Christian beliefs, other than making note of his sister’s life with nuns.
“That does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Josiah asked.
“What?”
“That the Comanche didn’t scalp Red, that they left you there . . . alive?”
“I wondered about it, but I sure didn’t dwell on it. I was just glad to be free.”
“How’d you get loose? Did you wiggle out of those ropes?” Josiah asked. “They looked awful tight.” His tone was curious, and soft. He figured the memory was fresh, and being so close to Red in death, seeing and smelling his blood, had probably provoked a reaction from Scrap’s emotional past. There was no need to get the boy all riled up again.
Scrap shook his head no. “No way I could have got out of that binding.”
“Then how?”
“Feders. He rode up with the company right near dark. I thought I was dreamin’, havin’ a hallucination. But sure enough, it was our company that rescued me . . . and you, too,” Scrap said, a satisfied smile growing on his face.
Josiah caught his words before he said them out loud. He swallowed the question that nearly escaped his lips and let it settle deep inside him. But he couldn’t let it go, couldn’t keep from wondering why Pete Feders had been just a couple of hours behind them on the same day he had sent them out on a mission that Josiah thought was all his own.
CHAPTER 18
Austin came into view as Josiah and Scrap crested the rise of a hill. Josiah gently pulled in Lady Mead’s reins and brought the palomino to an easy stop after a long, hard ride. Scrap followed suit, looking at Josiah curiously, but remained silent and didn’t question the decision.
There was no joy in the homecoming for Josiah. Very simply, Austin still did not feel like home to him. The city was crowded, noisy, smelly, and the shadows were uncertain and mostly unknown. Josiah had yet to get his footing as a city dweller even though he had moved there on a permanent basis nearly six months earlier. The reasons, at least at the time, had seemed clear: He needed to move on with his life, and leaving his son on a small farm while he was away Rangering didn’t feel right—especially after the outlaws—Charlie Langdon and Liam O’Reilly—had taken the boy hostage and used him as bait. It had nearly ended in tragedy. Lyle was no longer safe in the piney woods of East Texas. But it was more than that. For a brief moment, Josiah had felt his heart stir alive, and he thought that being in the city and being close to those that stirred his heart—specifically Pearl Fikes—would help him step forward into a life worth living. Being a Ranger helped, but the recovery from the wound that had occurred in Lost Valley had set him back, and taken a lot longer than he’d thought it would. And Pearl Fikes was a grand catch, being pursued by Pete Feders . . . and Major John B. Jones. Josiah knew he could not compete with the stature of either man, so he had tried to avoid her as much as possible in the last few months. If there was one quality about the city that Josiah liked, it was the ability to get lost in it.
“What’s the matter, Wolfe?” Scrap finally asked.
Josiah shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s a purty sight, ain’t it?”
Josiah exhaled deeply. “I suppose so.”
From their vantage point, they could see nearly straight down Congress Avenue. The Old Stone Capitol stood at the end of the road, a three-storey Greek Revival building, set in the middle of Capitol Square. The avenue was lined with buildings butted up next to each other, mostly two-storey, but some, including the hotels, were three stories.
The capitol building had a slight feel to it, and there were some who were demanding that a grander building be erected—but again the economic collapse had quelled any real momentum to rebuild. As it was, the election in 1850 had only named Austin the capital for twenty years, so there was a temporary feel to the building and what it stood for. Another election, in 1872, had settled the matter, making Austin the permanent capital of Texas.
It seemed there were buildings as far as the eye could see—churches and dry goods stores: Sampson & Hendrik’s groceries and hardware, more than one mercantile, competing liveries, the Opera House, a few theaters, Republic Square and the county courthouse, nestled close to “Little Mexico,” an enclave favored mostly by Mexicans and very few Anglos. Little Mexico was a rough section of town, but no more so than the section that served to provide entertainment for cowboys hot off the trail and looking for a good time in the bagnios, whorehouses, and saloons. That area, the first ward, was west of Congress Avenue and ran to just north of the Colorado River. It didn’t really have an Anglo name, like Little Mexico, other than Hell’s Half Acre—but that was a Dallas name, and most Austinites refused to call it that—most cities had spots that were called that or something similar. It was one place Josiah rarely visited, but he could see it from where he sat on the ridge.
Very few trees were mixed in among the buildings, hardly any in fact, and what wildlife existed in town was mostly the two-footed, human kind. Even birds seemed wary of Austin.
Occasionally Josiah would look to the sky and see a soaring hawk or buzzard, and his mood would be lightened for a moment, memories of his childhood home rushing to the forefront of his mind. Then he would grow sad, longing for the birdsongs in the woods instead of the rumble of the train, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, the hoots and hollers of teamsters, and the stagecoaches in a hurry to deliver their cargo, whatever it might be.
“If you don’t like the city, then why in tarnation did you move here, Wolfe?” Scrap asked.
“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Still does for that matter. At least as long as I’m riding with the Rangers.”
“Your boy ain’t no more safe here than he was in Seerville.”
“Ofelia has family here. They’re not alone.”
“I’d get rid of that Mexican woman if it was me. Your boy ain’t gonna know if he’s Anglo or a Mexican.”
Josiah shot Scrap a cold, hard look, and Scrap immediately looked away. He’d voiced his opinion before about Josiah’s choice to employ Ofelia as a wet nurse, a replacement mother, really, and Josiah had, in no uncertain terms, told Scrap to mind his own business. “If I was going to keep on Rangering, then I had to do something.”
“Find a wife like every other widow man I know. Might be a place to start.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Would be for me.”
“You need to . . .”
“. . . I know, mind my own damn business.”
“Something like that.”
Scrap shrugged his shoulders. “What are you gonna do if you don’t have to leave the city anymore?”
“I suppose if I’m cut from the company, then I’ll look to move back home.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Hard to say,” Josiah said. “Hard to say.”
They took the ride into the city slow. The only hurry Josiah was in boiled down to two things. He couldn’t wait to see Lyle, and more than anything, he wanted out of Charlie Webb’s clothes. It was hard not to be grateful to Billie for her generosity, but how he had come to accept that generosity in the first place was hard to swallow. And he could not get Billie out of his mind. Her fate was worrisome, a waif lost in plain sight in the midst of an angry town—but there was nothing he could do to help her at the moment except what he had done: leave.
It would be good to step into a pair of boots that were his own instead of wearing Charlie Webb’s and a shirt cut with his own scent and not a dead man’s.
Josiah picked up the pace a bit when they crossed over the train tracks. His home was less than a block away
