They watched the tall Ranger captain’s back all the way down the main street to the livery stable. He went in, nodded to the attendant, and then set down the bottle and glasses and began digging through a large stack of hay.

Pritchard and Ditch looked at each other again, puzzled. Franchard uncovered three wooden crates. One of them was small, and the two other considerably larger.

“Take a look, boys,” Franchard said. “I brung along some supplies for our Mexican vacation.”

Pritchard and Ditch knelt and examined the crates. The smaller one contained five hundred rounds of. 44 caliber ammunition. The larger crates contained dynamite.

Pritchard and Ditch accepted the glasses handed to them by Franchard. He poured three generous shots of whiskey. They clinked glasses and drank.

“Still think I’m interested in takin’ prisoners?” Franchard asked, wiping his mustache on his sleeve.

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

“That’s three of ’em, all right,” Pritchard said.

“You’re positive?” Ditch asked.

In response, Pritchard just looked at his friend and said nothing.

“Just askin’,” Ditch said sheepishly.

A trio of Triple B hands were seated in a small cantina, speaking with two Mexican men. It was after dark, and Pritchard, Ditch, and Tom Franchard watched them enter from a different cantina across the street. Ditch was carrying his Henry rifle, and Franchard a double-barreled coach gun.

Pritchard had wanted to cross the Rio Grande and enter Mexico immediately, to continue the pursuit, but was talked out of it by Franchard. He explained to Pritchard and Ditch that their best bet was to remain in Del Rio for a few days and wait until a few Triple B hands returned.

Franchard informed them that Winston Boone made his money by rustling horses and cattle in Texas, herding them over the Rio Grande, and selling them to the Mexican army. The BB&B outfit would be expected to continue delivering stolen American stock, regardless of what troubles the rustlers had created for themselves in the United States with their attack on the stagecoach station house. If not, the Mexican government wouldn’t continue to grant the men of the Triple B the unofficial asylum they enjoyed below the border; sanctuary they now required to escape the hanging justice above it.

Franchard believed that small parties of Triple B hands would be sneaking back into the U.S. to scout for herds of cattle and horses to rustle. When a potential herd was located, which could be at any ranch or stockyard from El Paso to San Antonio, all the way south to Laredo, the scouting party would split up. Part of the crew would remain in Texas to keep an eye on the targeted herd, while the others would return to Mexico to alert Winston and the rest of the hands. The entire outfit would then meet up at a prearranged location on the U.S. side of the border to commit the stock theft.