Bad Intentions

by Norman Partridge

  He is a devil of a man, and in his veins flows the black blood of sorrow and suffering.

  His fists are as heavy as brimstone.

  And his name is STACKALEE...

  PART ONE

  THE HANGED MAN

  The grower's name was Bill Fristo, and ol' Bill about had himself a conniption fit when he saw that someone had lynched a nigger in his apple orchard.

  Not that Fristo had a problem with lynchings. Mostly, if someone wanted to string up a nigger, Bill would be the first to offer up a length of rope. Except on a Sunday, of course, 'cause Bill Fristo was nothing if not a God-fearing man.

  So it wasn't the lynching itself that put the spurs to Bill's ire. What bothered Fristo was the simple fact that the nigger in question was hanging from a branch heavy with ripe red Fristo apples that'd put some change in Bill's pocket. And if that branch broke under the nigger's weight and gravity brought branch and nigger and fruit to ground, why then it stood to reason that Bill's pocket would be short that much more jingle, because there wasn't too many folks of Fristo's acquaintance who cottoned to beat-up apples, let alone beat-up apples that had dropped off a tree along with a dead nigger.

  Fristo fretted over this realization for several minutes. Then he did what he usually did when an unexpected event buffaloed his everyday routine—he yelled at his Mexicans long and loud, instructing them how to go about setting things right.

  When Fristo was done yelling, Gordito and Pablo did what they usually did—they looked at each other, not quite daring to smile or shake their heads, and then they set out in the direction of the trouble, thinking how best to take the long way around Bill Fristo's instructions.

  Bill took a seat in a rocking chair on the front porch of his place, watching the Mexican's every step. You had to watch them or else nothing ever got done. It was nerve-wracking work, the watching was. Because Pablo was slower than a fat man on his way to a scale, and Gordito... hell, Gordito was a fat man.

  Goddamn. Bill's heart was all aflutter. If things kept up like this—all manner of trouble busting out big as you please as soon as the rooster crowed—why then, it was bound to be one hell of a morning.

  Fristo settled back to think on that as Conchita brought his breakfast. She set a tin plate on a little table in front of the rocker and studied the trouble with her own two eyes, not saying a blessed word about it.

  Bill stared down at eggs and chorizo and fried onions and corn tortillas lathered with butter. But he couldn't eat now. The God's honest was that nigger in the tree had tightened the cinches on his appetite, and with good reason.

  Why, if word got out about the nigger, Bill's entire season could come a cropper. Wouldn't make no difference that Fristo apples were famous from Stockton to Sacramento. Wouldn't make no difference that Mama Fristo's apple pies had won ribbons at the state fair fifteen years straight, right up until the year she died. Wagging tongues would brand Bill's orchard as a last stop for lynched niggers. If gossip like that had a chance to take off, no one who heard the story would want to close their choppers around a Fristo apple, even the fruit that hadn't hung from the same branch as the nigger. Hell, a wormy crop would be an easier sale. And there wasn't no way around it, either, because there wasn't no way on God's green that Fristo could prove which apples had come from the nigger tree and which hadn't.

  Bill sure enough had to think this through, and think it through fast. First off, he'd have to get rid of the nigger... bury him someplace no one would notice. Out in the middle of the orchard maybe. And then he'd have to make sure Pablo and Gordito kept their lips buttoned. Conchita, too. That would take some doing, because those Mexicans liked to talk more than anything.

  Bill was in one hell of a jackpot, all right. He got out his makings and tried to roll a cigarette, but his hands were fluttering worse than his heart, what with his personal reputation and immediate financial future suddenly at stake and all.

  So he yelled at Conchita and told her what he wanted her to do. And, after two or three minutes lollygagging around, she got around to it and rolled Fristo's cigarette for him.

  Then he sent her after his spyglass.

  Because a situation like this one required close attention.

  Right off, Pablo saw that it was a black man hanging from the tree. That's why he didn't rush. Because black men were most of the time even worse off than Mexicans. They didn't have anything worth stealing.

  And a black man who'd been lynched... well, a negro cabron like that would most likely have even less than a black man who was still sucking air. Pablo knew down deep in his gut that this was the truth of the matter, the same way he knew that the sun would come up tomorrow and ripe apples would drop to the ground and rot if you didn't pick them and Senor Bill would never stop yelling.

  Still, sometimes the world held back a surprise the way a gambler holds back an ace in the hole. Pablo hoped this might be the case as he neared the negro gringo.

  Of one thing Pablo was absolutely sure—he had never seen a man quite like this one. Not living, and certainly not dead. The hanged man was tall and rangy, with the worn look of a dog-gnawed bone. Scars crisscrossed his face, purple-white ribbons of misery on polished ebony skin. And the man's tongue was caught between his teeth, trapped there all swollen-slick like a bulge of bellyguts poking through a knife wound.

  Pablo knew what that looked like. He had carved the innards out of a man in San Francisco. In truth, Pablo was not entirely responsible for the man's death, for the man—a shameless drunk—had made a great show of flashing a thick roll of bills under Pablo's very nose, and Pablo was not one to stand firm in the face of temptation. He yielded to same without benefit of conscience and butchered the foolish gringo. That was the only reason he stayed on at Bill Fristo's place. The farm was a good piece out in the country. Besides that, no one in town much liked the apple grower. No one ever came around, not even the law.

  The rope twisted in the morning breeze, and the lynched man rotated. Pablo wondered why the lynch mob hadn't tied the man's hands together, as was usually done. Then, glancing at the left sleeve of the stranger's tattered duster as it came into view, Pablo saw why.

  The hanged man didn't have a left hand. Just a bloody stump that ended at his wrist.

  Must have been whoever hanged the man had lopped off the hand in question. Pablo couldn't figure why someone would want to do that. It wasn't like you could keep a man's hand in your pocket as a good luck piece, the way you would a rabbit's foot. A man's hand was too big for that, and Pablo couldn't think of anyone who'd want to keep a dead man's hand so close to his own cojones, anyhow.

  Pablo shivered at the obscene notion. Suddenly, he didn't want to think about the hanged man anymore. The man wasn't worth thinking about, anyway. Because when you cut the gristle off the bone, it appeared that this negro gringo had less than most anyone Pablo had ever seen. Pablo seriously doubted that there had ever been an ace in this sorrowful bastard's hole —

  Until he took a closer look at the hanged man's footwear. At first glance it had appeared that his boots had been stitched together from mismatched bits of leather. Thick black hairs bristled from several patches, as if they'd been missed by a drunken cobbler's skinning knife. Other patches were as naked and smooth as a newborn babe's behind. But as Pablo drew nearer, he noticed weird bumps and bulges that couldn't be accounted for.

  Perhaps the boots contained hidden pockets, filled with God knows what. Pablo came within reach. Now, in addition to the bumps and bulges, he noticed little holes ridged with ivory that gleamed in the morning sunlight —

  Thoroughly amazed, Pablo sucked a short breath and hesitated. And then he realized that the ivory was not ivory at all, but razor-sharp teeth... the little holes... they were tiny mouths... and the mismatched bits of leather were fat mouselike torsos and wings ridged with bone....

  Why, the boots were made from huge bats, the kind Pablo hadn't seen since he'd departed Mexico as a child of ten!

  Pablo's jaw droppe
d. He had never in his life seen boots like these. He could not take his eyes off of them. So wonderful were they, so amazing...

  And, by the look of them, the boots were exactly his size....

  A cool breeze washed Pablo's shoulders and rustled the leaves of the apple tree. The hanged man swayed, and the branch creaked, and thick droplets of blood dripped from the man's wrist and pattered the moist earth.

  Pablo reached out...

  ...but Gordito was faster. In his reverie, Pablo had all but forgotten his young partner. Now he was paying for that mistake. Gordito shouldered past Pablo, and Pablo could only watch as the other man's plump fingers closed around the negro cabron's wonderful boots.

  And then the boots began to scream.

  So did Gordito. The fat youngster whirled around, hands held high—hands minus half the fingers they'd had just a moment before, blood spurting everywhere.

  Instantly, Gordito took off running in the direction of Bill Fristo's house. Pablo fell back, staring at the hanged man's boots, watching in horror as Gordito's plump fingers disappeared between the razor-sharp teeth of bats with eyes which were quite suddenly red and alive.

  The wind picked up. The hanged man swayed, and the branch groaned once again...

  No. Not the branch. The hanged man was groaning.

  His scarred eyelids flashed open, and he sucked his swollen tongue into his mouth just the way a rattlesnake does, and his gaze trapped Pablo's.

  Pablo was shaking from head to toe. With great effort, he managed to unfold the pocket knife which was sharp enough to open a man's belly. He did not know what good it would do to carve up a man who was hanged but not dead, but knew with great certainty that he had to do something.

  Before he could move, a thunderclap sounded behind him.

  A single gunshot.

  A bullet slashed the hangman's rope.

  The black man crashed to the ground.

  Pablo turned to face the gunman.

  Bill Fristo said, "He ain't dead through, is he?"

  Stack wheezed a shallow breath and let it burn in his lungs.

  The first breath that had passed his gullet in seven hours, at least. And now here he was, sucking air while down on his knees like a slave kissing the master's feet, but that was okay because at least he was breathing again.

  It was a fine trick, and he had to admit it. Dead in a tree, and then his boots—cursed or charmed, take your pick—well, those boots taste blood, and that blood does the trick like water to the roots of a parched tree.

  But blood or no blood—the gunfighter was still weak as a kicked pup. Plus he had one hell of a crick in his neck, and it felt like someone had carved his backside with a dull knife. Still, he knew that he had to get up his gumption. He had to move, and had to move now, because the white man had a gun and the Mexican had a knife.

  Stack's left arm brushed his tattered duster, but he couldn't seem to get his coat out of the way... and he realized in a sparkling moment of unease that there wasn't a hand at the end of that left arm, and hence no fingers with which to pull back his coat, let alone find the Navy Colt holstered beneath it.

  Short one gunhand. It was a hell of a problem for a gunfighter. Kind of stopped Stack cold.

  Where in hell had his left hand got to, anyhow?

  The white man said, "Jesus, Pablo. I can't believe you almost killed him."

  "He's a devil!" The Mexican couldn't stop shaking. "His boots... they are cursed! They ate Gordito's fingers!"

  "The hell they did. Clumsy bastard probably cut himself on the nigger's spurs."

  "No! This devil belongs in hell! We got to kill him, Senor Bill!"

  "Hell if we got to do anything of the sort." Bill unfolded a handbill and shoved it at Pablo. "I know you're too ignorant to read, but you take a look at this here picture and tell me if this ain't the same man on his goddamn knees before us."

  Still shaking, Pablo examined the handbill. "Yes... it is the same man, but I do not see — "

  "Open your eyes, Pablo. That's what I did, up there on the porch. I looked through my spyglass, saw this buck's face close up, a hangin' in the air. Right off I remembered them old wanted posters I keep out in the privy for comfort's sake. Sent Conchita runnin' for 'em and damn if my memory don't serve me. Turns out this here nigger is a wanted man. I'm just glad I didn't wipe my ass with his face days ago."

  "He is not a man at all, senor! He is a monster! We should cut off his head and stuff it with garlic! We should drive a stake through his black heart!"

  "We ain't killin' him, and that's final! This bastard's worth ten thousand dollars to the good folks of Fiddler, California! He done killed himself seventeen fellas down there!" Fristo snatched the wanted poster from the Mexican's hands. "But the son of a bitch has got to be alive, like the poster says! He ain't worth a plug nickel if he's dead!"

  Stack listened without saying a word.

  So the man with the pistol knew. Not everything. But enough.

  The man with the pistol knew that Stack had cut a wide swatch of death through Fiddler all those years ago. And he knew about the price on the gunfighter's head. But he did not know the whole story. He did not know about the old Chinaman and his daughter. He did not know about the magic— curse or charm, take your pick.

  Nor did the man with the pistol wish to know about these things, because he was the kind of man who could not see past a dollar sign.

  The fat Mexican's blood pumped through the hanged man's veins. His head began to clear. Soon he would rise and face this man, draw his own pistol —

  If he could only find his gunhand. He held his left arm before him, staring at puckered flesh and fresh scar tissue where his lifeline had once ended. Already, the stump had nearly healed over—that was part of the Chinaman's magic (curse or charm...). If nothing else. Stack was a very fast healer—but without the missing hand, he could be healthy as the proverbial horse and it wouldn't do him a damn bit of good.

  But that was not straight thinking. Not at all, because an obvious fact suddenly occurred to the gunfighter—he had another hand. That other hand was attached to his right arm. Currently it was on the ground, long fingers splayed, helping him to keep his balance while he leaned forward on his knees like a slave before his master. But if he could stand up, just do something as simple as that, and if he could keep his balance, why then there was no reason why he couldn't reach across his body and yank the Navy Colt from its holster with his right hand.

  And then he would kill the white man, because the white man had a gun. And if he had to, he would kill the Mexican. Not because the Mexican had a knife—a pocket knife was no match for a Navy Colt— but because the Mexican had seen too much. The Mexican, perhaps intelligent enough to be superstitious, might know ways to stop him that the white man would not.

  But before he could do any of that, the gunfighter had to move.

  He had to move, now.

  Bill Fristo couldn't believe his eyes. The nigger straightened, got one skinny leg under him, and stood up.

  He looked Bill dead in the eye, and Bill felt like someone had danced a jig on his grave. And then a hideous smile split the lynched man's scarred face, and he pawed at his duster with that stump of his, and he got the coat out of the way, and Bill saw for the first time that the buck was packing iron.

  Once upon a time. Bill Fristo had been one hell of a shot. Still was, if you could judge by the way he'd split the hangman's rope with one bullet. But right now he was shaking as bad as the Mexican. The memory of Gordito running past him with bleeding fingers, and the things Pablo had said about the nigger being a demon, and the way the buck had come down out of that tree and looked Bill dead in the eye, well, all that made Bill's trigger finger itch worse than his hemorrhoids, and that was saying something.

  Still, there was that ten thousand dollars to think about. No question Bill had to stop the nigger. Not kill him—that would sure as shit nix the bounty. Just stop him.

  Bill squinted and jerked the trigge
r, firing twice.

  Two cored apples dropped out of the tree.

  "I still got three shots left," the white man said. "Those bullets can stay in my gun, or they can excavate a ditch in your brainpan. I don't want to do that, because I want the reward that's on your head. I figure I want that money same way you want to keep on breathing."

  Stack held his duster away from his holster with the stump of his left arm, but his right hand did not reach for his Navy Colt. Dollars to doughnuts, the gun wasn't going to do him much good. Not with the white man holding down on him like he was, not with the way the bastard could shoot.

  Stack's mouth, though... why, that was another story. His mouth might do him a whole heap of good.

  "I'll be taking my leave," he said, and he began to back away, into the apple orchard.

  The white man cocked the hammer and drew a bead on Stack. "Hold on, now."

  The gunfighter grinned and kept on moving. "There's one thing in particular that I've learned in my travels," he said. "One thing you need to know right now."

  "What's that?"

  "If you're going to eat pie, amigo, the first thing you have to do is get to slicing."

  Bill wondered what the crazy son of a bitch meant. He watched the nigger backing away, still gasping for breath, more skeleton than man. A bony nigger with a hangman's noose around his neck who was worth ten thousand dollars, and no way he could beat Fristo in a gunfight, not when he was short one gunhand.

  Fristo glanced at the busted branch where the nigger had been lynched, then at the gunshot fruit on the ground below.

  Fruit that maybe would have put pennies in his moth-eaten pocket.