Christmas in the Lone Star State

by Jason Manning

  Sayles turned and employed the bowie knife in cutting Eddings free from the bay on which he had come all the way from Huntsville Prison. Eddings couldn’t seem to swing his leg up and over the cantle to dismount, so Sayles helped him down, noticing his body was rigid and shivering. His legs seemed to give out when he finally got his feet on the ground, and Sayles hooked one of the prisoner’s arms over his shoulders and helped him to the jail.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked the sheriff, primed to become even more resentful if it turned out the prisoner was injured, since that could well inconvenience him. “He hurt?”

  “He’s froze up. Move aside,” said Sayles gruffly. Noticing the door was ajar, he kicked it open and proceeded on into the jail’s office.

  He sat Eddings down in the nearest chair, poured a cup of java from a blackened coffeepot on a potbelly stove, and put it in the prisoner’s hands. The sheriff closed the door and walked around his cluttered kneehole desk but didn’t sit down. He felt a little better with the desk between him and the Ranger with his bowie knife. Crossing his arms, he cast a disapproving look at Eddings, then snatched up a pair of wanted posters and thrust them in the Ranger’s direction.

  “This is not a good time for me to have to deal with this,” he complained. “Looks like we have a pair of real hardcases in the area.”

  Sayles looked at the posters of two men named Litchfield, noting that if they were related they didn’t look it.

  The sheriff handed him a telegraph. “Came this morning. Most likely those two will head west, and that means they could come through here.”

  The telegram didn’t tell Sayles anything the ferryman hadn’t already told him about the killings on the riverboat. He looked up from the telegram and studied the Cameron sheriff for a moment, trying to figure out if the man was just annoyed or anxious. “Wouldn’t worry too much,” he said, putting the posters and the telegram on the sheriff’s desk. “They don’t know this country, or the people. They wouldn’t know what they were riding into. Reckon they’re just looking for a hole to crawl into for a while.”

  The sheriff didn’t like that the Ranger had made light of the threat he’d hoped to use as an excuse to get out from under taking care of Eddings. He flared at the prisoner. “Didn’t think I’d lay eyes on you again for many a year, if ever.” Eddings didn’t give any indication he even heard. He sipped the hot coffee, then held the cup up close to his face, for the warmth. The sheriff looked askance at Sayles as the latter opened a door and inspected the cell block—four small, windowless cells and a back door securely barred. “I’m Tom Rath, sheriff of Cameron for going on six years now. That’s my jail,” he added, possessively.

  “Gathered as much. Be needing you to lock this feller up, and I’ll be sleeping in one of the empty cells.”

  “This isn’t a hotel. Got one of those down the street. I can keep an eye on your prisoner just fine without your assistance.”

  “Reckon you can. But I don’t fancy wasting money on a room when a cot in one of them cells back there would suit me.”

  Sheriff Rath scowled. He had already told the Ranger that his jail was not a hostelry, but Sayles was either thick-headed or dim-witted as he obviously wasn’t going to be swayed from his intent to use the jail like one. Feeling territorial and imposed upon, Rath was about to argue the point when the door opened and Temple Hanley entered.

  The lawyer quickly shut the door, rubbed his gloved hands together, and stamped his feet, flashing a big smile at Rath. “Colder than I can ever recall, Sheriff!” he said, cheerfully, noting the lawman’s frowning features. That wasn’t unusual, Rath being a rather dour man. Hanley just naturally tended to counter truculence with pleasantness. He moved nearer the potbelly stove, where Sayles was helping himself to Rath’s coffee. “You must be the Texas Ranger, Bill Sayles.” Hanley stripped off a glove and offered his hand. “Temple Hanley is the name. Just got word you had arrived. Right on time, too. Couldn’t have been a very pleasant trip, the weather being what it is.”

  Sayles shook the proffered hand. It was soft and fleshy. “Mr. Hanley.”

  Hanley turned his attention to Jake Eddings, huddled in the chair with his head down and by all appearances unaware of or completely indifferent to what was transpiring around him. The lawyer’s smiled faltered. This was the first time in two years that he had set eyes on Jake, and the changes that prison life had wrought were startling. Where once had been a strong, robust young man was someone gaunt, hollow-cheeked, and much older looking. Not since his youth, watching his own father die of consumption, had Hanley seen such a distinct transformation occur in such a short span of time. He gently put the ungloved hand on Eddings’s hunched shoulder and bent over slightly. “Jake, do you remember me? Temple Hanley, I represented you in court.”

  Eddings looked up. “Purdy,” he said, his voice hoarse. “How is Purdy?”

  Having already given considerable thought to how to answer that question, Hanley smiled reassuringly. “She is holding up, Jake. As well as can be expected under these circumstances. I will go out to your place first thing tomorrow and let her know you’ve arrived.”

  Rath spoke up. “Sooner his boy is buried and he’s hauled back to Huntsville Prison, the better.”

  Hanley was perturbed by Rath’s callous disregard for Jake Eddings’s suffering. He knew Rath to be a lazy, ambitious, and self-centered man. He was not so much an officer of the law as a bureaucrat who viewed the position of sheriff as a springboard to higher office—and the respect he desperately sought but could not earn by dint of his personality or character. Since acquiring the office had been Rath’s sole objective, the duties that came with it were usually nothing more than an annoyance to him. Having to deal with Eddings—and Sayles—put him out. During his tenure as Cameron’s sheriff Rath had earned a reputation as a man who was perhaps a little too quick to resort to gunplay. He had shot several men to death, and Hanley had wondered in every case whether it was because disposing of a dead man was easier than having custody over a living one. Or, perhaps, Rath had a sadistic nature. Whatever the truth, he did not treat the men in his charge very well at all.

  “I will put everything in motion,” Hanley assured him, his disapproval of Rath effectively masked by a broad and disarming smile. Digging in a pocket, he produced a handful of silver dollars, which he placed on the sheriff’s desk, leaning forward to pitch his voice low, as though about to share a confidence. “I realize it isn’t always easy to effect reimbursement for your expenses here, Tom. So permit me to defray the cost of housing this man.”

  Rath looked at the coins, somewhat mollified, then remembered Sayles. “The Ranger, too. He seems to think my jail is a hotel.”

  Hanley glanced at Sayles, who now was leaning against a wall, still close to the potbelly stove for warmth’s sake, drinking his coffee and seemingly paying no attention to the conversation, instead casually looking at an old map of Texas, from back in the Republic days, that decorated one of the office walls. Hanley was relieved to know that Sayles would be around. That boded well for Eddings. Having brought several more silver dollars in case Rath was inclined to haggle, he added these to the pile on the desk. “That should cover it.”

  Rath quickly gathered up the coins, as though afraid Hanley might change his mind and take them back.

  As soon as Rath appropriated the silver, Sayles emptied his cup, put it down, and fastened his gaze on the sheriff. “You want to lock this man up so’s I can go tend to some business?”

  Rath took offense. “He’s not going anywhere,” he said curtly.

  “I’d like to be sure.”

  Hanley intervened. “Ranger Sayles is here by order of the governor, Tom. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to misplace his prisoner, as he would he held responsible.”

  Rath fumed. Hanley’s logic was unassailable. The sheriff got Eddings to his feet and took him into the cell block, securing him in the first cell on the right. The sheriff then unlocked the first cell on th
e left and opened the door, glancing at Sayles, who had strolled into the cell block. “Your room,” he said, the words laden with sarcasm.

  Sayles turned, nodded at Hanley, and left the jail. He led the horses down the street to the livery, where he sold the sorrel and the dead outlaw’s cross-draw rigs for ninety dollars after some haggling. From the proceeds he paid to have the coyote dun and the bay stabled and fed. Carrying his Winchester and the carriage gun, he made his way to the nearest saloon and bought a bottle of Old Overholt. There were half a dozen men in the place, three of them playing poker over in the vicinity of one of the two stoves, and two more jawing with the barkeep at the long mahogany bar. The men stopped talking and playing and gave him a long look, as they would anyone who was a stranger to them, especially someone carrying so many weapons. As the bartender produced the bottle and a reasonably clean glass, he asked Sayles if he was the Ranger who had brought Jake Eddings to town. Sayles grimaced and without replying took his whiskey to a table in the back. One of the men bellying up to the bar drawled, “Unsociable cuss, ain’t he.”

  He had knocked back just one shot when Temple Hanley walked in, spotted him, and, with affable greetings to the other men, made his way to the back.

  “May I join you, Mr. Sayles?”

  Sayles gestured at an empty chair while pouring himself another glass. The first shot had been an explosion of liquid warmth in his belly that took some of the aches and pains out of him, and he was thirsty for more. For the first time since Superintendent Goree’s office at the prison he was starting to feel warm. “Seems like everybody in this town knows my business.”

  Hanley sighed as he sat down across from Sayles, putting his hat on the table and running fingers through his thick matted hair. “I am ashamed to say that is my fault, sir. I let it slip to a local newspaperman.”

  Sayles wasn’t one to cry over spilled milk—or to berate the one who had done the spilling. What was done was done. “Eddings have many friends in Cameron?”

  The lawyer shook his head, brushing snow off the shoulders of his buffalo coat. “He kept to himself for the most part. The few who might have called him friend before the robbery have washed their hands of him now. Kill a man in cold blood, or even be party to the killing, and you become a pariah.” He put his arms on the table and leaned forward. “And even worse, so do your own people. In this case, his poor wife. I cannot seem to find a single woman in this town willing to go out to the Eddings place and help Purdy get through this terrible time. Though to be honest that may not be entirely due to Jake being an accomplice to murder.” He paused, looking at Sayles expectantly, but when the Ranger didn’t ask what he meant, he sighed, looked around, then spoke in barely more than whisper. “You see, rumors are going around that before her son became ill Purdy Eddings had taken up with another man. A farmer named Norris, a widower whom she allowed in her bed in return for helping her with the planting and harvesting.”

  Sayles looked up from his whiskey then. “Be best if Eddings doesn’t find out about that. Seems to me he’s pert near the end of his rope. That kind of news might make him plumb loco and then he could get himself kilt.”

  Hanley nodded. “Tom Rath wouldn’t hesitate. Killing Eddings is more convenient than taking responsibility for keeping him. That’s how the sheriff would look at it. I suppose you wouldn’t hesitate either.”

  “Reckon not.” Sayles knocked back the second shot of who-hit-john, gasping as the liquid fire chased away the last of the winter chill out of him and let him relax.

  “It would save you the trouble of hauling him back to Huntsville.”

  Sayles fastened his steely gaze on the lawyer. “I don’t have a problem doing my job,” he said, curtly.

  Flustered, Hanley felt a tingling anxiety at the base of his spine. “No, no, of course not, Mr. Sayles, I wasn’t implying that you would actually…”

  “So the boy can be buried tomorrow?”

  “I will go out to the Eddings homestead first thing in the morning and take a couple of hired men with me, as Purdy insisted on keeping her son’s body close at hand until time came. Poor woman sits in her rocking chair on the porch with a shotgun, watching over the casket.” Hanley sighed. “Hobbes was right. Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Especially out here on the fringe of civilization. In the meantime, I will hire other men to dig the grave in the Cameron cemetery. At first Purdy insisted her son be buried at their farm, but I talked her out of that. I mean, realistically there isn’t much chance of her holding on to that land. Barely made enough from the last harvest to pay the bank.”

  Sayles had no idea who this Hobbes feller was but decided that he was right about at least one thing. “You do this sort of thing for all your clients?”

  “No. But I find it difficult to think of Jake Eddings as just another criminal. Yes, he was involved in a robbery. Yes, a man was killed in the commission of the crime. I understand that the dead man deserves justice done. That the law-abiding in society should be protected from the scofflaws. But I also believe justice must be tempered by mercy. Jake made a mistake. He didn’t pull the trigger that ended the victim’s life. An eyewitness even testified to that fact. He had a family, a wife, to take care of. I believe the sentence of fifteen years was excessive, considering the circumstances. I know of cases where men were incarcerated for that length of time and even less for shooting someone. The law out here is very … unpredictable.” He studied Sayles’s craggy features a moment. “I suspect you don’t agree. My hunch is you have an Old Testament view of things.”

  The barkeep brought a clean glass to the table for Hanley. Sayles poured two fingers of whiskey into it. “What does that mean?”

  “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” When it came to strong spirits, Hanley preferred brandy, but he tentatively sipped the whiskey since the Ranger had been kind enough to share. “The problem is, what you do to one person usually affects other people as well. In this case, Purdy Eddings. You’ve seen Jake. Probably talked to him. You think he has been punished after two years in prison? Do you think he will be any more chastened and remorseful after thirteen additional years behind bars? Or will he become embittered, violent, desperate?” He held up a hand. “Rhetorical questions. I am just saying, Jake Eddings was not a hardcase outlaw. But he might well be one thirteen years from now when he walks free. As for Purdy, if she thought her husband would be free and in her arms in a year or two she might be able to hold on to hope. But fifteen years, Mr. Sayles? That’s a lifetime out here.”

  Sayles sipped his third dose of whiskey. He wasn’t sure what rhetorical meant but it was clear the lawyer didn’t expect him to express an opinion. “Well, speaking of hardcases, two such killed a couple of lawmen on a Brazos riverboat yesterday. From what I was told they headed east, but they might have doubled back, crossed the river, and gone west, where there’s less law. Either way, they’re somewhere in these parts, and if that Purdy Eddings is alone…”

  “My God!” exclaimed Hanley, an expression of horror on his face.

  “… you might want to go fetch her, and the boy’s body, today.”

  Temple Hanley was not a brave man, and he didn’t delude himself into believing otherwise. A quick calculation of time and distance convinced him that even if he left right away he could not be back in Cameron before nightfall. But knowing that Purdy was potentially in great peril, waiting until the morning was out of the question. “Yes, yes, of course.” He put his hat on, rose from the chair, and then, as an afterthought, picked up the glass and downed the rest of the liquid bravemaker it contained. The expression of high anxiety on his face made it possible for Sayles to anticipate what was coming next. “Mr. Sayles, could I … could I trouble you to come with me?”

  The Ranger grimaced. He had been looking forward to enjoying his bottle of Old Overholt and then laying his weary body on something besides the hard cold ground. He knocked back the third shot and corked the bottle, stuffed it under an arm, and rose, picking up the Winchester repeate
r and the sawed-off 10-gauge shotgun. “Go get yer wagon, Mr. Hanley,” he said, without enthusiasm. “I’ll fetch my horse.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jake Eddings lay on his side on a narrow bunk in the Cameron city jail cell, knees pulled up as if hugging himself against the cold; the thin, musty brown blanket he had been provided wasn’t sufficient to keep the bitter chill at bay. There was no heat source in the cell block. The sheriff kept the door closed to trap the warmth produced by the potbelly stove in the office. After two years in prison Jake was accustomed to having his health and well-being disregarded. He understood that as a consequence of his crossing the line and breaking the law he no longer warranted any consideration from others.

  In a way he wished he was back in prison. At least there, among men and women who through their actions had become outcasts like him, he hadn’t felt as ashamed as he did now that he had come home. Even though he remembered Tom Rath all too well from the weeks during which he had languished in this very jail before and during his trial, the sheriff’s contempt drove home an indisputable truth—that he was a loser. He’d had a loving wife, a beautiful child, land to call his own as long as he paid the banknote. He had been on his way to becoming a respectable member of the community. That had always been of foremost importance to his father, but Jake really hadn’t given it much thought. He had been wrapped up in his family, not his self-image. Now his son was dead, and he blamed himself, even though it was unlikely his presence would have changed anything where Joshua’s sickness was concerned. Without their son’s help, how was Purdy going to be able to hold on to the farm by herself? She certainly couldn’t afford to hire any help. But the most troubling question of all was—How could he expect Purdy to spend the next thirteen years of her life waiting for him to serve out his sentence?

  For the past two years he had longed to see his wife again, an agony that was like a knife in the heart. Every single day he woke up with it, tried to get through the day with it, and then went to bed and tried to sleep despite it. Now, though, he didn’t know how he could face her. He had let her down, had ruined her life. She had been forced to watch their son die all by herself and he had not been there to even attempt to comfort her. Even so the painful longing to see her was stronger, now that he was only a few miles away. It made his eyes burn with tears to think of her out there, alone and hurting. Angry and bitter, he cursed himself for being such a worthless husband and father.