Free West Texas Kill by Johnny D. Boggs Page A

surveyed for the S.P., established his Iron Mountain sheep ranch in the spring of 1882. When he applied for a post office, he recommended the name Marathon. Seems the area reminded him of the plains of his native Greece.
    By 1884, thanks to the railroad, Marathon had become a key shipping point in West Texas, but the town probably had fewer than seventy-five permanent residents. Of course, if you asked Grace Profit, the only permanent residents were those buried in Boot Hill or in the boneyard behind the Catholic church on the other side of the S.P. tracks. She hadn’t been convinced Marathon would really last.
    That’s why her saloon, which she had set up when the railroad first reached that point, remained a canvas structure—not stone or adobe—held up with mesquite posts, and held together by Grace Profit’s stubbornness.
    She had turned thirty-seven last month. Her face was bronzed, weathered by years working canvas saloons at railroad hell-on-wheels towns across Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico Territory, but most men—so she had often been told—found her stunningly beautiful. Her hair—blond, shoulder length—was tied up in a blue silk bandana. She wore hand-sewn Congress gaiters she had ordered from Bloomingdale’s, a beaded brown cashmere jersey over her chemise—too fancy to be cooking in, but the railroad men liked it—a navy blue skirt, and a ruffled apron trimmed with lace. Since she was outside, she had donned the heavy gray double-breasted range coat her ex-husband had owned.
    It was about the only thing that two-timing cad had left her, but it kept her warm on winter nights, and she wouldn’t trade it to have that son of a bitch back.
    Her eyes were like sapphires. That’s what most men noticed about her. They made men overlook the crow’s feet, few strands of gray hairs, and her leathery skin, although she needed spectacles to read these days. She had a brand-new book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, on the bureau by her bed in the hotel, the latest copy of Lippincott’s Magazine , and a month-old edition of the Tucson Citizen an eastbound traveler had left behind that she couldn’t wait to read.
    Whenever she decided to close up the saloon.
    She stood outside, grilling mutton over a mesquite-wood fire, watching the setting sun turn those crystal skies into a palette of orange, gold, red, yellow. The wind had died down, and the temperature had risen into the low forties, though it would surely plummet as soon as the sun finished sinking behind those mountains and mesas.
    From the west, on the road from Murphyville, came a buckboard, escorted by a pair of riders on dark-colored horses. She studied them a moment, then turned her attention to the mutton, forked the meat over, the aroma pleasant, the sound of the grease dripping onto the coals reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It had been a busy day at the saloon. The railroaders, having received their pay, had gotten good and drunk, and now they were hungry. Likely, those men in the wagon would be hungry, too, and good and drunk before midnight came.
    She looked up again, and lowered the fork to her side.
    The driver of the buckboard was a man, but beside him, wrapped in a blanket, rode a woman.
    They drove past the depot, where one of the men wheeled his horse, and dismounted.
    Grace glanced at the mutton, then called out to a man in red sleeve garters who stood inside the tent saloon, making whiskey. “Horatius?”
    â€œYes, ma’am?”
    â€œCut up this mutton. Put it on plates. Deliver it to the S.P. men.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œMake sure they pay you before they eat.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    He stepped through the opening, and Grace handed him the fork. Pulling up the collar of her range coat, she thought about stepping out toward the road to see who those strangers were, but decided business came first.