Free [Texas Rangers 04] - Ranger's Trail by Elmer Kelton

house.
    Rusty said, “Andy, go saddle that horse yonder for Alice. I’ll keep Mrs. Bascom company.”
    The woman seethed. Rusty was glad she no longer had the shotgun. She scolded, “It’s a mortal sin, comin’ between a man and his wife. My son and Alice taken the vows before a minister of the gospel and in the sight of the good Lord Hisself. The Book says what God has joined together …”
    “ You don’t talk like somebody who’d know much about the Book.”
    “ I know it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You carry that girl away and I’ll see to it that my boys take a lot more than an eye and a tooth.”
    Rusty saw no point in arguing. He let her continue a malevolent harangue laced with profanities the likes of which he had never heard pass a woman’s lips and some he had heard from few men.
    Alice brought a cloth bag out of the house. Rusty asked, “Is that all you’ve got?”
    “ I didn’t come here with much. I haven’t picked up anything new except bitter experience.”
    Mrs. Bascom shook a finger at her. “There’ll be hell to pay when the boys fetch you back here. And they will.”
    Alice murmured, “Hell is all I’ve had since I came.”
    “ You Jezebel!” The woman slapped Alice so hard that a red splotch arose where the flat of her hand had struck.
    Alice made an angry cry and drove her fist into Bessie Bascom’s face. The woman rocked back, almost falling.
    Rusty watched in pleased surprise. Maybe he had underestimated Alice. He said, “Looks like you’re your mother’s daughter, after all.”
    Andy led a brown horse up from the pen, a sidesaddle on its back. He boosted Alice up into place. Mrs. Bascom held one hand to her jaw, her eyes blazing from shock and pain and anger.
    Alice said, “I’ve wanted to hit that woman ever since the day I came here.”
    Rusty asked, “Why didn’t you?”
    “ She’d have killed me, or made me wish she had.”
    “ Well, she can’t do anything to you anymore.”
    Andy still had the shotgun. He pitched it up on top of the dirt-covered roof, raising a wisp of dust. He said, “I hope the law don’t get after us for takin’ this horse.”
    Alice said, “It’s the one I came here on. It never belonged to the Bascoms.”
    Rusty said, “Let’s git. I wouldn’t put it past that old woman to climb up there after that gun.”
    They rode at a rapid pace for a mile or so, then slowed. Alice looked back with concern. Rusty said, “She wouldn’t chase us afoot, not this far.”
    Alice was not comforted. “You don’t know Bessie Bascom. She’s liable to take a broomstick and come flyin’ after us.”
    “ How long do you think it’ll be before her menfolks come home?”
    “ Hard to say. They’ve been gone three days. Corey was talkin’ about a nice little Yankee bank over east that he said needed robbin’.”
    “ So that’s what they do for a livin’, rob banks?”
    “ Part of it. They burgle stores, steal cattle, horses, whatever comes easy to hand. I’m sure now that’s why Corey came to our farm in the first place. He had heard about the Monahan horses. But we took a shine to one another, and he carried me off instead.”
    “ Against your will?”
    “ Not then. I wanted to come with him. But when I got here I found things weren’t like he’d been tellin’ me. Nowheres near.”
    Rusty had noticed a blue mark beneath her left eye. “Corey did that to you, I suppose.”
    “ Not Corey. His mother. She reminds me of the wicked stepmothers I used to read about in fairy tales.”
    “ How long has she been a widow?”
    “ Several years. From what Corey told me, Old Ansel got surprised by the state police and tried to put up a fight. After that the Bascoms declared war against all authority. The only thing the boys are scared of is that old woman. Anybody who crosses her is fixin’ to bleed some.”
    She plied Rusty with anxious questions about her mother and others of the family. He knew her concern was