Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man The Eyes of Texas Read online

  Shady Rest

  Annabelle wasn’t a member of the city council, but as a representative of the Merchants Association, she was able to sit in on the meetings, and she was present on the day Devry Pruitt was sworn in as the new town marshal.

  “You have quite a job cut out for you, Marshal Pruitt,” Mayor Trout said. “Conditions over on Plantation Row are practically out of hand now.”

  “Not practically out of hand, they are out of hand,” Earl Cook said.

  “The tactless side of me would say that Plantation Row has been very good for my business,” Ponder said. “Though, since the last seven burials have been at the expense of the town, I have to say I’m not making that much out of it.”

  “Yes, paid for by the town,” Mayor Trout said. “And that is beginning to be quite a problem. Our tax base is barely able to keep up with the expense of all these burials.”

  “Ah, there is a possible solution to our problem,” George Tobin said.

  “What?”

  “Suppose we charge the businesses that are down in Plantation Row a special tax, a tax higher than we charge any other business in town? That will do two things. It will help pay the cost of all the burials, and it might even be so burdensome to them as to make them shut down.”

  “Can we do that?” Martin Peabody asked. “Charge them an extra tax, I mean.”

  “What about it, Mr. Dempster? You’re the city attorney. Can we?” Mayor Trout asked.

  “Well, we could charge an excise tax on the sale of liquor, gambling, and whoring,” Dempster said. “To be honest, if it is challenged though, the state might not allow it, especially if it is applied only to Plantation Row, which it would have to be, otherwise Gerald Hawkins would have to pay it as well. And he hasn’t really given us any trouble.”

  “He doesn’t have whores in his place,” Peabody said.

  “No, but I do sell liquor, and while I didn’t use to have gambling, I do now, ever since Emerson Culpepper arrived.”

  “Maybe we can find some way to exempt you from the excise tax,” Milner suggested.

  “I don’t see how,” Hawkins replied. “If you charge the people on Plantation Row an excise tax, Mr. Dempster is right, you’re going to have to charge me as well.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Dupree said. “We don’t have a courthouse, and the few times we’ve had a trial, we’ve had to find a place to hold them. Suppose the city were to lease the Texas Star Saloon to serve as a courthouse when needed. And the lease payment will exactly equal the excise tax. That way, it will be a wash.”

  “What do you say, Mr. Hawkins?” Mayor Trout asked. “Would you be willing to rent your place to the city for special occasions?”

  “I would be honored to do so,” Hawkins replied.

  “Then yes,” Dempster said with a broad smile. He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s the way we will handle it.”

  Shortly after the meeting of the city council, Jacob Bramley, in the far end of town, called a meeting of the other businessmen, and women, of Plantation Row. Fred Foster was there for the Crooked Branch; so was Red Gimlin from the Ace High. There was also a representative from the dance hall, and one from the gambling house. Abby Dolan of Abby’s Place was there too. Abby weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, and she sat there, smoking a cigar and fanning herself, her frizzy blond hair sticking out in all directions.

  “What’d you call the meeting for, Jacob?” Foster wanted to know.

  “I called this meeting to discuss the excise tax the city has placed on us.”

  “Yeah,” Gimlin said. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “There’s not much we can do but pay it,” Foster said.

  “I think the time has come for us to organize,” Bramley said.

  “Organize what?” Gimlin asked.

  “Organize ourselves. The town of Shady Rest has a city council, and it has a Merchants Association, but neither one of them meet our needs. And let’s face it, this excise tax is just a start. You know damn well if they could find a way to close us down, they would.”

  “How are they going to do that? We have licenses, we pay municipal taxes. We are legal.”

  “About these excise taxes,” Gimlin said. “I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. I don’t think any of the merchants of the town will put up with having their taxes raised.”

  “They won’t be getting their taxes raised,” Bramley explained. “Just the businesses on Plantation Row.”

  “What? How can they do that? Abby asked.

  “Because the new taxes will be applied only to the sale of liquor, to gambling, and to whoring. And that gets all of us.”

  “All right, what do you propose we do to stop them?”

  “At the moment, I don’t have any idea. That’s why I called this meeting. I think that if we organized ourselves, maybe into something like the Plantation Row Citizens’ Betterment Council, we might be able to come up with a way to fight it. But for now, the most important thing for us to do is to form the council.”

  “All right,” Gimlin said. “I’m in.”

  “Me too,” Foster said.

  “Count me in as well,” Abby said.

  “Who’s going to be the head of it?” Foster asked.

  “Bramley thought of it, I say it should be him,” Gimlin suggested.

  “So do I,” Abby put in quickly.

  “All right, Bramley, you’re the man,” Foster said. “So, come up with something.”

  “I’ll work on it. I’ll have a suggestion next time we meet.”

  Mutt Crowley did not come to Shady Rest alone. Bill Carter and Lenny Fletcher had come with him. Since the bank robbery in Monotony, Kansas, they had spent their money on expensive food and liquor, expensive whores, and even more expensive games of chance. When they arrived in Shady Rest, they were down to just a couple hundred dollars each.

  They were spending almost all their time in one saloon or another. At first, they split their time among three of the four saloons in town, generally avoiding the Texas Star. They had tried the Texas Star, but the problem, as far as Crowley, Fletcher, and Carter were concerned, was that the women were “bar girls” only. They would drink and provide company for the men, but they let it be known from the outset that they weren’t prostitutes, and no amount of money any of the three men offered them would make them change their minds.

  Mutt Crowley was well aware that he was a wanted man, so when he arrived in Shady Rest, he took the name of Dale Morgan. Bill Carter and Lenny Fletcher, who had not been identified for their parts in the Kansas bank robbery and murders, did not find it necessary to change their names.

  The fact that the bar girls at the Texas Star weren’t prostitutes wasn’t the only reason the three men no longer frequented the Texas Star. They hadn’t been barred from coming back, but none of the women, and very few of the patrons, would have anything to do with them. Now, they spent all their time on Plantation Row, and though they did occasionally visit the Crooked Branch and Ace High, the Pig Palace had become their saloon of choice.

  Because they had been warned by Prichard to stay out of trouble, the three men did nothing to raise anyone’s suspicions. However, the very fact that they did “nothing” is what did raise the suspicions of many.

  “What the hell do them boys do?” Doomey asked. Doomey, who was a frequent patron of the Pig Palace, worked at the feed and seed store. “I mean, no matter when I come in here I see ’em in here, either drinkin’, or playin’ cards, or sportin’ with one of the women. But I ain’t never seen a one of ’em do the first lick of work. Where do they get their money?”

  “I’ve seen men like them before,” a cowboy named Seymour replied. “More’n likely they was workin’ in one of the mines up in Nevada or California or some such place. Them mines pay real good money, and lots of folks just work hard, save up their money, then go spend it.”

  “Yeah, I reckon so,” Doomey agreed. “I mean, it ain’t like they’re spendin�
�� a whole lot. It just seems peculiar that they don’t never do nothin’ to earn what little bit of money they are spendin’.”

  “Well, it don’t seem to bother Bramley none that they are here all the time,” Doomey said.

  Seymour chuckled. “Why should it? Hell, they’re spendin’ money with him, ain’t they?”

  Mayor Trout was not only a supporter of Annabelle’s right to belong to the Shady Rest Merchants Association, his wife was also one of Annabelle’s best customers. The mayor planned to attend an upcoming political conference at the state capital in Austin, and that meant a formal ball. Despite the fact that she had a closet full of dresses and fancy gowns, Lillian Trout insisted that she had “nothing to wear,” so she came to the Elite Shoppe to ask Annabelle if she could do something to alleviate her desperate, bereft situation.

  “Why of course, Mrs. Trout, I’ll do whatever I can for you. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I want you to sew for me the most beautiful gown you have ever made,” she said. “Everyone in Austin is so snooty, I’m sure they think that anyone who doesn’t live in Austin must wear dresses made of flour sacks.”

  “It will be the most beautiful,” Annabelle promised. “And I can’t think of anyone more beautiful to wear it.”

  Lillian Trout blushed under the compliment. “Cost is not a consideration,” she said, and Annabelle smiled, because that was exactly the response she wanted her comment to elicit.

  Annabelle O’Callahan was looked up to by everyone in Shady Rest. In addition to being an excellent seamstress, she was also a very good businesswoman. She was so skilled and so at home in running a business that everyone who knew her was certain that she had a sound business background, perhaps in some family business. That was because everyone who knew her only thought they knew her. The truth was, they didn’t know her at all, and the first mistake they made about her was thinking that they actually knew her name.

  When she first arrived in Shady Rest to begin her business, she had introduced herself as Annabelle O’Callahan, but that was a deception. Her real name was Kathleen Murphy. She had taken the name Annabelle from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name.

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know

  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  O’Callahan had been the name of a green grocer in the Philadelphia neighborhood where her grandmother had lived.

  Annabelle’s (Kathleen’s) mother had died when she was fourteen years old, and her father remarried. Less than six months after he remarried, her father was killed in a railroad accident and her stepmother, who “couldn’t deal with a fifteen-year-old girl,” sent her to Philadelphia to live with Mrs. Alice Grayson, her maternal grandmother.

  The old lady was thrilled to have Kathleen live with her, because when her only daughter, Kathleen’s mother, had died, Mrs. Grayson had thought she would be cut off from her grandchild forever. It turned out to be a wonderful experience. Her grandmother sent Kathleen to a finishing school, and introduced her to Philadelphia society. She also taught Kathleen how to sew, intending it to be an “acceptable” hobby for a woman of substance. Kathleen loved her grandmother and, more important, knew that her grandmother loved her.

  Not once during the six years she was in Philadelphia did her stepmother ever come to visit her, though she did get frequent letters from her. Her stepmother lived in Kansas City, Kansas, and the letters were filled with the most wonderful descriptions of the hotel she had bought with the life insurance Kathleen’s father had provided. The letters often included vignettes about some of her guests.

  Then, in Kathleen’s last few months of school, her grandmother died. Kathleen was heartsick over the loss of her grandmother, but she learned, to her surprise, that her grandmother had left everything to her. The total amount of money, after she sold the house, came to almost seven thousand dollars.

  Kathleen returned to Kansas City, intending to live with her stepmother until she found a position and a place of her own. She had not yet told her stepmother of the inheritance, deciding she would surprise her.

  But the surprise was Kathleen’s, because when she got to Kansas City she learned that the hotel wasn’t a hotel at all. It was a rather high-class brothel.

  “You will be my prize attraction,” her stepmother told her. “You are beautiful, and I know of at least five very important and very wealthy men who will get into a bidding war. Someone is going to pay a great deal of money for the opportunity to be the first one to . . .” The woman paused and flashed a twisted smile. “Deflower you.”

  “No! I won’t do it!” Kathleen said. “What would my father think about such a thing?”

  “Don’t be so high and mighty,” her stepmother said. “How do you think I met your father?”

  “I won’t do it,” Kathleen said. “Tomorrow, I will move out of the hotel, and we can each go our own way.”

  That night, without Kathleen’s knowledge, her stepmother held the auction anyway, and sent the winner into Kathleen’s room to “claim his right.”

  In the struggle that ensued, Kathleen hit the man with an andiron. Without stopping to see whether he was dead or alive, she got dressed quickly, then climbed out the window with only the dress she was wearing, and the seven thousand dollars in cash.

  That was the night Kathleen Murphy “died,” and Annabelle O’Callahan was born.

  That was three years ago, and to date, Annabelle still didn’t know if she had killed him or not. Not, in all that time, had she ever made any effort to reestablish contact with her stepmother. And why should she? As far as she knew, Annabelle O’Callahan had not one relative in the world.

  Chapter Seven

  Pecos, Texas

  Prichard Crowley had gone first to San Francisco, where he spent heavily, staying in the bests hotels and dining in the finest restaurants. On the night that he’d planned to be his last night in San Francisco, he took a young, female violinist to dinner.

  “My dear, your playing tonight was absolutely brilliant,” Prichard said. “You played with . . . how can I express this? With seductive warmth and richness, not so much technically as interpretively, and with an introspective lyricism.”

  The young woman glowed under the compliments, and when Prichard reached across the table to take her hand, she offered no resistance.

  At midnight, as Prichard waited for the train, he had a hard time controlling the excitement that still coursed through his body, remembering the thrill he’d felt as he took the young woman, then killed her. He’d left her body in the alley behind his hotel. He would be gone before the San Francisco police could find her, and it would go down as just another of San Francisco’s unsolved murders.

  After the bank robbery, the Crowley gang had left Kansas and gone to California where they’d spent nearly all their money; then they’d left California for Texas. Mutt decided to go to Shady Rest while Prichard chose Pecos, which wasn’t too far away. Prichard and Mutt also took on assumed names—Mutt would call himself Dale Morgan, and Prichard would adopt the name Abe Conner. That way, they would be able to keep in touch with each other.

  When Prichard Crowley rode into Pecos, Texas, he found it to be full of activity and, like ants at a picnic, cowboys were everywhere. He reined up in front of a saloon, but as he dismounted he didn’t notice that a young cowboy was crossing the street right behind him. His dismount caused the cowboy to have to step away, and when he did, he stepped directly into a pile of horse dropping. There was a young woman who was crossing the street with him, and she managed to avoid it.

  “Hey, mister, look what you just made me do!” the cowboy complained.

  “You have my apologies, sir. It was unintentional,” Prichard said.

  “Yeah? Well your apology ain’t good enough,” the young cowboy said. He held
his soiled boot out. “Get down there and clean it off.”

  The girl with the cowboy saw the danger in Prichard’s eyes before the cowboy did, and she reacted to it by pulling on his arm. “Come on, Teddy, don’t make such a stink over it. Let’s go. I’ll clean your boot for you. There’s only a little on it anyway.”

  “No,” Teddy said, obviously trying to make a show of it in front of the people who, having heard the agitation in Teddy’s voice, had stopped to see what was going on. “This saddle tramp is the one who messed up my boot. He is the one who is going to clean it off.”

  Prichard made no reply. Instead, he tied his horse off at the hitching rail.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, mister. I’m talking to you.”

  Prichard stared directly at the young cowboy.

  “Young man, you are beginning to grow tiresome. You would be well advised to take the young lady’s advice and let this issue drop.”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you? You are a coward and you want me to just go away. Well, I’m not going away. I’m calling you out!” the young cowboy said, his voice cracking in anger.

  “Are you now? Are you that anxious to die?” Prichard’s voice, in direct contrast to that of the young cowboy’s was exceptionally calm.

  If the cowboy didn’t sense the danger, the young woman with him did, and again, she reached out to put her hand on Teddy’s arm. “No, wait, Teddy please!” the young girl pleaded, her voice now on the verge of panic. “Let it be.”

  “Young lady, if you and your young man will just walk away, this will all be over,” Prichard said.

  “Don’t be talkin’ to my sister. She ain’t the one you got to worry about. I am.”

  “You mean the young lady is your sister?”

  “Yes, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Evidently your sister is the only one in your family who has any sense,” Prichard said. “You had better listen to her, sonny.”