by Matt Braun
But in the end that’s what life was all about. Get a hunch, bet a bunch. Logic might make a man rich, but it was no substitute for raw instinct. Not when the other players carried guns.
A fellow either backed his hunches or he folded his cards and got out. Yet a man who cultivated the habit of running really wasn’t worth his salt. To himself or anyone else.
Tony Hazeltine had proved that.
McCluskie found what he was looking for in front of Gregory’s Saloon. The hitchrack was crowded with horses bearing the Flying A brand, and among them was Anderson’s chestnut gelding. Odds were that Bill Bailey wouldn’t be far from his Texan friends on this night.
The Irishman paused outside the batwing doors and surveyed the house. Anderson and Bailey were standing shoulder to shoulder at the bar, and the room was jammed with cowhands. There seemed to be a contest of sorts taking place. Whoever yelled the loudest got the floor and tried to top the others with some whopper about the afternoon’s chief sporting event. Though they had been at it for some hours, the stories seemed to get better the longer they drank, and there was no dearth of laughter. Apparently Hazeltine’s one-man race was the favorite topic, with the stampeded voters running a close second, and every time someone launched into a fresh version it was greeted by raucous shouts from the crowd.
McCluskie slapped the doors open and walked in as if he had just foreclosed on the mortgage. Hardly anyone noticed him at first, but as he crossed the room a ripple of silence sped along before him. When he came to a halt in front of Anderson and Bailey the saloon went still as a graveyard.
Anderson leaned back against the bar and gave Bailey a broad wink. “Well, looka who’s here, Billy. The holy terror hisself.” Suddenly he blinked drunkenly and peered a little closer. “Goddamn my soul. Billy, I think that’s your badge he’s wearin’.”
“Let’s get something straight,” McCluskie warned him. “I didn’t come here lookin’ for trouble with you or your boys. My beef is with Bailey. You stay out of it and we’ll just chalk this afternoon up to one for your side.”
“Sort of a Mexican standoff.”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe it don’t suit me to let it ride. You’re a feller that needs his wick trimmed, ’specially after today.”
“Then we can settle it later. Right now all I want is Bailey. Course, you can step in if you like. There’s nothin’ I can do to stop you. But it’s gonna start folks to talkin’.”
Bailey finally caught the drift and got his tongue untracked. “Hugh, he’s bluffin’ again. Can’t you see that?”
Anderson’s gaze never left the Irishman. “What kind o’ talk?”
“Why, the sort of stuff they’re already sayin’. That one Texan hasn’t got the sand to go up against a lawman by himself.”
The saloon went deathly still. Anderson’s face turned red as ox blood and for a moment he almost lost his steely composure. Then a tiny bead kindled back deep in his eyes and a crafty smirk came over his mouth. Turning sideways, he leaned into the bar and gave Bailey a speculative look.
“What about it, Billy boy? Think you can haul his ashes?”
Bailey swallowed hard. Every man in the room was watching him and he knew it. They had heard his brag for the past week, and Anderson’s question now made it a matter of fish or cut bait.
“Hell, yes, I can take him. Won’t hardly be no contest at all.”
McCluskie moved while he had the advantage. “Bailey, you’ve got your choice. Get out of town or go to the lockup.”
“Lockup? You’re talkin’ through your hat. I ain’t broke no law.”
“You were deputized and you broke your oath. That’s good for about six months accordin’ to Judge Muse.”
Bailey’s lip curled back and he launched himself off the bar. Whiskey had given him a measure of false courage but it hadn’t clouded his judgment. Somewhere deep in his gut he knew that if he touched his gun the Irishman would kill him. But in a rough and tumble scrap it might just go the other way. He was bigger and stronger and he’d never yet lost a barroom brawl. Nor did he intend to lose this one. Hurtling forward, he let go a haymaker that would have demolished a stone church.
Except that it never landed. McCluskie slipped under the punch and buried his fist in the Texan’s crotch. Back in Hell’s Kitchen, one of New York’s grimier slums, Irish youngsters were educated at an early age in the finer points of survival. What he didn’t know about dirty fighting hadn’t yet been written. Though he would have preferred to kill Bailey, he felt a certain grim satisfaction that it was to be settled with fists.
The Texan jackknifed at the middle, and as his head came down McCluskie’s knee met it in a mushy crunch. Bailey reeled backward, his mouth and nose spurting blood, but he didn’t go down. He was hurt bad, blinded by a chain of explosions that felt like a string of firecrackers inside his skull. Yet, in the way of a wounded beast, the pain only compounded his rage. Spitting teeth and bright wads of gore, he waded in again, flailing the air with a windmill of punches.
McCluskie gave ground, ducking some of the blows, warding off others. But he was hemmed in on all sides by shouting cowhands and there was no way of avoiding the burly Texan altogether. The air suddenly seemed filled with knuckles and for every punch he slipped past another sledgehammered off his head. With no room to maneuver, he had little choice but to absorb punishment and wait for an opening. His eyebrow split under the impact of a meaty fist and blood squirted down over his face. All at once it dawned on him that he was in grave danger. If he ever went down Bailey would stomp him to death, and the longer the fight lasted the more likely it was to happen. He had to end it fast or there was every chance he wouldn’t end it at all. Operating now on sheer reflex, he stopped thinking and let his body simply react.
Shifting and dodging, he feinted with a left hook and suckered the Texan into a looping roundhouse right. The blow grazed past his ear and he slipped under Bailey’s guard. Setting himself, he put his weight behind a whistling right that caught the other man squarely in the Adam’s apple. Bailey’s mouth flew open in a strangled gasp and his lungs started pumping for air. Both hands went to his throat and he doubled over, wretching in a hoarse, grating sound as he sucked for wind. McCluskie stepped back, planted himself, and kicked with every ounce of strength he possessed. The heel of his boot collided with Bailey’s chin and the big man hurtled backward as if shot from a cannon. Cowhands scattered in every direction as the Texan went head over heels through the batwing doors and collapsed in a bloody mound on the boardwalk. Like a great whale snatched from the ocean’s depths, he gave a blubbery sigh and lay still.
He was out cold.
McCluskie retrieved his hat, jammed it on his head, and somehow made it to the door without falling. He slammed one wing of the door open and leaned against it for support, inspecting the battered hulk with the cold, practiced eye of a mortician. Then he turned, glowering back at the crowd until his gaze came to rest on Anderson.
“When he comes to, give him the word. If he’s not out of town in two hours he goes in the lockup.”
The door swung shut behind him and he lurched off in the direction of the hotel. Except that he was walking, he would have sworn that somebody had just beaten the living bejesus out of him. Even his hair felt sore.
* * *
Kinch was stretched out on the bed with his hands locked behind his head. When McCluskie entered the room he gave him a sullen glance and looked away. Then it hit him, and he sat bolt upright, staring slack-jawed at the Irishman’s eyebrow. The cut itself was crusted over with dried blood and didn’t look so bad. But a knot the size of a hen egg had swollen his brow into an ugly, discolored lump.
McCluskie gave him a tight grin and headed for the washstand. “You’re gonna catch lots of flies if you leave your mouth hangin’ open.”
The kid’s clicked shut and he bounded out of bed. “Holy jumpin’ catfish! What’d you do, butt heads with a steam engine?”
“Just
about. Closest thing on two legs anyhow.”
McCluskie sloshed water into a washbowl and then dampened one end of a towel. Inspecting himself in the mirror, he understood why the kid looked so startled. The lump over his left eye was the color of rotten squash and a jagged split laid bare the ridgebone along his brow. It was a souvenir he wouldn’t soon forget. The same as his busted nose and scars from other fights. From the looks of this one, though, it would turn out to be a real humdinger.
After squeezing the towel out he began scrubbing caked blood off his face and mustache. The wound itself he left untouched. It had stopped bleeding and the flesh seemed pretty well stuck in place. Washing it now would only start the whole mess bubbling again. Ugly as it was, it would have to do for the moment.
Kinch came around and took a closer look at the cut. For a while he just stared, saying nothing, then he whistled softly under his breath. “Mike, that’s clean down to the bone. Doc Boyd’s the one that oughta be workin’ on it, not you.”
McCluskie grunted, swabbing dried blood out of his ear. “I’ll let him patch me up later.”
“Yah, but cripes, that thing needs stitchin’. You’re hurt worse’n you think.”
“Bud, I can’t spare the time now. It’ll have to wait.”
The boy glanced at him in the mirror, struck by a sudden thought. “It was Bailey, wasn’t it?”
“All five hundred pounds of him.”
“What happened?”
“He beat the crap out of me, that’s what happened. I finally got in a lucky punch and put him to sleep.”
“C’mon, I’ll bet there weren’t no luck to it at all. You could take him with one hand strapped down.”
The Irishman met his gaze in the mirror. “Much as I hate to admit it, that’s one bet you’d lose.”
Kinch blinked a couple of times, clearly amazed. “Tougher’n you thought he was?”
“Well, let’s just say he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a creampuff. Fact is, if I had it to do over, I’d sooner fight a real live gorilla. Probably stand a better chance all the way round.”
“Quit funnin’ me. You whipped him, didn’t you?”
“Just barely, sport. Just barely.”
McCluskie stripped off his shirt and tossed it in a corner. Crossing the room, he opened a dresser drawer and selected a fresh shirt. His arms and chest were covered with splotchy bruises from the pounding he’d taken, and every movement was a small agony in itself. Slipping into the shirt even made him wince, but as he turned back to the kid he forced himself to smile.
“Never seen it fail. Clean shirt and a little birdbath and it’ll make a new man out of you every time.”
“Malarkey!” Kinch obviously wasn’t convinced. “The way that eye’s puffed out, I’d say you need a sawbones more’n anything else.”
“All in good time, bud. There’s a few things that still need tendin’ before I call it a night.”
“You mean Bailey? I thought you said you whipped him.”
“Some folks might give you an argument on that.” McCluskie finished buttoning his shirt and began tucking it in his pants. “Thing is, I posted him out of town. Now I’ve got to make it stick.”
The boy gave him a look of baffled aggrievement. “You knew it was gonna happen, didn’t you? Even before you went down and talked with Spivey and his bunch, you knew you was gonna take that badge and go after Bailey and then start cleanin’ house on the Texans. That’s the way you had it figured all along, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it was. So what, though? You’re talkin’ like it was some skin off your nose.”
“Damn right it is! You got me locked up in this room instead of lettin’ me pitch in and help. That ain’t my idea of what friends are for.”
“Don’t say ain’t.”
“Aw, horseapples. I’m serious and you’re standin’ there grinnin’ like it was some kinda joke.”
“Nope, it’s a long ways from being a joke. Fact is, things are gettin’ sorrier and sorrier. Regular as clockwork, too.”
“You’re gonna go lookin’ for Bailey tonight, aren’t you?”
McCluskie smiled and shook his head. “Most likely he’s already left town. I’ll just sashay around a while and see what’s what.”
“I’m goin’ with you,” Kinch announced.
“Some other time, bud. Tonight’s liable to get a little dicey.”
“Goddamnit, Mike, you got no call to treat me that way. I don’t need nobody to wipe my nose. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Out here a man’s got to look after himself. Well I’m as fast as you are and I’m near about as good a shot, too.”
“There’s more to it than that. I’ve told you before, tin cans don’t shoot back.”
“Yeah? Well what if you go lookin’ for Bailey and them drovers back his play? Where’ll you be then?”
“That’s the luck of the draw. A man has got to play whatever hand he’s dealt. But that don’t change nothin’. Like it or lump it, you’re still not invited.”
Kinch’s eyes went watery all of a sudden, like a scolded child, and it was all McCluskie could do not to reach out and touch him. The kid was right. He didn’t need anyone to wipe his nose. But for all the wrong reasons.
The last couple of days had been the hardest of the Irishman’s life. After considerable self-examination he’d decided he didn’t like what he saw in himself. Or what he’d done to the kid. Before he got to Newton, Kinch had been a decent, God-fearing youngster. Raised up proper, taught right from wrong. Innocent as a lamb if a man got down to brass tacks. Now he had himself a gun and somebody had showed him how to use it. Worse than that, though, he no longer had any qualms about using it. That somebody had drilled him so good he was all primed and ready to pop. Like a puppy that had been fed raw meat and gunpowder till he just couldn’t wait to bust out and kill the first thing that moved.
Not that he wanted to kill anybody. Or even liked the idea. But just so he could prove to his teacher that he was everything a man ought to be. Cold and unfeeling and pitiless. The badge of manhood that had been drilled into him by someone who saw life at its very elemental worst.
The quick and the dead.
McCluskie wasn’t proud of himself. Not any longer. He hadn’t done the kid any favors, and that was an itch he’d have to learn to live with. But it was no longer just a matter of the kid killing someone. It had worked down to someone wanting to kill the kid. That was the one thing he wouldn’t allow to happen.
However much he had to hurt the boy’s feelings.
Watching him now, McCluskie made it even stronger. “Let’s get it straight. You don’t budge out of this room tonight. Got me?”
“Aw, c’mon, Mike.” Kinch’s look changed from one of hurt to disappointment. “I got a date with Sugar.”
“What time?”
“Eight. I set it up with Belle yesterday.”
The Irishman flipped out his pocket watch and gave it a quick check. “Okay. Just to Belle’s and nowhere else. I’ll walk you down there, but I want you to leave that gun here.”
“Cripes a’mighty, don’t you never give up? How am I gonna look out for myself if you make me walk around naked?”
McCluskie was forced to agree. It was just possible that Bailey hadn’t left town. That he might be laying for the kid somewhere, hopeful of settling at least one score before he made tracks. Even with a gun the kid would be in a bad fix. Without it he wouldn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell.
“You got a deal. But remember, just Belle’s. Nowhere else. Okay?”
Kinch grinned and gave him a shrug more elaborate than words.
* * *
After dropping the kid off at Belle’s the Irishman headed for Hide Park. He hadn’t spotted any of Anderson’s horses along the street, which meant the Texan and his crew had probably adjourned to the sporting houses. Wherever they were that’s where Bailey would be. If he was still in town. Oddly enough, he halfway wished Bailey had lit out for parts unknown.
It would set his mind at rest about the kid.
But it wasn’t a hope he meant to stake his life on. Wherever possible he stuck to the shadows, passing lighted windows quickly, without bothering to peek inside. Hitchracks were what interested him, and at the corner of Second and Main, he found what he was looking for. The same bunch of Flying A cow ponies, Anderson’s chestnut included, standing hipshot in front of Tuttle’s Dancehall.
Nearing the entrance, he slowed and moved up cautiously. If Bailey was inside he wanted to know precisely where, and more importantly, the best way to approach him. Otherwise, it was walk in blind and take a chance on getting his head shot off. Edging closer to the door, he stuck his head around the corner and slowly scanned the dancehall. Anderson’s men were plainly visible, stomping and howling as they swung the dollar-a-dance girls around the floor. But Bailey himself was nowhere in sight.
Then, as his gaze swept the room once more, the door frame above his head splintered and an instant later he heard the snarl of a slug. Dropping and rolling, he came up on one knee as another shot chunked into the wall behind him. He saw Bailey across the street, scuttling along the boardwalk, firing as he ran. McCluskie drew a bead, waiting, enjoying it. The bastard had set him up like a duck in a shooting gallery. And it would have worked, slick as a whistle, except that the numbskull couldn’t shoot worth a lick.
When Bailey silhouetted himself against the window of Krum’s Dancehall, the Irishman opened fire. The first slug nailed him in his tracks, and the next two sent him crashing through the window in an explosion of sharded glass. When he collapsed on the floor inside only the soles of his boots were visible over the windowsill.
