The Fastest Gun Dead
BY JULIAN F. GROW
The skeleton had the fastest
draw west of the Pecos. Too
bad he was such a lousy shot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He was a big man, broad of shoulder, slim of hip. His Stetson wascrimped Texas-style, over slate-gray eyes that impassively had seenmuch good and more evil in their twenty-six years.
He stood in the saloon door with the dust of the streets of DosCervezas Pequenas still swirling about scuffed, range-rider's chaps.His left hand held open the weatherbeaten swinging door. The righthovered over the worn peachwood butt of the Colt holstered on his rightthigh.
The slate-gray eyes, emotionless, swept the crowd bellied up to thebar, and stopped at one man. When he spoke it was flat, but with thering of tempered steel, and every man but that one drew back out ofrange. "I want you, Dirty Jake," the big man said. "Now."
Dirty Jake shot him into doll rags, naturally.
Dirty Jake Niedelmeier was, you might say, the most feared ribbon clerkin the Territory. Easily the most.
I remember him from the early days, from the first day he came to town,in fact. I remember because he got off the stage just as I was leaningout the window nailing up my brand-new shingle, and my office was andstill is upstairs next to the stage depot. I was down on the boardwalkadmiring it, all shiny gold leaf on black like the correspondenceschool promised:
Hiram Pertwee, M.D.
His voice broke in on me, all squeaky. "Beg your pardon," he said,"where's the YMCA?"
Well, that isn't the usual sort of question for here. I turned around.There he was, a scrawny little runt about knee-high to short, wearing apanama hat, a wrinkled linen duster and Congress gaiters.
He wasn't especially dirty then, of course, only about average for astage passenger. He kind of begrudged his face, with little squinteyes and a long thin nose, a mustache like a hank of Spanish moss andjust about chin enough to bother shaving. Under his duster he wore aclawhammer coat, the only alpaca one I ever saw, and I never from thatday out saw him wear any other. He stood there looking like he'd neverbeen anyplace he really cottoned to, but this might just be the worst.
I was just a young squirt then and not above funning a dude. I told himthe YMCA was around the corner, two doors down and up the back stairsat the Owl Hoot Palace. He nodded and went the way I told him.
That was, and still is, Kate's Four Bit Crib. The girls there wearcandy-striped stockings and skirts halfway to the knee, and theirshirtwaists are open at the neck. Dirty Jake didn't speak to me forthree years.
He wasn't Dirty Jake then, though, just Jacob Niedelmeier, fresh fromselling ribbons and yard goods in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and hot tofind a fortune in the hills. He'd been a failure all his natural life.This was a new beginning, for a man 34 who was already at the bitterend and looking for the path back. Gold was the way, he figured. He wasgoing to get it.
But he didn't. He was back flat broke and starving in four months.
He spent the next seventeen years behind the notions counter atMartin's Mercantile, selling ribbon and yard goods and growing old twoyears at a time. I think it tainted his mind.
Leastways, from the time I got to know him, some fourteen years gon