Beads of sweat welled up on Fowler’s face, on the back of his neck, and in various other parts of his body.
He looked into the eyes of the Sheriff and they seemed to have the same slitted tiger look that Gawk’s eyes had. The pupils, normally as round as a penny, looked like steel spikes. Lute thought at first it was his imagination and he tried to blink it away. As he looked again, it seemed that Don Jose’s countenance had become that of a swaying viper – the vertically slitted eyes glittering and seeming to send off an invisible ray that made Lute’s hands shake.
“I’m giving you more of a chance than you gave Gawk. Draw. Fill your hand you varmint! Draw Fowler. You either draw or I’m gonna beat you to death with my bare hands. Draw!”
For 10 minutes Don Jose jabbed at the reluctant Fowler, prodding and goading him relentlessly.
The crowd got so big inside the Bird Cage and outside on the street that it seemed as though literally the whole town was within earshot of the confrontation.
As Don Jose kept irritating Lute and daring him to draw, Fowler finally realized that one way or the other, he was going to die that day in the overstuffed Bird Cage. He knew he had little chance against the much faster Don Jose, but since a little chance is better than no chance, he filled his shaky hand and cleared leather.
Like Gawk before him, Don Jose’s viper slit-eyes seemed to narrow down to a razor thin vertical focus on Fowler’s gun-hand. The knifelike pupils recorded Fowler’s movements in slow motion. They saw Lute’s Colt clear the holster. The beast eyes saw him raise the weapon. They saw his finger start to embrace the trigger – and then the piercing slits sent a message up to Don Jose’s brain - FIRE!
Fowler’s Colt was pointed straight at Don Jose’s head and his finger was less than a thousandth of an inch from the trigger and yet before it could cover that miniscule distance, the sheriff reached for his holstered Remington 1875, cleared leather, carefully aimed the six-shooter, and fired a kill shot.
To a man and to a woman; everyone in the Bird Cage rose to their feet and cheered the feat of Don Jose as he continued to pour hot lead, putting three more shots into Fowler’s heart before using the last two bullets to erase Lute’s face – in the unlikely event anybody had the foolish idea of an open casket.
Even Big Red had left her place to witness the battle. “You did what you had to do Don Jose,” she said admiringly. “Come back to the Whiz Bang House with me. I’ll take you upstairs and I will help you ease your mind a bit.”
Before she departed with the Don in tow, Red gave Oil Can Slim a thick roll of bills and told him to serve up free drinks to everyone for one hour to celebrate.
Love him or hate him, on that particular night, nobody had a single bad word to say about Don Jose Alvarado, the Sheriff of Whizbang City.
Chapter Six: The Post Office Says No to Whizbang
(Author’s Note) Whiz Bang in the 1920s was a cluster of about 500 hastily built structures surrounded on all sides by two thousand wheezing oil rigs nodding their ugly steel heads. Up and down for 24 hours a day they bobbed - never resting even for a second, until they died, around 1943.
Bert Bryant pried open a fresh beer and informed Sgt. Bill James… “Before I can say any more about Whiz Bang back in the day, I have to come clean about the name.”
Tilting his beer with one hand while raking his white beard with the other, he sheepishly admitted, “It ain’t really officially Whiz Bang.”
“The prohibition laws were ignored here because the government realized that Osage County was vastly different from just about anywhere else in the Union. It was the same with the funhouses and the gambling halls. They were not strictly legal, but in Whiz Bang they were allowed.
“We never had a problem with any government agency except one – the Post Office.”
“How could the Post Office affect you?”
“Well Sergeant Billy, it was a regional postmaster who started the trouble because he hated the name of our town. He demanded we change it. We told him he could take a flying leap we were not going to alter our name by even one letter.”
“What was wrong with Whiz Bang?”
“That galoot thought it was not dignified. He ordered us to rename the town De Noya, a family name of a group of people in the Osage tribe of Indians.
“The battle of words went back and forth and heated up after that knucklehead refused to deliver any mail addressed to Whiz Bang, OK. Since almost nobody ever sent anything in the name of De Noya, the situation caused a big problem for Tulsa.”
“How was Tulsa affected?”
“All the mail they couldn’t deliver to Whiz Bang was being stored in Tulsa and it was taking up too much space. The regional postmaster conferred with the top man in Washington, Postmaster General Hubert Word.”
“What did he say?”
“Word sided with the regional guy in Tulsa. No mail would be delivered to us if the address read Whiz Bang. We fixed him. We wrote to Captain Billy Fawcett – the publisher of the racy magazine with the same name as our town. Captain Billy would later become enormously wealthy and influential as owner of Fawcett Publications and a vast business empire. Back in 1922 all he had was his bawdy little Whiz Bang – but that was enough because he sold a million copies every month. Captain Billy addressed all his west of the Mississippi copies ‘care of postmaster at Whiz Bang, Oklahoma!”
“So all those copies had to be stored in Tulsa?”
“Yes indeed,” replied old Bert. “The train pulled into Tulsa with three freight cars worth of Whiz Bangs that had to be stored and protected from the elements. There was no room for them. Besides that there was the matter of a lot of important people who were not going to get their Whiz Bangs! Finally the Postmaster General interceded. He said that both names Whiz Bang and De Noya would be considered acceptable for the town. The mail went through!”
Satisfied that he had come clean about the naming of Whiz Bang, Bert smiled and tilted back in his chair while closing his eyes for a spell. Raking his beard with his fingers he started to speak but the word quickly degraded into a snore.
Sgt. James didn’t mind the old cowpoke napping. It didn’t matter. He had plenty of time and was willing to wait for Bert to resume the chronicles of the abandoned town. Sgt. James reached for the ‘church key’ on the table in front of him and punched a pair of triangular holes into another cold can of ‘Colorado Cool- Aid’.
Sgt. Bill smiled as he remembered seeing Johnny Paycheck live on stage at Lawton, Oklahoma before 2000 service men. Ol’ John brought the house down when he sang his number one hit “Take This Job and Shove It” and then followed it up with “Colorado Cool-Aid”.
“Well I was sittin in this beer joint down in Houston, Texas
Was drinkin Colorado Cool-Aid and talkin to some Mexicans
An we was ‘what’s this you say?’
What’s Colorado Cool-Aid?
Well it’s a can of Coors brewed from a mountain stream
It’ll set your head on fire and make your kidneys scream”
Johnny Paycheck – country singer: 1938 - 2003
Author’s Notes:
Captain Billy Fawcett was one of the most colorful characters of the early 1900s. At 16 years of age and just five and a half feet tall, he volunteered for the U.S. army in 1902 and fought in the Phillipine-American War. He was wounded in the conflict but remained in the service and found that the military life suited him. Later, in World War One, he rose to the rank of Captain. He took to calling himself ‘Captain Billy’ and was known by that ‘handle’ the world over.
The original ‘Hugh Hefner’, Fawcett found immediate success with his lurid magazine, The Whiz Bang. The name came from his war days when he and his buddies called the falling shells from German artillery – ‘Whiz Bangs’.
A world traveler, Captain Billy was not only a publishing magnate, he also owned resorts, was an Olympic athlete, a boxing promoter, and a big game hunter.
?
??The Whiz Bang was the top publication of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Later magazines started by Captain Billy included the iconic “Mechanics Illustrated”, “Family Circle”, “True Confessions”, “Women’s Day”, as well as Captain Marvel and many other ‘funny-books’.
Captain Billy’s friends were legion, and included many of the most prominent names of the day. His boxing pals included heavyweight Champ Jack Dempsey. He was also buddies with the biggest Hollywood star of the era, Harold Lloyd – whose box office eclipsed the number two man Charlie Chaplin by several million dollars. In a period when it cost a few pennies to see a motion picture, Lloyd’s films grossed over 15 million dollars compared to about ten million for the Chaplin comedies.
April 1923 – a typical cover of an issue of the wildly popular monthly, Whiz Bang
Chapter Seven: A Two-Bit Bar
After Gawk Larkin’s funeral, Don Jose was fixing to go out the following afternoon to visit Chalky. Vickie had phoned him and said that the boy was making a rapid recovery and was already handling some of the daily chores like milking the cows and seeing to the chickens.
Several things came up at once that prevented him from leaving town. Two oil field roughnecks burst into his office just before lunch with news that a bandit gang had hit six oil field crews. At the point of their guns the crooks relieved the work gangs of money, rings, watches and anything else of value. Two oilmen who refused to surrender their valuables were shot and killed.
“They won’t be too hard to find boys. I’ll put in calls to Shidler, Carter Nine and the other towns. When they start spending your money on funhouse girls and booze, I’ll go pick ‘em up. Then I’ll string ‘em up on top of an oil rig. It’ll be just like ‘Pistol Hill’ all over again. Once those yahoos start swinging by the neck, anybody else who had similar ideas will quickly forget about it!”
True to his word, within a week Don Jose and the other lawmen in the area had captured the hold-up men. Under the Sheriff’s direction the roughnecks hanged the crooks from working oil rigs. The decaying corpses bobbing up and down on the undulating rigs put an instant stop to the oil field hold-ups.
The second bit of trouble that day required immediate action. While he was speaking with the roughnecks, he got a telephone call reporting that Oil Can Slim had just gunned down a customer in the Bird Cage.
Excusing himself, he ran to the dance hall where he saw a lifeless body lying face-up, splayed across the rough plank floor in front of the bar. Blood streaming from his shirt had turned the sawdust around him red, giving evidence that the man had been shot at least once in the chest.
At a table by the side of the bar, with several of the house girls tending to him, was a visibly shaken Oil Can Slim. So bulky was the bartender that two seats had to be propped under him to allow enough space for him to be seated.
One of the girls was wiping his sweaty face with a wet bar rag. Another was holding a bloody cloth against his protruding belly which more closely resembled the water boiler of a steam powered oil rig than a human abdomen.
A third girl, red haired Jenny, put her hand up to block the sheriff.
“You just stay back Sheriff Alvarado. That dead city dude on the floor fired first. He got off two shots with a little pistol before Oil Can blasted him with the shotgun he keeps under the bar.”
“How bad are you hit Slim?”
“The little rat got me with a pocket pistol – probably a derringer,” wheezed the bartender, his ragged breath impeded by stabbing pains. “Doc’s on the way. I’ll be fine. I don’t think those little ‘22’ slugs went in more than a half a foot. It’d take about twice that to get to something important.”
“What happened?”
“I think the dude had been drinking somewhere else before he came to the Bird Cage. He swaggered in with an attitude and right away he started acting a little crazy. He muttered something about showing ‘those girls’. I guess he had trouble somewhere else.”
“Maybe he was kicked out of one of the other taverns. I’ll check on that later. But why did he shoot you?”
“Well Don Jose, he ordered a house whiskey and I gave it to him. After he finished it, he put a short-bit (a dime) on the bar and slid it towards me.”
“This is a two-bit bar Mister,” I informed him. “It’s not a half-bit bar. I figured he probably didn’t understand how things work in the West so I explained it to him.
“I patiently told him that there are two kinds of saloons in Whiz Bang; the Two-Bit Bars and the Half-Bit Bars. I said, ‘now young feller, in a two-bit bar a drink is twelve and a half cents. You pay two bits for your first drink and then the second one is already paid for.
“But if you go into a half-bit bar you pay a long bit (fifteen cents) for the first one and if you want a second drink it will cost a short-bit (ten cents). I stated again that the Bird Cage is a two-bit bar.”
“Did he understand what you were telling him?”
“He said he did sheriff. He shouted…‘Listen fatso, I know all about half-bit bars and two bit-bars. I had heard that the Bird Cage was a two-bit bar and I had no reason to believe otherwise until I drank that rotgut that you cut with turpentine. That’s why I gave you a short-bit!”
“I lost my temper after that insult Don Jose, and I told him to get out. He screwed up his face into a sneer and says “make me”. So I started after him. Before I took two steps his hand went to his vest and he yanked out a palm pistol. He emptied both his barrels before I got to my shotgun.
I was hit but I laughed at him as I pointed the 12 gauge at his chest. As he looked at me in disbelief while he was fumbling to reload, I gave him both my barrels.”
“Death by misadventure is what I’ll write in my report Slim. Go lay down in the back room now and wait for Doc. Those little 22 caliber slugs can actually do a lot more damage than you think. You were pretty lucky tonight.”
Author’s Note: Bit Coins at a Glance
Chapter Eight: Chalky
It was close to supper time when Don Jose guided his ‘Tin Lizzie’ into a space by the side of the Larkin barn.
“Come on in sheriff. I was just setting the dinner table” smiled Vickie, opening the front door for him even before he stepped out of his car.
“Don Jose, please come and sit with me while Mrs. Larkin finishes getting dinner ready,” said a much improved Chalky who looked nothing like the pale wraith who had collapsed in the dirt in front of Vickie’s house less than two weeks before.
“How are you feeling Chalky? You look good. I think you must like Mrs. Larkin’s cooking.”
“She saved my life Sheriff – her and Doc Galen. I’d do anything for her and Doc - and you too.”
“Why are you including me in that group Chalkie? I didn’t do anything for you.”
“No, but you did something for my Pa. He told me how you saved his life that day in Mexico. You saved him and about 200 other soldiers. Pa said he never saw anything like it. You got those men to charge right into the main force of…..”
“We did what we had to Chalky and I didn’t do it by myself. I told you before that your father was as much a hero that day as anyone.”
“Let’s talk of heroes after dinner men,” Vickie Larkin broke in, carrying a platter of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and fresh corn on the cob. “I heard you like country fried fowl about better than anything Don Jose. Now this won’t be as good as Ma Glockner’s but I think you’ll like it just the same. Chalky says it’s pretty good.”
The “Don” did like the chicken. He liked it so much that he began to check in on Chalky at the Larkin farm every few days during the rest of the summer and the fall. Always arriving at dinnertime, he was a welcome guest.
Growing faster than the tall grass the ranch was famous for, Chalky had picked up almost three inches in height and a good 35 pounds by the time of his fifteenth birthday in November.
Vickie Larkin threw a party for the boy. She invite
d Doc Galen, Don Jose, and Ma Glockner.
“Mrs. Vickie, this golden sponge cake is the best I’ve ever had. Even in Virginia they couldn’t top this!” exclaimed Ma Glockner.
“Well how ‘bout that Vickie,” laughed Doc Galen, “The best cook West of the Mississippi is taking her hat off to you.”
“I’ve got to say that I’ve eaten in some pretty fine establishments from Mexico to Montreal and this cake is the best I’ve ever had too,” vowed the Don.
“No disrespect to you Mrs. Glockner. You are a fabulous chef, but I think Mrs. Larkin is just as good,” Chalky offered tentatively.
“I think so too Chalky,” Ma replied. “If you ever want to make up a batch of those cakes to sell, I’d pay top dollar to have ‘em in my restaurant.”
“In the winter when there’s not much to do here on the farm I might take you up on that,” Vickie responded. “Let’s open the presents now Chalky.”
The birthday boy attacked a large box wrapped in the ‘funny pages’ from Sunday’s Tulsa World, the largest newspaper in Northeastern Oklahoma.
Happily tearing away the comics featuring Popeye, The Katzenjammer Kids, Little Orphan Annie, and Snuffy ‘Smif’; Chalky dug into the box and drew out a long, heavy motorist’s coat – it might be called a car coat today – as well as a pair of goggles, a scarf, a pair of driving gloves and a hat.
Puzzled, Chalky looked at Mrs. Larkin.
“There’s something else that goes with those clothes Chalky. It’s outside in the old stable.”
She gave the boy her late husband’s 1921 Model T – with a newly installed electric starter.
“Gawk would have wanted you to have it Chalky. The automobile is yours.”
Chalky was thrilled and would be even more so when he obtained his other gifts.
“I’ve got something for you son,” said the Don.
Chalky eagerly attacked the package offered by the sheriff and was astounded to find a cartridge belt and a holster, filled with a white handled Remington 1875 SSA, Single Action Army revolver.