A day's ride from Black Rock was the Western town of Dry Gulch. Jay Gridley hadn't been disposed to spend that much time in the scenario, so he'd logged in on the edge of town. Black Rock had been a bust, no sign of the bad guys, so Gridley had moseyed on.
It was close to high noon, and the sun hammered the bleached road so dry that clouds of reddish-gray dust hung in the windless air after every step his faithful steed Buck took. Just before he reached the outbuildings behind the blacksmith's shop and livery, Gridley took the U.S. marshal badge from his Levi's pocket and pinned it on his shirt. The silver gleamed brightly in the hard, actinic light. He didn't want anybody catching that mirror-shine on the trail, but in town he wanted the official muscle the badge offered.
Like Black Rock, Dry Gulch looked like a place from a Western cowboy vid, circa the mid-1870's. The main street — and the only street — was fairly wide, situated between rows of false-front shops. Here, among others, were the dust-spackled Tullis Good Eats Cantina, Dry Gulch General Store, Mabel's Dress Shop and Tailors, Honigstock & Honigstock Attorneys-at-Law, King Mortuary and Undertakers, the Dry Gulch Bank, the La Belle Saloon, and the sheriff's office and city jail.
Jay nodded and tipped his hat at an elderly woman in a long dress crossing the street. "Howdy, ma'am."
The old lady gave him a suspicious glare and hurried on, stepping onto the boardwalk next to the storefronts. The walk was a foot higher than the street, and that made sense. It probably flooded here during the infrequent rain, and you'd want to be above all that sudden mud.
A couple of boys chased barrel hoops down the dirty road, driving the flat metal rings with short sticks, laughing. A quail offered his song in the distance, not the usual "bob-white" whistle, but the more urgent "baby! baby! baby!" mating call.
Jay reined Buck up in front of the sheriff's office. A gray-whiskered old man sat on a wooden chair, whittling on a big stick with a jackknife. He looked like a miner, with a leather vest over a grubby red-and-black checkered shirt, tan once-upon-a-time canvas pants, and black boots.
The saddle gave out a leathery creak as Jay put all his weight into the left stirrup and dismounted. He wrapped Buck's reins around the horizontal hitching post.
The old man spat a foul-looking brown stream at a lizard scurrying along the boardwalk looking no doubt for shade. Missed him by two feet.
"Missed ‘im, damn," the old man said. He had a voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in a barrel of whiskey, then pickled in heavy brine, and then left out in the desert for thirty or forty years.
Jay nodded at the old man and started for the door. His boots clumped on the boardwalk.
"You lookin for the shurf, he ain't around," the old man said.
Jay stopped. "Where would I find him?"
"Boot Hill!" The old man cackled until the laugh turned into a wheeze, then a cough. He spat more tobacco juice, but the lizard was already well out of range. "Damn, missed ‘im."
"There a deputy around?"
"Yep — planted right next to the shurf!" This brought on another round of cackling, wheezing, and coughing.
Must have been sitting here praying for a stranger so he could say that.
When he managed to get his breath back, the old man said, "The Thompson Brothers came to stick up the bank three days back. I ‘spect you bein' a marshal, you know who they are. They kilt two tellers, the shurf, and the deppity. Shurf got one of ‘em, and Old Lady Tullis blowed ‘nother one off n his horse as they were ridin' out, cut him down with that old 12-gauge coachgun she keeps behind the counter o' her cantina. Course that left three of ‘em still ridin' hellbent for leather, but they didn't get no money and they ain't likely to come back to this town real soon, nosiree Bob!"
"What's your name, old-timer?"
"Folks ‘round here call me Gabby."
I can't imagine why. "Well, Gabby, I'm trackin' down some shysters from back East. Bad hombres."
"Ain't been no tinhorns stop off here lately," Gabby said. "Maybe some passin' through on the stage. Wells Fargo office's down't'other end o' town." He pointed with the stick he'd been carving on. "Past the whorehouse there."
"I'm obliged, Gabby."
Jay walked back to Buck, mounted, and walked the horse toward the Wells Fargo office. He nodded again at Gabby. Of course, the old man could be a firewall. Might be the sheriff was snoozin' in his office, his feet propped up on his desk or in a cell bunk. Or maybe he was havin' a drink at the cantina or the La Belle, and Gabby had been posted there to stop any strangers lookin' to talk to the local law. Jay would check out the stagecoach office, check with the telegrapher — he saw the telegraph poles so he knew the town was wired — and if he didn't get anything there, he would circle back and bypass Gabby to be sure he was tellin' the truth.
Jay smiled. Who would have ever thought of a firewall as a tobacco-chewing, lyin' old fart who looked like a forty-niner?
Jay was almost to the Wells Fargo depot when a big, swarthy, black-haired man with a drooping handlebar mustache and a pair of holstered guns stepped out into the street in front of him. "Hold up there, pard."
There was a definite air of menace about the man, who wore a black suit over his boiled white shirt and tie, and a derby hat instead of a cowboy hat.
Jay looked at the man. The guns he wore weren't Colt.45 Peacemakers like Jay's; they looked like Smith & Wesson Schofield.44's, top-loaders with seven-inch barrels. Powerful and accurate, damn fine weapons, but slow from the holster. When it came to fast draws, size mattered. Shorter was better…
Jay dismounted and led his horse to another hitching post, this one next to the whorehouse. Four horses were already there. There were three large windows on the second story of the big house, and three or four pretty women in colorful petticoats and underwear leaned out of the open windows to look down at the two men in the street. Jay tipped his hat to the women. "Afternoon, ladies," he called out.
The women tittered. One of them waved. "Come on up, Marshal!"
Jay grinned, then turned back to face the man in the derby hat. He moved away from his horse so Buck wouldn't be directly behind him. "What can I do for you, amigo?" Jay said.
"Fact is, I don't like lawmen. I think mebbe you need to turn around and head back where you came from." The big man cleared his coat back from his holstered revolvers. "It would be good for your health."
"You got a name?" Jay said.
"Name is Bartholomew Dupree. Folks call me Black Bart," the man said.
Well, of course they do.
Jay dropped his hand next to the butt of his Colt. "Sorry, Bart, I got business at the stage depot. Why don't you just stand aside and let me pass?"
"Can't do that, Marshal." He waggled his fingers, loosening them.
Definitely a firewall, and a tough one. So Jay was on the right track; his quarry had passed this way. And he wasn't about to give up because there was a roadblock. Lonesome Jay Gridley hadn't gotten to where he was by accident. He was the best.
"Make your play then," Jay said.
Bart went for his guns. He was fast — but Jay was faster. The.45 spoke a hair before the twin.44's, a throaty roar, belches of thick white smoke erupting around tongues of orange fire. Speckles of unburned propellant stung Jay's hand. He recocked the big single-action revolver, but it wasn't necessary. Bart dropped to one knee, guns falling from his suddenly nerveless fingers, then toppled to one side. Dust splashed from the street, joining the stink of black powder smoke.