Christmas in the Lone Star State Read online

  “We went west, not south, numskull. It be winter anywhere north of the equator.”

  Lute’s brows knit, as he wasn’t sure what the equator was exactly, or what it had to do with warm and cold weather. “I’m not about to go over the side. I don’t swim that good anyway and I got maybe one hundred dollars, mostly coin, to weight me down. How much is a hundred dollars in pound sterling, Mal?”

  “About twenty quid.”

  Lute grinned. He was in a good mood again, even if there was a lawman on board hunting them. Lawmen worried Mal a lot more than they worried him. “Ah, a good day’s haul, then! Both those gents were merchants, which means they’re bigger criminals than I’ll ever be, so I’m happy to relieve them of their ill-gotten gains.”

  Mal had long ago given up trying to follow his brother’s twisted logic. “Shut your bone box and listen, if you don’t want to be pegging out today. Go to our cabin and get our belongings and meet me at the stern. I’ll keep an eye out for the law.”

  Lute was still worried about the possibility of having to go over the side. “How are we going to get off this boat, Mal? You know I’m not much of a swimmer…”

  “Just go fetch your dunnage and your weapons and do it on the fly,” said Mal. “We’re going to disembark like proper, law-abiding blokes.”

  Relieved that he wasn’t going to risk drowning in the Brazos River, Lute smiled and began to take the coins and greenbacks out of his hat’s crown by the fistful, stuffing them into his trouser pockets, as he walked past his brother with the intent of doing as Mal had said. He was the first to see a tall, broad-shouldered man in a brown greatcoat and hat appear near the bow of the stern-wheeler, striding toward them. The man saw Lute at the same time, and grimaced beneath his thick mustache as he lengthened his stride. Lute stopped and turned back to his brother.

  “Mal, I think…”

  Mal had already spotted the man—the one he had seen boarding the Mustang moments before. “That’s the copper,” he muttered and was already moving past Lute as though to confront the lawman, shoving his hands into the pockets of his peacoat. “Five and follow,” he muttered over his shoulder to Lute. “Five and follow.”

  Lute nodded, counting Mal’s strides as he firmly tugged his hat down on his head so the blustery winter wind gusting over the river didn’t carry it off. They had established a verbal shorthand over the course of pursuing their criminal livelihood in the streets and alleyways of Whitechapel. Five and follow meant he was to wait until Mal took five steps and then follow. What he didn’t know was that Mal had decided on five rather than six or eight strides because with five Lute could use the fingers and thumb of a single hand to keep count, which he often had to resort to since even the most basic mathematics had been a struggle for him. Ordinarily the brothers employed this technique when closing in on a mark. One of them would take the lead, distract the mark, and try to turn him so his back was to the other, who closed in from behind. Lute checked his coat pocket. His garrote was in his left pocket, his gull—a folding knife about the size of a barber’s razor and just as sharp—in the other.

  As Lute went into motion, he watched Mal admiringly. His brother tried to avoid danger whenever possible, but when it couldn’t be avoided he faced it head-on. Lute experienced a tingle at the base of his spine. It was anticipation rather than apprehension. Long ago, when they were hardly more than boys but had already committed all manner of crimes, he and Mal had made a pact, sealed with a blood handshake, that they would never be taken alive. At the time it had seemed quite daring, even moving.

  Seeing both of the Litchfield brothers moving toward him, the man in the greatcoat no longer strode so swiftly and with as much swagger as he had been, slowing down with brows furrowing. He was accustomed to guilty parties taking flight when they saw him coming. “You two!” he said gruffly, gesturing for them to stop. “Hold it right there.” His other hand began to pull back his coat which, Lute noticed, was buttoned only from the waist up.

  Mal had been walking with his head down, looking at the deck, appearing for all the world like someone deep in thought and in no big hurry, almost as though he hadn’t even noticed the big man or, if he had, didn’t think a thing about him. When the man spoke, Mal looked up, then over his shoulder, like he thought the man was addressing someone behind him. Still walking, he passed the man on the right with a nod and an amiable smile. The man half turned, his back to the railing, keeping a wary eye on Mal. His coat was pushed back enough that Mal could see the holstered Colt revolver as the man took hold of it and began to pull it. As Mal turned to his left, he took the Gasser out of his right coat pocket, and the man didn’t see it until it was aimed at his face. The clickety-click of the Gasser’s hammer being thumbed back froze him in place with the Colt half drawn.

  Mal still wore an engaging smile. “We’re the Litchfield brothers from Whitechapel, by the way,” he said affably, and the man’s expression told him all he needed to know. He didn’t look perplexed, as one might who did not recognize the name or could not fathom why this information would be provided. Instead he looked angry—and afraid. This convinced Mal that he had been correct—he and Lute were the ones this lawman was seeking.

  Mal’s Gasser held the lawman’s attention just a little too long. He reasoned that Lute was coming up on his right and he was just looking that way when the garrote wire came down and around his neck. The man was taller, bigger, and stronger than Lute, but that didn’t matter. Lute knew how to use a garrote on a victim larger than himself, since most men were larger. The lawman clawed at the wire embedded in his throat, then groped blindly behind him in an effort to grab Lute, wasting the few precious seconds during which he might have employed his pistol to good effect because the garrote induced panic like almost no other killing device.

  All of this moved the lawman away from the rail, giving Lute the opportunity to get directly behind his victim and push a knee into his lower spine. As soon he had the lawman bent over backward the deed was as good as done. A few seconds later he sat down and pulled his victim down with him. The lawman’s eyes bulged in a face going purple, blood pouring from the gaping wound as Lute kept sawing on his neck, and then a geyser of bright-red blood marked the severing of the carotid, followed by a sucking sound and a froth of bubbles signifying the fracture of the larynx. Lute sat there cross-legged and covered with blood with the man’s head in his lap, blithely sawing away as his victim went into his death throes, his boot heels beating erratically if briefly against the deck before his eyes glazed and his body went limp.

  Taking a step back as soon as he was sure the man wouldn’t draw his pistol, Mal lowered the Gasser and looked toward the bow and then the stern while Lute committed the murder. When he heard the death gurgle, he sat on his heels beside the body and quickly but thoroughly searched the dead man, getting his hands bloody in the process. He didn’t mind. Lute sat there a moment, panting, flush with excitement. He had once explained to Mal that it was the palpable fear in his victims that excited him so. Garrotes were a common weapon in the London slums, easy to make and cheap to acquire. They were a quick and relatively quiet way to kill when used by someone who knew how. London bobbies had taken to wearing wooden stays in high collars to help protect them from being garroted, and more than once Lute had laughingly taken credit for the “new fashion of the London constabulary”—at least those assigned to the East End. Until recently, the garrote had even been used in the execution of criminals in Spain.

  Mal found the folded wanted posters stuffed under the dead man’s vest. After perusing them for a moment he muttered, “Bloody hell” and looked sternly at Lute. “You just had to kill the Badham girl didn’t you! The daughter of an MP, no less!” Disgusted, he showed his brother the notice for one Luther Litchfield.

  Lute studied it a moment while he detached the garrote from his victim’s neck, pulling the wire free of the mutilated flesh. “A bloody poor likeness if you ask me.”

  “Are you nicked?” asked Mal
, incredulously. “This is Scotland Yard’s work, and it got halfway ’round the bloody world before we did. Probably on a China clipper to Boston or New York, then on around the coast, to Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston.” He was thinking aloud. The China clippers were the fastest sailing ships the world had ever known. They were used to import silk, tea, and opium to Britain. Opium dens were everywhere and laudanum, made from opium, was widely used as a painkiller. On the way back to China they would carry other goods, including mailbags. Some passed through the new Suez Canal, but there was profit to be made by carrying goods to the United States.

  Lute was on his feet, bending down to take the dead man’s pistol before rolling the corpse over and working the blood-splattered greatcoat free. A shout from the front of the steamboat made him look up. One of the Mustang’s crew had appeared near the bow and seen them. Mal stood and turned, raising the Gasser, but the crewman vanished and began shouting—what exactly Mal couldn’t tell.

  “Let’s go!” Mal shouted. A few long strides brought him to the port-side door of the saloon. He threw the door open and strode in, ready to shoot if anyone tried to get in his way. But there was no one in the room so he continued across to the starboard door.

  “What about my things?” asked Lute, following close behind his brother.

  Mal didn’t care too much about their dunnage. They had their weapons, and he had his Burns. He went through the doors onto the starboard deck and saw a crewman running toward him, and noticed too that the man who had been waiting on the dock was now striding up the gangplank, pistol drawn. Someone in the pilothouse was ringing the ship’s bell in a frantic way that made clear it was an alarm being sounded. Seeing the brothers emerge armed from the saloon, the crewman blanched, turned, and ran back towards the bow. Since he was unarmed Mal didn’t waste a bullet on him. He moved quickly toward the gangplank, reaching it when the man coming up was ten feet shy of the top, He caught a glimpse of a young, scared face, and then saw the blossom of flame and puff of acrid gray smoke as the man brought his pistol up and took a shot. Mal didn’t flinch or hesitate. Shooting from the hip, he put two bullets dead center in the man’s torso, his primary aim to stop him from getting off a second round.

  Realizing he was unscathed, Mal glanced back at Lute to make certain his brother was unharmed as well. The man he had shot was sprawled on his back across the gangplank, wrapping his arms around his midsection and producing wheezing grunts. Mal paused, looking down at him. He felt no animus toward this young lawman, who in the grip of fear had rushed his shot and missed his mark. Lute tried to push his brother on down the gangplank but Mal brushed him off, standing over his gunshot victim.

  “Please!” wheezed the man. “Don’t … don’t kill me!” Tears were welling up in his eyes. “I have a family! I have a son! I—I told him I would be b-back for Christmas…”

  Mal shook his head. “You’re not going to make it,” he said, and there was a trace of regret in his voice. He thumbed the hammer of the Gasser dangling in his right hand.

  A rifle barked from somewhere in the vicinity of the pilothouse. “Bloody hell!” shouted Lute after he heard a sound like an angry hornet close to his ear. It wasn’t that he thought he would die today, but getting shot hurt like hell and could make you wish you were dead. He reached down, grabbed the dying man by his lapels, grunting with exertion as he lifted him and then threw him headfirst over the gangplank’s rope railing. The man uttered a strangled cry, flailing as he tried—and failed—to grab on to something. Mal caught a glimpse of the horror on his face as he went over.

  “Come on!” Lute shouted, trotting down the gangplank, firing twice in the general direction of the pilothouse on the way.

  Mal followed, walking with long, angry strides, glancing down at the muddy brown river, knowing he would not see the young lawman surface. A gut-shot man wasn’t going to come back up. He didn’t break into a run when he reached the dock, either, even though a bullet splintered the weathered gray wood a few inches from his boot. Up ahead, Lute hurriedly shrugged off the greatcoat and muttered another heartfelt curse as a bullet plucked at one of the coat’s windswept tails.

  The horses of the two dead lawmen were fiddle-footing, made nervous by the gunfire and the smell of blood that Lute carried on him. Lute had some trouble getting into the saddle of a blaze-faced sorrel, and did some more swearing. He didn’t know much about riding, being a denizen of Whitechapel streets and alleys, and he envied his older brother because Mal swung aboard the other horse and sat there like he’d been born in a saddle. Mal was focused on the steamboat, scanning it from the stern wheel forward past the forty-foot smokestacks billowing gray-black smoke to the pilothouse. Whoever was shooting at them with a long gun had stopped now, and now nary a person on board was visible. He presumed they were hiding, waiting for him and his brother to ride off before coming out from behind cover.

  He looked around at Lute, who was finally perched precariously in the sorrel’s saddle. “Where are we going, Mal?” asked the younger Litchfield as he yanked on the reins, trying to bring the horse beneath him under some semblance of control. Despite the difficulty the horse was giving him he seemed quite cheerful. You could not have known by his demeanor that he had just killed two men.

  “Wherever we want,” said Mal flatly. He could not get the face of the wounded man Lute had thrown off the gangplank out of his mind. “You know,” he muttered, “they say whatever bad you do to people in this life, it will be done—and worse—to you in Hell, for all eternity.” He glared at Lute a moment before kicking his horse into motion, up the narrow, overgrown trail and into the thicket covering the riverbank.

  “Little late for getting religion,” commented Lute, following.

  Day Three

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was snowing again when Bill Sayles arrived in Cameron with Jake Eddings in tow. Even the occasional Christmas trees visible through windows, and doors adorned with wreaths made of evergreen boughs and colorful ribbons could not dispel the day’s gloom. Due to the weather the wide rutted streets and warped gray boardwalks were almost empty when they arrived, but before long people began to appear at the windows or emerge from the doors to get a look at them. Sayles had a hunch their interest wasn’t solely the result of curiosity about two men traveling in such inclement weather conditions. Cameron was a pretty small community, but not that small. It seemed more likely that their arrival had been expected. The word had gotten out somehow that the local boy turned outlaw and prison inmate was coming home to bury his son. Sayles wondered if the lawyer, Hanley, had anything to do with it. He had never had much use for lawyers. In his opinion they just complicated the law, and sometimes even thwarted justice.

  Occasionally he looked back at Eddings. The prisoner had scarcely uttered a word since the confrontation with the three road agents yesterday. Chatting with a captive was sometimes useful in determining the other man’s state of mind and perhaps even a clue as to his intent. But as a rule Sayles had never been much for small talk, and that conversation he and Eddings had engaged in the first night out of Huntsville had conjured up more than enough bad memories. So he was glad there hadn’t been much chatter since then. Besides, he didn’t need a verbal exchange to figure out what was bothering Eddings.

  Checking his timepiece, he noted with satisfaction that it was midafternoon. They were on time based on the schedule he had imposed on himself before leaving Waco bound for Huntsville. Despite the snowfall, the gunplay on the road, and a delay at the ferry over the Brazos, they had made good time.

  He thought about the ferryman’s news of a shooting on a riverboat the day before. Two lawmen from Washington-on-the-Brazos had been killed, one with his throat cut ear-to-ear. The other had been shot to pieces and then thrown into the river to drown. The killers had escaped into the brush. It was the kind of crime that would be the topic of conversation among the local folk for months to come. Having seen worse, Sayles was too jaded to get excited or overly concerned about
running into the pair of cold-blooded killers during his travels in the area. He woke up every day expecting trouble and was always prepared to deal with it.

  Dismounting at the Cameron jail, Sayles saw a tall, skinny man with a thick mustache looking out the window and glimpsed the glint of lantern light on the tin star pinned to his shirt. It was midafternoon but almost dark as dusk thanks to the steady snowfall, so windows all along the town’s main street glowed with yellow lamplight. The man studied Eddings and then gave Sayles a nod of acknowledgment before moving away from the window. When he came outside he had a jacket on and a flop-brimmed hat pulled down around his jug-handle ears. Sayles had tethered the coyote dun to the hitching post, with the bay’s lead rope secured around his saddlehorn, and was in the process of bringing the sorrel that had once carried a knife-wielding black outlaw up to the post.

  “You must be the Ranger,” said the thin man, hugging himself against the wind that came whipping down the street to blow snow in his face. “Lawyer Hanley told me you were coming. You might have sent me a telegram about it.”

  Sayles reached down and pulled the Sheffield bowie from his boot. “You just said you knew I was coming—and without getting a telegram,” he observed.

  The lawman’s eyes widened when he saw the bowie’s twelve-inch blade, and he muttered, “Just sayin’ it’s a simple courtesy between officers of the law.” His tone carried a trace of resentment still, but was not nearly as officious as before. He was pretty sure Sayles didn’t mean him harm, but then he was a Texas Ranger, and they were known to be unpredictable and violent.