Bucking the Tiger

by Marcus Galloway

  As he slid down the wall, the gunman’s finger tightened around his trigger and sent a bullet into the boardwalk.

  When the gun bucked against his palm, the first thing Doc noticed was the surprised look on Stakely’s face as hot lead drilled through his skull. Stakely gritted his teeth while still trying to take his shot. Doc fired again and dropped Stakely into a heap at the top of the steps.

  Only then did Doc look over to see that Stakely’s gunman was down. Nodding, Doc looked at Caleb and said, “That poor Tiger. Still trying to bite even after his fangs have been pulled.”

  Caleb stood his ground and didn’t allow himself to think about what Doc was saying. His eyes were darting back and forth among the faces in the crowd, waiting for one or more of them to step forward and take a shot at him. He looked to the upper windows of the Theatre as well as the other windows overlooking Blake Street, but saw nothing more than several frightened eyes staring back at him.

  When he finally heard the sound of footsteps stomping toward him, Caleb spun on the balls of his feet and turned to face them.

  Three lawmen approached the Theatre with their guns drawn. One of them was the man who’d disarmed Caleb and Doc. The other two were fresh faces.

  “You men throw down your weapons!” the oldest of the lawmen said. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties with a clean-shaven face and streaks of gray in his hair. Even after Caleb and Doc complied with the order, the lawman kept his gun trained on them. “What the hell went on here?”

  Doc blinked and looked at the lawmen before looking at Caleb. “We heard the commotion and thought we could be of some help.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” Caleb said. “I came to check on Lottie Deno after hearing some men were after her.”

  “You expect me to believe that line of crap?”

  Next, the younger lawman who normally patrolled that part of town spoke up. “It’s true, Dean. I have Miss Deno in protective custody.”

  “So who shot these men?” Dean asked.

  “More than likely, they shot each other,” Doc offered. “Much in the same vein as those fellows at Babbitt’s. It truly is disgraceful how animals like these insist on gnawing at each other.”

  Shrugging, Caleb added, “Better that they kill each other than anyone else.”

  As Dean was soaking that up, Andrew Corday stepped out of the Theatre and approached the lawmen. “I saw everything, Dean. These men got into a squabble and started shooting. I was lucky to push them out the door before things got too bad.”

  “Do you know who they are?” Dean asked.

  “Here. Take a look for yourself.” With that, Corday put the toe of his boot against Stakely’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The body flopped over so Stakely’s dead eyes stared up at the Theatre’s front awning.

  Dean, as well as the other lawmen, stared down at the corpse just a bit too long before glancing nervously at one another.

  “I think this is a simple matter of things resolving themselves,” the familiar lawman said. “That is, unless you think we should look into who these men were…as well as what their business was here in Denver.”

  Dean looked over at the third deputy, who had yet to say a word and didn’t seem too interested in breaking his silence now.

  “You’ll produce witnesses to verify that story?” Dean asked.

  Corday nodded immediately. “Some of my dealers saw what happened earlier, and my partner was inside by the front window the whole time.”

  “Well,” Dean muttered, “I guess that’s the end of it.”

  The look of relief on the quiet lawman’s face was as unmistakable as the relief in Dean’s voice.

  “Excuse me,” said a man from the crowd that had gathered a little farther along the boardwalk. “But I saw what happened, and it wasn’t—”

  “I said that’s the end of it!” Dean barked.

  After that show of support from the local law, the bystander shrugged and walked away.

  Turning to Doc and Caleb, Dean said, “Hand over those guns and you can collect them on the way out of town. And if I were you, I’d be collecting them real soon.” With that, Dean and the silent lawman left the Theatre to round up someone to clean up the mess on the boardwalk.

  When the younger lawman came by to take his guns, Caleb smiled and said, “Disarming me seems to be your biggest job.”

  “Yeah, well, after we clean up this mess, we should be able to get back to more important matters. By the way, Miss Deno is asking about you. She’s at a little place just down the street.”

  “Is she all right?”

  The lawman nodded. “That hotel doesn’t serve liquor and doesn’t have any card tables, so it’s not known to anyone associated with the likes of Morris or his men. Even though nobody’s sad to see these men go,” he added while glancing toward the two bodies in front of the Theatre, “I’d still recommend that you take the marshal’s advice and find somewhere else to be. At least, for a little while.”

  “I’ll do that.” Caleb extended his hand and said, “I never did get your name.”

  “And you don’t need it,” the lawman said. “Just like I don’t need yours.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Looking around at the dark street and the rapidly thinning crowd, Caleb still felt like he was charging forward on the back of that wild horse. This time, at least, there wasn’t anyone chasing him.

  35

  Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory

  One Month Later

  Sunlight streamed into the sparsely furnished hotel room, to spill onto the floor and bed. Lottie lay on her side, propping her head with one hand while using the other to flatten out a wrinkled newspaper. That paper and the thin cotton sheet beneath it were the only things keeping Caleb from seeing every one of Lottie’s natural wonders.

  “Can you believe this?” she asked.

  Caleb laughed under his breath. “You mean the newspaper or the fact that you’re naked in bed and I’m not in there with you?”

  “Well, I meant the newspaper, but that other point seems awfully strange now that you mention it.”

  Sitting on a rickety chair and leaning with his elbows on his knees, Caleb let his eyes drink in the sight of the redhead before finally glancing toward the paper. “What’s that?”

  “It’s last week’s edition of the Rocky Mountain News.”

  “The paper from Denver? Where’d you get that?”

  “I found it at the train station. You know what’s in there concerning Stakely, Morris, or even you or Doc for that matter?”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Nothing,” Lottie said. “Not one word. Soon after we left, there was a mention of the fight outside of Babbitt’s, but that was about it. There was one sentence about how some of the town’s law may have been indebted to Morris, but even that didn’t warrant more than any of the other gossip that’s in here.”

  “Would you be happier if there was a public outcry for my and Doc’s scalps?”

  “No. It’s just that…I don’t know…after everything that happened, I thought there’d be more to it once it was over.”

  Caleb walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. He took the paper from her, glanced over it, and then set it aside so he could see the inviting curves of Lottie’s figure under the sheet. “It’s over. That’s all that matters. Just because it’s not splashed across a front page somewhere doesn’t mean nobody knows what happened. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean all of this was for nothing.”

  “I know that,” Lottie said. “I guess I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “Me and Doc got you out of Denver with all of our skins intact. Nobody’s interested in trying to collect those idiotic taxes anymore, and it all got swept under the carpet by lawmen who were too far under Stakely’s thumb to do anything else but clean up the mess. I’d say that’s plenty of shoes dropping for a while.”

  She smiled and traced her finger
tips along Caleb’s hand and arm. “When you put it that way, it sounds a whole lot better. It sure will be easier to travel the circuit again.”

  “There you go.” Suddenly, Caleb twitched and said, “Wait a second. What were you doing at the train station?”

  “Buying a ticket. I think I’m going to head back east for a little while and take a rest. After that, who knows? I’m sure it won’t be too difficult for me to find you if you plan on staying anywhere near Doc.”

  “You take care of yourself, Lottie.”

  Nodding slowly, she reached out to take hold of Caleb’s half-buttoned shirt. “I will,” she whispered. “But I still need to show my appreciation for what you did when things got a little too much for me.”

  A few hours later, Caleb stepped in from the warm night air with a small bundle tucked under one arm. Although the fresh breeze was particularly sweet that evening, he couldn’t deny the instinctive attraction of places like the well-known Bella Union Theater. Inside, the smells of smoke and liquor mingled with women’s perfume and the sounds of shuffling cards.

  Doc sat at a small table facing the front door, sporting a new dark gray suit and eyeing the card games going on around him. Every so often, he glanced at one of the provocatively dressed serving girls making their rounds. Doc cleared his throat and acknowledged Caleb’s approach by pushing out the only other seat at the table with his foot.

  Noticing that there was no cane anywhere near Doc’s table, Caleb said, “I take it you’re feeling better?”

  “Right as rain. Lottie’s not coming?”

  “She’s getting ready to leave town.”

  “Are you going with her?”

  Caleb leaned back and surveyed his surroundings. The serving girls had noticed his arrival as well and smiled at him from the bar. “Nah. There’s still plenty of money to be made right here.”

  “I’m so glad you said that. There are some gentlemen from Charleston who’ve heard of me and want to have a game.”

  Shaking his head and chuckling under his breath, Caleb said, “Poor fools.”

  Doc grinned. “And that’s not all the good news. Arranging to deal faro here wasn’t half the ordeal it was back in Denver. Also, there’s no taxes beyond the normal house percentage.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Alas, poor Tiger,” Doc said while lifting his glass. “I knew him well.”

  Caleb placed the bundle on the table and slid it toward Doc. “Speaking of which, I got you something.”

  “Gifts? What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion. Just a little something I picked up before leaving Denver.”

  When Doc unrolled the dark brown cloth, he found a pistol that was well maintained but obviously somewhat used.

  “It’s a .38,” Caleb explained. “I thought it might suit you better than that big Colt.”

  Doc picked up the gun and flipped it around his finger. When he tried another twirl, he snagged the hammer on his thumb and nearly sent the gun flying across the room. After managing to catch the pistol, he said, “That’ll take some practice.” With the gun flipped around, he looked down at the side of it and his eyes went wide. “What have we here?”

  From where he was sitting, even Caleb could see the tiger engraved on the side of the gun. “I thought you might like that.”

  “Is this…?”

  Caleb nodded. “From Stakely’s own holster. Those lawmen were just going to throw them out. I think they’re awfully sick of anything that reminds them of those assholes.”

  “I might want to get that tiger covered up, lest anyone sees it and gets the wrong idea. Thank you all the same, Caleb.”

  “Buy me a drink and we’ll call it even.”

  A wry grin snuck onto Doc’s face as he said, “Actually, I might have something a little better.”

  Looking where Doc was pointing, Caleb saw three men at a card table. One of them was Robert Taylor. Just like in Fort Griffin, Taylor sat quietly wearing his fancy suit while sizing up the other players.

  “He’s been asking for a high-stakes game,” Doc said. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

  “All by myself? What if I need an accomplice?”

  “Just say the word, my friend,” Doc announced as he held up his glass in a toast. “Just say the word.”