Jake took a seat facing the entrance and placed his brushed nickel Colt on the table. He raised two fingers and Elias nodded behind the bar and put a stone crock of ginger beer on Lucy’s tray with two glasses.
“Jake, that’s a mighty fine ivory grip .45 you have there, I’ve always admired that golden scroll,” said Lucy, making sure not to place the glasses between her customer and his gun.
Jake looked at the worn ivory grip and said, “It doesn’t get much use nowadays, but this will last generations.”
Lucy always liked this gambler with the shiny gold vest. He never left an insulting tip and he dressed better than most and when he won big he always shared it with drinks on the house. He was old enough to be her father, but she and the other girls have spent many a time with him by the hour.
He poured himself a half glass of ginger beer and sat waiting, hoping that the new marshal was coming by like he said he would.
Jake had seen him earlier in the day behind the Chinese laundry. He watched as the marshal nicked his knife blade along the top of the timber fence and line a full Bicycle deck for sharp shooting and he just had to try and best. He had shot one card clean through edge-wise and should have stopped there but he was boastful and shot off all the heads of the kings and queens and two aces in the deck. Now he’s down to his last round of bullets and he might have to hock his pocket watch, the one he took from the rancher he shot when he was on the other side of the law in his younger days.
He was surprised that the young marshal was such a good shot and the competition came out equal. At least he showed him that an elder could still shoot with a keen eye and maybe that’s why he suggested he join his posse. That $1,000 award for a gang of horse thieves would be worth it. If there’s a gunfight he could always hold back, bringing in the rear, while others rushed in and through the confusion he wouldn’t mind shooting lawmen in the back to guarantee that the reward money would be his. With that money he could leave for Montana, the new 41st state of the Union.
Tall, slender and young, Lucy licks her lips and looks over her shoulder as U.S. Marshal Sullivan walks in and takes a seat. Jake fills the other glass almost to the rim.
“You’re a pretty darn good shot marshal, how’d you learn to shoot like that?” asked Jake.
“Learned it all from my pa,” said the marshal. He quickly gets down to business and continues, “We’re leaving tomorrow to find Cyrus Zauder’s gang. They have been rustling cattle and stealing horses all over the entire county. There’s a good chance that they’re back at their homestead bordering Indian country and I aim to find them and bring them back alive.”
“But the award, that’s for alive or dead, right?” asked Jake.
“Well, I want to bring them back to justice, I’m no man’s judge and jury. If you want to wear a star we’re leaving in the morning with a full day’s riding ahead.” The marshal got up and started to walk away and turned back and asked, “Have you ever killed a woman?”
“No, I’ve never killed a woman,” answered Jake, wondering if the marshal knew that he himself was, for a while, on the other side of the law, but he never killed a woman. He has killed a homesteader by surprise when he was stealing their family silver and that rancher with the pocket watch. And it all started when he was sixteen with that sentencing judge who swore that he would send his best friend to the gallows. He shot Judge Howard before breakfast and his ungrateful friend left without him for New Mexico Territory on his own father's horse. He never went back home to his family and he never saw his friend ever again.
Three deputies, the marshal and Jake ride across the desert before sunrise in search of Cyrus Zauder and his four sons. Each man has been given a full bandolier and as Jake rides he tries to predict the future, he wouldn’t mind taking any unused bullets from dead deputies.
Before dusk they come to a sagging adobe home by a dry riverbed. They can hear a drunken man screaming, “Goddamn you lazy sons of bitches.” There is a clatter of tin pots and pans and then silence.
The men and horses hide behind a rocky sand berm and Marshal Sullivan says, “Wendell, get out your flint, boys gather brush, we have to smoke these bandits out before the sun goes down.” James and Will hunt for tumbleweeds to burn while Wendell forms dry grass and twigs inside the bowl of his palm to ready the spark of his flint and stone. Placing his nest of kindling on the ground, Wendell strikes his flint and after a few tries a spark catches fire.
“Okay. James, Will, take the side windows. C’mon boys let’s try and talk sense, don’t shoot until I say so,” said the marshal. The posse silently move in closer towards the slumping adobe. James and Will crouch underneath the open windows on either side of the house, each holds a bundle of twigs to light and another already smoldering. Protected by a surround of boulders, the rest of the men sight their guns to the front door.
“Cyrus, come on out with your hands up. I want to take you and your family alive not dead,” yells Marshal Sullivan.
“You’ll gonna have to wait forever for that! We have our guns on you,” says Cyrus.
Marshal Sullivan gives a nod and the deputies light the twigs, which catch fire quickly, and throw the blazing torches through the windows. A volley of gunfire follows from both sides. The Zauder boys are as drunk as their father and shoot wildly out into the sunset and cannot see their targets.
After the first rounds are spent, Marshal Sullivan makes sure that no one in his posse is hurt and yells out, “Come on out and live another day, boys. You’ll get a fair trial. Who’s alive in there?”
From inside the house, the sound of a groan comes out followed by the voice of a young man scared and defeated, “You killed them all, I’m coming out so don’t shoot me.”
“Come on out son, we won’t shoot. And maybe one day you’ll be on this side of the law,” says Marshal Sullivan.
From the doorway a boy not sixteen years old appears. He is bleeding from his shoulder and his hand still holds a gun. Just as he is about to toss his gun to the ground, a gunshot rings out and Cyrus screams, “Goddamn yellow-bellied baby. You can go on down to hell.” He shoots his son in the back. The boy turns and shoots into the house and lands already dead.
Jake thinks, “I have to get in there now. I can pretend that I’m checking to see if they’re all dead and take whatever they have in their pockets. If the father is still alive I can shoot him easily.”
The men are checking the dead boy on the ground and Jake quickly slips into the house. It’s dark, but a thrown torch is burning itself out in a corner and he can see the father lying on the ground dead and rushes over to him. Jake knows that he’s the one who would have anything that was worth something. Just as he is about to pat the dead man’s vest for a watch or gold fobs, the old man opens his eyes and clicks the hammer of his gun and says, “Goddamn scavenger,” and shoots him in the stomach. The man watches as Jake slumps to the ground and then he himself closes his eyes, this time forever.
Jake knows that he will die from his wound. He looks up and in front of his eyes he can see a worn playing card, the ace of hearts with a bullet hole shot through its center.
“You still shoot good, like you did twenty years ago,” says the marshal as he puts his keepsake memento into the dying man’s pocket over his heart. He leans in closer and says, “I was born in 1861 in Texas, to Sarah Sullivan who made your fine gold vest and I want you to know that you did kill a woman.” And he whispers reassuringly, “A broken heart can kill just like a bullet.”
Jake smiles and says, “You got me, son.”
Marshal Sullivan gets up and Jakes yells out, “With everything I took that day I bought this gun. I taught you good and I want you to have it.”
The marshal ignores him and keeps on walking. After he’s dead he’ll go back and fetch it.