“No idea,” said Barton. “But I don’t like it. Puts me on edge.”
“Amen to that,” said Heller. “Seems like the only newcomer to Hangtree lately who ain’t tied in with the Black Ear gang is that pretty woman who knocked that man’s teeth out in church.”
“She’s been going about town with Johnny Cross, you know,” said Barton.
“That’s only because she ain’t had the chance to meet me yet,” replied Heller, and grinned.
The man named Bill Creed who had joined the late Hiram Tate in tormenting Timothy Holt turned out to have a Wanted poster of his own, but with a relatively miniscule award attached. There was no known connection in his case to the infamous and allegedly defunct Black Ear gang beyond the fact he had traveled to Hangtree with Hiram Tate. Quizzed closely by Barton as to what had led Tate to come to Hangtree at all, and whether Bill had any knowledge of why the other dead Black Ear, Toleen, had come to Hangtree as well, Bill Creed professed no knowledge of either matter.
Barton, alone in the jail with Bill Creed, who was chained to a chair, pulled a gleaming knife from a sheath and pressed the tip directly beside Creed’s Adam’s apple, hard enough to barely break the skin. A small red drop trickled down Creed’s neck.
Barton’s voice was a snarl. “Listen to me, you dog: I’m the sheriff of this county, and this is one sheriff who gets mighty nervous when members of one of the foulest criminal gangs on this side of the nation start turning up in his county. We’ve got one of the Toleen brothers rotting in his grave on Boot Hill, killed by God-only-knows-who while he was heading toward this town. We’ve got your partner Hiram, a known Black Ear, causing trouble in our streets and getting himself killed. And we had an old fellow who used to be a Black Ear years ago trying to rob a Sunday morning church congregation. Ever heard of such a thing? Bothers me to see such things happening in my county and my town. But you know what really bothers me about it all, Mr. Creed? Do you?”
“N . . . no, Sheriff. I don’t.”
“It bothers me that every one of them folk are tied to Black Ear Skinner. Every one! Makes me want to know why!”
“I don’t know, sheriff. I don’t. I rode with Hiram, I don’t deny it, but there ain’t no crime in just traveling with a man. And Hiram wasn’t no member of the Black Ear gang lately . . . Black Ear Skinner has been dead for years now. Shot down in the town of Mason during a stagecoach robbery. Bled to death in the dirt. Hiram saw it with his own eyes. After that the Black Ears scattered out and there wasn’t no gang no more. Still ain’t, far as I know.”
“You seem to know a good deal about Black Ear business, Mr. Creed.”
“Just what Hiram told me, that’s all. Hiram was the Black Ear, not me. I’m just a common old man of the road, that’s all.”
“Um-hmm. A common old man of the road who robbed two freight offices in Arkansas, shot up a dance hall in San Antonio, and beat up an old Cherokee man up in the Nations.”
“Sheriff, I know I’ve done wrong things and broke laws. But I swear to you, swear right on a Bible if you want me to, that if you’ll let me go from here you’ll never see me in your county again, nor hear of me doing no more law-breaking. Not anywhere. I’ll give it all up and be as good a man as you’ll find. I swear it. Just give me a chance, Sheriff Barton. I beg you.”
“Mr. Creed, you’re the kind of man who has had chance after chance already, and pissed away every one of them. I got no reason to think you’ve got any good inside you. I don’t believe a man like you can follow the law. It’s in your blood and bone to break every rule you run across. You can moan and swear and repent and make all the promises you want to me here today, but I believe that if I let you go out that door and get on your horse and ride, before sundown tomorrow you’d have robbed some poor old farmer or cattleman, and stole the pie cooling in some widow woman’s window. Then you’d be on to the next town and doing it all again.”
“I won’t, sir. I swear I won’t.”
“I’ll hold you to that, friend. I want you to ride out of this town and this county, and I don’t want to see you back here again. We don’t need more of your kind in Hangtree.”
“Sheriff, I’ll be more than happy to leave this place. It’s been nothing but trouble for me.”
“What were you doing in company with such a man as Hiram Tate, anyway? That man had ties to some bad folk. Real bad.”
“I know. I should have stayed clear of him. But I didn’t. I let whiskey lure me. He was willing to buy and I was willing to drink with him, and after that I just ended up riding with him a spell. I shouldn’t have done it. I knew he was a no-’count man.”
“Worse than that. He was part of the Black Ear bunch, you know it? You’ll not run across fouler scoundrels than them devils. And dear departed Hiram ain’t the only Black Ear we’ve had show up hereabouts lately. One of the Toleen brothers was found shot dead out on the road into town. An old-timer from Black Ear’s earlier days actually tried to rob our local churchgoers on a Sunday morning, right in church. Spunky gal visiting the service knocked his teeth down his gullet with a wooden collection plate for his trouble.”
“The hell!”
“Got me right worried, these Black Ears drifting in here.”
“If I was a sheriff, it’d worry me, too,” Bill said. “I can’t deny it.”
“Did you know any others of the Black Ears besides Hiram Tate?”
“No, I didn’t. Didn’t know Hiram all that well or all that long.”
“Did he ever talk about the Toleen brothers?”
“Mentioned them only once I can remember. Said they didn’t get along with each other very well.”
“Maybe our dead Toleen was kilt by his own brother, then.”
“Maybe.”
“Let me just ask you straight-out: Mr. Creed, do you have any notion, even a good guess, why old members of Black Ear Skinner’s gang might be congregating theirselves in and around Hangtree, Texas?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know how I would know such a thing, and I’d be not much inclined to try to guess,” Bill Creed said. He risked a small joke. “Maybe Black Ear’s boys are getting together to set up a school for poor Comanche children. You reckon?”
“Not likely, Mr. Creed. Not likely.”
Sheriff Barton arched his back and winced as his spine made an audible pop. His gut rumbled just as loudly right after.
“Mr. Creed, sir, a minute ago you said something about how you wish I’d just let you walk out of here and leave our happy little community. Well, you know I can’t do that. But I’ll tell you something, and you can figure for yourself how you want to deal with it.”
“Uh-huh,” muttered an obviously puzzled Bill Creed.
“Sir, this old sheriff needs to pay a visit to the outhouse out behind the courthouse. Now, from the noise my gut is making and the messages it’s sending me, I can tell you I can’t dawdle around long before I make that visit. So I’m going to put you on your honor here and leave you sitting right here while I go tend to the needs of my gut. Now, there’s a knothole or two in the privy walls that a man can see out of if he’s squatted on the hole, but none where I could see anybody coming or going from where we are right now. So even though a law-respecting sheriff can’t give a prisoner permission to walk out of a jail, the fact is, for the next few minutes I ain’t going to know if, say, you lit up from where you’re setting there and headed out the side door. I ain’t suggesting you do that, for if you do I’ll have no choice but to write you up as an escapee . . . but I’m just saying that if you did do it, I’d not even know about it before you had time to scratch a good bit of gravel.” The sheriff’s intestines grumbled and gurgled again, even louder, and he put a hand to his abdomen. “Well, there ain’t no more waiting. I’m heading for the outhouse, and I’ll leave you to think about what I just said. But if I was you I wouldn’t think too long. I’ll be in that outhouse awhile, but not forever. And my deputy—Clifton Smalls is his name, big tall beanpole of a feller—he’ll be
back here any time now.”
“Sheriff, you leaving me free to walk out?”
“You’re my prisoner. You ain’t allowed to just walk out. But an open door is an open door. Know what I’m saying, Mr. Creed?”
“Why, Sheriff?”
“Hell, even a good lawman can forget to close and lock a door behind him . . . especially when he’s about to mess his own britches. No more time to talk, sir. I’ll be in the outhouse if you need me. Just one last thing, in case this is my final chance to say it: Next time you’re in a town and you see some poor half-wit sweeping the boardwalk in front of the general store, and you get hit with a strong temptation to torment him a little, resist it. Just look that temptation in the eye and resist it. Gotta go now.”
And he was gone, out of the room and then out of the jail, heading for the outhouse at a fast trot.
Bill Creed required no time at all to think through his situation. He was out of the building almost as fast as Sheriff Barton was, laughing in his throat and marveling at this most unexpected and welcome turn of events. His lucky stars had been good to him. Mighty good.
Time to say good-bye to Hangtree, Texas.
CHAPTER TEN
Myrtle Bewley had not intended to discuss with her employee the unfortunate matter of Timothy Holt having been publicly tormented outside the Lockhart Emporium by two troublesome strangers, one of them now deceased through violence. But her new part-time clerk had mentioned it on her own. Myrtle was not one to pass up the latest town gossip, which she traded in more than in sewing thread and thimbles. Especially if someone else brought it up.
“It’s disgusting, absolutely disgusting, treating a helpless fellow like Timothy in such a way! Humiliating him for the sake of some perverse idea of fun! It makes me furious!”
“I can see that,” Myrtle replied to Julia Canton, who had come in asking about employment the day after her first visit to the dress shop. Myrtle suspected that Julia didn’t so much need the meager pay as simply something to do with her time in a town full of strangers. Myrtle could tell from Julia’s manners, way of dress, and general bearing that she possessed some level of means and was accustomed to a comfortable standard of living. And her diction and vocabulary revealed the tracks of a good education.
None of that much mattered to Myrtle. What had led her to hire Julia was the prospect that she would stir new business, and that had proven true. Myrtle had been quite amused to see how many Hangtree men suddenly found cause to visit a dress shop, a place most had shunned in the past except for those times their wives forced them to bring them into town for fabric, thread, or a new garment. In Julia’s brief tenure in the shop so far, Myrtle had seen men who possessed neither wives nor known intimate companions visiting her shop for no obvious reason beyond the chance to have a look at Julia Canton, and if they dared, to converse with her. Also amusing was the fact that female business in the shop had also increased, letting Myrtle know the women of Hangtree were well aware that there was a new standard-setter for feminine beauty in their town, and wanted to have a look for themselves at what had their men so distracted.
“People can be very hard on weak ones,” Myrtle said. “Especially in country like this, where being weak is a danger. They shouldn’t have been treating poor Tim that way, but that’s the way people do, and it isn’t something you can expect to change.”
“I have . . . I had a brother who was much like Timothy. That’s why I care so much about it when the feeble-minded are mistreated.”
“You are a woman with a good heart in her bosom,” Myrtle said, thinking but certainly not adding aloud that it was surely Julia’s bosom itself, not the heart within, that had the attention and admiration of most of Hangtree. “Nothing good in the hearts of the men who plagued the poor boy, though. I hear rumors that at least one of them used to be among the ranks of the gunhawks who rode for none other than Black Ear Skinner, a devil if ever there was one.”
Myrtle was looking out the front window of the shop as she said those words, eying a nicely dressed man who was unfamiliar to her. He was loitering on the far side of the street, slowly lighting a cigar with a sulfur-and-phosphorus match he’d struck against a porch rail. His eyes, Myrtle noticed, flicked up occasionally to look toward the dress shop as he stretched out his tobacco-lighting as long as possible. Occupied with watching the man, Myrtle did not notice the little jerk of Julia’s head when she said the name of Black Ear Skinner.
“I think I’ve heard of him,” Julia said. “An outlaw, I think?”
“The worst of them. Thank God he’s dead and gone. Killed during a robbery he and his gang were committing.”
Julia said nothing. Her gaze had followed Myrtle’s out through the front window to study the stranger across the street.
“You know him?” Myrtle asked her employee.
“How would I know a dead outlaw?”
“I mean the man out there. He’s a stranger to me.”
“I’ve been in this town far less time than you,” Julia said. “How would I possibly know him?”
“I’ve . . . somehow I’ve angered you,” Myrtle said.
Julia gave one of her bright-as-daylight smiles. “Nonsense! You’ve done nothing to anger me at all. Why would you think that?”
“Never mind it, then. I just talk too much, that’s all. Now I think I’ll go put the spools of thread back in order. Somebody played fruit basket turnover with them.”
“I hadn’t realized it or I would have straightened it out myself,” said Julia. “I’ll be more aware of such things as I get used to this place and the way things are supposed to be.”
“If you can straighten those bolts of cloth in the corner a bit, that would help greatly,” Myrtle said.
“I’ll get on it right away.”
Myrtle hummed as she worked, and after ten minutes of it, Julia found it annoying. There was no prudent way to complain, however, so she forced her attention to the bolts of cloth customers had knocked awry, and mentally hummed a tune of her own to try to drown out Myrtle’s off-key warbling.
A glance out the window a few moments later revealed the man who had been lighting the cigar and watching the store was no longer there. Julia looked up and down the street as far as the window would allow, and did not see the man. For some reason either instinctive or silly, she was glad he had gone. There was no good reason to think his presence out there had anything to do with her, but the feeling was there that, in fact, it did.
Probably just another man hoping to get a look at her, Julia told herself. She’d lived long enough now as a nubile and exceptionally beautiful young woman to realize she was an inevitable leading attraction anywhere she went. It was exhausting. She knew that other women were jealous of her, and a time or two had tried to explain to some of those she counted as friends that there was little to envy in her situation. It was virtually impossible for her to know whether men who were drawn to her saw anything in her beyond her appearance. Even those whom she allowed to get to know her as a person didn’t seem to care much about any aspect of her other than that which was superficial and unimportant. There were many times in her life when she had longed to move among others without drawing any attention to herself. To disappear, and reappear as someone else. Someone merely average, a face in the crowd.
Such was not possible for a female of such remarkable beauty. So Julia had learned to use her extraordinary appearance, the aspect of herself that, to her, seemed more a handicap than a benefit, to her own advantage. With a mere smile and brush of her hand, she could obtain from men what she needed and wanted. Money, praise, help in times of trouble, even physical protection. Whatever she might do in her life, she knew and accepted the fact that her true profession would be manipulation.
Even now, in this meaningless little job in a tiny dress shop in a nowhere town, a job she had sought out sheerly to avoid boredom, she was playing a manipulative game. Julia could tell that Myrtle Bewley was a woman with a certain degree of sense and acumen, eno
ugh to realize that having a lovely young woman in her shop would be good for business. She had played on that to manipulate the woman into giving her what she wanted.
Julia had just straightened the last bolt of cloth when she realized that Myrtle at last had stopped her droning humming. Yet still Julia heard music. Not humming, though, but fiddle music, and muffled to the point that she wondered if she might be imagining it. No, there it was again. Real music, coming from the direction of the back of the shop.
Myrtle came walking up and admired Julia’s improvements of the display of fabric. “Looking much better,” she said. Then she cocked her head and listened to the hard-to-hear fiddle music. “And Claude is sounding better this year than last, too. Improvements everywhere we look and listen!”
“Claude?”
“That’s right. The fiddle music—you hear it, don’t you—that’s Claude Farley. He’s been the resident fiddler in this town for about as long as it has been here. He taught himself, and for the first year or so his fiddling sounded a little like a screeching cat with its tail being squeezed in a clothes wringer. And that being a cat with very little ear for melody.” Myrtle tilted her head a little further and nodded with the rhythm of the music. “Yes, better now, much better. Claude must have been practicing out there in that farmhouse the last couple of years.”
“I can’t hear him well, but he sounds fine to me,” Julia said.
“Do you know him?” Myrtle asked.
“No. I’m quite sure I don’t.”
“I think you’ve probably met him and don’t realize it. He lives in the same boardinghouse you’re in now. You’ve probably dined at table with him and his wife, Hilda.”
“I thought you said he lived in a farmhouse.”
Savage Texas: The Stampeders Page 7