The Yellow Rose (31 page)
The memory of the beating that Burdette had taken at Clay Taliferro’s hand was like touching acid to a raw wound. He knew the speed with which Clay could draw a gun and held his hands out. “I ain’t drawin’ on you.”
“Well, that’s fine. What about the rest of you Skull riders? Anybody want to draw iron?”
The Skull riders were all still, but their eyes were fixed on Burdette, waiting to see what he’d do Zane said, “Come on, fellas, give us a run for our money. We’re gonna beat the soup out of these two, but you can get in on it if you like.”
None of the Skull riders said a word. They had heard of Clay Taliferro’s skill with a six-gun, and Zane’s reputation was almost his equal.
Still they were ready.
Devoe Crutchfield got up and came over to join the three. “I wonder if I can get in on the fun.”
“You stay out of this, Crutchfield,” Burdette snapped. “You’ll get hurt.”
“Well, I been hurt before, but I’ll tell you what. It looks to me like two against six.” Crutchfield said, “Zane, if you’ll give me the loan of your pistol, I promise to perforate anybody that tries to interfere with the fun.”
At once Zane drew his gun and handed it butt forward, grinning.
“Don’t shoot ’em in the head. That wouldn’t hurt ’em. Plug ’em through the gizzard. That’ll give ’em to understand you’re serious.”
Crutchfield made a dangerous-looking figure. He was a big, burly man. His light red hair was bright under the lights of the saloon, and he was known to be a tough fighter himself. He said, “You fly right at it. Any of you Skull riders ready to go meet your Maker, I’ll help you along.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Burdette said, for the odds had suddenly shifted. “I know you’re sore about your stepson, but he was inter-ferin’ with us.”
“You’re a liar, Burdette,” Clay said calmly. “What do you have? Guns, knife, or fist?”
Burdette licked his lips. His gun was at his side, but he had no delusions that he could beat Clay Taliferro to the draw. He also knew that Taliferro was a fighting machine, but he saw no way out. He looked around and saw that the four other riders were held in place by the gun in Devoe Crutchfield’s big hand and knew that he could not count on them.
Clay suddenly stepped forward and slapped Burdette across the face.
The blow drove Burdette sideways, and his hand nearly went to his gun.
But then he saw that he was too late, for the instant he moved, Clay’s own revolver had appeared.
“I ain’t drawin’!” Burdette yelled.
Clay reached over and plucked Burdette’s revolver from the holster.
He laid both guns on the bar and said, “Here, Devoe, take a couple of these. That’ll give you enough bullets to shoot every one of them four or five times.” He turned then and said, “The two of you beat a boy almost to death. One of you held him, I expect.”
Dee grunted, “That’s a lie. I don’t need no help.”
He said no more because Zane stepped forward and like lightning drove a blow straight into Nolan’s face. It knocked the big man backward but did not put him down. The blow broke his nose, and Nolan looked down and saw the bright, crimson stain on his shirt. He didn’t lack courage, so he threw himself forward, and Zane came at him.
Burdette took this opportunity, when Clay’s attention was on the other two, to throw himself at Clay Taliferro. He caught Clay high in the head with a wicked right and drove him backward, then with a fierce yell he threw himself forward. Clay had not gotten his balance and took several wicked punches, for Burdette was a strong man. Clay reached out and grabbed Burdette around the middle. He made a wild swing and lifted Burdette up, then flung him through the air. Burdette struck a table and went down. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Clay coming forward, his eyes glinting. He knew that no mercy would be given or expected in this fight.
The fight did not last long. Crutchfield, with a gun in each hand, watched it as he could, but he kept his eyes on the Skull riders, all of whom had come to their feet, but none went for their guns. He called out encouragement. “That’s it, Clay. Bust him in the belly! He can’t take it there!” And then, “Watch out, Zane, he’ll use his boots on you.”
Zane had his hands full, for Dee Nolan was covered with thick muscles, and his skull was hard as a rock. It had won most of his fights for him, but he was slow and ponderous. He landed a few blows that marked Zane up, but his own face became a mass of blood as Zane danced around, shooting hard lefts, followed by a powerful right. In the blink of an eye, Nolan reached down and pulled a knife from his boot. Zane picked up a chair and swung it over his head. The edge of the seat caught Nolan on the skull and drove him down, as if he had been hammered. It did not knock him out, and Zane dropped the shattered chair, picked up another one, and this time put him down with one terrible blow.
Burdette’s face was all bloody now from the blows Clay had rained on him. Clay caught him in the throat with a tremendous blow, and Burdette fell to the floor gagging and choking.
Breathing hard, Clay looked down. He had taken several tough punches himself, but it did him good to see that both of the Skull riders were battered and bleeding. “It hurts me to have to leave you two like this, but you tell your boss if any Skull rider ever so much as even speaks a word to those folks out at the old Bartley place, Zane and I’ll be comin’ to take it out of his hide. Come along, Zane.”
They took their guns, and Zane said, “Come on, Devoe. Let’s go down to the Golden Lady. Now, that’s a
real
saloon.”
As soon as the three left, the Skull riders rushed over to Burdette and Nolan. One of them said, “I think Burdette’s dying.”
Burdette could not talk, for the blow to his throat had hurt him badly.
Jake Ramsey said, “We’d better get these two to a doctor. They’re gonna have to be sewed up and put together again.”
They got Burdette to his feet, but it was hard to lift the huge form of Nolan, and Jake said, “We’ll have to bring the doc here. He’s too big to tote.”
“I wonder how Herendeen will take this,” a bystander said.
“I expect he’d better take it easy,” Jake said, looking at what Clay and Zane had done to Burdette and Nolan. “I’d hate to have them two come callin’ on me!”
T
he last day of September was a blustering windy affair that swept through Jordan City like a miniature tornado. The hornbeam and sycamore trees were swayed by gusts, and the roadrunners seemed to have proliferated. They ran with long, rushing strides, head low and uttering their strange chirping cry. Clay had ridden to the bank to deposit the money he’d gotten for a herd of cattle that he had sent to New Orleans with another rancher. He had not made this trip, a fact that amused him. He had always looked forward to being on the move, but the twins and Jerusalem were like a magnet that drew him closer and refused to release him. Now, as he stepped off of his horse and tied him at the hitching rail in front of the Golden Lady Saloon, he grinned wryly at his own follies.
He pushed the doors of the saloon back and walked over to the bar. “Got any root beer, Butch?”
Butch Landry grinned and nodded. “You’re livin’ pretty high, ain’t you, Clay? Fixin’ to let your wolf loose and tree the town?”
“I’m an old family man now, Butch. Them days is far behind me.”
Still grinning, Butch went over and pulled a root beer out of a box and set it before Clay, saying, “Don’t drink too many of these. You’ve still got to ride home, you know.”
Uncapping the beverage, Clay stood there, his eyes running idly around the saloon. Frisco Barr came over and stood beside him. “Hello, Clay. Haven’t seen you much lately.”
“Stayin’ close to home, Frisco. Julie around?”
“I think she’s up in her room.” He turned and called out, “Charlie, go tell Julie Clay’s down here.”
“Right, Frisco.”
Clay sipped on the root beer and said, “I guess I’ve warned you about this before, Frisco, but I’m gonna get Julie out of this place if I can.”
“That’d be all right with me.” Barr looked down at his boots and studied them as if there were some inherent meaning hidden in the design of the fancy stitching. Finally, he lifted his head and said, “She don’t belong in no saloon, Clay, but I can’t run her out. It’ll have to be her choice.”
“Reckon you’re right about that.”
The two men stood there talking for a time, and Barr spoke of the Texas government, which had begun printing money a couple of years past. “It ain’t worth the paper it’s written on. Nothin’ to back it up,” he complained. “You could take a wagon load of it and couldn’t buy a bottle of whiskey.”
“That’s why I always want to take hard money if I can get it.”
“And another thing. It was a raw move to change capitals.” He spoke of moving the capital of Texas in ’40 from Houston to Austin.
That move had displeased everyone in Texas pretty much, except, of course, the inhabitants of Austin. Lamar had moved his government to Austin, which at the time only had nine hundred people. It was the wrong decision according to most, for Austin lay far beyond the frontiers of most settlements, and it was on the very edge of Comanche country.
“I don’t think anything good has happened since Lamar got to be president.”
Clay nodded. “I don’t see why Houston couldn’t just keep on being president.”
“Because the Constitution says that a man can’t succeed himself.
Anyway, I don’t like Lamar.”
Clay nodded slowly. “I fought with Lamar at San Jacinto. He’s a good fighter, but a bad president, and this burr in his saddle he’s got about Indians is gonna mean trouble.”
Indeed, President Mirabeau B. Lamar hated Indians with a passion, and upon assuming the office of president, he had begun a series of fierce campaigns against the Indians. He had used the regular Texas army forces and local bands called “ranging companies.” Lamar was convinced that all Indians were evil no matter what tribe they came from. He had sent his forces to strike against the southern Indians, including the Cherokee, who were harmless, and several other immigrant tribes who had moved into east Texas after being driven out of the United States.
Clay spoke of this and then shrugged. “I reckon we’ve got to fight against the Comanches.”
“I reckon so,” Barr said. “They’ve been doing lots of raiding against the settlements on the border, but these blasted Indian wars have cost us two and a half million dollars—which we don’t have. Lamar tried to establish the Bank of Texas, but it takes plenty of money to found a bank.” He grinned wryly and said, “I reckon President Lamar don’t understand that, so he up and printed three million dollars in redback notes.”
“What are they worth now, Frisco, a dime on the dollar?”
“Not even that much. Did you hear about his latest idiocy?”
“Who? Lamar?”
“Yes.” Barr nodded. “He’s been talkin’ about the borders of Texas goin’ all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Can you tie that?”
“Why, that’s plumb crazy!” Clay exclaimed.
“I know it is, but he sent an expedition to take over Santa Fe. It come to nothin’, of course. The poor fools had to cross thirteen hundred miles of plains right in the middle of Comanches. Them that lived were captured by a Mexican army, only about three hundred of them. They’re all in prison now down in Mexico.”
Clay sipped his root beer, then set it down on the bar and began to draw figures on the surface. “I heard Lamar was tryin’ to get a bunch of Frenchmen to settle along the Rio Grande.”
“Another wild scheme of his! They were supposed to form kind of a wall between us and Mexico, to keep the Mexicans out. Wouldn’t that make a dog laugh? Imagine Frenchmen bein’ able to whip anybody! All they can do is be romantic and eat snails!”
“Well, one good thing about it. Next year we’ll have another election,” Clay said.
“And we know who our candidate will be.”
“Sure. Sam Houston. You hear he got married again?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“More than that. He got himself converted. Yep, Sam’s on the glory road now.”
“What brand did he wind up with?” Barr asked.
“A Baptist. I don’t expect even the Baptists will be able to tame Sam Houston down, though. I wonder what the issues in his campaign will be?” Clay asked idly.
“Well, I don’t know, but Sam will make it interesting.” The two stood there talking, when suddenly Barr caught a movement and said, “There comes your dear and beloved friend, Kern Herendeen.”
Clay did not turn around, but Barr watched as Herendeen stopped abruptly. He saw the big man’s eyes fall on Clay, and he noted the antagonism there. He waved, however, saying, “Come on, Kern, have a drink on the house.”
Herendeen hesitated only a moment and then came over and said, “Hello, Barr. I’ll take that drink.”
After Butch brought the drink, Kern stared at Clay with such animosity that Clay said, “You look like you’re about ready to pop, Kern. If you got somethin’ to say, why, just set it on the front porch.”
“All right, I will. I don’t take kindly to your beating up my men.”
“Why, Kern, you don’t know your Bible well enough. Don’t the Good Book say that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap?”
Humor played in Clay’s eyes, and he said, “I reckon Dee and Lou just did a little sowin’, so Zane and me saw that they did a little reaping.” His voice grew harder then, a slight edge on it. “Those boys had no business tryin’ to run the Stuarts off. That ground don’t belong to Skull. The Stuarts are there legally. And Dee and Lou deserve what they got for beating up on my stepson,” Clay said coldly. “If they ever do that again, they’ll get it worse.”
Both men saw that Kern wanted to argue, but he knew he was on shaky ground. Kern Herendeen had hated Clay from the moment that Jerusalem had agreed to marry him. The two men spoke only when necessary, and this was the longest conversation they had had since Clay’s marriage.
“All right,” Kern said. “I’ll let it pass this time.”
“I do appreciate it, Kern.” The irony in Clay’s voice rubbed against Herendeen, but he drank his drink, nodded, and walked away.
He passed Julie on the way but did not glance at her. Julie came over and said, “Hello, Clay. How’s Clinton?”
