by Ralph Cotton
“I know,” said Carmelita. “I only asked so I will know when to light a candle.”
“Tomorrow,” Dawson said. Still looking down at Suzzette he said, “This woman loved me, Carmelita. She loved me, and all loving me did was bring her pain, and get her killed…her and her baby.”
“Don’t think that way,” said Angel Andrews, hearing Dawson. She stood up and walked over closer. She started to tell him that there was no baby, but at the last second she decided against it. It was not something Suzzette would want her to tell him in front of Carmelita, she decided. “I mean…it doesn’t help to think that way,” she said. “What’s done is done.”
“Si,” Carmelita said. “Things happen in this life that are out of our control.” But as she spoke she saw that there were things Angel needed to say to Cray Dawson. After a second of pause, Carmelita said quietly to Angel as she took her hand off of Dawson’s shoulder, “I will go get some fresh water from the well. We will wash her and dress her and bury her this afternoon. I will say the rosary over her.”
Angel stood close to Dawson, and when Carmelita had left the room, she told him that there had been no baby. She also told him how Suzzette had called out his name in her dying breath. “Whatever mistakes she made,” said Angel when she’d finished, “it wasn’t done to bring anyone harm. I suppose she knew that you would want to help her get out of this business if you thought she was carrying a child, even if it wasn’t your child.”
“She was right,” said Dawson. “But I would have helped her get out of the business anyway, Angel. She should have known that. She didn’t have to make up a story.”
Angel shrugged. “Well, she thought she had to.”
“Yes, I suppose she did,” said Dawson. They stood in silence until Carmelita came back in with a gourd full of fresh water. Then Dawson turned and left the room as Carmelita and Angel began to unbutton Suzzette’s torn dress.
“Carmelita,” said Angel, almost in a whisper, once Dawson had left the room. “What happened to Suzzette and me today isn’t causing him and the Double D men to go to Somos Santos, is it?”
Carmelita considered it for a moment as the two of them undressed Suzzette. “In some ways perhaps it is, Angel,” she said. “But in more ways it is not. I think there must always be more than one reason for men to kill one another. Perhaps tomorrow each man will have in his heart a different reason why someone must die.” She handed Suzzette’s dress to Angel and dipped the clean, soft towel into the water gourd.
When the two women had finished their solemn task, Suzzette lay atop the dining room table with her hair brushed and her bruises covered by a clean dress Carmelita found in her dead sister’s closet. Without benefit of a coffin, they wrapped Suzzette in a plain brown wool blanket. After Carmelita said the rosary and Dawson read appropriate lines from a Bible, they buried her beneath the thin shade of a white oak tree behind the hacienda and walked back, each silent in their own thoughts, Carmelita carefully avoiding any mention of the following morning and what she knew lay before Cray Dawson and the Double D riders.
In the late evening, after Carmelita and Angel had both gone to their respective bedrooms, Cray Dawson sat in a circling glow of lamplight and took his Colt apart. He cleaned and inspected each moving part, then reassembled the gun piece by piece, carefully wiping each part with a soft white cotton rag. When he’d finished, he raised the gun close to his ear and turned the cylinder slowly, listening to each precision click of metal against metal. Satisfied, he examined each cartridge and loaded the pistol round by round. Having loaded it, he slipped the pistol into his holster lying on the table and slid the pistol in and out a few time, feeling the ease and smoothness of the motion. Then he laid his gun belt aside and cleaned his Winchester repeating rifle in the same meticulous manner.
He stood up quietly and slipped the gun belt up onto his shoulder. Carrying the lamp he walked to just inside the bedroom where Camelita lay sleeping. For a moment he stood there listening to the faintest sound of her breathing. Then he whispered softly, “Good night, Carmelita.” He turned out the lamp, set it on a small table beside the bedroom door, and backed silently out of the room.
In the night Carmelita awakened twice, once as she heard Dawson speaking softly to her from the doorway, then again at the end of a troubled dream when she reached a hand over to his side of the bed and realized he wasn’t there. She threw a robe around herself and went from room to room looking for him. Then she slipped on her boots and walked to the barn, but by this time it was only to confirm what she already knew. She sighed, holding the lamp up to the empty stall where Dawson had stabled the horse Decker left for him. Next to that stall Stony stood quietly, only twitching his ears as the lamplight spread upon his stall.
Cray Dawson had no intention of riding into Somos Santos at noon with the Double D men. He was on his way there now. Suddenly it hit her that Dawson had ridden Decker’s horse only because he thought he wasn’t coming back and he didn’t want Stony to fall into the wrong hands. “Santos nos protegen!” Carmelita whispered to herself, making a hasty sign of the cross. Then she hung the lamp on a post, grabbed Stony’s bridle from a peg, and hurried into his stall.
In the gray hour before dawn, Shaney and the Double D men rode quietly into the front yard and stopped their horses, seeing Carmelita on the front porch with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. She was dressed for the road. At the hitch rail Stony stood saddled and waiting. “I thought Dawson’s horse had a bad hoof?” said Decker.
Before Carmelita could answer Decker, Shaney already sensing something amiss, asked, “Where is Dawson?”
“He left in the night,” said Carmelita, “perhaps two or three hours ago, on the horse Decker left here.”
“Dang it all!” said Shaney, realizing instantly what Dawson had in mind. “He’ll get himself killed going up against that many guns by himself!” He watched Carmelita step down from the porch as he spoke to her. In the front door of the hacienda Angel stood watching, Carmelita having already awakened her and told her what was going on.
“Godspeed, Carmelita,” Angel called out.
“What?” said Shaney. He cocked his head toward Carmelita as she swung up onto Stony’s back. “Where are you going?” he asked Carmelita gruffly.
“I’m going with you,” she said with determination. “I would have gone already, but I wasn’t sure of the trail in the dark.”
“Now listen, Ma’am,” said Shaney. “It’s going to be a hard, flat-out ride to get to Somos Santos. We can’t wait up for you.”
“You will not have to wait up for me,” said Carmelita. “I can ride.”
“What do you say, Shaney?” said Broken Nose Simms, getting anxious. “We best get going! Let her come along! She’ll keep up!”
“All right, Ma’am,” said Shaney. “But either keep up or fall behind…we’ve got some ground to cover.” As he jerked his horse around by its reins, he spoke in the direction of Somos Santos, “Cray Dawson, you stubborn fool! I ought to bend a skillet over your head!”
From the doorway of the hacienda, Angel watched Carmelita and the rest of the riders disappear like smoke into the gray morning mist.
At daybreak Sheriff Martin Lematte stood at the bar in the Silver Seven Saloon with stacks of dollar bills and gold coins piled high before him. Beside him stood Karl Nolly and Mad Albert Ash. Lematte took a drink of hot coffee and lit his first cigar of the morning as Hogo Metacino walked in carrying a telegraph in his hand. “Boss, I’ve got a peace officer alert for you. You ain’t going to believe this!” said Metacino, waving the telegraph before handing it over to Lematte. “We’re supposed to keep our eyes peeled for Henry Snead!”
“Henry Snead? For what?” asked Karl Nolly in astonishment.
As Lematte read the telegraph, Metacino laughed and said to Nolly and Ash, “That came in overnight from the Grayson stage depot. A stage driver said that Henry Snead got drunk and forced two women to leave with him in a wagon somewhere along the Old Span
ish Trail yesterday! Said Henry is armed with a pistol and has threatened the women’s lives!”
“My goodness,” Karl Nolly chuckled. “Our Henry, making a fool of himself once again.” He raised his coffee as if in a toast to Snead.
“Yes, it’s the truth,” said Lematte, finishing the telegraph and passing it along to Nolly. “That beating Dawson gave him must’ve addled his brain.” Then Lematte reflected for a moment and said, “According to this it’s a couple of ‘soiled doves’ from Somos Santos he forced to go with him.”
Nolly gave a bemused grin and said to Lematte, “You don’t suppose it could be those two whores who left here the other day with Dawson, do you?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility. You can never tell where a whore’ll turn up.” Lematte gave it more thought. But before he could answer any further, a single rifle shot rang out from the street, drawing everyone’s attention toward the bat-wing doors and the sound of running boots along the boardwalk. Lematte, Nolly, and Metacino all drew their guns as Joe Poole and Eddie Grafe spilled through the doors and skidded to a halt.
“Don’t shoot!” Joe Poole shouted in a shaky voice, his eyes large with fear, seeing the guns pointed at him.
With his Colt still in its holster Mad Albert stood calmly at the bar and sipped his coffee, watching, chuckling under his breath.
“Sheriff! Cray Dawson is out there on the street!” Eddie Grafe said, his breath heaving in his chest. “He tried to kill us on our way here!”
“If Dawson tried to kill you, you’d be dead,” said Ash, still holding his coffee cup. He shook his head, set his cup down, and pushed it slowly away from him. He raised his big Colt from his holster and checked it.
“Yeah, Ash is right, so settle down,” Lematte said to the two deputies. “Where’s Delbert Collins?” As he spoke he took a cautious step toward the bat-wing doors, his pistol in hand, craning his neck for a look out at the street.
“He was headed this way with us,” said Joe Poole. “But he ain’t getting around so quick with that bullet wound in his nuts.”
“So you ran off and left him?” Lematte asked, sounding outraged.
The two looked at one another as if it had just occurred to them what they had done. “But, Sheriff! We thought we better hurry here and tell you about Dawson!” said Poole.
Lematte eased closer up and stood with his back flat against the wall beside the doors for a moment. Ash gave Lematte a dubious look, watching him turn slowly to peep around above the doors, out into the street. Immediately three pistol shots exploded almost as one, sending Lematte jumping backward, his gun falling from his right hand, both hands going to his face as he shouted, “Damn it to hell!”
Splinters from the shattered door frame stuck in Lematte’s cheeks like tiny darts. Mad Albert Ash backed away from the bar, taking his time, while the others scurried for firing positions and cover. Outside, Dawson’s voice called out above the sound of horses, wagons, and footsteps hurrying to get out of the line of fire, “Lematte! It’s time we settled up.”
Lematte pulled the splinters from his face and wiped blood from his chin as he replied, “Suit yourself, Dawson! There’s six of us in here! You don’t stand a chance!”
“Then let’s get to it,” Dawson said in a firm, even tone of voice, replacing his spent cartridges.
Lematte looked at Ash, stunned. “Is he crazy? He wants to fight all of us?”
“That is what it sounded like to me.” Ash grinned. He stood closer to the rear door, his glove off of his right hand and shoved down behind his gun belt.
“Didn’t you know it would come to this? He doesn’t care how many there are of us. He’s got his bark on. Don’t you?” He walked the rest of the way to the rear door, shook his head, and stepped outside into the alley. Lematte looked shaken by Ash’s unexplained departure.
But he swallowed a knot in his throat and managed to collect himself. “Dawson, we need to talk about this thing!” he called out, scrambling to grab his gun from the floor. Even as he spoke he gave the men a gesture with his hand, letting them know that he meant for all of them to rush the street when he gave them a signal.
“No talking,” said Dawson. “I’m here to kill you, nothing else.”
“How did things get like this between us, Dawson?” Lematte called out, checking his gun all the while. “Was it Bouchard’s death that caused it? Snead giving you that beating? The way I treated those whores? What one thing was it? Huh? I’d like to know before we kill you!”
“I don’t know…don’t care,” Dawson said. “You’ve wanted this showdown ever since I got back to town. Why you’ve wanted it makes no difference now. Get on out here. Bring anybody who wants to join you. I’m taking on all comers today.”
“All comers?” Joe Poole and Eddie Grafe gave one another a worried look, both of them hunkering down behind an overturned card table.
Lematte spoke to the others in a harsh whisper, looking around as he crouched on the floor, “Is everybody ready?” Seeing the men nod, he called out to Dawson. “I heard what happened, Snead kidnapping them whores. Is that what’s brought this to a head? Is there more to it than I know about?”
“Suzzette is dead, Dawson said flatly. “Come on out.”
“Suzzette…?” said Lematte. He formed a cruel grin. “Now let me see…which one was that?” He waved his men forward in front of him toward the door, saying, “Now! Let’s go! Get him!”
As Nolly, Grafe, and Poole charged out the front door, Hogo Metacino hurled a heavy poker chair through the large glass window, shattering it, then leaped out onto the boardwalk, his gun blazing.
“Damn you, Sheriff!” screamed Karl Nolly, seeing that Lematte had shoved them forward through the bat-wing doors, but had then ducked back inside at the last second as the shooting started. Nolly fired at Dawson as he cursed Lematte.
Cray Dawson’s first shot hit Eddie Grafe dead center, sending him backward into Joe Poole and keeping Poole from getting an aim. Poole never got another chance. Dawson’s next shot dropped him dead. Still firing, Dawson sent a shot through Karl Nolly’s heart. The impact lifted Nolly backward, spinning him along the front of the Silver Seven Saloon into a bloody spray until he collapsed off of the boardwalk and into the mouth of a littered alleyway.
Standing in the broken window glass, Hogo Metacino shouted loudly as he quickly emptied six shots at Cray Dawson, only one of them grazing Dawson’s right forearm. The other shots went wild, one thumping into the boardwalk across the street where Delbert Collins tried hurrying along, with both hands clutching his crotch. “Don’t shoot!” Delbert shrieked tearfully. “I’m ruined already!”
Dawson spun toward Delbert Collins and saw no threat there. He swung back toward Hogo Metacino and saw him click his pistol on an empty chamber. “No, don’t shoot!” Hogo shouted, repeating Collins’s plea. But when Dawson turned his colt from Hogo and back toward the bat-wing doors, Metacino saw his chance and pulled a small, hidden pistol from behind his back. Once again he started firing wildly. This time Dawson’s Colt exploded once, decisively, and dropped him dead before he got off his fourth shot.
Dawson had three shots left in his Colt, and one shot chambered and ready in his Winchester. He looked back and forth, through the broken window, and both above and below the bat-wing doors for any sign of Lematte. On the boardwalk where Delbert Collins still stood holding his wounded crotch, sobbing in pain, Councilmen Deavers and Tinsdale appeared from out of a doorway and began shoving him back and forth roughly. “Now let’s see how tough you are, Deputy!” said Deavers, “you son of a bitch!” He tried to kick Collins in his crotch, but Collins held onto himself.
“Please!” Collins pleaded. “I didn’t hurt anybody! Look at the shape I’m in!”
“We don’t care,” said Tinsdale, speaking loud enough for onlookers to hear him. “We’re talking this town back from you vermin!”
Dawson called out to the Silver Seven Saloon, “Lematte. Come out. You’re washed up here. Your men a
re dead. Let’s get this thing over with.”
“I’m not coming out, Dawson!” Lematte yelled. “If you want me, come in and get me!” Even as he spoke, Lematte made his way along the floor behind the bar, shoving a cringing bartender aside as he tried to get a closer run at the rear door. On his way, Lematte stopped and looked at the butt of a sawed-off shotgun sticking out from a shelf under the bar. “Is this thing loaded?” he whispered.
“Ye—yes!” said the bartender, “of course it is!”
“Good,” said Lematte, jerking it out from the shelf and shoving it into the bartender’s shaking hands. “Get down there at that end of the bar! When he comes through the doors, stand up and let him have it with both barrels. Do you understand?”
“Sheriff,” the frightened bartender said, “I can’t do that! I’m no gunfighter!”
“Get down there and do it, or I’ll blow a hole through you!” Lematte said, poking his pistol in the bartender’s belly.
Outside, Dawson stepped cautiously onto the boardwalk and shoved the bat-wing doors open as quietly as possible. Still, there was a slight creaking sound that caught Lematte’s attention. He waited until he heard the doors swing back and forth quietly, realizing that Dawson was now inside, perhaps halfway across the floor. “Now!” he shouted at the bartender as he raised up quickly, his gun going out arms length, cocked and ready.
At the end of the bar the bartender rose up stiffly, pointing the shotgun with his eyes squeezed shut. But it didn’t matter. Both the shotgun and Lematte’s pistol were pointed at an empty space. Lematte looked dumbfounded. But Dawson called out from across the broken window frame, “Lematte, over here!”
Lematte swung the pistol toward Dawson, shouting at the bartender, “Shoot him!”
A bullet hit Lematte in his chest above the bar top, knocking him back into a shelf of whiskey bottles. The bottles crashed around his feet. The same impact that flung him backward also bounced him forward off of the wall and half onto the bar top. He lay against the bar with his arms spread along the edge, blood pumping out in a thick stream with each beat of his pulse. Dawson stepped in over the window ledge and walked forward, seeing the bartender drop the shotgun and raise his hands high.
