William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

Watchful as always, Johnny stood with Luke at the head of the bar where it made a little L-shaped jog near the entrance. Angled sideways with his back to the wall, he watched the patrons’ comings, goings, and carryings-on.

He drank with his right hand—his gun hand—his left hanging down loose and easy near the butt of the gun holstered on his left hip. He was faster and more deadly accurate with a gun in his left hand than most men were with either hand.

Luke leaned against the bar with his back to the door, facing the rear of the building. He could see the full length of the saloon, all but the entrance, and Johnny had that covered. Between them, they had the whole place under view.

They weren’t expecting trouble, but they weren’t not expecting it, either. After all, this was Hangtown.

At the bar, you took your drinks standing up, since there were no stools. If you wanted to drink and sit down, you took a chair at one of the tables. Had Johnny and Luke been planning to stay a while, they would have taken a table, to give Luke a chance to rest his good leg.

Luke’s feet, the one of flesh and blood and the wooden one, were firmly planted on the sawdust-covered floor. His crutch was beside him, propped against the edge of the bar.

The Dog Star drew a rough crowd, attracting more than its share of local hardcases. Few were out and out villains, but most were no better than they had to be. Small ranchers who weren’t above using a running iron to put their brand on other men’s cattle, cowboys too ornery or alcoholic or both to hold a job for long, horse thieves, gun hawks, drifters, tinhorns, skirt chasers, saddle tramps—a lively crew. The saloon was packed with them, thronging the bar and the tables.

Johnny caught Squint’s eye, the good one, a round and fiercely glaring orb. He motioned for a refill. McCray nodded, reaching under the bar for a bottle of the higher-line brand of whiskey he kept for more demanding, better-paying customers.

He filled Johnny’s cup, a wooden tumbler, and Luke’s too, while he was at it. All the cups in the saloon were made of wood. It cut down on breakage, especially during brawls. Fridays and Saturdays were usually good for a half-dozen brawls each night.

“Have one on me, Squint,” Johnny said.

“Don’t mind if I do.” McCray grinned, showing the few teeth he had, black and broken. Setting another cup on the bar top, he poured himself a drink. Raising it, he said, “Mud in your eye.”

He didn’t mind having fun with his name, so long as he was instigating it. Let somebody else make sport of it, though, and there could be trouble.

“Here’s how,” Johnny said.

“Health,” said Luke, gesturing with his cup.

They drank up. McCray tossed his back like it was water, with as little seeming effect. Johnny drained his cup without flinching, but a deep red flush overspread his bronzed face. Luke did the same, eyes watering, an involuntary twitch firing a couple times at the corner of his mouth.

“Good for what ails you,” McCray said cheerfully.

“Smooth,” Johnny said, a mite breathless.

“Yeah,” Luke coughed out.

“It’s my special brand, for them what appreciates the quality,” McCray said. “The secret’s in the aging.”

“A whole week, huh?” Luke said sarcastically.

“Eight days! It’s that extra day that makes the difference.”

“As long as you’re in the neighborhood, might as well hit ’em again,” Johnny said, “and don’t skip yourself.”

McCray refilled the three tumblers. “This one’s on the house, boys.”

“Thank you kindly, Squint,” Johnny said.

“Right generous of you,” Luke said.

They all three drank the round slower, a sip at a time.

“Ain’t seen much of you boys lately,” McCray remarked.

“We’ve been out at the ranch, mustanging,” Johnny said.

“You picked a good day to come in, what with the shooting and all.”

“You see it, Squint?” Luke asked.

“And leave the place to those no-account thieving kinfolk of mine? Not on your life, brother. Although it almost would’ve been worth it to see Bliss Stafford get a bellyful of lead.”

“No bellyful. Shot through the heart,” Luke said.

“You seen it, huh?” McCray leaned forward eagerly, elbows on the bar.

“Sure ’nuff. A sweet piece of gunplay it was, too.”

“Worked out good for me.”

“How’s that, Squint?”

McCray looked around the saloon, his good eye glinting. “Nothing like a killing for bringing ’em in,” he said, beaming. “Saturdays is always good, but we’re doing a land office business. It’s the shooting what done it. Folks like to talk it up over their cups, kick it around.”

“What’re they saying?” Johnny asked.

McCray looked around, then leaned in farther. There was little worry about being overheard amid the noise and tumult of the hard-drinking, rowdy crowd. But the Dog Star was the kind of place where patrons naturally put their heads together as if cooking up some scheme—crooked, more likely than not.

McCray was just being confidential and cautious. “You ain’t gonna find too many tears being shed over Bliss Stafford. Too bad about Damon, though.”

“What for? He ain’t the one who got kilt,” Luke said.

“Not yet. But he’s not long for this earth.” McCray shook his head, the corners of his mouth downturned. “Damned shame, though. Him being a genuine hero of the Confederacy and all.”

“That right?” Johnny said.

“Ain’t you heard? Damon was part of that outfit that whupped that Yankee General Banks and his army at the junction of the Teche and Atchefalaya rivers. Chased ’em clear out of the Red River country.”

“That’s hard country. Swampland when it rains, near-desert when it don’t, and not much good any time.”

“Sounds like you been there,” McCray said shrewdly.

“Just passing through,” Johnny said. After the war, he’d knocked around for a while in the East Texas Louisiana borderland with Lone Star hellions Cullen Baker, Bill Longley, and such. Johnny was still wanted in those parts.

“Reckon the Staffords will come gunning for Damon?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Depend on it,” McCray said flatly. “The old man’s a mean one on the best of days, and this ain’t gonna be one of them, not with his fair-haired boy dead with Damon’s bullets in him.”

“A fair duel,” Johnny said.

“That won’t make no never-mind to Vince Stafford, no sir. Them other sons of his are a handful, too. Fact is, they could all use killing. Hard to beat, though. Clay’s pure hell with a gun and Quent’s meaner than a rattlesnake. And they won’t come alone. They’ll bring the whole Ramrod bunch, and that’s a passel of bad hombres.”

Two men came in through the front door, one at a time, cutting the conversation short.

The first was about forty, round faced, with a neatly trimmed black beard. His eyes were bright, calculating. He looked like a prosperous rancher or businessman, well fed, well dressed. Those types were at a premium in Hangtown ... in all of postwar Texas, for that matter.

A pair of big-caliber guns were worn holstered low on his hips, below a soft swelling roundness of belly. The bright shrewd eyes and low-slung guns didn’t quite fit the image of man of affairs that he presented.

The second man was in his mid-twenties. His hat was set back on his head so the brim tilted up at a near-vertical angle. A brown hat with a round crown, broad flat brim, and a snakeskin hatband. He was thin, bony, sharp-featured, with slitted eyes, a knife-blade nose, and a thin-lipped mouth. A holstered gun was slung low on his right hip, his hand hovering near it.

The duo moved apart, so that neither stood with his back framed by the open doorway. They stood at the front of the saloon, facing the rear, eyeing the place as if looking for something, or more likely, someone.