Joe Millard - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Gun in hand he prowled the hotel, finding only empty rooms. He came at last to one larger than the others and much more luxuriously furnished. A large folding screen at one end aroused his curiosity. He tiptoed across and peered over it.

Behind the screen was a rarity of rarities in that rough frontier land—a tin bathtub. It was narrow and long enough for a man to sit down in with his legs outstretched. One end swept up in a high graceful curve to provide a headrest for a bather. Attesting to the hasty abandonment, the tub was filled with sudsy water from which rose a delicate fragrance.

It was the first real bathtub Tuco had ever seen. As he goggled at it he realised that he was hot, dusty, sweaty and tired from a long day’s ride. A glint came into his eye and he began to strip.

The water was luxuriously cold as he sank into it. He soon discovered that splashing increased the foamy suds and sent up fresh waves of perfume to his nostrils. He became so absorbed in revelling in the new sensation that he almost failed to hear the stealthy creak of a floor board in the halt outside.

He was lolling back against the headrest, his eyes closed, when a harsh voice said, “If that ain’t the damnedest place to finally catch up with you, Tuco.”

Tuco’s eyes opened and snapped wide. The man standing just inside the door was gaunt, with a tangle of unkempt beard. His right arm was no more than a short stump in an empty sleeve. His left held a cocked pistol that pointed unwaveringly at Tuco.

The intruder laughed harshly.

“So you remember me, eh, Tuco? You haven’t forgotten old Elam after all these years. I never forget you, either. I remembered you real good every time I wanted to do something with my right hand and it wasn’t there.” He hawked and spat on the carpeted floor. “I just rode in and was puttin’ up my horse when you come riding down the street, bold as brass. I knowed you in a flash, Tuco, so I follered you here. Remember that day, Tuco? You could have killed me. You was a lot faster on your draw than me. You should have killed me—’stead of bullet-smashing my gun arm so it had to be cut off.”

Tuco had neither moved nor spoken. He sad rigid in the ridiculous tub, both hands hidden in the foamy suds. His clothing was piled on a chair beside the tub.

His gunbeit hung from a chairback.

“A lot of time has passed since then, Tuco, Time enough for me to learn to shoot real good with my left hand. Now I’m gonna show you just how good I learned.” His eyes narrowed as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Tuco lifted his own gun out of the concealing suds and shot him precisely through the adam’s apple.

“When you’re going to shoot somebody,” he said coldly to the twitching figure on the floor, “shoot him. Don’t stand around trying to talk a man to death.”

He carefully wiped the soapsuds from his gun, returned it to its holster and lolled back in the tub, splashing the cold water up over his chest and shoulders. He felt so relaxed and content that presently he yielded to an unprecedented urge to burst into song.

The sound of his voice drowned out the single gunshot from below.

The song ended abruptly in a choked gurgle. He sat up, his mouth open, gaping at the tall figure in the poncho who materialised in the doorway.

“Eh-eh-eh! Whitey? Is that really you or a ghost? It must be you because I don’t believe in ghosts. If there were such things—I would be followed by a crowd.”

“Get out of that silly bucket of suds and get your pants on. You’d look pretty ridiculous going into a gunfight naked as a jaybird.”

“A gunfight?” Tuco scrambled out of the tub, skidded on the soapy floor and grabbed wildly fora towel. “What are you doing here, Whitey? How did you get out of that sewer?”

“Your dear old friend, Sentenza, gave me new clothes and a gun and personally escorted me out of Battleville.”

“Sentenza?” Tuco howled. “You coward! You traitor! You stinking Judas! You talked. You told him the name. You betrayed your own partner, who loved you like a brother. Who saved you from that awful desert, eh? Who shared his water with you? Who carried you to that mission and stayed by your side, night and day, to help nurse you back to health, eh? And in return you sell me out to that black-hearted scoundrel, Sentenza.

“Oh, shut up and try using your head for a change. If I’d given Sentenza even a hint of what he wants to know, do you think I’d be alive and standing here now?”

“Ah—you didn’t talk, then. Your secret is still your secret and no one else’s. Whitey, I could not love my own brother more. Wait a moment until I button my pants and we will go kill that pig, Sentenza, eh?”

“That might take a little doing, Tuco. Sentenza isn’t alone. He has five gunmen, all pretty good at their trade and every one itching to gun me out,”

A crafty look came over the bandit’s face.

“Five, eh? So that’s why you come to Tuco again No matter. Five or five hundred, we’ll kill them all.”

The hunter stirred the body on the floor with his toe.

“Who was this? A friend of yours?”

“An old friend.” Tuco nodded, strapping on his gun. “Now the best kind of friend to have—a dead one. Let’s go.”

He started toward the door, stopped short. “Wait a minute, Whitey. Sentenza is after the gold—our gold. Right? And you’re the only man alive who knows the name on the grave where it is buried. Right? So Sentenza will never find the gold if you die. Right? So you come to your old friend, Tuco, with a crazy story that Sentenza’s men are trying to kill you. You think Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez is so stupid he will swallow that story and walk into your trap, eh, Judas?”

“I don’t think Sentenza has any say in the matter now. He had six gunmen until a few minutes ago. I just killed one of them down on the street. The others will be as hungry to get me that he won’t be able to stop them—short of killing them all himself. And I don’t think even Sentenza’s gun is quite fast enough for that.”

“Ah,” Tuco said, nodding. “A double double-cross, eh? That I can understand, Whitey. So let’s hurry and kill them all and go get our gold.”

They peered cautiously through a downstairs window of the hotel. The body of the dead Hank still lay on the walk by the corner. His five companions, guns in their hands, were spaced out along the street, two on each side and the fifth, Andy, who was rated the fastest, covering the middle. There was no sign of Sentenza.

“Come on,” the hunter whispered. “There’s got to be a back door out of this botch We can follow an alley and come out on them down the street”

“One thing, Whitey,” Tuco said as they darted out into the narrow alley. “Sentenza is all mine, eh? That pig. That raper of babies and grandmothers—I still hurt all over when I hear his name after what he had that animal, Wallace, do to me.”

“He’s yours if you think you can take him. I don’t care if a horsefly kicks him to death—as long as I can see his body and make sure he isn’t faking.”

Their sudden appearance down the street was greeted by yells of rage. The five gunmen moved toward them, maintaining a wide-spaced formation. Tuco and the bounty-hunter moved apart and advanced to meet them. The only sounds in the eerie stillness of the street were the measured shuffle of boots on sand.

The gunman called Andy stepped up his pace. He moved out in front of the others

“Hank was my partner,” he called out. “I claim first chance at the man who gunned him down without a chance.” He dropped his gun back into its holster and raised his voice. “How about it, you yellow-topped buzzard? Have you got the guts to make it a match?”