Shotgun Charlie

by Ralph Compton

  “That you, Charlie boy?”

  The words were faint but loud enough that Charlie heard. And they ended with a wet cough, as if Haskell was trying to spit but couldn’t. It didn’t sound to Charlie as if the man was faking.

  “Come what may,” said Charlie to himself, and strode toward the bullet-riddled, splinter-boarded miner’s shack, unarmed save for his Green River skinning knife. And that he left sheathed at his side.

  He walked right up to the door and kicked it hard. It spasmed inward, bounced off the wall, and settled, hanging from its top hinge. Directly opposite, Grady Haskell lay propped against the wall, a revolver in his hand, drawn dead to rights on Charlie.

  Grady’s bloody hand shook, the pistol wagging as if the man had a palsy. Sweat stippled his blanched face, and a wide, crooked grin twitched at the corners. Finally his hand dropped, the revolver clunking to the floor. Grady’s eyelids fluttered, and then he pulled in a deep breath and looked at Charlie and smiled.

  Charlie saw a long, thin man with his guts a churned mess from a shotgun blast and numerous other wounds. The big young man crossed the small room and with a boot toe nudged the revolver from Haskell’s grasp.

  “No!” Haskell’s bloody fingers groped feebly for the gun. He dragged the hand to his lap and cringed as some inner pain racked him.

  Charlie scanned the room, took in two rifles, a knife, and four revolvers. As he slowly circled the little room, gathering them, he spoke. “A gut-shot man, so I’ve been told, Grady, takes a long, long time to die. And what’s more . . .” Charlie tossed the guns out the door. He turned, regarded the bloody man, and rubbed his chin as if he were about to launch into a particularly exciting engaging story. “I hear tell that the pain is one of the most, maybe even the most horrible, excruciating pains a man can possibly endure on this earth.”

  “Charlie,” said Haskell, trying to grin despite his obvious pain. “You are a cruel sort of fella—you know that? Now give me that gun, Charlie boy. It’s the least you can do for me. One bullet’s all I need so’s I can do for myself. I can’t take much more of this. . . .”

  Charlie went on, ignoring the man’s words. “Now, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I? You being a man of the world, and do correct me if I’m wrong, Grady, but you’re also a killing man, right? A man who I’m sure has shot more than his fair share of people in his day. Right, Grady?” Charlie pulled a wide, false grin, as if the two men were sharing a big old laugh.

  “You . . . you’re meaner than I had you pegged for, Charlie boy.” Haskell grimaced as shards of hot pain needled into him from all sides. It felt as if he were being roasted alive and being eaten by fiendish stinging insects, all at once.

  “Oh, Grady, you in some pain, huh . . . boy?”

  “Yeah. . . . Oh Lordy, but it hurts like the dickens, Charlie boy. . . . I can’t hardly stand it.” He pulled his left hand away from his gut and held it up. The hand was barely recognizable, so much blood spooled off it, as if it were a hand dipped in a vat of gore. “Oh, Charlie . . . boy . . . make it stop. I can’t hardly stand it no more.”

  “Make it stop? Hmm, no, that’s plumb interesting. Makes me wonder what that little girl back in Bakersfield—you know, the one you trampled with your horse in the street?—makes me wonder what she was saying to her family. . . .” Charlie’s voice cracked, but he knew he had to go on, for her sake, for all their sakes.

  “When her family was gathered around her bedside and the doctor said there wasn’t nothing they could do for her, except for them to all stand there and watch that young thing die. A child, Grady, with so much promise, from good people who wanted nothing but good things for her.”

  Charlie’s big bull nostrils flexed and he leaned in close. “You got me, mister? And all them people who loved that little girl had to watch her die, awake and confused and bleeding and in agony? Oh, Grady, I sincerely hope such agonies are visiting you now, tenfold. You hear me . . . boy?”

  Charlie stood, paced in a circle around the little busted-down, shredded-board, shot-to-ruin cabin. Outside he heard a bird of some sort warbling out a random string of night notes, the call of a far-off coyote drifting high and away. All around them life was going on, and death too. He looked through the tattered rag in the window and pulled a draft of fresh air into his lungs.

  Then he heard a dry, cackling sound, soft but there it was. It was Haskell. The man had been silent and Charlie half hoped he’d expired. The fiend was laughing, a quiet wheeze, but even as blood oozed out his nose and mouth, he laughed.

  “You find it all so funny, don’t you? You think that little girl’s death is a funny thing? I didn’t think it was possible, Grady Haskell, but you are even more low-down than I ever could have imagined you’d be.”

  “I’m not laughing about the girl, Charlie boy. Though . . .” He coughed. “. . . I don’t recall stomping a child—don’t sound much like me. Likely she was in the way anyway. Wasn’t me, it’d been somebody else. Children, in my experience, are often underfoot.”

  Charlie’s blood boiled anew. He looked down at the wreck of a man—not much of a man to begin with—and though Charlie had no sympathy for the beast, he did hope Haskell would die soon so he wouldn’t have to listen to any more of his foul chatter.

  “No, Charlie boy . . . I was . . .” Another wave of pain coursed through Haskell. The man stiffened, convulsed, his blood-gloved hands clawing at his gut. He groaned low, too far gone for screams.

  “Charlie. . . .”

  Charlie turned his back on the man and strode out the door, his heavy weight springing the spent boards of the floor, creaking them as he walked out. He filled the doorway a moment, his back to the room.

  Haskell croaked, “Charlie boy, Charlie . . . boy, don’t leave me like this, don’t . . . Charlie boy. . . .” The “please” dissolved into a long, gagging groan, wet with blood and the imminence of death.

  Charlie stepped off the sill to the hard-packed earth and breathed deep of the cool night air. It seemed he could not get enough of it.

  He balled his big hands into fists, tight, realized he still held a revolver in his right, and looked at it, then tossed it away into the scrub brush. He’d had enough of such things. Had enough of everything, it seemed.

  Chapter 44

  Early the next morning, Charlie loaded the bodies of the four men, the good and the bad, onto their horses, to begin the long trip back down to Bakersfield. Marshal Wickham had said he didn’t need to, but that wasn’t so. That town and everyone in it needed to know that their lawman, their marshal, was a good man, a devoted man dedicated to the cause of being a lawman. And that was a good and noble thing.

  He would bring back the sadly crazy deputy and the man with him, the one who’d lost a brother. They had no doubt been driven by fear and anger and a lust for revenge, and all that emotion only got them killed.

  Ace and Simp, he’d leave them where they lay. Might be he’d have to pile up more stones on them on his return journey, but that would be part of it all. A thing a man should do for his fellows.

  Charlie would bring the corpse of Haskell back for himself, to prove that he wasn’t one of them, to prove that Haskell was a man who could be caught and should be caught, someone who deserved to be brought to justice, alive or dead. Then he’d toss the sacks of money at their feet.

  If the judge still decided Charlie deserved to be included in that group of criminals, then so be it. At least Charlie, if no one else, would know he’d done all he could with what he had.

  Mostly, Charlie wanted to go back to Bakersfield to make sure that Pap was buried with the respect due him. Pap Morton had been no saint, but he was a good man, as good in his own way as Marshal Wickham. They were men Charlie hoped to be like one day. It might be a long day coming, but he had time. Precious little else to his name, but he had time.

  As the full light of dawn burned through th
e last of the storm’s stray clouds, Big Charlie Chilton, trailing four dead men draped over their saddles, headed on down out of the mountains toward town and an uncertain future that he hoped one day might show signs of promise.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  THE LAW AND THE LAWLESS

  A Ralph Compton Novel by David Robbins.

  Available in August 2015 from Signet in paperback and e-book.

  Cestus Calloway sauntered into the Alpine Bank and Trust company as if he owned it. Which was remarkable, the people in the bank would later tell a journalist for the True Fissure, since he was there to rob it.

  Calloway wore his usual wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat, tilted up on the back of his head so that his brown curls spilled from under it. One lady would tell the newspaperman that it had given Calloway the look of the Greek Adonis. His handsome face was split in a smile and his blue eyes danced with amusement as he drew both of his Merwin Hulbert Army revolvers and held them out for all to see. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed in that grand way he had, “we’re here to make a withdrawal.”

  By “we,” Cestus had meant the eight members of his wild bunch. Five of them strode in after him, spreading out as they came so that they blocked the windows and doors. It was plain they had rehearsed what to do. As one bank customer would say to the reporter, “They moved like clockwork.”

  The True Fissure would be able to identify the five by the descriptions witnesses gave. The robbers were Mad Dog Hanks, Bert Varrow, Ira Toomis, a man who was only ever known as Cockeye, and the Attica Kid.

  The bank’s patrons and the pair of tellers all froze. Mrs. Mabel Periwinkle blurted, “My word!” and then blushed as if embarrassed.

  Behind the rail at his desk, the bank’s president, Arthur Hunnecut, was the first to get over his surprise. Rising, he moved to the rail. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  Calloway chuckled and ambled over, saying, “You’re a mite slow between the ears, Art.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance, sir,” Hunnecut said stuffily. “And I’ll thank you to stop waving pistols around in my bank.”

  Gesturing at the customers, Calloway laughed and said, “Do you hear him, folks? I bet if we look in his ear hole we’ll find a turtle in there.”

  Mrs. Periwinkle snorted and turned red again.

  “Let me gun him,” Mad Dog Hanks growled. He’d acquired his handle because he looked exactly like a mad mongrel about to take a bite out of someone. It didn’t help his appearance any that he had large tufts of hair growing out of his ears.

  Calloway glanced at him sharply. “What’s the rule?”

  Mad Dog scowled and said, “Well, damn.”

  “No swearing in my establishment,” Arthur Hunnecut snapped. “Not with ladies present.”

  Calloway hooked the gate with the barrel of a six-shooter and opened it. “You’re a marvel, Art, and that’s no lie. Step out here while me and my boys clean your bank out.”

  “I’ll be damned if I will,” Hunnecut said.

  The Attica Kid came over, his spurs jingling, and just like that his Colt Lightning was in his hand. The youngest of the outlaws, he always wore black, including a black vest. His eyes, as one person would describe them, were “cold green gems.” Cocking the Lightning, he said, “You’ll be dead if you don’t.”

  “I’d listen to him, were I you,” Calloway said.

  Arthur Hunnecut blanched.

  Over by the wall, Mad Dog Hanks grumbled, “Oh, sure. Me, I have to behave, but you let the Kid do whatever he wants.”

  Calloway shot him another sharp glance.

  “Step out here, money man,” the Attica Kid said, “or your missus will be wailin’ over your grave.”

  Hunnecut stepped out.

  “That’s better,” Calloway said, and clapped the banker on the back with a revolver. “Now let’s get to it.” He nodded at Bert Varrow and Ira Toomis, and the pair went to the tellers and held out burlap sacks.

  “Tell your people, Art, to empty the drawers and the safe,” Calloway commanded, “and be quick about it.”

  Arthur Hunnecut looked into the muzzle of the Attica Kid’s Lightning and became whiter still. “You heard him.”

  Showing his teeth in a dazzling smile, Calloway moved to the middle of the room. “I’m truly sorry for inconveniencin’ you folks. This won’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Are you fixing to rob us, too?” a man in a suit and bowler asked.

  “Rob you good folks?” Calloway said as if the notion horrified him. “May the good Lord strike me dead if I ever took from the likes of you.”

  “What do you know of the Lord?” Hunnecut said archly.

  “I know He’s not fond of money changers,” Calloway said. To the man in the bowler he said, “You must be new in these parts or you’d know I only rob those who deserve it.”

  “What did I do to deserve this?” Hunnecut said.

  “Do you mean besides the high interest you charge those who borrow from you? And besides those you’ve driven from their homes when they couldn’t pay their mortgage?”

  “Now see here,” Hunnecut said. “That’s a normal part of doing business. A bank isn’t a charity, after all.”

  Calloway winked and smiled. “I am.”

  At the front window Cockeye stirred and called out, “There’s a tin star comin’ up the street toward McGiven and Larner.”

  “Who?” Hunnecut said.

  “Pards of ours,” Calloway replied, moving toward the window. “Watchin’ our horses while we conduct our business.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  The Attica Kid pressed the muzzle of his Lightning against the banker’s bulbous nose. “I’m tired of your sass. Give me cause and I’ll splatter your brains.”

  “If he don’t, I will,” Mad Dog Hanks said.

  Cestus Calloway looked out the front window, careful to hold his revolvers behind his back. “It’s that new deputy they got. Mitchell, I think his name is. He’s supposed to be out of town with the marshal.”

  “That’s what I was told by that barkeep when I scouted out the town last night,” Bert Varrow said. He was the only one of the outlaws who wore city clothes—and a derby, to boot. His Colt pocket pistol had pearl grips, and he wore a diamond stickpin.

  “Either Deputy Mitchell didn’t go or he came back early,” Calloway guessed. Quickly moving to the front door, he poked his head out and said, “Send him in here, boys.” He stepped to one side, his back to the wall, and waited. It wasn’t half a minute before a shadow filled the doorway and in walked Deputy Mitchell.

  The deputy wasn’t any older than the Attica Kid, and he had red hair and freckles. “Mr. Hunnecut,” he said, “a man outside said you wanted to see . . .” Belatedly, he stopped and stiffened. “What in the world?”

  Calloway stepped up from behind him and tapped a Merwin Hulbert on Deputy Mitchell’s arm. “Turtles all over the place.”

  “What?” Mitchell said, gaping at the Attica Kid and then at Mad Dog Hanks as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Undo your gun belt,” Calloway said, “if you’d be so kind.”

  “What?” Deputy Mitchell said again.

  “You need to catch up,” Calloway told him. “The bank is bein’ robbed.”

  “Some lawman you are,” Arthur Hunnecut said. “I told the marshal you were too young for the job, but would he listen? No.”

  Deputy Mitchell’s features hardened and he started to lower his right hand to his holster. “Now see here. . . .”

  “Don’t be stupid, boy,” Calloway said, jamming his revolver into the deputy’s ribs. “We can blow you to hell and back without half tryin’.”

  For a few moments it appeared that Mitchell would draw anyway, but then he frowned and deflated, remarking, “I’m not hanke
rin’ to die.”

  “No one has to if I can help it,” Calloway said good-naturedly. “And I usually can.”

  Deputy Mitchell’s eyes widened. “Why, you’re him, aren’t you?” he said as he pried at his buckle.

  “President Hayes?”

  “No. You’re Cestus Calloway. The one everyone talks about. The Robin Hood of the Rockies, they call you.” The deputy let his gun belt fall to the floor.

  “I should thank that scribbler from the newspaper,” Calloway said. “What was that book he talked about? Ivanhoe?”

  “You are him, though?” Deputy Mitchell said in awe.

  Calloway gave a mock bow. “Yes, ’tis I.”

  “Why, aren’t you somethin’?” Mitchell said.

  Arthur Hunnecut muttered under his breath.

  The tellers were hurriedly stuffing money from the drawers into the burlap sacks under the watchful eyes and leveled six-shooters of Bert Varrow and Ira Toomis. Toomis, the oldest of the gang, had a cropped salt-and-pepper beard and a wad of tobacco bulging his cheek. Thrusting his revolver at them, he barked, “Hurry it up, you peckerwoods. We don’t have all week.”

  “And get the money from the safe,” Bert Varrow said.

  “It’s shut,” a skinny teller nervously replied, “and only Mr. Hunnecut has the combination.”

  “Is that a fact?” Cestus Calloway said. He bobbed his chin at the banker. “You know what you have to do.”

  “Never,” Hunnecut said.

  “We’re takin’ it all, Art.”

  “I refuse. Do you hear me?” Hunnecut said. “The people of this community have put their trust in me and I won’t disappoint them.”

  “Kid,” Calloway said.

  The Attica Kid’s smile was as icy as a mountain glacier. “How’s Martha? Should I go call on her now or wait until tonight when you’re off with your friends at that club?”

  “What?”

  “Or maybe I should have a talk with Cornelia. I hear she likes to wear her hair in pigtails.”