Outlaw Lawman (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Paul Bagdon

  “I ain’t real handy with a shotgun,” Dog said. “I never much cared for them.”

  “You don’t need to be handy,” I said. “That’s the beauty of it. The shot pattern opens so wide, it’s damned near impossible to miss.”

  “Be good to know how many of them sticks they got,” Dog said.

  “Yeah. That’s why we need to carry off all the cartridges we can find.”

  “OK,” Dog said. “You wait right here while I fetch up all the shotguns and cartridges I can find and put ‘em by the door. You’ll bust your silly neck stumblin’ around in the dark.”

  I started to say something but didn’t. Hairy Dog was right. I stayed where I was, listening to him moving quietly about the store. When he smashed the glass display case to free up the shotguns, it sounded like an explosion in a glass factory. I was somewhat surprised to find my Colt in my hand and my finger inside the trigger guard, ready to fire, and I didn’t remember drawing at all. It was reflex, I guess. I reholstered the pistol, feeling a tad foolish. I was glad Dog wasn’t right there to see how tight I was wound.

  Hairy Dog came back and got me, and I followed him again, my hand on his shoulder. It was pitch dark, and how he could see as well as he did amazed me. Even a candle would have drawn Powers’s attention to us.

  Someone once told me that every Indian has some cat blood running in his veins, giving him the cat’s ability to see so well in the dark. It made as much sense as any other explanation I’d ever heard.

  We stopped for a moment, and Dog moved something or other around on a counter. Then, he led me to the door, and we loaded our arms with shotguns and ammunition and trekked back to the office with no trouble, in spite of the awkward burdens we muled.

  Either Nose or Jake had gotten rid of the accumulated horseshit, which was good, but there wasn’t much that could be done about the pungent, ammonia-like reek of the urine except dash buckets of water on it and mop it up.

  We put the cases and boxes of cartridges on the floor next to the desk, and the shotguns on top of and around them. Hairy Dog picked up a shotgun, looked at it quickly, and tossed it into the corner near the stove.

  “Is 10-gauge,” he said. The remaining five were 12-gauge weapons.

  Dog went up on the roof to watch, and Jake came down. I explained my plan for dynamite control and the two men were enthusiastic.

  “Me an’ Dog an’ a couple of other boys robbed a plantation one time,” Big Nose said. “There was a bunch of old farts shooting at dinner plates a darkie was throwing up and out. Not many plates got busted, I’ll tell you that. We got some cash and jewelry.”

  “Didn’t we take a couple horses, too?” Dog called down from the roof.

  Big Nose considered for a moment. “No, not from that place. We got the horses a little later. That reminds me of…”

  It seemed like the Indians were about to launch into a grand tale of their exploits, and we didn’t have time for that.

  “Goddammit, listen up,” I interrupted. “Each of us has to keep a shotgun and a couple pocketfuls of cartridges in hand at all times. Try to blow the dynamite as far out as you can, but if they get close, shoot hell out of them anyway. One stick in here and we’re mincemeat—so keep a real good lookout.”

  “All that’s fine, Pound,” Jake said, looking over a shotgun. “But when does the fightin’ start?”

  “Keep your drawers up, Jake,” I said. “I know what I’m doing here.” Or, I hope I do anyway.

  “Way I see it,” Big Nose said, “they got a bunch of ex-military men over there.”

  “Deserters,” I said.

  “No difference, Pound. They will mount an attack, an’ they won’t wait much longer to do it.”

  Dog passed around his licorice whips.

  “We’re ready for ‘em,” Jake said.

  “We are,” I said. “We might need more food, though. I’m getting weary of jerky and hardtack.”

  Big Nose looked over at Dog. “Let’s go back to the store an’ stock up.”

  That’s exactly what the two Indians did, bringing back a sack of apples, three hams, ten pounds of ground coffee, seven quarts of whiskey, a few large tins of peaches in syrup, as well as tobacco, papers, and cheroots. We all took a turn at one of the bottles, and went to our watches. It seemed like a very long night.

  Snow started early the next morning. The storm wasn’t like the first of the season—the one where I damned near died—but it wasn’t too bad of a replica of it. The wind howled down the street like a malevolent spirit, looking for souls to carry off.

  We kept as close a watch as we could on the saloon where the Powers thugs were holed up, but there were so many whiteouts that it was impossible to see clearly. Of course, they had the same problem we had.

  I remembered storms from when I was a kid. Sucking at the whiskey facilitated the memories, and I drifted, half asleep, half awake, and let my mind wander.

  Pa used to send his cattle dog out in a bitch-storm like this. He’d paid $23.00 for that dog. The seller said the dog was part of the Scottish breed, the collie. It was a joy to watch the dog work the cattle, following my pa’s voice and arm commands. He—the dog—would light out after a stray Pa pointed at, and damned near drag it back to the flock. Even when the cattle were moving good, doing what they were supposed to do when moving from one pasture or another, that big ol’ shaggy dog was everywhere in the herd: nipping a hock of a slacker, even grabbing the nose of a wanderer to get him going in the right direction. It was something to see.

  Pa got caught with his drawers down one day when a storm worked itself into a blizzard and the herd was out in the lower forty acres, about as far away from the barn and their hay and grain as they could get without busting through a fence of two strands of tightly strung barbed wire.

  Pa sent that dog out, knowing the animal didn’t have a chance in hell of accomplishing anything worthwhile. I guess Pa figured even if a few head made it in, it was better than none. The dog didn’t come back, nor did any of the herd out in the lower forty.

  I was standing there in the barn sniveling because I knew the dog was either already frozen to death or would be shortly, and Pa cuffed me hard on the back of my head.

  “Lookit, Lawrence,” he said, “when you bust a hammer or a saw or whatever, do you cry like a sissy about it? Hell, no! You up an’ go buy another one. That’s what I’ll do is get me another dog. All he was, was a tool who shit in my barn an’ cost me money to feed.”

  I remembered this thought very clearly: I thought, “If I had a gun right now I’d kill you, you son of a bitch.”

  We kept our watches regardless of the fact that the wind-whipped snow allowed only very limited visibility.

  I was drinking more than I should and dozing pretty much all the time I was off watch.

  I had a pretty heavy booze problem before I partnered up with Zeb Stone—but I’d heard more goddamn Indian hero stories from Big Nose and Hairy Dog than any one man should have to endure.

  Jake was slugging the bottle pretty hard, too; his eyes were red rimmed and crusty and I noticed a tremble in his hands that worried me.

  Men begin to grind one another when they’re confined together too long, even if they’re tight friends. We weren’t pals—we were four men doing a job: three of us for cash money and one for freedom from the law.

  Early in the fourth day of the blizzard, I was dozing, half drunk, when Jake and Hairy Dog hollering at each other woke me up. They were racing beetles that came in with our cut firewood, and there was a conflict about the race: Dog called it a tie and Jake declared his beetle the winner.

  “That goddamn beetle shoved mine right at the starting line—hell, you saw it an’ you can’t say you didn’t—and it was still a tie race!”

  “Bullshit,” Dog exclaimed. “Your pendajo beetle is a clumsy pig an’ cannot run. This I saw with my own eyes.”

  The two men had been crouched side by side, and both were rising. I got my feet under me and dove between t
hem, arms extended, taking them down with me.

  “C’mon, dammit!” I shouted. “Both of you back off! What’s the sense of killing each other when we’ve got an enemy right across the street to fight?”

  “I piss on your enemy, Pound,” Dog snarled. “Me an’ Big Nose will ride on as soon as the storm ends. We are fighting men, an’ racing beetles is not fighting. You stick your money in your ass, no?”

  “I’ll take the money them two don’t want, Pound, an’ I’ll go across the street right now an’ raise some hell,” Jake said. “I don’t need no goddamn Injuns to…”

  “Cut it out!” I bellowed. “I can’t do anything about the storm, but to leave Gila Bend now—without the money—doesn’t make sense.”

  I thought real fast. I needed these men. I wouldn’t have a chance without them. “Look,” I said, “suppose we draw straws and the two short ones go across the street and do some spying to figure out if we should attack or if we should hold out a bit longer and wait for them to do something?”

  “I am all out of waiting,” Hairy Dog said. “My waiting is all used up.”

  “OK,” I said, “how about this: We do the straws like I said. If the two men who cross the street think we should attack, well, we will—tonight. If not, we hold out. Either way, you boys get your money.”

  There was an uneasy silence in the office. Jake’s beetle, after wandering as if confused for a bit, started hauling ass back to where our indoor wood was stacked. Jake stomped on it hard enough to drive it straight down to hell. He held out his hand to Dog. “No more beetles, right?”

  Hairy Dog took his hand and the beetle racing crisis was over.

  I went out back to pluck four pieces of straw from our broom. I stuck one of the short ones into a horseball and pulled it out with a little glob of horseshit on it, figuring the other men would avoid it. I called Big Nose down from the roof. “You been hearing what’s happening from up there?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. The plan is good. Let’s go up front and draw straws.”

  The three of my troops—such as they were—gathered around me. I held out my left fist out with all the straw tops even.

  We drew cards to see what order we’d choose in. Hairy Dog was first, Jake second, me third, and Big Nose fourth.

  Dog looked at the straws for a long moment and then laughed. “You think red men are stupid, Pound. You think we would not take the straw with the dung. You’re wrong.” He tugged the short, horseshit topped straw from my fist. “I go.” He grinned.

  Jake deliberated for a long time for a man who was a shoot-now-ask-questions-later sort. Finally, he chose a straw. It was long. “Damn,” he said, and tossed the straw toward our inside stacked wood.

  There were only two straws left. I had straight, honest, fifty-to-fifty odds. I don’t know that a man can ask much more in any situation. I pulled a straw; it was short.

  Big Nose snorted, his face hard and his eyes like embers behind polished black glass. He turned away from us and went back to his roof watch, wordlessly.

  “We go, Pound,” Hairy Dog said needlessly.

  We dressed in our outdoor clothing and covered our mouths and noses with a couple of bandanas each.

  “Maybe you know this, but I say it again,” Dog said. “No good to run outside, Pound. Is like a fire in the chest. Do everything slow, as if you are a dried up ol’ woman.”

  I’d never come across a man with burned lungs, but I’d seen a few horses. The poor sonsabitches had to work real hard for each breath, they stopped eating, and they croaked, unless someone was kind enough to put them down. No horse—and no man, I guess—gets better from burned lungs. I decided to pay real close attention to what Dog said.

  The wind was damned near strong enough to blow a man out of his boots. The cold was a living, malevolent force—a force to be reckoned with. Further, it was a force that couldn’t be overcome. I spat; the saliva turned to tiny, glistening bits of ice before it struck the ground.

  I stayed a stride behind Dog. He knew where he was going; I didn’t.

  He stopped. I walked into his back. “Hot damn,” he shouted into my ear. “This here’s a freighter with six barrels of beer on it. You stand right here like a statue, Pound. I’m gonna roll one’a these babies back to the office.”

  “But,” I shouted, “what we’re doing…”

  Hairy Dog had jumped atop the wagon and shoved a barrel off. It crashed pretty hard but didn’t break or leak.

  “A man needs a beer now’n again,” he yelled, face close to mine. “You stay here.” He was gone into the wildly whipping snow, probably with a major grin on his face, using his hands and feet to keep the barrel rolling.

  I didn’t see that I had a choice, so I stood there stomping my feet and rubbing my arms and hands until I felt Hairy Dog’s hand on my shoulder. How that man could see in this weather purely confused me, but he could.

  He appeared like a chimera next to me. “I’ll go around the building—see what I can see. You wait here.”

  I started to protest, but he was already gone. Into the maelstrom. I didn’t see or hear Dog until he touched my shoulder and led me to a huge pile of cut and stacked wood that cut the wind some, and let us talk.

  “Most of the windows are too froze over to see through, but I walked all around the building, looking in where I could. I took down a man, but I doubt that he was a watchdog—I think he jus’ stepped out to piss, is what he did.

  “The dynamite—two cases of it—is sitting on the bar. There are thirty or so men and eight or ten whores. They’re all boozin’ pretty hard. Looks like each man has at least a rifle and a pistol and whatever else he might be carryin’ concealed.”

  “Can we take them?” I asked.

  Dog grinned. “Yeah, we can. There ain’t but six or eight real fightin’ men in there—the rest are war crazies, drunks, and saddle tramps Powers signed on.”

  We got a tiny window of light as the wind shifted. The front of Dog’s albino wolf coat was painted with frozen blood, and so were his sleeves and gloves.

  I looked closer. “You hurt, Dog? Looks like you’re leaking blood. Let’s…”

  “Is no my blood,” he said. “The man pissing? I cut off his head and mounted it on a mop handle stuck in the snow.” He reached into his pocket and took out a pistol. “Is nice .45,” he said. “See the horn grips?”

  “Yeah. It’s a nice gun, Dog, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well…nothing. Let’s get back.”

  I don’t think Indians and whites can speak the same emotional language, or live anywhere near the same life. Hairy Dog had had just killed a man, decapitated him, and mounted the fellow’s head on an inverted mop jammed into the snow. The very thought of it made me queasy, made me swallow hot bile that’d risen in my throat. Dog, on the other hand, believed that nothing done to an enemy is too barbaric, too inhuman, too disgusting.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

  We crossed the street, barely able to stay on our feet in the wind. Dog waved his rifle over his head so our own boys wouldn’t pick us off. I was certain Big Nose would see the signal; I wasn’t at all sure about Jake.

  Jake let us in and handed us each a bottle. We shucked our outer clothes and damned near climbed right on into the stove.

  Big Nose asked Dog, “Can we do this?”

  “Yes,” Dog said.

  Jake stood. “Well, hell, then—let’s get to it.”

  Chapter Nine

  I was just about to make a couple of points about how we could attack Powers effectively when Nose kicked open the door, snatched up the shotgun that was standing on its butt next to it, and fired into the sky.

  I hadn’t seen the fuse burning, probably because I wasn’t looking quite that way, but I sure saw the explosion when Big Nose’s shot hit the stick. It was the blindingly bright—the purest, hottest white in the world, and then suddenly, it was red-orange. The snow acte
d as fast-moving reflectors, throwing the colors into the sky.

  We all grabbed shotguns—and we didn’t have to wait long to use them. The fuses, like I said, hissed as bright and hot as magnesium flares, and we blew the dynamite out of the sky with no more trouble than we’d have shooting pigeons. It’s not impossible to miss a near target with a 12-gauge, but it’s actually rather difficult. The pattern of shot opens up so wide so fast that a few pellets are almost bound to hit the target. The one problem I had was leading a dynamite stick a bit when one of my boys would blow one in my line of vision. The flash of it exploding would create a gauzy white curtain over my eyes for a moment, and I could no longer see my target.

  It was like looking at a mid-August sun for a few moments longer than necessary, and white spots floated for a bit. By the time I was able to refocus on the target, one of the others would have plucked it out of the darkness. My eyes were tearing, and I was glad to see that Dog’s and Nose’s were, as well.

  Jake had the best seat in the house: he was on the roof. He had the benefit of breathing unsullied air and the best vantage point. I was a little surprised to hear him fire his rifle every so often, until I saw a thug flip up into the air a good ten feet, like a rag doll thrown into the sky with a few parts missing—like an arm, a head, and a leg. Jake whooped like a kid at a circus. “Dumb bastid,” he shouted.

  Later, Jake told us that most of Powers’s men were lighting the fuses of their sticks of dynamite behind the cover of their saloon, but every so often some chowderhead would touch off a stick within Jake’s view. The shotgun pattern wouldn’t carry that far with enough punch to do any dam- age, but Jake’s rifle sure would. When he hit a stick the man purely came apart.

  It was coming dark, with snow spattering about now and then. It’d been dusk-dark all day, with a thick cover of gray clouds blocking any of the feeble winter sun.