Savage Texas: The Stampeders (5 page)

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

“Want it back, half-wit? Come get it, then! Here it is!”

The red-haired man with a face ruined by too many years of Texas sun chortled maliciously and tossed Timothy Holt’s flop hat high over the young man’s head and into the hands of another man whose laugh was just as harsh. Timothy leaped high, hands lifted, but the hat was a yard or more beyond his reach. He landed clumsily, stumbled, and twisted his ankle as he fell off the boardwalk in front of Lockhart’s Emporium. Timothy yelped in pain and fell to the dirt, which was mostly mud at the moment because of horse urine.

The two men, strangers in Hangtree, roared in mocking laughter as the mentally slow young man made sounds of disgust at having been sullied in such an unpleasant way. “What’s the matter, boy?” the first abuser asked. “You don’t like making mud pies, half-wit?”

“Why, Hiram,” said the second man, who still held Timothy’s hat, “I’d think that any half-wit fool would like to play in mud, you know, being just a child in his mind!”

“That’s right, Bill! He ought to be having himself a good time! Make us a good mud pie there, dummy! Maybe eat it for us!”

“You men, you should leave that poor fellow alone!” a woman said, coming out of the Emporium with a well-laden basket of goods on her arm. “He can’t help that he’s a fool!”

Timothy was at that moment trying to get up, but the pain in his twisted ankle stabbed him and he put his foot down too fast, slipping in the mud-urine mix and twisting the ankle a second time. He sent up a howl that could have been heard on the far side of town.

A well-dressed stranger, who had just come from the saloon where the picture of the slain Toleen brother stood on its easel, looking out at saloon patrons through eye sockets rendered hollow by hungry buzzards, leaned against a hitchrail on down the street a few dozen yards, and watched the performance in front of the big general store with what seemed only meager interest. A closer look at him, though, would have revealed that his eyes never veered away from the activity, even when he pulled makings from a pocket and rolled a quirly with experienced fingers.

Bill threw the flop hat over Timothy again and back to Hiram. Timothy this time made no effort to intercept the hat, being too distracted by ankle pain. Hiram moved forward, holding out the hat toward the young man as if about to give it to him. Timothy, aware he was being toyed with, hesitantly reached out to take it, but Hiram yanked it back and with a laugh threw it back to Bill. They were like two mean boys in a schoolyard picking on their weakest schoolmate. Bill, moving fast, went to where Timothy was, swept the hat down into the puddle of mud, then pushed the fouled thing down onto Timothy’s head. He and his partner laughed heartily.

The woman with the basket could handle it no more. She dropped the basket, crossed the boardwalk, and with fist balled, pounded Bill on the side of his head, hard enough to make him slip on the side of the boardwalk much as Timothy had, and fall into the urine-infused mud beside him.

The silent, smoking stranger who watched it all from down the street chuckled as he drew deeply on his cigarette.

She wasn’t through yet. She stepped into the street, reached down and hauled up a handful of mud, and stormed toward Hiram, who had begun the torment of Timothy in the first place. Hiram, a foot and a half taller than the woman and nearly twice her weight, put up a hand to block her. She dodged athletically and managed to shove enough mud into Hiram’s mouth to nearly fill it. He accidentally inhaled some of it into his throat, and went into a coughing frenzy so intense he almost heaved. Sputtering and with mud washing down his chin, he shoved the woman away and down, getting upright and stumbling away from her and Timothy as well. His companion, Bill, watched Hiram’s actions in a mix of surprise, alarm, and laughter. The handful of others on the street and boardwalk were laughing, too, and Hiram reddened when he realized it.

Hiram Tate could not bear to be laughed at.

Smeared with mud, reeking of horse urine, and with dirt-flecked spittle flying from his cursing mouth, Hiram rampaged about, roaring out his anger like some rabid beast. The woman who had humiliated him, equally befouled, also got to her feet. Hiram moved at her with a yell, scaring her badly and making her stagger back against the boardwalk’s edge. She wavered but somehow avoided falling.

The small pistol the woman suddenly held in her hand had seemingly come from nowhere. Only Timothy Holt had seen her pull it from a pocket sewn into the side of her skirt. He watched as the woman thumbed back the hammer and aimed it at Hiram’s livid, grimy face. Hiram himself didn’t seem to notice the gun, or so it appeared to Timothy, because he advanced onward, quite fast, cursing the woman foully.

“Hiram!” shouted Bill, who saw that his partner was fast losing control of his actions, compelled by a blind rage and wounded dignity. And the woman was so terrified there was no predicting what she might do with that gun, intentionally or otherwise. This would not end well.

So Bill intervened, joining the fray and trying to somehow bring an end to it. With the advantage of surprise, he was able to get a hold on the little pistol and wrench it out of the woman’s hand. He held it back and aloft, out of her reach, and back-stepped onto the boardwalk and toward the store building, laughing with triumph.

And then it was gone. The pistol was taken from his own hand just as fast as he had taken it from the woman’s. With a muttered oath, Bill wheeled and saw that Timothy had the pistol now. Bill was washed over with embarrassment . . . outwitted by a simpleton! Hiram Tate would never let him hear the end of it.

“Boy, you hand me that pistol back, you hear?” Bill held out his hand and tried to look intimidating.

Timothy would have none of it. The pistol in his hand gave him a sense of power he was not accustomed to. He waved the weapon in Bill’s direction and took two steps back. “I’ll shoot you!” Timothy declared loudly.

The pistol moved about in such a broad pattern that it was clear to all watching that Timothy might hit anything or anyone within a 180-degree sweep, if the pistol went off. People ran for cover or to put themselves beside or behind Timothy.

“You don’t want to shoot nobody, boy,” said Bill, still advancing, nervously. Timothy, visibly quaking, was so scared and antagonized that it was possible he really would shoot, even if only by accident.

“Do what he says, boy,” Hiram said from the street. Timothy, afraid to look fully away from Bill, even so flicked his eyes half a second toward Hiram and saw that the big man had a pistol of his own. He’d drawn it and it was now leveled directly at Timothy. Hiram’s gun hand was not shaking. “Drop that pistol, half-wit.”

The woman who had intruded herself into the situation, and whose pistol was now in Timothy’s hand, wailed loudly in tension and fear. Her banshee-like cry unsettled Hiram a little, and he glanced away from Timothy . . .

. . . and saw a man with long yellow hair striding toward him with a sawed-off rifle in his hand, bandolier belts draping his shoulders and chest, and a look on his face that put Hiram in danger of losing control of his bladder right where he stood.

Beyond the advancing man Hiram saw another man, leaning on a tierail and smoking a cigarette. He paid little heed to the man, the yellow-haired man dominating his attention.

“Down with the pistol, you!” Sam Heller said, punctuating the command by lifting the chopped-down rifle an inch or two higher, so that if he fired, the slug would tear through Hiram’s intestines somewhere between navel and groin.

“That dummy is threatening my partner with that pistol he stole!” Hiram answered. “Hell, he’s a public menace! A danger to us all! It’s
him
you ought to disarm.”

“Timothy is as gentle a soul as you’ll find anywhere in the Pecos country,” Heller replied, moving his mule-leg up another little bit.

“Timothy,” Heller said, “best you run that pistol up into the store and leave it with Mr. Lockhart. There’s no call for you to need to hurt anybody or to get hurt yourself. You don’t want that.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Sam,” Timothy said, and headed for the Emporium’s front door.

Long-trained instincts told Heller that the big man with the pistol would likely try to take advantage of the minor distraction of Timothy’s movement to make a move of his own. Though Heller didn’t know Hiram Tate, he knew something about him, something the former Pinkerton had learned to read in others with little more than a glance. Everything in the pistoleer’s manner, stance, and expression told Heller that Tate carried in him a dangerous pride that would not let him tolerate being bested or publicly shamed. This was the kind of man, with the kind of pride, that turned minor brawls into deadly fights. Heller’s hand tightened on the grip of the mule-leg rifle.

Hiram Tate swung and was about to fire at Heller when Heller’s weapon spoke first. With a blast akin to cannon fire, a hot slug left the shortened rifle and hit Tate right where Heller intended: the joint of his left shoulder. Tate grunted, spun, and fell, staining the ground red. His left arm was very nearly shot off, the joint shattered, the ball torn out of the socket, and only ragged flesh keeping the appendage attached to Tate’s body.

Tate writhed and screamed, dropping the pistol from his right hand and groping across his chest at his ruined shoulder. Blood poured between his twitching fingers.

Heller walked over to the fallen man and kicked his dropped pistol up under the boardwalk, out of reach. He leaned over a little and poked at Tate’s shoulder wound with the hot, short muzzle of the mule-leg. Tate screamed even louder, and his partner, Bill, a much less hardy man, stumbled to one side and vomited over the back side of the boardwalk.

“You said something about ‘disarming’ somebody,” Heller said. “Now you know how
I
‘disarm’ a man.”

“God, I’m hurting, I’m hurting . . .” The red-haired Hiram’s groans were pathetic.

“I bet you are. But you should thank me, really. I could have shot you in the gut, or the belly, or the heart or face. I was in a kindhearted humor today, though. I could see you weren’t a lefty because of which hand your pistol was in. So I decided that if you had to lose an arm, I’d at least let it be the left one, which you wouldn’t need as much.”

“Oh God . . . God . . . you expect me to
thank
you for blowing my arm off?”

“I expect you to get up and quit bloodying up the street, and to let me haul you off to the local sawbones and get that arm off the rest of the way, good and clean. Otherwise it’s going to just mortify on you and rot off, and probably by the time it was ready to fall off of its own weight, you’d have died from blood poisoning anyway. Look there, you fool! With all that twisting around, you’ve ground the wound right into the dirt. It’ll be dripping rot and pus in no time. Yep, you’d best get that flop arm hacked off right, or get ready to die hard and slow. Death by mortification ain’t no way for a man to go. I’ve seen it before. You don’t want it.”

Heaving and coughing noises from Bill over on the boardwalk, on his knees, let Heller know that he was going to be no threat. But still he had an interest in the fellow. Something about him seemed familiar.

Lockhart the merchant, helped by a store clerk, came out of the Emporium carrying a wooden door. This became a makeshift stretcher for Hiram Tate, who was fast on his way to the local doctor for an amputation already mostly completed courtesy of Sam Heller’s mule-leg rifle.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Though the slug from Heller’s mule-leg had struck no vital organs, and blood loss had been sufficiently controlled to keep Hiram Tate from bleeding to death, Hiram died on the doctor’s table anyway.

His heart, defective without anyone knowing it, including Hiram himself, was too taxed by the stress of his injuries to survive its ordeal. It simply shut down and the physician tending him found himself suddenly working to amputate the arm of a dead man. No point in that, he figured, so he stopped, washed himself up, and had Hiram hauled off to the local undertaker with both arms still in place, though the shot one was barely hanging on.

The doctor, who typically took a few nips before taking a knife to anyone, leaned unsteadily over the dead man, then asked Heller, “Who is this poor joker?”

“I don’t know, but I know I’ve seen him before. Kind of like that dead man I and that new picture-taker man found out on the Hangtree Road t’other day. Something familiar about him.”

“I had the same notion myself,” the doctor said. “But I can’t put a finger on . . . wait a minute. Wait. I think I know.”

Someone knocked on the outer office door, then immediately opened it. Sheriff Mack Barton walked in and stepped into the treatment room where the surgery had been taking place. “Doc, howdy. You, too, Heller. Heard about what happened. How’s the man who got . . . oh. I can see for myself. What did you do, Heller? Gut-shoot him?”

“Nope. Just that left shoulder. No reason he should have died that I can see.”

“Well, dead he is, anyway. And it really don’t matter . . . the reward for this one is on a dead-or-alive basis.”

“So I was right,” the doctor said. “I knew I’d seen this man’s face before.”

“Wanted poster?” Heller asked.

“That’s right,” the doctor replied. “I was in over at Sheriff Barton’s office just a week ago . . . remember, Sheriff? You had that toenail growing into your toe and I had to cut it out?”

“God, yes, I remember, and I got to tell you, Doc, you missed your calling. Should have been a butcher, the way you hacked on me.”

“Feels better now, though, don’t it? And I can tell you there’s not been much difference between medicine and butcher work since the war. If I had ten cents for every arm and leg I sawed off during that damn war, I’d not have to be feeding potions and pills to a gang of Texas plains-hoppers.”

Heller waved his hand over the dead man. “So, who is he?”

“Well, at one time he was right-hand man to none other than Black Ear Skinner himself,” said Barton. “Hiram Tate. Wanted here, over in Arkansas, all the way down into Louisiana, and north of here clear into Kansas. Bad apple, this one was.”

“Didn’t show a dang lot of sense, making such a show of himself on a public street with him being wanted everywhere,” Heller said. “All just to poke fun at a feeble-minded fellow.”

“These type of men ain’t generally smart,” said Barton. “This one made it far as he has without getting himself killed more by luck than keen wits. But he has brought
you
some luck, Heller: he’s got reward money on his head, and since it was your bullet that brought him down, you got it coming to you.”

“How much?”

“Don’t recall right off. It’s on the Wanted notice. Good likeness of this gent, too. Good enough that it really looks like him. A lot of them pictures, hell, they could be about anybody.”

“Tell you what, Mack, I want that money to be given to the Hangtree Church. They got a steeple that’s going to blow down flat in the next stout wind. Let Preacher Fulton use that reward, whatever it is, to get that steeple in good shape.”

“Mighty big of you to do that, Sam.”

“I don’t need the money. I got aplenty of it. Not saying it to brag, just stating the fact.”

“The reverend and his congregation are going to be mighty grateful.”

“Like I said, I don’t really need it myself. Might as well do some good for the town with it.”

“I got some improvements that could be made at the jail,” Barton said.

“Can’t solve every problem myself,” Heller said. “I’ll stick with the church for this one.” He looked down at the pallid-but-freckled face of the red-haired corpse. “One of the Black Ear gang, huh? Mighty strange, considering that the dead man out on the Hangtree Road was one of the Black Ears himself. And that old fellow who got his teeth knocked out by that pretty young lady in Sunday services awhile back . . . his name was Josiah Enoch, and I heard it said over at the Cattleman Hotel that he had some connection with the Black Ears, too, going back quite a few years.”

“Makes a man wonder,” Barton commented. “Why is it everybody coming into town lately has ties to Black Ear Skinner, may he rot in hell?”

“I’ve wondered the same myself, even before this one here came along,” Heller said, indicating the dead man lying supine before them. “It’s a mighty odd coincidence, no question about it. Why would folks associated with an outlaw who’s been dead for five years all at once show up in such an out-of-the-way place as Hangtree?”

“No idea,” said Barton. “But I don’t like it. Puts me on edge.”

“Amen to that,” said Heller. “Seems like the only newcomer to Hangtree lately who ain’t tied in with the Black Ear gang is that pretty woman who knocked that man’s teeth out in church.”

“She’s been going about town with Johnny Cross, you know,” said Barton.

“That’s only because she ain’t had the chance to meet me yet,” replied Heller, and grinned.

 

 

The man named Bill Creed who had joined the late Hiram Tate in tormenting Timothy Holt turned out to have a Wanted poster of his own, but with a relatively miniscule award attached. There was no known connection in his case to the infamous and allegedly defunct Black Ear gang beyond the fact he had traveled to Hangtree with Hiram Tate. Quizzed closely by Barton as to what had led Tate to come to Hangtree at all, and whether Bill had any knowledge of why the other dead Black Ear, Toleen, had come to Hangtree as well, Bill Creed professed no knowledge of either matter.

Barton, alone in the jail with Bill Creed, who was chained to a chair, pulled a gleaming knife from a sheath and pressed the tip directly beside Creed’s Adam’s apple, hard enough to barely break the skin. A small red drop trickled down Creed’s neck.

Barton’s voice was a snarl. “Listen to me, you dog: I’m the sheriff of this county, and this is one sheriff who gets mighty nervous when members of one of the foulest criminal gangs on this side of the nation start turning up in his county. We’ve got one of the Toleen brothers rotting in his grave on Boot Hill, killed by God-only-knows-who while he was heading toward this town. We’ve got your partner Hiram, a known Black Ear, causing trouble in our streets and getting himself killed. And we had an old fellow who used to be a Black Ear years ago trying to rob a Sunday morning church congregation. Ever heard of such a thing? Bothers me to see such things happening in my county and my town. But you know what really bothers me about it all, Mr. Creed? Do you?”

“N . . . no, Sheriff. I don’t.”

“It bothers me that every one of them folk are tied to Black Ear Skinner. Every one! Makes me want to know why!”

“I don’t know, sheriff. I don’t. I rode with Hiram, I don’t deny it, but there ain’t no crime in just traveling with a man. And Hiram wasn’t no member of the Black Ear gang lately . . . Black Ear Skinner has been dead for years now. Shot down in the town of Mason during a stagecoach robbery. Bled to death in the dirt. Hiram saw it with his own eyes. After that the Black Ears scattered out and there wasn’t no gang no more. Still ain’t, far as I know.”

“You seem to know a good deal about Black Ear business, Mr. Creed.”

“Just what Hiram told me, that’s all. Hiram was the Black Ear, not me. I’m just a common old man of the road, that’s all.”

“Um-hmm. A common old man of the road who robbed two freight offices in Arkansas, shot up a dance hall in San Antonio, and beat up an old Cherokee man up in the Nations.”

“Sheriff, I know I’ve done wrong things and broke laws. But I swear to you, swear right on a Bible if you want me to, that if you’ll let me go from here you’ll never see me in your county again, nor hear of me doing no more law-breaking. Not anywhere. I’ll give it all up and be as good a man as you’ll find. I swear it. Just give me a chance, Sheriff Barton. I beg you.”

“Mr. Creed, you’re the kind of man who has had chance after chance already, and pissed away every one of them. I got no reason to think you’ve got any good inside you. I don’t believe a man like you can follow the law. It’s in your blood and bone to break every rule you run across. You can moan and swear and repent and make all the promises you want to me here today, but I believe that if I let you go out that door and get on your horse and ride, before sundown tomorrow you’d have robbed some poor old farmer or cattleman, and stole the pie cooling in some widow woman’s window. Then you’d be on to the next town and doing it all again.”

“I won’t, sir. I swear I won’t.”

“I’ll hold you to that, friend. I want you to ride out of this town and this county, and I don’t want to see you back here again. We don’t need more of your kind in Hangtree.”

“Sheriff, I’ll be more than happy to leave this place. It’s been nothing but trouble for me.”

“What were you doing in company with such a man as Hiram Tate, anyway? That man had ties to some bad folk. Real bad.”

“I know. I should have stayed clear of him. But I didn’t. I let whiskey lure me. He was willing to buy and I was willing to drink with him, and after that I just ended up riding with him a spell. I shouldn’t have done it. I knew he was a no-’count man.”

“Worse than that. He was part of the Black Ear bunch, you know it? You’ll not run across fouler scoundrels than them devils. And dear departed Hiram ain’t the only Black Ear we’ve had show up hereabouts lately. One of the Toleen brothers was found shot dead out on the road into town. An old-timer from Black Ear’s earlier days actually tried to rob our local churchgoers on a Sunday morning, right in church. Spunky gal visiting the service knocked his teeth down his gullet with a wooden collection plate for his trouble.”

“The hell!”

“Got me right worried, these Black Ears drifting in here.”

“If I was a sheriff, it’d worry me, too,” Bill said. “I can’t deny it.”

“Did you know any others of the Black Ears besides Hiram Tate?”

“No, I didn’t. Didn’t know Hiram all that well or all that long.”

“Did he ever talk about the Toleen brothers?”

“Mentioned them only once I can remember. Said they didn’t get along with each other very well.”

“Maybe our dead Toleen was kilt by his own brother, then.”

“Maybe.”

“Let me just ask you straight-out: Mr. Creed, do you have any notion, even a good guess, why old members of Black Ear Skinner’s gang might be congregating theirselves in and around Hangtree, Texas?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know how I would know such a thing, and I’d be not much inclined to try to guess,” Bill Creed said. He risked a small joke. “Maybe Black Ear’s boys are getting together to set up a school for poor Comanche children. You reckon?”

“Not likely, Mr. Creed. Not likely.”

Sheriff Barton arched his back and winced as his spine made an audible pop. His gut rumbled just as loudly right after.

“Mr. Creed, sir, a minute ago you said something about how you wish I’d just let you walk out of here and leave our happy little community. Well, you know I can’t do that. But I’ll tell you something, and you can figure for yourself how you want to deal with it.”

“Uh-huh,” muttered an obviously puzzled Bill Creed.

“Sir, this old sheriff needs to pay a visit to the outhouse out behind the courthouse. Now, from the noise my gut is making and the messages it’s sending me, I can tell you I can’t dawdle around long before I make that visit. So I’m going to put you on your honor here and leave you sitting right here while I go tend to the needs of my gut. Now, there’s a knothole or two in the privy walls that a man can see out of if he’s squatted on the hole, but none where I could see anybody coming or going from where we are right now. So even though a law-respecting sheriff can’t give a prisoner permission to walk out of a jail, the fact is, for the next few minutes I ain’t going to know if, say, you lit up from where you’re setting there and headed out the side door. I ain’t suggesting you do that, for if you do I’ll have no choice but to write you up as an escapee . . . but I’m just saying that if you did do it, I’d not even know about it before you had time to scratch a good bit of gravel.” The sheriff’s intestines grumbled and gurgled again, even louder, and he put a hand to his abdomen. “Well, there ain’t no more waiting. I’m heading for the outhouse, and I’ll leave you to think about what I just said. But if I was you I wouldn’t think too long. I’ll be in that outhouse awhile, but not forever. And my deputy—Clifton Smalls is his name, big tall beanpole of a feller—he’ll be back here any time now.”

“Sheriff, you leaving me free to walk out?”

“You’re my prisoner. You ain’t allowed to just walk out. But an open door is an open door. Know what I’m saying, Mr. Creed?”

“Why, Sheriff?”

“Hell, even a good lawman can forget to close and lock a door behind him . . . especially when he’s about to mess his own britches. No more time to talk, sir. I’ll be in the outhouse if you need me. Just one last thing, in case this is my final chance to say it: Next time you’re in a town and you see some poor half-wit sweeping the boardwalk in front of the general store, and you get hit with a strong temptation to torment him a little, resist it. Just look that temptation in the eye and resist it. Gotta go now.”

And he was gone, out of the room and then out of the jail, heading for the outhouse at a fast trot.

Bill Creed required no time at all to think through his situation. He was out of the building almost as fast as Sheriff Barton was, laughing in his throat and marveling at this most unexpected and welcome turn of events. His lucky stars had been good to him. Mighty good.