The Butcher of Baxter Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  “This isn’t about money, Jess,” Caroline had told him. “It’s for my Father. For his legacy. His place in history.”

  Now, Jess led the old Butcher into the theater. He kept his pistol out, though he doubted if the McNamara boys would be here, ready for an ambush.

  They came onto the stage, went behind the curtain, and disappeared into the nether reaches of the theater. Jess checked the side door, but found that it had been fixed and remained locked. He saw the light on in the late Mr. Custer’s office and heard the squeaking hinges as the door opened.

  Jess waited, hoping, praying.

  He lowered the pistol when Amanda Wilson stepped out of the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tuesday, 4:10 p.m.

  “Are you sure you can trust her?” Caroline Dalton asked as they took the surrey back to the hotel.

  Jess debated with himself how he should answer before choosing to be honest. “No. She lost a cousin at Baxter Pass.”

  Caroline knew that. Amanda Wilson even told her before they had left. “I guess she could have killed him when we first arrived,” Caroline said.

  “I reckon so,” Jess said. He kept hoping that oath those doctors had to take might rein in any homicidal tendencies stirring up in the redheaded doctor’s insides. “I could have asked Hoot Newton,” Jess said, “but ...”

  “No,” Caroline said. “She’ll do. Doctor Wilson will have to do.”

  When they reached the hotel, Jess tugged on the lines and helped Amanda down. “I’ll be upstairs in a few minutes,” he said. “I’m taking this to the livery, getting your team, and I’ll hitch those animals to your wagon.”

  “No need.” Amanda pointed, and Jess saw the stable hands leading the team. “Major Clarke has done his job.”

  Jess looked at the rooftops. The sleet had stopped. The streets were stark white.

  He hoped they would not be running red in the next hour.

  * * *

  In the second-story hotel suite, Jess held up General Dalton’s pants, shook his head, and began doubting his plan. Sure, it would be dark and cloudy, and all that ice on the ground might play in his favor. Snickering, Lee Bodeen tossed the Butcher’s white wig onto the bed behind Jess.

  “I’ll laugh over your corpse, Casey,” the gunfighter said, and Jess understood that the killer was dead serious.

  “I’ll laugh at myself,” Jess said, and sat on the bed, pulled off his boots, and began to unfasten his britches.

  By the time Jess had finished dressing, Caroline Dalton knocked on the door. Bodeen answered, let her in, and saw Major Clarke bounding down the hallway. He closed the door after Clarke came in.

  “Folks are coming outside now, Sheriff,” Casey said. “Waiting along the boardwalks.”

  “We don’t get much snow or sleet in this country,” Jess said. “It’s like a free stereoscopic card.”

  “I don’t think that’s their reasoning,” Clarke said. “I think they want to see the show.”

  “Well,” Jess pulled an ill-fitting kepi over the wig. He felt ridiculous. He looked ridiculous. “They just might get to see a show. A whopper of a show.”

  Bodeen shook his head and spit into the cuspidor. “So. They’ll shoot you. Then I shoot them.”

  “Preferably, you shoot them before they shoot me, or even get a shot at me,” Jess said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You expect them to be on the rooftops?” Caroline said.

  Jess shrugged. “With Burt, yeah, I’d expect that. But Tom’s the older brother. Remember, he wasn’t in the kitchen when Burt sent that old Mexican out to try to kill the general. That’s not Tom’s style. He never struck me as a squat assassin. More of a stand-up kind of man. Unlike some gunmen I’ve known.” He made sure that Lee Bodeen knew who he meant by the last statement.

  “It’s time,” Major Clarke said.

  Jess felt his innards turning into quicksand. “I sure wish that Gatling gun of yours fired real bullets,” he said wistfully.

  * * *

  “I’ll blow the damn Yankee’s head clean off,” Burt McNamara said. “He’ll never know what kilt him, the low-down dog.”

  Tom McNamara shoved the last cartridge into the newly cleaned revolver, shut the loading gate, and holstered his pistol, pushed himself off the cracker barrel, and strode across the alley to his younger brother. Neils, sensing what was about to occur, moved away from Burt.

  The youngest brother started up from the hay bale, but prison had not slowed down Tom, nor softened him. He snatched the whiskey bottle Burt had stolen from one of Hell’s Half Acre’s worst saloons and backhanded Burt to the ice-covered alley.

  “Your brother Dan never knew who killed him, either.” Vapor shot out of Tom McNamara’s mouth and nose, like smoke from a dragon. “That was your convoluted plan, boy. One brother dead. And our pa dead. I want everyone in Fort Worth to know who killed the Butcher of Baxter Pass. And I especially want Dalton to know who it was that sent him to hell.”

  The slap in the frigid weather stung Tom’s hand as much as it did his kid brother’s face.

  “They got a Gatling gun atop that wagon, Tom!” Burt yelled out, his right hand against his red-marked face.

  “It don’t work,” Neils said casually. “Just for show.”

  “Even if it did work, I ain’t killing that Butcher without a call.” Tom had to control his voice, his temper. “We’re men. We’re Texans. We give him the chance he didn’t give our Pa ... or two hundred others who fought with Gen’ral Hood.”

  “So ...” Neils pursed his lips. “How do you plan it?”

  “They’ll come straight down the street. Toward the courthouse.” Neils grinned, and Tom knew why. He was thinking that if Tom had planned that bank robbery, the boys likely would have gotten clear away with it. They never would have seen the inside of the prison at Huntsville.

  “That fella guardin’ the Butcher,” Burt said. “He’s s’posed to be right handy with those revolvers.”

  “Which is one reason Dan’s dead.”

  Burt lowered his head, and Tom regretted his words. He loved his brother. Even when he hated him. It wasn’t Burt’s fault. Pa had gotten killed, murdered at the end of the War Between the States, and that had left Tom as the man of the house. It was Tom’s fault Burt—and Neils, and even himself—had spent time behind bars. It was all Tom’s fault.

  But he could right all of that this evening. He could avenge the death of Bass McNamara. He could go down in history as a legend of Texas. He’d bring glory to the McNamara name. To Neils. To Burt.

  They’d be the men who killed the Butcher of Baxter Pass.

  Tom stepped back and picked up the bottle that he had knocked from his kid brother’s hand. He took a swig—it was awful—and tossed it to Neils, who caught it with a grin.

  Then Tom extended his hand and helped Burt to his feet. He brushed off the ice and took the bottle from Neils, which he passed to Burt.

  “Finish it, Burt,” Tom said. “Can you shoot with that busted hand of yours?”

  Burt looked at his right hand, then grinned. “That’s why God give me two hands. And why you taught me how to use both of ’em.”

  “Let’s go,” Tom said. “Go make things right with Pa. Go make history.”

  As Burt McNamara, now grinning, finished the last two fingers of rotgut, a loud wailing commenced. Dropping the now-empty bottle onto the ice at his feet, Burt wiped his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve, and asked, “What the hell is that infernal racket?”

  Neils was checking his revolver. “It’s that steam piano,” he said, and dropped the Colt into the leather. “The general’s beginning his journey in that crazy-looking wagon.”

  “It’ll be his last journey,” Tom McNamara said.

  * * *

  Mounting their horses, they rode out of the alley and onto Throckmorton Street, pulling up the collars of their coats to fight off the temperatures, already freezing but not plummeting with the coming of dark. After t
hey reached the Eclipse Saloon, they turned east onto Weatherford Street and approached the courthouse grounds. When people on the boardwalks saw the three riders, they stopped to whisper among themselves. A few of the wiser men, sensing what would soon happen, went inside businesses and closed the doors behind them.

  Tom McNamara pointed with his gloved hand at the hay wagon still parked across from the courthouse. He looked at the clock in the tower, led his brothers to the wagon, where he swung out of the saddle, and pulled the rifle from the scabbard. He led his horse around the wagon, on the courthouse side and wrapped the reins around the rear wheel. That would offer his horse more protection from the bullets that would soon be flying down Main Street. Tom waited for his brothers, who also tied their mounts to the wagon, loose enough that the horses could paw away the ice-covered ground to munch on the dead grass below.

  He leaned the Winchester against the sleet-coated wagon and held out his right hand. First, he shook Neils’s hand, then Burt’s.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  The calliope wailed down the street.

  Neils gave a slight nod. Burt’s voice, higher than usual, cracked as he said something that Tom couldn’t quite make out, but Burt was already moving, stepping over the wagon tongue and moving toward Main Street. Tom and Neils quickly caught up.

  As they passed the Standard building, the editor, with a pencil tucked above his ear, hurried back into the newspaper office, yelling, “Jimmy, rip up that front page! Big bold headline. All caps. DEATH ON MAIN STREET!”

  They stopped in the middle first, waiting in the brick-lined street, covered with dust and dirt, coated with two inches of ice. The wind blew, but could not drown out the calliope’s belching noise that sounded a little like “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

  The men, women, and children standing on the boardwalks between First and Second streets quickly vanished. Those past Third Street found safer spots to be. The wagon was coming past the El Paso Hotel at the corner of Main and Third.

  Tom ratcheted the lever of the Winchester and took a few steps ahead of his two brothers. “Spread out a little, boys,” he said, and stared at the freakish wagon coming toward them. Neils moved to Tom’s right. Burt shuffled off a few feet to the left.

  The calliope grated on Tom’s nerves. He tried to remember his father playing the washtub as his uncle clawed a banjo and a cousin kept time on a jaw harp while his mother sang in her angelic soprano voice. Yet that Butcher’s daughter pounding those keys on the steam-powered organ drowned out those memories.

  That damn Yankee fool who called himself a major sat in the driver’s box, working the lines to the big horses pulling the heavy, loud, and obnoxiously painted wagon. The tarp had been pulled off the Gatling gun, and the white-haired General Dalton sat in his rocking chair, one hand on the gun, the other hand holding the kepi atop his head. The clothes seemed tight on the old man, who looked uncomfortable.

  Standing next to the Butcher of Baxter Pass on the colorful wagon was the murdering gunman, Lee Bodeen, a rifle in his hands. The wind, blowing harshly from the north, pinned up the brim of his hat against the crown, but if that killer felt cold, he did not show it.

  Tom could not see the woman playing the steam piano. He could just hear that dreadful noise, though, almost like a dirge instead of some jaunty Yankee tune.

  The wagon passed the intersection and the major turned his head to call out something to either the general or Bodeen, but the wind prevented Tom from hearing what was said. Both General Dalton and Bodeen answered, for Tom could see the white vapor escaping their mouths when they spoke to the wagon’s driver.

  Both sides of the block had been deserted, except for one brave individual who secured the heavy shutters to protect the windows of the apothecary. Then that man, too, was gone, disappearing inside his store and slamming the door behind him. He was close enough for Tom to hear the bolt latch.

  The major tugged on the lines, slowing the wild-looking wagon into a crawl.

  Tom wet his chapped lips and frowned.

  “Something ain’t right,” he told Neils.

  “What?” Burt’s voice remained unnaturally high.

  “It’s Dalton,” Neils said. “Something peculiar about the Butcher. Something just don’t set well about him.”

  Tom’s head nodded. “Yeah.” He focused on the old man in the rocking chair, and when the major pulled the wagon to a stop several yards from where Tom stood with his brothers, the woman stopped playing the calliope.

  Now, Tom could hear the steam pump belching in the insides of the wagon. He could hear the wind and feel the icy breath of death.

  General Lincoln Everett Dalton, the Butcher of Baxter Pass, the man who had murdered Tom’s father and two hundred other paroled Confederate soldiers, pushed himself out of the rocking chair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tuesday, 5:20 p.m.

  At that moment, Tom McNamara knew that he had been played for a fool.

  One second later, Jess Casey ripped the Federal kepi and the dying old general’s long, flowing white wig off his head. The wind carried both sailing over the street and onto the boardwalk next to City Hall. Jess felt relief. If he died now, at least he wouldn’t look like a complete idiot, although he still wore General Dalton’s ill-fitting pants and moth-eaten army blouse.

  “Tom!” Jess called out. “It’s over. Give it up.”

  His left hand rested on the brass end of the Gatling gun. His right held the crank’s grip. The weapon was eight feet long, or thereabouts, and the barrels stretched thirty-one inches. Jess could sense the power at his command, and he did not like it one bit. A weapon like this was the devil’s handiwork. It could destroy this entire street, maybe even all of Fort Worth, Texas.

  “Caroline!” Jess kept talking. “Get out of here. Now.”

  He heard her as she stepped out of the wagon, heard her feet crunching the ice, and caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye as she crossed the slippery, frozen street—the wind blowing her raven-dark hair—and slid around the corner of the two-story City Hall.

  Clouds had swallowed the sun, which would be setting in fifteen or twenty minutes. The wind lashed hard. Major Clarke set the brake.

  “Where the hell is the Butcher?” Burt McNamara called out, right hand wrapped up, left hand on the butt of a revolver.

  Jess didn’t answer. He appealed to Tom, the wisest of the brothers. “You got no chance, Tom. Don’t make me use this.” He patted the brass with his left hand, and his fingers tightened around the Gatling gun’s crank.

  “That thing’s just a prop, Casey,” Tom said, but his face showed doubt. “Everybody in town knows that already.”

  Jess let himself grin, even though as cold as it had turned, and still turning, the motion made his face hurt.

  “Tom,” Jess said softly, “you know better than trust a damn Yankee. Major?”

  “Brake’s set. These Percherons are trained.”

  Tilting the heavy weapon down just a notch, Jess pulled the crank and felt the lethal weapon come alive. He worked the handle slowly but surely, smelling the bitter tangy scent of powder as .45-70 slugs ripped into the icy street about ten yards in front of the McNamara boys. The ten-barrel weapon was said to be able to fire twenty rounds a second, but Jess knew these weapons were prone to jam, and he didn’t want things to get out of hand. He turned the crank slowly, just fast enough to send a steady round of lead into Main Street. The draft horses jerked a bit, but Major Clarke had been right. They were trained for the sound of the Gatling gun. Some animals would have bolted, but the Percherons did not.

  The sudden explosion of gunshots caused some folks hiding in the nearby buildings to scream, and when the smoke cleared, Jess saw Neils lying on his back, trying to scramble to his feet, and Burt on his knees, both hands clasped over his ears, his face as white as the ground in front of him. Only Tom remained standing, still clutching the Winchester with two gloved hands, staring hard at Jess, anger etched in
to his face, but Tom wasn’t fool enough to bring that rifle into a firing position.

  Jess drew in a breath and slowly let it out.

  “I don’t want to kill you boys,” Jess said. “Leave your guns on the ice. Get your horses. Ride home. The war’s over. It’s been over for a long, long time.”

  Neils had pulled himself to his feet and kept his hand far from the holstered revolver. Burt remained on his knees, though he had lowered his hands from his aching ears.

  “What about him?” Tom gestured toward his youngest brother.

  Yeah, Jess knew about him. Mort Thompson wanted to try the boy, send him back to Huntsville, and lock him up for another five or ten years. And Burt had broken out of jail—thanks to Neils and Tom—and left Hoot Newton with an aching head and plaster over his busted nose. Thompson would be furious, but Jess was getting used to that.

  “I don’t think the Tarrant County prosecutor will come looking for y’all down Stephenville way.”

  “You sure?”

  “I give you my word.” Even if it meant whipping the Tarrant County solicitor with his pistol barrel.

  “The Butcher murdered our pa!” Burt McNamara managed to stand but made no play for his pistol with his one good hand. His voice sounded like a girl’s, Jess thought as he considered the youngster but kept his attention on Tom.

  “Dalton’s a sick old man. He’ll be dead soon. Let God be his judge and his punisher.”

  The wind blew. The skies darkened.

  “I don’t want this to end badly, boys, and it will,” Jess said, “unless you drop those guns. Now.”

  His heart pounded, and his throat went dry, even when Tom McNamara let the big rifle slip from his hands and fall to the ice by his boots.

  Following Tom’s lead, Neils began to unbuckle the shell belt around his waist, and when Burt made no move to disarm himself, Tom McNamara crossed the icy street, leaving his gun belt on the ground, not far from where the Gatling gun had plowed the ice.

  “It’s over, Burt,” Tom was saying, and Jess was letting out a sigh of relief, watching Caroline Dalton step around the corner, her face revealing the relief that was washing away her fear.