Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(110)
Dylan stayed on top of the kid, pinning him, until a pair of cops yanked him off. As two more Houston officers stood with guns drawn, one of those cops pressed Dylan down right next to the kid and started to slap the handcuffs on.
The kid wasn’t much older than him—the homegrown version, for sure, who’d probably spent the past few years waging make-believe war on shooting ranges and meeting in dark, dingy basements with the windows blacked out. Dylan met his hate-filled eyes, returning a glare the kid probably practiced in the mirror.
“That was for Ela,” Dylan managed, with half his face still pressed hard against the tile, “you piece of shit.”
EPILOGUE
The Rangers were here before there was a Texas, and we have survived all that time. Now, we didn’t survive because we were good at riding horses. We didn’t survive because we can hunt or camp out on the prairie. We survived by being able to change with the times. When Texas needed Indian fighters, we were Indian fighters. When Texas needed border war fighters, we were that. When Texas needed someone to quell oil boom riots, we did that. When Texas needed detectives, we became that. When DNA became the mainstay of law enforcement work, we got good at that. We’ve had to change, and there have been some growing pains along the way. We have tripped and stumbled, and we’ve had times that were not our finest hours. But by and large we’ve had more successes than we’ve had misses. And we’re going to keep changing and evolving so we’re still here a hundred years from now.
—Ranger Matt Cawthon, in Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century, edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss, Jr. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013)
HOUSTON, TEXAS; SIX WEEKS LATER
“I’m really proud to be addressing you today,” Caitlin said to the students and families gathered on the football field of the Village School, which was adorned with the Vikings logo and the school color, navy blue. “I’d like to talk to you about a lot of things, but mostly I’d like to talk about bravery.”
She focused on Dylan, Cort Wesley, and Luke, who were seated in the front row with the other dignitaries at the graduation ceremony. Beyond them was a sea of gowns, caps, and tassels, soon to be flipped from one side to the other before the caps were launched airborne. The warm air smelled fresh and clean, almost like incense. The scent of hope, Caitlin thought to herself, in stark contrast to skunk oil or, worse, the deadly cuitlacoche that had come ever so close to killing thousands, just a few miles away, beneath downtown Houston.
“There’s a boy who goes to this school who’s about the bravest person I know, because he’s not afraid to be who he is. Folks like to think that gets easier as you get older, but it’s really not true. It only seems that way because, by then, most have given up trying. The difference between someone special and someone ordinary is that the one who’s special never gives up, no matter the odds. And the young man I’m talking about had the odds stacked against him, and it’s a credit to you folks out there that he’s been accepted here for who he is and has found a home.”
Cheers and applause interrupted her remarks. Caitlin was glad for that and, even more, for Luke’s smile. She had no speech, just a few notes scribbled on some composition paper torn from a pad she’d bought at a drug store, the fringe fluttering atop the podium before her on the stage. She wore the clothes she always wore, because she figured that’s what people expected from her and would feel most comfortable with. Jeans and a light-blue shirt, Texas Ranger badge pinned to her chest, holstered SIG Sauer clipped to her belt.
As the applause started to die down, she focused on Dylan and Cort Wesley, who were still clapping the hardest of anyone.
*
“I haven’t decided if I’m going back to school,” Dylan had told Caitlin and Cort Wesley the week before, out of nowhere, while they sat on the front porch. “I’m going to need some more time.”
“Doesn’t seem like a difficult decision to me,” Cort Wesley said.
“I’ve got some stuff I need to sort out, Dad.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff. I’m tired of getting involved with people who change me.”
“Ela?” Caitlin said to him.
“I go back there, she’s all I’ll think of. What’s the point?”
Cort Wesley remained restrained. “Getting past it, son.”
“That’s easy for you—for both of you—isn’t it? But I’m not like that. I want to be, but I’m not.” Dylan swept the hair from his face and swallowed hard. “Why do you figure she changed her mind?”
“Because somebody finally changed her,” Caitlin told him.
*
“Texas is full of brave folks, now and in the past,” Caitlin resumed, after checking her notes, finally used to the garbled feedback of her own voice from the speakers. “I’m the fifth in my family to become a Texas Ranger. The first was named Steeldust Jack Strong, and he fought for anyone who was in the right, out of a sense of duty. The Comanche, for example, against none other than John D. Rockefeller. He witnessed the Comanche burn their own land to deny it to Standard Oil. Most figure that was the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Rockefeller had a hatred for Texas that knew no bounds, and he saw his opportunity to get his revenge, once the first oil boom hit, with that strike in Corsicana in 1894. Figured he could move in and pretty much buy up the state. Turned out he didn’t know Texas and he didn’t know Texans, especially one named Steeldust Jack Strong.”