Death Rattle

by Sean Lynch

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Shipley,” Sheriff Foster said. “How’s your husband feeling?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she said curtly.

  “That’s what we came to do,” Foster said. “We heard he was feeling poorly.”

  “Anyone within a half mile with a pair of ears knows he’s feeling poorly,” Dovie said. “If you’ll excuse me?” She started past them and down the hotel steps.

  “I also heard your daughter is almost eighteen years old?” Gaines said.

  Dovie stopped, slowly turned around, and faced him.

  “My daughter’s birthday is no concern of yours, Deputy.”

  “Chief Deputy,” he said. “Be sure and tell Idelle I’ll be a-calling on her, real soon.”

  “No,” Dovie said, “you won’t.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Gaines retorted, his toothless leer spreading across his narrow face. “And please tell your husband, like you, I sincerely hope he gets to feelin’ better.”

  “Go to hell,” Dovie said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Gaines said through his infected grin.

  “Shut up, Gaines,” Sheriff Foster said. “Let’s go see Burnell.”

  Dovie left the lawmen on the steps of the hotel and walked through the suffocating Missouri heat across the street, past the Sidewinder, and into Shipley’s Mercantile and General Store.

  The establishment had expanded, along with Atherton, into a booming retail enterprise that added even more money to Burnell Shipley’s sprawling empire. Mr. Manning, who’d run the facility since it opened its doors, was an old skinflint employed by Shipley for his miserly ways and cowardly demeanor. Everyone knew Manning was too frightened to skim from Shipley.

  When Dovie entered, Manning, whose bespectacled eyes never missed anything occurring inside his store, wordlessly left the customer he was helping and greeted her.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Shipley,” the old shopkeeper said in his oily voice.

  “Did my package arrive yet?” she asked.

  “It did. Came on the train with yesterday’s delivery. I would have sent it over to you at the hotel, with your regular order, but you told me not to.”

  “That’s right,” Dovie said. “It’s a Christmas present for Burnell, so I want to keep it a secret. It’s also why I’m paying cash, instead of having it charged. You understand?”

  “Of course,” Manning said. “Christmas presents are one of the few secrets a wife is allowed to keep from her husband. You want me to stash it here until then?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  “Here it is,” Manning said, producing a polished wooden box from under the counter and opening it for Dovie’s examination. “All the way from Connecticut.”

  Inside the case was a pair of ornately engraved Colt Cloverleaf pocket pistols. Chambered in .41 rimfire and featuring a four-shot cylinder, the weapons were compact, powerful, and designed to be concealed rather than worn openly in a belt holster. There were twenty cartridges for the weapons in the felt-lined box.

  “Beautiful, ain’t they?” Manning said. “A real thoughtful gift, if I may say so. Just the thing for a well-dressed, traveling gentleman. I’m sure your husband will find them useful during his trips to Kansas City.”

  Whenever Dovie patronized the store, Manning couldn’t resist revealing that he knew about Burnell’s extracurricular activities, as if he were in her husband’s intimate confidence. As far as she was concerned, few in town didn’t know. Like the many other indignities she endured as Burnell Shipley’s wife, she endured this one with silent indifference.

  “They’ll certainly come in handy,” was all she said as she paid the shopkeeper.

  “You sure you don’t want me to store them here for you until Christmas?” Manning said. “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I have the perfect place to hide them. Besides,” she said, closing the case and tucking it under her arm, “I want the guns to be a surprise. Good day, Mr. Manning.”

  Chapter 38

  150 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas,

  March 1873

  Pritchard waved to Ditch from horseback as he led the single file of mounted Texas Rangers toward the ranch house he himself had helped to build.

  More than three years had passed since that fateful summer when Caroline found him. Three years since he kissed her, held her, made love to her, betrothed himself to her, and watched her die.

  In that time Samuel Pritchard, who’d once only pretended to be Ranger, gunfighter, and man-killer Smokin’ Joe Atherton, had become him.

  Pritchard hadn’t cut his hair since Caroline’s death, and his blond locks fell well below his shoulders. His mane was long enough, even without his ten-gallon Stetson, to easily conceal the bullet scar on the crown of his forehead. He also sported a full beard, which made him look older than his twenty-seven years.

  These additions, in concert with his six-and-a-half-foot-tall, muscular, frame, ever-present brace of pistols, hat, boots, and spurs, lent him an appearance that matched his increasingly fearsome reputation. The legend of Texas Ranger Smokin’ Joe Atherton, already formidable, had only grown since Caroline’s murder. And like most legends, there were more than a few grains of truth contained within its verses.

  In the wake of his fiancée’s death, Pritchard reassumed his duties as a Texas Ranger with singular vengeance and ruthless efficiency. Now, when encountering outlaws, renegades, rustlers, and gunfighters in the line of duty, he gave only a brief warning, if any at all. More often than not, his notice to an armed lawbreaker was communicated merely through the look in his eyes and the portent of the shadow that hung over him. If the warning wasn’t heeded, his pistols did any further speaking for him.

  Some claimed Smokin’ Joe had accumulated twenty notches; others said it was closer to fifty. Still others pointed out that since no one could say exactly how many men he’d killed during the war, before he became a Texas Ranger, there was no way to know his tally for certain.

  The only thing anyone knew for sure about Ranger Smokin’ Joe Atherton was that he seldom spoke, rarely drank, and anyone who crossed him did it only once.

  When not on the trail with Captain Franchard and his Rangers, Pritchard lived a uniquely Spartan life. He kept to himself, took his meals alone in a small café, and slept in the loft above Fort Worth’s main livery stable. He eschewed the whiskey, gambling, and nightlife favored by his fellow Rangers when billeted in town. He practiced religiously with his revolvers each day, and during what little leisure time he found, took long, solo rides in the country on his faithful Morgan, Rusty.

  The ten thousand dollars he’d planned to use to buy his bride a home, he deposited in the Wells Fargo Bank of Fort Worth, along with the several thousand dollars he’d accrued in reward money. Most of the bounties were of the dead-or-alive variety, with very few of Pritchard’s collections arriving in the alive category.

  All of Pritchard’s fellow Rangers respected him, some feared him, and most understood and accepted his desire to be left alone. Though he avoided socializing, and repeatedly turned down offers to promote to the rank of sergeant, they nonetheless recognized him as their brother at arms. They also noticed the paternal manner with which Captain Franchard regarded his top Ranger.

  When special orders were telegraphed from the capital in Austin, and Franchard began to select Rangers for a long-range, and particularly hazardous, assignment, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Smokin’ Joe Atherton would be the first man chosen.

  Franchard and his Ranger detachment were destined for the New Mexico Territory, on orders direct from Governor Davis. They were to assist the territorial governor there, a useless Connecticut Yankee named Marsh Giddings, in the tracking and apprehension of one of the most violent bands of outlaws the increasingly lawless region had ever seen: the Stiles Gang.

  Major Dalton Stiles was a Missourian, like Pritchard. Also, like Pritchard, he’d been a partisan guerrilla fig
hting on the side of the Confederacy as a member of a different company of Shelby’s Missouri Iron Brigade. That’s where their similarities ended.

  Whereas Pritchard took life only when his own or others’ were threatened, Major Stiles and the freelance group of partisan rangers he commanded killed at whim. And like many such far-ranging guerrilla outfits during the war, acting alone and without restraint by lawful authority or a chain of command, they killed not only Union soldiers, but men, women, and children on both sides as the mood suited them.

  They also robbed, raped, and burned. After the surrender, even against the murderously inhuman standards set during the Civil War, Stiles and his partisan rangers were considered bloodthirsty renegades by both the Union, and what was left of the Confederate, authorities. When Stiles and his men tried to rejoin General Shelby after he refused to surrender on his final, defiant, march into Mexico, they were turned away at gunpoint.

  In the years since the war, Stiles and the surviving remnants of his partisan rangers didn’t abandon their raiding, robbing, and killing. This, in itself, was not particularly unusual. Many Confederate guerrillas, such as the James and Younger gang, continued their wartime activities after the war ended, as outlaws instead of soldiers, without the cover of a flag or uniform. But what singled Stiles and his gang out from other renegade bands of veteran guerrillas was the scale, savagery, and sheer bloodlust of their criminal acts.

  All of the crimes committed by Stiles resulted in needless deaths. In the Arizona Territory in 1868, instead of merely robbing the passengers, they tore up the railroad tracks and derailed the train. The ensuing crash killed over twenty people. In 1870, in the New Mexico Territory, they robbed a bank in Las Cruces. The townspeople, led by the sheriff and two deputies, put up a valiant fight. When it was over and the gun smoke cleared, twenty-two men, three women, and a five-year-old boy lay dead in the streets.

  The U.S. Army, composed of too few soldiers in the territory, too thinly spread out, and too busy dealing with the warring Apache, were no more effective against Stiles’s highly mobile band of raiders than they’d been during the war. After each bloody raid, Stiles and his horsemen simply vanished into the vast, untamed New Mexico or Arizona territories, where they would remain hidden until reemerging to commit their next murderous crime.

  New Mexico Territorial Governor Marsh Giddings, a former civil judge from Michigan with no military or law enforcement experience, was utterly unprepared and completely at a loss as to how to deal with the widespread lawlessness pervading his jurisdiction. He was especially vexed by the Stiles Gang.

  After the Magdalena Mine Massacre, as it had come to be known, which occurred in December of 1872, the frustrated Giddings, in desperation, reached out to the Texas governor for help.

  On Christmas Eve, just after dawn, twenty members of the Stiles Gang rode into the silver mining town of Magdalena. Instead of robbing the bank, which was heavily fortified because it was stuffed with silver, they converged on the mine. After placing dynamite at the entrance, Major Stiles sent an emissary into the town with a simple demand.

  Every citizen was to surrender all their valuables, including everything in the bank, to Stiles’s men in the town square by noon. Failure to comply would result in a detonation at the mine’s opening, which would turn Magdalena’s sole economic engine into its largest grave.

  Since almost all the townsmen were working down in the mine, and Stiles’s riders had taken the liberty of killing the town marshal and his deputies upon their arrival, the people of Magdalena had little choice but to comply. They dutifully began to pile their money, jewels, and silver in the town square.

  By eleven-thirty a.m., Stiles’s men had loaded a wagon with the town’s treasure. At noon, not wanting a posse of over one hundred enraged miners after them, he ordered the mine blown.

  One hundred and twenty-seven men were sealed underground in the blast, turning the Magdalena Silver Mine into a giant tomb. After taking most of the town’s horses and livestock, and raping a number of womenfolk, the Stiles Gang rode off, pulling their wagonload of booty behind them.

  Governor Giddings wired the Texas governor for help. Captain Franchard and his Ranger detachment, the best in Texas, were dispatched. Their orders were simple: capture or kill Major Dalton Stiles, eradicate his gang, and do so with all due haste.

  Captain Tom Franchard, Pritchard, and sixteen other veteran Rangers left Fort Worth on horseback in January of 1873.

  It was more than six hundred miles to the New Mexico Territory. Three days into their journey, Franchard and his Rangers made a stop at the SD&P ranch.

  Ditch had made good on his intent to acquire the vast BB&B spread, just north of his own ranch, formerly belonging to the late Winston Boone and his now-deceased sons. Ditch and Paul Clemson used the additional grazing land to support several thousand more head of cattle and more than fifty breeding horses. They had also taken on a staff of ten hands, in addition to Foreman Alejandro Ruiz, as well as a full-time cook.

  “Been a while,” Ditch said as he shook Pritchard’s, and then Captain Franchard’s, hands.

  “Nigh on three years,” Pritchard agreed.

  Ditch examined his friend. “With that long hair and beard, you look like Goliath stepped right out of the pages of the Bible,” he chuckled. “You tryin’ to tempt the Comanche into takin’ your scalp?”

  “If I’m Goliath,” Pritchard unleashed one of his rare smiles, “who does that make you?”

  “Just because I’m smaller than you,” Ditch laughed, “and my name’s David?”

  Ditch ordered his cook to slaughter a cow, and the Rangers had beefsteak and beer for supper. At dusk, Paul and Ruiz, who’d been out checking stock with their men all day, rode in.

  Ruiz shook Franchard’s hand, but hugged Pritchard. “It is good to see you, Señor Joe,” he said, “even if you do look like a big, yellow, bear.”

  During the evening meal, Ditch announced that when spring weather was fully set in, in another month or two, he, Paul, Ruiz, and the hands of the SD&P Ranch were going to drive their herd up north, to Kansas.

  Texas had an overabundance of cattle, Ditch explained. The going price in San Antonio was currently around one dollar and fifty cents per head. But in Abilene, Kansas, five hundred miles north, where the railroads could launch beef eastward, a fair-sized steer sold for as much as twenty-four dollars.

  Ditch planned to take the entire SD&P outfit, along with a herd of over three thousand Texas longhorns, to the railhead in Abilene. He knew in addition to ornery cattle, they’d face harsh weather, warring Indians, bandits, rustlers, ticks, disease, and many other dangers during the drive. He figured they could make close to fifteen miles a day and still keep meat on the cows. That would put as much as seventy-five thousand dollars in their pockets in less than two months’ time.

  Ditch finished the discussion by once again offering Pritchard the opportunity to rejoin the SD&P Ranch and accompany the outfit on their cattle drive.

  “I’d surely like to,” Pritchard admitted, “but I can’t. Not now, anyway. I’m committed.” He nodded to Franchard. The Ranger captain divulged his unit’s destination and mission.

  “You’re goin’ into the New Mexico Territory after Dalton Stiles and his boys?” Ditch said. “That ain’t just loco,” he shook his head, “it’s suicide. Iffen Stiles and his gang don’t get you, the Apache will. You boys lookin’ to get shot, or scalped?”

  “You’ve heard of Stiles and his gang?” Franchard asked.

  “Who ain’t?” Ditch said. “Everywhere Stiles goes, that madman brings nothin’ but mayhem and murder. The damned fool never figured out the war is over. He kills for the plumb joy of killin’.”

  “That’s why he’s got to be stopped,” Pritchard said.

  “He may be a damned fool,” Franchard said, “but Major Dalton Stiles is no idiot. So far, he’s stayed out of Texas. He’s limited his murder and mayhem, as you called it, to the New Mexico and Arizona territories. That ai
n’t no coincidence.”

  “You can’t blame him for that,” Ruiz said. “He does not want the Texas Rangers to come after him.”

  “He’s got ’em on his trail now,” Captain Franchard said.

  Chapter 39

  Pritchard ducked his head as he rode through the gritty, red New Mexico dust. The stampede string on his hat was tightly cinched around his chin, and his neckerchief covered his face below his eyes. He was on the easiest trail he’d ever followed, and the hardest one he’d ever ridden. All he and his fellow Texas Rangers had to do to track the Stiles Gang was go from town to town in the New Mexico Territory and meet widows.

  After a night’s rest and a good breakfast, Pritchard, Captain Franchard, and the Texas Rangers bid Ditch, Paul, Ruiz, and the SD&P Ranch good-bye and continued their trek westward.

  Three weeks, two minor skirmishes with Apache war parties, and a freak blizzard later, they found themselves in El Paso. They rested their horses, refitted with ammunition and supplies, and added six Rangers from the El Paso detachment to their unit. Two days later, twenty-four Texas Rangers rode into Las Cruces, in the New Mexico Territory.

  The memory of what the Stiles Gang had done almost three years before was still fresh in the townspeople’s collective memory. Las Cruces was a small town, and people came out when they saw the string of riders coming down the main street. When they noticed the cinco-peso stars pinned on the Rangers’ chests, and learned of their mission, they didn’t hide their indifference. After a few glances, most returned indoors.

  The mayor, whose brother-in-law was one of the townsmen killed by Stiles and his gang during the bank robbery, remained in the street to greet them.

  “Not the friendliest town I ever saw,” a Ranger commented.

  “We saw you riding in from a distance,” the mayor explained. “We was hopin’, when somebody finally came around to bring justice, it would be the army. Folks around here don’t think twenty-four Rangers is gonna make a dent in Stiles’s Gang.”