by Ralph Cotton
Like children? His children? Stanley swallowed an uncomfortable tightness in his throat and avoided Shala’s eyes. “Yes, I know that. We both know that.” He paused, then said, “I realize I didn’t do things exactly the way I was supposed to. Things didn’t go just the way we had them planned—”
“Stanley,” Glick said, cutting him off, his voice turning harsh again, “you shot the wrong man.”
“I know I messed up bad, but it wasn’t all my fault, Mr. Glick,” Stanley said, the very same words he’d used all winter when Glick brought up the subject. “I kept watch on the high pass—the one you said he’d be using.”
“You shot the wrong man, Stanley,” Glick repeated in a stronger tone.
“I know that, Mr. Glick,” said Stanley. “And I’m sorry as hell I did. But I’ll make it right. I swear I will.”
“Oh, I know you will.” Glick gave a sly grin, reached up with his pale, cold hand and patted the young man’s jaw. “I’ll be right by your side to make sure you get it done right. This Ranger Burrack has to die now. The only thing worse than shooting the wrong man is shooting the wrong man and not killing him.” He pinched Stanley’s jaw roughly. “Eh? Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Stanley said, feeling himself shrink smaller and smaller in his wife’s eyes.
Glick turned loose the young man’s cheek and pointed his pale, blue-veined finger in warning. “Mind you, any more mistakes and I’ll have to sternly correct you, just as if you were my own children.” From beneath his hairless brow, his yellowy eyes moved from Stanley to Shala, looking her up and down. “That goes for the both of you.”
From his window above, Sam observed the interaction between Glick and the Lowdens. “It looks like Glick the Dutchman is trying to teach these lovebirds to eat out of his hand,” he said to Beatrice Prine.
“I’d say it’s more like he’s training them to jump through his hoops, if I know the Dutchman,” said Beatrice. She paused in consideration, then said in a wary tone, “Now that I see Glick with these lovebirds, I’m even more concerned for your riding up along the high trail alone. I’ve known my share of gunmen and assassins, but there’s something about Conning Glick that makes my skin crawl.” She rubbed her forearm. “Maybe I should send No Toes along to watch about you—you know, just until you reach Hole-in-the-wall?”
“I’m obliged for your concern,” Sam said, “but No Toes’ job is here, looking after you.” He smiled. “How could I live with myself if something happened to you while your bodyguard was off watching me?”
“But, Sam—”
Beatrice started to say more on the matter, but the ranger held up a hand to discourage her. “I’ll be all right,” he said. He nodded toward the door. “Come on now, walk me downstairs. I want to thank all your doves before I leave.”
Chapter 2
As the Dutchman walked back inside the ragged saloon tent, Shala gave Stanley a withering look as she unhitched her buckskin. “What?” said Stanley, trying hard not to look ashamed of himself.
“You know what,” Shala said, pulling her buckskin away from the hitch rail, ready to mount it and rein it toward the trail out of town. “His children? He’ll correct us like he would if we were his children?” Shala shook her head warily. “My God, Stanley, what have we gotten ourselves into?”
“It’s just something to say, Shala,” Stanley replied, trying to placate her. “I believe he really does think of us both as family.”
“Family?” Shala stared at him in disbelief for a second. “Did you see his eyes, the way he looked at me, Stanley?”
“I saw it,” Stanley replied, “but I think it’s just his way. I don’t think he means anything by it.”
“Oh, it’s his way all right,” said Shala. “I know all about his ways and what they lead to. He probably does think of us like family. I had cousins and uncles look at me that way. I learned early to avoid them the way a yearling avoids a wolf.” She stared toward the ragged tent. “I want to get away from that old murderer before he kills us both.”
“He’s a strange old man,” Stanley said, keeping his voice down in case Glick could hear him from inside the big tent. “But he’s not going to harm us. Besides, we can’t just haul up and leave—we took money from him. We owe him, Shala. He expects something from us.”
“We owe him eight dollars, Stanley,” Shala came back in response, “the money he advanced us to pay our livery bill so we could get our horses from the livery barn.” As she spoke, she stroked a hand down her beloved buckskin’s muzzle.
“Enough to keep us from losing our horses over an unpaid livery bill,” Stanley said bluntly. “It might be only eight dollars we owe him, but we still owe it to him. I say we meet up with him on the upper trails. This time we’ll do what we told him we’d do and be done with him for once and for all.”
“You mean—” Shala halted, then said, “You mean shoot the ranger? We can’t do that.”
“Why can’t we?” Stanley said quietly. “We did it before, didn’t we?”
“But we didn’t know it was a lawman when we did it,” Shala countered. “We thought it was an outlaw. We didn’t see a badge on him. Glick was paying us to shoot a man with a price on his head—a train robber. Not an Arizona ranger!”
“It doesn’t matter now, Shala,” said Stanley. “We shot the wrong man. Now we’ve got to kill him, to keep him from ever finding out what happened.”
“That’s Glick talking, not you,” said Shala. “How in the world will the ranger ever find out? If he thought anything, wouldn’t he have done something by now? He’s been up and around nearly a week.”
“I don’t know how he would ever find out. But Glick’s right,” Stanley countered. “If he ever did think it was us who shot him, we’d both be doomed.”
Shala lowered her voice even more, and said almost in a whisper, “Stop saying ‘we,’ Stanley. I’m the one who shot him. If it comes down to the ranger ever finding out, I’ll have to step forward and—”
“Stop it, Shala,” Stanley said. “I won’t hear of it. As far as Glick knows and as far as anyone is ever going to know, it was me who shot the ranger. Besides, what’s the difference? We were both there. We’re both guilty of ambushing him. Do you think it would make any difference to Burrack which one of us pulled the trigger?”
Shala didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at the butt of the big Spencer rifle in her saddle boot. “Ambushers . . . ,” she said grimly, running her hand along the rifle stock. “I never thought I’d hear myself calling us such a thing. My God, Stanley, what’s become of us? What are we doing? We’re not killers, not criminals.”
“Neither is Glick, Shala,” Stanley countered. “He’s a legal man hunter. This was all an accident—one more thing gone wrong for us. What’s become of us is nothing but a string of rotten luck, plain and simple. What we’re doing is just trying our best to hold things together, until our bad luck changes. That’s all we’re trying to do.”
“Maybe it’s time we quit blaming luck and admit we’ve been doing something wrong,” Shala countered. “I can’t go on living like this—hand to mouth, never knowing where our next meal is coming from, or if it’s coming at all.” As she spoke, her eyes glistened with tears.
He stepped in closer and took her hands in his. “I know things ain’t been the way I promised you they would be when you married me. Ever since we left Arkansas, it’s been one damned bad break after another. But things are going to change, Shala. They’ve got to.”
She stared at him. “I’m going to the ranger and tell him what happened, how I shot him by mistake. He’ll have to understand.”
“Shala, no—” Stanley tried to speak, but she shook her head and continued.
“I won’t even mention Glick,” she said. “I’ll explain that we were there to shoot a wanted man . . . that things went wrong, and we thought he was that man.”
“Listen to me, Shala!” Stanley shook her hands in his as he shot a nervous glance toward the ragged
tent. “Just saying something like that will get us both killed if the Dutchman was to hear it. You can’t go to the ranger and say something like that. Just keep quiet and go along with me for a while.”
“We’re not going to shoot the ranger, Stanley, and that’s all there is to it,” she said firmly.
“Okay, we won’t,” Stanley said.
Shala stared at him. “I mean it, Stanley.”
“I know you do,” Stanley replied.
“Swear it, Stanley,” she insisted. “Let me hear you swear to it.”
“All right, I swear it,” he said.
“I want you to mean it, Stanley,” Shala persisted, giving him a questioning look.
“I do mean it.” Stanley let out a tight breath. “Look, I know we’re on a tight spot right now, but I’ll get us off it. I swear I will. Only—only don’t be saying things like you’re going to go tell the ranger, all right?”
Now Shala let out a breath. “All right . . .” She took her hands from his and brushed a strand of loose hair back from her face. “I want us to both keep a close watch on that old murderer, Stanley. I don’t want to be left alone with him. I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.”
Stanley nodded. “All right, we will keep a close watch on him. Now let’s get going. We’re supposed to meet him up there, same spot above the north trail.”
“If it came to a fair fight,” Shala continued as she readied to mount her horse, “I know I can handle Glick, be it guns or knives or fists. But he’s a sneak and a killer.”
“I know,” said Stanley. “Don’t worry, we’ll get away from him as soon as I see our way clear.” He looked at his wife appraisingly as the two swung up into their saddles. She was right; she could handle a man like Glick. Stanley had no doubt. His wife was no frail or retiring soul. Like him, Shala had grown up in the backwoods of the Ozark mountain range. She could hunt, trap and skin. She was a crack shot with a rifle. She could handle herself as well as any man he knew.
“He scares me, Stanley,” Shala said with a grave expression, “and you know I don’t scare easily.” She turned her horse in the street; Stanley did the same right beside her.
“I understand,” he said, putting his horse forward at a walk. “We’ll get shed of him, you’ll see. Just stick with me. Don’t give up on us, Shala. Our luck is bound to change.”
From inside the ragged saloon tent, Glick the Dutchman stood watching as the two rode away. When they were out of sight, he slipped out through the rear fly and walked to the dingy room he rented in a storage shack behind the barbershop. An odor of death permeated the air inside the shack. The cot where Glick slept was used as a place to lay out the town dead until the deceased’s family had been reached and arrangements made for a proper burial. But none of this bothered Glick.
Once inside the shack, he inspected the strips of jerked elk meat he’d dipped in poison and laid out to dry hours earlier. “Perfect,” he murmured to himself, raising a slice of the jerky to his nose and finding only the slightest scent of Chondo—which didn’t matter, he reminded himself. Nobody here would recognize Chondo. Nobody here knew anything about South American blowguns or the deadly poisons their darts carried.
He gathered all the small strips of jerky except for one, placed them in a leather bag and drew the raw-hide string. He placed the leather bag inside his coat, wiped his hands on a gray, soiled handkerchief and smiled to himself. Picking up the remaining strip of jerky with the tips of his pale fingers, he looked at it closely. Now, to see how strong you are, he said silently to the darkly cured sliver of flesh.
On the muddy street, nine-year-old Rudy Harper, with his mother’s permission, had left her side and bounded along aimlessly, taking in the sights and sounds along the boardwalk. Glick spotted the boy from across the street. Like some winged predator of the sky, he swooped in closer and circled silently back and forth on the soft, muddy street, biding his time, giving no show of his interest in the child.
When young Rudy stopped farther down the block where both the pedestrian and street traffic had thinned down, Glick moved over swiftly, took position and waited until the boy turned away from the mercantile window.
Turning, young Rudy found himself staring into Glick’s pale, blue-veined face. He almost gasped at the sight of the red-circled yellowy eyes staring into his from only inches away. Before he could instinctively pull back away from Glick, the Dutchman’s pale hand came down firmly, like eagle talons, and clamped on to the boy’s narrow shoulders.
“There now,” said Glick with an evil grin, surrounded by a dark aura and the odor of death, “I see what it is you’re lusting for in there.” He nodded through the window at a tall glass jar of horehound candy sitting atop the oak counter. “You imagine what it would feel like to shove your hand down into that jar and fill it with sweet rock candy, eh?”
“I—I didn’t do nothing,” the boy offered, recoiling from Glick’s rotted, sour breath.
“Of course you didn’t, boy,” Glick said with a dark chuckle. He kneaded the boy’s thin shoulder without loosening his grip on it. “I’m not scolding you. I was much the same when I was a youngin.”
“Oh . . .” Rudy stared, no longer pulling against the firm hold Glick had on him.
“Of course I was,” said Glick. He made a fast glance back and forth along the boardwalk as his free hand came out of his coat pocket with the strip of jerky. “We all want a treat now and then, eh?” He shoved the strip of jerky toward Rudy’s face. “Here’s a little treat for you, a morsel of jerked elk. It’s something me and the other buffalo hunters made up down on the southern plains, hunting hand in hand with the wild Cheyenne Indians.”
But the boy would have none of it. He pulled back and turned his face away from the forced feeding. “You’re not a buffalo hunter, Mister!” he said, his voice growing a bit louder. He’d seen sketches of frontier men in books and periodicals; they didn’t dress like this ghostly, sick-looking old man.
“Why, certainly I am,” said Glick. The strip of jerky followed the boy’s face. “Here now, be a good boy. Have the treat offered to you. It’s better for you than the candy, and it’ll make you grow strong and—”
“Let go of me!” the boy shouted, cutting the Dutchman off.
Glick growled, “Shut up, kid!” Taken aback by the boy’s sudden outburst, he lessened his grip as he glanced along the street to see who might be watching. In that second of opportunity the boy managed to duck from under Glick’s hand and jump back, out of easy reach. He wiped his face vigorously where the jerky had barely missed his mouth and made a smear along his cheek.
“Little son of a bitch.” Glick made a quick step forward, ready to grab the boy and force him to eat the poisoned jerky. But the boy was fast on his feet. He jumped back further out of reach. “Get away from me. I don’t want it!” He started hurriedly walking away, looking back at Glick over his shoulder.
Glick saw that his trick hadn’t worked. Yet, in a last effort, he held out the strip of jerked elk and called out, “Don’t your folks teach you any manners, you rude boy? Never turn down a treat from a stranger.”
But the boy only quickened his pace. Too many eyes had now turned toward the minor commotion, and Glick knew it was time to duck away and set off in another direction. Glancing back as he moved off the boardwalk toward an alley, he saw the boy trotting the last few yards to his mother’s waiting arms.
“Indolent little turd.” Glick sighed and walked on deeper into the littered alley. As the sounds from the street grew farther behind him, he saw a man step out of the shadows toward him, his hands outstretched in what could be interpreted as that of either a beggar or a robber, depending on how the man sized him up. “Well now, what have we here, my good man?” Glick said, without slowing his steps as the man walked closer.
In a lowered growl of a voice the man said, “What we have here is me knocking your fool head off, old man, if you don’t hand over your money.”
“A robbery? In broad daylight?�
� Glick said in feigned astonishment. “My goodness, what has this poor world sunk to?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s hell these days,” the man said matter-of-factly, his left hand still outstretched, his thumbs and fingers rubbing together in the universal sign of greed. “Now give it up, else I’ll be taking it off your dead carcass.” His right hand went behind his back, then came forward wielding an Arkansas toothpick.
“My goodness,” said Glick, “but that is a wicked-looking blade.” As he spoke he raised his pale hands in submission. “I carry my money inside my lapel pocket.” He paused, then said, “I’m a curious old cat. Tell me how you expect to get away with this. A town this size, don’t you suppose I’ll go straight to the sheriff?”
“Naw, you won’t be going anywhere, old man,” the robber said, reaching out with his free hand and sliding it roughly inside Glick’s lapel, searching for the pocket. “You’ll be dea—”
His words stopped short as Glick’s hands moved in a blur. The robber felt the Dutchman’s thin arm entwine his like a serpent. Suddenly, in a fast, powerful twist and spin, Glick was behind him. The robber felt his back pressed against the foul-smelling old man, the sharp tip of the dagger now pressed up behind his own ear. He smelled the Dutchman’s sour breath as Glick spoke into his ear. “There now, aren’t you ashamed, drawing a toothpick on an elderly gentleman?”
The robber rose onto his tiptoes to keep the blade from going deep into his skull, stunned by the fact that it was his own hand holding the dagger. The Dutchman had his arm entwined in such a manner that it would cause the thief to bring about his own death.
“Plea—please, Mister, don’t do it,” the robber sobbed, knowing he was powerless. He found himself skillfully locked in some sort of death hold, held there by strength the likes of which he had never encountered. He felt as if he had stumbled upon something inhuman, something from some lower plain.
