More than a Word

Written by Gary Addis

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Me and Billy was playing in the alley between Birdie’s and the Alamo Saloon when he rode into town. We noticed him right off. We noticed everybody who come into town, especially strangers. But this was no saddle bum or whiskey drummer, I knowed that right off.

He was about to tie his horse to the hitching rail in front of Birdie’s Saloon, his back to us, when he suddenly whirled around, a pistol appearing like magic in his right hand. Didn’t take him but a second, though, to see we wasn’t no threat. He exhaled a deep breath, holstered the gun at his waist, and straightened out of his crouch.

He said, “Boys, don’t stand back there in the shadows staring at me. Come on out here, where I can see you.”

Billy turned and run off like his pants was on fire. Truth is, I wanted to light a shuck, too, but I’d rather get butted by a goat than be thought a coward. I sauntered out as if I was ten feet tall.

The stranger tied his horse to the hitching rail. “Where’d your little friend run off to?”

I lifted my chin, said, “Billy wasn’t scared or nothing…he just had to go home.”

“Relax, kid, I ain’t gonna hurt you none.”

Angered me, what he said. I stepped right up and looked him in the face.

“I ain’t skeered of you, mister. I ain’t skeered of nothing or nobody.”

He looked me up and down. I knowed right off what he was thinking. I could feel my ears redden with shame— but my eyes burned with anger. Both knees of my britches already had patches bordering patches when my mama dug them out of the church’s poor box, and they was loose in the waist and too long in the leg. Mama had made my shirt out of flour sacks, and the rough cloth rubbed my skin something fierce when I got sweaty. I glanced down at myself. Mama made me take a bath every night and put on clean clothes every morning. But Mama said boys attract dirt like a cowpie draws flies. I was coated from head to bare feet with dirt, and a splotch of dried horse apple covered the seat of my pants. The stranger stared for what seemed like a very long time into my smudged face, at my clenched jaw and my narrowed eyes.

Beneath his bushy black mustache, his lips twitched. Not a smile, exactly, but maybe as close to one as he could manage.

He said, “You know, I believe you’d try to punch me in the nose, was I to squat down where you could reach it.”

“Don’t be making fun of me,” I said, and balled my fists. “I’m smaller’n anybody else in the school, mister, but I bloodied the nose of the biggest boy in the second grade!”

He asked my name, and I told him. He nodded as if he had knowed me without even asking.

“Wesley? You say your name is Wesley? John Wesley?” He studied me awhile. “Well now. The name fits you fine, I’d say.”

He bent down and put his face close to mine. His eyes were no longer smiling, but they wasn’t trying to burn holes in me, either.

“I’m proud to finally make your acquaintance, John Wesley. I’ll be your friend, you let me. But don’t give me no more sass. You hear what I’m saying?”

He stared at me till I opened my hands, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“Yeah, I hear you, mister.”

He nodded, and straightened.

“Well, Wesley, now that’s settled, how’s about I buy you a cold sarsaparilla.”

Grinning, I said, “That’d be real nice of you, mister.”

“Well, come on, then.”

Me and Billy used to sneak into Birdie’s every chance we got. If Birdie was the one working behind the bar, she pretended not to see us if we got out of sight behind something, and kept quiet. Sometimes, she left a piece of hard candy or a licorice stick out so’s we could find it. But when Big Ed was working, he always run us off, right quick. The last time, he got a good hold on both of us before we could scat. Billy hollered like a bobcat had hold of him. If Birdie hadn’t stopped him, Big Ed would of boxed our ears. Birdie gave us each a whole dollar that day, but first made us promise not to come back, not till we was way, way older.

“Like in another fifteen years, you hear me, Wesley?”

Till now, I had kept my oath. But I wasn’t breaking no promise this time, not really. This time, I wasn’t sneaking, I was going in with a grownup.

The stranger’s hand on my shoulder, we went through the swinging doors, and sat down at the back of the saloon. Birdie’s wasn’t near as classy as the saloon across the alley. The Alamo Saloon had glass doors in front, a real bar with a brass foot rail and a filigreed mirror, a dozen card tables topped with green felt, and fancy red wallpaper. Birdie’s had bare boards laid across beer kegs, a big painting of a naked lady on a wall, sawdust on the floor to soak up all the tobacco juice, no mirror and no felt on the tables. But Birdie’s was the busiest place in Abilene when the trail drives hit town. See, Birdie’s had rooms upstairs, where the bar girls took men. Mama didn’t think I knowed about such goings on between men and women, but I got eyes and ears, and older boys like to brag.

Big Ed was working the bar, and he come over right away, like I knew he would. His eyes was on me the whole time.

To the stranger he said, “You’re more’n welcome, bud, but the kid ain’t allowed. House rules.”

“The boy’s with me.”

“The marshal catches him in here again, he’ll shut us down. So,” he shrugged, “you see how it is: the boy cain’t hang around, not even accompanied by a grownup.”

“I said, the boy stays. Now, whyn’t you run along, draw the boy and me some ice cold sarsaparilla. One for each of us.”

Big Ed squared his wide shoulders and spread his feet. He was in a mood to hurt somebody— seemed he was always in a mood to hurt somebody. Not a day went by he didn’t bloody somebody with that iron pipe he kept in his hip pocket. All the men in town knowed to be real polite around Big Ed.

Big Ed started tapping his leg with the head knocker, which made me kinda antsy, but didn’t seem to worry the stranger none.

The stranger said, “Well? You gonna stand here like a statue all day?”

Big Ed decided to ignore the stranger. Knowing that I’d be easier to run over, he pointed one of his fat fingers at me.

“Wesley, I know Birdie’s sweet on you, but she ain’t here right now, and I am. So, you go on, get on out of here.”

I looked at the stranger, and started to rise. The stranger laid his left hand lightly on my shoulder. He was slumping low in his seat like he hadn’t a care in the world. His right hand rested on his chest, near his flowered gray vest. He carried a gun in there, I knew, because I had seen it when he leaned down to me, outside on the sidewalk. And I bet even sitting down he would be god-awful quick getting to the one on his hip.

“Bartender, the boy is with me…I say he stays, he stays.” He softened his voice to a rasping whisper, and added, “Unless…you think you’re mean enough to make us leave.”

The bartender twitched as if he knew he was about to make a stupid mistake, but couldn’t stop himself.

I don’t know where she come from, but Birdie was suddenly on the floor, shouting.

“Eddie, don’t you do it!”

Big Ed stopped whatever he was about to do, and looked over his shoulder at her.

“Birdie, you know what Marshal Hickok said about this boy hanging around here…he’ll put us out of business.”

“I’ll talk to the marshal, he won’t mind, not this time.”

“You keep forgetting, Birdie, we’re partners now. I got as much to lose as you do, we get shut down.”

“But it’s still my name on the sign, you keep forgetting that.” She sighed. “Eddie, listen to me: you do not want to mess with this man…he’ll kill you straightaway.”

Big Ed squared his shoulders. Though his lip quivered slightly, he said, “I know he’s a gunslinger, but I ain’t armed, so he can’t shoot me. He takes off his guns, I’ll take him apart.”

Through all this, the stranger sat relaxed, amused, his hands clasped below his ribcage. Hearing the threat, he laughed softly.

Birdie said. “But the point is, he ain’t ever going to put down his guns. Don’t you know recognize him— no, I guess you don’t, else you’d be more polite. That there is John Wesley Hardin.”

Big Ed sucked in a deep breath, and all at once he began to tremble. His stomach went all sour; I smelled it on his breath and in his sweat. It was plain to see he hated owning up to his fear and backing down, but he took a labored breath, nodded his head a bunch of times, backed up, and headed to the bar, mumbling to himself.

My mama claimed that I had been named after a famous preacher of olden times, but no way that could be true! When me and Billy played with our make-believe guns, he always got to be Marshal Wild Bill Hickok. But that was alright with me, because far as I was concerned, my namesake was John Wesley Hardin, the deadliest gunfighter of them all. Everybody liked the marshal, but he made it plain he thought all kids was a nuisance. And here I was, in a saloon, with John Wesley Hardin! When I tell Billy, he’ll wish he hadn’t run off and left me!

Birdie said, “John Wesley.”

I thought she was speaking to me. Whenever grownups got angered at my friend Billy they yelled, “William Sylvester Jackson!” When they wanted to get my attention they called me John Wesley, my only two names ’cause my mama never married.

“Birdie,” he said.

Birdie said, “You’re looking good, John.”

“It’s been awhile, ain’t it, honey.”

“Don’t call me any sweet names— me big as a cow with your get, and you ran out on me!”

He shrugged.

“Didn’t have no choice, honey. After I had to kill them three drovers….”

He shrugged again.

“There was two big trail herds in town…all them drovers got together, they would’ve strung me up.”

“You always got an excuse for everything you do, John Wesley.”

He grunted. “They might’ve burned you out, too, they ever got started, since I killed them here under your roof.”

It was interesting, the talk of gunfights. But they was soon holding hands and whispering to one another. I began to fidget, and hum to myself. John Wesley Hardin slapped my shoulder lightly and told me to stop kicking the table leg and be quiet while grownups discussed things. Birdie said never mind, they’d talk more later, that she had to wake up the girls anyway, get them ready to work. Big Ed brought the sasparilla, set it on the table and backed away. I noticed a weird eagerness in his eyes.

Birdie tapped me to get my attention, then did what she hadn’t done but once before, the day she give me and Billy that dollar. She cupped my chin with her palm, and leaned down, and touched my lips with hers for just a instant.

“Now, Wesley, you’re a fine boy, I wish you could live here with me. But Big Ed is part owner. I hate the sumbitch, but he’s right, a bawdy house is no place for a young’un. I’ve told you this a thousands times myself, Wesley. It ain’t proper. And you did make that promise to me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

My face flushed with shame. I felt like crying, but sniffled it back.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

I glanced at my foamy mug, and started to rise.

“Oh, go ahead, drink your sasparilla,” she said, smiling and wiping at her eyes. “But after you finish, you have to go, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll leave straightaway. It’s time I was getting on home anyway. Mama will come looking for me, I don’t.”

With a quick glance at John Wesley Hardin and a swirl of skirts and perfume, Birdie turned on her heels and hurried up the stairs. I watched her go. Mister Hardin watched me watching her.

“She’s a good-looking gal, ain’t she, boy?”

“Mister Hardin, Birdie is the purtiest lady in town. Mama and most of the other folks in town won’t even speak to her on the street, they call her awful names behind her back, but she ain’t like that, she don’t ever say nothing bad about nobody. I like her a whole lot.”

He grunted. “You know, your eyes are the same color as hers, and it looks like you’re gonna be small-framed, like her.”

“My mama is kinda little, too. But she said don’t worry that I’m gonna stay small, ’cause my daddy was a big man.”

His eyebrows arched. “What’d she tell you about your daddy?”

“She won’t talk about him much. Only that he ain’t never been around and won’t never be around.”

“She give any reason that might be so?”

“She said once that he was a very bad man but that don’t mean I’ll grow up bad, because he ain’t raised me for ‘nary a day. She says that I’m going to be a fine man, because she makes certain I go to church reg’lar.”

Mister Hardin didn’t say nothing. He was looking over my head, toward the front of the saloon. I twisted around. Marshal Hickok was leaning against the bar staring at Mister Hardin. The marshal was dressed real nice, his long hair flowing over his fancy coat, one hand resting on a pistol tucked into the red sash he always wore, the other holding a beer mug. He took a sip and lifted the mug in salute to Mister Hardin. Hardin nodded back, then acted like he forgot about the marshal– but I knew he didn’t. I bet he never forgot nothing.

“Mister Hardin,” I asked, “is it true you killed more’n a hundred men?”

For a second his eyes narrowed like I had done made him mad at me. Instead, he took a breath, and shook his head, and squirmed in his seat.

“Don’t call me mister,” he said. “Makes me feel old and decrepit. And I’m still a young pup, like you.”

He smiled.

I smiled back.

“What’ll I call you then?

He sat back in his chair and pursed his lips.

“Oh, I dunno….” After a moment, he said, “Since we’re friends, and friends always call each other by their given names, how about you call me John, and I’ll call you Wesley. How’s that sound?”

I grinned at him, proud as a speckled pup.

“Drink up,” he said.

I pulled my legs up under me in the chair, and sat on my knees so that I could reach the table. We each sipped from our mugs. We each made a face.

“Oh, that stuff is awful,” he said, scowling.

This was my first taste of the stuff. I was sorely disappointed. I had expected it to be something really grand, almost like a real beer. I took a bigger gulp, and almost gagged.

“Oh, it ain’t so bad,” I said, but couldn’t keep my face from clenching.

“No, this’s pretty awful. Bitter as horse piss.”

His head snapped up as if something had just occurred to him and he glared at Big Ed. He turned his head, worked his mouth some, and spit a gob on the floor. He picked up both mugs, and again glaring at the bar, emptied both mugs into the sawdust.

“But Mister Hardin, they cost you a whole two bits apiece, didn’t they?”

“Now, tell the truth, that stuff was pretty bad, weren’t it?”

I made an exaggerated frown, tongue hanging out, copying the funny face made by my new friend, then grinned at him. This time he didn’t grin back.

“It was really really awful, but my mama says it’s a sin to waste anything, even a bite of beans.”

The gunfighter rested his forearms on the table.

“Well, how about that, how about food? You’re skinny as a rail. You getting enough to eat?”

“Most always,” I said.

“Mostly…but not always?”

“Sometimes it’s just a chunk of cornbread, milk and maybe a piece of fatback for days at a time, but…we make out alright.”

“Look at you, you ain’t even got a pair of shoes.”

“I do too!” For the first time, I felt ashamed, of my mama, and of the life we lived. “They used to belong to Clyde Horvath, till he outgrowed ‘em. They rub my feet some, so I wear them just to school and church.”

He nodded. “Well, we’ll have to do something about that. First thing in the morning, we’ll get you outfitted real nice, with some new pants and shirts and a brand new pair of boots that fits just right.”

My heart hammered in my chest. New clothes…clothes that nobody else ever wore. But then I thought of Mama. She always got her back up, anybody tried giving us things. She earned what she took from the poor box by cleaning the church. My excitement shriveled and died. I dropped my head.

“Mama won’t let me take no handouts. She says people got to work for what they get.”

“Hell, son, who’s talking about handouts? I’m talking about a job, you’ll earn what you get.”

Hopeful again, I looked up.

“I’m not very big, but everybody says I’m strong for my age. What would I have to do?”

“Anything I tell you, anytime I tell you to do it. Now, you want the job?”

“I want it, sir, I sure enough do.”

“I done told you, none of that sir business.”

“But…it’s awful hard for me not to say sir and no sir to a grownup I just open my mouth and out it comes ‘fore I even think about it.”

Amused, he shook his head. “Well, I guess it’d be alright, whatever you call me.” He grinned. “As long as it ain’t sumbitch. Just remember, me and you, we’re best friends, alright?”

“Best friends.” I spit in the palm of my right hand. “Shake on it?”

“First lesson of many I’m gonna teach you, son: never let nobody get ahold of your gun hand.”

Embarrassed, I dried my palm on my legs. That big red patch sewn on my blue britches stood out like a bloody nose.

“Can we go and get them new duds now? Before the emporium closes?”

My new best friend had stopped paying any attention to me. I glanced over my shoulder again, and saw that Big Ed was looking at us and laughing like he’d just thought of a good joke.

Mister Hardin muttered a cuss word, then said to me, “No, I got things to do, tomorrow morning’s early enough.”

“When do I start to work?”

“Right this very minute. Lead Darky down to the livery stables and tell the hostler he belongs to John Wesley Hardin, and to give him a clean stall, grain and a good currying. After that, you go home, and meet me downstairs in the hotel early in the morning.”

He got up, and I followed. Then, being a kid, I skipped ahead. I smiled at the marshal, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. Since I knew Mister Hardin would be stopping to talk to the marshal, I stopped near the doors, and looked on. Big Ed didn’t look so big, cowering against the racks of whiskey bottles.

“Barkeep,” Mister Hardin said. “I’m saying this in front of the marshal here. I’m going to fill you full of holes for what you did to me and my boy.”

The marshal said, “Suppose you tell me about it before you shoot him, Lil’ Arkansas. I may decide to save you the lead and hang him.”

Mister Hardin gave Marshal Hickok a quick flick of the eyes. “Wait,” he said, and bobbed his head in my direction. To me, he said, “Go on, Wesley, do like I told you.”

Hardin was burning up with anger, anybody could tell. Something was going to happen, and I didn’t want to miss it. I stepped outside, then quickly turned, dropped to my hands and knees, and peered beneath the two swinging doors.

Mister Hardin glanced again at the marshal, then directed his words to Big Ed. “How about it, you drain your snake in mine and the boy’s sarsaparilla?”

My stomach lurched. I knew at once it was true. So did the marshal.

His eyes stone cold, he walked around the end of the bar. “Ed, all’s I want to know is if you fouled the whole keg, or just the two mugs.”

Although Big Ed knew Death was staring him in the eye, he couldn’t hold his ego in check. Sneering, he said, “Well, what do you think? I might want a mug myself sometime.”

With a snarl, Hardin yanked his gun. But the marshal was in the way. Marshal Hickok’s arm moved in a blur and Big Ed crumpled to the sawdust with a gash from his ear to his chin. The marshal didn’t wait for the big man to fall. He whirled with the heavy Navy Colt leveled.

“Put it away, Lil’ Arkansas,” he said. “He deserves the beating I just gave him, but not a killing.”

Hardin’s gun was leveled, too. “I ain’t letting him get away with that!”

“A shot of whiskey will get rid of that bad taste in your mouth, but getting hung for committing murder will last you till the end of time. Let it go, my impulsive young friend.”

Doc Carper chose that time to appear for his weekly visit with Maisy, the little colored gal who worked for Birdie. He stepped on my hand, and I yelped.

Both men whirled instantly, both guns aimed at poor Mister Carper, who threw up his hands and yelped louder than I had. With slight nods to one another, both men holstered their guns.

Mister Hardin was some put out with me. He yelled at me. I wasn’t used to getting yelled at. My eyes filled with tears I wouldn’t let flow.

“What’d I tell you, Wesley! Go on git out of here, ‘fore I kick you into Colorado!”

Well, I got on out of there, lickety split.

The black stud pranced, head bobbing as if to say he was the bestest, fastest, prettiest horse to ever walk down the center of the street, and everybody who saw him agreed. He was showing off. But he was mannerly, easy to lead.

I climbed up on the rails of the stall and watched while the hostler brushed him down. Ol’ Joe let me put the hay down for the black and give him a feedbag full of oats. I kissed him on the nose when I said goodnight.

When I got home, the parson’s wife had been out there and gone. Mama knew everything that had happened to me.

“And you was at that…that bawdy house with that killer?”

I knew she’d go at me till she broke down and went off by herself and cried her eyes out. So, I sat quiet, and let her misery roll over me. I dozed off, there at the kitchen table. She got me up to climb into the loft and into bed.

I awoke the next morning to the smell of corn mush frying on the stove. Remembering right off that today I was going to get all new clothes, I come down right quick, and without even being told went outside to the zinc tub she washed peoples’ clothes in. I scrubbed extra hard, especially behind my ears and between my toes. I even soaped my hair and dunked my head in the cold water. I was shivering when I come inside buck-naked to the heat. Like every morning, Mama blushed and turned her eyes from my little boy nakedness.

“Your clean clothes is laid out,” she said. “Get ‘em on quick ‘fore you catch your death.”

While I dressed, she worked at the stove. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. Her eyes was red, her hair was sticking up in all directions at once. Her shoulders was slumping more’n usual. When she walked about the small house, she shuffled her feet like they was too heavy to lift. It suddenly struck me that my mama was an old woman; she had more wrinkles than Old Lady Keesler, and the widow’s grandson was older’n me.

Mama didn’t want me laying out of school to do Mister Hardin’s bidding, but knew she couldn’t stop me without tying me to the bedstead.

While I ate my hot corn meal mush and drank a glass of milk that had been stored outside in the nighttime cold, Mama sat across from me, drinking from her tin coffee cup. She drank it black as the hide of Mister Hardin’s horse. Mama claimed that coffee was bad for a growing boy. But sometimes she’d give me a little with lots of milk and a pinch of sugar. Not this morning, though. We both had other things to think about.

“Wesley, I don’t want you hanging around that man, you hear?”

I didn’t want to lie to her. I kept my head bent and kept shoveling mush into my mouth. We was out of salt, so it was hard to get the mush past the tongue.

“He’s a evil man, Wesley…they say he has murdered more’n thirty men.”

I looked up, my heart thumping in defense of my hero, my friend.

“Not murdered, Mama– he beat them all face-to-face, it says so in the dime novels Birdie bought me. He’s even faster’n Marshal Hickok, I bet!”

She looked at me a long time, her eyelids twitching, tears beginning to flow. The lines in her face seemed deeper than usual.

“You ain’t heered a word I said, have you, son?”

“I hear you, Mama. I always listen to you.”

“Since before you was born, I ain’t been able to do a reg’lar job standing on my feet all day.” She lifted her shoulders, and let them drop. “So, you wear hand-me-downs. But praise be to God, you ain’t had to go to bed hungry even once.”

Her cheeks were wet.

“Mama, I ain’t never complained none. You provide for me just fine, Mama. Please don’t cry, Mama.”

She wiped her eyes with her apron. “Ain’t crying.”

I went around the table, and kissed her cheek. She hugged me.

“I was already a aging woman, living alone, when I became your mama. I’ve tried, I’ve done my level best to raise you proper…to make certain you learned that stealing is wrong, and telling lies is wrong.”

“You taught me good, Mama. Everybody says I have real good manners. Birdie says I’m the best behaved boy in town.”

“That woman!”

“Mama, she’s real nice too. I wish everybody’d be nicer to her.”

“She runs a bawdy house, boy! And that man…that gunfighter! After all this time, why’s he shown up here again. Why? I’ll tell you why! They plan on taking you away from me.”

“No, Mama, nobody can ever take me away from you!” At that moment, I decided not to play hooky, to go on to class like the good boy Mama had raised me to be. And I’d try, I’d really try to stay away from that bawdy house, too. Birdie was right, everybody was right: that was no place for a boy to be.

By now Mama was bawling and I was bawling. We clung to one another and cried till both our shoulders was wet with tears, and my nose began to run into her hair. When we finally broke apart, she sent me off to wash my face again and clean my teeth and brush my hair.

Her eyes was still red, but she was no longer crying by the time I gathered up my Swinton’s Reader and paper and pencil nub. At the door she gave me a long, hard hug, and held my face in her hands and kissed me.

“I ain’t going to worry about it no more. I’m going to put this in God’s hands. God sent you to me, and God can take you away again if it’s His will.”

“God wants me to be here with you, Mama–I know He does. Else, why would you even be my mama?”

“Well, he did send you to me. So,…whatever will be, will be. Now, you run along to school. I got to deliver Missus Johnson’s laundry to her, and she always tips me something extra. So maybe I’ll have something special for supper tonight.”

“Could we have a porkchop and some rice and gravy, Mama?”

She smiled. “Son, I know all your like and dislikes. So, you go on now off to school.”

Billy come skipping outside soon as I reached his house and yelled his name. It was pert near four miles from there to town, but we always walked fast, so we’d be there in no time. Like usual, Billy was smiling, showing his gap-toothed smile.

“Look,” he said, pulling back his cheek. “I lost another’n last night, and the Tooth Fairy left me a whole nickel! We can get us some candy after school.”

Billy was almost twice as big as me even though we was the same age. Sometimes when we mixed it up, I made him cry and he sometimes he made me holler uncle–but he never made me cry.

I told him what happened after he run off yesterday. I told him about meeting my namesake, John Wesley Hardin, the famous gunslinger. I told him about the nasty-tasting sasparilla, and why it tasted so bitter.

“Mister Hardin made that big bully tread water, I tell you–Big Ed liked to of peed his pants when he found out who he was facing.”

Billy laughed. “Been better for you if he had, instead of peeing in your glass! What’d it taste like?”

I looked at him. “Pee tastes something awful, you don’t ever want to try it, I tell you.”

“No, no, you dummy. The sasparilla, what’d it taste like?”

“Don’t have a clue.”

“You reckon you could maybe get him to take me with you into Birdie’s and get us both a sasparilla?”

He asked me a lot of questions. Did I reckon Mister Hardin would let us hold one of his guns, maybe shoot it? Billy’s clothes wasn’t no hand-me-downs, and he wore shoes even when we was roughhousing, but, he reminded me, he didn’t have no shiny new boots. Boy, was I lucky to be named after John Wesley Hardin!

“Wish it was so,” I said, “but it ain’t. I was named after John Wesley, a famous preacher of olden times.”

Billy looked at me. “You sure you was named after some ol’ preacher? You sure Mister Hardin ain’t your daddy?”

I dismissed the idea out of hand–for him to be my daddy, he and my mama would have had to– no, no way. My mama was old, and truth be told, kinda homely with her sagging titties and lined face and calloused hands and swollen ankles. I couldn’t picture a handsome man like John Wesley Hardin even kissing my mama on the cheek. Mister Hardin liked his women real pretty, with lipstick and wavy hair and a store-bought dress with lots of frills and such. Women like Birdie. They was sweet on one another, I had seen that in their eyes.

The streets soon filled with kids headed to school and grownups going to work. Seemed everybody knew about me spending time with Mister Hardin. Even grownups smiled and waved and spoke my name. Made my head feel kinda airy, as if I had suddenly grown ten inches. I decided to meet Mister Hardin, after all. I talked Billy into taking my books on to school with him, and I went on into town.

Mister Hardin come downstairs as I was entering the hotel. We went to breakfast in the fancy hotel’s even fancier restaurant. He attacked his food like it might eat him if he didn’t. I talked with my mouth half full of scrambled eggs and bacon, I was so excited. I told him about how cold it was in Mama’s washtub of a morning, about the stray dog that took up with me for a time. When Mister Hardin pushed his plate aside, he poured more whiskey into his glass, and began asking questions. About my studies… could I read yet, could I cipher worth a hoot; about my mama and if she ever hit me with a hickory switch; about other kids and grownups of the town, and if they made fun of me because I didn’t have no daddy.

After what seemed the longest time, we left the hotel and went shopping. People stepped off the boardwalk to let us pass. Curiosity and a touch of something else animated the eyes of the ladies we passed; both fear and a grudging respect were evident in the shifty glances of the men. It made me uneasy, the knowing glances people give one another when they noticed me walking with Mister Hardin. But I also felt the awakening of a pride I had never known. As we walked along, I adopted Mister Hardin’s head up, chest out swagger.

“Lil’ Arkansas!” the marshal called from across the street. “Hold up there.”

We stopped and waited. Mister Hardin’s right hand always hovered near one of his pistols, no matter what he was doing. He adjusted the holster and gun on his hip.

He said, “Boy, you stay behind me and out of the way, hear?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“If this here bird takes wing, you drop to the ground right away.”

I nodded, unable to speak. I trembled with both gut-wrenching fear and a terrible eagerness.

Marshal Hickok asked, “Where were you last night, John?”

Hardin asked with a sneer, “What’s it to you? Somebody got shot and you think I did it. That it, Bill?”

“There was a killing in the alley behind your hotel. Who the perpetrator was is yet to be determined.”

“Wasn’t me, Marshal. I went to bed right after sunset, slept the night through.”

I slipped off to the side, so I could see better. Marshal Hickok saw me, but didn’t let on.

The marshal wore his usual scarlet vest beneath his usual black frock coat. The starched collar of his white shirt was buttoned. His wavy blonde hair spread like a warm blanket across his shoulders. A thin stripe running the length of his black pants matched the blue of the scarf around his neck. If he’d of been a lady, they’d of called him pretty. But he was no sissified dandy, not with a brace of pistols tucked into his sash. A couple of inches taller’n Mister Hardin, Hickok was wider in the shoulders and slimmer in the waist, too.

But John Wesley Hardin wasn’t no slouch. Shorter than the marshal, he was taller than most folks, and lean like a man who was used to hard work. His black suit was frayed at the sleeves, and his white shirt at the collar. His gray vest was missing the top button. But his boots and the holster at his waist gleamed with black polish, and his guns was both pearl-handled.

Hardin scratched his chin, then like the most natural thing in the world, he slipped all four fingers inside his vest, and let the hand rest on his thick chest.

The marshal noticed the move, and shook his head.

“I’m not a cowpuncher, John, you won’t surprise me with that move.”

Hardin grunted. “Seeing it coming is one thing, beating it is another.”

“Won’t be no winner between us at this range.”

Mister Hardin nodded, and dropped his hand. “We’d both take lead in the vitals, that’s a fact.”

They could of been talking about the possibility of rain. Neither man seemed concerned that he might die if he blinked at the wrong moment.

In his official marshal’s voice, Hickok asked, “Can anybody confirm where you spent the night?”

“Birdie…I was with Birdie. You doubt my word, ask her.”

“Did, while you was eating breakfast. If you gunned down five men in sight of the whole town, she’d still claim you didn’t stir a muscle till five minutes ago.”

“Spit it out, Marshal Hickok. What are you accusing me of?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about. But let’s pretend otherwise. Big Ed Markham was found in the dead space beneath your hotel two hours ago with his head bashed in.”

I knew about death, I had seen dead animals before. People, like animals, die all the time for all kinds of reasons. Mama and I had attended the funeral of a real old person who had had lots of friends; everybody had cried, even me, and I didn’t even know the man. I didn’t quite know what to think or feel about this particular death. Big Ed was a mean, mean man that nobody was likely to shed any tears for, but…he was dead? Dead, like that ol’ mangy dog me and Billy had found out by the town dump, dead and crawling with maggots and stink? And the marshal thought that my friend had done it?

Mister Hardin said, “I’m glad he didn’t die easy. But what’s that got to do with me. Since I have such an airtight alibi and all.”

“Birdie gained a lot from her partner’s death. But, of course, you’re her alibi as well.”

“For a fact.”

“I can’t arrest either of you for murder. Birdie’s the biggest depositor in the mayor’s bank, so I can’t do much about her. But as marshal I can post the notorious John Wesley Hardin out of Abilene. I do, the whole town will applaud.”

“Bill, you can’t make me leave till I’m ready to leave. You try, we’ll find out who is cock of this here walk.”

“John, you’re mighty slick what a Colt. I think I’m a better man with guns or knives, but I don’t have to be. I can raise twenty men in about a minute.”

Hardin lifted his shoulders slightly in frustration, “Bill, you know why I came to town. I have things to take care of…things that concern only me and Birdie.”

“Aren’t you forgetting somebody?”

For some reason the marshal shifted his eyes onto me. Mister Hardin noticed. He whirled around, stretched out, and hit me a glancing blow upside the head.

“John!” the marshal yelled.

Mister Hardin’s eyes was fuming, looking this way and that.

The marshal said again, “John, don’t hit him again.”

Mister Hardin took a couple of calming breaths. He wagged both hands at the marshal, and nodding, dropped his hands by his side, and looked at me. I was holding my reddened cheek, and quietly sobbing.

Now that his anger had burned itself out, Mister Hardin seemed contrite. He asked if he’d hurt me. I knew how to answer that question– kids learn before we can talk to grant instant forgiveness to adults. I nodded.

“I ain’t bleeding or nothing…I been hurt worser. I’m alright.”

He tousled my hair. His apology, I reckon.

“You disobeyed me, kid…you got me mad.”

The marshal’s lips were drawn into a thin line. His eyes blazed. His hands gripped his pistols.

“I can’t abide any man who’d beat on kids or women.”

“I didn’t hurt him none…you heard him say so.”

The air felt thicker than a boar hog’s hide. A twitch of a muscle was all it would take. Seemed to me, they both wanted it to happen. I let go of my stinging cheek and stepped between the two men.

“Can we get my new clothes now? Can we, Mister Hardin?”

The marshal said, “I see it’s still “Mister Hardin’ to the boy. So, you haven’t told him yet?”

Mister Hardin snapped, “Mind your own business.”

With a slow shake of his head, Marshal Hickok turned, crossed the street and stepped into his office. Mister Hardin watched till the marshal closed the door.

All the stiffness left me at once. Mister Hardin, too.

I had to ask. “You didn’t, did you? You didn’t kill Big Ed, did you?”

After a minute Hardin said, “What I do is my business, boy. If I want you to know my business, I’ll tell it to you. But this one time I’ll answer your question. People like that bartender? They’re bullies who pick on anybody can’t fight back; they use lead pipes to beat people up. Me, I want somebody dead, I shoot ‘em– and unless I’m mistaken, nobody found any bullet holes in that man. Now, does that set your mind at ease?”

I dropped my eyes and kicked at a loose plank in the boardwalk.

“Where to first?” he asked. “Boots, or the new suit of clothes?”

In less than an hour I stood two inches taller in polished black boots, black denims so stiff I could hardly bend my knees, and a bright yellow collarless shirt. A fresh haircut and a new Stetson completed the makeover.

Side by side we walked the streets of Abilene, me taking extra wide steps and hurrying some to keep up with Mister Hardin’s stride. Everywhere we went, the same combination of fear and awe was directed at the famous gunfighter. Anybody that didn’t give us the whole boardwalk, Mister Hardin used his shoulders or his hands to push them aside. He didn’t yield an inch to nobody.

Robby Kline, a local cowboy, blocked my path with his hands on his hips, and looked me up and down.

“My, my, Wesley, ain’t you something.”

I grinned. “Everything’s brand new.” I lifted my pants leg to show off the hand-tooled boots. “Look, Robby!”

Robby smiled with me. “Them boots must have cost near about what I earn in a month punching cows and smelling cowshit. You a lucky boy to have an old man like John Wesley Hardin.” Smiling, he looked at my new friend. “And, Mister Hardin, you’re lucky to have a boy like Wesley.”

Before I formed a single word, Mister Hardin drew one of his Colts and hit Robby, hard. Robby crumpled to the ground, blood pumping from his scalp and flowing over his face. Mister Hardin snatched him up by his shirt and dragged him back into the alley. I never seen nobody so mad and hope I never do again. Hardin hit Robby a bunch more times. Robby curled up tight, trying to protect his head. That didn’t stop the beating.

I grabbed ahold of Mister Hardin’s arm. He flung me aside. I got up and wrapped both arms around his arm, and pulled with everything I had. My weight was enough to stop the attack.

Hardin, still enraged, squeezed my wrist and tried to tear me loose.

“Please, Mister Hardin, please don’t hurt him no more!”

“Let go of me, boy!” he snarled.

“He didn’t mean nothing by what he said!” I shouted. “Robby’s my friend–he let me ride his horse once!” I don’t know what all I said. Every thought that come into my head spilled out. After a bit his hand relaxed on my forearm. His breathing had been short and rapid, but suddenly it got deeper and slower.

“Alright, Wesley, you can let me go now, I’m calmed down.”

I stared into his eyes. His temper had flared like a lucifer scratched on a fingernail just a few seconds ago, and now the pupils were a bottomless blue pond again.

We walked on toward Birdie’s. The September sun was still shining warm, meadowlarks was still flitting about their nests in the rafters above the boardwalk, and my schoolmates was out of school, playing at this and that. My friend Billy was standing at the head of the next alley, waiting anxiously for me to invite him over to meet the famous John Wesley Hardin. I gave him a look as me and Mister Hardin passed, and shook my head. For me, the joy in this special day was as dead as Big Ed.

Birdie had found herself a replacement bartender, a tall skinny man without any hair on his head and quick, nervous hands and eyes.

Birdie give me a good looking over, praising my appearance in the new duds.

“You can stay for now,” she said, “but when my girls start working the floor, you’ll have to leave, alright?”

I nodded.

“Or, if you like, you can go up to my private rooms, and wait there for John and me to join you. We have things to talk about, the three of us.”

“Thank you just the same,” I said, “but in a little bit I’ll go on home so’s Mama don’t worry.”

She and Mister Hardin exchanged a look.

“Well, I…we’ll talk about that later.”

She went back to work behind the bar, helping the new man with his duties. Although still early in the day, the place was packed, and every eye followed every move of the notorious gunfighter; everybody was tense, like they was waiting for something to happen. Me and Mister Hardin went to the back of the room. He chose an occupied table.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I believe you’re sitting at my table.”

Without argument, the three men moved to the bar, where they stood, their backs to us, looking over their shoulders at us and muttering to one another. Mister Hardin took the chair next to the wall, where he could watch the whole room. He directed me to take the seat on his left.

“Another lesson for you, Wesley. You don’t ever want to sit with your back to other people.”

Mister Hardin told me to keep sitting while he played some cards. Six men was already seated around the closest poker table, cards spread in a fan in their hands. Hardin tapped the player seated next to the wall and motioned with his thumb. The man quickly scooped up his poker chips and hurried from the saloon.

The new bartender brung me a sarsaparilla topped with foam. This one went down the gullet just fine.

This was the first time I had been permitted to sit openly in the saloon when there was a lot of grownups around. It was loud, and smoky, and it seemed that everyone wanted to talk at once.

I sat there a long time, silently watching, my calves and feet dangling, kicking one of my new boots against a table leg. I thought of the bright sunshine outside and the birds chirping and people moving about and Billy and the other boys running and jumping and climbing and laughing. Boredom made my eyes grow heavy.

As I was about to nod off, a chair scraped across the floor, a man began cussing. Mister Hardin sat at the table, his right hand resting on his chest. The man was accusing Hardin of cheating. Mister Hardin’s comment was so soft I couldn’t hear his reply, but suddenly the other man clawed at the gun tucked into his pants pocket. Before he got it clear, Mister Hardin’s practiced hand moved a couple of inches, and a gun filled it, and he squeezed the trigger, once, twice. A spray of blood erupted from the other man’s back and washed over bystanders like a spring deluge pouring off a roof. Thick red droplets splashed people sitting around the table; some got on Mister Hardin.

The room was abuzz. Somebody bending over the fallen man shouted, “Right square in the heart–both rounds–you could cover them both with a silver dollar!”

People would have patted Mister Hardin on the back, but he wouldn’t allow nobody to touch him. He calmly reloaded his Colt, tucked it away inside his vest, and pulled a white silk handkerchief from a coat pocket.

“Somebody get the marshal,” he said, and wiped the scarlet droplets from his face.

It was if someone had glued me to the chair. I was so little, sitting in that corner, it’s likely everybody forgot I was there.

Marshal Hickok come in a hurry. He walked right up to Mister Hardin, and he wasn’t smiling hello.

“Hardin,” he said, “you’re in town two days and you’ve already killed two men.”

Mister Hardin grunted. “You got no proof I killed the first one, and this one was self defense.”

Several people spoke up at once. The marshal waved everybody to silence, and spoke to the one voice in the room he trusted, that of Deputy Coyle.

“Yeah, Wild Bill,” the deputy said, “it was self defense alright. I never in all my born days seen the like. The sodbuster was standing, and he for sure drew first– he had the gun in his hand before Hardin twitched a eyelid. But Hardin drew and fanned two shots before the farmer got his gun cocked and level. The shots was so close together, I thought it was only one.”

The marshal couldn’t arrest anybody, but he was mad enough to bite the head off a chicken.

“Mister John Wesley Hardin,” he said, “you are hereby officially posted. I’ll give you until noon tomorrow to get out of town.”

“Ain’t gonna happen,” Mister Hardin said. “Birdie and me are getting hitched, we’re selling this rattrap and buying a ranch. I’m settling here permanent, me, my new bride and my son. So I’m gonna be around here from now on, and you may as well get used to it.”

“Yesterday if you’d told me that, I would have said good for you and wished you luck. But everywhere you go, people drop like flies. So, no, you are not settling in my town.” The marshal squared his wide shoulders. “You heard me, gunslinger. One minute after noon tomorrow I’m coming down Main Street, and I’ll shoot you on sight.”

Mister Hardin smirked, “Why don’t we settle it now? No time like the present.”

“Noon tomorrow,” the marshal said.

Hardin smiled a thin, tight-lipped angry smile. The only kind of smile he was capable of.

“Then, Mister-Marshal Wild Bill Hickok, I guess I’ll meet you on Main Street at noon.”

“Boys,” the marshal said with a deep sigh, “some of you carry Wilkins home to his wife–the city will reimburse you for your trouble. The rest of you, I advise you to save your drinking and gambling money till tomorrow night, after John Wesley Hardin has moved on or lies beneath the sod.”

The bloody sodbuster was toted out, Birdie’s Mexican swamper got down on his knees and scooped up the sodden sawdust with a bar towel and a broom. Most of the early customers followed the marshal through the batwing doors: they had gotten their taste of blood, and were satisfied for now.

By and by, everything got back as close to normal as a bawdy house ever does.

When Mister Hardin come over to the table where me and Birdie was sitting, I twisted out of her arms. I didn’t want to be in the same room with the killer.

“I got to get on home. When Mama hears about the shooting, she’ll be worried.”

“You don’t have to hurry,” Birdie said. “You don’t have to take that long walk out to that old woman ever again. You’re going to live wherever I do from now on. And before you know it, we’ll have us a real home…on a ranch with horses and cows and chickens and–”

“No,” I said. “Reckon not. I can’t leave my mama alone out there. She needs me, and I…I need her.”

Birdie talked fast. Mister Hardin sat slouched at a nearby table, his legs stretched out in front of him, sipping whiskey and listening with his eyes closed.

Birdie said straightaway that she was my birth mama, and John Wesley Hardin was my daddy. He got in trouble before I was born, she said, and had to either run or be killed. And back then Birdie had been a working girl.

“God knows,” she said in a rush, “a baby can’t live in a room that’s visited by all kinds of men at all hours of the day and night– and besides, you’d of been crying all the time, and the men wouldn’t have liked that. So, I done what I had to. I found somebody to raise you proper.”

But all that was changed now, Birdie said. She had a lot of money now and my father was back now and he wasn’t never going to leave again.

Finally Mister Hardin spoke up. Staring me in the eyes, his thin, tight-lipped smile dancing across his unshaved cheeks, he said, “That’s right, son. Birdie’s your real mother, and I’m your real father. She give you my given names at birth, but the law wouldn’t let her give you my last name ’cause we wasn’t married. Well, that’s changed now. When me and Birdie get hitched, we’ll have your name changed all legal-like in the birth books. From now on you’re John Wesley Hardin–my name, my blood. From now on, I want you to tell the world that I’m your daddy.”

I muttered, “I wsn’t named after you, Mister Hardin. I was named after a preacher of olden times.” No one seemed to hear me.

“Things will be real good for us,” Birdie said, “now that we’re gonna be just like a real family. You’ll have your own horse, of course, and–”

I stood. “Meaning no offense, ma’am, but being a mama is more than just a word. I already got a mama, and a home. When I was a helpless baby that nobody else wanted, my mama took me in and fed me and kept my bottom clean. You? You was too busy doing sinful things with men for money.” As I was speaking, Birdie’s face got hard and tight, her eyes bone-chilling cold. Maybe she didn’t want me anymore. Maybe she had only thought she did.

“Mister Hardin, I thought I wanted to be just like you when I grow up. Well, I don’t. People are afraid to even breathe around you; I want people to like me. I hope you saddle Darky and ride out of town before noon tomorrow. Because if the marshal shoots you down, I’ll most likely shed tears at your grave, but by and by you’ll be just another wish that didn’t come true. But if you kill Wild Bill Hickok, I think I’ll hate you till the end of time.”

Before either one could reply, I ran out the door and down the middle of the street past the school and church, hurrying home. To the only home I had ever known. To the only mother I had ever known, to the only mother I needed or wanted.

As I sloshed across the creek in my new boots, I tore off the fancy yellow shirt and dropped it in the mud. The shoemaker had kept my old shoes for leather scrap, and the milliner had throwed my worn out clothes in her stove to burn. Mama can always make me another flour sack shirt, but she can’t sew denim with her swollen, aching hands. So I’ll beg her to let me keep the stiff new pants and the shiny new boots.

Somehow, I think that’ll be just fine with Mama, this one time. I’ll explain to her that her tears and my tears was payment aplenty for a hundred pairs of new boots.

I began to sing as I started up the hill.

Hollywood Talent Scout

Bob Crismon

Back in those early days Fast Draw and event Entertainment Reenacting blended together. In 1957 just west of Canyon City in Colorado the ghost town tourist attraction named Buckskin Joe invited the Colorado Springs Fast Draw Club to provide weekend entertainment. The town is a western movie filming location with more than 21 films to its credit, including Cat Ballou, The Cowboys and The Sacketts. The 1991 television feature Conagher starring Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross, Ken Curtis and Barry Corbin was filmed at Buckskin Joe. At Buckskin Joe about a dozen or so of us had a bunch of fun shooting our single actions in contests and staged shootouts held on the town streets. Since we played the Bad Guys during skits, our costumes were usually black. Town employee professional stunt men wore white hats and played the Sheriff and his Deputies. Of course, we held a Fast Draw contest several times during the day using our Faber FasDraw Timer.

One Saturday we were informed a Hollywood talent scout would be in Buckskin Joe to look us over. Wow, maybe someone would be chosen to be the next Rowdy Yates! We decided to do our normal skits and stunts to make sure we looked as good as possible. An event popular with the tourists was to hold up and rob the narrow gauge train that circled the town. Normally, we would rob the express car. However, this time I thought I would upstage my buddies and bring attention to myself; I would kidnap a passenger! Without his prior knowledge, I ordered a five-year-old kid (Sammy on the left) to get off the train. He had no idea I was going to do that and loudly refused. Giving him my most ferocious snarl, I demanded he get off the train and fired a blank in the air. Now he began screaming, kicking, and yelling, “Help me – Someone help me” so I just pulled him off as the train continued its journey with the kicking and squirming kid shouted to the passengers, “Tell the Sheriff – Call the Sheriff!” The tourists were quite excited at the realism – I just hoped the Hollywood talent scout was equally impressed.

 The next stunt was to hold up the stagecoach on Main Street while it was loaded with tourist passengers. We had performed this stunt many times and had it down to clockwork. Wearing bandanna masks, as the coach approached we fired a few blanks in the air and demanded the old “Stand and Deliver” line. One outlaw held the reins of the lead horse and others were positioned on both sides of the stagecoach. With guns drawn, we told the guard riding shotgun to toss down the strong box. About the time the guard had crawled up on the top of the coach to toss the box off, for some unknown reason our fellow outlaw holding the horses had his single action cocked. Perhaps he also was also hamming it up for the talent scout. All of a sudden his five-in-one blank unexpectedly went off right next to the lead horse’s ear. The entire team bolted and took off – stagecoach passengers and all! Caught off balance, the guard on top of the coach took a headfirst off the end of the coach. On his way to the ground his sawed off shotgun went off, firing another blank at the departing coach, exciting the horses even more. As the racing team made the corner of the town street, with the coach precariously balanced on two wheels, the driver fell into the boot. We all stood there in shock as the horses followed their usual course around the block. Fortunately they ended up in front of the hotel again where this disaster began. On their own, with one driver gone and the other still in the boot, the horses and coach came to a screeching halt. The tourists began piling out of the stagecoach, laughing, loudly talking and grinning from ear to ear. This was perhaps the most exciting thing to happen during their vacation – they thought it was all staged!

Well, we were all immediately fired and told to never show up in Buckskin Joe again, even as a tourist or we would be shot on sight. What the heck, maybe something could be salvaged? I asked the Hollywood talent scout if he was interested in any of us cowboys. He said “You clowns? Hell no! But I sure want to talk to that kid on the train! What an actor, what realism! Introduce me to his parents.” I said, “You’re talking to his dad.” With that he didn’t say a single word, just grinned and walked away. Dang, there went the kid’s college fund.

http://www.buckskinjoe.com/

     The year was 1958 …. The fledging single action gun sport of Fast Draw (aka “Quick Draw”) was really booming! Most of the major TV shows were westerns. New clubs were springing up all over the USA. This phenomenal growth was remarkable when considering US mail was the primary method of communication. Even printing was expensive in relation to what a one page flyer costs today when printed on your home printer connected to your PC.

     The state of California was going through an amusing identity discourse. The news media fanned the idea fire of separating California into two states. Although not actually taken seriously by the general public, the rancor encouraged competitiveness between the Northern and Southern areas. And folks actively interested in Fast Draw were asking the question who was the “Fastest Gun in California”.

     No associations existed that could promote a State Fast Draw Championship Contest. Several clubs in the San Jose area decided a state championship event was desired. They spoke with a few shooters from the South but couldn’t come to an agreement as to where the event should take place – North or South? (No Lester, Barstow wasn’t even considered!) The Northern clubs came up with a plan. California was known as the “Golden State”, how about if they hosted a contest and name it the “Golden Challenge”? They knew who the top shooters are in Southern California and will invite them to a contest held at the Town & Country Village in Palo Alto. While they won’t claim the contest to be the State Championship, it would certainly be implied. They will use a home made timer designed by several Stanford students (a modified 78 RPM phonograph turntable). Percussion blanks only, each shooter will get three shots starting off the button and three shots starting from a reaction light. Total the inverse order scores and come up with a Winner. The discussion then turned to awards. The entry fee of ten bucks would be used to cover promotion costs. Incidentally, general liability insurance was not even a consideration back then. Oh, for the innocent days of yesteryear! It was suggested by the Northern hosts that some hot shot Hollywood Actor or Stuntman would most likely win all of the marbles – so let’s not spend too much on a trophy.

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    Here is a photo of the trophy won by Ralph “Mack” McKensey. Notice the Fast Draw figure was not available at the time. According to legend a young boy took the trophy to school “Show & Tell.”   Whoops, when it fell out of his bicycle basket the gun was broken off. That’s OK, the trophy survived (misspelling and all) and so has the wonderful sport of Fast Draw.

WINGO Indoor Rifle Range
Written by Bob Crismon

      The year was 1960 ….. The war has been over for fifteen years, times are good. Folks had extra money and time to spend on elective things of interest. Many of us chose recreational shooting activities. Interest in the Single Action revolver and lever action rifle grew every day, sparked by the popularity of movie and TV western shows. Winchester Fire Arms was in the ammunition and long arms manufacturing business. The new gun sport activities resulted in the sale of Winchester blanks, cartridges and brass. But without a manufactured side arm, Winchester could not capitalize on the Fast Draw Western TV show driven business boom. Winchester came up with a brilliant idea – why not develop a shooting sport centered on the use of Winchester rifles? Most Single Action Fast Draw shooters are likely Winchester rifle owners.

     The first and only WINGO Indoor Rifle Range was opened in San Diego. A large, freestanding building was built for this purpose. The inside of the building looked somewhat like a bowling alley. However, instead of bowling lanes, twenty or more rifle shooting stations spread across the building. Also like a bowling alley, the front area contained spectator bleachers, a service counter, and restaurant and gift shop. Unlike a bowling alley however, no alcohol was sold or allowed inside the range building. The shooting stations were perhaps ten feet below the spectator level providing excellent viewing advantage.

     The provided Winchester pump action rifles used Winchester 22-caliber “rat shot” ammo (a mini shotgun type load). Shooters purchased the inexpensive ammo at the service counter, paid a nominal fee, and were assigned a station. Each rifle was secured in its place by a thin, flexible steel cable. No only did this prevent anyone for taking the rifle from the shooting area, but for safety it restricted the right and left oblique swing (sweep) range of the barrel. Also a safety barrier wall separated the individual shooting stations. The shooter loaded his/her rifle and pressed a button mounted on the loading table. Like in bowling, each shooting activity started and ended individually. Most of the shooters belonged to a team and competed with team members as well as other teams. Bragging rights was the only but sufficient reward. Most teams were sponsored by a business, quite often the employer of the team members. Benches behind the shooting line were used by 6-8 team members. Individual “drop in” shooters could sign up for a non-team station and compete with each other.

     I represented the FasDraw Timer Company at the time and was given a VIP tour of behind the scene facilities. Down range behind a wall where bowling alley pin setting machines would have been located, hidden refrigerated machines made an endless supply of ice blocks. Other machines transformed the ice into shaved ice. The shaved ice was then pressed into ice balls about the size of a tennis ball. Each station had five ice ball launching arms. Like a baseball automatic pitching machine, the five ice balls were hurled one at a time toward the shooter station about one second apart. The trajectory of each ice ball was slightly different and would fall to the floor before not quite reaching the shooter’s station. The apex of the ice ball path was perhaps twenty degrees. Rarely did two balls in a row follow the same path. This was because the ice balls themselves were not always formed into perfect balls. In fact, sometimes a handful of slush would be launched instead of a ball. This inconsistency just made the game that more interesting. After all, like in a modern day single action competitive match, the shooters were there for a good time. And fun it was! Each shooter shot three sessions comprised of fifteen ice ball targets. The game was shoot ‘till you hit. Hits were noted on a scorecard. There was no timer involved; just add up the number of hits for a score. Unlike golf, honesty was rightfully assumed (lighten up guys – that’s a joke).

     One could find action at the Wingo Indoor Rifle Range from early weekday afternoon on, with peak competition in the evening. Weekends the place was jammed! You may have to wait an hour or so to get a station. But few minded because of the enjoyment in watching others compete plus the friendship and camaraderie that quickly developed between shooters. After about six months, all of a sudden the WINGO Indoor Rifle Range closed and Winchester abandoned the venture. Why, I don’t know. Do you?

 

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WINGO Rifle Range Mystery
Bob Crismon

     While researching the Gunfighter Gulch published article “Wingo Indoor Rifle Range”, Greg Custodio found on the Internet an article published in 1971 by Popular Mechanics magazine. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=m9cDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&ots=QUrMupvZvZ&dq=wingo+indoor+rifle+range&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html

     The article contained range photos of a special Winchester rifle apparently developed for Wingo range use.  It’s interesting that the article doesn’t say if the range was open at the time of the article.  Is it possible the Wingo range closed in the early seventies?  Three brothers, Bob, Fred and Dave were shooting Fast Draw in San Diego in 1960 and of course, shot at the Wingo range.  We are absolutely sure the 1960 date is correct.  Shortly after all three Brothers left San Diego (run out of town by Fast Draw Combat Master Deputy Sheriff Eldon Carl?).  We do remember seeing the boarded up building many years later.

     We three don’t remember the special rifle in Greg’s article find being used.  The article described it as a .20 caliber single shot shotgun.   That doesn’t make sense!  The photo clearly shows the down range launch board with five ice ball target launch holes.  How can one shoot up to five timely launched targets with a single shot rifle?  The article mentioned a “control console.”  The photo shows two men at each end of the console and they apparently have some type of control panel in front of them.  We do not remember a console.  Why two consoles for one shooter?  Could it be two timers were used to determine the fastest shot (and hit) of two competitors side by side.   That would be fun, particularly the shoot ’till you hit game.

     Winchester probably came to the conclusion the Wingo range product could not meet profit objectives.  Plus, someone forgot what their core business was – manufacture of long guns.  Perhaps ten years later Winchester set up a publicity photo shoot at the closed range to test a new shotgun product, modified Wingo system and new timing system.  Here is a comment from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingo

Another Internet find contributing to the Wingo Range mystery may be viewed at:

http://codyfirearmsmuseumblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/happy-thanksgiving/

     Here is the answer to the Wingo mystery:  After all of these years no single story is absolutely correct.  However, you may want to go with the eye witness Wingo version but that would mean trusting the nefarious Crismon boys! 

This Colt has a Colt letter with it and was originally sent to a Mexican Railway in 1903. The backstrap is engraved with the abbreviated letters of the railway, Ex. Nat. Mex. I made the grips for it from whale jawbone. When I bought the gun it was in need of work. The barrel & cylinder were pretty rough so I decided to replace them.

This is where it gets interesting… many years ago when E.L. (Pop) Warner first started shooting he had John Phillips change his Colt from 44/40 to 45 so he could use it in fast draw. The 44/40 is the one he carried when he was young and got in the gunfights that you can read about in Tom Blasgen’s book “Fast Draw Yesterday & Today”. He also carried it when he was a Mercenary soldier for a while with Pancho Villa. As luck would have it John had kept his original .44 barrel and cylinder all these years. They were in fair shape, better than what was in the gun, so I called John and bought them from him to put in the Mexican Colt. It just seemed like a fitting idea because of his tie in with Villa. Al and I were friends from the first day we met back in the early 60′s until the day he died.

The son of an itinerant horse trader, “Pop” learned to shoot a Colt sixgun from a retired gunhand turned cowhand. He grew up to become one of the last of the professional old west gunfighters, hiring his gun out in Mexico, the south western United States, and the last of the range wars in Wyoming.

Having outlived the age of the gunfighter, “Pop” became a successful business man. He started shooting in our sport of Fast Draw in the early 1950’s and is still active today. He has undoubtedly traveled more miles, and shot in more contests than any other shooter in our sport. He has attended contests from California to Ohio, Georgia and Florida.

For a number of years he presented a trophy in memory of his wife at any major shoot which he attended. These were greatly sought after. At first, he presented them for the fastest Standing Reaction Wax shot of the contest. One of the early Oklahoma speed shooters, Eddie Humingbird, won more of these than any other shooter I know of. Feeling that going for broke for a fast shot in order to win his trophy might be causing shooters to blow contests, Pop started presenting them for the best five shot Walking Wax total. He also started limiting them to one per shooter. Previous winners of his trophy were not eligible to win again. I am very proud to have won one of his best walking wax Mrs. E.L. Warner Memorial trophies.

Pop has told me that when it was for real, he poke fanned his Colt. When he started in Fast Draw, he was one of the few fanners, so he taught the thumbing draw. About ten years ago he switched back to poke fanning. For many years he shot nothing but Colts, but today he uses a Ruger set up for him by his close friend John Phillips. For the many years I’ve known him he has been using a custom, one of a kind, Alfonso rig.

For the five years that I was involved in producing the Mid Western Fast Draw Associations monthly Newsletter, the one report we could always rely on was the one from Pop. He is presently the Executive Chairman of the Worlds Fast Draw Association. E. L. “Pop” Warner, we in Fast Draw give you a special Six-Gun Salute!

Shortly after my arrival at the studio, realization set in as to why I was invited to perform live on TV. It certainly wasn’t because of my renowned gun handling ability. The truth is I was the only local gunslinger they could get on such short notice. Hugh had a Great Western timer and the dad blamed thing didn’t work! Since the timer prop was not available, Hugh wanted a local shooter to discuss with him the new Fast Draw craze that was sweeping the country. Hugh was an accomplished gun hand, having been trained by Arvo Ojala. Hugh shot a .45 caliber nickel plated Colt Single Action. As shown in the photo, I shot a Magnum .44 caliber nickel plated Ruger Blackhawk that I had modified. On camera we fired off a few blanks and twirled our guns a bit. Later after the show I called my sister to get her comments. She said, “I thought you said channel three at four o’clock – but the show was on channel four at three o’clock – I missed it!” Dang! Oh well, so much for my fifteen minutes of fame and glory.

Hugh O’Brien asked Marshall Faber to repair the Great Western timer. Marshall, with the usual design engineer mindset said, “This thing is a piece of junk!” Hugh then engaged Marshall to design and build him a reliable timer along the same lines as the Great Western. At that time almost all Fast Draw (also at the time also referred to as “Quick Draw”) shooting activity relied on a percussion blast. Either a primer or blank was fired. The sound of the shot was detected by a microphone that in turn stopped the timer sweep hand motion. The timer clock face was calibrated in hundredths of a second. The timer was activated by the shooter’s trigger finger depressing a start button mounted on top of the adjustable stand. The stand also contained a microphone. Upon release of the start button the timer hand began its sweep. Upon detection of the shot, the microphone stopped the clock. The fastest time off the button I ever witnessed in an actual contest was nine hundredths of a second. That event took place in San Antonio at the 1962 Texas State Championship.

For the next several years I had the pleasure of traveling around the country and shooting in Fast Draw contests while representing Faber FasDraw. It sure was a lot of fun as I rarely competed to win. My sales strategy was to make available a FasDraw Timer to local club contests at no cost. I even paid the entry fee necessary to personally enter the contest. If I was lucky enough to win a trophy, I donated it back to the sponsoring club. That is, all except the Texas Fast Draw Championship of 1962, 1963, and the Texas Two Gun Championship in 1964. I kept those! While very few local clubs owned a fast draw timer, a reliable, accurate, and low cost timer was of great interest. Without a timer, fellow shooters performed a “judge” assignment; look at the smoke and determine if the shot was high or low.

I came across a remarkable and innovative timer at a contest sponsored by a local club in San Jose, California. The home grown timer used a 45 RPM phonograph turn table calibrated to indicate up to one and one-half seconds total elapsed time (two revolutions of the turn table). The turn table mechanism utilized a stepping motor and was surprisingly quite accurate. The phonograph timer was started by use of a start button (operated by another person) that turned on a reaction light and concurrently started the turn table. A microphone mounted behind the metal target detected a wax bullet hit, turned off the reaction light, and stopped the turn table.

As the use of wax bullets developed, the Faber FasDraw Timer design was enhanced to support this popular change in the fast draw game. Early on, timer start button manipulation became a source of contention. Soon the Faber FasDraw timer self-start button was replaced with a reaction light start mechanism (copying the phonograph turn table timer design). The ultimate demise of the Faber FasDraw Timer came about as a result of the popularity of Walk & Draw blank contests. The Faber FasDraw electronic design could not be reliably modified to support two shooters firing a blank shot within milliseconds of each other. It took two complete FasDraw Timer systems to compete with products such as the Chrondek Timer that used more advanced electronic technology. In addition, the FasDraw Timer design would not tolerate low AC voltage current which was often found when a long extension cord was needed for the power source. However, the product has proven to be durable as working examples of the Faber FasDraw Timer exist today.

Wearing my all black cowboy costume I saunter up to the Maitre d’ and informed him of my mission. He hauntingly looks me up and down and I could see right away we had a problem brewing. I had my double Andy Anderson rig on and two nickel plated Colt 45’s holstered but with my split-tail jacket buttoned he probably didn’t see them. Maybe he didn’t like it that I wore a string tie instead of a regular tie. Then again, it may have been the black boots with ‘bull dogger’ heels. Ah, now I know – it was because I didn’t have my hat in my hand! Anyhow, this fellow says in a snooty manner, “You will need to go around to the back entrance.” I nonchalantly unbuttoned my jacket and pulled it back exposing both Single Actions and replied, “No, I don’t think so!” With that I walked past him and down through the center of the restaurant, right past the tables of interested and smiling dinner/show patrons. This was a real swanky night spot that catered to African-American patrons. Keep in mind this was years before the Civil Rights Act and racial discrimination regrettably was mostly the norm. I was probably the only white guy in the place. I see Sammy on stage and touch the brim of my hat to him. He had already noticed the ruckus and smilingly, pointed toward a side door adjacent to the stage.

The back stage area was crowded with very little room for Sammy’s entourage of a dozen or so people. Some drove the costume truck, buses, and autos. Others took care of various chores and several of the really big guys were personal body guards. They pointed me to the clocks and I made the necessary repairs in a matter of minutes – a burned out vacuum tube (remember those?). Sammy quickly cut his act short and came back stage. After a genuinely warm greeting, he says, “Let’s shoot!” Immediately huge steamer trunks fly open and before I know it almost every guy has his black Arvo Ojala double rig strapped on, each with two nickel plated Colt Single Actions. These guys all start spinning and twirling their guns, what a fun sight!

We take turns shooting primers to stop the clock. Back in those days Cowboy Action Shooting was a one draw, one shot, and one target game – against one timer. SASS matches have certainly come a long way since! Sammy was clearly the fastest of the bunch. I asked Sammy if the noise bothered the patrons. He said, “No, the orchestra just plays real loud when we start having fun back here.” After we shoot for awhile Sammy thanks me again for coming, explaining he has another show to do. As we conclude I say, “Sammy, are you aware that we haven’t been paid for these timers?” Sammy looks me in the eye with his one good eye and says, “No I didn’t know and I apologize in behalf of my accountant. Give me your card and you’ll have a check in the mail tomorrow.”

Guess what …… Sammy Davis, Jr. was not only a top gun hand, singer, dancer, comedian, and actor; he was also an honest man. Sure sounds like all of the qualifications necessary to be a SASS Posse Member, doesn’t it.

Bob Crismon is a veteran Fast Draw shooter, SASS member and one of the founders of High Noon Showdown Fast Draw, an exciting shooting sport that simulates the classic western movie gunfight. With an emphasis on safety and fun the contestants engage multiple targets against the clock. Speed is nothing without accuracy in this sport!

In the mirror behind the bar, I watched him watching me. The heat of the young man’s ambition made my neck itch. He wanted to call me out into the heat of the midday sun, and kill me. No, that’s wrong. He didn’t want to kill me; he didn’t have the hard eyes of a killer. He merely wanted to have killed me. He wanted the fearsome rep. The reputation I had earned.

Sweat drenched his eyebrows, dripped into his gray eyes. He dried both palms repeatedly on his unbleached cotton shirt. He wore his gun strapped quite low on his right hip, the holster tied down. He’s been reading the dime novels, I thought, watching him watching me. I didn’t have to wonder whether he’d find the courage. The back-slappers whispering into his jug-handle ears had the boy half convinced that he was the baddest hombre on Earth.

I made him to be about eighteen, maybe even seventeen. He still had a lot of growing up to do. However, boys raised in a frontier town grow to manhood early. Plenty of grown men, myself included, had to lift our chins to lock eyes with this six-foot youngster. Besides, even a five-year-old can pull a trigger tuned to quick action. I didn’t want to cut his life short. But kill him I would.

My fingertips tingled. As he approached, the muscles along my spine and legs tensed; my shoulders and arms tightened. I breathed in deeply, and let it out slowly, forcing my body to relax. The boy carried himself ramrod straight, shoulders squared, elbows akimbo and right hand flexed, two inches from the butt of his gun. He was not relaxed. Oh, he’d still be plenty fast: his hand would be a blur of movement. He’d cock the pistol as he drew, but lift it high to sight along the barrel. Those extra feet of movement require an eternity. My gun would clear the holster by no more than an inch before I fired, and I would not miss. In his excitement, the boy couldn’t hit the saloon we were standing in.

My own excitement was building. God forgive me, I enjoy the heat of battle. The knowing that I might die before my next breath fills me with fear–no, I am not immune: I don’t have a death wish. But fear is a white-hot infusion of energy. I never feel more alive than in the moment after the last bullet is fired. I figured this was the boy’s first gallop out of the corral. He didn’t know whether he’d puddle the floor in fear, or accept death with laughter on his lips. And because he didn’t, I didn’t. I turned to face the threat.

“Something I can do for you,” I said.

His eyes widened and, quite involuntarily, drifted a fraction of an inch, to one side then to the other, seeking backup that wasn’t there. Seeking escape. At this moment, he wanted to be anywhere else. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to kill him.

“Go on, Eddie,” one of his brave friends hissed from the anonymity of the crowd. “You can take him!”

I smiled. “Edward, is it? Got me a brother by that name. Eddie, let me buy you a drink.” I turned my back to him, lifted one booted foot to the hardwood rail, and leaned on the bar. I motioned to the barkeep. Two shot glasses of whiskey appeared on the gleaming countertop. The kid didn’t know quite what to do. I slid a glass down the counter to my left, and hoisted the other.

He stepped up to the bar, and turned to face me. A cluster of his friends pressed in close, jostling us both. Staring into the faces staring into mine in the big mirror, I said, “Barkeep, you running a schoolhouse?”

The bartender, a big man with thick, hairy forearms, a brushy black moustache and a flabby belly, nodded at me, hustled the teenagers outside, then returned to his duty station at the far end of the bar. As if he witnessed this sort of thing every day, he nonchalantly lifted his dirty apron and began to dry the inside of a beer mug.

“Barkeep,” I said, “maybe you ought to wait outside with the rest of them. I wouldn’t want you to catch a stray bullet.”

The big man grunted. “Mr. Jolley, I seen you in action once before, down El Paso way. A man come up on you in the street outside Rose’s Cantina…was aiming to back-shoot you. I’m the one give you the warning. You whirled around in a flash, shot that hombre right between the eyes. I ain’t worried that you’ll shoot me by accident.”

I nodded at him, but didn’t take my eyes off the boy. “A lucky shot. You are?”

“Name’s Sam. Sam Goldsmith.”

“If I didn’t get around to thanking you that day, I’m doing so now. Much obliged, Sam.”

“De nada. It were my pleasure, Mr. Jolley. I hate back-shooters.”

“Sam, if this boy is half as good as he thinks he is, I may not be the only one slinging lead.”

The bartender grunted. “I ain’t worried. The young pup, he is pretty fast, but you…you’re somethin’ else. He won’t even clear leather.”

The young man glared at Sam, but directed his comment to me. “I heard tell you can quickdraw and shoot the center out of a silver dollar from twenty paces with either hand. But I don’t never miss, neither. And there ain’t nobody faster on the draw than me. I’m bettern’ you.”

I grunted. “Maybe. But to prove it, you have to kill me. You a killer, Eddie?”

He snorted. “You think I can’t kill a man?”

“I think most folks can do whatever it is they have to do.”

Eddie nodded briskly, fear still dancing in his eyes. “You damn right I can!”

“But you don?t have to.” I lowered my voice. “You want my rep? Hell, boy, it’s yours for the asking. I’ll turn tail for you, make you the big man to your amigos.” A man doesn’t come by a gun rep by accident, but once it is acquired, it can’t be scraped off with a razor. As long as I breathed, I’d wear the beard of infamy, like it or not. Lately, I liked it not. “Let me finish my drink, young man, I’ll get on my hoss and ride out of town, and never come back.”

Face flushed, Eddie said, “You…you ol’ has-been! You don’t give me nothing! It’s mine for the taking!”

I turned, and set my feet, my hands relaxed, thumbs hooked in the waistband of my pants. His eyes widened, and he squared his shoulders. I took two quick steps forward and leaned in toward the boy.

My nose almost touching his, I said, “You calling me names, little man?”

He stuttered, “You don’t scare me none, mister.” He stuttered, and licked sweat off his lips, but he didn’t turn tail and run.

“That right? Well, I don’t mind admitting that you scare me, bucko. I’m scared that you might get in a lucky shot, but mostly, I’m scared that I’m going to have to kill you. Hell, boy, look outside. The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze blowing in from the mountains. This is a very bad day to die. For either one of us to die.”

He murmured, “You best be worrying about yourself. You got me figured for some snot-nosed kid. Well, you be figuring wrong.” He rolled his head on his thin neck to loosen the tension in his shoulders and jutted his chin forward. Pride shined in his eyes as he bragged, “I already killed me one man–he thought he was better’n me, too, but I proved him wrong! Sam, there, and everybody else in this one-horse town treats you like you’re some kind of big shot– Mister Jolley this, Mister Jolley that. Me, the whole time I was growing up, they all laughed when I walked by. Well, they stopped snickering at me– at least to my face– after I killed me a man. I aim to kill you, too, Mister. Jolley.”

“That right, Sam?” I asked the bartender. “This boy already put a notch on his gun?”

“Oh, yes, our little Eddie is a stone-cold killer. A few weeks back, him and his buddies was strutting around town like they always do, him snaking that gun out fast as lightning and pointing it at people for the pleasure of seeing the fear in their faces, when Silas Whitby, the town’s best barber finally got fed up. Silas, he come up on Eddie’s blind side and twisted the gun out of Eddie’s paw and slapped him in the mouth– he knocked him flat on his ass, he did, busted his lip real good. After Eddie here shook the cobwebs out of his head, he called Silas out; Silas just stared at the punk like he was dirt and walked back into his shop. But the rest of that day and that night and the day after, Eddie and his pals cussed at Silas ’till Silas went and got his old Colt dragoon.” The bartender lowered his chin to his chest for a moment. When he looked up again, his eyes locked onto Eddie. If looks could kill, little Eddie would have been incinerated instantly. “Silas was my best friend, and that punk there shot him down like he was a mangy stray dog.”

Eddie threw a hard glance over his shoulder. “You shut your yap, Sam. I get finished with Mr. Jolley, I’m coming after you next.”

I cocked the gun no one had seen me draw, and poked Eddie in the gut. He swayed as if he were about to faint. After a long moment, he mustered the gumption to speak.

“You…you got the drop on me. You…you aiming to shoot me, without giving me a fair chance?”

“You didn’t give that barber much of a chance, did you?”

I dropped my gun into its holster, wiggled the fingers of both hands in front of his face, then shouted, “Go!” and drew again, and again poked the boy in the gut. He had not moved a muscle. His right hand hovered an inch from his gun, but he couldn’t have held it in those trembling fingers.

Holstering the gun once again, sighing with the senselessness of it all, I said, “Aw, hell, boy, you don’t have to apologize. Sam’s friend is already dead and buried, and you ain’t done nothing to me yet. So, let’s just forget the whole thing, all right?”

“I…I ain’t afraid of you. I ain’t afraid of no man.” Although his entire body trembled, and his shirt was plastered to his back with sweat, he stood his ground. Eventually, he would gather enough courage to go for his gun.

I sighed again, shaking my head. I hefted my glass and drained it, took the boy’s whiskey and drank it. Time to end this little set-to, one way or another.

“All right, bucko,” I said, “Let’s get it done.”

I walked through the batwing doors, crossed the wooden sidewalk, and into the middle of the street. The boy didn’t trail me outside. Standing alone in the middle of the rutted street, before long I began to feel a little foolish–and a lot exposed. I’m Rance Jolley, a bad man, a very dangerous man. I am maybe the fastest gun still alive and, unlike most quick-draw artists, I’m also a pretty fair shot. Pistol, shotgun, rifle or Apache bow, I generally hit what I aim at. But I can’t see around corners; I can’t stay on my guard twenty-four hours of every day. The boy’s survival instinct had overcome his bravado. But, ashamed of what he must perceive as his cowardice, he just might shoot me from a rooftop. I whistled two sharp notes. My horse tugged her reins loose from the hitching rail, and trotted up. I swung into the saddle and rode out of town.

The road was dusty and hot. I decided to make camp about two hours’ ride from the nameless town, beside a nameless arroyo, at the bottom of which resided a nameless, but very precious pool of water. I tied Susie to a stunted pine a few feet from the bank. She nickered at me.

“Sorry, honey,” I said, stroking her velvet muzzle. “I ain’t too partial to horse slobber in my drinking water. No offense.” She jerked her head away from my hand. She nuzzled me back, though, when I brought her a drink in my hat.

I had intended to get a room at the nameless town’s only hotel, get a shave, a bath and a thick steak. If I had put down the kid I could’ve enjoyed the town’s few amenities, even had a couple of cold beers nad a few hands of poker. For a moment, I regretted my decision. I wondered how many more the boy would kill before he got his. I would have been doing the town a favor. But the youngster would get his wish eventually. He’d kill one rancher or townsman too many, and the boy would become guest of honor at a necktie party. Else, one day he’d get in the face of some other shootist, and find out that he wasn’t nearly as fast as the mirror told him he was. Oh, well, better the next man than me.

First the bath and shave. After refilling my canteen, I unsaddled Susie, undressed myself, hung my gunbelt from a handy limb, and waded into the tepid water. It muddied quickly, but I reckoned it would suffice to wash the not unpleasant odor of horse and the stink of stale human sweat from my body.

Susie heard them before I did. She stamped a hoof, snorted through her nose, and nickered. Wallowing around in the pool, squirting water out of my mouth like a kid, I had wandered beyond reach of my weapons. Foolish me. Careless me. Dead me. I splashed toward the bank, and the overhanging tree limb that held my gunbelt. I transferred my straight razor to my right hand, filled my left with cold blued steel, and hunkered down in the water, nostrils barely breaking the surface.

“We got the drop on you, Mister Jolley!”

Another voice said, “Drop that gun right quick or we’s gonna commence shooting!”

“Yeah,” another voice said, “and they’s five of us!”

I stood erect. I held my pistol wide of my body, barrel pointed toward the sky. I had one man spotted; his rifle and his head peeked at me from behind a stand of saplings. But thick shrubbery concealed at least two more shooters, and I can’t hit what I can’t see.

“Nope,” I said. “You can just go ahead and shoot me down in cold blood, if it’s murder you’ve come here to do. I ain’t dropping my gun in no muddy arroyo– I got more respect for a good weapon than that.”

“You don’t, mister, we gonna plug you right where you stand!”

“Shut your yap, Caleb,” a voice I recognized snapped. “This is my business, I’ll handle it my way.”

Eddie the slayer of barbers stepped out of the bushes, and stood facing me, his cocked Smith & Wesson aimed at my midsection. One of his friends stepped up beside him, clutching an aging Colt Dragoon. Eddie glanced at him.

“Caleb, don’t you do nothing but bear witness, you hear? I told you, this is my business.”

“Sure, Eddie,” Caleb answered with a nervous giggle. “Me and Walter, we ain’t like you, we know we ain’t no gunfighter. ‘Sides, it ain’t like you gonna need our help with this hombre anyway. You the fastest gun alive, ain’t you, Eddie?”

“You’re damn right I am!” To demonstrate his prowess, he eased down the hammer of his gun, twirled it on his finger, offering it to me butt first, then, with a deft twist of wrist and thumb, he cocked the gun and allowed me another look down its barrel. A cute trick. But dumb. His weapon was a tuned double-action revolver, probably with a butter-soft trigger pull. Lucky as hell he hadn’t blown his own foot off.

The Smith & Wesson was a fine weapon, accurate and trustworthy, and Eddie fondled it as if he knew how to use it. In skilled hands, it was accurate enough to do the job, and it packed a hell of a wallop. But its accuracy and stopping power came at a price. The pistol was too bulky and too heavy for his weak wrists and small, sweating hands. Caleb was even less of a threat; he could hardly hold the heavy Dragoon level. From the stand of saplings a few feet to my left, the long, black barrel of a Sharps fifty-caliber buffalo gun occasionally wiggled. It’d be hard to miss me with that thing from twenty yards away. But, apparently I had been lied to: they were only three.

“You come on out of that water, Mr. Jolley,” Eddie said. “I aim to kill you, but I’ll do it in a fair fight.”

I nodded at him, and smiled. “Good to know. Uh, not that I’m about to die, you understand– nobody wants to die, especially on a sunny spring day. And buck-nekkid besides!”

The young man blushed. “You can put your clothes on. Your boots too.”

“Mighty considerate of you,” I said. “I thank you kindly.”

Moving slowly, every move telegraphed in advance, I waded ashore, retrieved my gunbelt, holstered the Colt, and buckled the cold leather tight around my bare waist. I set my feet about shoulder width apart, mud squishing between my toes. A gentle breeze tickled the fine hairs of my legs and chest, cooling my body. But blood coursed hotly through my veins; my hands felt as if they were being warmed before a roaring fire. I smiled at the two young gents I could see and the one I couldn’t.

“Okay,” I said, and patted my holstered gun. “I’m all dressed.”

Caleb snickered nervously. His eyes kept dropping to my privates, and where his eyes traveled, the barrel of the big Dragoon followed. I could have dropped all three before the sound of the first shot faded into the still evening.

“You sure you got enough help,” I said. “Why don’t I put on some coffee while you go get some more of your pals.”

Eddie glanced to either side. “They ain’t gonna do nothing. This is just between you and me, Mr. Jolley.”

“All right,” I said with a sigh. “But before we get started, I’m giving fair warning. Anybody standing armed around me when the shooting starts, I’m going to kill.” I pointed with my chin at the rifleman concealed in the thick brush. “Either lay that buffalo gun aside or you’ll be the second man to go, sonny. That little shrub you’re hiding behind ain’t going to stop no bullet. You ready to die? And how about you, Caleb…you ready to take a bullet?”

The barrel of Eddie’s heavy Dragoon drooped another inch. He steadied it with both hands, and snickered.

“Psaw,” he said. “You ain’t going to be killing nobody, old man. Eddie gonna drop you ‘fore you clear leather!”

I stared at Eddie. I stared hard at him, hoping he’d fold his cards, and take his wounded pride back to town. He wanted to. His nervous, shifting eyes, and twitching fingers spoke better than words of his reluctance to go to war with me. Oh, he wanted to back down, all right. But he would not: he could not. For months, I figured, the young bully had been swaggering around town, forcing folks to step aside and give him the whole sidewalk. And then I had come riding in, and made him back down. And in front of dozens of people. If he turned tail to me again, he’d become a laughingstock to his few friends as well as to his many enemies.

“I’m catching a chill,” I said. “If you’re so eager to die, why ain’t you going at? Why are you just stand–”

His pupils widened suddenly, and I knew it was time to do or die. He was fast, blazingly fast. Because he began his move first, he beat me on the draw. But another precious quarter-second of the last second of his young life he threw away, lifting the gun to waist level. The instant my gun barrel cleared leather, I fired, and I did not miss. My first bullet struck Eddie an inch to the right of his left nipple. My second bullet entered the underbrush a few inches above the threatening big black bore of the Sharps. I swiveled my pistol to Caleb. He had not budged; a spreading urine stain wet the crotch of his britches.
Eddie died instantly, the Smith and Wesson still clutched in his small fist. From the stand of saplings, I heard a moan. There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal, so I moved carefully toward the rifleman.

“Toss the big Sharps,” I said. “Do it now!”

“I-I can’t,” the wounded gunman moaned. “I’m hurt…I’m hurt real bad. Please don’t shoot me no more!”

I moved aside a branch, and peered into the gunman’s hidey-hole. He would live; my bullet had entered the flesh of his right shoulder and passed on through. Hell, he wouldn’t even be sore in a week. I dragged him into the open. Caleb still had not moved. As I moved toward him, a terrible odor slapped me in the face, and a brown liquid ran down the boy’s pants legs. I ignored the stench.

“Boy, you take that dragoon off the barber your pal shot down?”

“I-I,” he muttered. “Please, mister, don’t shoot me! I didn’t do nothing!”

“Nothing, huh. You just stood there snickering like a mule while a good man died, that it?”

I stood in place for a few long moments, allowing my breathing to slow; now that the danger was past, enjoying my heightened awareness of all things living. Caleb interrupted my reverie all too soon.

“You…you gonna kill me and Walter, too, Mister Jolley?”

“You and your pals sneaked up on me…ruined my bath. As a rule, I generally kill any rabid dogs I come across. Y’all were planning to shoot me down, weren’t you?”

“It weren’t me, Mister Jolley! I didn’t do nothing!”

“You disgust me, you spinelesss little weasel. You created that monster lying over yonder, always patting him on the back, egging him on. You deserve to die. You’re holding a gun; use it.”

“I…I….” His entire body was trembling, but his fingers were frozen inside the trigger guard of the big pistol. He looked down at the weapon. “It’s all rusted…when Eddie give it to me, he told me not to shoot it…he was afraid it’d blow up on me or something.”

“Give it to me, you little shit.”

“I….” He moved his arms forward slightly, but couldn’t get his fingers to relax their death grip on the weapon.

I yanked the dragoon from his trembling hands and gave it a good toss into the underbrush. When the cocked old gun hit the ground, it fired off with a loud boom and a cloud of black powder smoke. I snorted in disgust and turned my back on Caleb.
“Don’t you move,” I said. “Neither one of you.”

I put my own gun away, unbuckled my holster, and pulled on my clothes. While I took my own sweet time saddling Susie, Caleb stood still as a tree, shit drying on his skin, stiffening his britches. Walter lay on a bed of weeds and twigs; he twitched and moaned, and bled into the soft, damp ground bordering the pleasant, sweet-tasting pool of water. When I was good and ready, I mounted up, and gazed down at the two living teenagers. Friends such as these, nobody needed.

“Sonny,” I said to Caleb, “You go find your mounts, tie your two friends across their saddles, then skedaddle back to town.”

“Yessir!” he said, turning to run.

“Wait,” I said, and he froze in mid-stride. “When y’all get back to town, you and Walter might as well tell the truth about what happened out here.” I smiled at him. “You might as well tell the truth, because I don’t figure anybody’s gonna want to come after me for squashing a bug like your pal Eddie. But if anybody does want to take issue with me, well…I won’t be hard to find. Adios.”

I whistled as I rode away. It felt great to be alive.