Kirby Langstrom was not a man to be intimidated.
He drew out his Colt and laid it down loudly on the polished hardwood bar next to his shot glass. It was a clear signal to the four men at the end of the bar. Mess with me and you meet a prompt and untimely end. That was what he was saying.
Maybe they were shortsighted or just plain dumb because they didn’t take the hint.
The four had been edgy ever since he had entered the saloon half an hour since. Sitting at the rear of the place and glowering at him. Shuffling their boots restlessly and pushing back their chairs so they could face him direct and show they were armed to the teeth.
They thought they were flag waving some kind of danger signal with their flashy presentation of large Bowie knives, cross-braced ammunition belts, cut-off shotgun and Enfield rifles but they didn’t fool Kirby. He knew their display was a front. They relied on their numbers to see them through but at heart he reckoned they were all just show.
‘You aiming to do something with that?’ the antsy bartender asked, looking down at the dull shine of the Army Colt sitting with warning menace on the bar.
Kirby gazed at him calmly, his gray eyes giving nothing away.
‘Aiming to stop something, is more like,’ he answered.
‘I run a decent place here, you want to make trouble, you do it outside. Am I clear?’
Doubtless, he was a man who had come up against the same problem a thousand times before. It showed in his hostile attitude. He was unmoving and firm, one hand holding a dishrag and washed glass, the other out of sight below the counter.
‘I ain’t about to start anything, sir,’ said Kirby politely. ‘Look to your other customers and leave whatever you’ve got down there where it is.’
‘Just so you know,’ warned the barman.
Kirby sipped from his glass, his eyes sliding back to the four men. The obvious leader sat far back in the shadows of their rear table, his hat brim formed up into a rakish black fold. He wore a jacket piped with white edging and sported old Mexican escudo buttons. One tooth was gold and it gleamed in the shadow of his dark beard as he sucked on a hand rolled cigarette and blew smoke in a stream towards Kirby.
‘You got my food yet?’ Kirby asked the bartender, who had backed off but was still keeping a close eye on him.
‘It’s coming,’ promised the man, with a glance towards the curtain covering the kitchen area behind the bar.
It wasn’t a bad little place really. Clean kept and comfortable, low pine-plank ceiling with a narrow bannister stairway off to one side that climbed to the rooms above. A long room with a black pot bellied stove halfway along. The room opened out once you got past the stairway and at that end of the room where the four guys sat only a little light penetrated from the street. The rest of the clientele was made up of mainly cowpunchers and town traders, who were generally quiet or engaged in low conversation. There was no music or any presence of loud whores and the calm atmosphere made his observation by the four men all the more evident.
Kirby tired of it, he had ridden a long day to get to Bullock Cross and he was in need of a meal and some rest.
‘Boys,’ he said, turning and facing the four men directly. ‘I’m getting a crick in my neck watching you fellas. You got some call on me? ‘Cos if you have, best spit it out so I can rest easy. I ain’t here looking for you, if that’s your problem. I just stopped by for a feed and a swallow for me and that pinto outside, that’s all.’
The one at the back was the only one to moved. He pushed his chair back with a rasp from the rondelo wheels of his silver spurs.
‘Then just who is you?’ the man asked, his voice a low sneer.
‘No one to you, partner,’ Kirby came back.
‘I ain’t your partner,’ growled the man.
‘Clinton,’ said the bartender. ‘Leave it be, I don’t want no trouble.’
‘It’s okay, Buzz,’ said the gold-toothed man in a placating tone. ‘No trouble from us. Maybe this stranger aims on making some but us boys is just sitting here quietly taking our leisure. You aim on making some trouble, stranger?’
Hot damn! Thought Kirby. What is it with these people? I don’t know them from Adam and they want to cause me grief for no good reason I can see, other than the fact I just walked in the door. He shucked out a few coins from his vest pocket and tossed them on the bar.
‘Tell you what,’ he said to the barman. ‘Forget the food. That’ll cover the drink and I’m out of here. Tell you friend Clinton there, he’s a mighty big man and I am truly in righteous awe of him.’
Kirby slipped the Colt back in his cross-draw holster and was turning to leave when he heard their chairs scrape on the floorboards.
‘You’re here for Bart McCoy, ain’t you?’ Clinton asked.
Right then Kirby had it figured.
Bart McCoy, the Confederate irregular who was cutting the railroad tracks north of here was certainly the man he was looking for. Word of his whereabouts on the Kansas/Missouri border had reached the Chicago offices of Pinkerton’s Preventative Watch and they had telegraphed Kirby to go seek him out right away.
‘Hey, Pink! I’m talking to you,’ called Clinton.
Kirby had his back to them but he knew that all four would be on their feet now, their array of weaponry pointing straight at him.
There was a scramble as the customers sitting in the line of fire scurried from their seats and Buzz the bartender started to complain loudly.
‘Outside!’ he bawled. ‘The whole damned lot of you. Get out of here, I don’t want my place busted up.’
‘Shutup, Buzz,’ ordered Clinton. ‘The Pink here has come looking for my cuz Bart, who’s a loyal and brave servant of the South. You should know we can’t let that happen.’
Kirby raised his open palms to his shoulders and slowly turned around to face them.
‘You got it all wrong, mister,’ he said, with a show of innocence. ‘Who is this Bart McCoy? Me, I’m just a hungry traveller passing through. I didn’t come looking for trouble and don’t want none.’
‘There, you see,’ said the irascible Buzz. ‘He don’t want no trouble. He ain’t who you think he is.’
Clinton sucked at his gold tooth, ‘Shoot, Buzz. You believe that? This old boy is a Pinkerton agent and whilst good Southern men are dying for the Confederacy this Northern piece of shit, who ain’t even got the decency to wear a proper uniform, is coming here to nail our poor boys down. Why, he’s a spy, ain’t that right, Pink?’
Kirby did not answer; he just looked at the four with sad eyes full of the inevitability of what he knew was coming.
‘I reckon we ought to string him up,’ said the man with the shotgun alongside Clinton. ‘That’s what they do to traitors and spies, ain’t it?’
‘Hmm,’ hummed Clinton speculatively. ‘That’s a mighty fine idea, Brad. He’ll make a right nice decoration to that telegraph pole outside.’
‘Buzz,’ Kirby turned and apologized sadly to the bartender. ‘This is a real nice place you have here and I hate to do this but you see how it goes, I just can’t help myself.’
With a clattering of boots, Kirby hopped from one foot to the other as he began a hoedown step on the boards. He picked up the pace and danced and whirled, tripping out fancy steps with his eyes never leaving the bemused group of gunmen. He whopped his boots with his hand and yipped as he sashayed on the spot.
‘I just love to dance, fellas,’ he called out, grinning wildly. ‘I find a step or two always takes the edge off, don’t you know?’
‘What the hell?’ snuffed Clinton in confusion.
How the Colt appeared in Kirby’s hand so fast was an object of conversation in Bullock Cross long after the matter had been settled.
Brad with the shotgun took it first. Kirby didn’t like the idea of the scattergun with its spread of shot, so he had to be the one to go right off. The .45 slug punched Brad in the gut and threw him backwards. The gunman stumbled over into the chairs and table behind and the shotgun roared skywards, blasting a great hole and cascading portions of the thin plank ceiling down in a rain of splinters and dust.
Kirby spun right, fanning the hammer and blasting at the second gunman. Without pausing to watch the fellow fall, he rotated and holding the pistol at shoulder height and with arm extended let the other man have one in the brainbox. The guy juddered as if he had been hit in the head with a hammer, which he had by rights. A lead hammer that took his future away and dropped him like wet rag.
That left Clinton, whom Kirby saved until last.
The gold tooth was visible as Clinton gaped. The air between them was alive with wreathing gun smoke, the noise had been deafening in the low roofed bar and Clinton was stunned by the speed and suddenness of such slaughter. His wide eyes looked from one of his fallen companions to the other and then back at Kirby. Clinton stared down the barrel of Kirby’s Colt and gulped, he allowed the six-shooter in his hand to fall to the boards as he raised his hands.
‘Don’t do it,’ he begged. ‘Please don’t do it. He’s upstairs,’ he added quickly. ‘Bart, he’s upstairs.’
‘So much for family loyalties,’ observed Kirby, keeping his pistol leveled between Clinton’s eyes. ‘What’s he doing upstairs?’
‘He’s got a woman up there,’ confessed the terrified gunman.
‘That’s enough!’ shouted Buzz, poking his head up above the counter where he had dived when the shooting started. ‘I knew it! Look at that ceiling. Busted to hell and gone, someone’s got to pay.’
‘There’ll be enough in their pockets, I reckon,’ said Kirby, with a nod at the fallen men. He was listening hard. No man could have missed the sounds of the gunfight, not even if they were heavily engaged in a lustful encounter.
He heard it then. The clatter of boots on shingles, then a thud as a body landed out back.
‘Sounds like your cousin is making his getaway,’ said Kirby, still keeping Clinton under a steely glance and the end of his gun. ‘This is real inconvenient. Now I have to light out again. I miss my supper and a glass or two taken in relaxation and it’s all down to you Clinton.’
Kirby clicked back the hammer on the Colt.
‘No, no!’ pleaded Clinton, all his earlier bravado deserting him. ‘Look, mister. I know where he hangs out. I can tell you where Bart’s going.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Sure, sure, I can take you there.’
‘Why don’t you just tell me?’
‘’Cos you’ll hear it all and then you’ll plug me, that’s why.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Kirby, levering the hammer back down and raising the pistol. ‘I can plug you any old time.’
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ gabbled Clinton thankfully. ‘You take it easy, mister. We’re all fine here now.’
The sound of racing hoof beats came from the rear of the saloon as Bart McCoy made off.
‘We ain’t fine!’ bawled the irate Buzz angrily. ‘Just look at my place. That there is a lake of human blood I have to clean up and a ruined ceiling to fix. You and your dandy roustabouts, Clinton, you ain’t got a lick of sense between you. You beggar belief, you really do.’
A murmur of excited conversation rose from the rest of the saloon as men righted chairs and moved for a better view of the bodies.
‘Come out here,’ Kirby ordered Clinton and pointed to a place further down the bar.
As he did so a half naked, older woman appeared at the top of the flight of stairs. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ she shrieked. ‘Buzz, we got a damned great hole in the floor upstairs. You going to let this sort of thing happen while I got visitors?’
‘There, there, honey,’ said Buzz, his tone dropping to a mellower and more ingratiating level. ‘It’s all done now. We’ll sort it out, don’t you fear.’
The woman sniffed and gathered the flounced folds of a flowered nightgown across her hanging breasts. She was no beauty and at her advanced years Kirby considered that she received such deference from the saloonkeeper as she was probably the only available female willing to share her withered bounty with the locals for fifty miles or more in any direction.
‘You just see you do,’ screeched the whore, turning on her heel and stomping back up the stairs. ‘Never known the like,’ she complained as she disappeared. ‘Thought I was enjoying an earth-moving moment there and turn’s out its just some ass with a load of buckshot. Lord! Wish I was back in Ohio, I truly do.’
Buzz was crouched over the fallen men going through their pockets and obviously pleased with what he discovered.
‘Hey there, everybody,’ he called out in a more cheerful voice, clinking a handful of coin. ‘Looks like we can afford a round of drinks on the bequest of these poor dead men. Somebody move them bodies out the way and I’ll set them up on the bar.’
There was a concerted rush at the news and soon Kirby and Clinton were sided by eager customers ready for a free drink. As the noise level rose, a round-faced buxom Mexican woman pushed aside the kitchen curtain with a hot steaming plate of food in her hand.
‘Who wan’ thees?’ she called, frowning po-faced at the eager men gathered at the bar.
‘That’d be the fella at the end,’ said Buzz, pointing at Kirby.
‘Well there, mister,’ said Clinton obsequiously. ‘Looks like you get your feed after all.’
Kirby stole him a sidelong glance, ‘You go sit at that corner table and keep your mouth shut. I ain’t decided on you yet.’
Kirby took the offered dish and followed Clinton over to the table, he sat opposite and with one hand he forked the food into his mouth. The other hand he kept not far from his pistol butt.
‘You riding with McCoy?’ he asked around a mouthful.
‘Me? No, never. He’s just a relative, is all.’
‘Seems like you’re in tight though,’ observed Kirby, chewing thoughtfully.
‘Not really. We’re just Missouri boys, come off the same patch. Say, mister, I never seen anyone draw that fast. That was plain impressive. How do they call you?’
Kirby swallowed some beans before answering, ‘Name’s Kirby Langstrom.’
‘Clinton Byers,’ the gunman said holding his hand out across the table. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Kirby looked at him in disbelief. ‘Put it away,’ he said.
Clinton withdrew his hand and sat back, taking a poke of tobacco from his jacket and commencing to roll a cigarette. He was relaxing some now as the feared approach of imminent death had eased off.
‘What’s the story with you and that crew over there?’ Kirby asked, jerking his head in the direction of the heaped bodies. They had propped the bloody corpses against the rear wall, and the dead men watched over the spending of their cash money with an uncritical show of slack-jawed indifference.
‘Oh, just a gang of fellas I joined up with,’ Clinton explained dismissively. ‘We was heading out to Oregon. Least that was the plan.’
‘You didn’t want to join up then? You being such a loyal supporter of the South.’
‘Not my fight. I never owned a black fella in my life, nor a patch of land to work him on. Seemed a bit stupid to go fighting for something you ain’t got.’
‘I see you are a man committed to high moral values,’ quipped Kirby cynically.
‘Damned right I am,’ promised Clinton seriously, leaning back and striking a match on his boot sole and lighting the cigarette.
‘Well, hear this,’ said Kirby, pointing his fork at him. ‘You’re going to take me to McCoy. You deviate or get sassy in any way and I will blow your dumb fucking head from your shoulders. We clear on this?’
‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ promised Clinton, sitting up quickly. ‘You got it. Don’t worry, I won’t be stupid.’
Kirby plunged his fork into his plate again, ‘That I find hard to credit,’ he murmured.