by Van Holt
“That’s all right, Hoodoo,” Ringo said, getting to his feet. “Step down and take off your coat.”
“S-sure, Ringo,” Hoodoo said, awkwardly swinging down and shucking out of his coat. “You want my pants too?”
“That’s all right, Hoodoo, you can keep your pants,” Ringo said. “But while we’re at it we might as well trade hats.” He reached for Hoodoo’s old slouch hat and put his black hat on Hoodoo’s head. He adjusted the hat on Hoodoo’s head at a certain angle and straightened the black coat on Hoodoo. Then he stepped back to admire the transformation. “You look like a new man, Hoodoo. But you want to be careful. If old Pike sees you coming in that outfit he might think it’s me.”
Hoodoo managed a sickly laugh. “He thinks you’re dead, Ringo.”
Hoodoo started to get back on his nag, but Ringo said, “Take my horse, Hoodoo. You need a black horse to go with your new coat and hat.”
“Well, if you want me to, Ringo,” Hoodoo said uncertainly, looking at the beautiful black. “You sure it’s all right?”
“Sure, go on, Hoodoo,” Ringo said. “I want you to be riding in style when Pike sees you.”
“Well, if you don’t mind,” Hoodoo said, and climbed on the black horse. He looked down at Ringo from the expensive hand-tooled saddle, unable to comprehend such generosity in a man who looked so hard and merciless. “You sure there ain’t no hard feelings, Ringo?”
Ringo made a little gesture of dismissal, his eyes cool and remote. “Not anymore.”
“Well,” Hoodoo said, still not knowing what to make of the situation, “so long, I guess.” He looked over at the blond fellow and bobbed his head respectfully at him. “Wyatt.”
Wyatt casually lifted his hand, but said nothing.
Hoodoo kicked the black horse into motion with his heels and trotted over the hill, convinced that his luck had finally changed. Ringo had not only let him live, but had given him this beautiful black horse for his old plug, and the fine black hat and coat for Hoodoo’s worn-out garments. The new horse and clothes had a profound effect on Hoodoo, and he sat tall and proud in the saddle, feeling and looking like a new man. Wait till old Pike saw him.
Pike was even then watching him through the sights of his rifle, slowly taking up the slack on the trigger, a wolfish grin on his face. Pike’s eyes weren’t the best, and at a distance of two hundred yards the man on the black horse looked to him like Ringo. He had no reason to suspect otherwise. As far as Pike knew, Hoodoo was still in Texas or someplace, and the farther away the better.
The rifle roared and the man on the black horse pitched out of the saddle and lay still. The horse trotted on a short distance and then stopped.
Pike got his horse and galloped toward the dead man, yelling in wild exultation, “I got you this time, Ringo! And I aim to make sure you stay dead!” He halted fifty yards away and levered three more bullets into the man’s body. Then he rode up and dismounted, his yellow teeth bared in a grin. He bent down and roughly turned the man over and stared down into Hoodoo’s lifeless face.
Then Pike’s wild eyes darted in every direction, for he knew he had been tricked. They couldn’t fool old Pike. “Over here, Pike,” Ringo’s voice called from behind a boulder.
Pike cried out in terror and fled in the other direction. He scrambled behind a rock and levered a shell into the chamber of his rifle, getting set to make a desperate fight for his life.
But just then he felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of his neck and a quiet voice said, “Drop it, Pike.”
The rifle clattered to the ground and Pike peered over his shoulder into Wyatt Earp’s deadly blue eyes. “I knowed I wasn’t drunk enough to see double back there! I figgered you and Ringo was workin’ together, just like before!”
“Maybe this time. Not before.”
“You can’t fool me!” Pike said, sounding mighty indignant about it.
“No one was ever fast enough to fool you, Pike,” Wyatt said. “You always beat them to it. Got the job done all by yourself.”
“Shoot me and get it over with,” Pike said.
“Wish I could oblige you, Pike. But it wasn’t in the cards.”
Wyatt caught hold of Pike’s collar and marched him out into the open, keeping the Buntline Special jammed in his back. Then he released him and pushed him toward Ringo, who had also stepped into the open.
For a time Ringo just stood there, straight and tall, without a hat or coat but indifferent to the raw wind whipping his copper hair about his temples, and studied Pike in silence. His eyes were like blue ice, but there was no particular expression on his smooth hard face. Wyatt figured he was trying to decide what to do with Pike.
Then Ringo holstered his gun, and silently nodded at the gun in Pike’s holster. Wyatt moved quickly out of the line of fire.
Pike suddenly seemed to wilt, his bravado deserting him. “I ain’t gonna draw on you, Ringo!” he cried in a trembling voice, his eyes jumping with fear.
Ringo’s jaw had set. “That’s up to you, Pike,” he said quietly. “I intend to kill you whether you draw or not.”
Pike shook his head desperately, sobbing like a scared and bewildered child, and unbuckled his gunbelt and tossed it to the ground. “You wouldn’t shoot a unarmed man, Ringo!”
Ringo’s eyes got colder and colder, until Pike could no longer meet them. He probably knew Ringo was thinking about how they had bushwhacked him, and Ringo’s silence seemed harder for him to bear than bitter curses and threats would have been.
Then Ringo deliberately drew his gun, cocked it and aimed it at Pike’s face.
Pike cried out and fell to his knees and said in a pleading voice, “Don’t kill me, Ringo, for God’s sake!”
Ringo’s jaws were clenched so tight that they swelled out in murderous hatred and his chest rose and fell. He gripped the cocked gun in his hand until it trembled, reducing Pike to blubbering terror. But the moments passed and Ringo didn’t pull the trigger. Finally he seemed calmer and there was even a kind of peace in his face, as if he had won some important struggle with his own violent nature. He looked at the astonished Wyatt and said, “He’s just not worth it.”
“Maybe he’s not worth it,” Wyatt said. “But speaking for myself, I can’t afford to leave him alive. Not after he’s seen me. He’d tell Curly, and pretty soon the whole world would know.”
Ringo shrugged and holstered his gun. “You do as you like with him. It doesn’t make any difference to me. He needs killing. But I’m not going to kill him unless I have to.”
“It won’t bother me any,” Wyatt said coldly. “Not after what he did to my brother.”
Pike swung his head around and looked at Wyatt as if shocked by the suggestion that he, Pike Lefferts, could do such a thing. “I never had nothin’ to do with that!” he cried hoarsely. “I wasn’t nowhere near there when it happened!”
“That’s what they’ve all said,” Wyatt grunted. “Every single one I’ve talked to.”
“It’s the God’s truth, Wyatt!” Pike cried. “Me and the boys was down in Mexico rustlin’ cows when that happened!”
“That I could believe—at any other time,” Wyatt said.
He looked at Ringo. “That’s how it’s been with everyone I talked to. Known stage robbers volunteered the information that they were holding up a stage at that very moment, but swore it was the only time they ever did anything like that in their whole lives.”
“Naturally,” Ringo said.
Pike must have figured that was the best chance he would have, slim as it was. He dived for the gunbelt he had thrown to the ground. He grabbed the gun and was jerking it out of the holster when Wyatt lifted the Buntline Special and shot him through the body. Pike flopped over on his back and lay there breathing with difficulty, not even trying to locate the gun that now lay besi
de him.
When Wyatt and Ringo drew near, he looked up at them with his yellow teeth bared in a sickly grin. He no longer seemed angry or bitter at either of them. “I don’t know how you got the idea I shot your brother, Wyatt,” he said, “but it don’t matter none. The minute I saw old Hoodoo lyin’ there I knowed my goose was cooked. If one of you boys hadn’t killed me it would of been someone else. Hoodoo never had nothin’ but bad luck and he spread it around wherever he went. I always knowed he’d get me killed one way or another.”
Those were the last words Pike Lefferts ever said. His dark eyes widened in a kind of panic and then stared off without seeing in two different directions.
“It’s going to make old Pike mighty uneasy if Hoodoo’s face turns out to be the first one he sees when he gets to hell,” Wyatt said, idly twisting the end of his mustache. “He’ll know his goose is cooked for sure then.”
“With Hoodoo and Pike down there, I think I’ll try to avoid the place as long as I can,” Ringo said. “I don’t think I’d much like doing a long stretch with them.”
Wyatt cocked one eyebrow at him. “I sort of doubt if they’d get a kick out of it either.”
“Probably not.” Ringo was looking thoughtfully down at the dead man. “Why do you think he said he didn’t have anything to do with it? He knew he was dying anyway.”
“I don’t think he knew which brother I meant,” Wyatt said.
“I guess not,” Ringo said, turning away. “Well, I’m glad it’s over anyhow.”
He went to where the dead Hoodoo lay, got his hat and dusted it off. His black coat was riddled with bullet holes and covered with blood and he left it on the dead man. He went to his horse and checked the cinch.
Wyatt stood watching him a moment in silence and then said, “I guess you don’t want any company? I wouldn’t mind riding along a piece. I got nothing better to do.”
Ringo kept his back turned as he said, “I don’t think you’d much like it where I’m going.”
“Where’s that?” Wyatt asked. Ringo didn’t answer and Wyatt smiled a little. “Back to hell?”
“Not till I have to,” Ringo said. The wry ghost of a smile touched his own lips. “But I guess it could still work out that way. I think nearly everyone in town would like to put a bullet in me. They all seem to hate my guts. That’s quite an accomplishment, when you consider that I’ve only been there a few days and haven’t spoken to more than four or five people.”
“It’s always the same,” Wyatt said, a note of bitterness in his tone. “When you come right down to it no one’s got much use for a gunfighter, no matter which side of the law he’s on. That’s one reason I quit being a lawman.”
Ringo turned and looked at him out of the clearest, bluest eyes Wyatt would ever see in a long lifetime. “The way I heard it,” Ringo said, “you didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“I guess you’re right at that,” Wyatt admitted. “I believe I mentioned that I’ve already got a murder charge hanging over me in Arizona. They should have given me a medal, but I’ve noticed that when you kill a snake, somebody always starts taking on like he was an angel. Anyway, I want to get back to Colorado before anyone ties me in with all this killing. If that happens, they’ll extradite me for sure.”
“I don’t plan to hang around here much longer than I have to myself,” Ringo said. “Someone might decide I’m not quite as dead as I should be. Curly’s the only one around here who knows me and no one believes much he says, so I don’t guess I’ve got too much to worry about there. The only one who could get me hung is you, and if you talk we’ll hang together.”
“Then I don’t reckon either one of us has got anything to worry about,’’ Wyatt said.
“I guess not,” Ringo said, stepping into the saddle. “Well, so long, Wyatt.”
“So long, Ringo.”
Wyatt stood there with the tall rocks behind him and watched Ringo ride off, turning west along the stage road toward Boot Hill. Wyatt’s own horse stood saddled and ready, but in spite of what he had told Ringo, he was in no hurry to begin the long, lonely ride back to Colorado. There was no one in Colorado who would be too anxious to see him, unless it was a cantankerous ex-dentist who might have already coughed his lungs out by now.
In any case, there was nothing he could do for Doc, and he wasn’t sure the trouble here was over yet. Not for Ringo, anyway.
Chapter 16
Ringo rode into town about midafternoon and those who saw him wondered about the missing coat. He rode all the way down the street to the livery stable without looking to the right or left, though his clear blue eyes missed very little. The Bishop kid was at the stable, but he stayed out of sight and let Ringo take care of his horse himself. Then he stood at his crack and watched the tall gunfighter walk up the street with his saddlebags and blanket roll and turn into the hotel.
Curly was standing alone at the bar in the Bent Elbow, his mood such that even the Hatcher boys were avoiding him. A little later he glanced out the window and saw them go by with the Bishop kid and they all had their heads close together. Cash seemed to be doing most of the talking, but there was a kind of secret excitement in the faces of all of them, and Curly knew they were plotting something. Something that concerned Ringo. Cash wasn’t about to forget that Ringo had killed his dogs. The thing had been festering in his mind all day.
Worried and restless, Curly went to the door and watched them go along the street four abreast. As they passed the hotel, the Bishop kid whistled the way he usually did when he saw Ringo.
Ringo was cleaning up in his room and he heard the taunting whistle. He didn’t go to the window to look out, but his eyes narrowed in anger and his jaw got a little harder.
The Hatcher boys and Billy Bishop went on by the hotel, grinning like kids after mischief. They walked on about fifty paces, then turned around and came back and this time all four of them whistled as they passed the hotel. Comanche Joe, the youngest Hatcher, stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled louder than any of them.
They came on down the street and Curly returned to the bar, shaking his head. The Bishop kid went back to the stable, but the Hatcher boys came into the Bent Elbow, still grinning like they had done something big.
Curly had developed a grudge of his own against Ringo, but he hated to see them behaving like that. It was a reflection on him. He had failed to teach them better. And now that old Parson was dead, he felt more responsible for them than ever. Ma Hatcher would blame him if he stood by and let them get themselves killed.
He gave Cash a hard look, knowing he was behind it. “I reckon you didn’t learn anything out there this morning when you tried to draw on Ringo. If you hadn’t been so damn slow, he would of killed you. He just hated to shoot someone whose gun was still in the holster. It would of looked like cold-blooded murder.”
“I ain’t scared of him,” Cash said, getting red-faced and sulky.
Curly turned his big shaggy head topped by the soiled white hat. His pale gray eyes were bright with scorn as he looked at Cash. “The hell you ain’t.”
“Who the hell does he think he is anyway?” Cash asked. “Killing my dogs like that.”
“Ringo knows who he is,” Curly said. “That’s the trouble with you boys. You don’t know who you are yet. And the way you’re going, you won’t ever live long enough to find out.”
“He ain’t going to get away with it,” Cash said stubbornly.
“Hell, it was your fault,” Curly said. “You could of called them dogs off. I as good as told you what would happen if you didn’t. But you thought it would be fun to watch. Well, you saw how much fun it was. But you still ain’t learned nothing. You’re still trying to play stupid punk games with Ringo. I guess you’ll have to get shot all to hell the way I did, before you learn anything. Ringo warned me the Earps weren’t the sort of me
n you could play games with. He knew them better than I did because he was a lot more like them. But I wouldn’t listen. I was just like you. I had to learn my lesson the hard way.”
“It’s time somebody learned him a few things,” Cash said.
Curly sighed and shook his head. “I’m telling you, Cash. You don’t know that man. He ain’t like anyone you’ve ever seen before. If you made me mad I’d knock you on your hind-quarters and like as not that would be the end of it. But Ringo ain’t like that. He lets things build up inside him till he explodes. And when Ringo explodes, somebody gets blowed all to hell. You just keep crowding him and there’ll be blood running in the street.”
“There’s already blood in the hills,” Cash said. “I’d just as soon get mine here in town as out in the desert where there ain’t any witnesses.”
“If Ringo wanted to kill you, he would of done it this morning.”
“He prob’ly didn’t because of what you said before.” Cash’s face paled as he remembered how close he had come to being a corpse, but his dark eyes remained bitter and unforgiving. “My gun would have still been in the holster and it might have looked like murder. But that wouldn’t stop him out in the desert where there wasn’t anyone to see who did it. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re taking his side. He ain’t no friend of yours. He already took your girl.”
Curly reached for his glass. “I reckon she never was my girl.”
“Nobody but just them two on the second floor of the hotel,” Cash said. “What do you think goes on up there every night?”
“Shut up,” Curly said. “Miss Sarah’s a lady.”
“Lady, hell,” Beanbelly said, with a dirty grin.
“Beanbelly,” Curly said, “if you don’t keep your filthy mouth shut, several things are going to happen to you all at once, and you ain’t going to like any of them.”
