Wes cussed like blue blazes. Now Alf was licking his lips and looking everywhere except in Wes’s eyes. Charlie was looking awful uncomfortable too. I knew we hadn’t heard the worst, not yet. I reckon Wes knew it too. “Get it out, Alf,” he said.
“Oh, Jesus, Wes,” Alf said, “I hate to be the one.” The way he said it, you knew it was going to be as bad as bad gets, and it was. Talking fast and without hardly pausing for breath, he told how Joe and the Dixons had been taken out of the courthouse jail by a midnight mob and lynched in the woods. “There wasn’t a thing in the world we could of done to stop them, Wes,” Alf said. “If we’d tried, they’d of hung us too. You got to believe that.”
“He died brave, Wes,” Charlie said. “It ain’t nothing but the truth.”
Wes’s face looked about to fall apart. He got up fast and went outside. The rest of us just sat there. I picked at the wood grain of the table top with my fingernail and wished I was someplace else. Jim Taylor looked like a kicked hound. “Sweet Christ,” he said. “Joe. He never even shot nobody.”
After a while Wes came back in. His eyes were puffy and red, but you could tell he was done with it. Jim Taylor got out of bed and joined us at the table. He was some better but still weak, and he stunk to high heaven.
Jim decided he’d go to Gonzales with Alf and Charlie to lay low among friends till he was full well again, but Wes was going back to Comanche. He had to know how the rest of his family was doing and see what he could do to get them clear of town. Alf said the family all been moved back to the Reverend’s house, but advised Wes against going there. “That Ranger captain got out the word that if you so much as show your face around there he’ll kill your daddy. He’s the sort to do it, Wes.”
Wes punched the table. “Son of a bitch! I can’t just do nothing!”
“You go,” Jim Taylor said. “But you step real light.”
I said he could use somebody to ride with him, and I’d be proud to be the one. He looked at me for long moment, then said he’d be proud to have me. And that settled that.
Three nights later we made our way into Comanche slow and careful. We went up through the heavy oak groves at the west end of town, where Alf said the lynching had took place. A hazy slice of moon showed through the treetops. It had rained a little earlier and the trees were still dripping. Our horses’ hooves sucked through the mud. We dismounted and walked the animals the last fifty yards to the rear edge of the Preacher’s property.
Several of the lower windows showed light, but the upper rooms were all dark. “It’s likely possemen on the first floor,” Wes whispered, “and the family sleeping upstairs.” He nudged me and pointed—a man had stepped out of the shadows alongside the house and was coming toward the trees, a rifle laid across his shoulders and his arms draped over its ends. He stopped at the trees, about fifteen feet from us, set his rifle against a trunk, and fumbled with the front of his pants. A moment later we heard the piss pouring and a satisfied sigh.
One of our horses snorted softly and the man’s head jerked up. He probably wet himself, cutting off his piss as short as he did. He tried to tuck himself in with one hand while he held the rifle out like a pistol with the other—but he was facing the wrong way, sound being the funny thing it is in the dark. Wes eased up behind him in the heavy shadows of the trees, and just loud enough for the fella to hear, he said, “Drop it or die.”
The fella dropped the rifle and froze. “Jesus, Wes,” he whispered, “don’t shoot. It’s me—Dick.”
“Dick?” Wes says. “Dick Wade?”
Turns out they knew each other. They’d had a run-in sometime earlier when Wes had sneaked up to his daddy’s house and found it full of possemen ambushers. He’d had to run for it with bullets whizzing past his ears. Dashing through the trees to get back to his horse, he’d run smack into Ranger Dick Wade. Wade had thrown up his hands and begged Wes not to shoot him, saying he was his friend and was pulling for him to get clear. He seemed so sincere that Wes not only spared him, but gave him a twenty-dollar gold piece to give to Jane as soon as he could sneak it to her.
“I snuck it to her the very next day, Wes,” he said. “She was so happy to know you were alive she cried. She said if I saw you again to tell you she’s all right, the baby too, and she prays for you every night. I told your daddy I’d seen you and was your friend, and him and me got to be friends too. He hired me on to tend his garden—that’s what him and me told Captain Waller—but he really just wanted me around here to keep a lookout and warn you off in case you came to see Jane and Molly.”
Wes asked where Joe was buried, and Wade said back in the grove about a quarter mile. Wes thought about it a minute, then said, “Show me. I want to see.”
We followed him through the dripping shadows until we came to the grave mounds. They were set pretty much side by side, and even though the rains had flattened them some, they still smelled heavy of fresh-turned earth. Wade pointed to the one a little apart from the other two and said it was Joe’s. “Listen,” Wes said, “I want to see Jane, I want to see my little girl. Tell Daddy I’m here. Find out how I can see them.” Dick said he’d be back directly and slipped off into the dark. Wes knelt in the mud beside Joe’s grave and took off his hat.
I went off deeper into the woods till I figured it was safe to light a cigar, then sat on a stump and smoked my cheroot and just listened to the raindrip and frogs and hoot owls. I hoped Wes was right to trust the Ranger not to bring back a bunch of his friends. When my smoke was down to a stub, I snuffed it and went back to the gravesite. Wade had already returned and was telling Wes his daddy’d been powerful happy to hear he was alive and running free. But he’d refused to wake Jane and tell her Wes was here. She’d insist on coming to see him, and all the stirring about would alert the Rangers in the house for sure. The Reverend wanted Wes to get far out of Comanche County and stay away. “He said to tell you Waller’ll kill the whole family if you’re seen anywhere in the county. He’s serious as church, Wes. I don’t blame him. Waller’s the devil’s own son of a bitch.”
Wes paced around in a wide circle, cussing steadily under his breath. There wasn’t a thing he could do, not with his whole family hostage like they were. It’s nothing in the world as bad as having to hold back from attacking something you hate with all your might because you might hurt something you love with all your heart. It’s a situation to make a man howl like a moonstruck hound.
Finally he says, “All right, tell Daddy I’m headed for Uncle Bob’s place in Brenham. See the word gets around. Once Waller knows I’m gone, maybe he’ll ease off on the family. Tell Jane I’ll send somebody for her and Molly just as soon as I can.” He handed Wade some gold pieces to give to Jane, then shook his hand and gripped his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Dick,” he said. “You either oughtn’t be a Ranger or every Ranger ought be like you.”
I rode with him as far as Lampasas. We spotted more than one posse brushing the country for the Hardin Gang, but managed to avoid being seen by any of them. At Lampasas we shook hands and wished each other luck, and then I swung off on the Austin road and he pushed on toward Brenham.