Outlaw Lawman (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Paul Bagdon

  “I must wire the good Father,” Hairy Dog said, “tell him to send no more men. We have enough here. Where is the wire office?”

  “I dunno about us having enough men,” I said. “The odds are lousy. You and Big Nose even things up a bit, but…well…forty men is a lot.”

  “Not so many,” Hairy Dog said. “And we have no need to fight them all at once.”

  “We’ll go to the wire office now. Your store, it has tobacco for smoking?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The Indians left without further speaking. “This ought to be good,” Jake said, moving to the window. “I suspect that the ol’ goat who owns the mercantile won’t do business with Injuns.”

  Don and I moved in behind and next to Jake and watched Hairy Dog and Big Nose trudge down the street to the mercantile. They went inside and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then the owner of the store sailed through his front show window in a glistening rain of shards and bits of window glass. A minute later the two Indians walked out, each with a fat paper sack of tobacco and each smoking a shiny new pipe.

  The three of us laughed. “I guess maybe he’ll be more open to Injun trade now,” Don said.

  Word of what happened at the mercantile must have spread rapidly. When the Indians took a room at the hotel, not a word was said, and the same applied to the restaurant. They got lots of attention as they ate, though. They had no use for forks, and they used their own knives on anything that needed to be cut. When Hairy Dog picked up a handful of mashed potatoes and shoved them into his mouth, there was an audible gasp from the other diners. Both Indians picked up their steaks and gnawed away at them, grunting, grease running down their chins. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table. Neither man bothered using a glass. When Hairy Dog removed a cud-sized, partially chewed piece of steak from his mouth, inspected it carefully, and then tossed it over his shoulder, the few diners who’d remained, left, many with half-consumed meals on their plates.

  I guess because they had nowhere else they wanted to go, Hairy Dog and Big Nose returned to the office. The five of us sat around smoking, not saying much, listening to horses slopping by outside.

  “This ain’t fightin’,” Big Nose said. “This is settin’ like an ol’ granny warmin’ her ass by the fire. Me an’ Dog, we come to fight, not to set.”

  Hairy Dog nodded. “Maybe you give us our money now an’ we go on our way.” He said it as a statement, not as a question.

  “You know,” Jake said, “what Nose said is right. We ain’t treatin’ our new guests real well. How’s about we take them on a tour of the saloons in town—kinda let them get acquainted with some of Powers’s boys.” Of course, Jake knew what doing that would precipitate, and I noticed a pleased little glint in his eyes.

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Don said.

  “Me too,” I agreed. “But first…” I walked to the rifle closet and handed .30-30s to Jake and Don and took one for myself. I looked at Nose. “We don’t need no rifles,” he said. Dog nodded.

  “Fine with me,” I said. “Come on, boys—let’s load ‘em up an’ keep ‘em loaded from now on.” The rifle I held was already fully loaded with a round in the chamber—it was the one I thought I might use to pick off the two Indians.

  There were five saloons in little Gila Bend. It didn’t make much difference which one we visited first. I set out but Jake grabbed my shoulder. “It’s a sign of disrespect to make the Injuns follow you. We either walk in a straight line or one of them takes the lead.”

  “OK,” I said. “Big Nose, how about we go over to that saloon, the one with the piano playing?”

  Nose took the lead with Dog right behind him, and we squished and slopped over the street behind Dog, following him like baby ducks follow their mothers. The piano stopped and so did all conversation when the two Indians pushed through the batwings. They walked to the bar.

  “Whiskey,” Dog said.

  The bartender shook his head. “We don’t serve no redskins in here, chief.”

  Don, Jake, and I spread out behind the Indians, several feet between us.

  Hairy Dog grinned at Big Nose. “He says they don’t serve no Indians in here.”

  “Why’s that?” Nose asked.

  “Why’s that?” Dog asked the bartender.

  “ ‘Cause all of ya are stinkin’ goddamn savages—animals ‘stead of people.” He was already reaching behind the bar for the scatter gun that was no doubt there.

  Nose pushed his coat aside and swiveled his cut-down 10-gauge and fired at the bottles behind the bar. Booze and glass spewed in all directions, like shrapnel from an exploding canister round. The bartender, shocked, stood halfway up, not yet clutching the scattergun. Hairy Dog reached over the bar and slammed the top of the ‘tender’s head with the butt of his Colt. The man went down into a puddle of booze and broken glass.

  Big Nose put a hand on the bar and vaulted over it. He strode to the end of the bar where his 10-gauge hadn’t done much damage, selected a bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth, and took a long drink. He tossed the bottle to Dog, who also did it justice. Jake had a drink. Don and I abstained for the moment. I was more concerned about the men at the card tables than I was in having a drink, and I’d turned toward them, hand on the grips of my Colt.

  “You boys be sure to tell Billy what happened here,” I said. To my men, I said, “C’mon, let’s get outta this dump.”

  Big Nose led us to the batwings. I noticed that Jake snagged a fresh bottle on the way out.

  The next nearest gin mill was three storefronts down, on the same side of the street. We trooped down there, my mind again forming an image of a mother duck being followed by her babies. Outside the second saloon we ran into Lucas and I introduced him to Dog and Nose. One of the thugs must have run out the back of the first place we hit because just as Nose was about to shove a batwing, a slug dug into the wood frame next to his head. Most of the tables were tipped—being used for cover—and a genuine fusillade followed that first shot at Nose. We stood outside, sort of bunched up, wondering what the hell they were shooting at.

  Hairy Dog held his hand out to me. “This pisses me off, standing out here like women. Borrow me your rifle.” I had no idea what he was going to do, but I wasn’t about to question him. “Is it fully loaded?” he asked.

  “Plus one in the pipe,” I said.

  Dog looked up at Big Nose for a moment, their eyes locked, and it was as if a sort of communication the others couldn’t hear took place between them. Nose grinned and nodded.

  Dog crouched and then launched through the batwings like a swimmer diving into a pond, except that he was getting off shots that made some difference, gauging from the screams and yells from inside. Nose followed his friend, shotgun in one hand, an army Colt in the other. He, too, did some damage.

  We followed the Indians. The interior of the saloon was thick with blue-white smoke and the metallic smell of blood. Shouts, curses, and more screams weren’t as loud as the barking of our pistols and the hollow, concussive roar of the shotgun—that of Big Nose and that of a man crouched at the end of the bar. He raised up a bit to fire and I gunned him down.

  Two outlaws were hunkered down behind a table, firing rapidly. Jake smiled. “Watch this,” he shouted to Don. He made the quick motion that placed the Derringer in his hand and fired twice at the table. Almost as if it’d been choreographed, a man fell to each side. Most of one outlaw’s head was gone; the other had a hole in his chest large enough to drive a wagon through.

  “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for that gun,” Lucas said.

  “Ain’t for sale,” Jake answered.

  The firing from inside the saloon ceased. Dog took a bottle from the bar and poured its contents on the floor, emptying it. Then he did the same with another. He stuck a match and tossed it at the edge of the puddle of whiskey. There was a loud whooomph sound, and orange flames leapt from the floor and licked at everything around them.

  “Nice touch,”
I said to Hairy Dog.

  “We could stand here and drop them as they run out,” Nose said.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s go on down the street and visit another gin mill.”

  “I could use a drink,” Jake said.

  “It’s a rare damned time when you couldn’t use a drink,” Lucas said.

  Jake thought that over. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess you could be right on that. Don’t make me want a drink no less, though.”

  Our parade set out again, stopping in front of a smaller saloon than the other two had been. Nose jacked a round into the rifle he carried and began to say something when Hairy Dog tackled him—hard—carrying both men several feet to where they landed in the mud. The shot from the roof stuck where Big Nose had been standing.

  “Goddamn, that makes me mad,” Nose said. “Tryin’ to ambush a man like that. Dog, you see jist where he was?”

  “No. I seen the glint on the barrel of his rifle right up there, to the right of the door.”

  “Well, damn,” Nose said. “I tell you what: this one ain’t goin’ down easy.” There were a couple of cow horses at the hitching rail, standing pastern deep in muck and mud. Big Nose unfastened the throwin’ rope from one horse, formed a quick loop, and hurled it over the chimney extension that stuck up on the roof. He handed his rifle to Hairy Dog, slid a twelve-inch bowie knife out of his boot, and climbed that rope as easily as he’d walk up a few stairs. We couldn’t see much of anything because there was a wall across the roof, kind of a false front to make the place appear larger—maybe two full stories.

  There were a couple of rifle shots in quick succession, and then one more—and then a gurgling scream that sent a chill the length of my spine. A moment later, the rifleman’s head arced up and splashed down in the street.

  “Didn’t take his scalp,” Dog commented. “I kinda figured he would.”

  Nose slid down the rope. Although neither Dog nor anyone else asked why he’d left the hair on the head, he said, “There’s no honor in taking scalp of ambusher. Now we go in, have a drink, no?”

  I’d never seen a severed head before. It’s a whole lot more than, say, someone looking over a tall fence so that only his head is visible. This…thing…in the mud and slop had no relation to anything human—and yet it did, because I knew this man had been alive not five minutes ago.

  I noticed that one eye was closed and the other open in a grotesque wink. The open eye was flat and going gray with no humanity—no life—behind it.

  We eased into the saloon, weapons in hand and ready to fire—and found no one. The boozers, the bartender, the whores, the drink-scrounger losers, had apparently hauled ass out the back door, the one that led to the outhouse.

  “Shit,” Hairy Dog said. “I thought they’d fight.”

  Big Nose and Jake were behind the bar checking out the bottles. The ones they found to be moonshine with some color added, they flung at the back wall.

  “Under the bar, boys,” I said. “That’s where they keep the prime stock for Powers and his crew.”

  Big Nose came up with the cashbox, which was hidden away behind a beer barrel. It was a sturdy-looking little safe with one of those numbered dials on the front. “Heavy,” Nose said, as he lifted it out and set it on the bar.

  “We can take it back to the office an’ smash hell outta it ‘til it opens,” Dog said.

  “Yer ass,” Jake said. The Derringer appeared in his hand. It took only a single round to spin the box off the bar, its door flapping like the wing of a wounded bird.

  There was all paper cash—no coins—in it.

  “You see?” Big Nose said. “This is my reward from the gods for hacking that pig-ambusher’s head off as he lived.”

  That seemed to make good sense to Hairy Dog, and the others’ faces didn’t change in the least—not even Don—so I let it go. Nose grabbed out handfuls of bills and gave a bunch to each of us.

  “Damned white of you,” Jake said. “I ‘preciate it.” There was no slur intended; the intrinsic insult was unconscious on Jake’s part. I don’t doubt that Nose had killed men for less.

  We each had several drinks, and we each lit a cigar from the jar behind the bar. They had the flavor of lengths of rope, but they were better than nothing.

  The whiskey loosened us up a bit, and we decided to do some target practice. Perhaps sober I’d have done better than I did. I shattered eight bottles of whiskey out of ten—and this was from a draw—so my score wasn’t half bad.

  Nose and his shotgun blew two and three down at a time because of the spread of the shot in his shells. Dog got all ten of his with one reload of four in his sidearm, but it seemed to me that his draw was a little slow. Jake blew all ten to smithereens. Lucas got nine. Don got a semi-respectable six bottles.

  The six of us decided we were hungry and headed for the restaurant. Nose magnanimously waved the procession up and around him. “Now we’re friends,” he said.

  My mouth started running before my mind. “Wasn’t Hairy Dog already your friend?”

  “Hairy Dog killed my brother. It was a fair fight—left wrists tied together, knives in the right hands—and Dog cut fast and sharp and stabbed when the time was right. Still, Dog knows this, as do I. We travel together. We walk or ride side by side. But not in a new group. You see?”

  “Sure,” I lied. I had no idea about the philosophy or the rationale behind what Nose had said, but I really didn’t much care.

  We invaded the restaurant stinking of gunsmoke, booze, cheap cigars, and the usual rank heaviness the unwashed carry around with them.

  I handed the wide-eyed waiter a fifty-dollar bill. Since he was making maybe twelve dollars a week—and all the grub he could steal—the fifty was a real big deal.

  “I’ll pay for everything we eat and drink—that fifty is for you. Some of my friends tend to be a little crude and raucous, OK?”

  “What’s raucous?”

  “This, pretty much: they act like a bunch of wild boar set loose in a fine place to scavenge.”

  The waiter smiled broadly. “Perhaps we should pull a couple of tables together,” he said. “I’ll bring some bottles of whiskey—not ‘shine—out in a minute.”

  The cook put on a half dozen steaks, which or-dinarily would feed perhaps ten people, and cooked up a damned henhouse of scrambled eggs. He had his helpers mashing enough potatoes to feed damned near an army troop.

  There’d been six or eight or so diners in the restaurant when we arrived. Within a few minutes, they were gone and we had the entire dining area to ourselves. I’d told the waiter I’d pay the checks of the folks we frightened away, and that yet furthered their departure.

  I can’t say that I blamed them. We were a motley-looking crew, and the Indians didn’t look like they belonged anywhere but in their caves or wherever they may have lived.

  Don’s face reddened for some reason, and he appeared suddenly antsy.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Well…it’s this. You’ve got some real tough boys now.…”

  “We sure have. But…”

  “The point is,” Don said rapidly, his words almost tripping over one another, “that I need to pull out. My family—my ma an’ pa an’ everyone—they need me there more than you need me here. I’m…I’m really sorry, Pound, but…”

  “You have nothing at all to be sorry about. I respect a man who takes care of family. When you leaving?”

  “I figured, uhh…I’m ready to go right now, if that’s OK.”

  “Of course it’s OK.” I looked at the others. “You boys been listening, so you all know Don is heading out. He’s a hell of a man. Let’s have a drink to him.”

  “Hell no,” Lucas said. “Let’s have lots of drinks to him.”

  Don stood, looked us each in the eye, and walked away from the table. No more words were needed.

  The waiter set down a massive bowl of mashed potatoes on our table. Then for no apparent reason, he spun away from the table and
dropped, slowly and almost gracefully to the floor. The sound of the rifle didn’t reach us until the poor fellow was hit.

  All of us hit the floor simultaneously, crawling toward the street windows. Some of Powers’s men—we had no idea how many, were firing at us from inside the mercantile, from a freighter loaded with barrels of beer, and other places we weren’t aware of yet.

  The restaurant street windows were shattered immediately and rifle and pistol fire continued to pepper the front of the restaurant and the wall at the far end.

  “Pound,” a voice hollered out, “Mr. Powers wants to talk with you!”

  Chapter Seven

  A man stumbled and weaved out of the mercantile clutching a white ladies’ type scarf, waving it back and forth as if he were in a Fourth of July parade and he was carrying the colors.

  “Mr. Powers wantsta talk with you, Pound,” he said. “He say he don’t know no war.”

  I shouted out, “You tell that pissant that my boys an’ me are going to kill the bunch of you—the ones that don’t get the hell out of Gila Bend right away. And you tell Powers that I’ll be the one who takes him down.”

  The flag carrier laughed and hawked a mouthful of spit toward us. Hairy Dog put two rounds in his chest. The makeshift flag fluttered to the ground like a wounded bird.

  “Dammit, Dog—you can’t shoot a man carrying a white flag!” I said.

  “Sure I can—I just did,” Hairy Dog said.

  “Is very big insult to Indian have a man spit at him. That man cannot be allowed to live no longer.”

  “What the hell, Pound,” Lucas said. “We woulda killed him sooner or later anyhow.”

  “That’s not the…ahh, shit. Forget it,” I said disgustedly.

  Jake, Hairy Dog, and Big Nose had led far different lives than I had. The customs, the beliefs, the concern for human life—or the lack of it—were way beyond my scope of understanding, and it made little sense for me to try to figure it out. I recalled sitting in my pa’s wagon as he did some trading with a group of nonhostile Indians. On the ground a chubby little kid—maybe two years old—was playing with a puppy, wrestling around with it, holding it while it licked his face. His mother came to him, picked up the pup, cut its throat, and began to skin it out for the stewpot that bubbled a few feet away over a bed of white coals.