A Quiet, Little Town Read online

  Then a strange thing happened that shocked everyone.

  For some reason that Western historians, and psychiatrists for that matter, have never been able to explain, Haydon McKenzie took exception to the attention Thurmond was paying to the woman. He rose to his feet, a Colt in his hand, and stepped toward the outlaw. Thurmond, his whole focus on Augusta Addington, didn’t see him coming. Three years after these events, dime novelist James H. Patrick claimed that McKenzie said, “Here, that won’t do. Get away from the woman, you damned scoundrel.” That quote was never confirmed, but Patrick and all historians agree on what happened next. McKenzie’s mouth was wide open as he yelled obscenities at Thurmond . . . until an Apache arrowhead that entered neatly between his upper and lower teeth closed it permanently. An Apache Osage wood bow had a draw weight of between forty and sixty pounds, enough to send its arrow shattering though a glass pane of the cabin window and into McKenzie’s mouth. There has been some discussion on whether or not it was an aimed shot, but no Apache ever took credit for it, so we’ll never know.

  For a long moment time stood still as McKenzie froze in place, his eyes shocked as bright scarlet blood ran from his mouth over his neck and chin. The iron arrowhead was jammed in his throat and he could not scream.

  “Down!” Red Ryan yelled.

  Along with Augusta, Smiler Thurmond and his men hit the wood floor as bullets splintered through the windows and pinged off the stove, others thudding into the fireplace and wall.

  Red saw the four monks move with amazing nimbleness as they tipped over their table, swung it broadside to the door and crouched behind it. Just in time, because a second or two later a couple of arrows thudded into the tabletop.

  “Where the heck are they?” Thurmond yelled. He had his Colt in his hand.

  “Out there, somewhere,” Red said.

  “Damned savages have us pinned down in here,” Thurmond said.

  “Seems like,” Red said.

  Beside him, Augusta had her British Bulldog revolver in her hand. “Finish the story about the Missouri midnight caller some other time, Mr. Thurmond,” she said.

  Thurmond managed a grin. “If we get out of this alive, I sure will, ma’am,” he said.

  From outside, rifles roared, fired again, and Red figured it was Moore’s sons shooting from the redoubt. Where was Buttons? Had he been caught out in the open with the horses? Red didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Then, a brown, painted face appeared at the cabin window. Red snapped off a shot, shattered glass, and the face disappeared.

  “Ryan, did you get one?” Thurmond said.

  “I don’t know,” Red said.

  McKenzie made a terrible sound, like a man drowning in mud. He lay on his back, choking on his own blood, the arrow sticking out of his mouth an obscenity.

  “Damn them!” Thurmond yelled. He raised his revolver and thumbed a couple of ineffective shots through the window. Red figured the outlaw was shooting to make noise or to cover up his fear. Or maybe he didn’t want to hear McKenzie dying so hard.

  Not a man to lie on the floor and let the danger come to him, Red got slowly to his feet and stepped to the window, his boots crunching on broken glass. He glanced out the shattered window, ducked back, looked again. Beyond the stage road stretched miles of rolling, open country, a few trees growing here and there. But there were no rocks, no thick stands of timber within killing range where an Apache could hide. And the hot day was silent, slumbering in starkly white sunshine that revealed every blade of grass and even the bees that bumbled around the wildflowers.

  After the initial flurry of gunfire, the Winchesters of the Moore boys had fallen silent. The Apaches might be gone . . . or they might not. They were a notoriously notional people with the patience of the devil. Behind him, Red heard Thurmond and his boys get to their feet and then the thud-thud-thud of Augusta’s high-heeled ankle boots on the wood floor as she walked toward him. Red herded her away from the window before she said, “See anything?”

  “Nothing,” Red said.

  “Have the Apaches gone?”

  Red shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Behind him, Thurmond said, “Hey, Mercer, get the dead man’s gun. You may need it.”

  “Smiler, he ain’t dead yet,” Ollie Barnes said.

  “True enough, he ain’t,” his brother Harvey said.

  “He’s dead,” Thurmond said. “He just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.”

  “I don’t want his gun,” Chris Mercer said. “His, or anybody else’s.”

  “I said, pick it up,” Thurmond said.

  “You go to Hell,” Mercer said.

  Ollie Barnes said, “Your Gypsy woman didn’t say nothing about Apaches.”

  “An Apache is a man,” Mercer said.

  “Yeah, but he ain’t a white man,” Thurmond said. “When it comes to gunfighting, only white men count.”

  Mercer shook his head, and Ollie Barnes said, “He ain’t gonna do it, Smiler.”

  “Then damn you, Mercer, make yourself useful,” Thurmond said.

  Rawboned and strong, the big outlaw grabbed Mercer by the back of his shirt. He frog-marched him to the door, opened it wide, and shoved the little man through.

  “Get out there and scout for Apaches,” Thurmond said, slamming the door shut behind Mercer.

  Red watched what had just happened. Had Mercer been a bona fide, fare-paying passenger of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, he would have intervened. But since Mercer’s fare was paid by a third party, the little man didn’t count, and Red let it go.

  This much he did do . . .

  Red moved closer to a broken windowpane and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Buttons! Are you dead?”

  A pause, then, “Not yet.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the redoubt with Jim Moore and his sons.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “No. You?”

  “McKenzie is dying. Took an arrow.”

  A longer pause, then, “Jim says he’s sorry to hear that, even though McKenzie was a disagreeable cuss.”

  “You see any Apaches?”

  “None. But that don’t mean they ain’t here. You stay put, Red.”

  “Buttons, listen. Chris Mercer . . .”

  “Who?”

  “Archibald Weathers. The chicken thief.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s out on a scout. Keep an eye out for him, huh?”

  “I don’t see him, Red.”

  “Well, he’s out there somewhere.”

  “More fool him,” Buttons said.

  “Well, if you see him, bring him into the redoubt.”

  “I’ll do that. Shoot if you catch sight of an Apache.”

  “I surely will, Buttons,” Red said.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes dragged slowly by, half an hour of unrelenting heat in the stark white glare of the sun. Buzzards gathered overhead and glided in lazy circles over the station, instinctively attracted to what might yet become a place of mass death. Mrs. Moore brought tin cups of water to the men stationed at the windows and gave Augusta hers in a green glass goblet. At some time during the thirty minutes, Haydon McKenzie made a gurgling sound and died. Everybody heard it . . . everybody saw the man’s body twitch and then lie still in death . . . and nobody much cared. The man was a stranger to them, and in this unforgiving, often merciless land, strangers died all the time.

  * * *

  The Apaches hit with the suddenness of a lightning bolt striking a tree.

  Thirty mounted warriors thundered past the cabin, raising a tan-colored cloud of dust, and in the first, fleeting moment a painted face hurtling by, blue and brown headbands, and the flash of sunlight on gunmetal was all Red Ryan saw of them.

  “They’re going for the horses!” Red yelled.

  He ran outside, and Thurmond and his men, aware of how serious the loss of their mounts could be, followed. The Apaches had come under fire from the r
edoubt and Red spotted a couple of riderless ponies as the warriors reached the corral. Red’s shotgun and rifle were with the stage, but Thurmond and his men opened up on the Indians with Winchesters, joining in the fire from the redoubt. Because of dust it was impossible to say if any Apaches were hit, but it soon became obvious that they were mightily discouraged. Nine well-armed fighting men were now shooting at them, and no Apache ever liked that kind of odds. They were first-rate fighting men themselves and didn’t lack courage, but they always sought the advantage in a brawl. The Apache warrior was a pragmatist. If the odds weren’t stacked well in his favor, he had no compunction about running away and fighting another day when his prospects might be brighter.

  Deciding that this was not a good day to die, the Indians streamed away from the corral and galloped into the prairie. They had not managed to steal a single horse, and behind them they left four dead warriors.

  Chris Mercer emerged from behind the redoubt looking dazed but otherwise unhurt. Buttons immediately took him into custody and ordered him to remain in the barn until the stage left. “On account of how you still ain’t a hundred miles from San Angelo,” he said. Then, frowning, “How come you’re still alive?”

  “The Apaches didn’t see me,” Mercer said.

  “Or you being such a scrawny little feller, maybe they figured you weren’t worth their while,” Buttons said.

  “Maybe,” Mercer said. “Next time I see one of those Apaches, I’ll ask him.”

  * * *

  Red and Buttons agreed to help Jim Moore and his sons bury the Apache dead. Since Haydon McKenzie was a white man, he was laid to rest in a separate grave, and Moore said he would set up a marker. And a few months later he did just that, a flat slab of limestone that gave McKenzie’s name and the date of his death “at the Battle of Moore’s Station.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Although it was almost four in the afternoon, Buttons Muldoon decided to make up time and hit the trail for the privately owned Cave Springs Station, where his passengers could be fed and the team changed again. The 1869 Army report on the first ten miles between Kickapoo Springs and Cave Springs was that the “the grass is good but available water is muddy.” The remaining ten miles or so was described as “rocky, but the grass and water is good.” There was nothing in the report to give Buttons pause, but the sky gave him fair warning of a gathering storm to the north.

  When Red pointed this out, Buttons nodded and then said, “It’s four hours to the station, but I reckon we can outrun them clouds.”

  Jim Moore cast a weather eye to the sky. “You got a good team there, Buttons,” he said. “You’ll be well on your way before the storm hits. What do you say, Red?”

  Red smiled. “Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger.”

  “Well, you can trust me,” Buttons said. “When it comes to storms, I’m never wrong.”

  That last didn’t exactly inspire Red with confidence, but he helped get the passengers loaded, and when Augusta Addington glanced at the northern sky and said, “It’s going to storm, Mr. Ryan,” he assured her that they’d be at Cave Springs Station before the bad weather hit.

  “If the worst comes to the worst, we can shelter there overnight,” Red said. “But I don’t think that will happen.”

  “Good. As I told you, I’m most anxious to reach Fredericksburg,” Augusta said. Then, for some reason she added, “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  That last surprised Red. But he saw the woman close down, unwilling to add to that statement, and he said only, “You’ll be there the day after tomorrow, because Buttons will want to push on.” He smiled and tipped his plug hat to a rakish angle. “Day and night, fair weather and foul, the Patterson stage never stops.”

  “Except when it does,” Augusta said.

  Red nodded. “Yeah, well, now and again an act of God will slow us down some.”

  “Then let’s hope there are none of those between here and Fredericksburg,” Augusta said.

  Buttons overheard that last part of the conversation and said, “Miss Addington, you’ve met Abe Patterson . . . God wouldn’t dare.” But God did dare . . . and would soon make Buttons Muldoon eat his words.

  * * *

  “Should we tell her?” Buttons Muldoon said, his gloved hands on the lines never still as he constantly made little adjustments that the team’s experienced leaders understood.

  “Tell who what?” Red said, the shotgun across his knees, his restless eyes scanning the vast rolling grassland ahead of him. To the south the sky was a uniform blue, but behind the stage the piled-up boulders of cloud were as black as coal.

  “Tell Miss Addington about Honeysuckle Cairns. Prepare her for a shock, like.”

  “Do you reckon she’ll be shocked?” Red said.

  “Seeing a four-hundred pound, painted-up whore for the first time would shock anybody.”

  “Back a couple of years ago, it sure did me the first time,” Buttons said. “And if seeing her wasn’t bad enough, then I heard that little, squeaky voice of hers. A man would have to be pretty desperate to tackle that gal.”

  “And were you?” Red said. “Desperate, I mean.”

  “No sir, not hardly. But the feller with me, went by the name of Trinity River Turk Matheson, sure was. He was my new shotgun messenger then, after ol’ Bill Simmons got hisself shot. Well, anyhoo, Turk had just spent two years panning for gold up Colorado way and when we arrived at Cave Springs, he hadn’t seen a real, female woman in any shape or form in all that time.”

  Red watched a small flock of crows flap south, a worrisome sign, and then said, “And did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Did he indulge?”

  “Indulge? He was flat broke after leaving Colorado, and Abe Patterson had advanced him a week’s pay. Turk blew his entire roll on Honeysuckle at two dollars a turn. He was still there, trying to borry money from stage passengers, when I left.” Buttons shook his head. “I never did find out what happened to ol’ Turk Matheson. Maybe Honeysuckle Cairns was the death of him.”

  “Too much woman, I reckon,” Red said.

  “Too much woman for any man,” Buttons said. “And Turk was just a little feller. He’d put you in mind of . . . what’s his name?”

  “Chris Mercer.”

  “Yeah, a scrawny little hombre like him.”

  “Sad story,” Red said. “I mean, him running out of money like that.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it though?” Buttons said. “So, do we tell her?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Let Augusta find out for herself,” Red said. “I reckon she can handle anything life throws at her, including four-hundred-pound whores.”

  “Heck, what does Smiler want?” Buttons said. “Be ready with the scattergun, Red. I don’t trust him.”

  Thurmond and his boys had been flanking the stage, and now the outlaw rode closer, looking worried as the day grew darker, and said, “Hey, Muldoon, do you see them clouds?”

  “I see them.”

  “Do you hear the thunder?”

  “I hear it.”

  “You know this road,” Thurmond said. “Is there anyplace we can find shelter?”

  “Not until we reach Cave Springs, there ain’t,” Buttons said.

  “I don’t like this,” Thurmond said. “There’s lightning spiking all over the place, and me and the boys are the tallest things on the whole damn prairie.”

  “No, you’re not, I am,” Red said.

  “Well, we’re going to ride on ahead,” Thurmond said. “See if we can outrun the storm. We’ll keep the coffee warming for you at Cave Springs.”

  “White of you, Smiler,” Buttons said. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, you too, Buttons. Good luck.”

  * * *

  Smiler Thurmond and his boys were ten miles north of Cave Springs when the storm caught up with them. At first there was only a growing darkness. A dire warning. Then the tempest struck with terrible fury. A gigantic, roaring wall of wind and torrenti
al rain accompanied by continuous thunder hurtled from the north like a landslide of monstrous boulders, stunning the senses and terrifying the horses. Suddenly, amid the deafening clamor of the storm came a more vicious noise, like the hiss of an angry snake, and a blinding flare of incandescent blue light followed by a rending crash.

  A solitary cottonwood on the bank of a dry wash burst apart, rose several feet in the air, and then fell, great splinters of its white inner wood erupting into the air like shrapnel. A thin cry in extremis, and Jonah Halton, closest to the lightning bolt, went down with his horse in a tangle of kicking legs, reins, and saddle leather. Thunder bellowed, lightning cracked like a bullwhip, lashing across the plains and the air smelled of brimstone and charred wood and grass. Battered by wind and rain, Thurmond opened his mouth and yelled, a sound no one heard above the earsplitting tumult. Fighting his rearing horse, the outlaw rode closer to Halton and swung from the saddle. Its reins trailing, his panicked mount immediately ran headlong into the prairie and disappeared into the storm. Thurmond never saw it again.

  Halton’s mount was standing head down, its left foreleg broken. The outlaw stripped the saddle and bridle and then put the animal out of its misery. He holstered his gun and kneeled beside Halton. Wind and rain hammered Thurmond and around him the roaring plains were dark, shot through with searing, blinding lightning flashes as though Heck had come to central Texas.

  Thurmond gabbed Halton by the shoulders and yelled, “Jonah, wake up! Open your eyes!”

  But the little outlaw did not respond, his face under its sunburn gray as ash. He did not seem to be breathing, and a thin trickle of bloody saliva ran down the corner of his mouth.

  Ollie Barnes stood over Thurmond, his tall form shimmering in the flash of pulsating silver light and steel needles of rain. “He’s a goner, Smiler,” Barnes said. “The lightning done for him.”

  Thurmond shook his head. “I set store by Jonah. Why did he have to haul off and die on me?”

  “Luck of the draw, I guess,” Barnes said with considerable indifference. He’d never liked Halton much. He was always a finger looking for a trigger.