Chapter 21
All four men leaped out of their chairs, snatching cold steel from leather holsters.
As much as he hated to do it, Brazos grabbed the end of his table with his left hand and leaped to his own feet, raising the table in front of him, shieldlike. The chili omelet and fried potatoes struck the floor with a crash. At the same time, Brazos shucked his big Peacemaker and commenced returning fire at the two men crouched over their own table, near the counter, triggering lead at him.
As bullets tore into his table, smashing against it with loud pounding sounds, he shot the swarthy, stocky gent through the chest, then triggered a round at the man’s hawk-faced partner, blowing the hat off the man’s head. Brazos heaved his table toward the hawk-faced man and his partner, who was just then falling back over his own chair, screaming.
Brazos leaped to his feet, triggered a round at the two men at the front of the room, then ran forward and dove atop a table, striking the table on its right side, tipping it over so it, too, became a shield of sorts. Two bullets ripped into the edge of it, and then Brazos raised his head and gun hand over the top of the table and shot the yellow-haired man. The man screamed and flew backward, triggering his bone-gripped Colt into the ceiling, then flying back through the window behind him in a shrill screech of breaking glass.
“You done used up all your lives, Black man!” yelled the hawk-faced man, triggering a round that sliced across the nub of Brazos’s right cheek.
Brazos returned fire, but missed as the man dove to the floor himself, bringing a table down with him. A gun continued thundering from the front of the room, two more bullets plowing into the floor near Brazos’s left elbow. Brazos raised the Russian again, just as the lone survivor at the front of the room flung a chair at him, running toward him. Brazos deflected the chair with his left arm and shot the man through the forehead.
Brazos turned to his right, just as the hawk-faced man gained his feet, grinning and extending his Remington straight at Brazos. The deputy’s spine turned to jelly. The grinning man had him dead to rights.
Just then, the door to the kitchen opened behind him.
Ida came striding out, raising a long, double-barreled Greener in her small hands. She aimed down the double bores, and screamed, “No shootin’ up my place, you ringtail varmint!”
Both the Greener’s barrels erupted in smoke and flames.
The thunder was like that of a keg of dynamite being detonated.
The hawk-faced man triggered his Remington wide as he screamed, and the force of the double load of double-ought buck lifted him two feet off the ground and hurled him across the room. His boot glanced off Brazos’s right temple before he hit the floor to lie facedown in the mess of the deputy’s spilled breakfast.
The man shook, sighed, and lay still.
The two-bore had carved two holes the size of pumpkins in the man’s back. Blood oozed through the shreds of his torn brown vest.
“Ha-haaaa!” Ida cackled wildly. “We sent all four back to the demon that spawned ’em!” Laughing, she pounded her boots on the scarred puncheons and did a little dance.
Then she looked around the bloody room and at her shattered window. The smile left her face. “Darn!” she intoned, smashing a boot down on the floor and punching her thigh with her clenched left fist in bereavement. “Look what they done to my place!”
“Sorry, Ida,” Brazos said, pushing off a knee as he climbed to his feet, brushing his fist across his bullet-grazed cheek.
Galloping hooves sounded on the street outside the restaurant. Brazos swung around, raising the still-smoking Colt in his hand. He lowered the piece when he saw Catfish rein Jasper up in front of the restaurant, shucking his Yellowboy from its scabbard and swinging down from the leather. The big, potbellied man pushed through the door, levering a round into the Winchester’s action.
“Stand down, Cha’les,” Brazos said, flicking his Peacemaker’s loading gate open to begin reloading. Obviously, no man—especially a lawman—wanted to be carrying around an empty gun in these dangerous environs. “You’re late to the dance!”
“Yeah, well, I been deflecting lead my ownself,” Catfish said, lowering his Yellowboy and stepping into the room, looking around at the fresh beef piled on the floor.
“You have?” asked Brazos.
“North of town. Haskell Benson.”
“The gunfighter out of Kansas?”
“One an’ the same.” Catfish looked out the window at the yellow-haired man lying dead on the stoop. “That’s Casper Finnegan.”
“Thought I recognized him from his wanted dodger,” Brazos said, letting his empty .45 shells fall onto the floor around his boots.
Catfish looked at the shorter man resting back against the wall near the door, head tipped to his right shoulder, hair hanging in his face. “That’s the bank robber Chester Fordheim. I’ve tangled with him before, a couple years back. I thought he was casing the bank, so I ran him out of town on a long, greased rail.”
He moved around the saloon, checking out the other two dead men. “Don’t recognize these two, but they have the look of the devil about ’em—that’s for sure.”
“Coordinated effort, eh, Cha’les?” Brazos said, replacing his spent rounds with fresh from his shell belt.
“Sure seems that way.” Catfish shouldered his rifle. “I wanted to take Benson alive, but he gave up the ghost before I could shake out of him just what his beef with me . . . er, us . . . was.” He looked at the dead man with his face planted in Brazos’s omelet.
“Waste of a good omelet,” Ida complained. She turned to Brazos. “You sit down, honey. I’ll fetch a cloth for that cheek and rustle you up a whole new omelet.”
“No, thanks, Ida,” the deputy said. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“I know what you mean, partner,” Catfish said. He placed his hand on Brazos’s shoulder. “Until we can get to the bottom of why these fellas had it in for us, we best assume there’s more of their ilk out there.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the street outside the café. “Prowlin’ around. Gunnin’ for us. I got me a feelin’ these fellas are part of a larger gang.”
“I do believe you’re right, Cha’les.”
“You let Ida clean up that cheek for you,” Catfish told his deputy. “I’ll send for the undertaker and head out on my rounds.”
* * *
Catfish was making his rounds an hour later when a bell rung over a door and a familiar voice said behind him, “Catfish, may I have a word with you, please?”
“Oh, of course,” the lawman said, turning to see the lovely Miss Julia Claire step out of a ladies’ hat shop onto the boardwalk fronting the place. As usual, she was elegantly attired. Today she wore a lime-green velveteen frock, with a lace-edged bodice that highlighted the comeliness of her figure to great degree. A large, matching hat was pinned to the hair piled atop her head, and Catfish suspected another hat resided in the large brown paper sack she held down low in her right hand.
Catfish pinched his hat brim to her and winced a little as he self-consciously tried to suck in his gut a little. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
Miss Claire used a white-gloved hand to slide a lock of her dark brown tresses back from her cheek. “Well, you see . . . you see”—she glanced at the boardwalk and gave a troubled wince of her own—“this is difficult. It’s about Miss Wilkes. Beth Wilkes.”
“Oh,” Catfish said. “How is Miss Bethany, anyway? I keep meaning to stop over to the Lone Star to see how she’s doing, but Brazos an’ me have been busy of late.”
“Oh, I know you have, Catfish. And I would like to reiterate how grateful I and the rest of the townspeople are to have you and Brazos back on the job.”
“Truth be told,” Catfish said with a smile, “I think we both needed it. Me more so than my partner.” He patted his gut. “I was going to wine fat out there. Back to Bethany . . . she still at your place, I take it?”
“Yes, that’s the problem.”
“Oh, well, if you need—”
“It’s not a matter of my needing compensation. It’s just that . . . well . . . she’s refused to entertain the notion of going home. You see, Catfish, she wants to work for me. She wants to work the line.”
“Bethany ?”
The lady sighed. “It’s quite astonishing, I know. She’s a schoolteacher, for mercy sake. But after what happened . . . with the Thorsons . . . she thinks she is sullied. She is too ashamed to return to school. She insists that the only thing she’s good for is . . . well—”
“Working upstairs at your place,” Catfish finished for her with a deeply troubled tone in his voice.
“Exactly. Look, Catfish, you know I love my girls. They all came from very humble circumstances, and I fear that if they weren’t working for me, they’d be—well, far worse off. Working for someone who treated them with far less respect and care than I do. Most of them are orphans. But Bethany came from a good home. She’s just ashamed, afraid to show her face in public, and she is deeply, deeply heartbroken over the death of her father. I’ve urged her to ride out to the cemetery with me, in my carriage, to visit his grave. She’s refused.”
“Oh, boy.” Catfish thumbed his hat brim up higher on his forehead. “Do you think I should talk to her? Abel was like a brother to me, and Beth is like a niece.”
“I was hoping you’d suggest that. It certainly can’t hurt. She’s very stubborn, but maybe you can convince her to return to her and Abel’s home, and to start teaching again. The doctor has said she’s fine now . . . physically.”
“Yeah, that’s a far cry from up here, I know,” Catfish said, tapping an index finger to his temple. “Well, no time like the present. I haven’t heard any shooting within the past hour or so.”
Though when he had last heard it, it had been a pip, he did not add to the woman.
“Thank you, Catfish,” Miss Claire said. “Shall we?” She began walking along the street, heading back in the direction of her establishment.
With men having drawn targets on his and Brazos’s backs, the lawman was reluctant to walk to the hotel and saloon with her. She might take a bullet meant for him. He decided to go ahead after a brief hesitation. Doubtful anyone would try anything right out on Wolfwater’s busy main street. He hitched his pants and gun and shell belt up higher on his hips and followed in the woman’s footsteps, arriving safely at the Lone Star Outpost a few minutes later.
Already, the place was busy. Not surprising. It was usually at least somewhat busy from sunup to sundown. Miss Claire led Catfish through the saloon, where businessmen in three-piece suits and sleepy-eyed gamblers were cracking eggs into beer schooners or finishing up platters of steak and eggs, and up the stairs to her third-floor suite.
“I’ll let you speak to her privately,” Miss Claire said, poking a key into the lock on her door and turning it. “She’s probably still in bed, but I’m sure she’ll feel comfortable with you. She probably won’t feel comfortable with any other man ever again . . . except for you, and Brazos, of course.”
“I know. That’s why it’s so surprising she wants to work for you.”
“Some things just don’t make sense.”
“I’ll go in and have a palaver with her,” Catfish said.
He twisted the doorknob, eased open the door, and, removing his hat, stepped into the lady’s nattily, tastefully appointed suite of rooms, which included the parlor area he was stepping into now, outfitted with elegant furniture, including a red scroll-back fainting couch, velvet drapes closed over the windows, and a large piano. Bethany lay on the couch, beneath a blanket with a floral pattern. She lay curled on one side, her brown hair sprayed across a green silk pillow.
“Hello, Catfish,” she said quietly in the room’s shadows abated by bright Texas sunlight angling in around the edges of the drapes. “I heard you and Miss Claire in the hall.”
“Hello, honey,” Catfish said, standing somewhat awkwardly by the door, kneading his hat brim as he held the topper down in front of his belly. “I’m sorry I haven’t come callin’ till now.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been busy—you an’ Brazos. Working to haze the coyotes back into their lairs after they killed my father.”
“Well . . . yes . . .”
There was a small writing desk near the fainting couch. A plush-covered wooden chair, with a high, fancily scrolled back, fronted it. Catfish moved into the room, drew the chair up to the couch, and sat in it, setting his hat on his lap.
“I understand you don’t want to go home,” he said, reaching forward and tenderly sliding a few stray locks of the girl’s hair back from her pale cheek.
“Papa’s not there,” she replied in a little girl’s thin voice. “He’ll never be there again. I don’t want to return there . . . not if he’s not there.” She rolled her eyes to look up at Catfish for the first time since he’d entered the room. “I want to stay here. I want to work for Miss Claire. I can earn my keep.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’d be necessary, honey.”
“I want to. It’s all I’m good for,” she added, choking back a small sob.
“Ah, that’s not true. That’s not true at all. You need to go home, honey. The doctor said you’re ready to go back to school.”
Bethany shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Everyone knows. I’m sure even the children know.”
“No one judges you for what happened, sweetheart. That wasn’t your fault.”
“Still . . .”
Catfish drew a deep breath, released it slowly. The poor girl was in a bad way. The Thorsons had robbed her of her honor, her dignity. Leastways, that’s how she saw it. Catfish had the almost undeniable urge to go back over to the jailhouse and blow Skinny’s kneecaps off.
But he’d rather watch the little viper hang. That would be even more satisfying. He wished the circuit judge would get here soon.
“I think it’s just gonna take you a little more time to get comfortable with going out again. You take your time. I’ll check back on you in a few days. We’ll ride out to the cemetery and visit your father’s grave. Put some flowers on it. I’ll rent a carriage, and we’ll have us a nice ride, maybe even a picnic.”
“I don’t think so, Catfish,” she said thinly. “I want to stay here. I want to work for Miss Claire. It’s all I’m good—”
“No, no, no,” Catfish said, putting some steel in his voice. “That’s not true, and I don’t want to hear you say it again. I want to get you out of here. Just for an hour or two. Just you an’ me. I’ll give you a few days. Will you promise to think about it?”
Bethany rolled her eyes up, to look at him again, wrinkling the skin above the bridge of her nose with incredulity. “Why, Catfish?”
“Why? Because I love you, honey. Don’t you know that?”
She stared up at him. A vague light seemed to grow in her eyes, but she said nothing.
“Promise me you’ll think about it? Just you an’ me. A ride out to your father’s grave. We’ll pay our respects, say a prayer.”
She continued to stare up at him. Then she turned her head sideways to the pillow again and stared down at the floor.
Catfish sighed. That appeared to be all the response he was going to get out of the poor girl.
He rose from the chair, returned the chair to the desk, then strode slowly to the door. He’d just reached the door and was setting his hat on his head and reaching for the knob, when she said very faintly, “Okay.”
Catfish glanced back at her.
He smiled, opened the door, and went out.