by Rob Grant
Carton was puzzled, but not enough to stay and waste time parleying with these range riders. He nodded them a miserly greeting, then set off over the street to the saloon again, gun case under his arm. Behind him, he heard the jailhouse doors creak as the first stranger stepped out. He could feel the burn of their eyes on his back as he mounted the steps. Then the friendly smell of smoke and stale liquor hit his nose, and he forgot all about the newcomers, his concentration being fixated on other things.
There was a burst of laughter from the card-players at Jimmy's table as he walked up to the bar, the product of some whispered slight, but Carton didn't pay it a never-no-mind. There was a chorus of clucking, and he ignored that too.
He wiped a clean space on the bar and set down the case. 'What do you figure, Hope? These ought to be good for a coupl'a bottles of throat-burner.' He flipped the case open and the gleaming guns illuminated the barmaid's face.
Hope looked up at Carton. 'You're trading in your best guns?'
'Why not? Ain't no use to me no how. Couldn't shoot and hit a whale's belly if'n I was Jonah himself.'
'But Will, these are your special guns. Ain't nobody can use them 'ceptin' you. Look...' she flipped the cylinder open. 'There's no chambers. No place to put the bullets.'
Carton felt like he'd been gut shot. He stared at the split-open gun, his face creased up like a toothless old squaw sucking a cactus. What in hellfire use were a pair of pistolaroes with no holes for bullets? He tried laughing it off. 'Well, they got to be worth something. Call 'em safety guns, let kids use 'em for drawin' practice.'
Hope put the revolvers back and slid the case over to Carton. 'Keep 'em, Will. I'll let you have a bottle if you keep the irons.'
'Sounds fair to me, little lady.'
Hope thumped a bottle on the bar.
'Obliged to you, Hope. You're a madonna of mercy. I'll be paying you back, mind, soon as I pass by this trail agin.'
'Don't be a fool, Will. Ain't gonna be no "agin". Soon as you leave, those Apocalypse boys are going to flatten this town, and you know it. Won't leave a splinter of wood big enough for a roach's toothpick.'
'That ain't so, Hope,' Carton said, but he wasn't fooling even himself. He fixed his gaze on the bottle, so she wouldn't catch the lyin' in his eyes.
'It is too so. Ain't nobody here got the wherewithal to stand up to the brothers. Or the guts, or the skill. You're the only one could take 'em, Will Carton. The only one.'
'Maybe once upon a time, Hope. The old Will Carton. But he's deader than coffin wood seven feet under, and that's a plain fact.'
Hope's voice softened, so he could barely hear her. 'If you could just remember... if you could just try and remember.'
'Remember? Remember what?'
But Hope had turned away. The feather in her headband was all aquiver, and her shoulders were heaving kind of gentle, like. Carton wanted to reach out and touch her, but it wouldn't have been right. He was abandoning her, sure enough. But what did she mean? What in blue tarnation was he supposed to remember?
He slid his eyes up to the bar-room mirror. All he could see was scowling, mocking faces. Why should he be getting hisself all fired up on account of these folk? He didn't owe them nothing. Not one of them was prepared to stand by him. Correction: just one. A nine-year-old boy with more guts in his dungarees than the whole bunch of 'em put together. Well, hang 'em all. If the Apocalypse boys wanted to torch the place, let 'em have it. It wasn't Will Carton's problem, not any more.
He reached out for the bottle of hooch, but as his fingertips touched it, there was a deafening crack and it whisked itself up in the air.
Carton span round. The liquor bottle was dangling on the end of Jimmy's bullwhip. Carton made a grab at it, but not quick enough; Jimmy yanked it just out of reach. 'You want a drink, Sheriff? Why don't you come and take it?'
Carton looked around and saw only wicked glee on the public's faces. Suddenly, he felt tired, real tired. 'Come on, Jimmy. I got no quarrel with you. Ain't no call to be making me look foolish.'
Jimmy dangled the bottle lower. 'Jump for it, Sheriff. I just want to see you jump.'
Carton grabbed for the bottle again, and Jimmy yanked it away. He grinned at his cronies. 'Come on, now. You can git higher than that.'
Then a voice, calm and dangerous, said, 'Leave him alone.'
Every head in the bar swivelled to the saloon doors. It was the stranger who'd spoken, the steamboat dude. He stepped into the bar room slow. His two compadres rolled in behind him.
Jimmy's grin didn't flicker. Why should it? Him and his boys outnumbered the strangers three to one. 'Just having' me a little fun, Mr Swanky Pants. Ain't no call for you to go getting yourself all shot up over it.'
You couldn't really see what happened next, only figure it out afterwards. The stranger didn't seem to move, but Carton heard a thud behind him, felt a wind whistle past his cheek, and the bottle dropped neatly into his hand. He turned his head. A throwing knife was still wiggling in the bar post by his head.
Jimmy's teeth were still locked into his grin, but the rest of his face had abandoned it, and was heading south towards a scowl. Jimmy was fast. His gun actually cleared leather before a knife caught the billow of his sleeve and pinioned his shooting arm to the wall. His left hand didn't make it to the handle of his second gun. He was pinned to the wall like a rare butterfly. He looked at his splayed arms, then up at the stranger, hate burning in his eyes. He opened his mouth to curse, but the stranger stabbed his blade into a red ball on the pool table, and he flipped it clean into Jimmy's mouth so neat, it lodged there and stopped the cursing.
Jimmy looked over to his table, eyes aflame, and grunted like a bear in a trap. Three cowpokes stood up. They smiled at the stranger, but it was not an appealing smile. They didn't share a full set of teeth between them. They flexed their hands by their gun handles.
Will Carton was thinking this had been a nice show, but the strangers had better be thinking about leaving now. The knifeman was fast, maybe faster than any gunman he'd ever seen, but there was three of them facing him, and neither he nor his compadre in the ten-gallon hat were wearing a pistolero.
It was the stranger in the Mexican outfit who stepped up. The one with the mountain-lion grin. He laid a kid leather glove on the gambling man's chest, and his face was saying, 'You've had your fun, friend. Let somebody else get their amusement, now.' The gambler doffed his hat, and swept it forward like he was Sir Walter Raleigh or someone, and let the Comanchero take the stage.
He was a strange bird, this one. The three gunmen were still twitching their hands by their pistol butts, but he didn't seem in no hurry to draw against them. Instead, he produced a pair of maracas and treated 'em to a short burst of Mexican dancing, with footwork faster than a barefoot boy on a blacksmith's forge. When he was done, he flung his arms back and broadened his smile as if he was waiting for applause.
The gunmen looked at each other with amused disbelief. One of them said, 'Well, kid: I hope for your momma's sake your shootin's as fancy as your dancin'.'
But the talking was a feint, and before it was over, all three men had their hands on their guns, and for Carton it was like it was all happening in slow motion. He saw the guns clear the holsters, saw the three of them crouch and sweep their left hands over to cock back the hammers; heard the clicks. And still the Comanchero hadn't moved, and Carton was thinking that this good old boy had danced his last hat dance. And he saw the trigger fingers tighten and the hammers fall and the puffs of smoke before he heard the gun blasts. But somehow, the Comanchero had gotten both his guns out and fired off three in reply, and Carton was thinking at least the kid would take a couple of them out with him, but nobody fell, and then there was a clattering sound, like coins falling to the floor.
Then there was just smoke and silence, and everybody was waiting for someone to keel over, but that didn't happen, and how was that possible, that all six bullets could miss their mark?
And Carton was the first to
realize it. The kid hadn't missed. He'd hit exactly what he was firing at.
He'd shot their bullets out of the air.
The Comanchero spun his weapons so they were just a blur, and slotted them back into the holsters like they'd never left home. He flung his head back, rapped a mean tattoo on the bar-room floor with his metal-tipped heels and stood, still as a stock on a Winchester. 45, smile agleaming.
The three gunmen seemed to have lost their appetite for shooting. They didn't look at each other, didn't even bother to holster their guns. Just dropped them right there on the floor and walked out of the bar, like maybe they'd found religion, and got to thinking perhaps a farmer's life wasn't such a bad deal after all.
There was a clump as Jimmy finally managed to spit out the pool ball, but he didn't appear to feel much like talking.
The gambling stranger looked at Carton and flicked his head back towards the doors. Well, Carton figured they'd earned theirselves a parley. He gathered up his bedroll and his gun case, and clutching the bottle to his heart, walked past the moose head and out on to the sidewalk. The gambler turned to Jimmy and tugged the knives out of his sleeves. He slipped them back inside his jacket, tipped his hat and pushed his way through the doors. The Comanchero favoured a bunch of dancing girls over by the piano with a salute, and stepped out after the others.
The hombre in the ten-gallon turned to follow, but a big cowboy who looked like he turned a living strangling bears stood up and blocked his way. Jimmy stepped up beside him. 'Your compadres seem plenty handy with their hardware. What about you, Tex?'
Ten Gallon had a curious accent. Boston, maybe, or someplace east. 'I don't carry weapons,' he said. 'And my name's not Tex, actually.'
The bear strangler let his gold tooth show. Jimmy wrinkled his nose. 'Well now, Tex. Wonder if you could settle a little dispute for me and my friends here.' Five cowboys scrawped back their chairs and formed a rough circle around the stranger whose name wasn't Tex.
'To be brutally frank, I'm in rather a hurry. Some other time, if it's all the same to you.' Ten Gallon moved to walk by, but the bear strangler shoved him back.
'Won't take but a minute of your time, Tex, 'Jimmy said.
Out on the sidewalk, Carton saw that the stranger was in trouble. The gambler caught his look and said, simply, 'He can take care of himself,' and carried on crossing the street. Carton stayed. Figured this ought to be worth watching.
Ten Gallon rolled his eyes. 'All right then, gents. What's the dispute?'
'Well, it's a kind of a musical dispute. Dispute is: when Bear Strangler here rips your little pecker off, are you gonna hit top A with your scream, or will you go all the way to top C?'
Ten Gallon looked down at the floor. He brushed some dust from his chaps. 'Well, indeedy. That is an intriguing conundrum. One that may very well tax to the absolute limits the brain power of a bunch of cretinous, foul-breathed inbreeds like yourselves, whose mothers were romantically linked to diseased bullocks.'
The bear strangler frowned. Jimmy's voice turned nasty, like. 'Now friend, you wouldn't be goin' around insulting our mommas, would you? Only, a feller could get hisself right dead doin' a thing like that.'
The stranger beamed at him brightly. 'Perhaps I can make it a little less obscure for you. Your mothers,' and he pointed to all six of the cowboys in the circle, 'each and every one of them, shagged pigs so frequently, their underpants smelled like smoky bacon.'
The cowboys didn't move for him right then. Just stared in disbelief, like it wasn't possible he could be saying what he was saying.
'Furthermore,' he went on, 'your mothers were so peculiarly ugly and undesirable, the pigs had to be blindfolded before they could achieve an erection.'
With a foaming roar, the bear strangler lunged. Ten Gallon stepped aside lightly and cocked his foot, spinning the screaming giant around the axis of his own belly, and then chopped at his neck on the way past, decking the big man out cold. He dipped his shoulder all nimble so that the chair in the hands of the cowpoke behind him just wafted past his ear, planted his elbow in the cowpoke's stretched belly, expelling all the air from his lungs and the fight from his spirit, and then snapped the arm back, flattening his nose like a cow-pat.
Another cowboy grabbed the neck of a bottle and lurched forward, growling.
Ten Gallon didn't even seem to heed the bottle; just struck a boxing stance and dealt a fast flurry of punches to the bottle-waver's face, so quick it was hard to keep count. While the man was staggering, his head still jerking back and forth rhythmically as if it had developed the habit, the stranger inserted his fore and middle fingers up into the stunned man's nostrils and swept him over his head so he crashed into a card-table and lay softly moaning among the splintered wood, the playing cards and the gambling chips.
Jimmy and the two remaining cowboys were holding back. 'OK, boys,' Jimmy said, keeping his eyes on the stranger. 'Let's take him all at once.' But before they could rush him, Ten Gallon turned his back to them, grabbed the backrest of the chair and kicked his legs up behind him, one, two, like some fancy ballet step, rolling his spurs up the middle of the centre cowboy. The first set of spurs split his pants and shirt wide open, the second carved a deep, neat dotted line up his body, from groin to forehead.
The stranger wheeled round. He hadn't even broken sweat. He'd flattened four men in a little under fifteen seconds. Nobody, as yet, had actually managed to touch him. Jimmy and his remaining crony weighed up the odds, and two to one didn't seem worth the wager, so they backed off, nice and easy, like, palms upturned.
Ten Gallon stepped out of the bar, dusting his hands needlessly. He beamed at the astonished Will Carton. 'Marvellous,' he said, brightly, and they walked together over to the jailhouse.
When they got there, the Comanchero was sitting on Carton's chair, boots on his desk, sombrero pulled over his eyes. The gambler was looking through Carton's drawers. Carton didn't mind much. He'd taken everything he valued, and, in any case, it couldn't be said to be his office any more. He flopped into the remaining chair and pushed back his stetson. 'Well, boys,' he said, 'you sure learnt them varmints. Be a fragrant day on a skunk farm 'fore Jimmy and his critters bother me again.'
Ten Gallon turned to the gambler, eyebrows akimbo in exasperation. 'Why is he talking like that? He's really beginning to get on my B Cups.'
The gambler said, 'You still don't remember us?'
Carton unplugged his bottle and took a libation. 'Like I say. Your features mind me of someone, but I'm danged if I can place 'em.'
'My name's Lister,' the gambler said.
'Lester?'
'Lister. Dave Lister.'
Carton hoisted the bottle. 'Mighty pleased to be acquainted with you.' He sucked a toast.
'Doesn't that name ring a bell?'
Carton thought about it. 'Seems to me I did know a Lister once. But it was a long time ago. Like in another life I only dreamt about.' He scoured the wasteland of his memory, but there was nothing meaningful he could find. Just a hazy, blurred recollection of a name. He slapped his thigh and stood. 'Well, it's been mighty dandy meeting you boys, but I have to be hauling my sorry hide out of here 'bout now. I got to be gone by high midnight, or else the buzzards'll be fightin' the lizards for my gizzards.' He stuffed the cork back in the bottle, gathered up his belongings and strode to the doors. He turned and nodded. 'Adios.'
The one who called himself Lister said, 'We can't let you leave town.'
Carton sized them up. Against the three of them he stood less chance than a snake on a mink farm. He edged a small step nearer the doors. 'And why would that be, friend?'
'If you leave, you're dead.'
Carton stood still, but his eyes were moving plenty. 'How does that figure?'
Lister wiped his hands over his face. 'Look, it's going to be hard for you to swallow this. Why don't you sit down and listen?'
Carton hesitated. 'OK,' he nodded, 'but just five minutes, no more.' He moved as if to head back inside, and then
jerked his head up so he was looking over Lister's head. Quiet, like, he said, 'Now I don't want to concern you boys overly, but a rattler just crawled in through the window bars behind you. Don't move a nostril hair.'
They froze, like he expected, and in the millisecond when their eyes all flicked back to look for the snake, he was out of the doors and tearing down the street towards the dangling sign that told passers-through they were now leaving Existence.
The newcomers burst out on to the sidewalk. Ten Gallon started chasing after him, but Carton had a fine start. Lister said, 'He's not going to catch him.'
The Comanchero stepped into the street. He drew out his pistol, crooking his left arm to rest the gun on and steady his aim.
'Now!' Lister shouted, 'You've got to stop him!'
The Comanchero seemed to be aiming at the hardware store.
'What are you doing, man? He's over there! He gets past that sign, he's gone!'
The Comanchero squeezed off a shot. It pinged off a bathtub hanging outside the store, zigged across the street and hit the barber-shop pole, zagged over and snicked the stirrup of a tethered horse, and then ricocheted over to the dangling town sign, severing the rope it was suspended from. The sign plummeted earthwards, thumping the running sheriff plum on the head. Carton pitched forward and lay still as a rooster who's just serviced his harem.
The Comanchero blew off the smoke and flipped his gun back home.
Ten Gallon gathered up the senseless Carton, hucked him over his shoulders like a deer carcass and brought him back to the jailhouse.
The next thing Carton knew about he was drowning under some immense wave. He shook himself alert, just in time to take another jugful straight in the face. His hands went up to protect himself. 'Boys! Boys!' he spluttered, 'that's unnecessary cruel.'
The Comanchero was smiling. 'Tell you the truth, buddy, you could do with another gallon or twelve. I don't know if you've noticed, but you're smelling a little ripe.' And he treated Carton to another jug.
