Chapter 6 Trouble in Taos Part 2 Spotting Trouble

This is part 2 of… Well, read the title. If you want part 1 here’s the link. You don’t really need it because it’s nothing but nonsense about global warming and aero planes. If you want to buy the book – please do. link

It was hot, but not as hot as it is now. Slimy and me was working together for the first time. As a matter of fact we were at church, but we was workin’, not going there for preaching.

There was a different padre at Saint Frank’s then, Father Julio. I’m not partial to religious men, but Father Julio wasn’t too bad. He was the first living client I had in Taos.

You see, Father Julio admired the coffin I made for Rutherford James and asked me if I’d be insulted workin’ on a couple nice outhouses for behind the church. He had this idea that men and women shouldn’t use the same shitter, so he wanted one for each. He thought I should carve Jesus on the men’s door and Mary on the women’s.

I told him that I didn’t much know what they looked like, so maybe I should carve a devil for the men and an angel for the women.

We finally decided to put hombres and mujeres in fancy letters. I guess Father Julio didn’t much care for devils.

Well, Father Julio wanted a whole new set up, so he hired Slimy to dig two new pits, and while Slimy was diggin’, I was banging together the planks for the walls and frame (I already had the doors done).

Now, Slimy was a peculiar character. I guess you knew that, but one way he was peculiar was the way he dressed. He wore all his clothes, all the time.

It was a hot day, and Slimy was digging a couple ditches, but he was wearing all his clothes, including that oversized duster. Ya gotta figure he was hot as hell in that damn thing, but there he was, digging ditches with his big fool coat on.

He was tellin’ me some story. I only say that because Slimy was always tellin’ me a story, but like usual I wasn’t payin’ any attention. I just kept my bad eye pointed his way as I worked, and that was good enough for him.

It was my good eye that spotted trouble.

A real thinking man might figure that one feller, especially a feller like Rutherford James, couldn’t work all by himself gettin’ all those guns and liquor to so many Indians. It just stood to reason a feller like that had people that worked for him. It also stood to reason that those people might not like a dirt-ditch-digger killin’ the Indian agent that was payin’ them so much money.

It just goes to show that no one at the Rosa Linda was a real thinking man, ’cause even Estevo didn’t think of it, or if he did, he didn’t say anything.

Might be trouble ahead for Slimy and Walter.  Maybe a number 6

Estevo's Shotgun

This post is a little violent. It’s hard to do a story about a gunfighter without… Of course I could have done it like A-Team where ex-military “elites” fired thousands of rounds each episode and never hit anybody.   More better – I could have done a gunfight like Mr. Bean had in this clip.

This is the third of five installments of an excerpt from my book Trouble in Taos, the story of Slimy Beach, gunfighter and latrine digger. If you’d like to see the first two here are the links. part-1 part-2

But back to the story. I’m pretty sure Slimy never thought of taking up fisticuffs to defend Miss Flossy’s honor. Being so small, Slimy was not one to resort to fisticuffs if he could avoid it, and certainly not with the village blacksmith. Furthermore, Flossy was not the sort of woman who expected, or even desired, men to defend her honor. That would be economically inconvenient.

It wasn’t the liberties Mike Finn took with Flossy that irked Slimy; Slimy just never could tolerate being ignored.

Slimy grabbed the barkeep’s scattergun from the top of the bar and shot Mike Finn dead. He also winged two poker players and shattered the chair that Claybourne Petree, the undertaker, was about to sit in. According to Two-Bucket Joe, Claybourne was pretty scared for a minute, but took it pretty well. Of course, he got some business out of the deal.

This was Slimy’s first killing, and it came as a surprise to the people of Taos. He’d been in town a year or two and was, after his own fashion, a successful businessman. People found him tedious, and nobody liked the way he smelled, but no one thought of him as dangerous before.

Slimy grunted an apology for the mess and offered the smoking scattergun back to Estevo, the bartender.

Estevo, not a man known for his courage, failed to take it.

Looking back, a lot of lives might have been saved if Estevo had reached over and taken that shotgun from Slimy. Others might point fingers, but I'll wager that not a single one of his accusers ever ran a saloon in a 19^th-century western town. Bartenders dealt with the rowdiest (and drunkest) characters in what was already an unruly and violent environment. Lawmen rarely spent time in saloons, and it wasn’t because there was more business elsewhere. They knew that if you sat around in a bar with a gun and a badge, someone would eventually think it a good idea to take a shot at you – maybe in the back.

Bartenders like Estevo didn’t have a friendly jailhouse to retreat to. If they started disarming their clientele, some clever fellow might figure things out. If he managed to smuggle one gun into an unarmed bar, the only thing he needed to do to be king of the bar was kill the bartender.

I’m sure there were a few brave bartenders in the West. A couple might’ve lasted a year. Estevo lived to sixty-eight and would have lived even longer if he hadn’t eaten his way to three hundred pounds by the time he was fifty.

It was a younger, slimmer Estevo who said to Slimy that day, “No, Mr. Beach. Please don’t be concerned about the mess. Accept the shotgun as my gift. Here…” And at that point, Estevo reached under the bar and produced a matching weapon. “Please accept this one as well.”

“That’s nice of ya, Estevo,” said Slimy. “Thanks.”

So Slimy just killed a man in cold blood. What will the folks at the Rosa Linda do about it? Find out in the next post: Hanging is for bad guys.

TnT Excerpt Part 1, The Preface.

“An excerpt!” he says to me.

“A hippo,” I reply, ‘cause I had no idea what he was talking about and figured we were playing word association.

I was never very good at word association . I don’t recall winning it once. I never could figure the scoring.

“You should put an excerpt in your blog,” he says more completely.

So the next five posts are excerpts from the first chapter of Trouble in Taos. It’s the story of Slimy Beach, a notorious gunfighter and gifted latrine digger as told by Walter Bego, his best friend. In 1934, decades after Beach’s death, Walter discovers a western novel written about his friend…

Slimy killed more men than any three gunslingers I’ve ever heard of. His twin double-barreled sawed-off shotguns looked scary as hell even lying on the bar. They looked even scarier flashing in Slimy’s hands. Even without them, no man in his right mind would get within horseshoe-tossing range of Slimy. He smelled worse than a skunk and was the most boring man alive.

No man in his right mind but me, that is. Slimy was my best friend.

I picked up the Slimy book. There weren’t a lot of pages, but they were nice and soft. Norry Basset gave me a wink. I wanted to punch him in the nose, but I winked back because bad things happen when small, eighty-six-year-old men punch large, middle-aged storekeepers.

I put my dime on the counter and, without asking permission, headed straight for Norry’s crapper.

“Walter,” Norry called, “why don’t you wait ’til the Sears and Roebuck catalog comes in before you use my toilet? The pages don’t clog up the works so much.”

I pretended not to hear him. There are advantages to being old. No one can say for sure what you hear and what you don’t.

Norry installed an expensive brass crapper back before Wall Street crapped on the country. It was one of the fanciest bits of seating I’ve ever been pleased to utilize, but it was too high off the ground for my taste. I guess a big man like Norry likes to keep his knees from cramping. It’s a good thing he didn’t have children. A three-year-old might fall right in a toilet that size.

I climbed up to take a seat and cracked the cover of my new purchase. The book had the usual illustrations of horses, saddles, and six guns you see in every western dime novel. I’d never seen Slimy shoot a six-shot Colt in my life. It wasn’t a promising start.

The text wasn’t any better. According to W. G. Chesterson Rawhide Colmes, Slimy was a large brawny brute with fists like railroad sledges. Such a statement indicated that Mr. Colmes probably acquired his “rawhide” from sitting on a barstool in Philadelphia.

I’ve been accused of being an ounce shy of pint-sized, but at five foot three, I had the clear better of Slimy Beach. Slimy’s railroad sledge hands were smaller than I’d seen on a few ten year old boys, and I imagine there were a few boys that age that could whip Slimy in a fair fight.

Slimy didn’t believe in fighting fair.

His perfidious reign of justice began when Beach was only fourteen. The rapacious giant, Mike Finn, forced his unwanted attention on Miss Purity Homebody, Beach’s beloved schoolmistress. Finn was an infamous brawler who routinely killed and maimed men with his bare hands. Young Beach traded thunderous blows with the titanic Finn before the exhausted villain reached for his gun. Beach drew his pearl-handled Colt 45 and spun the weapon twice in his hand – just to give his opponent a chance. Slimy Beach dropped that evil violator of feminine virtue with one shot through the eye. So the legend began.

W. G. C. R. Colmes, Slimy Beach, the Tornado of Taos, p.18

Well, the page was nice and soft anyway, but Norry was right. The pipes of the fancy brass throne didn’t sound too pleased after I flushed.

Just in case a flood was coming, I skedaddled as fast as an old fart can.

Next post, Slimy and his watch.