Hell's Jaw Pass

by Max O'Hara

  He dipped his chin and belched loudly.

  “Now, Sheb,” said the man sitting to his left, slapping his ragged hat across Sheb’s shoulder in feigned castigation, “that ain’t no way to talk to a cripple! Show some respect, will ya?”

  The three men howled.

  The rest of the room had quieted down. Daniel looked around the room, through the drifting tobacco smoke. The other diners, drinkers, and gamblers had turned their attention to Daniel and the three men rawhiding him.

  None objected. Most stared sober faced, not outwardly enjoying the show but not objecting, either. Enjoying it, most likely, on one level or another, though they tried to hide it.

  One of the famous Stolebergs was getting taken down a notch. Never mind that he had only one arm and that his legs were as stiff as fence posts. That he hated himself about as much as any man possibly could. That his own personal travails, both physical and mental, had shriveled his heart down to a lump of black coal.

  Wolves.

  Daniel turned again to Sheb Grissom and the other two men still howling in laughter, Grissom slapping the table as he bent over his knees.

  “Did you ever hear the joke about the fella was who busier’n a one-armed man in a fistfight?” asked the third man.

  They all laughed even louder.

  A few of the other men sitting around them chuckled incredulously then glanced at Daniel sheepishly, and looked away.

  Daniel stared at the three laughing drunks.

  Rage was a wildfire burning inside him.

  He stared at each laughing man in turn, at each red face bloated with laughter, tears streaming down stubbled cheeks. Grissom looked at Daniel again. Seeing the object of his derision still standing before him, so calmly enduring the humiliation, Grissom laughed even louder, slapped the table even harder.

  Daniel felt his chest rising and falling heavily. His cold, black heart thumped against his breastbone.

  The rest of the room was nearly silent. The only sounds were the howling laughter of Grissom and his two just-as-ugly, just-as-worthless partners.

  Daniel felt his right hand drop over the handles of the. 44 Colt holstered on his right thigh. Delight rippled through him as his hand began to slide the revolver from the holster. It was as though another man were sliding the gun from the holster, but it was Daniel’s cold black heart beating with feverish expectation and anticipation of what was going to happen without him even having decided to do it.

  As the gun’s barrel cleared leather, Grissom glanced up at Daniel again.

  The man’s drink-bleary and humor-bright eyes found the gun in Daniel’s hand near the holster. Grissom stopped laughing. His lower jaw loosened and his eyes widened as he looked up at Daniel’s stony face in which burned the eyes of a killer.

  The two others, still laughing, glanced at Sheb Grissom. When they saw that Grissom was no longer laughing but gazing quite seriously now at the crip, they turned their own gazes to Daniel. They both stopped laughing when their eyes went to the gun that Daniel now aimed straight out from his right shoulder.

  “Hey,” said the vermin to Grissom’s left. His long, horse-like face hung slack, as though the muscles had melted away beneath the skin. “Hey, now . . .”

  When Daniel clicked his Colt’s hammer back, the men sitting around Grissom’s table lurched from their chairs and scrambled for cover, some dropping to their knees behind other men still sitting at tables. One of the quickly vacated tables was knocked over, glasses and plates clattering onto the floor.

  A man cursed and clutched his bruised knee as he dropped down out of sight.

  When four tables around the table at which the three vermin sat had all been vacated, and the sudden flurry had dwindled back to silence, Grissom slapped his table angrily and lurched to his feet, jutting an enraged finger at Daniel and shouting, “How dare you aim a gun at me, you low-down dirt—!”

  The blast and the bullet cut him off, the blast rocketing loudly around the room while the bullet punched through Grissom’s grimy work shirt over his heart. Ricocheting off a rib, the bullet exited Grissom’s upper torso from just under his left shoulder blade and plowed into one of the recently vacated tables behind him, shredding a ham sandwich and tossing a shot glass high in the air.

  Grissom’s only reaction to having just been killed was a little jerk. He stared, wide-eyed, at the man who’d killed him. He looked down at the blood spurting from the hole in his shirt and made a gurgling sound.

  The other two vermin at the table looked at Grissom in shock.

  As the horse-faced man looked at Daniel and then leaped out of his chair, grabbing the old hogleg on his right hip, Daniel’s Colt roared again, painting a round, blue hole in Horse Face’s forehead, to the left of a triangular shaped birthmark. The back of Horse Face’s head blew across the table the shredded sandwich was on.

  Daniel calmly slid his smoking Colt to the left.

  The last surviving vermin screamed, “No!” and raised his hands as though they would shield his face from a bullet. As if to prove him wrong, Daniel clicked the Colt’s hammer back and dropped it on a third live round in the wheel.

  It blew the third vermin’s right index finger off before chewing into the nub of the man’s left cheek and slamming him back in his chair, which toppled over backward as it and the third dead vermin thundered onto the carpeted floor.

  The third vermin shook as though stricken with a seizure, still seated in his chair.

  Grissom was still standing on the other side of the table from Daniel. He stared at Daniel as though in wide-eyed fascination. The front of his shirt resembled a bright red bib growing redder by the second.

  Grissom opened his mouth as though to speak then fell forward onto the table before him, arms thrown straight out to both sides, cheek pressed against a pile of coins and playing cards.

  Daniel lowered the Colt and looked around the room.

  The room was so quiet that he could hear his own heart beating only a little faster and heavier than normal. Even the street outside the place was quiet. Three little boys stood with their hands and faces pressed up against the front window, peering in, one about four inches taller than the other one.

  A dog wagged its tail beside them.

  Most of the men in the room were standing now, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Daniel. The two bartenders stood staring at him from behind the bar, one holding a bottle and a shot glass as though he’d been frozen mid-motion.

  Boots thudded on the steps outside of Hennessey’s. The door opened and in came the big-gutted town marshal, Watt Russell, flanked by his tall, lanky deputy, Chet Diggs.

  “What in God’s name . . . ?” Russell said as he moved heavily down the three steps and into the room, his ragged duster flapping about his cumbersome frame.

  Flanked closely by Diggs, he pushed through the crowd. When he’d shoved aside the last two men standing between him and Daniel, he stopped suddenly, scowling at Daniel still holding his smoking Colt down against his right leg.

  Russell stared at Stoleberg. His eyes dropped to the Colt in Daniel’s hand then shifted to the three dead men to Daniel’s right now as he faced the front of the room. Russell and Diggs shared a look of unspoken shock, then both men turned to gaze once more at the unlikely killer.

  Daniel slid his Colt back into its holster. He felt a smile tug at his mouth corners. An enormous feeling of satisfaction washed over him.

  He looked around the room once more, at the faces gawking at him as though he were a . . . a . . . well as though they’d just found an unlikely wolf in their midst. An especially wild one, though they’d all thought he’d been as docile as a cottontail.

  He looked at the two boys and the dog on the other side of the window and then at Russell and Diggs again.

  “Fresh meat for the stray dogs,” he said.

  He turned and started walking toward the stairs again but stopped when he saw Kreg Hennessey standing on the balcony over the room, to the right of the st
airs. Hennessey stared down at Daniel without expression.

  Daniel continued to the stairs, glancing at the bouncer who now stood by his table to the left of the staircase, his playing cards in his hand. The bouncer stared at Daniel then lowered his chin deferentially, shock lingering in his eyes.

  Daniel wanted to smile but did not. He placed his hand on the rail and started climbing. As he did, a sudden roar lifted from the saloon behind him, as though a collective held breath had just been released.

  “Someone fetch the galldamned undertaker!” Watt Russell’s voice rose above the din.

  The staircase was roughly twice as long as the stairs in the main house at the Tin Cup headquarters. But Daniel would be damned if he’d stop for a blow. By the time he finally hoisted his right foot onto the second-floor hall, and then the left one, each one as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil, he was sweating so much that even his hair was damp beneath his Stetson and his shirt was sweat-basted to his back beneath his coat.

  Hennessey stood before him, one brow arched. His broad, pitted face with the long, black side whiskers that met over his fat upper lip to form a mustache, was paler than usual. His lips were swollen, bristling with sutures.

  Who on earth had belted Kreg Hennessey?

  He was a big man, but today he looked gaunt, eyes sunken into his head. His eyes were pink-rimmed as he said, “To what do I owe the pleasure?” His swollen lips made the words come out a little funny, like he had rock candy in his mouth.

  Daniel drew a breath, then another, and swallowed. His right knee was shaking. Ignoring it, he said, “We have to talk.”

  Hennessey glanced over the balcony rail at the room below, where men swarmed around the three dead vermin. The saloon owner pointed over the rail with his right hand. “You owe me for that rug.”

  “Take it out of the money for the right-of-way.”

  “I will,” Hennessey promised.

  He moved through the open door in the balcony’s back wall. Daniel followed him into the office and closed the door. As the saloon owner walked in his bow-legged, lumbering fashion to the large desk on the far side of the room, Daniel noticed that he, like the bartender downstairs, wore a black silk band around his right arm.

  “What are the arm bands for?” Daniel asked.

  Hennessey continued around behind the desk and sat heavily down in the high-backed leather chair. Leaning forward and entwining his thick, beringed hands on the blotter before him, he looked across the room at Daniel but said nothing.

  “His son.”

  Daniel hadn’t realized a third man was in the room until he’d heard the voice. He followed it to one of the two high-backed leather chairs angled in front of the desk, facing it. The speaker sat in the chair on Daniel’s right. Daniel could see only the very top of the crown of the man’s brown hat, and his boots on the floor beneath the chair, one hooked behind the other.

  Hennessey blinked once, slowly, as though to corroborate the other man’s information.

  Daniel walked shakily up to the desk. He stepped between the two chairs and placed his hand on the back of the right one, which was the one the other man in the room was sitting in.

  Stanley Cove was an odd-looking, crow-like man in a shabby suit coat over a gold and brown checked vest, and baggy broadcloth trousers. His high-crowned black Stetson had apparently weathered the abuse of many high-country storms.

  He had narrow eyes, long nose, and sharp, upturned chin. Three days’ worth of beard stubble shadowed his features.

  He wore two pistols on his hips, their walnut grips polished by usage to a high shine.

  “Well . . . if it ain’t the return of the prodigal son,” Cove said, giving a crooked grin.

  He had a drink in his left hand. There was a plaster cast around his other hand, extending halfway up his forearm. The arm angled across his chest in a white cotton sling. He, too, wore a black silk band, on his left upper arm, since the right arm was busy with the cast and the sling.

  “What happened to your hand, Cove?”

  Cove’s grin turned to a glare. “What happened to yours?” He glanced at Daniel’s empty sleeve.

  “Touchy.” Daniel looked at Hennessey who stared at him dully, as though his mind were elsewhere. A half-filled glass of what appeared to be whiskey sat near his right elbow. A fat cigar smoldered in an ashtray near the whiskey.

  Hennessey stared dully up at Daniel, for whom the shock at hearing of the death of the saloon owner’s son made him need to sit down even more than his ascent of the stairs had. He sagged into the chair to the left of Cove and pondered the information.

  “Well . . . I’m . . . I’m sorry, Kreg. About Riley, I mean.” It was a bald-faced lie, and Hennessey likely knew it. There was no man on earth in more dire need of having his ticket punched than Riley Hennessey. Kreg probably knew that, as well. “How did it happen?”

  Hennessey spoke for himself this time. “Same way Stan broke his paw and I got my mouth smashed, two teeth broke. Stockburn.”

  “Ah.”

  “Have you seen him?” Hennessey asked.

  “I have. He rode into the Tin Cup headquarters with four of your men lying belly down across their saddles.”

  “Bohannon one of ’em?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn!” Hennessey pounded the desk with the end of his fist.

  “What were Bohannon and the others doing on Tin Cup range?”

  Hennessey frowned at him, the heavy brows mantling his eyes forming a large, lumpy ridge. “You know what they were doing. They were moving McCrae beef onto your land. Just like we arranged.”

  “Yeah . . . about that,” Daniel said. “That’s got to stop.”

  “Stop?” both Hennessey and Stan Cove said at the same time, incredulity sharp in their eyes.

  Daniel looked at the hand splayed across his right thigh. It was abnormally large and calloused from having had to perform the work of two hands for the past ten years. He hesitated, struggling to find the words, embarrassment burning his ears. “Uh . . .”

  “I know,” Cove said with a knowing grin. “It’s that pretty little McCrae piece of work.”

  Hennessey sipped his whiskey, swallowed, and stretched his swollen lips and thick, black mustache with waxed ends back from his large, ivory-colored teeth. “I heard Lori McCrae was back in town. After only a month away.” He glanced at Cove, then slid his coldly mocking eyes back to Daniel. “That bit of interesting gossip wouldn’t have anything to do with why you’ve had a sudden change of heart so late in the game, would it?”

  Daniel’s heart thudded. He looked at his hand again, opening and closing it, then looked across the desk at Hennessey once more. “Look, Kreg . . . I didn’t know you were going to kill those men. Those track layers. We never agreed to murder!”

  “Oh?” Hennessey said. “How did you think I was going to get them out of there so I could sabotage the rails and the work train? Ask them very politely if they wouldn’t mind please leaving while I blew up the rails and the work train?”

  Stanley Cove laughed.

  Exasperation bit Daniel hard. Now, his heart was finally beating fast. It was beating hard, anger and frustration burning inside him. He pounded the edge of the desk before him, leaning forward.

  “Stockburn’s going to find out, Kreg! He’s going to sniff it all out! I think it best to err on the side of—”

  “That’s why I brought in Slim Sherman.”

  Daniel leaned forward in his chair, the urgency of the situation coming to a head inside him. “Sherman missed the shot!”

  “What?” both Hennessey and Cove asked again at the same time.

  Daniel said, “Sherman had Stockburn in his sights, and he missed!”

  “How do you know?” Cove asked.

  Daniel didn’t grant Hennessey’s lowly underling, a back-shooting Texas killer who fancied himself a gunslinger, the courtesy of a glance.

  To Hennessey, he said, “I rode out to the line shack on Blackbird Creek and found him t
here, nursing a nice gash in his cheek. Stockburn gave him a scar he’ll take to his grave if he lives to be a hundred. Which he won’t. Stockburn will get him. He almost had him last night, and he would have if that shack hadn’t had a back door!”

  Daniel sat back in his chair. “I want out, Hennessey. I made a hasty decision in throwing in with you. It’s too risky. I didn’t agree to cold-blooded murder!”

  Hennessey and Cove shared another conspiratorial glance. Cove leaned toward Daniel and rubbed the back of his right hand across Daniel’s cheek with mocking gentleness. “Oh, come on, now, Master Stoleberg, I know her skin is fair, an’ she does know how to fill out a shirtwaist, but—”

  Daniel drew his head away and swatted Cove’s hand away with his own. “Get your filthy stinky hands off of me, you common privy rat!”

  Instantly, one of Cove’s six-guns was in his hand. The killer extended it out over the arm of his chair at Daniel’s right temple and clicked the hammer back loudly. Cold anger flickered in the man’s small, lake-blue eyes, above his gritted teeth.

  Daniel stared at the gun, which Cove held steady as stone. Daniel felt a strange calm wash over him, his heart suddenly slowing.

  It was like the way he’d felt just after he’d made the decision to kill the three vermin downstairs. He vaguely wondered if, had his fall into that rattlesnake nest not happened, he wouldn’t have made a good professional killer himself. He’d heard to be really good you couldn’t fear your own death.

  He didn’t fear it now. He stared at the maw of Stan Cove’s gun barrel, and simply waited for the bullet that would end his misery.

  “Stan,” Hennessey said. “Young Stoleberg’s in love.” Mockery lilted in his voice as he sat back in his chair, leaning a little to one side and canting his head, grinning, and said, “And . . . word has it . . . a child’s involved.”

  Enunciating each word slowly, carefully, he added, “A bastard child . . . born out of wedlock.”

  Daniel glared at the man.

  Hennessey blinked slowly. “Go home, boyo. Go hide under your bed. I called my new men back to town. I was going to give them their pay and their leave. Since Sherman apparently isn’t up to the task of sending Stockburn under, they’ll more than adequately fill his boots. It might be a little more public than I would have liked, but, what the hell—that useless Russell won’t cause any trouble. Maybe public’s better, anyway. A good show of force. Should’ve done it that way from the very beginning!”