Gunman's Song

by Ralph Cotton

  “Who the hell said that?” Willie asked, incensed by such an insult.

  “Bo Kregger,” the voice said bluntly. Now Willie saw the broad shoulders and the long-hanging riding duster step forward, the other gunmen giving this man plenty of room. “If you didn’t understand it, I’ll say it again.”

  Willie looked at Barton Talbert, then at Blue Snake. “I asked him to ride with us, Willie, just because of Fast Larry Shaw,” said Barton Talbert.

  “Yeah, he asked,” said Bo Kregger to Willie the Devil, “but I haven’t gave an answer yet. I was doubting this is the kind of men I want my name associated with.” He looked Willie up and down. “Listening to you, I doubt it even more.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Bo Kregger,” said Willie, making sure his hands came up a good distance from his gun butt. “I’m not a big gunslinger…I don’t want no trouble.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you too, Willie the Devil,” said Kregger with contempt. “But nothing yet that makes me think you’re anything but a bummer and a low backshooting coward.”

  Willie glowed red, but wasn’t about to backtalk the gunman. He looked at Talbert and said, “I don’t deserve to be treated this way, Bart…as far as we go back together? Huh-uh. It just ain’t right.”

  “We’ve only known one another a year or so, Willie,” Barton Talbert said with a shrug. “I don’t call that going far back together, do you, Bo?”

  “No,” said the fierce-looking gunman, “I call that a short spell. Not long enough for him to want to save your brother from Fast Larry Shaw, anyway.” He stared coldly at Willie the Devil until Willie grew so rattled he began to sweat and shake all over.

  “All right,” said Willie, “maybe I could have done more. But the fact is, I had a deal going with this peckerwood and a friend of his named Sammy Boy White. Sammy was supposed to kill Fast Larry, but that plan went plumb out the window and Shaw nailed him too. And that was with Donald Hornetti ambushing him! I tell you, that Shaw ain’t human, he’s so fast! So all right, maybe I was a little afraid I might get killed too. Does anybody blame me?” His eyes searched the unyielding faces of the gunmen, who offered him no sign of support.

  “Everybody here thought the world of Sidlow, Willie,” said Curley Tomes. Beside him Stanley Little nodded in agreement. Next to Stanley stood Denver Jack Fish, Jesse Turnbaugh, Bobby Fitt, and the Furlin brothers, Harper and Gladso. The group nodded solemnly as one.

  Bo Kregger took on a more serious look. “Did you say Sammy Boy White?” he asked Willie.

  “Yep, that was his name,” said Willie. “Do you know him?” he asked Kregger, feeling the heat lessen on him a bit.

  “Yeah, I know him,” said Kregger. “Sammy Boy White was damn good with a gun. That’s a known fact.”

  “Better than you?” asked Talbert.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” said Bo Kregger. “But if Fast Larry killed Sammy Boy White, I have to respect the man a little bit more.”

  “I don’t know if Sammy Boy was dead or alive when we hightailed it,” said Willie the Devil. “But he came in second place against Fast Larry…so did a crazy bartender named Porter something or other.”

  “It wasn’t Porter Chapin, was it?” Bo Kregger asked.

  Barton Talbert looked disgusted with Willie, knowing that every time he mentioned somebody fast whom Shaw had killed, Bo Kregger’s price as a hired gun was going to get higher.

  “Yep, that’s his name,” said Willie. He looked at Elton Minton for confirmation, and Elton nodded his head vigorously.

  “Damn…” Bo Kregger rubbed his chin in contemplation. “Sammy Boy White, Porter Chapin. What the hell is Shaw so worked up about?”

  “Never mind,” said Barton Talbert. Then, with a snap of sarcasm, he said to Willie the Devil, “Tell me something, Willie: Is there anybody left in Eagle Pass that Fast Larry didn’t kill…or is the whole damn town dead?”

  “Hold it!” said Bo Kregger to Talbert, before Willie had time to reply. “Did you just tell me never mind?” He took a menacing step forward. “Maybe you forgot who you’re talking to. Nobody tells me never mind.”

  Talbert stood fast, but said apologetically, “No offense, Bo; I’ve just got a lot on my mind lately. I suppose you never heard all the way up in Silver Wreath. There was a terrible thing that happened to Fast Larry’s wife, and he blames all of us for it.”

  “Oh?” Bo Kregger gave a dubious look. “What kind of terrible thing?”

  “Well, the fact is, we killed her,” said Talbert.

  “Whew,” said Kregger, “I bet he is angry over that.” He gave Talbert a strange look, then said, “Were you going to tell me about it at some point or other?”

  “I just did,” said Talbert.

  “You know what I mean,” said Kregger. He pushed up his hat brim and backed away from amid the gunmen. “I want nothing to do with this. As far as I’m concerned, if you men killed Shaw’s wife, he’s got every right in the world to hunt you down, skin you, and salt you.” He looked around at his horse standing free-rein at a hitch rail. He let out a short, sharp whistle and the big, fancy paint horse came trotting to his side.

  “Wait a minute, Kregger,” said Talbert. “I need your gun hand. I’m talking about good money!”

  “How good?” said Kregger, reaching up and taking the horse’s reins from around the silver-trimmed saddle horn.

  “One thousand dollars!” said Talbert. “Paid upon delivery.”

  “Bull,” said Kregger, raising his boot to the stirrup, “a thousand is what we agreed to in the first place.”

  “That’s right,” said Talbert, “one thousand dollars is what we agreed to. That’s what you said you always get, and I accept it.”

  “That was before you told me what this was all about,” said Kregger, stepping up into the saddle. “If I was to take this job on at all, it would have to be for twice that amount.”

  “Two thousand dollars?” said Talbert, sounding outraged. “Just to back us up so we can get the drop on the man?”

  Without answering, Kregger turned his big paint and started to put his heels to its sides.

  “All right then, hold it, damn it!” said Talbert. “Two thousand it is.”

  Kregger smiled to himself, then backed the horse and looked down at Talbert, saying firmly, “That’s one thousand dollars now…another thousand when I nail his shirt to his chest.”

  “All right,” said Talbert, looking embarrassed in front of his men. “We’ve got a deal then?”

  “Absolutely,” said Bo Kregger. He stepped down from his saddle, wrapped the horse’s reins loosely around the saddle horn, and gave the animal a short slap on its rump. The paint horse trotted over and stopped at the hitch rail. “Let’s go have a drink to it, while you count out my first thousand.”

  “All right,” said Talbert. “After that we head out of here.”

  “Why?” asked Bo Kregger as they started walking to the saloon. “What’s your hurry? If Shaw is on his way here, what better chance will we ever have to kill him?” He grinned. “I find it is always better to have a person come to me than it is to ride all over hell looking for him.”

  “I can go along with that,” said Talbert, thinking it over. “Yeah,” he concluded, “who the hell is Shaw that I should have to go looking for him? If he wants me let him come and get me.”

  “Who knows,” said Kregger, “the way everybody is always looking to kill a big gun like Shaw, it could take him a long time to get here. He might not even get here at all. Every place he stops there’ll be somebody wanting to put him down in the street. Somebody could be standing over him right now, putting that next bullet straight down into his eyeball.”

  “Damn right,” said Talbert, getting more and more confident as they crossed the dirt street toward the saloon. “He could already be dead, for all I know!”

  Following Talbert and Bo Kregger to the saloon, leading their tired horses behind them, Elton sidled up close to Willie the Devil and s
aid, “Now that it looks like everything is all right for you here, can I go?”

  “Sit tight, Elton; what’s your hurry?” said Willie without facing him.

  “I’ve got no business here,” said Elton. “You fellows have your own way of doing things. I’d just as soon not get involved, no offense.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere until I say you can go,” said Willie. “Since your boy Sammy was such a letdown, who knows, I might have you fighting Fast Larry before it’s over.”

  “Please, Mr. Devlin,” said Elton, “I can’t take this kind of living. I’m no gunman, no outlaw!”

  “Don’t wet yourself, Elton.” Willie chuckled. “I was only funning you.” He stared at Bo Kregger’s back as Kregger walked along with Barton Talbert and the others in front of them. “But seriously, let me ask you this, Elton. You saw Shaw shoot those boys in Eagle Pass.” He nodded with contempt at Bo Kregger. “Do you think this bag of wet crackers would stand a chance against him?”

  Elton considered the question for a second, then said, “That’s hard to call…but if I was going to bet on Kregger, you’d have to give me some strong odds, make it worth my risk.”

  “Yeah,” said the Devil, tweaking his thin mustache with a crafty grin, “that’s sort of what I thought.” He hooked an arm up around Elton’s shoulder and gave him a slap on his back. In a lowered voice he said, “You did good keeping your mouth shut about the money. Far as I’m concerned there’s nothing in this world that means as much as having a good fat roll of cash in your pocket.”

  “To be honest, Willie,” said Elton, “I’ve always sort of felt that way myself.”

  “No kidding!” The Devil seemed genuinely moved. “My amigo, stick with me. It looks like we might just have ourselves a match in the making.”

  Chapter 12

  “Let the shot come as a surprise to your ears,” said Cray Dawson, cocking the Colt in his hand. “That way your nerves don’t have time to flinch at the sound of it.”

  The pistol bucked, the explosion sending a streak of smoke and blue-orange fire from the tip of the barrel. Ten yards away where a line of rocks lay on the sun-bleached carcass of a downed pinyon tree, a rock shattered as it jumped into the air. Before the pieces of it landed another shot exploded, another rock shattered and jumped, then another. Jedson Caldwell held his finger in his ears until Cray Dawson lowered the pistol and looked over at him. “I-I see,” Caldwell said haltingly. “Maybe if I stuck some cotton in my ears? Think that would help?”

  Dawson just stared at him. Then he opened the Colt, took out the spent cartridges, replaced them, and closed the cylinder. He held it out on the flat of his hand toward Caldwell, the barrel pointed in the direction of the rock targets. “Come over and give it a try.”

  “Uh, all right,” said the young undertaker hesitantly, taking a look around as if to make sure no one was watching. A few feet above them on a slope down from the trail stood Lawrence Shaw, holding the reins to his big buckskin, watching with an air of detachment. “You fellows won’t laugh, will you?” He slid a quick glance to Shaw, then looked away.

  Dawson gave Shaw a look, then said to Caldwell, “No, we won’t laugh. There’s nothing funny about it. It’s a gun…you’re learning to shoot it. Everybody has to start somewhere.”

  “Well, that’s true,” said Jedson Caldwell, stepping over and taking the Colt in his right hand. He held it out at arm’s length. Unprepared for the weight of the big Colt, his wrist let it droop until Dawson reached out and raised it.

  “Now do what you need to do to take your shot,” said Dawson, taking a step back from him and giving Shaw a glance, seeing his flat expression.

  “Here goes,” said Caldwell. He squeezed the trigger back steadily, but still flinched a bit. When it didn’t fire, he let out a breath, looking embarrassed, and said to Cray Dawson, “I forgot to cock it.”

  “I see you did,” said Dawson, being patient with him. “Don’t get rattled; take your time…this is practice. Aim it like I showed you…keep both eyes open.”

  Caldwell tried to cock the big Colt, but he’d already been holding it out too long. The weight of it caused his arm to tremble. He lowered the pistol, switched it to his left hand, shook out his right hand, and wiped his moist palm on his trouser leg. “It got too heavy for me!” He offered a weak grin, then took the gun into his right hand again, cocked it, and raised it. “Here goes.”

  It took him a long time to get the Colt aimed; then he squeezed the trigger slowly, far too slowly. But when it fired, Dawson was watching his eyes. He didn’t flinch until after the shot was made. The bullet fell short by three inches, but when it struck the pinyon log, the impact caused the rock above it to fall to the ground. “Hey!” Caldwell beamed. “At least I moved it! Does that count?”

  Dawson smiled thinly. “No, but if that had been a man you would have hit him. That counts.”

  “Oh…” Caldwell stared at the log as if imagining it had been a man. “My goodness! Somebody would be lying there dead…just because of me.”

  “Maybe not dead,” said Dawson, “but hit in an awfully painful bad place, provided you’d been aiming at their belly.”

  It took Caldwell a second to put it together. When he did, he winced at the thought of it and said, “I hope I never really have to do anything like this.”

  “We all hope that,” said Dawson. “But it’s a dangerous world we live in. Take a few more shots.”

  While Caldwell aimed the pistol again slowly, then fired it, Dawson walked up the slope and stood beside Lawrence Shaw. “There are some people who shouldn’t be allowed to even stand near a loaded gun,” Shaw said just between them. “It looks like your pard Caldwell is one of them.”

  “I wouldn’t call him my pard,” said Dawson. “You asked me to teach him to shoot. That’s all I’m doing.”

  “We might want to leave him behind, next town we come to,” said Shaw. “If we don’t we’ll likely get him killed once we catch up to Talbert and his bunch.”

  “He seems to really want to ride with us,” said Dawson. “I could give him a shotgun.”

  “He’ll shoot one of us,” said Shaw. “Or himself, one.”

  “Let me work with him until we get to Clearly,” said Dawson. “If he’s not showing us something by then, we’ll cut him loose. At least he’ll know enough, maybe he won’t have to tolerate a black eye from a town barber.

  “That’s sounds fair enough,” said Shaw. “But there are some folks who are going to wear a black eye their whole life. This undertaker might be one of them.

  “We’ll see,” said Dawson, seeing another shot hit the pinyon log. They watched in silence for a second; then Dawson said, “Can I ask something?”

  Shaw just looked at him.

  “How did you shoot the first time you ever held a gun?” Dawson asked.

  “I don’t remember any first time,” said Shaw.

  “You weren’t born firing a gun, Lawrence,” said Dawson. “I remember a time when we were kids and neither one of us had a gun to even shoot a rabbit with.

  “I remember that short period of time, said Shaw, “but it didn’t last long. As soon as I saw what a powerful influence a gun had on a man’s life, I knew I had to have one if I never had anything else.” He stared at Caldwell, watching him take aim. “Sometimes it seems like once I got one I never really had anything else.”

  They stood feeling a hot breeze blow down off the trail above them. “I saw her in town the day before,” said Dawson out of the blue.

  But Shaw knew he was talking about Rosa, as if the whole of the conversation had been about her all along. “You did, huh?” Shaw said flatly, watching Caldwell closer now, seeming to take a sudden interest.

  “Yes,” said Dawson, “I saw her out front of the telegraph office. She smiled and spoke to me like she didn’t have a care in the world.” He turned silent for a moment while a shot rang out from the Colt in Caldwell’s hand. This time a rock exploded up into the air and Caldwell let out a s
hort cry of joy.

  “There, I got one!” Caldwell called out. “Did you see it? I hit it!”

  “Good shot,” said Dawson. Then he said to Shaw, “I can’t get over how happy she seemed. Do you suppose she might have just gotten a telegraph from you?”

  Shaw’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer. Instead he walked a few steps closer to Caldwell, stooped down, picked up a rock, hefted it in his hand, and called out, “Here, Undertaker, hit this.”

  “Wait up!” said Caldwell. “I’m not ready!” But as the rock sailed upward in a high, slow arc, he adjusted the pistol quickly in his hand, cocked it, and fired, trying to take aim on the rock long after it had passed the high point of its arc and started speeding toward the ground. “Missed it!” he shouted. But the sound of Shaw’s Colt roared and shattered the rock as it dropped to shoulder height. Caldwell felt sharp particles sting him from twenty feet away. “Good Lord!” Caldwell shouted. “What a shot!”

  Dawson had walked down beside Shaw, and upon seeing the shot he said, “If that was meant to make a powerful impression on him, I think you succeeded.”

  Shaw stared at the open space in the air where the bullet had struck the rock and blown it into a thousand sand tiny bits. “You never know if the man you’re teaching might be the next one who tries to kill you.”

  “It ain’t been but a few minutes ago you said he shouldn’t be allowed to stand near a loaded gun.”

  “That was before he hit something,” said Shaw. He walked back to where he’d dropped his horse’s reins on the ground.

  “Shaw,” said Dawson, “I’m sorry I brought it up, what I said about seeing her in town. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  Shaw only nodded, picked up the reins, and said, “When you two get finished busting rocks we’ll ride on into the Turkey Wells station, spend the night, and see which way Willie the Devil went from there.” He turned and began to lead the big buckskin up toward the trail.

  Caldwell listened, then asked Dawson as Lawrence Shaw led the stallion back up to the trail, “What is the Turkey Wells station, and how do we know those two men went through there?”