[Texas Rangers 05] - Texas Vendetta (18 page)

Rusty said, “The Rangers aren’t supposed to get tangled up in personal feuds unless there’s a killin’.”

Farley’s lips pinched together. “There’ll be a killin’. It’ll be Big’un’s.”

They took their horses to the livery barn. The hostler seemed hesitant at first to accept them but softened when Rusty offered him money. “Havin’ you-all in my wagon yard is like standin’ in a storm with a lightnin’ rod in my hand.” He focused his interest on Farley. “I figured if you ever came out of that jail it’d be feet first. Big’un was braggin’ that he’d see to it.”

Farley said, “Big’un ain’t seein’ anything real clear right now.”

The hostler seemed to pick up on Farley’s implication. “The Landons would give you a medal if you was to put Big’un’s lights out. Even a Hopper or two might chip in.”

“I didn’t put his lights out. I just turned the wick down a ways.”

“That’ll tickle a lot of people who ain’t even kin to the Landons.” The man paused, reflecting. “It ain’t fair to put all the blame on Big’un, though. Jayce shot his brother Ned. You wouldn’t believe it, lookin’ at Big’un now, but as a young’un he was the runt of the litter. Other boys picked on him all the time. It’s no wonder he got mean. Once he started comin’ into his growth, he got over bein’ a runt but he never got over bein’ mean.”

Andy said, “I suppose he paid back the boys that had picked on him?”

“He’s still doin’ it. One of them was Oscar Truscott.”

Farley gave the hostler a minute’s speculative study. “I don’t suppose you’re the type that spreads gossip.”

“Not me. Gossip is a sin.”

“If the Landons was to hear what I’m about to tell you, there’s no tellin’ what they might do.” He proceeded to describe Big’un’s attempted assault on Flora Landon.

The stableman listened with rapt interest, his eyes wide. He shook his head and clucked in sympathy for the woman. “Nobody likes Big’un very much, not even some of his kin. This would sure rip his britches if it was to get out.”

“I’m tellin’ you in strict confidence.”

“It won’t go no further.”

The stableman led the horses away to turn them loose in a corral. Farley made a grim smile. “By sundown the story will be all over town and halfway across the county.”

Andy said, “It’s like you painted a target on Big’un.”

“Right between his eyes.”

Lige Tennyson surveyed the small town from a bend in the road a quarter mile away. He looked as if he had ordered whiskey and been given milk. “I’m disappointed. I thought Hopper’s Crossing would be a lot bigger than this.”

Scooter echoed his misgivings. “Don’t look like enough of a place for people to fight a feud over.”

“They ain’t fightin’ it over just the town. Once there’s been blood spilt, a feud don’t have to be over anything else in particular, just blood. Other reasons don’t count anymore.”

“You really think they’ll pay you to fight for one side or the other?”

“It’s been nothin’ but amateurs so far. I figured somebody’d be willin’ to hire a professional. At least I thought so till I saw how puny a town they’ve got. Well, I’ll ride on in and look things over. Worst come to worst, I can always visit the bank, if they’ve got one. But there may not be twenty dollars of real money in the whole shebang.”

“Want me to come with you, Pa?”

“No, you shade up in them trees yonder and wait for me. The laws are still lookin’ for a man and a boy travelin’ together. It’s better if you stay out here where it’s safe and don’t cause no notice.”

Scooter accepted without argument. His father had demonstrated early on this trip how suddenly he could explode into a rage, though his temper usually cooled as rapidly as it flared.

Lige removed his feet from the stirrups and stretched his legs without dismounting. The long ride had stiffened him. “Be a good boy and maybe I can bring you some candy.”

“I’d be tickled, Pa.”

Lige looked back once and was pleased to see that Scooter had ridden that paddle-footed old horse into the shade and had dismounted to rest and wait, as he had been told. He smiled and thought how lucky he was to have such a good and obedient son. During his years of incarceration he had worried a lot about what would become of the motherless boy. He had not left him in the best of hands, letting him fall in with the no-accounts Arliss and Brewster, but he had had little choice. He had feared that the authorities would put Scooter into some bleak orphan’s home if he stayed around where they would notice him.

That was the way with government, always messing in where nobody had invited it, he thought. Life would be a lot less complicated if there wasn’t some law to get in a man’s way every time he tried to turn a dollar or do something that pleasured him.

A good boy deserved a better horse. Lige had it in mind that when they left here and started up toward Indian territory he would watch for a better mount and do a little quiet trading. It was a father’s duty to provide for his son. Nobody was apt to think enough of one horse to trail them all the way to Red River and beyond.

The town was as inconsequential close up as it had appeared from a distance. The residential area consisted of no more than a dozen houses, most built of rough-sawed pine lumber. The main street, actually only a wide wagon road, had a handful of business buildings: a general store, a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, a church, a livery barn with several log corrals behind it. He noticed right away that there was no bank.

Scooter had been right. It was not worth fighting over.

He stopped in front of the general store and tied his horse to a hitching rail strung between two posts, its rawhide strips almost rotted through. A mongrel dog lying in the shade of the storefront made a halfhearted effort to get up and move out of the way, then settled back down. Lige had to step over him.

A couple of elderly loafers sat on a bench, watching him with a curiosity that told him the town did not have so many visitors that they went unnoticed.

He remarked, “Not too busy around here today. I thought Hopper’s Crossing would be a livelier place.”

An elderly man with a long gray beard and a cane said, “Hopper’s Crossing is. But this is Landon’s Flat. Hopper’s Crossing is about six miles further up the road.”

Lige felt relieved. Maybe the trip hadn’t been a waste after all. “My mistake. I didn’t know this place was here.”

“Neither do many other people. That’s the trouble. Now, if we’d won that fight over the courthouse …”

The other man looked as if he had just bitten down on a sour persimmon. “Spilt milk, Homer. No use hashin’ over somethin’ that happened a long time ago.”

The man named Homer reacted with impatience. “There’s plenty others still hashin’ it over. That’s what the feud is supposed to be about, even if most folks have forgot.”

Mention of the feud brought Lige to full attention. “What do you mean?”

The sour-faced one said, “Been thirty-forty years ago. There was an election to decide which place was goin’ to be the county seat. See that big empty lot over yonder?” He pointed an arthritis-twisted finger. “That was goin’ to be our courthouse square. But them crooks over in Hopper’s Crossing voted more than once and throwed in their horses and dogs. Stole the courthouse from us, is what they did. Us Landons put up a squawk, and the shootin’ started. There’s more of them Hoppers than there is of us, and they own most of the money.”

Lige saw his chance. “Maybe what you-all need is a real gunfighter, somebody who knows what needs doin’ and how to do it.”

“A man like that would cost a lot. Like I told you, most of the money is over in Hopper’s Crossing with their names on it. Bein’ the county seat, their town prospered while ours … well, you can see for yourself.”

Lige’s first reaction was sympathy, but his practical side did not tolerate it for long. He hadn’t come all this way to donate his services. He had come for the best reason he knew of: money.

He asked, “If you was to want to shoot the top man of that Hopper bunch, who would it be?”

The two old men looked at each other. The sour one said, “Judge Judd Hopper is the head of the clan. But if it was me doin’ it, I think I’d shoot Big’un Hopper first. The judge runs the family, but Big’un is the one he sends out to do the dirty work. He enjoys his job.”

“Where would a man find Big’un Hopper, if he was of a mind to look?”

“He’s a deputy under Sheriff Oscar Truscott. He fiddles to the judge’s tune, though. He don’t pay much attention to Oscar, nor anybody else besides old Judd. Come to a showdown, he might not listen to Judd either. He’s built like a bull and got a head like one.”

Lige said, “Sounds to me like he’d be the one to kill, all right.” But he was thinking Big’un would be the one to see about a gun-toting job. It was evident if he was to make any real money out of this situation, it would have to come from the Hoppers. Teaming up with the Landons would be like fishing in a dry hole.

He was about out of tobacco, and he had promised Scooter some candy. He remembered how much he had liked candy when he was a boy and how seldom he ever had any. Life was going to be better for his son than it had been for him, no matter what Lige had to do to make it happen.

Always in the back of his mind when he entered a place like this general store was the feasibility of emptying its cash box. He dismissed the idea in this case. From the looks of things he wouldn’t get much more than tobacco money. He would stir up all the John Laws within a hundred miles and almost certainly spoil his chance of profiting from the Hopper-Landon feud. If prison had taught him nothing else, it had taught him patience.

The clerk seemed grateful for even so small a sale. Lige thanked him and turned back toward the door, thinking that Scooter was the only one who profited much from this trip. At least he would be getting some candy. On reflection Lige realized the knowledge he had picked up was likely to be of good use. At least he knew not to waste his time with the Landons. He would try the Hoppers instead. Failing that, the Hoppers’ town must have a bank to hold all that money.

The two loafers had not moved from their place on the bench. Homer said, “Didn’t take you long to do business.”

Lige said, “Ain’t much business to be done around here. That dog looks about as busy as anybody in town.”

Like the old loafers, the dog had not moved.

Scooter waited in the shade of the trees as he had been told. Lige handed him the sack of candy. “Don’t eat all of that at once. It’ll make you sick at your stomach. Good things need to be stretched out so you enjoy them longer.”

“Thanks, Pa.” Scooter took a piece of hard candy from the sack. He held it up and stared appreciatively at it for a minute before he put it in his mouth. He talked around the candy. “I don’t reckon you saw a bank?”

“Takes money for a place to have a bank. This wasn’t the town I thought it was. We’ll do better in the next one.”

“We goin’ there today?”

Lige looked up at the sun. “We still got some daylight ahead of us. Ain’t no use wastin’ it.”

He set his horse into an easy trot. Scooter followed, crunching the candy with his teeth. The sound made Lige’s skin tingle. His own tobacco-worn teeth would crumble if he put them through that torture.

He said, “I sure wish we could give these horses a good bait of oats. They’ve earned it, bringin’ us this far.”

The candy made Scooter’s words sound garbled. “Oats cost money, don’t they, Pa?”

“We’ll have money when we get through with our business here. Them old fellers back yonder told me the Hoppers have done right good. I figure they’ll be willin’ to fork over for gettin’ some of the Landons out of their way.”

“You’d kill them people, Pa?”

“You’ve got to look at it from my side, son. Them people don’t mean nothin’ to us. They’re goin’ to kill one another anyway. I don’t see nothin’ wrong if I push things a little. I’m bettin’ the Hoppers would be glad to keep their hands clean by turnin’ their dirty washin’ over to somebody else. Wouldn’t be nothin’ the law could do to them, and me and you would be long gone.”

“Them Landons are liable to shoot back.”

“The bigger the risk, the bigger the gain. Even marryin’ an Indian woman and gettin’ head-right land, we’ll need some start-up money in the territory.”

Scooter asked, “You reckon you’ll make a good farmer, Pa? Been a long time since you done much of it.”

“I growed up with my hands shaped like a plow handle. It’s a good life.”

He had not always thought so. Years ago he had decided that harvesting banks and prosperous storekeepers was better than picking cotton. Graying hair and arthritis now draped a nostalgic curtain over fading memories of a sore back and bleeding fingers.

They stopped in a stand of timber half a mile from Hopper’s Crossing. “We’ll make camp here. We’ve got the river for water and plenty of deadfall wood for a cook fire. Ain’t nobody liable to pay us much mind.”

Scooter asked uneasily, “You goin’ to visit the bank, Pa?”

“Maybe later, when I’m done with the other business. Right now I’m goin’ in to stable my horse awhile and get myself a haircut. I want to find out what direction the wind blows.”