Texas John Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  Fewer than ten men had gathered in answer to his summons. The bank robbers would outnumber them by a margin of more than three to one.

  It was a pretty motley group of posse men, too. Slaughter saw the other two bank tellers, Ross Murdock and Joseph Cleaver. He wondered if the young men were volunteering because they wanted to or because their boss Cyrus Stockard had ordered them to.

  Diego Herrara, the cook at one of the local hash houses, was there, as was the saddle maker, Grover Harmon. Herrara was too fond of his own cooking and was almost as wide as he was tall, while the stocky, walrus-mustached Harmon was as old as Luther Gentry. The two old-timers were friends, too, Slaughter recalled.

  Pete Yardley owned a general store and was one of the merchants who’d been robbed by the bandits. With his spectacles, thinning brown hair, bushy mustache, and prominent Adam’s apple, he looked about as dangerous as a buttermilk pie.

  Jack Doyle was a professional gambler who worked most often in Upton’s Top-Notch. His presence surprised Slaughter. Evidently he didn’t hold a grudge against the sheriff just because his boss did.

  A sweating, red-faced, heavyset man in a brown tweed suit and a derby was a stranger to Slaughter. He introduced himself as Chester Carlton and explained that he was a drummer who’d been staying at the hotel. “I’d like to come along with you if that’s all right, Sheriff. I’ve been traveling around out here in the West for quite a while, but never had the chance to take part in any real excitement.”

  “You may get more excitement than you bargain for, Mr. Carlton,” Slaughter warned him. “But if you can stay in the saddle and pull the trigger on a gun, I won’t refuse your offer of help.” He looked around at the others. “Anybody need a gun? There are rifles in the sheriff’s office if you do.”

  Murdock, Cleaver, and Carlton all spoke up. Slaughter took them inside the courthouse and armed them with fairly new Winchesters and boxes of ammunition. The other men all had weapons of their own, and the armament was as wide an assortment as they were, including single-shot rifles, repeaters, pistols, and shotguns.

  Better than nothing, Slaughter thought.

  He hoped fervently that he wasn’t going to get all these men killed.

  Chapter 6

  Viola was scared, but knew better than to let her fear take control of her. If she allowed that to happen, she would be paralyzed with terror and wouldn’t be able to escape, even if the opportunity arose.

  The big bandit holding her in front of him on the horse was a bit free with his hands, but he didn’t grope her too shamelessly. She tried a couple times to twist out of his grip, but couldn’t budge his arm. She gave up when she realized that if she jumped off while they were galloping, she would probably break her leg . . . or her neck.

  Like it or not, she told herself, she might be better off biding her time and waiting for a better chance.

  The outlaws didn’t slow down until Tombstone fell several miles behind them. When they finally pulled their mounts back to a walk, Viola tried to turn and look behind them, but she couldn’t see over her captor’s shoulder.

  He laughed. “Ha, little one, you look for your novio, eh? You think he’s coming after you?”

  “I know he will,” Viola said. “He’s—” She stopped herself before she said Sheriff of Cochise County. If the bandits knew she was married to a lawman, they might consider her an even more valuable hostage and hang on to her longer. She hoped they would release her once they were well clear of the settlement.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, chiquita,” the big man told her. “I already looked. There’s nobody back there.”

  Despite her determination to be strong, Viola’s heart sank. She knew John would come after her, of course, but she would have felt better if he was already on the trail with a posse.

  A posse, she thought. Where was he going to get a posse with most of the able-bodied men in Tombstone off looking for silver in the Dragoon Mountains?

  A groan of despair welled up her throat. She forced it back down for two reasons.

  First of all, she wasn’t the sort to give up. She never had been and never would be. For another thing, she didn’t want to give the brute holding her the satisfaction of knowing that she was scared.

  The man who had tackled her on the boardwalk and knocked the Henry out of her hands had been riding a little ahead of her and the big outlaw. He let his horse drop back until he was alongside them.

  Viola noticed he was younger and slimmer. When he looked over at her, she thought she saw something . . . haunted . . . in his dark eyes.

  He asked, “Are you all right, señorita?”

  She didn’t correct him and tell him that she was a señora. The less they knew about her, the better. Unobtrusively, she slipped off her wedding band and closed her hand around it.

  “How do you think I am?” she asked tensely. “Attacked, dragged off the street, kidnapped! If you have any decency, sir, you’ll release me right now!”

  He tried to look her in the eyes, but his gaze dropped to her body and then jerked away as guilt flashed in his eyes. Even though the white nightgown was very plain, not provocative, and covered her from neck to feet, he suspected there was nothing underneath it except her. Clearly that bothered him.

  “Releasing you was exactly what I intended, señorita, but now that I have had time to think about what happened in Tombstone, I believe things have changed.”

  “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

  “You came to the aid of the sheriff. I heard you call out to him. The two of you know each other.”

  She put a disdainful tone in her voice as she said, “Everyone in Tombstone knows Sheriff John Slaughter.”

  “Sí, the famous Texas John. I have heard that in addition to being a lawman, he owns a large rancho east of here in the San Bernardino Valley. Everyone in Arizona Territory knows of John Slaughter.”

  “Then you know you don’t want him on your trail,” Viola said. “You’ll be better off if you leave me right here and head for the border as fast as you can.”

  The young man seemed to be the leader of the bank robbers. “I would if I had not seen Sheriff Slaughter’s face as we rode out of Tombstone with you as our prisoner. It was the face of a man losing a loved one.”

  Viola frowned, but didn’t say anything. The bandit had made some big assumptions, but he had drawn the right conclusions.

  “I think in the long run we may be safer, as long as we have the daughter of Sheriff John Slaughter as our prisoner.”

  Well, maybe not all the right conclusions, Viola thought.

  * * *

  Luther Gentry furnished horses for the members of the posse who didn’t own one, along with a couple pack animals. With the border as close as it was, the chances of them needing as many supplies as they were taking were small. It didn’t seem likely the posse would be gone from Tombstone for that long.

  But there was no guarantee the outlaws would cross the border into Mexico. They could always turn and head in another direction, and Slaughter thought it was possible they might do just that in hopes of eluding pursuit. It was better to be prepared for anything.

  Slaughter was a man of strict habits, and he credited that discipline for much of his success in life. But he was also a man who played hunches from time to time, relying on his instincts to tell him when to do so. He had learned to be ready to take action when such a hunch came to him.

  Luther Gentry and Grover Harmon moved their horses up alongside Slaughter’s. Harmon was as short and squat as Gentry was tall and skinny. The wide-brimmed brown hat Harmon wore had an unusually tall crown, as if to make up for his lack of stature. A magnificent mustache stuck out on either side of his face and curled down to frame his mouth.

  “We tried to get some more members of the Spit ’n’ Whittle Club to come along with us, Sheriff,” Harmon said.

  Slaughter recognized the reference to the group of old-timers who got together almost every day on the benches near the publ
ic well.

  “The rest of ’em begged off on account of rheumatiz and the like. Those old men are a bunch of complainers, I tell you what.”

  “It ain’t like we don’t do our fair share of complainin’, Grover,” Gentry pointed out. “Wasn’t it you who was just talkin’ this mornin’ about his piles?”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s a legitimate complaint. Sheriff, did you ever have that terrible itch—”

  Thankfully, the sound of swift hoofbeats coming up from behind them interrupted Harmon’s question.

  Slaughter reined in and turned in the saddle to see who was following them. He didn’t recognize the rider, who wore tan pants, suspenders, and a patched, faded work shirt. A battered old bowler hat was pulled down low over his ears. The newcomer held an old Springfield rifle across the saddle in front of him. Evidently he intended to join the posse.

  “Who’s that?” Slaughter muttered.

  The other men had reined in to look back, too. Gentry shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted for a moment. “Appears to be Mose Tadrack.”

  The name was vaguely familiar to Slaughter, but he couldn’t place it. “Who’s Mose Tadrack?”

  “Swamper down to the Oriental Saloon,” Harmon answered.

  “He can’t figure on throwin’ in with us,” Gentry said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the fella when he wasn’t at least half drunk. Most of the time he’d fall down if he wasn’t hangin’ on to a broom or a mop.”

  That didn’t sound like a promising recruit to Slaughter. He was already saddled with a posse that might have trouble bringing in a band of marauding pie thieves. He didn’t need a drunkard, to boot.

  Tadrack rode up to where Slaughter sat on horseback. Up close, he was even less impressive, with a receding chin that made his Adam’s apple look like it stuck out more than normal. But he was sitting fairly straight in the saddle, and his eyes, although a little watery, were clear. “Sheriff, if you’re going after those skunks who carried off Mrs. Slaughter, I’d like to come with you.”

  Slaughter was a little impressed that Tadrack mentioned Viola being kidnapped, but didn’t say anything about the bank money. “It’s liable to be dangerous, Tadrack.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” the swamper said with a nod. “But as soon as I heard what happened, I . . . I knew I wanted to help. It just took me a little while to get ready.”

  “To sober up, you mean,” Harmon said.

  A flush crept over Tadrack’s face. “Yes sir, Mr. Harmon. That’s what I mean.”

  Gentry asked, “How many gallons of coffee did you pour down your throat, Mose?”

  “Enough,” Tadrack replied curtly. Then Slaughter heard him mutter under his breath, “I hope.”

  Slaughter didn’t appreciate the two old-timers horning in with their questions when he was in charge of the posse. “Why do you want to come with us, Tadrack? What’s Mrs. Slaughter to you?”

  “Why, I doubt if she even knows I exist, Sheriff. I’m sure she doesn’t know my name. But one night when I was . . . under the weather . . . she helped me get back to my shack. She even came in and fixed me something to eat. I . . . I couldn’t believe it . . . a lady like her giving a hand to the likes of me. . . .”

  “I believe it,” Slaughter said quietly. It sounded exactly like something Viola might do, even though he would have fussed at her for taking such a chance if he had known about it. He lifted his reins. “If you want to come with us, you’re welcome.”

  Then he turned his horse and rode south again, with the rest of the posse trailing behind him.

  Chapter 7

  The blue-gray peaks of the Mule Mountains loomed in front of the outlaws as they continued southward. Clumps of manzanita and juniper covered the steep slopes that were cut by deep canyons. Viola had been in the Mules before, but was not overly familiar with them.

  “Are you going through the mountains?” she asked Chaco.

  He still would hardly look at her. With his gaze facing ahead, he replied, “To go around them would take an extra two days to reach our destination.”

  “And what’s that? The border?”

  Chaco didn’t say anything. He had the extremely annoying habit of ignoring questions he didn’t want to answer.

  It always made Viola angry when she said something to someone and they acted like they hadn’t even heard her when she knew good and well they had.

  “You’re wrong about me, you know,” she said sharply. “I’m not Sheriff Slaughter’s daughter. My family is just acquainted with his, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t exactly a lie. John had met her father and brothers on the trail during a cattle drive over in New Mexico Territory, even before the two of them were introduced,

  Again Chaco didn’t reply, but the big man, whose name Viola had learned was Gabriel, chuckled. “Even if you’re just a family friend, señorita, you are very valuable to us. A young, beautiful hostage is the best kind to have!” Laughter boomed out from him.

  Viola restrained the impulse to drive an elbow back into his gut. It wouldn’t do any good. He was built like a barrel, and his stomach was hard as one.

  Now that some time had passed since the raid on Tombstone and her kidnapping, her fear had subsided somewhat. She didn’t trust the hardened outlaws not to harm her, of course, but she didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. At the moment, she was more angry than anything else, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good to give in to that feeling.

  They reached the foothills by early afternoon and climbed into them. At the top of a hill that would give them a good view back to the north, Chaco reined in and lifted a hand in a signal for the others to halt.

  He slid down from his saddle, pushed his sombrero back off his head, and raised a pair of field glasses to his eyes as he peered back in the direction they had come from.

  Gabriel dismounted as well. He stood beside the horse and held up his arms. “Come on, little one. I’ll help you down so you can walk around a little.”

  “What if I don’t want down?” she snapped.

  “We’ve been riding for quite a while,” Gabriel said with a shrug. “And you’re not exactly dressed for it, señorita.”

  That was certainly true. As a matter of fact, Viola very badly wanted to get off the horse for a few minutes. But she didn’t want to admit it to the big bandit.

  Discomfort won out over pride and stubbornness. “Oh, all right.”

  She reached down to take hold of his arms as he lifted her off the animal’s back. Having solid ground under her again felt good, even though the sandy surface was hot on the soles of her bare feet.

  Chaco lowered the field glasses. “I don’t see anyone, but they’re back there. I can feel them coming after us.”

  “Of course they’re back there. Sheriff Slaughter isn’t going to let you get away with robbing the bank or with kidnapping me. You’d still be better off to release me before he catches up to you.”

  Gabriel waved a hand at their rugged surroundings. “Leave a beautiful señorita stranded in a place like this full of cactus and scorpions and rattlesnakes? That would be a terrible thing to do!”

  Viola had to admit, at least to herself, that she wouldn’t enjoy spending much time in these mountains on her own, especially in her state of undress. She didn’t want to continue as the outlaws’ captive, but she had started to wonder if she wouldn’t be safer in their company for the time being.

  Something had to be done about certain situations, though. She stepped in front of Chaco and forced him to look at her. When he tried to turn his eyes away, she moved so that he couldn’t help but see her. “I need some clothes and some privacy in which to put them on.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any clothes suitable for a lady.”

  “I don’t care if they’re suitable. A spare shirt and a pair of trousers will be better than what I have on. A hat and a pair of boots or some moccasins would be good, too. Honestly, you can’t expect me to ride all the wa
y to Mexico dressed only in a nightgown!”

  Stubbornly, he looked away from her again, but not before his eyes flicked down to her body, followed by the same flash of guilt she had seen in them earlier.

  “I will see what I can do,” he muttered. “Gabriel, watch her.”

  “Sí,” Gabriel said, grinning again. “Never have you given me a more pleasant job, amigo.”

  The other men had dismounted to rest their horses. Chaco walked over to them, “Ortiz!”

  A small man with a mustache that looked like a fuzzy caterpillar crawling across his upper lip stepped up. Chaco spoke to him in rapid Spanish. Viola followed the exchange with no trouble as Ortiz replied. After spending a number of years in Arizona Territory, she spoke Spanish like a native.

  Chaco asked the man if he had any spare clothes. Ortiz answered that he had an extra shirt but only the trousers he wore. Chaco told him to fetch the shirt, then asked among the other men for a pair of trousers. He had to check with several of them before someone finally agreed to supply the garment.

  Several minutes later, Chaco came back to Viola with a faded red shirt and a pair of denim trousers draped over his right arm. He had a pair of moccasins and a flat-crowned hat in his left hand. “This is the best I can do. The pants will be too long, I am sure, but we can cut some off the legs once you have them on.”

  “Thank you,” she replied stiffly. “Now there’s a matter of privacy . . .”

  “Of course. You can go behind those manzanita bushes over there.”

  He pointed to a clump of several bushes that were tall enough and thick enough to provide at least a semblance of decency, Viola thought, although it was possible a few flashes of skin might be seen through them as she changed.

  Not by Chaco, however, since she was sure he would keep his eyes averted the whole time. She didn’t expect such consideration from the rest of the outlaws.

  Chaco handed the clothes to her and then surprised her by following her over to the manzanitas. “You go behind the bushes. I’ll turn my back, but keep talking to me so I’ll know you’re there.”