Leaving Epitaph Read online

  “The hunt” was what they were calling it. They did not pretend that it was anything but, because when you hunted, it was understood that you intended to kill your prey.

  “I want the three of you to understand something,” Shaye said to his sons later that night, when they were in the Red Garter Saloon. Their presence had killed business for the night, since no one wanted to be in the same room with them—not after the funeral and the sheriff’s unsuccessful attempt to gather a posse. The only other people in the place were the bartender and two saloon girls.

  “What’s that, Pa?” Matthew asked.

  “We’re not going after these men to bring them back,” Shaye said. “We’re going after them to kill them.”

  “Won’t that get you in trouble?” James asked. “I mean, you bein’ the law an’ all?”

  “It could get us all in trouble,” Shaye admitted. “We’re all representing the law, but more than that, we’re representing the husband and sons of Mary Shaye. In my book, that’s even more important.”

  “To us too, Pa,” Thomas assured him.

  “You haven’t killed anyone, you haven’t even ever shot at anyone,” Shaye said. “That’s all going to change.”

  “We know that, Pa,” Matthew said.

  “Are you ready for it?”

  “Sure we are,” James said enthusiastically.

  “I don’t think you are,” Shaye said, filling four shot glasses with rye from a bottle he was holding, “but by the time we catch up to them, you will be, because you’re all going to get your education on the trail.”

  He picked up his glass and his sons emulated him.

  “Here’s to the memory of Mary Shaye,” the father said, and the sons lifted their glasses and joined him in downing his toast.

  “Now you boys better get off to bed,” Shaye said. “No more drinking tonight. You’ve got to be sharp in the morning.”

  “What about you, Pa?” Thomas asked.

  “I’ll be along,” Shaye said. “Go on, do as I say.”

  Thomas stood and his brother followed his lead. As they went out the door, Shaye poured himself another glass of rye.

  Later Dan Shaye stood in the moonlight at his wife’s grave, still holding the bottle.

  “I have to take them with me, Mary,” he said to his dead wife, “if only because I don’t know if I’ll be coming back. I sure have a better chance of coming back with them than without them, though, don’t I?”

  He took a drink from the bottle and then tossed it away, still half full. He wasn’t foolish enough to get drunk the night before the hunt started.

  “I’d swear to God that I’ll try my best to keep them safe, but I’m kind of mad at God right now, so I’ll just give you my promise. I’ll keep them safe, and I’ll kill the murdering bastards who took you from us.”

  With the promise offered and—he hoped—accepted, he turned and walked to the house where he and his sons would spend the night for perhaps the last time.

  The next morning the four Shaye men split the supplies evenly among them and mounted their horses in front of the livery stable.

  “Where we headed, Pa?” James asked.

  “North,” Shaye said. “They headed north.”

  “Why not south, to Mexico?” Matthew asked.

  “Because Ethan Langer doesn’t run and hide after he hits a bank,” Shaye said. “He joins up with his brother Aaron, after he and his men also hit a bank.”

  “You mean they hit banks in different towns at the same time?” Thomas asked.

  “Roughly the same time,” Shaye said. “I got a telegram yesterday from the sheriff up in Prairie Bend, South Dakota, that the Langer gang hit their bank yesterday. It’s a competition between them, I think, to see who gets more money.”

  “Is that sheriff tracking them?” James asked.

  “Won’t go out of his jurisdiction.”

  “So where will they go?” Matthew asked.

  “Aaron and his part of the gang will go south, while Ethan and his part will go north. They’ll probably meet up somewhere in Kansas.”

  “So we’re goin’ to Kansas?” James asked.

  “We’re going north,” Shaye said. “Wherever they end up, that’s where we’ll end up.”

  5

  Ethan Langer poured himself a cup of coffee and replaced the pot without offering any of his men some. Terry Petry picked up the pot and filled his own cup. The other men were too busy eating to notice or care what was going on with the coffee.

  “Whataya think, Ethan?” Petry asked. “We do better than Aaron and the boys?”

  “We won’t know till we meet up,” Langer said.

  “Yeah, I know, but whataya guess?”

  “I don’t guess, Terry,” Langer said. “I never guess. I pick my banks because it’s where I know we’ll do the best. Aaron picks his the same way. We’ll see who got the most when we meet up, like always.”

  “Okay, sure,” Petry said, “sure, Ethan.”

  Langer drank his coffee and avoided looking into the fire. He’d had one plate of bacon and beans and that had been enough. Despite what he told Petry, he was wondering how his brother Aaron had done in South Dakota. He hated going north himself, because he hated the cold. That’s why most of the jobs he’d pulled over the past year had been in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

  “Too bad about the woman,” Petry said.

  “Huh?”

  “That woman that we rode down,” the other man said. “Too bad she was in the street.”

  “Stupid bitch got what she deserved,” Langer said.

  “Wonder who she was?”

  “Who cares?” Langer demanded. “Look, Petry, go and sit at the other fire, okay? Yer startin’ to piss me off.”

  There were two campfires for the eight men, and they were sitting four and four, but now Langer took out his gun and waved it around.

  “All of ya, go sit by the other fire, damn it! Now!”

  Petry and the other men moved quickly, so that there were now seven men seated around the other fire. Ethan Langer was known to have a short fuse. A big man, he dealt out punishment with his fists or his gun, and none of the men wanted to risk either.

  Langer holstered his gun and poured himself more coffee. What did he care what happened to some stupid woman who was standing in the street? Goddamn dumb bitch was too slow-witted to move, she deserved to get ridden down.

  His horse had been the first to strike her, and the shocked look on her face was still vivid in his mind. So vivid that he had been seeing it in his sleep every night since then.

  Goddamn bitch, she’d haunted him all the way here to the Oklahoma Territory. How much longer did she intend to haunt him?

  6

  When Dan Shaye and his sons rode into Vernon, Texas, a week after leaving Epitaph they were all bearded except for James, whose cheeks had only been able to sprout some fuzz during that time.

  The young men had learned a lot from their father during that week: much about tracking, like reading sign. They now knew that when you were tracking someone, the evidence of their passing was not just on the ground, but in broken branches, as well, or places where branches and brush had been gathered for a fire. They had also learned about the proper care of a horse while on the trail—how important it was to walk a horse at times, resting it but not necessarily stopping your progress—and of making and breaking camp. James had been taught to cook by his mother, but on this trip he’d learned a thing or two about trail coffee from his father.

  They’d learned about shooting too. Every day after they ate, Dan Shaye had schooled his boys on the proper use of a handgun and a rifle. Thomas, though a fair hand with a pistol, had never drawn or fired the weapon at another man. Shaye taught them where to shoot a man to be sure to bring him down, and what to do when facing a man who was better than they were with a gun. He explained that it was not the fastest man with a gun who survived, but the most accurate.

  After one particular lesson, James had
said, “But, Pa, that wouldn’t be fair.”

  “You want to be fair, boy?” Shaye had asked him. “Or alive?”

  The answer was easy for all three boys.

  Along the trail the three young men had time alone with their own thoughts, both on horseback and at night, when they were camped. Shaye made them all stand watch, made sure they all knew not to stare into the fire and destroy their night vision, but there was plenty of time for introspection.

  Thomas was normally a quiet person, so introspection was nothing new to him. Growing up, he often went off alone to shoot targets and think. He wanted very much to be like his father, even though his physical resemblance was to his mother. At six feet tall, he was a slender 170, and he had a good eye and fast hands. He’d asked his father on more than one occasion to make him a deputy, but his mother had always stepped in and vetoed the idea.

  “I worry day and night about your father,” she’d say, “I’m not going to do the same with you or any of my boys.”

  Those first seven nights on the trail, Thomas thought about those words, and now it wasn’t any of them who was dead, but her. He felt guilty that it had taken the death of his mother to get him the job he wanted—deputy to his father, whom he considered not only a great lawman, but a great man as well.

  The middle brother, Matthew, was not much for thinking. At six-five, he was three inches taller than his father, but he resembled him more than either of the other two boys. He had his father’s breadth of chest and shoulders, and was narrow in the waist, the way Dan Shaye had been before he moved into his forties. Now forty-eight, Shaye had thickened somewhat, but still had his power, though less than his middle son’s, and for that he was proud rather than envious.

  While on the trail, Matthew had done some thinking, and had posed many questions to himself. He would follow his father to hell and back, but he wondered what was going to happen when it was all over.

  He had no doubt that he and his brothers would follow their father and be successful in killing the men who had taken their mother from them. But what then?

  Would his father go back to being sheriff of Epitaph?

  Would he and his brothers stay on as deputies?

  Would they live in the same house?

  He knew there was danger in what they were doing, but he had so much confidence in his father that he felt no fear.

  In his father’s eyes, this was not a good thing.

  James loved his father, but he idolized his oldest brother, the way many younger brothers did. Like his older brother, he resembled his mother more than his father, and so when the four men were together, Shaye and Matthew looked like big hulking brutes, while Thomas and James were slender and graceful. James was impressed with the way Thomas handled a gun, and hoped that someday he’d be able to do the same. During the target shooting they’d done while on the trail, he had begun to display certain natural abilities with a handgun, but he still had a long way to go to match Thomas—and they both had far to go to be ready to face another man with a gun.

  James missed his mother terribly, but felt that he was on a great adventure with his father and brothers, and he hoped that the adventure would not only continue, but escalate.

  Like his brother Matthew, James felt no fear.

  Thomas, on the other hand, was worried about his father and his two brothers, was afraid that something might happen to them. But he worried little about himself. For someone who had never faced another man with a gun, he was inordinately confident.

  For his part, Dan Shaye worried about all his sons. Thomas was too confident, Matthew too brave, and James too headstrong and adventurous. He knew that all of these qualities would have to be tempered with his own experience—and yet could he keep a tight rein on his boys and his own rage?

  By the time they rode into Vernon, Texas, all of the Shaye men had had their share of deep thoughts. Also, though they hadn’t met the Langer gang, they came upon their trail in two other towns, which told them they were on the right track.

  “How long we stayin’, Pa?” James asked.

  “How long do you want to stay, James?”

  “Well,” the younger Shaye said, rubbing his face, “long enough for a shave, maybe. I’m startin’ to itch.”

  Matthew, who had the heaviest beard of the four, reached out and touched James’s face.

  “You got nothin’ but peach fuzz there, little brother,” he said, laughing. “Why don’t you wait until you got a man’s full growth of beard before you complain?”

  James brushed Matthew’s tree trunk arm away from him, while Thomas had a good laugh.

  “I have to talk to the local law,” Shaye said, “and it’s a few hours from dark. We’ll stay the night, and you boys can all get a shave and a bath.”

  “A bath!” Matthew said, appalled. “Why would we want to take a bath, Pa?”

  “Because, Matthew,” James said, “some of us smell like a goat.”

  Matthew squinted his eyes at his younger brother and said, “You wouldn’t be talkin’ about me, would you, little brother?”

  “You all smell like goats,” Shaye said, “and so do I. Take your horses to the livery, be sure they’re fed and bedded down, and then get us two rooms at the hotel. Thomas, you’ll be in a room with me.”

  “Yes, Pa.”

  “And you’re in charge of these two,” Shaye went on. “After you get the rooms, see that they’re bathed, shaved, and that they keep out of trouble.”

  “Yes, Pa…. Pa?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know the local lawman here?”

  “Yes,” Shay said. “He’s an old friend of mine, name of Sam Torrence.”

  “I heard you mention him. Weren’t you deputies together?”

  “Years ago, boy,” Shaye said, “a lot of years ago.”

  “Want us to take your horse, Pa?” James asked.

  “I’ll take care of my animal,” Shaye said, “you boys take care of your own.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll meet you back at the hotel in two hours.”

  “Two hours?” Matthew complained. “That’s barely time to see to our horses and have a bath and a shave.”

  “And no time to get into trouble,” Shaye said. “That’s about what I had in mind, boy.”

  7

  When Dan Shaye entered the sheriff’s office, the man behind the desk looked up from the wanted posters he was studying, frowned just for a moment, then smiled and stood up.

  “Dan Shaye!” Sam Torrence said, extending his hand. “What the hell are you doing in Vernon? I didn’t think you ever left South Texas anymore.”

  “Hello, Sam,” Shaye said. He approached the desk and shook hands with the tall, slender man whose hair had gone completely gray since the last time Shaye had seen him.

  “It’s good to see you, Dan,” Torrence said. “What brings you my way?”

  “The Langer gang.”

  “I heard they hit a bank down south,” Torrence said. “That was you?”

  Shaye nodded, then said, “They killed my wife during their escape.”

  “Ah, Jesus…” Torrence’s face went pale. “Mary…”

  “Rode her down in the street, Sam.”

  “Christ,” Torrence said. “Sit down, Dan. I was gonna offer you some coffee but this is better.”

  He brought a bottle of whiskey out of his desk drawer, then fetched two coffee cups from the potbellied stove in the corner. He poured a shot into each and handed one to Shaye.

  “Here’s to Mary,” he said.

  “To Mary.”

  They both drank, and when Torrence reached across the desk to pour again, Shaye placed his cup on the desk, upside down.

  “One’s enough for me.”

  “Not for me,” Torrence said. He poured another shot and downed it. “You on their trail?”

  Shaye nodded.

  “With a posse.”

  “My boys.”

  “Your…”

  “Sons,�
�� Shaye said. “Three of ’em.”

  “That’s right,” Torrence said, snapping his fingers, “I knew you and Mary had three sons. How old are they?”

  “Twenty-five, twenty-three, and nineteen. I deputized them.”

  “Are they experienced?”

  “No,” Shaye said, “but I had no choice. No one else volunteered, my deputies quit. Besides, they deserve to come. Langer and his boys killed their ma.”

  “We’re talkin’ about Ethan Langer, right?”

  “Yeah,” Shaye said. “Aaron hit a bank in South Dakota about the same time.”

  “So you’re trackin’ them north…through here?”

  “You tell me, Sam.”

  Torrence sat back in his chair, which creaked. “They ain’t been through here, Dan,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d know if they had.”

  Shaye stood up. “We’ll be here overnight, Sam, and then we’ll be moving out. If you have anything you want to tell me, you’ll be able to find me.”

  “Dan,” Torrence said, “I’m tellin’ you—”

  “It’s good to see you, Sam.”

  Shaye turned and walked out of the office. He knew that Torrence’s eyes were on his back. He stopped just outside the door, in case the other lawman came after him right away.

  The last time Shaye saw Torrence had been years ago, before he moved on to wear the sheriff’s badge in Epitaph. They had both been in Wichita, and Shaye had caught Torrence with his hand out. All these years later there was no reason to think the man had changed. A lawman with his hand out could live very well, and Shaye had the feeling Torrence was doing all right for himself in Vernon. However, if he had taken a dime from Ethan Langer and was covering up for him, he would regret it.

  8

  In a nearby bathhouse, Thomas Shaye was drying off, while both Matthew and James were still languishing in tubs of what was now tepid water.

  “Hey, this ain’t half bad,” Matthew said.