The High Sheriff of Dog Knot

by Gary Clifton

part 1

“Whoa, Injun,” the burly, trail-dust covered man growled. He stepped to block the swinging double doors of the Green Rooster Saloon. “Whut the hell kinda place serves some greasy redskin?”

The target of the loudmouth’s wrath, a small, dark-skinned man, stepped slightly back and aside, his soft brown eyes calmly studying the challenger. On the boardwalk behind the troublemaker, a second dirty, unshaven saddle tramp appeared, basically a twin of the first.

“Wasn’t drinkin’, mister.” The small man edged slightly to his left, lining up with the space between his tormentor and the door frame.

The bulky man poked his right index finger into the small man’s chest while laying his left hand on a holstered Colt. “Crowd me again, Chief, an’ I’m gonna get to say I kilt another uppity redskin.” His once-white Stetson was dingy with sweat stains that had spread upward through most of the crown.

From the darkened bowels of the Rooster, the deep voice of bartender Rufus “Bull” Mendez boomed out in heavily accented English, “Stranger, you got a mama?”

The saddle tramp peered into the dimly lit interior. Who the hell...? “Any man maligns my mother ends up in his grave pretty damn quick.”

“Malign? No man, I was jes’ hopin’ for some way to contact the poor lady to tell her foolish son had got hisself killed by the High Sheriff of Dog Knot, Texas.”

The man, now obviously a stranger, bellowed, “Who just who—”

Mendez, pudgy and deliberate, said slowly, “Hombre named Juan Pablo Garcia. The man with your finger in his chest.”

“Juan Pablo Garcia!” The loudmouth deflated like a shot coyote, hands wilting at his sides like stale onions. His hard face flushed to ghost-white.

When he pulled his hand away, the tin badge on the dark-skinned man reflected outside sunlight. He said with a quavering voice, “Oh heavens Mr. Garcia, I heard you’d been kilt in a saloon up in San Antone. Ya’ know I was just kiddin’ ’bout killin an Injun...” He prattled on, backing slightly back out the doors. “Sheriff? Good grief, Garcia... uh, Mr. Garcia, never heard you’d become the laws. Supposin’ we could jes’ ease on outa here, sheriff... uh,sir?”

Garcia also took a step backward and eyed the man’s pistol, a well-oiled and maintained Army Model Colt .45. “Left-handed gunsel. I got paper over to the jail on a left-handed bully name o’ Billy Joe Crocket. Man about your age, wanted for bank robbery and murder over at Eagle Pass. Seems reasonable to me, you and your partner walk across, and we’ll do some checkin.’”

“Now hold on jes’ a damn minute. Billy Joe... whut? ’Taint me... never heard o’ the man.” The racial hatred suddenly returned. “Ain’t goin’ no place with no Injun carryin’ no gun.”

Mendez’s voice drifted from the bar, “Your mama, partner... maybe jes’ a town where she might be located. And he ain’t no Injun.”

Garcia said softly, “There’s no call to do somethin’ foolish.”

With deadly intent, the man’s left hand snatched at the Colt with a move that was skillful and lightning-quick.

The roar of two gunshots so close together as to sound as one filled the entry way with thick black powder gunsmoke. The man, his smoking Colt pointed at his feet with his eyes fixed on eternity above.

Garcia stood calmly, his Colt Model 1877 .41-caliber double-action revolver still in the “ready” position, waiting for the second man. But the dead man’s partner was racing toward a lathered-up mare tied on the other side of Main Street.

Garcia leveled his Colt at the center of the fleeing man’s back and shouted, “Turn around and come back over here or it’s the same for you, mister.” The grungy man returned like a bass on a fish hook, hands high, urine showing down the front of his pants. Garcia handcuffed him around the top rail of the saloon hitch rack.

“Why drift in here and cause a ruckus, sir? I find papers on you, it’s back to Huntsville prison.”

“Huntsville... whut the hell... how could you—?

“Because you carry the bearing and stench of the penitentiary, sir. That where you met your friend here?” He pointed his chin at the dead man.

“Yeah, okay. Man, I only been out a month. It waren’t me started the ruckus. Lefty hates... hated Injuns. Hadda row with a couple of mean ones up in the Wynne Unit at Huntsville. Lemme outa these, man. I ain’t gonna run or nothin’. Hey, I got no quarrel with Injuns... you bein’ one ’n all.”

Bull Mendez boomed, “He ain’t no Injun, fool.”

Garcia asked, “What kinda row did Lefty have with these Indians?”

“Shovel... killed one and crippled the other. Since they was Injuns who’d caused plenty of trouble, they cut him loose.”

Garcia gestured to the body blocking the doorway. ”You confirmin’ that’s Lefty Joe Crockett?”

“Yeah, it’s him all right. An’ I heard o’ you, jes’ like Lefty did. No idea you was the law around here. You gunned Lefty, and he was a right fair hand with that Colt.”

“Fair enough hand to murder somebody in a bank robbery out in Eagle Pass, I reckon. Gimme your name, your age, and where you hail from. Catch you in a lie and I’ll let Mendez kick your ass till Sunday.”

“Hugh Farrell. Twenty-nine, from Waco. But ain’t been there in a while. And you got no papers for me. I paroled out square and wasn’t with Lefty when he did any robbin’ and killin’.”

In a logical world, that would have been it. Garcia checked papers, wired Texas Ranger Headquarters in Austin and, on finding no provable warrant, had no choice but to send Hugh Farrell on his way.

* * *

Logic, however, went south the next morning. Garcia, as sheriff of San Anita County, rode out east of the county seat of Dog Knot eight miles to collect taxes from a couple of ranchers who consistently never paid unless the sheriff came in person to extract the county’s share.

As he was returning in the late morning, he heard the faint sound of gunshots wafting in on the hot south Texas wind. “Let’s go, Pedro.” He spurred his buckskin gelding to a brisk trot. In ten minutes he met a rider coming at full speed.

He recognized Low Dime, an old drifter and penny-ante gambler who’d hung around Dog Knot so long he was sort of a permanent resident. He slept beneath the rear stoop of Hooker’s Livery and existed on charity, odd jobs, and more than occasional light-fingered theft.

“Better rein her in, Low Dime. You collide with us and we’ll never know why you’re in such a hurry.” The old man managed to get the fine, lathered-up brown mare stopped. Garcia’s first thought was where Low Dime had stolen the animal.

“Bank robbery sheriff! Three fellas... shot Mr. Wilkins dead. Got away with three thousand dollars. One of ’em was that man with the joker you kilt yisterday. You gotta come quick.”

“I’ll be goin’, ol’ timer, but yer gonna rest that horse an hour or so. There’s a clump of live oaks around a little spring about a half mile back the way you come. Don’t let her drink all she wants. Whose animal is she, Low Dime?”

“Mine, sheriff. Least I’m a-claimin’ her. Bull Mendez shot her rider outa the saddle when them three was runnin’ from robbin’ the bank.”

“Shot? Dead?”

“Yessir. Deader ’n hell. Both barrels 12-gauge. The dead one ain’t the saddle tramp you let go. He got away. They was havin’ a hell of a gunfight till Bull run outa shotgun shells.”

“What about the third man?”

“Vaquero, early twenties. Fancy silver trim on his sombrero. Ivory-handled Colt. It was him shot Mr. Wilkins, I heard. His partner called him “Lalo.”

Garcia said casually, “I’m headed back. You rest that mare, then follow.” He spurred Pedro and in seconds was moving at a fast canter back to Dog Knot.

If his response to the description of the Mexican bandit was outwardly calm, his stomach was in turmoil. Young Bandit, silver-trimmed sombrero, ivory-handled pistol, answered to “Lalo,” a common nickname for “Edward”? Garcia knew well the full name of Edwardo Garcia-Thornton, the youngest son of his sister, Lucinda Salazar Garcia, who now lay moldering in her grave in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, less than twenty miles to the south.

As he hurried toward town, his mind wandered back. Good God, it had been twenty years! Lucinda had gotten tangled up with an Anglo gambler, drunk, and general no good named Ed Thornton when she was working briefly as a bar maid in a Laredo, Texas cantina. A child was born whom Lucinda named Edwardo Garcia Thornton. Garcia, fourteen at the time, working as a wrangler for the Bar 6 spread, had beseeched his sister to omit any reference to Thorntonin naming the baby. The baby’s father, at the slightest hint at assuming responsibility of any sort, particularly a screaming infant who was a product of a brief, torrid relationship, was long gone.

At the time, Garcia’s total assets consisted of a weak-backed U.S. Calvary surplus gelding named Fredo, two extra shirts, and an old 1847 .44 Walker Long Colt.

Lucinda, always prone to depressive issues, deprived of a man she thought she loved, saddled with a crying baby, and penniless, hanged herself from a Live Oak Tree when baby Edwardo was less than a year old. The baby went to Brownsville to be raised by an uncle, Lucinda went to her grave, and Juan Pablo Garcia drifted. Strapped for cash to repay his sister’s funeral and other expenses, he sought a better-paying occupation.

Word of his natural prowess with a handgun spread quickly. His quiet, youthful good nature sweetened the pot, and he soon fell in with some of the worst characters along the violent Texas-Mexico border. He caught on with a group loosely headed by a forty-year old New Mexico bandit, John Fred Caldwell, who was called “Yarders,” short for his gang’s reputation for dispatching men to the graveyard.

Caldwell, paroled a year earlier out of Yuma, Arizona, prison after six years inside for bank robbery, was a tough, rawhide animal who killed for sheer pleasure. Because of Garcia’s youth and lack of experience in criminal activity, it was to his good fortune that in his six months with the Yarders, his participation in the dozen or so atrocities committed was limited to lookout duty or being sent along early to scout the crime scene.

The natural tendency of men like the Yarders toward violence did, however, enhance Garcia’s reputation as a lightning fast, deadly pistol shot. Early on, a grizzled bandit called “Ox” actually tried to approach Garcia with sexual advances. The ensuring brouhaha expanded until Ox called the kid out to a gunfight in a lonely craggy camp on the Rio Grande between Laredo and Piedras Negras. After fifteen minutes of Garcia trying to persuade the bad man to stand down, Ox suddenly went for his Colt. He fell dead in the dust with a bullet in his heart from Garcia’s old Army Long Colt.

A couple of friends of the dead man sprang to retaliate, and one, a former lawman from Alabama named Cleo Short, actually drew on the kid. His body landed beside the recently departed Ox. The boss, John Fred Caldwell, witnessed the entire scenario. “Damn good shootin’, kid.” He laughed. “Anybody else wanna step up?” There were no takers. Any danger from the gang was stifled on the spot, at least for the time being.

But behavior amidst criminals and killers was unpredictable, and Caldwell had the moral fiber of a rabid wolf. Caldwell sent Garcia ahead to scout a thriving general store in a crossroads community on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Seeing no impediments, Garcia stepped outside and waved his sombrero to Caldwell and two other gang members hiding in brush thicket nearby.

When Caldwell and another outlaw brutally raped the señora working behind the counter, Garcia had reached his limit: “That’s enough, Caldwell!”

Caldwell, behind his formidable reputation as a brawler and gunfighter, yanked his Colt from its holster on the store counter. The second rapist, a Louisianan named LaBeef, fumbled for his own Colt on the floor. As gunsmoke filled the room and the victim scrambled for some clothing, Caldwell and LaBeef lay dead on the floor with their pants down.

Garcia helped himself to Caldwell’s new model 1877 .41-caliber long Colt, plus his fine buckskin gelding, Pedro, and rode out of the territory. He was still carrying the Colt and riding the horse as sheriff of Dog Knot.

He spent the next three years riding shotgun for the Adams and Babcock stage line out of San Antone, killing three would be hi-jackers during the period. By the time he turned twenty, Garcia was one of the most feared men with a gun within four hundred miles. Although he had actually killed seven men, a horrendous total in itself, his reputation grew more rapidly. Gossip added to his ferocity as rumor gradually reported he had dispatched as many as twenty souls. Wherever he went, strong men stepped aside when he approached.

Word spread that the sheriff of San Anita County had been shot and killed trying to disarm a drunken cowboy. Expecting to be ignored, Garcia applied to the county commissioners to finish the interim term. He was surprised to be accepted immediately and later learned he was the only applicant in the rough and tumble county seat of Dog Knot and Sana Anita County.

At one month shy of twenty-one, he became the sheriff of a town where human life was extinguished regularly. In a few short months, he had used his natural talents with a Colt to quell most of the most violent men who happened through. He was re-elected, then re-elected again. Now twenty-eight, his reputation as a lawman had obliterated his earlier handle as a lethal gunfighter.

A milling crowd clogged the boardwalk in front of the brick front Bank of Dog Knot. Town mayor, Cletus Taub, who also was bank owner, stood talking tersely with two county commissioners.

“Where the hell you been?” Taub asked angrily as Garcia dismounted.

“Rode out east to collect taxes.” He tied Pedro to the hitch rail. “Where is John Kramer?”

Garcia was inquiring about his only deputy. Applicants for law enforcement officers in Dog Knot, San Anita County were scarce. When Kramer, a slender man with an accent from somewhere east of Louisiana had drifted to town looking for work, the commissioners had hired him without consulting with Garcia.

Kramer claimed he had been the law in several places in North Texas, but Garcia quickly saw he had no skills either with the old Colt he carried or in dealing with rowdy drunks. Garcia recognized the problem immediately. Kramer was a liar and a coward, but Garcia was stuck with him.

Taub looked around. “Damn if I know. He was here a while ago.”

“Heard him say he was goin’ after them. They headed south... prolly to Mexico,” said one of the commissioners.

“Was he ridin’ his roan?”

“Yeah.”

“Winchester in his saddle holster?”

The commissioner nodded. “And a sack of grain and a water bag on his saddle horn.”

Kramer’s absence stuck in García’s throat. Kramer usually needed Garcia’s OK to use the privy. Chasing two armed killers into Mexico was not Kramer’s style.

“We’ll get a posse together. It’ll take a while,” said the commissioner.

Garcia remounted Pedro. “Can’t wait. I’m gonna follow, maybe head ’im off.” He spurred Pedro to the crowd standing over the blanket-covered body of the dead bandit. “Okay, folks, the undertaker will be along soon. Can some of you people help him get this man off the ground and into it?”

* * *

Proceed to part 2...