Fighting Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Densmier, Fuller and Nichols backed away grudgingly. The young deputy looked from one to another until the three showed signs of cooling down. “It’s time we get some rest and keep moving. I’m going to figure now that we’re looking for seven gunmen instead of the three we started out chasing.”

  “He’s motioning for you, Eddie,” said the townsman holding the sheriff’s head in his lap.

  Lane hurried over and stooped down beside the wounded sheriff. “What is it, Sheriff Morgan?”

  The weakening sheriff placed a trembling hand around the deputy’s forearm and drew him closer. “Send them home,” he whispered in a failing voice near Lane’s ear.

  “Sheriff, you take it easy,” said Lane. “We’re going to ride into Rimrock. There could be a doctor there. If there is, we’ll—”

  “Send . . . them home,” the sheriff repeated in a rasping whisper as the others drew closer around him in the campfire light.

  Leaning down to keep their conversation between them, Deputy Lane said, “But, Sheriff, we’re getting close. The robbers are in Rimrock, I’m almost certain.”

  “Send . . . them . . . home . . . ,” the sheriff repeated, this time with much more effort, but much less strength.

  “What’d he say?” asked Fuller, from a few feet away.

  “Sounded like he said for us to go home,” said Densmier.

  Lane said into the sheriff’s dying face, “But what about these robbers who killed you?”

  “Go . . . after them,” said the sheriff, gripping Lane’s forearm with determination.

  “Alone?” said Lane. “Sheriff, I want to do what you ask me to, but I can’t bring these men in alone. I’ll need help.”

  “Don’t . . . bring . . . them in,” the sheriff gasped. His eyes took on a wild, pleading look of desperation for a moment, then went blank. He sank back onto the townsman’s lap.

  “Sheriff Morgan . . . ?” said Lane, feeling the grip loosen from his forearm and slip away.

  “He’s dead, Deputy,” the townsman said gently. He tucked the blanket around the dead sheriff’s body, closed the blank, open eyes and pulled the corner of the blanket up over Sheriff Morgan’s face.

  “Oh no . . . ,” Lane murmured. He straightened up from beside the sheriff’s body, dusted his knees and looked around at the others. “You all heard him,” he said to the townsmen. “He said for me to send all of you home.”

  “Amen to that, Deputy,” said Art Fuller. “I know when I’m licked. I’ll be ready to ride back as soon as you say the word.”

  “Hell, so will I,” said Densmier with disappointment in his voice.

  “Me too,” said Nichols. “You both done the best you could. It’s time to draw in our horns and get back to decent normal life.”

  “I’m not going back with you,” Lane said.

  The men all looked at him. “Where do you think you’re going, Eddie?” said Densmier, not even using his title of office.

  “I told the sheriff I’d go on after them,” said Lane, overlooking the disrespect Densmier had shown toward him.

  “So what?” said Densmier. “The sheriff is dead. Nobody is holding you to your word to a dead man.” He gave a troubled, bemused grin. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”

  “Besides,” Fuller cut in, “like as not, the sheriff didn’t know what he was saying anyway.”

  “He knew what he was saying. So did I,” Lane said stubbornly.

  “Now, hold it,” said Nichols. “Did you give your word or just tell him that you would go on after them?”

  “What’s the difference?” said Lane, not giving an inch.

  “Well, there’s a hell of a lot of difference,” said Nichols. “A man gives his word, that’s one thing. But anybody might say they’ll do something. It doesn’t mean they have to do it.” He gave a nervous chuckle and looked to the others for support. “Does it, fellows?”

  “Naw, not really,” said Densmier. “It’s just talk. It’s not a man’s word.”

  “A man’s word is given in everything he says and everything he does,” said Lane. He looked from one silent face to the next. “If a man doesn’t hold to his word in everything he says and does, he ain’t a man—he’s shit out of a chicken.”

  “Hey, boy,” Densmier said in a challenging tone. “You’re starting to talk like you’re some kind of fighting man or something. I’ve got news for you—you’re not. So get back down to earth here, before you ride out and get yourself killed.”

  “How do you know I’m not?” said Lane in a strong, even voice. “You’ve never seen me in a fight. I’ve never been in a fight.”

  “Well, there now, that says it all,” said Densmier, as if having proved his point.

  “But I’m going to be. I gave my word,” Lane said as if he hadn’t heard him.

  “Again with that word business,” said Densmier. He shook his head.

  “Now, you hold it right there, Deputy,” said Nichols, seeing Lane step toward his horse. “I don’t like how you looked at us when you said that about being shit out of a chicken.” He shook a finger at Lane.

  “Christ, Nichols, it was just a figure of speech, is all,” said Fuller. “Can’t you see he’s just broken up over the sheriff dying?”

  “That’s another thing, Deputy,” said Nichols. “If you act responsibly, maybe you can wear Sheriff Morgan’s badge until his term runs out. We’re still going to need a sheriff, don’t forget.”

  Lane stared past the townsmen toward the darkness ahead, the high trail leading to Rimrock. “Keep the badge. Take the sheriff’s body back to town. I’m done killing,” he said.

  In Rimrock, as the three riflemen filed in through the rear tent fly, Big Chicago gave Thatcher a bemused look and said, “Damn, I bet you’re embarrassed!” But before Thatcher could reply, Chicago laughed and said to Bobby Candles, “I always said you’re a sneaking sumbitch, Candles. That’s about the only thing I ever liked about you.” He turned toward the three gunmen and said to the tired bartender, “Give these boys what they want. It’s on me.”

  “Does this mean we’re going to ride together after all?” Candles asked.

  “How can I say no?” Big Chicago grinned. “You slipped three men in on us while my pards here were fingering their peckers. That bodes favorably in my book. We’ll make room for yas.” He gave Russell and Thatcher a hard look.

  “How are we going to make room for four more at the trough?” Russell asked bluntly. “There’s not enough cash to go around as it is.”

  “We’ll rob bigger banks,” Chicago said. “Never mind how we’ll do it. I’m the boss. I’ll say who rides with us and who doesn’t.” He turned and raised his filled shot glass in a toast toward the three new men lined along the plank bar. “Drink up, men. Welcome to my gang. I should say, the former Curly Joe Hobbs Gang.”

  The riflemen nodded and drank in reply. As they lowered their shot glasses, one of them said to Thatcher with a cold stare, “We heard you call us idiots from out there.”

  “Come on, now, Milo,” said Chicago with a grin, giving the man a slap on his back. “No harm done, eh? Consider it an act of camaraderie.”

  “Camaraderie, eh?” Milo said grudgingly, keeping his cold stare on Thatcher.

  With the same hard stare, Thatcher said, “Yeah, you know, like pal, idiot, pederast. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Milo said, his eyes glaring, his knuckles white, “like turd, poltroon, catamite—”

  “Yeah, that’s the spirit,” said Chicago, cutting him off, his hand close to the big Walker Colt in his black waist sash. “All of it in fun,” he added.

  “Whoopee,” Thatcher said in a dull, flat tone.

  Once the two men stopped glaring at each other, Chicago turned to Bobby Candles and said, “I like that kind of fighting spirit in a man, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Candles replied. Staring at Thatcher, he said in warning, “But the next time you call a man a turd, poltroon or catamite, you best be ready to kill
him, camaraderie be damned.”

  “No problem. I will be,” said Thatcher coolly, holding his stare.

  Candles finally eased down and sipped his whiskey, seeing Thatcher wasn’t going to give an inch. Letting his own hand fall away from his gun butt now that a storm seemed to have passed, he said, “I realize it’s not always easy, men like us having to come together under new leadership.”

  “New leadership?” Chicago said, his face turning serious.

  “You know,” said Candles, “you and me sort of acting as one, now that Curly Joe is up there dancing with the angels.” He gave an upward toss of his eyes.

  Chicago didn’t like it but he let it go for the time being. “It ain’t angels he’s dancing with, but I get your meaning all the same,” he said. Changing the subject, he said, “Bobby, ol’ pal, you’re going to have to tell me more about the Teacher. It looks like I’ll have to kill him all over again, first chance I get.”

  “He’s nothing,” said Candles. “I saw him back when he rode with a posse led by Abner Webb and Will Summers. He made a big stir for a while. He’s been shot more times than any man I ever saw. But he’s overdue for a bullet in his head. You should have killed him while you had him pinned to the dirt.” He shook his head at Chicago’s mistake.

  Chicago took a deep breath and let it out in exasperation. “You’re not going to let up about that, are you, Candles?” he said darkly.

  Candles chuckled and dismissed the matter. “Soon as I heard you’d taken over Curly Joe’s business, I set out to find you. I wanted to stop by the Fair and Square and put the ol’ stiff leg on Geneva Darrows first, but I’d heard the Teacher had shot her all over the upstairs wall.”

  “In other words, you’re out to lay claim on everything that belonged to Curly Joe.”

  “Does it sound that way to you?” Candles grinned and raised his glass as if in a toast.

  “What about this posse you and your three idio—I mean gunmen—followed here?” Chicago said, catching and correcting himself.

  “Follow them? Hell, I told you—I led them,” said Candles. “They even made me a trail scout—me and the fool I had to kill. I had my pards here following close behind the posse, though. I wouldn’t have led them right to you.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Chicago said, not meaning it.

  Candles shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I left their sheriff sucking air through his belly. He’ll die. They’ll go home. That’s that. Like I said, you don’t have to thank me for it.”

  “Then I won’t,” said Chicago. “What makes you so cock-certain they’ll all turn back when he dies?”

  “They have to turn back. There’s no fighting men among them,” said Candles. “Just some townsmen and a slow-witted deputy.”

  “Slow-witted, huh?” Chicago asked, pondering it.

  “Slow as an iron door,” said Candles. “Follows that sheriff around like a hound pup.”

  “You checked him out good?” said Chicago.

  “I checked him out real good. He’s stupid enough to bang his balls against a tree stump if the sheriff told him to.”

  “Ouch,” Chicago said with a chuckle. “I hope you’re right. I hate surprises.”

  “I never miss when it comes to reading a man, knowing what he will or won’t do,” said Candles. “This one was cleaning stables when the sheriff hired him. I doubt if he was smart enough to do that.”

  “Smart never has nailed a hide to the wall, my friend,” said Chicago.

  “I know,” said Candles with a grin as he raised his glass to his lips, “but neither has stupid.”

  Chapter 9

  Throughout the night the outlaws drank inside the ragged tent. A rounded glow from a single lantern hanging above the bar marked the tent from the surrounding hillsides and rocky cactus flats. Before dawn, as a few other lanterns, candles and torches began to blink to life from inside shacks, tents and adobe hovels, a scrawny red rooster made his way onto a hitch rail in a single hop and a batting of wings and let out a long broken screech.

  Before the luckless bird completed his bid at waking the town, a shotgun blast from the open tent fly swept him away in a flurry of blood and feathers. The explosion resounded across the silent town and echoed off the surrounding hillsides.

  “Damn it, Thatcher, that was right in my ear!” said Candles. He rounded his finger inside his right ear and shook his head to get rid of the ringing. The other men only stared, bleary-eyed in their whiskey-induced stupors.

  “You’ll have to excuse Morris Thatcher,” Chicago said to Candles. “I still haven’t gotten him all the way housebroken yet.”

  “I hate a loudmouthed rooster something awful,” Thatcher said, breaking open his shotgun and replacing the spent load. “My pa had one like that when I was a little boy. I hated the son of a bitch—his rooster too.”

  “Hell, we’re going to have townsfolk swarming here any minute to see what that shot was all about,” said Delbert Garr.

  “When did you become so shy about meeting folks, Delbert?” said Dayton Oak, a big Nebraskan outlaw who had ridden for a time with Memphis Beck and The Hole-in-the-wall Gang.

  Behind the bar the exhausted bartender had been sitting asleep atop his tall stool. The shotgun blast made him spring onto his feet. Half asleep, he began wiping the bar top wildly, like a man obsessed.

  “I’m not shy,” said Oak. He gestured toward Thatcher and said, “Your chicken-shooting pard here just woke the whole damn town up, is all. I don’t want a damn bunch of nosey sumbitches crowding around me first thing in the morning.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset your delicate nature,” Thatcher said. “Next time I’ll try to be more considerate.”

  Oak’s eyes flared beneath his angry brow. He started to offer a scorching reply, but before he could, Chicago cut in unexpectedly.

  “Let’s go find ourselves some breakfast,” Chicago said. “I don’t know about you, Candles, but this all-night drinking makes me as hungry as a grizzly bear. I could eat my weight in hoecakes.”

  “I could eat something, for sure,” Bobby Candles said, his voice a bit slurred by all the whiskey he’d drunk.

  “Then let’s do it,” said Chicago, “before everybody gathers here.” He turned to the bartender, who had gotten a grip on himself and stopped wiping the bar top. “Barkeep, where’s a man eat in this town without getting himself poisoned?”

  “Up the street, next to the stage office,” said the worn-out bartender, thankful to hear the drinkers were getting ready to leave. “There’s a restaurant run by a widow woman, Shelly Ann Haspers. She feeds all the en-route stage passengers. . . . She’s never poisoned one that I can recall.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place, then,” said Chicago. He picked up his hat from atop the bar and made a sweeping gesture toward the tent fly. “After you fellows,” he said to the others.

  As Candles, his three riflemen and Thatcher filed out into the grainy morning light, Big Chicago held back and took Russell by his shoulder before he could leave behind them. “Hold on, Russell, I’ve got something I need to say to you,” he said. Turning Russell toward him, he grabbed him by the front of his coat lapels and said in a gruff, lowered voice, “Don’t you ever again question me like you did last night, or else I will gut you through to the bone.”

  “Whoa, what are you talking about?” said Russell, taken aback.

  “I’m talking about last night, you questioning me about taking Bobby Candles and his men in with us,” said Chicago, still with his gruff tone of voice lowered just between them.

  “All right! Okay!” said Russell, his hands chest high in surrender, in spite of one of them holding his shotgun. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Chicago turned loose of his lapels. He settled down a little, but said, “I’m the one taking over running the gang. I say who joins us or who doesn’t. Do you understand me now?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” said Russell. “Only . . .” He let his words trail.

  “Onl
y what?” said Chicago. “Spit it out. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Only, I still can’t see why you’re bringing Candles and his men in,” he said in the same lowered voice as Chicago’s. “Bobby Candles is the most sneaking sumbitch in the world—he always has been. I thought you knew that.”

  “I do know that,” said Chicago. He grinned and straightened and adjusted the front of Russell’s wrinkled coat as he spoke in a softer tone, using Russell’s first name in a fatherly manner. “You see, Bart, the best place to keep a sneaking dog like him is close to the side of my boot. That way, I’ll see when he’s about to bite, and I’ll kick his damn teeth in. Do you get me?”

  Russell considered it, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I guess so, since you put it that way.”

  “See?” Chicago went on to explain. “This smiling asshole just led a posse up from Cottonwood. He took a chance on them finding out what he is, just so he could meet up with us.”

  “I don’t see that as something good he did,” said Russell.

  “Nor do I,” said Chicago. “But there’s a message in him doing that. It tells me that he’ll do anything to get what he wants. What he wants is to be top dog here. Word has gotten out about Curly Joe being killed. There’s going to be more than just Bobby Candles wanting to round up Joe’s old pals and take the gang over. Most of them will be damn good and ready to kill whoever they have to to do it. Right?”

  “Sure they will,” said Russell.

  “So why not let Candles think he’s taking over, let him have to deal with whoever shows up? Does that make sense to you?”

  Russell thought about it and finally grinned, getting the picture of what Chicago had in mind. “Yes, it does. I like that, Chicago,” he said.

  “I’m so happy you approve, Bart,” Chicago said with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Now let’s go, before Candles gets all edgy and suspicious, thinking we’re talking about him.”

  Outside the tent a few yards away, Bobby Candles looked back over his shoulder and past the other men and said, “Where the hell is he?”