Gun Country

by Ralph Cotton

  “Positive, huh?” Lowe queried.

  “Damn positive,” said Mason. “What else could I do but start shooting?”

  “You could’ve held your fire and kept the yellow from running down your leg,” New York Joe Toledo put in, standing a few feet away listening.

  “There was three of us,” said Mason. “He had already put the other two out of action. Damn it, Joe! I’d already seen that Thornton and Stopple couldn’t do nothing against him.” He paused, then lied, “I heard shooting. Shooting back was the only natural thing to do!”

  “Son of a bitch . . . ,” Lowe growled. He stared away from Mason and Toledo, toward the saloon, as early sunlight peeped over the distant horizon. “You in there,” he demanded, after a moment of serious consideration. “Get on out here. We’ve got some talking to do.”

  Shaw made no reply.

  Realizing that whoever was in the saloon wasn’t about to take any orders from him, Lowe let out a breath and said, “All right, stay where you are. We’re coming in. But we’re not coming in shooting.” As he spoke he holstered his Colt and drew his hands up chest high. “I want to talk.” He paused, then asked, “All right? After all, I’ve got two of my men dead and one knocked half senseless.”

  There was a moment of tense silence as Lowe and his men looked back and forth at one another.

  “Suit yourself,” Shaw finally called out, his pain increasing with every word he spoke.

  “All right now,” Lowe said quietly to those around him. “Everybody be ready for a signal from me once I see who this is, and what we need to do about him. Like as not I’m still going to kill him.”

  Chapter 4

  Shaw raised his lowered eyes just enough to acknowledge Lowe and his men as they filed in slowly and spread out in a half circle around him. They had holstered their pistols, but Shaw paid their gesture little regard. Guns sprang up quick in his world.

  “There, you see?” said Lowe, standing in front of him, his hands chest high, his right glove off and stuck down behind his gun belt. “I’m not here for killing, unless it comes down to that.”

  Shaw looked at him, then let his eyes drift past him to the fleshy young whore who’d slipped inside and eased over behind Lowe. Seeing Shaw’s eyes go past him, Lowe said over his shoulder without looking around, “Tuesday? Damn it, girl. You’ve got no business in here.” He gave Shaw an almost apologetic look. “Whores, huh? What can you do with them, right, Mister . . . ?” His words trailed as his eyes went to the bandage atop Shaw’s head.

  Shaw didn’t respond. Instead he said, “You came here to talk. Talk.”

  Lowe looked taken aback at his bluntness. “All right,” he said, “Let’s talk, whoever you are.” He looked Shaw up and down, but his eyes couldn’t stay away from the white bloodstained head bandage, the dusty brown edges of it circling his skull above Shaw’s ears. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

  Shaw looked at him. He’d heard of Dexter Lowe, aka Dangerous Dexter. From the tales he’d heard, this young gunman was hickory tough, ready to kill at the drop of a hat, the turn of a card or the cock of a hammer. Yet, in person, Lowe didn’t measure up to much more than a dirty grin and a dark promise of trouble. Shaw breathed in and said dismissingly, “I took a gunshot to the head. Now, you want to know what happened to your men out there?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, I do,” said Lowe. “What happened to them?” But his eyes only flicked down to Shaw’s for a second, then went back to the bandage. Before Shaw could reply, Lowe cut in and asked, “You took a bullet to the head and you’re still—”

  “Alive . . . ?” Shaw said, cutting him off and finishing his sentence for him.

  Lowe leveled his gaze on Shaw’s eyes again.

  “You’re not the first person who’s asked me,” Shaw said, leaning back a little onto the edge of the bar.

  “I bet I’m not,” said Lowe, not knowing what else to say, realizing his men were standing, watching, listening, waiting behind him.

  A tense silence ensued. Lowe had let his hands lower slowly from chest high, closer to his holstered Colt, close enough for drawing if he decided to take things in that direction. But he took note that this drifter didn’t seem concerned one way or the other with where his hands were.

  Shaw’s left hand lay on the bar top, his fingertips near the wad of cloth, which was rolled and ready to stick into his ear, should this talk turn into a shoot-out. His right elbow lay propped on the bar edge, but his right hand hung loosely down toward his holstered Colt as if drawn there by instinct or predestination. “About your men . . . ,” Shaw reminded him.

  “Yeah,” said Lowe, seeming to lose interest in what happened to Thornton and Stobble, but having to sound menacing for the sake of his gunmen. “I think I’ve already got an idea what took place.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward Bell Mason. “I just want to hear it from you, make sure you or my man here ain’t either one jerking my reins. He says you fired first.”

  “I never fired a shot,” Shaw said in a quiet, restrained voice. “Did you check his gun?”

  “Sure did,” Earl Hardine cut in. “It was empty, still smoking. I even smelled it for good measure.”

  This was the opening Shaw wanted. His right hand streaked upward, his Colt leveled at Lowe’s heart. The move had come so fast, no one had caught it until it was too late. Then Shaw cocked it with a flick of his thumb and flipped it around sideways in his hand, the barrel pointing away from Lowe. “Want to smell mine?” he said.

  Shaw’s eyes riveted into Lowe’s for a second, long enough to let Lowe understand that he could just as easily have killed him. “Holster it,” Lowe said in a tight voice, now that the gun was aimed away from him. His hand had managed to get around his Colt’s butt, but the move would not have come soon enough to save his life. “My men get itchy when a gun is drawn in their presence.”

  Shaw uncocked and holstered the Colt almost as fast as he’d drawn it. His eyes held the same confident message as he went on to say, “Feel the back of your man’s head, there’s a whelp the size of your fist. I turned a shovel blade loose on him.” He eyed Mason as he spoke. “I did the same on the other two. I smacked them open-faced. Killing them wasn’t my intent.”

  “How do I know that?” said Lowe stiffly, needing to save face among his men.

  Shaw looked from face to face among the men, at the young whore too, as if establishing himself with everyone in the salon. Then he said, “If a little shovel smacking killed them, I expect you’re better off losing them now instead of down the trail”—he stopped his words as he went back to Lowe’s eyes with a knowing look—“when you need men less prone to fall victim to farm implements.”

  Lowe stared stone-faced, calculating his best response. The man standing before him wasn’t going to back down or compromise. The men behind him were looking at how he handled this. He had two men dead, but now it appeared that his own man, not this bandaged-headed drifter, had been the one who killed them. But he needed something to ease the tension, get him off the spot.

  Behind Lowe, New York Joe Toledo muffled a dark chuckle in response to Shaw’s reference to farm implements. That was all Lowe needed. He allowed himself a grudging grin. Then he let the grin turn into a dark chuckle of his own. Over his shoulder he asked in a dry but joking manner, “Is there anybody else here prone to fall victim to farm implements?”

  Behind him on his other side, Sonny Floyd said, “If there was, do you think they’d admit it?”

  Lowe let himself ease down even more. He nodded with a short laugh, then asked Shaw, “You said killing them wasn’t your intent. Just what was your intent?”

  “I saw those three when I rode in,” said Shaw. “I even recognized Roland Stobble. I’d heard he rode with you. I figured we’d get around to meeting each other soon enough. I wanted to see what the game is and see if there was room for another player.”

  “There is now . . . ,” Joe Toledo said quietly to Lowe from behind.

  Shaw went on. �
�I didn’t like it when they came sneaking around like coyotes—this is wolf country we’re in.” He turned a frown toward Bell Mason, who stood scowling at him with a reddened face.

  A gunman named Jimmy Bardell, standing back in the middle of the floor, cut in, saying, “It’s not shovel country either, Mister. It’s gun country. We saw how fast you can skin one. How sharp can you make one shoot?”

  Instead of answering Bardell, Shaw asked Lowe, “What do you want shot?” As he asked he picked up the wadded strip of cloth and stuck it into his left ear, his right already plugged.

  Without hesitation Lowe jerked his head toward Bell Mason and said, “Shoot him.”

  Almost before his words were out of his mouth, Shaw’s big Colt streaked up from his holster, cocked and leveled. But Lowe quickly shouted, “Whoa! Hold on! I didn’t mean that!”

  Shaw only heard him enough to stop and jerk the plug from his ear. “What?” he asked, his cocked Colt still pointed at Bell Mason’s chest. Mason stood staring wide-eyed with fear.

  “I said stop,” Lowe said with a dark grin turned toward Mason. “I’m short enough on men as it is.” He looked from Mason to Shaw. “Let’s call that a little test.”

  “A test . . .” Shaw lowered the Colt, uncocked it and slipped it back into his holster in one sleek move. “Good, I hate wasting bullets,” he said, his eyes going back to Mason.

  A short, tight laugh rippled across the men. “Hear that, Bell?” said Lowe. “He figured you’re not worth the cost of lead and powder.” He looked at Shaw. “So, you are a man who makes a living with a gun.”

  “Just as much as I can,” said Shaw. “Have you got work for me, being short on men like you said?”

  “Yeah, you’re on,” said Lowe. He had things back in hand now, and he knew it. “Let me ask you something, though. Should I be hiring you or the man who put the bullet in your head?”

  Shaw gave a trace of a grin. “What makes you think he’s for hire?”

  Lowe tried not to look impressed. “You managed to kill him?”

  Shaw considered his words before turning them loose. “To be honest with you, I don’t know who did it.”

  “Damn!” said Lowe. “Then I guess you’re most eager to find out?”

  “It might make me sleep better,” Shaw said. He eased back against the bar again, picked up his shot glass and sipped his whiskey. “But I can be a patient man when I need to.”

  Lowe stepped back and looked around at the men, gauging whether or not they were satisfied with how he’d handled things. He was relieved to see their expressions said they agreed with him. The drifter’s story sounded believable. Nobody liked being set upon in their sleep, especially a man who already had a bullet wound in his head, Lowe told himself. It made sense to him.

  “It’s sunup,” he said. “I don’t know about the rest of yas, but I’m ready for some breakfast.” He looked at Shaw, and asked, “What about you? Are you ready for some breakfast?”

  “I’m just finishing up breakfast.” Shaw threw back his shot of whiskey in a gulp. He looked around, seeing the men’s eyes on him, expecting him to accept Lowe’s breakfast invitation as his entrance into their group. “But I will have some coffee,” he added, catching himself. He jerked the cloth plug from his other ear and stuck both plugs in his vest pocket.

  While the men surrounded Shaw and accompanied him to a small restaurant farther down the dirt street, Dexter Lowe and Tuesday stopped off at their hotel room. Lowe reclaimed his shirt from her and stood watching as she pulled on her dress, a pair of lace-up shoes and reached for her frayed wool coat. Suddenly a flash of recognition came to the young woman.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped, stopping cold with only one sleeve of her coat on. “I know who he is!”

  “Who who is?” Lowe asked, reaching out and directing her other arm into the empty coat sleeve.

  “Him, the drifter!” said Tuesday, wide-eyed in her discovery. She slid into the empty sleeve, hiked the coat and gripped Lowe’s forearm. “I saw him last year, in Wooten, when I worked at Bentley’s Pleasure Palace.”

  “Jesus, you worked at Bentley’s?” Lowe asked. “Is there anywhere you haven’t whored this side of the Mississippi?”

  Ignoring him, she said, awestruck, “He’s Fast Larry Shaw.”

  “What?” Her words recaptured Lowe’s attention. “Him? This head-shot gunman is Fast Larry Shaw?” He considered it for only a second, then let out a short chuckle of disbelief. “You’ve got to be crazy, woman. Fast Larry Shaw, here, with a bullet in his head?”

  “I’m telling you, Dex, it’s him for a fact,” Tuesday insisted. “I did—” She caught herself and said, “That is, I knew a whore who did him while he was there.”

  Lowe gave her a suspicious look. “You started to say you did him, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Tuesday, but her words didn’t sound convincing. “Besides, what if I did do him? That’s my job—it was then anyway.”

  “It’s not now,” Dexter said, pulling her roughly to him. “It better never be again. You belong to me now. Don’t forget it. I get riled hearing about all the men you did. Sometimes it sounds like you’ve done every sonsabitch who pulls on britches.”

  “I’m a young woman in high demand,” Tuesday reminded him. “Don’t worry, I didn’t use it all up. You’ve got plenty left to keep you busy.” She gave a lewd grin and squirmed away from him.

  But Lowe grabbed her by her frayed coat sleeve and menacingly raised a finger near her face for emphasis. “But you’re not interested in doing anybody else, ever again, right?” he asked for reassurance.

  “Yeah, right, whatever,” Tuesday said in a dismissing manner. She wiggled herself loose again. “But back to Fast Larry Shaw. That is him, I damn well promise you it is.”

  “All right, then, it is,” said Lowe. “So what?” He gave a shrug, not wanting to appear rattled by the news that he’d just looked down the pointed barrel of the fastest gun alive.

  “So what?” Tuesday mocked. She hiked a hand onto a fleshy hip. “So, what are you going to do about it? From what I heard he turned lawman.”

  Without taking on alarm, Lowe said calmly, “Yep, I heard that myself.”

  “You’re not concerned?” Tuesday asked.

  Lowe let down his cavalier facade. “If it is him, I expect the best thing I can do is not let him know that I’m onto him. I’m going to keep a close watch on him. If things start to look wrong to me, I’ll have the boys shut his eyes for him, fast gun or not.”

  “Is this going to mess anything up?” Tuesday asked. “I mean for you and your gang riding for Corio on that big job you told me about.”

  “Naw, don’t worry about it,” said Lowe. “Everything is going right. I’ll see to it it stays that way. After all, I need good gunmen. Whoever this drifter is, he’s slick at handling a gun.”

  “All right,” said Tuesday, “but don’t forget you’ve promised me diamonds and rubies, remember? I’m still expecting them.”

  “You’ll get them,” said Lowe. “No head-shot gunman is going to change anything.” He swung open the hotel door, ushered her out into the hall and down the stairs to the street.

  From the boardwalk out in front of the restaurant, Shaw and two of the men stood watching as Lowe and the young woman came walking toward them from the hotel. Under his breath, Dan Sax said to Jimmy Bardell, “Damn, I love a fleshy young whore like her.”

  “Get it out of your mind,” Bardell warned him in a lowered voice. “She’s Dex’s now.”

  “Ha!” said Sax. “I’ve never seen a whore turn down a little extra gold or silver, I don’t care who she claims to belong to.”

  “That’s the kind of talk that can get a man killed,” said Bardell. “Lucky for you I’m the only one who heard it.” They both looked over at Shaw.

  Without taking his eyes off Lowe and the young woman, Shaw said, “I didn’t hear a word.” After a silent pause he added, “Let me ask you this. Am I wasting my time, looking t
o make any real money with you fellows?”

  The two chuckled among themselves. After a moment, Sax said quietly, “Drifter, you’re fixing to make more money than you’ve seen in your life.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Shaw said. He continued staring out at Lowe and the woman, and said silently, All right, Dawson, I’m here where you want me. Ready when you are. . . .

  PART 2

  Chapter 5

  Wooten, Texas

  Jane Crowley sat out of the scalding sunlight, on the edge of a boardwalk in the shade of a saloon overhang. She stared out through the wavering heat at the same low cloud of dust she’d been observing for the past half hour. Squinting, she watched a collection of black dots bounce steadily closer until they began to turn into thin vertical lines. She shut her eyes for a moment and when she reopened them she took in as much as she could before the harsh sunlight again overpowered her vision.

  “Riders coming . . . ,” she murmured instinctively to herself, her voice still a bit slurred from a weeklong whiskey binge. She cut a glance back and forth with hangover contempt and said to the empty street in general, “As if any of you square-heads even gives a damn. . . .”

  Beside her, a black cat had stood up and arched its back, and in its movements had knocked over an almost empty whiskey bottle she’d stood there. The sound of the corked bottle against the plank boardwalk resounded like a gunshot inside her jittery brain.

  “Lord A’mighty!” she said, jerking sidelong with her hands thrown up as if to protect herself. Catching herself, seeing the bottle roll back and forth and settle, she snatched it up, clutched it to her fringed doeskin bosom and shoed the cat away with a shaky hand. “Get out of here, you yellow-eyed son of a bitch. I’ve got all the bad luck I ever prayed for!”