Big Win

by Tony Masero

  Well-spaced gunshots were echoing down the street and into the mountain pass beyond as Joe walked along the road with his saddlebags slung over his shoulder. He could not see the source of the gunfire but could hear the cheers and shouts of merriment accompanying each firing and guessed that some townsfolk were letting off steam somewhere.

  Both sides of the street he noticed, were busy with building going on. New structures with timber-framed fronts were springing up at every turn and heaps of lumber and sawmill wagons were evident all along the road. General merchandising stores butted up side by side with the many saloons and billiard halls.

  The most active amongst the watering holes was The Orleans and it was to here that Joe went to get his bearings and find out what he could about Monty Dupree and Shallow Creek. It was with a shock of surprise that Joe noted the owner’s name printed on the sign that hung over the entrance. Jefferson Randolph Smith. He remembered the name from his first introduction into Denver, it had been the guy selling dollar wrapped bars of soap on the street corner and it appeared the scam had been lucrative as here he was in the mining town running a fine new drinking house.

  Joe pushed his way into the busy place crowded with every type and manner of man, from prospector and mineworker to gambler and gunman. Tobacco smoke hung heavy and writhed in a dense cloud above the heads of the customers, some of who were well into their cups.

  Joe shouldered his way to one end of the bar and ordered himself a beer from the remnants of his frugal savings. It did not take long before an elderly man dressed in tattered clothing elbowed up beside him.

  ‘Say, fellow,’ said the old timer in a pleading voice. ‘Couldn’t spare a drink for an old man down on his luck, could you?’

  Joe risked another few cents to set the man up, thinking that aside from a bum on his thin resources perhaps the old man might prove to be a fatter resource regarding information.

  ‘Obliged,’ said the old fellow, thirstily slurping a sup of his beer. ‘Name’s ‘Rusthead’ Peak and I’m pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Howdy, Joe Alberplas. You been here long Mister Peak?’

  ‘Sure, since they first discovered ore back in the sixties. Weren’t worth much then as we didn’t have no crushers, but now….’ he left the rest hanging as he swallowed more of his beer.

  ‘So you know this place pretty well?’

  ‘Could say,’ agreed Rusthead.

  ‘You know a man called Monty Dupree?’

  ‘Oho! That actor fellow? Sure I know him, why he’s had our biggest strike around here. Lucky bastard bought up the Caveat Emptor Mine for a song then struck a prime vein.’

  ‘Rich then?’

  ‘Sure is, won himself a fortune. Building this palace down on Shallow Creek near the lake. Man, that’s pretty country down there, it’s going to look fine when he’s finished.’

  There was a ruckus further along the bar that interrupted them and Joe looked over to see a boorish looking, big man in a fancy vest and long-tailed jacket smoking a fat cigar and clearing space around him by the simple expedience of pushing people aside with jabbing elbows.

  ‘That there is one best avoided,’ advised Rusthead, who was obviously glad to have the listening ear of a newcomer. ‘‘Reddy’ McCann, nasty piece of work who deals Faro at the tables and death on the side,’ said Rusthead in a hushed whisper. ‘Him and the bartender been having a fancy for the same hussy, one of them showgirls here.’ He thumbed in the direction of the band of obvious prostitutes who favored one end of the saloon and gathered around the foot of the staircase leading to the rooms above. Most of the battered creatures looked as if they drunk at the well way too often and were a rough looking bunch of females, bruised and tough featured.

  Joe wrinkled a disparaging lip at sight of the women and Rusthead chuckled, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t be so fussy you’d been here a while. Spend a year or two up in them bleak mountains scrabbling for a find with nothing but your right hand for a wife and you’ll start looking at the hind-end of the pack mule with affection. Believe me, I’ve been there.’

  ‘Well, I guess I ain’t that hard up just yet awhile, thank goodness.’

  ‘Take care, here comes trouble,’ warned Rusthead in a harsh whisper.

  The man Joe recognized as the bearded scam artist and saloon owner, Jefferson Smith eased his way up to the bar beside them and wagged a finger to call the bartender over.

  ‘He been drinking hard?’ he asked the barman with a nod in the Faro dealer’s direction.

  The barman nodded affirmation, ‘He’s been at it all day long. Been outside with some boys doing shooting practice at the streetlights. I reckon his pistol’s empty as I ain’t seen him reload.’

  ‘Don’t you worry Bill,’ said the bearded owner. ‘My brother-in-law is on his case.’

  The blustering card dealer meanwhile, was waving extravagantly in the direction of the whores and blowing wet kisses across the heads of the customers.

  ‘Look at the fool,’ snarled the barman. ‘Why, you know what, Soapy? I’d like to….’

  ‘Hold your water, Bill. It won’t be long, I didn’t get Cap promoted Deputy Sheriff so he wouldn’t help us out when the time came.’

  ‘That would be Deputy ‘Cap’ Light,’ whispered a knowing Rusthead with a sidelong look in Joe’s direction. ‘Married Soapy’s wife, Eva. He ain’t adverse to putting a bullet where it counts.’

  ‘What you say?’ asked Soapy Smith whirling around, his hearing obviously acute enough to hear the old man’s words despite the noise at the bar.

  ‘Me? I didn’t say nothing, Soapy,’ promised the startled prospector.

  ‘I heard you,’ said Soapy, his eyes narrowing and for a moment a streak of meanness showing across his face. ‘You taking my family’s name in vain?’

  ‘Honest,’ protested Rusthead nervously. ‘Weren’t me, must have been someone else.’

  Soapy swiveled his attention to Joe. ‘You? Was it you?’

  ‘No, sir. I just got here, I don’t know nobody well enough to cast aspersions.’

  Soapy studied Joe a long moment with a mistrustful and doubting look.

  ‘Just be sure you don’t say nothing against me or mine, peckerwood. You hear me?’

  ‘Listen, sir,’ Joe answered evenly. ‘I’ve no intention of taking yours or anyone else’s name in vain but don’t you go speaking to me like that.’

  ‘You know who I am?’ asked Soapy, in a low warning voice.

  ‘I seen you once,’ admitted Joe. ‘Selling soap with dollar bills wrapped around it.’

  ‘You buy one?’ asked Soapy with an amused raised eyebrow.

  ‘No sir, I did not. When I seen that hundred dollar bill come out, I knew anybody bought one they’d be on a loser.’

  Soapy’s lips crinkled and he gave into a slim smile, ‘You’re smarter than some then, young fella.’

  ‘I sure hope so.’

  ‘Well, I’ll let it slide this time but don’t go crossing me in future.’

  Joe met his gaze evenly and said nothing. Soapy was about to say more when there was a loud cry from the saloon doorway.

  ‘Reddy McCann! I want a word with you.’

  All eyes turned to see a neatly dressed young man wearing a badge and carrying a holstered pistol high on his hip.

  The space around Reddy McCann cleared miraculously as the lawman made his way across the room.

  Joe heard Rusthead mutter something obscure and sink lower behind the cover of the bar.

  ‘What you want with me, Cap?’ blurred the obviously drunken card sharp. ‘You want a cigar maybe?’

  He leaned forward at a dangerously drunken angle and took the chewed stogie from his mouth, spitting a loose leaf from his tongue onto the floor.

  ‘You spitting at me, you ass?’ asked Cap.

  Joe noticed how the young man held himself tense and ready, the crooked fingers of his hand hovering not far from the revolver at his waist.

  ‘Nah, nah. I gob on you, you’ll know all abou
t it, pencil-head.’

  ‘You been having fun shooting out streetlights?’ asked Cap.

  Reddy weaved from side to side and chuckled, his eyelids fluttering dreamily. He grinned, ‘Sure I been shooting out lights. Why not? Ain’t much else to do in this pissant town.’

  ‘Come on then. You’re coming along of me to the jailhouse.’

  ‘You think so?’ huffed Reddy, his whole attitude confident and assured despite his obvious drunkenness. ‘Well, I don’t think so,’ he said, stuffing the cigar back in the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re getting too far ahead of yourself, Cap. You and old Soapy here. Got it all sewn up, haven’t the pair of you? Running the whole goddamned town. What is it you’re up to? You want to make Creede a family business, is that it?’

  ‘Leave it alone, Reddy. Just you come along peaceable and sleep it off.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ spat Reddy dismissively. ‘Why don’t you piss off, you miserable young fuckwit? Go play with your marbles, or something.’

  Angrily, Cap leaned forward and slapped Reddy hard across the mouth, sending the cigar flying from his stung lips.

  ‘Why damn your eyes!’ snarled Reddy, going for his gun.

  It was a pointless exercise as Reddy had forgotten his gun was empty after all his earlier pistol practice and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Cap meanwhile was at no such disadvantage and his gun barrel flared. The bang was muffled as the pistol end was so close to Reddy’s body and the shot man was thrown back to rebound off the bar behind him. He came forward and received another bullet from Cap’s gun that struck him in the midriff.

  Reddy sagged but didn’t fall, his bulging red-rimmed eyes fixed wildly on Cap as the lawman coldly emptied his revolver into the gambler one bullet after the other. A leg buckled and gave way and then the other and Reddy slipped to the floor muttering the last accurate phrase he was ever to make. ‘I’m killed,’ he said as the life fell out of him along with a few pints of blood spilling onto the saloon boards under him.

  Joe released a long held, pent-up sigh of tension and Soapy turned to him with a sly smile.

  ‘See what I mean?’ he said quietly, his voice full of veiled warning.

  Five

  It was a violent introduction to the town of Creede for Joe and beneficial in a way as it sharpened his nerve and put him on his guard. As if he wasn’t in enough of a desperate situation already, he had little money, no place to stay and was about to confront the apparent thief of his fortune.

  Thankfully, the old prospector came to Joe’s aid when he heard his circumstances and offered him a bed in his home. It proved to be no more than a small cavern on the rocky hillside, not much more than a hole in the wall but as Rusthead led the way up the darkened hillside, Joe was glad of at least somewhere to go for some respite after his long journey.

  ‘T’ain’t much,’ warned Rusthead, as they stumbled upwards. ‘So don’t go expecting anything grand. Barely room for me, so it’ll be a cram in there.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Joe, following carefully in his footsteps. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘Funny! What’s this?’ said Rusthead, stopping suddenly. He was looking in the direction of a round opening in the rock face from which a soft light glowed. ‘I never lit no lamp.’

  ‘You got visitors?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Ain’t likely,’ muttered Rusthead. He pressed on more rapidly and Joe hurried after him.

  They both burst into the cavern mouth, bending low to enter the small opening and found a grizzled fellow warming his hands over a stub of candle.

  ‘What you doing in my place?’ Rusthead burst out.

  The man turned a sneering gaze at the old prospector, ‘Who the hell are you?’

  He was a stick thin character, with long rat-tailed hair and an unshaven chin. His face was so gaunt it appeared the skin was stretched tight over the bone and the structure of it shone waxy in the candle glow.

  ‘This is my place, what you doing in here?’ snarled Rusthead.

  ‘T’ain’t yours any longer,’ sniffed the man. ‘Finders keepers.’

  ‘Get out!’ snapped Rusthead.

  ‘You want to come in, then come on in, there’s room for all,’ offered the fellow, the light from the candle unplaying his face and giving it a demonic and malevolent look. ‘Wouldn’t recommend it though,’ he added with a leer as, with a scrape of steel on stone, he pulled from under his backside a broad and sharp bladed butcher knife.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Rusthead, his tone softening nervously as he saw the knife.

  ‘Salem, Ben Salem. Now, you coming or going? And I’d recommend the latter.’

  It was close in the small cavern, the curved roof kept them crouched over and there was barely room for the three men inside. Joe noticed that Rusthead’s few possessions had been thrown around and dumped on the cavern floor as Salem had searched through everything before throwing it aside.

  ‘This ain’t right,’ complained Rusthead. ‘I found this place first.’

  ‘Life just ain’t fair, is it?’ sniggered Salem. ‘It’s right snug in here though, I have to say. I like it. Guess I’ll stay. You two can mosey along and get yourself something else now.’

  Behind Rusthead’s back, Joe had eased open the flap on his saddlebags and his hand closed on the grip of his pistol.

  ‘Fine looking blade you got there,’ he observed over Rusthead’s shoulder.

  ‘Sure is,’ agreed Salem. ‘Guts pigs real fine, some people too,’ he added with a thin yet threatening smile.

  ‘Trouble is its kind of limited,’ said Joe, pulling out the gun and cocking it. ‘Move aside, Rusthead,’ Joe raised the pistol so Salem could see its gleam in the candlelight.

  Salem moved fast, as quick as a striking snake and his thin body snapped out, swinging the blade in a flashing arc as he came. Rusthead roared as the knife sliced through his upper arm and Joe fired at the same instant. The sound in the small dark space was deafening and the flare of gun flash blinding.

  The unwelcome usurper took the bullet at close range and in the face, punching a hole under his eye and wrecking his cheek. The hefty .45 slug blew the back of his head away and made an awful mess on the cave wall. The butcher knife clattered to the cave floor and the skinny man collapsed in a bony heap.

  Rusthead was poking a wringing finger into his ear trying to ease the effects of the deafening blast.

  ‘Lord A’mighty!’ he spat. ‘Sounded like a battery of cannon going off.’

  Joe bent over the figure of Salem and made sure he was stone dead, ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologized. ‘I reckon he would have killed us given the chance.’

  ‘Damn right!’ agreed Rusthead.

  Joe turned to see Rusthead favoring the slash in his coat sleeve and he noticed the blood seeping from between his compressing fingers. ‘You alright?’ he asked.

  The prospector eased his fingers away and searched in the ripped cloth. ‘He marked me good. Looks like I might need a stitch or two, you any good with a needle?’

  ‘I can do leather work.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Rusthead. ‘Lets get rid of this deadbeat and then you can get to the embroidery.’

  ‘You know him?’ asked Joe as they dragged the body through the cave opening.

  Rusthead shook his head, ‘Nope. But there’s all sorts wandering around these hills. Probably some hardhead that run out of cash and didn’t strike lucky up there. Bit like myself, truth be told. Difference is, I wouldn’t go stealing other folks property or go sticking them with no knife.’

  ‘Where we going to bury him?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Right here,’ said Rusthead and Joe looked around at the barren landscape as they set the body down on the angled slope.

  ‘It’s all rock, we can’t dig nothing here,’ Joe observed.

  ‘There’s only one kind of grave in Creede,’ said Rusthead. He put his boot toe under Salem’s flopping frame and nudged it firmly. The body began to roll and then tumble, falling over itself in
loose tangled movements. Finally it disappeared into the darkness and they could only hear the soft bump and thud as it hit the lower slopes and continued on.

  ‘Remind me to never take you on as pallbearer in future,’ Joe observed dourly.

  ‘He weren’t worth nothing more than that, the thieving son-of-a-bitch,’ said Rusthead, hawking and spitting a stream after the body.

  When they got back to the cave, Rusthead tidied away his things and Joe threaded a leather needle from his saddlebags.

  ‘Reckon you’d better be wearing that thing permanent now,’ advised Rusthead, nodding in the direction of the coiled gun belt and holster.

  ‘You ready for this?’ asked Joe, holding up the needle and waxed thread.

  ‘Goddamn it, yes,’ spat Rusthead, shucking off his tattered jacket.

  He winced and gritted his teeth as Joe pushed the hooked needle through his flesh above the four-inch cut in his arm.

  ‘What you doing up here anyway, boy?’ he asked. ‘This ain’t no place for you. Appears to me you’d be happier on the back of a cowpony rather than digging dirt for silver.’

  ‘I ain’t here for any prospecting,’ said Joe, squinting in the dim light as he tried to place the stitches evenly. ‘I came to get back what’s mine.’

  ‘Someone take what’s yours?’

  ‘Indeed they did. A parcel of money.’

  ‘Do tell?’ asked Rusthead curiously.

  ‘Thing is, I just don’t know if it’s all worth it. So far it’s cost me everything I already got, money, job and this fellow I killed tonight is one of two men put down as a result of it, I just ain’t too sure that cash money is worth the price any more.’

  ‘You come so far. Can’t let up now, not if its rightfully yours.’

  ‘Oh, its mine alright. Least it was until some son-of-a-bitch got his hands on it.’

  Rusthead let out a moan as Joe dug in again.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Joe. ‘Almost done.’

  ‘Man, that hurts like the devil,’ groaned Rusthead. ‘This wouldn’t be that fellow you was asking about in the saloon, would it?’

  ‘Might be, I have to find out for sure.’