Episode 20

Pools of Blood

The drunks at the Paradise had grown in number, drawn there by the shootout. The curious and the idle come to flock about the pools of blood like desert birds around a water hole. The drovers stood over their fallen amigos, toasting their memory with shots of whiskey. Others stood viewing the two dead cowboys like they were museum exhibits or carnival curiosities. The recent gunplay was recounted again and again for newcomers, the lies compounding until the seconds-long fracas took on the stuff of legend.

“Phoo!” said the big drover, waving a hand before his face. “What’s that stink?”

“I think it’s Lem Dougal,” another drover said, stopping by one of the corpses and sniffing the air. “Shat himself when that bassard gunned him.”

“We’re gonna see to that lawman. We’re gonna settle him good. What he done weren’t right. He needs to settle for poor Lem and... and...” said the big man, unable to recall the name of the other good friend growing cool in the crust of his own blood.

“We can settle up right now, cowboy,” Joe Wiley said, making his way through the press to the bar.

The drovers swallowed their rage in a hurry. Except for the big man, the others couldn’t meet the lawman’s gaze. The big man kept working on his bleary stare. He meant it to sting but all it managed to do was make him look frog-eyed.

“Four men each, grab a wrist and ankle. Haul your friends over to Johansson’s. Tell him to put it on my bill,” Joe said, prodding one of the bodies with a toe of a boot. Johansson was the funeral director set up in a tent sitting well back of the main drag. Back where the stench of his customers, and the necessary chemicals to see them buried right, wouldn’t trouble the citizenry. Joe covered the funeral expenses out of his “arrest” fund. Ten bucks for a pine box and a hole dug and even a word said over the departed. That left forty bucks pure profit from each “conviction.”

The cowboys made their way out, toting their dead amigos. The big man followed, a glance back at Joe Wiley who ignored him to step to the bar.

“Who owns this pisshole?” Joe asked a bartender. The man blinked at him.

“You understand English?” Joe asked.

“This is my place, marshal.”

Joe turned to see the roulette dealer stepping his way. A fussy little man in a green jacket trimmed in velvet at the collar and cuff over a silk vest. The man had a fixed squint that set his face in a permanently sour expression. Behind him stalked the shotgun man from the stool. Closer up, Joe could see the larger man was a half breed or maybe half Mex. Dark walnut skin and black eyes without a light in them. His face was that of a fighter—clubbed ears, crushed nose and the white hatchwork of old scars on his brows.

“Joe Wiley,” Joe said without offering his hand. He took an instant dislike to the man in green and made no effort to hide it.

“I know who you are. You’re the one keeps killing my customers. My name is T.J. Bratt. The Paradise is mine,” the man said, making no struggle to conceal his own dislike. But he signaled the barman to set Joe up with a drink. The bartender slid a glass before Joe and tipped a bottle to it, filling it to the brim. Joe ignored it.

“I’ll keep on coming in here until you get a rein on this place or until I’ve put a bullet in every last one of your patrons,” Joe said, fixing Bratt with a hard look. “I’ve been in here three times since I came to Mercury Wells. You need to get this place under heel, mister. I’ll give you one day to hire yourself some kind of protection. Because every time I have to come through those doors someone’s going to die. This time being the exception. For now. And that’s not good for your custom.”