Savage Texas: The Stampeders (4 page)

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Myrtle Bewley already had played a part in the commerce of three small towns in her fifty-year life: she’d worked as a young girl in her uncle’s general store in rural Kentucky, stocking shelves and sweeping floors; at a slightly older age she’d been trained as a seamstress by an aunt in Illinois, and found work in a dress shop, hemming new dresses and repairing torn ones. After marrying, she and her husband had opened a general mercantile, also in Illinois, until the war erupted and Bradley Bewley found himself drawn into the life of a soldier. Wartime friendships and interactions had led him to a conviction that his most promising future might lie in the cattle business, which with the growth of railroads and westward expansion of a reunifying nation, seemed poised to move forward when the war was past. So without much delay the childless couple headed to Texas, following a particular army friend, Dan Roark, who guided them into Hangtree County. Like many others, Roark and Bewley began building their own small ranching operation, developing their herd mostly from the unbranded and free-ranging cattle spread across the plains. And to make his wife happy, Bradley Bewley had supported her wish to create a business of her own in the town of Hangtree. A dress shop, of all things, a small, bright haven of domesticity nestled among saloons, gambling halls, dives, dance parlors, cantinas pandering to Mexican tastes, general merchandise stores, a livery stable, freight depot, a feed and farm supply store, and several brothels. Unlikely as it seemed, even to Myrtle herself, the dress shop had fared well, welcomed by the lonely, isolated wives and daughters of Hangtree and its environs. Never quite thriving, the business even so survived and moved ahead.

Myrtle was on a ladder, dusting a high shelf at the back of the store, when the door opened and a lovely young woman entered. This was a newcomer, never seen before by the shopkeeper. Myrtle welcomed the sight of her because she was well-dressed and seemed a likely spender. Myrtle descended the ladder and approached her.

“Good day, miss . . . I am Myrtle Bewley, proprietress of this shop. Hello and welcome!”

“I am Julia Pepperday Canton. I am so pleased to find that Hangtree has a dress shop.”

“Thank you, Miss Canton. I’m happy you like it. I do find it makes this town a little less rough, a little more hospitable to those of our sex. You are new to Hangtree, I believe?”

“I am. And I am here alone, so I welcome your cordiality.”

“Alone? I am surprised such a lovely young woman as you are is not married.”

“Thank you for the compliment. Marriage is a blessing I hope will come to me in the future. Assuming, of course, I can find the right man.”

“Maybe right here in Hangtree, miss!”

“Perhaps so.” Julia looked about, making sure there were no other customers in the shop. “Maybe you can, sometime or another, provide me some eligible names.”

“Surely. I might mention one even now . . . have you heard the name of Sam Heller?”

“I think I have.”

“He is a man of means. Owns more cattle, and has more money in the Hangtree Bank, than any other man in this county and a good distance beyond. Some don’t like him because he was a Union man in the late conflict . . . but we must all learn to put such former differences behind us, don’t you think? The wise woman keeps her eyes focused on her future rather than on the past. And only the foolish woman disregards the importance of monetary stability.”

“You are a fount of good advice, Mrs. Bewley! I shall have to visit you often.”

“You will be welcome. I am open daily, though I do close in the afternoon on Wednesdays. And on Sundays, of course.”

“Of course.”

Julia perused the little store’s bolts of cloth and spools of thread and flats of needles, pins, and scissors. Meanwhile Myrtle Bewley chattered on, pleased to have a seemingly moneyed customer willing to listen to her. Julia pleased Myrtle further when she purchased a simple but colorful handmade shawl Myrtle had stitched and decorated herself.

With her purchase draped over her shoulders, Julia headed for the door, but stopped short of opening it. “Oh my,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” Myrtle asked.

“Nothing . . . not really. It’s just . . . someone is out there I don’t really prefer to run into.”

“Oh! Who might it be?”

Julia sighed loudly. “There’s a young man in town, simple in his mind, who has taken a liking to me because I was kind to him. I was warned that he might misinterpret my friendliness as something other than it is, and become infatuated. I’m afraid that might be the case.”

“I’m sure it’s Timothy from the Emporium who you are speaking of,” Myrtle said. “A good boy. Good heart but simple mind.”

“Yes, it is Timothy I’m speaking of. I have some affection for him because I had a brother in a similar situation, and loved him very much. But Timothy, I think, sees me in a more romantic light than I would wish. I hate to hurt him, though.”

“Is Timothy out there right now, then?”

“Waiting for me on the porch across the street. With a paper flower in his hand.”

“How sweet! They sell those for a penny at the Emporium where he sweeps. But I understand your concern. How to be kind without hurting his feelings? It’s a difficult question. Perhaps it will help you to know that this isn’t the first time poor Tim has become smitten like this. I’ve seen it before. And he came through it without being damaged.”

“Who was the lady?”

“Lady! Ha!” Myrtle shook her head and frowned. “No lady, that one! It’s hardly decent to speak of, really. It was one of our local doves. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“A
soiled
dove, I assume.”

“Yes. Hard-looking young woman, face like a piece of flint, but Timothy seemed to see something in her he liked. Not in a lewd way, I don’t think. He simply sees the good in people that most of us don’t.”

“Not a bad thing, I suppose,” Julia said.

“I’m sure you’re right. But this time Timothy’s infatuation very nearly got him killed.”

“Oh my! How?”

“Timothy lives in a little back-alley house with his widowed mother, but when he isn’t working he often simply roams the streets. The chef at the restaurant of the Cattleman Hotel slips him food to take home, which helps him and his mother greatly. Other people are kind to him, too. And a lot aren’t.”

“You said he nearly got himself killed . . .”

“That’s right. Roaming the street one evening, he went around a corner and found the young woman he was smitten with, uh, plying her trade in the most crude way behind the freight office. It sent him into a fury and he attacked the man, who fought back. Timothy is no fighter, as you might guess, and the man beat him senseless, and nearly to death. The young woman—I will not call her a lady—who was at the center of it all didn’t lift a finger to intervene . . . too busy lifting her skirts, I suppose. Fortunately the man desisted before it was too late for Timothy, and the boy survived. The soiled dove left Hangtree and found some other town to ruin her life in. And the lives of others, too, I’m sure.”

“Very sad. I’ll bid you good day now, Mrs. Bewley, and will be back to see you soon.”

The front door rattled and two hefty ranch wives came in, clomping hard on the floor in pairs of manly boots probably cast off by their husbands. While Myrtle greeted the newcomers, Julia slid out the door, keeping her eyes turned away from where Timothy stood watching across the street, hoping that maybe shyness would keep him where he was and she could escape without an encounter. It didn’t happen that way. Timothy was at her side, calling her “Miss Julia” before she’d gotten thirty feet from the dress shop.

“Hello, Timothy. Are you well today?”

“I’m fine, Miss Julia. Fine and good. What about you?”

“I’m quite well. Do you like my new shawl?”

“It’s pretty, ma’am. Pretty like you are.”

“Thank you!”

“I got you a flower. It’s just made out of paper, but I hope you like it. We have them at the Emporium. I think they look real nice.” He thrust the cheap item forward with an awkward smile.

“It’s lovely, Timothy!” She accepted it with a smile of her own. “It’s a nice thing for a friend to receive a flower from another friend. Though I don’t want you to think you need to give me gifts for any reason.”

“I
want
to give you gifts, Miss Julia. Because I . . . I like you. You’re kind and good.”

“I will treasure this flower. I’ll put it up on the mirror in my room. But you work hard for your money, and I think you should spend it on yourself and your mother.”

“All right, Miss Julia. All right.”

“I’ll be going on now, Timothy. Do you work today?”

“Yes, ma’am. I got to sweep nearly every day. Texas is a mighty dusty place, and folks tromp up and down them steps and I got to sweep them all the time.”

“Hard work never really reaches its end, does it?” she said, and began to step away. Timothy watched her go and wished he had the gift of talking to females in a way that interested them. He knew his mind was slow, and he suffered greatly in most conversations, lacking things to say. Sometimes he saved up items to share that he thought might interest others . . . and one came to his mind as Julia walked away.

He hesitated only a moment, then ran after her. “Wait, Miss Julia, wait!”

She turned and frowned at him before she could stop herself. “Timothy? I’m sorry . . . I thought we’d finished talking.”

“There was just something I heard about, and thought you might not have heard. Everybody’s talking about it.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Did you hear about the dead man Sam Heller found on the road into town? Him and some other man, a stranger.”

“No, I’ve not heard . . .”

“The dead man was an outlaw. He’d been shot dead by somebody, right through the brow’s what I heard.”

“How dreadful! An outlaw, you said?”

Timothy could tell that he’d authentically interested her this time. He knew that most people who talked to him were merely humoring him because they felt sorry for him. “Yes, ma’am. An outlaw name of... of . . .” His mind blanked.

“Can you not remember, Timothy? I’d really like to know.”

“His name was . . . oh, I can’t recollect it.” He paused, thinking hard. “But wait . . . I do remember that they were saying he was somebody who has a brother that looks just like him. They’re kind of famous, I think.”

“A brother . . . a twin?”

“That’s what I heard a man saying to another man while they went past me going into the Emporium.”

“Toleen? Might that have been the name?”

Timothy lightly slapped his fingers against the side of his head as his memory was refreshed. “That’s right! Toleen was his name. I remember now that you said it. But how’d you know?”

“Well . . . it’s like you said, Timothy. They are famous outlaws.”

“Outlaws are bad,” Timothy said. “I don’t like them.”

“Some are worse than others, Timothy.”

“You know outlaws, Miss Julia?”

She waved dismissively, giving no verbal answer, and made a show of admiring the paper flower he’d given her. “Thank you again for this dear gift, Timothy. You are a good friend. But now I have to be going.”

“Good-bye, then, Miss Julia. I reckon I’ll see you later on.”

“I’ll look for you every time I go to the Emporium.”

“I’ll look for you, too.”

“Good-bye, Timothy. Have a wonderful day.”

“You, too, ma’am.”

“Timothy, you’re sure that the name was Toleen?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“But his first name . . .”

“Don’t know, Miss Julia. Maybe Sheriff Barton knows. I can go find him and ask him for you, if you’d like me to.”

“No need for that, Timothy. It’s not really important. Good day.”

“Good day to you, Miss Julia.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

They buried the slain outlaw in a grave on Boot Hill, near the Hangtree Church, and stuck in a cross with no name but Toleen written upon it, because no one knew which of the infamous Toleen brothers this one was. No one grieved the loss of the man because neither Toleen brother had done anything but bad with his life. Losing one was as good as losing the other.

With the dead outlaw in the ground, the only hope of identifying him lay in either finding and knowing his brother, living or dead, thus identifying this one at the same time, or in identifying the slain man through the death photograph made by Otto Perkins. That image, with some of the more gruesome facial damage obscured, had been placed on display in the Dog Star Saloon in the hope that someone would come along who knew the Toleen brothers and how to distinguish between them. Then the name on the crossbar of the Boot Hill grave marker could be completed.

So far no such identifier had appeared, so the unpleasant visage of the dead man’s damaged face stared out with bird-pecked eyes across the rough-edged patrons of the Dog Star, silently pleading to be given back his missing name, and perhaps to have his killer exposed and named as well. There appeared to be little prospect of that happening. After saloon patrons became accustomed to the unsightly portrait, it ceased to be noticed or discussed. It was simply there, like a curtain in a window or a knothole in the planks of the floor.

Otto Perkins, meanwhile, had changed his usual nomadic pattern of doing business and set up a shop in a studio in Hangtree. He’d found and rented, for a three-month term, an empty shop building on the north end of town. He had moved his mobile darkroom off the wagon and into a back corner of the building, then advertised that he was available to take family portraits, wedding portraits, baby pictures, and images of corpses of the recently deceased. Over a few days he began to find work, discovering that isolated ranching families were keenly cognizant of their isolation and the fact that the lives they lived were prone to being forgotten. Portraits of families lined up before their unpainted ranch houses came into demand in Hangtree County. Newlywed couples showed up at the door of Perkins’s studio, ready to pose woodenly with the young wife in a curve-backed chair and her husband in a suit he’d probably not wear again until it was time to attend a family funeral, standing sentinel-like beside her with a rigid jaw and locked knees.

The most promising development, from Perkins’s perspective, was when clusters of cowboys and ranch hands from the surrounding cattle country began showing up, bearing armaments enough for a small army and various props of their line of work, such as lariats and spurs and chaps, so that they could show the present-and-future world, via photographic record, what dashing hombres they were as young men, and how deeply they had woven themselves into the warp and woof of the American West. They typically spent more than they could afford, dipping even into their whoring and drinking funds, to make sure they could obtain sufficient tin copies for their families back East to display on walls and mantels. Perkins gladly took their money, but knew these initial fees were only the beginning of what he could make on these authentic cattle country images. Shops and parlors back in the eastern cities would pay dearly for these romantic icons of the nation’s frontier, especially if Perkins passed them off as pictures of outlaws, something he was quite willing to do. There was money to be made, immediately and later.

He’d just finished photographing a group of three fresh-faced youthful ranch hands, complete with peach-fuzz whiskers they’d stained with acorn juice to make them show up better, when Julia Canton came to his door. With her was Johnny Cross.

Perkins’s response to the vision that was Julia Pepperday Canton was the same as that of most timid men who saw her for the first time: he was stunned silent by her beauty and simply gazed at her. Being the humble physical specimen he was, he felt pathetic and meager as she advanced toward him. But he thrust out his chin and did his best to mask his timidity.

“Good day, ma’am, sir,” he said, hating the piping tenor of his own voice. Julia stared, unspeaking, while Johnny Cross said hello to the photographer.

“How may I help you?” Perkins asked.

“Howdy, sir,” Johnny Cross said. “Name’s Cross. Johnny Cross. I came in here looking for somebody. Jimbo Hale, man who works down at the feed store. He ain’t there at the moment. You seen him?”

“I wouldn’t likely know . . . I’m not familiar with the man.”

As Perkins answered, an odd look shadowed across Julia’s lovely features, and she stepped slightly behind Johnny Cross, putting him between herself and Perkins and pretending to look around the room, keeping her face mostly turned away from Perkins.

“Well, a gent down the street said he thought he saw Jimbo coming in here just a few minutes ago, so that’s why I’m here. I’m thinking of buying an Arkansas toothpick knife he’s trying to sell.”

“I had some young cowboys in here to get a photograph made, but I don’t know if one of them was the man you’re looking for.”

“Wouldn’t have been any of them. Jim Hale’s three hundred pounds or more, and above forty years old. Not likely to be mistook for a young cowboy.”

The front door opened and closed behind Cross. Julia had just surreptitiously exited the shop. Cross glanced over his shoulder, puzzled she had abandoned him here.

“Mr. Cross,” Perkins asked, “can you tell me who that young woman is?”

“Her name’s Julia Pepperday Canton. Came here from Georgia real recent. Mighty pretty young woman, as I figure you noticed. Everybody does.”

“Canton?”

“That’s right.”

“You are certainly right regarding her beauty. Rather breathtaking, I must say.” He paused, thinking hard. “Are you sure, though, about her name?”

“I got no cause to believe her name is other than what she says it is. Why? You know her as somebody else?”

“I believe I have seen her before, yes. But just where, that I can’t say. In my line of work I see very many faces and hear very many names.”

“And some of them are bound to resemble one another, I’d think,” Cross replied.

“I can’t dispute that.” Perkins looked across Johnny Cross’s shoulder and through the panes in the top half of the door. The lovely lady was still out there, apparently waiting for Cross to come out. Perkins struggled to remember where he might have seen such a face before, but could not.

Cross leaned in closer and scrutinized Perkins intently. “Know what, sir? I believe maybe I’ve run across
you
before.”

And at that moment Perkins knew with a jolt that it was true. Cross was correct: they had met. And Perkins knew exactly where and when. This fellow Johnny Cross had been among the pistol fighters Perkins had photographed along with the infamous Bloody Bill Anderson, Confederate guerrilla. There was a certain keenness in his gaze that made him memorable, along with the fact that Cross bore a resemblance to Anderson himself, though the latter was whiskered while Cross was clean-shaven both then and now. It was actually Cross’s face that Perkins’s eye was drawn to each time he looked at that old photograph of Anderson and his pistol fighters.

Perkins wasn’t about to mention any of those details here and now, however. Anderson and his men were considered murdering criminals by much of the nation, and despite his and Cross’s shared Confederate background, Perkins didn’t know if Cross’s affiliation with so controversial a wartime figure was something generally known. Best to just hold silent.

What Cross said next revealed he was experiencing some memories of his own.

“You took photographs during the war, I recall,” Cross said. “Some of them up in Kansas and Missouri.”

“I . . . I did. Is that where you saw me?”

“Don’t really matter where it was. It’s just interesting that we’ve crossed paths before. And that you believe you also saw the same lady I’m walking about town with today.”

“As they say, it’s a small world.”

“You betcha. Let me call her in and see if she might remember you, too.”

“Please, sir, don’t. She stepped outside so there must be some reason she did not want to be in here. Perhaps she just needed fresh air.”

“Whatever you say. I don’t know about the fresh air, though. To me Hangtree air always smells like dust and horse poop.”

Perkins gave an obligatory chuckle. “Mr. Cross, let me ask you, if you don’t mind: Do you and the lovely lady have a, er, formal association? Are you her beau?”

“We have no such understanding with each other. I have befriended her as a newcomer to town, mostly because, to tell the truth, I think she’s the prettiest gal I’ve ever run across. But from what time we’ve spent together, I don’t know that she’s looking for anything more than a walking-around-town kind of man friend right now. If she ever wants more, I’m sure ’nough available for it.”

Perkins merely nodded.

“Are you interested in getting to know her yourself?” Cross asked.

Perkins seemed instantly discomfited, even embarrassed. “Sir . . . this isn’t the easiest thing for me to say, but let me ask you to just, well, look at me. See me? How I look? How I speak? High voice, neck the size of your wrist, stick legs and big feet. I see you struggling not to laugh, sir. Don’t worry over it. I learned to laugh at myself a long time ago.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, can you imagine a man like me thinking that such a divine creature as your beautiful friend could ever see me as anything but a walking joke? I could never ask any respectable woman to look at me in a serious way. Why would she want to?”

“You’re mighty hard on yourself, friend.”

“Mr. Cross, there is no way a man of your appearance and appeal could possible understand life as a man like me experiences it. You enter a room and every eye turns your way and smiles brighten the faces of every female. The same usually happens to me, but for very different, even opposite, reasons. Any woman who smiles at me does it out of amusement.”

Cross did his best to look encouraging and clapped his hand on the photographer’s shoulder and gripped firmly. “Sir, sir, I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I’ve seen much lesser specimens than you end up with women you would never imagine taking so much as a glance their way. What you believe about yourself, other folks are going to believe, too, in the end. If you look on yourself the way you described just now, you got no chance of having other people, women most of all, seeing the better side of you.”

“How can I help it? I mean . . . look at me! That woman out there sees you, she sees a handsome face and strong arms and a man able to fight his fights and maybe hers too. Me, she sees a little bug of a man who can take a picture of her and . . . and . . . well, in my case, that’s about it.”

“Hold on a minute.”

Johnny Cross went to the door and opened it. Julia Canton looked at him with expectation and welcome, obviously ready to move on down the street. But Cross instead motioned her to come back inside with him.

Her reluctance to do so was evident and confusing. Cross gave her a quizzical look and motioned again for her to come. She did, and entered the photographer’s business with a downcast face, simply refusing to look at the little man behind the counter.

Cross said, “Julia, I want you to do me a favor. Shake Mr. Perkins’s hand here and tell him to cheer up. Coming from you I think that would go a long way.”

She slowly raised her head, her manner strange and nervous. Johnny Cross looked from her to Perkins and back again, trying to decide which of the two was the more unsettled. Perkins’s situation he could understand, but Julia’s was incomprehensible.

“Julia?”

“I need to go,” she said, still looking down. “I’m . . . unwell. Feeling poorly.”

“Oh. We’ll go right now, then.” He grinned at Perkins. “If Jim Hale comes back in here, tell him Johnny Cross wants to talk to him about that knife.”

“I will.”

As she and Cross turned to leave, Julia took a fast glance at Perkins, giving him his clearest look at her. She wheeled and was gone.

When the door closed behind her and Johnny Cross, Perkins went back to a rear corner of his thrown-together place of business. A chest in which he stored volumes of his photographic work over the years, labeled and indexed. He opened the chest and dug out a particular volume, which he carried up to the counter. No customers were present. He opened the heavy, thick volume, referenced dates marked on the tops of the leafs, and found a particular image, which he studied closely.

He closed the volume and put it on a shelf beneath the counter. Returning to the chest, he dug in deeper and pulled out an older volume of images. This one he studied more slowly, with the help of a magnifying glass. Finding at last the picture he sought, he examined it until he was satisfied that his memory had been confirmed.

What really intrigued him was a sense that he was beginning to see connections where they seemed unlikely to exist. He wasn’t sure he had seen enough to identify an undeniable pattern yet . . . but the coincidences intrigued him.

Something was happening in this cursed little town. Otto Perkins could feel it in his bones.