The Big Showdown

by Mickey Spillane

  “That’s a good plan. But they aren’t as smart as you, Tulley.”

  “They ain’t?”

  “No. They have guns but lack brains. Anyway, I’m counting on that. That and their desire for revenge.”

  “They’s gettin’ paid, remember.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that. That’s the one reason we could get surprised this morning—if they view me as a payday and not somebody they want to kill nice and slow.”

  York left Tulley to tend to their guest briefly before getting himself back to the livery, and his window onto Main.

  As the sheriff walked toward the barrio, the lower third of the eastern sky glowed red-orange and bright yellow as if a distant fire was encroaching upon Trinidad.

  In the barrio, the chickens and stray dogs still ruled, and the smoky cooking smells had heightened. That made his belly rumble, but he ignored its demands—you don’t go into a gunfight on a full stomach. You might embarrass yourself puking at some point.

  He positioned himself at the pueblo window.

  Within minutes, the sun was spreading across the sky and illuminating a Main Street that might have belonged to a ghost town—not a soul in sight, no sign of waking businesses, only boarded-up windows and a street whose layer of river-sand was riffling in a too-cool breeze. No, not breeze.

  Wind.

  The kind that promises a storm.

  And just about when he’d expected the Rhomers to ride in, black clouds rolled across the sky, churning, roiling, blotting out the sunrise, turning early morning into near midnight. Crackles of veiny lightning momentarily illuminated the sculpted, shifting forms of a burgeoning black thunderhead, billowing like smoke from some invisible conflagration.

  Distant thunder shook the ceiling of the sky, and five men on horseback came riding in, harder than need be. They turned that corner past the livery, horses leaning; then their redheaded riders pulled back sharp on their reins and they assembled in front of the jail, one man on horseback moving out in front of the others.

  These horses, York was pleased to see, were not the black mustangs he feared might show up under the Rhomer backsides—that type of well-trained steed of which three dead bank robbers had availed themselves. These were solid horses, all right, but as mixed a bunch as the redheaded brothers were similar. Two quarter horses, two paints, an Appaloosa.

  It took the horses a while to settle, and the men on them seemed worked up, too. Grinning yellow teeth in scruffy red-bearded faces, butts moving up and down on saddles.

  They weren’t interchangeable, though, these Rhomers. The one out front—positioning himself as the leader, as the men on horseback faced the adobe jailhouse—was older, and looked a lot like the late Vint Rhomer.

  He’d likely be Lem.

  One brother was skinny and tall, another was heavy and short, the other two medium-size, but of those two, one was obviously the youngest, just a kid in his early twenties, his beard barely filled in. All were dressed in Levi’s and shirts with sleeve garters and vests, of various colors—maybe this family shopped together. Only a variety of hats set them apart.

  One thing they had in common: .45 Colts in tied-down holsters, kept in place by snap straps. They must have bought their guns together, too. They had rifles in scabbards, as well, riding with them.

  The horses were settled. Each brother unsnapped his holster.

  Quietly, Lem—York barely made it out, listening at his pueblo window—said to his brothers, “Second he shows, let rip.”

  The sky grumbled and the horses shuffled a little.

  When the animals had settled again, Lem called out, “Caleb York! Lem Rhomer. You killed my brother Vint. I mean to see you die for it.”

  York wondered how many nights under the stars Lem Rhomer had spent, staring into the sky, composing those words.

  Lem wasn’t through: “Come out and face me like a man, and we’ll have it out. My brothers been told, if the fight is fair, they is to ride off. Caleb York! You hear me?”

  The sky alone answered with a faint, murmuring rumble. The horses danced a little. Settled again.

  “York, come out here and meet me in the street. They say you’re fast! Well so am I. Let’s see who’s the better man!”

  Tulley burst out the barnlike doors of the livery and fired both barrels of the scattergun into the sky. The thunder of it, here on the ground before God could have his say, spooked the horses bad. Every one of the animals got up on its hind legs and shrieked in terror and then bucked and circled and danced and kicked, and one by one, each redheaded Rhomer got tossed from his saddle onto the sandy street.

  York came out of the pueblo hut as the two closest to him were trying to scramble to their feet, guns in hand but wholly flummoxed.

  Somebody yelled, “He’s over there!”

  The two—the medium-sized pair, one of whom was the youngest brother—wheeled toward York, but their guns weren’t even raised when a bullet blew through the eye of the older of the pair, and a second slug cracked the younger one’s head like an eggshell. They stood momentarily, staring with three blank eyes, then flopped back onto the street and leaked blood and brains.

  Tulley scurried back inside the livery, while the other three Rhomers, Lem included, realized they’d been ambushed, and been abandoned by their spooked horses, who had gone off this way and that, and the remaining three brothers ran down deserted Main Street, looking for cover.

  Like a delayed echo of Tulley’s scattergun blasts, the sky ruptured with thunder and rain sheeted down. York ran to the boardwalk opposite the jail and, with his back to the building facades, moved down slow. The rain came almost straight down, making a translucent curtain. York barely made out the heavyset Rhomer cut around the corner of First Street, down to the right, and the skinny one do the same, on the other side of the street.

  Lem Rhomer, who York guessed was the most dangerous of this bunch, he’d lost track of. That probably meant the man had ducked into one of the few buildings whose doors weren’t locked—that would be the hotel or the Victory and maybe the café.

  First things first.

  The rain drummed incessantly on the roof over the boardwalk as York moved cautiously down. Whip cracks of lightning momentarily lit up the night this morning had become, but no Rhomers were in sight. Skinny was around one corner, Fatty the other, the one York was inching toward. At some point he might become a good target for the former, although either man, or both, might not be waiting—they may have splashed through back alleys to either flee or find a better position.

  At least he knew neither man was tucked into a recession of the buildings he was edging past—although, come to think of it, Lem could be. At each one, York peeked around, ready to blast, finding nothing but closed doors. As the angry sky roared and the rain pelted the boardwalk awning, he slid along and, finally, made it to the corner.

  Peeking around, he saw nothing but a street between buildings that was turning into a soup of sand and mud, as Main Street’s businesses trailed off into residences.

  He stepped off the boardwalk onto ground already gone spongy and the rain pummeled and drenched him, gathering in his curl-brimmed hat and overflowing, as he moved toward the rear alley. Again, recessions of doorways presented danger, and he took care with the two doors between him and the alley.

  When at last he rounded the corner into the alley—which bordered fenced-off residence yards at left—he saw nothing, though at right a rear exterior stairway to living quarters above a store had a landing that presented a platform for a shooter. But in the dense downpour, York couldn’t see anybody up there.

  He decided to go up and make sure.

  With the .44 in his right hand, York couldn’t make use of the wooden railing, so his left hand supported him against the side of the clapboard building. The rain was pounding into his face, but his hat brim was protecting his eyes somewhat, as he went up one step—one slow step—at a time.

  He was halfway up when a roar came not from the sky but
from a small bear of a man, a redheaded bearded bear, who had been prone on that landing and now lumbered to his feet and pointed down with his .45, though the dripping monstrosity was just a blur before York’s rain-streaked eyes.

  York’s two .44 slugs made their own thunder, punching the fat Rhomer in the chest, shaking him, rocking him, making him stumble backward and he went over the far side of the landing, taking some crunching wood with him. He must already have been dead, because he didn’t scream on the trip down, though when he landed on the muddy-topped ground, he hit hard enough to send plenty of moisture momentarily back into the sky, the whump of it competing with a halfhearted growl of thunder.

  York went down the steps much quicker than he’d come up, and he slogged toward the street, knowing he had to risk crossing Main to seek the skinny brother. He would stay low and he would move as quickly as this molasses underfoot would allow. But he had barely begun the journey when he realized someone was running at him, shooting.

  The skinny Rhomer!

  . 45 slugs flying overhead, York flopped to the ground and was aiming up at the screaming, approaching scarecrow when a boom came that wasn’t from the sky. The skinny guy suddenly was a teetering headless thing with a jagged neck geysering red and getting it spewed right back.

  Grinning, a thoroughly sopped Tulley came into view, his scattergun barrels smoking despite the rain.

  The skinny brother wobbled, then fell headfirst onto the ground. Well, not exactly headfirst. . . .

  Tulley scurried over and helped York up.

  “That stopped him,” Tulley said.

  “Seemed to,” York said.

  Pieces of what had once ridden the skinny one’s shoulders were scattered in the rain-swept street, looking like nothing remotely human, except for a staring eyeball, floating in a puddle.

  “That leaves one,” Tulley said, over the downpour. “That Lem feller.”

  “See where he went?”

  The deputy pointed. “Down the block from the Victory. Think he ducked in that there doorway. Barbershop.”

  They moved to the edge of the building. Behind them was the dead fat Rhomer, on his back, his mouth open and overflowing with rain. In front of them, in the street, the headless skinny Rhomer lay on his belly.

  As if a switch had been thrown, the rain slowed and then stopped. Dark clouds still filled the sky, but they were moving fast, racing, a stampede headed elsewhere.

  Within a minute, the only raindrops were those falling from awnings, and the sky turned a tentative blue, damn near cloudless. The soggy aftermath was everywhere, pooled in the street, dripping off storefronts.

  But the storm had passed. The one in the sky, at least.

  York quickly crossed the side street to take a position alongside the opposite building, the mercantile. Tulley came along, and fell in, in back of him. The old boy was reloading. So was York.

  “Lem Rhomer!” the sheriff called around the corner. “Give yourself up! Your brothers are dead. You don’t have to be!”

  The street was silent but for drip-drip-drips.

  Then: “Why not decide this, York!”

  Yes—the recession of the barbershop doorway. Just across the way and down. Well within range....

  “What is there to decide, Rhomer?”

  More silence punctuated by the aftermath of the deluge.

  Then: “What do you think, you bastard? Who’s fastest!”

  “That’s what you want, Rhomer?”

  “That’s what I want! Face-to-face. I’m holstering my gun, right now. You holster yours.”

  “And if I do?”

  “I step out and we finish this! See just how fast Caleb York really is!”

  “All right!”

  Several long seconds dragged by.

  Rhomer stepped out.

  York stepped out.

  Turned sideways, presenting smaller targets, they faced each other in, and across, the saturated street.

  But Rhomer’s holster was empty, his gun already drawn and at his side, held rib-cage-high, the turn of his body meant to conceal the trick.

  Then one last thunder crack came: a .44 slug from York’s gun—he’d done the same as Rhomer, been ready with holster empty and gun in hand and rib-cage-high.

  The bullet punched the last redheaded brother in the belly, .45 tumbling out of his fingers, Lem Rhomer himself tumbling into the street, facedown, exposing the cavernous red-bubbling exit wound the .44 round left behind.

  As York hurried to the man, Tulley tagging after, Rhomer crawled over onto his back, filling his red-bearded face with morning sun, though his clothes were filthy from the muddy street, the brown covering him leavened only by the scarlet, spreading patch over his belly where the bullet had gone in.

  Rhomer looked up at York; gut-shot like that, the man was suffering, the pain excruciating. But he still said, “Damn . . . damn liar. . . .”

  “You know the saying,” York said blandly, looking down at the dying man. “ ‘Takes one to know one.’ ”

  Tulley was at York’s side. “Put him out of his misery, Sheriff. It’ll take him a long damn time to die iffen you don’t. . . . He be way past doctorin’.”

  “No.”

  Tulley took York’s sleeve. Whispering, the coot said, “Do it, Caleb. You’d shoot a dog in the head, sufferin’ like that.”

  The sheriff responded to his deputy, but he was staring at the grimacing Rhomer, who glared back in pain and rage.

  York said, “Dogs don’t need to think about what they done.”

  Tulley scuttled off. Couldn’t stand the sight.

  But Caleb York stayed and watched the man die.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sun was out and so were the citizens of Trinidad. They hugged the rails of the boardwalks, men and women, some of them fathers and mothers with their children along for the view of the aftermath of a shoot-out that for all its gory glory would grow into epic proportions as the story was passed from this one to that, as eyewitnesses (who had seen nothing, cowering under tables or hugging floors) described in vivid detail the day Sheriff Caleb York gunned down the five Rhomer brothers.

  Or was that seven Rhomer brothers? Or had there been a dozen of the redheaded villains who had gone down under the relentless fire of Caleb York’s blazing six-shooters (like the brothers, the number of York’s guns would increase over the years).

  Today, however, eyes were wide and at a distance as the doctor and undertaker approached the sheriff, who was standing over the body of Lem Rhomer, a big ugly man, who had died wearing a big ugly grimace. The sand on the street had returned to its damp riverbank roots, a wealth of puddles and pools resisting the sun’s rays.

  But there was no question: the sky was bright and blue and the violence was over.

  As they regarded a corpse that still seemed in pain, Caleb York said to Doc Miller, “You have four more dead patients scattered here and there. My deputy will show you to them.”

  “Perkins has already spotted one of ’em,” Doc Miller said, nodding toward where the dour-faced undertaker, as always in black frock coat and beaver high hat, looked down regretfully at a headless skinny Rhomer brother sprawled in the moist sand.

  “Looks disappointed,” York said, “for a man about to make ten dollars.”

  The doc smirked. “It’s a bitter pill, knowing he dasn’t display a corpse like that in his window.” Miller gave York a look. “You know, I haven’t had a live patient in two days. If I have to write out one more death certificate, I’ll be riding over to Ellis and have that print shop make me some forms.”

  “Well,” York said, with a sigh and a glance around, “things should be quieter now. Can you and Perkins handle these dead ones?” He gestured to his soaked, mud-splotched attire. “I need to clean up some.”

  “Before cleaning up the town?”

  “I do have more to do on that score,” York admitted.

  The doctor said he’d take charge of the various deceased, and the sheriff called his
deputy over to have him give Miller and Perkins a tour of the carnage.

  York was on his way to the hotel, where he could get a bath—the place had plumbing from its well, though it would cost fifty cents to get the tub of water heated up by firewood—when the telegraph operator came rushing up to him, already heated up. The scrawny, bespectacled Parsons—like the rest of the citizens of Trinidad—was dry and clean. But he was also excited.

  The little man handed York a wire, saying, “This just came in for you, Sheriff. All the way from New York City.”

  “Thanks, Ralph.” He dug a dime out of his soggy pocket and tossed the slippery coin to the operator.

  A clearly troubled Parsons lingered, however, saying, “That’s dynamite, Sheriff.”

  York was reading it. “I agree, Ralph. But can I count on you to keep it to yourself this time? My dime cover that?”

  The operator flushed, nodded, and scurried off.

  Right outside the hotel, York paused when a voice called out to him, “Sheriff!”

  He turned and a smiling Zachary Gauge was approaching quickly, again in his frock coat, waistcoat, and silk tie, looking like a parson with a wealthy flock.

  York smiled slightly as he accepted and shook the offered hand. “What brings you to town, Zachary? Did you want a ringside seat on the festivities?”

  “I stayed the night here at the hotel,” he said, with a nod toward the place. “But it had nothing to do with those outlaws coming to town—I have a business meeting with our town shopkeepers. On my way now.”

  “Over at the mercantile?”

  “That’s right. I just wanted to tell you how pleased I am that things worked out the way they did. You’re a real force of nature, Sheriff.”

  “That storm wasn’t my work.”

  Half a grin blossomed. “But I have a feeling you made it work for you. One man against five. Amazing.”

  “There were two of us. Deputy Tulley pitched in.”

  “I haven’t heard the details. Just that you prevailed, handily. At any rate, I must be off.”

  York gestured to his mud-spattered self. “I’m going in and get a mite more presentable. Would you stop over at the sheriff’s office, after your meeting? In a hour and a half, say?”