Ghost Colts
by
Peter Brandvold
Smashwords Edition
Ghost Colts
Presented by Western Trail Blazer
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4658-4740-9
Copyright © 2011 Peter Brandvold
Cover Art Copyright © 2011 Miss Mae
Produced by Rebecca J. Vickery
Design Consultation by Laura Shinn
Smashwords Licensing Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this ebook without purchasing it and it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Ghost Colts is a work of fiction.
Though actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author except for the inclusion of actual historical facts. Similarities of characters or names used within to any person – past, present, or future – are coincidental except where actual historical characters are purposely interwoven.
Ranger Tim Armstrong seeks shelter from a Texas snowstorm with his injured prisoner, Renfrow. Half a dozen men, a pretty young woman, and a boy watch as he slings the unconscious desperado over his shoulder and totes him to a room in the saloon's second story.
As the night deepens and the storm worsens, the Ranger keeps watch for the trouble he suspects is behind him. When Renfrow's gang shows up, adding a lead storm to the blizzard, the Ranger gets help of a most unusual sort.
Chapter One
The Ranger halted his paint between two high, red-granite ridges cloaked in the gray muslin of winter storm clouds. Hunkered low over the horse's neck, he held the collar of his patched buckskin coat closed and squinted against the wind-driven sleet and snow.
Ahead, a handful of shabby buildings rose from the swaying chaparral tufting the canyon. Three stood tall, with false fronts, two facing the third across the trail. The Ranger took a deep breath. Pinion and cedar smoke laced the wind.
The Ranger—a big, red-haired man with a red goatee and a broad-brimmed Stetson with a snakeskin band—turned to look at the chestnut mare he was trailing on a lead line. His prisoner lay belly down across the chestnut's saddle, handcuffed hands tied to his feet. The man's sandy hair whipped this way and that, as did the tied ends of the bloody bandage wrapped around his head.
"It's more than you deserve, Renfrow," the Ranger said beneath the wind, "but I'm about to find you a bed. I want you well rested for the judge."
The prisoner gave no response beyond lifting his head slightly then letting it rest once again against the horse's belly.
The Ranger lightly spurred his horse forward, jerking the chestnut along behind him. A minute later, he reined up at the hitchrack before a sprawling gray building with the windows on both sides of the door lit from within. A sign swaying beneath the awning read:
YSLETA MERCANTILE/SALOON
in large, faded-green letters to which several clumps of snow stuck. Another, smaller sign to the right said simply: ROOMS.
The Ranger lifted his gaze above the sign, blinking against the stinging sleet and wind-driven sand. It was only three or four in the afternoon, but the gun-metal clouds hovered low, making it look like twilight.
The Ranger dismounted with a weary sigh, quickly tied the reins of'both horses to the rack, and mounted the three wobbly wooden steps to the boardwalk. The chinging sound of his spurs was drowned by the wind and the signs squawking overhead.
He glanced in the window right of the door, then stepped inside the building, causing the bell over the door to ring.
He paused and looked around with the caution of a lawman in unfamiliar territory. A dozen or so round tables were scattered about the long, narrow room before him, to the right of a mahogany bar. At two tables sat six men drinking whiskey or beer and playing cards. One was a well-groomed, young cavalryman in crisp, gold-buttoned blues.
Behind the bar stood a young, pretty woman wearing a man's checked shirt. Her features slack with boredom, she was drying glasses with desultory swipes of a towel. Her thick, wavy hair hung down her back in a ponytail.
The air smelled richly of burning pinion and of wet leather, liquor, and tobacco. The card players had positioned themselves near the black, bullet-shaped stove in the room's right-center; the stove ticked and sighed. The Ranger felt its welcoming heat, like a soothing blanket.
"Come in and shut the door, Ranger," said a pigeon-chested, bandy-legged oldster with heavy-lidded eyes and thin, gray hair. He was playing cribbage with a brawny bull of a shaggy-headed man, with a heavy nose thrusting high between dark eyes, a buffalo robe thrown over the back of his chair. The two sat separate from the other four. "You're lettin' all the heat out."
The Ranger closed the door, let his hand fall away from the butt of the Peacemaker .45 on his right hip, and turned to the young woman who'd looked up from her work when he'd entered. "Miss, you run this place?"
"Don't I look like it?" She offered the others a faint, conspiratorial smile. Several glanced up and chuckled, as though it were a joke between them. To the Ranger, she said, "Name your poison."
"Later," the Ranger said. "I'd like to get a room for an injured prisoner I have outside. The rest of his gang—eight men—could be behind us. I think I shook 'em off my trail last night." He drew a deep, tired breath. "Like I said, my prisoner's injured. In this weather, I don't think he'd make it back to San Antone alive, and I need him alive."
The young woman's face remained expressionless as she glanced at the card players.
"Wake up and buck the tiger," one of them said to another. The Ranger wondered if they'd heard him. The blonde set aside her glass and towel and returned her eyes to the Ranger.
"I wouldn't turn a man away in this weather," she said. She turned to a small jar containing several keys on the bar behind her. "Fetch your prisoner, Ranger. I'll open room three for you. Second door on the left at the top of the stairs."
The Ranger slid another curious glance to the card players, engrossed in their game, as though they'd forgotten he was here. Finally, he went out and came back a few minutes later, his prisoner draped over his shoulder. The prisoner groaned, his gloved hands sweeping the floor as the Ranger kicked the door closed, 'then wove a course through the tables, heading for the stairs just beyond the bar.
The card players looked up from their pasteboards to regard the Ranger dully, as though he were crossing the room with a mere potato sack.
The half-conscious prisoner was nearly as big as the Ranger, and the lawman crouched beneath the weight, wincing as he grabbed the newel post, hiked his load higher on his shoulder, and mounted the stairs.
He stepped aside when a tow-headed boy of about twelve appeared at the top of the stairs. The boy brushed past the Ranger on his way down, his high-topped miner's boots hammering the scarred planks. The youngster gave the Ranger a timid glance but said nothing. The Ranger continued to the top of the stairs, walked a few feet down the smoky hall in which most of the heat from below had collected, and turned into the second door, open on the left.
The young woman was there, kneeling beside a small, sheet-iron stove balling a yellowed newspaper in her hands. She glanced at the Ranger's load and arched a brow.
"What happened to him?"
"Had a little heart-to-heart with my rifle butt," the Ranger grunted under the weight.
"Go ahead and lay him on the bed," the woman said. "It's one of the few I keep made up. Don't get many travelers through here these days, since the gold pinched out and the stage line rerouted."
When the Ranger had deposited his load, the prisoner falling onto the bed with another groan, the Ranger said, "Much obliged to you, Miss. I hope I haven't brought trouble."
The woman struck a match and held it to the pile of paper and pine bark she'd arranged inside the stove. "I doubt you could bring anymore trouble than we could handle," she said tonelessly as the flame grew. "Between Injuns and outlaws, there isn't much we haven't seen."
She stood and extended her hand. "I'm Ann Coleman, owner and manager of the Ysleta Mercantile and Saloon, though the mercantile part burned down two years ago and we saw no point in rebuilding." She offered another soft, bland smile, her blue eyes pretty but oblique, her lips thin and straight. "You can call me Ann."
The Ranger shook her hand, which was small but strong, the palms lightly callused—the hands of a woman who knew her way around a barn and feedlot as well as a kitchen. "I'm Tim B. Armstrong, ma'am. Special Troops, Texas Rangers." He smiled and pinched his hat brim. "As soon as I've got this man secured to the bed here, I'd like to stable my horses, if that's possible. I saw a barn across the road..."
"There is, indeed," Ann Coleman said, "but your horses are already taken care of. I sent my son to bed them down with fresh hay and oats."
"I saw the boy, Armstrong said. "I didn't realize he was your son."
She'd knelt before the stove again, adding kindling to the growing fire. The corners of her mouth stiffened slightly as she read Armstrong's mind. "Everyone thinks Michael's my younger brother." She grabbed another pinion stick from the apple crate, which served as a kindling box. She added it to the fire already nudging the chill from the room.
She lowered her head for a better look inside the stove. "We drop 'em young out here, I reckon."
"I didn't mean to be forward, ma'am."
"I didn't take you to be, Mr. Armstrong. We're just jawing. I don't often have many people to talk to ... besides Dad, that is. My father's the gray-headed old reprobate you saw downstairs." She poked one more kindling stick into the stove, closed the door, then stood and slapped her hands against her thighs. "I'll fetch more wood. When I saw the storm coming, I covered a whole cord with a tarp."
Armstrong was removing his prisoner's high-heeled riding boots. "I can do that, ma'am."
"I don't have much to do around here anymore," she countered from the door. "You and the men downstairs are the first customers I've had in a month of Sundays, and this weather doesn't help."
She nodded to indicate the snow slanting and ticking against the room's single window. Ann turned through the door and walked away down the hall.
The Ranger handcuffed his prisoner's wrists and ankles to the tarnished brass bed frame, then cast a glance outside, seeing little but the weather-obscured barn across the trail, and the tiny, white javelins of snow and sleet driven by the keening wind. He ran another glance over his unconscious prisoner, then walked from the room, leaving the door open for the woman.
Downstairs, Ann's father was pouring drinks at the bar while three of the four others played cards. The big, bearded man—round-faced, barrel-chested, and wearing a big bowie knife in a sheath around his waist—stood warming his backside at the stove. A thin cheroot smoked between his teeth.
The other men regarded the Ranger with only passing interest as he crossed the room to the window between the door and the bar. Peering out, he looked up and down what had apparently been the town's main drag. Now, with most of the town died off, its buildings either dismantled or in ruin, the street was just a trail between the saloon and the yellow 'dobe post office and wooden livery barn.
When the wind shifted, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the red sandstone ridge behind the disheveled buildings.
Satisfied Renfrow's gang hadn't caught up to him, Armstrong shrugged out of his wet, foul-smelling buckskin. He shook the beaded moisture off, then draped the coat over the back of a chair near the window. He tossed his hat on the table, angled the chair so that it sat sideways, affording him a view to the east, and slumped down with a weary sigh.
The old man delivered drinks to the card players. When he'd handed a beer mug to the big man by the stove, he turned to Armstrong. "You look like you could use a toddy, Ranger."
Armstrong lifted a shoulder and ran his hands through his thick red hair, combed straight back from a sharp widow's peak. "A whiskey might cut the chill. 'Specially if it was backed up by a beer."
"Comin' up," the old man said.
He limped off behind the bar and stepped out from behind it a minute later, carrying a filled shot glass in one gnarled hand, and a beer schooner in the other. When he'd set the shot and the beer on the table before Armstrong, the Ranger leaned back and reached into a pocket of his wet denims.
The old man shook his head. "On the house. We appreciate you Rangers standin' up to them curly wolves. Seems like every time you turn around, we got Mex or American bandits collarin' stolen beef, runnin' down stagecoaches, or robbin' banks. They'll shoot a lawman on sight, no questions asked."
"I wish we were makin' more headway against 'em" Armstrong said. "There's plenty more where the lobo upstairs came from."
The old man put his gnarled hands on a chair back. "Outta what hole'd you smoke the snake upstairs?" He lifted his chin, indicating the second story above the room's pressed tin ceiling.
"A roadhouse near Eagle Pass. Him and his gang were stompin' with their tails up last night, havin' too much fun to post guards."
The big, bearded man, now sitting on a hide couch near the door that led into the mercantile, said, "Bole Renfrow. I'd recognize ole 'Hatchet Face' anywhere. Fisher's band." His gaze settled on Armstrong with interest. "You take him down alone, Ranger?"
Armstrong nodded. "He was on the back stoop, tendin' nature. I didn't realize another man was out there till me and Renfrow were ridin' away. He gave a yell to alert the others, and Renfrow came up with a hideout gun. That's when I introduced him to my rifle butt."
Just then, footsteps sounded on the stairs. All heads turned as Ann came down, vagrant strands of blond hair wisping about her cheeks.
"Your prisoner's fast asleep, Ranger," she said, her eyes finding Armstrong's. His stomach tightened, her gaze reminding him of another young woman in his past. Swinging her gaze around to the others, she said, "I'll bring out a pot of soup in a few minutes."
Brushing tree bark and sawdust from her shirt, she strolled past the bar and disappeared through the swinging door behind it.
Chapter Two
"Shoulda shot the son of a bitch," said one of the four men playing cards, taking up the conversation where it had left off before Ann appeared. He was a tall, slim man with a pitted beak nose and sweeping, salt and pepper mustaches. He wore a calico shirt, suspenders, bull-hide chaps, and large-roweled spurs.
"That's Chess Burgenreich," said the old man. "He used to ranch out that way, till Fisher's gang cleaned him out, shot several of his cowboys and ran his herd clear to the Sierra Madres."
"Shoot 'em all twice," Burgenreich grunted around the twisted quirley protruding from his mustache. He studied his cards and said, "Lieutenant, I'll see your nickel, and I'll raise you a dime."
The old man said to Armstrong, "The man to Chess's right is Jake Magoon out of Corpus Christi ..."
"And headin' back that way," Magoon said, flicking his blue eyes at the window behind Armstrong. "As soon as this weather clears." Magoon was dressed in the faun-colored vest, trousers, and claw-hammer coat of the professional gambler. He had the pallor of one who spent most of the daylight hours in smoky gambling dens and bucket shops.
"The feller across from Magoon is Jeb DeRosso," the oldster continued. "He hunts buffalo with Big Bill Morgan, over there on the sofa."
"Jeb answers to 'One-Eye'," Morgan growled over his beer mug, one high-topped boot resting on a knee.
When DeRosso looked at Armstrong, the Ranger saw that the buffalo hunter's left eye appeared perpetually swollen and milky, spoiling an otherwise handsome face.
"The Kiowa brave woulda fixed my other'n for me, if'n Big Bill hadn't jumped in and thrown the hot tar on his powwow." The hider held up his rawhide necklace, trimmed with what looked like two shrunken marbles and dried potato skins but could only have been the Kiowa's eyeballs and ears. "That brave's now stumblin' around blind and deaf in the next world." DeRosso wheezed, snorted, and returned his attention to the fan of cards in his hand.
The' soldier sitting to DeRosso's right looked over at Armstrong. He was a tall, well-groomed redhead with a cavalry mustache and piercing blue eyes. He couldn't have been much over twenty-five. "Lieutenant George Paine at your service, Ranger," he said with a noble air. "I was on my way to Fort Bowie when the clouds blew in." Lifting a long, thin cigar to his lips, he tossed a nickel into the pot. "Let's keep the bets low, eh, fellows? My trust fund disappeared with my old man's shipping business."
"I'm Lowell Hart," the old man said to Armstrong, pulling out a chair from the Ranger's table and sitting down heavily. "Couldn't tell it by lookin' at me, but I'm Ann's father." He poked a finger at the ceiling.
"She told me," the Ranger said. He turned his head from the window, where he'd been keeping one eye on the trail, and extended his trunk-like arm across the table. "Tim B. Armstrong, Special State Troops, Texas Rangers."
"McNelly's Viking," the oldster said with an admiring smile.
"Been called worse."
"I've heard of you. Tough area you're workin'."
"I'd heard you folks were burned out." Armstrong glanced around the room and grinned. "Reckon I got some bad information."
"Several ranches been burned hereabouts. That's what you musta heard."
"Who was it? Coon Davis? Tiburon from across the border ...?"
"The snake you got upstairs," Hart said, lifting his chin at the ceiling again. "Him and his gang been raisin' hob ever since Munson and Prewitt swore out affidavits against 'em in Austin. Been ridin' roughshod, killin', rapin', burnin', and collarin' beef to sell in Mexico."
"They get themselves a herd together and disappear south of the Rio Grande for a few weeks at a time," said Big Bill Morgan. "Then they're back, killin' and burnin'. They won't stop till they've stolen every cow between the Jackrabbit and Duck Creek, and killed every man who spoke against 'em."
The Ranger sipped his beer and wiped the foam from his mustache and spade beard with the back of his wrist. "What about Munson and Prewitt?"