Texarkana by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

“Somebody’s comin’!” Mutt Thomas exclaimed and picked up his rifle as he ran to the window. After a quick check of the path leading up to the house, he said, “I’ll be . . . it’s Duke.” He turned his head and called, “Hey, Ned, it’s Duke! And he brought an extra horse.”

Ned Bates came running from the kitchen where he had been in the process of trying to explain to Cora Cross why he and Mutt had come back. She had been promised that the house would be hers when Duke and the gang took over the Double-D and she was not at all happy when the two of them showed up again.

“Wonder if any of the other boys got outta that damn trap,” Ned exclaimed when he saw the familiar figure approaching the house.

“Ain’t nobody with him.” Mutt stated the obvious.

Both men went out on the porch to meet him.

“Glad to see you found you a horse and got on outta that mess,” Mutt sang out. “Me and Ned just got out by a hair. We was lucky to find that horse wanderin’ back to the barn all by himself.”

“We was startin’ to worry about you when you didn’t come along right after us,” Ned said. “We pulled up right after we crossed the creek to wait for ya. Didn’t we, Mutt? We started to go back to look for ya, but there was too many of ’em by then. So we just hoped you found you a good hidin’ spot some place, and it looks like you musta.”

Thacker didn’t respond at once. Taking his time, he got down off the buckskin and walked up the steps to the porch before he spoke. “Glad to see you boys made it safely back here,” he said, his tone thick with sarcasm. “It musta been a long, hard ride with both of you havin’ to ride the same horse.” He paused to watch them squirm. He was angry and they knew he was angry. “You say you stopped and waited for me? Too bad you didn’t come back to give me a hand. You’da got a chance to see the rest of the boys gettin’ shot to hell. Lem didn’t get shot. They hung him, him and two of the other boys that were in the house. I couldn’t tell for sure which two it was, but I could tell it was Lem.”

“I don’t blame you for bein’ sore, Duke, but I don’t know what me and Mutt coulda done to help you. Like I said, when we stopped and thought about goin’ back to help you find a horse, there was a bunch of ’em headed for the barn. We knew your only chance was to find you a hole and stay in it till you got a chance to run. And that’s what we was hopin’ would happen.”

It was total fiction Ned created on the spot, but Thacker looked as if he halfway believed it, so it partially calmed him down.

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