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CHAPTER 1
Dallas Mercury, June 14, 1865:
MASSACRED NOTHING SHORT OF MURDER !!!! 200 Brave Boys from Texas Butchered at Baxter Pass Prison Camp Commander Refused To Send 1st Texas Soldiers Home SHOCKING DETAILS! Is This What We Can Anticipatse Now That Our Valiant Cause Is Lost?
By M.O.V./Special Correspondent
BAXTER PASS, OHIO (MAY 31) – Much savagery has been witnessed during the past four years of just but forlorn rebellion, but none — not even the butchery at Gettysburg, nor the shocking sights of brave young men full of ideals and courage struck down in the prime of youth at the slaughters of Sharpsburg, Shiloh, the Wilderness, and Franklin — has been seen as horrific as what happened late last night on the Ohio River.
With word of the surrenders of Confederate armies (General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox; General Joseph E. Johnston's army at Durham Station, North Carolina; General Richard Taylor's army north of Mobile, Alabama; and, most recently, Lieutenant General Kirby Smith's command of the Trans-Mississippi Department in New Orleans) reaching the prisoner-of-war camp southeast of Cincinnati and just across from Kentucky, the 4,230 prisoners at Baxter Pass were sent home after taking the Oath of Allegiance to the victorious but damnable Union.
More than 4,000 soldiers of the South, many of whom had spent three years in the wretched conditions of Baxter Pass, including some 200 of what had originally been 450 boys of the famed division led by that gallant Texas leader, John Bell Hood. Hood's 1st Texas Infantry, glory be their name, Hood's Texas Brigade! Yes, 450 1st Texas boys had been sent to Baxter Pass after their unfortunate capture at Sharpsburg in September of 1862, a bloody, savage encounter in Maryland that the Yankees have called Antietam.
Four hundred and fifty ... reduced to 200 from disease and privation and butchery ... now all gone to Glory.
Slaughtered. Murdered. Incarcerated in a field fit not even for trash, these men had become mere skeletons, having had to fight for coarse cornmeal and rancid bacon for three years. Living off rats and mice with little more than greatcoats turned into tents during the worst of winters.
If ever there was a Hell on Earth, it was at Baxter Pass.
Our brave soldiers had survived buck and ball at Eltham's Landing, the horrific grapeshot that cut down soldiers by the scores at Gaines's Mill during the Seven Days Battle, they had helped turned the tide and send the Yankees running at Second Manassas, only to run into rotten luck at Sharpsburg, where so many gallant Texans fell to Yankee shot and turned a cornfield into a death field. Our 450 survived, only to be captured and sent to Ohio as prisoners of war since Mr. Lincoln and his black Republicans had refused to allow any more prisoner exchanges.
So they rotted. They died.
And all the while, Lincoln Everett Dalton, the commandant of the prison camp, the Butcher of Baxter Pass, watched, and laughed.
But with the unfortunate end of the war, the Butcher had to let his prisoners go. Oaths were pledged, the paroles issued, and the gates to the filthy camp were opened. Four thousand soldiers, once men, now practically ghosts, walked past the "dead line" — where many prisoners had been shot by Yankee guards taking target practice, where others had stepped across to die by musket ball rather than cough or rot to death — and past the cemetery where hogs rooted out the dead, where markers were unheard of, where mounds and mounds — thousands of them — were reminders of what once had been soldiers. They left weakly, but with dignity, for they are the future of our glorious South.
Some returned to South Carolina. Some decided to cross the mighty Ohio by ferry and walk — take the "ankle express," as they called it — back home to whatever home awaits them in Tennessee and Alabama and Georgia.
And 200 brothers of Texas were given passage on the stern-wheeler Fancy Belpre that was bound to the mouth of the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois, and then to steam south down the mighty Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana, where they might find transportation back home to Marion County ... to Livingston County ... to Harrison County ... Tyler County ... Anderson County ... Houston County ... San Augustine County ... Galveston County ... to mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends ... and wives — and ladies who had pledged to wait for their brave men's return before they were to wed.
Some soldiers wrote letters to their loved ones to let them know they would be home soon.
Instead of home, however, this morning their mangled bodies are washing up by the scores on the banks of the Ohio. Slaughtered by the Butcher of Baxter Pass.
At 10 P. M. last night, those paroled soldiers of South Texas boarded the Fancy Belpre, an old packet, tried and true, that has been carrying passengers and cargo down the Ohio and Mississippi since 1857. With no berths available on the passenger deck, our Texas boys bound for home sat on crates that lined the main deck. General Dalton, the Devil Incarnate, watched from the balcony of the Union Hotel, where he has made his headquarters since taking command of the prison camp two miles south of here in August of 1863. The Union Hotel is known for its catfish and fried chicken, smells that are much more pleasant than those foul scents that attack one's nostrils at Baxter Pass.
Shortly past 11 P. M., the packet pulled away from the landing, to begin its journey south. But she never made it to Cairo — our brave Texans never made it home. Indeed, the Fancy Belpre never made it more than three hundred yards from the landing at Baxter Pass.
For gunfire, practically unheard of in this quaint city of 750 — except the occasional muffled sounds of musketry from the prison camp — erupted at 11:10 P. M.
A Gatling gun — that Yankee-created monster of a weapon — opened fire on the Fancy Belpre. General Dalton himself cranked the handle, turning the multiple rotating barrels, and sending lead projectiles ripping into the hull of the old packet — and into the bodies of soldiers of Texas who had survived so much.
General Dalton murdered 200 Texas soldiers, but he also killed the crew of the packet and 58 civilian passengers. He triumphantly told a reporter that the Texas boys had escaped, but the war is over — which, naturally, he knew, unless his evil brain has been rotted to insanity; therefore he changed his story and told authorities and the press that the Texans had found weapons and had pirated the ship and opened fire on town. He said the Texas boys had already killed the crew. He, of course, lied.
As leaden projectiles from the Gatling gun ripped into men and women and wood and Negroes, the boiler on the steamboat exploded. Fire swept through the Fancy Belpre like a tinderbox. The wonderful old stern-wheeler sank quickly to the Ohio's murky depths. Bodies began washing ashore, some drowned, some horribly burned, and others ripped apart by those awful heavy slugs from that unholy creation of Mr. Richard Gatling.
Crews this morning are still recovering bodies. General Dalton has ordered that any body identified as a former prisoner be returned to the camp at Baxter Pass and be interred there.
Already there are calls from Yankee newspapers that the commander at Andersonville, Georgia, should be tried and hanged. He is considered a monster — but in Ohio, the Cincinnati newspapers have already labeled the Butcher of Baxter Pass as a savior of Ohio, a hero. Some have suggested that he run for senator of Ohio ... or President of the United States.
Lincoln is dead. The war is barely over. The horrors that face the South, and Texas, have just begun.
CHAPTER 2
Monday, 7 a.m.
Winter had settled over Tarrant County, Texas, which made Sheriff Jess Casey quite happy.
January meant a lot of things in Fort Worth. It meant that the stockyards were practically empty of cattle, which meant that Hell's Half Acre's saloons and gambling halls and cribs and gutters were mostly empty of cowboys. The bulk of the notorious district's gamblers had departed for warmer climes and hotter decks of cards. Luke Short had gone to San Antonio. Others had opted for Arizona Territory or New Orleans. Railroad workers had blown off most of their steam during the summer and fall, and now they were settling down for the winter. The trains still arrived, but not many people got off in this cow town, and those that did were welcomed here to peddle their merchandise or pay their respects. Legitimate businessmen. Women visiting families. Families relocating, for Fort Worth kept right on booming.
Kurt Koenig, Fort Worth's city marshal, and Jess's and the marshal's deputies had taken a train that eventually would deposit the lawmen and a handful of prisoners at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, which meant that the jail cells in the sheriff 's office were also empty. Oh, sure, Koenig had asked Jess to look after the town while he was gone. Like Jess wasn't always doing town work in addition to county work, but this time, Jess didn't mind. Winter. January. Cold, clear, but pleasant.
This time of year, what would he be doing other than patrolling the streets for dead dogs and picking up trash? Maybe there might be a drunk to arrest, or some vagrant to send along his way, but ... Jess had other things in mind.
Winter. In the old days, back when Jess had been cowboying, winter would usually mean riding the grub line, drifting from ranch to ranch for a meal and maybe a bunk for the night in exchange for some trivial work: Chopping wood. Mending some tack. Feeding the stock or mucking a few stalls. Maybe digging a hole for a new privy if picks and shovels could cut through frozen ground. But now that Jess had become well established as the law in Fort Worth, having survived a slew of gunfights and fistfights and drunken brawls and sober fights, having been rewarded with a nice rocking chair and a fancy gold badge — but mostly with his life — Jess figured that winter meant catching up on some much-needed, much-appreciated sleep.
He had dragged that old oak rocking chair — the one Mayor Harry Stout had awarded him (by salvaging it from the City Hall garbage) — from outside his office (actually the jail), where he liked to sit and rock and watch people ride down Belknap Street, inside, where the hard-coal Duke Canyon stove kept the front office toasty and the coffee warm enough.
The Regulator clock let him know that it was seven in the morning, maybe a half hour before sunrise, though gray light already crept in through the slits in the window shades. He could sleep now; sleep as long as he wanted, to noon or midnight or February. The hard coal would keep the stove pleasant for hours, and Jess had finally gotten everything perfect. The pillow behind his head, the one he had procured from one of the, ahem, "sporting houses" in Hell's Half Acre, felt comfortable, and smelled really sweet, like one of Ma Shirley's girls. He had the rocker positioned perfectly, his hat had been pulled down just at the right spot, and his boots, crossed at the ankles, had found a comfortable place on the edge of his desk.
Now all he had to do was think about what he would like to dream about. A cold beer maybe. A good horse. A fifteen-pound catfish hooked. A morning without interruption. A winter with nothing to do but....
The door opened, letting in a cold wind, and feet stamped on the floor. The door slammed. Jess Casey did not budge. He had found the perfect position and was not about to change anything.
"Marshal!"
Jess did not answer. One of these days Clint Stowe might remember at least that Jess was the county sheriff and Kurt Koenig was the city marshal.
"You awake?"
Jess's eyes remained closed. He could hear Clint Stowe shaking a piece of paper.
"No," Jess said. He wet his lips and wondered if he could just imagine an office without a Clint Stowe.
"He's a-comin'!" Clint Stowe said urgently.
Maybe, Jess thought, if I just tried counting sheep. He had never done that before. After all, Jess had started out cowboying back when he was fourteen years old, some twenty years earlier. Cowboys did not count sheep. Unless, of course, they were killing them.
"Sheriff Casey?" Clint Stowe pleaded.
Well, since old Clint had gotten Jess's title right, he had to react to that. Slowly, Jess's eyes opened, and he removed his brown hat.
Clint stood in front of the door, still shaking that flimsy piece of yellow paper in his right hand as if it were burning hot and he was trying to shake out the flames. If Jess guessed right, the temperature outside was hovering around thirty degrees, but Clint had left the telegrapher's office without his bowler, woolen scarf, or his overcoat. He stood there in his cotton shirt and sleeve garters. Not only that, beads of sweat, which had somehow not formed into bits of ice, rolled down his forehead.
The telegrapher had to be in his fifties, with a head as bald as a cue ball except for that thin band of gray that ended right above his ears but, surprisingly, produced enough dandruff for ten or fifteen teenagers. He had a potbelly, long fingers meant for tapping out Morse code on a telegraph, plaid woolen trousers, and scuffed-up black gaiters, which, Jess noticed, had been pulled onto the wrong feet. Clint usually sat in the office by the depot barefooted. Probably because he hailed from Alabama and still was not used to wearing shoes.
"He's a-comin'," Clint repeated.
Jess nodded. "Well ...," Jess picked the hat off his lap and began to return it to his head. "Let him come."
"But it's ... him."
With a heavy sigh, Jess tossed the hat on his desk, uncrossed his ankles, brought his feet down to the floor, and leaned forward in the old oak rocker. He snapped his fingers and waited for Clint Stowe to deliver the telegram.
"It's from Paul Parkin," Clint told him.
Parkin was the city constable in Dallas, roughly thirty miles east across rolling Texas prairie.
What does a Dallas constable want with me? Jess asked himself as Clint gave him the telegraph slip. Dallas and Fort Worth mixed like oil and water, like cowboys and farmers, like ...
In a matter of seconds, Jess Casey was wide awake.
GEN DALTON ARRIVED DALLAS YESTERDAY STOP YOU MIGHT BE TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER HIM STOP JUST ASK ABOUT THE BUTCHER OF BAXTER PASS STOP I SENT HIM YOUR WAY STOP ENJOY HIS VISIT STOP PARKIN DALLAS
Yeah, Dallas and Fort Worth did not mix. The two cities were rivals in everything, so Paul Parkin had run Lincoln Dalton out of Dallas and sent him to Fort Worth. Not that Jess Casey could blame Parkin. Had the Butcher of Baxter Pass arrived in Fort Worth first, Jess would have run that damn Yankee east to Dallas.
"You just get this?" Jess asked.
"Uh-huh. Came in a little past six."
After a quick glance at the Regulator, Jess scowled at Clint Stowe.
"Well," the telegrapher began, and stuttered, and stopped, and wet his lips, and finally found a handkerchief in his trousers pocket and wiped the sweat off his face. "Well, sir, I figured the mayor should know ... and ... um ... well ..."
"The telegram was sent to me," Jess said.
"Yeah. And I brung it to you ... just as fast as ... well ... you know ..."
"Don't you telegraphers have to take some kind of oath about ... confidentiality?"
"Confound what?"
Jess moved toward the wall where his shell belt hung, along with the holstered .44-40-caliber Colt.
"What time does the train get in from Dallas?" Jess asked.
"Which one?"
"The next one!"
"Seven thirty-seven, if it's on time."
The gun belt was buckled on now, and Jess had pulled out the Colt, opened the loading gate, and was spinning the cylinder. Five fresh shells. He wondered if he should fill it with six. Most men — most smart men — kept the chamber under the hammer empty to prevent that accidental discharge, which might blow off a toe or a foot or a leg. Jess didn't consider himself much of a gunman, certainly no fast-draw specialist. As a cowboy, he had used a Colt primarily as a hammer when he drew the unfortunate duty of riding a fence line. As the law of Tarrant County, Texas, however ...
"You can go now, Clint," Jess said, and plucked a brass cartridge from the belt.
"Where?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Hell's Half Acre: The Butcher of Baxter Pass"
by .
Copyright © 2015 J. A. Johnstone.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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