Bloody Sunday (2 page)

It had started a few weeks earlier in San Antonio, where Luke had brought the body of an outlaw named Joe Jack Talcott. Luke had caught up to Talcott at a road ranch between Schulenberg and San Antonio and gotten the drop on him—or so he'd thought—while the outlaw was in bed with a soiled dove named Juanita.

What Luke didn't find out until later was that Juanita's brother, who was something of a desperado himself, had been gunned down by a bounty hunter a couple of years earlier, so when Talcott, with his hands up and his long underwear down, had paused in his cussing long enough to call Luke a no-good bounty hunter, Juanita had gone loco.

Practically spitting fire, she had rolled out of the sheets with a flash of sleek, golden-brown skin and grabbed a bottle of tequila from the little table beside the bed. She flung it at Luke's head, and her aim was good. He had to throw his left arm up to block the bottle.

The next instant, Talcott crashed into him, desperation prompting the outlaw to try a diving tackle despite the fact that Luke's gun was still pointed in his general direction.

The Remington had gone off as the collision drove Luke backwards off his feet, but the bullet missed Talcott and tore through the oilcloth shade over the room's single window instead. Outside, it creased the rump of one of the horses tied at a hitch rack and set off an explosion of bucking and squealing that spooked the other mounts and made them jerk their reins loose and stampede away.

While that was going on, Luke was locked in a deadly struggle with Joe Jack Talcott. The outlaw got a hand on the barrel of Luke's gun and tried to twist the weapon around so that it pointed at its owner. Luke resisted that effort. Juanita came up and tried to kick him in the head with a bare foot. Actually, she was bare all over, which was very evident from Luke's vantage point on the floor, although he was in no position, physical or otherwise, to appreciate the view.

After jerking his head out of the way of Juanita's foot a couple of times, he grabbed her ankle with his free hand and heaved. She went over backwards and landed hard enough on her rump to knock the breath out of her and take her out of the fight for the moment. Luke balled that hand into a fist and slammed it a couple of times into the side of Talcott's head. The outlaw's eyes glazed over. He lost his grip on Luke's gun and Luke shoved him away.

Unfortunately, Talcott rolled within reach of his Colt, which rested in a holster attached to a shell belt hung over one of the posts at the foot of the bed. He regained his wits enough to make a grab for the gun, even though Luke yelled for him not to do it. The Colt slid out of leather and Talcott started to swing it up.

Luke shot him in the chest.

The Remington boomed three times and made Juanita scream and clap her hands over her ears. The first shot probably killed Talcott instantly, but Luke knew there was nothing worse than thinking some varmint was dead and then finding out that he wasn't, so he put two more slugs into the outlaw, each within a few inches of the blood-pouring hole where the first bullet had struck him. With the Colt still in his hand, Talcott sagged sideways on the floor.

Luke pushed himself onto one knee, then onto his feet and took a step back so he could cover Talcott and Juanita at the same time. Neither appeared to be a threat anymore. Talcott was dead and Juanita was curled up in a ball, sobbing in fear.

The fella who ran the place came in the door with a shotgun. He was a fat, bald-headed gent named Edwards with a long gray beard that hung down over his chest. Luke was ready to shoot him, too, if need be, but Edwards quickly pointed the shotgun at the floor and backed off.

“Take it easy, mister,” he said in an urgent voice. “Just take it easy.”

After that it was just a matter of explaining everything and showing Edwards the wanted poster with Joe Jack Talcott's picture on it. The proprietor insisted that he hadn't known the man who had taken Juanita into one of the rooms was really a wanted killer. Luke didn't know whether or not Edwards was telling the truth and didn't really care one way or the other.

The only ones who were really upset were the men whose horses had run off, and after taking a look at Luke they appeared to decide it wasn't worth raising a ruckus over.

All that was left was getting some clothes on Talcott's corpse, throwing it over the saddle on his horse, lashing the dead outlaw in place, and taking him to San Antonio. The State of Texas had placed the bounty on Talcott's head, so Luke figured the easiest way to collect would be to turn the body over to the Rangers.

That was how he came to find himself in the office of Major John B. Jones, the head of the Frontier Battalion.

The major didn't seem to be overly fond of bounty hunters, but what Luke did for a living wasn't illegal and there was a reward for Talcott, dead or alive, so Luke had $800 coming to him.

“Next time you should just take the body to the nearest undertaker and get a local lawman or other official to vouch for the fact that you brought him in,” Jones said. “You didn't have to haul Talcott all the way here to San Antonio.”

“The place where I caught up with him was halfway between here and Schuelenberg,” Luke explained. “I thought I'd probably get my money faster if I brought him to you.”

Jones grunted and said, “The money's all that matters to you, isn't it?”

“Talcott's killed three men in the commission of his crimes, that we know of,” Luke pointed out. “There's a good chance he's also the one who burned down that store in Hallettsville after it was robbed, and the bodies of two more men were found in the ashes. I'd say it's a pretty good thing Talcott won't be around to keep on robbing and killing, because I don't think he planned on stopping anytime soon.”

The bearded ranger inclined his head in acknowledgment of Luke's argument.

“I'll have the voucher for your reward drawn up right away,” he said. “You can come back by the office and pick it up later this afternoon. Take it to any bank in San Antonio and they'll honor it.”

“I'm obliged to you.” Luke nodded toward a stack of papers on Jones's desk. “That looks like a bunch of new wanted posters.”

“Already thinking about where your next payoff is coming from, eh?” Jones shoved the reward dodgers toward Luke. “You can take a look at them, but don't carry any of them off with you. My men haven't even seen them yet.”

“Obliged again,” Luke said as he picked up the stack.

The first dozen posters he flipped through were the usual motley assortment of bank, train, and stagecoach robbers, rustlers, horse thieves, backshooters, and rapists. Many of them were illustrated with crude drawings of the wanted men, and a few didn't have pictures at all.

But then Luke came to one that made him pause as his eyebrows rose in surprise. He said, “What do we have here?”

“What?” Major Jones asked distractedly without looking up from the paperwork he had already gone back to.

Luke turned the reward dodger around and held it out so that Jones could see the picture on it. This was a photograph, not a drawing, and the portrait was of an undeniably beautiful young woman with dark hair.

Jones grunted as he leaned forward to take a look at the wanted poster. He started rummaging through some of the papers on his desk as he said, “I think I've got a notice about her somewhere here. Yeah, there it is.”

He handed a couple of pages to Luke. One was a letter from the chief of police in Baltimore, Maryland, asking the Rangers to be on the lookout for a fugitive, and the other was a report from a Pinkerton Detective Agency operative.

“Gloria Jennings,” Luke mused as he studied the documents. “Wanted for murder. That's a little unusual, isn't it?”

“You've never hunted down a female killer before?”

“Actually I have, several times, in fact. But it's still not all that common. I see here that she murdered her husband.”

“Alfred Jennings,” Major Jones said. “A rich man, considerably older than Mrs. Jennings, who was his, ah, second wife.”

“Funny how often it happens that way,” Luke said. “This says that Jennings had interests in banks, warehouses, even a shipping line. He must've had a lot of money.”

“Less when his wife got through with him. In addition to the murder, there's a hundred thousand dollars missing.”

Luke let out a low whistle.

“I suppose that's why the family can afford to post a five thousand dollar reward.”

The amount of the bounty was the second thing Luke had noticed, the first being the fact that Mrs. Gloria Jennings was an exceptionally good-looking woman. Most of the time he brought in outlaws who were worth less than a thousand dollars, like Joe Jack Talcott. He made a decent living doing that, but most likely he would never get rich at it.

He tapped the detective's report and said, “It says here the Pinks tracked her to Fort Worth.”

“That's right, and while she was there she boarded a train bound for San Antonio.”

“Do you know if she ever got here?”

“I have no idea,” Major Jones said. “I'm not a Pinkerton detective or a bounty hunter. I've got a big stretch of country between here and the border to ride herd on. I can't go out looking for one fugitive who hasn't committed any crimes in Texas that I know of, and my men can't, either. I'll make sure they know about Mrs. Jennings, in case they happen to run across her, but capturing her isn't going to be a priority.”

“How long ago was this?” Luke asked.

“The dates are on the paperwork.”

Luke looked at the documents again, then said, “She killed her husband and vanished from Baltimore almost a year ago. This report saying she was in Fort Worth is almost eight months old. You're just getting a wanted poster on her now?”

“I don't have any control over when those things are sent out,” Jones said testily. “Paperwork takes a long time.”

“Why were these documents still on your desk?”

“They weren't. I had a vague memory of the case, so I had my clerk go through the files and pull them out after I saw the lady's picture on the poster. I wanted to refresh my memory on the details.”

Luke grinned and said, “You wanted to know more about the pretty lady.”

“If we're done here, Jensen . . .”

Luke tossed the documents back onto the desk and stood up. He would have liked to take them with him, along with the reward poster, but he had a good memory for facts.

And for faces as well, when they were as attractive as the one belonging to Gloria Jennings.

“Since this particular fugitive isn't a high priority of yours, I don't suppose you'd mind if I took a shot at tracking her down, would you, major?”

“Help yourself,” Jones said. “As long as you don't break the law or interfere with me or my men, I don't care what you do. The trail's bound to be pretty cold by now, though.”

“I've picked up colder ones,” Luke said.

As it turned out, it took him a week of asking questions at hotels, boardinghouses, and the railroad station before he found someone who remembered seeing Gloria Jennings. That led him to a porter who recalled helping her with her bags as she boarded a westbound train. More searching and asking questions turned up the conductor on that run, who told Luke, “The lady didn't go all the way to El Paso, I remember that for sure. It's not every day you come across a woman who's so easy on the eyes.”

“Where did she get off?” Luke asked.

The conductor, a pudgy, mostly bald gent with a high-pitched voice, took off his cap and scratched his bare scalp.

“I don't rightly recall,” he said.

Luke reached for his pocket.

“No, no, I'm not hinting for a bribe, mister,” the conductor said quickly. “I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure it was somewhere pretty far west, but not all the way to El Paso. There are several little towns in that ranching country out there north of the Big Bend. That's where it was she got off the train, in one of those settlements.”

Well, that narrowed it down some, anyway, Luke thought. He thanked the conductor, put together a load of supplies, picked up his horse from the livery stable, and headed west.

He could have taken the train and retraced Gloria's route that way, but he preferred to ride. As cold as the trail already was, a little more time wouldn't make any difference. Besides, if she was trying to elude pursuit she might have doubled back, and this would give him a chance to stop and ask questions in every little town he came to.

He was in a wide place in the road called Bracken's Crossing when the man who ran the general store listened to his description of Gloria Jennings and then said, “That sounds a lot like the gal who married old Sam MacCrae a while back. She's from back East somewhere, I hear tell. Young and a real looker, too. That ol' dog Sam.”

“Who's MacCrae?” Luke asked. “Where does he live?”

“He owns a ranch over on the other side of Painted Post, about fifty miles from here.”

Luke's interest picked up at that news. He said, “A good-sized spread, is it? Or just a little greasy sack outfit?”

The storekeeper snorted.

“Greasy sack, my hind foot. The MacCrae spread is the biggest outfit in that part of Texas. Takes up the whole of Sabado Valley and more besides.”

“So MacCrae's a rich man,” Luke said. “You called him old Sam. How old?”

“Shoot, I don't know for sure. He's in his fifties, I'd say.”

So far, everything Luke was hearing meshed perfectly with what he knew about Gloria Jennings. She had married a rich, older man back in Baltimore. There was no reason to think she wouldn't marry another one here in Texas if she got the chance.

Of course, she had already stolen a hundred thousand dollars from Alfred Jennings when she killed him, so she probably didn't need money, but for some people, plenty was never enough. No matter how much they had, they always wanted more, especially when it came to money and power.