Showdown at the Silver Dollar Saloon

I had killed once before, so I figured I was already damned—and I’d do what I had to do if it came right down to it. The sirens of the Sheriff’s dark gray Ford F-150 blared and lit up the hollowed-out canyons of the Climax Molybdenum Mine with red and blue bursts. The high country echoed with the whir of the siren. I’d just about navigated the roundabout of 91-S, but I wasn’t going to make it back to Leadville after all, from the look of things.  I stiffened up in my seat and took a few deep breaths. This could be just like the last time—he might leave me no choice. 

I hadn’t been back to Leadville since that night, fifteen years ago, just after Adi died, and I imagined I’d stroll in like a disembodied ghost—like Baby Doe herself, who literally froze stiff at the Matchless Mine—but still appears to locals in the old saloon to this day, as if she’d come in for a highball and a chat. 

I feared I’d find that the town I’d known as a boy with its local color, rich history, and grandeur was gone forever, like the Old West itself. Perhaps those days only lived on now in my memories, and in the tired drinking stories men told from barstools in dark saloons off Harrison Avenue. But maybe, if that were so, time had also covered over what I’d done that cold winter’s day. I had tried to talk myself into the idea that maybe my fugitive warrant and poster had been tossed in the dustbin with those old stories, but I knew Judge Dwyer still drew breath and wouldn’t rest until I saw justice.

I sure wasn’t gonna be that lucky. Not in this lifetime. No, sir. Mine was a sin unto death, and I was marked like Cain to wander this world as a fugitive from justice until the day I died. My fate was sealed shut with a spent shotgun shell steaming under fresh snow cover—a smoldering brand that could never be extinguished. I reckon it’s better to live life as a ghost than to spend it in a jail cell, but I can’t really say, because I was never going to let that happen.  Hell, be damned!

I tucked my Glock G19 9mm pistol down under the riser of my low-rise Buffalo jeans, pulled my blue denim button-down over the riser to cover over the butt of the pistol, adjusted my red ballcap, and waited for the Sheriff to tell me why he’d pulled me over. Sweating a little under my collar in the dry midday heat of the West, I thought it only takes a second to do something that can never be undone. My old man used to say, “you can’t step twice in the same river.” Ain’t that the truth.

“Where you headed today, son?”

“Driving into Leadville,” I said.

I noticed that the name badge above the double-breasted black utility denim read, “Dan “Buck” Lamont.” The gold 7-pointed Lake County Sheriff’s badge picked up the glare of the sun, making me squint my eyes. I shifted in the cabin of my Diamond Crystal Black Ram 1500 TRX Truck, careful not to move the pistol under me, and pulled out my registration and insurance—well, Ben Richards’s registration and insurance. My given name is Skyler Davis, but I’ll get back to that later.

“Ok. What do we have here, B-en Rich-ards. Alrighty.” Buck was about 6’2” and had dark black hair with crisp bangs falling over his brow and a full beard that offset his blue eyes. He was a big boy and solid and struck me as the kind of man who you didn’t want to scrap with for no good reason.

“Can I ask why you pulled me over officer?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid you are going to have to circle back off of 91-S and head back to 70 and up to Vail and then head back down Route 82 at Glenwood Springs and follow Independence Pass on in.”

“What’s the matter officer—the road is down?”

“No, no. We’ve got a forest fire being dealt with just up the road by Buckeye Peak. Now be on your way. Maybe we’ll see you in town.” 

And the Sheriff tipped his white Stetson with the leather buckled hatband, bidding me goodday.

* * *

It had been a cold, howling November day with the snow coming down in sheets off the Rockies. It was the kind of day that weren’t good for nothing but staying shet in and drinking coffee and huddling up by a fire. I’d lost Adi that fall to lung cancer and was left with a little girl, Callie, to raise all on my own—and I’d intended to do just that—even if it was just the two of us and the cattle hands on this big old ranch. Me and Adi had thought of naming her “Silver Dollar” after Baby Doe’s daughter, but sense won out there. She was a good baby and didn’t fuss much. Callie was in her crib in the bedroom sleeping, and her Meemaw, as she called her, was goin’ to shovel out and come by to take care of her later in the evening so I could get some time alone, and God-willing a little shuteye, for once. But, that weren’t to be the case.

I hated cancer. But life is unfair. From cradle to grave, the devil picks at your bones and heckles you like a rabid ky-oat, foaming at the mouth—so who can blame a man for striking back? And when Adi passed so young, I guess I shook my fists at God and anyone else that crossed me. I cursed myself too—for carrying on when she hadn’t—and wished he’d taken me instead. It got to where I had whiskey for supper. The first course was whiskey, the second whiskey and the third whiskey. It wasn’t a popular diet, but if it was good enough for Sir Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker, who played down at the Tabor Opera House, not a hundred years ago, it was good enough for a hick like me. But I’ll be honest. I’m an angry drunk. And much worse on whiskey.

It started innocently enough with a few card games at the Silver Dollar Saloon. But, that soma’bitch is as haunted as a war cemetery. And before long, I’d run up a debt—a curse of grief—that caught the notice of Judge Wilbur “Willie” Dyer. Judge Wilbur wasn’t just a lawman. He was the Goddamn bank. He didn’t get his hands dirty—no, sir—he had his front men—but he was the money. Not only that, he weren’t afraid to enforce neither.

Judge Dwyer was an old-time cowboy. Sure, he wore them robes on the bench. But any other time, he had his wide-brimmed silver-buckled black Stetson, gold hair slicked back and neat trailing to his neck, black double-breasted gimme-cap shirt, grizzly stubbled muzzle, flared boot-cut slacks, gaudy gold belt buckle, and cowboy boots with the spinning-star rowel—and all.

What I couldn’t figure for the life of me, is with all the men he had on payroll, why he’d sent his son out that night to collect—from me, of all people. His son weren’t like the old judge. He was a boogahead college boy, with an affinity for strippers and whores, who played at that new-fangled ju-jitsu and was freebasing bumps and chasers most days until he was jittery as a coon and sure as shit convinced that he were invincible, when he weren’t—Lord knows he weren’t.

Watching the snow fall and sipping on my third nip of Macallan, I didn’t think for a second that the devil was on my doorstep, waiting for me. If I was going to keep the Lake Fork Ranch running through the winter, I needed to get down to the Hitch’n Post in Salida and haul back a trailer full of hay—and that was just the first item on my list. I was in my study, feet up on my desk, goin’ through a lot of such scheduling and paperwork—when I noticed something wasn’t right. You get to where the land is in your bones, and you have a sixth sense where the smallest thing that’s out of place in the land is like an itch on your own skin.

I set foot out in the whitewash of the blizzard with my trusty Winchester 21 shotgun and heard footsteps in the fresh snow. I dropped down on the deck and my heart started drummin’ in my ears. I knew straight off Judge Dyer had his goons out to collect. It just took a second. I heard a rustling in the brush by the end of the drive. This pucker-assed buffoon had been pissing on my property! But I didn’t know that then. I felt my blood pressure in my skull—I was so angry that some damned fool were on my property without announcing himself, and he was not going to get the jump on me or harm my baby girl.  I fired. Jimmy weren’t fifteen feet out. 

That slug hit him in the ribs and pierced his heart like a water balloon. Jimmy felled like timber. He never even saw it coming. And once I was standing over him and saw that fresh boy’s face—I knew I were dead too.