by Ralph Cotton
“Sure thing, Vernon,” said Dawson, taking Stony’s reins and leading him out through the front door, across a muddy corral, onto the muddy street.
Closing the livery corral gate behind him, Dawson led the bay along the edge of the boardwalk, keeping away from the middle of the street where water stood three inches deep. He wanted no trouble, yet he knew better than to allow himself to get caught on horseback in the rain on a muddy street, should a fight be forced upon him. With his Winchester rifle in hand he moved at a cautious pace, keeping his attention toward the Big Spur Saloon even as he appeared to stare straight ahead. He made it past the saloon by eight yards and thought he might ease out of town unnoticed, but then he heard a booming, gravelly voice call out, “Mister Dalton!” pronouncing his name incorrectly. “I have been hearing your name all across the hill country. I believe it’s fitting time we said our howdies, don’t you?”
Dawson stopped in his tracks and turned toward the Big Spur Saloon, across the street behind him. Raising the Winchester he cradled it in the crook of his left arm and kept his right hand around the stock, his thumb across the hammer. “I am Cray Dawson,” he said, looking at the tall, lean man who stood with his weight shifted onto his right leg. “I take it you must be Mister Ash?”
“Mad Albert to be exact,” the man said, wearing a wide, mirthless grin mantled by a thin black mustache. “Please call me Mad Albert.” His eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark-tinted wire-rims in spite of the sunless morning. His wide-brimmed hat hung behind him on a leather strip. He wore a rawhide poncho, the right front of it flipped up over his left shoulder. His right hand rested on the bone handle of a big Colt similar to Dawson’s. His black right glove was off, stuck down in his gun belt. “I would like to buy you a drink for breakfast, Mister Dalton,” he said, again mispronouncing his name.
Realizing that Ash might be doing it deliberately, Dawson let it pass this time. “I’m on my way out of town, Mad Albert,” said Dawson. “Another time perhaps?”
“In matters of both courtesy and killing, I always say ‘no time like the present,’” Ash said. He gestured with his free hand toward the gray sky and the rain. “It appears that all natural forces are against your departure anyway.”
“I don’t want any trouble with you, Mad Albert,” Dawson said firmly, his voice carrying a warning tone.
Ash appeared to be taken aback by Dawson’s abruptness, but it was hard to tell if his gesture was sincere or feigned. “Nor I with you, sir!” he said as if surprised by such a thought. “I’m only suggesting a breakfast drink…call it one for the trail. I’m not used to having an invitation turned down. Do you rebuff me, sir?”
Dawson took a deep breath and considered his position: standing in the rain, the mud, his horse right behind him in the line of fire. Without answering, he nudged forward on Stony’s reins and led the bay toward the Big Spur Saloon.
“There now, that’s more like it, Mister Dalton,” said Ash, grinning even more as Dawson walked the bay to the hitch rail out front of the saloon, hitched the reins, and shoved his Winchester into the saddle boot. Dawson noted that the gunman seemed sincere. Raising a long, gloved finger, Ash added, “I always say that a man who doesn’t have his morning whiskey is an unenlightened soul.” He stepped to the side and gestured Dawson to the bat-wing doors. “After you, sir!”
Dawson stepped inside the saloon and walked to the bar, feeling a bit uncomfortable with Mad Albert Ash behind him. But at the bar, Ash stood beside him, allowing three feet of space between them, and said to the young bartender, “Two tall ones if you will.”
At the end of the bar, two men stood rigidly, wearing worried expressions. Two full glasses of whiskey stood in front of them. When the bartender had poured shots of rye for Ash and Dawson, Mad Albert said to the two other drinkers, “Well, gentlemen, you are both free to go now…I’ve found someone else to converse with.”
“Thank you, Mister Ash,” said one of the men in a shaky voice. They downed their drinks and hurried out the door.
It dawned on Dawson that Mad Albert Ash was slightly drunk, but doing a good job of keeping it hidden. “And then there were only two,” said Ash, pulling his dark visor lens down enough to gaze at Dawson. A scar above his left eye caused a high arch in his black eyebrow, giving him an angry look. “Tell me the truth now, Dalton. You thought I came here to kill you, didn’t you?”
Dawson wasn’t going to allow himself to be intimidated. “I admit, I thought you might have come here to try,” he said.
Ash chuckled. “Good answer, Dalton.” He raised his drink and sipped it, then set it down and said, “I have to admit, when I heard what you did in Turkey Creek…then at Brakett Flats, I thought to myself, is this young man trying to outdo me?”
“It had nothing to do with you, Mad Albert,” said Dawson. He took a short sip of whiskey, then set it down.
Ash shrugged. “I realized that of course, once I heard the whole story. But we are a vain lot, us rootin-tootin gunslingers.” He grinned. “No matter what happens, we always wonder what it will have to do with us, our reputations that is.” He gave Dawson a questioning look. “Tell me, Dalton, do you always wonder that way yourself…as if anything that happens in the world of guns and gunmen is all about you?”
“No,” said Dawson, carefully considering his answer, already seeing how Albert Ash got his nickname. “But to tell you the truth I don’t consider myself a gunman, at least not the way other people seem to.”
“Oh really?” said Ash flatly. “Yet, the first thing that crossed your mind when you heard I was in town was whether or not I would try to kill you?”
“I wouldn’t say it was the first thing,” said Dawson, not giving in.
“Oh? Then what was?” Ash asked.
“All right,” said Dawson, “you’re right. I thought it.”
“Ah! Yes, indeed,” said Ash. “So you see, we all think the same way. If we hear that someone has come along and done something spectacular with a gun, we immediately think our position has been threatened. I’m certain we’re all a pompous bunch of snobs. And, notice I don’t judge myself any less guilty than the rest of you. I’m afraid that I too am hopelessly swollen on my own importance.”
Dawson only nodded, not wanting to argue the point—or any other point—with Mad Albert Ash. He shoved the glass of unfinished whiskey back from him. “You’ve been at this business a long time, Mad Albert. I doubt anybody will ever take that away from you.”
“Well, aren’t you kind to say so,” Ash said, his drunkenness becoming more apparent. Seeing that Dawson was getting ready to leave, he said, “What’s your hurry, Dalton?”
“My horse is standing in the rain,” said Dawson.
“Now that’s admirable,” said Ash. “I respect a man who will sacrifice his own comfort for that of a simple beast.”
Thinking of the night before, Dawson replied, “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve given up lately for that horse.”
Ash only nodded. “Dalton, I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to meet one another without guns in our hands.”
“My pleasure,” said Dawson, not sure what meaning this held for Mad Albert Ash, but glad that he wasn’t going to have to fight the man.
Before Dawson could turn and leave, Ash said, “Tell me, Dalton, do you believe we are evil men?”
“I’m not the one to say,” said Dawson. “Every man has to answer that sort of question for himself.”
“Well spoken!” Ash grinned, raising his glass as if in a toast. “I, too, feel that way, most times. The problem is that sometimes I am haunted by the many ghosts inside my shirt. They cause me to doubt myself.” He tossed back the drink and set the shot glass on the bar top, hard. Then, in reflection, he said, “We are all the terrible product of this unsettled time and place we live in, Dalton. We are civilized creatures…but creatures nonetheless. In Roman days there were mercenaries who hired their blades to the highest bidder. That’s what we are, isn’t it? Bold mercenaries?”
“I don’t know,” said Dawson. “I’m just on my way home.”
Ash continued to speak as Dawson left. “We are all on our way home, aren’t we?” He laughed aloud, then said, “Dalton, I’ve been at this for a long, long time! When I started, I took a bite out of the liver of the first man I ever killed. That was up in the high country! Can you imagine if I were to do that today? Stick a man in his gullet, rip out his liver, and take a big bite?” He hooted and laughed and raved. “Now that would most certainly raise some brows, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it! But see how civilized I’ve become? I don’t do that anymore. No, sir!”
Leaving Mad Albert alone with his drunken ranting and his shirt full of ghosts, Cray Dawson walked through the bat-wing doors out onto the boardwalk, only to be met by two men standing in the rain, one with a shotgun, the other with a Spencer rifle, both pointed at him. Raising his hands chest high, Dawson said quietly and cautiously, “Every time I leave this place, I get guns pointed at me. I’m getting tired of it.” Rain poured straight down.
“Then quit leaving,” said the young man holding the shotgun.
The other man lowered his rifle barrel an inch and said in a hushed tone, nodding toward the sound of Ash’s voice, “You’re with him, ain’t you?”
“Do I look like I’m with him?” Dawson asked in response.
“If you’re with him, you’re dead,” said the man with the shotgun.
“Then I’m for damn-sure not with him.” Dawson looked the two young men over, getting a picture of what they were up to. He let his hands down slightly.
“Keep ’em up, Mister!” growled the one with the rifle. “I’ll drop you deader than hell!”
“You’re out to kill yourself a big gunman, huh?” Dawson asked.
The young man gave him a look of bemused disbelief. “Now what would make you think a thing like that?”
“So what if we are?” said the one with the shotgun, stepping closer. “Are you going to try to stop us?”
“All I’m wanting to do is walk down to that big bay, get on him, and ride out of here,” Dawson replied.
“You won’t try to warn him?” asked the one with the rifle.
“He don’t need warning,” said Dawson. “He’ll know before you get to the doors.
“Yeah,” said the one with the rifle, “how do you know he will?”
“He’s been doing this longer than you two have been alive,” said Dawson, hoping to dissuade them. “He’ll know. Don’t ask me how, but he’ll know…and he’ll kill you.”
The two looked at one another. “Go on, Clifford,” said the one with the shotgun. “This saddle tramp don’t know nothing. He ain’t no gunman! He ain’t nobody!”
Clifford looked closer at Cray Dawson, at the big tied-down Colt and asked, “You ain’t are you, Mister…nobody that is?”
“No,” said Dawson. “I ain’t nobody…nobody worth killing anyway. But I know something about how gunmen think, and how they sense things. He’ll hear a board creak, a boot squeak. Hell, he might even just hear the difference in the sound of the rain once you both step out of it. But he’ll kill you, that much I’m sure of.”
“Clifford, are you going to do it or not?” the one with the shotgun asked, coming up onto the boardwalk, keeping Dawson covered.
“Damn it, Randall, yes! I’m going to do it,” Clifford whispered harshly. “But I ain’t going in there.”
“What are you going to do then?” asked his companion.
Clifford bit his lip, thinking, then said, “Give me the shotgun. I’ll nail him from over the doors.”
“Hold it,” said Dawson. “Don’t ambush the man.
You get no reputation that way, unless you want to be known as cowards.”
“Shut up,” said Randall, poking the shotgun at Dawson’s stomach. “I’m sick of your mouth!”
“Here, give it to me, Randall,” said Clifford, grabbing the shotgun.
Seeing his chance as the shotgun changed hands, Dawson snatched the barrel and shoved it upward. A blaze of fire erupted, blowing a large hole in the boardwalk overhang. Randall fell back off the boardwalk into the mud, grabbing for the pistol he wore shoved down behind his belt. Dawson was too busy wrestling the shotgun from Clifford’s hands to go for his Colt. Just as he managed to shove Clifford backward, Randall fired. Dawson buckled at the waist as the impact of the bullet lifted him slightly and tossed him sidelong against the front of the Big Spur Saloon. He tried reaching for his Colt but his hands seemed frozen in place, clutching his bloody stomach.
“You meddling son of a bit—” Clifford drew his pistol, leveled it at Dawson from less than ten feet, and cocked it quickly.
Dawson was coming back to himself now, getting his hand down to his Colt. But his hand was too bloody to get a grip on it. Shots from Randall’s pistol hissed past his head. He could see almost in slow motion the fall of Clifford’s gun hammer. Then everything seemed to stop and take off in a different direction. Clifford flew backward, a hole the size of a fist in his chest. In the mud, Randall had struggled upward onto his knees, but then he flew backward in a wide splash as a bullet nailed him between the eyes.
Dawson saw Mad Albert Ash step onto the boardwalk, his Colt up, cocked and smoking. He turned the barrel quickly in both directions. Then seeing Dawson slumped against the front of the building, he stepped over and stooped down, still keeping an eye on the street. “Damn, I expect you were right, Dalton,” he said. “You really aren’t much of a gunman. Are you?”
“That’s what…I’ve been trying to tell…everybody,” Dawson said, his bloody hands clutching his belly.
Chapter 3
“You are one lucky fellow, Crayton Dawson,” said Doctor Orville Peck, standing over Dawson’s cot in the back room of the doctor’s office.
Dawson raised his head off of the pillow enough to look down at the thick white bandage wrapped around his waist. He saw the wide pinkish circle where blood had begun to seep through the gauze. “Yeah?” said Dawson. “Then how come I don’t feel real lucky from where I see it?”
The doctor smiled. “Because we’re looking at it from two entirely different perspectives I suppose.” He reached over and picked up Dawson’s belt from a chair and held the buckle out for him to see. Part of the buckle had been flattened and mangled by Randall’s bullet. “See? I call this a stroke of luck,” he said. “You might call it just ruining your belt buckle. If this hadn’t deflected the bullet and split it in two, it probably would have gone deeper into your belly and just cut everything you’ve got to pieces. Instead it only nicked your intestines a place or two. We’ll talk about that later.” He dismissed the matter, then went on. “As it is you’re going to be pretty sore for awhile, but nothing inside your gut is damaged. I say you must have been born under a lucky star.”
A deep, dull pain caused Dawson to collapse back onto the pillow with a moan. “That must be it,” he rasped. “Where’s Mad Albert Ash? I suppose he’s all right?”
“Oh, yes, he’s fine, discounting insanity of course,” the doctor said. He shook his head. “Just listening to that man speak is unsettling.”
“He saved my life,” said Dawson, in Ash’s defense.
“That doesn’t mean he’s sane…that just means he was present,” said the doctor. “The fact is, he says you saved his life, warning him those two fools were out to kill him.”
“I want to tell him I’m much obliged,” said Dawson.
“Next time you see him maybe,” said the doctor with a shrug. “He left town as soon as he heard you were going to live.” Considering it, he rubbed his chin and said, “I shouldn’t speak harshly about Mad Albert. He did pay your medical bill…in full. All in cash! Which must be some sort of record for any doctor in this town.”
“Those two ambushers were nothing but kids,” Dawson said with a tone of regret. “Ash killed them both without batting an eye.”
“Mad Albert Ash would never bat an eye over something as trivial as killing a man,” sai
d Doctor Peck. “But under the circumstances, aren’t you glad he did? And of course, now the big question, wouldn’t you have done the same if you could have gotten a gun in your hand?”
“Yes, Doctor, I would have,” said Dawson. “But it all just comes so easy, the killing, the justification for the killing. Where does a man lay it down and walk away? How does he walk away from it?”
“Mister Dawson, it seems to me you haven’t been in this insane gunman world long enough to be asking those questions yet. Don’t tell me you already want out?”
“I never wanted in, Doctor,” said Dawson, feeling nausea deep down in his stomach, partly from the wound and partly from the conversation. “How soon can I ride?”
“If I tell you one week you’ll likely leave tomorrow. So I’m going to say two weeks, on the outside chance you’ll wait one week.”
“The problem is, Doctor, Sheriff Neff wants me out of town, before somebody shows up wanting to do me the same way they wanted to do Mad Albert.”
“I’ve already spoken to Sheriff Neff on your behalf,” said Doctor Peck. “He said take a few days and get healed up, but get out as soon as you’re up and around. Before the word gets out that you’re here, is what I think he meant. But let’s not worry about that right now. Get yourself some rest. If you think you’re sore today, wait until tomorrow.”
Stepping forward, the doctor held up a long steel syringe and examined it closely, then bent slightly and held it down toward Dawson’s forearm.
“What’s that, Doctor?” Dawson asked as the doctor held his arm in place.
“Just a little something to get rid of the pain and make you take a nice long sleep,” said Doctor Peck. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. The best way to get it back is to rest, let it replenish itself. When you wake up we’ll get some blood-rich food in you. But first, I want to put you to sleep.”
