Christmas in the Lone Star State Read online

  Goree was a lean, dark-haired man in a fashionable high-buttoned sack coat of brown wool with waistcoat and four-in-hand. Sayles didn’t know much about him, except that he had been on the state prison board of commissioners before taking over as superintendent. But in a glance he pegged the superintendent as an ambitious man who pushed himself and others hard. “It’s only a few hours until dark,” Goree observed, glancing out the window. “Perhaps it would be better to get an early start in the morning. You look like you could use a hot meal and a long rest.”

  Sayles’s bushy brows furrowed. “I feel better than I look,” he muttered. “Enough daylight to get six, maybe seven miles behind me. There’s a dead boy lying in a wood box for nigh on a week now and I reckon his people would like to see him buried. Seems they don’t want to do that until his father gets there.”

  Goree rose from behind his desk to open the face of the wall clock and move the minute hand ahead eight minutes. “Bring Eddings here,” he told the guard, who was standing at the door. Then the superintendent sat on the edge of the desk, arms folded, looking mildly perplexed. “I didn’t think the governor was a sentimental man. I can only conclude that this has something to do with the clamor raised by some newspapermen regarding the treatment of prisoners here. Or maybe Coke is heading for the United States Senate and wishes to polish his image, since some called him inhumane for refusing to fund the state asylum.”

  He began to pace, hands shoved into the pockets of his wool trousers. “You see, we’ve made some changes here. Changes for the better. The prisoners are no longer a burden on society. They work for their keep. A few years ago the prison commission struck a deal with Ward, Dewey and Company out of Galveston. The state was no longer able to afford the prison’s operating costs. Ward-Dewey paid three hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars for a fifteen-year lease on the labor of the inmates. We make wool and cotton clothing, as well as furniture and wagons, shoes and boots. Work crews are hired out to lay track for railroads or to cut timber. Ward-Dewey profits from all of that, and in return has paid for improvements to the prison itself. New fireproof brick buildings, forty new cells, an infirmary.”

  Goree returned to his chair and sighed. “The problem is … human nature. A man will work if he thinks he profits from it, or if it’s something he’s born to do. We have had to persuade many of the inmates that work makes it easier for them to do their time. That it keeps them healthy in body, mind, and spirit. Slackers must be strictly dealt with. Examples must be made. Some people disapprove. They don’t understand. The newspapers only sensationalize what is done here to boost their sales.” He studied Sayles a moment, a slow smile curling the corners of his mouth. “But you aren’t interested in all of this, are you?”

  “Not really,” admitted Sayles and drank the rest of his coffee. He didn’t think much about prisons except to believe that the people in them deserved what they got whether it was working till they dropped or languishing in a six-by-eight cell. He himself had been in jail a few times, but usually just to sleep off a drunk, to be cut loose the morning after and sometimes pay a fine. He had never stolen anything—a matter of self-respect—nor killed anyone that hadn’t been trying to kill him first—a matter of pride.

  “Single-minded in purpose,” said Goree. “A much-admired trait of the Texas Rangers. I read somewhere that a Ranger rides like a Mexican, tracks like a Comanche, shoots like a Tennessean, and fights like the devil. You may know I served as an aide to General James Longstreet and saw many Texas units serve with valor in Northern Virginia. Did you serve in the War?”

  “Not the last war. I did some shooting down in Mexico in the one before.” Sayles was uncomfortable talking about himself. He rose, grimacing as his stiff and saddle-sore body complained, and moved to the potbelly stove, relishing the heat that emanated from it. He was warm for the first time in three days. “During the last war, what with so many Texicans back east fighting, the Indians were kicking up some dust, so I had plenty to do right here.”

  Goree began elaborating on his wartime experiences, but Sayles tuned him out. Looking through the window, he saw two men crossing the yard. One was the guard Goree had sent to fetch Jake Eddings, so he assumed the second man was Eddings himself. The prisoner was a gaunt man of medium height. He wore a shapeless brown woolen coat over faded black-and-white-striped prison issue. His arms were crossed, hands shoved into armpits, hugging himself against the blustery wind that whipped at his baggy clothes, He walked with the shuffling gait of a man who’d had to learn how to walk in shackles, even though his ankles weren’t chained now.

  A moment later Sayles was getting a better look at Eddings as the guard ushered him into Goree’s office and stood him in front of the desk. There was an unhealthy grayish pallor to the man’s skin. His hair had been clipped short to the scalp, which made lice easier to deal with. His eyes were deep in their sockets, and it looked to Sayles like there wasn’t much life left in them.

  Sitting behind his desk, Goree said, “Eddings, this is Bill Sayles, Texas Ranger. He will be taking you to Cameron so you can bury your son. He will then bring you back to me so that you may serve out the remainder of your sentence. Make no mistake. If you try to run, he will shoot you down.”

  Eddings had been looking at the floor, and when Goree stopped talking he looked not at the superintendent but at Sayles. “I just want to see my son one last time. And … and my wife.”

  He said it so earnestly that Sayles didn’t doubt him. He could tell Eddings was struggling to maintain his composure. The words, though, cut like a knife in his gut. “I don’t reckon he and I will have a problem,” he told Goree.

  The superintendent was studying the inmate’s face. He knew what prison could do to a person. A few individuals managed to adapt to incarceration. Many more, though, were embittered by the experience and became a danger to others as they felt they had nothing to lose. And then there were those who had the life sucked right out of them by the experience of life behind bars. He decided that Eddings belonged in the latter category. “I’m not so sure,” he murmured, then rifled through the papers on his desk and produced a document, which he held up. “If you would sign this, Mr. Sayles. Shows we released the inmate into your care.”

  Sayles turned to the desk, took the metal-nib pen Goree provided, dipped it in the inkwell, and scratched out his name. “I’ll have him back in six days, a week at the most,” he informed the superintendent.

  “Splendid,” said Goree, studying the Ranger’s indecipherable scribbling on the release form. “Then we will have him back in time for our famous Christmas dinner.”

  Sayles, who was studying Eddings and wondering if the man would even make the three-day trip in the dead of winter in the condition he was in, glanced at the superintendent because he couldn’t tell if Goree was being serious or not. Then the prison guard standing by the door snickered at his boss’s comment.

  A moment later Sayles was outside, with Eddings and the guard. After the stint in Goree’s warm office he was particularly susceptible to the bitter, breathtaking cold of the winter wind that whipped around in capricious zephyrs out in the wide-open space of the prison yard. He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering as he snugged the Winchester carbine into its scabbard, brushed snow and ice off the worn hull on the bay horse, and told Eddings to mount up. Once the prisoner was aboard, he brandished some wrist irons from the saddlebags on the dun and put these on him, with the hands behind his back.

  “How am I supposed to ride like this?” asked Eddings.

  Sayles didn’t waste breath replying, since the answer would be evident soon enough. He made a noose knot in one end of a rope, then took several turns of the rope around Eddings’s ankle, over the muddy, down-at-the-heels half boots the inmate wore. Threading the rope through the knot, he tossed it under the bay’s barrel, walked around to the offside of the horse, and lashed Eddings’s other foot. He checked underneath to make sure the rope, now taut, rested on the cinch strap; he di
dn’t want it chafing the bay’s underside. There wasn’t much extra length to the rope; he had used it before, binding a prisoner’s feet tight to the mount’s barrel so the former couldn’t kick the latter into motion or a faster gait. Besides that, it would help Eddings stay in the saddle since he couldn’t grab the pommel or have hold of the reins.

  While Sayles hauled himself up into his own rig, the guard made for the nearby West Gate, getting one side open in time for the Ranger to exit the prison, leading the bay with Eddings on board. He gave the guard a nod, rode about thirty feet, and, when he heard the gate close, reined in the dun. The bay, no stranger to following in the dun’s wake, stopped immediately. Sayles twisted his upper body, gloved hand on the cantle of his saddle. Eddings was half turned as well, looking back at the gate,

  “Reckon I know what you’re thinking,” drawled Sayles. “What just about every man would think once he come out of there. That you’re not going back in no matter what.”

  Eddings looked at him sullenly. “You going to threaten me now, is that it?”

  Sayles shook his head. “Nah. Just saying, you will be back here. I’m not going to have to shoot you because you’re not going to have a chance to run. You got no good options, son, but the best one is doing your time and getting out a free man.” He glanced up at the thick gray clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon. There was still not a piece of blue sky to be seen. He shook his head, tugged the collar of his coat up under his chin, pulled the brim of his battered campaign hat down over his already frozen face, and nudged the coyote dun into motion.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sayles put six miles between himself and Huntsville before stopping with just enough light left in the western sky to turn off the road, venturing about a hundred yards into the forest and finding a site that looked suitable for a night camp. An big uprooted oak tree had toppled over, leaving a depression in the ground on a slope rising slowly to the north. The oak had fallen within the year, and Sayles found plenty of wood debris dry enough to burn underneath the massive trunk, sheltered somewhat from the constant drift of snow filtering through the forest canopy. He got his prisoner down off the bay and started a fire in the depression. Eddings hadn’t said a thing since they left the prison, and Sayles hadn’t tried to engage him in small chat. That silence was broken only after the fire was well started.

  “Can’t feel my hands, Ranger,” said Eddings, through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. “Cut me loose. Let me thaw them out over the fire.”

  The rope that had bound the prisoner’s legs together under the barrel of the bay was still tied to one ankle, and Sayles used that to secure Eddings’s feet before unlocking the shackles from his wrists. Though thinned by two years in prison, Eddings was a rawboned man with thick wrists, and Sayles could see how the shackles had been tight enough to cut off the circulation. He circled around to his side of the crackling fire before dropping the irons and, sitting on his heels, fed the voracious flames a few more sticks of deadwood. That done, he stripped saddle and blanket off his dun and put them on the ground near the fire. Taking the Winchester with him, he fetched the bay’s rig next, along with an extra bedroll consisting, like his own, of two woolen Cherokee blankets. This he dropped near Eddings.

  That chore done, Sayles sat down and pulled a .45 Smith & Wesson Schofield from the holster under his coat, broke it open, and used a small cloth he carried in a coat pocket, which was blackened from years of blood and grime, to dry the pistol. When he was done he put both the cloth and the pistol into his coat pocket.

  Holding his hands close to the flames, Eddings was starting to feel his fingers. He watched the Ranger but didn’t speak again until Sayles had put the pistol away. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I told you, I’m not going to try anything.”

  Sayles smiled a crooked smile. “As desperadoes go, you ain’t too worrisome. I just don’t want to have to shoot you, should you decide of a sudden to do some damned fool thing. Might be another owlhoot or three right around here, you know. Ain’t likely they will see our fire, but on a night such as this a gunshot’ll be heard a far piece. Gunshots make desperadoes nervous, and to see if there’s a reason for being nervous they would take a look around if they were smart. Other reason is if I have my druthers I’ll deliver you alive to Cameron. I reckon your wife would not care for buryin’ you alongside your son.”

  Eddings grimaced, his eyes glimmering as he stared into the dancing flames. Seeing the profound grief etched into the prisoner’s face, Sayles quickly busied himself making supper. He scooped some untrammeled snow into a small cooking pot and placed the pot near the fire. The snow melted quickly. The fire was burning hot and fast, and he set up his rig, a long stout length of bamboo driven at an angle into the frozen earth to one-third of its length, set in a forked stick firmly pushed into the ground upright, the upper end of the bamboo directly over the flames. He added some frijoles to the water and hung the pot from a notch in the high end of the bamboo. Melting more snow in a second pot, he pushed this into the bed of glowing embers and poured two handfuls of ground coffee into it. Quite satisfied with the setup, he told Eddings, sounding almost cheerful, “Did you know this here bamboo won’t burn? Don’t matter what you try, it can’t catch fire. Damnedest thing.”

  “Her name is Purdy.” Eddings looked up, his eyes glancing off the Ranger’s steel-gray gaze. “Been married … eleven years next March. I was born on a farm outside Cameron. Her pa was a steamboat captain. Back before the war steamboats could sometimes get up the Little River to town. Times were good for everybody. For a while. Then the war came, and the river trade moved to Nashville and Port Sullivan. Purdy and me, we never knew our mothers. Mine died in childbirth. Hers … well, no one is quite sure what happened to her, though one rumor is that she ran off with another man after Purdy was born. Whatever the truth, Purdy never knew her. Purdy’s pa died of the consumption in ’67, mine the second day of the next year. He just … went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up next morning. Neither of us had anybody else and she just … took up with me. I was nineteen, she was some younger. Billy was born the day before Christmas of ’68. Until then the best day of my life had been the day Purdy became my bride.” He choked on the words and tried to clear his throat.

  Sayles dug into his possibles bag and produced a large wooden spoon. He grunted as he stood up, stiff and sore from the cold and all the riding. He stirred the beans cooking in the now boiling water of the cooking pot that was suspended from the makeshift bamboo crane, then got back down on his heels to shake the pot containing the coffee. His nostrils flared as he caught the java’s aroma while he produced two hard biscuits from a smaller sack, meticulously checking each one in the fire’s light for any bugs. He tried to focus on his cooking and ignore his own memories, stirred to life, this time, by the prisoner’s words. But he didn’t entirely succeed in that endeavor, and this perturbed him. “Won’t do you no good thinkin’ on such things,” he said, his tone gruffer than usual.

  “What else am I supposed to think about in prison?” asked Eddings, resentfully. “That I’ve got nearly five thousand more days before I’m a free man?”

  Sayles looked off into the darkness. “Man’s got to live with the choices he makes.”

  Eddings lapsed into silence, for which Sayles was grateful. He pulled two tin plates out of his possibles bag and, after scooping out the foam that floated on top of the water in the cooking pot, piled some beans on each plate, adding a pinch of salt and placing a single hard biscuit on each plate as well. He filled two tin cups with steaming black coffee and walked one plate, one cup, and a spoon around the fire to set them on the ground next to the prisoner. “Hurry up and eat. It’ll get cold quick.”

  Watching Eddings wolf down the food, Sayles ate his beans then broke the biscuit in two, soaking each half in his coffee to soften it. He had lost about half his teeth in one way or another, and softening up the biscuit made it a lot easier to chew. When done, he
collected his prisoner’s plate and cleaned it and his own with snow. Because he was a man who wasted nothing, there were no beans left in the cooking pot, so he cleaned that in the same manner, working at it diligently, and after a while the pot was as clean as it would have been had someone taken soap and water to it. Pouring the rest of the coffee into Eddings’s cup, he commenced to unrolling the extra bedroll, anchoring the end of one blanket with the bay’s rig and laying the top blanket over the first. He was shackling the prisoner’s hands behind his back when Eddings spoke up.

  “You don’t always have choices,” he said defensively. “First few years we did just fine. Then in ’71 there was the drought. The next year the big floods came and we lost the whole crop. The pigs got sick and died that same year. Someone ran off with our milk cow. The storekeeper in Cameron said I had to pay my bill before I could add anything else to it. I didn’t blame him. He wasn’t running a charity and he had given me a lot of rope over the years. Times were hard for everybody. My pa had taken out a loan on the homestead during bad times, a couple years before he died. I’d paid a lot of it off but there was some still owed and the bank wouldn’t lend me anything more to tide us over. There wasn’t no work to be found what with the railroads going belly-up. Couldn’t push cows north since I didn’t have a single pony, much less a string.”

  He paused and studied Sayles as the Ranger circled back around the fire, hoping to see at least a glimmer of sympathy. But Sayles gave no sign he was even listening as he fixed his own bedding. “Game was scarce,” continued Eddings, perturbed. He was arguing whether a person always had a choice and in the process hope to make the case that he wasn’t a bad man, just an unlucky one—but the man he was trying to convince wasn’t even paying attention. There hadn’t been a living soul in prison who had cared one bit about his story or his plight, and now that he was on the outside the man he was going to be spending his time with couldn’t care less either. “My wife and son were hungry, you know. That’s when I met Underhill.”