Free The Ranger by Ace Atkins Page B

five minutes, rubbing Hondo’s ears, before one of the miscreants spotted him and nudged another in the ribs.
    They weren’t ranchers. Three of them were nothing more than kids with shaved heads and wearing ragged jackets, another was a fat man with a shaved head, wispy red beard, and a scrawled tattoo on his neck. Quinn took the last fella to be running the show, from the way he was bossing everybody around. He was older, tall and skinny, with hollow dark eyes, and was shirtless under a camouflage jacket with all matter of patches and symbols.
    Quinn’s hand left Hondo’s head and waved to them. “Hello.”
    The skeletal man broke away from his group and walked to a midpoint between them and Quinn.
    Quinn walked toward him, seeing himself and the dog as moon shadow. He held the rifle loose and easy in his left hand.
    “Evening” was all that came to Quinn’s mind.

8
    The skinny guy didn’t say a word, just kind of stood there. He was a little shorter than Quinn, sporting a shaved head with short black mustache and goatee. He had vacant black eyes and a bulging lower lip packed with snuff, spitting every few seconds. Quinn guessed the guy was trying to stand tough, but he looked more confused than anything, other men now surrounding him in the moonlight like trained dogs. He didn’t break his stance as Quinn walked around to the open cattle gate, some of the cows scattering from the herd and heading back to pasture.
    “You boys lost?”
    The skinny man—Quinn seeing the jacket patches included both the American and Confederate flags—smiled a row of very uneven yellowed teeth. A tattoo crept around the side of his neck. He looked to be jail-hard, moving slow in speech and eyes. A gun at his waist. That fat man with the wispy red beard carried a 12-gauge.
    “Let ’em out,” Quinn said.
    The skinny man kept grinning.
    Quinn walked right through the center of the group, elbowing one boy out of the way, and to the cattle trailer. He opened the gate, whistling and calling out the cows. Hondo hopped inside and nipped them along.
    A half ring of men moved toward Quinn as he stepped back and let the flow of cattle pass him. He saw two more guns, the boss yet to pull his pistol, and Quinn kept his rifle by his side, finger on the trigger.
    The men shuffled and stared, a couple of them looking to the boss and toeing the ground.
    “You need me to call the sheriff’s office?” Quinn asked. “This place isn’t abandoned.”
    The skinny man nodded to a couple of the boys and they made a run at Quinn, Quinn stepping right for them, busting one in the skull with the rifle’s butt and punching the other in the throat, not even breaking stride until he got within maybe a foot of the boss man’s face and smiled at him. The man smelled of sharp body odor and old cigarettes.
    The man pulled his pistol, and Quinn reached for his wrist, twisting it back until there was a sharp snap and the man fell to his knees. Quinn kicked him in the body twice as he fell and the gun dropped. Quinn picked it up, emptied the cylinder of the cheap .38, and slid it into his pocket.
    “Gather your shit and get gone,” Quinn said. “I’m in my legal right to shoot every one of you shitbags.”
    Hondo barked and nipped at the fat man’s heels. He kicked at the dog.
    Quinn said: “Do that again.”
    He walked straight away, not looking back, not hearing that telltale click of weapons until he reached the gate. There were two clicks, but Quinn didn’t really give a damn, as if he’d heard the buzz of a mosquito.
    Quinn called Wesley Ruth, but five minutes later the rusted trailer drawn by a King Cab truck ran down the road, bumping over potholes and ravines, Quinn standing on the porch, watching the face of the skinny man behind the wheel but not getting a look in return. With the trailer in the way, Quinn couldn’t get a read on the tag.
    The fat man remained in the empty cattle hold like a fattened hog, pointing a pistol up at Quinn and