by Tim Bryant
I left the three rented rooms with six dead Blackfoot Indians stacked in them and moved to the other end of town, where I found accommodations much more to my liking. Greer Lusk and I took a two room place just over a livery stable, which was convenient. I had taken the best horse from the Indian party as a sort of peace offering to Greer. There wasn’t a horse alive I would have traded for Roman. I was his as much as he was mine, and nothing was going to change that.
I also took a couple of keepsakes when I moved to the new place. A Winchester rifle the Indian chief had carried that looked to be brand new and likely taken off a dead soldier anyway. A Colt Peacemaker that felt so good in my hand I couldn’t find a way to put it down. And a lock of that damn Indian’s hair. I didn’t scalp him, though I wanted to. I’d never scalped anybody before, but I figured it was about like skinning a squirrel. Greer would have let me do it too, if I’d had more time and inclination. I kept a lock of the bastard’s hair because I’d heard an Indian war fighter say, many years before, that if you cut a chunk out of their hair, they would walk around the Happy Hunting Ground forever, shamed and searching for it. That served him right, far as I was concerned.
I never heard any word about the dead Blackfoot Indians in the rented rooms. It’s my belief they were scooped up and hauled outside of town where the trash was usually taken and burned. With that small problem taken care of, Greer and I decided we liked our new surroundings and quickly went about making a home.
There wasn’t much peace at all in Mobeetie, but they did have a Justice of the Peace, an odd but likable fellow named Polidore Hews. Hews agreed to marry Greer and me. We jumped the sword, she became Greer Liquorish, and that small piece of happiness helped to console some of her sadness and calm her fears. Rarely would a week go by, though, without her waking me up shrieking about some unseen person in the house trying to steal her away. Usually it was one of them Indians, and I would make out like I was getting the Peacemaker and running them off, and it would, true to its word, restore peace for a little while. Other times, much rarer, the person coming for her would be Bricky himself, and those turned out to be trickier. I could only be patient, urging Bricky to return to the dark of her mind where she would eventually forget long enough to fall back into a slumber.
I decided to take a job digging holes for the undertaker, an old man named Grover Morrow. I needed the pay, and I was starting to think of my talents in a different way. Death didn’t bother me none. If it was inevitable, I preferred it six foot down and well packed in to sharing retail space above ground. Of course, I’d shot those six Indians out of desperation. They asked for it, and that made all the difference. When they got it, I didn’t feel a lick of remorse. If I had, I might have taken a different line of work.
“You got any kind of work here?” I said. “I don’t have no misgivings being around dead folks.”
I was dressed up and on my best behavior. It was one of the last chances to get anything, and, if I came up short, I’d either have to think about becoming a farmer or pulling up stakes. I didn’t have what I thought of as a farmer’s disposition, as I hated early mornings.
“Only people I hire on is gravediggers,” Grover Morrow said, “and I got a man named Jolly does a fine job for me.”
I didn’t see any evidence of Jolly on the premises.
“Well, I don’t see no Jolly, sir,” I said, “but I’m here and ready to work.”
I pointed out that I was well acquainted with Polidore Hews, and I had a new bride and a new home right there in Mobeetie. All of which got me nowhere. Morrow pointed to a door behind him, beyond which I could only imagine slabs and slabs of bodies awaiting their turns in the soil.
“No bodies, no holes,” he said.
I found Joe Mack Jolly easy enough, living in a two room shack just a skip and a jump from Morrow’s business. He seemed likeable enough. I didn’t let on that I’d been asking for his job. Not exactly, anyway.
“I was talking to the undertaker,” I said. “Says you’re having trouble with the work.”
Of course, he’d said no such thing. That didn’t matter.
“Only trouble I have is when there ain’t enough of it,” he said.
We talked for a few minutes, and it became apparent he wasn’t going to quit without a little motivation.
“I got me a new wife to support,” I said.
He didn’t congratulate me or wish me luck or anything. I’d finally had enough of the one-sided banter.
“I need your job,” I said.
I raised up and plugged him one with the Sidehammer, right in his right ear. One was all it took. His life came blowing out the other side and splattered the wall next to him. I placed the gun in his hand, wrapped his dirt-stained fingers around it and rested it against the ear that was not there anymore. His mouth opened, but only a stream exited. His other ear heard nothing.
The next day, I came back to see Mr. Morrow about that job, and he had two different holes that needed digging. One was for an old woman who died of something he called “rising of the lights,” a thing that sounded so scary, I had to will my feet to stay in position. Rising of what lights? Where exactly were they rising from? Did we all have them in us? How had I never heard of this? The other, he was pained to say, was for a young man by the name of Joe Mack Jolly. Seemed Joe Mack had grown despondent over putting so much death into the ground, took a pistola and wrote himself out of the script.
“I’m sure vexed to hear it,” I said.
I was a little vexed to lose that Sidehammer, but it had to be done. That gun had got me through a little thick and a lot of thin. But I’d grown fond of the new Colt Peacemaker, and it represented a new beginning, same way Mobeetie did. I wasn’t about to let Jolly get in the way of that. My first job for Grover Morrow was to dig a hole for the previous gravedigger. It was hard work, but I liked the fact that I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder. I dug for a few hours in the morning, then I dug another one like it in the afternoon for the old lady with the lights and collected a dollar at the end of the day. Mobeetie was looking good enough that I soon put the cattle drive in the back of my mind for a while.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
There was an element in that Fort Worth crowd who, true to Gentleman Jack’s words, weren’t happy to see a colored man strutting around the stage, trying to convince them that a white boy of seventeen years should be the next person to hang. The gallows was still new, having been built in the spring of ’82, and Jack had christened it at the end of May, hanging a man known as Arkansas Pete for stealing three hogs from a farmer on the north side of town. The High Sheriff had given Arkansas Pete the choice between being tried in Fort Worth or being sent back to his hometown of Fort Smith for it. Jack said Pete was horrified at the thought of hanging in front of his mama and sisters, so he chose to die where he was.
I never had a thought toward indulging those elements in the audience on that morning. I didn’t hold Jack’s color against him any more than I did my own. If I was guilty of the things he said I had done, it wasn’t because of my white skin. I had been too young to go off to the war, but if I had gone, I wouldn’t have been shooting at those Yankee soldiers because I hated the black skin of the men, women and children in the South. I would’ve been shooting at them to keep them from shooting at me.
San Antonio had been a colorful city, filled with brown Mexicans and Spaniards and white and colored Texicans. Some of the coloreds were freed slaves, some had never known slavery at all. The colored people, like the Indians, weren’t considered citizens. Some didn’t even consider them people. But they walked mostly free and unencumbered among us, especially living in the District. I grew up with colored kids who were just one generation away from slavery in the cotton fields of East Texas. One girl named Ginny Hay was my best friend when I was of school age. Afraid to leave the district, Ginny Hay would walk me to the little one room school even though she wasn’t allowed in, and sometimes she would be waiting to walk me back home
. I thought nothing of it, and, many years later, she would sometimes cross my mind while laying in the arms of someone like Sunny.
“Who gave you the power to try a white boy like this?”
The loudest of a group of men shouted out during a brief pause, and it hung there in front of us. I was as curious as anybody to see if Jack would address it or just act like he hadn’t heard it when everyone knew he had. He tried for the second option first.
“This man left Mobeetie with a small band of men, none of whom could be called experienced cattle drivers,” he said. “And it was a small drive, as cattle drives go. Eight hundred head might be a lot for you or me, but we see two, three thousand head drives come through here. Thank God Wilkie John Liquorman wasn’t foolish enough, or destructive enough, to take on more than eight hundred.”
Reverend Caliber was stepping up to attack this line of thought when the man in the crowd repeated himself. Louder this time, in case anyone thought we hadn’t heard.
“Heard you twice the first time, my friend,” Gentleman Jack said.
He looked to the Reverend and asked permission to address the question. I was interested in hearing the list of his credentials myself, even if I got an uneasy feeling from the group of men who brought it up. There were plenty of stories of trials breaking out into fisticuffs and then much worse. While such a scene might be good cover for a getaway, I was now perched over a trapdoor with my hands tied in front of me and a noose draped loosely over my head. Not the best place to be if hell did break out.
“I had an agreement with your late High Sheriff to try criminals and execute justice here in this fine city, but I am free to work with or without express consent,” Jack said. “I am a bounty hunter, and, as such, I am a full and legal member of United States law enforcement. The Courts have spoken and said so.”
I didn’t have a clue about courts. It all sounded about as real as castles and kingdoms to me, but it sounded impressive enough. The man in the crowd wasn’t ready to let go of his case though.
“I’m not sure the Courts knew they were speaking of a colored man bounty hunter.”
The Reverend grinned like a big daddy cat watching a smaller cat play with a baby bird. Gentleman Jack kept his cool. I’m unsure if I would have.
“I was raised by my mother, Babet Delaney, sir. I never knew who my father was. I only know he was a white man. May I ask where your father was and what he was doing in the months before I was born?”
There was a divide between the people who got what he was saying and the ones who were standing there scratching their heads, and it wasn’t hard to see. I was happy to see the idiot who posed the question scratching his head and trying to make out whether half the crowd was laughing at him. I was less happy to see Reverend Caliber with a similar expression.
I liked the way Delaney handled the guy, because, when you peeled it back and looked, he wasn’t really even attacking the man. He was suggesting that they could be related. And I could appreciate that. It was what had attracted me to the Jackrabbit in the first place, when I followed him through these same streets on his daily rounds. Maybe I had been the idiot then, not seeing that this same man would quite possibly be my end. Then again, maybe I was the idiot now, standing on this trapdoor to the great void and laughing with this colored man as he gently thumped his white brother on the chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The carnival came to Mobeetie in 1881, if only because it was close enough to Amarillo to make the stopover worth it. We didn’t attend on the first night. The next day, everyone was talking about it. Even Grover Morrow who never did anything said it was the best time he’d had since he buried his ex-wife.
“Greer, let’s go out to the carnival tonight,” I said.
Big crowds made Greer nervous, and she wasn’t sold on the idea.
Second night was one I’d have to live a thousand years to forget. There was a sky full of stars over Mobeetie, and they all seemed to shine on Greer. I paid out two cents to have a go at some wooden chickens on the arcade and sent them flying in all directions. The prize was a book of paper dolls and costumes, but the boy working the booth let us trade for a gold coin that at least looked to be of some value. Greer liked American coins, so I told her she could keep it.
Horse racing and bicycle racing were both featured at the carnival and eagerly taken to heart by the people of Mobeetie, who found them to be great opportunities for gambling. For three nights, money changed hands like a burning coal, good luck and bad wrestling this way and then that, until the fun and games had to pack up and move on to bigger places. That’s when the powers in Mobeetie decided to keep the horse racing going.
It took a little time and a lot of convincing by my friend Polidore, but on a cold autumn night when Greer couldn’t be bothered with going out, we set Roman and me up in one of the races. For once, lack of size was to my benefit. We won our first race by seven lengths. There was no stopping then. We won the second race by ten lengths, and suddenly everyone was lining up to have a chance against us. The next night they brought in what everyone claimed to be the fastest horse in all the surrounding territory, and we won by half a length. I felt bad after that, like I’d pushed Roman far enough. I pocketed more money than I made in a month of grave digging and walked away.
My good luck on the horse track meant I was able to relax when grave digging jobs slowed down for a spell. I took a small job selling farming and ranching equipment in a store connected to the livery stable as well. Convenient, of course, because it was right beneath our home. I proved to be ill-fitted for such employment though. On the second day there, an old rancher came into the store and walked up to me.
“I need to buy a calf weaner,” he said.
I did a double-take, thinking he was trying to make sport of me. He looked completely serious.
“What was that?”
He hitched up his trousers and stood his ground.
“It was a calf weaner. I need a calf weaner.”
Well, I didn’t know any better than to laugh at the old man. I couldn’t see any way clear on his odd request, so I gave him my best shot in return.
“We don’t sell calves, either with or without their weiners,” I said.
He looked at me like I was crazy. There wasn’t a trace of humor anywhere on his person.
“Son, where in the hell did they find you at?” he said. “A calf weaner is a contraption that weans the calf from suckling on the mama cow’s tit.”
I don’t know what it was that struck me so funny, but the more I laughed, the harder it was to stop. If I looked away, I laughed to be rid of him in my sight, and if I glanced back, I laughed all the harder. I heed and I hawed at the man until I was leaning over with my hands on my knees, trying to think of things sorry enough to make me regain some sense of solemnity.
“You keep right on laughing all you want, but I don’t much care for the joke,” he said. “I expect your boss won’t like knowing it either.”
My boss was out for the afternoon, tackling chores that needed doing. It was the main reason he’d given me the job in the first place. I opened a door in the back of the counter and looked into it, making out like I was looking for something that might be a calf weaner. As if I had the faintest idea what such a contraption might look like. I shut the door and moved to the side, opening the one next to it. I took a deep breath.
“I really don’t like it when people call me son,” I said.
I moved to the third door. From the expression on the old man’s face, he didn’t seem to care what I liked or didn’t like. The Peacemaker was waiting for me inside that third door, and by that time, it was itching to be used. I pulled it up and stuck it right in the rancher’s unlaughing face.
“Here’s what I think about your calf weaner,” I said.
I shot him one time. That’s all it took. I stood there for a minute to make sure, but he died so quick and easy, it made me think he must have already been close and ready for it. I pulled him
through the back of the store and out the back, where the staircase climbed to our little home above. I didn’t take anything off of him except a little .41 caliber derringer I thought Greer might be fond of. She said later that she heard the gunshot and stopped and listened, but, when there wasn’t another following, decided it must have been something less foreboding. I never did give her the derringer.
I quit the job there in the farming equipment store soon after, explaining that the grave digging job had gotten busier and I just didn’t know enough about the ins and outs of farming and ranching. That was no lie. I had to bury the rancher two days later, and soon enough, all manner of folks were dying again in Mobeetie. The farming equipment business rises and falls with the seasons and with the quirks of nature. Death doesn’t get eaten up by swarms of locusts, and it never goes out of season. I decided I had a lot more to offer in that line of business, and I went to work proving it.
Not to say death was my only line of business. Greer and I lived not a quarter mile from the sawmill. Even though I’d never done a stitch of work at the mill at Fort Griffin, it was enough to get me on a shift with the big saw. I ran that thing for half a day and dreamed of it half the night. On several mornings, I woke up for work and counted my fingers and toes. When it wasn’t them getting chewed to pieces under that rusty blade, it was an unfortunate co-worker or a boss who had pushed me too far. Alas, they were only dreams, although they did their best to warn me of what lay ahead. On a cold but unremarkable Wednesday morning, the governor on the steam engine broke and the thing overheated, spewing pieces high into the sky, punching through metal and drilling deep into wood and narrowly missing my head. One metal rod punched straight into the head of a worker named Gus, who sat there for half an hour talking to us and then fell limp.
