Savage Texas: The Stampeders Page 4

  “I mean you look like the spirit of it all. A human incarnation of what makes this country so tough and stern and strong. That’s why, Sam Heller, I hope you’ll let me create a portrait of you once we reach Hangtown. Perhaps you standing before the famous hangtree itself.”

  “I . . . I ain’t much one for having my picture took.”

  “It requires nothing of you. Simplicity personified. You take your position, remain for the brief time it takes to capture the image, and that’s it.”

  “I’ll consider it, Otto. Because you seem a decent enough hombre. Better than many I’ve run across on this same road.”

  Otto’s heart skipped a beat. “Outlaws, you mean? Bad men?”

  Heller nodded, one fast bob of the head. “Hangtree draws its share, and I’ve dealt with many.”

  Otto all but rubbed his hands together in glee.

  “Excellent!”

  “How so?”

  “I have my own reasons, artistic and commercial, for expressing that feeling. You see, it is my goal to gather the finest and most complete photographic gallery of those individuals and groups who have brought romance and mythos and a sense of legend to the world of the western outlaw . . . those whose names will be recalled through the years. I hope to allow their faces to be remembered as well. Too many will come and go and all that will remain will be legends and lies and faulty memories. As a photographer I can remedy that.”

  “So you’re going to Hangtree in the hope of lining up robbers and killers and rapers and may-hemers and saying ‘smile!’”

  “Not precisely how I’d phrase it, but essentially, yes.”

  “We all live in our own worlds, don’t we, Otto.”

  “We do. But in my view, we should learn to remember as much as we can of all of them. We need help for that. Giving some of that help is what I do.”

  Heller finished his sandwich, dusted off his hands, and said, “Well sir, I wish you luck in whatever thing it is you’re working at. I don’t profess to understand arty things real well. But I got to tell you that I hope you’re disappointed. I hope there’s not an outlaw to be found in Hangtree when we get there. They’re just too much dang trouble for honest folks.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Though the general flatness of the countryside disguised it, there was a gentle swell to the land between the place they were and the nearest side of Hangtree. Thus they had no idea, until they had moved forward a few hundred yards, that a dead man was lying beside the road. He’d not been there long enough to be much decayed, but the buzzards had already relieved him of his eyes and lines of ants were moving into his ears and out again while others entered via his nose and slightly open, sun-blistered lips. Buzzards had also helped themselves to what brains they could reach through the bullethole in his forehead, and insects were also swarming freely around that splintery access point as well. It was an ugly sight that Sam Heller did not like looking at, though he’d seen enough gore in his day to handle it. Otto Perkins, delicate-looking as he was, seemed to possess no qualms at all about getting near the stinking body. This photographer of the dead leaned over the ruined face, whose skin crawled with bugs and swarmed with flies, and studied it seriously.

  “I’ve seen this man,” he said.

  “Who is he?” asked Heller.

  “I’m not sure. His features are very damaged, as you can see. And besides that, I’m not sure I could place him. I see so many faces in my line of work.”

  “Well, Otto, we can bury him, throw him up on top of your wagon there and haul him on into Hangtree, or . . .”

  “Not on top of the wagon. He’d leak right through the wood into my darkroom box, and it’s close and hot in there. I’d never be able to use it again. I say we leave him where he is. Or drape him over the saddle of your horse and ride him in that way. Or we could drag him with a rope.”

  “Leave him and report that he’s out here,” Heller said. “If the critters don’t have him scattered off in all directions before you know it, somebody can come out here and say a few words over him and put him in a hole.”

  Otto Perkins rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him out here when I know I’ve seen him before.”

  Heller said, “You don’t want him leaking into your wagon box, and I don’t want him staining up my saddle. So it looks like it’s drag him or leave him. Your choice.”

  Perkins paced about in a tense circle. “Drag, then. I can’t think of leaving him here.”

  “Drag it is.”

  “But not until I take a picture.”

  “I don’t think this gent is up to smiling for the camera, Otto.”

  “I have to have an image. I have to be able to figure out why he seems familiar.”

  “Suit yourself. But I don’t think you’ll find many people wanting to put that face in a frame and hang it over the mantelpiece.”

  “It’s for my own purposes, which I’ve already explained. It won’t take long. If you prefer, go on ahead toward town.”

  “I’ll wait. I want to see how you do what you do.”

  It made for an ugly parade. Heller brought up the front on horseback, Otto Perkins and his darkroom wagon behind him, and the stiffened dead man, tied at the ankles and freshly photographed, dragging along behind like a sculpture made of pulpwood, shedding pieces of decaying flesh along the way and tainting the air all around with the smell of death.

  Squint McCray and Luke Pettigrew, the former the proprietor of the scruffy Dog Star Saloon and the latter a frequent friend and companion of Johnny Cross, were among the first to notice their approach. Sam Heller, looking like he always did and being a commonly seen personage in Hangtown, did not particularly attract their eye, but Otto Perkins and his boxy wagon did. Once proximity and angle allowed them to see that a human form was being dragged behind the wagon, their full attention was seized and held, and both men headed out to meet Heller, Squint with his good eye almost as pinched as his permanently squinted one because of dust blowing against his face, and Pettigrew with his pegleg slowing him down this particular day more than it usually did. Some days for the war-crippled ex-Confederate were just that way. At times he could actually feel pain in the ankle of a foot no longer there.

  The pair muttered greetings at Heller and nodded cautiously at the pencil-necked man driving the boxed-in wagon, then moved around to the battered corpse. They stood beside it, wincing at the stench and ugliness, and looked for any clue as to why a dead man was being dragged into town by Sam Heller and some puny stranger.

  Heller, on foot now with his horse loosely tied off to a front wheel of Otto Perkins’s wagon, walked around and stood beside Pettigrew.

  “Who is he, Sam?” Squint McCray asked.

  “Don’t know,” Heller replied. “We found him out on the road like this, dead and stinking like the rump of Satan, blowflies buzzing and ants crawling and the buzzards sitting around and belching from having eat a good meal. Mr. Perkins, who I met coming in toward town, he says the man looks familiar to him, but he can’t place him.”

  Pettigrew cast a quick glance at Heller. “Did this Perkins maybe shoot this man?”

  “Don’t seem likely. This gent had been laying out there long enough to start ripening pretty good, as you can see and smell for yourself. And I had already come upon Mr. Perkins when we found him. I can tell you, just from watching him, that he was as surprised to find this corpse as I was.”

  “Who is this Perkins?” asked Pettigrew.

  “Traveling picture-taking man. Got himself set up so he can work right out of his wagon there . . . that box is made so no light gets in and he can work in there with the pictures he takes. He took one of our dead friend here. That’s what he does, mostly. Makes pictures of killed folks and outlaws. Other things, too, but it’s the outlaws and killers and such he likes best.”

  Pettigrew frowned. “Sounds like an odd bird.”

  “Yep,” Heller said.

  As if cued by the conversat
ion, Perkins came around from the front of the wagon. With lips pressed nervously together, he nodded briefly at each man and got nods and grunts of greeting in return. Perkins looked down at the corpse.

  “He looks even worse since we dragged him,” he said. “Does he look familiar to any of you?”

  “Sure does,” said a voice from behind them. Sheriff Mack Barton walked up beside Heller and took a look at the dead man. “Yep, I know that face . . . or what’s left of it.”

  “Who is he?” Pettigrew asked.

  “Ever heard of the Toleen brothers?”

  “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Perkins. “They rode with the Bracken Gang for years, but made their name riding for Black Ear Skinner and his men. Some of the worst. I made portraits of both of them, along with Black Ear himself and some of his other gunnies. That’s where I saw this man before.”

  “Black Ear Skinner . . . God!” said Barton. “Worst of the worst, that one was. I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “Over in Mason, wasn’t it?” Pettigrew said. “During a stage robbery?”

  “That’s right. Shot right through the side of the head. The side that had the blackened ear, matter of fact.”

  “How’d that happen to him, anyway, sheriff? The ear, I mean.”

  “As I hear it, it was somebody who had a grudge against Skinner’s old man, his pa. To pay him back for whatever he’d done, they captured his boy, Curry—that being Black Ear before he was Black Ear—and hauled him off in the woods somewheres, and made him suffer bad. Cut him, beat him, whipped him. Burned him. Burned off three toes, burned his elbows through to the bone, and burned his left ear to ash. The elbows healed over, but the joints were stiffer than they should have been. The ear never grew back in, not most of it, anyway . . . just left him with a black little stub of gristle sticking off the side of his head. Earned him the nickname Black Ear. He hated being called that when he was young, but by the time he’d growed up and turned to crime, he accepted it. Liked the sound of calling his gang the ‘Black Ears.’ From all the stories, though, his heart was blacker than that ear ever was. Man had no mercy at all in him. One of his own gang crossed him, just a young gent who wore his hair long, and Black Ear hung him up by his toes and built a fire under his head. Kept it low enough just to cook him, not burn him fast. Burned off that long hair down to the scalp, then burned the scalp through to the skull. He let the poor hombre suffer for half an hour or more, then built the fire up higher and tossed the boy a pistol with one bullet in it. Told him he could use it to shoot him, Black Ear, or put the bullet through his own brain. The boy did what anybody would in that circumstance and used it on himself.”

  “The hell,” said Pettigrew. “Reckon that’s true, or just one of them stories that get started and grow?”

  “It’s true,” Perkins said. “I heard it spoken of by Black Ear himself. He laughed about how after the poor devil shot himself, the blood that dropped down sizzled when it hit the fire.”

  “Meaner than a Comanche with an Apache mama and a bad affliction of piles,” Heller muttered.

  “Yes indeed.”

  “And this poor fellow here was one of Black Ear’s guns, huh?”

  “He was. He and his brother together, twins. Drew and Cal Toleen.”

  “Which one is this?”

  Perkins rubbed his chin in the same way Heller had seen him do out on the Hangtree Trail. “Don’t know. They look just alike to everybody except them who knows them well. This one could be either one, as best I could tell. I’ve only had one good look at the Toleens myself.”

  “But there’s no question it’s one of the two?”

  “No, sir,” said Perkins.

  “You weren’t talking so sure before. You said he was familiar but you couldn’t place him.”

  “That’s right . . . then the sheriff here called his name and then I remembered, and knew he was right.”

  “So where’s his brother?” Luke Pettigrew asked. “Every story I’ve heard of them, they always stuck together. You see one, you’re going to see t’other before you know it.”

  “Maybe the other one’s dead, too,” said the sheriff. “If he is, we ought to go have a drink to celebrate. Any of the Black Ears gone is good news to good folk.”

  “Tell you what, men, this old boy here needs to be in the ground.”

  “Needed to be in it maybe two days ago,” said Heller, waving his hand in front of his nose to clear some of the death stench. “I’d say it’s time to get this gent here a new low-ceiling house made of pine boards, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll fetch him myself,” said Barton.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Myrtle Bewley already had played a part in the commerce of three small towns in her fifty-year life: she’d worked as a young girl in her uncle’s general store in rural Kentucky, stocking shelves and sweeping floors; at a slightly older age she’d been trained as a seamstress by an aunt in Illinois, and found work in a dress shop, hemming new dresses and repairing torn ones. After marrying, she and her husband had opened a general mercantile, also in Illinois, until the war erupted and Bradley Bewley found himself drawn into the life of a soldier. Wartime friendships and interactions had led him to a conviction that his most promising future might lie in the cattle business, which with the growth of railroads and westward expansion of a reunifying nation, seemed poised to move forward when the war was past. So without much delay the childless couple headed to Texas, following a particular army friend, Dan Roark, who guided them into Hangtree County. Like many others, Roark and Bewley began building their own small ranching operation, developing their herd mostly from the unbranded and free-ranging cattle spread across the plains. And to make his wife happy, Bradley Bewley had supported her wish to create a business of her own in the town of Hangtree. A dress shop, of all things, a small, bright haven of domesticity nestled among saloons, gambling halls, dives, dance parlors, cantinas pandering to Mexican tastes, general merchandise stores, a livery stable, freight depot, a feed and farm supply store, and several brothels. Unlikely as it seemed, even to Myrtle herself, the dress shop had fared well, welcomed by the lonely, isolated wives and daughters of Hangtree and its environs. Never quite thriving, the business even so survived and moved ahead.

  Myrtle was on a ladder, dusting a high shelf at the back of the store, when the door opened and a lovely young woman entered. This was a newcomer, never seen before by the shopkeeper. Myrtle welcomed the sight of her because she was well-dressed and seemed a likely spender. Myrtle descended the ladder and approached her.

  “Good day, miss . . . I am Myrtle Bewley, proprietress of this shop. Hello and welcome!”

  “I am Julia Pepperday Canton. I am so pleased to find that Hangtree has a dress shop.”

  “Thank you, Miss Canton. I’m happy you like it. I do find it makes this town a little less rough, a little more hospitable to those of our sex. You are new to Hangtree, I believe?”

  “I am. And I am here alone, so I welcome your cordiality.”

  “Alone? I am surprised such a lovely young woman as you are is not married.”

  “Thank you for the compliment. Marriage is a blessing I hope will come to me in the future. Assuming, of course, I can find the right man.”

  “Maybe right here in Hangtree, miss!”

  “Perhaps so.” Julia looked about, making sure there were no other customers in the shop. “Maybe you can, sometime or another, provide me some eligible names.”

  “Surely. I might mention one even now . . . have you heard the name of Sam Heller?”

  “I think I have.”

  “He is a man of means. Owns more cattle, and has more money in the Hangtree Bank, than any other man in this county and a good distance beyond. Some don’t like him because he was a Union man in the late conflict . . . but we must all learn to put such former differences behind us, don’t you think? The wise woman keeps her eyes focused on her future rather than on the past. And only the foolish woman disregards the importance of monetary stabi
lity.”

  “You are a fount of good advice, Mrs. Bewley! I shall have to visit you often.”

  “You will be welcome. I am open daily, though I do close in the afternoon on Wednesdays. And on Sundays, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Julia perused the little store’s bolts of cloth and spools of thread and flats of needles, pins, and scissors. Meanwhile Myrtle Bewley chattered on, pleased to have a seemingly moneyed customer willing to listen to her. Julia pleased Myrtle further when she purchased a simple but colorful handmade shawl Myrtle had stitched and decorated herself.

  With her purchase draped over her shoulders, Julia headed for the door, but stopped short of opening it. “Oh my,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Myrtle asked.

  “Nothing . . . not really. It’s just . . . someone is out there I don’t really prefer to run into.”

  “Oh! Who might it be?”

  Julia sighed loudly. “There’s a young man in town, simple in his mind, who has taken a liking to me because I was kind to him. I was warned that he might misinterpret my friendliness as something other than it is, and become infatuated. I’m afraid that might be the case.”

  “I’m sure it’s Timothy from the Emporium who you are speaking of,” Myrtle said. “A good boy. Good heart but simple mind.”

  “Yes, it is Timothy I’m speaking of. I have some affection for him because I had a brother in a similar situation, and loved him very much. But Timothy, I think, sees me in a more romantic light than I would wish. I hate to hurt him, though.”

  “Is Timothy out there right now, then?”

  “Waiting for me on the porch across the street. With a paper flower in his hand.”

  “How sweet! They sell those for a penny at the Emporium where he sweeps. But I understand your concern. How to be kind without hurting his feelings? It’s a difficult question. Perhaps it will help you to know that this isn’t the first time poor Tim has become smitten like this. I’ve seen it before. And he came through it without being damaged.”