“Oh, yes, ma’am.”
“‘Yes, ma’am,’ what?”
“You . . . uh . . . got the right to run us out of town. Come on, Hoke. Let’s get out of here. There ain’t nothin’ worth seein’ in this no’count town nohow.”
Hoke and Speeg mounted their horses and rode down Center Street until they reached the edge of town. Then, urging their mounts into a gallop, they rode away quickly. Sally stayed on the buckboard, keeping an eye on them until they were well down the road. Not until then did she drive over to Longmont’s.
“Why, did you ever see the man’s sister?” Louis was saying, obviously in the middle of a conversation. “No wonder she isn’t married. Her eyebrows alone would stop a man dead in his tracks at fifty paces.”
Both Smoke and Sheriff Carson laughed at Louis’s unflattering description; then, looking up, Smoke saw Sally coming in.
“Hello, Sally. All finished with your shopping, are you?” Smoke asked.
“All finished,” Sally said.
“Well then, friends, I guess it’s time for us to get back out to Sugarloaf,” Smoke said, taking the last swallow of his beer before standing.
“We’ll see you around,” Sheriff Carson called.
“See you,” Smoke called back as he started toward the door where Sally was waiting. “Any trouble?” he asked as he bent over to kiss her.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Sally replied.
“That’s pretty much what I figured.”
CHAPTER THREE
Stan Harbin’s body was taken into Corpus Christi, where it was put on a train and shipped back to his parents in Kentucky. The other seven were brought out to the ranch, where funeral services would be conducted in the ranch chapel.
King had built the chapel before the war to accommodate the more than 150 employees of his ranch. Most, but not all, of his employees were Mexican. In fact he had once relocated an entire Mexican village, which was dying because of a prolonged drought. The relocated village, reconstructed about a quarter of a mile away, and separated from the main house by the barn, machine shed, granary, smokehouse, bunkhouse, and kitchen, consisted of more than thirty homes, identical in size and shape; all were green, with red roofs.
The residents of that village, which had the unofficial name of King’s Settlement, were exceptionally loyal employees, believing, rightly, that King was their great benefactor. Babies were born there, old people died there, and gradually, the little graveyard just outside the chapel began to fill up with the departed.
Now, seven more graves were about to be added to the ranch graveyard.
Even before dawn on the day of the funeral, visitors began arriving at the ranch. Most came from Benevadis or San Diego, but many came from farther away, and those who did camped on the ranch itself. Some hadn’t camped at all, but rode or drove through the night to get there.
King had thought to have a private funeral, but when the word got out that there were ten men killed in a shoot-out on the ranch, it spread throughout Duval County, as well as the neighboring counties of Nueces, Encinal, McMullen, Zapata, Starr, and Hidalgo. Some people had even come from Mexico, and many came from Corpus Christi.
There were far too many people for the chapel to hold, so priority was given to those who actually lived and worked on the ranch. The others gathered outside the chapel, content just to be there and to be present for the actual interment.
The main house, called the “Casa Grande” by the Mexican and American cowboys alike, was a large, two-story edifice with a porch all the way across the front at the ground level, and an equally large balcony across the front at the second-floor level.
Richard King and Robert Kleberg were sitting on the front porch, watching as the people arrived for the funeral. Already dressed for the funeral, both men were wearing black suits with black string ties.
“What are all these people doing here?” Richard asked.
“They’ve come to pay their respects,” Kleberg said.
“But why? I doubt that any of them ever knew any of the men that were killed,” King said.
“I think they are paying their respects to you,” Kleberg said.
“To me? Why on earth would they do that?”
“You are an important man in these parts,” Kleberg said.
“Hrmmph,” King said self-consciously.
Henrietta, King’s wife, and Alice, his daughter, came out onto the front porch then. Like the men, the two women were appropriately dressed for the funeral, not only wearing black dresses, but black veils as well. Henrietta offered her arm to her husband, while Kleberg stood to take Alice’s arm.
There was a large crowd gathered around outside the chapel, and as King and the others approached, they parted to make a path for them. Inside the chapel they were greeted by Padre Bustamante, the priest at the little church in Benevadis.
Bustamante took King and the others down the aisle to the front row, then held out his hand bidding them to sit. There were seven closed coffins elevated on sawhorses in front of the sanctuary.
Bustamante took his place at the front of the chapel, then began the funeral Mass.
King did not understand the Latin, so instead of of listening to the words, he listened to the rhythm of the delivery. He allowed his thoughts to drift back to the war when, once before, tragedy had struck the little community of ranch workers who resided on his ranch.
Returning from a cattle-buying trip in Mexico, King discovered that twenty-three of his people had been slaughtered during a raid by the Union Army. Not only were many slaughtered, but several of the women, including the young girls, had been brutally raped.
“Who could do such a terrible thing?” he asked.
“El Carnicero,” Ramon answered. At the time, Ramon had not been his foreman, but because the foreman had been one of those killed, Ramon was promoted on the spot.
“El Carnicero,” King said, saying it more as if repeating it than questioning it. “The Butcher?”
“Sí, The Butcher,” Ramon said. “Anyone who kills in such a way is a butcher.”
“Are you sure he was in the Army?”
“Sí. He was in the Army and he carried a big sword. It is with the sword that he . . . corte las cabezas of the people.”
He cut off the heads of the people, King thought, coming back from his reverie. Exactly like the man did who led this attack upon his ranch. Could it possibly be the same one?
King looked up toward the front of the chapel and saw that the priest was just concluding the Lord’s Prayer.
“Amen” the congregation responded as one.
The seven coffins were transported outside the chapel to the adjacent cemetery. There, even those who had not been able to get into the church were able to gather around to pay their respects, and express their sorrow over the loss of so many young lives.
King stayed in the cemetery until the graveside services were concluded, and not until dirt was being shoveled onto the caskets did he, his family, and Kleberg start back to the main house.
Once Henrietta and Alice were back inside the house, King and Kleberg sat again on the chairs on the front porch. They watched as the people began leaving the funeral.
Kleberg shook his head. “Richard, we’ve got to do something about this.”
King nodded slowly. “I know. I just don’t know what yet.”
“If you would like, I can go into Corpus Christi tomorrow and call in the Rangers,” Kleberg said.
“No, don’t do that.”
“No?” Kleberg replied, surprised at the response. “Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I think I know who did this. And if I’m right, he’s making it personal.”
“Who?”
“Someone that my people call The Butcher,” King said. King told the story of the raid against his ranch during the war.
“It was a Regular Army unit? Not a band of guerrillas?” Kleberg asked.
“Regular Army, yes. But Major Brandt and Sergean
t Stone were court-martialed and sent away to prison.”
“For how long?”
“I thought, for the rest of their lives,” King said. “And they may still be there. I don’t know, maybe I’m just letting an active imagination get the better of me. For all I know, Brandt is still in prison . . . or dead.”
“Well, then, If I go into Corpus Christi I can find out for you,” Kleberg offered.
“Yes,” King answered. “I think I would like that.”
It was at that very moment that Alice came back out onto the porch. “Did I just hear Bob say he was going to Corpus Christi?” she asked brightly.
“Were you standing just inside the door, listening?” King asked.
“No, I was just coming out to see if you wanted coffee, and I heard Bob say he was going to Corpus Christi tomorrow. You did say that, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Kleberg answered.
Alice smiled broadly. “Then this will work out just great!” she said. “Papa, you remember a couple of weeks ago I told you I wanted to go to Austin, and you said it would be all right if I could get someone to take me to Corpus Christi to catch the train?”
“Yes, I remember,” King said. “But I don’t know that this is such a good time now.”
“Why not?”
“Alice, you know what just happened. Do you have to ask why not?”
“Well, Papa, it didn’t happen in Austin,” Alice said.
Kleberg tried to hold back a laugh. “She’s got you there, Richard,” he said.
Despite himself, King laughed as well. “All right,” he said, giving in. “You can go to Austin. How long will you be up there? Remember, we’re starting the cattle drive north, and I would like for you to be back before then.”
“But neither you nor Bob will actually be going on the drive, will you?”
“No, but I’d like you home before the drive starts.”
“All right, Papa,” Alice agreed. “I’ll be visiting Loretta Dixon, and I won’t stay longer than a week, I promise.”
“Then, if it is all right with your mama, it’s all right with me,” King said.
“Oh, thank you, Papa,” Alice said, kissing him on the cheek. “If you say it’s all right, then Mama is a cinch.”
After Kleberg put Alice on the train headed for Austin, it took only one exchange of telegrams for him to learn that Jack Brandt and Wiley Stone had been released from prison. That meant that King wasn’t imagining things. It probably was Brandt who’d raided the ranch, particularly given his penchant for beheading his victims. The question was, why? Was it some sort of twisted revenge for what happened to him during the war? Since none of the cattle were stolen, Kleberg had to believe that it was something like that.
So, what now? Should Kleberg ride the forty miles back to the ranch to ask King for permission to call in the Texas Rangers? No, that would just be a waste of time. King had already made it clear that he did not want the Texas Rangers involved.
But something had to be done. The only question was, what?
Suddenly, Kleberg knew what it was, and he took it upon himself to send the next telegram. In the telegram, he asked an old friend for help.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kirby Jensen never really knew his mother, and when he was barely in his teens, he went with his father into the mountains to follow the fur trade. The pair teamed up with a legendary mountain man called Preacher. For some reason unknown even to Preacher, the mountain man took to the boy and began to teach him the ways of the mountains: how to live when others would die, how to be a man of your word, and how to fear no other living creature. On the first day they met, Preacher, whose real name was Art, gave Kirby a new name that, over the years, would become a legend in the West. After a while, even Kirby thought of himself as Smoke Jensen.
Preacher was with Smoke when he killed his first man during an Indian attack, and he took the boy in when his dying father left him in Preacher’s care.1
Now Smoke was in his thirties, a happily married landowner whose ranch, Sugarloaf, was said to be one of the finest in the whole state. He was in the kitchen of his house, drinking coffee and leaning back against the counter, when he laughed so hard that he sprayed coffee from his nostrils.
It was a funny sight, since Smoke stood just over six feet tall and had shoulders as wide as an ax handle and biceps as thick as most men’s thighs.
“I wish I had been there,” Pearlie said. Pearlie was a shade under six feet tall; he was as lean as a willow branch, with a face tanned the color of an old saddle and wild, unruly black hair. His eyes were mischievous and he was quick to smile and joke, but underneath his happy demeanor was a man as hard as iron and as loyal to his friends as they come.
“Yeah, me too,” Cal said. Calvin Woods was Pearlie’s young friend and protégé in the cowboy life.
“I suppose if you two had been there you would have been standing over there with Smoke, staying out of it,” Sally said. “Never mind that I was being accosted by two men.”
“Ha! From the way I saw it, you were the one doing the accosting,” Smoke said, laughing. “I never saw two galoots leave town so fast. I don’t even think Sheriff Carson could have sent them galloping out of town the way you did.”
“Miss Sally, would you really have shot him in the . . . uh,” Cal began, but he was too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
“You mean his privates?” Sally asked. “You damn right I would have.”
“And she wouldn’t have missed either,” Pearlie said. “I’ve seen her shoot.”
“Still, I could have used a little assistance,” Sally said. “It would have helped me maintain a little female decorum.”
“Darlin’, you’ve got common sense and guts,” Smoke said. “That’s all the female decorum you need.”
“And she makes the best bear claws in Colorado,” Pearlie said, reaching for one.
“Pearlie, that’s your fourth,” Cal said.
“Well, maybe. But I think she made them just a little smaller this time,” Pearlie said as he took a bite.
Sally laughed. Her bear claws, sweet, sugarcoated doughnuts that she made by hand, were famous throughout the county, and some men had been known to ride ten miles out of their way to drop by the Sugarloaf just on the off chance she’d have a platter of them made up and cooling on the windowsill. “If you say so, Pearlie.”
“They weren’t no smaller,” Cal argued. “They was as big as always, just like yore stomach,” he added.
Sally turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. “Calvin Woods,” she said, mock anger in her voice. “If you don’t start using correct grammar, I’m going to have Smoke make you start taking lessons with the schoolchildren in Big Rock when school starts up again.”
Pearlie grinned. “You tell him, Miss Sally.”
She turned to him. “You know, your language could use a little tidying up too, Pearlie. I think listening to you talk is what has made Cal forget everything I taught him when he first came here. I don’t know why I even bothered.”
A couple of years after Pearlie had joined the ranch, a starving and destitute Cal, who was barely in his teens at the time, had made the mistake of trying to rob Sally of some groceries to eat. Instead of turning him over to the sheriff, she brought him home and made him one of the family along with Pearlie. Since she’d been a schoolmarm in her days before marrying Smoke, she took it upon herself to teach the wild young man grammar as well as proper manners. He’d done well at first, until Pearlie took him under his wing and began teaching him the more rough and ready language and manners of cowhands. But Cal wasn’t yet twenty, so Sally figured it wasn’t too late to send him back to school if he needed it.
Smoke choked down another laugh until Sally turned to him. “And you, Mr. Smoke Jensen, I see you’ve been letting the boy smoke, and him not even out of his teens yet!”
Smoke reddened. “But Sally, Cal is doing a man’s work every day and living with the other hands in the bunkhouse. It would
n’t be right to tell him to work like a man and then treat him like a little kid, would it?”
“Humph!” she snorted. “Next you’ll be giving him whiskey and sending him into town to learn about women and things.”
Smoke’s blush deepened because Pearlie had broached just that subject with Smoke only the day before, saying that Cal was getting to that age. Smoke had suggested that Pearlie take the boy into town the next weekend and fix him up with one of the ladies who routinely dealt with that sort of malady.
“Now, darlin’,” Smoke said, cutting his eyes at Pearlie and silently imploring him to keep their conversation a secret. “You know I wouldn’t do any such thing.”
She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, then when she couldn’t hold it in any longer she burst out laughing. “Oh, you men. You never know when you’re being teased.”
Smoke silently breathed a sigh of relief and changed the subject. “Speaking of town, I’m going to have to go back in today. I need a wagon load of fence posts and barbed wire for the north pasture. I don’t suppose you’d like to go with me, would you?”
Sally brightened. “Just let me freshen up a bit and we’ll be on our way.”
“You know’d she would go with you,” Cal said. “Miss Sally takes to town like my horse does to sugar cubes.”
“Cal?” Sally said with raised eyebrows.
Cal looked at Sally with an anxious look on his face, wondering if he had been out of line.
“Know’d,” Pearlie said quietly, prompting his younger friend.
Cal smiled. “Knew,” he said, correcting himself.
Sally returned his smile. “That’s better,” she said.
“Pearlie, why don’t you and Cal get the wagon hitched up? That is if you’re through stuffing your belly,” Smoke said.
“Well, truth of the matter is I kind’a noticed that Miss Sally had a fresh apple pie coolin’ on the sill an’ I . . .”
Smoke sighed. “You can come back and get some pie after we’ve left for town.”
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