And the Devil Makes Five

Book 4: O'Malleys of Texas

by Dusty Richards

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sea Adventures

Synopsis

From acclaimed western author Dusty Richards comes an explosive new novel in his O’Malley saga, the powerful story of a strong Texan family caught in the crossfire of rebels, assassins, and history itself . . .
 
It begins with a spectacular train robbery—a brilliantly planned, brutally executed heist masterminded by a shadowy gang of conspirators with far deadlier motives than money or gold. Their mission: to steal the train’s shipment of powerful explosives. Their goal: to assassinate Mexico’s legendary resistance leader Benito Juarez—at a small stagecoach station owned and operated by the O’Malley family . . .
 
As a lifelong patriot himself, Joe O’Malley understands the struggle for freedom. As a proud Texan, he knows the importance of fighting for your land and your liberty. But as patriarch of the O’Malley clan, he also believes that his family comes first—and that any outsider who brings their war into his home will have to face another deadly force of resistance…named the O’Malleys.  

“Dusty Richards is the embodiment of the Old West.”
—Storyteller Magazine
 

Release date: January 25, 2022

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

“I now pronounce you—”

“Man and wife! Yay-hoo!”

“B.W.” Beauregard Lafayette shouted the words and whooped, jumping from his seat and waving his weatherworn hat over his head. Lolling nearby, the collies Blood and Mud came alert and barked at him, though it was too hot for them to move any closer. They stood as if waiting for something to happen. But no one moved or spoke. Brother Whip just stared ahead, searching for a sign of support, his cry quickly, mercifully, lost in the blue skies and yellow-white sun overhead and the expanse of plain that surrounded them in all directions.

The officiant, Reverend Merritt Michaels, looked with open shock past the couple standing before him. The couple remained stationary under the lace canopy protecting them from the sun. When the reverend—the bride’s brother—failed to immediately continue, the young woman turned. A sharpshooter, if she had her rifle, the bride looked as if she would have used it.

At the same time, by habit, the hand of the groom drifted to the spot on his thigh where he usually wore his Bowie knife. It was not there this afternoon because of the occasion—though there had been a discussion with his fiancée about not having wanted to leave it behind.

“It’s as much a part of me as my lips,” he had said.

“I will not be kissing your knife,” she reminded him.

“But I always have it,” he remarked to no avail.

Now, on the verge of being Clarity O’Malley, Clarity Michaels turned blazing eyes from B.W. to the groom.

“You were right about the knife,” she told Slash O’Malley.

“I coulda thrown it and I wouldn’t never have had to leave your side,” he assured her, cooing.

Clarity’s harsh expression cracked, and she smiled sweetly. They both turned back to the pastor.

The man who had leapt to his feet remained dumbly, firmly planted on them. He was still stunned to be the only one who had risen from his seat.

“Why’d y’all stop?” the stagecoach driver stubbornly inquired of the preacher.

The round-faced clergyman had no answer beyond what was self-evident. Neither did anyone in the small group of people seated on the wooden chairs that had been carried from the Whip Station, along with a pair of stools and an empty water barrel.

Without turning from his front-row seat, the head of the family, Joe O’Malley spoke quietly from under his broom moustache.

“B.W.—sit yourself down.”

The collies promptly obeyed. B.W. defiantly did not. He stood there still with a look that was half-surprise, half-humiliation. Joe continued to look toward the canopy though his salt-and-pepper brows now dipped disapprovingly.

The rugged seventy-year-old was seated directly in front of B.W. He was glad it was noon, so he couldn’t see the man’s shadow clearly. Seeing his throat, he might be tempted to turn and choke the real one.

To Joe’s left was his granddaughter Gert, twin sister of the groom. She was hiding a smile with an Apache fan made of snake bones and eagle feathers. To Joe’s right were his frowning son Jackson and Jackson’s frozen-faced wife Sarah, parents of the groom.

To the left of B.W. was Dick Ocean. The stagecoach shotgun rider just shook his head very slowly. They were surrounded by the Isaiah Sunday family from the Vallicita station and the Mission Indians Sisquoc and Malibu out of Fort Yuma, in the southeastern-most corner of the State of California. The Indians were wearing their uniforms, the only somewhat formal attire they owned.

Inside the station were the two passengers who had come in on the Butterfield Line stagecoach, Sebastián Sanchez and Rafael Gonzalez. Sarah and Gert had fed the two men and then asked if they wouldn’t mind helping themselves to anything else they might want. The men were only headed to Vallicita, the next stop on the way back to St. Louis, Missouri, and had obligingly said they understood completely.

“Please enjoy your ceremony,” Gonzalez had told her.

Sarah had thanked him in her soft German accent. “This is the only time the driver and his Shotgun can be here,” she apologetically explained to the young men. “They didn’t want to miss it.”

“The bride is lovely, they are not to be blamed,” said the courtly Sanchez.

Now, Sarah wished they had done the ceremony an hour earlier, while the stage was still up north a way and headed toward them from Oak Grove.

Despite the admonition from Joe, and in spite of tense moments that seemed to pass like B.W. was a mouse snared in tumbleweed, the man was still standing. Dick finally tugged at the hem of the whip driver’s Sunday tweed jacket. Reluctantly, the burly driver lowered himself into his seat on stocky, bowed legs. His personal Bible, from which he was never separated, was held tightly in his left hand. His fingertips gleamed white, tightly pressed against the black leather covers.

The man landed heavily, the chair squeaking with his weight. In the nearby stable, a horse answered the sound with a whinny.

“I meant nothing—” B.W. began quietly as he settled in.

“Quiet,” Joe said through his teeth, making two taut syllables of the word,

“Sure, Joe,” B.W. said. “Sure.” The driver turned his crinkled eyes toward the backs of the soon-to-be-newlyweds. Raising his voice, he said, “Y’know, where I come from, right before the ring goes on, the cheer goes out!”

“You’re still talking,” Joe said thickly.

B.W. looked absently at his right hand. He held it up, showed his soft fawn-colored gambler’s hat. “Hey,” he grumbled. “At least I took my hat off.”

Octogenarian Willa Sunday, whose son ran the Vallicita station, leaned forward and whispered.

“I suspect that lest you want your head off, you still that tongue at once!” warned the former slave.

A hot wind blew a warm, enervating heat over the group. B.W.’s big shoulders finally rounded and gave up the fight. Reverend Michaels, dressed in black and standing just outside the canopy, took advantage of the break to dab his perspiring head with a handkerchief. He also looked to Joe for guidance. The patriarch nodded his uncustomarily clean-shaven chin.

“Continue, friend Merritt,” the elder O’Malley said.

“Very well,” Michaels spoke softly. He regarded the couple and found his previous smile. “I now pronounce you man and wife. Brother Jefferson Slash O’Malley, you may kiss the bride.”

Everyone leapt to their feet and applauded—except for B.W. who, showing a cautious, perplexed expression, took a moment before rising slowly.

“Would someone tell me just what in the name of the holy prophet Moses I did wrong?” he demanded of everyone around him.

No one answered. They were all filing from the rickety chairs and improvised seats to wait their turn to hug the newlyweds, who were in the process of being blessed by Clarity’s older brother. Jackson and Sarah tearfully signed the wedding certificate that Merritt had written out. The document sat on a crate, held there by the inkwell.

Gert was allowed to greet the couple first so she could get back inside to their guests. She was followed by Sarah, who trailed petals from the homegrown bouquet her daughter had given her to preserve. Jackson went third so that he could attend to the stagecoach horses and quickly get B.W. and Ocean back on the road. The thirty-seven-year-old required more time to do his work than he would have liked, having been seriously injured in a horse fall years before. His pronounced limp notwithstanding, Jackson always got the job done right, and on time.

As Isaiah helped his mother to her feet, his wife Bonita and son Joshua went to the bride and groom. Slash was distracted, admiring the ring on his finger. It had been the one Joe had worn when he married Dolley. It had never left the older O’Malley’s finger until this morning.

“I am so happy for you both,” Bonita told them.

“Thank you,” Clarity said, pressing her cheek to that of the Colored woman. “And thank you for being here.”

“I only wish we could stay for some of your mama’s pie!” she said. “But we got a place to run.”

“We’ll bring one when we get back,” the native Kentuckian assured her.

Isaiah stepped over. He bowed his head to the bride and folded the groom’s hand in his own strong, five fingers. “May you be as happy as I am,” the big man said.

“That’s the kindest wish, friend,” Slash said, genuinely moved. “I’m grateful you were able to get here.”

“We knew there wouldn’t be any stagecoach while we was gone.” Isaiah grinned. “And we’ll still beat him back.”

The Sundays’ boy Joshua stood between his parents. His mother bent and whispered in his ear.

The boy looked up. “Best of happiness, sir and ma’am!” he said through a big, missing front tooth and offering his small, spindly hand next.

“I thank you kindly, young Master Sunday,” Slash said. “Me being married—that doesn’t mean we can’t still go hunting together. And you have to learn to throw a knife.”

“My daddy says when I’m older,” the eight-year-old replied.

Slash leaned down and whispered conspiratorially. “I learnt when I was young’n you,” he said.

Joshua turned wide eyes to his mother. “Hear that, ma? Slash was—”

“On the trail from Texas and didn’t have time to set traps, like you do,” she said.

“We came all the way from ’Bama—”

“That was different,” Bonita said and hushed him.

“How?” the boy grumped.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said.

The boy knew, but did not understand, that his mother and son had been brought west by their former master, Brent Diamond. Isaiah and Willa had tracked them to California when the South fell. When Isaiah discovered his wife and child working at the Vallicita station for their onetime owner, Isaiah gave Diamond the option of vacating, at once, or staying—underground.

Complicit in a failed plot to establish a secessionist empire in the West, Diamond chose flight to parts unknown.

As the Sunday family boarded their wagon, Clarity tugged her husband over to see the Mission Indians. They had to return to Fort Yuma but stood patiently waiting to present their gifts.

“We brought books for your firstborn,” said Malibu, pointing to the bundle he left on the seat. “It was those we used at the mission to learn English.”

Clarity and Slash were deeply touched. The bride hugged both men lightly. The two seemed surprised by what would have been frowned on anywhere else. They stood stiffly, unsure how to respond. The groom shook their hands. That they understood.

Off in the distance, Joe stood at his usual spot near the trough at the porch. His shotgun rested against it, where it always was during the daytime. The thumb of his left hand was absently fingering the spot where his ring had been. It felt naked but it felt right.

He was taking in the last of the event—and calming from B.W.’s outburst. He scowled at Clarity’s familiarity with the Redskins. “I got another Gert on my hands,” he said to himself.

When the Indians went to the stable, the newlyweds went to “papa” Joe.

“Surprised you didn’t use this on B.W.” Slash grinned, nodding toward the gun before hugging his grandfather.

“He’s a dunderhead sometimes, but who isn’t?”

Clarity stepped up and embraced Joe. He was pointedly silent. That was so he wouldn’t mention the breech in custom. She knew from just two weeks of living here that Joe was intemperate of Whites being close to Indians, especially women. It was a convention the man’s granddaughter flaunted at every opportunity.

“You got yourself a lovely woman and a sharpshooter,” the older man said to Slash after stepping back from his granddaughter-in-law. “Now you’ll learn if she can sew, plant, and cook.”

“I do not recall those words in the vows, but I am an admirable learner,” she assured the O’Malley men.

Clarity’s clear eyes drifted to B.W. and Dick Ocean who came up behind Joe—though not too closely. The men had waited to talk to the couple when Joe could also hear.

“I’m real, real sorry, Miss Clarity,” the Louisiana-born driver said, the Bible under his arm as he turned his hat round in his hands. “I hope you forgive me.”

“Your enthusiasm cannot be faulted,” she answered with a quick and easy smile. “The thought was pure even if the action was—”

“Disruptive,” Slash interrupted scoldingly.

“That’s a very good word for the Whip,” laughed Ocean. “Disruptive.”

B.W. scowled at the shotgun rider. “I don’t have to hear that from you, and won’t—lest you want your other leg shot.”

A Massachusetts man of Caribe descent, Ocean was still hobbling from a bullet he had taken two weeks before at Civil Gulch, between Vallicita and Whip Station. Gert’s quick attention and native ointments had helped it to heal quickly. He was able to rejoin B.W. for the delayed trip to San Francisco and, now, for the return to St. Louis.

The ceremony had broken up quickly. There was no celebration for the guests. The family would have one after the coach departed and before the newlyweds rode off to San Diego. The Sunday family had already passed through the big, stone entranceway and B.W. and Ocean left to check on the condition of the stagecoach before heading to the stable.

Though the team was changed here in just ten or fifteen minutes, B.W. was fond of telling impatient passengers, “Fresh horses won’t help if the thoroughbrace tears and y’all drop through the bottom of the coach.”

The driver made sure the luggage and mail bags were secure. There wasn’t much of the former on this trip, but mail was crammed into both the back box and the free seats inside. San Francisco and Los Angeles were seeing an influx of new settlers every month. They were anxious to let folks back east know they were still alive.

The couple took a moment to themselves. They still had to see Clarity’s brother, who had remained by the canopy, lost in pleasant, emotional memories of all that he and his sister had been through as orphans—up through the dire events that had brought them here.

But this isn’t the time for reflection such as that, he reminded himself as the newlyweds approached. This is the time to look ahead to a new life.

Even so, though he thought it, though he hoped it, Merritt Michaels added a silent prayer for his dream to be so. The people they had crossed back in Murray, Kentucky, were powerful . . . and as wicked as any among God’s too-many sinners.

Taking a little time to watch the water bugs as they skidded along the top of the trough, Joe headed inside, as he always did, to size up the passengers. He did it not to pry, not to judge, but to be knowledgeable about the land in which he and his family lived.

Since the end of the War, and in the two years the O’Malley family had been running this station, Joe had watched the West swell with all kinds of people. There was a time, in memory still green, when the entire land west of the Rockies seemed like it was home to just himself and a few other souls. That was when he worked as a scout and buffalo hunter for John Butterfield and his western operations. Then, well before the War, he saw mostly Indians, a few hardy prospectors, and surveyors looking to put in more stage lines, mail routes, or even establish rail lines to the Pacific.

Joe had not yet seen a train but he had seen pictures in books and newspapers and he had heard stories from travelers. He did not believe he would like them or their tracks, which were spiked hard into the ground. It wasn’t like a homestead, which was constantly in use. These rails just lay there empty, most of the time, like scars across the land. And when they were in use, the wheels apparently made a lot of noise and the locomotives spit choking smoke and black grit.

And for what? he wondered. To quickly turn the West into the crowded East. It made no sense to him.

The West already had new merchants and pastors, schoolteachers and reporters, card sharps and loose women—every kind of human being God had fashioned. They were all coming this way to find fresh opportunities.

That in itself was fair. People had first come to the shores of America seeking freedom and a new beginning. But boats took weeks to arrive, not days. He wondered how much the land could sustain.

Joe also wondered what his late wife Dolley would have thought of it all. She had never spoken about much other than the raising of Jackson and the challenges of tending to their little log cabin when Joe was away. Sometimes she talked about foods they’d had to try, like muskrat and buzzard, when cold weather killed their garden and made anything else scarce.

But she did it uncomplaining. She probably would feel the same about trains. She liked people, so whatever damage was done there would be compensation by the benefit of fellowship and new ideas.

Joe missed her steadying good sense. Her death was one of the reasons Joe had decided to set this place up with his son, his daughter-in-law, and their kids. He had a chance to work with ranching O’Malleys in Texas. But here, with the faintest salt water breeze in the air when the wind blew right—here was where he belonged.

Want to make sure the West settles right, he thought as he entered the station. With decent values and law.

That thought made him wonder about the two men who sat before him, comfortable and at their leisure—as if he was the stranger here, not them.

Joe stood a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the pine-wood darkness. He smelled the remains of the meal that had been served, notably the chicory coffee that was presently being drunk with molasses for a sweetener.

Not all of those folks coming west did so from the east. A great many also came north from Mexico, like the two gentlemen who were sitting at the Whip Station table, smoking cigars and drinking their own tequila. The two men were well-dressed, around thirty years old. They had an attitude of affluence about them. One wore a pocket watch with a gold chain, the other a large, sterling silver and onyx sealing-wax seal ring. Joe didn’t know the seal, but he knew the black stone. It was a treasured rock that local Indian tribes used for necklaces.

The cigars didn’t smell cheap and rank either, the way the O’Malley root cellar or outhouse did. The smokes smelled nutty, like when Joe and young Jackson used to toss acorns into campfires.

Except for thin moustaches, the dark-eyed men were clean-shaven. Their hair was black and neatly brushed from their foreheads. They had obviously freshened up after they arrived at the wash basin in an adjoining room. The journey from San Francisco was not friendly to anyone’s grooming.

If the men were Mexican nobility, they might well be looking for a place to settle in the United States. Their kind was not wanted in the Juarista-run state to the south.

Neither Joe nor Sarah engaged the passengers unless their guests spoke first. Most times, people on an hourlong layover during the arduous trip wanted to enjoy the fact that they had legroom and weren’t bouncing. Most of what they had to say included an “ooooh” or some such.

There, too, these men were different. They had been in a mostly empty carriage, it was true, but they were relaxed, conversing softly in their native tongue.

“Señor O’Malley,” said the one who was facing the front door.

Joe looked over at the man. Sanchez, he recalled the name. The Mexican wore a pleasant smile behind a cloud of smoke. He also wore two jeweled rings and a silver chain around his neck, both of which announced his social standing.

“Yes, sir,” Joe replied affably.

“My congratulations on your son’s marriage.”

“Thank you very much, and call me Joe,” he answered. He continued toward the window sill where Sarah had set a freshly baked cherry pie. That was not for the passengers but for the little wedding party to follow the departure of the stagecoach. The women were outside, washing the meal plates by the well. The dogs had roused from their torpor and were snapping up scraps. What they didn’t eat, smaller varmints would.

Gonzalez was sitting opposite Sanchez, his back to Joe. He wore a leather satchel, bulging slightly, over his right shoulder. He turned round to look at his host.

Unlike the first man, this one had a sly look and a long ash on his cigar. He also had a scar that ran from his left ear to his chin. It was old, with spidery stretch marks where the skin had grown over. It looked too fine, too regular to have come from anything but a knife.

“The Brother Whip—he speaks very highly of your family,” Gonzalez said.

Joe stopped. He didn’t know why, but the remark didn’t sit right. Perhaps it was innocent. But it almost sounded like it was somehow a threat.

“Why were you and the driver discussing my family?” Joe asked. His own voice, now, had a trace of menace.

“The proprietor at the Oak Grove—it was he who mentioned you,” the man said.

“That doesn’t tell me why,” Joe responded bluntly.

“Let me think,” Gonzalez said, pressing his lips together in thought. “What were we talking about?”

Joe waited. He knew the folks at Oak Grove, but not well. Their relationship was not the same as it was with Isaiah and his family, who they took to like sun to summer. Station owners from up and down the line met twice a year with representatives of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company at a hotel in Los Angeles. It was not a time for socializing but for business. At least, that’s how Joe took it. He was there representing the future of his children and grandchildren—and perhaps, one day, great-great-grandchildren, the Lord willing. After those meetings, he was itchy to get out of his best clothes. He was happy to talk to the St. Louis boys about profits, but not about dinner menus. When the work was done, he did not delay but set out for home. Even if it was after sunset, he would get some distance away from the dirty city, then sleep in the plains or by a clean, flowing river. Los Angeles and even San Diego made him feel like the clothes he wore when he went to them: they were too tight.

Gonzalez was still thinking, and Joe was still waiting. Noticing his ash, the Mexican dropped it into a copper ashtray.

“I remember,” he said, then pointed the cigar at Joe. “We were discussing travel from Mazatlán to San Francisco, Señor O’Malley. Sanchez and I—we were trying to determine whether it was best to go by sea or by land.”

“I suppose,” Joe said, “that depends on whethe. . .