The Butcher of Baxter Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  It was a long damned run.

  More than a dozen blocks to the Third Ward. Jess was glad no cowboy he had ridden with had witnessed him, a cowboy, running instead of riding, but by the time he could have fetched and saddled his horse at the livery ... well.

  This was why the Scott brothers had moved what was now called AddRan Male & Female College out of Fort Worth. The college had been just a couple of blocks over, between Calhoun and Jones streets, until the professors and parents of the college kids decided that being butted against the worst red-light district in Texas, or maybe the West, was not conducive to higher education.

  Jess found himself in the middle of Hell’s Half Acre, directed by one pockmarked hurdy-gurdy girl and a staggering drunk in a stovepipe hat to a bucket of blood known as Gabe’s Place.

  Gabe Pryor didn’t own the place anymore. He had lost it to Luke Short back in ’77, and Luke had sold it to a gambler named Pacific Knight in ’79, and Pacific Knight had been shot dead while bucking the tiger in ’82, and Jim Hanson had bought it at the courthouse for back taxes the following year. Jim Hanson had then gone under with a knife in his belly in ’85, and maybe one or two others had owned the place since Hanson’s demise. Nobody had ever bothered to change the sign out front, though.

  With the shotgun pointed straight ahead, Jess Casey walked into the combination saloon and gambling parlor.

  “Drop it,” he said.

  The shotgun in his hands was an 1883 Colt, a hammerless twelve-gauge with its Damascus barrels sawed down to eighteen inches. The checkered hard-rubber buttplate pressed against Jess’s stomach, and his fingers lay gently on the twin triggers. A shotgun like that, in the hands of a lawman, usually held persuasive powers.

  The man standing over a table, holding one of those fancy European pinfire revolvers in his right hand, glanced at Jess and the badge. He did not lower the double-action revolver with a lanyard ring affixed to the walnut butt. But he did not threaten Jess with it, either.

  He wore the same black broadcloth coat and the fancy gold vest that he had been wearing when he had stepped off the stagecoach yesterday. Jess remembered him, and now he remembered that he still had the tinhorn gambler’s Remington derringer in his back pocket. He suddenly felt the .41’s weight.

  Lantern light reflected in Luke Flint’s shaded spectacles. Gamblers often wore shades, even in dark saloons in the dead of night. They didn’t want anyone reading their eyes.

  Slowly Jess moved through the doorway toward the center of the saloon, keeping the double-barrel trained on the gambler at the table. He kept his legs wide apart, ready.

  “No cause for that, Sheriff,” Luke Flint said in an ugly drawl. He still did not lower the revolver. “Tell’m,” the gambler barked to a girl, who stood in her flimsy attire against the bar, a shot glass trembling in her left hand, her face white, her right hand covering her mouth.

  Jess listened to the girl, but he did not take the Colt shotgun’s aim off Luke Flint’s belly.

  * * *

  “It happened so fast,” the girl at the bar said. So did the bartender. And two other gents, a graybeard local who made his rounds through the Acre’s poker tables and a cowboy Jess did not know, supported her testimony.

  Five men had remained at the poker table in a game that had started at Gabe’s Place around five-thirty that afternoon. The game was five-card stud. The cowboy folded after the first bet. The graybeard lasted until his straight had been busted on the fourth card. That left Luke Flint and the two dead men, one crumpled over the table, the other lying in a pool of blood against the wall. The man on the table had been called Joe. The one on the floor was Herb Blackwell, the latest owner of Gabe’s Place to meet an unfortunate, untimely end.

  Raise followed bets, and then came a series of raises before Blackwell folded. The man named Joe called Luke Flint, and when Flint turned over his hole card to reveal he had a full house—treys over deuces—beating Joe’s ace-high flush, Joe called him a cheater and jerked a Colt Lightning from his belly.

  The Lightning is a .38-caliber double-action with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel. Luke Flint grabbed Joe’s right arm with his left hand, and the revolver went off—six times in fact—every bullet slamming into poor old Herb Blackwell, who fell dead on the table. Then Luke Flint slammed the man’s gun hand on the edge of the table, dropping the Colt to the floor. Simultaneously, Luke Flint broke the whiskey bottle that the dying Herb Blackwell had knocked over and rammed the jagged edge into Joe’s throat. He shoved Joe away, and Joe likely bled out before he had slid to the floor.

  “Self-defense,” Luke Flint told Jess Casey.

  Jess kept the shotgun on the gambler. He remembered what he had told the cardsharp when he had stepped off the stagecoach from Dallas.

  Gamblers are welcome in Hell’s Half Acre. As long as they don’t deal from the bottom.

  “Maybe,” Jess said, and tilted his head—though never taking his eyes or shotgun off the gambler—toward the bar. “But what about him?”

  Him was a burly man with balding red hair, a railroad worker by his striped denim britches, cap, and bulging biceps, who lay in front of the bar, facedown, three bullet holes in his back. His right hand still clutched a billy club.

  “Now I didn’t kill him, Sheriff,” Luke Flint said.

  Which made sense, in a way. The man appeared to have been coming from the bar toward the poker table. The bullets were in his back, and Luke Flint would have been facing him.

  The voice behind Jess Casey said, “I shot him, Sheriff.”

  Jess didn’t turn around, though. He kept the shotgun on Luke Flint.

  “And you are?”

  “Ira Flint. Luke’s big brother.”

  Jess nodded. “Bullet holes are in his back, Ira.”

  “He was goin’ after Luke. Didn’t have no choice. Self-defense. Or maybe to protect my dear kid brother.”

  “He was a long way from your brother, Ira.” Thirty feet, by Jess’s estimate. “And your brother was armed—in violation of the city ordinance.”

  “I’m armed, too, Sheriff,” Ira Flint said. “In violation of the city ordinance.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to take you both in.”

  The girl with the shot glass and the shaking body recovered long enough to walk around the bar and drop behind it. The graybeard and the cowboy moved into the corner of the building, as far from Luke Flint, the poker table, and two of the three dead men as possible. Batwing doors made a racket as other patrons of Gabe’s Place left the saloon for fresh air. The bartender joined the shaking hurdy-gurdy girl on the floor but not before taking the two good bottles of actual single-malt Scotch with him.

  “No, Sheriff,” Ira Flint said. “Here’s the way this morning will play out. Luke’ll collect the money owed him. We’ll borrow a couple of horses out front. Leave your fair city. But first ...” Now came the click of a revolver being cocked. “... first, you’ll drop that scattergun.”

  Jess wasn’t sure if it would work. The Colt twelve-gauge was hammerless but set ready to fire, so he tossed the shotgun, hoping it would hit at the right angle and discharge one or both barrels. With added luck, if the angle was just right, the blast might tear off Luke Flint’s head. Then all Jess would have to worry about was Ira Flint, and the shock of the gun going off—and seeing his kid brother’s head torn apart—would give Jess the advantage. And if the shotgun just went off and didn’t kill Luke Flint, both men would still be stunned by the blast, and Jess could gun them both down.

  Of course, it didn’t work. The shotgun landed on the stock, flipped up, fell on its side, and slid underneath an abandoned faro layout. It did not discharge.

  “Good,” Ira Flint said, and now Luke Flint was moving, filling a carpetbag with the assortment of gold, silver, greenbacks, watches, and other plunder into the open satchel. He had laid the big pinfire revolver on the table.

  “The Colt, Sheriff,” Ira Flint reminded him. “Let’s not leave that revolver of yours too close. Toss
it beside the shotgun.”

  Jess started for the pistol, slowly, but now he felt the barrel of Ira Flint’s revolver against his spine.

  “Just to be safe. Use your left hand, Sheriff. And just thumb and forefinger, if you please.”

  Jess brought his right hand back and crossed his midsection with his left hand. Luke was watching him now, the carpetbag on the table next to Herb Blackwell’s dead head. He had not picked up the big revolver, though. He just stood there, watching, enjoying himself.

  Jess slowly drew the .44-40 from his holster and dropped it by the spittoon next to his boot. It was a lot harder than it looked, pulling a Colt out of a holster with only a thumb and forefinger.

  “Kick it toward the shotgun, Sheriff,” Ira Flint said.

  Jess obeyed.

  “That’s fine.” Jess felt the pressure removed, heard Ira Flint take a few steps back, then swing a wide arc around the sheriff.

  Ira Flint was uglier than his kid brother. They were of the same build, with the same greasy hair, only Ira did not dress as flashy as Luke. He wore Wellington boots, plaid britches, a tan bib-front shirt, and moth-eaten black woolen vest. His hat was a Stetson Boss of the Plains. The gun was a single-action 1873 Colt, and the hammer remained cocked.

  “Hurry up, Luke,” Ira instructed his brother.

  Luke let out a little sigh and gave Ira a wry smile. He backed up a bit, telling the man with the .45-caliber Colt, “Just going to the bar. For support. It’s been a long day.”

  When he reached the bar, he leaned against it and sucked in a deep breath.

  Ira Flint laughed. Luke Flint moved to other abandoned card tables, collecting coins and currency.

  “Texas ain’t been friendly to us,” Luke said. He even dropped a corked bottle of whiskey in the carpetbag.

  “Then let’s head back to Kansas,” Ira Flint told him.

  “There better be good horses outside,” Luke said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ira said. “The sheriff won’t be comin’ after us.”

  Jess smiled. He had reason to. While the brothers were bantering, he’d moved his right hand to his back pocket and fingered out the little derringer—ironically, Luke Flint’s over-and-under Remington.

  Which he brought up and put the first bullet right between Ira Flint’s eyes.

  The uglier and older of the Flint boys spun around in a complete circle, sending his long-barreled Colt skidding across the floor. He stood there for a moment, blood leaking from the purple hole just above his nose, eyes open but no longer seeing, mouth open, and surprise chiseled into his face until Judgment Day. This took only a few seconds, even though to Jess Casey it seemed as if it lasted for hours. Time had stood still until the dead Ira Flint collapsed in a heap.

  Even before the killer had dropped to the saloon’s sawdust-covered floor, Jess had dropped to a knee, turning his attention to the other killer. He brought the little hideaway gun up and only half-aimed as he sent the derringer’s second and final bullet toward Luke Flint. Even before he pulled the trigger, Jess understood that it would have taken a scratch shot to hit the younger gambler. A Remington .41 was meant for targets across a card table, not across a darkened saloon against another man with a bigger, better, deadlier pistol in his hand.

  Yet that little piece of lead from the derringer had done its job, which was all Jess could have hoped for.

  The shock of his brother’s unexpected death and the firing of a bullet toward his own head startled Luke Flint, who had swept up the pinfire revolver in his hand but jerked at Jess’s second shot. Yelping, Luke Flint dived to his left, knocking over the neighboring card table.

  Jess was moving himself. He thought about going for his shotgun, or his Colt revolver nearby, but changed his angle and went for the single-action .45 that the late Ira Flint had dropped. It was closer to him and a bit farther away from Luke Flint.

  The skid over the floor tore at Jess’s flannel shirt. Deftly, he snatched up the Colt .45 and rolled over, just as two bullets from Luke Flint’s double-action pistol dug up chunks of wood and sent sawdust flying.

  Jess rolled again, firing once and seeing the wall behind the overturned table splinter.

  The circular table rolled back and forth, just a bit. Jess thought about shooting through the green felt cloth and wood but didn’t want to waste a shot.

  Outside, dogs barked throughout the Acre, and somewhere a rooster crowed.

  Jess rushed for a potbellied stove in the center of the floor. Hearing the movements, Luke Flint came up over the top of the table and fired again, the bullet whining off the cast-iron stove. Jess found his knees, faked to his left, and then moved to his right, squeezing the trigger just a second after Luke Flint had dived back behind the table for cover.

  Now Jess sprang to his feet and charged, cutting loose with a third shot before diving toward the bar. Luke Flint fired, too, and that shot punched a hole in the left side of Jess’s red-and-tan shirt. It burned his skin, too. Jess grimaced, came up, cocking the revolver, but holding his fire.

  Flint had lost his nerve—not to mention his brother—but not his instincts. He made for the batwing doors, carrying the carpetbag full of his winnings and plunder, including at least one bottle of whiskey, pulling the trigger as he ran.

  Jess sat up as Flint’s bullet smashed into the spittoon next to Jess, sending its foul contents up and out to splash on the brim and crown of Jess’s hat and the shirt he had just put on.

  Jess let loose with a vile curse and thumbed back the Colt’s hammer. If he had counted right—and ciphering had never been his strongest subject back when he went to the subscription school—Luke Flint had only one bullet left in his revolver.

  Unless it held more than six bullets. You could never tell about those foreign weapons.

  And, naturally, it only took one bullet to send you to Boot Hill.

  Luke Flint had a clear shot as he reached the doors. He just never got the chance to squeeze the trigger.

  Jess’s shot caught him square in the chest and sent the carpetbag falling by a bowler hat somebody had lost while leaving Gabe’s Place in a hurry and sent Luke Flint flying through the batwing doors.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, 4:55 a.m.

  “It’s the damnedest thing, Sheriff,” Morris Stokes was telling Jess. “I’ve been doing this job for seventeen years now here in Fort Worth. Thirty-five years altogether in the business. And this is the damnedest thing. In all my time here in Fort Worth, folks rarely die on Monday. Tuesdays were the slow day back in Nacogdoches, and they’re a tad slow here in Fort Worth, but not compared to Mondays. Why I can count on one hand how much business I’ve had on a Monday in seventeen years here. They just don’t die on Monday. Not in Fort Worth. Not from natural causes, accidents, or gunshots. The damnedest thing. They just don’t croak here on Mondays, so I’ve often considered not even opening for business. But here ... this day ... I’ve got ...” He had to count, and use two hands. “Eight cadavers. Eight! It’s the damnedest thing, Sheriff. Eight men needing my embalming and burial services. On a Monday.”

  “It’s Tuesday,” Jess reminded the undertaker.

  * * *

  He collected written statements from the hurdy-gurdy girl, the bartender, and the few men brave enough to wait outside Gabe’s Place and see who came out alive. He half-expected county solicitor Mort Thompson or Mayor Harry Stout to wander over and stick their heads into this mess, but it was far too early—or late—for those two fiends to make their way this deep into Hell’s Half Acre. He told Morris Stokes to send his bill to Kurt Koenig when the marshal got back from Huntsville, and once the bodies had been hauled out of the saloon, he blew out the lights, took the key that had been removed from the late Hank Blackwell’s vest pocket, and locked the door. Then he used the butt of the late Ira Flint’s Colt .45 as a hammer and nailed a crudely painted sign—the hurdy-gurdy girl had done it with some whitewash they found in the storeroom, though Jess had to tell her how to spell most of t
he words—over the front door and just below the sign that had read GABE’S PLACE for too many years.

  CLOSED TILL

  NEW OWNER

  CAN BEE FOUND

  She had spelled BE with one too many E’s, misunderstanding Jess’s dictation, but Jess figured that the sign would do the job well enough. It was legible anyway.

  He had the carpetbag full of money and miscellaneous items, which he would have to sort through and document before turning it over to the county officials, or Kurt Koenig if the marshal decided to come back to Fort Worth, and a sack full of weapons—a derringer, a Colt .45, a fancy pinfire revolver with one round in the chamber, the dead gambler’s Colt Lightning, and a Colt rimfire .22 that had been found in Herb Blackwell’s boot—that would likely be auctioned off.

  It was quite the load, especially since Jess still had the Colt hammerless shotgun, and nobody volunteered to help. In fact, by the time Jess had finished everything, undertaker Stokes had already hauled the five dead men back to his office to be prepared for burial, and even the bartender and the hurdy-gurdy girl were gone.

  Only a couple of banjos still played in a saloon, and most of the other joints Jess passed were sparsely populated, a drunk or two at the bar, a gambler in sleeve garters playing solitaire, and bored bartenders wiping down their mugs and shot glasses.

  The church bells over at St. Stanislaus sounded six times when Jess pushed open the door to the jail’s office.

  Hoot Newton slept in Jess’s chair, his spurred boots resting on Jess’s desk. He dropped the sack of weapons on the floor, returned the shotgun to the gun case, and shoved the carpetbag into the cabinet below the gun case, thinking it would be safe there. His hat wound up on his desk, and he pulled off his shirt and replaced it with his Sunday-go-to-meeting shirt, a laundered French percale, ivory with pink hairline stripes. He was pinning on the fancy gold badge when Hoot Newton woke up.

  Jess planned on waking him anyway as soon as he had the sleeves buttoned, not wanting to risk his jailer slipping into a coma.