by Sean Platt
They pulled up and walked toward the constable’s office. On the front door was a sign that read, Gone for chili.
“Chili?” said Stone. He laughed at the absurdity. “Is this a joke?”
Clint, already feeling skeptical after his brush with chili-believing lawmen in Nazareth Shiloh, followed a large hand-drawn arrow on the sign that pointed to the left. There, beside the constable’s office, was an eatery with its name writ above the door: THE LIBERTY VALANCE. Below that: Best chili in Mateo!
“This is absurd,” said Clint. “The lawmen leave in the middle of the day to engage in some bizarre ritual?” He looked at Whitney. “Head out, Whitney. You don’t want San Mateo justice. They’ll insist on simmering your man for six hours in the mysterious seven spices, and never arresting him.”
Whitney climbed around Buckaroo and hopped down to the street.
“Fine, I’ll find the constable myself,” he said, heading for the saloon door. “Pleasem and thankoo for the ride.”
Stone looked at Clint, then raised his eyebrows. Despite his mockery of the chili notice, Stone was curious. Chili cults perpetuated false hope, but Stone, Clint, and Edward were all hungry. Bizarre rituals or no bizarre rituals, the travelers were in need of pie and brew. Stopping in at the Valance wouldn’t hurt.
Clint gave Stone a nod.
“Hey Whitney,” Stone called.
Whitney turned.
“Stay your feet a moment. We’ll go with you.”
Whitney smiled, then came back over and helped Buckaroo tie his horse to a post. He watched Stone hitch his, then managed to refrain from reminding the gunslinger to tie his own mount.
“I can’t fit in there,” Edward said, nodding toward the building’s batwings.
“So you’ll stay out front, then?”
Edward shook his head. “Nar. Mai and I will check out the town. Won’t we, Mai?” His horn glowed and Mai’s inert body rose from the travois, gently coming to rest on the unicorn’s back inside of a protective pink bubble. He looked at Clint. “Now that your wretched carcass is off of my back, the lady can finally ride. Are you comfortable, Mai?” Using the bubble, the unicorn made her head nod. Then, in a squeaky falsetto from the side of his mouth, he said, “Yes, Edward! I’m quite comfortable, thankoo!”
Clint gave the unicorn an annoyed look, but he and his partner had lived through too much seriousness and sorrow lately. It was hard to be irritated by any levity, no matter how inappropriate.
“Oh, relax,” said Edward. “She’ll have fun. Bring me some chili.”
Clint laughed. Hard. He didn’t know what had broken his armor — Edward’s quip or his absurd mention of chili — but in an instant the dour gunslinger had gone from annoyed to giddy. For years, he’d been near his breaking point. Maybe he’d finally tipped past it, into maniacal dementia.
“I will stay with you, sire,” Buckaroo said, addressing Edward. “This town is still far from The Realm and equally far from anywhere we’ve stitched seams. These people will likely have more questions about me if I go in than they will for Mister Whitney.”
“We’ll bring you some chili too,” said Clint, still giddy.
“I’m not hungry, sir, but thankoo,” said Buckaroo.
Clint laughed harder — and then, with a scintilla of panic, suddenly found himself unable to stop. So after a moment, Stone took him by the arm and pulled him into the crowded saloon, shoving Alan Whitney ahead of them.
They found the town constable at a table with six other lawmen, all wearing stars. The constable was a greased sow’s worth of fat and spoke with a long and lazy drawl. He was unshaven and jawing on a fatty steak when they arrived, dripping grease down onto the front of his shirt. The lawmen didn’t look much more promising than the constable; all were either fragile or slow. Clint, whose mood sobered when he’d seen the state of law enforcement in San Mateo Flats, estimated that he could kill all seven before one touched his sidearm.
While Clint stood by like a chaperone, Whitney told the constable about his encounter outside of town. He started by mentioning a robbery, and the constable listened politely. Then he described his assailant and the table fell hushed. The party to the left, sensing the mood at the constable’s table, fell into a hush. The table to the right caught the quiet, and then it spread through the room like a disease.
“I don’t have jurisdiction out there,” the constable said. “And if you didn’t see the bandit’s face, you couldn’t identify him anyway.”
“Of course I can identify him!” Whitney blurted. “He was as tall and thin as a railpost. Easily six and a half feet tall, skinnier than that man there. He carried a sidearm, but the weapon he hit me with was like a ball on a stick. Heavy alloy on one end, abutted to a black handle. He attacked alone, save for the strange rustling in the weeds.”
“I’m sorry,” said the constable. “That could be anyone.”
“That’s Independence Lee, that is!” blurted a man at the next table, unshaven and with a single snaggletooth sticking out of his upper gum. His hat was brown, beaten, and torn. “Constable, that’s Independence! He’s the only one what carries a mace!”
“That’s it,” said Whitney, pointing. “A mace. Caved my skull in with it. I’d be dead if not for this man’s unicorn.” He touched Clint’s shoulder, and Clint resisted an urge to snap the man’s arm from his body.
At the mention of a unicorn, the lawmen looked from one to the other. Then they looked at Clint and noticed for the first time that he wore two guns, both with large, seven-shot cylinders. The constable’s eyes found Clint’s, but he silently refused to acknowledge the true he’d just learned of the gunslinger’s identity. The presence of a Realm marshal complicated things in a thousand different ways.
“You don’t know that it’s Lee, Marley,” the constable said to the unshaven man. “He has no proof.”
“Proof? You act like I’m accusing you. Aren’t you the law in this town?”
“Yar,” said the constable, “but…”
“But nothing,” said Whitney. “Your office is next door. Let’s head over there and I’d like to file a report, and…”
“Mister,” said the snaggletoothed man, “you don’t ‘file a report’ on Independence Lee. You stay away. And if you face him, you prepare to kill him … or die yourself.”
“Probably the latter,” said a man beside him. Then he looked into his mug of brew and added, “So far, anyway.”
“Where’s the law in this town?” Whitney railed, raising a hectoring finger. “What kind of lawmen are you? I’m an attorney, sir, and let me tell you, I…”
But at that moment, a server slid a bowl filled with a red substance in front of the constable. Stone grabbed Whitney’s arm to stop his speechifying and said, “Is that chili?”
Whitney quickly recovered. “… I will not stand by lawlessness! You have a bandit who assaults people that you seem to already know about, which means you’re turning a blind eye to…”
Stone mopped the fresh sweat from his suddenly beaded brow. “It is, isn’t it? It’s… holy guns; it’s chili!”
“It’s Fool’s Chili, you fool,” said Clint.
“I can smell it. All seven spices.” Sly Stone’s voice was wet and full of yearning. He stood on his toes, craning over the table and the rich, red bowl like a vulture over prey. His eyes were wide, mouth smacking in a way that had to be subconscious.
“Stand down, Stone,” said Clint. “We’re here to do a job and to help Mr. Whitney to…”
“It’s true! It’s always been true!” Stone crouched over, reaching for the bowl. The constable pulled it back. “Providence, it’s true! I can smell it! Let me have it, Constable. Let me have just a little…”
“Get your own!” the constable snapped, eyeing Stone’s huge ball of orange hair.
“Constable,” said Whitney, “I want to file my complaint, and…”
“GIVE ME THE CHILI, FLATFOOT!” Stone screeched, pulling both shotguns from his holsters and aiming
them at the constable. Movement stirred from behind and Stone swung one of his guns around, now pointing one barrel at the terrified constable and the other at a table of men who were, now, cowering low, ducking below their table.
Clint put a hand on Stone’s gun, pointed at the constable to remind Stone who he was threatening, then pushed it slowly toward the floor. But Stone shook him off and turned a wild gaze to the gunslinger. Forgetting all semblance of himself, he yelled, “THEY HAVE CHILI! THEY’VE ALWAYS HAD IT!”
“Put down your guns, we…”
“What is wrong with you people?” Whitney stuttered. “This Lee, he…”
“Here!” spat the constable, shoving the bowl forward and spilling it onto the plaid tablecloth. “Here! Take it! Take the dagged chili!”
Stone leapt for the bowl, but a fast hand snatched it from him. Clint looked down to see who’d taken the chili from Stone and realized he’d done it himself. He could smell it. It wasn’t Fool’s Chili. It was chili true.
“Oh, so now you believe?” said Stone. “GIVE ME THE CHILI!"
Clint flicked at Stone’s gun barrel with his free hand. “Or what, you’ll hit me with your pop guns?” He brought the bowl closer to his nose and deeply inhaled. “Smells good, Stone. I’d say this has eight spices.”
Stone started to bring his gun around, but it was too big, too clunky. Clint had his pistol out, cocked, and aimed as Stone attempted to shift his grip. He poked Stone in the forehead with his iron and said, “Go ahead. Make my day.”
“I WAS THE BELIEVER!” Stone yelled, his eyes bugging out.
“With hair like that? I don’t think so.” Clint raised the bowl to his mouth and touched his upper lip to the fragrant red liquid. A tiny drop entered his open maw and detonated pleasure in his brain.
“SANDS TO YOU!” Stone kicked his foot upward, meaning to strike the precious chili and spill it — if he couldn’t have it, nobody could — but Clint was too fast. He wasn’t going to actually shoot Stone, but he wasn’t going to let him have the chili, either. He lowered his gun and fired a shot at Stone’s boot, knowing it would fly harmlessly between his toes with only a burn. The shot was on target but threw off Stone’s kick. His boot landed in the gunslinger’s groin.
Clint almost collapsed, but was still holding the chili. He winced and staggered back, gripping the table behind him. Men scattered. Then, fighting seething pain, he raised his gun and whacked Stone across the head.
A server girl who had missed the commotion came out from the kitchen carrying a tray laden with at least eight bowls of steaming chili, then chose the wrong moment to say, “Chili up!”
Stone, seeing that Clint hadn’t faltered, was frozen on the floor with a gun in each hand. His eyes flicked toward the server. Clint, still holding his pistol and fighting discomfort, saw Stone’s eyes and followed them.
Stone’s eyes said, That’s my chili.
Clint’s eyes said, Like sands it is.
Stone lurched to his feet. Clint lunged. The girl flinched, nearly spilling her tray. Clint caught Stone before he could rise and they fell to the floor. The first bowl flew from Clint’s hand to the floor and shattered like the world was ending. A wave of rich meatiness flowed toward them, coating Clint’s sleeve. Stone licked at it, moaning.
“I’ll kill you for that,” said Clint.
“Try it,” said Stone.
They paused, staring at each other. The girl was frozen, and backing up, looking at the men. The other patrons of the Liberty Valance watched the fight, frozen. Time stopped.
“I’m going for the chili,” said Stone.
The door exploded and something gigantic bowled through the saloon, upending tables, scattering diners and sending them diving, causing the girl to trip and spill her tray, which rained like meaty blood around the room.
It was like a bomb had gone off — a massive white bomb, yelling about chili while shooting bolts of purple and blue light, causing cataclysmic damage. Whitney’s problem mattered nar, and neither did Independence Lee. Nothing mattered.
The saloon held its breath and waited for the tumult to end.
CHAPTER THREE:
THE BANDIT AND
HIS MURDER
“Once again,” Clint said, “we’re sorry.”
William O’Hanorhan, the Liberty Valance’s owner, glanced sidelong at Clint, then turned to Sly Stone, then finally to Edward. The unicorn had indeed been too big to fit through the door, but once he’d broken in (leaving Mai outside with Buckaroo) and trashed the place in a fit of chili lust, Edward figured he might as well eat his fill of hot, steamy chili. So now the unicorn was sprawled on the floor, half on his side, complaining about how uncomfortable it was to sit that way. But he couldn’t stand unless he wanted to keep clanging his horn on the saloon’s decorations — most of which were hanging portraits of a thin-faced man who O’Hanorhan explained the saloon was named after.
“Yar,” said O’Hanorhan, unwilling to totally commit himself to accepting Clint’s apology. Edward had already fixed everything they’d broken and had even magicked the chili squeaky clean from the floor, but O’Hanorhan still didn’t like them. Outsiders, he seemed to think.
After a long glance, O’Hanorhan returned to the kitchen. Edward, not to be out-ignored, announced that he’d had his fill of both chili and local hospitality (unlike Clint, Edward hadn’t apologized) and stood, broke through the doors again, fixed them again, and left to rejoin Buckaroo and Mai. He said over his retreating rump that he had to explore a hunch he’d been pursuing anyway. Now that he’d eaten, he said, Clint could “Be dumb with the dumb townies” on his own.
“You have some bridges to mend if you’re aiming to stay, I’m afraid,” said the fat constable after O’Hanorhan and Edward had left Clint, Stone, and Whitney alone with the table of lawmen. The constable’s name turned out to be Paulson, and he wasn’t seeming any more brave or competent to Clint as time passed.
“Yar,” said Clint.
“It’s just chili,” said the constable. “What sort of fool has a bowl of chili set in front of him one day and gets some stupid idea?”
“We’ve nar heard rumors of chili were true,” said Clint.
“Tomatoes. Peppers. Spices. Meat. There’s really nothing special.”
“You’re not from the deep Sands,” said Clint.
“I mean, my mother used to make it every…”
“We get it,” said Stone, wiping his lip with a bare wrist. He was trying to sound annoyed by the patrons’ overreaction to their group’s irrational response to what had turned out to be a rather common bowl of hot food, but his bliss was true. He was on his fifth bowl of chili, which placed his consumption behind only Edward, who’d eaten thirty-four.
“Look,” said Paulson. “We’re simple folk, not used to such commotion. We’re not familiar with outsiders. Your man here —” He gestured toward Whitney, who astonishingly didn’t care about the chili and hadn’t had any. “— what he yammers on about? That’s just not something we talk on here in San Mateo. Yar, I’m sure he came afoul of Independence Lee. He’s the only man what carries a mace and is tall and thin as such. Dressed all in black, weren’t he? Yar. But Lee and his murder? They’re our cross to bear. A nest we don’t poke.”
“Maybe we could poke it,” said Clint. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered why he’d said them. They had a man to pursue, yet it seemed that over and over, they kept getting sucked into other people’s problems. Curse of being a lawman true, he supposed.
“Nar, you won’t!” Paulson said, pointing an accusing finger at the gunslinger. “You’re not from here. You don’t know how it is. You thought chili was worth killing for? Wait’ll you see Independence Lee. You don’t understand San Mateo. Things is different here.”
“We could make them different, is what I’m saying,” said Clint. “Lee couldn’t touch my unicorn.”
“Yar,” said Paulson. “But what on his murder?”
“Exactly,” said Stone.
“There will be no murder,” Whitney declared. “This is my complaint, and I won’t have vigilantes on its account. I am a man of law. Not ‘law’ like you, though. I’m law and order. You’re law and disorder.”
“Strange thing to say to those who saved you,” Stone said. “Maybe you’d rather we left you with your ‘orderly’ head wound to die.”
Whitney held out a pacifying hand. “And I appreciate your help, but towns like San Mateo will never prosper so long as they’re lawless. Man killing man?” Whitney shook his head. “That’s no way to live. You need men like your Lee to nar start trouble — and for that, you need law.”
Someone cackled behind Paulson. It was a man playing poker at the next table. He turned, then nodded to Stone and Clint. He said, “Sirs? No offense, but you don’t know Lee and his murder. He ain’t gonna abide no law. When he attacked you — did that go lawly-like?”
Whitney just stared.
“Did he seem like a man what’d be upset by a fella like you?” The man laughed, tickled by something in his head. “Mister, I’ll bet you told him you’d see him in jail. Did you?”
“I told him I’d have him arrested for assault.”
“How’d that go?”
Whitney said nothing, but he’d already told Clint, Edward, Stone, and Buckaroo how it’d gone. During the entire encounter, Lee seemed to have three goals. Arranged in order from most important to least, the goals seemed to be insulting Whitney, causing chaos and inflicting pain on Whitney, and, as a by-the-way, robbing Whitney.
“Mister,” said a man at the poker table wearing a hat big enough to be a twenty-gallon, “did you meet his murder?”
“What are you talking about?” said Stone.
“His soldiers. Did they get at you?”
“His gang?”
The table looked from one man to another, then laughed. “I suppose you could call ‘em that,” said the man with the big hat.
“Nar,” Whitney said. “I heard noises in the bushes, but saw no men.”
“Nar, you wouldn’t have.” Paulson rubbed at his chin. “Had you seen them, you’d never see anything else ever again. Lee is crueler than cruel, see. The foulest kind of man, who loves to cause pain more than he even loves his own pleasure. Your squirming, it must have been like…” He looked around the table at all of the empty, red-stained bowls and laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “… like chili to him. So he’d want to pound you himself. And the way you lived until your rescuers arrived? I’d wager that weren’t no accident. Probably let you live on purpose, because more life after a pounding with that mace means more pain. Means more cruelty.”
