Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden

by J. Lee Butts

  Couldn’t do much but shake my head and grin.

  No boardwalk in Lone Pine. Set of rickety-looking steps, made from rough-cut, unplaned boards, led into Black’s front entrance. We stood on the top tread, gazed over the café doors, and scanned the pitiful interior of the place.

  Under his breath Nate hissed, “Wish Carlton J. Cecil coulda come with us. Always like havin’ that redheaded devil with a pistol along anytime we have to put lead in the air.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Always feel a bunch safer when Carl’s around. Man can thumb a pistol faster than a chicken can peck seed from a metal pie plate.”

  My partner grunted, as though someone had pulled all the hair out of his nose at the same time, then said, “Guess by now he’s probably already got that carbuncle on his rump lanced. Sweet mama. Heard tell as how that thing was the size of a grown man’s fist. Makes me cringe just thinkin’ ’bout it.”

  Whispering, I said, “It’s a big one all right. Maybe the biggest I’ve ever seen. Went by to check on him day we rode out. Man was having trouble standing. Barely able to walk out onto the porch and wave good-bye. Hobbled around like a one-legged cripple.”

  Interior of Black’s joint amounted to little more than a single, oblong wooden-and-canvas box, of about twenty by thirty feet. Rough-cut pine boards came up about three feet off the floor, like wainscoting in a house. Shabby, patched, canvas roof and half walls let in sunlight like a worn-out flour sifter. Three poles in the middle of the room held up the roof. Five tables scattered around the room. Only two were occupied. Three fellers sitting at the one closest to the door. Men we wanted took up space in the far corner. Bar, comprised of a single plank board atop two barrels, stood on the left, just inside the door.

  Pushed the batwings aside with the barrels of our weapons and stepped inside. Heard the hammers of Nate’s shotgun snap back, as we stepped over the roadhouse’s threshold.

  Nate headed left and attempted to wave the bartender into silence. Man, who bore a striking resemblance to a rake handle sporting a moustache the size of a wharf rat, snapped to attention behind one of the barrels. Went to waving his bar rag at us, then called out, “Wait just a damned minute, now. Just, by God, wait a minute.”

  Sounded like spit on a hot stove lid when Nate said, “Shut the hell up, you ignert son of a bitch.”

  Fellers at the table by the door hopped up and disappeared through the batwings like windblown steam.

  Eyeballed our prey at the ramshackle table near an idle potbellied stove in the hangout’s far corner. None of them appeared to have taken notice of our arrival. Given the number of empty bottles atop their table and on the floor, would have surprised me if any of the drunken trio would have noticed Gabriel blowing his horn for the Second Coming.

  Flicked a quick, corner-of-the-eye glance over at Nate. He had a finger pressed against his lips and was shaking his head at the bug-eyed bartender. Whiskey wrangler had his hands up, kept shooting horrified looks from Nate to me, and vibrated like a plucked banjo string.

  No more than ten feet from the far end of the bar, Black’s piano player, eyes closed, head back like he was entertaining the king of France, tinkled away at his keyboard. Swayed back and forth on his wobbly bench like a weeping willow in a light breeze. Man was serious into his music.

  Motioned Nate on around to my left toward the battered, upright music box. For no reason I could imagine, the ivory tickler’s eyes suddenly popped open like a pair of cheap, paper window shades. He went to blinking and glanced around like a man who’d just woke up and didn’t recognize his surroundings. Spotted us and stopped playing. His pale, stubble-covered face went scarlet. Veins popped out on his neck. Then, he hopped up and unceremoniously wobbled through a door in the wall right next to his twangy-sounding instrument.

  Eased my way to the center of the room, next to one of the poles holding the canvas roof up. Couple of dust devils wafted off my boots. Tiny twisters twirled across the floor in front of me like a pair of intoxicated dancers, hit the stove and flew all to pieces. Ended up four or five steps away from the three drunks in the corner. Was close enough to them that no matter what happened knew I wouldn’t miss whoever I picked to die first.

  4

  “WELL, WE MIGHTA KILT THAT WOMAN . . .”

  BROUGHT MY WINCHESTER to bear on the trio. Addressed the man sitting on the backside of the table when I called out, “Okay, Mort, you boys best throw all your iron on the floor. Then get up real slow. Keep your hands where I can see ’em when you do it.”

  Mordecai Staine, who’d spent the whole time I approached them staring at the scarred tabletop, as though on the verge of drifting off to sleep or maybe passing slap out, snapped his head back with all the speed of a man sitting on the bottom of a deep, cold lake. With agonizing, near-paralytic slowness, he pushed back in his chair, then shoved a sweat-stained, wide-brimmed Stetson to the back of his head with one finger.

  Brothers Darius and Dolphus swayed to their feet. Hands hovering over still holstered, well-used pistols, they backed into the tent saloon’s far corner. Took a stand on either side of their eldest.

  Mordecai’s bloodshot, rheumy-eyed gaze wobbled around the room till it landed on me. “Jus’ be got damned,” he said. “If’n it ain’t Deppidy Marshal Hayden by-God Tilden, I’ll shit in my hat, then eat it. Whachoo doin’ all the way out here on the back side a nowhere, Deppidy Tilden? Mus’ be sumthin’ important for Isaac Parker’s personal, hand-picked killer to show up way’n the hell out here. Brung another badge-totin’ killer with you, too, I see.”

  Moved the Winchester, ever so slightly, and leveled the muzzle up on Mordecai’s breastbone. Figured the heavy-grain bullet would go plumb through him at that range. Blow a big chunk of heart and lung onto the wooden half wall and flapping canvas at his back.

  “My partner and I’ve come to arrest you fellers, Mort,” I said. “Take you boys back to Fort Smith, where you’ll dangle from a piece of Maledon’s oiled Kentucky hemp at the Gates of Hell gallows down in the hollow next to the courthouse. Once you’ve stood trial and Judge Parker sees fit, of course.”

  Darius, gaunt, ghostly pale, and sporting the appearance of an advanced consumptive, coughed into his off hand. Fingers draped over his pistol grip twitched when he hissed, “We ain’t done nothin’, you law-bringin’ son of a bitch. Why you Parker boys wanna go botherin’ us? Why doanchu just hike it on outta here and leave us to our drinkin’.”

  Dolphus, whose eyes seemed just a mite too far apart in his wide, childlike face, let out a strange, eerie, hacking cackle. Said, “Yup. Why’er you Parker boys goin’ and botherin’ us? We ain’t done nuthin’. Jus’ hike it on outta here. Leave us to, uhhhh, well, you know, like Darius done said.”

  Felt rather than saw Nate, as he moved a step and a half along the wall, and a mite closer to the action. Sounded like a cornered wolf growling when he said, “Stupid questions you’re askin’, boys. You know exactly why we’re here.”

  Dolphus flashed an idiotic grin. “I don’t,” he said, then giggled into the back of a filth-encrusted hand. “I don’t be knowin’ why you ’uns is here.”

  “Shut up, Dolphus,” Mordecai snarled.

  Dolphus ducked, as though someone had slapped him on the back of the head, then whimpered, “Well, I don’t.”

  Could hear the growing irritation in Nate’s voice when he snarled, “You sons a bitches can’t rob a Van Buren bank, then go and murder women and children in the process of gettin’ away, and think you can escape punishment for your evil deeds. Now, if you don’t wanna end up deader’n rotten tree stumps, best get to doin’ like Tilden said. Two-finger them pistols outta their holsters and drop ’em on the floor.”

  “An’ what if we don’t?” Darius snapped back, then went into another fit of croupy coughing. Wiped a blood-flecked spew from his lips, and said, “Personally, I don’t believe you sons a bitches got the huevos to do nothin’. Case you didn’t notice, they’s three of us. Ain’t but two of you.”
>
  “Yeah, wha’ if’n we doan do what y’all want? Yeah, an’ them huevos, too,” Dolphus said through a spray of slobbers. Then, he glanced at his oldest brother for approval. Drool ran down the man’s chin and dropped onto the front of a never-washed, band-collared shirt the color of a year-old cow flop.

  Sounded like a crosscut saw ripping through oak logs when Nate growled, “Any of you woman-killin’ bastards get feisty, I’m gonna splatter the three of you all over the ceiling and wall. I touch this ten gauge off and there won’t be enough left of you to run through Granny’s favorite food mill.”

  Mordecai raised both hands from the table, as though to shush his idiot brothers. Accidentally tipped a half-empty bottle over in the process. Liquid leaked onto the tabletop, then ran over the edge and dribbled onto the dust-covered floor.

  From behind us the witless bartender shouted, “Ain’t nothin’ illegal goin’ on here, deputies. These fellers brung all that liquor with ’em. I didn’t sell ’em nothin’. Just provided a place to sit, some glasses, a little music, a bit of privacy, and the possibility of some female companionship—long as they showed me they weren’t violent.”

  “Told you to shut the hell up, mister,” Nate shouted over one shoulder.

  Drink slinger wouldn’t let it go. “Cain’t arrest me for nothin’. Didn’t do nothin’. Swear it. ’Sides, I cain’t spend no more time in that dungeon of a jail in Fort Smith.”

  “Damnation, are you deef as a rotten fence post? Hear me tell you to shut it?” Nate yelled.

  Bartender sounded some desperate when he yelped, “Damn near addled my thinker mechanism last stretch I served in that viper’s pit. Place is fulla murderers, thieves, and them what has their lock nuts cross threaded. Ain’t goin’ back there, you hear me. Ain’t goin’ back.”

  Over my own shoulder I said, “We’re not here for you, you mouthy son of a bitch. So, why don’t you just dance your ignorant self on out into the street and wait till we’re finished with these fellers.”

  Slower than a five-hundred-pound pig in January, Mordecai Staine pushed out of the chair and brought himself erect. Seat caught on the back of one of his legs and made a squawking sound as it skittered on the rough-cut floor.

  Mordecai ceremoniously placed both hands on the buckle of his pistol belt, then said, “Well, we mighta kilt that woman, that’s fer damned sure an actual fact, lawdog. But if’n we done the foul deed, it were definitely accidental. As I recall, she just happened to come outta that Van Buren hardware store at the exact wrong moment.” Of a sudden he appeared to lose his train of thought, but then blurted out, “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout no kid, though.”

  To my dismay, could tell that, in spite of hours at the bottle, all three of the Staine boys had begun to sober up. Realization as how bony-fingered Death had waltzed into Black’s carrying a shotgun and rifle had begun to settle in on them like the worst kind of bloody nightmare they could think up.

  Darius approved of his older brother’s version of their murder and outlawry with a sage nod.

  Dolphus giggled, did a kind of kid’s jig, then set to watching his brothers for the right cue. Vigorously went to nodding as well, as though he’d heard something floating on the dust-laden air the rest of us had missed.

  “Yup. Yup. Yup. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Woman ’uz accidental kilt. Patch-assed kid, too. Didn’t mean it whence I hit ’im with my pistol barrel. Jus’ got in the way. Jus’ got in the way. He’n his mammy both. Yup. Yup. Yup. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  “Shut up, you blatherin’ idiot,” Darius snapped, then dabbed at his lips with a filthy bandanna.

  Dolphus took half a step backward as if someone had slapped him across the face. Puckered up like he might bust out bawling, then said, “Best be a watchin’ yer smort mouth, Darius. Mama finds out you gone and call’t me an idiot, she’ll whup yer stupid ass with one a Papa’s razor strops. Laugh myself silly whilst I watch you git blistered, by God.”

  Dolphus never took his eyes off us. Didn’t bother to look at his brother. “Mama’s deader’n a rotten hoe handle, you stupid gob of walking dung. And Papa’s been worm dirt for nigh on twenty year. So, shut the hell up. Hard for me to think with you yammerin’.”

  In a gesture of apparent peacemaking, Mordecai raised one hand. Couldn’t help but notice that he bore the look of a man much put upon. Once his brothers had fallen silent again, barely heard him when he said, “Give it a rest, boys. Gotta take care of these lawdogs first. Let’s get to killin’ ’em, then you can kill hell outta each other, if’n that’s what you want.”

  Swear ’fore Jesus, those loony bastards fixed their gazes on me and Nate like three diamondback rattlers that had just cornered a pair of fat field mice. Trust me when I tell you, there’s no single thing I can think of to match the feeling that runs up and down your sweaty spine when you find it necessary to acknowledge that desperate, whisky-addled, and perhaps crazy men plan to go down shooting.

  “Don’t do it, Mort,” I called out. “Best back off a notch. Come on back to Fort Smith with us. It’s either that, or all of you’ll die where you sit.”

  A twisted, weird, bloodthirsty grin etched its way across each of the Staine boys’ unwashed, unshaven faces at the exact same instant. Struck me as likely their fierce glowers of shared insanity was the last thing that poor woman saw just before she and her child died in a dusty Van Buren street.

  An obviously half-brained Dolphus actually smiled at me as though someone had just handed him a bowlful of ice-cold, seedless, cubed watermelon. Not certain the man had any idea what was about to go down though. Instant later, the finger of Mordecai’s right hand twitched. His convulsive movement sent the level of lethal tension in the room right through the canvas roof like a July 4th whizbang.

  As if agreed on by some unknowable method of communication that Nate and I didn’t have the perverted power to hear, Mordecai made a grab for the brace of Remington .44-40s dangling from his paunchy waist.

  Split second later, his stupid brother Darius did the same.

  The gape-mouthed, brain-numbed Dolphus appeared oblivious to what was happening. Of a sudden, the scene started moving amazingly fast and damned slow at the same time.

  Dolphus continued to grin like the village idiot when I touched off the round that caught Mordecai dead center. Bullet bored through the big bone in the man’s chest, blasted out his back, and splattered a gob of blood and bone the size of a three-pound cannonball all over the wall behind him.

  Amazed hell out me that, in spite of the death-dealing blow, ole Mort still managed to keep himself upright, get his strong-side pistol barrel free of the lip of its holster, and fire at least two wild shots into the top of the table. Then, the man began to collapse in on himself like a newspaper house sitting out in a rainstorm.

  Knew full well that Mordecai Staine was on the way to being dead when he started sagging. Quickly turned my attention on Darius. Jacked another round into the Winchester about the same instant Nate cut loose with both barrels of that amputated ten-gauge popper of his.

  My partner held the monstrous blaster hip high. His carefully placed discharge sent a murderous cloud of heavy-gauge, buzzing buckshot pellets that slapped into Darius just above his pistol belt. Same bedsheet sized veil of gray death nailed the drooping Mordecai right in the top of his anvil-thick head. Canvas and pine wall behind those two boys rattled and shook like a field of dry corn in a cyclone as those pieces of shot not stopped by their bodies flew past and sizzled through cloth and wood.

  Bottles atop the Staine brothers’ table shattered and flew into thousands of glittering shards that sliced into all three of those skunks like tiny, flying, glass knives. Blistering curtain of lead hit them in a wave, as if they’d been swarmed by a nest of teased hornets. Darius and the near-dead Mordecai let out individual screeches of shocked pain that hit the ear as though they’d all come from a single man.

  Instantaneous spray of blood, bone, rendered flesh, and chewed-up clothing filled the air in a misted
spray of gory steam. Unnerving blast knocked the brothers backward, into a wooden section of the wall, as if God himself had reached down from Heaven and slapped the hell out of them. Their limp bodies bounced off the sap-dripping pine boards and dropped to the floor, one atop the other, in a gore-stained heap.

  Thunderous report from Nate’s weapon ran ahead of a shock wave of roiling dust that wafted across the joint’s filthy floor. Powdery grit swelled and rose up all around us in the manner of water on a storm-tossed lake. Only took about half a second for the inside of Black’s roadhouse to assume something akin to the look and smell of a place where a herd of buffalo had stampeded through.

  Staggered, clearly stunned and amazed by the unfolding events, and bleeding from numerous minor wounds caused by the flying glass, a wide-eyed Dolphus Staine stared at his fallen brothers in stunned wonderment. After several seconds of gaping at the corpses, he glanced down at the blood leaking onto his shirt front and sleeves, then turned on me.

  “Whachu lawmen’s went and done? You done went an’ kilt my brothers, that’s what. Got Ammighty, that’s what, fer sure. Well, by God I’m gonna . . .”

  Surprised hell out of me then, and still amazes me today, how quick with a pistol that half-brained son of a bitch was. I saw the weapon flash into his hand. And though I didn’t want it, he forced me to drop the hammer on a round that hit him in the right elbow, as he brought the shooter up to fire. Man yelped like a kicked dog.

  Levered another hot round into the Winchester’s receiver, as Dolphus’s weapon fell to the floor and bounced near his foot.

  To this very instant, I couldn’t testify in one of Judge Parker’s court trials as to where the second handgun came from. Heard Nate yell out a warning, but I’m not sure whether I blinked when Dolphus pulled the weapon from a holster at his back, and I just flat missed it, or maybe, at the time, I had it figured as how he was done and didn’t pay strict enough attention, or what. But he for damned sure came up with another pistol from somewhere. Ripped off a blue whistler that hissed so close to my ear I could feel the heat and smell the bullet as it zipped past, kept going, and punched a hole in the wall behind me.