Bad Men Go to Hell

by Tony Masero

  It was the signal for battle to commence.

  A volley of firing came from the Texas Rangers across the street at the sound of shooting. Thinking that they themselves were taking fire every Ranger opened up and a hail of bullets hit the bank.

  The remaining window burst inwards, sheets of broken glass scattering as the bullets smashed them. The couple of the outlaws crouched below received nasty cuts from the flying shards of splintered glass and they cursed bitterly. The frames and outer adobe walls were potholed and chipped as the barrage of bullets rippled across the bank frontage and winged their way inside plunking into walls and tearing through woodwork.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ wailed Parks piteously, flopping down in a blubbering mass behind the counter.

  Ricochets started to pan off the steel safe and barred counter cage and fly at bizarre angles around the room.

  Firing ceased as the Rangers left off to reload and Scart took the opportunity to glance out the window. The street was a mass of cloud as if a sudden heavy mist had fallen and the opposite side of the street was half hidden behind the veil of gun smoke.

  ‘We going to take that?’ Scart asked his crew belligerently, raising his Colt. ‘The hell we are.’

  At his word the outlaws began their answering fire and soon the street echoed with the continuous roar of the gun battle.

  The inside of the bank suffered terribly and soon after the firing started one of the outlaws took a hit and spun over with a howl, one of the hostages followed suit and slumped down with a neck wound. The man gurgled and clutched at his throat, a jet of pumping blood raising a crimson spitting fountain as he fell down and writhed on the floor. Ellie released the children and scrambled on all fours to try and reach the man and offer assistance.

  That was when she too was hit.

  The slug took her under the left arm and lodged in her chest. Ellie was twisted over by the force of the bullet and rolled onto her back, her numbed gaze fixed on the ceiling. Eloise sat screaming at the sight of her mother, stunned and bleeding. Tag scurried over to join his mother and a few of the hostages reached out to pull him back but he evaded their grip and grimly lay across her enclosing his mother protectively in his arms.

  There was pandemonium in the bank. The air was alive with hot lead and the sound of gunfire, people cried out in panic and fear as the shattering blast tore apart the bank’s interior. Objects were smashed and obliterated as the bullets blasted the interior, the bank’s wall clock exploded and sent cogs and springs flying across the room, an inkpot on Park’s desk shot in the air and threw a dark blue stain across the wall as the papers on his desk were thrown upwards like windblown chaff.

  Parks in a fit of terror dragged at his clerk, pulling him to his feet.

  ‘Stop them! Stop them, Willows!’ he cried wildly. ‘I can’t stand it any more.’

  Willows would rather have stayed were he was and only obeyed out of some crazy ingrained sense of duty in his numbed state of shock. Standing above the counter, he looked around the smoke laden room and was about to cry out, when a renewed swathe of bullets ripped through the room and he received a hit in the head and shoulder. Willows spun side on and looked down stupefied and disbelieving at Parks who was still clinging to his place on the floor behind the counter. Then the clerk tottered sideways and fell, slamming against Parks’ desk, his bloody head bouncing off the wooden edge as he dropped.

  He lay before the cringing Parks and the bank proprietor stared into the vacant eyes of the teller for a moment before issuing a whining, high-pitched scream of terror that did not stop.

  It was the only sound in the sudden silence that descended over the bank.

  All firing ceased and the quiet following the awful racket was almost as shocking as the deafening noise of gunfire itself. Only Parks could be heard squealing pitifully in the background.

  ‘Shoot!’ cursed Scart, shucking out empty cartridges and reloading from his gun belt. ‘They got some fire power out there alright.’

  Crome looked across at their men and reported. ‘We got two dead, a couple cut up by the glass.’ He noted one of the Mack boys tying a bandana around a shoulder wound. ‘And one wounded. What you want to do, Scart?’

  Scart sneered, ‘Which d’you prefer? A quick end under hot lead or a long drop with a rough rope. Hell, we don’t have much choice here…. What the devil is that?’ he said, turning in irritation at the squealing whine coming from behind the counter.

  ‘The bank boss, appears he ain’t got the stomach for it and has lost the place somewhat.’

  Scart’s eye took in the huddled townsfolk. One of the female captives now held Eloise wrapped in her arms and Tag still lay protectively covering his wounded mother.

  ‘You don’t hear that kid complaining, do you?’ he said, nodding towards Tag. ‘Miserable ass back there don’t have no guts.’

  In a show of bravado and ignoring the danger from outside, Scart got to his feet and made his way casually across the bank and behind the counter.

  ‘What you moaning about, you dismal toad?’ he asked, looking down at the shaking figure of Parks. ‘Why the hell don’t you shut up? Things is bad enough without you bitching.’

  ‘Don’t…. don’t,’ pleaded Parks, his hands raised protectively before him. ‘I have a wife and family. Take the money, take everything, please take it and go.’

  Something slid from Scart’s face, scorn gave way to a blankness that entered his eyes as suddenly as if a curtain of winter frost had just fallen. His lip curled in contempt and he cocked the Colt down at his side.

  ‘No! No!’ screamed Parks. ‘Please, sir. Anything, I beg of you, I’ll do anything.’

  Casually, Scart lifted the revolver and shot the bank owner point blank in the face. With an indifferent sniff Scart stepped back away from the counter only to find his way blocked by the youthful figure of Tag.

  Pugnaciously and unfazed, the boy looked up at the gunman towering above him. Tag’s fair hair was tousled and his mother’s blood had stained one leg of his dungarees.

  ‘You, mister,’ the boy said with stern certainty, as he pointed a stubby finger. ‘Are a bad man and you will go to hell.’

  The two stared at each other for a long moment. The corner’s of Tag’s lips were downturned and his face fixed in a determined and reprimanding manner and Scart stared at the boy before him in amazement.

  There was a sudden twitch in Scart’s body and a slight smile played at the edge of his mouth.

  ‘That your ma lying there?’ he asked.

  ‘It sure is and you got her shot?’ spat Tag accusingly.

  ‘She still alive?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘You got some balls, kid, I’ll give you that,’ Scart observed. ‘You see that, you fellows?’ he asked his remaining men. ‘Boy’s got more brass than most full growed men. Here’s what you do, kid. You take your ma and you get out of here.’

  ‘I take my sister too?’ said Tag, pointing at Eloise. ‘Or we ain’t going nowhere.’

  Scart chuckled magnanimously, ‘Okay, boy. You take your sister too. And here you take these as well,’ he reached over to the counter and grasped a handful of striped candy sticks from the jar miraculously still standing intact. Thrusting the sweet sticks into Tag’s hand, Scart called out through the open window.

  ‘Tarfay, I’m calling a truce. You hold your fire. We got a wounded woman and two kids coming out. You hear me?’

  There was a pause and then Tarfay answered, ‘I hear you. Let the people go. Hold your fire, men. That’s an order.’

  ‘Help him,’ Scart said to Crome. ‘Get the lady on her feet.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked one of the townsmen. ‘Can we go too?’

  Scart stared at him coldly, ‘You sit still and stay where you are. Say your prayers or something.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Eloise,’ said Tag as he swayed under his mother’s sagging weight on the porch step outside the bank.

>   Gingerly, Eloise placed her arm around her mother’s waist and the trio began a staggering walk across the road.

  ‘Will you just look at that?’ asked Scart in amazement as he watched them from the window.

  ‘Something else all right,’ agreed Crome.

  ‘I had a kid, I’d sure like him as ballsy as that one.’

  It was hot out in the open and the two children struggled manfully across the bare plain of the open road. Ellie, barely conscious limped painfully, her dazed mind hardly able to take in what was happening.

  ‘I’ll be alright,’ she muttered dreamily. ‘Don’t you children worry. It’ll be okay.’

  ‘That’s right, ma,’ said Tag. ‘Just a little further, we’re almost there.’

  Tarfay watched them stumbling slowly towards him until he could bear it no longer. He slid his pistol back in his holster and started out across the stretch of roadway.

  ‘Hold on, Sergeant,’ one of his men called. ‘They’ll cut you down.’

  ‘Then let them,’ Tarfay said over his shoulder. ‘I ain’t about to let these people go unaided.’

  He strode on until he came up to the three in the middle of the street.

  ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I’ll take her.’ Then he swept the bloodstained figure of Ellie up easily into his strong arms. ‘You kids hold onto my belt and we’ll get your ma to safety.’

  They walked back with the Ranger carrying Ellie, whilst Tag and Eloise clung to the ammunition belt at his waist.

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ said Tag, looking up at Tarfay. ‘I’m obliged.’

  ‘It’s nothing, boy,’ grunted the Ranger. ‘You done pretty well yourself back there.’

  A few Rangers gathered around as Tarfay laid Ellie on the ground behind the cover of a shack. One of the men with some medical skill, a Ranger called Cornpone, rolled Ellie over and ripped apart her blood soaked dress above the wound.

  He took one look at the torn flesh of the gaping hole and glanced up at Tarfay, ‘They got a doctor in this town, Sergeant?’

  Tarfay turned to Tag and jerked a questioning chin.

  ‘Nearest one is over at Bellow Springs.’

  ‘How far is that?’

  Tag shrugged, ‘I don’t know, fifty miles,’ he guessed.

  Tarfay looked back at Cornpone who pursed his lips and shook his head dismally.

  ‘Okay, do what you can for her.’

  He was about to turn away when he heard the wounded Ellie call to him from where she lay.

  ‘Did you see my boy?’ she asked the Ranger, her voice little above a whisper.

  ‘I seen him bring you over.’

  ‘No,’ Ellie shook her head weakly. ‘We only got out because Tag stood up to him. Told him he was a bad man and was going to hell. I’m right proud of you, Tag. Your pa would be too, if he was alive.’

  ‘You said that?’ Tarfay asked, a twinkle shining in his eye. ‘You said that to Scart Benjamin?’

  ‘Sure, I told him,’ affirmed Tag, his face was set but there were tears glazing his eyes. ‘My ma’s going to be alright, ain’t she?’

  Tarfay shook his head sadly, ‘Can’t say, son. It’s in God’s hands right now. We can’t take her to Bellow Springs, a fifty-mile trip would kill her for sure.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tag, a single tear trickling down his cheek.

  ‘You be strong, boy,’ said Tarfay softly, his hand resting on Tag’s shoulder. ‘Your ma needs you strong right now.’

  Tag drew a deep breath, nodded and rubbed the tear away with his wrist. He noticed then that he still held clasped the bunch of rock candy that Scart had given him. ‘You want some candy?’ he asked Tarfay.

  Tarfay smiled, ‘Maybe later, right now I got to send some bad men to hell. Ain’t that what you said?’

  Tag nodded emphatically.

  Tarfay turned to his men, ‘Cornpone, you stay with the lady, you others get these children to a safe place.’

  Right then, there was a loud muffled boom from the direction of the bank and Tarfay spun around and loped off. Tag watched him go then knelt down beside his mother and rested his hand on hers.

  ‘You alright, ma?’ he asked. ‘We’re here, me and Eloise, we’re here.’

  Ellie nodded weakly and Cornpone shook off his jacket and knelt down to make a pillow of it for her head.

  ‘You kids are going to have to get out of here now,’ said Cornpone as the sound of shots being fired came from the Main Street.

  His mother clasped his hand before Tag could stand. ‘Look to your sister,’ she said. ‘You hear me, Tag. Take care of your sister.’

  ‘Of course, ma. But you’ll be okay, you’ll be able to take care of her yourself soon enough. That’s right, ain’t it?’ he asked the Ranger kneeling beside him desperately.

  ‘Sure thing,’ agreed Cornpone, but he was unconvincing and Tag felt it with a sharp pain in his chest.

  ‘Mama,’ Eloise began to cry softly and the remaining Ranger, who had her in his charge, enfolded her in his arms.

  ‘Come on, little lady. Let’s get you away from here,’ said the Ranger, with a knowing look at Cornpone.

  Ellie’s grip had tightened on Tag’s hand, ‘I’m sorry, Tag,’ she said dreamily. ‘I don’t want to go. I surely don’t. I love you both….’

  Her voice trailed off and Tag felt the grip loosen and her fingers slide away from him. He looked at his mother’s face and believed he could see the soul departing before him as her features sunk and her staring eyes scaled over. She paled and her skin lost its color before his eyes and as the terrible transmutation took place Tag knew she had passed and was no longer with them.

  Cornpone beside him placed his arm around Tag’s shoulders and reached down to pull Ellie’s eyelids closed and cover up her staring eyes. Tag shook off the arm and climbed to his feet. The tears were there; they were waiting to come but Tag bit them back. He still held the bunch of striped candy, sticky and melting in his hand and without any forethought he placed them, as if they were a bunch of flowers, under his mother’s hand on her chest.

  Cornpone was watching him with sad eyes, ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he murmured.

  ‘I want to see them men die for this,’ Tag said firmly. He turned on his heel and raced away towards the street ignoring the Ranger’s call from behind him.

  When Tag got to the corner of the shack he could see a great cloud of dark smoke billowing from the bank’s doorway.

  ‘Get down,’ growled Tarfay, dragging him by the shoulder.

  ’What happened?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know. I believe one of them had some dynamite to blow the safe. Maybe a stray hit the sticks.’

  ‘Then they’re all dead?’

  ‘Can’t say for sure yet awhile, not with all the smoke.’

  ‘Then we have to go look,’ said Tag boldly, starting to get up.

  ‘Hold on there, sport,’ said Tarfay, a hard hand on Tag’s shoulder. ‘You stay put. This is my job not yours.’

  ‘My ma’s dead,’ croaked Tag and Tarfay looked across at him sympathetically.

  ‘Okay, I appreciate that but it don’t mean you have to go getting yourself killed too. You got a sister to care for.’

  ‘I know it,’ mumbled Tag.

  A figure burst from the cloud of smoke across the way, he was coughing and spluttering as he ran into the road and attempted a dash around the corner. Hardly had the man stumbled down the porch steps when the boom of a Sharps rifle from one of the Ranger snipers sent him whirling in a spin to the dust.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ bawled Tarfay. ‘They got civilians in there.’

  Tarfay looked at the body lying crumpled in the street. ‘Don’t look like anybody inside can see straight enough to shoot now. Okay, men,’ he called. ‘Cover me, I’m going in.’

  Tarfay picked up his Springfield rifle leaning against the shed wall and walked out into the sunlit street. He did not hesitate but holding the rifle crosswise at waist height he walked on at a steady pace.


  Treading lightly, so as not to be heard, Tag followed on behind.

  Flames were beginning to lick from one corner of the bank now, the ruby flames reaching out through the empty window and running up underneath the overhanging porch. The oily smoke billowing out was dense and heavy with a stink of cordite and burning varnish.

  Tarfay strode up the steps and vanished into the cloud, Tag hesitated for a second and then followed. No Ranger had called out after them and Tag surmised that the Rangers probably thought Tarfay had permitted his presence.

  He followed the dim outline of the Ranger into the smashed interior of the bank and almost fell over a body lying on the floor. Tarfay turned, his rifle raised as heard Tag’s stumble.

  ‘Hell, boy! What are you thinking of? You can’t be here now.’

  ‘I have to see and I know which ones are the bad guys,’ argued Tag determinedly. ‘This here is one of them,’ he indicated the fallen man at his feet.

  Tarfay stared down at the body and then raised his bandana over his face as the stinking cloud wafted over them. Tag used a hand to cover his nose and mouth.

  The boy could see the faded outlines of the bodies of the townsfolk, unmoving and piled up by the counter, all of them lying tangled one over the other and covered with pale dust and debris. Tarfay looked at him once in annoyance and then turned away to complete a closer exploration of the room.

  Tag followed behind him, glancing behind the counter and as the smoke drifted he noted the spread out and empty face of Mister Parks and the pallid form of the teller. He only knew it was Mister Parks by the fat body under the missing face.

  ‘Damn it!’ he heard Tarfay’s muffled exclamation. ‘They blew a blasted great hole in the wall.’

  The vacant space lay beyond Park’s desk and it occupied a cavernous and flame licked opening full of shattered timber and broken adobe.

  The heat from the fire was reaching into the room, its glow a hellish bloom amongst the dark smoke.