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

Rusty. “And you’re the doctor who fetched it.” She looked up at the boy. “And you, Andy.” She turned back to her sister. “Come on, let’s go show you to Mama.”
    The family trooped into the big house. Andy started to follow, but Rusty raised a hand to stop him. “This is for the family,” he said.
    Andy nodded, seeing the rightness of it. “But you’re one of the family too, just about.”
    “ Not yet, not ‘til Josie and me stand up in front of Preacher Webb. Right now there’s no tellin’ when that is liable to happen.”
     

CHAPTER FIVE

    C orey Bascom was in a dark mood as he and three younger brothers approached the long picket house that had been their home since soon after they had left Arkansas just ahead of some angry horsemen. The bank for which he had held considerable hope had been a disappointment. With the muzzle of a pistol in his face, the bank’s president had stammered that local farmers had made only a mediocre crop the previous fall and most of their money had already been spent. The county government should have had some funds on deposit, but the outgoing officeholders had absconded with most of the money. “We’ve got nothing but a toenail hold,” he had said, “and hopes for a better year.”
    Frustrated, Corey had promised to come back in the fall, after harvest. “You’d better have somethin’ here worth the takin’. Otherwise you’d better start learnin’ how to play a harp.”
    His brother Lacey then forced the sweating banker to go to his knees and beg for mercy. It was a bluff, but Lacey took pleasure in his ability to frighten people. He especially enjoyed it when he could make them wet themselves, which the banker did. Corey sometimes worried that Lacey would get carried away and really kill someone. He had come close. So far the Bascom brothers’ crimes had stopped short of murder. So far.
    Before leaving town the brothers had paused to rob a mercantile store but found its till was as poor as the bank’s.
    Lacey shot out a window glass as they left. “Somethin’ for them to remember us by,” he had explained. It was an unnecessary gesture. Nobody ever forgot a visit by the Bascoms.
    The only bright spot Corey could see in this whole trip was the prospect of getting back to Alice. He had enjoyed women before, usually with payment involved, but this girl had awakened a hunger in him that never remained satisfied for long. She had been shy and uncertain the first few times, and he had gotten a little rough. He had occasionally been rough with other women but considered that to be his right inasmuch as he had bought and paid for them. He suspected this treatment was the reason Alice had become increasingly reluctant about his attentions as the weeks passed. He had tried to be gentler, but he didn’t know how.
    This trip had kept him away for four days—and four long, lonely nights. He hoped his absence would have made her more receptive. He would keep working on the gentleness thing and see if it helped.
    He saw smoke rising from the chimney and realized he was hungry for more than Alice. Though Ma’s cooking wouldn’t get her a job even in a hole-in-the-wall chili joint, when a man’s belly was empty her beans and cornbread were welcome. Nobody ever complained, at least where she might hear. Though her sons were grown, she felt obliged now and again to take a quirt to one or another of them just as she did when they were little. To Ma they would always be “my boys,” to be praised highly or punished severely, whichever the situation called for.
    Praise came sparingly. She had come near taking a quirt to Corey when he brought Alice home unannounced. In her view he had no right to get married without her approval, especially to a pampered girl who was obviously a misfit, unlikely ever to find a comfortable place in this close-knit family. Bessie Bascom had tried hard to weld her boys into an insular unit, mutually shielding one another from the rest of