West Texas Kill

by Johnny D. Boggs

  His wife gave birth to a son, and Milton carved a kingdom in that patch of desert, trading at his rancho, raising longhorn cattle and sheep. Fruits grown in his orchards tasted spectacular, and nobody ever passed the chance to sample his peach brandy. By the end of the Civil War, nobody knew him as Milton Benton anymore. He was Don Melitón.

  His accent hadn’t changed, though. It remained pure Missouri.

  “Reckon I’ll take that b’hoy off your hands, pilgrim,” he said.

  “Reckon you won’t, Don Melitón,” Chance said.

  “You know me?”

  “I was at your rancho on Cibolo Creek this year, Independence Day, sir. Remember? You invited all of Captain Savage’s Rangers from Fort Leaton.” After shoving his mackinaw behind the butt of the Schofield, Chance tapped the badge pinned to his vest.

  “You won’t be invited back next Fourth of July. You son-of-a-bitchin’ Rangers drank four kegs of peach brandy, another of pure Kentucky bourbon, and took two bottles of Manhattan rye.”

  “Yes, sir. It was quite the fandango. Captain Savage still has one bottle of the rye. Had, at least, last time I was down Presidio way.”

  “I want him.” The old man pointed the barrel of the pistol at Albavera, but the .22 hadn’t been cocked.

  Yet.

  “So does the county sheriff in Galveston.”

  “Galveston!” The old man practically spit.

  “Yes, sir. He murdered a couple of brothers—”

  Albavera interrupted, “It was a fair fight.”

  Chance kept on—“in a saloon there in the summer of ’77. I’m bringing him in.”

  “For a reward, I take it,” Don Melitón said.

  “I don’t know that there is a reward, sir.”

  “There is,” Albavera said. “A hundred dollars.”

  “Not much money for a couple of brothers,” Chance said.

  “They weren’t exactly pillars of the community,” Albavera said.

  “Shut your traps,” Don Melitón snapped. “I don’t care how many brothers this man killed in Galveston, or how many men he killed anywhere else. He killed my son. For that, I shall kill him.”

  Chance switched legs over the horn, stretched, and shook his head. “Don, sir, I don’t think you’d have any trouble getting the attorney general to give Presidio County first crack at trying Moses Albavera. And knowing the folks out here, they’d have him swinging in a hurry.”

  “That’s a sure bet,” Albavera muttered.

  Chance wished that big bastard would shut up.

  “I’d prefer killing him myself,” the don said.

  “I don’t blame you. But he gets a fair trial.”

  Albavera snorted with contempt.

  “My wife has been dead ten years,” the old man said. “I’m not long for this world. I’d planned on leaving my empire to Prince. That man has taken away not only my son’s life, but my legacy.”

  Albavera cried, “You were going to leave your fortune to that tinhorn? What he wouldn’t have squandered away, he would have gambled away. You’re better off alone, old man. Give your empire back to the poor bastards you stole it from. The Mexicans. The Apaches. Hell, give it to those brave riders you got backing your play. Give it to the great state of Texas.”

  Chance wouldn’t bet on who was getting angrier with each word his prisoner spoke, the don or himself.

  “Let me tell you about your son, old man,” Albavera continued. “We were playing poker at Diego’s Cantina in Shafter. He was losing. I was winning. This Mexican lady comes in off the street selling tamales. I bought one. He took one. I paid her. She asked your boy for some money. He took a bite, spit it out, told her it was terrible, and shoved the rest of the tamale in her face. Shoved real hard, too. She hit the floor, and I hit him. I admit, I hit your son harder than he hit the woman. He got up cussing me, calling me a ‘swamp-running SOB,’ and I hit him again. Told him my family was Moors. I’m right proud of my heritage. He drew his revolver. I kicked it out of his hand and hit him again. Then I helped the lady up, gave her a dollar, and sent her on her way. I gathered my winnings, and started for the door. That’s when I heard the revolver cock. I ducked, drew Miss Vickie, and spun. Your son’s shot tugged at the collar of my coat.” He tilted his head to the left, and Chance saw a hole in the buckskin coat’s collar. “Mine hit him in the chest.”

  Chance let his leg down from the horn. His boots found the stirrups. His right hand found the butt of the Schofield.

  “That’s how it was, pardners,” Albavera said. “You ask anybody in Shafter who was at Diego’s Cantina, and they’ll tell you that’s what happened. Anyone who won’t lie for you, Don Melitón.”

  Knowing Prince Benton, Chance believed Albavera’s story, and, from the look on the old man’s face, so did the don. Yet Chance knew the powerful merchant and rancher would not bend. The don looked again at Chance.

  “I have no quarrel with you, Ranger.”

  “I’ve none with you, Don. Not yet.”

  “You say there is a hundred dollar reward for this man in Galveston?”

  “I didn’t say it.” Chance’s chin pointed toward Albavera. “He did.”

  “I will pay you five hundred dollars. In gold.”

  Chance pushed up the brim of his hat. “When?”

  The old man turned, barked an order, and one of the vaqueros rode up, reached into his saddlebag, pulled out two leather pouches, and tossed them into the dirt between the gray Andalusian and the sorrel gelding. The coins clinked when the pouches hit the dirt. Someone still standing in front of the saloon whistled. The vaquero backed his horse away from the don.

  Chance studied the two pouches, looked at Don Melitón, then turned to Albavera. Taking a deep breath, he slowly exhaled, and sighed, shrugging at Albavera before he looked back at the old man. Chance reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a key, and tossed it to the dirt. “He’s yours.” Sliding from the Andalusian, he walked toward the money pouches.

  “You greedy bastard,” Albavera said.

  Dismounting, Don Melitón barked an order at his riders, then walked toward the handcuffed prisoner, the single-shot pistol still in his hand, still uncocked. As Chance bent to pick up the gold pouches, the don swept up the key in his left hand without breaking stride. The old man made a beeline for the prisoner, never considering Chance, never seeing one of the pouches sail from Chance’s hand until it was too late. The sack slammed into the don’s crotch. Gasping, he dropped the side-hammer .22, grabbed his balls, and sank toward the dirt.

  Chance drew the Smith & Wesson from his back, caught Don Melitón, turned him around, and pressed the barrel underneath the don’s chin. “Move and I’ll blow his head off!” Chance roared to the vaqueros.

  Probably not, he thought. Not with a .32, but Don Melitón would be dead, sure enough.

  Of course, so would Dave Chance and Moses Albavera after those vaqueros were finished. At least half of them had drawn Navy Colts or Spencer carbines. Those weapons were cocked and trained on Chance, but they’d have to shoot through their boss to kill him.

  “What is it you wish us to do?” spoke the middle-aged vaquero who had carried the saddlebags full of gold.

  “I want you to get the hell out of here,” Chance said. “Ride back to Cibolo Creek, I’ll take—”

  “¡Imbécil!” the vaquero shouted, and Chance realized the question had been directed at Don Melitón.

  The proud old man tried to straighten. Chance pressed the barrel deeper into the don’s flesh, his finger tightening on the trigger. Don Melitón spoke in a voice muffled by pain, “Do as he says, Godofredo.”

  “Sí, patrón.” Disappointed, the vaquero shoved the Navy into his yellow sash, tugged on the reins, and led the other riders away from the two-story saloon. They turned south, and loped away.

  From the doorway of the saloon, the woman gambler named Lottie said, “You got grit, mister.”

  “He’s a damned fool,” Moses Albavera said. “Did it ever occur to yo
u, Ranger, that this old don might have just shot me out of the saddle before you could try to castrate him? Did it?”

  “No.” The Smith & Wesson felt like a cannon in his hand. He lowered the barrel, released his hold on Don Melitón, and shoved the the .32 behind his back. “It didn’t.”

  The old man sank to his knees. Bent over, his hands on the ground, in terrible pain, he didn’t utter a sound.

  Chance picked up the single-shot .22, returned to the don, and helped the old man to his horse, a palomino with a good dosage of Arabian blood. He boosted the man into the saddle—Don Melitón hunched low, gripping the horn instead of the reins—before mounting the Andalusian.

  “Let’s go,” he told Albavera.

  “Which way?”

  “Just to the Sender Brothers store.”

  “Don’t know where it is, Ranger. You best lead the way.”

  “You lead,” Chance said. “I’ll tell you which way to go.”

  Albavera grinned. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Not much.”

  The black man kicked the sorrel into a walk.

  Thirty minutes later, Chance’s saddlebags were filled with beef jerky, salt pork, a sack of Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee, four airtights of peaches and one of condensed milk, not to mention extra ammunition for the arsenal he now carried, all paid for from a gold coin in one of Don Melitón’s pouches. He figured the don owed him. Besides, Austin rarely paid his expenses in a timely fashion.

  He left the old man tied to a chair in the back of the mercantile, ordered the clerk working the store to leave the don there for two hours before turning him loose. Like hell, Chance thought. A powerful patrón like Don Melitón Benton. If that weasel-faced clerk left the don tied up for ten minutes, Chance would be counting his blessings.

  “All right, sir,” Chance whispered into the don’s ear. “If it had been my son killed, I’d likely feel as you do.” He tapped the badge. “But I’m paid to uphold the law, and the law wants Moses Albavera in Galveston. I’m asking you to let the law handle it. Do like I say. You’ve got more pull than those Marin brothers ever had in Galveston. You can bring Albavera to trial here, and you know, as well as I do, that he’ll hang.” He wanted to say, but didn’t, No matter if your boy got what he deserved. “I’m just doing my job. I’m leaving you here, and taking Albavera to El Paso. I’ll turn him over to the deputy U.S. marshal there. Maybe you can buy a federal lawman. But you can’t buy me.”

  He stood, threatened the clerk with jail time if he didn’t keep the don tied up for two hours, and prodded Moses Albavera outside, onto the sorrel. Chance mounted the Andalusian.

  “El Paso, eh?” The black man’s head shook as he chuckled.

  “I doubt if that old hard-rock believed it, either,” Chance said. “But I had to try.”

  They rode north, but quickly turned southeast.

  “Murphyville?” Albavera asked.

  Chance shook his head. “Too close. Marathon. We’ll catch an S.P. there to Houston.”

  Albavera asked, “Reckon we’ll get there?”

  Replied Chance, “I doubt it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There wasn’t much to Marathon, Texas. Oh, it had a post office, behind the front desk at the two-story hotel, but only one saloon—and it was only a tent.

  The town had been founded a few years earlier when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway crew, laying track east from El Paso for the Southern Pacific, reached those wind-blown plains surrounded by mountain vistas, although a few cattle ranchers and sheep men had settled in the area some time before. Albion E. Shepard, an ex-sea captain who had surveyed for the S.P., established his Iron Mountain sheep ranch in the spring of 1882. When he applied for a post office, he recommended the name Marathon. Seems the area reminded him of the plains of his native Greece.

  By 1884, thanks to the railroad, Marathon had become a key shipping point in West Texas, but the town probably had fewer than seventy-five permanent residents. Of course, if you asked Grace Profit, the only permanent residents were those buried in Boot Hill or in the boneyard behind the Catholic church on the other side of the S.P. tracks. She hadn’t been convinced Marathon would really last.

  That’s why her saloon, which she had set up when the railroad first reached that point, remained a canvas structure—not stone or adobe—held up with mesquite posts, and held together by Grace Profit’s stubbornness.

  She had turned thirty-seven last month. Her face was bronzed, weathered by years working canvas saloons at railroad hell-on-wheels towns across Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico Territory, but most men—so she had often been told—found her stunningly beautiful. Her hair—blond, shoulder length—was tied up in a blue silk bandana. She wore hand-sewn Congress gaiters she had ordered from Bloomingdale’s, a beaded brown cashmere jersey over her chemise—too fancy to be cooking in, but the railroad men liked it—a navy blue skirt, and a ruffled apron trimmed with lace. Since she was outside, she had donned the heavy gray double-breasted range coat her ex-husband had owned.

  It was about the only thing that two-timing cad had left her, but it kept her warm on winter nights, and she wouldn’t trade it to have that son of a bitch back.

  Her eyes were like sapphires. That’s what most men noticed about her. They made men overlook the crow’s feet, few strands of gray hairs, and her leathery skin, although she needed spectacles to read these days. She had a brand-new book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, on the bureau by her bed in the hotel, the latest copy of Lippincott’s Magazine, and a month-old edition of the Tucson Citizen an eastbound traveler had left behind that she couldn’t wait to read.

  Whenever she decided to close up the saloon.

  She stood outside, grilling mutton over a mesquite-wood fire, watching the setting sun turn those crystal skies into a palette of orange, gold, red, yellow. The wind had died down, and the temperature had risen into the low forties, though it would surely plummet as soon as the sun finished sinking behind those mountains and mesas.

  From the west, on the road from Murphyville, came a buckboard, escorted by a pair of riders on dark-colored horses. She studied them a moment, then turned her attention to the mutton, forked the meat over, the aroma pleasant, the sound of the grease dripping onto the coals reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It had been a busy day at the saloon. The railroaders, having received their pay, had gotten good and drunk, and now they were hungry. Likely, those men in the wagon would be hungry, too, and good and drunk before midnight came.

  She looked up again, and lowered the fork to her side.

  The driver of the buckboard was a man, but beside him, wrapped in a blanket, rode a woman.

  They drove past the depot, where one of the men wheeled his horse, and dismounted.

  Grace glanced at the mutton, then called out to a man in red sleeve garters who stood inside the tent saloon, making whiskey. “Horatius?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Cut up this mutton. Put it on plates. Deliver it to the S.P. men.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Make sure they pay you before they eat.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He stepped through the opening, and Grace handed him the fork. Pulling up the collar of her range coat, she thought about stepping out toward the road to see who those strangers were, but decided business came first. She needed to finish making that whiskey while Horatius fed the railroad men.

  The swamp-root she served at Profit’s House was her own blend. Grain alcohol aged in a porcelain-lined preserving kettle for ten days with burnt sugar and two tablespoons of iodine, colored with four five-cent plugs of Star Navy Chewing Tobacco, then poured through a milk strainer to cut down on the number of tobacco flakes a patron might swallow, and blended with water from the three-hundred-foot-deep well behind the depot. Two parts whiskey, one part water.

  You had to do it that way, she reasoned. Anyone who drank that wretched water straight was bound
to get really sick, maybe die.

  She shed the coat. A couple of cast iron stoves kept the tent quite warm. Hanging from posts and from a hemp rope beneath the canvas top, coal oil-burning lanterns kept the saloon well lit.

  Horatius served mutton to the railroaders, while Grace mixed the whiskey and water, funneling the finished product into brown clay jugs, which, when full, she corked and set on the mesquite table behind the bar. The front canvas flap opened, and two men walked inside, one of them escorting the woman to a table, the other headed straight for the bar. Before he was halfway across the room, the flap parted again, and the third man entered, slapping dust off his hat. Apparently, he had finished whatever business he had at the depot. He looked around before taking a seat across from the woman.

  Leaning against the bar, the newcomer rubbed a gloved hand across heavy beard stubble, and set his derby hat on the bar. Grace picked up a relatively clean tumbler, a fresh jug, and walked to him. She poured a shot and slid it in front of him.

  A badge cut from a peso was pinned on the bib of his red shirt.

  “On the house, Ranger.”

  The man looked up. “Thanks.” He downed the shot, and his eyes immediately watered. “Maybe.” He coughed. “Maybe I thanked you too soon.”

  Grace smiled, and refilled his tumbler.

  He didn’t look like a Texas Ranger. Too old. Too bald. He wore plaid trousers, a red bib-front shirt, a yellow bandana, well-worn brown boots, and old Spurs. A russet gunbelt with a Colt holstered butt forward hung on his left hip. He wore eyeglasses that highlighted his brown eyes, but Grace figured he needed the glasses to see both near and far. She only needed hers to read.

  “I’ve met some Rangers up here,” Grace said, tucking a strand of blond hair back underneath her silk bandana. “Captain Savage,” she said, trying to conceal her bitterness. “Dave Chance. Wes Smith. But I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of your company.”