Firestick Read online

  “You want to throw ’em in the hoosegow?” Hendricks said.

  “That’s exactly what I want.” McQueen gestured offhandedly toward the sprawled form of Woolsey. “Have ’em drag their pet red-haired rat along for the trip and and throw him behind bars with ’em.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’ll let you know after I think on it some. I might decide to pile on a few more charges.”

  Hendricks frowned. “You know Tolsvord ain’t gonna like that much.”

  “That’s too bad,” McQueen said. “For his sake, we’ve gone easy on these no-accounts way too often. I figure it’s time we clamped down on ’em a little harder for a change—and past time for Tolsvord to recognize they’re a lost cause for him and everybody else.”

  “If you say so, Firestick.” Hendricks waggled his gun at Greely and Grady. “You heard the man. Grab hold of your pet red-haired rat and bring him along. You’re all invited for a stay in the exclusive little hotel we run.”

  Wordlessly, the brothers grabbed the sagging Woolsey—one by the feet, the other under his arms—and headed for the front door ahead of Hendricks. Before following them out, the big deputy looked over his shoulder and said, “I’ll send Moorehouse over to see about patchin’ you two up. Then I’ll have him take a look at these three.”

  McQueen shrugged. “I suppose. No particular hurry, though . . . especially not for them.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Once Hendricks was out the door with his charges, McQueen turned to the yellow-haired stranger who’d been standing quietly by with a bemused expression on his face. “Now then,” said the marshal. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt, because I know those three jackasses to be liars and troublemakers. Thing is, that don’t necessarily prove you ain’t a card cheat. I hope you’re not gonna disappoint me by turnin’ out to actually be one.”

  “Trust me, Marshal, I very sincerely do not want to disappoint you,” said the stranger. “Like I told you before, those men were such terrible players there would be no need for me or anybody else to cheat in order to beat them.”

  McQueen regarded him for a moment before making a gesture to indicate the paper bills that, along with the cards, ashtrays, and drinks, had been spilled from the table. “Reckon these winnin’s are yours, then.”

  The stranger returned his gaze, the bemused expression remaining in place. He said, “If that’s intended to be some kind of trick to test my honesty, Marshal, then that would make me the one disappointed in you . . . I hadn’t yet had time to clean those gentlemen out entirely, you see. So not all of the money scattered there is mine. However, since I do know the amount I had in front of me before the trouble broke out, I’d like to claim what is. The rest can be returned to the men your deputy hauled away.”

  “Minus the amount owed for damages, that is—from their part, not yours,” McQueen said.

  “Sounds reasonable,” the stranger allowed.

  “Reasonable, maybe. But not really necessary,” said Farrelly, the barkeep, who’d come out from his station to start righting chairs and putting things back in order. “The boss learned a long time ago to furnish this joint with sturdy trimmings that wouldn’t bust up so easy every time a fracas broke out. Looks like it paid off once again. I don’t see nothing that suffered much damage.”

  He paused in what he was doing to glance upward. “Except for the ceiling, that is. Doggone it, Firestick, does Moosejaw have to fire off a blast into the ceiling every time he shows up to tame down a spot of trouble? Lookit up there. That’s three times in the past six months, and last time it was with a doggone shotgun!”

  “Moosejaw don’t like wastin’ words,” McQueen said.

  “Well, he oughta try not liking to waste bullets for a change. He’s gonna have that ceiling peppered with so many doggone holes that the next time we get a frog-strangler of a rain, it’ll leak in here like one of those Swedish shower baths I’ve heard tell about.”

  “Art,” McQueen said, “when’s the last time we had a frog-strangler of a rain around these parts?”

  Farrelly frowned. “Well . . . I don’t know exactly.”

  “You don’t know because you can’t remember. Nobody can remember. Because it never happens.”

  “We get some doozies now and then,” Farrelly said stubbornly. “But that ain’t the point. The point is, if Moosejaw keeps shooting holes in the ceiling, it’s just a matter of time before it’ll start to leak from even only—”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “I mean, it ain’t like he ain’t big enough to just march in and give a loud snort if he wants to—”

  “You made your point. I said I’ll talk to him about it,” the marshal interrupted for a second time, his tone growing a mite testy.

  While McQueen and Farrelly were talking, the stranger had quietly gathered up the cards and money scattered across the floor. He placed the deck of cards on top of the table Farrelly had pushed back into place, and alongside it a thin stack of bills—minus a thicker bundle, his winnings, that he kept for himself. Brandishing the latter, he announced, “Gentlemen. Since I was a participant—albeit a reluctant one—in the disturbance that disrupted everyone’s afternoon, I’d like to make amends by offering to step over to the bar and buy a round of drinks.”

  One of the onlookers already at the bar responded by saying, “Heck, mister, that wasn’t no disturbance to us. It was a right entertainin’ show you put on.”

  One of the other patrons leaning on the bar next to the speaker gave him a quick elbow to the ribs, then was equally quick to add, “But that don’t mean we won’t still accept your offer to stand a round of drinks.”

  “Reckon I’d better get back in place to do some pouring, then,” said Farrelly as he headed once again for the bar.

  The stranger pointed to the money he’d placed on the table and said to McQueen, “That rightfully belongs to those other players. I presume you’ll see that it’s returned to them?”

  The marshal hesitated for a moment, making a sour face, before finally reaching for the bills. “I ain’t done bein’ mad at those boobs yet, so I hate to do anything in their favor,” he said. “But, yeah, I’ll see to it this gets back to ’em.”

  The stranger smiled. “I trust also that you will be accepting my drink offer? Or are you not allowed to imbibe since you’re on duty?”

  McQueen’s sour expression suddenly turned into a wide grin, accompanied by a hearty chuckle. “Mister, I wouldn’t have a job that didn’t allow for a little im-bibin’. Which ain’t to say I go around half-pickled or anything like that. But I do enjoy a few nips on occasion, and I reckon this measures up as one of those occasions. So lead on, I surely do accept your offer.”

  By the time they took their places at the bar, Farrelly had already served the other men farther down the line. Moving back to stand before McQueen and the stranger, the first thing he did was place a couple of damp bar towels in front of them. “The laundry lady will likely raise hell with me about the bloodstains, but here, you fellas might want to take a swipe at some of your cuts and scrapes before you get down to drinking.”

  The long mirror behind the bar was the pride of the otherwise rather austere establishment. The Silver Spur’s owner, Irish Dan Coswick, liked to boast how he’d had it shipped special all the way from New Orleans, and he took great offense at any mention of the few distortions and blurry spots to be found across its surface. It nevertheless did give the place a nice added touch and proved quite helpful at the moment for the marshal and the stranger to see their reflections in order to take some “swipes” at their wounds. The latter, upon closer examination, proved numerous though mostly superficial.

  “I guess,” said the stranger as he dabbed at the raw, reddened swelling under one eye, “we can take a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact that those men your deputy took out of here looked considerably worse than us.”

  Wiping his chin clean of the partially dried blood smeared across it, McQueen grinned. “Like the old joke that goes, ‘You oughta see the other fella, eh?” Then his grin stretched even wider. “Of course, when you take into account those ugly-assed Dunlaps and stack ’em up against a couple of handsome gents like us, you’d be quick to conclude they looked considerably worse even before we did any poundin’ on ’em.”

  Now it was the stranger’s turn to chuckle. “If you say so.”

  As he continued to utilize the mirror’s reflection to dab at the damage done his face, the stranger also used it to discreetly make a closer appraisal of the man standing next to him. He saw a solid six-footer in his middle fifties with a full head of gray-flecked hair, a broad face anchored by a strong jaw, ice-blue eyes separated by a blunt, moderately large nose. His attire was simple—homespun shirt and denim trousers, the latter tucked into a pair of high-topped buckskin boots with fringes around the top cuffs. He wore a walnut-handled Frontier Colt in a well-worn holster on his right hip, and moved like he knew how to use it. And although the stranger had seen the marshal’s wide grin and the laugh crinkles at the corners of his ice-blue eyes, he’d also noted those eyes narrowing and deepening to a much darker blue during flashes of anger. In summation, the stranger made McQueen for a self-assured, generally easygoing individual, but one with a dangerous edge that marked him as no one to be trifled with.

  Setting aside his bar towel and raising the shot of red-eye Farrelly had placed before him, the marshal said, “I thank you for this, mister. Could thank you more properly if I knew your name, which, it occurs to me, I never got around to hearin’.”

  The stranger raised his own glass. “It’s Lofton. Henry Lofton.”

  “And I’m Elwood McQueen . . . Here’s to you.”

  Both men tossed down their shots.

  Returning his glass to the bar top, Lofton said, “Now you’ve got me curious. You say your name is McQueen. But your deputy—the big fellow you referred to as Moosejaw—kept calling you ‘Firestick.’ It may not be polite to probe too much since we’ve only just met, but I’m thinking there’s got to be an interesting story or two behind such colorful names. Care to enlighten me?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Without waiting to be asked, Farrelly had already begun pouring refills. As he did so, one side of his mouth pulled into a wry smile. “Oh, there’s stories behind those names right enough,” he said. “Don’t keep the poor fella in suspense, Firestick. Go ahead and tell him.”

  “Now, Art. Don’t go makin’ more of it than there is.”

  “Aw, come on,” the barkeep protested. “I’ve heard you tell plenty of tales about your mountain-man days. No need to be shy about it now.”

  “Mountain-man days?” echoed Lofton. “Now I’m really intrigued. You must tell me more.”

  McQueen tossed back his second shot, then pushed the emptied glass toward Farrelly, saying, “Okay. But enough panther juice. Pour me a beer to keep my tongue oiled for the tellin’. That’ll be strong enough.”

  After downing his own drink, Lofton said, “Same for me on the beer.”

  Once a tall brew was in front of him, McQueen began. “I was born and raised a farm lad back on the flatlands of Iowa. One of my pa’s brothers, Uncle Eugene, ran a little country inn on the main road that bordered the south end of our land. Most of the travelers who stopped by his place were headed out West, some were comin’ back. The yarns he heard from those returnin’ and then passed along at family gatherin’s were wondrous tales to the ears of this restless farm boy. I knew at an early age I wasn’t cut out to be chained to a plot of land or a backbreakin’ plow or any of the rest that went with it. Hearin’ those tales of the West pretty much set the course I knew I’d be followin’ the first chance I got.”

  McQueen paused for a moment, a trace of sadness passing briefly over his face. “Reckon I’ll always feel a mite guilty about leavin’ my pa with one less set of hands to work the farm,” he continued. “But I think he knew early on, just like I did, that it wasn’t something I was cut out for. So I tell myself I sorta balanced it out by also leavin’ him one less mouth to feed. I remain hopeful he didn’t think poorly of me for the rest of his days.

  “At any rate, light out is what I did at about seventeen or so. Headed straight for the Colorado Rockies. The glory days of mountain-mannin’—the beaver-trappin’ and such—had mostly run out by the time I got on the scene. But there was still a livin’ to be made in pelts and hides and huntin’ meat for the minin’ camps. I lucked out by fallin’ in with some fellas here and there who showed me the ropes and didn’t leave a greenhorn to starve or freeze to death those first couple winters. In the end, I had some pretty good years there in the Rockies.

  “But then”—the marshal sighed after taking a pull of his beer—“I got a fresh dose of wanderlust, and knew the only way to scratch the itch was to roam farther west. So that’s what I did. Spent some time in and around Yellowstone. Moved on to the Cascades. Looked out on the Pacific Ocean . . . Eventually, though, the Rockies beckoned me back. It was on the way there, at a rendezvous in Wyoming, that I met a couple of rascals who I wasn’t able to shake—and never really wanted to, truth be known. The three of us have stuck together from that point on.”

  “Let me guess,” Lofton interjected. “I’m betting I just met one of them, sort of, in Deputy Moosejaw.”

  “That’d be another bet you’d win,” McQueen allowed. “His real name is Hendricks, by the way. Jim Hendricks. I’ll get to how he came to be called Moosejaw in a minute, but while we’re at it, you might as well know that the second rascal I ran into at that rendezvous can be found hangin’ around these parts also. He’s my other deputy, in fact. His name is Malachi Skinner.”

  “No nickname for him?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute, too.” McQueen took another drink of his beer. “After the three of us throwed in together there in Jackson Hole, we spent the next several years in the high country. Meager years, from a money-earnin’ standpoint, through much of it. But some mighty good times all the same. We were wild and free, and we always had meat to eat and a tight shelter from the cold and rain.

  “When the Civil War came along and tore hell out of most of the rest of the country, it never really touched us up there where we were. Hell, the two armies had been fightin’ for months before we ever even heard anything about it. When we did, on account of all three of us livin’ away from so-called civilization for as long as we had . . . well, we never really understood what the fuss was about and we weren’t rightly sure which side we belonged on if we would’ve decided to go off and fight.”

  “Too bad more didn’t feel that way,” Lofton said bitterly. “It might’ve saved the senseless slaughter of a lot of innocent young men.”

  McQueen shrugged. “What it boiled down to, in the end, was that the war never came around us, so we never went lookin’ for it. Thinkin’ back on that time now, after the passin’ of years, I wonder if we did the right thing. We weren’t cowards, I’m certain of that much. But that’s the only thing I’m certain of. We live in this country, we reap the benefits, such as they are . . . But we never fought for ’em. Maybe we should have.”

  “But neither did you fight against the side that prevailed,” Lofton pointed out. “There’s always that to consider.”

  “Reckon that’s one way to look at it.” McQueen heaved a sigh. “Anyway, we gradually worked our way down out of Colorado and into the southern Rockies and the San Juans in New Mexico. It was there that we ran into some serious trouble with hostile Indians. Oh, we’d had skirmishes before. Plenty of ’em in plenty of different places. But it was usually a hit-and-run kind of thing, never nothing that dragged out for very long.

  “Once we got in amongst the Jicarilla and Coyo-tero Apaches, though, it was a whole different kettle of fish. They got real intense about lettin’ us know we wasn’t welcome in their mountains, and we took a stubborn—and probably not too smart—stance when it came to lettin’ ’em know we wasn’t of a mind to be run out. And so it went for the next handful of years. Lots of run-ins, some of ’em pretty bloody. We managed to keep our hair and our lives, but it came powerful close to goin’ the other way more times than I care to think about.”

  McQueen paused for another long pull of his beer. When he lowered his glass, there was a wry smile on his face. “It was from those Injuns, you see, that all three of us got our nicknames. Firestick for me, on account of my skill with a long gun when it came to nailin’ anything I shot at—be it a four-legged critter or the two-legged kind. Moosejaw for Hendricks, due to the time he got caught alone and was ambushed by a party of braves; after he ran out of bullets, they closed in on him with war clubs and tomahawks and he fought ’em off with the jawbone of a moose skeleton that happened to be lyin’ on the ground of the gully where they had him cornered.”

  “Samson of the San Juans!” Farrelly cackled. “I never grow tired of hearin’ that yarn.”

  “I can see why,” said Lofton in a somewhat awed tone.

  “That only leaves Malachi, the fella you ain’t met yet,” McQueen said. “Him they took to callin’ Beartooth on account of the fierce way he handled a knife—one he kept as sharp and deadly as a grizzly fang.”

  “I take it the Apaches got a firsthand taste of that skill also?”

  “Often enough for ’em to come up with the name. Not that Beartooth didn’t prefer usin’ a gun and bullets as often as he could,” McQueen explained, “but somehow he ended up fightin’ in close quarters on several occasions and, when he did, well . . . it was his knife that got him out alive.”