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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780759520639 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grand Central Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2001 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 483 KB |
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Chapter One
Misery, Texas, Autumn 1879
The gnawing in Rafe Bodine's belly and the position of the setting sun told the ex-Ranger that suppertime was at hand. It took a lot of food to fill his six-foot, three-inch frame, and the considerable improvement in his wife's cooking over the past three months made him eager to reach their small house.
Ellie had made the cabin a real home — a welcome retreat. Sweet-scented wildflowers graced the center of the rough-hewn kitchen table, and blue gingham curtains hung crisply at the windows. She had even fashioned a handsome starburst-pattern quilt for their bed.
Rafe's impulsive decision to marry his best friend and neighbor was working out after all. Despite niggling doubts about quitting the Rangers, and his brother Ethan's repeated warnings that marrying Ellie would be like marrying his own sister, Rafe felt confident that he'd made the right decision.
He loved Ellie in his own special way. It wasn't an all-consuming, hearts-on-fire, romantic kind of love that young girls were prone to dream about, but a genuine, caring, dependable kind of love — one that promised contentment and friendship. That was more than most couples shared in their lifetime.
And now there would be a baby to cement their relationship, to bring them even closer together.
He'd been stunned last night when Ellie had revealed the news of her pregnancy. But now that he'd had time to ponder things, the idea of becoming a father wasn't nearly as frightening. In fact, he was growing downright comfortable with the notion.
"Guess we'll be adding another room onto the cabin now,Buck," he told his horse, gently nudging the stallion's flanks to quicken his pace. "With the baby coming, we're going to need another bedroom for a nursery." The thought made him grin.
As Rafe drew closer to the cabin, an uneasy feeling took hold of him. Things didn't seem quite right. The smoke that usually belched from the stone chimney was absent, as was the sound of Ellie's sweet singing, which he could always hear when he approached.
Tying the horse to the porch rail, he moved cautiously to the front door. Years of sneaking up on hombres and Indians had made Rafe careful by nature, and his hand went to the butt of the Colt revolver slung at his hip.
"Ellie," he called out, noting that the cabin door stood ajar. He drew his weapon, entered, and called out again for his wife, but no warm, familiar greeting answered him. The house appeared empty.
He looked about. The cabin was neat and tidy, as was always Ellie's practice to leave it. An apple pie was cooling on the table, and everything appeared to be in order. Chiding himself for starting to worry like an old woman, he holstered his gun.
Most likely Ellie had gone out back to fetch more firewood, which was probably not such a good idea, considering her present condition. He would have to put a stop to her strenuous activities until after the baby was born.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the door shut, and Rafe spun toward it. It was then that he noticed the small pool of blood on the floor, and he wondered if Ellie had cut herself while paring the apples for the pie. He didn't want to think about the other possibility: that she might be having female trouble because of the baby. "Complications," Doc Leahy would call it. Ellie was of an age when having babies could prove difficult.
Fear gripped his innards at the possibility of her losing their child. What just a short while ago had seemed so remote and unreal had now become an important element in their lives and their marriage. A child could forge their union just as Ethan's birth had melded Ben and Patsy Bodine's.
His parents' arranged marriage had started off on shaky ground. The two had come together as virtual strangers, but the birth of their first son had been the catalyst to ignite a love that had burned brighter and grown stronger than any other union Rafe had witnessed, until his mother's untimely death from pneumonia eight years ago.
It was Rafe's hope that the child Ellie carried in her womb would have a similar effect on their marriage.
He pushed those thoughts aside and headed outside. The sun dipped slowly to the horizon, making it more difficult to follow the trail of blood that shone dull red against the pale sandy soil. It led across the yard toward the barn, and he thought it strange that Ellie would have cause to visit the barn at that time of evening. Unless something had happened to one of the animals — that could explain the blood, he reassured himself.
One of Ellie's lambs might have gotten hurt, cut itself on that damned barbed wire he was forced to string to keep his herd from straying, or maybe the new colt had gotten into something he wasn't supposed to. Ellie had a soft heart for animals and helpless creatures, and she was always bringing them back to the house to tend them. Perhaps she had done so today.
The eerie silence surrounding him as he drew nearer to the barn made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. His sixth sense — the one that had saved him countless times from gunslingers and cattle thieves — told him that something wasn't right. He pulled the .45 from his holster once again and approached cautiously.
The barn doors were closed, but the latch that fastened them was not in its fixed position. Grasping the edge of the heavy door, he pulled it open; it creaked loudly in protest. Still, there was no sound from the animals.
He searched for the lantern that hung on the wall to the right of the door and, finding it, struck a match.
Flies buzzed around his head, and the cloying, familiar odor of blood rose up to torment his senses. A fear he'd never known before gripped his belly, twisting it into a tight knot.
"Ellie!" he called, holding the lantern out in front of him as he walked farther into the barn. It was then that he saw the two slaughtered lambs. They'd been gutted, their lifeless heads severed from their bodies.
Disgusted at such wanton violence and alarmed for his wife's safety, he rushed forward, shouting her name again and again. Then he stopped dead in his tracks at the gruesome sight he encountered.
Ellie's lifeless body lay before him in a mound of hay colored red by blood. She'd been knifed viciously, thoroughly, almost ritualistically, and tears of grief filled his eyes.
Screaming out her name, Rafe dropped to his knees beside his dead wife, his mind refusing to believe what his eyes beheld.
Why, God? Why did you allow this to happen? She was such an innocent, so kind....
Ellie and his child, like his hopes for a new beginning, were dead.
He'd seen men murdered countless times, some who'd been butchered by the Comanche, others by Mexicans out for retribution, but he'd never before seen a woman so viciously slaughtered and violated, never in all his years of rangering and Indian fighting.
Rafe shut his eyes to wipe out the hideous sight, though he knew that his wife's lifeless visage would haunt him the rest of his days. Then he fetched a horse blanket and wrapped it about her, and as he lifted her tenderly in his arms, he saw that whoever the murdering bastard was, he'd secured himself a trophy. Ellie's long blond braid had been severed.
A killing rage, unlike anything Rafe had ever felt before, consumed him, and he shook from the force of it. "I'll kill you, you murdering bastard. I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do."
* * *
Guilt rode heavy on Rafe's shoulders, thick and cold as a slab of marble. In the short time it had taken him to clean Ellie's body and wrap it in linens for transport to her parents' home, he had done a lot of thinking about her murder, and her murderer.
In a cold, calculated, detached manner he had tried to fathom the reason for her killing, and the only conclusion he had drawn was that Ellie had been killed because of him, because of the profession he'd chosen. His creed that justice must be served at all costs — the Rangers' creed — had ultimately destroyed his own wife.
In his heart he knew who the murderer was, who had vowed to get even, and had threatened to "cut Rafe to ribbons" if he ever got the chance.
Hank Slaughter was a man capable of such mayhem and torture. The sick, twisted bastard, whom he and Ethan had sent to prison five years before for robbing the Misery Bank and Trust, was no doubt on the loose again and on a mission of revenge.
There'd be no place for Slaughter to hide. Rafe would hunt him down and exact his pound of flesh. He had pledged as much on his dead wife's body, and he would keep his promise to the dead woman, whose only crime had been loving him too much.
Later there would be time for self-recriminations and sorrow that he hadn't loved Ellie as much as he should have. Now he had to inform the Masters that their only daughter was dead. They would be devastated by the news, but would draw comfort in the knowledge that Ellie would have a proper Christian burial. Then he would set out on his mission.
* * *
Hank Slaughter was feeling good, and it wasn't just the half bottle of rye whiskey he'd drunk. Killing made him feel good, made him feel powerful, and right now he felt as if he could conquer the whole goddamn world and Texas to boot.
The lamplight glinted through his red hair and beard, both sprinkled with generous amounts of gray. He looked much older than his forty years, but then, he'd lived a harder life than most, and prison had never been conducive to keeping a man young.
"Well, boys," he said, leaning back in his chair as if he didn't have a care in the world, and grinning at his compatriots, "we got our revenge on Bodine. And sweet it was."
Bobby leaned over the card table and whispered to his older brother, so the other patrons of Sweetwater's only saloon couldn't overhear him, "You shouldn'ta killed the woman, Hank. It wasn't right. She didn't have nothing to do with Bodine putting you in jail."
"She was his wife. That makes her guilty by association. Besides, the deed's done. What the hell you acting so jumpy about? Once we've had a few whiskeys, we'll hightail it outta here and ride to the hideout. We'll lay low for a while. No one will find us there."
The two brothers, Roy Lee and Luther, cast their cousin a skeptical look but kept silent. They had no intention of bucking Hank Slaughter. Arguing with him wasn't a real healthy thing to do, and Bobby was just plain foolish for questioning his brother's actions.
Bobby snorted, then downed his glass of whiskey. "You're a fool if you think that. Bodine's a Ranger. He's going to come looking for us, and when he finds us he's going to kill us all."
The bearded man's eyes, silver like the skin of a snake, narrowed into reptilian slits, and he grasped his brother's arm, knocking the glass from his hand. "Don't ever call me a fool, you lily-livered coward. I ain't the one peeing my pants over Bodine. Let him come if he's got a hankerin' to die. I'd still like to carve his ass into little pieces. It wasn't nearly as satisfying carving his wife's."
Bobby didn't bother to hide his disgust. "I think we should split up. It'll be harder for Bodine to find us if we're not riding together."
Luther belched, then wiped his mouth on his dirty shirt sleeve. "There's safety in numbers, Bobby. We should stick together like always. Ain't that right, boss?"
Hank nodded. "Luther's right."
"Well, I'm splitting off," Bobby declared, unwilling to look his brother in the eye for fear of what he'd see there. He knew he was a big disappointment to Hank. But not every man could live up to Hank's twisted values.
"Judy'll put me up, and I'd just as soon take my chances in a whore's bed than in a saddle, waiting to be picked off by a bullet from a rifle."
Roy Lee didn't look quite as convinced as Luther of the need to remain together. "You gonna stay at Madam DeBerry's whorehouse, Bobby? 'Cause if you are, maybe I should go to Justiceburg with you. Judy's got herself some real nice whores, and the biggest tits I ever seen on a woman."
Bobby shook his head. In his opinion, Roy Lee and Luther were liabilities and should never have been included in the first place. But Hank was big on family ties, and he liked the fact that the two brothers were so easy to lead around. "You go with Hank and Luther, Roy Lee. I don't want to be responsible for your hide."
The skinny man looked offended at first, then disappointed that he wouldn't be getting a poke.
Hank pushed himself to his feet and the other two men followed suit. "We'll wait for you at the hideout. If you don't show, say in a month's time, I'm gonna assume you're dead." Hank's laugh was sinister. "That'd be a real crying shame, me losing a baby brother."
Bobby figured that the only thing Hank was sorry about was the fact that he wouldn't get to kill him himself. Hank surely was a sick son of a bitch.
* * *
Rafe had just finished hitching the team to the wagon when the sound of hoofbeats caught his attention. He recognized Ethan approaching and wasn't glad to see him. Once the Texas Ranger found out what had happened, he would be adamant in his desire to hunt down Ellie's killers. But this was one time, Rafe decided, he'd be going it alone.
"Hey, little brother," Ethan called out before dismounting. "Where you off to? I come out here for a meal and some companionship, and I find you running off to who knows where. Anybody with a lick of sense would know it's too goddamn late to be traveling." He grinned, winking suggestively. "Guess I'll just have to keep that little wife of yours company, until you..."
"Ellie's dead." Rafe didn't flinch as he said the words, didn't let on to his brother that grief consumed him. He couldn't afford the weakness of letting it show.
Ethan's face paled, and he removed his hat, hitting the dust off his pant leg with it. "Dead? Did she have an accident or something? Did she— "
"Ellie was murdered. I found her in the barn a little while ago. Her throat's been slashed, and she's been..." He swallowed with difficulty, trying to block the hideous sight from his memory as he said the word: "Violated."
"Jesus!" Ethan stepped forward to put a comforting hand on his brother's shoulder. "Rafe, I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. Who'd do something so terrible to a sweet little thing like Ellie? She never harmed a fly." He looked into the back of the wagon and saw the shrouded body.
Rafe saw the grief in his brother's eyes and said, "There's only one man I can think of capable of such evil. One man who'd have the motive to revenge himself on me."
"Hank Slaughter?" Ethan's lips flattened into a grim line as he asked the question, then he nodded to himself. "It's possible. Slaughter and his brother were seen in town a couple of days ago. They had a drink at the saloon and left. I didn't see 'em myself, or I might have hauled them in for questioning."
Rafe masked his anger and hostility behind a cold facade, unwilling to let Ethan know the hatred he felt for the Slaughters. "I'm taking Ellie to her parents' home for burial. I was just leaving when you rode up."
"I'll come with you. I can deputize you as a Ranger, and we can hunt for the Slaughters together, just like we used to. But first there's some business I need to attend to in Fort Worth. It should only take about a week, two at the most, then we can hunt the Slaughters down."
It wasn't hard for Rafe to figure out his brother's motive. It wasn't out of disrespect for Ellie — the Ranger had thought the world of her — but because of his hard-edged, unfaltering opinion that Rafe should never have left the Texas Rangers to begin with.
The bitter irony surrounding Ellie's death was that Rafe had never wanted to be a lawman. It was Ethan, whom Rafe had looked up to and admired, who had the hankering for rangering. And it was Ethan, those many years ago, who had persuaded him to join the Texas Rangers, with promises of adventure and glory and reminders of duty and allegiance to the glorious state of Texas. Rafe had wanted to be a rancher, build a herd of black Aberdeen Angus, and follow in his father's footsteps.
Maybe if he had been his own man back then, none of this would have happened, Rafe thought, listening to the mournful howl of a coyote, which seemed somehow fitting.
"What do you say?" Ethan prodded.
Rafe nodded in agreement, though he knew he wouldn't take Ethan up on his offer. He was through with the Rangers, with civilized justice and the law. There was only one kind of justice left for killers like the Slaughters — vigilante justice — and he aimed to mete it out.
Ethan was too much a lawman ever to agree to that kind of retribution. Captain Bodine liked doing things by the book, all legal and proper. In the past, Rafe had, too. But not this time. Not after the way his wife had been butchered. He wasn't waiting for any judge and jury who might make the wrong decision. And he wasn't waiting for Ethan to get back from Fort Worth and allow the trail to get cold. So he lied.
"Sounds good, Ethan. I've got to get Ellie settled with her parents first, then there's the matter of the funeral. Most likely it'll take a few days. I think the Masters are going to need some time to adjust to Ellie's death." And there was the matter of the grandchild, which they didn't yet know about.
But he wouldn't tell Ethan of that now. It was too soon, too painful, the wound too raw to probe.
Ethan cast Rafe a searching look. "And what about you, little brother? How much time are you going to need?"
"Only as long as it takes to bury my wife." The words were said with cold finality, and Ethan seemed to accept them.
Rafe knew he had no time for such civilized matters as funerals. He intended to go after the Slaughter gang before their trail grew cold. He would grieve for Ellie and the unborn child in his own way, in his own time — grieve for everything that might have been and now would not because of Hank Slaughter.