CHAPTER TEN
Although it was almost four in the afternoon, Buttons Muldoon decided to make up time and hit the trail for the privately owned Cave Springs Station, where his passengers could be fed and the team changed again. The 1869 Army report on the first ten miles between Kickapoo Springs and Cave Springs was that the “the grass is good but available water is muddy.” The remaining ten miles or so was described as “rocky, but the grass and water is good.” There was nothing in the report to give Buttons pause, but the sky gave him fair warning of a gathering storm to the north.
When Red pointed this out, Buttons nodded and then said, “It’s four hours to the station, but I reckon we can outrun them clouds.”
Jim Moore cast a weather eye to the sky. “You got a good team there, Buttons,” he said. “You’ll be well on your way before the storm hits. What do you say, Red?”
Red smiled. “Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger.”
“Well, you can trust me,” Buttons said. “When it comes to storms, I’m never wrong.”
That last didn’t exactly inspire Red with confidence, but he helped get the passengers loaded, and when Augusta Addington glanced at the northern sky and said, “It’s going to storm, Mr. Ryan,” he assured her that they’d be at Cave Springs Station before the bad weather hit.
“If the worst comes to the worst, we can shelter there overnight,” Red said. “But I don’t think that will happen.”
“Good. As I told you, I’m most anxious to reach Fredericksburg,” Augusta said. Then, for some reason she added, “It’s a matter of life and death.”
That last surprised Red. But he saw the woman close down, unwilling to add to that statement, and he said only, “You’ll be there the day after tomorrow, because Buttons will want to push on.” He smiled and tipped his plug hat to a rakish angle. “Day and night, fair weather and foul, the Patterson stage never stops.”
“Except when it does,” Augusta said.
Red nodded. “Yeah, well, now and again an act of God will slow us down some.”
“Then let’s hope there are none of those between here and Fredericksburg,” Augusta said.
Buttons overheard that last part of the conversation and said, “Miss Addington, you’ve met Abe Patterson . . . God wouldn’t dare.” But God did dare . . . and would soon make Buttons Muldoon eat his words.
* * *
“Should we tell her?” Buttons Muldoon said, his gloved hands on the lines never still as he constantly made little adjustments that the team’s experienced leaders understood.
“Tell who what?” Red said, the shotgun across his knees, his restless eyes scanning the vast rolling grassland ahead of him. To the south the sky was a uniform blue, but behind the stage the piled-up boulders of cloud were as black as coal.
“Tell Miss Addington about Honeysuckle Cairns. Prepare her for a shock, like.”
“Do you reckon she’ll be shocked?” Red said.
“Seeing a four-hundred pound, painted-up whore for the first time would shock anybody.”
“Back a couple of years ago, it sure did me the first time,” Buttons said. “And if seeing her wasn’t bad enough, then I heard that little, squeaky voice of hers. A man would have to be pretty desperate to tackle that gal.”
“And were you?” Red said. “Desperate, I mean.”
“No sir, not hardly. But the feller with me, went by the name of Trinity River Turk Matheson, sure was. He was my new shotgun messenger then, after ol’ Bill Simmons got hisself shot. Well, anyhoo, Turk had just spent two years panning for gold up Colorado way and when we arrived at Cave Springs, he hadn’t seen a real, female woman in any shape or form in all that time.”
Red watched a small flock of crows flap south, a worrisome sign, and then said, “And did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Did he indulge?”
“Indulge? He was flat broke after leaving Colorado, and Abe Patterson had advanced him a week’s pay. Turk blew his entire roll on Honeysuckle at two dollars a turn. He was still there, trying to borry money from stage passengers, when I left.” Buttons shook his head. “I never did find out what happened to ol’ Turk Matheson. Maybe Honeysuckle Cairns was the death of him.”
“Too much woman, I reckon,” Red said.
“Too much woman for any man,” Buttons said. “And Turk was just a little feller. He’d put you in mind of . . . what’s his name?”
“Chris Mercer.”
“Yeah, a scrawny little hombre like him.”
“Sad story,” Red said. “I mean, him running out of money like that.”
“Yeah, ain’t it though?” Buttons said. “So, do we tell her?”
“No, I don’t think so. Let Augusta find out for herself,” Red said. “I reckon she can handle anything life throws at her, including four-hundred-pound whores.”
“Heck, what does Smiler want?” Buttons said. “Be ready with the scattergun, Red. I don’t trust him.”
Thurmond and his boys had been flanking the stage, and now the outlaw rode closer, looking worried as the day grew darker, and said, “Hey, Muldoon, do you see them clouds?”
“I see them.”
“Do you hear the thunder?”
“I hear it.”
“You know this road,” Thurmond said. “Is there anyplace we can find shelter?”
“Not until we reach Cave Springs, there ain’t,” Buttons said.
“I don’t like this,” Thurmond said. “There’s lightning spiking all over the place, and me and the boys are the tallest things on the whole damn prairie.”
“No, you’re not, I am,” Red said.
“Well, we’re going to ride on ahead,” Thurmond said. “See if we can outrun the storm. We’ll keep the coffee warming for you at Cave Springs.”
“White of you, Smiler,” Buttons said. “Good luck.”
“Yeah, you too, Buttons. Good luck.”
* * *
Smiler Thurmond and his boys were ten miles north of Cave Springs when the storm caught up with them. At first there was only a growing darkness. A dire warning. Then the tempest struck with terrible fury. A gigantic, roaring wall of wind and torrential rain accompanied by continuous thunder hurtled from the north like a landslide of monstrous boulders, stunning the senses and terrifying the horses. Suddenly, amid the deafening clamor of the storm came a more vicious noise, like the hiss of an angry snake, and a blinding flare of incandescent blue light followed by a rending crash.
A solitary cottonwood on the bank of a dry wash burst apart, rose several feet in the air, and then fell, great splinters of its white inner wood erupting into the air like shrapnel. A thin cry in extremis, and Jonah Halton, closest to the lightning bolt, went down with his horse in a tangle of kicking legs, reins, and saddle leather. Thunder bellowed, lightning cracked like a bullwhip, lashing across the plains and the air smelled of brimstone and charred wood and grass. Battered by wind and rain, Thurmond opened his mouth and yelled, a sound no one heard above the earsplitting tumult. Fighting his rearing horse, the outlaw rode closer to Halton and swung from the saddle. Its reins trailing, his panicked mount immediately ran headlong into the prairie and disappeared into the storm. Thurmond never saw it again.
Halton’s mount was standing head down, its left foreleg broken. The outlaw stripped the saddle and bridle and then put the animal out of its misery. He holstered his gun and kneeled beside Halton. Wind and rain hammered Thurmond and around him the roaring plains were dark, shot through with searing, blinding lightning flashes as though Heck had come to central Texas.
Thurmond gabbed Halton by the shoulders and yelled, “Jonah, wake up! Open your eyes!”
But the little outlaw did not respond, his face under its sunburn gray as ash. He did not seem to be breathing, and a thin trickle of bloody saliva ran down the corner of his mouth.
Ollie Barnes stood over Thurmond, his tall form shimmering in the flash of pulsating silver light and steel needles of rain. “He’s a goner, Smiler,” Barnes said. “The lightning done for him.”
Thurmond shook his head. “I set store by Jonah. Why did he have to haul off and die on me?”
“Luck of the draw, I guess,” Barnes said with considerable indifference. He’d never liked Halton much. He was always a finger looking for a trigger.
* * *
Now that it had done its worst, the storm passed. The darkness that had descended on the plains lifted, and the thunder now grumbled its way south, occasionally throwing out spiteful darts of lightning.
Smiler Thurmond and the Barnes brothers watched the Patterson stage, its sidelamps lit, slowly emerge from the gloom. When Buttons drew rein on the team, he looked down at the dead man and the dead horse and said, “You’ve been through it, Smiler.”
“I reckon,” Thurmond said. “Jonah Halton is dead, and I lost two good horses.” He looked at the soaking-wet driver and guard and said, “You don’t look so good yourselves.”
Red’s buckskin shirt was black with rain, and Buttons’s blue sailor’s coat hung on him like a wet sack. “Damned storm rained bullfrogs and heifer yearlings,” Red said. “Sorry about Halton.”
“I set store by him,” Smiler said.
“Yeah, he was a right neighborly feller,” Buttons said, straight-faced.
“What happened here?”
Augusta Addington, carrying her top hat after it was knocked off during the stage’s violent charge through the storm, stepped toward Thurmond.
“Man killed by lightning,” the outlaw said.
Augusta kneeled by Halton, peeled off a glove, and felt the right side of the man’s neck. After ten seconds, she said, “How long has he been like this?”
“Quite a spell,” Thurmond said.
“How long?”
Thurmond thought about and said, “Thirty minutes, maybe more.”
Augusta nodded. “I can bring him back.”
“How?” Thurmond said. “He’s dead.”
“Not yet. Not quite,” the woman said. “I saw a Chinaman on the Barbary Coast over San Francisco way bring back a ship’s carpenter who’d been struck by lightning.” She laid aside her hat. “We have no time to waste.”
Augusta forcibly opened Halton’s mouth and carefully looked inside. Then she placed the heel of her right hand on the center of Jonah Halton’s chest, put her other hand on top, and positioned herself so that her shoulders were above her hands. Using her body weight, she pressed down hard, and Buttons Muldoon would later say she almost flattened out Halton’s chest before she stopped and let his breastbone return to normal. After a hundred of these compressions, she stopped to rest for a few moments and then started again. Augusta was breathing hard after her fifth round of compressions, but she kept at it. After another three, Halton showed signs of life. He coughed weakly and moved his head. Augusta paused for a moment and said, “He’s coming around.”
“He was spitting up blood,” Thurmond said. “I saw it and figured he was dead for sure.”
“No, I checked his mouth, and, as I suspected, he’d bitten his tongue when he fell from his horse,” the woman said. “Here, help me sit him up.”
Red and Buttons climbed down from the box, and the driver said, “Heck, lady, how did you do that? I mean, bring a man back from the dead.”
“He wasn’t quite dead, and I got to him just in time,” Augusta said. “The Chinaman who taught me how to press on the chest that way told me it stimulates the lungs and the heart . . . something like that. He said that back in Shanghai he was a doctor.”
“I reckon it takes a pretty good doctor to raise the dead,” Buttons said.
Augusta smiled and let that go. Halton looked around and his eyes fixed on Thurmond. “Who shot me?” he said.
“You weren’t shot, Jonah,” Thurmond said. “You were hit by lightning. Your horse is dead.”
“Damn,” Halton said.
“The young lady, Miss Addington, saved your life. Brung you back from the dead.”
Augusta said, “He wasn’t . . .”
“Like Lazarus in the Bible,” Halton said, interrupting. He turned his head and looked at Augusta. “Call me Lazarus.”
“I prefer to call you Mr. Halton,” Augusta said. “Now, let’s get you to your feet. Mr. Muldoon, he’ll have to ride in the coach.”
Buttons shook his head. “No, he can’t, not unless he has a hundred dollars, the fare from here to the Cave Springs station.”
“I don’t have a hundred dollars,” Halton said.
Buttons nodded. “In that case, by the authority vested in me by the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, you can ride on top, free of charge. Up there with the other drowned rat. Ain’t that right, Archibald? Or whatever the heck your name is.”
“I’ll have to ride up there as well, Muldoon,” Thurmond said. “My hoss is in the next county by this time.” His hand edged closer to his gun. “Of course, I could just take over this stage, and you and Ryan can ride on top with the drowned rat.”
When it came to rubbing shoulders with known outlaws, Red was a prudent man, and a mark of his caution was that he’d brought his shotgun down from the box with him. He lifted the barrel until the twin muzzles were in line with Thurmond’s belt buckle.
“I can cut you in half from here, Smiler,” he said. “This will be your only notification.”
The outlaw dropped his hand. “A joke, just a joke,” he said. “Damn it, I never did meet a shotgun messenger with a sense of humor.”
“Having no sense of humor is a qualification for the job,” Red said. “It’s in the Patterson rule book.”
“Damn right, and if it ain’t, it should be,” Buttons said. “Smiler, for once in your life are you gonna forget you’re an outlaw and act true blue and straight up, or do we leave you here?”
“I’ll ride on top with Jonah,” Thurmond said. “Ollie and Harvey Barnes still got their nags.”
“Crackerjack!” Buttons said. “Heck, Smiler, when we pull into Cave Springs, you’ll be the first to catch sight of Honeysuckle Cairns.”
“Oh yeah?” Thurmond said. “Who’s she?”
“You’ll find out,” Buttons said.