by Ben Bridges
I nodded carefully, aware now that a few passers-by were breaking stride to glance around at us, for he did not believe in moderating his tone at all, this one.
His lips curled disdainfully and he said, ‘You don’t look like much to me. I was expecting something more.’
‘Do I know you?’ I asked.
He shook his head no, but satisfied as to who I was, he spread his feet a little and bent his right arm at the elbow, to bring his hand that much closer to the butt of his gun.
I frowned. ‘Just what do you think you’re playing at?’
He said, ‘I’m not playing.’
And he flexed his fingers expectantly.
I had known what was coming all along, of course — or if not exactly known it, at least suspected quite strongly that this encounter would turn ugly sooner rather than later. My heart began to beat slightly faster, my breathing to grow shallower, my throat to dry up and turn scratchy. It had always been that way for me. Some men talk of the pleasure that comes before a kill. I had only ever known this far less palatable reaction.
Narrowing my gaze at him, I said, ‘Have I ever wronged you, son?’
He said, ‘No.’
‘Has Jack?’
Again: ‘No.’
‘Then why have you come looking for a fight?’ I asked.
A brief, edgy smile tugged at the line of his mouth, and made his moustache stir momentarily. ‘Don’t you know?’
I knew. Lord, he wasn’t the first of his kind I had come across, and neither was he the last. In essence he was a nobody looking to become a somebody. He had no skills to speak of, save an ability to use a six-gun. And he genuinely believed that the best way he could make his name was to gun down an even bigger name and add that man’s reputation to his own.
I looked at him. He was more of a boy than a man, and not only in his physical appearance. I looked into his eyes. They were sharp and tricky. And yet if you looked deeper, you could also see an almost painful naiveté in them. He was doubtless poorly-educated, and he knew little of real life, He wanted wealth and fame but he didn’t want to work for it, he didn’t have the patience for that, he just wanted the rewards but not the hard work that came before the rewards.
I knew that if he hadn’t challenged me, he would have challenged somebody else eventually. It was just my bad luck and his even greater misfortune to have heard — probably from the hotel clerk — that I was in town.
He was an accident waiting to happen, and I did not want to be the man who taught him the final, irreversible lesson of his folly. But what if I had underestimated him; that he really knew how to use that gun he kept so well? What if it was my life we were measuring here, on this crowded street in Fort Wray, Colorado?
I said, ‘I have no argument with you, son. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.’
I began to turn away from him and he said, ‘You stay right where you are, you son of a bitch!’
Again he reached out for me. I felt his right hand come down hard on my shoulder and shrugged him off, turned back to him and hit him in the face.
The blow did not carry as much force as it could have, but still it rocked him backwards. He fell off the sidewalk and spilled into the muddy street, his lip split, his face a mask of fury.
I had not wanted to hurt him, but perhaps my blow might knock some sense into him. I turned away from him again. My stomach felt so taut that it was as if my intestines were being wrung dry. He yelled my name, but still I kept walking, feeling the eyes of the passers-by shuttling between the two of us now, just waiting for the inevitable to happen.
‘Colter!’ he yelled.
I kept walking.
‘No man turns his back on Dick Mills, damn you!’ he screamed.
One more pace, one more, one more …
‘Colter!’ he screeched.
My pulses racing, I kept walking away from him, hating the idea that all the people in the street would think that I was a coward for retreating this way, but knowing that it was the price I must pay if I were to avoid the killing I so despised.
‘Colter!’ yelled this Mills. ‘Colter, your father was a cur! Do you hear me? He was a scrap-eating, mangy-coated dog!’
My steps faltered, but still I continued away from him.
‘And your mother!’ he cried. ‘She was naught but a whore!’
I stopped suddenly and just stood there, buffeted by the blustery wind. I did not care to see my parents bad-mouthed by anyone, for whatever reason, and for a moment then I nearly turned around and gave the fellow exactly what he wanted, a gunfight.
But at the same time I knew why he was saying these things. He was trying to goad me into obliging him, and I would not fall for it. I took another pace, heard Mills scream something that was distorted by his rage, and in the very next moment someone else, one of those passers-by who had halted on the other side of the street, called out in a desperate voice, ‘Mister!’
There was something in that yell that set warning bells ringing inside my head and I twisted around fast, just as Mills, now back on his feet, closed his right hand around his Colt.
I could no longer afford the luxury of ignoring him. He had just taken that away from me. Now, whether I cared for it or not, I must shoot this man before he shot me.
What happened then was an automatic reflex. My right hand came around, my fingers closed on the edge of my jacket, I flipped it back, out of the way, thanking God that I had not re-buttoned it after having opened it in the restaurant, and then swooped for my .442.
Meanwhile, Mills had cleared leather. His face was contorted by a rage he had no real cause to feel against me. I felt no hatred in return. Why should I? Disgust, perhaps, that he should feel that this was the only way he could improve his standing in the world, but no hatred.
He fired his Colt. The gun bucked in his hand and amber flame spat from the barrel.
I stood my ground, knowing that he had made his shot hastily and that the odds were heavy against it hitting me, and as calmly as I knew how in such circumstances, I brought up my Adams and fired back at him.
The bullet struck Mills in the shoulder and he hunched up beneath its impact and staggered backwards. Over on the other side of the street a woman screamed, and the sound cut right through me.
I did not move again, not at once. Momentarily deafened by the gun-blasts, I was waiting to see what Mills would do. I hoped he would drop his gun and sink to his knees and then someone could send for a doctor. But somehow I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.
Instead he fixed me with that hate-filled glare again, and brought his Colt back up onto me. I yelled, ‘Give it up, man!’ but he ignored me, and with no other choice in the matter I shot him again, and this time blood spat from out of his shirt and he cried out, corkscrewed around and fell sideways, off the sidewalk.
I knew in that instant that he was dead; that I had killed him. Somehow everyone else on that bustling street knew it as well, and as I let my gun-hand drop back to my side, they began to surge forward to get a closer look at the corpse I had just made.
I felt tired beyond my years, suddenly too weak to resist them as they caught me up in their forward tide, and pushed me inexorably along until I found myself standing over the body.
In death Dick Mills looked little better than he had in life. His face had taken on that awful, waxy pallor I knew so well. His eyes looked vaguely dreamy. He looked as if he had died midway through a blink. His mouth was open. His tongue was caught between his teeth, and there was blood on it where he had bitten into it.
I wanted to be sick.
The sky darkened ominously. The street was absolutely silent.
It was then that the storm finally struck.
Fat raindrops began to pound the roofs and overhangs and gather into puddles in the street. I watched it slap Dick Mills in the face and dilute his blood so that it blurred like watercolor. Around me the rubberneckers hurried for cover, but I just stood there and let the wind-driven rain lash me, hop
ing against hope that it would cleanse me; that it would wash away my guilt, the killing curse that Fate had bestowed upon me.
But it didn’t.
It didn’t.
Chapter Two
The old-timers had a phrase for it. Bite or get bit. And, as far as it went, that was exactly how it was, that business with Dick Mills. But knowing that, and understanding it, did little to expunge the guilt I felt at taking the fellow’s life. Try as I might, I could not escape the shameful waste of it. It was all so pointless.
At the end of the day, a man’s life — and death — should mean something. But what had Mills’ life meant? What great, divine purpose had there been in bringing him into the world, of watching him grow and then allowing him to be cut down so young, and for no good reason?
As near as I could tell, his life had served no useful purpose, and as for his death, the death I had given him …
I stood there in the rain, looking down at his corpse, for a long time before the storm passed over and a sheriff s deputy finally appeared on the scene. Coming to stand beside me, he looked down at the dead man and nodded sagely. ‘Ah,’ he pronounced almost at once. ‘Dick Mills.’
I glanced at him. My voice was a croak. ‘You knew him?’
‘I did,’ replied the deputy. ‘And a hellion he was, that one.’ He shook his head and his tongue made a clicking sound against the roof of his mouth. ‘What happened?’
I told him. He asked me who I was and when I told him that as well, he gave me that sidelong glance I had come to hate. Yes, I thought sourly. The Ash Colter.
Rapidly now I was learning to hate the name, because the Ash Colter these people thought they knew was something of a celebrity, just like his former partner, whereas all I wanted was peace and privacy, simply to be left alone.
The deputy took some more details from me and then a couple of witnesses offered their version of events. Very soon it became obvious to him that I had acted only in self-defense, and after much provocation. Eventually he told me that I was free to go, but that I must not attempt to leave town until the coroner’s court could confirm a verdict of “lawful killing.”
I left that quarter of town and followed the weathered boardwalks until at last they led me back to my hotel. The clerk was nowhere to be found, which was a very good thing for him, so I helped myself to my key and went up to my room and shut the rest of the world out.
I knew that the sense of guilt that was overwhelming me was irrational. Dick Mills had given me no choice in the matter. He might just as well have put his own gun to his temple and committed suicide. It was, as the old-timers rightly said, Bite or get bit.
But the shooting of Dick Mills was only secondary to my now all-consuming disquiet, for whilst I had thought it possible to renounce the gun and lead a more peaceful life, whilst I had deluded myself thinking that I could leave all that behind me just by severing my relationship with the man who had taught me the art of killing and riding a couple of hundred miles from the violence of Yellow Creek, Fate had now shown me that it was not going to be as easy as I had hoped.
I cannot remember much about the days that followed the incident with Dick Mills, save that I put myself through a very special kind of hell over the next sixty-odd hours. I paid a girl to fetch my meals and ate in my room. But I ate very little. My sleep was bitty and tortured. I sat there on my bed and looked at the .442 in the holster on the dressing table and I cursed the weapon, as if it were solely to blame for all that had gone wrong in my life.
The sun disappeared beyond the horizon and the room was plunged into darkness. Still I sat there, unmoving. My mind was fogged with images of Dick Mills, hunching up beneath the hammer of my bullets, twisting around in some gruesome balletic display, falling to earth with his lifeless limbs flapping and, finally, staring up at the sky with eyes frozen midway through a blink, while the rain needled his waxy face and watered down his spilled blood.
A very special kind of hell, yes.
And then, three days later, there came a brisk rap at the door that drew me from my trance. I rose, crossed the room, unlocked the door and opened it, just a crack. I did not immediately recognize the man who was standing there. Then I had it. He was the clerk I had spoken to at the offices of the Cattlemen’s Association the day of the shooting.
He gave me a rather queer look, and suddenly I realized that I must look like hell. Certainly I felt that way. Self-consciously I reached up and touched my jaw. Three days’ growth of whiskers rasped against the pads of my fingers.
The clerk said uncertainly, ‘I’m sorry to, uh, disturb you, Mr. Colter ... ’
I shook my head and gestured that he should not concern himself on my account.
‘Mr. Black has instructed me to ask if you would meet him out at the stockyards at two o’clock this afternoon. If you can, uh, make it.’
Mr. Black. In my blinkered intemperance I had all but forgotten about him. I had to clear my throat before I could speak because I had said very little in the previous few days, and I had grown used to the silence.
‘Thank you. You … you may tell Mr. Black that I shall be there.’
I closed the door on him, heard him turn and walk away upon creaking boards. For the first time I became aware that a stranger was in the room with me. I saw him in the reflection of the dressing-table mirror as I turned away from the door, and he made me halt and study him closer.
I looked a mess. My hair was ruffled and matted, my eyes were dark-ringed and hollow, I was in need of a shave and my clothes were creased and rumpled.
I ran the fingers of one hand up through my hair. I had been a fool to let myself go to such an extent. By his own stupidity, Dick Mills really had killed himself. I would be foolish indeed if I forfeited my life because of his folly.
I took my watch from my vest pocket and opened it. It was a little after eleven o’clock in the morning. I had three hours to put myself to rights.
I had grown used to inactivity and my limbs felt heavy and stiff. But I knew a good cure for that. I picked up my hat and put it on. I paused briefly then, and stared at my gun for a long moment before I finally decided to wear it. In truth, I had carried it for so many years that I felt strange without it. And whether I loved the thing or hated it, it had saved my life more times than I could count. We were linked by an invisible, unbreakable bond, the gun and I.
The hotel clerk looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. And certainly he had never seen such a bedraggled version of Ash Colter before. When I asked him, he seemed almost eager to give me directions to a barbershop.
You will need no word-picture from me as to what followed; a haircut and shave, and a lengthy wallow in tepid bathwater while my suit was sponged and pressed at a local laundry-house.
Sometime later, once I had dried myself off, I donned my spare shirt and buttoned it to the throat. The crisp white cotton felt clean against my skin. I finished dressing, paid my tab and left the barbershop. If I was not exactly a new man, I was at least an improved version of the old one.
I found an eatery and ordered a meal. Only when it arrived did I realize that I hadn’t really eaten anything since just before my encounter with Dick Mills. But I thrust him from my mind. What had I thought when first he had braced me? That he was an accident waiting to happen. Well, I could see now that indeed he was. And, more importantly, that his particular brand of accident could have happened to anyone. It just so happened to be me.
At about one-thirty I prepared my mustang for riding, swung up into my saddle and headed west, bound for the stockyards at which I had been told to meet Mr. Black. The day was bright and the wind was brisk, but the coming winter seemed to have temporarily given way to milder conditions.
The stockyards had spread out alongside the curve of the railroad tracks about a mile and a half outside town, and occupied some fifty acres of land. As I approached them, I saw an apparently endless tapestry of brown and brindle-colored I cattle, each bunch separated into just-abou
t-manageable lots of twenty five or thirty by means of orderly pole corrals.
As I rode closer, I saw that the yards were a riot of activity, for a train was squatting on the tracks beside the pens, exhaling steam almost impatiently, as if anxious to be on its way. Men were whistling and yelling as they used prods to force unwilling, bawling animals up wooden chutes and into the long line of slat-sided cars.
It was a hard job, that one, and every cowboy I had ever met thoroughly detested it, but it had to be done and so they grabbed their prods and went at it with the same rough kind of enthusiasm they displayed for just about everything else in life.
I swung my horse around in a wide sweep, wondering how I was going to find the man whose wire had brought me here. Eventually I reined down before a knot of coffee-drinking, tired-looking range-men and asked them to point me in Black’s direction.
One of them, a beefy fellow in flapping, unbuckled chaps, gestured towards the north and said, ‘Black? You’ll find Black an’ his cronies top end of the stockyards. Can’t miss ’em. They’re th’only ones around heah ain’t dressed fer work. Aside from you, a’course.’
We grinned at each other, just to show that no offence had been offered or taken, and then I rode on. Some distance away, and well out of reach of the yellow dust that rose and drifted around the busy yards, I saw a stalled buck wagon and, beside it, a large, olive-colored tent. It was an incongruous sight, quite the last thing I had been expecting to see, and I assumed that this was where I would find the man I was after.
I rode closer. A man in a long, off-white duster and some sort of peaked cap was idling beside the ornate wagon, and I aimed my mustang towards him. When he saw me coming he pushed away from the vehicle and came forward to meet me.
Wind sent little waves through the material of the tent and made the loose-hanging flap pop and crackle.
‘He’p you?’ he asked, looking up at me with his head cocked to one side and his eyes narrowed against the unseasonal sunlight.
As I made to reply, the tent-flap was suddenly pushed aside and a portly man in a spotless brown suit came outside, having no doubt heard the sounds of my arrival.
