The Butcher of Baxter Pass Read online

  Tom McNamara took his foot off his kid brother’s hand and picked up the little gun in his right hand. He blew the dirt off it, broke open the action, and withdrew a .32 bullet from the barrel, which he dropped into his vest pocket.

  The gun was a Marston. It held only three shots. Apparently, Burt had fired only two, and one of those had been at Jess Casey. He looked at the door to Miguel’s place. Then he looked hard at Tom McNamara.

  “I had hoped,” Jess said, not lowering his Colt, “to be taking my nap right about now. And my mood grows mighty sour when I don’t get my nap.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Monday, 9:10 a.m.

  He slipped the Marston that Tom McNamara handed him into the back pocket of his britches. Keeping the Colt leveled at the oldest brother, Jess Casey knelt and slapped one iron bracelet on Burt McNamara’s left hand. He wasn’t worried about the kid’s right hand, for Tom’s boot had taken care of that one. From a glance, Jess figured the boy’s thumb and two or three fingers were busted, but Jess did not care.

  He dragged the screaming, cursing kid toward the hitching rail, where he secured the other end of the handcuffs to the sturdy post. Then he said, “Nobody leaves.”

  That was likely a wasted breath. If everything he had heard about those brothers was true, they wouldn’t leave one of their own.

  Then Jess went inside Miguel Sanchez’s little café.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Jess sat on the edge of the water trough in front of the restaurant, surrounded by the county solicitor, Mayor Stout, and the McNamara brothers. Tom, Neils, and Big Dan stood in the streets; young Burt remained chained to the hitching post, his mangled hand resting on his dusty thigh. Doc Amanda Wilson, who had arrived in Fort Worth and hung up her shingle just a few weeks back, was inside the café, working on Miguel’s ear and his sister’s head.

  “Attempted murder on Miguel,” said Solicitor Mort Thompson. “Assault and battery on Ramona. Attempted robbery.” Thompson grinned. “We can add vagrancy, resisting arrest, and petty larceny for the meal they wanted to eat for free.”

  Everything about Mort Thompson was wrong, from the custom silk shirt from Bloomingdale’s to that fancy overcoat of black mohair, and the blue corkscrew suit that had been tailor-made in St. Louis—which clashed with the high-crowned Texas hat, a spotless white, and its leather chin strap and his polished black boots and handsome spurs. Trying to fit in with Fort Worth, Jess figured, with the hat and boots, but especially the spurs. Mort Thompson likely had never been on a horse. Probably was scared of them, and Jess had never met an honest-to-goodness Texas cowboy or cattleman who needed a chin strap to hold his hat on his head.

  Jess Casey did not care much for Mort Thompson. Besides, he knew Miguel Sanchez.

  “That Mex,” Tom McNamara said tightly, “was pulling a shotgun on us. That was self-defense.”

  “You’re free to act as your brother’s counsel, McNamara.” Thompson grinned.

  Jess hoped that miserable politician would get creamed in the next election.

  “We would have paid the Mex,” Tom said.

  “Yeah. With thirty cents.”

  “Thirty-one,” Jess corrected.

  “We would have hocked one of our guns. Spurs. Hat. Something.” McNamara shook his head. “For God’s sake, man, it was over two dollars.”

  “And ten cents.” Mort Thompson was a low-down Yankee weasel. Jess wondered how he had managed to get elected in this day and age. Reconstruction had ended years ago. Fort Worth did not need some slick-talking, baby-kissing skunk from South Bend, Indiana, to handle prosecutions in Tarrant County.

  Mayor Stout mumbled something. Probably worried if the café would be able to open for dinner. The mayor ate there a lot, probably because he was a bigger miser than Miguel Sanchez.

  “You haul Burt off to jail, they’ll send him back to Huntsville in a blink of an eye.” Tom’s face flushed. “Make him finish those two years.”

  “And add a few more years to that sentence.” Thompson pointed a fat finger in the oldest McNamara brother’s face. “Ask me, all of y’all belong behind those brick walls.”

  Jess cleared his throat and stepped off the boardwalk between Tom McNamara and Mort Thompson. He even turned his back on the McNamara boys, hoping to defuse the situation.

  “Miguel’s a skinflint,” he said. “Pulling a shotgun over a two-dollar bill is extreme, even for that old boy.”

  “I’d call shooting a man’s ear off extreme, too, Sheriff Casey,” Thompson said icily.

  “A man has a right to defend himself,” Casey said.

  “This is a town matter, Casey,” Thompson said. “Not the county.”

  “But Kurt left me in charge while he’s out of town.”

  “And I say who goes to trial and who doesn’t.”

  “No,” Casey corrected. “That’s actually up to a grand jury. And I’m thinking, once they’ve heard what happened, the good citizens on that grand jury would no-bill these boys.”

  “He just wants those ex-cons out of town before ...” Mayor Stout stopped himself, cleared his throat, and looked uneasily at the Fort Worth men and women who had gathered around.

  “I can pay Doc Wilson for her troubles. I can pay the two dollars and ten cents for these boys’ breakfast. Turn them loose. Let them ride home.”

  “Let Stephenville’s law worry about them,” Mayor Stout said.

  “No.” Jess wondered if he would be no-billed by a grand jury if he up and shot Mort Thompson right now. The solicitor waved that fat finger in Jess’s face. “Take him to jail. You have the charges. We’ll see what the good citizens of Fort Worth say when he goes before the grand jury.”

  “When would that grand jury be?” Tom McNamara asked.

  “A week,” Thompson answered.

  “You boys could ride home and come back,” Mayor Stout suggested. He had started to sweat.

  “We might wait around here,” Tom said.

  “There’s a law against vagrancy,” Thompson said.

  “We’ll sell one of our horses. Maybe two.”

  A cold silence filled the morning air, and Jess Casey wondered if he could find a job punching cattle up around Jacksboro. Maybe just ride the grub line for the winter. Drift on to Kansas. Dodge City. Maybe on up into Montana. He had heard a lot of good stories about cowboying in Montana. There weren’t as many fences in that part of the country, and there sure weren’t many Mort Thompsons and Mayor Stouts up north.

  “Take him to jail, Sheriff.” Mort Thompson turned on his heel and shoved his way through the crowd as he sought out his office. Good, Jess thought. The solicitor had knocked off one man’s bowler hat. That’ll likely cost him a vote in the next election.

  Shaking his head, Jess knelt by the hitching post and fetched the key to the handcuffs from his vest pocket. He gave Tom McNamara an understanding look.

  “My hand’s all busted up,” Burt wailed.

  Jess rose, tugging on the manacles as Burt McNamara struggled to his feet, then pulled the kid’s left arm behind his back, took the swollen right hand, and gently locked that bracelet in place.

  “Send Doc Wilson to the jail when she’s done here,” he told Mayor Stout.

  The mayor nodded, then asked, “Have you heard anything about ... you know who?”

  Jess’s head shook, and he pulled the watch from his vest pocket. “Stage is due at eleven. I’ll be there.”

  “That’s my watch,” Mayor Stout said.

  Jess returned it to him and walked the sniffling Burt McNamara through the crowd.

  * * *

  “You want me to do what?” Hoot Newton asked. “Be a law dog?”

  The old cowboy slurped coffee, sweetened with Old Overholt, in the cell across from the one where Jess Casey had deposited Burt McNamara.

  “It pays a dollar a day,” Jess said. “And it’s only till my regular deputies get back from Huntsville.”

  “I don’t know, Jess ...”

  So Jess topp
ed off Hoot Newton’s coffee with more rye whiskey. Actually, regular sheriff ’s deputies earned seventy-five dollars a month, but if Jess was going to have to keep Hoot Newton supplied with whiskey, he figured thirty a month would be more in line with what he could afford. He wasn’t sure the county commissioner and Tarrant County’s cheap treasurer would approve of hiring an extra deputy, so this money would likely come out of Jess Casey’s own meager bank account.

  “Newt ...”

  “Hoot ...”

  “Right. Hoot. Thing is, ol’ hand ...” Jess figured it the right time to thicken that Texas drawl. “Here’s what’s going on in Fort Worth.” He jerked his thumb behind him toward Burt McNamara. “This boy is here in jail on some charges that could send him back to Huntsville. Which makes no never mind to me. But his brothers—those boys who raised such a ruckus down at the depot earlier this morning ... you remember that, Hoot? How you saved my bacon?”

  Hoot Newton focused on his coffee, which he quickly drained, and then looked back up at Jess. Hoot’s face revealed nothing but blankness.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jess said. “McNamara here has three brothers. In town. Right now, they are unarmed, but you know how easy it is to get a pistol in the Panther City, right?”

  Nothing.

  “So that’s one problem I have. The other is this.” He leaned forward. Inside the office, he heard the chimes on the clock. Then the door opened and a voice called out, “Sheriff Casey?”

  “Wait a moment,” Jess said and moved down the hall. He opened the door and leaned inside his office.

  “Hi, Doc. Thanks for coming.”

  Amanda Wilson closed the front door. She held her black satchel and smiled. Her smile was the best sight Jess had seen all morning. She was probably in her thirties now, but she didn’t look it. Red hair. Smartly dressed. Green eyes and a face full of freckles. He had heard that her husband had died back in Jefferson, an old cotton town in northeast Texas, and had moved to Fort Worth to start over. But she didn’t wear black, so maybe she had stopped mourning. She sure was pretty.

  Jess got the keys and motioned Doc Wilson to follow. Back in the jailhouse, he unlocked the door to Burt’s cell and held the heavy door open as Amanda Wilson eased inside.

  “Let me see your hand,” Amanda told Burt.

  “It’s busted.” Burt’s voice had lost its whine, and he sat on his bunk like a bantam rooster. “But I can sure ...”

  “And I can bust your other hand,” Amanda said, and for proof, she pulled one of Burt’s fingers.

  The boy yelped like a kicked dog.

  Doc Wilson was all right, Jess decided, so he turned his attention to Hoot Newton. He kept the door to the cell open, though, just in case he needed to get in there quickly.

  “All you’d have to do, Newt ...”

  “Hoot.”

  “Right. Hoot. I need some coffee.” Actually, he could use a couple of morning bracers of rye whiskey, but that was out of the question. On this day in particular, Jess Casey knew he needed to keep his mind clear.

  “You’d just be the jailer. Wouldn’t have to leave the office. Just keep an eye on Burt yonder.” He hooked his thumb again, just as Burt yelled as Amanda Wilson set another one of the fingers his big brother had busted.

  “I just sit here.”

  “Just for a while. Week. Probably no more. Maybe a little less.” Maybe, Jess thought, the judge could convene a grand jury early enough, or even better, someone could talk Mort Thompson and Miguel Sanchez out of pressing charges. But that wouldn’t happen. Although if Tom McNamara filed a civil suit against Miguel Sanchez, or even pressed charges against that miserly Mexican then ...

  That was a wild dream. Jess stopped himself. He didn’t know Tom McNamara at all, but he knew enough about the man. Tom McNamara would not go to a lawyer, or a judge, or a hired gun. Tom McNamara would do his own fighting, his own killing, and his kid brother might not be worth a hoot in hell, but he was blood kin, a McNamara, and those boys fought together.

  Jess sighed. “Hoot. There’s a fellow coming to town. Anyway, he’s supposed to be coming to town. And I think when he arrives, things might get hot in Fort Worth. I can’t babysit this McNamara kid all day and all night. Not if this fellow comes.”

  “Who’s this fella?” Newton asked.

  “His name is Lincoln Dalton and—”

  Behind him came a roar of pure rage that drowned out Doc Wilson’s girlish yelp. Dropping the bottle of Old Overholt, Jess whirled to see Burt McNamara racing toward him, hatred filling his eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Monday, 10:25 a.m.

  Jess reacted more out of instinct than anything else. Amanda Wilson was lying on her buttocks on the filthy jail floor, and Burt dashed out of the cell. Instead of drawing his Colt—fearing a wild shot might injure or even kill Amanda—Jess reached out with his left hand, grabbed the edge of the iron-barred door, and swung it with such force he grunted and fell to his knees.

  He heard the crunch of iron meeting bone and flesh, followed by a feminine shriek and an unladylike curse, and came up. This time, he did draw the. 44-40, but as soon as he was standing, he holstered the Colt.

  Burt McNamara, his nose gushing blood, lay atop Amanda Wilson, who pushed him off her body, pulled herself up, and while brushing the filth off her dress, she spit in the kid’s bleeding face, cursing him like a sailor before her eyes fell upon Jess Casey.

  “I’m ...” She blushed. “Sorry.”

  Jess grinned. “I’ve heard worse.”

  Behind him, Hoot Newton said, “Bottle didn’t break.”

  Jess looked at the cowhand, who had picked up the bottle of Old Overholt and took a long pull. Wiping his mouth, Hoot gestured with the bottle at Burt McNamara. “You don’t need nobody to mind your pris’ners. You does a good job your ownself.”

  With a chuckle, Jess pulled open the door and stepped inside Burt’s cell. He unloosened his bandana and handed it to the dazed prisoner, who seemed to know enough to wad up the piece of calico and press it against his nose, which, Jess could tell, was busted. Next, he leaned down and lifted the punk onto the bunk and stepped back.

  Recovering and remembering her upbringing, Amanda knelt to pick up her satchel, then righted the stool and sat back down. She started to bring a cotton ball toward Burt McNamara, then she stopped and looked up at Jess, who was leaning against the iron bars of the cell.

  “You said ... Lincoln ... Dalton ... ?”

  Jess nodded. He stared into Amanda’s pretty green eyes, but Burt McNamara said something in a nasal voice, and Jess found himself looking at the kid’s bloody face.

  “He ... killed ... my pa.”

  Jess frowned.

  Burt McNamara continued. “The ... Butcher ... of Bax-ter ... Pass. Ouch!” He flinched from Amanda’s touch, and this time she turned back to Jess.

  “The Butcher of Baxter Pass ... is coming ... to Fort Worth?”

  “He’s a murdererin’ son-of-a ...”

  In the hallway, Hoot Newton burped.

  “How old are you?” Jess asked.

  Amanda glared at him.

  “No. Not you, ma’am. How old are you, Burt?”

  The punk answered with a curse.

  “How could Dalton have killed your father ... ?”

  “I’m ... twenty-seven.” He pulled away as Doc Wilson set his busted nose.

  The math there worked out. At least, it was mathematically possible, though he doubted if Burt McNamara would ever have met his father.

  “They ... was ... marchin’ out of that ... hellhole. And ... Dalton just ... gunned’em ... all down.”

  “Like dogs.”

  Now Jess found himself looking into those green eyes of freckle-faced Amanda Wilson, who no longer looked so beautiful, but angry, and her eyes did not register anything resembling Hippocrates or Florence Nightingale.

  “My cousin,” she said. “Corporal Vincent Groves.”

  She went back to doctoring the patient, and Jess Casey ba
cked out of the cell.

  * * *

  In his office, Jess stirred honey into the coffee he had just poured and passed it across his desk to Doctor Amanda Wilson. A quick glance at the clock told him he had enough time for a chat.

  “Your cousin?” he said.

  She sipped the coffee, calmer now, not as angry, and she had wiped the blood and remnants off her face and hands. She relaxed, leaned her head back, and let out a little sigh. “Vincent Groves. Mama always told us how he’d been wounded at Sharpsburg. Everyone thought he was dead. He was Mama’s brother’s oldest son. I barely knew him. When the war started, I was only ... well, that doesn’t matter. Anyway, three months later, Mama got word from Uncle Vin—that was Vincent’s pa, Mama’s brother—that Vincent had died in that pesthole at Baxter Pass. They even put up a headstone in the family plot in Galveston County. That’s where I grew up.”

  Jess nodded and stirred his own coffee, even though his was black.

  “And just when the war had ended, Mama got a letter from Uncle Vin. Turned out, Vincent had not died after all. You know how rumors get started and all. Vincent was alive. And he was coming home. And then ...” She shuddered and looked down at her lap, at the coffee cup that trembled in her hand. When she looked up, Jess had to search every pocket and drawer before he found a decent handkerchief, which he handed her.

  Amanda wiped her eyes. She set the coffee cup on the edge of Jess’s desk.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That was in ’65. I was ... well, that doesn’t matter ... but I was old enough to understand. My cousin was coming home. Alive. He had survived all those awful things, Sharpsburg, Baxter Pass. He was coming home. Mama and Papa even made jokes about taking Vincent to the cemetery, show him his grave, his tombstone. They’d have a good laugh over it. And then ...”

  Tears poured, and she sobbed without control, but without shame. Jess knew that those tears needed to run their course, and he waited. Finally, she wiped her face again and shivered.