C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-NINE
Apart from a sack of coffee and some sugar, Ben Lucas and Bob Corcoran had dumped the supplies for the cholera wagons and had taken great delight in ruining what they didn't want. Flour lay scattered over the ground as though there had been a snowfall.
Bound hand and foot, Kate had been thrown into the empty buckboard and driven away
Across the broken country north of Eagle Pass, the buckboard bounced. Around Kate lay a wasteland of scattered mesquite, a few live oak, cat's claw,
hua-jilla, cenizo
, and prickly pear, all of it struggling to survive on limestone bedrock. Of people or animals there was no sign. She knew that Frank would not follow closely, but that realization only increased her feeling of isolation and vulnerability. Thank God the derringer had not fallen out of her pocket during her struggles with her two captors. The weight of the little pistol in her pocket brought her comfort, slight as it was.
Kate had long since ceased to struggle against the ropes that bound her so tightly, and she lay on her back and watched the light change as the day shaded into night and a horned moon rose and gored aside the first stars. The desert smelled of dust and rock. She was thirsty, but would not ask her captors for water. She imagined that in all the vast expanse of barren wilderness somewhere lime green frogs dived into a blue, ice-cold pool, each one making a soft
plop!
under the overhanging ferns
.
Despite her discomfort, Kate dozed. She was aware that the two men made a stop and cigar smoke drifted over her as they passed a bottle back and forth between them. Half an hour later the team once again lurched into motion.
At first light, she woke to the smell of boiling coffee. Ben Corcoran brought her a cup that she didn't refuse. What was it her grandmother used to say? Ah yes
. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
The coffee was strong, bitter, and black as mortal sin but it tasted heavenly.
The sun was just over the eastern horizon when Corcoran climbed into the buckboard's seat and Ben Lucas mounted and took up his station a few yards to the rear where he could keep his eyes on Kate and his back trail.
Turning his head, Corcoran said, “You'll be the guest of Tilly Madison until we get the ransom money. She has a cabin a mile outside of town.”
“Who is she, may I ask?” Kate said.
Corcoran grinned. “Sure you can ask. She's a hunchback who done for seven husbands, maybe more. Before she gives you anything to eat or drink make sure she tastes it first.” Corcoran thought that last very amusing and launched into a roar of laughter. After he regained his composure and wiped a tear from his eyes, he said, “Some say Tilly is a witch and she probably is.”
“Did you say
witch
or . . . something else?” Kate asked.
“She's both.” He laughed again and slapped his thigh.
* * *
The Madison cabin lay close to a narrow creek that was dry for nine months of the year. Nearby a single cottonwood struggled for life and cast thin shade onto the cabin's tarpaper roof. When the buckboard rattled to a halt, the door opened and a small, bent old crone with an incredibly wrinkled face stepped outside.
Kate thought Tilly Madison looked like a wicked witch in a child's picture book . . . but instead of a broom she held a .44-40 Winchester in her hands.
Her voice sounded like a rusty gate. “Hell, I heard you two had been hung fer outlaws in Huntsville. I see I was told wrong.”
“Yeah, Tilly, we're still kicking,” Corcoran said. “Jesse Dobbs pass this way?”
“I ain't seen him. Who's that in the wagon?”
“A guest. We want you to take good care of her.”
“She looks hoity-toity.”
“She is,” Corcoran said. “Her name's Kate Kerrigan and she owns a ranch northwest of here. She's worth a pile of money to us.”
“Her kind doesn't come cheap,” Tilly said. “Not when it's crowned with red hair. You, Ben Lucas, get her down from there and let me take a look at her.”
When Lucas pulled Kate out of the buckboard and she stood in front of Tilly, the old woman said, “Look at those bold, insolent eyes. No mistake what she is.”
“I'm a respectable, widowed woman and I'll ask you to keep a civil tongue in your head, missy,” Kate said. “If you don't, I'll slap your face.”
“And I'll ask you to get off my property”âTilly leveled the rifleâ“if you know what's good for you.”
“Tilly, the woman is worth thousands of dollars to us,” Corcoran said. “Harm her in any way and you'll deal with Jesse.”
The old woman's face changed, showing fear. “He's a rum one, is Jesse. Got a demon in him. One time I heard it. Said to me that its name was Malphas, a great prince of hell.”
Corcoran said, “So now you know. Best you do what we told you.”
“Bring her inside,” Tilly said. “I'll keep watch on her.”
To Kate's surprise the cabin was clean, the wood polished, and the stove blackened and shiny. A red rug lay on the floor in front of the fireplace and something cooked in a pot. Peppers hung from the rafters like bunches of bloodred grapes and to Kate's surprise, above the mantel, looking unamused and imperial, hung a portrait of Queen Victoria. Bonded by sponge cake, any friend of old queen Vic was a friend of Kate's. But it seemed that Tilly Madison did not share that opinion.
“I don't sleep, ever, so don't think about making a fancy move,” she said. “I see you trying to escape, I'll kill you.”
Tilly kept the Winchester close, and within the confines of the small cabin that was very close. The derringer hung heavy in Kate's dress pocket, but she would have to choose her time carefully to make a play. Everybody must sleep. Eventually the old woman must close her eyes and rest.
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
“So Seth is dead,” Jesse Dobbs said. “I can't believe a woman killed him. Wait, yeah, I can believe it. He was always a skirt chaser.”
“A woman done fer him all right,” Bob Corcoran said. “And then me and Ben done fer her.”
Dobbs laid his whiskey glass on the bar. “Fill it.” To Corcoran and Lucas, he said, “Seth wasn't much, but he was kin. Did you bury him decent?”
“Sure did, Jesse,” Corcoran said. “Piled rocks on him, made his last resting place look nice.”
Dobbs smile was twisted, contemptuous. “Seth ain't resting. He's roasting in hell with our pa.” He shook his head. “Pa wasn't much, either.”
Zebulon Magan said, “He was good with a gun, was Seth. Mighty sudden.”
Jesse nodded. “He was that. Killed three, four white men in his time.”
The bartender coughed to draw attention to himself and then, still polishing a glass, leaned toward Dobbs and whispered, “A word to the wise, mister. You got three men watching you. I think they're Pinks.”
Dobbs gave a short nod. “Seen them right off.”
“You on the scout? Just askin'.”
“Yeah, headed over the border after I have me a woman or two,” Dobbs said.
“They're Pinks for sure,” the bartender said.
“Thanks.”
“We don't cotton to lawmen in Eagle Pass.” The bartender's black hair was parted in the middle, slicked down on each side of his head, and it gleamed like patent leather. “The Pinks are the worst. Bounty hunters is what they are. Hired killers, all of them.
Dobbs glanced in the mirror. Three men in high-button dark gray suits and bowler hats sat at a table in a corner to the left of the door. They had a bottle and glasses on the table but weren't doing much drinking. Another dozen or so patrons sat at other tablesâthe typical flotsam and jetsam of the borderâgamblers, gunmen, and young men on the make.
Corcoran gave Lucas a sidelong glance before he said, “How you want to play this, Jesse? And where is the payroll stashed?”
“You never mind where the payroll is stashed, Bob,” Dobbs said. “It's in a safe place. What did you do with the woman's body?”
“It's out there, Jesse,” Lucas said. “I'm sure the coyotes got to it by this time.”
“Bad thing not to bury a person,” Dobbs said. “His soul doesn't rest and comes back to haunt them who left his body to the wolves.”
Lucas smiled. “Maybe that don't apply to women.”
“It applies to everybody. Step over to the Pinks, Ben, and tell them I want to buy them a drink. See if you can get them to state their business.”
Again Lucas and Corcoran exchanged a glance, but Lucas nodded. “Sure thing, Jesse.” Smiling, he stepped to the table and in the mirror Dobbs watched him talk to the Pinkertons then point in his direction.
What he didn't hear were the words whispered from Lucas's smiling mouth. “He's got you pegged. Take care.”
Lucas walked back to the bar. “The gents said they buy their own drinks, Jesse. And they refused to tell me why they're in Eagle Pass.”
“Too bad,” Dobbs said. “It's a thing I'd like to know.”
Corcoran, smarter than Lucas by far, was worried, sure that the Pinks were on Jesse's trail. He swallowed hard, well aware how fast Dobbs was on the draw and shoot. He had to take a risk. He had to know about the payroll and know now. “Jesse, you got to tell us where you stashed the money. I mean if, God forbid, something happens to you . . .”
“Nothing is going to happen to me, Bob,” Dobbs said, his voice low, seemingly friendly, but ominous. “When the time is right, we'll go for the payroll together.”
“Well . . . I mean . . . what if we get separated?”
“We won't get separated, Bob. Why would we?”
“I don't know, Jesse. If them boys are Pinkertons . . .”
“Oh but they are, Bob,” Dobbs said. “I've seen their kind before, but they won't make a move against me until they know where I've hidden the money. Then they'll kill me.” He smiled. “Just like you and Ben aim to do.” He slapped Corcoran on the shoulder and grinned. “Ain't that right, Bobby boy?”
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-ONE
Frank Cobb and JC Brewster made a cold camp at the base of a low, rocky ridge not twenty feet from the yellowed bones of a long-dead mule deer. Their discomfort was alleviated to some extent by a bottle of wine, bread, and slices of ham that Jazmin had hurriedly packed for them. A crescent moon hung in the sky and the night was as peaceful as a country graveyard, but an insistent west wind gusted from the direction of the Sierra Madres and lifted veils of sand that rustled against the legs of the two men.
Brewster didn't like it and he made his feelings known. “Wind's picking up, Frank. If it gets any stronger, we've bought into a heap of trouble.”
Frank smiled, his mouth a thin line under his mustache. “Sandstorm. I had that same thought. We can't ride it out here.”
Brewster, small but lean as a lobo wolf and as enduring, was used to the ways of the desert. “We'll ride. Look for somewhere to hole up. Hey, don't throw that out.” He grabbed the wine bottle from Frank, put it to his mouth, and drained what was left. “Waste not, want not, my friend.”
“Slice of ham left. You want that?”
“Sure I do. A Ranger learns to eat and drink when he can. It could be days or maybe weeks before he happens on anything else.”
Both men donned slickers to keep the blowing sand from finding its way under their clothes and saddled up. They headed south in the direction of Eagle Pass, neither of them real confident that they'd ever reach it.
The wind was up, the sand drove against them and growled like a cougar, and the moon was lost so that earth and sky became one, a cartwheeling maelstrom of sepia and shadow painted by Mother Nature, the maddest of all mad artists.
* * *
Kate stood at the rattling window of the cabin and looked outside but saw only darkness and an occasional glimpse of slanting, windblown sand.
“What you expect to see out there?” Tilly Madison sat in a chair by the fire, the Winchester across her lap.
Without turning, Kate said, “The Seventh Cavalry.”
“Well, they ain't comin', lady.” A mean glint filled Tilly's firelit eyes, “Only feller coming for you is Jesse Dobbs, and God help you when he does.”
Kate turned. “What makes you the way you are, Tilly? What makes you such a mean, nasty old woman?”
“You'd like to know,” the old crone said.
“Yes, I would.”
“Why the interest?”
“So I don't do the things you've done and end up like you,” Kate said.
Tilly slammed the rifle up and down on the arms of her chair as though to emphasize what she was going to say next. “Maybe you think it's all them husbands I poisoned made me the way I am? Well, that's bull crap. All seven of them got what they deserved. A bunch of lazy, no-good loafers . . . every damn one of them.”
“Then why did you marry them?”
“So I could kill them later.” Tilly's face became crafty. “Maybe the crooked carcass I was born with made me cruel, huh? Maybe all the abuse and the fun made of me as a hunchback I endured after my ma died made me nasty? Know how many foster parents and their offspring I poisoned? Nah, you don't know. And you don't know what rat poison does to folks, either. Kills them bit-by-bit it does, and nobody any the wiser. When it was done, some relative of the departed would say, âPoor Tilly, poor little hunchback, alone again. But now you can come live with us.' And then I'd begin all over again with the poison.” The old woman cackled. “Rats! Rats! I killed lots of rats, whole families of rats. And maybe I'll kill you because you're pretty and I'm not. You're a rat!”
Kate was horrified. “What kind of hellish creature are you?”
“The worst kind that you'll ever meet, dearie. I've seen hell. Seen the fire and heard the screams of the suffering damned. Satan himself told me there's a place reserved for me among the princes and princesses of the abyss. Now lie down on the floor and go to sleep.”
“I won't sleep in your house or eat or drink here,” Kate said.
“Then stay awake and starve to death for all I care,” Tilly said. “But remember, I'll shoot you if I have to and do it gladly.”
“You're a horrible woman and you'll have to sleep sometime.”
“No sleep!” Tilly said. “There will be time enough to sleep in Hades. I'll be overworked tormenting the damned, see? How could the devil find a more vicious, heartless demon than me?” The old woman convulsed with glee. She bent over and her frail body shook with laughter, bellow after bellow of mad mirth.
In that moment, Kate knew that Tilly was insane. It made her unpredictable and dangerous. Kate slipped her hand into her pocket and stepped slowly toward the madwoman, but Tilly was alert. The laughter stopped like the turning off of a faucet and the muzzle of the Winchester pointed at Kate's chest.
“One more step, dearie,” the old woman said. And then, harshly, “What do you got in your pocket? A knife? Out with it, real slow.”
Kate hesitated. She'd draw and shoot and be too slow. She knew that, but Tilly would kill her anyway. It was timeâ
“Hello . . . cab. . . .” A man's voice came from outside, his words shredding away in the hurtling wind of the violent sandstorm.
Long moments passed. Tilly stood, the Winchester up and ready in her hands. She was set, ready to kill.
The door burst open and a man stumbled inside. “Sorry Iâ”
“Frank! Look out!” Kate yelled.
The Winchester roared just as he dived for the floor. Tilly levered the rifle and fired when JC Brewster filled the doorway. The Ranger cried out and staggered backwards into darkness.
“Drop it!” Kate yelled, her derringer hammer-back at eye level.
Tilly Madison snarled like an animal, levered the rifle, and turned.
Kate fired and thumbed back the hammer again . . . but a second shot wasn't necessary. The old woman shrieked when the .41 crashed into the middle of her forehead. For a moment, she stood still, her ashen eyes wide and round as moons. The Winchester clattered onto the floor and Tilly followed it.
Frank was on his feet, Colt in hand. “Kate, are you hit?” he said, talking through a drift of gun smoke.
“No, I'm not hit.” She slipped the derringer back into her pocket.
Frank stepped to Tilly's body and turned it over with the toe of his boot.
Kate said, “Is she . . . ?”
“Yeah, she's on a stony lonesome. Who the hell was she?”
“A horrible, hellish creature. The world is better off without her shadow falling on it.” As though waking from a bad dream, Kate said, “Frank! JC Brewster was shot.”
Frank holstered his revolver and ran out of the cabin into the storm. He stumbled back inside a few moments later, his arm around Brewster's chest. The Ranger's toes dragged behind him and the front of his shirt was scarlet with blood.
“On the table,” Kate said. “Gently now, Frank.”
“I think he's hit hard,” Frank said.
“Unbuckle his gun belt and help me get his shirt off.”
Frank stared into Brewster's gray face. “Is he still alive?”
The Ranger opened his eyes. “No, I'm dead. Now let Kate undress me and don't interrupt.”
Kate smiled. “It seems there's life in you yet, JC. Frank, there's a well outside. I need water.”
There was no letup in the wind. It shook the frail fabric of the cabin and violently hurled sand against the windowpanes like birdshot. Brewster pretended to be in no pain, but his strained face and tortuous breathing gave lie to that. The rifle bullet had entered his left shoulder, smashing bone, and was still in there, too deep for Kate to dig it out.
Frank dragged the old woman's body outside.
When he returned. Kate said, “We need to get JC to a doctor. The bullet is where I can't reach it.”
“I reckon the nearest doctor will be in Eagle Pass”âFrank's face was clouded by doubtâ“if we can risk it.”
“Of course we'll risk it,” Kate said. “Besides, I have scores to settle. I will not be abused and manhandled and discussed as though I was a head of cattle to be bought and sold.”
“Tell me what happened, Kate. Why did Seth Dobbs bring you here?”
“Seth Dobbs is dead. I killed him.” She saw the shock in Frank's eyes and added, “I had no choice.” While she did what she could to clean Brewster's wound she told him about the kidnap and Bob Corcoran and Ben Lucas's plan to sell her in Mexico. “They brought me here and went on to Eagle Pass.”
“Then thank God for a sandstorm, huh?”
“Indeed and to His Blessed Mother who heard my prayers.” Kate bent over Brewster. “How do you feel, JC?”
The Ranger looked up at Kate's breasts hovering just above his face. “Stay right there, Kate,” he whispered. “I feel so much better when you're close.”
She smiled. “I will. I'll do what I can to take good care of you.”
Frank Cobb shook his head. It seemed like the Texas Rangers could turn any situation, no matter how dire, to their advantage. Finally he said, “Kate, I know he's hurt bad, but he's milking it.”
“He's what?” she said, startled.
Frank said quickly, “He's pretending to be worse than he is.”
“No, he's not. He's a poor thing.”
Despite his pain, JC Brewster looked up and grinned.