Family Sand

by Gary Clifton

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

A month passed, then two. Liz and Mary made the train trip to Austin. They returned, encouraged that Governor Roberts had at least seemed outwardly supportive of their causes, but they were aware they had far to go. Mary declared she would run for mayor in the fall.

Charlie and Beulah lavished in jail. The jailer led both out on leashes regularly. Charlie and Beulah became very, very good friends.

Another month passed. At just past eight in the morning, the jailer burst into Brannigan’s basement office from the jail down the hall. “God a’mighty, Ranger, it’s childbirth!”

“Fernando, what are you talkin’ about?”

“Beulah had a pup. Little Hombre no bigger than a rat. She’s so big, she never looked in a family way.”

Brannigan raised an eyebrow. “Just one pup?”

“Yup. It’s a male, and she’s nursin’ it now, Wanna see?”

Brannigan grinned. “Charlie struck gold.”

Beulah, who had still attracted no buyers for such a valuable thoroughbred, nursed the scrawny pup in her jail cell. Brannigan, Bear, and others regularly looked in on the little “hombre.” Soon, Hombre had become his name.

The once scrawny puppy weighed 21 pounds at six weeks. He grew fond of crawling on Charlie and chewing his ears and toes. Charlie relished the attention.

Then, when the pup was eight weeks old, Brannigan received a telegram from St. Louis. A buyer offered six dollars. Brannigan was still concerned Mrs. Bushworthington might burn down the courthouse, and he was aware that the pup was weaned. He had Beulah in a crate on the outbound train the following morning.

Charlie and the rapidly growing new addition, now regularly called “Hombre,” rode home in a buggy to the Brannigan ranch. Elizabeth, Tad, and ranch foreman Emilio Alvarez and his family fed him on pure cream, undoubtedly too often and too vigorously. By Christmas, the feed store scale showed the pup weighed 80 pounds, with feet Brannigan often joked were ten inches in diameter.

With Beulah gone, Charlie and the pup were constant companions. When Charlie was called, the pup automatically followed. He followed Charlie everywhere, but he’d learned when “Hombre” was called; he was about to receive another ration of cream and meat.

Then another casualty of age entered the situation. Charlie, exposed to gunfire many times in his years with Brannigan and suffering the rigors of age, suddenly suffered radical decline in hearing. Then his ears failed completely.

The circumstances had reversed. All involved learned that to summon Charlie, Hombre had to be called. The new pup now weighed in at 105 pounds.

By the time Hombre was nine months old in the Spring of 1883, he tipped the feed store scale at 132 pounds. Charlie could travel only when Brannigan lifted him into a buggy. Finally, he simply slept in the yard or on the porch while Hombre followed Brannigan wherever he went. The sad transition was nearly complete. Canine ladies of the area had received their last attention from the old warrior.

In the fall, Mary Smith ran for mayor of Uvalde and finished second by six votes. She vowed she’d win the next mayoral election. Women’s suffrage was alive and well in Uvalde.

Eleven months after his birth in a jail cell, Hombre weighed in at 146 pounds on the feed store scale. Over thirty pounds heavier than his sire, he was a far more handsome specimen with a distinct Newfoundland appearance. He was still an unproven, playful pup who delighted in allowing town children to ride him like a pony.

Brannigan had remarked often, if his new dog companion didn’t improve his agility and balance, he was going to take a fall and break his neck. But he was delighted to see Hombre handled the oppressive heat quite well.

“Don’t believe he’ll have his father’s sand,” Brannigan said to the feed store operator. “Charlie had more sense than most humans and more grit than a mountain lion.” Brannigan would learn shortly that gauging “sand” and the mentality of an amiable, calf-sized dog is a very inexact science.

* * *

A year had passed since Hombre entered this mortal life in a jail cell. It was summer 1883. Hombre, although maturing rapidly, was still the oversized, clumsy critter who had become Brannigan’s constant shadow.

Surroundings were calmly similar with one major exception. Reverend Bushworthington fell into ruin. In early September, the entire choir of the Uvalde Church of the Lamb had taken a Saturday wagon ride to a small rural church three miles north of Uvalde to sing together and socialize.

In a wooded thicket halfway in between, they had come upon the preacher, who was “consorting” on a blanket beside the reverend’s carriage with a “totally unclothed” Green Daisy saloon employee known as “Big-Nose Kitty.” Word spread that the good reverend had literally gotten caught with his hand in the kitty. The Bushworthingtons quickly made plans to leave town.

Brannigan and Bear had personally assisted the Bushworthingtons aboard the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad bound for San Antonio, then for parts unknown.

Life continued. Kitty went back to the Daisy, and the notoriously unpredictable Rio Grande Valley weather morphed into an unusually cool fall 1883 season.

Uvalde winters are gauged more by cold north winds than temperature. One cloudy Wednesday in October, a north wind was seeking and usually finding many leaks in the clothing of anyone foolish enough to stand outside.

Brannigan was sitting in his courthouse basement office, big booted feet on his battered desk, reading yesterday’s copy of the San Antonio Daily Express. Hombre was stretched out, asleep, occupying most of the remaining floor space.

Several rapid gunshots exploded in the distance. Brannigan grabbed his Henry .44 rifle, stepped over Hombre, and bounded up and out into the wide street.

A block distant, he could see one man laying prostrate on the boardwalk in front of the Daisy. Two men, pistols in hand, were scrambling onto horses at the hitchrail. One fired another round at the man already down on the boardwalk.

Both spurred their mounts east toward the Leona River Bridge. Marshal Bear Smith emerged from his blacksmith shop, six-shooter in hand. One of the men chanced a shot at Bear, who instantly shot the man off his horse. The second man fled across the bridge in the sharp, cold wind.

Brannigan and Bear converged on the Daisy. Owner “Pig” Pickens emerged with a double-barrelled shotgun.

“Looks like you missed the action, Pig,” Bear said, holstering his Colt.

Pickens’ hands were shaking so severely that he had difficulty holding his shotgun. “Damn card game. This feller here” — he gestured to the dead man on the board sidewalk — “caught one of them three markin’ aces. They’s another dead one inside.”

Brannigan asked, “Any idea who they are, Pig?”

“This ’un here is a hand out at the Hearn Box 4 spread. The other three is jes’ saddle tramps passin’ through, far as I know. Never seen the dead man inside before, or the two that got away.”

Bear tilted back his soiled derby, displaying the mop of red hair beneath. “Pig, that would only be one that got away.” He pointed to the man he’d shot off his horse. “That one didn’t.”

“Bear?” Brannigan stroked his handlebar mustache. “Chances of catching that killer who got away are slim. I’ll saddle Buck and follow. You stay here and see the bodies get over to Smothers’ funeralizin’ parlor. Maybe see if anybody knows who the two dead strangers were. Send somebody out to the Hearn place with the bad news. Follow me when you have the chance.”

“Okay, Henry Paul. Pig, gimme that shotgun.”

* * *

Bundled in his Mackinaw, Brannigan cantered Buck over the Leona River. Hombre followed. The sight appeared perfectly normal — a big, black dog loping along after Brannigan on horseback — except it was a new dog.

Brannigan was pleasantly surprised when Hombre, lumbering along behind, seemed to have inherited his father’s instinct. Soon, the big pup was out front, his nose to the ground. If the man he was trailing decided to stop and lie in wait for the Ranger, Hombre might sniff him out.

As the afternoon wore on, Brannigan was surprised to hear the wail of wolves in the distance, seemingly ahead of him. Although the howling sounded like twenty animals, Brannigan knew two wolves could make enough sound for many more.

Wolves attacking a human, particularly one mounted on a horse, were almost unheard of. But the summer had been extraordinarily hot, and a chilly, dry autumn had not brought relief to predatory animals; small game was scarce. Concerned that the pack might attack Hombre, he slid his Henry out of the saddle scabbard and double-checked that it was fully loaded.

In the distance, he first saw the dust of a rider, then recognized the mounted man, the one he was pursuing. He also saw at least four wolves trotting along in the dust behind the fugitive. Somehow, in the gunplay, either the rider or the horse had been wounded. The wolves were trailing the smell of blood.

Spurring Buck slightly, he saw that in minutes, he’d be within his rifle’s range. When he topped the next rise, the rider had disappeared. Then a Winchester round whizzed past his head.

Brannigan stopped, dismounted, and said, “Stay, Buck.” He was not surprised to see the rider ahead of him re-emerge on horseback from a brush thicket and continue fleeing. He turned back in the saddle and fired a round from his Colt at Brannigan.

“Oughta save your ammunition for the wolves,” Brannigan said softly. He leveled his Henry and squeezed off a round. The fleeing rider grabbed his left shoulder but continued riding.

Brannigan spurred Buck hard and was soon closing the gap. Buck, on a dead run but tired from the long ride, stepped in a rut and went over forward. Brannigan hit, head down, in the center of the road, losing consciousness briefly.

When he had partially regained his senses, he was surrounded by at least three big, South Texas brush wolves, all drawn to him by the blood scent from the gash in his forehead. He’d lost his Henry in the fall. Fumbling for his Colt, he realized he’d lost it, too. Groggily, he tried to find either weapon in the dust. The wolves closed in.

“Dammit, Buck, run,” he shouted. The big bay stood nearby, not moving. Hombre, puppy-like, came back and licked his face. Brannigan fumbled for the Derringer in his boot. As he was beginning to lose consciousness again, Brannigan saw the alpha male wolf within three feet. He fired the derringer into the wolf’s maw, then blacked out.

* * *

“Good grief, Henry Paul, you gonna lay out here on State of Texas time sleeping all night? It’s a wonder you haven’t already froze to death.” Brannigan recognized the voice of Bear Smith, who was standing over him, holding a torch aloft. Two other mounted men were holding torches behind Bear.

“You was gone too long, so we rode after you,” Bear continued. “Your fugitive is about a half mile ahead. You let the air outta him okay. Deader’n hell. Another pack of wolves have gotten to him some.”

Brannigan tried to stand up but was restrained by Bear. “Buck stumbled. I lost both my weapons. The wolves... Hombre?”

In the flickering torch-light, he caught sight of Hombre stretched motionless several feet away, bloody, and coated in dirt.

“My God, they killed the pup!”

“Buck is big and spunky enough,” Bear said. “Wolves can’t and won’t take him on. But looks like they did attack Hombre. Probably when he interfered with them having you for dinner.”

“Dead, Bear?”

“Yeah, Henry Paul.”

Brannigan stiffened, bracing to conceal the grief of his loss.

Bear continued. “Looks to be whole damned bunch of ’em. That’s wolf guts and blood you see on Hombre. Dunno how many there was, ’cuz Hombre tore ’em all to hell.”

Hearing Brannigan’s voice, the huge bloody, muddy, pup popped up and rushed over, smearing Brannigan’s face with a bloody lick. His muzzle was saturated with gore, one ear was badly mangled, and a nasty tear was seeping blood in the thick hair on a side of his neck.

Brannigan, still sitting on the ground, bear-hugged the blood-saturated giant and said quietly, “Well, Hombre, I guess you inherited a fair share of your daddy’s sand after all.”