The Coyote Tracker Read online

  “Rangers ain’t no better’n the State Police if’n you ask me. He’s here ’cause he murdered a whore, plain and simple. He’ll have a noose around his neck before the week’s out, Ranger or not. You wait and see.”

  “Nobody asked you about the Rangers, did they?” Josiah hesitated, then unbuckled his gun belt, put it on the desk with ease and respect, and followed it up with his knife. “Now, let me in to see my friend.”

  Jones took the weapons and walked over to the wall-sized wood armory, then unlocked it, put them in, and locked it back up. He walked back to Josiah with a frozen look on his face, void of any emotion. “Put your arms out.”

  “What for?”

  “I need to see for myself that you’re not carryin’ anything else.”

  “I gave you my word.”

  “I don’t trust anyone. Do as I ask or leave. It don’t matter to me.”

  Josiah dropped his head a bit in defeat and extended his arms. “I’ve said those words before myself. I surely understand what you mean . . .”

  * * *

  Jones led Josiah down a long, dank, smelly hall with an exterior wall on one side, facing out to San Antonio Street, and the jail cells on the other. A series of barred windows let in the light, but there were no lamps within sight or available to the prisoners, for mischief or warmth. Even in the throes of a fine spring day, there was a chill in the air that caused Josiah to shiver.

  The walk garnered some attention from the prisoners, though a quiet wave followed after them as they passed by a line of twelve fully tenanted cells. There was another wing of cells behind these and one above them. There was rumor of a dungeon, a hole for solitary confinement, but Josiah had never been in the bowels of the jail, and he hoped to never have reason to be.

  One man stood nervously at the front of his cell, about halfway down to the end of the hall. He was a short man, with a bald patch on the top of his head, the rest of his stringy black hair wispy and unattended. His clothes seemed to suggest nothing in particular, whether he was a saddle bum or an outlaw, but what stuck out about the man, other than a long, cold stare, was the fact that his forehead was soaked with sweat. The odd little man was either nervous or ill with a contagion, and Josiah wanted no knowledge of either cause. He hurried his step a bit to get past him.

  Scrap was in the last cell, at the very end of the hall. Instead of being in line with the rest, it crooked around a corner, stuffed in an alcove, and was about half the size of the other cells.

  “You got company, Robert Earl Elliot,” Jones said.

  Josiah stood behind the skinny sergeant, not trying to hide, but trying to get an extra second to gauge Scrap’s state of mind and possibly his innocence or guilt.

  Scrap was just a bit over twenty years old, maybe twenty-one, Josiah wasn’t sure. He’d never asked directly. It was obvious the boy was young. He could hardly grow a full row of stubble under his nose, much less on his face, and his words and actions were mostly impulsive, lacking any wisdom or experience at all. Still, Scrap was a fine horseman and a better shot. Because of both skills, regardless of his untamed attitudes, Josiah owed the boy his life. Friendship was not an act of obligation, but respect was.

  The boy was curled up on a cot at the back of the cell. Shadows fell hard in the alcove, and he looked more like a lump of grain sacks stuffed under a blanket than a body. But Jones’s voice had roused him, and Scrap rolled over then sat up slowly on the edge of the cot.

  He had a hard, thin face himself and a head full of unruly hair the color of coal. His eyes were blue, but distant, and he was rangy, not carrying an ounce of extra fat on his lean, muscular body. His shirt was soiled, blood-stained on the right side, and his lip was puffed, like he had taken a punch square in the mouth.

  “I figured I’d see you here sooner or later, Wolfe.”

  “You got anyone else who knows you’re here?”

  “Ain’t a soul in this old world that gives a hoot about what happens to me, Wolfe. You know that.”

  Scrap’s parents had been killed in a Comanche raid when he was a few years into his teens. He was left to care for his younger sister, Myra Lynn, who was now at a convent in Dallas, serving the church and her God as an Ursuline nun. Josiah had never met Myra Lynn, but he had met Scrap’s aunt Callie, who owned a boardinghouse in Fort Worth, and he knew that Scrap was, in fact, alone in the world, other than her and his relation to the Ranger company he belonged to. And there was no question that no one from the company would come to his aid, especially not if the charge of murdering a whore was true.

  “I’m here,” Josiah said.

  Jones stepped back. “I’ll leave you two to yourselves.”

  Josiah nodded, and Jones started to walk away, but he stopped once he was about to turn the corner. “You can see yourself back to my desk, but don’t be talkin’ to none of these heathens on the way out, you hear?”

  “No worry there,” Josiah said.

  “Good.” Jones walked on, eventually disappearing.

  Scrap walked up to the front of the cell. “It’s good to see you, Wolfe. I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said.”

  “I know. Now, tell me what happened.”

  Before Scrap even got a word out of his mouth, a wave of screaming and shouting broke out, echoing back to Josiah and Scrap . . . followed by a loud, ear-shattering boom! An immediate rush of air pushed through the jail, followed by the quick crumbling of the exterior wall. Dust and chunks of the brick wall flew everywhere—it was like a stick of dynamite had gone off just outside the jail. A hole big enough to ride a horse through suddenly appeared on the street side of the jail.

  Josiah ducked and covered, shielding himself from a thick gray cloud that had filled the hallway and from chunks of wall that were flying through the air. It was like standing in the middle of a windstorm on the driest day in the summer; he couldn’t see two inches in front of his face. His ears rang from the explosion, but he was far enough away not to have been seriously injured, at least he didn’t think he’d been. He could taste the dust, smell the black powder residue of the dynamite, but still feel all of his limbs.

  Only one thought crossed his mind as he shoved himself into the corner of the alcove: He was in the midst of a jailbreak, and there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t hardly see, couldn’t hardly breathe, and worst of all, he had no weapon to defend himself . . . or the jail.

  CHAPTER 8

  Distorted images—silhouettes of a group of men rushing into the dust cloud, and then a team of horses following, whinnying and protesting—appeared through the hole in the wall, materializing like a willful dream collaborated on by all of the hostile prisoners in the jail.

  Light anxiously pushed in sharply defined rays through the eight-foot-tall hole. It was as if such bright light had never touched the inside walls of the gloomy place, even though this level of the jail wasn’t the dungeon.

  As the dust cleared and the images grew less distorted, and more real, Josiah knew he was right in his thinking: This was a jailbreak.

  There was yelling and screaming everywhere. Someone fired a gun just outside of the wall. All of the sounds echoed and reverberated harshly inside the walls. Josiah’s ears still rang from the initial explosion.

  A rope had been tied to not one, but three horses, and two men appeared alongside the horses and simultaneously tied the rope to the metal door of one of the cells.

  There was no sign of Sergeant Jones, any of the other of deputies, or the sheriff, Rory Farnsworth. They certainly had to be aware of the explosion and, more certainly, what its purpose was. Anyone within five miles had heard the rumble of the dynamite and felt the ground tremble for a second or two. Surely the jail was fortified and staffed by more men than just the grouchy old desk sergeant.

  Or maybe not. The fact that it was broad daylight, coming straight up on noon, the ti
ming of the jailbreak was brazen, and a surprise to Josiah—he would never have suspected a thing like this could happen in the middle of the day. Whoever was behind the plan must have had good reason to take such a blatant risk. Maybe the planners of the act were aware of something that Josiah was not, concerning the whereabouts of the sheriff and his men. It was the only thing that made sense.

  For the moment, there was nothing Josiah could do but stay where he was and not give any indication that he had anything to do with the law.

  If these men were as serious as they appeared to be, shooting a Texas Ranger would be of no consequence to them. Most likely, killing him would be just one more bloody deed to brag about after it was all said and done.

  Outlaws had a mean streak that Josiah could never understand, and he hoped he didn’t share any of their spiteful and heartless tendencies, like he’d been recently accused of in the newspapers.

  The men on the horses were becoming clearer as the explosion and its residue quickly settled to the ground.

  They were dressed in black dusters, with kerchiefs pulled up over their noses, both for protection against the dust and so they couldn’t be identified. Typical. Nothing stood out. Nothing to identify them later. Even their hands were covered with black gloves. It was almost like they had uniforms on, another odd twist of forethought that stood out to Josiah, as he regained his senses and tried to pay attention to what was happening.

  All of the prisoners in the cell block had recognized what was happening as Josiah had. They started shouting, banging against their metal cell doors with whatever they could find to draw attention to themselves: tin cups, pillows, shoes, their own bodies. It was an orchestra of salvation, pleas to be set free, beggars held tightly in the shackle of steel with no promise of escape, ever—until now. The voices and cries were almost as loud as the explosion.

  Where was Farnsworth? Josiah wondered silently. There was no way anyone within several blocks could not have heard the ruckus.

  None of the prisoners had any privacy in the construction of the fortress of the Black Hole of Calcutta, not that it mattered—they had all given up their rights when they committed whatever crime had landed them in the jail in the first place. There were no brick walls in between the cells, just bars, row after row, like cages set next to one another, and now that the dust had completely fallen to the floor, Josiah could see all of the way to the entrance.

  Every confined prisoner was one step from madness, screaming and dancing like a fire had been lit, trapping each man even further, his life at risk—though there was no immediate threat of death, not even the slightest hint of smoke now. And the smell of freedom was an unforeseen stroke of luck that none of the prisoners could ignore. They were all in a frenzy, like someone had kicked a nest of red ants, sending them scurrying for escape.

  “Let me out!” came a scream.

  “Take me!” said another man.

  “I’m next!” another voice shouted, rising over the rest.

  The only man, it seemed, who was not excited about the break was the sweaty, mousy-looking man that Josiah had noticed as he and Jones passed by.

  That man stood in the center of his cell, his head slightly down, his hands clasped in front of his waist, almost like he was looking down on a grave, praying. He was completely unaffected by the chaos around him, other than that he was sweating more profusely now. He did not share in the enthusiasm that was so palpable in the jail that it could be tasted.

  “What the hell is going on, Wolfe?” Scrap whispered.

  Josiah was stuffed as far back in the corner of the alcove as he could get. He held his index finger to his dry lips, hoping to avoid notice by the men conducting the jailbreak.

  Scrap kicked at the ground, groaned, eyed Josiah angrily, then turned his attention back to the horses and the men standing in the blast hole.

  “Pull!” came a command, and the horses danced backward with all their might, the rope on the cell wall tightening immediately.

  After a quick tussle, the door popped off with a hard-fought and unifying tug from all three horses. Only after the metal fell to the ground, creating an immediate cloud of dust, did one of the horses begin to protest more strenuously than any of them had previously. Something had spooked the solid gray gelding. Fear and frustration boiled in the horse’s eyes. If there was any identifiable creature among the outlaws, it was this horse.

  The rider, who sat tall in the saddle, tried to calm the horse, but didn’t seem to be able to get it to settle down.

  “Explosion set it off,” Scrap mumbled. “Damn fool’s gonna let that horse hurt itself if he don’t get it out of there fast.”

  Josiah said nothing. Just watched and kept an eye on Scrap. The boy knew horses and their behavior better than any man he knew, and the thought of one in trouble made the boy visibly nervous, agitated.

  Scrap started pacing, pushing at the bars that separated him from his freedom, and from helping the horse. “You gotta get me out of here, Wolfe.”

  Josiah shook his head no.

  “Untie the damn thing,” the rider yelled. “Now. Untie it now!”

  Only a few minutes had passed since the explosion, but it seemed longer. Everything was happening at lightning speed. The gang of men looked well rehearsed, with distinct roles to play—the only hitch so far seemed to be the frightened horse.

  A distant shot rang out, followed by another and another.

  The rider jumped out of the saddle on the gray gelding, holding on to the lead as firmly as he could, and quickly untied the rope from the cell door. The horse continued to nay and protest, but it quit bucking once the rider dismounted. Josiah didn’t have the insight to a horse’s mind that Scrap did—it was one of the reasons that Josiah had grown comfortable with riding with him.

  Once the rope was untied from the gray gelding, another man rushed inside the open jail cell, glanced over his shoulder in a panic, then grabbed the mousy man and headed back for the horse. The mousy man offered no verbal complaints, but he didn’t aid in the escape, either. It was almost like he had to be dragged to the waiting horse.

  It was an odd sight for Josiah, seeing a man busted out of jail in such dramatic fashion, not showing any emotion, specifically joy, or relief. He wasn’t sure if the behavior mattered, but it sure did register with him as odd.

  “Trouble’s a-comin’,” someone just outside the hole in the wall shouted inside.

  The rider pushed the man up on the horse and yelled back, signaling for the first time that he might be the leader of the gang. “You know what to do.”

  A heartbeat later, more shots rang in the air, sounding much like a July 4th celebration. There was no way for Josiah to know how many men were actually involved in the jailbreak—he couldn’t see beyond the blast hole, but from the sound of the guns, there were at least five, maybe more.

  The gray gelding was quickly backed out of the hole, and in another half minute, the gunshots were trailing away, the firing continuing but growing distant.

  The only noise in the wake of the jailbreak was the disappointed screams and whistles of the prisoners left behind. If there had been more will and opportunity, Josiah was certain that a riot could have broken out at any moment, leaving him in a worse position than he was in when the jail wall exploded open.

  “They’re gone,” Scrap said.

  Josiah nodded. “Keep quiet. I need to go find Jones and Sheriff Farnsworth.”

  “Well, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.” Josiah pulled himself out of the corner and started to head away from Scrap’s cell but stopped just at the farthest corner of it. “Unless you deserve to be in here.”

  “I didn’t kill no one, Wolfe. I swear.”

  “All right, that’s all I need to hear.”

  CHAPTER 9

>   Sergeant Jones was lying facedown in the middle of the foyer, a pool of blood growing underneath him like a dam had been breached by a heavy spring rain; red rivulets trailed away from the body in all directions on the uneven floor. He’d been shot in the back at least four times and at least once right through the heart. His hand was outstretched, only a few feet from the gun locker. Perhaps he’d died valiantly, or perhaps not, there was no way to know. Either way, there was no question that there had been at least one death, a murder through and through, associated with the jailbreak. There might have been more, for all Josiah knew.

  Noonday light pushed inside from the open front door of the jail. The rays stabbed at the dreariness of the foyer, cutting through the dust and dirt that seemed to hang woefully suspended in the air. The room smelled like a mix of gunpowder and blood, an all too familiar assault on the senses for Josiah—he could taste war on the tip of his tongue, and he unconsciously spit it out as he rushed to Jones and pulled the keys off the man’s belt. There was no use checking to see if Jones was still alive; his eyes were fixed upward, frozen open for the very last time.

  Josiah headed to the gun cabinet, unlocked it, and quickly found his Peacemaker and Bowie knife.

  He quickly buckled his gun belt on his waist, slid his knife back in the sheath, then pulled his six-shooter from the holster and made his way to the door. He was reasonably certain that the outlaws were gone, quick on their getaway, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  There was still a great deal of riotous noise coming from the cell block, but it was a different sound; the prisoners’ hopes of escape and rescue had faded to anger, disappointment, and rage.

  Just as he was about to approach the door and exit the foyer to the outside world, Josiah heard a different variety of screams, shouts, and footsteps approaching from the wing behind him, as well as from down the hallway that led to the sheriff’s quarters. He stopped and turned around.