by J. Lee Butts
Boz threw his head back, let out an extended, hacking snigger. “Don’t tell me.”
The cap’n showed a set of choppers fully capable of biting through an arm-sized cottonwood limb. “Yep. You guessed it, Boz. Landed on that big ole .45-caliber popper of his like a load of bricks. Shot his more’n stupid self in the foot.”
Boz grimaced. “Damnation, Cap’n.”
“Uh-huh. Blew his three biggest toes clean off. Made one helluva mess, according to Marshal Cobb’s wire. My friend said the boardwalk out front of the bank was covered with all manner of bones, toenails, rendered flesh, blood, and such.”
I squirmed in my chair and stamped a foot then mumbled, “Makes my own kicker hurt just thinkin’ ’bout it.”
The cap’n knuckled a stubble-covered chin with the back of a hand the size of a camp skillet. “Yeah, well, sorry skunk injured himself so bad he managed to get back up, but couldn’t run for spit on that blood-gushin’ two-toed stump of his.”
“That’s when Cobb got him?” I said.
Cap’n’s grin widened even more. “Nope, Lucius. Seems a group of wild-eyed, angry Rio Seco citizens jumped on his toeless, would-be bank-robbin’ ass. Came nigh on to kicking him slap to death before friend Cobb could arrive on the scene and stop ’em.”
Boz giggled like a little girl. “Too bad those good people didn’t save us a trip and just go on ahead and kill ’im.”
Another satisfied grin etched its way onto Culpepper’s face. “Cobb’s telegram mentions as how the youngest of the Teal boys had so many knots on his thick noggin when them town folk got finished with him, the man bore a striking resemblance to a west Texas horned toad.”
Well, the three of us got a rib tickler of a hoot out of that one. The pleasant thought of Boston Teal getting the crap kicked out of him by a bunch of angry hoople heads had the mystic power to satisfy the souls of all us badge toters and man hunters.
A sudden thought struck me. “Bein’ as how they ain’t all that far away, why don’t we just have some of them boys from Company A waltz over and take Teal in hand? Escort him on up our direction. Be a site easier than makin’ the trip all the way down to Rio Seco ourselves.”
Culpepper sliced a squinty, corner-of-the-eye look my direction. “Because I want him back here so I can be absolutely certain he’s dead once his neck’s been legally stretched. Let them boys from Company A get their hands on the walking stack of hammered manure, and there’s more’n a good chance we’ll never see hide or hair of the iniquitous polecat. Besides, I want the unqualified opportunity to piss on that bastard’s grave soon as he’s under a thick layer of legally sanctified Texas dirt.”
Boz squirmed in his chair. Picked at lint on one of his pants legs. “Now, that sounds right personal, Cap’n.”
Culpepper flopped into the chair behind his desk for the first time since we’d entered the pavilion. He stared off into space, as though distracted. “Boston Teal murdered my brother’s son during the course of one of his more heinous crimes over in Mesquite, boys. Nephew was only sixteen. Had his whole life ahead of him. Smart young feller. Think he would’ve made a fine man.”
That’s all me and Boz needed to hear and, from every indication, as much as the cap’n cared to say on the matter at the time. So we stuffed our hats on. Heeled it for our camp digs—a tent-and-log affair Boz had named the Viper’s Nest long before the pair of us had even met.
We set to getting ourselves ready for the trip. But you know the prospects for that particular excursion just didn’t sit well on my gizzard for some reason. Couldn’t put a definitive finger on the why of it, but like Boz, I began to feel uneasy about the whole situation from the minute we stepped out of the capn’s pavilion that blazing hot afternoon.
2
“. . . BLOW YOUR DUMB ASSES BACK INTO THE STREET . . .”
NOW, BACK IN them long-ago days weren’t no real easy method for getting yourself from Fort Worth to an out-of-the-way, one-dog burg like Rio Seco. So, with the captain’s emotional admonition to drag Boston Teal back up to Fort Worth quick as we could, or kill him, still a-ringin’ in our ears, Boz and I lodged our animals on a cattle car of the M.K. & T. flyer and rumbled south.
Feller just never knew what might happen on one of those raids, and we both hated like sulfurous Hell trying to make do with rented animals. Besides, I’d grown used to my blue roan, Grizz, and didn’t care for the experience of having to deal with the peculiarities of some bang-tailed rental nag that might well break down a few miles from the stable. Like the wise feller said, a man without a horse is riding the boot leather express. And you for damned sure didn’t want to be afoot out in the briars and brambles between Del Rio and Rio Seco. Stretch of sandy dirt, rock, and cactus is so desolate in places even rattlesnakes won’t pitch a tent.
Anyhow, we took the Katy line down to Waco. Loafed around in the depot there for nigh on two hours waiting on the Missouri Pacific passenger train that carried us on south to San Antone.
God, but I hated sitting around twiddling my thumbs. ’Course Boz proved the exact opposite. I am convinced the man was the most creative porch sitter and all-around loafer I’ve ever run across.
We wasted another four hours rubbing blisters on our rumps in San Antone’s fancy, palatial station house. Ole Boz was happier than a gopher in soft dirt. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, and I don’t think he moved a muscle the whole time. I still harbor the belief that the man had a bit of Messican blood in him.
We rode the Southern Pacific line’s day coach on west to Del Rio. Not much of a town, but it was nice and green. Greenest spot in that part of Tejas. Still and all, train didn’t even stop there ’less a passenger forced the issue. While growing at a pretty fair clip, the isolated berg could just barely boast of anything like a real depot. Nothing more than a sap-oozing, one-man shack constructed of warped, rough-cut boards, midways of an even rougher loading platform.
Once called San Felipe Del Rio, because of its proximity to San Felipe Springs, most of the town’s permanent population made its living as sheep herders and ranchers. If memory still serves, good many of those as didn’t ranch plied the trade as railroaders for the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio line, as it continued on west to link up with the Southern Pacific again.
Constructed of adobe bricks and topped with tin or wooden roofs, most of the visible buildings were scattered hither and yon in the most haphazard of manners. The village appeared to have grown up like a crop of overnight mushrooms after a rain. A single central thoroughfare, labeled Main Street by signs all along the way, bustled with people, animals, and a constant parade of wagons that rattled back and forth along the rude street’s entire expanse.
The meandering main street moseyed its leisurely way from south of the tracks and headed north. We rode past the remains of an old stockade, once used in the Indian fights, and the typical businesses you’d expect in a slow growing, barely civilized town. There were several nice-sized cantinas here and there—three as I recall, one of ’em pretty good-sized. Couple of recently erected hotels, a gun shop, meat market, liquor store, and one thriving mercantile. Even had a spanking new post office that couldn’t have been more than a year old, along with a number of other commonplace businesses scattered about.
Must admit I was tickled slap to death to get off that train’s day-coach seat and onto the back of a horse. Tell the God’s truth, I ain’t never cared a hoot in hell for trains. Mechanical monsters stink of hot grease and burning coal no matter where you picked to sit. And, Lord God, every one of those iron beasts rattled like a bucketful of loose gravel in a metal barrel.
Besides, ain’t nothing to do on any kind of a train car except stare out the window till your eyes feel like they’re about to drop onto your chest. Hell, anyone who’s seen a mile’s worth of south or west Texas has seen just about all there is to see. So, mostly, only thing left for a body to do on a train is sleep.
But even that weren’t easy. Those passenger benches were covered
with a worn piece of padding about as thick as a single page from a family Bible. Damned uncomfortable seats could just by God beat a man to a mumbling, whimpering pulp in a matter of hours.
Entire trip, including that horseback jaunt from the fairly pleasant climes of Del Rio then north on up to Rio Seco, took the better part of two and a half days. By the time we finally reined up outside Rio Seco, situated along the east bank of the Dry Devils River, the pair of us were tired to the bone.
Boz stood in his stirrups and swept the town with a narrow-eyed gaze. “Don’t know ’bout you, Lucius, but I’m damn near wore to a fuzzy-assed frazzle.”
Rio Seco’s dust-blown main thoroughfare kind of started on the west side of the near nonexistent waterway. The rutted, dirt road oozed up out of the sandy stream’s waterless bottom like a lazy snake. It wandered in a more-or-less southeast-to-northwest direction. Buildings on either side of the street appeared to have grown out of the ground in much the same fashion as those we’d observed in Del Rio earlier that day. It was almost as though nothing by way of serious thought had gone into the rapidly dilapidating town’s initial planning.
We crossed the dust-choked watercourse’s exposed bed and didn’t get a drop of liquid on either of us, or the horses. Rode past a wagon yard, a run-down liquor store, a Chinese laundry, a boot and shoe shop, and an abandoned saddle-making operation. Hard to make definitive comparisons, but the graveyard-quiet town actually appeared a bit larger than Del Rio, leastways on the surface of it.
The street out front of the town marshal’s office was as empty of people as a Baptist church and sing-along on Saturday night. At first, we didn’t see a living soul. Hell, as I remember it, weren’t even any skillet lickers, or free rovin’ pigs, in evidence to greet the weary traveler.
“Town’s got a serious ghostly look ’bout ’er, don’t she?” Boz muttered.
I nodded, then ran an appraising gaze from one end of the street to the other. “Appears as how Rio Seco, Texas, is sure ’nuff locked in a losing battle with the sun and wind to me, Boz.”
A runtified branch of the Texas State Bank stood kind of catty-cornered and across the street from the jail. It was cheek by jowl to the Barnette Brothers’ Hardware and Mercantile operation on one side and a saloon on the other. The boardwalk out front of the shabby, well-worn emporium was littered with piles of galvanized washtubs, racks of ready-made clothing, and wooden barrels decorated with hand-printed signboards. Whole shebang appeared designed to draw the prospective customer into partaking of pickles, crackers, and blocks of hook cheese, as could be easily purchased within.
We stepped off our animals out front of Marshal Jacob Cobb’s sturdy blockhouse of a jail. Building appeared to have been constructed from a pile of discarded cross-ties. Couldn’t have blown up that jailhouse with a Concord coach loaded to the roof with dynamite. We both went to hobbling around like all the gears in our hips and backs were out of mesh soon as our feet hit the ground.
Rubbed my aching rump. “Tell you what, Boz, don’t know ’bout you, but my dauber’s sure ’nuff dragging in the dirt. ’Bout another hour on that damned train, or ole Grizz here, think I’d be needin’ a cane right now. Swear ’fore Jesus, seems like the older I get, the tougher these raids of ours get.”
Tatum swayed in the street beside his hammerhead like a weeping willow in a wind storm. A thin cloud of powdery grit swirled around his feet. He stooped over at the waist and massaged his back. “Right there with you, pard. You know, way I’m going, be willing to bet that I’ll be a hobblin’ cripple by the time I turn forty.”
I straightened up, stretched, and grinned. “Yeah, ole buddy, can see that ’un comin’ myself. Worse, you’ll still be uglier’n a hatful of horned toads, on top of it, by God.”
Boz threw his head back and guffawed. I glanced around just in time to notice a pair of indolent-looking, heavily armed gun hands push through the batwings of the Saratoga Saloon, across the alley from the bank. They slouched their way up to the nearest porch pillar. Slumped against either side of the veranda’s wooden prop, then cast sneering, self-important glares our direction and passed a smoking, hand-rolled ciga-reet back and forth. Looked, for all the world, like they wanted to amble on over and slap us nekkid just for the belligerent, hellacious fun of it.
Don’t think Boz noticed the gunnies. He sliced a smirking look back at me. “Should be hereby noted that I take umbrage at the snide remark you just made about my personal handsomosity, Dodge. Want you to know they’s many a beautiful woman in Tejas as will gladly testify that I’m a damned good-lookin’ man, and will likely be so till the day I die.”
Pitched my reins over the hitch rack’s cross bar. Kept a corner of the eye check on the men watching us from across Rio Seco’s empty main thoroughfare. As I eased up beside my friend, I slapped his shoulder. “Yeah,” I said, “but all that proves is that there must be troops of females in Tejas that’re blinder’n a row of fence posts long enough to circle the entirety of Val Verde County.”
Still yammering at each other, when we stepped up to the jailhouse door and tried the knob. Turned it, but the heavy entry wouldn’t give way.
Heard a less-than-friendly voice from inside the sturdy building call out, “Who’n the hell are ya? Best speak on up and be damned quick about it, lest I cut loose with this here coach gun of mine. Got ’er loaded with heavy-gauge buckshot. Blast’ll take down the door, most of the frame, and probably blow your dumb asses back into the street with ’em, by God.”
Crazy-sounding son of a bitch sure as hell got my attention.
3
“MIGHT JUST SEND YOU TO JESUS MYSELF.”
TO SAY OUR reception, in one of south Texas’s more secluded villages, wasn’t exactly what we’d expected can only be described as a blue-eyed understatement. Course we’d considered an encyclopedic list of deadly possibilities for the trip, but having a local lawdog draw a bead on us with a shotgun wasn’t one of ’em.
In an effort to get away from a potential flesh-rending gob of buckshot, Boz took a higgy-jiggy step to one side of the jail’s iron-hinged door. I hopped the opposite direction. Boz knifed several quick, darting glances at the shuttered and barred windows of the fortresslike poky.
Then, appearing convinced he was fairly safe, my partner leaned back against the wall and hooked both thumbs over his double-row cartridge belt. Twisting his head toward the disembodied voice inside, he yelled, “Now don’t shoot us, friend. We’re rangers. Have official business with Marshal Jacob Cobb. Come on and open up.”
A long pause followed. Then sounds of shuffling and scraping went on behind the door. We heard a couple of loud bumps and an odd thumping noise. Finally, a grinding racket like something big being dragged aside.
Slotted peephole in the thick slab of wood popped open. Hands raised, we moved out onto the boardwalk so the guy inside had a reasonably good view of his visitors. Set of disembodied, bloodshot eyes floated up in the slit and flicked nervous glances from one of us to the other.
“You bastards prove that?” feller behind the door yelled.
Look of tired disgust, and fleeting resignation, etched a path across Boz’s face. “Tell Marshal Cobb that Ranger Randall Bozworth Tatum is out here in the street waitin’ to see him at his personal request. And be damned quick about it.”
Second later the peephole slammed shut. Action left us standing there with our faces hanging out. We stared at our feet for what seemed near a minute. Then we heard one heavy bolt snap aside, then another. Door swung open on a set of hammered iron hinges in sore need of some attention from an oilcan.
We eased over the threshold and into an office so small a feller couldn’t cuss a cat in there lest he ended up with a mouth full of fur. Thick-walled, dirt-floored, poorly ventilated room couldn’t have measured more than twenty feet across and maybe half again that deep.
Much-abused banker’s desk sat on our right, just inside the door. Ragged, dog-eared map of Tejas, tacked to the wall behind the desk, looked as
though it just might end up on the floor with passage of the slightest breeze. A half-empty rack for weapons covered most of the entire wall next to the map. Total armament stored there didn’t amount to anything but a couple of old Henry rifles and one of them ancient black-powder Walker Colts with what looked to be a busted cylinder.
Pair of four-by-eight cells made from two-inch-wide, basket-woven straps of hammered metal that matched the front door’s hinges stood against the back wall. Farthest of that pair of chicken coops appeared the only one of the closet-sized spaces occupied. Looked as though the entire building had been erected around that brace of tiny, metal enclosures. No air circulated in the room at all. Place was sure enough ripe. Smelled like an open chamber pot.
Sounded like a cannon shot when the door slammed behind us. Both bolts clattered into place with loud metallic clanks. Badge-wearing feller armed with a short-barreled scattergun crab-walked around us to his station of authority. He pushed a banker’s chair, located behind the desk, aside with one foot.
Jaw clenched and red-faced, the local lawdog flopped into the raggedy seat with that big popper laid atop across one arm. Had it aimed at a spot about level with our bellies. Haggard-looking gent eyeballed the pair of us as though he just might cut loose with that intimidating blaster at the least provocation. Figured if the twitchy feller got heavy fingered, he wouldn’t leave enough of me and Boz to scrape up in a saloon swamper’s best dustpan.
Boz took plenty of time as he peeled his leather riding gloves off. He tossed an amiable, toothy grin at the red-faced feller. Sure he tried his level best to sound sociable when he said, “You Marshal Cobb, friend?”
Gent behind the desk didn’t look old enough to be Jacob Cobb to me. Not a wrinkle on his face, as I could detect. And his droopy moustaches appeared a fairly recent cultivation. He confirmed my suspicions when, with a sneering insolent look, the local star toter leaned back in his squeaky seat.
