A Bad Day to Die: The Adventures of Lucius “By God” Dodge, Texas Ranger (Lucius Dodge Westerns Book 1) Read online

  He always said, “Lucius, cover from anything between you and heaven can make a fifteen-degree difference in the sun’s power to bore a hole in your head.”

  Just about the time everything seemed on the way to being so good you couldn’t hardly beat it with a stick, feller named Slayton Bone stormed up, one day, heading a pack of gun-totin’ animals known for scaring the hell out of everybody in the county. Their reputation preceded them sure as the smell wafting off a week-dead animal—mighty unpleasant bunch. Sported a well-earned reputation for killing folks without having anything like a good reason.

  Whole damned gang rode into our grassless yard stomping chickens and scaring hell out of the dogs. Forced everybody inside, or onto a porch. I stood next to my pa, and heard every word ole Slayton said. Arrogant son of a bitch wanted our ranch, and had got right blunt about his desires several times before. He’d made generous offers. Pa forthrightly turned all of them down.

  “Dodge, how’re you and the missus doing this hot, summer morning?” he asked. Swept his palm-leaf sombrero off, and wiped at a dripping shiny pate with a red bandanna the size of a saddle blanket. Smell of horse manure, people sweat, chicken droppings, whiskey, and every other kind of nose-twisting odor imaginable stirred in the barely moving air. Made my mother cover her face with an apron, and back deeper into the doorway.

  Everyone on our side of the question had managed to get pretty well armed by the time all them lathered-up animals finally came to a hoof-stamping stop. Ain’t no way Bone and his bunch couldn’t see it. Pa cradled an iron-framed Henry in the crook of his left arm. I had a couple of Colt’s pistols cocked and ready behind my back. My brother Denton slouched in a strap rocker with a long-barreled shotgun across his lap. Burl, my other brother, who’d arrived five years after we vacated Louisiana, favored a Spenser’s carbine he’d carried at a place named Gettysburg. He stood with several of the hired men, who lurked in the noonday shadows and scratched at their cartridge belts with nervous trigger fingers.

  Once the flying dust settled some, sweet smell of baking bread from my mother’s oven pushed all them other odors aside, and tickled my nose. Pa smiled, and glanced over the faces of Bone’s iniquitous gang of cutthroats. The six heavily armed men stayed on horses that twitched under the assault of an army of flies bedeviling their legs and rumps.

  I could feel the trouble oozing off those ole boys. Most of them shuddered and shook like chute-crazed cattle. You’d a-had to have been carrying a pretty full load of stupid not to recognize the whole festering state of affairs was about to pimple its way to a nasty head. All us Dodge boys tried to motion our mother inside. But she refused, kept to the door, and listened.

  When he finally had the situation pretty well reasoned out, Pa eyeballed Bone and said, “Well, Slayton, if life was any better I couldn’t stand it. And the county sheriff, if’n he was worth a tinker’s damn, wouldn’t allow it. Probably arrest me. Tell the judge I was just too happy to be sober. Must be bootleggin’ on top of my other life endeavors. But I don’t think none of that means much more’n a gob of spit today. Way I’ve got it figured, you didn’t ride this far, and scare hell out of my chickens, just to inquire as to my health and welfare. Guess you’ve come to talk about buying our land again.”

  A ferretlike look crept across Bone’s face as he mopped the inside of his hat and said, “That I have, Dodge. Recently discovered a neglected account in Grady Sims’s First State Bank. More money than I realized. And, turns out, the perfect amount for a little land speculation. Thought a sweeter offer might get you to reconsider your last rejection.”

  A blind schoolteacher could have seen Bone’s fuse was getting pretty short with answers Pa sent his direction during previous meetings. He stuffed the sweat-stained hat back on his glistening head, and smiled like a greedy rattlesnake that’d just discovered a fat mouse under a woodpile.

  Pa tried to maintain a friendly front, but twisted at the waist just enough to bring the Henry’s muzzle in line with One-eyed Whitey Krebbs. Krebbs sat at attention on a dappled gray to Bone’s immediate right. Story that got told, most often, said a bear took Whitey’s left eye back when he made a meager living as a trapper up in the Rockies, around Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Some even said the ragged slash on his face made the man mean, and he’d come to realize his real calling lay in killing people for money, rather than unarmed bears.

  However he’d managed to get tumblebug ugly and outright vicious, ole Whitey screwed his head so far around, you could barely see the greasy, crust-covered leather patch over his mangled eye. Whole of Lampasas County knew Slayton Bone for a liar, thief, and scoundrel. But One-Eyed Whitey Krebbs enjoyed the hard-earned reputation as a widely feared man-killer that wouldn’t hesitate if encouraged to do murder by his soulless, land-coveting boss.

  I noticed Whitey had removed the thumb and forefinger of his right-hand glove and, with a ragged fingernail, kept tapping the butt of the Colt lying across his belly. A hand-tooled, double-loop Mexican holster cradled the weapon. His crooked grin revealed tobacco-stained teeth, and, more than once, he sent spittle flying between his horse’s ears. Juicy wads landed in the dirt before they reached the steps of our porch—and my father’s feet. Whitey often missed his mark, and he’d decorated that big gray’s head so many times, the poor animal’s ears were stained brown.

  No invitation, or friendliness, left in Pa’s voice when he said, “You can’t make an offer sweet enough to get this land, Slayton. We traveled hundreds of miles, found it, paid for it in our own blood, and ain’t about to sell. Why don’t you give up on the effort; write it down in your ledger as one of your failures.”

  Bone dragged the bandanna over his face again, scrubbed at his neck, and leaned forward as if to emphasize his words. “Well, now, I cain’t oblige you with giving up on the proposition, Dodge. You know, well as I do, this here land is mighty important to me.” He leaned back in the saddle, and waved majestically at the heavens. “Only plot left in these parts keeping me from owning sunrise to sundown. Gonna have to turn the place loose sooner or later, ole pard. Just ain’t no two ways about it.” Last couple of sentences came across like a threat—brutal, obvious, and mean.

  Krebbs spit another stringy gob of tobacco juice and mumbled, “Ain’t no two ways about it. You Dodges gonna have to give ’er up.”

  Denton, who’d always been something of a hothead and openly hated Krebbs, caressed the polished stock of his 12-gauge Greener and snapped, “Well, it ain’t gonna be today, or anytime in your foreseeable future, Bone. So why don’t you take this pack of egg-sucking dogs, along with your mealymouthed hired killer, and get back across the river to that snake pit you call a ranch.”

  Jesus Christ, I thought Krebbs’s one good eye was gonna pop right out of his claw-scarred face. “Come down off ’n that porch, Denton, and we’ll settle our differences right here, right now. Nothing would give me more pleasure than leavin’ your sorry carcass a-twitchin’ amidst the mud, blood, and chicken shit.”

  My brother chuckled, pulled the hammers back on his shotgun, and snorted, “Keep hearing all kinds of rumors ’bout how fast you are with that fancy slick-barreled pistol, Whitey. Know some of our friends have watched you murder members of their families. But I’d be willing to bet, no matter how fast you are, or claim to be, you can’t match my shotgun from this distance. Make the wrong move today, you goggle-eyed son of a bitch, and I’ll splatter you, and that ugly gray horse, all over this part of Lampasas County.”

  If all the big talk from Brother Denton threw a scare into Slayton Bone’s one-eyed gunman, he sure as hell didn’t let on like it bothered him much. Several of his friends moved their animals a few steps away from him, though, and Bone kind of sidled off with them. Most folks knew us Dodges could be a handful, if things didn’t go our way. Them boys must have figured there was less chance of getting hit when some of ours came flying back in their general direction, once Whitey finally decided to put hot lead in the air.

  By and by, I got to
thinking they’d left ole Whitey kind of hanging out there in the wind alone. At least it seemed that way at the time. Looking back on the thing, from the safety of the present, I can say with damned little or no equivocation Brother Denton seriously misjudged his competition. We all did. No one could have figured on what happened next.

  Shamed by the bold-as-brass challenge to his pistoleering manhood, Whitey tilted a scarlet face even further back in an effort to get a better view of his opposition through that one good window to the murderous workings of a lethal brain. Rolled the milky-blue thing around in its socket a time or two. His odd, bug-eyed countenance had a somewhat spellbinding effect on all of us, I think. For certain sure, I couldn’t stop looking at that lonely eyeball twirling around in his ugly, bear-scratched skull.

  But Good Lord Almighty, I still don’t know, to this day, how he managed to get his pistol out, and shoot my father, quicker than God could get there to stop it. Whitey was so close to Pa when he fired, the concussion from his .45 almost knocked me down too. Pa died before his knees hit the porch planks.

  In a flash, Denton had the Greener up, but he’d spent too much time worrying about Whitey, and not enough watching another shooter off to his right. Erasmus Delaquoix popped my brother with shots from a long-barreled Schofield. Whole damnable bunch contributed to some general spraying of lead that riddled the front of the house. Then, the bloodletting scum spurred terrified animals away from the scene of their most recent killings.

  Blue whistlers cut holes around the murderers’ ears as they fled. Fired all twelve of mine as fast as I could thumb them off. Know for a fact, at least one of those found a home, but somehow he stayed horsed. Heard later, his friends had to take him straight to Lampasas for some real, honest-to-God doctoring. Story was he almost died. Shame he didn’t.

  Burl unsaddled two of them cowardly son of bitches with his Spenser. Some of their gamer friends turned back, and snatched them boys up. Didn’t kill them, but I’m pretty sure the wounded duo carried Burl’s lead to their graves a few years later.

  It was all too little, and way too late. My father, and older brother, lay deader than the withered flowers decorating the altar of last week’s Sunday service, over at Reverend Castleberry’s Baptist church. Someone’s stray lead had shattered Ma’s arm too, and for a spell afterward, we feared the mangled limb might have to come off. All because a greed-driven murderer like Slayton Bone wanted land he couldn’t have.

  The following day we committed our dead to eternal slumber on a hill behind the house set off especially for family burials. My two-year-old brother Grady rested inside the iron fence up there. He died of the diphtheria some years after our arrival in Texas. We placed our most recently departed next to him, so they could all spend time without end together.

  My mother, a woman of uncommon strength, wept enough to refloat Noah’s boat. Her bitter tears seared a blazing path through my heart, and hardened me for what I knew must come to pass. Stood by those freshly covered graves, held her close, and whispered, “They’ll pay for what they did, Mother. If it takes the rest of my life, they’ll pay. Slayton Bone’s gonna be first. With God as my witness, I swear it.”

  Being as Burl was the only other one of us boys left, I made him stay at home. He wanted to go along. Did some mighty fancy talking to make him understand he had to take care of Ma and the land. Hell of a responsibility to put on him, but I knew he could carry the freight. Pa always said a man never finds his destiny—it finds him. Think he might have been right about that one.

  Got myself loaded for bear, kissed everyone good-bye, and headed for Bone’s scorpion’s lair of a ranch. His main house sat on a nice piece of grass about twenty miles north of us, on the west side of the Colorado. I fully anticipated drenching every blade of it with blood.

  2

  “. . . DO HAVE MY PRIORITIES. GOT TO KILL YOU FIRST.”

  HELL, I KNEW Bone and his bunch of murdering scum expected me. Sweet Weeping Jesus, you just don’t kill a man’s father, and brother, then shoot his mother right in front of his face, and not expect some serious vengeance to drop upon your head. About the only real law a man could depend on, out in the wild places, rested in the rifle he slept with and the pistol on his hip. Anyone bold enough to think they could murder several members of the same family, and get away unpunished, had to have been sticking his finger in too deep when he picked his nose.

  Figured on at least eight, maybe ten, of those boys who doubled as gunmen and ranch hands. So, I took my time. Spent most of three days watching them through my long glass from the bushes and brambles around a ranch house ole Slayton called The Devil’s Roost. Hard to keep from being spotted. But by the third day, my opposition had relaxed its guard considerable. Suppose they figured, seeing as nothing wayward had occurred since their latest killings, the Dodge family hadn’t been able to gut up and do what was required. To this very moment, I think they felt like we’d been buffaloed, didn’t have the huevos grandes necessary to punish their transgressions. Course, they’d made a serious error in judgment. Damned deadly one, as a matter of fact. They’d pissed in their own well, as my pa used to say.

  In spite of all my spyglass work, never did locate them murdering bastards Whitey or Erasmus. Bone stuck to the house, always kept at least a pair, sometimes three, of his hired thugs with him, day and night.

  But, sure as flames flick around the edges of Hell’s front door, everyone has a weakness or a blind spot. Didn’t take me long to find Bone’s. See, he spent at least ten minutes every morning out on his porch, giving instructions to the ranch help. Then, he took breakfast with two bodyguards there, once them cowboys had all headed out for the day’s work. Soon as I got his habits lined up in my mind, his death was an absolute certainty. Little piece of advice to all those who might be contemplating an act of Biblical retribution—when it comes to cold-blooded murder, mis amigos, patience is always your best friend.

  Somewheres around midnight of the fourth day, I tied my blue roan, Grizz, to a stand of stumpy trees, ’bout half a mile from The Roost’s main house. Left a nose bag to keep him happy and quiet. Strapped Pa’s Henry to my back, and spent most of a moonless night crawling for the barn. Made the hayloft ’bout the time a rooster got everyone up and moving around. Covered myself with straw, and waited. Heard the help ride out for the day’s work just after daylight. Climbed down, and snaked my way around the house to the breakfast porch.

  Sons of bitches didn’t see me till I’d walked right up on them. With no kind of effort at all, I could have spit on the top of Johnson Keeler’s head after I stopped directly behind his chair. Across the table, Bone looked up from his breakfast and spotted me. His fork hovered over the plate, circling between eggs and bacon like a confused buzzard.

  “I’ll just be goddamned if it ain’t Lucius By-God Dodge,” he snorted like a man dismissing a bothersome insect.

  Enrique Esparza, the third man in the group, dropped his eating utensils and mumbled, “Jesus Maria,” made the sign of the cross over his chest, and went for his pistol.

  Dumbest, and last, thing the stupid bastard ever did. We couldn’t have been more than six feet apart at the time. He tried to hide the move with a napkin. Didn’t work. I blasted him dead center. Big chunk of slow-moving lead punched through his breastbone, knocked a hole the size of my fist in his back, and lifted him out of the chair. Impact pitched him through the porch rail into a patch of water-starved wildflowers, struggling to grow along the gravel walk from the hitching post. Just goes to show that if you’re dumber than the head on a hammer, you shouldn’t try to do two things at the same time. Especially if one of them might get you killed graveyard dead.

  Poor ole Johnson Keeler’s luck ran out, right in front of me. His boss hurried the only shot he managed to get off. Guess Bone must have thought he could shoot through Keeler, and hit me. That one didn’t work for damned sure. He only managed to send one of his own bodyguards to hell in a heartbeat. Course it saved me the trouble. I kept my place b
ehind Johnson, used his corpse as a shield, leaned over, and pushed the Henry’s muzzle against Slayton’s chest. He dropped the smoking pistol on the table, raised his hands, and mouthed off like he had me under the gun. I’m still amazed at the nervy display the man put on.

  “Didn’t think any of you leftover Dodges actually had sand enough to pull off a move as brazen as this here. Have all my boys looking for a military-style assault from your whole camp. Got a dozen men out watching. Cain’t believe you snuck up on me all by your lonesome, boy. Damn sight bolder than I’d of ever believed possible, for any of your sorry clan.”

  Shoved the Henry’s muzzle deeper into the slab of muscle across his chest. Venom came boiling out of me. “Well, looks like you mis-thought yourself again, Slayton. Like you did with my father. Now, you murdering polecat, is there anyone else in the house?”

  He leaned back in his chair. Brutal lout’s composure was nothing short of amazing. Dead men within a few feet of him, and he acted like we were just passing the time of day. “The cook. He’s a Chinky feller. Don’t speak much English. Makes a damned fine flapjack, though. Why don’t you sit down, and enjoy one. Blood on these eggs, but he can fry me up some more. We can talk over this unfortunate situation. Maybe work somethin’ out.”

  Couldn’t believe the absolute effrontery of the son of a bitch. For about half a second, the vision of us having breakfast, within spitting distance of a pair of oozing corpses, flashed across my brain.

  “Where’s One-Eyed Whitey and Erasmus, you snake-bellied bastard?”

  “Fired ’em. Wasn’t supposed to be no shooting yesterday, Lucius. Not in my plans a’tall. Those boys took it upon theirselves to make some real poor decisions. Felt so bad ’bout your father I run ’em off. Heard Whitey say they was headed for Fort Worth. Bet you everything in my poke, they’ll be in the Indian Nations soon as their drinking money runs out and they’ve gone through all the whores in Hell’s Half Acre. You’ve probably got about another four or five days to catch ’em whilst they’re still in town. Might want to get moving that direction. Already wasted almost a week. They could both be gone by now.”