The Killers

by Peter McCurtin

  My gunbelt was hung over the back of the chair. I twisted out of his way and was grabbing for my handgun when he hit me a mule kick of a punch in the back of the head. Another man would have wrecked his hand; that blacksmith had hands like seasoned wood. He kicked me behind the knee while I was still falling. All I could think of was the gunbelt. White lights were flashing in my head. I could see the gunbelt. My hands were clawing for it, but instead of kicking me the blacksmith moved around me fast and kicked the chair out of the way. Figuring he’d wade in again with more kicks I rolled away from him. That gave my head a few seconds to start thinking again. The blacksmith moved fast, but not at me. He scooped up belt and gun and slung them out through the door. “We’ll see how tough …” he was saying. He grabbed the empty bottle and broke it on the wall.

  The son of a bitch turned his back on me and went after the goose-gun. I took a flying leap and tackled him from behind. My arms got him around the middle; it was like trying to bring down a tree. He kept moving, dragging me behind him. I hooked a heel in front of his ankle, and we both staggered and fell. Bear-hugging him wasn’t worth trying. Like I said, it was like trying to break a tree in the middle. The worst of it was, there was nothing to hit him with but my fists. We rolled on the floor. I tried to use the knee on him, and that didn’t work either. He was up before I was. He let me get up most of the way, grinning at me. I lowered my head and went at his belly like a mad bull. I should have remembered that his belly was as hard as his hands. It was like using your head to batter down a barn door. My head hurt. It hurt worse when his big paws clamped on both sides of it. I expected a knee in the face, but that wasn’t what he did. What he did was try to twist my head off my shoulders. Then, I swear, he used my head to lift me off the floor. I don’t know how big that big bastard was, a good six inches taller than me, a hundred pounds heavier. Even so, he had to use all his heat-forged muscles to throw me at the back wall of the jail. He managed to do it. My back hit the wall and I sat down hard.

  He bent down and came up with the goose-gun in his hands. In his hands the big gun looked small. He was laughing now, having a good time, and it wasn’t because he thought I was keeping food from his starving kids. He cocked the gun and held it in one hand, his thick finger curled around the trigger, grinning like a wild man. I don’t know what I thought when I saw that monster gun cocked and aimed at me.

  Just for a second or two, there wasn’t a sound. Just the two of us standing there with the Goddamned music drifting over from the hotel. One thing I can’t stomach is a man about to kill me with a grin on his face. I called him a dirty name to hurry it up.

  “You’re scared sick,” he sneered. “You and your stinking guns ... ”

  He set down the hammer and tossed the sawed-off into the street. I guess I blinked at that. How often do you look into the gaping muzzle of a sawed-off and get another chance?

  Balling his fists he moved in slowly, running off at the mouth as he did. “Here’s where you get taught a lesson,” he said. “First I’m going to beat you till your guts come loose. Then I’m going to kick the lungs clear out of your chest. Then I’m going to stomp on your hands till they’re jam. You ain’t never going to use another gun in your life. Here or no place else.”

  The only thing I could see to use on him was the broken chair. There was a leg with part of a rung stuck to it. He didn’t even try to keep me from grabbing it. He moved in easily, grinning all the time, fists balled hard and held shoulder high. I swung at his face and he blocked it with his forearm. If it hurt he didn’t show it. He didn’t even try to take the chair leg away from me, not at first. The next time I feinted with the piece of wood. He moved his arm to block it and I hit him along the side of the head. His ear puffed up as soon as the blow landed, but the wild grin on his face didn’t change.

  He took another whack across the side of the neck. It was like hitting a side of beef for all the good it did me. “Lesson time,” he said. I swung the chair leg again. It smacked against his open hand, then his huge hand snapped shut like a steel trap. I hung onto the chair leg and he knocked me loose with a punch delivered with his other hand. Then he deadened my right arm with the chair leg before he threw it away.

  “Now!” he grunted.

  I went at him again using every dirty trick I ever learned. I know a lot of dirty tricks and one or two should have worked. He grunted a bit when I tried to kick off his kneecap with the toe of my boot. That was all he did—he grunted. There was that much meat and muscle on the big bastard, and all of it was hard. He crowded me against the back wall again making no effort to block the punches I threw at his grinning, meaty face.

  When I couldn’t back off any more, he started body punching. The stink of sweat and whiskey was strong in my face. I felt the trickle of blood and knew the wound in my side had broken open. That made me mad because that Goddamned hole had taken so long to heal. It didn’t do me much good to get mad. Nothing I was doing was much good.

  He hit me again, then grabbed my shirt and pulled me away from the wall. Jesus, I don’t mind being punched, but I hate being open-handed. That’s what he did. With my shirt bunched in his hand he slapped me with the other hand. The shirt tore loose and I went flying back against the desk. He jumped after me, trying to throw me on top of the desk. Papers rustled under my hand and I remembered the desk spike where Luke stuck the reward posters. I grabbed the heavy metal base of the spike and shook it loose from the stack of papers. I don’t think he saw the spike. If he did it was too late. He rushed in on me and I shoved the needlepointed spike through his chest. I was trying for the heart and got him through the right lung. That’s what it looked like—the right lung.

  It went in smooth as a hot knife through butter. Not a bone got in the way to turn back the long thin bar of steel. With all that whiskey in him, he didn’t feel it right away. Maybe he didn’t even know it was there. I rolled over the desk and landed on my feet. He roared and grabbed the desk with both hands and began to lift it. That was the first and only time any man tried to throw a desk at me. He almost made it. He got it chest high in one powerful pull like a weight lifter. There was some blood on the front of his white shirt, not much.

  The grin was still on his face. He tried to keep it there. Then he looked surprised as the strength drained from his arms. The desk wavered and crashed to the floor. His hand came up and touched the base of the spike. He held out his hand and looked at the blood. Putting one foot in front of the other like a man walking in deep snow, he tried to come after me. I was too tired to hit the son of a bitch. I moved out of his way and waited till he fell. That’s what it was like—a tree falling.

  He lay on his back, the spike in his chest, his eyes open. Words came from his mouth, but I didn’t understand them.

  “Shut up and lie still,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll die and maybe you won’t.”

  I figured Dunstan and his friends hadn’t gone far. They were out in the dark and they tried to sneak away when I went to pick up the guns from the street. Before I went outside I found the key and unchained my Winchester. I should have worried that the goose-gun had gotten into the wrong hands, but it was still lying where the blacksmith had thrown it. Dunstan was leading his pack of rats back to the hotel as fast as they could drag their fat bellies. Out of pure meanness, I thought of letting off the goose-gun. It was a good idea, but I didn’t do it.

  Word of the fight, if you can call it that, had gone out. The two boys from the livery stable came to gawk. I waved them away from the door and told them to hunt up some kind of doctor. “Hurry it up,” I said.

  Finley, the talky one clapped his hand to the side of his head. “Holy Moley!” he said. “Did you beat up Mr. Bullock that way?”

  His brother Todd said, “Town doesn’t have a doctor, if you don’t count Mr. Frimmell who sets bones.”

  “Go get him,” I said. “Don’t weasel me for money, you little bastard—go fetch him.”

  The two kids ran off yelling about the big f
ight, and I told the gawkers to get the hell home. I was doing that when Fallon and his two gunmen came out of the hotel and stood looking at the jail. Then Dunstan and some of the storekeepers came out too. Dunstan was talking and Fallon was nodding his head. Judge Flanders was there, but he wasn’t too interested. He had a bottle in his hand.

  I went back inside and closed the door but didn’t bar it. The blacksmith lay there like a wounded grizzly. His beefy red face had turned white in patches; the skin that hadn’t turned white was redder than before. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, and when he took in air the wound in his chest made a bubbling sound. There was still very little blood on his shirt; that didn’t mean he wasn’t leaking fast inside. He croaked for water, and I didn’t give it to him.

  “No water now—don’t talk,” I said.

  I didn’t especially want him to die and I wasn’t praying for him to get well. It would make my general problem a little bit worse if he died—but not much. The fact was, it was getting worse every minute I let Fallon run loose.

  The stable boys were coming back with the bonesetter. I didn’t want them in there gaping at the wounded man, but I figured the bonesetter might need some help. When they got inside I told them to bar the door.

  The bonesetter was a frail old gent with a dry, papery face. Straightening out busted bones takes some strength; this old gent didn’t look like he had it. He walked over to the blacksmith and looked at him like a vet looking at an injured horse.

  He snuffled for a while before he spoke. “Worse than a broken leg, I reckon.”

  “Skip the talk,” I said. “Can you help him or do we let him die in peace?”

  “Not for you to say, maybe not for me to say. He dies in peace or torment—that’s his business. There isn’t a thing I can do—nor the best doctor going—but pull that thing out of his chest, cover the wound, and make him rest. You do this, did you? Must have had a good reason. I always did say Mr. Bullock would meet a bigger man some day.”

  I didn’t feel like laughing at the bonesetter’s joke. “Do anything you want with him. If you can’t fix him—then bury him. If he lives he’s under arrest for attempted murder. Don’t worry, you’ll be paid. Just bill the county. Doctor him the best you can, but don’t do it here.”

  After they took away the blacksmith in a wagon bed softened with hay, I barred the door and turned down the lamp. Luke had only one chair and that was broken. The bottle was broken and I felt pretty busted-up myself. The pink-white hole in my side had stopped bleeding; now it was caked shut with dried blood. And I’ll say it again: I hurt like a son of a bitch.

  Not much else was definite.

  Chapter Nine

  In the morning, the kid called Finley came around to tell me it looked like the blacksmith might live. That was the good—or bad—news from the old man who had doctored him.

  I was back from breakfast, and by now even the old fry-cook didn’t have much to say to me. I guess he was thinking of his business, such as it was.

  I’d been thinking about Finley. He was too young to consider that hanging around the jail could make him unpopular with his boss and the rest of the town.

  “Todd wants to be a businessman, a big one,” he informed me. “Not me.”

  “That a fact,” I said.

  It was hot as hell even so early in the morning, but I couldn’t be up and down the street every time I wanted coffee, so I had a fire going in Luke’s potbelly and a pot of coffee made and set back to simmer blacker than it was.

  “That’s right,” Finley said.

  “You’d as soon be a lawman, is that it?” I asked him.

  “Nothing else,” he answered. “Todd can have his ledgers and account books. The hell with that, Mr. Carmody. There’s more money in it—I know that—but where’s the glory, I want to know?”

  Luke’s office was as shabby as the salvation room of a city mission; as battered as a Mexican camp follower.

  “Not here,” I said.

  Finley didn’t mind that. “Maybe not here,” he said. “I admit that. But that’s what I’d like to be—a lawman. Don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  I still can’t remember what Finley looked like. “Wouldn’t think of it,” I said. “You want to start right now?”

  “You mean it?”

  “Maybe. You know what’s going on in Salter City?”

  “Sure,” the boy said.

  I asked him to explain.

  “You got most of it,” I said. “Some of it anyhow. You know you could get killed helping me?”

  Finley had a question. “I’d get paid, wouldn’t I?”

  That was the idea, I said, not wanting to make use of the kid, but there was nobody else in Salter City I could even think about trusting.

  “Then it’s all right,” he decided. “Doesn’t have to be much. Isn’t the money, I mean. But if I didn’t get paid I wouldn’t feel like I was doing any good. Mr. Carmody, what do I have to do?” Finley made his face look serious. “Before my daddy died he taught me to shoot. That was a time ago. Maybe I could work at it.”

  “No guns,” I said. “You ride north to the telegraph wires and send a message. That’s what you’re to do—nothing but.”

  Disappointment clouded his face. He had a fair command of bad language, for a boy. “That ain’t nothing, Mr. Carmody,” he said. “Ain’t you got nobody else for that?”

  “Don’t be like that, boy.” I went over it again.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Want me to go now?”

  I said when it got dark. If not then—when it was safe to go without being spotted. “They could be watching the road,” I said. “You sure you want to do this? Maybe Brother Todd has it right. You think rubbing down horses is nothing. It’s some better than laying dead in the dust.”

  The kid asked if he could have a cup of coffee, explaining that he was purely sick of buttermilk. Buttermilk wasn’t my drink either. I penciled the message on the back of a wanted poster and gave it to him.

  A slow reader, Finley got as far as To Governor, State of Texas before he whistled long and loud.

  “Depend on me, Mr. Carmody.” He paused, “Would two dollars be asking too much? They say deputies get that much.”

  “Do it right and you’ll get a month’s pay—sixty,” I said.

  Coffee spilled out of his cup. “Lord, wait’ll I tell Todd.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “You figure it.”

  Most of the fifty Luke gave me was left, about forty dollars. I gave him twenty. “Get out of here, boy, you been in here too long—and thanks!”

  It was still early, still quiet—but not for long. I was working on the rest of the coffee when I heard yelling down the street. The yelling started and stopped. The sound of boots clopping in the dust followed the yelling. My first thought was that Fallon’s man had come back with the rest of his bravos.

  I was wrong. The noise came from the south end of town and Fallon’s men wouldn’t be coming in from that direction, not without a good reason. To do that they’d have to ride around. I went outside and blinked some in the hard sun.

  It wasn’t just the sun. No, sir. What I blinked at was Zack Eldredge riding into town on about the oldest horse I ever saw. A man like that would ride a nag like that. Allowing for the difference in the ages of men and horses, Zack’s cayuse was older than he was. It was a white horse gone gray with hard use. It sagged in the middle and its ribs stuck out. Probably it could manage a downhill trot, but nothing could make it gallop.

  Zack and his nag were out in front. Some of the other Eldredge men had mounts, a few horses, the rest mules. Hardly an animal there that hadn’t seen better days. Zack’s boys rode in close to a buckboard that had Sally Eldredge, and the boy, Willy, holding the reins. Just one woman and all those wild men with rifles.

  Sally didn’t look any too happy. There were about as many Eldredges there as I’d seen out at their place; and they rode—and walked—into Salter City as cocky as Sherman’s looters mus
t have been when they reached the sea.

  It was what the military gents call a show of strength. The town was surprised, and so was I. All they needed to make it official was a flag. I didn’t know what they could put on their flag. A squirrel rifle leaning against the side of a half-mooned outhouse with a coon hound watching it?

  One of Fallon’s bullyboys was carrying a tray of food from the restaurant to the hotel. He didn’t drop the tray, but he did hurry up. Then everybody was off the street except me and the Eldredges.

  I stood outside the jail and waited. A fool might have laughed at the way they looked; nobody else would have. I knew that every rifle in the bunch had a bullet chambered or primed to let fly.

  The town watched from windows and doors. Fallon’s hotel room fronted on the street. There was a movement behind the curtains, then it stopped.

  I knew as much as the town did. The Eldredges weren’t carrying cans of coal oil; that didn’t mean they couldn’t burn Salter City flat with one match.

  They kept coming, taking no heed of the hotel. Old Zack had no saddle, just a folded blanket. Zack stopped in front of me. Civil enough, he nodded to me and I nodded back. I said, “Morning.”

  “Hot,” he said.

  “That’s true,” I agreed.

  “Has been hotter,” Zack went on.

  He didn’t have to raise himself to look at the town. Robert E. himself, looking out over Gettysburg, couldn’t have done it better.

  “Anything I can do for you?” I asked as if we’d never met before.

  Zack’s fierce old eyes came back to rest on me. “Nobody does nothing for me.” My shotgun didn’t bother him. “I’m here to say something. I guess you don’t know my daughter Sally?”

  It was kind of an introduction. I needed both hands to hold the shotgun steady, so I nodded. Sally didn’t do anything.

  Zack brought his rasping voice up to a full roar. “I hear some folks in town been asking questions about this daughter of mine. You hear that, Sheriff?”

  “Something like that,” I told him. I wondered how Fallon was feeling along about then.