“Changed times,” Buttons said.
“Sure enough.” Pruitt pulled on his tobacco-stained beard, obviously thinking, and then he said finally, “Rumor going around, Buttons. And you too, Red. You might want to hear this.”
Remembering Patterson’s hints about the coming of perilous events, Buttons said warily, “What kind of rumor, Hynick?”
“Nothing I could write down and make sense of,” the driver said. “Just whisperings, ye understand?”
“Let’s hear them,” Red said. “Whispered rumors are the worst kind.”
Pruitt’s shotgun guard, a surly man named Quinan, spoke for the first time. “I heard the army officers from Fort Concho talking and they say they heard it from Cuthbert Patterson. It seems there’s an important person coming in on a train and the gov-ment is involved. It’s being kept very secret. They’s heading this way and on different trains that end up in El Paso.”
“Do tell,” Buttons said. “What the hell would an important government person want in El Paso?”
“The Patterson stage, if the rumor is right,” Pruitt said.
“Taking him where?” Buttons said.
Pruitt said, “The government wants him hidden away in a godforsaken army post at the edge of nowhere and Fort Concho fits the bill.” He stared at Buttons. “Maybe you’ll take him there, Buttons, you and Red.”
“What’s so important about this government feller?” Buttons said. “Is he the president or something?”
“That’s the strange thing of it, Buttons,” Pruitt said. “Them two army officers we’re taking to Arizony say that Cuthbert told them he’s a whiskey drummer.”
“Huh?” Buttons said.
“You heard it right,” Pruitt said. “He’s a whiskey drummer.”
“The gubmint must be real worried about their whiskey supply, that’s all I can say,” Quinan said sourly.
Buttons shook his head. “It’s a great mystery.”
“Ain’t it though?” Pruitt drained his glass. “I got to go see to my team. So long, Buttons, Red.”
“Yeah, so long, Hynick” Buttons said. “And good luck.”
Pruitt said, “You, too. Good luck.”
* * *
It was the custom of a stage driver to showboat as he left town, standing in the box yelling and cracking the whip as the team leaned into the harnesses and broke into a thundering gallop. Buttons, a very critical judge, was impressed. Hynick Pruitt had it down to a fine art and passersby stopped in their tracks to cheer and applaud as the spinning yellow wheels of the Patterson stage kicked up clouds of dust on their way to places known and unknown.
* * *
Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon were at the Texas and Pacific railroad station at three-thirty and Abe Patterson showed up five minutes later. He wore his Colt on his hip as did Buttons and Red, and he was not in a sociable turn of mind.
“I’m glad to see you boys can be on time,” Patterson said. “More than your stage ever is.”
Buttons let that slide and said, “Boss, we hear the passenger is some kind of a government man. Is that true?”
“Who told you that?” Patterson said.
“It was Hynick Pruitt,” Red said.
“Pruitt never spoke an honest word in his life,” Patterson said. “The passenger is a whiskey drummer, or he was. He got religion a time back and swore off peddling demon drink.”
“All right then. How come a reformed whiskey drummer is getting so much attention from the government?” Buttons said.
“Because he is, that’s how come,” Patterson said, his banty rooster feathers ruffled. “That’s all you need to know for now.”
Buttons decided to avoid the whole subject, at least for a spell. But he did have one more question to ask. “What’s the party’s name, boss? We can hardly call him, ‘Hey, you’ all the way to Fort Concho.”
Patterson though about that and said, “His name is Archibald Monday, but you can call him Mr. Monday.”
“But only on a Sunday,” Buttons said, grinning. Patterson eyes became pieces of flint. “Is that your idea of a good joke, driver?”
Buttons shook his head. “No, boss. It was my idea of a bad joke.”
Patterson said, “Ryan, if Muldoon comes up with another joke, good or bad, you have my permission to shoot him.” Then, in his changeable way, he took out a silver case and proffered it to Buttons. “Here, have a cigar. Keep you occupied until the train gets here.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The train was only twenty minutes late and disgorged about thirty passengers who wasted no time clearing the station and heading for the city. The big locomotive belched clouds of steam across the deserted platform and then it cleared, revealing two men who stood side by side, both carrying small carpetbags. The larger of the two was a tall, wide-shouldered man who had a United States Marshal’s star on the left lapel of his coat as regulations demanded. He wore a Colt with dull yellow celluloid grips in a cross-draw holster and carried a Winchester. Even from a distance, the marshal looked like a man to be reckoned with.
Red Ryan studied the lawman’s companion who could only be Archibald Monday. In contrast to the marshal, he was a short, frail-looking man, dressed in a gray ditto suit and a bowler hat of the same color. The little man blinked like an owl behind his round spectacles and seemed nervous. Red mentally amended that observation . . . Archibald Monday seemed terrified.
For long moments five men stood on the platform staring at each other until Abe Patterson broke the ice. “Mr. Monday, I am Abe Patterson of the Patterson stage line. A warm welcome to El Paso.”
The big marshal whispered something in Monday’s ear and the little man scampered like a scared rabbit to where Patterson stood.
Immediately, his face ashen, he said, “There’s trouble brewing, Mr. Patterson. Big trouble.”
He was right. It was trouble with a capital T, and it wasn’t long in manifesting itself.
Three men stepped off the train, all of them big, all of them wearing shabby suits and bowler hats. They were a tough threesome, more gorilla than human, with fist-battered faces and huge hands that hung by their sides like anvils. Their deep-set eyes never left the trembling form of Archibald Monday, three predators studying their prey.
The marshal cleared his gun and turned to face them.
“Ryan, Muldoon, side him!” Patterson drew his gun, and then said to Monday, “You stay right here with me.”
Today, there are those who question why Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon would get involved in a scrap that really didn’t concern them. They’ve forgotten, or didn’t know, that the frontier era was a time of fierce loyalties and if you accepted wages from a man, you rode for his brand. That mind-set left no room for questioning. It was the keystone of the Code of the West, writ large in letters of fire. And Red and Buttons lived by it.
* * *
As Red Ryan and Buttons stood on either side of him, the marshal said in a strong Irish brogue, “Now what is it you gentlemen would be wanting?”
The three toughs didn’t like this development. Instead of facing one man, they faced three, all of them armed. But they’d been paid to do a job, and confident of their fighting and killing ability, they’d see it through.
The biggest of the three thugs, a man with a broken nose and scar tissue above each eye, took a step forward and said, “We want no trouble here, copper. Give us Monday and we’ll walk away.”
“You want Monday, come and take him,” the marshal said.
“Don’t force us to do just that,” the big man said.
“I’m forcing you. May I suggest that you lively lads go back to New York and to whatever slum spawned you.”
“You force our hand, copper,” the man said. “On your head be it.”
The three hardcases were by instinct and practice, fist, skull, and boot fighters, also adept with the knife, billy club, and sap. During their various criminal activities, they used revolvers when the need arose, but in the street gang brawls
and muggings that occupied most of their time, guns were not their weapon of choice. They were city boys who’d never before come up against a tough frontier marshal and a Texas draw fighter like Red Ryan . . . a fatal flaw in their education.
To his credit, the marshal didn’t immediately try to shade them on the draw. He waited a split second, hoping for a change of heart on the part of the thugs, but in that he was disappointed. They unlimbered their revolvers, two from shoulder rigs, the other from his coat pocket. The three took up a duelist’s shooting stance, using the sights as they’d been taught, right side to the opponent, arm extended, the left foot behind the heel of the right.
The marshal drew and fired and Red did the same. Two shots a fraction of a second apart. Two hits. Red fired at the big man who’d done the talking and his bullet slammed into the thug’s chest, staggering him. The man to Red’s left went down under the lawman’s bullet, a killing wound that dropped him to the platform’s timber floor. The third man, still unhurt, fired at the marshal, who took the bullet to his lower left side that rocked him and put him out of the fight. Red and Buttons shot at the same time and the thug screamed and went down, blood opening up like a scarlet rose between his collarbones. But when he struck the ground he lived long enough to fire, and Red heard Buttons gasp as he was hit. The big, talkative man wanted no more of Texas gunfighting. Mortally wounded, he threw down his revolver and yelled, “Quarter.”
But Red, seeing the marshal down and blood seeping through Buttons’s fingers as he clutched at a wound in his right shoulder, was not inclined to be merciful, at least not that day. He pumped two bullets into the big hoodlum, scored two hits, and when the man hit the ground he was already dead as a rotten stump.
Gun smoke drifted across the station platform as Archibald Monday stood behind Abe Patterson, held his hands to his ringing ears, and in a state of trembling anxiety said over and over again, “Oh, dear . . . oh, dearie me . . .”
Red stepped toward Buttons, and the driver said, “I’m all right, Red. See to the marshal.” Then, for no apparent reason, “He’s an Irishman.”
The lawman sat on the platform, the left side of his shirt glistening with blood.
Red took a knee beside him and said, “You’ve been hit hard. We’ll get you a doctor.”
The lawman nodded and extended his hand. “Name’s Sean Brannigan. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Red Ryan.” He took the man’s hand. “I’m a representative of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.”
“And a credit to it, you are. How are the three boyos over there?” Brannigan said.
“All dead.”
“Pity. They were likely lads but on the wrong side of the law. Was Monday hit?”
“No, he’s fine. Mr. Patterson is taking care of him.”
“He’s an excitable little fella,” the marshal said.
“Which one?”
Brannigan smiled. “Mr. Monday.”
Red nodded. “Yes, he’s all of that.”
* * *
Acting city marshal Tom Moad arrived with gun drawn and doctor in tow. The lawman looked around at the carnage and fell into an agitated silence, obviously deciding who to charge with what. But a quiet word from United States Marshal Sean Brannigan calmed him down and convinced him he was dealing with circumstances beyond his control.
As Dr. McKenna worked on Brannigan, Moad said, “Marshal, I searched the bodies and found no identification. Between them, the deceased carried a sum of two hundred and five dollars and eighteen cents, three large knives, and three Smith and Wesson pistols, all of which I am confiscating.”
“The spoils of war, Marshal,” Brannigan said. “The three deceased, as you call them, were gang members from the Five Points neighborhood in New York City, a place where lives are short and violent and a place where infectious diseases ravage the mostly starving population. In short, it’s a den of murderers, thieves, brothels, and terrible poverty—and it’s ruled by the gangs.”
“The bullet passed right through your side, Marshal Brannigan,” Dr. McKenna said. “I don’t think it struck anything vital, but it’s done some damage and I will examine you further in my surgery.”
“How is the other fella?” Brannigan said.
“Mr. Muldoon? It’s a flesh wound,” McKenna said. “Nothing too serious.”
“Glad to hear it,” Brannigan said. “The Muldoons hail from County Sligo in the old country. Fine people.”
“I’m sure they are.” McKenna hailed a couple of railroad workers. “Bring me a cart or something to transport this wounded man to my surgery.”
One of the workers touched his cap and said, “Doc, there’s a stretcher in the station storeroom.”
“That will do nicely,” the doctor said. “You gentlemen can carry him.”
Irritated by the interruption, Moad said, “Marshal Brannigan, why are the Five Points gangs so interested in a whiskey drummer here in Texas?”
“Best you don’t know, Marshal Moad,” Brannigan said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help me. I wish I didn’t.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Abe Patterson thought it better that Archibald Monday spend the night in the stage station, rather than a hotel. “Easier to keep an eye on him.”
The little man was terrified, jumping at every noise in the street outside.
Finally Buttons Muldoon said, “What the hell is making you so nervous, Archibald?”
Monday hesitated, and then said, “Men are trying to kill me.”
“Why would anyone want to kill a harmless little runt like you?” Buttons said.
“Not only me, but my lady wife,” the little man said. “My dearest Prudence is a large lady and not easy to hide.” He leaned forward in his seat, whispering, imparting a confidence. “She’s at a Catholic convent.”
“Huh?” Buttons said.
“The Sisters of Charity are keeping her safe in their convent in New York’s Upper West Side. She’s guarded night and day.” shook his head. “My dear, dear Prudence, so large in size, yet so vulnerable.”
“Why?” Buttons said.
“Because she eats a lot,” Monday said.
“No, not that,” Button said. He had a fat bandage under his shirt. “I meant, why is she guarded day and night?”
“Because she’s my wife,” Monday said.
“You’re not catching my drift,” Buttons said. “Let’s try it from a different direction. Why are men trying to kill you?”
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” the little man said. “You’ll need to ask Marshal Brannigan.”
As it happened, there was no need to ask Marshal Brannigan, because a boy came to the depot door with a message for Mr. Muldoon. He was to come to Dr. McKenna’s surgery right away.
“You’ll be all right by yourself, Red?” Buttons said. “You still ain’t feeling frisky.”
“Says a man with a shot-up shoulder.” Red smiled. “Sure, I’ll be fine. And Ira Cole hasn’t let go of his scattergun since Monday got here. He claims it’s become both wife and child to him.”
* * *
Dr. McKenna met Buttons Muldoon at the door of his surgery and imparted some bad news. “I’m afraid Marshal Brannigan has a fever and he’ll have to remain in bed for at least a few more days. His wound is more severe than I first thought.”
McKenna saw that his tidings didn’t have the effect he’d anticipated on the stage driver and added, “It means he will be unable to accompany Mr. Monday to Fort Concho.”
Now Buttons understood the implication. He and Red could have used Brannigan’s fast gun on the journey. It was an unwelcome loss.
“Sorry to hear that, Doc.”
“And so was Marshal Brannigan,” McKenna said. “He wants to talk with you. How does the shoulder feel?”
“Middlin’,” Buttons said.
“I’ll change the dressing before you leave for Fort Concho. Now go see the marshal.”
The lawman was propped up on pillows and at fi
rst look seemed healthy. But then Buttons saw the blush of fever on his cheeks and the beaded sweat gathered on his forehead.
“How you feeling, Marshal?” Buttons said.
“The sawbones says I’m doing poorly, and judging by the way I feel, I guess he’s right,” Brannigan said. “I can’t ride with you to Fort Concho.”
“McKenna told me that,” Buttons said. “I was some disappointed.”
“Whatever you do, take care of Monday,” Brannigan said. “Make sure he gets to the fort safely.”
“Depend on it,” Buttons said. “Red Ryan is the best shotgun guard in the business.”
“I hope he’s enough,” the marshal said.
Buttons sat on the corner of the cot, making it creak. “All right, Marshal Brannigan. What’s going on? I think I got a right to know.”
“Yes, you do. And I’ll tell you.” The lawman took a drink from the glass of water on the table beside him and said, “The three men we killed today were from New York’s Five Points neighborhood, a cesspool of crime and violence, an overcrowded, disease-ridden slum run by five or six major gangs. For years the gangs have waged war on one another, and hundreds have died.”
“Sounds like a place to avoid,” Buttons said.
“Indeed, it is,” Brannigan said. “But recently a new leader, a man named Steven Wainwright, rose up and convinced the gang bosses that they should join together into one huge, crime syndicate, to rob, rape, and murder on an industrial scale and get rich in the process. He wants the Five Points to be wide open to opium trade controlled by the gangs, and he estimated they could create a thousand new addicts a day among the poorest and least fortunate, the immigrants and sweatshop workers—men, women, and children who live ten or twelve to a filthy, rat-infested room. What better way for people to dream away their dreadful existence than opium?”
“So where does Archibald Monday fit in all this?” Buttons said.
“I’m coming to that, Mr. Muldoon,” Brannigan said. “A crusading Catholic priest got wind of Wainwright’s plans and confronted him in the street, demanding that he disband the gangs and work to make Five Points a better place. Wainwright’s answer was to draw his gun and shoot the priest down in the street. There were no witnesses, of course . . . except one.”
The Backstabbers Page 24
