Black Hat Jack

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Don’t nobody shoot now,” he said, “it’s me. Doors in here won’t hold as good as yours, and there’s four of us here, counting my wife. We want to come through.”

  “Then we got a goddamn hole in the wall to contend with,” Jack said.

  “It’s not like we can run outside and you can let us in. We’d be scalped and skinned before we could get halfway there.”

  “Oh, hell,” Jack said. “Come on through, but leave the hole small as possible. We got to plug it with something.”

  So the pick-axe worked again, and the hole started growing, and after about fifteen minutes it was wide enough for two men to come through, and then Olds pushed his wife through the hole like he was shoving a log into a furnace. “She’s still out.”

  “You hit her hard enough,” Bat said.

  “Naw, she’s mostly drunk, but it was a good punch, don’t you think?”

  “Try that with me,” Jack said, “and see how it turns out.”

  Between his previous comments and then, Jack had turned chivalrous.

  Mr. Olds slipped through. “Naw, I only like to fight people I know I can whip, if I take them by surprise. Me and her have tussled before, and I mostly win. Hell, she cut me pretty bad, you want to know.”

  “No one’s asking,” Billy Dixon said.

  When they was all through that hole, me and a few of the others went in there and grabbed some supplies, a barrel of water, some jerky and some bags of beans, and when we got that inside the saloon, we put sacks of grain that was in the saloon at the hole and pushed an anvil that was in the corner, being there for no reason I could figure, up against them. It wasn’t much, but it was something. They came through that hole, they’d have to come one at a time, unless they took time to break down the wall. If they started on that, we’d pull aside them sacks and start on them.

  “I Got A Hand In My Ass here was just telling us about some Indian magic, wasn’t you?” Jack said turning back to Happy Collins.

  “It’s I Got A Hand In My Hair, but Happy will do,” he said.

  “Go on with your story, Ass,” Jack said.

  Happy sighed. “Quanah has them all wound up tight as a cheap watch. He’s told them how this medicine man, this White Eagle—”

  “That’s your father-in-law?” one of the men asked.

  “No. My father-in-law is White Shield. White Eagle is a medicine man.”

  “Just tell it,” Jack said.

  “White Eagle said he has enough magic to take care of the whole of the Indian nations, except the Tonkawa. Nobody has much for them. Comanche, pretty much everyone else, thinks they’re toadies for the whites and are said to be cannibals. White Eagle told the others that he had a vision. That he went up in the heavens and seen the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit told him he was going to lead the Indians against the whites and drive them out. He even got the Comanche doing the Sundance, way the Cheyenne do. You know the Comanche, they are the orneriest bunch of warriors this side of Genghis Khan, but they went for it like a perch on a cricket. That Sundance, that is painful business. I have watched it a few times, but have never had any urge to do it. It is best seen from afar.”

  I ought to pause here and lay this out to some of you so you’ll know what he was talking about.

  What the Cheyenne called the Sundance was that they had bones or sticks stuck through their breasts, and then rawhide strands was tied to them, and then long strands to a pole that was stuck up in the ground. Some of them would take a buffalo skull and tie it to bones ran through the meat in their backs. The skulls made them heavy, made them fall back and pull against the bones through their breasts, those rawhide strands. They danced and chanted and pulled back until the bones or sticks snapped out of their chests, or some of the other Indians would tug on them, helping break them loose. During this time they was supposed to have a vision. I know I’d have one or two, and most of it would be trying to figure out how I had got talked into such a thing in the first place.

  “I’ll say,” Bat said.

  “He told them if they attack with full vigor, they will win and will not be bothered by your bullets.”

  “So far he’s not a shining light,” Jack said.

  “I agree,” Happy said. “I think that’s why they’ve backed off for the moment, trying to figure what to do, what went wrong.”

  Billy, who was at a window looking out, talking over his shoulder, said, “Which is which here, Hand In The Ass?”

  Happy didn’t even bother to correct, just sighed, got up at a stoop and made his way to the window.

  “Who is who?” Billy asked.

  I had eased over too, my curiosity being stronger than my common sense. It was quite a view, all them Comanche bunched up on a hill near a mile away. Happy studied the crowd up there, said, “One ain’t got no drawers on of any kind, just swinging it in the wind, painted yellow, that’s White Eagle.”

  “He doesn’t seem to have much faith in his own medicine,” I said. “He’s got some distance there.”

  “They have all sort of made for the rear,” Billy said, “and I know that ain’t from lack of courage.”

  “No,” Jack said, as he came over for a peek. “It is not, but they don’t like surprises. They see signs in deer shit and flying birds and most anything. If they think the sign is good and it ain’t, it pees in their soup. They have to take time to wrap their head around it. Right now, they’re up there figuring how they’re going to kill us. If they was mad before, they are more mad now.”

  “That’s right,” Happy said. “That’s how they are. But if they decide things was not just right, or White Eagle can tell them something that soothes the fact that they lost a few warriors, in spite of his assurances, they will come on, and it will be busy.”

  “Who is that next to White Eagle?” I said that as a big Indian on a white horse had ridden up, and was looking out on us.

  “That there is Quanah his ownself,” Happy said. “There aren’t any chiefs that run all things for the Comanche, or the Cheyenne neither, but him and White Eagle is close to it as of these days. They don’t like the way things are going and are trying to group up and have leaders. I note my father-in-law has hung to the back, even farther back than White Eagle. That was something that was said of him, from time to time. That he liked a good fight when he and his warriors outnumbered their enemies, but that he had a tendency to linger otherwise. He’s lingering. I don’t see any of the other leaders… Oh, wait a minute, there’s Robert. He is kind of hunkered down over his horse. He does that when he’s pissed about things. I figure he’s mad at White Eagle, and I figure White Eagle is pretty much aware he’s in the shit house now.”

  6

  Quanah Parker was part Comanche and part white. The son of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was stolen when she was a child, and became a squaw of a Comanche named Nocona, which made him a Scotch-Irish Comanche, though they wasn’t as rare as you might think. The Comanche was among the most common for killing everybody and their dog, cattle, and keeping only horses and children if they wasn’t babies, and therefore trouble. Them they would kill as quick as too many cats, banging their brains out or sticking them on cactus and such. They wasn’t a sentimental sort. But the children that was older they’d sometimes keep as slaves, or add into the tribe, as their numbers was declining due to disease from frontier folks and rifle shot, as well as folks like us killing their traveling grocery stores.

  Cynthia was rescued some many years later, having bore Quanah, and another son, if memory serves me, and a little daughter named Prairie Flower. She wasn’t all that happy about being rescued, though. She had been taken so young, she didn’t know shit about the whites, outside of remembering she was Cynthia Ann Parker. That didn’t stop white folks from making her stay with them, though. They was certain wasn’t nothing better in the world than being a white person, living the way they wanted you to live. I understood a bit of her concern, having been among whites as a young slave. On the frontier, I was better treated
, and by some folks a lot better. Buffalo hunters and mountain men was down right democratic compared to others, even Yankees. Therefore I can see her being more than a smidgen nervous amongst the whites.

  She run off a few times, but they wouldn’t let her go, caught her and brought her back. Her baby died, and then she died too. Starved herself to death. After she was taken, Quanah never saw her again. She died four years before this time I’m telling you about, and I apologize. I can’t seem to stick to anything straight away, and get distracted as easily as a cow by a blue bottle fly.

  So there we was, surrounded by hundreds of Indians, and we was now less than thirty, some having died in the wagons outside. A couple of the men that had been wounded wasn’t doing so well either, and there was a couple that was talking about putting on the sneak if we could hold until dark. There was also a man or two thinking about breaking out in broad daylight for the horses and making a run for it. This was something that got our best wishes, but not our support, especially that whole daylight runaway plan. Besides, the horses had at this point either been taken by the Indians, scattered, or shot in the barrage of gunfire that had gone on earlier. They wouldn’t be waiting politely for us in the corral.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t consider escape plans, but outside of tunneling straight down to China, nothing seemed better than those rickety walls, the hunters and those buffalo rifles, me and my pistols and that sweet Winchester.

  Well, there I was contemplating, thinking that the bullet I ought to save for myself ought to be that 4/10 load. I figured I put the barrel in my mouth and let it rip, there wouldn’t be any wounding and surviving, left to be worked over by the Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa. I would be missing a head. One thing I decided I would do, if time allowed, was shave my head. A good load from the 4/10 might make my part a bit too wide for scalping, but I didn’t want to leave my hair to hang on their scalps. I was a Negro with what we called good hair. I wore it long because it made me look like a real frontiersman, which I was, and the girls liked it. Also, it covered my ears, which was a little like two ends of a hallway with the doors thrown open.

  I pulled my knife and was going to get some water from one of the water barrels, and then I realized we needed all the water there was to drink, not wasted on me shaving my head. I put the knife away. I hadn’t no sooner done that then a barrel was dragged around with a dipper in it, and we all took turns. The man dragging it was the barkeep, and he said, “This here is it, boys. Unless one of you would like to go out to the well.”

  That got a short laugh.

  “They done cut up a horse or some such and dropped down it,” Jack said, “you can bet on that. Maybe they all peed in it. That’s how they work. How much whisky is there?”

  “Plenty,” the barkeep said.

  “That’s what we need,” Billy said, “a bunch of us drunk and trying to make a clear shot.”

  “I been thirsty enough I would have drank piss and thought it a treat,” Jack said.

  “I’m shooting myself first,” Bat said.

  “You say that now,” Jack said.

  “Ask me about it later,” Bat said. “See if the view changes.”

  I eased up by Jack, said, “So, you think this is where we toss in our hats?”

  “Could be. Never say never until never is done. Or almost done. You save a load for yourself, Nat.”

  “Planned on it.”

  “You know, that fellow ate all the peaches, it was me told him to go to the shitter.”

  “Everyone has to shit,” I said.

  “That’s true, but I told him right then. Maybe it was his pancreas.”

  “He’d have gone to the outhouse soon enough,” I said. “It’s just how it all shook out.”

  “Reckon so,” Jack said.

  Then Olds got our attention. He called out, “They come, bet you they come through the roof. That’s the weak part.”

  No one disagreed with that.

  Olds put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling. “There’s still a hole where that support pole cracked. I think I can ladder up there for a peek, see when they’re coming. My head will be between the support poles, and the sod is pushed up there, so I might get a look-see before they note me up there.”

  “All right,” Bat said. “But you ought to let me do it. I’m a bit more nimble than you.”

  “You ain’t nothing but a green kid,” Olds said.

  I looked around for Mrs. Olds, see how she felt about such concerning her husband, but she was still on the floor asleep. The Indians could be scalping her and cutting off her toes, and she wouldn’t have known no difference. She was drunk as anyone I’d ever seen and snoring like wind blowing through the mountains.

  Olds got a Henry rifle from the stock against the wall, and Billy pulled a ladder from behind the bar, and propped it up.

  “I’ll just go up there for a gander,” Olds said.

  “I ought to do it,” Bat said. “I’m small. That ladder looks rotten to me.”

  “I’ve climbed that ladder many a time and it’s held,” Olds said.

  “That may be why you ought not to climb it anymore,” Bat said. “Your fat ass is bound to be wearing it down.”

  “Oh, go diddle yourself,” Olds said.

  The ladder was propped and a man held either side of it, me being one of them, and up went Olds, that ladder squeaking like it was in pain. But up he went, hoping to see better what was behind us, as there was no window on that side.

  He reached the top, gently poked his head through the hole in the sod, between the two support poles. After a moment he said, “My, my. I can tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that,” a man called up.

  “There are a lot of fucking Indians out there.”

  “Thanks for that bit of news,” Jack called out from the window.

  “I can also say, for whatever reason, they ain’t behind us. I figure they got some braves tucked out there in the grass somewhere, but I don’t see them. Why ain’t they surrounding us?”

  “Why should they?” Jack said. “When they charge down off that rise and out from the trees, they’ll flow over us like water. We can run for it, but without horses, we wouldn’t have a chance. They’re doing fine. They can wait us out if they like.”

  “They won’t do that,” Happy said. “They are in for the kill, and are hot for it. I think they are holding back a little due to some disappointment. They was all supposed to be untouchable. Meaning bullets wouldn’t hit them. They are now uncertain, and the medicine man will have to make excuses for the ones that got killed. I saw him this morning looking for a sign, which meant he knew he had got himself on the edge of a cliff with them predictions. I was figuring that right then, before I was asked to run like hell. He gave the braves instructions on how they were to conduct themselves, and if he can prove someone killed a skunk, which is bad medicine when on the war path, then he can claim they are the ones threw off the magic. Medicine man has not only got to come up with predictions, he’s got to plan excuses for when things go wrong. It’s part of the job.”

  Olds called down. “Still a lot of Indians… Wait now. Here’s something. Two riders coming this way, way off, and they ain’t Indians.”

  “Well,” said Jimmy, “they’re skint.”

  Right then the ladder squealed and a rung cracked, and down come Olds, and he hit the ground in such a way his gun went up under his chin, and obviously being set on a hair trigger, the jar set it off, sending a round through chin and out the top of his head. He didn’t move a inch after that. Wasn’t no kicking or moaning, he was dead as a bag of hammers.

  Jack turned from the window at the sound of the shot, seen Olds on the ground, men gathering around him. Jimmy said, “Well, he’s out of it.”

  Bat scurried up the ladder without weapons, avoiding the missing rung, and when he was up there, Billy said, “Here go, Bat,” and handed him the Henry Olds had dropped.

  I glanced over to Mrs. Olds, but she wasn’t
aware her husband was dead. She wasn’t aware of anything. For all she cared she was dead.

  If it seems we sort of took this all in stride, we didn’t. It wasn’t that we wasn’t caring, but we had learned to put that sort of thing in our vest pocket, or most of us had. We could save our upset feelings for when we could afford them.

  Bat yelled down, “Those two are coming Hell-Bent-For Leather, but I don’t think they’re going to beat the Indians. There’s a wad of them coming around to the side of them, on their left.”

  We heard a couple of shots then.

  “There’s ten, maybe twelve Indians on them. Oh, shit. One of their horses stumbled… Ah, hell, the other tumbled over it. I think one took a shot, and the other is up, got a broke leg way it’s standing. Those two’s scalps are good as taken.”

  “I’m going out after them,” I said. “Open them doors.”

  “Son,” Jack said. “You can’t.”

  “I can and I am.”

  “Niggers can run,” Jimmy said. “Only one of us got a chance of doing it. I only knew two niggers couldn’t run. One of them had a bad leg and the other had a wrenched back. No offense, Nat.”

  “A little taken,” I said.

  “They’re to the right of the doors, and way out there, not so far you wouldn’t be able to make it easy enough if you were on a picnic and there were no Indians,” Bat said. “I’d stick, Nat.”

  “Open the doors and keep your eyes and ears on,” I said.

  They pulled the planking and the doors came open. With rifle in hand, away I did run.

  I am a fast runner, but I made a note that if me and Jimmy didn’t get killed, I was going to punch him in the mouth.

  Went for all I was worth, I can assure you of that, and it was fairly flat there, so I had a mighty smooth run, considering the circumstances. I knew that Bat wouldn’t fire at those Indians near that pair until necessary, because when he did, they might note I was coming. Right then they was concentrated on sending arrows and shots at them two out there on the ground. Soon as they noticed me, he would commence if he was thinking clear, and maybe not even then. I might be out of reasonable range. But when I started back, and with them coming after me, because I assumed they would, he could cut down on them then. I had no doubt he would.