Max Collins - The Legend of Caleb York

But he didn’t hit her.

Willa, in the recession of the barbershop doorway, watched as the stranger unhitched his horse with his left hand, the shotgun stock clutched in his right. He was looking everywhere, listening intently for any hint of sound over the muffled fun from the Victory.

Nothing.

She left the recession of the doorway and stepped across the boardwalk and down into the street, approaching him. He spun toward her, swinging the shotgun her way, making her jump back a little.

Then he let out so much air that he might have collapsed. “I told you stay back, woman.”

She gestured to the quiet, dark street around them. “You’re imagining things. Who are you meeting, anyway?”

He took a step closer to her. Softly he said, “You. I want to ride out to your father’s ranch for a talk.”

This news widened her eyes, threw her off balance. “Well... that’s why I came to town. To talk to you. ”

A tiny click froze them both.

Just the smallest little noise...

... a gun cocking?

Swiftly the stranger shoved her to the street, where she landed whump in a dust cloud of her making, and he ducked down to where that desert rat was napping, pulling out from under Tulley the seed bag that had been the old boy’s mattress, and slinging the thing over the saddle of his horse, whose rump he slapped, sending the animal charging down the street, galloping in the direction of the hotel.

A dark-mustached man in a black vest emerged fast from the alley across the way, to aim a pistol at what he must have figured was the stranger on horseback, trying to get away.

But the stranger was in the midst of the street now and the shooter turned in surprise and got a bellyful of buckshot for his trouble. Blown onto his backside, the openmouthed ambusher stared at the sky, but wasn’t seeing it.

From the alley off to her right came another attacker, a smaller man but burly, on the move, firing a pistol at the stranger, three shots cracking the night, but his target had hit the street in a roll and came up in a crouch, letting loose the other barrel of the shotgun with a boom that sounded like dynamite exploding.

The smaller man was lifted off his feet, then fell back and splashed onto his own spilled blood and innards.

Now she could smell it.

Gunsmoke in the air like gray-blue drifting fog, the stranger was getting to his feet, slowly, looking all around him.

She stayed down, trembling, wondering what might come next, and from her vantage point she could see men pouring out of the Victory down one way and people coming out more tentatively from the hotel down the other. The glow of lights came to windows of second-floor living quarters here and there, folks leaning out for a look, as the stranger calmly, almost casually walked first to one corpse, kicking it, then to the other, and doing the same.

A cowboy, who’d come out of the Victory, close enough to see, called out, “My gosh, he got Jake Britt ! And Lars Manning !”

Townspeople, men mostly, tucking nightshirts into trousers they quickly stepped into, some in bare feet, were emerging from this place and that one for a look. Pushing through this assembling wall of gawkers, came the sheriff.

“All right!” Gauge yelled. “All right, get back, back, all of you!”

The stranger was standing near the second of the dead bodies he’d made, the shotgun cradled in his arms.

The sheriff faced the stranger, putting perhaps three feet between them. He almost snarled as he said, “What is this? What happened here?”

“I’d call it an ambush,” the stranger said offhandedly, breaking the shotgun, snapping out shells, reloading but leaving the gun open. “Or I guess in more official terms? An attempted ambush.”

Gauge backed away a few steps, hands on hips, and called around to those gathered at this latest shooting scene, “Anybody see what happened here?”

Around them were the faces belonging to what must have been a third of the town, anyway... and all were shaking their heads.

The sheriff wheeled back to the man with the shotgun and pointed a finger at him like a pistol. “Who ambushed who, stranger? What I see is two of my deputies shot down like dogs in the street, and nobody but you to say how it happened.”

Willa was already heading over, dusting herself off from the fall. “ I saw it, Sheriff.”

Gauge turned toward her and his smile was witheringly sarcastic, as was his tone as he said, “Now, ain’t that just nice. Ain’t that convenient and all. The little lady comes up with a story just in the nick of time to clear her father’s hired gun.”

“He’s not my father’s hired gun,” she said, almost spitting the words. “But I saw those two men try to bushwhack him. That one shot first, then the stranger defended himself, and after that, this one came out shooting and got what he asked for. Self-defense in anybody’s book. Any questions, Sheriff?”

Before Gauge could respond, the desert rat scrambled out from under the boardwalk, saying, “Wait just a minute, Sheriff! Hold your horses.”

Gauge looked with contempt at the ragged figure shambling toward him. “What is it, Tulley?”

The desert rat patted his chest, raising dust. “Maybe you better count me as a witness, too, Sheriff. I saw the whole blasted thing myself. Came about just like Miss Cullen said. Couple of back-shooters got shot front-ways. Better than they merited.”

The sheriff scowled at this second witness. “Are you drunk, old man?”

“Not presently.” Tulley pointed to the boardwalk. “That’s what I was doin’ under there — sleepin’ it off!”

Gauge gave first Tulley, and then Willa, a lingering look at his disgusted sneer.

Then he turned to the stranger and said, “Fine pair of witnesses you got here, mister. Town drunk and the daughter of a man who hates my guts. Maybe I ought to take you in, anyway.”

The stranger snapped the shotgun shut and grinned, though his eyes weren’t friendly at all. “Guess you could try, Sheriff.”

The two men faced each other for five seconds that must have seemed, to one and all, a very long time.

Deputy Rhomer stepped from the crowd — “Out of the way, out of the way!” — and took the sheriff’s arm, jerking his head to one side, indicating they should move away from their potential prisoner.

Willa could hear what Rhomer whispered: “Take it easy, Harry. Suppose he is Banion. He’ll cut you to pieces with that shotgun!”

“If he ain’t Banion,” Gauge said, “he’s a fool.”

The sheriff stepped away from his deputy, sighed deep, hitched his gun belt, and returned to the stranger, saying, “I’m not going to waste time or taxpayer money arrestin’ you. Thanks to these two witnesses, you’re free to go.”

The stranger smiled, nodded. “Right kind of you, Sheriff.”

Gauge gave him a hard look, a hand on the butt of his holstered .44. “You still claim to just be passin’ through, mister?”

“That’s my intention.”

The sheriff’s chin raised, as if begging the stranger to take a swing. “You could stand to pick up the pace a mite.”

Then the lawman went back to the milling citizens, perhaps half of whom had lost interest and gone back home and to bed already, and got somebody to go after Doc Miller. Not that pronouncing either of these two dead would take much effort. Nobody had to seek out undertaker Perkins, who always showed up, no matter what time of day, whenever there were gunshots. Just trying to serve his community.

Willa went to the stranger, who said to her, “Sorry about the rough treatment.”