Fast Guns Out of Texas

by Ralph Cotton

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART 2

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART 3

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Praise for the Novels of Ralph Cotton

  “Cotton writes with the authentic ring of a silver dollar, a storyteller in the best tradition of the Old West.”

  —Matt Braun, Golden Spur Award-winning author of One Last Town and You Know My Name

  “Evokes a sense of outlawry . . . distinctive.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “Disarming realism . . . solidly crafted.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Authentic Old West detail and dialogue fill his books.”

  —Wild West Magazine

  “The sort of story we all hope to find within us: the bloodstained, gun-smoked, grease-stained yarn that yanks a reader right out of today.”

  —Terry Johnston

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2007

  Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2007

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16697-0

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  For Mary Lynn . . . of course

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  On his way into town Cray Dawson had taken note of the long boardwalk crowded with prospectors, miners, teamsters, and a varied assortment of businessmen leading into the barbershop. He’d studied the gathering curiously as he rode closer, keeping his biscuit-colored barb at a walk, leading his pack mule on a rope behind him.

  In a bustling dirt-street gold town like Crabtown, Montana, Dawson would ordinarily have given such a gathering a passing look and ridden on to a hotel or saloon. But as his horse and mule made their way past the barbershop, something caught Dawson’s eye that caused him to give the crowded boardwalk a double take. Stopping the barb and the mule abruptly in the middle of the street, he stared almost in disbelief at the hastily painted sign reading SEE FAST LARRY SHAWL DEAD IN HIS COFFIN, 50 CENTS. Beneath the hand-painted words someone had added in thick pencil lead: WHILE HE LASTS.

  “Oh no . . .” Dawson murmured, reality sinking in quickly, something inside reminding him that this should come as no great surprise, given the kind of life Lawrence Shaw had chosen for himself. Still, he felt stunned for a second at the thought of his lifelong friend lying dead in this town so far away from home—home for both of them being Somos Santos, Texas.

  For just a fleeting second Dawson caught sight of the two of them years ago, tough young ranch hands, mounted on tough cow ponies, running down strays beneath the hot Texas sun. But that vision left as quickly as it came to him and he swallowed a tight knot in his throat and said to himself, “Jesus, Shaw, they didn’t even spell your name right.”

  Coaxing the horse and mule over to the barbershop, Dawson stepped down from his saddle and spun the barb’s reins and tied the mule’s lead rope to a hitch rail. Stepping up onto the boardwalk near the crowded barbershop door he noted the smell of leather and sweat, of deep earth, witch hazel, and whiskey.

  The rank bittersweet scent of civilization took a second of readjustment after weeks of living alone on the trail. So did the sound of a human voice when an old man wearing a flop hat called out through a tangle of ashy red beard, “Hey, mister, how about waiting your turn like everybody else here!”

  Dawson felt eyes shift to him and take note of the tied-down Colt at his hip. Beside the old man a cautioning voice said, “Hush up, Reardon. We don’t want no trouble!”

  “To hell with trouble!” said the old man. “Wearing a big sidearm doesn’t give all these bummers the right to shoulder their way past the whole world!”

  Dawson agreed, but before he could tell the old man that he’d had no intention of cutting into the line a familiar voice called out from the open barbershop door, “Let this man through! This is Mr. Crayton Dawson, best friend of the deceased! He doesn’t have to pay, or stand in line . . . give him room!”

  Dawson saw the old man’s expression soften. “Begging your pardon,” he murmured almost in awe. “No offense intended. Any friend of Fast Larry . . .”

  “None taken,” said Dawson. As he turned from the old man and looked curiously at the moon face staring at him from the doorway, he said, “Caldwell? Jedson Caldwell?” as if he had trouble believing his eyes.

  “At your service, Mr. Dawson,” said the young dark-haired man in the doorway, not dwelling on the matter as he motioned Dawson inside. He wore a flat-crowned straw sombrero and a black pin-striped suit a size too small for him. The fingers of his black gloves had been snipped off in the manner of a stevedore’s hand wear. “I must say,” he added in a lowered tone as Dawson entered the shop, “we weren’t expecting to see you here in Crabtown.”

  “I’m only passing through, on my way north of here to do some digging,” Dawson respond
ed. He glanced at a slow-moving line of men who filed somberly past a pine coffin set atop a long wooden table against the far wall. He saw hats slip respectfully from their heads as they murmured among themselves.

  “I would never have considered you the kind of man for prospecting,” Caldwell replied. “Some time back I heard you were the law in Somos Santos?”

  “I was. Now I’m prospecting a claim,” said Dawson, as if to discourage any further discussion of his term as sheriff in Somos Santos. He stared at the long pine box, seeing on the floor beneath it a thin puddle of water where melting ice packed in sawdust dripped from inside the coffin and had spread in a wide circle. Wet dirty boot prints left a muddy path to the open side door. “I thought you headed for New Orleans.”

  “Victor, hold them back for a moment,” Caldwell said, avoiding the subject of New Orleans. He spoke to the stocky young man who stood at the front collecting money from the sightseers. “Mr. Dawson will want a private viewing, I’m sure.”

  “Cray Dawson?” young Victor Earles asked in a hushed tone of voice, his eyes widening in excitement. “The Cray Dawson? The one who sided with Fast Larry against the Talberts? God Almighty, I’ve seen more big gunmen the past three days than I’ve seen in my whole—”

  “Victor . . . ?” said Caldwell, giving the excited young man a stern look, causing him to cut his words short.

  “Sorry, Mr. Caldwell,” Victor said sheepishly. He turned and planted a thick hand firmly on a miner’s chest, stopping him from entering the barbershop. As Caldwell motioned Dawson toward the wooden coffin, Victor said harshly to the miner and the line of men behind him, “Quit pushing, damn it! Everybody will get their turn! The man’s dead, he ain’t going nowhere!”

  “He’s ripening awfully fast, though,” a voice said from the line.

  As stragglers moved away from the pine coffin and followed the grimy wet boot prints out the rear door, Caldwell gave Dawson a look and said regarding Victor Earles, “He means no disrespect toward Shaw. He’s just young, and, well . . . not very bright, I’m afraid. He is a good apprentice, though, learning the barbering trade quite well.”

  “He the one painted the sign out front?” Dawson asked. He and Caldwell both took off their hats as they stepped up to the pine coffin. A scent of pine and paraffin wax loomed above the open coffin blanketing an encroaching smell of rancid death.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” said Caldwell. “Why?”

  “He spelled Shaw’s name wrong,” said Dawson, avoiding looking down at the closed eyes and stoic face of his old friend for a second longer.

  “That figures . . .” Caldwell said, letting out an exasperated breath. “I should have checked it sooner.” As he spoke he kept a close watch on Dawson’s face, wanting to see his expression as he gazed at the body.

  “Just thought I ought to mention it,” said Dawson, his eyes turning down toward the heavily waxed and rouged face lying in endless repose.

  Caldwell watched intently, seeing Dawson’s eyes search the dead face, then drift down to the hands lying folded on the abdomen. Dawson took a deep breath. He shut his eyes tightly for a second, then opened them and studied the face closer. “The damage was severe,” Caldwell whispered, as if to keep from awakening a sleeping man. It came to Dawson that Caldwell could have shouted the information; it would have made no difference. Nothing would disturb this kind of sleep. “I only hope I did him justice,” Caldwell concluded.

  Dawson nodded his approval, looking closely at bluish green circles the size of chickpeas on the corpse’s hands, face, and throat. “Shotgun, was it?”

  “Yes, shotgun,” Caldwell whispered. “An old hermit prospector found him before the creatures got to him. Brought him to me. I went right to work . . . filled the wounds with wax.” He paused, then added, “I threw in that suit for him. It came from a dead judge’s baggage. Thought I owed him a nice adios, after what we all three went through together.”

  “That was good of you, Caldwell,” said Dawson. Now it was Dawson’s turn to study Jedson Caldwell’s face as the young undertaker spoke to him and stared down at the waxy face of the dead man.

  “I would have telegraphed you in Somos Santos,” said Caldwell, “had I thought you were still there.”

  “Would you have, sure enough?” Dawson said, nodding as Caldwell ran a palm across his perspiring forehead. “That would have been real kind of you, Caldwell.” His voice took a slightly cynical tone. He raised his eyes, looked all around the empty room, then said in a lowered voice, “Now, do you want to tell me who this is lying here?”

  “Huh? What? I don’t know what you mean!” said Caldwell, also taking a quick look around. “It’s Shaw! Who else could it be? Look at him!” He gestured with a hand toward the rough pine coffin.

  “Hell, Caldwell, I am looking at him,” said Dawson. “It’s a good job you’ve done with all the coloring and wax filling. But I’m not buying it, not for a minute.” He stared sharply at the undertaker.

  Finally Caldwell gave in with a slight shrug. “All right, fair enough, you’ve caught me. May we talk about it out back?”

  “By all means,” said Dawson, staring at him curiously and sweeping his hand toward the rear door.

  “Victor, start letting them in again,” Caldwell said over his shoulder as the two walked to the rear door and out to a deserted alley running behind the main street of Crabtown.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but I’m not falling for it,” Dawson said in a half growl while the undertaker closed the door behind them. He had to admit to himself that he was relieved to see that the body lying in the pine coffin was not his friend Lawrence Shaw.

  “Okay, you’ve seen through it,” said Caldwell, raising his hands chest high. “Before I say anything, let me ask you this . . . does it look like Lawrence Shaw?”

  “I saw it wasn’t him right away,” Dawson replied, after only considering it for a second.

  “Yes, of course you did,” said Caldwell, “after a long close look. But you two were good friends. Would someone less familiar think it was him?”

  Dawson just looked at him for a moment, then said, “You mean someone who’d only seen a picture of Shaw? Someone who had only seen him a time or two in passing, or from across a crowded saloon?”

  “Yes, someone like that,” said Caldwell, in an even tone, letting his hands down a little.

  Getting the picture more clearly, Dawson said, “The wax and makeup are thick, but I suppose most folks would be fooled. The resemblance is awfully close.”

  “The wax and rouge and lip coloring are about right for a man chewed up by a shotgun blast,” said Caldwell.

  “You’re the undertaker,” said Dawson. “I can’t argue with your professional practices.” He nodded toward the rear door and asked, “Who is that anyway?”

  “That is an unsavory fellow known as Stiff-leg Charlie Hyatt,” said Caldwell in a near whisper, looking around to make sure no one was close by listening. “This was all Shaw’s idea. There was no hermit prospector. Shaw found Stiff-leg on the trail and brought him here over a week ago. The body’s holding up quite well, don’t you think, in spite of the heat?”

  “Well enough, I suppose,” Dawson commented, not wanting to mention the smell rising from the coffin.

  “The secret is, I have a tub of ice water I keep him in overnight. A teamster rides up and brings down ice from the high canyons. The suit is split in half, and sewn together into one piece. But you can’t tell, can you?” Without waiting for Dawson to answer, he said eagerly, “All I have to do is lift it off him like it’s a blanket and roll him into the tub. It’s something I invented to make the dead easier to handle.”

  “What about Shaw and Stiff-leg Charlie?” Dawson asked to keep the undertaker focused.

  “Yes,” said Caldwell, continuing, “Shaw told me he found Stiff-leg lying against a rock, on his way here from Willow Creek. It looked like an ambush . . . a robbery perhaps.” Lowering his tone he added, “Shaw found hi
m with a bullet through his heart. He gave the body a blast of buckshot to justify my using so much wax and coloring. There was a close enough resemblance, but he asked if I could make it even more so.” The undertaker offered a thin smile. “What could I say? I welcomed the challenge.”

  “My goodness,” said Dawson, “Shaw wants out of gunfighting so bad he’s faked his own death.”

  “Yes, and I decided there were worse things he could do to get himself out of gunfighting . . . if you get my meaning,” said the undertaker with a solemn look. “That’s why I went along with this. He had suicide written in his eyes.”

  “Suicide . . .” Dawson pondered it for a silent moment, then dismissed it. “I thought you told Shaw and me that you’d quit this profession,” he said, recalling their last conversation, three years earlier. “You were headed to New Orleans after our shoot-out with the Talbert Gang.”

  Jedson Caldwell sighed, realizing this was the second time Dawson had brought up New Orleans. “I did go to New Orleans,” he said. He knew the matter would have to be addressed. “I spent six weeks at a barbering school there, learning a new profession.” He gestured with a hand toward the rear door of his barbershop, noting the irony of his situation. He had traveled west years ago as an undertaker only to find that barbers had firm control of his profession and weren’t about to give it up. “I decided if I couldn’t beat them, perhaps I should join them. I’m now a bona fide groom to both the living and the dead.”

  Looking off and all around the rugged hilly country surrounding the town, Dawson said, “I wouldn’t get too comfortable here. Crabtown looks like the kind of place that could be gone before your next breakfast.”

  “I keep that in mind constantly,” said Caldwell. “Crabtown is a growing place, has been since sixty-four. But it might only be here as long as the gold holds out, times being what they are.” He nodded toward the distant foothills. “The big findings are coming from up in Black’s Cut right now.”