by Bill Brooks
John told him.
“You staying for the hanging?” Hoodoo said when Teddy went back out into the office.
“No, I don’t reckon.”
“Friends is hard to come by, that’s for sure. I guess you’d hate to see one you got go like that.”
Hoodoo seemed to be enjoying his morning, now that he brought up the subject of death.
“See you around, Sheriff.”
Teddy walked down to the mercantile. They had everything from Mexican blankets to strings of drying chilies. Teddy looked first at the boots, picked out a pair he was sure John wouldn’t mind putting his feet in. Then he picked out a hat before looking at the shelf of pistols.
John favored the Birdseye Colt Lightning, like the one Teddy carried in the shoulder rig, but there wasn’t any of that model on display.
“Let me see that Schofield,” he said to the clerk.
“Forty-four forty,” the clerk said, handing it to him. “Russian model.”
Teddy broke it down, checked for rust in the chambers and barrel, worked the action, said, “I’ll need a box of shells for it too.”
Then he went and had lunch before going back to the livery.
“I’ll ride that roan out now, want to see how he does,” he told the smitty.
He took the road leading south, found a place maybe a mile along where they could cut southwest up through an arroyo and over some hard country. He scouted far enough along the arroyo he could see where they could cross and recross a wide stream and he liked what he saw.
He rested for a time near a stand of cottonwoods where the stream ran clear and the sun shone in it like broken glass and some fish held their place in the current by just shifting their tails slightly as they waited for a meal to come along. Brown fish. He studied on the plan some more; they rode hard they could make it. Most posses would give out after a day or two, he didn’t figure any that Hoodoo Brown could raise would be any different. Satisfied, he mounted again and went back to the stables and picked up the other horse and led it down to the hotel where he tied both horses off at the hitch post. He went inside to his room and put together his things, then lay down on the bed and waited.
Somewhere in the middle of the waiting he fell asleep, knowing that if he didn’t rest while he could, he might not get to for a while. And if things went wrong he might be resting for a very long time.
He awoke to a shattering sound and came up with the Colt’s in his hand, cocked, ready, then realized the sound was only thunder and heard the first rain strike against the tin roof above his head, a sound like peas being shelled into a pan. He went to the window and looked, only it wasn’t rain, it was hail and the street was nearly white with it.
He saw men ducking in under eaves and awnings where there were some to duck under. The two horses tied up out front were skittish and he went down to calm them. By the time he arrived out front of the hotel, the hail had stopped and was replaced by rain—a light rain at first that grew harder and more steady.
The sky was dark with clouds and the lateness of the hour. Storms were hard things to understand. They could last for hours or they could be over in minutes. Teddy figured the storm presented as good an opportunity as any. Hell, it might even be some sort of omen. He went back up to the room and got his things and got John’s things, then went back down and untied the horses and led them down the street and tied them off again in front of the funeral parlor, next door to the jail.
Rain was hammering hard now, had a hiss to it and wind whipped and you couldn’t ask for things to be much better, the way he figured it. He was half tempted to go on up to the mercantile and buy him and John some slickers, but too late for such luxuries.
Instead, he entered the jail with the bundle of John’s things under his arm in wet butcher’s paper.
Ramon was standing at the window looking out at the rain, the way it was pooling in the streets and sluicing down off the eaves and running in small rivers. Wind-whipped rain was always a fascination in that country.
Teddy shook his hat free of water and settled it back on his head.
Ramon looked over at him.
“Some storm,” Ramon said, turning his attention to the street again.
“You want to go get my friend and bring him out here,” Teddy said. When Ramon cut his gaze to Teddy again, he could see that Birdseye Colt there in his hand, aimed and steady.
“You picked a piss-poor day to die,” Ramon said.
“I guess I won’t be the only one if it comes to that, but it doesn’t have to come to that if you’ll just walk on back there with me and open that cell.”
Ramon sighed, thought about the fat wife he had waiting for him at home, the one who was always complaining about one thing or another. He thought about how she’d tell everyone what an irresponsible man he had been to get himself killed over a twenty-dollar-a-month job. It didn’t seem worth it. Nothing did lately.
“Hoodoo’s dog, that’s all he was…” Ramon could hear her saying at his funeral to anyone who would listen. Well, he wasn’t going to give her the pleasure. He took the ring of keys down from the peg on the wall, thought briefly how long it would take him to reach a little to his left for one of the shotguns or rifles in the gun rack. It took more than a breath it would be too long. Hell with it, he told himself and led the way back to the cells.
Ramon didn’t have to be told what to do next: He unlocked John’s cell and took his place inside and sat down on the cot and waited for whatever else was going to happen.
Teddy handed John the bundle with the boots and hat and gun in it and John put them on without saying anything until he turned to Ramon and said, “I’m sorry about this, you did right by me and I’m sorry it’s had to come to this…” He closed the cell and locked it.
Then he turned to Teddy and said, “Let’s go.”
They walked to the front and paused there at the window. The rain still fell hard, like nails and nickels, and John said, “I don’t suppose you were foresighted enough to buy us slickers…”
Teddy couldn’t see anybody on the streets and opened the front door and John followed him out.
They mounted the skittish horses and John’s almost bucked him off, but he stuck and talked to it and stroked its neck as he followed Teddy’s lead.
“Don’t run ’em,” John said. “It will draw attention.”
“Might draw more attention if we don’t run ’em. Folks will wonder why two fools would be walking their horses in a hard rain.”
“Then let’s run ’em.”
So they did.
Fifteen minutes later they left the south road and cut down into the arroyo that was running a foot deep with red water. They followed it for a ways and came out over a low cut in the bank and rode up it and headed out over a flat. Flashes of lightning stroked the stormy sky.
Teddy looked back over his shoulder and John did too, but there wasn’t anybody following them that they could see. They slowed to a lope, John saying, “We don’t want to bust these nags out too soon.”
They made a stand of junipers and rode up through them and kept going until they came to the stream and crossed it. The rain had soaked them through to the skin and their flesh prickled with goose bumps, but their hearts were pumping hard the hot blood that flowed in their veins.
They rode on, cutting off in different directions when they could, but always taking a southerly course—back and forth, the rain knocking down the brims of their hats, the cold water sluicing down the back of their necks, some of it filling their boots.
They slowed the horses to a walk when they could and ran them when they could and kept on like that until they couldn’t ride them any longer.
They found an old cabin, its roof half knocked in on one end, but it afforded some shelter from the rain on the other. They took the horses inside with them and rubbed them down as best they could. John said the horses would give off their heat.
“What time you figure it is?” John asked after they’d s
ettled down, wrapping themselves in their horse blankets.
“Midnight, maybe later,” Teddy said.
“You sorry you did it now?”
“No, I’m not sorry, John.”
“Hell, I’m not so certain I ain’t. I’m about froze, you?”
“Let’s try and sleep a couple of hours, then get a shag on.”
“Sleep?” John said.
They did their best with the rain coming in one end of the cabin where the roof was gone and dripping here and there in the rest of it. John finally fashioned himself a cigarette as best he could and got it lit and took a deep draw, then handed it over to Teddy.
“I never got the habit,” Teddy said.
“Go on, it will warm you some.” So Teddy took it and took a draw and held it in his lungs, then let it out again. “Take another,” John said. So he took another and handed it back and it did make him feel some warmer, but not much.
“Last week,” Teddy said, “I was sitting in a nice warm parlor drinking good whiskey in my mother’s house in Chicago.”
“Seems like a long time ago, don’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“She probably wouldn’t be too proud of you about now—being a jail breaker and a outlaw.”
“She’d probably say I got mixed up with the wrong company.”
“She’d be right on that account. Take another draw on this.”
They smoked the shuck down to where they couldn’t hold it any longer without burning their fingers and John ground it out on an old plank full of rusty nails.
“I guess I owe you,” John said.
“You don’t owe me.”
“I guess maybe I do.”
“I thought we were going to try and get some sleep.”
“You go ahead, I’m going to just sit here and enjoy this rain.”
They fell silent for a time, each trying not to think about how cold and wet they were, then John said:
“They ain’t no rain in Hell, that’s why I’m enjoying it.”
But Teddy didn’t say anything.
Sometime over the next few hours they lost the night and first dawn crawled over the land, bringing the hills back to their dull brown color and with it the coo of gambel quail.
Teddy shook himself free from his squatting position and so did John. That’s when the first shot rang out, taking a chunk of old wall with it.
“You boys might as well come on out, I got plenty of guns out here.”
There was no mistaking the gravel voice of Hoodoo Brown.
“You ready for this?” John said. “Tell me what you want to do. This is my fight, not yours.”
“Way I’m thinking, even if we did give ourselves up, he might well prefer taking us back belly-down. After all, he’s got you as a dead man already. One more added to the number wouldn’t make anybody any difference.”
“I’ll tell him he can have me if he’ll let you mosey.”
“No deal.”
“You sure?”
Teddy nodded, shouted through the busted window opening, “Come on in, Sheriff, we’re eating chilies and playing whist. There’s room for one more in here.”
A fusillade of bullets raked the building, some sounding like gravel flung against the walls.
“You’re a more experienced hand at this than I am, John. Any suggestions?”
“Fire every now and then, just to keep ’em interested. Maybe we can get them to shoot up their ammunition. Or maybe if we can keep ’em from killing us, they’ll give up and go home. Most posse men ain’t professionals, just married fellers and other types thinking they’re out on a quail hunt. They get tired and hungry like everyone else.”
And so that’s what they did, kept up a running gunfight most all that morning and afternoon. The sun struck down through the open roof and once Teddy saw a man running from one juniper to the next and he and John both fired at the same time and the man yelped and rolled like a stone-struck dog.
Hoodoo Brown maintained a running commentary on the situation as well, yelling to them how he was going to kill them and cut off their heads and take them back on the end of a pole and other atrocities he could think to come up with.
Late afternoon found them low on ammunition.
“I’ve got six shots left, how about you?” John said.
“Three.”
“How many you figure is out there?”
“A dozen, maybe.”
“Way I see it, we got to shoot Hoodoo. We do him, the others will quit.”
“Give me your piece, John.”
“What for?”
“You’ve got more rounds than me and if I’m going to shoot the sheriff…”
“Hell with it, I’ll do it.”
“No, let me.”
Two more shots shattered the wall opposite them. The light was dimming now, the sun sinking low.
“We could just wait till dark and try and sneak out.”
“They’d just stay after us, if not here, we’ll have to fight ’em somewhere.”
Teddy took a silver dollar from his pocket. “Call it,” he said.
“Heads,” John said.
Teddy slapped it palm-down, showed it to John.
“Give me your gun.”
John handed over the pistol and Teddy started to hand his to John.
“How you going to do this?”
“I figure straight on is best, don’t you?”
“Best way to get yourself killed, maybe.”
“Hell, John, we both know most of ’em can’t hit a bull in the ass with a scattergun if they had to, much less a man riding straight into ’em.”
“They’s always luck. I seen more men get shot lucky than on purpose.”
“My luck’s never been that bad.”
“You’ll need both guns, then.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
Soon as the sun dipped beyond the horizon and there was only the last light that lay across the land, Teddy swung onto the back of his horse. “Swing that door open when I say to,” he told John.
The two men’s gaze held a moment, then Teddy said, “Do her,” and John swung the door open and Teddy, lying low over the back of the horse, one hand full of mane, the other full of gun, charged out and rode hard toward the line where he’d heard Hoodoo cussing them most of the day.
It took several moments for the posse to figure it out, and when they did, it was nearly too late, the man with the blazing gun was nearly among them. They opened fire but the rider presented no good target, lying low over the horse’s back. He fired left and right.
Hoodoo instinctively knew the score and stood and took careful aim and shot the horse. But rather than it going down it lurched sideways, stung by a badly aimed bullet that struck it high on the rear flank. And when Hoodoo aimed again, he saw fire spit from Teddy’s revolver and felt the bullet rip through his thigh. The posse had to hold its own fire until the rider cleared their line, lest they shoot one another. And by the time he cleared the line, he dropped over a hill and into the brush and none were wont to follow after a man bold enough to charge them.
Hoodoo lay on the ground, cursing and holding his leg that had become a pillar of fire and remorse to him.
“’At son of bitch shot me, boys.”
“He sure as shit did,” one of them said.
“We best get you on back to town before you bleed out.”
“Boys, I ain’t the noble type, carry me back quick before I die out in this chaparral.”
Night fell fast over the land and John wondered was his friend lying out there dead, or maybe if he was smart and lucky and hadn’t got shot, he’d just kept riding. John wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.
Then something stirred outside the cabin, the land in a deep purple dusk now, and Teddy said, “I’m coming in.”
And John said, “Come on in. I don’t have nothing to shoot you with, even if you was one of them.”
Teddy came in with blood on him, but it was horse-bloo
d and not his own.
“I shot him, John. They all packed it in and went home, least for now.”
“You kill him?”
“No, didn’t want to if I didn’t have to. I just shot him enough, is all.”
Teddy handed John back his pistol. John checked, saw the cartridges had all been spent. “We best get into the wind.”
“My horse has been shot, John, but it went clean through and he’s stopped bleeding. I think he’ll be all right.”
“Let’s ride ’em as far as we can, walk the rest of the way if we have to.”
“They quit hard, John, Hoodoo and them.”
“I know it. Best reason I can think of to go on down to Old Mexico so we don’t have to fight ’em again.”
They rode out into the night, the two of them, just about spent as two men could be, and kept riding.
Chapter 6
Billy rose early. Louisa slept like a rock still. Poor girl, he thought. I put her through her paces last evening. Billy was almost always pleased with his performance when he coupled with Louisa. He liked to think he still had something of the old mad bull in him yet.
He went to the window, pulling on his trousers and tucking in a fresh woolen shirt. He rubbed away a circle of frost from one of the panes and looked out at the fresh-fallen snow now sun-struck under a gas blue sky.
It was a fine day to go get his skull read.
He left Louisa sleeping and joined his girls down in the kitchen, where they were already preparing their own breakfast. The girls were quite handy and were becoming fine little cooks.
“Oh, Papa,” they called when they saw him and rushed to him and hugged him in such a way he almost wept.
He patted each one and gave each one a kiss and said, “Ladies, what will we be having this fine morning?”
“Biscuits, Papa,” Arta said.
“And flapjacks,” Orra said.
“And strong black coffee with sugar,” Irma said.
“Fine, fine,” Billy said. “Let’s eat.”
The biscuits were a little underdone, and the flapjacks a little burnt, and the coffee tasted about like ditch water, but Billy adored his girls such that he never complained and instead complimented them until their cheeks turned red as apples.
