Eyes closed, the Webb girl tossed her head from side to side, as though trying desperately to clear a confused mind and wounded soul of a spider’s web of unwanted thoughts, horrific images, and the pain lying at her bare feet. She latched onto my forearm with an iron-fingered grip that belied her youth and childish, rail-thin scrawniness.
In spite of the protection of the sleeve of my heavy, bib-front shirt, Clementine Webb’s dagger-sharp fingernails gouged through the material and into the skin beneath. I stared down into the girl’s emotion-etched face. Could physically feel her boring gaze, as it augured into my very soul.
She popped up on tiptoe and pulled my hatless head down to her level. In a croaky, emotion-choked voice that sounded like cold spit on a red-hot stove lid, she whispered into one ear, “Will you swear it? Will you swear before God and me, Mr. Dodge? Swear that you’ll ride down the men who brutally murdered my family. Swear to me that you’ll run the scum to ground like rabid dogs . . . and kill them, one and all.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Swear it,” she hissed.
“Already promised, Clem. We’ll do what we ...”
She jerked on my arm so hard I came nigh on to losing my footing. She twisted the sleeve of my faded shirt into a blood-blocking knot with her bony, child’s fingers and glowered up at me like a thing crazed, demented. Then she threw her head back and moaned as though her soul was being tortured.
I drew myself up with the implacable Clementine Webb still attached to my arm. Stared down into twin pools of hard-edged vengeance. “We’re working on catching the folks what done this foul act as we now speak, darlin’. Have a man out looking for them at this very instant. But there’s some things I need to know . . .”
Didn’t get a chance to finish my thought. The sound of horse’s hooves slopping their way across the shallows of Devils River brought everyone’s attention around to the west.
Clementine released my arm, then grabbed on to my pistol belt and moved slightly behind me. From beneath my protective arm, she flashed a gaze filled with death-dealing lightning bolts at the new arrival.
I rubbed my elbow, then pointed. “In fact, that’s my man coming now, Clem. Hairy beast lopin’ out front’s Bear.” The girl’s grip tightened. I patted her hand and added, “No need to worry yourself. Ole Bear wouldn’t hurt a flea.” Then, to an unhearing world in general, I said, “Not ’less Glo first told him he could, anyways. Then it’s Katy bar the door.”
12
“. . . BLEW THE WHOLE TOP OF THE MAN’S HEAD OFF . . .”
GLORIOUS JOHNSON ROOSTED atop a broken, leafless cottonwood limb Boz dragged to a convenient spot near our sputtering campfire. Wisps of gray-black smoke swirled above the heap of sticks and logs in an angry, spiral-shaped, cyclonic cloud.
Elbows propped on bony knees, flop hat pushed away from a sweat-and-dirt-stained face, Johnson sipped at his battered, tin coffee cup. Said, “Yah, suh. I’m certain, Mistuh Dodge. Ain’t no doubt in my mind a’tall. Them murderin’ skunks what done fo’ these poor folks is headed south and east.”
“Del Rio?”
“Yah, suh. ’Pears they’ll eventual end up in Del Rio fo’ certain sure.” Glo glanced at the cowering girl who peeked from beneath my arm and added, “Sorry, miss, don’t mean no disrespect fo’ yore poor departed family members or nuthin’ by mentionin’ murderin’ skunks and such. Sad to say, but that’s just the way things has turned out, you know?”
I patted the girl on the shoulder. “Her name’s Clementine, Glo. Clementine Webb,” I said.
Glo touched the brim of his hat, nodded, and tried to smile. “ ’S my pleasure, missy. Sorry we has to meet under such tryin’ circumstances.”
Clementine, who still kept to the safety and protection of a spot slightly behind and to one side of me, gave a dull nod of the head, but offered nothing else by way of reply. The largest part of her attention, at that moment, appeared focused on the dog. Bear sat at her feet and wagged his knotted tail like a happy puppy as he nuzzled and licked at her hand. The creature appeared totally entranced by the girl.
Surprised by the animal’s somewhat less-than-usual response, I allowed myself a wide grin, gave the girl’s shoulder another tap, and said, “Seems you’ve made a new friend, Clem. Not many folks as can say that.”
Glo tossed away the last few drops of the up-and-at-’em juice left in his cup, then said, “Them boys gonna end up in Del Rio, or Ciudad Acuna, sooner or later. But right now, ’pears to me as how they’s headed nigh on straight for Arturo Mendoza’s Cantina over in Carta Blanca. Should hit the Sonora-Del Rio road there, then hoof it south, once they’s finished gettin’ red-eyed, rubber-kneed, and whiskey weary.”
With nervous fingers, Boz tapped the brass tops of bullets in the loops of his pistol belt. “Makes sense to me, Lucius,” he said. “Mendoza’s trail-side whiskey and tequila locker in Carta Blanca is the closest place for ’em to tie on a good drunk ’tween here and Del Rio. Maybe grab a bite to eat as well.”
I scratched my chin and frowned but said nothing.
“Bet all them fellers as had a hand in sendin’ Miss Clementine’s family to eternal rest,” Boz continued, “are a-lookin’ to drown some of the bloody horror of what they went and done in a river of bad tonsil paint. Ain’t a man of good conscience who could face his God after such a monstrous act. Figure they’re likely goin’ straight to horned Satan just as fast as bad whiskey and good horseflesh can carry ’em to ’im.”
Glo grunted, nodded his agreement, then said, “Everthang you just said could well be true, Mistuh Tatum. But you know them fellers ain’t in no special, horse-killin’ hurry to get theyselves to Mendoza’s, or anywhere else for that matter. They’s ridin’ along all slow and cocky, real arrogant-like. Done set me to thinkin’ as how they figures ain’t nobody knows, or cares, as how they done went and kilt off the most part of an entire family.”
“Taking their time, are they?” I growled between clenched teeth.
“Yah, suh. They ’uz draggin’ around so slow I almost rode right up on ’em, no longer’n I ’uz gone this mornin’. Trailed ’em till they weren’t no doubt in my mind where them fellers was headed. Way I got it figured, if’n they keep up the pace they ’uz makin’ when I turned back, likely be bellyin’ up to the bar at Arturo’s jus’ about now. Be good’n knee-walkin’ drunk in another hour or so. Passed out or pukin’ up they sorry guts whence it comes on dark.”
I picked at my teeth with a splinter of wood, stopped a second, and said, “How many of ’em, Glo?”
“They’s five, Mistah Dodge. Whole party stopped a time or two so as to rest they animals. Offered me a chance to get up close enough to give ’em a pert good lookin’ over through my long glass. Mighty rough bunch if’n I ever seed one. Could well be the roughest we ever done went out after, you ask me. Even worse’n some of them Messican bandits we chased down into Chihuahua some years back.”
“Get any five gun-totin’ men in Texas together and they’re usually a rough bunch, Glo. All together the three of us have chased enough bad ones over the years that, of all people, you should know that,” I said.
“Yah, suh. I knows that. My mama sho’ ’nuff didn’t raise no fools. Knows ’bout badmen. But I think maybe the gennuman leadin’ this crew’s ’bout as bad as it’s gonna git. It’s somebody we already knows.”
Boz slapped the butt of his hip pistol, frowned, and growled, “The hell you say, Glo. Who’n the red-eyed name of Satan would any of us know that’s capable of the brutal, senseless massacre of a man, woman, and three of their innocent kids?”