City of Bad Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Hesitating on his way to the rear door, the bartender said, “But I have only cabra milk, senor.”

  “Goat milk?” Dorphin made a sour expression, but then said, “I don’t give a damn if it’s dog milk. Get it in here.”

  The bartender rushed out the back door as the four riders walked in, looked around and spotted Dorphin at the bar. “Where’s Readling?” asked a tall man with a drooping thin mustache and a wide, low-crowned hat.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” said Dorphin, gesturing a hand toward the four glasses on the bar top. “Mr. Readling is in his room. Have some whiskey. You look like you could use something to cut the dust.”

  The four men spread out along the bar, each catching a shot glass as Dorphin slid it to them. He handed the bottle to the man with the thin mustache. The man poured his glass full and stood for a moment looking back and forth expectantly.

  “Don’t worry, Doc. Your leche is on its way,” Dorphin said. He managed to keep any personal disdain out of his voice.

  No sooner had Dorphin spoke than the rear door opened and shut and the bartender hurried behind the bar and set a tall wooden cup in front of Dorphin, who pushed it sidelong to Doc Penton.

  The other three men stood staring as the tall gunman raised the wooden vessel to his lips, sipped deeply and then lowered the glass in satisfaction. “Ah, leche la cabra,” he said, licking a drop of it from his mustache. He pushed the whiskey bottle on to the man beside him as he savored the taste of the cool thick milk. Only then did he raise the whiskey glass to his lips.

  A powerfully built man named Aldo Barry stood at the end of the line of gunmen. He curled his lip at the thought of goat milk, but he kept quiet about it and filled his whiskey glass when the bottle finally made its way to him.

  Brothers Elvis and Witt Johnson drank greedily and ran their hands across their lips, letting Doc Penton do the talking.

  “We’d have been here sooner,” Doc Penton said, “but Aldo here shot a man in the territory. A sheriff kept him overnight, made him write down all that happened.” He shook his head in disgust. “It’s getting to where you can’t have a square fight without some lawman pulling out a fistful of paperwork on you.”

  “He didn’t make me do a damn thing,” the young gunman cut in, sounding offended. “I wrote it down so’s everybody would know. I shot Fred Colvin fair and square—one shot in the liver. Bang!” he added, making a gun of his right hand.

  “You killed ‘Hot’ Freddie Colvin?” Dorphin asked, half surprised, half impressed.

  “Dead as hell,” Aldo said with a crooked grin. “But he wasn’t the first. And he won’t be the last.”

  Realizing the two men had not been introduced, Doc Penton said, “Dorphin, this is Aldo Barry.” Nodding toward Aldo, he said, “Aldo, this is Willis Dorphin.”

  The two acknowledged each other. “My friends call me Kid,” said Aldo.

  The Johnson brothers barely kept themselves from smiling sarcastically. They both stared at Dorphin with their whiskey glasses in hand.

  “Likes to be called Aldo the Kid—get it?” said Witt Johnson.

  “Get what?” Aldo said testily, stiffening at Witt’s comment.

  “Nothing,” Witt shot back, the same testy tone in his voice, “just that you like being called ‘the Kid.’ ”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Dorphin cut in, noticing the tension between the two. “Glad you could join us on such short notice, Kid.”

  “Yeah, well, I had plenty of other offers,” Aldo said, disregarding Dorphin and looking out through the open front door at the men they’d passed while riding in. “The men at the well, are they with us?”

  “No,” said Dorphin. He nodded at the dried blood on the floor and said, “Two of them came in with another fellow. The other fellow threw down on the man wearing the sombrero and got himself killed.”

  “Yeah . . . ? The man in the sombrero?” Aldo stared toward Shaw in contemplation. “Mexican . . . I figured when we rode in.”

  “He’s dressed like a Mexican, but he’s not one,” said Dorphin. “That’s a Texan named Lawrence Shaw. They call him the fas—”

  “Damn, son!” said Aldo, cutting him off. “That’s Fast Larry Shaw? The fastest gun alive? You’re not joking with me, are ya, fellow?”

  Dorphin didn’t answer. Instead he gave Doc Penton a look.

  Doc Penton cautioned, “Aldo, Mr. Dorphin here doesn’t joke.”

  Aldo just looked at the two as if he hadn’t heard the warning in Doc’s statement. “I’ve wanted to kill Fast Larry Shaw since I first heard his name.” He grinned and gave Doc and Dorphin a questioning look.

  Witt and Elvis Johnson looked at each other and sipped their whiskey.

  “Some other time, Aldo,” said Doc. “We met Dorphin here to take on a job. That’s all we’re here for.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m betting Mr. Readling would like to see what he’s spending his money on,” said Aldo, staring at Dorphin and ignoring Doc.

  Dorphin gave a slight shrug. He was already starting to dislike Aldo Barry. “I’m in no hurry, Kid Aldo,” he said. “If you think you need to prove something, have at it.”

  Aldo grinned. “Which room is Mr. Readling in? I think he ought to see this for himself.”

  “Hold on,” Witt Johnson chimed in as Aldo turned and started toward the front door. “You’ll make us all look bad if this doesn’t go your way.” He looked at Dorphin for support.

  But Dorphin only shook his head. “Let him go. If it doesn’t go his way, he’ll be dead in the street. I saw a lot out of Shaw earlier. If this Kid kills him, he deserves to be the top dog.”

  Aldo grinned with confidence and adjusted the Colt in his holster. “Fill my glass, bartender,” he said. “I’ll be right back for it.”

  From his hotel room, Howard D. Readling heard his named called out through the partly open door leading onto a front balcony.

  “What the blazes is this?” he said, sitting up naked in his bed. The woman lying beside him sat up as well.

  “It is one of your men calling you,” the woman said with a half sigh. She swung over onto her side of the bed, sat on the edge and wrapped a sheet around herself.

  “I’ll have his eyes for this,” Readling growled, as he heard the voice call out his name again on the dirt street. He sprang up from the bed and snatched a robe from a chair on his way to the balcony.

  “Who are you? And what do you want?” Readling shouted down, taking a sweeping glance along the street and seeing Dorphin and three other men step out of the cantina, watching. In the other direction, he saw Shaw standing at his horse beside the town well, the livery boy handing over his horse’s reins.

  “There you are, Mr. Readling,” Aldo called out, seeing his new employer step onto the balcony.

  “Beg your pardon, Mr. Readling,” said Aldo, seeing the woman watching from the half-open doorway, wearing nothing but a sheet. “I’m your new security man. I want you to see that you got your money’s worth hiring me.”

  “This idiot!” Readling growled under his breath. “Why doesn’t Big T kill him?” He started to turn and walk back inside, but when he saw that the man was walking directly toward Shaw, he mumbled to himself, “Oh . . . I understand.”

  “What is it, Howard?” the woman asked, walking across the short balcony and standing beside Readling. She clutched the sheet at the center of her bosom.

  On the street, Shaw saw the gunman walking toward him with deliberation, his gun hand poised near the butt of his holstered Colt. He’d seen all of this before. He knew what it meant without the man saying a word. Yet, even as the stranger drew closer, Shaw turned his eyes away from him, and up to the balcony.

  My God, Rosa, it is you . . . .

  He saw the dark-haired woman return his gaze, looking down on him as if from some higher sunlit plain. The sight of her held him transfixed.

  “Well, well, if it ain’t Fast Larry Shaw!” Aldo called out in a taunting voice as he advanced along the dirt street. Even a s
kinny hound who sat scratching himself in the street by the boardwalk seemed to hear the threat in Aldo Barry’s tone of voice. He stopped scratching, cocked his head in curiosity and slinked away, looking back wearily over a bony shoulder.

  “Rosa . . . ?” Shaw whispered to himself, handing the reins back to the livery boy, his eyes still turned upward to the balcony, seeing only the woman.

  Chapter 4

  Out in front of the cantina, Doc Penton stood beside Dorphin, holding the tall wooden cup of goat milk he’d carried with him from atop the bar. Looking down the street toward the town well, he said, “So, that’s Fast Larry Shaw in the flesh.”

  “Yep,” said Dorphin, staring right along with him. The Johnson brothers stood nearby, following suit.

  “For a man singled out for a gunfight, he doesn’t seem to be much beside himself,” Doc mused.

  “There ain’t anything that seems to faze him, Doc,” said Dorphin. “I’ll give him that.”

  “Fast, huh?” said Doc.

  “Yep, as the name suggests . . . ,” Dorphin said with quiet speculation, seeing Shaw finally turn his eyes away from the balcony and on to an approaching Aldo Barry.

  “I’m here to kill you, Fast Larry,” Aldo Barry called out, stopping thirty feet away and spreading his feet shoulder width apart.

  Ruiz and Wilcox hurriedly led their horses off to the side and stood watching with rapt interest.

  Shaw didn’t answer Barry’s threat—didn’t pay him any notice. He gave his horse a firm push on its rump as the livery boy quickly pulled the animal out of the line of fire. Then he started walking toward the gunman, a look of dark resolve on his face.

  “Did you hear me, Fast Larry? Stop right there!” Aldo Barry called out, watching Shaw advance with no sign of slowing down, let alone stopping.

  Barry had positioned himself at just the right distance from Shaw. No sound gunman ventured any closer than this. But Shaw reduced the distance between them with each step.

  “Damn . . . ! What’s wrong with this fool?” Aldo remarked to no one in particular. He couldn’t let Shaw force him back in front of Readling and the others. “I said stop right there, Shaw!” he bellowed.

  Shaw didn’t even slow down. He stalked closer, fifteen feet . . . twelve . . . nine . . . six.

  Aldo could wait no longer. If this fool won’t stop and fight . . . ! He drew his gun from his holster with blinding speed. But it was too late; Shaw was upon him. As Aldo’s gun came up, Shaw snatched it from his hand, made one vicious swing and crushed Aldo’s nose flat to his face with the edge of his own gun butt.

  Out in front of the cantina, both Doc Penton and Dorphin winced at the sight of the blow.

  “Holy Mother Hannah,” said Elvis Johnson under his breath, seeing Aldo fly to the ground in a spray of blood.

  “Aldo is down,” said Witt Johnson, shaking his head.

  “And out,” said Elvis, also shaking his head. “Felled by his own shooting iron.”

  At the well behind Shaw, Ruiz and Wilcox stared at each other, dumfounded. “We’re in a bad spot here,” Wilcox whispered, “and it keeps getting worse.”

  On the hotel balcony, Howard Readling smirked at the downed gunman and watched for a second longer, a bemused look on his face. It was clear that the man wasn’t going to get up for a while. He nodded down toward Dorphin, and turned to the woman beside him.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her back inside the room. As she turned, the woman looked down at Shaw standing in the street over the unconscious gunman. The man’s Colt hung in Shaw’s hand.

  “Did you see what he did?” the woman asked, unable to take her eyes off Shaw as she stepped inside the door.

  “Oh, yes, I saw,” said Readling. “Shaw coldcocked that fool with his own pistol.”

  “No, I mean the way he grabbed the man’s gun instead of drawing his own,” she said, noticing Shaw’s eyes following her own until the balcony door closed between them.

  “Yes, I saw that too,” said Readling. “Shaw is a remarkable man.”

  “He—he grabbed the gun because he did not want to risk a stray bullet hitting someone,” she remarked to Readling, as if in disbelief. “I have a strange feeling that he did it for me . . . .” Her words ended in a wistful tone.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” said Realing. “A man like Shaw looks out for no one but himself. It’s what keeps him alive. That, and always being faster than the person standing in front of him.” He jerked the sheet from her and tossed it onto the bed. “There, you see? I’m pretty fast myself.”

  She stood naked, her arms open to him. “And he works for you, this man Shaw?” she asked.

  “No,” said Readling. He stepped forward and took her in his arms. “I offered him a job, and he turned me down.”

  “Oh, so there is someone you can’t hire?” she teased, a hand on her bare hip. “There is someone even you cannot persuade to do your bidding?”

  “Nobody can persuade a gunman like Shaw to do anything unless he sees something in it for himself,” said Readling.

  “Oh? Perhaps you gave up too easily,” she said, drawing circles on his chest with her fingertip. “I bet if you asked him again he would accept your offer.”

  “What makes you think so?” Readling cocked his head and gave her a curious look.

  She shrugged a naked shoulder. “It is just something I feel.”

  Readling edged her toward the bed as she loosened his robe and spread it open. “We’ll see,” he said. “Now, where were we?”

  Aldo Barry awakened, sprawled out on the dirt street where he’d fallen nearly an hour earlier. He opened his bleary eyes as water from a wooden bucket splashed onto his throbbing face. “Go-d . . . ,” he managed to groan brokenly, batting his eyes, trying to get them to focus on something, anything. Slowly, he shifted his head toward a voice that addressed him.

  “You must wake up, senor,” said the boy from the livery stable, an empty bucket in hand. “It will be dark soon and a wagon could run over you.”

  Aldo struggled back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to lift himself up. Finally the boy set the bucket on the ground, took the dazed gunman’s right hand in both of his and pulled him into a sitting position. Aldo shook his pounding head a little to clear it.

  “How—how long . . .?” His voice had taken on a thick nasal twang.

  “I do not know, senor,” said the boy. “It has been some time now. Everyone thought that you were dead. But when they went to drag you from the street, they saw that your heart was still beating.”

  Aldo looked confused. Gently, he touched a palm to his smashed and swollen nose. “So, they . . . they just left me lying here . . . because I’m alive?”

  The boy only shrugged. “I do not know. I only know that your compañeros paid me to bring a bucket of water from the well and throw it on you.” He gestured a hand toward the cantina. Now only a lone woman stood out front smoking a short black cigar.

  “Compañeros?” said Aldo, turning slightly and looking toward the cantina. He spat in disgust. “They’re not my companions, the sonsabitches.”

  The boy only stared at him.

  “I’ll show them whose compañeros—” Aldo instinctively ran his hand down to his holster and gazed ahead at the cantina, but to his surprise, his Colt was missing. “What the . . .?” He looked down at the empty holster, his head throbbing with pain from his crushed and swollen nose.

  “He took your gun, your compañero—” The boy caught himself and said, “I mean the man they call Big T.”

  Aldo gritted his teeth and shoved himself to his feet in spite of his pain. He staggered in place for a moment, wiping water from his face. His eyes glowered wild and red with pain and fury.

  “Well, then, I’ll just have to go get it back, won’t I?” he said.

  “Senor, your hat?” the boy called out as Aldo began to stomp off toward the cantina.

  Aldo forced himself to turn around and walk back to
the boy, who was holding out his dusty hat. The boy stared expectantly at Aldo, anticipating a tip. But the staggering gunman only snatched the hat from him and slapped it against his thigh. Dust billowed from both hat and trousers. He looked all around until he eyed his horse standing at the iron hitch rail. His rifle butt stood up from its saddle boot.

  “Gracias,” Aldo said in a gruff voice.

  At the sight of Aldo Barry rising from the dirt, the lone woman at the cantina blew out a long puff of smoke, turned and walked back inside.

  Dolphin, the Johnson brothers and Doc Penton sat at a round table off to one side of the bar, where they could see the comings and goings of both the front and rear doors. Dorphin had walked over to the hotel only a few minutes earlier to check on Readling. He had returned and seated himself as Doc Penton raised another cup of goat milk to his lips.

  “Readling says we’re leaving in an hour,” Dorphin told the others, making a swift grab for his shot glass.

  Doc and the Johnson brothers looked at one another.

  “It’ll be dark when we leave here,” Doc said. “Why not stay the night . . . ? He’s already wasted the day between the sheets with some puta. Why not head out in the morning?”

  Dorphin stared at him. “I wouldn’t be calling her some puta, Doc,” he cautioned the dapper gunfighter. “Traveling with her is costing Readling more than an entourage of French chorus girls.”

  “A whore is still a whore,” said Doc. “The cost is incidental.” He sipped his tepid milk and licked it from the lower edge of his mustache. Then he toasted a shot glass toward the Johnson brothers and tossed back its fiery contents.

  Before Dorphin could reply, the woman who’d just made her way back inside approached him and whispered, “The dead man in the street is coming here.”

  Dorphin picked up a gold coin from the tabletop and handed it to her. “Gracias, Juanita,” he said.

  “De nada,” Juanita replied, thanking him, her cigar clenched between her teeth. She dropped the coin into the bosom of her low blouse.