Texas Gundown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He splashed water from the basin on his face and then dressed in his spare suit. He had sent everything he was wearing the day before out to be cleaned, and he had no idea when he would get the clothes back. As lawless as Sweet Apple was, it was possible someone might steal the garments and he would never see them again. Rubbing eyes grown gritty from lack of sleep, he stumbled down the stairs to the lobby, wondering what sort of evil concoction the cook had come up with for breakfast.

  The same clerk was still on duty at the desk, and the same sneer was on his narrow, pockmarked face. “Sleep well?” he inquired in a tone that made it clear he didn’t give a damn whether Seymour had slept well or not.

  Seymour muttered something meaningless, and was about to go past the desk when he saw the newspaper lying on it. One of the headlines caught his eye. He started to snatch up the paper, but then his natural politeness made him stop and ask the clerk, “Do you mind if I have a look at this?”

  The man snickered. “Help yourself, Mr. Standish. You’re the big story, after all.”

  Seymour swallowed hard as he picked up the newspaper. It was the Sweet Apple Gazette, according to the masthead. The headline emblazoned below that read:

  THE MOST COWARDLY MAN IN THE WEST?

  The subhead below that was New Arrival Encounters Local Man, Disgraces Self; Easterner Dubbed “Seymour the Lily-Livered.” The byline was J. Emerson Heathcote, Editor and Publisher.

  “That son of a bitch,” Seymour breathed as he read the story, hardly able to believe what his eyes were seeing. He was so upset that he didn’t even notice he had just cursed, which was completely uncharacteristic behavior for him.

  After pretending to befriend him and be sympathetic to his plight, the newspaperman had taken everything Seymour had told him and written a story about it, exaggerating the facts so that Seymour came across as even more of a bumbling, terror-stricken oaf than he actually had been. Anyone who read this couldn’t help but see him as a ludicrous figure, worthy only of scorn and ridicule. His reputation in Sweet Apple was ruined for all time.

  And Seymour was shaken to his core as he realized that Miss Maggie O’Ryan would probably read this newspaper story, too. Without him thinking about what he was doing, his hands clenched, crumpling the newspaper.

  “Hey!” the clerk objected. “I wasn’t through with that!”

  “Here then,” Seymour snarled. He threw the crumpled sheet onto the desk and then wheeled around to stalk toward the front door of the hotel.

  “Where you going, Seymour?” the clerk called after him in a mocking tone.

  “Better be careful. Somebody might say ‘boo!’ to you!”

  Seymour ignored the grinning jackanapes. He had finally been pushed too far. He flung the door open and went outside, ready for a showdown.

  J. Emerson Heathcote was going to rue the day he’d made sport of Seymour Standish!

  Chapter 15

  Seymour hadn’t gone half a block toward the newspaper office before someone called out, “Hey, it’s Seymour the Lily-Livered!”

  “Don’t look at him crossways,” another man said with a laugh. “He’s liable to faint dead away!”

  “I hear tell he’s the scaredest man west o’ the Mississippi,” put in a third man.

  “Hell, he’s the biggest coward in the whole damned country!”

  The laughter swelled and grew until it threatened to overwhelm Seymour as he came to a stop and just stood there with his head down. He was still angry, but there was nothing he could do in the face of the whole town’s mirth at his expense. And there was nothing he could do about Heathcote’s newspaper story either, he realized. The damage was already done. Everyone in town knew who he was. Knew what he was. And even though he had stormed out of the hotel with the idea of giving Heathcote a well-deserved thrashing, Seymour knew that was never going to happen. The journalist was larger than him, and anyway, Seymour was no fighter. He turned to slink back toward the hotel. He would stay in his room until the next eastbound train arrived, he decided, and then he would leave Sweet Apple and go home. Uncle Cornelius would be disappointed in him, and he would be letting his father’s memory down, but there was nothing Seymour could do about that. He just wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier.

  Then he thought again about Maggie O’Ryan, and to his great surprise, he felt his backbone stiffening. The trio of loafers who had first started poking fun at him still lounged nearby on the boardwalk, laughing at him. He turned toward them and snapped, “That’ll be quite enough out of you three.”

  The men fell silent and stared at him in obvious surprise. They were in their thirties, roughly dressed, with beard stubble on their faces and guns on their hips. Not the sort of men who Seymour should be confronting at all. He knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. He supposed he had lost his mind. But even so, it felt good to put them in their place.

  Unfortunately, their surprise didn’t last long. One by one they scowled, and then the ugliest of the three, a dark-complected man with an eye that tended to wander, stepped forward and growled, “What’d you say, dude?”

  Seymour’s instincts told him to apologize, to grovel if necessary, and then to get back into the hotel as quickly as possible.

  But instead of doing that, he glared right back at the man and declared, “I said that’ll be enough out of you three.” He didn’t even have the sense to leave it at that. He added, “I won’t put up with any more childish behavior from ruffians and louts!”

  The laughter in the street had died away as Seymour confronted the three men. Obviously, they weren’t the only ones who were shocked that he hadn’t turned tail and run. Everyone within earshot was staring now.

  “I think Seymour the Lily-Livered just called you a name, Jack,” one of the men gibed.

  A hideous grin appeared on the face of the man with the wandering eye. “Yeah, and he’s gonna be damned sorry about it, too.” He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt and sauntered closer to Seymour. “You got a gun, dude?”

  Seymour could have lied, but instead he swallowed and said, “As a matter of fact, I do own a firearm. I don’t have it with me, but—”

  “Go get it,” the man called Jack said. “Right now. You and me are gonna settle this like men—even if you are a worm!”

  Hoping against hope, Seymour said, “Are you suggesting that we have some sort of shooting competition—”

  “Haw!” Jack broke in. “That’s exactly what I’m suggestin’, you spineless little son of a bitch! And the prize is, the winner gets to live!”

  Seymour remembered the dime novels he’d read. “You . . . you’re saying that you want to have . . . a shoot-out. . . with me?”

  “Damn right! Now go get your gun!”

  Seymour began to tremble inside. His rage evaporated. This madman was going to kill him if he didn’t do something right now to stop it.

  “Listen, perhaps I spoke too hastily—”

  “Forget it!” Jack roared. “It’s too late for that now! I ain’t interested in no damn apology. Get your gun and face me out there in the street like a man!”

  Seymour’s mind cast about frantically for any reasonable excuse. “But I don’t . . . I don’t have a gunbelt and a holster, like the one you’re wearing.”

  That brought more laughter from Jack’s friends. They slapped their thighs and roared. Jack just sneered and said, “Tell you what, dude. I’ll let you hold your gun while we do this. I don’t mind givin’ you a little advantage.”

  Except it wasn’t really an advantage, Seymour thought. By the time he could lift the revolver Rebecca had given him, pull back the hammer, aim the weapon, and press the trigger, Jack would have had time to shoot him three or four times at least.

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?” he asked miserably.

  “You mean you want to back down like a whipped dog?” Jack laughed, and it was one of the most evil sounds Seymour had ever heard. “Sure, but you got to act like a dog, mister. Get down on all fours and bark f
or me.”

  Seymour swallowed. This was going to be the worst humiliation of his life. But he could do it. He had to do it. Otherwise his life wouldn’t continue much longer.

  “But that ain’t all,” Jack went on, perhaps sensing that Seymour was about to give in. “When you’re done barkin’, you’re gonna crawl over here on your belly like the cur you are and lick my boots.” He pointed down at his feet.

  Seymour couldn’t help but look. Jack wore his denim trousers tucked into high- topped black boots. The boots were filthy, covered with dung both dried and recent and God knows what else.

  “You . . . you’re speaking metaphorically, of course. You can’t expect me to . . to actually lick—”

  “Either that or go get that gun o’ yours, Seymour.”

  By now Seymour was shaking all over. The street had fallen silent again as the bystanders waited to see what he would do. He lowered himself into a crouch, preparing to get down on all fours as Jack had ordered. He heard mutters of surprise from some of the townspeople, as if they couldn’t believe he would go along with such horrible humiliation.

  He could barely believe it himself, but he had no choice. He put a hand on the boardwalk . . .

  Then glanced along the street toward the far end of the settlement. He saw a building there with a couple of cottonwood trees next to it. The door was open, and children were going inside. Seymour realized that had to be the school where Maggie taught.

  She was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean anything. She didn’t have to see what was about to happen. She would hear all about it, probably before the day was over. And no matter what she had already heard about him, or no doubt al- ready read in the newspaper, this would be worse. This would be so bad that she would never be able to see or talk to him again without thinking about how he’d crawled like a dog and licked this man’s filthy boots. He would rather be dead than suffer through that, he realized. He took a deep breath and pushed himself upright. “All right,” he said. “I’ll fetch my firearm.”

  Jack’s bushy eyebrows went up in surprise. “You’re serious, dude?”

  Seymour made himself nod. “That’s right. The gun is up in my hotel room. You’ll wait here for me?”

  Jack’s face darkened with anger. “I never run out on a gunfight yet, blast you! Damn right I’ll wait for you. Fact is, I’ll be waitin’ right out yonder in the street! Waitin’ to kill you!”

  Seymour jerked his head in a nod and turned toward the door of the hotel. As he pulled it open and went inside, a tiny voice in the back of his head told him to get his bags from the room, head out the rear door of the hotel, and keep going.

  The clerk didn’t know what had been going on outside. “Back already?” he asked with a smirk.

  “That’s right,” Seymour heard himself saying. “I have to get my gun. I’m going to have a shoot-out.”

  The clerk stared at him as he climbed the stairs.

  As Seymour reached his room, he asked himself again if he truly knew what he was doing. If he went through with this, it would be tantamount to committing suicide. Was his pride worth losing his life? Was it worth it to keep a woman he hadn’t even met until less than twelve hours earlier from thinking badly of him? Despite the obvious answers to those questions, he found himself opening his carpetbag and taking out the wooden case that contained the revolver Rebecca had given him. There were bullets in the case as well. With trembling fingers Seymour opened the gate on the side of the weapon and began thumbing the cartridges into the empty chambers of the cylinder.

  He loaded it full, then held the gun down at his side. It was heavy. He tried to pull it up quickly, just to see if he could do it. His fingers slipped on the walnut grips and he almost dropped it. Perhaps when he fired, he should grip his right wrist with his left hand, just to steady it, he thought. Then he told himself how ridiculous that was. He would be dead before he ever got to that point.

  By the time he reached the lobby again, the clerk had heard what was about to happen. “Listen, Mr. Standish,” the man said. “Jack Keller’s pretty good with a gun.

  If you throw down on him, he’ll kill you.”

  “He insulted me,” Seymour said.

  “He insults a lot of people.” The clerk lowered his voice. “If you tell anybody I said this I’ll deny it, but Keller’s a jackass, just like a lot of folks in this town. He’ll gun you down and won’t blink an eye.”

  “If you’re worried that I already paid you for a week in advance,” Seymour said, “don’t be. You can keep the money.”

  The clerk shook his head. “That ain’t it. I know I gave you a hard time, Mr. Standish, and I wasn’t the only one. But I’d hate to see anybody get killed over a little hoorawing.”

  “I don’t know what that is, but I assume you mean being laughed at and humiliated.” Seymour hefted the gun. “This is supposed to settle everything, isn’t it?

  This will make everything right. We’ll see.”

  He turned toward the door.

  “Damn it, Mr. Standish—”

  Seymour walked out before the clerk could say anything else—and before he could lose his nerve. If he suddenly regained his sanity, he would probably turn and run screaming back up to his room. He could crawl into the bed and pull the covers up over his head . . .

  Jack Keller was standing in the middle of the street, as promised. The morning sun cast a dark shadow behind him.

  The news of the impending gunfight had traveled swiftly. The boardwalks were crowded with people who had come out to watch. Seymour saw the avid expressions on their faces and felt a little sickened. They were eager to see his blood spilled in the street. Eager to see him die.

  “Well, dude,” Keller drawled. “You came back out. I didn’t figure you would. And you really do have a gun.”

  Seymour forced himself to nod. His voice sounded strange in his ears as he said, “I told you I did.”

  Keller lifted his left hand and made a lazy gesture. “Come on then. Let’s get this over with.”

  Seymour took a step out into the street. His legs began to shake so bad he wasn’t sure if he could walk all the way out there. He willed his muscles to work and took one step, then two.

  Pierre Delacroix came hurrying from the direction of the Black Bull. The saloon probably never closed. He caught up to Seymour when Seymour was only a few steps from the boardwalk and gripped his arm.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, mon ami?”

  “Hey, let him alone, Frenchy!” Keller called. “He’s a full-growed man. He can make up his own mind when he wants to die. Haw!”

  “M’sieu Standish, no one will think less of you if you abandon this mad idea,” Delacroix went on.

  Seymour looked over at him and said, “We both know that’s not true, Mr. Delacroix. It . . . it’s too late to back out now.”

  “But look at yourself! You are shaking so much you can barely hold that pistol.

  How in the world are you going to shoot it out with an experienced gunman like Keller?”

  “I’ll manage somehow,” Seymour said.

  “Or die,” Delacroix said.

  Seymour managed to smile slightly and raise his shoulders in a little shrug.

  “Get out of the street, Frenchy, or you’ll be next,” Keller warned.

  Delacroix could only sigh, shake his head, and step back. “God be with you, mon ami,” he murmured.

  Seymour resumed his unsteady march toward the center of the street. The gun seemed to weigh more with every step, so that by the time he reached the place where he was going and turned to face Keller, the weapon pulled him to the side. His knees shook and his mouth was dry and his pulse hammered in his ears like the pounding of distant drums. Bitterness filled his throat. He worried that he would be sick, right here in front of everyone who had come out to watch the gun- fight.

  Not that he would have to endure the embarrassment of that for long if it did happen, he reminded himself. Once he was dead, he would be past any sha
me.

  “Seymour, you’re shakin’ so hard you look like a little breeze’d knock you right over,” Keller said with that ugly, confident grin. “You sure you want to go through with this? You can still lick my boots instead, if you want.”

  “I’m here,” Seymour choked out. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Keller laced his fingers together, cracked his knuckles, and stretched. His stance was full of contempt. “Well, if you’re sure.”

  Suddenly, one of his friends called out to him from the boardwalk. “Hey, Jack, wait a minute.”

  Keller glanced over at him, clearly annoyed. “What the hell is it, Dugan?”

  “I was just thinkin’ . . . you can see how scared this fella is.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a story about him in the paper this mornin’. I seen the headline. It says he’s the most cowardly man in the West.”

  That headline had been a question, not a statement, Seymour thought wildly.

  “Yeah, what about it?” Keller said.

  “You’ve faced down some hombres who were pretty good with their guns.”

  “Damn right I have! Killed six men, ever’ one of ’em in a fair fight!”

  “What do you think it’s gonna do to your rep when folks hear that you gunned down—” The man called Dugan pointed at Seymour and said with utter contempt,

  “This.”

  Keller frowned as he considered what his friend had just said. After a moment, he replied, “You might have a point there, Dugan.”

  “You heard what Cole Halliday said about him yesterday. The likes o’ him ain’t worth wastin’ a bullet on. It really would be just like shootin’ a dog.”

  Keller lifted his left hand and rasped his fingers over his beard-stubbled jaw.

  “Yeah. Folks might start callin’ me the man who shot Seymour the Lily-Livered. I ain’t sure I’d want that.”

  Dugan shook his head. “I know I wouldn’t.”

  Seymour had watched and listened to the exchange with a mixture of fear, amazement, and growing anger. Now he burst out, “Are you saying that now you don’t want to fight me?”