Savage Texas: The Stampeders

by William W. Johnstone

  “Listen to me, Della Rose . . . she’s gone. She passed on, peaceful they say, not long after you left.”

  Tears rose and trailed down a beautiful face and across trembling lips.

  “Sorry to tell you, girly. I reckon I should have told you before, but it’s been for so long as if she was dead anyway, there didn’t seem much call to distress you over it.”

  “It’s all right, Uncle Cale. It is. If she’s gone, she’s gone, and like you said, she’s been gone a long time already.”

  “I miss her. Fine woman, my sister was. But she married bad.”

  “I know. Papa did wrong things. But you got to remember, Uncle Cale . . .”

  “That I followed right along and joined in with him. Yep, I know that, girly. And now with Curry gone, here I am still doing it. Still planning to, anyway. That’s part of why I come to see you today. I got to learn where all this stands now.”

  “I would think I could ask the same question of you.”

  “You can. And I can tell you that on my end of things, we’re ready to go. We’ve just been waiting for you to come tell us when to get it started. And if this is going to be done, it can’t wait much longer. I know the cattle have been seen, by who I don’t know, but there’s been men spotted watching and looking. Raises a lot of questions for folks, I reckon. That ain’t your usual throwed-together herd of mavericks, most of them. Them’s branded cattle for the most part. All kinds of brands, but most bear the Heller brand. What’s going to happen is that somebody is going to decide what’s going on is some kind of big rustling operation. Or if they are savvy enough to know a bit of history, they may figure out the truth, that this is a stampeder plan.”

  She nodded and said nothing.

  “Let me just get right to the heart of it and ask you straight out, Della Rose: you still want to do this? We could turn them cattle back out loose on the plains as easy as you please, and go our way and be done with it. You’d have some mighty angry men on your hands, though. They see this one as something big, bigger, maybe, than most of what they did when your daddy was still leading them. They won’t turn away easy. Might not turn away at all, no matter what you say.”

  Her manner changed when he said that. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

  “All right. All right, I will. You ain’t going to like hearing it, I don’t think.”

  “Talk!”

  “Fine. Let’s just run through it from the start. What we’re doing here is getting ready to revive the Black Ears, and revive ’em big. This time with somebody different at the head of it all . . . you. Black Ear Skinner’s own born daughter, his pride and joy. Taking up what her daddy had to leave behind when a bullet caught him in Mason. And besides reviving the gang, we’re going to make us a piss-pot full of cash and gold, courtesy of Mr. Rich Man Carpetbagger Sam Heller of Hangtree, Texas. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And we’re going to go about this from two . . . no, three . . . angles. We know that Heller ain’t a totally trusting man . . . he’s got lots of money but don’t trust banks to keep it all. So he puts only a part of it in the bank here. The rest he puts . . . well, nobody knows for sure. But the figuring is, if anybody could get Heller to let the cat out of the poke, it’d be a pretty lady who gets close enough to him. That being you.”

  “Right.”

  “Has that happened? Have you cuddled up enough with him to get him to talk?”

  “We kind of got interrupted, you know.”

  “By Brody, you mean.”

  “That’s right. By Brody, and a smashed head.”

  “Forget all that a moment. Let’s move ahead. The plan is, you find out where Heller hides his money that ain’t in the bank, and how to get to it. Second part of the plan, we stampede that big herd of cattle we’ve been collecting up out there right through this town and pound it to splinters. Meanwhile, with the town having its hands full with the cattle running everything and everybody into the dirt, we get into that bank and clean it out. Everything Sam Heller has becomes ours . . . property of the back-to-life Black Ears, and their leader, Della Rose Skinner. That’s the plan.”

  “When you spell it out like that, it sounds . . . sounds . . .”

  “Loco? Yeah, it does. Except that it’s been done before. Little settlement over in East Texas, stampede tore through it three years ago, just an accident . . . and while the town was getting run over, some smart old boys there got the notion of cleaning out the local bank vault, which was standing open when the cattle came through, and also the stock of a gunsmith shop and a silversmith, all in the same town. They did it, got away clean, and never got caught. Happened there, it can happen here, with the difference being that the stampede happens when and how we want it to.”

  “If we can get all the advance work set up.”

  “The cattle are in place. And skittish. It ain’t going to take much to stampede them. We got to get the rest of this in place, too, and move soon. And I mean real soon.”

  “I can’t even stand up for long without holding to something for balance,” she said. “And lying up here in this bed I ain’t in much position to be galivanting around with Sam Heller to persuade him to tell me where he keeps his fortune.”

  “Hate to say this to my own sister’s daughter, but if you can’t galivant around with Heller out there, maybe he can do some galivanting with you up here.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, not out of moral offense, but because of the sheer impracticality of it. “Uncle Cale, you’d best remember what ‘up here’ is. This is the spare bedroom in the local preacher’s house. Neither Sam Heller nor anyone else is going to be allowed to come up here and ‘galivant’ with me in a parsonage bedroom.”

  “Then you’d best be figuring up another way to go about it, and fast. The cattle ain’t the only thing getting restless out there. I got a bunch of men starting to ask why we really need a ‘play-pretty girl’ running this, anyway. They respect the memory of your father and the name of the Black Ears . . . but they don’t see that this couldn’t be done for the most part by them alone. Even if the money Heller keeps hidden somewhere is never found, there’s still enough money in the Hangtree Bank to make it worthwhile. And the stampeding you wouldn’t be part of, anyway. They can pick their time, run them cattle in, and get that bank robbed at gunpoint before the local law can even see through the stampede dust.”

  “But that would be wrong. This isn’t just another bank robbery. This is for my father, for his memory and his legacy. It has to be led by a Skinner to mean what it should mean.”

  Martin shook his head. “Girly, listen to your uncle. The men out there rode with your father and backed him up to the end. They were proud to be Black Ears with the original Black Ear himself. The point of all this being that they ain’t doing this for the same reasons you are. For you it’s family pride and a daughter picking up where her father was forced to leave off. For them, it’s a job. A strike. Money to be got. They ain’t going to wait much longer to reach out and take it.”

  Her heart was racing in her chest and it was hard to breathe. For the first time she wondered if this was going to happen, at least with her involved. Everything felt like a train about to jump track, and she had no idea what to do about it. Not while she was still laid up.

  “Brody’s fault, that’s what it is. If he hadn’t come along . . .”

  “But he did come along, Della. Just a sorry devil your father made the mistake of hiring one time. And I reckon Brody must have took a shine to you, the wrong kind, and there you are.”

  “Tell them it will be soon, Uncle Cale. Tell them to be patient just a little while longer, and keep a look out for trouble. And before you know it the ground will be shaking and cattle will be rumbling by, and what’s in that bank vault right now will be in their saddlebags. Our saddlebags.”

  “I’ll tell them. I don’t know how much they’ll listen. There’s been talk lately of another way, maybe an easier way. There’s a b
anker, name of Caldwell. He’s in a position to be pressured. He could get us in, get us access to the vault . . .”

  “Do what you have to, then. But remember who it is who is running this thing. And Uncle Cale . . . who is it who is stirring things up?”

  “I ain’t going to say, girly. Nothing gained by it.” And without saying anything more, he was gone.

  Julia felt very tired all at once. Closing her eyes, she fell asleep propped up against the headboard.

  “What are you thinking, Cale?” asked Drew Toleen of Cale Pepperday after his return from visiting his niece.

  “Drew, I hate to say it, but I don’t believe we’re going to be able to wait on her anymore. She says she wants to go on, but I don’t know. Something ain’t right. Maybe she’s got cold feet, or is getting religion, or just getting scared . . . but I think this thing is either going to be done by us, fast, or not done at all. Just my gut feeling, but I ain’t usually wrong.”

  “When, then?”

  “They got a big town dance coming up in two nights. I say let them dance theirselves ragged and crawl off late to bed, then hit the next morning when they’re still wore out. Get it done and get out of town.”

  “What about the vault? How will we get it open?”

  “It’ll be open. Don’t fret.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sam Heller, plagued by doubts raised by the things Johnny Cross had told him about the Skinner family picture in Otto Perkins’s studio, had put off paying a call on Julia Canton, choosing instead to quietly check in with Myrtle Bewley, who was dropping in to see Julia regularly, and other times getting information from Claire Fulton. He knew that he would be driven to put the question to her directly if he sat down with her: are you Julia Pepperday Canton, or are you Della Rose Skinner?

  Heller wasn’t afraid of much, but personal confrontations of that sort distressed him. His affection for Julia made him loathe to endanger his relationship with her, something he feared a direct question might do. So he hung fire, walking and riding past the parsonage where she resided at the moment, but never going to the door.

  Until now. He simply couldn’t wait. The postponed town dance was two nights away, and the town was expecting him to escort the lovely Julia Canton. He couldn’t leave the matter unsettled.

  So it was he strode now toward the parsonage, flowers in hand and making him feel so foolish that he tried to hide them with his body, a task of course not fully achievable. Still worried about how a direct question regarding her identity might be received, he decided to simply let conversation progress where it would.

  Claire Fulton greeted him quite politely and offered him coffee and a vase for his flowers when he came in. He accepted both. After a few minutes of strained conversation, he was left alone while Claire went upstairs to make sure her houseguest was in a position to receive company.

  She came downstairs and Heller started up with flower vase in hand. Claire stopped him and suggested he leave his mule-leg on the mantelpiece, it not seeming a fitting item to carry on a visit to an injured young woman. Heller complied and handed the weapon down to Claire, who accepted it in a manner suggesting she thought it might bite her.

  The reunion was as clumsy as Heller had feared, but Julia’s warm manner eased the strain substantially. Heller was glad to learn that she remained pleased to accompany him to the dance, and the conversation became amusing as she described to him a visit from Hilda Farley the day before. Hilda told her that her husband, Claude, had composed a piece of fiddle music he called the “Brave Maiden Waltz,” dedicated to her. It was his intention to play it while she and Heller waltzed before the attendees.

  “Oh no, no . . . I ain’t no trained circus bear, some dancing critter in a show tent. I ain’t even sure I know how to waltz, Julia.”

  “We can practice. Right now.”

  “You ain’t supposed to be doing such, are you?”

  “That was right after I was hurt. I’m fine for it now, as long as I don’t trip and fall.”

  “You start planting them dainties of yours down where my big old paddles are slapping the floor, trip and fall is just what you’ll do.”

  Clad in her nightgown and a modest white robe borrowed from her hostess, Julia got out of bed. Heller held her hand to steady her, and they simply walked about the floor a few moments, letting her get past the dizziness that still plagued her. She did so swiftly, and began to hum an old waltz tune, breaking up the music with instruction on the art of dancing in three-quarter time.

  The bedroom door remained open at Claire’s instruction. As the wife of the local parson she found it important that wrong perceptions be avoided. But as they waltzed about the relatively small open space on the floor, Heller inevitably tapped the door and it closed. When Claire did not appear and reopen it at once, they relaxed and waltzed a little faster to Julia’s hummed music.

  “See?” Julia said as he held her close. “You can do it! And so can I . . . I’m not falling over or even feeling very dizzy.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Julia. I could go on holding on to you like this all day long, I think. And maybe through the night, too. Am I wrong in speaking so?”

  “I’m not offended in the slightest. But I do feel all at once like I might fall. Help me lie down . . . I’m dizzy.”

  He held her steady and moved her back to the bed, where she sat down, looking peaked. He looked closely at the white bandage skillfully emplaced on her head by Claire Fulton, and saw no sign of fresh blood penetrating.

  “I think I should lie down now,” she said.

  “We may have to pass on the dancing at the big play-party,” Heller said. “Claude can play his new waltz and everybody else can have at it, but I think you may need to recover a little longer before you get out there swinging about and all. Don’t you think so, Della?”

  They both froze rigid at his calling of that name. She looked at him with eyes wide and jaw fixed, and he felt like the world’s most bumbling fool.

  He hadn’t planned to call that name. He’d lost himself sufficiently in the dance and the closeness of her that the whole matter of her name had been nearly forgotten. But now that it was out it was out. He looked at her and tried to read her expression.

  “Why did you call me that?” she asked weakly.

  “I didn’t plan to . . . it just came out.”

  “But why? Why that name?”

  “Does the name mean something to you?”

  “What it means to me is that you’re here with me, but there’s someone else on your mind. Someone named Della.”

  There seemed little point in dodging now. “Della Rose Skinner, to be exact.”

  He felt her tense, body flinching up hard as flint. “Who?”

  “Maybe you know.”

  “Sam, what are you talking about? Why are you . . .”

  “I’m told there is a picture of the family of Black Ear Skinner right here in this town. Taken some years back. And in that picture is . . . you.”

  “That’s absurd! Why would I be in a picture of some outlaw’s family?”

  “What I’m told is that it’s because maybe you were part of that family. That your real name is Della Rose Skinner, and Julia Canton was a name made up to use in place of the real one.”

  She spluttered and seemed authentically stunned. “Why would . . . how can . . . who is it telling you these tales?”

  “Folks who are generally to be relied upon.”

  “Where is this picture? I want to see it.”

  “I ain’t got it. I ain’t even seen it. But one who has tells me there’s no mistake. It’s a younger gal in the picture, but the gal is you, clear as morning.”

  “It’s nonsense! My name is Julia, not Della whoever! How could you believe anything different? I told you myself who I am. You think some old picture can change my identity? My history? Whoever is in that picture, it isn’t me. Somebody else. Take my word!”

  “That’s all the word I’ve got to go by. On the other s
ide, though, there’s the fact that somebody who can be trusted on such things swears that picture shows you.”

  “You’re simply choosing to believe someone else over me, then?”

  “There’s more to it than that. Tell me something, Julia. How was it you were so sure in naming that Toleen brother in that picture at the Dog Star as being Cal Toleen? How would Julia Pepperday Canton, preacher’s daughter from Georgia, know one outlaw twin from the other?”

  “I . . . didn’t. I was just talking. It was just something to say.”

  “Mighty odd thing to say just to be saying, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe it was. I suppose I thought it would make me sound like I knew important things. I don’t know! I just said it.”

  “Don’t cry on me now, Julia. I don’t like it when women cry on me.”

  She clenched her teeth at him. “And I don’t like being called a liar and told I’m the daughter of an outlaw, when I know perfectly well who I am!”

  Sam had expected this might go badly. And it was. For a few moments there was nothing but silence between them. Then a sudden light rap on the bedroom door, and a slightly alarmed Claire Fulton opened the door and peered in, her alarm stemming from the fact they were together, in her house and the church’s house, in a bedroom with the door closed.

  When she saw them both sitting on the bed, she blanched. “Julia? Are you all right?”

  “Fine, Claire. I’m fine. We’re fine. Nothing for you to worry about here.”

  Sam stood. “I’d best be going.”

  Claire was ill at ease and seemed glad to hear Sam was going. “Perhaps so. But thank you for coming by and paying call on Julia. And forgive me for my nosiness, but I must ask: are you two planning to grace the town dance with your presence?”

  Sam looked at Julia as he said, “I think we are, ma’am. So is my understanding, anyway.”

  Julia’s smile was but a flicker. “Of course we are,” she said.

  “Are you two sure there is nothing wrong?”

  “Not a thing, ma’am. Not a thing. Good day to you, ladies.” And Sam Heller was gone, pausing only to retrieve his mule-leg rifle from the downstairs mantelpiece.