These Violent Times Read online

  Then, there was a crack.

  Not a shot, but the sound of bone snap-pounded by metal, probably a gun barrel. Followed by something heavy falling, smashing through wood, hitting the floor. It was easy for Bishop to picture Avery, a turtle on its back, another gash in his bald head, this one with blood washing from it, but still talking his nonsense until the edge of a gun came down again. A gun for sure . . . Bishop knew that thud of metal-on-flesh-on-bone.

  Bishop pressed the barrels of the rig flush against the side of the bunk, steady across his knees and hidden by the lower folds of the Cheyenne blanket. Fabric that was so familiar to his touch, comforting under other circumstances. Now, his ally. He heard every footfall on the stairs, then the six feet reaching the landing, then outside the door.

  Words whispered: “Remember what fat boy told us to look for.”

  “When he was cryin’.”

  A little bit of nervous laughter and then the door squeaked on its hinges, one of the three men pushing it with the death-end of a tarnished-silver Colt. This first man shouldered the side of the door frame, staying back, making himself a harder target in case Bishop let loose.

  But all that was heard from the room was the steady breathing of sleep, and the storm shaking the window glass . . . a noise like the distant crying of a lost foal.

  The creeper-along in front pushed the door completely open. The three men walked in, two pushing the one in front along. The first stumbled, caught himself, and they looked to each other for next moves. Fighting not to speak. Then, more steps, and eyeing what they could see of Bishop in the lamplight: curled on the bed asleep, hair streaked gray, his half-arm resting on the blanket, involuntarily twitching from the elbow joint.

  The lead man nudged his partners, pointing his gun at the carpetbag that was tempting from just under the bunk. One grabbed the handle, pulling it to the middle of the floor.

  Bishop stirred, but only to sink deeper into the straw mattress. The stuffing was old and cooperated by failing to crinkle.

  “Looks old,” one whispered.

  “Take the rig,” the other hissed, “then take him.”

  The one in front set his pistol on his knee, then freed the carpetbag’s leather straps, opening it slowly, without sound. He reached in, pulling out a tangle of gun-oiled rags, and Bishop’s infamous beaver-skin bandolier. He held the skin up as a trophy, mouthing a war whoop, as his partner twisted loose a long, wooden box that had been jammed into the bag tight, bulging its sides.

  Expertly carpentered, with a detailed painting of the double-barrel against a setting sun, it was a perfect, miniature coffin for the gun rig. One of the assassins snickered. Excited. Not able to stop, he bit down on his hand. His buddy turned the coffin over, trying to pry open one of its perfectly fitted sides.

  Bishop hadn’t moved. Only watched.

  The intruder’s fingers pressed the painted sun, springing the lid and loosing the large rattler coiled inside, its jaws split wide open. Striking. Once. Tearing flesh. Whipping back and striking again, fangs completely through the careless man’s cheek.

  Searing pain.

  The victim fell back, panicking, for the knife in his belt. Trying to grab it. Rolling onto the floor, the snake’s full, thick body out of the coffin. One of the partners grabbed the rattler’s tail, pulling it straight, as the bit man tore the blade from his belt. He brought the knife down, quick slash, stabbing into the snake. Slicing skin and muscle. But not killing. Halfway through, just behind the reptile’s hood. Stuck.

  The animal thrashed as the jammed knife was yanked free, brought down again, the poison from the rattler’s fangs that pierced the writhing man’s face pouring into his mouth, over his tongue, and down his throat.

  He jabbed the knife one last time. Sawing. Cutting off the head, the body still writhingly alive, then spinning around, slamming into empty bunks. Fighting to pull the head from his cheek, fangs staying deep. Still fighting, slashing blind, catching his partner’s throat with the knife tip.

  Hitting the jugular.

  Blood fountained, jetting red across the walls, as the partner panicked. Stumbling and wild-firing his pistol, while holding his throat. Blasting into the floor, the door, then exploding the snake and the head of the first man. Then, these two clowns from a Wild West show collapsed into a pile, bleeding into each other, before the echo of the gunshots faded.

  It was all finished in a few dying heartbeats.

  The third interloper, youngest, sporting a rough-patched raincoat and a cowlick, stood back. Mouth open. Eyes locked, not blinking, as Bishop sat up, the rig still hidden just below the bunk frame.

  “Good God Almighty.”

  Bishop said, “You weren’t with them.”

  “Huh?”

  “In the trees. You were somewhere else.”

  “Here,” the boy muttered. “Here.”

  “Watching for the parasol,” Bishop said.

  The young man, the youngest of the men, didn’t know what to say. He just stood there dumbly, probably pissing himself because the water Bishop heard running wasn’t from the rain.

  “Take a breath, son.”

  “Not sure I can.” The last intruder’s voice cracked.

  “What’s your name?” Bishop asked.

  “Edward. And Vance and Tommy—that’d be my two cousins dead there.”

  “Everything gone crazy, that’s how it is sometimes.”

  “I know about head-crazy,” Edward said defensively. “This—they wasn’t—they had a plan they was sure of.” That last was spoken more to the corpses.

  “They were wrong,” Bishop said coolly. “But son, you don’t have to be. Go on. Go on home.”

  “They had that plan—” He spoke directly to his dead cousins now.

  Bishop said, “They were jackasses, and jackasses get themselves killed. You wanna be a jackass too?”

  Jim-Bob was trying to find his thoughts, eyes fixed on the stripes of his cousins’ blood, sprayed across their pants and shirt, which was all he could see in the dim light through the open door. Then, he met Bishop with, “Hell Christ, you ain’t even got that special gun we all read about.”

  “It’d be another mistake for you to believe that.”

  “Another mistake,” Edward muttered, disbelieving. He was thinking about backing from the room when he said, “I didn’t even draw.”

  “You knew better. Keep knowing better.”

  The confused young man freed the pistol from his belt loop, with hands shaking and sweat pouring.

  “You’re not knowing better,” Bishop warned.

  The boy snickered unhappily. “See, I got nothing ahead for me, why I came on this jaunt.”

  “That’s not true,” Bishop said. “You got one of two things ahead of you. Life . . . or death. And after that, two things ahead of you. Heaven . . . or hell.”

  The boy shook his head defiantly, as though trying to convince himself otherwise.

  Bishop was now sitting with his legs over the side of the bed, right hand on the rig’s still-hidden triggers. “Use your sense, boy. All you have to do is walk.” He raised the shotgun, letting it poke from beneath the Cheyenne blanket, the flickering lamp catching the double barrels, showing up the polished steel like two small cannons.

  The last intruder’s restless eyes stopped. “How about that. There it is.”

  “Turn around, go back down those stairs,” Bishop said. “I’d welcome it, you riding out of here.”

  “No, see, that won’t work.” Edward shook his head before wiping his eyes on his tattered sleeve. He had the old Colt pistol, tarnished and nicked, angled to the floor as if he were too weak to aim it straight. “I can’t go back from where we broke out. Can’t do that.”

  Bishop said, “Jail’s better than what could happen here.”

  “It sure as hell wasn’t no jail,” Edward said, then steadied himself with the back of a chair, standing a little taller. “But maybe, right now, I’ll get you. You so sure . . . you could be wrong
.”

  “Not likely at all.”

  “Well, so you say. And goin’ ahead’d be worth some money, and it’ll revenge my cousins. If I don’t shoot, I’m dead anyway for not dyin’ with them. But at least I’ll be famous for dyin’ in this room.”

  Bishop said, “Jesus, son, that’s not worth anything.”

  Edward was staring directly at Bishop, his face still washing in fevered sweat, but his mouth now twisting into a near-toothless smile. Defiant.

  “That? That is worth everything!”

  The pistol was firing Edward’s manic words, the slug from a shaking hand punching a hole in the wall behind Bishop’s head. Bishop ducked but didn’t shoot. He knew he had all the advantage, was holding back, judging the boy’s aim, his nerves. The wet in his eyes.

  “Last chance,” Bishop said. “You don’t get another.”

  Edward yelled something guttural and opened up again at the same moment the blast from the shotgun slammed into his middle, spiraling him back through the corner window, screaming him to the ground, in the rain, blood, and shards of razor-edged glass.

  * * *

  The lamps threw off streaks of purple and orange that collided as Avery moved. He’d been skull-cracked before, but nothing like this; a hot pain searing between his temples and behind his eyes, as if he’d been shot with a molten needle.

  He pushed himself from the floor, rolling from his barreled stomach, to lie against the bar, and reach for a whiskey towel to mop the blood streaming from the back of his head.

  “I heard that double-barrel!” Avery called out. He had to yell since the blast shut his ears for a moment and the echo still rang through the structure. The big man grabbed the laudanum in a hand partly asleep from his having fallen on it, then he lurched around the poker tables until he reached the bottom of the steps. “I take it you survived in fine style, John, and they did not!”

  Bishop’s voice came back, “Find out for yourself.”

  “Well, I am very relieved,” Avery said to Bishop, then to himself, draining the cobalt bottle, “and it’s good for business.”

  * * *

  Bishop’s right arm went through the leather harness, pulled it up to his shoulder, then tightened the silver chain from the shotgun, across his back, to his right wrist where it was secured by a tight leather cuff.

  The device drew itself into shape, conforming to his muscles, as he moved, pulling the amputee cup and gun stock to his left elbow, over the corrupted skin, sliding back to the joint, then locking it there. The silver chain hooked to the triggers, snapped tight, and was again taut across his back.

  Bishop moved his left arm away from his side, swinging the double-barrel around, the weapon always adjusting, responding as an extension of his body. New brass fittings allowed it to swivel to either side, gyroscoping, then locking into position. Easy as making a fist.

  His mind was no longer on the distant past but the recent past. He gave quick thought that if the young man had seen the double-barrel properly, not something hidden in a blanket, he would have ridden off, instead of trying. Maybe. But it happened the way it happened.

  Bishop shifted his powerful shoulders, getting used to the rig’s weight again, compensating, as Avery’s bulk filled the doorway and shadowed the room. Cradling a bundle of yellowing penny dreadfuls with Bishop on the cover, copies he had immediate need for, the fat man was unsteady on his feet, leaned heavily for the wall, almost toppling over. He couldn’t afford to hurt now. There was work to be done.

  He took a lace handkerchief from his breast pocket, daubed his head, and pointed to the rig. “Well, some improvements surely have been made.”

  Bishop buttoned his shirt over the gun, adjusting the sleeve. “A little time out of the rain, that would’ve been fine. But this, you bastard—this is your doing.”

  Avery winced in pain, his massive chest heaving. “They were fools three times over. I tried to turn them ’round, back into the storm, but their zeal overtook them.”

  “Bullshit. How much of their silver you have on you?”

  “Why do you have a problem with trustin’ me, old—”

  “Shut up!”

  Avery dropped the bundle, the magazines scattering at his feet. “Dammit, the money is not the point. It’s your history. That’s what brought them up the stairs.”

  “I’d lay odds you wish I was the one bleeding on your floor.”

  “That isn’t true. It also isn’t fair.”

  “How much would my blood be worth—there?” He nodded to the magazines.

  Avery limped to the window, handkerchief pressed to his wound, looked down at the young corpse lying among pork barrels—broken wood and bones—his chest blasted in half. “That isn’t bleeding, my friend. That’s the stuff of legend. You outdid anything the dreadfuls could’ve imagined.”

  “I don’t live behind a desk in New York or London.”

  “Nor I.” Avery turned from the window, rain still blowing in. “Now I’ve got three graves—well, one—to dig, and a window to fix. Oh, as acting sheriff of Good Fortune, I find that the killing was in self-defense. Investigated and excused.”

  “Not by me,” Bishop said.

  “You never did know how to accept a gift,” Avery said, still with the lace to his head. “I won’t dare ask about that new ammunition.”

  Bishop finally said, “From my last war.”

  Avery’s eyes dropped to the magazines. “Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett.”

  Bishop didn’t bother answering. Which was an answer.

  “So . . . so . . . a little more of the legend proven true,” Avery said admiringly.

  “Brother, you talk too much.”

  “No, I think too much! I’m naturally curious!”

  Bishop shook his head. He draped the bandolier around his left arm by the shoulder, tied it off. Avery made a move to help. Bishop backed him off with a look before quick-fitting a dozen shells into the skin’s specially cut pockets.

  “I’d no intention of ever using these again.”

  “Which is why you carry so many,” Avery said. “You can read all about how powerful they are in these pages. Also, weren’t some of your shells called Dragon’s Breath, dispensing fiery death? See? You just can’t help being colorful, John.”

  Bishop said, “You should lie down before you collapse.”

  “Now you’re wishing I didn’t recover.”

  Avery knelt, dipping the edges of the dreadfuls in the pooling blood, the red seeping up into the rough pulp pages. Staining Bishop’s face on the covers. “I wonder how much these’ll fetch, soaked in the blood of your enemies?”

  Bishop stood over Avery. “You’re a soulless bastard.”

  “Said the killer to the merchant.”

  The onetime soldier had to fight the urge to kick the man, not only because he was outspoken but because there was some truth to that. Maybe that was why he bothered to associate with Avery at all. The man had no real conscience, but he did have some boundaries.

  “Tell me something,” Bishop said quietly. “Did you ever even fire that derringer you carry? The one in your waistcoat pocket? Or the carbine?”

  “Never. Not in the bar, not behind the badge. Usually, just showing up with that silver license to use it is enough.”

  Bishop wondered what that kind of a conscience felt like. Not having taken a life but having stepped aside to let them be taken. Avery probably felt like a human being when he woke up in the morning. Bishop could barely remember what it felt like not to have fangs.

  Avery waggled a finger. “Careful you don’t get more of their blood on your boots.” He glanced up briefly from his labors, as though he were waiting on griddlecakes to tan. “Do you know your eyes go completely black when you anger? Not the first time tonight you’ve had the impulse to kill me.”

  Lightly touching his head wound again, pain-wincing, Avery continued, “Your history follows you, and we all get caught up in it. So, if there’s a way to offset the cost of your damages,
after all these years, don’t you think me entitled?”

  He grinned, using his three chins and ignoring the shotgun barrels shifting toward him; the gun moving as Bishop moved. “Actually, I doubt you’ll ever be able to take off that rig again. And before you boil over, you should see this latest, this possibly greatest interpretation of your life.”

  “Why?”

  Avery offered Bishop some blood-soaked pages, still wet across his name. “Because it’s your reputation, Doctor. Not mine.”

  From The National Police Gazette, October 5, 1883:

  “Eye” Witnessed the Slaughter

  by VIRGIL DEMETRIUS CHANEY

  I have seen the hero, and the dastardly monster. Doctor John Bishop’s saga has been well documented in these pages and others, as a man who suffered a tremendous loss in his life, with the death of wife and child, and yet persevered to become a figure of righteous vengeance in Colorado, and Wyoming, and points farther West. And now, Dr. Bishop is a dastardly symbol of bloody slaughter, an instrument of violence and death.

  This reporter, at risk of my own life, eye-witnessed Bishop’s famed use of the shotgun he carries as furious replacement for his left arm, when riding for The Chisum Cattle Company and on August 15, 1882, he and other of Chisum’s men faced down with masked marauders, in a terrible gunfight that left dozens dead and dying. Bishop himself was shot, but even as he bled, he used his skills to doctor the wounded. I have also seen the ruins of a prison, used by these marauders, turned to rubble and ash by John Bishop, as he brought deadly justice to the life of his outlaw brother. Killing many, all for the purpose of law and order.

  This now begs the question of the price of frontier justice. How can we rally around this man, brandishing a specialized weapon that perverts his own flesh and blood limbs, who has killed without warning, and without provocation, of suspected law-breakers, and sadly, the innocent alike.