Canyon of the Long Shadows

by Carl Dane

  “And why are you taking his side?”

  “I ain’t. My point is that there ain’t no precedent unless a law’s been used by the court, and as we don’t have no courts here and the only judge is a phony little pissant who pissed on his robe, Gillis’s argument don’t hold water any better than the phony judge does.”

  Gillis’s goons were getting restless. They’d been hired to rough up a marshal, not listen to a mountain man lecture them on jurisprudence. Can’t say I wouldn’t have felt the same way, to tell you the truth.

  In any event, I was getting tired of the entire piece of street theater.

  “Gillis,” I said, “you’re orchestrating an attack on a sworn peace officer. That’s a felony. It’s also stupid. That adds up to felonious stupidity, and I’m a heartbeat away from arresting you for it. And maybe I might throw in bribing a judge. Carmody saw you hand Weed a fistful of money at the delta fork.”

  “That’s impossible,” Gillis said.

  And then he realized that he’d just made a tacit confession, but he made a quick recovery.

  “Impossible that a man of Judge Weed’s integrity would take a bribe, and equally absurd that I would be involved in something like that.”

  “Carmody could see you just fine. He’s from a long line of mountain ancestors. We’re not sure of his family tree, but apparently one of them was a goat because he likes to climb up high and keep an eye on things. Good quality in a deputy. He was on the roof of the bank when Weed rode in on the trail through the delta.”

  The town’s one and only bank had been built at the fork of two rivers, an unlikely place for a bank because it regularly flooded. More improbably, the bank was rebuilt on the same spot after it burned down, a conflagration that was partly my fault. But that’s another story for another time.

  “I did not bribe that judge – Mr. Weed.” Gillis spoke slowly and decisively, wagging his finger in that earnest manner employed by experienced liars.

  “He ain’t no real judge anyway,” Carmody said.

  “He is a real judge and you are not real lawmen,” Gillis said. “You were appointed by the madame of a whorehouse who claims that she inherited her seat from the husband I suspect she killed anyway.”

  He was close. Elmira hadn’t killed her husband; her daughter did. That, too, is another story.

  Gillis liked the sound of his own voice and he was picking up momentum, like a locomotive headed downhill.

  He stopped wagging his finger and poked it in the air.

  “These men and I have formed a committee to reconstitute the rule of law in this town. You are not duly sworn officers and we demand that you stand down. Isn’t that right, men?”

  A gigantically fat fellow with a flowing beard mechanically said, “Yeah.” Some kid with buck teeth and red hair and little eyes nodded. And a thin fellow in the back spit and rolled his eyes and spoke up.

  “Can we just bust him up now and get this over with, Mr. Gillis?”

  I’d suspected from the start that Gillis’s plan was to lay a group beating on me. I didn’t think they’d risk gunplay because even in a more or less lawless territory, killing a lawman – even one of dubious heritage – could still be trouble. And if they wanted to kill me outright, why not a simple rifle shot from down the street?

  Of course, there was always the possibility that I’d shoot them, but that’s whey they’d swarmed me on the pretense of registering Gillis’s protest. And maybe they’d figured that as a peace officer – of doubtful provenance or not – I’d feel constrained by the law, or some moral code, not to capriciously ventilate them. And they had a point.

  But the matter was coming to a head. The odds were against us, and the one on the ground had regained consciousness, struggling to a sitting position.

  I had no professional or ethical qualms about keeping a downed opponent from getting up and rejoining the effort to dismantle me, however, so I kicked him in the head.

  He flattened back out again.

  “And Gillis,” I said, “I told you that I’d asked about those town bylaws you swear by. They also prohibit carrying a gun within the town limits. I’m not really sure where the town limits are. Nobody seems to know. But seeing as how we’re smack in the center of town, I figure they must be in force here.”

  And with that I used a short left hook to the temple of the next-closest goon. He was out before he fell, and I snatched his revolver from his holster as he crumpled.

  The remaining five cowboys closed in.

  Gillis stepped back to watch.

  Chapter 6

  I kept my hands clasped in front of me at waist level. It was a peaceful-looking posture, but it hid the fact that I was tensing with my left hand, trying to slash out from my body, but restraining the movement of my left hand with my right.

  When I let go of my left hand, it moved in an explosive arc. You can strike like a cobra by holding and releasing in that manner, and the edge of my hand chopped the guy to my left cleanly across the throat. It took a second to register, and then I saw his eyes go wide with shock and pain. I forced myself to direct my attention elsewhere; the last thing you want to do in my business is stop to admire your work. He would be out of commission for a while and I had other business to attend to – to be precise, to my right and about six feet away.

  I turned sideways and snapped out a kick to his knee. The knee is a vulnerable part of the body, what with that little plate of soft tissue that crumples up so conveniently when the edge of a hard boot slices into it. The fellow I’d kicked, the skinny kid who urged Gillis to get on with my beating, had been taking a step forward when I crushed his knee and the timing was perfect. He stepped onto a leg that would no longer bear weight and collapsed face-first, his hat falling off in the process. I kicked him square in the top of the head, the place where a bundle of nerves join together, I’ve been told.

  He jerked a couple of times and went limp, face-down.

  There were four of them left and two were trying to get in back of me, but they encountered a formidable barrier in Carmody, who was a wrestler by inclination.

  One of Gillis’s goons had grabbed Carmody from the rear and cinched his arms around his waist. Carmody snapped both their bodies backward, which was probably the very last thing the guy who’d grabbed him from behind expected. Instead of falling flat on his back, at the very last moment Carmody arched upward, driving the attacker’s head and neck into the hard dirt of the road.

  Carmody was up in a second, agile as a cat, and it occurred to me that it was genuinely awe-inspiring to see a man that large move so quickly.

  The guy he’d pole-driven head-first into the dirt, I surmised, probably would not get up anytime soon.

  Suddenly the odds were three to two, not counting Gillis, who had gone pale and was backing away, unsure of whether to stay or run.

  The most formidable remaining goon, very fat but thick-necked and broad-shouldered, with a beard and long hair, surveyed the situation. He apparently decided that the odds were still with him, and he put his head down and charged me.

  There’s only one foolproof response to that, and it was taught to me by a fighter who’d spent some time in Siam, where they fight with knees and elbows as well as feet and fists.

  I grabbed two convenient handfuls of his hair and beard – it wasn’t clear where one boundary left off other the other started – and jerked his head down. At the same time, I brought my knee up to his face. If you practice, and I had, you can put your whole body into the movement and generate enormous power.

  The wick behind his eyes flickered out instantly, but his momentum carried him forward. I was off-balance and on one foot and he shoved me backward, falling on top of me. He was doughy of build and heavy as a horse, and I was pinned under a mass of flesh that oozed and flowed as I pushed on it, as though his unconscious body was keeping up the fight on its own. I couldn’t get any leverage.

  Now there were two of them left, other than Gillis, who had backed away some m
ore and looked as though he wanted to cry.

  The two looked at Carmody and did not like what they saw. He has one of those powerful backwoods builds, long and rangy with thick wrists, ropey veins, and huge hands.

  And that’s when the one with the buck teeth began reaching for his gun. He moved hesitantly, like somebody does looking while over their shoulder when they really don’t want to see what’s behind them.

  I was afraid a gun would come out. As much as I wouldn’t have minded plugging him, gunfire would add a new and unwelcome dimension to the friendly little beating they had planned to lay on us, both a legal dimension and an escalation of the type of revenge each party would seek after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried.

  Carmody was just disposing of the other conscious attacker – holding him by the collar and alternatively backhanding and forehanding him into insensibility – and if Bucktooth went for his weapon, Carmody would have no choice but to drill him.

  I wanted to do something but was still pinned under an elephant-full of flesh that flowed with a mind of its own. I couldn’t buck him off and was losing my breath from trying. My feet were free, but I was too far away to kick with any effect. I was, however, able to hook my heel in back of Bucktooth’s and press my other heel into the front of his knee. That pushed him straight back and he fell flat.

  Carmody finished off his opponent with a smart backhand and reached down, seizing Bucktooth’s gun hand.

  “Do you really want to travel down this road?”

  Bucktooth stiffened and he had something of a spasm as he tried to pull his weapon. His eyes grew wider as the slow realization overtook him: Carmody’s grip was like something set by a stonemason.

  Carmody backhanded him into unconsciousness.

  As strong as he was, Carmody had to heave the elephant three times to unearth me from blubbery captivity. As we pried the monster off me, he made strange sputtering noises with this lips.

  Now we had a dilemma. First, it’s not easy to carry seven extra revolvers. Carmody and I filled up our pockets and our waistbands and tucked a couple inside our shirts, but we clanked when we walked. I had a fleeting worry that we might set one off by accident if we dropped it.

  Second, we had seven thugs in various states of incapacitation who were gradually rousing themselves. At most, we could squeeze one extra person into my cell, and the guy with the beard would probably need his own individual barn. We could chain them to trees or something – it wouldn’t be the first time we’d employed that particular manner of detention – but doing so would entail a host of other inconveniences. We decided to keep their guns and let them walk away as soon as they were willing and able, assuming they would have the sense to stay peaceful and avoid another beating.

  Finally, there was the matter of Gillis, who was frozen in terror and made no effort to run. Locking him up would be trouble because he was, as far as I could determine, well-connected; putting him behind bars would be his ticket to political martyrdom, which I sensed he would enjoy.

  Still, he had orchestrated an attack on a marshal and deputy and that’s worth a couple days of penance, I concluded.

  Carmody agreed, and we marched him to the cell, stopping only to pick up the occasional revolver that dropped out of our pockets and waistbands on our way. I tensed up every time one fell.

  Carmody steered Gillis into the cell, where he would share about thirty square feet with Judge Percival Weed.

  “Mind your step,” Carmody said, leading Gillis in. “Floor’s a might damp and slippery.”

  Chapter 7

  As was usual, I woke long before Elmira and watched her sleep until it came time for me to forcibly pry her into consciousness.

  She was a beautiful woman. No kid, to be sure, but neither am I. Her hair was like spun precious metal, part gold, part silver, and a trace of platinum. Her eyes were big and round, blue as a mountain lake, and childlike in the sense that they appeared to be perpetually delighted, seeing everything anew for the first time.

  I rather doubted there was one facet of human degradation she had not witnessed by now, and I was prepared to be enraptured by the incongrous innocence of her eyes as soon as she managed to open them.

  Elmira had been raised by Apaches who had killed part of her family but adopted the rest. Such selective slaughter and domesticity within one group of captives certainly didn’t make sense to my way of thinking, but I’ve learned that reasoning is a process of a culture and things don’t necessary conform to any universal laws of logic because there aren’t any.

  Elmira’s daughter, Cassie, was half-Apache. Her father was killed by Comanches a year or so before Elmira ran away and returned to white life, first as a prostitute – as she tells it, the only option available to a woman who had been a long-term guest of the Apaches – and later as a partner in the Silver Spoon with her late husband. Cassie had lived with Elmira until a year ago. Cassie had killed her stepfather, Bannister Adler, Elmira’s husband, because he’d repeatedly raped her, something I found out in the process of investigating the murder of Marshal Billy Gannon. Cassie then went to live with an Apache chief named Taza, which I knew would be rough road but one suited for her; she was a tough girl with many demons that overtook her mind when she had too much time to think about them.

  As I say, there is little in this world that Elmira’s eyes haven’t seen.

  “You’re awake,” she said, noticing that I was watching her.

  I didn’t think that needed confirmation, so I let it pass.

  “I’ve been thinking about Jefferson Gillis,” she said.

  “Kind of a strange thought to begin the morning with. But go ahead.”

  “Maybe it’s not fair that you put him in jail.”

  I sat upright.

  “Why in hell not? He tried to have me and Carmody beaten up, and from the looks of it, maybe beaten to death.”

  “Well, maybe that was at least partly your fault. He has a right to be a political activist. Things just got out of hand.”

  “Elmira, he’s active in trying to put you out of business.”

  “I don’t think that’s the reason. At least you can hear him out and not toss him behind bars. He does have good ideas. He was in the Spoon early yesterday and told the girls he favors women getting the right to vote. Did you know that just about five years ago Texas was considering putting the women’s vote in the state constitution? But it was killed in a committee or something, whatever that means. He said if he were there he would have made sure it went through.”

  I leaned back on an elbow and contemplated the coming excursion though some dangerous territory.

  “First,” I said, keeping my tone neutral, “he wasn’t there, and never will be there, if ‘there’ means being at the capital making laws. He’s a con man and an opportunist and has nothing to do with government other than currently enjoying the municipal hospitality of the Shadow Valley jail.”

  “But his ideas are good. He cares.”

  “Elmira, he slaps your girls around when he gets drunk. He’s nibbling around the edge of some crooked deal to seize your land. But you say he cares?”

  She yanked the covers up to her neck and spun away from me, taking all the covers with her.

  “You’re just jealous.”

  I was, but not in the way she suspected.

  I was and remain truly envious about how some people lie and cheat and still get people to like them.

  Or vote for them.

  Wish I knew how to do that.

  So I turned in the other direction and went back to sleep, even though I was cold.

  Chapter 8

  Later in the morning I sent a telegram to State Senator Thaddeus Munro, my one and only important friend in politics. He’d been a major in my unit, an Academy man with a classical understanding of tactics and strategy but an open mind toward what you might call nontraditional warfare.

  Munro liked straight talk, which seems to me to be at odds with his present career,
but despite his bluntness he is not without his charms and unique graces.

  I received a reply late in the afternoon.

  TO HAWKE, MARSHAL

  YOU HAVE REALLY STEPPED IN SHIT STOP WEED REALLY IS SORT OF A JUDGE AND POLITICALLY CONNECTED STOP BUT IF YOU AGREE TO DO BIG FAVOR FOR SUPREME COURT JUDGE YOU CAN HANG THE LITTLE FUCKER FOR ALL WE CARE STOP HARBOLD WILL RIDE TO YOUR PITIFUL LITTLE TOWN TOMORROW WITH DETAILS

  MUNRO

  Chapter 9

  Munro didn’t say when Tom Harbold would arrive, but I knew that Austin was at least a two-hour ride, and so he’d probably be there by late morning.

  When I stopped in at the Spoon after my morning rounds, Elmira was already packing lunch for the prisoners.

  She had a habit of picking up strays, a trait I ordinarily admired. Down-and-outers could always put the touch on her for a free meal, and if the doctor wasn’t around she’d take it upon herself to patch up whomever I’d whacked over the head that day. She’d tended in a motherly way to Bucktooth, the last of the Gillis gang to remain horizontal, yesterday in the bar. All the rest of Gillis’s thugs had recovered the ability to walk upright and melted away to whatever place lowlifes go to brood and plot revenge, but we had to pick up and carry Bucktooth because he was blocking traffic and the stage couldn’t get through.

  Carmody’s backhand had seriously rearranged the kid’s brainpan and opened up a deep gash on his cheekbone. Bucktooth kept issuing some sort of mewling plaint as he sat on a barstool and Elmira swabbed turpentine on the cut. It sounded like waba-waba-waba-something, but I couldn’t make it out and didn’t care.

  Elmira clucked her tongue throughout the process and fixed me with a look of cold reproach.

  The same look I was getting as I sat and watched her stuff bread into a wicker basket.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t understand why you’re mad at me. Those goons were hired muscle who were going to put our lights out. And it was Carmody who scrambled that hayseed’s eggs, not me.”