by Ralph Cotton
“Is this place getting ready to fall over?” Shear asked the short, stocky man standing behind the bar. The gunmen spread along the bar. At a corner table two men sat bowed over shots of whiskey. A half-full bottle stood on the table between them. They watched the gunmen out of the corner of their eyes.
“No, sir-iee, she’s safe as your mama’s arms,” said the bartender. “Just built crooked from the start, is all.” He grinned widely and tugged at his white-turned-yellow collar. “What’ll yas have, gentlemen?”
“Whiskey, for openers,” said Shear. “Beer, mescal, anything else you’ve got that’s not poison.” He laid a plain-faced twenty-dollar gold coin on the bar top.
“Say, mister, unstamped coins are a rare sight around here,” the bartender remarked. “Am I being too nosy asking where you acquired them?” His hands adeptly snatched up three fresh bottles of rye from beneath the bar top as he spoke. He pulled the corks and slid the bottles along the bar, shot glasses right behind them.
“Damn right, you are,” Duckwald cut in, catching a bottle and a glass for himself. He leered menacingly at the man. At the corner table the two men tossed back their shots of whiskey, grabbed the bottle and eased quietly out the front door.
“Easy does it, Rudy,” said Shear, defusing the wild-eyed gunman. “Not too nosy at all,” he said to the bartender. He raised another gold coin and turned it between his thumb and fingertip. “This is railroad gold. We robbed a train and took it from them.”
The bartender froze. He stood staring, stunned into silence.
The gunmen also froze in silence, staring at Shear in disbelief.
Shear looked at the bartender, then at the faces along the bar. After a second he threw his head back in a hearty laugh. “Damn, fellows, I’m joking!”
The men laughed in relief. So did the bartender. His knees had gone a little weak. “Mister, you sure had me going there . . . ,” he said. Still laughing, he pulled up empty beer mugs, three in either hand, knocked back a tall wooden tap handle and stuck the mugs under its spigot, filling them one at a time.
Duckwald leaned forward onto his elbows and said to the bartender, “On the way in here, I scented up some whores. Where are they?”
“All the whores left here over a year ago,” said the bartender, “but it just happens that two young doves walked into Alto Meca a week ago. Apparently the gentlemen they were traveling with were no gentlemen at all. They left them stranded—put them out along the trail and left them seven miles from town.”
“Oh my God,” Longley said quietly. He gazed Duckwald up and down as if in awe. “What color is their hair?” he asked the bartender.
“One’s a flaxen-haired little honey,” said the bartender. “The other . . . well, I can’t say. You’ll have to judge for yourself.”
“Oh my God!” Longley repeated in a louder voice.
Duckwald gave a rare smile of satisfaction. “Get them down here, bartender!”
“Oh, they’re coming down, fellows, soon as they get powdered up,” said the bartender. “They were excited to see yas ride in. They need to raise money for stage fare.”
No sooner had the bartender spoken than a door at the top of a leaning stairs opened and two young women walked out onto the landing wearing short, scanty dance hall dresses and carrying feathered fans.
“Did I hear someone say they’re looking for female companionship of an informal nature?” said a blonde with a suggestive expression, her feathered fan cocked beneath her right ear.
“My God, Rudy,” Ben Longley asked, without taking his eyes off the two women, “how long have you been able to do this?”
“All my damned life, Ben,” Duckwald said. He pushed himself back from the bar and hurried over to the tilted stairs, catching the sassy blonde in his arms as she threw herself forward from the bottom stair.
Watching, Shear took out a cigar and stuck it into his mouth, hearing the woman squeal with delight. He grinned and raised a fresh shot glass of whiskey in his hand.
“Ah,” he said, “these are the moments to enjoy. If only we had some music now, I’d call this a perfect celebration.”
“Say, mister,” said the bartender, “I just happen to have a Missouri squeeze box in the back room.”
“Do you indeed?” said Shear. He tossed two more gold coins on the bar top. Along the bar, some of the men did the same, until a sizable amount of gold lay glittering in the lamplight.
“Well, go get it, friend. Let’s make this a night to remember,” said Shear.
Late in the night, after the men had taken their turns walking up and down the tilted stairs, Shear stood at the corner of the bar, whiskey bottle in hand. His shirt blared open down the front. His string tie hung loose; his gun belt hung over his shoulder where he’d forgotten and left it hanging after his earlier trip upstairs.
Above the bartender’s accordion music, the blonde, an Illinois girl named Emma Fay Wheatley, said in Shear’s ear, “Cleary and I are only six dollars shy of bypassing Denver and going on to San Francisco.”
“Bless both your hearts,” Shear said. He tipped his shot glass toward them. “I’m only happy we could help in some small way.”
“Is there anything else we can both do for you?” she cooed.
“Girls, I’m good as a man can get,” Shear said. He threw an arm around each of them and pulled him to his sides.
“Anything you’d like to watch us do?” the other girl, Cleary Jones, asked in his other ear.
Shear chuckled at her offer. “So that’s how it is, eh?”
“It is if you want it to be,” Cleary replied.
Before Shear could answer, the bartender’s accordion playing abruptly ceased. The drunken outlaws along the bar turned. The two men who had left so quickly earlier in the evening now stood in the middle of the plank floor, each wearing a tied-down holster on his hip. The butt of a Colt revolver stood near each gun hand.
“Brayton Shear?” said one of the men, a slim young fellow with a drooping mustache and a scar across the bridge of his nose.
Shear’s gunmen stood straighter at the bar.
“Who’s asking?” Shear replied.
“I’m Patton Clark,” said the young gunman. “This is my brother, Noland. “You’ve probably heard of us—the Clark brothers, out of Nogales?”
“I can’t say that I have,” said Shear. “But then I don’t get around to the cattle spreads or the sheep ranches.”
Duckwald stifled a laugh, and stared hard at the two young toughs.
“We’re neither cowhands nor sheep men,” said the other man, stepping up beside his brother. “We do gun work, and we do it well.” He stared at Shear. “Want to see some right now?”
The half-drunken gunmen stiffened along the bar. Their hands went to their gun butts. Shear stood firm, but ready to set them into action.
“Whoa there,” said Patton Clark, “that ain’t what he meant!” He held a hand up in a show of peace. He gave his brother a tense, angry look.
“No,” said Noland Clark, “I meant I’d show you some friendly, but slick, gun handling—maybe shoot a mug or two off the bartender’s head.”
Shear grinned and perked up and said in a mock but friendlier tone of voice, “There you go. That might be fun. What say you, bartender?”
“Good Lord, no!” said the bartender, the accordion squeezed tightly shut between his hands on a sour note. He gave the young gunmen a fiery stare. “Have you lost your damn mind, young fellow?”
“Well, there goes that idea,” Shear said to the Clark brothers. He shrugged. “Is there anything else we can do for you before you head back to the bunkhouse?”
“I told you we’re not cowhands,” said Noland.
“We wondered if you need any help,” said Patton, cutting his brother off.
Shear gestured toward the women hanging on his sides. “Do I look like I need any help here?”
Noland started to say something more, but his brother grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“You finally got it, eh?” Duckwald chuckled. The other men joined in as the two young men turned back toward the front door.
Patton stopped and said to Shear, “We saw the moon and star on your vest earlier. We were told you Black Valley Riders are square shooters. But maybe we were told wrong about it.”
“Hang on, Clark brothers,” said Shear as the two started toward the open front door. “Don’t get your bark on with Black Valley Riders, unless you’re tired of living.”
The two turned again and stared at Shear.
Shear gave them a thin, flat smile. “Hell yes, I’ve heard of the Clark brothers, everybody has. I was just testing your iron.”
The tension eased.
“But who told you about us?” Shear asked.
“Mingo Sentanza,” said Patton. “We know Mingo.”
“You used to,” said Shear. “Mingo is dead. He took a bad fall over in the hills. He wasn’t the only one. I lost a few men there.”
“That’s too bad,” said Patton.
Shear shrugged. “Too bad for them, but maybe a good thing for the Clark brothers.”
“We’re all ears,” said Patton.
“Have a drink,” said Shear. He jiggled both young women under his arms and. “Either of you need a sweet young whore?”
“We had them earlier,” said Noland. “A drink sounds good, though.”
“Right, business, eh?” said Shear, appraising the two. “I like that. Set them up, bartender,” he ordered, “then get back to the squeeze box while me and the Clarks have ourselves a little talk.”
“Obliged, Mr. Shear,” said Patton.
Noland nodded his thanks.
Shear lowered his hands and gave both doves a friendly slap on their backsides. “Go perch on somebody else’s shoulder, gals,” he told them.
While the bartender once again started filling glasses and mugs and playing the accordion, Shear and the Clarks stood at the corner of the bar and discussed the two young gunmen riding with him and his men. By the time they slid an empty whiskey bottle back across the bar, the music had changed from playing high-spirited Irish reels to squeezing out slow, soulful Spanish ballads.
The bartender stopped playing and asked, “Another bottle for the three of yas?”
“This one’s for the trail,” said Shear. He took out more gold coins and spread them on the bar. “You sure know how to squeeze that thing, barkeep,” he said, nodding at the accordion.
“Thank you, sir.” The bartender smiled and lowered his head in modesty.
Shear called out to his men along the bar, “Everybody get up some more gold for this wonderful man, show some appreciation before we leave.”
The men weaved and swayed drunkenly, their hands going into their pockets. But in a second, the sound of coins jingled in the air.
Seeing the glimmer of gold in the lamplight, Emma Fay said to Cleary, “We’d be dang fools to jump off this wagon.”
“I was just thinking that myself,” Cleary whispered back to her, the two sitting up on the bar edge, one on either side of George Epson.
Emma Fay eased down off the bar and walked toward Shear. “Hey, big fellow, if you’re leaving, can Cleary and I ride along with you a ways?”
“Are you sure? It’s a rough trail we ride, little dovey,” Shear warned her.
“Sometimes a gal likes it rough,” said Emma, a hand cocked on her hip.
Shear looked at his men and saw the eager look on their whiskey-lit faces. He grinned. “Well, what the hell? You gals grab what you’re taking. Let’s ride up out of here.”
“Who’re they riding with?” asked Longley with a hopeful look.
The men all moved forward toward the two women.
Emma held up a hand and said, “Easy, fellows. Cleary and I will sort of switch from one of you to the other and make do.”
The bartender shook his head and hurried along the bar raking gold coins into his palm. Somewhere on the empty outskirts of Alto Meca, a thin rooster crowed in the blue darkness.
Chapter 25
During the night, the ranger and the bounty hunters had moved the Gatling gun from beneath the cliff overhang and set it up inside the barn doors atop the gold wagon. Atop the tall boulder, Sandoval had laid out a folded wool blanket and arranged his Swiss rifle and ammunition alongside Thorn’s battered naval telescope. From his higher position the young bounty hunter could watch the winding trail that Shear and his men would ride back on from Alto Meca, without being seen himself.
Without disturbing the lock on the front barn door to which Brayton Shear carried the key, the three had managed to gain entrance through a small rear door. When they’d finished setting up the big gun, its barrels pointed at the front doors, they had even swept away any sign of their footprints. They had hitched their horses out of sight behind a large stone sticking out of the hillside.
It was almost daylight when the ranger stepped out of the cabin through a short side door and carried a cup of coffee over to Thorn inside the barn.
“You read my mind, Ranger,” Thorn said, taking the hot tin cup from the ranger’s gloved hand into his own.
“I poured a canteen full and carried it up to your son,” Sam said.
Thorn sipped the coffee through a gust of steam. “I know, I saw you. Obliged,” he said. “How’s Tinnis Mayes doing in there?”
“He’s awake, sitting up,” said Sam, “keeping watch on Lilly and Freddie. I wouldn’t be out here otherwise. Those two are apt to do anything to let Shear know we’re waiting for him.” Sam looked at the stacks of ammunition laid out beside Thorn in the wagon bed. “You’re all right firing and reloading for yourself?”
Thorn just looked at him.
“I’ll get back inside,” Sam said, “before Freddie or Lilly decides to take advantage—”
Sam’s words stopped short as two shots were fired from the front porch of the cabin.
Running out the back door of the barn, Thorn right behind him, the ranger saw Freddie Dupree lying in the dirt out in front of the cabin. Tinnis stood behind him, his Colt Thunderer in his right hand, his left forearm gripping his wounded side. Pushing the gambler aside, Lilly ran screaming down to Freddie and pulled him to her heavy bosom. “You son of a bitch!” she shouted back at Tinnis, who slumped over against the door frame.
Stopping over Freddie, his own Colt drawn, the ranger looked down and saw the smoking derringer lying near his hand. Freddie groaned and opened his eyes.
“I knew that wasn’t the sound of a Thunderer I heard,” Sam said, stooping, picking up the small hideaway derringer.
“I thought you’d shot him, Tinnis,” Thorn called out to the gambler as he pulled Lilly to her feet. Freddie groaned and rubbed the back of his head.
“No . . .” The gambler had to take his time and catch his breath. “I cracked his head . . . but I caught up to him too late to stop him . . . I’m afraid.”
“There’s no way Shear didn’t hear the shots,” Thorn said. He looked at Sam with disappointment.
“Good! Good!” said Lilly. “I hope he did, you dirty sonsabitches!” she shouted at the three. She spun toward Tinnis. “And to think I used to consider you a friend.”
Sam helped Freddie to his feet. “Both of you get back inside.”
Freddie managed to cackle with glee even as he rubbed the welt on his head. “Did I do good, Lilly, ol’ gal?”
“Damned good,” Lilly said. “I’m proud of you.”
The two walked arm in arm past Tinnis, back into the cabin. As Sam walked in, Tinnis said, “I don’t know where he . . . got the pop gun, Ranger. But he broke for the door before . . . I could stop him.”
“I should have cuffed them to their chairs,” Sam said. He shoved the derringer into his belt. “Freddie had this hidden somewhere in here, just waiting for his chance to use it.”
“Damn right,” Freddie called out proudly from the corner of the cabin w
here he stood beside Lilly. She stood gently rubbing the back of his sore head.
“Well . . . what do we do now?” the gambler asked Thorn and the ranger when they’d passed him and stood in the middle of the floor. He left the open doorway and stood beside them.
“Same as before,” said Sam. “It’s gone too far to make any changes now. Shear has more gold waiting here than most thieves like him see in a lifetime of stealing. He’s not going to turn and ride away, gunshots or not.”
“He could be here any second,” Tinnis said, his voice sounding stronger now, out of necessity.
“Sandy has us covered,” said Thorn. “They won’t get any closer than his telescope range without him warning us.”
Shear and his men were less than two miles from the cliff side when they heard the two pops and a long echo in the distance. Several of the men straightened in their saddles and turned toward Shear, who rode along in their midst. Duckwald raised his face from between Cleary Jones’ breasts.
“What does that mean, Rudy?” Cleary asked, sitting straddled over his lap, facing him, her short dance hall dress pulled up over her pale thighs.
“Cover up, sweetheart,” said Duckwald. It means the party’s over.” He lifted her, turned her and sat her down in his lap facing forward.
Beside him, his brother-in-law, George Epson, said over his shoulder at Emma Fay sitting behind his saddle, slumped against his back, “That goes for you too. The party is damn sure over.” He shot Duckwald a sidelong glance. “Besides, I’m a married man—to his sister.”
Emma sighed and sat up from against him. Her arms had been encircling him, her hands down inside his unbuttoned shirt. She grumbled but drew her hands away.
“Now get down from here,” Epson said.
“And do what, walk?” Emma said in protest. “Cleary didn’t have to get down.”
“I don’t give a damn what Cleary did or didn’t have to do,” said Epson, “get the hell down.”
“Hey now! Easy there, George,” said Shear, riding in close and reaching out and taking Emma in his arm. He lifted her over onto his lap. “Let’s not let a couple of gunshots cause us to lose our manners.”
