‘Ain’t one man in this damned town with a full set of balls!’
Jack LeFarge stood away from the bar and turned his head slowly, staring at the customers of the Black Ace with his one good eye and daring any of them to contradict.
No one did.
LeFarge stuck out his left arm and pointed his finger round the low-ceilinged, smoky room. ‘If there was we could have whipped a posse down to the Canadian border and smoked out that damned thievin’ bitch and her gang an’ strung ‘em up from the nearest high tree. That’s what we should’ve done. That would have put a stop to any rustlin’ that’s goin’ on round here.’
He moved forward fast and reached for a chair, picking it up high and then thrusting it towards a couple of cowboys who happened to be standing nearest to him.
‘But you ain’t got the guts for that, have you? You ain’t got but half the guts of a one-arm, one-eyed man like me. You’d rather wait till some fool judge a hundred miles from here thinks to send us a deputy to do the job for us.’
LeFarge put his head to one side and spat at the sawdust floor in disgust.
‘You’re chicken-hearted, mealy-mouthed piles of cowardly pig shit! Ain’t you? Ain’t you?’
The cowboys stood tight-lipped, faces white and strained itching to knock the chair aside, do something for their pride. But both knew that Lee and Aaron were standing at the far end of the bar, leaning against it, hands close to their guns, watching, smirking.
They glanced at one another then down at the floor.
‘Ain’t you?’ prodded LeFarge.
First one, then the other mumbled something inaudible.
LeFarge worked the chair into their chests. ‘Louder!’
‘Yeah,’ they agreed resentfully, turning away.
LeFarge turned back towards the crowd, swung the chair in an arc and smashed it against the edge of the bar counter, shattering legs and back. The pieces spun in the mixture of spilt beer, sawdust and spit and Texas Jack kicked them aside savagely.
Under his black patch, his cheeks glowed with anger.
‘I’ll tell you somethin’ else. All of you. This damned deputy marshal ain’t goin’ to get rid of Belle Starr an’ her kind. He’s as scared as the rest of this town. Too scared to come in here and take a drink with Texas Jack LeFarge.’
A sly laugh left Aaron’s smooth face and his fellow gunfighter grinned and poured another shot of whisky. He was lifting it to his lips when the batwing doors to the saloon swung open.
Wes Hart stood inside, the doors squeaking slowly to a halt behind him. He didn’t make a move, just stared into the low, long room. Waited.
Apart from the nervous drumming of someone’s fingers against wood, everything was silent.
Hart had the Indian blanket slung over his left shoulder, hanging down to cover his left arm. The wide stripes of dark blue, red and white wool folded one into another. His head was bare and beneath the thick brown hair his lean face was taut, skin tight against high cheekbones. He was wearing an unbuttoned leather waistcoat over his wool shirt, a heavy leather gun belt over the hips of his black pants. Even in the dulled light of the saloon the mother-of-pearl grip on the Colt .45 showed clearly.
Texas Jack stood half-facing the mirror behind the bar, half-turned towards the doors. Lee and Aaron were no longer leaning on the counter but standing away from it, giving room to their gun hands. The glass of whisky still hadn’t finished its journey to Lee’s mouth.
Men standing and sitting round the room held their breath, worked tongues round dry lips, eyes flicking from LeFarge to Hart and back again. Annie smoothed her hands down over the shiny material of her dress, mind and feelings racing, remembering that less than fifteen minutes before she had held Hart in her arms, had felt his body against her own.
‘I think you was sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout a drink.’
Hart’s voice was like iron; his eyes rested on LeFarge or seemed to, though he knew every movement the two young gunmen behind him made.
When LeFarge’s reply came he had lost the roistering confidence that had terrorized men minutes earlier. Instead it was grudging, uncertain.
‘Sure. A drink.’ He pointed to the bottle. ‘Come on over.’
Hart moved his right hand, but only to adjust the blanket. Lee set his untouched glass back down on the counter and took a couple of steps wide, leaving Aaron where he stood.
Hart let the man see that he had noticed, then went slow and easy to where the rancher was waiting. LeFarge pushed along an empty glass and reached for the bottle. Hart’s fingers were round it so fast that LeFarge could only blink and jerk his hand away.
‘Better let me do that. You’re goin’ to have difficulty—only one good hand an ’all.’
LeFarge flinched as if he’d been struck; someone in the crowd laughed. Hart poured the two shots of whisky just as if nothing had been said.
‘There she is.’
He set the bottle down on the counter and picked up the glass with his right hand. His blue eyes looked keenly at LeFarge through narrow slits.
‘Seems to me,’ said Hart slowly, ‘as I was on the way in you was sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout me bein’ too scared to come in here an’ drink with you. Least,’ he paused a moment, lingering on the words, ‘that was what I heard.’
Hart downed half the contents of the glass.
‘Maybe you could tell me if that’s right?’
Lee took a further pace to the left and Hart swiveled his body through an angle, keeping the young gunman covered. Texas Jack glanced over his shoulder, wanting one of his men to take a hand.
Hart finished his drink and put the glass on the counter. In the mirror he could see the faces watching, hanging on the action they thought must be about to break.
When Hart turned his face back he was smiling. ‘Don’t worry, Jack, I guess I didn’t hear you right.’
LeFarge nodded quickly, letting his body relax. Hart’s smile broadened and across the room Lee flexed his fingers and moved his hand away from his gun butt.
Hart nodded down at the drink in the rancher’s left hand. ‘Drink up.’
‘Sure,’ said LeFarge. ‘Sure.’
He lifted it to his mouth and as he did so Hart swung his right arm across and up. The heel of his palm slammed against the underside of the glass and rammed it into the man’s face. Texas Jack’s head was jolted back hard and he let out a choking shout of anger and pain as the edge of the glass shattered against his upper teeth and gums. Whisky splashed up into his eye, blinding him; as it ran back down it merged with the bright red of his blood.
Hart was no longer watching.
The instant the glass had burst apart in the rancher’s face, Hart had jumped sideways, his body dropping into a gunfighter’s crouch. His right hand hovered above the butt of his Colt .45, fingers grazing it, his blue eyes switching from one black-shirted gun hawk to another.
‘Try it and you’re dead!’
They faced him, young, lean bodies copying his position, hands close to their own guns, eyes never still, nerves close to breaking.
A jagged piece of glass fell away from LeFarge’s lip and bounced back off the floor. One of the saloon girls was sobbing, her breath catching with every other breath. The same fingers had gone back to tapping a tattoo on the same piece of wood.
‘What’s it goin’ to be?’ Hart asked.
Aaron, nearest to the bar, curled his lip. ‘There’s two of us. You ain’t goin’ to take two.’
Hart smiled grimly: ‘I wouldn’t bank on that if I was you.’
LeFarge pulled more glass free from his gums as blood ran freely down his shirt. ‘Take him!’ he shouted, enraged. ‘Take him!’
Annie pressed her back against the wall, screwed her hands hard into her groin, mouth gasping air.
Lee’s hand came to rest on his gun.
‘I gave you good warnin’,’ Hart said clearly.
Lee and Aaron exchanged glances, uncertain. ‘Take the bastard!’ LeFarge shrieked, spitting blood. Lee exhaled breath fast and pulled on his gun. Hart’s body jerked and his right arm flowed through an arc that defied anyone to keep pace with it. His thumb pulled back the hammer on the Colt as it moved upwards and as soon as it came level he fired. Lee jumped backwards, unused pistol falling from his hands, left crossing to right, grabbing at the place where Hart’s bullet had torn through him, high in the right shoulder.
‘No!’
Hart had swung his gun across to cover Aaron whose pistol was halfway from its hand-tooled holster, his young eyes wide with fear.
‘No!’
‘Go on!’ urged LeFarge.
Aaron looked again at Hart’s gun, at Hart’s face, at Lee’s shattered arm. He let his pistol slide back down into the holster.
Hart waited until Aaron’s hand had let go of the grip and come to rest on the bar counter. Lee was staring at him, white-faced, hate filling his eyes with blackness. The blood ran from his shoulder and over his fingers. Maybe he would have an arm as useless as that of his boss. When he stared over at LeFarge it was clear that the thought tore at his mind.
‘Next time you got any complaint to make about the way the law operates round here, maybe you’d best make it in some other way. You reckon you understand that, Jack?’
The rancher glanced at him, then away, staring at his broken reflection in the mirror.
‘Same goes for anyone else round here.’ Hart continued. ‘You know where to find me.’
He eased his Colt back into its holster and stood straight, started to back towards the door.
Gradually the crowd relaxed and began to move, sensing that the action was over. Low, quick snatches of conversation spilled over one another. At the far side of the room, Annie stood away from the wall and wiped one hand across the front of her short, dark hair.
Only three people remained quite still.
Lee leant back on a table, half-sitting on it, his left hand still stretched across to his right shoulder. The pain that pulsed through him caused his eyes to narrow, the corners of his mouth to tighten. His discarded pistol lay on the floor, several feet away to his right. For an instant he glanced up at Hart in the doorway and Hart wondered what was hurting the young gunman more—the gunshot wound or the knowledge that he just hadn’t been fast enough. Nowhere near fast enough. Hart could have killed him had he wanted: both of them knew that.
Aaron was still at the far end of the bar and his hand was as far away from his holster as before. He’d read the message clearly enough; there was no way he was going to make a play against Hart. Not without something else bettering the odds in his favor.
Texas Jack LeFarge was bent over the bar, head down, his hand apparently to his cut face. For him the fall from pride was the greatest, the most painful; he felt himself reduced to what he was—a bitter shadow of a man who couldn’t cover the fact up any longer. Not with any amount of shouting and hectoring, nor with his hired guns. He was a rancher who was getting old and who only had the use of one eye and one arm.
From the door Hart saw LeFarge’s head sink lower as the noise about him rose; his hand slipped away from his face. Hart turned to go. He was out on the boardwalk and the batwing doors had swung twice behind him when he heard the woman’s shout of warning.
LeFarge had moved the instant Hart had gone through the door. He’d spun round fast and ducked low across the floor, left hand scooping up the fallen gun.
Hart half-guessed and hit the doors in a dive. He came through faster than LeFarge could follow and as soon as he hit the boards he rolled his body to the right. The Indian blanket came away from his left arm and the shiny sawn-down barrels of the Remington 10-gauge shotgun caught the light. Before he finished rolling he had positioned LeFarge, kneeling now in the center of the room and trying to get a line on Hart. Behind him, to his right, Aaron had obviously thought that this gave him the edge he needed and had spread his legs wide and was going for his gun.
Hart braced himself with his right elbow and knee and angled the Remington upwards: he squeezed down on both barrels.
The explosion shook the saloon apart.
Texas Jack was thrown sideways, the right side of his body shredded and torn. He slammed into tables and chairs, knocking them in all directions, sending people scattering away.
Aaron took most of the remainder of the charge in the upper part of his chest and across the neck. The force of it lifted him off his feet and carried him back into the far wall where he hung for a few moments like a black-shirted dummy in a dry goods store. Then he came forward fast, nothing to stop him, face smacking down on to the floor with an echoing crack.
Hart stood up and broke the shotgun, throwing the spent cartridges to one side and pulling two more from his pants pocket, pushing them into place. He moved the weapon into his right hand and bent to retrieve the blanket, draping it over his shoulder.
Texas Jack was a huddle of limbs from which blood seemed to flow without beginning or end. Hart moved him with his boot and the rancher’s body toppled on to its back, knocking a chair over as it went. The black cord that held his patch had snapped: an empty socket, white and puckered, stared meaninglessly up into Hart’s face.
Hart moved away, heading for the back of the room. Where Aaron had slid off the wall, a smeared passage of blood marked his going. Dead, he looked young no longer. The smoothness of his face had become twisted in a rictus of shock and pain and maybe a sure knowledge of dying.
Hart stopped by Lee who was still leaning back against the same table. He waited until the gunman looked up at him.
‘I didn’t want this. If I’d wanted killin’, I’d have started with you.’
Lee nodded: ‘I know.’
‘Just listen. Don’t make it your business to go no further. There ain’t nothin’ here for you to avenge. Get that wound dressed an’ ride out. If you come back we both know I’m goin’ to have to kill you.’
Hart stared into Lee’s face a moment longer before stepping to the bar. ‘Give me a bottle. No, two. An’ a couple of glasses. I’ll pay you later.’
He stuffed the glasses into his waistcoat pockets, pushed the bottles under his arm and headed back for the door. Behind him some of the people of Boley were starting to drag the bodies out into the street.