by Steve Lee
Annotation
"GET HIM!"
In a pack they rushed him. like a statue, Sloane awaited them, unmoving, expressionless. Then, when they were upon him, the statue sprang startlingly to life. Sloane's high kick shattered Surly's jaw, his right fist smashed the bearded one's nose, his left hand chopped Hare-lip in the temple, and as he dropped his right arm, Sloane shot back his elbow, sinking it deep into the Mexican's soft belly. The Mexican grunted and careened into the bar. Hare-lip fell senseless on the spot. Arms flailing, the bearded one cannon balled into the crowded tables, splattering blood on the horrified customers. The Mexican launched himself at Sloane, his hand emerging from inside his poncho with a long-bladed knife. He slashed at Sloane's throat. Sloane danced out of reach. Again the blade sliced the air toward Sloane. Again Sloane evaded it. The third time the Mexican lunged, Sloane gripped the man's wrist and applied pressure to the nerves.
The Mexican threw back his head and screamed. His fingers clawed open. The knife slipped from his numbed grasp and embedded itself in the polished floor. Maintaining his grip, Sloane spun the Mexican round, doubled his arm high up his back and spun him squealing over the counter onto a shelf of bottles. He collapsed heavily onto a bed of broken glass… It was a waste, These were not the men Sloane was seeking. Only fools who felt they could taunt a lone blue-eyed "Chink." He smiled at the idea of being thought of as an Oriental. True, he would always remember Chang Fung and his family. They had literally plucked his broken body from the jaws of death when he was only twelve. But now he was ready find the vicious killers of Jim and Martha Sloane, two God-fearing homesteaders who had scraped the blistering desert with their bare hands to give their son a chance at a better life…
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Steve Lee
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Steve Lee
The Man With The Iron Fists
OCR Mysuli: [email protected]
I
The Outrage
1
The white hell of desert was Death's domain — and Death was throwing a party. It was a good party. There was plenty to go around, plenty for everyone.
First to come were the flies. Then the buzzards glided down for the feast. Intuitive, they'd waited all day, wheeling over the paymaster's wagon in wide, lazy circles, patient as the fat globe of molten heat squatting heavy above the parched, thirsty sand that stretched to the horizon and beyond like a sea of bone.
The three guests of honor were the center of attention. But they didn't seem to be having much fun. They lay where they had fallen, the driver and the two guards, their bullet-smashed bodies grotesque, empty eye sockets staring. Nearby, still harnessed to the upturned wagon, the team of horses stiffened. The wagon was cleaned out, empty.
Without haste, making their selections with care and deliberation, the gaunt, ugly birds tore into the feast. Raw, scrawny necks bulged, forcing down thick gobbets of horseflesh — and manflesh. Their patience had been well rewarded. The buzzards ate their fill.
Later the coyotes would slink in for their share.
Out in the shimmering desert heat, Tod Sloane was taking a good, close look at death in action. Five feet away on the baking sand a gila froze, tensing in anticipation, as a plump black beetle crept aimlessly, unsuspecting, toward it. The mongrel dog Tod held in his arms bared its teeth and growled. Tod hushed the dog, stroked it to silence. The boy was twelve years old, and death was too remote to be feared.
The gila stood erect, motionless, paying no heed to its lazily approaching meal. It reminded Tod of a stuffed eagle he'd once seen in a store. Only a slight pulsing movement in the puffed-up bag of wrinkled skin under the monster's throat betrayed life, showed that it too was not stuffed. Tod found himself holding his breath as the beetle crept within inches of the stonelike gila. The gila remained motionless, vacant, apparently unaware even of the beetle's existence. Then it pounced. A long streak of tongue rolled out, scooped up the beetle and carried him back into the gila's waiting mouth. The mouth snapped shut. The gila sucked philosophically on its victim and gulped him down.
From Tod's arms Scamp barked in angry protest. Again Tod hushed the dog but, blink-fast, the gila was gone, swallowed up by the empty desert. Tod hunched his shoulders. Anxious to go gila-hunting, Scamp urgently pawed the air. Tod set him down on the hot sand. Scamp got to work, sniffing round for the scent.
"Ain't you glad they don't come no bigger'n that?" Tod asked his dog. He wasn't expecting a reply and he didn't get one. Besides, Scamp was too busy digging a hole. Tod. jerked a rubber ball, tight and black, from a well-filled pocket of his dungarees. He flicked it in the air, caught it two-handed. Scamp lost interest in his, hole, barked eagerly for attention. Tod flung the ball high and far into the air like he was fixing to knock the sun out of the red sky. Boy and dog raced after in pursuit.
Scamp's jaws closed on the ball. Tod ran up behind, panting. Scamp tail-wagged his triumph. Tod threw his wide-brimmed straw hat to the ground in disgust. Plumping himself down beside the hat, he grabbed a handful of sand and watched it trickle from out of his fist, making patterns that were instantly part of the desert.
"Hell, I let you win anyway," said Tod. "Only a darn fool dog'd wanna run in this heat like this."
The trickle of sand stopped. Tod uncurled his fingers. His hand was empty. Still wagging his tail, Scamp ran up and dropped the ball into Tod's open palm. Tod pulled on his hat and stood up. Then, ghostly in the heat haze, he saw the covered wagons crawling toward him out of the desert. He wondered if this was a mirage or if he'd gone sun-crazy or if people often dreamed with their eyes open. Because up on the driver's seat of the lead wagon was a clown, a real live honest-to-goodness clown with a face white as flour and a great big red half-moon of a grin.
"You see what I see, Scamp?" Tod asked his dog. Scamp barked enigmatically. Then Tod made a realization that spread a smile across his whole face.
"It's a circus, Scamp," he laughed. "A circus!"
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Seconds later, Tod was running toward the two wagons, whooping with pleasure, Scamp bouncing at his heels. Drawing nearer he saw there was no doubt about it, the man was a clown. A clown in a long checkered jacket with wide baggy pants cut of the same cloth. A battered derby perched atop his head at a drunken angle and a floppy green spotted bow tie dangled from his neck. The clown waved…
Tod shifted his gaze to the other wagon. Its driver was even more surprising: a tall beautiful near-naked woman sitting cool beneath a pink parasol. Long hair, red as blood, cascaded down over bare shoulders and onto a glittering costume that fully displayed her white arms and black-silk legs and hugged the firm swell of her breasts. Tod had never seen so much of a woman all at once before, not even his mother, and he slowed to a walk, staring.
The clown greeted him with twinkling blue eyes and a broad painted smile.
"Don't be bashful, young feller… men three times your age've been struck dumb when they first laid eyes on Miss Scarlett Blade. That's all they ever laid on her too!" The clown laughed. It was a crazy kind of laugh.
"Are you a real clown, mister?" Tod asked, edging nearer.
"Can't think of no other good reason why a man'd be crazy 'nough to be all dressed up like this in the middle of hell-hot nowhere… can you?"
Tod moved his head from side to side, slowly. The clown studied him with amusement.
"What's your name, young man?"
"Tod. Tod Sloane."
Tod glanced down at his dog.
"His name's Scamp."
"Pleased to meet the both of you," said the clown. "You strayed far from home, Tod?"
"No, sir," said Tod, pointing. "I live just over them dunes with my Ma and Pa."
"How's about a free ride home in a circus wagon?" the clown invited.
"Up there, next to you?" Tod marvelled.
"Sure thing, climb aboard."
"Thanks, mister!"
Grabbing ahold of Scamp, Tod climbed up onto the seat beside the clown. The clown started up the team. The wagon jerked forward and the second wagon followed.
Tod didn't like to stare. He examined the clown's painted face side-wise.
"How'd you get to be a clown?" he asked. The clown laughed heartily.
"You don't become a clown," he said. "Clowns happen. They're natural-born that way."
2
The Sloane homestead was a small, half-civilized bridgehead of humanity encroaching on Death's domain, torn from the parched wasteland by guts, determination, and relentless hard work. There was a neat timbered house with a flat roof, another half-completed building not quite ready to be called a barn, and a corral holding two aging horses. Nearby, a surly goat was tethered, munching resignedly on the previous day's leftovers. A dozen chickens patroled the yard, pausing often to jab shortsightedly at the weak soil.
It wasn't much but to a man who'd been looking all his life for a place to call home, it was plenty. The fact that it was his because no one else wanted it didn't bother Jim Sloane at all. It made him that much more satisfied with his lot. Maybe other men could build themselves a home from a lifeless patch of sunbaked sand — but no one else had. Only him.
Stripped to the waist, Jim was in the yard, rasping a hot saw through wood, cutting planks for the new barn. In that kind of heat every stroke of the saw was an act of faith. Sweat slicked his back, matted the sparse graying hairs on his chest. Every couple of minutes Jim had to stop to wipe the salt from his eyes and shoo away the fat blue flies drawn as eagerly to sweat as to death.
He was gaunt and stringy with the look of a man who had worked ten hours a day, Sabbath included, for as long as he could remember. Some nights he lay awake and worried about that, about working on the Lord's day. But always he decided that if the Almighty could see, he also must understand. If Jim rested up for just one day it would be admitting defeat, giving in to the Devil's temptations. For who could deny that the desert, with its hellish heat, lifeless soil, and thousand kinds of death, belonged to the Devil and that Jim, by the fruits of his labor, was winning it back for honest Christian folk to dwell in. Not that Jim didn't expect Old Nick to fight back for his land. Already he'd sent his poisonous imps to drive Jim and his family out — the scorpions and rattlers, tarantulas and gilas… But with fire and bullets Jim had resisted them all and prevailed. And he was ready also for any of the Devil's two-legged emissaries that might come calling: Indians, army deserters, bandits, and worse. Propped within easy reach against a water butt was his rifle, a seven-shot cylinder number bought from Benjamin Bigelow's gunstore in Maysville.
Jim had little liking for guns or instruments of death of any kind but he knew that until the Lord's commandments were established in the wilds, the law would have to be laid down with guns. And when the hour came for him to use his rifle against the ungodly, Jim Sloane knew the good Lord would guide his bullets to their target.
When he saw the approaching wagons, Jim reached tensely for the rifle. Then he saw Tod waving happily to him from the lead wagon and he partly relaxed. Alerted by Scamp's excited barking and the creak of the wagons, Martha Sloane joined her husband in the yard, wiping her hands on an apron. Even with her straw-colored hair severely pulled back into a bun, Martha was an attractive woman with the fair, delicate good looks of her Swedish ancestors. Seeing guests, she pulled off her apron. Beneath it she wore a frock of pink calico, damp under the arms and at the cleft of her matronly breasts.
Tod jumped down from his favored position beside the clown and ran to his father, Scamp not far behind.
"Pa, can we go to the circus… please, Pa?"
"Looks like the circus has come to us," said Jim, taking a step toward the man with the painted face. He saw it but he didn't yet believe it.
"Mister, if you ain't the darndest thing I ever seen come out that desert!"
The clown chuckled, climbing down from the wagon. He faced Jim, who was taller than him by a head.
"This face, sir, is my fortune," the clown explained. "And there's some've said a considerable improvement on the one the good Lord in his wisdom saw fit to give me."
As he spoke, the clown swung a black cane in a loose-wristed hand, giving emphasis to his words. The cane was richly ornate, engraved in gold.
"I ask you, sir," he continued, "who am I, a simple entertainer, to go against both the wishes of my public and of the good Lord above?"
"Amen!" agreed Jim Sloane, warming to the clown. However strange the small man's appearance, Jim recognized him for a true lover of the Lord.
"Ah, brother, I knew you was a man of good sense and religion the moment I set eyes on you!" the clown exclaimed. He looked about, nodding in approval at what he saw.
"It's a fine homely place you've got here, Mr. Sloane. You must be proud."
The clown caught the sudden puzzlement in Jim's face and laughed, tugging playfully at the brim of Tod's hat.
"This bright young man, trusting angel that he is, told me your name," he explained.
"This here's m'wife, Martha," said Jim. Martha displayed pearly teeth in a welcoming smile. The clown bowed to her, tipping his hat.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma'am."
"Thanks, I'm sure," Martha answered, flustered by the unaccustomed gallantry. "I'll go in and fetch y'all a pitcher of nice coolin' buttermilk."
"You're an angel too, ma'am… a merciful angel of providence!" Smiling girlishly and shaking her head at the man's flap-doodle, Martha headed back to the kitchen.
While his father and the clown got better acquainted, Tod wandered round the back of the wagon with the healthy curiosity of a growing boy. His eyes met those of the red-headed girl called Scarlett. She hadn't moved from her perch up on the second wagon. Seeing her closer, Tod didn't think her face was so beautiful. Her eyes were too hard and her mouth was all crowded to one side like a sneer that had settled in. But there was no denying the rest of her was beautiful. Tod was old enough to know where to look and look he did. He couldn't help himself. Her costume was an open invitation. The tops of her breasts were peeking out and he could see the freckliness of them. Her waist was as hourglass trim as a young girl's and her legs looked so soft and silky in the dark stockings that Tod wanted to reach out and touch them. He repressed the urge, guessing the experience probably wouldn't be worth a strapping.
Scarlett met his scrutiny with a cold, hostile stare. Avoiding her eyes, Tod turned his attention to the back flap of the clown's wagon. He wasn't a snooper but he felt a feverish excitement that needed feeding with further surprises. He knew the clown wouldn't mind if he took a quick peek inside the wagon. After all, it was a clown's job to provide fun surprises. Inside, there might be tricks and trumpets and bright costumes all demanding his immediate attention. Maybe even a dancing monkey… impulsively, he reached out and pulled the wagon flap open.
Tod stepped back in a panic. He was looking into the eye of a rifle pointed straight at him by a man in buckskin with the look of a hunter. The man was grinning. It was not a very pleasant grin.
It Tod hadn't been staring so hard at that little round noticed, further back in the wagon, the heap of dull gray hole at the end of the Sharp's carbine, he might have bags bearing the mark of the U.S. Treasury Department.
3
"As for me, I don't hold myself to any name," said the clown. "A fool gets called all kindsa names… so I let folks pick their own name fo
r me, the one they reckon as fits me best."
Jim Sloane frowned. "If you got no regular name," he puzzled, "how'd people remember you by?"
The clown laughed his peculiar high laugh.
"They don't forget me easy… no, sir!" laughed the nameless clown. "I give 'em cause to remember me!"
Carrying a tray with a pitcher of fresh buttermilk and some glasses, Martha joined them. She filled a glass and handed it to the clown. He raised it to his painted lips and drank.
"Delightful!" he complimented, returning the empty glass to the tray. "Truly delightful."
Martha seemed to glow with pleasure.
"You blessed Samaritans have been so hospitable to a poor stranger without a name," said the clown, "I dare scarcely ask another favor of you…"
"Ask and ye shall receive," said Jim.
"You give me the courage to speak right up, brother Sloane," the clown said earnestly. "Would you kind folks be mindin' if me and my little family rested up here awhile?"
"You'd be right welcome, mister," answered Jim Sloane. "You and your… family."
The last word caught like a fishbone in Jim's throat because at that moment he looked up and saw the clown's «family» and he got the feeling that all the evil in the world had suddenly entered his home. Martha followed his gaze and gave a small cry.
There were seven of them and none of them were smiling. Despite the heat, Jim felt cold inside as he looked at each of the strangers in turn. There was a wild-eyed youth in buckskin, cradling a rifle, and a dark thin man in a gambler's black suit. Next to them was an Indian who looked as if he might once have been an army scout. His thin-lipped face was cruel. Beside him stood a huge man, a giant with yellow skin, slanted eyes, and a bald head of polished smoothness. Then there was a lean blond cowboy, the surly expression of a rebellious child on his baby-face. And a Negro, heavy and thick-set, dressed from head to toe in soft black leather. In his hand dangled a bullwhip. And finally there was the woman Jim had seen on the second wagon, the woman with hair the color of fresh-spilled blood. For the first time he realized how near naked she was, how carelessly she flaunted her voluptuous body. Now he saw her for what she was — the Scarlet Whore of Babylon!
