The known and experienced gunhandlers had stiffened when their eyes touched the awesome rig belted around Parnell’s waist. Nobody in their right mind wanted to tangle with a sawed-off shotgun, since a buckshot load at close range would literally tear a man in two. Even if a man could get lead into the shotgun toter first, the odds were, unless the bullet struck him in the brain or the heart, that he could still pull a trigger.
“Beer,” Smoke said.
“Tequila,” Lujan ordered.
Beans and Charlie opted for whiskey.
Horace ordered beer.
Parnell, true to his word, looked the barkeep in the eyes and ordered sarsaparilla.
Several young punks seated at a nearby table started laughing and making fun of Parnell.
Parnell ignored them.
The barkeep served up the orders.
“What’s the matter with you, slick?” a young man laughed the question. “Cain’t you handle no real man’s drink?”
Parnell took a sip of his sarsaparilla and smiled, setting the bottle down on the bar. He turned and looked the young man in the eyes. “Does your mother know where you are, junior?”
The punk’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to retort just as the batwings swung open and the stranger entered.
There is an aura about really bad men, and in the West a bad man was not necessarily an outlaw. He was just a bad man to fool with. The stranger walked between the punk and Parnell, his hands hanging loosely at his side. He wore one gun, a classic Peacemaker .45, seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. It was tied down. The man looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, deeply tanned and very sure of himself. He glanced at Parnell’s drink and a very slight smile creased his lips.
Walking to Charlie’s side, he motioned to the barkeep. “A sarsaparilla, please.”
Another loudmouth sitting with the punk started giggling. “Another sissy, Johnny. You reckon they gonna kiss each other.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
The barkeep served up the stranger’s drink and backed away, to the far end of the bar. When they had entered, the bar had been full. Now only the seven of them remained at the long bar.
The stranger lifted his bottle. “A toast to your good health,” he said to Charlie.
Charlie lifted his shot glass and clinked it against the bottle. “To your health,” he replied. If the man wanted to reveal his real identity. That was up to him. Charlie would hold the secret.
“Hey, old man!” Johnny hollered. “You with them wore-out jeans on.”
Charlie sipped his whiskey and then turned to face the mouthy punk. “You talkin’ to me, boy?”
“I ain t no boy!”
“No,” Charlie said slowly, drawling out the word. “I reckon you ain’t. Strappin’ on them guns makes you a man. A loudmouth who ain’t dry behind the ears yet. And if you keep flappin’ them lips at me, you ain’t never gonna be dry behind your dirty ears.”
Johnny stood up, his face flushed red. “Just who the hell do you think you are, old man?”
“Charlie Starr.”
The words were softly offered, but they had all the impact of a hard slap across Johnny’s face.
Johnny s mouth dropped open. He closed it and swallowed hard a couple of times. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
Charlie spoke, his words cracking like tiny whips. “Sit down, shut your goddamned mouth, or make your play, punk!”
The experienced gunhandlers had noticed first off that the men at the bar had entered with the leather thongs off their hammers.
“You cain’t talk to me lak’at!” Johnny found his voice. But it was trembly and high-pitched.
“I just did, boy.”
Johnny abruptly sat down. He tried to pick up his beer mug but his hand was shaking so badly he spilled some of it on the tabletop.
Charlie turned his back to the mouthy punk and picked up his shot glass in his left hand.
But there wasn’t a man or woman in the bar who thought it was over. The punk would settle down, gulp a few more drinks to boost his nerve, and would have to try Charlie, or leave town with his tail tucked between his legs.
“Been a long time, Charlie,” the stranger said.
“Near’bouts ten years, I reckon. You just passin’ through?”
“I was. I decided to stay.”
“What name you goin’ by nowadays?”
“Same name that got hung on me seventeen-eighteen years ago. ”
Being a reporter—Charlie would call it being a snoop, among other things—Horace leaned around and asked, “And what name is that, sir?”
The stranger turned around, facing the crowd of punks and tinhorns, loudmouths and barflys, hurdy-gurdy girls,gamblers, and gunfighters, who were all straining to listen. He let his eyes drift around the room. “I never did like a lopsided fight, Charlie. You recall that, I suppose.” It was not posed in question form.
“I allow as to how I do. I ’member the time me and you
up to a whole room filled to the rafters with trash and cleaned it out.” He chuckled. ”That there was a right good fight.” Charlie held up his shot glass in salute and the stranger clinked his sarsaparilla bottle to the glass.
“I got my other gun in my kit over to the roomin’ house. reckon I best go on over and get it and strap it on. Looks like got some house-cleanin’ to do.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Smoke was smiling, nursing his beer. He’d already figured who the stranger was.
One of Cat Jennings’s men lifted his leg and broke wind. “That’s what I think about you, stranger.”
“How rude!” Parnell said.
“Sissy-pants,” the man who had made the coarse social comment stood up. “I think I’ll just kill you. ’Cause I n’t believe you’re the Reno Kid.”
“Of course, he isn’t,” the stranger said. “I am!”
Twenty-Four
That news broke the spirit of a couple of men who had already been toying with the idea of rattling their hocks. They stood up and walked toward the door. Charlie Starr and them old gray-headed he-cougars with him was bad enough. Add the Moab Kid and Lujan to that mixture and you was stirrin’ nitro too fast with a flat stick. Smoke Jensen was the fastest gun in the West. Now here comes the Reno Kid, and there goes anybody with a lick of sense.
The batwings squeaked and two gunnies were gone.
The gunhand facing Parnell didn’t back down. Without taking his eyes from Parnell, he said, “Did anybody pull your chain, Reno?”
“Nope,” Reno answered easily.
“You gonna fight Sissy-pants battles for him?”
“Nope.”
“You ready to die, Sissy-pants?”
“Oh, I think not.” Parnell had turned, facing the man, his right hand hovering near the butt of the holstered sawed-off. “But I do have a question?”
“Ax it!”
“What is your name?”
“Readon. What’s it to you?”
“I just wondered what to have carved on the marker over your grave.”
“Draw, damn your eyes!” the man shouted, and grabbed for his six-gun.
Parnell was calm and quick. Up came the awesome weapon, the right side hammer eared back. Across went his left hand in a practiced move, gripping the short barrels. The range was no more than twelve feet and the booming was enormous in the beery, smoky room. The ball-bearings and rusty nails and ragged rocks hit the gunhand in the belly and lifted him off his boots while the charge was tearing him apart. He landed on a table several feet away from where he had been standing, smearing the tabletop with crimson and collapsing the table. He had never even cleared leather.
The hurdy-gurdy girls began squalling like hogs caught in barbed wire and ran from the room, their short dresstails flapping as they ran.
Parnell, seeing that no one was going to immediately take up the fight, but sensing that was only seconds away, broke open the shotgun pistol and tossed aside the empty, loading it up full. He snapped it shut and eared back both hammers.
The gunhand Smoke had first seen at that little store down on the Boulder stood up. “Me and Readon had become pals, Jensen,” Dunlap said. “You a friend of that shotgun-toter, so that makes you my enemy. I think I’ll just kill you.”