Festus Haggen was a literal man. He took things at face value – men, words, actions. But even he had figured out, over the months, that feeding Matthew to the wolves didn't literally mean a wolf chewing on human bones. At first, as a man who'd once spent his time killing and skinning wolves for bounty, he watched carefully for wolf packs and investigated every one he found. In the end he realized that it was costing him time and that there was nothing to find. Whoever the wolves were, they weren't the animals that he'd once hunted for profit. He figured men could be wolves as well.
It was November when he got to Galveston. No one had told him it was an island, and he'd had to stable both mounts in Texas City on the mainland before taking a train across the causeway to the largest city in Texas. He drifted his way around the town, drinking quietly, asking a question here and there about wolves. Men looked askance at him, but shook their heads at the question. It was chance, really, that drew him, after several days, down a back street near the port one afternoon, and stopped him cold at the display in a pawn shop window. Matt Dillon's gunbelt and horn handled Colt hung there under a carefully lettered sign.
Festus walked into the store and began looking around. The shop sold everything a cowboy or a seaman might use or need, or that he might try to trade for a little cash. Clothes, boots, guns, saddles, ropes, leather goods, and canteens nestled next to seabags, knives, heavy cotton jackets, knitted sweaters, and rope soled shoes. After a deal of exploring, Festus found himself looking at the window from the inside and raised his voice to ask the wiry older man behind the counter, "That gun somethin' special, storekeep?"
"Sure is, pilgrim," the man replied, "Why it says right there it belonged to Wild Bill Hickok."
"Now how in tarnation would ya' be knowin' that?" Hagen asked.
The storekeeper shrugged. "Man who brought it in told me. Said he got the gun from a man up in the Dakotas where Hickok was killed." He walked over and picked the gunbelt up out of the window and handed it to Festus. "Sure big enough to have been his. Can't see a normal sized man wearing something like this."
Festus smoothed his hands over the worn, well-kept leather. He'd seen Matthew wearing this belt and this gun every day for years, watched him fill the cartridge loops with bullets, watched him rub the belt with saddle soap and keep it clean and supple. "Well, how much you want for somethin' like this, anyways?" he asked.
"A hundred dollars." The storekeeper replied smoothly.
"Well shucks, 'tain't worth that." Haggen replied and made his way out the door. Several blocks walk towards the center of town brought him to a telegraph office. Hating to do it, but knowing that he had to, he dictated a telegram to be sent to Kitty Russell at the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas. He crossed the street to a café for a meal, and when he came back an hour later, the telegraph clerk counted out two hundred dollars into his hand. He'd only asked for a hundred, but had suspected Miss Kitty would send more. He stuffed the money in his pocket and headed back to the livery stable where he'd arranged a bed in the hayloft. He tried a few more saloons, and asked a few more questions, but retired early to sleep. He had a very bad feeling growing on him that the questions he was asking wouldn't find answers in the cowboy's side of town.
The next morning, but not too early, he headed back towards the pawn shop near the wharves. He spent an hour or so haggling as only a Haggen could over the price of the gun. When he'd gotten the price down to seventy dollars, he pretended a sudden thought, and directed the conversation towards anything else that might have come in with the gun. "Now ol' Wild Bill, he was a mighty big man. I remember ta seein' him once up in Kansas when he and the Earp brothers came a-visitin' with the marshal up there. Now ifn you had some other things a his, why that might make a difference in people believin' this was really his gun."
The storekeeper pulled a ladder round and poked through some boxes up on a top shelf. "Now here ya are, friend. I just thought these might be worth keeping. Not many men could fit these clothes, but Wild Bill Hickok – men say he was a giant of a man. Thought maybe someday some other big man might come in here and I could sell them. There were boots, too, but they went pretty fast. Now my wife, she washed these, all but the vest, and that's leather. Good leather too."
Festus handled the dun colored britches and faded red shirt, running his fingers lightly over the two small holes in the shirtfront where a badge had hung. He examined the big vest, feeling along the side seams, and then, with very little bargaining he let himself be convinced to buy both gun and clothes for seventy-five dollars. Back in the privacy of his hayloft, with the noon light shining golden through the open doors, he carefully ran his fingers into the small pocket along the inner seam of the vest and pulled out a small door key tied with a bit of green ribbon. "Oh, Matthew," he whispered, "What the heck have you gotten your ownself into?"
OoOoO
Festus' questions changed a bit, as did the places he was asking them. Instead of bars and saloons in the central part of Galveston, he began drinking in the grog shops nearer the harbor. The questions he asked seemed to indicate that he knew a man who was giving him trouble over a woman, and if there might be a way for such a man to disappear. Mostly, he was ignored, but sitting in a back alley and sharing a bottle with a one-armed seaman late one night, he finally heard the words he needed. There was a man, he was told, at a dockside tavern called The Ship, who might arrange for such a thing. Festus waited until his companion was sprawled asleep behind a barrel and walked himself back across town to his stable.
Leaving his hat, spurs, and gunbelt behind, he found The Ship tavern down on the harbor near noon the next day. The painted sign over the door of the inn had a picture of a big ship under full sail, but the back of the sign, only visible from the alley alongside, showed a wolf's head. Festus couldn't read the letters spelling out the name of the ship as the Sea Wolf, but the picture on the back was enough to make him think he'd found the right place at last.
He spent a good part of the afternoon nursing a slow sequence of beers in a dark corner and snarling at anyone who came near him. It was the kind of place where men often came to be alone with their drink, and no one bothered him as long as he bought enough liquor. A little before supper time, with the low sun shining straight through the dirty windows, the man Festus knew as Malachai slid through the front door and down a stairway behind the bar. Festus finished his beer and staggered out the door and back into the alley to piss. A careful walk around the building showed him alleys at the side and back. There were two ground floor doors in back, and a rough staircase leading down from the side alley to a cellar door. The other wall of the tavern was shared with a warehouse, and Festus investigated that building as well. Satisfied with his work for the day, he made his way back to the part of Galveston that felt more like a town than a port and settled himself to think and sleep.
It was long past midnight and the streets were mostly deserted when he set out again, walking quiet and keeping to the shadows. He came in from the other direction and gave his attention not to the still-open tavern but to the warehouse beside it. A knife and a little pressure was enough to unlock one of the windows, and a series of carefully shielded matches let him find a connecting door between the two buildings. Settling carefully behind a stack of crates near the door, he dozed until sunrise.
Long experience in bars and saloons held him in good stead. He knew that the quietest and most deserted times in such establishments weren't late at night, but early in the morning. Listening carefully for any sound, he jiggered the lock, opened the door, and followed a dark flight of steps downward. Half an hour's silent exploration showed him the layout of the cellar, the location of the alley door, and the location of the stairs up to the locked door behind the bar. He walked through the open doorways of several storerooms and found only one locked door inside the cellar. It was behind that door that he heard the snores of several men. Picking his way back up the dark stairs to the warehouse, he left the door closed and headed away from the docks leaving the early morning breeze off the sea behind him.
His first stop was the telegraph office. Then he took the causeway over to the mainland, checked on his mounts, paid for another week of stabling, and headed back to Galveston. He spent the day moving into a moderately priced hotel, sorting and repacking his supplies, and getting himself a bath, a shave, and some clean clothes. Late in the afternoon, he presented himself again at the telegraph office and had the clerk read him the single line that was the response from Marshal Reardon in Dodge City. LES MCNEILL TEXAS RANGER.
His earlier forays into the watering places of Galveston had let him learn where the local law tended to congregate, and he stepped up to the bar at the Texas Star a little before ten to ask with confidence for Ranger McNeill. The barkeep pointed him to a table at the back where a man wearing a Ranger's silver star sat talking with a well-dressed blonde. That man had clearly been looking out for him and rose to meet him at the bar. "Ace Haggen?" he asked. "Got a telegram from Frank Reardon today saying you might be looking for me. What can I do for you?"
Ace looked the short, stocky man up and down, and then nodded his head. "I'm after the men what killed Matt Dillon, Ranger, an' I could use a mite a help."
A long conversation and a chill walk through the town garnered four more men, one wearing a deputy sheriff's badge, and three wearing no badges at all. McNeill and the others were surprised to hear that Ace was looking into the kidnapping of a man, and seemed to be fairly certain that what they would find would be kidnapped women bound for the brothels of South America. The Ship Inn had an evil reputation, and despite various raids, the white slavers who used it as a base tended to return. Their plan was simple and direct. They made their way to the harbor, two men taking each of the three doors into The Ship's cellar, and at precisely four am they shot the locks, broke down the doors, and leaving one man on guard at each door, Ace, McNeill, and Deputy Roger Cumbert set out for the locked room.
A shooting match left Cumbert on the floor with a bullet through his leg, and Danton and Plunder, but not Malachai, standing with their hands raised. "Where's your partner?" Ace asked. More shooting in the hallway answered his question, and McNeill headed towards the shots. Seeing two of them against one gun, Danton and Plunder began sidling apart to divide his fire. Ace, afraid that he might have to kill at least one of them without a chance for questioning was about to shoot when the door behind Plunder opened quietly and a naked young woman stepped silently behind the big cowboy and brought a cast iron stove lid down on the back of the man's head. Danton growled a curse and stuck the woman across the face. Ace Haggen shot him dead.
OoOoO
It took until almost dawn to get things sorted out at the tavern. The inner room had held not one, but two naked women, the other huddled on a pallet on the cold floor. The only other furniture in the room was an old iron stove – missing one lid. All three of the men from Tonneman's gang were dead. The barkeep from above remained in custody, but swore down heaven that he'd had no idea what the men renting his basement rooms had been up to.
Ranger McNeill took charge of the women. Frightened, battered, and wearing a variety of makeshift garments and blankets, he hustled them down the street in the grey light of early day and found them refuge in the rooms above the Texas Star. "I doan understan' this, Ranger. Why ain't you takin' these ladies to the marshal or the sheriff or the po-leece?" Ace asked as several saloon girls and the middle-aged madam he'd seen with McNeill the night before led the women into an upstairs room.
"Because if I did that they'd likely be sold back to another group of slavers before they even got a decent meal." McNeill replied. "Carlotta and her girls will get them bathed and fixed up, maybe let them get some sleep, and tomorrow you can talk to them about what happened." He sighed, "And maybe we can even get them home, if they have a home to go to."
"You mean ta be tellin' me that the lawmen here are in on all this?" Ace said in amazement.
"That's exactly what I'm tellin' you, Deputy. Whoever's been running this operation has for sure paid off the local law, and the only way to see these women clear is if we do it ourselves. Now Carlotta's going to help us with that, and she's the best one to do it. You ain't gonna tell me, Ace, that you don't know a saloonkeeper or two that's worth a half dozen crooked lawmen?"
"Well, when ya put it that way, I'd have to say as I do." Ace replied smiling.
"Glad to hear that, mister," Carlotta said stepping back into the hallway and handing McNeill and Festus back the shirts they'd loaned to help cover the young women. She turned to McNeill, "This one is bad, Les. Those women have both been beaten and pretty much starved. Likely raped, too, although we haven't gotten around to talkin' about that yet. You leave 'em with me until tonight and then you can try having a word with them."
"I'll do that, Lottie, and I thank you." McNeill said, turning Haggen around and heading him down the stairs. "You got a place to stay, Ace? I'd sure like to hole up somewhere today and hear the rest of your story and not be 'round anywhere that someone might be looking for me."
"I surely do, Ranger." Festus told him, "Let's you an' me be a-walkin' afore the sun gets any brighter."
OoOoO
Ace had begun the day regretting that all three of Tonneman's men had died without questioning, but he ended it simply angry that they'd died so easily. When he and the Ranger had returned to the saloon after a late dinner, they'd found the two women able to talk. The first thing Ace noticed, when he saw them clean and decently dressed, was that they both had red hair – ranging from a strawberry blonde on the younger girl, the one who'd killed Plunder, to a deep auburn on the older, a woman of about twenty-five.
The men let Carlotta lead the questioning, and got a name and next of kin for the older woman, but not the young blonde. She told them her name was Julie and that she was eighteen, which no one believed, but wouldn't say her family name or where she'd been taken. "My pa sold me to those men. Sold me outright for twenty dollars in gold, and I'm never in my life goin' back there. Don't care what I do, or if I die, but I'm never goin' back."
The older woman, Susannah, was married and had a husband and two children at home. She'd been captured less than a week before – taken from her farm just south of Houston. Julie told them it had been the middle of October when her Pa sold her, but that she'd been on the road with the three men, and a few others, for several weeks before they arrived in Galveston. She'd been Malachai's woman until then, and he'd kept the others off her, but once in the cellar Plunder and Danton had abused her while Malachai was gone.
The men had taken the women's clothes to keep them from running away. "But I thought my way through that one pretty quick," Julie said, "Made up my mind if there were ever a chance, even a time when there was only one of them out there, I'd hit him on the head and run. I'd rather be naked on the street than in that room and used by those men and who knows what to happen next."
OoOoO
Thanksgiving was a week gone and Festus was beginning to fret at the passing time before McNeill located Susannah's family and got a telegram back from her husband. He was on his way south to pick her up – relieved and eager to have her home despite what had happened. That left Julie. Carlotta told her she had grit and offered her a job, but she wanted out of Galveston, and out of Texas. At that point Festus offered to take her back to Kansas.
"You killed that fella jus' like a Haggen woman woulda done, Miss Julie. I can see you don' wanna go back to your family, whyn't ya jus' join mine? I'll tell folks you's my cousin, and that the Texas Haggenses done sent you back with me to Kansas. Won't be a mite of trouble findin' ya a job an' a place to stay in Dodge."
Julie looked at him with suspicion and didn't answer.
"Now, Miss Julie, you ain't got no cause fer lookin' at me like that," Festus told her, "Ain't I the one what done rescued ya outta that there cellar? Ain't I been helpin' ta look after you an' Miss Susannah while you been here? I know you been treated bad, child, but there's lotsa men in this world ain't like that at all. You c'mon with me an' I swear I'll look after you like my own kin. An' Miss Julie, Haggenses don't never treat their women lik'n your Pa did you. Not never."
"Can I have a gun?" Julie asked, "A gun of my own?"
"Yes'm, you surely can." Festus replied, "I'll get you one afore we go, an' I ever raise a hand to ya, you jus' go ahead an' shoot me dead."
Supplied with a carpetbag, a change of clothes, and a reticule containing several dollars and a loaded derringer, the pseudonymous Julie Haggen agreed to travel to Dodge City with her newly found cousin Ace. McNeill got them quietly across the bay on a small boat. He helped them get Buck and Ruth settled in a freight car, and themselves seated on a train heading first to New Orleans and then north to Missouri. "I'll send a telegram off to Dodge to let them know you're comin'. You tell Frank Reardon he's free to call on me anytime, Ace. You tell him I'll be up Kansas way next spring to look in on him." McNeill said, and then he walked off the train, leaving two uncomfortable but reasonably satisfied people to stare at each other.