Showdown at Possum Trot

  SHOWDOWN AT POSSUM TROT

  A WESTERN

  DAVID WATTS

  Copyright © 2018 by David Watts

  Published by Dusty Saddle Publishing

  ISBN: 9781723845291

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This version of the town of Possum Trot in the book is fictional and not intended to relate in any way to any town or place with a similar name. All characters are also fictional, not meant to represent anyone living or dead.

  HAVE YOU TRIED “THE GUNS OF PECOS COUNTY” FROM WESTERN BESTSELLER DAVID WATTS?

  FOREWORD FROM ROBERT HANLON

  This new release from David Watts should be introduction enough. Watts, who has had great success, has presented a brand new novel set in the West. This novel introduces brand new characters you will love.

  Western readers…. Grab “Possum Trot” and run with it! This is one of the Westerns you will love, over and over again.

  Robert Hanlon – author of the number one bestseller “Timber U.S. Marshal” and many others.

  FOREWORD FROM SCOTT HARRIS

  First, and I need to clear this up right away, how could you not read a book with the title Possom Trot? I have no idea where Dave (Nick - does he go by Dave?) came up with that title, but it’s spectacular.

  Second, I had the honor of being included in a David Watts Presents project earlier this year when he pulled three novels together in U.S. Marshals The Trail of Justice and I was fortunate enough to be included and am happy to have been asked to spread the word about Dave’s newest effort.

  And third, and most important, Possom Trot is one heck of a book!

  I loved that the first chapter focused on burnt biscuits and why in the hell someone would name a village Possom Trot. The book picks up steam from there and races to an exciting ending.

  If you’re looking for a good old fashioned Western, a fun, fast read filled with action and snappy dialog, I suggest you quickly turn the page and get started with David Watt’s newest effort – Possom Trot!

  Scott Harris – bestselling author of “Coyote Canyon” and many other western hits!

  ONE

  “These biscuits are burnt to hell,” Jake said.

  He leaned over the breakfast table where smoke was rising like wind off a prairie fire and snorted. He waived his crumpled, faded yellow hat over the embers and bit hard on his toothpick. He looked over at Sabo. “Toss ‘em out in the yard,” he said. “They can make friends with all the other rocks out there.”

  Sabo tilted his head. “Tol’ you that fire was too hot.”

  “That you did.” Jake took the shattered toothpick out of his mouth and examined the damage turning it in his fingers. “That you did. However, what you didn’t tell me was that you were going to ignore the whole batch while it was a-catching fire.”

  “You just had to get everything started right away. Just had to be in a hurry. We should have waited.”

  Jake turned his toothpick around so that the shattered end stuck out. It looked like he was chewing on a small tree. “Getting started was okay. I like that part. But the fire was too hot. It lit up them biscuits like a house on fire.” He bent over close like he was talking to a child. “That right there was the problem.”

  Sabo shook his head. “Talking to you is about like talking to a mule and not near as much fun. Don’t you have business to tend to?”

  Jake clicked his tongue, hooked his thumb in his belt and smiled. “Naw. Just burnt business.”

  Sabo straightened his leather jacket. “A mule might be a durn sight more helpful.”

  Sabo looked over Jake’s shoulder. A twinkle rose to his eye. “You got business.”

  Jake tilted his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. “Whadaya mean?”

  Walking away to the back of the house Sabo turned his head. “Look what just rode up outside.”

  Jake strolled out the door to find a horseman pulling up thirty feet away, standing like a statue against the morning sun. Jake squinted and shifted side to side. The horse was black. The man was dressed in black. Jake shook his head. “Well, I’ll be a steaming cow patty,” he said, “if that’s not Galen Clay, fastest gun in the west.” He slapped his thigh and shifted the toothpick side to side in his mouth without touching it.

  Jake looked at Galen’s hip. No gun. Before he could ask about it, Galen spoke.

  “How in hell did you get a name like Possum Trot for a run down piece-a-shit town like this?”

  Jake tipped his hat to the back of his head. “Looky here, buckaroo. You been gone nigh on ten years, out cleaning up the countryside,” he waved his arm back and forth, “from all those varmints—“ he threw his hand roughly in the direction of places west, “or whatever the hell it is that the God Almighty Texas Rangers do while nobody’s looking—and the first thing you do is to drag up here looking like a bandit and throw kerosene on the name of our fair village.”

  “Name like that deserves a little kerosene,” he said, “. . . and a lit match.”

  Galen looked down at the star on Jake’s vest. He decided to tease Jake a little more. “Some drunk sheriff thought it up in a stupor, I reckon, staggering home from a whore house in the middle of the night. . . and before anybody could stop him, put it on that sign back there.” He threw his thumb over his shoulder and dismounted.

  Jake looked cockeyed at him. “You never did like anything that was any fun. Ain’t changed a bit. Rather go off killing a bunch of bank robbers than to enjoy a funny name for a town or a little slice of heaven in the arms of a beautiful woman.” He made a dramatic gesture with his hand.

  Galen tied up his horse.

  Jake broke his pause making a wider gesture with his arms as if Galen might have missed it the first time. He danced a little jig, then stopped. He swatted his dusty tengallon against his thigh and stirred up a cloud where it hit. “But since you’re down off that high horse of yours. . .”

  Jake turned and kicked at a rooster crossing the front porch. “Go on, Charlie,” he said, “git.” The rooster squawked and took off.

  “. . . come on inside and we’ll have a conversation over some burnt biscuits.”

  *****

  Horse Diggins looked across his elaborately carved desk out onto the floor of the Angel Dust Saloon and didn’t like what he saw: two dirt-speckled strangers sitting at the bar, the rest of the place empty as a tomb, and his whores not occupied.

  He bit off the end of his cigar, spat out the tip in the general direction of a spittoon, extinguished the butt on his elbow and flipped the rest of it out the window. He scratched his unshaven face and hollered, “Crissy, get up here.”

  A lithe and supple girl with stringy blond hair, clad in what looked like a cross between a nightshirt and a man’s undergarment rose from her chair, climbed the stairs and entered the boss’s loft. She stood quietly at his elbow looking like she half-expected him to lash out at her.

  “I don’t see you doing nothing down there,” said Horse.

  “There’s nothing to do, H. There’s just those two Cedar Choppers at the bar and they got no interest.”

  Horse glared at Crissy. “Every man’s got interest. And you can’t make them show it?”

  “I tried, H. I really did. I nuzzled up to them and everything. They just want to get drunk.”

  “Loosing your touch?”

  “No, H. Honest. Besides there’s no one else out there.”<
br />
  The slap came so hard and fast that Crissy was caught unawares and it spun her down to the floor. She sat there weeping, rubbing her face.

  “Then get your ass out on the street where you belong and stay there until you drag in some stray cat to generate a little business for us. I’m not running a charity club around here.”

  Crissy stumbled to her feet keeping her elbow over her face. “You being mean to me again, H.”

  Horse sat back down in his chair, put his feet on the desk. “I got an errand for you,” he said. “Maybe you can do that right.”

  Crissy rubbed the spittle from the corner of her mouth and wiped it on the front of her dress. “Anything,” she said.

  “First, make yourself useful and pull off these stinking boots of mine. My dogs need a rub. Then I want you to go get Rudge.”

  “Sure thing, H. Sure thing.”

  *****

  Galen tossed his black hat on a nail and sat down at the pine table. “You didn’t finish telling me how your village got stuck with such a god-awful name,” he said.

  “Didn’t start.”

  “Well then, if you can find the time, how about a little news on the subject.”

  Jake looked at Galen cockeyed like he was saying, okay sucker, you asked for it.

  He leaned back. “Legend has it Pecos Bill scratched out that arroyo west of town you crossed over getting here and diverted the gush of spring water we usually get that comes off that butte out yonder known as Throckmorton’s Teeth,” he flipped his hands like he was shooing pigs away. “‘cause of them stone formations up top. By that bit of unexpected creativity,” he made a little bow, “Bill pushed the water around this hallowed mound of sanctified dirt that turned into the town of Possum Trot, all that water from the springtime flood harmless as a kitten off in the gentle flow of the Pedernalis on its way to the ocean. “ He shot one finger the direction of the Gulf and followed it with the arm and a twist of his whole body.

  “You sound like you trying to write a poem.”

  “You wouldn’t know a poem if you saw one.”

  “What’s that you just said got to do with anything?”

  “Named the town too, Pecos Bill did, so say Jigsaw Higgins who hangs out over at the General Store—he’d probably know too, since he’s old as Methuselah and twice as stinky—“ He tapped the table three times with an open palm—“named it ‘cause of a momma possum and her litter that Bill almost run over, skedaddaling across Humpback Trail, just as stuck-up as you please.”

  Galen looked on without expression, studying Jake for foolishness.

  “Took a liking to that piss-ant attitude of the critter, he did—knowing a bit about that kind of temperament hisself. Named the town Possum Trot and that name has stuck.”

  He tapped the table with each of the last three words like he was mashing the name permanently into wood. When he finished the sentence his head was tilted way over to the side.

  Jake pulled the toothpick, now shattered on both ends, out of his mouth, flipped it in some random direction, reached in his pocket and replaced it with another. “In case you don’t know, anything Pecos Bill names, nobody’s gonna even think about changing.” He raised both eyebrows, then leaned back in his chair like he’d just bought the prize bull at the county auction.

  Galen pushed a few empty plates in front of him off to one side. “Where did Mary Mae get off to?” he said. “Don’t see no sign of a woman’s touch around this dump.”

  “She died, Galen. Seven years gone.”

  Galen’s face turned pale. His tight jaw clenched, then dropped a bit.

  “Was a horrible thing,” Jake said. “She died trying to born that baby stuck up inside her somehow. She give it all she got but it wasn’t enough.” He paused. “I know you were sweet on her, Galen. I know that. Everybody knows that.” He looked at Galen then out the window a second. “I was too.” He picked at his thumb. “We all were.”

  Galen took a breath. He shifted in his chair. Jake continued.

  “I think she’d-a gone with you, Galen, if you just hadn’t got it in your silly-ass head to go off chasing after a bunch of worthless criminals and thieves.” He stopped talking. The windmill on the hill made its sound. The window curtain lifted in the slight breeze off the plain. “I guess that makes me second choice. . .” He sat up in his chair and leaned toward Galen. His voice returned to its light, teasing music. “. . .but a lot better one ‘cause, unlike you, I had the common sense to stay in one place.”

  Galen bowed his head then looked up. “You going to fill me up with sad news or are you going to feed my growling stomach?”

  “Ha! There we go. . . Now Galen, I know you wouldn’t know good manners if you saw it coming at you on four legs, but I won’t hold that against you. Problem is this half-breed Indian I got here don’t know how to cook.”

  Sabo grimaced coming in from the kitchen. “How would you know?” he said. “White man don’t know shit from succotash.”

  Jake laughed and patted Sabo on the back. “Don’t worry none, Hoss. Just bring us what you got. With the kind of taste we got around here we couldn’t tell if you put a dead skunk in there.”

  Beans and cornbread and bacon strips appeared on the table and they dug in. “Tell me right quick,” Jake said, “why you got no sweet swift gun on your hip.”

  *****

  Rudge showed up looking like he’d been in a fight. He was unshaven, his hair stuck out like a tornado landed on it and his shoes were caked with mud. He wore a brown jacket and under it a Colt 45 stuck in a ragged, brown leather holster that looked like he pulled it off a dead man. He stood opposite Horse waiting his fate.

  “What are you doing standing in the way of my vision,” Horse said.

  Rudge shifted to one side. “Crissy said you wanted me.”

  “What I wanted was somebody who was human. You look half coyote.”

  “I feel that way sometimes.”

  Horse stood up suddenly and grabbed Rudge by the neck. “I don’t pay you to feel that way sometimes. I want you on your feet ready to do whatever I ask you to do, whenever I ask you.”

  Rudge was wheezing through his constricted throat and couldn’t talk, though he tried, his lips mouthing the uttereless words.

  Horse shoved him backwards against the wall. Rudge waved his arms frantically and turned grey in the face. Horse squeezed even tighter then released him and Rudge slumped to the floor. Horse leaned over his sagging head, half whispering.

  “Maybe you’ve noticed, we don’t have any customers down below. Not like we used to since that goddamned joint of his came in down the street. . .” He flung one arm in the direction of the new saloon.

  “The Rusty Bucket.”

  Horse slapped Rudge across the face. “Don’t mention that name in my presence. Ever. Understand?” At this point Horse was up against the ear of Rudge. Horse pulled out his revolver and pressed the muzzle under Rudge’s chin.

  “I could scatter your brains all over this ceiling, then go have a real nice dinner, fuck one of my whores and sleep like a baby before you stopped drip, drip, dripping from my oily, ass-stinking ceiling all the way down to the floor below.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he croaked.

  Horse pulled back his revolver. He turned his back, lifted a cigar from its humidor and lit it. “We need a disturbance.” He spoke with his back still turned.

  “What kind of disturbance?”

  “That’s for you to figure out, ‘cause I don’t want to be associated with it. You get what I mean?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “But I’ll tell you this.” He turned to face Rudge. “I need for that shithead owner of that Fuck Bucket, Jackson Charles, to wish he’d never set foot in this town.” Horse turned around and dusted ash on top of Rudge, still sitting on the floor.

  Horse kicked him in the leg. “Now get to work and don’t be too friendly about it.”

  *****

  “About that gun that isn’t there. .
. ?” said Jake.

  “I give it up, Jake. Those days are past.”

  “Got old and soft, did ya? A little saggy in the jowls?”

  “Too filled up with killing. Had to undo as much of that as I could.”

  Jake twisted his mouth to one side. “Last I heard, once you make somebody dead you don’t get to make ‘em undead.”

  “Not that way.” Galen gestured with his head back over his shoulder. “On the back of Major, my horse out there, are all my tools.”

  “Whatcha need with tools? Gonna dig a well?”

  “Doctoring. Healing. I went to San Antone’ and got a diploma. I’m going to be your town doctor.”

  Jake leaned on his elbows. “Now, let me git this straight. You give up your gun, fastest gun in the west, your only protection against all the enemies you made killing off their kin, and then you go naked into a town that’s going to be more than a little tough to handle.” Jake spread his hands. “What are you, shit-crazy?”

  “It’s what I gotta do. I done decided.”

  “You decided.” He scratched his head. “If that’s not the most durn fool of all durn fool things I ever heard. You couldn’t cure the backside of a barn, much less a good case of Saint Vitus Dance. And you’re going to stick your neck out like you want somebody to separate it from the rest of your body. Do you know what you’re dealing with?”

  “I reckon you, being the sheriff of this fair and gracious town you love so much, would be rightly familiar with its underbelly. What do you want me to know?”

  Jake took a little while to answer. “What I want you to know is, I’d rest a lot easier if you had a firearm on your side.”