Gunman and the Angel

by George Snyder

  ‘The other side of the fire,’ Dan said.

  ‘It’s too alone over there, and cold.’

  Probably a good idea – they could use all three wool blankets plus the body heat. Besides, Dan expected something. He wasn’t sure what. ‘OK,’ he said.

  With leaves and the saddle blankets to fit under them and the three blankets to go over, their camp bed was ready. Mandy tucked herself in. Dan piled another log on the fire. He went to the other side and pushed rocks and branches together in a line about his length. He placed his Stetson at the end. He thought about covering it with the third blanket but the night was black under cloud cover. Be hard to see clearly at any distance. On the fire side of the mound, he stretched tree leaves. He and Mandy would need all three blankets.

  ‘What you do that for?’ Mandy asked when he crawled under the blankets next to her.

  ‘In case.’ He placed the Colt .44 next to his leg.

  ‘Ain’t you shedding your boots?’ she asked.

  ‘Not tonight. Might need to get up and about in a hurry.’

  She snuggled close to him with her thin leg over his, her skinny arm around his neck and her head on his chest. ‘You’re cozy warm,’ she said.

  ‘You could be on a feather bed in a heated room.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can still take you back to Gila City.’

  ‘No, you can’t, Dan. You didn’t like the marshal and his wife, did you.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘She’s very pretty.’

  ‘On the outside.’

  ‘How come you don’t like them?’

  ‘Part because they never said your name. They didn’t look at you as a person. They wanted you to live with them but not as you.’

  ‘I never noticed that.’

  ‘You would have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They sucked the life out of my friend, Deputy Clyde McCabe and caused him to get hisself killed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Clyde was in love with Josephine and he wanted to be marshal.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘A few more years on you and you will.’

  ‘Just so you’ll be with me then.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I got nobody else in the world, Dan. My folks is dead. I got no kin I know of.’ Her voice broke. ‘You’re the only person I can depend on. You can toss me to the side of the trail anytime you’re a mind to, leave me to all kinds of two-legged buzzards and vermin.’

  ‘Like Bear?’

  ‘Just exactly like that.’

  ‘That ain’t gonna happen.’

  ‘I get scared about it. You’re all I got. The tin box and you.’ She pushed closer to him and sobbed.

  He held her close. ‘You’ll grow and get touched by others. Might not be too good to get next to a loner like me. I got few people myself – a few trail riders, maybe, some ladies in my past.’ Dan reckoned to talk about CK in harsh daylight when it wouldn’t be part of night wonder.

  ‘We got each other, Dan.’

  ‘You’re too young for talk like that.’ He didn’t want her to get any girlish notions she wasn’t grown up enough for.

  ‘No, I ain’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

  He had to slip the talk in another direction. If it wasn’t for the cold, and what he expected, she’d be on the other side of the campfire. He should have found a room, or a pair of rooms someplace – odd, that he preferred outside and wilderness to inside and towns. Towns had their place at times, especially CK’s bed and her softness. With this spindly girl hanging around, he might have inherited a basket of trouble. He already had a woman; he didn’t need any girl-child with stars in her eyes and man-fantasy that just wasn’t true. He was already thinking about staying in the area. His plan to stick on the killers like a shadow had already begun to change because of the girl. The talk had to get away from her maiden feelings and ideas like it.

  ‘Monte Steep might do something with your tin box. He’ll sure spend the eight thousand dollars. What does the box lead to? Can it take us to him?’

  Mandy lay still for a minute, her soft hair against his chin. ‘How did come you to be there, at our wagon when they was attacking it?’

  ‘I’d been tracking them.’

  ‘You mean since the bank they robbed there in Gila City?’

  ‘Since years before.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Steep killed my little brother. Him and the big nose hombre and three other fellas shot me to pieces down in Mexico. I killed the other three. Took months before I could walk.’

  ‘You’re after them for revenge.’

  ‘Ain’t we both?’

  He felt her nod against his chest. ‘I wish I could remember all about the tin box. It’s tin with a copper top and there’s a crown engraved in the copper.’

  ‘You mean like a queen or king?’

  ‘A princess – Pa always called Ma his princess. She went to Europe when she was my age. She saw I got schoolin’, readin’, writin’ and numbers. We left Missouri on account of what was in the box – the papers and the money. Eight thousand dollars in Union cash Pa got from selling the farm and all we had ’cept the Conestoga and the two black mules and some personal stuff. And the contract with his partner, Jeremiah Dickers. The silver claim and Mr Dickers is waiting there for Pa to show.’

  ‘What’s that name?’

  ‘Jeremiah Dickers.’

  ‘Waiting where?’

  Mandy lay still for a minute. She placed her hand on his right shoulder and held it there. ‘Arizona Territory – Pa never said exactly where, what town or mountain or anything. You reckon that outlaw Monte Steep is going to use the tin box?’

  ‘I do, but we got to know where.’

  ‘You think he’s headed back now?’

  ‘They might Christmas in Mexico, even wait ’til spring. Or, he may sneak back into El Paso, work his way toward the territories. Too many after him right now, though.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Don’t know. Might head north. I ain’t going back to Mexico. Let me think on it tonight.’

  Mandy snuggled closer. ‘You’re like a big stove.’ She ducked her head under the blankets. ‘And you sure smell good.’

  Dan kept his head outside, hearing the restless hoof stomp of the horses carousing, above the gurgle of the river. His thinking got serious; serious thinking of Christmas in Abilene.

  His cheeks were icy cold, but that wasn’t what woke him. The shotgun blast lit the coming dawn with a flash and a roar. Rocks on the other side of the dead campfire leaped and scattered over his Stetson.

  Dan had the Colt in his hand as he rolled out from under the blankets. Mandy squealed, but he was up and fired a shot at the huge bulk running away between trees. Dan moved after the big, buffalo coat, not enough light to make out features, but he knew who it was.

  Bear spun around and fired off his second shotgun blast.

  Dan felt rather than saw two tree limbs chip away behind him. He saw the thick, black beard. ‘Get rid of it, Bear,’ he shouted.

  Still running, Bear already had the empties out and another load in. He pulled the second shell from his coat and was shoving it in when Dan fired and missed.

  The shotgun slammed shut, and Bear turned around again. ‘She’s gonna be mine.’ He brought the shotgun to his shoulder just as Dan stopped, aimed and shot him in the beard. His hairy head jerked back. The shotgun went off, and Dan felt air whizz close to his left ear. He shot Bear in the forehead, started running toward him as the big man staggered back, then Dan shot him again through the heart.

  Bear went down, lifeless as a chopped tree.

  Chapter Seven

  Abilene, March, 1872 – with Mandy in school and living in a boarding house, Dan had his old security job at the Silver Street Saloon and Pleasure Parlor. Most nights after the saloon closed, he spent upstairs in the suite with CK.

  Neither CK nor Mandy was happ
y to know each other.

  Mandy went to school in the mornings with her friends. In the afternoon, Dan rode by, and they headed to the banks of the Smoky Hill River to practice gun work; Mesa, the little filly foal of Moccasin and Rowdy rollicking along. Mandy had already become quick on the draw – she still needed work on accuracy. Dan had put a bullet dent in a fence post about chest high for her practice.

  During the following year, Mandy grew full of confidence. She said, ‘I can draw quick as you now, Dan. Come on, stand next to me. I’ll bet I’m as fast.’

  ‘Being fast don’t mean nothing if you shoot a boot toe, or nip an ear. You won’t have time for a second shot. He’ll knock you back – he’ll flatten you to the ground if he shoots straighter.’

  ‘Just stand next to me,’ Mandy said.

  ‘Something else – it could be the fast draw don’t mean nothing. Could be the man is on a roof, or hiding behind the corner of a building, or kneeling at a water trough, or if you remember Bear, coming at you with a shotgun in the night.’

  ‘Right next to me, Dan,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ She wiggled and stepped back and forth, her almost-woman face beamed with excitement. She kept her hand next to the holster, ready to draw.

  Standing beside the post, Dan hooked his thumb on the hammer of his Colt and squinted at Mandy. She stood taller – the top of her brown-copper hair reached his chin. Her triangle face had lost much of its baby-child softness – her features had sharpened, her skin tawny. She was starting to fill out the denim pants with copper rivet pockets, and the silk blouse. But she carried a restless spirit. She had told Dan they should be on the trail. They weren’t going to learn anything stuck in town. Mandy had never killed a man. Dan wasn’t sure of her reaction, if or when it ever happened.

  And Dan had no intention to draw. If he outdrew her, she might lose confidence. If she came out faster, it was liable to go straight to her head. He slid her off the subject. ‘How is school, Mandy?’

  ‘Forget school, Dan. We ought to be down there in Arizona Territory. How we gonna hear anything planted up here – me stuck in school with a bunch of children gawking at how I dress, and you working in some whorehouse?’

  ‘Saloon,’ Dan said. ‘We’re waiting. We ain’t had no word on them.’

  ‘While you’re waiting, and drinking too much, you better look closer at CK. She’s showing little lines around her eyes. She’s got a slump to her walk, getting hefty. She looks tired.’

  Dan frowned. That talk was nonsense. CK, who had once been Sweet Candy Kane when she came to town at sixteen – escaped from a Choctaw brave who shot her to leave a scar at the temple in front of her left ear – just before she buried a tomahawk into his head. The tribe had taken her at thirteen after killing her family. Gone from them, she worked as a whore until a customer left her a silver mine in Arizona Territory, which she sold and as Candy Kane, went to Winston-Salem for an education. She now owned The Silver Street Saloon and Pleasure Parlor, and was called, CK – a woman blonde, beautiful and sleek, with devotion to her head of security who shared her upstairs suite.

  Dan said, ‘She’s my woman, Mandy, and she’s barely thirty. And what I’m waiting for is word on any of the gang. That’s why I talk to drovers. It doesn’t have to be Steep. Any one of them will lead me to him.’

  ‘Sure. I’m just waiting for you to really look at me and come to your senses.’

  Dan continued to buy drinks for drovers that came up the Chisholm and moved herds into the railroad stockyards. He asked them about Monte Steep or any member of his gang. In a couple of years, no gunfighters had come to Abilene after the thousand-dollar bounty on Steep. Maybe there was no bounty now that Steep had disappeared. Not so many Texas longhorns came north, either. Sodbuster farmers across the plains bred like rabbits. They plowed the earth, grew hundreds of acres of wheat, and pushed more tribes from the land. Besides Indian trouble along the plains, grasshoppers had wiped out the entire wheat crop that year.

  Most late afternoons, Dan sat on the saloon porch to sip whiskey and read papers filled with news of corruption and disaster.

  Thanks to the rail, Abilene was growing. The most powerful force in the country was the railroads. It wasn’t enough for them to acquire cheap right of way for tracks, they took ten to twenty miles on each side of the rails. Since railroad owners were in bed with politicians, no tax was ever required on the land. The owners parceled it for homesteads, and sometimes even railroad-run towns.

  In June, 1873, Dan Quint received two eagerly anticipated packages in Abilene. One was the new Winchester .44-.40 center fire, fifteen-round, repeating lever action rifle – the ’73 Winchester. The other was a Colt .45 single-action, center fire revolver called the Peacemaker. He took to drinking more whiskey while he waited.

  Also in 1873, William Cody began the first of his popular Ned Buntline’s, The Scouts of the Plains Wild West show. His killing of buffalo gave William Cody the nickname, Buffalo Bill. During one two-day period, he slaughtered close to fifteen hundred buffalo from the side of a train. And trains continued to stop across the plains long enough for shooters to kill off three million buffalo a year. A bill had been introduced to protect the herds, but President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed it.

  Newspapers printed two big news events in 1874. A new type of fencing emerged to all but halt Texas longhorn cattle drives across the plains. It was a strand of wire with twisted barbs spaced along it. The wire immediately sold to and strung by sodbuster farmers and ranchers, not in feet or yards, but in miles. Cattle ranchers and wheat farmers spread the word that Texas longhorns carried a parasite dangerous to health. Whether the word was true or not, the price for longhorns fell and eastern meat packers were no long interested in them.

  Most significant to Dan Quint, hungry for news of the territories, was the night he met a trail-driving cowhand named Gray Putman.

  Sally Green, a petite redhead who earned more in tips than her two-dollar poke fee, was depended on more by CK than other girls. Sally worked as Assistant Manager for extra cash, and ramrodded the saloon and parlor house when CK was busy seeing to the wants and needs of her love, Dan Quint. Dan heard talk among the other girls that when he was away on the trail, Sally Green became closer to CK than Assistant Manager. Even if true, it didn’t affect his feelings toward her. She was devoted to him when he was there. No other man touched her close at any time. What she and Sally did while he was gone held no concern for him. She was still his woman.

  One spring, Saturday night, a little after ten, the salon crowded with drovers from a fresh drive, Sally came down the stairs hand-in-hand with a freshly cleaned-up cowboy wearing a trail-tainted, ten-gallon Stetson. Dancing girls kicked up their heels onstage to a lively piano tune, showing all their legs and a little more, to whoops and hollers of trail-end cowboys already through half their whiskey bottles. At the fancy hickory bar, men roared to be heard while homemade cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke waved around the room like dirty, thin blankets. Spittoons were spit at with chewing tobacco juices but seldom hit. Away from the stage, in a corner just inside the batwing doors, Dan and CK sat close, his hand on the inside of her bare left knee, a whiskey bottle and two glasses on the table. Sally brought the cowboy across the room with a smile.

  ‘CK, Dan, this here is Gray Putman,’ Sally said, grinning. ‘He’s fresh off the Chisholm and asked especially to meet Dan.’

  CK said, ‘After he had a little diversion.’

  Sally’s cute, thin face brightened in a wide smile. ‘Why, of course.’

  Dan nodded. ‘Set yourself down, Gray.’

  Gray wore a green and red checkered flannel shirt under his plain, black cloth vest, and wool pants pushed into his boots. He carried an old Colt Navy .36 low on his right leg, the holster just above the knee. He pulled the tainted Stetson off and held it with both hands over his chest. His head was a mop of sloppy, mahogany hair, fresh-cut and shaved from his neck and around his ears. A boyish face made him look a year or two under twenty. He did not
sit. He looked embarrassed by the attention. ‘Sir?’ he said.

  Sally kissed Gray’s cheek. ‘Maybe see you later, sweetie.’ She moved off through the noisy crowd as the piano and dancers finished.

  Dan was three-quarters through the bottle. He seemed to get there often lately, going up the stairs to CK’s bed, fuzzy-headed with demon drink. ‘Wrangler?’ he asked Gray when the boy continued to stand.

  ‘Yes, sir. Can we go off someplace, maybe talk alone?’

  ‘Sure we can.’ Dan patted CK’s leg and swayed, pushing off the chair. He led Gray to the end of the bar, thinking he had to turn his bad habit around, stop drinking so much, get back to what he started. Mandy was right. They had to return to the trail. He was anxious to hear what the drover had to say.

  When two filled glasses were in front of them, Gray said, ‘I got word, Dan Quint.’

  ‘What about? What can I do for you?’

  ‘You can die for me,’ Gray said.

  Because of the drink, Dan knew he had little edge. With a tingling forehead and a grip of fear, he didn’t see the quick movement as the Navy Colt cleared the holster, wasn’t sure of the words. ‘What?’

  ‘I got a personal message from Big Nose Rox Levant. He says, ‘Dan Quint has to die.’

  Dan spun to the side, clawing for his Colt. The saloon exploded with gunshots as Gray shot Dan across the stomach, then across the chest and through part of his forehead. Three quick shots before Dan cleared his holster. Hammer blows of pounding lead slammed his body. His knees began to buckle. He leaned hard over the bar, but he was slipping. His left elbow hooked on top of the counter then quickly slid off the edge as he sank to his knees and fell back while hot steel burned his stomach, chest and head. A woman screamed. A man on the other side of the room shouted his name. Feet pounded the floor as drunks stomped to the doors. Dan waved to aim, but his vision would not clear. He could not see what to aim at. He felt pain like a saber slice across his chest, another slice pushed blood from his forehead. A flurry of movement circled him as men grabbed the wrangler’s gun arm and slammed the boy against the bar.