The Big Gundown

by Bill Brooks

  She moved closer to his bed and it scared him because he was certain she was a ghost and he said, “No, Ma, don’t come no closer.”

  She hovered over him and he felt a breath of cold fall upon him and he began to shiver.

  “I’m dying, ain’t I, Ma? That’s why you’re here. You come to take me with you…”

  “Beware, child.”

  “Beware of what?”

  Then she began to fade and he reached out his hand to touch her, but there wasn’t anything there to touch. Just cold air.

  The coldness got in him and he trembled. Snakes crawled along the floor toward his bed.

  “No! No!” he cried.

  Clara heard him calling and hurried to his room.

  “What is it?” she said.

  She found him huddled in the corner of the bed, curled up and whimpering like a child, went over to him, put her hand on his forehead, and felt how hot his skin was.

  “No, Ma!”

  She could see his glassy eyes staring up at her, full of fear.

  “Easy,” she said. She was nearly afraid to touch him.

  She saw the sheets were stained with blood.

  “I’ll go and get Jake,” she said.

  His teeth chattered.

  And when the man returned with her a short time later, Willy Silk remembered where it was he knew the man from.

  It was that fellow he’d been paid to find and kill.

  That one the rich man in Denver had paid him to track down.

  “Put a bullet in that son of a bitch and you’ll make me a most happy man, Mr. Silk.”

  Ain’t them the exact words he said?

  Then the fever took full hold of him and sent him tumbling into a strange world—one in which he saw faces and heard voices of his uncle Reese and his ma and saw the bad things they were doing together, forcing him to watch, and horses were running wild through a cornfield. And there was a river across which he had to swim, only he didn’t know how he was going to do it, since he was fearful of rivers and deep water. On the other side of the river he saw a man waving to him, yelling at him to come across, and he knew that the man was his pa.

  And the wives of men whose names were lost to him appeared before him, lined up like rows of angels, dressed in long white robes, their hair in flames, and they became a choir of voices whose power seemed to lift him straight up toward the sun.

  Then the face of Reese leaned in close, his fetid breath sour and stinking, and said, “Go on over, Willy. Go on over to the other side of that river yonder.”

  But when he tried to cross that troubled water, he sank, and the water closed over him, cold and heavy, and the last thing he saw was the face of the man on the other side, the one he was sure was his pa, only it was the face of the lawman.

  “What is it?” Clara said when she saw the boy’s eyes roll white.

  “The fever is burning him up,” Jake said. “Help me carry him outside.”

  And as Willy Silk trembled, they carried him outside, for he was hardly more than a wasted young man, and laid him in a snow drift.

  “He will freeze to death,” Clara said.

  “No, he won’t. It’s the only way I know to bring the fever down quickly before it ruins his mind and maybe takes his life.”

  And for a time it was touch-and-go as to whether Willy Silk would live or not.

  23

  BOB PARKER WAS SITTING AT THE TABLE, waiting for his breakfast, when he smelled something burning. He had been reading an article in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper about the assassination and subsequent death months later of President Garfield. There was a drawing of the assassin shooting Garfield in a train station.

  “Says here,” Bob commented to his wife, who sat near the fireplace, knitting, “that his doctors submitted a bill for eighty-one thousand dollars to Congress, but they called them a bunch of quacks.”

  His wife arched her eyebrows as she brought him a plate of eggs and set it before him. It was still dark outside, the sun now yet risen. Bob read on, moving his lips over each sentence.

  “Quacks,” he repeated. “I guess so. That poor man suffered greatly, according to this. Sounds like they spent all their time torturing him. Eighty-one thousand dollars.”

  Then he smelled the thing burning and looked up and looked over to the stove, where his wife was now standing, thinking it the flue might be plugged but it looked all right and he said, “Do you smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “That?”

  She sniffed and wrinkled her nose.

  “What is it, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He rose from his chair and went over to the window and looked out.

  “Oh hell,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “The bunkhouse is on fire!”

  He grabbed his coat and hat and went out in a rush, leaving the front door standing open. His wife closed it behind him and continued to watch out the front window toward the bunkhouse. The dark sky was tingeing crimson along the horizon, like a seam of thin blood seeping up from the earth. The snow was ghostly blue and reflected the fire around the bunkhouse. Bright orange flames shot up from the roof of the burning building. She saw her husband high-stepping through the deep drifts that had piled up between the main house and the bunkhouse.

  By the time he got there, he was out of breath. The odd thing was the hired men were simply standing there, watching the place burn.

  “You boys!” he shouted. “Pitch in and get water out of the well!”

  But they didn’t move, not a single one of the five.

  He started to run to the well himself to winch up buckets of water.

  “Form a line!” he called, but they didn’t bother to even so much as turn around.

  It stopped him short when he realized they weren’t pitching in.

  “What the hell is wrong with you all?”

  Dallas struck a match and cupped it in his hands as he lowered the end of his cigarette down to it and let it catch hold, then snapped out the match and dropped it in the snow. You couldn’t tell whether it was smoke or just the cold air he was exhaling.

  “You-all don’t raise a hand, you’re fired, every goddamn one of you!” Bob Parker yelled as he went over and lowered a bucket down into the well and heard it splash when it hit water, then winched it back up again and ran with it—spilling half of what was in it before he got to the bunkhouse—and pitched what there was left against the flames coming out now through one of the windows, the heat busting the glass. The flames licked out like the fire was trying to eat the very air. The water hit the fire and hissed but didn’t seem to do a thing to stop its ravages. It made him about as mad as he ever had been to think those boys were just standing there like a bunch of mules, watching him and not lifting a hand to help out.

  He threw the empty bucket to the ground and it stuck in the snow.

  “I want to know just what the hell is going on here!” he said.

  “Looks like your bunkhouse is burning, is what,” Dallas said. Bob could see the flames reflected in his dark eyes, could see the fire’s glow flaring out over all their faces as they stood there, their hands jammed down inside their pockets.

  “Well, that’s it, then. You boys are fired as of this minute. I won’t have a bunch of useless sons of bitches around here.”

  “I guess we’ll just collect our pay,” Dallas said, “and move on.”

  “Pay! Hell, there’s your damn pay,” Bob said, pointing toward the burning building. “You fire-bugged the place on purpose. I’d like to know why.”

  “No,” said Dallas. “We’ll collect our pay before we move on.”

  He could see them standing there watching him. They were all dressed and set to go. He saw then their horses saddled and tied off to the corral rail. The boys had their saddlebags and soogins tied on. It was something they’d planned out.

  “I’ll be goddamned you get a single dime off me!”

 
; His wife called to him from the house: “Bob! What’s going on out there?”

  Dallas’s gaze flicked toward the house.

  “You want us to burn it down with her in it?” he said.

  They had him whipped every which way there was, he could see that. He had no firearms to defend himself or her, had come running out of the house thinking it was an accident. He hated it like sin they’d gotten over on him again. He should have fired them all soon as he suspected they’d had a hand in Nat Pickett’s death and the brutal thing they’d done to Tig. These were mean, onerous men without a lick of conscience.

  “I’ll have to go into town to the bank,” he said. “I don’t keep that much cash on hand.”

  Dallas smoked his shuck and watched the fire burn and a few minutes hardly went by before part of the roof caved in and sent a shower of sparks skyward lightening up the now purple morning sky and Perk whooped and slapped his big hat against his thigh and put it back on his head again, saying, “Son of a bitch, would you look at her burn!”

  “Let’s go see what you got in the house,” Dallas said.

  “A few dollars at the most, is all.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  The others started to follow, but Dallas told them to wait and he slid the Colts out of his holster from underneath his coat and said to Bob, “Lead the way.”

  They came inside the house. She saw them coming, Bob and Dallas behind him trudging through the snow and couldn’t understand why they weren’t trying to put out the fire. Then the door swung open and they came inside without even bothering to stomp the snow off their boots first and it fell off in clumps there on her expensive carpet.

  “Why, whatever…” Then she saw Dallas holding the pistol and started to shriek, but he said, “Shut up or I’ll shoot you in the mouth!” And when Bob started to protest such treatment of his wife, Dallas hit him hard across the side of his neck with the pistol barrel and the blow caused him to stumble and fall down on one knee, striking it hard against the floor.

  “Go on, git up, you ain’t hurt,” Dallas ordered.

  Bob struggled to his feet.

  “Now let’s go get the money.”

  Bob Parker led him into what looked like a study, a place with bookshelves and books on them and a big oak desk sitting in the middle of the room, and behind it a wood chair with cowhide covering the back and seat and some along the arms.

  “Show me the safe,” Dallas said.

  “What safe? There ain’t no safe.”

  “Goddamn but I’ll hit you again you keep it up.”

  “Oh, Bob, just give him the money so’s he can go on and leave us alone.”

  “Go sit in that chair,” Dallas said to her. And when she did, he said, “Now quit fucking around here or you’ll be sorry you did.”

  The safe was behind a horsehair divan in the corner. A little safe on wheels with gold lettering on the door: IN-GRAM’S SAFECO. Bob knelt before it, his fingers trembling as he tried working the combination. He thought he had it but when he tried the handle it wouldn’t open. Dallas stepped in close to him, stood over him and cocked the pistol and laid the muzzle against the back of his head.

  “First I’ll shoot you, then her. But before I shoot her, I’ll let the boys take a turn with her then shoot her. That what you want?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bob Parker blubbered. “I’m trying.”

  “Try again. You got one last chance.”

  The rancher steadied his hand and got the combination right and this time when he tried the handle the heavy door swung open. He kept a little two-shot derringer in it, right atop his money, thinking a time like this might some day come and what a grand surprise it would be for the son of a bitch who tried to rob him. But there it was and he had no will to grab it, no will, or no nerve either one.

  Instead his fingers moved the little gun to the side and took the stack of money, which he knew rightly was just a little over fifteen hundred dollars—what he liked to think of as his rainy-day money.

  “Here,” he said, offering up the money.

  Dallas looked at it, then stuck it down in his coat pocket with his free hand.

  He didn’t say anything for a time, just stood there breathing through his nose.

  “Ah hell,” he said and pulled the trigger.

  Perk and the others heard the gunshot and started toward the house. Then they heard another just as they reached the front porch and Dallas came out through the door, closing it soundly behind him.

  “What happened?” Perk said.

  “Just a little misunderstanding, is all. He tried to shoot me with a little two-shot derringer” and he tossed it to Perk, who caught it, but when he broke it open, he could see there were two unspent shells still in it. Then he caught the look on Dallas’s face and understood what the situation was.

  “Let’s ride,” Dallas said.

  “What about the money?”

  “Son of a bitch had him a safe in there, but all he had in it was papers. I think he was telling the truth about it being in the bank.”

  “So it means we ride out busted as the day we rode in?” Taylor said.

  “Well, unless you boys want to wait around and sleep in the snow.”

  They strode to their horses.

  “What about that other thing?” Perk said.

  “Yeah, we’re gone take care of it. We’re gone ride into town and get us a few drinks and maybe a little breakfast and then we’re gone take care of it.”

  They mounted their horses, which were a bit rank from lack of being ridden very much over the weeks it took the men to dig the new well the boss had wanted, and Taylor’s tried bucking him off and he cursed it and fought it to a standstill and said, “These goddamn nags are all rough” when it quit bucking.

  Perk said, “You never was much with horses.”

  The bunkhouse was still in flames, but most of the rest of the roof had collapsed and there were just some of the walls standing now. And when they’d ridden off a mile or more, they looked back and could see the flames still rising and falling like something breathing and the sun was just edging its way over the horizon, shoving back the now gray sky, its rays spreading out over the snow causing it to sparkle.

  “Maybe we should have burnt the whole place,” Perk said as he rode alongside Dallas with the others trailing behind riding in single file because it was easier work riding through the deep snow to ride one behind the other.

  “Maybe,” Dallas said.

  “What we gone do after we take care of that lawman?” Perk said.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m about headed out of this country myself.”

  “I don’t blame you after what you did back there.”

  Dallas looked at him hard.

  “Whatever went on back there, we’re all in it together, don’t you forget that.”

  “I know it. You know me, Dallas, I’m loyal to a fault, but what about them?”

  Dallas didn’t bother looking over his shoulder at Taylor and the others.

  “It’s every man for himself once we clear this country, I reckon.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “Maybe we ought to rob the bank.”

  “My, ain’t you gone and got big ideas.”

  “I know you shot them two back there.”

  “So what if I did?”

  “Like you said, we’re already in it together. Might just as well go on and make us some money long as the law will be looking for us anyway.”

  Dallas turned halfway around in his saddle and looked back at the others now, riding with their heads down to protect their faces from the cold. A chill wind had begun to stir.

  “They’re as dumb as rocks,” he said.

  “Don’t take no brains to rob banks, I reckon.”

  “All I want to do right now is take care of that goddamn son bitch lawman.”

  “I know it, but then afterward we could rob the bank. Might just as damn well. We
kill that lawman, who’s gone stop us from taking the bank?”

  “Make me a shuck, I’m all out of makings.”

  Perk removed his gloves and tucked them down inside his coat pocket then reached up inside and took out his makings from where he kept them in the pocket of his shirt and set about making a shuck and when he finished he handed it over to Dallas.

  “Here,” he said.

  Dallas took it and struck a matchhead off the horn of his saddle and cupped it in his hands and lowered his cigarette to it until it caught.

  “Hell, maybe we ought to,” he said.

  “Then ride south, the bunch of us, we could rob all the damn banks from here to Texas I imagine, have us enough money time we got down there we could live like barons.”

  The idea was beginning to take root, Perk could see that when Dallas drew on the shuck and the way his eyes looked.

  “Otherwise, we’ll end up doing the same old thing—if we ain’t caught and hanged—well-digging and fence-riding and cutting the nuts off steers,” Perk added.

  They rode along like that, thinking about it, the others in a single line behind them, cold and uncertain of their futures. Dallas had pretty much ruined them in this part of the country with burning down the bunkhouse and all the rest.

  But they were men of a solitary nature and futures never did hold that much truck with any one of them. There was always another place to drift, always another job to do sooner or later. And if worse came to worst, they were sure old Dallas would come up with a plan.

  Taylor said to Lon, “Look it how purty the sky’s becoming.”

  Lon looked up and so did Harvey.

  “This is real sky country, ain’t it?” Lon said.

  Harvey dropped his head back down; the wind hurt his face.

  24

  JAKE WAS STILL AT CLARA’S when the evening came. Willy Silk’s fever had finally broken and he had sunk into a deep sleep. Jake said, “I ought to stay close, in case the fever comes back.”

  Clara fixed them supper and the girls set the table.

  “Why not light some candles,” she said to the girls. “Instead of lamps, let’s eat by candlelight.”