by Carl Dane
“Thanks, Moon. I believe you.” And I did.
Some of the Apaches where talking among themselves and there was a buzz in the room. Taza took the opportunity to sidle up to me and speak softly out of the corner of his mouth. “No need for mountain man to translate for poor stupid Apache. I speak English. You make mistake underestimating enemy, thinking dumb Apache cannot speak English. You, big military hero. You are great fighter but maybe not such good thinker. Mountain man tell me that.”
I let the blood pound in my ears for a few seconds and I after I’d calmed down I turned to dismiss the Apaches but they were gone. I didn’t even hear them leave, and it was a pretty good object lesson to those present that if your crossed Taza’s men you won’t hear them come at you, either.
Carmody was the last in the room and he shrugged and closed the door behind him.
“They’re taking up positions now for the piece of business Purcell and I have to finish. They won’t interfere. Neither will Carmody. They’ll just make sure none of Purcell’s men interfere. This is all up to you and me, Purcell.”
Purcell finally spoke. “You seem to think I’m going to play along with all this. If I draw on a marshal, even a half-assed marshal I don’t even think was officially appointed in a half-assed town that probably doesn’t exist on a map, I’ll be a fugitive.”
“You have a point,” I said.
I unpinned the badge and tossed it on the table.
“I quit. I’m a private citizen.”
Purcell shook his head. “I’m not playing your games on your terms, Hawke. Go fuck yourself.”
Telling me to perform that particular procedure seemed to be an obsession with people in this town. I told him as much, and then I shoved him back over the chair.
Chapter 39
He hit the floor hard and stayed on his back, his boots in the air. He knew that trying to scramble to his feet would put him in a vulnerable position during the awkward few seconds it would take him to rise. On his back he could kick or go for his gun, though his draw would be complicated by the fact that his elbow couldn’t move back very far before hitting the floor.
“Think you could outdraw me from that position? I don’t think so, but if you try, I will kill you, and it will be a justified shooting. Right, Moon?”
“That’s right,” Moon said. “Only way to end this fair is to take it to the street.”
Purcell was a professional shootist and the only people who live long in that job know to keep things and themselves under control and act only when circumstances are tilted in their favor, but every man has a temper and a breaking point. I’d pushed him past his. He was red in the face and ready to explode and, as it happened, pretty much out of other options.
He picked himself up, smoothed out his clothes, wiped the dust from the back of his sleeves, and backed out of the room, his hand poised.
I followed him and we did an odd, slow minuet through the bar and out to the street: Both of us kept the other in sight, both of us were poised to shoot, even though neither expected to until we got outside. Purcell exited the batwing doors first and stood in the doorway for longer than he should have.
He was smart. He was stalling, letting his eyes adjust to the noonday sun, hoping I’d still be blinking when the shots were fired. So I shoved past him, our chests touching.
I walked into the street and then back-walked to the left. With the sun directly overhead there was no advantage to be gained by position on the street, and Purcell knew that, too, so we didn’t fight over which end to stand on. He took a minute to scan the buildings and the rooftops, as did I. There were no men to be seen. They were there – everywhere, his and mine – but out of sight.
Purcell stopped when we were 65 feet apart. I was comfortable with that distance – and, yes, it was 65 feet and I knew that because after years of my particular work I can gauge distances pretty much to the inch, as I’m sure Purcell could, also.
There’s a mythology that’s sprung up in the dime novels about shootouts: The guy who draws first is the aggressor and the one who draws last is defending himself and gets a pass. In real life both parties tend to draw when they feel like they have the advantage because it doesn’t really matter who draws first. In an actual gunfight, a lot of men who fancy themselves fast draw artists send their first shot into the air or even into their foot. What matters is who fires the first shot that lands.
And whether you are acquitted because you drew second in “self-defense” largely depends on how many of your friends were watching and how well you know the presiding judge.
But today there would be no justice system except the rough and final justice of the street, and we both knew it.
I suspect both of us also knew that I didn’t have full use of my right arm. I’d actually held back a little when I target-shot with Purcell. I could have done better, but not by much. A shoulder wound takes months to heal, and some people never come back from it.
So I took some time to limber up my arm, flexing my fingers. I hunched my shoulders a couple times to make sure my jacket wasn’t bunched up above the holster and wouldn’t interfere with the draw. Purcell didn’t wear a coat or a jacket, even though it was cold.
I flexed my hand again, stretching the fingers. Purcell couldn’t help but notice, and he watched for what must have been a full minute. I’m sure he thought he was drawing on a man who, if not exactly crippled, did not have a right arm and hand that was at full strength.
And he was right.
And it didn’t matter.
He began his move, smooth, taking his time, confident that he’d be able to aim precisely and get off a killshot.
He was still watching my right hand as he drew. Purcell was practically hypnotized by that stiff-fingered, waggling right hand.
The hand that I would not use.
I pulled my Cooper Pocket Double Action Five-Shot from my coat with my left hand. It’s a beautiful gun, compact and with a wide and thick trigger guard that keeps it from snagging on cloth.
As I told Carmody the night he was mesmerized by my piano playing, you can do anything equally well with either hand if you practice.
And as I think I also mentioned to him once, twice, or maybe ten times after we’d had a few whiskeys, you don’t need fancy holsters or trick rigs to get off a quick shot. Some of the best shootists kept their guns in pockets or stuffed in their waistbands or, like some cavalrymen, stowed in a sash, butt forward, for a reverse draw.
I didn’t need anything so fancy. A small gun in a big pocket is as good as any rig and better than most.
I hit him in the chest before he got off a round. His shot went in the dirt, and I put two more into him, one in the chest and one in the forehead. He stiffened when the shot tore open his skull, and he toppled slowly like a felled tree.
Chapter 40
I didn’t stand around to admire my work because I wasn’t sure if someone was going to take a shot at me. I retreated under the overhang of the Full Moon, and waited.
For about five minutes all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. Then I heard the batwings creak as Elmira bustled through and threw her arms around me. I wanted to stop her. The very last thing I needed if hell broke loose was to have my movement encumbered, but I didn’t protest.
Nothing happened for another ten minutes until Carmody yelled that it was all clear. The shout came from on high somewhere, I couldn’t tell exactly where. That goddamn giant squirrel was hopping rooftops again.
Then a door opened; then a window, then two, then three. The druggist pulled up the shade on his front window and in a few minutes I heard the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer. In an hour the street was full of people and horses and real life – like nothing had ever happened.
And two things occurred to me.
First, I’d never seen the town hum like this in the entire month I’d been here. It was suddenly a normal place. People were going about their business as th
ough this were a normal town where people could come and go as they pleased and not have to cower from thugs and goons. And all this was happening while Purcell lay dead in the street.
The second thing was that I realized was that the town of Shadow Valley still didn’t have an undertaker and everybody was waiting for me to pick up the body.
Chapter 41
I decided to stick around town for a while, and so did Carmody.
When I pinned my badge back on Elmira told me that she would flush the town council out of hiding and get things on the books for real – “officially official,” as she put it.
Most nights I stayed with Elmira above the Silver Spoon, though I kept the room at the hotel. I guess it was a comfortable relationship as far as it went; neither of us was in a hurry to take it further and frankly there was a lot of unexplored and maybe treacherous terrain that we’d have to navigate in the future.
We took a few steps into that uncomfortable, uncharted territory on Christmas Eve. The Spoon was decorated with a Christmas tree, and in a sure sign of prosperity the tree was festooned with gingerbread men. People on the frontier generally ate their food, so when they hung it on a tree, things must have been looking up.
Christmas had become a much bigger event since the war. President Grant had even made it a federal holiday.
I was playing carols on the piano and Elmira was sitting beside me on the bench. She tried singing. I know a bit about music and I can tell you the word “tone-deaf” is over-used. Very few people are actually unable to differentiate pitches but damn it, she was one of them.
I knew the words to a few carols, and sang one that had recently become popular, “We Three Kings.” Elmira commented on how unusual it was for a man like me to sing and play the piano. It didn’t make me angry, exactly, but I did want to know what she meant by “a man like me.”
Things turned frosty. She didn’t answer – we both knew what she meant – but instead volleyed back a question of her own.
“Does it bother you,” she asked, “that I lived with the Apaches and had a baby with one? That I was a whore? That I run a whorehouse?”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t have any alternatives. You sure as hell couldn’t make a living as a singer.”
Neither of us spoke until I’d finished another song.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t make judgments based on assumptions. I judge people, of course, but I try to do it on who they are, not on who I think they are. Sometimes you get assumptions set in your mind so deep that you don’t even know you made the assumption in the first place. They become invisible. They obscure alternatives to themselves.”
The way she looked at me I could tell she didn’t get what I was saying.
“Take Purcell. He just assumed that I was going to shoot right-handed, and that assumption killed him. It blinded him to the possibility I’d fish a gun out of my left-hand pocket.”
I thought about what I wanted to say next and then spoke deliberately and softly as I played. She had to lean close to hear me.
“You brought up the Apache thing, and I know Cassie’s on your mind. I never had children, and I would never presume to tell a parent her business, but I suspect that pretty soon you’re going to ask me about getting Cassie back and I’m going to advise against it. One of those assumptions we make is that our way of life, our way of thinking, is better because it’s what we know. All we know. From our view, a comfortable life, what we call ‘civilized,’ is always better, and has to be better for everybody. But for some people with too much to think about it’s probably better to focus on the day-to-day. I saw that in the war. I can’t prove it but I think a lot of very troubled people are considerably more at peace with themselves when they are fighting for survival.”
“I guess some people just need to fight to feel alive,” Elmira said.
I knew that was directed at me.
“But I pick my fights. And I like to think I produce a greater good in the end. I think the good guys won this one. You’ve got your business back, for one thing.”
She laughed and the tension broke.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. The Full Moon’s packed. We’re not. He’s running me out of business anyway.”
“I can’t shoot all your rivals for you. As long as he runs a legit business he can stay. Although it wouldn’t hurt if he’d bribe me now and then.”
“I guess you have to choose your battles.”
“That is for sure the truth,” Carmody said in a booming voice, startling us from behind. I stopped playing. I didn’t know how long he’d been listening but I was sure of one thing: he was drinking whiskey right out of the bottle, the bottle was near empty, and he was very much in the holiday spirit.
“You have to pick your fights,” he said, waggling that goddamned finger at me again.
“You pick your causes,” Carmody lectured expansively, “you do the best you can, and sometimes you have to live with the lesser of the two evils.”
“It’s far from a perfect world,” I agreed.
I’d had a few drinks and was not averse to being a little expansive myself.
“But maybe someday things will be better. Smarter people than me will really figure out how to match bullets to guns and we can put all the killers in jail, which seems like a big step closer to a perfect world as far as I’m concerned. Maybe we won’t have wars, or at least we figure out ways to keep three times as many people from dying of sickness as from getting shot. Maybe we won’t fight over land, or fight because we’re from different places, or different tribes. And maybe we’ll be able to fix all sorts of sickness, including sickness of the soul.”
I didn’t mean to say that last part but I’ve always had the tendency to fall in love with the sound of my own voice – and deep down I truly, sincerely, did hope that something could be done for Cassie.
If Elmira caught my reference, or if it bothered her, she didn’t show it. She suddenly clapped her hands for attention.
“Do you have that watch on you?”
Carmody dug the timepiece out of his pocket. It was the one we’d borrowed from the store and I bought it for him with some of the reward money I’d collected when I turned in Purcell’s body and identified Purcell as Billy Gannon’s killer.
The watch wasn’t cheap. Neither was my telegraph bill. But I pay my debts.
Carmody fumbled with the cover and squinted while he tried to bring the hands into focus.
“It’s precisely twelve-oh-two.”
“Then it’s Christmas,” Elmira said. “Right here, right now, it is a perfect world. Or we can pretend that it is, anyway. Maybe we can pretend again tomorrow, and the day after. Maybe we can fool ourselves for a while. And keep trying.”
“That’s the best you can do,” Carmody said. He took another drink.
“That’s all you can do,” I said. I turned back to the piano.
THE END
About the Author
Carl Dane is a career journalist and author who has written more than 20 nonfiction books, hundreds of articles, and a produced play. He’s worked as a television anchor and talk show host, newspaper columnist, and journalism professor.
He was born in San Antonio, Texas, and has maintained a lifelong interest in the Old West and the Civil War. He is a member of The Sons of Union Veterans and has traced many of ancestors not only to the Civil War, but also to the War of 1812 and the American Revolution.
Carl often writes and lectures about ethical dilemmas, and has a deep interest in morality, including questions of whether the ends justify the means and how far a reasonable person can go in committing an ostensibly wrong act to achieve a “greater good.”
He has testified on ethical issues before the U.S. Congress and has appeared on a wide variety of television programs, including Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, ABC News World News Now, CBS Capitol Voices, and CNN’s Outlook.
Carl is also interested in th
e structure of effective and eloquent communication, and has written two recent books on professional writing and speaking for a commercial academic and reference publisher.
Reviewers have consistently praised his work for its deft humor.
When not coyly writing about himself in the third person, Carl lives in suburban New Jersey, where he is active in local government and volunteer organizations. He is the father of two sons.
The characters of Josiah Hawke and Tom Carmody – and the situations they confront – were drawn from the author’s interest in the darker sides of the human soul, and the contradictions built into the psyche of every man and woman.
Hawke is an intellectual, a former professor of philosophy, who became drawn to the thrill of violence after the life-changing events of the Civil War – which not only exposed Hawke to violence but showed him that he possessed considerable untapped skill in that area. Carmody, yin to Hawke’s yang, is a blunt backwoodsman who is no stranger to violence, either, but has fought for survival and not for sport. Carmody wonders if Hawke’s philosophical justifications are merely a smokescreen for seeking out trouble – and he’s not afraid to tell that to Hawke.
Follow Carl at www.carldane.com
