The Butcher of Baxter Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  It started slurping. Another horse—no, that one was too small, had to be a donkey—walked in and stopped to eat some hay just across from Jess.

  He bit his lips. The sleet drummed all around him, and the temperatures plummeted even more. The Colt he was holding felt like an anvil. He kept thinking, praying.

  Come on, Bodeen. Hurry up, damn it.

  The pistol’s report sounded like a cannon, and the muzzle flash practically blinded him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, 5:40 p.m.

  Right in front of the open stall, Lee Bodeen had fired at the dummy Jess had rigged up. Jess hadn’t heard the gunman’s footsteps. In fact, he had not even seen the killer until the gunshot.

  Bodeen pulled the trigger again and laughed.

  The horse in the stall overturned the bucket, snorted, kicked, and Jess had to dive out of its way to keep from getting trampled. Bodeen whirled, but saw only the panicking eyes of the horse as it charged out of the stall, turned right, and raced back into the corral and numbing sleet.

  Jess bounced off the stall, heard other horses screaming. The donkey took off running toward the open door. Jess fell to the ground. His arm felt as if someone had chopped it off with an ax.

  “Bodeen!” Jess called out. He couldn’t make out Bodeen. Didn’t even know where the man was.

  “What the—!”

  Bodeen’s Remington barked again. Jess felt the tug of the collar on his shirt, and he squeezed the trigger. The Colt bucked, and Jess was diving to his right, thumbing back the hammer, aiming up, below the muzzle flash.

  Another bullet blasted past Jess.

  He rolled to his left, cocked, and fired. Cocked. Fired. Came to his knees. Cocked. Fired. The flashes gave him enough light. He saw Bodeen staggering backward. Jess aimed carefully this time.

  Cocked.

  Fired.

  There was another pistol shot, but it was low on the ground, muffled, and the muzzle flash ignited the hay on the livery’s ground floor.

  He could barely hear anything now. Not the sleet. Just the roaring in his ears. He blinked. Then held his eyes shut for the longest time, waiting for the orange flashes to diminish.

  Jess was standing now. He smelled gun smoke. And the smoke from the burning hay. The fire was small but could quickly send the livery stable up like an effigy.

  Walking out of the stall, Jess holstered his Colt.

  Lee Bodeen lay facedown in the muck. His last shot had been spasmodic and had touched off the fire, which gave enough light for Jess Casey to see that Lee Bodeen was dead.

  After stomping out the fire, Jess hurried toward the livery’s front entrance. At least one of Bodeen’s bullets had knocked his coat to the ground, and Jess didn’t want to bend over to pick it up—and he certainly remembered the pain taking off that coat had caused him—but that hat remained on top of the hay. He snatched it as he ran outside and into the sleet. It fit, barely, but kept his head warm, barely.

  His arm throbbed. Sleet beat him without mercy. He stumbled once but kept his feet. He kept running, as fast as he could, ignoring the bitter cold, the brutal pain in his arm.

  He made his way to the Fort Worth Opera House.

  A block away from the building, he heard the muffled sound of a pistol shot from inside.

  * * *

  He hurried, smashed through the double doors, with his Colt drawn. Jess made his way down the aisle, onto the stage, and toward the curtains. The theater had been lit, but no one sat in any of the seats. Jess even looked at the balcony. His boots echoed as he hurried down the aisle and kept his .44-40 trained on the man standing beside the curtain.

  The stranger in front of him wore a sack suit, with the left sleeve pinned up at the elbow, and a crutch under the armpit. Jess saw the man’s left leg was wooden, and he remembered the mail clerk telling him about the cripple who had gotten off the northbound stage.

  He was a thin man, old, with a neatly groomed mustache and goatee, dark hair but streaked with silver. Spectacles pinched his nose. He held no gun in his right hand, which pointed toward the curtain.

  “The shot came from behind the curtain,” the man spoke. It was a Texas drawl but with an intelligence.

  “Stay there,” Jess told him, and climbed the side steps to the stage. Taking a breath, he stepped through the curtain to find Burt McNamara holding Caroline Dalton’s revolver, the barrel pressing into General Lincoln Everett Dalton’s temple. The Butcher of Baxter Pass sat in a rocking chair, center stage, not seeming to notice that if the sobbing boy with the pistol in his one good hand pulled the trigger, Lincoln Dalton would be dead.

  Amanda Wilson sat on the floor, stage left, holding her head, from which blood trickled down. Otherwise, she seemed unharmed, and her eyes locked on Jess’s for a moment before turning back to Burt McNamara. Caroline Dalton stood behind the general, her face pale, her eyes pleading, and her lips trembling with fear.

  “Please ...” she begged.

  Jess stepped onto the stage.

  “Burt.” Jess’s voice seemed to echo across the theater. “Put the gun down, son.”

  “H-h-he ... he k-k-kilt Tom. He k-kilt ... Neils.”

  “No. Bodeen killed your brothers. And I’ve killed Bodeen.”

  Behind him, Jess heard the wooden leg and crutch treading the boards as the stranger came closer. Jess didn’t like that. He couldn’t see the man on the other side of the curtain, didn’t know him, and questioned what a stranger would be doing in the opera house. But stopping Burt McNamara from murdering the old man remained Jess’s top priority.

  “H-he ... he ... or-ordered it.” The gun shook in Burt’s hand.

  Caroline wet her lips.

  Jess figured what had happened. Burt had barged in, taken the pistol from Caroline Dalton’s hand, with the gun discharging in the scuffle. Doc Wilson had tried to help, and Burt had buffaloed her slightly with the barrel.

  “No. Bodeen was crazy. You’re not, Burt.”

  “He kilt my pa, too.”

  “That was war.” Jess felt the curtain move behind him, heard the crutch and peg leg, and felt the stranger’s presence behind him. He wouldn’t take his eyes off Burt, though, except for quick glances at Amanda and Caroline. They seemed confused by the newcomer’s presence but not scared.

  “I-it wa-wa-wasn’t ... w-war. It w-was ... murder.”

  “Twenty-f ive years ago,” Jess said. “The war’s over, Burt. Three of your brothers are dead. You need to go on living.”

  The boy’s head shook savagely.

  “I don’t want this to end badly, Burt. Put the gun down. He’s a dying old man. He’s not worth it.”

  “He ... k-kilt ...”

  “The war’s over, Burt. It has been over for a long time.”

  The head shook again. Jess feared that the way the kid kept shaking, he might accidentally jerk the trigger.

  “It’ll never be over,” Burt said.

  “Maybe.” Jess knew enough Texans to believe what Burt had just said. “But you can start the peace right now. Just lower than pistol, son.”

  The head shook again. “He ... k-kilt ... Pa.”

  “No.” The voice came from the cripple standing behind Jess. “No, son. General Dalton killed no one. At least, not on the night of the thirtieth of May in the year of our Lord eighteen and sixty-five.” It was a voice meant for the theater, though more for Hamlet or King Lear than what was being played on this stage this night.

  Burt glanced at the man behind Jess, but did not lower his pistol. “Who are you?”

  “Professor Mitchell Vogt,” the man said. “I teach at AddRan Male & Female College down at Thorp Spring. And I served with Hood’s First Texas. I was wounded and captured at Sharpsburg. The rest of the war I spent at Baxter Pass. Who was your father?”

  He started to answer, but then General Dalton blurted out, “I killed twelve hundred and seventy-four traitors.”

  “No, you did not, sir,” Vogt said, addressing the Butcher now and not
Burt McNamara. “Disease killed most of them. Wounds. Our own men. And a few died trying to escape, which was their duty, as it was yours to stop them.”

  “I cut two hundred boys down with a Gatling gun.” Even Dalton sounded like a veteran thespian and not the blithering idiot whose mind wandered and whose body had been eaten up with the carcinoma.

  The clopping of the crutch and peg leg sounded, and Jess stood still as Professor Mitchell Vogt crossed the stage and stopped just a few feet in front of the old man and the kid with the pistol.

  “No, sir. You saved my life.” Vogt’s head turned from Dalton to Burt.

  “Your father’s name, son?”

  “B-B-Bass. Bass Mc-Namara.”

  Vogt’s head shook sadly. “It has been too many years. I’m sorry. I don’t remember him, but there were many, many brave Texans under Hood’s command. I was a mere private.”

  “Pa was ... a ... sergeant.”

  “And a brave man.”

  “He was gunned down ...”

  “No. It didn’t happen that way.”

  “But ...”

  “Yes. The stories. The lies. Hell, I was partly responsible for that myself. I wrote an article, sent it to Dallas—that’s where I’d lived before I rode south to join the cause. The Dallas Mercury published my lies.”

  Jess found himself lowering his pistol.

  “W-what ... happened?” That came from General Dalton himself. “I do not remember ... anymore.”

  Vogt’s head bowed.

  “We boarded the steamboat, the Fancy Belpre. A ship built for cargo and maybe sixty passengers and crew, loaded down with more than three hundred or thereabouts. Alas, the Belpre was also carrying weapons and ammunition. Bound for a war that was already over. When the boilers exploded that awful night, the ship went up like a tinderbox, and the flames set off all that ammunition. Bullets ripped through the bodies of so many men—even women passengers and children—tore them to pieces. Dalton, though.” Vogt bowed at the seated old man. “He raced from the hotel. He pulled a few survivors out of the Ohio River. One of those men he saved ... was me.”

  “I ... was ... a ... hero?” the Butcher of Baxter Pass asked.

  “Yes, Father,” Caroline said softly. “As I always knew ... in my heart.”

  “Indeed, General,” the stranger said.

  Burt McNamara had lowered the revolver, and Jess holstered his own, crossed the stage, and took the pistol from the boy’s left hand.

  “But ... why?” Amanda Wilson asked. “Why did you lie? Why did you write that ... article?”

  Vogt shrugged. “I was young. I was bitter. I hated General Dalton. For letting me live and not drown. It’s ... it’s ... hard to ... explain.” His head bowed, but only for a moment. “But do not ... do not forgive me. I do not deserve such mercy.”

  He held out his hand. Which the Butcher of Baxter Pass accepted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Wednesday, 7:50 a.m.

  “I can’t believe,” Jess told Hoot Newton in the jail, “that you slept through that Gatling gun last night.”

  “I was tired, Jess,” Hoot said between slurps of coffee and chewing bacon and scrambled eggs. “I’m still tired.”

  “You’re tired!” Jess laughed, although that hurt his broken arm. “I haven’t slept since Sunday night!”

  He had spent all Tuesday night and most of this morning straightening everything out. Having Doc Wilson set his broken arm and put it in a cast and sling. Cleaning up the streets. Getting the bodies of dead men to a very happy undertaker. Telling every newspaper reporter—including those that came from Dallas via special trains—what had happened. Setting the record straight about the Butcher of Baxter Pass after twenty-five years.

  At dawn, Caroline Dalton had loaded her senile father into the circus wagon—with a new team, although mules and not Percheron draft animals, donated by Stewart’s Wagon Yard—and paraded him down Main Street toward his home up north in Wise County. Men and women, boys and girls cheered the new hero ... the man who had tried to save so many lives of Texas Confederates at the awful prison camp in Baxter Pass, Ohio.

  Jess didn’t know how much longer the old man had, but he’d live the rest of his days as a hero. Jess wondered if he would ever see Caroline Dalton again. Certainly, he hoped so.

  Burt McNamara had gone south before the big parade and without any fanfare. He had been given a buckboard, loaded with three coffins, and ridden in the frosty morning toward Stephenville.

  After the Daltons had left, Jess had walked into the jail, opened the cells, and kicked the teenage kid who still hadn’t told anyone his name and Pete Doolin out. Run both of them out of town and did not ask for any fines to be paid. Mort Thompson and Harry Stout wouldn’t like that one bit. But they weren’t here. Actually, Jess hoped they stayed in Dallas. And become Constable Paul Parkin’s problem. Maybe Fort Worth Marshal Kurt Koenig would also stay gone. This town could be a right peaceable place if you got rid of certain undesirables.

  The door opened as Jess finished his coffee. Professor Mitchell Vogt hobbled inside. Leaning on his crutch, his right hand disappeared into his sack suit’s pocket.

  “Sheriff,” Vogt said, his voice still booming. “I have something for you.”

  “Would you like some cof—” The sentence died in his throat as Vogt withdrew a Colt Thunderer double-action revolver and dropped it on Jess’s desk.

  Jess didn’t have any words. He looked across the room, but Hoot Newton had finished his breakfast and was lying on the cot in the corner. A few seconds later, and Hoot started snoring.

  “I don’t understand,” Jess said.

  “It’s simple, Sheriff.” Vogt straightened. “That’s the weapon I bought in Granbury after receiving your telegram and before catching the stage. I came here to kill the Butcher of Baxter Pass.”

  Jess’s arm ached, but his head hurt more.

  “But ...”

  “Last night?” Vogt grinned. “I love the theater, sir. Love to perform. I lied.”

  “You mean ...”

  “Dalton was the devil incarnate, and he opened fire from the Union Hotel’s balcony on that night with a Gatling gun. He murdered everyone who died aboard the Fancy Belpre. He had been driven mad. The article I wrote for the Mercury might have been biased, but it was the truth, sir.”

  Jess slumped in his chair.

  “Oh, the Butcher did try to get food for the prisoners. I think that’s what drove him insane. No one helped. It was war. But when Dalton destroyed the steamboat, he was mad. Mad. He shouted that no one had any right to survive the hell they had endured. It was nothing short of murder, but the murder of a man driven insane by the horrors at Baxter Pass. The Yankees knew what Dalton had done. But Lincoln was dead, the war was over, Booth was dead, and there were conspirators to be hanged. They ignored what Dalton had done. Made him a general. Conveniently swept the matter under that proverbial rug.”

  Hoot Newton rolled over, said something in his sleep, and resumed snoring.

  “How did you live?” Jess asked.

  “That’s the crux of things, Sheriff. It was Dalton. He refused to let me take the steamboat. Said I was too sick. But he knew. He knew my fellow Texans knew that I had been a traitor, informing the guards of tunnels being dug, of escapes being planned. I did what I needed to do to survive, Sheriff. Had the steamboat made it down the Ohio, I would have been murdered. But in the general’s hotel room, I heard the Gatling gun. I wanted to die. I wanted Dalton to die for letting me live.”

  Jess’s head shook. “So why didn’t you kill him last night?”

  “You stopped me, Sheriff. I guess I should thank you for that. When you told that boy that the war was over, that he could start the peace ...” Vogt opened the door and stepped outside. “I knew then that twenty-five years was long enough to hate. Hate Dalton. And hate myself. I knew I should get back to living. Thank you, Sheriff. If you ever decide to come down to Thorp Spring, please, don’t. I’d like to forget everyt
hing and just teach young men and women to be better than I was, or could ever be.”

  The door closed. Like that, Mitchell Vogt was gone, leaving Jess alone in the office with a dumbstruck look on his face and a snoring Hoot Newton.

  Exhausted, Jess stared at the clock, stood, and walked to the cells. After closing the heavy door behind him to drown out Hoot Newton’s snores, Jess stepped inside the first cell. He sat on the cot, and then lay down carefully with his busted arm in the sling, and closed his eyes. Immediately, he fell asleep.

  JOHNSTONE JUSTICE. WHAT AMERICA NEEDS NOW.

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  THE EDGE OF VIOLENCE

  A TIM COLTER WESTERN

  by William W. Johnstone

  with J. A. Johnstone

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