The Butcher of Baxter Pass

Book 3: Hell's Half Acre

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone turn up the heat for one heck of a showdown with lawman Jess Casey—when the devil goes down to Texas...

THE MOST HATED MAN IN THE SOUTH

They call him "The Butcher of Baxter Pass," the notorious former Union General who massacred 200 Conferate prisoners—just because he could. Now it's Sheriff Jess Casey's unenviable job to protect the bloodthirsty murderer from those who want him dead, which turns out be pretty much everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line. When the Butcher arrives in Fort Worth—followed by the vengeance-hungry McNamara clan—Casey has to swallow his disgust and uphold the law, even if it means saving a mass murderer's hide. But it won't be easy. He's outgunned by a dozen ex-Rebel avengers who lost three of their kin to the Butcher and will shoot anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately for them, Sheriff Casey is the one man who's brave enough—and crazy enough—to try and stop them...

Release date: September 26, 2017

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Dallas Mercury, June 14, 1865:

Monday, 7 a.m.

Winter had settled over Tarrant County, Texas, which made Sheriff Jess Casey quite happy.

January meant a lot of things in Fort Worth. It meant that the stockyards were practically empty of cattle, which meant that Hell’s Half Acre’s saloons and gambling halls and cribs and gutters were mostly empty of cowboys. The bulk of the notorious district’s gamblers had departed for warmer climes and hotter decks of cards. Luke Short had gone to San Antonio. Others had opted for Arizona Territory or New Orleans. Railroad workers had blown off most of their steam during the summer and fall, and now they were settling down for the winter. The trains still arrived, but not many people got off in this cow town, and those that did were welcomed here to peddle their merchandise or pay their respects. Legitimate businessmen. Women visiting families. Families relocating, for Fort Worth kept right on booming.

Kurt Koenig, Fort Worth’s city marshal, and Jess’s and the marshal’s deputies had taken a train that eventually would deposit the lawmen and a handful of prisoners at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, which meant that the jail cells in the sheriff ’s office were also empty. Oh, sure, Koenig had asked Jess to look after the town while he was gone. Like Jess wasn’t always doing town work in addition to county work, but this time, Jess didn’t mind. Winter. January. Cold, clear, but pleasant.

This time of year, what would he be doing other than patrolling the streets for dead dogs and picking up trash? Maybe there might be a drunk to arrest, or some vagrant to send along his way, but ... Jess had other things in mind.

Winter. In the old days, back when Jess had been cowboying, winter would usually mean riding the grub line, drifting from ranch to ranch for a meal and maybe a bunk for the night in exchange for some trivial work: Chopping wood. Mending some tack. Feeding the stock or mucking a few stalls. Maybe digging a hole for a new privy if picks and shovels could cut through frozen ground. But now that Jess had become well established as the law in Fort Worth, having survived a slew of gunfights and fistfights and drunken brawls and sober fights, having been rewarded with a nice rocking chair and a fancy gold badge—but mostly with his life—Jess figured that winter meant catching up on some much-needed, much-appreciated sleep.

He had dragged that old oak rocking chair—the one Mayor Harry Stout had awarded him (by salvaging it from the City Hall garbage)—from outside his office (actually the jail), where he liked to sit and rock and watch people ride down Belknap Street, inside, where the hard-coal Duke Canyon stove kept the front office toasty and the coffee warm enough.

The Regulator clock let him know that it was seven in the morning, maybe a half hour before sunrise, though gray light already crept in through the slits in the window shades. He could sleep now; sleep as long as he wanted, to noon or midnight or February. The hard coal would keep the stove pleasant for hours, and Jess had finally gotten everything perfect. The pillow behind his head, the one he had procured from one of the, ahem, “sporting houses” in Hell’s Half Acre, felt comfortable, and smelled really sweet, like one of Ma Shirley’s girls. He had the rocker positioned perfectly, his hat had been pulled down just at the right spot, and his boots, crossed at the ankles, had found a comfortable place on the edge of his desk.

Now all he had to do was think about what he would like to dream about. A cold beer maybe. A good horse. A fifteen-pound catfish hooked. A morning without interruption. A winter with nothing to do but... .

The door opened, letting in a cold wind, and feet stamped on the floor. The door slammed. Jess Casey did not budge. He had found the perfect position and was not about to change anything.

“Marshal!”

Jess did not answer. One of these days Clint Stowe might remember at least that Jess was the county sheriff and Kurt Koenig was the city marshal.

“You awake?”

Jess’s eyes remained closed. He could hear Clint Stowe shaking a piece of paper.

“No,” Jess said. He wet his lips and wondered if he could just imagine an office without a Clint Stowe.

“He’s a-comin’!” Clint Stowe said urgently.

Maybe, Jess thought, if I just tried counting sheep. He had never done that before. After all, Jess had started out cowboying back when he was fourteen years old, some twenty years earlier. Cowboys did not count sheep. Unless, of course, they were killing them.

“Sheriff Casey?” Clint Stowe pleaded.

Well, since old Clint had gotten Jess’s title right, he had to react to that. Slowly, Jess’s eyes opened, and he removed his brown hat.

Clint stood in front of the door, still shaking that flimsy piece of yellow paper in his right hand as if it were burning hot and he was trying to shake out the flames. If Jess guessed right, the temperature outside was hovering around thirty degrees, but Clint had left the telegrapher’s office without his bowler, woolen scarf, or his overcoat. He stood there in his cotton shirt and sleeve garters. Not only that, beads of sweat, which had somehow not formed into bits of ice, rolled down his forehead.

The telegrapher had to be in his fifties, with a head as bald as a cue ball except for that thin band of gray that ended right above his ears but, surprisingly, produced enough dandruff for ten or fifteen teenagers. He had a potbelly, long fingers meant for tapping out Morse code on a telegraph, plaid woolen trousers, and scuffed-up black gaiters, which, Jess noticed, had been pulled onto the wrong feet. Clint usually sat in the office by the depot barefooted. Probably because he hailed from Alabama and still was not used to wearing shoes.

“He’s a-comin’,” Clint repeated.

Jess nodded. “Well ... ,” Jess picked the hat off his lap and began to return it to his head. “Let him come.”

“But it’s ... him.”

With a heavy sigh, Jess tossed the hat on his desk, uncrossed his ankles, brought his feet down to the floor, and leaned forward in the old oak rocker. He snapped his fingers and waited for Clint Stowe to deliver the telegram.

“It’s from Paul Parkin,” Clint told him.

Parkin was the city constable in Dallas, roughly thirty miles east across rolling Texas prairie.

What does a Dallas constable want with me? Jess asked himself as Clint gave him the telegraph slip. Dallas and Fort Worth mixed like oil and water, like cowboys and farmers, like ...

In a matter of seconds, Jess Casey was wide awake.

Yeah, Dallas and Fort Worth did not mix. The two cities were rivals in everything, so Paul Parkin had run Lincoln Dalton out of Dallas and sent him to Fort Worth. Not that Jess Casey could blame Parkin. Had the Butcher of Baxter Pass arrived in Fort Worth first, Jess would have run that damn Yankee east to Dallas.

“You just get this?” Jess asked.

“Uh-huh. Came in a little past six.”

After a quick glance at the Regulator, Jess scowled at Clint Stowe.

“Well,” the telegrapher began, and stuttered, and stopped, and wet his lips, and finally found a handkerchief in his trousers pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. “Well, sir, I figured the mayor should know ... and ... um ... well ...”

“The telegram was sent to me,” Jess said.

“Yeah. And I brung it to you ... just as fast as ... well ... you know ...”

“Don’t you telegraphers have to take some kind of oath about ... confidentiality?”

“Confound what?”

Jess moved toward the wall where his shell belt hung, along with the holstered .44-40-caliber Colt.

“What time does the train get in from Dallas?” Jess asked.

“Which one?”

“The next one!”

“Seven thirty-seven, if it’s on time.”

The gun belt was buckled on now, and Jess had pulled out the Colt, opened the loading gate, and was spinning the cylinder. Five fresh shells. He wondered if he should fill it with six. Most men—most smart men—kept the chamber under the hammer empty to prevent that accidental discharge, which might blow off a toe or a foot or a leg. Jess didn’t consider himself much of a gunman, certainly no fast-draw specialist. As a cowboy, he had used a Colt primarily as a hammer when he drew the unfortunate duty of riding a fence line. As the law of Tarrant County, Texas, however ...

“You can go now, Clint,” Jess said, and plucked a brass cartridge from the belt.

“Where?”

Back to Tuscaloosa, please, Jess thought, but held his tongue. Instead, he just glared some more, and as the telegrapher turned to the door, he added, “Clint ... if you get another telegram from Dallas, bring it to me ... first.”

“Yes, sir.” The door let in a numbing blast of wind. The door slammed shut as Jess snapped the gate shut on the revolver and dropped it back into the holster.

He moved toward the coatrack and fetched his Mackinaw. That old red-and-black-plaid coat had been with him forever. Smelled like it, too. “‘You might be too young to remember him,’” Jess said as he slipped on the woolen coat. No, Jess wasn’t that young, or green. He had been, what, six years old or right around there when the Civil War—no, the War for Southern Independence—had erupted. Too young to fight, of course, but he had certainly killed a lot of invading Yankees back when he was playing war while his older neighbors were fighting that horde of blue-coated tyrants. Anyone who had grown up in Texas or the South remembered the war, and no one would ever forget Brigadier General Lincoln Everett Dalton and what he had done to two hundred paroled soldiers at Baxter Pass, Ohio.

Shot them down like dogs.

The Butcher of Baxter Pass.

“Thank you, Paul Parkin,” Jess said, and added a few phrases that insulted the Dallas constable’s mother as much as Parkin himself. Next, Jess stood in front of the gun case and thought about grabbing his Henry rifle. Instead, he withdrew a Parker twelve-gauge with the sawed-off barrels. Opening the breech, he found two shells already chambered. He snapped the barrels tight and grabbed a handful of fresh loads, which he dropped into the pocket of his Mackinaw.

Another glance at the clock on the wall. Then at the stove. He could use some coffee but not to keep him awake. No, Paul Parkin and Clint Stowe had remedied that. Later, he thought.

If I’m still alive.

He opened the door, stepped into the cold, predawn air, and almost got trampled to death by a herd of angry citizens.

“Casey!” Big-bellied Harry Stout pointed a fat finger at Jess. “Where are your deputies?”

Stout wasn’t alone. Through the white vapor of breath and flaring nostrils, Jess could make out bowler hats and even some bell crown hats, and woolen caps, and coats and ties, and a few diamond stickpins. Even a dressmaker and the Methodist preacher’s wife.

Jess wondered if Clint Stowe had told all of these people about the impending arrival of General Dalton.

“You and Kurt and the county commissioner and the district judge sent them to Huntsville,” Jess reminded the appropriately named Mayor Stout. “Remember?”

“He ain’t stayin’ here!” someone drawled.

“He ain’t welcome here,” another man said.

“Maybe the Butcher wants to murder some more of us Texans!”

Jess sighed. Tucking the Parker’s stock underneath his shoulder, he reached for his pocket watch. Only ... he must have left it... . Now, he remembered. He had stuck the old Illinois in his desk’s top drawer, thinking that he wouldn’t care what time it was until spring.

The mayor, however, had brought out his watch, opened the hunter case, and was saying, “It’s—”

“Thanks, Mayor Stout,” Jess said. He glanced at the time, shut the case, and slipped the heavy, gold watch into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m just borrowing this. I’m going to the depot, and when General—”

“General!” someone spit. “You mean murderer.”

“When Dalton arrives, I’ll tell him to stay on and head west. Let the town marshal in Abilene worry about the Butcher.”

Back in the early 1870s, when the railway had been chartered, the idea was to send trains all the way to San Diego, California, but the Texas and Pacific had only reached Abilene. Jess hoped Abilene’s town law wouldn’t send General Dalton back East.

“Now ... if you gents will excuse me, I’ll—”

Gunfire erupted from—where else at this time in the morning?—Hell’s Half Acre.

The Butcher of Baxter Pass and Stout’s citizens’ committee would have to wait.

Frigid air left his lungs burning by the time Jess reached the White Elephant Saloon in the cow town’s notorious anything-goes district. Two saloon girls stood in the muddy street, shivering like crazy in their skimpy attire. The bartender, his face pale, had pasted himself against the outdoor wall. One drunk was urinating in the horse trough, and another squatted beneath an empty hitching rail with both fingers in his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.

Jess saw the splintered wood from three bullets in the batwing doors.

A horse farted, and Jess stepped away from the stink.

“Bennie,” he called out.

The bartender craned his head but refused to leave the front of the saloon, as if he were holding up the wooden façade.

Bennie managed to free one finger.

One man. But how many shots had he fired? Better yet, how many guns did he pack?

A muzzle flash lit up the dark interior of the saloon, and glass shattered, which forced Bennie the barkeep to squeeze his eyes back shut and return that extended pointer finger into a tightly balled fist.

“Yeeee-hiiiiiiii!” Spurs chimed, drawing closer to the doorway, so Jess Casey leveled the Parker and thumbed back the double hammers. The girls took their shaking bodies a bit farther down the street.

Jess saw the figure first, mostly a big Texas hat, and then the doors swung open, sending pieces of the shot-up door falling back inside. A tall man in shotgun chaps and tall boots with Lone Stars inlaid in the uppers staggered onto the boardwalk. A smoking Remington .44 was in the man’s right hand, although the barrel—for the time being—was pointed at the ground.

He was leathery and hard and drunk. The spurs were big, and so was the man’s head, and his face bore the reminders of too many chuckleheaded horses and even more saloon brawls. Bunkhouse brawls, too. Hoot Newton had a reputation for fighting anyone, anywhere, though he had never tangled with Jess Casey. Which was a good thing, Jess figured, because Jess had never seen Hoot lose a fight.

“Hoot.” Jess took a chance and lowered the hammers on the shotgun. “What are you doing?”

For a few seasons, they had worked together on Nathan Swift’s ranch. Swift, of course, had wound up firing Hoot Newton. Said Hoot made it hard to hire good cowboys who had better sense than getting their ribs broken and noses busted, and, hell’s fire, Swift had grown tired of paying doctor bills. That had been three years back. Of course, Swift had also fired Jess Casey, which is one reason Jess found himself wearing a fancy star on his new blue bib-front shirt instead of riding the grub line this January.

Hoot Newton turned and narrowed his eyes, which refused to focus. His mouth drooled, and he staggered a bit, but he managed to keep his feet and his hold on the Remington. The pistol wasn’t one of those late-model Remingtons, either, but an old cap-and-ball relic from the days of the Rebellion. Most men would’ve had that antique converted to take brass cartridges, but not Hoot Newton. He still used copper percussion caps, black powder, round balls, and grease.

Finally, Hoot smiled. “Long Jack Muldoon!” he said, chuckling. “As I live and breathe.”

Yeah, Hoot was really in his cups. Long Tom—not Jack—Muldoon had cowboyed with them, too, and Jess Casey didn’t look one thing—thank the Lord—like that old cowboy, though Jess certainly was getting more and more stove up.

“It’s Jess,” Jess said. “Jess Casey.”

“Who?”

Jess sighed. “What are you doing, Hoot?” he repeated.

“Celebratin’.” He raised his pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The drunk underneath the hitching rail grimaced. The one who had been urinating turned and staggered deeper into Hell’s Half Acre. The pistol, however, only puffed, though Jess couldn’t tell if the old percussion cap had misfired or if the Remington was indeed empty.

“It’s ... Robert E. Lee’s birth”—a burp, then—“day!”

Hoot stepped off the boardwalk, grinning, slurring, slobbering, and said, “Let’s have a drink, Jeff.”

“Pard,” Jess said. “I’ve got just the place to drink,” he added, thinking on his feet, despite the fact that the sun was just rising over toward Dallas way. “I have a bottle of Old Overholt,” he said. “Good rye whiskey.” Hoot wrapped his arm around Jess’s shoulder and almost pulled the both of them to the muddy, cold street.

Jess tried to hold his breath. And a new bar of Pears soap, he thought. Which he would hate to use on Hoot Newton.

Bennie the Bartender moved from his spot against the wall, nodded a pale thanks at Jess, and went through the batwing doors. The saloon girls followed. The batwing doors sang out, and the drunk underneath the hitching rail keeled over.

Jess tried to remind himself to come fetch that walking whiskey keg later and have him sleep it off in a cell.

With Hoot hanging on Jess’s shoulder, they wandered back toward Main Street, Hoot singing—if one could call it singing:

I do not gives a damn I’m glad I fit ag’in her

Fer anything I done

They were just about to the office when the train whistle blew.

Monday, 7:30 a.m.

Jess stopped and stepped from underneath Hoot Newton’s heavy arms. He expected the drunken old cowboy to fall facedown in the street, but Hoot kept his feet, though he swayed every which way but loose.

Seven thirty-seven, the telegrapher had told him. Jeff was opening the mayor’s watch. The train from Dallas had not come in late. The damned thing was early, which rarely happened.

“Hoot,” Jess said. “I gotta meet somebody. Important.” He stopped, tried to think.

He was just a cowpuncher with dreams of making enough money to buy his own ranch. Run his own cattle. Ride for his own brand. He really had no clue how this law job was supposed to work. Especially with no deputies, and no Marshal Kurt Koenig.

“What ... about ... burp ... our drink?” Hoot Newton slurred.

“I’ll fetch an extra bottle,” Jess said, which made Hoot grin and drool some more.

“Hell,” Jess added. “I’ll need an extra bottle. Wait here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

He started running. The sun was rising. Hoot Newton kept swaying, and Fort Worth was slowly waking up.

Thick, pulsating black smoke pretty much ruined whatever sunrise was shaping up to be. Not that sunrises ever meant much to Jess Casey, especially in Tarrant County. He stopped to catch his breath as he stepped onto the platform and got out of the way of a black porter who almost trampled him. Jess wet his chapped lips and looked at the train.

The 4-4-0 locomotive was one of those relatively new Class J’s from Baldwin, and not many people were disembarking from the coaches it pulled. Jess stopped himself and tried to refocus. He had been looking for some monster in a Union shell jacket, maybe a fancy kepi with a French braid. Cloven hoofs and a pointy tail and horns sprouting from the top of his head. The war had been over nigh twenty-five years now, and whatever the Butcher of Baxter Pass had been in 1865, he’d have to be practically an old man by this day and age. Jess spotted a drummer in a tan plaid sack suit and another man helping an elderly woman off the train. She certainly wasn’t General Dalton, and the man was one of the station hands Jess had seen in town though he couldn’t pin a name on the gent.

He shifted the shotgun, and a new thought crept into his mind.

What if Paul Parkin, Dallas city constable, had been playing Jess Casey, thirty-a-month-cowhand turned reluctant lawman, for a fool? Get the greenhorn’s goat. Tell him that the most despised man south of the Mason-Dixon Line was coming to torment his fair city. See if Casey would arrest a drummer or a spinster by mistake. Or if Casey would soil his britches.

He wouldn’t put it past anyone from Dallas. People there thumbed their noses at the Panther City.

That’s when one of the wooden doors to a freight car slid open, and Jess watched a ramp fall into place. Briefly, still the cowboy with a deep appreciation for good horses, he forgot about Lincoln Everett Dalton and looked with envy at the fine sorrel stallion coming down the ramp, followed by a black Morgan and maybe the best-looking Tennessee walker that Jess had ever laid his eyes on. Goo. . .