Christmas in the Lone Star State Read online

  With a weary sigh, Sayles settled cross-legged on his blankets, digging under his coat and coming up with a half-smoked Mexican cheroot, which he lit with the flickering flame on the end of a half-burned stick plucked from the dying fire. He looked up at Eddings, puffing to get the cheroot burning evenly. “Never heard of him.”

  “I hadn’t either. He said it was because he had never been identified, much less caught. He was proud of his…” Eddings couldn’t think of the word. “Being unknown. He enjoyed coming into Cameron, where everyone knew about his stage robberies but no one had any notion that he was the bandit. I was angry, desperate. I told him everything. He bought me a meal and then we rode out to a shack a mile or so from town and we got drunk on Forty Rod. He said he didn’t ‘talk business’ in town and that was when he told me he was the road agent. He was talking bad about all the ‘money people’—the banks, the railroads, the merchants, the politicians. How they got rich off the poor. How they wouldn’t lend a hand to people in need. He said that was why he held up mail coaches. To strike back at the money people. To take from them the only thing they cared about—their money. He had his eye on the Sawyer coaches coming into Cameron from Tyler. Said he didn’t need a partner but he would take me along just the same.” He looked sullenly at Sayles. “You still say I had a choice?”

  He didn’t expect an answer so he didn’t wait for it. “There were no passengers on the mail coach the morning we stopped it. Just the driver and the guard. We had sacks over our head, holes cut out so we could see. We got the drop on them. The guard threw away his coach gun. I got the strongbox while Underhill cut the horses out of the traces. Then the driver pulled a hideout and took a shot at me. I don’t know why he did it—or how he missed. Underhill put a bullet in his gut. He wasn’t dead when we rode off but I guess I knew he would be. Funny thing is, Underhill cut the horses loose so the guard would have to walk the rest of the way to Crockett, giving us plenty of time to get away, but the horses ran straight to town. I reckon they were so used to the route that for them it was like going home.

  “The posse caught up with us the next morning. Must have been a damned good tracker among them. We were breaking camp. Didn’t hear or see them until they came out of the brush. Underhill turned to me, said he was sorry. I’ll never forget the look on his face. The look of a man who knows he is a heartbeat away from eternity. Then someone put a bullet in the back of his head. I was standing right in front of him and his blood got in my eyes. Blinded me. Underhill pitched forward and knocked me down. When I tried to get up someone knocked me down again with a rifle butt. I thought for sure they were going to kill me too. But they didn’t. The guard was in the posse, and told them it was Underhill who had done in the driver. I think killing Underhill like that took the bloodlust out of them. It was cold-blooded murder. Kind of funny if you think about it. They were after us for shooting the driver in self-defense, and they committed cold-blooded murder.”

  Sayles waited a moment, but Eddings was done, so he said, “Still, you had a choice. You could’ve sold the farm to pay what was left of your debt, and what you owned the storekeeper. Should’ve had enough left over to take you and yourn to San Antone, or Galveston, someplace where more work could be found.”

  “My father carved that farm out of the forest. I told him I would work it, pass it on to my…” Eddings suddenly looked like he had been poleaxed.

  Sayles didn’t see the prisoner’s expression, being busy using a stick to poke at the fire, herding the still-burning pieces together. “The dead are dead,” he said brusquely. “He wouldn’t have held it against you. He wouldn’t have known. The dead don’t know anything. Don’t even know they’re dead.”

  He heard Eddings make a choking sound and looked up. The prisoner hung his head. He was shaking, but not from the cold. He was trying to stifle the sobs that racked his body, that came welling up from his grief-and guilt-stricken soul. Sayles knew what the prisoner was going through. Damn you, you old fool, he chided himself. Eddings raised his head as though it took great effort. He was breathing raggedly, looking like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t manage. Instead he lay down on the ground blanket, managing, with hands shackled behind him, to partially cover himself with the other. He rolled over to put his back to Sayles.

  Finishing the cheroot, Sayles flicked it into the fire. The cold crept into his bones. It made his muscles spasm. It burned his nostrils. He pulled his bandanna up over his nose and lay down, propped up against his saddle. His right hand was in the coat pocket where his pistol resided. He could reach up with his left hand and grab the Winchester, which he had put back in its scabbard. But he didn’t think anyone would be moving around tonight unless they had to. He was about to drift off to sleep when Eddings spoke, and he was speaking from the depths of his tortured soul.

  “I should have been there. To hold him. To tell him I loved him. To … say good-bye.”

  Day Two

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Every morning for a week Temple Hanley visited the Cameron telegraph office, in the hope of hearing something from someone regarding Jake Eddings. A very punctual man, he woke at seven, had his breakfast at home at seven thirty, and was in his office on Cameron’s main street by eight. He found comfort in routine. It gave one the sense that one exercised control over one’s life. It was order in the midst of the chaos that was a frontier town. And while he was relieved to get Ranger Sayles’s telegram from Huntsville, he was also ill at ease. It meant he would have to put a notice on his office door informing whoever might be looking for him that he would be away for much of the day. Then he would have to hire the buggy at Cornell’s Livery and ride out to give the news to Purdy Eddings that her husband was on his way. And it made his full stomach feel unsettled just thinking about that poor woman. It was difficult to face someone who had lost everything—even, it seemed, the will to live. Purdy challenged his most cherished belief—that a person was the master of his or her own fate.

  He was making for his office, the telegraph grasped excitedly between pudgy fingers, when Emmett Placer approached him in an ungainly run across the street, a hand on top of his straw boater to keep it from blowing off, as the north wind was gusting down the town’s wide muddy thoroughfares. His hat’s security was further threatened because he kept looking up at Hanley then down to try to differentiate between slush and mud and horse and mule excrement. Getting mud-caked shoes was bad enough without sinking to the ankles in shit.

  “Lawyer Hanley! Lawyer Hanley, a moment, sir!”

  Hanley sighed, hastily folding the telegram several times so he could conceal it in the palm of a clenched hand, as it was too much trouble to secrete it in a pocket of his low-cut vest, which was beneath his buttoned tailored frock coat, which in turn was under his buttoned buffalo coat. He would have to nearly undress to do so, and it was much too cold for that. He pushed his bowler hat down more firmly on his head, then combed his thick but well-groomed rust-red beard at the chin with thumb and forefinger, a nervous habit, as he was very self-conscious about his appearance. He felt it was his duty to set an example of civility and good taste in dress, speech, hygiene, and behavior in this rough-and-tumble frontier community. Never mind that technically the Texas frontier was at least a hundred miles farther west—and with the removal of the Comanches to the Indian Territory, it would likely move still farther west at a much quicker pace in years to come.

  Hanley assembled a polite smile on his lips, turning up one corner of his mouth and then the other, and remembering to unfurl his brows as he waited for the newspaperman’s arrival. “Good morning, Mr. Placer, you’re out and about early, aren’t you?”

  “Morning, Lawyer Hanley,” said Placer affably. “I’ve noticed of late you’ve been going to the telegraph office first thing each day.” He glanced at Hanley’s apparently empty hands. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but I could’ve sworn you left there with a telegram just a moment ago.”

  With a sigh, Hanley said. “You are ver
y perceptive, Mr. Placer.”

  “I cannot help but think the telegram has something to do with Jake Eddings. Will he arrive soon? At long last can his poor wife give a decent Christian burial to the mortal remains of her young son, so tragically wrenched from her loving arms at such a tender age?”

  Placer often spoke to others employing the purple prose with which he wrote articles for the local newspaper, and Hanley was of the opinion that he was writing the story in his head and giving voice to snippets here and there to let his ears—and those of others—luxuriate in their worthiness. Hanley normally found this habit of Placer’s mildly amusing, but this morning it put him in a bad temper. He straightened his spine so as to tower imposingly over the slightly built newspaperman, and puffed out his barrel chest. At six feet six inches he towered over most, just as did Sam Houston, who was of the same height. His girth was quite a bit greater than Houston’s, though.

  “Sir, where is your sense of decency?” he boomed, in the voice he normally reserved for cross-examining a witness or admonishing a jury to remember that a defendant was innocent until proven guilty. “Where is your compassion? You cannot seriously consider profiting from the great misfortune that has befallen that family!”

  Put on the defensive, Placer bristled. He wasn’t easily intimidated, and it helped that he knew Temple Hanley, as impressive as he was in size and voice, did not pose a physical threat to anyone. “I have a duty to the people of this community to keep them informed of important matters. And you must admit, Lawyer Hanley, that Jake Eddings being allowed to attend the funeral of his son at the order of the governor, no less, is newsworthy. You had something to do with it, too, did you not? You wrote Governor Coke, that much I know. What possessed you to do that, Lawyer Hanley? Why did you set in motion a chain of events that will result in a desperate man being set loose among us? A man with blood on his hands!”

  “It’s called compassion,” replied Hanley, wrapping himself in the impenetrable and somewhat haughty calm he summoned when he felt himself becoming the target of verbal slings and arrows. “And Mr. Eddings will not be ‘set loose.’ He will be in the custody of a Texas Ranger.”

  Placer’s eyes widened. “A Texas Ranger! Indeed! Well well, this is news, indeed! A Texas Ranger coming to Cameron. Who is this man? What’s his name?”

  Sometimes, a commitment to being unerringly truthful was a burden, but Hanley wouldn’t lie, even though he had a sinking feeling that the forthcoming revelation would guarantee that poor Purdy Eddings would have to suffer the torment that no mother should have to suffer while in the public eye. “His name is Sayles.”

  Cupping chin in hand, Placer looked off into his memory a moment, then shook his head. “Never heard of him. No matter. A Ranger coming to Cameron is certainly newsworthy!” He touched the brim of his boater with a crooked grin that infuriated Hanley. “Thank you, sir, thank you!” And off he went, returning to his lair, again trying to distinguish mud from excrement en route.

  A disgruntled Hanley walked to his office and from there to the livery, stopping first at the general store to put together a box of foodstuffs, informing the storekeeper he would come back by to pick it up. At the livery he paid for the buggy and stood outside the barn while waiting for a sturdy piebald mare to be hooked in its traces. He was quite warm in his buffalo coat, though his cheeks were numb and rosier than usual. He glumly studied the depressing gray overcast while reflecting on God and the vicissitudes the Almighty often visited upon individuals to gauge their worthiness to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In his opinion, the worst was the loss of a child, and while it was not always so, today he was glad that marriage and family were not in the cards for him. He had seen firsthand the terrible effect the loss of her boy had wrought upon Purdy Eddings, and one’s first impulse was to believe no one deserved that. But his religion informed him that it wasn’t about what a person deserved in this life but what he—or she—deserved in the next.

  With these thoughts he was trying, without fully realizing it, to buttress himself for the unpleasant duty that took him to the Eddings homestead out by the Little River. By then it was midmorning, but it was impossible to distinguish midmorning from any other part of the day with this dreary sky. Hanley fervently wished for a little sunshine, as so many consecutive gray and lifeless days were depressing. Not as depressing, however, as the sight that he beheld when he rolled up to the plain but sturdy Eddings farmhouse—a sight that would remain etched in his memory to his dying day.

  On one side of the porch, resting on sawhorses, was a plain pine casket. Hanley knew it contained the body of eight-year-old Joshua Aden Eddings. On the other side, Purdy Eddings sat in a rocking chair. She was barefoot, clad in a plain brown walking skirt and gray blouse buttoned at the neck. The only hint of color was in the crocheted green-and-brown shawl around her shoulders, and also her auburn hair, which he remembered to have been quite full and lustrous at one time but which now lay in unwashed and tangled strands around her shoulders. Her complexion was ashen and her violet-blue eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. It profoundly saddened him to see how tragedy had sapped the life right out of her. Once upon a time she had been such a lovely, vivacious young woman.

  As Hanley drew closer his heart lurched, because she didn’t move, didn’t look his way, just sat there, quite still, in the rocking chair. A shotgun lay across her lap, and for one frightening instant he wondered if she was alive. He was so focused on her in that moment that he didn’t see the big yellow field dog at first. The beast lay half under the porch, but as Hanley brought the buggy to a stop in front of the house the beast came charging out with a deep and menacing series of barks that scared him. The sound animated Purdy. The chair began to rock and she shushed the dog, which responded at once, clambering up onto the porch to sit beside the chair, tail swishing across the snow-swept and weather-warped planking, panting with its big pink tongue lolling. But its gaze never left Hanley.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Eddings!” said Hanley, managing to sound cheerful. It wasn’t easy. In fact, the scene before him nearly broke his heart. A lawyer had to be part stage actor. Knowledge of the law and of human nature was not all that was required for an effective summation or cross-examination. One had to be able to portray confidence, conviction, skepticism, compassion, indignation, whether one felt anything or not. He was vastly relieved to see that Purdy was, indeed, still among the living—and that the dog, which had to weigh a hundred pounds and appeared to be all bone and muscle and gristle, was at bay.

  Purdy looked at him then. “Mr. Hanley,” she said, her voice as drawn and melancholy as was her expression.

  Hanley descended from the buggy and walked around it to approach the porch, keeping a wary eye on the dog. He noted that Purdy had spared him a mere glance and was now focused on the coffin to her left, staring at it as though she expected something to happen over there. He tried to distract her with the box of foodstuffs purchased at the general store, placing it on the porch beside the rocking chair. The yellow dog watched every move he made with his strange eyes—one was a bright blue, the other a golden brown—and now that he had come closer to Buck’s owner, his tail had stopped wagging.

  “I’ve brought you a few things, Mrs. Eddings. Let’s see what we have here. Flour, sugar, baking soda, oatmeal, molasses, dried beans, crackers, coffee, some airtights—peaches and tomatoes—as well as…” He pulled each item out of the box as he named them, then stopped, noting that she wasn’t paying any attention. It was as though she hadn’t heard a word he said. He rose and touched her cheek with the back of his hand—briefly, since a menacing rumble rose up from down deep inside the yellow dog. His name was Buck, but Hanley preferred to think of him as the Hound from Hell. “You’re freezing cold,” he told her, alarmed. Moving circumspectly, he took off his buffalo coat and draped it over her like a blanket. The dog was grimly watching his every move while sniffing the coat suspiciously.

  “Thank you,” said Purdy, flatly. “I’m not really cold
.” But she didn’t remove the buffalo coat.

  Hanley sighed and was about to place a comforting hand on her shoulder when the dog’s head came up and he thought better of it. Instead he turned up the collar of his frock coat and held it closed at the throat. Without the buffalo coat the bitter cold wasted no time in chilling him to the bone. He looked down at Purdy, alarmed by how much Joshua’s death had changed her. He remembered her as such a pretty young woman-child, one of the prettiest in the country, with such a sunny disposition, such a breathtaking smile, so full of life. Every man in Cameron and the surrounding area had desired her. Of this he was sure. Even he, in a moment of bittersweet whimsy, daydreamed about what it would be like to live his life with such an angel. And an angel she was. Her father, a steamboat captain, had turned to drink after Purdy’s mother ran off with a gambler. His health rapidly deteriorated as he grew old, and Purdy had taken care of him, doted over him, working menial jobs in Cameron to keep a roof over their heads and a little food on the table. Though at times it was a real trial for her, she was always ready with a kind word and that breathtaking smile of hers.

  But now there was a palpable sadness in her, so intense that he found himself thinking she would surely never smile again. Never laugh again. This was why every time he laid eyes on her, it felt like his heart was going to break.

  He glanced out across the snow-carpeted fields that stretched from the house to the line of bare-limbed cottonwoods and willows that marked the course of the Little River. Though he knew nothing about farming, he could sense the allure of this river bottom land even under the harsh veil of winter. In a perfect world a family could grow this land and prosper from it, and he knew that the start Jake and Purdy Eddings had made here had been a promising one. But the weather had wreaked havoc. Hanley sometimes hated the weather in Texas. It was brutal, extreme, unpredictable. In a broader sense this was true, he mused, about much of the West. Why would anyone endure such conditions, such uncertainty? Because there was land for the taking, for farming or mining or raising livestock, and land not only nurtured dreams but sometimes made them come true. There was land enough for everyone out West, but not everyone had the grit—or the luck—to succeed in an environment that was routinely hostile.