by J. Lee Butts
Eyes wide in surprised childlike wonder, Boz muttered, “Jesus, Lucius. A thousand dollars? Each? That there’s a buncha money. We’d work our fingers to the bone chasin’ badmen for Cap’n Culpepper for such an amount. Hell’s iron bells, that’s more money than all three of us together’d see in a year. Maybe two.”
Glorious Johnson’s eyes popped open. “Heard you right, didn’t I? You’d give us each a thousand dollars, miss? Each?”
Clementine quickly seized on her advantage. Perked up, grinned, and said, “Give you an additional thousand to split three ways if you can find out why those men did what they did. You know I can do it. You’re looking right at the proof of my ability to pay up.”
I let my cash-heavy hand drop to my side. “We can’t do this, fellers.”
“Oh, yes, we can,” Boz snorted. “Oh, hell yes, we can. Leastways, I sure as hell can.”
Glo appeared to stiffen. “Look here. I ain’t never had that much money in hand at one time in my whole life, Mistuh Dodge. How come we cain’t take it? Do what this here chile wants and get paid. We’s gonna go after them mens anyway. Gonna hang ’em, or kill ’em, if’n we catch ’em. Ain’t no doubt about that. For once, we might as well get paid well for our troubles.”
For the first time that day, Clementine Webb flashed a toothy, satisfied grin. “Then is it settled? Do we have a deal, gentlemen?”
I slapped my leg with the stack of bills. “Well, now wait just a minute. I never said any such thing.”
Glo propped his shotgun on one shoulder. “We done always took a vote when things got difficult in times past, Mistuh Dodge. Think we’d best take one now.”
Boz looked pleased that someone had come up with a viable method for solving the problem. He grinned like an opossum in a plum tree when he said, “There you go. A vote, by God. We’ll take a vote. That’s the ticket. Democracy in action. Right out here on Devils River. I vote yes. We should take Miss Clementine Webb up on her offer of one thousand dollars each for killin’ Pitt Murdock and his gang of sorry-assed cutthroats. Who’s with me?”
14
“. . . COULD GET LUCKY. KILL THE WHOLE BUNCH OF US . . .”
A BRITTLE SUN, the color of liquid gold, dangled low in a heat-blasted, late afternoon sky. Fiery orb appeared as if pasted there by an angry God. I drew my froth-covered mount to a halt on the western bank of the Dry Devils River. Stood in the stirrups and stretched the knotted muscles of my aching back.
Clementine Webb slid from the animal’s muscular rump and set to slapping at her sweat-drenched, dust-covered clothing. Boz and Glo pulled up alongside us. Bear stuck to the girl like a happy, tail-wagging puppy.
Bone tired, us man hunters stepped down and held the reins as our animals drank from the barely moving, ankle-deep tributary of the larger, deeper Devils River. On the far side of the sluggish stream, less than a hundred yards to the east, wiggly, squirming waves of midday heat rose from the baked buildings and tired landscape of the near-nonexistent village of Carta Blanca.
“Place ain’t never been much of a town,” Boz said and fished a nickel cheroot from his inside vest pocket, then stoked it to life.
Using my hat, I whacked at the layer of coarse, irritating grime that covered me from head to foot. Stood in the cloud of powdery, swirling grit I’d generated and said, “Looks like it’s even less of a town now than it was the last time we were over this way.”
“World’s kinda passed on by, Dodge. Done heard rumors as how Dusty Biggerstaff’s Nueces Billiards Parlor went and burned slap to the ground several months ago,” Boz offered. “Came close to breakin’ my heart when I heard tell as how the fire just ripped the guts right outta what little was left of this place.”
I leaned against Grizz’s side. “Yeah, I heard that one, too, Boz.”
“Damned shame,” he continued. “Ole Dusty had the only decent snooker table within a hundred miles of these parts. Plus, his hangout was, for damned sure, the spot a man could depend on to have a mug of cold beer and a friendly game of nine ball goin’ anytime you ’uz travelin’ ’tween Sonora and Del Rio. Yep, done spent many a pleasant, idle hour with a pool cue in my hand in that joint. And now she’s gone. Nothin’ but a heap of stinkin’ ashes left.”
I knelt in the wet sand, dipped my hat in the lethargic stream, then slapped the waterlogged chunk of handwoven, Mexican palm leaf back on my sweaty head. The soothing liquid ran down my neck and onto my broiling shoulders as I rose. Hands on hips, above the grips of my pistols, I glared across a glass-smooth waterway that looked almost as though it had frozen in spite of the blistering heat.
For as far as a man could see, in either direction, a single dirt trace ran along the easternmost bank of the river, from north to south. Carta Blanca’s narrow, central thoroughfare split off the wagon-rutted Del Rio road and snaked its meandering way through the forlorn village.
Half a dozen aged, shabby, run-down businesses lay scattered about on either side of the town’s gloomy Main Street. All the crude buildings a body could lay an eye on stood at odd, incongruent angles to one another, as though the berg had been platted, drawn up, and then carelessly erected by a troop of drunken, giggling children.
Behind the few remaining shops and stores, low, adobe houses roofed with layers of limbs and twigs, stained in washed-out shades of pink, blue, or yellow, cropped up amongst stunted live oak and mesquite trees like blocky, out-of-place wildflowers. Built into the base of a squatty, rock-strewn hillock, Mendoza’s Cantina proved the exception to that rule. Locals all knew that Mendoza lived in rooms behind the bar that he’d tacked on to the back of his watering hole.
As I swabbed at my dripping neck with a frayed bandanna, I said, “Well, boys, if Dusty’s place has sure enough burned, doesn’t leave a passing man much to do in Carta Blanca but drink. From here, thank God, appears Big Jim Boston’s corral and smithy operation is still cranking along over yonder to the south.”
“Yeah,” Boz said, “can see smoke wafting off the forge.”
“Looks like Miss Martha Hooch’s rooming house is still standing, too,” I continued. “Only two-story building in this part of the country. Guess a body could still purchase a decent meal there, long as he’s willing to pay dear for it. And it seems as though Eldritch Smoot’s pissant-sized mercantile outfit, next to Big Jim’s, is still operational.”
Glo squinted, shaded his eyes with a dripping hand, shook his head, and said, “Done heard tell as how mos’ dem houses and buildings yonder’s emptier’n last year’s rattlesnake nests, Mistuh Dodge. Might remember when my friend Moses Blackstock stopped in at the ranch for a visit month or so ago. Mose said there warn’t ’nuff people left in Carta Blanca for a decent card game.”
Slipped my long glass out and socked it up against one eye. “Can’t see but two horses out front of Mendoza’s. Big bay mare and a piebald gelding.”
“Them hosses belongs to two of the Pickett boys,” Glo offered. “Priest and Cullen as I remembers. Leastways, them’s the ones what was ridin’ hosses like them you’ve described when I snuck up on ’em earlier this mornin’.”
“Roscoe on either animal?” Boz said.
“Naw. That ’un they calls Roscoe was mounted astride a big ole hoss what was blacker’n a sack full of witches’ cats on a moonless night. Hoss gave me the creepin’ willies jus’ lookin’ at it. Swear as how Satan, his very own self, musta rode that animal straight up out of the smolderin’ pit. Kep’ thinkin’ maybe the beast was actually gonna breathe real fire whilst I ’uz lookin’ at it through my own long glass.”
The scope made an angry series of metallic clicks when I slapped the big end with an open palm. “Would be the two worst of them Pitt boys we’ve caught up with, wouldn’t it?”
Boz let out a derisive chuckle. “Sweet Jesus, Lucius, all three of the Pickett boys is in serious cahoots with horned Satan. Their reservations for a room in a festerin’ hell were made the day they got born. Whole family’s lower’n a snake’s belt buckle. Even the women.
Hell, that sister of theirs, Winona, is just about tougher’n the snout on a wild sow.”
From behind us, Clementine scratched Bear’s ragged ears and called out, “Are the three of you bold gentlemen just gonna stand here by the river and talk all day? Might as well throw some blankets on the ground and have a picnic. Skip rocks on the water. Play hopscotch. Or maybe you gents can pull your pocket knives and play mumbletypeg.”
I cast a sidelong glance over my shoulder. Didn’t take much for a body to recognize that a stern hardness had replaced the girl’s earlier displays of fear, emotional loss, and hesitant indecision.
“You seem a might anxious for more bloodshed, Clem,” I said.
The Webb girl flipped her shock of straw-colored hair to one side and kicked at a fist-sized rock with one foot. “Yes. You could say that, Mr. Dodge,” she snapped. “I’ve contemplated what would happen when we caught up with these killers. Pondered the problem all the way from the site of my family’s sorry grave. I’ve come to the conclusion that the men responsible for my present situation owe me their blood—every drop of it. And you’ve already sworn to deliver their blood to me. So, let’s get this hoedown started.”
I swung my gaze back to the grubby collection of buildings across the river, slapped a glove-covered palm with my reins, then said, “All right, here’s how I think it’d be best to handle this dance. We’ll circle around to the south. Ease up on the backside of Big Jim’s stable. Spend a few minutes talking the situation over with Jim. Then we can decide on how to approach the problem from there. Everyone okay with that idea?”
Boz and Glo both nodded and grunted their approval at the same time.
Clementine strode up beside the horse. “Let’s be on our way then. Quicker those men are in the ground, the better I’ll like it.”
I climbed back aboard, then helped the girl up to her spot behind me. Once she’d settled in, I touched Grizz’s side with one rowel and urged him into the shallow stream.
Unnoticed, our small posse slipped along the riverbank around Carta Blanca to the south. In a matter of minutes, we arrived at the back entrance of Big Jim Boston’s dilapidated corral and smithy concern. The busy, musical sound of metal ringing against metal sang through the sultry air.
Boston’s weathered, board-and-batten livery barn sported a comic, drunken lean toward the east. Boz sat his animal in the building’s wide-open back entrance. He flicked a grinning gaze from one side of the structure to the other. During a lull in the noisy shoeing, he called out, “ ’Bout one good gust of wind outta the west and Big Jim’s gonna be wearing this place around his ears like a wooden hat.”
From the stable’s dark interior, a low, earth-thumping voice rumbled out, “I heard that, Tatum. If’n you don’t particular like my place of commerce, for one reason or ’tother, then you can, by God, take your trade sommmers else. Hear tell as how folks have several fair to middlin’ blacksmiths in Del Rio. Don’t like the way any of their places look, might have to head on over Uvalde way. ’Course, the best man there’s my brother, Jake.”
As our party dismounted, a totally bald, shiny-pated, bullet-headed man the size of a freight wagon stepped from the barn’s murky shadows. Adorned with a stained leather apron, the giant sported a moustache the size of a draft horse’s hind leg. Covered in a layer of soot, grease, and grimy grunge, he wiped ham-sized hands on a ragged chunk of nasty burlap, then flipped the rag onto an equally grubby shoulder.
I moved forward, flashed my friendliest grin, grabbed one his enormous smithy’s hands and shook it. “Good to see you again, Jim,” I said.
Eyes the color of coal flicked a narrow, inquisitive gaze from me, to Boz, and to Glo, then finally landed on Clementine Webb. The big man’s glance lingered on the girl as he said, “Been a spell, boys. You fellers ain’t had much business over this way lately. Ever since y’all went and set up house out yonder on Devils River, don’t think any of you’ve been by more’n once or twice. Not like the old days when ya’ll used to come breezin’ through these parts two or three times a year chasin’ Injuns, rustlers, crooked gamblers, footpads, and killers.”
“Been livin’ the unhurried, leisurely life of gentlemen horse ranchers, Jim,” I said. “Spend most of our time these days sitting on the front porch whittling and spitting. Trying to rest our various hurts and bullet holes.”
Fisted mitts on muscular hips, Big Jim Boston glared at us from beneath a knitted brow. “What’re you ranger boys doing over this way this mornin’ then? Sure as hell ain’t much goin’ on in this dried-up, dyin’ berg.” The massive smithy’s black-eyed gaze zeroed in on Clementine Webb again, then knifed back to me.
I hooked both thumbs over my pistol belt. “Got two, maybe three men drinkin’ over at Mendoza’s, Jim?”
Boston waved a filthy hand at the slab of darkness at his back. “Workin’ on one of ’ems big ole black mount right now. Threw a shoe. Animal’s borderin’ on the most uncooperative, spiteful beast I’ve ever took in hand.”
“Three of them waiting for you to finish up?” I said.
“Sounds right to me. Was five of ’em earlier, I believe. Maybe six. Not exactly sure. Caught a glimpse of ’em ridin’ by when they first came into town. Rough lookin’ bunch, Dodge. That bunch is rougher’n the calluses on a barfly’s elbows. Got myself back inside. Just hopin’ they’d do their drinkin’, leave me alone, then head on out.”
“Appears that didn’t happen,” Boz offered.
“Naw. Think maybe two or three of ’em stopped about long enough to throw down a single shot of Mendoza’s least lethal cactus juice, then they hit the road headed for Del Rio. Leastways, that’s what I figured on anyhow. Made me mighty happy to see them as headed out to leave. Wish the other three had gone with ’em.”
“How long ago?” I said.
Boston rubbed a stubble covered chin with the back of one immense fist. “Oh, be guessin’ at it, but I’d say they’ve been gone two hours or so, maybe a bit more. Seems as though them three what stayed in town set down to some serious drinkin’. Know they ran all of the regulars off pretty quick. Then, one of ’em paid Mendoza’s helper to bring this black devil over here for me to work on. Peon’s sittin’ out front waitin’ for me to finish so’s he can return this monster to its owner soon’s I’m done.”
Rubbed the back of an aching, sunburned neck, then said, “Could you call the man back here so I can talk to him?”
Boston swiveled at the waist and yelled, “Gustavo. Gustavo Morales. Adelante, amigo.”
Barefoot and stooped, a white-haired Mexican, sombrero held against his wizened chest like a shield, shuffled up to a spot near Boston and stopped. “Sí, senor. I am here. Is the demon caballo ready?”
Boston grinned, shook his sweaty pate, waved my direction, then said, “This gentleman’s a Texas Ranger. Wants to ask you some questions.”
Gustavo Morales’s black eyes widened. Lines of worry creased the old man’s forehead when he said, “Sí. Es no problema.”
Pushed the still-dripping hat to the back of my head with one finger. “No need to be afraid, Senor Morales. Simply want you to tell me where the men who sent you here are sitting in Mendoza’s Cantina. As I remember there’s only room enough for four tables inside the joint. So, are they up by the front door, in the middle of the room, or in back near the bar?”
Morales’s darting glance flicked from face to face until it reached the angelic visage of Clementine Webb. Of a sudden, the ancient peon stopped twisting his hat and appeared to relax a bit. As if unable to comprehend the reasons for her presence, he continued to stare at the girl as he said, “Near the bar, senor. Muy borracho. How you say, very drunk. Muy ofensivo. Dangerous hombres, senor. Mendoza is very afraid. He did not say it, but I could tell.”
Boz slapped his good leg with his reins and said, “Be foolish to go in there after ’em, Dodge. Mendoza’s joint is way too cramped for a six-man gunfight. A one-eyed, three-fingered jasper who couldn’t hit a washtub with a shotgun could get luck
y. Kill the whole bunch of us in such confined circumstances.”
“Ain’t dat duh truth,” Glo chimed in.
Big Jim Boston ran a hand beneath his leather apron and scratched a tub-sized belly. He said, “Sure you boys have a good reason to be talkin’ ’bout gunfights, killin’, getting’ killed, and such. Mind tellin’ me why you’re after these men?”
I knifed a sidelong glance at Clementine Webb, then said, “Tracked them all the way here from over on Devils River not far from the ranch, Jim. They helped murder this child’s entire family in a stand of cottonwoods where Three Mile Creek dribbles into the river.”
“Jee-zus. Sorry to hear that,” Boston muttered.
“Yeah, well, we’d like to get one of them alive. But I’d be willing to bet they’ll go down shooting. Sons a bitches will fight rather than let us take them in for the most brutal killings any of us have come across in years. Those fellers have an absolutely certain date with a bullet or a piece of short hemp and a long drop.”
Boston stared at Clementine with renewed interest. “Right sorry to hear about your loss, young lady,” he said.
Clementine pulled the dog closer and silently stared at the ground as though she didn’t care for the topic of discussion.
“Gonna have to call ’em out onto Mendoza’s porch, or maybe into the street, if we can figure a way to get ’em to come that far,” I said.
I turned on my heel, strode to my animal, and slipped the Winchester from its scabbard. As though I’d somehow mysteriously lit a hidden fuse, Boz and Glo hotfooted it to their own animals. They quickly armed themselves with their big-barreled blasters, too. In a flurry of activity, the three of us retrieved additional ammunition. Once again, we went through the process of making certain our weapons were ready and in working order. When finally satisfied with the condition of their hardware, Boz and Glo looked to me for instructions.
“Okay, here’s how it’ll go down,” I said. “We’ll spread out. Since we know from past experience that Mendoza’s doesn’t have a back exit, we’ll approach the front in a three-pronged assault. I’ll go at the front door head on. Boz, you move up to the veranda on my right. Glo, you take the left. Want you boys to get around behind ’em by moving to the corners of the cantina’s front façade where they can’t see you. Then stay out of sight until I need you.”