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Blues
Michael Dority

Here it comes to me
That caution, warning
Don’t trust her,
She’ll make you bleed.

She’ll bring me low,
Cause me misery,
I just can’t let it be.

But what’s my life gon’ be
Without she and me?

Whatchu gon’ be?
Whatchu gon’ do?
Can’tcha see?

Hangin’ round her door,
No self-respect
Nowhere else to be.

Oh God,
How come
It’s what became
Of she and me.

No matter what I do
I can’t pull free.
I just can’t let her be.

Take Your Time Contest
Don Webb

The Last Shoot Out

Dr. Reginald Ross knew he was being manipulated. Yet he was still mad. Tenure was a scarce resource, and the other young professors wanted it. And they wanted him to blow it. It would be easy to screw up; fate had made it a lose-lose scenario. He would either loose the funding from Big Al Reynolds or he would lose his manhood to Big Al Reynolds. Either way the University of Texas at Austin would soon be a note on a resume.

He had the gun with him now. You could carry guns with the right permit in Texas. His Quaker mom would be horrified. She would be more horrified if she knew he came out of the History Building at noon on Mon. Wed. Fri. and stared at the UT Clock tower and had a fantasy of taking the little Colt .45 and killing a few worthless humans. Not exactly a sniper’s weapon, especially since it had been over a hundred years since it was fired. But Dr. Reginald Ross liked to put his hand on the holster for a few seconds every day. It filled his hand. A cold and happy weight.

Ned Buntline had set-up the showdown in 1884, but some folks might argue that it had been Jeanie Fish writing her smug little column in the Texas Monthly in 2005, or maybe by big Al’s publicity machine this year. Or maybe it had been a throwaway line in the Daily Texan, the student newspaper. It called New York-born Reginald Ross a “mild mannered academic.” Krypton for his Clark Kent persona.

In the late 1800s, everybody knew of the two famous encounters between Harvey McGill and Frank Newkirk. Everybody that read dime novels knows about the first encounter. Hell, everybody that read newspapers knew about the second. There was an earlier encounter only the two of them knew about. Possibly Harvey had long since forgotten about it. Let’s review the first encounter, the first famous encounter.

Except for die-hard Western fans most people don’t know the story of “Marshall” Harvey McGill. His life seems to have survived as a trivia question, “Who did Western novelist Ned Bluntline call ‘the fastest gun in the West’?” Harvey had only 16 confirmed kills including the Lubbock Massacre. He had never been a Marshall. He had worked for the Citizen’s Committee of Bardo, Arizona. He locked up drunks, caught arsonists and petty thieves and was the bodyguard of a (now obscure) mine owner Peter Farber. Farber liked money, whiskey and women. Including McGill’s wife. Farber was the first (illegal) kill, and the only unarmed human McGill ever shot.

McGill never relished killing. Most of the men he shot needed killing. He went into retirement twice. The first time was after Ned Bluntline’s The Mercury Marshall.

Marshall McGill caught a metal glint – the tip of a gun around the corner of the livery stable. He had three men that were trying to kill the fastest gun in the west. Pedro Sanchez stood brave and bold in the street, but he had amigos one on the roof of the Yodeling Jackass with a rifle and one behind the livery. He took a deep breath and his Ned Bluntline Colt Special barked three times. For Sanchez and his men, it might have been the first bark of the hounds of hell. Sanchez managed to squeeze off a shot that wounded a horse tethered in front of the barber’s. The other two, their movements already slowed by fear of the Mercury Marshall passed from this earth without even a bullet leaving their guns. They had meat a coward’s death and the silence was deafening.

The book painted a huge bulls eye on McGill. Who wouldn’t want to take out the “fastest gun in the West?” Ned Buntline’s career was in its downward phase. He had been popular – Stephen King popular – but the reading public tired of the formula. It took them over a hundred novels to tire, but it tired. So, he had branched out into marketing. He had Colt design the “Ned Bluntline Special” and he gave out a couple, with gold plated handles no less, to prominent gunslingers. The Mercury Marshall wasn’t exactly a true account of McGill’s life, even the famous battle just quoted added an extra gun to the mix. Bluntline didn’t regain his big sales with the marketing gimmick. In fact, America’s richest author’s wife had to sell their home “Eagle’s Nest” to pay for his entombment. But the story did line up the next six men, six boys really that went after McGill. The first five died.

McGill left white society and moved in with the Tiwa Indians of the Taos Pueblo. He loved the Tiwas, their beautiful daughters were young and willing and their men fierce. They were the only native population to stage a successful revolt against the Spanish. Their three and four story mud houses were cool in summer and warm in winter. In the autumn the aspens turn golden and shimmer against the evergreens, and the winds blow with the tiniest kiss of snow from the Sangre de Christo mountains. Harvey thought he had found paradise among the reddish-brown adobe walls. He had given up booze, taken up peyote, and was about ready to throw his gold-plated guns away, when Frank Newkirk called him out in front of the church.

Frank was less than half his age. Harvey doubted the boy could sprout a beard. His gray rat-like eyes told the story. Unlike Harvey, he loved killing. He had already sent eight men to their graves. He held his cheap pistol in shaky hands.

“Harvey McGill, I am calling you out.”

Harvey turned to face him. The imperturbable men watched with mineral calm. Before Harvey even drew, the boy squeezed the trigger. The gun flashed but no bullet emerged. It has misfired. Harvey charged the boy knocking him down. He grabbed the gun and began beating the boy with it.

“Just get the hell out of my life. Just git!”

He hit the boy’s back until he drew blood. The kid was crying.

“I am going to let go. If you don’t run like hell, I will have to kill you.”

He handed the buy the gun of shame and the boy ran. Like hell.

Big Al Reynolds was born in 1972, but he came into being in 2005. Jeannie Fish wanted to do a story on the richest oilman in Houston. Texans love wealth and the myth of the oilman is as a sacred story for Texans as to the Trickster tales are for the Navajo or the Hercules myths to the ancient Greeks. The fact of his life were A) graduating from Texas Tech and B) working in his daddy’s oilfields. He wasn’t too bright, or too dumb, or too good-looking, or too-anything. His daddy gave him some land near Binger, Oklahoma and he brought in the Grey Eagle field – just like the highly paid geologists said he would. He liked to dress in rich Texan drag, got a blond wife, a busty former cheerleader for the University of Texas, and with average luck and intelligence made a vast family fortune slightly vaster. But Ms. Fish knew better than to tell that story. Fish was interested in reader-response. So, she made him humble for going to Texas Tech (his smarter dad had gone to Rice). She made him lucky for finding oil on the old David Davis estate. She made him romantic by ordering one gross (that’s 144) yellow roses sent to his wife-to-be’s dorm room, and she told him to dress the part of the last frontiersman. He had the Stetson and the ostrich hide boots, and his press secretary had read about Harvey McGill’s guns coming up for auction that week. So, when Al Reynolds (His family called him Alvin) showed for his photo shoot, he was sporting the guns with gold handles that sent many a miscreant to their grave. After she called him Big Al, everybody called him Big Al. He never was without the guns. His business luck went up a few notches. He became bolder and brasher. He came into being as Big Al and made his family fortune even bigger. He also took up philanthropy – Texas style. He gave good money to his Alamaa Mater for “Western Studies.” He gave money to the Bob Bullock State Historical Museum, and when Dr. Reginald Ross was creating a traveling exhibit about the life and times of Frank Newkirk – he wanted to bankroll it.

For a price.

Ned Bluntline was dead by many years at the time of the Lubbock Massacre. Harvey McGill was a bonafide old man, and Frank Newkirk was a person of questionable historical taste. Bad men and gunslingers had died out with the nineteenth century. Frank was an anachronism. In all ways except for the 1905 Colt. He wanted to match a great gun with a great gun. Colt had gone to .45 caliber in late 1905, Frank had bought two. He had their handles silver-plated and he ran ads calling out Harvey McGill.

If we think of 1916, we might think of it as the year that Teddy Roosevelt signed a secret treaty giving Korea to Japan. Damn good thing too, otherwise they would have bothered us some. We certainly think of March 13, 1906 as the day Susan B. Anthony died, but if we read the papers it was the day of the Lubbock Massacre, the second public interaction between Frank Newkirk and Harvey McGill. McGill’s hope was death. He had buried two wives; his eyesight was going and a cancer gave him daily pains in the gut. When he heard that Frank wanted a rematch he wired that he was leaving Albuquerque and taking the train to Lubbock. He gave away what little money he had, told his landlady that he was not coming back, and we can safely assume he was glad there was no Ned Bluntline around to write up his last days. Harvey didn’t know much about Lubbock, and Frank didn’t either.

Frank had ranked up at least twenty kills that McGill knew about. Frank missed the old days. Gunslingers didn’t catch the imagination like they once had. He was simply a middle-aged thug. But he was the Man Who Misfired. Freud could have explained it all to Frank. Lubbock seemed like a good venue. Big open streets, it was be easy for the reporters to see everything. He had come once in the summer. Flat, flat, flat – the eye could see as far as was painful . . .

But Lubbock in the spring has dust storms. Fierce dust storms. Storms like you ain’t seen this side of the Sahara. To add insult sometimes it rains, so you’ve got a flying mud storm. But on the 13th it was a freezing rain. When you walked down the street your face was hit by freezing mud flying at 70 mph. Train record tell us that Harvey pulled into town about ten. The shootout was to be at noon. In fact both men passed each other twice on Q Street in the non-visibility. Finally, Harvey, his arms aching with rheumatism approached a man he saw trying to light a cigarette in the storm to ask for directions. Frank couldn’t believe this white bearded stranger was the Mercury Marshall. Four decades will do that. Frank was about to ask him to step back and draw, when a bullet whizzed past his ear.

Three sheriffs had read the ads. Two from Lubbock and one from Happy, Texas. The man from Happy saw himself as the Killer of the Last Gunslingers. The locals just didn’t want Lubbock getting a reputation as a violent town. It was the Twentieth Century for God’s sake.

Frank and Harvey turned, and saw that three men had the drop on them. Three average gunmen. Even at Harvey’s age, he was far from average. The two opponents drew their weapons and plugged the three lawmen. Frank watched them fall.

“I can’t shoot you now. Goddamn you!”

Harvey started to argue, and then some more freezing mud hit his cheek.

“You are a useless son of a bitch!”

He walked away.

The next day every newspaper in America carried a fairly accurate account of the massacre. Except they all listed Frank’s last name as Newcastle, and they all called Harvey “the fastest gun in the west.”

Harvey’s speed didn’t stop his stomach cancer, which took him in a Santa Fe hospital a month later. A well-to-do lawyer named Horatio Smith paid Harvey’s bills. He posted a couple of notices looking for family and wound up the owner of Harvey’s estate: the two Ned Bluntline Colts, a first edition of Moby Dick, three Tiwa blankets, The Mercury Marshall, and three unused brass bordello tokens from the House of the Rising Sun in New Orleans. Frank Newkirk was presumed to have disappeared until the findings of Dr. Reginald Ross.

Dr. Ross had car trouble one day in a small village south of Austin, Texas with the colorful name of “Doublesign.” The local joke was the sign post with “Welcome to Town” and “Goodbye” were on the same post. The town had a Dairy Queen, an eatery called the Kuntry Kitchen, and no full-service gas station. AAA told him it would be at least an hour before a tow-truck arrived, so after coffee and a huge slice of coconut meringue, he ambled over to the village library.

It was a small affair, full of hardback mysteries, Time Life books, two computers where a couple of Hispanic boys pounded out homework. It also had a glass display case for “Doublesign’s first writer.” The case held several Western pulps Cowboy Stories, Two Gun Novels, Wild West Weekly, Spicy Trails, Weird Wild West. It had a pair of Colt .45s with tarnished silver handles monogrammed FN, and a faded black Stetson. A small card explained that Newcastle Relic had moved to Doublesign in the year 1908 and had begun a writing career. His specialty was gunslinger stories. Every Halloween he would captivate adults and kids alike with his stories of the old west. He claimed to know various gunslingers and lawmen. One of his minor stories Death of a Halfbreed had become a silent movie. He was compared to Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains as well as other locals – Katherine Porter, Walter Miller, Rex Hull, and so forth. He asked the librarian, an old white woman with a nice smile, if he could take one of the magazines out of the case. She agreed – seeing as he was a professor in Austin.

His academic training was Byzantine history. He had never been a Western reader, and the lurid cover of Two Gun Novels wasn’t his idea of art. The pages were yellow and brittle, the typos many, but Newcastle Relic’s account of two rival gunslingers coming for a last fight in Lubbock, Texas during a “freezing mud storm” was captivating. The gold- and silver-plated guns seemed unlikely and for that matter so did freezing, flying mud. He could feel the frustration of Frank Newcastle – the desire to kill Speedy MacBeth. The cruel turn of fate that made them allies. For the first time in his life, Ross Reginald felt blood lust. Ross’s mom had been a psychiatrist and vegetarian. His dad had been an anti-war protester in the 1960s. Good hippy parents, they had not even allowed Star Trek on the TV, certainly no guns as toys, no cowboys and Indians. Ross wanted to pick up one of the Colts and spin the chamber. That’s what you did right? Spin the chamber. Plug Speedy MacBeth.

The tow truck came after two hours. Ross had finished High Plains Shootout and begun one of Relic’s stories in Weird Wild West, “The Haunting of the Gun” -- a tale about a milksap that inherited his uncle’s revolvers and becomes obsessed with tracking down his uncle’s killers. Ross didn’t want to leave and told Mrs. Anderson that he would be back.

The next week Ross found out three things that amazed him. One of his students hailed from Lubbock and told him that yes Virginia there are flying freezing mud storms in Lubbock. Secondly, he discovered that there had been a shout in Lubbock in 1906 that matched Relic’s account. Since the Lubbock Avalanche listed one of the shooter as “Frank Newcastle” and the other as the “The fastest gun in the West;” it wasn’t rocket science to figure out that the FN of the silver guns belonged to Frank Newcastle. Thirdly he found out the Texas Monthly magazine did something that academic magazines don’t do – pay real money. He chatted with Dr. Don Graham, who has the J. Frank Dobie chair in Southwest Life and Literature. If he proved that a retired gunslinger had written up his adventures as a series of pulp stores – both tenure and lucre could roll in at the same time.

Finding out that it was Newkirk not Newcastle was easy. He was able to talk with the old men and women of Doublesign and find out that their parents and grandparents knew Relic. The Masonic Lodge was very helpful – Newcastle Relic was a brother. He was a “confirmed bachelor.” That being the Texas phrase for homosexual. If Dr. Ross agreed to gloss over this lavender fact, the village of Doublesign would do everything they could to help put Frank Newkirk on the map.

It was an exceptional story in Texas Monthly – everyone loved it. Local TV stations had Dr. Ross in for interviews. The Austin American Statesman and The Daily Texan ran stories.

Frank had twenty known kills, which he had relived in thirty-nine stories. Their realism and their gritty call of savagery had a nice red glow, the color of the Texas sun at sunset through closed lids.

The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum became interested in putting together a traveling exhibit. Ross took a crash course in museum science. Ross had a black leather and silver gun belt made, he had the silver polished, he began lecturing while wearing the guns. Most of his colleagues snickered behind his back – a few complained, but Texas loves guns. Texas does lead the nation in death-by-duel among state legislators.

The Doublesign village library asked for the guns back. Mrs. Anderson didn’t see any research value in playing dress-up. She had seen children get in trouble before.

Dr. Reginald Ross began assembling notes for a biography of Frank Newkirk. It would be hard to write, Ross wanted him to a dashing figure of the Old West – not a sadistic killer, who preferred to kill unarmed victims. Ross wanted him to be a great writer, but Relic’s prose was clumsy except when he talked about killing. The literary standards of the Western pulps were not high, and Newcastle Relic was not a Louis L’Amour or a Max Brand. He wasn’t a Robert E. Howard or even a Seabury Quinn. However, a chance remark by Cormac McCarthy about Relic’s raw Sadean savagery gave blessing to the research. The bio, Blood Before the Ink was coming along nicely. Ross couldn’t find out one important thing – where had Newkirk been born. He seemed to show up first in San Francisco shooting a Chinese waiter over a restaurant bill in the 1890s.

History does not report the first time Harvey McGill met Frank Newkirk. It is doubtful that McGill remembered it. The citizens’ committee of Bardo, Arizona and Peter Faber had shelled out the vast sun of fifteen dollars a month for Harvey to take guns away from drunk cowboys, stop fist fights and shoot at Mexicans of dubious nature. Newkirk’s father periodically needed to prove his manhood by shooting his revolver into the air at Blue Moon Saloon. This had caused no human injury but had necessitated roof mending and was seen as possible danger to the common weal. One night as the piano player played “Sons of Temperance” and other drinking songs, Tom Newkirk was singing” I am a S.O.T.” and shooting upward at the chorus, Harvey pulled the pistol from his hand and slapped him down. The drunken Newkirk hit the sawdust and a couple of Blue Moon regulars dragged him across the street to the jail. Frank was told to run on home and tell his ma. Harvey gave him his father’s guns of course. The kid was eight and therefore could be trusted with firearms.

The next morning Harvey woke, as was his wont, with a dance girl from the Blue Moon. He heard gunfire. He dressed quickly and ran to the jail. Young Frank had set up some cans as targets behind the jail and was proving no threat to them.

“Son show me your gun< I can teach how to shoot better.” Said McGill.

He pulled his revolver out and killed two cans. “You’re firing too fast.”

Frank said, “I want shoot fast to kill the bad guys.”

“You don’t want to kill anybody, and the way you shoot you won’t be. Take your time, get your shot.”

Frank missed again.

“Why did you lock up my dad?”

“Your daddy was drunk and making a fool of himself. Is your Ma coming to get him?”

“Ma left us last month.”

“Is anybody to your house?”

“Just dad and me.”

“Then he needs to be more careful. When he’s good and awake this morning, I’ll send him home. Did you get anything to eat today?”

“Dad says we don’t help from anybody.”

Frank missed again.

“I know. He’s an S.O.T.” McGill laughed. “You run on home son. I’ll straighten your daddy out.”

McGill turned and headed toward the jail. He didn’t see the kid draw a bead on his back, didn’t hear the hammer hit the empty chamber.

The museum had coached Dr. Ross in getting some backing. Texans are generous in financing their own history. Jeannie Fish had suggested that Big Al Reynolds was the man with the moolah. Dr. Ross wrote him, and he wrote back. He was glad to throw money at Ross’s idea like an old-style liberal would throw money at a problem. He just wanted the guns. What a collection guns from both survivors of the Lubbock Massacre.

You’ll pry my guns from my cold dead fingers.

Dr. Ross hadn’t told his momma about his NRA membership.

Dr. Ross didn’t have anyone to talk about his guns with. Some of his friends that he used to meet in a sweet little gay wine bar on Congress feared the guns. But more of his friends were scared by Ross’s newfound aggression and confidence. Ross hadn’t learned about the gay bar where they “Cowboy and School Marm.” Texas is different.

The Doublesign library wrote again. Ross put it next to the other unopened envelope.

Slowly a plan began to form in his mind. He would ask Bug Al to lend his gun to the exhibit. The guns would be displayed point at one another. It would be cool.

He called Jeanie Fish. She could set up a meeting, photographers, another article. Of course, Big Al would agree, he was older than Ross. His reputation was already secure. Ross needed the win.

To Jeanie’s credit she did not misrepresent the men to each other. Yet after every exchange Ross grew more confident that Big Al would lend his guns to the exhibit, Big Al became more and more sure that Ross would sell the silver-plated guns. Jeanie knew this was going to be a remarkable story, so she arranged that the two men would meet at high noon at the Austin Arboretum on March 13.

There was no mud, no high winds, no freezing. The bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes were glorious that day. Dr. Ross and Jeanie arrived with two photographers first. The photographer shot some photos of Dr. Reginald Ross pointing his gun at the cow sculptures. The symbolism was trifle unclear. Big Al Reynolds arrived in a burnt orange Cadillac with longhorn horns. His photographer shot a few pics of him standing in front of his car, the central Texas sun glinting off the gold. With the benefit of cell phones, Big Al heard about the pictures by the cow sculptures and he moseyed over.

Ironically Big Al had asked his press secretary to help him not make any inadvertent gay jokes to Dr. Ross. When he walked up, and saw the crowd admiring the little academic playing at being a gunslinger, he said the phrase he was not supposed to say.

“Son show me your gun.”

Ross turned in his direction. He began to move toward Big Al, with the butt of his pistol out. About twenty feet away, he changed his posture and pointed the gun at him.

“Draw!” said Dr. Reginald Ross. As he has said a thousand times later, he had no idea why he said it.

Big Al laughed. Then as the seriousness of a man pointing a gun at him quickly sunk in, said, “Dr. Ross this isn’t funny!”

The crowd had whipped out their cell phones, everyone was watching.
Dr. Ross repeated, “Draw!”

Big Al’s hands reached toward his guns. Like lightning Dr. Reginald Ross squeezed the trigger. You’ve probably watched Al Reynold’s death on YouTube, at least five people caught it on their phones. Everyone focused on the surprise on Big Al’s face, but one eye witness said at the moment of shooting Dr. Ross looked like a young crying boy. Even after years of therapy he doesn’t remember drawing or firing.

The guns lie in a glass case in the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, a silver and gold yin-yang symbol of the last great shoot out.