Chapter 38

I stood silently off to the side of the back door until my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior of Rosa’s Cantina. The back door was the route to the outhouses, and was down a short hallway that had a door on either side. A partition about six and a half feet tall screened the hallway from the interior of the bar.

When I was sure of my vision, I walked quietly down the hall and looked around the partition. George Howard was sitting at a table with two other cowboys and a couple of the saloon girls. George’s back was to the wall, but his attention seemed focused on the front door. A couple more cowboys were sitting with two other women at the adjoining table. The cowboys at the two tables seemed to be relaxed and ready to party, but George was only toying with his beer.

I stepped all the way into the cantina from around the partition. Rosa, from her place behind the bar, was the first to see me. She gasped and dropped the glass she was polishing. Everyone at both tables looked quickly in my direction. There was a brief flurry of activity as the saloon women scurried away from the tables, but all of the cowboys seemed frozen in place as they looked at George for guidance.

“Stand up, George Howard, you craven coward, you are under arrest,” I said, my voice cold and my tone flat.

Howard looked slightly surprised at what I said, because my pistols were still holstered and I was acting as if it was nothing to me that I was facing five men. Howard gave a tight smile and started to stand up. Although I could see his men edging back from their tables, my focus was totally on George. I could see a fleeting look of indecision cross his face when he was completely on his feet facing me. Suddenly, the indecision changed to a snarl, and down went his hand for the gun that he wore.

I know that time plays a big part in this story, but I swear that as George went for his gun, time just stopped, and everything except him and me became a frozen tableau. It was as if the universe hiccupped. I heard Rosa’s front door bang open on its hinges, while behind me, I heard the distinctive sound of a Winchester lever cycling a round into the chamber. Yet all of that was peripheral to me, as my complete focus was on Georgie Boy.

Say what you want about George Howard, but he was damned fast on the draw. His pistol actually cleared his holster before mine. That nanosecond advantage evaporated when his left hand came across his body to fan the hammer back on his Colt. That fanning action looks slick as hell. I even used it in my Black Bart persona for the Sagebrush Show. I have found through experience, though, that there are two big problems with using the fan. For one, it is almost impossible to make your hands meet at the same instant in the same place. The difference might only be a hundredth of a second, but it still slowed down your shot. The second disadvantage was that sweeping your hand across the hammer jiggled the pistol slightly as it fired. Since you are pointing your pistol instead of aiming it, that jiggle could have a huge effect on where your bullet went.

No, I didn’t have all these academic thoughts while we were drawing, but both disadvantages bit Georgie Boy in the ass. Our shots were simultaneous, but my pistol was extended and my shot aimed. His round scored a groove in my left side just above my gunbelt. Mine punched a hole just to the left of the center of his chest and sent him flying backwards. George had ruined my new shirt, but I ruined his day, because he was dead before he hit the ground.

I had my pistol recocked and was swinging it toward the man who had been on George’s left, when the Winchester I’d heard cocking went off about four feet behind my left ear. The left side of my body was catching hell that day, as my left ear went deaf, but the cowboy I’d seen raising his pistol was slumped against the wall, a bullet hole dead center in his forehead. Before anyone else could do something stupid, a voice I recognized as Matt Faulkner’s roared “FREEZE!” from the vicinity of the front door.

I glanced towards the voice and saw Matt standing there with his pistol drawn. He was flanked by two nervous looking deputies holding shotguns. I didn’t move a muscle, but I didn’t lower my pistol either, until Matt disarmed the remaining Lazy H cowboys. With no threat in front of me, I holstered my pistol and turned to thank the deputy who’d shot the other cowboy. I almost fainted when I saw Connie standing there, holding my Winchester at port arms. She closely watched Matt as he checked both the man she shot and George Howard for any signs of life. Standing right beside Connie was Belle with her shiny pearl-handled revolver in her hand.

I’d like to say that both women rushed into my arms weeping with relief that I was alive, but that’s exactly opposite of what happened. Belle frowned as she looked at my bloody shirt.

“I’m getting tired of patching you up, Tyler, especially after you’ve done something as monumentally stupid as you did today.”

I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t bother to answer her. How could I tell her that I made the play I did to ensure that George would be confident enough to draw down on me? Everything I’d done was to put the two of us together in a way that, at least against him, I had the best chance of winning. That’s why I stayed in the dimness at the back of the cantina, instead of advancing on his table. I hadn’t made any plans beyond killing George, so the other cowboys at his tables didn’t bother me in the least. Yet the ringing in my ears and the pain in my side were letting me know I was still alive. I turned my attention to Connie.

“Thanks, Princess. Where did you learn to shoot like that?” I asked.

It was Connie’s turn to shrug.

“I am Comanche, you are my man, no thanks are needed.”

It would have been the perfect little speech had she stopped right then. Unfortunately, she didn’t.

“Next time you do something this stupid, I might not think that way,” she added.

Of course Matt Faulkner jumped on the ‘Ty is an idiot’ bandwagon too, and chewed me a new ass for not waiting three minutes for him. I think Matt did that mostly for the benefit of the gathering crowd of onlookers, though, because he didn’t look nearly as mad as he sounded.

After the brouhaha died down some, I started thinking about what was supposed to happen to me after I eliminated George. By then, Feleena had come running into the cantina. She saw me, rushed over and kissed me fiercely. As I held her in my arms, I suddenly recalled that according to the legend embodied by the song, Tyler Ringo McGuinn safely made his getaway via the back door and rode off on a horse. It wasn’t until the next day that he met his end. I could relax for the moment, but tomorrow might be another story.

With those thoughts in mind, I kissed all three women and told them I loved them. I told them to give me a minute alone out back and then we’d go home. All three of them looked at me strangely, but they let me go. I walked to the back door, took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and pushed the door open.

It had started raining while I was inside Rosa’s, a slow steady drizzle that showed no sign of stopping anytime soon. I took three or four steps into the alley and glanced up and down it. I didn’t see any one else out there, and started to feel relieved and even a little foolish standing there in the ever increasing rain.

I was turning to go back into the cantina when the world exploded. When I say exploded, I’m not gilding the lily here; I mean that there was a blinding flash of light and a deafening percussion. Before I lost consciousness, I felt myself flying through the air. My last thought was that Tyler Ringo McGuinn was making a spectacular exit, no ‘shuffling off this mortal coil’ for me...

I woke up instantly, still floating through the air. Only this time I was reclined in an airplane seat, with the attractive older woman who had been my seat mate gently shaking my arm. The woman was smiling serenely at me, and it was disconcerting that she looked just like Anna Lopez.

“Time to wake up muchacho, they want you to put your seat upright.”

I shook my head to clear it and sagged back in the seat. So it had all been a dream, even the airplane crashing. I pulled my seat back upright and sat there glumly stunned. The woman in the seat next to me looked at me kindly.

“You were having a pleasant dream?” she asked.

I nodded my head.

“It wasn’t all pleasant, Señora, but I wish it had been real. I was back in 1877, and you and I were lovers,” I blurted.

Her smile turned into that smoldering Lopez look, and she gripped my hand tightly.

“Is that what you truly wish, Hombre, to give up all the modern conveniences for a vaquero’s life?”

“More than anything,” I said fervently.

“Then so be it, Charro. Vaya con Dios,” she said as I blacked out again.

The next time I came to, I was in Feleena’s bed at Rosa’s cantina, and Doc Willis was doing his torture act with the smelling salts. I woke up lucid and clear headed, but I felt some kind of strange. My body tingled from the tip of my hair down to my toenails, and my skin had the hot feeling you get when you over do it at the beach. I opened my eyes and tried to tell the sawbones to give me a break with the ammonia salts, but my lips couldn’t wrap themselves around the words. Thankfully, Willis saw my eyes pop open and moved the salts from under my proboscis.

Looking over the doc’s shoulder, I could see a half circle of anxious faces, chief among them were Belle, Connie and Feleena. I did that lip moving thing again and managed to get out a garbled noise that I meant to be reassuring words.

“Will he be okay, Doctor Willis?” Belle asked anxiously.

Willis shrugged noncommittally.

“I haven’t a clue, Miss Belle. He’s the first patient I’ve ever had that was struck by lightning.”

Willis then turned his attention to me. My eyes opened wide when he pulled out his folding knife and jabbed me in the leg with it.

“Feel that, my boy?” he asked.

“@!%&$@&&,” I replied, as my leg jerked involuntarily.

Willis’ laugh seemed pure evil to me as he cackled at my speaking in tongues.

“I think the lightning scrambled what little brains he has left. I gotta hand it to you Tyler, you are the only man I’ve ever met who has been thrown from a horse, bit by a snake, run over by a bull, shot twice and struck by lightning. If it wasn’t for all these beautiful women loving you, I’d think you had buzzard luck.”

I scrunched up my eyebrows inquisitively at that last sentence.