The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  He stuffed the rest of the bacon in his mouth.

  He wasn’t laughing.

  “What else you heard about us?” my brother asked him.

  “Well, for one thing, that you borrowed horses off a couple Circle B boys last night.”

  “Oh, that couldn’t be,” I said, wide-eyed innocence personified. “We don’t know anyone from the Circle B.”

  The cook came over with Rucker’s coffee, and after thanking him, the lawman picked up my brother’s fork and helped himself to some home fries.

  “I’m also told you been harassin’ some of our local business leaders,” he said around a mouthful of tater.

  “Golly, Sheriff…you make it sound like we blew up the Elks Lodge,” I said. “As I recall it, I was the one with the gun to his head last night.”

  Rucker gave me a glower, then turned to my food, poking at a yolk until it bled gold all over my plate. He sopped up the mess with my egg’s mangled remains and stuffed his mouth full, leaving a yellow slime trail up his chin.

  “We wasn’t harassin’ nobody,” Old Red said. “Just askin’ questions.”

  “It ain’t for the likes of you to ask questions. That’s my job.” As if Rucker’s badge couldn’t be more tarnished in my eyes, he tapped it twice with his fork, leaving a smear of yolk and grease. “And let me tell you something else…”

  And just like that, Rucker’s voice rose and his back straightened and his head went up high. It was almost like he was giving a speech—and from the way the rumble of conversation and the clink and scrape of cutlery came to a sudden stop all around us, I knew he was.

  “Pete Ragsdale and Gil Bock provide a service this county needs. That’s what this stick-up-its-ass town doesn’t understand anymore. Oh, yeah, we’ve got a fancy school up on the hill and telephones and electric lights—but the money for all that? It still smells like cowshit, no matter how much perfume these townsfolk sprinkle over it. It’s cattle that made something outta San Marcos and cattle that’ll keep it something. And you can’t push men as hard as ranch work does without lettin’ ’em blow off a little steam at the end of the week. So the boys whore. So they drink. So they get rowdy. So what? At least they ain’t rapin’ and robbin’ and shootin’ up the county courthouse. And that’s just what they’d do, run wild through town, if they didn’t have someplace like the Phoenix to turn to.”

  I caught a flurry of motion out of the corner of my eye, a little ripple that spread from table to table.

  Nods. Cowboy or railroader, it didn’t matter—they agreed with Rucker.

  He may have been a rotten lawman, but as a politician he was first-rate.

  “Sheriff, with all due respect,” Gustav said, and from his grating tone and gritting teeth, it was clear not much was due. “I don’t give a damn about any of that. I just wanna know who killed my Adeline.”

  Rucker nodded, an expression of benevolent tolerance on his sun-leathered face…even as he reached out and speared another helping off my brother’s plate. When he spoke, his voice was quiet again, muffled by a moist mouthful of fried egg.

  He’d stepped down off the stump.

  “Look, Gus…I sympathize. I knew that little gal myself, and it’s a shame what happened to her, but you know what she was. It’s a rough business, and people get hurt. That’s just the way of it, and you’d best accept that.”

  Old Red’s lips squeezed tight but his jaw was working, almost squirming beneath the skin. He looked like a man trying to figure out what kind of bug just flew into his mouth. He finally washed the sour expression away with a long slurp of coffee.

  Rucker’s coffee.

  “So,” he said, slamming the mug down hard in front of the sheriff, “you ‘knew’ Adeline, did you? You usin’ that word biblical-like? Cuz obviously it ain’t just ranch hands who turn to Ragsdale and Bock for their fun.”

  Rucker had been polishing off the last of my potatoes when Old Red got going, and now he froze midchew.

  “And tell me, Sheriff,” my brother rolled on. “Them ‘people’ who ‘get hurt sometimes.’ Who would you be talkin’ about, exactly? Cuz if the son of a bitch who sliced Adeline up has done the same to anyone else since then, that’s blood on your hands. And another thing—”

  Gustav was cut off by a nerve-shaking clatter—Rucker tossing the fork he’d appropriated onto my plate.

  “Listen here, you little shit.” Rucker snatched my napkin off my lap, wiped his mouth with it, then threw it back into my chest. “Do you have any idea why I sat down to talk things through with you all polite like this?”

  “Because you were hungry?” I ventured.

  Rucker kept his unblinking gaze on Gustav.

  “Cuz we’re inside city limits,” my brother said.

  “That’s right. Milford Bales’s badge trumps mine here in town. But out there?” The sheriff pointed a long finger to the east, then did the same to the north, west, and south. “And there and there and there? That’s all me, and the law is what I say it is. Right is what I say it is. Wrong, too. So sittin’ here in San Marcos, I can only try to persuade you to see reason. But the second you cross the line…?”

  Rucker leaned toward Old Red and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I can gun you down easy as swattin’ a goddamn fly.”

  Then, quick as that, he was on his feet.

  “Quit buzzin’ in my ears, boys.”

  Before he turned to go, he smacked an imaginary fly on his shoulder, brushing its little invisible carcass away with a couple casual slaps of the hand.

  He was all smiles again as he made his good-byes and left.

  Me and Gustav—we were all frowns.

  11

  Suicide

  Or, A Visit to the Lucky Seven Is Abruptly Deep-Sixed

  “Well, now it’s official,” I said to Old Red. “We’ve been threatened by every livin’ soul in San Marcos.”

  My brother just glared hatefully at Rucker’s back as the sheriff ambled out the greasy spoon’s door.

  “Eatin’ a man’s eggs,” I said. “That is just plain wrong. Say, Cookie…”

  I turned toward the belly cheater at the griddle, thinking I’d order us another round of eats. I found the old man already glowering our way, a spatula gripped tight in his hand like a flyswatter he was fixing to squash us with.

  “You two clear out,” he said. “I don’t need no troublemakers in here.”

  “Oh, come on, Pop,” I started to protest.

  “You heard the man,” snarled a grungy puncher at the counter. “Get.”

  “Yeah,” his equally scruffy buddy threw in. He left it at that, apparently assuming it said enough.

  He was right, too, and a quick glance around the cookshack confirmed it. We were surrounded by scowls. Our choices were get or get got.

  “Guess I was wrong before,” I sighed. “Now we’ve been threatened by everyone in town.”

  We had our revenge, though. Gustav and I made for the door without leaving the old coosie a gratuity. That’d show him.

  After that, alas, it was a breakfast of general store crackers and jerky, and then we were riding off for the Lucky Seven on mounts rented from a local livery. It felt good to be putting San Marcos behind us for a while, though our departure clearly wasn’t permanent enough to suit some: As we trotted by the railroad depot, we passed Milford Bales himself chatting with the station agent, and the marshal stared at us with such open revulsion I had to look down to be sure we’d remembered to put on our pants.

  I tipped my hat.

  He curled his lip.

  Given all the ill will coming our way lately, some serious slinking seemed in order. So though there was a well-trod trail to the outlying ranches, my brother insisted we ride along the San Marcos River, which bubbles up out of springs just north of town.

  While it’s fed by the occasional stream as it winds its way south, the “river” rarely lived up to the name its first few miles. It seemed no deeper than your average bathtub, and in some spots was so nar
row I could have stood with a foot on each bank. About four miles south of town, though, the San Marcos joins up with the Blanco River, and the water not only widens considerably, it picks up some foamy white. Here my brother steered us to the southwest, and we left behind the lush green undergrowth and looming trees lining the river in favor of craggy, hilly grassland.

  After that, we gave the horses our heels, and not just because we no longer had to watch for coiling vines and low-hanging branches. We were out in the open, exposed, and a man with a Winchester or carbine could pick us off with ease.

  It wasn’t long, though, before this open country started to close in as it has everywhere else out West: with a lot of barbed wire. We’d reached the fence line of a big and obviously busy spread, for cow-smell was in the air all around us. Which meant cowboys would be all around us, too. It was October, time for the fall roundups, and those beeves wouldn’t be leaving the summer pastures of their own free will.

  “This it?” I asked.

  “Yup. The Lucky Seven.”

  My brother had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes as he took in the rolling meadows on the other side of the wire. He seemed to be as much in the past as the present just then, though whether the memories he was reliving were happy or sad, I couldn’t say.

  A flurry of movement ahead jerked him back to the here and now—and jerked our hands to our holsters. It was no bushwhacker, though, and the both of us relaxed…a little.

  A family of turkey vultures was tucking into the mangled carcass of a calf just over the fence, cleaning up after a wolf pack’s midnight snack. As we passed by, they screeched and flapped up into the sky, barely getting above the treetops before circling back to their banquet again.

  “Well, that’s a good sign,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “They didn’t start followin’ us. Speakin’ of which, I been wonderin’—what kinda reception we gonna get at the Seven, anyway? Ain’t no one in town baked us a cake yet. You really think it’ll be any better out here?”

  “Depends. I got along good with the boys in the bunkhouse. The superintendent, too. The straw boss, though…” Gustav sighed. “Let’s just hope he finally took a hoof to the head.”

  “He have something against you?”

  “Yeah. Mostly that I thought he was a stupid son of a bitch…and told him so before I lit out the last time.”

  “Christ, Brother,” I said with a laugh. “You burned more bridges than Sherman.”

  “Maybe, but all we need’s…” Old Red twisted around in his saddle, looking back. “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I said—which surely answered the question.

  “Get in the brush,” my brother snapped.

  I turned to look back, too.

  We’d been rounding a low, flower-dappled rise, and up above it I could see, just for a second, the flutter of big, black, flapping wings.

  Something had startled the buzzards again.

  “You think we’re bein’—?”

  “Yes. Now get outta sight, goddammit.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll draw ’em out, you cut ’em down. Now go!”

  There was no use arguing—and no time for it, either. Whoever was behind us would round the curve of the hill any second.

  Off to the east, about thirty feet from the wire, was a tangle of trees and brush. I hopped off my horse, tugged her into the shady chaparral, and wrapped the reins around a low-hanging branch. Then I filled my hand with iron.

  Old Red, meanwhile, just sat there, slump-shouldered, both hands on the saddle horn, looking as relaxed as any hand lollygagging between chores. If it was Death he was facing, he’d meet it like an old friend.

  A moment later, our shadow came galloping around the hill: one man on horseback, on the Lucky Seven side of the wire.

  I squinted down the barrel of my Peacemaker.

  “Suicide!” Gustav shouted. It looked like he was committing just that, too, for he sat up straight, making a nice big target of himself with his Colt still holstered.

  The man slowed his horse and came toward Old Red at a trot. With his big brush-popper chaps, coiled rope, and general air of dirt-caked grit, he could be nothing but a puncher. An old hand, by the look of him—he might have been as ancient as twenty-nine or thirty.

  If he reached for a gun, I’d see to it he never got any older.

  “Hey, Gus,” the cowboy said. He reined up near the fence. “You mind tellin’ your brother he can leave my head on my shoulders?”

  “Sure, sure. Come on out, Otto! Suicide’s a friend.”

  That last word—“friend”—seemed to poke the drover like a pin-prick, and a little wince puckered his tanned face.

  “That ain’t an easy thing to be these days, Gus,” Suicide said. He greeted me with a nod as I stepped from the thicket. “You two ain’t very popular around here. In fact, I shouldn’t even be talkin’ to you. We got orders to run you off if you come around.”

  “Joe Koska’s still straw boss, is he?” Old Red said.

  “Yeah, and he ain’t forgot how you said good-bye to him.” Suicide coughed out a grunt that might’ve been a chuckle under happier circumstances. “That ain’t the all of it, though. The Circle B, the Lazy Diamond, the Slash—they’re all closed up to you. You won’t find a hand in the county who won’t spit in your eye.”

  “Well, there’s one,” I pointed out. I was up to the fence by then, and I stretched an arm over the wire. “Otto Amlingmeyer. Big Red to friends.”

  Suicide leaned down for a reluctant handshake. “I know who you are—and I’d be spittin’ at you, too, if any of the boys was around.” He gave my brother a miserable shrug. “Sorry, Gus, but I gotta get by around here.”

  “It wasn’t just luck it was you who spotted us, was it?” Old Red said.

  Suicide nodded. “I’ve been ‘roundin’ up strays’ over here all morning. Figured you’d come this way sooner or later.”

  “Well, there you go.” My brother waved the puncher’s shame away with a single swipe of the hand. “So…what’s got everyone so riled?”

  “That ruckus y’all kicked up at the Phoenix, for one thing. There were hands from all the big spreads there last night, so word’s got ’round fast about it.”

  “Why would anyone hold that against us?” I said. “Fellers must be raisin’ hell at the Phoenix all the time.”

  “Not fellers like you.”

  “What’s different about us?” Gustav asked.

  Suicide took in a deep breath. He looked like a man who’s been asked to tell a long, sad story he’d just as soon forget.

  “Look, Gus—things have changed since you been gone. Before, there was a little chafin’ between San Marcos and us out here in the country. Now everything’s rubbed raw. A bunch of them townsfolk went and got religion—the hellfire and damnation, no whorin’, no drinkin’ kind—and closin’ down the Golden Eagle won’t be enough for that bunch. It won’t be long ’fore they’re tryin’ to vote the whole county dry…and you know that don’t sit well out here. It’s got so there’s only two ways to line up: with Marshal Bales and them reformer types or with Sheriff Rucker and everybody else.”

  “And ‘everybody else’ thinks we’re in with Bales?” Old Red asked.

  Suicide looked confused. “Ain’t you? That’s what Ike Rucker’s been goin’ around sayin’. And everyone knows you and Bales used to be pals.”

  “Used to be is right. Now?” Gustav shook his head. “Milford don’t even enter into it, though. I ain’t here to help him. You know what really brought me back.”

  Suicide nodded slowly. “Sure. It ain’t like Gloomy Gus Amlingmeyer to leave a job undone. I can’t help you on that score, though. I don’t know anything more about it than I did five years—”

  “Put your gun on us,” Old Red cut in.

  “What?”

  Suicide’s Peacemaker was still in its scabbard, but Gustav put up his hands all the same.

  “Some f
eller just come over the hill behind you,” he said.

  I peeked past Suicide’s shoulder and spotted the man myself: another puncher, not a hundred yards off and headed our way fast.

  I put up my hands, too. “Looks like you got the drop on us, you wily devil.”

  Suicide finally got the idea and whipped out his artillery.

  “One more thing you oughta know, Gus,” he said, talking fast. “Bob Harris bought part of the Seven—that rocky patch that dips into Guadalupe County. Got himself a homestead and his own little herd, of sorts. You want answers, maybe you oughta look there.”

  As Suicide spoke, the hand behind him came galloping down the slope so fast it looked like he aimed to jump the fence. At the last moment, though, he reined up hard, and his horse kicked up dust and clods of dirt as it skidded to a stop mere inches from the wire.

  It sure made a statement, an entrance like that.

  I am a reckless halfwit.

  He was young, even by drovering standards—a true cowboy of perhaps fifteen, with wispy fair hair and apple cheeks and freckles he probably wished he could shave off like the whiskers he hadn’t yet sprouted. He was trying to scowl at us like a hard man, a real tough hombre, but the effect he achieved instead was more a gassy baby.

  “That them?” he said to Suicide.

  “Yup. Caught ’em skulkin’ around the wire here.”

  “Meddlin’ sons of bitches.” The kid caressed the grip of his gun—a Smith & Wesson .45 that bulged on his hip like a two-ton anchor tied to the side of a rowboat. “What should we do with ’em?”

  “I already gave ’em the lay of the land.” Suicide threw us a depressingly convincing sneer. “They know they ain’t welcome here—nor anywhere else outside town.”

  “We was just leavin’,” my brother said.

  “Yeah, you do that.” Freckles straightened up in his saddle, puffing himself up to what he fancied was man size. “Run on back to your streetlights and Bibles, and do it quick. Cuz the next time you get caught out here in the hills, you’ll be buried here. You get me?”

  It was a little much to take from a squirt who didn’t look any tougher than a slice of angel food cake. So I didn’t take it.