The Comancheros

by Stephen Lodge

  “Don’t neither of you two know nothing about workin’ yer ribbons? I seen better horse drivin’ by a first-time dirt farmer plowin’ a rocky field.”

  And he was gone, whipping his four-up team into another lane, then disappearing into the crowd of other vehicles in front of him.

  About then, a traffic cop in his gray uniform, wearing a slicker to keep him dry, saw what was happening, and he moved over to the confused Charley.

  “Anything I can help you with, sir?” asked the policeman.

  “All I want to do is get from here across to that hotel over there,” said Charley.

  “You ever driven this rig in a big city before, sir?”

  “Bigger cities than this one,” Charley answered back.

  The cop took Charley’s answer with a grain of salt. He knew perfectly well that the old man was not being completely honest with him.

  “How about I slide in there next to you, sir. Let me have the leathers and I’ll get you and your friends over to your hotel quicker’n a duck on a June bug.”

  Charley leaned in closer to the cop so those in the rear seat couldn’t hear him.

  “Thank you, but no thank you, Officer,” said Charley. “I’m afraid that would be a little too embarrassing for me. In front of my grandson,” he added with a wink.

  He nodded toward Henry Ellis in the rear seat. The boy was too busy watching the surrounding activity—vehicular and pedestrian—to deal with the traffic, let alone the bad weather.

  “Seriously, Mr. . . .”

  “Sunday,” said Charley. “Charles Abner Sunday. I just bought this here surrey. Gonna drive her all the way back home to Juanita, I am.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Sunday,” said the cop. “That’s country driving. What you’re in the middle of here is city driving. But for now, I just want to get you over there to your hotel. What would you say if I walked in front of you and stopped some of the other wagons and buggies . . . just to make sure you get yourself, your friend . . . and your grandson, over to the hotel?”

  “I don’t think you doing that would bother me so much, Officer,” said Charley. “I thank you. Lead on.”

  The cop held up his wet, white-gloved hands, then he stepped out into the plaza—and its puddles. He put a whistle between his lips and used it in synchronization with his arms to stop all the traffic moving around the one-way concourse. When he was sure he had the attention of every single driver, he moved out slowly—avoiding the deeper pools of rainwater—with Charley driving the surrey across the wide cobblestone square, until he reached the other side. Once there, the cop suggested that Charley pull the surrey to a stop directly in front of the Menger Hotel, an elegant, stone structure that appeared to take up the entire city block.

  The crack of a gunshot rang out, and a voice screamed from inside.

  “I’m being robbed! They’re taking everything I have in the shop.”

  Three men came running out of a jewelry store—one shop out of many doing business in the storefronts that were a part of the elaborate hotel’s stone facade.

  Behind them came the jeweler, a partially balding man in his late forties, still wearing his jeweler’s eyepiece. He spotted the cop.

  “Help . . . Police. I’ve just been robbed.”

  As the escaping thieves continued to run right at him, the traffic cop reached for his side weapon—which wasn’t there, because he was directing traffic and not walking a beat.

  When the robbers saw the officer was unarmed, they slowed down. Then they aimed their weapons at him.

  Three shots in quick succession exploded from behind the cop. The robbers clutched their wounds and pitched forward, one of them dropping the bag of stolen loot as he slid along the cobblestone gutter at the curb. His body came to rest just inches from the cop’s feet. The other two robbers landed not that far away.

  The cop looked down at his empty hand. Then he glanced behind him.

  On the other side of the trembling horses, Charley sat smiling in the surrey’s front seat, his smoking Walker Colt in one hand, the horses’ reins in the other.

  The cop could only stare at the old man in the surrey with the large revolver. He didn’t say anything, because his jaw had dropped four inches when Charley’s bullets whizzed past his head before burying themselves in the three jewelry-store bandits.

  After a long moment, the other drivers in the plaza whipped up their teams. Traffic resumed to normal within minutes.

  Someone inside one of the shops who had witnessed the shooting must have called the police, because it wasn’t that long before the clanging bell of an approaching police wagon was heard growing closer and closer.

  By the time the law enforcement vehicle arrived, the traffic cop had recovered the bag of jewelry and was standing over the wounded robbers on the boardwalk, talking with Charley, who had gotten out of the surrey. The hotel doorman had joined the two. Roscoe and Henry Ellis remained in the surrey’s rear seat waiting for a reason to disembark.

  Charley called over to his partner.

  “Roscoe,” he said. “Take Henry Ellis inside. There’s no reason for him to be seeing this. And have a bellhop come out for our luggage, what little we got. I’ll be there in a minute to get us registered.”

  Roscoe helped Henry Ellis out of the surrey, skirting the crime scene with the boy. They entered the hotel through another entrance several yards away.

  “I shoulda known you’d been in law enforcement just by looking at you,” the traffic cop was saying.

  “What I can’t figure out is why a member of the San Antonio City Police Department ain’t toting a gun,” said Charley.

  “That’s the way they’re doing it nowadays in most big cities,” said the cop. “We’re what they call ‘departmentalized. ’ And the rules are, the traffic department don’t carry weapons.”

  “You realize that if I hadn’t been there, you’d be dead, don’t you?”

  “I sure do, Mr. Sunday. And that’s something I’d like you to talk to my chief about, if you would.”

  “It’d be my pleasure,” said Charley. “But, I don’t have the time to be going to your station.”

  “That’s all right,” said the cop. “The chief’s with the bunch that just pulled up in the wagon. Matter of fact, he’s coming this way right now.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me for just a minute, though,” said Charley. “I gotta run inside this here hotel and register. My friend and my grandson need to get to our room.”

  He turned away quickly, almost colliding with a bellboy who was carrying their luggage toward the hotel entrance.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me give you a hand with that, son. It’s only right that I do, because most of it belongs to me anyway.”

  He took the largest carpetbag of the three, turned, and went inside.

  The bellboy just stood there for a moment, while the quizzical look in his face turned into a wide grin. In his hand was a shiny ten-cent coin, slipped to him by Charley during the luggage extrication.

  The lobby of the Menger Hotel was large and airy, with a huge longhorn steer’s head and horns mounted over the main entrance. The floors were solid marble, causing voices and footsteps to produce hollow echoes throughout the enormous expanse.

  Charley saw Roscoe and Henry Ellis sitting on a circular divan near the front desk. He waved to them as he passed on his way to deal with the desk clerk.

  The clerk stood at attention behind the desk, a room key held to the proper height in front of him.

  “Welcome to the Menger, Mr. Sunday. You’re in room three oh four, as requested.”

  “Folding bed for my grandson?”

  “Already in the room,” said the clerk.

  “Well, thank you, James. You tell the bellboy where we are, an—”

  He stopped, setting his personal carpetbag on the counter in front of the clerk. “And you can give him my bag, too. He’s already got his tip.”

  An hour later, the three of them had settled into their hote
l room. Two brass beds, plus a smaller fold-up, took up most of the floor space. Roscoe lay on one bed, the boy rested on his fold-up. There was a muffled flushing of a toilet, then Charley emerged from the bathroom, pulling his lime-green suspenders up over his shoulders.

  “Ain’t nothing like indoor plumbing is what I say,” said Charley.

  He glanced around the room and saw the others stretched out on their beds. Charley could sense that Roscoe was about to start snoring.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “It’s still daylight outside, to hell with the nasty weather. We promised to show Henry Ellis this historical city, Roscoe Baskin. And if you don’t have the energy ta go out again today, I’ll take the boy myself.”

  The surrey, with its isinglass curtains still rolled down against the weather, traveled along another San Antonio byway. The trotters were moving briskly as the rain had let up some, and they were now on the outskirts of town where the traffic was much lighter. Roscoe was sitting in the rear seat by himself. Henry Ellis was up front, beside his grandfather, pointing at everything they passed. Charley drove the team.

  “Where are you taking us, Charley?” Roscoe wanted to know.

  “I thought I’d start out by showing the boy the San Antonio River. If you want to see how it’s supposed to look, you have to get out of town aways. Back in the city, the river has darn near become a sewer, with everyone using it as a garbage pit, or a place to toss their junk. Don’t you worry yourself, Roscoe Baskin, we’re almost there.”

  Within minutes, Charley had pulled the surrey over to the side of the road and was pointing out the San Antonio River to both Henry Ellis and Roscoe. They all stayed inside the vehicle because the rain had started to beat down harder, and the air was becoming much colder.

  “I thought she’d be bigger,” said Roscoe.

  “She’s bigger than usual right now because of the rain,” Charley told him. “Though there’ve been times when folks have dammed her up in places to collect the water in big ponds for their livestock.”

  A bright flash of lightning filled the sky overhead, followed by rolling thunder. The rain was now coming down in torrents.

  “Well,” said Charley over the pounding rain on the canvas top. “I wanted to stop by the missions of San Antonio on the way back, but in this weather, I reckon I’ll just hafta point ’em out to you as we drive by . . . if we can even see ’em.”

  “There’s a lot of history right there in the Menger, too,” said Charley. “And you don’t have to get all wet seeing it.”

  He leaned forward and wiped away some condensation from the inside of the isinglass in front of him.

  “We’ll be home before you know it, Roscoe. I’m getting kind of hungry, too.”

  The three of them sat at a small table in the Menger Hotel bar, eating roast beef sandwiches.

  “Sorry it’s so dark in here, Henry Ellis,” said Charley. “But everything being made of dark wood, like it is, doesn’t give the available light anything to reflect from.”

  “Plus, it’s a dark and dingy day to begin with,” added Roscoe.

  “But it sure is pretty,” said Henry Ellis. “It’s exactly what Rod told me it’d look like. The hand-carved wooden support posts, the bar itself, the narrow stairway leading to the balcony upstairs, even that big ol’ moose head hanging over the door.” He pointed. “And just being in the same room where Teddy Roosevelt signed up a bunch of the men for his Rough Riders is enough to keep me happy for the rest of the year.”

  “This bar is famous for more than just Teddy Roosevelt signing up the Rough Riders, Henry Ellis,” said Charley. “This bar is where Roscoe Baskin faced off with three dangerous outlaws back in 1878.”

  “Really?” said the boy.

  “It was two drunken trail hands, not no dangerous outlaws, Charley Sunday,” said Roscoe. “An’ it was a fistfight, not no gunfight. They punched me until I was too tired ta hold my hands up. And then they stole my badge.”

  “They got away with your Texas Ranger badge?” said Henry Ellis.

  “I’d’a never got it back without Charley’s help,” he said. “Charley buffaloed ’em both with his Walker Colt. Then he made ’em apologize to me an’ pin my badge back on my vest.”

  “Wow,” said the boy.

  “An’ another time here in the Menger bar,” said Roscoe, “your grandfather caught up with a three-man gang of bank robbers, who’d stopped in for a belly-warmer before makin’ their getaway.”

  “That’s right, son,” said Charley. “I chased ’em as far as Pipe’s Creek, and then some, before I caught ’em. Some folks still like to say that they were remnants of the old Jesse James gang come to Texas to try their luck in a new territory, but after we got ’em behind bars, it turned out they were just a bunch of war veterans, about my age, trying to put a little excitement back into their lives.”

  “An’ what about the time ol’ Feather Martin got hisself so liquored up in the Bull’s Head Saloon up in Waco that he didn’t remember how he got here when he woke up under a table in the Menger bar? Even today, old Feather don’t have no recollection about the ride that brung him here.”

  A bright flash of lightning illuminated the small window in the outside door. That was followed by a loud clap of thunder that rattled the old bar’s wooden structure.

  The bartender came out from behind the bar, cracked the door, and peeked outside. The rain was coming down in sheets.

  “I don’t think we’ll be going out anymore this afternoon,” said Charley.

  “Not unless one of those lightning bolts strikes this hotel,” said Roscoe.

  “Hell,” said Charley. “We’re wasting good sleeping weather. Why don’t we all go upstairs for a nap until suppertime?”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that one, C.A.,” said Roscoe.

  All Henry Ellis could add to the conversation was a big, wide yawn.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They left San Antonio a little before six in the morning. The rain had stopped for a while, but the temperature outside was still in the low twenties.

  By seven, they were beyond the city limits, on the road that paralleled the railroad tracks all the way to Juanita. As usual, Charley drove the surrey, while Roscoe sat beside a still sleeping Henry Ellis, both covered with heavy blankets, in the rear.

  “I reckon we’ll be home in two days,” said Charley, attempting to start a conversation.

  “Two or three don’t matter none ta me,” said Roscoe. “Just as long as I can stay here beside Henry Ellis, wrapped in these warm, comfortable blankets.”

  “There’re several other towns we’ll pass through on the way. We’ll stop in Hondo tonight,” Charley told them. “It’s still down the road a spell. They got a little boardinghouse there where we can stay the night. They’ll feed us and take care of the horses, too.” A few drops of rain began to spot the isinglass in front of Charley’s eyes.

  “Another storm like the one we had last night,” said Charley, “could slow us down some. But not enough that we couldn’t make up the time once the rain stops.”

  “What makes ya think it’ll ever stop?” said Roscoe.

  “Oh,” said Charley. “I just got that feeling.”

  “Yeah,” answered Roscoe. “A feelin’ like the one you got back in ’73, when you said John Wesley Hardin would never come as far west as Del Rio. And then, there he was, plain as day, sittin’ in Maria’s Cantina that day you, Feather, an’ me decided to take our noon meal in that joint.”

  “When we were stationed in Del Rio, Roscoe, we always took our noon meal at Maria’s Cantina.”

  “Anyway, there we were. Someone mentioned Hardin’s name an’ you had that feelin’ about him not bein’ that far west. We made a bet on it, and you had ta go over an’ tap him on the shoulder ta see if it really was him.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Well . . . was it John Wesley Hardin, or wasn’t it?” asked Henry Ellis, who had just awakened.

  Charley glanced over hi
s shoulder with a big grin.

  “Oh, it was Hardin all right . . . and thank God he was waiting for someone else, or I’d’a been a dead man for sure that day.”

  “Wow,” said Henry Ellis. “You almost got shot dead by John Wesley Hardin. That’s something I’ll have to tell all my friends about when I get back to Austin.”

  “Ol’ John Wesley hadn’t even drawed his gun,” said Roscoe. “He threw his arms around yer grampa an’ dern near hugged ’im ta death, is how I saw it. But then he did draw his gun, an’ he killed the sheriff who was comin’ through the back door to arrest him.”

  “Using me as a shield,” said Charley. “He never knew I was a Ranger, and I didn’t tell him. It never hurts to keep your mouth shut when opening it at the wrong time might get you killed.”

  “Me an’ Feather didn’t say nothin’, either,” said Roscoe. “We knew ta foller exactly what Charley was doin’.”

  “Was John Wesley Hardin fast enough that he could have shot all three of you before any of you could have shot him?” asked the boy.

  “Fast, son,” said Charley. “John Wesley Hardin was the fastest man alive back in those days. Every lawman in Texas, at that time, couldn’t hold a candle to him. That’s why we done what we did that day.”

  “An’ no one called us cowards fer not standin’ up to him, either,” said Roscoe. “It was a known fact that you didn’t want ta face ol’ John Wesley. That is, unless you wanted ta get yer dang head blowed off.”

  A train whistle blew from somewhere in back of them. All heads turned to see a continuous rope of black smoke moving up on them from behind. The rain was coming down harder than before, and the engineer had his headlamp on, even though it was still daylight outside.

  “Any other time, I’d race that steam-spitting son of a gun into town,” said Charley. “But the road is so muddy, I’m afraid these two trotters might get their hooves gummed up and start slipping and sliding.”