William Johnstone - Code of the Mountain Man

Charlie sipped his drink. The whiskey tasted good after the dust of the road. He’d been a hard-drinkin’ man in his younger days. Now he enjoyed just an occasional drink, liked to linger over it. In peace. Young Bobby was pushing. Hard. Just a few more words and he would step over the line. Charlie hoped the young man would just sit down and shut up.

“Goddamn mangy old fart!” Bobby yelled. “You wear them two guns like you think you’re hot stuff. Turn around and prove it!”

There it was, Charlie thought. He would have liked to just finish his drink and walk out the door. But the code demanded that he do otherwise.

No, Charlie corrected that. It wasn’t just the code. It was much more than that. It came with manhood. It was part of maintaining one’s self-respect. It . . .

Larry Tibbson walked down the rickety stairs and stepped into the barroom.

. . . was just something that a man had to do. Right or wrong, and Charlie had thoughts about that, it just had to be.

“I called for hot water!” Larry said.

“Shut up and git out of the way,” the bartender told him.

“You goddamn old turd!” Bobby hollered. “Turn around and face me.”

“What on earth is taking place here?” Larry asked, looking around him. “And where is my hot water. I want to take a bath.”

The barkeep reached over the bar and pulled Larry to the far end of the long bar. “Shet your trap, boy,” he told Larry. “Lead’s a-fixin’ to fly.”

Charlie finished his drink and slowly set the glass on the bar. He turned around, his hands by his side. “Go home, boy,” he told Bobby. “I ain’t lookin’ for trouble.”

“Well, you got it!” Bobby told him.

“Why?” Charlie asked. “I don’t know you. I never seen you before in my life. Why me?”

“ ’Cause I think you maybe believe you’re a gunhawk, that’s why.”

“Son, I was handlin’ guns years before you were born. Now why don’t you just sit down and finish yur drink, and I’ll just walk out the bats?”

“Yellow!” Bobby sneered at him. “The old man’s yellow. He’s afraid of Bobby Jones.”

Charlie smiled. “I never heard of you, Bobby. Are you lookin’ for a reputation? Is that it?”

“I got a rep!”

“I ain’t never seen none of your graveyards, boy.”

“You just ain’t looked in the right place. As far as that goes, where’s your graveyards?”

“All over the land, son. From Canada to Mexico. From Missouri to California.”

“You say!”

“That’s right, son. I say.”

Earl Sutcliffe pushed open the batwings and stood there, sizing up the situation. “What’s the trouble here?”

“Stay out of this, marshal,” Bobby said. “This is between me and this old goat here.”

“You know who that old goat is?” Earl asked.

“Don’t make no difference to me. I don’t like this old coot’s looks, and I told him so. He’s afraid of me.”

Earl laughed. “Boy, that man is not afraid of anything. That’s Charlie Starr.”

Bobby looked like a horse just kicked him in the belly. His face turned white and sweat popped out on his forehead. But he had made his bed—or in this case, dug his grave—and now he would be forced to lie in it. Unless he backed down.

“Give it up, son,” Earl told him. “Sit down and live.”

Bobby’s hands hovered over the pearl handles of his brand new matching .45s. Those raggedly-looking guns of Charlie’s looked to Bobby like they was so old they probably wouldn’t even fire. Looked like they’d been converted from cap and ball to handle brass cartridges.

Bobby stepped down into the damp, Chilly grave he’d just dug for himself. “You’re yellow, old man!” he shouted. “Charlie Starr’s done turned yellow. You’re standin’ on your reputation, and I’m gonna be the man who jerks it out from under you.”

Charlie straightened up, his mouth tight and his face grim. Earl knew it was nearly over. A man can only take so much, and Charlie had given the young punk more than ample opportunity to back down. “Enough talk,” Charlie said. “Make your play, you stupid little snot.”

“Here now!” Larry said. “This has gone entirely too far. You there,” he said to Charlie. “You stop picking on that boy.”

“Shut up,” Earl told him.

Louis Longmont, Johnny North, and Cotton Pickens had walked into the saloon, standing on either side of Earl. “Fifty dollars says the kid never clears leather,” Louis offered up a wager.

“You’re on,” a young man at the table where Bobby should have stayed seated said. “That there’s Bobby Jones. He’s faster than Smoke Jensen.”

“He couldn’t lick Smoke’s boots,” Charlie said.

“What!” Bobby screamed. “Draw, you old fart!”

“After you, boy,” Charlie told him. “I don’t ever want it said that I took advantage of a young punk.”

“I ain’t no punk!”

“Then show that you’re a man by sittin’ down and lettin’ me buy you a drink. That’s my final offer, son.”

“You mean, that’s your final statement. ’Cause I’m gonna kill you, Starr.”

“That’s it,” Louis muttered. He knew, as did everyone else in the bar, that those words, once spoken, were justification to kill.

Charlie shot him. His draw was so smooth, so practiced, so fast, so professional, that it was a blur to witness. Flame shot out the muzzle of his old long-barreled .44. Gray smoke belched forth, obscuring vision. Bobby was jarred back as the slug ripped his belly and wandered around his guts, leaving a path of pain wherever it traveled.

He imagined himself jacking the hammer back on his .45 and pulling the trigger. He actually did just that. But his guns were still in leather. He leaned against a support post and finally dragged iron.

Charlie let him cock his .45 before he put another slug in the punk’s guts. Bobby yelled and slumped toward the floor, sliding down the post and sitting down heavily. He pulled the trigger and blew off several of his own toes. He screamed in pain and tried to lift the .45. It was just too heavy.

The .45 clattered to the littered floor.

“By God,” one of Bobby’s friends declared. “That’ll not go unavenged.” He stood up, a pistol in his hand.

Charlie drilled him in the brisket and doubled the young man over like the closing of a fan. The young man fell, landing on Bobby.

Bobby screamed in pain.

“You still owe me fifty dollars,” Louis reminded the gut-shot punk who’d wanted revenge for Bobby.

“Help me!” the second punk bellered. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, my belly’s on fire.”

“My God!” Larry yelled. “Somebody get a doctor and call the police.”

He was ignored.

Bobby’s other friends sat quite still at the table, their faces a sickly shade of green.

“Gimme a drink and one of them eggs over yonder,” Charlie told the bartender. “Shootin’ always makes me hungry.”

“You barbarian!” Larry yelled at him.

Charlie noticed the man wasn’t wearing a gun, so he did the next best thing. He walked over to him and slapped Larry across the mouth, knocking him down.

“I’ll sue you!” Larry hollered.

Bobby broke wind and died.

His friend yelled, “Help me!”

Charlie punched out his empties, loaded up full, holstered his gun, and began peeling the egg.

“Somebody run fetch that new undertaker feller that just set up business down the street,” the barkeep suggested. “I wanna see that shiny black hearse and them fancy-steppin’ horses.”

“You’re all mad!” Larry said, getting to his shoes.

“Somebody get a doctor for that poor boy.”

“Ain’t no doctor,” a man told him. “Go get the barber.

“The barber!” Larry exclaimed in horror.