The Big Gundown

by Bill Brooks

  He fashioned himself a smoke and lighted it with a Lucifer struck off the edge of the table, took a deep draw from it before taking a hit from the bottle again, then set it down again. The liquor seemed to take some of the sharp edge off from the long stage ride and temper some of the headache it seemed he’d been suffering ever since he had left Colonel Lily’s Wild West Combination three years back. Another thing was he’d had a few blackouts lately and sometimes lost an entire weekend from memory. But mostly it was the damn headaches that got so severe it felt like thumbs were gouging his eyes from the inside out.

  Then he caught movement out of the corner of his vision. He could see by the looks of her what she was when she approached the table. She was small ivory-skinned woman who looked to be Oriental, with long black straight hair and dark eyes, and he liked what she looked like, but he wasn’t sure he was in the mood for a woman just then.

  “My name is Narcissa,” she said.

  “What you want?” Willy said, testing her a bit, fooling with her because he was in a bad mood and felt like fooling with someone.

  She smiled and he could see her teeth weren’t the best.

  “You buy me drink? I sit with you and we have good time, yes.”

  Willy looked at the bottle, then at her, before pushing a chair out from the table with his foot.

  She sat, he moved the bottle over. She looked around.

  “I like drinking from glass,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Drink from the bottle.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She put the bottle to her lips, but Willy could see she was barely drinking any of it. She set it before him again.

  “Now you drink,” she said, smiling that fake smile. For behind the eyes he could see a bored dullness that set into every working girl he’d ever met save for one: a whore in Kansas City who had just barely turned seventeen at the time and been put to work by a three-finger pimp named Johnny Lou.

  “Sure,” Willy said and lifted the bottle to his mouth and took another long pull from it then set it back before the Oriental again. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “We go in back now?” she said.

  “How much?”

  “Ten dollar,” she said, reaching across the table with her hand.

  He drew on the smoke, then exhaled.

  “Ten, huh?”

  She nodded.

  He could see another whore standing at the bar, talking to a man with red garters on his shirtsleeves. The whore kept glancing over at the table where Willy and the Chinese girl sat.

  Willy reached into his pocket, saw that his roll was getting skinny. Take two for the bottle, ten for the whore. It would eat most of his poke.

  “No,” he said. “Maybe later.”

  She put on a pout.

  “I give it to you for less?” she said, starting to stand.

  He shook his head.

  “Sit down and drink some more with me,” he ordered.

  The whore at the bar came over and stood next to the China girl.

  “He giving you trouble?” she said, looking straight at Willy.

  Willy looked up at her, said, “Why is any of this your business?”

  The white whore had rouged cheeks and a mole near the side of her mouth. She had pocked skin. She looked like death and murder. Willy saw her reaching into the pocket of her skirt.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  Her hand paused.

  “You think I wouldn’t shoot a woman?” Willy said. “Well, you’d be wrong.”

  “A real gentleman, huh,” she said.

  “Damn straight,” Willy said sourly.

  The white one was older, had a small moon-shaped scar under her chin. Something about her made Willy want her more than the Oriental and made him think whatever the cost he was going to have her, one way or the other—maybe just to prove he could.

  “How much for you?” Willy said.

  “Go to hell,” she said and turned and took the Oriental by the arm and pulled her away and toward the bar.

  Willy took another pull on the whiskey and watched them, then took another draw on his cigarette.

  This man he was looking for, this—he took the wanted poster out of his pocket and unfolded it and spread it out there on the table—this Tristan Shade. His eyes scanned the room, the air sooty, and he looked over the boys there drinking and didn’t see that any of them resembled this fellow. He reached back and scratched up under his hat. His scalp itched and it would be no surprise if he had caught the cooties off that stage seat or somewhere else. He hadn’t bathed in a week or better, hadn’t shaved in nearly as long. He felt grungy and unsettled, but somehow it really didn’t matter, he told himself. He just didn’t give a damn that much about it.

  He studied the likeness drawn on the poster for a long and hard spell before putting it back again in his pocket. Doctor, huh? He took another pull from the bottle. He saw the two whores talking to some men down at the far end of the bar, saw the way the one looked back at him—the older ugly white one—with that pitted face and that scar on her chin and those pitiless eyes.

  Hell, he thought, it don’t get no better than this.

  16

  THE FLESH OF ELLIS KANSAS had become putrid. Jake took the bandage from around the saloon keeper’s neck, smelled rottenness almost the same time he saw the ugly wound. Infected. He found a bottle of carbolic acid and cleaned the nasty gunshot flesh, then put on a clean bandage. Fever had set in. Kansas rolled his eyes, then closed them.

  In the parlor Clara stood looking out at the snow through a double set of leaded windows. The snow fell softly, silently. Winter was finally upon them. She stood with her arms crossed, holding herself, while her daughters played in the snow, trying to build a snowman, and it reminded her of a time when she was a little girl and the sight of her father’s coal black moustache crusted with ice as he helped her.

  Jake said, “He’s dying.”

  Clara turned.

  “No,” she said.

  Jake came and stood at the window.

  He stood close to her and she wanted him to take her in his arms, to reassure her somehow that the world would be right again—that such violent acts as what happened to the saloon keeper would somehow go away and never return.

  “I’ve got a problem, Clara.”

  She looked up at him, saw that his gaze followed that of the children.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Some men are going to come and kill me.”

  He did not look at her when he said that, but if he had he would have seen the effect it had on her.

  “Then you have to run,” she said.

  “I thought about it.”

  But she could tell by the sound of his voice he’d made a decision not to.

  “Who are these men, Jake?”

  “Some ranch hands from the Double Bar,” he said. “They know I know they were the ones who killed that Negro cowboy and they know I’m going to arrest them.”

  She took in a deep breath, let it out, then moved against him, pushing her body against his, and he put his arm around her.

  “Don’t stay,” she said. “I’m pleading with you to leave.”

  “No guarantee that even if I run they wouldn’t pursue me.”

  His hands reached up and felt the cool damp thickness of her hair. She’d been washing it in a deep pan when he’d arrived; one of the girls had let him in, saying, “Mama’s washing her hair with melted snow water in the kitchen.” He brought it to his face and it smelled like morning in a meadow after a rain. Her face was warm and flush and her mouth tender when he kissed her and he thought there is nothing as sweet as a woman with fresh-washed hair.

  “What will you do?” she said softly.

  The snow seemed to dance on the thin gray air as it tumbled earthward. The girls ran about, flopping down and pouncing on each other like kittens, then scrambling to their feet again, remembering the task they’d set for themselves of building
a snowman. When Clara looked at them, her heart filled with pride. But her heart was full of sorrow, too, hearing this news: that Mr. Ellis was dying, that men were coming to kill the man she knew she was falling in love with—the man who she could never openly say those words to because he’d given no indication that he felt the same toward her.

  “Stand and fight is my only choice,” he said.

  “What about the others? Won’t they stand with you. Have you asked them?”

  “They won’t stand,” he said. “Maybe John will, but…”

  “Jake, I need to say this, even though I know you probably don’t want to hear it. I need to say it.” It wasn’t something she’d planned on revealing.

  He turned his gaze from the playing children, the snow, the endless white landscape, and rested it on her. He saw in her face a place of sanctuary if he wanted it, he saw in her eyes the offer of some future hope if he wanted it. He saw beauty that springs from a woman with an honest heart.

  “Jake, I’ll go with you. Me and the girls. We’ll leave together and we’ll find a place and make a home together. I…”

  He took her face in his hands.

  “I can’t let you get in the middle of this, Clara.”

  “No, damn it! I want to be in the middle of it if it means saving you.”

  Her eyes brimmed and he drew her into him and held her tightly until the small sobs of regret and sorrow subsided.

  “I would give my life to protect you, Clara, just as you’re offering to give yours for me. But this is not something I can allow you to do.” He looked out at the children again, saw how happy their red faces were, could hear their muted laughter. He thought of Ellis back there alone, dying, and how death comes to men unbidden, suddenly, striking like a snake or black lightning, striking down whomever it calls upon without warning or discretion. It was almost as though such men as Ellis and Nat Pickett had been standing in line, one after the other, waiting their turn to walk through death’s black door, a door that they all must eventually pass through. And now he was next in line and it was his turn to meet that mysterious event.

  He kissed her lightly on the mouth and fought his desire to be more intimate with her, for the snow was falling and the children outside playing and blissful and unaware of what was transpiring inside the house. The rooms were empty and cool, except for the one where Ellis Kansas lay dying. It would have been easy just to go off to one of the rooms with her, just for a short time. She kissed him back, more passionately, more needy, as though it was the last kiss they’d share. And maybe it was.

  But instead he separated himself from her and said simply, “I need to go, Clara.”

  She clung to his arms a moment longer, then released him as she might a kite caught by the wind that had been tugging on the string she held. And like a kite caught on the wind, she watched him take his leave, go out and pause there by the children, who looked up at him, their coats caked with snow, and their mittens as well. And he knelt between them and wrapped his arms around each of them and drew them into him and whispered something to them, then stood again and trudged off toward town.

  She wept openly. The girls—her little girls—stared after him for the longest time, then went back to being kittens.

  The ride to Toussaint’s seemed to take longer than usual. Maybe it was the silence of riding through the snow, only occasionally broken by the snuffle of the horse, the jingle of bit, the creak of cold saddle leather. Once he could hear the caw of crows somewhere but couldn’t actually see them. The cottonwoods along Cooper’s Creek off in the distance looked black, foreboding, like shreds of mourning crepe hanging from some invisible window.

  The little house stood bleak against the wintry landscape. A smudge of smoke curled from the stovepipe, poking through the roof at one end. Beyond a short ways he could see the lone stone that marked the grave of their boy, Dex, under a cap of snow. He drew in at the house and tied off the horse, then knocked on the door, stamping snow off his boots and sweeping it off the brim of his hat.

  Karen answered. She beamed when she saw him and he was just as pleased to see her again so soon, but his mission was a troubled one and he knew he had to keep it from her if he could.

  “Married life suits you, Karen,” he said as she hugged him.

  Their adopted son, Stephen, came and took his hat and he rubbed the boy’s thin blond hair, saying, “You’re getting big as your pa.”

  From the back part of the house he could hear Toussaint.

  “If it’s that damn drummer, run him off!”

  Karen shook her head.

  “He’s cranky,” she said. “Some drummer came around selling Bibles the other day. They weighed five pounds each, it felt like. I thought about buying one, but Toussaint said we’d be wasting our money. Said, ‘There ain’t nothing in it but fairy tales.’ I don’t know what to do with the man.” This she said with the warm soft humor of a woman in love.

  Then she said, “He broke his leg. It doesn’t help his mood.”

  Toussaint appeared in the door, leaning on a homemade crutch made from the branch of a tree.

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought you were that Bible drummer. I was going to pitch you into the snow.”

  Jake held up his hands.

  “No Bibles.”

  Toussaint hobbled over to the table and sat down heavily, awkwardly, keeping his left leg out straight. Jake could see there was a homemade splint around it as well: two wood rods that looked like sawed off broom handles—which is exactly what they were—tied with strips of muslin.

  “When did you do that?” Jake asked, nodding toward the leg. “I mean, you didn’t have it the other day when we were out here.”

  “We got any coffee?” Toussaint said to Karen, as though he hadn’t even heard the question.

  She said, “He fell off a horse.”

  “Fell, hell, got thrown off that hammerhead.”

  “We went horse hunting and caught three and my wild cowboy here said he’d green-break them for me, that we’d get a few extra dollars if they were green-broke. I said, ‘You don’t know nothing about breaking horses. You don’t even like riding them,’ but he didn’t listen. He climbed on the back of that rough buckskin out yonder in the corral and it pitched him. That’s how it happened.”

  Toussaint swallowed as though he had a crabapple stuck in his throat and said, “I guess a man could grow old and die around here waiting for a simple cup of coffee.”

  Karen wiped her hands on her apron and set about brewing a pot of coffee. The boy came and sat next to Toussaint and looked at him, then the stiff leg, and said, “Does it hurt, Pa?”

  “Course it hurts, boy. Broken bones is gone to hurt, just hope you don’t ever find out how much. You do your arithmetic lessons?”

  “Yes, Pa. And my reading lessons, too.”

  “What about your Latin?”

  The boy looked sheepish.

  Toussaint looked like he wanted to say something else about it, but he couldn’t think of what it was he wanted to say, so instead he begrudgingly said, “I think there still might be some hard candy back there in my tin box. But just once piece or else your ma will get all over me for spoiling you.”

  The boy grew a smile and went off to find the candy. Toussaint’s gaze followed him and Jake could see the pride in those dark eyes. But it was also a pride that bordered on sorrow for the other son that was not among them—the one that lay under the cold ground out back of the house.

  “What brings you out here?” Toussaint said, turning his attention back to Jake.

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about.” Jake saw Karen turn her head around to look at them from where she stood at the stove. Jake waited till she turned back around, then slanted his eyes toward the door for Toussaint’s benefit. “Some private business.”

  Toussaint looked at his wife’s back. He could tell she was listening and interested in whatever it was Jake wanted to tell him. He stood, got the crutch under his arm, and said
to Karen, “I could use some help getting my coat on. I got to go check on the horses.”

  “I can check on them,” she said. “You go out in that snow one-legged, you’ll just fall on your can and bust your other leg, then you won’t be a bit of use to me and I’ll just have to take that old gun and do to you what I’d do to an old dog that had gone rabid. I’d just as soon not be put through all the trouble. It’d be easier was I to check the horses myself.”

  “Fine, take the boy with you. He needs to learn to take care of his animals.”

  “He already knows how,” she said. “But I’ll take him anyway, because I’d not want you and Jake here to have to talk your man talk around women and children.”

  “I apologize, Karen,” Jake said. “I just want to ask Toussaint a little advice on a personal matter.”

  She turned and with a genuine smile said, “Don’t mind me, Jake. I’m just a little testy when it comes to him. Lord knows, we all been through enough this last year.” And she looked at Toussaint with unhidden love.

  “Don’t worry, woman,” Toussaint said softly. “You know you and that boy come first with me. Now let us have a second, if you would.”

  She got her and the boy’s coat and helped him on with it and they went out. A breath of cold air came in when they opened the door; the fire in the stove ate it.

  “So what’s the deal?” Toussaint said when they were alone.

  Jake told him.

  Toussaint listened, then said, “How can I help?”

  Jake looked down at the leg.

  “You can’t,” he said.

  “’Cause of this? Shit.”

  “No, because of them,” Jake said. Toussaint looked at the door as though he could see out into the yard, clear out to the corral where Karen and the boy had gone.

  “They’ll understand. Karen will, anyway.”

  “Not if you are brought home wrapped in a tarp, they won’t.”

  “Karen’s a tough woman,” Toussaint said.

  “I really just want to know one thing: If it was you, how would you handle it, considering the circumstances?”