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  If anyone asked Annie, the men of the wagon train should have elected her father as the head of the train, but the reverend had been a good soldier, at least if you listened to what he said. He had even once set out for California, spent three years there before returning to Arkansas. He knew the trails even though the one he had taken to California and back had been much farther north.

  “Do you trust the reverend?” Annie heard herself ask.

  “Child,” her mother, Harriet, scolded, “He’s a man of the cloth.”

  Annie’s eyes shot toward Five Scalps and the soddie across from the big trading post or whatever it was. She wondered if her first thought, Sergeant Major Primrose likely is not wearing any sort of cloth right now, would be declared a sin come Judgment Day.

  Her father smiled with the patience of a father. “He has been to California.”

  “We’re not going to California,” she pointed out.

  “But he knows the trails, or at least, how to handle a wagon train on the trail.” Walter reached over and patted her arm. “You see how he taught us to circle our wagons at camp, and he guided us across the Red River into Texas. Now here we are, deep in Comanche and Kiowa territory, and we have not been attacked yet.”

  “And he preaches a good sermon.” Harriet had always been one to admire some brimstone and vinegar.

  “We have traveled six hundred miles, Daughter. Perhaps farther, and that means we are almost halfway to our new home. I would not disservice our train’s duly elected captain by complaining or making disparaging comments as to his wisdom or leadership abilities. We are all in good health and have run into no trouble to speak of.” He looked over at Five Scalps and shook his head with a smile, sipped the last of his tea, and turned back toward Annie.

  “The Reverend Sergeant Major is a man, Annie, and men are—”

  “Idiots,” her mother said.

  They all laughed.

  “Well, I am not idiot enough to argue with your mother, Annie, so I will agree with her. When the Reverend Primrose returns with the others we shall continue on to our destination. Perhaps we are delayed by the evils that men do, but let the boys be boys. There is not much left for them until we reach Arizona Territory. Do not frown too much at this delay. It is, I feel, needed.”

  Her father’s face told Annie that he wasn’t speaking entirely truthfully. He was just trying to make things seem better than they were. That was her father’s way.

  “You didn’t want to go with them?” her mother asked and chuckled at her good humor.

  “I might have, Mother,” he said with a smile, and rose to collect the dishes. Most men would leave washing dishes to the women, but Walter liked to do things, liked to stay busy. He wasn’t one to waste time playing cards or drinking intoxicating spirits when he could be accomplishing something, like going to Arizona Territory to start a new life, or going around a place like Five Scalps to avoid unnecessary delay, or even washing the supper dishes.

  She helped him because she loved her father. Her mother came to help, too.

  This is the way a family should be, Annie thought.

  When she prayed that night before going to sleep, she thanked God for that greatest of gifts.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Matt McCulloch leaped away from the slashing knife again with yet another curse, and the momentum carried the Indian back toward the rocks. That gave McCulloch enough time to look at his belly. A scratch. He had cut himself worse shaving, although he had never been drunk enough to cut his stomach shaving. Hell, he wasn’t Sean Keegan. McCulloch rarely got drunk. But getting into fights? Well, that seemed to occupy a lot of his time—as a horse trader and as a Texas Ranger back in the day.

  The Apache turned, but stood with his back against the rocky wall. His right hand still held the blade of the deer-handled knife, a mean looking weapon. The blade had probably been taken from an old horse soldier’s saber, cut down to something a kid could use quite handily.

  McCulloch figured that this Indian was a kid, no more than sixteen years old, though guessing an Indian’s age often could be as risky as guessing a woman’s.

  A few facts became obvious. The boy was Comanche, not Apache. Remembering his late wife, his dead sons, and his missing daughter, had his opponent been Apache, McCulloch would have drawn his Colt and blown the kid’s head off. It wasn’t that McCulloch had any love for the Comanche—they could be as fearsome, as ruthless, and as hard to kill as any Apache—but this one was just a kid. And he was wounded.

  His left arm hung broken, raked with the claws from that bear he had managed to kill. He was sweating hard. The boy panted like he had just run all the way from the Rio Grande and needed time to catch his breath. McCulloch could wait in a Mexican standoff and hope the boy would finally pass out.

  Those eyes were like obsidian, staring briefly at McCulloch, then at the Winchester lying in the dirt between them, then back at McCulloch, and then at the belted Colt holstered on the white man’s right hip. Never did the Indian’s eyes focus on one particular spot for too long. His eyes moved like most Indians moved—like the wind.

  As the boy’s breathing slowed to some sort of normalcy, McCulloch figured he had little time before that deadly blade came slashing He wasn’t too worried. If things got desperate, all he had to do was draw the revolver and punch a hole through the kid’s middle. But he tried something different.

  He spoke a short warning in Comanche. “No. Me friend.”

  That being his entire Comanche vocabulary, “Let me help,” came out in English. He could turn to sign language easy enough, but the blackness in that boy’s eyes told him that he needed to keep both of his hands free. He pressed them down a little like he was training a puppy to stay down. Stay down, don’t jump.

  Don’t rip out my intestines with that damned pig-sticker you have.

  The black eyes of the Comanche brave hardened, moved again from McCulloch to the rifle to McCulloch to the holstered revolver, and finally the Indian lunged. He had lost a lot more blood than McCulloch figured. Although the kid’s first move was sudden and with lethal intensity, by the time he stepped over McCulloch’s Winchester, he was practically falling. The knife passed easily as McCulloch moved to his right, and the Indian boy staggered over. Falling headfirst, the knife plunged into the grasslands. He moved his left arm in an attempt to push himself up and screamed from pure agony. It looked like a bad break. The boy tried with his right hand, but collapsed, shuddered, and lay still.

  For a moment, McCulloch thought the boy was dead, but after gathering his Winchester and laying it behind him—out of the young warrior’s reach—McCulloch gently rolled the boy over. He looked at the knife, buried almost to the hilt, but left it untouched. It was out of the kid’s reach, at least from his right hand. His left arm remained useless and the boy would have to reach over his body to grab the deer-horn handle. If he ever woke up, that is.

  Kneeling over the unconscious brave, McCulloch studied the kid. No moccasins, no shield. Just that knife and a heavy woolen breechcloth covering the rest of his nakedness. His hair hung loose and long, but not in braids wrapped in otter skins or tied with ribbons, and there was no headband, not even a single feather of honor. McCulloch lifted the broken arm gently and laid it across the boy’s dehydrated stomach. Now that his own heart wasn’t racing and his only instincts were about staying alive, he thought the boy looked like he was half-starved. McCulloch untied his bandana and wrapped it over the boy’s deeply scratched forearm. He tightened it just enough to stop the bleeding for the time being. Cleaning it would have to wait. Most likely, his best bet would be to walk till he fetched his horse, then return and care for the kid.

  Or he could just let the boy die. Hell, the kid was a Comanche. If the tables had been turned, McCulloch had a pretty good idea that he’d already be dead and scalped. He looked at the knife. That was no Indian knife, nothing a brave or boy would have traded with some Comanchero. The blade was, to McCulloch’s horror, fairly rusted over. Quick
ly, the old Ranger turned his attention to his own wound, but saw that the blood had already congealed and wasn’t deep at all. He had just been cut slightly. But that rusty blade made him stand up long enough to pull the flask out of his hip pocket, and poor rye whiskey over the wound, just enough to cleanse it some. He knelt beside the unconscious Indian and did the same over his scratches. The kid jerked, moaned, screamed, and spoke in short bursts of the Comanche tongue, before shuddering and sinking into an even deeper sleep.

  McCulloch looked at the knife again, understanding at last that the boy had likely found the blade, somehow managed to break it apart, and fashion it into a knife, using the antler from a dead deer. The starving teenager had been alone, trying to survive.

  “Vision quest,” McCulloch said aloud, looking at the kid.

  It certainly made sense. A Comanche boy, maybe thirteen to sixteen years old, before he could become a warrior, would have to leave his village on his own in search of his vision, to learn what was his power, and earn the name he would carry into manhood. McCulloch was no expert on Comanches, but he had been in Texas long enough to know a lot about them. It paid to know your enemy, and the Comanches hated all Texans. But he did know that when a Comanche boy went off on his vision quest, he wore only his breechcloth, and carried his pipe and a buffalo robe. The robe and the pipe, he figured, had to be around somewhere.

  “If you live,” McCulloch said, “I think I’d name you Bear Killer.” To his surprise, he realized he was smiling down at the kid.

  All right, he told himself. Get on your feet and start walking. Let’s get that horse and get back here and figure out what to do with this buck before you go traipsing through these mountains looking for a herd of wild mustangs.

  A horse whinnied, and McCulloch looked up to see his black coming toward him. He let his right hand fall onto the butt of the Colt.

  It was his horse, all right. He knew that whinny, and he knew the color and the saddle, but the horse carried a stranger. Three other men rode with him, two on paints, one on a dapple gray. One had an eagle feather flapping from his black hat. Another wore a Mexican sugarloaf sombrero with bandoliers crisscrossing his chest and a Spencer repeater braced against his thigh. The third was dressed in buckskins. The fellow riding McCulloch’s horse carried a Winchester across his pommel, had red hair down to his shoulders, and scalp locks secured to his vest like medals.

  They reined in about twenty-five feet from McCulloch, keeping about ten yards between them. Spread out.

  Smart, McCulloch figured.

  The Indian boy’s eyes shot open, and he seemed alert, like he knew there were four strangers with them.

  “Be quiet,” McCulloch whispered in Spanish, hoping the boy understood that. “Don’t move.” He would have said, “Play dead,” but he couldn’t figure that out in Spanish.

  He waved with his left hand and painted on a welcoming smile that wouldn’t fool an imbecile. “Thanks for bringing back my horse.” His head tilted to the man on his far left, the one on his horse.

  “Your horse?” asked the man in buckskins, mounted on the dapple. He laughed. “Bert found this horse lopin’ across the valley like it didn’t belong to nobody. And seein’ his come up lame and we had to shoot ’em, he figured it was a gift from God.”

  “You shot a lame horse?” McCulloch figured this man to be the group’s leader.

  “Well, not really. That’s just a figure of speech. Amigo yonder slit his throat. Didn’t want to risk firin’ a shot. But had we knowed there was a horse lover around us, we woulda brung him directly to you.”

  Amigo, McCulloch guessed, would be the Mexican with the Spencer, riding one of the paints.

  Bert said, “You got any proof that this horse is yourn?”

  McCulloch said, “You’ll find my brand on his left hip. You’ll find my name and my brand burned on the underside of that saddle. You’ll find a book with my name in it in the saddlebags.”

  “You got a book with your own name in it?” The leader laughed again. “That makes you famous.”

  McCulloch chuckled and nodded. “Hell, boys, I bet that book’s got your names in it, too. It’s the List of Fugitives from Justice. They hand those out every year to Texas Rangers.”

  The smiles vanished. The faces tensed. Two hands inched slightly closer to holstered revolvers, but not close enough to make McCulloch lose his cool and make the first move. The one holding the Winchester wet his lips. The man with the Spencer straightened in his saddle.

  “You a Ranger?” asked the man on the dapple gray.

  “Open that saddlebag,” McCulloch said calmly, “And you might find a cinco pesos star.” That was the Mexican coin most Rangers used to carve out their badges. Some were quite crude, but they all meant one thing. Frontier Battalion.

  His Mama would have been pleased. He had not told a lie. He said they might find a badge in there. Hell, they might not. To put it bluntly, they wouldn’t. And that List of Fugitives from Justice was two years old. McCulloch brought it along to rip out pages when he couldn’t find anything dry enough for kindling to light his evening or morning campfire.

  “Well,” the leader said, “I guess that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that that horse is yourn, all right. But this is a hell of a place to be left afoot. Since we was kind enough to bring you your hoss back, how ’bout you offer us a reward?”

  “Now, wait a minute, Linton,” Bert said.

  Without taking his eyes off McCulloch, Linton said to Bert, “Shut up. You was the fool who didn’t realize your hoss had tossed a shoe.” He smiled, even took his right hand away from his holstered revolver and waved. “Trade. The Texas way.”

  “What do you have in mind?” McCulloch asked.

  The man’s head tilted directly at McCulloch. “That red devil you got there. Looks half dead already.”

  McCulloch answered with a lethal stare.

  “Mister,” Linton said dryly, “I got three men with me. And I ain’t no slouch with a handgun.”

  “You got three scalp hunters with you,” McCulloch said, spitting out the words like a disgusting curse.

  “It’s a livin’. We been trailin’ him for nigh on four days.”

  McCulloch laughed. “If it takes you four days to find a puny little boy on a vision quest, I’m surprised you even caught my horse.”

  The Indian boy’s eyes widened and focused on something behind McCulloch.

  He saw relaxation settle over the four strangers and knew he had been stupid. There were five men—not four—and the fifth was behind him. McCulloch saw the boy lunge over, reaching for the knife. Saw the redhead with the Winchester and the Mexican with the Spencer bring up their long guns.

  Some extra sense told McCulloch not to worry about the man behind him. Looking for him would put his back to the four horsemen. Besides, he already knew where they were.

  The Colt leaped into his right hand, and he fanned back the trigger and shot the long-haired redhead off his black horse. McCulloch moved just as the Spencer barked. From his new position, he took careful aim while the big Mexican was cocking the rifle on his stutter stepping horse. McCulloch touched the trigger and dived before the smoke cleared.

  The Indian boy fell as the knife he had ripped out of the ground sailed. McCulloch rolled over in the grass, glanced behind him, and saw a man in leather pants and a white beard trying to pull the rusted knife blade from his belly. His hands kept slipping off the bloody deer-horn handle already coated with crimson blood. Then the man’s eyes glazed over and he fell to his side. The Indian boy didn’t move. McCulloch did. He fired the next three shots as fast as he could, while crawling toward the Winchester. A bullet punched a hole in the dirt to his left, but he grabbed the lever, pulled the rifle to him, and fired from the prone position.

  By then, Linton was hightailing it as fast as he could, and the guy with the eagle feather in his hat was trying to control his paint while helping the redhead onto the back of his saddle. Although McCulloch could have shot hi
m out of the saddle, he drew aim on Linton, whose dapple was raising dust like there was no tomorrow. If McCulloch hadn’t rushed his shot, there wouldn’t have been a tomorrow or even another hour for Linton. He could have chanced another shot, or he easily could have shot Bert in the back as he was carried off to lift scalps another day.

  Backshooting bushwackers was all right, he figured, for some people. But even a jackal might not be willing to do some things.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hank Benteen held a short barreled Colt revolver, the front sight filed down for a faster draw, and grinned. “Looks like you two deputies are—”

  “He ain’t no deputy,” Titus Bedwell said. “I’m arrestin’ him for bustin’ up one of our saloons.”

  “He don’t look like he got busted up much,” Hank said.

  Sean Keegan chuckled. “I appreciate the compliment, Hank. I did all right, if I have to say so myself.”

  “You mean to tell me the law here just left one deputy to guard my cousin?” Hank Benteen looked insulted.

  “County’s dirt cheap,” Bedwell told him. “The Purgatory City Council is even tighter with a coin. That’s why we got only one jail for the city and the county.”

  “Will you get me out of here, Hank?” Tom Benteen pleaded.

  Hank Benteen waved the pistol. “You heard Tom. Open the cell, Pops, and we’ll swap out prisoners. Maybe you can hang the big mick instead of Tom. I mean, you don’t want to disappoint the crowd that’ll be coming in here directly, expecting to see a man swing.”

  Bedwell looked at the pistol on his hip, and Keegan stopped grinning, hoping his friend wouldn’t be so foolish. Hell, that would likely get them both killed, and all Keegan wanted right now was a place to sleep off a rip-roaring good drunk. He could care less what happened to Lovely Tom Benteen or the rest of those killers.

  “Pops,” Hank Benteen said. “I ain’t got all day.” He raised the revolver.