Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

  Colonel Rutherford’s Colt

  by Lucius Shepard

  ElectricStory.com, Inc.®

  COLONEL RUTHERFORD’S COLT

  Copyright © 2001 by Lucius Shepard. All rights reserved.

  Ebook edition of Colonel Rutherford’s Colt copyright © 2001 by ElectricStory.com, Inc.

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-59729-082-1

  Published by ElectricStory.com, Inc.

  ElectricStory.com and the ES design are trademarks of ElectricStory.com, Inc.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism.

  Cover art by and copyright © 2001 Cory and Catska Ench.

  Edited by Bob Kruger.

  Ebook conversion by ElectricStory.com, Inc.

  For the full ElectricStory catalog, visit www.electricstory.com.

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  Contents

  Colonel Rutherford’s Colt

  Also by Lucius Shepard

  Other Ebooks from ElectricStory

  Colonel Rutherford’s Colt

  RITA WHITELAW AND JIMMIE ROY GUY seemed like a strange couple to everyone but themselves. No one could understand how this boyish man of twenty-nine had come to partner with a flinty Blackfoot woman ten, eleven years older and looking every day of it . . . though even her harshest detractors would not deny that Rita was of a type certain men found alluring. She stood nearly six feet tall—taller yet in her fancy boots—and wore a hawk feather woven into her braid. Her finely sculpted features brought to mind a long-dead movie actress whose name folks could never quite recall. But there was something off-putting about her, something distinctly not-beautiful. Too much crazy luck and reckless living in her eyes. She gave the impression you might strike sparks from that hard-held mouth if you brushed her lips with a kiss. By contrast, Jimmy was towheaded, several inches shorter, with an amiable hillbilly face and grayish blue eyes whose steadiness supported the air of distracted calm with which he met the world. Some would tell you that he wasn’t right in the head, and Rita was taking advantage of him. Then there were those who argued that the situation was exactly the reverse. Whatever their opinion, when people saw Rita and Jimmy sitting behind their tables at the gun shows, they found no reasonable way of fitting them together, no evidence of love or any ordinary mutuality. The only thing they appeared to have in common was each other.

  Thursday, the opening morning of the Issaquah Gun Show, began as did many of their mornings in a campsite just off the expressway, this one a twenty-minute drive west of the Cascades in Washington State. A heavy mist ghost-dressed the landscape, lending the bunkerlike building that housed the bathrooms a mysterious presence and making shadowy menaces of the sickly fir that sentried it. The rush of high-speed traffic sounded like reality had sprung a serious leak. Rita had thrown on a plaid wool jacket over a denim shirt and leather pants, and was stuffing sleeping bags into the rear of a brown Dodge van with Guy Guns lettered in black and yellow on the side. Jimmy, wearing jeans and a tan suede sport coat that had seen better days, was standing off a ways, his head tipped back as if contemplating a judgment on the weather.

  “Believe we got one coming today,” he said. “One with some move on it.”

  “You always say the same thing,” Rita said curtly. “About half the time you wrong.”

  “I can feel them out there,” he said. “They all trying to come our way, just sometimes they don’t make it to the table.”

  She slammed shut the rear door of the van. “Yeah . . . we’ll see.”

  They drove the slow lane for nine miles to the Issaquah exit and turned off the access road into a strip mall. Rain began to slant against the windshield. There were deep puddles everywhere. The blacktop was a regulated river running straight between one-story banks of burger taco pizza, with big shiny metal fish passing along it two-by-two. They ate a McDonald’s breakfast in the van, staring out at a tire dealership bulking up beyond a row of dumpsters—a huge tire with a white clown face bulging from its middle was stuck on a pole atop the roof. Jimmy had gone for the sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. Rita was working on a Whopper and fries supersized.

  “How you eat hamburger damn near every morning of your life, I’ll never know,” Jimmy said, and had a bite of biscuit. “That ain’t no real breakfast.”

  Rita said something with her mouth full and he asked her to repeat it.

  “I said”—she swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin—“you’re eating lard.” She took a swig of Diet Coke. “That thing you’re eating, meat’s about half lard. Biscuit, too.”

  “ ’Least it tastes like breakfast.”

  Rita let out with a give-me-strength sigh, like she knew she was dealing with a child. They continued eating, and into Jimmy’s mind, which generally ran along unimaginative lines, came the image of a sapling palm bathed in golden early morning sun. As the image hung there, superimposed over the customary traffic of his thoughts, it began to acquire detail. Dew beaded its dark green fronds. Glowing dust motes quivered in shafts of light like excited atoms. A speckled lizard clung to the trunk. When it faded he said, “Now I know we got one coming! It’s talking at me already.”

  Rita popped a fry into her mouth, chewed. “What’s it say?”

  He told her about the palm tree.

  She was studying the fine print on the back of a candy bar wrapper she was preparing to tear open. “Sounds like a real pretty story.”

  “I know it ain’t talking at me,” he said, annoyed by her indifference. “It’s a figure of speech is all. I ain’t as simple as you think.”

  “You don’t know what I think,” she said flatly, and peeled back the wrapper; she had a bite of the candy bar.

  “What the hell you see in me?” he asked. “It can’t be much. You treat me like a damn idiot about half the time.”

  The rain picked up, filming across the windshield, washing the tire dealership into a blur of blue and white.

  “How I treat you the rest of the time?” Rita asked.

  “You treat me nice,” he said sullenly. “But that don’t . . .”

  “Well, maybe you oughta consider that before you snap at me. Maybe you oughta assume when I don’t treat you nice, I got things on my mind.”

  That worried him. “What . . . ? Something bothering you?”

  “Something’s always bothering me, Jimmy.” She stuffed the empty fry carton into the McDonald’s bag, balled it up, rolled down the window and heaved the bag in the direction of a dumpster. Rain slashed at her shoulder as she wrangled the window closed. “I’m thinking about bills. If it ain’t bills, it’s about getting the van looked at. About whether we should do the show in North Bend. About all the shit you don’t have to handle.”

  “I can do my share, you just let me.”

  “Oh, yeah! I seen you do your share. Last time I left you to handle things, we had collection people calling every five minutes. You want to know what I see in you?” Her black eyes nailed him so hard, he felt stricken. “I tell you that, chances are I won’t see it no more.”

  She turned the ignition
key, gunned the engine. “Finish your breakfast. Y’know they won’t have nothing good at the show.”

  He was remembering the palm tree, wondering where it grew, Mexico or Brazil . . . maybe Cuba. It took him a few seconds to respond.

  “I ain’t eating no damn lard,” he said.

  * * *

  Tucked into a corner of the Issaquah armory, away from the central pathology of the gun show, where beneath ceiling-long trays of fluorescent light, teenagers with tipped hair, relief-map acne, and Satanist T-shirts fondled assault rifles, and wary militia types with graying prophets’ beards passed out tracts to Kiwanis Club members and fat men with trucker wallets, and novelty dealers sold Buck Owens switchblades and WWII bomb casings, and families shopped at the fancy booths for a nice pearl-handled carry-along with decent stopping power for Mom . . . far from all that, tucked into a rear corner of the building, were the two tables assigned to Guy Guns. Unlike the other dealers, Jimmy and Rita suspended no banner behind their tables. They appealed to a select clientele, and the people with whom they did business knew how to find them. In their display cases a .42-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver that had once belonged to Teddy Roosevelt, a .38-caliber Beretta with a golden grip presented to Elliot Ness by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, and a single-shot derringer wielded by the Civil War spy Belle Star nested in among weapons of less noble yet no less authentic pedigree, some dull and evil-looking amid folds of purple velvet, others with fancy plating and inlays appearing harmless as jewelry. Most people who wandered back into their corner would glance at the price tags and skate away. Occasionally a man wearing a T-shirt bearing a brave slogan such as If You Want My Gun You Can Pry It from My Cold Dead Hand would linger over the cases and ask a question or two before moving on. And once a group of Russian men who had been buying switchblades in volume debated whether or not to make an offer on the Ness Beretta.

  “Is Elliot Ness the Untouchable guy, yes?” their spokesman asked, and when Jimmy said Yeah, it was indeed that Elliot Ness, and showed him the certificate of authenticity, the Russians huddled up. After a brief discussion, the spokesman—a burly, affable sort with a a watermelon gut and his head shaved to stubble—came back with an offer that was about two-thirds the asking price.

  “This gun’s got a lot of move,” Jimmy told him. “It’s bound to move before end of business tomorrow.” He dangled the price tag in front of the bewildered Russian’s face. “But it ain’t moving for a dollar less than it says right here.”

  “We coulda used that sale,” Rita said as they stood watching the Russians push into the crowded center aisle.

  “He’ll be back before closing.” Jimmy lifted the top of the display case and gently placed the Beretta next to a delicate fowling piece embellished with mother-of-pearl—male and female together. “Come Saturday night he’ll be hauling it out at a party, telling everybody he’s”—he did a mud-thick Russian accent—“ ‘the Untouchable guy.’ ”

  “Your call,” said Rita and went back to her magazine.

  One o’clock came, and Jimmy’s stomach started growling. All the food concession had to offer were corn dogs and warmed-over fries and rotisserie-grilled Polish sausages that resembled blistered rubber tubes. He was debating these choices when a woman in a blue flowered dress approached the table. She had smoky hair bobbed at the shoulders and a fair complexion. Peaches and cream, his daddy would have said. A little plump, but pretty in a TV-housewife way. She would have looked a lot prettier, he thought, if she’d been less worried. Her mouth was screwed up tight, her brow furrowed. Dark pouches beneath her eyes suggested that she hadn’t been getting much sleep. She had tried to fix herself up with powder and bright cherry lipstick, but this had not disguised the effects of whatever was troubling her. He guessed she was about Rita’s age, though it would have been a neat trick to find a pair of women more opposite. Where Rita was all lean angles and cheekbone sharpness and aggression, this woman was diminutive and gave the impression of vulnerability and soft curves everywhere. She kept an arm wrapped about a large brown purse, as if afraid what was inside would squirm out should she let go.

  “Are you Mister Guy?” In its gentle probing, the woman’s sugary voice reminded Jimmy of his third grade teacher asking if she could see what he was writing in his notebook. He said, Yeah, he sure was. She offered her hand and said, “My name is Loretta Snow,” almost making it into a question. She had a quick look behind her. “I’m told you buy guns?”

  “We buy historical weapons,” Jimmy said. “Y’know . . . guns belonged to famous people, or else they were used in some famous battle. Or a crime.”

  “I might just have one for you, then.” She opened the purse and removed something covered in a gray cloth. The instant she began to unwrap it, Jimmy knew she had brought him the palm-tree gun, and when she handed it over, a Colt .45 Model 1911 with a well-oiled gray finish, he could feel a tropical heat in his head, and felt also the shape of a story. Blood and passion, hatred and love.

  Rita leaned in over his shoulder, and he held it up for her to see. “Original model. No crescent cuts back of the trigger.” She made a noncommittal noise.

  “It used to belong to Bob Champion,” Ms. Snow said. “He might not be famous enough for you, but people know him around here.”

  Jimmy didn’t recognize the name, but Rita said, “You mean the white-power guy?”

  Ms. Snow seemed surprised that she had spoken. She folded the cloth and said quietly, “That’d be him. I was his wife for eight years.”

  Rita scoured her with a stare. To Jimmy she said, “Champion’s the one robbed them armored trucks over in Idaho. Son-of-a-bitch is a star-spangled hero to every racist fuck in America.”

  Ms. Snow took the hit fairly well, but when two pre-pubescent boys juked past behind her, laughing, jabbing and slashing at each other with sheathed knives, she gave a start and looked shaken.

  “You sell this privately, you’ll get more’n I can pay,” Jimmy told her, ignoring Rita, who was making angry speech with her eyes. “I can move it for you, but we get forty-percent mark-up.”

  “I know.” Ms. Snow stuffed the cloth back into her purse. “I had a man offer me four thousand, but I wouldn’t let him have it.”

  “Four thousand’s high,” Jimmy said. “I’d do ’er, I was you.”

  “No sir,” she said. “I won’t sell to him. In fact, I don’t want you to sell to him, neither. That’d be a condition of me selling it to you.”

  Rita started to object, but Jimmy jumped in first. “How come you won’t sell to him?”

  “I believe I’ll let that stay my business,” said Ms. Snow.

  Rita snatched the gun from Jimmy and held it out to Ms. Snow. “Then you can let this here stay your business, too.”

  After a moment’s indecision Ms. Snow said, “The man’s name is Raymond Borchard. He calls himself Major, but I don’t know if he was a real soldier. He’s got a place up in the mountains where he marches around with some other fools and shoots at targets and talks big about challenging the government. He venerates Bob. They all do. He told me Bob’s gun was a symbol. If they had it to look at, he said it’d make them stronger for what was to come.”

  “I can’t understand why you got a problem with that,” said Rita. “Seeing how you in the same damn club.”

  Ms. Snow met Rita’s contempt with cool reserve. “You don’t know me, ma’am.”

  This tickled Jimmy—Rita hated to be called ma’am. She set the gun down on the table and said to Ms. Snow, “I don’t wanna know ya . . . ma’am.”

  “I was barely eighteen when I married Bob Champion,” Ms. Snow went on in a defiant tone. “Far as I could tell, he was a good man. Hard-working and devout. Something went wrong with him. Maybe it was the money trouble . . . I still don’t understand it. It just seemed like one minute he was Bob, and the next he was somebody else. I was twenty-three and I had three babies. Maybe I should have left him. But I simply did not know where to go.” A quaver crept into her voice. �
��If you want to damn me for that, go ahead. I don’t care. I’ve got a good job’s been offered me in Seattle, and all I care about is getting enough money to move me and my kids away from here . . . and away from Ray Borchard.”

  Rita gave Jimmy a you-deal-with-this-shit look and had a seat at their second table. Jimmy picked up the Colt and settled the grip in his palm. He felt the weight of the story accumulating inside his head. “Tell you what,” he said to Ms. Snow. “I’ll take the gun on consignment this weekend and the next. For the show they got over in North Bend. If I move it before I leave North Bend, I’ll cut myself twenty-percent commission. If it don’t move, I’ll make you an offer and you can do what you want.”

  “I suppose that’s reasonable,” Ms. Snow said hesitantly.

  “It’s a helluva lot more than reasonable!” Rita scraped back her chair and came over. “We don’t take nothing on consignment.”

  “We can do this one,” said Jimmy calmly. “We got enough we can help someone out once in a while.”

  “Jimmy!”

  “We going to move the goddamn Beretta, Rita!” He fished out a handful of twenties from the cash box. “Here. You go on ahead and celebrate. And get us a room at the Red Roof.”

  He thought he could feel the black iron of her stare branding a two-eyed shape onto the front of his brain. She grabbed the bills and stuffed them in her shirt pocket. “I’ll leave you a key at the desk,” she said. “I’ll be at Brandywines.” She expressed him another heated look. “You better sell the damn Beretta.” Then she stalked off, shoving aside a portly balding man wearing a camo field jacket and pants.

  “I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Ms. Snow said, but Jimmy gave a nonchalant wave and said, “That’s just me and Rita. We got what you call a volatile relationship.”