by Paul Bagdon
There was an open tin of udder balm on a shelf in the barn, and I spread some across my knuckles and globbed some on the cut over my eye. That udder balm is good stuff—it stops bleeding better than anything else I know of.
I’d already tied my bundle of .30-30s where a bedroll would go on a working cowhand’s saddle. I dropped my piece of steel back into my saddlebag and led the buckskin out of the barn and climbed aboard. The sun hit his coat and his golden copper coloring was a thing of beauty. I stepped into a stirrup and settled myself on the buckskin’s back.
He had an easy mouth, which is certainly rare in Western ranch horses. A working cowpoke doesn’t develop any more friendship with one of the horses in his string than a storekeeper does for an apron.
A slight tap at the reins stopped the horse perfectly and laying a rein lightly against either side of his neck eased him into a turn. I noticed he always kept under himself—ready to go in any direction.
I rode to the end of the street and out of the town, out to the prairie. I was raising dust, but this time no one seemed to be following me.
I gave the buckskin some rein and thumped my spurless heels on his side. He was in a full gallop in a couple of strides and he had the Thoroughbred way of running: stretching his body to pull long pieces of ground under him. I couldn’t see any signs of Thoroughbred blood in him, but I was more than sure there was some back there somewhere in his parentage.
I eased him back to a lope when sweat broke on his chest. I pulled my Colt and fired three times into the air. My horse flinched, of course, but didn’t show any fear and held to his lope without missing a stride. I rubbed his neck and reined him down to a walk.
When I thought I was in a good place to work the rifles, I stopped and dismounted and tried the horse on ground tying. I eased the reins over his head so they touched the ground, said, “Stay,” and walked away. He stood there like a marble statue.
Like I said, sometimes things work out good.
I picked a saguaro about fifty yards out as a target. I used a coin to adjust the sights because I’d forgotten to bring a small screwdriver along.
Three of the rifles I needed to do considerable screwing around with to bring them dead-on. One of the others was perfect as it was. The other took only a minor adjustment to true up.
Of course, the rifles would shoot a bit high at distances less than fifty yards, but it’d take only a single shot to tell Don or me that. Then we’d aim a frog hair lower and kick some ass.
I put my horse up in the livery—my dead animal was already gone—and took the rifles to the office and set them butt down in the gun closet. I didn’t have much to do and considered a cold beer. I lit a cheroot as I pondered.
I guess it didn’t take long for Billy Powers banged-up men to get back to him.
He bashed the door open, slamming it against the inside wall.
“You dirty sonofabitch,” he bellowed, his face as red as Italian wine. “I’ve had just about enough of you screwing with me and my men. Those three you attacked are hurtin’ pretty bad, and they’re useless to me until they heal. You’re pissin’ me off real bad, Pound, and people who piss me off end up dead.”
“Nice to see you too, Billy,” I said. “Fine morning, isn’t it? I’d like to offer you coffee, but the stove we ordered from Chicago hasn’t come in yet. Damn shame, ain’t it? We ordered that little stove some time ago.”
Powers sputtered a bit before he could get his words out. “You think you’re the top gun around here, Pound. You ain’t. I am. Understand?”
I grinned at him. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go out on the street right now and have a draw an’ fire contest. The winner gets to stay alive.”
“I ain’t…”
“What you ain’t is ready to face me without your flunkies set to blow me to pieces if it looks like I’m faster than you, right? ‘Course you could always use that goddamn buffalo hunter who rides with you and uses a Sharps. He could drop me from a couple-three hundred yards out—in the back—before you and me ever faced off.”
Powers face was apoplectic.
Don walked in and saw what was going on. “Billy,” he said cheerfully, “good to see you. I sure hope you brought some coffee, ‘cause the stove we ordered ain’t come in yet from Chicago.”
Powers glared at Don for a moment, then put his hand on the deputy’s chest to move him from blocking the doorway. Insanely angry as Powers was, and how his face was scarlet and twisted, surprise still registered. Trying to push Don Murfin was like trying to push over a marble column.
“Lemme out,” Powers demanded.
“Why sure,” Don said. “Just as soon as you say…”
He started the word “please” when I said, “Don,” and shook my head very slightly from side to side. Don stepped out of the way, and Billy Powers stormed out, mumbling to himself.
“You’ll get your chance with Powers,” I said. “But we can’t face that army of his right now.”
Don shrugged, then nodded. “OK.” He tugged a coin from his pocket and flipped it into the air. “Heads, we go get a cup of coffee, tails we get a beer.” He flipped the coin again and slapped it on his palm. “Heads,” he said, “but I meant two out of three. I just didn’t say it out loud, is all.”
“Right,” I said.
We got up to six out of ten before the coin relented and set us off to a saloon. We selected the one with the fewest horses hitched out front. We wanted to talk, and shouting over the racket of drunks isn’t talking. We took our schooners of beer to a table and settled in.
“I heard about your little do-si-do this morning,” Don said. “Sorry about your horse. He was a good one.”
“Yeah. He was.”
“The way I heard the story is that the two of us jumped the Powers boys swinging two-by-fours.”
“That’s exactly the way it happened,” I said, “but if I recall, we were using clubs stouter than two-by-fours.”
We laughed and drank some beer. “My cousin does some horse trading, Pound, and he ‘most always has a few head that’re worth owning. I can check…”
“I bought a real fine horse from the livery,” I said.
Don smiled. “That buckskin, right? The rest of them looked like buzzard bait. That buckskin—what does he know?”
“A whole lot,” I said proudly. “He reins perfectly, isn’t afraid of gunfire, and I swear he’s the fastest horse I ever rode.”
“Damn,” Don said appreciatively. “Where’d he come from?”
“Probably stolen. But there’s no brand or other identifying mark on him. I got real good papers from the livery.”
“I wonder if you shouldn’t cut his lip to get an identifying scar, Pound, or maybe get a brand on him.”
“I won’t cut his lip, and I don’t want a brand, either. My papers are good enough.”
“Nutted?”
“Yeah. He’s not interested in the mares.”
“Sounds like a hell of a horse.”
“You won’t get an argument from me on that,” I said.
Don went to the bar and brought back a couple more beers. “I was thinkin’,” he said, “I’d take a ride on home an’ see how many boys I can get together an’ ready to fight in a hurry.”
“Good idea.”
He took a long swallow of beer. “I’m kinda wonderin’ what’s going to keep Powers’s men from shooting your buckskin like they gunned your bay.”
“I thought about that. I’m going to post a watchman at the stable every night.”
“Who you gonna get?”
“I was thinking Calvin, the drunk. I figure if I give him a bottle every morning he’d by fairly sober by night.”
“Jesus, Pound—that ol’ bar-rag is useless.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“Look, Pound, I’ve got a better idea than using that rum-dumb at all for anything. I got a fella who up an’ married my sister—done the right thing by her. Thing is, I hadda chase the sumbitch halfway ‘cross
Texas. Anyway, he’s a handy type and a good carpenter. Why don’t I bring him on back with me an’ we’ll have him build a shelter right out behind the cells? I ain’t talkin’ about a barn—jus’ a three-sided shelter to keep our animals outta the rain and wind—an’ maybe a bit of hay storage room, too. An’ as to fightin’, he’d take on Goliath outta the Bible and purely kick his ass.”
“That sounds real good, Don. What’s the fellow’s name?”
“Lucas is what he goes by. I’ll ask you not to go through them Wanted posters too close—he’s got some money on his head.”
“No problem there. You’ll be back tonight?”
“Most likely—tomorra morning at the latest. Lucas has a little wagon he hauls behind a donkey with his tools an’ such in it. Might take him a bit longer, but he’ll get here.”
Don wasn’t one to put things off; he left our office, collected his horse from the livery, and went off on his way home.
It’s odd: I didn’t know whether Don had a honey he missed and who missed him. Because a man isn’t married doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a lover.
A pair of horses galloped by the office, and I barely caught them with my edge of my eye through our small window. The riders were leaning over their horse’s withers, and the animals were running their hearts out. I couldn’t see who was ahead, so I went to the window. The horses seemed perfectly matched. I stood there, wanting to see who took the race.
These two boys couldn’t have been among Powers’s crew—neither wore a gunbelt, and when they reined in they laughed and did some back-slapping and shook hands. They rode back into town, no doubt headed for a saloon.
‘Course, early on I’d said there’d be no horse racing in Gila Bend. But hell, these two boys, probably silver mine workers or cowpokes from the looks of them, weren’t causing any problems or trouble. They were simply cutting loose, with maybe a couple of weeks of wages in their pockets, just itching and twisting to be spent.
I sat back down, put my heels up on the desk, and just let my mind drift.
I’d never planned to teach school. I wanted to be a writer—but not that sensational bullshit that’d become so popular in the East. I wanted to write novels that reached deep into the human condition. I wanted my characters to be real people—not stereotyped puppets. It didn’t work out quite that way. I fell in love with booze and didn’t let it go for about fifteen years, until I met met Zeb Stone.
I liked women well enough, but they didn’t seem to take to a falling down, gaping-mouthed loser who pissed his pants fairly frequently when he passed out on the floor of a saloon.
When I got semistraight with Zeb and we started robbing and killing folks, there wasn’t any time for ladies. Once in a while, though, depending on where Zeb and I were, I’d get my ashes hauled.
It wasn’t good, but I suppose it was better than nothing.
Or maybe not.
The concept of being married appealed to me—marriage and a family seemed like a divinely peaceful way to live out a life, not at all what my own family was like.
At times, when I think of families, I get to feeling a little envious. Don and his relatives all living in close proximity to one another must have been nice.
My old man didn’t say a dozen words a day—none of them to me unless he was bitching that I didn’t work hard enough or long enough. Jesus. An army of sodbusters couldn’t coax a decent crop out of the sand and rocks that comprised Pa’s sixty acres.
My ma reminded me—and still does—of a sheep: large, clumsy, hairy, and plain stupid. She’d have to be stupid to stay with my father. He hit her every so often, and she accepted that as part of the marriage contract, I guess.
Both of them sweated all summer and froze their asses off every winter. I couldn’t figure it out. Had I been either of them, I’d have climbed onto one of the busted-down plow horses and gone somewhere—anywhere.
It could be that the hardscrabble life is what made me take to bank robbing so readily, or to the bottle before I became a criminal. I’d far rather catch a few slugs from the law and go out that way than work myself to death in the sun, cursing everyone and everything because I had such a lousy life and couldn’t get a break.
Don and Lucas arrived late that night, both drunk. They didn’t make a bit more noise than would a herd of buffalo stampeding through the office. I heard them carry some things inside—Lucas’s tools, probably. They finally settled down or passed out—whichever, didn’t matter to me as long as they kept quiet. Don slept in his usual cell and Lucas on the floor next to the desk in the front part of the office. Don grabbed my sleeve as I was checking that he wouldn’t suffocate himself.
“Pound,” he said drunkenly, “you’re outta luck in bringin’ more of our family. It ain’t that they can’t fight, but my pa said this ain’t his fight and to screw the whole buncha us. So that’s it—no more family fightin’ here. An Pa—he don’t change his mind.”
The neighborhood roosters woke me up, just as they did every morning. I pulled on my boots—I slept in my shirt and pants because I didn’t know when I’d be called out by the good citizens of Gila Bend. I took a look at Don. He looked and smelled dead: mouth hanging open, vomit down the front of his shirt, one boot on and the other tossed into the corner of the cell. I knew he was alive, though. His phlegmy snorting and snoring established that.
Lucas was stretched out next to the desk, sleeping peacefully. His gunbelt was draped over the desk chair. It was of good leather, very nicely tooled. A piece of latigo hung down from the bottom of the holster. The holster itself was empty. Lucas was using a saddle blanket for a kind of pillow and his right hand was tucked under the blanket next to his head. I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out where his pistol was, and I was more than a little concerned about waking him, surprising him. While I was pondering how I could make my presence known without getting shot, Lucas’s eyes popped open. They were a very dark and piercing blue, and there was not even a hint of drunken redness or morning-after crud in the corners.
“You Pound?” he asked. His voice was deep, resonant, pleasant enough to the ear with none of the raspiness that follows a night of boozing.
“You might better learn not to sneak up on a sleeping man,” he said. He pulled his right hand out from under the saddle blanket, holding a Colt .45 with the front and rear sights filed away.
“See why?” he said.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Lucas: I could have gunned you as you slept with no trouble at all.”
“There’s that, ‘course,” he said. “You got any coffee?”
“Nothing to heat it on. But come on—the hotel down the street has a little restaurant.”
Lucas’s face lit up. “Restaurant? Hot damn! I’m purely starved to death.”
I got a good look at Lucas when he stood and strapped on his gunbelt. He was cut from the same mold as Don: tall, broad shouldered, with a narrow waist. The man exuded strength. For whatever reason he put me in mind of a mountain cat ready to spring. His face was planes and angles and his hair—little-girl blond in color—far below his shoulders. I noticed that the thumb of his left hand was missing, and he caught me gawking.
“A bounty hunter in Laredo was faster’n me, but he was a lousy shot. I didn’t need my left thumb to kill the sumbitch. I hardly miss the thumb; anyways, that was a good long time ago.” Then he added, “I’m a lot faster now than I was then. And I shoot real good.”
I nodded but had nothing to add. “I’m thinking,” I said, “I might try to wake Don up to come along, but I suppose that’s a lost cause.”
“Yeah, it is. Plus, he stinks.”
We walked to the hotel without much to say, Lucas looking around at the stores and bars. I ordered four eggs, lots of bacon, hash-brown potatoes, and a pot of coffee. Lucas asked for the biggest beefsteak they had in the place, a dozen fried eggs, fried potatoes, and another pot of coffee.
“I already ordered up a pot, Lucas,” I said.
“Yeah, but you nev
er seen me drink coffee. I still amaze my ma-in-law an’ the rest of the family.”
The waitress brought the coffee first. Lucas attacked his as if it were an ice cold beer after a long, hot day of following a plow horse’s ass.
“I hear you done banks, you an’ your pard,” Lucas said, refilling his cup.
“Yeah. We did one stagecoach, too, but that didn’t work out well, so we stuck with banks. I did one stage by myself—an army pay wagon.”
“Good hit?”
“You bet.”
“Now me,” Lucas said, “I was always partial to coaches, an’ I done good with them. Hell, all you gotta do is take out the shotgun rider an’ you’re all set. Most all the drivers ain’t concerned about their passengers’ money, or money they was carrying for anybody else. They preferred to stay alive. I rode with Butch and Sundance for a while, but they was crazy. Anyway, I like working alone.”
“What’s the paper out on you for?” I asked.
“Murder, robbery, rape, escape from federal authorities, all that shit. Hey, let me ask you somethin’. You got some kinda deal for bein’ sheriff here for a year. If you live it out, you get a pardon, no?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“What about me? If I joined up, would I get one of them pardons, too?”
“I dunno. I’ll look into it, Lucas.”
We ate for a while in silence, enjoying our food. Finally, I said, “You married Don’s sister, right?”
“Had to. She was up the stump, and Don tracked me down. Rose of Sharon is her name. The baby was a girl, jus’ as goddamn cute as a young bunny.”
He chewed and swallowed a large chunk of steak and then said, “See, my ma-in-law—hell, I just call her ma—she takes care of my kid. My wife, she run off with a guitar player.” He shook his head. “At times I kinda miss her, but that boy could play the livin’ piss outta a guitar. He played on a twelve string. You ever heard one?”
“I don’t think…”
“He sometimes played darkie music, an’ it was like nothin’ you ever heard before. Used one of them sliders on his left hand to make that guitar talk. That music, well, it was raw like corn whiskey an’ driving, ya know? I never heard no white music like that.”
