CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Buttons Muldoon had changed horses three times by the time the dusty stage reached Kickapoo Springs station under a clear morning sky. San Angelo lay about twenty miles of good road ahead of him, hilly grasslands on either side of the track with scattered groves of trees and wide prairie basins many miles in extent.
As Jim Moore and his sons helped Buttons change the team, the manager said, “I hear tell Smiler Thurmond and Jonah Halton are back in this neck of the woods.”
“Damn that man,” Buttons said. “He keeps turning up like a bad penny.”
“The word is he and Halton held up a Wells Fargo stage and robbed twenty thousand dollars from the strongbox,” Moore said. “That’s the story a Ranger told me no later than the day before yesterday, and I got no reason to doubt his word.”
“Seems to me Smiler will head for the nearest big town to spend his ill-gotten gains,” Buttons said. “But there ain’t anything like that in this part of the country.”
“San Angelo,” Moore said.
“Heck, it would take a man his whole lifetime to spend twenty thousand dollars in San Angelo,” Buttons said. “My guess is that he’ll head for a burg with snap, maybe El Paso or Fort Worth.”
“Well, be on the lookout for him, Buttons,” Moore said. “I figure you and Smiler get along, but he’s still bad news.”
“He knows the Patterson stage doesn’t carry a strongbox, so he pretty much leaves us alone,” Buttons said. “But I don’t trust him. Outlaws can be mighty notional.”
After the fresh team was hitched, Buttons stepped into the cabin to roust his passengers. Edgar and Fanny Crawford were all worked up as only a pair of old, timid folks can get. It seemed that Mrs. Moore had casually mentioned that the gunslinging outlaw Smiler Thurmond was in the area.
“I said, maybe he’s in the area,” Gertrude Moore explained to Buttons. “I didn’t say he was here fer sure.”
“Oh, Mr. Muldoon, are we in great danger?” Fanny Crawford said.
She was a small, gray-haired, lumpy woman, dressed all in black like Queen Victoria, with a small, nervous mouth surrounded by wrinkles. Edgar Crawford, equally small and just as agitated, had a bristly beard, a few sparse hairs in place of eyebrows and blue, slightly protruding eyes that were quick and darting.
“Will the outlaw rob us of our money and my snuffbox and then shoot us?” Edgar said.
“Buttons smiled. “Put your minds at rest, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, Smiler Thurmond is far from here. Why, I do believe that right now he’s in El Paso or maybe Fort Worth probably disporting himself with fancy women.”
“We are not without protection, Fanny and me,” Edgar said. His right hand suddenly dived under the front of his pants and he pulled out a revolver of the largest proportions and waved it in the air. “We have this, by God.”
Taken aback, Buttons said, “Where in blue blazes did you hide that cannon?”
“Down my drawers,” Edgar said.
“Give me the damned thing before you do yourself or someone else an injury,” Buttons said. He grabbed the gun, a rusty Colt Dragoon, capped and ready to go, and said, “I’ll return this to you when we reach San Angelo.”
“Then you leave us defenseless,” Edgar said.
“You were just as defenseless with the Dragoon,” Buttons said. “That’s too much gun for a nubbin’ like you to handle.”
“The man at the hardware store in Fredericksburg told me . . .”
“That it’s a sweet-shooting gun just so long as you rest it in the fork of a tree before you cut loose.”
“Yes, or a fencepost,” Edgar said.
“He saw you coming,” Buttons said. “When we reach San Angelo, trade it in on a squirrel rifle.” He turned to the others. “Now, all aboard for San Angelo.”
Red escorted Augusta to the stage, where she sat and immediately reassured the Crawfords that Smiler Thurmond was not the ogre some made him out to be.
“In fact, he can be quite the gentleman,” she said.
“I do hope so, dear,” Fanny said. She didn’t look at all reassured.
Peter Cream the seeds salesman, a gaunt, brown-eyed man with a full beard and bad haircut, said, “There have been many gentleman bandits in history. I can name two off the top of my head, Robin Hood and Jesse James.”
“And now you can add Smiler Thurmond to your list,” Robert Jenkins, the women’s corsets drummer said.
“That remains to be seen,” Cream said. “Not that I want to meet the gentleman in person.”
Up top, Buttons Muldoon hoorawed the team, and the Patterson stage jolted into movement. Side lamps lit, it reached San Angelo in a dark blue dusk without incident.