Free [Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton Page B

bust themselves trying. Sometimes they did indeed bust themselves, but more often they did whatever they thought it took to get the job done. If they happened to maim or kill a few more people than was really necessary ... well, that was just too damned bad. It was ranger logic that such casualties resulted from folks being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were probably guilty of something anyway.
    Blessing did not call a halt until dusk faded into darkness. He stopped where the steep banks of a near-dry creek bed would hide their meager campfire from view should the Indians send scouts to survey their back trail.
    The men needed rest, especially Mike and Preacher Webb. Mike rubbed his bad leg and winced with pain when he thought nobody was looking. The minister seemed wrung out like a freshly washed shirt. He gripped his crooked arm as if the miseries had set in deep.
    Blessing offered, "Oscar Petrie had the foresight to bring a bottle of whiskey if that would help you, Mike."
    Mike accepted with gratitude. "Oscar Petrie is the smartest man I know."
    Blessing turned to Webb. "How about you, Preacher?"
    "After I have made whiskey the subject of a hundred sermons?"
    "It has medicinal properties."
    Rusty remembered that Mother Dora had put coffee in the sack of grub she had given him. "I'll boil you some coffee, Preacher. I never heard you sermonize against that."
    "And you never will. When the Christians drove the Turks from the gates of Vienna, the Turks left their stores of coffee behind. I feel sure that was the Lord's notion of a proper gift to His faithful."
    Rusty had no idea where Vienna was. Probably not in Texas, or he would have heard about it.
    He noticed that Isaac York kept pacing back and forth atop the creek bank, staring toward the north. Blessing called, "Isaac, you'd better get some rest while you can."
    York's voice was harsh. "I doubt that woman and boy they stole are gettin' any rest."
    "You can't do them any good if you're too worn out to keep up."
    "Moon's risin'. Plain as the tracks are, we ought to be able to follow them pretty soon."
    "We'll never catch up on dead horses. Come on down." Blessing poured a tin cup almost to the brim with steaming coffee and held it high as enticement. York descended from the bank. A black man who always accompanied him took the coffee Blessing offered and handed it to him as if it were his place, and his only, to serve York.
    York said, "Go get you some sleep, Shanty." He squatted near the fire, a towering man with a slight hunch to his broad shoulders. Rusty studied the brooding face, made blood-red and fearsome by the flickering reflection of the coals. He knew the man mostly by reputation. He was said to be a ferocious fighter in any scrap with Indians. Mike had fought side by side with him in the Mexican War. He said York seemed to take that conflict as a personal crusade and killing as many enemies as possible a personal obligation. Back home, York was known as a heavy drinker and dramshop brawler always looking for a new war to fight.
    Though Mike Shannon was a good scrapper himself, he gave York room except when duty called them together.
    Rusty was intrigued by the man's intensity. He eased himself down at Preacher Webb's side and asked, "What do you think of Isaac York?"
    Webb considered the question gravely. "He's been to the edge of the pit and looked down into the fires of hell. He's a good man to have at your side in a fight, but some dark day the fire will draw him in. You'd not want to be at his side then."
    Rusty stared at the troubled face and shivered.
     
    * * *
     
    It seemed he had barely gone to sleep when Mike shook his shoulder. "Time to saddle up and go, young'un. Tom Blessing's given the word."
    Rusty's body resisted at first. He was painfully stiff from lying on the ground, and his stomach was uneasy because of the need for more sleep. But he felt a renewal of yesterday's excitement at riding with these men. Moreover, he was