The Butcher of Baxter Pass Read online

  “He’s a-comin’,” Clint repeated.

  Jess nodded. “Well ... ,” Jess picked the hat off his lap and began to return it to his head. “Let him come.”

  “But it’s ... him.”

  With a heavy sigh, Jess tossed the hat on his desk, uncrossed his ankles, brought his feet down to the floor, and leaned forward in the old oak rocker. He snapped his fingers and waited for Clint Stowe to deliver the telegram.

  “It’s from Paul Parkin,” Clint told him.

  Parkin was the city constable in Dallas, roughly thirty miles east across rolling Texas prairie.

  What does a Dallas constable want with me? Jess asked himself as Clint gave him the telegraph slip. Dallas and Fort Worth mixed like oil and water, like cowboys and farmers, like ...

  In a matter of seconds, Jess Casey was wide awake.

  GEN DALTON ARRIVED DALLAS

  YESTERDAY STOP YOU MIGHT BE

  TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER HIM STOP

  JUST ASK ABOUT THE BUTCHER OF

  BAXTER PASS STOP I SENT HIM YOUR

  WAY STOP ENJOY HIS VISIT STOP

  PARKIN DALLAS

  Yeah, Dallas and Fort Worth did not mix. The two cities were rivals in everything, so Paul Parkin had run Lincoln Dalton out of Dallas and sent him to Fort Worth. Not that Jess Casey could blame Parkin. Had the Butcher of Baxter Pass arrived in Fort Worth first, Jess would have run that damn Yankee east to Dallas.

  “You just get this?” Jess asked.

  “Uh-huh. Came in a little past six.”

  After a quick glance at the Regulator, Jess scowled at Clint Stowe.

  “Well,” the telegrapher began, and stuttered, and stopped, and wet his lips, and finally found a handkerchief in his trousers pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. “Well, sir, I figured the mayor should know ... and ... um ... well ...”

  “The telegram was sent to me,” Jess said.

  “Yeah. And I brung it to you ... just as fast as ... well ... you know ...”

  “Don’t you telegraphers have to take some kind of oath about ... confidentiality?”

  “Confound what?”

  Jess moved toward the wall where his shell belt hung, along with the holstered .44-40-caliber Colt.

  “What time does the train get in from Dallas?” Jess asked.

  “Which one?”

  “The next one!”

  “Seven thirty-seven, if it’s on time.”

  The gun belt was buckled on now, and Jess had pulled out the Colt, opened the loading gate, and was spinning the cylinder. Five fresh shells. He wondered if he should fill it with six. Most men—most smart men—kept the chamber under the hammer empty to prevent that accidental discharge, which might blow off a toe or a foot or a leg. Jess didn’t consider himself much of a gunman, certainly no fast-draw specialist. As a cowboy, he had used a Colt primarily as a hammer when he drew the unfortunate duty of riding a fence line. As the law of Tarrant County, Texas, however ...

  “You can go now, Clint,” Jess said, and plucked a brass cartridge from the belt.

  “Where?”

  Back to Tuscaloosa, please, Jess thought, but held his tongue. Instead, he just glared some more, and as the telegrapher turned to the door, he added, “Clint ... if you get another telegram from Dallas, bring it to me ... first.”

  “Yes, sir.” The door let in a numbing blast of wind. The door slammed shut as Jess snapped the gate shut on the revolver and dropped it back into the holster.

  He moved toward the coatrack and fetched his Mackinaw. That old red-and-black-plaid coat had been with him forever. Smelled like it, too. “‘You might be too young to remember him,’” Jess said as he slipped on the woolen coat. No, Jess wasn’t that young, or green. He had been, what, six years old or right around there when the Civil War—no, the War for Southern Independence—had erupted. Too young to fight, of course, but he had certainly killed a lot of invading Yankees back when he was playing war while his older neighbors were fighting that horde of blue-coated tyrants. Anyone who had grown up in Texas or the South remembered the war, and no one would ever forget Brigadier General Lincoln Everett Dalton and what he had done to two hundred paroled soldiers at Baxter Pass, Ohio.

  Shot them down like dogs.

  The Butcher of Baxter Pass.

  “Thank you, Paul Parkin,” Jess said, and added a few phrases that insulted the Dallas constable’s mother as much as Parkin himself. Next, Jess stood in front of the gun case and thought about grabbing his Henry rifle. Instead, he withdrew a Parker twelve-gauge with the sawed-off barrels. Opening the breech, he found two shells already chambered. He snapped the barrels tight and grabbed a handful of fresh loads, which he dropped into the pocket of his Mackinaw.

  Another glance at the clock on the wall. Then at the stove. He could use some coffee but not to keep him awake. No, Paul Parkin and Clint Stowe had remedied that. Later, he thought.

  If I’m still alive.

  He opened the door, stepped into the cold, predawn air, and almost got trampled to death by a herd of angry citizens.

  “Casey!” Big-bellied Harry Stout pointed a fat finger at Jess. “Where are your deputies?”

  Stout wasn’t alone. Through the white vapor of breath and flaring nostrils, Jess could make out bowler hats and even some bell crown hats, and woolen caps, and coats and ties, and a few diamond stickpins. Even a dressmaker and the Methodist preacher’s wife.

  Jess wondered if Clint Stowe had told all of these people about the impending arrival of General Dalton.

  “You and Kurt and the county commissioner and the district judge sent them to Huntsville,” Jess reminded the appropriately named Mayor Stout. “Remember?”

  “He ain’t stayin’ here!” someone drawled.

  “He ain’t welcome here,” another man said.

  “Maybe the Butcher wants to murder some more of us Texans!”

  Jess sighed. Tucking the Parker’s stock underneath his shoulder, he reached for his pocket watch. Only ... he must have left it... . Now, he remembered. He had stuck the old Illinois in his desk’s top drawer, thinking that he wouldn’t care what time it was until spring.

  The mayor, however, had brought out his watch, opened the hunter case, and was saying, “It’s—”

  “Thanks, Mayor Stout,” Jess said. He glanced at the time, shut the case, and slipped the heavy, gold watch into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m just borrowing this. I’m going to the depot, and when General—”

  “General!” someone spit. “You mean murderer.”

  “When Dalton arrives, I’ll tell him to stay on and head west. Let the town marshal in Abilene worry about the Butcher.”

  Back in the early 1870s, when the railway had been chartered, the idea was to send trains all the way to San Diego, California, but the Texas and Pacific had only reached Abilene. Jess hoped Abilene’s town law wouldn’t send General Dalton back East.

  “Now ... if you gents will excuse me, I’ll—”

  Gunfire erupted from—where else at this time in the morning?—Hell’s Half Acre.

  The Butcher of Baxter Pass and Stout’s citizens’ committee would have to wait.

  * * *

  Frigid air left his lungs burning by the time Jess reached the White Elephant Saloon in the cow town’s notorious anything-goes district. Two saloon girls stood in the muddy street, shivering like crazy in their skimpy attire. The bartender, his face pale, had pasted himself against the outdoor wall. One drunk was urinating in the horse trough, and another squatted beneath an empty hitching rail with both fingers in his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.

  Jess saw the splintered wood from three bullets in the batwing doors.

  A horse farted, and Jess stepped away from the stink.

  “Bennie,” he called out.

  The bartender craned his head but refused to leave the front of the saloon, as if he were holding up the wooden façade.

  Bennie managed to free one finger.

  One man. But how many shots had he fired? Be
tter yet, how many guns did he pack?

  A muzzle flash lit up the dark interior of the saloon, and glass shattered, which forced Bennie the barkeep to squeeze his eyes back shut and return that extended pointer finger into a tightly balled fist.

  “Yeeee-hiiiiiiii!” Spurs chimed, drawing closer to the doorway, so Jess Casey leveled the Parker and thumbed back the double hammers. The girls took their shaking bodies a bit farther down the street.

  Jess saw the figure first, mostly a big Texas hat, and then the doors swung open, sending pieces of the shot-up door falling back inside. A tall man in shotgun chaps and tall boots with Lone Stars inlaid in the uppers staggered onto the boardwalk. A smoking Remington .44 was in the man’s right hand, although the barrel—for the time being—was pointed at the ground.

  He was leathery and hard and drunk. The spurs were big, and so was the man’s head, and his face bore the reminders of too many chuckleheaded horses and even more saloon brawls. Bunkhouse brawls, too. Hoot Newton had a reputation for fighting anyone, anywhere, though he had never tangled with Jess Casey. Which was a good thing, Jess figured, because Jess had never seen Hoot lose a fight.

  “Hoot.” Jess took a chance and lowered the hammers on the shotgun. “What are you doing?”

  For a few seasons, they had worked together on Nathan Swift’s ranch. Swift, of course, had wound up firing Hoot Newton. Said Hoot made it hard to hire good cowboys who had better sense than getting their ribs broken and noses busted, and, hell’s fire, Swift had grown tired of paying doctor bills. That had been three years back. Of course, Swift had also fired Jess Casey, which is one reason Jess found himself wearing a fancy star on his new blue bib-front shirt instead of riding the grub line this January.

  Hoot Newton turned and narrowed his eyes, which refused to focus. His mouth drooled, and he staggered a bit, but he managed to keep his feet and his hold on the Remington. The pistol wasn’t one of those late-model Remingtons, either, but an old cap-and-ball relic from the days of the Rebellion. Most men would’ve had that antique converted to take brass cartridges, but not Hoot Newton. He still used copper percussion caps, black powder, round balls, and grease.

  Finally, Hoot smiled. “Long Jack Muldoon!” he said, chuckling. “As I live and breathe.”

  Yeah, Hoot was really in his cups. Long Tom—not Jack—Muldoon had cowboyed with them, too, and Jess Casey didn’t look one thing—thank the Lord—like that old cowboy, though Jess certainly was getting more and more stove up.

  “It’s Jess,” Jess said. “Jess Casey.”

  “Who?”

  Jess sighed. “What are you doing, Hoot?” he repeated.

  “Celebratin’.” He raised his pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The drunk underneath the hitching rail grimaced. The one who had been urinating turned and staggered deeper into Hell’s Half Acre. The pistol, however, only puffed, though Jess couldn’t tell if the old percussion cap had misfired or if the Remington was indeed empty.

  “It’s ... Robert E. Lee’s birth”—a burp, then—“day!”

  Hoot stepped off the boardwalk, grinning, slurring, slobbering, and said, “Let’s have a drink, Jeff.”

  “Pard,” Jess said. “I’ve got just the place to drink,” he added, thinking on his feet, despite the fact that the sun was just rising over toward Dallas way. “I have a bottle of Old Overholt,” he said. “Good rye whiskey.” Hoot wrapped his arm around Jess’s shoulder and almost pulled the both of them to the muddy, cold street.

  Jess tried to hold his breath. And a new bar of Pears soap, he thought. Which he would hate to use on Hoot Newton.

  Bennie the Bartender moved from his spot against the wall, nodded a pale thanks at Jess, and went through the batwing doors. The saloon girls followed. The batwing doors sang out, and the drunk underneath the hitching rail keeled over.

  Jess tried to remind himself to come fetch that walking whiskey keg later and have him sleep it off in a cell.

  With Hoot hanging on Jess’s shoulder, they wandered back toward Main Street, Hoot singing—if one could call it singing:

  Oh, I’m a good ol’ Rebel

  Now that’s just what I am

  And fer this Yankee nation

  I do not gives a damn

  I’m glad I fit ag’in her

  I only wisht we’d won

  I ain’t askin’ any pardon

  Fer anything I done

  They were just about to the office when the train whistle blew.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday, 7:30 a.m.

  Jess stopped and stepped from underneath Hoot Newton’s heavy arms. He expected the drunken old cowboy to fall facedown in the street, but Hoot kept his feet, though he swayed every which way but loose.

  Seven thirty-seven, the telegrapher had told him. Jeff was opening the mayor’s watch. The train from Dallas had not come in late. The damned thing was early, which rarely happened.

  “Hoot,” Jess said. “I gotta meet somebody. Important.” He stopped, tried to think.

  He was just a cowpuncher with dreams of making enough money to buy his own ranch. Run his own cattle. Ride for his own brand. He really had no clue how this law job was supposed to work. Especially with no deputies, and no Marshal Kurt Koenig.

  “What ... about ... burp ... our drink?” Hoot Newton slurred.

  “I’ll fetch an extra bottle,” Jess said, which made Hoot grin and drool some more.

  “Hell,” Jess added. “I’ll need an extra bottle. Wait here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  He started running. The sun was rising. Hoot Newton kept swaying, and Fort Worth was slowly waking up.

  * * *

  Thick, pulsating black smoke pretty much ruined whatever sunrise was shaping up to be. Not that sunrises ever meant much to Jess Casey, especially in Tarrant County. He stopped to catch his breath as he stepped onto the platform and got out of the way of a black porter who almost trampled him. Jess wet his chapped lips and looked at the train.

  The 4-4-0 locomotive was one of those relatively new Class J’s from Baldwin, and not many people were disembarking from the coaches it pulled. Jess stopped himself and tried to refocus. He had been looking for some monster in a Union shell jacket, maybe a fancy kepi with a French braid. Cloven hoofs and a pointy tail and horns sprouting from the top of his head. The war had been over nigh twenty-five years now, and whatever the Butcher of Baxter Pass had been in 1865, he’d have to be practically an old man by this day and age. Jess spotted a drummer in a tan plaid sack suit and another man helping an elderly woman off the train. She certainly wasn’t General Dalton, and the man was one of the station hands Jess had seen in town though he couldn’t pin a name on the gent.

  He shifted the shotgun, and a new thought crept into his mind.

  What if Paul Parkin, Dallas city constable, had been playing Jess Casey, thirty-a-month-cowhand turned reluctant lawman, for a fool? Get the greenhorn’s goat. Tell him that the most despised man south of the Mason-Dixon Line was coming to torment his fair city. See if Casey would arrest a drummer or a spinster by mistake. Or if Casey would soil his britches.

  He wouldn’t put it past anyone from Dallas. People there thumbed their noses at the Panther City.

  That’s when one of the wooden doors to a freight car slid open, and Jess watched a ramp fall into place. Briefly, still the cowboy with a deep appreciation for good horses, he forgot about Lincoln Everett Dalton and looked with envy at the fine sorrel stallion coming down the ramp, followed by a black Morgan and maybe the best-looking Tennessee walker that Jess had ever laid his eyes on. Good horses with fine saddles—clean saddles, too, and Jess knew you could tell a lot about a man by how he kept his saddle.

  Or his guns.

  Which reminded Jess about that star he packed.

  He scratched a thumb on one of the hammers of the Parker and walked toward the car.

  The three men looked younger than Jess but only by a few years. Their hair was close-cropped, and each kept his mustache we
ll-groomed. Even from the distance, Jess could guess that all three were brothers. They had pulled on linen dusters but swept the tails behind their gun belts.

  Black hats. Gray-striped trousers. Good boots and Crockett spurs. New clothes, store-bought duds. They wore two-gun rigs, which a body didn’t see much, even in Fort Worth. The leather looked a lot older than the duds but recently cleaned, just like the revolvers in the holsters. Right-hip Colts with the butts to the rear and the revolvers on the left hips facing butt forward. So all three had to be right-handed.

  One of the riders had been about to swing into the saddle when he noticed Jeff making a beeline toward them. He said something, and the other two men stepped around. The tallest of the three hooked his thumbs in the gun belt. The other one simply put his right hand on the butt of the Colt on his right hip. The last one, the one with the savagely pockmarked face, gripped the stock of a Winchester sheathed in the scabbard.

  The Parker felt cold in Jess’s hands, but then he realized that it was only thirty-something degrees this morning. It was the weather, he tried telling himself, not some premonition.

  He stopped when he figured he was close enough to take down two of those boys by triggering both barrels of the scattergun.

  If it came to that. Jess sure hoped it wouldn’t.

  “Morning,” he said, but did not smile.

  The oldest one, the tallest one, nodded. None of the brothers spoke.

  “Good-looking horses,” Jess said. “Riding out?”

  The one with his hand on one of his revolvers nodded.

  “Good.” Jess nodded at their guns. “You see, we have a town ordinance. We don’t allow firearms worn in the city limits. That keeps a lid on things.”

  Sometimes, he thought, but did not say. Actually, rarely. But we mean well by that law. After all, it had worked in some towns.

  “Figured,” the oldest said in a deep Texas drawl, “that we’d just grab us some breakfast, then lope on home.”

  The young one sneered. “If that’s all right with you, law dog.”