Christmas in the Lone Star State Read online

  “You just had coffee,” drawled Sayles.

  “That was at least three hours ago.”

  “Like I said, you just had some. You’ll get more tonight.”

  Yesterday they had traveled no more than half a dozen miles after leaving the Cameron cemetery. Someone like Temple Hanley would have argued that it made more sense to spend the night in the shelter of the jail and get an early start in the morning. But Sayles figured it was better for Eddings if they put some miles between them and his son’s final resting place. Besides, he didn’t like burning daylight. If he pushed hard he might get Eddings back to prison in two days, and he was eager to be done with this job. For that reason he decided not to investigate the homestead. With a cluck of the tongue and a flick of the reins he got the coyote dun moving again, with the bay that bore Eddings trailing along behind on the lead rope. They began crossing the clearing, angling east by south, on a bearing that would not take them any closer to the cabin. For a moment there was only the crunch of snow under iron-shod hooves, the creak of old saddle leather, the breathing of the horses to break the stillness of the winter day. But before they got halfway across Sayles suddenly pulled rein and muttered “Goddamn it.” He crossed his arms on the pommel of his saddle and turned his squinty eyes to the cabin again. The coyote dun whickered softly. “I know,” he said. “Curiosity killed the cat.” Then he straightened, sighed, and changed course, making straight for the cabin.

  He checked the dun about thirty feet from the cabin, dismounted stiffly, and ground-hitched his horse. He knew from experience that the dun was steadfast even when there was gunfire. He pulled his Winchester from the saddle boot and slanted it over a shoulder while he gave the place a careful survey. Then he proceeded to study the tracks in the snow. There was plenty of sign. With no snowfall in the past two days and no sun either, the footprints were virtually pristine. He looked at the trees to the west and then the trees to the east, in the direction of the Brazos. He suspected the river was not more than a mile or so in that direction. When you had spent a lifetime tracking Comanches across the plains of West Texas for hundreds of miles, you became adept at remembering landmarks and determining the distance between them. He finally walked back to the bay and looked up at Eddings.

  “You make a fine target sittin’ up there,” he remarked.

  “And if someone shot me dead this minute you’d probably haul me back to Huntsville anyway, wouldn’t you.”

  “Thought we’d hashed that out. Yes I would, although I believe Superintendent Goree would rather you be alive, so as you could make more shoes or whatever it is you make for the law-abiding. So get on down, now.”

  Eddings threw a leg over the saddlehorn and slid off the rig, landing unsteadily. Once he had his balance he looked about uneasily. “What is it? Why’d you decide to stop after all?”

  “Reckon the answer’s inside.” Sayles turned his steps toward the cabin’s doorway, certain that Eddings would follow. The prisoner wasn’t foolish enough to run, and with his hands shackled behind him he couldn’t get back in the saddle.

  The door was only halfway open and Sayles paused briefly just outside, tilting his head, listening intently. Then he tried to push the door all the way back with the barrel of the repeater but it was blocked by something, so he shoved his hand in the pocket of his coat where the Schofield revolver rested and slipped inside. Stepping to the left, keeping his back to the wall, he looked down at the body that had prevented the door from opening fully. His steel-cast eyes swept the room, and then he moved abruptly to the curtain that partitioned the main room from the sleeping area and swept it aside, bent over to peer under the bed; only then did his hand emerge from the coat pocket. His nostrils flared as he moved to the table at the center of the cabin. He could smell blood, and he smelled a woman, too. He had already known a woman had been here thanks to the tracks in the snow outside, but now he believed that she had lived here. Eddings stood just inside the door, staring at the dead man, and Sayles asked, “Any idea who that jasper was?”

  Eddings shook his head. “No. I never came down this way.”

  Sayles used a foot to roll the corpse over. “Throat cut,” he murmured and instantly he thought about what the ferryman had told him a few days before, how two lawmen had been killed on a riverboat, one of them with his head nearly severed. “Stay right there until I get back,” he told Eddings as he went out the door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Eddings.

  Sayles didn’t answer. He untied the lead rope from the pommel of his saddle and led the coyote dun by rein leather toward the woods to the east, following one of the two sets of prints that came from that direction. The bay stood right where he left it, watching them go. Sayles was fairly certain whoever had killed the man in the cabin was long gone—and headed west, not east—but he wasn’t one to take unnecessary chances, and if trouble waited for him behind that eastern tree line he didn’t need a second horse to worry about.

  Once he reached the trees it didn’t take him long to find the Litchfield brothers’ night camp. Two men, one horse. That was immediately obvious. One of the men had walked across the clearing to the house and the other had led the horse to the same destination, but far enough away from the first man’s tracks to make Sayles surmise that they had not made the walk together. He went a little deeper into the woods and before long heard the unmistakable murmur of the river. He didn’t need to see it to know it was a river and not a creek, and since it was a river it had to be the Brazos. He estimated that the ferry was less than half a day’s ride south.

  Sayles grimly thought it over, re-creating the past in his mind’s eye based on what he had seen and smelled. Two men had killed those lawmen on a riverboat not too far south of the ferry, and two men had been here, leaving a dead man in their wake and in all likelihood riding off with a woman on a stolen horse. They had crossed the river, but not on the ferry. There were plenty of men capable of murder in this country, but it was entirely possible that the same pair had done all three killings.

  Retracing his steps, he checked inside the ramshackle barn and found it empty before going back inside the cabin. Eddings hadn’t moved and even as he opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, Sayles answered it. “Two men with one horse camped in the woods to the east. They come up here, went inside. Came out with a woman and rode west on two horses. More tracks around the barn, probably two mules. They come out of the corral and one headed due north while the other headed for the river.”

  “How do you know they were mules?”

  Sayles looked at Eddings with mild disbelief, wondering how a man, a farmer at that, wouldn’t know enough about mules that he would need ask such a question. “Well, for one thing, they walked, they didn’t run. A mule won’t run ’less it has to. And they struck out in different directions, since mules don’t get attached to one another. Horse tend to stick together. Now, a mule might have a fondness for his mother if it’s a horse, which it usually is. But generally it’s just not very sociable.”

  “Like some people I know,” said Eddings.

  Sayles nodded and scratched an itch on his beard-stubbled jawline. “Yeah, well, some people don’t have the luxury of being sociable. Also, they weren’t shod—the mules, I mean. It can be a struggle putting a shoe on a mule. It don’t like nothin’ between its feet and the ground. And finally there’s the fact that the two men who killed this feller and took his woman didn’t take ’em. It’s not that a mule can’t run. In fact they’re as fast and sometimes faster than a cowpony if they got good reason to be. But they can be troublesome and I don’t reckon men on the run would want to bother with ’em.”

  Eddings looked embarrassed and said, defensively, “I had a mule … for plowing. I already knew … most of your lecture on mules.” Having heard more than enough on that subject, and having had plenty of time to study the interior of the cabin, he changed topics. “Maybe they killed this man for the woman. Maybe she wanted to run off with them.”
r />   “Maybe. But most likely those two jaspers are on the run. They come here with just one horse and they didn’t go back the way they came. So not likely they come to fetch a woman and took her back home. They’re heading west, and the farther west you go the less law you find.” Sayles sat on the edge of the plank table in the middle of the room and lit a cheroot with a strike-anywhere, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and letting it trickle out through his nostrils as he surveyed the room carefully. Meanwhile Eddings thought about Purdy, alone at the farm. If the two men who had done the killing here passed that way.

  “Just because they rode west doesn’t make them outlaws.”

  “Well, no, I reckon not. They could be mustangers. More of them going out that way now that the Comanches are dealt with. But a mustangin’ crew is usually more than two and they would have a pack animal with them. No buffalo to hunt anymore. You can take a westward-bound stage line from points south of here—and points north too—all the way to Tucson and whatever’s beyond so you don’t need to ride across the desert unless you’re just fond of sand, rattlers, and alkali water. Homesteaders would be in a wagon. So I don’t know. You tell me what two men who took another man’s woman with them, and left the man dead, might be.”

  Eddings just shook his head and moved over to the fire, kicking at the pile of ashes with his toe. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with Sayles, especially since he was usually right.

  The smoldering cheroot dangling from his lips, Sayles eventually stood up and moved toward the door. “I’ll send a wire to Tom Rath about what we’ve found here, once we get to Huntsville.”

  “That’s two days from now!” exclaimed Eddings. “Whoever killed this man will be long gone by then.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “And what about the body? Oh, yeah, I remember. Critters got to eat, right? Isn’t that what you said after you killed those three men on the road?”

  “You ever dug a grave in frozen ground? We’ll close the door on our way out. Weather being what it is, he won’t get too ripe.” The Ranger went past Eddings and out the door.

  Eddings followed, unwilling to let it drop. “I don’t understand you. You gunned down three bandits who were ready and willing to ride off because, you said, if you didn’t deal with them they might rob someone else. But you’re going to let the killers of that man in there get away with it. What if these are the same two who killed those lawmen on the riverboat? You know, the ones that ferryman told you about?”

  Sayles looked at the lead-gray sky and grimaced as he produced the Elgin keywinder. When the sun was out he could calculate time about as well as a watch could, even a timepiece as fine as his, but there was no sign that the sun was going to make an appearance anytime soon. The thought had crossed his mind. “I have a job to do. I told Superintendent Goree I’d have you back at the prison in six days or a week. That’s tomorrow or the next day. Don’t have time to go chasin’ after a couple of bad eggs.”

  Eddings stared at him in disbelief. “So what you’re saying is the only reason you killed those three men was because they were on our way to Cameron. Had you needed to go out of your way to get them you wouldn’t have bothered. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were afraid. The men who did this are cold-blooded killers. They probably kidnapped the woman who was here. They’ll probably rape her if they haven’t already. And what do you reckon the chances are that she’ll live to tell the tale? “

  Sayles looked at him with eyes that were every bit as cold as the day. He took one last long draw from the cheroot and flicked it away. Eddings’s heart was galloping in his chest. He had just suggested that Bill Sayles was a coward, and that was something you were wise to think twice about doing to any man out here, much less this man. But Eddings was tired and angry and worried, and he often spoke before thinking. And since he had already crossed the line, he had more to say while he had the chance.

  “Truth is, you don’t care,” he said grimly. “You don’t care what happens to the woman they took. You don’t care if they kill a few more innocent people. You Rangers are supposed to be the brave and noble defenders of the frontier but looks to me like you’re just heartless killers, not much different from the two men who came through here. Big talk about all the people you saved but you don’t give a tinker’s damn about how many died. They just justified you killing others. In fact, I doubt you ever cared about anybody your whole life.”

  “Turn around,” rasped Sayles.

  Eddings had the sensation of the blood running cold in his veins. He hesitated, staring at Sayles in fear and then disgust. “Could at least give me a gun,” he said, his tone bitter, his voice hollow.

  Sayles walked around Eddings, stowing the watch back in a coat pocket before producing the key to the shackles on the prisoner’s wrists, which he unlocked and stuffed into the same pocket. Eddings slowly turned to face him, certain that he had said too much, pushed too hard, and that Sayles was going to kill him for it.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Not like I have much to lose anymore.”

  “Just get on the damned horse,” said Sayles.

  Eddings glanced at the bay, then down at his wrists, and then at the Ranger.

  “We travel faster if I don’t have to lead that bay. I assume you know more about horses than you do mules. Need to make better time than we have been if we’re to have a hope of catching up with those two jaspers. If you get it in your head to try to ride away I’ll just shoot you dead and take you back to Goree and you can do the rest of your time six feet under in the prison boneyard.”

  Without saying another word, and feeling he was lucky to be alive, Eddings went to the bay and climbed up into the saddle. Sayles moved to the coyote dun and put boot to stirrup and hauled himself up onto his rig. Every time he climbed aboard the dun it looked to Eddings like it would be be the last time he would be able manage it. And yet the old man, for his stiffness and groaning, was all grit and gristle and just kept going on. Sayles settled into his rig and sat there a moment, looking around like he had suddenly forgotten where they were. Then he reined the dun around and pulled up alongside Eddings,

  “Haven’t had many people to care about,” he said flatly. “My mother and father died of cholera when I was a young’un. Don’t know why it didn’t kill me too. And I had a wife and daughter once. They were killed by Comanches. Thirty-five years ago. That was during the Great Raid led by Buffalo Hump. It wasn’t his bunch that done it, though.”

  Eddings was visibly taken aback by these revelations. It was hard to imagine Bill Sayles as a family man. He didn’t know what to say, so he settled on asking a question. “That was because of the Council House Fight, wasn’t it?”

  Sayles nodded. “I still don’t know why they done it. I mean those thirty Comanche chiefs who rode right into San Antone to talk about a peace treaty. Foolish thing to do. See, back then, the Comanche nation was something to be reckoned with. I don’t think they were ever as strong as they were back in those days. They had been raiding deep into Mexico and all along the frontier from the Red River to Matagorda Bay. They took a good many captives back in those days, both Texan and Mexican, and tempers ran hot when the meetin’ took place in San Antone’s Council House. When the Comanches didn’t agree to release all the captives they’d taken, the effort was made to grab them and then trade them for the captives. But a Comanche don’t surrender. The chiefs put up a fight and lost. About twenty or thirty Comanches were killed that day too. A few months later Buffalo Hump did what no other chief had ever been able to do, before or since. He got all the bands to join forces. He put together an army of about four hundred warriors. There were a hundred or more women and children who went along too.” Sayles paused, staring off into the distance, and Eddings sensed it was not the distance of space but rather of time. “It was a sight to behold, I’m telling you.

  “I reckon Buffalo Hump didn’t want to waste such a force on the small towns along the frontier, and even four hundred Comanches were
n’t going to attack a city the size of San Antone. So they rode all the way across Texas, down to the coast. Showed up first at Victoria and killed about a dozen people, then moved on to the port of Linnville. Only thing that saved the people of that town was all the ships out in the harbor. You see, Linnville was a busy port in those days. Lot of sailing ships from all over the world. The people got on those ships and watched the Comanches loot and burn their town. There was a lot to loot in the warehouses along the docks, including a small fortune in silver bullion. They spent three whole days there. By then the word was out. Volunteers from Bastrop and Gonzales headed that way, and every Ranger who could ride was in the saddle too. I was at home with my wife and daughter when my company showed up. See, the captain was in such a hurry he just mounted up and rode around and collected the men one by one.” After a long pause, he added, “That was my old captain, Jack Hays. Usually, Captain Hayes would send a messenger ride out to tell you to report. When that happened I always took my family into town before I lit out. But this time I had to settle for telling them to go to town and then I rode away. That was the last time I saw them … alive.”

  He paused, took off his battered hat, ran gloved fingers through his thinning hair, then untied his canteen from the saddle and took a drink. His throat was dry, and not entirely because he hadn’t said so many words all at once since … he couldn’t remember when. For once he regretted the decision he had made years ago not to carry a flask of whiskey with him while on the job. That was because ever since the event he was now revealing to Eddings he had developed a tendency to drink a little too much on occasion, and he didn’t want to go out falling off his horse in a drunken stupor and breaking his neck. That was no way for a Texas Ranger to die. But he sure needed a drink now. He had never told anyone this story and he wasn’t exactly sure why he was telling it now. Jake’s assertions that he was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t give a tinker’s damn for anyone or anything didn’t bother him. Many worse things had been said of him, though usually by people who knew to say them behind his back rather than to his face. Maybe he was doing this because everything about this job, from the moment The Captain had given him his orders in Waco, had conspired to bring these painful memories to life and he had to talk about it, just had to get it out. He drew a long, somewhat ragged breath, and let the past take hold of him again.