Killer Clan
by Gary Clifton
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Brannigan and Bear had been gone eight days. Elizabeth and Mary had continued to be close and to meet with numerous ladies of the community to discuss support of women’s causes. A major discussion was the possibility of Elizabeth running for local political office. The upshot: Mary, intelligent and personable, was a natural to work part-time in the bank. But chaos was hovering ahead to crash headlong into this orderly chapter of their lives.
The weather had typically warmed to spring, light-jacket comfort. Elizabeth scarcely noticed when three riders dismounted and tied their horses to a hitching rack beside the bank just as it opened at 7:00 a.m. She became aware of deadly peril when all three burst through the front door, hooded in flour sacks with eye-holes and brandishing Colt six-shooters.
“Okay, folks,” the first man in growled. He tossed a flour sack on the counter. “Fill that with cash and then we’ll see if anybody needs killing.” His voice bore a heavy rasp, which Elizabeth recognized as smoking- or injury-related. He waved his Colt toward Brannigan’s desk.
“Where’s that man-killing lawman, Brannigan?” Raspy Voice barked.
Elizabeth stood, blues eyes radiating fear and hatred. “Just down the block, mister. Stand your ground, and you can deal with him sooner than you’re going to like.”
“Crap, lady,” spat the second man. He was husky and sounded younger than the first. “We know your old man and that big dumb marshal are off chasin’ Indians.”
He stepped around the end of the counter and reached toward Elizabeth’s breasts. She stepped backward, stumbling on her four-year-old son, Tad, playing on the floor beside her desk. Raspy Voice, the older man, ordered, “Later, Davy.”
As teller Thompson stuffed cash into the flour sack, the third man stepped around the end of the counter. Only a nervous kid hooligan, his hands were trembling, and he appeared skittish. She had not raised her hands and could feel her small Colt in her apron pocket. To attempt to use it would be suicide.
Elizabeth looked over at Mary, still sitting at a bookkeeping table, her expression locked in fear and uncertainty. “Remain calm, Mary. They’ll take the money and leave.”
At Elizabeth’s warning, Mary nodded, her young face morphing from fear to a knot of anger. Elizabeth was concerned that if Mary figured out there was a loaded Colt in her bookkeeping table drawer, she might try to use it. Elizabeth understood the value of patience.
Mary, quick to adapt, studied the robbers calmly, and regained her composure. After surviving her recently harrowing kidnapping, she had no intention of yielding to panic.
Charlie, snoozing behind the iron stove, stood, and walked quietly toward the two men behind the counter, teeth bared.
“Charlie, stay,” Elizabeth commanded.
Charlie, a hundred pounds of mean critter when need arose, looked up at her and sat, eyes riveted on the two masked outlaws.
Thompson tossed the sack up on the counter. Raspy Voice, motioned for Nervous Kid Hooligan to hoist it. The second man, who’d just been called “Davy,” suddenly shoved Elizabeth to the floor and snatched up Tad. She cried out in horror as he backed out into the entryway, waving his Colt.
“Mama,” pleaded Tad.
“Great God, Tad,” she screamed at a mother’s nightmare. Tears of anger and terror distorted her vision. She swallowed the urge to rush headlong after the kidnapper.
Charlie was crouched, ready to take the assailant down.
“Charlie, no,” Elizabeth shouted desperately.
“Damn, Davy, we sure we want to do this?” asked Nervous Kid with the sack. He holstered his Colt and followed the older man out the door.
Davy, holding Tad, also holstered his Colt. He called back over his shoulder, “Mrs. Texas Ranger, your husband and that marshal murdered my brother on the Rio Grande. We’ll jest hold onto little junior here until he comes after us. We’ll kill him and let the kid go,” he sneered.
Elizabeth then realized these men must be related to the three murdering rustlers whose bodies had decorated Smothers Mortuary weeks earlier. Clearly, someone had recognized the bodies on display.
From the floor, she saw in heart-stopping finality that Tad’s chances of survival were dim. The three robbers rounded the bank, mounted horses, and were gone on the north road in seconds. A wailing Tad was clutched in front of the man called Davy, atop a white horse.
She drew her pocket pistol and considered putting a round in his back, but did not shoot on the chance the bullet would pass through his body and hit Tad.
In minutes, a crowd had gathered. “With Charlie’s help,” Elizabeth said, now outwardly composed, “we can trail them.”
“Best let Rangers from San Antone handle this, Mrs. Brannigan,” said one man.
“Use the telegraph. We’re not lawmen,” said another.
Frustrated and filled with a terrible resolve, Elizabeth ordered a man to cross the street and send telegraphs to Ranger headquarters in San Antonio and to lawmen in surrounding communities. After retrieving the Colt pistol from the bookkeeping drawer and checking its loads, she and Mary hurried to the general store where Elizabeth bought riding britches for both.
Mary entered Bear’s house behind the blacksmith shop and loaded his double-barreled shotgun, then followed Elizabeth to the livery barn. Charlie trotted behind.
“Mary, saddle Bear’s mare. Thank God, Henry Paul left Buck behind.” She quickly saddled the big bay gelding. In minutes, the first female posse in the history of Uvalde, Texas, clad in trousers — scandalous for the time — was headed north at a run. Both had found heavy jackets and loaded their pockets with spare ammunition.
Mary slid the shotgun into the saddle scabbard and spurred the mare. Elizabeth, although terrified for the life of her child, couldn’t avoid a smile when the chaste and youthful Mary spat, “Hurry, Liz. I want a chance to kill these bastards.”
Charlie, nose to the ground took the lead. Liz and Mary both, with limited experience in violence or the intricacies of firing a gun in anger, vowed inwardly to rescue Tad, even if it meant kill or be killed. Mary and Liz had both learned to shoot — from father and husband, respectively — a skill they figured they would need someday.
Elizabeth, fully aware that a horse cannot run any great distance before playing out, motioned to reduce their speed. For six, then eight miles, they cantered behind Charlie. Distraught and struggling with anguish and anger, Elizabeth stifled the horrifying thought that they’d find Tad’s body along the trail.
Suddenly, about ten miles out, Charlie veered off the dusty trail into a cluster of live oak trees surrounded by heavy brush. Elizabeth could see a faint trail ahead where men on horseback had forced their animals through the thicket.
Softly, she called Charlie back, dismounted, and motioned for Mary to do the same. A distant peal of thunder rumbled from the west as they left the trail.
“Mary, speak only at a whisper and only when necessary. You’re going to need both hands to handle that shotgun. Let me lead both horses.” From her saddlebag, she pulled the Colt they had taken from the bank, whispered Charlie forward into the brush, then followed him.
Charlie, a million years of ancestral silence when necessary, crept forward. Mary brought up the rear, toting the heavy, bulky shotgun.
They struggled through the brush for nearly an hour until they came out onto a narrow, dusty horse- and cattle-trail leading farther north.
Elizabeth called Charlie back and whispered to Mary. “Lest one of our horses smells other horses and sniggers if we get close, lets tie them by this little stream. They’ll have access to water.” She added soberly, “If we don’t come back, they’ll pull free and return to Uvalde. We walk the rest of the way.”
In a few minutes the lowing of cattle wafted in on the cool afternoon air. Charlie lifted his nose, homing in on the livestock scent.
The sky to the west, where dark clouds had showed a hint of foul weather all afternoon, drifted ominously toward them. A distant roll of thunder rumbled.
Charlie leading, with Elizabeth close behind, holding her big Colt at her side, said over her shoulder, “Mary, our husbands would say, ‘Point that shotgun at the ground so you don’t shoot me in the butt’.”
Mary nodded and pointed the weapon downward.
Charlie, fifteen feet ahead, suddenly stopped. Around a sharp bend in the trail was a ramshackle barn surrounded by a roughly constructed fence. Beyond, smoke trailed from the chimney pipe of a small cabin. The volume and frequency of thunder increased. A massive bolt of lightning struck a tree a hundred feet away. Dusk was less than two hours away.
“Mary” — Elizabeth turned back — “we can make it to that barn unseen if we keep it between us and the house. Let’s pray they don’t have dogs.”
At that instant, the clouds finally prevailed. A torrential downpour engulfed then, obscuring the barn. Several more lightning strikes crashed with deafening ferocity into the ground within a half mile. The small trail they had been using filled instantly with rushing water. Heavy wind blew rain horizontally, making vision nearly impossible.
Mary, instantly soaked, shouted over the din, “Liz, if we can make that barn, we might ride out the storm.”
Elizabeth shouted back, “Tad must be in that shack. God knows what they’ve done. We can’t hole up in that barn. I’m gonna kick down that damned cabin door. Our guns all fire brass cartridges; the rain won’t stop us.”
Another massive bolt struck a nearby tree. Mary, toting her heavy shotgun, said, “Elizabeth, you’re right. I’ll try for the barn. If they see me, they’ll think I’m lost. I’ll say my dad is got bit by a cottonmouth back on the trail. You and Charlie can sneak in and get the drop on them.”
Elizabeth’s heart raced. “Think you can kill a man?”
“Now’s a hell of a time to ask, Elizabeth. The answer is yep.” She pulled back the shotgun hammers and she moved stealthily into the buck brush. In blinding rain and deadly lightning, the noise of thunder drowned all other sounds.
She made her way through the brush and into the crude barn. If the outlaws had dogs, the thunder and lightning had covered her approach.
Her outer coat was heavy with water. Mary leaned her shotgun against a wall, and pulled off the garment. Soaked through beneath the coat, her blouse hugged her skin-tight, showing the firmness of her young figure.
The bandit’s white horse was munching hay strewn on the floor. Several more horses and about twenty cattle were outside in the corral, all crowded against a gate barring them from the cover of the barn.
Mary reached between loose planks and waved for Liz and Charlie to come forward. An iron grip clamped over her mouth. She struggled, helpless against her male attacker.
“Well, well, well,’ the man said. “The little sweetie from the bank.” Mary instantly recognized the sweat odor and voice of Davy, the very outlaw who’d robbed the bank and abducted Tad hours before.
His hand still stifling any scream, he tore at her clothes, his intention clear. “Baby, you come all this way jes’ to see me, I can tell. Well, bitch, you lookin’ damned good with them wet duds showin’ what you got.” He partially ripped off her clinging, wet blouse, wrestling her into a haystack.
Mary fought with all her strength, but Davy pinned her beneath him in the hay. Mary tried to call out, but he again clamped his hand across her mouth. She tried feebly to knee him in the groin.
“Nice try, you little heifer.” He managed a grip on the waist of her riding breeches.
Exhausted from exertion, Mary felt consciousness and hope fading. His hand clawed inside the breeches.
Copyright © 2018 by Gary Clifton
