by Lou Bradshaw
It was a little ahead of train time when Blaze stepped out on the hotel porch, where I had been sitting in the shade of the upstairs balcony. He stood there searching the street, for what I didn’t know. My guess was, he was just a cautious man. Then Clayton stepped out dressed like a dude in a mighty fine suit. Whoever was getting off that train must at least be a governor or a senator. I was happy he hadn’t asked me to dress for the occasion because I would still be there in those same clothes.
He asked if I was ready, and I stood up and motioned for him to lead the way. We walked three abreast across the street with Clayton slightly in the lead. It took us all of twenty seconds to reach the little station made from a caboose with the wheels taken off. The platform was partly covered, so we stood in what shade there was. I went and asked the telegraph man if the train was on time, and he let me know it was about fifteen minutes late. I told Clayton and he just grunted then lit a cigar.
We stood there waiting as townspeople started moving up on the platform. Most of them had no business there other than relief from boredom. The train was about the only entertainment those people had. It was almost as good as a tent show or a revival. But it only lasted a few minutes. As long as it took for a few passengers to get off and possibly a few to get on, while the big boiler took on water. It was all the entertainment they had.
When the crowd started moving forward, I turned around and faced them. They shied away and moved off to the side. When Blaze saw what I was doing, he turned to face the crowd and kept them at bay. Carson moved in and helped keep folks back. The people in back were pushing forward and I froze a few with a pointed finger and a stare… they backed off. I didn’t exactly care to treat people that way, but it was all part of the act.
There were no more than twenty or so folks on there, but the platform was so small, it seemed like a hundred. Normally there wouldn’t be more than a dozen, but with the extra ranch hands in town, the number had swollen.
Off in the distance, we heard the whistle and could see a plume of smoke. The train was finally in sight. We all watched as it grew larger and larger, until the brakes were applied and it came hissing and chuffing into the station. It stood there huffing and shooting out blasts of steam, while the brakeman pulled the water spout over the tank and started the flow of water.
The conductor at the far end put his little step on the platform and turned to help someone down. Looking over my shoulder, all I could tell was, it was a woman. So there must be someone else getting off. The conductor steadied her descent, and got her firmly on the platform. Then he picked up his step box and climbed back on the train.
Those gathered behind us started to murmur and move forward. My attention was refocused on them. When they had backed off again, I turned and looked at the lady again. My first reaction was… Dang!
Now, I’m a man who pays attention to pretty women, and this lady deserved a lot of attention, and I mean a whole lot of attention. She was young and trim in her plain gray traveling dress. My trained eye placed her at eighteen or nineteen… a maiden fair, and on the verge of womanhood. I had heard the term, “A rare beauty,” before, but had never really known what it meant until that moment. I was flat out smitten.
She stood there for a few seconds and started slowly walking toward the assembled crowd. You could see her searching each face as she came forward. Finally, Burley Clayton cleared his throat and said, “Emma?”
The vision that had caused my heart to skip several beats stopped, she looked at him, and started running toward him. She literally threw herself into his arms and sobbed. I felt my life was over. The woman I had been looking for all of my twenty two years had come to be with a hardened criminal, bank robber, and most surely a killer. Did she know? Did she care?
Burley turned to me and with a tilt of his head, told me to get rid of the crowd. I held my arms out and said, “All right folks go on about your business. The train’s leaving and there’s nothin’ to see here.” The smart ones started moving away. The crowd dissolved quicker than it had formed. With Blaze encouraging them from the right and Carson adding some encouragement from the left, the platform was soon almost empty.
The only remaining holdouts were a few leftover cowhands. And a cowboy is going to put a brave front if it kills him, and sometimes it does. So I walked right into the middle of the group and threw a punch to the left eye of the toughest looking one there. He spun around and banged into the wall of the station. By that time, Carson and Blaze were backing my move.
“Now you boys were asked nicely to leave… So why don’t we let those folks have a private moment?”
They started to move away, and as they did, I took hold of the one I’d hit by the arm and said, “Sorry about the sucker punch, pal, but if I hadn’t broken the tension, someone would wind up dead… And you looked like the one I didn’t want to be facin’ if it came to a brawl or a shootin’.”
All he said was, “Yeah… thanks a lot… maybe next time.”
“I promise to give you first punch.” I said as he moved on.
He turned and tried to grin saying, “I think you would.”
As Carson and Blaze watched them walk across the dusty street heading for the saloon, I turned to the only couple standing on the platform.
Chapter 8
They were still clinging to each other when Carson and Blaze came to where I was standing. They pulled apart and looked at each other long and hard. I couldn’t see the expression on Burley’s face, but the young woman’s face told me everything I didn’t want to know. He pulled a silk kerchief from his breast pocket and tenderly dabbed her eyes. She laughed through her emotions and took the kerchief to finish the job.
Burley Clayton turned to us and motioned us forward… that was the last place I wanted to be. My mind was telling me to pull my Colt, and shoot him where he stood. But my better sense told me I couldn’t do that so I didn’t. We moved forward, and I knew how a condemned man feels climbing those thirteen steps up to a gallows. But I forced myself forward, knowing that no matter what he had to say would cause my heart to break.
Clayton had turned around so that both of them were facing us. He had his right arm around her back with a firm grip on her shoulder. “Gentlemen,” he started, “I want to introduce Miss Emma Clayton… my daughter… We haven’t seen each other since she was eight years old.” It was all I could do to keep from doing hand springs. Clayton went on and introduced us each by name.
She extended her hand first to Carson, then to Blaze, and finally to me, “Mister Tate, why did you hit that young cowboy for no reason?”
I held on to her hand until she drew it away before I said, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I hoped you hadn’t seen that. Those fellas were a bunch of good boys, but a cowpuncher has a code he has to live by. And part of that code says he doesn’t take orders from anyone who isn’t payin’ his wages… unless it’s the law… and that ain’t always sacred. I had to be aggressive and put out a fire before it broke into flames and someone got bad hurt.
Her brows knitted and she looked to her father. He nodded and said, “That’s true, Honey, JL handled it the way I would have.”
With that said she took my hand again and gave me a smile that put my head to spinning. Fortunately, her father broke the spell by saying, “Forgive me Emma, but I’m meeting with the crew in a few minutes… Blaze and Carson, you two come with me. Tate, would you see that Emma gets settled in the hotel… Carson will fill you in later… Wait there for me.”
I arranged with the telegraph agent to have her trunk and suitcase taken to the hotel, and I picked up her satchel and carried it in my left hand keeping my right free. I knew Clayton had put her in my care without saying so. She was no child who needed watching, but Odessa was a raw frontier town without so much as a town marshal or deputy. A very few years ago, the Comanches had cut a wide swath through this whole area. And I knew for certain that all savages didn’t wear feathers and paint. Some wore Stetsons and high heeled boots.
As we started, she slipped her hand into the crook of my right arm, but I shifted the satchel to my right hand and offered my left to her. I figured it would be easier to drop the bag than disentangle her hand if my gun was needed for the half minute trip. I just didn’t know who was around and way too many people knew about the gold to make me comfortable.
“Do you really think you’ll need that thing, Mister Tate?”
“Likely not,” I told her, “but I’m a cautious man. Your father would be devastated if anything happened to you, and so would I.”
“How gallant… a regular Sir Lancelot.” She smiled again, and neither of my feet was touching the ground.
I got her checked in and safely to her room, then a half grown boy came dragging her travel trunk and portmanteau across the street on a hand cart. Between the two of us we got her luggage up the stairs and delivered. She thanked us, and I told her I’d be in the lobby if she needed anything. I got another smile… I gave the kid a two bit piece instead of the nickel I’d planned.
Sitting there trying to read a month old San Antonio newspaper, my thoughts kept going back to the occupant of room twenty two. I kept telling myself, she was the daughter of a criminal… a man I would surely have to arrest if not kill. There was no point in thinking about her. It was just plumb stupid and a waste of time, but there I sat looking at a two month old newspaper from a place I’d never been. Now that was wasting time.
After a little bit, she came down and let me know that she still had unpacking to do, but she didn’t know how long they’d be here. She sat in an overstuffed armchair set at an angle so that two people could sit and have a conversation or share the lamp. The chair was large enough to make a big man comfortable, which only exaggerated the fact that she was anything but a big man. It swallowed her up, and only made her look smaller than she already was.
Emma had freshened up and changed into something less fundamental and durable. If it was at all possible, she was even prettier than she had been stepping off the train. She had soft brown eyes, the kind that you can look into and lose whatever it was you had been thinking about when you looked. What the hell was I doing even noticing that she was a beautiful woman? This wouldn’t end well. For one thing, everything she thought she knew about me was a lie.
We talked for a good twenty or so minutes, oh there was nothing of any importance. We were just two people who were getting to know each other. She did most of the talking about growing up on the gulf coast. She was open about her father having spent the last ten years in state prison. Until he was locked up, she didn’t know what he did, she just knew he was gone a lot. She had overheard her mother and her grandmother arguing about it.
Later she asked her mother about it and found out the truth. Her father had been the victim of a scheme to embezzle money from a shipping company in Corpus Christi. “When the scheme fell apart, the others made my father the scapegoat. But we got through it. Papa had invested well and Mother was able to keep the house. When she died, I was only thirteen, and the courts sold everything and put me in a boarding school. I was there until I was eighteen…which was last month. They gave me what was left of the estate.”
“I had been writing to Papa the whole time he was gone, so when he learned I was through with boarding school, he sent word to meet him here. A friend of his came and made all the arrangements and helped me move my things.”
“Oh, I know Papa was in prison, and I know he was somehow involved in a fraud scheme, but no one got hurt… It wasn’t like he had shot people.”
Not only was she getting lies from me, she had gotten them from her mother for years. And I was one of those who would have to expose her mother and myself for liars… This could not end well… at all.
She sat telling her story, while I stood nearby listening and wondering what kind of mess I would be stirring up. Or was she living in a dream world? Was she refusing to think past what her mother had told her about her father’s involvement? Involvement hell! He had been up to his ears in a gold shipment robbery, and probably had something to do with the deaths of some of the others in the gang. It was a lead pipe cinch that he killed, or at least tried to kill the others who knew where the gold had been reburied.
I was on the verge of getting mad, when Burley walked in. A few minutes more of hearing how they had led her down a false trail, and I would have unloaded the whole thing on her. Doing so I would have broken her heart and filled it with hatred for me. And I would have blown the whole operation to dust. It was getting hard enough for both Carson and me to swallow taking orders from a jailbird killer.
He had himself a prison gang, probably for protection and extortion, but that don’t make him a boss. It especially doesn’t make him my boss. When this operation is over and finished, I was going to take Mr. Clayton out to the wood shed.
But as he walked through the door, the job came first. We had the perfect in, and I wasn’t about to blow it… not because I was a little peeved.
“Carson will tell you, but I’ll let you know anyway.” He said. “We’ll be leaving at first light tomorrow.”
I turned the welfare of the lovely Emma over to her father and started for the stairs and the room I shared with Carson.
Behind me I heard Emma ask her father, “Leave at first light… Where are we going?”
“Well… that’s kind of a problem, Honey; I won’t be able to take you on this trip. It’s through some mighty rough and dangerous territory. There might be wolves, Injuns, banditos, and who knows what else….” I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He had lowered his voice and I was at the top of the stairs. I heard them coming up the stairs, so I ducked into our room and waited with my ear pressed to the door, hoping he would give some indication of where we were heading.
Sweet little Emma was not so little when it came to getting what was important to her. As they reached the top of the stairs, I heard her say, “I’ve lost my father once… I’m not going to let that happen again.”
Burley replied, “But I’ve made arrangements for you to stay with a nice family here in Odessa, We won’t be gone for more than three weeks… There’s no wagon trails… It’ll be all mules and horses. There won’t be room to carry your trunk and your gay dresses. It’s all sweat and grit.”
“I love you, Papa, but if you leave me alone again, I’ll be on the next train to Ft. Worth… from there I’ll go to the coast.” They stepped inside and I couldn’t hear what they were saying for a few minutes. And that was all right because that was private conversation between father and daughter, and it had no bearing on our case.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, Clayton was standing there looking like a whipped pup. I let him in.
“You think you can find a good horse and saddle here in town… Emma’s going with us. She seems to have her mother’s strong will… If you can get a side saddle… so much the better.”
I think the livery still has the horse and rig that Cassidy rode in on. He might make a deal on it… I’ll see what I can do.”
Clarence at the livery made a good deal on Cassidy’s horse… pretty much just what he had in feed and keep plus a little to boot. He let the saddle go cheap, but kept the rifle. I told him to just have it ready to go with the rest of the bunch in the morning. He told me he hadn’t missed a scheduled take off in over twenty years.
I gave Clayton the news and how much he owed Clarence, and that there wasn’t a side saddle to be had in town. His eyes blinked a couple of times, like he just then realized what he had let himself in for.
Then I went looking for Carson. He was right where I thought he would be, sipping a beer in the saloon. I moved in beside him and finished off the beer he had just set down.
“Hey!” He said. I was just getting set to drink the rest of that.”
“You wouldn’t have liked it…. it was goin’ flat… besides, we need to have a pow wow. If you’ll take a little walk with me, I’ll see if I can give you something to think ab
out… something that might just turn this whole deal upside down.”
So we took off down the street toward the store. We walked until we were out of earshot in all directions.
So I started with, “The girl’s comin’ with us in the morning.”
“What’d you do boy, find a bottle of Old Skull Buster up there at the hotel? He’s not stupid enough to do that. Why, he don’t even know if he’ll live through it… What makes him think that little slip of a girl would be able to stand up to what’s comin’ up?”
“She took to poutin’ and goin’ on till he must have said yes, ‘cause he sent me off to find another horse and saddle for her… I was able to get Cole Cassidy’s horse and rig.”
“That’s only part of the problem, JL, you get a woman… especially a pretty woman and there’s no end of the problems it can create…. Supposin’ you take a shine to her, and she takes a shine to… say… Bridger. That could end in a knifin’ or a shootin’. It just can’t be a good thing, even if you take that part out of it, you still got all that rough country and harsh conditions… and… Heaven help us.”
Chapter 9
At first light, we were all there and ready to move out. We brought the mules out of the corral and fixed lead ropes so that they were strung out eight of them one behind another. Burley led off with Blaze beside him and Emma slightly behind. Morgan took the lead mule with Bridger keeping them moving from the rear. Carson took the flank, and I was designated as rear guard.
Those first light departures were usually pretty nippy, even as far south as we were. There just wasn’t much to hold the sun’s heat over night. This was still bald prairie, and one thing about the prairie that you could always count on was the wind. And the wind did blow. Mostly it came from the southwest, but it could just as likely come from the south and blow nothing but dust and heat. It was sweaty, dusty, and gritty behind the caravan. I wondered how Emma was faring with the sun and wind, but I had no reason to think about her… but I did anyway.
