The Coyote Tracker Read online

  “I’m glad to see you,” Josiah said. There was no use offering up another apology. He had said he was sorry to the man more times than he could count.

  “I am glad to be back in Austin. After dismounting, a few of the boys went off looking for a saloon. They stopped at the Easy Nickel,” Juan Carlos said.

  “I know that place.” The saloon was a couple of blocks from Miss Amelia’s house. “It can be a little rough for a boy like Scrap.”

  “I do not know the details, but I heard screams. Then I saw Scrap Elliot running down the street with blood on his hands; he was wide-eyed and pale, like a man gone loco. Suddenly, there were deputies around. They ran after him, cornered him, then took him to jail. I went asking around, but all I could find out was that the Ranger had killed a whore in the back of the Easy Nickel. It seemed very strange to me, señor.”

  Josiah felt numb. He could not imagine Scrap Elliot laying a violent hand on a woman. “There is nothing I can do now. I’ll go down to the jail first thing in the morning.”

  Juan Carlos nodded and headed to the door.

  “You can stay here if you want,” Josiah said.

  Juan Carlos smiled, nodded, then slipped out the door into the darkness, disappearing, like he always did . . . as if he had never existed in the first place.

  After a moment, after the silence had completely returned to the small house, Josiah wasn’t sure if he was awake or asleep, if he had dreamed the whole conversation with Juan Carlos or not.

  CHAPTER 6

  The rising sun burned the back of Josiah’s eyelids, forcing him awake. Sleep had been fitful, and he didn’t feel rested at all. It was like he’d been fighting something, or someone, all night long, even though he couldn’t remember a thing. No ghosts, no voices from the past whispering in his ear—just sore muscles and the feeling like he’d been awake for days instead of asleep for hours.

  There was no question that Josiah was troubled by Juan Carlos’s visit, and more than worried about Scrap—even though, given the tenuous nature of their friendship, he felt odd about that concern. Sometimes it felt to Josiah like he was more a surrogate father to Scrap than a friend or sergeant.

  He sat up on the edge of his bed, wiped his eyes, took a deep breath, and then froze with panic at a sudden realization. Lyle’s bed was empty, the covers twisted and rolled about. There was no sign of the little boy. Worse yet, the Peacemaker on the bureau was gone.

  Fear careened through Josiah’s veins like a blast of dynamite blowing open a new mine shaft.

  “Lyle!” he hollered out, dashing into the front room of the house without one more thought, reacting to what he saw, instead of thinking. “Lyle!” he screamed again.

  Lyle was sitting in the middle of the room. His eyes wide open, obviously startled by his father’s screams. The little boy froze, like a rabbit trying to camouflage itself in the woods, unmoving at the hint of the first cry of a hawk.

  “What is the matter, Señor Josiah?” Ofelia asked, annoyed by Josiah’s sudden outburst, wiping her hands on her apron and rushing over to Lyle, who was now on the verge of tears.

  Ofelia was at least thirty years older than Josiah. Old enough to be his mother. She was about five feet tall, and round as an October pumpkin. Her black hair was shiny, with streaks of silver zigzagging through it, and her face was almost always happy. Her wide brown eyes were more forgiving than judgmental, and she usually laughed a lot, and rarely spoke ill of anyone—even those who held a prejudice against her because she was a Mexican.

  Josiah had known Ofelia since he was a little boy. She had been a partera, a midwife, in and around Tyler and Seerville. She had delivered all three of his daughters, and Lyle, too, into the world. Now she was much more than a partera; she was treated as a member of Josiah’s small family. She was all that remained of his past, and he trusted her with the care and welfare of his most prized possession: Lyle Wolfe himself.

  “Where is my gun?” Josiah demanded. “Lyle, what have you done with my gun? It was on the bureau when I went to bed, and now it’s gone.” It was Josiah’s turn to act like a bull, cut loose from the herd, bucking wildly in search of a target to pierce with its horns.

  The first two things that Josiah realized, after taking a deep breath, and taking in the circumstance he’d found himself in, was that Lyle was just fine and that he had slept much later than he’d thought. His heart was racing so fast he thought it was about to jump out of his chest.

  The welcome smell of frying bacon hit his nose, but he was still panicked; his gun was nowhere in sight.

  Ofelia had reached for Lyle with a surprising amount of grace and speed, pulling him into her arms before one tear could fall from the boy’s eyes to the floor. “You have scared him. What are you thinking, yelling at the top of your lungs?”

  “Where is my gun?” Josiah demanded, as he stopped in the middle of the room, about three feet from Ofelia and Lyle.

  The depth of his voice echoed off the tight walls of the house, making it seem much louder than it really was. Still, he was perturbed, and scared. Though he was relieved to see his son and Ofelia in the house, acting as if nothing was amiss, the gun not a worry, or even a thought.

  “I have put it away, Señor Josiah. You are not in a camp of rowdy vaqueros, where you can just dejar las cosas laicos.” There was no mistaking the tone in Ofelia’s voice. She was reprimanding Josiah. Her voice was harsh, but there was still a softness to it, a line of anger she would not allow herself to cross, though he could see she was really having to restrain herself.

  Josiah glared at Ofelia. She knew full well that he did not understand her language . . . and had no interest in learning. Lyle, on the other hand, could speak Mexican just as well as he could speak English. An advantage, to Josiah’s thinking, when it came to growing up in the city.

  Ofelia patted Lyle’s back and drew a deep breath. “You cannot leave things laying about, Señor Josiah. Lyle knows no normas, no rules, about such things as guns. You are not here enough for him to understand that. The pistola does not mean life and death to him. It means he is just like you if he carries it around. There are other ways for him to que imitan, to, um, how you say it? Mimic you?”

  Josiah recoiled unconsciously. Ofelia was right.

  “Lo siento. I am sorry, Señor Josiah,” Ofelia continued. “I do not mean to step out of place. I came into the house this morning, and you both were sleeping. I put the pistola away. I should have asked you before now to be aware because Lyle is getting into everything—and I can hardly keep up with him. He es ràpido. Very fast for this old woman.”

  Lyle peered sheepishly over Ofelia’s shoulder. “I din’t do it, Papa.”

  Josiah felt himself deflate. He had acted comfortably in his own home, unaware that Lyle, who was almost four, had the strength now to carry off the gun . . . and possibly, pull the trigger. Just the thought made him shiver with fear and dread.

  There were never guns lying around his own home as a child, not that he could remember anyway.

  He was not allowed to touch his father’s long gun that stood by the door, guarding and protecting the family, albeit coldly and silently; it would provoke a hard slap to the hand if it was touched. Only once, when his father was too sick to hunt, was Josiah allowed to take the long gun out of the house. And then, it was stolen by a Comanche, never to be seen again. Josiah was lucky he wasn’t stolen, too, another Cynthia Ann Parker story. It seemed that the memory of guns was prolific and, at times, painful to him. And now he was giving his son a set of memories, different but the same. But hopefully not as dangerous. It was a lesson learned . . . not as hard as it could have been.

  “You’re right, Ofelia, I don’t know what I was thinking. It won’t happen again.”

  Ofelia nodded and let Lyle slide down out of her grip.

  Josiah stood back, smiled, and opened his arms
. Lyle only hesitated for a second, then ran as fast as he could to his father, jumping into the air so Josiah would catch him in a big hug.

  * * *

  The jail was several blocks away from Josiah’s house, and he had chosen to walk, instead of pulling Clipper out of the livery. Spring air washed around him comfortably. The fresh fragrance of opportunity was seemingly everywhere, like someone had kicked over an aromatic keg of sweet-smelling liquid that had soaked thoroughly and completely into the rutted dirt streets of Austin.

  The sky was clear of clouds, a perfect blue that looked like the ocean had been cast upward and turned upside down, the waves and tides shaken out of it in the process.

  It was nearly noon, and the sun hung steady overhead, under no threats and beaming proudly of the season it had brought forth. The day was as perfect as one could ask for; the only matter altering Josiah’s mood was the one at hand: finding out exactly what kind of trouble Scrap Elliot had gotten himself into. The trouble with the gun was past; he’d not put Lyle in harm’s way again. Not if he could help it.

  Josiah pulled his Stetson down to shield his eyes from the sun and to avoid the gaze of any of the passersby, hoping to avoid any undue recognition, or nasty snickers. His tolerance for such things was still low after his outing with Pearl the day before.

  It didn’t take long to walk to the jail. It stood between Guadalupe and San Antonio streets and between West Third and West Fourth streets—four blocks off Congress Avenue.

  Ask for directions from anyone, and you’d likely be told it was on the Old Courthouse block, since this was the second jail Austin had seen built since the city had come into existence. The first one had burned down in 1855.

  The jail was two storeys tall, constructed of local brick, and could hold up to thirty-four prisoners, and also held a residence for the Travis County sheriff, Rory Farnsworth himself.

  Two square turrets bounded the building, one on each side, and the jail was often called the “Black Hole of Calcutta,” like the dungeon in India where a hundred British prisoners died in one night several years before. That grisly tale had somehow made its way to Texas and settled as a moniker for the jail. Josiah didn’t know why.

  It looked like a fortress, a brooding gray building with water stains seeping downward from the roof that seemed like long, dried, black tears. There were no trees, no plants growing up and around the place. It looked like nothing could, or wanted to, live on the grounds.

  As it sat in the shadow of the courthouse, a white stone building that gleamed in the spring sunlight, there was no questioning that the jail had been treated with neglect and disregard by those inside and out.

  It was a dangerous place. More dangerous than any saloon on a Friday night. The reputation of prisoners walking into the Black Hole on their own two feet but leaving in a pine box was well earned and caused a great deal of worry for Josiah.

  He was very aware of the hard life in the jail.

  It had been his charge, well over a year ago, to bring in Juan Carlos, for a crime he committed in the name of saving a man’s life—Josiah’s—and as a matter of fairness, when the time came to turn his head, Josiah had done so.

  Juan Carlos escaped before entering the jail. The Mexican’s only real crime had been the color of his skin and the accent on the end of his tongue. The sheriff in San Antonio had finally dropped those charges, at the strong urging of Captain McNelly, allowing Juan Carlos to come and go freely, though he still chose to lead a secretive life. The Mexican didn’t trust the destruction of the writ, or the Anglos who put the pen to paper.

  To further validate Josiah’s dread of entering the jail, he found it odd that a kettle of turkey vultures were circling overhead. The birds surely smelled a chance to tear at the meat of something dead, or at least were encouraged by the opportunity of doing so relatively soon.

  The sight of the death eaters, with long, black, shadowy wings, slowed Josiah in his tracks, and he sure hoped he wasn’t too late. He hoped Scrap Elliot hadn’t already met his maker in the violent confines of the Black Hole, the Travis County jail.

  CHAPTER 7

  A desk sergeant sat just inside the tall double doors leading into the jail. He was an older man, with broomstick arms, a mustache that was neatly tended to, and eyes that looked like they could have belonged to one of the vultures overhead—black and glassy, focusing, unimpressed, on Josiah as he walked in the door.

  “Remove your weapons,” the sergeant demanded, then extended his hand. He was dressed in a dark brown long-sleeve shirt, wore a silver star above his heart, and was hatless.

  Josiah stared at the man, sure that they hadn’t met before. “I’m a Ranger.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Ulysses Simpson Grant hisself. Rules is rules. No man gets past me without checking his gun.”

  “Is Sheriff Farnsworth in his office?”

  “Won’t hep you none.”

  “What’s your name?

  “What’s it matter, Ranger? If’n you really are one. I hear everything sitting here at this desk, trust me on that. You could be John Wesley Hardin for all I know, ’ceptin’ I’d know that scoundrel anywheres.”

  Josiah shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m not the enemy here, Sergeant, that’s all.”

  “The name’s Emery Jones, for what it’s worth to you. Every man who steps in that door there might have cause for trouble. You here on official bizness?”

  “No, sir. I’m here to see a friend.”

  “Check your weapon then. That’s all there is to the matter.” Jones stood up and squinted at Josiah. He wore a gun on each hip—Sheriff’s Model Colts with three-inch barrels, hanging on a nicely tooled belt. “You look familiar. You ever been in here before?”

  “Not recently.” Josiah glanced away. There was a newspaper scattered off to the left side of the desk. His name and description had been in the Austin Statesman more than once in the last few months, most recently for the killing of Cortina’s spy, Edgar Leatherby, aka Leathers.

  The light was dim inside the foyer, only a few sconces burned along with a lamp on the desk. The ceiling was high, fourteen or fifteen feet, and the hanging lamps hung unlit. There was a musty smell mixed with an underlying odor that was not too difficult to identify. The jail smelled of human excrement, piss and shit, and the natural odor that came from warehousing men without the demand, need, or decency of washing facilities that would probably just serve as a manner of escape or violence.

  “I swear you look like somebody I should know.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Josiah said.

  Sergeant Jones twitched quickly, casting a quick glance to the exterior wall, where all of the wanted posters hung. Satisfied that Josiah’s picture wasn’t there, he turned his attention back to him. “I guess you ain’t John Wesley Hardin.”

  “It’d be a fool thing to do, walking straight into the jail, if I was an outlaw, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s been done. Outlaws start thinking they’re smarter than the rest of us, kind of a ruse, you know. Rules is rules. No guns, no matter who you is. No knives, either.” Jones nodded at the Bowie knife strapped on Josiah’s belt. “You got a stingy gun hidden about, I’ll need that, too.”

  “I only have what you see, nothing else.”

  “So you say.”

  “I suppose you’re just doing your job. Can’t be too careful, I expect.”

  “There’s no supposin’ to it. Who you here to see?”

  “Scrap Elliot. He’s a Ranger, too.”

  Jones shook his head no. “Ain’t got no Scrap Elliot here.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. Sure as it’s a fine spring day and I’m stuck here inside this stinkin’ hole, talkin’ to the likes of you, I am.”

  “There’s no Scrap Elliot here?” Josiah repeated.
>
  “There’s a Robert Earl Elliot. But no Scrap.”

  “That’s him.” Josiah looked to the locked door behind Jones, which obviously led to the cells. There was noise coming from behind it—hoots and hollers, laughter, and snoring. It was most likely where the smells were emanating from, too.

  Just inside the foyer was a small room with another hallway leading off in the opposite direction. It held the offices, kitchen, and residence for the sheriff. Josiah had been in the sheriff’s office once, but no farther than that. He had no desire to see the inside of the residence, or Rory Farnsworth for that matter. Though he doubted that there was any way around that. If he was going to help Scrap, he was certain he had to speak directly to the sheriff.

  “I know who you are now. You’re that Ranger who kilt his captain . . . among other things. Josiah Wolfe. That’s who you are, ain’t it?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re a lucky man to be walkin’ around free, and still a Ranger to boot. They sure did scurry you out of the city for a while. Looks like that ploy worked, eh?”

  “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because what’s in the papers isn’t always true. It’s been my experience that newspaper writers hold grudges and make things up to suit their aims.”

  “Really?” Jones asked sarcastically.

  “Yes, really. If I killed a man unjustly, I’d be behind bars myself, or hung out in the gallows, wouldn’t I? Put away in a prison instead of a jail if I was allowed to live out my days. I’m an innocent man who was just doing his duty. My guess is, my friend Elliot doesn’t belong here himself.”