“Then what?” Boz said.
“Well, if I need you boys to move out where they can see you, I’ll call for you to step on out and show yourselves. Should it prove necessary for you to have to make the move, get well situated as quickly as possible. Given where you’re gonna be standing, gotta stay sharp. Sure as the devil don’t want you shooting across the porch with those shoulder cannons of yours and accidentally hitting one another.”
Big Jim Boston danced from foot to foot like a trained bear in a traveling circus. He nervously rubbed both hands up and down on the sides of his leather apron. “Well, none of this sounds good. What ’er you intendin’ to do here, Dodge?”
The rifle made a loud mechanical racking noise when I levered a shell into the Winchester’s receiver and left the hammer back.
The harsh, metallic click of the rifle’s lever slapping against the stock’s grip jerked Clementine Webb’s head up. An eerie unearthliness crept into the girl’s voice when she hissed, “He intends to kill them all. Don’t you, Ranger Dodge?”
I refused to look at the girl. Boz and Glo in tow, I strode past Big Jim and headed through the wide-open barn’s back door and, from there, toward the front entrance. “We’ll see,” I said.
Then, over one shoulder, I called out, “You stay here, Clem. Keep the dog with you. Don’t let him get to wandering around till the shooting’s over. Anyone bothers you, just snap your fingers and tell Bear to go get ’em.”
15
“. . . USE YER PERFORATED HIDE FOR A FLOUR SIFTER . . .”
LINED UP NEAR elbow to elbow, we drew to a halt outside Boston’s front entrance near a decrepit rail fence that surrounded the livery’s horse-poor corral. East of the empty enclosure stood the ramshackle grocery and mercantile business of Eldritch Smoot. Men’s and women’s ready-made clothing, draped over wooden hangers, nearly covered the boardwalk outside Smoot’s street-facing windows.
Beneath the fading shirts and dresses were a number of rickety tables beset with mounds of tarnished pots, pans, galvanized washtubs, and discolored bolts of cloth. The floorboards of the store’s raised veranda were littered, here and there, with piles of ancient, dust covered, army-surplus McClellan saddles. Above the shabby concern’s open door, a weather-scarred sign invited shoppers inside by boasting the availability of guns, boots and shoes, dry goods and clothing, hats and caps.
Boz, me, and Glo cast darting glances toward Smoot’s. We eyeballed each nook and cranny of Carta Blanca’s main thoroughfare, then carefully gave Mendoza’s one more final going-over.
We viewed the rough cantina at something of an angle that made it somewhat problematic for us to see the entire front façade all at one time. Off to our left, the slap-dash, westernmost side of the saloon ran away from us and toward the low hill the joint’s back wall abutted.
The place appeared to have grown up in bits and pieces, like a patch of unwanted ragweed. Half the establishment’s front façade, on the most distant side of the entrance, was constructed of crumbling, adobe bricks. The remainder of the shanty-like affair seemed to have been built from discarded scraps of wind-aged lumber taken from the remains of other long-gone houses, businesses, and saloons.
The most easily viewable exterior side of the structure was nothing more than a jumbled series of weathered, paint-blistered, wooden doors nailed one edge atop the other like shake shingles. A sloped roof covered a rickety front porch constructed of rough-cut, never-planed boards laid directly atop the parched, dusty ground. A number of shaggy, white-faced curs lazed around in the ever-shrinking rectangle of moving shade provided by the veranda’s overhang.
Scattered here and there, empty whiskey barrels of various sizes stood beneath the scruffy porch like a milling group of tipsy loafers seeking a spot of shelter from the sun. The largest of the metal-bound casks sat atop its own separate elevated platform. The container supported one end of a V-shaped, wooden gutter. The wishfully crude setup was for catching whatever sparse rainwater might someday drip from the roof’s front edge and rotting corners.
A pair of six-over-six glass-paned windows, located on either side of the front entrance, provided the only possibility for occupants to see outside. Above the chaotic porch’s pitched roof, a near-indecipherable sign informed the prospective imbiber that he was about to enter MENDOZA’S CANTINA DE CARTA BLANCA.
A wispy dust devil swept along the street all the way up from the river. The miniature cyclone paused between Boston’s livery and the saloon, then blew itself out as it twisted east and disappeared over the low hills that placed the dying west Texas village in a bowl-like earthen cavity.
I nodded, and my partners heeled it for their assigned spots at either end of Mendoza’s rude porch. “Careful, boys,” I softly hissed at their backs, “Don’t let your attention stray. Wait for my call. Try not to shoot me or each other.”
I stood in the swirling dust and waited until both my friends were properly stationed and had signaled their readiness. Then I strolled to a spot twenty or thirty feet distant from the liquor locker’s front entrance.
Mendoza’s only obvious method of egress and exit stood wide-open. It sported but one half of a weather-beaten batwing door that dangled from a single, bent, springloaded brass hinge.
After a quick glance at each of my partners, I held the Winchester’s stock against one hip, touched the trigger with my thumb, and fired off a single shot. The weapon’s thunderous report echoed off the surrounding hills. It ricocheted around a bit, then escaped west, back across the river, like a frightened animal fleeing from larger predators.
One-handed, I levered a fresh round in, then laid the gun across my left arm. Cupped my right hand to my mouth and yelled out, “This is Texas Ranger Lucius Dodge. You Pickett boys best come on out right now. We’ve got things to talk about.”
Didn’t take long to get the easily predictable results. No more than ten seconds had passed when inquisitive faces oozed up out of the interior darkness of the blasted entryway, then bobbled around behind the busted batwing like carnival balloons tethered to a string.
The decrepit café door squawked open, pushed to one side by a disembodied arm.
I recognized the first of the murderous Pickett bunch to slither out onto the porch as Priest. Tall, lank, and gaunt, the scowling killer dressed himself in the garb typical of most working cowboys—sombrero, faded cotton shirt, brightly colored neck scarf, high-waisted pants, shotgun chaps, riding boots, and massive, silver-plated Mexican spurs. His elaborate pair of horse rakers sported rowels the size of a grown man’s palm. He drunkenly crabbed-walked to one side of the porch.
Behind him came Roscoe, then Cullen. Although separated by one to three years, the men could have easily been mistaken for a set of stubble-chinned, grim-faced, rheumy-eyed triplets. As the dodgy, dangerous trio spread from one end of the veranda to the other, all the skinny dogs, hairless tails tucked between their legs, cautiously rose and slunk out of harm’s reach.
Priest edged his way to my left. He reached the farthest porch pillar and leaned a bony shoulder against it. The gunny had picked a spot not five feet from where Glo hid with his back pressed against one of the wooden doors that made up the cantina’s strangest wall.
The squint-eyed thug propped a booted foot atop one of the empty barrels. He hoisted an open, half-filled bottle to twisted, snarling lips. A goodly amount of the nose paint missed its target and ran from the corners of his mouth and down his neck.
He wiped his ragged chin across the sleeve of a bib-front shirt that appeared to have once been bright yellow. The lethal skunk cast a nervous, tight glance at his elder brother Roscoe, who had stepped off the watering hole’s rough porch and now stood in the street less than twenty feet from me.