Skedaddled: Up the Chisholm

By Kenton Smith, Michael T. Hurley and Jerry D. Hurley

Both marshals had pledged to one another that not another soul would be injured or killed--not on their watch--by Damien.
The urgent questions now are where do we look? How do we find him? What if he is running in the opposite direction? How would we know?
The answer is always the same: To catch a criminal one must think like a criminal.
That's why Buster Gibbs and Ruston Lovell are now heading back up the Chisholm. The criminal escaped from them in the southern tip of Texas. There was no place else to go. He must be going north back up the Chisholm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543428278

Kenton Smith

Kenton Smith rarely attempts publication of his own work with the exception of "The Pipsqueak Kid" and "Skedaddled !" and as a co-author of Micheal T. Hurley's nonfiction "I Solemnly Swear". After teaching most of his life at a small high school near Mt, Rainier in Washington State, Smith finally retired from teaching at a small, satellite college also near Mt. Rainier. Smith has received three Teacher of the Year Awards--one from students, one from fellow teachers, and one from the community which he serves. At the college level, Smith has taught English 101, English Fundamentals, American Drama, Poetry, and Creative Writing. Micheal Hurley was one of his students.

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Copyright © 2017 by Kenton Smith.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017908861

ISBN:                     Hardcover                  978-1-5434-2826-1

                                Softcover                    978-1-5434-2831-5

                                eBook                          978-1-5434-2827-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 07/19/2017

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Preface

Unfortunately, sequels can in their excitement spawn a problem that was unforeseen prior to the realization that there might be enough enthusiastic readers to want one. Such has been the case with The Pipsqueak Kid. New readers are now out of order; namely, they have stumbled into the second in the series, Skedaddled, without having read the first. How can the author bring those people up-to-date without spoiling the first book for them should they later want to back up and read it? Enough background has been included in the second book to make it clear enough. Here, bounded in a nutshell, if I might make so bold as to steal from Shakespeare, is the briefest of summaries.

In The Pipsqueak Kid, two men aligned themselves as a team fighting on the side of justice against 150 violent and lawless gunslingers run by one man who changed his disguise and stayed ahead of the law. The Pipsqueak Kid is about the destruction and disbanding of those 150 men; this book, Skedaddled, is about the search for that one remaining man.

In a longer summary, after chasing the Damiens—the killers and thugs who cheated people out of their money in exchange for protection—US Marshal Buster Gibbs and US Marshal Ruston Lovell turn their attention to the search for the leader, Damien himself, who had escaped the mass round up by the law in The Pipsqueak Kid by disguising himself as a Catholic priest. Now, two US Marshals prowl their way back up the Chisholm Trail from Austin, Texas, on the alert. Both marshals had pledged to one another that not another soul would be injured or killed, not on their watch, by Damien.

The urgent questions they have now were, Where do we look? How do we find him? What if he is running in the opposite direction? How would we know?

The answer is always the same: to catch a criminal, one must think like a criminal.

That’s why Buster Gibbs and Ruston Lovell are now heading back up the Chisholm. The criminal escaped from them in the southern tip of Texas. There was no place else to go. He must be going north back up the Chisholm.

Kenton V. Smith

March 2017

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Chapter One

US Marshals Buster Gibbs and Ruston Lovell retreated to the front porch steps of Kathy’s Boarding House, Fort Worth, Texas. The dusty street in front of them had settled for the day. There were no more horses. Wagons and buckboards brought their owners in to do business. Anyone who had been going anywhere had arrived and set up camp, checked in at one of the hotels or boarding houses, or completed their business and headed home, or were already there—the kids climbing over their parents and hollering from their house or climbing in and out of the bathing tubs in the kitchen next to the stove while Mom heated the water and poured it steaming into the water that hadn’t seen even lukewarm water for over an hour.

Sometimes—like now—Buster thought about what a home could mean to him. He’d had enough of dust up his nose. He slid his toothpick to the other side of his mouth and continued wondering.

Ruston wasn’t even moving his toothpick. It poked out like a tree branch with no wind blowing. Buster turned his good ear in Ruston’s direction. Since his good ear was on the side opposite of Ruston, Buster looked as if he was turned to see something behind Ruston. He heard a low guttural sound at first, bubbling up into a barely audible, awful song.

"And now that we are married and live on the prairie,

A happier little couple you seldom ever see, you seldom ever see,

A happier little couple you seldom ever see."

Are you singing? Is that what it’s called? Buster demanded.

Ruston pulled out his toothpick and looked away from Buster.

Yeah. Some do.

What’s that song called? Buster wondered aloud.

It’s got a lot of titles. ‘The Buckskin Shirt,’ ‘The Gambling Man,’ even ‘Rambling Gambling Man.’ I didn’t mean to interfere with your reverie.

With my what?

Reverie.

Is that one of those inchmeal words? Buster asked. It’s sure a gross-sounding thing like that song you was … What did you call it? You know, when you’re not busy insulting me singing? I’m just trying to give you some truth. You sing with your tail up. Say, you ever think of marrying someday? You sure seem to enjoy Jenny.

Buster laughed heartily although he didn’t know what it meant, and then Ruston picked up the conversation on a more serious note. Yeah, sure, I think on it. A lot as I get older. A guy couldn’t do better than have a gal like Jenny to come home to at the end of his day.

Unless he had a Goldie. Ruston grinned at Buster.

This time it was Buster’s turn to laugh.

Yeah. It would be hard to do better than Goldie and Jenny.

After the ambush they’d arranged for the Damien gang outside of Austin, in which the farmers and soldiers squashed the marauding murderers who had terrorized the southern end of the Chisholm, Ruston and Buster spent the next two months going to Catholic masses, searching for the deadliest Damien of them all who had escaped capture. Parading as a priest, he had organized a subscription service for protection for him and his gang. If people didn’t pay, his gang killed them in their homes, in their fields, in their barns. It didn’t matter if the kids watched them rape their mothers and shoot them; the Damiens sometimes just turned their guns on the kids. Now Buster and Ruston were enjoying that rare moment of stepping out of their roles as US Marshals if only for a few days of good meals, good companionship. It felt good to be sitting there, enjoying the luxury of a toothpick and even the misery of a song.

Ruston plugged his toothpick back in as Buster continued, No, I’m probably not going to settle down now. Too many bad habits. ’Sides, I’m getting too long in the tooth to pretend that I’m a young snorter. Someday, ’bout a hundred and fifty years from now, they’ll have a saying that’ll sum situations up just fine.

What will that be?

It is what it is, Buster replied.

A booming silence filled the space between them until Ruston spoke.

That’s stupid talk. Of course, you are what you are. If you weren’t what you are, you’d be someone else. You wouldn’t be who you are. Where did you get such a saying? I ain’t never heard it ever.

Oh, it just came to me, Buster replied. But it will be famous someday, standing there right along with ‘gitty up.’ Probably, your great grandchildren will use it along with your great-grandchildren’s children. Course, you’d hafta get married first and have a child.

Kinda like my singing?

What’s your singing got to do with it?

Whether I’m married or not married, have children and grandchildren or no children, I will still be whatever I was. I am what I am, Ruston explained as he looked over at Buster.

Yep. But you could change who you are and, therefore, change who you’ll be. There’s a Jenny in there too. Buster’s head swiveled toward Ruston to see if he was going to continue the point. He wasn’t.

We have a priest to find first. That job isn’t over if he’s cranking up the machine here on the Brazzo River two hundred miles southwest of Red River Station. He may have escaped us then as the leader of the Damiens, but he won’t do it twice, Ruston promised.

After a good night’s sleep, Buster woke ready to make the day happen.

Let’s git ’er done!’ Buster said as he stood up.

Git ’er done? Now where did that come from?

Same place as my other sayings a hundred years from now, Buster replied as he walked beside Ruston, who