“Oh, nothing fancy. A shotgun, double-barreled twelve-gauge. For deterrence purposes. . . to stop trouble before it gets started,” Sixkiller said.
“You seem to know a good deal about the workings of the law, Quinto.”
“When you’ve been around as many jails and sheriffs as I have, Mitch, you can’t help but pick up something.”
Evert went to a desk in a corner of the room and pushed up the rolltop. Stretched lengthwise on the desktop was a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun. He picked it up, hefting it, showing it to the others.
Sixkiller looked at the prosecutor with new eyes. “You’re a man of many ways, Mr. Prosecutor,” he said respectfully.
“In Ringgold, a prosecutor has to be able to defend himself,” Evert said. “I never know when some hothead will come busting in here looking for trouble. This is a most convincing persuader.”
“I don’t want to leave you without protection,” Sixkiller said.
“You won’t.” Evert flipped back his baggy suit jacket to reveal a gun holstered in a shoulder rig harnessed under his left arm, the piece worn butt-out.
Sixkiller had thought the prosecutor had been looking a little bulky under that suit.
Evert opened a side drawer in the rolltop desk and took out a leather pouch. It was closed at the top by drawstrings. He opened it. Inside were several dozen shotgun shells. “I assume that’ll be enough for your purposes,” he said dryly.
“For a start,” Sixkiller said. “Figure you can handle this, Bull?”
“Can I? Just watch the fur fly!” Bull enthused.
“Reckon we’ll be on our way,” Sixkiller said to Evert. “See you.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Jackpot saloon looked somewhat bedraggled, like an attractive blonde with a black eye. The disreputable condition was due to the condition of the left front window, the one Sixkiller and Bull had gone crashing through during their previous day’s tussle. It was boarded over, a patch-up job.
“We’re not looking for trouble now, Bull, so be nice. Let me do the talking,” Sixkiller said.
“Hey, you started the fight, not me!”
“Hmm, so I did. Best hold that sawed-off pointing down. We don’t want to be misunderstood.”
Bull looked formidable walking around with the shotgun. The pouch of buckshot shells was tied to his belt at the hip.
The duo went into the saloon. It was slack time after lunch—only a few handfuls of patrons were scattered around the big space. A quiet hour. Good food smells wafted from the free lunch table.
It got a lot quieter. Only the spinning of a Wheel of Fortune could be heard.
Stunned saloon girls froze while leaning over the serving tables to afford the customers a better look at the décolletage of their low-cut dresses. The customers were so shaken up they forgot to look. They were too busy staring at the newcomers.
A white-aproned chef at the carving table glared daggers at them, putting extra effort into sharpening the carving knife, which already had a keen edge on it.
“As you were, folks,” Sixkiller said breezily to the assembled. It didn’t seem to ease the tension much, if at all.
Mason Rourke came out of his office, impeccable in a dove-gray suit with gray satin ribbon trim on the lapels. A gray leather gun belt was wrapped around his waist.
Sixkiller glanced at Rourke’s boots where they showed below the cuffs of his pants and was mildly disappointed to see that they were not gray, but tan. He made a mental note to ask Rourke when he was in a better humor if it was so hard to find gray boots.
Not that Rourke seemed in a bad humor. He was his usual unflappable self. He was a gambler and a successful one so he knew how to keep a poker face. No warmth showed in his pouchy, heavy-lidded eyes, but was there ever?
“You again!” Rourke said.
Sixkiller began by country-boying it. “Howdy, Mr. Rourke. We’re not looking for trouble—”
“No? Too bad, because I’ve got plenty if that’s what you’re looking for. More than enough,” Rourke said, glancing pointedly at Bull’s shotgun.
“Oh, that sawed-off’s got nothing to do with you. This is strictly a social visit,” Sixkiller said.
“That’s nice. Steve and Roy aren’t looking for trouble either. They’re sociable, too.” Not taking his eyes off Sixkiller and Bull, Rourke indicated Steve and Roy with a tilt of his head.
Those so indicated were Jackpot staffers posted on the right-hand second floor balcony, each armed with shouldered rifles pointing straight down at Sixkiller and Bull.
“Howdy boys,” Sixkiller said, waving at Steve and Roy, who failed to return or even acknowledge his salute. They kept their rifles pointed at their human targets.
“You’re a busy man, Mr. Rourke, so we won’t take up any more of your time. We just dropped in to apologize. We’re real sorry we busted up your window—”
“And some tables and chairs,” Rourke said quickly. “Don’t forget them.”
“I know you’ve been paid to cover the damages.” Sixkiller knew Mayor Ivey had arranged the payment to sweeten the gambler. Sixkiller wanted Rourke to know that he knew. “We’re sorry for what we did and trust that you’ll accept the apology in the spirit it’s offered. We’ve said our piece now, so we’ll be on our way.”
Rourke was a bit nonplussed. Whatever he’d been expecting, an apology wasn’t it. He was thrown for an instant, a rarity for the smooth gambler. “Well sure, okay. Apology accepted.”
“No hard feelings?” Sixkiller asked.
“No hard feelings,” Rourke said. “Only next time you feel like busting loose, do it in somebody else’s saloon.”
Sixkiller smiled in an odd way. “Funny you should mention that . . . but you’ll hear about it soon enough. See you.”
He and Bull went out.
Rourke called up to Steve and Roy. “Hold your places in case it’s a trick or they change their minds.” Hand on the butt of his holstered gun, Rourke went to the entrance, looking out above the tops of the swinging doors. He watched Sixkiller and Bull walk away, their forms dwindling down the long street.
* * *
At Sixkiller’s prompting, he and Bull went into Tobey’s hardware store.
Sixkiller selected an ax handle, the biggest he could find.
Shopkeeper Tobey was beefy with wavy, ginger-colored hair and muttonchop side-whiskers. “Good choice! That’s a real lumberjack’s model. Now let me show you some A-One double-headed ax blades—”
“No thanks. Just the handle will do this time out,” Sixkiller said. “But we need some kind of leather strap, something we can rig to that sawed-off so Bull can carry it over his shoulder and keep his hands free.”
He turned to Bull. “Folks’ll breathe easier that way, Bull. Seeing that sawed-off in your hand ready for action tends to have a powerful disturbing effect.”
“But that’s what we want, ain’t it, Quinto?”
“Not all the time, no. We want to scare our enemies, not our friends or folks who might be inclined to be our friends. Besides, you need to keep your hands free for riding a horse or taking a drink or whatever.”
“Okay.”
“Make it a nice long strap,” Sixkiller told Tobey. “Bull’s got big shoulders.”
Sixkiller paid for his purchases, then rigged the strap around the shotgun. The stock had been shaped into a kind of pistol grip. He tied the strap to the narrow waist of the grip and the other down near the twin muzzles.
Bull slung it over his right shoulder. “Not bad,” he judged, adjusting it a bit.
When Sixkiller was satisfied Bull could wear the piece comfortably, he thanked the shopkeeper and they left the store.
Standing on the boardwalk, Sixkiller looked Bull over. “You know who wears a rig like that? Doc Holiday.”
“You don’t tell me!”
“That’s the honest truth. Doc’s a big one for working a sawed-off and that’s how he totes his around. I’ve seen him.”
“If
it’s good enough for Doc, it’s good enough for me! Where to now?”
“I’ve some unfinished business to attend to,” Sixkiller said.
They headed to the Paradise Club.
Sixkiller and Bull could smell the place long before setting foot in it—raw whiskey fumes, a haze of smoke, sweat, stale beer, and cheap perfume.
They climbed three stairs to the porch of Hickory Ned’s saloon and went in. Even by day it had a cavelike appearance, milky daylight filtering in through dirty windows.
Sixkiller glanced down. Sawdust covered the floor, all the better to soak up blood, of which plenty was spilled, according to rumor.
He looked around, his eyes lighting up. Smack-dab in the center of the place, like a cow pie ringed by swarms of flies, were the Highline riders he had seen earlier on the street—Port’s crowd. They had a table to themselves and plenty of empty tables around it, others not wanting to sit too close for fear of attracting their attention and becoming the butt of their roughhousing.
There they were—Port, Virgil, Romeo, Foley, and Lew—seated in the center of things, facing the door.
Lew had taken on too much of the whizz. His arm was on the table, the side of his head lay on his arm, his hat covered his head. Dead drunk, apparently.
Romeo had a saloon girl on his lap. No mystery there. The girls at Hickory Ned’s did more than sell drinks. They sold themselves, pure and simple . . . or maybe impure and not so simple.
He had his hands full, and was whispering sweet nothings in her ear or maybe sticking a tongue in there because she really started squirming on his lap. Not hard enough to get away though. She was too savvy for that.
Virgil slipped an arm around a saloon girl with curly blond hair, a plain face, and a sensational figure. She kept easing out of his grasp, but that snakelike arm of his kept returning to encircle her.
Foley was a mean drunk, not that he was much easier to get along with sober. He sat there scowling, eyes muddy, muttering a stream of obscenities.
Behind the bar stood a demented caricature of a white-bearded oldster as seen in a fun-house mirror in Hell. He was a scrawny old goat in a crooked top hat, white-haired with the beady red eyes of a drunken white mouse, blue drinker’s veins webbing his long sharp face with its tufted, white billy goat beard.
He saw Sixkiller and Bull, and looked worried. The place was a bucket of blood saloon with an outlaw clientele, a murderous clientele he had to ride herd on with six-gun and shotgun. But Bull Raymond was more trouble than any saloon keeper should have to deal with, a one-man wrecking crew when his fighting blood was up, and it didn’t take much to rouse his ire.
As for the stranger, he was an unknown quantity. The only known thing was that he had fought Bull to a draw, if not a victory. Now they were together, yoked in tandem and ready for . . . what?
“Mind your manners, Bull,” Sixkiller said in a low-voiced aside, “but mostly keep your eye on that white-haired bird behind the bar. He looks shifty.”
“That’s Hickory Ned hisself.”
“Well!”
Port was first to take notice, but it wasn’t Sixkiller he focused on. It was Bull. The sawed-off slung over Bull’s shoulder intimidated him not at all. Port was fast.
“Hey boys!” he roared. “Take a look at who just come slinking in. Bull Raymond!”
The others of his crowd—all but Lew—listened and looked up. He stayed head down, inert, oblivious.
Foley’s mean face got meaner, eyes shining with anticipation of fresh sport in the offing. He was unworried because he figured . . . actually, he knew . . . that speedy Port could draw and shoot Bull through the heart before Bull could unlimber the sawed-off.
The rest of the crowd figured the same way, all but Lew, who was too drunk to do any figuring at all.
Sixkiller knew the type, the outlaw kind. He had had them sized up from the start when he saw them earlier on the street.
Cowboys? No, they were not working cowboys, men who worked damned hard for low wages and played hard. Honest cowboys could run mighty rough indeed, especially when in their cups. A cowboy had to know how to use a gun. It was a tool of the trade like a lariat or branding iron. They’d shoot if they had to, mostly rattlesnakes, but sometime rustlers. They weren’t killers.
The crew at the center table was a different story. Port and his crew were not cowhands but gun hands. These rannies didn’t give a good damn that Bull was a terror with his fists. They weren’t fist fighters. Come at them with fists clenched and they’d put a bullet in him without thinking twice.
The only reason a rancher would hire them was because he meant to make war on his neighbors, to take all he could grab at gunpoint.
So—no mercy, from them or for them.
The inevitable taunts came quickly, foreplay to explosive violence.
“Hey Bull, who laid that mouse under your eye?”
“That ain’t no mouse. It’s a rat!”
“Looks like he was dragged down forty miles of bad road, facedown!”
“Naw, he always looks like that!”
“Bull, what’s up, buddy? You come sucking around looking for a job on the Highline? Might be an opening. The cook’s looking for a pot boy.”
“Pot boy? You mean prat boy, don’cha? Haw!”
The two saloon gals, Polly and Flo, were cackling, laughing so hard the white face powder caked on their faces started coming off in flakes. Their laughter went a bit hollow when Sixkiller loomed over the table, ax handle held dangling down at his side.
Port sat with his chair pushed back from the table to give him room to draw. He wore his gun reversed, butt-forward, possibly a quicker reach if seated than the standard style for a gun grab.
“Vamoose, Chief. They don’t serve redskins in this establishment,” Romeo said.
Polly and Flo convulsed into mirth like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. When Flo laughed, her bountiful bosom heaved, threatening to spill free of the tight confines of her outfit, which was frayed at the edges and straining at the seams.
Lew stirred restlessly in a drunken stupor, arms flapping like a land-bound walrus using its flippers to drag itself along the beach.
“Say . . . wasn’t it a redskin that whupped Bull?” Virgil asked, eyes narrowing.
“Sure was! Now Bull’s carrying his water,” Romeo said.
“Bull’s already got hisself a job as prat boy for the big chief,” Foley spat out.
Sixkiller was smiling, if you could call that jack-o’-lantern grimace of his a smile. It might be mistaken for a smile if one didn’t look too closely . . . or if he were drunk enough.
Port wasn’t that drunk. He was suspicious and ready for action.
Foley was geared for trouble, too. Virgil and Romeo not so much, but they’d follow their leader.
“Gee, he’s a big one, ain’t he?” Polly said, looking Sixkiller up and down.
“I’ll give you a big one,” Romeo growled.
“What do you think you’re gonna do with that ax handle, boy?” Foley demanded.
“You know the Bible Psalm that goes ‘Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me’? Well, this here’s my rod.” Sixkiller paused a moment, then added, “Not the kind of rod you gals take your comfort from.” He was playing up to the women because he knew that would burn the Highline riders even more.
Flo was taking a drink when Sixkiller cracked wise. She choked on her laughter, whiskey spewing out of her nostrils. It burned, making her cough and choke.
Polly screamed with laughter at her.
Port’s crowd didn’t like Sixkiller taking the play.
“What’re you, one of them Mission Injins that got the white man’s religion? You’re preaching to the wrong choir,” Romeo said.
“You gone git yourself a pair of wings sooner than you expect, boy,” Virgil said.
“You in an all-fired hurry to get into that white man’s Heaven?” Romeo asked.
“He cain’t get in. No redskins allowed,” Virgil said.<
br />
Port wasn’t joking. He’d had enough cat-and-mouse. Trouble was, he was a mite confused about who was the cat and who was the mouse. “Mister, you’re going straight to the Devil.” He clawed for his gun.
Sixkiller held the ax handle like a baton, gripping it in the middle. He reached across the table, lunging like a fencer, thrusting the wide, blunt end into the hollow at the base of Port’s throat. The vicious strike stopped the gunman cold.
Not as vicious as it could have been, though. With more force it would have been lethal—a killing stroke.
Port choked, gasping for breath, face purpling. Both hands reached up to clutch his throat, as he wheezed and sucked for air.
As long as the ax handle was in the neighborhood, Sixkiller meant to keep it working. He swung it sideways, a slashing circular strike that whammed Virgil on the side of the head below the hat brim so there was nothing to cushion the blow. It struck with a snap like the crack of a whip.
Virgil followed the direction of the blow, toppling over sideways out of the chair and taking the gal with him down to the floor.
Flo started screaming from the floor in the sawdust, her limbs all tangled up with Virgil’s.
Foley grabbed for his gun.
Sixkiller’s free hand grabbed the table edge and heaved, uplifting and overturning the table.
Polly jumped out of Romeo’s lap, slipping off to the sidelines as the table toppled, knocking Lew, Foley, and Port to the floor. Clear of the overturned table and free of Polly on his lap, Romeo was free to go for his gun.
Too bad for him.
Sixkiller had a two-handed grip on the ax handle and jabbed it to the point of Romeo’s chin, snapping his head back. He followed through with a couple more jabs, liking the popping sound it made when it connected with Romeo’s chin and liking the way his head kept snapping back.
Romeo’s eyes rolled up in his head so only the whites showed. He was out. O-U-T Out! He fell backward to the floor, gun undrawn. He’d never had a chance to clear the holster.
Lew somehow woke up amid all the turmoil. Deprived of the resting place for his heavy drunken head he flopped around on the sawdust.
Hour of Death Page 15
