Fast Guns Out of Texas

by Ralph Cotton

  “Yes, I am,” said Dawson, giving the old sheriff a questioning look.

  Sheriff Foley shrugged a thin shoulder. “He said you’re Shaw’s friend. Only friend I ever heard Lawrence Shaw mention was the man who rode with him to hunt down his wife’s killers. So I just figured . . .”

  “You figured right, Sheriff,” said Dawson, touching his hat brim.

  “And this is Sheriff Daniel Foley,” said Caldwell, cutting in to make an introduction. “I’m certain you’ve heard of him?” he asked, hoping Dawson would realize how important it might be for an aging lawman like Foley to have his name recognized by a man like Cray Dawson.

  “You can bet I have,” said Dawson; but upon seeing a look of doubt in the old sheriff’s eyes he added quickly as proof, “You’re a Texan like myself.

  I expect every young saddle buck or trail waddie from Rio Bravo to Indian Nations has heard of Dan Foley.”

  “Aw, I never done nothing, just did my duty,” said Foley, averting his eyes modestly for a moment. But both Dawson and Caldwell could tell Dawson had said the right thing.

  After a pause, Dawson asked, “How many other people know about this?” He looked back and forth between them.

  “Just us three,” said Caldwell. “There’s a young widow, Madeline Mercer, who lives near here that I wanted to tell, but Shaw wouldn’t hear of it. She and Shaw were . . .” His words trailed, then came back, saying, “Well, you know how it is with Shaw and women.” Caldwell raised a finger for emphasis and added quickly, “Not that I’m judging him, you understand.”

  “I understand,” said Dawson, recalling how women in every town he and Shaw had traveled through together had thrown themselves at the man known as the fastest gun alive. “How is she taking his death?” he asked.

  Caldwell and the sheriff looked at one another, and then Caldwell said, “To be honest, we have not gone to check on her yet. She came to town in a buggy day before yesterday, visited his body in private for a moment, then left.”

  “With no doubts, no questions about it being Shaw’s body?” Dawson asked.

  “None,” said Caldwell. “She will be leaving the territory as soon as she has sold and settled her late husband’s cattle and land holdings here. I doubt if we’ll be hearing from her again. Her dead husband, Bradley Mercer, owned a chunk of New York and New Jersey. Don’t know what brought him here in the first place.”

  “Good, she’s leaving, then,” said Dawson, letting the rest of the story pass. “It sounds like Shaw and you two have everything worked out.”

  Caldwell and the sheriff looked at one another again, nodding. “All that’s left is to nail down the coffin lid and get the body into the ground,” said Caldwell. “A few days from now, Lawrence Shaw will be just a name carved on a pine grave marker. Lives will go on—”

  Before he’d finished speaking, loud angry voices resounded up from the street, interrupting him. No sooner had the voices settled than Victor shouted from the boardwalk out in front of the barbershop, “Mr. Caldwell! Sheriff Foley! Come quick!” Before his words ended the angry voices started again.

  Looking down through the open window, Sheriff Foley noted two young gunmen facing one another from a distance of thirty feet between them. “Gunfight,” he said flatly but with urgency in his voice. “Well, gentlemen,” he added, hiking his gun belt, “looks like it’s time for me to get back to work.”

  “I’ve got you covered, Sheriff,” Caldwell said, the two of them turning toward the door. To Dawson he said over his shoulder, “Come by the shop this evening, dinner’s on me.”

  Chapter 3

  Dawson followed Caldwell and the sheriff down the stairs and toward the front door of the saloon. On their way, the bartender, who had scurried from behind the bar and now stood at the bottom of the stairs, pitched Caldwell a sawed-off shotgun as the two hurried past him. Keeping the shotgun pointed at the floor, Caldwell stayed close to the sheriff’s back, shoving through the drinkers who had hurried over from the bar and stood staring out above the batwing doors.

  “Go for your gun, Hill, you line-jumping son of a bitch!” shouted one young gunman to the other young man facing him.

  “I’m giving you the first move, Prince,” the young man replied coolly. “You’re going to need it. Nobody pushes me from behind.”

  Before Davey Prince could respond, Sheriff Foley came running from the saloon, Caldwell right beside him. “Hill! Prince! Don’t neither one of yas make a move!” he shouted with ironlike authority in his voice.

  “Stay out of this, Sheriff!” shouted Prince. “This is a fair fight! He tried stepping in front of me in line! I don’t have to take that off of no man!”

  Caldwell shot a glance toward Victor, who stood on the boardwalk. Victor gave a nod, letting him know that Prince wasn’t lying. Bobby Hill had stepped in front of him. But it was not something Caldwell wanted to comment on right then. He stood with the shotgun up and ready, moving the barrel back and forth slowly between the two while Foley tried talking them down.

  “I don’t give a tinker’s damn who got pushed or who got stepped in front of!” said the sheriff, his big Colt already out, cocked and ready. As he spoke he moved forward slowly, getting himself almost but not quite between the two. “Anybody draws a gun and starts firing amid all these folks is going to go down with a belly load of buckshot and bullets! I’m not having it!” His voice had grown louder and more harsh as he spoke. But then he deliberately lowered it almost to a growl as he finished with “Do you boys understand me?”

  Dawson stopped a few feet back, giving the sheriff and Caldwell plenty of room to handle the situation. Sizing the two young men, Dawson pegged them both as nothing more than a couple of hotheaded ranch boys in their early to mid teens. Fighting over their place in line, he told himself, like ordinary schoolboys would do given a different place and time. But being young didn’t make them any less dangerous with a gun, not here on the raw edge of the high frontier.

  “He pushed me from behind, Sheriff,” said Hill without taking his eyes off Prince. His right hand poised an inch from his gun butt—ready to shake hands with the devil, Dawson told himself, watching intently.

  “Bobby Hill,” said Sheriff Foley, still in a lowered tone, “you’re getting too old for me to have to run to your pa and tell him . . . so’s he can take a layer of hide off your rear end.” He paused, then added, “You want your ma hearing how you died in the street?”

  “I ain’t planning on dying, Sheriff,” said the young man, looking determined.

  “Then you better plan on hanging,” Sheriff Foley said with resolve. “Either way, it’ll make a lasting impression on your ma . . . your pa too, for that matter.”

  Dawson saw the slightest waver in Hill’s demeanor. Foley saw it too. As if the young man had envisioned his family gathered around his grave, his hackles seemed to ease down, not much but just enough. Seeing it, Foley turned his eyes to Davey Prince. But the young man saw what was going on and he said before the sheriff got the chance, “I’ve got no ma, no pa either. So you can save your breath, Sheriff.” He stared fixedly at Bobby Hill and said, “I’ll put his blood in the dirt. Nobody steps in front of me.”

  “Good Lord, Davey, look at you!” said Foley, taking a whole other approach, Dawson noticed, seeing that this young man had decided he had less to lose and wasn’t at all afraid of dying. “I was just telling some folks the other day what a good man you’ve turned into. You ride and rope with the best of them. Now I’ve got to tell them I was wrong, that you’re just one of them hotheaded fools that don’t give a bead of sweat for nobody.”

  “It ain’t working, Sheriff,” Prince said flatly.

  “Okay then, try this on,” said Foley. “I believe Bobby is cooled down enough so I can deal with him like a man. So, he ain’t going to draw unless he has to. Can I count on that, Bobby?”

  After a second of pause, Hill said, “Yeah, Sheriff, you’ve got my word.”

  “There now, Prince,” said the sheriff
. “You go for that gun, you’re drawing on me and the barber, nobody else. And we never stepped in front of you.”

  “Damn it.” A nerve twitched in Prince’s jaw as he considered it. “This ain’t fair, Sheriff Foley,” he said finally.

  “That’s right, it ain’t,” said the sheriff. “All the more reason you ought not to die over it.” He said to Hill without taking his eye off Davey Prince, “Bobby, raise your gun hand and stick it inside your shirt, like if you was getting a photograph taken, Napolean style.”

  “You’re taking his side,” said Prince, watching Hill’s hand come up slowly and rest between his shirt buttons.

  “I know you’re real mad about it right now, Davey,” said the sheriff. “But in about ten seconds it won’t matter anymore.”

  “Huh?” Prince looked less confident.

  “Bobby is out of the fight now,” said Foley, with cold deliberation. “It’s just you against us. Caldwell, you ready to drop him?”

  “Ready, Sheriff,” said Caldwell, tightening the shotgun to his shoulder.

  “Damn it to hell,” said Prince, seeing things were only going to get worse for him, “this is not right, everybody jumping in this way.”

  “Talking’s over, Davey,” Foley said, his voice taking on an urgency designed to put more pressure on the young gunman. “Get your hand in your shirt or you’re dead! Caldwell?”

  “I’ve got him, Sheriff,” Caldwell said in a firm somber tone, his shotgun poised intently.

  “Wait, damn it!” said Prince.

  Watching, even Dawson himself let out a tense breath. He thought at first that Foley was only bluffing, but now he was beginning to wonder. Continuing to watch the sheriff, Dawson saw Prince raise his gun hand, slip it inside his shirt, and give Bobby Hill a look of disgust. Caldwell walked up close and jerked Prince’s Colt from his holster.

  “You made a wise decision today, Bobby,” Foley said, walking in and quickly taking Hill’s Colt from his holster. He stuck it down into his waistband. Turning toward Prince and seeing that Caldwell had disarmed him he said, “We’re taking both of yas to jail, let you cool down some before we turn you loose.”

  Dawson stood back and watched the onlookers along the boardwalk while Caldwell and Foley took the two young men to jail. Caldwell called back over his shoulder, “Come back to the shop as soon as you get settled in, Dawson. You’ve got a free bath, shave, and haircut coming. If not from me, then from Victor.”

  “Obliged,” Dawson replied, idly raising a hand to the rough beard stubble along his jawline. “I’ll take your offer. But dinner’s on me this evening.”

  Caldwell gave him a nod of acknowledgment, nudging his prisoner along.

  “Damn, Sheriff,” Dawson heard Hill say, Foley walking him along by his forearm, “I did what I was told, I shouldn’t be going to jail.”

  “That’s right, you shouldn’t,” said Foley. “But since you wasn’t smart enough not to go to jail this time, maybe you need to sit and think how to do it different next time.”

  “You mean, keep my mouth shut and not start trouble with nobody in the first place?”

  “There, you see?” said Foley, nudging him on toward the jail. “You’re getting smarter already.”

  Dawson smiled to himself, shook his head slightly, and walked to where he’d left his horse and mule standing at the hitch rail out in front of the barbershop. As he gathered the reins and the lead rope, a tall one-eyed man wearing a black linen suit and a handlebar mustache stepped down from the boardwalk and stared at Dawson from beneath a wide-brimmed hat. “Did I hear right a while ago? You’re Cray Dawson—the hombre who helped Shaw kill off the Talbert Gang?”

  Dawson weighed his words before replying, studying the man’s face and demeanor, seeing the wide fierce scar running down through a blind white-clouded eye. “I am Cray Dawson,” he said at length, offering nothing more about having ridden with Lawrence Shaw.

  A slow flat smile formed beneath the waxed and sharply pointed mustache. “Yes, I did hear right, then. You are Cray Dawson.” His right hand clutched his lapel near the protruding butt of a black-handled Remington resting in a holster across his flat stomach. “I’m Brue Holley. The man who would have killed your pal Shaw had somebody not beat me to him.”

  “I’ve heard of you, Brue Holley. You’re a bounty hunter,” Dawson said flatly, his hand relaxing close to the Colt on his hip.

  “It’s true I’ve been a bounty officer most of my grown-up life,” said Holley, his smile still intact. “Have you got something against bounty officers?”

  “Not at all,” said Dawson. “I’m just letting you know what I heard about you.” He remained civil but not overly talkative. “Shaw and I rode together after the Talbert Gang. Years before that we rode herd together. We were never what you call pals. But I had lots of respect for the man. Whether or not you would have killed him is something we’ll never know.” Without excusing himself, Dawson pulled on the reins on his horse and pack mule in order to walk away.

  Holley chuckled. “To not be pals, you sure got the raw uglies about me saying I meant to kill him.”

  “All right, we were friends,” Dawson said flatly, still pulling his animals away from the hitch rail without turning his back on Holley. “The fact remains Shaw is dead. I suppose you’ll have to live with the question of what you might or might not have done. Looks like you’ll never know.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” said Holley, his smile going away, leaving a hard-edged stare in its place. “I understand you’re just as fast as Shaw with a gun.”

  “You heard right,” Dawson said without hesitation. He’d been caught by a threat like this too many times in the past to try to ignore it and hope it would go away. He dropped the reins to the dirt and stood squarely facing Brue Holley, his hand still poised near his Colt, but no longer relaxed. “Now what?” he added, every part of his demeanor making his intention clear.

  “Whoa!” said Holley, seeing the look in Dawson’s eyes turn hollow and deadly. “I’m not looking to throw down with you, Dawson. You’ve misread my meaning.” He raised his hand a more friendly distance from his big Remington belly gun. “What I meant to do is offer you a proposition that serves both our interests.”

  “You said you came to town to kill my friend, Shaw,” said Dawson. “I can’t think of anything you and I might do for one another.”

  “I see we’ve gotten off to a bad start, Dawson,” said Holley, trying to keep the conversation civil. “But I dare to differ with you. I’m sure we share an interest in common.” He tried offering another thin sterile smile that didn’t work. “Hell, let your bark down, Dawson. I’m not interested in shooting it out with you. I want the son of a bitch who was fast enough to take Shaw down. If you’re out to avenge your friend’s death the way any man would, that makes us both hunting the same game.”

  Dawson knew he had to be careful what he said next. He didn’t want to act as if Shaw’s death meant nothing to him. A sharp-eyed bounty hunter like Brue Holley might see through this ruse and foil Shaw’s attempt at carrying out his fake death. “I don’t know that my friend Shaw would want me avenging him,” said Dawson, “and even if I could outgun the man that killed him, I wouldn’t have any idea where to start looking.”

  “That’s where I come in,” said Holley. “I’m a good detective. I can start by locating the person who found Shaw’s body. Once I know where he found it I can start searching from there.”

  “Bad luck already,” said Dawson. “Some drifting hermit found Shaw. He could be anywhere by now.” Dawson feigned considering things for a moment as if he might have some interest in working with Holley. “If that’s your part of the deal, what’s mine? It doesn’t take two men to search for whoever shot Shaw.”

  “That’s right,” said Holley, “but I figure odds are whoever did this had others with him. He’d need witnesses to back up his story. I find that man, I’ll be needing some backup help. You keep his friends off me while I kill him. You g
et your vengeance, simple and sweet.”

  “And you get the reputation for killing the man who killed the fastest gun alive,” said Dawson. He had to keep himself from shaking his head in disgust.

  “Something like that,” said Holley. “Only I figure Shaw quit being the fastest gun alive the minute his eyes closed. The man who killed him is now the fastest gun alive . . . until he faces me, that is.” He smiled again, this time tweaking the sharp point of his mustache. “What do you say? Want to go with me, get that son of a bitch?”

  Dawson stared for a moment as if actually giving the idea serious thought. Finally he said, “Obliged, but I work better alone. I better keep it that way.”

  “Ah!” said Holley. “So you are out for vengeance after all?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Dawson replied, drawing on the reins again, to lead his horse and mule away. “Truth is, I came up here to work a claim. I just happened through Crabtown and saw the sign on the barbershop.”

  “You better throw in with me, Dawson,” said Holley, seeing his proposition hadn’t worked. “Look at all these gunmen flocking here just to see Shaw’s body. Any one of them would jump at the opportunity I’m offering you.”

  Dawson shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t. These gunmen will want what you want, to kill the new fastest gun alive.”

  Holley walked along with Dawson for a few steps before stopping and watching him and his animals walk away. “If you change your mind before I head out tomorrow, come let me know,” he called out. “I’m pitched just off the main trail a mile out.”

  Dawson raised a hand in acknowledgment, but walked on without looking back. Instead he looked at the crowd still lined and milling along the boardwalk, and at two more horsemen turning from the middle of the street, headed for the hitch rail. “Look at this,” he murmured to himself as if speaking to his friend Shaw. “You would think the president was laying dead in there. . . .”