Lawless Town: A Western Duo

By Lewis B. Patten

“Death of a Gunfighter”

Walt Street is on a stagecoach bound for Escalante, Colorado, where he hopes to reunite with his wife after two years of living without violence at her request. But when fellow passenger Ben Rawlins recognizes him as a man with a bounty on his head, a struggle ensues and Rawlins ends up dead. Walt switches identities and all is well until he finds out that Rawlins has inherited a small ranch that the neighboring Gunhammer Ranch wants. He can’t sell because he’s not Rawlins, but the Gunhammer crew thinks he just needs some strong-armed persuasion.

“Lawless Town”

Sloan Hewitt was just a passing stranger. All he wanted was to sell his wagonload of buffalo hides, get a drink, a bath, and a good night’s sleep. Hewitt didn’t know about the town’s dark desires. As a former soldier, he’d had his fill of killing. But when three gunmen ambush, rob, and leave him for dead, Hewitt sees just how hungry the town is for blood.

Soon after Sloan Hewitt takes care of the sidewinders who’d bushwhacked him, someone decided to pin a marshal’s badge on him. He didn’t want the job, but someone had to teach this town a lesson, and he’s just the man to give this place a dose of its own lead poisoning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781504787185

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www.BlackstonePublishing.com

Death of a Gunfighter

I

At Montezuma, the middle-aged woman passenger left amid the considerable confusion of her welcome, and the driver lit the lamps on either side of the stage. Street and the other man stayed in the coach, which was in itself rather odd for it had been a long, hot day with not too many stops for stretching the legs and moving around. They watched each other carefully in the wanly flickering glow of the two oil lamps, neither speaking.

Street was a tall, lean man nearing thirty. His body possessed that hard-packed solidness that denies any excess of flesh. His dark-bronzed face had the same spare look as his body and was clean-shaven, save for the sweeping, tawny cavalry mustache that decorated his upper lip. He wore a townsman’s gray broadcloth suit, and while it fit and looked well upon him, he somehow carried it uncomfortably. His watching eyes betrayed a mixture of caution and cynical bitterness.

A relief driver came out of the darkness, put his face against the open window, and asked with bored cheerfulness, Ready, gents?

Street nodded briefly, vaguely irritated by the impulse that made him want to avert his face. Street’s fellow passenger said shortly, Whenever you are.

The driver withdrew. In the cool night, in the thin air of this desert town, each small sound stood alone, plain and very clear. There was the metallic clink of harness rings, the scuffle of hoofs on the dusty street, a voice distantly shouting, and the tinny sound of a saloon piano. The coach tilted as the driver pulled his weight aboard. Then loudly and dwarfing all other sound came the driver’s shout and the crack of his whip as he laid it out over the heads of his teams. The coach lurched and rolled ahead.

Street settled back. He found a cigar in the pocket of his vest, bit off the end, and lit it. In the match’s bright flare he caught the speculative and studying eyes of the other upon him, and knew a rising exasperation—more than exasperation, too, a stirring of dormant anger, because the ancient pattern was again being repeated.

Montezuma’s buildings ran briefly past, lights flickering warmly in their windows, and then it was wholly dark save for the two oil lamps. The coach slowed noticeably as it began its ascent out of this deep cañon and onto the high desert plain above.

For the twentieth time in the last couple of days, Ben Rawlins, Street’s fellow passenger, dragged the dog-eared copy of Leslie’s Weekly from his pocket and studied it. Street waited with patient aggravation for his soft-repeated comment, Damn if you don’t look like this guy, but tonight it didn’t come. Instead, Rawlins dragged out of the stub of a pencil and began to scratch idly on the paper, occasionally looking at Street as he did. After that he put the pencil and paper away, shifted around uncomfortably, and tilted his hat down over his eyes against the flicker of the oil lamps.

Both puzzled and relieved, Street puffed his cigar and stared unseeingly out of the window, forgetting Rawlins in the rush of his thoughts. Two years it had been, two endless years. And now they were over. He would see Verona again. He would hold her warmth in his hungry arms. The hand that held his cigar was trembling; all the assurance, all the steady self-possession were abruptly gone from his face. In their place was an odd mixture of fear and anticipation. He finished his cigar and tossed the stub out the window.

By now the coach was rolling along at a fair clip, having negotiated the last hairpin in the ascending road and come out onto the relatively level plain above. Street turned and put his feet up on the opposite seat. He searched for and found a place where he could rest his head without undue discomfort. He tilted his hat down over his forehead but beneath its wide brim he could still see Rawlins. Street stared at the man for a moment, warily weighing the danger he presented, then closed his eyes. Thinking of tomorrow and of Verona, he experienced again that unsettled nervousness that was so unlike him. He smiled wryly to himself. Walt Street, the man without nerves. Well, he had nerves tonight, and it wasn’t altogether because of tomorrow, either. It was because of instinct as well, instinct that told him the past two years, their striving and loneliness, were in jeopardy tonight from the man who rode with him. Because Rawlins thought he had recognized a resemblance between the old daguerreotype of Street in Leslie’s Weekly and the man across from him.

Feeling Rawlins’ steady gaze, Street opened his eyes, ruefully amused at the abrupt way Rawlins closed his. Hell, he thought, if it came to that, this Rawlins could be mistaken for Street, too. He had the same build, if less solid, the same coloring, and the daguerreotype was fortunately a poor likeness, and old. The coach lurched and swayed interminably through the night’s still darkness. Into the windows came the sharp smells of the high desert—sage, dust, the smell of horse sweat. Off somewhere to the right a pack of coyotes yammered noisily.

Street dozed. The hard lines of his face relaxed and at last, asleep, he looked only tired. Certainly he did not look dangerous. Rawlins watched him in unmoving silence for a long time. Uneasily he fingered the copy of Leslie’s Weekly in his pocket, his face a study of indecision. Gradually, however, that disappeared. His eyes took on a widely frightened look and his lips firmed out with determination. Stealthily his hand crept under his coat, withdrew a small pocket revolver. Holding the gun against his coat to muffle the click, he carefully drew back the hammer. Then sharply, loudly he said, Street!

An instant before, Street had been asleep, his eyes closed, his breathing steady and quiet. Now he was suddenly awake, his eyes open and clear, watching the man across from him without expression.

Rawlins blurted, Hang it, you are Street.

You’re sure now, are you? Street was smiling sourly.

You’re blamed right I’m sure.

Mind telling me how you got so sure?

The way you came awake when I said your name.

What are you going to do about it? There was a dangerously still patience in Street’s voice.

Take you in to the sheriff at the next town. By Judas, that’s what I’m going to do. Rawlins was scared.

Street said soothingly, You’re forgetting something. I’m not wanted by the law.

There’s a bounty on your head, and I could use it.

Street murmured, A private matter. Jagger offered a thousand dollars more than two years ago to the man who killed me. The law is not concerned in it.

Rawlins appeared to be thinking that over. He was tight-drawn, frightened, doubly dangerous because he was so frightened. Street didn’t like the look that came into his eyes, the pupils pinpointing. He didn’t like the whitening and the tightening around Rawlins’ mouth. He’d seen that look before. Hang Frank Leslie and his lousy Weekly! With a convulsive jerk, Street flung himself off the seat, rolling, lashing out as he did with a wildly swinging arm. He felt his wrist connect with Rawlins’ hand, felt the burn of powder, and then the report was ringing in his ears, deafening in the close confines of the coach. The bullet seared across the long muscles of his shoulder, leaving a numbness but no pain.

Street was unthinking now, an animal fighting for its life. He came scrambling up from the floor, hampered and cursing the close quarters in a softly muttering voice. He threw his weight against Rawlins, who had half risen and was thumbing back the hammer of the gun for a second shot. Rawlins’ legs caved and he lurched back against the coach door. It gave with a splintering crash. Street, rising against the man with all the drive of his powerful legs, was unable to catch himself and helplessly followed Rawlins through the door. He cleared the coach wheel by a scant margin and struck the ground on his face and shoulder, skidded an instant, and then began to roll.

The coach went on, its driver’s shouts only a background to the sounds of struggle on the ground. Street’s dirt-filled eyes found Rawlins and he lunged forward, thoroughly angry now. His body struck the revolver, forcing it upward. His outflung hands groped and one of them closed like a vise over Rawlins’ right wrist. He twisted viciously. His other hand had struck Rawlins’ cheek bone, flinging the man’s head aside. The gun discharged for a second time. An awkward, senseless fight, in which there was neither grace nor skill, ending as senselessly and without pattern as it had begun. Rawlins went limp and fell away, pulling Street down into the dust with him.

Street came clear, knowing with shocking clarity that Rawlins was dead. For an instant he stared down at the man. Growing within him was a wild, outraged anger that this thing could have happened. Two years of striving and danger were wrecked. When it was known who he was … 

Automatically he stooped, doing this as much by instinct as by conscious thought. He fished his own wallet from his pocket and quickly exchanged it for the one in Rawlins’ pocket. He started to straighten, then remembered the copy of Leslie’s Weekly. He found that in Rawlins’ side coat pocket and quickly stuffed it into his own. Then he stood up and faced toward the stage, which had turned around and was now returning.

The driver hauled his teams to a halt and climbed down. What the devil’s going on here?

Street said irritably, What’s it look like? This damned fool tried to kill me.

Is he hurt?

He’s dead.

Oh, Jesus, did you have to do that? The driver knelt beside the still form and struck a match.

What would you have done? Let him kill you? Besides, I never even had my hand on the gun. He shot himself.

The driver fished Street’s wallet from the dead man’s pocket. He straightened. Who was he?

Street took the Weekly from his pocket. He could be this Walt Street. He looks something like the picture.

He struck a match, held it over the paper. The picture of Street stared up at him, decorated with a penciled cavalry mustache. So that was what had made Rawlins so sure. He let the match burn his fingers and dropped it. But the driver had seen the penciled mustache and had thrown a quick glance at Street. He said, You even look a little like Street yourself.

Street made himself laugh. We were talking about that. I said he looked like the picture and he said, ‘Hell, you do, too.’ He drew the mustache to prove it. But he must have got scared. Because he pulled down on me while I was asleep.

The driver whistled. You’re lucky, man! He whistled again. Lordy! Imagine that. Walt Street riding my coach and I didn’t even know it. You’re due to collect that bounty, friend.

Yeah. Street’s tone dismissed the subject. He growled, Well, hell, are we going to stand here jawing all night?

The driver stared at him. You’re a cool one, ain’t you? I’d be shaking like a leaf, if I just killed a man.

Street muttered, Who says I’m not? I just don’t want to stand here, looking at him all night. He managed to make his laugh shaky. Let’s put him in the coach. I’ll ride the box with you the rest of the way.

Together they lifted the dead man and put him in the coach. The driver found a piece of wire and wired the door shut. Street mounted the high seat beside him and the coach lurched ahead.

Out into the high brush it went, turning, the driver cursing and popping his whip. Then back on the road and ahead toward Escalante and the waiting Verona.

Now a new worry entered Street’s mind. Verona would give him away. He shrugged that off. No. She’d not cry out his name. She was as interested as he was in keeping his identity a secret. She was not even using his name, but her own, Verona Ormsby.

The stage driver chattered excitedly over the noise of the thundering coach. He speculated and guessed at the reasons for Street’s presence on his coach. He said, Mebbe he was going to rob the bank at Escalante.

Street said dourly, He ain’t an outlaw.

Hell! All them gunmen’re outlaws. What’s the difference? You kill a man or you rob a bank. Which is the worst?

Street shrugged, silent. You could never explain. You couldn’t ever make people believe the killings were unavoidable, even sometimes justified. You couldn’t make them understand how the thing got started, a man stealing a horse out of your father’s pasture. You yell at him to stop, but he doesn’t stop. You fire, and the man falls. Only later do you discover that he is Lee Myers, the famous gunman. So overnight you’re famous yourself. Being a kid and having no defense against the deteriorating effects of fame, you begin to pack a gun and to practice with it. Your old man takes a buggy whip to you, trying to make you stop, and you run away from home. Now you’re on your own. You’re Walt Street, the kid who killed Lee Myers. And along comes another tough kid who wants to be the kid who killed the kid who killed Lee Myers.

Street laughed softly, bitterly and wholly without humor. You’re twice a killer now and learning to be tough and hard. The years and the towns flow past in a seemingly unbroken stream. And then you fall in love. Verona Ormsby. Verona Ormsby Street. A girl in one of the towns you pass through, a girl with copper hair, green, laughing eyes with tiny flecks of brown in them, a girl to make your blood run hot. Maybe she’s taken with the fame you pack in your holster. Maybe there’s a yearning for excitement and adventure in her. Anyway, she marries you. Her parents try to run you out of town without her, but you take her anyway—on a fast horse. She loves you and you love her. But love can’t live on the run. It can’t live with fear, and distrust, and cold camps in the open and dreary hotel rooms. It can’t live when you come home to her with that look in your eyes that says you have killed again.

So one day you come home and she’s gone. There’s a note, a tragic, half incoherent note: Walt, put the gun away for two years. I’ll wait, Walt. I’ll wait and then we can start again. Angry at first, you are, wildly, violently angry. Then hurt. Then lonely. And at last you admit that she was right. So you leave the country. You put the gun away and you ride. You change your appearance by growing a mustache. You get an honest job and save your money. When the two years are over, you visit the town where you first found her. Maybe you’ve succeeded. Maybe you’ve made a man of yourself, because her father, so bitter before, now tells you where to find her. Escalante, Colorado. You come to her with clean hands, your heart blazing with the flame of your need for her.

Street’s face contorted in the darkness. His eyes were dead, still, bitter. Because of an article in Leslie’s Weekly and an old daguerreotype, because of that bounty Jagger put on him for killing Jagger’s brother, because of these things it all went sour. Tonight he’d killed in self-defense. He hadn’t even really killed. But would Verona believe that? When he came into town on a crest of this notoriety, would Verona believe he had changed? He knew she wouldn’t.

II

Through most of the night the stage brawled along across the seemingly endless reaches of desert, but when dawn’s gray streaked the eastern sky, it silhouetted the towering rims of the Cougar Plateau. The stage driver, having talked himself out during the night, now drove with relaxed and bored concentration.

Gray crept across the desert floor and at last the clouds over the Cougar Plateau’s high rims turned pink. The sun came up, laying a clean, clear magic of light across the land, giving color to the desert flowers, to the purple haze of distance to north and south. Dawn’s chill evaporated with the warm rays. Street straightened from his relaxed position, fished for a cigar, and asked, How long now?

Hour. Mebbe a little more. The driver was cryptic and Street grinned at him.

The driver was a small, oldish man and now his face was coated with a light film of dust. Around his eyes, where the wind had fetched moisture, it had streaked and turned to mud. He had not shaved for several days and the stubble on his face was mostly gray. His eyes were blue and friendly, framed with crow’s-feet from his constant squinting against sun and dust.

They came into a wide cañon formed by a split in the plateau, and after another ten minutes reached a bridge crossing a tumbling, roaring whitewater stream. Shouting over the noise of the water, Street said, Thirsty. Dirty. Mind stopping for a minute?

The driver shook his head and pulled up. Street got down stiffly, yawned, and walked off to the bank of the stream. He dropped to his belly and drank, holding his body off the ground with his hands. Then, squatting, he removed his hat and splashed the icy water over his face, scrubbing vigorously. He got up, ran his fingers through his hair, and replaced his hat. Face dripping, he returned to the coach, refreshed.

The driver, standing beside the coach, was eyeing him oddly. Took you fer a townsman, he said. Though you drink like you’ve drunk that way before.

Street grinned. Getting down, you mean? Best way, ain’t it?

The driver shrugged, and climbed aboard. Street followed and the coach rolled on.

The horses were tired, having traveled steadily since the last change at midnight, but they knew this run as well as the driver. Knowing it was near its end, they quickened pace. The cañon gradually narrowed and the walls of the plateau grew steeper. Then, as they rounded a bend, Street saw the scattering of buildings that was Escalante ahead. And like the blow of a fist in his belly the fear hit him. It was not fear of anything physical, nor even fear of the repercussions that might arise from the killing last night. It was fear of meeting Verona. It was fear that she would not believe he had changed.

He caught the driver watching him. The man said sympathetically, Feeling peaked, son? Wouldn’t blame you if you was. Something to ride into a strange town like this, a dead man behind. Something to step down offen a coach and say ‘Walt Street in back there. Dead. I killed him.’

I didn’t kill him. It was an accident. Street’s voice was strange.

Accident, hell! Suppose you wasn’t so quick on your feet. Suppose you wasn’t now? Would it be him laying back there? No, sir. It’d be you. You killed him all right.

Street’s hands clenched. His face was twisted, white. His eyes were wild and he yelled savagely, Shut up, damn you! Shut up!

The stage driver started violently. He shrank away from Street as far as the narrow seat would allow. He opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. He swallowed as though his throat were dry. Finally he got out a shaky, Hell, no need to take on so. What’d I say wrong?

Street fought himself for control. He made his voice calm. You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s me. I’m sorry. Guess I’m more upset than I realized over last night. I guess I don’t like to talk about it.

The driver relaxed. He shifted back to where he had sat before. He said, "Know how