Gunman's Song (12 page)

The big gunman ran out the doors onto the boardwalk, drawing his pistol on his way. Frome ran straight down the rutted dirt street toward the Desert Flower. “I've got him,” said Hornetti, raising his pistol, calmly taking aim as onlookers veered out of the way. The gun bucked once in his hand, the explosion resounding along the street, and Frome seemed to be thrust forward by a powerful blast of wind. “Got him dead center.” Hornetti chuckled, raising his pistol and blowing smoke from the tip of his barrel. He turned and walked back into the Big Spur Saloon without giving Dillard Frome another glance.

“I didn't mean for you to shoot him, damn it!” said Willie. “I only meant for you to stop him.”

“Then you should have made it more clear.” Hornetti grinned. “He's laying out there deader than hell.” He patted the pistol he'd slipped back into his holster. “The way I just shot, I don't know that we really need ol' Sammy Boy here.” He gave Sammy Boy White a look that could be read different ways.

Noting it, Sammy Boy said flatly, “You're a bag of fish guts, Hornetti. If you think shooting a man in the back while he's running is anything like facing Fast Larry Shaw, then I'm tempted to stand down and let him shoot your eyes out.”

Hornetti looked stunned. “Hey, wait a minute, ol' pard, I was only joking around with you!”

“Sure you were,” said Sammy Boy, his hand poised
close to his pistol butt, “now that you see I ain't taking a nickel's worth of your bullying horseshit. I've noticed that old ‘I was only joking' is the ace every coward keeps up his sleeve. You'll push a man a little; then if that sticks you'll push him a little more.” He jerked a thumb toward Elton Minton. “You started off calling my friend here an idiot…once you saw he wasn't going to call you down for it, you started pecking him on the head, like this.” He took a step with his gun hand still poised and with his free hand palmed Hornetti on his forehead. “There,
idiot,
how does that feel? Dare me to do it again.” Sammy Boy offered a flat, mirthless grin.

“Why you…” Hornetti bristled, his hand going instinctively toward his pistol butt, then stopping short as he felt the tip of Sammy Boy's pistol against the tip of his nose.

“You wasn't going to draw it anyway, idiot,” said Sammy Boy. “I'm doing you a favor. Think how bad it would look if I'd waited for you to draw. We'd have been here all day.”

“All right, stop it, Donald! We've got business to attend to!” said Willie the Devil, directing his attention to Hornetti and giving him a shove, deciding it wouldn't be wise to push Sammy Boy White. “Go get a drink and calm down,” he said to Hornetti. I'm going to be counting on you to back this man when the time comes.”

Hearing Willie the Devil, Sammy Boy White looked at Elton and asked, “What's he talking about,
backing
me?” He cut a glance at Hornetti, making sure Hornetti heard him say, “I don't need that piece of rat bait backing me up, he'd soil his trousers.”

Hornetti's face reddened. He bristled with anger and humiliation, but he made no offer of retaliation. Instead he turned and walked to the bar.

“Easy, Sammy Boy!” said Elton. “We just thought in case things went bad—which we know they won't, of course…” He looked around and lowered his voice. “Willie just thought it might be a good idea to have Hornetti near about with a shotgun. Sort of a secondary plan, you might call it.”

“Secondary plan, like hell,” said Sammy Boy. “This is not going to be some crooked scheme. I'm fast and I'm good. I'm younger than Shaw and I want his handle, ‘fastest gun alive,' more than I think he wants it these days. That's what this is all about, Elton, nothing else.”

As Sammy Boy and Elton spoke, a drunken old man wearing a miner's cap staggered in between them and shook a bag of coins in Elton's face. “Have I got time to get the rest of this down on Fast Larry Shaw?”

“Not now,” Elton said quickly, giving the old man a shove, hoping Sammy Boy hadn't heard what he'd said. But Sammy Boy had heard. He caught the old man by his arm before he staggered away.

“What did you ask, old-timer?” Sammy Boy said.

The old miner said in a blast of sour whiskey breath, finally recognizing Sammy Boy White, “No offense, Mr. White, but I watched Shaw outgun D.C. Hanson on the street in Laredo. I just don't believe there's a man alive who'll beat him.”

“Bet the way you feel, old-timer,” said Sammy Boy, letting the old man stagger away as he turned a cold gaze to Elton Minton.

“Let me explain, Sammy!” said Elton, looking worried.

“You bet against me,” Sammy Boy said flatly.

“Listen to me, Sammy; it ain't like you're thinking it is,” Elton pleaded.

“My pardner,” said Sammy Boy in a hurt and disgusted tone. “You went behind my back and bet on Shaw.”

“No, Sammy, I bet on both of you! See, I was looking out for you and me, just in case something went wrong! We'd still have something coming.”

“You were looking out for me?” Sammy looked amazed. “Elton, this ain't no sporting event! If I lose, there ain't no ‘looking out for me'—I'm dead!”

Elton looked down at the floor in silence and shook his head, as if he had just come to realize what a deadly situation Sammy Boy White was in. When he looked back up at Sammy Boy he said, “Sammy, I'm sorry. I just got so caught up in the money we was going to make, I plumb forgot what losing would cost.” He cupped his forehead in his hand. “Jesus, what have I gotten us into?”

Sammy Boy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, releasing his anger and his disappointment in Elton. “You didn't get me into it, Elton. I want this awfully bad. It just cut me deep, you betting against me.”

Willie the Devil had overheard part of the conversation; then, seeing the two talking between themselves, he backed away and turned toward the bar.

Seeing him slip away, Elton said, “He caused it…he caused me to do it. I never should have listened to him.”

“Don't blame him,” said Sammy Boy. “If I hadn't been wanting this kind of gunfight, the rest wouldn't have happened anyway.”

“What are we going to do, Sammy?” Elton asked in a shaky voice. “It's too late to stop it.”

Sammy Boy raised his pistol and checked it, turning the cylinder slowly, listening closely to it click. “Have you got all the bets down the way you want them?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then just stay out of my way until this is over,” said Sammy Boy, cutting him off. He turned and walked away to a lone table in the far corner, hooking a bottle of rye off the bar on his way. Standing at the crowded bar, Willie the Devil and Donald Hornetti watched Sammy Boy pull out a chair, sit down, and pull the cork from the bottle.

“What do you think, Willie? Hornetti asked, the two of them seeing Sammy Boy turn up a long drink of whiskey. “Has this whole plan gone to hell on us or what?”

“Naw, we're still on track,” said Willie the Devil. “They're both in too deep to pull out now.” He chuckled. “What gets me is how easy it was for us to get somebody to do our killing for us.”

“But don't forget, I'm still facing Shaw if things go bad,” said Hornetti.

“Yes, you're facing him, all right,” said Willie the Devil, filling a shot glass for himself and sliding the bottle to Hornetti. “But with Sammy Boy calling him down, you'll be facing Shaw's back…from behind cover.” He raised his glass in a short salute. “I think that makes all the difference in the world, don't you?”

Hornetti grinned. “Yeah, it does at that. I almost hope Sammy Boy loses, just so I can put a bullet in a big-time gunslinger like Fast Larry Shaw.” Having poured himself a drink, Hornetti raised it in a return salute, then tossed it back in a quick gulp and let out a whiskey hiss. “I like the idea of killing him without him ever seeing it coming.”

Had Donald Hornetti waited a moment longer out front of the Big Spur Saloon after shooting Dillard Frome, he would have seen that Frome was still alive. The shoot had knocked him unconscious, but only for a few seconds. As soon as he came to, he lifted his face from the dirt and began crawling toward the Desert Flower Inn. In his addled state he waved away the few onlookers who offered to help him. In his wake Frome left a smear of dark blood across the dirt from the exit wound in his shattered chest. He had just managed to drag himself onto the boardwalk of the Desert Flower when Lawrence Shaw and Cray stepped out the door, having come down from their rooms to investigate the single gunshot they'd heard.

“Oh, no, Frome,” said Cray Dawson, hurrying forward and kneeling down, cradling Frome in his arms, “who did this to you?”

The gaping wound in the man's chest bubbled with each breath. Frome struggled to speak, letting a long string of blood spill from his lips. “I came to warn…you…Shaw.” Unable to continue, he pointed a weak, trembling hand toward the Big Spur Saloon.

Shaw had also stooped down at Frome's side, but he remained on guard, poised and watching the street. “There's somebody waiting for me?” he asked, as if he weren't at all surprised.

Frome nodded his head. “They're…holding Caldwell. They mean to kill you.” At that Frome's words seemed to give out on him.

Shaw stood and stared long and hard at the Big Spur Saloon. Cray Dawson looked up at him and said, “Forget them! We've got to get Frome to a doctor!”

Still staring at the saloon, Shaw said down to Frome in a calm, solemn voice, “What say you, Dillard Frome? Do you need a doctor? Or would you rather I go kill the man who did this to you?”

Frome managed to look down at the gaping hole in his chest. He gave Dawson a look of hopelessness, then rasped to Shaw, “There's more than one of them…watch your back—” His words stopped short, followed by a long exhale of breath.

“You can bet I will,” Shaw said under his breath, his right hand raising his Colt gently in its holster, then turning it loose. He stepped to the edge of the boardwalk, looking up at the evening sun standing low behind the Desert Flower and stretching long onto the dirt street.

“Frome?” said Cray Dawson, shaking him slightly as if to wake him. Then, seeing that no amount of shaking would wake him, Dawson reached down with a gloved hand and closed Frome's eyes.

“Your game, ol' pard,” said Shaw without looking down. “I'll finish your hand for you.”

“Shaw!” said Dawson, sounding ready to do some serious killing for the sake of the man who had just
given his life to come and warn them. “What do you want me to do?”

Shaw said without turning to face him, “Go along the boardwalk across from the Big Spur—watch the rooflines. Then follow me inside the saloon and stay to my left. Give me room.” He stepped down from the boardwalk and headed toward the Big Spur Saloon, the sun standing like a fiery red ball behind his left shoulder.

“You got it,” said Cray Dawson, hurriedly taking off his right glove and shoving it into his belt. He veered off and hurried ahead of Shaw a few feet until he'd gotten onto the boardwalk across from the Big Spur. He moved along with caution, scanning the roofline on the other side of the street, his pistol drawn and ready.

Out front of the Big Spur Saloon, Shaw stopped in the middle of the street and stood with his feet planted shoulder-width apart. Back at the Desert Flower Inn, Sheriff Neff had arrived, hearing the onlookers tell him what had happened as he stared down at Dillard Frome's body. “You've got to do something, Sheriff,” a woman said, wringing her hands. “What's happening to our good town?”

Before Sheriff Neff could reply, he turned toward the sound of Shaw's voice calling out to the doors of the saloon: “I want the craven coward who shot Dillard Frome in the back to step out here. We both know why you shot him, so there's nothing to talk about. You want killing? Come on out and let's commence.”

“Damn it,” Sheriff Neff whispered under his breath at the far end of the street. “Right
there
is what's happened to our good town.” He hurried
along the boardwalk out front of the Big Spur, his hands chest-high, offering no threat to Shaw. When he stopped, it was at Shaw's insistence.

“Stop right there, Sheriff,” said Shaw, his left hand raised, his eyes still on the Big Spur Saloon. “These cowards shot that man in the back because he was coming to warn me that they're waiting for me.”

“Shaw, it's got to stop!” said Sheriff Neff. “I can't have no more of it.”

“I never asked for none of this, Sheriff,” said Shaw. “They keep coming at me, no matter where I go.”

Cray Dawson kept scanning the roofline, the boardwalk, the streets and alleys, feeling his palms grow moist around his gun butt.

“I know you don't start trouble, Shaw,” said Sheriff Neff. “You don't have to. It's your name that starts it! But I can't go no farther with it. Eagle Pass is a peaceable town right now. I want to keep it that way. Do you understand me, Shaw? I want you to leave…leave right now.”