by Paul Bagdon
We’d expected that Powers would eventually move some of his troops down the street behind the buildings to put them closer to our office. It would make hurling the dynamite easier and perhaps more effective. We were correct. There was an out-of-business apothecary shop kitty-corner across the street, and the men broke in the rear and were tossing dynamite at us from behind the cover of the boarded up storefront.
If one of those sticks of dynamite had made it past our guns, the four of us would be painting the office with our guts, blood, brains, and flesh. The thing is, none of them did. Hairy Dog—and Jake, for that matter—were as happy as seven-year-olds at a birthday party playing a game—and Big Nose was shooting with the efficiency of a regulator clock.
Even with the door wide open and the window adjacent to it shot out, the office was filled with gun smoke and its acrid, eye-burning, fog.
A couple of moments went by that no dynamite was thrown at us. We all rubbed our eyes and held our shotguns at the ready. Still, nothing happened.
“They’re outta dynamite,” Jake said.
“Nah,” Dog said, “there were two cases on the bar. I dunno how many sticks come in one, but they ain’t out.”
“I say we charge ‘em, Pound,” Big Nose said. “The way they were wasting explosives shows that they’re dumb—that they’re not fighters. If we go over there now…”
“Jesus, lookit this!” Jake yelled.
Powers and his crew had snagged a small, fancy surrey from the stable, filled it with straw and, no doubt, dynamite—and were pushing it on the street toward our office from an alley about halfway between their saloon and the apothecary.
My personal fire was churning and seething at my gut, demanding that I do something to quench it before it consumed me. My palms were sweating—they always do before a fight. I saw that as a good sign. I was as weary of screwing around with Powers as Jake, Nose, and Dog were.
“It ain’t usual,” Nose said, “to see anyone do something that goddamn stupid—that cart—in a battle.”
Jake clambered down the ladder.
“Yeah,” I said. “An’ you can just wager it’s the crazies and the expendables that’re pushing that little surrey—Powers wouldn’t risk fighters on such a dumb move.”
“Well, look, I don’t care to spend the rest of my life screwing around with these clowns. I’m gonna go an’ blow that wagon,” Jake said.
“C’mon, Jake, if the goddamn thing is loaded with dynamite, you get blown apart. An’ if not, the gunmen will trim you down. You ever think of that? That these boys have set up a ploy that’ll draw a couple of us to them—and then they’ll start shooting?”
“They ain’t smart enough.”
“You don’t know that, Jake. Here’s the thing…”
“No!” he cut me off. “Here’s the thing.” He held his rifle over his head and his pistol in his hand. “I’m purely done sniffing around these saddle tramps.”
“But…”
Jake booted the door open and ran outside. I saw the first couple of slugs hit him because I was right in front of the door. He was spun around by the impact of the bullets, and he fell to his knees. He’d dropped his pistol, but he worked his rifle like someone drawing water from a well, his shots very close together. Another slug hit him in the shoulder, and I guess one in his neck. Blood gushed from his mouth and his nose, but he kept on firing that .30-30.
There was a massive explosion in the street—the whole goddamn surrey came apart, and the men pushing it did, as well. It was spectacular; pieces of flaming wood and men and surrey parts rushed upward volcanically in a blaze of orange-red fire. There seemed to be nothing left of Jake but a dark puddle on the dirt of the street. He’d been a good fifteen feet away from the cart when one of his slugs found the dynamite, and the explosion had taken him in its upward spew.
“Son of a bitch,” I said quietly.
Big Nose shook his head from side to side slowly. “Was good man, that Jake,” he said. “Crazy but good and strong with the bull’s balls. He didn’t know fear.”
All of us were quiet for a minute or so, watching pieces of char drift down from the sky. Eventually, Hairy Dog spoke up.
“Pound,” he said, “suppose you get taken out? It ain’t like it’s impossible, ya know? Then Nose an’ me been wastin’ a bunch of time an’ ammunition for nothin, ‘cause a dead man can’t pay what he owes. It don’t seem right.”
“Dog speaks the truth,” Big Nose said. “If you croak, we don’t get paid.”
“Yes, you do,” I said. “In the middle drawer of the desk is a map I drew up. There’s about seventy-five thousand dollars at the place I marked. You boys split it.”
“Hell.” Dog grinned. “It’d be easier to gun you now.”
“Help yourself, Dog,” I said. “ ‘Course I could put a round in your head, too, an’ Nose and I would split the cash.”
The three of us laughed quietly—but it seemed like a nervous laugh, a bit forced.
It struck me that these men were sadistic, hardened killers, thieves, and rapists—as crazy as shithouse rats. Life—their own or that of others—had essentially no meaning to them. I shuddered slightly.
“Now we must attack,” Nose said. “If we can kill those in the saloon, our work is finished.”
“That’s probably where the real fighters are,” I said. “And I don’t doubt that most of the cowards are spurring their way out of Gila Bend. The odds are getting better. One thing,” I said, perhaps louder than I needed to, “Powers is mine.”
“We remember, Powers is yours,” Nose said.
“Be nice, if we could get our paws on somma that dynamite,” Dog said. “We could take ‘em from three sides an’ blow their asses off.”
Big Nose smirked. “It’d be nice if we were Eoa Lok Tatoa, the great bear that cannot be killed,” he said. “But we’re not.”
“So, let’s figure this out as best we can,” I said, “since we don’t have explosives and we’re not bears. I’ve been in that saloon a few—more than a few—times.” I turned over a Wanted poster and sketched a long rectangle onto it, using a chewed-up nub of a pencil.
“Is there any booze?” Hairy Dog asked.
I was confused—irritated for a moment. “It’s a saloon, Dog, not a goddamn church. Of course there…”
“Here, I mean. Damn, Pound, you’re for sure gettin’ porky.”
I ignored Dog’s comment but took our last bottle out of the deep desk drawer and tossed it to him. He pulled the cork with his teeth, hit the bottle pretty hard, and passed it to Big Nose, who sucked it a bit and then handed it to me. I did it justice.
“Now look,” I said, pointing at my drawing. “Here’s the windows on the sides. Maybe they’re boarded up by now. I dunno. Here’s the bar—it runs pretty much the whole length of the room.”
“Looks easy enough,” Nose said. “We jus’ bust in the front an’ fight. If we live, we win.”
“No, wait. Here’s a problem. This place has an actual second floor—a couple of rooms for the whores to conduct their business, and at least a couple more, like hotel rooms. You can bet the gunsels Powers brought in aren’t about to sleep on the barroom floor like the cannon fodder does. If we come charging in, the boys upstairs can pick us off like birds on a fence.”
“Are there windows up there?” Big Nose asked.
“I dunno. I think there were at one time, but I’m pretty sure they’ve been boarded up. But either way, if we got into a gunfighter’s room, we’d bring the whole bunch down on us.”
“A knife sliding through a throat makes no sound,” Nose said.
I hefted the bottle, took a suck, and passed it around again.
“Even those morons,” I said, “know we won today. We lost one man an’ they lost…what?…maybe twenty? I thought they might post extra guards tonight an’ then get drunk. The guards…”
Hairy Dog held up his hand to shut me up. His voice was flint edged, irritated. “You think Big Nose an’ me are white
men?” He spit on the floor. His eyes, hot and angry, held mine. “We piss on these guards after we kill them, after we open their throats. We can do this, Pound.”
I was sure Dog’s claims were valid and true. He and his partner hadn’t stayed alive all this time by making blunders in battle. “OK,” I said. “You kill the guards. Then what?”
“We go in shooting,” Dog said. “Whether they’re dunk or sober don’t matter much—we’re better fighters. The ones upstairs we kill, too. Big Nose, you agree with me?”
Nose nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s give them some more time to get liquored up and then have at it.”
We cleaned our weapons, although they didn’t need it—we pretty much cleaned and oiled them daily.
You know how a specific, repeated sound can drive a man loopy? Big Nose was honing his knife with a stone, and with each motion the length of the blade made a skreeeeeeeech sound. It wasn’t a particularly long knife by West Texas standards—Jim Bowie’s best approached two feet—and Nose’s blade was a mere eleven inches or so. He honed for maybe an hour and when he tested the blade with his thumb and grunted his satisfaction, I was inwardly jubilant.
Then he slid the knife into his boot and tossed the sharpening stone to Hairy Dog. Dog screeeeeeeched for about an hour.
There’s a sharpening of all of a man’s senses just before a battle: he sees better, more clearly; he hears better; and he moves faster and smoother. In a sense, he comes to believe he’s invincible.
There’s a scent—an odor—to it, and men who survived Antietam and Gettysburg told me about it. One one-legged Reb I talked to told me that the smell before lightning strikes is what becomes a cloud around fighting men who’re ready. He also said—and I believe him—that he walked past an opening in the woods at Cemetery Ridge and a Catholic priest was saying a mass and giving communion, and that the fellow could smell blood and just-slaughtered meat.
I’ll never know what possessed Bobby Lee to order that cretin Pickett to do what he did, but if they were both standing in front of me I’d feel not an ounce of compunction in shooting both of them down.
It’s always difficult to tell what an Indian is feeling, but I’d wager my good buckskin horse that the two Indians were feeling what I was.
Finally, after a century or so, I stood.
“Ready?”
“I was born ready to fight,” Hairy Dog said.
“Ready,” Big Nose quietly.
Each Indian had a .45 tucked in his belt, a shotgun in his left hand, and a .30-30 held in his right. Each had his boot knife clenched firmly between his teeth.
I carried my holstered .45 as well as another stuck behind my belt. Like Dog and Nose, I had a shotgun in my left hand and a .30-30 in my right.
“What about extra ammunition?” I asked.
Both Indians grinned. “If we need more ammunition,” Nose said, “we’re going to be too dead to shoot it.”
None of us shrugged into our heavy winter coats; they’d have slowed us down.
The plan was this: The Indians would go out through our back door and split, each going in behind the buildings to where they’d cross the street. They’d work their way back to the saloon, eliminate the guards, and call me in by lighting a bunch of matches at once. It was a dark and overcast night; I’d be able to see the signal. When I trotted over, we’d charge right in and start shooting.
“There’s one thing,” I began to say.
Nose waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, “Powers is yours.”
“Take some soot and char from the stove an’ darken your face,” Dog said. “Your pale skin is like waving a flag.”
The Indians went out the back and I stood at the front door, watching for their signal. Of course, I thought I saw the matches struck a million times before it actually happened.
My palms were sweating copiously and my gut fire was way the hell out of control. I was ready.
I didn’t doubt for half a heartbeat that Big Nose and Hairy Dog would take out whatever number of watchdogs Powers posted, and that they’d do their gory work silently.
When the signal came, it seemed as vivid as a stroke of lightning. I left the office, crossed the street, and hugged buildings and doorways as I made my way to Powers’s saloon.
It sounded like a pretty rowdy crowd in the joint as I approached—or else well boozed up. There was lots of braying laughter, squeals from the whores, and general gin-mill racket.
I came upon a guard about seventy-five feet from the saloon. He was on his side, like a child sleeping through a night, with one hand under his head and his body kind of tucked upward. The wide puddle of blood around his head and upper chest was inky black in the murky, overcast, moonless night.
I made it to the side of the saloon, and after a moment, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I don’t know how Hairy Dog had crept up on me so quietly on the squeaky snow, but he did.
He whispered into my ear, “Nose is on the other side of the door. We meet an’ we attack through the front.”
The batwings had long since been removed with the coming of winter, replaced by a wide, carved, wooden door that looked like it had come from a church. In fact, it no doubt had—possibly from the burned-out hulk I’d seen as I rode into Gila Bend a bunch of months ago.
Both Indians had put their knives away. Everything from then on was going to be gunpowder and bullets.
Big Nose signed to me that the door swung inward. He pointed to me and then to himself to the left, and to Hairy Dog to the right. The Indians stood on each side of me, slightly hunched, weapons ready.
I caught each of their eyes for moment, took a long step back, and hit the door like a locomotive plowing into it. Nose and I dove to the left; Dog to the right.
We had no particular targets. We intended to kill everyone in there except the whores. I was certain a couple of them would go down, but that couldn’t be helped.
I squeezed off the first round from my shotgun and blew apart a fellow going for his holstered pistol.
The ‘tender was reaching under the bar. I used my second round on him. The lamps in the joint were large and cast a good deal of light. Part of my pattern must have caught the lamp over the ‘tender: the glass reservoir shattered and a liquid sheet of burning kerosene flowed the wall to the floor, licking off to its sides, as well.
Our shotguns were double-barreled Remingtons and I’d fired twice. That fine weapon was good for nothing just now, beyond a club, so I tossed it aside. I shifted my .30-30 to my left hand and drew my Colt. Nose had fired his first 12-guage round at four men at a table playing cards. The money, cards, bottle, and glasses erupted; the men went down. Those 12-gauges were mean sonsabitches.
I had no idea whether Powers had used all his dynamite in his ineffectual charge, but there wasn’t a case of it on the bar where it originally had rested.
A stud on the second floor rushed to the railing with a rifle, no pants, and an admirable erection. I shot him in the face.
A slug gouged a groove in the side of my head. I had no idea where the shooter was, but apparently Hairy Dog did. He put a couple of rounds into the chest of a fellow on the second floor, who made a spectacular dive through the railing after being hit. My Colt was empty; I holstered it and pulled the second one from behind my belt.
Big Nose came rolling across the floor, cranking his .30-30, making damned near every round a killing shot. I had a good look at his face and the observation stayed with me; it showed no more excitement than it would if he were sitting at a campfire, smoking and dreaming. But his eyes—Jesus—they burned, glistened, with the fire of the very hottest corner of hell.
Hairy Dog was a noisy fighter when he was engaged, the direct opposite of his partner. He whooped, laughed, and cursed as he threw lead around the saloon.
The last of Powers’s men standing on the first floor was a half-breed Indian with long, greasy braids and knife scars on his face. He dropped his
pistol on the floor and raised his arms in surrender. Hairy Dog shot him in the heart.
I never really noticed the racket a gunfight created until it was over. My ears were screaming like buzz saws in my head, and I was dizzy from breathing nothing but gun smoke. Big Nose was dripping sweat, and he’d been hit at least twice—his shoulder was bleeding and so was the calf of his right leg. Dog was rifling the pockets of a dead gambler.
The bar area looked like a painting done by a crazy man: The floor was littered with the dead and dying, and a haze of smoke made everything look hidden behind light gauze. The fire I’d started with the lamp when I shot-gunned the bartender was spreading. It’d followed the length of the bar and was well up into the walls. A cork was forced out of out of a bottle of booze with a loud pop! and I instinctively drew my Colt. It’s a good thing I did; I hadn’t reloaded it. I did so and holstered it.
“Pound,” a voice called from the second floor, “me an’ my boys didn’t sign on for this shit. We’re ready to make tracks outta here without no more killin’ ”
“How many are you?” I asked, my voice dry and raspy.
“Was four. You an’ your Injuns killed two. Let us come down an’ we’ll saddle up an’ ride.”
“Powers up there?”
“Yeah,” Powers answered from behind a door. “I don’t give a good goddamn what happens to these cowards, but it’s gotta be me an’ you, Pound.”
“You two hired guns come down the stairs hands raised and get out of Gila Bend. If I ever see either of you again, I’ll kill you. You make a move that turns us nervous, we’ll kill you right here.”
There was a silence.
“We’re comin’.”
These fellows looked they’d been ridden hard and put away wet—shaggy, sweaty, bodies trembling. One had a white cloth—it looked like a piece of a dress—wrapped around his head. Blood was seeping through it. The second man’s left arm hung uselessly at his side, blood dripping from his finger tips. When they’d made it to the middle of the stairs Hairy Dog and Big Nose opened up on them. I hadn’t seen that coming. I turned to the Indians, about to speak.