that Charlie always threw him off center when he was in his company. Always.
“Both of you just shut up,” the captain continued to rant. “Don’t make me regret my decision bringing you down here, Wolfe.”
“Yes, sir. It was the right decision, sir.”
Sheriff Patterson walked up to the captain and offered him the key to the metal bracelets that bound Charlie Langdon’s wrists. Fikes snatched the key from the man’s hand and stuffed it in his vest pocket.
“Stop in the office the next time you ride into town, Fikes. I want to know you’re here.”
The captain squinted his eyes, rolled his tongue in his mouth, and spit again. This time he hit his target dead-on. The sheriff’s boot dripped with spit. At some point the captain had stuffed a fresh plug of tobacco in his cheek, and he’d been working up a mouthful of stringy brown juice to release at just the right moment.
Scrap had to restrain himself from laughing out loud.
Without saying another word, Captain Fikes let out a yell that sounded like a whoop, then waited for Sam Willis and Vi McClure to get the escort party moving.
Sheriff Patterson started cursing the captain and the Rangers as they began to move forward. Fikes ignored the sheriff, stared straight ahead like the man had never existed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Josiah was certain he saw a quick smile pass across Captain Hiram Fikes’s weathered face as they rode out of shouting distance, but he couldn’t be quite sure. The captain always celebrated his victories in subtle ways.
Now that they were on the way, Fikes was focused on his prisoner, and there was no mistaking the tension that came from escorting a man as dangerous and loathsome as Charlie Langdon. The tussle with the sheriff was the last thing the captain would be worried about.
Though Josiah was sure that Juan Carlos’s well-being wasn’t too far out of Fikes’s mind.
CHAPTER 7
San Antonio disappeared quickly behind Josiah and the other Rangers. It did not take the horses long to find a comfortable rhythm. Even the supply ponies and the heavy breather that Charlie was riding offered no restraint or stubbornness as they eased up a slight ridge on the trail.
Josiah stared at the back of Charlie Langdon’s head for the longest time, trying to force himself not to remember all of the times he had ridden with the man in the past. Obviously, the bees were still buzzing in his stomach, and the last thing he wanted to do was show Charlie, or the captain, any fear . . . so he began whistling.
Lily played the piano, and the only songs Josiah knew were a few waltzes and some church songs. He avoided the church songs, and as he whistled a waltz, a song of happier days, he could almost smell Lily’s skin, her neck resting on his shoulder at a social dance when they were courting. He would rather ride away the hours wrapped in the memory of the music Lily loved than the memories of the war as he rode behind a killer like Charlie Langdon. He was desperate to rid himself of all the wartime memories that had come surging back to him since seeing Charlie. He hadn’t expected that to happen.
Captain Fikes looked at Josiah in surprise once he began whistling, then nodded, giving silent permission for him to continue on. It was nearly afternoon. The sun was already high in the sky, and even though it was still spring, mid-May, the air was hot and dry. There was hardly any breeze at all. The wind was silent and the sky vacant of clouds. Josiah’s whistling echoed off the boulders and cliff faces.
All of the Rangers had sweat on their brows.
The trail was reasonably wide, and the rocky landscape was mostly brown and dull, in comparison to the lushness around Tyler. East Texas and its vast pine forests, where everything was as green as green could be, seemed like it was a world away. There were splashes of color, though, like a spattering of bluebonnets along the trail, spring wildflowers that were starting to bloom into their prime.
Farther off the trail, the bluebonnets gave way to a few yellow flowers—primroses, buttercups—with some verbena mixed in. The early season had to have been wet considering that some of the flowers were almost thriving—though struggling by comparison to the lush wildflowers around Josiah’s cabin and in the forests that surrounded his barn and pasture.
Josiah decided that life in and around San Antonio must have been far more difficult than he’d realized, or cared to think about.
He had never had the wanderlust, and he was thankful for that. Having a home to return to at the end of a long ride had always meant the world to him. Even now, he looked forward to returning to what was familiar. Pine trees. The smell of Ofelia’s menudo simmering in the pot—honeycomb tripe, chilies, calf’s foot, and some hominy, all joining together to warm a home that was once alive and throbbing with the giggles of three little girls. He really missed the familiar, but mostly Josiah was stricken with how much he longed to see his son.
He gazed upward, whistling softly, and studied the stiff oak trees that reached to the sky with grizzled fingers and towered over the trail.
The trees looked a hundred years old to Josiah. Just the sight of them made him a little melancholy. The big old trees had survived the sun, storms, rain, and probably fire, too. A few of them bore scars from lightning strikes, black wounds that looked like they would never heal. Josiah felt an odd kinship with the old trees.
High in one of them, a cuckoo clucked away at the sun, or called for a mate, Josiah wasn’t sure. Most every other creature had taken refuge from the heat of the day.
Hunting was done in the early morning, late evening, or at night. Killing in the bright heat of the day was either out of necessity or for pleasure. Anything with any sense, or knowledge of the natural way of things, was fast asleep under a rock or some well-sought-out shade.
More than a few times, out of the corner of his eye Josiah thought he saw shadows moving. But, when he focused his sight, there was nothing to be seen in the thickets or on the hilltops except a stand of trees or the occasional hawk soaring high in the sky, casting a shadow downward—like a harbinger of some foreboding darkness to come, his cry carrying effortlessly in the dry air for miles.
Josiah’s imagination was playing tricks on him again. He thought his awareness was reasonably keen, but he still felt uncertain of most everything he saw or thought about doing. His senses weren’t as sharp as they had been on the battlefield, where day after day living and dying hinged on killing and not being killed.
It would take a long time to get back to that place, that process of consideration where physical survival was the only thing that mattered. Even with all that had happened in San Antonio, especially at the Menger with Burly Smith, he still didn’t feel threatened, or fully awake to what was happening around him.
Josiah wasn’t sure if he could ever regain the skill he’d possessed as a young soldier. Maybe that was something to consider about becoming a Ranger at this age, he thought to himself. Maybe he could never recapture the enthusiasm that was so apparent in Scrap Elliot’s every word and deed.
Either way, now was not the time to judge himself as inept. He was far from that—he just wasn’t as sharp as he used to be. Time had taken his thoughts and skills prisoner, and he had to figure out how to release them, free them from the past.
He knew one thing to be true if nothing else, though: Charlie Langdon was being too quiet, too compliant.
Something was up, he was sure of it.
Leaving the jail had been too easy.
The crowds had parted and watched solemnly. Not once did anyone try to stop the escort from leaving town. It seemed like the entire population of San Antonio was glad to see Charlie and the Rangers go.
Captain Fikes brought the party to a stop about three hours after leaving San Antonio.
Josiah stopped whistling.
They had come down an easy sloped hill and gathered in a clearing, their formation around Charlie still reasonably tight.
There were hills on all sides of them—but the hills were distant, too distant for some unseen shooter, outlaw or Indian, to attack from and take cover in.
The trail was wide, and in the mud there were wheel ruts that ran into and out of a slow-running stream. At some point in history, the spot had sported a population of settlers. There were a few foundations alongside the trail, cracked slabs of stone lying about haphazardly and crumbling remnants of buildings or houses that looked like giant footprints. It had not been a big town, only three or four buildings at the most, probably a stagecoach stop at some point, but now all of the buildings were gone—the wood rotted, stolen, or burned by travelers in need of a nighttime fire.
Josiah listened and looked around, trying to figure out if there was a railroad anywhere close, trying to solidify his bearings. That’s what had happened to his town, Seerville—the railroad hadn’t come close enough to keep it alive—but that didn’t appear to be the case here. There was no railroad in San Antonio or this part of South Texas yet, and from what Josiah understood, it would be a few more years, or longer, before that life-changing event occurred.
Whatever the cause, the town was gone, just a memory. And the place made Josiah uneasy, because there were plenty of places for cover close-up.
Across the stream, through a healthy grove of pecan trees, sat a cemetery. The weeds around the grave markers were already tall. A few yucca plant spikes reached to the sun, not yet in bloom. It was no surprise that the cemetery was in disrepair, a neglected garden of crosses and broken-down picket fencing used to keep the animals and any other unwelcome creatures out. The fencing had been trampled. Some of the grave markers had toppled over a long time ago.
“Let’s water the horses, men,” the captain said, as he dismounted from Fat Susie.
“Man ought to be able to relieve himself,” Charlie Langdon muttered.
Captain Fikes stalked over to Charlie’s horse and glared up at the man, shaking a finger as he yelled, “You obviously don’t understand the rules here, mister. You speak when you’re spoken to. You piss when I say you can piss. I don’t want to hear another word from you until I tell you to dismount—and when that happens, there will be six guns pointed at that empty head of yours. So don’t go thinking we’re a bunch of idiots. Do I make myself clear?”
Other books
Evening Primrose (Devil's Hornets MC Book 2) by Thomas, Kathryn
Another Little Secret by Jade Archer
Hold Me: Delos Series, 5B1 by Lindsay McKenna
Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle
Demon's Kiss by Laura Hawks
Fields of Fire by Carol Caldwell
Quarry in the Black by Max Allan Collins
Five Go Off to Camp by Enid Blyton
The Mer- Lion by Lee Arthur
Death in a Cold Climate by Robert Barnard