JL Tate, Texas Ranger Read online

  JL Tate

  Texas Ranger

  By Lou Bradshaw

  Copyright © 2015 LE Bradshaw

  Cover Art Copyright © 2015 LE Bradshaw

  JL Tate Texas Ranger is a work of fiction, and is not intended to depict any person or event. It is purely a product of the author’s imagination. All rights reserved and it may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author or his representative, except for small portions for the purpose of literary reviews.

  Dedication

  (Please see the Author’s Note and Acknowledgements page at the end of the story.)

  Books on Kindle by Lou Bradshaw

  Westerns:

  Ben Blue Series:

  1) Hickory Jack

  2) Blue

  3) Ace High

  4) Blue Norther

  5) One Man Standing

  6) Rubio… the Legend

  7) Spirit Valley

  Shad Cain Series:

  1) Cain

  2) Cain…Just Cain

  3) Driftin’

  JL Tate Series:

  1) JL Tate… Texas Ranger

  Humor: A Fine Kettle of Fish

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgement:

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Things were just starting to get interesting, when we heard the rattle of a key in the door. She stepped back from me bringing her hands to her throat.

  “Oh God…! It’s my husband!” she said in a harsh whisper.

  “You said you weren’t married.” I harsh whispered back to her.

  “Well I am… and he’s Blackie Doyle a card shark and a gunfighter… What’ll we do?

  “Leave!” I told her.

  Raising the window I threw the shutters open. In a half a heartbeat I was through the window and out onto the balcony and over the rail. I listened and heard the sound of a door opening and someone yell, “Aha!” A few seconds later a man’s head poked through, looked both ways, and went back in.

  When that head went back in, I went back over the rail and to the open window. As I listened to the jumble of argument going on inside, I was able to start getting the gist of what they were saying.

  “You fool, you were five minutes early. You were supposed to wait outside the door and listen… Idiot! Now we’ve lost him, Blackie. Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you.”

  “Oh button it… We may have lost him, but we got his coat… and I’ll bet there’s a nice fat wallet in it… Yeah… there it is, and look what’s in it…. Dammit!… Sophie, we gotta get out of here now… get packin’!”

  He had found the badge, and I had stepped in through the window with a fist full of Mister Colt’s finest.

  “There he is, Blackie. He took advantage of me… shoot him…shoot him!” she yelled.

  Blackie wanted to in the worst way. His hand was poised and his fingers were itching to try it, but his desire to keep on living convinced him to raise his hands. I slipped behind him and lifted his pistol from his holster. I kept the barrel of my gun pressed against his backbone while I searched him for other weapons. All the while I was doing that, I had an eye on Sophie. I trusted her far less than I trusted Blackie, and I trusted him none at all.

  Of course, Blackie didn’t disappoint me in the least; he had a hideout gun in his watch pocket and a dagger with a six inch blade in a sheath inside the back of his collar. Sophie, on the other hand, posed a problem. Getting her searched might be a bit sticky. I had never had to search a woman before, but I would if I had to. I could tell by the way she was smiling that she was daring me.

  I opened the door, dragging Blackie by the collar and yelled out to the man at the desk down stairs. “Hey… Front Desk… We got a mess up here in 2B… we need a cleaning woman… Right Now! I mean Right…Now… If you want to save this rug!”

  Within a minute, an apple cheeked young blonde woman with a German or Swedish accent came to the door with a mop and a bucket. When she saw Doyle standing there with his arms raised, she took a step back. But when she saw Sophie crouched in a corner like a well dressed rat ready to jump in a hole, she almost turned around and went back. But when she saw me holding a gun against Blackie’s back, she was sure she had come to the wrong room.

  “It’s all right, ma’am….I’m an officer of the law, and these two are my prisoners…. I just need a woman to search that one over there for guns or knives.”

  “If she threatens you with a weapon, just jump out of the way and I’ll shoot her.”

  Sophie gave me a hard look, as the cleaning lady began walking toward her. The woman stuck a hand under each of Sophie’s arms and with more strength than I thought a woman would have; she lifted her out of the crouch and stood her up straight. Then with nary a warning, the blonde, whose name turned out to be Ingrid, gave Sophie a closed fist roundhouse punch to the jaw.

  Sophie dropped to the floor like a pole axed steer and was thoroughly searched by the more than competent Ingrid. Then she found a derringer in Sophie’s garter and a cute little dagger resting comfortably between her breasts. She then propped Sophie up against the wall and slapped her awake with a little more vigor than was necessary, but I wasn’t the one to complain, and Sophie wasn’t saying anything. I had Blackie bound with his hands behind his back by then and did a thorough search, including boots, hat, and wallet. I didn’t find any more weapons, but I found an extra few dollars in his wallet for Ingrid’s services.

  She was appreciative and helped me get them down the stairs, where they checked out of the hotel and I made sure they paid their bill. I told the clerk to hold their luggage until it was decided, which courthouse they would stand trial in first. It didn’t matter much to me. I was getting paid one way or the other… sometimes.

  The lovely Mrs. Doyle wasn’t so lovely anymore with her swollen jaw and her missing tooth. Ingrid, the buxom Viking lass, packed a pretty good wallop. I made a mental note to be on my best behavior anytime I’m in the company of any woman with a European accent.

  I marched the pair down to the office of Marshal McGill and introduced myself.

  “Marshal, I’m Ranger JL Tate, and I’ve got a pair of con artists here that need to use your accommodations for a couple of days, till we can get them on a stage and back to any one of fifteen towns with wanted posters on ‘em.”

  McGill was the town marshal, and he wasn’t too happy accepting a prisoner not of his own capture. He especially didn’t want to be feeding them if there wasn’t a complaint from a taxpaying citizen.

  “We can’t be just opening the doors to every roving lawdog that comes along… You have any idea what it costs to feed a prisoner?… it’s almost twenty two cents a day. This ain’t no hotel, you know.”

  “If you can feed ‘em for that much, then this is your lucky day because the great State of Texas pays thirty cents a day for their keep. You just fill out the paperwork and they’ll send you the money.”

  McGill thought that was a fine profit, so he agreed to let Texas store those two in one of his two cells. The ropes were off no more than three and a half seconds
, when the Doyle family feud began. She started calling him every naughty name she could think of, and he started choking her. The marshal unlocked the door; I rushed in to save her wind pipe by laying a Colt barrel across the side of his head.

  “You’re almighty sudden with that pistol barrel, son. You might have cracked his head.” The marshal told me.

  “I reckon… but I didn’t want to do all that paperwork that would have followed him chokin’ her to death and depriving the town of Wet Rock the pleasure of hangin’ them side by side.”

  “Hang ‘em! They gonna hang ‘em…. Hang a woman…. Doggies, I’d sure like to see that. What’d they do?” McGill was a man easy to get excited.

  “They’ve been runnin’ a little con job halfway across Texas… Sophie and Blackie were both professional gamblers. She’d invite some poor soul up to her room and Blackie would bust in and raise hell. The unsuspecting gentleman would turn over his wallet to keep from gettin’ shot or havin’ his family find out… They usually waited till the stooge and Sophie were half undressed…. Well you get the idea.”

  “But that ain’t no hangin’ offense.” McGill argued.

  “Well, sir, it seems that Blackie got hung up on a hand of cards and when he finally broke away, the victim was already in the bed waiting for Sophie. When she got down to that little pistol in her garter, she just pulled it and started taking the wallet out of his coat… He jumped out of bed and confronted her…. So she shot him.”

  “Blackie showed up right after. They stole a couple of horses and took off for the next stage station….I’ve been on their trail for close to three hundred miles… Caught up with them here in… Where am I anyway?”

  “Pampa… Pampa, Texas….You’re about fifty miles northeast of Oneida.” He said, with some degree of pride. “But how’d they figure the lady shot the gent and not that there Blackie fella?”

  “Oh the mayor, who was also a deacon, lived till mornin’, and he told them what had happened just before he died. By then Sophie and Blackie were on a west bound stage looking for another mark.”

  About that time, Blackie was moaning and coming around. The war was back in full swing. That time we put Sophie in the other cell, and moved a smelly drunk in with Blackie.

  I didn’t envy the marshal’s job of trying to deal with those two for the next few days. But he had the roughly sixteen cents a day profit from the state to brighten his spirits. I didn’t see that it was important to mention that the state was nigh onto eight months behind on payments. Like I said, I didn’t envy the marshal’s job.

  The saloon wasn’t too busy as I walked my way back to the hotel, so I stopped in for a drink and a little conversation with the bartender. There were only a few patrons in the place, and they didn’t seem to be promising any entertainment, so I left.

  Picking up my key, I assured the clerk that the criminals were safely locked up, and posed no danger to him or the hotel. I was in a good mood, even though I was bored because I’d won about thirty dollars playing poker while setting my trap for Sophie. But I was still bored, so I pulled out some paper and a pencil to write up a report on the arrest of the Doyles.

  Absorbed in my spelling efforts, I barely heard the turning of the key in the door. My Colt Peace Maker was on the table next to my papers… so I waited as the door inched open.

  “Och, you are here?” came the sweet voice of Ingrid, “I be yust checking to see if your room needed cleaning.” She said as she smiled and stepped into the room carrying a small broom.

  “Oh, I believe I saw a little dust over in the corner… seein’ as you’re here…” I said, and her smile grew wider and more inviting.

  Chapter 2

  I stayed in Pampa for two interesting days until the Oneida stage came in. I loaded the unhappy pair into the stage and tied my horse to the rear. He wouldn’t be carrying any load, so the trip wouldn’t be too hard for him. I was to turn the pair over to the county Sheriff in Oneida, where they would be met by two deputies from Wet Rock.

  The coach ride was an unpleasant ordeal… for the prisoners. To me it was just something I had to do. An eastern drummer took a good deal of interest in Sophie until he saw the shackles on her wrists. The chain coming out from under her skirts, which was attached on the other end to Blackie’s ankle was a definite damper. And the six-gun in my lap put out any fire he may have had burning.

  Sophie was more embarrassed that folks would see her in chains, than any concern of hanging. Blackie was more down to earth about it. He didn’t want any part of anything that takes place on a gallows. So I gave Blackie Doyle the better part of my attention. He was only one slight opportunity away from seeing what he could do with the eighteen inches of chain connecting his wrists. I didn’t dare close my eyes and snooze during that flat featureless ride.

  We spent the night at a stage relay station. I wrapped their joint chain around a support pole and reattached it to their ankles. I had to get some sleep. I should have deputized Ingrid to keep watch over Sophie…It ain’t easy traveling with a female prisoner. And I was mighty happy to see the city limits of Oneida.* *Now Amarillo

  I turned the pair over to the Sheriff of Randall County, and as I was getting ready to go find a hotel, when the sheriff remembered he had a message for me. It was from my friend and teacher, Spade Carson. He wanted me to meet him in Lubbock on or about the twenty third of the month. It was the seventeenth, so that gave me less than a week to go more than a hundred and twenty miles across the Llano Escondido also called the Staked Plains.

  The Llano was a flat, dry, and a most unfriendly part of the Texas high plains. It stretched from the Canadian River for about two hundred and fifty miles north to south and one hundred and fifty miles east and west. It covers over half of the Panhandle country. It’s a series of steps that get higher and higher as you go north. Fortunately I would be going south. It was still going to be a long ride across dry country.

  Carson knew I would break my neck getting there by the twenty third, but he also knew I’d catch up with him if I was late. So I loaded up on supplies and bought a couple of extra canteens. It could get almighty dry out there on the plain. I had a good horse, but he’d been running for two days. So I wasted half a day and a night to give him a little rest. I made sure he had an extra helping of grain, and I bought some extra to take a long.

  Early the next morning, I was all saddled up and ready to go before the sun came creeping over the endless horizon. There wasn’t a thing out there to block the sun, so it came up in a mighty big hurry to start blistering the paint off anything painted. It was also determined to boil the blood right out of a man.

  This part of Texas was well known for extreme weather. It could be over eighty degrees on Tuesday afternoon and thirty on Wednesday morning. Lucky for me, I never knew what day of the week it was, so the extremes didn’t seem so bad.

  All I really knew was it must be something important for Carson to send me a message. The wires hadn’t stretched as far as Oneida or points west yet so he probably sent the message a week ago by wire and it was forwarded by mail from the last telegraph station down the line. Texas is a mighty big state.

  I had five days to get to Lubbock, and with fresh horses along the line, I could do it in three. But I didn’t have fresh horses waiting along the line. We were on the trail as soon as the light was there, and we went until the light was going down. As often as possible, I’d hold up to rest my horse whenever I found shade, which wasn’t as often as I would have liked. If I could make thirty miles a day, I’d be there with time to spare, but I sure didn’t want to kill a good horse doing it.

  My horse was a gift from a rancher over in New Mexico, who was a US Marshal off and on. He got it from a gambler who said, “A good gambler needed two things… a fast gun and a faster horse.” Well, I’ve got the horse, and the gambling man is a cattle rancher now. So I guess you never really know how things are going to shake out.

  By early afternoon of the second day we came to a sluggish litt
le stream, with a tiny little town attached to it. By tiny, I mean it had four buildings that passed for houses. One of those buildings was a combination trading post and saloon. One looked to be a residence of sorts as were the other two. But I didn’t want to know what kind of folks lived in the last two. The crude sign on the other side of the stream just said, “Tule”. I didn’t know if that was the name of the creek or the name of the town… I guess it didn’t really matter; I wouldn’t be there long enough to need an address.

  I decided to water my sorrel and fill all the canteens with fresh water before I entered the town. One never knew when one would have to make a hasty departure. And the last thing I wanted was to do was leave in a hurry straddling a dry horse.

  Now, I’ve been known to be a might too glib… especially with folks that I didn’t like much. That’s not a bad trait if you know those folks well enough to dislike them good and proper. But I can often dislike an hombre real good, as soon as he opens his mouth. So I had a little talk with myself as I stepped up on the porch. Just watch your mouth, JL, was what I said to me. And you be on your best behavior, was what me said to I.

  Stepping through the swinging doors, I couldn’t see anybody in my line of vision that I’d taken an immediate dislike to. So I sauntered on up to what passed for a bar and ordered rye. Before the drink could be poured I heard a voice behind me saying, “I’ll give you twenty dollars for that hoss, Mister.”

  Turning around, I found myself looking at a full sized wanted poster. The only thing missing was the name. I could see the amount of the reward and the crimes, but still no name appeared.

  “I’m sorry, friend, but that critter’s not for sale.” I told him as I was still trying to find his name on that poster in my mind.