The Lawless Read online

  His heart thumping, Rivette considered his next move. Damn, he was in a bind. Draw fighter. The tall man was a draw fighter, had to be. He didn’t want any truck with them Texas fast guns. He saw something that made him sick to his stomach.

  Kate had stepped inside the door and come back with a Henry rifle. The child was no longer with her. She pointed the rifle at him. “Mister, if he doesn’t shoot you, I will.”

  “I’ll ride out and be damned to both of ye,” Rivette said.

  “Shuck the guns first,” Cobb said. “I don’t want a lowlife like you coming back here armed.”

  “Damn you!” Rivette squealed as a bullet from Kate’s rifle clipped a neat half-moon out of the top of his left ear. He put his hand to his head and it came away bloody.

  His reactions were remarkably swift and Kate decided later that he might have been sudden enough on the draw and shoot. But the man’s hands didn’t go for his guns. They went to the buckles of his gun belts and he dropped both of them as though they were poisonous snakes.

  “Step away from the iron,” Cobb said. “Yes, that’s it. There’s a good fellow.” He stepped to the man’s horse and slid the Henry out of the boot and tossed it onto the gun belts. “Now we’re all perfect friends again.”

  “What’s your name, mister?” Kate said. “Next time the Rangers pass this way, I’ll be sure to let them know.”

  “Name’s Hack Rivette.”

  “How very unfortunate for you.”

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, may we have coffee? I’m sure dear Mr. Rivette would like a cup.”

  “You go to hell,” Rivette said.

  “And bear sign would be nice if there’s any left,” Cobb said.

  Kate was puzzled. She lowered her rifle and stared at him.

  He winked. “It’s good to be hospitable to folks.” At gunpoint, he forced Rivette to sit under a cottonwood tree.

  Kate brought out the coffee and doughnuts.

  After Rivette had drunk coffee and eaten, Cobb thumbed back the hammer of his Colt and shoved it into the other man’s belly. “Comfy?”

  “Go to hell,” Rivette said, seething with impotent rage.

  “Now I’m going to tell you my life story, Hack,” Cobb said. “If I find that you’ve dropped off, I’ll take it as a personal affront and shoot you in the guts. Is that clear?”

  “Go to hell,” Rivette said.

  “Good, then we understand each other. Right, here we go. My life began when I was very young . . .”

  The long day shaded into night and the moon rose and silvered the sleeping land. The only sound was the steady drone of one man’s voice and the whimper of another.

  Kate looked out the window several times. Cobb and Rivette remained under the tree. She suggested to Moses that she go outside with supper, but the old man grinned and shook his gray head.

  “Mr. Cobb, he’s had plenty of rest this last month and feels like staying awake and talking. The other man though, he don’t seem like he cares to listen. I stepped outside and heard Mr. Cobb talking and the other man was groaning something terrible.”

  “It’s a terrible torture, Ma. Like something the Inquisition would dream up.” Quinn shook his head. “I even feel sorry for the bad man out there.”

  At one in the morning before she went to bed, Kate opened the door and listened to what Frank Cobb was saying.

  She heard him solemnly intone, “. . . but my ma was having none of that. She’d asked for calico cloth and by golly she would accept no substitute. Mr. Brown the storekeeper offered her gingham and he said he’d throw in a dozen sewing needles for her trouble. But my Aunt Agatha, remember she’s the one who grew them giant plants on her porch, the ones with the caterpillars in ’em, well she said that the cloth was for a dress for her and she was too old and set in her ways for gingham. Well, sir, finally Ma decided that silk might work for a dress, but Mr. Brown had no silk cloth so Aunt Agatha said . . .”

  Kate quietly closed the door. Like Quinn, she almost felt sorry for poor Rivette. Almost.

  Dawn came and Cobb was still talking on and on. Hack Rivette still listened, his glazed eyes staring into space.

  Kate came out of the cabin with coffee and heard Cobb say, “. . . but then I had a decision to make up there in El Paso. Should I order the beans and bacon or try the steak and eggs? Mind you, flapjacks sounded pretty good to me then and so did—”

  Rivette had reached his breaking point. He jumped to his feet, spread his arms, and yelled, “Kill me! Get it over with! I can’t take any more of your damned life story.”

  Cobb pretended hurt. “You don’t like my story, Hack? But I’m only getting started. Wait until you hear about Aunt Agatha and the aspidistra and Ma and—”

  “Frank, he’s had enough,” Kate said. “Let him go.”

  “You called me Frank,” Cobb said.

  “Yes, well, you earned it yesterday.”

  Cobb got to his feet. His joshing tone gone, he said to Rivette, “Ride on out. Next time I see you around here again, I’ll kill you.”

  “My guns—”

  “Stay where they are. I’m sure you’ll steal others.”

  Rivette saddled his horse and mounted. “I won’t forget this, Cobb.”

  “Nor will I.” Kate watched the man ride away.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The badlands to the east of the Kerrigan Ranch had been pretty much picked clean of wild cattle, but over the next month Frank Cobb and Quinn managed to bring in another forty head of longhorns, most of them young stuff.

  There was no news of Trace Kerrigan or the herd, but a passing drover said he’d not heard of bad weather on the Chisholm, though the Apaches were out and several small farms and ranches had been raided. “I ain’t no hand to be causing you worry, ma’am,” he said to Kate, but it ain’t like the Apaches to be raiding this late in the fall.”

  “You think it’s something to do with the cattle drives?” Kate asked, pouring the puncher more coffee.

  “Might be, ma’am, but then Apaches are notional folks and it’s mighty hard for a white man to take a stab at what they’re thinking.”

  Cobb said, “Trace is riding with some good well-armed and mounted men, Kate. I reckon the Apaches will give them a wide berth. They’re notional all right, but not stupid.”

  She set the coffeepot back on the stove. “I’ll say a rosary for Trace tonight and ask the Virgin to keep him safe.”

  The puncher rose to his feet and touched his hat. “I got to be riding, ma’am. I reckon them prayers will get the job done.”

  Cobb was unshaved and dust lay thick on his range clothes. He touched the back of Kate’s hand with the tips of his fingers. “He’ll be all right, Kate. I know he will.”

  A week later, he was proved wrong.

  Trace Kerrigan was brought home in the chuck wagon. His left leg was heavily bandaged and under his trail tan his face was ashen.

  Kate had him carried into the cabin and laid on her own bed. “What happened? Was it Apaches?”

  Grimacing from pain after a bumpy carry into the cabin, Trace didn’t seem much inclined to answer, so the rancher Jason Hunt did it for him. “Not Apaches, ma’am. It was a white man.”

  “How did it happen?” Cobb asked.

  Hunt looked uncomfortable and his words dried up.

  His segundo Kyle Wright stepped into the silence. “It was over a woman, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

  Kate had been attending to her son and looked like she’d been slapped. “Trace . . . a woman . . . I don’t understand.”

  Wright said, “Ma’am, she was a lady of ill-repute, sometimes referred to as a fancy woman. I have no wish to offend, ma’am.”

  “Mr. Wright, I know what such a woman is,” Kate said. “In my time, I’ve known many. How did it happen?”

  “Well, ma’am, Trace had never . . . ah . . . been with a woman before and the boys thought it would be fun if they put money into the hat to buy him one.”

  “Fun? And was that also your idea of fu
n, Mr. Wright?” Her eyebrows met in a frown.

  “No ma’am. I was not aware of such coarse behavior.” Wright’s eyes met Hunt’s, and he quickly looked away.

  From the bed, Trace said, “I was set up, Ma. I was sitting at a table with the girl when a man stepped over and said she was his wife. He demanded my money, horse, and rifle to satisfy his honor.”

  “Or what?” Cobb asked.

  “Or he’d kill me,” Trace said.

  Wright said, “It’s an old trick, ma’am. The crook and the woman work as a team and usually they pick on a married man. But there’s a shortage of such men in Abilene.”

  Kate took Trace’s hand. “What happened?”

  Hunt cleared his throat. “I can tell you that, Mrs. Kerrigan. There was a shooting scrape. Trace refused to pay the man, his name was Curtis though some said it was Collins, and when words failed, the crook went for his hideout gun and put a ball into your son. Trace’s rifle was on the table and he fought back. Ma’am, he worked that Henry so fast, he shot that feller all to pieces. It was a fair fight and all agreed that Curtis had drawn first.”

  “Trace stood his ground and let no man bully him, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Wright said. “He didn’t dodge the fight, and I reckon he proved himself a man.”

  “Where is the ball that hit my son? Is it still in there?”

  “No, ma’am. It was removed by a mule doctor, and last I looked, it was healing well. No smell of the gas gangrene or anything like that.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Kate said.

  “Of course you will, ma’am,” Wright said.

  Shannon and Ivy had climbed onto the bed and were consoling their wounded hero with hugs. For his part, Trace looked as though all he wanted was sleep after his weeks of jolting misery in the back of the wagon.

  “I know it’s hardly the time to talk business, Mrs. Kerrigan, but it has to be done.” The rancher looked thin and worn, but everyone who went up the trail and back bore the traces of their hardship. “The count in Abilene was nine hundred unbranded Kerrigan cows. Beef prices are still low, but after shipping costs and agent’s fees, I managed thirty dollars a head. I knew you’d prefer cash to a bank draft so”—Hunt took a paper sack from his coat pocket—“this here is twenty-seven thousand dollars in Yankee greenbacks and gold coin.”

  Kate took the sack, her face thoughtful. “I’ve never had this much money before in my life.”

  “I’m sure you’ll put it to good use, Mrs. Kerrigan. It’s the last money you’ll see until after the gather next spring.” Hunt touched his hat brim. “I’ll be going now, Mrs. Kerrigan.” With a small smile, he added, “You can be proud of your son. He played the man’s part on the drive and proved his worth in Abilene. Trace will make his mark one day.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  September brought cooler temperatures and high winds. Trace healed with the season, but Kate saw a difference in him. He was quieter, more reserved, and less inclined to roughhouse with Quinn or play ring-around-the-rosy with the girls. He was still willing to do anything Kate or Cobb, recently made segundo of the Kerrigan Ranch, asked of him, but he kept to himself much of the time, his nose buried in a volume of the recently acquired Complete Works of Charles Dickens or Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

  One afternoon when a raging east wind rattled the new glass windows of the cabin and made the stove chimney gust smoke into the living area, Kate took Cobb aside and asked if he could explain her son’s change in behavior.

  Cobb smiled. “Kate, he’s grown from a boy to a man, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Is this how it was with you, Frank? Can you remember?”

  “Sure I can remember. I was about Trace’s age when I had my first woman and not much older when I killed my first man. Certain things happen in a boy’s life that change him, mostly for the better, sometimes for the worse. Trace is one of the better ones, but he knows he still has to prove himself, prove that he’s worthy of the manhood we’ve bestowed on him and he knows his greatest challenges are yet to come.”

  Kate frowned. “You mean making our ranch a success, building a Kerrigan dynasty that will last for a hundred years and maybe two?”

  “That’s part of it, Kate. I can’t read Trace’s mind, so I don’t know what else he thinks. Maybe just being expected to live the rest of his life as a man and not a boy scares him. This is a hard land, Kate. It tests a man . . . and a woman . . . constantly and never lets up.”

  “What do I do to help him?”

  “Nothing. Just let him be. Only Trace can work it out.”

  Trace caught a drift of wood smoke borne on the wind that stirred the grass on top of the ridge. In the lonely hill country it could be a puncher riding the grub line who’d decided to make camp early or it could be trouble.

  It smelled like trouble.

  Trace swung out of the saddle and, crouching as low as his still hurting leg would permit, he stepped carefully to the edge of the windswept rise and looked down on the vast sweep of the land below. It was rolling hill country thick with scattered mesquite, piñón, and a few red oak. Coming in hard off the Gulf of Mexico, the south wind was strong enough to lift veils of dust from the dry ground and toss the branches of the mesquite and piñón into a frenzied dance. The smoke was rising briefly from behind a hill where the red oak grew before it was shredded by the wind.

  He remounted and searched for a way off the ridge but everywhere he looked the rock face toward the smoke was thirty feet straight down. He decided to go back the way he’d come and loop around the base of the rise, a twenty-minute detour in a wind that tore at him and his horse. The big Thoroughbred weathered the storm and once among the mesquite, Trace slid the Henry out from under his knee and rode toward the smoke.

  Squatters were a possibility and outlaws were another. He discounted the possibility of Lipan Apaches. They were unlikely to have a fire that smoked so much it gave away their presence. Only white men did that.

  A few yards of the hill, Trace swung out of the saddle and went forward on foot. Not Indians or white men. Blanket-wrapped Mexicans—a man, woman, and three children—huddled around a mesquite fire that smoked better than it burned.

  “Howdy.” Trace held his rifle across his thighs, a sight that made the woman afraid. “This is Kerrigan land.”

  In truth, Kate claimed any land she could ride a horse over.

  Trace didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”

  The man rose to his feet. He wore the shapeless white cotton garb of a peasant and the wind tugged at the sombrero he pulled low down on his head. “We’re not here to steal, señor.” He spoke hesitant missionary-taught English. “We are lost. No food for the niños or ourselves.”

  “Where are you from?” Trace asked.

  “Chihuahua, señor. But there is no work at home and my wife and I seek employment.”

  Trace shook his head. “It’s a wonder you’re alive to seek anything. The Apaches are out. Didn’t you know that?”

  The man shook his head. “No, señor. We did not know.” One of the children started to cry, and he said, “She is hungry.”

  “Damn it. I took a ride for my health’s sake, but I didn’t count on meeting pilgrims.”

  “I am sorry, señor. We will move off your land.”

  “Wait. I have grub, probably enough for three hungry men.” Trace backed away to his horse and untied the sack his mother had tied to the saddle. She would not let him leave the cabin without his lunch.

  He returned to the Mexicans with the sack. “What did I tell you? Beef sandwiches and a piece of dried apple pie. Maybe dried apple pie doesn’t sound good, but it is.”

  “To a hungry man, all food sounds good,” the Mexican said.

  Trace passed the sack to the man. “I guess there’s enough to feed all of you.”

  “But you must eat, señor,” the man said.

  Although he was hungry, Trace saw a need greater than his own. “I�
��ll get something later. I ate a big breakfast.”

  The adults fed the hungry children first—and this met with Trace’s approval—before they shared what was left. The food seemed to help. The button-eyed children smiled shyly at Trace and their parents, though still thin and gaunt, were more animated.

  “We will leave your land now, señor,” the man said. “Thank you for what you have done for us.”

  “Where will you go?”

  The man shrugged. “Wherever a good blacksmith is needed.” He smiled. “And a Mexican woman who can cook.”

  “The fall is here. And next thing you know, winter will be cracking down hard. Your children could die in this country.”

  “They will most certainly die in my own country if I can’t feed them,” the man said.

  “You better come with me,” Trace said, making up his mind. The Kerrigan Ranch could use a blacksmith and a good cook. A thought struck him, and he stared into the Mexican’s eyes. “Any man can call himself a blacksmith who is not.”

  “That is so, señor.” The little man reached into the sack his wife had carried and produced a foot-long bowie knife. He passed it to Trace.

  He examined the blade closely and tested the edge. “It’s a beautiful knife. The best bowie I’ve ever seen.”

  The Mexican nodded. “Any man who can forge a steel blade from a piece of raw iron is a blacksmith. You may keep it, señor. It is my gift.”

  Trace shook his head. “It is a fine gift, but it’s too much. Perhaps one day you can make me one just like it.” He returned the knife. “Your wife and the little ones can ride my horse. The Kerrigan Ranch is not far.”

  “He’s a blacksmith, Ma,” Trace said. “Every ranch needs a good blacksmith.”

  Kate glanced out the cabin window. “He looks a bit tiny to be a blacksmith.” She smiled. “‘Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he with large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands.’” Kate turned and frowned at Trace. “Mr. Longfellow tells us how a real blacksmith should look.”