Episode 15

Paradise

The Paradise was anything but.

There were gunshots sounding from inside the Paradise even as Joe followed the boardwalk toward the simple shingle with the saloon’s name painted on it in crude letters. Below it hung a cloth banner promising nickel shots.

Unpainted plank walls nailed up on half-timber posts formed the walls. The roof was stretched tent canvas. The street front was wide open under an awning. The only attempt at decoration was a sagging string of pennants across the opening with the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star flag hanging limp and faded.

The place stunk of sweat, tobacco and beer gone skunky.

The floor was sand and sawdust. The bar was just a broad plank resting atop barrels. There were no chairs on which to sit. Men stood and drank until they chose to leave or could no longer stand. The only table was set across the back where a dealer operated a wheel under the uncertain light of oil lamps. The field of numbers were painted atop the sanded surface in red and black. In addition to the dealer, the game was watched by a dour looking man seated on a high stool with a cut-down coach gun across his knees. The man was the size of a mountain, broad of girth with pig eyes under a sloped brow.

Joe stood under the awning, taking in the smell and noise as his eyes adjusted to the light. Bob Miller was at his elbow close enough that Joe could smell his brand of chaw.

His eyes swept the room to where three cowboys were tossing shot glasses in the air, taking turns shooting at them with revolvers. One would make the throw and the other two would plug away. The crowd whooped and laughed and yelled for more. The glasses either dropped to strike the heads of fellow customers or fell to the sand floor unscathed. The trio of drovers was only managing to shoot holes in the canvas above them. The bartenders, rough-looking fellows in stained aprons, seemed to show no concern at the giggling drunks shooting up the glassware and ceiling.

Joe parted the half-ring of onlookers and stepped through a wreath of gun smoke to approach the three at the bar. Bob Miller slipped away to watch from a safe distance.

“That’s enough for now, boys,” Joe said, smiling easy.

The three turned to him, eyes bleary and lacking focus. Their audience shifted their attention from the shooting contest to this newcomer in the preacher’s coat.

The drovers smirked and turned from Joe to return to their game. One of them bent an arm back to toss a new shot glass. The other two stood, eyes skyward, revolvers cocked in their fists.

Joe hooked the thrower’s elbow and levered the man off his feet to strike the back of his head on the edge of the oak plank that served as a bar top. The other two turned too late, guns leveled. Joe reached them in a single stride, stepping over their friend, and snatched the pistols from their grasps. Before they could react to their suddenly empty hands, Joe had brought the butts of the guns down on their heads. Both men dropped as though suddenly boneless, one on his ass, the other to his knees.

The metallic click of a drawn hammer caused Joe to spin, the pair of borrowed pistols, hammers already drawn back, whirled in his hands. He fired off both guns at the glass-thrower, now raising himself up to one knee, his Colt coming up to train on Joe as the twin bullets struck him in the chest inches apart.

The drover was thrown back against a keg hard enough to tip bottles off the bar top then lay still, a dark stain spreading over his filthy shirt.

Joe straightened, thumbing back the hammers of the pistols once more as his eyes traveled across the room. The ring of men had broken up and retreated well back, mouths agape. The bartenders had taken a step away from the bar top. One held a sawn-off pick handle in his fist but swiftly dropped it when Joe’s eyes fell on him. The dealer had ducked beneath his wheel. The big man on the stool sat motionless; the shotgun on his knees remained in place. His only look-out was the wheel and the table—the death of some dumb cowboy meant nothing to him.

“Miller,” Joe said, and saw the county constable stepping between two goggle-eyed customers.

“You’re my witness,” Joe said to the constable, handing him the pair of borrowed pistols.

“Witness to what?” Miller said, voice catching then recovering himself.

“That’s my first conviction,” Joe said, nodding to the dead man turning ashen gray in a pool of sodden red sand.

“And those two?” Miller said of the other two drovers stirring and moaning on the dirty floor. He stuck the pistols in his waistband then stooped to pick up the dropped Colt.

“I don’t happen to have any deputies, do I?”

“You do not.”

“Then you can help me with the other pair. And lead the way. I don’t know where my jail is yet,” Joe said.

Miller did as he asked and they had the dazed drovers out the door, shoved by the collar back in the direction of the post office.

“No need to add that fracas to my expenses,” Joe said, weaving through the growing crowd of gawkers drawn to the spectacle.

“Add what?” Miller said, confused.

“The bullets. I didn’t use any of my own back there,” Joe said.