by J. Lee Butts
And Kill Them All
J. Lee Butts
Determined to find her family's murderers, fifteen-year-old Clementine Webb vows to hunt them down, one by one. Texas Ranger Lucius Dodge tries to talk some sense into the little lady. Trading lead with stone- cold killers is men's work. At least it's what Lucius always thought- until darling Clementine shows her aim is true.
SIXTEEN AND SET TO KILL . . .
From the corner of my eye, I saw the little pistol flash up in the girl’s hand. Immediately recognized the weapon as a New Line .32-caliber pocket pistol.
For reasons I could not have explained to God, or anyone else, afterward, the fact that Clementine Webb had the barrel of a loaded weapon pressed to the end of the dying Roscoe Pickett’s nose just didn’t register with me for about half a second. When it finally dawned on me what was about to occur, I made an awkward, squatting lunge at the miniature shooter just as the gun went off. Burning powder singed my fingers when they wrapped around the weapon’s tiny cylinder.
The little gal’s well-aimed bullet hit Roscoe right in the mouth. A searing chunk of peanut-sized lead knocked all his front teeth out, carved a tunnel through the soft tissue at the back of his throat, and blasted its way through a spot in his neck just below the skull bone . . .
“Damnation, girl,” I yelped, then flicked a glance at Roscoe Pickett’s shattered teeth, blasted skull, and sagging corpse. I shook my head in total disbelief, then locked Clementine in a narrow, steely gaze and added, “You’ve grown a mighty thick layer of hard bark around your heart since this morning, darlin’.”
Praise for J. LEE BUTTS
“J. Lee Butts keeps his readers on the edge of their seats.”
—True West
“A writer who can tell a great adventure story with authority and wit.”—John S. McCord, author of the Baynes Clan novels
“One of the top writers of Westerns working in the genre today.” —Peter Brandvold, author of Helldorado
“Lawdog has it all. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Jack Ballas, author of A Town Afraid
“J. Lee Butts is one fine Western writer whose stories have a patina of humor; nonstop action . . . and a strong sense of place.”
—Roundup Magazine
For My Wife, Carol
I am daily inspired by her strength, tenacity,
determination, and will to survive.
and
For My Good Friend Linda McKinley
Perhaps my most enthusiastic cheerleader,
collaborator, and critic. She made me a better writer.
This is one of the few efforts I’ve produced
that doesn’t have Linda’s fingerprints on it,
along with her cat’s tracks.
I will miss her more than mere words can tell.
O! My offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
a brother’s murder.
—Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3
The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
—Proverbs 4:18
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her guilt away?
—The Vicar of Wakefield
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special tip of the sombrero and bow at the waist for Sandy Harding. Perhaps the most personable and amiable editor I’ve had the pleasure to work with. And many thanks to Faith Black for her stellar help with this particular piece of work. Muchas gracias to Roxanne Blackwell Bosserman. She helped start me down this rugged trail years ago and still shouts encouragement from the sidelines when I appear ready to falter. And, as mentioned on the previous page, especially to my friend Linda McKinley. Not sure what I’m going to do without her editorial skills, advice, and willingness to spend hours discussing my writing. We made a good team. She’s gone on ahead to scout the great unknown. I miss her every time I sit down at the computer.
PROLOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE READER
ATOP THE CREST of a tidal wave of unprecedented death and destruction, they poured into Texas—desperate, hard as nails, the men of blood. Men who were forged in the crucible of America’s bloody Civil War and tempered to the consistency of weapons-grade steel. Their conflict-acquired skills, stock, and trade often included brutality, murder, and a penchant for vicious mayhem. The unfortunate citizens who crossed the gore-drenched paths of those war-hardened gents referred to them as gun-men, shootists, gunfighters, or pistoleers—a grouping of benignly euphemistic terms that every man, woman, and child who lived between 1865 and 1900 understood to really mean man killers.
The frontier West’s slayers of men came from every sort of background imaginable. Prior to the great war of Yankee aggression on the South, many worked the land as hardscrabble farmers. At one time or another, some pursued employment as storekeepers, dentists, barbers, and butchers. Others worked as actors, doctors, lawyers, clerks, miners, buffalo hunters, Pony Express riders, or school-teachers. More than a few had once borne the badge of law enforcement officers.
Regardless of their previous backgrounds, upon arrival in the great Lone Star State, they plied whatever trade necessary to survive. In the process, a goodly number became double-dealing, card-marking, itinerant gamblers, swindlers, thugs, pimps, stock and property thieves, footpads, train and stagecoach robbers, con men, pickpockets, tricksters, rapists, murderers, and assassins of every stripe, variety, and type imaginable.
Life for such dangerous gentlemen (for the brotherhood of audacious hired gun hands, bandits, and charlatans proved almost entirely male) could generally be described as wicked, violent, and in most cases, extremely short. Death usually came for the men of blood by way of a gun or knife. And while a miniscule number of the most infamous slaughterers managed to die in their beds as the result of natural causes, or at the end of a legally applied length of oiled Kentucky hemp, most went to the judgment of their Maker surrounded by a roiling cloud of acrid-smelling, freshly spent gunpowder accompanied by the bitter, coppery taste of spilled blood.
A short listing of some of their names literally defines the real West in that period between the Civil War and the dawn of the twentieth century. Their grisly ranks included the likes of Luke Short, Longhair Jim Courtright, Clay Allison, Henry Newton Brown, Ben Thompson, and John King Fisher. Such man killers were the ill-famed contemporaries of Dallas Stoudenmire, Henry McCarty, the James boys, the Younger brothers, Jim Reed, Harry “The Sundance Kid” Longabaugh, Tom Starr, John Sellman, Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan, Sam Bass, and John Wesley Hardin. The worst of them all was the dignified, churchgoing assassin for hire, Deacon Jim Miller—also know as Killin’ Jim, a shotgun-carrying back shooter of the first water.
Perched on the razor-thin precipice between living to a ripe old age and an early death stood the guardians of law, life, liberty, and civility. Men charged with the protection of the weak and easily intimidated from those who would, without compunction, rob or murder any luckless citizens unable to defend themselves. Unfortunately, cold-eyed killers would commit such dastardly deeds for little more than the change an undertaker could find in a dead man’s pockets.
These stalwart defenders of law-abiding citizens, the edicts of God, and the rules of men included heroic figures like Texas Ranger Captains Lee H. McNelly and John B. Armstrong. Men of grit and backbone such as John R. Hughes, Jim Gillett, Heck Thomas, and Texas John Slaughter. And while these redoubtable gentlemen diligently served the state and their fellows as rangers, marshals, deputy marshals, police officers, and sheriffs, they often found that even their extensive experience and talent could accomplish little against the baddest of the bad men.
At such critical
junctures, local, city, and state law enforcement officers often found themselves compelled to call upon a special breed of men who could bring the worst malefactors to book. Dedicated men gifted with nerves of iron. Men who would, without remorse, ride the practitioners of evil to ground like the brutish animals they really were, drag them back to justice, or kill them one and all.
What follows is a tale of viciousness and ugly death taken from the heroic adventures of one such man. A man who would, when circumstances required, do whatever he deemed necessary to bring evil to heel. In guarded whispers his numerous enemies called him Lucius “By God” Dodge.
1
“BLEW HIS THREE BIGGEST TOES CLEAN OFF.”
DON’T KNOW ABOUT anybody else, but until recently I’ve always been partial to hot weather—the steamier the better. Scorching sunshine coming down hot enough to bake blisters on a bayou-dwelling turtle’s hard-shelled back used to be just my cup of tea.
But, you know, for unfathomable reasons, if it gets too hot or too cold these days, I swear ’fore Jesus, seems like each and every one of my ancient hurts and past injuries start to aching something fierce. And usually, all of them at the exact same instance. Seems the rigors of advanced old age can sure enough border on a downright hellish torture at times.
Especially problematic are the numerous bullet holes in my antiquated, wrinkled ole hide. Last I counted there were eight of them. ’Course I might’ve missed a couple here and there. Way I figure it, if I’d a got shot about two more times, back when my teeth were still new and not worn down so much, my whole body just might’ve fell apart like a newspaper suit in a rainstorm.
Woke up around midnight. Horse killer of a heat wave must have blown through Domino and the Sulphur River country whilst I was asleep. I was hurting like hell from the blue whistler that motherless brigand Irby Teal put in the meaty part of my right side. Ragged vent’s just above the spot where my pistol belt used to hang.
As bullet wounds go, ole Irby’s unwanted outlet never really amounted to much—leastways not till here of late. Now she throbs like the pure dickens when excessive heat, or numbing cold, hits me just right. Damn that sorry-assed weasel for being a pretty good shot with a pistol, by God.
Anyhow, ole Irby’s antique pain got me up and prowling around the house in the middle of the night. That achy, scarred-over hole set me to thinking about how I came to have the ugly blemish on my hoary hide. As I remember the events surrounding the shooting and its later consequences, me’n Boz Tatum had been running buddies and man hunters for about three or four years back in ’82 or ’83—no longer certain of the exact year to tell the truth. Captain Horatio Waggoner Culpepper, commander of Ranger Company B, sent us down to Rio Seco ’long about then.
At the time, our loose-knit bunch of hard-eyed lawdogs was headquartered out on the banks of the Trinity River a bit north of Fort Worth. Before we left town and headed south, Cap’n Culpepper had me and Boz up to his pavilion. Personally gave us strict instructions as to the disposition of a stack of boot-wearing manure named Boston Teal, younger brother of the aforementioned Irby.
Remember as how Boz didn’t care much for the assignment from the outset. Wagged his leonine head back and forth, then mumbled, “ ’S a long damned way to Rio Seco, Cap’n. ’Bout as far south as a body can go in Tejas and not have to speak Messican like a native.”
Culpepper nodded. “That’s right, Boz,” he said. “Near sixty miles north of San Felipe Del Rio. Out on the Dry Devils River. Hotter’n hell under a Dutch oven down that way ’bout now.”
From the corner of my mouth I said, “ ’S okay with me, compadre. Like it hot myself.”
Boz ran a finger across a dripping forehead, flicked a gob of sweat onto the sleeve of my shirt, then grinned.
Cap’n Culpepper, a smoldering see-gar clenched between his horsey teeth, stared off into space like a politician about to make promises he couldn’t keep. “Hell, I’ll own as how it is indeed a far piece, Tatum. Ass buster of a trip for a man on a horse. But Boston Teal is a murderous brigand. Man has personally delivered the souls of near a dozen innocents into the heavenly presence of a benevolent Jesus.”
“I done heard tell of even more’n that, Cap’n,” Boz said.
“True enough,” Culpepper continued. Hands clasped behind his back, he puffed away and paced to and fro, as though agitated. “Sad to say, you’re right as rain, Boz. I harbor not a single doubt that the evil-doin’ bastard has snuffed the candles of any number of folks we know little or nothing about.”
Me and Boz nodded our mutual agreement.
Culpepper kept his rant going. Didn’t even slow down. “Want the widow-making slug back here so’s I can hang ’im. Now, I wouldn’t force an extended horseback trip like this on any man without good reason. Bein’ as how the Southern Pacific pushed through there not long ago, I’m more than willing to foot the freight for whatever you might require by way of tickets for yourselves, and transportation of your animals, all the way down to Del Rio.”
I knifed a glance over at my partner and said, “Well, that ain’t a’tall bad, Boz. Hear tell as how the area around Del Rio’s something of a garden spot, what with San Felipe Springs supplying water for that whole vicinity.”
Culpepper grinned. “Town’s a growin’ all right, Lucius. Somethin’ close to five hundred souls livin’ there these days, maybe more.”
“Most of ’em weevil-brained railroad workers. And every one of them boys dumber’n a bag of busted hammers, I’d wager,” Boz grumped.
As though pleased by the ease of his sales job on me, Culpepper added, “Figure as how it’s a fairly easy horseback jaunt up to Rio Seco from Del Rio. Want you fellers to make damned sure Teal gets back to Fort Worth as quickly as possible. If he tries to escape though, you have my permission to kill the hell out of ’im.”
Boz and I sat at attention in a pair of rickety canvas chairs. Cap’n Culpepper’s massive, treelike bulk loomed over us from behind his battered, Civil War cavalry officer’s field table. Swear that mountainous man could fill up all outdoors like he was wearing it.
A booted foot crossed over one knee, Boz thumped the musical, solid silver rowel of a Mexican spur. He glanced up at the cap’n and said, “So, Teal’s corralled in whatever goes for a jail in Rio Seco, Cap’n? That the whole, complete, and entire deal?”
The open, tentlike structure Culpepper used as his official office flapped overhead in the scorching Texas breezes. Filtered sunlight seeped through the thin, frayed material. A moving, crosshatched, shadowy pattern played back and forth across Culpepper’s square-jawed, rugged countenance.
Our fearless leader snatched the well-chewed, root-like panatela from between chapped lips. “Indeed, Boz. My old friend Jacob Cobb, one of the finest rangers I ever rode with, acts as city marshal down that way these days. Appears Jacob scooped Boston Teal up during that belly slinker’s slack-jawed attempt to rob Rio Seco’s pissant-sized branch of the Texas State Bank.”
“Thought them Teal boys usually worked those kinda jobs together. Bein’ as how they’re such a tight-knit, God-fearin’, lovin’ family and all,” I offered.
Culpepper dismissed my clumsy effort at humor and waved the stubby piece of his stogie around as though he might be about to make a long-eared jackrabbit appear out of the upturned Stetson hat that rested on his rude desk. “Could very well have been the case in the past, Lucius,” he said, “but not this time.”
“How so, Cap’n?” Boz said.
Culpepper raked stubby, dirty-nailed fingers through sweat-drenched hair. “Oddly, in this particular instance, appears the youngest of the Teal boys acted alone. Telegraph message I got from ole Cobb indicates as how Boston Teal is something of a blanket-headed idiot.”
Boz flashed a toothy grin. “I’ve heard as much.”
Company B’s commander nodded. “Friend Cobb allows as how given the slightest opportunity he felt certain Irby Teal’s baby brother could single-handedly screw up a one-hearse funeral. Get the di
stinct feeling that the poor, broke-brained bastard could mess up a ball bearing with a soiled dove’s favorite powder puff.”
“He botched the robbery?” I asked.
Culpepper took a lung-filling drag off his smoldering stogie. Blew a tub-sized smoke ring that circled over our heads, then gathered into an ominous, hovering, steel-colored cloud.
The cap’n flashed a sly grin then said, “Damned fine assessment of the circumstances there, Lucius. Seems the squirrel-headed son of a bitch had the money in hand. He was heelin’ a hot path to the street and the prospect of imminent, glorious escape, by Godfrey. Bet my entire poke the man had unrestrained visions of Messican senoritas, tequila with lime and salt, and a plate of fire-breathin’ enchiladas as he headed for his horse.”
“Cobb caught him?” I said, then grinned.
Culpepper waved away my comment with his cee-gar again. “No, Lucius, no. See, Teal hit the boardwalk out front of the bank at a run. Clumsy jackass stubbed his toe on something.”
“Aw, geez,” Boz mumbled, then rolled his eyes.
The cap’n almost laughed out loud. “Yep. Uh-huh. You see it a-comin’, don’t you, Boz? ’Pears as how the rusted head of an errant nail must’ve been pro-trudin’ from a loose piece of rough-cut pine. Or, hell, maybe the clumsy idiot just got tangled up in his own spurs. No way to tell, really.”
“Could be he’s just born dumber’n a baby bird, Cap’n,” I said. “You know, all mouth and no brains.”
Culpepper let out a short, snorting chuckle. “Doesn’t matter,” he went on, “ ’cause Teal tripped. Went down like an anvil in a well. Fell on top of his very own, fully cocked Colt’s pistol.”
