by Paul Bagdon
“Don’t need no help,” was his response.
That boy dug for at least a full hour in the midday heat without slowing or stopping for a breather. He dug a hole about four feet deep and a couple wide. I jumped down and helped him get Rex out of the little wagon. Then he said, “You mind walkin’ off a bit, mister? This is private stuff.” I did that. When I saw him putting dirt back into the hole I went back to the cart.
“I guess I’ll walk from here,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
“Glad to give you a hand,” I said.
He wasn’t quite finished with what he had to say. Finally, he said, “Shootin’ them two dirty sonsabitches was a good thing, mister. Rex was jus’ chasin’ his ball. He wasn’t out to scare no horses.”
“I know, boy.”
“My name’s Evan Murfin,” he said. “My pa has a little farm an’ he makes some whiskey, too. You ever need any kinda help, you come to my pa an’ me, OK?”
“You bet.”
Evan reached up to shake my hand. At first I thought his palm was merely sweaty, but then I saw blood dripping. He’d shoveled himself into blisters and then broke those and hit blood. It hadn’t slowed him down. He turned away and began walking. I turned the cart back toward Gila Bend. As I watched the boy walk, the fire in my mind was growing. I saw the whole scene over again: the joy of Evan and his dog, the outlaw’s first shot, the dog crawling to get the ball, and the blood on the boy’s hands.
The sensible, logical thing to do was to return the cart, pick up my horse, and head out. I’d killed two more of Powers’s followers. That wouldn’t please him at all. I’d probably need eyes in the back of my head to survive the day. But the fire was turning into a conflagration.
I wanted a bit more speed from the ol’ plug pulling the cart, but didn’t dare ask for it. As it was, she was huffing when we reached the livery. The owner, with whom I’d talked horses a few times in my meanderings about Gila Bend, began to saunter over to me to say hello, but when he saw the look on my face, he stopped and watched as I took a wind around the hitching rail with the reins and began a fast, stiff legged walk to the hotel. I noticed that the two corpses were gone, but their blood and blood of the dog was seeping slowly into the dirt.
This is none of my business. I’m being crazy. All I need to do is to ride away and it’ll all be over. I’m setting myself up to be killed. This is plumb, stupid, goddamned insane.
The fire, however, was speaking much louder and much more urgently than my mind.
The judge had a room on the second floor of the hotel, although I didn’t know which room it was. I climbed the stairs two at a time and started down the corridor, kicking each door solid and yelling, “Judge!”
His door opened before I got to it, and I saw the glint of metal of his Derringer as he stood in the doorway. He motioned me inside.
He had a table from the restaurant squeezed into his tiny room, and it was covered with papers, posters, and miscellaneous writs and so forth. The judge stood in front of the table.
“I want to do it,” I said. “Where’s that goddamn thing I’m supposed to sign? And I’m going to need money to fix the sheriff’s office.”
“Are you certain you’ve given this adequate thought?” the judge asked. “You seem…over-wrought.”
“Do you want me or not?”
“Yes—yes I do.” He took the paper out of his coat pocket and a duplicate of it from his briefcase. “Sign both of these,” he said, “down at the bottom where the line is.”
I did so, the nib of the pen grinding into the paper from the excess force I was using to write.
“There’s an oath I need to administer and then we’ll…”
“C’mon, dammit, let’s get this over with.” I didn’t pay much attention to the words I mumbled after the judge said them.
“Keep the document with you at all times, Mr. Taylor.”
I refolded it and stuck it in my back pocket. I opened the door to leave. “Mr. Taylor, one more thing.” He reached into his briefcase, fumbled around a bit and tossed something to me. I grabbed it out of the air and turned it flat on my palm. It was a silver star with the word Sheriff inscribed on it. I stepped out into the corridor and looked at that star in my hand for a long moment. Then I pinned it to my vest.
“Lord, what the hell am I doing?” I said aloud. I walked down the stairs considerably slower than I’d run up them. I needed a drink.
I stood at the bar. When I’d first pushed through the batwings all eyes turned on me. Obviously, the story about the two outlaws I’d gunned had gotten around quickly. The bartender drew me a beer without being asked. I asked him for a shot, too, and he reached for a bottle of swill in front of the mirror. “No,” I said. “The drinkable stuff—not that hog-piss.”
“But I can’t—that’s Billy’s.”
“That shit is all finished right now,” I said. “You start serving up a decent drink no matter who asks for it.”
“Is…is that badge for real?”
“You bet your ass it’s real.”
An outlaw moved from a table to stand next to me. “You ain’t serious about sheriffin’ in Gila Bend, are you?” he asked. “You already got enough trouble gunnin’ those two boys today over a goddamn dog. That badge is gonna buy you a coffin real fast.” He looked at the bartender. “Give him a drink,” he said.
The ‘tender poured a shot. The outlaw turned away.
“Wait,” I said.
He turned back around.
“You haven’t paid for the drink you just ordered for me,” I said.
His face changed rapidly from incredulity to anger. I pushed my coat behind the grips of my Colt, making the move obvious.
The outlaw moved closer, close enough that his rotted teeth and whiskey breath made my gorge surge in the back of my throat.
“I ain’t gonna draw on you,” he said. “Ain’t no sense in tusslin’ over a drink, is there?”
His voice was nicely controlled, but his eyes conveyed a distinctly different message.
I was ready for his sucker punch. I stepped aside easily, and when his fist and forearm crossed the edge of the bar, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and his arm—just before his elbow—with my right. The combination of his weight and momentum helped me in the downward force I was exerting. The long bone between his wrist and his elbow snapped like a piece of dry kindling. He went to his knees, screeching in pain. I kicked him in the mouth, helping rid him of at least three or four of his diseased teeth. He fell to his side, semiconscious, moaning.
The four or five of Powers’s followers who’d been at tables playing cards stood, glaring at me, but I didn’t see much of a threat in their postures or their eyes. It’s strange how that works: if they came at me, I had the order in which I’d shoot them flit into my mind—the short guy first, the man next to him, the fat slob at the table to the left, and so on. I put a dollar on the bar and said loud enough for everyone in the joint to hear.
“Fun time ends today, right now, for you trash. You either follow the law or you pay for the consequences. I’m a total, real, genuine goddamn sheriff now, and I’ll kick some ass before I’m done.”
There was some growling and mumbling but nothing that bothered me. “Tell Powers I’m at the hotel and I want to talk with him.”
I downed the shot on the bar in front of me. After all, I’d paid for it. I could taste Kentucky woods in it, as well as the smoke of a hickory and mesquite fire. I was getting to like this fine booze no little bit.
“Where’d you get this whiskey?” I asked the ‘tender.
“A local fella an’ his brother make it,” he said. “They don’t make a whole lot, but what they do produce is fine sippin’ whiskey.”
“It sure is,” I agreed.
I went to my hotel room shoved the bed out of the direct line of fire through the door. The cheap wood wouldn’t even slow down a .45 slug, much less stop it. I sat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, awaiting compa
ny. I didn’t have long to wait. I’d barely lit a cheroot when there were three heavy, measured thuds at the door.
“It’s open,” I called, pistol in my hand resting in my lap.
It wasn’t Powers. It was, instead, one of the largest men I’d ever seen in my life. He was tall, but his size went well beyond height. His shoulders were hugely broad, and he’d ripped the sleeves off his shirt, apparently because the fabric couldn’t restrain the bulging, flint-hard muscles of his arms and forearms. Even his denim pants were stressed by the muscles in his legs. He wore a gunbelt with a Smith & Wesson long-barreled .38 in it, but he wore it like an amateur—the holster high and resting too far toward his back for him to draw smoothly or rapidly. His face was placid, like those of so many men who know their own strength and don’t need or care to exhibit it to anyone. He was beardless with good features: high cheekbones, a straight nose, a mouth that looked like it smiled often.
“You Pound?” he asked. His voice was deep and resonant, although he was young—somewhere between twenty and twenty-five I guessed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m Pound.”
“I hear tell you might be in need of a deputy—somebody to cover your back.”
I hadn’t really given any thought to hiring a deputy—maybe because I didn’t think there was anyone in town who could be trusted. “I might be,” I said. “Who’re you?”
“My name is Don Murfin. I’m an uncle to Evan, the boy you helped bury his dog. Evan, he said you killed a couple of Powers’s men for shootin’ that poor dog. Me an’ my family respect stuff like that.”
“They needed killing,” I said.
“For sure they did. It made good sense to me to come on into town and be your deputy.”
I started to answer, but Don held up his massive hand to stop me.
“Look,” he said, “lots of people figure ‘cause I’m big, I’m stupid. That ain’t true, Pound. Me an’ my family, we make up a little whiskey from time to time. Some folks thought I’d be easy nuff to track down an’ kill us an’ then take over the whiskey trade. There must be a half dozen or more bodies buried up around our still.”
“I wasn’t about to say you were stupid, Don. What I was going to say is that there’s a pretty good probability you’ll end up dead. Powers is a sneaky sumbitch, and he has nothing at all against backshooting.”
“I never planned to live forever, nohow. And us Murfins, we’re a tight bunch. What you done for Evan you done for the whole slew of us. We pay our debts, and we figure we owe you. I got no wife or kids or nothin’, so I’m the best one to help you out. An’ if I get dropped, why there’ll be another Murfin standin’ beside you ‘fore my corpse is cold.”
I thought for a moment, then stood and extended my hand. Don Murfin took it and we shook, formally, as if sealing a business deal.
“I’ll get you a star as soon as I can,” I said. “The pay is that I’ll buy you a beer every so often.”
“Not two beers?”
I hesitated. “You drive a hard bargain, Don. But OK, two beers.”
“Now,” I said, “I think the first thing we need to do is to rebuild our office and the jail. The judge said he’d make sure everything is covered in terms of payment for a carpenter and whoever else we need. We need some…”
A loud rapping on the door interrupted me. I picked up my pistol from the bed and said, “It’s open.”
Powers walked in and closed the door behind him. His eyes were red—from anger or from booze, I couldn’t tell. He glanced at Don and then focused on me.
“You killed two of my boys today,” he said. “For shootin’ a goddamn worthless dog that was worryin’ their horses.”
“The dog was nowhere near worthless, Powers,” I said. “But you’re right. I dusted two of your flunkies.” I paused for a moment. “I kinda wish there’d been three or four of them, but a man has to play the cards dealt to him, no?”
“I’m awful tired of this shit, Pound. Awful tired. I see that judge made you a sheriff. That don’t mean a goddamn thing to me. I’d as soon use that star as a target as not.”
“I have a deputy, too,” I said. “But he doesn’t have a star yet,” I said, and laughed a bit.
“I’m gonna tell you…”
“What you’re going to do is listen, Powers,” I snarled. “Don and me are going to clean up Gila Bend. There’s no more free rides for you and your crew, no collections from the saloon owners, no gunfights in the street, no horse racing in the street. I hear your gamblers are crooked. Get rid of them. I hear you mistreat the whores and don’t pay them ‘cept with nickels and dimes. That’ll stop. Lemme make this clear: starting right now, you people pay for what you drink or take out of the mercantile, you cut out the gunfights, and you pay your girls what they’re worth. Anything else I think of, I’ll let you know about.”
Powers shook his head in amazement. “You’re purely crazy,” he said. “An’ you won’t leave Gila Bend alive. That’s a promise on the heart of Robert E. Lee.”
“The war’s over, Powers,” Don said. “Whether or not you and your crew believe it, it’s true. This town is under the jurisdiction of the United States of America and all the country’s laws apply right here as much as they do in Washington.”
Powers’s face turned yet more scarlet so that he looked apoplectic. “You’re dead, too,” he growled at Don.
Don moved a lot faster than one would think a man of his size could move. He grabbed Powers by the back of the neck and seat of his pants and threw him through the door. The door, of course, was closed.
Powers gathered himself up and got shakily to his feet. “The war ain’t near over yet,” he said, “ ‘least between you two an’ me.” He limped down the corridor to the stairway. I wondered for a moment why he didn’t draw, and then something became clear to me: he was a coward—afraid to face me or Don one-to-one. He needed the scum he rode with to give him courage. That was a good piece of information to have, and I wouldn’t forget it.
Don and I briefed the judge before he left town. He gave us promissory notes that he said were as good as cash for whatever we needed to rebuild the office and jail and to buy whatever supplies we needed. He had another badge in his briefcase. It said Sheriff just like mine, but we didn’t let that bother us.
The hammers of the carpenter and his helpers—friends of Don—rang several hours each day. Charred and broken wood was dragged out and replaced with new. We bought a rolltop at the mercantile but had to make the purchase and move the desk late at night because the mercantile owner was afraid of repercussions from Powers—but he was more afraid of losing the price he gouged out of the government for the desk.
I requisitioned far more substantial doors both at the street entrance and in the area leading from the office to the cells, figuring if Don and I came under siege, we wanted something substantial between us and our attackers. We bought six Remington .30-30s and a thousand rounds of good ammunition—not the army stuff. The carpenter built a rifle closet and Don and I each had a key.
I had a little innovation I asked the carpenter to make and install. I wanted a pull-down ladder that’d lead to the roof. Although the office was but a single story high, the perspective on the length of the street was better.
There was a bizarre lack of sound in Gila Bend, other than the working of the carpenter. The mercantile opened each day, but from my vantage point in front of the hotel, I saw that there was no traffic into the store—no citizens and no outlaws. The tension in the air was thick enough to swim in. Everyone knew something was going to happen, that Powers wouldn’t relinquish his iron grasp on the town without a fight.
“Kinda like the lull before a storm,” Don commented.
“Yeah. It is. Thing is, we have no idea which way the storm would hit us from.”
That afternoon we carried our gear to the new office. We each slept in one cell, and we switched off watches so that only one of us slept at time. After we started collecting prisoners, we’d have to make di
fferent arrangements.
The first skirmish came late one night. Don was on watch, and he called me to the front of the office. The bars were still open, but very few horses were tied at the rails. I pulled on my shirt and went forward to the office. Don pointed down the street toward the livery stable. Five or six torches burned orangish red in a cluster of riders.
“How about we try out them rifles?” Don asked. “Pick off a couple of ‘em right where they are ‘fore they charge us.”
“Not yet,” I said. We got out the rifles, loaded them, and each of us took three. The fresh, clean scent of gun oil clung to each weapon. “Prolly should’ve sighted these in before now,” Don said. To that, he added, “ ‘Course it’s kinda hard to miss an outlaw carryin’ a torch comin’ at us.”
“How about I go up on the roof and you fight through the window and door down here?” I said. “Seems like that would give us the best coverage. Don’t fire before I do—but take the sonsabitches down when you do. We don’t want to burn out our nice new office.”
I went up the ladder and pushed open the hatch. There wasn’t much pitch to the roof; it was easy enough to sit or stand without fear of toppling. I arranged two of the .30-30s next to me and cradled the other in my arms.
I could hear the voices of the group fairly well. There was a whole lot of talk about “burnin’ them shitheels out,” and every so often the light from a torch would glint on a bottle being passed around.
The cluster broke into a jagged line. From the roof, I could see two of the horsemen with torches swing to the back of the buildings, apparently with a plan to get us from the rear.
If a person has ever heard a rebel yell, the sound of it will never be forgotten. It’s more like the ululating moan-growl of some unearthly beast than of a human voice. The raggedy-assed and disorganized line started down the street howling the reb yell, holding their torches high, spurring their horses.
Don said something from downstairs that I missed.
“What?” I called to him. “What’d you say?”