MORNING came, in all its ordinary glory. Today it brought with it the sheriff, who brought with him a brown clad stranger.
“Morning, Tadhg,” sheriff greeted doctor. “Our boy up?”
“Not as yet. Is there a rush about it? I can wake him for you,” Connell offered amiably, already knowing full well the need.
What choice did the sheriff have except to lose what little ground he had gained? Everything about the brown man declared his impatience.
“Take a walk, Lee,” Gandy ordered, as that young man came from the kitchen and made to follow them into the examination room.
“Couldn’t I—” Lee argued.
“No.”
The adjoining door closed with an inarguable thump. So much for any objection. Lee stood mid-step between barging in and wanting to believe Luke knew what he was doing. His hand hovered over the doorknob. Daggonit! Lee turned himself around. He had to trust Luke– did trust him. If the sheriff turned out to be wrong, surely he would still manage to keep Gideon around for today at least. The best thing Lee could do was give the sheriff room to maneuver. In the meantime, he could check in with Aspen.
“You gentleman may have your say,” Connell told his visitors, “only don’t tax the lad. He isn’t up to half as much as he’d like.”
Gideon did not wait for introductions, yeas or nays.
“Whatall’s he doin’ here?” he demanded, struggling to sit up.
“Gandy, get me a pillow from the shelf there and give me a hand,” Connell directed. “Gently, he’s been knocked about enough. There now, that’s better, eh?”
Gandy flashed the stranger an ‘I-told-you-so’ and then addressed Gideon.
“You know this man?” the sheriff asked.
“He done tried to rob the stage this mornin’.”
Yesterday morning? How long ago had that been? It seemed like only a minute and yet ages ago too.
“How would you know?” asked the stranger, his acerbic tone turning the question into an accusation.
“‘Cause I’m the one what done hit ya,” Gideon replied bluntly. “You gonna ‘rest ‘im, Sheriff?”
The way Gideon pronounced ‘sheriff’, the title sounded marginally less socially acceptable than profanity.
“We’ll see,” Gandy replied, noncommittally.
“Sheriff,” the outlaw complained. His accent, accustomed to speaking in an easy mosey, was currently clipped and irritated. “I‘m not sure you’re takin’ this situation seriously. Do y’all honestly expect me to b‘lieve—”
“I’m a-tellin’ ya, this jasper’s a road agent.” The vehemence of Gideon’s objection hurt his ribs. “He were. . . up in them rocks.”
“Slow down,” Gandy suggested sympathetically.
“Southeast a-here,” Gideon continued, “he were aimin’ a rifle at the stage. Ya gonna lock ‘im up or were I a-wastin’ my time?”
Gandy was going to have to remedy this utter lack of faith in the law and its servants. Today was as good a day as any to make a start.
“Tell me what happened, and I guarantee you this is not the time to leave anything out.”
“What for? You’re—”
“Gideon Fletcher, could we do this the easy way for once? Just tell me.”
Gideon considered on the sheriff, his exasperated tone, and the advantages of complying. One tally to the good was, at present balance, cooperating might just keep the lawman from jumping his case. Another possibility— narrow though it may be— was that his time had not been wasted. It never occurred to Gideon to worry overmuch what the ought-to-be-a-convict might think. The wants and needs of criminals did not rank highly on his list of ‘Things Worth Buffalo Spit’.
“You fig’r to b’lieve me?” he challenged.
“I’ll hear you out and see how it reads. Fair enough?”
“No, but from a lawman it ain’t bad.”
Gideon gave every detail Gandy requested, until the point where he had first seen that misplaced glimmer in the rocks connected up to the point when he parted company with the stage.
“Somebody told him,” the brown man opinioned, flat rejecting the story. “The tracks I found were too big to be his.”
“Check his boots,” Luke suggested reasonably.
What is this? Don’t nobody need to check no boots.
Gideon would have taken to his feet right then and there to educate that outlaw on the healthy benefits of keeping out of other folk’s gear, but the doctor and sheriff both laid a restraining hand on him.
“Eh-eh, none of that now,” Connell cautioned. “It’s only yourself you’ll hurt.”
He was more than right, Gideon’s teeth clenched against numerous protests from his bruised body.
“You own a horse, stocky blue roan, NH brand?” the man asked, kneeling to examine Gideon’s boots.
His question was stiff and brittle, like a man trying to hold in an already shattered temper.
“Ain’t no business a-yourn,” Gideon spat.
The expression on the man’s face gave Gideon the distinct feeling he was being measured somehow. Those dark eyes seemed to see everything, not only features, but straight into a man, into the thoughts he kept to himself. It gave the impression you had might as well answer straight, because he already knew everything about you. And possibly everything about your family. And definitely where your horse last sniffed the breeze for water.
“When was he last shod?”
“Black feet don’t take shoes,” Gideon replied, meeting that piercing gaze square on.
“What about you? Where’d y’all get your shoes?”
“Sheriff, you gonna just stand there?” Gideon scolded.
“For now,” said Gandy, apparently indifferent to the fact that he was letting an outlaw take the upper hand in asking the questions.
“Y’all are playin’ a dangerous game, young man,” the criminal with the make-believe authority continued. “If you insist on this course, I could arrest you for so many things. Startin’ with assault an officer, followed by interferin’ with an officer in the execution of his duty, and attempted robbery and maybe even attempted murder. Let me give y’all some advice: when you’re in over your head, quit digging’.”
Arrest? Was that the best he could do, masquerade as a lawman? Was Gandy actually buying this? He had certainly let the charlatan have his way thus far. Perhaps Gandy was in on it. He would hardly be the first man of the law who turned out to be a man of no law. Whatever the sheriff’s position, whatever dubiously gotten coin burned a hole in his pocket, Gideon saw no justice in letting this imposter worm his way loose.
“You done bought your ticket,” he sneered. “Don’t—”
Oh, man.
Gideon wouldn’t have known ‘credentials’ if he were smacked over the head with them and given a second helping, but he knew what he was seeing. In the palm of his interrogator’s hand, as comfortable as a preacher in a church and equally voluble, lay a scrap of metal. There was not one tiny sneeze in a hurricane of a reason why Gideon could possibly mistake its meaning.
Man, ohhh, man. Now ya done it, boyo.
That badge was Simon pure. He had hit a ranger. He had picked up a rock and hit an actual Texas Ranger. That was one pack of hornets savvy men left alone. What was he supposed to say? After being bound, gagged and dragged half across Texas to the ranger’s court of choice– presuming he bothered with a court— what could Gideon possibly say? ‘Rock? What rock?’ Or perhaps, ‘Ya can’t prove nothin’ ‘cause the only witness were a-smacked right out-a his senses.’?
Oh yeah, them Texans’d take to that like biscuits an’ gravy, I don’t think.
“I’ll ask again,” said the ranger. “Whose boots?”
“Look you here, mister—”
“Tyree. Ranger Tyree. Who gave you the boots?”
About to let loose, Gideon held back. It wasn’t so much that a fellow had to go careful when hazing a ranger, which he did, but it suddenly dawned on Gideon that he was missing somethi
ng. Think, Aspen had told him more than once, think things through.
“Ya fig’r I’m a-hidin’ someone, don’t ya? An’ them boots’re his. . . my horse too.” Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “Ya got Aspen, ain’t ya?”
“Is that who you’re protecting?”
“Ranger or no. . . you ain’t got no claim. . .”
“Slow down, Gideon,” Dr. Connell interrupted.
“Devil I will! Not whilst this tin-star. . . stands there a-callin’ me a liar. . . an’ a-lockin’ Aspen up for. . . what he ain’t done.” Gideon gasped a shallow breath and brushed away the doctor. “If’n there’s. . . one place Aspen’d be it’s. . . right here a-givin’ me heck. . . only he ain’t. This gent’s got ‘im.”
“That’s enough. No, don’t argue,” the doctor chastised, planting a firm hand on Gideon’s chest. “Gandy, fetch me some water. Ranger Tyree, you may continue in a moment.”
Gideon sipped at the water and calmed down against his will. Whereupon, Gandy gave the ranger a nod and a rather expressive expression. One lawman to another, it meant the floor is yours, only watch how you go. It was good advice. Ranger Tyree nodded his agreement; by the looks of him, this young man had been having a hard enough time lately.
“Suppose it was you who hit me—”
“It were,” Gideon insisted.
He might be headed for a sight of grief, but that was likely one way or the other and better him, who kept grief as a constant saddle partner, than Aspen who had done nothing wrong and met his trouble between the pages of a book. If Gideon had been inclined to stay out of this, he had long overshot his mark. The time for that was back when he had left a Texas ranger face down in the dirt.
“Don’t get riled, boy,” Ranger Tyree soothed. “I’m listenin’. Where’d you put my rifle?”
“My horse,” Gideon answered.
That was right enough. It had been on the roan when the ranger found Aspen leading the animal, bold as day, down Caswell Crossing’s one and only main street.
“And my handgun?”
That was an answer Gideon did not care to give because doing so would connect him to the saloon and that would open a whole barrelful of what-fors and how-comes. What had the man at the livery told them? Had he seen anything worth telling?
“Gideon,” Gandy warned.
Gideon knew the sheriff had him figured. If he took any longer, Gandy would surely stick his nose in even more than he already had. Gideon had no idea how far in it he was, all he could do was paddle.
“Tossed it,” he admitted. “Down from an’ office. Red sign. End-a the street.”
The ranger had no idea if that were true, but he surely intended to find out. Losing his firearms had set his blood boiling, being hit on the head rated as a secondary vexation. Fixed on plumbing the whole, dreadfully increasing possibility of the truth, Tyree tossed out his line.
“Pretty risky, hiding in the scrub oaks like that.”
It was not a direct question and Gideon let it bob unanswered between them.
“Don’t you think so?” Tyree angled.
“Ya ain’t much of-a ranger,” Gideon opinioned.
“Why’s that?”
“Bog-holes an’ bed-wagons.”
“You sayin’ I can’t track? So, set me straight.”
Gideon scowled. Why should he say anything?
‘Cause this two-bit, sheep herdin’ excuse for a lawman has Aspen.
“Were boulders, not oaks,” Gideon corrected.
“Mhhm, and y’all knelt there watchin’ me,” the ranger nodded, his Texas drawl taking its time. “You came ‘round to my off side to hit me, then left me untied and joined the soiree. Y’all should be more careful. You went directly back to your horse– you ought to be more careful than that too— and hesitated with your foot in the stirrup. You have an unusually long stride for your height and, now that I’ve seen them, I can tell those boots,” his finger jabbed gently but inarguably towards exhibits A and B, “definitely belonged to someone else before you put them on.”
Gideon elected to say nothing.
“Oh,” the ranger added, “y’all are left handed too.”
The smugness of this afterthought aforethought was not lost on Gideon. He’d been shown up. Only. . . since the ranger was asking questions, then he was trying to find the loop holes, the niggly bits– in Gideon’s experience, the way out. Well, whatever road the man needed to take, so long as he got there with his brain still on the wagon.
“Here,” the Texan said, producing a large handkerchief. “Reckon you may as well have this.”
Had Gideon had not been there, had he not been the one to secure those knots, he might well have taken the bait.
“It’s yourn,” Gideon refused.
Tyree appraised him thoughtfully, then tucked the test away.
“Why didn’t you give me a chance to show my badge?”
“Weren’t time. Stage were a-comin’ an’ you upped with that rifle.”
“Y’all could have covered me.”
Gideon shook his head. “Hadn’t no gun.”
The ranger gaped. That was the only word for it. His jaw slid open and his eyes widened fit to leap clean out of his head.
“You didn’t— you mean to tell me you climbed up that mountain, alone, to stop an armed man from shooting up a stage and y’all didn’t even have a gun?”
“Hittin’ ya done the job,” Gideon pointed out.
“I could have shot you!” Tyree admonished, as the possibility painted unwelcome images in bright, bold colors across his imagination.
“Don’t look like ya managed it.”
“Did Aspen do this to you?” Tyree asked, pointing with his chin to indicate Gideon’s bruises.
“No. An’ if’n ya ‘rest ‘im,” Gideon promised, “I’ll finish what I done started.”
Tyree had clearly seen the gut-clenching shock when he showed his badge— yet here Gideon was drawing a line in the sand and daring it to be crossed. The ranger studied the painted floorboards, thumbs hooked over his gun belt. It was the stance of a man about to take a swallow of a mighty bitter pie.
“You did tell me, Sheriff. I just didn’t b’lieve you.”
Gandy politely buried his grin and accepted the apology.
“Fortunately for me,” he said, “when I caught Gideon here, he was up to his ears and red handed.”
“You knowed!” Gideon accused hotly. “He’s got Aspen an’. . . you knowed he din’t do nothin’. This here’s a set up.”
“Relax,” Tyree soothed. “I’m the one who’s been hustled. I intended to throw the book at your brother, and anything else I could find. I was fixin’ to have him out of here within the hour. Sheriff Gandy said I had the wrong man, but I wouldn’t b’lieve him. How could I? Sounded like one heck of a whopper to me.”
“I would have thought the same in your place,” Gandy allowed kindly.
“Sheriff, there’s no way I can press charges. Put down by an unarmed kid? I’d never live it down. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we forget about this, and I mean all about it. My part’s done, this one– he’s all yours.”
“Why din’t ya just tell me?” Gideon persisted, a dog with a bone and not letting go.
“You wouldn’t have talked and Ranger Tyree wouldn’t have listened,” Gandy said, completely unperturbed. “The only way to get you out of this was to get you through it.”
Tyree leveled a finger at Gideon, but no words came. He stood there struggling over all the things he wanted to say: that Gideon was crazy, that if he ever tried something this harebrained again Tyree would shoot him himself. It’s what he would have said to a ranger under his training, though few had given him such enormous cause.
“Next time, y’all might think about asking a man’s intentions. It might could’ve saved me a headache,” he finally said, in no doubt at all there would be a next time.
Gideon wasn’t so sure about that advice. Had the ranger really been an outlaw, and ha
d things gone a little differently, Gideon would have been the one left lying out there. Probably for the buzzards. Hitting first still sounded like a pretty good idea to him.
The ranger apologized to the room in general for his wrathy approach and shook Gandy’s hand. About to close the door on the whole embarrassing mess, he hesitated. There was a time when he had been ready to take on anyone and anything at the drop of a hat and nobody, but nobody, had better get in his way. He’d been walking a mighty fine line without even realizing it, one that could have taken him in a very different direction. Were it not for the right man saying the right thing to a kid who hadn’t wanted to hear it, which way would he have gone? The ranger turned a paternally stern countenance on his almost prisoner and tapped the boy’s chest.
“I ever see you again, y’all had better be on my side.”
“Reckon I were,” Gideon allowed, with the merest sliver of humor, “just din’t know it.”
“You’d best think about knowin’ it, Gideon Fletcher. The Rangers can always use men with initiative– and nerve.”
Tyree about-faced, nodded to the doctor, and left. Gideon heard the door squeak, a barely audible ‘ma’am’, and then the Texas ranger was gone, his parting words still hanging in the air.
If’n that gent thinks we’ll ever turn lawman, he’s six rounds shy of-a full load.