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Authors: William W. Johnstone,J.A. Johnstone

Savage Texas: The Stampeders (6 page)

BOOK: Savage Texas: The Stampeders
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Time to say good-bye to Hangtree, Texas.
C
HAPTER
T
EN
Myrtle Bewley had not intended to discuss with her employee the unfortunate matter of Timothy Holt having been publicly tormented outside the Lockhart Emporium by two troublesome strangers, one of them now deceased through violence. But her new part-time clerk had mentioned it on her own. Myrtle was not one to pass up the latest town gossip, which she traded in more than in sewing thread and thimbles. Especially if someone else brought it up.
“It’s disgusting, absolutely disgusting, treating a helpless fellow like Timothy in such a way! Humiliating him for the sake of some perverse idea of fun! It makes me furious!”
“I can see that,” Myrtle replied to Julia Canton, who had come in asking about employment the day after her first visit to the dress shop. Myrtle suspected that Julia didn’t so much need the meager pay as simply something to do with her time in a town full of strangers. Myrtle could tell from Julia’s manners, way of dress, and general bearing that she possessed some level of means and was accustomed to a comfortable standard of living. And her diction and vocabulary revealed the tracks of a good education.
None of that much mattered to Myrtle. What had led her to hire Julia was the prospect that she would stir new business, and that had proven true. Myrtle had been quite amused to see how many Hangtree men suddenly found cause to visit a dress shop, a place most had shunned in the past except for those times their wives forced them to bring them into town for fabric, thread, or a new garment. In Julia’s brief tenure in the shop so far, Myrtle had seen men who possessed neither wives nor known intimate companions visiting her shop for no obvious reason beyond the chance to have a look at Julia Canton, and if they dared, to converse with her. Also amusing was the fact that female business in the shop had also increased, letting Myrtle know the women of Hangtree were well aware that there was a new standard-setter for feminine beauty in their town, and wanted to have a look for themselves at what had their men so distracted.
“People can be very hard on weak ones,” Myrtle said. “Especially in country like this, where being weak is a danger. They shouldn’t have been treating poor Tim that way, but that’s the way people do, and it isn’t something you can expect to change.”
“I have . . . I had a brother who was much like Timothy. That’s why I care so much about it when the feeble-minded are mistreated.”
“You are a woman with a good heart in her bosom,” Myrtle said, thinking but certainly not adding aloud that it was surely Julia’s bosom itself, not the heart within, that had the attention and admiration of most of Hangtree. “Nothing good in the hearts of the men who plagued the poor boy, though. I hear rumors that at least one of them used to be among the ranks of the gunhawks who rode for none other than Black Ear Skinner, a devil if ever there was one.”
Myrtle was looking out the front window of the shop as she said those words, eying a nicely dressed man who was unfamiliar to her. He was loitering on the far side of the street, slowly lighting a cigar with a sulfur-and-phosphorus match he’d struck against a porch rail. His eyes, Myrtle noticed, flicked up occasionally to look toward the dress shop as he stretched out his tobacco-lighting as long as possible. Occupied with watching the man, Myrtle did not notice the little jerk of Julia’s head when she said the name of Black Ear Skinner.
“I think I’ve heard of him,” Julia said. “An outlaw, I think?”
“The worst of them. Thank God he’s dead and gone. Killed during a robbery he and his gang were committing.”
Julia said nothing. Her gaze had followed Myrtle’s out through the front window to study the stranger across the street.
“You know him?” Myrtle asked her employee.
“How would I know a dead outlaw?”
“I mean the man out there. He’s a stranger to me.”
“I’ve been in this town far less time than you,” Julia said. “How would I possibly know him?”
“I’ve . . . somehow I’ve angered you,” Myrtle said.
Julia gave one of her bright-as-daylight smiles. “Nonsense! You’ve done nothing to anger me at all. Why would you think that?”
“Never mind it, then. I just talk too much, that’s all. Now I think I’ll go put the spools of thread back in order. Somebody played fruit basket turnover with them.”
“I hadn’t realized it or I would have straightened it out myself,” said Julia. “I’ll be more aware of such things as I get used to this place and the way things are supposed to be.”
“If you can straighten those bolts of cloth in the corner a bit, that would help greatly,” Myrtle said.
“I’ll get on it right away.”
 
 
Myrtle hummed as she worked, and after ten minutes of it, Julia found it annoying. There was no prudent way to complain, however, so she forced her attention to the bolts of cloth customers had knocked awry, and mentally hummed a tune of her own to try to drown out Myrtle’s off-key warbling.
A glance out the window a few moments later revealed the man who had been lighting the cigar and watching the store was no longer there. Julia looked up and down the street as far as the window would allow, and did not see the man. For some reason either instinctive or silly, she was glad he had gone. There was no good reason to think his presence out there had anything to do with her, but the feeling was there that, in fact, it did.
Probably just another man hoping to get a look at her, Julia told herself. She’d lived long enough now as a nubile and exceptionally beautiful young woman to realize she was an inevitable leading attraction anywhere she went. It was exhausting. She knew that other women were jealous of her, and a time or two had tried to explain to some of those she counted as friends that there was little to envy in her situation. It was virtually impossible for her to know whether men who were drawn to her saw anything in her beyond her appearance. Even those whom she allowed to get to know her as a person didn’t seem to care much about any aspect of her other than that which was superficial and unimportant. There were many times in her life when she had longed to move among others without drawing any attention to herself. To disappear, and reappear as someone else. Someone merely average, a face in the crowd.
Such was not possible for a female of such remarkable beauty. So Julia had learned to use her extraordinary appearance, the aspect of herself that, to her, seemed more a handicap than a benefit, to her own advantage. With a mere smile and brush of her hand, she could obtain from men what she needed and wanted. Money, praise, help in times of trouble, even physical protection. Whatever she might do in her life, she knew and accepted the fact that her true profession would be manipulation.
Even now, in this meaningless little job in a tiny dress shop in a nowhere town, a job she had sought out sheerly to avoid boredom, she was playing a manipulative game. Julia could tell that Myrtle Bewley was a woman with a certain degree of sense and acumen, enough to realize that having a lovely young woman in her shop would be good for business. She had played on that to manipulate the woman into giving her what she wanted.
Julia had just straightened the last bolt of cloth when she realized that Myrtle at last had stopped her droning humming. Yet still Julia heard music. Not humming, though, but fiddle music, and muffled to the point that she wondered if she might be imagining it. No, there it was again. Real music, coming from the direction of the back of the shop.
Myrtle came walking up and admired Julia’s improvements of the display of fabric. “Looking much better,” she said. Then she cocked her head and listened to the hard-to-hear fiddle music. “And Claude is sounding better this year than last, too. Improvements everywhere we look and listen!”
“Claude?”
“That’s right. The fiddle music—you hear it, don’t you—that’s Claude Farley. He’s been the resident fiddler in this town for about as long as it has been here. He taught himself, and for the first year or so his fiddling sounded a little like a screeching cat with its tail being squeezed in a clothes wringer. And that being a cat with very little ear for melody.” Myrtle tilted her head a little further and nodded with the rhythm of the music. “Yes, better now, much better. Claude must have been practicing out there in that farmhouse the last couple of years.”
“I can’t hear him well, but he sounds fine to me,” Julia said.
“Do you know him?” Myrtle asked.
“No. I’m quite sure I don’t.”
“I think you’ve probably met him and don’t realize it. He lives in the same boardinghouse you’re in now. You’ve probably dined at table with him and his wife, Hilda.”
“I thought you said he lived in a farmhouse.”
“He did, until it burned down at the first of the year. Complete loss. He and Hilda moved into town and rented the biggest room in the boardinghouse, and have been there ever since.”
“Gray-haired man with a white-haired wife? Older folk?”
“That’s them.”
“I have met them, then. The names just didn’t stay with me. He’s a quiet man, very little to say at the table.”
Myrtle nodded and straightened some thimbles on a little shelf nearby. “That’s Claude. Silent as a church mouse, except when he has his fiddle in hand.”
“I haven’t heard him play at the boardinghouse.”
“He generally does his practicing in an old shed about an eighth of a mile out that way.” She pointed toward the rear of the shop. “He’s shy about his fiddling until he’s practiced up.”
“Why is he practicing now, I wonder?”
“You haven’t heard, I guess. We’ve got a big dance coming up, going to be held at the big horse barn over on the south end of town. Outside if the weather is good, inside if it rains. Claude provides the music. The town’s held dances every few months since the end of the war. There’ll be a couple of pigs roasted in the ground and lots of steaks fried. The idea is to give people a chance to know each other better and put aside differences.”
“Does it work?”
“There was a knife fight at the last two dances. Same men both times, and they were drunk both times, too.”
“Oh my.”
“It can be a rowdy town sometimes. It’s Texas, after all.”
Julia smiled. “A dance. It sounds like it could be a pleasant diversion . . . if knife fights can be avoided.”
“It will happen a week from this Friday night. I’m quite sure you’ll receive plenty of invitations, being as pretty as you are. I’m surprised Johnny Cross hasn’t asked you already. If he wastes too much time, he might lose his dancing partner to somebody else.”
Julia gave an impish grin and shrugged. “Maybe so. Maybe Sam Heller.”
“Oh! Have you met him now?”
“Well, no. But I dropped a subtle word or two with a couple of busybodies who hang around the boardinghouse, looking for gossip. Just to let him get the word that I’ve heard of him and have an interest in meeting him.”
“Oh! Very forward of you, my dear.”
“My father always taught me to say what it is you want, and not to be shy about it.”
“You might want to be aware that Sam Heller and Johnny Cross have an . . . unusual kind of relationship. Mutual respect and antagonism all rolled up together until it’s hard to peel the two apart.”
“Well, neither man has asked me yet. Who knows? Someone else might ask me before either one of them gets around to it.”
“Yes, indeedy, Julia. And speaking of that, there comes a likely prospect for asking you right now.”
Julia looked out the window and felt her heart sink as she saw, just entering the angle of view allowed by the window, Timothy Holt, walking toward the shop with another paper flower in his hand.
 
 
“It is very nice of you to ask me, Timothy,” said Julia as she walked with the humble young man in what he told her was the direction of his home. “I don’t know I’ve ever been invited to a dance by a better young man.”
“So, you’ll go with me?” Timothy asked, his smile bright and his step quickening.
“Timothy, it wouldn’t be right of me to say yes,” she said. “It would give you, I mean, give people, the wrong impression of our friendship.”
“But you are my friend, right, Miss Julia?”
“Of course I’m your friend. But that is all I can be, Timothy. Just your friend.”
“Well . . . can you go with me to the town dance?”
“No, Timothy. I can thank you for asking me, but I can’t go with you.”
Timothy’s shoulders slumped and he looked down. Conversation ended for a few moments.
“Are we still going the right direction to your house?” Julia asked.
“Yes.”
“May I meet your mother when we get there?”
“Yes. If you want to.”
“I’d like to tell her how much I admire her son.”
Timothy had nothing to say. In moments he turned down an alley and Julia followed.
The house would have been easy to pass by with barely a notice. Made in a simple rectangular pattern, no more than a shed, really, it was made of the same unpainted wood as a nearby small barn. From the outside the place looked barely large enough to accommodate two occupants.
Timothy’s widowed mother was named Margaret, and a more slumped, exhausted-looking woman Julia had never seen. It was clear within moments of beginning to speak with her that Margaret Holt was nearly blind and also hard of hearing. Clearly she was not equipped to pursue a livelihood. The importance of Timothy’s meager earnings made with his broom, and the charity foods sent home with him from local cafés, as Myrtle had told her about, became clear in a rush.
The only chair Margaret had to offer was a crude bench sitting against a bare and windowless side wall, near the cot that apparently served Timothy as a bed. Margaret’s bed was as crudely made as a cot, but was bigger and was an authentic bed, complete with a straw-stuffed bedtick. It was the nicest item in the entire tiny house.
BOOK: Savage Texas: The Stampeders
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