McCormick shook his head. “Well, I wish you all the luck in the world. Lord knows you deserve a break, for a change.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go on back. I keep a tub heated up most of the time, and it just so happens I got one goin’ now.”
A door in the back wall of the barbershop led into a canvas walled rear area where several large galvanized tin tubs were sitting. A small fire burned under one of them, the flames just large enough to keep the water in the tub warm. Off to one side sat a massive iron pot where a larger flame could be kindled to heat the water that was then dumped into the tubs with pitch-lined buckets.
“Shuck those duds and climb in, Harry,” Scratch told Winston. “Bo and me will see to it that you don’t drown.”
Winston looked reluctant. “It’s been a while since I had a bath.”
“We can tell,” Bo said. “Go ahead, Harry. It’ll be all right.”
“Well…all right.” Winston took his spectacles off, folded the stems carefully, and handed them to Bo. “You’ll take care of them for me, won’t you? I don’t see very well without them.”
“Sure,” Bo told him. “Don’t worry about them.”
While Winston began taking off his filthy work clothes, Bo held the spectacles up to the light that came through the entrance into the bath area. The lenses were so smeared it was hard to believe that Winston could see anything with the spectacles, let alone without them. Bo pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, breathed on one of the lenses to fog it up, and began cleaning it.
Without his clothes on, Winston was so pale and scrawny, he looked like a fella on the verge of starving to death. He climbed awkwardly into the tub and sank down in the warm water.
Scratch used the toe of his boot to prod the pile of clothes Winston had left on the ground and said, “We should’ve got him some more duds before bringin’ him down here. If he puts these back on, he’ll be almost as dirty as he was when he climbed in there.”
Bo regarded his handiwork with the spectacles. He wasn’t sure if he was improving the situation or just making it worse. He said, “I can walk over to the general store and pick up a few things for him, if you don’t mind staying here and watching him by yourself.”
“I reckon I can handle that chore,” Scratch said dryly.
Bo refolded the spectacles and slipped them into his coat pocket. “I’ll be back in a few minutes then.” He left the bathing area and walked back through the barbershop.
A ladder-back chair sat to one side in the bathing area. Scratch picked it up, reversed it, and straddled it. He reached into his buckskin jacket, pulled out the makin’s, and with a satisfied sigh began to roll himself a quirly.
“Doin’ all right in there, Harry?” he called to Winston.
“Yes, I…I think so,” the former lawyer replied. “The water’s awfully hot, though.”
Scratch doubted that. The tub hadn’t been steaming. The water was probably only lukewarm, but that might feel hot to somebody who hadn’t had a bath in a long time.
“There’s some soap there on the edge of the tub,” Scratch said as he spilled tobacco from his pouch onto a paper. “Get it and give yourself a good scrubbin’ all over.”
“All right…Uh, Deputy Morton…”
Scratch heard the footsteps behind him at the same time as Winston spoke with a warning tone in his voice. The silver-haired Texan grimaced. He had made the same sort of mistake that he had cautioned Jake Reilly against only a short time earlier. He had sat down with his back partially toward the entrance from the barbershop. Not only that, he had his hands full at the moment.
“Hey there, mister,” a harsh voice said.
Scratch turned his head to look over his shoulder. Three men had just stepped out of the barbershop into the canvas-walled bathing area. They were roughly dressed, hard-faced men, all three of them gun-hung. In fact, one of the men packed two irons, just like Scratch. And all of them looked like they knew how to use those weapons.
“If you’re lookin’ for a bath, boys, you’ll have to wait,” Scratch said, keeping his tone light.
“What we’re lookin’ for are the sons o’bitches who shot up the Top-Notch and the Lariat earlier today and killed one o’ our pards,” the two-gun hombre said. He had an ugly face topped by carroty hair under a squashed-down hat. “You’re one of ’em, ain’t you? One of those bastards who calls hisself a lawman?”
“What do you aim to do if I am?”
Ugly Face snarled. “We aim to kill you, that’s what! And then we’ll finish settlin’ the score with your pards!”
“Well, then, boys,” Scratch said with a sigh, “I guess you got it to do. Duck, Harry!”
And with that he erupted up off of the chair.
After leaving the barbershop, Bo walked up the street to the Abbott & Carson General Mercantile Emporium. It was a big frame building that took up an entire block by itself, with a long loading dock out front where wagons could pull up and supplies could be stacked in their beds. This bustling enterprise had grown from a tiny frontier trading post, according to Rawhide. That was the way of civilization, Bo reflected. Things always got bigger.
Sometimes they even got better…but not always.
He climbed the steps to the loading dock and walked through the double doors that stood open. The store was high-ceilinged and somewhat cavernous inside, with wooden shelves full of merchandise taking up most of the area. More merchandise was in glass-fronted counters along the side walls, and farm implements, tools, rope, and other goods hung on hooks and pegboards on the walls behind those counters. Toward the rear of the store were huge barrels of sugar, flour, salt, crackers, and pickles. Another glass-fronted counter that ran from one side of the store to the other contained rifles, handguns, shotguns, bowie knives, axes, and hatchets. As far as Bo could tell, a fella could get almost anything he needed to survive on the frontier here, but there were things for the ladies, too, such as bolts of cloth, colorful beads and other notions, and shelves full of canned goods. Considering the selection of merchandise available, Bo wasn’t surprised that the store was doing good business. At least a dozen customers were in the place, being helped by three white-aproned clerks.
Rawhide Abbott was there, too, which surprised Bo a little. Not too much, though, because he recalled that the young woman owned a half interest in this emporium. She struck Bo as being canny enough to keep a sharp eye on her holdings. She stood at the rear counter talking to a man in a gray suit who stood behind it.
Rawhide noticed Bo and motioned him back to join them. “This is my partner, Thatcher Carson,” she said as she nodded toward the man in the gray suit. “Thatcher, meet Deputy Bo Creel.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you lawmen,” Carson said as he reached across the counter to shake Bo’s hand. He was a little below medium height, clean-shaven, with sleek, iron-gray hair and the face of a terrier. His brisk accent marked him as not being a native Westerner. Bo pegged him as being from Massachusetts or somewhere else in the Northeast. Carson went on. “I’m glad to see that someone is finally going to make Whiskey Flats a decent place to live.”
“The town strikes me as already being a decent place to live, Mr. Carson,” Bo said. “It just needs a few of the rough edges sanded off.”
“Indeed. And all of those rough edges are south of the bridge. You’ve made a good start, Deputy. Keep up the good work.”
“Were you looking for me, Bo?” Rawhide asked.
“No, as a matter of fact, I came to get some new clothes for Harry Winston. He’s over at the barbershop getting a bath, and those rags he was wearing aren’t fit for man nor beast to put back on.”
“Amen to that,” Rawhide agreed. “Thatcher can fix you up.”
“I certainly can, Deputy,” Carson said. “What did you have in mind?”
“Maybe a white shirt and a plain black suit?” Bo suggested. “And a tie and some socks and underwear, of course. A couple of shirts, I guess. We want Harry to look like a judge once he’s himself again.”
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Carson frowned. “You’ve acquired yourself quite a project, Mr. Creel. I always liked Harry Winston and wish only the best for him, but it may be too late.”
“Somebody’s got to bet on the long shots,” Bo said, thinking not only of Winston but also Jake Reilly. Bo had gotten mixed up in this because he wanted to help Reilly, and now he had another lost soul to help out in Winston. Bo knew that he looked a mite like a preacher in his sober garb, and now he was starting to act like a sky pilot, too. He warned himself not to get too carried away. It wasn’t his job to help all the lost sheep in the world find their way home.
“I suppose so,” Carson said. “I’ll gather up those clothes myself.”
He bustled off to take care of that. Once Carson was gone, Bo said, “Seems like a nice fella. Probably pretty efficient, too.”
Rawhide laughed. “You got that right. Thatcher’s a regular eagle eye when it comes to watchin’ the pennies and makin’ sure that the store is run right. There’s no way I could’ve kept it going by myself. I reckon my father knew that, and that’s why he set things up the way he did.” She paused. “How’s Harry?”
“Getting cleaned up,” Bo replied. “And that’s liable to take—” He was about to say “a while,” but he didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Because at that moment, gunfire erupted somewhere down the street, filling the late afternoon air of Whiskey Flats with the sounds of violence once more.
Scratch dropped the tobacco pouch and paper as he exploded into action. His right hand flashed to the ivory-handled grips of the Remington on that hip. As he spun toward the gunmen, his left hand reached down and grabbed the top rung of the chair’s back. He dropped into a crouch as he slung the chair at them.
The gun-wolves had already begun to howl. The roar of shots pounded against Scratch’s ears as flames jetted from the muzzles of the revolvers wielded by the would-be killers. A bullet whistled past the silver-haired Texan’s ear, and more of them clawed through the air near his head.
But then the chair crashed into the man who was firing two guns and knocked him backward. That gave Scratch just enough respite to plant a slug in the middle of Ugly Face’s chest. The carrot-topped gunman rocked back and then forward, pain and disbelief etched on his face as he realized he was dying. He tried to raise his gun for another shot, but instead his knees unhinged and he pitched forward.
By then Scratch had filled his left hand, too, and that Remington blasted twice. The first shot narrowly missed the third gunman. The second shattered the man’s elbow on his gun arm. He grabbed at the injury with his other hand as he let out a high-pitched, keening wail of agony and staggered to the side.
That left the two-gun hombre who’d been knocked off balance by the chair, which had also busted his nose, from the looks of the blood streaming from it now. As he caught himself and started to raise his guns again, he found himself alone, facing a grim-visaged Texan who also had two guns. Unwilling to match his Colts against Scratch’s Remingtons, the man did the only sensible thing.
He turned and ran.
Scratch could have shot him in the back as the man galloped out through the barbershop. He considered the idea very seriously for a second before lowering the Remingtons. He’d never been a backshooter, and was too danged old to start now, he told himself.
A little splash came from behind him as Harry Winston stuck his head up from the water in the tub. Winston was gasping a little because he had held his breath and gone under when the shooting started. Now that the blasts had stopped, he blinked soapy water out of his eyes and asked, “Is…is it over?”
“I reckon,” Scratch said. He was pretty sure Ugly Face was dead, and the man with the shattered elbow had fallen to his knees and was whimpering as crimson rivers continued to flow down his arm. Scratch stepped over to Ugly Face and toed the hombre over onto his back, just to make certain.
He was looking into the glassy, lifeless stare in Ugly Face’s eyes when Harry Winston yelled, “Look out, Deputy!”
Scratch jerked his head around and saw that the other man had managed to get to his feet. In his left hand was a long-bladed knife he must have plucked from a sheath worn behind him, because Scratch hadn’t seen it earlier. The man howled curses as he lunged at Scratch and started to bring the knife down in a killing stroke.
Scratch still had both guns in his hands. He tilted up the barrel of the right-hand Remington and fired. The bullet caught the man in the throat at a rising angle, tore through the jugular so that a crimson fountain spurted from his neck, and then bored through his brain to explode out the back of his head in a grisly spray of blood, gray matter, and bone fragments. The varmint dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, the knife falling harmlessly to the ground beside him.
“Now it’s over, right enough,” Scratch said. “For these two stupid bastards anyway.”
“What…what about the other man?” Winston asked.
More shots thundered in the street.
Scratch turned to look in that direction. “Sounds like somebody’s dealin’ with him now.”
As Bo ran out the double doors of the emporium, he could tell that the shots came from the barbershop where he had left Scratch and Winston. He couldn’t see any reason why anybody would want to hurt the drug-addicted former lawyer, but some of the lawless element in Whiskey Flats might have seized this opportunity to try to rid themselves of one of the new lawmen. Three or four different guns were firing. It was a regular battle, and Bo cursed himself for leaving Scratch alone to face that ambush attempt.
But he was still a block from the barbershop when a running man burst out the front of the place and the guns fell silent. The man carried two revolvers, but didn’t look like he had any more interest in using them. He looked around frantically for a second, then pouched the irons and started to walk away as if he hadn’t had anything to do with the gun battle behind the barbershop.
Bo felt a little better now. The man had dashed out of the barbershop as if the Devil himself were behind him. It hadn’t been the Devil that had chased him out of there, Bo knew…although the fella responsible was called Scratch.
If the hombre thought he could fool anyone by his casual pose, he was sadly mistaken. The townspeople who were near the barbershop had seen him run out, and so had Bo. The Texan strode toward him determinedly. Bo was going to arrest the man and find out if there was anything behind this gunplay besides mere vengeance.
Suddenly, a single shot rang out behind the barbershop. Bo didn’t know what that was about, but he thought the report sounded like one of Scratch’s Remingtons going off. Whatever it was, it galvanized the gunman on the street into action again. He clawed his Colts out as he broke into a run and craned his neck to look over his shoulder, clearly afraid that somebody was going to come after him.
He should have been looking in front of him. Bo planted himself in the street and called, “Hold it!”
The man jerked toward him and swung the guns up. Bo had no choice but to pull his own Colt. He fired just as the other two guns erupted, and the three shots were so close together they sounded almost like one.
A slug kicked up dust at Bo’s feet, and he heard the wind-rip of the other as it passed by his head. Both of the gunman’s shots had been close, but clean misses anyway.
Bo’s bullet found its target, though. Dust puffed out from the breast pocket of the gunman’s shirt as the deadly piece of lead punched through it and on into the man’s chest. He swayed drunkenly as both guns slipped from his fingers and thudded to the street. For a long moment, he managed to stay on his feet, but then his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he collapsed.
Bo shook his head in disgust. He had wanted to take the hombre alive.
Scratch emerged from the barbershop while Bo was walking over to the man he had just killed. The Texans met at the corpse, looking at each other over the gunman’s body.
“You all right?” Scratch asked.
“Yeah. You?”
Scr
atch nodded. “Fine as frog hair. Can’t say the same for the two fellas lyin’ dead behind the barbershop, though.” “What about Harry?”
“He was still in the tub when I left, a mite shook up but not hurt.”
“So there were three of them, eh?”
“Yep. Claimed to be friends of the hombres we shot earlier in the day.”
Bo nodded. “I suspected as much. I would have liked to question one of them, though, just to be sure.”
Scratch gestured toward the corpse between them and asked, “Why’d you kill this one then?”
“Wasn’t time not to,” Bo said.
CHAPTER 14
Quite a crowd gathered around the Texans as everybody wanted to know what the shooting was about. Rawhide and Thatcher Carson appeared, having followed Bo out of the general store.
“Where’s Harry?” she asked.
“Still back yonder behind the barbershop, takin’ a bath,” Scratch told her with a nod of his head in that direction. “I reckon one of us better get over there and keep an eye on him, Bo. With all the shootin’ goin’ on, I wouldn’t put it past him to run off and try to hide somewhere.”
“Not Harry,” Rawhide insisted. “He’s not a coward. He’s just had some bad luck and made some bad decisions.”
Scratch headed for the barbershop again. Bo was about to ask Rawhide to fetch Ed Chamberlain, the undertaker, when Jonas McHale pushed his way through the crowd.
“Good Lord!” the mayor exclaimed at the sight of the dead man. “Now there are gun battles on this side of the bridge! I expected Marshal Braddock to put a stop to this sort of thing.”
“It’s all connected,” Bo told him. “This hombre, and the two Scratch killed over at the barbershop, were friends with the men we shot earlier. You’ll find that bringing law and order to a town isn’t an easy process, Mayor. One thing leads to another, and then another and another.”
McHale’s bearded jaw was tight with anger. “Where is the marshal anyway?” he wanted to know.
Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats Page 11