The Last Shootist (18 page)

“Sir, excuse me! Who would I talk to about a job as a bank guard?”

“Me. I'm this bank's president.”

“Oh. Gillom Rogers, sir.” He extended his hand but the president just looked at it. “Just got into town from El Paso. Looking for security work, which might make use of my gun skills.”

The older gentleman pulled a handkerchief to polish his wire-rimmed spectacles.

“We already have a uniformed guard inside. But, well, a couple weeks ago, one of our town butchers, big guy, too, was robbed right up the gulch there, trying to walk down here with a late deposit from his till. I've been thinking, maybe if we did offer private guard service, to our better customers, for a small fee, they would feel safer.”

“I can bodyguard anybody.”

“You look young. What guard experience have you had?”

Gillom leaned back on his bootheels to make himself taller. “None, sir. Just out of high school. But I make up for that with my gun speed and friendly countenance.” He smiled wide.

“Prove it.”

They were standing on cement steps underneath the bank's granite columned portico, and Gillom stepped down to let a customer enter. Slowly withdrawing his right-hand Remington .44-.40, he opened its nickel-plated cylinder and pulled one brass cartridge. Resnapping the cylinder into place, he made sure there were two empty chambers now in his six-shooter, one under the hammer and an empty one for the next rotation. He reholstered his weapon. Placing the spare cartridge on the back of his right hand, he stuck it out in front of him. Gillom looked at the bank president, who was watching curiously.

“Don't blink.” Yanking his right hand out from under the bullet, Rogers fast drew his pistol, thumb-cocked it, and pulled the hair trigger, dry-firing the big pistol before the bullet hit the ground.
Click
.

The banker licked his lips. “I think we might find use for you, young man. For twenty-five dollars a week.”

Gillom bent to pick up his bullet. “Need a little more than that.”

“What! You're just
starting
. If you get along well, become known around town, you can probably pick up extra work nights, escorting some of our gamblers and their winnings safely home.”

“Later.
Maybe
.” The young gunslinger looked the banker directly in the eye. “Some of these miners make twenty-five dollars a day now.”

“But that's hard work, digging and blasting ore. You're just going to be babysitting some of our merchants, walking them to and from their stores.” The banker was becoming frustrated, suddenly in a negotiation he hadn't expected this morning.

Gillom drew both pistols in an instant, threw in two forward rolls, a pinwheel transfer with each Remington revolving one full turn while crossing in midair, caught them in opposite palms and concluded with double reverse spins back into both holsters. Perfectly.

“All right, all right!
Fifty
dollars a week.”

“To start,” added the young shootist.

“To start. First thing Monday morning, 8:00
A.M.
I'll send customers letters over the weekend. See if extra protection doesn't stir up some new business after that last robbery scare.”

They were distracted by the Locomobile chuffing back down the street and skidding to a squeaking stop on the brick pavement nearby. The banker frowned at the showoff.

“That's my cashier. Have to tell him to put you on the payroll.”

The banker started to walk up the steps to enter, but Gillom stuck out his hand again.

“Thank you, Mister…?”

The bank president hesitated, finally stuck out his hand to shake with the teenager.

“Sumner Pinkham. Your new boss.”

“Much obliged, Mister Pinkham.”

“
Cunningham!
Leave that toy automobile alone and get the hell in here!”

*   *   *

Gillom celebrated with a breakfast of eggs and bacon and a rasher of potatoes at a small café, then started back up to his hillside home, a bounce in his bootsteps, puffing less from this elevated hike. The birds trilling in the bushes along the creek below certainly sounded sweeter this fine afternoon, saluting him.

He discovered two stacks of firewood and a half-filled water barrel beside his kitchen door. While he unpacked his limited possessions, Gillom lit his Franklin stove and heated several buckets of water. He dumped the hot water into his big tin tub he'd placed on the wooden floor, threw in some Gold Dust washing powder he'd found on his shelves, grabbed a bar of Ivory soap and a pig bristle brush, and treated himself to a refreshing scrub.

Dressed in his black wool pinstriped pants, his black-and-silver-threaded shirt, and brown calfskin vest with the silver conchos, Gillom was back in the Bonanza before 8:00
P.M.
Ease was behind the long bar cleaning up from his day shift. The barkeep smiled and poured his new pal a free beer.

“Sleep well, pard?”

“Dandy. Landlady took a shine to my money this morning, so it looks like I'll be there awhile. No bedbugs, either.”

“Good! Makes me as daffy as a duck lost in Arizona to have a new friend handy just across the hillside. Just don't pee in her bushes!”

They both laughed. Ease took off his apron and checked out with the senior bartender, before drawing himself a beer and joining his young friend on the other side of the hard wood.

“Welcome to the Golden West, where a few folks have more money than they can spend in the daytime!” They clinked pint mugs.

“Appears that way tonight.” They looked around the big saloon, where the gaming tables were filling and tarted-up women were filtering in to flirt with the amateur gamblers and entice them to drink.

“Well, long as your ore holds out and the price of copper stays up, Bisbee'll keep booming,” Gillom agreed.

“You betcha! And we'll make our fortunes here along with her. I intend to
own
a saloon better than this someday.” The boys clinked glasses again, but were interrupted in their mutual admiration by a slap from the tables that resounded like a firecracker's report. They turned to see a big man in a black suit rising from one of the faro tables to confront the dealer behind the felt layout.

“You've got that squeeze box rigged!”

Threatened, the gray-suited dealer shoved his right hand forward like he was shooting a starched cuff, but the big customer grabbed his wrist and twisted it, pushing a hideout gun from the spring mechanism inside the dealer's suitcoat's wide sleeve. The din died down due to the confrontation and the boys could hear the gambler growl.

“William, open that faro box. Let's see how it's stacked?”

The dealer started to protest, but the beefy gambler leaned and thrust the dealer's over-and-under derringer right up his nostril.

“I want my money
back
!”

The Bonanza's floorman and its burliest bartender were already on the move, the latter holding a wooden cudgel behind his apron tied in back. The dealer's “lookout,” the man who sat on his right corner of the faro table and collected and paid off the bets, was also on his feet with his hand on his side gun.

The gambler's buddy opened the faro box, a small metal rectangle inlaid with abalone shell designs, removed the cards, and examined the insides. At the bottom William found a metal plate that, when pressed with a finger, sprung up slightly to allow him to pull out a hidden card, an ace of spades, concealed in a smaller stack beneath the plate.

The gambler yelled, “Lookit
that
! He's pullin' two cards out of the slot! Whichever he needs to win! Bastard's
bracing
the deck!”

The big man with the Roman nose pulled back the derringer and with both meaty hands shoved the green felt faro table hard at the dealer, pushing him suddenly back into his chair and pinning him right up against the saloon's wall.

“I want my money
back
!”

The floorman leaned in, took the angry gambler by the shoulder of his gun hand to restrain him. Right along his other side was the bartender, thrusting his cudgel.

“Okay, Luther, calm down. We'll give you your money back if it's justified.”

“
Justified!
His box is gaffed to double-deal!
Look!
”

A crowd had gathered around this faro table, wanting their look, too. Luther's partner demonstrated the spring plate card concealer to the elbowing barflies and floor boss, who stared hard at the sweating dealer pinned against the wall.

“You're through, Simmons. We don't allow gaffed faro boxes in the Bonanza. Be on the next stage out of Bisbee.” There was nothing more to say, so the dealer wisely didn't. The gambling manager was making good on everybody's losses while Luther held the rigged faro box high as his trophy. The din returned as bettors loudly demanded to examine the boxes at other faro tables.

“C'mon. I'm not supposed to drink much in here after work, and the owners'll be coming in, they hear about this mess.”

“Let's put on the nosebag then. I'm starving!” The boys chugged their beers and were outside the Bonanza in a burp.

“Who was that spotted the fix?” Gillom wanted to know.

“Luther Goose. One of the biggest gamblers around. They say he comes down here to recruit our girls for his parlor house up in Clifton, the other big copper town in Arizona.”

“Funny name for a gambler.”

“His whorehouse in Clifton's called the Blue Goose.”

They chuckled as they strolled farther up the dirt lane comprising Brewery Gulch, Ease explaining it was the next street in town scheduled to be brick-paved. They stopped to watch a fierce dog fight erupt from an alley. No one claimed the territorial mutts so a few miners paused to watch, even started to make bets on the barking, biting combatants.

“How do you know so much about Bisbee, Ease? Were you born here?”

“Nope, grew up in Tucson. My dad was a bartender, part owner of a saloon. Mother was a barmaid there awhile. She's still over in Tucson, lives with her sister after my pop died a few years back. Heart went. Saloon business is a hard one, never stops, but the money's good if you can stand the late hours. I learned from the bottom up, mopping vomit and washing out spittoons. I came over here right after high school. There's more promise here in Bisbee with all its mining money, although Tucson's still the biggest trading town in Arizona Territory.”

They pushed their way through the dozens of men sitting along the boardwalks outside the twenty saloons and rooming houses lining the lower end of the gulch. Miners off their day shift clotted in groups smoking, chawing, or passing round a bottle as they watched their brethren make the rounds of the bars this fine Friday night.

Ease steered him into one of the better establishments, Tony Down's Turf Saloon. Gillom was soon digging into steak and potatoes and steamed vegetables washed down with another beer.

“Hell, you got to be a little on the rustle to make your fortune in Bisbee now it's being dug out and built up. I'm just training on the day shift, where I miss the better tips at night, but eventually I'll meet some well-connected gentleman through the Bonanza who can get me a head bartender's or a manager's job somewheres else.”

“Same here,” agreed Gillom. “Hope to bodyguard enough wealthy businessmen during my day job at the bank, to slide into something more lucrative nights.”

“Just don't end up an enforcer, a fast gun for somebody like Luther Goose. He's put the evil eye on the Bonanza now. Rigged faro, gollee.”

“Does he really steal girls from your saloons for his own joint?”

“Yeah, but lots of professional gamblers take up with prostitutes and make money off them. Doc Holliday had Big-Nosed Kate following him around the West. Over in Tombstone, the famous Earp brothers were known as the fighting pimps.”

“Huh.” Gillom leaned back and wiped his mouth with his linen, well satisfied with his supper. The boys ordered dried plums soaked in water overnight, dessert fare in an arid country where fresh fruit was a rarity. “Well, I'm no dirt digger. I aim to keep my hands clean and make my fortune aboveground.”

Ease wiped foam off his bare upper lip. “Me, too, pard.
Waitress!
Bill, please! I feel like goin' on a tear tonight!”

 

Twenty-two

 

They tumbled from the Turf Saloon into the night. The upper end of Brewery Gulch was beyond a sharp bend in the gorge that cut it off from the street of that name as if it were in a different mountain range altogether. Ease explained this was Bisbee's red light area of twenty dance halls, cribs, and whorehouses known as “the reservation,” all licensed and taxed by the city fathers to keep a lid on their licentiousness in one boiling kettle. Consequently, it was the part of town notorious for robbery, assault, and drug use, so they had to watch their tails. Bisbee's wickedness beckoned these young men this fair spring night with a wide red smile.

Gillom had strolled El Paso's notorious Utah Street at night with his pals, so he wasn't shocked when he passed the rows of cribs on both mountainous sides of the gulch. These were frame rowhouses about the size of boxcars, fifty to seventy-five feet wide, partitioned into ten to twelve cubicles, each with an entrance to the street and a bedroom in front and a small washroom, closet, and stove in the back, with privies and clotheslines out behind. Women posed in the doorways and front windows displaying their charms, soliciting customers with lewd gestures, whistles, and insistent entreaties.

“Hey, I'm Cassie, an awful nice friend to you boys.” Or, “Say, sweetheart, what's your hurry?”

They were different shades, brown or white, some overweight or worn, others fresher, lingering in the lamplit openings in skimpy nightgowns or colorful kimonos, rocking on their front porch pulling up silk stockings and stifling yawns.