“So it may be that he rode out that way, because he has been acting much like he did years ago when he first told me of the tragedy. Or maybe not.” She shrugged. “Who can ever say about Bill? He is a hard man to get a handle on.”
The Captain hurried to finish off the coffee—he didn’t want Mrs. Doubrett thinking he didn’t like it—and was about to leave when she caught him by the sleeve of his shirt.
“While Bill is a hard one to read, I can tell you this, Captain. He needs something to do. For a man like that, sitting around idle is downright unhealthy.”
The Captain smiled. It was obvious that Mrs. Doubrett cared very much about her lodger’s well-being. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. I’ll keep him busy.”
It took The Captain an hour to find his man. The Sayles place was nestled in a horseshoe-shaped hill covered with scrub brush and a handful of live oaks. There looked to be a small spring at the base of the hill. The ruins of what had once been a house lay in the shade of two big pecan trees, and The Captain wondered if Sayles had planted those when he built the place. At the foot of one of those trees were a pair of graves marked by headstones. Sayles was sitting with his back to the tree’s trunk, and the coyote dun was ground-hitched close by. A warm southerly wind cavorted through the branches and made them dance. Checking his horse some distance away, The Captain was struck by the scene. There was something poignant about it and for a moment he was hesitant, not wishing to intrude. But then Sayles got slowly to his feet and walked in his stiff, horse-warped gait out into the sun. His left arm, bent at the elbow, was pressed tight against his side. The Captain rode on in.
“Afternoon, Bill. Sorry to intrude, but I need to talk to you.”
“Where’s your manners, Captain? Climb down and we’ll jaw some.”
The Captain chided himself for forgetting that Sayles was a stickler for frontier etiquette. He climbed down and followed Sayles, who was making for the nearby spring, and he got the distinct impression he was being steered away from the graves. When he pulled up alongside Sayles he noticed the grimace on the old Ranger’s creased, weathered face. “That bullet what’s still in you giving you some trouble?”
“Nothin’ to speak of. Feel it when I walk.”
“How about when you ride?”
Sayles fished a half-smoked cheroot out of the pocket of his shirt and scraped a thumbnail across the sulfur tip of a strike-anywhere to light up. He inhaled deeply, then let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils before speaking. “You got a job for me.” He wasn’t asking.
“That’s right. Governor Coke wants you to handle something.”
“You’re not sending me back to Huntsville.” Again, it wasn’t a question.
“No. We want you to bring in a killer so we can put him in the Huntsville prison. A real hardcase.”
“Who might that be?”
“John Wesley Hardin. We think he’s in Florida. Have a Ranger working undercover over there and he intercepted a letter addressed to Hardin’s father-in-law that said John Wesley is hiding out near the Alabama border and using the name James Swain. Reckon Hardin’s killed so many men here in Texas he finally had to go somewhere else and crawl under a rock. You’re to go track him down and catch him. Or kill him.” The Captain paused to study Sayles’s profile, trying to read the old Ranger’s expression. But he couldn’t. “Listen, Bill. Hardin is the most dangerous man alive. I know that doesn’t spook you, but you’ve just been shot all to hell and if you don’t feel up to making the trip, then that’s fine. I’ll send someone else.”
Sayles watched the water trickling over the rocks into a small pool as he reviewed what he knew about Hardin. The Captain hadn’t been exaggerating when he called Hardin the most dangerous man alive. Born in Texas to a Methodist circuit preacher, Hardin was in his early or mid-twenties and bragged about killing around forty men. Sayles figured the true number was closer to half that. Hardin demonstrated his violent nature at an early age. As a schoolboy he stabbed a fellow student, nearly killing him. He was fifteen when he killed his first man, claiming his victim had waylaid him, seeking retribution for Hardin beating him in a boxing match. As the dead man was a former slave, and Texas was under Reconstruction law, three Union soldiers were dispatched to bring Hardin in. He killed all three. At seventeen he was arrested in Marshall, Texas, for killing the Waco sheriff, a man Sayles knew personally. While being transported to Waco to stand trial, Hardin killed one of the two lawmen escorting him, and escaped.
Even while pushing a herd of cattle to Abilene, Hardin continued to take lives, tangling with Mexican vaqueros and castle rustlers. Arriving in Abilene, he quarreled with a man who thought poorly of Texans and shot him in the mouth. A few months later, while staying in an Abilene hotel, he shot through a wall into an adjacent room because a man’s snoring was keeping him awake, and killed the snorer. Hunted by town marshal Wild Bill Hickok, he hid himself in a haystack until morning, then stole a horse and made his getaway. The next year he became embroiled in the Sutton–Taylor feud over in Trinity, and was credited with killing two local lawmen known to be allies of the Sutton family. While celebrating his twenty-first birthday with some friends in a Comanche, Texas, saloon, Hardin shot a deputy sheriff. After that he disappeared. Sayles calculated that had been about a year and a half ago.
Being busy fighting to end the Comanche threat during Hardin’s brief but bloody career, Sayles hadn’t paid much attention to the man’s exploits. He remembered hearing that Hardin carried a brace of pistols in holsters sewn to the inside of his jacket, using the cross-draw technique to brandish them. Clearly, having killed so many men, he was quite a pistoleer. And one couldn’t elude justice as long as he had without being pretty smart. None of that worried Sayles too much. One well-made shot could end even the most dangerous man’s career. You just had to make sure you didn’t miss your mark.
“There’s a reward,” said The Captain. “Four thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. You could fix this place up with money like that.”
Sayles looked around. What was left of his house was overgrown with brush. The Comanches had burned it down and he had never even considered rebuilding or replacing it, the site of the greatest tragedy in his life, and the biggest mistake he had ever made. Now, though, it was something to consider.
The Captain didn’t expect the bounty offer to influence Sayles, who had never been a man who seemed concerned about money as long as he had enough to buy ammunition and an occasional bottle of whiskey. So he was surprised when Sayles nodded and said, “That’s a purty fair number. Reckon I’ll go.” Noting the look of surprise on The Captain’s face, he added, “After this I think I might just settle down here. It’s where I should’ve been all along.”
Deciding it was best to steer clear of that remark, The Captain glanced past Sayles at the grave markers and then turned to his horse. Once mounted he said, “Does that mean this will be your last job, Bill?”
Sayles shook his head. “Just sayin’ I’ve been away from home for going on thirty years.”
The Captain nodded. There was something right and comforting in the knowledge that Bill Sayles would do what he was made to do, that when he died it would be violently, not falling to sleep for the last time sitting in a rocking chair.
“When you get to Florida, find a man named Jack Duncan in Gainesville. He’s one of us. I’ll take care of your horses while you’re gone.”
“No need. Only got that one over yonder now, and I’m taking him with me. He and I been through too much together for me to leave him behind.”
The Captain smiled faintly. He suspected that was Sayles’s way of saying the coyote dun meant too much to him to leave behind. It meant extra cost to haul the horse across the country by train and The Captain was a notoriously parsimonious man, but he decided to take care of the cost. After all, it would be a feather in his cap if a member of his company was the one to bring in the notorious and elusive Hardin. “Come by the office and I’ll give you enough to get you th
ere and back. You can catch the Great Northern at Hearne and connect with the Texas and Pacific at Longview and then…”
“I know which way Florida is.”
Sayles gave a wave of the hand as he turned to walk back into the shade of the pecan trees, with the smoke from the cheroot between his lips trailing over a shoulder. The Captain turned his horse and urged it into motion. To those who didn’t know any better, Bill Sayles would seem like nothing more than a broken-down old man. But The Captain knew better, and he felt sorry for John Wesley Hardin.
Standing in the shade at the foot of the two graves, Sayles finished off the cheroot and ground the butt under a heel. He had spent the morning walking around the place, or sitting under one of the pecans, setting free all the memories he had locked away, memories of the good times he had shared here with his wife and daughter. Those times hadn’t lasted long but now he was glad to have had them. This hadn’t always been true. More than once, when those good memories had become too painful to bear, he would conclude that he’d have been better off never to have made them. Today, though, he had let them out and was glad of it. Now this place felt like home again. He could feel the presence of his loved ones. He could see his wife’s warm smile again. Could hear his young girl’s laughter. He still had his family. Even tomorrow, when he started after Hardin, he would have them with him.
Sayles sat down between the crosses, wincing as his old bones complained. One of the crosses was tilted a little, and he straightened it, firmed up the dirt around its base. He wiped at his squinty, steel-cast eyes and softly murmured, “Well, gals, have I got some tales to tell you…”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JASON MANNING was born and continues to live in Texas. He has been writing popular Westerns since 1979, including the Judge series, the Gordon Hawkes novels, the Barlow novels, and the Ethan Payne trilogy. As a historian, Manning has taught at Stephen F. Austin State University, Southern Illinois University, and Montgomery College in Texas. His website The Eighties Club is widely regarded as an excellent resource on the history and pop culture of the 1980s. Visit jason-manning.weebly.com to learn more, or sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Day One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Day Two
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Day Three
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Day Four
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Day Five
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Day Six
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Day Seven
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Three Weeks Later
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CHRISTMAS IN THE LONE STAR STATE
Copyright © 2016 by Jason Manning.
Cover photographs © Shutterstock and getty images.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN: 978-1-250-09117-8
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by
e-mail at [email protected].
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / November 2016
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Christmas in the Lone Star State Page 22
