A Season in Hell Read online

  Winn Payton’s kindness stopped short of inviting her and her nefarious stepsons to live with him after Ashton Granger’s sudden death, however. His answer was to get married again, and fast. He distinctly disapproved of her decision to take the job as town marshal over making a hasty marriage. But that didn’t stop Tennie from liking the tall, slender old man with the gray muttonchop sideburns and his tiny white-haired wife.

  Because of the heat, they ate at the big table in the front office instead of in the back at the kitchen table. The jail cells above their heads were mercifully empty for the time being.

  Winn Payton sat at the head of the table. “His name is Hawkshaw.”

  “Hawkshaw what?” Tennie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Payton replied, sopping up potlikker with his cornbread. “He never goes by anything other than Hawkshaw.”

  “I wonder where he came from.” Like most Southerners, Mrs. Payton was always interested in the genealogy of every stranger she met.

  “I have no idea,” Mr. Payton said.

  “And the boy who tried to shoot him?” Tennie asked.

  Winn Payton stopped eating long enough to give Tennie a stern look of disgust. “Just another loose cannon roaming the countryside, looking for trouble. He’d been in the saloon, listening to the local idlers talking up this Hawkshaw fellow and decided he’d be the one to take him down.”

  Tennie sighed. It seemed men spent their whole lives trying to prove something, and when they quit trying to move upward, they spiraled into the depths of a pit trying to prove how low they could go.

  Mr. Payton broke into her reverie. “Tennie, have you heard from Wash?”

  Before she could answer, Lucas bent his head low over his plate and began to quote dramatically. “‘My darling Tennie, my heart aches to see you, to feel the softness of your hair in my fingers, to gaze into those big brown eyes, to grasp your small back in my hands, and to feel the beating of your heart next to mine once more.’”

  “You’ve been reading my mail,” Tennie said. “Stop that!”

  She looked at the Paytons and blushed. George Washington Jones was a silent and taciturn Texas Ranger most of the time, but when his lawyer oratory mode surfaced, he was prone to outbursts of extravagant speech.

  Winn Payton had no desire to hear an argument between Tennie and her stepsons. He wanted to argue with her on his own. “You shouldn’t have let Lafayette talk you into waiting for this elaborate wedding,” he fussed. “Why in God’s name Lafayette thinks you and Wash have to be married in the governor’s mansion of all places is beyond me. No, I take that back. It’s just like Lafayette to want to put on the dog.”

  “He thinks it will be good for Wash’s career,” Tennie said, not too happy about it either. “You know Wash has these aspirations of becoming a judge when he quits being a Ranger.” And she secretly hoped it would help overcome her stigma of being raised in an orphanage from age ten and being forced into a profession that was looked on in horror as unseemly for a woman.

  “They had different mothers, didn’t they?” Mrs. Payton said, back on the genealogy trail. “Wash’s mother was a Jones, and Lafayette’s mother was a Dumont. And when they came to Texas, they took those names.”

  Tennie didn’t even know what their real last name was; both said it was no longer important.

  Before she could ask, Mr. Payton started on something else. “I don’t know what kind of strings Lafayette had to pull to get you a wedding in the governor’s mansion,” he said, already knowing Wash and Lafayette’s family history all the way back to the American Revolution and not caring.

  “I’m sure it had something to do with the war,” Tennie said.

  The Confederate soldiers may have lost the war, but they created an exclusive fraternity out of it. Tennie reminded herself that Mr. Payton was in that brotherhood, too—he just didn’t like being called General Payton.

  “Before now, they haven’t even seen hide nor hair of one another since Lafayette left home,” Mr. Payton said. “What does Wash think about Lafayette killing their older brother?”

  Tennie saw the boys’ eyes grow big. She tried to explain. “Mr. Lafayette and Mr. Wash had an older brother who thought Mr. Lafayette was paying too much attention to his wife.”

  “It wasn’t no thinking about it,” Mr. Payton said. “It was seduction.”

  “Now, Father,” Mrs. Payton said.

  “But Mr. Lafayette killed him?” Lucas asked.

  “It was an accident,” Tennie said in a hurry. “The brother challenged Mr. Lafayette to a duel, and Mr. Lafayette thought they would just shoot wild at one another and that would be the end of it. Instead, he realized his brother meant to kill him, so he tried to wing him, but he missed and accidentally killed him.

  “Now don’t be asking him about it,” she warned. “That was a long time ago, and that’s dead and buried.”

  Tennie turned to Mr. Payton. “Wash would just like to forget the whole thing. He said the brother’s wife was always a little unbalanced, and Lafayette just got caught up in her web. He knows Lafayette didn’t intend to kill their older brother.”

  “Lafayette is always going to be caught up in some unbalanced woman’s web,” Mr. Payton said. “Tennie, you are marrying into an old and well-respected Southern family, but they’ve got a streak of craziness inbred in them.”

  Tennie glanced at her stepsons. Other families spoke about such things in whispers and certainly not in front of children. Perhaps she was wrong to let them hear so much. But Mr. Payton never spoke anything in a whisper.

  “She still wears heavy mourning,” Mrs. Payton said. “The wife, I mean.”

  “Her family hates Lafayette,” Mr. Payton said. “I can’t say that I blame them.”

  “Would you care for some coffee?” Tennie said, rising.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Payton said.

  She went to fetch it, hoping it would interrupt Winn Payton’s tirade, but when she brought the coffee from the kitchen, he launched into another attack.

  “I cannot believe Wash would leave you here as marshal in a town full of hot-blooded men,” he said, pouring his coffee from the cup into the saucer. He blew on it and slurped it, giving a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Now, Father,” Mrs. Payton said again, taking a cup and saucer from Tennie.

  “Lafayette convinced Wash that Ring Bit would be much safer for me than the ranch,” Tennie said.

  “Humph,” Mr. Payton said. “I can’t imagine any man in his right senses leaving a comely eighteen-year-old heifer alone in a jailhouse and working as a marshal in a town full of women-hungry men ready to kill for her. This whole scheme of Lafayette’s to make you wait to be married and keep your engagement hush is ridiculous, and I can’t believe either one of you agreed to it.”

  Tennie and Wash had been reluctant, but in the end, let themselves be persuaded by Lafayette. He had taken her aside and said, “My darling Miss Tennie, there are men in this town who will shoot Wash in the back in hopes of having a chance with you. Once you are married, it will be a done deal, but until then, it is in Wash’s best interest to keep your engagement a secret.”

  “Father,” Mrs. Payton said unexpectedly. “Tennie has a whole town full of men watching out for her. If one of them makes a false move, the others will be all over him like fleas on a hound. Lafayette was right to insist she stay here until they can be married. She can’t live in his saloon. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “Hardly any more inappropriate than her being a city marshal,” he retorted.

  Tennie did not resent Mr. Payton’s remarks. She knew he worried about her.

  As they were leaving, Mrs. Payton handed Tennie an arithmetic primer. “From the undertaker’s wife, Tennie dear. I think she feels a little guilty about the boys.”

  Tennie took the book, so shocked at first, she wasn’t sure what to say. “Um, when you see her, tell her I said much obliged. I think.”

  Mr. Payton was never unsure about anythin
g, and he gave her one final word of advice. “Stay away from that new shootist in town. He’s up to no good, whatever it is.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Tennie said. “I have no intention of going anywhere near him.”

  CHAPTER 2

  That night, the sound of shots being fired increased, boisterous laughter was brasher, and it seemed the rinky-dink pianos played louder than ever before. Tennie sat at a table with her stepsons and tried to ignore the noises coming from outside. The town leaders wanted her to stay at or near the jail to open the cells to any miscreants they wanted to toss in. They also wanted her to feed the prisoners, to release them when they sobered, and to clean up after them. Anything else she could manage would be a bonus, and no one except Inga Milton seemed to expect it of her. The town paid her very little, but she had a roof over their heads and a stipend for all the food they needed.

  While she patched holes in Badger’s overalls, Lucas and Rusty took turns reading by the coal oil light. Wash liked to read to them, and Rusty, especially, tried to emulate his deep cadence.

  A knock at the jailhouse door broke into Lucas’s narration. Tennie placed her mending on the table, rising to hurry to the door. The boys followed her. Opening it, she saw a stout cowboy gripping an obviously intoxicated and much smaller one. Behind them, she caught a glimpse of a dark suit, and a man holding on to his upper arm.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” the big cowboy said. “I’d take my hat off, but I can’t let go of this here cork-puller.”

  Tennie nodded. The shorter cowboy was trying to focus his eyes on her and having trouble.

  “I just started working for Colonel Lafayette,” the taller one continued. “The name’s Gid. Giddings Coltrane, but I ain’t the Giddings Coltrane from down around the Nueces way. No ma’am, that ain’t me.”

  “Uh, yes, Mr. Coltrane,” Tennie said. “Did Mr. Lafayette send you over here with a prisoner?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know you be from the South, and that’s where my people be from, so I know what kind of store we ’uns set on manners and such, but I’d be much obliged if you’d just call me Gid like most folks generally do. Calling me Mr. Coltrane adds a lot more to me than is really there, ma’am.”

  “Well, I doubt that,” Tennie said, wondering why there seemed to be something familiar about him. “But I’d be pleased to call you Mr. Gid. And please call me Miss Tennie.

  “Let me get a lamp,” she continued, “and we’ll put your prisoner upstairs.” She fetched the keys from their nail on the wall and took a lantern from a hook. “Follow me, please. She led the way up the stairs.

  The prisoner offered no resistance and said little, which piqued Tennie’s interest. Usually, the saloon owners only sent the most violent rabble-rousers to be thrown into the jail cells overnight. She unlocked one of the three cells and stood with her back next the windows that faced the street while Gid more or less pitched his prisoner onto a cot.

  He stood back while Tennie locked the door, explaining as he followed Tennie down the stairs. “He accused this here Hawkshaw feller of card cheating, taking a swipe at him with a blade, but Mr. Lafayette said he’d have him thrown in jail for a day or two to keep him from gettin’ killed.”

  As Tennie came down the stairs, the light from the lantern illuminated below, showing her stepsons hovering in a corner and the man named Hawkshaw waiting at the bottom, holding a white handkerchief slowly bleeding red over his upper left arm.

  Tennie remembered the flash of his gun and the dead young cowboy in the street. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but she couldn’t turn him away if he needed help. Hadn’t she once been forced to kill a man who tried to harm her and her stepsons?

  She turned the lantern on Gid. “Good night, Mr. Gid. I can take it from here.”

  This time, he did remove his hat. His head was square, its dark and curling unkempt hair thinning on top. He had large gaps between crooked teeth in a rather wide mouth, but he emanated innocent charm totally lacking in guile, and seemed eager to be friends.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” Tennie said. “I’ll be seeing you again, I’m sure.”

  “Good night, Miss Tennie,” Gid said, giving a hard warning look to Hawkshaw before turning and disappearing. The sound of his spurs jingling through the night told Tennie he was heading back to the Silver Moon.

  Tennie shut the door and held the lantern up so she could see her other visitor. “What can I do for you, Mr. Hawkshaw?”

  “I hear you are a fair hand at doctoring. I need this arm sewn up.” His deep voice held a hint of scorn for the rest of the world, Tennie included.

  She nodded. “Follow me, please.” Since the doctor had fled town, she had become something of an unofficial nurse in Ring Bit, having worked in a war hospital with her mother. Her stepsons’ father had been a retired surgeon, and they had inherited his instruments. The women banded together to take care of one another, excluding Tennie. Anybody seriously ill had to go to Cat Ridge, the next town. But the single men in Ring Bit had come to rely on her to patch them up.

  She helped Hawkshaw remove his coat. He hesitated at removing his shirt.

  “Don’t worry,” Tennie said. “I’ve seen it before, and I have my chaperones standing guard across the room.”

  He grunted a short laugh and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Sit down, please.” Going to the stove Tennie poured hot water from a kettle into a basin, then took the basin to the table. She sat down and began to wash his wound—a deep but clean cut across the flesh of his upper left arm.

  “Why are you doing that?” he asked.

  “Their father,” Tennie said, nodding toward her stepsons, “told me he had good luck with it during the war. It seems to keep down infections. I would advise you to keep it clean.”

  She took the needle and thread she had been using on Badger’s overalls. “This is going to hurt,” she warned. “I don’t have any whiskey or laudanum.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, and did not so much as flinch when she poked the skin with the needle. He talked while she made small, even stitches. “I didn’t think that yahoo was ever going to shut up.”

  “He was a talker, wasn’t he?” Tennie said, concentrating on his arm. “I didn’t realize you were bleeding so much, or I would have hurried him along.”

  “You can’t hurry somebody like that.”

  “I wonder how there can be two Giddings Coltranes in Texas,’” Tennie said while she stitched.

  “Probably it’s his pa—they just don’t claim one another,” Hawkshaw said.

  Tennie accidentally went in a little too deep with the needle, and he blinked.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He looked away. “That drunken fool upstairs better be glad he sliced my left arm and not my right, or he’d be dead.”

  “I’ve seen how fast you are with a gun,” Tennie said, stopping to dab up blood. “I’m surprised they were able to stop you.”

  “I grabbed his knife and was about to slash his throat when that saloon owner, Lafayette, stopped me. He promised to keep him locked up for a while. I shoot with my right hand, and I would have killed the sorry skunk regardless of what anybody said if he had interfered with that.”

  “Glad I wasn’t there,” Tennie murmured.

  “Every time some gopher starts losing at cards, he has to accuse the other fellow of cheating.”

  “Were you cheating?” Tennie asked, avoiding a small freckle on his white skin.

  He snorted. “No. I don’t have to cheat to win.” His eyes roamed the room, taking in the back door, the cookstove next to it, and the windows on the side of the room.

  Tennie glanced at him. She had seen that look on men before. It meant he was memorizing every place a man could come in or escape from.

  “This is the strangest town I ever rode into,” he said. “Everybody running around, trying to hold elections, find bank managers, see who’s going to run what business. And to top
it off, a lady marshal who looks like a picture out of a magazine.”

  Tennie blushed but continued to sew. She wondered if he was always so talkative. It crossed her mind that he was digging for information, but she put it aside. She liked conversation and was a naturally truthful person. “The men who hired me thought they could give the town a better image, and at the same time, hide their wrongdoings from someone who might be more suspicious. The Texas Rangers were investigating a widespread rustling outfit, and they narrowed it down as originating here. When they busted the gang, everything in town was shaken up.”

  “But the saloons are still going.”

  “Yes,” Tennie said. “They are like you are about cards. Why make money illegally when they can make just as much legally? But I assure you, I am nothing more than a glorified cook and jailhouse janitor.”

  Hawkshaw gave a short laugh, an odd one that seemed to lack any warmth.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Rusty tugging on Lucas, but Lucas broke free and approached the table.

  He stared at Hawkshaw. “My stepmother held a Navy Colt on the worst outlaw in these parts and told him to get on the stage or she was going to blow a hole in his stomach,” Lucas said, driving his point home.

  Hawkshaw stared back at the boy. “I have heard that,” he said, dismissing him.

  Tennie finished, knotting the thread and cutting it close to the skin. She wrapped a bandage around his arm, looking at his chest and torso, realizing the scar left from the wound she sewed would be joining others. She rose and began helping him into his shirt and jacket.

  “Why isn’t a beautiful young woman like you married?” Hawkshaw asked.