Town Tamers (2 page)

U
sually when Bull Cumberland threatened someone they had the good sense to show fear. But the young bartender went on smiling as if it were of no account that he was the lone mouse in a room full of angry cats.

“Let me have him,” Jake Bass said. “The only thing I hate more than a gent who thinks he knows everything is redskins.”

“I don’t know everything,” Byron said, “but I do know my namesake. I’ve been reading him since I was knee-high to a calf.”

“Don’t think you can talk cows and save yourself,” Crusty said.

Jake Bass slowly drew his Colt and pointed it at Byron. “How about I start with his ears? Then a finger or three. Then we can make him dance and I’ll work on the toes.”

To Bull’s surprise, Byron ignored Jake and turned to him.

“That’s why I thought of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
when I saw you.”

“What?” Bull said, and was annoyed at himself for saying it so much. To his consternation, the young barkeep touched his chest again and raised his hand.

“‘Sudden he stops—his eye is fixed—away—Away, thou heedless boy! Prepare the spear.’”

Jake Bass cocked his Colt. “I’ve listened to enough of this.”

“Wait,” Bull said. “What was that about a spear?”

“‘Now is thy time, to perish, or display the skill that may yet check his mad career!’” Byron quoted. “‘With well-timed croupe the nimble coursers veer. On foams the Bull, but not unscathed he goes; streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear.’”

“Did you say Bull?” Bull said.

Byron nodded. “You can see why I thought of you, can’t you?”

Bull couldn’t see any such thing but he didn’t want to admit it.

“Mr. Tandy told me about the Circle K when he hired me,” Byron went on. “He said you’re the cocks of the walk in these parts.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Crusty said.

Byron went on addressing Bull. “He described you and said I’m to treat you special. That you’re to be respected. That what you say goes.”

“George Tandy said all that?” Bull said.

“And more.”

“Can I shoot his ear off or not?” Jake Bass asked.

“Not,” Bull said.

“Why in hell can’t I?”

“Because I said so.”

“Damn it. Look at him. Standin’ there all dandified and spoutin’ that stuff.”

“Holster your smoke wagon.”

Jake’s jaw muscles twitched. He glared at Byron, glanced at Bull, and reluctantly let down the hammer on his revolver and thrust it into his holster. “If this don’t beat all,” he grumbled.

Bull held out his hand to Byron. “You get to go on breathin’, boy.”

Crusty spit into the dented spittoon caked brown with misses and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I don’t like it nohow.”

“You buckin’ me?” Bull asked.

“Not so long as I’m in my right mind,” Crusty replied. “But a saloon ain’t no place for Nancy talk.”

“I sort of like it,” Bull said.

Old Tom shook his head. “Just when I reckon I’ve heard everything.”

Byron began filling glasses, tilting the bottle expertly and not spilling so much as a drop. He went down the row so fast that the cowhands were impressed. Righting the bottle with a flourish, he announced, “Wet your throats and let the fun commence.”

In no time the saloon filled with raucous laughter, ribald jokes, and the tinkle of poker chips. Everyone forgot about the new bartender. They paid him no mind when he mentioned that he was going into the back room for more bottles.

Byron whistled as he went down the hall and opened a door.

A small man in a rust-colored suit perched on a stool in a corner gave a start. His bald pate was sprinkled with sweat, and he anxiously said, “I didn’t hear shots.”

“You see me, don’t you?” Whistling, Byron moved to a shelf and selected a couple of bottles of Monongahela. “You should go home, Mr. Tandy. Try to relax and get some sleep.”

“How can I, with what we’ve done? If they find out—” Tandy stopped and his throat bobbed.

“They won’t,” Byron assured him and flashed another of his smiles. “The Circle K outfit doesn’t know it yet, but hell is coming to call.”

A
long about midnight, things turned ugly.

By then the punchers had guzzled a river of liquor, those who had money to lose at poker had lost it, and the jokes and the boasts had worn thin.

Old Tom started things by saying to no one in particular, “Well, this has gotten dull.”

Crusty missed a spittoon and wiped his mouth with his other sleeve. “Watchin’ grass grow would be more excitin’.”

“It’s Tandy’s fault,” Jake Bass said. “He should hire a new dove. Hell, he should hire five or six.”

“You shot the last one,” Old Tom reminded him.

“Only in the leg,” Jake Bass said. “And only because she poked fun at me.”

“What did she say, again?” Crusty said and scratched his chin as if he was trying to remember. “Now I recollect. She said your pecker was the size of a pencil.”

Many of the cowboys laughed but not Jake Bass. He reared out of his chair with his hand poised over his Colt. “On your feet, you son of a bitch. I’ll blow out your wick for that.”

Crusty was drunk enough that he put his hands on the table to stand.

“No,” Bull Cumberland said from over at the bar.

Jake Bass swore a mean streak, then snapped, “Why are you buttin’ in? You heard him insult me.”

His back to the room, Bull raised his glass and swallowed before he answered. “Lavender wouldn’t have called you a pencil, except you were smackin’ her for refusin’ to take you to bed, and she got mad.”

“She was a dove, damn it.”

“Not all doves sell themselves,” Bull remarked. “And she had the right to say no if she wanted.”

“Why are you takin’ her side all of a sudden?” Jake Bass asked. “You’ve been pickin’ on me all night. You wouldn’t let me shoot that no-account poet, and now this.”

Bull set down his glass and turned. His right hand was close to a Smith & Wesson he wore high on his hip and when he spoke, his voice had a timbre that caused every man in the place to stiffen. “You’re commencin’ to rile me.”

Old Tom quickly said, “He don’t mean nothin’, Bull. He’s had too much to drink, is all.”

“We all have,” Tyree Lucas said.

Bull moved a couple of steps to one side so no one was between him and Jake Bass. “I’m waitin’,” he said.

Jake Bass looked around him, apparently expecting someone to say something. When no one did, he elevated his arms out from his sides and offered a sickly grin. “Tom is right. I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Your problem, Jake, is that you let your mouth get ahead of your brain.”

“I do,” Jake agreed. “I truly do.”

“You’re always ready to sharpen your horns at the drop of a feather, and you drop the feather.”

“I am,” Jake said. “I surely am.”

“One of these days you’re goin’ to sharpen them at the wrong time and someone will put windows in your skull.” Bull’s mouth split in an icy smile. “Maybe me. Maybe here and now.”

“I have a notion,” Old Tom piped up. “Why don’t we tree the town and have us some fun?”

“Tree the town?” Crusty repeated. “You don’t tree towns, you old goat. You tree law dogs.”

“Same thing,” Old Tom insisted.

All eyes swung to Bull Cumberland, who hadn’t taken his off of Jake Bass. Now he did, to gaze thoughtfully at the batwings.

In the act of wiping a glass, Byron said, “Most folks are in bed by now. You’d wake them up.”

“So?” Bull Cumberland said.

Old Tom, Crusty, and several others stood up, and Old Tom said, “Let’s do ’er. Let’s rouse ’em and pass out some booze and have us a frolic.”

“Let’s,” Bull Cumberland said.

Just like that, the saloon emptied. Yipping and laughing and unlimbering their hardware, the punchers bustled out into the night and spread up and down the main street.

Bull went out last, taking his time. He paused at the batwings to say, “Bring me a couple of bottles.”

“Sure thing.” Byron came around the end of the bar. “I hope no one gets hurt.”

“Why would they? We’re only havin’ fun.” Bull took the bottles and said, “Keep things like that to yourself from here on out. You’ll last longer.”

Byron watched the man-mountain stride off, then hurried to the hall to the storeroom.

Tandy was still on the stool in the corner, looking as glum as a human being could look. “You’re running out of whiskey again?”

“They’re fixing to rouse the town,” Byron said. “Figured you’d want to know.”

“Oh God.” Tandy came off the stool as if shot from it. “You have to stop them. All kinds of things can happen.”

“Not me by myself I can’t,” Byron said. “I have to stick to the plan.”

Tandy nervously rubbed his hands together and bit his bottom lip. “You can see why we sent for him, can’t you? You can see how it is?”

“So far I haven’t seen much,” Byron said. “Some prodding and tempers, but no blood has been spilled. I’d hate to think I came all this way for nothing.”

“Just you wait,” Tandy said. “You don’t know them like I do. They’re animals. They fooled you by acting tame but it won’t last. Their true natures will come out and innocent people will suffer.”

“Do you always expect the worst?”

“I know them, I tell you,” Tandy declared. “There have been seven killings in two years, one of them our last marshal, plus the stage robberies and that drummer who was found dead. They’re bad men, the whole bunch.”

“The man you sent for is worse,” Byron said.

A
t
the second house they came to, Crusty pounded on the door and hollered, “Open up in there. We’re invitin’ you to a town social.”

The windows were dark. No life showed within until Crusty pounded harder. A glow lit an upstairs window, and a few moments later it slid open and a head poked out.

“What in tarnation is going on down there?”

“Open up, Ed,” Crusty said.

“What are you loco cowpokes up to now?” Ed demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Come on down and bring the missus.”

Other punchers were pounding on other doors and other lamps and candles were being lit, other windows brightening.

Crusty stepped back from the door and looked up. “Didn’t you hear me, Ed?”

Ed was gaping at the state of events in amazement. “You can’t do this. We’re decent, law-abiding folk.”

“There hasn’t been any law since Bull shot that tin star,” Crusty said. “And drinkin’ and dancin’ is only a little bit indecent.”

“You’re loco, the whole bunch of you,” Ed said.

Crusty and Tyree Lucas swapped scowls.

“Ed,” Crusty said, “I like you. I’ve been in your store more times then I have fingers and toes and you’ve always treated me kindly.”

“You and everyone else,” Ed said.

“But we want a frolic. And what we want, we will by-God have.”

“My wife and I aren’t coming out for no silly frolic, and that’s final.”

“You’re a poor excuse for a friend,” Crusty said.

Tyree Lucas moved to a patch of flowers ringed by rocks and hefted a big rock. “This will do,” he said, and let it fly at the nearest ground-floor window. The glass shattered with a tremendous crash.

“No!” Ed cried. “What are you doing?”

Tyree bent and picked up another rock.

“He’ll stop chuckin’ when you open this door,” Crusty said.

Ed’s head disappeared.

“That did the trick,” Crusty said, and he and Tyree chuckled.

It wasn’t twenty seconds more that the busted window glowed and they heard the rasp of a bolt and the front door was flung open.

In the doorway stood Ed in his nightshirt. He was short and portly—and holding a doubled-barreled shotgun.

“Well, hell,” Crusty said.

Ed was so mad, his whole body shook as he pointed the shotgun at them and placed his thumb on a hammer. “You broke my window, damn you. You’ll pay for it, you hear? For the glass and the cost of putting it in.”

“Lower that cannon,” Tyree Lucas said.

“I will not.”

“Where’s that missus of yours?” Crusty said. “She always struck me as havin’ more sense than you.”

“Leave Myrtle out of this,” Ed said.

“I was hopin’ to have a dance with her.”

“Over my dead body.”

Bull Cumberland appeared out of the darkness with his Smith & Wesson in his hand. He fired, and the impact of the slug when it smashed into Ed’s chest staggered Ed back against the jamb.

Ed stared in disbelief at a spreading scarlet stain on his nightshirt and then at Bull Cumberland. “You’ve done killed me.”

“You shouldn’t ought to point shotguns at Circle K riders,” Bull said, and shot him a second time.

A hole blossomed in Ed’s temple, and his legs melted out from under him.

“Well, hell,” Crusty said a second time. “Did you have to?”

“What’s the rule?” Bull asked as he calmly set to reloading.

“We stand up for each other,” Crusty said.

“We ride for the brand above all else,” Tyree Lucas threw in.

“That we do,” Bull said. “Anyone points a gun at us, they die. Doesn’t matter who they are, they die. Male, female, young, old, they die.”

Crusty sadly shook his head. “We’ve all of us known Ed Sykes for years. He always treated us decent at the general store. I doubt he’d have shot me.”

“You can’t ever take anything for granted,” Bull Cumberland said.

As if to prove him right, Myrtle Sykes stepped out the front door. She had on a bulky blue robe and blue slippers, and her hair was in a bun. She also held a pocket pistol.

“What do you think you’re doin’?” Bull demanded.

“Killing you,” Myrtle said, and trained her pocket pistol on him.