The Badger's Revenge

solid friends and standing up for them, and for yourself, when times got tough—like now.

The last several months had been difficult, moving to Austin, not knowing anyone, and sleeping in a lonely bed by himself. Mostly it had been difficult being away from Lyle. It seemed like he was always working his way back to his son, at least since rejoining the Rangers. Somehow, that needed to change—if Josiah survived, was able to make it back home, one more time. Or it would be a sad certainty that Lyle would grow up alone, never knowing what had become of his father.

There had been outlaw trouble in the town of Comanche earlier in the spring. John Wesley Hardin had been in town celebrating his twenty-first birthday, and a deputy sheriff recognized the noted gunfighter. When Hardin asked the deputy if he knew who he was, the deputy, a man named Charlie Webb, lied and said he didn’t. Instead, Webb followed Hardin into a saloon for a drink, pretending to be part of the celebration, and pulled his gun on the outlaw, intent on taking Hardin down. But one of Hardin’s friends saw the ploy play out and yelled out to warn the criminal. John Wesley Hardin killed Charlie Webb at close range, then ran out of town like a cockroach encountering sudden daylight.

A lynch mob was quickly formed, and most of Hardin’s family was taken into protective custody—to save them from the angry townspeople. But a group of men, supposed loyal, law-abiding citizens hiding under the cover of darkness, broke into the jail where the family was being held and pulled out Hardin’s brother, Joe, and two cousins. All three men were hanged without the luxury of a trial, and it is said they were all hanged with a rope too long, the promise of a slow, strangulating death more than certain, since all three men had grass between their toes when they were discovered the next day.

So Josiah was more than surprised when their trio topped a slight, treeless, rise, and the town of Comanche sat in the middle of the road, about a mile away.

Embers from the troubles in the spring still burned among the townsfolk, even though Hardin had fled, reportedly out of Texas, to Florida. But there were rumors of revenge from the remaining Hardin family, against the ruthless tyrants of so-called justice, for the senseless killing of Joe and the cousins.

The town was small, a supply base for the surrounding ranches. There was a courthouse built of hand-hewn log; a small post office since the town was the county seat; a dry goods, and a general store; along with the expected livery, blacksmith, and jail. Several wood frame houses sat along a couple of dry, dirt streets. Rain was obviously an event of long memories—perhaps winter would be a relief and bring a spattering of much needed precipitation to the parched town. Snow was shared only in imaginations and once every hundred years or so, this far west.

A dog barked in the distance. The sun fell below the horizon, and a wind picked up, swirling dust into tiny, harmless, cyclones. A chill touched Josiah’s face, and he shivered from the sudden burst of cool air—a reminder that it was November, that a change in seasons was under way, no matter how brief or unnoticeable that change would be.

Little Shirt pressed his mustang paint closer to Josiah’s mare. “Listen, Ranger, one wrong move and I’ll kill you. Right in front of the sheriff. He’s not going to do nothing. You understand?”

“He’s warning you not to shout out, Wolfe. He won’t kill you.” Big Shirt cast an angry glance at Little Shirt. “But we know your name—you remember?”

Josiah nodded.

“We also,” Big Shirt continued, “know of your little house in Austin, and the wet nurse, Ofelia, who tends to your only son.”

“I will kill you both the first chance I get if anything happens to my family,” Josiah said through clenched teeth. Instinct demanded that he reach for his gun and end this game now, but the ropes were so tight on his wrists that he could barely wiggle his fingers. He felt a throbbing pulse from his fingernails to his toes.

Little Shirt laughed. “Mexicans are not family, Wolfe. You are Anglo through and through. What are you thinking?”

Josiah ignored the taunt. His mouth was foaming like that of a rabid dog.

“You will be free of us soon enough, Josiah Wolfe,” Big Shirt said. “We will collect our reward and be on our way.”

“Your reward?” Josiah demanded. “Why is there a reward?”

This time Big Shirt laughed—only it was a slight, knowing laugh with the turn of a lip instead of the deep antagonizing laugh of his brother. “You did not know that you are a wanted man, Josiah Wolfe? What a shame. You do now.”

CHAPTER 4

Evening was settling in as the trio eased into the town of Comanche at a slow gait, taking full advantage of the falling shadows and thick gray light.

It would have made sense for them to ride right down the main street to the sheriff’s office if what Big Shirt had said was true, that Josiah was a wanted man, but that was not the track that the Indian brothers took leading their prisoner into the quiet, almost dead, town. They avoided the main street and cut down the first alley they came to, coming to a stop directly behind the Tall Gate Saloon.

The thought of being a wanted man played heavily on Josiah’s mind—but not as heavily as remaining a captive of the two Comanche, who he figured were loyalists to the Badger. Whether they wanted to admit it or not.

He’d encountered Liam O’Reilly, briefly, at a distance, in Waco in July, riding with a posse of deputies. Word was the sheriff had been bought out, was operating at the will of an outlaw gang, most likely O’Reilly’s. Hiding behind the badge was not an unusual ploy for the despicable and unworthy—so it came as no surprise to Josiah that O’Reilly had worked his way into Waco after Charlie Langdon’s demise.

When Josiah was a marshal himself, Langdon had taken up a lawman’s position as a deputy, taking advantage of their friendship and the bonds that had been created fighting together in the Texas Brigade—all for the power, or the perception of power, that being a lawman offered.

Charlie had quickly twisted that power into an ugliness that led to the deaths of four innocent people—and from there he had gone on an all-out rampage, with disregard for the law and justice itself. Charlie had been a great soldier, excelling at killing the enemy. So it was entirely possible that Langdon had clued in his protege, O’Reilly, to use the badge and hide behind it, as well.

But what if there was an unknown warrant, a wanted poster with Josiah’s face on it? he wondered silently to himself. Would being a member of the Texas Rangers save him from prosecution?

He knew the answer to that question before it had completely vanished from his mind. The answer was a resounding no.

There would be no protection against the law, not if a crime was provable—even though Josiah could think of nothing that he had done in the recent past for which he would be considered culpable. He had plenty of enemies, though, enemies who would see him harmed any way they could—and, of course, O’Reilly fell right into that bunch.

“You get down easy, now, Josiah Wolfe,” Little Shirt said.

Josiah sneered at the Indian. He could smell the sour yeast permeating from the kegs sitting along the back wall of the Tall Gate Saloon. “How much am I worth to you, little man?”

Big Shirt swiftly intervened, saying something to Little Shirt in a calm but forceful voice, in their native Indian tongue, then: “As for you, Wolfe, we are finished.”

“You didn’t have to kill Overmeyer,” Josiah said, again, trying to get Big Shirt to tell him why the tracker had been killed.

“You do not know what I had to do, or why. Perhaps you never will. It does not matter to you. My duty is done, and I can get back to my own life now.”