CHAPTER 23
The young man lifted his face and shouted at the upper half of the Silver Dollar, “Hully Markham, you double-crossing, backstabbing son of a bitch, show your ugly stinking face! Right now!”
His words got no reaction.
The street was mostly empty, except for faces peeking around the corners of doorways and Buckhorn standing motionless on the boardwalk out front of the Good Eats Café.
The man in the middle of the street hollered again. “Hully! I know you’re up there and you can hear me, you spineless coward. Don’t make me come get you!”
Again there was no response to the demands from the man in the street. Not right away.
Then, accompanied by some muttering and cursing, some movement appeared on the second-floor balcony that ran across the face of the saloon building. As was common to establishments like the Silver Dollar, it served a row of rooms whose windows could be seen above the colorfully painted banister enclosing the balcony. The rooms were the cribs of the soiled doves who worked the Dollar and, on warm summer nights when cowboys were in town, the banister served as a showcase for the gals to advertise their wares in hopes of attracting customers.
What came on display, however, was something quite different. It involved a soiled dove, but only one—a pretty though somewhat plump little number who called herself Gladys. Her bright orange hair shone in the sun and spilled frothily down over her bare, freckled shoulders and got lost in the filmy folds of the gauzy robe she clutched closed at the front, scarcely containing a pair of oversized breasts.
Standing close beside and partly behind her was a very anxious-looking man in an unbuttoned white shirt and a pair of faded denim trousers. He looked roughly the same age as the one hollering down in the street, somewhat leaner, with a dimpled chin in need of a shave and a prominent Adam’s apple that right at the moment was doing a lot of bobbing up and down.
“Oney-Bob,” called down Gladys in a trembling voice, “what in the world are you causing such a ruckus for? You’re making a dreadful and embarrassing scene is what you’re doing!”
“Well, you’d better get used to it, Gladys, on account of I got a lot more to get to afore I’m finished,” said the young man addressed as Oney-Bob. “You and that yellow dog Hully Markham have made a fool out of me and put me in a state fit to be tied. You, Gladys, I am through with, even though it breaks my heart. But I ain’t through with that Hully, not by a bucket full! The only question is whether or not he’s got the stones to face me like a man or I have to chase him down to take out of his hide what he deserves!”
“You need to simmer down, Oney-Bob, if you know what’s good for you.” Hully thrust his chin out defiantly as he said this, but all the time he kept his hands on Gladys’s meaty shoulders and made sure he kept her pushed partly in front of him.
“What’s good for me is what’s gonna be bad for you, you snake in the dirt!” Oney-Bob snapped back.
Smiles were starting to appear on the faces of some of those peeking out of the doorways, and Buckhorn even heard a few titters of nervous laughter as the realization started to sink in that what they were witnessing was a pair of jealous cowboys vying for the favor of the same dove.
To Buckhorn’s way of thinking, that smoking gun still in the grip of Oney-Bob wasn’t quite so funny. He was relieved when he glanced up the street and saw Deputy Gates—the only lawman left in town, what with the sheriff and Deputy Pomeroy and some other men gone off to investigate the site of where those Flying W men had been found shot—walking measuredly toward where the surly exchange was taking place.
As he drew closer, the deputy spoke in an easy, soothing tone. “Hey there, Oney-Bob. What’s all this hollering and carrying-on about?”
“Watch out, Deputy,” called down Hully. “He’s got a gun and he’s been drinking. He can be wild mean when he gets like this.”
Oney-Bob paid no attention to Gates. His blazing eyes just kept staring up at the Silver Dollar balcony. “You only think you’ve seen me wild mean,” he said through clenched teeth. “You wait till I get my hands on you, Hully, then you’ll feel it up close and personal.”
“Come on now, that’s no way to talk,” said Deputy Gates. “You and Hully been pals for a long spell. Whatever’s gone wrong between you can surely be worked out without threats like that, can’t it?”
“No! How can I be pals with a skunk who’d do me like he done? He promised me—both of ’em did—that he’d stay away from her.”
“That ain’t true,” Gladys wailed. “I never promised such. How could I, a gal in my position?”
“There’s sense to what she’s saying,” Gates pointed out. “You can see that, can’t you, Oney-Bob? After all, Gladys is a . . . well, having fellas up to her room is what she does.”
“You think I don’t know that? How do you reckon I met her?” Oney-Bob said, his face reddening. “Even though I love her, I can understand how she has to do her job, make her living. I don’t like it, but I can tolerate it. Leastways until I’m ready to take her away from that life.”
“But then why . . .”
“A quick poke is one thing,” Oney-Bob explained. “Like I said, I can tolerate that. There’s nothing personal in it, it’s just a matter of doing some business and getting things over with. But all night, now that’s another matter. That’s where things get, whatyacall . . . intimate. That’s how I come to fall in love with Gladys in the first place, and her with me. I’m gonna take her away from here and we’re gonna get married just as soon as I can scrape together enough taking-off money.”
“That’s a dream, Oney-Bob. You lunkhead!” hollered Gladys. “I got that same dream with a half dozen of my other regular gentlemen callers. But we all know it ain’t true, ain’t ever gonna really happen. Everybody knows it except you, I guess. You silly damn fool.”
“Yeah, everybody but me . . .” As he said it, Oney-Bob made a motion with his left hand and cast onto the dusty street the little box he’d been holding. As it hit, the box popped open and a ring with a large sparkly stone fell out. “And there’s the engagement ring this silly damn fool was bringing you.”
“Oh, Oney,” said Gladys, her chin trembling.
“That’s too bad, Oney-Bob. I’m sorry,” Gates said, sounding genuinely sincere. “But that still don’t mean you can go around shooting and threatening over it. Now, how about you put the gun down, too? Or, better yet, just hand it over to me.”
Oney-Bob’s whole body suddenly went rigid. “No!” His gun hand swung up and he turned toward the deputy, who’d taken a step closer and was holding out his hand. “Stay out of this, Gates, or you’ll force me to hurt more than just that damn Hully. He’s got to get his desserts, get what’s coming to him. He knew how I felt about Gladys, even knew I was coming here today to give her that ring. And he for damn sure knew how I felt about her doing all-nighters, especially with the likes of him!”
“That’s right. I knew all those things,” Hully admitted. “And I know something else, too. I know she’s nothing but a whore, Oney-Bob! That’s what I wanted to try and get sunk into that thick skull of yours afore you went and made an even bigger fool of yourself. I wanted you to hear I was up here with her in order to get that point across. I just didn’t figure you’d come gunning for me over it!”
“Well, then you figured exactly wrong, didn’t you?” Oney-Bob twisted back to face Hully again, but the latter slid even farther in back of Gladys, giving Oney no clear target without the risk of hitting the gal he’d thought to be the love of his life.
“Here now!” Gates said, bringing his hand to rest on the grips of the hogleg holstered on his hip. “You’re gonna fool around and get somebody hurt, Oney-Bob. If you don’t drop that gun, you’re gonna force me to make it be you.”
Oney’s eyes whipped back and forth between Gates and Hully. His whole body was starting to tremble with rage and frustration. He couldn’t shoot the man he wanted to—Hully—for fear of hitting Gladys, but he badly wanted to shoot somebody.
Buckhorn recognized the young man was working himself into the kind of blind fury where he was going to cut loose one way or another. Gates had better do more than just rest his hand on that hogleg, Buckhorn thought to himself, if he knows what’s good for him.
In that same long, tense moment, Buckhorn spotted movement in one of the doorways across the street, behind and slightly off center from where Oney-Bob stood. The doorway was that of the Sun Ledger newspaper office. As Buckhorn watched, Carl Orndecker stepped out of the shadows and came to stand silently in his doorway, much like Buckhorn was doing in the doorway of the café, also with a revolver raised and ready.
Buckhorn heard Justine emit a soft gasp from in back of him.
“Damn it, Oney, enough is enough,” Deputy Gates declared. “I want that gun, and I want it right now!” He took another step forward, his left hand reaching for Oney’s gun, his right still resting on his own still-holstered sidearm.
The fury inside Oney-Bob broke wide open. “Stop meddlin’, damn it!” he shouted, thrusting his pistol to arm’s length and firing point-blank at Gates.
Oney got off a second shot as the deputy spun away and started to fall but, in the same instant, Carl Orndecker started shooting from the newspaper doorway. He punched two slugs through Oney-Bob’s extended arm, causing the limb to flop uselessly and the Navy to fall from nerveless fingers.
Instead of also firing on the hapless Oney, some instinct told Buckhorn to concentrate on Hully. It paid off when, as soon as Oney was eliminated as a threat, the open-shirted man shoved aside the frantically wailing Gladys and raised a previously concealed pistol that he promptly aimed down at the pal whose love life he’d allegedly been out to assist.
Buckhorn’s Colt spoke first. The .45 caliber slug smashed into Hully’s shoulder and knocked him clean off his feet. The unfired hideaway gun dropped over the edge of the banister and onto the street below.
It was over that quick. An eerie silence settled briefly in its wake, broken only by the sobs and wails of Gladys, who lay in a heap on the floor of the balcony where Hully had shoved her.