The banker liked that. “By Judas Priest, I think I will.”
Mayor Dunstan staggered out of the saloon singing about Kathleen.
Zack needed another slopped-over mug of whiskey to wash away the bad taste. It was like water going down a drain. He filled his mug again and asked for a fresh bottle. “Town people—Lord, how I hate them!”
“Think about this,” I said. “If there were no towns, then no saloons, no cathouses.”
“Make my own whiskey, too old for the other.”
“Think we can stop Thornton?”
“Could be hard to do if he comes in the night. You know that, Carmody.”
That was what I’d been thinking about sure enough. Big Sam was a town-burner from way back; some men, crazy men, liked the way a town burned bright against a black sky. An old-time raider with a big price on his head and nothing but a rope from any Texas jury if he got caught, Thornton could be more cautious than I’d figured. Night or day, Zack and his boys would hold and fight till the last bullet; I knew the men from the town would drop their guns and run—they might not even pick them up, but they would run—if Sam Thornton came in the dark.
Old Zack was ahead of me on my next thought, which was to take myself back to the jail and see how Sally was doing. “You want to go, you go, Carmody, nobody’s going to get at the liquor with me bedded down in here. Nobody that don’t want a bullet in both knees.”
I took a bottle and started to leave. Zack’s eyes were bright and red-veined and I knew he was drunk. I knew he was drunk because he had to be drunk. “Hold on there, boy,” he called after me, “Just one damn minute.”
“Yeah, Zack?”
Well, I thought, that’s what a hungry old wolf looks like when he’s trying to be friendly. All along I’d been thinking of him as a dangerous old lobo, but that was just a way of thinking. Most men sort of look like something besides men—bulls, sheep, goats, mules, rats or donkeys. That’s just sort of, I mean, but Zack wasn’t ‘sort of’ at all. He was a real wolf.
“You sure you don’t want another drink?” Then he sounded that ‘boy’ again. “Just asking because I been thinking.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Not exactly thinking but figuring. I was figuring my girl Sally’s about to be a widow when this is over. You ain’t married, are you, boy?”
“No, Zack,” I said. “Guess I’d make a bad husband if I was.”
I was glad Zack didn’t sound too determined. I didn’t want to be married by my own shotgun. It was funny, the two of us fairly drunk, there in the cold empty saloon, Sally over at the jail, the mayor maybe kicking his wife in the head, and Thornton out there astride the trail, planning a massacre.
I laid it on thick. “Bad isn’t the word,” I said. “Not bad, meaning I’d be mean to a woman, but, you know—not so young, no money, no settled job. Shiftless, that’s me.”
“Now don’t you downgrade yourself that way, boy. You ain’t never met the right woman, is all. Why with a piece of land to call your own, a new house, a few cows, you could raise yourself up in no time.”
I looked doleful, ready to drop the bottle and argue with the eight-gauge Davenport if Zack got any more sentimental. “Won’t ever be so lucky,” I said. “A wandering stranger is all I’ll ever be.”
Zack dumped more whiskey into his mug. “Don’t have to be,” he said, more wolfish than ever. “I ain’t as poor as I look. Why, son, I could deed you a nice piece of land, set you up with some stock, with all the boys pitching in could raise a house in no time. I ain’t Scotch where my little girl is concerned—you could owe me. What do you say?”
“Not now, Zack,” I said. “Wouldn’t be fair. Less than two days from now we could all be dead.”
He wasn’t ready to argue about that. It was the best excuse I could think of. And it was true.
Chapter Fourteen
I had told Sally to stay inside, to keep the door of the jail barred. She was in the doorway sweeping dirt onto the sidewalk, then into the street; and her shape looked good with the light behind her. That started me thinking about Fallon, in the cell next to Luke’s homemaking cell. I could take her over to the hotel—there wasn’t a roomer in the place—but I didn’t want to do that.
She saw me quick enough, and I don’t know where she found the broom. It wasn’t Luke’s broom; Luke didn’t think much of brooms.
She swept dirt onto my dirty boots. “Men are dirty,” she said. I stood there, rifle in one hand, bottle in the other. “You are dirty,” she said, “dirty and drunk. You’re drunk, Carmody. Sometimes I wonder why we women bother.”
I was drunk and I told her why. Well, it was the truth, wasn’t it? Women always ask why they bother as if they don’t know. It’s hard on them and it’s harder on us. Back East a woman named Woodfin was running for President; and you know where that can lead.
“You got no consideration,” Sally yelled, giving a few more vicious sweeps with the broom before she threw it down. “Nothing but dirt, dirt, tobacco spit, whiskey smell, dirt and dunk!”
“I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,” I said. “What’s dunk?”
“You’re drunk and Fallon’s in there yelling for his supper,” Sally said. “Says no lunch nor supper.”
“Same for tomorrow,” I said. “Be good for Fallon. Too much fat. What’re you so mad about?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I know and I don’t know. You’re dirty and you’re drunk. I’m in jail and Fallon’s in jail. I’m in a worse jail ... ”
I put on my wise face and hiccupped. “Terrible being a woman,” I said. “We’ll see if we can’t stop that.”
“Not with Fallon in there we won’t,” Sally said. “You didn’t say Fallon was in the jail when you brought me there. That was a rotten thing, Carmody.”
I pushed her aside and unlocked the door to the cells. Fallon got up off his bed, gray-faced by the quick walking and the slamming of the door. For a runner of county politicians and an all-round fixer, Fallon was fresh out of confidence. I guess he thought I had changed my mind and was about to kill him.
“Jesus, don’t do it!” he yelled, scrambling to the back wall of the cell. It was good to see him sweat. I unlocked the cell door and crowded in on him.
“You’re bothering the lady,” I said before I laid the rifle barrel across his narrow skull.
That would keep him quiet most of the night, and if he didn’t wake up at all Texas would be a better place to live in. To make him real comfortable, I rolled him under the cot and hung a blanket over him.
I went back outside and told Sally it was time for bed. She came in looking for Fallon. “Shush,” I said. “Malachi’s finally nodded off.”
I wasn’t sleepy when we finished what we were doing in Luke’s bed. She was asleep when I got back from touring the town, checking the Eldredge boys on guard at both ends of the street. They had nothing to tell me, and the only sounds were the night wind and two coyotes singing a duet. I looked into the saloon and Zack was asleep on top of the bar, hugging that damn shotgun.
I slept in the third cell and Fallon’s groaning woke me while it was still dark outside. Fallon dragged himself out and croaked for water. I gave him a mug of cold coffee instead, and told him to stay quiet.
Streaks showed in the sky, and when I went outside Zack was bent over a horse trough, using his hat to pour water over his head. I did the same. The water smelled old, but it was good and cold; what I needed to get my head working. “About time,” I said.
We started them digging and rolling the wire before the sun came up. Everybody looked sour or scared, but with sun and coffee to warm them, some of that dropped away. It was the most activity Salter City had seen for years, everybody shoveling and hammering and sawing boards. They got the first ditch dug and floored with spikes, then covered, by nine o’clock. Close up it wouldn’t fool anybody but a blind man—or a man riding full tilt through bullets.
They were slower getting the second ditch finished.
Dunstan was there digging with the rest, sick as a dog, blowing on his fat hands to cool the blisters. “You’re going to have to work faster, boys,” I told them. “Still got to block off the alleys and get the wire set up. Set it up, then see if it works.”
Zack set his womenfolk to blocking off the alleys while the men worked on the second ditch and the wire. They were finding it hard to get together enough junk to do the job. “Use furniture, anything at all,” I said. “Get it good and high.”
They had the rolled wire ready to be tested. The wire was rolled around wood frames with ropes going from one side of the street to the other. Zack was saying horses could pull it into position faster than men. I shook my head. “They could spook and pull it too far, maybe clear out of the street. Let’s see how fast men can do it.”
They tried it. “Not fast enough,” I said. “Put another man on it.”
They were finishing up the second ditch and everybody looked ready to lie down. It was nearly five in the afternoon and they’d been working for eleven hours with only two short breaks. There were a lot of sour faces when I said it was time to check out their firing positions.
“Soon as we do that it’s supper time,” I told them. “Every man gets a place and that’s where he stays when the time comes.”
Zack’s boys were the best shots so they got the best places. The ones with the muzzleloaders got the best cover; the men with repeaters would give them cover while they reloaded. Dunstan had a Spencer carbine, a gun I hadn’t seen for years. I put him where he wanted to be, at the window of the bank. Zack picked his own spot, the flat roof of the hotel.
I got my horse and mounted up. “I don’t want to see one Goddamned face,” I yelled in the silent street. Salter City looked like a ghost town, the wind stirring the loose dirt on top of the canvas covers above the two ditches. “I’m going to ride out, then come back in fast,” I yelled. “Any man can’t get me clear in his sights is in the wrong place. After that—supper.”
I rode out and checked the wire at the north end of the street. It was lined up with two wagons end-to-end to hide it. The road from that end of town ran up a slope before it dipped down to level country. Three of Zack’s boys were on the far side of the slope with the upturned wagon.
I got to the top of the slope just as the yelling started. Cursing, I yanked the Winchester out of the scabbard. Thornton had jumped the gun and started in a day early. Thornton’s column was still riding easy when I topped the hill. It wasn’t dark yet, but close—bad light to shoot in. I saw Zack’s boys running, Thornton’s bunch coming after them, a dark mass of men and horses. I was too far away to give Zack’s boys any help.
Thornton’s men closed the gap fast. Fallon had said fifty men; there looked to be more than that. Zack’s three boys went down about the same time in a hail of lead. One of them got up again and threw a Goddamned rock. A dozen guns sent him rolling. I turned the horse and galloped back toward town. Some fool panicked and shot at me as I came in. I heard Zack Eldredge roaring. I was roaring too. I couldn’t leave the horse in the street because he’d spook and run into the covered ditches. Right into the saloon I headed the damn animal, knocking the doors to kindling. Something, maybe the naked lady, made him spook, and with me still in the saddle he started to do a wrecking job on that saloon. He started a player piano that hadn’t played in years and I guess he didn’t like the music because he whinnied and stomped the guts out of the mechanical noisemaker before he ran full tilt at the bar.
I got the leg he was trying to crush out of the way and rolled onto the bar, then rolled over and off it, the rifle still in my hand. I heard the thunder of fifty or sixty horses coming down the slope into town, then the first shooting. The damn horse started for the front door, then wheeled and charged out the back way.
It was too late to get upstairs where I wanted to be. I ran back to the big window and knocked out all the glass I could reach. I was ready to shoot when the first of Thornton’s men rode past with blazing guns in their hands. Hell! There were more than fifty, more than sixty. I shot two fellers off their horses, wounded another feller, but he straightened up, and I had to shoot him again. I shot at another feller and missed and he rounded his horse and started for the saloon door. I was shooting too fast to see the thing hissing in his hand before he threw it—a bottle of Greek fire with a burning fuse. I killed him with one bullet but the bottle landed on the sidewalk.
Bullets chipped wood as I charged out the door and kicked at the bottle. It went off the sidewalk and blew up in a flash of white flame. It showed more of me than I wanted them to see, and bullets came at me thick as hailstones in Montana. Men and horses were screaming in the first ditch, and bullets still came at me, but not so many. Somebody else threw Greek fire and this time it landed inside the saloon. The flames started like a forge with a full draft. Hot as a full-going forge; I could feel the heat from ten feet away. I ran for the hotel, the closest cover on the same side. Horses started after me, then I heard two quick shots, and there was a falter in the gallop. Zack Eldredge stuck his head over the top of the building and yelled at me. I yelled back and kept running.
I made it to the door. A man rode his horse after me, and I guess he wasn’t that good a rider, or else the animal was spooked. The horse didn’t try to go in the door; he made for the window. The man screamed as he went through the glass, but he was scared, not hurt, when he landed inside in a shower of broken glass. He was quick for a scared man, or because of it. I calmed him down with a bullet in the head. I ran up the stairs, then up other stairs, and out onto the roof.
Zack was thumbing a fresh load into the rifle he had. The goose-gun lay beside him. “Going good, General,” he said. “Short notice but good.” He ducked his head over the edge to have a look. “There goes the wire.”
There was more screaming. I felt bad about the horses. He was right. It was going pretty good; they were coming back, trying to come back. I heard the wire being dragged across the street at the other end of town. I kept looking for Thornton so I could kill him. I knew what he looked like ten years before, but not now, not with the thick light. I might not have seen him at all if Sally hadn’t started firing from the window of the jail. That was another thing she wasn’t supposed to do. What she was supposed to do was keep the door barred and bolted when I wasn’t there, to stay out of the war.
Then I figured what she was shooting at—Sam Thornton.
Thornton was big as they said and he rode straight at the jail on a big Morgan horse, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. A bullet hit him but hardly budged him. The men, turned by the spiked ditches and the wire, were coming back through heavy fire. Some were off their horses or had their horses shot from under them. Thornton stopped shooting at the jail window and started yelling and pointing. I don’t know how many of Thornton’s men were left. A lot of bodies were in the street, some quiet, some crawling. Darkness was coming down like a blanket. Thornton threw a rope around one of the beams that held up the jail porch, circled his saddle horn with the free end and backed off the big horse. I aimed and fired and the rifle clicked empty.
“Come on,” I said to Zack.
I loaded on the run. A wounded man was lurching into the hotel lobby and I used my belt gun to drop him. Zack was ahead of me, the goose-gun cocked to fire. The noise of the porch beam battering against the jail door sounded across the street. Thornton, roaring like a mad bull, was under the front end of the beam, with four men pushing from the back. Suddenly the heavy door burst open and Thornton fell inside. The four men staggered under the beam. They were getting up when Zack, a wild look on his face, stepped up and blew them meat from bones with one blast of the Davenport. Then a bullet took him in the leg and he went down.
I swear the old son of a bitch was smiling.
There was screaming inside the jail and I went in the door like a bullet. Thornton was crowding Sally into a corner; there was blood on her face and Thornton was hitting her again.
“Thornton!”
I yelled.
That turned him and I could have killed him, but a bullet would be letting him off too easy. There was a hole in his left shoulder and that arm was no good. He started to jack the rifle one-handed. I put a bullet through his arm, then another bullet an inch lower. He lurched across the room trying to knock me down with his bulk. I got out of his way and tripped him as he charged back. He didn’t get far. The butt of the Winchester caught him behind the ear and laid him out.
Outside the goose-gun boomed again. The old man had dragged himself out of the street and was lying with his back to the jail wall, loading and shooting. The roof of the burning saloon fell in with a shower of sparks, but the other buildings hadn’t caught fire. The firing had thinned except at the north end of the street where what was left of Thornton’s army was trying to break through the wire. Two of Zack’s boys came running to pick him up. They kept him on his feet while he loaded a shell into the Davenport. “Now comes the best part,” he roared.
They didn’t need me to finish the job. It took some doing to get Thornton into the cell beside Fallon. The big man from Pecos County was where I’d put him the night before—under the bed. You never saw a more surprised man than Fallon when he unsqueezed his eyes and saw Thornton.
“You can hold hands when hanging time comes,” I told him.
I could hear the Davenport booming up the street, and every time a shell went off the noise drowned out all the other noise. A few scattered shots answered back, then it got quiet. It stayed quiet for a while, and then the big gun sounded again. I grinned at that. Old Zack was making sure nobody got up again.
I went back inside and looked for a drink of whiskey. “That’s it,” I said to Sally.
The Killers Page 10
