The Baron Range Read online

  “Well, Anson, row us out to the Mary E,” Martin said.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Anson said as his father pulled the line inside the boat. He grinned as the oars dug in and he pulled away from the dock and turned the boat. He thought it was a fine life being a sailor. No chiggers, no mosquitoes, no Apaches. He couldn’t understand why his father would leave the sea for such hard work as raising cattle.

  None of them noticed the man standing in the shade of an awning jutting out from a small fish market set back from the embarcadero. He watched the three men in the dinghy leave the dock and struck a lucifer on his boot heel, lit a small cigarro, sucked the smoke into his lungs and blew it out of a mouth full of gold teeth.

  He turned to the man standing next to him wearing a striped shirt and flared trousers, a large black belt with a flintlock pistol hanging from the side by its flange.

  “Well, looks like Jerry’s going to buy him a boat, Hoxie.”

  “He picked him a purty one, Sam.”

  Sam Cullers slapped his companion on the back. “Go get Lars and tell him to get the rowboat ready. We’ll go out there tonight before Winfield gets back aboard.”

  “Sam, you are a larcenous sonofabitch.”

  “I’m only goin’ after what’s owed me, Hoxie.”

  “Says you.”

  “Yeah, says me. Get your ass a-haulin’.”

  Hoxie left the shade of the awning and wended his way down the boardwalk, passing stevedores carrying cargo on their shoulders, never hearing the gulls scream overhead as they dove at the fish in the carts. Beyond, nets dried in the sun along the curved shoreline as killdeer ran in and out, picking up scraps from the hundreds of broken clamshells littering the beach.

  15

  MARTIN COMPLETED THE deal with Jerome Winfield that evening in a Galveston tavern, the Ports O’Call. Anson had his first taste of beer and felt grown up. Juanito smoked his pipe and drank brandy sparingly. Anson’s father drank rum with Winfield as they discussed the papers showing the boat’s origin and ownership, its tonnage and the gear on board. Jerry gave Martin some money and they shook hands.

  The tavern was crowded and the tables full of hearty drinkers and eaters. Anson’s gaze swept the room. Never had he seen so many different people together in one place. Many of the conversations were in languages he did not know: Portuguese, French, German and even a different kind of Spanish that was alien to his ears. The talk flowed around them and he felt a oneness with the men and women, even though he knew none of them. Serving girls carried tankards of ale on wooden trays and brought food to the table—chicken, pork, sausage, duck, goose, shrimp, red snapper, crayfish, mussels, and clams. The smell of rum and whiskey was strong in air blue with cigar and cigarette smoke.

  Two men at the bar kept looking at him and Anson felt uncomfortable. He poked Juanito in the side and whispered into his ear. “Who are those men standing up at the bar?”

  Juanito looked over in the direction Anson was nodding. His gaze swept the men and he shook his head. “I do not know.”

  Jerry Winfield looked up, saw Anson and Juanito huddled together. He turned around, looked at the two men at the bar. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “What is it?” Martin asked.

  “Trouble, maybe. That big man smoking the cheroot is Sam Cullers. I got into a deal with him and we lost money. He blames me and has been trying to make me pay him. But it was an equal partnership, with equal risks.”

  “Don’t know him,” Martin said. “Who’s the feller next to him?”

  “Hoxie. I don’t know his first name. Mean sonofabitch, though. I saw him stick a man in a fight over at Port Aransas one night. Laughed about it.”

  “Have I reason to worry with all this money in my pocket?” Martin asked.

  “No. I don’t know why they’re here. I put Sam in his place a long time ago. They wouldn’t be after you, anyway. Just me.”

  As Jerry finished talking, Sam Cullers walked over from the bar, stood over Jerry. Jerry looked up. “Sam.”

  “Are you forgetting you still owe me money over that catch you and me made?”

  “Sam, I don’t owe you a fart or a farthing. We both lost. That was it.”

  “Wasn’t my fault you couldn’t get the catch to port and it spoiled.”

  “An act of God,” Jerry said.

  “Your dumb luck, you mean.”

  “Look, Cullers, I’m not going to argue with you. Make your own money back, same as me, and quit your damned bellyaching.”

  “I ain’t forgetting, Jerry. You’ll pay, damn you, or else.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what I say. You’ll pay me what you owe me, one way or another.”

  Jerry started to rise. Martin put his hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “Let it go. We don’t want any trouble in here, Jerry.”

  “Good thing you’ve got yourself a pal, Jerry,” Cullers said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  “In hell,” Jerry said.

  “Maybe so,” Cullers replied, and turned on his heel. He finished his drink at the bar, then left with his companion.

  “There’s a man carrying a big grudge, Jerry,” Martin said.

  “He doesn’t worry me none. Sour grapes.”

  “Just the same, watch yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, Marty. I will.”

  Martin signed the boat’s papers and handed them over to Jerry, along with a bill of sale.

  “The Mary E’s all yours, Jerry. And I’ve got something else for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Martin looked at Juanito and winked. “You can pick up a load of goods dockside tonight for transport to New Orleans in the morning. There’ll be a man with Jones Shipping waiting for you. You can earn back some of the money you paid me for my boat.”

  Jerry grinned. “Why, how did you do that so quick?”

  “The man, his name is Dan Jones, nabbed me when we came in this morning. I told him I was going to sell the boat, but would see to it that his load was picked up tonight. Fruit and vegetables. He’s pretty desperate.”

  “That’s fine news, Marty. I’m obliged.”

  Martin slapped his friend on the back. “Think nothing of it.”

  “I was going to sail you boys back to Matagorda.”

  “Oh, we’ll stay over the night. I’m going to look at horses tomorrow and buy some new stock. We’ll ride back to the Box B overland. We need to get back home quick.”

  “Well, I’m still mighty obligated to you.”

  “Take care of the Mary E, Jerry.”

  Jerry ordered a round of drinks, but Martin could see that he was anxious to get to his new boat. Jerry sat in his chair as if he was sitting on a hot stove lid, then finally bade them all good night and left the Ports O’Call. “I guess I’d better see Jones and get his cargo loaded. Good night, boys.”

  “There goes a happy man,” Martin said.

  “But you’ll miss the boat, won’t you, Daddy?”

  “I miss it already,” Martin said.

  16

  MARTIN OBTAINED HOTEL rooms for himself and Anson, and another for Juanito. He went to bed right after supper. Anson and Juanito walked down to the docks and found a place to sit while Juanito smoked his pipe. It was a cool evening with a fresh shore breeze. Lights from the lanterns along the bay striped the waters with orange banners. Bullbats flew over them, darting acrobatically as they devoured flying insects.

  “Do you miss sailing, Juanito?” Anson asked.

  “I miss the sea.”

  “Why did you leave it?”

  “I grew up with the cattle. I missed the cattle. And while I left the sea, it never left me.”

  “I don’t think it will ever leave me, either. There is something about it that I like.”

  Juanito laughed softly. “The sea casts a spell. It is like a home we left a long time ago.”

  “A home?”

  “All creatures came from the sea, I think. We might have come from there, t
oo.”

  “But how could we breathe?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps we had gills like the fish.”

  “Aw, you’re kidding me, Juanito.”

  The Argentine puffed on his pipe. The aroma of the burning tobacco wafted to Anson’s nostrils. He liked the smell of it. He thought that one day he might get a pipe and try and smoke it. Once he had asked his father about smoking and Martin had told him he was too young. He was always too young, according to his father.

  “Maybe I am kidding, maybe I am not,” Juanito said reflectively. “Who knows where we really came from? That is a question we will always ask. And someday we will know.”

  Juanito saw something out of the corner of his eye. Then he and Anson heard the ringing of cables against the mast, the singing of sheets on the boom. They both looked at the Mary E as her mainsail went up the mast. They could see the lanterns shivering and trembling as the vessel got underway.

  “Well, there goes Jerry,” Anson said.

  “He got that load on quick.” Juanito drew deeply on the pipe. He had thought Jerry would set sail in the morning, when it would be easier for him to familiarize himself with the Mary E.

  A rifle cracked and they heard a man scream. Then it was quiet for a moment.

  There was a commotion on the dock. Anson and Juanito heard a man yelling. “Hey, where are you going? Come back, come back.”

  They saw a man waving his arms and jumping up and down on the dock.

  “Let us go and see what is happening,” Juanito said.

  “That looks like the man Daddy was talking to this morning.”

  “Jones?”

  “Yes,” Anson replied. “I wonder what’s the matter.”

  Anson and Juanito ran toward the man on the dock. Jones turned and saw them, looked at them for a long moment. “You there,” he called. Then he started walking briskly toward them. “You two,” he said.

  “Yes, we are coming,” Juanito answered.

  The corpulent man broke into a ragged trot. “Do you see?” he shouted. “All those vegetables on the dock, ready to load.”

  Jones stopped running at the same time he ran out of breath. When Anson and Juanito got to him, he was puffing on scarce air, swaying back and forth, his lungs wheezing like a bellows.

  “Ain’t you two the ones that came in on that boat yonder?”

  “Yes,” Juanito said. “Martin Baron sold it to the man who’s sailing it.”

  “But—but he was supposed to load my vegetables on tonight. He said he’d put into the dock. I’ve got men standing by to load.”

  Jones stopped rocking back and forth on his heels and his breathing seemed to be getting better, his breaths more even.

  “He may be just trying the boat out,” Juanito said. “He’ll probably turn her back in.”

  “He looks like he’s going out to sea,” Jones said. He was a short man, rotund, his face tanned by the sun, his thick fingers cobbled with cracks and scars. “Did you hear a rifle shot? I heard a shot.”

  “Yes, we heard it,” Anson said. “It was out in the harbor, I think.”

  “Damned right it was,” Jones said. “And I didn’t hear no ball hit the water. I heard a man scream.”

  “So did we,” Anson said.

  The three men watched as the Mary E cleared the harbor and caught the wind in its sails. It showed no signs of jibing or returning to port. Soon its sails disappeared into the blackness of the Gulf.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jones said. “I was sure as hell counting on getting these vegetables to New Orleans before they spoil. Don’t that beat all?”

  “He—he might come back,” Anson said.

  “There is something not right about this,” Juanito said to Jones. “Did you see Jerry go aboard?”

  “Yes, I talked to him. He said he would take on my cargo.”

  It was then that they saw the empty rowboat bobbing in the bay. As the Mary E cleared the harbor, the boat became clearly visible. It had been on the other side of the sailing vessel where they could not see it.

  “Who does that rowboat belong to?” Juanito asked.

  “Oh, that one. Cullers. I think he and some men rowed out to help your friend Winfield.”

  “Cullers?” Juanito asked.

  “That’s the man. I’ve heard nothing good about that one.”

  “Well, he was not going out to the Mary E to help Jerry Winfield, I can tell you that,” Juanito said.

  “He wasn’t?” Jones seemed bewildered.

  Anson gritted his teeth as the realization of what had happened blossomed in his mind. He felt an anger rise up in him as he stared at the abandoned rowboat bobbing in the bay, its oars shipped.

  “I will bet money that there is someone in that rowboat,” Juanito said.

  “I don’t see anybody,” Anson said.

  “No. If there is somebody in the boat, he is dead. Murdered.”

  “Who?” Anson asked.

  “Jerry Winfield, I think,” Juanito replied.

  Anson let out a breath, shook his head in disbelief. “It—it can’t be,” he whispered. But he knew Juanito was right. Those men in the tavern had killed Jerry Winfield and stolen the Mary E. The thought of it sent shivers rippling down his backbone.

  17

  JUANITO WAS SOAKING wet as he rowed the Cullers boat up to the dock. He had swum out to retrieve the rowboat with its grisly cargo. He threw a line to Anson, who caught it and pulled him up snug against the pilings. He looked down into the boat. Dan Jones held a lantern high above Anson’s head.

  “Lordamercy,” Jones breathed.

  The man Anson had known as Jerry Winfield stared up at him with wide open sightless eyes. There was a bullet hole in his temple. Blood covered the dead man’s clothing like flung barn paint. The front of his shirt was black with the coagulated gore. The pockets of his trousers had been turned inside out and his boots were gone, as well as his socks and belt. There were gash marks on his bloodless face, and one cheekbone was swollen so badly that the symmetry of Jerry’s face was forever askew. The lantern swayed back and forth in Jones’s hand as he began to tremble, casting an eerie orange light over the corpse.

  “He was shot in the head,” Anson said. “He must have tried to get away in Cullers’s boat.”

  “Jerry put up a good fight,” Juanito said.

  “He was outnumbered,” Anson said. “I wish we could have been there to help him.”

  “Anson, go and awaken your father,” Juanito said.

  “Oh, God,” Anson said and his stomach turned over and bile rose in his throat.

  “Go quick,” Juanito said.

  Anson turned away from the lurid sight of the dead body and ran up the dock, the boards clattering beneath his feet. Up a cobblestone street to the hotel he raced, flying through the front door past a startled desk clerk and on up to the door of his father’s room.

  “Daddy, open up. Come quick.”

  The door opened and Martin stood there in his nightshirt, barefooted, hair tousled, eyes bloodshot. “What in hell’s all the racket about?”

  “Daddy, they done killed Jerry. They shot him in the head.”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “I don’t know. Cullers, I guess. That’s what Juanito thinks. He said to come and get you.”

  “What about the Mary E?”

  “Gone,” Anson said. “We saw it sail out of the harbor slick as anything.”

  “Goddamn. Give me a minute. I’ll meet you down at the dock.”

  “It—he looks real dead, Daddy,” Anson blurted. “I never saw anything so awful.”

  “Well, don’t look at him. Damn it.”

  Martin closed the door. Anson stood there a moment, uncertain about what he should do. For a long moment he thought he had been shut off from the world of reality. A strange feeling came over him as he stood there in the dark of the hall. He heard what he thought might be whispers at the other end of the corridor. A board creaked and he turned his head suddenly to see if someon
e had come up behind him, but there was no one there. In the silence, he suddenly thought of Jerry Winfield, the way he had been savagely murdered. He could not erase that dead face from his mind, and the finality, the suddenness of it overwhelmed him. One minute Jerry had been laughing and talking and drinking with him, his father and Juanito, and the next he was dead forever. How could such a thing happen? he wondered.

  He hated going back through those dark streets alone. He felt that Death was so close to him it could reach out and touch him almost anywhere, especially in a dark place.

  “I’m not afraid,” he said aloud to himself and walked slowly down the stairs and through the lobby of the hotel. The clerk stood there blinking. You could be dead, too, Anson thought, and hated himself for thinking such a thing, even if it was not out loud. When he got outside, he began to run back to the docks. He could feel Death right behind him, stalking him, breathing down the back of his neck. He tried to shake off the fear that gripped him and made it hard for him to breathe, but he kept looking over his shoulder, expecting something or someone to jump out and grab him.

  Anson wished now that he had waited and walked back to the dock with his father, but he wouldn’t have dared to admit that he was scared. He had to prove to his father that he was a man now and could handle grown-up situations. Or maybe he had to prove it to himself.

  When he reached the dock, he took a deep breath, relieved to be back with Juanito, glad that the lantern Jones held up gave off as much light as it did. Two burly men who had been waiting to help load Jones’s vegetables on the Mary E stood off to the side. One of them carried another lantern.

  Anson tried not to look at Jerry Winfield’s lifeless, blood-covered body, but he couldn’t help but stare down at the grotesque sight. It was Winfield’s unseeing, glazed-over eyes that gave Anson goose bumps. Even though he knew that the killers had gotten away, he felt an uneasiness creep back into his mind. An unknown fear that he couldn’t explain.

  Martin ran down to the dock a few minutes later. He had dressed and put on his boots, but hadn’t bothered to comb his hair.

  “Gawdamighty,” he said. He stared down at the gruesome sight as Jones held the lantern above the bobbing rowboat, then shook his head. “Oh, God, Jerry, I’m sorry.”