The Butcher of Baxter Pass Page 12

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Monday, 6:20 p.m.

  “Smells perty, don’t it?” Hoot Newton grinned.

  “The dishes, Hoot,” Jess said, although he didn’t care if the prisoners ate off dirty dishes or clean ones. And Hoot was right. The note smelled even better than that Sweet Bye & Bye cologne he had bought for that gal who worked in the dance hall down around Pleasanton so many years back. That little bottle had cost Jess twenty cents. He figured what he smelled right now had to be worth at least a dollar. Maybe more, if you considered inflation.

  Jess Casey, Sheriff had been written in a beautiful cursive. Practically art. No return address, but the back of the envelope read Trinity River Hotel, Fort Worth.

  Eagerly, Jess opened the note with a pocketknife, although he felt like ripping it open to get at it immediately. But a note like this deserved preserving. He was careful with the knife blade and gingerly withdrew the folded piece of hotel stationery.

  Sheriff Casey:

  I hope you would do me the honor of dining with me tonight. It is the least I can do to pay you back for your services and honesty and protection of my father. Say 6: 30 tonight? I will be waiting in the hotel lobby.

  Sincerely,

  Caroline Dalton

  He exploded out of his chair with a barnyard curse.

  “I’ll be back later,” he said, glancing at the clock, grabbing his hat, and hurrying through the door.

  He moved quickly down the boardwalk, weaving in and out of the people leaving their businesses for home or the saloons over in the Acre. He wasn’t dressed for supper. He felt his cheek. Didn’t even have time for a shave. And he was already late. A woman like Caroline Dalton would likely have decided he had shunned her. She was probably eating in the hotel dining room with that lout Lee Bodeen. Had she wanted a reply? What time had that note been delivered? No answers. Not even guesses. Besides, he’d find out soon enough.

  Jess Casey entered the lobby of the Trinity River Hotel.

  There, sitting on a settee in the corner, holding a copy of the Fort Worth Gazette—the English paper, not the German Gazette—sat Caroline Dalton, still in the black velvet outfit Jess had seen her in earlier that day, before Mayor Harry Stout had barged in with the report of Gary Custer’s demise.

  The paper lowered and Caroline Dalton’s gray eyes shined. Jess swept his hat off his head, tried his best to comb his hair with his fingers, and walked across the carpeted floor, hearing the annoying chimes of the jingle bobs on his spurs. His heart pounded against his rib cage, and he felt like a fourteen-year-old boy at his first church picnic calling on the preacher’s daughter.

  She rose, relocating the paper on the stand beside her chair.

  He wondered if he smelled half as bad as he thought he smelled. Had he washed the blood off his fingers?

  “I just got your note,” he told her. Well, his mouth moved, and he had said some words.

  “I’m glad you could make it.” She held out her hand. He took it.

  “How’s your father?” he asked.

  “Sleeping,” she said.

  He looked around the lobby.

  “Major Clarke is making arrangements for tomorrow at the opera house,” she told him. “Mr. Bodeen is, of course, in Father’s room.”

  She wore no gun belts, but when she picked up her purse, it seemed to be heavy for her, and he suspected she had slipped one of the Navy Colts, or maybe a smaller hideaway gun, in there. He decided not to ask her about it.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Reckon I could eat,” he said, though he wasn’t sure his stomach, dancing like butterflies, would hold anything.

  He expected her to head for the hotel restaurant, but she started outside, crooking her elbow, though a few moments passed before Jess Casey understood her meaning, and slipped his left arm through it. It wasn’t walking hand-in-hand, of course, but it did feel mighty fine.

  At this time of evening, several people had gathered around the circus wagon, chattering about it, about General Dalton, about Baxter Springs and every other thing they could think of. The Gatling gun looked safe. After all, Jess figured the general’s room was right above it, giving Lee Bodeen a perfect view of the wagon on the street and the dying old war criminal in the hotel room’s bed.

  Before long, they were away from the noise outside the Trinity River Hotel. This was his town, but Jess let Miss Dalton lead the way, although he wondered if she knew where she was going. Maybe she didn’t, because she stopped at a little place on a street he avoided.

  The sign above the door read: Café Lavendou.

  The man at the door wore a suit with tails that undoubtedly cost more than Jess’s best saddle and had a thin mustache with the ends twisted upward toward his little beady eyes.

  She went inside. The man with the pointy mustache bowed at her but did not cast a look at Jess Casey.

  “Mademoiselle?” he said, bowing. “Avez-vous une réservation?” He gave Jess one wicked glance, but when he looked back up at Caroline Dalton, he was smiling again.

  “Mais bien sûr,” she said, and gestured at Jess. “For Sheriff Casey and myself.”

  He frowned and said to Jess. “We have a house policy, monsieur. Gentlemen are required to wear a coat and a tie.”

  Jess tapped the collar of his Mackinaw, unloosened and retied his bandana. Finally, he pulled away the coat to reveal the golden badge pinned to his vest.

  “That work, pal?” he said.

  Caroline broke out in laughter, and the headwaiter’s face turned such bright red, Jess thought he might blow up.

  “Suivez-moi.” He led Jess and Miss Dalton to a table by the window. He did not come back.

  * * *

  “Do you eat here often, Sheriff Casey?” she asked.

  Jess laughed as he sipped the wine the waiter—a much politer gent than the guy with the funny mustache—had served them.

  “Miss Dalton. They don’t even let me on this street.”

  They started with something called hors d’oeuvres and little bitty drinks the nice waiter and Miss Dalton called aperitifs. Jess figured he could handle the tiny little plate of some kind of fish and potatoes that no one Jess had ever cowboyed with would recognize as potatoes. There was something about crème fraiche and brandade canapes and caviar, which tasted worse than canned sardines. Jess managed to get the food down, thankful they didn’t serve bigger portions of this junk, and shot down the aperitif. The drink, something that sounded like a Dubonnet, tasted like syrup. Way too sweet. Jess liked the wine better.

  Those Frenchies didn’t eat much, Jess thought, and was saddened that the meal hadn’t lasted long at all. He started to reach for his hat when the waiter came back, but he wasn’t bringing a check. He had more food.

  This one was more fish—and not the fried catfish with corn dodgers Jess usually chowed down on over at Harry’s Fish Shack on Throckmorton—with some squash (Jess had never cared much for yellow squash) and pumpkin, which was pretty good. Now they ate and talked.

  “How long have you been a lawman?” she asked.

  “Not long. Still figuring out how to do this job.” He dabbed his lips with the napkin and discreetly spit out the squash.

  “What did you do before?”

  “Cowboyed.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And before you were a cowboy?”

  He smiled. “That’s it. I was a thirty-a-month-and-found drifter, Miss Dalton.”

  “Call me Caroline,” she said. “And I’ll call you Jess.”

  He did not object.

  They finished up the fish and vegetables, and the waiter quickly took away their plates. They sipped more wine.

  Jess wanted to ask her about her father, about Baxter Pass, and the Fancy Belpre, but every time he summoned up the nerve, he would look into those wonderful gray eyes. So instead, he answered her questions about trail drives and broncs, cattle yards and branding irons, chuckwagons and St. Elmo�
�s fire, that glowing light during thunderstorms that cowboys feared more than rattlesnakes and stampedes. He even had to tell her about prairie oysters, what they were, how you got them, how they tasted. Her eyes brightened.

  “That is so amusing, Jess,” she said.

  “Not if you’re a new steer,” he told her.

  She giggled, sounding just like a regular girl, and Jess laughed with her.

  By then the waiter had returned with what Jess assumed was dessert. Lime sorbet, he called it, but to Jess it tasted partly like ice cream—Fort Worth having its own ice cream parlor, too, though it didn’t do much business in the dead of winter.

  “How long have you been playing the calliope?” he asked.

  “Mother taught me,” she said. “She played piano.” She set her spoon on the dish. “She loved the piano, and I loved hearing her play. The calliope ... well ... she didn’t enjoy that, and I don’t blame her, but she did it for Father.” She picked up the spoon, chipped away at the ice cream—sorbet!—and smiled at either the sweet dessert or the memory.

  “And your mother ... ?” Jess broached.

  “She died in ’79. I was just fifteen.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, while mentally doing the math in his head. That meant Caroline would be twenty-six or twenty-seven, though she didn’t look a day past eighteen. “Didn’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories.”

  “There are no unpleasant memories about Mother,” she said. “Or Father.”

  Which came out as a bit of a challenge.

  “You were born in ... ?” he tried.

  She told him: 1863. Then she added, “I did not meet my father until after the war’s end.”

  The waiter returned, and Caroline told him that he could take her plate, even though she had scarcely touched the sorbet. Jess quickly finished his and let the nice fellow take away those dishes, too. He wondered if she expected him to pay for this meal. It would likely set him back a month’s salary. She had invited him, but that wasn’t the way a gentleman did things. He wondered if the waiter or that mean cuss with the mustache and tails would let him hock his spurs. Or if he’d be doing dishes the rest of the night.

  Hell, the rest of the month.

  “Why did you save his life?” Caroline Dalton asked.

  Jess studied her. He had to think, which he had not done when he had snapped that shot at Pete Doolin.

  “I’m paid to uphold the law,” he said. “As far as I know, General Dalton isn’t wanted for any crime.”

  He’ll face his judgment on Judgment Day.

  She looked as if she could read his mind. She probably had. But she smiled sweetly. “You’re good with those guns.”

  “I get too much practice,” he told her. “Might surprise you, but I don’t like using my revolver.”

  “It won’t surprise you that Lee Bodeen does.”

  “No, ma’am. I’d heard of him long before you and that wagon came to town.”

  “He was Major Clarke’s hire. Father lets the major attend to that part of business.”

  “How long have you ...” He had to stop. Damn him if that waiter wasn’t bringing back more food.

  This was antelope, and not some tiny portion, but a big chunk of meat that left Jess’s mouth drooling. Some green stuff on the side—garnish, Caroline Dalton called it—and some carrots glazed with honey and pepper. The waiter also brought out another bottle of wine, let Jess taste it first, as if he knew what good wine tasted like. Jess nodded his satisfaction, and the waiter filled two new glasses, taking the old ones away. He left the bottle.

  “You were asking?” Caroline Dalton reminded him.

  “Oh.” Jess had forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to be hungry, but that antelope was calling his name. “How long have you been touring with your father?”

  “All my life,” she answered. “Well, since the end of the war. Father tried returning to his business.” She looked away. “Not here. He wanted to open a hardware store. He just wasn’t good at business. That’s what Mother always told me. And he had to face the Senate hearing in Columbus. That wore him out.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Monday, 7:20 p.m.

  “Senate hearing?” Jess asked.

  “Yes.” She had picked the knife and fork up off the table, but now she laid both on the plate of wild game, carrots, and garnish. “The stories you have heard in Texas we heard in Ohio. Especially after Major Wirz was hanged.”

  “Wirz.” Jess nodded. “Andersonville,” he said.

  “Right.”

  Henry Wirz was a native of Switzerland who had come to America in the 1840s, eventually hanging up his shingle as a doctor in Kentucky and Louisiana before the war broke out. He had joined the Confederate army as a private, but within a year he was a captain. Then a minié ball had shattered his right arm at the Battle of Seven Pines, and the fighting war was over for Henry Wirz.

  For a while, he had served as Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s special minister to Europe. Probably because he could speak French and maybe other foreign languages. Jess wasn’t sure what the Swiss spoke. Didn’t matter. Wirz had returned to the South by 1864, and that spring assumed command of a prisoner-of-war camp deep in Georgia. It was officially called Camp Sumter. It was known as Andersonville, the nearest town—if it actually could be called a town.

  It was, in fact, hell.

  In an enclosed stockade that covered sixteen acres, Yankee prisoners crowded the filthy pesthole. Thirty-two thousand were imprisoned there by August of ’64—not that many more lived in Fort Worth today—and they died by the hundreds from dysentery, scurvy, and other diseases, but mostly, from starvation. Or they were just sick of living like animals, freezing in the winter, sweating in the summer, living off rats, with nothing to drink but the wretched water that flowed through the compound.

  When the war was over, Major Henry Wirz was captured and taken all the way to Washington City. The Yanks charged him with war crimes, and he was brought before a military tribunal. Major General Lew Wallace was the presiding judge. These days, Wallace was known more for a novel he had finished while serving as territorial governor of New Mexico: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

  According to testimony, Wirz hadn’t just conspired to kill Yankee prisoners. He had beaten at least one bluecoat to death with a pistol, shot some, kicked one poor man to death, and left others to rot in stocks. He had sicced dogs after some men who had tried to escape, and those dogs had killed plenty.

  The tribunal found Wirz guilty, and he had been hanged by the neck at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. The Yanks botched the execution. The drop through the trapdoor didn’t break the major’s neck. He twisted, turned, and kicked until he choked to death. Some Southerners said the Yanks did that on purpose.

  Guilty? Jess didn’t know. He did know that not many people were eating well in Georgia after Sherman’s bluecoats had marched their way through, burning, ransacking, and pillaging. Food had been scarce throughout the Confederacy. But what about those Southern boys confined in hellholes up North? Many of those had died, too. Some of them had been murdered.

  “Father answered the questions, and the Senate sent him home. He never faced another day in court, but there were always those questions about what had happened at Baxter Pass.”

  “And how did he answer?”

  She smiled, and picked up the knife and fork. “You’ll have to come tomorrow night, Jess. Hear it for yourself.”

  Thinking of Wirz ... of Andersonville ... and of two hundred Texas boys gunned down at Baxter Pass, Ohio, after the war had ended spoiled Jess’s appetite. He barely made a dent in the antelope, even though it was delicious. He only took a few sips of the wine.

  Eventually, the waiter took away their plates ... only to return with more. A green salad with a vinaigrette. Jess wondered where in blazes the headman at Café Lavendou had managed to find fresh greens at this time of year. He made himself eat a couple of bites.

  “And the Gatling gun?” Jess
asked.

  “The one on our wagon?” Caroline smiled. “For years, Mr. Richard Gatling paid Father a tidy annual sum to display his weapons. Sometimes, when Father was younger, he would even fire a round. For three months, we even charged ten dollars for people to get to turn the crank one entire revolution. You’d be amazed how many people would be willing to part with that much money to shoot a weapon like that.”

  Jess almost told her that she’d be amazed to see how many men had been killed in Fort Worth for much, much less money than ten bucks. But he didn’t want to interrupt her. She had a lovely voice, musical, not like that calliope.

  “We had to stop that, though,” she said. “After a gentleman in his cups shot up the side of a livery stable in Faribault, Minnesota.”

  “So the Gatling isn’t loaded,” Jess said, praying that she would confirm.

  She did. “It’s just part of an act. We are a circus, more or less.” She hadn’t exactly answered Jess’s question, but he didn’t pursue.

  Instead, Jess asked, “How did your father manage to get a Gatling gun at Baxter Pass? That wasn’t standard issue for prison camps. If my memory’s right, those fast-shooting weapons weren’t even standard issue for most Union armies.”

  “They weren’t,” she said. “Very few guns made their way into that war. The War Department considered Mr. Gatling a copperhead. He lived and started his company in Indianapolis, but that city wasn’t entirely loyal to the blue. If you asked the War Department. And Mr. Gatling had family, everyone said, from South Carolina. Or was it North? Yes, North Carolina. Anyway, General Butler bought a few of those guns, and Admiral Porter got one. The U.S. Army didn’t come aboard until the year after the war ended.”

  Jess waited. She had not answered his question.

  Realizing this, Caroline smiled at him again. “Most of those guns,” she said, “were manufactured at a plant in Cincinnati. Just down the river from Baxter Pass. Have you been to Cincinnati?”

  Jess shook his head.

  “It’s beautiful. Just beautiful.”

  “And Baxter Pass?”