Nueces Justice

by Greathouse, Mark

  “I see him now. He walkin’ his horse?” Carlotta asked.

  “Likely rode it too hard. Strong never respected horseflesh, much less humans.” Zeke stepped from the doorway, extending the lantern in front of him. It cast a bit of light across the clearing in front of the station house. He called over his shoulder. “Fix up a bit of grub, Carlotta. Best stay on Strong’s good side so far as we can.”

  The shadowy figure continued to trudge down the trail toward the station.

  “Zeke? That you?” Strong’s voice called from the shadows up the trail.

  “Bart? Bart Strong? Slip your horse into the corral and come in for a spell.” Zeke strove to be welcoming, at least as welcoming of evil as anyone could be.

  Bart Strong was only about twenty, maybe twenty-two years old but, by all accounts, he’d lived a lifetime in those years.

  If you needed to attach a date to when Strong’s mean ways took to him, it was during one of those Texas Panhandle blizzards. The cold and snow had raged for three days. The space in the little cabin was tight and aromas were oppressively rank. His father had begun drinking early on that third morning.

  “Paw, gimme that bottle. You’ve had enough already.” Bart Strong’s mother, Myrt, reached out her hand toward the bottle.

  Paw squinted. His eyes began to almost squirt blood as his face turned red. The rage was coming on. “Shut yer mouth, woman!”

  Bart watched helplessly. He knew better than to try to restrain his father when he was angry. His strength could seem superhuman.

  Paw threw the bottle against the wall, grabbed Myrt’s arm, and planted a haymaker of a punch square into her chest about heart-high, ending her life abruptly. Bart Strong’s father had killed his mother in a fit of drunken rage. Bart, only sixteen at the time, witnessed it. One punch in her chest. Stopped her heart stone cold.

  Paw turned to the boy. “What you looking at? Get her outside afore this place stinks more than it does.”

  The boy dutifully dragged his mother’s body out into the still- raging blizzard. He propped her on a bench alongside the front of the house. She’d already begun to turn blue, and ice was forming on the wisps of hair across her face. He closed her eyes. The vacant lifeless stare would come to haunt him.

  From that day forward, Strong’s father regularly beat young Bart. He did it most every time he got drunk. He told the boy he was giving him lessons so one day he could beat others. To his credit, more or less, he would never hit young Bart in the face, as that would have left cuts and bruises and been too obvious to neighbors or anyone who might come by. The boy tried hiding the liquor bottles, but Paw would find them and then beat him for hiding them. He asked Paw why once or twice, but the answer was invariably more rage.

  The only positive thing young Bart had going for him was that he learned to shoot. He became a pretty fair marksman.

  One day, his father hit him especially hard. Not just with his fist, but with an axe handle planted full swing against the boy’s ribs. The pain was excruciating. As Bart doubled over in pain, Paw grabbed a whiskey bottle and headed out the door and up the hill to where Myrt had been buried. He sat next to the grave and took a long guzzle from the bottle.

  Bart, struggling to breathe, fetched his rifle. He stuffed a round in the firing chamber and stuck the muzzle through a hole in the door that had been put there to enable defense against Indians. This was Comanche country, so that wasn’t unrealistic. He pulled back the hammer and aimed carefully. He exhaled and squeezed the trigger, placing a bullet between Paw’s eyes at two hundred yards. He’d taken one beating too many. He buried the old man next to Myrt, though he nearly thought better of placing him next to the woman he’d murdered. He grabbed what he could of value from the house and headed for Corpus Christi on the Nueces Strip. It’d be a long ride, but he’d heard there were fortunes to be made in that booming part of Texas. He didn’t know how fortunes were being made, but figured to work that out once he got there.

  An orphan by choice, Strong quickly earned the nickname “Bad Bart.” He kind of cottoned to the name. Having not experienced love since his mother died, he wasn’t one to give any. It was said by those who encountered him and lived to tell about it that there was a coldness in his eyes that could turn a morning dew to frost. He seemed to be hateful to anyone who beat living things, animal or human.

  It was said that he’d killed at least ten people, though three couldn’t be confirmed as his victims. Two of those killed were young boys with pistols carved from wood that Strong mistook for real guns, so it was sort of self-defense. Another was a woman who tried to protect her husband from Strong’s wrath. Apparently, the husband looked crossways at Strong as he was beating her, and it was interpreted as an insult. Actually, it was a twofer, as the bullet passed through the wife and killed her husband, too.

  There was a price on his head, and Bad Bart knew that Luke Dunn aimed to get him before any bounty hunters. He suspected it was a matter of pride and duty for the Texas Ranger.

  “Get yourself washed up, Bart Strong, and then set yourself right over there at the table.” Carlotta motioned to the wash basin and the table.

  Carlotta and Zeke had known Strong long enough to call him by his first name. Of course, they also knew how he’d earned the “Bad Bart” appellation and heard what happened to his mother and father.

  Soon enough, a steaming dish of stew, or at least what passed for stew, was being ladled by Strong into his gaping pie-hole between swigs of hard cider. For a young, decent-looking man, he wasn’t much for table manners.

  “Whatcha in such an all-fired hurry for, Bart?”

  Strong raised an eyebrow as he looked up and fixed his eyes hard-like on Zeke. “Better not to ask,” he snarled. He caught himself. These were the only folks in the Nueces Strip he remotely cared about. They were as close to being parents as he had. “Can I spend the night?”

  Zeke and Carlotta glanced at each other. “’Course you can, Bart. ’Course you can,” Zeke told him. They didn’t expect a rider for at least another day, so Strong was likely as safe from whoever was tailing him as could be expected.

  “Maybe I ought to sleep in the stable near my horse.” The implication was that he might have to leave in a hurry.

  Zeke would have none of it. “It’s fixin’ to rain hard tonight, Bart. Likely to be a gully-washer. You can make your bed near the door. If you gotta leave hurried-like, that’ll be close enough to the stable.”

  Strong nodded. He was growing groggy from the cider and lack of sleep. In any case, if it did rain hard, his trail would be impossible to follow.

  He soaked up the last of the stew gravy with the fresh-made biscuit Carlotta had given him. About this time, exhaustion took its measure of him. A hard day of walking, a full belly, and just a bit too much hard cider had the effect of making even the hardiest soul drowsy.

  Carlotta saw his eyelids getting heavy. She spread a bunch of blankets near the front door, and Strong got up slowly, walked a few steps, and barely landed on the blankets. He was passed out stone cold.

  Zeke and Carlotta had been through this before. Either a fellow thug or a lawman was after him. Given his behavior, they figured it was most likely the latter. In his day, Zeke had run with a bad crowd for a while, so he could tell when someone feared the law versus his own kind. Zeke was a big man, though hunched over a bit with age and hard living. He sported a scraggly beard that mostly served as a food catcher. He disappeared with Carlotta behind a wooden divider that served as a modesty panel, sort of separating the cabin into two rooms.

  As the sun broke over the horizon, Strong awoke to the smell of sausage and eggs. Carlotta knew how to care for a guest, even evil ones, though she tended to see the best in people. She’d arisen early to grab some eggs from the chickens and get some venison sausage from the cold storage.

  Zeke had just returned from the stable. “Yer horse seems fine this morning, Bart.” He set himself at the table in anticipation of Carlotta’s cooking. “Which
lawman is it?”

  “You don’t want to know, Zeke.”

  “Luke Dunn, ain’t it?”

  “I’m the best goddam shot around, and I missed the son of a bitch.” Strong doused his face from the wash bowl. “He turned. All day tracking, an’ his damned horse gave me away.”

  “He’s the one what got yer brother, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah. Hung him high. And he won’t be catching me. I’m gonna get his sorry ass afore he has a chance to sight his rifle on me.” Strong smiled. It was the cold smile of a vengeful soul. “I know I hit him. Sure of it.”

  “If ya did and he’s able to ride, he likely headed to Nuecestown. Wouldn’t be that far for him.” Zeke shook his head. He figured Strong couldn’t have picked a worse enemy. “You know, he’s gonna come get you. You can take that to the bank, son.”

  Strong began to shovel Carlotta’s cooking into his mouth as though it were his last meal. She smiled approvingly. “Slow down, Bart. If he were chasin’ you, he’d be here by now, rain or no rain. There simply ain’t many places ’round these parts that someone on the run might take shelter.” That was an understatement; the Nueces Strip was pretty much a boundless grassy wasteland. Not many places to run and hide.

  Zeke pushed back from the table and lit his pipe. “Where do ya think you’ll head, Bart?”

  “I shan’t be tellin’ y’all. If you don’t know, Dunn can’t get it from ya.” Implied was that he didn’t want to have to kill them.

  Strong took his time walking out to the corral. Indeed, it had rained last night, and it likely had washed out any clues as to where he might be headed. He saddled up, took some grub offered by Carlotta, and headed out. He was of a mind to eventually wind up in Laredo, but he dared not give a hint of that to Zeke and Carlotta. To avoid capture, he figured to take a route parallel to the road Colonel Kinney had cut from Corpus Christi to Laredo. It passed through San Diego, which was okay with Strong, as he’d be able to take a breather from the long journey. His only fear was that damnable Ranger getting on his trail.

  Early on, Strong realized he was going to have to make ends meet. He needed to feed himself, care for his horse, stay supplied with ammunition, afford a whore now and again and, as he’d find out, ante up in a card game or two. That last thing—cards—had caught his fancy. He got himself a deck from his father’s meager possessions and practiced handling the deck every chance he got. He could even shuffle with one hand. He watched card sharks at saloons early on to learn strategies. He’d even seen a man or two shot and killed for cheating at cards.

  Finally, he played a few times and managed to play well enough to win more money than he lost. Most important, it was sustaining a very Spartan lifestyle. He caught on early in his card playing that the card sharks tended to dress for the part. It was as though they were actors on a stage. He surmised that it likely gave them a psychological advantage. Fancy jackets, frilly shirts with cuff links, embroidered vests, string ties, black flat-brimmed hats, grey-striped trousers, and black boots completed the typical costume. Another thing he noticed was that the “professional” card sharks generally carried a small weapon that was easy to hide in a vest pocket. Strong vowed to get one as soon as possible. He decided to be more subtle in what he wore and let his play speak for itself. His marksmanship and card playing would be the tools of his existence.

  He felt a warm breeze from the northeast. He had a strange sense that something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t figure out what. He picked up the roan’s pace just a bit. Perhaps he could find a card game in Laredo if he didn’t run into that damned Ranger first.

  THREE

  The Live Oak Motte

  At least once a week, Elisa made the short trek to the swift-moving stream that ran past their property and dumped into the Nueces River. Now, her task completed, she began to walk back from the creek where she’d been beating her father’s fresh-washed clothes on the shoreline rocks. As she beat, rinsed, and beat again, slapping the trail dirt and horse dung residue from his shirts and pants, she daydreamed about what her future might hold.

  At sixteen, she was pretty much a full-grown woman. She’d been seeing and feeling changes to her body and soul. Her smooth alabaster skin was a bit prone to freckles that made her seem younger than her years. Her daydreams of a home and children of her own became ever more vivid. There were a couple of boys in Nuecestown that seemed interested in sparkin’ her, but she had her heart set on a man…a real man. He was out there somewhere. Besides, she had a certain independence and feistiness about her, a spirit that demanded a man who fully appreciated those qualities.

  Nuecestown wasn’t much in 1856. Corpus Christi founder Colonel Kinney took kindly to the location roughly thirteen miles northwest of the city for its ferry across the Nueces River. The area was originally called Motts by English and German settlers back in 1852. Kinney had been the driving influence for developing the area. The colonel required new settlers to purchase hundred-acre tracts at a dollar an acre and at least ten cows at ten dollars a head. He even saw to it that a temporary post office was established.

  The Corrigans had settled in Nuecestown, having first homesteaded a few miles west of Galveston. There, her father, Sam, had first tried his hand at farming. He had grown up in western Pennsylvania where he met and married Elisa’s mother. He answered the call from Stephen Austin to come to Texas, where he fought at Goliad and San Jacinto. He had been wounded, but that didn’t hold him back from having his wife join him on the new homestead. Wasn’t long before Elisa was born, though it’d be several years before Robert and Michael came along.

  It became clear that they needed more space to raise their family and Sam seized the opportunity to answer Colonel Kinney’s call for homesteaders in Nuecestown. By this time, Elisa had reached her fourteenth birthday and was fast becoming second in command of the household after her mother. With her father and two brothers around, it was little wonder that she quickly learned to understand male ways, especially as manifest in the pranks her father taught the boys. Like as not, it contributed to her feisty nature.

  Elisa Corrigan’s father had literally loved her mother to death. She and her two younger brothers Rob and Mike had been playing down by the creek, when her half-naked father came staggering from the house. He sounded like a madman, crying and shouting and carrying on. Elisa ran back to the house. Sam initially tried to block her way, but she evaded his arms and burst through the front door of the cabin. Her mother lay exposed from the waist down with blood everywhere. She had already turned a deathly bluish sort of pale. Elisa grabbed her mother’s shoulders and tried to shake life back into her.

  “Live, Mama. Live!” she commanded through her tears. “Live!”

  Sam came back inside the cabin. He’d told Rob and Mike to stay outside. “I already tried that.” He pulled on his pants and boots. “You stay here. I’m gonna see if Doc is sober enough to see her.”

  “Papa, she don’t need no doctor. She’s past that, Papa.”

  He hung his head resignedly for a moment, and then turned and headed to the stable to hitch up the mules and wagon.

  As Elisa went to cover her mother, she saw the tiny baby in the puddle of blood between her legs. “Oh, Mama.” She hung her head for just a moment, feeling helpless. She’d lost her mother and a brother or sister. She couldn’t bear to touch the dead baby to see what sex it was. It was so tiny, barely big enough that it might have fit in her hand. She’d heard of these sorts of things happening, but it didn’t lessen the pain that shot through her. It hadn’t yet struck her that she would now be the woman of the family with all the associated responsibilities.

  She heard her father whip the mules as the wagon lurched down the road. She figured he needn’t rush. She rightly saw it as something he felt he needed to do.

  They buried Elisa’s mother under the shade of a nearby live oak motte. It was a truly pretty spot with a right beautiful view of the surrounding grasslands. They’d given a fleeting thought to the new cemeter
y established in Nuecestown, but having her buried close by seemed vastly preferable.

  That was more than a year ago. Now, she was experiencing awakenings within herself, dreams of finding a man. Her mind drifted off to such musings as she hauled the basket of wet clothes up the path toward the cabin. It was generous to call it a cabin, but her father had done the best he could on meager farming income. He’d done a fine job building the place, as there were no cracks where winter breezes might sneak through.

  Elisa had pretty much taken over the woman-of-the-house duties by now. She hadn’t expected to have had to learn so much so soon in her life.

  It was a long walk uphill from the creek. It was far enough from the cabin that you had to holler loudly to be heard across the distance. There was a slight breeze and a quietness in the air.

  As she rounded the live oak motte, the one where her mother was buried, she saw them. Horror of horrors, a big, well-muscled Comanche had just finished the grisly task of scalping her father. At least two arrows protruded from her father’s chest. Mike and Rob lay unmoving just a few feet from Sam. They had taken Comanche arrows as well, and it was obvious that Rob’s head had also been cracked open with a club. The warrior paused from mutilating his victim, scalp held high. “Who was this?” must have been running through his mind. He let go of Sam’s head. He smiled, a cold, evil smile. His eyes narrowed. Rape would only be the beginning. A golden-red scalp would be a beautiful addition to his collection.

  Elisa fought the urge to run. They―there were three of them―would have chased her down anyway. The Comanche were a fearsome sight with black war paint across their faces. Their bodies were nearly naked. The big one that stood over her father, brandishing his scalp, was closest. He took a step toward her. She felt shivers of fear coursing through her frame. Cold, unfeeling, vile, savage wickedness was moving toward her.

  From under her skirt, she drew the Walker Colt. Sam had made her always take the revolver with her to the creek in case of rattlesnakes or other critters. Now, she was faced with the worst beasts she could imagine: Comanche. She’d heard from the ladies in Nuecestown about what they did to women. Mutilation would be the least of her worries. No white man would ever want her again were she to fall prey to Comanche.