The Bloody Spur

Chapter Six

Alver Hollis had never really been a preacher of any kind. His father had back in Ohio, and it was from that very real Baptist minister that Hollis had learned the Bible inside out, and been frequently beaten with the Good Book, as well. Also with various belts and a razor strop, as evidenced by the scars Hollis’s flesh still bore.

Not that his righteous daddy had needed anything but the two massive fists God had given him. From his pulpit, Hollis’s old man — a tall, broad-shouldered figure with blazing eyes in a black-and-white-bearded face — promised his flock fire and brimstone. He scared the hell into and out of them, but only his boy knew how much terror this man of God could deliver when words weren’t his only weapon.

One afternoon, when his mother — God bless her — was away, seventeen-year-old Hollis had shot his father six times on various parts of his body. This included, stigmata-style, the palms of his upraised, begging hands, but not the man’s head, because that crown of thorns would have seen the mean old bastard dying much too soon. How Hollis had relished the variety of expressions — surprise, pain, rage, fear, and various shades of each — that crossed his father’s face as the man died there in his study, crumpled on the floor by his desk, a towering figure no more, surrounded by all those books about God and sin and salvation.

As he’d planned, Hollis had quickly packed a bag, mostly with his father’s clothes, since all he had were a couple of shirts and pants and a pair of shoes. He’d taken the money from the tin box in the desk — seventy-five dollars, a fortune — his dead father on the floor making no protest, before saddling up the best of the buggy horses and making his way to the wagon train outside Springfield.

Wearing his father’s black frock coat and hat, and sprinkling his speech with the many Bible verses he’d swallowed, if not digested, Hollis was assumed by one and all to be a godly man. Or at least that was the case before he was thrown off the wagon train somewhere in Colorado after two married women got into a fight over him and one of their husbands drew down on him, dying for it, of course.

By that time, he carried with him the nickname “Preacher,” granted him by those around him before they understood his true nature. And as he rode through the West, perfecting the lethal proficiency with a six-gun that he’d first demonstrated back home in his father’s den, Hollis would never correct those who assumed he was a real reverend. Or that he at least had once been one. And he was barely twenty before the “man” got added on to “Preacher.”

The Preacherman fell into his self-created profession gradually. He had no desire or training or, for that matter, talent for any usual Western trade. Cowboying was too hard and too dirty, and prospecting was harder and dirtier. He was no damn clerk or farmer, turning his nose up at anything menial, and much of the outlaw life didn’t appeal to Hollis, either. Rustling or claim jumping was, after all, just a left-handed way of cowboying and prospecting.

So what might he be good at?

First, he had a way with a gun — he was fast and accurate, a skill enlarged upon by his lack of respect for any human life but his own.

What else?

Well, from his father he had picked up a certain bearing, an unearned dignity that attracted others to him. Farmers had him over for Sunday dinner; politicians running for office invited him to sit up on the stage; merchants either charged him nothing or provided a discount. Churchgoing women invited him in when their men weren’t around; trollops never asked to be paid; virgins sought his religious guidance, only to be schooled in sin.

More important than these disposable females were the gutter gunhands who gathered around him like flies to honey. He’d been through almost as many of these creatures as he had women. At first — discreetly, not wishing to spoil the false impression of piety he would ride into town with — Hollis had gathered such would-be desperados in the one line of outlawing he could stomach: robbery.

Starting out with stagecoaches, Hollis would ride at the rear of two or three masked others and shout orders. His boys would be in the line of fire, dealing with stagecoach drivers, shotgun guards, strongboxes, passengers and their possessions — and if somebody got brave, Hollis would not be the one who got the bullet. He lost four or five boys in this line of work, and the one bank he robbed saw two more buying it before Hollis got a bullet hole through a perfectly good black Stetson. Enough of that!

But by this time, he had a stake, and he took up traveling alone again and set upon gambling, which was another of his talents. At this point he was mistaken less and less for a godly man, the suggestion now being that he had once ridden circuit but had lost his calling, if not quite his faith. And it was as a cardsharp that he accidentally came upon his unique profession.

On three different occasions — three — he was accused (rightly, but that is incidental) of cheating at poker. On each occasion he taunted his accuser — with “ ‘The Lord detests lying lips,’ Proverbs, twelve, twenty-two,” among other appropriate shaming verses — goading them into drawing first.

With his speed and accuracy, Hollis had no problem besting these challengers. He wouldn’t even bother getting to his feet before drawing his Colt Single Action Army .45 and sending them to glory. In no instance was he held longer than an hour before a local lawman or justice of the peace declared the killing self-defense. Only once in those three times was he asked to leave town.

The three dead men were a cowboy, a rival tinhorn, and a local rancher. The variety of the victims encouraged him that he might be on to something. His reputation as a gunfighter inevitably led to backroom offers by various respectable types, mostly wealthy but sometimes merely successful merchants seeking to remove some human obstruction from their path. While flat-out murdering somebody seemed risky to Hollis, and a little distasteful, killing someone in self-defense was both an interesting challenge and a legal way out.

That was how the Preacherman’s profession developed. If you wanted a man dead, you crossed Hollis’s palm with the requisite silver. And here was where the challenge came in, as the Bible verse — spouting hired gun would needle and insult the intended victim, sometimes over days or even weeks, until that victim pulled on him. In this manner, Hollis protected his client, since the grudge appeared to be between the victim and Hollis himself.

The two currently riding with the Preacherman were typical of the rabble he periodically gathered — lowlifes attracted by his killing reputation who would settle for crumbs from whatever bread he might bake.

This pair — Trammel and Landrum, a scarecrow and a porker — were no better or worse, no smarter or dumber than those who’d preceded them. Their function was to be there to back Hollis up if a victim turned out to have unexpected help. Friends of a sort to handle any real friends the target might have.

Right now, the Preacherman and his two-man congregation were seated at a wobbly table in a two-story adobe structure that might have been a church. They had walked up here from the Victory not long after the sheriff knocked Trammel down and took his gun away.

The Cantina de Toro Rojo was no house of worship, however, rather a temple of sin looming over the humble adobes huddled along the narrow lane that led here. Trinidad’s modest barrio, its inhabitants like the slumbering serfs of a medieval castle, lay silent but for this lively cantina.

Hollis had been in dozens of such watering holes — straw covering the dirt floor; walls of yellow, their once bright murals now faded to pastel. A little hombre in a sombrero tickling a cheap guitar; a fat, sweaty bartender with a droopy bandido mustache, his bar a couple of planks on two barrels, with no stools. A scattering of mismatched tables and chairs, the ghost of refried beans haunting the place, no food service this time of night.

The all-male clientele ranged from gringos, both cowboys and town folk, to Mexicans, the latter vaqueros from area spreads, with a few black cowboys on hand, too. Nobody seemed to care. That included four young señoritas with old eyes who circulated open-mindedly. Lots of dark hair rode their bare shoulders; their peasant blouses threatened to spill their contents like fruit from a basket; and black skirts striped with red and yellow and green, plump with petticoats, swirled and twirled. They were not waitresses — you went to the bar yourself for that kind of service.

These soiled doves had rooms upstairs, where they lived and worked. Two others were already up there working, not living.

Hollis was having mescal; the other two, beer in warm bottles. Trammel was staring at a pleasantly plump strumpet who was working a table over by the washed-out mural of a bullfighter, a guitarist occupying a nearby corner. Laughing, she sat sideways on the lap of a black cowboy, facing him, arms around his neck, but also displaying her legs to other potential clients, in case this didn’t work out.

Trammel’s pop eyes were half closed, which was no one’s idea of a pleasant sight, and his upper lip was curled back over the smile whose missing two front teeth made a window onto his throbbing tongue.

“That ain’t right,” the lanky saddle tramp began muttering. “That ain’t right nohow, no way.”

Hollis, who had relieved the bartender of the bottle, poured another shot of mescal. He had no interest in what Trammel was talking about.

But the pig-faced Landrum did. “What ain’t right, Lafe?”

Trammel shook his head. “Piece of calico makin’ eyes at a black bastard such as that, and him lappin’ it up like cream. You see that, don’t you, Wilbur?”

Landrum, who clearly hadn’t given it a bit of thought, now frowned in outrage. “Oughta be a law. Oughta be a damn law!”

Both of the Preacherman’s altar boys had been drunk before they got here, making any meaningful business conversation with them a “filling an inside straight” long shot. But he would try.

After savoring a smoky sip of mescal, Hollis said, “I met today with that old friend of yours, Lafe.”

Trammel removed his awful eyes from the Mexican girl and the black cowboy and applied them to his boss. The gap-toothed frown became a grin. “How is the old buzzard? Does he get why I best not be seen with him?”

Hollis nodded. “He appears fine, but the question is, do you ‘get’ why you can’t be seen with him?”

“Well... because you said I oughtn’t.”

“But... the reason?”

Trammel sucked air in through his grin. “Might start people to talkin’ or such like.”

“Good. Yes, it might. And I won’t be meeting with him myself again until the job is done.”

Trammel leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner that fairly shouted secrecy. “Did he say who he brung us here to do in?”

“He did. Did indeed.”

Now Landrum sat forward, like a baby bird wanting its portion of worm. “Ain’t you gonna fill us in, Preacherman?”

Hollis shook his head, his expression somber. “No. I think it best I keep to myself the object of our attentions until we’re closer to the actual carrying out of the task.”

Trammel frowned, not angry — more like hurt. “Don’t you trust us, boss?”

Hollis raised a benedictory hand. “I trust you, but not your discretion. ‘Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,’ Ephesians four, twenty-nine.”

His two helpers thought about that, as they often did when he quoted scripture.

Then Landrum said, “Well, I sure as hell hope we get to stay around town till after that poker match. Might be some easy pickin’s.”

Hollis, knowing Landrum was a miserable poker player, nonetheless nodded. “You’ll have that opportunity. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves, my friends. This, by the way, is the only house of ill fame available in Trinidad.”

Big eyes rolling, Trammel said, “I learned that the hard way. That woman what runs the Victory says her girls ain’t harlots no more. What’s the good of a dance hall in such case?”

Hollis took another smoky sip. “Civilization is coming to the West, my friends. No getting around it. We must adapt or go the way of the buffalo.”

Forehead creased, Landrum said, “The buffalo got shot.”

“Yes, and that’s because they were dumb beasts. We are God’s children, blessed with the gift of thought. Of reason. We will fit in as times change.”

Trammel wasn’t listening now. He was again frowning over at the Mexican girl and the black cowboy. They were four tables away and apparently hadn’t noticed his gaze, though that particular gaze would seem hard not to notice.

But Landrum was interested in what his boss was saying. “If times is changing, how does gunfighters fit in?”

“Eventually,” Hollis admitted, “they won’t. Not as we know them. But guns aren’t going anywhere. And there will always be people eager to hire their use. And other people ready, willing, and able to fill such requests. ‘For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts,’ Mark seven-twenty-one.”

Trammel, this time ignoring the word of God, held his hand out to his porky compadre without looking at him. “Gimme your gun, Wilbur.”

Landrum blinked at him. “What?”

“Your gun! Gimme your gun. That damn deputy at the Victory took mine!”

“What you want it for?”

Hollis sighed and put a hand on Trammel’s arm. “There are plenty of choices here among the señoritas. Be content with one who does not already have a customer.”

Trammel didn’t appear to hear. He thrust his open palm more forcefully at his porcine companion. “Wilbur! Your goddamn gun.”

The gun was handed over, and Trammel stood, sliding the weapon — a nasty-looking Remington — into his low-riding holster. A decent fit.

“I implore you, my friend,” Hollis said, “not to cause yourself, not to cause us, any needless trouble. ‘The hotheaded do things they’ll later regret,’ Proverbs fourteen, seventeen.”

But Trammel still didn’t seem much in the mood for theological counsel.

He strode across the room, long arms swinging, just as the unwitting cowboy and the girl got to their feet and headed, smiling, arm in arm, for the door. They were apparently on their way to a room upstairs, accessed by an outside flight of stairs.

Trammel, spurs singing a discordant tune, stalked over and put himself between the couple and the exit.

“Some things just ain’t right under the sight of God,” Trammel said.

At that moment, Hollis — still seated with Landrum at their table — wished he hadn’t filled Trammel’s skull with so much scripture. He considered interceding and trying to stop what otherwise would be an inevitable tragedy, but putting himself in the middle of this might risk what they’d come to Trinidad to do.

Trammel would either survive or not. With a shrug, Hollis poured himself another glass of mescal.

The coffee-skinned cowboy wore a yellow bandana, a broad-brimmed felt hat, a blue cavalry jacket over a lighter blue shirt, and light gray “California”-style wool pants with loose-fitting legs. He was big and tall and as good looking as Trammel wasn’t, the harlot hanging on to his arm like a bosomy appendage.

A Peacemaker rode his right hip, high.

The cowboy’s voice had a low, rich timbre. “You have a problem, mister?”

“I got a problem called niggers putting their hands on their betters.”

The harlot’s eyes and nostrils flared. “I am mexicano, you crazy-eye fool!”

The cowboy knew what was coming and pushed the girl aside, and she went clattering into the table they’d just vacated.

But that gave Trammel all the time he needed to draw and fire, while his opponent’s hand was barely over his holstered .45. The bullet punched its way through the cowboy’s chest, blood and general gore splattering the bullfight mural.

Damned good shot for a drunken fool, Hollis thought.

The black vaquero teetered on his heels, taking a few seconds to come to terms with his own death, then fell back and landed hard on the straw-strewn floor. Chair legs scraped and señoritas screamed, the fat mustached man behind the bar shaking his head with disgust as he wiped a glass with a rag.

What the hell? the Preacherman thought. In a place like this in this part of town, a shooting wouldn’t amount to much. Hollis was digging some half eagles out of his pocket when he saw something that, for the first time this evening, caused him alarm.

That bearded old coot of a deputy stood in the doorway, a double-barreled shotgun over his arm.

Jonathan Tulley, after locking up that sidewinder Trammel’s .45 in the jailhouse safe, had not returned to the Victory, having had his fill of sarsaparilla for one night. Instead, he had taken up the nightly patrol, which was a big part of his job as deputy. This consisted of checking doors and alleys on Main Street, and walking the side and back streets to make sure no devilry was afoot.

When he collected his scattergun at the office, the wall clock had said 11:10 p.m. This was late for him to be starting patrol, which he usually began at sundown and kept up till the Victory was shut tight. But tonight was different: he’d had that special undercover assignment from the sheriff, to hang out at the saloon and keep an eye on the Preacherman and them two hard cases he rode with.

Often Tulley made the barrio, that shabby cluster of low-slung adobe-brick buildings opposite the jailhouse, the last stop of his night patrol. That was because the deputy lived at the office, sleeping on a cot in one of the cells. And saving the barrio for last left Tulley close to home when he finished up.

In his loose canvas trousers and BVD shirt, Tulley found the night cold enough to give him some shivers. The sheriff had advised him to spruce up his duds some, more suitable like to a deputy, but Tulley had never got around to it. He had a daughter in Denver, living with his brother and wife; he was saving up money for the girl. Ella would be sixteen now. Last saw her at six, when her mother died of the smallpox. Anyway, he liked that BVD feel, though a buckskin jacket this time of year might make a wise investment.

His shotgun over one arm, Tulley started down the central lane of the modest barrio, which was quiet and dark now, the dusty path free of barking dogs and scurrying chickens, not a light burning in a single window. That is, not a one till he approached the two-story structure at the dead end of the facing rows of adobe huts. There the windows glowed yellow on the first floor, with more yellow above, thanks to flickering candlelight in rooms where them fallen women practiced their sweet and sinful trade.

Big, red, weather-faded letters above the archway door said CANTINA DE TORO ROJO. A cowboy and a señorita sauntered out, hanging on to each other, both three sheets to the wind. They went up the exposed wooden staircase on the right side of the place, and Tulley saw the female wasn’t as drunk as she pretended to be.

Horses lined the leather-glazed hitch rail; guitar music and conversation murmured at the open windows. Nothing out of the ordinary. Tulley made his way to the door and was almost inside when the gunshot shook the room, and the deputy.

That same saddle bum who had given the sheriff trouble at the Victory was standing there with a big smoking six-gun in his hand, looming over a cowboy on his back on the floor, staring up with eyes that weren’t seeing a damn thing. People were on their feet and would have rushed out if Tulley and his scattergun hadn’t been in the way, and the señoritas were screaming their fool heads off — in particular, the one near the shooting.

“Just hold ’er right there!” Tulley yelled, and he swung his shotgun to and fro so’s people could tell he was serious. The badge on his chest said the same.

That tall, skinny Trammel was looking over his shoulder at Tulley with them weird bulging eyes, and the deputy let him use them bulgers to have a look down the twin black holes of the shotgun.

“Set that iron down, sonny,” Tulley said. “Slow and no tricks. You wouldn’t look no worse with your head blowed off.”

The buzzard bent at his knees and set the gun down nice and easy — feller was smart enough, anyways, to know that throwing it down hard might discharge the thing and kill somebody. Another somebody.

“All right, mister,” Tulley told the now-unarmed killer, “you set yourself down at the table there. You, too, señorita. Right now!”

They did so.

“Pedro!” Tulley called out.

The sawed-off guitarist, who was cowering in the corner, trying to hide under his sombrero, called back, “Qué quieres, señor?”

“Git the dickens over here.”

Pedro got the dickens over there.

Sombrero in hand now, the guitarist asked again, “Qué quieres?”

“Go find the sheriff. Should be at the Victory.”

“Si no?”

“Well, if not, might be in his room at the hotel.” Tulley made room for him. “Go!”

Pedro went.

So fast you could hear the dust kick up.

Tulley positioned himself in the doorway again, blocking the way, or, anyway, his scattergun did. Everyone was back in their chairs. The Preacherman and the other varmint that traveled with this Trammel seemed to be going out of their way not to look in his. Cesar, the bartender, also the proprietor, was leaning his elbows on the bar, his folded hands under his chin. He looked bored and kind of put upon.

Pedro did well: within five minutes Caleb York sidled up at Tulley’s side. The sheriff patted his deputy on the shoulder, then took a few steps inside. He cast his eyes around the room slowly, then wound up looking down at the dead man but not going over to do so.

“Anyone check him?” York asked.

Heads shook; shoulders shrugged.

“Doesn’t look to be breathin’,” York admitted. “Cesar, have a look-see.”

Cesar came around the bar and went over to kneel by the fallen cowboy. The proprietor’s pudgy fingers searched for a pulse in the man’s neck. Failing, he looked up at York and said, “Está muerto, Sheriff.”

York curled a finger, and Cesar came over to him, in no hurry.

“What happened here?” York asked.

Before Cesar answered, the seated Trammel yelled, “It was a fair fight! Nigger drew down on me. He went for it first!”

York looked hard at Cesar.

Cesar smirked and held his hands open. “Quién sabe?”

“I will tell you who knows,” Alver Hollis said in a calm, commanding voice worthy of a pulpit. He swung around in his chair and gave York a steady, unblinking look. “I know. I saw it. Everyone saw it. That black son of a bitch pulled on my friend. It’s as clear a case of self-defense as ever was seen on God’s green earth.”

Twitching half a smile, York said, “How about on indoor straw?”

Hollis stiffened. “That’s how it happened.”

York pushed his hat on the back of his head. “Is there a Bible verse that covers it, Preacherman?”

“Any number. For example, ‘For he is the servant of God, who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.’ Romans thirteen, four.”

“Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the one about turnin’ the other cheek... Anyone else here see anything different?”

Around the room came more head shakes and mumbled negatives.

Tulley slipped up by the sheriff and whispered, “That señorita over there, same table as the troublemaker? She’s the cause.”

York turned his gaze on the girl. “How about it, señorita? Did the cowboy draw first?”

She glanced at Trammel, who was glowering at her, then nodded.

“Positive of that, señorita?”

She swallowed and nodded again.

“Cesar,” York said, turning to the proprietor, who remained nearby. “You weren’t sure what happened. Are you sure now?”

The big mustachioed head bobbed up and down, then nodded toward the Preacherman. “It was as that one said — as fair a fight as ever I saw. As ever anyone saw.”

York’s grin came slow. “Well, that’s good to hear. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to close the cantina down for the night. Sorry for the loss of business, Cesar, but somebody’s gotta pay for this killing.”

Cesar shrugged. A man who ran this kind of place had known for a long time that life was not fair.

“You two,” York said, pointing at Hollis and Landrum, “stay put. Need a word. Join your friends, Mr. Trammel. You just leave the gun on the floor there. Everybody else, out!”

Tulley stepped outside, and one by one, the patrons piled through. Some went off on foot; others claimed their horses, though a few steeds remained, their owners upstairs with wenches. Others up there had probably fled at the gunshot.

Heading back inside again, Tulley and his double-barrel took their position in the doorway and watched as York strode casually over to the three seated men.

“Mr. Trammel,” York said pleasantly, “you seem to have a propensity for trouble.”

The bulgy eyes blinked. “A what-sity?”

“A bent toward gettin’ yourself in a fix. This is two incidents in one night. Now, it would appear there’s no one to stand against you in this shooting.”

“He drew on me!”

“So you say. Of course, his gun was in his holster, nice and snug. But he may have made a move. He may. Anyway, I know when I’m buffaloed. You’re walkin’ out of here a free man.”

Hollis said softly, “It was self-defense, Sheriff.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, back when you were directing the choral group in this place in the hymn you wanted sung. Here’s the thing. You want to hang around my quiet little town up to and till after the big poker game, fine and dandy. But none of you boys better so much as pass wind, or I’ll jail the lot of you. Or worse.”

Hollis said, “Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

“Call it a covenant, Preacherman. Now you and your brethren get the hell out of here.”

They departed.

York came over to Tulley and said, “Fine job, Deputy. Now go tell Doc Miller to bring a wicker basket for the body.”