Gunman's Song (17 page)

Barton Talbert stood on the abandoned gallows at Brakett Flats and looked south toward the Anacacho mountain line. It had been almost an hour since he'd first spotted the two thin, wavering figures riding toward town in the scalding midday heat. The first thing he'd said to Blue Snake Terril, who sat beside him, one haunch perched sidelong on the gallows rail, was, “Where's Bo Kregger?”

“He was out behind the old cemetery a while ago,” Blue Snake said, squinting toward the two distant riders.

“What's he doing back there?” Talbert asked.

“Shooting cans,” said Blue Snake. “Didn't you hear him?”

“Oh, yeah, that's right,” said Talbert. “I wasn't thinking there for a second.” He tossed a glance toward the cemetery, from where three shots rang out in rapid succession.

Blue Snake looked him up and down, realizing how nervous and preoccupied he'd been lately. Then he looked back out toward the riders, saying sarcastically, almost to himself, “Kregger must figure if Fast Larry Shaw shows up and throws some cans at him, he wants to be prepared.”

“I know you've got no use for him, Snake,” said Talbert, “but the plain, simple fact is, we need Bo Kregger.”

“Like hell,” said Blue Snake. “I can handle Shaw.”

“I'm not saying you can't,” said Barton Talbert, “and like as not you'll get a chance to prove it before this is over. But I'm saying we need somebody like Bo Kregger just in case you
can't
handle him. Fast Larry Shaw is still the fastest gun alive.”

Blue Snake spit and shook his head. “This whole thing is such a stupid mess, anyway. None of it should have happened. You go out of your way to stop by a man's house to pay him your respect; damned if you don't wind up killing his wife. What are the odds of something like that happening? You idolized the man! Now he's out to kill you.”

“You know I idolized him, and I know I idolized him,” said Talbert. “The problem is, Shaw ain't going to hear of this all being a terrible situation that got out of control.” He also shook his head slightly, recalling the event in his mind. “How do you tell a man you killed his wife but didn't mean to?”

“Just like that,” said Blue Snake, giving a slight shrug. “You say, ‘Shaw we killed your wife but we didn't mean to.' If that won't stick, then you settle with him, man-to-man. You don't go hire some other gunman to take care of your business for you. It's my belief that all these fast guns are a little
loco
to begin with. The less you get tangled up in their world, the better off you are. I might be nothing but a damn half-breed outlaw and cattle rustler, but I'm smart enough to stay away from those crazy jackrabbit gunfighters.”

“Well, she's dead, and I can't call it back and
change it,” said Talbert with a sigh of finality. “We got to deal with Shaw and get it done.” He stared harder at the riders through the shimmering heat. “I almost wish that
was
him coming.”

“So do I,” said Blue Snake, studying the figures closely as they neared, “but it ain't; it's the Devil.”

“That's what I thought too,” said Barton Talbert. They watched in silence for a moment; then Talbert reaffirmed, saying, “Yep, it's the Devil, all right. But that's not Brother Sidlow with him.” There was a sound of concern in his voice.

“No sign of Donald Hornetti either,” said Blue Snake, the long tails of his bright Mexican neck scarf fluttering on a hot Texas breeze. Around Blue Snake's neck a strip of rawhide held a Colt .45 hanging down his chest like some religious object. He wore black leather gloves with the fingers and thumbs cut off. His own fingers were ingrained with dirt and black gun oil. His thumbnails were painted bright blue but badly flaking. “Who's this peckerwood beside him?”

“I'm wondering that myself,” said Talbert. He slapped a sand flea that had worked its way up through the wiry beard stubble on his cheek. Then he picked the dead flea off and flipped it away. Watching Willie the Devil and Elton Minton ride onto the main street, Talbert said, “I told the Devil not to bring me anything but good news about my brother…. Let's go see what's he got.”

“It ain't good, I'm already thinking,” said Blue Snake, rising from the gallows rail.

Turning and walking down the gallows steps, they looked at two small boys who swung back and forth, playing on the hangman's rope, each supported by one bare foot in the noose. The rope creaked eerily
with each pass. On the bottom step a dark bloodstain marked a time long past when someone had killed the hangman, dragged him his gallows into an alley, and stuffed him headfirst down into a rain barrel.

“You kids get the hell out of here,” said Talbert to the two boys. Then he called out to the empty storefronts and closed doors and windows, “Somebody better get these knothead kids out of here! I bet I end up pistol-whipping some mommies and daddies in a minute!” He looked menacingly along the deserted boardwalks, where the only sign of life was an occasional gunman who leaned against a pole with a rifle in his arm and a bottle of whiskey hanging in his hand. The buildings were silent as stone except for the small saloon, where both large windows had been busted from the inside and shards of glass littered the street. Beyond the broken windows a banjo played feverishly, its rhythm speeded up and goaded on by random gunshots and loud laughter.

On their way toward the two approaching riders, Talbert and Blue Snake saw a dark-haired woman run out from a building with a worried look on her face. She chastised the two boys loudly in Spanish and shooed them away from the gallows with both hands. “
Gracias, Mamacita,
” Talbert sneered at her. “Now keep them the hell out of my hair! If I wanted to be aggravated by kids, I've got a dozen of my own scattered out some-damn-where!”

The widely flared legs of Blue Snake's Mexican vaquero trousers stirred a low swirl of dust at his boot heels. His big Mexican spurs rang out like small bells with each step. By the time they gone fifteen yards, a couple of the gunmen had stepped down from the boardwalk and joined them. “What's the deal coming
here?” one gunman asked, nodding toward Willie the Devil and Elton Minton as they slowed their tired horses to a walk.

“Beats, me, Curley,” said Blue Snake, his hand around the bone handle of the pistol hanging around his neck. “You've seen as much as I have.”

Curley Tomes noted Blue Snake's hand, flaking painted nail and all, and he tightened his grip on the rifle cradled in his arm. Another gunman drifted in beside Curley Tomes and asked in a lowered voice, “What's the hash, Curley?”

Curley gave him a barbed sidelong glance. “Do I look like I know every damn thing, Stanley?”

“Pardon the hell out of me then,” said Stanley Little.

As Willie the Devil and Elton Minton halted their horses and started to step down into the middle of the street, Barton Talbert said, “Don't even get out of the saddle unless you've got some good news for me, Devil.”

Willie the Devil stopped midmotion, swung his leg back over the saddle, and sat down. “It's all bad, Bart,” Willie said, letting out a breath of dread.

Barton Talbert gave Blue Snake a look, then said, “Get on down, Willie. Tell me everything.”

This time Willie and Elton both stepped down. Elton looked around nervously at the gunmen staring at him. “Who is this scarecrow?” Blue Snake asked, sizing Elton up with a sneer of contempt.

“This is Elton Minton, Bart,” said Willie the Devil, addressing Barton Talbert directly instead of answering Blue Snake.

“Where's my brother?” Talbert asked, barely giving Elton a glance.

Taking his hat off, Willie the Devil shook his lowered head. “Bart, ol' pard, I hate to say it, but poor Sidlow is dead…there was nothing we could do about it. Not one damn thing.”

“What? You lying son of a bitch!” Barton Talbert shoved him hard, causing him to lift his lowered head and hold both hands out to keep Talbert back away from him.

“Please, Bart! Listen to me!” Willie pleaded, seeing Talbert's hand snap tight around his gun butt. “It's the truth; we couldn't help him!”

“Who killed him?” Talbert hissed. “That damned Sheriff Neff? I'm going right now to that little pig rut of a town and shoot his eyes out!”

“Uh, no,” said Willie, “it wasn't Neff. It was Fast Larry Shaw.”

A sick look came over Barton Talbert's face, but he tried to hide it. “Oh…” His word trailed off as he considered it. Then he said, “Fast Larry Shaw be damned! I'm still going to Eagle Pass. Shaw's going to pay!” He spoke loudly enough for all the gathering gunmen to hear him, yet there seemed to be less iron in his tone than there had been only a moment earlier. “How did it happen? Face-to-face? One-on-one? Everything on the up-and-up?”

Willie shook his head. “I swear I can't say, the way it all happened so fast. Me and Hornetti had already set up a way to kill Fast Larry,” he continued, not giving the details in the exact sequence in which they happened. “Neff was escorting Sidlow to the jake, if you can believe the sheriff's version. But then ol' Sidlow, God love him, he tried to make a break for it, like any freethinking man would do! And that damned Fast Larry saw him and shot him over and
over in the worst sort of way!” Willie seemed to be on the verge of weeping. “It was terrible! And there was me and Hornetti, couldn't do a thing about it. I was sickened by it!”

“Where is Hornetti?” asked Blue Snake, looking around as if the man might suddenly appear.

“He's dead too,” said Willie the Devil. “Fast Larry's pard shot him dead. Poor Donald fell all the way from a window atop the saloon.”

“Shaw's pard?” said Talbert. “You mean Shaw's got somebody riding with him? Another slick gunfighter, I reckon?”

“Oh, yes, no doubt about it,” said Willie, “this man is just as cold-blooded and lightning-fast as Shaw! It would have been nothing short of suicide for me to try to take them both. Shaw called out to everybody around that if they rode with you they were fair game. Said he wanted you to know what happened to Sidlow. Sounded like he's out for a showdown, just like we figured. I ran into Mace Renfield and some pards of his in Turkey Wells on our way here. I know Mace has been aching to kill Shaw for a long time. Maybe he'll just up and do it, save us some trouble.”

“Yeah,” said Barton Talbert, “
maybe
…but I can't chance hanging my hat on a maybe.”

“I know,” said Willie, “and it's a damn shame what Shaw done to those two good men…both Donald and Sidlow shot down in their prime! I tell you again I was sickened by the whole thing!”

“You seem to sicken pretty easy for a man who doesn't do much,” said a deep voice from off to the right of the other gunmen.

“Who the hell said that?” Willie asked, incensed by such an insult.

“Bo Kregger,” the voice said bluntly. Now Willie saw the broad shoulders and the long-hanging riding duster step forward, the other gunmen giving this man plenty of room. “If you didn't understand it, I'll say it again.”

Willie looked at Barton Talbert, then at Blue Snake. “I asked him to ride with us, Willie, just because of Fast Larry Shaw,” said Barton Talbert.

“Yeah, he asked,” said Bo Kregger to Willie the Devil, “but I haven't gave an answer yet. I was doubting this is the kind of men I want my name associated with.” He looked Willie up and down. “Listening to you, I doubt it even more.”

“I've heard a lot about you, Bo Kregger,” said Willie, making sure his hands came up a good distance from his gun butt. “I'm not a big gunslinger…I don't want no trouble.”

“I've heard a lot about you too, Willie the Devil,” said Kregger with contempt. “But nothing yet that makes me think you're anything but a bummer and a low backshooting coward.”

Willie glowed red, but wasn't about to backtalk the gunman. He looked at Talbert and said, “I don't deserve to be treated this way, Bart…as far as we go back together? Huh-uh. It just ain't right.”

“We've only known one another a year or so, Willie,” Barton Talbert said with a shrug. “I don't call that going far back together, do you, Bo?”

“No,” said the fierce-looking gunman, “I call that a short spell. Not long enough for him to want to save your brother from Fast Larry Shaw, anyway.” He stared coldly at Willie the Devil until Willie grew so rattled he began to sweat and shake all over.

“All right,” said Willie, “maybe I could have done
more. But the fact is, I had a deal going with this peckerwood and a friend of his named Sammy Boy White. Sammy was supposed to kill Fast Larry, but that plan went plumb out the window and Shaw nailed him too. And that was with Donald Hornetti ambushing him! I tell you, that Shaw ain't human, he's so fast! So all right, maybe I was a little afraid I might get killed too. Does anybody blame me?” His eyes searched the unyielding faces of the gunmen, who offered him no sign of support.

“Everybody here thought the world of Sidlow, Willie,” said Curley Tomes. Beside him Stanley Little nodded in agreement. Next to Stanley stood Denver Jack Fish, Jesse Turnbaugh, Bobby Fitt, and the Furlin brothers, Harper and Gladso. The group nodded solemnly as one.

Bo Kregger took on a more serious look. “Did you say Sammy Boy White?” he asked Willie.

“Yep, that was his name,” said Willie. “Do you know him?” he asked Kregger, feeling the heat lessen on him a bit.

“Yeah, I know him,” said Kregger. “Sammy Boy White was damn good with a gun. That's a known fact.”

“Better than you?” asked Talbert.

“I wouldn't go so far as to say that,” said Bo Kregger. “But if Fast Larry killed Sammy Boy White, I have to respect the man a little bit more.”

“I don't know if Sammy Boy was dead or alive when we hightailed it,” said Willie the Devil. “But he came in second place against Fast Larry…so did a crazy bartender named Porter something or other.”