Tascosa Gun

by Gene Shelton

  Winter had blown itself out in the January blizzard. February had brought slow, soaking rains instead of the usual ice storms, and March thunderheads had left an abundant supply of moisture in the Panhandle. The grass was already tall and green. It would be a good year for cattlemen, Jim mused as he strode along Main Street. But that didn’t mean it would be a good year for sheriffs.

  Tascosa

  September 1885

  “Jim East, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” Hattie scolded as she dabbed a wet rag across the scrapes and cuts on the knuckles of Jim’s right hand. “Why don’t you just get yourself a thick stick and whop these rowdy cowboys on the noggin instead of breaking up fights with your fists?”

  Jim grunted and flexed his sore hand. The movement started the blood oozing again. “That would save some wear and tear, Hattie,” he said, “but there’s always the chance I could accidentally kill a man if I hit him with a club.”

  Hattie frowned at him, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I still love you after all these years, Jim. Under that grizzly bear hide of yours is the gentlest man I’ve ever met.”

  Jim felt the color rise in his face. “No need to insult me, girl. Just fix up the hand. I’ve got to get back on duty.” He smiled for Hattie’s benefit. “It’s Saturday after payday, you know. Tascosa gets to feeling its oats when the eagle screams. It won’t last long. Cowboys get separated from their money in a hurry here.”

  Hattie’s lips turned down in a frown. “All that money wasted on gambling, whiskey and women,” she said with a snort, “and all the while we’re fighting to get a decent schoolhouse and a church.”

  Jim chuckled. “Then all you civic-minded ladies of the town have to do is open your own saloon and whorehouse. You could build a school on every pile of horse apples and a church on every corner.” He patted her affectionately on the rump. “Why, girl, you’d bring top dollar yourself in the dance hall market.”

  “Jim East! Of all the nerve!” The scowl stayed on Hattie’s face, but mischief danced in the depths of her eyes. “Get out of my house, you crude scoundrel! Go beat up some poor drunken cowboy!”

  Jim pushed himself out of the chair and studied his battered knuckles. A bit of blood still seeped from the scraped skin, but the hand worked. He kissed Hattie, reached for his hat and started for the door.

  “Wait a minute, Jim. I’ll walk with you a way.” Hattie plucked a shawl from the back of a chair and wrapped it over her shoulders. “Frog Lip Sadie’s baby is due any minute. I promised I’d be there to help. I just wish that new doctor we finally talked into coming from Mobeetie was here now instead of next week.”

  Jim held the door open for Hattie. The night air was cool and fresh. It carried a hint of autumn. He glanced at his wife as they strode arm in arm down Main Street. Jim East , he thought, you’ve got to be the luckiest man alive to catch a woman like Hattie. At the same time, he realized Hattie had seemed to age a bit since he pinned on the badge. She had a few more worry lines about the eyes, more gray strands in the dark brown hair. Being a sheriff’s wife must be a hell of a lot harder than being a sheriff Jim thought. At the corner of Main and Water Street Hattie pulled him to a stop, rose on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Jim, be careful out there.” Concern tinted Hattie’s tone. “I’d like to get you back tonight in one piece.”

  Jim watched her walk toward Frog Lip Sadie’s two-room adobe and shook his head in wonder. Tascosa still amazed him at times. A respectable woman could walk the streets at night without fear of being molested. The same God-fearing Christian woman had no qualms about helping deliver a whore’s baby. The children of the prostitutes played as equals with the kids of the honest couples of the community. The whores contributed whatever they could afford to the school fund and the drive to build a church, and they showed up with food and sincere tears at funerals of the rich and poor alike.

  Tascosa was wild but civilized, as serene as a mother’s smile and as explosive as a charge of buckshot, honest as a good man’s word and crooked as a shaved deck. In some ways, Jim thought, it was a puzzle inside a puzzle in a box with no lid. Jim shook the thoughts away. Cowboys and sheriffs aren’t supposed to be philosophers , he thought; they aren’t mentally equipped for the job.

  He found Deputy L. C. Pierce in the back room of the Exchange Hotel, keeping a watchful eye on a high-stakes poker game. The hotel owner was there, along with a cattle buyer, a land surveyor, a ranch manager, Lem Woodruff and Luis Bausman. The table was littered with gold and silver coins and U.S. greenbacks. Woodruff and Bausman had the biggest money piles. Those two, Jim knew, could hold their own with the top poker players in any town from Boston to California.

  “Everything all right, L.C.?” Jim asked.

  The deputy nodded. “All quiet in Upper Tascosa. Haven’t been to Hogtown yet. How’s the hand?”

  “Touchy. Those XIT cowboys have the hardest heads I ever saw. But then a man’s got to be hardheaded to be a cowboy. Or a peace officer. I’ll check out Hogtown. You go get some rest. We may have a long night ahead of us.”

  Luis Bausman glanced up, winked a greeting at Jim, then turned back to the men in the card game. “Did I ever tell you boys about the time Charlie Bowdre’s Mexican wife rearranged old Jim’s ears with a branding iron?”

  The cattle buyer grunted in disgust. “Not more than a hundred or so times, Luis. Deal the damn cards.”

  Jim grinned and shook his head at Bausman, then left the Exchange to continue his patrol. L. C. Pierce had been mostly right. Upper Tascosa wasn’t quiet—there was plenty of carousing going on—but Jim didn’t smell any trouble brewing. He made his way toward Hogtown, checking the doors of businesses that had closed for the night. The doors were locked, the goods inside the stores secure.

  A half hour later he stood inside Jess Jenkins’s saloon in Hogtown. The place was as noisy and smoky as usual. Cowboys stood three deep at the bar and there wasn’t a spot to be had at a table. Jim frowned as he spotted Ed King and John Lang leaning against the bar. A nearly empty bottle stood before them. King had his hand around the waist of the girl called Sally. Lang was well on the way to being loaded on cheap whiskey, but he was generally a happy drunk. It was King a man had to worry about.

  At the moment the two were busy regaling a handful of newcomers with yarns of their exploits as LS Rangers. Jim overheard a few of King’s comments. Most of what he heard went past exaggeration to the point of outright lies. The former Rangers had earned the tag Tascosa had hung on them. They were called “barroom gladiators,” since most of their fighting had been done with a bottle in one hand and a woman in the other.

  King finished spinning his story, then turned away from the bar. His gaze caught Jim’s steady stare. King lifted a glass toward Jim. “Care for a drink, Sheriff?”

  Jim shook his head.

  Anger flared in King’s eyes. “What’s the matter, East? You too good to drink with an old saddle mate?”

  Jim stepped up to King and glared into the LS rider’s face. King had already had one too many, it appeared. “No, Ed, I’m not. But I don’t drink on duty.” He nodded toward the bottle in King’s left hand. “You might consider going easy on that stuff. The jail’s already full.”

  King’s gaze wavered, the eyes momentarily glassy. “What you mean by that, Sheriff?”

  “Just that I don’t want any trouble in town tonight.”

  King rocked back on his heels, a mocking smile on his thin lips. “Damn if you ain’t a suspicious man, Jim East. I wasn’t plannin’ on no trouble.” He squeezed Sally’s waist. “Me and the girl here got other things to do.” The grin faded from King’s face. “Where’s that damned pretty boy friend of yours, that Woodruff?”

  “Watch your tongue, King,” Jim warned.

  “Well, you give him a message from me,” King said, the words slurred. “You tell Pretty Lem that old Ed King’s done shot him out of the s
addle with little Sally here. She’s my girl now.”

  Jim leveled a hard glare at King. “You want to send a message, King, hire somebody to carry it. I’m not anybody’s messenger boy.” He fought back the impulse to whip his Colt from the holster and rap it against King’s head. “You cause any trouble tonight, King—even so much as spit on the sidewalk—I’ll come after you.”

  Indecision flickered in Ed King’s eyes, pushing aside the challenge and drunken anger. Jim knew he had won this round even before King shrugged. “Aw, hell, Jim. You won’t hear nothing about trouble from me.” He turned away and signaled the bartender for another bottle.

  Jim waited a few more minutes, his gaze sweeping the crowd through the blue haze of tobacco smoke; then he strode for the door. He still had to finish his rounds.

  Tascosa

  March 1886

  Jim East sat astride his buckskin gelding and watched as the drag riders of the trail herd from South Texas disappeared from view on the Dodge City Trail ten miles north of Tascosa.

  Normally the sight of a railhead-bound herd brought back a wash of memories and set the cowboy blood that still flowed in his veins to pumping. Now it brought only a feeling of emptiness in his chest.

  Jim sensed that he was watching one of the last trail herds to move through Tascosa. He thought of Wade Turner again; the old man’s words seemed to come to mind more often these days. The trail herd that had just passed was one more of Wade Turner’s “dyno-sewers.” Maybe the last of its breed, one dying twitch of the tail of a big lizard. A lizard called the open range.

  The damned wire was ruining the country, Jim thought bitterly. The XIT had almost completed fencing in its range. Jim knew the four strands of pointed barbs were not so much to keep XIT cattle in as to keep other men’s cattle out. Now the thorned wire was creeping onto the LIT, the LX and the LS spreads.

  “You were right, Wade,” Jim muttered to the spirit of the old cattleman. “Pretty soon a man won’t be able to ride a mile in a straight line.”

  For an instant Jim thought he heard the old trail driver sigh in pain. Then he realized it was only the wind whispering through the prairie grass.

  The buckskin stomped its front foot and tossed its head, jangling the curb chain and bit. It was the big gelding’s way of telling Jim they were too close to home after too long a ride to stop now. Jim touched the reins to the animal’s neck. The horse snorted and stepped out toward Tascosa, anxious for its feed, stall and rest.

  Jim knew how the horse felt. He was tired to the bone himself. Six days out, six days back, and all for nothing. The cattle rustled from the LS were now somewhere in Kansas. Another crime unsolved by the minions of Tascosa law, Jim scolded himself. The days had run together over the past few months, all different yet the same. Garrett’s LS Rangers hadn’t come close to stopping the cattle and horse thefts. The stealing had slowed for a time, but now it was worse than it had been before Garrett showed up. The small ranchers and the cowboys had hit back hard at the association for calling in Garrett and the Rangers, and the split between the two factions ran deeper than ever.

  The association hadn’t helped matters when it squeezed out two of the more popular and most honest ranch owners in the business. The Slash B had been forced to sell out to the LX, unable to obtain credit in Panhandle stores dependent on association money. And a suspicious fire had burned two sections of the Rafter K’s grass—almost the entire usable winter graze of the four-section outfit. The house, barn and corrals also had gone up in flames.

  Even the weather had gone contrary in the Panhandle, Jim thought. A mild winter and dry early spring had dropped the water levels in the river and springs to half of what it normally would have been. And the heel flies were worse this year than at any time Jim could remember.

  Heel fly time was one of the worst seasons on a working cowboy’s calendar. The flies came in swarms and gave cattle unshirted hell. The tormented animals sought the only relief they knew, wading into the knee-deep mud of seeps and bogs along the creeks and river. It was the time when cowpunchers from every outfit got stuck riding bog, a back-breaking, dangerous job. Cowboys strained muscles and ropes and horses to pull cattle from the quicksand and sucking mud bogs, only to find the same cows back in the same muck again in less than a day. It brought to mind the comment of one old-timer: “The only thing dumber than a cow is a cowboy.”

  Jim had to admit heel fly time was one part of cowboying he didn’t miss in the least. It made cowboys surly as well as muddy. That complicated a sheriff’s life no end. There were more brawls, more shootings or near-shootings, and more drunks, at heel fly time than at any other stretch that didn’t include a major holiday.

  Now the worst combination of all had come together at a place called Jerry Springs eleven miles upriver from Tascosa on LS range. Ed King, Frank Valley, Fred Chilton and John Lang were riding bog there. That put them too close to Tascosa to suit Jim East. Of all the former LS Rangers, those four were probably the most hated. They were the core of the barroom gladiators, men unwilling to let go of what they saw as the glory days of their otherwise boring years in the saddle. They liked being hired guns a lot more than they liked tailing up a bogged cow. Blood wasn’t as thick as Canadian River mud.

  The buckskin stopped at the gate of the county livery stable and looked back at Jim as if to say, “Well, fool, we’re home; get off and open the gate.” Jim realized with a start that he didn’t even remember riding the last mile. He had been too wrapped up in his worries. He unsaddled the buckskin and fed the animal before starting his walk home.

  Jim paused at the corner of Spring Street and Main, his face drawn into a frown as he watched the four Jerry Springs bog riders move at a steady trot toward the hill on the east side of Tascosa. King, Valley, Chilton and Lang weren’t the only ones in town today.

  Men and women on horseback, some in buggies or wagons and some afoot, filtered in a steady stream toward the big adobe home of Casimiro Romero north of Hogtown. Romero was famed far and wide for the lavish parties called bailes that he hosted from time to time.

  Jim thought for a moment about following and confronting the four former LS Rangers, then pushed the idea aside. He had already had a talk or two with King and his bunch. There was nothing new to add. It could even make matters worse. If Ed King got mad before he started drinking, he would be in a full-bore rage after a few hits from the jug.

  Casimiro Romero had strict rules for those attending his bailes. No guns, no cursing, no drinking to excess. The aging Mexican patriarch backed up his rules with a powerful personality and a rifle when needed. It was unlikely the LS riders would cause trouble at Romero’s.

  Jim felt a pang of guilt for not having promised to take Hattie to the baile , with its lively dances, tables heavy with food and drink, and good company. He could never seem to find the time to take her to social gatherings these days. He knew Hattie would understand that he was dog-tired, hungry, saddle-stiff and needed a bath, a shave and a good night’s sleep a lot more than he needed a party. He sighed and strode toward the footbridge over Tascosa Creek and the home that awaited him as twilight began to settle over the community on the bend of the Canadian.

  ***

  The sound of gunshots brought Jim awake with a start. The sharp crack of rifles and flat thump of pistol shots rattled down Main Street.

  Jim was out of bed and grabbing for his pants before Hattie sat up in bed, alarmed. “What’s happening, Jim?”

  “I don’t know, but it sounds like the Little Big Horn out there.” The thunder of what seemed to be a dozen shots punctuated his words. Jim shrugged into his clothes, yanked on his boots, grabbed his gunbelt and was out the door before Hattie had time to call a warning.

  Jim sprinted toward Main. The gunfire that had sounded in quick, ragged volleys died away for a moment, then a single final shot cracked the chill air. He reached the corner of Main and Spring three strides ahead of Deputy L. C. Pierce. Jim skidded to a halt, cocked pistol in hand, in fr
ont of the Jenkins and Dunn Saloon. Ed King lay face up in a pool of blood, a bullet hole below his left eye. A second wound ringed by powder burns seeped crimson from his throat.

  Jesse Sheets, the North Star Restaurant owner, lay in the doorway of his business, still in his nightclothes. He had a small, lethal hole in the center of his forehead. Fred Chilton’s body slumped over a pile of plaster boards at the corner of the saloon. Blood soaked the front of his shirt and stained the porous boards beneath him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pierce said, his voice hushed.

  “Watch out, L.C.,” Jim warned through clenched teeth. “This may not be over yet.” He plucked a lantern from a bracket on a porch post and stepped into the darkened saloon. “Check around outside,” he told the deputy.

  Jim found Frank Valley dead near a bullet-riddled door in a back storage room. A single slug had hit him just below the left cheekbone and taken away a half-dollar size chunk of skull when it went out the back of his head. In the guttering lantern-light Jim saw pools of blood along a back wall of the small room. Someone else had been in here, someone hit hard, he thought.

  Jim lowered the hammer of his Colt and holstered the handgun. He left the lantern and stepped outside just as L. C. Pierce yelled “Halt!” toward a crouched figure running from the back of the saloon. Pierce yelled again, then leveled his rifle and fired. The running man went down. Pierce levered another round into his Winchester and sprinted toward the figure.

  Lanterns bobbed along Main Street as Tascosa residents roused by the gunfire headed toward the saloon. A small crowd had already gathered. At the center of the crowd John Lang stood, his face ash-white in the feeble light of kerosene lamps. Jim pushed his way through the crowd to Lang. The man’s clothing reeked of powder smoke. Jim reached out and plucked Lang’s pistol from its holster. The barrel was still warm.

  “What happened here, Lang?”