The Third Western Megapack

by Barker, S. Omar

  “Uh-huh!” Hank grunted.

  “I don’t like the way you said that, Hank,” Mr. Jones observed. “Don’t you go to gettin’ me mad at you, Hank. I ain’t tasted blood for ten or twelve days, and I’m gettin’ thirsty.”

  He turned his back to the bar and surveyed the room. And at once his gun was out and had spat flame. The bullet whistled past the head of the piano player and buried itself in the wall. The piano player went through the nearest open window.

  “Whoopee! I feel a wolfin’ spell comin’ on!” Peter Jones yelled. “Anybody want fight a lil’ duel?”

  There were no takers. Peter Jones shot out a window, smashed a couple of bottles with bullets, and calmly reloaded and purchased a drink. He gambled, and he won. He defied any man there present to dance with one of the girls, especially Juanita, though he would not dance with them himself. He even crossed to the other side of the partition and plagued Ike until that worthy was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  Three men of the range wandered in at a late hour, received a hostile reception, and went forth again to ride back to their ranch and spread the news that the Sagebrush Kid had taken up his residence in Rock Castle and was terrorizing the town. That information already had been spread by others, including the stage driver. But the sheriff had not come to make an investigation, nor did he send a deputy.

  Peter Jones continued to rule the town until almost dawn, when he barricaded himself in his room and fell into a deep sleep.

  * * * *

  The next night, his evening meal consumed, Peter Jones sat down at a table against the wall in Hank’s Place. He seemed to be brooding about something.

  “I know the signs,” Ike whispered to Hank. “Calm before the storm! Me, I’m goin’ to shut up the store early and get to my room. I ain’t goin’ to be present when the fireworks starts.”

  “Coward!” Hank hissed at him.

  A man came in from the street, and Hank, who had heard a horse stop in front, turned quickly, expecting to see some puncher from a nearby ranch. Instead, he beheld a stranger.

  He was a tall, slim man, but with shoulders like a giant. He was dressed as for hard riding. His face was leather colored from exposure, his eyes black and piercing, and he had an uneven mustache. Hank mentally catalogued him as a tough customer.

  He glanced over the room and then strode to the bar. Peter Jones, sitting with his back against the wall seemed to give him no attention. The newcomer waved a hand, and Hank set forth bottle and glass. The stranger drank, wiped his lips with the back of a hand, and drew out a six-gun slowly and deliberately.

  Then he spoke, and his voice shattered the din. “Where’s the knockkneed, bowlegged son of a lizard that calls himself the Sagebrush Kid?” he demanded.

  “Ssh!” Hank cautioned. “He’s sittin’ right over there.”

  “Why should I shush?” the newcomer rasped. “I want to see this here Sagebrush Kid I’ve been hearin’ about.”

  He whirled and looked around the room. Men had terror in their faces. There could be but one outcome to this—the Sagebrush Kid, alias Peter Jones, would arise from his chair, shoot down this daring one, and then probably start on a rampage because he had been insulted in his own home town.

  “Where is he?” the stranger bellowed.

  “He—he’s sittin’ right over there,” Hank whispered.

  “You!” The stranger indicated Peter Jones with a forefinger. “You get up and step right here to the bar! Stand right here on this spot, you worm!”

  In that breathless silence, Peter Jones arose and moved forward slowly. Every instant they expected to see his hand come up spitting flame, to see this daring stranger crumple up on the floor, his life blood ebbing away.

  Peter Jones moved across to the bar and went slowly along it. He stood on the spot the stranger had indicated.

  “Are you,” demanded the man who had come out of the night, “the misguided hombre who came to this town posin’ as the Sagebrush Kid?”

  “Posin’?” Peter Jones asked.

  “Posin’—I said it! You the Sagebrush Kid, huh? Why, you knocked down, spavined ape! I’m the Sagebrush Kid, dang your hide! And I’m right here with a gun ready to prove it! I heard rumors about same jasper comin’ here and posin’ as me.”

  “W-wait a m-minute!” Peter Jones suggested, appearing to tremble.

  Indignation surged into the hearts and brains of the citizens of Rock Castle. So they had been sold, had they? This man who had pretended to be the Sagebrush Kid and had made fools of them! They hoped that the real Sagebrush Kid would shoot him down!

  “It—it was only in fun,” stammered Peter Jones. “Are you really the Sagebrush Kid?”

  The breast of the outlaw swelled. “I am!”

  “Nobody ever saw his face, they say. Maybe—maybe you’re just foolin’ these folks, like I did.”

  “What’s that?” the other cried, lifting the gun. “I’m the Sagebrush Kid, all right, and everybody here better believe it!”

  Some of the citizens of Rock Castle were creeping furtively toward the door.

  “Don’t leave, gents!” the Sagebrush Kid warned. “Stay and see the fun.”

  “Only in fun!” Peter Jones repeated. “You—you should have been here. Just ’cause they thought I was the Sagebrush Kid, they fetched and carried for me like good little boys.”

  “And I’m prayin’ that this real Sagebrush Kid lets us get our hands on you!” Hank exploded.

  “It was fun!” Peter Jones told the Sagebrush Kid. “I chased the Chinaman out of his own restaurant, and made them give me pie for breakfast, and shot out the windows. Just ’cause they thought I was the Sagebrush Kid.”

  He touched the outlaw’s vanity. The real Sagebrush Kid roared his raucous laughter.

  “I’ve a mind to forgive you,” he told Peter Jones. “Have a drink on the house while I think about it. I reckon the two of us together could just about run this town.”

  “Oh, you could do it alone!” assured Peter Jones.

  “Hee, hee! What else did you make ’em do?”

  “They stepped high and wide and pretty,” said Peter Jones, “just ’cause they thought I was the Sagebrush Kid.” He emphasized that point like a man talking for his very life. “They quivered every time I come near ’em.”

  “I’m hopin’ this here Sagebrush Kid don’t kill you, that’s all!” Hank growled. “Kid, you turn this skunk over to us!”

  “Why?” the real Sagebrush Kid asked him. “He got away with it, didn’t he? Wasn’t a man with guts around, I reckon. You take another drink, feller, and then we’ll have some fun. I’m feelin’ a mite like bustin’ up this town.”

  Peter Jones stepped nearer and filled his glass, being careful to wait until the Sagebrush Kid had taken his amount of liquor.

  “Good joke!” the Kid declared. “Here’s how!”

  And then Peter Jones did a surprising thing. He dropped his glass, his right hand darted forward—and snatched away the revolver of the Sagebrush Kid, which he had been holding lightly. He sprang backward, covering his man. The Sagebrush Kid choked on his liquor, looked bewildered.

  “High up with ’em, and keep ’em there!” Peter Jones commanded. “Sagebrush Kid, are you? All right! I want you, Kid! I’m Peter Jones—real name—new deputy sheriff! You’re goin’ to jail, Kid.”

  “You—you—” the Sagebrush Kid was sputtering.

  “Only way to get you!” Peter Jones said. He snapped handcuffs on the wrists of the desperado before the Sagebrush Kid could move. “No man ever had seen your face, so you couldn’t be identified. But you walked right into the trap, Mr. Sagebrush Kid! Your curiosity got the best of you; you had to come and see what was goin’ on.”

  “You—you—” the bandit mouthed again.

 
“And so I’ve got you!” Deputy Sheriff Peter Jones said. “We’ll be startin’ for the county seat and jail as soon as the moon’s up.”

  Silence for an instant, during which realization came to those in Hank’s Place. Then a bedlam of voices and cheers.

  Hank turned to Ike. “I suspicioned it all the time,” he whispered.

  Ike looked at his old partner without batting an eyelash.

  “I’m a liar too,” Ike said, “but not such a good one!”

  THERE AIN’T NO MEN IN HEAVEN, by Gary Lovisi

  The stage came in late from Rockville Flats, but that, in and of itself, didn’t mean a heck of a lot out here where time sort of stands still and even the morning sun seems to take its sweet time beginning another day.

  No, it wasn’t a big deal that the Overland stage was late again, that was too usual. What was unusual was the man who got off that stage into the dusty dirt street of our little town. I’da sworn I’d seen his features before, a grim-looking shootist who looked like he meant his business and took nothing lightly.

  He was dressed in black homespun and leather, with a dark slouch hat and red bandana, black shiny boots with silver spurs, and hanging real easy from a hand-tooled holster was a fancy six-shooter that looked to be rarin’ to get out and be put to use.

  He was a bad one. I could see that right away as he dusted himself off and then gave the town the eagle-eye as the stage pulled away from the depot.

  Mama had always warned me about bad men like that. How the world is full of them and how they be all over the West, infecting it with their wildness, drinking, cussing and gunplay. I remember Mama telling me there weren’t no men in Heaven at all as far as she was concerned – that they’re all bad and mean and just brought trouble to all women. I guessed I would be included in that grouping some day, once I growed up and became a man myself, but that just didn’t seem fair to me at all. Especially since at that time just being a 12 year old boy, manhood seemed a real long way off to me.

  Ma had her reasons for the way she felt though. She’d been alone for a long time, bitter, consumed with hate and anger. It just burned her up. Pa had pulled out on us years back when I was born, gone out prospecting for gold. Or so he’d told Ma. He never came back. We never heard hide nor hair of him since. Ma worked herself to death trying to provide for me and my older sister. When sis died of the whooping cough, it broke what was left of Ma’s heart, and she blame Pa and all men for her terrible plight and our sunken fortunes in the world. Ma passed away and I hardly remembered her now. I was looked after by Sheriff Wilson, but I lived pretty much by myself these days.

  Now we had this fancy shootist, and by the looks of him he was a dangerous man who’d not be entering into Heaven when he died either – but I was sure he’d sent his share of men to Hell just the same. I wondered who he was, and why he had come to our little town.

  I ran to the jail up the street and asked the Sheriff if I could look through the old wanted posters again. Here was as mean-looking a group of cut-throats and rogues, bank robbers and gunfighters as you’d ever want to see. They was a sure scary lot. None of them, however, looked like the man just off the stage, but they all sure had something in common by the way they looked. Especially in the eyes. They all had that same cold stare that seemed to be looking far off at something just outta range. The man off the stage had it in spades, a wary sharpness, a piercing alert gaze that looked like it could melt ice in winter – and every one of them desperadoes what had a wanted poster looked the same way. It was a dangerous look, the look that dangerous men gave off. And now one of them was in our town.

  I went back to the stage depot and it wasn’t long before I saw Sheriff Wilson and Bob Gritz his deputy come down the street. Keeping in step with their purposeful strides on the other side of the street was Timmy Wirth, the blacksmith’s son, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms. His face stone cold with a flush of nervous fear, though he tried his best to hide it.

  The shootist waited for them. Calm. Assured. He hadn’t moved from his spot in the street since he got out of the stage. He noted Timmy Wirth across the street with the shotgun, moving up on him, saw the sheriff and his deputy approach with hands near their six-guns as well.

  “Don’t try nothing now,” Sheriff Wilson ordered careful, a twinge of the nerves creeping into his heavy voice. “I just want to talk to you, Jack. Peaceful-like. So let’s not have any trouble we’ll all be regretting.”

  “That’s fine by me, Sheriff. I’ve been waiting for you. Figured you’d some around once you got wind of me being in town.”

  “That’s real fine of you to wait here for me, Jack.”

  The shootist smiled. Like ice. Chilling.

  Sheriff Wilson smiled back hesitantly, said, “But damn, Jack, you’re the last person I ever expected to set foot back in this town.”

  I saw Jack the shootist smile at that. He said, “Hell, Warren, it’s been a long time.”

  “You look good, Jack, the years have been kind to you.”

  The shootist allowed a grim look, dark and full of foreboding, as though he saw his entire life flash before him. Remembering. Terrible memories. “The years have been anything but kind, Warren.”

  “Alright, Jack, but don’t you go fixin’ to go mean on me or make any trouble here.”

  “No, Warren, I’m through with all that. I mean you no harm. Nor anyone else. After a time a man forgets all the pettiness that seems so important when he’s young and stupid. I’ve done my share of killing and worse. What’s done is done. I just hope I won’t have to be doing no more.”

  “That’s right fair of you to feel that way, Jack. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “It’s true, Warren. I don’t hold no grudges anymore. Life’s too short for that.”

  By this time a crowd had gathered but Wilson’s deputy had most of the loungers and curious move off so they’d be out of earshot. Nevertheless, the place was a buzz with rumor and whispered talk about the stranger and the fact there might be gun-play before his talk with Sheriff Wilson was done.

  “So what brings you here, Jack?” the Sheriff said getting down to business.

  “A legacy, Warren, a promise to a friend.”

  Sheriff Wilson looked skeptical. “Now, Jack, I thought you was…”

  “Don’t worry, Warren, it’s not anything like that. Not revenge. Why don’t we go to your office and have a talk about it. You still keep a bottle of Tequila in the top drawer of your desk?”

  * * * *

  At the time I didn’t know what it was all about. I was surprised an hour later when Timmy Wirth, still wearing a bright shiny deputy badge, came looking for me.

  “Joey, Sheriff Wilson wants to see you.”

  “He wants to see me?” I didn’t now what to make of that, figuring I might have done something wrong, but unable to figure what it could have been.

  “Come on, its alright. He just wants to talk to you.”

  I said, “Is the stranger there with him?”

  Timmy Wirth looked at me carefully, said, “Yeah, sure is, Joey, and I think that’s what it’s all about.”

  I gulped nervously, then walked back with Timmy Wirth to the other edge of town.

  When we got near the jail we could see there was some kind of commotion brewing outside in the street. Timmy and I walked closer and by the time we got to the jail there was a sudden chorus of screams and running people. The crowd cleared in a mad rush, the people who had blocked our view now running to safety. Suddenly I saw before me Kyle and Jonas Reed drawing on Sheriff Wilson and the stranger.

  Shots were fired.

  Timmy Wirth cocked his shotgun by Kyle Reed quickly took him out with a bullet to the gut. Timmy fell back, hit the ground, his shotgun flying into the street. The shootist quickly put one bullet in Kyle Reed’s arm, another in hi
s shoulder, causing him to fly around like an out-of-control spinning top. Klye’s brother, Jonas, the faster of the two, very business-like, put two bullets into the stranger. Kyle Reed, not wounded in his shooting arm, got off a couple of shots at Sheriff Wilson, one of them hitting him in the head. With a loud wooof, like he’d been knocked with a sledge hammer, I saw the sheriff fall back into the open doorway of the jail. He lay there unmoving. I saw blood and it sent shivers all through me and a rage I’d never known since Ma had passed.

  The scene grew quiet now, almost desolate, all the bystanders having long since fled. Timmy Wirth and Sheriff Wilson were out of the action, the sheriff’s other deputy, Bob Gritz, nowhere to be seen. Kyle Reed though wounded was still in play, his gun trained on the wounded unarmed stranger, his brother Jonas motioning with his weapon for the man to stand off and not make a play for his gun.

  “We got no quarrel with you, Jack Slade. It’s the gold we’re here for and the gold we aim to take. Give it to us and you’ll come to no harm.”

  The stranger, who by all accounts now seemed to be the deadly Black Jack Slade, just laughed at that as he made a teasing attempt to move closer to his gun. The Reed Brothers quickly dissuaded him with their own firearms – a couple of well-placed shots in the dirt at his feet in warning. The stranger nodded, calmly stepped back and waited.

  It occurred to me that the Reed Brothers would kill the stranger as soon as he let out where the gold was hidden. Obviously he didn’t have the gold on him, probably the only thing keeping him alive at the moment. I knew the reputation of the Reed Brothers, seen their wanted posters for murder and robbery. They were a bad seed that would surely kill the unarmed stranger as soon as they got what they’d come for.

  I stood frozen at the head of the alleyway. A few feet from me lay Timmy Wirth, writhing in pain, a silent crumpled mass, motioning for me to get away. To run. To hide. I remained frozen. I ignored him. Instead, my eyes locked onto Timmy’s shotgun laying alone in the street where it had been flung scant minutes before.