by Paul Bagdon
“Madder’n a pissed-on hornet,” Lucas said. He smiled. “Gimme that bucket.”
Will noticed an inch gash over Lucas’s left eye. The cut was held closed tight with a glob of hoof dressing. The dried blood was pretty much the same color as his beard.
“Little tussle?” Will asked.
“Sumbitch caught me soon’s as I put the iron to him. That’s why I got him rigged like that.” Lucas grabbed the beer bucket with a hand on either side and drank it dry in four long, gargantuan glugs.
Will moved to his horse’s flank. The new brand was covered with udder balm, but the livid pink-red flesh showed through. It was a fine piece of work: the IIII had been transformed into a neat HW.
“You done real good, Lucas. I’d be mighty proud to buy us beefsteaks an’ maybe another beer or two.”
“Lemme put your horse in a stall an’ dump some laudanum in his yap ’fore he busts up all his teeth.”
Will watched as the smith put his shoulder against Slick’s right shoulder and took a good grab on the horse’s pastern. Will shook his head in awe. Lucas was damned near carrying a twelve-hundred-pound horse into a stall.
The tincture of laudanum was in a brown glass bottle with a capacity of a pint or so. Lucas took a hard twist on Slick’s nose. The teeth chattering stopped. The smith poured half the bottle and maybe a bit more into Slick’s gullet. Three minutes later Lucas unfastened the rig. Slick stood on all fours for a bit of time and then nuzzled Lucas like a foal begging for a piece of apple.
The few folks at the rickety tables in the hotel dining room barely looked at Lucas and Will as they walked in and sat at a table. Lucas took over the ordering when the waitress—a hefty lass with a sweet smile that’d make Satan head for the nearest church to repent—walked up.
“What we need is this, Millie: two of the biggest beefsteaks ya got, barely cooked, a heap of mashed taters, maybe some of the carrots you do up with butter on ’em, an’ six schooners of cold beer.”
Millie brought the tray of beer first. The men lit into it.
Lucas set an empty schooner down and caught Will’s eyes, holding them.
“Somethin’s been itchin’ me, Will, an’ I’m tryin’ to figger her out. Not much more’n a hour ago I tol’ you your bro an’ his family was killed an’ his place burned to the ground. You took you a little walk and then come back an’ that was it. See? Now here we are gnawing beef an’ suckin’ beer, like nothin’ bad never happened. Why’s that, Will?”
Will Lewis held the blacksmith’s eyes.
“I don’t know that it’s your business, Lucas, but you been real good to me—busted a couple of heavy laws with your runnin’ iron an’ your papers—an’ you deserve a answer.”
Will hesitated for a time. “I took a floggin’ in Folsom—thirty strokes—for killin’ another con in a fight. I’d seen other men under the lash screaming an’ cryin’ and beggin’, an’ it made me sick. When it was my turn I made me a promise: there wasn’t nothin’ I couldn’t take—but what I could do was find a way to make things even.”
Will took the last beer from the tray and drank half of it. “After I stole the warden’s horse, I went to the cabin of the man who laid the whip to me an’ hung the sumbitch from a tree by his wrists an’ put an even thirty on him. See, Lucas, what I done was mark that bill as paid. That’s what I’m gonna do with this One Dog an’ his crew—mark their bills paid in full.”
“We need more beer,” Lucas said. “You want some red-eye, too?”
“Beer’s fine. I already got me half a stumbler on.”
“Ya know, tryin’ to do what you plan is pure crazy. Some more men . . .”
“I’m more’n likely gonna get killed doin’ this, right? That’s OK. But if I brought friends in, the whole mess wouldn’t be all right. ’Cause those boys’d be killed, too. I’ll hire me some guns when an’ if I think I need ’em. Nobody cares if those types get killed, not even their own selves.”
The steaks came—an honest two inches thick and dropping off all the way around the big dinner platters. They were singed outside but bleeding inside—cooked perfect. The mashed potatoes were as white as a new snowfall, and the serving spoon stood up like a soldier at attention in the middle of the bowl. The carrots were soaked with melted butter with a touch of garlic, an’ they tasted just fine.
Lucas wiped his mouth with his sleeve and chuckled.
“What?”
“Ain’t real hard seein’ you et in stir.”
Will was confused for a moment and then looked down at the table and at his right hand. His left arm was wrapped protectively around his plate, his hand in a tight fist. When he used the knife to cut his steak, Lucas saw that the handle was tucked into Will’s palm and that the blade was between his thumb and forefinger, ready to attack in any position.
Will chuckled softly. “Ol’ habits die hard. In Folsom, a man who doesn’t guard his plate is gonna go hungry.”
“You have much trouble inside—’sides killin’ that fella?” Lucas asked.
“Everybody has trouble in a prison like Folsom,” Will said. “Some real bad boys in there. Show some weakness an’ you’ll end up bent over a barrel with your drawers down.”
“What about the guards?”
“The screws? They’d be first in line at the barrel.”
Lucas began to speak but stopped. The two men finished their meals and called to Millie for another tray of beer.
“You got somewhere to stay while you’re in Dry Creek?” Lucas asked. “Thing is, I got a decent li’l room up in my hayloft I usta live in ’fore I was married. It’s got a real bed. It’s a tad warm durin’ the day, but cools down good at night.”
“I’ll take it an’ pay up when I leave. Thanks.”
Lucas wiped foam from his mouth with his sleeve and looked down at the table, avoiding Will’s eyes. “About Hiram’s farm . . . ,” he began.
“What about it?”
“Ain’t no reason to go out there, Will. None ’tall.”
“I gotta pick up a trail somewhere.”
“Nothin’ to pick up,” Lucas said. “We had rain since, and some hard wind. Anyways, the sonsabitches headed for Mexico with the beef, jus’ like they always do.”
“OK.”
“You’re goin’ anyhow, right?”
“Yeah—if you’ll rent me a horse. Slick’s gonna be on vacation for a bit.”
“I don’t have nothin’ with the class of your Appy, but I got a couple head of good horses got some manners an’ will take you where you want to go.”
“Sounds good. Say—ain’t it about time to have us some more beers?”
“Some more, my ass.” Lucas grinned. “I’m wantin’ a lot more.”
The ringing and clanging of Lucas’s work the next morning as he shaped a piece of stock felt and sounded like he was using Will’s head for his anvil. “Damn,” he grunted, sitting up very slowly. He noticed he was wearing only his left boot. The right one rested next to the bed. As he leaned forward to tug the boot on, a spinning dizziness captured him. He lowered his head between his knees and sucked in deep drafts of air. Quite slowly the earth ceased spinning. He sat up again, found his hat next to where the boot had been, and put it on. He had no recollection of what had happened after the steak dinner and the ocean of beer he had poured down.
“You didn’t quite make it.” Lucas grinned as Will stepped slowly down the ladder. “There’s prolly some beer left in town, an’ last night you swore you was gonna drink all there was.”
Will stumbled to the water barrel, doused his face and head, drank deeply, and then vomited the water next to the barrel. “Damn,” he grumbled, “you musta had as much beer as I did last night, an’ here you are workin’ away, makin’ more goddamn noise than a locomotive hittin’ a brick wall.”
“I’m used to it,” Lucas said. “Hell, you jus’ was sprung from four years in hell. You gotta build up what they call ‘tolerance.’ ”
Will rolled a smoke with slightly
trembling fingers, lit it with a wooden lucifer he snapped to a flame with his thumbnail, and inhaled deeply. “Damn,” he said.
“You’re lookin’ a mite shaky,” Lucas said. “Have you a belt from my bottle an’ you’ll be fine—hair o’ the dog.” Lucas tossed the half-empty quart to Will. Will grimaced but was able to choke down a good slug—and keep it down. The results were almost instantaneous.
“Hard to git it down, but it sure does the job,” Will said. He held his hand in front of him: it was rock steady.
“What’re you gonna do today?” Lucas asked after helping himself to a suck at the bottle.
“Well,” Will said, “I’m gonna buy me a Winchester Model 1873—the .32-caliber, lever-action model—an’ a whole lot of ammunition, an’ then sight her in. I’ll pick up a couple hundred rounds of .45s—Remington, not that army crap. I gotta see can I still draw an’ shoot. It’s been a long goddamn time.”
“That 1873’s a fine rifle,” Lucas said. “They come kinda dear, though.”
“Well, it’ll be the second one I’ve owned. The first one took a round in the lever mechanism that warped it all up the time the law got me. You’re right, though—the ’73’s a hell of a weapon. That first one of mine never jammed or screwed up the six years I carried it. Oh—I need to rent a horse, too.”
“Rent, my ass, Will. You paid for all the beer an’ grub last night. That buckskin down at the end stall is a honest horse—he’ll do for you. Toss your rig on him. Take a set of hobbles along—I don’t know how he’ll act when the shootin’ starts.”
Will fetched the buckskin from his stall and put him in crossties. He worked the horse over with a currycomb and brush, checked all four hooves. The gelding was put together nicely: broad chest, slanting pasterns, good-sized rump, and prominent withers. Slick’s saddle fit the buckskin well. Will noticed that the horse didn’t suck air to bloat up a bit when Will pulled the cinches—always the sign of a willing cayuse. Will led him out of the barn, climbed into the saddle, and headed for the mercantile.
The store smelled good, just as most mercantiles did. The scents of leather, gun oil, the tang of the bundles of new shovels, picks, and axes, tobacco, new denim, and the barrels of apples and buffalo jerky combined, merged, into a partnership of promises of new goods that’d get the job done—whatever the job was.
Will knew he was wasting his breath, but he asked the clerk anyway, “I don’t suppose you got a Sharps?”
“Wish I did, but I ain’t,” the shop keep er said. “What the armies—both sides, mind you—didn’t snap up, the wooly hunters bought.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Will said, and walked over to a long rack of rifles, his boots loud on the polished wood floor. He pulled out a Winchester ’73, held it to his shoulder, worked the lever, and dry-fired it. He put it back and tried another and then another. He settled on the fourth one.
“Somethin’ wrong with them first three you tried?” the clerk asked, curious.
“Not a thing. But this one here feels like it was made for me. That’s somethin’ a man knows when he’s choosin’ a rifle or a pistol. Know what I mean?”
“No,” the clerk admitted, grinning, “but I’ll take your word for it.”
Will bought a couple hundred rounds of .32-caliber cartridges and a hundred .45s for his Colt. He’d been lucky to get his pistol back when he was released from Folsom. Ordinarily, its bone grips and filed-down front sight would have caught a guard’s eye, and the pistol and gun belt would have gone home with him. Will’s weapon was buried in a pile of beat-up rifles and shotguns and, beyond being dusty, was in fine shape. He set the rifle on the counter and began to walk the aisles of the mercantile, picking up a good bedroll, a poncho, a nine-inch knife in a sheath to carry in his boot, a little derringer .25 for his vest pocket, four canteens, a handful of stogies, and a few packs of Bull Durham. Finally, he bought a pair of denim pants, a set of long johns, and a good work shirt. The clerk let him change in the back of the store. Will tossed his old clothing into a trash barrel. The pants felt like slabs of wood against his legs, but he knew they’d break in soon enough.
The clerk, grateful for the big sale so early in the day, tossed in a rifle-cleaning kit and a can of gun oil for free. Will paid up and hauled his purchases out to the hitching rail. He tied the bedroll snugly behind the cantle of the buckskin’s saddle, distributed the ammunition into the right and left saddlebags, and slid the rifle into the sheath in front of his right stirrup, where a cowhand would carry his throwing rope. Will had no use for a rope. He led the horse across the street and tied him at the saloon hitching rail.
He had a single belt of whiskey and a mug of beer and bought a sack of empty whiskey bottles from the bartender.
It was a nice enough day for a ride, and the buckskin had a sweet rocking-chair lope that was a pleasure to sit to. Will put maybe six or eight miles between him and Dry Creek and reined in at an outcropping of rocks. He slid the hobbles on the buckskin’s pasterns and, as an extra precaution, tied the reins securely at the base of a stout rock.
The sun was flexing its muscles as Will walked out into the arid land, dropping a bottle here, standing a line of three there, throwing a couple out as far as his arm could hurl them, and dropping others randomly until the sack was empty.
Will already knew that the action of his new Winchester was as smooth as the workings of the best regulator clock and that the snick as he worked the lever indicated perfect lubrication. Nevertheless, he levered and dry-fired a few times for the simple joy of using a well-made tool. He loaded the rifle.
Will eased himself down onto the sand in the sit/fire position and fit the butt to his shoulder. The first round he fired spurted grit into the air a couple inches to the left of his intended bottle. The buckskin snapped his head toward Will, eyes wide, but settled down quickly. He’d heard gunfire before. Will used the tip of his sheath knife to adjust the tiny setscrew and fired again. The bottle exploded, spewing bits and shards of glass, glinting like diamonds high into the sky. He blew two bottles apart without removing the butt from his shoulder: the action of flicking the lever was smooth and sure, and his index finger barely moved from the trigger.
He needed the remaining bottles for practice with his Colt. He took some long shots with the rifle, spurting chunks of pulp out of a cholla about seventy-five yards away. With his last two rounds he reached out farther—at least a hundred and twenty-five yards—to a rock he could barely see and punched it twice, the slugs ricocheting into the vastness with a sharp whine. Will held the barrel of the rifle against his cheek: it was warm but far from hot. “Hell of a weapon,” he said aloud, smiling. “I can trim the hair off a flea’s nuts at half a mile with this baby.”
Will stood and meandered off from his sit/fire site, very conscious of the stiffness of his new drawers against his legs. The leather of his holster was warm and slightly oily feeling from the neat’s-foot oil he’d rubbed into it, his gun belt, and the piece of latigo he’d used to tie the holster to his thigh. The oiliness would dissipate quickly, leaving the leather smooth and supple.
The bone grips of his Colt .45 fit his hand as easily and naturally as the hands of two lovers as they meet. He crouched slightly and drew a dozen or more times, until the process began to feel as effortless as it needed to. He knew he’d lost a little speed, and that a speck of time could kill him. He wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, walked over to the buckskin, drank a couple sips from his canteen, and poured the rest into his Stetson for the horse.
He worked on his draw an hour without firing a shot, breaking only to build and smoke a cigarette. When a good bit of his confidence had returned he slid a half dozen rounds into the pistol’s cylinder. His first draw and fire brought a curse from him: he’d missed the bottle by four inches. He dropped the pistol back into his holster, let it settle itself, and tried again. He missed by three inches.
“Shit,” he said disgustedly, “I can creep up on it a inch at a time, but there ain’t a lot
of gunmen who’ll give me the time.”
Will put perhaps twenty rounds through his Colt before he made a good, solid hit. Grinning, he took out two more bottles, reloaded, and blasted his final targets into smithereens. He fired until all he could hear was a buzzing in his ears and his right hand was scored and scraped by blowback. An unlucky rattler chose the wrong time to slide out from a small group of rocks. Will decapitated the snake with a single shot. He stood, pistol hanging at his side, sweat stinging his eyes, and watched as the snake’s mouth on the raggedly severed head opened and snapped shut several times, as if it were attacking an enemy. Amber-colored venom dripped from the sizable fangs.
Time had passed unnoticed. Will was surprised to see the sun beginning to touch the horizon to the west. He loaded and holstered his Colt, slid his rifle into its sheath, removed the hobbles from the buckskin, and rode back to Dry Creek, the image of a cold beer floating in his mind. The horse, too, was anxious to get back to the stable where water, hay, and grain awaited him. Will had to rein him in several times—it was still too damned hot to run a horse unless it was absolutely necessary. He held his mount to a walk the last half mile into town.
Lucas, finished with his day’s work when Will rode in, was sitting on a hay bale with an empty beer bucket next to him. “Damn, boy,” he called out, “I’m hungry ’nuff to eat my saddle an’ thirsty ’nuff to drink the damn Pecos dry!”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Will said with a grin. “Lemme brush out this good horse an’ look to his feed an’ I’ll show you how to eat a steak and drink some beer.”
“I put fresh water, grain, an’ a flake of hay in his stall, Will. All you gotta do is run a brush over him an’ we’re on our way.”
Twenty minutes later the two men were seated at a rickety table on equally rickety chairs in the saloon, each with a schooner in hand and another full one waiting to be imbibed.
“So—how’d the shootin’ go, Will?”
“Piss-poor at first, but then it all started comin’ back to me. Some more practice will help.”
