by Paul Bagdon
“Ahhh, shit,” I said aloud.
I walked back through the burned-out door and doorway that led to the two cells. Fire doesn’t do much to cold rolled steel. The bars probably looked as good as they ever had. There was a scorched slop bucket in one cell, along with what had probably been a meal tray.
There was also a skeleton jammed into the corner of the cell. Of course, much of the flesh had burned away, and rats and other vermin stripped off the rest. The hairless skull had fallen forward and rested on its side on the floor, eye holes watching me. Some of the longer bones—the long leg and arm bones—had been wrenched free and carried away, no doubt by dogs and, possibly, coyotes.
I moved on to the second of the two cells. There was no skeleton in that one—it was empty except for yet another scorched slop bucket.
The cells reminded me of the days and hours I spent in similar ones, awaiting my date with the hangman. That was a few years ago, but the sensations and memories still sent a chill down the length of my spine. Being killed in a gunfight or while robbing a bank wouldn’t bother me much—such deaths are quick and unforeseeable. But Jesus, I could see the gallows through my cell window and the waiting was the worst part of the whole package. I left the building, crunching over the door to the street that had fallen in. It was good to be outside.
“Kinda like it in there, do ya?” a voice called to me from the street. Calvin, the bar-rag I’d discussed Gila Bend with when I first came to town, walked a bit unsteadily.
“Can’t say I do.”
“There’s some history in that ol’ jail,” Calvin said. “Maybe you want to hear about it?”
“Maybe.”
Calvin cleared his throat. “A day like this, why it’s just natural for a man to develop a thirst—wouldn’t you say so?”
I sighed. “C’mon,” I said, and went to a gin mill across the street. Some folks looked up when I walked in and stood at the bar. The fellow next to me looked around and then said surreptitiously, “You done good. The more of them snakes gets killed, the fewer there’ll be.”
I guess it doesn’t take news at all long to find its way into every bar in town.
I bought a bottle of rotgut and a couple schooners of beer and sat at a table at the rear, my back to the wall. Calvin hustled through the batwings and joined me. He pulled the cork on the bottle and began sucking at it without benefit of a glass. He brought the level of the bottle down close to three inches.
“Kinda under the weather today.” He grinned. “A little bracer’ll fix me right up.” He took a long drink from his beer and grunted contentedly. “Well,” he began, “maybe you heard that there’ve been four lawmen killed off since Billy Powers rode in.”
“Yeah. I heard that somewhere.”
“The first one Billy got in a tussle with had been in office a few years—a good man. Handy with a pistol an’ a rifle an’ put up with no shit in his town, I’ll tell you that. Billy met him right out on the street. The sheriff was fast; Billy was faster. By then, folks was scared of Billy and nobody admitted to seeing nothing.”
Calvin sucked at the whiskey again. “The second one was but a kid, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. Nice enough fella, but he didn’t have no place in that office. One morning he set out to serve a warrant someplace or another and was picked off his horse with a buffalo gun. Sumbitch left a hole in him big enough to drive a freighter through.
“The third one was a long time coming. Word had got around that Gila Bend wasn’t healthy for lawmen. He wasn’t in town a week before somebody blew the hell out of him with a scatter gun—both barrels, I heard—as he was walkin’ out of the mercantile.
“This last fella was a hellcat. Whipcord tough, smart as a goddamn fox, and hotter’n hell with a pistol. One of Billy’s men tried to take him down one night, and the lawmen emptied his pistol into the outlaw. That there must have pissed Billy off no little bit. A couple-three nights later, Billy and his entire goddamn crew attacked the sheriff in his office. From the sound of the gunfire, a man would think he was hearin’ the battle of Shiloh all over again.” Calvin poured a few inches of whiskey into his half-full schooner and swirled the mixture with a grubby finger.
“The sheriff had him a couple of rifles, a scatter gun, an’ his pistol. The fight went on for half the night ‘til a half dozen of Billy’s boys flung torches through the windows. The place went up like a stack of hay. The sheriff didn’t have no choice but to get the hell out—it was that or burn to death, an’ I guess the lawman preferred a bullet or two to the fire. He got put down ‘fore he was two full steps outta the office. There was a drunk in one cell. He burned up with the office.”
We were both silent for a few moments. Then Calvin said, “So that’s her—the story of Gila Bend. Ain’t been nobody interested in takin’ the job since, an’ I can’t say I blame them. Hell, it’s like committin’ suicide.” Calvin set his empty mug on the table. “Say, you wouldn’t care to buy me another beer, would you?”
“No. Keep the whiskey.” I pushed my chair back and stood. “Thanks for the information.”
I went back to my hotel, the taste of the beer sour in my throat and mouth. I sat out in front and put a match to one of my cheroots. It was a good smoke—seemed fresh, and tasted good.
Why the hell am I still here in this goddamn garbage pit? All I gotta do is get my horse, fetch my money from its hiding place, and ride on.
Gila Bend was no concern of mine—none at all. So why was I still here?
Chapter Three
I sat out in front of the hotel for a good bit longer, at least until the heat became really oppressive. I generally don’t mind hot weather—and if a man does mind it, he’d best stay the hell out of West Texas.
I’ve always enjoyed watching streets and the activity on them. There wasn’t much in Gila Bend to watch, so when a fellow in a nicely fitting dark suit and polished boots rode by on an obviously well-bred horse, I paid more attention to him than I would to other passersby. One thing I noticed even before the suit and the sleek strength of his horse was the fact that he was wearing a derby—not a Stetson or Stetson-type hat.
I figured that if he was thinking about going into any of the saloons, he might want to leave the hat with his horse. No one but a dude would wear a silly lid like a derby, and I doubted that Billy Powers and his crew were real friendly to greenhorns who belonged in Boston much more than they did in Gila Bend.
Once, a few years back, in a cattle town called Divinity, I saw a dude get a foot shattered by a .45 slug. A bunch of drunks had decided to make him dance by shooting as close as possible to his feet. One cowhand was a bit too sauced to aim, and he shot the poor fellow’s foot. I could easily see that happening here. It didn’t, though. The town was as quiet as a graveyard at midnight.
By and by I was developing quite a thirst. Having cold beer available was spoiling me; in the over-whelming majority of towns, beer was served piss warm.
I’d been in each of the five saloons in Gila Bend, and they were all the same except the one that had the piano player who could play more than two or three songs—and play them well. I walked over to that one. There were drinkers and card players, but at that time of day—midafternoon—it didn’t smell quite as bad as usual inside. I stood at the bar and ordered a beer. I’d often wondered why the gin mills didn’t provide stools for the bar drinkers to sit on as they drank. I’d finally figured it out: a stool was easy to pick up and easy to swing, and if swung with enough power, easy to break. With the number of fights in most saloons, the owner’d go broke buying stools.
I lit another cheroot and made a mental note to buy more of them—perhaps a boxful if the mercantile had enough in stock. I drank my beer unhurriedly, kinda savoring it. Below the mandatory nude over the bar was a somewhat battered mirror that was a brownish yellow color from the smoke it was forced to endure. It was my habit to be aware of what was happening behind me, particularly in a place like Gila Bend.
The dude I’d seen earlier wal
ked in, minus his derby, and strode up to the bar.
“Afternoon, sir,” he said.
I nodded. I was having a fine time; I didn’t need some clown to talk at me.
“I believe,” he went on, “that you’re Lawrence Basil Taylor. Am I not correct?”
“No, you’re not. My name is Pound and I wonder if you could find someone else to pester, ‘cause I don’t have the time or the interest to flap gums with you.”
“Here’s how I heard the name Pound,” the dude said, as if he hadn’t heard my surly response. “You were teaching school in some broken-down little burg, and you ordered up some things in the town mercantile. You signed the purchase form with L.B. Taylor. The moron clerk made the ridiculous assumption that Pound was you’re your given name and you abbreviated it with the initials L.B., and from then on he—and the rest of the town—referred to you as Pound. You tended to get drunk and fall over at that time—in class or not. Correct? And then Zeb Stone came to town and the two of you became partners and you started robbing banks with him.”
“Look,” I said, “this is goddamn ridiculous. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t care to hear any more of it. You understand?”
“Certainly,” he said. “First, let me show you this.”
The dude reached into his coat pocket and took out a tightly folded document of some kind. “Please, Mr. Taylor, please listen to me. It’s for your own good—I promise you that.”
“Yeah,” I said, “lots of legal documents are for the good of me and my neighbors—like the goddamn bank foreclosures and tax liens on farmland and so forth.”
The dude grinned a bit. “Mr. Taylor,” he said very placidly, as if we were discussing the price of corn, “this very document may well keep you alive.”
“What? What’s this all about?”
“I’ll tell you—if you give me a chance.”
“OK, tell me what you’re after.”
“Certainly. I’m the circuit rider—the judge—for these parts. I make a circuit and hear cases, decide on sentences, settle land disputes, and so forth.”
“You’ve done a helluva job in Gila Bend,” I said.
“Your sarcasm is well-founded, Mr. Taylor. I can’t deny that. But here’s my offer, signed by ol’ Sam Houston himself: if you become the lawman in Gila Bend for a year—only a year—your robbery and murder charges will be totally extinguished.”
“Lemme see that paper,” I said. I read it carefully. It was precisely and exactly as the dude presented it, except, of course, it had a blank line where the outlaw agreeing to the proposition was to sign. Apparently it didn’t matter what thief, outlaw, bank robber, or killer the judge signed on—the promise would apply.
I shook my head. “You think I’m a gunman, no? That I shoot people whenever I care to? Lemme tell you this: I’ve killed no one beyond a kid who challenged me, and a couple of folks in banks who were truly stupid. If anyone was to try to clean up Gila Bend, the street would run with blood.”
“Isn’t it true that when you chop a snake’s head off, the rest of it dies, too?”
“So you want me to gun Billy Powers.”
“No, not unless it comes to that. What I want is for you to cover the commitment set forth in the pardon—to be the law in Gila Bend for a full year.”
“No. I won’t do it.”
The judge began refolding his precious document, but stopped when I said, “The problem is that you know where I am now. With a word from you, the bounty hunters and Rangers would swarm around me and kill me right then or string me up after a parody of a trial.”
“All I can do is give you my word, Mr. Taylor. But I’ve made this offer to a couple of Butch Cassidy’s men, as well as a hired gun out of Dodge and a half-breed named Small Bear—all wanted and all with good money on their heads. I gave them my word I wouldn’t reveal a thing about my meeting with him. I’ve kept my word. I was able to convince them all except Small Bear, and him I shot and killed because he was preparing to kill me.”
I looked down at the judge’s waist—he wasn’t wearing a gunbelt. There was no lump under either arm that would indicate a shoulder holster.
“How…?”
The judge held out his right hand, there was a quiet metallic click, and a Derringer two-shot over and under magically appeared in his palm. “I made the device myself,” he said. “It’s spring loaded and quite simple, really. The Derringer rests just in front of my elbow. A certain motion of my arm releases the spring and shoves the pistol into my hand.” He put the Derringer back under his shirt cuff and slid it up to his elbow and then straightened his shirt a bit. The weapon was completely invisible.
I couldn’t help being impressed. “Damn,” I said. “If that ain’t somethin’.”
“Yes. Well. I don’t need a decision from you right now, Mr. Taylor. I’ll be in Gila Bend a couple of days having my horse reshod and trying to make some sense out of this town and Billy Powers.”
“You can’t make sense where there is none,” I said.
“Perhaps. Now, is my word that I’ll release information about you to no one, ever, for any reason enough to keep me alive?”
I finished the beer in my mug and signaled the bartender for another. The judge stood quietly next to me, staring into the mirror. I thought for a bit.
“I’ve always figured I was a pretty fair judge of a man,” I said. “I’ll accept you at your word. But leave me the hell alone, hear?”
“Fine,” the judge said. He turned away from me and walked out of the saloon.
The West is getting stranger and stranger. Judges offering to let off killers, lunatics taking over towns, half the Confederate Army real sure the war isn’t over yet, every man from the age of ten carrying a sidearm. The buffalo herds have been cut by two-thirds by skin-hunters who set up on a knoll and pick off two-three dozen shaggies with a Sharps, skin ‘em out, and leave the meat to rot. Railroads goin’ all over the goddamn place. I dunno. It doesn’t make sense.
I was getting awfully accustomed to sleeping in a bed and having my meals prepared for me. Even a dung heap like Gila Bend had its advantages—iced beer being one of them.
I spent a good deal of time sitting in front of my hotel, reading a newspaper or simply watching the street. I also spent a good deal of time bellied up to the bar with a foaming schooner in front of me. As I thought about it, I hadn’t had a real break—a rest—since the day Zeb Stone and I robbed our first bank together a few years back. There were a slew of better towns and cities to rest up in, but they had the disadvantage of lawmen and bounty hunters. At least in Gila Bend I didn’t need to worry about either.
I saw that judge every so often and nodded, but we didn’t talk again. Every time I saw him, I thought about his ludicrous proposition. I’d make about as good a lawman as a rattlesnake would a house pet.
All around me Gila Bend went on as it had—gunfights in the streets, murders in the saloons, and normal folks who scurried when they had to be on the streets rather than walking normally or stopping to pass the time with a friend or neighbor.
One afternoon I was sitting in my usual rocker in front of the hotel when a kid—a boy of ten or so—came running down the street with a large, shaggy, brownish colored dog right at his heels. The kid pulled to a stop not too far from me and took a homemade ball from his pocket—a lumpy thing bound around and around with tape. The dog nearly jumped out of his skin, dancing in front of the kid, whining, pawing at him.
I’m not a sentimental man, but the love between the boy and his dog was palpable; I could feel it in the air.
The kid hurled the ball, and his dog took off like a racehorse, fetched it back after almost skidding by it, and dropped it at the boy’s feet, tail beating so that his whole hind end wiggled. The boy wouldn’t trade that mongrel dog for all the riches in the world.
He threw the ball again and the dog took off after it—just as a couple of Billy Powers’s men rode out from the mouth of an alley. One of
their horses spooked at the dog, and the rider cursed, drew, and shot the dog. The slug must have taken that good dog in the hip because his back legs didn’t work, and he was dragging himself toward the ball with his forepaws. The outlaws laughed and then the second one drew and put a bullet into the dog’s head. I vaulted over the rail in front of the hotel and shot him out of his saddle. The first rider, still wrestling a bit with his horse, began to take aim at me. I put a slug between his eyes.
The boy stood like a statue for a long moment, and then he ran to his dog. He cradled the dead animal in his lap like a mother holding a child, tears gushing from his eyes, the look on his face so stricken, so hurt, that I knew he’d never get over it. I walked over to him, ignoring the two corpses and the loose horses and crouched down next to him. “I’m real sorry, boy,” I said. “Real sorry.”
The kid said between gasps of anguish, “Rex, he was the best friend I ever had. And now…”
I straightened and walked over to the ball, picked it up, and brought it back to the boy. “You keep this ball, son, and you’ll always have it to remind you of your dog—your best friend.”
“I…I need to bury Rex,” the boy said. He attempted to lift the dog, but he probably weighed a good hundred pounds and his master couldn’t get him off the ground.
“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll fetch a cart from the livery and then we’ll go to wherever you want to bury Rex.”
I hustled to the livery, tossed a ten to the owner, grabbed a manure shovel, and climbed into a cart someone had just returned. I swung around to the horrible tableau of the boy and his dead dog, and as I looked a spark was ignited somewhere deep inside me. It was like a tiny part of my brain was aflame—and that fire was spreading.
I had a lot of respect for that boy. His eyes were still running tears, but he wasn’t about to let me hear him sob.
“Turn onto that wagon road up there,” he said, after we’d gone a mile or so out of town. His voice was slightly shaky. “Over by them trees,” he said.
I reined to a stop and the boy jumped out, took the shovel, and started to dig under a desert pine. After a while I said, “I’ll spell you with the shovel.”
