by J. Lee Butts
Seldom-used hinges on the calaboose door squalled in protest when pulled open. “Sheriff Fain ever lock anyone up in your town’s juzgado before he vanished, Mr. Hickerson?”
Our host threw me a satisfied smile. “Prior to the arrival of Titus Nightshade and his band of brigands, we never really had much use for a jail.”
“That a fact,” I said.
“Yep. Mainly kept up just for show. You know, the kind of thing you scare kids with. Once in a great while, one of our youngsters would get caught trying to look down a little girl’s pantalets, or tipping an outhouse over, or pilfering hard candy out of my store. Ole Charlie would pinch their ears, and run them in here for a lecture on how he’d lock them up for life if they ever got caught doing anything else wrong. Tactic worked, mainly.”
Boz slapped his leg with his hat. “By Godfrey, that’s exactly the kind of life’s lesson more of our young people need these days. Rambunctious little shits over in Fort Worth run the streets and alleys like wild animals. City marshal and county sheriff spend almost as much time trying to corral strong-willed, high-spirited kids these days as they do keeping south Texas brush-poppers in line who blow through on their way to the railheads in Kansas.”
Pulled one of the chairs from the desk and sat myself down. The antiquated rump roost groaned and squeaked like a week-old shoat. “Well, Burton, you’ve got a pretty good idea how Boz feels about the matter. Personally, I wouldn’t want to spend five minutes locked up in a booby hatch like this one. Bet if we pitched a couple of the Nightshade tribe in here for a spell, might take some of the starch out of the whole crowd.”
Hickerson shook his head. “They’re a pretty feisty bunch, Mr. Dodge. The women are as bad, or worse than the men. And, honest to God, I do believe Titus’s wife, Dusky, is the worst of the lot. Woman can cut loose with some of the bluest language I’ve ever heard come out of any female’s mouth. Even those girls roaming the streets of Hell’s Half Acre, over in Forth Worth, can’t hold a candle to her in the swearing department.” He thought about what he’d said for a moment, amended his ruminations with: “Then again, oldest daughter Nance runs the old man a pretty close second. She’s tougher than her brother Jack, and I’ve never seen him back away from anything. That boy looks like a coiled rattlesnake all the time. Angriest human being I’ve ever been around.”
Guess Hickerson finally realized we’d just about run out our string for the day. He started for the door, but stopped just before pulling it shut behind him. “Don’t mean to tell you fellers how to do your job, but if left to me, I’d start by talking to House Rickards—Sweetwater’s blacksmith. He’s the one who got the first taste of just what kind of trouble comes when you cross the Nightshades. Hope you Rangers sleep well because, once you start asking questions around here, your whole lives are gonna change. Be on your toes. Number of folks who got on the wrong side of the Nightshades ended up on the receiving end of a hellacious beating in the middle of the night. Take my advice and stay together, boys. You’ll live considerable longer.”
His kind wishes for our pleasant repose didn’t pan out. Thundered like damnation, and lightning fell like pitchforks all night long. Never did rain, though. Next morning, after some fried bacon, a fairly decent cup of coffee Boz liked to call belly-wash, and half-a-dozen damned fine biscuits he cooked in a Dutch oven, we strolled down the main thoroughfare to Rickards’s thriving blacksmith operation.
The street had begun to busy up by then. Women in gingham dresses and sunbonnets watched us pass, and whispered behind their hands. Kids carrying schoolbooks, with lunch bags thrown over their shoulders on leather straps, snatched furtive glances as they headed to the north end of town, and a day’s measure of pure torture chained to a school bench. Saloons, stores, and other businesses had already opened. When we tipped our hats, most folks acted cautious, but friendly.
Smithy’s shop reminded me of the barn behind my family’s house in Lampasas. The long, rough-cut boards had weathered to a color resembling the soil where the building stood. At some point, the façade appeared to have once been painted red, but time and the extremes of weather had stripped most of the crimson cover away, and left the front wall looking like a large slab of crusted iron fronting the street.
The coarse outside walls were covered with an array of tin signs and metal parts taken from a variety of farm equipment and implements. Inside, pegs, nails, racks, and shelves held a clutter of harnesses, straps, buckles, yokes, bridles, and confused wads of other rigging. In many areas, the litter’s depth made sections of the walls impossible to perceive. Much of the leather and metal had seen no use for so long a time, it had dried, cracked, and appeared beyond any hope of recovery.
Got to say, House Rickards looked less like the poet’s image of a shoe bender than any man I’ve ever known to work at the profession. He was short, stringy-muscled, snowy-haired, and damn near sixty years old. If the man had worn a white shirt, string tie, and eyeshade, I would have gladly sworn he was a bookkeeper.
His heavy hammer rose, fell, and tapped out a metallic tune. Covered in sweat and ash, he moved though his work like a dancer. Smell from the smoky fire, heated metal, animals, and the company of other men worked like a magnet that pulled in an appreciative and ever-changing crowd. Without being told, I knew his audience came, and went, like the sparks that flew from the flaming shoes Rickards hammered into shapes that precisely fit each animal’s foot. His whittle-and-spit congregation occupied an array of crates and boxes around the forge, and nodded their approval of his talent and skill. They stuffed their pipes, and contributed to the growing pile of splintered wood shavings at their feet.
Available places to take a seat led me to believe the group could have numbered as high as ten or eleven. I knew, having seen similar scenes all my life, men would sit, scrape slivered chunks off a pine picket, talk for a spell, then, like gypsy travelers, move to new and more interesting conversations—no matter where in town they might be located.
Few seconds before we walked up on them Boz whispered, “Pull your vest back so they can see your badge. Always be forthright with folks like these, Lucius. No need to antagonize them if we can keep from it, but let ’em know we’re here, and expect ’em to cooperate with our efforts on their behalf.” Then he grinned real big and said, “But whatever else you do, ole son, keep one hand on your pistol and make damn sure you watch my back.”
Learned pretty promptly that morning, when official business reared its ugly head, Boz Tatum didn’t mince words, or put up with much in the way of obfuscation from those he chose to interview. He walked straight up to House Rickards like he owned the shop and the smithy worked for him.
“Mr. Rickards, name’s Bozworth Tatum. Young friend here’s Lucius Dodge. We’re Texas Rangers from Company B out of Fort Worth.” Made something of a show when he pulled his vest away from one of Alfonso’s heavy silver stars pinned to his chest. “If’n you can spare the time, we’d like to talk with you for a spell.”
Chatter and laughter from the half-dozen whittlers dried up like rainwater during a west Texas drought. Got so quiet there, for a minute, I could hear glowing coals in the forge crackle and snap. Rickards propped a set of iron horseshoe tongs against his anvil, jerked a grimy rag from his waist, and wiped at the rivers of sweat streaming down his neck.
“What about?” For a man not much bigger than my younger brother, the elderly blacksmith had a voice that sounded like something coming from an angry panther.
“We understand you’ve had less than satisfactory dealings with a family name of Nightshade,” Boz said.
One of the knife-and-pine picket bunch snorted, “Hell, boys, that describes damn near everybody in Sweetwater.” He chuckled. His friends must have liked the joke. Twitters and snickers escaped some of them as well. “Ole House there just happens to be the first of a long list of folks around these parts who’ve had ’less than satisfactory dealings’ with that bunch of ruffians. Yessir, be willing to bet near’bouts everyone here can
relate a tale concerning them evil bastards and their witchy women. But such yarns mightn’t be very smart health-wise, you know.”
Rickards tossed his grubby rag onto the anvil beside the tongs. “I ain’t afraid of that bunch, in spite of what they done to me. Ain’t afraid of no man. Or woman. Including Nance Nightshade or that wolf-bitch she calls mother.”
I decided to act something like a Ranger myself, and said, “What exactly did they do to you, sir?”
He eyed me with a bit more than run-of-the-mill suspicion and shoved gnarled hands behind the bib of his leather apron. “Feller name of Sparky Hazard lived out yonder on the Jacksboro Road not far from where Titus and his family live. Used to come by and sit with all my friends here. Guess them Nightshades had been out in the woods about three weeks, or a month, when Sparky stopped for a visit with us one day and said he was havin’ trouble keeping firewood. Said he thought some Injuns might be skulking around in the woods near his house. Felt they was a-stealing from him. So, between the two of us, we figured out a way to put an end to it.”
All six of Rickards’s friends stifled giggles. Some laughed out loud. Graybeard sitting closest to me said, “Weren’t nothing more’n a joke. Anyone else would’ve just let the thing go. But Titus, Jack, and Arch took the whole business as some kind of personal insult.”
Dried-up geezer wearing a Boss of the Plains hat hacked more kindling onto the pile with a foot-long bowie, and said, “Just one of them fanciful thangs that seemed like a good idea at the time. We all got a kick out of it. The whole bunch of us laughed like folks from an insane asylum while we watched House do it.”
Guess Boz finally tired of being left out of the joke, and brought the discussion back to where he wanted when he said, “Mind lettin’ me, and my partner, in on the trick? What’d you do?”
Rickards shook his head and toed the dirt. “Drilled out about a dozen sticks of stove wood and spiked them with gunpowder. Nothing more’n big ole firecrackers really. Sparky took ’em home. Stacked ’em under his shed on top of the regular stuff. That night, ’bout half of ’em disappeared. Early the next morning he heard an explosion over toward the Nightshade place. Some folks here in town claimed they heard the blast too. Can’t testify to that part myself ’cause of all the hammerin’ and other racket around here. Don’t matter anyhow. Titus, Jack, Arch, and Nance stormed up to Sparky’s house, dragged him out in the yard, and beat the hell out of him. Whipped up on him long enough that he told ’em I was the one what made them woody poppers. He disappeared a few days later. Ain’t seen him since.”
Boz looked like a man who couldn’t believe what his mind had already worked out. “You gonna say they came after you?”
Rickards’s head snapped up. Sounded like a man spoiling for another fight when he said, “When the Nightshades ride into town, they all like to hit the bridge across Walnut Creek at the same time. Makes a sound like rolling thunder. I heard ’em coming. Just didn’t know what they had in mind. All four of ’em brought their horses to a jumping stop ’bout where you’re standing, hopped off their animals, and kicked the hell out of me.”
Got to admit it came as something of a surprise when his head dropped in embarrassment. Didn’t expect such a reaction from anyone as feisty as he first seemed. He kinda mumbled, “They got me down on the ground and kicked me like a stray dog, Rangers. Worst came from that gal, Nance. She wears boots with hammered-silver tips on the toes and Mexican rowels the size of ten-dollar gold eagles. Them sons of bitches really hurt. Think she was the one what busted a couple of my ribs. By the time all four of them pissed-off thugs took a turn on me, I couldn’t even get up.”
Boz said, “Did they say anything to you at all?”
“Not till they’d finished. Titus stood over me and whacked a silver-headed riding crop against his palm. He hissed, ‘My damned stove went through the roof and landed in the creek, you iron-pounding son of a bitch. You ever pull another stunt like this, and I’ll let my boys, and girls, finish you off for good and all.’ Then, they mounted up and left me laying here in the dirt. Went fogging over to Shorty Small’s Saloon and spent the afternoon, and into the night, drinking. Hadn’t been for some of my friends, I’d probably have laid out here in the cold and died. That was three year ago. Only good thing about my particular encounter with them hoodlums seems to be that once they’ve damned near stomped you to death, they tend to leave you alone, and go looking for their next victim.”
Boz shook his head. Could tell he was getting angrier by the second when he said, “Typical goddamned bully behavior. Sweet Weeping Jesus, I do hate a bully. Sheriff was still here at the time. Did he try to do anything about either of the beatings?”
Whittler, with one of those ancient five-pound Walker Colts sticking out of his belt, said, “I wuz in Shorty’s that night. Had me a spot in the corner. Don’t think anyone even noticed I was there. Hell, they was all excited and laughing ’bout how they’d just beat the bejabbers out’n Sparky and House. That gal, Nance, stood at the bar and drank straight whiskey with the men. I do believe she’s the first woman I ever seen what goes around wearin’ pants and straddlin’ a horse. Good-looking gal, but damned unladylike behavior, if’n you ask me.”
The side trips had begun to wear on Boz. “Get to the point, friend. Did the sheriff try to do anything?”
Feller carrying the Walker leaned over and spit before he answered. “Well, Titus and his clan had been at the bottle, pretty hot and heavy, for almost an hour ’fore anything happened. Sheriff Fain came in right after some fellers found House. Charlie barely got his head in the door when Jack Nightshade pulled his pistol and whacked the poor man across the mouth. He never knew what hit ’im. Knocked ’im colder’n a log-splitting wedge in January. Busted three of his teeth. Man never recovered. Disappeared ’bout a week later. Anyhow, the whole gang just kinda sashayed out, took their time saddlin’ up, and proceeded to shoot hell out of the town in general. Been doin’ the same kind of vicious shit ever since. Bastards seem to take particular pleasure from scarin’ the hell outta women and kids.”
Shriveled-up gent, who looked about a thousand years old, rolled a wad of cut-plug tobacco from one cheek to the other. His voice crackled and split like the dried pine at his feet. “Done got to the point where a body cain’t even git out on the street some nights. Too damned dangerous. Them sons of bitches git good an’ drunk, and git to shootin’ at anything that’s a-movin’. Put one through the brim of my hat one night when I wuz on my way home from prayer meetin’. Most folks round here is skeered to death of ’em. But as you can see, that don’t include none of us. Like House said, once they’ve beat the snot out of a body, or if’n you’re older’n the Red River, they tend to leave you alone. Guess they figure them such as us ain’t much of a threat.”
Rickards scratched at a crusted spot on the back of his hand. “You want a lesson in how to terrify a body, just stroll over to the Texas Star and talk to Cap’n Euless Whitecotton. He usually stakes out his spot by eight or nine in the morning. Be there all day. He’s an easy man to find. Almost always sits in the corner opposite the pianner. Got his leg shot off in the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg. Came to Sweetwater for some peace and quiet, but mostly to get away from men like Titus Nightshade. Didn’t do him no good, though.”
Boz allowed as how we’d taken enough of their valuable time, and thanked all those attending the devotional at Rickards’s shop that morning. As we headed for the Texas Star, he said, “Don’t seem to have much trouble letting their feelings be known. I’ve seen situations like this where everyone in town was so terrified they wouldn’t even talk to a Ranger. Doesn’t appear to be a problem in these parts. Leastways, not yet.”
I watched the street while he stood at the Texas Star’s batwing doors and checked on everything inside. Sure as big yeller dogs live in Arkansas, a one-legged former trooper, in the remnants of a Confederate cavalry captain’s uniform, nursed his drink at a corner table away from everyone else.
Tattere
d soldier spotted us soon as we ambled in. Looked mighty uncomfortable when confronted by two heavily armed men who strolled right up to his table. Boz tugged at the brim of his hat, introduced us all over again, and surprised me with the deference in his voice when he said, “Cap’n Whitecotton, we’ve come to try and help folks out with a problem we understand you’ve had some past experience with. Much appreciate the effort if you’d tell us anything you can about the Nightshade family.”
The broken warrior fidgeted with his drink like he had trouble deciding whether he wanted to talk with us or not. Kept squirming around in his chair, but eventually motioned for us to take a seat. Could barely hear him when he said, “You boys don’t have any idea what you’re getting into here.” His soft Southern accent, and an abundance of whiskey, rolled words around, smoothed the edges off them, and spread them inside my ears like butter on my mother’s hot biscuits.
He kind of caught us by surprise for a second or so. I said, “We’re trying to find out if there’s any substance to complaints made by almost a hundred of the town’s residents. House Rickards told us you’d had less than pleasant dealings with the Nightshade family.”
Whitecotton’s pale, lifeless eyes bored into mine. “Less than pleasant dealings. That’s an understatement if I ever heard one, young man. Let me ask you a question, son. Ever met someone who seemed to hate you from the first second they laid eyes on you?”
Boz rolled a smoke, and eyeballed me as I answered. “Yessir, think I have. My father and mother took me to Lampasas once a month when they went in for provisions. Second trip, I ran up against a bully named Pottsy Billingsly. Dragged me into an alley and beat hell out of me. Got to the point where he was waiting on the boardwalk in front of the general mercantile every time we went to town. Just couldn’t seem to get enough of whipping my ass.”
Captain Whitecotton leaned back in his chair, and grinned. “Yes. Well, same thing happened with Titus Nightshade and me. Man hated me from the instant we met. Takes uncommon pleasure at bullying me at any opportunity. I try to avoid him. Last time we accidentally ran into each other was a few weeks ago. I made the mistake of thinking I could go back into Shorty Small’s saloon. Always liked Shorty’s place because he don’t have no piano. Less noise, you see. Didn’t realize Titus was inside. He always lit in on me anytime he walked in the door. So, I ceased going over there.”
