Riding Shotgun

by William W. Johnstone

  * * *

  Buttons Muldoon lit the stage’s side lamps when he and Red Ryan were still an hour out from El Paso. He handled the ribbons in silence for a while and then said, “Red, where do you stand on the extr y hundred dollars Holt Tyler gave us for saving his daughter?”

  “I’m not catching your drift,” Red said.

  “Well, here’s the question . . . does it belong to us or Abe Patterson?”

  “Us, of course,” Red said. His derby hat balanced on the fat bandage around his head. “We did most of the gunfighting with the road agents, and I damned near got killed. Abe gets the fifty dollars for the fare, that’s all.”

  “It’s what I figured, but with you being such a company man an’ all, I wasn’t sure.”

  Red smiled. “Like it says in the Bible, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s . . .’”

  “Is that what it says?”

  “It sure does.”

  Buttons nodded. “Then I guess that’s why they call it the Good Book, huh?”

  “I’d say so, Buttons. It tells us that we should keep Holt Tyler’s hundred bucks, and that’s advice right from the good Lord’s mouth.”

  “Hell, Red, I got to read that book more often,” Buttons said. “What does it say about whiskey and whores?”

  “My boy, read it and you’ll learn,” Red said, grinning.

  * * *

  On the outskirts of El Paso, on the bank of a dry creek, stood an ancient cottonwood, an unremarkable tree except for a heart carved into its trunk and inside the heart the date 1880 and under that the initials JW L EH proclaimed some lovelorn swain’s undying devotion.

  But what made Buttons Muldoon halt the stage was not the heart, but the hanged man swinging from one of the lower tree limbs, his moccasins only a few inches off the ground. Nascha the army scout had died hard. He’d strangled to death, slowly, the life choked out of him by the rough hemp of a noose.

  “Well, they done for him at last,” Buttons said, his face like stone.

  Red Ryan nodded, shocked. “Seems like.”

  Under a copper-colored sky, he climbed down from the stage, found his barlow, and cut the rope. The Apache collapsed in a lifeless heap, and Red said, “Buttons, help me get him into the stage.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” Muldoon said.

  “Leave him on T. C. Lyons’s doorstep,” Red said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon drove into El Paso, the early-evening festivities were in full swing . . . as though the murder of the Apache had gone unnoticed.

  Buttons drove to the sheriff’s office, and the stage jangled to a halt. Scalded by anger, Red jumped down and opened the stage door to retrieve Nascha’s body, then stopped as T. C. Lyons staggered out onto the boardwalk.

  The sheriff had been badly beaten.

  His face was bruised, his left eye swollen shut, and there was blood in his mouth. It looked like his left cheek had been scratched by a knife blade, and his clothing was ripped, the ends of his celluloid collar up around his ears.

  Lyons glimpsed the Apache’s body through the open door of the stage and said, his voice a harsh croak, “Damn you, Ryan, don’t blame me none. I tried to stop them. I did my best to save him.”

  “Who did it, Lyons?” Red said. “Who lynched him?”

  “Half the damned town. I couldn’t fight off half the town.” Then, as though he couldn’t believe it had happened. “They beat me, Ryan. My own town . . . folks I know . . . and they beat me.”

  Lyons took a step toward Red, and then groaned and fell heavily to the boardwalk.

  “He’s out, Buttons. Let’s get him inside,” Red said.

  The four-man orchestra of the nearby saloon played “Oh! Susanna” and boots thumped on a timber floor as Red and Buttons half-carried, half-dragged Lyons inside and dropped him into the chair behind his desk.

  “Where do you suppose he keeps his whiskey?” Red said.

  “Tr y the bottom drawers of the desk,” Buttons said. “Lyons is a bottom-drawer drinker if ever I saw one.”

  Red was sure there was Buttons Muldoon logic there someplace, but he did as the driver said, and sure enough in one of the drawers he found a bottle of Old Crow and glasses. He poured whiskey for Buttons and himself and then a glass for Lyons that he held to the man’s lips.

  “Drink this,” Red said. “It will do you good.”

  Lyon’s eyes fluttered open and he said, “I don’t drink.”

  “You do now,” Red said. He tipped whiskey into the sheriff’s mouth.

  Lyons lurched forward in his chair, coughing, the bite of Old Crow in his throat. “Enough!” he gasped.

  “You back in the land of the living?” Red said.

  “More or less. There’s coffee. Bring me a cup.”

  Muldoon poured coffee from a pot on the stove and brought it to the sheriff. Red waited until the man had taken a gulp and then said, “All right, tell me what happened.”

  “Somebody riled them up, turned a crowd into a mob with free whiskey and wild talk,” Lyons said. “They came for the Apache, and there was no stopping them.”

  “Recognize any of them?” Red said.

  “Hell, Ryan, I recognized all of them.”

  “Good, then after they sober up you can arrest them for murder,” Red said.

  Lyons shook his head. “I got maybe two deputies I can count on. How are three of us going to arrest a hundred men? I try my best to uphold the law in this town, but I’m not about to commit suicide. The beating they gave me was a warning. Next time they’ll shoot.”

  Buttons Muldoon said, “Sheriff, any idea who got the crowd so all-fired excited?”

  “No, I don’t. Somebody with a pile of money to spend and enough of a viper tongue to whip up a mob.”

  “I reckon that description could fit a few men in this town,” Red said.

  “Anybody in mind?” Lyons said.

  “Yeah, I have. But for now, I’ll keep my suspicions to myself.”

  “Somebody wanted that Injun dead real bad,” Lyons said.

  “You’re right about that, and a rope was the best way to shut him up and avoid a trial,” Red said. “For a spell there, your somebody was running just a little bit scared.”

  “Ryan, you should tell me what you know,” Lyons said. “Maybe I can’t arrest a lynch mob, but I can jail the ringleader.”

  “Later,” Red said. “Right now, I know nothing. I still have some investigating to do.”

  “Damn it, Ryan, you think you’re a lawman, don’t you?” Lyons said.

  “No, I don’t. I’m a shotgun guard, but as such I am a representative of the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, and they would expect me to see justice done. The old Butterfield outfit always thought that way and so does Wells Fargo.” Red lifted Lyons’s cup from the desk and handed it to him. “Drink some more coffee, Sheriff. Earlier today, my driver and I were set upon by road agents, and we have a report to make.”

  Lyons stared hard into Red’s face with his one good eye. “How many road agents?”

  “Four.”

  “How many dead road agents?”

  “Four.”

  Lyons shook his head. “You’re a trial and a tribulation to me, Ryan.”

  “You want the report?” Red said.

  “Did this encounter take place within the city limits?”

  “No. It happened out near the Franklin Mountains.”

  “Thank God, then I don’t need to hear your report. Tell it to the county sheriff.”

  “There is no county sheriff,” Red said.

  “I know,” T. C. Lyons said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon ate a very early breakfast and then kicked their heels for a while until they figured it was time to rouse the town undertaker and arrange for Nascha’s burial.

  To their surprise, though it was still short of six in the morning, Thaddeus Wraith was already up and doing.
Wearing the traditional black-as-a-raven’s-wing frock coat and top hat of his melancholy profession, Wraith was a hopping little bird of a man with bright black eyes and a skin as white as parchment paper that never tanned in the Texas sun. The undertaker was washing his elaborate black and silver hearse when Muldoon drove the stage right into his front yard.

  Wraith dropped the washing cloth into a bucket of soapy water, dried his hands on the skirt of his coat, and bobbed his way to the stage. He looked up at Red and said, “Good morning, sir, can I be of assistance? And may I say it’s a fine morning to be alive.”

  “It’s fine to be alive any morning,” Red said.

  “Just so,” Wraith said. He smiled, revealing teeth as big and yellow as ivory piano keys. “And what can I do for you this fine day?”

  “I have a burying for you, undertaker,” Red said.

  “Ah, yes, of course. What other reason would you have for visiting the premises of Thaddeus Wraith? And the whereabouts of the deceased loved one?”

  “In the stage, and we have to get him out of there,” Red said. “I’m coming down.”

  Ryan climbed down from the box and opened the stage door. Wraith looked inside, hesitated a moment, then withdrew his head.

  “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that an Apache gentleman?”

  “Yes, Jicarilla.”

  Wraith looked pensive and then said, “There are few surprises in my profession, but being asked to bury a savage in the city’s Concordia Cemetery must be listed among them.”

  “You don’t want to do it?” Red said.

  “Why, of course I want to do it, is that not my calling in life? Am I not the caretaker of the dead?” Wraith said. “Ah . . . judging by the deceased’s face, his death was not a peaceful one.”

  “He was lynched by a mob yesterday,” Red said.

  “I heard a commotion and I knew something was afoot, but a lynching . . . how utterly horrible.”

  “So, you’ll do the job?” Red said.

  “Yes, I will, and at cost, dear sir,” Wraith said. “At cost, mind you.”

  “Send the bill to Sheriff Lyons,” Red said.

  “That is most satisfactor y,” the little undertaker said. “Now it so happens, that I have a nice grave already dug, awaiting a lucky occupant. I believe it will fit the deceased most comfortably. Do you have a casket preference, Mister—”

  “Ryan. Red Ryan, shotgun guard. And just joining us here is my associate and driver, Mr. Muldoon. We work for the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.”

  “And it’s an honor to meet you both. I’m very fond of members of the stagecoach profession, especially shotgun guards. I’ve buried quite a number of them in my day. Now, about the casket, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Pine box,” Red said. He saw Wraith’s face fall and added, “It’s all Sheriff Lyons can afford.”

  “Here, undertaker, how come you have a grave all ready?” Buttons said. “Is it so you’re always ready for future customers, huh?”

  “Ah, no, stage driver. The vacant grave involves a morality tale that can teach us all a lesson about life and death,” Wraith said.

  “And what mought that be, if’n you don’t mind me asking,” Buttons said.

  “Simply that you can flee the Grim Reaper, but you can’t outrun him,” Wraith said. He saw confusion in Button’s face and said, “The gent who was to occupy the grave was thought to have died, and his wife had the hole dug and whiskey, rum, beer, and chocolate cake ordered for the wake. But, to everyone’s surprise, the presumed deceased recovered consciousness, an occurrence the local Catholic priest called a miracle and the doctor called a damned mystery because he was sure the gent had been as dead as a doornail.”

  “And the wife asked you to plant him anyway, so not to spoil a good wake, not with all that whiskey, rum, and beer on order,” Buttons said.

  “Well, I can hardly bury a gent alive. But I must confess that the wife was not pleased by her husband’s return to the land of the living,” Wraith said. “By all accounts he was an abusive drunk and a whoremonger, as future events would soon show, but she didn’t advocate burying her spouse alive. Oh, dear me, no, that would have been quite illegal.”

  “Yeah, I can see how the law could frown on that,” Buttons said.

  Wraith’s face thinned into a solemn gray mask, and then he said, “On the morning of the day following his resurrection, the gentleman in question fled El Paso with an eighteen-year-old whore and all the money in his bank account. As a farewell, he gave his wife a black eye and then told me where to shove my grave. ‘Beware,’ I told him in plain English, just as I’m speaking to you now, ‘Death always rectifies his mistakes.’ But instead of heeding me and falling to his knees in prayer, Archibald Scratcher, for, unlovely as it sounds, that was the gentleman’s name, said, ‘I’m out of here. The grim reaper will have to catch me first.’”

  Shadows shrank as the sun rose in a pale sky, and nearby among the pine trees songbirds greeted the new day. Wraith had stopped talking, and now Buttons urged him to start again. “So, what happened to Archie?” he said.

  “Alas, the tale grows even more poignant,” Wraith said. “And stranger, much stranger.”

  “I’m listening,” Buttons said. “Ain’t you, Red?”

  Ryan’s head was bowed, concentrating on the cigarette building in his fingers. Without looking up he said, “Every word.”

  “Well then, I will proceed,” the undertaker said. “Now, imagine five miles to the north of us a tall cottonwood tree, and imagine a beautiful young Mexican woman standing under that tree. Now listen to the testimony of a teenaged whore named Mattie Wells that she presented to the county coroner.” Wraith reached into his frock coat and produced a paper that he unfolded and read, “‘The woman was Mexican all right, wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse that showed most of her tits. Unlike mine, they were big, real big. Well, Archie took a look at the woman, studied her tits and then mine, and told me to get lost. He pushed me off the mule, and I landed on my ass. He rode to the woman and she smiled at him. Well, she put her arms around Archie’s neck, kissed him, and a second later he dropped dead at her feet. The woman didn’t move or anything, she just stood and stared at me, kind of friendly, as if we were kin or something, and all the time that son of a—I mean to say, Archie was lying dead at her feet, his face turning blue. I don’t know what happened to the woman, because I grabbed Archie’s wallet and then caught up the mule and lit a shuck back to El Paso. And that’s all I can tell you about Archie Scratcher.’”

  Thaddeus Wraith refolded the paper and put it back in his coat. “I’m keeping this testimony for my memoirs,” he said. He placed a bony hand on Buttons’s shoulder and said, “My friend, death comes in many guises, from ravening wolf to beautiful woman, be prepared and know that escape is impossible.”

  “Hey, what happened to Archie’s body?” Buttons said. “Didn’t you go looking for it so the widow could have the party?”

  “In accordance with Mrs. Scratcher’s wishes, yes, indeed I did,” Wraith said. “Apparently, Mr. Scratcher had been torn to pieces, by wild animals or some other agency I know not which. I took a few scraps of bone and hair to the widow in a clock box, but she said she wasn’t paying to bury a couple of ounces of dead husband and to throw it away, which I did.”

  Red Ryan said, “Well now a better man will lie in Archie’s grave.” He took a medal the size of a silver dollar from his pocket and handed it to Wraith. “Pin this on his shirt, he won it in the wars.”

  A small, mean-spirited man with thin lips clamped shut tight as a steel purse had drifted close to Red and overheard what he had just said. His name was Miles Landis, and he was one of Wraith’s four assistants. At the first opportunity, he stole away in the direction of the saloons, determined to cause trouble.

  And he did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Platte River Saloon and Dance Hall was owned by a former rum and sugar, and slave importer by the name of Snow Jackson, a mean, vi
olent lowlife who catered to others of the same breed. Of all the saloons in El Paso, the worst dive was the Platte, and more men had been rolled, stabbed, or shot in its adjoining alley than the town’s other drinking establishments combined. It was a place for hard, dangerous men and, apart from the occasional rube attracted to its gambling, cheap whores, and cheaper whiskey, those were its clientele.

  Big Jim Black, a moody, menacing, obscenely savage fist, boot, and skull fighter and named gunman, reigned as the dark lord of the Platte, feared by all, loved by none. Standing four inches over six feet, he was massive in the shoulders and chest, with huge hands and fingers like steel grappling hooks. His hair and eyes were the color of green slime, and his soul was a cesspit of mortal sin. There was no humanity in him, no pity, no love, no tenderness, just a scalding hatred for humanity, man, woman, and child, that ran in his veins like liquid fire. In his thirty-five years of life Big Jim had killed seven men with his bare hands, crippled five more, shot a dozen other gunmen, one of them Dawson G. Taylor, the famed Houston gunfighter and bounty hunter who’d boasted eight kills and three shared. A whispered rumor persisted that Black had murdered several women, all of them whores he was pimping, but that was never confirmed, and no one ever brought up the subject within his hearing.

  When Miles Landis slunk into the Platte, Jim Black was partaking of his morning bourbon and cigars in the company of Seth Roper. The two gentleman gunfighters had similar interests, desires, and ambitions, and they dominated the saloon with their mere presence.

  Landis sidled up to Black, and the gunman looked down at him with distaste, as though he was studying a louse. So great was the little undertaker’s agitation and eagerness to be seen as a person of importance bearing urgent news, Landis spoke to Black first, a severe breach of etiquette that was noticed even by the hungover and insignificant morning crowd, the more influential sporting set still abed.

  “Mr. Black, did ye hear?” Landis said.

  It took a while for Black to answer while Roper stood aloof and a little irritated by the unwelcome intrusion of a nobody.