by Len Levinson
Duane stared malevolently at his former deputy, as the ramifications of the evil plot deepened. “I was right about you all along, Derek. I figured you asked too many questions, and I should've shot you while I had the chance.”
“But you didn't, fortunately for me. You've bit off more than you can chew, kid. I told you to forget about your thieving father, but you were stubborn as a jackass. We did everything to persuade you to go to Mexico, so don't blame us. It is your ignorance and immaturity that has brought us to this sorry pass. Say your prayers, my lad. The party is over.”
Duane couldn't believe that his life was coming to an end, but any other conclusion would be irrational. He glowered at Derek Wright and said in a deadly tone: “I can understand how men like Snodgras and Sanchez can go wrong, because they were the scum of the earth to begin with, but you fought in the Stonewall Brigade. Or did you?”
Wright removed his old Confederate cavalry hat, examined it critically, and shrugged. “You can buy one of these quite cheaply these days. I never fought for either side during the war. What for?” Wright smiled ingratiatingly. “I fooled you with my charming line of horseshit.”
“Not really, because I always figured there was something false about you, and you made one big mistake that I recall. If you're so smart, why didn't you let that cowboy shoot me in the back at the Longhorn Saloon. It would've saved you a lot of trouble.”
“When we first heard about you, we weren't sure who you were. Regardless of what you might think, we only kill when we have to.”
“And for some strange reason,” Duane replied sarcastically, “you have to kill all the time.”
Sanchez took a step closer to Duane and grinned like a dog, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “I like to see how a man faces death. Sometimes they cry, other times they beg, but this young fool appears lost in the sound of his own voice. Are you afraid to die, Señnor Pecos?”
“Just tell me one thing, you flea-bitten varmint. Who killed Twilby?”
Derek replied. “I did. And Sanchez killed the women, of course. Snodgras tried to bushwhack you a few times, and he took care of Marty Schlack, while I had to silence that damned fool blacksmith. Then somebody else tried to bushwhack you in front of your office, and we don't even know to this day who the hell he was. We tried to keep you from finding out the truth about the Polka Dots, but it soon became clear that too many people knew. Then we hoped to scare you away, but you wouldn't take the hint.” Derek smiled cruelly. “You even thought I was a Polka Dot myself. In point of fact, I hated the damned Polka Dots. They were nothing but a bunch of dirty outlaws, and I rode with the posse that tracked them down, you fool. A lot of lead flew that day in the Sierra Madre, and maybe I'm the one who killed the son of a bitch horse thief known as Joe Braddock.”
Duane thought his head would explode, but Derek and Sanchez both leveled guns at him, and the Pecos Kid realized that his only hope was to play for time. “How'd you know the blacksmith told me about my father?”
The undertaker replied. “You were talking about Mister Archer an awful lot after you saw the blacksmith, so it wasn't hard to figure out.
“We knew, of course, that Rafferty had lived in the Pecos country, and the Polka Dots stopped at his shop while they were making their last run. So Mister Wright paid Mister Rafferty a visit, and one thing led to another, you might say.” The undertaker snickered at his little joke.
It had never occurred to Duane that his nemesis might be three bungling blood-soaked fools, but his worst rancor was reserved for his former deputy. “You're a polecat, Derek Wright. You act friendly with people, but you're just looking for a soft spot to stick your knife.”
“Derek Wright isn't my name, you horse's ass. Your ignorance and gullibility astonished me on numerous occasions, but we have no more time to waste with you.” Wright turned toward Sanchez. “Are you going to shoot him, or shall I have the pleasure?”
“I will do it, Señor. I have never liked this young son-of-a-whore.”
Sanchez aimed his gun at Duane's chest, and Duane knew that he was going to die. All he could do was close his eyes, and whisper, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”
A shot resounded in the small parlor, and Duane felt sharp pain in his heart. Smoke filled the air. He was certain he was dead, but had somehow remained standing. Sanchez's expression of triumph became blank despair, as the whoremaster dropped to the side like deadweight, his shirt blanketed with blood. Duane spotted the double barrels of a shotgun poking through the window.
An expression of panic came over the man Duane knew as Derek Wright as the second barrel fired. Buckshot caught him in the face and sent him slamming against the wall. He slid down, wearing a ghastly red mask, dead as a mackerel.
“Looks like I arrived in the nick of time,” said Maggie O'Day, smiling in the window.
Duane gaped at her in amazement, as Snodgras dashed toward the kitchen in the momentary confusion. Duane came to his senses, pursued the undertaker down the corridor, tackled him, and brought him down. As Snodgras lost his balance, he grabbed a frying pan off a hook and slammed Duane upside his head. Duane lost consciousness, and Snodgras fled down the corridor to his office. Duane cleared the cobwebs out of his head, followed the undertaker's trail, and turned the knob, but the door to the office was latched from the inside. Duane took two steps backwards, then slammed his shoulder against the door and it burst open.
Snodgras stood beside his desk, an empty goblet in his hand. There was a strange glazed expression in his eyes and a faint smile on his pale craggy features. “So you finally know,” he said dreamily.
“I haven't figured out everything,” replied Duane. “How do you communicate with Sam Archer?”
The undertaker laughed weakly. “You can't arrest a corpse.” He swayed, stumbled, burped, and went crashing to the floor. Duane ogled him in wonderment, when he heard footsteps in the hall. It was Maggie O'Day smiling cheerily, a double-barreled shotgun in her hand. “So this is where you went.” Then she noticed the undertaker lying on the floor. “What happened to him?”
“He poisoned himself, just as he tried to poison me at your saloon. How'd you know I was here?”
“I've been keeping an eye on you in more ways than one. After you left my saloon in such a hurry, I figured out who might've poisoned you. Then, when you came back to town, somebody told me that you was headed here.”
Duane picked up his Colt, checked the loads, and holstered the weapon. Then he returned to the parlor and regarded Sanchez, killer of women, and felt a certain perverse satisfaction at his passing. Duane turned to Derek Wright, who'd pretended to be a friend and nearly won Duane over. “I was thinking about going to Mexico with him,” Duane said.
“He would've shot you in the back when you wasn't looking, and brought your head back to Old Man Archer.”
Duane thought of Twilby, the blacksmith, the dead prostitutes, Marty Schlack, and his father. And in back of them all, hovering maliciously in the distance, was Old Man Archer. Duane gazed for a long time at Derek Wright bleeding on the parlor floor. You fooled me and everybody else in this town, but you didn't fool Maggie O'Day.
His head whirling, Duane opened the front door for Maggie. A crowd had congregated outside, and Duane saw the gunsmith, the bartender from the Silver Spur, merchants, prostitutes, and others he'd known and sometimes suspected during his brief stay in Escondido.
“I just killed two sons of bitches!” Maggie declared proudly. “And the other one killed himself.”
The townspeople cautiously entered the undertaker's house, and one of them hollered, “Holy Jesus, lookit this!”
Duane and Maggie headed toward the center of town. Lamplight twinkled behind windows, and a big cowboy moon hung high over the rooftops. “What're you gonna do now?” Maggie asked.
“I'm headed for the Pecos, I guess.”
“If you ever need help, just get in touch with Maggie O'Day.”
They came to the Last Chance Saloon, where
half-empty glasses could be seen through the window, and horses lined the hitching rails. Desert bats flew eccentric patterns in the sky, as crickets sang loudly in the vast sea of grama grass.
“Care for a last drink on the house?” she asked.
Duane opened his mouth to respond in the affirmative, when his Apache ears perceived strange rumbles from the north. “Something's coming,” he said, wrinkling his forehead.
“I can't hear nothin’.”
Duane dropped to the street and pressed his ear against the ground. Massed hoofbeats were on the desert, and he heard the distant bleat of a man hollering at the top of his lungs. Duane narrowed his Apache eyes and picked out a black bouncing dot in the dark night. “The Fourth Cavalry's on the way!” yelled the faraway voice. “Run fer yer lives!”
Duane's body tensed, because the Fourth Cavalry had chased him in the past, and for all he knew they were coming specifically for him now. The dark outline in the desert became an old cowboy with a long gray beard riding his pinto nag down the main street of Escondido. “The Fourth Cavalry'll be hyar in ‘bout an hour, boys! Hit the trail!”
Pandemonium broke out all over town, as outlaws stopped what they were doing and prepared for the sudden imminent journey across the Rio Grande. Coins were dug from beneath floorboards, supplies stuffed into gunnysacks, and horses saddled rapidly. Maggie's eyes misted as she looked at Duane standing before her like a big gangly boy, anxious to move on. “I wish you'd forget about the Pecos,” she said.
“Old Man Archer isn't getting away with killing my parents,” Duane replied. Then he raised his right hand to the sky and said solemnly, “So help me God.”
She gazed at him, her eyes filled with tears, and then she clasped him to her. They hugged tightly. Then he kissed her forehead and said, “Please take care of Alice for me. Give her a chance, all right? She's a good girl, smart as a whip, and can be a big help to you.”
“As long as there's a roof over my head, there'll be a roof over Alice's head. It might not be much of a roof, but...”
They separated reluctantly. “I never knew my mother,” Duane said, “but you're the closest thing I ever had to a mother, and I promise I'll see you again someday.”
Horses trotted down the middle of the street, as outlaws and banditos headed for Mexico. Men bellowed, laughed, and yawped at each other, because the chess game with the Fourth Cavalry had begun again. The stable was a hubbub of madness and curses when Duane arrived, men frantically saddling horses in the lamplight.
“To hell with the Fourth Cavalry!” somebody yelled, as he rode his prancing charger to the door. “They'll never catch me!”
Duane saddled Nestor in the darkness at the end of the row. “We're going for a long ride,” Duane said to the horse. “You won't be getting oats or apples for a while, but sooner or later things'll settle down, you'll see.”
Nestor didn't appear convinced as Duane led him out of the stable with other horses and riders. Duane's plan was to head for Mexico and hide out for a few weeks, then turn around and cross the Rio Grande upriver, his trip to the Pecos temporarily rerouted thanks to the Fourth Cavalry. The notes of a brass bugle sounded in the distance, and a great tumult could be heard coming through the stillness. The Fighting Fourth advanced on Escondido, while the town's outlaw citizens fled south.
Duane climbed onto Nestor's back, wheeled the horse around, and nudged him with his spurs. Nestor heard the bluecoats coming as he joined the mass of other horses and riders departing in earnest. Nestor turned into the nearest alley, leapt over a sleeping drunkard, loped through the backyard, vaulted over a pile of firewood, and broke onto the open desert, heading for Duane's stash in the hills. Fragrant night wind streamed through Duane's beard as Escondido twinkled and faded into the black pitch darkness behind him.
The Pecos Kid was on the dodge yet again, headed for the ancient home of the Aztecs. Rattlesnakes or scorpions could get him, not to mention the Mexican Army, and Comancheros might string him up by his heels. Nestor kicked clods of desert behind him, as his youthful rider gazed back at outlaw hell falling behind in the distance. At least I know who my mother is, Duane thought gratefully, and thank you, dear father, for being a man that others admired and trusted to lead them. I knew you weren't an outlaw, and I'll clear your name even if it kills me.
The clatter of cavalry reverberated off mountains, as bugles blew and officers shouted orders on the horizon. The detachment of the Fighting Fourth charged helpless little Escondido, but the hard-riding Pecos Kid was long gone.
The mighty Rio Grande gleamed like an iridescent silver snake in the Texas night, but Nestor kept barreling onward. When the horse dived off the riverbank, a massive splash of cold water baptized horse and rider. The Pecos Kid yelled with strange inexplicable joy as his hundred-dollar stolen stallion stroked powerfully toward the distant shore.
