City of Bad Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Atop an ancient adobe church, a concerned face stared out from under the hood of a black frock, toward the noise and commotion coming from the rollicking cantina. He murmured something dark under his breath, then looked away in disgust when he saw Buck Collins stagger out from the open cantina doors to relieve himself in the street.

  Spotting a young Mexican trying to slip past the cantina along the side alleyway with a sack of supplies under his arm, Buck called out, “Hey, you! The hell you think you’re going?”

  The frightened young man stopped and froze in place for a second. Then he slowly turned his head toward Buck as the half-drunken gunman buttoned his fly.

  “Me, senor?” the young man said, terrified.

  “Hell, yes, you,” Buck said, raising his gun from its holster as he took a sauntering step toward the frightened man. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Some food, senor,” the man said, clutching the sack more securely under his arm. “Only food for mi madre y mi.”

  “Hunh-uh! No, no, no,” Collins admonished the young man, wagging a finger at him, his six-shooter hanging loosely in his hand. “You started out all right, speaking English. Now try again.”

  The young man looked scared and confused. “My mo-ther and me, senor . . . .” he said in labored, broken English.

  “That’s more hospitable,” Buck said with a satisfied grin. He reached his gun barrel out and poked it against the sack under the young man’s arm. “Now show me what you’ve got there.”

  “Es alimento— I mean food, senor,” the shaking young man said, quickly correcting himself. He started to hug the sack tighter, but Collins snatched it from under his arm.

  “Don’t be shy,” Collins laughed. He pulled open the sack’s drawstring and looked down at the butt of an old and battered pistol sticking up at him. “Oh, my!” Collins said in mock fear. “What have we here?”

  “It was my father’s before he died, senor,” the young man said. “There are no bullets in it. He never shot it, except if he haves to.”

  “Good thing he never haves to,” said Collins, chuck-ling at the young man’s words and examining the gun in his free hand. “This old smoker would’ve blown up in his face.”

  From the door of the cantina, Hogue and Stewart stepped out and stood watching.

  “Sí— I mean, yes, senor, you are right,” the boy said, again correcting himself. He reached out as Collins held the gun butt back to him.

  But just as Collins turned the gun butt loose, he raised the six-shooter at his side and cocked it an inch from the boy’s forehead. He said angrily, “Pull a gun on me, you little snip? That’ll get you killed straight-up!”

  The young man stood frozen, his mouth agape, too frightened to move or reply.

  “So long, little greaser,” said Collins. He pulled the trigger; the boy’s eyes clenched shut.

  But Buck caught the hammer with his thumb a split second before it struck the cartridge. He let it down and gave a dark laugh.

  “Let that be a lesson to you, kid,” he said. “Never carry a gun unless you’re prepared to use it to kill.”

  The boy’s eyes snapped open as he realized that he was still alive, for the moment anyway. He stared at the open bore of Collins’ pistol.

  “Let me ask you this,” Collins said, “now that we know each other better. Where’s all your sisters?”

  “I—I have no sisters, senor,” the boy said, having a hard time keeping up with the gunman’s English.

  “I never said older.” Collins grinned. “Younger will do, in a pinch.” Seeing Hogue and Stewart watching, he gave them a knowing grin. The two only stared.

  “I have no sisters, senor,” the frightened boy said to Collins.

  “I know better than that,” Collins said, again cocking the gun inches from the young man’s forehead. “Don’t play me for a fool,” he warned, and this time his voice sounded darker, deadlier. “I know all you snipes have a dozen or more sisters running around—every one of them hotter than a chili pepper, eh?” He managed a grim smile.

  “No, no, senor, I have solo hermanos—I mean, only brothers,” he said, trembling. In truth he had neither brothers nor sisters. It was only him and his aging mother.

  “What’d I tell you about talking Mex to me?” Collins warned. “I won’t stand for it.”

  “Leave him alone, you Tejas bastardo!” the priest shouted, running toward Collins and the young man from the adobe church.

  “What . . .?” Collins turned, facing the priest with a dark glare. He called out to Hogue and Stewart, “Did he call me what I think he called me?”

  “He called you a Texas bastard,” Hogue said, him and Stewart still staring, detached.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Collins.

  To buy the young man more time, the priest stared Collins down, enraged, his big, strong-looking fists clenched tightly at his sides.

  “Yes—God forgive me—” he said, crossing himself quickly. “I called you a Texas bastard!” He glared back at the gunman boldly, fire in his eyes.

  Stewart turned to Hogue and quietly mumbled under his breath, “I’ve got a gold twenty says this priest can kick his ass proper.”

  “I wish the padre would beat him into the ground, the stupid turd,” Hogue whispered in reply. “Santana ain’t going to like this at all.”

  “Yes, I called you a Texas bastard! Is my English good enough for you?” the padre said.

  “Well, well,” said Buck, slightly taken aback. “Are you sure you’re a preacher? You don’t talk like none I ever knew.”

  “I speak the language of those I’m talking with,” the priest said. “You are a bastard, the son of nameless bitch dog and a scaly viper! The brother of snakes, and of slimy dung beetles—!”

  “Hold it, Padre,” said Collins. “I can see you’ve met all my kin.” He grinned as he lowered his six-shooter a little, recognizing that the priest was challenging him to a fistfight. “But as a man of God, you ought to know that no family is perfect.”

  The priest started to say more, but he saw the cantina owner appear in the open doorway. He watched him stagger out into the street and collapse, landing with a solid thud. The priest ran to him, startled by the blood pouring down from a vicious welt on his forehead.

  “What have they done to you, Javier?” he said, stooping down and helping the man try to stand.

  “Help me, Padre,” the owner pleaded in a weak, half-conscious voice.

  “That’s right, Padre. You take good care of your flock,” Collins called out. He holstered his six-shooter and stuck the battered pistol he’d taken from the young Mexican down behind his gun belt. “This barkeeper might have just saved your life.”

  Hogue and Stewart watched the priest help the beaten cantina owner stand up and wobble in place. Eventually letting their eyes wander from the scene, they noticed a rise of trail dust drift from the street leading into town. “Look what’s coming here,” Hogue said.

  “I hope it’s Santana,” Stewart said. “Maybe he’ll stop this fool, since the priest ain’t going to do it.” He grinned.

  Buck Collins also spotted the rising dust, and watched the approaching horsemen come into sight. “Riders coming,” he called out to the rest of the men inside the cantina.

  Hogue and Stewart counted seven horses riding abreast toward them, spread across the empty street.

  “Get ready to do some killing,” Buck Collins called out, drawing his pistol again.

  “Hold it, Buck,” Stewart said, recognizing some of the men. “These men are Cut-Jaws. I’ve seen them before.”

  “If it’s a fight they’re looking for . . . ,” Buck said, spreading his feet and starting to raise his pistol toward the riders.

  “Damn it, Buck, it’s some of the men we’re trying to join up with!” Stewart said.

  “Leave him be,” Hogue said quietly. “Maybe they’ll kill him.”

  “Yeah, and maybe they’ll kill us too, just for being with him!” said Stewart.

&
nbsp; But at the sight of a gun pointed at them, the riders drew rifles from their saddle boots, and Collins immediately lowered his six-shooter. “If you say you know them, that’s good enough for me,” Collins said.

  “Easy, men,” said Silver Bones to the riders on either side of him. “I don’t know who this crazy sumbitch is, but that’s Carlos Loonie stepping out of the door over there.”

  Loonie walked out of the cantina and stood in front of Collins and the other men. He raised a hand toward Silver Bones.

  As Bones and the others rode up, the priest and the cantina owner slinked away unnoticed. “But what about my cantina, Padre?” the owner asked. “You don’t know how hard I worked to—”

  “Don’t tell me I do not know how hard it is to make a living,” the priest admonished. “It is the same everywhere. Are you the only man who toils every day for his bread?”

  “Forgive me, Padre,” said the owner. “It’s just that these men will trample all over Rafael.”

  “Rafael will flee when he feels it is the time to do so,” the priest said, leading him away. “For now we must take care of your head.”

  As Silver Bones stepped down from his horse, he looked over suspiciously at Buck Collins, who stood with a dark, drunken grin across his face.

  “Who’s this,” he asked Carlos Loonie, “and why is he pointing a gun at us?”

  “He’s one of the new men who came along with my cousin, Cervo,” said Loonie.

  “All right . . . if you say so,” Bones said, still eying Collins as he spun his reins around the hitch rail.

  “Have you heard anything out of Santana yet?” Bones asked. “By now he’s usually sent somebody to round us all up.”

  “No,” Loonie lied, “I’ve heard nothing.” He stared at the arrivals as they stepped down from their horses. Spotting Aldo Barry, he said, “I see that you too have a new face riding with you. What happened to his nose?”

  “Yeah, he’s new,” said Bones. “He rode in with Ruiz and Wilcox.” He winced a little and said, “You’ll be hearing all about his nose soon enough, I expect.”

  “What’s to eat and drink in this town?” Bones asked.

  “Plenty of mescal, whiskey, wine, hell, you name it,” said Loonie. “As for food, we’re getting ready to roast something, soon as we can catch it.”

  In the afternoon, the two federale trail scouts finally rode into the City of Bad Men and stepped out in front of the adobe church. They looked down the street at a large hog and two goats roasting above a roaring fire in the middle of the street out in front of the cantina. At the sight of so many horses, some hitched and others roaming freely in the dirt street, the two soldiers looked at each other.

  “Mandíbulas de corte?” the younger scout asked the other, his hand on a holstered revolver. “The men the capitan warned us about?”

  “Sí, Cut-Jaws,” the older scout affirmed. He spat in contempt upon mentioning the name. “The capitan will want to hear about this pronto. If the Cut-Jaws are starting to gather here, they will soon be robbing and killing.”

  The two turned their horses around and kicked them up into a trot.

  From the doorway of the cantina, Rafael the dwarf walked out carrying a chicken in either hand. He looked down the street and saw the two soldiers leaving town. His left eye was black and blue, almost swollen shut.

  “What’s their hurry?” he said to no one in particular.

  He twirled the birds around by their necks until their heads twisted off into his strong stubby hands.

  “They were just in time for supper,” said Loonie, staring after the two soldiers.

  As the two headless birds flopped and batted their dying wings in the dirt, Rafael turned and walked back inside the cantina. As he made his way through the open cantina door, two half-naked young whores ran up to him. The two had appeared earlier, as if out of nowhere, along with an accordion player. The whores had mingled right in with the gunmen while the accordion player stood off to the side and played nonstop.

  “Watch this!” one of the women called out to the men, some of them standing spread out along the bar, others seated at battered wooden tables scattered across the cantina’s floor. She threw a leg up over Rafael’s head and buried the dwarf beneath her loose peasant skirt. The men hooted and laughed as she grabbed Rafael by his head and ground her crotch into his face.

  When she released Rafael and threw her skirt back from over his head, he spat and spluttered and wiped his eyes. But before he could collect himself, the other young whore bent over him and swung her large naked breasts back and forth, batting him across the top of his head. The drinkers roared and hooted.

  The dwarf turned his face upward, welcoming the back and forth slap of warm flesh against his cheeks. “Being small is not so bad!” he said in broken, muffled laughter as the swinging breasts pummeled his face.

  He continued to laugh and squeal as the two women snatched him up, carried him behind the bar and stood him on a wooden crate he used to reach the bar top.

  “All right! Who’s ready for more, you Cut-Jaw sonsabitches!” he shouted in a fit of laughter, grabbing a bottle of rye in his stubby hand and shaking it toward the drinkers. “This is the best job an hombre like me ever had!”

  In an alleyway behind the adobe church, Marshal Dawson and Deputy Caldwell heard the laughter and accordion music as they lifted Shaw from across the back of his horse and carried him between them to the church’s rear door. They had long ago removed their badges and tucked them away in their pockets. But when they knocked on the thick door and saw the wooden peep-hole cover slide open, Dawson pulled his shiny badge out of hiding and held it up.

  “We are lawmen,” Dawson said to the curious eye looking out at them. “We are here under the authority of the Mexican government.” He nodded at Shaw hanging limp, bloody and battered between him and Caldwell. “This man needs attention, bad.”

  “Is this man a prisoner?” the padre asked. Even as he spoke he pulled back a latch and swung the door open.

  “No,” said Dawson, “he’s one of us.” The two led Shaw inside.

  The priest looked along the alley in the direction of the cantina; then he gestured the lawmen to a small bed along a wall. From a wooden chair near the bed, the cantina owner looked up at the men. He was holding a wet cloth against the welt on his forehead. An empty wooden wine cup sat in front of him.

  After the two had laid Shaw down and stepped back, the priest said, “I am Padre Timido, but do not let my name fool you. There is nothing timid about me. Welcome to God’s house.” As he spoke he pushed up the big sleeves of his robe and bent over Shaw.

  “I would have beaten the face of one of those hombres malos into the dirt, had more of them not arrived when they did,” he said. “Perhaps later I will do so. I was practiced in the art of fisticuffs before I came to do God’s work.”

  “I see. Then it’s good to have you on our side. I’m Marshal Crayton Dawson. This is Deputy Jedson Caldwell,” Dawson said, watching the priest tend to Shaw.

  “I have heard of you both,” said Father Timido. He glanced at Caldwell, noting his derby hat and his black fingerless gloves. “You are the Undertaker, sí?”

  “Well . . . I was once an undertaker,” Caldwell said, turning bashful at the mention of his nickname.

  “I understand,” Padre Timido said, looking down at Shaw’s bruised, sliced and beaten face. He touched a careful fingertip to the welt that Dorphin’s pistol barrel had left on Shaw’s head. He studied the older wound lying beneath it, and shook his head.

  “What happened to this man?” he asked.

  Dawson and Caldwell looked at each other.

  “Which time?” Dawson asked, not sure where to start.

  Chapter 14

  As Father Timido worked on Shaw, Dawson explained how someone had tried to cut the unconscious gunman’s throat before throwing him off a cliff. The cantina owner sat listening, wide-eyed, a wet cloth still pressed to his forehead.

  “I know
these hills you speak of,” the priest said while he worked. “He could have fallen over a hundred feet or more, down between the switchback trails.”

  Caldwell said, “Luckily the rocks broke his fall.”

  Dawson gave him a look.

  “Oh?” said the priest with condemnation. “You make jokes when this man lies injured?”

  “No, Padre, this man is my friend,” said Caldwell. “I only meant he was lucky he fell down a steep hill instead of a straight drop. He probably bounced a lot, and rolled and—”

  “Leave it alone,” Dawson said quietly between them.

  The lawmen listened to the sound of music, gunfire, laughter and cursing coming from the cantina. The bar’s owner groaned, shook his bowed head and kept the wet cloth against his injured brow. Shaw murmured mindlessly about the old witch and her sparrows.

  Dawson had explained to the priest that the man lying with a fierce gash running from the side of his throat up across his chin was Lawrence Shaw.

  “Ah, so this is Larry Rápido . . . ,” Father Timido murmured under his breath, barely looking up while he held Shaw’s chin wound closed with two fingers and sewed it snugly with coarse handspun thread.

  The two lawmen exchanged glances. “Everybody’s heard of Fast Larry, I suppose,” Dawson said quietly.

  Two gunshots exploded from out in front of the cantina, forcing its owner to cringe and let out a muffled sob. “I should not have left Rafael alone with those animals,” he said with remorse.

  “Rafael is in God’s hands, as are we all,” Father Timido said as he stitched. “Dawson, I hope you are here to do away with the Cut-Jaws Gang? They have killed two of our town already, and left their bodies lying in the street. The others must hide in the hills for safety.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Padre,” Dawson said grudgingly. He didn’t like to reveal what he and his deputy were up to. “We’d like to put them out of business. But it’s always better to catch the leader of the gang.”

  “I see,” Father Timido said bluntly. “You are waiting until Santana rides in. Then you will turn our modest town into a battlefield.”