A Quiet, Little Town

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Angry at losing so many warriors and frustrated, the Apaches turned their attention to Effie Bell. Eight of them formed a semicircle around the terrified girl. She tossed away the Sharps and forced a smile. Then, in a moment of both inspiration and desperation, she pulled open the front of her dress and showed the leering Indians what lay beneath. Her ploy worked. Effie exchanged certain death for a living death. Since she disappears from history at this point, it is not recorded what she later thought of her bargain.

  * * *

  “Heck, I thought the Apaches were gone from this part of Texas,” Anton Bauer said.

  “So did I,” Buttons Muldoon said. “Looks like we were both wrong.”

  “Three dead,” another man said, stating the obvious. “Deputy, you said two of them were the sham monks, so who is the third?”

  Buttons pulled the lance from the dead man’s back, then turned him over with his boot. “This ranny has long hair and looks like a breed,” he said. “Since he’s supposed to be hanging around this neck of the woods, I’d say that there could well be Donny Bryson.”

  “The notorious killer?” a man said.

  “None other,” Buttons said.

  Bauer said, “Well, don’t that beat all. Obviously, he was in cahoots with the other four.”

  “Until the Apaches punched his ticket,” Buttons said.

  “O dear,” Elijah Blake said. He sniffed. “My lady wife will be so surprised. I wonder if there is a reward?”

  “I’m sure there is,” Buttons said. “We’ll split it among us. Except for Schmidt, that is. He ran out on his share.” He glanced at the sky. “We got some daylight left. Get the bodies up on your horses. He pointed at Bauer, Blake, and another man. “You, you, and you.”

  “Oh no, Mr. Muldoon. Remember my hay fever. I can’t travel with a dead man hanging behind me.”

  “Then hang him in front of you,” Buttons said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Three days had passed since the deaths of Dr. Ben Bradford, Chris Mercer, Donny Bryson, and the four assassins. Benny Bone had been busy. Bradford’s burial had been well-attended, most of the town turning out along with Red Ryan, Buttons Muldoon, and Augusta Addington, but Della Stark had been noticeably absent.

  Red and Buttons sat in the Alpenrose Inn’s front porch drinking afternoon beers with Augusta who still had her throat bandaged.

  Red let a brewer’s dray rumble past, then said to Buttons, “How many passengers does the Crawford couple make?”

  “Four. The Crawfords, a ladies’ corsets drummer by the name of Jenkins, and a man called Peter Cream that I know nothing about except that he’s in the plants and seed trade,” Buttons said. “But I’m not real sure about the Crawfords. They’re a mite nervous about the Apaches. Maybe they won’t show tomorrow.”

  “Five passengers, Buttons. There’s me, remember?”

  Buttons smiled. “You’re not a passenger, Miss Augusta. Since you’re Red’s bride-to-be I count you as a special guest of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company. That’s why I’ll only charge you half-fare.”

  “You’re so kind,” Augusta said, smiling.

  After he gave Buttons a scorching glare, Red said, “What does Sheriff Ritter say about Hans Schmidt?

  “What about him?” Buttons said.

  “I thought he was pressing charges against you for assault.”

  “Oh that. No, Ritter says it was a fair fight and no charges are forthcoming. Besides, he made me promise him that me and you would leave Fredericksburg and never come back. He says we ride into town like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and leave death and destruction in our wake.”

  “I thought the holy monks were the four horsemen,” Red said.

  “Yeah, well, now Ritter doesn’t see it that way, if he ever did.”

  “What about the reward for Donny Bryson?” Red said.

  “He says he ain’t a hundred percent sure that it was Donny we brought in. But he said he’ll contact the Mexican authorities and let me know.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Ritter says he has no idea,” Buttons said. “Then he fired me from my deputy sheriff position, as if I gave a damn.”

  Red set his beer mug on the table and said, “Well, well . . . lookee here.”

  Della Stark pulled up in her surrey, a cowboy at the reins, the gun vaquero Manuel Garcia as an outrider. She wore a plain black day dress without a bustle and a poke bonnet of the same color that tied under the chin.

  The cowboy helped Della from the carriage, and as she mounted the steps to the porch, Augusta noticed a gesture that perhaps betrayed the young woman’s state of mind. The custom dictated that a lady used only one hand to lift her skirt high enough to take the steps. Della used two hands . . . the mark of a whore.

  The girl was very pale, no trace of paint or powder, and she looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept in days. “Pardon my intrusion,” she said.

  “You’re not intruding,” Buttons said, standing. “Take a seat, Miss Stark.”

  “No, what I have to say won’t take long,” Della said. “I really want to talk with you, Augusta, but I don’t mind if the others hear.”

  “I don’t mind, either,” Augusta said. She sounded cool, distant. “Please, go ahead.”

  “First I want to apologize for my father’s actions,” Della said. “He hadn’t been himself recently and was prone to sudden outbursts.”

  “Ma’am,” Red said, “it wasn’t an outburst. He tried to strangle Augusta with a length of barbed wire.”

  “Yes, I know. Manuel told me,” Della said. “That was unfortunate.”

  Augusta’s fingers moved to her bandaged throat. “Yes, wasn’t it?’ she said.

  “I’m sure that if my father had time to reconsider his actions, it would never have happened,” Della said.

  “He rode here from your ranch,” Augusta said. “He had hours to reconsider his proposed actions.”

  Feeling a niggle of annoyance in his belly, Red said, “Dr. Bradford’s funeral was well attended. Just about the whole town turned out.”

  “Did they?” Della said. Her face showed little emotion. “I’m so glad.” Then, perhaps realizing how cold that sounded, she said distantly, “Ben was a good man and a fine doctor. What a pity my father could never accept him.”

  “Yes, it was a pity,” Augusta said. “A lot of men died because of Gideon Stark’s lack of acceptance.”

  “Are you still blaming him?” Della said.

  Augusta said, “For Ben Bradford’s death? Yes, I am. For trying to kill me? Yes, again.”

  “Father was disturbed,” Della said. “As I said, he wasn’t himself and didn’t know what he was doing. I know because I was the cause of it.”

  “Your father’s own ambition was the cause of it,” Augusta said.

  Manuel Garcia stirred, his web between his thumb and trigger finger rested on the hammer of his holstered Colt. Suddenly he seemed uncomfortable, and Red watched him closely.

  “As a tribute to my father’s memory I’ve decided to marry Don Miguel de Serra,” Della said. “Our lands will be joined as father always wanted.”

  Augusta realized she was dealing with someone mentally unbalanced and said, “I hope you and Don Miguel will be very happy.”

  “We won’t be happy, that’s too much to ask. But I do hope I can drive him into an early grave,” Della said. “He is an old man and sick. When he dies all the land will be mine.”

  Buttons could always be depended on to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. “From Monterrey to San Antone . . . that’s a whole heap of range, Miss Della.”

  “Enough to found a dynasty in my father’s name,” Della said.

  “Boss, it’s time to leave,” Garcia said. “Best we get back to the ranch before dark.”

  Della nodded and opened her drawstring bag. “Augusta, Miss Addington, how much do I owe you?” she said.

  Augusta shook her head. “You don’t owe me a thing, Della.�
��

  “I insist.”

  “You hired me to save Dr. Ben Bradford’s life and I failed. You owe me nothing.”

  “Not even expenses?”

  “No. Not even expenses.”

  Della drew the bag closed again. “Then I’ll be on my way,” she said. She hesitated and then said, “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “So am I,” Augusta said.

  Della Stark returned to the surrey, and Manuel Garcia said to Augusta, “Black clouds ahead for Miss Della, I think.”

  “I’m sorry,” Augusta said. “I had hoped for something better.”

  The vaquero nodded. “After she weds Don Miguel, I will ride on.”

  “I suspect Della will be very much alone,” Augusta said.

  “She will not be alone,” Garcia said. “Her father will never leave her.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “I’m sorry to do this,” Sheriff Herman Ritter said, “but it’s a lifetime plus a year ban from the city limits, both you and Red Ryan.”

  “You ain’t sorry,” Buttons Muldoon said. “I can see it in your face that you ain’t sorry.”

  Ritter sought to soften the blow. “Of course, the Patterson stage will always be welcome, so long as it has a different driver and messenger.”

  The passengers, including the old Crawford couple who had decided to brave the Apaches, had already boarded the stage, and Red and Buttons along with Augusta Addington stood on the Alpenrose porch, facing Ritter and five of the city fathers, stern-looking gents in black or gray broadcloth with aggressive, Teutonic faces.

  The sheriff reached into his shirt pocket and produced a piece of paper that he opened and then read from. “It has also been decided by those present, that this ban does not apply to future Patterson passengers, with the exception of one Miss Hannah Huckabee and her associate, the Chinaman known as Mr. Chang. In the future, any stage bearing the aforementioned will be stopped at the city limits. It has also been determined that Miss Augusta Addington, due to the ordeal she suffered in our fair city, can return to Fredericksburg, zu jeder Zeit . . . in English, anytime.”

  “Hear, hear,” the grayest of the city fathers said. “It will always be our pleasure to welcome you, dear lady.”

  Augusta smiled. “You are very kind. I look forward to my next visit.”

  Under her riding outfit, she wore a blue and white pinstripe blouse with a high collar that covered the bandage around her throat. She’d left off the top hat, preferring to let her unbound hair fall over her shoulders in soft waves.

  Red thought her a flawless beauty that morning and a fine lady.

  Buttons glared at Ritter and said, “Have you finished?” “Let me see,” Ritter said. “Patrick Muldoon . . . Red Ryan . . . banned for life . . . don’t ever come back . . .” He smiled. “Yes, I think I’ve covered it.”

  One of the city fathers—he wore pince-nez glasses on a thin black ribbon and had a protruding round belly that spoke of a love for beer—said, “We are sorry to be so harsh, Mr. Muldoon, but every time you visit our city sundry disasters befall us. In short, sir, you are a Jonah.”

  “Well, you needn’t worry about that, because I’ve no intention of coming back,” Buttons said. “And I will let it be known to the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company that we are as welcome in Fredericksburg as a rattlesnake in a prairie dog town.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, ex-Deputy Muldoon,” Ritter said. “I think the per capita life expectancy of our city just went up by about twenty years.”

  Buttons gathered his dignity around him like a cloak, ignored that last, and said, “Please, Miss Addington, enter the coach and let us shake the dust of this town off our feet.”

  As a mark of his displeasure, Buttons didn’t showboat out of town but left at a sedate pace, the stage creaking its way toward the city limits.

  The reins in his hands, eyes on the street ahead, Buttons said, “You think them square-heads meant all that.”

  “About us being banned?” Red said. “Yeah, they did. Every word. We’re banned for life plus a year. That means we can’t come back even if we’re dead.”

  “Well, I won’t miss the place,” Buttons said.

  “How about the beer and the frauleins?” Red said.

  “Yeah, that’s right, Red, go ahead and spoil things for me.”

  “Spoil what?”

  “My determination to never set foot in that burg again.”

  “Maybe you’ll be able to go back one day,” Red said.

  “You could go in disguise like the holy monks.”

  “Wear a robe?”

  “Heck, no, just grow a beard.”

  Buttons slapped the reins, smiling, his good humor restored. “Now you’re talking sense,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Buttons Muldoon had changed horses three times by the time the dusty stage reached Kickapoo Springs station under a clear morning sky. San Angelo lay about twenty miles of good road ahead of him, hilly grasslands on either side of the track with scattered groves of trees and wide prairie basins many miles in extent.

  As Jim Moore and his sons helped Buttons change the team, the manager said, “I hear tell Smiler Thurmond and Jonah Halton are back in this neck of the woods.”

  “Damn that man,” Buttons said. “He keeps turning up like a bad penny.”

  “The word is he and Halton held up a Wells Fargo stage and robbed twenty thousand dollars from the strongbox,” Moore said. “That’s the story a Ranger told me no later than the day before yesterday, and I got no reason to doubt his word.”

  “Seems to me Smiler will head for the nearest big town to spend his ill-gotten gains,” Buttons said. “But there ain’t anything like that in this part of the country.”

  “San Angelo,” Moore said.

  “Heck, it would take a man his whole lifetime to spend twenty thousand dollars in San Angelo,” Buttons said. “My guess is that he’ll head for a burg with snap, maybe El Paso or Fort Worth.”

  “Well, be on the lookout for him, Buttons,” Moore said. “I figure you and Smiler get along, but he’s still bad news.”

  “He knows the Patterson stage doesn’t carry a strongbox, so he pretty much leaves us alone,” Buttons said. “But I don’t trust him. Outlaws can be mighty notional.”

  After the fresh team was hitched, Buttons stepped into the cabin to roust his passengers. Edgar and Fanny Crawford were all worked up as only a pair of old, timid folks can get. It seemed that Mrs. Moore had casually mentioned that the gunslinging outlaw Smiler Thurmond was in the area.

  “I said, maybe he’s in the area,” Gertrude Moore explained to Buttons. “I didn’t say he was here fer sure.”

  “Oh, Mr. Muldoon, are we in great danger?” Fanny Crawford said.

  She was a small, gray-haired, lumpy woman, dressed all in black like Queen Victoria, with a small, nervous mouth surrounded by wrinkles. Edgar Crawford, equally small and just as agitated, had a bristly beard, a few sparse hairs in place of eyebrows and blue, slightly protruding eyes that were quick and darting.

  “Will the outlaw rob us of our money and my snuffbox and then shoot us?” Edgar said.

  “Buttons smiled. “Put your minds at rest, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, Smiler Thurmond is far from here. Why, I do believe that right now he’s in El Paso or maybe Fort Worth probably disporting himself with fancy women.”

  “We are not without protection, Fanny and me,” Edgar said. His right hand suddenly dived under the front of his pants and he pulled out a revolver of the largest proportions and waved it in the air. “We have this, by God.”

  Taken aback, Buttons said, “Where in blue blazes did you hide that cannon?”

  “Down my drawers,” Edgar said.

  “Give me the damned thing before you do yourself or someone else an injury,” Buttons said. He grabbed the gun, a rusty Colt Dragoon, capped and ready to go, and said, “I’ll return this to you when we reach San Angelo.”

  “Then you leave
us defenseless,” Edgar said.

  “You were just as defenseless with the Dragoon,” Buttons said. “That’s too much gun for a nubbin’ like you to handle.”

  “The man at the hardware store in Fredericksburg told me . . .”

  “That it’s a sweet-shooting gun just so long as you rest it in the fork of a tree before you cut loose.”

  “Yes, or a fencepost,” Edgar said.

  “He saw you coming,” Buttons said. “When we reach San Angelo, trade it in on a squirrel rifle.” He turned to the others. “Now, all aboard for San Angelo.”

  Red escorted Augusta to the stage, where she sat and immediately reassured the Crawfords that Smiler Thurmond was not the ogre some made him out to be.

  “In fact, he can be quite the gentleman,” she said.

  “I do hope so, dear,” Fanny said. She didn’t look at all reassured.

  Peter Cream the seeds salesman, a gaunt, brown-eyed man with a full beard and bad haircut, said, “There have been many gentleman bandits in history. I can name two off the top of my head, Robin Hood and Jesse James.”

  “And now you can add Smiler Thurmond to your list,” Robert Jenkins, the women’s corsets drummer said.

  “That remains to be seen,” Cream said. “Not that I want to meet the gentleman in person.”

  Up top, Buttons Muldoon hoorawed the team, and the Patterson stage jolted into movement. Side lamps lit, it reached San Angelo in a dark blue dusk without incident.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Red Ryan and Augusta Addington were married in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in San Angelo. Buttons Muldoon was best man, and Abe Patterson gave the bride away.

  Abe insisted on holding a wedding reception at the stage depot where cake and ice cream was served, and the refreshments for the drivers, messengers, and horse handlers in attendance came in gallon jugs. A half-drunk fiddler provided the music, and every booted gent present insisted on dancing with the bride . . . and a few with the groom.

  The merriment was well underway and the crowd, with the lone exception of Augusta herself, was feeling no pain, when a shadow fell over the dancers on the floor and the fiddler screaked to a stop.