Bucking the Tiger

by Marcus Galloway

  Rather than think about the bullets flying around him, Doc focused on the blind panic in Morris’s eyes. That, alone, was enough to convince him that he could take his time with his next shot to make sure it was done properly. His ears rang from the gunfire, making the dry wheezing in the back of his own throat the only thing Doc could hear with any clarity.

  The pistol bucked against Doc’s palm once more, punching a hole directly through the center of Morris’s face. Morris dropped back into his chair and then fell into a heap on the floor. The impact of his body against the boards was covered by the sound of Doc’s pistol as it sent another round into the second gunman.

  Just then, Doc realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out and took a step toward the second gunman to make sure the man was down for good. Sure enough, there were two holes in that one’s chest. Doc figured the shot that was off-center and in the man’s stomach was the shot he’d taken without looking.

  When he pulled in a breath, the acrid smoke lanced like a set of talons straight down the back of Doc’s throat. He coughed once, which lit a burning pain in his lungs as the taste of blood spattered against the back of his tongue.

  The ringing in Doc’s ears faded just enough for him to hear the pounding of footsteps approaching the door. At any moment, he knew someone would work up the courage to open the door or just shoot through it with the biggest gun they could find.

  “I got you now!” Budd shouted as he charged Doc with both hands balled into fists.

  Doc’s first reaction was to pull away from the man while also bringing his arm up to fire the pistol he’d taken. But the Colt’s long barrel weighed heavily in his grasp and the gun began feeling like a cannon at the end of his arm.

  Too rattled to be afraid of the gun, Budd grabbed hold of Doc’s wrist and wrenched it to one side. Just as he was thinking he might have broken Doc’s arm, Budd felt the Georgian regain his composure and fight to take back control of the weapon.

  Doc snapped up his right hand, which was still wrapped around the handle of his cane. His silver knob caught Budd solidly in the gut. Although he felt the dull thud of the cane’s impact, Budd hauled another breath into his lungs to replace the wind that had just been knocked out of him. His next breath came a lot easier once he felt the gun come loose from Doc’s hand.

  Budd grinned triumphantly as he lifted the gun. One moment, he was sighting down its barrel, and the next found him staring straight up at the ceiling as Doc’s cane caught him solidly under the jaw. Feeling as if the floor were being tilted under his feet, Budd staggered back until his shoulders hit the door behind him and slammed it shut just as it was being tentatively pushed open.

  Letting out a haggard breath, Doc swung his cane with all the strength he could manage. After landing the previous two blows with the makeshift weapon, his blood was burning through his veins like wildfire. When his cane smashed into Budd’s arm, Doc felt the impact all the way up to his shoulder.

  Budd let out the cry of a wounded animal as his finger reflexively tightened around his trigger. The gunshot punched a hole through the floor, while also shearing off the smallest toe on Budd’s right foot.

  Although he was relieved to see Budd crumple over and lean against the wall, Doc knew it hadn’t been any of his blows that had put him there. When he saw the bloody mess on the side of Budd’s foot, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What’s so…god…damn…funny?” Budd gasped.

  “All the tough talk you spout off when you’re playing cards,” Doc said with a wheeze just beneath his voice, “and you wind up shooting yourself in the foot when everything boils over. I guess…that proves what men like you are made of.”

  Budd gritted his teeth and forced his eyes open. Focusing on Doc’s pale, sweating face, he said, “You’re crazy, Holliday.”

  “I want you to tell the Tiger to come find me. I believe Stakely is his name.”

  Budd lifted his gun and shoved the barrel into Doc’s chest. The only move Doc made was to lean against it with all of his weight.

  When Budd pulled his trigger, all he got for his trouble was the hollow slap of a hammer against empty brass.

  “Looks like this moment’s just not your best.” Doc taunted him. “For a man that’s so good with numbers, I would have thought you’d at least be able to count down from six.”

  Budd pushed himself up against the wall, but pressed a little too hard against his bloody foot. With a loud groan, his legs slipped out from under him and he landed on his backside with a thump against the floor.

  Since Budd was sitting against a good portion of the door, Doc allowed himself a moment to catch his breath. He reached into his pocket and found his flask. After taking a sip of whiskey, he offered it to Budd. When the wounded man shook his head, Doc shrugged. “Are you sure about that? This helps the pain go away. Trust me on that much, if nothing else.”

  “Choke on it, Holliday.”

  “Tell me who’s the Tiger at the top of the heap. Is it Stakely?”

  “Hell yes, it’s Stakely. He came to Denver just to bury you and your Injun friend personally, and that’s just what he’ll do.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “He knows that Injun was at the theater. He’s probably gutting him right about now.”

  “And once he hears about this and sees his partner over there, I figure he’ll be mad enough to shoot the first man he can find.” Doc straightened up and tucked his flask away. “Too bad you can’t run so well any longer.”

  Budd shook his head as he reached down to grab his wounded foot. His hand stopped short, however, and reached into his boot to pull out a revolver that was slightly smaller than the one Doc had taken from him.

  As Budd lifted his small backup pistol and his thumb was pulling back the hammer, Doc’s hand flashed over his right shoulder as if he were scratching the back of his neck. When his arm snapped back again, Doc was holding a small knife with a T-shaped handle and a short blade that extended from his clenched fist.

  Doc’s first slash caught Budd across the face to open his cheek and slice through his chin. After pushing Budd’s gun hand away, Doc took a second backhanded slash that cut through Budd’s throat all the way down to the bone.

  Doc stood hunched over with his knuckles turning white around the handle of his knife. As much as he wanted to, he simply couldn’t take his eyes off Budd’s face. In a matter of seconds, Budd’s face turned pale and the entire front of his shirt was stained almost black.

  Straightening up, Doc started to wipe his blade on his shirt, but found it was soaked as well. He used Budd’s pant leg to quickly clean off his knife and then stood up to take a look around.

  Doc’s eyes were narrow and his breath was still coming in labored gusts. Covering his mouth as a hacking fit nearly doubled him over, Doc used up a good deal of his strength to open the door enough for him to step into the hall. When he let the door go, Budd’s body thumped back into place behind it. He found a set of stairs leading into the kitchen before encountering a single person brave enough to take a step anywhere near the room he’d left behind.

  32

  The rooms for rent inside the Theatre Comique immediately struck Caleb as too expensive. The furniture was too new and the bed was too comfortable for him to normally afford. Price wasn’t exactly as important, however, as the strength of the locks on the doors.

  When he heard the knock, Caleb drew the gun that resided at the small of his back and stood against the wall next to the door.

  “It’s me,” Doc said from the hallway.

  Caleb unlocked the door and opened it without lowering his gun. As Doc walked in, Caleb took a glance outside and then closed the door and locked it.

  “Did you find those assholes?” Caleb asked.

  Doc’s dark jacket was buttoned to cover his shirt. He nodded and took a sip of whiskey. “I sure did.”

  Suddenly noticing the dark smudges of gunpowder on Doc’s face, Caleb asked, “Are you all right?”


  “Morris is dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very much so.”

  Studying the grim look on Doc’s face, Caleb asked, “You got to him?”

  “I’m not the only one. A Mr. Stakely was there just before I was. Apparently, he’s the one who set Morris and his men on edge.”

  “How many men?”

  “Three.”

  “I’ll go back there with you and we can clean them out.”

  “No need for that. It’s already done.”

  Lottie had been sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. When she heard that, her head snapped up and her eyes fixed on Doc. “You killed Morris and three of his men while you were gone?”

  “I thought I might get one of them to tell me where Stakely was, but when I heard that Morris was already there and Stakely was close by, I couldn’t resist paying them a visit.”

  “Jesus,” Caleb muttered. “It’s all gone to hell now. First there was the problem of getting out from under the price on our heads and now God only knows what else is about to be thrown at us.”

  Doc laughed to himself and took a drink. “You talk as if everything’s been a field of daisies up until a few days ago.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I’m sick to death of hearing about this fucking Tiger and all the other animals that go along with him,” Doc sneered. “And I consider myself something of an expert as far as being sick to death is concerned.”

  “Everyone is fed up with this goddamn Tiger,” Caleb said. “There’s nothing to do about it, though.”

  Doc jabbed a finger at him and said, “You see? Right there is what I’m talking about and it’s also where these extortionists are slipping up. It’s been hard to see while in the middle of it all, but this whole thing strikes me as a bigger con than anything we ever thought of pulling off.”

  “Say what you want, Doc, but the Tiger is real. Funny name or not, they’re out there.”

  “Of course he is…they are…whatever…and under any other circumstances, these same men would be called a gang and they’d be hunted down like one. But they’re not. They’re the Big Bad Tiger and everyone’s scared because they show up everywhere like some kind of nightmare.”

  As Doc went on, he grasped the top of his cane in one hand. His voice became like a beam of light focused through a spyglass as he tapped the cane against the floor to emphasize certain words here and there. “It’s bullshit,” Doc said. “All of it is. This is nothing more than another gang of thieves who just happened to come up with an angle that allowed them to fleece an even bigger group of thieves.”

  “The system works well enough for them to collect taxes and put a price on our heads that gets spread across at least two states.”

  “It works because most people would rather go along with that system and complain about it than go through the trouble of bucking it.”

  “And going against these men is more trouble than it’s worth, anyway,” Caleb added.

  Doc nodded once and tapped the floor with his cane as if he were applauding the dancing troupe on stage. “Exactly. They’ve got fear going along with the bullshit they’ve been pitching to all the saloon owners and lawmen. Whatever service the Tiger provides is minuscule at best. A crooked lawman will take money from anyone and an honest one won’t. No Tiger in the jungle will change that.”

  Caleb’s brow furrowed as he thought that over.

  “Rumors are spread about certain gamblers, saloons, or games with or without a middleman,” Doc went on to say. “If Stakely is the man who put this Tiger thing into motion, I’d like to shake his hand because he is a damn genius.”

  “So you don’t think that price on our heads means anything?”

  “Oh, it means something,” Doc said. “But any idiot can offer a reward to have someone caught or killed. That doesn’t make him anything more than someone with money in his pockets. I’ll also grant the fact that they have some amount of leverage as far as polishing or tarnishing another gambler’s reputation.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes and muttered, “Jesus, here we go again with the reputation talk.”

  “You know what I had to pay to get permission to deal a faro game here?” Doc asked.

  “The normal taxes plus the percentage?”

  “Try no taxes and a quarter less of the percentage we’ve been getting.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “By the reputation that I built for myself. At the start, the Tiger might have provided a service that was worth paying for. I imagine you would have liked getting all your information on transients like us from one reliable source when you owned the Busted Flush.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Those days are over,” Doc said. “The Tiger’s worn out what little welcome he had and folks are tired of getting gouged by these ridiculous taxes and watching these idiots strut around like they own these towns. The only thing still working in the Tiger’s favor is that most folks are too scared or too lazy to go against them. As soon as folks look into what’s left of Morris’s office, they’ll see that the Tiger is just a bunch of flesh-and-blood men sharing a silly name.”

  Caleb nodded. “Now I see where this is headed.”

  “So do I,” Lottie said. “And I don’t like it one bit. You don’t know about the blood these men spilled, Doc. Going against a few of them is fine, but there’s plenty more where those came from.”

  Doc stepped over to the bed and leaned against his cane as he knelt down to look her directly in the eyes. “I know about pain and I don’t have to ask what those godless bastards did to you when they had you alone.”

  A response started to come out of Lottie’s mouth like a reflexive twitch from her muscles, but it stopped before she let out much more than a squeak. Although she kept her eyes on Doc, she couldn’t hold in the tears that began trickling down her cheeks.

  “What did they do to you?” Caleb asked.

  After steeling herself, Lottie said, “They came and took me from my room. They hauled me off so quickly that I didn’t even know where we were going. All I knew is that there were at least two guns digging into me the entire way and that they would shoot if I made one wrong move.”

  Her eyes drifted away from Caleb and Doc to focus on the back of her hand. “They…tried to hurt me. Stakely…he…did things and told me to tell you all about it so you’d face him down. He wants you to be off balance and sloppy.” Shaking her head, she added, “It’s the oldest trick there is, but I knew it would work if I told you. You would have charged after them, Caleb. I know you would have and then you would have been killed because they were just waiting for you.”

  “So you kept this to yourself?” Caleb asked.

  She nodded. “The damage was done. Nothing you did would have made it better. The only thing I could do was keep you from playing right into Stakely’s hands.”

  “I’m not about to disgrace myself by saying I’m a saint,” Doc told her quietly. “And I won’t deny killing Morris and those men he hired, because every last one of them got what they deserved. What I did may not have been right, but seeing the pain they put into you only makes me wish I could breathe some life into them so I could kill them all over again.”

  “You keep this fight going, and you’ll be set up for trouble from more than just the Tiger,” Lottie said. “The law won’t care about your reasons. And those dead men will have friends who’ll be out for blood. If you do this—”

  “Too late,” Doc interrupted. “It’s already done.”

  Lottie sat there with the rest of what she’d meant to say perched on the tip of her tongue. She looked at Doc and saw a fierceness in his sunken eyes that defied the very forces of nature that were tearing him apart. In the presence of that, she simply couldn’t muster up the will to continue what she was saying.

  Instead, Lottie wrapped her arms around Doc’s neck and gave him a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.
>
  Straightening up, Doc cleared his throat and tightened his grip around the handle of his cane. “That’s the problem with loudmouthed assholes like these,” he said. “Someone brings the fight to them sooner or later. The funny thing is that they never see it coming.”

  After patting Doc on the shoulder, Caleb moved to Lottie’s side and asked, “Is Stakely the top of the heap as far as these extortionists go?”

  She nodded. “He’s the one behind the Tiger.”

  “And he’s still in town?”

  “I was supposed to tell you he was at the Mint, but that was just so he could set you up. I know Morris’s office is at Babbitt’s. Once Stakely hears about what happened to Morris, he’ll be tearing Denver apart to find you two. He already wanted blood and now he’ll just want more.”

  “Then I don’t see any reason why he should be disappointed.”

  Doc grinned and tapped his cane once against the floor. “If word about the money being offered for us can spread so fast, imagine how quickly it would spread if the Tiger were to stop collecting those taxes.”

  “A whole lot of folks would become very grateful.”

  “I like the way you think.” Opening his jacket, Doc revealed a pair of mismatched guns that were stuck under his belt, as well as a newly restocked shoulder holster. “Before I freshened up, I relieved Morris of some pistols to save us a trip down to the sheriff’s office.”

  Caleb took two of Doc’s spare guns and tucked them under his jacket. “I wouldn’t mind taking these assholes on myself, Doc. You’ve already done more than your share.”

  “I beg to differ,” Doc said. “This is just my game.”

  33

  “Those sons of bitches are going to pay for this,” Stakely growled. Looking up to the side of the Theatre Comique that faced the street, he shouted, “You all hear that? Nobody spits in my face and gets away with it! If anyone’s hiding Holliday or that accomplice of his, you’ll earn a pretty penny by handing them over right now! Otherwise, stay out of our way and watch what happens to cowardly killers like them!”