A Tale Out of Luck Read online

  So, who had killed that stranger? Whoever it was had likely fomented an Indian uprising because a handful of souls from that Comanche band had probably survived the cavalry attack. They would take word of the massacre back into Comancheria. Comanches lived by the code of revenge. This wasn’t over. Scalps would peel.

  20

  TRYING TO KEEP UP with Poli and Tonk as they dodged and ducked brush and timber would ordinarily have made great sport, but right now Hank was too anxious about his boys to take much pleasure in the excursion. They rumbled across hills, creeks, and prairies in the direction of the flock of vultures for ten or twelve minutes before Poli pulled up at a vantage point.

  “Look!” the foreman said, pointing.

  A rider leading a horse had just come out of a tree line a rifle shot away. At a glance Hank knew that it was Jay Blue, trailing the Kentucky mare. He whistled through his teeth, and saw his son react.

  “Good job, Poli!” He gripped his foreman’s shoulder with gratitude before spurring his winded mount ahead to meet his son. His relief was tempered only by a nagging concern over Skeeter, who was nowhere in sight.

  “Son!” he cried, coming within earshot.

  “Daddy! Am I ever glad to see y’all!”

  “Son, where’s Skeeter?”

  “He’s okay. Not far back.”

  Hank’s relief came out in a weary groan. He got down to loosen the cinch on his still-heaving mount. Poli and Tonk did the same.

  Jay Blue stepped down to their level out of respect and gestured with pride toward the Thoroughbred. “We got the mare back! And that ain’t all!”

  Hank turned away from his saddle and stalked toward his son. “Jay Blue, I don’t care about the damn mare.” He took the boy in his arms and hugged him roughly, slapping his back as if putting out a fire. “I thought you’d been killed a dozen times by now.”

  “You’re not gonna believe it, Daddy. We caught the Steel Dust Gray, and we found a wounded Indian! That’s why I left Skeeter behind!”

  “Slow down, son. Tell me what the hell you’ve gotten yourself and Skeeter into, and give it to me straight.”

  As he shook the saddle kinks out of his legs, Hank listened to Jay Blue tell what had happened since he skipped guard duty.

  “We didn’t know what else to do with the Wolf,” Jay Blue finally said.

  “You did the right thing.”

  “I think he told me the truth. His camp had nothin’ to do with scalpin’ that drifter. He said the arrows in the man were ghost arrows. What do you think he meant by that?”

  “I know exactly what he meant,” Hank said. “The killer who murdered and scalped that drifter, Wes James, seems to have come back from the dead.”

  Jay Blue and Poli looked at each other, puzzled.

  “Huh?” Tonk said.

  Hank immediately felt foolish for having brought it up. It was the last thing he wanted to talk about. “It’s a long story. We’ll get into that later if we have to. For now, here’s what we’re gonna do: Poli, you’ll go stay with Skeeter and the wounded warrior overnight. Son, you and I and Tonk will ride to town to get some medicine for that Indian. Tomorrow, Tonk can accompany you back here.”

  “I need to get supplies for Mr. Hayes, too. Skeeter and I promised we’d deliver the stuff to his cave, and to the corrals where he’s breaking that stallion.”

  Hank frowned. “You boys don’t need to be out here ridin’ around with Indian trouble brewin’.”

  “We gave our word. You’ve got to let us.”

  Hank started to argue the point, but caught himself before he spiraled into another outburst of hotheadedness. He sighed. “Alright . . . I’ve been thinkin’ about this, son. This ain’t easy for me to allow, but I reckon you’re old enough to make your own decisions. Hell, when I was your age, growing up back in Tennessee, I’d spend months at a time in the wilderness, so I guess you’re a chip off the old block. You go help that mustanger, like you promised.”

  Jay Blue beamed. “We’ll be careful, I promise. But what about you? You’ve got something on your mind. I can tell.”

  Hank nodded. “I may be retired, but I’ve still got some Rangerin’ left in me. I aim to find out what’s behind these so-called ghost arrows.” He turned to tighten the cinch on his saddle, his mount having recovered from the gallop. “We’ve got the rest of the day and most of the night to talk about it on the way to town, son. I hope you’re ready for some tall ridin’.”

  Jay Blue smiled. “Yes, sir!”

  Hank mounted, then turned to his foreman. “Poli, don’t let Skeeter shoot you when you find him. He’s liable to be a mite jittery.”

  The riders arrived at Luck in the night, stabled their horses at Gotch Dunnsworth’s livery, and collapsed on hay piles to sleep for a few hours. At daylight, they ate breakfast at Ma Hatchet’s Inn and Café. Taking a look at Jay Blue’s ripped and trail-soiled clothing, Ma Hatchet insisted on preparing a bath for him.

  Hank went down to Sam’s store to buy his son a new change of clothes.

  “Damn, son,” Hank said, looking at the bathwater his son had stepped out of. “You had more Texas on you than a pack of javalinas.”

  Next, they went to Doc Zuber’s office to obtain some medicine for the Wolf. After Jay Blue described the warrior’s wound to him, Doc Zuber gave him a piece of an aloe vera plant to use as a topical treatment to fight infection around the entry and exit wounds. Then he reached for a bottle labeled Darby’s Carminative.

  “You won’t tell anybody we’re nursing a wounded Indian out there, will you, Doc?” Jay Blue asked.

  “Every vord spoken in my examination room is confidential,” Zuber said in his thick German accent. “It’s my duty to treat all human beings, no matter their race. I vill tell no one of the voonded varrior.”

  “How much of this stuff should I give him?”

  “A shot every day for pain and internal damage. But only one shot a day! This is laudanum. Made from opium. It’s highly addictive.”

  Jay Blue thanked the old doctor. The Tomlinsons then paid the medical bill and stepped out of the office onto Main Street. Hank pulled his watch from his vest.

  “It’s past noon, son. Let’s have a snort of something besides that laudanum.”

  Jay Blue grinned. “I wouldn’t mind an eye-opener.”

  Walking down the street, Jay Blue began to notice a certain commotion gathering in his wake. Faces peered through windows. Doors shut behind them, as a string of citizens began to follow at a respectable distance behind the Tomlinsons.

  “I may have let the news slip about your capture of the Steel Dust Gray,” Hank admitted. “They’re gonna want to hear the details.”

  “But noboby knows about the Wolf, right?”

  “These folks don’t need to know a thing about any of that.”

  Just then, the door to the hotel opened, and Ma Hatchet stepped out, holding Jay Blue’s discarded trousers. “Jay Blue, what do you want done with the trail duds you left behind?”

  “Throw ’em away, ma’am!” Jay Blue shouted with a casual wave of his hand.

  “But burn ’em first,” Hank added. “They ain’t hardly fit for a trash heap.”

  At the hitching rail in front of the saloon, one mount stood—a well-muscled sorrel gelding, quite striking in appearance, wearing a finely tooled saddle.

  “Good God,” Hank said, pausing to gesture toward the horse. “Would you look at that collection of bad ideas.”

  Jay Blue followed Hank’s thinking, of course, having learned all he knew about horses from his father. “Bald face, one glass eye, four white socks, flaxen mane. Gotta be crazier than hell.” Still, aside from the color issues, he had to appreciate the way the horse was put together. “Too bad. Looks like a waste of otherwise good horseflesh.”

  “True,” Hank agreed. “Look at the hindquarters on that rascal—built for speed. Long straight legs, deep chest, round feet, fine head. The neck’s weighted just right, and ties in perfectly at the withers. Sti
ll . . .”

  “Yeah . . . I wonder who this lunatic belongs to.”

  “Let’s go find out.”

  As they stepped in through the swinging doors of Flora’s Saloon, Jay Blue feeling as close to equal in stature to his father as he had ever come, he noticed three men standing at the bar. Two were local entrepreneurs who had walked in from businesses down the street. The third man had to be the owner of that bald-faced thunderbolt tied outside.

  This man looked as if he belonged with the horse. Both were mature, and in their prime. The man was a six-footer who looked as if he could handle himself, and there was a bit of flash about him that bespoke a warning. He wore his hair long and straight, tucked behind his ears. It fell out of a rather citified black felt hat. His muscle filled out a dark suit with matching trousers and jacket, the latter left open to reveal a silk vest and gold watch chain, not to mention a tooled gun belt with two Smith & Wesson revolvers. Jay Blue figured him for a slick gambler looking for rustics to fleece. Right now, the man had a large smile on his face and seemed to be enjoying himself. He was getting an eyeful of Flora Barlow, but that certainly wasn’t unusual.

  Flora put everything aside to greet the two Tomlinson men. Hank ordered them both a beer and a whiskey.

  “Whiskey?” Jay Blue asked, shocked.

  “You’ve earned it.”

  The two locals wanted to know about Jay Blue’s adventures, so he began to tell the story. But halfway through, two more townsmen came in and demanded that he start over, which he did. Then another few patrons arrived and, in turn, lobbied for a retelling of the story, from the beginning, and then more customers shuffled in . . . It took Jay Blue an hour and a half, three beers, and two shots of whiskey to tell his tale of the rescue of the Kentucky Thoroughbred and the roping of the Steel Dust Gray.

  The timing, he thought, could not have worked out better, because when he finally came to the part about throwing the loop on the mare and the attack of El Grullo, the beautiful Jane Catlett just happened to walk into the bar and started her workday by collecting all the coal oil lamps from the saloon. Certainly this story would impress her, he thought, so he made sure he told it loud enough for everybody in the saloon to hear, especially Jane. The pleasant hum of beer and whiskey in his head made the story sound pretty remarkable to him, and the faces of the men in the bar seemed to reveal the high entertainment value of the account, yet Jane scarcely deigned to grant him so much as a glance as he rhapsodized.

  Eventually, the tongue oil got into every man’s system, and the talk of wild horses and Indians became a general discussion that included subjects such as the murder of one Wes James, the attack of Crazy Bear’s camp on Flat Rock Creek, and the death of Major Ralph Quitman during that fight. Jay Blue, satisfied that he had held sway long enough, withdrew from the nucleus of the gathering with his third beer in his hand.

  He found Jane at a table in the corner, polishing the soot out of all the glass globes she had removed from the kerosene lamps that served to illuminate Flora’s Saloon at night. Jay Blue could see that she was only halfway through with her task. Finally, he had caught her sitting still so that he didn’t have to chase her all over the saloon to get in a flirtatious word or two.

  “You need some help?” he said, pulling a chair back and setting his beer on the table. To his alarm, his words came out with a bit of a slur, and some beer sloshed out of his mug from the simple task of setting it down on the table. “Whoa!” he said. “I’m not accustomed to drinkin’ quite so many drinks in a row.”

  Jane glanced up through a strand of stray hair hanging between her eyes and his. “You’re a cowboy. You’ll get used to it. And I don’t need any help, thank you. In fact, I’m almost done if you want to go back and join your admirers.”

  He sat down anyway. “I take it you’re not one of ’em.”

  “I have no opinion one way or the other.”

  Disappointment fueled his frustration, and he became suddenly very frank with this barmaid he had tiptoed around for months. “Well, just what does it take to impress you, anyway?”

  Unmoved, she went back to polishing lantern globes. “My, you’re snippy when you’re drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk! Anyway, you’re snippy all the time, so you’re not one to talk.”

  She gasped at the comment, but offered no rebuttal.

  Jay Blue saw that she was down to two lantern globes, and she was now cleaning with a fury, so he thought he’d better patch this situation up fast, if he didn’t want to leave town with a bad feeling in the pit of his heart.

  “Look, Jane, I didn’t really come over here to help you. I came to ask you for your help.”

  “A Tomlinson asking someone else for help?” Then she softened a bit. “Help with what?”

  Conspiratorially, he looked over both shoulders. “I can’t tell you, unless you promise you can keep a secret.”

  “Are you kidding? I could ruin half the men in town with what I’ve overheard in this place. Of course I can keep a secret.” She was polishing the last globe.

  Jay Blue leaned in close. “I’ve got the Wolf.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “The Wolf. He’s a warrior wounded in the fight with the buffalo soldiers. Skeeter and I found him, half dead. I’m taking some medicine back out to him, trying to save his life.”

  For a moment, her mouth hung open, breathless. “So, how can I help?”

  “First of all, don’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t!”

  “I need evidence. I have reason to believe that the Wolf’s people had nothing to do with killing that drifter, Wes James. I think somebody faked the murder to make it look like Indians did it. If you hear anything that could help me prove the Wolf and his band were wrongfully accused in this whole deal, it could help us head off an Indian war. If it’s not already too late.”

  Jane looked across the saloon to where Hank Tomlinson and Flora were deep in their own discussion. “Does your father know about all this?”

  Jay Blue nodded. “He’s trying to find out the truth about who killed Wes James.”

  “I was here when your father got his first look at the dead body with all the arrows in it. I never thought I’d see fear in his eyes, but I don’t know what else it could have been.”

  Jay Blue nodded. “Something strange is going on. He won’t even tell me what it is. Something from his past. But, anything you see or hear, you can tell him. I’ll be out there trying to nurse the Wolf back to health. Then Skeeter and I have to take some supplies to Jubal Hayes, the mustanger. But Daddy will be around, and you can tell him if you pick up on something out of the ordinary. Anything.”

  “Let’s start with that guy at the bar. He ain’t from around here.”

  “Not much trail dust on those duds,” Jay Blue agreed. “Looks like he came here straight from Austin.”

  “Maybe he’s a gambler.”

  “That was my thought. Anyway, keep your eye out for strangers like him, or anything unusual. Tell my father anything you know, even if it seems inconsequential.” He lifted the beer mug, mopped up the little bit he had spilled with his sleeve, then stood.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I’ve got to stock up on some supplies and get back out there to my patient. I just hope he lived through the night.”

  Jane put her chores aside and stood. “Well, hey . . .” she said. “I’m sorry I snipped at you about your story. It’s just . . . I’ve heard a lot of stories in here, you know?”

  “I imagine.” Now that he was getting somewhere, he couldn’t think of a cotton-picking thing to say. “Well, I’ve got to make tracks.”

  “Okay. Hey, not that I care, but . . .”

  “What?”

  “Watch yourself out there.” Her eyes met his briefly, then fell bashfully to the floor. She began gathering up the lantern globes.

  He tried not to grin too idiotically. “I’ll see you soon, I hope.” He turned and walked away, leaving the unfinish
ed beer on a barroom table.

  21

  I’LL TELL YOU THIS MUCH . . .” Hank paused to take a sip from his shot glass. He had noticed someone coming nearer from the corner of his eye, so he looked sideways to find his own son approaching.

  “I’m going to buy my supplies,” Jay Blue said.

  “Put ’em on the ranch tab, son.”

  Jay Blue slapped Hank on the shoulder the way a horseman would pat a favored mount. “I’ve got my own tab.” He tipped his hat to Miss Flora and headed for the door.

  “Come get me before you leave,” Hank ordered. He saw the boy wave an acknowledgment of the order as he strode out.

  “Anyway,” Hank continued, leaning in close to Flora again. “I’ll tell you this much about it. Years ago”—he jutted his thumb toward the doors Jay Blue had just set to swinging—“long before he was born, there was a string of murders by a renegade Comanche. There were certain men that he hunted.”

  Flora rolled a tumbler of brandy elegantly between her fingers. Her features looked beautiful as ever, but her brow had just become quite serious. “What men?”

  “Rangers. And not just any rangers, but four men from a specific company. My company. This renegade killed three of my best friends.”

  Flora gasped. “Why, Hank? What did he have against you and your friends?”

  “It’s a long story. I don’t even want to dredge it up if I don’t have to.”

  Flora was curious, but respectful. “This renegade—what was he called?”

  “We never knew his real Indian name but we dubbed him Black Cloud, because that’s the way he hung over us, waiting to strike like lightning.” Hank threw half a shot of whiskey past his teeth, shook off the old memories, and composed himself. “Anyway, Flora, this buck had a certain way of making his arrows. The craftsmanship was the finest I ever saw. The markings in red and black paint were typical Comanche designs, but he always used the exact same patterns. You could tell the same hand had made all the arrows. The dogwood was straight as a guitar string; the feathers trimmed just so, fastened expertly with sinew; the war points were filed from barrel hoops, weighted just right, sharp as razors. He was an artist. He had a flare. A signature.”