Sarah and Becky, the three-year-olds, stood off to one side, eyes big as they looked at the dying man on the concrete. “Lisa,” Rani said. “You look after Sarah and Becky. Come on, kids, we’ve got to get busy.”
“Is Crazy Vic gonna get us, Rani?” Six-year-old Danny asked.
“No!” Rani said. “I swear to you all-no!”
Chapter 11
“Be like my great granddad,” one of the men said, after Ben touched on his outpost idea. “Back when they was fightin’ the Indians.”
Another man, obviously with strong Indian blood flowing in his veins, looked at the spokesman and smiled. “But now we’re all in it together. Right, Frank?”’
“Thank God,” his friend said, returning the smile. “I’d hate to think we had to fight you heathens, too, Roland.”
A woman said, “Don’t pay them no mind, General. They’ve been friends for forty years.”
The man jerked his thumb toward the Indian. “His ancestors scalped my ancestors.”
“Your ancestors stole our land,” Roland retorted. “Besides, Indians didn’t invent scalping. They got it from the white man.”
“And away they go,” the woman said.
“Been doing it for forty years,” another man said.
“I think the Indians are winnin”,” another man said.
“If we have enough time,” Roland said. Then he laughed. “And enough Indians.”
The people in the small town warned Ben that there were outlaw gangs roaming about everywhere, and that they were vicious, cutting another page from the dark history of the Texas Comancheros, the band of Mexicans, half-breeds, and Caucasian Americans who had looted and raped and killed until finally being wiped out when the citizens of Texas and Mexico got their guts’ full of the outlaws.
Ben and Jordy pulled out early in the morning, heading south on Highway 83.
Guthrie was a ghost town, with anything of value having been looted long ago.
Without having any good reason to do so, other than the fact Ben was on no timetable, he cut west at Guthrie, heading for Lubbock. He did not see one human being until reaching the town of Rails, and his curiosity almost got them both killed.
“Yeah,” Campo said, surveying all the carnage Ben had left behind. “Raines was here, all right.” He laughed, an ugly bark of derisiveness. “These pecker-woods thought ol’ Ben would be an easy touch. I could have told them different.”
“Me, too,” West said sorrowfully, looking at his stump. “I don’t know, Jake. Sometimes I get a plumb spooky feeling thinkin’ “bout Raines.” He looked around at the charred bodies lying on the Oklahoma highway. “You know what I mean?”
Campo didn’t want to admit it, but he knew very well what West was talking about. He just didn’t like to think about it.
Campo chose not to answer West’s question. He turned away from the scene and walked back to his van. He told one of his men, “Somebody who lives around here saw something. You get some boys and scatter. Find out what you can; especially which direction Raines went from here. G.”
Standing by his van, Campo looked toward the west. “You may think you’re a god, Raines. But I’m gonna prove people wrong. ‘Cause I’m gonna kill you, mister. I’m gonna kill you and hang your scalp on my belt buckle. Bet on it.”
Rani got as far as Lamesa before running into trouble. But she had vowed the next time she was confronted with trouble, she would shoot first and take her chances with her conscience later.
There was a CB radio in the truck, along with some sort of military-looking short-wave radio. She was amazed at the traffic on the CB radio, most of it very unfriendly and extremely vulgar.
And it was the CB radio that warned her of impending trouble.
“Blue king-cab rollin” south on 87,” the voice sprang out of the speaker. “Fine-lookin’ cunt behind the wheel. Truck’s packed with kids.”
“Stay out of this,” a man’s voice blasted the cab, obviously pushed by a booster. “That’s Vic’s woman.”
“Vic who?”’
“Cowboy Vic. Warlord of the West.”
The first voice laughed. “Never heard of the son of a bitch. Tell him to keep ass out of this part of Texas or we’ll feed him to the rattlers.”
Rani pulled off the highway and drove behind a falling-down old farm and ranch complex of buildings.
“Lost her!” the first voice said. “She’s somewhere between O’Donnell and Arvana.”
“Keep lookin”,” a new voice was added. “She won’t be that hard to find.”
Another voice was added to the growing number of voices. “If you’re hiding, lady,” a man’s voice spoke, “stay down. We’re sending out a patrol from Lamesa to help you. Don’t reply to this transmission. Just stay quiet.”
“It’s them Christian mother-fuckers,” the first voice said contemptuously.
“Yeah,” yet another voice said. “You asshole Jesus freaks come on. We’ll run your psalm-singin’ asses back to Lamesa.”
“You’ve tried that before, Red,” the calm, steady voice replied. “The Lord will forgive me for saying this, but this time I intend to kick your worthless ass all the way up to the Red River.”
“You the warlord called Texas Red?” Vic’s man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Pull it over, Red. Let’s talk. We might stand a better chance if we joined forces. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Mayhaps you’re right, friend. Me and my boys will meet you on the south side of O’Donnell. Be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Ten-four.”
Rani sat it out, watching the highway from behind a shattered window in what had once been a nice home. She saw a dozen vehicles pass by her position, all heading north. She did not move for several minutes. Then she smiled as she saw a dozen more vehicles drive slowly past, heading north. The second line of cars and trucks, she concluded, belonged to the folks from Lamesa.
It was not that Rani didn’t want good homes for those kids in her car. It was just that she didn’t trust people. She’d been burned too many times by people professing to be this, that, or the other.
Her thoughts were interrupted by an excited Robert.
“Miss Rani!” the boy said. “They’s cases and cases and cases of food down in the basement of this place.”
“What were you doing in the basement?” she spoke, more sharply than she intended.
“Exploring,” the boy said, hanging his head.
She went to him and put her arms around his slender shoulders. “I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean to be cross with you. Let’s look at this food.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m proud of you, Robert.”
Ben caught the movement to his right and twisted the steering wheel just as the man fired. The slug whined off the camper of the truck. Ben floorboarded the truck and ducked behind a building. Grabbing his Thompson, he said, “Shoot anybody that sticks their head up, Jordy. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll blow their ass off.”
“That’s as good a place as any to shoot them, I suppose,” Ben said, not able to hide his grin.
Ben slipped along the rear of the old store. He heard boots scraping the pea gravel near the corner and smiled, raising the Thompson, finger on the trigger.
“Easy, now,” a voice came to him. “I don’t want that fancy truck all shot up. And take the kid alive.”
“Yeah,” a second voice said in a hoarse whisper. “Clean-lookin’ kid lak “at’s worth a lot of guns.”
Ben’s smile turned savage at the vocal implications of what lay in store for Jordy if the men took him. The men rounded the corner and Ben pulled the trigger, firing at almost point-blank range, and he deliberately held the muzzle low, at crotch-level.
He took the men’s guns and ammo, and left them screaming and bleeding on the gravel. Here were two who would molest no more children. And Ben hoped they would live a long and totally sexless life. Pissing through a
