Free West Texas Kill by Johnny D. Boggs

“You got grit, mister.”
    â€œHe’s a damned fool,” Moses Albavera said. “Did it ever occur to you, Ranger, that this old don might have just shot me out of the saddle before you could try to castrate him? Did it?”
    â€œNo.” The Smith & Wesson felt like a cannon in his hand. He lowered the barrel, released his hold on Don Melitón, and shoved the the .32 behind his back. “It didn’t.”
    The old man sank to his knees. Bent over, his hands on the ground, in terrible pain, he didn’t utter a sound.
    Chance picked up the single-shot .22, returned to the don, and helped the old man to his horse, a palomino with a good dosage of Arabian blood. He boosted the man into the saddle—Don Melitón hunched low, gripping the horn instead of the reins—before mounting the Andalusian.
    â€œLet’s go,” he told Albavera.
    â€œWhich way?”
    â€œJust to the Sender Brothers store.”
    â€œDon’t know where it is, Ranger. You best lead the way.”
    â€œYou lead,” Chance said. “I’ll tell you which way to go.”
    Albavera grinned. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
    â€œNot much.”
    The black man kicked the sorrel into a walk.

    Thirty minutes later, Chance’s saddlebags were filled with beef jerky, salt pork, a sack of Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee, four airtights of peaches and one of condensed milk, not to mention extra ammunition for the arsenal he now carried, all paid for from a gold coin in one of Don Melitón’s pouches. He figured the don owed him. Besides, Austin rarely paid his expenses in a timely fashion.
    He left the old man tied to a chair in the back of the mercantile, ordered the clerk working the store to leave the don there for two hours before turning him loose. Like hell , Chance thought. A powerful patrón like Don Melitón Benton . If that weasel-faced clerk left the don tied up for ten minutes, Chance would be counting his blessings.
    â€œAll right, sir,” Chance whispered into the don’s ear. “If it had been my son killed, I’d likely feel as you do.” He tapped the badge. “But I’m paid to uphold the law, and the law wants Moses Albavera in Galveston. I’m asking you to let the law handle it. Do like I say. You’ve got more pull than those Marin brothers ever had in Galveston. You can bring Albavera to trial here, and you know, as well as I do, that he’ll hang.” He wanted to say, but didn’t, No matter if your boy got what he deserved. “I’m just doing my job. I’m leaving you here, and taking Albavera to El Paso. I’ll turn him over to the deputy U.S. marshal there. Maybe you can buy a federal lawman. But you can’t buy me.”
    He stood, threatened the clerk with jail time if he didn’t keep the don tied up for two hours, and prodded Moses Albavera outside, onto the sorrel. Chance mounted the Andalusian.
    â€œEl Paso, eh?” The black man’s head shook as he chuckled.
    â€œI doubt if that old hard-rock believed it, either,” Chance said. “But I had to try.”
    They rode north, but quickly turned southeast.
    â€œMurphyville?” Albavera asked.
    Chance shook his head. “Too close. Marathon. We’ll catch an S.P. there to Houston.”
    Albavera asked, “Reckon we’ll get there?”
    Replied Chance, “I doubt it.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    There wasn’t much to Marathon, Texas. Oh, it had a post office, behind the front desk at the two-story hotel, but only one saloon—and it was only a tent.
    The town had been founded a few years earlier when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway crew, laying track east from El Paso for the Southern Pacific, reached those wind-blown plains surrounded by mountain vistas, although a few cattle ranchers and sheep men had settled in the area some time before. Albion E. Shepard, an ex-sea captain who had