Christmas in the Lone Star State

by Jason Manning

  “Make up your mind,” said Rath, impatiently. “This is your last chance to die a free man.”

  Looking at the pistol Rath held down at his side, Eddings gauged his chances of reaching the sheriff and wrestling the smoke-wagon out of his grasp. The hammer wasn’t cocked, he noticed. Rath didn’t look concerned, though. He didn’t look at all like a man taking a chance, and Eddings had to concede that he wasn’t. And why would he want to escape? To be on the run, hunted like an animal? He wouldn’t be able to restore his good name, or hold on to his farm, or be with Purdy. Ranger Sayles had said that there was nothing after death. That you wouldn’t even know you were dead. After two years of unremitting misery he found the concept of nothingness to have a certain appeal.

  But there was one problem. He didn’t believe what Sayles had said about dying. He couldn’t believe that his son had never been anything more than flesh and bone, now lying lifeless in a pine box. What had become of his soul? It still existed. Even the Indians—which his own kind considered heathen—believed in spirits and a life beyond the grave. And so did he. His father had not been a churchgoing, God-fearing man, and Eddings could count on the fingers of one hand the number of sermons he had heard in his lifetime. He hadn’t bothered attending the Sunday-morning services at the prison. But he believed in an Almighty God, which meant there was a life after death, a Heaven and a Hell. Joshua resided in the former. And even if he didn’t see his son again in the next life, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his son could see him in this one. So the question was, Did he want his son to know he had taken the coward’s way out? Because that was what Tom Rath was offering him.

  In this moment of clarity, Eddings became reacquainted with self-respect. He raised his head and looked squarely into the glittering eyes of Tom Rath. “I’m not going to take the easy way out. Not this time. Not going to play your game. You’re a cold-blooded murdering snake, Sheriff, and I’ve seen better men than you’ll ever be in Huntsville Prison. As for me, I have to say good-bye to my son, I have to tell him how sorry I am.” He sat down on the bunk. “And while maybe I wasn’t much of a father to him when he was here, I still have a chance to be.”

  Rath angrily slammed the cell door shut and locked it. “You’re just a yellow coward,” he sneered, keenly disappointed. “You deserve to rot in that hellhole of a prison.”

  Eddings nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I do.”

  He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After escaping the lawmen on the Mustang, Mal Litchfield led the way north along the east bank of the Brazos. He was always the one who led the way. Lute was content to let his older brother make the decisions, especially the hard ones. In his opinion there were too many idle pleasures available in life to waste time anguishing over choices to be made. He just took what came his way and let Mal decide which direction afforded them the best chance to avoid the law.

  Mal had spent the few days he and Lute lingered in Galveston listening and chatting, on docks and street corners, hotel lobbies and watering holes, learning a lot about Texas. They had fled England on a ship bound for Galveston because that seemed the most direct route to what, as Englishmen, they believed was the lawless frontier, a vast stretch of sparsely populated and poorly policed territory located between the Mississippi River and California, where men such as themselves could do what they wanted with little fear of consequences. That included Texas, or so he had thought. For this reason, Mal wanted to get across the Brazos and head west. Coming from a place like Whitechapel, which was crawling with bobbies, a place where a person rarely saw a badge struck Mal as being the closest thing to paradise he would ever experience.

  They spent the night in a dilapidated shack deep in the woods and overrun by brush. It was a sleepless night for Mal, who thought there was a fair chance that posses were already out searching for him and his brother. He stood guard, because it was too risky to rely on Lute with the stakes so high. Giving the town of Port Sullivan a wide berth, they came. at midmorning, upon a ferry where what appeared to be a well-traveled east–west road crossed the Brazos. Lute assumed they were going to take the ferry but Mal informed him otherwise, as they sat their stolen mounts close enough to get a clear view of the ferry but not so close they risked being seen. The raft was halfway across the river. An older man and a big strapping youth were manning the stout rope, taking two men and two horses to the other side. The horses blocked his view of the two passengers.

  Mal had already discovered that people out here were curious about strangers, about where others had been, where they were going, what they had seen along the way, and their reasons for traveling. In a country where telegraph stations were few and far between, and newspapers were just as scarce, news largely traveled by word of mouth. For this reason, he and Lute needed to stay away from the ferry.

  “We don’t want anyone knowing we headed west,” he explained.

  Peering after the ferry, Lute said, “So, they take us across and then we drown them. People will assume it was the river that did them in.”

  “Two men killed on a riverboat. Two more disappear just upstream. A smart copper would draw the right conclusion.”

  “Then how the bloody hell do we get across this bloody river?” asked Lute with a petulant scowl. He was sick and tired of being so cold it hurt. “I want walls and a roof—and maybe a ladybird to warm me up.”

  Mal scanned the bleak overcast sky, blinking at the snowflakes that fluttered down into his eyes. It was difficult to tell the time of day with any precision, but he calculated they had roughly an hour or two of daylight remaining. It was impossible to know with certainty whether their wanted posters had reached this far inland, or even how long it would take for word of what had transpired on the riverboat to reach the settlement. But if men weren’t scouring the countryside for them now, they soon would be. He realized they needed to cross the Brazos soon.

  “We’ll go upriver until we find a likely spot and swim our horses over.”

  Lute was aghast. “What? Have you ever tried to swim one of these bloody animals across a river?” He stood in his stirrups to get a better look through the brush at the surface of the Brazos. “And I can’t swim, in case you had forgotten!”

  “You don’t have to. Your horse will. You just hold on to the saddle.”

  For once Lute decided to balk at one of Mal’s decisions. “I say we take the ferry. I’ll kill those two. It’s no problem.”

  Mal sighed. No problem. That was what worried him. The more dead bodies left in their wake, the less likely they would make it into the wild country. He shook his head. “That we don’t take it—that nothing happens to those two blokes down there—will cause anyone who might be on our trail to think it’s likely we’ve remained on this side of the river. And that’s what we want them to think.”

  Lute looked at his brother and fumed. He knew it was pointless to argue with Mal. Sometimes he did anyway, just to get his opinion and objection on the record, but he realized that whether he wanted to or not he was going to have to risk swimming across the river. “Fine,” he muttered. “But if I drown you’ll never forgive myself.”

  “It will be one more thing added to the list,” murmured Mal.

  They continued upstream for about an hour and then Mal saw what he was looking for. A small wooded island hugged the western bank of the Brazos. This far inland the river was considerably narrower than it was where they had boarded the Mustang, and the presence of the island meant they would only have to swim two-thirds of the river’s width. Between the island and the western bank was a narrow channel clogged with debris and a fallen tree, the river tumbling over these obstacles like a staircase of small waterfalls. While Lute stared apprehensively at the expanse of slow-moving brown water between him and the island, Mal sat his saddle on the verge of the thick brush on the eastern side and took a long look up and down the river. He saw no road or farm or structure of any kind, nor pasture or fence l
ine, either.

  “We’ll cross here,” he said, dismounting. “Strip down to your long johns. Bundle up your clothes and use your trouser legs to tie it all together. Boots come off too.”

  Lute stared incredulously at his brother. “Are you off your head? That water must be freezing cold.”

  “Soaked clothes will make you colder still and weigh you down. Your boots will fill up with water and do the same.” Mal was already stripping.

  Lute sighed. Mal knew a lot about many more things than he did, so he was willing to give his brother the benefit of the doubt in most instances. That included crossing a river in the dead of winter, but he didn’t have to like it. He pulled off his mule-ear boots and put his gull and garrote in one, into which he also stuffed his shirt. The boots were wrapped up in the greatcoat that yesterday had been in the possession of the lawman he had garroted aboard the riverboat. He tied this bundle up with the legs of his trousers, which he knotted, and then knotted again at the bottom, fitting the saddlehorn through the space between the knots. His poker winnings had been transferred from the crown of his hat to a coin pouch that resided in a saddlebag, the flap of which he checked to make sure it was securely tied down. But this time he was shivering uncontrollably, and his ordinarily nimble fingers had become clumsy.

  Mal was barefoot and in his long johns and back in the saddle. “Ride your horse into the water,” he told Lute. “If he doesn’t like it when he loses the river bottom give him a good kick and make him swim, and when he starts, slip off to port … the downstream side … and hold on to the saddle.” That said, he urged his horse into the river.

  After the fact, Lute decided that the next ten minutes were the most harrowing of his life—ten minutes during which his youthful sense of invincibility abandoned him entirely. He was afraid of the water, and thought for sure something would go wrong and he would end up drowned, and since God had a sense of humor, he imagined his waterlogged corpse would be carried all the way down the Brazos until the river spit him out into the sea, where sharks would feast upon his remains. His horse balked momentarily when it reached deep water, lunging and snorting, and no sooner had Lute slid off the saddle than he came perilously close to losing his grip. Now it was up to the horse. His life depended on the blaze-faced sorrel’s strength, stamina, and survival instinct.

  Mal’s horse made for the nearest land—the island—and Lute’s followed. After what seemed like an eternity of fear combined with a cold so severe that he was shivering uncontrollably even while every muscle, tendon, and ligament in his body seemed to be tied up in knots, the horse dragged him onto dry land. He had gripped the saddlehorn so tightly it took him a few tries to make his fingers work so that he could let go and collapse in the snowy muck. Mal got him under the arms and stood him up, helping him stay upright until he could be sure his legs would support him. Teeth chattering violently, Mal told him to shed the long johns, which clung to Lute’s lanky body like a cold wet second skin, before putting on the rest of his clothes.

  Their horses stood nearby. They were shaking, too. The island was small, hardly more than a sandbar overgrown with brush and a few young trees. With the water rushing on all sides the horses were not inclined to wander far. Peeling off the long johns, Lute got his clothes bundle off the saddle and on the ground. His fingers still didn’t want to work properly but he finally clawed the bundle open and thanked God that his shirt and trousers, wrapped tightly in the greatcoat he had confiscated, were fairly dry. The greatcoat itself was soaking wet and quite heavy as a result, but he donned it anyway, since the north wind was blowing steadily. It felt like the marrow in his bones was turning to ice. He retrieved his weapons from his boots and shoved them in his pocket, then had to struggle mightily to get his boots on. Taking up his horse’s reins, he led the animal to the center of the island before huddling miserably in the lee of both the horse and the trees that grew in a clump there.

  Once dressed, Mal took a closer look at the jumble of timber debris that had collected in spots and at varying heights between the island and the western bank of the river. He returned to Lute and said, “I think we can lead our horses across,” clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering.

  “We better,” moaned Lute, hugging himself tightly. “I end up in the river again it will be the death of me for certain.”

  Mal took a long look around, grimacing as the raw winter wind seemed to cut right through his damp clothes and freeze his flesh. He was willing to concede that crossing the river in this way had been ill advised, because if they didn’t find shelter they would be in a bad way come nightfall. A deep thicket where they might find enough dry wood to provide kindling for a fire, and dense enough to hide the glow of said fire—that would do, since finding an empty place with a roof on it was unlikely.

  He coaxed Lute to his feet and urged his brother to keep moving, to keep the blood circulating in his limbs. He then turned to his horse, took up the reins, and ventured out onto a natural bridge formed by the trunk of a large oak that had not too long ago been swept downriver and become lodged between island and riverbank. The upper branches had become entangled with the brush on the island, while its roots were anchored in the muddy western bank of the Brazos, so that the portion of the trunk that traversed the swift narrow channel was for the most part clear of limbs. Ten feet below him the water rushed and tumbled violently over other, submerged debris.

  Lute waited until Mal had successfully crossed the natural bridge and then, with a tight grip on the sorrel’s reins, followed in his brother’s wake. The snow and ice on the top of the tree trunk had been broken up by Mal’s booted feet and the iron-shod hooves of his brother’s horse, and when he didn’t lose his footing after the first half-dozen tentative steps Lute began to relax and think he might actually make it safely across. He was glancing at the torrent of water below when his left foot found a patch of ice and shot out to the side. With a strangled shout, he tottered precariously for a heart-stopping instant, a flailing arm catching the wide brim of his hat and knocking it off his head. He tried to steady himself by climbing the reins, but that pulled the horse’s head down sharply and then the sorrel lost its footing and went into the water on its back. Lute clung to the reins almost too long, as though he thought he could keep a thousand pounds of horse from being swept away. But he let the leathers slip away and, still teetering on the trunk, arms windmilling, watched in dismay as the wild-eyed horse whinnied and struggled and careened violently from one tangle of debris to another before being carried out of sight beyond the southern tip of the island.

  “Get down on your hands and knees and crawl!” shouted Mal, then muttered a curse as he looked downriver, hoping to catch sight of the sorrel. He was already in the saddle by the time Lute had crawled across, impatiently extending a hand. “Come on, come on! Get up behind me!” Lute wasn’t even settled astride the cantle of Mal’s saddle before they were off at a canter. They traveled about half a mile downriver before Mal, muttering more epithets, gave up. There was no sign of the sorrel in the water or on the eastern bank. It had either been swept away by the quick currents or managed to clamber up on the west side and elude them.

  “Wasn’t my fault,” muttered Lute. He could tell his brother, sitting there stiff and silent in the saddle, was angry. “Just lost my balance, is all. We’ll find another horse.” He sighed. “But now we’re broke. Every bit of what I won on the riverboat was in the saddlebag.”

  Mal shrugged. “Since when did you ever pay for something instead of just take it?”

  The day was drawing to a close, night shadows gathering under the trees, when Mal found a deadfall in a deep thicket a few miles from the river. As he had hoped, he salvaged some wood dry enough to start a fire while feeling fairly certain that the thicket was so dense no one would see the firelight from a distance. Once the campfire was going, Lute got on his knees and curled his trembling body right over the flames. Mal erected makeshift tripods using limbs from the tangle of deadwood caused by
a tree that had fallen and crushed other foliage. On these tripods he hung his brother’s greatcoat and the blanket roll that had been tied behind the saddle on the stolen horse. He kept feeding the fire for a couple of hours, sitting there with his eyes peering into the pitch-black night, his hand resting on the comforting shape of the pistol in the pocket of his peacoat. Finally thawed out, Lute fell asleep sitting up, and Mal laid him on his side and covered him with the blanket once it was reasonably dry.

  * * *

  Mal sat there throughout the night, contemplating the future and dwelling on the past. All in all it had not been a very good day. The previous night, in the cabin aboard the Mustang, he had slept quite well, excited by the prospect of arriving at Port Sullivan, acquiring a couple of mounts by fair means or foul, and then heading westward, a stranger to all who came upon him and his brother. Possibly because he was on the water—albeit a river rather than the ocean—he had dreamed of being on a clipper ship plying the seven seas, a dream that left a smile on his lips when he woke. His good mood had been short-lived, since a few hours later he discovered that wanted posters originating in England had caught up with them. Worse still, they had snuffed out the lives of two lawmen. The situation had become considerably more perilous in a very short period of time.

  His goal was to get as far west of the Brazos as possible without being seen. But they wouldn’t get far with just one mount. Acquiring another, regardless of the means they employed, increased the likelihood of being spotted and then identified. Although he had been in plenty of tight spots before, thanks to the life he led and to his careless brother’s proclivity for violence, Mal still tried to maintain some semblance of order and routine in life. His hope had been that they could travel upriver without incident, disembark at Port Sullivan, and strike out west. Out where there was so much unpopulated territory they could live by their own rules and still avoid dying young, as most wanted men did, if they were smart. But so many things could go wrong—and might have already. He thought about the horse swept downriver. If it was found west of the Brazos, and somehow traced back to the dead lawman … Mal shook his head.