The Butcher of Baxter Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  NO KNOWLEDGE OF LUKE FLINT STOP AND YOU CANT FOOL ME STOP TELL THE BUTCHER I SAID BYE

  Well, Jess didn’t really think his telegram to Dallas would fool the city constable, but it was worth a try. He wadded up the paper, tossed it in the trash can, and as soon as Clint Stowe was out the door, it opened again. Jess stood, watching the old-timer who had been wounded in the fracas outside the Trinity River Hotel hobble in, using a broomstick as a crutch. His thigh was bandaged, the pants cut off just above the wound, and he still wore those scuffed-up old boots.

  Doc Wilson followed him in, closing the door behind her and answering the question before Jess could ask it.

  “Mort Thompson said hold him for a grand jury inquest. Public intoxication. Carrying a firearm in the city limits. Unlawful discharge of a weapon. Attempted murder. Resisting arrest.” She tossed her black satchel on the desk, followed by the gun belt and revolver the old man had been carrying when he had tried to gun down General Dalton, and pointed at the coffee. “You got more of that?”

  The old man had moved toward the gun case but made no move for one of the weapons. By then, Hoot Newton was standing, and the big man undoubtedly put the fear of the law in the wounded man.

  “Discharge of a weapon?” Jess said. The old-timer hadn’t even gotten off a shot.

  First things first, though. Jess filled a cup with what passed for coffee and handed it to the doctor. He then moved to his desk, opened a ledger, grabbed a pencil, and looked at the wounded man. His legs were thin, and pale except for the stains of blood that Amanda Wilson had not cleaned up. He looked ridiculous in his one-legged pants.

  “You got a name?” Jess asked.

  “‘The Man Who Killed Lincoln Dalton.’”

  “Not even close, old man,” Jess said. “You want to try again?”

  He spit in the cuspidor.

  “Then I’ll write your name as Lincoln Dalton.” He started to scratch something in the ledger underneath Burt McNamara’s name.

  “Pete Doolin,” the man said.

  Jess wrote it down, opened a drawer, withdrew an old flour sack, and tossed it to Hoot Newton. “Give any valuables to my jailer,” he said. “You’ll get them back when you’re free to go. Hoot. Search him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I’ll ...” Jess was already moving toward the prisoner. He took the suspenders because Kurt Koenig demanded that no prisoner was going to hang himself with a belt or socks or suspenders while he was town marshal, and as sure as there was a God, if Jess let the old man wear those, he’d hang himself. Probably could use his pants—what was left of them—or shirtsleeves, or even his socks, but Jess wasn’t going to have a bunch of naked men in his jail while he was in charge of the city.

  When it was all said and done, Jess had put a rabbit’s foot, three dollars and seventeen cents, a gun belt, old revolver, and a pair of spurs in the sack, which he deposited on the desktop. “Put him in the cleanest cell we got, Hoot.” He shot Doc Wilson a quick look.

  “Clean wound. I can come by every day to change the bandage.”

  He nodded and sank into his chair as Hoot guided Pete Doolin into the cells.

  Amanda found the chair opposite him, frowning at the empty plates Hoot had piled up over a couple of wanted dodgers.

  “Jail’s filling up,” Jess said.

  “No jury in Fort Worth. No jury in Texas will indict that old man for anything,” Amanda said, “not even the firearms ordinance violation.”

  “Yep.”

  She sipped the coffee.

  “I would have run him out of town,” Jess said. “He didn’t even get off a shot.”

  He shook his head, and then added, upon reflection. “But ... I guess maybe it’s better to have him off the streets ...” He did not trust Lee Bodeen.

  The thought of Bodeen gave him pause. He also thought of Caroline Dalton. He’d go back to the Trinity River Hotel. Lee Bodeen couldn’t pack a revolver, nor could that carnival barker Major Jedediah Clarke and his hideaway derringer. For that matter, he should also take away Caroline Dalton’s matched set of Navy Colts.

  “I can’t believe ... after all this time ...” Her voice faded away, and she stared at the cup that she now held in her lap.

  “He’s an old man,” Jess said.

  “He’s still the Butcher of Baxter Pass.” She lifted the cup, started to drink, and then slid it on the desk. Her eyes found his. “And that major ... that man makes my skin crawl ... he has asked me to ...” She leaned her head back and let out a laugh, but there was no humor to be found in either her laugh or her eyes.

  The door to the jail cells opened, and Hoot Newton came out, closed the door, slid the bolt, then, with a heavy yawn, and moved over to the stove. Amanda Wilson handed him the cup as he passed. “Here,” she said.

  He stared.

  “There are only two cups,” she told him, “and I’m finished.” She rose, finding her bag, and locked her eyes on Jess Casey’s again. “Major Clarke asked me if I would come to the general’s room.”

  “Is he sick?” Jess asked.

  “He’s an old man, like you said.”

  Jess considered this, but mostly, he considered Amanda Wilson.

  “Don’t worry about me, Sheriff Casey,” she said. “I am a doctor. I know my duty. I also know my conscience ... unlike that butcher.”

  And she was gone, slamming the door as she left, leaving Jess Casey alone with a cup of coffee that suddenly tasted bitter, and Hoot Newton, who belched again and slurped his own cup.

  “That gal mad at someone?” Hoot asked.

  Jess shrugged. One thing kept puzzling him. Amanda Wilson’s story had the prisoners gunned down inside the prison camp at Baxter Pass, Ohio. Burt McNamara had the Texas boys, by then mostly skeletons, walking through the gates before being caught in the maelstrom of lead from Gatling guns. Yet the story he read said the prisoners were on a steamboat about to head down the Ohio River before they were massacred. That’s one reason Jess wanted to hear back from that college teacher at AddRan Male & Female College down in Thorp Spring. Hank Joseph had told him that the professor had been imprisoned at Baxter Pass.

  Not that it really mattered. No one had ever denied that some two hundred prisoners of war had been gunned down by General Dalton.

  He couldn’t count on actually hearing back from Mitchell Vogt down at AddRan, though. Fort Worth had no library, although a bunch of women in town kept threatening to start one, even if they had to get in touch with that Yankee Andrew Carnegie to foot the bill. Yankee money was good in Texas ... sometimes. Of course, no one had gotten up the nerve to ask the philanthropist for money for a library.

  Jess rose, moved to the window, and looked outside. The streets were quiet but busy, typical for this time of day on a Monday. Some dirty little urchin stood across the street, waving a newspaper over his head, shouting out to passersby, though Jess couldn’t hear the words. Too soon, though, Jess realized with relief for any of the newspapers to be informing their readers about the arrival in town of Brigadier General Lincoln E. Dalton and his Gatling gun.

  But the newspapers... .

  Jess turned, thinking. A journalist might be able to steer him toward the truth of what had happened at Baxter Pass. Fort Worth still boomed and boasted a number of newspapers: Daily Reporter, Evening Mail, Fort Worth Gazette, Fort Worth German Gazette, Fort Worth Guide, the Advertiser, Commercial Reporter, Livestock Journal, Fort Worth Standard.

  “Be back in a little bit, Hoot,” said Jess, grabbing his hat and hurrying out the door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Monday, 2:30 p.m.

  His first stop, however, was at the Trinity River Hotel. He didn’t even have to ask the clerk for the room numbers for the Butcher’s coterie. Major Clarke and Lee Bodeen were sitting in the lobby, smoking cigars, and sipping brandy. With the exception of the clerk, no one else was inside. Nobody stood outside, either. No one even gawked at the circus wagon with the Gatling gun affixed to its top.

/>   The streets of Fort Worth were busy—except here on Main Street. Texans seemed to be avoiding this place like the plague, and usually, immediately after a gunfight, a body could make a small fortune if he could have sold tickets.

  Jess glanced at the clerk, and made a beeline toward Clarke and Bodeen. Both men laid their cigars in ashtrays but did not rise. Nor did they extend their hands in a friendly greeting.

  “Sheriff,” Clarke said.

  They had changed their trail duds into gray Prince Alberts, pinstriped pants, blue silk shirts, and ties—a red polka-dot cravat for the major and a black ribbon tie for the gunman. Bodeen also wore a vest, double-breasted, of dark gray worsted wool. A brown bowler rested on Clarke’s knee. Lee Bodeen had not bothered removing his black hat, the one piece of wardrobe he had not changed, though he must have brushed the dust off the brim and crown up in his room. The Centennial Winchester was nowhere in sight, though the two revolvers on his hips remained in plain view.

  “I should have thought of this earlier,” Jess said. “But we have an ordinance in our city that prohibits the carrying of firearms. I’ll take yours now.” He held out his left hand toward the major. “Yours, too,” he told Bodeen.

  Jess kept his right hand on the butt of his .44-40.

  Actually, the city ordinance allowed men to check their weapons at saloons or hotels, or merely leave them at their hotels, homes, or boardinghouses, but Jess didn’t trust these two galoots.

  Wordlessly, Clarke and Bodeen looked at one another before Clarke, a sudden smart-aleck grin beaming across his face, set down his snifter and reached inside his coat. Jess waited, keeping his eyes on both men, ready for anything, though he doubted if either would make a play. Major Clarke withdrew an envelope and held it out for Casey.

  Jess just stared, not moving his right hand off the butt of the Colt.

  Shaking his head in amusement, Major Clarke opened the envelope and held out a letter. Jess moved closer and took the letter, while Clarke picked up his snifter and swirled the dark liquor around the rim of his glass.

  Immediately, Jess recognized the seal of the governor of the state of Texas. Frowning, he read:

  To Whom It May Concern:

  The Bearer of this letter is Jedediah Clarke, late of the 75th Ohio Infantry and a friend of Texas and this office.

  He is to be given any consideration, including the possession of concealed weapons, tolls for ferries and pikes, and minor offenses that might arise in defense of his person, or to protect his cargo and employer, Brigadier General Lincoln Everett Dalton, U.S. Army.

  Sincerely,

  Lawrence Sullivan Ross

  Governor

  Sul Ross himself. Jess could scarcely believe what he had just read, but the seal was official. Sul Ross had grown up in Texas during the republic years—his folks, Jess recalled, had even founded the town of Waco down on the Brazos River. He had fought Indians ... and Yankees. In fact, Sul Ross had joined the Confederate army almost as soon as Texas had voted to secede. He had fought at Corinth and Thompson’s Station and countless scrapes in Mississippi. In fact, the story Jess had heard countless times at campfires was how when the Yanks had captured Sul Ross at Brown’s Mill in Georgia in the summer of ’64, his men had immediately launched a counterattack—simply to free their general. He had been one of the youngest generals to wear the gray.

  In 1886, Ross had won the election for governor in a landslide, but now Jess remembered a few details about that election. Although he was a Texas Democrat, folks said Sul Ross pandered to Greenbackers, but mostly to Republicans. Apparently, holding this letter and seeing Lincoln Dalton’s name in Ross’s flowery script, there had been some truth to those charges. Jess decided he wouldn’t vote for Sul Ross ever again, unless he ran against Mort Thompson for Tarrant County solicitor.

  He handed the letter back to Clarke, who took it with that impish grin and began to fold it and return it to the envelope.

  “I suppose you have one of those letters, too,” Jess said, staring at Lee Bodeen.

  The gunman did not smile, nor did he lower his brandy snifter. Casually, he brought his free hand to his Prince Albert and slowly pulled the frock coat away just long enough for Jess Casey to see the badge pinned to the lapel of his fancy vest.

  “Reckon I can do better’n a letter, Sheriff,” Lee Bodeen said.

  The badge was small but unmistakable: a circled star cut out of Mexico’s version of a silver dollar, a five-peso coin. Folks in Texas called it the cinco pesos star.

  It was the badge of a Texas Ranger.

  “That good enough for you, Sheriff ?” Now, Lee Bodeen grinned.

  Jess said nothing. There was nothing to say, but now he remembered something else about Governor Sul Ross. Shortly before the War Between the States had broken out, Sul Ross had joined the Texas Rangers down Waco way. The captain had made Ross a lieutenant, and later Ross had been appointed by Governor Sam Houston to form his own Ranger battalion, so Ross had gone chasing Kickapoos and Comanches. In 1860, Ross’s boys had surprised a Comanche village on the Pease River, killed the war chief, and rescued a white woman captive. The woman was Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken by Comanches during a raid at Parker’s Court back in 1836. As a young woman, Cynthia Ann Parker had become the wife of the chief killed by Ross’s Rangers. She had given birth to at least one son, and that son had grown up to become Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all. Now Quanah went by his full name, Quanah Parker, and was courted by governors, presidents, but mostly by Texas ranchers for that rich grazing land up north of the Red River on the Comanche reservation.

  Sul Ross, Jess figured, had given Lee Bodeen a badge.

  No. Jess would definitely not vote for Sul Ross for anything, even if he ran against Mort Thompson.

  His eyes moved to the staircase and the balcony, and suddenly he forgot all about his troubles and Lee Bodeen and his dislike for the current governor of the state of Texas. His right hand left the handle of the Colt in the holster, and he swept off his battered cowboy hat. Bodeen and Clarke might have looked stupid, or questioned one another, or merely turned, saw, and stood. Jess couldn’t have said one way or the other.

  Caroline Dalton stood by the balustrade, her dark hair shining, her face angelic. She was staring right at him, right through him, and now she moved, one hand gripping the railing as she moved to the stairs and descended like an angel coming down from the heavens.

  She had changed her outfit, too, now wearing a kilt-pleated skirt of black velvet with a cutaway basque of red velvet, the collar and cuffs trimmed in black, and mother-of-pearl buttons on the tightly fitting front. Her hat was of black lace with a Chantilly net, pearl beads on one side, and a shirred rim.

  He sucked in a deep breath and did not move.

  Caroline Dalton did not wear her brace of .36-caliber revolvers, but even if she had, Jess wouldn’t have asked to see her Rangers badge or a letter from Governor Ross. Hell, he thought, she probably has letters of introduction from President Benjamin Harrison, Queen Victoria, and Porfirio Díaz. If she asked, Jess Casey would have given her a letter or badge himself.

  She crossed the floor and came directly to Jess Casey, extending her slender, ungloved hand. He started to take it in a handshake, then remembered himself and brought it up slowly to his lips, which tingled as he kissed her hand.

  “Ma’am.” Then he remembered his hat, and swept it off his head, wondering if his hair resembled a rat’s nest.

  “I wanted to thank you again for all your help earlier today,” she said. “And I apologize for any unfortunate problems that have arisen from our arrival.”

  Such as one dead man and one man in jail with a bullet hole in his thigh. And another prisoner in jail who’d love the chance to put a bullet in General Dalton’s brain.

  He thought that. He said: “It’s my job, Miss Dalton.”

  She looked for the longest while. He stared into those beautiful, big, haunting gray eyes, until he realized what he was doing, and
he made himself look up to the second floor and gestured lamely with the hat in his hand.

  “I hope your father is well.”

  She looked down. “The doctor is with him now.”

  “Alone?”

  He hadn’t meant to blurt it out, and he half-expected to hear the muffled report of a pistol from that second story as Amanda Wilson avenged the death of her cousin.

  “Lee.” Jess turned toward the major and the gunman, saw Lee Bodeen rising at Major Clarke’s order. Bodeen hitched his two gun belts and started for the staircase, but Caroline Dalton stopped him.

  “It’s all right, Bodeen,” she said, and faced Jess again.

  “She’s a doctor.”

  “She’s also a Texan, ma’am,” Major Clarke said.

  Neither of them knew the half of it. Had they known that Amanda Wilson’s cousin had been killed during the massacre at the Ohio prison camp all those years ago, this troupe probably would have kept right on west to Weatherford or Belknap ... maybe San Angelo or even El Paso.

  “So is my father,” Caroline Dalton said.

  Jess dropped his hat. His old joints cracked as he bent to lift it off the floor, and he could see the surprise in the faces of Bodeen and Clarke. Even the desk clerk, who had been eavesdropping as he always did, knocked over the inkwell.

  “He’s a ... Texan?” Major Jedediah Clarke sank deep into his sofa and quickly polished off the snifter of brandy.

  “Well, he was born in Memphis,” she said. “But came to Texas during the Revolution. Fought at San Jacinto under Houston. Fought at the Battle of the Knobs, and that’s why he moved to what’s now Decatur before there was a Decatur or a Wise County.”

  Jess had cowboyed up in Wise County for a season or two, so he had heard about the Battle of the Knobs. He had even found some old arrowheads near the site. It had happened in November of ’37, when eighteen soldiers of the Republic of Texas, under the command of some lieutenant whose name Jess could never remember, had engaged one hundred and fifty hostile Indians. Outnumbered, those old Texans refused to retreat and held their ground, killing fifty of the hostiles and driving off the rest. Only eight of the soldiers survived.