by Ralph Cotton
Inside the saloon, Blue Snake Terril continued to speak to the empty stairwell while the Devil poured kerosene all over the floor and walls, shoving bottles of rye into his coat pockets in the process. “Hear that, Shaw? That’d be ol’ Bo right now, practicing, I bet, wanting you to meet him in the street. But I say first it’s between you and me. What do you say?”
“Blue Snake, you fool!” shouted Barton Talbert from the open doorway, a rifle in one hand, a pistol in the other. “Shaw’s not up there! He’s out here! He’s just killed Bo Kregger deader than hell!”
Blue Snake went blank for a second. Then he shook his head as if to get his mind started again. He shot a quick glance at Willie the Devil, who stood striking a match along the edge of the bar top. “Don’t, Willie!” he shouted, but not in time. The Devil had already given the match a pitch toward the stairwell. Flames spread quickly upward, following the long, wet stream of kerosene Willie had slung up the stairs. As soon as Willie saw the fire spread he hurried back toward the doorway, hearing Blue Snake, but unable to undo what he’d started.
“Sorry, Blue Snake,” Willie said, “but when the Devil starts a fire there’s no stopping it from running its course.”
“Bo Kregger? Dead?” said Blue Snake, as if he couldn’t believe it. He no longer seemed to care about the saloon being on fire.
“Deader than hell!” said Barton Talbert. “Shaw’s here, and he’ll have to be dealt with before he kills us all!” He stepped inside the burning saloon and looked back out onto the dark street. “I tell you, this man don’t act human!”
Blue Snake grabbed the rifle from Talbert’s hand and levered a round into the chamber. “He might not act human, but he damned sure is! Once we put a couple of bullets in him, I expect he’ll bleed just like the rest of us!” Looking out into the shadowy moonlight, Blue Snake called out, “All right, Shaw, if this is how you want it, here we come!” Then he said to Talbert, “Where is Gladso?”
“Gladso took his brother inside and laid him out on the floor of the hotel,” said Bobby Fitt, standing ready with the shotgun under the bar. “If I know Gladso, he’s listening to everything right now. He’s the sneakiest man I ever saw. He’ll pop out on Shaw when Shaw’s least expecting it, is my guess.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” said Blue Snake. “Bobby, take the shotgun and get around on the far side of the street. Blast Shaw down when he comes past you to get to us.” He looked around and saw Willie the Devil, but no sign of Elton Minton. “Where’s Scarecrow, Devil?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said the Devil, “but forget him; he’s no fighter anyway.”
Barton Talbert took a deep breath and said with resolve, “All right, let’s get out there and kill this bastard. There’s still plenty of us, counting the Devil…. I’m tired of worrying about Fast Larry Shaw. Whoever kills him gets the other thousand dollars that was going to go to Bo Kregger!” Then, thinking about it, Talbert said, “No, make that five hundred of what was going to go to Kregger.” But it made no difference to Bobby Fitt, Blue Snake, or Willie the Devil. This was all about staying alive now, and nothing else.
As they left the burning saloon, Bobby Fitt hurried away along the boardwalk, crouched and ducking into the shadows, where he could lie in wait for Shaw to come down the middle of the street. Throughout the town word had spread about the saloon being ablaze. Townsmen appeared, hiking up their suspenders and buckling their belts, their shirt-tails flapping loosely. Ghostly flames licked high into the night, streaking upward through boiling black smoke and racing sparks.
Lawrence Shaw sat inside a darkened doorway and watched the fire calmly. He thought of a Fourth of July celebration in Somos Santos back when he and Rosa were still young lovers thinking their lives together were unending. In Shaw’s eyes the saloon fire sparkled and shone, and he felt a tear well up until it spilled freely and warmly down his cheek. “Rosa…Rosa,” he whispered, “look where this life is taking me…look where it’s taken you.”
Then he stood up, seeing the outline of men walking toward him against the backdrop of fire. “Shaw,” he heard Blue Snake Terril call out.
Wiping his fingertips through the tear on his face, Shaw said to Rosa under his breath, “I won’t be but a minute, Rosa, darling…I’ll be coming right along.”
“Step out, Shaw!” said Barton Talbert, letting go of his fear and taking charge, leading Blue Snake and Willie the Devil down the middle of the dark street. “I had nothing to do with killing your wife! I’m innocent! But if there’s got to be some killing to make it right…come and get all of it you want!”
Several of the townsmen who had formed a bucket brigade to fight the saloon fire ducked out of sight at the sound of Barton Talbert’s words. “We’ve got a fire going, damn it!” one townsman shouted in anger.
Seeing Lawrence Shaw’s dark figure appear before them, Blue Snake and Willie the Devil began firing. But their first shots were wild and unaimed. Barton Talbert stopped and took careful aim. Yet, as he fired, Shaw moved at the last second and the shot sliced through the air past his head. “Damn it, somebody hit him!” Talbert shouted.
Lawrence Shaw drew his big Colt and walked forward, taking quick aim and firing. Shot after shot, the three men felt the bullets punch and cut and drive them to their knees in bloody submission. Once flat on his belly, Willie the Devil managed to lie quietly, a pistol tucked up under him. Blue Snake Terril took a bullet in the chest but still managed to crawl away, leaving a blood trail behind him until he managed to turn and shove upward to his feet. Shaw didn’t see him, but as Blue Snake took aim, a bullet came out of the darkness and knocked him dead.
Shaw kept walking, kept firing, knowing that with each shot fired at him his odds of living fell dramatically. “Shoot, damn you, shoot!” he shouted. “Can you only kill women?”
But as he stepped closer, he saw only Barton Talbert, on one knee in the dirt, his Colt hanging loosely in his hand. “I just…want to say…I’m sorry, Shaw,” he said in a gasp, blood spilling from his lips.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” said Shaw bitterly, the Colt bucking in his hand, knocking Barton Talbert flat onto his back in a spray of blood.
To his right, Shaw heard Cray Dawson’s voice call out, “Look out, Shaw!”
Before Shaw could turn to see why, Dawson’s Colt exploded, causing Bobby Fitt’s shotgun to go off wildly as Fitt fell dead with a bullet through his heart.
“I told you I was going to be here, Shaw,” Cray Dawson’s voice called out in the darkness. “I got Blue Snake.”
With a sigh of resignation, Shaw said, “So you did, Dawson, and I got Barton Talbert.” Shaw lowered his pistol and whispered, “Well, Rosa, looks like I’ll be a while longer.”
“What?” asked Dawson, stepping into the dimly moonlit street.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Shaw.
There was a pause. “Oh,” said Dawson, as if he understood.
Just as the tension eased a bit and both men let their gun hands relax, Gladso Furlin stepped out of nowhere with a double-barreled shotgun pointed at Lawrence Shaw’s chest. “Shaw, I got you!” he said, pulling the trigger.
“No!” Cray Dawson shouted, lunging into Shaw as the shot exploded, taking part of the buckshot in the back of his shoulder, keeping the bulk of the blast from hitting Shaw full in the chest.
On the ground atop of Shaw, Dawson clung to him, braced for the second blast, knowing that Gladso had them cold. Then Dawson flinched three times in rapid succession as Jedson Caldwell fired without hesitation, each shot driving Gladso Furlin backward until the third one hurled him into a water trough that the townsmen were using to fill buckets to extinguish the saloon fire. No sooner than the shooting had stopped, the townsmen ran forward, rolled Gladso’s body from the trough, filled their buckets, and began concentrating on the fire.
Jedson Caldwell ran out of the dark shadows into the moonlit street, shaking out of control, looking over at the wet, dripping body of Gladso Furlin. When he
got to where Cray Dawson and Lawrence Shaw lay in a bloody heap, he saw Dawson roll over off of Shaw and struggle up into a crouch, his back covered with blood. “Are you all right, Dawson?” Caldwell asked, his words trembling.
“I’m all right,” said Dawson. Then, looking down at Shaw, he said, “What about you, Shaw? Are you doing all right?” He saw the wide spread of blood on Shaw’s shoulder, his chest, his face. “Shaw?” he asked, his voice taking on a hushed tone.
Lawrence Shaw lay flat on his back, his eyes staring blank yet serenely upward into the wide, starry sky. “Oh, no, Shaw!” said Dawson, his voice beginning to fail him at seeing the expressionless look on Shaw’s bloody face. Jedson Caldwell stepped in quietly beside him, the two of them staring down at Lawrence Shaw.
“That was…a damn stupid thing to do, Dawson,” Shaw said, reaching a hand up slowly for help to his feet.
Dawson and Caldwell each let out a breath of relief. “You’re right,” said Dawson, feeling the pain in his wound begin in earnest as he gave his hand to Shaw. “I don’t know what I was thinking, doing that.”
“Oh, Mr. Shaw,” said Jedson Caldwell, “we thought for certain you were dead.”
“Dead? No, not dead, Undertaker,” said Shaw, “just taking a second there, wondering what it would be like if I was.” He looked longingly up at the night sky again and wiped a sleeve across his face, clearing off some of the blood. “I’ll probably go from being the fastest gun alive to being the oldest gun alive, the way things go for me.” Then he said to Dawson, “You saved my life, Cray Dawson…. I’m obliged.”
Dawson let it pass him by, saying, “Caldwell saved both our lives.”
“That you did, Undertaker, and I’m obliged to you, too,” said Shaw. Seeing the Colt still in Caldwell’s hand, the barrel pointed at him, Shaw reached out and nudged the barrel down at the ground.
Caldwell was still shaken but highly excited. “I didn’t see the Devil or Elton go down. Want me to go hunt them?”
“No,” said Shaw. “The Devil had nothing to do with Rosa’s death, and Elton just got dragged along by the Devil. It’s finished.” He sighed. “The killing, anyway. Now comes the hard part for me…just living.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, Shaw?” said Dawson. “You didn’t come here tonight to do anything foolish, did you?”
“Foolish?” said Shaw, with a twist of irony in his voice. He looked around at the burning saloon, the bodies on the ground, the blood on Dawson’s face, and the blood on his own chest. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Just the way you did this,” said Dawson, “trying to get rid of us…coming here in the dead of night, one man against all these guns. I wondered if maybe you weren’t out to get yourself killed.”
Shaw managed a dark chuckle. “Dawson, I suppose I could say I’ve been trying to get myself killed my whole life. But I’m just too good at staying alive to let it happen.”
“You know what I mean, Shaw,” said Dawson, not letting Shaw play it off.
“Oh, you mean suicide?” said Shaw, sounding astonished at such a thought. “No way, Dawson. I got too much pride to do something like that,” he lied. “You just misread me. I didn’t want you two here because…” His words trailed; then he shrugged and said, “Well, being the fastest gun alive, I don’t suppose I have to explain every move I make, do I?”
“Not to me, you don’t,” said Cray Dawson. Seeing Shaw stagger a bit, he reached out, took his arm, and looped it across his shoulder. “Here, let’s go find a doctor before we both bleed ourselves dry.”
A townsman rushed in and looked around at the dead, then said to Shaw, “This was supposed to happen in the daylight! When folks could see it!” He tossed his hands in the air.
“The Devil had a scheduling problem,” Shaw said without looking at him.
“But I had money on this!” the man said. “Many of us did! Where is it? Who has it? I demand my money back!”
Caldwell gave him a narrow, blank look and hissed, “Mister, the betting was all put up by Willie the Devil! If you’ve got a problem with it, go to the Devil!” He stared coldly until the man shied back, turned, and hurried away.
“Getting cocky, ain’t he?” Shaw said quietly to Dawson.
“Yeah,” Dawson replied as they limped along, “I’ve been expecting it.”
Caldwell picked up Shaw’s hat from the dirt and carried it dutifully along behind them. Taking a deep breath, he kept his chest expanded, liking the broad, strong feeling it gave him. When the wounded gunmen had gone a few feet farther, Caldwell dusted the big hat, raised it, and set it atop his head, but just for a moment, just long enough to see what it felt like.
