Chapter 2
The next three days were short on daylight, but the Keeshaws rode from first light past sunset, stopping only for a cold noon meal of jerky and hardtack and when the animals puffed and slavered and shuddered beneath the riders. Straight south through East Texas, no-place country, raw with red flanked hills, unblessed, infertile land, grassless, ungreen, and winter grim. South toward a speck called, God only remembered why, Gilead.
During the days they rode mostly silent, but at night, by the flickering light and inadequate warmth of a mesquite campfire, while Bart admired his newly acquired timepiece, Tom urged Deek to tell them more about what lay ahead for them in Mexico. Deek spoke about women, wealth, and tequila just as if he had been there. Tom closed his eyes and listened, just as both younger brothers had listened to Deek since their daddy died drunk, stomped to death in a barn by a bay. They buried their daddy next to their long-dead mother, who had expired giving birth to Bart.
They shot the bay, stopped by to say “so long” to Frank and Dingus, who had a nearby farm in Clay County, Missouri, and rode off to join up with Quantrill, flower of Southern knighthood.
A few months later Frank and Jesse also joined up. The war was the worst thing that ever happened to bleeding Kansas, but the best thing that ever happened to the Keeshaws. But all good things must come to an end. For Quantrill it ended with a mortal wound near Taylorsville, Kentucky, in May of 1865.
Frank and Jesse went into the railroad and banking business, investing with lead and dynamite. For a time the Keeshaws rode along, but splintered off when Jesse started taking too many chances and giving orders for his band to take even more chances.
The Keeshaws decided to go into business for themselves. They hadn’t exactly prospered. But things would be different in Mexico after they stopped off in Gilead. Deek told them so.
And the brothers believed everything Deek said.
Midmorning of the fourth day the three riders topped out on the crest of a hill curved along a moody sackcloth sky.
They paused at the rim and drank from a canteen in the order of their birth.
“Wish it was tequila,” Bart said as he passed the canteen back to Deek.
“Soon will be,” Deek said, and took another pull. Then he saw something on the road down below and pointed.
In the distance, a two-up wagon, a buckboard. One of the rear wheels had fallen off. The buckboard was empty except for the driver, who was just climbing down. He walked toward the fallen wheel, which had rolled a few feet away.
“Looks like that man’s had some bad luck,” said Deek.
“Better him than us,” said Bart, checking his timepiece again.
“Let’s go down.”
“What for?” Tom asked.
“Why, it’s our chance to play the ‘Good Samaritans. ’”
Deek rode off toward the wagon.
“What’s that mean? Sam-mar-samarisons?” Bart asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Well,” Bart grinned through his absent teeth, “I guess we’ll soon find out.”
Tom rode after Deek. As always, Bart followed.
Shad Parker rolled the wayward wheel close to the wagon.
And as the three riders, first Deek, then Tom and Bart, came closer, they sized up the man they approached. It wasn’t hard to see that he was a powerful man, with buffalo shoulders and thickset arms under the gray jacket he wore, now faded to a washed-out bone gray. His face a sullen, dangerous mold. His eyes bleak, weary, bitter. From under the black, sweat-scalloped, flat-crowned hat, jutted twists of coarse dark hair grained with irregular ridges of gray. His cheekbones were high and hard. In spite of his powerful structure, he moved with a pantherine grace and ease. The barrel of a Walker Colt inched out of its holster from beneath the edge of his jacket against his dark serge pants. Without moving his head, Shad Parker’s eyes appraised the approaching riders, but he went on with his task.
The Keeshaws were now in an almost straight line just a few feet from the wagon.
“Howdy,” Deek greeted as pleasantly as he knew how.
There was no response from the man, who went on working.
“Deek Keeshaw,” Deek said after a silence. “My brothers. Tom and Bart.”
Shad paid no attention. He dropped the wheel near the rear axle, then proceeded to remove a pickax from the bed of the wagon. He placed the pickax on its head so the handle stood straight up near the rear of the tilted wagon.
“Looks like you need a hand,” Deek tried again. “We’d be happy to help you, mister.”
Shad ignored the offer. The three men let the silence settle in, then looked at one another.
Shad Parker squatted so the bed of the heavy wagon rested on his shoulder.
“Maybe he’s deef and dumb,” Bart whispered to Deek.
Deek didn’t reply. His eyes fastened on to the man and what was happening.
Shad Parker strained for just a moment, then the tilted side of the wagon started to rise, slowly, steadily. It almost appeared that the man could have flipped the wagon over if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Shad walked the wagon back, one, two, three steps until the rear end was directly over the ax handle.
The Keeshaws were justifiably astonished. Bart pushed the brim of his dirty hat back over his hairline and swallowed some cold air.
While Shad started to lower the wagon, one of the two horses hitched to the wagon nickered.
“Easy, Nell.”
“Whatever he is,” Tom said, “he ain’t deef and dumb.”
Shad gently lowered the bed of the wagon so it rested on the pickax handle that now acted as a jack. He lifted the wheel without much strain and slipped it onto the axle. He still hadn’t even glanced at the three horsemen.
“Looks like you don’t need a hand.” Deek smiled. “If you’re heading for Gilead, we’d be happy to buy you a holiday drink.”
By now the Keeshaws didn’t really expect an answer. They didn’t get one.
“Come on, boys,” Deek said to his brothers, “I calculate that Gilead is just beyond that next turn.” The Keeshaws rode off toward the turn about a quarter of a mile south.
A few vagrant flakes of soft snow drifted uncertainly out of the amber sky but melted instantly on whatever they touched.
It wasn’t until the Keeshaws were halfway to the turn that Shad Parker looked in their direction.
Chapter 3
The croaking Conestoga with weathered buffalo hides stretching over the iron ribs groaned to a stop along the road within sight of Shad Parker’s spread.
A man who called himself “Buffler Jones” held the reins of the four-up. Whoever designed his face had never heard of handsome, and growing older while letting a crop of spiky hair cover most of what went under his hat hadn’t helped much.
Next to Buffler sat an Indian, older and homelier, but hairless, at least the hide on his face was hairless.
“All right, young ’uns,” Buffler looked back inside the wagon, “I said I’d take you far as the first farmhouse we come to. Ain’t hardly much, but this appears to be it.”
After waking up the youngest, the three of them crawled over the seat and jumped down on the ground.
First the oldest, a boy, Austin Coats, age eleven, but older inside than out, gaunt, with defiant pinwheel eyes, a knife blade mouth, long rankled yellow hair, half-sad, half-insolent but comely. Clothes torn and dirty.
Next a girl, Peg, a year and a month younger than her brother, in the same slattern condition, but with wider, more tragic eyes.
And finally, a six-year-old boy, Davy, rope thin, in about the same condition as his brother and sister, except still sleepy.
“Thanks, Mr. Jones,” the little girl said. “Me and Austin and Davy appreciate your help.”
“I’d admire to do more.” Buffler rubbed his spiky beard. “Grub, or some money, but ol’ Moondog and me is busted flat. Gonna have to kill what we eat till we hook up with the railroad. Well, so long, young ’uns, and good l
uck.”
The wagon pulled away and left them standing there.
They had met the old man and the Indian the night before when the three of them had walked toward the campfire and found themselves looking into the barrel of a Sharps buffalo rifle, held by the old man with a carved piece of wood for a left leg and an Indian standing beside him.
“Just the three of you young ’uns?” the old man asked.
All three nodded.
“Hungry?”
“All three nodded again.
“Eat.” The old man pointed toward what was left of a rabbit they had cooked for supper.
The three of them went to work on it until there was nothing left of the animal but a few bones, and they sucked them clean.
While they ate and long after, the old man talked. Austin, Peg, and Davy never heard anybody talk so much in all their lives. He didn’t ask many questions, and they were glad of that.
“Family? Ma and Pa?”
“Dead,” said Austin.
“Orphans, huh?”
Peg nodded.
“They have places for orphans.”
“Not for us,” said Austin.
“Why not?”
“They kept trying to split us up,” Peg said.
“So you run away?” That was just about the end of the questions, but not the conversation. It wasn’t exactly a conversation, more like an oration.
Buffler Jones appeared eager to spill out his story while Moondog sat, seemingly asleep with his eyes open, and never spoke a word.
“Moondog ain’t long on talkin’,” Buffler observed. “Some days he don’t even grunt.” But the old man made up for his friend’s silence.
The children listened, partly because they were fascinated by the story and partly because they hoped the old man might take them along to wherever he was going, he and Moondog, north to the plains to hunt buffalo for the railroad.
Buffler told them how he began to hunt the beasts when he was a boy little more than Austin’s age. It was no great task to kill buffalo with a rifle. For years the Indians had done it the hard way on foot and horseback, with bows and iron-tipped arrows. The beasts had bad eyesight and were short on brains, but they were big and strong and brought down many ponies and braves with hoof and horn.
But they were no match for rifles. Buffler said that he and the other white hunters who smelled of death and old guts all the time would come upon a countless herd two to four hundred yards away and pick off 150 buffalo a day apiece. Their skinners stripped the animals, whose tongues were smoked and sent back East as a culinary delicacy, while the hides were sold as lap robes.
The heaps of meat lay rotting. There weren’t enough buzzards in the world to consume what was left behind.
And, said Buffler, there was a time when he thought there weren’t enough rifles and cartridges in the world to decimate the herds. But now he wasn’t so sure. But they’d last his lifetime and that’s all that mattered to him because there was no other way he knew how to make a living.
“I tried after I lost my leg last year. Ol’ Moondog and me, we went to farmin’. But we weren’t cut out to be no farmers. Went flat bust, so it’s back to the buffalo. You know, boy,” he said to Austin, “I could take you along, you’re old enough to go to skinnin’, I’d teach you how, but there wouldn’t be any place for the younger ’uns.”
“Thanks anyway,” said Austin. “We’ll stick together.”
“Suit yourself. Well, time to turn in. We’ll take you far as the first farmhouse tomorrow then me and ol’ Moondog’ll turn north. At least the railroad eats the meat. Still, if there’s another world after this ’un, and if there’s ghosts of buffaloes up there, I got a heap of explainin’ to do.”
Austin, Peg, and Davy watched the wagon move away then turned toward the farmstead. The structures consisted of a squat main cabin, a barn, a smokehouse, a chicken coop, and a hog pen. There was a well between the cabin and the barn.
Part of the spread had been fenced, plowed, and planted. Part of it was still studded with rocks, especially along the bottom of a soaring hillside.
In front of Austin, Peg, and Davy there was a sign nailed to a post.
NO TRESPASSING
“What’s that sign say?” Davy asked.
“It says ‘No Trespassing,’” Peg answered.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means what it says,” came a voice from behind them.
All three turned and saw a man aboard a mule. He was tall and lean, with a long face and musing eyes.
“We don’t mean no harm, mister,” said Austin. “Is this your property?”
“No, it’s not. Haven’t got any property, not anymore. But I stopped by once to water my mule. Least, that’s what I intended to do. Man who owns this property had other intentions. Didn’t include being hospitable, or even civil. Probably poke a hole in a blind man’s cup.”
“Doesn’t appear to be anybody home,” said Austin.
“Then, that’s the time to leave, before he gets back.”
“We don’t mean no harm,” Austin repeated.
“You already said that, and I said you better get to gettin’ before he gets back. And that’s all I’m saying.”
And that was all he said. Then he and the mule left.
“I still don’t know what that word means.” Davy pointed to the sign.
“It means,” Austin said, “‘keep off.’ ‘Get away.’”
“And that’s just what we’re going to do,” Peg remarked. “Isn’t it, Austin?”
“I’m getting hungry,” Davy said. “Listen to all them chickens. Where there’s chickens, there’s eggs.”
“They don’t belong to us, Davy,” Peg said. “I think we better do like the man said and get away from here.”
“We will,” Austin replied. “But let’s take a look up that hill first.”
“What for?” Peg asked.
“Well, for one, we ain’t got nothing else to do. For another, I think I see somethin’.”
“What?”
“Yeah, what do you see?” Davy said. “Somethin’ to eat?”
“Just follow me and you’ll find out.”
Chapter 4
South of the Red River that separated the Oklahoma Territory from Texas, west of the Sabine that divided Louisiana and Texas, and east of the Brazos that threaded down toward Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere where the devil stomped the dust off his boots, there was a place where even wolves didn’t have much of a chance.
Somebody chanced to call it Gilead. Not all that far from where some other Bible thumper thought it appropriate to christen some other boghole Palestine.
Not even “New” Gilead or “New” Palestine. Whoever named these places apparently was trying to pass them off as the genuine article. And apparently some citizens didn’t know the difference—or care.
In the depressed post–Civil War Texas, bled of men and money, all anybody cared about was surviving.
There were traces of snow scattered along the streets, signs, and rooftops. But the day was crisp and clear in Gilead.
Despite the economic depression, the townsfolk of Gilead had not forgotten that it was the Christmas season. They reminded one another and whoever might pass through by nailing up Christmas banners, wreaths, and assorted decorations.
Let nothing you dismay, these Texans seemed to be saying. We’ll survive. We’ll prevail. We’re tough. We’re Texans. No matter where we came from, Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, Missouri, or Kansas—we’re Texans here and now—and here and now we’ll stay until things get better. And some added, They can’t get any worse.
Shad Parker’s wagon rolled through the main street of Gilead and stopped in front of Inghram’s General Store on the corner. This was the center of town. On the other three corners were a bank, a saloon, and a hotel.
Just south of the main street there was a church, Methodist. Actually it was little more than the size of an ordinary house with a small steepl
e stuck on top of it. But the little steeple did have a bell.
There were a few more citizens than usual, doing what passed for Christmas shopping, with whatever passed for money; coins, currency, barter, but more often credit. The youngsters were on Christmas vacation from school and that added some to the people on the street and to the noise.
Only one man paid much attention to Shad Parker as his wagon rolled by and pulled to a stop.
Sheriff Elwood Hinge, whose office was next door to the bank, leaned back on a Douglas chair, carving a small Christmas tree out of a chunk of wood. Lying across the sheriff’s lap was a shotgun.
Elwood Hinge knew how to use it. Just as important, he knew when to use it. Not too soon—and not too late—at least not too late for himself.
He didn’t move fast. He didn’t move slow. But he moved when he had to. Even without the shotgun or the badge he was the sort of man who commanded attention. With the shotgun and the badge he commanded respect.
He wore a trail hat, a mackinaw, a flannel shirt, and wool vest with canvas pants, and Justin boots with three-inch heels. He also wore a .44.
Elwood Hinge had a frontier face with shoulders to match. His eyes were the color of a December morn and just as cold. He was born on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, of the eleventh year of the nineteenth century.
Shad Parker wrapped the reins around the brake handle and alighted from the wagon. He walked around the team and headed for the entrance to Inghram’s General Store. He paid no attention to anything or anybody on the street.
A boy of ten or twelve stood near the doorway to the store. Two men were working in front of the livery stable next door to Inghram’s.
“Merry Christmas, mister,” the boy greeted Shad. “Can I water your animals?”
The two men in front of the livery looked up from their work.
Shad looked at the boy for only a moment.
“No.” Then he walked on, opened the door, and went into the store.
The two workmen at the livery went back to their work. The boy sat on the stoop in front of the store and turned up the thin, threadbare collar of his coat.
The Christmas Trespassers Page 2