Gun Country

by Ralph Cotton

  “I’ve never even seen a situation like this,” said Sadler. He stood scratching his head up under his cap brim. In the open windows the soldiers stood looking all around, and down at the yawning canyon below. “I say we’ve got to walk off of here,” Sadler concluded. He looked at Ploster and said, “Leastwise that’s what I’m going to do. I advise all of yas to do the same.”

  Looking embarrassed, feeling humiliated and helpless, Captain Ploster asked humbly, “When will another train be through here?”

  “Tomorrow at noon, or thereabouts,” said Sadler. “I’m going to walk back and warn them as far back as I can.”

  Across Hueco Pass, Irish Tommie continued his jig on the rear of the flatcar. As he dipped and twirled he raised a flask to his lips and drank deeply, in spite of the fact that Madden Corio had given strict orders against it. “Look at me, I’m fat as a Christmas goose but lighter than a pillow feather!”

  “You best settle yourself down, fool,” Harvey Lemate called out to him.

  But Irish Tommie would have none of it. Instead of heeding Lemate’s advice, he reeled with laughter and jumped higher and higher as he shrieked toward the wide blue evening sky. With his eyes closed he finally jumped so high that when he came down, the flatcar had sped out from under him.

  “Good Lord!” Boxer Shagin, one of Corio’s men who’d brought the uniforms, called out to his brother, Lindsey Shagin. “The idiot’s jumped off the train!”

  Irish Tommie’s shriek had intensified, then stopped short as he hit the cross ties feet first, bounced high, flipped in a full circle and bounced twice more until he landed headfirst and came to a limp and broken halt between the two gleaming rails. “He’s bashed his bloody brains out!” shouted Richard Little, one of the men standing and gawking in awe as the train sped onward.

  Brule Kaggan, another of the six who’d brought the uniforms, stood beside Little and Matt Ford. “Somebody tell Corio. We’ve got to go back for him.”

  “In a pig’s eye,” said Ford. “Corio wouldn’t stop this train for his own mother.” He added with a wicked grin, “Hell, neither would I. Ma and I never got along that well.”

  The train rolled on into the long shadows of evening, the surrounding terrain growing more rugged and mountainous until darkness sank down and enveloped the land. “Won’t be long, we’ll be coming to the starting edge of Yellow Moon Canyon, Mister,” the engineer called out in the dim glow of lantern light, above the deep, steady hypnotic throb of the steam engine.

  Madden Corio pretended not to have been dozing and just awakened. Instead he forced his voice to sound strong and alert. “Good work, men,” he said to the two railroaders. “Don’t be surprised if there’s a bag of gold coins waiting for both of you once we get to where we’re going. How would that suit you?”

  The engineer and fireman looked at each other in the dim flickering light. “That would suit me fine,” said the engineer. “But I’m afraid it wouldn’t set well with my employer.”

  “Me neither,” said the fireman.

  “You’d tell him about it?” Corio mused, giving Jordan a look of disbelief.

  “He’d ask,” said the engineer, “and I would not brand myself a liar over a bag of gold coins.”

  “Neither would I,” the fireman said as the train made its way along the beginning of a deep canyon.

  “I say man’s honor is all he’s got,” said the engineer. “I stand good to my word whatever it takes.”

  “My hat goes off to you,” said Corio. “I feel much the same way myself. When I give my word I refuse to crawfish on it.” He and Jordan gave each other a knowing look, then chuckled between themselves.

  Lawrence Shaw, Sonny Lloyd Sheer, Dan Sax and Able Hatcher sat atop their horses at the top of a steep trail leading down into Yellow Moon Canyon. They watched the round globe of the train light meander up as if from out of the earth and straighten itself into a long harsh beam of light across the rocky ground.

  “Here it comes now,” Shaw said sidelong to the men beside him. “Bring Corio’s gunmen up behind us,” he said to Hatcher. “Get ready to cut them loose when I give you a signal.”

  As Hatcher turned and rode away at a gallop, Shaw reached out and turned up a dimly lit lantern into a high glow. He raised the bright lantern over his head and waved it back and forth slowly toward the approaching train.

  “Can’t they see us?” Sheer asked after an anxious moment.

  “Oh yes, they see us,” Shaw said with confidence, still waving the lantern. No sooner had he spoken than they watched the bright headlight shudder atop the engine as the train began its long, screeching, grinding, steam-blowing halt.

  “They damn sure do,” said Sax, restlessly gripping the stock of the rifle lying across his lap.

  “All right,” said Shaw, “be ready to back up anything I tell them.”

  A moment passed as the train sat pulling and pounding and blowing off steam into the desert air. Then the heavy thud of a boarding ramp dropping resounded in the darkness, and horses’ hooves shuffled and clanked down onto the rocky ground. As Shaw and the others watched, figures began to move toward them in the shadowy moonlight. Shaw held the lantern low and gave a short signal wave to Hatcher and the others waiting just off the trail behind them.

  In the darkness, Madden Corio saw the short wave of the lantern and said to Jordan and Lemate, who rode close beside him, “They’ve gotten themselves ready for us. Keep me covered.”

  As the three rode closer and Corio saw the lantern go out altogether, he said to the shadowy images sitting their horses before him, “You better hope our wagons are ready and waiting. I’ll hear no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

  “The wagons are ready, Corio,” Shaw said, on the hunch that it was Corio talking to him.

  Corio stopped his horse, the other two following suit beside him. They were barely able to make out the three figures in the pale moonlight. “Bring up the wagons, let’s get them loaded,” he commanded.

  “Real soon, Corio,” Shaw said calmly. “First let’s talk about it.”

  “What is there to talk about?” Corio asked, his hand on the rifle across his lap as he nudged his horse forward at a slower, more cautious pace. “Your partner and I agreed to the payback before you become a part of this deal.”

  “That was then, Corio,” said Shaw, “this is now. Things have changed.”

  “Oh, have they?” Corio asked, moving forward and stopping fifteen feet away, his two men flanking close on either side. “In what way has anything changed?”

  “Lowe is dead,” Shaw said.

  “What happened to him?” Corio asked, but his eyes kept moving back and forth, trying to see in the darkness down along the canyon trail.

  “His gal killed him,” Shaw said. “They had a lovers’ spat, you could say.”

  In the darkness, Corio fell silent for a moment. Then upon making out the faces of Sheer and Dan Sax in the grainy moonlight, he said to Sheer, “Is that true, Sonny Lloyd? Dexter Lowe’s whore killed him?”

  “She killed him deader than hell,” Sheer replied.

  “And it’s true this man was his partner?” Corio asked, sounding wary of the whole idea. “And you believe all this, you being Lowe’s right-hand man?”

  “Yes, I believe it,” said Sheer. “I heard the words come straight from Dangerous Dexter Lowe’s own mouth,” he lied. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

  Corio stepped his horse in closer for a better look at Sheer’s and Sax’s faces. “What about you, Dan?”

  “No doubt in my mind either,” Sax said.

  “With Lowe dead, where does that put you two?” Corio asked, testing the two gunmen’s loyalties.

  “You see where we’re sitting, Madden,” said Sheer, nodding toward Shaw. “We’re with him, all the way.”

  Corio considered what all the way meant. “We don’t have all night to sit jawing about this,” he said. He turned to Shaw. “If these two say you’re all right, then you’re good in my book. Now
get my wagons up here, let’s get loaded and gone. We’ll finish talking about the money once we’re under way. We’re going to have soldiers down our shirts soon as they figure out what’s hit them.”

  “We talk about the money now, else there won’t be any wagons brought up,” Shaw said.

  “I left Watkins and Skinner with them,” Jordan said to Corio. “I call out to them, they’ll start killing these saddle tramps quicker than—” His words stopped as he saw the two walk up from the trail, out of the greater darkness, their hands tied behind their backs.

  “Saddle tramps, are we, Jordan?” Sonny Lloyd Sheer asked in a sharp-edged voice.

  “Shut up, Jordan,” said Corio, seeing that this was getting him nowhere. He calmed down and watched Skinner and Watkins walk up closer and stop. Watkins’ forehead bore a swollen imprint of a rifle barrel. Skinner’s nose and upper lip were swollen and bloody. “It looks like you’re trying to deal yourself in deeper into my business, Mister,” said Corio, ready to go along with anything so long as he got his wagons and got them loaded.

  “Now you’re starting to get the message,” Shaw said. “My men get even splits the same as you pay you’re regulars.”

  “Okay, that’s them,” said Corio. “Let’s hear about you.”

  “This time out I get the same as your man here gets,” Shaw said, nodding toward Jordan. “Next job, whatever my men get will come off of my end.”

  “Off of your end?” Corio said, with a slight bemused grin.

  “That’s right, my end,” Shaw said. “Next job we pull I ride as a full partner.”

  “You’ve got sand. I’ll say that for you, stranger,” Corio said, still knowing that it didn’t matter what he said, so long as he got moving across the border. “Hell, all right, it’s time I take on some new guns, expand on my horizons, so to speak.”

  Behind Shaw, Sonny Lloyd Sheer and Dan Sax looked at each other in amazement.

  “You men heard my partner,” Shaw said. “Get those wagons up here. Let’s make some money.”

  Chapter 17

  In a grainy glow of moonlight and torches, Corio’s men and Lowe’s men made quick work of unloading the flatcars onto the big wagons. Upon first arrival, Shaw climbed up and cut the tie-down ropes from a canvas tarpaulin. When he flipped the corner from atop the cargo crates, he stopped for a moment and looked down at the crate markings.

  “Gatling guns . . . ,” he said in a whisper, wondering how far behind him Dawson and Caldwell might be. So long as these guns stayed in the crate, his lawmen partners were safe enough, but he did not want to draw them into a fight with an enemy armed with Gatling guns.

  “That’s only part of it,” said Corio, stepping up beside him. “On one of these cars we’ve got a crate of newly designed French hand grenades. All you do is run a striker across the top of it and give it a toss.” Seeing the question in Shaw’s eyes, he added, “Some high brass always manages to slip in something like this. It keeps them knowing the latest in armament.”

  Shaw was impressed but he tried to play it down. “Who is this going to?” he asked in an offhand manner, hoping Corio would give something up.

  But Corio didn’t fall for it. “That’s going to remain my little secret, partner,” he said with deliberation. “I’m not sharing any more than I have to with you just yet.”

  Shaw just stared at him.

  “What do you expect?” Jordan asked, stepping up beside Corio as the men began laying walk boards from the flatcars to the wagons. “We don’t even know your name.” Behind Jordan came Sonny Lloyd and Dan Sax. “But I say it’s time we find out, here and now.”

  More of Corio’s men gathered on the ground beside the low open flatcar. Now that the wagons were in place, Shaw figured it was time for somebody to test him a little more, see how far he might be pushed. He took a moment and looked all around at Corio’s men, matching faces to names by memory, by wanted posters. When he turned back to Jordan, before he said anything, Tuesday Bonhart climbed the iron ladder up onto the flatcar.

  “His name is Shaw—Lawrence Shaw,” she said with no hesitancy. “Some of you might know him as Fast Larry or the Fastest Gun Alive.”

  “What the—?” Jordan cut himself short; his hand went for his holstered gun.

  Tuesday’s words caught Shaw by surprise, yet as he saw hands snap to pistol butts and rifle stocks, his own Colt streaked up fast enough to cause every other hand to freeze in place. Even Jordan hadn’t manage to clear the top of his holster before Shaw’s big Colt bore down on him and moved back and forth slowly between him and Corio like some steel-eyed serpent choosing where to strike first.

  “See why they call him that?” Tuesday said fearlessly, her hand going to her cocked hip. “I just love watching him at work.”

  “Everybody hold tight,” said Corio. Watching Shaw’s gun barrel move slowly back and forth, he raised a calm hand toward his men as if it would keep the blood from spilling. “Are you Fast Larry Shaw?” he asked Shaw somberly.

  “I’m Lawrence Shaw,” Shaw said, feeling the pounding begin to ratchet up inside his head, induced by the suddenness of his move. “I don’t go by Fast Larry anymore.”

  “You’re a lawdog,” Jordan said, a bit brazenly considering his gun had not even cleared his holster.

  “Watch your language,” Shaw said. “I wore a badge for a while. I still carry it. But I’m a gunman, always was, always will be.” Even as he said the words, it dawned on him that he was not lying. The pain in his head had grown intense; he hoped it didn’t show on his face. Yet with his pain came the truth. The two seemed intertwined. There was a sudden rush of clarity in calling himself a gunman, as if it had been something he’d denied for too long.

  Corio saw the look on Shaw’s face and eased in to take things over before Jordan worked this into a killing. “You rode with that U.S. marshal and his deputy,” he said, but not in a harsh, confrontational manner. “You killed friends of ours along the border.”

  “This is gun country, Corio,” Shaw said, feeling more like himself than he had for a long time. “I live here. Killing is what I do.”

  “But you are the law,” said Jordan, venturing his words in, his finger stabbing toward Shaw like some short saber. “You put on a badge and killed our own kind down here.”

  “I kill for money,” said Shaw, “same as every other man here. I put on a badge for the law, or a uniform for the army, or a monkey suit for some high-rolling money baron.” His gaze bored into Jordan.

  “But still . . .” Jordan let his words trail, but his accusing finger drooped a little.

  “Let me say it again, this time slower for you.” Shaw cocked the Colt’s hammer as he held the big gun leveled at Jordan’s chest. “This is gun country. I live here. Killing is what I do. Any questions?” His eyes looked dark and dead with resolve as they moved slowly from face to face.

  A tense silence set in. Sonny Lloyd Sheer, Dan Sax and the others watched in awe. Tuesday stood rapt in fascination. Corio took a tight breath and said, “And it’s a damn good job you’ve done of it, from all I’ve ever heard.” He paused with a slight smile, still holding the upper hand, he thought, so long as only he knew where the armament was going. “Now can we get these damned wagons loaded?”

  “Yeah, let’s get to it,” Jordan said, glad to put aside differences now that Corio had given his approval to do so.

  Corio gave his men a look. The men eased back into motion, their hands coming away from their guns and going to the business of reaching for crates and rolling tarpaulins. In a moment everyone had gotten busy again, too busy to note that Shaw still stood with the same look frozen onto his face. But Tuesday saw that Shaw was in trouble. He seemed to be stuck in place.

  “Hey, you’re coming with me, Fast Larry,” she said, moving in quickly and hooking her arm through his, drawing his forearm away from the big Colt. “We’re going to do some celebrating in private.” She turned and gave a wink to Corio to keep him from seeing Shaw’s condition. “I get
hot all over when I see him sling his big gun around,” she added, and she tried to turn and walk to the iron ladder.

  But Corio blocked her way. “Hold on,” he said, without noticing Shaw’s lost and frozen eyes. “I take it you’re the young whore who killed Dexter Lowe?”

  “Yes, what of it?” Tuesday asked in a bold voice, ready at any second to grab the derringer from inside her dress if she needed it.

  “Dexter and I did lots of business together,” said Corio. “He was a good man. I don’t like the idea of you killing him.”

  “Get used to it,” Tuesday said. She stepped forward, using Shaw’s presence to get Corio to move aside. “How do you think I feel killing him? The son of a bitch said he’d take me to Paris.”

  Corio took her by her forearm to keep her from walking away. “Why’d you kill him?” he asked bluntly. “I’ve got a right to know.”

  “I killed him because . . .” Tuesday took her time, staring down at his hand on her arm before raising her eyes to his. “He put his hands on me,” she said with a knowing look. “You might want to keep that in mind, Madden Corio.”

  As Shaw and Tuesday stepped onto the iron ladder, neither Corio nor Jordan saw the change that had come over the wounded gunman. “I suppose we should’ve figured on some whore killing Lowe someday,” Jordan said between the two of them. Then in a lowered tone he said, “What about Shaw?”

  “What about him?” said Corio, watching Shaw and Tuesday step away into the moonlit darkness. “We’ve got a deal going with Bocanero. Until we’ve gotten our money, we leave Shaw and Lowe’s men alone, let them do the job they’re paid to do.”

  “Which is to be decoy targets for the Mexican army while we get away with our firearms,” Jordan said with a sly grin.

  “That’s right,” said Corio. “You heard Shaw.” He quoted, “ ‘This is gun country.’ He lives here.”

  “He can die here too,” said Jordan.

  “Only when the time is right for it,” said Corio. “Any time him or these men get on your nerves, remind yourself of that, and keep your head clear. We can kill Shaw any time we’re ready, like snuffing out a match. But for now, let him burn.”