The Warren City Renegade

By Wayne Bethard

March 1888. Northeast Texas. President Grover Cleveland faces off against
Benjamin Harrison in Washington, the worst snowstorm in history rages
across the central United States, the Indian Wars are over, the Texas
Longhorn, long the staple of cattleman, is being replaced by the more
beefy Hereford, and Texas Ranger Jim Acker, after twelve years with the
service, decides to trade his guns for a pitchfork and a hoe and recline
on a creek bank of his youth with a straw in his mouth. When he returns
home to the family ranch he finds his old uncle in bad health and their
future in turmoil. Local land seekers headed by a true devil's advocate,
by stealth, wealth and death, are taking over the smaller area ranches. In
addition, a man the old ranger sent to prison five years earlier has been
released, a man who swore revenge and sets out to get it. Jim Acker finds
himself torn between his principles, his livelihood and his life. This is
his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne Bethard
• Release date: Jul 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476190297

Wayne Bethard

A pharmacist by trade, Wayne Bethard is the truest of drugstore cowboys. A graduate of the University of Texas, he resides, practices, and writes out of his home in Longview, Texas.

Book preview

The Warren City Renegade

By Wayne Bethard

When ex-Texas Ranger Jim Acker returns home to retire, he finds his old uncle in bad health and the future of the family ranch in turmoil. Local land seekers headed by a true devil's advocate, by stealth, wealth and death, are taking over the smaller area ranches. In addition, a man the old ranger sent to prison five years earlier has been released, a man who swore revenge and sets out to get it. Jim Acker finds himself torn between his principles, his livelihood and his life.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Wayne Bethard

This book is a work of fiction. All portrayed characters and events are pure products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design by Wayne Bethard

Other Fiction by Wayne Bethard

A Hoot Owl Moon

(Historical Fiction-Western)

The Moon Wolf Legend

(Historical Fiction-Western)

Proud Flesh

(Historical Fiction-Western)

Chapter 1

He traveled in quiet content. On his hip rode a silent partner with six agents of death waiting to bark in triumph, its cold resolve patient and ready. This steel companion was his livelihood and together, though many tried, none could match the precision of their actions. But this union had grown cold. Jim Acker was tired of fighting. No longer did a gunfight dump adrenalin into his veins. Survival ending in the death of another was more mundane now than exciting. For the previous twelve years he had tracked the devils of society bringing justice to the land, but righting wrong had its price. The remorse of killing that plagued him in the past no longer existed. A monster called time had ticked in a steady countdown toward a limited future.

Jim Acker was headed home to trade his gun for a hoe and a pitchfork. The time had come to rest and let his life coast a while, a time to piddle away a day in repose on a creek bank of his childhood with a straw in his mouth.

Save for the road here there was little evidence of human life along this lonely stretch. Jim came around a curve and saw two coyotes fighting over a jackrabbit nearly as big as they were. They looked up, startled at seeing a man and horse so close and bounded away on springy legs, wads of shedding hair like cocoons hanging on their sides bouncing as they went. Near a cedar thicket they stopped to look back. From the road they made easy targets. He could easily take them both with a steady sweep and a level aim. His horse, Dandy, watched the outlaw dogs as if waiting for a gun to discharge.

Across the rugged terrain of Texas there exists an old adage, You can tell a lot about a man by the horse he rides. A man with intelligence likewise chooses intellect in his mount. Learning about one explains the other. Together they are like dancers with the rider leading and the steed following in a graceful sashay, each totally cognizant and in tune with his partner. Jim and Dandy were a perfect match.

To the slightest touch of a bare heel and a relaxed rein the big brown gelding fell into a free-swinging gallop down a shadowed path, his hooves thumping in the soft sand. The moment Jim gave Dandy his head they entered a steep downhill grade with a narrow washout in the road. At the end of it they reached another gradual decline strewn with fist-sized rocks. The horse's head was low hung, his balance ponderous to keep his footing. Unable to secure purchase in loose gravel Jim felt him losing his equilibrium as he went into a swinging dash. The horse swerved to the right and then to the left, a move that would have unseated a normal man. The little jaunt made Dandy loose footing and fall. The horrible crack of snapping bone and the scream of mustang horror split the air with the cry of a wasp-stung child. The downhill tumble separated them into a foot-slinging fury. Jim had turned in the saddle but was too late. His weight shifted sharply to the left where he hung in mid-air two heartbeats then tumbled into the bushes at roadside. The horse rolled and stumbled to a tripod stance and then limped to Jim as if to apologize.

It was a clumsy unwinding of his own legs and arms before Jim gained enough composure to stand and face the poor animal. Dusting himself off, his attention became intent. Any pain he experienced was overridden by concern. Eying the hoof swaying to the cadence of a pendulum from Dandy's lower left leg Jim faced the terrible truth that a bullet would have to do what countless days of torture and pain would accomplish only do it faster, and more humanely. He rubbed the horse's nose with undisguised pity. It nuzzled him and a soft whiny came from deep in its throat.

Horses have an indefinable proud gleam in their eyes—the tip of an iceberg atop a mountain of spirit. The twinkle in the gelding's eyes appeared dampened. Jim Acker had to turn away to pull the trigger. To look back and down at a faithful friend took courage, and his chest filled with the thunder of a racing heart. For several minutes he squatted at roadside.

This gelding named Dandy had supported the ranger's weight for going on three years. On a fugitive's trail the horse had the stamina of the wildest mustang, the speed of a thoroughbred, and the heart of a loving friend. On two occasions he had outrun and outdistanced outlaws who swapped their horses for stolen fresh mounts.

The horse's unyielding devotion and sense of the importance of his job were typical of his name. He was a dandy. He seemed to have an aggressor's interest in the hunt. To say Jim loved him would air the truth, as much as was possible for any man to love an animal. Now as he said his last goodbye, tears didn't form on his eyelids, but emotionally his heart bled out through a gaping wound in his soul. His loss was a malady replacement could never cure. Hard put to find a painless place in compassion, he sighed at length then went about tending to his gear before striking out.

A tolerable evening chill set in but the wind drove it to a flesh numbing cold that slowed the blood and shivered the bottom jaw. Jim walked on the sheltered side of a rock wall leading down a dry creek bed and into a cedar break, then up and out the other side where the road exposed him to the ragged teeth of an even more bitter wind. By his best guess he should reach the ranch within an hour.

He hid his gear in the bushes and planned to return with a wagon to retrieve it. Time and function had worn the saddle the same way it weathered the old ranger. The thought that scavengers would feast on his old friend didn't sit well. Now, he wished he'd shot those coyotes.

As he trudged along, his mind wandered. Jim had a need to bare some innermost holdings in his heart. He and his uncle had always been close enough to confide in one another. Right now Jim needed someone to talk to, someone to listen with an open heart. There were times after Julie died when Jim's mind bent to the feeling of guilt. Had he been home, where he should have been, she would likely still be alive. He left her alone for a week to travel to Austin. The state had sent out notices of re-enacting another regiment of the Texas Rangers and the man in charge requested Jim attend. His new wife's pleading did little to change a stubborn mind. If time were repeatable he would have stayed home, as he should have. True he might have died by the same arrows that took her life but at least had he been with her she might have had a fighting chance of survival. His oath till death do us part branded his heart and never was spoken over another union.

In every western community there were women of pleasure pleading and enticing, flauntingly exposing bare skin to excite the imagination as to what lies at the junction of those shapely extremities. The sight dumped hormones into a man's bloodstream that drained the wallet and dressed the face with a daylong smile. Jim had manly desires and though not often, had tasted the illicit fruit of the physical gratifications those ladies had to offer. There were other encounters tendered by hopeful female others, but that's all they were, encounters void of personal involvement. He had tucked his heart away never to share it with another and went about in careless abandon flaunting death at every opportunity.

To do things needing done regardless of the fear of dying is by definition the makings of a hero. Jim Acker didn't think of himself as such. He did what was necessary because he didn't care if he died or not. The biggest part of his soul died when Julie did. And now as he approached the waning span of his hundred-year war against time, apathy had consumed his soul.

Jim's reputation was his only legacy, his word an actual physical force. People depended on him to the extreme of his being taken for granted, a trait that might overwhelm a normal person. But this ranger was not a normal man. Only two fugitives had escaped him once he received the order to bring them in; one succumbed in a gunfight before Jim caught him, the other died by his own hand after being gut shot in a payroll robbery. Jim found him minutes after the outlaw blew his own brains out.

His life's work, aside from righting wrong, encompassed helping others. Where one man might alter his course to assist with wagon bogged in mud, Jim waded in, stranger or not. And if repairing the wheel required a half-day's ride to get it fixed, he covered the distance without question. His persistence sometimes bordered on demanding, a trait some saw as enthusiastic to the verge of interference. Yet seldom did a confrontation arise once they saw his Texas Ranger's badge. Authority has its benefits and Jim Acker's personality was as authoritative as an individual can get. His every suggestion was a command worthy of respect.

He was glad to have the wind to his back. Leaves, holdouts from the last frost, fell and drifted past him. Carried forth by a swirling breeze they tumbled in the image of mice scurrying down the road at his feet. Darkness was yet another distress taking control of his life today. He needed to reevaluate his thoughts on the distance to the ranch. Obviously it was much farther than memory recalled. He had often walked this road in his youth. It seemed narrower than he remembered. He crossed the old wooden bridge over Six Mile Creek where he fished long ago. Hidden in a rapidly forming cloak of darkness now, he can barely identify the meadow where he took his first deer. It can't be much farther, he thought. And on he trudged.

Blackness settled in that sent skittering images before him, images identified by memory as suspect paths of the road's previous direction. His memory failed him and he fell at a curve, tumbling into the ditch at roadside. Foolish feelings were foreign to his nature. Still they consumed him and he smiled to himself as an idiot might do. No sooner had he brushed the dirt off his knees than he squinted to the faint yellow glow of a coal oil lantern a hundred yards distant.

Hello the house, Jim called out when he got close enough to see the square corners of the dimly lit windows.

Who is it? Show yourself, and give me a name, came from inside.

David? Jim yelled.

Your name, not mine.

How about James Albert Acker, the first and the worst.

Jimmy, is that you?

Yeah, what's left of me, and Jim chuckled.

Got dang, I thought sure you was in one of them state cemetery plots in Austin by now, David spoke as he came out the door tucking in this and adjusting that to maneuver suspenders over his shoulders. Dang it's good to see you. Been a lot happen since you been gone. He looked outside. You walking?

Yes. I'll explain later.

Come on in. Hungry? And his uncle ushered him into the ranch house, down a narrow hall and into the kitchen. Jim's thoughts fought to inquire further as he walked down the familiar halls of his youth. His old uncle had peaked his interest with the lots had happened statement.

After a delicious bowl of beef stew and three pieces of buttered cornbread, David pulled out a bottle and they both sat in comfortable silence sipping and thinking. Jim broke the quiet with, You inferred changes. What kind?

Reluctance made his uncle pause. He sucked in a deep breath and let his eyes focus on the air between him and the kitchen wall before saying, You remember Albert Haskins?

Hard to forget that old cheat.

"Yeah, well, he's worse now than before. We have always had control of the water here on the ranch and allowed it to flow onto his land. Well, a couple months back he married April Billingsley from over near Waco and she has been pushing him to acquire this ranch so they can expand their holdings and control everything themselves. Al does anything she demands and they have been trying to run me off ever since they married. Word has it she had old man Elkhart killed and took over his place.

Sam Elkhart?

Yeah. That woman has mentioned to several people in town that it sure would be sad if I met with a serious accident of the same sort. She's hired some pretty nasty characters as ranch hands since then.

Have you spoken with Ed Butts about this?

Obviously you haven't heard, Sheriff Butts was killed in a hunting accident on, guess whose land?

Haskins?

"Yup. Shot in the head. They found a six-point buck on top of him like he was carrying it out on his shoulders. Deputy Lance Yoder and Judge Wilson declared it a hunting accident but no one admitted they shot him accidentally. Yoder said something didn't quite look right since Ed was hit square in the back of the head, at the base of the neck, a difficult position since it looked like he had the deer draped over both shoulders, but only one bullet entered the buck's heart from the left side. There should have been another in the deer's back. Yoder told me he never said anything for fear the Judge might fire him. Judge Wilson and April Haskins are friends, very close friends. Rumors are like mud holes, where its wet, water comes from somewhere. Sometimes I wonder if Al