by Ralph Cotton
Moments later, the three bandits stepped through the batwing doors, having walked all the way around the large building to wash Baldhead Paul’s blood from their hands at a public well. Leading the three, Dad Lodi gave Bobby Candles a faint, telling smile as they sauntered through the milling crowd over to the bar.
“How’s the evening going, Dad?” Candles asked, Chicago busily watching a topless whore twirl her breasts in opposite directions.
“Couldn’t be better.” Lodi grinned and patted the stacks of money in his waist.
“Drink up then, my campañeros,” Candles urged.
But as the three lined up along the bar and inspected their hands and shirtsleeves for any traces of blood, the rear door slung open wide and an enraged Buddy Short ran inside. Whores screamed, customers leaped out of his way as Short swung his cocked Colt in the direction of the crowded bar and bellowed like a man possessed, “Bobby Candles, you rotten, murdering sumbitch!” He stood with his breath heaving in his chest, both arms covered with Baldhead Paul’s blood up to his elbows.
“Whoa!” Candles threw his arms in the air, making sure the two men in the birdcage saw him make no move for his gun. Alongside him the bandits did the same.
Even Chicago, seeing what was going on, threw his hands up. “Buddy! Drop it! Don’t be a foo—”
But Chicago’s words were swallowed up by the explosion of both the big deck guns from inside the birdcage.
In a split second Buddy Short turned from an enraged gunfighter into a large roiling spray of dark blood, chunks of flesh, bone matter and shards of shattered tile lifted from the floor.
“Lord God!” a customer cried out as Short’s ghastly remnants splattered all over the wall like some exploding star, and showered down all over the cowering crowd. “Look at his foot!”
On the floor where the tile had exploded, Buddy Short’s left leg, boot and all, stood rocking back and forth, covered with blood. “Jesus,” said Candles, keeping himself from smiling as the severed leg finally toppled over onto the floor. “Talk about leaving a place in a hurry.”
“You’re behind this, Candles, I know you are,” Chicago growled, making sure to keep his temper in check, having just seen the guards reload the two deck guns. He kept his hands high as the Shay brothers stepped out onto the upper landing, guns in hand, and looked down on the blood-spattered crowd.
Chapter 21
As Emmen and Brady Shay walked down the blood-splattered stairs, Emmen looked up at the birdcage with disgust, wiping his palms on a handkerchief after using the stair banister. “Both guns, at once, Ulan?” he asked one of the guards with a sour and skeptic expression.
The guard said, “Better safe than sorry, Emmen, is what you always say. I had no idea Victor here was going to shoot too.”
“There was no time to talk about it,” the other guard said. “He came in and threw down on Candles. Candles didn’t even go for his gun. It was all Buddy Short’s doings.”
Emmen turned a stiff gaze to Bobby Candles, who gave a grin and a shrug. “That’s me right enough, peaceful to a fault,” Candles said. He wiggled his fingers, his hands still raised chest high.
“Same with us,” said Dad Lodi, wiggling his fingers, giving Dirty Foot and Frank Dorsey a look, coaxing them to follow suit.
“All of you get your hands down,” Emmen said. He called out to the Chinese swampers, “Get some buckets and scrape Buddy Short off the furniture.” He studied the lone severed leg still in its boot and said, “One of yas bring Short’s leg up to the office.” He said to Brady, “Maybe we’ll get some use of it, after all this mess.”
The man who had earlier been billy clubbed staggered in through the rear door, the welt still on his head. He pointed in the direction of the privies and said in a shaken voice, “There’s one sitting back there with his throat cut ear to ear.”
“Damn it, what next?” said Emmen. He stomped on down the stairs, his brother, Brady, right behind him, and walked out the open back door.
At the bar, Chicago gave Russell, Thatcher and Garr a nod. “Go see who it is out there.”
Russell grumbled under his breath. But he clamped a whore to his side and said, “Come on, honey, you’re going with me.” He looked at Thatcher and Garr as they joined the other customers streaming out behind the Shays. “I’ve got ten dollars says it’s Baldhead Paul Crane.”
“Do I look stupid enough to take that bet?” Thatcher said, his half-naked whore walking at his side, his arm around her. Delbert Garr walked along alone, still boiling over having lost his money to Candles and his bandits. The bandits sauntered along behind him, three abreast, smug grins on their weathered faces.
In a moment Bobby Candles and Chicago stood at an empty bar. The two guards still sat above them in their iron cage, but the bartender and the rest of the patrons had all trampled across the bloody floor and spilled out around the privies like a herd of cattle.
“It’s quiet moments like this when a man takes stock of himself and begins to ponder his life,” Chicago said quietly.
Candles stared at him, lifted a shot of tequila and said bluntly, “You’re down to three men, Chester.” He cut a glance toward the rear door, having watched the way his three bandits had closed up behind Russell, Thatcher and Garr. “Things being as they are, you could lose another one any minute.”
“Why, you . . .” Chicago straightened and instinctively laid his hand on the butt of the big Colt in his waist sash. But the sound of a deck gun turning on its swivel caused his hand to freeze, open wide and then rise away quickly.
“Easy, Chester.” Candles grinned, wagging a finger back and forth. “You don’t want to leave here the way Buddy Short did.”
“All right, Bobby,” Chicago said, “I’m ready to reconcile all our differences.”
“I’m not,” Candles said with the same sly little grin. He backed away from the bar, keeping his hands in plain sight of the two guards above them.
“I’ll get new men, Bobby,” Chicago said.
“And I’ll kill them,” Candles returned. He backed farther away toward the front door.
“This is foolish,” said Chicago. “You’ve got law on your tail, you’ve got three men you can’t trust as far as you can spit. I’m offering to set things right with you, Bobby, and get back where we both ought to be.”
Before turning and walking out the door, Candles called up to the guards in the iron birdcage, “You fellows keep an eye on Chester here. He looks like a man all set to blow up any minute.”
Chicago stood at the bar, staring with killing rage, knowing there was nothing he could do with the big deck guns standing over him. . . .
Upstairs, on the floor of a small dark room off the Shays’ office, Hatton came to, feeling something hot, coarse and wet swabbing the length of his face. His eyes flew open, then shut tight; he lay as still as stone. He heard the bear snort, felt a blast of strong foul-smelling breath on his saliva-lathered cheek. Oh my God!
The big bear stood over him, a heavy front paw pressing down on his chest. The animal’s wet nose poked and probed his face, his neck, his closed eyes. Oh my God! Oh my God! He felt its toothless mouth close around his ear and twist and yank as if to rip the helpless appendage from the side of his face.
Then the bear turned loose of his ear, as if bored with it. Hatton’s head dropped back to the plank floor. He opened his eyes in time to see the wide black mouth close down, only an inch from his face, and let out a long, loud bawl that shook the very bones inside his chest. Easy, fellow . . . Easy, fellow . . . Hatton repeated the words over and over to himself, as if reciting a chant.
The big bear stepped back and began raking a powerful claw down his chest as if to open him for a curious look-see inside. Yet, bracing himself for the feel of his flesh being sliced by a fistful of daggers, Hatton felt a sense of relief when he realized the bear’s sharp fore-claws had been filed down to hard, stubby buttons.
His sense of relief heightened as the bear turned in the grainy dark
ness, ambled across the plank floor and dropped onto its belly. All right, James, he thought to himself, you’ve made it this far. Hold out—win this game!
Keeping close watch on the resting bear, he crawled an inch farther away, then another, slowly, until he felt the bite of a leg iron around his left ankle. He lay staring up at the ceiling, the only light in the room coming from a window where a flickering glow shone in dimly from oil pots lining the streets below.
What is going on here . . . ? Hatton looked down at the leg iron, the length of chain bolted to the floor. It didn’t take him long to answer himself. This was a place the Shays used to frighten, coerce and torture—a place where they forced men to submit to their will. This was the place where debts, both real and alleged, were collected. This was the place where gold claims changed hands, land titles, cattle, anything of value that the two thugs and their henchmen made men forfeit in order to save their lives.
Well, not him, Hatton decided with a firm set to his wet, grimy jaw. His was a fortune made the hard way, a life hewn from the hardest of matter, the most unforgiving of substance. He could give it up with no less effort, he thought, staring hard through the darkness at the big panting bear.
It went through Hatton’s mind that his wealth and his existence had somehow been related to the death of his daughter—not that he had caused such tragedy, simply that the loss of those he’d loved had been a part of what fate had bequeathed him. He had caught a brief, ugly glance of Curly Joe’s head in the small briny tomb before he released it and burned it to ashes.
His success had always carried with it a price, and whatever that price had been he had paid it. As well all men must, Hatton reminded himself. For even one more touch of his wife’s and daughter’s hand he would gladly offer up all he owned. But to those who would rob him, those who had offered nothing, neither in sweat nor in blood: Not one damn dime, he told himself.
Staring at the bear, he let out a loud bawl of his own, his fists clenched at his sides, as if daring the big animal to devour him. But the big sow only stopped panting for a moment. She stared at him, cocking her head curiously to one side. Then she lowered her big head, dismissing him, and began licking her forepaws.
Standing on a plank walkway out in front of a wooden privy where Baldhead Paul Crane’s body sat slumped to one side, Emmen Shay and his brother, Brady, both looked down at their blood-soaked boots. “Damn it to hell,” Emmen cursed in disgust. In a lowered tone, he said to Brady, “Do you see what I mean about cashing in, getting out of this blasted business?” He held a glowing oil lantern at shoulder height.
“Yes, brother Emmen, I couldn’t agree more,” Brady replied, raising a boot and slinging it back and forth.
When the customer had found Baldhead Paul’s body, he had slammed the privy door and run back inside the saloon. All the blood had poured down Paul’s chest; most of it lay in a thick puddle inside the closed door. When Emmen opened the door, a pool of blood had spilled out over his and his brother’s boots.
“All right, Hu, get him out of there,” said Emmen to the leader of the Chinese swampers who had gathered around the open privy door.
“And send out a bucket of water to throw over our feet,” Brady called out in afterthought.
Standing in the crowd behind the Shays, Russell, Thatcher and Delbert Garr heard a dark chuckle and looked to their left where the three desert bandits stood staring back at them. Knowing they had the eye of Chicago’s men, Dad Lodi pulled out a stack of money they’d taken from Baldhead Paul. In full view of the three, he licked his thumb, rifled the money and put it away.
“These sonsabitches,” said Garr, taking a step toward the bandits.
But Russell turned loose of his whore and grabbed Garr. “Let it go,” he said. “You heard Chicago. All these tramps are doing is trying to set us up. Look what happened to Short.”
“What are we supposed to do, let them walk all over us, kill one of us any damn time they want to?” Garr asked Russell, staring hard at the three taunting bandits.
Dirty Foot crossed his eyes and grasped himself by the throat, mocking Baldhead Paul.
“Damn this!” Thatcher growled. “I can’t take it anymore. Let’s kill them,” he said to Garr.
“No!” Russell grabbed him by the arm too. “We’ll do what Chicago told us to do,” he said in a stern tone, still holding Garr’s arm. “He said ‘no trouble here!’ That’s how it’s going to be.”
Three guards with shotguns stepped forward out of the crowd and eyed all of the gunmen equally until both sides settled down. “See this?” Emmen said sidelong to his brother. “This is a sign from hell that we need to get all we can off of this J. Fenwick Hatton fellow while the getting’s good.”
“I back your play, brother Emmen,” said Brady. “Tell me what you want to do.”
“It’ll be daylight before long,” Emmen said, looking off toward a thin, pale light mantling the horizon. “We’ve got to get Hatton to write that message and tell us who to deliver it to.” He looked down at the blood on their tall boots.
Seeing his brother’s state of mind, Brady said to the gathered customers, “All right, folks, get back inside. Enjoy yourselves! Let Hu and his Chinks get this all cleaned up.”
As the crowd disbursed itself and moved back inside the saloon, the Shay brothers walked all the way around the large building and climbed the private wooden stairs to their rear office door. Once inside, Emmen slammed the door loud enough to awaken the old bear handler, who lay asleep in a big wooden chair. On one side of the chair, the big bear rose and stared blankly at the Shays.
“What’s the bear doing out here?” Emmen asked the bleary-eyed Mexican. On the other side of the chair sat a small bucket of rocks; beside the bucket lay a short prospector’s pick. “Have you been chipping rocks instead of doing like I told you?”
“No, Senor Shay,” said Edwardo. “I put Louise in there to scare him. But then I took her outside to relieve herself,” the old Mexican said. “When I brought her back, she lay down beside this chair and would not get up.”
“You’re her handler, Edwardo. You should be able to make her do what you tell her to do,” said Brady, his hands on his hips.
“Sí, it is true,” said the old Mexican. “But I am an old handler and she is an old bear. Sometimes it is easier to let an old sow do as she pleases.” He gestured a hand up and down the bear. “But as you can see, most of the dried blood is still on her. If I made her stay in the room, she would have licked herself clean, out of spite.”
“All right,” Emmen conceded.
Brady toed the bucket of rocks with his wet boot and shook his head. “What is it you’re always chipping for, Edwardo, gold, silver . . . diamonds?”
“Who knows?” The old Mexican shrugged. “I have chipped rocks ever since I was a niño. I have never found anything.”
“Jesus,” said Brady, “then why don’t you stop?”
“I chip for a purpose that I do not yet know,” he said with a sad expression. “But someday I will see what my chipping has led to.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it is not easy to stop chipping when one has chipped as long as I have, even when one’s father and his father before him have chipped rocks without knowing wh—”
“Enough of this,” said Emmen, cutting the old Mexican off. He looked around the dim-lit office and asked, “Where did Hu’s man put Buddy Short’s leg?”
Edwardo pointed at a blood-smeared roll of canvas stuck under the edge of Emmen’s desk. Emmen stepped over, dragged out the canvas and unrolled it on the floor. He looked at Short’s leg, seeing where the loads of scrap iron and nail heads in the deck guns had chewed it off just below the knee. “Perfect,” he said, standing and dusting his hands together.
“It’s getting near daylight,” Brady said, gesturing toward the encroaching sunlight on the eastern horizon.
“Yes, I see it is,” said Emmen. He stooped and picked up Short’s leg by the boot. “Let’s get started, then, shall we?”
; Chapter 22
On a steep hillside beneath a guard outpost two miles from Robber’s Roost, Sherman Dahl and Eddie Lane hugged themselves against a large embedded boulder. They listened quietly, making sure they had not been heard by the two guards above as they’d climbed upward. Their horses stood waiting, out of sight, hitched among the rock and scrub cedar alongside the meandering trail below.
After a moment of tense silence, satisfied that their presence had not been detected, the two nodded at each other in the grainy morning light. Then they slipped away quietly in opposite directions, each headed up the rocky hillside on his belly, as if some strange reptile.
In the guard camp atop a cliff overhang, a young gunman named Curtis Stroud picked up his rifle from against a rock and walked to an edge overlooking the trail to Saverine Pass. “I could have sworn I heard a horse down there a while ago,” he said to an older gunman named Toby Myers.
“Relax, kid. You’ll live longer,” said Myers, leaning back against his saddle beside a low campfire.
“Living longer is no concern of mine,” Stroud said, gazing out and down across the trail below.
“Mine neither,” said Myers. “It’s just something to say.” He finished rolling himself a smoke and ran the thin cigarette in and out of his mouth to wet it and firm it up. “The only reason we’re out here is because Emmen Shay got nervous, all the new blood drifting into the Roost.” He struck a match in his cupped hands, lit the cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. “This is the first time this lookout post has been used in nearly a year.”
“Yeah, I heard,” said Stroud, still probing the purple morning light, restless, bored. “I’m starting to wonder if coming here to work for the Shays was a bad idea.”
“It’s a guard job. What did you expect it to be?” Myers asked, leaning back, making himself more comfortable against his saddle.
“I don’t know what I expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t this,” said Stroud. “I was better off working for the Mexes, scalping ’Pache for a living. At least I got to see lots of country.”