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In the last episode, Sheriff Brucker is shot to
death after having killed the entire Thomas Brothers Gang.
Episode 16
It was as if the gates of Hell opened up and
loosed all of its denizens free in Contention City. After the Brucker
murder, it wasn't safe standing on a street corner there, let alone make a
life for yourself.
Many more wagons rolled out of town than rolled
in. Those who could afford the train waited at the station, eager to be
anywhere but Contention City. Houses were vacated. Campsites cleared.
Outlaw gangs infested the outskirts of the town
stopping the former citizens and helping themselves to whatever lucre they
could find in their wagons and on their bodies. The threat of a bullet in
the head guaranteed nearly ubiquitous cooperation. Often several gangs would
stop a party, one after the other. Those boomtown refugees who made away
with more than the clothes on their back were lucky.
On my way into Contention, I came close to getting
my hat shot off when I rode into the middle of two gangs of gun throwers
going at it. I reckoned the warring parties had to stop to reload before
they resumed plugging away at each other. That brief respite to reload is
what saved my hide. I spurred ‘49er, and he carried me out of there fast
as he could.
I thought I was giving the other gangs a wide
berth, riding off-trail. Wrong. Within earshot of the battle, I was stopped
by another gang.
"Hold on a minute, partner," hailed a
man in a dirty white shirt, face concealed by a red bandana. He rode up on a
piebald from behind me with his revolver drawn. His eyes were slitted and
voice was gruff, trying to do his best to show he meant business.
That look of his set me off. "Why don't you
join the party a half-mile back?" I said snidely, annoyed as all
get-out, hearing the echoing gunfire. "Sounds like either side could
use another gun or two."
A sweaty fat man then stepped out of the brush.
"Just shut up and hand over your wallet, dummy," he said.
“Come on now! What did I do to you?” I said.
“Why do you have to go calling me things like dummy? Can’t you be the
least bit friendly?”
“Cut the chitchat and hand over your money,”
the man with the dirty white shirt repeated.
Graax’s alien brain-scrambling equipment made me
ornerier than usual. "Would you like this?" I said, motioning like
I was getting out my wallet but instead waving the pleebk.
"Why would I want that?" the mounted
bandit said mirthfully.
"I don't know," I said, squeezing the
end to activate it. They froze in position almost instantly, looking like
they were staring at each other.
I didn't fool around with installing any brrkups
that time because of the gangs fighting it out nearby. The sooner I got to
town, the less trouble I’d have, so I judged.
People walked the streets of Contention City with
wary, serious faces. Anarchy causes consternation.
The first day after the shootout had been quiet.
People were too busy reeling from shock. All over town, in the bars and
yards, on the porches and sidewalks, talk buzzed about what happened. People
discussed the events repeatedly.
General disorder started the day after when Del
Wilson walked up behind Tom Prickett, his former partner, at the End of the
Trail and shot him in cold blood.
Prickett was sitting on a barstool minding his own
business. Wilson put the barrel of his derringer against the short man’s
back and squeezed the trigger without saying a word. Then the would-be
businessman calmly walked away as if nothing more than eating lunch had
happened, ducking to step out the door as he always had to do because of his
height. Prickett took a last gasp of air, slumped over and died.
Some folks said if Wilson hadn't shot first,
Prickett would have done the same after he finished his drink. Seems one
partner had crossed another in a deal. Nobody knows who crossed who first.
Wilson ate some bad meat the next day at lunch at
the Contention Café. He died that night. The meat affected nobody else.
Anaya had some leads about who poisoned Wilson but
didn't try to make an arrest. Someone threw a rock with a note wrapped
around it through his widowed mother's front window. The note warned him off
the case. Anaya said his mother made him take the hint.
After the Prickett and Wilson murders, others
realized they could do anything they wanted and wouldn't be stopped. And do
anything they did.
Steven Henry, Jasper Halahan and five other
buddies of Pricket were drinking to Wilson’s death the night after he
died. Playing draw poker first for dollars, they turned to a drinking game
called Polish Poker next and kept getting drunker.
“You must leave now,” Chen, the main bouncer
at the Metropolitan, said.
“We’ll hold it down. Sorry,” Halahan said
good-naturedly. He was the drunkest of all.
“No. You leave. Now,” Chen said. He stood
there in his sandals, arms folded over his kimono, black topknot tied off to
the side of his head, intimidating because of his controlled presence in
spite of his diminutive stature.
“Are you looking for trouble, Chinaman?”
Halahan said, steeling for a fight that he would be sure to lose. Nobody who
was sober would risk angering Chen, the bouncer who worked at the
Metropolitan. After folks saw him break rocks with his hands, people gave
him wide berth. He was actually from Japan though just about everybody
called him “that chinaman.” Chen was quicker than lightning and twice as
deadly with his fancy swords as most men are with a gun. Trouble for the End
of the Trail was that there was only one Chen, and he was loyal to the
Metropolitan. They would have liked to hire another wandering samurai, but
he was the only one to be hired for miles around.
But Halahan was a good shot when playing
horseshoes or pitching throwing knives against stumps. He knew it too. He
also had a generous amount of muscle, working as a blacksmith. He wasn’t a
pushover by any means. When sober.
“Come on, Halahan. If they don’t want our
business here, we won’t give it to them,” Henry said.
“You can’t be afraid of him. I’m not going
to back down from him,” Halahan said.
Henry and the others left that unanswered.
The seven collected their guns from the bartender.
From there, the party boys went to the End of the Trail, a rougher, more
tolerant bar. The pack gulped down a few more shots of liquor and managed to
get themselves thrown out of there too. After the Prickett shooting, the
owners of the End of the Trail were less tolerant. They envied the
reputation the Metropolitan enjoyed as a sanctuary from the violence and
didn't want to get a bad name.
Halahan, Henry and the others refused to leave the
End of the Trail until they were sold a bottle of hard liquor. Roy Gill, the
bartender, sold them that bottle just to be rid of them.
Henry and Halahan then went back to the
Metropolitan with the idea they’d obtain the services of a lady of the
evening. Chen wouldn't allow them to even step in the door.
"You goddamn rice eater, you think you're
going to boss me?" Halahan said, trying to bully his way past the
Oriental’s slight body, poking his pointing finger square in the middle of
his chest. Though his icy blue-eyed gaze wavered from all the liquor,
Halahan had a cruel curl to his lip and a face with many scars from previous
knife fights.
“Let’s not give him any trouble,” Henry said
cautiously, the least drunk of the bunch.
“I think we need to give him trouble. I’m
tired of seeing everyone back down to this chink. So he whipped a few
people. They was all weak yellowbellies. . .”
The 4-foot-9 (145 cm) bouncer had Halahan in a
hammerlock sooner than you can say "Mississippi."
"You want broken arm? You either go or I
break," Chen said angrily, putting slight pressure on the man's elbow.
"Come back tomorrow, sir." Chen acted angrily frequently. But even
when he was angry he never used foul language, and he was unfailingly
polite.
"All right! We'll go!" Halahan said,
with a whiny plea in his voice. The other revelers and others sitting around
the bar laughed at him. “Those fancy moves. Why don’t you fight like a
real man? Oww!”
“Should I use wakizashi on you?” Chen said,
referring to the short sword tucked in his belt.
"You don't have to kill me!" Halahan
pleaded again, pain increasing.
Chen released him without a word. “Take him
away. Next time I not am so friendly.”
“All right, all right. Sorry about that.” The
seven left.
"Sheesh! That don't matter none!"
Halahan said once outside the swinging doors. "Them women ain't good
looking in there anyway. We can do better!"
Halahan then mentioned a particularly beautiful
woman he'd seen earlier in the day. She had just rolled into town in a
covered wagon with her husband and children.
"Though she dresses like a real lady, and
probably is, we'll get her to pull a train," Halahan promised the mob,
waving his index finger in the air for emphasis.
“Whoo-hoo!”
From there, the gang went to the road-weary tent
encampment where the newcomers stayed. Halahan led the lot of them from tent
to wagon to tent, searching for the woman.
Halahan and his pack cheerily wished everyone they
encountered "good night and sweet dreams" telling them they were
looking for someone else. The campers considered them nothing more than a
gaggle of noisy drunks.
"The booze has pickled your brain. Ye don't
know what you're talking about," Henry said, half way through the camp.
"Aw shut up!" Halahan said, laughing.
"Haven't you heard about the good things that come to those who
wait?"
In the dim light of a failing lantern, Halahan
finally recognized the wagon he'd seen earlier in the day. It rode high on
its axles compared to the others.
“That’s it!” he cried, eyes widened in a
beatific manner.
The farm family from Missouri who owned the wagon
slept atop and between their possessions. They'd heard about the sheriff's
murder and abandoned the idea of striking it rich in Contention City. They
were going to roll on to California the next day. Even without law, they
figured it to be safer there then in the outskirts where they might have to
deal with bandits.
"Looks like they're getting ready to leave in
the morning," Halahan said sadly.
"That's a shame!" rejoined Henry in mock
dismay. "My lover! She's a going to be going!"
"We'll interrupt her sleep only a little.
She's much too beautiful to have only one man keep her all to himself.
We’ll tell her goodbye."
Halahan clambered upon the wagon and tore open the
draw. "Is this the home of one very beautiful woman I saw today?"
Her husband picked up his sidearm he kept next to
his head while he slept. He sat up quickly and aimed it. "What do you
want?"
"We need your woman's services. None of the
other whorehouses will service us tonight," Halahan said.
"She's not a whore," the husband said
grimly, cocking the revolver. “Leave. I ought to shoot you.”
"She might not be a professional, but she'll
do fine," Halahan said, charging, grabbing the woman's agitated husband
by the nightshirt and pitching him out of the wagon. He discharged the
weapon uselessly into the side of the wagon. On the ground, Halahan's five
followers kicked him to death where he lay, paying no attention to his
wife's screams.
"Scream all you want," Halahan said.
"There's no law in this town. Means me and the boys can do whatever we
want."
"Yeah," Henry agreed.
She sobbed, frightened.
"These kids don’t need to see
anything," Henry said, grabbing the six-year-old and the
three-year-old, one after the other, tossing them roughly out of the wagon.
The six-year-old knew he couldn't do anything to
stop the men by himself. He ran to the tent of a hairy big man who sang
funny songs and smiled a lot. The family had befriended the man earlier in
the day while trading supplies. The grizzly bear-like traveler had pretended
to pull a nail, penny and a stone out of the six-year-old’s ear much to
the boy’s delight. That man, Christopher Myers, quickly rounded up others
in the camp to come to the woman's aid.
Myers saw the bleeding and bruised form of
Crawford and his three-year-old son. The tarp covering the wagon had fallen
down. He saw what was going on by the light of the dimming lantern.
"Y’all wait your turn," one of
Halahan's gang called out to Myers and the other two men, seeing them in the
shadows. "I'm next."
"We're willing to share," another said,
laughing.
"I’m first!" Halahan cried out, pants
around his knees.
Myers looked at the kid, shook his head
wordlessly. The kid buried his head in the legs of his jeans. While the kid
clung to him tightly, Myers drew his long barrel revolver, leveling it at
Halahan up on the wagon and squeezed the trigger. People said the extrovert
usually had something to say about everything. Not that time.
Meyer’s shot ripped into the drunken rapist's
abdomen and out his back. Halahan folded up like a used, reddened dinner
party napkin and tumbled off the wagon.
The kid buried his head into his thigh even
further.
Myers next sited Henry. He was bending over in the
act of taking off his trousers. Myers shot him in his ass. The bullet exited
south of his huevos. Henry, holding his bloody privates, screamed out in
anguish before he fainted and he too tumbled off the wagon.
Only one man Myers bought along had a pistol.
"Give me that," the one without the
pistol said, yanking the firearm away from Meyers. "Target
practice."
"Whoo-hoo!" the newly armed man called
out, going berserk. He was bald, of medium stature and his arms were covered
with tattoos. Myers and the now-armed man fired at the five men gathered at
the base of the wagon.
"Wait! Wait!" one man cried before he
was shot in the throat. He continued to say something, but it was
unintelligible, garbled by the spurts of blood gushing from the punctured
arteries.
"Why wait?" the berserk man asked
rhetorically. “This can’t wait!”
When the bullets were spent, the berserk man
returned the empty revolver to the man he borrowed it from.
"Thanks!" he said. "You can use it to whup them now. I'll use
my hands."
"Don't you think you're enjoying this a
little too much?" Meyers said, holding his empty pistol, looking at him
with a mixture of disgust and amusement.
"No!" The crazed man grabbed a dying men
who lay bleeding at the base of the wagon. Picking him up by the collar, he
attempted to force his head through the slats of the front wagon wheel.
"It doesn't want to fit!" he said, as if surprised. “We’ll
just haul you round the keel!”
While the crazy man beat on the dead and injured
would-be gang rapists, Myers checked on the woman.
The new widow, who was probably still a little
funny in the head from the stress of losing her husband and three-year-old,
hunted up Rev. Rollins the next day and married Myers. The Myerses moved on
to California, joining the general exodus.
Nobody knows who the berserk man was, where he
came from or where he went, but said he might have been a sailor. The same
goes for the other man who came armed, didn't fire and didn’t say
anything.
At campsites all across the country, almost every
night on the trail to California, Meyers told the story of the fight in
Contention City animatedly. The numbers of men he and the unknown sailor
beat grew with every retelling. So did the number of awful things the
berserk man did to the would-be attackers. Meyers had the berserk sailor
doing things like arranging the bodies in a pyramid and pushing the wagon
over on top of them, climbing atop the whole mess and shouting, “We’ll
sail for China tonight!”
Five years later the story had grown some more.
According to the way Myers told it in Placer County, California there was a
tribe of Apaches encamped in the middle of Contention City. After the drunk
bad men were whipped by Meyers and the berserker, the drunks had gone to the
Indian chief and promised them a nickel and a drink at the Metropolitan if
they would go fight the two of them. “We just can’t take him,” they
supposedly said.
When the Indian warriors came to get him, the
fighting sailor tore through all the braves in nothing flat, tomahawks and
all.
The story became something of a legend in the west
due to these frequent retellings.
The former Mrs. Crawford didn’t say anything
when he told the story of her rescue. She only demurely cast her eyes
downward and smiled. The simple truth was that he had come to her rescue in
a nick of time just like a hero of old from a storybook. That was really the
only thing that mattered.
No matter how wild the story got, the listeners
wanted to believe him. Though she must have gotten tired of hearing the tired
story repeatedly and though the marriage had its genesis in impulse and fear,
you could tell that was nothing but the look of love that shown forth in the
former Mrs. Crawford’s eyes. Maybe it was because of the way Myers had
pretended to find a wedding ring in her ear just as they were riding out of
Contention after they were married.
He had her believing they’d get one when they got
to California. She thought they wouldn’t get one for her at all. Crawford
had been cheap, after all.
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