Sons of Some Dear Mother

by Matt Cole

  The Sons of Some Dear Mother

  The five sons of Dorothy Daniels – Frank, a notorious gunman; Hugh, an attorney; Urban, a drifter who works odd jobs; Virgil, a sober and serious rancher; and the youngest, Casey – reunite in their hometown of Blue Springs Creek, Missouri, for their mother’s funeral, after she is murdered.

  The townspeople are shocked, and an eyewitness claims it was the outlaw leader Henry Lowe and the Murdock Gang who were responsible. When the brothers become disillusioned with the local law and their lack of pursuit, they decide to track down the gang themselves and get their vengeance.

  On the trail of the murderous outlaws, the brothers start to find some of the brotherly love they had lost since they were kids. The trail is filled with danger, duels and death. The brothers will risk everything to get justice for their mother – especially Frank, the toughest and most ruthless of Dorothy’s sons.

  By the same author

  Hell Paso

  Shadow Peak

  Gunpowder Empire

  The Dead, the Dying and the Damned

  Battle Mountain

  Trouble at Painted River

  Boyd Rode Alone

  Writing as Cole Matthew

  The Trail to Devil’s Canyon

  The Sons of Some Dear Mother

  Matt Cole

  ROBERT HALE

  © Matt Cole 2019

  First published in Great Britain 2019

  ISBN 978-0-7198-3008-2

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Matt Cole to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ‘Men are what their mothers made them.’

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  ‘Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.’

  Sophocles

  ‘There has never been, nor will there ever be, anything quite so special as the love between a mother and a son.’

  Unknown

  CHAPTER 1

  SOME KIND OF GOD

  There was an ugly word that maybe the preacher, the Reverend Elston Hagwood, officiating at the funeral, had not used as yet. That word was murdered! But it was uppermost in the thoughts of every man, woman and child standing in the Missouri rain that awful day. It was bad enough that the most respected matriarch in the county was dead, but the fact that she had been mercilessly gunned down by outlaw scum unfit to breathe the same air as her was intolerable.

  ‘Dear Lord, we come today to honor our loved one. We are gathered here today, not only to grieve the loss of Dorothy Daniels, but also to give thanks to you for her life among us. We are gathered here today, not only to mourn over how different our lives will be without her, but also to give thanks to you for how full life was when she was with us. We have gathered here today, not only to consider the shortness and uncertainty of life on earth, but also to give thanks to you for the gift of life and the gift of family and the gift of friendships. Lord, we ask that you would comfort us this day as we come together to share love and sweet memories with one another,’ the Reverend Hagwood said, then paused. ‘In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.’

  The preacher’s voice was steady and unemotional. Although as outraged as anybody, he was not about to inflame already raw emotions by playing up to the popular sentiment. He meant to lay Dorothy Daniels next to her late husband, Isaac, with full ceremony and dignity, as befitted the life she had led in Clay County. There would be no talk of hatred or revenge in his eulogy; there was enough of that everyplace else, without his adding to it.

  The whole town was there to honor one of the last of the county’s genuine pioneers, and to support her sons in their time of sorrow.

  Married for forty-one years, up to the time of Isaac Daniels’ death a few years before, the Daniels had produced five strapping sons. Four of them were at the funeral, and they made an impressive if heartbreaking sight, standing tall and dark-suited in line as the casket was slowly lowered into the grave alongside their father.

  Hugh, the eldest of the four present, had arrived the previous day from Kansas where he had a thriving law practice. Young Casey, only twenty years of age as of last week had shown what he was made of by taking charge of the arrangements after the brutal shock of learning of his mother’s murder. Virgil, the sober and serious rancher, had to be restrained from going after the killers before the burial. Urban, the drifter, had reached town just that morning by train from St Louis.

  Few people had ever been given a more impressive farewell than the Daniels – Isaac first, and now Dorothy – but something was missing. And everybody knew what it was – or more accurately, who it was: Frank Daniels.

  The brothers tried every way they knew to contact big Frank, while Missouri newspapers made front page stories of the senseless murder of Dorothy Daniels at the hands of the Murdock Gang. Wires had been dispatched to places he was known to visit, places as far apart as El Robles, Mexico, to Indian Knife, Canada.

  It was more than a year since Clay County had laid eyes on giant Frank Daniels, but nobody ever forgot him. He had always been like that, a man who could make a lifetime impression just by saying ‘howdy’.

  It made folks sadder still to think of Frank Daniels missing out on his mother’s burial. With one thing and another, there was hardly a dry eye in the Blue Springs Creek graveyard as the good reverend summed up what it was all about.

  ‘Her life was a good life . . . the sons of some dear mother . . . she is our loss if the good Lord’s gain.’

  The rain continued to hiss down harder than ever. Hugh, as the oldest son present, was handed the shovel to send down the first clay clods.

  As he dug the blade into the earth, he seemed to freeze. Then he turned his head sharply and stared at his brothers, as though somebody had spoken. Three solemn faces told him otherwise. The Reverend Hagwood cleared his throat. Something had distracted Hugh from his solemn task, all right. He straightened up and looked around until his eyes fixed on the ridge behind the cemetery.

  It wanted an hour or two of sunset on a lovely evening as a single horseman made his way eastwards, across the high dry prairie land between the upper portion of the river and the trail that led into town. He was a big man, of great personal power, a figure that promised great agility and the capability of enduring fatigue; most remarkable was the shadow that he cast.

  On the croup of his horse, attached to the cantle of the saddle, he carried a small valise of untanned leather, with a superb Mexican blanket of blue and scarlet strapped upon it, and a large leather bottle with a horn drinking cup swinging from it on one side; on the other was fastened a portion of the loin of a fat buck, which had fallen in the course of the morning by his rifle.

  The horse that carried this well-appointed rider was a dark brown thoroughbred.

  At length, when the sun was no longer above three times the width of its own disc from the level line of the lowest plain, he set spur to his horse, and pushed him on from the raking
trot he had hitherto maintained into a long swinging gallop, which carried him over the ground at a good rate.

  After he had ridden at this pace for twenty or thirty minutes, he reached the brow of one of the low, rolling waves of earth that constitute the surface of the prairie; from here the land fell away in a long gentle slope for some six or seven miles towards the east, and the experienced eye of the horseman could make out a heavy growth of timber – this he knew was the deep forest of his youth, within its shadowy depths a wide and never failing river that he used to fish with his father and brothers. A short hour brought him closer to the forest – and closer to home – just as the sun was setting.

  Through this wild paradise the mighty river rolled its pellucid waves, rapid and strong, and as transparent as the purest crystal.

  Galloping his horse joyously over the rich green turf, the traveler soon reached the river, to a spot where it was bordered by a little breach or margin of pure white sand, almost as hard as marble; and wading into the cool, clear water till it washed the heaving flanks of his thoroughbred, he let it drink long and deep of the pure beverage, water having not touched its thirsty lips since the early morning.

  This duty done, he returned to the shore – he was running late – in order to make his way to something he did not wish to attend. Selecting an oak tree about two feet in girth, around which the grass grew tall and luxuriant, he tied his horse to its trunk with his lasso – a cord of plaited hide – that he kept coiled at his saddle bow.

  After polishing his accoutrements as if for a parade – though this was not a day of joy for him – he checked his saddle-bags to ensure they were secure. Satisfied that everything was fine, he reluctantly climbed back on to his horse, and with a slight nudge urged the animal onwards. He could see the town’s edge – a familiar sight for him, though it had been a long time since he had seen it – as he rode. He paused before topping the ridge, as he knew those in town would see him as soon as he did.

  Frank Daniels took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and checked if his tears were still coming. They were gone now.

  With that he topped the ridge.

  Above the puzzled murmur of adult voices, a child cried: ‘There’s someone up there, Mommy!’

  Every person, no matter what their age, turned to the ridge. And there they could see the dark silhouette of a man beside his horse, veiled but not hidden by the deluge of rain. The man appeared very big, and to at least one of the Daniels brothers, he looked very familiar.

  The shovel slipped from Hugh’s hands as his eyes widened.

  ‘It’s Frank,’ he whispered. Then, because nobody had heard, he shouted it: ‘It’s our brother Frank!’

  Scarcely anyone seemed ready to believe him until the tall figure started down from the top of the ridge. There could be no mistaking that distinctive, arm-swinging walk.

  ‘Yeah!’ breathed Urban Daniels. ‘It is him all right! He made it!’

  For some reason, people began to applaud and cheer, the way folks do at a theater when things are going badly and the hero makes his entrance.

  Until that moment, everything had been unrelievedly bad: the murder, the grief, the sense of affront and outrage to an entire community, even the appalling weather for the funeral. But the eleventh-hour arrival of big Frank Daniels, the eldest of the sons of Dorothy and Isaac Daniels, seemed to put things in a different perspective, and to offer some relief and hope just when people needed it the most.

  At least one man there, a grizzled old veteran who had cowboyed for the Daniels for near twenty-five years, saw something more in Frank’s arrival.

  ‘This is what we wanted,’ he confided to those around him as the Daniels broke into a run to welcome their brother. ‘They’re done for now, and that’s for sure.’

  ‘Who?’ someone asked with a frown.

  ‘The killers, of course. That giant Frank will be wearin’ their guts for gaiters inside a week, I reckon.’ The cowboy slapped his thigh and smiled for the first time since the awful killing. ‘By Glory, this is the best thing that could have happened. I would rather have Old Scratch hisself on my tail than big Frank Daniels.’

  His listener, a newcomer to Blue Springs Creek, thought that the cowboy might be overstating the case. Those who knew Frank, either personally or by legend, sided with the cowboy.

  ‘Why, Marlene,’ the swamper grinned toothlessly, ‘you sure look prettied up this mornin’.’

  Marlene Welch was still regarded as the most handsome woman in Blue Springs Creek, despite her thirty-year-old status as a businesswoman – or spinster – and shot a scowl at the man with the mop.

  ‘What are you even goin’ on about?’ she shot back, feistily. ‘I am dressed as I do just about every day.’

  The swamper’s skepticism was thick enough to cut with a blunt knife.

  ‘Sure – I reckon – if you say so, Miss Marlene. . . .’

  ‘Very well, Mr Dobbs, what is the difference about the way I am dressed today?’ she asked, curious.

  ‘Well, you got your Sunday-go-to-meetin’ dress on for one thing,’ Andy Dobbs noted.

  ‘What? This old thing?’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Cost you at least ten dollars at Ma Haffner’s,’ Dobbs observed.

  Marlene Welch’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘How far would ten dollars take you, you old swamper?’

  ‘How’s that, Miss Marlene?’ Dobbs replied.

  ‘Are you too dumb to know when you are told to get busy or catch a stage?’ she said without a smile.

  The swamper hurried on to the front porch and got busy with mop and pail.

  To alleviate the tedium a little, Marlene Welch attended to most of the paperwork at her private table by the bar-room windows. As a rule, she liked to get this part of her chores out of the way early in the day. As the only woman saloon owner in the country, she could then concentrate on what she did best: greeting customers, serving drinks and keeping an eye on her staff.

  She had started as a dance-hall girl back in Dodge City. It was her job to brighten the evenings of the many lonely men fresh off the trails. She was on the ‘respectable’ side of Front Street back then, where most establishments barred girls and gambling; but she was there for those cowboys starved of female companionship. As a saloon girl she would sing for the men, dance with them and talk to them, inducing them to remain in the bar, buying drink after drink and patronizing the gaming tables.

  Like most saloon girls she was a refugee from her family’s farm in Tennessee, which had been destroyed by the Civil War. She earned as much as ten dollars a week and worked her way up to earning commission from the drinks she helped sell. Whiskey sold to the customer was generally marked up thirty to sixty per cent over the wholesale price. Commonly, drinks brought for the girls, such as Marlene, would only be cold tea or colored sugar water served in a shot glass; however, the customers were charged the full price of whiskey, which could range from ten to seventy-five cents a shot. Marlene Welch was learning the business.

  Marlene doubted if she would get far with her ledger this morning, however. The day following Dorothy Daniels’ funeral would be no ordinary day. Shock waves were still reverberating around the town in the wake of the tragedy – and the dramatic return of Frank Daniels had stirred Blue Springs Creek, too. Marlene had never seen the town so disinterested in its everyday business.

  Marlene Welch’s main purpose in sitting at her table this particular morning was to see what was going on, and maybe to be seen.

  The rain had blown away overnight, leaving mud and slush in its wake. A pallid sun had broken through the cloud cover by mid-morning. By noon, steam was rising from the street.

  Looking up from her books, Marlene saw a wagon grinding by. The wheels and the team were caked with mud. Men from the hardware store were laying planks across the street for pedestrians, and the first person to cross over with dry boots was Melvin Pasley.

  Atticus the horse breaker wore an added aura of importance these d
ays, having been the man who saw the killers as they thundered away from the Daniels’ spread on the day of the murder. Hidden behind a stand of brush as any self-preserving horse breaker might with wild outlaws about, Atticus had an unimpeded view of the hellions who had taken five of Dorothy Daniels’ blood horses with them as they left. The same day, he identified three of the five men from the sheriff’s wanted files: Henry and Rhonda Lowe and Olly Murdock. As a result of Atticus’ good work, the entire West knew that Dorothy Daniels had been the victim of the Murdock Gang.

  After Atticus had swaggered past, Marlene Welch returned to her work. Dark haired and full figured, she was a fine-looking woman who liked to wear brightly colored ruffled skirts that maybe in her younger days were scandalously short for the time but were now considered to be a modest length. She still liked to have her arms and shoulders bare, with her bodice cut low over her bosom – all to help business.

  Marlene Welch was also unique in that, despite her occupation and past, she could still boast a good reputation.

  Customers had been drifting in for half an hour now, and Marlene could not help but overhear their excited conversations. Everyone was talking about developments out at the Daniels’ spread since Frank’s return. The latest story was that the five brothers were getting ready to go after the Murdock Gang – even Hugh with his law practice, and Virgil with a ranch to run.

  Some drinkers seemed to be of the opinion that with Frank at their head, the Daniels would run down the Murdock Gang in next to no time. Others were more cautious.

  The banker, Larry Niehardt, said: ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, gentlemen. I mean, all sorts of people have been trying to get Olly Murdock and his bunch for quite some time. . . .’