CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The train was only twenty minutes late and disgorged about thirty passengers who wasted no time clearing the station and heading for the city. The big locomotive belched clouds of steam across the deserted platform and then it cleared, revealing two men who stood side by side, both carrying small carpetbags. The larger of the two was a tall, wide-shouldered man who had a United States Marshal’s star on the left lapel of his coat as regulations demanded. He wore a Colt with dull yellow celluloid grips in a cross-draw holster and carried a Winchester. Even from a distance, the marshal looked like a man to be reckoned with.
Red Ryan studied the lawman’s companion who could only be Archibald Monday. In contrast to the marshal, he was a short, frail-looking man, dressed in a gray ditto suit and a bowler hat of the same color. The little man blinked like an owl behind his round spectacles and seemed nervous. Red mentally amended that observation . . . Archibald Monday seemed terrified.
For long moments five men stood on the platform staring at each other until Abe Patterson broke the ice. “Mr. Monday, I am Abe Patterson of the Patterson stage line. A warm welcome to El Paso.”
The big marshal whispered something in Monday’s ear and the little man scampered like a scared rabbit to where Patterson stood.
Immediately, his face ashen, he said, “There’s trouble brewing, Mr. Patterson. Big trouble.”
He was right. It was trouble with a capital T, and it wasn’t long in manifesting itself.
Three men stepped off the train, all of them big, all of them wearing shabby suits and bowler hats. They were a tough threesome, more gorilla than human, with fist-battered faces and huge hands that hung by their sides like anvils. Their deep-set eyes never left the trembling form of Archibald Monday, three predators studying their prey.
The marshal cleared his gun and turned to face them.
“Ryan, Muldoon, side him!” Patterson drew his gun, and then said to Monday, “You stay right here with me.”
Today, there are those who question why Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon would get involved in a scrap that really didn’t concern them. They’ve forgotten, or didn’t know, that the frontier era was a time of fierce loyalties and if you accepted wages from a man, you rode for his brand. That mind-set left no room for questioning. It was the keystone of the Code of the West, writ large in letters of fire. And Red and Buttons lived by it.
* * *
As Red Ryan and Buttons stood on either side of him, the marshal said in a strong Irish brogue, “Now what is it you gentlemen would be wanting?”
The three toughs didn’t like this development. Instead of facing one man, they faced three, all of them armed. But they’d been paid to do a job, and confident of their fighting and killing ability, they’d see it through.
The biggest of the three thugs, a man with a broken nose and scar tissue above each eye, took a step forward and said, “We want no trouble here, copper. Give us Monday and we’ll walk away.”
“You want Monday, come and take him,” the marshal said.
“Don’t force us to do just that,” the big man said.
“I’m forcing you. May I suggest that you lively lads go back to New York and to whatever slum spawned you.”
“You force our hand, copper,” the man said. “On your head be it.”
The three hardcases were by instinct and practice, fist, skull, and boot fighters, also adept with the knife, billy club, and sap. During their various criminal activities, they used revolvers when the need arose, but in the street gang brawls and muggings that occupied most of their time, guns were not their weapon of choice. They were city boys who’d never before come up against a tough frontier marshal and a Texas draw fighter like Red Ryan . . . a fatal flaw in their education.
To his credit, the marshal didn’t immediately try to shade them on the draw. He waited a split second, hoping for a change of heart on the part of the thugs, but in that he was disappointed. They unlimbered their revolvers, two from shoulder rigs, the other from his coat pocket. The three took up a duelist’s shooting stance, using the sights as they’d been taught, right side to the opponent, arm extended, the left foot behind the heel of the right.
The marshal drew and fired and Red did the same. Two shots a fraction of a second apart. Two hits. Red fired at the big man who’d done the talking and his bullet slammed into the thug’s chest, staggering him. The man to Red’s left went down under the lawman’s bullet, a killing wound that dropped him to the platform’s timber floor. The third man, still unhurt, fired at the marshal, who took the bullet to his lower left side that rocked him and put him out of the fight. Red and Buttons shot at the same time and the thug screamed and went down, blood opening up like a scarlet rose between his collarbones. But when he struck the ground he lived long enough to fire, and Red heard Buttons gasp as he was hit. The big, talkative man wanted no more of Texas gunfighting. Mortally wounded, he threw down his revolver and yelled, “Quarter.”
But Red, seeing the marshal down and blood seeping through Buttons’s fingers as he clutched at a wound in his right shoulder, was not inclined to be merciful, at least not that day. He pumped two bullets into the big hoodlum, scored two hits, and when the man hit the ground he was already dead as a rotten stump.
Gun smoke drifted across the station platform as Archibald Monday stood behind Abe Patterson, held his hands to his ringing ears, and in a state of trembling anxiety said over and over again, “Oh, dear . . . oh, dearie me . . .”
Red stepped toward Buttons, and the driver said, “I’m all right, Red. See to the marshal.” Then, for no apparent reason, “He’s an Irishman.”
The lawman sat on the platform, the left side of his shirt glistening with blood.
Red took a knee beside him and said, “You’ve been hit hard. We’ll get you a doctor.”
The lawman nodded and extended his hand. “Name’s Sean Brannigan. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Red Ryan.” He took the man’s hand. “I’m a representative of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.”
“And a credit to it, you are. How are the three boyos over there?” Brannigan said.
“All dead.”
“Pity. They were likely lads but on the wrong side of the law. Was Monday hit?”
“No, he’s fine. Mr. Patterson is taking care of him.”
“He’s an excitable little fella,” the marshal said.
“Which one?”
Brannigan smiled. “Mr. Monday.”
Red nodded. “Yes, he’s all of that.”
* * *
Acting city marshal Tom Moad arrived with gun drawn and doctor in tow. The lawman looked around at the carnage and fell into an agitated silence, obviously deciding who to charge with what. But a quiet word from United States Marshal Sean Brannigan calmed him down and convinced him he was dealing with circumstances beyond his control.
As Dr. McKenna worked on Brannigan, Moad said, “Marshal, I searched the bodies and found no identification. Between them, the deceased carried a sum of two hundred and five dollars and eighteen cents, three large knives, and three Smith and Wesson pistols, all of which I am confiscating.”
“The spoils of war, Marshal,” Brannigan said. “The three deceased, as you call them, were gang members from the Five Points neighborhood in New York City, a place where lives are short and violent and a place where infectious diseases ravage the mostly starving population. In short, it’s a den of murderers, thieves, brothels, and terrible poverty—and it’s ruled by the gangs.”
“The bullet passed right through your side, Marshal Brannigan,” Dr. McKenna said. “I don’t think it struck anything vital, but it’s done some damage and I will examine you further in my surgery.”
“How is the other fella?” Brannigan said.
“Mr. Muldoon? It’s a flesh wound,” McKenna said. “Nothing too serious.”
“Glad to hear it,” Brannigan said. “The Muldoons hail from County Sligo in the old country. Fine people.”
“I’m sure they are.” McKenna hailed a couple of railroad workers. “Bring me a cart or something to transport this wounded man to my surgery.”
One of the workers touched his cap and said, “Doc, there’s a stretcher in the station storeroom.”
“That will do nicely,” the doctor said. “You gentlemen can carry him.”
Irritated by the interruption, Moad said, “Marshal Brannigan, why are the Five Points gangs so interested in a whiskey drummer here in Texas?”
“Best you don’t know, Marshal Moad,” Brannigan said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help me. I wish I didn’t.”