Outlaw Lawman (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Paul Bagdon

  “Sure,” Calvin said. After a moment he added, “Feisty, ain’t you?”

  “I’m just passing through,” I repeated. I pushed back my chair and stood.

  Calvin cackled. “Passing through? To where? Hell? No need to leave, Pound. C’mon, sit down.” His hand was wrapped protectively around the whiskey bottle, as if I were about to snatch it from him. I thought it over for a moment and then sat down.

  “This Powers,” I said. “How many men does he have here?”

  “Maybe thirty to forty. The number kind of varies actually. Some can’t take Powers’s craziness and ride out at night—and keep ridin’, I guess ‘til they run their horse’s legs down to nubs. Then there’s Powers’s shoot-outs, too. That drops a few men each year.”

  “Shooting contests?”

  Calvin grimaced. “Powers chooses a couple of men at random and puts them out in the street facing one another at about twenty-five to thirty paces. The men draw—they know they have no option, no way out. Powers stands there with a .30-30 just to make sure no one hightails it.” Calvin cleared his throat. “The one who’s alive at the end wins.”

  “Powers has no argument with these two men?”

  “Nope. He’ll get liquored up an’ something will piss him off and he grabs a couple of fellows and drags them outside. No reason at all for it, Pound. Lots of times the guys are friends. That’s sad.”

  “Couldn’t the ones in the street both turn on Powers and blow his ass off?”

  “That’s been tried. The rest of the group blew the two men to pieces. That’s one of the rules.”

  The complete and utter depravity of a man who’d demand a gunfight to the death between two others who more than likely had nothing at all against each other stunned me. Even Bloody Bill and his lunatics didn’t quite reach Billy Powers’s depth of killing simply for the sake of killing. I looked at the bottle in front of Calvin. It was about two-thirds gone. I filled my shot glass. “If I got jammed up in a situation like that, I’d take out the man I was drawing against and then empty my pistol into Powers. If his boys shot me to pieces after that, I’d die with a smile on my face.”

  Calvin nodded. “That makes good sense. I’ve often wondered if Powers’s gang saw him dead and bleeding in the street, whether they’d scatter like a bunch of puppies in a thunderstorm. Powers is what holds them together, and without him they’d be nothing—and they know that.”

  “They’re nothing already,” I said.

  “Yeah, but they have a leader.”

  “Right, a leader who’s a homicidal maniac.” I stood again. “Thanks for the information, Calvin,” I said. “It was appreciated. You keep that bottle.” I reached into my vest and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “I don’t want to insult you, but maybe you could use a…loan…of ten dollars?”

  Calvin laughed his annoying cackle. “Insult me? Hell, you can insult me all day long with them tens, Pound.” He held out a grimy hand with enough crud under his fingernails to give a maggot the heaves. I’m a little ashamed of this—dirty or not, the guy was still a man—but I looked as if I was fussing in my vest with my right hand and turned away, heading toward the batwings, as if I considered our meeting and conversation over. I heard the grating cackle behind me.

  I took a deep breath as soon as I stepped outside. The reek of tobacco smoke, spilled beer, sweat, and the essence of a gathering of long-unwashed men was pervasive, and it followed me like a foul and disgusting cloud until I was several steps away from the saloon. I glanced back and found that the cloud I imagined was real; smoke and stink billowed out the batwings.

  It was coming dusk, and the softening light made Gila Bend appear almost pretty, like a rendering of a quiet Texas town by an Easterner. The pianos in the saloons began to tinkle almost melodically. A pair of men—hardcases from the looks of them—rode down the street toward me. I noticed that both of their horses were gaunt and hadn’t been groomed in a long time. As the men drew closer, I could see scabbed-over spur marks on the flanks of the animals.

  The two men could just as well have been cut with the same mold. They slouched in their saddles, looking almost asleep, but their eyes missed nothing. One wore a pair of Colts in holsters on his hips, the other a single pistol on a hip but another strapped over his shoulder and across his chest. Both riders could have benefited by being dragged through a sheep-dip. Each had perhaps a week’s growth of beard and greasy hair that hung past his shoulders in thick hanks.

  They moved away to the side of each other as they approached me, which I didn’t like much. Close together, both could have been taken down by a good shootist, but spread apart, the man in the middle would die. Unconsciously, I pushed my coat back behind the butt of my Colt and let my hand linger there. The one on my right lifted the barrel of the .30-30 in his saddle scabbard a couple of inches, not pointing directly at me, but not far off, either.

  We stood there for a full minute without moving, as if we were statues. Finally, I said, “Evening, gents. That cool breeze feels real good, doesn’t it?”

  The one who answered—the man on the left—said, “Maybe it does, maybe it don’t,” in such a high-pitched, childish voice I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. My eyes dropped for a moment to his throat. An elevated, festering scar ran from one ear, under his chin, and almost to the other ear.

  “Shaddup, Squeaky,” the Right Man said. To me, he said, “New in our little town?” in a voice that was near worn out from tobacco and whiskey.

  “Just kind of passing through—resting my horse a bit, have a drink or two, maybe play a little poker.”

  “You looking for work?” Right asked.

  “Nope. Just drifting.”

  “What do you do when you are working?” Right asked.

  “This an’ that,” I said. “I work beef some—whatever comes along when I’m in need of money.”

  “Bullshit,” Squeaky snapped. “You got no rope on your saddle and your hands look like them of one of them pansy-boys.”

  I laughed. “And you sure do sound like one.”

  Squeaky went for his pistol. I blew him off his horse before he had a chance to bring his barrel at me. I swung immediately to Right, ready to fire, but he was just sitting there in his saddle rolling a cigarette.

  “That goddamn voice can sure get on a man’s nerves after a bit,” he said. “Like a goddamn ol’ rusty gate cryin’ out for oil every time it’s opened.”

  “Your friend a mite touchy about it?”

  “Shit, Squeaky’s touchy about everything.” He grinned. “Or he was until you plugged him, anyways.”

  “Maybe a fellow like that,” I said, “ought to keep his yap shut ‘til he gets a whole lot handier with his weapon.”

  “Could be,” Right said noncommittally. “Say, you fancy a drink?”

  “Another time,” I said. “I’m just takin’ a little walk, like I said.”

  Right’s voice became flinty and cold. “I’d suggest you have that drink with me—let me tell you about Gila Bend.”

  I waited a few seconds but not too many. “Sure,” I said, “let’s do that.”

  “My name’s Mack.”

  “Mine’s Pound.”

  There was no offer to shake hands on either part.

  Mack walked his horse over to the rail of the saloon I’d just left, swung down, and tied up.

  “What about that?” I asked, nodding toward the corpse still leaking blood into the dust and grit of the street.

  “Ain’t nothin’. It’ll get took care of.”

  We went into the saloon. Mack walked over to a table where four men were playing cards. There wasn’t a word exchanged, but each picked up his money and cards and found another table.

  “You the lawman here?” I asked.

  Mack chuckled. “In a sense, maybe. I ride with Billy Powers, an’ anyone who rides with him is a kind of a lawman—we make our own laws.” He found his own attempt at humor hilarious and laughed like the braying of a mule.


  I forced a grin. “Who’s this Billy Powers?”

  A bartender brought a bottle and two glasses and hurried off. “Billy,” Mack said, “owns Gila Bend—every whore, every bottle, the mercantile, the other store, the livery, the assay office—the whole shebang. He moved in with a few men—afore my time—and just took over. An’ here we are—four dead lawmen later.”

  I nodded as if impressed. “He must have come in with a basketful of money to buy up all the businesses,” I said.

  Mack brayed again. “Buy? Buy, my ass! He jus’ took ‘em over, an’ a percentage of the take of each place goes right into his pocket.”

  “Sounds like a sweet deal to me, Mack,” I said. I poured each shot glass full. We both downed the whiskey. My surprise must have shown on my face: the booze was smooth and smoky. “The swill,” Mack explained, “goes to the town people. The good stuff is reserved for Billy an’ his men.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “The people let Billy Preston just—”

  “Powers.”

  “Sorry, Powers. Anyway they let Billy and his men jus’ ride in an’ take over?”

  “Some didn’t. You can see them from the little rise outside town. Boot Hill, it’s called.”

  “Well, that’s one way to keep peace in a town,” I said.

  “Lemme ask you this,” Mack said. “You wanted? Is there money on your head?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I felt something hard pressing against my right kneecap.

  Mack grinned wolfishly. “Ever see what a .45 will do to a kneecap? It ain’t real pretty. Either the fella bleeds out and croaks, or a doc saws the sumbitch off a couple inches above the wound, ‘cause of gangrene.” He paused for a moment. “So let’s cut out this ‘maybe’ horseshit.”

  I remained silent a few moments longer. That goddamn .45 felt as big as the maw of a canon against my knee. Mack was right about bullet-shattered kneecaps. Hell, I’d rather take a slug between the eyes.

  “You got eight hundred dollars in your saddlebag, Pound. That ain’t the kinda money a man draws for following a herd—‘specially without a throwin’ rope an’ a bedroll no cowpuncher would tie onto his saddle. So where’d the money come from, Pound?”

  I grinned at Mack. “No matter how many of my knees you shoot up, I’m still faster than you and better than you.”

  “Bullshit. But you an’ me might just find that out someday, no?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “You can bet on that.”

  “Seems to me you already are bettin’, Pound. Now, what about the money?”

  “My poke came from a pimp outside of Yuma. I had a bit of a fancy for one of his whores. She was a pretty girl—not like the goddamn buffalo cows you have here. One day I saw some bad bruises on her ass and back. Her pimp—name of Spenser—found out she was pleasuring me most afternoons and he wasn’t getting his cut. This Spenser had a bodyguard outside his room. At that time I figured I was a tough young buck, and I was carrying a pair of .45s. I emptied one into the guard and the other into the pimp. I found his poke under his bed—damned near four thousand dollars. Then I hauled ass. So, about paper on me, I don’t know. I just wandered and drifted, spending the pimp’s money.”

  I didn’t have to make up the story as I went along; it was true.

  “Where’s the rest of the cash?”

  “Like I said, I pissed it away—I’ve got maybe six hundred in my pocket plus the eight you found—and that’s the end of it. Tell you the truth, I came through here to see if you folks had a bank I could do some work in. If not, the assay office would work out, too.”

  “Woulda been one big goddamn mistake,” Mack said.

  “I can see that now.”

  The muzzle of the pistol slipped away from my knee, and I could hear the oiled shuff as he holstered the gun. That made my breathing a lot easier and more even.

  Mack poured more whiskey for both of us. “I seen you get your coat out of the way of your Colt, Pound. You one of these crazy-fast gunmen like Doc Holliday or maybe Wyatt himself?”

  Maybe it was the whiskey talking for me: I should have shut up. “Holliday uses a goddamn shotgun he carries under his duster. He’s got consumption or something, and he coughs most of the time when he isn’t sucking air. I imagine I could blow him straight to hell before he fumbled out the scatter gun. Holliday is one of those fellows—like Billy the Kid—who lives on luck and backshooting and reputation.”

  “What about Earp?”

  “Different story. I never met the man. I never saw him in trouble, in a gunfight. I hear he’s real fast and shoots well, and I heard that from men I trust, men I could believe. Maybe I could drop him; maybe I couldn’t. I don’t know—or care.”

  Mack chuckled. “Ain’t you somethin’? You figure there’s anyone in this place who could take you? Some of the gamblers are good, and there are a few of Billy Powers’s men here.”

  “No,” I said. “Not face to face anyway. Any one of them could take me out from behind.” I shoved my chair away from the table and stood. “I still want to take my walk, Mack. I’m sure I’ll see you again.” I took a five out of my pocket and dropped it on the table.

  “Wazzat?” Mack asked.

  “That’s awful good whiskey. I thought I’d pay for the bottle.”

  “Don’t be an idjit. Billy Powers and his men don’t pay for nothin’ in Gila Bend. Not a goddamn thing—whores, booze, mercantile stuff, whatever. I’m ridin’ a good Texas-made saddle that woulda cost me seventy-five, maybe eighty dollars. I jus’ walked into the livery, seen her there, picked her up, unstrapped my old saddle and left it there on the ground, and fit the new one to my cayuse. Billy, he takes care of his boys.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “But I ain’t one of Powers’s men.”

  I left the saloon and continued my walk. All the businesses except the gin mills were closed. There were no kids playing in the street, no ol’ gents sitting on benches whittling and arguing politics, no women scurrying about between the stores. It was as if some sort of plague had struck Gila Bend, wiping out all the good and normal people, leaving behind only the homicidal losers and kill-crazy gunmen. Come to think of it, that wasn’t too far from actuality.

  There was a light on inside a two-story hotel. I went in, got a first-floor room with a window looking out on the street, paid for three days, and stretched out on the bed, which wasn’t half bad for a hotel bed. I was tired but couldn’t sleep. The whiskey was still buzzing in my head and my conversation with Mack replayed in my mind. Finally, I said the hell with it, pulled on my boots and coat, and went back outside.

  Down the street there was a gathering of thirty or forty men, clustered around two men on horses. As I got closer, I saw money was changing hands. I looked over the horses. One was a loud-colored Appaloosa that was well muscled and sleek and glowing with nervous sweat and mouthing his bit. The other was a tall black that looked to have some Thoroughbred blood. He was nicely put together. Both horses were studs—or, if not, they’d found interesting places to carry a couple doorknobs. The black was antsy and dancing a bit.

  I like horse racing—always have. Covering ground real fast isn’t all that important overall in a good horse, but still, racing was fun to watch. The cluster of men cleared back from the riders. The run was to be down the street to the end of the town, swing around the last building, and then race back to where they’d started. A fellow approached me with two-to-one odds on the black, but I’m not much of a wagering man and I declined.

  The rider of the Appy was young, probably not twenty yet. The beard he was trying to grow was scrawny and didn’t look like it was going to fill out anytime soon. He wore a holstered Colt. His hat looked new. The other rider was of the Billy Powers gang sort. He was at least half drunk, weaving slightly in his saddle.

  They got their horses aligned and then held them on tight reins, both riders barely touching their horse’s flanks with their heels. The kid wasn’t wearing spurs, but the othe
r had those sharp-roweled Mexican gutrippers tied onto his boots. That he used the spurs often was easy enough to see; the black’s flanks were masses of healing cuts, scars, and some fresh slashes that were still weeping blood.

  The moon had risen—a full one, casting a good deal of light. Other than that, the only illumination was that from the saloons. Both horses were dancing a bit, still on a tight rein.

  “C’mon, goddammit!” the older rider shouted. “I ain’t gonna sit out here all night.”

  A man stepped out of the crowd holding his pistol over his head. “On three when I fire,” he shouted. “One…Two…” The black was in motion the very smallest bit of time before the starter yelled “three” and fired into the air.

  Every man there saw the black jump the start. No one said a word about it.

  Both horses knew their jobs well. They came off the start as if they were running from Satan himself, hurling clods of dirt behind them with all four hooves.

  It took the Appaloosa only a half dozen long, powerful strides to catch the black—but he couldn’t pass him. Or the kid was savvier than he looked and was holding his mount back, saving some horse for the run home.

  Most—in fact, all—the races I’ve seen in Texas, the horse and rider automatically lose if the rider uses a quirt or crop in front of the saddle cinch. Apparently, that rule didn’t apply in Gila Bend.

  The outlaw was whipping hell out of his horse—in front of the cinch—for no reason at all. That black horse was running his heart: he didn’t need the quirt or the cruel spurs to urge more speed out of him.

  It was difficult to see what was going on because of the thick cloud of grit and dust behind them. I barely saw the outlaw raise his quirt and swing it at either the Appy or his rider. Several men who’d picked it up too laughed.

  “Ol’ Frankie, he don’t like to lose,” one said.

  It was in that turn that the kid and the Appaloosa grabbed the lead. He turned smoothly and easily—as if he were on tracks. The black scrambled in the turn, shaking his head, long strands of foamy spittle flailing back from his muzzle as he ran. A bottle was passed around; there’d be nothing to see until the horses rounded the other end of town and hauled for home. I refused the drink and passed the whiskey on.