by E. R. Slade
Joe Kingston was a gaunt, waxy-faced man in his late sixties, and he looked every year of his age. He was not happy to see Riley’s gang, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about them.
“Red-eye!” Pirate bellowed, tucking his dirk away in his belt. “Want something to clean the dust and cobwebs outa my throat, so’s I can straighten this here Injun out on a couple things.” His eye was getting bloodshot, veins purple under the thick skin of his bull-like neck, pocked cheeks flushed with excitement and anger. Kingston was not looking forward to seeing Pirate drunk. It had happened a couple of times before, and both times the wreckage in the Blue Belle was enough to necessitate closing down for a couple of days to repair the damage done. When he was closed down, the business went to the other five saloons. When he reopened, it didn’t all come back. So far, Pirate had not wrecked anyone else’s saloon, apparently preferring to fight here in the Blue Belle. Riley and the rest of his assortment of toughs hadn’t failed either time to join in the fun, once Pirate got it started. It had begun both times before just the way it was starting now: Pirate and Riley at each other. Pirate would get ornery and accuse Riley of being a traitorous Apache dog, and then he would head for the red-eye to work up his fury and dim what few inhibitions he possessed.
Riley and the others bellied up to the bar alongside Pirate, all clamoring for red-eye. The line of them displaced the three drifters and the mining share huckster, filling, crowding the length of the bar. The displaced men went to a table over in the corner by the window. They said nothing to each other, watching and waiting.
Kingston poured red-eye into tumblers and sent them whizzing down the bar after serving the two big wheels who stood right across from him. There was hollering and jostling among the lesserlings when the first tumblers didn’t reach the far end of the bar. Kingston poured as quickly as he could and got everyone satisfied with a drink in hand. He realized the place would inevitably fall apart anyway, no matter what he did, but of course he could try to put it off by cooperating to the fullest, so as not to trigger anything by getting them annoyed. Maybe this time there wouldn’t be a fight.
Times like this, Kingston wanted wholeheartedly to stand up solidly for the rights of ordinary citizens against men like Riley and Pirate, but he never had the nerve to do so. Every time a new sheriff got shot, he wasn’t among the ones to vote for a new one. At first, he was alone in this. But the last time, voting in the third sheriff in two months, the vote was three for, two against, Art Duggan joining him in voting against. Philip Clay was always too drunk to really care what happened, and was always for everything, no matter what it was. That left Walt Bingham and Spike Littleton, the ranchers. They were both getting to be borderline in their feelings, he thought, at least Bingham was. If they kept bucking Riley and Pirate, the chances were good that the outlaws would get short-tempered about it and start terrorizing the ranches. After all, the law meant more to the townspeople than to the ranchers anyway, since the ranchers usually got together on their own to take care of rustlers and the like.
But Kingston knew one thing: In spite of the fact that he would lose money by having the outlaws running free, he would lose less that way than if he got their anger up at him. They now looked on him as a friend, harmless, and he’d just as soon keep it that way.
Now Riley was talking, answering something Kingston hadn’t been paying attention to.
“Goldarned you, Pirate,” Riley roared. “You just try to say that again!”
“I said,” Pirate bellowed at the top of his lungs, “that you’re a yellowbellied coward. You never fought a fair fight in your life.”
Riley set his tumbler down hard on the bar top. It was ominously silent for some seconds while the two big, angry men stared at each other.
Then Pirate slammed his own tumbler across the room, shattering it against the wall, the remnants of whiskey still in the glass making a stain.
The huckster’s eyes lit up. He’d seen his chance. The next moment he was outside in the hot street shouting that there was a fight starting between Riley and Pirate, and that any man who cared to bet with him would get paid off twice his money if Riley lost. Men came out of other saloons, crowding around the huckster, arguing, shouting, waving money, betting with each other, crowding through the batwings to be on hand for the fun. For they all knew that there was fun to be had when Riley and Pirate started a dustup. But ironically, it was probably the huckster who kept everyone from joining in on a free-for-all. They all were more interested in betting and in watching the outcome of the fight.
Pirate’s gleaming dirk appeared in his hairy right fist. He stepped away from the bar, facing Riley, who took up a half-full bottle of red-eye, shattered the base off it on the bar top, and faced his challenger.
The dirk arced for Riley’s belly. Riley deftly sidestepped, then swung the jagged, broken end of the whiskey bottle within an inch of Pirate’s blunt red nose.
The dirk arced again, caught the ratty cotton shirt just above Riley’s left elbow and cleanly opened it up for nearly four inches, though without touching Riley’s skin.
The glass cut a beading red streak on Pirate’s forehead, making the burly man roar with a sound like a rock slide. The dirk flashed, then flashed again, but still drew no blood.
Riley suddenly threw his jagged bottle into Pirate’s face. It glanced off the matted black hair on the side of the seaman’s head and shattered on the floor beyond. But Pirate had not expected such a move and in surprise, trying to avoid being hit in the face with the bottle, he staggered backwards.
Riley flashed inside the bigger man’s guard, and the next moment Pirate found himself flat on the floor on his back with arms pinned to the floor.
Here was where the whole tenor of the situation changed. Riley, with all the advantage, did not press it. Pirate stopped struggling. They both grinned and then began to laugh.
“Just like a bloody typhoon,” Pirate said. “You done it again, Riley. Let me up, you ornery yellowbellied Apache typhoon, so’s I can buy to a drink.”
They climbed to their feet. Pirate put away his dirk, and bellowed at Kingston, “Red-eye for Riley! Reckon he needs to splice the main brace.”
Kingston poured with shaky hands. He knew well enough that so far he’d been lucky. But it could be only a prelude. Though their differences with each other might be for the moment settled, their differences with others, real or imagined, could come to the fore. They did not look ready, as a group, to settle down. After all, there hadn’t yet been a free-for-all.
The place was full of noise, shouting, hollers for wagers to be paid up, the slick-tongued huckster trying to talk his way to the door past an irate man who thought he had been betting on Riley instead of Pirate.
“Well now, Pirate,” Riley said generously, “I reckon you’re gettin’ better all the time. One o’ these days you’re goin’ to up and whop me. Then I’ll have to hightail it for other parts.”
“Say,” Pirate said suddenly, after downing another tumbler of red-eye with Riley, “I don’t think this here saloon has enough entertainment.”
The two men looked at each other, mischief of the most ominous kind kindling in their eyes. Kingston saw it coming and wished desperately he knew what to do about it. Once the Blue Belle had been a place where ranchers and the more decent men among the miners came for a regular drink and to pass the time of day. Now those kinds of people stayed clear, and only the rabble showed up. The trouble was that they drank and didn’t pay, or, if not given anything to drink, made trouble instead. What had once been a rather profitable business was getting closer to just breaking even, considering all the expenses he had now, fixing the place up after every fight. And his daughter was pregnant, and the man responsible having been killed in a duel, it fell to good old Pa to support her until she found someone else to take up with. These pressures played havoc with his nerves and general health and made him grow old faster. But what could he do? It would only be worse if he tried to stand up to them.
He could be killed, or maybe even tortured.
He thought of what had happened to Billy Lawes, who had been the sheriff previous to Tracy. He’d been found with his head caved in. Now Tracy with a bullet through his heart. When would the outlaws get tired of killing sheriffs and decide to put a stop to the whole thing by finishing off the selectmen who voted in favor of new law enforcement? The day couldn’t be far off.
“I reckon we need to start up some dancing,” Riley was saying judiciously. He poured more red-eye down his throat, set the tumbler down and then leaned with his back against the bar. Casually, he eyed the rough-and-ready bunch of characters crowded into the saloon, all drinking, shouting, swearing, jostling each other. A rowdy crowd. All spoiling for some fun.
Except one man, a Mexican vaquero who looked as if he were trying to drown some private sorrow with drink. He sat at a table in the center of all the activity, staring pensively into his tumbler of whiskey. It was poor judgment on his part, Kingston predicted to himself, and then watched in resignation as the scene he foresaw was acted out before him.
“Vaquero!” Riley shouted over the din. The vaquero probably didn’t hear, or if he had heard, didn’t think anyone could be talking to him. “Vaquero!” Riley bellowed. “I’m a-talkin’ to you! Listen up!”
The vaquero still took no notice.
Riley looked around at his companions in mock fury, drew his pistol and emptied it into the floor just at the vaquero’s feet. The man jumped up, startled, and then saw Riley reloading his pistol and grinning, leaning back comfortably against the bar, one leg crossed casually over the other.
“What is the matter?” the vaquero asked. “You would like my table, yes? You may have it. I will go.”
Riley and the others laughed. The gunfire had quieted the saloon, and everyone was watching the show.
“Your table!” Riley laughed some more, and so did the others. “If that ain’t just what a vaquero would think of. No, I don’t want your doggoned table. I want entertainment. You know how to dance?”
The vaquero’s eyes grew very large.
“No, señor.” He shook his head vehemently.
“No? I thought you were a dancer. I reckon it’ll be all right, though. You want to learn?”
“No, señor. No.”
“Oh, now, vaquero, you ain’t goin’ to get nowhere with them dance-hall girls without you first learn how to dance. You just climb up on the table there. I want to see your feet.”
The vaquero’s eyes got larger still. He began to step from one foot to the other, probably without realizing it.
“No,” Riley said, “not like that. I can’t see your feet down there on the floor.” He toyed with his pistol idly, looking it over as though to familiarize himself with it (which was just what he was doing as it was not his own, having come from the Rocking B bunkhouse). “Get on the table.”
The vaquero eyed the gun, then looked quickly over his shoulder at the wall of guffawing men around him and shakily did as he’d been told. He was so badly frightened his knees wobbled.
“Now then,” Riley said. “That’s a whole lot better. Don’t you agree, folks? Looky here, I’ve got me six beans in the wheel ...” (He waved the pistol in the air before him) “...six Mexican jumping beans, eh boys?” That brought hoots of laughter and much slapping of knees. The vaquero watched Riley as if transfixed.
“Dance!” Riley abruptly roared. The vaquero began hopping from one leg to the other as if he were barefoot on a hot stove. Riley shook his head disgustedly, raised the pistol, taking aim at the vaquero’s feet.
The men directly across the table from Riley moved hastily back, leaving a corridor of cigarette and cigar smoke to the window, beyond which could be seen the sun-bleached dusty street, scattered with people moving slowly in the heat of midday.
The pistol roared and a splintery furrow appeared in the table top just under the vaquero’s right foot. The vaquero danced twice as fast and twice as high, making the table itself dance along the rough wooden flooring.
“You need a whole lot of learnin’,” Riley shouted, and the pistol roared again, and then again, and again. The table had taken all the bullets so far, but the vaquero was dancing up and down as hard as he could.
The men were laughing and shouting insults and scurrilous advice on how to dance. The pistol roared again.
The vaquero yelped in pain and fell off the far side of the table. Before anyone could react in any way, the vaquero was up and diving desperately through the window into the street, shards of glass flying. Then he could be seen getting up and limping off as fast as he could go.
The place reverberated with obscenities and laughter. Red-eye was called for. Kingston mentally calculated the expense of replacing the window and wondered if this time he would get off easy. The vaquero had not been a fighter. It was that fact which had staved off the brawl yet again.
~*~
The vaquero was not in town alone. He had arrived with a half dozen other hands who had been let go from a Mexican hacienda when the owner sold out. They had traveled together to the gold diggings and had not been in town quite a day. The wounded vaquero had been in love with a girl in the previous town they’d been to, but she had married another man. His luck seemed to be running low these days.
When he returned to the fleabag hotel he and his amigos were staying in, they were just getting up to have lunch, having spent until the early morning hours carousing.
“¡Roberto!” one of them said, as the wounded vaquero came into the hot little room they all shared. “Qúe tiene usted?”
Roberto explained. The others looked at each other. One twirled his handlebar mustache, a thing he did when thinking serious thoughts. They had to say little to each other to come to an understanding of what they must do to avenge the thing that had been done. In less than a minute they were armed to the teeth and ready for battle.
Chapter Eight
Lee Calloway, standing in the lobby of the Grand Palace Hotel across the street from Millie’s Boardinghouse, saw the six determined vaqueros go past up the street, but did not take much notice. He was having trouble enough trying to keep his eyes open while he waited to see Carmen leave. Since he had himself suggested that she go to ground somewhere without telling him or anyone else where, he felt cheap not keeping faith with her. But he just couldn’t bring himself to risk not being able to find her if he needed to. So here he was.
It was only a short while later that she emerged from Millie’s with a bag, and in her riding clothes. She looked carefully up and down the street, and then went along to the livery. Lee went out into the street and put his Stetson on. He stopped behind a rig that stood at the hitching rail, watching.
All at once there was the roar of gunfire from the direction of the Blue Belle Saloon, and then shouting and the splintering of wood. Men came out through the already broken window and the batwings. Soon the street was full of gunfire and swinging fists. Amongst it all Lee saw Riley and Pirate, the latter with his dirk out. The dirk flashed down and the motion was completed by the fall of one of the vaqueros he’d seen going past on the street. Another vaquero jumped Pirate from behind, but the hairy fist swung around, and with a yell the vaquero fell off, stumbled, and then collapsed.
It was over. The Riley gang was left in the street with no one to fight. Just then Carmen led a horse from the livery, got quickly aboard and rode hurriedly away to the west, out of town. She had not seen the Riley gang until she emerged from the livery, but had surely seen them then, for she was wasting no time.
They had seen her too. At least, Riley had. He watched her go and spoke sharply to his companions. They all sobered up considerably and followed him down to the livery.
Lee came out from behind the rig and went after them. He passed the dead vaqueros lying in the street and set his jaw. Just short of the livery he stopped, drew his gun, and took cover behind a water barrel.
He could hear Riley talking.
“We ain’t goin’ to le
t her see us,” he said saying. “I got me a hunch she’d goin’ to lead us to the gold. I think Calloway and her have some kind of thing goin’. I wouldn’t be surprised if’n he was already at the place where the gold is, just a-layin’ for us. So we’re goin’ to play it very careful. We follow at a distance, no noise, got that?”
“What if we lose her?” Pirate demanded.
They brought horses outside and clambered aboard.
“I think she saw us,” Pirate said. “This could be a wild goose chase.”
“Of course she saw us,” Riley said irritably. “She wants us to follow, because Calloway is waiting for us at the other end.”
“That’s how you figure?” Pirate was highly skeptical.
“That’s how I figure. Look, Calloway shows up out of the desert, drives us off. That can’t be just luck. He must have been on our trail. Now she takes off out of town in broad daylight. Calloway nowhere around. What does it look like to you? He wants the gold, same as we do. Only he’s been playin’ it smarter than us. He’s sweet-talked her out of it. But now we’re onto him, we’ll know what we’re gettin’ into. Come on.”
Lee, under the circumstances, decided not to show himself. He waited for them to get out of sight, and then wearily saddled his own horse and followed. It was beyond him how they could have so much energy after so long without sleep. He was about to fall asleep on his feet. But if they rode, he had little choice.
~*~
Carmen Haversam, also very tired, decided that the best place to go was the Lazy L Ranch to stay with the Littletons. The Littletons had always been good friends and neighbors of her father, and they would help. She was especially close to Mandy Littleton. Lee had been right that she should find somewhere to hide from the Riley gang. She had almost told him that she was changing her mind about him, but had not quite done so. Perhaps that was because her father had so often drummed into her the necessity for playing everything close to the vest, as he called it.