CHAPTER SIX
The railroad clock in the Gray Wolf Inn joined hands at midnight when saloon girl Addie Turnbull decided to take a stroll in the moonlight to walk off a pounding headache, the result of noise, smoke, constant pawing by the sporting crowd, and too much cheap champagne. She took Irving Street and headed toward the dark ribbon of the North Concho River, past the Rowdy Peacock Saloon and then the Silver Garter bawdy house. By the time Addie reached the lot where stood the timber framework of what would soon be a hardware store, her headache was what she later described to the law as “a sight better.”
Then, her pale blue, myopic eyes popping, she saw what was hanging from a crossbeam of the construction and she screamed and screamed . . . and her headache suddenly got a heck of a sight worse.
Game for any distraction, people spilled out of the saloons and brothels, and a gaping crowd quickly gathered, among them Police Constable Boone Sturdy, who glanced at the mutilated bodies of the dangling men and promptly threw up all the whiskey he’d drank that night and then green bile. When he recovered enough to address the horrified throng he said only, “My God. Oh, my God in heaven.”
One soused rooster who sobered up fast would later tell the San Angelo Standard-Times that what he saw “was a sight not meant to be seen by a Christian man and was like to burn out my eyeballs.”
* * *
Abe Patterson, dressed only in a long gown and sleeping cap and in the highest state of agitation, ran along the hotel corridor and hammered on Red Ryan’s room door and then roused Buttons Muldoon. “Don’t you hear the screams and commotion?” he said. “I fear our monks may be in trouble again.”
Buttons, wearing his hat and long johns, scratched his belly and said, “Where the heck are they?”
“The Irishman told me they were planning to spend the night in prayer at the Church of the Immaculate Conception,” Patterson said. “We must ensure that they’re safe.”
“Why would they do something like that?” Red said.
“Because they’re holy monks,” Patterson said. “That’s what monks do. Now get dressed. We’re going to church.”
* * *
When Red Ryan and the others stepped onto the street outside the hotel, a youngster riding north on Irving Street reined in his galloping horse. “Apaches!” he yelled.
“Where?” Abe Patterson said.
The towheaded kid jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That way,” he said. “I’m going to Fort Concho for the soldiers.”
“Wait!” Patterson yelled, but the kid was already gone, a cloud of dust trailing his gray nag. “Right,” he said. “Ryan, you go see what the Apache trouble is. Buttons, you come to the church with me. We’ll meet back at the hotel.”
“You reckon the Apaches attacked the church?” Buttons said. “And maybe scalped them monks?”
“Paying passengers, you mean. I don’t know, but I aim to find out,” Patterson said. “Red, you be careful. Apache bucks on the prod can be a handful, and they’ll fight in the dark if the notion takes them.”
Red nodded. “I’m always careful around Apaches,” he said.
* * *
Red Ryan saw the crowd first, a cross section of the temporary and permanent residents of San Angelo, cattlemen, cowboys, gamblers, painted saloon girls rubbing shoulders with respectable matrons, hawk-eyed gunmen, businessmen, merchants, and the usual collection of young men on the make. Then Red saw what hung, head-down, from a crossbeam of a framed-up building, and wished to God he hadn’t.
Stover Timms and Lem Harlan had been stripped naked, gutted, and hung by their ankles from the beam. Pink and purple coiled entrails spilled onto the ground below their dangling arms, and their entire faces and bodies were scarlet with blood. When Red looked closer, he saw that both men had been gagged with pieces of sacking, probably to stifle their death screams.
Members of the local volunteer fire department, wearing brass helmets and black tunics, were tasked with cutting down the bodies, and a doctor and his nurse attended to hysterical women who’d swooned away in fright when they’d first beheld the scene or heard the subsequent dire warnings that bloodthirsty Apaches were playing hob in San Angelo and might be lurking anywhere.
Red waited until the bodies of the dead men had been cut down and the undertaker and his assistants had packed what was left of them into pine boxes, including the bits and pieces. He walked to the scene of the crime, now lit by several guttering oil lamps. To his surprise, a woman was already there, examining the ground as had been his intention. To his surprise, he recognized Augusta Addington in the gloom, her nightclothes covered by her canvas duster, pale green slippers on her feet. She saw Red looking at her and smiled and said, “Firemen’s boots have tromped all over the place. There are no other tracks to be seen, Apache or otherwise.”
Red said, “Miss Addington, do you always visit the scenes of killings, especially one like this?”
“No, not always,” Augusta said. “But I do when there’s ones like this.”
She sounded a little breathless, as though she’d been caught in the act of doing something she shouldn’t. Her thick auburn hair was tied back with a blue ribbon and her unfettered breasts were firm enough to mound the canvas of the duster, reinforcing Red’s opinion that she was one fine-looking woman.
“So then, what are you doing here?” Red asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” Augusta said.
“Abe Patterson was worried about the four monks,” Red said. “They’ve never been around Apaches before.”
“And where are my saintly fellow passengers?” Augusta said.
“In church, praying.”
“An all-night vigil?”
“If vigil means saying prayers, then yeah, all night.”
“Very devout of them,” Augusta said. “Apaches didn’t kill those two men.”
“What makes you so sure?” Red said. For some reason he was irritated. What did Miss Augusta Addington of the Philadelphia and New Orleans Addingtons know about bronco Apaches?
“Apaches don’t attack a town of this size with an army fort full of cavalry right on its doorstep,” Augusta said. “And if it was just a quick raid, why take time to disembowel two men and string them up from a downtown rafter?” Her beautiful eyes searched Red’s face. “That doesn’t make any sense, don’t you think, Mr. Ryan?”
Red recognized the woman’s cool logic, but that only irritated him further.
“Then you know all about Apaches, huh?” he said.
“I know nothing about Apaches,” Augusta said. “I’ve never even met one. But they’re men, and I know a lot about men.”
“If it wasn’t Apaches, then who killed Stover Timms and Lem Harlan?” Red said. “They were tough men, quick on the draw and shoot and mean as curly wolves.”
The woman smiled. “I guess they were unfortunate enough to run afoul of men who were a great deal meaner.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never did answer my question, Miss Addington,” Red said. “Why are you here?”
“Curiosity,” Augusta said. “Nothing more.”
“You know what they say, curiosity killed the cat.”
The woman smiled. “Why would anyone want to kill me, Mr. Ryan?”
“Nobody that I know would,” Red said. He also smiled.
“In any case, I can take care of myself,” Augusta said. She reached into the pocket of the duster and produced a stubby, nickel-plated revolver with yellowed ivory grips. “This is a British Bulldog in .450 caliber, Mr. Ryan, a gift from my papa. I’m really quite proficient with it.”
Red nodded. “I’m sure you are. It’s late, and since you’re a passenger of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company and I’m its representative . . .”
“You’ll walk me back to the hotel,” Augusta said. “You are very gallant, Mr. Ryan. Now give me your arm.”
* * *
When Buttons and Abe Patterson met Red Ryan at the hotel, the only report they had to make was that the monks had spent most of the day in prayer and planned to continue their pious devotions overnight. Meanwhile, the army called out two full companies of cavalry and patrolled the streets of San Angelo until just before dawn and concluded that the Apaches had snuck into town, killed two citizens, and then left. Patrols would be sent out to track down the savages, and an entire regiment would remain on high alert until the culprits who did the actual killings were severely punished and the rest returned to the San Carlos.
Red echoed the thoughts of Augusta Addington and said that he doubted Apaches had killed . . . he used the word slaughtered . . . Stover Timms and Lem Harlan. But nobody cared to listen.