Dead Man's Revenge

by Colby Jackson

  He didn’t even hear the sound of the gunshot, but he feel his hat lift off his head, and he heard the bullet chip splinters off the corner of the wall beside him just as he was about to step down from the boardwalk and cross an alley. If he hadn’t stepped down, the bullet would most likely have hit him in the head.

  Blaylock didn’t stop to think about what might have happened, however. He kept on going down, hit the dry dirt of the alley and rolled to his left, coming to a stop behind a rain barrel just before a bullet hit it, puncturing one of the wooden staves. Water fountained out of the top of the barrel and trickled down the sides.

  The barrel of water offered good protection, so Blaylock drew his Smith & Wesson .44 and waited, but no more shots came. Gradually Blaylock became aware of sounds from the street, men shouting, children yelling, dogs barking. He stood up warily, holstered his pistol, and located his hat.

  Settling his hat on his head and walking out of the alley, Blaylock approached a cluster of men who were talking and pointing.

  “Anybody see where those shots came from?” he asked.

  A thin man with bulging eyes turned to look at him. “Was somebody shootin’ at you?”

  “Don’t think so,” Blaylock lied. “Just curious.”

  “Looks like the shots came from the new buildin’ over there,” another man said. He was short and wiry, and Blaylock thought he worked at the livery stable down the street. “Maybe from the roof.”

  “Thanks,” Blaylock said, and started across the street.

  “Told you they was shootin’ at him,” he heard the thin man say at his back.

  “If they was, they better watch out,” someone said. “That’s Sam Blaylock.”

  “Damn. Better notify Joshua Shadrack, then.”

  Shadrack was the local undertaker.

  “Blaylock’s given him right smart of business,” the liveryman said. “Reckon he gets a cut of the profits?”

  The men laughed, but Blaylock was no longer paying attention. He was focused on the building in front of him. It was so new that he could smell the raw wood. The sign in front announced that the Bad Dog Saloon would be opening soon. The doorway was boarded up, but there was a stairway attached to the alley side of the building. It led up to the second floor. Blaylock didn’t hesitate. He drew the Smith & Wesson and went up the stairs.

  The door at the top of the stairs was locked. Blaylock opened it with one quick kick. The jamb splintered, and Blaylock stepped to the side before the door even hit the wall. When there was no response from inside the building, he poked his head around the edge of the door and looked down a hallway. Nobody was in sight, so he went inside and stood quietly, listening. He heard nothing. Either the building was as empty as it was supposed to be or someone was being very quiet.

  The doors along the hallway were open, so Blaylock walked along and took a quick look into each one. He suspected that the rooms would eventually be occupied by some soiled doves who’d be working in the Bad Dog Saloon, but at the moment they were unfurnished and unoccupied. In the middle room, however, the window was open. Blaylock went inside and immediately smelled gun smoke. The shots had been fired from here.

  He went back out into the hall. The bushwhacker could have gone downstairs, or he could have gone out the window at the end of the hall. That didn’t seem likely to Blaylock, since the window was closed, but he took a look, anyway.

  The building next door was a hardware store, only one story high, and while it would be easy enough for someone to climb out the window, hang from the sill, and drop to the roof, it wouldn’t be possible to close the window. So whoever had shot at Blaylock was still inside the building.

  Or not. The front entrance was boarded up, but there had to be another way in and out of the building. Otherwise, how had the shooter gotten inside?

  The stairway was at the end of the hall near the window, and Blaylock went down slowly. The front windows gave plenty of light, and he saw tables and chairs covered with sheets to keep off the dust. The bar was in, but it was also covered. Behind the bar was a large mirror that reflected the room. Instead of looking new, the place looked old and deserted because of the covered furnishings.

  Blaylock stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening. He heard muffled sounds from the street but nothing more.

  Between the stairway and the bar was a wall with a couple of doors. One of them, Blaylock guessed, would be to an office and rooms for the owner of the saloon. The other might go to a storeroom, and in the storeroom there was probably a door to the outside. Another alley ran along behind the saloon, and the shooter could have easily gone out that way. Blaylock was sorry he hadn’t tried the alley first, but he’d been concentrating on the spot where the shots had come from, not on escape routes.

  He saw that the door nearest the bar, the one most likely to lead to a storeroom, was slightly ajar. He walked to it and put his hand on the knob. As he did, he heard a sound from behind the bar.

  Once again, Blaylock didn’t have time to think. He threw himself aside and down, landing on his back. He looked behind the bar and saw only white cloth and something that might have been a pistol. He fired the Smith & Wesson at the same time that another pistol roared.

  The thunder of the shots filled the saloon. Blaylock didn’t think his shot had hit anyone. He tipped over a table and got behind it. The table wouldn’t stop a bullet, but at least it would make it harder for anyone to see him.

  As he waited to see what the gunman’s next move would be, Blaylock heard someone in the storeroom. The door opened, and Blaylock’s finger tightened on the trigger of the Smith & Wesson, but the pistol behind the bar was quicker and fired of two quick shots. The bullets ripped through the door and sent splinters flying.

  The door slammed shut. Blaylock didn’t know who was in the storeroom, but it was clear that whoever it was, it wasn’t a friend of whoever was behind the bar.

  For a while, nobody moved. The pistol fire in the confined space had made Blaylock’s ears ring. He couldn’t hear much of anything, and he didn’t know if the man in the storeroom had stayed or left the same way he’d come in.

  After a couple of minutes had gone by, a voice came from the storeroom.

  “This is Marshal Everett Tolliver. I’m going to give you a chance to give yourself up. If you don’t, I’ll come in shooting.”

  “Hold on, Marshal,” Blaylock called out. “This is Sam Blaylock. I’m not the one who tried to shoot you. There’s a man hiding behind the bar.”

  “Just one?” Tolliver said.

  “Good question,” Blaylock said. “I haven’t had a chance to count.”

  “So there might be three or four of ‘em, then.”

  “Could be a whole regiment, for all I know.” As he spoke, Blaylock looked out from behind the table. He saw nothing but the bar, the cloth, the mirror. Nothing moved.

  “Stay where you are, Marshal,” Blaylock said.

  He moved in a crouch from behind the table to a spot where he could see the side of the bar but not what was behind it. Whoever was back there couldn’t see him, either, not even in the mirror.

  As quietly as he could, Blaylock made his way to the end of the bar. When he was close enough to reach the cloth, he flipped it up.

  Getting no response, he readied his pistol and moved quickly to where he could see all along the back of the bar.

  No one was there.

  6

  “So you’re telling me it was a ghost?” Everett Tolliver said.

  He and Blaylock sat at the table Sam had overturned, now set upright, the cloth tossed aside. They’d searched the area carefully and found no one and nothing.

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Sam said, “except that somebody was behind that bar shooting at me and you, and now nobody’s in sight. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Me, neither,” Tolliver said. He paused. “I saw a magic act once, were a fella pulled a rabbit out of an empty hat, then made that rabbit disappear. Damnedest thing I
ever saw.”

  “That wasn’t any rabbit shooting at me,” Blaylock said. “There’s no magician around here, and no hat, either.”

  “Somebody shot at me, too, and then he disappeared, unless it was you that did the shooting.”

  “You know better than that,” Blaylock said. “Somebody took a shot at me when I left McCarthy’s office, and the shot came from here.”

  Blaylock took off his hat and poked a finger through the hole in the crown.

  “I never doubted that somebody shot at you,” Tolliver said.

  “I didn’t take kindly to it,” Blaylock told him. “I thought I’d come in here and see if I could find out who wanted me dead.”

  “That might be a long list.”

  “Might be. Did Turley come get you before the shooting started?”

  “Turley?” Tolliver said. “That fella who works for McCarthy? I haven’t seen him all day. I didn’t hear the shots, though. A woman came running in the jail and said there was shooting going on down the street. I should’ve known you’d be involved.”

  Turley hadn’t been in the pressroom when Blaylock left the newspaper office, or if he had, Blaylock hadn’t seen him. Blaylock wondered if Turley knew how to use a gun. He looked like the kind of man who’d been in a fistfight or two in his time, and he could probably handle a pistol, too.

  He couldn’t disappear, though. Nobody could do that.

  “I can’t help it if people don’t like me,” Blaylock said. “McCarthy’s doing everything he can to turn the whole town against me, and he’s succeeding.”

  “How much good did it do to talk to him?”

  “None at all.”

  “’Bout what I figured,” Tolliver said. He looked around the saloon. “Who you reckon owns this place?”

  Blaylock said he didn’t have any idea.

  “Fella named Russell. Deuce Russell. Ever hear of him?”

  Blaylock shook his head, though the name did sound a bit familiar.

  “Supposed to be a rambler and a gambler. Won a big game in New Orleans and decided to build his own place.”

  Now Blaylock knew why the name was familiar. Blaylock had done a bit of gambling in his younger days, and while he’d never run across Deuce Russell, he’d heard of him. Always on the lookout to make a big killing at the tables and settle down with a saloon of his own where he could watch other gamblers buck the tiger or try to make a living playing stud poker.

  “Russell looked around for an up and coming town,” Tolliver said, “one where a big saloon would do a good business, and he decided on Shooter’s Cross.”

  “Lucky us,” Blaylock said, wondering what the point of the story was.

  “Somebody had to tell him about this place,” Tolliver said. “We’re growing, but we’re not exactly famous in New Orleans.”

  “So?” Blaylock said. “Who told him?”

  “Well, you know how it is when you’re the marshal. You hear things. Some of them are true, and some of the aren’t.”

  “What have you heard about Russell?”

  “Not so much him. What I hear is that he’s got a partner.”

  Blaylock was catching on, now. “I read the newspaper. I think I know who you mean.”

  “If you’re thinking Mitchell McCarthy, you do.”

  The Sentinel had run several articles about the new saloon that was coming to town, mentioning how grand it would be and how it would be a big improvement on the places of entertainment to be found in the town now. A place of “wholesome entertainment,” as McCarthy had put it, “where men can be assured of decent prices and where a peaceful atmosphere will be maintained at all times.”

  “I don’t recall that McCarthy mentioned he was a partner in the saloon,” Blaylock said.

  “He hasn’t said that. It’s just a rumor.”

  “He’s sure giving the place a lot of ink in that paper of his.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” Tolliver said.

  “Funny he should mention the ‘peaceful atmosphere,’ though.”

  Tolliver looked around at the draped furniture and the now-covered bar. “Looks mighty peaceful to me.”

  Blaylock stood up. “It wasn’t a while ago. McCarthy got that part wrong.”

  “Guess he did,” Tolliver said. “You leaving?”

  Blaylock shook his head. “Not yet. I want to have a better look around.”

  Tolliver stood up as well. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t even believe in rabbits being pulled out of empty hats.”

  “Saw it with my own eyes,” Tolliver said.

  “Never said you didn’t. A man’s eyes can fool him now and then, though.”

  “Nobody got out that back door past me. Maybe he went up the stairs.”

  “Nobody came out from behind that bar,” Blaylock said.

  “We’re back to the ghost, then.”

  “Let’s find out,” Blaylock said.

  He went back over to the bar with Tolliver following.

  “We’ve already looked there,” the marshal said. “Nobody’s hiding under the bar.”

  Blaylock wasn’t so sure. He knelt down and ran his fingers over the floor. Even though he was looking for it, this time, he still almost missed the trap door because it fit so well into the floor. Two of its edges were masked on one side by the edge of the bar and on the other by the parallel boards. The other two sides weren’t disguised, but the light from the windows didn’t reach back there, and there was so little space between the edges of the door and the boards they touched that Blaylock had to look twice to see them even though he was looking for them.

  “You see it?” he asked Tolliver.

  “Hidey-hole,” Tolliver said, kneeling down beside Blaylock. He ran his hands over the boards. “If things get too rowdy in here and the bullets and fists start flying, the bartender can get out and come looking for the marshal to help out.”

  “Or just save his own skin,” Blaylock said. He tapped the trapdoor. “Not a bad idea.”

  “No hinges and no handle, though,” Tolliver said. “How’d anybody get it open to get down below?”

  “This knot,” Blaylock said, touching the dark whorls with his finger. “Look at the edges.”

  The knot had well-defined edges, too well-defined. Blaylock pulled his Arkansas toothpick from its sheath and slipped the point into one of the thin crevices. He gave the knot a flip, and it popped out to reveal a hole through the board. Blaylock put the knife away, put a finger through the hole, and lifted up the trapdoor.

  “Easy enough for somebody to slip through and replace it from underneath,” he said. “I couldn’t see him because of the covering, and I couldn’t hear him because my ears were ringing from all the shooting.”

  “Reckon he’s still down there?” Tolliver said.

  “You want to go down and see?”

  “You’re skinnier than I am. I’ll go out in the alley and wait, just in case he comes sneaking out.”

  It didn’t sound like such a good deal to Blaylock, but he nodded his assent. Before he slipped through the opening, however, he searched his pockets for a lucifer and struck it with his thumbnail. He stuck the lighted match below the floor. Nobody took a shot at it.

  “Probably nobody down there,” he said, “but I’ll have a look, just in case.”

  He got out another match and slid head first through the opening. It was a pretty tight fit. He heard Tolliver’s boot heels on the boards above him. He lay still for a second, smelling dirt and dust, before he struck the second match. The floor was only about a foot and a half above his head. Whoever had come through ahead of him would’ve had to slither out like a snake.

  Blaylock didn’t like thinking about snakes, not where he was. Since he saw nobody, he waved out the match and went back into the saloon. Tolliver was gone, so Blaylock went through the storeroom and out into the alley.

  “He came out right here,” Tolliver said. He pointed to the ground at the edge of the building.
“Went off down the alley.”

  Blaylock couldn’t track the man, and neither could Tolliver. The ground was too hard to take the imprint of his boots.

  “So it wasn’t a ghost,” Tolliver said. “Any idea who might have been shooting at you?”

  Blaylock had some ideas, all right, but he wasn’t ready to share them with Tolliver. After all, he might be wrong.

  “Nope,” he said. “McCarthy’s pretty much made me the target of the whole town.”

  “You’re not saying he did anything directly, are you?”

  Blaylock thought about Turley. “Not yet.”

  “You planning to cause any trouble about this?”

  “Not me. You’re the marshal, I’m a citizen. It’s your job to find out who’s trying to kill me.”

  “Right.”

  #

  The two men walked around the building and out onto the street. The crowd that had gathered earlier had increased in size, and one of the people in the front of it was Mitchell McCarthy.

  “Anybody dead in there?” McCarthy yelled as Blaylock and Tolliver came into the street.

  “Not that we know of,” Tolliver said. “We didn’t find anybody.”

  “We heard shootin’,” a tall man standing nearby said. “Lots of shootin’.”

  “Don’t worry about what you heard,” Tolliver said. “What did you see?”

  “Nothin’ to see, just a saloon that ain’t opened up yet.”

  “Nobody came out of the alley?”

  “Not a soul,” the tall man said.

  Blaylock hadn’t thought it likely that the shooter would come out in the street right there. The alley behind the saloon ran for a couple of blocks in each direction. It would be easy enough for someone to walk down to the end of the buildings and come out onto the street without being seen.

  “You can all go about your business, then,” Tolliver said. “The excitement’s over for the day.”

  Looking vaguely disappointed, the people began to drift away, going back to their usual pursuits. Blaylock figured they’d have been a lot more chipper if someone had been killed or at least wounded. There was nothing like a little bloodshed to cheer people up, as long as it wasn’t their blood that was being shed.