Pinto Lowery (2 page)

“Won't that deputy bother anybody else,” Joe said, pounding a big fist against the wall. “Will he, Pat?”

“Not 'less he comes back as a ghost,” the younger man said, laughing. “Now, Mr. Tubbs, why don't you tell us 'bout them wagons?”

“Jus' whad's ...“Pinto started to object.

“Hush, Lowery!” Tubbs shouted. “Look around you. Can't you see what's happened?”

Pinto stared grimly around the room. Faye Tubbs stood anxiously with Alice in one corner. Elroy and Ted faced the big man with the broken nose. Pat, the younger one, kept vigil over the door. The shotgun that normally stood in the gun rack beside the desk was gone, as were the three Winchester rifles. Pat drew a pocket Colt from his right pocket. Big Joe didn't seem to need a gun.

“Who's outside now?” Joe asked. Pat stepped outside and began a short tour of the Tubbs place. He was gone maybe ten minutes. When he returned, Joe repeated his earlier question.

“Was a boy passin' a dipper o' water about,” Pat explained. “He seems to've gone.”

“Neighbor boy,” Pinto broke in. He flashed a warning with his eyes, and the Tubbses remained silent. “I asked him to tend yer men,” Pinto went on to say. “Then he was hurryin' along to school.”

“Anybody else here?” Joe demanded.

“That's all,” Tubbs replied.

“You're a liar, mister!” Pat shouted, striking Tubbs with the back on his hand. As Tubbs collapsed onto the floor, Pat laughed. “Was a boy in the barn.”

Pinto started to speak, but Pat jabbed the pistol into his ribs.

“Don't get yourself all riled, mister. We don't aim to hurt anybody. Just come for the money.”

“What money?” Pinto cried. “All we do here's ship goods on de marked road.”

“That right?” Joe asked. “Or is it what ole Tubbs here tells you? Why, he looks to keep you at starvin' wages, friend. Past three months this fellow's been shippin' gold and silver for the carpet-baggin' Yanks in Jacksboro. Tax money. Sends it down to Austin in tool crates. How's that for clever?”

“Not clever enough,” Pat observed. “We Hannigans got eyes.”

“Yer Joe Hannigan?” Pinto asked, feeling his toes grow numb.

“Heard o' me, have you? More reason to do what you're told. I don't make war on Texans if I can help it. Just on gold boxes and cash drawers. Open up that 'un yonder.”

Tubbs complied with his orders, and Pinto took charge of Ted for a moment. The youngster felt feverish to the touch, and he was clearly worried. Tubbs and the women were even worse. There was a trace of murder in the eyes of Big Nose Joe Hannigan. Pinto knew enough about the outlaw to judge that killing the whole population of Hill Junction wouldn't rob Hannigan of much sleep.

Once the cash drawer was emptied, Joe sent his brother Pat out to tie the money behind a packhorse. A bit later the freight wagons rolled in. The drivers surrendered without a shot, and the outlaws quickly ransacked the supplies.

“Here's the gold, Joe!” one of the young thieves announced. “Now what do we do with the people?”

“I could take 'em to the barn,” Pat suggested with a cruel grin. Only now did Pinto take note of something thin and shiny popping out of Pat's pocket. Muley's mouth organ! There was blood on Pat's boots, too, and ...

“Muley!” Pinto shouted, leaping past the Hannigans and starting toward the barn. An outlaw rushed over and blocked the path. A second raider slammed a forearm into Pinto's ribs, doubling him over. Before Pinto could catch his breath, Pat appeared, pistol in hand.

“Ever hear this tune, Patches?” Pat asked, pressing the mouth organ against his lips and playing a jaunty version of “Dixie”. “Now you be real good, mister, and maybe my big brother'll let you get a little bit older.”

“Thad boy was simple,” Pinto growled. “Never would've caused you a particle o' trouble.”

“Wouldn't let go o' the mouth organ,” Pat explained, drawing out his knife. “So I gutted him like a catfish.”

“Dear Lord,” Faye Tubbs whimpered as the outlaws dragged her outside. Big Nose Joe held a knife against fifteen-year-old Alice's throat.

“You've got your money!” Tubbs shouted as he struggled to free himself from the grasp of a young outlaw. “And you've killed!”

“Maybe we'll kill somebody else,” Pat suggested. “Or maybe pleasure ourselves a hair.”

Pat stepped toward Alice, and little Ted raced over.

“Ma!” the terrified boy screamed.

“I'll tend him,” Pat said, turning that way.

“Stop, Teddy!” Faye pleaded as she reached for the boy. “Ted!”

Pat leveled his Colt and fired a single bullet into the ten-year-old's hip. Ted fell in a heap, and Pat holstered his pistol.

“Murderer!” Alice screamed.

“My Colt's got a lot o' use left in it,” Pat replied, turning toward the girl. “We got time, Joe?”

“Best we move on along,” Big Nose Joe answered. “Burn the wagons and what supplies we don't take with us. Run the horses away. Be sure they got no guns. Wouldn't want any vengeful papas on my trail.”

“There's a better way to make sure o' that,” Pat said, drawing the Colt.

“Boy's got a taste for killin', don't he?” Joe asked, slapping his brother to the ground. “I got no love o' posses, little brother. You go murderin' little kids and such, people take note. There's neighbors already growin' curious, what with you shootin' off your gun. Now get onto a horse and let's leave this place behind us. I got the itch to ride.”

Pinto rushed over to where Faye was tending little Ted. The child was a lump of shudders. His face was already paling, and blood stained his trouser leg, collecting in a pool on the dusty ground.

“Give me a try, ma'am,” Pinto said, taking cloth strips torn from Faye Tubbs's petticoats and binding the bloody wound. “Had practice at such, you see.”

“I've heard stories,” the woman said, fighting to regain her composure. It wasn't easy. Already the odor of burning wagons filled the air, and smoke blended with the gray morning to obscure the horizon.

“Look after him good, Lowery,” Elmer pleaded, sitting beside his son with a face paled by shock and fear.

“He won't die, will he?” Alice asked.

“Where's Tom?” her mother added.

“Safe, I pray,” Pinto muttered as he glanced at the barn. The outlaws were driving the last of the horses out toward the open range. As they left, Pinto recalled Big Nose Joe Hannigan's words.

I know all about de itch to ride
, Pinto thought as he spat dust from his mouth. He had the urge to be anywhere else than the Tubbs place at that moment. Anywhere else!

Pinto discovered Tom Tubbs cowering in a corner of the barn. The boy gazed anxiously toward where Muley Bryant lay facedown just inside the door, and Pinto nodded with understanding.

“Dey had no call to do that,” the mustanger said as he helped Tom rise. “Nor to raid yer pa, neither.”

“Nor to shoot Teddy,” Tom mumbled as they reached the door.

“Hoped you didn't know 'bout that,” Pinto said, shaking his head.

“Saw most of it,” Tom explained. “Guess you know they might have kilt me if I'd stayed out there.”

“Didn't shoot me,” Pinto pointed out. “Weren't altogether hard o' heart. Let yer ma and Alice be. Was gold dey come fer.”

“Sure,” Tom grumbled. Then, when his mother spotted him, he raced to her side. The Tubbs family circled around Ted and offered comfort and encouragement. Pinto took note of that.

“You don't belong there, Pinto,” he told himself. And he walked back to the barn to tend Muley.

By late afternoon little Ted was resting comfortably in his bed. A doctor had come out from Cleburne to dig the bullet from the youngster's hip, and what fever had ensued broke an hour later.

“Thank God for that,” his mother had proclaimed.

Elroy Tubbs, meanwhile, had collected a group of neighbors, chased down his horses, and was readying himself to set out after the outlaws. The posse showed little enthusiasm for the task ahead, though. They had no hunger for an ambush.

Fool's errand
, Pinto thought. Big Nose Joe Hannigan and his outfit weren't going to be brought to bay by a band of shotgun-wielding farmers and shopkeepers.

As for the Hood County sheriff, Murray Ralls, he contented himself with sending telegrams.

“Let them politicians in Jacksboro worry themselves sick over that gold,” Ralls told Tubbs. “Ain't a penny of it mine.”

Tubbs was visibly disappointed when Pinto refused to join the posse.

“I expected loyalty from you, Lowery,” the freighter complained. “And after all, they were none too friendly toward you.”

“Somebody ought to tend Muley,” Pinto argued. “He got killed, remember?”

“Wrap him in a blanket and dig him a hole,” Tubbs suggested. “We can't do him any good now. Better to punish the ones who killed him.”

“Wasn't but a boy, and a simple one at thad,” Jonas Birney, one of the neighbors, agreed.

“Maybe,” Pinto admitted. “Still, he ought to be cleaned up respectable. A proper place should be dug, with a marker put up. We should get a preacher to read words over him. If he's got family ...“

“He doesn't,” Tubbs said, spitting as he slung a saddle onto the back of broad-backed brown stallion. “There'll be no crowd of mourners, either. Now come along.”

“Might be he'll have jus' one soul at his buryin',” Pinto replied. “Me! He'll have thad one, though. Muley never dealed me false, nor gave me call to doubt him. I'll see right done him.”

“You may just do it jobless!” Tubbs hollered. “Let's go, men. Lowery wouldn't be any use in a fight anyway.”

Pinto glared as the riders set off northward.
What would Elmer Tubbs know o' fightin'?
he wondered.

Actually there wasn't much to tending Muley. The poor boy was hardly marked. Except for the hole in his chest, it looked like he was sleeping. Oh, there was the blood, sure, but it was washed off easily enough.

Not all the Tubbses shared Elmer's disdain for the slain stableboy. Tom offered a clean shirt, and Alice supplied an old pair of her father's shoes. Muley had decent enough trousers set aside for rare ventures into Cleburne for church. Pinto provided stockings and a string tie from his own scant belongings.

“Wish I could put yer mouth organ in here with you,” Pinto lamented as he and Faye wrapped Muley in a time-worn quilt. “But I guess dey'll give you a harp to play up yonder.”

“Sure, they will,” Tom said by way of comfort.

Pinto dug the grave alone. He found a spot half a mile up the road where a clump of willows crowded a spring. Even on that gray February afternoon the place seemed halfway cheerful.

“It'll do,” he announced as he struck a spade into the hard ground. “And come spring dere'll be flowers.”

It was young Tom who nailed a pair of white pickets into a cross and inscribed Muley's name in carefully drawn letters.

Martin Bryant, horse lover
, Tom had thought to write.

“Never knew he had a proper name,” Pinto said as he eased the body to its resting place.

“Everybody's got a proper name,” Alice declared. “Or did have. Muley told me his last Christmas when we had that barn dance. He was all elbows and knees mostly, but he never did anybody harm.”

Pinto began the brief memorial by reading from a battered Bible. He'd barely begun when Faye Tubbs rode up atop a wagon. In the bed little Ted looked out, pale and battered but alert.

“He oughtn't to've lef' his bed,” Pinto grumbled.

“Muley was my friend, too,” Ted argued. “I had to come say good-bye.”

The words spoke for the whole company, and Pinto said as much. He then read two short passages, and Faye added a fourth from memory.

“Rest easy, Muley,” Tom said when Pinto announced it was time to fill in the grave.

“No more hogs to feed,” Alice whispered.

“You'll break some hearts up there,” Faye added as she draped an arm over Alice's shoulders. “And chase some good horses, I'm certain.”

“Be lonely on de Llano,” Pinto said last of all. The others climbed into the wagon, and Faye drove them home. Pinto stayed and shoveled earth over his young friend. It wasn't the first time he'd buried a comrade. At least this time there'd been time to wash away the blood and see a proper hole was dug. Just the same, death had a way of leaving a man cold and hollow when it passed close by. Pinto Lowery hoped to give the grim reaper a wide berth for a time.

Elmer Tubbs returned near dusk the day after the burial. The freighter said little. He was trail-worn and dust-choked. After embracing his wife and looking in on Ted, he marched to the barn.

Pinto was looking after Tubbs's weary horse at that moment.

“Well, at least you've put yourself to some use,” Tubbs grumbled. “Come dawn have me a fresh mount saddled. Ready one for yourself as well. You ride tomorrow, either with me or on your own.”

“Was only waitin' fer you to get back,” Pinto answered, motioning to where his two horses stood ready for hard travel. He'd rolled his belongings in a blanket and tied them atop the pack horse.

“Be some winter left,” Tubbs growled, twirling a watch fob. “You'll wish you'd decided elsewise.”

“Likely,” Pinto replied. “Wouldn't be de firs' mistake I made. Still, I can't work for a man's got no time to honor his dead. And if I did, I'd have to think hard on stayin' with anyone fool enough to hunt dem Hannigans. Thad's fer de law, or maybe de army. Yer sure to come to grief on dem men's trail.”

“You said your piece. Now get along with you!”

“I got good-byes to make,” Pinto said as he led the horse to an empty stall. “And dere's wages I'm owed.”