Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man The Eyes of Texas

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’m not in town,” Matt said as he paid for the beer. “I’m just passing through. Thought I’d have a couple of drinks, eat some food that isn’t trail-cooked, then be on my way.”

  “What brings you to this neck of the woods?” the barkeep asked.

  “Nothing in particular,” Matt said.

  A man who was standing at the other end of the bar looked over toward Matt.

  “I don’t think you’re goin’ to like it here, mister. I think you’re goin’ to find that things here is just a little too quick for your kind. You’d best just keep on movin’.” The comment was low and sneering.

  Paying no attention to the comment, Matt lifted the beer to his lips. Taking a swallow, he wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Is there a place to eat in this town?”

  “There’s Kate’s Place just down the street. Nothin’ fancy, but the food is good,” the bartender said.

  “Good is good,” Matt said.

  “Hey, mister, are you deef?” the man at the far end of bar asked. “I said you’d best just be movin’ on.”

  Matt turned to look at him for the first time. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with a dark, bushy beard. Matt figured that he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Mister, you seem to have something stuck in your craw,” Matt said. “What would that be?”

  “I don’t like saddle bums,” the bushy-bearded man said.

  “Waters, you got no call to ride one of my customers like that,” the bartender said. “He ain’t done nothin’ but buy a beer, which he paid for.”

  “I know his kind. I seen ’em before, back when I was workin’ as a bum chaser for the T and P. Bummin’ rides on the cars, they was. Hell, I’ve lost count of the number of ’em I’ve thrown off the cars between Shreveport and El Paso.”

  Matt picked up his beer and held it toward Waters. “Here’s to you, Mr. Waters, for keeping the railroad safe.”

  “I don’t drink with no-’count bums like you,” Waters said.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Matt replied. “Is it that you don’t drink with any no-account bums? Or is it that you don’t drink with no-account bums like me?”

  The others in the saloon laughed, and Waters, realizing that they were laughing at him, grew very angry. He pointed at Matt.

  “I don’t like you, mister,” he said. “I don’t like you at all.”

  “I guess that means you won’t be asking me to the barn dance. And I was so looking forward to it.”

  Again, the others in the saloon laughed.

  “Waters, you was sayin’ things here is a little too quick for this fella. Looks to me like he’s a little too quick for you,” one of the bar patrons said.

  Waters, his face flushed red with anger and embarrassment, charged toward Matt with a loud yell. Like a matador avoiding a charging bull, Matt stepped easily to one side. He pulled his pistol and brought it down hard on Waters’s head as the big man rushed by, and Waters went down and out.

  Matt put his pistol back in his holster, then picked up his beer. “Does Mr. Waters greet all your customers that way?”

  “To tell the truth, mister, we don’t get that many visitors in Sherwood. But Waters pretty much has the whole town buffaloed. I reckon he figured he needed to take you down, just to show everyone else that he was still the top rooster.”

  Finishing his beer, Matt put the glass down and slapped another nickel on the bar beside it. “I’ll have another.”

  “No, sir,” the bartender said, pushing the coin back.

  Matt gave the bartender a questioning look, and the bartender smiled.

  “This one is on me.”

  When Waters came to a minute later, he stood up slowly, then rubbed the bump on his head.

  “Say, what happened to me?” he asked. “How come I was lyin’ on the floor like that?”

  “You must’ve gotten some bad whiskey,” the bartender said.

  “Bad whiskey?”

  “Yes, you took a swallow, then started runnin’. You must’ve tripped and fell, ’cause next thing we saw, you was lyin’ there on the floor.”

  “Bad whiskey?” Waters repeated.

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. I poured the rest of that bottle out.”

  “How come I got a knot on top of my head?”

  “You must’ve hit the foot rail when you fell.”

  “Yeah,” Waters said, still rubbing his head. He started toward the door, walking unsteadily. “Yeah,” he repeated. He had no idea why everyone in the saloon was laughing at him.

  Half an hour later, when Matt tried to pay for his meal, Katie refused to take his money.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I heard what you did to Waters. The whole town has heard. It’s worth the price of a meal, just to see him get his comeuppance.”

  “I appreciate it,” Matt said.

  As Matt rode on, he thought of the little town he had just come through, off the beaten track. Except for his run-in with Waters, the people had been nice. He hoped it would survive, but doubted that it would.1

  Chapter Nine

  Shady Rest

  In order to satisfy the demands of the mayor’s wife, Annabelle O’Callahan took an inventory of all the dress-making fabric she had on hand and realized that it was going to be necessary to go to Van Horn to buy new material. She didn’t mind making the trip—she needed to restock some items anyway—so she would let the dress she was making for Mrs. Trout be both the excuse, and the financial basis of the trip.

  Van Horn wasn’t much larger than Shady Rest, but it was located on the Texas and Pacific Railroad, and because of that, it acted as a distribution point for goods and supplies that came in by rail from all over the country. Shady Rest was connected to Van Horn, indeed to the outside world, by the Van Horn and Shady Rest Stagecoach Line. There was only one coach, and it made a run to Van Horn on one day then returned the next day. Annabelle, as she had done many times before, put up a sign in the door of her shop, or shoppe, as she preferred to spell it.

  Elite Shoppe closed for the day.

  Gone to Van Horn for supplies—

  will reopen in two days.

  George Tobin operated the stagecoach line and handled the ticket sales and all the book work. He had four employees: two drivers and two shotgun guards. They alternated the trips, and on the day they weren’t on the trip, they maintained the livestock and equipment at the home depot.

  When Annabelle approached the depot she saw that the team was being connected. Dusty Reasoner was standing near the rear of the coach with one hand up on the boot.

  “Good morning, Miss O’Callahan,” Reasoner said as Annabelle passed by the coach. “Are you taking a trip with us today?”

  “Yes, I have to buy some material. Are you our driver?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m driving, Jim Richards will be riding shotgun. I’ll try and give you folks a real smooth trip today.”

  “Good, I’ll hold you to that,” Annabelle replied with a smile.

  “Hello, Miss O’Callahan,” a young woman greeted when Annabelle went into the depot. The young woman was Mindy, one of the girls who worked at Suzie’s Dream House. Suzie’s Dream House was a house of prostitution, but, as Mayor Trout had said at the last Merchants Association meeting, Suzie ran a clean house, with the doctor checking the girls regularly. And there had never been any trouble at her place of business.

  Annabelle recognized Mindy because she had made a couple of dresses for her.

  “Hello, Mindy. Are you going to Van Horn this morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m going to catch the train back east. My mama lives in St. Louis, and she’s took sick. I need to go back and look after my two little sisters.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sorry. I hope your mother recovers soon.”

  “Yes, ma’am, me too. She don’t know what I am. She thinks I’m working as a maid in a hotel. I don’t know what she will think of me, when I tell her
.”

  “Don’t tell her,” Annabelle said.

  “But what if she finds out?”

  “How likely do you think you are to run across someone from Shady Rest in St. Louis?” Annabelle asked.

  Mindy smiled. “Not very likely, I don’t reckon.”

  “Then she’s not likely to find out. Sometimes, it’s best to keep some things secret,” Annabelle said, thinking of her own secret past.

  Dusty Reasoner stepped into the depot. “If you two ladies will come climb aboard, we’ll get on our way,” he said.

  Van Horn, Texas

  That afternoon Annabelle was standing at the fabric table looking at the bolts of cloth thereon displayed.

  “Hello, Annabelle. It’s good to see you again,” Glenda McVey, the owner’s wife said. “What brings you this time?”

  “I’m to make a new dress for the mayor’s wife,” Annabelle said. “And I want it to be something special.”

  “Well, let me help you. We just got in some new cotton sateen that is quite lovely,” Glenda said. Over the next several minutes, Glenda helped Annabelle pick out six bolts of material, from white cotton, to green silk, to purple wool.

  “Do you want your purchases shipped to you, Annabelle?” Glenda asked.

  “No, thank you, I’ll be going back on tomorrow’s stagecoach. Could you have them taken to the depot so they can be loaded onto the coach?”

  “Of course, I’ll be happy to do that,” the owner’s wife said, satisfied that the transaction had been quite substantial.

  Leaving the fabric shop, Annabelle wandered through the other shops, buying a hat at one, and a reticule at another, while checking out all the stores to see if she could get any ideas for her own.

  Annabelle ate dinner alone that night, then turned in fairly early. The forty-mile trip from Van Horn to Shady Rest the next day would be tiring.

  Pecos

  Prichard had quickly become very popular as a deputy sheriff. He helped women with their packages, and when he arrested drunks, he did so without belligerence or unnecessary force. He broke up fights in saloons, protecting the smaller and weaker men from being bullied. He visited the Rogers Ranch to again express his regrets for what happened between him and Teddy Rogers. And though the pain of his loss was still keen, even the Rogers family was ready to forgive him.

  Everywhere Sheriff Nelson went, he was complimented for having hired Abe Conner.

  “I recognized something about him as soon as I saw him,” Sheriff Nelson said. “Maybe you ain’t noticed the way he talks, but I have. That is an educated man. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t a doctor, or maybe a lawyer or something.”

  “If Deputy Conner is an educated man, what’s he doin’ workin’ as a deputy?” Ray Kelly asked. Kelly owned the feed and seed store.

  “I’m goin’ to ask him some day,” Sheriff Nelson said. “I don’t figure now’s the time to do it—too early, I’d say. But more’n likely we’re goin’ to find out that somethin’ tragic happened, like maybe a wife dyin’ or somethin’ like that, to cause him to turn his back on his profession.”

  The mystery of Prichard’s past, rather than arousing suspicion, merely enhanced his status in the eyes of the citizens of Pecos. More than one single woman and widow of the community began to look at him as potential husband material.

  Van Horn

  Braxton Barlow walked down the dark street from the depot toward the town. The Railroad Bar was the most substantial-looking saloon in a row of saloons, but there was a drunk passed out on the steps in front of the place and Braxton had to step over him in order to go inside.

  Because the chimneys of all the lanterns were soot-covered, what light there was, was dingy and filtered through drifting smoke. The place smelled of cheap whiskey, stale beer, and sour tobacco. There was a long bar on the left, with dirty towels hanging on hooks about every five feet along its front. A large mirror was behind the bar, but like everything else about the saloon, it was so dirty that Braxton could scarcely see any images in it, and what he could see was distorted by imperfections in the glass.

  Over against the back wall, near the foot of the stairs, a cigar-scarred, beer-stained upright piano was being played by a bald-headed musician. At a table next to the piano he saw his two older brothers, Ben and Burt. It was Ben who had come up with the idea of holding up a stagecoach.

  “It’s a lot easier than robbin’ a bank,” Ben told them. “Once you rob a bank, you still got to get away, and that means ridin’ right down the middle of the street so’s that damn near ever’ one in town can take a shot at you. But whenever you hold up a stagecoach, you’re already out in the country. It’s as easy as takin’ candy from a baby, ’n all you got to do after you get the money is just ride off.”

  Ben was the oldest of the three Barlow brothers, Burt was in the middle, and Brax was the youngest. When Ben suggested they hold up the stagecoach to Shady Rest, it wasn’t hard to talk his two brothers into going along with it.

  “How much money will the stagecoach be carrying?” Burt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “But they always carry some money, deliverin’ it back and forth between banks, and such. And if nothin’ else, the passengers will be carryin’ some money, ’cause there don’t nobody travel anywhere without takin’ some money with them. It’ll be as easy as takin’ candy offen’ a baby.”

  “You know what I’m goin’ to do when we get the money?” Brax asked.

  “What?”

  “I’m goin’ down into Mexico and I’m goin’ to buy me the best-lookin’ whore I can find. No, no, make that the two best-lookin’ whores I can find. One for the daytime and one for the night. And I’m goin’ to get me some whiskey. . . .”

  “Tequila,” Burt said.

  “What?”

  “If you’re down in Mexico, you won’t be gettin’ no whiskey, you’ll be getting’ tequila.”

  “All right, tequila, what do I care? I’m goin’ to get tequila, then I ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ but lay with the whores and drink tequila ’til the money runs out.”

  Ben laughed. “What you should do is get a pretty daytime whore, and an ugly nighttime whore. The ugly whores don’t cost as much.”

  “Why do I want a ugly whore? Iffen I got the money, I want me a pretty whore.”

  “Hell, at nighttime, ugly is as good as pretty. You can’t see ’em in the dark anyway,” Ben said.

  Burt laughed. “He’s right. No sense spendin’ money on a pretty whore at night.”

  “When are we goin’ to hold up the stagecoach?” Brax asked.

  “Tomorrow mornin’,” Ben said. “The coach will leave at about eight, so I figure if we leave around six in the mornin’, we’ll be in place to waylay it when it comes by.”

  “Yeah. Good idea,” Burt said.

  “Six o’clock? That’s awful early, ain’t it?” Brax complained. “You really think it’ll take us that long to get to wherever it is we’re goin’ to be to do the robbin’?”

  “I want plenty of time to find the right place,” Ben said.

  “I agree with Ben,” Burt said. “Six o’clock ain’t too early to make sure the job gets done right.”

  “Good, I’m glad that’s settled,” Ben said. “So, you boys be ready to go when I call for you in the mornin’.”

  Chapter Ten

  Pecos

  “Abe, we got a new batch of wanted posters in yesterday afternoon, and I’d like you to take care of ’em.”

  “Take care of them in what respect?”

  “Well, like we might get a poster that says somethin’ like, ‘John Calhoun is wanted,’ only John Calhoun has already been caught, or killed. So if that’s the case, you just tear up the poster and throw it away.”

  “How will I know the status of the subjects?”

  “What?”

  “How will I know if ‘John Calhoun’ has been killed or captured?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Along with the posters, there will also b
e an update on the status of previous posters. If you get a notice that a poster is being recalled, you can take it down. I also have a list in my desk drawer of previous withdrawals, so check them all against that list, just in case you get a duplicate. The posters that are good, you can put up on the wall here, then later go down to put them at the post office.”

  “All right, that doesn’t sound too difficult.”

  “I know this might be borin’ work for you, bein’ as how smart you are and all. But it’s generally the job that the junior deputy does, and since you’ve been a deputy for the shortest time, it’s goin’ to be your job.”

  “I’ll be glad to do it, Sheriff, and I shall do so without complaint.”

  Sheriff Nelson smiled.

  “You’re a good man,” he said. “I’m going to take a stroll around town. I’ll back in a while.”

  “Take your time, Sheriff,” Prichard said as he started through the posters. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  The third and fourth wanted posters were for Mutt and Prichard Crowley, offering rewards of five thousand dollars for each of them. There were also dodgers out for Bill Carter, Lenny Fletcher, Dax Williams, and Titus Carmichael, offering fifteen hundred dollars. That surprised him, because he didn’t know they had even been identified.

  Prichard smiled as he tore the flyers into small pieces. This was exactly why he’d taken the job. It took him about forty-five minutes to go through all the posters and to make the updates. He had just finished when one of the jail prisoners called out from the cell area behind the office.

  “Hey, Sheriff.”

  Prichard, who was drinking coffee, stepped back into the cell area. The prisoner who had called had been brought in the night before for public drunkenness, having been found passed out on the street. He was sitting up on the edge of the bunk, and he ran his hands through a shock of unruly hair.

  “Something I can do for you?” Prichard asked, as he took a swallow of his coffee.