Carmody 6

by Peter McCurtin

  Sam took the bottle and didn’t even ask if I could do with a snort. Even for a man who drank bourbon like mother’s milk, the Mexican firewater must have tasted awful. Sam drank it anyway, and the wrong way to drink tequila is to gulp it. Sam whacked himself in the belly to help a belch get started.

  “Dear Lord, how can you drink that stuff? Why do they make it, why do people drink it?”

  It would take a Mexican, or somebody like me, to answer Sam’s question.

  But after the burning and belching stopped he liked it a lot. Suddenly it was time to sing “The Succotash Song,” one of Sam’s favorites. Tequila takes people in different ways; some sing, others commit murder. Only a man as old as Sam would have remembered the words to that one. It was about a dude who married an Indian—and what happened on their wedding night.

  We rode through the darkness with the echoes rolling back at us. Sam was loud and merry, but you could almost hear the fear gnawing on his guts.

  At the house, still singing, he slid off his horse and lay gasping in the dirt. He was snoring hard when the three women came out like angry clucking hens and carried him inside.

  McCarty put his pony away and came back to me. “You know it ain’t right for him to do this, Carmody.”

  I went inside without giving him an answer. The best time to argue with Sam was when he was feeling worst.

  Chapter Seven

  We reached Mariposa City about eleven the next morning. If Sam had been real eager we could have made it hours earlier.

  At four he got up roaring for a bottle, and when I came out of my room Sam was already downstairs knocking over the furniture. At that point he was still running on last night’s booze; by five thirty he had taken on a whole new load.

  “Bugger breakfast,” he roared when I said something about coffee. “Ain’t got time for that. Got to get started in a minute.” To show he wasn’t just talking, he yanked the heavy matched Colts. Twenty years back the big pistols would have come out pretty fast. But Sam was still fast; drawing against an old woman with rheumatism he would have won hands down.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d look more fear-provoking with his pants on. They say Wild Bill once fought an early morning gun battle dressed in nothing but a quilted dressing gown; anyway, Sam in any clothes was no Hickok.

  I found a cup of cold coffee in the kitchen and brought it in. Sam said, “Now don’t you go stuffing your belly, Carmody. We got to be going.”

  I said it was ten past four. “That’s A.M. Still not light, Sam.”

  Sam was huffy and, I guess, scared. He said he could tell the God damned time as well as I could. He got a bottle and a glass and sat down at the head of the table in his big chair. Putting his fat hairy hands on the polished wood, he turned them this way and that. Looking at his hands didn’t make him feel any better. “Guess it is kind of early,” he said. “You eat your fill. I got to set things in order. Wouldn’t be fair, the men didn’t get paid. You too.”

  I wouldn’t like that either. “Want some advice?”

  Sam said no. He was probably the heaviest man in New Mexico, but his No didn’t have much weight behind it. So—asked or not—I said what I thought. Everything I said was tooled so as not to raise his hackles.

  I put it several ways. Everybody in the Territory and some beyond knew Sam Blatchford; knew how he’d hacked a big spread from nothing but sand and rock. So there was nothing more he had to prove. No more than General Phil Sheridan had to personally take on Sitting Bull to prove he could kill Indians.

  He could have said no to the food Graciela brought in. That would have cleared his end of the table. He didn’t have to grab the plate and spatter the wall like a colicky baby in his high-seat. The shake in his hand, when he held it out, turned him into a mean-mouth old man.

  “You just don’t want to lose your job, Carmody. Gun jobs getting scarcer all the time, they tell me.” Fuzzy spit showed at the corners of his mouth; the spit gets fuzzy when the mouth is dry with fear. I let him get it all out. “You were just scratching around in Mexico when I took pity … ”

  Sam was sort of an old friend—not close but old—and now he was drunk and scared, but you can’t let any man shit on you with his mouth. If he’d been younger I might have thrown the pot of near-boiling coffee in his fat face before I walked out of there. He had put my money, a month’s gun wages on the table, and I picked it up. Another man with more of the bravo in his make-up would have hit him in the face with the money. After twenty years on the prod I knew better. Whether the parting is friendly or foul, I never leave without the money.

  I pushed back the chair. “Be good, Sam,” I said.

  Coming in with his hair parted in the middle and plastered down with water, McCarty heard what I said. The grin lines deepened in his face and he sat down like he’d just been promoted from supply corporal to full general. There must have been a rush of those stomach juices that make a man want to eat. He reached for the farm-fried potatoes.

  He looked up from the platter, first at me, then at Sam. Sam, tight in a chair with arms, was swaying like a man trying to wade across a river in full flood. “I’ll stick with you, Mr. Blatchford,” the kid said. “Not for wages neither. You giving the orders, me carrying them out.”

  Broken veins showed red in Sam’s face when he looked up from the whisky slopped table. Both hands holding the edge of the table helped to slow down his sideways drift. He looked up at me. “Sit down, Carmody. What I said … ”

  He didn’t finish it, and that was all right with me. “Glad you called me back, Sam. You pay top wages.”

  Sam said, “Don’t try to slick me, you Texas shit-kicker. I guess I know you all right. A favor—no more arguments. I got to face Saxbee. You’ll ride with me?”

  The kid had lost interest in the fried spuds, so I took them away. I forked meat and roped in some hard-fried eggs to keep it company. “Sure I will,” I said to Sam.

  McCarty, seeing his general’s stars fading away, was nerved up enough to make a protest. “We don’t need any paid help, Mr. Blatchford.”

  That was taking his nerve further than was safe, so the kid stopped to see how I was taking it. About three hours sleep was all I got the night before, and that early in the day I didn’t feel much like killing anybody. “Yer a darlin’ boy, Tex,” was all I said.

  “Mr. Blatchford,” the kid started again.

  Sam let out wind like a horse with a worm-swollen belly. “Why don’t you not talk, son. Appreciate your kindly feelings—just don’t talk for a spell.”

  Yeah, I thought while I chewed my meat, Sam was sort of an old friend. Living like I had for the best part of twenty years, you could count my friends—any kind of friends—on the fingers of one hand. How did fat Sam Blatchford fit into that? Kind of an old friend, is the best answer I can give.

  “Got to get some coffee inside me,” Sam said. By then it was past six; the hands were long since fed and doing what work there was to do. Usually when a ranch begins the day’s work there is not too much noise. Men rolled out early, no matter how long they’ve been doing it, have a sour mouth in the morning and not much use for talk. On this morning they hid their jumpy nerves by jawing too much.

  Sam kept his word and drank half a cup of black coffee. It would have taken a gallon of coffee and a dip in a frozen creek to get him sober. Sober or drunk wouldn’t make much difference. He was fat and scared and, unless I was wrong, Saxbee was thin and scared. Both men were long past the age for gunplay.

  Sam asked me if I’d take a bundle of money outside and give it to Dink Westfall to pay off the men.

  When I came in again the kid was arguing for a double-cross, and I was surprised to find Sam listening, which meant he was more rattled than I thought he was. Naturally, McCarty tried to make it sound like good sense. Doing them dirt before they did us, was his line of argument. “Saxbee’ll have a rifleman set up to kill you, Mr. Blatchford,” he said.

  Sam looked a little sheep-faced
when he saw I heard what was said. So he was kind of loud for my benefit. “Not that way, Tex. Got to take my chances.” Still showing off for me, he added, “Got to deal this one off the top.”

  McCarty didn’t look at me. He said, “If Saxbee makes a wrong move I’ll kill him sure.”

  “Not before I do,” I said.

  All this palaver happened four hours before we got close to Mariposa. Sam, riding in the spring wagon, slowed us up. Showing how ready he was to take a bullet in Sam’s defense, the kid rode ahead of the wagon. The whole thing was one stretched-out piece of foolishness, but that’s what the world is made of.

  I should have taken my easy-won wages and rode away from there, but I didn’t. Lazy, I guess.

  Whisky, sun, jumpy nerves had soaked Sam with sweat. After the first hour—and Sam never was too fussy about soap and water—you could smell him at ten feet. “Would never have taken the wagon if my animal was all right,” he said, his way of explaining for the tenth time why he was too drunk to sit his horse.

  That close to Mariposa I was watching for our welcome. “Got to have that animal vetted for worms,” Sam said. I raised my hand and Westfall and the boys spurred their horses and took up positions front and back of the wagon. I stayed close to Sam. Westfall, the man who was going to kill me later, was to watch for the kid if I wasn’t close enough to do it. Westfall’s job was to shoot the kid in the back if he tried to start his own private war. I knew that was what McCarty wanted more than a hungry man craves food. To make a name for himself, to put “brother” Billy in the shade.

  At first we rode spread out in a skirmish line. The deal with Saxbee called for no men on rooftops, and if they were there I didn’t see them as we got closer to the edge of town. That didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  We started in from the north end of town just as Sam took a final drink and stuck the unfinished bottle in the side pocket of his dusty black coat. A rider watching from the shade of the livery stable galloped his horse down to the Kit Carson Saloon when he heard us coming. More than twenty horses were hitched at the rail, and maybe their riders were inside drinking down courage with Noah Saxbee, and maybe they were watching us from behind rifle barrels.

  In less than minutes we were a third of the way down the main street. Mariposa wasn’t the smallest, deadest town I’d ever been in, but it was pretty high on my list. Any year now the desert would creep in and take over the town. “Far enough,” I told Sam. Westfall got his men dismounted and into position on both sides of the street. McCarty took a notion to stay in front of the wagon and I had to tell him twice to move around to the side.

  Now, barring a double-cross, it was Sam’s show. I wondered how he liked it. Across the street from the saloon Deegan’s office was closed up; Saxbee had worked out that end of the deal. I could see where Deegan would be glad to get this business finished. A hot wind blew in from the desert, and bulked heavy on the wagon seat Sam took another pull at the bottle and yelled at Saxbee to come out. He looked and sounded like an old bull buffalo, but I had the feeling he wouldn’t break down and cry if Saxbee turned up missing.

  Saxbee came out through the swinging doors trailed by his men. His twangy voice carried easily in the silent street. He snapped a finger and one of his men handed over a bottle. Saxbee’s stringy neck gobbled like a turkey as the whisky went down.

  He wiped his mouth and gave away the bottle. “No need to yell that way, but then you always did have a big mouth, Sam. You ready?”

  Sam said he was rarin’ to go.

  “Took you long enough to get here,” Saxbee commented like the sour old Yank he was.

  “I’m here now, Noah,” Sam said.

  Shaking loose his foreman’s arm, Saxbee stumbled getting down from the boardwalk—and that made two drunk old men in town that morning. Saxbee, skinny as a chicken, walked like a strong wind was trying to knock him over. It took him a while to get to the middle of the street; in the bright sun he blinked like an old ram caught in the glare of a locomotive light.

  “Going to shoot sitting down, Sam?” Saxbee’s long-jawed face twisted into a nervous grin.

  Sam got down, moving like a man bogged in deep mud, and when his boots hit the street he had to hold on to the side of the wagon. I took the reins and moved the wagon to one side, then set the brake. I stayed there. The kid moved to the other side; Dink Westfall nodded when I looked over his way.

  No matter who got killed, the deal was winner take all. No more shooting and the men with a dead boss could hire on with the one who survived. If they both died, then everybody would be out of a job.

  Saxbee surprised me by saying, “You call it, Carmody.”

  Suddenly it wasn’t funny, the two old fools ready to kill for something that could have been settled over a drink.

  “A count of three,” I said, looking from one to the other. They nodded.

  I got to three and for old men their guns came out fast enough. Sam was a mite slower than Saxbee, and I don’t know how he was able to get off the first shot. It missed by a yard and when Saxbee steadied his gun and fired, the bullet came closer to killing me than anybody else. They lurched and swayed and kept firing.

  Firing fast, Saxbee threw five shots at Sam; the last one broke the bottle in Sam’s pocket and you should have heard him howl. Saxbee was drunk all right. With the empty gun dangling from one hand, he slapped his bony chest with the other and told Sam to do his worst. Sam fired and Saxbee fell in the dirt.

  “Merciful Christ!” Sam roared and threw his gun away. Deal or no deal, I knew there would be shooting in a minute. I yelled at Sam to get down, but he paid me no heed. When he got close to Saxbee he roared like a man being played a dirty trick. He pointed at Saxbee and roared, “You dirty dog! What in hell are you laughing at?”

  That’s what Saxbee was doing, flat on his back in the middle of the street, cackling to beat all hell. When I first saw the shaking I thought he was dragging himself through death’s door. Then the crazy laughing started, and when Sam got through gaping and cursing he was laughing too. Suddenly that broke the tension and we were all laughing—everybody but the kid. He didn’t like it one bit. I guess from his rat-brained point of view it was a downright shameful way to conduct a gunfight. Dink Westfall, right behind McCarty, said something I couldn’t hear and the kid’s hand dropped away from his gun.

  “You, Sam—I’m laughing at you,” Saxbee twanged, making no effort to get up. “You’re drunk, Blatchford. Rotten stinking drunk is what you are.”

  “You’re the one that’s drunk, you skinny Yank.” Sam had to hold his belly to keep from splitting a gut. “Saxbee, you couldn’t hit the side of a church.”

  Raising himself on his elbow, Saxbee looked at the dark stain on Sam’s coat and pants. “Christ, I didn’t hit you, did I? Wasn’t meaning to hit you.”

  “Couldn’t hit me if you tried. You sure ruined good whisky.” He reached out to set Saxbee on his feet, and for a minute I thought they’d both go down in a heap.

  Watched by us, by the town people that had come out of their holes, the two old men staggered over to the saloon. Sam said the drinks were on him. No, Saxbee argued, today was his treat. The hands, faster on their feet but no less thirsty, beat them to the swinging doors. A player piano started banging out a jerky two-step and you could almost hear the whole town letting out a long breath, now that the tension had unwound.

  Still not liking the ways of peace, the kid drifted after the two old men. Westfall, serious about his job, stayed close behind. I caught up and said I’d watch McCarty from here on in.

  “Maybe somebody ought to watch you,” Westfall said, and went away to look after his horse.

  Short of something real unusual, the war looked about over, and the boys from both ranches sort of avoided me when I went inside after the kid. That didn’t bother me a bit, because that’s always how it is when you hire out your gun in a range war. As long as trouble is threatening they don’t mind having you around, because you’re a pr
ofessional and know how to handle it. Mostly, before and after, they see a hired gun as a man who lives off death—and who can argue with that?

  Sam and Saxbee were at a table by themselves, a bottle and glasses between them, and with all that backslapping you’d think they had never traded a hard word in their lives. Saxbee’s voice was drowned out by the clockwork piano, but Sam’s roar came through the noise. He was asking, “How in hell did this foolishness ever get started?”

  Chapter Eight

  I sat at a table, poured a drink but didn’t touch it till I rolled a smoke and got it lit. Unless the truce turned sour, which wasn’t too likely from the looks of things, I was fresh out of a job. That was fine with me. Besides, I had enough folding money to raise a slight bulge in my pocket, and thinking about money I was heartened to see the first of the whores coming downstairs with that greedy look in their eyes.

  When he got tired of standing around like a bump, the kid came over and sat with me without asking if he could. That was kind of strange when you think about the set-to’s we got into during the past few days. But that’s how McCarty was—peculiar.

  Fired up with free booze, some of the boys were dragging the whores through a wild polka. McCarty stared as if he had never seen people dancing before. In his moment of courage, the sheriff had called him a misfit, and there was no better name for the kid.

  “Must be a big disappointment to you, Tex,” I said. “The way things turned out today. Don’t fret, McCarty, you’ll get yourself killed one of these days.”

  I wasn’t prodding him just to be mean. As soon as I felt like it I’d be moving on and I wanted to give him some thought before I did. That much at least was owed to Sam.

  “Not by you I won’t,” the kid stated.

  “You keep saying that,” I said. “Guess you’re right though. It could happen if I stayed around. How soon will you be moving on? You were heading for Colorado when you got here. I think that’s a good place for you to go.”