The Butcher of Baxter Pass Read online

  The big cowboy’s boots dragged off the desktop and landed with a thud on the floor. Hoot touched his bandaged head with a grimace, then saw Jess’s hat.

  “That hat’s covered with tobaccy juice,” Hoot told him.

  “And other things,” Jess said.

  “About time for breakfast, ain’t it?”

  “That’s where I’m going.”

  “Hotcakes would be nice. The ones with the pecans in ’em. With syrup. Maple syrup. From Vermont. And some bacon.”

  “Where do you want the bacon to hail from?” Jess asked.

  Hoot grinned. “Hell, Jess. You ain’t that dumb. From a pig, of course.”

  He had no spare hat. So he went out into the graying morning without one.

  Workers were preparing the mule-drawn streetcars, and city employees were turning off the streetlamps as Jess walked to Main Street and headed up the street. The cafés had begun preparing for the first rush, and Jess could smell ham and eggs, but mostly coffee. A number of eateries would have been closer to pick up a meal for a jailer with a concussion and a prisoner with a bullet in his thigh and a dreadful fear of the dark, but Jess kept walking. The air cleared his head.

  He stopped at Second Street and looked at the sky. It remained dark, of course, and most of the stars could no longer be seen, but he made out enough. He took in a deep breath and let it out. No rain. Whatever winter thunderstorm had been threatening last night had gone another way.

  It remained cold, and Jess told himself that he should have pulled on the coat back at the jail. But he didn’t feel cold. He just walked.

  He entered the Trinity River Hotel through the lobby door. A few early risers were staring at the tarp that covered the blown-out plate glass window, china cups of coffee in their hands. They shut up when Jess entered.

  After a quick look upstairs, he moved to the dining room and found his way to the counter. It remained too early for most occupants in the upstairs rooms. The only ones dining—and they were mostly drinking coffee or tea or wolfing down biscuits and gravy—were those who had to catch an early train east or west. None paid much attention as Jess leaned against the bar before lifting his tired, weary body onto a stool.

  “What’ll it be, Sheriff ?” the counterman said when he finally decided he had read enough of the Gazette and made his way to the end of the counter. He did have the decency, however, to pour aromatic, freshly brewed coffee into a cup and place that in front of Jess.

  “Two plates,” Jess told him. “Bacon and hotcakes. To take to the jail.”

  “You want syrup?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Vermont? It’ll cost a little extra.”

  “I don’t give a damn. The syrup can come from a pig as far as I care.”

  The man stared, considered Jess, and then retreated for the kitchen. Jess picked up the coffee, hoping good coffee might improve his mood. It didn’t.

  “Aren’t you grouchy this morning,” a pleasant voice came to his left, and Jess turned.

  His mood improved. Caroline Dalton was standing next to him.

  She wore a green and gray blazer-style suit, with a full-sweep skirt lined with taffeta and bound with velvet. Pinned into her well-groomed hair sat a hat of braids and chiffon ribbon, with a pleated satin edge, highlighted with a large rosette. Jess guessed that she had stayed up all night after he had left, just getting fixed up.

  Caroline Dalton took his breath away, especially when she smiled.

  “Tough night?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had better evenings.”

  She came closer to him, and he caught the scent of lilac and perfumed soaps. “My father can be a handful.”

  “It wasn’t your father,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  Now came that awkward silence, Jess holding his cup, wondering what to say, fearing that his beard must look as if he were coming off a six-day drunk and without a hat to cover his mangled hair. He wondered if any of that slop from the spittoon at Gabe’s Place had splashed on his cheeks, or hair, or neck, or pants. He wanted to check, but just couldn’t take his eyes off the stunning woman standing before him.

  She broke the silence.

  “Would you care to have breakfast with me?” she asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tuesday, 6:15 a.m.

  They had a selection of tables, so Jess led Caroline Dalton to the remote one near a corner window. The fellow who had taken Jess’s order for Hoot Newton and the prisoner came out, frowned, and made his way to take their orders. Jess told him he’d just stick with coffee and for him to bring the plates to the jail whenever they were ready, and Caroline asked for some hot tea and a couple of biscuits.

  “I reckon neither one of us has much of an appetite,” Jess told her when the surly waiter left.

  “I guess so.”

  The quietness was broken up only by the sound of another early morning diner stirring sugar or cream into a coffee cup.

  Jess glanced out the window to find one of the newspaper waifs getting ready to start hawking to businessmen heading to work. At least what had happened at Gabe’s Place would not be in the headlines until the afternoon newspapers came out. Reporters had likely heard about the shootings, though, and they’d be searching all over town to find Jess Casey.

  “You make good copy, Jess,” one inkslinger had told him a few months back.

  They would be staked out in front of the jail, though, and he frowned, because Hoot Newton would likely tell them about the escape of Burt McNamara last night, and the afternoon papers might have that bit of news, too.

  The waiter returned with Caroline’s tea, topped off Jess’s coffee, then left without speaking. Well, there wasn’t going to be much of a tip on a couple of biscuits, coffee, and tea. He settled back behind the counter and picked up the newspaper.

  “My father,” Caroline said after a long while. She had not even sipped the steaming tea in front of her. Her eyes left the checkered tablecloth and found Jess. “He was at his best last night?”

  Best? Jess nodded, although he didn’t understand the statement. Best at what? Being a doddering old fool or a veritable curmudgeon, maybe.

  “His memory,” Caroline said. “It isn’t just the cancer that’s killing him. His mind is going. His memories. There are times when he can’t remember what he ate for breakfast.”

  “I have that same problem,” Jess told her, and he smiled, hoping she might return one. She did, but he could tell it was forced.

  “He could remember a lot,” she said. “Last night. That’s rare these days. Sometimes, he’s good, but other times ...” Her voice trailed off.

  Jess tasted the coffee. Something struck him, and he asked, “When’s the last time your father gave one of his lectures?”

  The Texas newspapers used to report those items a lot, usually under headlines like THE BUTCHER’S LATEST LIES or MURDERING YANKEE SPEAKS AGAIN, reports sent by other newspapers or telegraphed by the Western Associated Press. Yet Jess couldn’t remember seeing one of those items in any newspaper for ... for how long?

  “It’s been five years ... not quite five. The Fourth of July in Wheeling, West Virginia. He said then that this was to be his farewell address, but nobody really believed him. He’d said that at Columbus and Louisville and Cleveland and Indianapolis. That time he meant it, though. He came home. His memory got worse. Then the doctors said he had the carcinoma. And then he woke up one morning, memory clear, his body seemingly stronger than ever, and said he had to make one final speech.”

  She paused to sip her tea and allow a Mexican girl to place the two biscuits on the table. “¿De salsa?”

  Caroline glanced at Jess. “She wants to know if you want gravy.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head.

  “No gracias,” Jess told the woman, who nodded and left.

  Caroline looked up with a smile. “I do not understand how you people put that white soup on your biscuits. It’s disgusting.”

  “But fillin
g,” Jess told her, and her smile widened.

  She found a fork, cut off a piece of biscuit, and ate some. Jess had never seen a person eat a dry biscuit with a fork. She even dabbed her mouth with the napkin before she continued, after another sip of tea.

  “That’s when he told me he wanted to give his final speech in Texas.” She shook her head. “I never knew he’d ever settled in Texas, but he showed me his diary and some of Mother’s letters. All these years, giving talks and lectures and appearing at parades and carnivals and circus acts, he’d never gotten farther south than the border states. Only in St. Louis in Missouri, never western Missouri or south toward Springfield.”

  “Confederate strongholds,” Jess said.

  “Even today,” Caroline added.

  Jess had to nod his agreement.

  “Kentucky ... Maryland ... that’s about it. I told him it would be suicide, and he told me he was ...” Her head dropped. Jess searched his pockets for a handkerchief but had nothing but the bandana, and he didn’t think it appropriate to hand her that. It didn’t matter. She found one and dabbed her eyes. “... that he ... was dead anyway.”

  “So,” Jess said, “he bought the circus wagon and ...”

  “Oh, no. We’ve had that for years. I told you that Mother played the calliope and taught me how to play it. We just had to fix it up some, grease the axles, freshen up the paint, and get rid of the mouse nests.”

  She ate some more biscuits. Jess drank some more coffee.

  “Where is home?” Jess asked.

  “Terre Haute,” she said. “Western part of Indiana. It was far enough away from Baxter Pass.”

  “Long way to Texas,” he said.

  “We stopped. Sometimes he’d arrange for lectures, though often I’d have to fill in for him, when he’d just sit in his rocking chair and drool. They’d ask me what it was like to be the daughter of a butcher—and this is in Union states.”

  “You’d answer that?” Jess set his coffee cup down.

  “I’d tell them that he was a good father to me.” She smiled. “Then they’d ask me to play the calliope. That always lightens the mood.”

  He drank coffee and listened as she kept on talking, telling him of their journey to Texas. Terre Haute to Seymour to Cincinnati. Charleston to Frankfort to Louisville. Hogdenville to Memphis, General Dalton’s first appearance in a Southern state. Little Rock to Texarkana to Dallas. And now Fort Worth.

  “They wouldn’t let us a room in Little Rock. We slept in a wagon yard in Texarkana, arriving at dark, leaving at dark. They threw tomatoes at us in Dallas. Mr. Custer was the only person who would agree to let us rent his theater.”

  “But you got Governor Ross’s agreement. That took some doing.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “That letter, Jess,” she said, “is a forgery. Major Clarke—I don’t believe he ever served in any army, let alone the Union—spent two years in Michigan City.” She gave Jess a knowing look.

  Jess didn’t know anything about Michigan City.

  “That’s where the Indiana State Prison is now,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “And I take it that Lee Bodeen is not a Texas Ranger,” Jess said.

  She wet her lips. “He met us in Texarkana. Major Clarke hired him.”

  She finished the biscuits, let the waiter refill the cup with more tea—he didn’t ask Jess if he wanted any more coffee—and then said, “You can run us out of town now, Jess. With a clear conscience.”

  His head shook. “You have a legitimate contract to perform this evening at the Opera House,” he said. “I’m paid to uphold the law. You and your father are legal.”

  “And Bodeen?”

  He finished his coffee. “I’ll deal with Bodeen and the major later.”

  Maybe now. Jess leaned back in his chair. Just entering the dining room were Bodeen, Major Clarke, and the Butcher of Baxter Pass himself, Brevet Brigadier General Lincoln Everett Dalton, who was being pushed in a wheelchair by Clarke.

  The Butcher was yelling in his ugliest voice, turning Caroline Dalton’s eyes cold as she looked toward him, whispering. “This morning, he didn’t remember Baxter Pass at all. He didn’t even know ... who ... I was.”

  “What are we doing here? I don’t want any damned breakfast. I already ate breakfast. Get me out of here!”

  “You haven’t had breakfast, General,” Jedediah Clarke said, as if speaking to a toddler or a dog. “Since Dallas.”

  A few patrons tossed coins on their tables and hurriedly left for work, or the depot, or anyplace far, far from the Trinity River Hotel.

  Once Clarke had wheeled the Butcher to the table closest to Jess and Caroline, he faced the man at the counter with the newspaper, bellowing: “Three cups of coffee. Immediately, sir. Don’t keep General Dalton waiting.”

  The man turned another page in the newspaper. He did not look up.

  “Bacon and eggs,” Bodeen said. “Fried. Three of them. Now.”

  That prompted the man to fold his newspaper and disappear into the kitchen. By the time he had returned, the restaurant was empty except for two tables, and Jess wanted to leave now. But the damned waiter hadn’t brought out the plates for Hoot Newton and Pete Doolin.

  “Damnation,” General Dalton whined. “I think I’ve wet my britches.”

  He wasn’t the same man Jess had seen the previous evening. His arms trembled, and his eyes appeared vacant, almost dead. He was dressed in a nightshirt, and Jess could tell that indeed, the old-timer had lost control of his bladder. If he had not been such a lout last night, and if he had not possibly murdered two hundred paroled Texans, Jess Casey might have felt sorry for him.

  “You look plumb tuckered out, Sheriff,” Lee Bodeen said. His chair scraped the floor, purposefully, making Jess’s and Caroline’s skin crawl. “Rough night?”

  “I’ve had worse,” Jess told him, and added, “Ranger.” He even looked over at Clarke, who settled into a chair across from the Butcher. “Good morning, Major.”

  He stressed their titles, hoping they would understand that he knew their little secrets. Clarke’s reaction reaffirmed everything Caroline Dalton had told him. The gunman with the Ranger badge showed nothing on his face.

  Dalton turned to face his daughter and Jess.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  He was looking at Caroline, but Jess came to her rescue. He could not bear to see her break down again, not here. Not in front of these men.

  “Sheriff Jess Casey, General Dalton,” he said. “Are you ready for your lecture tonight, sir?”

  “What the blazes is he talking about?” He turned back to the men at his table. “Who the hell are you? What am I doing here?”

  He was still firing out insults and questions and nonsensical statements when the waiter returned. He put two covered plates on the table in front of Jess and dropped a bill. He walked back to the kitchen, taking his newspaper with him, and Jess had to smile at the man’s spunk. Clarke, Dalton, and Bodeen would be waiting a long time before they got served in this hotel.

  They didn’t notice. General Clarke probably never would. Jess turned his attention to the window. The streets and boardwalks were crowding up, and he excused himself and went to the window, drawing the shade.

  “Cautious man,” Bodeen told Clarke.

  “I don’t mind a cautious man,” the major said. “I don’t fancy getting killed in this Southern pesthole.”

  “You can always go back to Indiana,” Bodeen told him.

  “No,” Clarke said. “I can’t.”

  A man came out from the kitchen and walked directly toward the only patrons in the place. He wore black shoes, black pants, and a white tie with a black string tie around the collar. A fancy towel hid his hands. Bodeen gave him no more than a moment’s glance. The general and the major did not even consider him, but Jess did.

  He stood up, told Caroline that he had to be leaving, and walked away. Jess didn’t bother picking up the plates the other waiter had left on the t
able. Nor did he leave any money for the check. He was moving toward the man, on instinct, and reached him just as the man’s hands appeared as the towel fell to the floor.

  He held a revolver.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tuesday, 7:25 a.m.

  The 1875 Schofield .45 trembled in two small hands, and the man struggled to pull back the hammer to full cock. That was the trouble with those old thumb-busters. Someone had sawed this model’s barrel down to maybe three inches.

  Jess Casey didn’t want to kill the man. In less than a full day, he had seen enough dead men, but he knew he had to react quickly and prevent the waiter from murdering General Dalton—and even faster to keep Lee Bodeen from carving another notch on his revolver. With his right hand gripping the butt of his holstered Colt, Jess brought his left hand down on the Schofield just as the frightened would-be assassin pulled the trigger.

  The hammer smashed into Jess’s hand, ripping into the flesh just below his pinky finger and tearing out a chunk a little less than the size of a dime. It hurt like hell, sent blood spurting, but it stopped the firing pin from striking the bullet, and at least it missed the bone in Jess’s hand.

  As the Schofield fell to the floor, dropped by the waiter in a moment of panic, Jess brought his own pistol out of the holster and slammed the barrel onto the man’s black hair. Stunned, but still conscious, the man fell at Jess’s feet, and Jess was turning, thumbing back the hammer on his .44-40, and lining the front sight up with Lee Bodeen’s belly.

  “Holster it,” Jess ordered.

  Bodeen’s right-hand pistol had scarcely cleared leather. For a split second, his eyes burned with hatred, and Jess thought the gunman might even make a play—even though he had no chance—but then the man let the pistol slip back into that hog-greased holster, and he moved his hand to hook the thumb by the belt buckle. Lee Bodeen even grinned. “You’re fast, Casey.”

  “I’m alive,” Casey told him.

  Something flashed again in the killer’s eyes, and Bodeen sang out, “Look out!” He stepped to his right and palmed the revolver.

  It could have been the oldest trick in the book, but Jess sensed danger himself. Besides, Major Clarke was spilling out of his chair, pulling his arms over his head as he dived for the floor, and Caroline Dalton screamed something and leaped, tackling her father and sending them both sliding across the dining room floor.