The Gunfighting Gunfighters of Gunfighter’s Gulch
()
About this ebook
When Portly Ben Rousterman tried to hold up the Third National Bank, he paid for the mistake with his life, and roiled the far west Texas town of Gunfighter's Gulch.
Into the story with a fierce indifference ride the principals:
· Raccoon Jack Carter, big game hunter with an oversized personality and a powerful thirst for avenging his fallen brother.
· Sheriff Darren, the overweight, poor-on-the shoot sheriff with the massive wife must contain the trouble before it gets out of hand.
· Hiram C. Cort, president of the Third National Bank who has ambition, drive and plans—all of which may be thwarted by an infestation of owls.
· And lovely Lacy Halverson, the prettiest girl in Gunfighter's Gulch, under a constant barrage of marriage proposals, and maybe the only one who really knows what happened to Portly Ben.
All these characters and more in one hilarious night of bullets, dancing, fowl and water as the gunfighting gunfighters collide in Gunfighter's Gulch.
"At first I was mad at Sam White, when I shot coffee out my nose after he caught me off guard and made me laugh out-loud. I loved the book and I don't normally read 'smoke burners', as I call them. If you want to travel back to the old west, and then laugh when you step out of the saddle, this is your book! WARNING - Do not read while drinking coffee." --Steve Sederwall, Cold West Investigations
Samuel Ben White
Sam White is a hospice chaplain and cartoonist living in the Texas panhandle. He has published 27 novels. His most successful books continue to be those which are focused on time travel, though his detective novels (featuring Bat Garrett--aka "The Nice Guy") are selling well. He is married, has two sons, as well as several pets. His comic strip "Tuttle's" is read by thousands every day in newspapers across the Texas panhandle, and on-line at tuttlecom.com His on-line comic book "Burt & the I.L.S." was a big success and dealt with time travel in ways his novels can't (because the comic book didn't have to make sense). He also writes a blog concerning time travel.
Read more from Samuel Ben White
Overstreet A Hand With Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Gunfighting Gunfighters of Gunfighter’s Gulch
Related ebooks
Never Cross a Vampire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5He Played For His Wife And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLIT Series Bundle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTelémachus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Betty: An Easy Rawlins Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes of a Dirty Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Bart Reborn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trial: A Man Arrested For Nothing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlory Over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jim Saddler 1: A Dirty Way to Die Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWith a Bare Bodkin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More Than Somewhat Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Folly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Criminals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swerve Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBobby In Naziland: A Tale of Flatbush Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFranz Kafka: The Complete Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFranz Kafka: The Complete Novels (The Trial, The Castle, Amerika) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Marauders Of Pitchfork Pass Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Trial: The Original 1925 Unabridged and Complete Edition (Franz Kafka Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPro Se Presents: February 2012 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrow 7: One-Eyed Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Bottom Line Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Trial - Franz Kafka Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings13 Drops of Blood Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Deck Two: Underland Arcana Decks, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Western Fiction For You
Texasville: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dancing at Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragon Teeth: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Man's Walk: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Homesman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Country for Old Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thief of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anything for Billy: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buffalo Girls: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A River Runs through It and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistakes Can Kill You: A Collection of Western Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All God's Children: A Novel of the American West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5CALICO Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Old Women, [Anniversary Edition]: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knotted: Trails of Sin, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zeke and Ned Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Brave, Young, and Handsome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Pretty Horses: Border Trilogy 1 (National Book Award Winner) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDirt Rich: A Novel of Texas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man from Battle Flat: A Western Trio Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Montana Creeds: Tyler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forgotten Ghost Tales and Legends of the Old West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSimply Cherokee: Let’s Learn Cherokee: Syllabary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDuane's Depressed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Gunfighting Gunfighters of Gunfighter’s Gulch
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Gunfighting Gunfighters of Gunfighter’s Gulch - Samuel Ben White
Chapter One
It was a hot day in Gunfighter’s Gulch, the sun overhead as red as an undersized banana and beating down on man and beast. It hadn’t rained in time out of mind and the east town doctor was beginning to worry that insanity would set in sooner than usual this year.
It was such a day as that that Portly Ben Rousterman left his spotless appaloosa in the corral to the east and walked to the Third National Bank of Gunfighter’s Gulch. Hitching his twin, Allen, five-shot pistols into a more comfortable position on that part of his body where he once remembered having hips, he stepped up on the boardwalk.
And promptly went through as the heft of his girth cracked the dried wood. With a foul oath his mother had taught him on his lips, he stepped out of the hole and to the door of the bank. Throwing it open, he wedged himself through with much effort and difficulty for not only was it narrow and he wide, it was a revolving door—the only revolving door between Dallas and Los Angeles and, therefore, almost impossible to get parts for.
With an effort, Portly Ben finally shoved his way into the lobby and was told politely by the bank guard, You might want to try the loading docks in the back when leaving, Sir.
Obliged,
sneered Portly Ben before pulling out his twin Allens, their maple grips feeling comforting in his big beefy paws, and said, This is a stick-up. Take me to the vault.
A woman screamed. Another used that same word Portly Ben had used out on the boardwalk. Several people gasped at the use of such a word in public. A child asked his mother what it meant, to which she replied, Ask me after the hold-up, please Dear One.
The nearest teller, a man so tall he could actually see over the cage, said, Good sir, we have no funds in the vault at this time.
Eliciting more use of that same word from earlier from all the people who had come to withdraw various sums so that they might pay their bookies, he elaborated, If only you had come tomorrow. That’s when the enormous secret gold shipment is due to be inexplicably deposited here.
While Portly Ben mulled over this information with a strange light in his eyes, the bank guard couldn’t help but think there was something he should have been doing. The other teller, meanwhile, was Lacy Halverson, prettiest woman in the bank—and possibly Gunfighter’s Gulch—and a crack shot. She had jet-blonde hair and an alluring if strictly off-limits body and piercing mismatched eyes. She dreamed of one day going on the stage, and taking that stage to some place where she might find a theater production to watch and then become a part of, where she might spurn many protestations of love and die a romantic but unrequited life.
Just give me what’s in the vault,
Portly Ben demanded, his voice low and gravelly for he had forgotten to drink water that day, And no one will get hurt.
Whipping the ancient LeMat revolver from her cash drawer, where she kept it, both for defense of the bank and her person, but also as a conversation piece as there was so rarely money in the drawer, Lacy pointed it at Portly Ben and said, Kind sir, please either put your guns away or move a step closer for when I shoot you, I do not want to hit anyone else.
Portly Ben was surprised and, as he looked in Lacy’s one beautiful blue eye (the other being brown and only so-so), he saw that he truly could die. He had never thought that before.
Well, he reasoned, that wasn’t exactly true. He supposed he had always known he would die, but he expected it to be from either old age or cliff-diving, possibly hanging. He carried guns, and he had used them, often as firearms, so he knew that man could die by the gun. He just never thought it would be him because so far it never had been.
They stood there like that, in a New Mexican standoff—for the bank was in more than half of the town that was in the New Mexico Territory on account of the Texas side of town having more laws against fraud—until Percy McGoon, a slightly-built man with massive forearms and a taste for spinach said, If you people don’t mind, I really need to make my deposit and get to work.
I don’t mind,
said Portly Ben and waved Percy to go ahead.
Why does this always have to happen to me?
Percy whined as the very tall cashier—Very Tall Paul Bigman—counted the three dollars Percy was depositing and then made him out a receipt for the majority of the amount. Taking his receipt and vowing in his mind to one day avenge all that had been stolen from him by this bank for years, Percy wished all a good day and left. He thought about informing the sheriff that the bank was being robbed, but he had already been late for work every day that week and didn’t want to try his boss’s patience any further.
In the bank. Portly Ben and Lovely Lacy said in unison, What’s it going to be, Pal?
and then he chuckled and she tittered at their harmony.
The bank guard happened to glance at the clock just then, saw it was his break time, and so sat down and picked up the nearest copy of Puck and began to read. Chuckling, he kept his daily vow to not think at all about the bank or it’s problems for the next fifteen minutes. He did think about going in the back and getting a cup of coffee, but he hated coffee, so he didn’t.
Portly Ben was a patient man, but he could be pushed past the point of endurance. It came just then and he said, I’m going to count to three, and if you bankers don’t start handing me sacks of money, I’m going to let loose with these guns and heaven help whoever’s on the other end!
Those still paying attention were scared, for he sounded like he meant it and they all knew about Allens. Five-barreled guns where the barrels rotated instead of just the chambers, they were notoriously unreliable but, if their triggers were pulled, bullets almost always came out the other end. In the hands of a skilled user, they knew, an Allen could do much random damage and, unlike Portly Ben and living in the west as they did, they knew one and all that they could die that day.
The tall cashier, already bored out of his mind since Percy had left, could only hope that one of the bullets would catch him and end the afternoon sooner rather than later. He sighed with exasperation, but such didn’t trigger Portly Ben’s trigger finger. Tall Paul Bigman would have sighed again, more loudly, if he could have generated the interest in doing so.
He couldn’t, and so just remained silent, wondering if the would-be outlaw would mind terribly if he balanced his drawer, especially now that there was three dollars in it.
All I want’s what’s in the vault,
Portly Ben demanded. Just let me by and I’ll go in there and get it myself if it’s too much trouble for you to get it for me.
Lovely Lacy replied, The vault is for authorized personnel only. Now you, just turn around and squeeze yourself back through the door and don’t come back.
Portly Ben was not used to having anything he desired denied him. Things he commanded were always carried out. Who was this remarkably attractive girl to deny him anything, he wondered, and would she go out with me when this is all over? He happened to know there was a barn dance over in Friona the next Friday night and he was going to be there robbing the stagecoach anyway, so maybe—
While no one but the Good Lord ever knows for sure, it is quite possible that the Friona Quilt Store Jamboree and Hog Call was the last thought to pass through Portly Ben’s mind. It is quite possible that his thoughts were more along the lines of, Wait! That’s a LeMat, the gun of the Confederacy that not only had six revolving chambers but a second barrel bored out to either 16- or 20-guage with which the user could fire a raft of buckshot!
Accidentally waving his left-hand gun in a more threatening manner than he perhaps intended, he received the full brunt of the 16-gauge in the chest, which spun him around (twice). As, with his last breath and more from autonomic function than intention, he stumbled toward the front door, Lacy fired off the six rounds of .36 caliber bullets, knowing as she did that a .36 didn’t pack the wallop of a .45 and one couldn’t be too careful.
With his dying breath, Portly Ben Rousterman wedged himself into the front door of the Third National Bank of Gunfighter’s Gulch. Portly Ben dropped his two guns, the one from the right hand going off on impact with the floor, its bullet destroying the framed portrait of Aaron Burr which hung over the bank president’s desk for reasons that probably don’t come up in this story.
Someone screamed, several other people said that word, and all of them wondered how they were going to get out with the front door clogged up that way and the loading dock door the guard had mentioned blocked by that old train car.
Chapter Two
By the time the security guard had finished both his coffee break and the extremely short article in Puck he had been trying to work his way through for days, the patrons of the bank had all but calmed down. Lovely Lacy put her gun away (after reloading it, of course, from the stock of ammo she kept in a discreet thigh bandoleer) and said, calmly, Next?
Tall Paul Bigman looked down at the three dollars in his till and thought, Whoo-hoo! I might get paid this week!
As the patrons queued to the two teller windows, grumbling that the third window was not open and yet did not contain a Next Window
plaque, it fell to Mrs. Sadie Perkins to finally exclaim, Well, I never!
And she hadn’t. Not once.
The guard’s attention was finally captured by those people outside the bank who wanted in but thought crawling over a dead body to get there was bad form in some way. So he looked around for the bank president, one Hiram C. Cort, late of Boston, Miami, San Francisco and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Not seeing the president, the guard shrugged at the people outside as if to say, I don’t know what to tell you,
while saying audibly, I don’t know what to tell you.
It was at that moment that Hiram C. Cort—the C being short for Cee
—crawled out from under his desk where he had been hiding in a panic ever since the school-marm had stopped in earlier to ask how her Christmas account was coming along. Brushing the dust from his fine, woolen suit, he stood and cleared his throat meaningfully.
Seeing the dead body lying in the doorway for the first time, he let slip with, Oh my!
for his desk had been especially designed to be sound proof and he had had no idea that a holdup or a shooting had taken place or even if the school marm had left. What goes on here?
he asked in panic, for he was both squeamish at the sight of blood and wondering if the bank board would continue to employ him.
Hiram looked to Tall Paul, who gave him a thumbs up, followed by another, more subtle, hand gesture which meant, Three dollars!
Hiram nodded appreciatively, wiped his brow with what he thought was his handkerchief but was actually a silken bearer bond which should have been in the safe and said to the security guard, Guard, get that body out of there.
The guard, whose name actually was Guardian Morris, put his hands on his hips and said, I’d sure admire to, Boss, but it looks to me like he’s wedged in there tight.
Hiram came over and grabbed hold of one leg of the late outlaw while motioning for Guard to take hold of the other. Now pull,
he commanded.
As the bank president managed only to pull a single small boot from the remarkably big man, the guard said, I was thinking we’d be better off shoving him on through. Outside being where the cemetery is and all.
Hmm, what? Hmm, quite right. Paul come over here and give us a hand, as it were.
Can’t right now, Boss. I got three dollars to watch over and a bearer bond to dry out.
He looked down at the paperwork in his hand, which had been slid under the wire cage to him by Mrs. Perkins, and proudly added, Thirteen dollars.
I was asking for change,
Mrs. Perkins told him.
Excuse me,
Tall Paul said to her. I’m trying to have a conversation with my boss here, if you don’t mind.
The bank president looked up in exasperation and asked lovely Lacy, Lovely Lacy, why is there a giant hole in the protective screen before you?
Buckshot,
she replied happily while counting out a stack of I.O.U.s to the customer before her.
Oh, well, of course,
Hiram C. Cort replied, as if he understood. It didn’t bother him as much as you might expect that he didn’t understand for he rarely did.
It was the guard, Guard, who had a good idea at that moment in time and said to the people waiting outside the bank, most for no good reason, You people grab onto an arm and pull! No, not on each other! On this man, Portly Ben here. You all tug on that end and we’ll shove on this one.
After much pulling and pushing, they managed by working together to get the body more firmly wedged in the door. By that time, those who were bound and determined to conduct banking business had decided that crawling over the body was just something they would have to do and so they did. The kid sitting in the open window and watching all this with great interest grumbled for he never got to crawl over dead bodies. Not like his brother, who got to do everything.
It was almost closing time and Hiram was concerned, for he couldn’t very well close the bank if he couldn’t close the door. He had tried every way he could think of to move the giant form of Portly Ben Rousterman, all to no avail, and was beginning to wonder if the mortician would let him borrow enough dead bodies to just pack the door until morning when maybe the sheriff would be back in town and could figure out something.
Just then, Ungentlemanly Jack Wiggums came by. The local handsy-man, he was sometimes prized for his ability to figure things out but regularly shunned for that ‘s’ in the third word of this sentence was not a typo.
Holding up his bag of tools and bad dime novels, he called across the corpse, I reckon I can help you, Hiram. Want I should give it a try?
He then held up an exceptionally large crowbar and gestured meaningfully.
Oh, certainly,
Hiram said, the happiest he had been all day aside from that moment when he had caught a brief glimpse of Lovely Lacy’s garter bandolero.
Ungentlemanly (so-named by his parents, who were Pentecostals) held the crowbar in his left hand and a large, twenty-pound sledge in the other. Assaying the situation for a moment, he then put the crowbar in what he adjudged to be the exact right spot and gave it two hard whacks with the sledge. He was gratified—and the onlookers cheered—as the door fell out of the bank, frame and all.
Hiram C. Cort, bank president, was on the verge of becoming distraught again but then reminded himself to take both troubles and triumphs one at a time and thank Providence that at least now he could roll the dead body into the street where it would be the street-sweepers’ problem. That done, he slapped his hands together triumphantly and asked the assembled crowd, Does anyone have any banking business that needs to take place before we close in approximately two minutes and fifteen seconds?
He quickly added, No withdrawals, please! Not this close to close of business.
A few people made desultory deposits but they were mostly there to talk about the bank robbery and, the men anyway, get a glimpse of lovely Lacy.
But then came the dilemma of how to close the bank when the front door was laying on the boardwalk. Hiram C. Cort, bank president, tried to talk Handsy Jack into reinstalling the door but he was already down at the Lucky Dead Guy Saloon and Gambling Parlor consuming alcoholic beverages for discerning alcoholics
served by alcoholics.
Finally, with the help of everyone in the bank—including some customers and one man who had been there thinking about robbing the place until Portly Ben beat him to it—they managed to turn the bank president’s desk on its side and wedge it into the gap where the door should be. Hiram (C. Cort) then let everyone out through the window, closed it behind them, and vowed to stay the night in the bank himself. Many who knew his wife were surprised he didn’t do that more often.
As soon as everyone was gone and all the lights save one long-burning candle made of remarkably odiferous and unpleasant animal renderings were doused, Hiram C. Cort was quickly reminded why he didn’t stay the night more often. The reason was that the bank, whose official motto was As solid as the mountains themselves
, at night was a building that creaked and whistled and moaned with every breath of outside wind. Gunfighter’s Gulch being along the Texas-New Mexico (Territory) line, there was enough wind to keep every squeaking board busy throughout the day and night.
There were also owls. Gunfighter’s Gulch had a large owl population, but somehow the owls that called the bank home managed to get inside once the sun had fallen each day. This meant that, each day, the first thing the cleaning lady—Mrs. McGillicuddy—had to do was clean up the owl droppings from every surface in the bank. (The current cleaning lady was not actually named Mrs. McGillicuddy, but the cleaning ladies stayed on the job such a short time before