by Paul Bagdon
I never cared for killin’, but I’ve done ’nuff of it. Thing is, I never killed a man who didn’t need killin’. Now, this One Dog . . .
That thought raised him from his languor. He put the brush and soap to good use and then stepped out of the foul water and dried off with a rough towel. He dressed quickly, tugged his boots on, and went out front. The barber was sucking at his pipe, smiling. “What do I owe you?” Will asked.
“A dollar’ll do her.”
Will gave him two. “Anyplace in town I can get a room for a couple nights an’ a decent meal?”
“Hell, boy,” the barber grinned, “this place was a cathouse. I got more damn rooms’n a ol’ whore has crabs. Cost you a dollar a night. Only real grub in town is the saloon on the other side of the street, but it isn’t a half-bad feed. That ‘Eat Drink’ sign on the other gin mill don’t mean a thing ’cept the sign was there when the owner bought the joint.”
Will handed over another pair of dollars. “I’ll be back later,” he said.
The meal at the saloon wasn’t half bad: the steak was large and thick and cooked so that thin blood ran from its middle. Will sat at his table, drank a pot of coffee, and then started on beer. It was good beer—not cold, but not warm, either. He rolled smokes until his fingers no longer obeyed and he scattered perfectly good Bull Durham all over his table, put a bunch of money next to his empty plate, and weaved back to the cathouse. He slept the rest of the day away as well as the full night.
In the morning he ate a half dozen fried eggs and most of a pound of bacon, along with a helping of thin-cut fried potatoes and several cups of coffee. He walked down the street and checked on Slick, who snorted at him and then dropped his muzzle back into a nice serving of crimped oats and molasses.
Will spent the rest of the day sitting in the shade of the saloon’s overhang, went inside at late dusk, drank too much, and crossed the street to his room. He flopped onto the bed fully dressed except for his hat, which he tossed toward the door, and slept deeply and dreamlessly for the night.
The screams he heard at first light tried to work themselves into a dream, but failed. Will sat up as the howls of pain from the street brought him to full wakefulness. The window of his room no doubt hadn’t been cleaned for years, but it was possible to see through parts of it.
There were two men on horseback—Indians, obviously—and a white man with a rifle.
The two drunks from the day before were yelling with pain, screaming for help. The Indians fired arrows at the drunks, starting low—just above their heels, and then moving upward. The Indians were good: their shafts went where they wanted them to. Their speed and skill with their weapons was nothing short of amazing. A man barely had time to scream before the next arrow was unerringly on its way.
Some grunted words were exchanged between the two Indians. They laughed and nodded to one another. The next two arrows severed the spines of the two harmless drunks at about midback. They fell clumsily, with no control of their limbs, like a child’s rag doll hurled against a wall.
Will scrambled from his room and down the stairs, his right hand checking the position of his Colt. He burst out of the cathouse a few seconds too late. The two men were facedown in the dirt of the street with arrows buried several inches into the backs of their heads—the final punishment for speaking of One Dog.
An arrow slashed a shallow furrow across Will’s cheek and blood cascaded down the side of his face. He was on the ground, rolling in the dirt, before the next arrow from the second Indian missed his face by a couple of inches. It was hard to keep moving and fire accurately at the Indians, and even if he dropped them, there was the white man with the rifle.
Will fired twice at the Indian who’d cut his face and he got lucky: a slug tore through the archer’s shoulder and the second entered his right eye socket. The second Indian was drawing his bow as Will got his balance on the ground. He put two bullets in the man’s chest.
The rifleman was the problem now and Will rolled again, just as a gritty volcano of dirt spurted an inch from his face. He blinked away the grit, and as the rifleman worked the lever of his weapon, Will blew the top of the man’s head off, blood, bone, and brain tissue scattering in a pinkish red mist.
The rifleman collapsed from his horse. Will recognized him—the rag-dressed boozer in the saloon who was slumped over the table with the empty bottle in front of him.
Will walked to the pair of dead Indians. Both wore war paint on their faces, but their clothing was strange—one wore a rebel outfit with bullet holes in the shirt that were there long before he met Will Lewis; the other, butternut drawers and a Union shirt. The rifleman looked like a down-on-his-luck cowhand who hadn’t seen a new shirt or pair of drawers for a good long time. The serape he wore was too large for his body and there were bullet rents through it—mainly in the back.
Will slid the cylinder of his pistol to the side, let the empties drop to the ground, and replaced them with fresh cartridges. He holstered the Colt and raised the fingers of his right hand to his cheek. Blood was gushing, cascading, onto his neck and shirt.
A quick flash of a thought flicked into his mind and he forgot his wound and his flowing blood. He set out at a clumsy run to the saloon where he’d asked questions about One Dog. He pushed through the batwings and breathed a sigh of relief. The ’tender was peeking over the bar, unmoving.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” Will began as his vision cleared in the dreary light. “Those two boys . . .”
He looked more closely. The bartender’s head was planted on the handle he used to draw beer from a barrel. Will looked closer, wiping blood from his face. A long tube of bloody, glistening intestine snaked out of a lengthy gash in the man’s stomach. His pants were at his knees; his groin was a bloody, sexless mess.
Will turned away, gagging, choking, bile burning in his throat, dizzy from what he’d just seen and from his loss of blood.
He stumbled out of the saloon and down the street to the barber’s place. The usual thick scent of ganja filled the room. The barber was in his corner chair, almost invisible behind a shroud of smoke.
“How screwed up are you?” Will asked. “I need some stitches bad.”
The barber smiled. “I’m jus’ havin’ my mornin’ smoke, is all. I can sew you up right fine.” He laughed then, totally inappropriately. “I seen what happened. Them Injuns was for sure handy with the arrows. An’ you—”
Will stepped closer and backhanded the barber—hard. “You drink a pot of coffee an’ then git to work on my face ’fore I bleed to death. Hear? You don’t, I’ll gun you as dead as them bodies out in the street.”
“I don’t need coffee. I can stitch you up just fine. Thing is, it’ll hurt like a bitch. How about you take a few sucks on my pipe—relax a bit, kill the pain?”
“No. Jus’ do your sewin’.”
“Maybe some booze? Like I said, this is gonna hurt bad.”
“Goddammit . . .”
“OK, OK—no need to get feisty an’ outta sorts.” He fetched a leather kit box such as surgeons used during the War of Northern Aggression and selected a hooked needle and a long length of suture material. “Too bad I don’t have some chloroform, but I don’t. See, chloroform will put a man to sleep an’ he’ll—”
“Do your work an’ shut the hell up,” Will interrupted.
“Yessir.”
The suturing was an ordeal that had Will digging his fingernails into his palms until they bled. After an eternity the barber placed the last of thirty-seven stitches and tied off his handiwork. “Gonna leave a scar, but what the hell,” he commented. “You wasn’t all that pretty to begin with. Now—here’s what you gotta do. Go over to the mercantile an’ pick up a quart of redeye an’ a clean bandanna. Every mornin’ you soak the bandanna in booze and wash down the wound.
“Take a nip if you want—the cleanin’ is gonna sting some. After maybe twelve, fourteen days, cut the first suture an’ pull the whole length out. Don’t yank—kinda u
se steady pressure an’ she should come right on out, slick as can be.”
Will stood up from the chair woozily, but quickly regained his balance. The side of his face felt like a mule had kicked him. He handed the barber a gold eagle. “Thanks. You quit burnin’ that weed an’ you might could make a good sawbones.”
The barber pocketed the coin and mumbled something that ended with “. . . an’ the horse you rode in on.”
Will strolled on over to the mercantile, weaving slightly but walking fairly well. It was the messiest, most poorly kept store he’d ever been in. The storekeeper was a large—very large—woman who quickly brought the image of a Brahma bull to Will’s mind. He wandered the aisles until he came to an uneven pile of bandannas and pulled one out from the bottom of the pile. He went to the counter. “I need a quart of decent whiskey,” he said, “an’ this bandanna.”
“What happened to your puss?” the woman asked. There was no sympathy in her whiskey-and-gravel voice, only mild curiosity.
“I bit myself,” Will said. “How much for the booze an’ the bandanna?”
“Say—ain’t you the gunman who put an’ end to them three this morning?”
“No.”
“Yes ya are—I seen it from my window right here. Ornery sumbitch, ain’t you?” She turned and plucked a bottle from under the counter. “This here’s a good sippin’ bourbon,” she said. “Aged.”
Will looked over the bottle. The label was slightly crooked, and the print on it was fuzzy and next to impossible to read. “Old . . . old what?” he asked. “I can’t read this.”
“Says Ol’ Kaintuck Home—brung here all the way from Kaintucky.”
“Brung all the way from the barrel of this crap you got in the cellar—right? Aged maybe part of a day?”
“Buy it or don’t buy it—makes no nevermind to me. You ain’t gonna git a chance to drink it ’fore One Dog rips yer guts out, anyways.”
“You pretty sure of that?”
“Damn right. You pissant gunsels don’t scare Dog none.”
Will dropped some coins on the counter. “You talk to One Dog, do you? Tell him he doesn’t have long to live.”
The woman laughed, and it was a cruel laugh—like one would give to a fool. “You ever had yer nuts ripped off when you was alive? You ever git to see how long your guts is? You ever had yer head boiled while you was tied upside down over a fire?” She laughed again, that same witchlike laugh. “Yer a fool—an’ right soon yer gonna be a dead fool.”
Will smiled. “Jus’ tell him, OK?” He tipped his hat. “Been real nice doin’ business with you an’ chattin’ with you, too.” He took his bottle and his bandanna and left the mercantile. The air outside smelled very good after being in the store.
Slick was out in the small pasture the stablekeeper maintained for his own stock and for the horses he boarded who’d kick hell out of his stalls out of boredom. That, or cribbing—chewing on the crosspieces of their stalls. The swallowed chunks of wood could kill a horse, and it made his stalls look terrible.
As usual, Slick was a good bit away from the other animals. He’d either mounted them or fought them, and they wanted no part of him.
Will leaned against the fence, his face throbbing as if he’d taken a punch every few seconds. He soaked his bandanna with whiskey and gently rubbed it along the line of stitches. It felt as if he’d lit the wound on fire.
“Dammit,” he said, tossed the bandanna to the side, and took a long suck from the bottle. It wasn’t as bad as the saloon booze, and even if it were, it cut the pain. Will took another suck and put the cork into the bottle. That’s when the arrow buried its head in the board he’d been leaning against. He dropped to the ground, Colt already in his hand, and saw an Indian riding toward him, a fresh arrow already nocked. Will’s finger was on the trigger and the muzzle of his pistol was chest high to the galloping attacker.
He lowered his weapon and put a slug into the Indian’s knee. The bow and arrow dropped into the dirt of the street; the man screeched and grabbed at his leg with both hands and tumbled from his war pony.
Will walked to the Indian, his Colt steady in his hand, muzzle centered on the Indian’s head.
“Bad shot,” Will said. “Now I can send you away, no? To the place where all your relatives will shun you, laugh at you, and you’ll be alone, eating snake and prairie dog, no woman, no horse—no pride. Why? ’Cause you’re a coward who was scared off by a white eyes you didn’t even know.”
“I piss on your mother,” the Indian snarled. “I know you.” He grasped his knee with both hands. His face was contorted with the pain.
“You know me? Damn, coward, I never seen you before.”
“One Dog, he had a vision. He will himself kill you.”
“I’ll do this: You can crawl to your pony an’ somehow git on him. Then you ride back to One Dog an’ tell him Will Lewis is gonna kill him—an’ all you’re getting is some time, ’cause I’m gonna kill all of you who ride with One Dog.”
“A corpse—you’re a . . .”
Will nudged the Indian’s knee with the toe of his boot. “You remember the name I gave you?”
“You said, Lewis—Will Lewis.”
“Very good. An’ you’ll tell One Dog this: He’s a cowardly chunk of yellow dog shit—a killer of children an’ of women. Tell him he’ll suffer before I kill him.”
The Indian spat again. “One Dog cannot be killed. He has medicine—bad medicine—that protects him from white men. You will—”
“This is gettin’ tiresome. You gonna do what I said?”
“One Dog will carry your hair on his belt and your head will—”
“Like I said, this is gettin’ tedious.”
Will fired, the slug giving the Indian a third eye.
“Dumb sumbitch. All you hadda do was make it to your pony, an’ ride off. Now, you ain’t ridin’ nowhere—’cept maybe to hell.”
Chapter Three
The saloon on the other side of the street was doing business, as usual. Will saw that the bodies were still in the street, although there was a difference: the Indian’s bows, quivers, arrows, and moccasins were gone. The two drunks were drawing hordes more flies than the Indians, probably because of the manner in which the Indians had slaughtered them. The white man with the rifle lost his boots, horse, weapon, gun belt, and hat—and anything he had in his pockets.
“One hell of a sweetheart town,” Will said aloud, disgustedly. “Even in Dodge the furniture maker hauled the dead gunsels outta the street. ’Course he got money for boxin’ ’em up an’ plantin’ ’em.”
An old gaffer with a patch over one eye sat on a bench in front of the mercantile—all mercantiles had to have benches—whittling aimlessly, not forming anything from the rough block of wood he held, merely cutting thin and narrow strips from it.
“Kids got the bows an’ the arrows an’ such,” the old fellow said. “Ain’t nobody in this here town got the balls of a turnip to touch One Dog’s men.” He thought for a moment.
Will stepped toward the batwings.
“ ’Course One Dog would up an’ gut them kids same way he would a full-growed man. Don’t matter none to him.
“You’re prolly wonderin’ why I got this patch over my eye. Thing is, there ain’t nuthin’ but a hole there. I lost the eye at Antioch to them sonsabitch bluebellies an’ their grapeshot.” He paused again. “I s’pose you wanna hear the story.”
“No—not at all,” Will said, pushing his way into the saloon.
Will stood at the bar and swilled beer and the occasional shot of redeye. He hadn’t gone after One Dog immediately, suspecting that the posted guards would be the heaviest after the shootings in Lord’s Rest. His face throbbed with his pulse and his head felt as if someone had split it with a dull ax.
The bartender fetched another schooner for Will and asked, “Want me to run a tab for ya for a couple days? Be easier than you haulin’ coins outta your drawers.”
“No. I’ll be ridin�
�� out early tomorrow. I’ll pay my way tonight.”
“I don’t think you’ll be ridin’ out. We got a nor’easter comin’ on like a damn locomotive. Ain’t gonna be nobody ridin’ nowhere. You don’t believe me, you go on out an’ take a gander at the sky.”
“I’ve rode in rain an’ wind before,” Will said. “I guess I can do it again.”
“Nossir. I don’t think so. Even the goddamn wooly hunters hunker down under cover when something like this comes on.”
Will walked to the batwings and out onto the street, beer in hand. The sky in all directions was a roiled, dirty gray, like soiled, fresh-sheared wool, and the temperature had dropped like a rock down a well. Chain lightning flickered and flashed as if spearing the clouds, and thunder grumbled, although the sound was muffled, muted, like the sounds of a far-off cannonade.
A few fat, stinging drops of rain struck Will’s face as he stood looking at the sky. The choice was an easy one: go back to his room at the cathouse or into the gin mill. He chose the saloon.
“See wad I mean?” the ’tender said. “An’ damn, I was supposed to git some bidness late tonight or tomorra—a bunch of fellas ridin’ through. Shit. They ain’t gonna be thirsty if they ride in this sumbitch storm, an’ that’s for sure.” He considered for a moment as if working a puzzle in his mind. “ ’Course they might like a taste of whiskey.”
Will’s head was still throbbing. The stitches seemed to be holding well, weeping only minute bits of blood. He ordered a bucket of beer and walked over to a table with his bucket and an almost empty schooner, and rolled himself a smoke.
There were eight, maybe ten, men in the saloon—no women. A couple were playing checkers at a table. The balance were standing at the bar in various states of intoxication, from the gent stretched out on the floor to those who stood straight to those who looked like they’d join their colleague on the floor before long.
The storm was like a living thing, with its massive paws around the saloon. The entire building shook when blasts of wind struck it, beams groaned, and the sounds of shingles ripping from the roof sounded like heavy cartridges striking. The rain—now sheets rather than drops—was lashed almost parallel with the ground by the snarling, howling wind.
