The Butcher of Baxter Pass Read online

  The plump waitress swept Neils’s mug off the table without a by-your-leave or kind smile, and for a fat petticoat, she was mighty quick. Neils couldn’t even pinch her rear as she raced back to the kitchen.

  “I got five years a-drinkin’ to catch up on, Mommie!” He winked at both brothers, shot a look at Big Dan, and shook his head at his third sibling.

  Tom and Neils glanced at one another. Big Dan slowly shook his head, cursed, sniffed, and mumbled something about that low-down law dog who had come mighty close to crippling him with that singletree and then maybe cracked his skull with his six-shooter.

  The waitress returned with Burt’s beer, slamming the mug down in front of him, sending most of the suds and some of the brew sloshing over the rim and puddling on the well-worn checkered tablecloth. She did not apologize and vanished once again.

  Tom sighed as Burt picked up the mug and drained about half of the beer. Tom and Neils had each had one beer; Dan hadn’t had a thing. Their kid brother was well in his cups now.

  Not that Tom blamed the youngster. If Tom hadn’t been saddled with the job of being pa and brother to his younger brothers, he likely would have joined Burt in some drinking contests. Burt was the youngest, but twenty-seven now, not a kid but a man. A man old enough, five years back, to know better than to rob a bank, but that hadn’t stopped Burt, who had always been wild. Neils, now thirty years old, had joined him. “Because he’s my brother,” he had told the judge, “and he needed me.”

  Tom hadn’t even known what those two had been up to until they rode home with a posse barely behind the dust the two brothers’ well-lathered horses had raised up. All Tom had seen was a bunch of strangers sending bullets after his two kid brothers, so he had opened fire. Hadn’t killed anyone, as luck would have it, but he had knocked two out of the saddle and dropped two other horses.

  Of course, neither the judge nor the jury—and probably not even that pettifogging lawyer who had represented the three brothers in that trial back home in Stephenville—had believed Tom’s story. Even after Burt and Neils had testified that they had planned the robbery on their own, that Tom was just defending his sorry brothers.

  At least, no one thought ol’ Dan had taken part.

  And at least, Tom figured, the judge had taken mercy on the McNamaras. He had given them only seven years, but the warden had recommended that two years be knocked off that sentence, for good behavior.

  “I knew your father, Tom,” the warden had said when he told the three brothers they would be getting out early.

  Same thing the judge had said in Stephenville before passing sentence.

  I knew your father.

  Which is something Burt couldn’t say. By thunder, Neils couldn’t even remember Walter Bass McNamara. Even Tom, at thirty-five years old now, and Big Dan, thirty-three, had only vague recollections of their father, but, oh, those stories Ma would tell before consumption called her to glory.

  Bass McNamara was tougher than Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, Hercules, and Samson all rolled into one. He’d been born in Kentucky, or somewhere along the Cumberland Gap, and came to Texas shortly before Sam Houston had won Texas’s independence at San Jacinto back in 1836. He fought Indians—four Comanche and three Kiowa scalps still hung over the fireplace mantel in their home—rode with the Rangers, and cleared about two hundred acres by himself. He had once lifted a piano over his head, had killed an alligator down along the Gulf of Mexico with nothing but a knife, and had befriended the likes of Deaf Smith, Jack Hays, and even Sam Houston himself.

  Then came the war, and Bass had been among the first to join up, riding down south to enlist in what became Hood’s Texas Brigade. Some muckety-muck had offered him a commission, but Bass had said he’d be danged if he’d be giving any orders and cowering with some yellow-livered general. By thunder, Walter Bass McNamara was a fighting man, and that’s why he had joined up. To fight. To kill Yankees. He even hated it when they made him don sergeant’s stripes, and he refused to carry the colors. He would use his Enfield rifled musket. He wanted to fight, to kill blue bellies, not wave some damned flag.

  So he had fought, practically winning the fight at Gaines’s Mill by himself—if you believed those tales—until that September day in Maryland when the Yanks had taken Bass McNamara and hundreds more prisoners after that bloody, savage day at Sharpsburg. The Yanks had carted them all off to some hellhole on the Ohio River, to starve, to rot, to die. But you couldn’t kill a man like Bass McNamara.

  You couldn’t....

  Unless you lined him up after the damned war had ended, turned the crank on a Gatling gun, and ripped him apart. Murdered him. And many more.

  Tom thought about ordering a whiskey, just to kill the memory, to wash that gall out of his mouth. He looked at his coffee but did not drink. Burt was laughing at something, but Tom didn’t hear what was so funny. Right now, nothing was funny. He felt the blood rush to his head, and he dropped his hands beneath the table, put them on his thighs, and clenched his fists until his hands shook and his arms ached.

  The Butcher of Baxter Pass.

  That yellow-dog Yankee had killed his pa. Murdered him.

  Tom himself had been only eleven years old when his father had been shot down like a rabid dog. Assassinated. Before then, everybody down around Stephenville had bragged on what a good boy Tom McNamara was, how he would likely go to college, maybe become a lawyer, a doctor, maybe governor of the great state of Texas. Perhaps even president of the Confederate States of America—after Texas had whipped those blue-bellied tyrants.

  After the murder of Bass, however, things changed. Carpetbaggers came flooding to the South. Yankees wanted everything, and they could take much of it. Take anything they wanted with Yankees running the Texas government, the county government, and the crooked State Police. And even after those long, bitter years of Reconstruction, things had not really improved. Oh, many of the Yankees had headed back north, to steal from their own people, but things remained hard in Texas. And every time Tom would read about that butcher, that killer of some two hundred paroled Rebel soldiers, Tom would seethe with anger.

  Brigadier General Lincoln Everett Dalton was free to roam across the North, and even the West, giving speeches, showing off Gatling guns or other weapons—for which gun companies paid him a healthy stipend—or kissing babies and the like. While he, Tom McNamara, had to tend to his younger brothers, manage the farm, pay the sharecroppers who had once been slaves owned by Bass McNamara, and watch his mother cough herself to death.

  She had never really, truly, recovered after word reached Stephenville of her husband’s death. Most times, she’d just sit in her rocking chair on the porch and talk to Bass. Talk to herself. To her memories. By the time Tom was sixteen his mother could barely get out of bed, and even when she could manage that, she’d just sit, too weak to rock herself by then.

  When she died, back when Tom was two weeks shy of eighteen, everyone said it was a blessing.

  Tom McNamara never thought of anything as a blessing. Blessings came from the Lord. To Tom’s way of seeing things, everything since May 30, 1865, had been damned.

  “Tom?”

  He blinked, made his hands relax, and wondered if his face was as scarlet as it felt. He forgot those bad memories, tried to put aside that hate, and lifted his left hand for the mug of coffee.

  “Yeah.” He saw Neils hook a thumb at the portly waitress who stood behind him.

  Tom looked up at the Mexican woman.

  “You pay?” Her accent thickened the words.

  With a sigh, Tom drained the coffee.

  Any money they’d managed to earn in prison had already been spent. On new duds. On ammunition for the guns that had been returned. And on food and on some horses and tack they had bought at a livery in Dallas before the law had sent them back onto the train. Mostly on the horses. The McNamaras had always admired good horses. Good horses. Good guns. Take care of both, and they’d take care of you.

  “Dan?” Tom aske
d.

  The simpleton brother lowered his hands. His eyes looked rheumy, his face pale.

  “How much money do you have?”

  Dan blinked. “Mo-ney?”

  Neils cursed. Burt laughed. The waitress frowned.

  Tom wondered what the home place would look like after five years. Maybe the sheriff down there had already claimed it from back taxes.

  Tom dropped his hand to his belt, thinking maybe he could trade the gun belt for the meal, but then found himself, as the saying around here went, “undressed.” The sheriff had taken not only their guns, but also their shell belts. There was that one Winchester carbine Burt had insisted on buying in Huntsville...

  Tom cursed again. No, the sheriff had taken the Winchester, too.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Dos dólares y diez centavos.”

  He dipped his fingers inside his vest pocket, glaring at his two brothers—but not addlebrained Dan—to do the same. When it was all said and done, they had thirty-one cents among them.

  The waitress put her hands on her thick waist and barked something to her boss in rapid-fire Spanish.

  Tom was standing, turning toward the Mexican owner, starting to say that he would bring them the money as soon as he saw the sheriff, but when he turned, he saw that the big man with the apron was bringing up a single-shot bird gun from behind the bar.

  “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “It’s two bucks and a dime!”

  The man was slow, and Tom was already moving. You had to be fast, even in prison, especially in Huntsville, if you wanted to stay alive in that place, where life was worth even less than two dollars and ten cents. He figured he could get to the middle-aged man before he could even thumb back the hammer on that big shotgun, jerk the weapon out of the man’s big hands, and make everyone understand.

  He had practically reached the hombre, was extending his hands to grab the barrel, when something boomed behind him and heat flashed past his left ear, and the right ear of the big Mexican disappeared in an explosion of red.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Monday, 9 a.m.

  The shotgun’s barrel went upward, away from Tom, as the Mexican fell. The single-shot weapon boomed, punching holes into the tin ceiling and filling the little eatery with clouds of pungent white smoke. Whirling, reflexively bringing up his hand to his burning, now ringing, ear, Tom McNamara saw Burt grinning wildly, moving. Yet even before he had seen the café owner/cook’s ear shot off, Tom knew what had happened.

  He had not forgotten the little .32 Burt had pocketed at the hardware store where they had bought the Winchester and bullets for their revolvers.

  “Don’t!” Tom yelled, but Burt did not listen. He’d never listened, not even when he had been a little kid.

  The stout waitress was screaming, and Burt slammed the pocket pistol against her head, dropping her onto the sawdust-covered floor.

  Neils also moved, jerking the groggy Dan out of his chair, which fell backward.

  A couple of cooks pushed through the door to the kitchen, saw Burt aiming the little popgun in their direction, and the door slammed as they retreated. Another door opened, and Tom saw the other customers fleeing into the streets.

  “Best ride!” Neils yelled, and he was dragging Big Dan over the unconscious waitress’s body, following the café’s patrons.

  Behind and beneath the bar, the wounded Mexican groaned.

  “Don’t leave without me, Neils!” Burt yelled, and he leaped over the bar, moving toward the cashbox. A place like this, it dawned upon Tom, was too cheap to have a cash register.

  Tom looked around, found the beer mug that Burt had been cherishing since they’d arrived at the restaurant, and fetched it, spun, and sent it sailing after his brother. The glass smashed the wall at the end of the counter, just as Burt reached the cashbox. The kid had to raise his arms to protect himself from the shards of glass that sailed toward his face, and then he spun, pointing the little .32 at Tom.

  “Get out!” Tom yelled. “You ain’t robbin’ these people.”

  His brother lowered the gun, glared at Tom, and cursed, but this time he actually obeyed.

  Tom followed him through the door, checking both directions on the street.

  The town had filled up, and so had the boardwalks, but nobody wanted to stick his nose in somebody else’s business. Businessmen and passersby kept a respectful distance. At least the streets were clear. For now.

  Neils had managed to get Big Dan onto that big mule he had ridden all the way from Stephenville, and the big cuss leaned low in the saddle. The mule did not budge. Neils’s horse, on the other hand, was rearing, eyes wide and full of fear, the hoofs slashing down as Neils fought to keep his grip on the reins.

  “Easy. Easy! Easy!” Neils tried to coax his horse.

  Burt had untethered his horse and was leading it down the street, away from Neils and that little rodeo dance his horse was doing. Tom’s horse was pulling at its reins, threatening to break the hitching rail in half, and Tom knew he needed to get to his mount or he would be afoot in this cow town with a wounded café owner and an unconscious waitress—not to mention a two dollar and ten cent bill, less thirty-one cents, to account for.

  So he moved, grabbing the bridle straps on the horse’s head. Prison hadn’t softened any of Tom McNamara’s muscles. He jerked the horse’s head, saying in a firm voice. “No.” That was with his right hand. His left was unloosening the reins around the rail, and then Tom’s right hand was moving toward the saddle horn, and he felt himself leaping into the saddle from a standstill.

  He spurred the horse down the street to prevent Neils’s mount from escaping. With relief, he saw the panicking horse calm down, just enough for Neils to get control and get himself mounted.

  Clucking his tongue, Tom guided his horse between Neils and Burt, moved over toward that worthless mule carrying Big Dan, and slapped his hat on the mule’s rump.

  “Hi-ya!” Tom shouted. “Get a-movin’ ! Get a-movin’ !”

  The mule started to move. The streets remained empty, and for a brief moment, Tom McNamara thought that they just might get out of Fort Worth unscathed, get back home to Stephenville, and put the past five years, and especially this morning, behind them.

  That’s when he heard that voice that somehow, deep inside him, Tom knew he would hear.

  “Hold it!”

  * * *

  Sheriff Jess Casey took everything in. The McNamara brothers. The open door to Miguel Sanchez’s little café. Nobody on the boardwalk on this side of the street, but across the street, dozens of people kneeling, staring, pointing. He also saw the little pistol in the youngest brother’s—the pockmarked kid, Burt, yeah, that’s the name—right hand.

  The kid’s horse reared, came down, and Burt McNamara was smiling. Tom, the oldest, yelled. Sounded like “Don’t!” The mule with the big brother, Big Dan, who had come mighty close to stomping Jess Casey until he was just a puddle of grease earlier this morning, had stopped again. The other one—Nelson, no, Neils—he had his hands full managing his own mount. The only one with a weapon, it appeared, was Burt McNamara.

  And the kid was leveling that gun at Jess Casey.

  Jess blamed everything on the morning. It had been too busy, and he was too tired to think straight. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left his office without a double-barreled shotgun. He only had the Colt hanging on his hip, but in a situation like this, that .44-40 was all he really needed.

  He moved to his side as the little pistol popped. The column near him splintered as the .32 bullet tore at its side. By that time, the people across the street were ducking behind water troughs, or columns, or some bales of cotton, or moving back into their businesses or residences. Jess had swept the Colt into his right hand, thumbed back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

  The horse screamed and blood spurted from its neck. That sickened Jess Casey. He never liked to hurt a horse. In fact, he hadn’t meant to kill this fine animal, but he had rushed his shot, an
d the horse had come down from another jump in an area Jess had not anticipated. Otherwise, the bullet would have, should have, caught Burt McNamara in his right kneecap. And that would have ended all of this unpleasantness.

  Instead, the horse fell to its side, and Burt McNamara kicked free of the stirrups and dived to his right. He landed with a thud, stirring up clouds of dust. As far as Jess could tell, however, the ex-con had not lost his hold on that little popgun.

  Jess moved, sizing up the scene, as he leaped over the empty hitching rail, cocking the Colt again, as he raced toward Burt McNamara.

  Big Dan had fallen off the mule and lay in the street, curled up like a baby, wrapping his big head with both of his massive arms. Neils was turning his wild horse around in a circle, a move that an ex-cowhand like Jess Casey had to appreciate. Good horsemen were good people. Usually. Unless they were also bank robbers.

  Tom McNamara had swung down from his horse and started moving toward Burt, who was coming up. Burt was on his knees now, trying to stand, or maybe just trying to bring his gun hand up. The dust was too thick for Jess to tell for sure. The .44-40 was cocked in Jess’s hand, though, and all he had to do was squeeze the trigger.

  Which he did.

  But only a warning shot that sent mounds of dirt clods up in front of Burt McNamara. He heard Burt’s curses, and then he was moving to his right, thumbing back the hammer again. He would not give the boy another chance. He couldn’t afford to.

  That’s when Tom McNamara kicked his brother in the back. Jess heard the oomph and saw Burt slam face-forward in the dust. Tom was moving around, as his kid brother tried to bring up his gun hand, but Tom’s boot planted on the boy’s right hand, burying his hand and the pocket pistol in the dirt.

  By then, Jess stood only a couple of feet from those two McNamara brothers, and his Colt .44-40 covered both of them.

  “Why’d you do that fer, Tom?” Burt managed to say, through coughs and sniffles and spitting out dirt.

  Jess took a quick look behind him. Big Dan still lay in the dirt. Neils had his horse under control but sat still in the saddle, frowning, and keeping his hands away from his horse and his person, showing that he was making no play for any weapon he might have on his person.