Dusty Roads and Dried Beef the Human Side of Sibleys Texas Brigade

Western Wednesdays—OUTLAW LAWMAN by Paul Bagdon

Outlaw Lawman is a book that swept me upwards in the first chapter. The scene is set up so perfectly, I felt as though I was in that location beside Bagdon'due south enigmatic hero Pound every bit he rode into the unruly bordertown of Gila Curve, his truthful motives hidden from the reader, and perhaps even himself. The cast of characters that y'all run into in this excerpt simply hint at the depth and complexity of the story to come.  If yous want to feel the heat and the sweat, taste the dust in your oral cavity, hear the desolate sounds of an outlaw town, be transported to the Old West, and so this is the book for you.

Happy Reading,
Allison Carroll
Dorchester Publishing

Chapter 1

I heard the baseball game before I even drew close to it: men whooping and yelling, guns firing, the occasional series of curse words that reached me fifty-fifty over the distance. A sign on a stout fence post told me I was in—or coming into—Gila Bend.

I topped an easy rise and looked direct down at the game. A fat human being was at bat. The pitcher gave him a good throw, and the fatty man swung difficult and arrondi the ball over the bullpen's head and into the outfield. It looked like an like shooting fish in a barrel single, even though the heavy human waddled rather than ran. When he reached first base, the baseman swung at him, continued with his chin, and dropped him there in the dust, unconscious. A mixture of cheers and boos sounded as the fat man's pals dragged him off to the side.

The runner who'd been on second base of operations took off for third as soon as the fat man continued with the ball. The third baseman covered his base—blocked it, actually—and held a thick piece of a tree branch. The runner dove at the baseman, and the 2 of them rolled nigh in the clay, raising a deject of dust, punching, gouging, bitter, and blasphemous. The runner managed to wrestle the club away from the baseman and beat him unconscious with it. At the same fourth dimension, the runner who'd been on third was earthworks for dwelling house plate, running hard, knees pumping, head downwards, arms flailing. It was then that a loop sailed out from the grouping of observers. Whoever he was, he was one hell of a roper. His loop was small—exactly the correct size to drib over the runner'due south head and terminate him very quickly—and so rapidly, in fact, that the wet snap of his neck was easily audible over the balance of the racket of the game.

If the baseball game game was a fuse, the fight that followed was the explosion. Two masses of bellowing, drunken men met about midfield, swinging, boot, and in some cases, shooting.

I'd seen lots of bar fights, more than a few gunfights where the loser ended upwardly dead, but I'd never seen anything like this before. Baseball game can raise a human's ire, and a little pushing and maybe slugging is to be expected during a game, especially when most or all of the players were drunk.

But damn: shooting a base runner? Snapping a young man's neck with a lariat? Anybody who threw a loop the way that cowboy had could have widened information technology a foot or so and fabricated his catch effectually the runner's middle.

My horse was getting antsy nether me, communicable the scent of the horses staked and hobbled down by the game. A slug whispered by my head, then another. A man never forgets that sound once he's heard information technology, and I've heard it too many times to sit around and wait to hear it again. I heeled my good bay horse into a gallop, swinging back down below the rising, and made a big half circumvolve effectually the baseball game. From there information technology was piece of cake enough to follow wagon tracks and hoofprints to Gila Curve.

I swung off the tracks and rode a half mile or so out onto the prairie. The money in my saddlebags was in those waterproof canvas sacks banks and large mercantiles apply. I triangulated a nice little rock outcropping with a pair of desert pines, moved some rocks effectually, and stashed my money. Then I went on back to the trail that led to Gila Bend.

The town looked like most of the trivial Texas towns of the time—splintered, unpainted wood buildings; hand-painted signs; and the usual assortment of businesses: a stable, a mercantile, five saloons, a eating house, a piece of furniture maker/embalmer/mortician, and what may or may not have been at i fourth dimension a church. Information technology'd been burned, but information technology looked as though some of the chairs inside may once have been pews.

At that place were two or 3 horses tied in front of each gin mill and a few men walking, going into the mercantile or a saloon. Every man I saw was conveying a sidearm, and some carried two.

Some of the men were wearing those big broad hats—sombreros—and I knew for an absolute fact that any cowhand, drifter, saddle-tramp gambler—whatsoever American at all—would prefer to have his head broiled over a campfire like chicken than wear one of those Mex hats.

Without being obvious about it, I looked more closely at some of the men under sombreros. I was certain that looking likewise long at any human in Gila Bend was a bad idea. There was no doubt the fellows were Mexicans.

I was real unclear equally to where I was, Texas or Mexico. I figured that in a hellhole like Gila Curve, information technology didn't much affair.

I put my horse up at the stable, had new shoes put on him all the way 'round, and paid in accelerate for a double scoop of crimped oats daily, plus all the good hay he wanted. That horse had done some difficult and long traveling, and he more than than deserved a respite, some good grub, and some time out from nether the saddle.

I walked down the rutted street past the first saloon I came to. The beer and booze were singing out to me, only I kept walking. I was looking for a specific and recognizable human, and I knew I'd somewhen detect him.

I walked past what had in one case been a sheriff's office. The front door was battered and broken and hung from its peak swivel. It was riddled with bullet holes, as well. I looked inside as I walked by. There was an overturned rolltop desk that was partially burned. A cut chain hung from what had obviously been a burglarize chiffonier. There was a Stetson on the floor almost the desk with several bullet holes in information technology and flaking, dried blood around the holes. It'd probably been a fine hat at one time; Stetson didn't brand junk.

There'south always at least one of the bar-rags I was looking for in Texas towns; I figured Gila Curve would have a couple of them—Mexican or Texan—and peradventure three. They were hardcore drunks, who, since they were incapable of working and too stupid to steal, spent their days cadging or begging drinks. Sometimes they exchanged good data for a belt of redeye and a schooner of beer. Often the information was mindless babble or pure fabrication; one time in a while information technology was proficient.

I most passed a hairdresser shop, just then took a couple of steps back and entered. A bath was xxx cents, which was kind of steep. The shave and the haircut came to 2 bits.

The hairdresser was a surly oaf who smelled of pomade, talcum powder, and stale beer. Usually those fellows would talk your ear off nearly nothing, but this guy was an exception. He grunted every then often as he went about his work just said not a give-and-take. When we evened up, I added a nickel tip, which was customary.

The barber's eyes opened broad in a parody of joyous surprise. "Hot goddamn!" he said. "Now I tin buy me a few hundred acres of good land and a thousand caput of prime, fat beef, an' maybe even a runnin' horse, an' make yet more money!"

I took the nickel back from the counter and put it in my pocket. "Hey, Mr. …" he began angrily.

"Another word and I'll step on your goddamn face existent hard, you lot pile of shit," I said. The barber snorted and glared but didn't say anything.

I stood there a moment, trying to convince myself that doing what I had in mind made no sense at all. I couldn't practice information technology. At that place was a shelf behind the hairdresser chair that held maybe 10 or then bottles of various stuff—cologne and such. I drew and blew the living piss out of six of them. The barber had hitting the floor and was curled into a brawl similar a dung beetle. I stood there while I reloaded and so went on my way.

There was a burned-out building next to the barber shop and the next business was a saloon with a broad, poorly lettered sign over its batwings that said BAR—DRINK.  Only outside was where the bar-rag latched on to me.

"Ahh, my skillful friend," he slurred equally he stepped in front of me from where he'd been standing just outside the saloon. The man was a textbook illustration of what constant drunkenness, dissolution, malnutrition, and general booze-generated stupidity could do to a fellow. The poor sonofabitch wasn't worth the bullet it'd accept to put him out of his misery.

"Yous looking for a drinkable?" I asked.

"I don't generally imbibe spirits, only I meet that y'all're new in Gila Bend, and I'll be pleased to join you—on you, of form."

I was more than a tad astonished at how well this rummy spoke. I pushed through the batwings and held one side open for the homo. As he passed me, I got a closer expect at him. His hair was gray—he wore no hat—and information technology seemed to have fallen out in lumps, leaving deathly pallid patches of scalp behind. It seemed to me that he was too gaunt to alive; his wrists were like sticks, and his neck was and then thin that his Adam's apple tree appeared to exist the size of a ripe melon. He wore a work shirt that at one time must have belonged to a shorter homo—the cuffs barely passed his elbows. His coveralls—large plenty to conform iii men his size—hung from his shoulders like drapes. His anxiety were blank and horrible to wait upon; the nails of his toes were long and a vomit-yellow hue, and the crud on his ankles and the upper length of his foot would exist impossible to remove. It was part of his mankind, role of his being. The stench of his body was bad; I gagged as he walked past me. He smelled dead—long dead.

I picked up two schooners of beer, ii shot glasses, and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and carried all that on a tray to where my new colleague was sitting at a table. "My proper noun'southward Pound," I said. "Yours?"

"I'm called Calvin," he said, "although various bartenders and others have unlike names for me—bad names, names that sometimes injure."

I couldn't help request, "And then why not clamber out of the bottle and do something with yourself?"

Calvin poured a shot with a trembling hand, spilling as much booze on the table equally he got into the shot glass. He drained his schooner in ane long, gulping, gasping swallow. He followed the beer immediately with the shot. "'Cause I don't want to," he said. "Bein' a bar-rag suits me. It ain't the noblest of professions, but information technology works for me."  He refilled his shot glass with considerable less shaking this time and dumped it down, smacking his lips as if he'd just had a bite of a crisp, tart apple. "I suspect you're looking for data—or did y'all gear up drinks to ask me the proper noun of my tailor?"

I poured myself a shot. "Tell me near Gila Curve," I said.

"It got started perhaps 20 years ago when a fat vein of silvery was struck. The vein didn't play out, neither. It's a little harder to get to these days, but she's still there. 'Course that strike brought lots of others: miners, gamblers, men running from the police force, drifters all the same wearing Reb uniforms, whores, gunfighters, storekeepers, saloons, an' so along, just like any burg built on gilded or silver does."

"Why'd they name information technology Gila Bend?"

"'Cause there was a gila setting correct where a miner hit the strike."

"Permit me ask you this: are we in Texas or United mexican states?"

"Calvin laughed. "Texas—non that it matters much. You could throw a stone from here to Mexico."

"What about the law here?"

Calvin grimaced and spat on the floor. "Shit," he said, "you might accept seen the sheriff's function. He was the fourth 1 in less than three years. Got shot off his equus caballus from a hundred or better yards away past a fella with a Sharps. The i before him was a picayune slower on the draw than a shootist who'd moved in. The ane before that…well, I think he got a knife in his eye trying to suspension up a fracas in a saloon. I disremember what happened to the one farthest back, but y'all can wager he didn't die from falling out of bed and groovy his head."

I handed Calvin a pair of 10-cent pieces and had him fetch a couple more beers for u.s.. When I saturday downwardly at the tabular array over again, Calvin said, "At that place's a young man by the name of Billy Powers. Baton runs Gila Bend."

"How then?"

"It just happened, I guess. There's newspaper out on him and most of his men. They rode in and decided to stay. None of them have much utilise for Mexico or Mexicans, so they didn't care to cross over. There's a agglomeration of Mexicans in Gila Curve, but they walk real placidity around Billy Powers."

"What's the newspaper on Powers for?" I asked.

"Murder and rape, robbery, the usual stuff. He's a hired-gun type. He'd shoot his grandmother if the money was adequate."

"Sounds similar a cracking guy."

Calvin laughed, but it was a bad laugh, one with no mirth behind it.

"At that place'southward paper out on maybe one-half the men in boondocks, Pound. And the other half simply haven't killed or robbed enough to charge per unit posters."

"How'd this Powers come up to take over the town?"

"Well," Calvin said, "four—maybe five—years ago, Billy shell the piss out of a human who was feared past everyone in Gila Bend. This was a fistfight in a saloon, and it didn't take but a minute or so."

I nodded.

"The very next twenty-four hour period, Billy was in a saloon where he fancied a whore. He wrestled her clothes off—everything she was wearing—in front of a packed saloon, mind you lot. Then he slapped her on the ass and carried her upstairs. In a minute she was screaming in pain. Somebody ran for the sheriff, and one of his men warned Billy. They met on the street in front of the saloon. Billy put three slugs in the sheriff'south chest earlier the lawman'south pistol ever cleared leather."

I rolled a smoke and pushed my sack of tobacco and my papers across the tabular array to Calvin. He rolled a cigarette that looked every bit as good as one of those fancy-ass store-boughts. He looked longingly at the sheath of papers and the sack of tobacco in front of him every bit I struck a lucifer and lit both our smokes.

"Continue 'em," I said. "I got plenty more."

His total smile showed how very few teeth he had, and the ones left were more dark-brown than yellow, slanted similar very old headstones in an aboriginal cemetery. His gums were a godawful dark-green-pink that made my gorge rise hot and stinging in the back of my throat. I had to wait away.

I took a long suck of beer. "Why doesn't the law come in and tear this whole goddamned place downwards?" I asked.

"'Crusade it own't worth the fourth dimension nor the soldiers who'd be killed—and there'd be a whole lot of them."

I needed to retrieve for a fourth dimension, and then I said, "You're either diddling me or running some sort of a scam. I don't similar either choice."

"I don't know what you're…"

"Talking about," I finished Calvin's sentence. "It'southward this: your linguistic communication. Your apply of words swings from that of a drunken cowhand to that of a college professor and back, often in the same judgement. What's going on here?"

Calvin poured us each another shot of whiskey. "I was once an instructor in a school in Massachusetts," he said. "It was a expert job, merely I drank my fashion out of it. Then I came West and taught at a schoolhouse in a town called Hempton'south End, and boozed my manner out of that one, as well. Somehow I ended up here after a couple of years." He looked at me quizzically. "What was it that indicated to you that I—"

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