CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Red, we got a dead lady in the stage, four holy monks walking behind us slow as molasses in January, and one of my gray wheelers is coming up lame,” Buttons Muldoon said. “It’s the curse of the sombrero, I tell you. The bad luck is beginning.”
Red said, “Buttons, the gray is young, and he’s tiring and the dead woman has nothing to do with your luck and everything to do with the mad dog killer Donny Bryson.”
“But I feel it,” Buttons said. “Bad luck is in the air, like a black fog.”
“When did you ever see a black fog?” Red said.
“All right, then, a gray fog,” Buttons said. “But it’s in the air. Keep your eyes skinned for Apaches, Red. Them savages can sense when a man’s luck is running bad.”
Red smiled. “Once we get to Fredericksburg, we’ll drop the passengers at the stage depot and then head to the Munich Keller for good German beer and sausages. That will fix you right up, make you feel a sight better.”
Buttons shook his head. “Nothing will make me feel better.”
“Damn, it all, Buttons, I’ve never seen you so down in the mouth before,” Red said. “You ain’t exactly good company.”
“Yeah, well, I never ran over a cursed hat afore, either,” Buttons said. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“You’ll get over it,” Red said. Then, “Hey, there’s that blonde waitress who works at the Munich Keller . . . what’s her name?”
“Lilly.”
“Yeah, Lilly. You like her.”
“She won’t even look at me,” Buttons said. “Not with my luck.”
“Oh, damn,” Red said.
“Oh, damn, what?” Buttons said.
“That gray wheeler is limping,” Red said.
* * *
The oil lamps were lit in Fredericksburg when the Patterson stage drove along the main street that was lined on each side with a large variety of stores and warehouses. Buttons Muldoon pulled up outside the depot with five horses in the traces, the sixth tethered behind the coach. The town was settled by German farmers, some of whom later branched into manufacturing, and it had none of the boisterous saloons and whorehouses of the Texas cattle towns, though its several beer gardens did a lively business. It was a clean, well-ordered settlement of stone and plaster houses, churches, and schools. The county seat of Gillespie County, Fredericksburg had a young sheriff named Herman Ritter who spoke both German and English and attended Lutheran services every Sunday. He was as tough as he had to be but had no gun reputation.
Fredericksburg was a straitlaced town, a civilized town, a peaceful town . . . but not a good town to bring a murdered lady with a dead baby inside her.
The Alpenrose Inn was a two-story hotel that doubled as the stage depot with a corral and barn out back and beyond that a fenced pasture where a dozen horses grazed. The animals looked fit and sleek, and Red figured that boded well for the final leg of the trip to the Perdinales River. Buttons had a deep-seated prejudice against grays, and happily there were none to be seen. Red hoped that might cheer him up, but it didn’t.
Looking grumpy, Buttons said, “The monks have decided to stay here in Fredericksburg for a few days of quiet prayer and meditation, whatever the heck that means. I told them the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, doesn’t do refunds, even partial refunds, and that Abe doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”
“What did they say?” Red said.
They stood on the hotel porch while the depot manager and his two helpers took care of the team and the lame gray.
“It didn’t trouble them none,” Buttons said. “The Irish feller told me they’d book rooms here at the inn.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know monks had the money for fancy hotels. I figured they’d pay a few cents a night to sleep at the Lange livery stable over yonder.”
“Me too,” Red said. “But then I don’t know much about holy monks and their finances.”
“Miss Addington has also booked a room here,” Buttons said. “I don’t know where Archibald is. He scampered down and vanished as soon as I stopped the stage.”
The body of the dead woman had been carried into the foyer by Buttons and Red and covered with a sheet awaiting the undertaker. But the hotel manager, a small, harried-looking man named Watson, who was probably a nail-biter, was not entirely happy with the arrangement and had already sent a bellboy running for the sheriff.
“I have to think of my guests,” Watson told Buttons. “A dead woman in the foyer is bad for business. Who gave you permission to dump her there?”
Now two things in that speech rubbed Buttons the wrong way. One was that, depressed as he was, the manager’s whining grated on his ears. The second was the man’s use of the word “dump.” The woman was not dumped in the foyer, she was laid on the ground with all the respect and gentleness he and Red could muster. The upshot of all this was that Buttons drew his Remington, thumbed back the hammer, placed the muzzle between Watson’s eyes, and said, “Are you trying to make trouble for me?”
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the business end of a gun barrel shoved into a man’s mug will give him pause for thought . . . and Watson did pause . . . and then said in a rush, “No sir. No, not at all. Not me.”
“Glad to hear it,” Buttons said. He lifted the big revolver from Watson’s face, lowered the hammer, and holstered the gun. “I can’t abide a man who goes out of his way to cause vexing fuss and bother,” he said.
Watson, fright ashen on his face, backed away a few steps and then turned and ran into the hotel and took refuge behind his front desk.
“A bit testy this evening, ain’t we?” Red said.
“Heck, I didn’t really plan on shooting him,” Buttons said.
“You could’ve fooled me,” Red said.
Buttons shrugged. “You’re right, Red, maybe I would’ve plugged him if’n he’d given me sass and backtalk.”
“Well, thank God we’ll never know,” Red said. “And just in time. Here comes the undertaker, and he’s bringing the law with him.”
“Ritter!” Buttons said. “He doesn’t cotton to us. Remember the last time we were here with Hannah Huckabee?”
“I remember,” Red said. “How could I forget.”