The Accomplice, page 1
The Accomplice
Marcus Galloway
First in an action-packed new Western series for fans of Deadwood.
After killing his first man, Caleb Wayfinder is on the run-straight into the confidence of the notorious Doc Holliday. Now Caleb's got the devil on his shoulder and together they're going to blast their way into history. Even if it kills them.
Author's note: In writing this book, I have tried my bet to stay true to the spirit of John Henry "Doc" Holliday. Wherever possible, I have kept the actual names, places, and dates intact.
A fine friend in Hell.
“You cheatin’ son of a b—”
Mike’s insult was cut off by the roar of a shotgun at close range. The blast took a chunk out of his torso and spun him around.
Every face turned to stare at Caleb, who stood over the messy remains of Loco Mike Abel.
“Jesus Christ,” came one voice from near the bar. “He shot him.”
“I saw it, too. Damn near cut him in half.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
The bottom of Caleb’s stomach dropped out, and soon the floor seemed to tilt beneath his feet. Almost immediately, he felt a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Doc Holliday said in a low, soothing voice. “It’s all over. You did good.”
In loving memory of
my grandmother Martha.
She taught me to play cutthroat poker and said,
“Shut up and deal, kid,”
when I wanted to go to sleep
after winning a few hands.
Thanks, Ma-Mu.
Going to bed early never got anyone anywhere.
Author’s Note
In writing this book, I have tried my best to stay true to the spirit of John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Wherever possible, I have kept the actual names, places, and dates intact. Even some details that might go unnoticed are historical fact. However, this is a work of fiction, and some things needed to be altered a bit for the sake of the story. My real intention is to entertain but also give an accurate portrayal of one of the Old West’s most well-known figures. Doc was a character in every sense of the word, and hopefully this book will let that shine through. If it’s true history you’re after, I would suggest books like Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, by Karen Holliday Tanner, or The Frontier World of Doc Holliday, by Pat Jahns. With that said, turn the page and enjoy!
[1]
Dallas, Texas
1873
The Busted Flush Saloon wasn’t the biggest place in Dallas to go for a drink. It wasn’t even the best. It was, however, the closest when approaching the town from the southeast, and that was good enough to bring plenty of folks through its doors. The saloon was cobbled together from splintered, weathered wood and leaned slightly to one side. In that way, it resembled the drunks who stumbled out of it after a long, rowdy night.
It was the end of summer, and waves of heat from the ground made the Busted Flush appear to waver in the breeze. Grit covered the ground after having been blown or tracked into each and every building. Everyone in Dallas knew only too well the feeling of their teeth crunching upon the dust that had coated the backs of their mouths. It was hot. Everyone knew it. Even so, that didn’t stop some folks from needing to drive the point home even more.
“I’ll be damned, it is hot!” the tall fellow bellowed as he strutted into the Busted Flush. He was a big man with long, wavy hair encrusted with dust, tangled with briars, and tossed about by the wind. He gazed around at the half dozen or so others inside the place, waiting for some kind of answer to his statement.
Finally, a portly figure standing behind the bar obliged him, twisting a cloth through one mug after another as he said, “You got that right. What can I get for you, Mike?”
The big fellow’s proper name was Mike Abel, but he went by the name Loco Mike. He hadn’t exactly earned the nickname or gotten it from someone else. The name, along with the three guns holstered on his person, were overly obvious attempts to gain respect or at least some degree of fear. Judging by the tired glances he got from the others around him, he might have needed to try a little harder.
“I’ll take a beer. Jesus, it’s so hot I think I feel my gullet baking in me,” Mike said as he strutted up to the bar. Slapping the shoulder of an old-timer standing there, he asked, “How ’bout you, Orville?”
“Sure, Mike,” Orville said without even glancing in the bigger man’s direction. “But I felt a whole lot worse when I was out digging. You ain’t never felt heat like the kind that gets reflected off the top of a tin pan.”
The barkeep took a mug out for him and filled it with beer from a rusted tap. “Any luck playing cards last night?”
Mike had both hands flat upon the warped wooden surface and looked at the barkeep as though the man had just insulted his mother. “What the flamin’ hell is that supposed to mean?”
Freezing for a moment, the barkeep topped off Mike’s drink and set the mug down in front of him. “Nothing, Mike. Just making conversation is all.”
“Well conversate about something other than my goddamn losing streak!”
“Sure, Mike.”
The old-timer was chuckling and shaking his head.
“What’re you laughin’ at?” Mike grunted.
Without flinching, the old-timer stared straight ahead and ignored the growling menace beneath Mike’s question.
“He’s probably laughing at those sorry hands you tried to bluff with last night,” came a voice from the Busted Flush’s front door.
Mike, as well as one or two others in the saloon, turned around to get a look at who’d just spoken. What they saw was a solidly built figure wearing the black suit and string tie that might as well have been the uniform of a professional gambler. He carried a polished cane, which seemed to be more of an accessory than a necessity. A wide-brimmed hat cast a dark shadow over the well-dressed man’s face. Beneath that veil of shadow, the man was smiling.
Taking hold of his mug roughly enough to spill at least a quarter of its contents upon the bar, Mike shifted on his heel until he was facing the new arrival. He glanced around at the other drinkers, not even seeming to notice that they were already leaning forward with their elbows in the grooves that they’d worn into the bar.
“You all hear that?” Mike asked to nobody in particular. “Seems like the dandy over there’s got a sense a’ humor. Well, come on over here and tell me another one, Dandy. I’d love to have a laugh.”
The well-dressed man walked lightly across the room and sat down at one of the tables. He kept his back to the wall and his cane within arm’s reach. “I apologize, Mike. That was rude of me. Enjoy your drink. In fact,” he added, flipping a coin through the air, “have the next one on me.”
Mike caught the coin and then stared down at it as though it had bitten him. With a sneer, he threw it back to the well-dressed man’s table and said, “Buy a fuckin’ drink for yerself. If you want to hand out money, you should give me back the hundred dollars you cheated off of me last night!”
When the gambler snatched his coin from the air, he did it with a gesture that fell just short of a flourish. He held it for a moment, rolled it over the back of his fingers, and then pocketed it. “Any time you want another game, I’m your man.”
That was too much for Mike to bear. Hearing those words come at him was like having a punch land squarely on his nose. He glared about with disgust and still seemed to miss the fact that most everyone else in the bar had already lost interest. “You talk to me like that in front of my friends?”
The gambler shrugged.
“You gonna put up with this bullshit?” Mike asked the barkeep. “After all, he did cheat me in your place!”
“You got proof?” the barkeep asked.
Mike gritted his teeth and said, “Fetch the asshole in that office. I want to have a word with him. Or maybe the law ought to know what goes on in here.”
“No need for that,” the gambler said. “You have a problem with me, you can take it up with me.”
When Mike wheeled around to get another look at the well-dressed man, he found the gambler was already on his feet and walking toward him. Mike’s lips curled into a humorless grin, baring a yellowed set of crooked teeth. “I do got a problem with you. And I think I can settle it right here. Right now.”
Mike’s arms dropped to his side, making a jerky wave toward his guns as if the weapons weren’t already on display well enough. “You wanna know why I’m called Loco?” Mike asked, patting the pistol on his right hip. “You’re about to find out.”
The gambler stood his ground. With a flip of a wrist, his coat was opened just enough to reveal the Colt housed in a finely tooled leather holster at his side. “You lost at cards, friend. See that you don’t lose a whole lot more.”
Mike wasn’t the only one to feel the impact of those words. All the others at the bar had taken notice and were backing away from the pair, getting ready to either run for the door or jump for cover. The barkeep had stepped a few paces back and was reaching for something with a twitching, desperate hand.
Words swirled around inside Mike’s head like whiskey at the bottom of a shaking glass. Before any of those words could be spoken, they were swallowed up by the nervous breaths leaping back and forth at the top of his throat. The corner of one eye twitched, flaring the nostril on that same side.
The gambler read Mike’s expressions as though he was reading a book. Sensing approaching danger, he let his smile fade as the muscles i
“Double it?” Mike snarled. “You mean I’d win back what you cheated from me as well as what you put up tonight?”
Nodding, the gambler said, “Either way you want to think about it, that’s the only way you’re getting your money back. That is, unless you want to try your luck right here and now.”
When he’d said those last few words, the gambler’s voice dropped to a dangerous pitch. It wasn’t a dramatic change, but it was like the shift in a wolf’s eye. When another man spotted a change like that, he tended to think twice before taking his next step.
Mike’s jaw clenched, and the muscles in his arm relaxed a bit. Finally, he nodded. “All right then. But if’n I see the first sign that you’re cheating, I’ll blow you straight to hell.”
“Fair enough. I’ll see you back here tonight, and we’ll have our game. In the meantime, I think I’ll seek my refreshment elsewhere.” The gambler tipped his hat and started to leave.
Only then did the barkeep finally get a response to the insistent rapping of his knuckles against the narrow door behind the bar.
When that door swung open, it revealed a small back office as well as a man that nearly filled out the entire frame. He was of slightly better than average build and carried himself with a quiet confidence. Dark brown eyes darted back and forth, quickly taking in the situation within the saloon.
“Hold on here,” the man said as he stepped through the door. Addressing the gambler more than Mike, he asked, “Is there a problem?”
The gambler shook his head and continued out the door. “Not at all. I’ll be back later.”
Seeing that it was too late to say anything to the well-dressed man, the bigger fellow behind the bar shifted his attention to the barkeep. “What’s so urgent?”
The barkeep nodded toward Mike with a pained expression.
“Ain’t no problem here, Caleb,” Mike grunted. “Just get your ass back into that office like a good little bookkeeper.”
Annoyed, the taller of the two men behind the bar stepped forward, pushing the door shut behind him. “If you’re chasing off my customers again, Mike, I’ll have you run out of here for good.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what you always say.” The more Mike talked, the more steam he put into his words. And when he saw that nobody around him was heeled, he found even more courage. “If you think I’m taking orders from some goddamn Injun, then you’ve got another think coming.”
Those words dropped through the air like dead flies. Everyone else in the saloon who’d just been starting to relax now once again backed away. As Caleb stepped up closer to the bar, his boots knocked against the floorboards like hammers. When he got close enough, he placed his hands upon the bar and leaned forward.
What little sunlight that could make it through the smoked glass of the windows fell upon his face in a grimy wave. His skin was darker than most, carrying the underlying tint of desert clay. Coal-black hair sprouted from his scalp in irregular clumps, not one of which was longer than a brush’s bristles. The intensity in his eyes was powerful enough to light a campfire.
“What did you say to me?” Caleb asked.
Mike leaned forward. At this point, he was either too cocksure to care about the glint in Caleb’s eyes or too stupid to notice it. Slapping a coin onto the bar, he said, “You heard me, Injun. Now shut yer hole and give me some firewater.”
As Caleb reached out to accept the coin, he felt a calming hand on his shoulder. The barkeep eased him away from the bar and sidled in front of him.
“With all the heat we’ve been getting,” the barkeep said, “it’s no wonder tempers are flaring. Here’s your whiskey, Mike, and how about a round for the rest of you?” Glancing back at Caleb, he asked. “That all right?”
“Sure,” Caleb said. “I think I could use a drink.”
Caleb stepped away from the bar so Mike could get to his bottle and spout off to someone else. After filling up a mug of beer for himself, Caleb didn’t even get a chance to raise it to his lips before he heard Mike’s voice booming out yet again.
“This ain’t whiskey!” Mike shouted after spraying the liquor out at both men behind the bar. “It tastes more like piss to me! What’s the deal, Caleb? Did your squaw momma squat down on top of this here bottle and piss in it, or do you just need a lesson in how to run a goddamn saloon?”
Stopping just short of the narrow door leading to his office, Caleb pulled in a measured breath and let it out. He wasn’t at all surprised to hear the taunt coming from an asshole like Mike Abel. Unfortunately, the bottle thrown at him by that same asshole was a bit more of a surprise.
The bottle knocked against Caleb’s left shoulder blade and rolled down his back before hitting the floor. Although the impact wasn’t enough to do any damage, it was the spark that had landed too close to a powder keg.
The bottle hadn’t even come to a stop on the floor before it was snatched up again by Caleb’s hand. Shoving past the barkeep, Caleb glared straight into Mike’s eyes and slammed the bottle back onto the bar in front of him. The impact was hard enough to send a series of cracks through the glass.
“You’d best calm down, Mike,” Caleb snarled. “Or so help me . . .”
Mike’s smile was deceptively calm as he reached out to grab the bottle one more time by its neck. “Or you’ll what?” Mike taunted. “I’ve had enough grief for one day, so I sure as hell won’t take no more from some Injun bartender.” Without another word and before Caleb could say anything else, Mike brought the bottle up and around in a quick arc that was aimed directly at Caleb’s head.
Caleb’s first thought was to reach for the shotgun beneath the bar. He could also have picked up a thick length of timber that sported plenty of dents from cracking against the skulls of men like Mike Abel. Instead, Caleb stepped back after too much deliberation and almost tripped over the barkeep behind him.
The bottle slammed into Caleb’s jaw with enough force to snap his head to one side and rattle his brain. Caleb could feel the bottle folding around his jaw as the cracks deepened and eventually shattered it completely. When the bottle exploded, Caleb’s world became alight with intense, throbbing pain.
“How’d you like that, Injun?” Mike taunted with a grunting laugh.
Before he knew what was happening, Caleb felt the floor teeter beneath him. His arms reached out for support, but his backside found the closed office door instead. As he bounced off the door, Caleb pulled in a breath while trying to right himself before he gave Mike the satisfaction of seeing him fall over.
That breath felt like his jaw was being sawed off, but at least it kept him upright.
“Get the hell out of here, Mike,” the barkeep said while bringing up the thick piece of lumber that was dented and bloodied at one end. “Or I’ll knock you into tomorrow.”
Mike held up his hands and backed away from the bar. “I’ll be back tonight for my game. And I expect to have my whiskey replaced with some proper liquor.” Before anyone could say or do anything else, Mike turned his back on the bar and walked out of the saloon.
“Jesus Christ,” the barkeep said as he rushed over to lend a hand to Caleb. “Are you all right?” While he was genuinely concerned with Caleb’s well-being, he was also raising his voice in the hope that he could drown out the sound of Mike’s laughter. Judging by the look on Caleb’s face, the effort wasn’t exactly successful.
[2]
“I’m all right.” With each syllable, Caleb felt more pain stabbing through his face. At first he thought his jaw had been broken. Then he reached up to feel the spot with one hand and realized the pain was coming from a different source.
The barkeep was examining him as well. Although he wanted to help, he pulled his hands back before he did any more damage. “You need to see a doctor. It looks like you got some glass stuck in you.”
