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The steam locomotive chugged its way westward, already halfway to its destination between Houston and Austin. Sheriff Reagan Cawley strolled through the swaying cars and glanced at the faces. Couldn’t hurt. The trip all the way to Houston had been a bust. What a mess. Blame it on cheap wanted posters if you like, but he’d met smarter pack animals than that Harris County Sheriff.
He thought often about when he’d been a Texas Ranger lieutenant fighting Mexican desperadoes down along the border. He never thought he’d look back on those days with anything like longing. Goes to show.
He passed through a sleeping car, next a car of first class compartments, and then the smoking car. The next car ahead was the dining car. A rush of air slapped into him and the rattle of steel wheels on rails assaulted his ears as he pushed outside and stepped across the walkway-covered coupling. He opened that car’s door, and went inside to see rows of dining tables on either side by the windows. The places had been set with crystal and each table had a decanter of wine. Ah, how the well-off lived these days. He’d picked up a dinner of a big block of cornbread and a plate of beans at a hash joint in Houston near the train depot before getting on. He had no idea how much a full-course meal cost here, though no doubt the price was beyond a sheriff’s salary.
Some people looked up as he went by, some stayed tucked into their meals. At the table to his right a face looked up at him and then smiled. “Why, Sheriff Cawley. How do? What in land’s sake are you doing this far away from Bentley?”
It took Cawley a second or two to place the face. “Oh, you’re that Francis fellow from back East.”
“That’s right. Francis Marion Gallagher at your service.” He half rose and held out a hand.
Cawley hadn’t forgotten what a big man Francis was, a good six-foot-six and he didn’t look like he had missed many meals. Cawley glanced down and saw that half a Delmonico steak remained on Francis’ plate along with one of the railroad diner’s specialties, a two-pound baked potato, shipped down from Idaho exclusive to this train line.
“Sit down. Sit down. Have a glass of wine. I’ll get another glass.”
“No. No.” But Francis had already waved to the server who hustled toward the table with another decanter of wine. Once he had put the wine on the table he held out a chair for Cawley. “Okay, for just a second or two. Just a glass of water for me,” he said to the waiter as he sat down.
Francis poured wine into his stemmed glass. “Don’t drink on the job? Well, hats off to you. I’ll have your portion for you since I suffer under no such restrictions. What brought you way over here, this far out from Bentley?”
“And my jurisdiction, do you mean?”
“I thought I was being subtle.” Francis took a sip of wine and rolled his eyes.
As a bronco in a china shop, Cawley thought. But that was always Francis’s way. “The Harris County sheriff wired me that he was holding a man who matched the wanted poster of Gabe Bentley. You no doubt recall Gabe. I had to have a talk with the leaders of the Bentley community, such as they are, about whether they would stand the expense of a trip to go bring Gabe back to justice. They hemmed and hawed, and finally said yes, but their feathers are going to be in a flutter when they learn the man being held in the Harris County jail didn’t look any more like Gabe Bentley than I look like Aaron Burr.”
“Ah, but you got a vacation away, now didn’t you?”
The train swayed slightly from side-to-side as it swung around a long curve in the tracks. The waiter kept a close eye on the tables. Though Cawley heard a little rattle of silver and tingle of crystal, everything stayed in place.
“This was hardly a vacation.” Cawley didn’t mention he wasn’t in a first class compartment, that he, in fact, had the cheapest ticket that could be bought. He waved a hand at the meal spread before Francis. “You seem to be doing powerfully good for yourself for a man who writes dime novels. What’s that pen name again?”
“The adventures of Tornado Trey Calvin are written by me under the name of Ben Blunt. I’m sure you must have heard of them. They sell in the thousands.”
“But still.”
“Well, truth be told, I had the misfortune to be born into some money, and an uncle recently passed away and did additionally well by me. So I write for the joy of it, and I come out west now and again because my publisher wants authentic yarns. I’ve importuned on Sara Bolger out your way to put me up for a few days, though like as not she’ll have me sleeping in the goat shed with the boys like the last time. Odd sense of hospitality, that woman has. But I don’t mind telling you that I never felt more alive than when out this way.”
“Even though you came within an ace of getting yourself killed the last time?”
“That’s the thrill of it, so close to the end, but still alive.” Francis cut off a large chunk of steak, speared it with a fork and carried it to his mouth. A smear of red juice trickled out from the remaining portion of steak across the white plate. He chewed and looked at Cawley with half a grin on his face.
“Well, I have a horse stabled at an Austin livery. I suppose you’re welcome to ride along the trail if you’re heading that way.”
Francis finished chewing and reached for his wine glass, took a big cleansing gulp. “Sir, while I appreciate your offer, I found the last time out this way that parts of me had not yet toughened up enough for days on end in the saddle. So I plan to take the stage from Austin to Bentley and rent a buggy there.”
“Okay by me.” Cawley shrugged. “You just want another helping of real, right?”
“There you have it. Authentic action. Has your area settled down by now, or is it just as peppy as the last time I visited?”
“Oh, on the matter of getting yourself half-killed out here, I think you’ll be perfectly satisfied by what we have to offer.” Cawley stood, touched the rim of his hat, and headed up through the car, still checking faces in a long-shot attempt to run across Gabe Bentley after the long fruitless trip this way.
The stagecoach driver and conductor both looked askance at Francis when he showed up with no luggage and climbed right into the coach. A drummer, already seated on the backseat against the far window, said, “Travelling light?”
“Oh, I come out this way to learn, and by now I have learned a thing or two,” Francis said. He gave the drummer a broad wink, got a “we’ll see about that” look back.
Francis stayed put in his window seat as two more drummers and a cowhand, who stowed his saddle up on top of the stage, climbed in. But he started to slide over when a buxom blonde woman started to climb in.
“No.” She shook her head. “Let me be in the middle. Big ol’ boy like you ought to stop a bullet right proper if it comes to that.”
He got out of the stage, helped her in, then got back in himself. Stop a bullet. He snorted to himself.
Above their heads, the driver gave a command that started them moving, slow at first, but soon working up to a rollicking near-gallop.
The coach swayed back and forth and the passengers rocked with it, pressed together as they were, with little incident other than an occasional sudden dip or hole that sent then down and then up in a jolt that shot them off their seats an inch or two. The occasional crack of the driver’s whip and shout by the conductor were mere sounds in the wind, whisked away before Francis could make any sense of any of the words.
They pulled up at the first stagecoach stop for a change of mules. Francis climbed out of the stage, helped the woman down. She had slept most of the way, her head leaning on his upper arm. Even the jostling bumps hadn’t roused her from her deep slumber until the stage had come to a halt. He took in the bare wood and part adobe building that had a couple of visible bullet holes. Half of one arrow still stuck out of its side up near the eave. It looked to have served as an ad hoc fort from time to time. The stagecoach operator himself had said as they set out, “You’ll be traveling through the dark heart of Indian country and the safety of your person cannot be vouchsafed by anyone but God.”
That had seemed heavy-handed and a bit theatrical to Francis, who’d heard that only occasional roving bands of Indians still cut up now and again. But that didn’t account for a broken arrow he could plainly see.
Inside, the others steered themselves straight for the table. Francis crossed the room to the wash area on a stand in the corner. He found himself in front of a wash basin of water that had clearly been used before, often. A rime of dirt floated around the edges of the brownish water. Beside the basin lay a small yellowish oval of homemade lye soap, as covered in hair as the stationmaster. He decided not to use the soap, and settled for wiping his hands on his handkerchief. Just as well. The towel that hung wetly from a hook looked powerfully used up until it had become as thin as a spider web and looked like it might crumble at his merest touch. He went to join the others at the table. The fare was bread, tea, and fried steaks of greenish bacon along with what could be venison, antelope, or mule flesh. In any event, some of the toughest chewing he’d ever encountered.
By way of conversation, one of the drummers said, “I hear that only two weeks back the Injuns ambuscaded the road by building blinds on each side of the road, then riddled the stage with bullets and arrows.”
“Bullfeathers.” That came from the small table in the corner where the driver and conductor sat tucking into what looked like better cuts of meat. Francis assumed that the driver had spoken, since the conductor was far above chatting with passengers.
The driver turned and said, “Was only one person kilt out of all those aboard.” As if that resolved everything, he went back to his grub.
The stationmaster, coming through the room and overhearing, decided to help their digestion along further by saying, “Why, in the past two whole years and five months this line lost only fifty employees to those pesky redskins, though we did lose several hundred head of mules and horses. But it’s not them so much lately are a pest as the robbers. Why, getting robbed got to be so plain regular for a spell that passengers just natural begin to complain if their coach wasn’t robbed, like they’d missed out and denied their right to such a highway ceremony.” He gave a convulsion of one eye that Francis took to be an effort at winking and moved on through as he headed back outside.
Other than the routine stops to eat or switch out teams or drivers, the next couple of days of the six day trip went by as uneventfully as being rattled like a maraca inside a sweltering and crowded coach can go. Then it rained.
The downpour lasted only a morning, with spray coming in through the supposedly closed windows, and worse, the rivers and creeks had swollen. At one place the stage pulled to a stop with its wheels stuck midstream in some roiling brown knee-deep water. The driver sloshed his way back to them, stuck his head inside, and told all of the passengers to step outside and walk in the mud to push and help free the stage from the mud’s grip.
Francis, who wore one of his burgundy velvet suits, grumbled all the while, but pushed as hard as all the others put together and the stage rocked loose from the clasp of the stream’s muddy bottom. The driver cracked his whip and took the coach to the far side of the stream until it rocked onto firmer ground. The passengers slogged along behind until they could climb wetly back aboard.
They had just reached what one of the drummers told Francis was the Peg Leg Crossing of the San Saba River when a fellow wearing a mask rode out to them from the side of the road. Another masked rider rode down from the other side of the stagecoach. He unhitched the mules, and ordered everyone from the coach.
Francis glanced at the others, cowhand, woman, and the three drummers. He knew that such men as the drummers usually conducted their business in cash and road agents considered them “rich pickings.”
The outlaws ignored the baggage at first and one of them went through the pockets for any cash and coins he could find. The other stood by and watched. The one going through pockets examined the lady’s purse and jewelry, then handed the purse back, saying he didn’t rob women. When he got to the cowhand he gave him a whack in the ribs with his gun, and said, “Keep your stuff, there ain’t no cowboy got a dern thing worth taking.”
Francis stood close enough to watch the exchange. He thought he saw a glimmer of recognition in the cowhand’s eyes. But the man just rubbed his ribs and kept his mouth shut. The other robber started pulling down trunks and carpetbags and got busy going through those. But he didn’t take anything, just nosed around.
The tall man came to stand in front of Francis next. Hard to tell what makes a man think pulling a red handkerchief up over his nose will prevent recognition, but Francis knew at once the man was Gabe Bentley. He didn’t get a good look at the other fellow, but this one was Gabe, sure enough. He did the best he could not to let Gabe know.
Gabe’s hand went inside Francis’s burgundy velvet jacket and he drew out a slim black leather wallet. He opened it, then groaned in disgust when he pulled out a mere seven dollars in script bills. He threw the wallet to the ground. Francis had to fight back a grin since the eel hide wallet was worth far more than seven dollars. Gabe next dug into Francis’s pockets and came out with a small handful of coins. Finally, in Francis’s vest pocket he dug out a single twenty-dollar gold piece. He bit at it, and slipped it into his pocket along with the other money.
“Why you low life piker. Dress like that and here you are stingy enough to skin a flea for its hide.” Gabe held his revolver in his right hand and swung his left fist as hard as he could into Francis’s stomach. Francis stood there while Gabe stepped back, anger and fear rippling across his face as he shook his left hand. “What’d you have for breakfast, horseshoes?”
For a second or two Francis thought Gabe would just shoot him. But he moved on to where his partner was tossing through the luggage and scattering clothing and sales goods from out of the trunks. It took them only a few moments. Then they got back on their horses and took off.
They were barely out of sight when the driver started hitching up the mules again and the other passengers scrambled to get what was left of their possessions back into their trunks and bags.
Francis helped the lady back up into the coach.
“Annabelle Lee Highwater,” she said.
“What brings you west?”
“I thought my trip here was to be a schoolmarm, but I’ve heard a nasty rumor that they don’t even have a school.”
“What will you do?”
“I suppose I could work in a saloon,” she said. That drew wide-eyed looks from the other male passengers.
“There’s always that,” Francis said.
The drummer Francis had first spoken with earlier said to him, “I see now why you travel light. You don’t leave much to rob. Another thing too. You take a heck of a punch.”
Francis didn’t tell the man that what Gabe’s fist had connected with so firmly was an inside vest of small pockets, each one holding a silver or gold coin. Must have felt like hitting a chain-mail vest. Gabe was lucky he hadn’t broken his hand. Francis suppressed a grin and quietly climbed back into the stage.
“Leastwise we got that out of the way,” the drummer with a pock-marked face said as they rolled on in the direction of Bentley. “Could a been worse. Last trip one of the drivers we went to pick up was so drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat in three tries. The agent had to climb on and get us to the next station. That driver, who rode along inside with us, was still unsobered when we reached the next station, so the agent decided to go with us to the one after that. Worse than that, when the stage folk there turned loose the heads of the four wild mules they’d rigged for us, they had to jump out of the way. Those mules shot out of there like being fired out of a cannon. Away we went as fast as those mules could possibly go. No effort was made to do more than keep them in the road. Yelling and cracking his whip, the agent had to operate his coach as if there was going to be no tomorrow, which was what we terrified passengers had come to believe. We shook and rattled around inside that coach until we couldn’t tell who was sitting on what or whom. Fella next to me claimed that in the jumble he got his nose pushed up so far he could look down into it.”
Francis smiled to himself and soaked it all in. Hard to tell sometimes which yarns were borrowed and which really happened, but he couldn’t fault them for color and liveliness. This was the sort of thing he’d come out this way for, the yarns, the excitement, and the danger. He just hoped, as he always did, that he made it back east in enough of one piece to use it all.