by A. W. Hart
There was not a soul on the street. It was eerie. He walked to Moses & Bloomfield’s store first. It was open, but he was the only customer. Reno was glad. What he wanted to buy was nobody’s business but his.
“Howdy. Do you have a double-barrel shotgun in stock?” he asked.
The shopkeep, Moses, or maybe Bloomfield, said, “Not much pickings. If you want a new one, you’re out of luck. If you want a ten gauge, same thing. I got an older twelve gauge. She’s seen some use, but she’s mechanically fine.”
He went to a back room and returned with a double-barreled percussion shotgun with thirty-six-inch barrels.
Reno took it and looked it over.
“You got a hammer and punch or screwdriver I can use for a minute?” he asked.
The man presented him with both from under the counter. Reno was familiar with shotguns like this one. He had grown up providing the family with game for dinner with one just like it.
He placed the gun on the counter and tried to pry the barrel wedge out with the screwdriver, which did not work. He flipped the shotgun over and placed the tip of the blade against the smaller end of the barrel wedge and tapped it out with the hammer.
He grinned at the shopkeep. “My pa always said you could fix anything with a big enough hammer.”
Reno removed the twin barrels and held them up to the only light in the store. They were dark like he expected, and a little pitted inside. But he figured the old gal had more than a few shots left. Maybe a lifetime more.
“How much?” he asked as he reassembled it.
“Five dollars,” the man said.
“I’d give your four if I can borrow a hacksaw for about two minutes right here,” Reno countered. The man nodded and went for the tool.
Reno sawed the twin barrels off three inches beyond the end of the forestock. He looked at it and was not satisfied.
“You got a small wood saw?” he asked.
“You’re asking for a lot for four dollars,” the man said.
Reno slapped a silver dollar on the counter and the man walked off, hacksaw in hand.
“Fine customer service,” Reno growled under his breath. He really thought “Mule’s butt,” but his upbringing did not allow such language. Except by his sister.
Several minutes later, the buttstock had been sawed off a couple of inches behind the handgrip. Reno brushed the sawdust from the stock and the metal filings from the barrel onto the floor and left the spare parts on the counter.
“Now, a charger full of four double F powder, a pound of buckshot, and a tin of percussion caps to fit, please. Oh, and add two tin coffee cups.” The deal was recomputed, and he paid and loaded up. Reno stuck the two feet of alley sweeper in his belt under the back of his heavy lined-canvas coat and walked out.
With the fourteen-inch barrel, the shot would spread sooner. He would not be taking forty-yard shots at Canada geese with this thing, but at ten feet, it would almost cut a man in half. And maybe the one next to him. Reno smiled. The odds had just gotten better.
He went into the café, ordered six biscuits with bacon to go, and had the counterman fill his new tin mugs with coffee. The shotgun still secure, the bag of bacon biscuits in his deep side coat pockets, he carefully walked back to the hotel and up to the room, spilling hot coffee only once.
Reno called, “Sara, It’s me.” She answered from behind the door, so he set the cups on the floor and unlocked it. He pushed it open and took the cups in. They were still steaming.
“Okay, you earned the right to be my favorite brother for a little while longer,” she said as she took the first sip of coffee.
“Oh, I earned the right to be your favorite and only brother for a lot longer,” he said, producing the bag from his pocket. He handed her two biscuits, and she jumped up and hugged him.
“I am so glad you’re my brother. Some of the time, anyway.”
“Be gladder,” he said, producing the sawed-off shotgun and setting it on the table holding the pitcher and bowl.
She nodded, still chewing.
He noticed a skim of ice on the water in the pitcher and tipped it over enough for her to see.
“Guess you won’t be taking a sponge bath today, huh?”
She just chewed vigorously and looked at him like he was crazy.
She finally swallowed, and as she was taking another bite, she said, “You should talk.” She began chewing anew.
After breakfast, they sat down to plan. He sat on the room’s only chair, Sara on the bed. Their bedrolls had been re-rolled and were ready for replacement at the rear of their saddles.
“It’s even stranger-feeling outside than it looks out the window,” Reno said.
Sara shrugged and waited.
“We almost have to play it by ear. I propose for me to broach them and tell him to surrender. Of course, he won’t. You somehow move around to one side of me first, looking like a harmless boy, but with the alley sweeper hidden in your coat. Move forward so I can shoot him and one gun thug, and you take out the other two without him in the way. Sound good?” he asked.
“Sounds good under ideal conditions, which we have never experienced yet. My vote is we pass on Adams and see what wanted posters the town marshal has instead. Any way you crack it, Reno, it’s still four against the two of us. If we are going to stay alive long enough to do half of what Pa charged us with in his dying breath, we need to figure the odds and not take on impossible ones. You are quick with your guns, no doubt about it. But there are people quicker. People who don’t care if they die today or fifty years from now. Every time you face somebody down, your odds of surviving the next one get smaller.”
Reno did not have a response for her. He knew she was right. Instead, he pawed through his saddlebags until he found a three-foot latigo strip. He soaked it in the icy water he poured from the pitcher into the bowl.
Reno picked up the shotgun and tied it tightly around the pistol grip. Most of the latigo was a big loop. It would dry tight as a drum.
Sara, or him, if he chose, could sling the shotgun around their neck and close their coat. The shotgun would not hang down below the hem of the coat but had enough rawhide latigo to allow shooting it while still attached with the coat open.
“Why don’t we walk down to the marshal’s office and see what they have in the way of wanted posters?” Sara suggested as she brushed her hair, twisted it up, and put her Stetson on over it.
Her brother looked at her. It was getting harder to pass her off as a boy, even with her hair hidden under her hat. Her face was beginning to give her away. She’d be better off in this business if she had been born homely, but no, she was the Beautiful Angel of Death. Capitalizing on her fame just made her a bigger target.
Reno wanted him to always be the target, not Sara. It was his duty.
Sara knew it. She thought the concept was a pile of manure, and she often reminded him it was. In those words, or worse.
They left Apache to guard their rifles and saddlebags. He was pretty happy after his two bacon biscuits and stayed dutifully. A nap was in order, now that it was warming up a bit and he had a full stomach.
They walked downstairs and out onto the street.
“You know, you are right, Reno. It feels really strange out here, as if there is some sort of energy in the air. Kinda like before lightning strikes. There’s an odd glow. I don’t like it. If I were you, I’d think the world was coming to an end. But I’m not you, so there has to be some other explanation,” she said.
“The fella at the hotel said it used to get like this in Missouri before tornados hit. Tornados seem the most likely case to me.”
“Tornados are even scarier. I don’t know much about tornados, but it seems like they are something you can’t fight. If they get you, you are history, right?”
“The hotel man said so,” Reno responded, having exhausted his total knowledge on the subject.
They went into the town marshal’s office.
“Howdy. I’m Reno Bass. T
his is my sister, Sara. We are bounty hunters.”
“Hey. My name is George Ringo. I’m deputy marshal here. The marshal is back East in St. Louis for a few days, so I am in charge. What can I do for you?”
“First off, we want to tell you there is a wanted dead or alive fugitive gambling every night at Paddy’s Bar,” Sara began.
“Wilton Adams and his three gun thugs. I know. No way I can go up against them. I can’t take a reward anyway. It’s against my deputy contract with the town,” Ringo interrupted.
“What if the three of us took them down, and we gave you a third of the reward on the side, just between us?” she continued.
“Money won’t help if I’m dead. I ain’t no gunfighter. I just carry drunks off to jail and collect license fees from the gambling and whoring places. The marshal, even if he was here, ain’t either. You’d think with our murder rate, we’d have some hot gun-wearing the star in this town. Maybe one day. Not now.”
“Which takes us to Sara’s second thing,” Reno said. “Do you have any good Dead or Alive posters we can see?”
“Naw. I got a couple small-dollar Wants. They ain’t dead or alive. None of them rise to the dead part. They are hundred to two hundred dollar ones for non-lethal stabbing, robbing a store at gunpoint, and such stuff.
“We are looking for bigger fish. But if any are locals we can help you with, we might consider it,” Sara said.
“Are you really a lady bounty hunter?” Ringo asked.
“I really am.” She unbuttoned her heavy coat. There were two revolvers and the sawed-off in plain sight.
He pulled out a short stack of Wants and thumbed through. He withdrew one and looked at it and passed it to her.
“Hiram Shook, wanted for strong-arm robbery in here in Hays City, Kansas. $100 reward.”
She looked at Reno.
“George, what’s the story here? I never saw a poster for a strong-arm robbery,” Reno asked.
“He gets drunk about every night, sometimes earlier. Drinks at the Number One Saloon. Beats the dickens out of somebody daily. Occasionally helps himself to some of their money to buy more hooch. The town council got tired of it and funded the reward. He’s a big, tough character. Not a gunman. He does pack a long skinning knife and has used it to scare people off sometimes. Never used it on anybody, as far as I know, but he’s sure mean enough to. I’d say if anybody shot him for threatening with the knife, it would be clear cut self-defense.”
Reno looked at Sara and saw the slight change in her pupils.
“Okay, George. We’ll bring him in. If we have to kill him in self-defense, will the council still pay?”
“Oh, yeah. Gladly. Killing him would take care of the Shook problem once and for all. He usually gets in around seven. He starts drinking after supper.”
“Where does he work? Would we be better off taking him at work?”
“He’s one of our three town blacksmiths,” George Shook said.
“Oh, boy,” Sara commented to no one in particular.
“Got a set of nippers?” Reno asked the deputy.
“I’ll check. I’ve never handcuffed anybody before.”
“We might need them if he doesn’t resist with deadly force,” Reno explained.
Sara rolled her eyes. Sometimes, she just did not know about her brother.
“Here’s a pair. I got a key,” the deputy said, handing the rusty cuffs to Reno.
“Got some gun oil?” It was provided, and Reno lubricated the cuffs and tested the locks. They worked fine.
“George, in this Wanted, do we have to deliver the prisoner to you here at the jail? Or can we take him into custody and hand him over to you at the blacksmith shop?”
“I think I have to have him brought here by you. If you kill him, the body has to be brought here, too.”
“Okay. You want to come along and show him to us, and we’ll do the rest?” Sara asked.
“I’ll show his place to you, but I’d rather not be seen participating. He will get out soon enough and beat the hell out of me. Unless y’all go ahead and kill him.”
“We might be killers, but we are not murderers,” Reno said.
Sara stared at him, thinking, Where does he get this stuff?
Reno put the heavy iron handcuffs, or “nippers,” in his coat pocket and headed out the door. We should have brought Apache, he thought but did not say.
A five-minute walk later, they were at the smithy. The deputy scurried off quickly.
A massive man was hammering a red-hot piece of iron on an anvil. Reno and Sara wore heavy coats. He wore bib overhauls over his bare chest. His arms were bigger than Reno’s thighs. He was bald. The only hair on his head was a large black beard.
He looked like a man one would not want to tangle with.
“Hiram Shook? We have a warrant for your arrest for strong-arm robbery. Put the hammer down and come with us,” Reno said in his most authoritative voice.
“Come with you and what company of cavalry, little boy?” the huge man asked.
“Just me and my sister. Nobody else is needed.”
“How ‘bout I squash you and have your sister for lunch?” Shook asked.
“You’d be dead before the first happens, and God help you about the second,” Reno said. “So just set the hammer down now and come with us. We’ll have to put the nippers on you. It is common practice,” Reno invented.
“Why don’t you come and take the hammer away from me?”
“Reno, this is not going well,” Sara said. “Why don’t I just kill him?”
“Lady, I am right here listening to you. Maybe I will come for you first,” Shook said in a booming voice.
He stepped forward toward Sara.
Reno drew and put a .44 ball through the hand holding the hammer.
Shook dropped the hammer, grabbed the wounded hand, and stared at Reno.
He thought for a minute and then charged.
There was a loud boom, and he folded up with all twelve buckshot balls Reno had loaded into the right barrel in his stomach.
Sara stood there, holding the smoking shotgun.
“You know, Reno, I like this thing. It works well,” she remarked.
Reno walked over to the blacksmith, who was not breathing. His eyes were still open, frozen in a look of complete surprise. Reno cuffed him just in case. In case of what was something he had not thought through about people who had been shot. Shook was very dead. Not just dead, very dead.
“Reno?”
“Yes, Sara?”
“How in hell are we going to get this three-hundred-pound sack of manure over to the marshal’s office? Waiting for the tornado to blow him over there might not be the best plan.”
Reno walked out back of the smithy, where he found a mule. By the door were some sacks of feed covered with a heavy canvas tarp. He located a sawbuck pack saddle and some rope.
Reno brought the tarp into the blacksmith shop and put it down beside the dead blacksmith.
“Would you give me a hand getting him onto the tarp?” he asked Sara.
With a fair amount of grunting and straining, they got him rolled over.
Reno tied a length of rope to the corner grommets on either side.
A few minutes later, he brought the mule around, saddled with the sawbuck. He tied the two ropes to the sawbuck pack saddle, tossed the hammer on as evidence, and led the mule out of the building.
Sara hung the Closed sign on the door as she shut it.
Deputy Ringo was standing at the door, waiting for them.
“I see he resisted. I figured he would,” he greeted them. “We will need to get a certificate of death from the doc, and I will walk with you over to the city hall to claim your bounty.”
“Sounds reasonable. Where’s this doc?” Reno asked.
“His office is six doors down. Why don’t you go get him? I will take the report from Miss Bass, and you can sign your half when you get back with Doc.”
“On the way,” Reno said,
leaving.
“Would you write out a statement of what happened?” he asked Sara.
She sat at his desk with a blank sheet and an ink pen.
“Bounty hunters Sara and Reno Bass attempted to take one Hiram Shook, blacksmith, into custody under a warrant for strong-arm robbery.” She wrote in the date and time. “He resisted arrest with violence and attempted to murder both agents with a large hammer. Reno Bass shot the hammer out of his hand. He continued to attack and was shot by Sara Bass, whereupon he died.”
She handed it to the deputy.
“Perfect. Now both of you have to sign it, I present it to the council with a death certificate, and you get your money right away.
Reno appeared with the physician. The old doctor looked at Shook with his eyes rolled back and a massive hole through his middle, nudged him with a boot, and said, “Yup, he’s dead.” They went inside, and he completed the death certificate and left.
“Reno, you want to go over and get the undertaker. I’ll take Miss Sara to the city clerk to get y’all’s money.”
“I will. Saw his place on the way to the doc’s. We used Shook’s mule to drag him over on a travois. Where do you want the mule? There’s plenty of feed for him at the blacksmith’s shop.”
“I’ll take care of him. The undertaker might want to drag him back on the rig you put together, so leave everything be until they decide. Not like him and his assistant can put Shook on a stretcher and walk him back.”
“Seems to be a crowd gathering out front. First folks Sara and I have seen on the streets today,” Reno said.
“Rumors are we have tornados on the way. I suspect it’s true,” the deputy responded.
As Reno walked down the muddy main street, the sky turned dark. He could see lightning in the clouds. Thunder rolled every now and then.
He reached the undertaker’s and went in and explained what had gone on. The undertaker and his assistant put their coats on and walked back to the marshal’s office with Reno.
As they approached, shots were fired inside Paddy’s Bar. Wilton Adams and his three henchmen came running out and jumped on horses tied to the hitch rail.
A fourth man ran out and pointed at Adams.
“Hey, you are stealing my horse. Get off right now.” He pulled a revolver and fired high, knocking the hat off Adams’ head. Adams drew and fired, dropping the man in the doorway.