Gunman's Song

by Ralph Cotton

  “Yep, he is,” said the sheriff. “He’s fast enough that nobody is going to put another bullet in him for a while. He’s learned to pick his fights wisely. But take my word for it; he won’t go looking for Lawrence Shaw…he’ll just spend the rest of his life pretending he is. Shaw gave him a reason to live.” The sheriff smiled. “What happened here will keep him fueled for a long time to come.”

  “Then I worry about that poor girl, Lizzy,” said the townsman.

  “I do too,” said Neff with a trace of a grin, “for all the times she’s going to have to listen to Sammy’s gunfight over and over. But other than that, she’ll be all right. I was riding Sammy a little, hoping some of it will get through to him. Maybe it will someday, if he’ll ever stop running long enough to remember any of it.” He nodded at Sammy and Lizzy’s dust. “If they’re lucky they’ll both fall in love with each other along the way, make some kind of life they can live with.” Dismissing the matter, he looked around the street, then said aloud to anyone along the boardwalks, “All right, come on; let’s get Fat Man and his cronies out of the street. It’s already getting hot out here.”

  PART 3

  Chapter 17

  “What can I do for you, Mayor Bland?” Barton Talbert asked the stoop-shouldered man standing before him. The mayor fidgeted with the brim of his worn derby hat, taking a moment to summon up his courage before raising his eyes to Barton Talbert, who sat tilted back in a wooden chair with a boot hiked up on the tabletop. The rest of the outlaws lounged along the bar, watching in curiosity. Bo Kregger stood rigid beside Barton Talbert’s chair with his arms folded, a scowl on his face.

  “Mr. Talbert, sir,” said Mayor Bland, “I…that is, we…the town council, that is, have had several complaints about the behavior of your men.” He fidgeted in place, his eyes fearful and unsteady.

  “No,” said Barton Talbert, looking greatly concerned, “tell me it ain’t so, Mayor. My men? Misbehaving?” He gave the faces along the bar a stern look, then said to the mayor, “Are these just wild, unfounded rumors, or is there some particular thing you can put your finger on?”

  The mayor ventured a nervous look around the saloon. Both bat-wing doors lay broken on the floor. The saloon’s large windows were a pile of broken glass shards. A wall stood blackened and charred by flames. In a rear corner stood a horse with Gladso Furlin sitting passed-out drunk in the saddle. “Nobody is blaming anything on anyone in particular,” the mayor said. “I think it’s more of an overall rowdiness that this town can’t abide.” He cleared his throat and wiped a hand across his wet brow. “They have asked me to come and point this out to you and to…well…” He hesitated. “To ask you and your men to leave.”

  As the mayor spoke, Denver Jack Fish walked through the open doorway dragging two freshly slaughtered goats behind him, blood smearing behind them. “Leave?” said Barton Talbert in stunned disbelief, gesturing toward the dead goats. “My goodness, Mayor, we was just getting prepared to invite this whole town to an old-fashioned fiesta!” He grinned broadly. “Compliments of me, of course.”

  “And me,” said Bo Kregger in a low growl.

  “Yes, excuse me, Bo,” said Talbert. “Compliments of me and my good friend Bo Kregger.”

  Seeing the outlaws were in a better mood than they had been since their arrival in Brakett Flats, the mayor pressed on. “I…that is, we appreciate your offer, Mr. Talbert, but I’m afraid there have just been too many complaints.”

  “And they decided that since you are the mayor, it would be only fitting that you be the one to ask us to leave?” Talbert chuckled. “You are one game peckerwood,” he added. “I have to give you that.”

  “Mr. Talbert, we’re just a peaceable little town here…we like to welcome everybody. But you have to admit, this is a pretty unrestrained group of men you have riding with you.”

  “Unrestrained?” blurted Jesse Turnbaugh through his thick, tangled black beard, jumping out from the bar as if prepared for a gunfight. “Nobody calls me unrestrained and lives to tell about it!”

  “Easy there, Jesse!” said Talbert, raising a hand toward him as if to hold the outlaw back. “I don’t think the mayor meant to single you out, did you, Mayor?”

  Mayor Bland looked terrified. “Oh, no! No, indeed! I’m referring more to an overall disruptive attitude!”

  “Disruptive attitude! Now you’re stepping on my toes,” said Denver Jack Fish, dropping a rope he was using to string up the goat carcasses. He stepped forward, wiping his palms on his trousers.

  “Boys, boys,” said Talbert in a mock show of trying to calm the men. “Let’s not allow the mayor’s fit of cruel name-calling drive us to rash violence.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean to call anyone a cruel name,” said Mayor Bland. His face had turned chalk white beneath a deep layer of sweat.

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Barton Talbert. “I can see this is not exactly your area of experience.” Then he said to the men, “I’m sure the mayor is new at this sort of confrontation.”

  “Well…yes,” the mayor said, sweating heavily, rounding a finger in his white shirt collar. “If we had a sheriff, I believe he could better express what I’m trying to commun—”

  “There’s the problem, all right,” Talbert butted in. “There’s no sheriff here! Had I known that to begin with I ain’t sure we would have stopped here. I don’t mind telling you, Mayor, a prudent man wants the comfort of law and order anywhere he goes these days.”

  “Please, Mr. Talbert,” the mayor said, seeing how he was being strung along by the outlaws and their leader, “I’m only trying to get along with you, see if we can come to some sort of—”

  “I know what!” said Talbert, cutting him off again. “We’ll elect you a sheriff right here and now! All these men, all these guns…!” He thumped his palm soundly on his forehead. “Why the hell didn’t I think of this before?”

  “Mr. Talbert,” said the mayor, almost pleading, “I don’t want any trouble; this town doesn’t want any trouble.”

  “Nonsense, Mayor Bland!” Talbert boomed with a grin. “It’s no trouble at all.” He turned to the men, saying, “Boys, which one of you would like to make a bid for the office of sheriff in this small but, I feel, very promising community!”

  Bobby Fitt spit on the floor in disgust and said, “Brakett Flats is the worst shithole I ever stepped foot in. I’d like to see everybody who lives here fall over and choke to death!”

  “Well, there, Bobby,” said Barton Talbert, “I can see we won’t be calling upon you for any campaign speeches, will we?” Grinning up at Bo Kregger, he said, “Make a note, Bo, no goodwill speeches from Bobby Fitt.”

  From the doorway Blue Snake Terril called out through the roar of laughter from the men, “This ain’t no child’s game here, Barton! We’ve got some hard killing coming our way.”

  The laughter fell. Mayor Bland looked sick to his stomach, sweat running down his cheeks. Barton Talbert looked over at Blue Snake and said, “I know it ain’t no child’s game, Snake, damn it. But I don’t see where we’ve got much to worry about now that Bo Kregger is guarding our flank. Ease up; have a drink. Where have you been, anyway?”

  “I rode back a ways with Curley and Stanley, making sure they’ll do what they’re supposed to when Shaw shows up.”

  “Don’t you worry about those two ol’ long riders; they’re both tougher than pine knots,” said Talbert.

  “I know,” said Blue Snake, “but I spent most of the day firing this baby.” He patted his holstered pistol. “When Shaw gets here, I don’t plan on leaving my fate in anybody’s hands but my own.” He shot Bo Kregger a look, saying, “No offense, Kregger.”

  “None taken,” said the surly gunman.

  “Lawrence Shaw?” the mayor said, his eyes widening even more. “Shaw is coming here? To Brakett Flats?”

  “That’s right,” said Barton Talbert. “Now you see why we need a sheriff so desperately?”

  Mayor Bland only stared, unable to
respond for a moment. Finally he said, “Fast Larry Shaw isn’t a troublemaker. I’ve never heard of him having any trouble with the law.”

  “Not yet, you haven’t,” said Talbert, standing as he spoke and walking over to where Gladso Furlin sat in his saddle in a drunken stupor, a whiskey bottle standing between his thighs. “But then Shaw hasn’t yet met our new sheriff here.”

  He gave Gladso’s horse a slight nudge on the rump, sending it forward with Gladso wobbling in the saddle. A new roar of laughter rose up from the men as the horse walked calmly out the door, Gladso tilting dangerously to one side. “I better go get him before he breaks his damned neck,” said Gladso’s brother, Harper, hurrying from the saloon.

  Turning to Mayor Bland, Barton Talbert said, “He ain’t looking too spry right now, Mayor, but once he sobers, he’ll be a sheriff this town will be proud of!”

  Laughter erupted again. At the bar, Blue Snake poured himself a shot of rye and tossed it back, saying under his breath, “Damned fools! Fast Larry Shaw is going to walk right through the lot of them.”

  Seeing the look on Mayor Bland’s face, Barton Talbert looped an arm over his shoulders and said, “You think you’ve seen some unrestrained behavior? Hell, Mayor, this little fiesta wingding ain’t even started yet!” He drew the mayor closer, saying into his ear, “I know there’s some young women lives in this town…now where have you got them hiding?”

  “No, honestly, there are no young women here…only the ones you’ve seen!” said Bland. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken! We’re not hiding anyone!”

  The mayor winced at the feel of the cold metal gun barrel suddenly pressed against his ear.

  “Don’t lie to me again, Mayor!” Talbert growled, “or I’ll clean your ears with this forty-five; then we’ll all go ask your wife. I bet she’ll tell us if we ask her polite-like, don’t you think so?”

  At the crest of a dry creekbed, Cray Dawson stood up in his stirrups for only a second and gazed up across the higher edge of broken land on the far side of a wide, sandy basin dotted with mesquite and creosote brush. When he sat down Jedson Caldwell started to rise up and take a look for himself, but Shaw said, “Stay put, Caldwell,” causing him to sit back down in his saddle.

  “I didn’t see anything worth seeing,” said Dawson, as if to satisfy Caldwell’s curiosity.

  Jedson Caldwell waited, hoping someone would explain why he shouldn’t rise up and take a look. Shaw poured a thin trickle of water onto a waddedup bandanna and pressed it to the back of his neck. “That’s known in these parts as Sidewinder Ridge,” he said, nodding toward the distance where a white, piercing glare of sunlight mantled a long ledge of jagged earth. “Years ago, one Texas Ranger held back a band of Comanche for three days from a position along that rim. He had a Henry rifle and a Patterson Colt. It’s an easy place for a good rifleman to pick your eyes out.”

  “Oh!” Caldwell seemed to sink lower in his saddle. “So you think there’s some of Talbert’s men waiting up there?” he asked, squinting as he studied the harsh land through the sun’s glare.

  “If they’re not, they’re damned fools,” said Shaw. “They know I’m coming. We know the Devil ran to them in this direction. Barton Talbert left somebody up there to ambush me; you can count on it.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Caldwell asked, looking back and forth between his two companions.

  “What are we going to do, Dawson?” Shaw asked, his way of passing Caldwell’s question off to Cray Dawson.

  Dawson turned his horse slightly. “All they’ve seen so far is our dust,” he said to Caldwell. “We’re going to follow this creekbed around them as far as we can. Then we’re going to wait until dark and come up behind them.” Dawson looked to Shaw to see if he agreed.

  “Sounds good to me,” Shaw said. He held his horse back for a moment and let Dawson take the lead.

  A mile across the basin, Curley Tomes and Stanley Little lay at the edge of the rim gazing out to where they’d seen the thin rise of dust only moments earlier. “Think it might have just been some elk or whitetail crossing in a hurry?” Stanley Little asked, keeping his voice down even though a mile of sand and brush lay between them and the veil of dust lying sidelong on the hot, dry air.

  “Could be, I reckon,” Curley Tomes said, reaching up under his hat brim and scratching his moist forehead.

  “Think it might just be some other travelers coming this way? Maybe somebody leaving Texas, heading up to Colorado? I heard there’s lots of folks have been doing that lately.”

  “Stanley,” said Curley Tomes, taking a deep breath, “who the hell did you ask all these questions before I came along?”

  “There’s no need getting belligerent about it,” said Stanley. “I was only asking to make conversation.”

  “Go somewhere and make conversation with yourself,” Tomes growled, levering a round up into his rifle chamber. “You’re starting to get on my nerves something awful.”

  “Think it’d be all right if I boiled some coffee?” Stanley asked meekly, as if not to impose on his partner.

  “Boil some coffee?” Curley said in disbelief. He gazed up at the blistering sunlight and shook his head. Then he looked back at Stanley Little. “I don’t give a damn if you boil your head!”

  “I won’t cause no smoke,” said Stanley, scooting back from the edge before standing up and dusting his trousers.

  “See that you don’t,” said Curley. “From what I hear, Fast Larry Shaw is like a panther. He can sniff trouble on the turn of a breeze.”

  Stanley Little moved about the area behind them, gathering small dried twigs and kindling. In moments he’d built a small fire and boiled some coffee; then he immediately put out the fire and carried the pot over to where Stanley still lay in the same spot watching evening shadows spread long across the earth. “Here we go,” he said, setting the pot down beside Curley Tomes. Having used his hat as a pot holder, he shook it out and set it back atop his bald head. “By dark it ought to be simmered to about the way we like it.”

  “Good,” said Curley, concentrating on the land without turning to face him, “now see if you can sit there real quiet-like for a while.”

  Chapter 18

  In the moonlight, Jedson Caldwell held the horses while Lawrence Shaw and Cray Dawson worked their way silently through the brush toward the edge of the basin they had circled in the darkness. Against a short rock sticking up from the sandy earth, Shaw lifted his Colt from his holster and checked it as he said almost in a whisper, “Do you think we ought to send Caldwell on his way before we catch up to the whole Talbert gang? It might keep him from getting killed.”

  “I think Caldwell has to make up his own mind,” said Dawson, also raising his pistol and checking it in the clear moonlight.

  “I don’t know why he rode with us to begin with,” said Shaw. “I can’t figure the man out…and I don’t like riding with a man I can’t figure out.” He kept the Colt in his hand after checking it, instead of slipping it back into his holster.

  Looking at Shaw as he finished checking his gun, Dawson said, “Then I reckon that means you’ve got me figured out pretty good?”

  “You never was hard to figure out, Cray Dawson,” said Shaw. “Besides, you and I was good friends years ago. There’s some people who don’t change much over the years.”

  “Maybe I haven’t changed much since we were friends chasing brush-tailed mustangs together,” Dawson offered, also keeping his Colt in his hand, “but things have happened in my life. Things that were just as important as you going off and making a big reputation for yourself.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Shaw. Trying to dismiss the subject, he said, “Come on, let’s get on up there, see how many there are.”

  “Shaw!” Dawson said, not allowing himself to be put off, “we still ain’t talked things out.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Shaw said, hearing Cray Dawson speak above their whispered tone. “They’ll hear you.”

&n
bsp; Lowering his voice again, Cray Dawson said, “All right, but I want things straight between us, Shaw.”

  “They are,” said Shaw bluntly. “You might not realize it, but things are straight between us.”

  “Damn it, no, they’re not,” Dawson hissed to himself. Seeing Shaw had already started moving away through the cover of brush, he arose from against the rock in a crouch and hurried along silently behind him.

  When Shaw stopped again, this time behind a stand of creosote and the bone-dry remnants of a juniper bough, they were too close to the outlaws for Dawson to risk saying a word. Less than ten yards from them, they could see well enough in the moonlight to know that there were only two men lying along the rim looking out onto the sandy basin. Shaw inched forward; Dawson followed until they were close enough to hear the two men talking quietly.

  “I wouldn’t say so to his face,” said Stanley Little, “but to me, Barton and Blue Snake are going about this thing with Shaw the wrong way.”

  “Yeah?” said Curley Tomes with a trace of sarcasm. “I suppose you would have a better way of handling a big gun like Fast Larry Shaw?”

  “Yes, I think I would,” said Stanley. “If I was Barton Talbert, I would look up Fast Larry Shaw face-to-face, tell him how it all happened, and let the chips fall where they will, so to speak…take my punishment, if I had any coming.”

  “Sure you would, you lying dog.” Curley chuckled. “You was there when it happened; so was I. Why don’t we go find Shaw and explain it? Let the chips fall where they will, so to speak. That would be about the same, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be,” said Stanley, “because Talbert and Blue Snake are the ones running this bunch; they’re the ones responsible for what happened.”

  “You’re wrong there, pard,” said Curley. “If the woman hadn’t put up such a fight, she’d be alive today. That’s the fact of the matter. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut about everything; who would ever know any of it—”