Man From Boot Hill

by Marcus Galloway

  Joseph thought about that for a moment and shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’d be good to know what kind of law they have there, how big the place is, if there’s been any trouble. Some better directions would be nice.”

  “Asking that asshole back at his camp would have been a good idea.”

  Nick laughed. “That fellow may have been scared, but there’s no way I’d go by any directions he gave. He could barely spit the name out. If he had any sense at all, he would have told us just enough to get us good and far away from him before turning back.”

  “I do have a notion as to where the Busted Wheel Ranch is. Some of my men used to talk about it.”

  “Can you get us there?”

  Joseph started to nod and stopped short. “It could take a while.”

  “Then we could use any information on that as well.”

  “Not asking for too much, huh?”

  Nick shrugged and said, “Keep your ears open about any of it. If we find a few things on one of those subjects, we’re better off than when we started.”

  “Got it.”

  After checking the battered watch in his pocket, Nick said, “Let’s meet back here in two hours whether we’re done or not.”

  “Good. Hopefully we’ll be ready to get the hell out of this hole,” Joseph said distastefully.

  “Maybe. This town actually brings back a lot of old memories.”

  “Remind me to never ask you about them.”

  With that, the men parted ways. Joseph rode toward the closest end of the street and Nick rounded the corner.

  When Joseph tied his horse to the post outside the first saloon, he doubted he’d ever see the animal again. He stepped through the swinging doors that were rotting on their hinges and thought he’d pass out from a stench that hit him like a slap in the face.

  The place was as much of a saloon as Perro Negro was a town. Fewer than a dozen bottles were kept on a shelf behind a bar tended by one Indian with greasy hair. The bar, itself, was just a pair of long tables set end to end. One of the tables was raised up so it came up to the Indian’s waist. A few small round tables were scattered about, outnumbering the chairs two to one.

  The people drinking in there were loud and leaning against one another, since there was nowhere to sit. Joseph walked through them, doing his best not to touch anyone unless there was no other choice. He could see the Indian behind the bar glaring at him well before he made it to the taller of the two tables.

  “I was hoping you could tell me—”

  “What do you want?” the Indian interrupted.

  “I need to know—”

  “What to drink?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  “Then get out.”

  Joseph recoiled as if he wasn’t certain he’d heard the Indian correctly.

  “Drink or get out,” the Indian told him. “It’s not hard.”

  “I’ll have some water.”

  The Indian took an empty jar from under the table and then turned around. He held the jar below his waist, fidgeted with his pants, straightened up and let out a slow breath. Soon, the sound of something pouring into the jar could be heard. It was followed by a sharp, bitter smell.

  The Indian fidgeted with his pants some more and then turned back around. Wearing a broad, obscene smile, he set the jar on the table and said, “Drink up.”

  Joseph looked down at the jar and its pale yellow, slightly foaming, contents. Although he wanted nothing more than to knock that jar of piss straight back at the one who’d made it, he took a second to think. The Indian looked ready to fight. In fact, he looked as if he was already planning on where to dump Joseph’s body.

  “I’ll have a whiskey,” Joseph said as he pushed the warm jar away. “And if you put any water in that, I’ll make you drink it.”

  For a moment, the Indian was quiet. Then, his smile returned and he laughed loudly. “I wouldn’t ruin whiskey that way,” he declared, taking the jar away and dumping it on the floor.

  Joseph watched the Indian like a hawk, but didn’t see anything besides whiskey go into the glass he was given. After taking a sip, he set the glass down. The Indian stood directly in front of him.

  “What else did you want to ask?” the Indian said.

  “I want…a job.”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “Not here,” Joseph added. “I’m a brand artist.”

  The Indian nodded. “You’re too late. Someone came around hiring cowboys a few days ago.”

  “Did they get any takers?”

  “A few. Some gun hands went along. Sons of bitches still owed me money.”

  Since he didn’t know what else to say, Joseph looked down at his whiskey and then took another sip. The burn of the liquor didn’t do much to ease the frustration filling his gut.

  “I don’t know how to catch up to them,” the Indian continued without missing a beat, “but Schultz might.”

  “Schultz?”

  “Fat man with hair that looks like a bird’s nest. He owes me money, too.”

  “Tell me where he’s at and I can see about collecting that debt.”

  The Indian grinned as if Joseph were a child who’d decided to stand up to him. “That’s asking for a lot of trouble. Too much trouble to be worth eighteen and a half dollars. He drinks and sleeps at the Six-Forty, down the street. One of his brothers rode off with those cowboys.”

  “You sure?”

  “Shultz was bragging about how his brother gave him some of the advance pay he got when he was hired on. Like I said,” the Indian added with a deadly glint in his eye, “that son of a bitch owes me. Waving money around without paying doesn’t sit right. If you see him, punch him in his fat stomach for me.”

  Digging in his pocket, Joseph took out a carefully measured wad of money and set it on the table. “There’s twenty dollars,” he said. “I made the offer, so I’ll back it up.”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  “I’ll try to punch him at least once.”

  Joseph could hear the Indian laughing even after he’d walked out of the saloon.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Joseph realized he should have asked for better directions. He assumed “Six-Forty” was the name of the place, but half the saloons he saw didn’t have any signs on their fronts. One of them, however, had an old clock dangling precariously from a copper arm. Sure enough, the hands on that clock were stuck at six-forty. Joseph stepped into that place and wasn’t as affected by the pungent aroma that hit him in the nose. This saloon was a bit bigger than the first one and even had a real bar. Looking around, he spotted a couple of card games going on in the back.

  The sound of knuckles cracking against flesh and bone rattled through the stale air, followed by a torrent of raucous laughter as something heavy hit the floor. Two skinny drunks with half a set of teeth between them were fighting. Sitting close to the fracas was a fat man, wearing a gray shirt, who seemed to fit the Indian’s description.

  Joseph walked up to the fat man and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Uh?” the fat man grunted as he strained to look up and around at Joseph.

  “Are you Schultz?”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Sure it is, now go fuck your mother.”

  Joseph balled up his fist and slammed it into Schultz’s mouth. The sound brought another wave of cheers from the surrounding drunks, along with two men who stood up and marched toward Joseph with fire in their eyes.

  Seeing those other men close in around him, Joseph turned and said the first thing that came to mind. “Stay out of this. I’m collecting money for the Indian.”

  One of the other men was a stout fellow wearing at least four different pelts buckled around different parts of his body. He squinted through a pair of light brown eyes and asked, “What Indian?”

  “The one behind the bar at the saloon down the street. Which one did you thi
nk?”

  The men looked at one another, studied Joseph and then looked at the fat man with the fat lip. Sniffing once, like a dog examining a table scrap, the man with the furs said, “Sorry, Shultzie. You’re on your own.”

  Joseph did his best to keep the confident look on his face as the other men slowly drifted away. At the very least, he managed to keep himself from looking too surprised when they left him and Schultz alone at the table. By that time, the rest of the saloon had already found other things to worry about.

  “Look here,” Schultz said as he squirmed around to the other side of the table. “I got the Indian’s money. I just don’t got it with me.”

  “Then tell me about the men who came through town looking to hire cow hands.”

  Shultz squinted and sputtered, “What?”

  “You need to be more helpful, or I’m supposed to start taking scalps.”

  The moment he said that, Joseph thought he might have pushed just a little too far. Judging by the horrified look on Schultz’s face, however, the Indian barkeep must have been known for worse things than just serving piss to his customers.

  “This ain’t a cow town,” Schultz quickly said. “There’s no work for cow hands.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit. You know what kind of work I mean.”

  “Then you already know they was looking for branders and anyone who would get their hands dirty for pay. They also needed scouts.”

  “Scouts?”

  “Yeah. Riders with fast horses who could cover a lot of ground. My brother weren’t one of them, but one of his friends fit that bill just fine. Anyone looking to work was supposed to meet someone in San Trista.”

  “Where is that?”

  “A few days’ ride south of here. It’s just a hacienda with a general store that serves drinks. Ride south until you hit a dried up riverbed. Follow that until it hooks east and turn west, instead. You’ll hit San Trista before long. I don’t know who’ll be there, though. They said not to bother if it took too long to make up their minds.”

  “I’ll just have to take my chances.”

  “You like taking chances, don’t ya boy?”

  “Pardon me?”

  Schultz spread the corners of his mouth apart in a wide, filthy grin. He snorted and wheezed with the effort of leaning forward until he was close enough for Joseph to smell the rotten meat stuck in the fat man’s teeth.

  “You ain’t asked for the money I owe that Indian,” Schultz grunted. “I bet you can’t even tell me how much it is.”

  “Eighteen and a half dollars,” Joseph recited.

  “You still seem to have forgot all about it so you could ask about them men that came along to give my brother a job. You the law, boy?”

  Every time Schultz called him boy, Joseph felt his teeth grind together. The fat man seemed to have picked up on that right away and now put extra emphasis on the word.

  “I asked you a question, boy. You the law or are you just trying to stick yer nose into my brother’s affairs?”

  Before Joseph could answer that, he heard boots scraping against the floor behind him. A few quick glances over his shoulders told him that those men who’d been scared off before were now closing in on him again. As the men got closer, Joseph wondered if he could draw his gun before they made their move. In the time it took to ponder that question, he knew he was already too late.

  “We don’t take to the law ’round here, boy,” Schultz grunted. “Fact is, we like to slice law dogs open and pin their badges to the fucking wall behind you. That’s why I prefer this here place over that Indian’s saloon. What do ya say, Stein? You think this asshole’s got another badge to pin to the wall?”

  The tallest of the men standing behind Joseph laughed under his breath and dropped a hand on Joseph’s shoulder than felt more like an anvil. “If he don’t, I’m sure his balls’ll do just fine.”

  As the men closed in behind him, Joseph could hear them all laughing to each other. They were looking at him as easy pickings and that, alone, sparked a fire inside his gut.

  Balling up his fist, Joseph turned and swung his arm around like a whip. The side of his fist cracked against a man’s head, making him stagger back and to the side. Pain flared in Joseph’s hand, so he swung his other one with the same amount of fury.

  “Get ’im Stein!” Schultz hollered.

  The man who responded to that was taller than Joseph and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. His blond hair was cropped so short that it looked like bristles on a brush. He grabbed hold of Joseph’s shoulder and shoved him hard enough to spin him like a top.

  Joseph’s first reaction was to take a swing and Stein stood there to let him do it. His fist made solid contact, but thumped uselessly against a wall of pure muscle. He swung again, but only got a pain in his knuckles for the effort.

  Stein grabbed the top of Joseph’s head in an iron grip. He pulled back his left fist and smashed it into Joseph’s face.

  For a moment, Joseph thought that Stein was the only thing holding him up. His legs turned to pudding and he couldn’t feel the floor beneath him. He only realized he was falling a split-second before his backside hit the floor. When he dropped, all the air was forced from his lungs.

  It took a second for Joseph’s vision to clear. He was sitting on the ground with his legs splayed out in front of him, leaning back on his arms for support. Above him, Stein was trading jokes with Schultz as the fat man pulled himself out of his chair to get a better look.

  Joseph couldn’t see everyone else in the saloon, but he could hear them shouting and cheering as if they were watching a stage show. When Stein looked down at him with a cruel purpose in his eyes, Joseph knew he had to make a move before he was knocked out for good. Frantically grabbing for the gun tucked under his belt, Joseph fumbled a few times before finally managing to pull the weapon free.

  “Lawman’s got a gun,” Stein growled. “But he don’t got the sand to use it.”

  Holding the pistol in hand, Joseph placed his thumb on the hammer and immediately thought back to the man he’d killed with that same gun. The longer Joseph waited, the wider Stein’s smile grew.

  “Maybe he ain’t no law dog,” Shultz said.

  Stein slowly drew a gun from his own belt. In the big man’s hands, the weapon looked like a toy. “Maybe, but he sure as hell won’t be walking out of here.”

  Joseph couldn’t hold his gun up. It weighed his arm down to the point that the end of the barrel tapped against the floor. When he heard that sound, Joseph snapped his eyes up as well as his arm. The pistol made a satisfying thump as he slammed it straight up into Stein’s groin.

  Stein’s knees bent and his body slumped forward. He dropped the gun so he could move his hand between his legs. For a second or two, Stein didn’t make a sound. He then let out a strained moan and lowered himself to one knee.

  Joseph collected the gun that Stein had dropped and jumped to his feet. Holding a pistol in each hand and keeping the rest of the saloon at bay felt good enough to make him forget about the throbbing pain in his face. “Anyone else interested in trying their luck?” Joseph asked.

  There were no takers.

  Swinging one of his guns to aim at Schultz, Joseph said, “Put any weapons you got on the table.”

  The fat man complied, producing a gun from his holster and a knife from his boot.

  “How many men came through here looking for hired guns?” Joseph asked.

  The fat man sputtered for a bit and then spat out, “Five or six.”

  “And how many took them up on the offer?”

  “Maybe another five or six. I don’t know for certain.”

  Joseph glared over the barrel of that gun as he tried to think of anything else he should ask. Unable to come up with anything, he nodded and backed toward the door. “All right, then,” he said. “Anyone who wants to push their luck can follow me out this door.”

  The rest of the men that had been fighting on Shultz’s behalf lowered thei
r heads and backed away. Everyone else in the saloon was just waiting to make sure the show was over.

  Once he was on the street, hardly anyone bothered to look at Joseph. The fact that he still had a gun in each hand didn’t seem to carry much weight. Joseph tucked his gun back into its regular spot and then found another space under his belt for the one he’d taken from Stein.

  Passing by the next saloon, Joseph went straight to the one at the end of the street simply because it was far away from the rest. He went inside, ordered a drink and downed it in one swig. The next drink went down just as fast.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “So,” Nick said as he walked up to Joseph a while later, “you get into any trouble?”

  Although the question was meant as a joke, Nick could tell Joseph was rattled by it. His eyes quickly picked up on something else, as well.

  “Where’d you get the second gun?” he asked.

  When Joseph let out his breath, it was thick with the stench of cheap whiskey. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  As they were riding out of Perro Negro, Joseph told Nick about what had happened during his tour of the saloons. Nick listened and nodded, every so often checking Joseph’s face to see if he could spot any hint of a lie. When he didn’t see one, he let out a low whistle.

  “Jesus,” Nick said. “All I got was a belly full of bad beer and a few stories about men riding through there looking for cowhands. Sounds like this was your lucky day.”

  “Lucky?” Joseph muttered. “I damn near got killed.”

  “But you didn’t,” Nick pointed out. “Very lucky.”

  It was pitch black, but they kept riding until Perro Negro was well behind them. Nick made a small fire while Joseph threw together a quick meal of beans and coffee. While they ate, both men compared what they were able to gather during their expedition through town.

  “I feel like I was the lazy one,” Nick said. “You waded into that mud hole and came out with damn near everything we needed.”

  “Cost me twenty dollars, but it was well spent.”

  “From what I’ve seen, you’ve got plenty to spare.”

  Joseph instinctively looked over to his horse. The strongbox was no longer hanging from his saddle, since the money inside of it had been secreted away between himself, his horse and Nick. “If it costs me all I got to see this through,” Joseph said as he shifted to face the fire, “it’ll be worth it.”