For gunslingers, you traveled around and shot folks. See, in those days, it weren’t nothing for a man to travel from town to town and try to establish himself as the cock of the walk. I can only remember those red, watery eyes.Īnd of course, the big hole in his forehead put there by The Chalupa. To this day, my memory will not give me a clear picture of Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan. He carried a filthy snot rag with him that always seemed stuffed in his face. No sooner would some cowpoke or gunslinger or gambler light up a hand-rolled tobacco stick, than old Jimmy’d start leaking at the nose and eyes. You could say it was an unfortunate ailment for a man who spent his entire life in the confines of a saloon. Well, that was on account of the way he got to snorting and snuffling in the presence of tobacco smoke. Now, you might be wondering why he was called Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan. Bridewell that run the upstairs whorehouse. Bridewell’s Saloon, the best and most famous card player at said establishment, and none other than the husband of the same Mrs. Card players of fame from all over come there to try their hand at beating Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan, who was at once the owner of Mrs. You see, in Dodge City at that time, Miss Bridewell run the most fantastic and profitable saloon in all the Kansas Territory. Bridewell’s Saloon and put a bullet between the eyes of Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan. But I was there in Dodge City the night The Chattanooga Chalupa won big at Mrs. No one in this shit-hole town believes me, ‘cause I been drunk for about sixty-seven years now. I don’t rightly know where he hailed from, originally.
There were stories of his winning Montezuma’s Gold in Mexico City the same night a Caribbean princess dropped to her knees in front of him and begged him to kill her father and usurp the throne. Some say he was the bastard child of a whore in Nuevo Laredo who abandoned him to be raised in a culvert by armadillos. But I know for a fact that he was, more than anything, a lover of women. The Chattanooga Chalupa is remembered for his gambling skills and his quiet viciousness with his drawn Schofields. The Chattanooga Chalupa (Pardon me, boy…) This one was inadvertently deleted, so I’m reposting. BB