Kathleen Kent - The Outcasts

They thanked him and walked a ways, looking for a place to eat their dinner. They found a small boardinghouse with a dining room, ate, and lingered for a while drinking coffee. It was growing dark as a man came in and sat at an empty table. From time to time he snuck a look at Deerling.

Nate started to say something, but Deerling said, “Yes, I see him.”

Nate angled his face away from the watching man. “How did you know Prudone was lying?”

“Just a sense.” Deerling took a drink out of his cup. “On principle, I don’t trust any man that would use the word adjudicated .”

“Are we leaving tonight?”

“I think we should.”

“We goin’ to Lynchburg?”

“No, we need Tom on this. We’ll ride back to Houston and start back as soon as he can sit a horse.”

“You think he’s going to be all right?”

“Why? You know something I don’t?”

“No. He just seemed pretty sick.”

“Tom’s a tough bird.”

They paid for their meal and, after retrieving their horses from the stable, rode for Houston. The night was clear, with the lingering kind of light that turns the sky turquoise before it goes black. A Roman sky, Dr. Tom had once called it, which to Nate’s mind sounded fanciful, a description Dr. Tom had probably read in one of his books.

There was no moon, but the brightest stars were beginning to appear, and the road was level and worn fine. A cold wind coaxed the horses to a fast walk, Deerling’s big bay straining at the reins to outpace Nate’s gelding. They would be in Houston before midnight.

Deerling said, “You did good back there.”

Nate felt his face redden, but he was pleased.

“That was quick thinking with the telegraph man. Saved me from having to bang him over the head to get what we needed.” He drew a pouch from his pocket and pinched some tobacco into his lower lip. He offered some to Nate, but Nate declined.

Deerling said, “Guile. That’s the way of the world now. Pinkertons and federal agents asking questions, stealthy-like. As if you could talk a John Wesley or a Mescalero Apache out of his gun.”

Nate watched Deerling’s profile, certain his sudden talkativeness had more to do with the excitement of being near to capturing McGill and less to do with his being impressed over Nate’s initiative. Dr. Tom had told him that bold action would go a long way towards salving the disappointment Deerling had felt over the horse-thief incident, but Nate figured that his sneaking over a telegraph counter was hardly enough to earn his way back into Deerling’s good graces.

As though he’d been reading Nate’s thoughts, Deerling asked, “I imagine you were too young to be caught up in the war?”

“Well, I didn’t fight, if that’s what you mean, but I did get caught up. I was sixteen when I volunteered with the Nineteenth Mounted Cavalry. I’d no sooner got to Arkansas when they sent us back to Texas. Me and a few other boys, and three hundred cavalry horses from the dismounted troops.”

“You herded them back to Texas?”

“Yes.”

“How many’d you lose?”

“Two.”

“Two?” Deerling reined up the bay and looked at Nate. “You lost only two horses out of three hundred? You drive them straight into Texas?”

“No, sir. I drove them into Oklahoma first, south of Fort Smith, and then down to Lancaster.”

“How many miles is that?”

“I don’t know. A couple hundred.”

Deerling stared at him for a moment, then spurred his horse into motion. He spit off to the side and was silent for a while.

Nate added, “The man I’d joined with was fatherly to me. Some of the best stock was his. There were rogue troops in Arkansas, Union and Confederate, and I didn’t want the horses taken.”

Deerling chewed on that for a while, along with his plug of tobacco. He asked, “You ever shoot a man, son?”

Nate looked at him and said, “Yes.”

“Did it have to do with losing those two horses?”

“Yes.”

“Then it comes as a surprise to me that you were so upset by my killin’ a horse thief. One, I might add, that would’ve made soup from your guts if he’d had a chance.”

“Would you have shot him like that from the ridge if he weren’t Indian?”

“Probably not.” Deerling spit again, then backhanded his mustache. “That what bothers you?”

“It does.” Nate felt his jaw beginning to set.

Deerling grunted and shifted in his saddle impatiently. “And I guess you’d tell me why, if I was to ask?”

“Yes, sir, I would.”

“Yes, I bet you would. I see you’re just burstin’ to tell me why it’s wrong to kill an Indian, you bein’ from Oklahoma and all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think it means you’re diggin’ awful close to the bone with that stick you call your tongue. Go on, ask me about my mission-raised mother, and while you’re at it, why don’t you go insulting my wife too!”

“Hold on, Oklahoma—”

“No, you hold on. I went along with the mishandling of a prisoner, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about your shooting a horse thief, but you keep riding me about my people and, captain or no, I’ll knock you off that big bay. So you go ahead and ask me about my Oklahoma-reservation kin.”

A look of dawning understanding passed over Deerling’s face. “Whether or not you were raised on a reservation is no matter to me.”

“Well…all right, then.” Nate reined his horse abruptly to the far side of the road.

“All right, then.”

A good quarter hour passed with no words exchanged, but Nate kept watch on Deerling out of the corner of his eye. He was angry, still itching to confront the ranger, to bring it to balled fists on a flat piece of earth if need be, but he also felt brought down, deflated, and he thought it would probably always be this way with the ranger: three steps forward and two steps back. He struggled to calm his breathing, focusing his mind on the road ahead.

“I had a daughter,” Deerling finally said, surprising Nate with the suddenness of a statement that sounded more like a confession than a revelation. The ranger had slowly eased his horse to the middle of the road, and to Nate, Deerling’s words felt like the closest to a peace offering he’d get that night. Deerling’s face was composed, no longer heated, but Nate caught the whiff of remorseful sadness, the downturned mouth and hunched shoulders.

“It happened a while ago. But you never get past it. I regret now not being softer with her. I’m told I’m sometimes…” Deerling looked at Nate briefly, exhaling a breath through his nose. “Unyielding.”

Nate nodded sharply once in agreement, but said nothing. Talking to the widow must have stirred memories for the old man, but it came to Nate that neither Deerling nor Dr. Tom had ever made mention before of having wives or children, other than Dr. Tom’s saying that the hunt for McGill was for family reasons. It had seemed only natural to him that a life spent so long in rangering would mean forgoing such attachments.

He was going to ask Deerling how he came to lose his daughter when a pistol blast caused Nate’s horse to rear up, and he saw Deerling knocked back over the bay onto the road. As he struggled to keep his own horse under control, Nate heard a second blast, and then the gelding collapsed to his knees, pitching Nate to the ground. The fall sent a pain like a white phosphorus flare striking across his bad hip and the back of his head, and he lay on the ground stunned and half conscious.

The gelding’s hooves were flailing nearby, blood coursing from a wound in his side, and Nate rolled over, pulling himself away from the injured animal, trying to keep the horse’s body between himself and where he thought the shooter was. The only cover for an ambush was in a stand of trees nearby, and he pressed close to the ground, hoping their attacker would think them both dead and reveal himself. Nate pulled the pistol from his belt and cocked the trigger.