Shotgun Charlie (4 page)

The first bullet plowed a furrow, unearthing a trench of fresh-splintered mahogany six inches long and half an inch deep. The slug finally lodged, a hot, spent devilish thing, out of sight in the bar top. But no one noticed.

The second bullet had already done what it was born to do—it stopped a living thing from ever moving forward again. That thing was one Rupert McGinley, town fireman, avid reader of books, amateur gunsmith, and on this particular day, a man not blessed with the best of luck.

Spelling his barkeep pal, John Otis, whom he was visiting on this not-very-busy Saturday morning, so Otis might visit Mae's Dining Emporium for a bite before the long, busy day grew that way, McGinley had little time to regret his decision before the bullet drove through his left cheek, through his brain, and caromed off his skull, angling downward with considerably less force, before exiting his head where his hairline stopped and the back of his neck began.

No one knew if he died right away or if he somehow managed to see the man who'd felled him. Likely all he saw were the boots the stranger wore, stovepipes with dog ears at the tops for tugging on, filmed with trail dust, the cracked heels caked with dung. They were like a thousand other pairs of boots that had stomped in and out of the Blue Bird Bar over the years.

But these boots belonged to Grady Haskell, a man known by an increasing number of people from Old Mexico to Oregon, and not a one of them recalled the meetings with Haskell favorably. The ones who survived them, that is.

If anyone other than Rupert McGinley had been in the Blue Bird that dark Saturday morning, they might have wondered why Haskell had shot the local fellow, known by all as a decent sort, reliable when friends knocked for help, steady in his work, uncomplaining, and true.

McGinley had turned smiling eyes on the stranger and asked what he might do for him, already reaching for a coffee mug, it being assumed by the man that the early hour meant the stranger might be more interested in a wake-up than the numbing effects of liquor.

They might well have wondered all this, but they too would have been shot. For Haskell took great pains never to leave known witnesses breathing. At least that was what he'd heard about himself in small towns and large, wherever he'd visited quietly, where people thought they knew him but didn't realize they were talking to the man of flesh himself, and not just the man of rumor.

“That's not the sort of help I was looking for,” said Haskell as he glanced down at the oozing head of McGinley. He knew that soon a crowd would close in, attracted by the god-awful noise revolvers made. But there was nothing for it. He had to have the innards of that cashbox, and the fastest way was a bullet.

Grady liked the way sudden, sharp actions had of blazing right through all the expected yammering and chitter-chatter. All he wanted was the money, maybe a free drink, and then . . . gone. He'd get that this morning too, but in the form of the still-locked cashbox and a nearly full bottle of Crow Dog rye.

Yes, voices drew closer, clumping along the narrow sprung-plank boardwalk out front. But Haskell was already out the same door he'd entered. Through the narrow storage room, then the alley to his waiting horse, the fidgety roan. If he had known what the beast would be like, he would have opted for a different one. But he had to admit the horse had bottom. He'd tested it three times since leaving Oregon and heading southward.

Each barroom raid had resulted in less money than he had expected, but enough to get him to the next town. The one thing he always tried to avoid was hard work for someone else. Heck, he didn't even like to spend much effort on his own behalf. Nothing more galling than sweating when he didn't have to.

By the time shouts from the alley reached him, he was already more than half a mile out of town toward a cluster of rocky gray spires visible to the southwest, jutting from the lodgepole pines like low storm clouds.

Haskell snorted down a laugh. “Rubes, every one of them,” he said to the horse. “They'll be coming and we'll be gone. They always wait a little too long. They see the blood and they know they're next. They let themselves think of their wives, the little ones, their good town lives, how hard their trips out here were.

“They let those comforting thoughts settle in and then, of course, it's too late to give chase, to do much of anything but quiver and cry and mourn. Those few seconds plant the doubt, the fear.” Haskell smiled. That's really what I do, he thought. I am a farmer of these fools, and their fears are my crops. He let out a snort. “I am a poet, horse. And don't let nobody tell you different!”

The metal cashbox, stuffed in one saddlebag, but too long to let him work the buckle properly, bounced in rhythm with the harried horse's efforts. Its coiny contents clanked, alternately pleasing and annoying Haskell. He'd hoped for a heftier box, but hadn't had the time to wait another day for the money from Saturday night's affairs. Besides, he reasoned, there was no guarantee that the lummox of a bartender—different from the man he'd laid low, wouldn't have taken the cash home or to the town bank.

What he wouldn't give for all the money in a rich town's bank. . . . With that fulsome, comforting thought settling over his brain like a thick, drizzle-filled gray cloud, Grady Haskell booted the wide-eyed roan to a greater lunging pace and popped the cork from the mouth of the bottle of rye. He smiled as he guzzled what he regarded as a well-earned drink. But nowhere near as tasty as that first sip of champagne was going to be from that first bottle of many he was going to buy once he pilfered clean his first big, bursting bank.

Only thing he needed was a handful of rubes willing to do all the things he didn't have enough hands for. Elsewise he'd do the entire thing himself. But there was nothing saying he had to end up splitting the loot with them. No, sir, they would serve a purpose, as all the others had done, as the man back at that one-horse-town saloon had done, served a purpose. And then Grady had done him a favor by relieving him of having to think about his part in it all.

Grady howled once more as his horse galloped hard over the low hills far to the south of the little town. He swigged the rye and enjoyed the sound of the coins clanking and rattling in the box. Soon, he thought. Soon I will need packhorses to haul it all.

“Well, I'll tell you, Charlie. Tawley's place is sort of hard to define. I can tell you what you can do there and what you can't do there. What you can do is a fairly limited list, but what you can't do there is an even shorter list.”

“I reckon I don't understand that, Pap.” Charlie winced as Nub stepped wrong, looking to avoid a wrist-thick branch that would've tripped him up. “Whoa, now.”

Pap rubbed his chin in consideration. “Let's see. I'd say that Hawley's is equal parts education, salvation, and damnation. That is to say that at least last time I was through this way, part of the day on Sunday it was used as a church—not that there was many folks who'd attend. Tawley and his woman and some little half-breed that was left with them a while back. Little girl, I think it was. Couldn't speak, nor hear. Odd case, that was.

“Now you mention it, I do recall hearing some time ago that Tawley's woman up and left him. Lucky for him, I'd say. A homelier critter you'd have to work hard to find—she had more hair on her face than I do—and lumps and warts and whatnot. But Lordy, she could cook, I'll give her that. Yep, I heard that she up and left him. Now, who told me that? Couldn't have been one of the boys. They don't much care for palaver, though I am partial to it of an evening.” He looked over at Charlie, saw the young man was chuckling and wincing and holding his sides all at once.

“What's so all-fired humorous, youngster? I will say it does me good to see you know how to smile. I thought for sure that mule you'd buried back there had taken that with her.”

“Oh,” said Charlie, rubbing his sides and doing his best not to laugh anymore. “It's that you started out talking about one thing, then kept going with another notion, then another.”

“Oh,” said Pap. “Where was it I was supposed to go, if you don't mind telling me?”

“You started out telling me about that fella Tawley. And how his place was sort of difficult to pin down.”

“Yep, so it is. Then I commenced to telling you about the man himself. And one thing led to another. Can't tell about a man without telling about his woman, eh?”

“I reckon you're right.”

“You already said as much.”

Charlie felt as though he looked dumber than ever. He felt his face redden again. It was getting to be a habit.

“Them other things, let's see, there's the fact that the same woman tried to teach anyone who came by the basics of schooling. That's the education part of what I was saying about Tawley's place. Matter of fact, I took one of her readin' classes, but I'll be jiggered if I can do much more than decipher a plain old word here and there, maybe read my own name. But it got me this far, eh, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, makes no never mind. You'll see Tawley and his place soon enough. I hope the boys managed to do what I asked of them. They should be there, waiting on us.” He turned to Charlie as he nudged his own gray horse into a lope. “With any luck Tawley'll have a venison haunch roasting over a fire!”

“Pap? You say your name is Pap?” The unknown man pushed himself away from the rough plank bar top, turned to face Pap and Charlie.

“I knowed me a fella by the name of Pap once. Of course, he was a real pap, ol' Grandpappy, he was. And I doubt very much, knowing him as I did, that you would make much of a patch on his backside. On the other hand, could be I'm being cranky and cruel. Could be I should get to know you first before I make such bold proclamations.”

Pap didn't know what to make of this bold-talking stranger. In short enough order he regained his voice and bellowed not at this new jackal, but at his men, “Ain't a one of you all going to do a thing except stand there and drink and look stupid? I swear, why I ever took to dragging you fools around is a thing I will never in all my years fathom.”

The most sign of offense or shame any of them could muster was a bit of reddening in the ears. None of them met his stare. The stranger broke the silence, cutting off Pap Morton before the old man began to cackle again, this time in his direction.

“Who's that big goober there?” said the stranger, nodding at Charlie. “I see he's one of them big, dumb ones.”

He walked forward toward Charlie, talking and raising his voice. “I say, I see you are one of them dumb ones. Soft in the thinker?” He rapped his finger to the side of his head. “You get kicked in the head by a ornery mule as a boy? That what happened?”

The stranger looked to either side of himself, where Ace, Mex, Dutchy, and Simp were arrayed, two to a side, flanking him at the bar. He leaned back, thumbing the half-filled beer mug and smiling at his own wit.

There was a brief silence; then Charlie said, “No, sir.”

“How's that?” said the stranger, his brow knitted. “What did you say to me?”

Charlie cleared his voice. “No, sir. I said, I ain't never been kicked by a mule.”

“Oh, well, now, that's good to hear. Mighty good to hear, ain't it, boys?”

The four men flanking him still looked at their boots and mumbled.

“Come on, Charlie. These folks are too good for us, I guess.” Pap headed down to the far end of the bar and rapped his knuckles on the bar top. Where's Tawley at? You back there, boy?” Pap smiled at Charlie. “You'll like Tawley. He's a—”

“He's a lousy bartender is what he is.” Again, it was the stranger. “But I reckon he'll be out soon to fill our glasses. I sent him back there to fix us up some food. I asked about that fat little squaw he's got kicking around back there, but he told me she ain't for sale. I told him I don't want to buy the dang cow, just want to milk her for a while, you know?”

The stranger thought this was a funny thing, because he laughed all by himself longer than any man Charlie had ever seen do such a thing. Then the man stopped and Charlie felt the air in the room tighten somehow, grow colder and clammy.

After a few minutes a short, fat man grunted and nudged aside a filthy, frayed canvas tarpaulin nailed up that served as a door between what Charlie assumed was the kitchen area. The man held before him a plank on which sat the remnants of a round loaf of bread that had been not so much sliced as clawed apart. Charlie spied a hunk of cheese beside it, the yellow of which resembled thick crumbs in the man's beard.

The fat man's hands were as begrimed as the canvas that slapped back into place behind him. His head was little more than a protuberance from atop his soft, round shoulders. All in all, Charlie decided the man resembled an egg topped with a ring of hair so greasy it looked wet. Circling the very air above him, like a living halo, a tangle of flies buzzed and dipped, alternating between the heights of the man's head and the food on the plank he carried.

The man regarded warily the tray of food he carried as if it might fight back, and didn't look up until he was halfway down the long plank bar. He set the food on the counter before Grady and the others, then looked to his right, probably sensing someone else had entered. A smile cracked the fat, sweaty face. “Pap Morton! As I live and breathe, been a long time, old friend!” He shuffled toward Pap and Charlie's end of the bar as Pap responded in kind.

“You've looked better, you old cur—”

Grady's voice barked, cutting through the sudden hopefulness.

“This is what you got for us? You call this food?” Haskell jammed the end of the serving board with his hand and sent it caroming off the bar top behind Tawley.

Though Charlie admitted that the food hadn't looked all that appetizing, this stranger's rudeness was something he'd not ever seen in a man before.

“Here, now,” said Pap, slamming a bony fist on the bar top hard enough to jiggle a cracked saucer with the nub of a tallow candle setting in it. “I've had about all I'm going to take from you, mister. My boys here are obviously smitten with you, but I'll be jiggered if I am. You're rude, you're a loudmouth, and you're acting like everybody in this here room owes you something.”

The stranger, instead of bellowing like a scalded cat as Charlie had expected he would, grinned high and wide, barked a laugh, and slapped the bar himself. Then he said, “Finally, glad to see someone here with a set of man's best friends. I thought for sure I'd found the wrong group!”

The sudden change in the stranger's attitude stunned everyone into silence for a moment. Then Pap broke the silence. “What are you on about, mister? You looking to pick a fight, I'll oblige you and glad of it. Been a while since I mixed it up with a jackass.”

Pap pushed back from the bar and with trembling hands and an outthrust bottom jaw supporting a dancing bottom lip, he fidgeted with the buttons on his shirt's cuffs.

“Relax, old man. Name's Grady Haskell, and I was funning you, as I said. Long and short of it is, I am looking for a handful of men for a job. I wasn't none too convinced of it when I come upon these four slow-witted gents trying to nab goods from a mule skinner's freight wagon. Man didn't see them, but I did.”

“You the law, Grady Haskell?” said Pap, not slowing down his unbuttoning one bit.

“Me? The Law? Nah, but that's about as funny a thing as I've heard in a long while.”

“You best start making sense, mister, 'cause I'm about to button up those eyes of your'n, fatten your homely lips, and make you wish you wasn't born.”

With that, Pap shoved by Charlie and launched his old chicken-bone body straight at the unsuspecting Haskell. Charlie made a grab for the old rooster, but too late, and ended up feeling the back of Pap's leather vest slip through his fingertips.

All Charlie would recall of the next few minutes were a blur of scarred, bloody knuckles on grimy hands, bellowed oaths shouted by grunts as those begrimed fists slammed into flesh. All around him the melee built to a rage. Dutchy and Mex, Ace and Simp all dove in, throwing elbows, raising knees, and driving their scarred fists at one another, at Charlie, at Pap, at the stranger—didn't seem to matter to them if they were friends or foes.

Finally Charlie figured there was enough reason to help Pap and his boys as there was to fight against that foulmouthed rascal who made less sense to Charlie every time he opened his mouth.

His sides still hurt him mightily. He guessed that must be those broken ribs Pap was all bothered about. But it felt good to stretch out. Unfortunately his first punch met not with the leering face of the stranger, but with the same spot on Dutchy's head, who had managed somehow to pop up between the two of them, like a rabbit out of a hole, as Charlie swung.

Dutchy went down with an “Oof!” like a sack of ground meal at Charlie's feet.

“Thanks, friend,” wheezed a still-smiling stranger, staring at Charlie.

“What was that?” shouted Pap, windmilling at anyone in sight, but angling toward the loudmouthed stranger. His bony chicken limbs and big knuckles had already clipped each of his men, and now that glint in his eye told Charlie that he was next.

“It wasn't like that, Pap. Honest.” But he had no time for further thought on the subject, because Pap freed himself from the desperate grip Tawley had on the back of his vest. He blustered himself like a crazed chicken right at Charlie, in the process whipping by the wide-open stranger. Before the old man's claws connected with Charlie, his eyes went wide and he gagged out a sound Charlie hadn't ever heard from a man before. But the reason why interested him much more—Haskell's wide hands were encircled around Pap's throat.

Without thinking, Charlie went low, wedged a big arm between the two struggling bodies, and drove upward. It didn't knock the stranger's grip loose as he'd intended. Instead it appeared to have the opposite effect, and succeeded only in tightening the stranger's grip on Pap's neck. The old man's eyes bugged out like two bloodshot quail eggs and his tongue had begun to purple.

Without thinking, Charlie drove his right fist straight at the side of Grady Haskell's head and relished the cracking and shifting that he felt underneath his knuckles. The man's head snapped to the side and his grip on Pap's old neck peeled apart. But to Charlie's surprise, Haskell spun back around and stared right at Charlie, smiling.

“Now, that was a hit!” he said, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth, then spitting a clot of blood on the floor.

Charlie bent to help Pap, who was rising from where he'd dropped to his knees. “You leave offa me. Keep yer big mitts to yourself.” He shouted this, but it took him a few seconds to get it out. And as he did, the room filled with a thundering boom. Charlie brought his hands to his hears reflexively and winced as pain bloomed in hot jags throughout his rib cage.

Blue-gray smoke filled the room and as the roar diminished it was replaced with ringing silence.

“There, by jove! You stop your fighting right now or I'll touch off the second barrel. And these shells don't come cheap!” It was Tawley and he looked fit to be tied.

“Tawley,” said Pap, massaging his neck. He looked upward as the smoke parted, revealing a ragged slumped hole in the roof's random thick layers of branch and daub and thatch. “You touch off another and this tender old place is liable to come down around our ears!” He cackled then, but the laugh turned into a coughing fit.

“You all right, Pap?” said Tawley.

The old man merely nodded. “No thanks to the pair of them.” He looked at Charlie and the stranger named Grady Haskell.

“Now, look here, Pap,” said Charlie, wanting in no way to get lumped in with the big-mouthed stranger.

“He ain't with me. Charlie boy can hit, but he's too big, too soft, and too blamed young to throw in with the likes of me, old man.” Haskell smiled. “No offense boy. As I say, you can lace with that big ham hand of yours, but those four sad cases over there are more to my liking.”

“Your liking?” Pap looked at his boys, Ace, Simp, Mex, and Dutchy, who were hanging back by the bar. They'd thrown punches, as Charlie had seen, but they didn't seem to have regarded the dustup as anything more than a bit of blowing off steam, a fun way to pass a few minutes.

Pap stared at the men back by the bar. “What in heck are you papooses doing? Holding up the walls? By gum, if I had me an ounce more of gumption I'd let you all have it to the high heavens and back. Ain't never seen a more worthless or ungrateful gang than the likes of you all.”

While Pap sputtered on, berating the four weak men, Charlie glanced at Haskell once again. He saw the man smiling, enjoying the spectacle of Pap's anger. Charlie saw in the stranger's eyes the glint of something he'd never seen in another person's eyes before. And he knew what it was—it was evil and rage and jealousy, all balled up in the man's eyes, in his mind.

Most of all, it was, Charlie decided, a murderous mind and a killing look, a killing urge that Grady Haskell represented. Charlie was quite sure, no matter what the man said, that if he hadn't stopped him, Haskell would have strangled Pap to death, would have finished what he'd begun. This was no kiddies' game to Haskell.

But now the man appeared to act as if it was all a joke, all in good fun, and that they were the best of friends. None of this made any sense to Charlie. And why weren't Pap's boys doing something to lend a hand?