“These flying ships,” Bardwell asked. “Are there many?”
“Several,” the old man said. “Most are of the oldest order, one man guides it through the air while another shoots from the open door.”
“Then we should be on our way,” Bardwell said, getting up from the table. “There is still a great distance that we will walk before our night will even begin.”
Curtis nodded.
“We will care for your animals,” the old man said. “And saddle them before the clock strikes five bells.”
Bardwell nodded slinging the saddle holster over his shoulder and adjusting a bandolier. Curtis grabbed up his long gun for the trip into the city.
The sun was well down now. A great shaft of electric blue light shot from the top of the LUXOR—the residence of the great chiefs of Arroyo de las Vegas—to the heavens above. The rotating wings of a flying ship could be heard across the city in the distance.
White light flooded the defensive wall in spots, the streets, and few buildings of old that remained.
Bardwell stopped to wind his timepiece. It was just after seven and folks were out in droves now that the daystar had passed. There were some lying in the dirty gutters intoxicated from drink and smoke. Just inside of the defensive perimeter, the bodies of the day’s dead lay about as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
A foul evening wind blew across the desert city. The putrid smells were enough to make a man think otherwise about continuing on.
Peddlers stood trading and hawking their goods. Here and there, a piece of copper was traded for a sack of long grass. Smoke rose skyward. Bodies of the dogs skinned during the day hung lifeless waiting for a willing buyer. More of the mongrel animals skittered away into the darkness between the rusting automobiles forgotten four generations previous.
A woman walked closer, smiling in the fading light. Her smile exposed several missing teeth and bright sores inside her mouth. “Want to fuck, sweetie?” she asked.
Bardwell continued past without acknowledging the woman. Curtis shook his head in the negative, but still, he dared a look back.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked, closing back up next to the lawman.
“Zombies,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to them.”
Small fires burned in places along the dirty street. Black smoke from burning rubber tires screened one side street completely from view.
“These motherfuckers know how to party down here, don’t they?” Curtis mentioned matter-of-fact.
“The elders called this place sin city,” Bardwell replied, taking in the view of the filthy nighttime scene.
Well above the street—on the top of a nearby building—the iron rails of the elder’s locomotive twisted and turned, inverting in a great loop before the trestle ended suddenly in midair. Bardwell wondered at the reasoning of building a railroad on the top of such a high building.
“Look at this,” Curtis said, drawing Bardwell’s attention down the street. Great fires burned, lighting the way to the city capital. LUXOR the letters of the ancients read. A gentleman rode a two–wheeled vehicle up and down the street at times on its rear wheel. Women plied their age’s old trade offering to sell their dignity for little of nothing.
“I bet she’d fuck for a strip of jerked meat and hardtack,” Curtis said, looking over a woman with hunger in her eye.
“Or less,” Bardwell said, seeming to take in the various scenes at the same time.
Curtis had seen it before. Several times in fact. Dan Bardwell had never been big on talking. When the lawman was closing in on his prey, it was as if he ceased to exist. He drifted among the crowd like a ghost with no one noticing the antique hardware that he carried at his side.
Up the steps they walked. More of the mindless zombies and other hangers-on remained close to the entrance waiting for their chance. Maybe someone would drop a piece of copper or offer them a hit. It seemed that nobody wanted to get high alone. Bottles of hastily distilled liquor were passed between them in the dark shadows. It was said that a temporary blindness was achieved after only a few swallows. In time, the effect became permanent.
“Can you spare some change, brother,” A blind, young black man asked holding out a dented tin can.
Bardwell moved past looking high into the building. It seemed that all of the electric light in the country was in this one place.
Curtis dropped a copper into the can.
“May the Lord bless you, Sir,” the beggar said.
A crowd pushed through the entrance. The military guarding the door could not stop the rush, sweeping the lawmen inside of the great building. Loud music came from the rear of the place. Smoke hung thick overhead obscuring some of the higher levels.
Bardwell stopped at a bar where music played inside. Long grass smoke was thicker in here. He took a seat next to a gentleman who leaned against the bar staring into a sweating glass.
Curtis had a look around the place. A few armed men made their rounds, covering the exits mostly. He kept the rifle more or less concealed under his long canvas coat.
“So how have you been, Wyman?” the lawman asked, nodding to the barkeep.
“Whiskey?” the barkeep asked.
Bardwell nodded. “The good stuff, huh? And whatever my friends here are having?”
The bartender poured two glasses full then filled the glass in front of Maddox
“I’ve been better, Marshal,” Wyman Maddox said, coughing a foul smelling stench across the bar.
The bartender flinched, looking at Maddox first then to the lawman. Bardwell slid a large piece of silver across.
“You knew that it would happen sooner or later,” Bardwell said.
“Yeah,” Maddox said. “I’m sick man, Opium.”
“I’ve heard,” the lawman answered. “Are your friends here in town also?”
“They’re here,” Maddox said. “Marion’s in the back somewhere chasing whores. You’ll find Parle at the card tables.”
“Is he doing any good?” Bardwell asked.
Curtis wasn’t sure about the line of questioning. They were here to arrest the men wanted in connection with a string of killings back in Sacramento. If hindsight was twenty-twenty, Bardwell would kill all three and report that they put up a fight. There was just no bringing them in.
“He might be?” Maddox said, sipping his drink.
Inside of the watering hole, music played and colored lights flashed on the walls along with smoky burning oil lamps, casting a dim yellow glow. Young women danced on tables and in cages, some had the open sores of the zombies. A couple, three seats down at the bar, shot Heroin into their collapsing veins.
“Luck always favored Marion, didn’t it?” Bardwell said, taking a sip of the sour whiskey. The lawman closed his eyes in thought.
“You going to arrest me, Marshal?” Maddox asked. “You know that I won’t live long enough to make Sacramento.”
“I know it,” Bardwell said.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“No,” the lawman said. “You’ll pay hell dying over the next few months Wyman and I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”
“You’re still the same old son of a bitch that you’ve always been, Marshal,” Maddox said, looking into his now empty glass.
“I am,” Bardwell said, getting up from the stool. “I’d like to say that I wish you the best Wyman,” Bardwell said. “But I hope it takes six months or even a year for the dark rider to catch up with you.”
“Fuck you, Marshal,” Maddox said.
“Yeah,” Bardwell said, not bothering to turn back. “Same to you Wyman.”
“Shoot me, you motherfucker,” Maddox yelled, pleading over the noise of the watering hole. “You cocksucker, you owe me that?”
“Don’t worry, Son,” the lawman said. “You’ll die in time, but you’ll have to live with it for a while yet”
The lawman walked through the crowd unnoticed by any of the armed gentlemen riding herd in the great pyr
amid.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Curtis asked. “We ride two weeks through hell and high water and you buy the man a drink and leave him sitting at the bar?”
“He’ll pay for his sins, Son,” Bardwell said. “If I shoot Maddox, I’ll just spare him a miserable death. If I leave him there, he’ll have plenty of time to think over what he’s done.”
Curtis knew that it would do no good to argue with the lawman when his mind was made up and he was right. Letting Maddox off would prolong a shitty death that would take months to arrive.
Maddox had been right also, Bardwell was a motherfucker when he wanted to be.
Chapter Fifteen
The lawman started up a stairway crowded with those trying to get further up in the building. Hastily rolled cigarettes of the long grass were passed from one hand to another. Smoke was thick here in the stairwell.
Curtis followed with his finger on the trigger and watching the rear for any changes on that front. There were now two Sacramento lawmen in their presence. Those charged with control of the city wouldn’t have it for long.
Bardwell walked along a wide corridor. Curtis followed looking over the side at the gathered crowds of the city’s night people.
Bardwell stopped. His eyes drew into the narrow slits that the young lawman had seen too many times before. Bardwell knew that their prey was just the other side of the door. Curtis didn’t know how the lawman knew, but he did.
The knob turned easily in the lawman’s hand. The occupants of the room had not bothered with locking it.
“Sheriff Bardwell,” A man engaged in the act of sex looked over the shoulder of the young emaciated woman riding him said.
The woman had not noticed the lawmen entering. She jumped up wrapping herself in the dirty bed cover and started for the corner surprised.
“Marion,” the lawman said, nodding at the man still lying in filth.
Holderman reached for a bottle on a small table at the bedside. He took a good swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I didn’t expect that you’d find us so fast?” he said, lighting one of the rolled paper and long grass cigarettes from the oil lamp where the bottle sat.
Bardwell paid no mind to the woman with lesions and open sores on her back and shoulders as she fumbled to light her pipe for a smoke.
Curtis watched both the woman and the landing outside the door for any sign of trouble. Security would be here at any moment. He was sure of this.
“Where are my manners?” Holderman said, absentmindedly. “Would you gentlemen like to fuck? I’m sure that she’ll do the both of you if you talk nice to her?” The bandit took a long drag from the cigarette, “Hell, she might even do all three of us if a little silver is involved?”
The woman had no expression—no soul—in her eyes. She only hit the pipe staring at the dirty floor.
“Marion Holderman,” Bardwell said, in a low firm voice, “We are here to place you under arrest in the name of the States of a United America.”
The bandit lay back in the bed laughing.
“You know that ain’t happening, Sheriff,” he said, still laughing.
Bardwell nodded his agreement.
Curtis knew that although the old lawmen had led an unsaddled horse through hell and high water—figuratively speaking—he had no plans to take any of these men home to Sacramento. Once the authorities in the city got word of their being here, all hell would break loose in just getting free of the place. There was no way they could simply haul the bandits away. Sin City wouldn’t be so quick in giving up her children.
“I mean, really,” Holderman said, continuing to laugh from the dirty bed. “Did you think that you would just walk in here and lead me away?” The bandit continued to laugh, “I’m surprised that you even made it past the guard out front?” Holderman continued to laugh fueled on toxic whiskey and long grass.
Although Curtis witnessed it with his own eyes, he was never really sure what he had seen, it had happened so fast. Bardwell reached for one of his Colts, thumbed the hammer back and placed a single bullet right between Holderman’s eyes.
The expression on the laughing man’s face changed to a more serious look as it began to register. He would not be seeing the daystar overhead any longer.
His whore smoked at her pipe feverishly, expecting the same from the lawman with the Colt pistol.
A disgustingly dirty pillow soaked up the bandit’s lifeblood as it cascaded from under his head. Holderman’s eyes were open and staring at the crumbling ceiling above.
Bardwell stuffed the Navy Colt back in his holster. He started for the open door not paying mind to his young partner. Curtis backed out of the way to let the lawman pass.
“Is that it?” Curtis asked, trying his best to conceal the long gun that he carried at his side.
“For now,” Bardwell said, descending the stairs in the direction that they had come.
Mindless souls crowded into the galleys and saloons now, thicker than before. Loud music—foreign to the lawmen’s ears—blared from several places at once. The noise within what the elders had called a Casino was deafening.
Two of the Sacramento bandit’s had now been dealt with. Wyman Maddox would be left to his own to die over time. Marion Holderman, lead poisoning from one of Bardwell’s bullets.
Parle Deville was all that remained of the western ruffians. Curtis knew that there was no love lost between his boss and Deville. It was rumored that the pair went back quite a way.
Bardwell continued across the main floor of the placed called LUXOR. Curtis followed through an open door into a great room where the ghosts of long forgotten machines were lined in dying rows. The young lawman wondered at how the place had once looked, with the elders seated, drinking and smoking and playing the many games of chance.
Although dark and seemingly abandoned, a few of the machines were kept in play in a far corner. Gentlemen fed the machines copper and pulled at their great arms. Electric lights flashed and bells chimed as they did.
Bardwell stopped, taking in the place at once. Men sat at round tables playing Boa Huang, Pai Gow, and Tiles. The lawman started across the dirty floor of the room. Women danced on the empty tables and the bar. Whores mingled freely with the crowd, some clothed and some not.
This place—this Casino—smelled of toxic booze and piss and sex. Smoke from the long grass hung thick against the high ceiling choking off what electric light there was.
Bardwell walked to a far table like a ghost not gaining the attention of any of the armed gentlemen in charge. Once there, he removed one of his Colts, stuck it to a seated man’s head and pulled the trigger.
The contents of the seated gentleman were sprayed across the table. The players there were coated in bright crimson and bits of gray matter. No one said a word as the music continued to blare. The dead man fell to the floor next to the card table where he had played just moments ago.
Curtis stood back watching the room for any trouble. He reckoned that Deville was one of the gentlemen seated at the round table. The young lawman had never seen Parle Deville in his time behind the tin star.
“Marshal Dan Bardwell,” one of the seated gentlemen said, in a booming voice. The man was large. His pores oozed toxic liquor and Curtis reckoned the man was foul. “What do I owe the pleasure?”
“You know why I’m here, Parle,” Bardwell said, taking a seat at the round table across from the lawless gentlemen.
“Whiskey…?” Deville asked.
Bardwell nodded.
Devilled looked over his shoulder nodding to one of the whores. He snapped his fingers and the woman stepped off for the bar.
The fat man, Deville smiled. “Have you run across Wyman?” he asked. “He’s not looking so well these days. Got the Dry Ditch Fever you know.”
Bardwell nodded. “I have,” he said. “I talked with him for a while in the saloon.”
“Is he dead?”
The whore returned with two sweating glasses of am
ber liquor. Bardwell turned his up. “He’s as good as dead, the way he is.”
“So you didn’t put a bullet in his head for me?” Deville asked. “You would have done me a favor, friend.”
Bardwell’s eyes drew into narrow slits as he watched the seated gentleman across from him.
“It’s so hard to travel with one of the ruined,” Deville went on. “You know that Wyman is turning into one of these zombies, always with the Opium, that boy.”
Bardwell didn’t reply. He’d allow the fat man all of the time that he needed to say what he wanted to say.
“And I trust that you found Marion,” Deville said. “He was just here. Had him a little nigger whore who liked the long grass.”
“Marion’s no more,” Bardwell said, in a tired voice.
“How did you do it, Dan?” Deville asked, smiling. “Was it that knife that you carry or a bullet?”
Bardwell nodded, “Lead poisoning.”
The fat man sent up a bellowing laugh. He reached out and hit his neighbor. “I told you the Marshal was a funny man, didn’t, I? Lead poisoning,” he laughed.
The man seated next to Deville nodded his agreement but said nothing.
“That’s fucking funny, Marshal,” Deville continued. “Here lies the body of Marion Holderman,” he said. “The poor bastard died of lead poisoning.” The fat man continued to laugh as a lunatic.
Curtis noticed that a vein in Deville’s neck now pulsed along with one running across his forehead. The sweat continued to pour from the fat man’s skin.
“How will you explain this back in Sacramento, Bardwell?” Deville asked. “You let one man off and killed another in cold blood. I don’t reckon they’ll take it lightly back home.”
The lawman said nothing.
“What will we say about you, Marshal,” Deville asked. “When we bury your tired ass in the sand?”
“I don’t figure that you’ll be with the living when it comes time to bury me, Parle,” the lawman said.
Deville laughed snapping his fingers to one of the nearby whores for another drink. Curtis wondered how many the lawman would allow before he did what it was that he was sent to do. Outside, the winds were up now, tearing across the desert and blowing sand against the walls.
Ain't No Law in California Page 11