by J. T. Edson
‘I’d say they’re not after you for “Handsome” Phil, was I asked,’ Breda commented, still standing motionless apart from glancing at his companion. ‘How about you, Paddy?’
‘Sure and I’m thinking you’ve got the rights of it, Colin,’ the Irish sergeant agreed, being just as careful to avoid movement. ‘I’d be saying this’s more likely to be a personal thing between you and them, darlin’s.’
‘That’s how I see it, too, Paddy,’ Breda asserted. ‘So it’s your choice, “Wisenheimer and Dummy”, we’ll play it the way you want.’
There were certain indications for the experienced eyes of the peace officers which could have helped them reach their conclusions with regards to the intentions of the party who had waylaid them. Despite his cheap clothing, the one who was doing all the talking carried himself with the erect bearing of a professional soldier. His tone and general demeanor were those of a person who was capable of exerting authority and having his wishes respected by others. While this alone would not have ruled out the possibility of him being a criminal, or even a professional killer, there were other signs suggesting such was not the case.
The most noticeable indication was the way in which the other members of the ambush party were armed. Shotguns were not infrequently included in the armory of the underworld, but were invariably ‘sawn off’ to increase their concealability and lethal qualities at close quarters. Those held by the pair at the serving hatch had not been subjected to such treatment. Each still retained barrels a full thirty inches in length, making them more suitable for pass shooting at migrating ducks or geese 53 than paid assassination. Nor was a Winchester Model of 1873 rifle a general inclusion in the weaponry of modern outlaws. Furthermore, as more compact and easily hidden handguns were available—including the “Storekeeper” model which came into this category—the sturdy and reliable Colt Peacemaker was now only rarely used by criminals in the commission of crimes.
‘Do what the feller tells you!’ Chiverton ordered and, once again, his partner gave instantaneous agreement.
‘Like Colin said, darlin’s,’ Bratton remarked, his attitude signifying that the onus of responsibility for the surrender rested entirely upon the prisoners, and bending so he could place the trench gun gently on the floor. ‘It’s your choice.’
‘Now your handguns, gentlemen,’ the spokesman ordered, after the Scottish sergeant had laid his carbine with an equal care alongside the weapon of his companion.
‘I’ll not be dropping this, if ’tis all the same to you,’ Bratton stated, extracting the double-action Colt—using only the thumb and forefinger of his left hand—from the retention springs of his shoulder holster. ‘As you may be knowing, us Texas Rangers have to buy our own weapons and pay for any repairs they get to be needing.’
‘You can put them on the nearest table,’ the spokesman authorized, as—duplicating his companion’s actions with an equal care—Breda was lifting the Peacemaker from its holster. ‘But please don’t try any tricks. Those two aren’t worth you getting injured to protect them and we aren’t going to kill them.’
‘Sure and we never thought you were,’ the Irish peace officer claimed, strolling unconcernedly to do as had been suggested. ‘What with the length of them shotguns and all, we didn’t figure you was professional killers.’
‘We certainly are not!’ the obvious leader of the party confirmed and the man by his side uttered an equally vehement agreement. ‘As you guessed, our interest in those two is purely personal. Take them out back, men.’
‘Y—You can’t let them!’ Chiverton protested, being disinclined to accept the declaration of intent and swinging to face the peace officers.
‘It was your idea for us to give up our guns,’ Breda pointed out, stepping away from the table and leaving behind his revolver. ‘Now we have, there’s not a whole heap we can do to stop them.’
‘And leave us not forget what was said about you two being the first to get gunned down if it’s resisting we were, which wouldn’t have let us get you to Texarkana alive’s we’re under orders to do,’ Bratton elaborated, also moving clear of his handgun. Then, looking past the prisoners; he continued in a somewhat harder voice, ‘Where’re the folk who run this place?’
‘There weren’t any customers when we arrived and, as he’d sent his wife into Groesbeck to pick up supplies, there were only the owner and his colored fry-cook here,’ replied the spokesman, to whom the question was directed. ‘We bound and gagged them, then put them in the storeroom so they couldn’t raise the alarm when you came in.’
Having left the serving hatch as soon as the sergeants discarded the revolvers, the two men came from the kitchen. They no longer held the shotguns which had been a major factor in quelling any desire to resist felt by the peace officers, having exchanged these for, respectively, a Colt Peacemaker and Government Model automatic pistol. While the third hooded man and the Negro continued to cover the sergeants, they crossed the room. Each took a frightened, but unresisting, prisoner by the jacket collar and, using the weapons as an added inducement, ordered them to start walking.
‘You’d best come with us, gentlemen,’ the leader suggested, as Chiverton and Schulman were being escorted into the kitchen.
Obeying the politely given, yet obvious, order, the peace officers accompanied the hooded men and prisoners. While they were doing so, the Negro went to the front door. Closing and locking it, he turned around the sign in the window so it would read “Closed” to anybody outside the diner. Having completed these tasks, he collected the weapons discarded by Breda and Bratton, then followed the rest of the party.
Taking the lead as the party left the diner by its rear door, the spokesman neither halted nor spoke until they reached a small clearing roughly at the center of the cottonwood grove. It was obvious that preparations for their coming had been made. A length of rope was fastened, at slightly over shoulder height, around the trunks of each of two adjacent trees.
‘I’ll trouble you gentlemen for the keys to the handcuffs,’ the leader commented.
‘Do you mind if it’s asking what for?’ Bratton countered.
‘They’re to strip to the waist,’ the spokesman explained, indicating the clearly terrified prisoners with a contemptuous gesture from his quirt. ‘It will be easier on their clothes if they’re free to do it, rather than having us cut them off.’
‘That sounds reasonable to me,’ the Irish sergeant conceded and did as he had been requested. ‘Only, at the risk of sounding nosey, it’s wondering I am why you’d be wanting them stripped that way.’
‘I’ll tell you when everything is ready,’ the spokesman promised.
Having been liberated by the keys Bratton supplied, working as fast as their fumbling fingers would allow, Chiverton and Schulman divested themselves of all their upper garments. While this was being done, the two men from the serving hatch gave their handguns to the Negro. Then, working with a commendable co-ordination, they grasped the comic by the arms. Despite being strong and a rough handful in a fight, his stage personality notwithstanding, he was in too great a state of terror to resist as he was dragged forward and secured between the trees by the ropes being tied to his wrists.
‘W—What’s this all about?’ Chiverton croaked, watching what was happening with an expression of horror.
‘You pair of lecherous bastards took out a couple of girls, neither of whom had reached her eighteenth birthday, got them so drunk on gin-spiked lemonade they didn’t know what they were doing, then had your god-damned way with them,’ replied the spokesman, accepting the Winchester he was being offered and passing his quirt to its owner. ‘One wound up with a baby, which was bad enough. But the other one lost the child she was carrying and, as a result, she may not be able to have any more children.’
‘They were my daughter and niece, you god-damned sons-of-bitches!’ the man who had surrendered the rifle went on, his accent also Texan—if one of a lesser social status—making the lash of the quirt hiss vicious
ly. ‘I aimed to kill you both, but the boss said “no”. Which being, I’m still aiming to make you both pay for what you’ve done.’
‘W—Who are you?’ Chiverton gasped, being aware that there could be a number of girls who might qualify as his victims as he and his partner had a penchant for subjecting girls in their teens to such treatment.
‘Think about it while you’re watching that fat bastard being handed his needings,’ the man with the quirt suggested. ‘ ’Cause it’s your turn next. But you can both count yourselves god-damned lucky. When the boss told me I wasn’t to make wolf bait of you, I reckoned I’d “Goodnight” the both of you.’ 54
‘Hold hard there!’ Breda barked, as the outraged father started to walk towards the trees between which Schulman was suspended. ‘Are you aiming to use that quirt on him?’
‘Nothing else but,’ the stocky man confirmed, while the pair who had done the tying lined the Colts they had retrieved from the young Negro at the sergeants.
‘You’ll be breaking the law if you do,’ the Scottish peace officer warned, without moving apart from spreading his hands from his sides as an indication of his pacific intentions.
‘Sure and isn’t that the rights of it?’ Bratton seconded, doing the same as his companion. ‘It’s committing assault you—or anybody else—who does it will be.’
‘By god, yes!’ the spokesman ejaculated, having turned his gaze to the Irish sergeant on hearing the emphasis given to the words, “anybody else”. ‘If you do it, I—you will be breaking the law!’
‘Likely, boss,’ the vengeance seeking father replied. ‘But I still aim to do—!’
‘Not you,’ the spokesman contradicted firmly and pointed with his right index finger as a look of incomprehension mingled with annoyance came to the face of the man he was addressing. ‘Him!’
‘Him?’ the stocky man repeated, still showing no greater understanding.
‘M—Mel Chiverton gasped in almost the same breath, staring in consternation at the finger which was pointing in his direction.
‘You!’ the spokesman confirmed definitely. ‘And, by god, if you don’t lay it on hard, I’ll take the chance of breaking the law and make you wish you had!’
Showing the respect he felt for his employer, the stocky man held the quirt forward without further discussion. Running the tip of his tongue over his lips, Chiverton accepted it with such hesitancy he might have believed the leather would be red hot. Covered by the two Colts, whose owners showed no sign of relaxing their vigilance, Breda and Bratton were not presented with any chance of intervening.
‘D—Don’t you use that “mother-something” thing on me!’ Schulman shrieked, looking over his shoulder as his companion walked towards him, but bound in such a fashion he was unable to do anything more positive about avoiding his fate.
‘I—I don’t have any choice, Irv!’ the “straight man” pointed our hoarsely.
‘Anyways, “Dummy”,’ the father supplemented. ‘When he’s through, you’ll have your chance to do it to him!’
Taking a warning from the comment and paying no further attention to his partner’s almost hysterical protests, Chiverton swung the quirt. Its plaited leather lash landed hard on the writhing white back, eliciting a screech of pain and leaving a vicious red weal. To give him credit, the “straight man” looked at the leader of his captors before—being ordered to do so—he continued with the flogging. Blow after blow landed, each delivered as vigorously as the first. In the beginning, the former comic shrieked profanities and threats. These turned into blubbering sobs interspersed by cries of agony as the quirt tore repeatedly into the quivering and, soon, bloody flesh.
‘That’s enough!’ the spokesman stated, as the twenty-fourth blow was delivered and its recipient subsided into a faint. ‘Cut him down and revive him. Then put the “Wisenheimer” up in his place so he can pay back what he’s been given.’
‘Hot damn, Paddy!’ Breda remarked, watching the orders being carried out. ‘I bet those two bastards are cursing the day they agreed to perjure themselves for Handsome Phil.’
Twelve – I Don’t Know Everybody in Falls County
‘POOR ole Reece Mervyn’s jaw ’n’ nose are busted and, way they looked, them fancy “falsi-ficated” teeth of his’d got tromped on,’ Sergeant Jubal Branch reported, in a voice which might have struck some people as filled with sympathy although none of his audience considered it in that light. ‘Then, when one of Dex Armstrong’s deputies found his car in that old cottonwood grove ’bout a mile out of town, all its tires had been ripped wide open. That fancy spotted cat’s hide’d been torn to doll rags. There’s not so much’s one piece of glass left un-busted in it and all that “hell-agrant painti-fying’ ’n’ “crow-mee-nimum’s” scratched up something awful. Didn’t make a whole heap of never-mind about the tires being flat, though. It couldn’t’ve been driven in on account of there being iron filings in the oil sump and sugar mixed with the “gasser-lane”, which hadn’t done the “mecker-nicals” too much usefulness at all. Fact being, tooken all together, I’d say the Counselor won’t wind up showing much of a “profat-ability” out of getting “Handi-some Phil” found “not guiltery”.’
It was nine o’clock in the evening on the day of the conclusion of Philip “Handsome Phil” Foote’s trial.
Sitting with the big bluetick coonhound sprawling apparently asleep at his feet, the elderly peace officer was delivering his information in the dining-room of a hunting cabin maintained by Judge Robert J. McCrindle close to the western border of Falls County. In addition to other members of the Company of Texas Rangers to which he belonged, his commanding officer and the owner of the property were present.
‘Let’s hope he’s taken out enough insurance on the car to cover the damage,’ Sergeant Alexandre “Frenchie” Giradot remarked, almost sounding as if he was sincere in the sentiment he uttered—but not quite. ‘It’ll be a mortal shame if he hasn’t.’
‘Well now, “mon hammy”,’ Branch drawled. ‘Going by what he told the sheriff when he got to hear about it, he’s got his-self caught neck deep and with the water up over the willows in that said “morat-ual” shame.’
‘The car isn’t insured then, Jubal?’ McCrindle asked—being aware that the term, “water up over the willows”, had originated in the days of the great trail drives as severe flooding was one of the most dangerous hazards faced by the cowhands handling the cattle—making no attempt to conceal his satisfaction over the possibility.
‘Nary so much as a teensy “in-sure-you-ate, Your Honorably”,’ Branch confirmed, still employing a tone which seemed filled with commiseration and his leathery features gave no indication to the contrary. ‘Seems he’s been so all-fired busy since he took up “Handi-some Phil’s dee-fensive” that getting it done plumb slipped his “memor-able”.’
‘I wish I could feel sorry for him,’ the judge declared. ‘But I don't. Does he know who did it and why?’
‘He allows he didn’t get “hintrer-ducted” formal-like to the jasper, “Your Honorably”,’ the elderly peace officer answered. ‘Seem’s it was a real mean cuss’s got the wrong notion ’cause his wife had stopped to ask the time o’ day. Give the sheriff a pretty fair “desper-craption” of both of ’em. Way he told it, the gal was right pretty, with some more meat on her than’s mostly these days, but all of it stacked right “curvied” in the right places—whichever he meant by that—and’d long, “platter-nepum” blonde hair.’
‘Do you know her, Bob?’ Major Benson Tragg put in.
A good six foot tall, in his late forties, with brown hair turning gray at the temples, the asker of the question was as lean and wiry as Jubal Branch, although his Texas drawl was suggestive of his having had a better education. Being dressed in attire more suitable for going hunting did not detract from the commanding force of his personality and presence. Belonging to a family which had long been associated with the enforcement of law and order in the Lone Star State,55 he had acquired the repu
tation for being one of the shrewdest and most progressive peace officers in the New World.
‘I can’t recall her to mind,’ McCrindle confessed, after thinking for a few seconds. ‘But I don’t know everybody in Falls County.’
‘You’d likely know somebody who looked like she was described,’ Tragg stated with a grin. ‘Or you’ve changed a whole heap since the last time we went hunting together.’
‘I wouldn’t know what you mean by that, Ben,’ the judge claimed blandly, but showing he was far from offended by the assertion. ‘And I still can’t bring her to mind. How about her husband, Jubal?’
‘He’s what you might call tolerable “noticer-able”,’ Branch supplied. ‘Close to seven foot tall, just ’bout ’s wide across as Main Street and heavy bellied with it. Dressed and looked like a saddle bum. Top of which, ’cording to the Counselor, he looked mean’s all get-out, with a big red boozer’s nose, a heap of long brown hair and a beard bushier’n an old-time mountain-man fresh come from the high country to the “rander-viewers”.’
‘Huh!’ grunted Sergeant David Swift-Eagle, darting a glance at the youngest Texas Ranger present. ‘A feller who looks like that ought to be easy to locate, even on a crowded street. Damned if he wouldn’t stand out even more than Ranse here.’
‘Why sure,’ Sergeant Ranse Smith agreed, his deep drawl that of a Texan who had received a good education. ‘But there’s one good thing. I don’t reckon anybody could mistake me for him.’
There was some justification for the latter part of the Kiowa peace officer’s comment and the reply it had elicited.
While Smith would certainly stand out in any crowd, other than in size and bulk he appeared to have nothing in common with the man who had assaulted Reece Mervyn. Almost three inches taller than Swift-Eagle, possessing, tremendously wide shoulders, he slimmed to a flat-bellied waist and his entire physique was indicative of exceptional fitness and health. He was in his early twenties, with short ash blond hair. His almost classically handsome features were pleasant, tanned and clean shaven. He had on a black leather vest, to which his badge of office—glistening with newness—was fixed, an open-necked clean tartan shirt and spotless Levi trousers such as a cowhand might wear, but the legs were tucked into his polished brown, calf high and low-heeled hunting boots. A British-made Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver rode in the ‘flower design’ embossed Model 30 cross draw holster at the left side of his George Lawrence Gunslinger belt. Behind the rig was a pouch holding two Prideaux ‘Quick Loaders’, each of which would allow him to feed six .455 cartridges into the cylinder of the unusual weapon with a single movement when the need arose to reload in a hurry. 56
