His brow tightened. Perhaps it was time for that to change. Surely one of the bandito’s numerous lieutenants was dissatisfied with his leader and primed to be bought. There were a few possibilities. He would have to look into that later. At the moment, he just wanted to sit down. The plush chair at his desk beckoned to him. He shuffled over to it and just as he was about to sit down, a female voice called out.
“Sheriff!” The woman’s shout was muffled by the thick jail door between them, but he made out the words just fine. “Hey! Let me help you out!”
“Yeah? Maybe by feeding El Estrangular,” he grumbled under his breath. The noose was always hungry and it would be eager to replace the energy he had taken from it that day.
The only reason he hadn’t bothered to make up a reason to hang her already was that he wasn’t entirely sure how guilty she was. One of the noose’s restrictions was that it only received power from those that were truly guilty. That was one of the things he loved about Puerta Muerte. There weren’t many folks in this town that weren’t guilty of something.
He raised his voice, “You’re no help to nobody, Miss Weiss!”
“But I can be!” she replied from her cell. “C’mon, I heard what he said and you know he didn’t hear none of it from me!”
Jeb frowned. He wasn’t happy about anyone hearing that conversation, but she had a point. She’d been in jail since the robbery. Santos couldn’t have gotten his information from her. “Is that so?”
“I got an offer you gotta hear, Sheriff,” she promised. “You won’t be sorry.”
With a grunt, he pushed back from his desk and walked to the jail door. He stood in front of it for a moment until he was sure that he was steady on his feet. Then he slid open a slot in the door and peered inside to make sure she hadn’t found some way to get loose. The interior of the jail was gloomy, lit only by the small barred windows near the ceiling of each cell. He could just see her form standing inside the last cell on the right.
He threw back the bolt and opened the door. There were six cells in Puerta Muerte’s jail, three on each side of the center hallway, separated only by floor-to-ceiling bars of thick iron. Each of them was large enough to hold several men if necessary, but hers was the only one currently occupied.
He walked over to the cell across from the woman and leaned back against the bars. He folded his arms. “What do you want, Miss Weiss?”
“Call me Katie,” she replied with a sly smile, her voice breathy.
For the first time, Jeb noticed that the woman was a looker. She had cleaned her face in the washbasin, tossed her rumpled hat aside and pulled the hair out of her ponytail, letting her red curls hang loose around her shoulders. In addition, she had altered her clothes, tying a knot in the back of her shirt to pull it tight against her body and undoing enough buttons to reveal a generous amount of cleavage.
A half grin curled the corner of the sheriff’s mouth. She had been smart to hide her looks. In a town as rough as Puerta Muerte, the only women safe from wandering hands were either too old or too bland. It also helped that she had a reputation for being mean. “Alright, Katie. What do you want?”
“I want out of here,” she said.
“Is that so? And what are you offering in return?” Jeb asked. He stepped towards her, his interest piqued. He could have his choice of any woman in town, free of charge, but this could be a fun romp.
“Oh, whatever you want I’m sure I could provide,” she suggested, reaching through the bars to stroke his chest. Then her look became businesslike. “But in reality what I’m looking for is to get paid.”
“Is that so?” he said.
“You see, I listened at the bars during your little speech,” she said, jerking her head towards the tiny barred window at the back of the cell. “I heard your offer. Two thousand a head seems a right fine price for those particular boys. I want that money.”
“You?” he scoffed.
She smirked. “C’mon, Sheriff. You know what they say about me. I can find any man.”
The smug look on her face as she said it took the lust out of his loins. No, this woman was the kind of viper he didn’t need in his bed. He pulled away from her and leaned back against the opposite cell again. “I admit you have that reputation. But that doesn’t solve the problem I have with you in the first place.”
“Like I told you a hundred times, I got no reason to tell anybody what I saw in that bank. You want those boys. I want to bring you those boys. They deserve whatever you’re gonna do to them after the way they left me tied up in there.”
“Hmph,” he said. “Even if you could find them, how is one lone woman gonna get those three outlaws back here when they know I’m gonna kill ’em?”
She chuckled. “I never said I’d be doing it alone.”
* * *
The office of U.S. Marshal Chuck Blye was nowhere near as fancy as the Sheriff of Puerta Muerte’s. The walls were bare of any decoration save for the Union Flag and his chair was plain wood and squeaked something fierce. His desk was on the small side and the edges had the tendency to give him the occasional splinter.
He didn’t mind those things so much, though. What he hated about his office was the paperwork. If there was one thing the government liked, it was records. Stacks of paper lined the edges of the room; case files sitting on top of full cabinets. His desk was awash with papers he needed to fill out or sort and there was always a deputy willing to bring him more.
“I hate this,” Blye said, grumbling as he signed off on yet another prisoner transfer. “You know what we need in this place, Zed?” He looked around, but no one was there. “Zed? Hey!”
Marshal Blye was a rugged man. He had a weathered face and eyes that had seen more than most men. His hair was short but messy, best covered with a hat, and his thick gray horseshoe mustache had been yellowed by tobacco. He looked out of place sitting behind a desk in a clean suit with his callused fingers ink-stained. He knew it too. His skin crawled with the urge to get out of there.
There was a quick knock at his door and it opened to admit a young deputy. Of course, he had a stack of papers in his hands. “Did you call for me, sir?”
“Nope,” Blye snapped, turning to spit into a spittoon on the floor next to his desk.
The deputy’s face colored. “Oh. Well I needed to come see you anyway, so-.”
“Hey,” Blye interrupted. “Do you know what we need in this place, son?”
“Uh . . . no, sir,” the Deputy replied.
“More bureaucrats,” the marshal proclaimed.
The deputy smiled hesitantly. “You want . . . more bureaucrats? In here?”
“Yes! More bookish fools to run around sorting papers so we can be out in the territory where we can do the most damn good,” he explained. “Don’t that sound good to you? Don’t you want to get out of this place and put that shiny badge of yours to use?”
The young deputy scratched his head. “Uh, sure, sir. That would be nice. You know, you could always assign me somepla-.”
Blye grunted. “Well you ain’t ready. I was talking hypothetical.” He waved the deputy over. “You got something for me?”
The man blinked in disappointment. He approached the desk. “Yeah, we just got word on that robbery over the Texas line.”
“Which one?” He held out his hand. “You mean the bank in Puerta Muerte?”
The deputy placed the papers in his hand. “Yeah, that Sheriff Wickee is pretty steamed. He’s demanding we help catch the men responsible and turn them over to him. He thinks that since his town’s so close to the New Mexico border we should raise the bounty here too.”
Marshal Blye snorted. “Of course he does.” He dropped the papers on top of the other papers on his desk. “I’ll look at it. Thanks. You can go.”
“Uh, right,” the deputy said and he left the room, closing the door behind him.
The marshal leafed through the papers, his brow raising with interest. One of them was a letter in Sheriff Wickee’
s angry hand. The other three were the wanted posters for the Red Star Gang. He read the sheriff’s letter quickly and rolled his eyes before tossing it to the side. He spread the wanted posters across his desk.
“These boys,” he mused. “I was wondering when we’d hear about them again. They’ve been quiet lately. What do you think, Zed? Should we send someone after them?”
A man appeared in a puff of pipe smoke and stood over his shoulder. He was gray-haired and wore a goatee with a manicured mustache. An older style marshal’s badge was pinned to one lapel of his pinstriped suit. The pipe in his hand was fancy, made of wood and polished brass.
He glanced at the posters and said with a drawling Irish accent, “Those boys again. Ain’t they just another group of Noose Jumpers?”
Blye grunted and lifted Sheriff Wickee’s letter. “Maybe they are, maybe not. Says here that they stole over forty thousand in cash and gold and killed the bank clerk.”
“Really?” The old specter blinked. He leaned closer to the paper, reading it carefully.
“Of course I find that a mite suspect, considering who it’s coming from,” Blye added.
Zed shrugged, pulling back from the letter. “You could do as he says. Raise their bounty a bit. Add murder to the list of crimes. They’ll walk themselves right into the gallows just like the rest of their kind.”
“You could be right,” Blye said, stroking his chin. “I don’t like that sheriff, though, and what they did was gutsy. Robbing that particular bank under that particular bastard’s nose? I find that to be a crime worthy of more investigation.” A smile spread across his face. “Hey, this could be just the excuse we need to get ourselves out of this place for awhile.”
“I would prefer you wait until we found some fruit a little riper for plucking,” Zed pointed out. “They are still too new for my tastes.”
Marshal Blye chuckled. “Don’t you worry, Zed. If this turns out like I think it might, it’ll be plenty juicy for your liking.”
The specter sighed and puffed on his pipe. “If you must.”
Part Two:
The Bounty Hunter, The Gunslinger, and The Scoundrel
10: A Brief Interjection
Greetings, dear readers. I find myself once again speaking to you directly. Why, you may wonder? After much deliberation I feel it is quite necessary to acknowledge some of the questions that may have formed in your minds after reading part one of this story.
Undoubtedly, there are a small percentage of you (history enthusiasts, I would suppose) who have been searching their favorite textbooks or online search engines and scoffing at some of the narrative. You may have spent the last eight chapters sputtering in outrage and harumphing to your significant others or, more likely, to the empty air in the overpriced coffee shop around you, “What balderdash! This supposed ‘Observer’ has it all wrong! Why, Oldwestipedia states that Luke Bassett was a Mexican man . . . and so on and so forth!”
To you, I must refer back to my comments in chapter one of this book. Supposed “Historians” are, more often than not, wrong. I was there. I observed these men and the events surrounding them. I know how it was. Accept it.
I direct my next remarks to the rest of the skeptics; those of you who choose not to niggle over the historical narrative, but instead are more concerned about the supernatural aspects of the tale. I sympathize with your position. After all, you have been taught all your lives that such things as magic and specters are aspects of fiction. Science would tell you that these intangible beings and their supposed powers are falsehoods believed only by the weak of mind.
I would tell you this. Not only is magic real, it affects you every day. Every living and thinking creature has access to magic of a sort. You use it yourself. People use it against you and you don’t even know it.
I suppose I could write a treatise on this magic. Lay it all out for you. Explain it succinctly. Perhaps you would prefer that. Then again, maybe it would bore you. Either way, I am not your parent or pastor. It is not my place to explain the meaning of life. I am a humble storyteller. If I am to illuminate you it is through the thoughts and experiences of the lives I narrate. To you I say, read on, for the members of the Red Star Gang had similar questions.
Whether or not you choose to come to believe as they did is up to you. All I can endeavor to do is deliver you a well-told tale.
Yours humbly,
M.O.U.P. III, Observer and Caretaker
11: Sandy Tucker was Very Nearly a Bastard
An excerpt from the Tale of Sandy Tucker
“But ol’ Pecos would not be so easily restrained. ‘There ain’t a horse been born I can’t break,’ he declared. ‘I’m fittin’ to hop aboard this here Widowmaker and I’m gonna stay on him ’till he either accepts me as his master or both of us fall dead.’” – From an article entitled, That Ornery Cowpoke Pecos Bill Breaks Himself a Winner by E. Elfred Hoback, published in the Albuquerque Proclaimer, August 1862.
Yes, that’s right. Sandy Tucker was very nearly a bastard. I understand that this is a declaration that could be taken multiple ways, (and perhaps all of them are true) but in this particular case the statement should be taken quite literally. In order to explain, it is perhaps best to go back to his origins.
Sandy’s grandfather, Eduardo Tuccini, immigrated to the U.S. from Italy with his young bride in the late 1820s. Upon arriving, they changed their last name to the more Americanized “Tucker”. Eduardo swiftly moved to Chicago, where he opened a successful butcher shop. While in Chicago, his wife birthed two sons.
The family was staunch Roman Catholic and their oldest son, Vincente, went into the priesthood early on, while the younger boy, Alberto, apprenticed in his father’s shop. Vincente received his first appointment at a church in Santa Fe not long after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. It was a prestigious destination and his parents followed, bringing Alberto with them. Alberto was angry about leaving Chicago at first, but he soon fell in love with the West. More importantly, he fell in love with a woman.
Elizabeth-Ann Montegue was half Indian. Her father was a local sculptor in Santa Fe, living off of inherited money. Her mother was a Navajo woman. Elizabeth-Ann was young, fierce, beautiful and well-dressed; her doting father having spared no expense on her. She became enamored with Alberto immediately upon meeting him one day outside the butcher shop. In fact, it was she who approached him and suggested that he court her.
Alberto had no ability to resist her. He had set aside nearly every penny he had made while working for his father and at this point his savings added up to a tidy sum. For the first time in his life he had something to spend it on. He began buying her gifts and taking her to expensive dinners. His father noticed his odd behavior and upon discovering their relationship was furious.
Eduardo did not approve of his son courting a girl with Indian blood. He disliked it even more when he found out that her family was Baptist. He forbade the relationship, but Alberto and Elizabeth-Ann carried it on in secret and soon she was in the family way. She hid her pregnancy for five long months before she finally couldn’t hide it any longer and they were forced to tell their parents.
Eduardo was outraged. He fired his son from the shop and demanded they marry at once. He knew that Vincente would be embarrassed by a brother marrying a Baptist Indian half-breed, but at least if they were wed the child wouldn’t be a bastard in the eyes of God.
Elizabeth-Ann’s parents were just as mortified. They met with Alberto’s father briefly and together decided that the young lovers should leave Santa Fe. As long as the child was born in another town no one would learn the truth and their families would be spared the humiliation. It was a difficult decision, especially for Elizabeth-Ann’s parents, but societal standards were unforgiving. Perhaps they would have reacted differently if they had known that Alberto and Elizabeth-Ann would never return.
Ashamed, the young couple agreed to a swift and discreet wedding. The ceremony was performed by the Baptist minister. Elizabeth
-Ann wore a long white shawl and held a large bouquet of flowers in front of her dress in such a way as to keep her pregnancy undetected. Then the newly hitched youngsters loaded up a carriage with their possessions and left their families behind.
The couple traveled southward from Santa-Fe, looking for a place to ply Alberto’s trade. They took the journey slowly as Elizabeth-Ann’s state made her more and more uncomfortable. Along the way, they heard rumor of a town just over the Texas border by the name of Puerta de la Muerte. It was said that people of that fair town were open and willing to overlook minor indiscretions such as those the young Tuckers were running away from. Fortunately, they never made it that far.
A great windstorm picked up as they approached the border. Elizabeth-Ann grew ill, overcome with a fever. The couple was forced to stop in the small village of Luna Gorda. That night, with the wind howling around the creaking walls of the Cloverleaf Hotel, she gave birth to Sandy.
Elizabeth-Ann nearly died from the combination of her illness and the birth. She was bedridden for two weeks. In that time Alberto learned that the town was in need of a butcher. The man who had previously held that position was set to retire and offered to sell him his shop and the living quarters above it. A deal was struck and the Tuckers became Luna Gorda residents.
Despite being born a month early and in dire circumstances, Sandy was a strapping lad. He was tall and keen-eyed and began helping his father in the butcher shop at a young age. He was smart, but quiet, rarely saying anything until he had thought the words through. He was also a serious child, taking after his father.
Sandy had no brothers or sisters. The complications from the illness his mother suffered at his birth left her unable to have another child. Instead, he latched onto the other children in town. Tom and Luke were the two boys closest to his age and he treated them like his younger siblings.
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