Black as Death

by George G. Gilman

  And, without a word, Barnaby Gold went home. To endure another beating from his whiskey-smelling father who saw the mud-splattered jacket and bloodstained pants as signs of a fight.

  It was the last belting he ever received, for there were no more fights involving the boy who — had he been so inclined — could easily have become the new school bully or the most popular pupil. For in the cold winter light of the following days those who had witnessed the short-lived showdown on the vacant lot came to admire the way Gold had handled the situation and respect him for not taking advantage of his victory.

  He had fought dirty, sure. But when the chips were down and the odds were heavily loaded it was the only way to fight. The fact that, without adult intervention, he might have smashed one boy’s face to a pulp and done serious internal damage to the vital organs of another.

  It was early evening when the former undertaker of Fairfax drove his hearse into the town of Standing: he, weak from hunger and the horses close to exhaustion from the long haul through the heat of the day.

  Standing was about four times as large as Fairfax: an older community which had started out as a mission, then an army post — both now defunct. It had a mixed American and Mexican population, many of whom worked at a company owned silver mine and ore crushing plant to the west of the three-street town.

  It was supper time and most people were eating behind doors, which were closed against the first chill of the night air when the hearse rolled down Main Street. And among those who did see it, it was cause for only passing comments for both the Gold father and son had driven the rig to Standing on several previous occasions.

  The smell of food mingling with the wood smoke from so many stovepipes made the hunger pangs in Gold’s stomach almost painful. But with just forty-five cents in his pocket, he drove on by the Mexican cantina that served meals and the restaurant a few doors along the street and did not rein the team to a halt until after he had steered the rig around the corner on to Silver Mine Road: climbed down from the seat out front of Ward’s Funeral Parlor which was on the very edge of town. Where the open trail started to curve toward the canyon from which the ore was mined.

  The single storey adobe building was in darkness, but a dim light showed at the draped window of the small frame house. In a grove of Alligator Junipers out back, Barnaby Gold hand-brushed trail dust off his clothing as he went along the well trodden pathway that led around the side of the parlor, across a yard on which an elderly and worse for wear hearse was parked, timber planks and ready-made coffins were stacked and a partially inscribed headstone lay, then through the twenty foot high trees.

  At the door beside the lighted window, he curtailed his intention to rap the knuckles of a fist on the panel. For the window was not quite closed at the bottom and through the gap came the sound of a woman giggling.

  Then: ‘I think you have had a little more to drink than you should have, Senor Ward.’

  A man laughed. ‘Reckon that means you gotta work harder for your money, Maria.’

  ‘I think so, too. But can I have a drink, too?’

  ‘It ain’t no bottle neck I want you to suck.’ There was a commanding harshness in his tone. Then another laugh. ‘Hey, don’t you look so friggin’ sullen, woman. I got an idea.’ There was the sound of liquid gurgling from a bottle. But not into a glass. ‘Here, try that Special kinda cocktail, maybe?’

  He laughed longer and louder but in a while this sound died away to be replaced by others. Uttered by both the Standing undertaker and the Mexican whore.

  Barnaby Gold clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and moved away from the house, to lean against the trunk of a tree and light his final cheroot. The sounds of the whore’s false passion and of Clay Ward’s struggle to overcome the effects of liquor so that his lust could be released reached the black-clad young man at a muted volume. But no conjured up images of the scene inside the house entered his mind to stir a desire of his own. His stomach rumbled its emptiness and the tobacco smoke scorched the membranes of his throat.

  Crickets chirped and bats beat their wings, a player piano began to sound the notes of Dixie from the Silver Lode Saloon halfway along Main Street.

  Barnaby Gold displayed the same brand of stoic patience as had Floyd Channon.

  ‘Get away from me!’ The sharp sound of flesh striking flesh and a strangled scream accompanied Clay Ward’s snarled words. ‘Call yourself a friggin’ whore? A twelve-year-old unbroke girl could suck better than you!’

  Another cry of pain and a heavy thud, as if the woman had been pushed hard to the floor.

  ‘But Senor Ward, I am not to blame for what the whiskey has—’

  ‘Get outta my house! And tell that old bag that owns you whores, the next time I ask for a woman, I wanna woman! Not some titless, fat-assed...’

  ‘But I am not dressed, senor!’

  ‘I don’t give a frig if you gotta walk bare-assed naked from here to Tucson! Get outta here, damn you!’

  Bare feet slapped the floor, moving fast. Gold pushed his back away from the deeply furrowed, alligator-skin-like bark of the tree and moved out of the shade into the bright moonlight. This as the door of the house was jerked open and Maria emerged, seemingly thrust into the night by a physical force as if each obscenity hurled at her by Ward was a shove against her back. Her slim, long legged, light brown skinned body was naked and she was clutching a dress and a pair of shoes. Her pretty, thirty-year-old face was wet with tears and a bruise was already starting to show on her right cheek.

  She was brought up sharply with a gasp of fear by the sight of Gold on the pathway. Then she recognized him and pleaded: ‘Barnaby?’

  ‘Hello, Maria,’ he said dully as he stepped aside to go around her. ‘Bye bye.’

  She spat a Spanish curse and ran into the deep shade under a tree to get dressed as Gold, the cheroot clamped between his teeth again, entered the house and closed the door at his back.

  Clay Ward was still seated in the deep armchair where the whore had done her best for him and failed. He was muttering now, as he fastened the front of his pants. Stopped and looked up at the sound of the door closing, to squint angrily at his visitor through the dim light of a single kerosene lamp turned to a low wick.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he slurred.

  Gold crossed to a centrally placed table in the small parlor and adjusted the wick of the lamp. The brighter light showed a poorly furnished, untidy and unclean room. Into which the Standing undertaker fitted well.

  He was fifty years old, short and painfully thin. With an almost skeletal face, the deeply wrinkled skin of which fell loosely from the cheekbones and jaw lines. Above the face was a mop of greasy black hair that hung down to cover his ears at either side. He was dressed in long johns and baggy pants, his ugly feet bare.

  ‘Ah, the Gold boy,’ he said after a long, squint-eyed look at the black frock-coated man in the brighter level of light. He picked up a half empty bottle of rye from the floor beside the chair. ‘Whores ain’t what they used to be. How’s your Pa, boy?’

  ‘Like whores, Mr. Ward. He’s dead.’

  The older man did not pause in drinking from the bottle until he had his fill. Then: ‘Well, I’ll be. Peaceful end was it?’

  ‘Had one of his coughing fits. Then a heart seizure. The rig’s out on the street’

  ‘What’s that?’

  The hearse you were always eager to buy. It’s outside.’

  Clay Ward seemed suddenly sober. ‘Why’s that, boy?’

  ‘I’m out of the undertaking business. Going to Europe.’

  Ward rose from the armchair with a creak of bones. ‘It’s what you always said you wanted to do, after that pretty young wife of yours run off.’

  A nod. ‘Just like you always wanted to buy the circular hearse, Mr. Ward. As I recall, your last offer was five hundred dollars.’

  That it was. To you and your Pa both, over to the Silver Lode. Let’s go take another look at her.’

  He l
ed the way out of the house. The player piano in the distant saloon was striking out with Home on the Range. Ward still carried the whiskey bottle.

  ‘Why just the hearse, boy?’

  ‘I’ll sell the team, too.’

  ‘I already got a team serves my purpose. It’s the hearse appeals to me. But seein’ as how you’re givin’ up the entire business over to Fairfax—’

  ‘The parlor and all that was in it got burned out, Mr. Ward.’

  Well, I’ll be. That’s a damn shame, boy. So there ain’t no undertakin’ facilities over in Fairfax now?’

  They emerged from the side of the Standing parlor on to the end of Silver Mine Road. Where the travel-wearied horses stood disconsolately in the traces of the dust-covered hearse.

  ‘Guess the folks there would be happy to have you take over, Mr. Ward.’

  ‘Reckon I can oblige them, boy.’

  He walked along one side of the hearse, around the rear and down the other side. And with his fingertips touched the glass panels and the polished timber, felt the hammer cloth drape over the seat and explored the silver trim here and there. Occasionally sucked from the bottle.

  Then: ‘What’s this here, boy?’

  Barnaby Gold ground out the cheroot under a boot heel before going to look at what had caused Ward to pause. Saw where a large splinter of black painted wood had been blasted from a panel by the shot from Coombs’ Colt

  ‘Can be fixed in no time, I’d say.’

  Ward spat. ‘Reckon so. Two fifty bucks.’

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘You heard, boy.’

  ‘Because of that scratch?’

  ‘No, boy. Not on account of the damage. Matter of business in the marketplace. Made that offer of five hundred when I was itchin’ to buy and your Pa was in no mind to sell. Way it is now, I still want her. And you’re real eager to sell her. With no other customer closer than Tucson interested in makin’ a deal.’

  The younger man considered what was said by the older one for long moments, his good-looking face wearing a scowl of dislike. Then he nodded.

  ‘Okay, Mr. Ward. We have a deal. You want to go bring the money?’

  The Standing undertaker grinned, displaying blackened teeth. ‘Sure thing, boy. Real glad you understand the situation.’

  He hurried back along the pathway, as if anxious to complete the transaction in case Gold was tempted to back out But Gold had no intention of doing this. Continued to scowl as he took the team from the traces and then got the Murcott shotgun and the three pieces of the shovel from beneath the seat He had expected Clay Ward to do some hard bargaining, for the man was known as much for his closeness with money as for his drunkenness and lechery. But he had not thought to get so little for what was probably the most impressive hearse in the territory.

  Then, minus the bottle and breathless from hurrying, the man was back, a stack of bills in his hand

  ‘There you go, boy. Count it if you’ve a mind to.’

  Barnaby Gold transferred the money to the pocket of his frock coat that held the empty cheroot tin. ‘I’ve a feeling you’ve counted it at least twice yourself, Mr. Ward.’

  Now the Standing undertaker scowled his distaste for the implicit taunt about his meanness. But quickly abandoned it.

  ‘Like to buy that neat shovel you got, too.’

  ‘It’s not for sale.’

  ‘Why’d you want it if you ain’t in the business no more?’

  ‘Sentimental value, Mr. Ward, Bye bye.’

  He turned, with his burdens under one arm, holding the bridles of both black horses in the other hand. To wheel the animals and lead them back along Silver Mine Road toward the centre of town.

  ‘Sorry to hear about your Pa, boy!’ Ward called after him.

  Barnaby Gold looked briefly back at him to accuse: ‘You’re a liar as well as a thief.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE quiet-spoken and unsmiling young man in black ate a supper of two orders of beef stew in the Main Street restaurant and then transacted some more business with Standing merchants. All of whom expressed genuine sorrow for the death of his father: but made no attempt beyond this to bridge the distance which Barnaby Gold’s attitude placed between himself and those he approached.

  He traded the team for a saddle-broke black gelding plus enough cash to buy a big Denver saddle and accoutrements. With a surplus to cover the cost of a week’s provisions, fifty cheroots, cooking and eating utensils, a bedroll and some shaving and washing gear. But he had to draw on the money from the sale of the hearse to purchase goods and service from the elderly gunsmith.

  A carton of fifty cartridges for the shotgun. And a gun-belt and attachments: a holster on the right side and a slotted plate on the left. In the low-slung holster was a Peacemaker .45 with a wooden butt. Fitted to the plate by a stud was an eagle-butt Peacemaker, the grip of mother-of-pearl and with a cutaway trigger guard.

  It was a second-hand, well used rig and he bought it on impulse because at fifty dollars it seemed like a bargain. Which was what he truthfully told the gunsmith who had known him and his ways for as long as every other merchant he did business with that night.

  ‘It’s a gunslinger’s rig, boy. And I ain’t never thought of you as no fast draw, quick-fire artist. A bargain ain’t a bargain unless a man has a use for it.’

  The puzzled old timer said this with a shake of his head as he gave Gold back the Murcott after shortening the barrels and fixing a metal hook to the stock plate of the shotgun.

  ‘Bye bye, Mr. Murchison,’ was all the response he received as Barnaby Gold left his store, frock coat unfastened to accommodate the bulk of the gunbelt.

  When the former undertaker of Fairfax went into the barbering parlor next to the saloon for a shave, it was necessary for him to remove his necktie. And when he emerged with two days and a night’s blond bristles gone from his cheeks, jaw and throat, he left the tie behind.

  The Mother Lode was doing good business now, which deterred Gold from entering through the batwings to take a couple of drinks. He had never liked crowded places. The music from the player piano had a spiritual beat to it.

  A Mexican whore — young and with a fuller figure than Maria — was lounging provocatively in the arched doorway of the cantina, long hair masking half her face, body turned so that her breasts were silhouetted against the light and the hem of her dress hiked up by a hand scratching her thigh. He felt a mild stir of wanting between his legs as the girl saw him watching her and altered the movement of her hand from a vigorous scratching to a seductive caressing.

  ‘She’s new in town, son. Doc Garradine’s checked her out and says she’s clean.’

  The man who made the recommendation emerged from the saloon batwings: the star on the left side of his sheepskin coat glinting in the light.

  Sheriff Walt Glazer was sixty. Old for a lawman, but Standing was a law-abiding town to the extent that the office of sheriff was virtually an honorary one. He was tall and heavy, with a fleshy face and a belly that overhung his belt He had given up tobacco a year since, but was hardly ever seen without a big-bowled pipe angled from one side of his wide mouth.

  ‘Guess I’ll pass it up.’

  Glazer leaned against a support of the saloon’s stoop roof. ‘Forever that’ll be. Word is you’re headed for Europe.’

  ‘Right, Sheriff.’

  ‘Expectin’ trouble over there?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Packin’ two guns. One of them hung on a quick-fire device.’

  ‘Right, Sheriff.’

  The whore spat sullenly into the street and withdrew across the threshold of the cantina.

  ‘Never seen you tote any gun except for that Murcott. And that when we was out huntin’.’

  ‘Appreciate your concern, Sheriff.’

  His newly purchased black gelding was hitched to the saloon rail, the shotgun hung from the right front rigging ring of the saddle and the three pieces of the shovel pushed through the centre of t
he bedroll. He swung up astride the horse.

  ‘Been trouble already, maybe?’

  ‘Nothing I wasn’t able to handle.’

  Glazer shifted the dead pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. Nodded sagely. ‘I’m one that’s always considered you a capable young feller, son. But down here in this piece of the country, not much ever happens a capable man can’t take care of.’ He waved a hand to indicate the trail that cut away north-west from the end of Main Street ‘Out there, though. A whole damn world full of all manner of trouble. You take care now. Come back to see us one day, maybe?’

  Gold tugged on the reins to turn the horse away from the hitching rail. Said: ‘Bye bye, Sheriff.’ And trotted the gelding along the street.

  He was aware that he knew little of the world which lay beyond the sandstone ridges of the Huachuca Mountains. Except for an area of a few blocks in New York City and what he had seen from the railroad car and stagecoach window on the long, arduous journey from the eastern seaboard to the south-west. But as the lights of Standing faded into the distance behind him, he made no attempt to form preconceived opinions of what to expect based upon the ominously spoken words of Walt Glazer.

  He had seldom indulged in trying to forecast what the future held, be the omens good or bad. Even as a child he had never looked excitedly forward to birthdays and Christmases. Which was an attitude, so unchildlike, that used to upset — even anger — those adults who came into contact with him lacking a forewarning of his reticent and introspective character.

  ‘He seems like a nice little feller. Kinda quiet though, Mr. Gold.’

  ‘He’s always polite to folks. But cold with it, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Does like he’s told, with no backchat. If only he didn’t make it seem like he’s doin’ you a big favor.’

  ‘He seems happy enough, but he don’t hardly ever smile as I’ve seen.’

  Most of the good things that were said about Barnaby Gold Junior during his boyhood and youth were qualified with ifs and buts. Often, when it was not thought the boy or his father could overhear, bold statements about his attitudes and behavior were made which used such words as: arrogant, vain, selfish, disdainful, supercilious and dumb insolence.