Savage Texas: The Stampeders by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

left him with a black little stub of gristle sticking off the side of his head. Earned him the nickname Black Ear. He hated being called that when he was young, but by the time he’d growed up and turned to crime, he accepted it. Liked the sound of calling his gang the ‘Black Ears.’ From all the stories, though, his heart was blacker than that ear ever was. Man had no mercy at all in him. One of his own gang crossed him, just a young gent who wore his hair long, and Black Ear hung him up by his toes and built a fire under his head. Kept it low enough just to cook him, not burn him fast. Burned off that long hair down to the scalp, then burned the scalp through to the skull. He let the poor hombre suffer for half an hour or more, then built the fire up higher and tossed the boy a pistol with one bullet in it. Told him he could use it to shoot him, Black Ear, or put the bullet through his own brain. The boy did what anybody would in that circumstance and used it on himself.”
    “The hell,” said Pettigrew. “Reckon that’s true, or just one of them stories that get started and grow?”
    “It’s true,” Perkins said. “I heard it spoken of by Black Ear himself. He laughed about how after the poor devil shot himself, the blood that dropped down sizzled when it hit the fire.”
    “Meaner than a Comanche with an Apache mama and a bad affliction of piles,” Heller muttered.
    “Yes indeed.”
    “And this poor fellow here was one of Black Ear’s guns, huh?”
    “He was. He and his brother together, twins. Drew and Cal Toleen.”
    “Which one is this?”
    Perkins rubbed his chin in the same way Heller had seen him do out on the Hangtree Trail. “Don’t know. They look just alike to everybody except them who knows them well. This one could be either one, as best I could tell. I’ve only had one good look at the Toleens myself.”
    “But there’s no question it’s one of the two?”
    “No, sir,” said Perkins.
    “You weren’t talking so sure before. You said he was familiar but you couldn’t place him.”
    “That’s right . . . then the sheriff here called his name and then I remembered, and knew he was right.”
    “So where’s his brother?” Luke Pettigrew asked. “Every story I’ve heard of them, they always stuck together. You see one, you’re going to see t’other before you know it.”
    “Maybe the other one’s dead, too,” said the sheriff. “If he is, we ought to go have a drink to celebrate. Any of the Black Ears gone is good news to good folk.”
    “Tell you what, men, this old boy here needs to be in the ground.”
    “Needed to be in it maybe two days ago,” said Heller, waving his hand in front of his nose to clear some of the death stench. “I’d say it’s time to get this gent here a new low-ceiling house made of pine boards, if you know what I mean.”
    “I’ll fetch him myself,” said Barton.

C HAPTER S IX
    Myrtle Bewley already had played a part in the commerce of three small towns in her fifty-year life: she’d worked as a young girl in her uncle’s general store in rural Kentucky, stocking shelves and sweeping floors; at a slightly older age she’d been trained as a seamstress by an aunt in Illinois, and found work in a dress shop, hemming new dresses and repairing torn ones. After marrying, she and her husband had opened a general mercantile, also in Illinois, until the war erupted and Bradley Bewley found himself drawn into the life of a soldier. Wartime friendships and interactions had led him to a conviction that his most promising future might lie in the cattle business, which with the growth of railroads and westward expansion of a reunifying nation, seemed poised to move forward when the war was past. So without much delay the childless couple headed to Texas, following a particular army friend, Dan Roark, who guided them into Hangtree County. Like many others, Roark and Bewley began building their own small ranching operation, developing their herd mostly