Ralph Compton - Bluff City

Without being invited, the cardplayer pulled out a chair. He wasn’t much more than an inch over five feet tall. Bushy eyebrows and glittering dark eyes lent him a sinister aspect. “It’s been a while, Crooked Nose.”

“Don’t call me that,” the rider said.

“Why the hell not? It’s what everyone else calls you. The newspapers. The law. Crooked Nose Neville Baine. The scourge of the cow towns. Isn’t that what they wrote about you after that shooting affray over to Salina?”

Baine set down the bottle. As he did, his other hand drifted under the table. “I won’t tell you again.”

“I don’t see why you’re so prickly,” the cardplayer complained. “You have a bent nose. Me, I lost a toe once. I accidentally cut it off when I was chopping firewood. But you don’t hear me gripe. At least we still have our fingers and hair, which is more than Beanpole Charlie could say after the Blackfeet were done with him.”

“What I don’t savvy is why you are being so friendly, Stark. I have never been your favorite person and you have never been mine.”

Jesse Stark’s laugh was more like a growl. “Same old Baine. You always speak your piece and don’t care who you offend. But I reckon you can afford to be uppity, as many hombres as you have bucked out in gore.”

“Go away,” Baine said.

“What is gnawing at you? I pay you a compliment and you bristle like a cactus. You should be friendlier. In case you have forgotten, we are a lot alike, you and me.”

“You must be drunk.”

“I haven’t had a sip, believe it or not,” Stark replied. “I have to stay sober. Me and the boys have something special planned.” He glanced at the bartender, who was arranging bottles, then leaned across the table. “As for being alike, we both have a string of killings to our credit. Granted, your tally is higher, but it won’t always be. I have plans. Big plans. Before I’m done, I’ll be as famous as that other Jesse, Jesse James. Maybe more so.”

“You misjudge me.”

“Are you denying you have a string of shootings as long as my arm?” Stark snorted.

“I am not denying anything,” Baine said. “But you are the one wanted by every lawman in Kansas and Missouri. Texas, too, I hear tell. I’m not wanted anywhere that I know of.”

“You make it sound as if that makes you better than me,” Jesse Stark said. “But when folks talk about gun-sharks, they mention you in the same breath as Ben Thompson, Jim Courtright and John Ringo.”

“What’s that brown coming out your ears?” Baine said.

Stark sat back and drummed his fingers on the table. “I was thinking of asking you to join us, but not now. Your trouble is that you always look down your nose at the rest of us. One day someone is going to shoot that ugly nose right off.”

“Anyone who wants to try is welcome to.”

“There you go again. You are one smug bastard.” Stark spread his hands on the table. “But I didn’t walk over here to sling affronts. Fact is, I want to be sociable and give you a friendly warning.”

“How is that again?”

Just then a townsman in a bowler entered. Jesse Stark tensed and eyed the man suspiciously. When the townsman went to the bar and asked for a drink, Stark visibly relaxed. “A friendly warning,” he repeated. “No one here has recognized you yet, other than me. Once they do, it wouldn’t surprise me if they ask you to skedaddle, same as they did to you in Topeka.” His grin was as cold as an icicle. “Out of the goodness of my heart I will spare you the inconvenience.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“I told you. The boys and me have something planned. Once we light the fuse, hell will seem like a church picnic compared to Whistler’s Flat. The people will be as riled as hornets. You might not want the attention.”

Crooked Nose Baine did not say anything.

“Well? Don’t I rate a thanks? Warning you is right neighborly of me, don’t you think?”

“The bank,” Baine guessed.

“Not hard to figure, was it? And a little fun, after.”

“How soon before you light the fuse?” Crooked Nose Baine asked.

Stark took a badly scratched and battered pocket watch from a pocket and consulted the timepiece. “It is a little before two. We aim to start the festivities at six, just as the bank is fixing to close. We hear tell their marshal is out of town, but some of the good citizens are bound to come down with a dose of brave. They won’t catch us, though. Not that close to dark. And if me and my men ride hell bent for leather all night, they never will.” He chuckled. “I have it worked out in detail.”

Crooked Nose Baine said, “All right. You have done your good deed for the year. Now scat. I do my drinking alone.”

Stark pushed his chair back and rose. “I don’t know why I bothered. I should have known better.”

“You must be hankering to bed down with the sawdust.”

The flinty edge in Baine’s tone caused Jesse Stark to back up a step and to anxiously say, “Now just you hold on. I did you a favor. You can’t blow out my wick here in the saloon.”

“You mentioned Salina,” Baine reminded him. “I put windows in the noggins of three polecats in a saloon there.”

Without another word Jesse Stark returned to his friends. The other four leaned over the table to hear what he had to say, then all five glared at Baine. But only until Baine raised his head and returned their glares. Then they became interested in their cards again.

For the next half hour Crooked Nose Baine nursed his bottle. A great sadness seemed to be upon him. Several more locals came in to wet their throats, but he did not notice them. They noticed him, however, especially after he stood and came around the table, kicking over a chair in his path. Crossing to the bar, he smacked down the empty bottle and growled, “Give me another, barkeep.”

“Maybe you have had enough, sonny,” the bartender suggested with a friendly smile.

“You are not my pa,” Baine said. “I will decide when I am saturated.” He pounded the bar. “Another bottle, and be quick about it.” The bartender hurriedly complied, and Baine paid and crossed to the batwings. Pushing on out, he stopped in the shade of the overhang and tilted the bottle to his lips.

An elderly woman walking by tilted her nose in the air and sniffed.

Crooked Nose Baine finished chugging and grinned after her. He turned toward the window and his grin evaporated. He stared at his reflection; at the hideous mockery of a nose that once had been straight and smooth. Upending the bottle, he swallowed while continuing to stare. A low sound escaped him. Suddenly he stepped back and raised his arm as if to throw the bottle at the window. But then his arm dropped, his shoulders drooped and he walked from under the overhang into the hot glare of the sun.

Baine walked to the hitch rail in front of the feed and grain. He corked the whiskey bottle, opened a saddlebag and slid the bottle inside, neck up. He reached for the saddle horn to fork leather.

Squealing with glee, a small boy and girl came skipping down the street. The boy had a hoop and was pushing it with a forked stick. He passed the hoop to the girl, who also held a stick, and she laughed and kept the hoop rolling.

Baine watched them, the corners of his mouth curling upward. A puppy came from behind a rain barrel and playfully barked at the hoop. Farther down, the old woman who had sniffed at him saw the children and smiled.

A young man and woman strolled out of the millinery, hand in hand, the young woman wearing a new bonnet.

From the butcher shop stepped a middle-aged matron in a calico dress, with wrapped meat under one arm and a pink parasol under the other. She promptly opened the parasol and strode off in stiff-backed dignity.