by J. Lee Butts
Pratt tilted his head to one side like a puzzled dog. Thumped ashes from his smoke, and suddenly appeared to remember something. He waved the cigarette like a wooden pointer and said, “Well, come to think on it, I wuz makin’ my way down the west side of Rusk when I seen three fellers on the east side at about Eighth Street. Couldn’t for certain sure identify ’em, though. Way too dark. But I could tell as how two of ’em wuz well over six feet tall and wearing buffalo-skin coats. Curious garb for these parts, considering how hot as it is most days, and nights.”
His description sounded familiar, so I pressed him farther. “Either of the men in the skin coats have a severe limp?”
“Yes, by God. One of ’em appeared to have right smart of trouble walkin’ at all. Acted like his leg were twisted almost completely around. Maybe clubfooted.”
Carlton pulled at my sleeve, leaned close, and whispered, “Bet it’s the Doome brothers. Clubfooted one is Jethro. Sure as we’re standin’ here.”
Farmer started to walk away. “Do you mind if we go ahead and do some investigating on our own, Marshal?” I called as he headed for the group of fidgety helpers.
He motioned to his deputies. “Wanna get that poor girl down from there, before we have a crowd gather. Gonna be bad enough when word of this killin’ gets around town, as it is. Get a bunch of waggin’ tongues and faintin’ women gandering at this mess, and we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Four men stepped forward and began the gruesome task of trying to remove the body. Farmer beckoned me join him, took my elbow, and led me back to Rusk Street. Carlton and Nate followed.
The three of us gathered around Fort Worth’s troubled marshal. In a low, conspiratorial voice, he said, “You have my blessings to do whatever it takes to bring the men responsible for this killing to justice, gentlemen. I will instruct my deputies to render any assistance you might need, and will personally inform the county sheriff of my decision and actions.”
“Don’t worry, Marshal Farmer, we’ll find ’em.” Carlton sounded considerably more confident that I felt.
Nate nodded his unqualified agreement.
I said, “Do be aware, sir, when we find ’em, we don’t intend to take Dawson, Storms, Cotton Rix, or the Doome brothers alive. Far as we’re concerned, they’re dead already and just don’t know it.”
For about five seconds, Farmer stared at me like I’d grown another head. Then, he smiled. “Sounds like a damned fine idea to me. Save the county the cost of a trial. Besides, deputy U.S. marshals, such as yourselves, can rub the Dawson bunch out and head back to Fort Smith with very little in the way of repercussions. But, let’s keep this particular piece of information between the four of us. No need for anyone else to share the least familiarity with your plans.”
We shook hands all around and, later that morning, Nate, Carlton, and I pushed the batwing doors of the Two Minnies Saloon open and stepped inside. Paused near the open door to let our eyes adjust to the darkness, then eased over to the bar.
“I don’t see nothin’ all that special ’bout this place,” Nate offered.
Friendly whiskey slinger inquired how he could help. Showed him our badges and asked if he could direct us to Miss Lucy Love. He pointed at the ceiling and said, “That’s her by the table upstairs. Red-haired gal. Best hope she’s in a good mood. Woman can be a handful when she’s not.” He ran a wet bar rag around in front of us and kept pointing at the ceiling.
Think we all looked up at about the same time. “Just be damned. Now t-t-that’s a s-s-sight,” Nate stammered.
Carlton turned back to the bartender. “What the hell’s it made out of?”
“Four-by-eight sheets of six-inch-thick reinforced glass.”
Nate sounded baffled when he said, “They always go completely bare-assed nekkid like that?”
Bartender offered us a broad, toothy grin. “All day, every day. Cowboys from the massive entirety of Texas know about this place. Just stroll in, order yourself a drink, and a man can see all he could ever want to see for the price of a shot of whiskey. Best damned deal in town. Ain’t an ugly, bucktoothed heifer in the bunch.”
Less than five feet above our heads, viewed through a glass ceiling, there must have been twenty, or more, totally nude females. Some strutted around, waved, and brazenly exposed themselves in the most lewd manner for anyone willing to take a gander. Others sat at conveniently placed tables and, most astonishing of all, at least half a dozen played tenpins on an alley in the corner farthest from the front door.
“Most cowpunchin’ fellers usually end up over yonder, rubberneckin’ and watchin’ our gals play tenpins. Something they can brag about to their friends, once they get back to the ranch, you see. Course for the right price, man with the money can have any of the ladies that take his fancy, out back to one of the cribs for a bit of the ole slap and tickle. You boys interested in a little female companionship of the ride-the-tiger variety?”
“No,” I said, “we’re here on official business. Would appreciate it if you’d get Miss Love for us. We’ll be at that table yonder. Might be helpful if you had her throw something on to cover herself. Don’t know ’bout anyone else, but I find it mighty distracting trying to talk to nekkid females.”
Carlton flopped into a chair at the table I’d picked, as Nate said, “Would’ve been a lot more interestin’ if’n you’d let her come on down without gettin’ dressed, Hayden.”
We were still discussing the various merits of having a naked woman at the table, when Miss Lucy Love swaggered up and took the chair between Carl and Nate. “Hear you boys is U. S. marshals or some such. Bartender says you have something you want to talk with me about,” she said. Then she dramatically stabbed a smoking cigarette, which had been machine-rolled in blue paper, between lips painted blood red, and waited. Overpowering odors of lilac water, whiskey, and body sweat tinted with a snuffy smell wafted across the table, and almost knocked me out of my chair.
From all observable appearances, Nate and Carl went completely mute, and stupid, when the girl’s robe dropped open and exposed most of her pale upper body. She was thinner than my first impression. Couldn’t have been much over sixteen or eighteen years old.
“Miss Love, were you acquainted with a young woman named Molly LeBeau who worked at Smiley’s dance hall?” I asked.
“Maybe I wuz. Maybe I wuzn’t. Whaddya mean ‘were’?” she snapped.
“Did you know her?”
She puzzled over her choices for answers a second, and finally said, “Yes. We sometimes roomed together. Still trying to understand what you meant by the question, though. Has something happened to Molly?”
Nate suddenly came back to life. He managed to draw his fascinated gaze away from the girl’s exposed breasts long enough to say, “I’m afraid so, Miss Lucy. Someone murdered her last night.”
Lucy Love’s head dropped to the top of the table with a resounding thump. Both my friends made a grab for her, but it happened too fast. Thought for a second, she’d fainted dead away and possibly knocked herself out, or maybe cracked her skull, when her rock-hard noggin bounced the way it did.
“Jesus H. Christ,” she said, and snapped back to a sitting position. Tears streamed down heavily roughed cheeks and smudged the dark liner she used under bloodshot eyes. A quivering hand wiped at the dampness, and further smeared the icing of carelessly applied face paint. “How’d it happen?”
Carl and Nate both shot puzzled looks my direction as if to ask how they were supposed to react. “We can’t discuss the details of the crime at this point, Miss Love,” I said. “We hoped you could tell us if you saw Molly late last night and, if so, who she might have kept company with.”
Lucy Love’s pupils narrowed down like pieces of spent birdshot. “There was three of them bastards. Me and Molly’d just come out of Lulu’s when they stopped us out on the street. Said they’d be willing to give a handsome sum to whichever one of us’d take ’em all on—at the same time.”
Nate leaned towa
rd the girl. Tried to sound understanding when he said, “You weren’t keen on the idea?”
She shot him down like a dove hunter using a cannon. “Hell, yes, I wuz willing. Just tired. Been lettin’ cowboys ride me all night long. Wuz wore out, sore, and needed some sleep. Ain’t no sleepin’, if you stay with Lulu. That woman keeps a warm female busier’n a three-armed bartender at the Local Option Saloon.”
Carl tapped her on the arm. “Can you describe those three men?”
“Two of ’em looked like twins. Thought maybe that wuz why they wanted the same girl, at the same time. Tall, nasty, wearing those big ole buffalo coats no one around here wears anymore. Oh, one of them twins had a twisted leg. Limped right smart. Think his friends called him Jethro.”
Carl’s chin dropped to his chest. “Jesus, save us,” he mumbled under his breath.
Knew exactly how he felt. Suspicion was one thing, confirmation a totally different animal altogether. No doubt remained in my mind. The Doome brothers had a part in Molly LeBeau’s murder. Only one question remained.
“Can you remember anything helpful about the third man?” I asked.
Girl rubbed a final tear away, wiped it on her thin, almost transparent gown. “Well, it wuz dark out where they stopped us. But even that didn’t keep me from bein’ able to tell that someone had tried to cut that short bastard’s nose off. Had a terrible mess of scars on his face, looked like a map for the Texas and Pacific Railroad tracks.”
Nate’s glance darted my direction. “Bet everything in my pocket that’s Charlie Storms,” he said. “Seen him outside McAlester’s store one time, several years ago. She’s described him near perfect.”
Carl touched the well-used girl’s arm again. “Did they leave you with any idea of where they were stayin’?”
“No. But if I see ’em again, they’ll play hell keepin’ me from cuttin’ their hearts out. Molly LeBeau might’a been a whore, but she was my friend, a human being, and didn’t deserve to be kilt by nobody, for any reason.”
Angry red-eyed girl stood, pushed her chair away, and the gown fell open down to her feet. Nate’s eyes almost dropped onto the table. She pointed at me, shook her smoking blue cigarette in my face, and said, “You catch ’em, mister. Cause if you don’t, and I run across ’em again, there’ll sure enough be another killin’, or maybe even three.”
Barely clothed girl grabbed both sides of her robe, snatched them closed, and stomped away without another word. We watched her trudge back to her lewd duties on the second floor.
“Damn,” Nate barely breathed. “Wouldn’t want that gal after me.” Then he turned to Carl and said, “Where you reckon she was hidin’ the razor we heard about?” Carl grinned, then laughed out loud, and slapped the top of the table.
“Tell you one thing, boys,” I said. “Bet this situation is gonna get considerable bloodier before we can stop it. Tell you, Carl, if what we saw out in the Nations is any indication of what to expect, better find the Doome brothers—and Storms—damned fast. Otherwise, Satan’s gonna be a mighty busy man in Hell’s Half Acre.”
15
“MUSTA PUNCHED A HOLE IN MY LARGE GUT.”
VERY NIGHT AFTER the discovery of Molly LeBeau’s poor battered body, me, Carlton, and Nate spread out in the Acre. Searched every crack, saloon, bar, whorehouse, crib, and cranny available. Talked with all those who were willing to stand still long enough, and carried on with the same dance again—each evening—for an entire week.
Even had some hard-to-ignore handbills printed up, at Carlton’s suggestion, and handed one to any working girl who’d take it. But the simple fact always was, when it came to such efforts, you couldn’t be everywhere at the same time. After seven fruitless nights on the hunt, our frustration had begun to get the best of us.
Far as I can recall, we didn’t turn up a single hint as to where any of the men we sought could have hidden themselves. Experience proved, beyond my ability to understand it, that not one other person we contacted could, or would, admit to having seen Rufus or Jethro Doome, Charlie Storms, Cotton Rix, or Maynard Dawson. Then, with little to go on and nowhere left to look, our most dreaded fears came to pass like an electric bolt of icy-hot death from the blue.
Woke to more frantic banging at our door, on the eighth morning. Deputy Herman Blodgett held his battered hat in his hands and said the words all of us had most feared would surely come. “Sorry to wake you so early again, gents, but we’ve discovered another body. Marshal Farmer sent me to ask if you might want to come on out and take a look at ’er.”
Carlton pulled his shirt over his head. “Well, Herm, don’t really want to see her, but suppose we’d better have a peek. Hadn’t we, Hayden?”
With no enthusiasm, I said, “Much as I hate to agree, think you’re right, Carl.” A sense of apprehensive foreboding, unlike any I’d felt in years, settled over my shoulders like a necklace of anvils.
Blodgett surprised us when he made a kind of deferential, I’m-so-sorry shrug and added, “Gonna need horses this time, boys.”
Unexpected pronouncement stopped us all in mid-motion. I stepped a bit closer to our reluctant messenger. “Where’s the girl’s body located, Herman?”
“’Bout two miles out, on the Fort Concho stage road. Driver making a return trip found her.”
As he buckled his pistol belt, Nate said, “Man able to see in the dark?”
Deputy sounded a bit shifty with his answer. “Not exactly sure ’bout that, but I know we did have a good moon last night. And some of these stage drivers have mighty fine eyes, you know. Almost a requirement of the job, being as how they spend so much time operating after the sun goes down.”
“This victim treated same way as the other’n?” Carl asked.
“Not exactly. Poor girl’s nailed to a tree right next to the road, if you wanna call that different. Guess the position of the body could explain why the driver spotted her so easy. But there’s something else as well.”
Nate threw his head back and let out an exasperated sigh. “A tree? You did say a tree, didn’t you?”
“Yep. Terrible sight, fellers.” Blodgett gazed at the floor and twisted his hat between nervous fingers. “I thought that last ’un was awful, but, boys, she warn’t nothin’ compared to this ’un.”
“That bad, huh?” I grumbled.
“It’s horrible bad, Marshal Tilden. And that’s as much I can say right now. Fact is, Mr. Farmer gave me strict orders not to even tell you what I already have. Said he’d have my butt in a sawmill vise, if’n I actually told you what was what.”
Figured there was no need to press the agitated deputy any farther. Took us over an hour to get saddled up and make our way to the ghastly scene. By the time of our arrival, the sun had got up pretty good and the searing horror of the grotesque setting fell on us with the full force of an avalanche of stomach-churning revulsion. Charred tree still smoked, and the well-cooked stench of human flesh permeated the air with an unforgettable, sickly-sweet odor.
Nate climbed off his animal, turned away, and refused to look at the body after an initial dose of mind-numbing shock. “What sort of men can do such things, Hayden?” he asked, and whipped his reins against the palm of a trembling, glove-covered hand.
“Jesus, thought I’d seen it all. Probably have nightmares ’bout this till I die. Defies the ability to even imagine, Nate.” Hadn’t meant to let anything like that slip out, but I did.
With both hands thrust under his pistol belt, Carlton ducked a wagging head, and moaned like a man who’d been shot. “God Almighty, Hayden. Believe this corpse looks a helluva lot more like them we seen out in the Nations than Molly LeBeau did. Leastways, the bastards didn’t bother to set fire to poor Molly. This sad girl’s condition don’t leave one bit of doubt in my mind who done the deed.”
Marshal Sam Farmer rushed over, gently grasped my elbow, and pulled me to the far side of the heavily rutted stage road. Poor man looked on the verge of physical and mental collapse.
“Ha
yden, we’ve gotta put a stop to these murders, and damned quick,” he said. “I kept the story of what really happened with Molly LeBeau to little more than a footnote report in the paper, last time around.”
“Would seem to me this killing might be easier to hide for a spell, being as how it happened way the hell out here in the woods, Sam.”
He shook his head. “Half-a-dozen devastated stage passengers saw this one, when the coach came on the still-burning body. By now, they’re all over town talking their heads off to anyone who’ll listen, in spite of my pleas to keep it quiet.”
The longer Farmer talked, the more excited he got. Tried to calm him a bit when I said, “Come on, Sam. Can’t be that bad.”
Thought the man’s eyes would pop right out of his head. “Listen to what I’m sayin’, ole son. By the time we get back to town, I’d be willing to bet near panic has set in. Way I’ve got it figured, if we have just one more of these brutal slaughters, and it goes unsolved, I’ll be looking for a new job.” Disgusted, he spit and toed at the dirt.
Tried to steer the conversation another direction when I turned back to the smoking tree. “Have any idea who this one is?”
Once more, Farmer shook his head, but didn’t look up. “Nope. Not a clue. Very likely we’ll never know. Blaze was going pretty good by the time Texas Jack Beck drove the coach from Fort Concho around that curve yonder and found her. He told me the whole tree was afire. Said you could see the flames for miles.”
Have to give Fort Worth’s marshal his due. Man knew the citizens of his town. By the time we could get that poor woman’s crispy corpse down and drag her back to civilization, word of her demise had extended far beyond anything I could have imagined. Rumors, tall tales, outright lies, gossip, and eyewitness reports of every kind, type, and sort imaginable surfaced. As cowboys came and went through town in droves, the story spread out across the entire countryside like the legs of a West Texas tarantula.
