Hell in the Nations: The Further Adventures of Hayden Tilden (Hayden Tilden Westerns Book 2)

by J. Lee Butts

  Couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “What might that be, Cletis?”

  He got up close and talked low like he feared someone might hear him. “Well, sir, if’n yew’d like ’em, I’ve got several boxes of Ketchums in the barn too.”

  That one left me completely in a fog. Couldn’t figure out what he meant. Thank goodness Carlton saved me the trouble of embarrassing the hell out of myself, though. He blurted out, “What the hell’s Ketchums?”

  “Wait right here. I’ll get some of ‘fer yew.” He sprinted back to the barn, and we could hear him dragging a lot of heavy stuff around inside for a good bit. After a couple of minutes more, he reappeared with a small wooden crate across his arms and sat it on top of the cannon’s ammo box.

  “They’s eight of ‘in here. You can have ’em. Cain’t imagine I’ll ever have any use fer ’em.”

  Carlton pulled the lid back and lifted out what looked like a silver rocket with red paper fins. Broad-bent was so proud of himself he almost glowed. “They’s called Ketchum grenades. Yew throw ‘like a big dart. They’s nose-heavy as hell, and when they hits on that flat plate there on the end, yew get a hell of an explosion. Only good fer close-up work, though. If’n I wuz yew boys, I’d only use’m if’n nothing else worked. Oh, keep ‘in this here box. Wouldn’t want to bump ‘around overmuch neither.”

  Carlton gazed into the crate and said, “Hell, man, these things are fifteen years old. How do we know they’ll actually work?”

  “I keep ‘up high and dry. Trust me, they’s still good. But if’n yew want, we’ll try one out.”

  Devilment jumped around in Carlton’s eyes again as he said, “Now that sounds like a damned good idea, don’t it, Hayden?”

  Couldn’t do anything but nod while Cletis raced back into the barn and came out about a minute later gingerly carrying one of the grenades in front of him like an offering to some hidden god of thunder who was about to make a surprise appearance.

  We strolled back out to his cannon range, and stood behind a busted-up piece of wagon that looked like he’d put it there just for the trick he was about to perform. “The kids like these ’uns. I throws one fer ‘’bout once a year. Ain’t got but fifteen or twenty lef’ now. I’ll count to three and pitch her out. We gonna have to duck down behind this here wagon on three.”

  We stood behind him while he counted. When he got to three, we all ducked. Guess ole Cletis managed to pitch that thing about sixty or seventy feet. Then there was a hell of an explosion. Little pieces of hot metal flew in every direction and rattled our wagon-bed screen like someone hit it with a sledgehammer. Damned thing blew a hole in the ground about two feet deep and ten feet across.

  Carlton gandered at the damage like a man amazed and muttered, “Goddamn, Hayden. If I get a chance, I’m gonna throw one these things right into Big Eagle’s drawers.”

  Cletis made a heavy-duty point of warning Carlton to be careful with the grenades again before we pulled out. We carefully strapped their crate to the top of the ammo box after Carlton padded the inside with some extra straw—and that just about did it. Hitched our horses up to the rig, waved good-bye to ole Cletis as he stood in his scruffy yard counting his money, and dragged the whole shebang back to Fort Smith. Gunpowder didn’t seem to mind the pull much, but that meaner’n-hell dapple-gray mare Carlton called The Beast snorted, honked, flounced in the traces, and tried to bite everything in site for miles before she calmed down.

  Started hunting for a posse soon as I got back in town. Even though it was beginning to get dark, didn’t take but about ten minutes of Beulah sitting outside the courthouse door to draw every marshal in from the Nations for a gander at Carlton’s new toy. Just about had my pick of anybody I wanted. Course it shouldn’t take a genius to guess who I asked to go with me.

  Handsome Harry Tate ambled up, caressed the cannon’s barrel, and smiled. He’d traded his monstrous beaver hat for a brand-new felt Plainsman with the brim pushed back out of his heavily mustachioed face. His pearl-handled pistols glistened in the dying sunlight, and I noticed he’d added a matching third gun and holster across his lower back.

  He strolled around Cletis’s cannon, chuckled, scratched his chin, then stopped and shook my hand. “Don’t know why someone hadn’t thought of this before, Hayden. Might well be the only for damned sure way to get at Big Eagle. You need some company?”

  “Love to have you, Harry. You seen Bixley Conner lately?”

  “Think the Marshal sent Bix to Mobile, Alabama, to serve an extradition warrant on Elton Bob White, that Choctaw gentleman who cut his wife into four or five fairly equal pieces several months ago. Probably won’t be back for two or three weeks. You gonna take Old Bear with you?”

  “As you well know, that hairy sometime-Indian tends to come and go as he pleases. To tell the absolute truth, I haven’t seen him in more’n a month. Thought he might show up when I went out with Barnes Reed, but didn’t spot hide nor hair of him. When Thunder fell and Smilin’ Jack was dusting me with rifle fire that sounded like a Gatling gun, hoped he’d pop up and save me.”

  Harry smacked the leg of his shotgun chaps with a leather quirt and laughed. “Billy Bird’s upstairs in the Marshal’s office. He’s spent the past few days trying to whittle a six-pound chunk of stove wood down to something like a toothpick. Man’s so bored, someone claimed they heard him say he was going to carve himself a sailboat. Bet he’d jump at a chance like this.”

  “Well, why don’t you go tell him we’ll be leaving in the morning? Love to have him along for the hunt. Figure four of us should be plenty. Carlton Cecil agreed to go. Hell, he’s so worked up about firing this thing, he can hardly sit still. He and Billy can pilot the tumbleweed. We’ll hitch the ammo box and cannon to it. We can tie the extra horses and a couple of mules to the tail end of this rig. Sound good to you?”

  “Judge Parker couldn’t have planned it any better himself.” He smiled and started for the courthouse door, then stopped with his hand on the knob and called to me, “Hayden, I’ll throw a few sticks of dynamite in with our supplies just in case things don’t work out the way we want them to. You just never know.”

  “Good idea, Harry. See you in the morning.” Cannon, Ketchum’s, and dynamite. If there was any other kind of weapon we needed and didn’t have, I couldn’t bring it to mind.

  Thought we had everything pretty well set when I started for home that evening. Rode up to the house and spotted a horse I didn’t recognize out front. Knew it couldn’t be Elizabeth, she never got in from a long day at the store before dark. Real rough looking feller had a comfortable seat in my favorite chair there on the veranda. He stood and ambled up to the porch rail as I tied Gunpowder off at the hitch rack.

  “You Tilden?” Silver spurs of the Mexican type attached to high-heeled boots jingled and sang as he came to a stop and looked down at me from his perch on my porch. Heavy canvas riding pants were stuffed in the tops of the leather stovepipes that came up almost to his knees. White Texas stars and fancy colored stitching you couldn’t miss seeing, decorated the front, sides and backs of them.

  “You are correct, sir. And who might you be?”

  He flashed a toothy grin at the world in general and said, “Might be Andy By God Jackson or Abraham By God Lincoln, or even Sam Houston, but they’re all dead—so I must be Lucius A. By God Dodge, Texas Ranger extraordinaire, and I know you’re gonna be glad to meet me.” Another five-pointed star inside a circle of silver twinkled and glittered on the left pocket of his rough vest.

  Made my way up the steps as he sheathed a foot-long bowie knife he’d been using to carve up a piece of wood about the size of an eight-foot-long two-by-four. Man had so many pistols and knives hanging on him, it became something of a puzzlement for me to figure out how he managed to stand and walk.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Ranger Dodge,” I said as we shook hands. Pointed to his gunbelt. “You figure on running into some serious trouble from all appearances.”

  He glanced
down at the twin Smith and Wesson .45’s hanging on his hips. With an itchy left forefinger, he tapped the grip of the hideout gun in a shoulder rig under his right arm that was made almost invisible behind a cowboy bandanna. He pushed his bear-killer of a knife forward and checked the Colt snugged against his back before he grinned, made a clicking sound at me, and said, “Well, a man in our business just can’t be too careful these days, now can he, Mr. Tilden?”

  Found it hard to argue with reasoning as sound as that. “Guess not, Mr. Dodge.”

  Motioned for him to resume his seat, and took the chair next to the table. He seemed perfectly at home, like he’d been sitting in my chair on my porch all his life. He crossed his right leg onto the left and dropped his palm-leaf sombrero—crimped and formed in a stylishly Western manner—onto the toe of his boot. A leather case from his inside vest pocket produced long, thin, black cigars. He offered me one and took another for himself.

  “Think we . . . can be of . . . some help . . . to one another, Mr. Tilden,” he said while at the same time lighting the panatela and puffing it into action.

  “How’s that, Mr. Dodge?”

  “Well, there’s a rumor going around you might be about to take a party up the Canadian to Martin Luther Big Eagle’s nest.” He pulled a lung of the heavy smoke down and blew it into the air. “Heard you’re looking to catch a no-account named Smilin’ Jack Paine. Way I’ve got it figured, anytime you come across Smilin’ Jack, you’ll probably also run into a slithering bag of pus named W. J. McCabe.”

  “Never heard of the man.”

  He pulled an official-looking pile of paper from his belt and dropped it on the table. The top sheet was a wanted poster for W. J. McCabe. My new Texas Ranger friend went on talking like I wanted to know everything he could tell me about a subject he clearly enjoyed discussing.

  “Ah, W. J. McCabe. Been after the man going on a year now. All started when he celebrated his departure from the clutches of education in the town of Posey, Texas, by beating hell out of the schoolmaster and burning the community’s one-room center of learning to the ground. He scampered away before Mr. Harvey Monday—the aforementioned much-abused schoolmaster—could bring charges. W. J. took umbrage at the audacity necessary to put the law on his back, and promptly returned and shot Harvey Monday deader’n last week’s beefsteak. Killed him on the steps of his classroom while he was ringing the morning bell. About twenty terrified kids witnessed the bilious shooting of a man most of them liked and respected.”

  “And I take it that was just the beginning?”

  “Absolutely. Witnesses have identified him as having taken part in at least three robberies, another killing, and there exists some evidence he’s done his share of horse theft, stage holdups, and cattle rustling. Think he probably robbed the Jacksboro stage at least three times. He evidently stole so many cows from the Bow and Arrow Ranch down in south Texas, the owner put up a five-hundred-dollar re-ward for his capture.”

  “You figuring on taking the ever-lovely W. J. back to Texas for the money, Mr. Dodge?”

  “Couldn’t care less about the re-ward, Mr. Tilden. Harvey Monday was my mother’s brother. I intend to watch W. J. swing for that killing—or put so many holes in his sorry hide that the state of Texas won’t have to waste the money, time, and effort to hire a good hangman.”

  “And you want to ride along with my posse in the hope McCabe is nesting with Big Eagle and Smilin’ Jack up at Robber’s Roost in Red Rock Canyon.”

  His face lit up and he smiled like a man who’d just been told about the birth of his first son. “That I would, Mr. Tilden. Yes, sir, I would indeed.”

  “Why don’t you call me Hayden, Lucius? If we’re going to be on the trail together for a spell, I’d get real tired of being called Mr. Tilden.”

  “My pleasure, Hayden. You reckon I could camp out here on your place till we start for the Nations?”

  “Throw your stuff in the barn. There’s a cot in the tack room. Elizabeth, my wife, should be home soon. I usually start supper a-cooking and she finishes up. Call you when it’s ready.” I figured we’d have to forgo our usual pre-departure dinner at Julia’s. Knew Elizabeth wouldn’t stand for us leaving a guest in the barn with nothing to eat.

  He stood, picked up the warrants and other paper on W. J. McCabe, and stuffed it all back into his belt. “An actual home-cooked meal would be much appreciated, friend Tilden,” he said as he tipped his hat. He jingled down the steps to his gray mare and pulled the reins loose.

  Couldn’t help but notice the arsenal that decorated his tough-looking mustang. “How many guns you got hanging on that poor animal, Lucius?”

  “Oh, just the usual. Four Colt’s Dragoons and a ’73 Winchester. Don’t really need the rifle, though. These Dragoons are still the most powerful pistols known to man. When me and Hateful here get to running and shooting, we can pump out almost sixty shots without stopping to reload.” He smiled, patted the animal on the neck, and pulled at her mane. “Makes it real hard for men like W. J. McCabe to put us down, and even the wildest of Injuns just naturally give us a real wide berth. There’s men of every race all over Texas what ball up in knots of fear when they see Hateful coming.”

  He’d already started for the barn when I called out, “You named your horse Hateful?”

  Over his shoulder he threw back, “Once you get to know and love her the way I do, you’ll understand.” The animal must have sensed he was talking about her. She snapped at his hand, then tried to push him aside with her nose.

  “You see?” he said as they disappeared into the barn.

  Dodge turned out to be something of a lady-charmer. He came to the table freshly shaved, dressed in a clean shirt—minus all the weapons I’d seen earlier that afternoon—but still wearing those Mexican spurs. His deep-fried accent and courtly Southern manners had Elizabeth dithering around the table like a girl half her age. When our evening came to a close, and I told him we’d be leaving first thing in the morning, he seemed genuinely disappointed his stay had ended before it got started. He kissed Elizabeth’s hand as he took his leave. Thought the woman would pass out. She flushed up and got to batting her eyelashes so fast, I thought she would lift off the floor and fly around the room.

  Stood on the porch, had a whiskey, and smoked another cigar with him after dinner. He took his liquor mixed in a cup of coffee and said, “I do like a dab of stump juice with my sour mash.”

  “Pretty sure you’ll find all your traps in order when you get back out to the barn, Lucius. Not many around here would have nerve enough to come on my property and take anything.”

  He started out grinning, then laughed so hard he had a coughing fit that caused him to have to sit down for a moment on the porch rail. “Hell, Hayden, left all my stuff in the stall with Hateful. Any of these bold sons of bitches here in Arkansas, or the Territories for that matter, with brass enough to get within ten feet of that animal can have every damned thing they’re man enough to carry off.” Then he started laughing again, winked, and ambled off toward the barn. Those big Mexican spurs sang jingling songs to a moon that floated silently overhead in an inky black sky. Just before he disappeared inside, he held the cup up above his head in salute.

  When first light came, Lucius A. Dodge, Texas Ranger extraordinaire, got to witness something not even Billy Bird or Handsome Harry had ever seen.

  Every time I had to take my leave of Elizabeth—it got more difficult. We’d worked my actual departures down to a little ritual. She always fixed a good breakfast on the morning I left, and sat at the table while I ate. Walked me out and watched until I got to our gate at the bottom of the hill. When I turned and placed my hat over my heart for her, she waved good-bye. Just nothing like my memory of that glorious woman standing on our veranda with the sun coming up behind her. Even now, sixty years later, when I close my eyes at night, I can still picture her waving farewell like we might never see each other again.

  As Lucius and I turned toward Fort Smith, he said, “
You are one truly lucky son of a bitch to have a woman like that, Marshal Tilden.”

  I remember blinking back a tear when I told him, “No one knows it better than I do, Lucius.”

  4

  “DONE FOUNT ME A BODY.”

  “HAYDEN, IT’S GETTING a bit late in the day. Much as I’d like to hear the rest of this business about Smilin’ Jack, think we might better take it up again sometime tomorrow. Maybe around one in the afternoon.” Lightfoot leaned forward in his chair and brought shaking hands up to his tired hollow-eyed face.

  “You sure you’re going to make it back tomorrow, Junior? Hell, you sure you’re going to make back it to your car?”

  Poor drag-assed boy waved absently over his shoulder and mumbled, “Hey, the only thing that could keep me from an appointment with you would be an unexpected late-night visit from Veronica Lake.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. See you tomorrow afternoon.”

  Watched him all the way to the front door before I called Jerimiah Obidiah Samuel Henry Jones over and got him to help me get myself out of the wicker torture instrument that seemed to have caved in a bit since I first sat down in it. Hell, the minefields just seemed to pop up all over the place when you get as old as Carlton and me. Something as simple as sitting in the wrong chair had the possibility of turning into an ordeal, if you didn’t keep a sharp eye on where you were and what you were doing.

  Hobbled down to Carlton’s room. Stood in the hall and peeked in through the crack between the hinged side of the door and the frame. Nurse Heddy McDonald fussed around his bed. Kept talking to him as she fluffed his pillow and straightened his sheets. She checked all the tubes and rubber hoses flowing into his worn-out old carcass, and then bent over and whispered something in his ear. Swear she looked almost like someone in love. Managed to sneak into the room before she spotted me.