(From the current work in progress; a collection of adventures set — so far — in frontier Texas. Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his trusted Delaware Indian friend, Toby Shaw are on the road, the Opelousas Trace, with cattle rancher Clayton Huff searching for Clayton’s missing brother. A number of people, including Captain Jack Hays, Jim’s own father and many of the people they meet along the road seem to suspect a local innkeeper of having something to do with the disappearance of Clayton’s brother … and others.)
They traveled east at a casual amble, although the urgency of their errand was always at uncomfortable odds with the need to maintain the pretense of being casual travelers, always ready to pause along the way for a good meal and a comfortable stretch of gossip. Their first encounter seemed to set the pattern for the others, which did not escape their concentrated attention. None of those whom they passed the time with over the following days recalled seeing Randall Huff the cattleman, returning from New Orleans, with his bay horse and brown and white hunting dog … and a money-belt of gold coin from the profitable sale of his cattle. Mention of Squire Yoakum and his establishment – although Jim was careful not to seem to connect one inquiry with the other – sometimes drew responses akin to the farmer and his field hand; a mixture of veiled suspicion and wary dislike, but nothing put into overt words. It became plain to Jim and Clay, on discussing this, that Squire Yoakum was feared by his neighbors, although just as many were fulsome in their praise of his character and generous hospitality.
“He’s a power in the county, so none might go against him openly – and he is a very rich man,” Clay expounded on his own feelings. “I haven’t had much truck with his kind before. In Bastrop there are just as many as have large cattle herds and have built themselves fine houses … but I don’t think I have ever heard any around there say as much ill about them as I have heard in the last three days about Yoakum.”
“There is very often a crime at the base of a great fortune – but well-buried and forgotten, if it were properly done,” Jim agreed, with a touch of cynicism. “I read that in a novel by a Frenchie a while ago – didn’t think it was true at the time, but now I am beginning to wonder. I do not think we should ask him straight out about your brother, when we reach Pine Island Bayou tomorrow – I had thought at first that being a man of property and the postmaster and all, he might stand ready to assist, but considering what has been said by those who may be better-acquainted … no, I think we must be discrete. Perhaps you can mention how welcome his hospitality was for you both on the journey to New Orleans some months ago … but nothing more. Are we agreed on this, gentlemen?”
Both of his companions agreed, although with some hesitation on the part of Clay, who remarked abruptly, when they had gone a little way farther along the Trace,
“I have begun to consider what I must do if I find that Randall is dead – murdered, as it seems likely. We were next in age to each other – and always close.”
“So was I, with my brother Daniel,” Jim answered, with a sudden and unexpected rush of sympathetic emotion, to the point where he was near overcome. “We were only the two brothers in our family who lived to majority – we had three small brothers who perished as children – the usual accidents and illnesses. His death was a tragedy most unexpected, since he fell by the hand of one he considered a comrade, if not a friend.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Clay said, after a moment. “I am given to wonder – what did you do, upon the death of your brother?”
“Mr. Shaw saw that he was decently buried,” Jim replied. The memory of that was one which cut to the heart – for Jim had been there, when his brother and the other Rangers of his company were murdered by men who came among them as friends. Jim himself had survived only by chance. “Together with his comrades, and I have taken service with Captain Hays. Someday, I will find the man who killed my brother and the other Rangers. The old Spaniards in Bexar have a saying – revenge is a dish best eaten cold. I have a better one – justice is a task which never grows cold, or stale.”
“I see now why Captain Hays has sent you with me,” Clay said, after a moment. They were riding where the Trace led, through a stand of thick woods, as dark as the heart of an evil man, where sunshine was a memory. “For your cool head, at least as much as your experience – I rode with his company myself, a time or two. And he is the calmest man I know in a fight – I was with him when we fought Yellow Robe’s Comanche on the Pedernales! We were outnumbered three or four to one, and yet we came away with none lost and only two wounded bad enough to need a doctor afterwards. Any other captain, we would have been slaughtered.”
“You didn’t give up then and you should not give up yet,” Jim said, although deep in his heart he also suspected that Randall Huff was dead.
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