Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (38 page)

Chapter
2

I waited outside the
saloon doors in the shadows, ignoring the row of horses tied out front.
Normally, Marshal Harrison and I took care of the rowdies. But tonight Marshal
Harrison was a full day’s ride away, escorting a prisoner back to Belleville
for trial.

I waited a moment longer,
thinking through the various scenarios that might occur. It’s one thing for two
Marshals to back down three angry drunks. It’s quite another for one man by
himself. Especially a young man my age. Young and small in the West reads
amateur and pushover, whether true or not.

I eased through the saloon
doors, my hand resting on my pistol. I had every intention of talking Bill
Garland down. No gun work for me tonight, since according to his reputation,
he’d killed six men in fair and square gunfights.

No doubt he could beat me
if it came down to pistol work, and I had no desire to gamble on a pistol fight
with him. Not unless I could get behind a table or an edge of the bar. I’m not
partial to fair gunfights.

With the saloon doors open
and my hand on my pistol, I took in the scene. All the customers appeared to be
in a state of shock. No music came from the normally loud piano and the men at
the crowded tables sat still with downcast gazes. No one talked. No one played
cards.

To my right, two men lay
on the floor among the remnants of at least three shattered tables and a couple
dozen broken glasses and plates. One of them was groaning and holding his side.
The other was out cold in a small pool of blood that ran from his mouth. A
tooth lay in the blood.

To my left stood Bill
Garland, leaning on the bar, with his partners on both sides of him. All three
men had their backs turned to me, but I knew Bill stood in the center. His reputation
billed him as a hoss.

Most small men learned to
expertly wield a pistol, while big men preferred to handle things with their
fists. Bill Garland was an exception to the rule: A big man who could shoot
with the best of them. At least, that was his reputation.

The bar had cleared out
around them, and the folks who normally lined the bar stood against the walls.
Everyone looked like they wanted to leave, but no one dared pass Bill Garland
and his friends. It was as if the three men had some kind of contagious
disease.

I stood just inside the
doors and looked the three men over. Bill Garland was every bit the giant his
reputation claimed. A big, ham-fisted man at least two heads taller than most
in the room. A striped shirt strained to hold in his thick, wide back. And on
the other side, the shirt struggled to contain his gut.

He had to weigh more than
two hundred pounds. Why anyone would be stupid enough to try to take him on in
a fight was beyond me. You don’t fight draft horses. Especially draft horses
with a gunfighter’s reputation. At least now I knew why no one had broken up
the fights to keep the men from being kicked while they were down.

Bill Garland was the most
intimidating presence I’d ever seen. And dating back to my war years, I’ve seen
a few men who’d scare the living daylights out of you.

Bill’s two buddies didn’t
look like pushovers either. One was a scraggly, bearded Mexican. He wore a
sombrero and looked about fifty. Old to be staying out late and carrying a
fancy, ivory-handled pistol tied down to his leg. The other one was a tall,
lanky white man probably in his mid-twenties. He had the look of a cocky Texan,
since he wore a huge, high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat pushed back on his head.

I knew standing behind
them that I was in deep shit. Some men carry experience in the way they stand,
the way they talk, the way they look. These men were fighters and killers. They
would have even been a challenge for me and ole’ Marshal Harrison together. I
didn’t want to consider how it would turn out for just one young deputy.

Chapter
3

I considered sliding out
of Frank’s Place -- the name of the saloon -- and pulling my pistol from behind
the cover of the wall below the saloon doors. Maybe after I’d shot one or two
of them, they’d decide they ought to leave, though big Bill Garland might take
more than two shots to put down.

But before I could back
out, Frank Connors, the saloon owner who stood behind the bar, looked up. Bill
Garland, standing in front of him, saw his eyes move toward the saloon doors
and turned to see who had entered. I heard several people audibly gasp,
probably figuring a shootout would happen immediately.

“What seems to be the
problem?” I asked, wanting to speak first.

Bill Garland, now enraged,
threw his mug to the floor as hard as he could, shattering it into a thousand
pieces.

“What do you want?” he
demanded, practically sneering.

“I’m the law,” I said, “so
don’t do anything stupid like going for your gun. I came to resolve this
dispute.”

I said it as deep as I
could, but it came out shakier than I wanted.

Bill laughed and smiled at
the Mexican. The Mexican placed his hand on the ivory-handled pistol, which I
thought was a little bold, while the lanky feller remained leaning on the bar,
seeing no threat and keeping his eyes on the bar owner.

I shifted my eyes from
Bill to the Mexican.

“If you draw and manage to
kill me, you’ll have a posse the size of the Comanche nation coming after you,”
I warned, nodding toward the roughly two dozen men sitting at tables or lining
the walls. “Led by a handful of U.S. Marshals. And that’s if these fine folks
let you walk out of the saloon alive.”

Bill Garland walked toward
me, a monstrous hulk that caused the floors to creak.

“Son,” he said, “if you’ve
got a lick of sense, you’ll leave us the hell alone. We’ll bury you before the
hour is over, and these fine folks you mentioned won’t do a damned thing. Just
like they didn’t earlier when I was tossing around and kicking their friends.”

He had a point there, but
I tried not to show anything as I looked up at him. He moved his head closer,
lowering it a bit, and said, “Little man, I suggest you leave now while you can
and let us handle this disagreement with Frank here.”

His breath smelled of beer
and peanuts, and it was hard not to recoil from it. But, somehow I managed to
answer him.

“Ya know, if I was a tub
of lard as big as you, I’d talk big, too. And if I wasn’t planning on hitting
the sack soon, I’d show you why it’s best to keep your mouth shut. But, that’d
take two hours and get me all sweaty and probably a bit busted up, so if you
don’t mind, let’s settle this tomorrow.”

Bill pulled in his gut and
hitched up his pants. I could tell the tub of lard comment had hit home. I
doubt anyone had gathered the nerve to mention it before.

I thought he was going to
reply, but instead he slapped me. Openhanded with his right hand. And he was
WAY faster than I expected. Not to mention, he hadn’t telegraphed the move by
flinching or moving his shoulder. I never saw it coming and my head rang from
the force.

I tasted blood in my mouth
and tried to collect my wits.

“Little man,” he said,
leaning in again with his revolting breath, “you shut your mouth or I’ll slap
you silly from one end of this room to the other.”

I’ve fought big men before
and whooped most of ’em. But, it takes a lot of space and time, to wear them
down. Most lack agility and move slow and give away what they’re doing by
leading and flinching.

Bill Garland didn’t fit in
that category, and it occurred to me that I was in deep shit. I didn’t have any
men on my flanks as I’d had in war. And I didn’t have anyone who’d have my back
in this saloon -- those along the walls and at their tables were too
intimidated.

I’d never been so scared
in my life. I knew for sure he was way more than I could handle, and that he’d
very likely lame me for life if we fought and he kicked me while I was down.
That slap – the force and weight of his hand – had felt like getting kicked by
a horse. He’d probably nearly killed the two men lying on the floor. A kick
from Bill Garland, if he were enraged and landed it well, could quite possibly
kill me. A ruptured organ or cracked skull seemed completely reasonable.

The man in me wanted to
fight. Every muscle fiber and piece of binding sinew in my body screamed at me
to fight him. And I felt the men of my family – a line of tough hombres as
stout as bulls and as stubborn as mules – looking down on me.

But despite the pressure
of being a man and having a family lineage to uphold, every bit of common sense
told me that a fight was what he wanted. He wanted to lame me for life to add
to his already growing fame. As I considered these thoughts, Bill Garland saw I
was going to do nothing.

“Little man, at least you
got more sense than ya got stature.” And with that, he turned and lumbered back
to the bar.

I stood there dazed. My
face pounded with heat and pain from his heavy-handed slap, but as I looked
around and saw everyone staring at me, embarrassment hit home. This man turned
his back on me, because he didn’t see me as a threat. Worse, he’d slapped me,
because he thought I was a joke. I’d have rather been punched. Maybe knocked
out, or even injured and helpless from a broken jaw. At least then I’d have an
excuse for not confronting him again. But to slap me? Like a girl?

So, instead of lying in
the floor with a broken jaw having given it my all, I had to stand there,
watching Frank Connors behind the bar and a couple dozen friends look at me
pitifully. As if they felt sorry for me.

It hit me that my whole
life had come down to this moment. I could turn and walk out, but my reputation
as a man would be over. All my war experience. Worthless. Me gunning down the
Jones brothers after they robbed a bank. Forgotten. And worst of all, the
reputation of my Zachary family name would collapse into a cowardly rubble. All
because I’d let a man slap me and didn’t have the nerve to do a damn thing
about it.

I knew, as I stood there ashamed,
that I had to act, though it was clear I’d probably get seriously injured.
Possibly even die, but I had to act. To do nothing was worse than serious
injury or death. To just stand there would be to surrender my manhood and
everything I’d worked to earn since my first fist-fight as a boy.

Bill Garland’s two friends
had turned from looking at me, as well, and now all three of them faced Frank
again, who looked even more scared now that the law -- his final hope -- had
fallen short of proving a savior.

Shooting them in the back
would be illegal and wrong, and drawing on them and asking them to disarm would
only work for a few minutes. Even though I knew they’d drop their gun belts, I
also knew I’d never get them to walk down the main street to the jail without
jumping me.

Even if I did get them
down the street, I’d have to get them in a cell somehow. Alone.

I cursed the fact Marshal
Harrison wasn’t in town and had left me alone, and I cursed the fact I’d let
Bill Garland slap me like I was nothing in front of so many people. My brain
told me I’d have been better off not coming into the saloon at all when the boy
Joe showed up. But that old family blood of mine had made me respond to the
boy’s request.

I’ve never felt so many
eyes on me as I felt that night, and I’ve never felt so clearly that my life
hinged on a single moment.

And that’s when I saw the
stool. It was to Bill’s left and behind him. It had probably been the Mexican’s,
and he’d pushed it back when Bill had turned to face me earlier.

I moved toward the stool
and grabbed a leg with each hand down toward the base. As I pulled it up with
both hands, I realized it was far heavier and stouter than I expected. But with
hardly a pause and with all the power I could garner, I spun in a complete
circle and arched the stool from low to high, swinging it with all my weight
and momentum.

I’ve cut a lot of wood and
know that nothing creates power like long arcs, and I created a lot of power
that night. Anger, shame, and adrenaline caused me to yank that stool off the
floor and swing it as I’d never swung anything in my life.

The four-legged,
thirty-pound walnut stool hit Bill Garland so hard across the shoulders that it
likely injured him for life.

The stool slammed into him
in the back of the neck and right shoulder area, and it didn’t even break --
the stool was that solid. Bill screamed, almost like a girl or a deer that’s
been fatally hit, and as he fell, he twisted toward me and went for his gun.

Time slowed down, as it
always does in those moments, and I saw Bill’s friends looking at me in shock
in my peripheral vision. Too stunned to move. Too shocked to see I was no
longer behind them, standing there helpless. The “little man” in over his head.

But, Bill, grievously injured
as he fell to the ground, reached for his pistol. I’ll always believe he did it
because he thought I’d smash him again with that stool when he hit the ground.
Right in the face.

I wouldn’t have -- because
it would have been unnecessary and would have left me vulnerable to his friends
-- but, Bill didn’t know that. And as he clumsily went for his gun, I shoved
the stool at him to startle him, drew my pistol, cocked it, and shot him right
in the chest – about four inches to the left of his heart. Not a great shot,
but first shots rarely are.

As the stool rolled away
and he clutched at his chest, I cocked again, aimed better, and shot him one
more. Even more accurate this time. About an inch off the mark.

My ears rang from the
shots and smoke rose from my gun as I cocked it a third time and aimed it at
the Mexican. Right at his head. About a foot away. I figured he’d be a far
greater threat than the tall lanky Texan, who was still young and hopefully
pretty green.

The whole series of events
took less than a couple of seconds.

“You’ll regret that,” the Mexican
said, looking from the barrel of my smoking gun to the bloody floor where Bill
Garland lay.

“I’m just getting
started,” I said, my voice having returned to its normal octave with the
rebound of my courage.