by J. T. Edson
Before leaving the marshal’s office, Slaughter paused to see how his cook fared, and waited ready to take a hand should Coonskin find himself in deep water.
No sooner had Slaughter entered the marshal’s office than a bunch of six gun-hung hard cases left the saloon. For a moment they stood on the sidewalk studying the wagon, then walked in its direction. Coonskin became aware of their arrival and cast a glance down at Betsy Two-Eyes. While the gun had been most scientifically loaded with a handful of black powder and a fair slew of 00 buckshot balls as a charge, he still felt the situation called for the specialized talents of Mr. Earp.
“You from that trail herd that’s coming?” asked one of the toughs, stepping from the sidewalk and approaching the side of the wagon, his pards following on his heels.
“I has that honor, sir,” replied Coonskin in his most dignified and polite manner.
“Then you’d best just whip up them knobheads and head out of town, afore we sets your wagon on fire around your ears.”
Coonskin’s eyes bulged out like twin organ stops and he looked just about as scared as it would be possible for one man to get.
“You-all wouldn’t do nothing like that, would you, gents?” he asked.
“We sure would,” the gunman confirmed.
“Can’t say as how I’d like that to happen, gennelmen,” Coonskin warned the men. “And I’m certain sure Mr. Earp wouldn’t like it neither.”
“Mr. Earp, huh?” grunted the gunman, coming to a halt. “You’ve got Mr. Earp in there?”
“I sure has, sir.”
For a moment the gunmen hesitated, having Yankees’ regard for the prowess of a gentleman called Wyatt Earp. Then their leader gave a grunting laugh. It was as likely for Wyatt Earp to be riding in a Texan’s chuck wagon as for Main Street to get up and walk away.
“If you got Mr. Earp in there,” the gunman grinned, throwing a wink at his pards, “fetch him out so’s we can tell him what we told you.”
“You-all sure that’s what you wants, sir and gennelmen?”
“Yeah!” chorused the sir and “gentlemen” mockingly. “You-all bring out old Mr. Earp.”
“Anything to oblige,” Coonskin replied, rising to turn and lean into the wagon. “Mr. Earp, Mr. Earp,” he called. “You-all can come on out now and meet these folks as wants to see you.”
The gunmen watched, not knowing what to expect. Some of them expected to see a drifter who had told the gullible-looking Negro he was the famous Wyatt Earp and been believed. Others of the group wondered if the Negro was reaching for a gun and decided it would be too bad for him if he did. Certainly none of them even started to expect what Mr. Earp might be.
Coonskin straightened up, lifting something from inside the wagon, turned and placed it on the seat nearest to the bunch of gunmen. At first glance the thing he set down looked like a cat. Except that no cat had even been born with a sharp-pointed nose, colored black and longitudinal white stripes, and with a long plumed tail that it carried arched up over its back.
Stopping dead in their tracks, the gunmen stared at Mr. Earp with goggle-eyed horror. Not one of them even started to think it was a cat. In fact they knew for sure it definitely was not a cat, nor even a member of the cat family.
“A skunk!” one of the men yipped, taking a rapid pace to the rear.
“Don’t you point that thing at me!” yelled a second man, showing a true spirit of friendship and loyalty by moving so as to protect yet a third of the group from an attack in the rear—although the third man stood facing towards Mr. Earp.
“You-all asked to see Mr. Earp,” Coonskin told them, sounding reproachful at their lack of pleasure. “Well, here he am.”
For a moment the leader of the gunmen studied Coonskin and Mr. Earp, then reached what at the time seemed like a logical conclusion.
“That damned thing’s had its stink glands cut out!” he yelled, stepping forward and dropping his hand towards the butt of his gun. “I’ll show you.”
And he did!
Mr. Earp made a rapid about-face movement, took aim over his shoulder and made a liar out of the gunman. Long before the man got his gun clear, Mr. Earp, showing a speed and accuracy his namesake only used when popping holes in paper targets for visiting Eastern newspapermen, cut loose with his defense armament. The jet of evil-smelling fluid shot out and its main column struck the boaster in the face, but there was enough of a side spray to ensure that all the group caught the benefit of it.
Letting out a howl like a scalded wolf, the leader of the gunmen sprang backwards, all thought of burning wagons, or proving his point, forgotten. Not that any of his pards felt like objecting.
“Yeeagh!” howled one of the bunch. “Ib gedding out ob here!”
He did not usually talk like that, but had his forefinger and thumb firmly clamped on his nose in a vain attempt to keep out the smell.
On the words, all six men turned and left the vicinity at a dead run, heading for the hotel and hoped that a hot bath might clear the stench of skunk from off their suffering bodies.
Coonskin watched the men go, then dropped a hand on to Mr. Earp’s back. A pained expression crossed his face as he looked down at his pet.
“Looks like they didn’t take none to you at all, Mr. Earp,” he said. “Don’t let it worry you none though, I’m still your friend. Reckon you’d best ride up here on the seat for a spell, though.”
Ever since finding the skunk as a kitten, Coonskin had kept it as a pet. The J.S. cowhands gave Mr. Earp the name in honor of, and to show how they regarded, Mr. Wyatt Earp, lawman of Kansas. While the skunk was safe enough with folks it knew and even with strangers provided they did not try to enter the chuck wagon, threaten Coonskin, or attempt to draw a gun, it was likely to cut loose with its artillery should anyone break the rules.
~*~
John Slaughter left the marshal’s office after standing watching the scene before the store, ready to back Coonskin up if the Negro and Mr. Earp failed to attend to matters. Crossing the street, he passed in front of the wagon and halted at the door of the store, looking at his cook.
“Let’s get the supplies,” he suggested.
“I reckons we might at that, Massa John,” Coonskin replied.
On entering the store, Slaughter found the owner hanging on to his counter and laughing until tears ran down his face.
“Land-sakes a-mercy,” gasped the businessman, wiping his eyes. “I’ve never seen the beat of that.” He lost his laughter when Slaughter asked to buy supplies. “Shouldn’t sell you none, according to Mr. Bitter-Creek Gallagher’s orders. Only why should I chance refusing when said Mr. Gallagher’s out of town, and his hard boys aren’t here to pertect me?”
The use of the word “mister” let Slaughter know where he stood with the storekeeper. A Western man did not call anybody “mister” after they were introduced unless he disliked the other.
“Could always say I threatened you if you didn’t sell,” Slaughter suggested, “and lay all the blame on his boys not being here.”
“Which same’s just what I figure on doing,” grinned the other. “What’re you wanting, friend?”
While loading the supplies, Slaughter learned how Bitter-Creek Gallagher came to take over the small township. It all stemmed from the stupidity of a couple of well-meaning Easterners who brought out a bunch of folks and built the town. After getting it built, they decided there would be no dangerous gunplay in their locality and produced a city ordinance banning the sale or ownership of guns in town. Fortunately for them, the Apaches had been gathered on reservations and their town did not have a sufficient importance to attract outlaws. The storekeeper, one of the few Westerners in the town, tried to point out the dangers of the no-firearms policy, but the others would not listen. Then Bitter-Creek Gallagher arrived and offered his services as protector of the town. The citizens agreed, only to find themselves defenseless and under the control of a tyrannical bully. There were three hundred male citizens in the town and Gallagher’s band n
ever exceeded ten men, but those ten men had arms and the other citizens did not. So Devil City suffered from the blind stupidity of a couple of anti-firearm bigots who cleared out and left the others to the problem the moment they found out how things were going.
“I got me a few rifles and shotguns hid out, and ammunition for ’em,” the storekeeper finished his story, helping the J.S. men to load their wagon. “And there are some of us who’ll take a chance on moving that bunch out if the other folk’ll back us.”
From his tone, he did not think the others were likely to supply the needed backing.
“I’ve just one more call to make, Coonskin,” Slaughter told his cook as the Negro closed the tailboard of the wagon.
“Yes, sir, Massa John,” Coonskin replied. “I’ll just sit on the box and wait until you-all gets through.”
Walking to the doors of the Bitter-Creek Saloon, Slaughter pushed open the batwing doors and entered. Only the bartender and the pianist were in the room and they looked at the Texan with frank curiosity.
“The name’s John Slaughter. Tell Gallagher when he gets back that I’ve bought my supplies and don’t aim to pay his head tax toll. And tell him if he’s got any objections to come himself instead of sending his hired men.”
With that Slaughter left the room. Across the street Gosse and his deputy watched the Texan mount the black stallion and ride alongside the wagon out of town. Neither man made a move, or thought of taking up a weapon to challenge Slaughter’s right to depart. Both remembered how one of the men who went to deliver Gallagher’s message came back from the mission. While Slaughter might not have intended his bullet to strike the exact point it hit, neither men figured the lead went far from where it was intended to go. Slaughter had wounded the young gunman. If he needed to use his gun again he would shoot to kill, for that was Slaughter’s way.
~*~
An hour after John Slaughter and Coonskin left Devil City, Bitter-Creek Gallagher rode in. He was barely in his room when Gosse and his boss gunman, who still retained a whiff of Mr. Earp’s special perfume about him, arrived with news of the Texan’s visit.
Gallagher sat at his table in the back room of the saloon, a big, heavily built man with shoulder long, pomaded hair, and a buckskin outfit that might have turned Buffalo Bill Cody green with envy. While his gunbelt looked shiny enough to be made of patent leather, the matched pearl-handled, nickel-plated Colt Cavalry Peacemakers rode in fast-draw holsters.
“You mean you let Slaughter come in here and buy supplies?” he bellowed, glaring at the other two men.
“Couldn’t rightly stop him, Bitter-Creek,” Gosse replied. Being a cousin, he knew Gallagher’s name to be Horace, but nobody who liked living would have dared to use it to the town boss’s face. “Slaughter come in at the head of twenty men.”
“Twenty?” Gallagher spat out, knowing that only by leaving his herd all but untended could Slaughter bring that many men into town.
“Well, ten at least. Then Sully here and the boys tangled with that there skunk on the chuck wagon—”
“And he means a for-real skunk, boss,” Sully put in.
“It smells that way. Go get me the storekeeper.”
The order proved to be unnecessary, for a knock sounded at the door and the storekeeper entered, a look of polite annoyance on his face.
“Now, lookee here, Bitter-Creek,” he said indignantly. “I don’t mind you telling me not to sell supplies to folks without your say-so. But I sure do mind about getting my head shot plumb full of windows ’cause I refused Texas John Slaughter. Where was your boys when he came in my place demanding to be served?”
Gallagher opened his mouth to snarl something out, then he closed it again. There was a hint of mockery behind the storekeeper’s contrition. All too well did Gallagher know his position of power in Devil City depended solely on his reputation for toughness. Only as long as people feared him could he retain the reins and hold the superior number of citizens under control. Already word of Slaughter’s challenge had been spread around the town and folks waited to see if Gallagher dare take it up. Worse than that, Gallagher’s own men must be thinking on the same lines as the town, wondering if their boss dare face Slaughter, or if he aimed to let them take all the risks.
“I’ll see you later,” he growled to the storekeeper, dismissing the man with a wave of his hand. Then he looked at the other two. “We’ve got to do something about Slaughter.”
“Depends on what you want doing,” Sully answered. “I tell you, Bit, after this afternoon it’ll take a helluva lot to get those boys to stack up against him again.”
“Let’s go ask them,” Gallagher snapped.
Just as Sully guessed, the other men showed no eagerness to tangle with Slaughter, in fact bordered on open mutiny to avoid doing so. Gallagher argued, threatened, cajoled, but to no avail. Not one of the men wanted to face the J.S. until their boss showed them the way by accepting Slaughter’s challenge.
Back in his office, Gallagher looked at Gosse and Sully. They more than any of the others stood to lose everything should the town slip through their fingers. Yet Gosse did not care for the idea of getting involved in gunfights. In the end it was Sully who came up with a brilliant idea. When he explained it, the other two agreed it might work, in fact stood a better than fair chance of working. Even Gosse took heart and waxed brave in his certainty that the plan they made must work.
A scared-looking gunman, the same who delivered Gallagher’s first message, rode into John Slaughter’s night camp as Coonskin had the trail crew howling with laughter as he described the scene when Mr. Earp made his dramatic appearance. The man rode with his arms raised and his gunbelt strapped in plain view around his saddle horn.
“Bitter-Creek says he’ll be waiting for you alone in that dry-wash about two mile this side of town at ten o’clock in the morning,” the man said, keeping a wary eye on his escape route. “He says bring the head tax toll money—or a gun.”
“Tell him I’ll be there,” Slaughter replied.
~*~
At ten o’clock promptly John Slaughter rode his horse through the mesquite scrub and halted it on the eastern end of the half mile long dry-wash. This was a wide, deep gash in the ground, probably carved by the action of water from some long gone stream. Its sides rose gently, covered in thick bushes, but the bottom, some thirty yards wide, was bare of anything but soft sand.
For a few minutes Slaughter sat his horse, looking along the wash to where, at the other end, waited Bitter-Creek Gallagher, mounted on a fine Palomino stallion and cradling a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun on his left arm. The town boss made no attempt to move forward and he was far beyond any range where a shotgun might make a hit.
Starting his horse forward, Slaughter rode down into the wash. His cigar hung from between his lips and his hat tilted slightly further back on his head than usual. There was no sound save for the muffled thud of the black stallion’s hooves in the sand. Still Gallagher had not made a move to start towards him.
Suddenly, and without apparent reason, Slaughter drew his Colt and threw three fast shots into the clump of white-flowering bushes on his left side. A scream of pain rang out; he bushes shook violently; the twin barrels of a shotgun pointed up into the air and one fired as a dying man’s finger closed convulsively on the trigger.
Even as he fired, Slaughter went sideways from his saddle. The charge of buckshot from a shotgun at his right ripped through the air over his falling body, for Gosse was not a brave man and in his panic jerked on the gun’s triggers and tilted the barrels of his scattergun upwards just as he cut loose. Slaughter fell to the ground, jerking loose his rifle from its boot with his left hand as he went down. Twice he fired under the belly of his horse, throwing the shot into the bushes which hid Gosse. The fat marshal had chosen discretion as being more advisable than valor and was already on the run, discarding his shotgun, the instant he saw he had missed his mark. One bullet burned a crease in his rump as he bounded off and f
or a fat man whose only exercise for some time had been walking around town collecting bribes, he sure turned on a fair turn of speed.
With Sully and his cousin out of the game, Gallagher knew he must stand or fall alone.
Letting out a screech like a drunken Sioux coming to a powwow, Gallagher kicked his horse into movement, sending it barreling down the bottom of the wash. He figured Slaughter had only one bullet left at most in his revolver, and possibly not that for most men only put five beans in the wheel as a matter of safety. He reckoned that he ought to be able to sink some buckshot into the Texan before Slaughter could lay lead into him with one shot from a Colt.
Too late Gallagher saw his mistake. He had not seen the withdrawal of the rifle when the move was made. Desperately he threw the ten gauge to his shoulder and sighted it, although he was a good hundred yards away. However the charge ought to spread just right for some of the buckshot to hit its mark, and even one 00 size ball could affect a man’s shooting skill.
Slaughter held his rifle in the left hand and there was no time to make a swap. However, a lever action Winchester could be handled just as well from left or right, which no bolt-action weapon ever could. He let the Colt drop from his right hand, gripping the Winchester’s foregrip and nestled the butt against his left shoulder and his right eye closed. Sighting quickly, but without getting flurried, Slaughter fired. His bullet beat Gallagher’s shotgun to the punch by just enough, striking the big man in the body and deflecting his aim just as he squeezed the trigger of the right-hand barrel. A charge of nine buckshot belched out of the gun, but it ripped harmlessly into the bushes at the side of the wash.
Yet Gallagher was not done. He let the shotgun fall from his hands and jerked out his right-hand gun. Setting the spurs to his Palomino’s ribs, he sent the horse charging down at Slaughter and as he came, he came shooting.
While the Winchester was a real fine medium-range fighting weapon, with a good magazine capacity and the advantage of being able to pump out its lead at a fast rate, it was not the best type of weapon to be fired from a prone position due to the awkwardness of working its lever to reload while lying on one’s stomach. To add to the difficulty, Slaughter handled the rifle from the left side and although he had used his Winchester from the left enough to be able to shoot accurately, his speed at reloading left something to be desired under the present trying circumstances.