Devil in Texas(49)

Collie wasn't eager to continue his employment with Baron. He hoped Sadie would convince Cass to quit, too. Ever since Collie had learned Cass wanted revenge against Sterne, Collie had had a bad feeling. The kind of feeling a fella got when he was staring down the wrong end of a loaded gun. Collie wasn't worried so much about his own safety; he could disappear faster than a six-legged jackrabbit. But it did occur to him that Sadie and Wilma were vulnerable. If anything happened to either of them, Cass was just hotheaded enough to turn vigilante again.

And that worried Collie.

Nobody knew better than Collie what Cass was capable of doing with a gun. Two summers ago, Collie had watched in astonishment as a half-dead Cass had managed to fire off one shot—one shot!—with a Winchester rifle to saw through the rope lynching his Injun friend, Lynx.

At other times, Collie had seen Cass cock his .45 with his heel and drill a knothole at 50 paces while aiming over his shoulder! Whether Cass was firing his guns stupid-drunk, blinded by rain, or shaking with cold, he never missed.

The trouble was, even Cass couldn't survive a bullet in the back.

"Dead is dead," Collie explained to his furry sidekick. "It doesn't matter whether you're a Ranger, a vigilante, or an outlaw."

Vandy ignored him. The coon was busy gorging himself on the sugar skulls some Mexican family had arranged beside potted chrysanthemums and a colorful skeleton doll, draped in a sombrero and serape.

With nothing better to do than wait for Cass and Sadie to get tired rutting, Collie had gone prowling. He'd sneaked inside Wilma's so-called "secret" cave and helped himself to his favorite Halloween spirits. He'd found the cave several days ago, along with the Wild Turkey Wilma had hidden inside a crate marked, "Ripy Brothers Distillery, Tyrone, Kentucky."

Which just proves that reading leads to drink. And sin. And that anybody who forces book-learning on a boy is an unholy influence.

"If I didn't know how to read, I wouldn't have been tempted to jimmy open that liquor crate with a crowbar," he told Vandy righteously.

The coon whuffed. He was sniffing a papier-mâché coffin at the Garcias' gravesite.

In this part of the world, Devil's Eve, Halloween, and the Mexican Day of the Dead all collided at the Witching Hour. After chugging enough bourbon, Collie had gotten the bright idea to ride out to the boneyard to see what all the Día de los Muertes hoopla was about. To the best of his knowledge, folks in Kentucky didn't paint sugar skulls or go singing for soul cakes. At least, not in Blue Thunder Valley.

That's why Collie was crouching behind a Lampasas tombstone on the spookiest night of the year. About 20 yards away, a band of shrieking, ash-smeared urchins was dancing, singing, and feeding the bonfire they'd rigged in the granite belly of a dried-up water fountain.

Collie watched wistfully. His boy's heart yearned to join in the fun, to wear a mask, smash pumpkins, and spread creepy gossip about evil property owners, who liked to turn their scatterguns on stray dogs and trespassing kids. God knew, he could share plenty of hair-raising tales on that subject.

But Collie had never been much good at making friends.

At least, not Human friends.

His brow furrowed with his effort to understand the sing-song taunts. Ring-leaders, who were dressed like tramps in patched gingham and garish skull masks, were ribbing the younger boys. Although the Tejanos spoke in Spanish, Collie intuited that the shortest gang member was supposed to earn his stripes by tugging the bell pull of the eerie old caretaker's cottage, huddling in the shadow of a lightning-sheared oak. The tree's leafless limbs resembled giant claws, whose twig talons kept rubbing together, scratching and grasping at the wind.

The shack itself was supposed to be haunted by the soul of an outlaw, who'd been lynched from that oak. No one lived in the house anymore. The limestone ruins sported jagged panes of glass, which glittered like fangs each time a lightning spear flashed. Even Collie's heart skipped a beat to think of pranking La Bestia—or The Beast—with nothing but rotten eggs and flour pellets as defense.

His hand edged toward his six-shooter as the sky growled at the noisy mortals, cavorting below.

"Why is it," he muttered to Vandy, "that no storms have threatened this region for six months, and yet one is brewing on Devil's Eve?"

The coon flopped on his back and kicked up his paws.

"Oh, so now you're calling me a yellow belly?"

Grunting with pleasure, Vandy rolled across the gravesite, his ringed tail upsetting the skeleton doll.

"You want whupped?" Collie threatened in an exasperated undertone. "'Cause that's what Seňor Garcia's going to do when he wakes from the dead!"

The cheeky coon whickered, a sound reminiscent of Human snickering. Then his beady eyes—or maybe his twitching nose—noticed how Collie was unfolding an orange linen napkin. Vandy heaved himself to his paws with interest.

"Don't bring any angry ghosts over here," Collie scolded. "I got enough problems with the live folks."

Vandy ignored this order, trampling skeleton dolls and paper coffins in his eagerness to sniff the treat up close.

Collie scowled, imagining some angry spook's retribution. It was a good thing he had so many dead kin watching over him, thanks to those trigger-happy Hatfields from Virginia. Of course, whenever folks back home got suspicious about his family origins, he'd swear up and down on Bibles, crosses, rosaries, and a couple of other sacred relics, too, that he wasn't related to any Kentucky-born McCoys. He'd even fooled Sera, and that was saying a lot. Sera had a spooky way of knowing the events of the past, by touching something metallic, like a brass button, Peacemaker, or whittling knife.

"You can't be too careful when you've got the wrong blood in a blood feud," Collie told Vandy with all the amassed wisdom of his 17 years. "Luckily for you, my ghosts could probably wallop any ghosts in this cemetery. Ghouls, too. And that includes Mrs. Westerfield."

Collie snickered at his churlish humor. "I mean, something scared that woman into being nice tonight. And it wasn't you, Fur Face."

Collie suspected that to Poppy, Devil's Eve must be like Christmas to nice folks. After all, he'd found her humming and decorating a Halloween basket. At the time, she'd described the soul cakes as a "token of appreciation" for certain hotel staff, who'd gone "beyond the call of duty to serve my husband's needs."

Collie figured he'd gone way beyond the call of duty to serve Senator Rat-fink Scum-bucket, so he'd helped himself to a couple of tasty treats. Caching food was an old habit; even when his Pa had been alive, Collie had never known where the next meal would come from. But all his city living must have dulled his instincts, because Poppy had caught him thieving.

"Take another cake, dear boy," she'd encouraged with a beatific smile. "I have plenty more."

"To tell the truth," Collie confided to his coon, "she kind of freaked me out. I kept expecting her head to spin around. Or her eyes to pop out. Or black spiders to crawl out of her nose. Every time I pinched myself, I never woke up. So I reckon there really must be gingerbread inside this napkin."

As Collie unfolded the linen corners from his loot, Vandy frisked with all his rascally charm. He wuffed. He reared up on his hind legs. He put a little black hand on Collie's heart.

But Collie kept his snack well out of the reach of those clever paws.

Vandy whined.

"What, you want one?"

The coon licked his chops, his black eyes bright with hope as he stared at the prize. The cakes looked like little round cookies, except they were plumper and decorated with raisins in the shape of a cross.