Two

 

The McGinty Coronet Band, its brass blasting and drums rattling, marched up El Paso’s main street to its free Saturday night concert in the Gem. Dobkins elbowed his way through the marching throng to reach the bottleneck outside the Constantinople’s front doors.

“Make way for the press! Please! Daily Herald coming through!” A strong hand pushed back his chest. The imposing, red-necked man was one of the smaller marshal’s muscles. Turning to catch Walter Thibido’s eye, the deputy got the nod to let the press in.

Dobkins stepped carefully into the saloon’s mess. He noted the bullet holes in the carved mahogany bar, the jagged glass teeth left in the wide, shattered mirror behind it. Amazingly only one light fixture, designed like a cluster of glass grapes, was broken. The burnt gunpowder filled his nostrils with an acrid scent of sulphur, like the devil’s vapor trail.

Moving around the big stranger’s body near the front door, Dobkins gave a kick to a short-haired mongrel licking brain slime off the green and white floor tiles next to the gaping hole in Jay Cobb’s head. The dog let out a yelp, but circled out of boot range to go lap more blood from the viscous pool around the other stranger’s torso.

Marshal Thibido mopped his brow with a blue silk handkerchief. “Books hasn’t any relatives I know of, so I’ll handle his personals until this shooting investigation’s finished. Where are his guns?”

The lawman was addressing Skelly, the photographer, who was propping Books’s upper body against the bar’s mahogany front, closing eyelids over vacant orbs, arranging the corpse in a position more suitable for infamy. The gunman’s skeletal features, emaciated by his prostate cancer, were ghastly gray to look at, but aside from wiping away blood splatters, there was nothing much Skelly could do to improve J. B. Books’s gaunt death mask. No time to get any face powder, makeup from his studio. Skelly had to tilt the gunfighter’s Stetson to cover up the hole on one side of his head. Luckily the bullet hadn’t exited through the face or he couldn’t shoot a saleable photograph.

“No weapons on him. No watch, no wallet, no money. He was robbed, Marshal.”

“Goddammit, he used those guns. Deputies! I want these shooters’ guns confiscated, especially Books’s. Find ’em! They’re valuable … evidence.”

Dan Dobkins curried favor. “Kid’s got those pistols, Marshal. Gillom Rogers took ’em before finishing Books off, that shot to the head there.”

“You saw those Remingtons?”

Dan nodded. “Ten minutes ago, talked to Gillom. He’s gone home.”

Thibido blew relieved air. “Well, least we know where they are.”

Mr. Skelly positioned his equipment, angling the maple Conley eight-by-ten camera on its tripod down on Books before ducking under green baize cloth to adjust the focus on its twelve-inch rectilinear lens.

Pushing his opening, the lanky reporter began to drill. “So, Marshal, what have you concluded from this gory mess?”

Thibido surveyed the big saloon. “Well, all of El Paso’s hard cases seem to have convened to gun each other down. I’ll propose to the city council we pay for these burials, since they’ve done us a civic favor. No innocents lost in here today.”

“Any idea who shot first, or why?”

“Nope. Except to burnish their bad reputations? Pulford and Serrano were mankillers. Jay Cobb was just a pimple-faced punk, a sharpshooter only with his mouth. Jerk didn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance against these gunslingers. And J. B. Books, well, his reputation rode into town before he did.” The marshal sighed, exhausted at just the thought of how much legal trouble cleaning up this big mess was going to be.

“I’ll tell you straight, Dobkins. We’ve had bloody hell here these past ten years, since John Selman blew Wes Hardin’s brains out in the Acme in ’95. Then Scarborough killed Selman. Then some tough killed Selman. Before that marshal Stoudenmire shot Hale Manning and his brother Frank retaliated, killing the marshal.” The short, well-dressed lawman gestured around the barroom with vigor.

“Now I’m standing at six-shooter junction. If these shootists don’t stop invading our fair city to assassinate each other, there’s going to be nothing left of El Paso but burnt dirt!”

Both men were distracted by the sight of two young boys playing with Jack Pulford. The cardsharp was slumped against the back wall of the Constantinople. J. B. Books had killed him from sixteen feet, both men standing and firing at each other. One shot, right in the heart. But the bullet, stopped by fibrous heart muscle, hadn’t exited, and now the two boys, who must have snuck in the back door, were bent over Pulford’s corpse, playfully lifting his slack left arm up and down. With each lever action of his pump handle arm, blood swelled from the wound in the deceased’s chest. The mischievous boys were pumping a dead man dry.

Appalled, the city marshal yelled to another deputy. “Jackson! Get those damned kids outta here! Playin’ with the corpses. Christ!”

“So Marshal, you have no idea how five noted gunslingers managed to show up in the same saloon at the same time in broad daylight for the shoot-out of the century, right under your nose?”

Walter Thibido had had enough.

“No, by ginger, I don’t! And I’ve had quite enough of you today, too.” His face flushed red, one neck vein began to pulse as he shouted. “I want everyone not involved in this police investigation out of this saloon right now!” The marshal pulled his own pistol to wave above his head. “That includes children, dogs, and journalists!”

At that moment, Skelly puffed hard into the brass pipe in his mouth, squeezed the bulb, and his exhalation blew the alcohol flame through the rear of the tin trough he was holding and ignited the magnesium powder in the trough. For a second the barroom lit up like the Fourth of July.

Everyone—children, dog, deputies, the marshal, frightened bystanders—jumped. They might have all been standing in Hades’ waiting room. The photographer quickly extinguished the flame, put down his flashpan, and began fanning away the cloud of smoke. Five corpses never moved a muscle.