City of Bad Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Across the street, Silver Bones saw Aldo Barry step out into the sunlight. He knew what the vengeful gunman had in mind. Bones also looked toward the bell tower. Then he looked back at Shaw, the weak gunman appearing to have a hard time staying on his feet.

  “What the hell, there’s a gunfight coming anyways,” he said, his toothless mouth causing a whistle in his voice.

  “Where are you going?” Dorphin asked, seeing Bones walk toward the middle of the street.

  “Where do you think?” Bones said through his blue-purple lips. “I’m killing him while I can.”

  “Not without me, you’re not,” Dorphin said, stepping out behind him.

  “What the hell’s this?” another gunman asked the two men standing near him.

  “It’s starting. That’s what,” one of the gunmen answered. “Let’s go.”

  Dawson and Caldwell had already stepped back away from Shaw. But seeing the Cut-Jaw gunmen appear from both sides of the street, the lawmen stopped and stood firm.

  “Did he do this on purpose?” Caldwell asked Dawson in a tense whisper.

  “I can’t even guess,” said Dawson.

  Doc Penton stepped forward, taking position a few feet from the two lawmen.

  In the church bell tower, out of sight behind its thick adobe housing, Thorpe whispered toward the ladder as he heard footsteps climbing up.

  “Stay back, Santana! It’s commencing,” he said.

  The priest stuck his head up anyway and said in a harsh tone, “I warned you never to call me that. It’s Padre Timido, you fool.”

  “I’m sorry, Padre,” said Thorpe, a gun in his hand, his free hand pressed to his wounded side.

  “I gave you the order to not kill them if you can keep from it,” the padre said. As he stepped up off the ladder, he reached back, took Rosa Reyes’ hand and assisted her into the tower.

  “I know, Padre, and I respect it,” said Thorpe, “but some of these men want Shaw dead so bad that they can’t even think straight. They don’t give a damn about any order.”

  The priest turned and looked down on the street without being seen. He shook his head. “This man, Larry Rápido . . . if only I had a hundred like him.”

  “Take a good look, Padre,” said Thorpe. “After today there will no more Larry Rápido.” He gave a smirk.

  The priest let out a breath and said, “All right, it was coming. There was no stopping it.” He turned to Rosa Reyes and said, “We must go now, while everyone is busy killing each other.”

  But the woman had looked down and seen Shaw standing there, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he had come there for her. Oddly, since the day she had spoken with him in the wagon, she’d felt as if something was constantly drawing her toward him, wherever he was. The feeling made no sense, and yet she could not—would not—dismiss it. Why do you come to me . . . ? she asked him silently, as if he could somehow hear her.

  “Uno momento,” she said to the priest, staring down onto the dusty street, where men were about to kill each other.

  One moment . . . ? The padre was not used to having his orders ignored. He took her by her forearm. “Come with me, Sister Rosa. This is not a place for a sacerdote y una monja. We must go.”

  “I am no longer a nun,” she reminded him, “not after the things I have done. It is also highly questionable that you are still a priest.” She rounded her forearm away from him. “I said one moment,” she repeated coldly, this time in English.

  Shaw looked from Aldo Barry on one side of the street to Silver Bones and Willis Dorphin on the other side, then spoke quietly to Dawson.

  “The three of you keep out of this,” he said.

  “You know we can’t do that, Shaw,” Dawson replied in the same quiet tone. “Even if this wasn’t my job, I couldn’t turn back on you. Not with the shape you’re in. You and I have been friends too long.”

  “Me neither,” said Caldwell.

  “That’s real touching,” Shaw said wryly. “But I brought them all out here. The least I can do is shoot them for you.”

  “I knew it . . . ,” Caldwell said under his breath. “He fell on purpose, didn’t he?”

  Dawson didn’t answer.

  “What about you, Doc?” Shaw asked. “Are you here out of friendship?”

  “No,” Doc said, one hand poised near his gun butt, his other clenching a rifle, “I just want to fight.”

  Shaw gave a short grin. “That’s me all over,” he said. “As for the shape I’m in. . .” He raised his voice for the gunmen to hear. “I’m feeling good today.”

  That does it . . . !

  Aldo Barry was the first to snap, hearing Shaw’s taunt.

  “I’ll kill you!” he bellowed, his broken nose causing his voice to sound like the honking of an angry goose.

  But Silver Bones was not going to let Aldo Barry beat him to Shaw. He walked faster toward Shaw in the middle of the dirt street, his revolver raised arm’s length. A few feet behind and to Bones’ left, Dorphin hurried along, raising his rifle to his shoulder, wanting to get a shot at Shaw from as far away as he could manage. Shaw stepped away from the bay, giving it a shove on its rump. The animal hurried off and stopped a few yards away.

  Aldo bellowed, “I can’t tell you how bad I’ve wanted to kill you, Sha—”

  His words stopped as the big Russian bucked in Shaw’s hand and the bullet from its fiery barrel picked Aldo up and flung him backward onto the dirt street. The impact was too great to turn him loose. He hit the ground, rolled a back flip and almost came back onto his feet. But his legs had gone limp and he melted to his knees for a second, then fell to the ground. Blood splattered through the air around him from the large hole in his heart.

  Silver Bones wasted no time. He began firing as Shaw’s bullet nailed Aldo. But Shaw spun toward him as Bones’ third shot sliced through the air past his head.

  Shaw made his shot count. The big Russian bucked in his hand again. This time Bones flew backward, twisting as he left his feet, like some sort of ballet move gone terribly wrong.

  “I’ve got him, everybody stay out of it!” Dorphin shouted, seeing Bones hit the ground out of the corner of his eye. It didn’t matter; he had Shaw. One pull of the trigger was all it took. He had his sights locked dead on him, Shaw standing there, the big Russian hanging at his side, smoke from its barrel curling up his hand, his forearm.

  Along the main street of the City of Bad Men, the Cut-Jaw gunmen stood staring.

  “All right, then, have it your way . . . ,” Carlos Loonie said to himself on everybody’s behalf.

  But before Dorphin could pull the trigger of his rifle, he saw Shaw swing the big Russian up at him so fast, it caused him to freeze for just a second.

  Shaw called out to him from behind the cocked and leveled Russian. “Remember what I said, Big T? If you told Readling what I said, guess who I was going to kill?”

  “You can go straight to hell, Shaw,” Dorphin raged, realizing in a flash that he’d failed in saving his own life.

  “Guess who’s going first?” said Shaw. The big Russian bucked in his hand for the third time.

  Chapter 25

  The Cut-Jaws gunmen did as Dorphin had asked them to do and stayed out of the fight. They’d watched as if none of it had anything to do with them. But the second that Willis Dorphin hit the dirt with a bullet hole through the center of his forehead, the outlaws seemed to snap back to life, as one.

  Bobby Flukes turned toward Dawson, Caldwell and Doc Penton with his rifle up. “Kill them,” he shouted as he pulled the trigger. He got off a shot that nipped Doc across his shoulder. But before he could lever another round into the rifle chamber, a bullet from Caldwell’s Colt nailed him in the chest.

  Next to where Flukes stood, Rady Kale fired on Dawson with a big Dance Brothers pistol. His first shot knocked Dawson’s hat from his head; his second shot went wild as Shaw fired the big Russian in Kale’s direction.

  “Kill Shaw, damn it!” shouted Carlos Loonie, seeing th
e bullet hurl Kale backward in a spray of blood.

  Crouched down low, Shaw shifted his aim, following the path of the fighting. Out of the corner of his eye he, saw the woman standing in the church bell tower looking down at him. Even from that distance, he felt as if their eyes met just for a second before he looked away. But when he swung his eyes back to the tower, she was gone.

  Enough of this.... He shook his head as if to clear it, not even certain he’d really seen her there. But he had no time to consider it.

  Matt Stewart and Russell Hogue fired on him as one. A bullet streaked through his duster sleeve, and another screamed across this left ear. But as the two fired on Shaw, Loonie himself ran to cover behind the stack of firewood out in front of the blacksmith shop.

  Dawson Caldwell spun backward and went down to his knees when a bullet Stewart fired at Shaw went wild and nailed him in his left shoulder.

  Dawson fired quickly at Stewart. So did Shaw. Both of their bullets hit their target. Stewart stiffened upward onto his toes as the bullets sliced through him. He almost managed to recover and throw his gun out at arm’s reach. But Penton fired his rifle as bullets whistled past him. His shot went through Stewart’s heart and dropped him to the dirt.

  Recognizing that the lawmen, Doc and Shaw weren’t going to be easy to kill, Carlos slipped away from the woodpile and ran toward the church. Shots exploded back and forth behind him. Seeing Loonie retreat, Charlie Ruiz and Ned Breck did the same.

  Russell Hogue was left standing alone in the street on wobbly legs. He’d taken a bullet to his right side—several other stray bullets had nicked and grazed his body.

  “Sonsabitches!” he shouted at both the Cut-Jaws who’d abandoned him and the lawmen who’d shot him. “All of yas. Every damn motherless ones of yas!”

  “Drop the gun,” Doc Penton called out, not realizing that Dawson and Caldwell had come here with no intention of taking the Cut-Jaws prisoner.

  “You too, mister!” Hogue called out to Doc, his pistol hanging in his bloody hand. “You’re a motherless son of a bitch too.”

  “Drop it,” Doc insisted.

  Shaw and Dawson gave Doc a questioning look. The two had hurried to where Caldwell had fallen to the ground, blood gushing from his shoulder in a braided stream.

  “Shoot him, Doc,” Shaw said flatly.

  Hearing Shaw, the bloody swaying gunman turned toward him. “City of Bad Men, my ass,” Russell Hogue shouted in disgust. “Look at me!” He spread his arms to show that he was still standing, despite how many times he’d been shot. “There ain’t a bad man amongst yas—”

  Before his words had fully made it out of his mouth, Shaw’s first bullet hit him. Then the second bullet. Then the third. Shaw had dropped his rifle in the dirt beside Dawson and Caldwell and started walking toward Hogue with both of the big Russians bucking in his hands.

  When the sixth shot struck Hogue, he finally left his feet and sank down onto his knees, his gun still in hand.

  “Now. . . that’s more . . . like it,” he said as a strange, pained grin spread across his bloody face.

  Shaw saw the dying gunman lift his pistol with all the effort he had left. One final bullet from Shaw nailed the man in the forehead and flipped him backward, sending his shot straight up in the air.

  Up the street, Dawson watched as the last of the fleeing gunmen slipped into the mission church through a side door. He helped Caldwell onto his feet, holding a bandana pressed to the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  “We’ve got to get them out of the church without any harm coming to the priest,” he said, glancing at the blood-soaked bandana on Caldwell’s wound. “Jedson needs treating, fast.”

  “The woman is in the church,” Shaw said as he walked to Dorphin’s body and pulled his Colt from the dead gunman’s belt. After checking it, he shoved it down into his holster, where he’d been carrying one of the Russians. “I saw her in the bell tower.”

  Uh-oh . . . .

  Dawson and Caldwell looked at each other with trepidation. “Which woman?” Dawson asked Shaw warily. “The bruja with her sparrows, or Senora Rosa Reyes, who stole Jedson’s horse—?”

  “Don’t talk crazy, Marshal,” Shaw said. “I saw Senora Reyes. I wouldn’t bring up the witch and her sparrows at a time like this.”

  Dawson and Caldwell looked at each other again, this time with relieved expressions. “We’re both glad to hear that, Shaw,” Dawson said.

  After a pause, Shaw said quietly, “That is, I think I saw her . . . .”

  Dawson only shook his head. Looking at Caldwell’s back, he held another bandana on the exit wound. “At least it’s a clean shot straight through,” he said.

  “Lucky me,” Caldwell said drily.

  Dawson helped him over to a post standing at the corner of a wooden overhang. He sat the deputy down and leaned him back against the post with the bandana pressed in place.

  “Are you all right here while we take the church?”

  “No, Marshal,” Caldwell said with determination, “I’m not sitting this one out. Help me to my feet . . . stick the bandana under the back of my duster . . . I’ll hold this one in place.” He held the bloody bandana onto his wounded left shoulder, and managed to raise his Colt with his left hand. “See? Everything is working fine.”

  Dawson cursed under his breath. But he pulled the deputy to his feet and said, “All right, but don’t die on me.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Caldwell said.

  For nearly an hour, Morgan Thorpe and Reilly Killer Cady had stood out of sight in the church’s bell tower. They watched the empty street below, having seen the three men help the wounded man into an alleyway. From inside the church, the remaining Cut-Jaws gunmen had taken positions in the open windows overlooking the courtyard. They watched the ten-foot-high adobe wall, knowing it to be the most likely way for the four men to attack.

  “I hope we haven’t been left in a jackpot here,” Cady said to the wounded Thorpe.

  “If we have, it’s too late to stop it now,” said Thorpe, feeling a little better but still weakened from the loss of blood. “We had this thing all worked out. It should have gone through slick as grease.”

  “It went to hell when my brother and the Fist disappeared.”

  “I hate to say it, but somebody killed them,” said Thorpe. “It might have been some of our own.”

  “I hope I live long enough to find out who,” said Cady.

  The two looked back and forth along the inside of the adobe wall. “I hate to think of all that gold lying out there in the hills, and me dying here, never getting my share of it.”

  “Think the best,” said Cady. He gave a short grin. “That’s what Santana always says.”

  “Santana . . .” He spat and lowered his voice, even though the priest was nowhere around. “I’ve had it with him too,” said Thorpe. “Him and his damn revolucion. He needs to make up his mind, decide if he’s an outlaw or some kind of politico—savoir of his people.” He smirked and spat again.

  “I can’t complain up to now,” said Cady. “He’s always seen to it we got our share. What he did with his share was his business.”

  “The kind of money he’ll make off of this job is going to push him to the top of the heap, though,” said Thorpe. “He’ll be able to afford himself an army. Once he gets that he’ll be hard to stop.”

  “Good for him,” said Cady. “He’s no more crooked than any other sumbitch who wants to run other people’s lives for them.”

  “He’s a bad man, and a son of a bitch,” Thorpe said.

  “He’s a priest,” said Cady.

  “So . . . ? He can be all three things at once.” Thorpe grinned weakly.

  “Yeah, I expect you’re right,” said Cady. “Did you see that poor sumbitch’s face in the cellar?”

  “Yep, that’s Buck Collins,” said Thorpe, “or what’s left of him. Santana said he’s teaching him.”

  “Teaching him what? How to take a bad beating?” Cady asked. T
he two chuckled.

  Outside, having snuck up crawling on their bellies until they huddled close against the outward wall, Shaw and Doc Penton checked their guns. When they were finished, Shaw left his rifle in the dirt and held the two big Smith & Wesson .44s in his hands.

  “Are you sure you can handle the doors, Doc?” he asked under his breath. “It’s going to get awfully busy down there.”

  Doc gave him a look. “Are you doubting I can handle the doors?”

  “Just offering,” Shaw said, noting the prickly sound in the wiry older gunman’s voice.

  “Well, don’t offer,” Doc snapped back at him.

  Shaw watched him raise his hat and run his fingers back through his gray hair.

  Doc let out a breath and said, “Pay me no mind, I get as rank as a bad onion, times like this.”

  “Get going,” Shaw said. “I’ve got you covered.”

  They both looked around at the empty wagon still sitting in the street, the team of horses standing at rest in the cool evening air.

  From the bell tower, Thorpe and Cady saw Doc Penton’s thin figure appear atop the ten-foot wall, then jump down quickly and race to the big wooden doors.

  “Here we go!” Thorpe shouted, cocking and leveling his gun down onto the running gunman. “Get him!”

  A barrage of bullets exploded from the open church windows and whistled past Doc Penton as he ran. Bullets from the two gunmen in the bell tower kicked up dirt in his wake, only inches from his boot heels.

  But shots from both the church and the tower slackened when Shaw appeared on top of the adobe wall, firing round after round with deadly accuracy from the Russian .44s.

  Of the three Cut-Jaw gunmen in the windows below, Ned Breck lay dead, draped over a window ledge. Blood ran freely from his body, dripping down the wall and onto the ground. Carlos Loonie and Charlie Ruiz had ducked inside as Shaw’s bullets spun past them. But Charlie stood gripping his chest with one hand, his face as pale as chalk.