Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden

by J. Lee Butts

  Jemson’s thin, cruel lips curled away from yellowed, tobacco-stained teeth. Nervous twitch in his pockmarked cheek when he said, “Well, now, we’ll just sure enough do that, Marshal. You star carriers can depend on our complete cooperation. Yessir, its always law and order top to bottom for me and the boys here. That’s us, for sure and certain. Born to help the law, by God.”

  Backed away from Jemson and his lethal friends, then turned and hoofed it for the Elephant’s front entrance. Carlton followed. Nate was the last man out. He didn’t give his back to those brigands until he’d darted through the Elephant’s café doors onto the boardwalk, then he drew both pistols.

  15

  “ALREADY GOT A BEAD ON THE SILLY IDIOT . . .”

  I HIT THE White Elephant’s batwings so hard those swinging, café doors sounded like pistols going off when they slapped against the outside wall. Had a gun in each hand. Quick as I could, turned left, out of the brilliant wedge of light that cascaded onto the boardwalk from the doorway. With Carl and Nate in tow, we headed north along Main Street fast as we could heel it.

  Inky, thick layer of lightning-tinged cloud cover, no moon, and sheets of drifting rain contributed to a murky, sinister night. Remember it as being so dark Fort Worth’s flickering, yellow-tinged streetlamps, though fairly close to one another, provided little in the way of helpful illumination. Only other available light shimmered over and around the saloon’s front entrance, lay in pools on the boardwalk, or lamely oozed from the curtain-poor windows of other still-open businesses along the west side of the street. Way I had it figured a man could stand in the covering shadows and not be seen by someone within spitting distance who found himself caught in the poorest puddle of available lamplight.

  All those thoughts buzzed across my heaving mind, as I pulled to a halt about thirty feet down the boardwalk from the White Elephant’s entrance. Decided to take my stand out front of Ella Blackwell’s Shooting Gallery. Joint was damn near right next door to Luke Short’s place. Only thing separating the two businesses was a narrow, midnight-black alleyway.

  Twirled around, pointed toward the entry of the shooter’s paradise with one of my pistols and said, “Get up inside Black-well’s entrance far as you can, Nate. We don’t want those skunks to see all three of us if they do come pouring out of the Elephant, grow a crop of smarts for the first time in their benighted lives, and manage to spin around our direction.”

  Carl took a spot on my left, nearest the street. A cocked weapon in each hand, he leaned against a porch pillar and sucked at his teeth. Sounded as calm as a horse trough in a drought, when he said, “You really think those idiots’ll step out shootin’, Hayden? Mean, hell, that’d be mighty stupid. Leave the ignert churnheads standin’ right out in the light. Make perfect targets.”

  “Figure if they have any idea at all where the Coltrane boys are, Carl, they’re gonna come fogging through the Elephant’s front door behind a curtain of hot lead. Besides, think you might’ve jerked Jemson’s tail a bit harder than necessary. May have even insulted him a mite.”

  “Doubt that. Not sure you could insult anybody that stupid. ’Course, suppose anything’s possible. But, maybe they’ll just let it all slide. Slink out the saloon’s back door. Vanish into the night to do whatever evil it is men like those three brigands do when no one’s watchin’.”

  Backed up against Ella Blackwell’s sheltering door frame, could barely see Nate when he rolled the cylinder of one of his weapons across an extended forearm and said, “By God, I doubt that, Carl. Have my doubts that snaky, vicious skunks like Staggers, Jemson, and Neely will let our visit pass. Fact is, way I’ve got it figured, them no-accounts should be hittin’ the door just about right now.”

  Those wildly prophetic words had barely fallen from Nate Swords’s lips when the White Elephant’s fancy, bloodred batwings exploded in a bullet-rendered cloud of gore-colored flying wood splinters and hot lead. Thunderous explosion was followed by a roiling cloud of spent black powder and splintered fragments of the wooden doors that showered down into the muddy thoroughfare.

  Directly across the rain-soaked quagmire that was Main Street, people out front of the Empress Saloon and Beer Hall went to hollering and running in every direction imaginable. Next day we would discover as how the Jemson gang’s initial salvo gouged half a dozen holes in the popular watering hole’s front façade.

  Heard scared, surprised folks inside the Elephant as they yelled, turned furniture over, and ricocheted off the walls in an effort to hide themselves, or get away from the promiscuous blasting. Heavy footsteps rumbled all through the building as terrified revelers heeled it for the nearest exit.

  Remember thinking as how there’s just nothing like the fear of brutal, impending death to send normally reasonable, thoughtful folks into a blind panic. Turn the stoniest amongst us into shrieking children, searching for the comfort of parental protection.

  Brought both my pistols to bear on the White Elephant’s bullet-ravaged, smoky entrance and waited. Didn’t take long for the ball to open and really get rolling.

  Stooped in a gunman’s crouch, both arms extended, hands filled with a brace of Remington pistols, Bronson Staggers leapt through the demolished entryway first. He landed in the middle of the now sharply defined pool of iridescent light left by the missing doors, then swung around to his right, away from us.

  Plain as rat pills in a sugar bowl, the ignorant, squint-eyed wretch couldn’t see for more than a few feet. So, typical of his type, he went to firing at anything he could hear, or thought he could hear. The few people bold enough, or unthinking enough, to be out on the street yelped, screamed, or swore, and dropped behind the nearest available cover.

  Kept my gaze fixed on Staggers. From the side of my mouth and under my breath, said, “You got him, Carl.”

  Flicked a quick, corner-of-the-eye look at my friend. He had turned sidewise like a New Orleans pistol duelist. Left hand braced on his hip, right arm straight and level. Solid as the biggest limb on a hundred-year-old live oak.

  Though but a few feet away from him, barely heard it when Carl hissed back, “Already got a bead on the silly idiot, Hayden. He’s a dead man soon’s he turns back around our direction.”

  C. W. Jemson hesitated in the saloon’s devastated doorway, then hopped out onto the boardwalk like some kind of enormous, demented, heavily armed jackrabbit. A clearly inebriated Jasper Neely wobbled out last and swung to his left and directly into our line of fire.

  In the manner of an inquisitive dog, could see Neely tilt his head to one side, then squint, as he tried to penetrate the light and get a look into the darkness where we stood and waited. Given the spot they’d chosen to take their stand, not a one of the witless morons could see more than three feet in any direction.

  An edgy Jasper Neely swung his weapons back and forth at the impenetrable darkness surrounding him. Man had the bug-eyed, terrified appearance of someone scared right up to the precipitous edge of screaming insensibility.

  Red faced and shaking all over, Neely set to hollering, “Where are you? Show yourselves, you cowardly, star-totin’ bastards.”

  Idiot bystander, somewhere off to my left, across Main Street near the Merchants Restaurant, yelled, “What’n the blue-eyed hell’s a goin’ on over there? What’s all the shoutin’ and shootin’ about?”

  Another less-that-bright, anonymous gawker bellowed, “ ’Pears theys the makin’s of a killing out front of the White Elephant. Somebody best call the law. Go on now, run for the marshal’s office and be damned quick about it.”

  Neely did a sudden shift and thumbed off three or four quick shots in the general direction of the disembodied voices. Heard what sounded to me like a man yelp out from being hit.

  Brought both my weapons up and said, “Guess we’d best put a stop to this dance, boys. Wouldn’t want these lunatics to mess around and accidentally kill somebody.”

  Six well-aimed shots, touched off at almost the exact same instant, delivered a near deafen
ing, cannonlike torrent of blue whistlers that sliced through C. W. Jemson, and his pair of liquor crazed toadies, like a busy butcher’s favorite, well-honed meat cleaver.

  River of bright, reddish-orange, blue-edged flame carved trenches in the darkness and squirted six feet from the muzzels of our pistols. Flashes lit the street as surely as streaks of ice-pick lightning and, for about a second and a half, turned blue-black night into something akin to a lurid form of startling, nightmarish daylight.

  Curtain of sizzling lead we threw at Jemson and his boys shredded the three gunmen like we’d run them down with a sodbuster plow. Hard behind our blasting, a thick cloud of spent black-powder smoke rolled along the boardwalk and away from us like a wave on a storm-tossed ocean. Carried on a slight breeze, the dense screen of smoke came nigh on to completely obscuring our view. Still and all, I could see more than enough.

  Neely’s block-shaped, anvil-thick head exploded in a plume of misted gore, bone fragments, and shredded pieces of his hat. Second chunk of hot lead stood the man straight up, then put him back on his heels. Useless arms plastered to his sides, he went rigid, but somehow fired two shots into the plank walkway at his feet. Then, knees locked, he toppled sidewise and went to ground like a hewn tree.

  At the same instant, our death-dealing barrage caught C. W. Jemson in the side, twirled him around like a kid’s wooden top and dumped him in a mud hole near one of the Elephant’s hitch racks. Almost flat on his back, the man still had the amazing wherewithal to rip off four or five more shots of his own. While noisy, his efforts proved ineffectual. Seemed as though he fired at everything in general and nothing in particular—the old spray-and-pray method of gun-fighting. Poor wretch ended up killing a defenseless, unarmed horse tied at a hitch rack out front of the Club Room Saloon a block away, before he finally stopped moving.

  A wounded Bronson Staggers went down on one knee. Thought sure the man was dead, finished, and just didn’t know it. But, some way or another, he managed to twist around at the waist and get off a pair of shots that cut through the murky night and buzzed within inches of my ear like angry hornets.

  Air still sizzled like coppery-smelling bacon frying in a hot skillet when I once again caught view of a shadelike Carlton J. Cecil from the corner of one eye. He leveled up on the dying Staggers, took aim, and fired again. Saw the hammer on his pistol fall.

  Blast sent a 255-grain, .45-caliber chunk of lead that caught the shot-to-pieces Staggers dead center of his chin. Slug blew the whole bottom of the man’s mouth to misty smithereens. Fist-sized wad of teeth, bone, and shredded flesh flew into the air like a handful of bloody confetti.

  Heavy bullet punched on through ole Bronson’s windpipe and severed his spine, just below the spot where his head was attached to his neck. Slug exited in a torrential, mistlike storm of flying blood droplets, bone chips, and body parts. Man went rigid, then rolled onto one side like a two-hundred-pound burlap bag of feed pushed off a general store’s loading platform. Didn’t even twitch.

  Then, of a sudden, the corner of Fort Worth’s Third and Main Streets got so quiet a body could literally smell the odor of dead silence. There, for a few seconds, got quieter than snow falling on a feather bed. Would’ve sworn I could hear my own eyes blinking.

  Kept my gaze glued to the fallen trio and didn’t bother to look over at my friends when I said, “Everybody all right? Either of you boys hit?”

  Carl just grunted. Heard him spit, then set to reloading his weapons. Spent shell casings bounced off the boards beneath his feet, then rolled into the street.

  Nate said, “Finer’n frog hair, Hayden. Feel better right now than I have since we left Atoka. Just might feel better’n I have in a month or so. My side’s even stopped hurtin’. Just ain’t nothin’ like killin’ a skunk to brighten a man’s outlook. Killin’ three of ’em just might keep me grinnin’ for nigh on a year.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Just one thing though,” Nate said and holstered both his pistols.

  “And what’s that?” I said.

  “Sure ’nuff gets right hot travelin’ with you’n Cecil, Tilden. Can’t say as I’ve ever been involved in a pair of toe-to-toe shootings this close on top of one another in all my time as a lawdog. Tension following you boys around sure goes a long way to keepin’ a feller on his toes.”

  Carlton shoved both his weapons into their holsters, then rubbed the back of his neck. Torqued his head from side to side, then twisted it back and forth, as though trying to stretch out a crick the size of a yellow-meat watermelon. “Well, don’t get too used to such shenanigans, Nate. Bein’ around Tilden’s usually about as boring as trying to talk Chinese to a wooden Injun. But the man does have these moments when he sure ’nuff drives the dogs out from under the porch. Definitely has a way of gettin’ my attention, tell you for certain sure.”

  Approached the bodies of Jemson, and his stupider-thanstinkbugs amigos, with all the care that men who’d kill you for the fillings in your teeth deserved. Here and there, the lame-brained, the dim-witted, or the just downright inquisitive crept from their hidey-holes and began drifting toward the bloody scene.

  One man pointed and, under his breath, declared, “Aye God, them’s teeth yonder, Kyle. See ’em. And ’at ’ers part of this poor bastard’s jawbone. My God, look at that mess. ’S enough to make a feller wanna retch.”

  Another sagely shook his head, then said, “Do believe that’s a big ole chunk of this ’un here’s skull plastered to the porch pillar. Lord, Lord. Glob of goo still has the hair growin’ out’n it.”

  And a third announced that, “Sweet merciful Jesus, they’s blood all over hell and yonder. Cain’t say as I’ve seen this much blood since the Big War. Maybe as far back as Pea Ridge.”

  Holstered one weapon, unpinned my badge, and held it up so everybody and sundry could see it. Loud as I could manage, called out, “We’re deputy U. S. marshals, folks. Best if you all kept your distance from these men. Better for everyone involved if you just stayed inside. Still a very dangerous situation out here, and we don’t need your help.”

  Sure surprised hell out of all of us when C. W. Jemson lived up to that warning, brought one arm out of his mud hole, then fired a final, air-burning shot that carved a hissing path between Nate Swords and me. Lightning fast, Nate drew and ripped off at least three more booming rounds that thumped the walkway so hard a thin puff of drifting dust rose up around our feet from between the cracks between the boards.

  Think all of Nate’s well-placed rounds hit Jemson somewhere. Man’s body jerked, flopped, and rolled around in the muddy, bloody puddle like an unseen attacker was beating on him with a long-handled shovel. After everything calmed down again, felt pretty sure we didn’t have to worry much about anything else in the way of response from Jemson or his friends.

  Was standing near the limp body of Bronson Staggers when I felt someone at my elbow. Bob Evans eased up next to me, shook his head as though he might well be the weariest man living. Knuckled one eye, then said, “Damn, Tilden, been working at this job for about a year now. Never seen anything to match this dance.”

  “Gun work can get right bloody, Bob.”

  “Yeah. Sure ’nuff. ’Course I’m well aware that cowboys, gamblers, and such do have their disagreements. Some of ’em have even been known to shoot each other every once in a blue moon. And, in spite of every thing we can do, once in a great while they even manage to kill one another. But I swear to Jesus, ain’t never seen a triple killing before. This ’un here sure ’nuff one helluva mess. Blood, bone, and pieces of rended flesh all over creation. Boardwalk looks like the floor of a Chicago slaughterhouse.”

  Shaking his head in disbelief, Evans, and two of his fellow Fort Worth policemen, walked the scene, examined the bodies, and asked more questions than there are fiddlers in Satan’s favorite playground. Watched and offered all the information I could in an effort to satisfy their necessary, but often clumsy, inquiries.

  Couple minutes into Evans’s
investigative dance, I leaned against one of the porch pillars and stoked myself a nickel cheroot. Shook the lucifer to death and thumped it into the soggy street. Tried to stay out of the way while Carlton and Nate laid out a detailed explanation of the events that surrounded what we’d been forced to do and how it all came to happen in the first place.

  While I puffed at my stogie, the rain slacked off some. Clouds the color of buckshot mud and gunmetal parted. A clipped fingernail slice of silvery moonlight sliced through the gash and bathed the entire street in an eerie, muted, hoary glow. For the first time since our arrival in Fort Worth, a body could actually see from one side of the street to the other.

  To this very instant I could not for the life of me tell anyone why, but at some point during all the walking, talking, and testifying, I glanced up at a corner window on the El Paso Hotel’s third floor. Stunned the hell out of me when I spotted the backlit silhouette of a young woman.

  Appeared to me that gal was as naked as the day she got birthed. Couldn’t really see the details of her face, just the unclothed shape of an obviously nude body. She clasped the edge of a heavy curtain panel in each of her fisted hands. Would’ve sworn she was hanging in midair, like some un-tethered, floating spirit, staring down at the gory carnage that decorated the blood-soaked street at my feet.

  Not sure why, but it suddenly came to me as how, beyond any shadow of doubt, the anonymous woman was none other than the elusive Daisy Cassidy. Had an eye clamped on that little gal’s shadowy outline for less than ten seconds. Was stunned when I realized that she was laughing—head back, in full hoot. Cackling like a person completely addled in their thinker box. Unexpected, eerie scene sent an icy chill down my cold, damp spine.