The night before, a band of Comancheros who had been terrorizing the territory raided the fledgling town of San Angelo, in the Concho Valley. They killed several men and made off with eleven females. The oldest was in her forties, and the youngest not yet ten years old. By chance, Captain Franchard’s contingent of Texas Rangers was passing through the valley on the way back from Fort Stockton after action against the Comanche, and took up the hunt.

“What do you think?” Franchard asked Pritchard.

“I think it’s going to be messy,” Pritchard said, “but we’ve got no choice. If we split our forces and try to head them off at the other end, they’ll spot us for sure. Even if they don’t, we’ll lose the rest of the day. But if we let them get out of that wash, they’ll scatter, and we’ll never get those hostages back alive.”

“I agree. How do you want to play it?”

“Only one way to play it,” Pritchard said. “Straight at ’em, hell-bent for leather.”

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Dovie walked down the sidewalk with her head high, exuding a confidence she didn’t feel. She felt the many scornful eyes on her, but ignored them, as she always did when out in public in Atherton.

It was spring, and more than five years had passed since she took Burnell Shipley’s name during a Valentine’s Day ceremony performed in the lobby of the Atherton Arms Hotel. It was a day she loathed to remember.

Since the wedding, Atherton had become a boomtown. Dovie’s new husband, as he’d once boasted, had indeed become the wealthiest and most powerful man in not only Jackson County, but the entire region.

After the surrender, Burnell convinced the railroad companies it would be in their mutual financial interests to build a special rail line from Atherton to Kansas City. This gave the once-small town direct access to all the many benefits of the postwar expansion.

By then, America’s great westward migration was in full swing. While the country’s never-ending demand for beef and lumber fueled the massive tide of humanity west toward the promise of California, Atherton, Missouri, under Burnell Shipley’s greedy stewardship, became one of the midcontinental hubs to provide both.

Burnell built up Atherton as the migrants and carpetbaggers flocked in. He erected another hotel, and two more saloons, in addition to expanding the stockyards and lumber enterprise. He traveled once a month to Jefferson City to meet with a sympathetic, and easily bribed, senator, and spent at least two weeks each month in Kansas City, allegedly conducting business.

Dovie suspected her husband did indeed conduct some business in Kansas City, but knew that most of his transactions were conducted at the city’s saloons, poker tables, and bordellos.