Dancing With Dead Men

by James Reasoner

  While he could still move, he tried to get his hands under him and push himself back to his feet so he could run to the town hall. His right arm moved, but his left didn't. Logan realized to his horror that he couldn't even feel it. It was like something had come along and sheared that arm off at the shoulder.

  But he still had one good arm, so he used it to brace himself as he struggled to climb upright. As soon as he put weight on his right leg, though, it crumpled and went out from under him.

  Left arm, right leg . . . That didn't make sense. Unless he'd been shot twice, once in each place. But he hadn't heard any shots, and he was sure Jim Meadows had been either unconscious or dead when he rushed out of the mining syndicate offices.

  Logan raised his head and looked toward the town hall. The men who had come out onto the porch had turned their backs and started inside the building. He realized they had seen him wallowing around in the street and decided that he was drunk. That would explain the shots, too, since plenty of men had been known to get liquored up and fire a gun into the air, especially on holidays.

  "No," he groaned. "Get out . . . of there!"

  The men couldn't hear him. They were too far away.

  Logan heard something else: hoofbeats. Somebody was riding away from the town hall in a hurry. That made sense. Anybody who just lit the fuse to a whole box of dynamite would want to put some distance between themselves and the explosives as fast as possible!

  Logan gritted his teeth and groaned again. His left arm still flopped uselessly at his side and his right leg was almost as limp, but when he got the leg under him this time and carefully pushed himself up, he was able to balance on it and his good left leg. He started hobbling toward the town hall. He couldn't risk moving too fast, because if he did he would fall down again.

  But if he moved too slow the building would go up in a huge blast and everyone inside would be killed. Men, women, children, all gone in a flash of noise and fire . . .

  Logan kept moving. One foot in front of the other, he told himself.

  As he walked unsteadily toward the town hall, he used his right hand to check for bullet wounds. He didn't find any, which made no sense. What else could have knocked him down and crippled him like this?

  He didn't have time to think about the answer. He was closer now, close enough to start yelling in a raspy voice. He shouted, "Dynamite! Get out, get out!"

  The doors were closed. He heard music through them, bright, merry Christmas carols. The people inside would be dancing, he thought, dancing with no idea what was really right under their feet.

  "Hey! Hey in there! Dynamite!"

  One of the doors opened, and a familiar stocky figure stepped out, silhouetted by the light behind him. Marshal Floyd Mahaffey called, "Who the hell's doin' all that caterwaulin' out here?" He paused, then said, "Handley? Is that you? What's wrong with you, man? You drunk?"

  Logan was almost there. The world spun crazily around him, the beat of his pulse inside his skull was like an enormous drum, and when he tried to respond to the marshal's questions a fit of coughing seized him. Finally he gasped, "Dynamite . . . under building! Get everybody . . . out!"

  Mahaffey roared a curse and ducked back into the hall. Logan heard shouts and screams as the place erupted in panic. He had worried that Mahaffey wouldn't believe him, but obviously the marshal didn't want to take that chance. More men appeared in the doorway as they tried to stampede out of the place, but they hung up and got stuck there as they struggled with each other in their fear.

  Like a herd of spooked horses getting in each other's way, the people inside the town hall would never be able to get out before the explosion went off, not all of them, anyway. Logan didn't know how much time was left, but it couldn't be much. He had to try to stop the blast.

  Dropping to the ground was no problem. He'd been fighting not to fall down for the past few minutes. He let himself go, sprawled on his belly, and began to drag and push himself under the building, using his one good arm and one good leg. He crawled between the nearest pilings and looked around as frantic footsteps pounded like thunder on the floorboards above his head.

  If he'd had to search everywhere under the hall, he never would have found the box of dynamite in time. But the burning fuse threw off sparks, and he spotted them right away in the darkness. They were almost directly under the center of the building. Logan set his jaw and dug the fingers of his right hand into the dirt to pull himself toward them.

  For a second as he had looked around under the building, the thought had crossed his mind again that maybe Meadows had lied about the dynamite. He was going to feel mighty foolish if it turned out there was nothing under here. Seeing the sparks was, in a bizarre way, almost a relief. He had always liked having a goal.

  This was one hell of a goal: get to that dynamite and stop it from exploding before he and everybody still in the hall wound up blasted to kingdom come.

  Logan worked his way closer and closer. His eyes had adjusted some to the gloom under the building, and the sputtering, sparking fuse gave off a little glow. He could see the wooden crate sitting on the ground. The fuse looped up and over one side of it and disappeared inside the box. As he drew closer he shoved hard with his left leg to push himself forward and stretched out his right hand as far as it would go. His fingers fell just short of the fuse's burning end. Logan cried out from the effort as he lunged for it again.

  This time his hand closed around the fuse. It burned his palm, searing the skin as if he had grabbed a live coal from a fire, but he ignored that and yanked. The fuse came loose at the other end and slithered out of the box like a snake to drop onto the ground.

  Darkness had enveloped Logan when his hand closed on the fuse. His grip had snuffed it out, so it was still dark under the town hall except for a little light that came down here and there through tiny cracks between the boards. He lay there breathing hard, with his face pressed against the dirt. He didn't feel the cold anymore. Didn't feel much of anything, in fact.

  His hearing still worked. He heard Marshal Mahaffey yell, "Somebody crawl under there and drag him out! I want to have a word with that damned gunman, panickin' everybody and ruinin' the dance like that!"

  "But Marshal," another man said, "what if there really is dynamite under there?"

  "It ain't gone off, has it?" Mahaffey demanded. "Go ahead and get under there. I'd do it myself, but I'm too old."

  And too stout to be crawling around under a building, Logan thought, and even after everything that had happened, a grim smile tugged at his mouth for a second.

  A few moments later a hand clamped around his left ankle. A man called, "I got him! You want me to pull him out, Marshal?"

  "That's what I said, wasn't it? Dadgum it, don't anybody listen to me around here?"

  Whoever had crawled under the town hall to get him must have taken hold of his right leg, too, but Logan couldn't feel it. His left arm and right leg were just so much dead meat by now. But he felt himself sliding backwards along the ground, and it wasn't long before he emerged into the light of several lanterns being held up by men who had gathered around the front of the town hall.

  More hands took hold of him and lifted him. His muscles wouldn't work, so the men had to catch hold of him again as soon as they let go of him. As they propped him up in front of the marshal, Mahaffey demanded, "Handley, what in the sam hill – "

  "Meadows," Logan rasped. "He tried to . . . steal the bullion . . . from the Rimfire vault . . . was gonna . . . blow up the town hall . . . to cover up the robbery . . ."

  "That's a lie!" a man shouted. Logan recognized him as Clete Barrows, the superintendent of the Aldena syndicate. "Meadows wouldn't do such a thing."

  "You don't . . . know him like I do," Logan forced out. "He was gonna . . . double-cross you, Barrows . . . blow you up . . . along with . . . everybody else."

  Barrows paled in the lanternlight, probably as he realized how close he might have come to dying.

  Another man had c
rawled under the building. As he emerged he pushed the box of dynamite out in front of him.

  "It's true, Marshal," he yelled. "Look what I found under there!"

  "Son of a – " Mahaffey was so shaken he couldn't even finish the curse. He grabbed the front of Logan's vest. "Where's Meadows now?"

  "I shot him . . . left him down at the Rimfire offices . . . knew I was the only one . . . who could stop the explosion . . ."

  Logan broke off in a fit of coughing again, and one of the men holding him up said, "Marshal, he's burnin' up! The fever's got him bad!"

  Mahaffey could be decisive when he had to. He snapped, "Somebody find Doc Johnston! Thurman, you and McClure get down to the Rimfire office right now and see if Meadows is still there. If he is, arrest him! And if he puts up a fight – " Mahaffey glanced at the box of dynamite and shuddered. "Ventilate the son of a bitch."

  "Meadows is a curly wolf, Marshal. Can we take some men with us?"

  "Take as many as you want. Just catch the varmint!"

  Men rushed off shouting in excitement and anger. Logan let his eyes droop closed. The townspeople were safe now. The Christmas Eve dance was ruined, but at least hundreds of innocent people wouldn't have to die because of Jim Meadows' greed.

  Logan started to cough again. His muscles seized up. Every wracking spasm felt like something was breaking inside him.

  "Marshal, I think Handley's dyin'!" said one of the men holding him up.

  Mahaffey got in Logan's face and yelled, "Blast it, don't you die, Handley! Not until I get to the bottom o' this!"

  "Sorry . . . Marshal," Logan whispered. "I reckon that's . . . out of my hands now . . ."

  The cold was gone and so were the hands holding him, along with everything else except the night's blackness. It closed in around him.

  Logan didn't mind at all. He welcomed the oblivion.

  3.

  Logan was sixteen years old when he killed his first man. That was Kansas, 1861, a bad time and place to be. Bloody Kansas, they called it, and it more than lived up to the name. Guerrillas had swooped down on the Handley farm one night, set the barn on fire, then shot Eben Handley full of holes when he tried to defend his home and family. They had raped and murdered Logan's mother and his two younger sisters. Logan wasn't there – his father had sent him to a neighbor's farm to help them with the harvest – but he saw the orange glow in the sky and jumped on an old plow horse and rode toward home as hard as he could.

  When he got there, he found two of the guerrillas coming out of the house. They were the last ones, lingering behind to do a little more looting, and when Logan galloped up and saw the barn in ruins, the huddled shape of his dead father lying on the ground, and two strangers coming drunkenly out of his house, he knew what had happened.

  Before riding away from the other farm he had borrowed an old Walker Colt from the neighbor, who had carried the gun during the Mexican War. The man hadn't wanted him to take it, telling Logan that he would just get himself into trouble, but Logan had insisted.

  The gun was still in his hand, and when the two raiders saw it, they tried to draw their own weapons. Logan cocked the Walker and got off the first shot. The recoil nearly tore it out of his hand, but his aim was accurate. The heavy lead ball smashed into the chest of one guerrilla and knocked him backward into a rocking chair on the front porch.

  The other man had his gun out and fired, but Logan was already off-balance from the Walker's kick and fell off the plow horse just in time to avoid being shot in the head. He landed hard in the dirt but hung on to the pistol and used both hands to steady it as he cocked it again and fired from the ground. Pure instinct guided his shot. The ball hit the second raider in the throat and angled up into his brain, dropping him like a rock.

  Breathing so hard he was like a runaway steam engine, Logan climbed to his feet. He had to use both thumbs to pull the Walker's hammer back again as he stumbled toward the porch.

  The second man he'd shot was dead, no doubt about that. Blood was all over the place and the ball had torn half his throat away. The first man was still wheezing, though, as he sat in the rocking chair where he had landed. The chair still moved back and forth a little, gently.

  The man's gun had slipped from his fingers and lay on the porch beside the chair. His eyes were so wide they seemed like they were about to pop from their sockets. He stared at Logan and rasped, "Kid . . . I . . . I need help."

  By now Logan was close enough to look through the house's open door and see the nude, crumpled body of one of his sisters lying on a throw rug that soaked up the blood from her slashed throat. Logan aimed the Walker at the surviving guerrilla's face. Even though it didn't seem possible they could, the man's eyes bulged out even more as he opened his mouth to beg for his life.

  Logan pressed the trigger first, and the man's head exploded like a pumpkin dropped from a hayloft.

  Before that night was over, Logan dragged the bodies of both guerrillas into the open space between the house and the burned barn. He took his father inside the house and placed both his parents in their bed after dressing his mother so she wouldn't look so indecent. He did the same for his little sisters. He took some of the money that the family had saved up and left it on the kitchen table along with a note for the neighbor explaining that the coins were payment for the horse. The note apologized, as well, for Logan not being able to return the animal. He weighted down the note with the old cap-and-ball pistol.

  He gathered some supplies, a few extra clothes, and his father's rifle. He took the rifles and handguns belonging to the two guerrillas as well, along with their ammunition. He turned their mounts loose so no one could accuse him of being a horse thief.

  Then he rode away and didn't look back.

  It wasn't very hard to find out the names of some of the men who had been there at the farm that night. Over the next two years Logan killed nine more of them, catching each of them alone, or in one case, two at a time. By then he realized that no matter how many he killed, it wasn't going to bring his family back or ease the grief in his heart. The only thing that would do that was putting all of it behind him, once and for all.

  So that was what he did. He rode away, rode west, and didn't look back. By then he had gotten pretty good at killing.

  He had never really wanted to be a farmer, anyway.

  Ten years had passed since then, ten long years of selling his gun to anybody who had enemies but lacked the courage or skill to deal with them himself. Logan had no idea how many men he had killed during that time. It never seemed worth the time and energy to keep a count of them.

  He wasn't completely without scruples. He never backshot anybody, not once. But he had goaded men into fights when he knew they had no chance against him. Some people would claim that was the same as murder, and he didn't figure he could make much of an argument that it wasn't. He had never shot a woman or a kid, either, not even by accident.

  With plenty of money most of the time, he had developed expensive tastes: good clothes, fine liquor, the occasional high-stakes game of cards, the best whores money could buy. He knew perfectly well that one of these days he would run up against somebody a hair faster on the draw and that would be the end of him, assuming somebody didn't drygulch him first or blow him apart with a shotgun blast from a dark alley some night. These things happened to a man in his line of work. He accepted that, and he slept well.

  Except for the rare nights when all the dead men came back to haunt his dreams, starting with the two he had killed on the front porch of his family's home in Kansas all those years ago. They danced through his head, laughing and bleeding and dying, and all he could do was wake up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. He shoved all that out of his mind as best he could, told himself that such dreams were just an occupational hazard, and got on with his life.

  Then he had gotten a telegram from a man named John Purcell, asking him to come to a settlement in Montana Territory called Aspen Creek.

  4.

  Oc
tober, 1874

  Infantile paralysis, one of the doctors in Denver had called it, because the disease usually struck down children. Nobody knew for sure what caused it or what to do about it. Sometimes the condition seemed to get better on its own, the medico had explained to Logan. Sometimes it never did.

  The Rimfire Mining Syndicate had paid for Logan to go to Denver and get medical attention. That was out of gratitude for him saving the shipment of bullion and also the lives of all those people in the town hall, although Logan had a definite feeling that the bullion was more important to the syndicate. However, that was as far as their gratitude went. A gunman who couldn't draw and fire was of no use to them.

  Over time, some feeling had returned to both his left arm and his right leg. He could walk on his own now, although he had to use a cane and couldn't go very fast. His left arm was thin and withered from disuse. He could move it and could grasp things with his left hand, but the arm was too weak for him to lift much of anything with it.

  The doctor in Denver had sent him to another physician in Kansas City who had more experience treating the condition. After examining Logan, that doctor had told him any recovery he made was liable to be within the first year after being stricken. Any paralysis or weakness remaining after that time was likely permanent.

  Ten months had passed. Time was running out for Logan.

  The doctor in Kansas City had had a suggestion, though. A town in Arkansas called Hot Springs was famous for its mineral baths that were supposed to be good for almost any ailment a person might have, including paralysis and muscle weakness.

  "There's a doctor there named Strittmatter, August Strittmatter, who's supposed to have had some success treating conditions like yours," the doctor had told Logan. "His method includes a combination of muscle massage and soaking in the mineral baths. I think you should give it a try, Mr. Handley. It might be your last chance to regain more use of your limbs."

  By this point, Logan was willing to try almost anything. His life was in deadly danger every day that passed with him unable to use a gun.