Free Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) by Jon Land

here, the body count inside stretching into the dozens. Black flies swarmed wildly about, making the air look stained dark in patches. William Ray and Earl figured the heat had started turning the bodies sour ahead of normal timing. It was one thing to see the remains of outlaws, criminals, or would-be gunmen made brave by drink. It was another to see women and children among the fallen. It was enough to make William Ray and Earl feel their mouths go dry and stomachs quake with bile and gas.
    “What you make of the spacing of the corpses, Ranger Earl?”
    “I’d say a bunch were lined up against the wall and executed.”
    “Anything else tell you that?”
    “Well,” Earl said, feeling about that wall, until he came to what he was looking for and pried it out. “How about this?” he asked and handed his father the bullet he’d pried free. “Seven millimeter,” he added.
    William Ray nodded in agreement. “Yup, a Mauser for sure.” Then he shook his head, his expression that of a man who’d just eaten an onion and washed it down with straight lemon juice. “But what could account for a massacre like this?”
    Earl was crouching over the bodies now, moving from one to another. “Well, to start with, I don’t believe this was Pancho Villa’s work, sir.”
    “Son?”
    “His ammo supply’s dried up to just about nothing since he mixed it up with General Pershing. I heard told to save bullets he took to executing two prisoners at a time with a single bullet.”
    “Bet that didn’t go so well.”
    “Point being that whoever mowed these folks down was firing about as random as it gets.” Earl tilted his gaze behind him now. “As many rounds found that wall back there as did flesh. They were firing like they enjoyed it, like it was sport.”
    “What in hell were they doing in Willow Creek? Better question being what the hell went wrong when they got here?”
    Earl rose, brushing off his pants as if to ward off the stench. “Maybe we got the timing wrong. Maybe that sheriff and his shotgun started things and the killers didn’t want to leave any witnesses after they took down the bodies we saw in the street. Or maybe they were making the point that they were just not to be messed with.”
    “Maybe that boy can tell us,” William Ray had just added when Blackie neighed loudly outside.
    He held his son’s stare as they moved for the door and burst out from the saloon side by side, the dusk sky giving up riders coming in fast from the south and the Mexican side of the border.
    Earl and William Ray stood their ground, Earl with the Colt drawn now and his father with the Winchester grasped so tight his hands had turned bright red.
    “You remember what I told you before?”
    “No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.”
    “True enough. Now let’s kill us some men,” said William Ray Strong, eyeing the badge pinned proudly to his son’s shirt.
    “That’s if they are men,” Earl replied, thinking of that drawing the boy had done of skeletons wearing bandoliers. “You can’t kill something that’s already dead.”
    “You ever try that, son?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then you can’t be sure, can you?” William Ray hocked up some spittle and steadied the Winchester higher, as the oncoming riders kicked up a torrent of dust in their wake. “Anyway, welcome to the Texas Rangers.”

 
    16
    S AN A NTONIO, THE PRESENT
    “I never heard old Earl tell that one,” Tepper said when Caitlin had finished. “I’m guessing it wasn’t zombies with skulls for heads that came riding in.”
    “That’s besides the point.”
    “What is the point, Ranger?”
    “Five kids found dead in the very place where a whole town preceded them over ninety years ago? You trying to tell me that’s a coincidence?”
    “Here we go again.…”
    “Where’s that exactly, Captain?”
    “To a place where the legendary Caitlin Strong sees the forest but not the