CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“Buttons, you’re buying,” Red Ryan said. “My throat’s dry after all the talking I’ve done.”

Buttons ordered two more beers and said, “So now that detective feller has the bag with all the loot, what’s he gonna do with it?”

“Right now, he’s hoping that Stella will come after me and make a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“The kind that gets her hung.”

“Big mistake,” Buttons said.

“She’ll come after me to recover the carpetbag,” Red said. “Maybe Ogden hopes he can pin her with an attempted-murder charge.”

“It’s only attempted murder if you survive, Red,” Buttons said. “If she kills you, it’s just plain murder.” He shook his head. “Damn, it all seems mighty thin to me.”

“Ogden figures Stella and Lucian Carter killed the old rich lady in San Antonio. And he believes the murder of Major Morgan and the Rabinovich couple are connected, but he doesn’t have a shred of proof.”

“He has the bag, though,” Buttons said.

Red smiled. “Yeah, he has the bag. You don’t trust him?”

“I don’t trust anybody, including the mean-looking ranny who just came in. He’s sitting over there on a high lonesome.”

Red looked in the mirror behind the bar and saw what Buttons saw, a tall, lanky man dressed like a gambler sitting at a table, his long slender fingers manipulating the deck of cards that were lying on the table.

“Gambler,” Buttons said, dismissing the man.

“Maybe he’s a gambling man, but most of all he’s a gun,” Red said. “I reckon he followed us here from The Inglenook.”

“That how you read him, a pistol fighter?” Buttons said.

“That’s how he reads himself,” Red said.

The Silver Slipper saloon was off the beaten track, known more for its quiet, its excellent selection of brandies and cigars and available out-of-town newspapers than its gambling, and mostly the sporting crowd avoided it. To see a gambler in the place was rare, like spotting a unicorn in church . . . a gambler who had the casual arrogance and careful eyes of a shootist was rarer still.

“He’s taking a good look at you, Red, summing you up,” Buttons said. “You gun any of his kinfolk?”

“Not recently that I recollect,” Red said.

“Then maybe he just don’t like the way you look, huh?” Buttons said.

“Could be, but since he followed us from the hotel, that’s a heap of not liking a man’s appearance,” Red said.

“Ah, maybe he’s just be bored and looking around, huh?” Buttons said.

That question was answered when the man rose from his chair, slowly, elegantly, unwinding one piece of himself at a time. He stepped across the floor, his spurs chiming, and stood at the bar. Without turning his head, as though he talked directly to the mirror, he said, “Going by the color of your hair, I’d say your name was Red Ryan.”

“You got my name, mister, so what’s yours?” Red said.

“Name’s Danny Kline. Mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing,” Red said. “Are you somebody I should know?”

Kline ignored that and said, “I’m only going to say this once and I won’t repeat it . . . I’ll stay for the next thirty minutes. Bring back the carpetbag before I leave or you’re a dead man.”

“What carpetbag?” Red said.

“You got thirty minutes and time is a-wasting. You get back here a minute late, I’ll kill you. Don’t come back at all and I’ll kill you. Mister, you got a decision to make.”

Danny Kline had scored too many easy kills, gunned too many scared or unskilled men, and his overconfidence was his undoing. He’d measured Red Ryan all wrong. Red would not be pushed, browbeaten, or threatened, and above all he was good with a gun and had sand.

“I’ve made my decision, Kline,” he said. “And now it’s time for you to make yours . . . walk out of here while you still can or draw your pistol and get to your work.”

The bartender leaned across the bar and said, “Here, that won’t do. I run a respectable place here.”

An elderly man with a fashionable imperial beard and mustache sat in an easy chair by the far wall. He looked over his newspaper, said loudly, “Tut-tut-tut,” and went back to reading again.

“You heard the bartender, Kline, this is a respectable place. Now get the hell out of here and tell Stella Morgan to come for the bag herself.” Red stood loose, ready, his hand by his holstered Colt. “Other wise, I can accommodate you at your earliest convenience,” he said.

Kline didn’t like the taste of his own medicine, he didn’t like it one bit. But he’d been fairly called and his pride would not let an uppity stagecoach messenger put the crawl on him.

“Well, mister, it seems like I got to kill you,” he said. “Pity, because that’s not how I planned it.”

Kline went for his gun and cleared leather faster than Red. A gunfight is measured in fractions of a second, and Kline drew with blinding speed and fired first. It is said that in later years Bat Masterson penned a newspaper account of the Silver Slipper draw-fight and wrote that the noted shootist Danny Kline should have taken an extra half-second to place his shot against such an inferior opponent. And he was right. Kline’s bullet went wide to the left by a couple of inches and splintered into the bar. But Red’s first shot, slower but accurate, was on target and hit the gunman’s right bicep, tearing through muscle and shattering bone. Again, referring to Masterson’s account, Danny may have been attempting a border shift, tossing his Colt into his left hand, when Red steadied, placed his second shot on the money, and hit Kline’s breastbone dead center. The gunman staggered back, stared at his bloody chest in horror for long seconds, and then collapsed onto the wood floor and died.

Masterson wrote, “Danny Kline passed away secure in the knowledge that he’d been bested by a less-speedy opponent. And so it was with many fast-draw gunfighters who fell to lesser, but coolheaded men who took their time and placed their shots where they would do the most damage.”

His ears ringing, Red Ryan stared at Kline’s body as he reloaded his revolver, and he was vaguely aware of Buttons Muldoon saying, “Hell, Red, you cut that too close.”

It took a while before Red answered, and when he did he said, “He was good, fast on the draw and shoot, and I reckon there will be more where he came from.”

“Then it’s high time we quit this burg,” Buttons said. “What do you say we hitch up the team right now and head for Fort Concho and pick up that Limey coward feller?”

“No, I’ve been wronged, and I’ll see this through to the end, no matter what that end may be,” Red said. He glanced at the dead man again. “Danny Kline, you tried to scare me, and all you did was make me angry. The mistake was yours, not mine.”

The old man with the imperial stepped to Red’s side, bringing along his newspaper. “Suh, my name is Major Augustus Bennett, late of the 8th Virginia Infantry, and I saw this whole sorry affair as it happened. You defended your honor as a true Southern gentleman should and you were not to blame, suh, not to blame.”

“Thank you, Major,” Red said.

“Hey, Major, tell that to the sheriff,” Buttons said.

Ten minutes later T. C. Lyons stalked through the open door, a Colt at his waist and a scowl on his face. “What’s all the shooting about?” he said. His eyes went to the dead man on the floor and then to Red. “I might have known. Ryan, did you have a hand in this?”

“He drew on me, and I killed him,” Red said. Then, with a mind to Major Bennett, “I was defending my honor.”

“And I can attest to that, Sheriff,” the major said. “Fair fight, suh, fair fight.”

“Hell, that’s Danny Kline, runs with Skull Jackson and them,” Lyons said. He looked at Red. “It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

Red nodded. “He was good, real good.”

The bartender said, “Sheriff, I run a respectable place here. There hasn’t been a gunfight in the Silver Slipper in three-month.”

“Seems to me there was a shooting not so long ago,” Lyons said.

“A dispute between Southern gentlemen over a game of cards,” Bennett said. “I saw that too, Sheriff.”

Lyons nodded. “Major, one of those Southern gentlemen died of a bullet in the heart and I hung the other one.”

The bartender turned surly. “When it’s only one man doing the shooting, it don’t count as a gunfight,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

Lyons ignored the man and turned his attention to Red. “Ryan, what happened here?”

Red decided not to mention the carpetbag, and implied that Kline picked a fight because he was in the mood to kill a man. The major, well gone in brandy, didn’t contradict that account, nor did the bartender, who wanted the whole matter forgotten as quickly as possible, and for once Buttons kept his mouth shut.

“All right, so it was self-defense,” Lyons said. “But you’re in a heap of trouble, Ryan. You said Danny Kline was fast, and he was, but Skull Jackson is a sight faster. He set store by Kline. They drank together, whored together, and killed together, and he won’t let this stand.” The sheriff shook his head. “I thought Pip Ogden would keep you out of trouble, but obviously that hasn’t happened.”

“We’re still investigating Stella Morgan,” Red said.

“Forget it, Ryan. Do as I do and leave it for the county sheriff when we get one. Climb on your stage and head west, east, north, south, anywhere but El Paso. Ogden is a trained police detective. Let him investigate Stella Morgan.”

“I’ll see it through, Lyons,” Red said. “There’s a train headed north the day after tomorrow, and Stella Morgan will be on it unless I stop her.”

“I told you, let Ogden stop her.” Lyons studied Red’s face. “I can see you won’t take my advice, so on your head be it. In the meantime, steer clear of Skull Jackson. I won’t describe him for you, Ryan, because you’ll know him when you see him . . . and he may be the last thing you’ll ever see.” He turned to the bartender. “I’ll send the undertaker to clean up this mess.”