by Frank Callan
‘Keep back there, Lydia . . . keep well away!’ Harry shouted. His wounded arm throbbed with pain. Sadly it was his better hand for drawing from his holster.
They faced each other. Harry’s mind went back to those times, so many of them, when he had faced the little upstarts who had heard about him, been told his reputation, and had come looking for him, wanting to take him on. He had thought his life had seen an end to all that; he had thought he had put a stop to the senseless killings, the pointless confrontations. But what rushed back into him was also the keen, quick as lightning flick of a wrist that was required. He looked deeply into Dane’s eyes. That was part of the face-off as well: the play of the minds, the strength of will and the resolve to come away the victor. He saw a killer, but he saw the fear as well.
‘Go when you like, Englishman.’ Dane’s smile was forced, sweat-lined, a touch too artificial. There were hands darting down the inches to the grips, and then the dual lift of the lethal weapons. Then there were cracks as bullets ripped out and over the warm air of the room and into something that had no chance of resistance. In this case, it was flesh.
That flesh was the chest of Joe Dane. He called out what was meant to be, ‘Die, Lacey . . .’ but it was never completed. His fall took him back and his head cracked on a sturdy wooden shelf. He fell down, life seeping out of him.
Lydia rushed in and looked at the body of the man she had hunted, then rushed to Harry Lacey and fell at his feet. ‘Lord Harry . . . thank God you’re all right! You did it, you did it . . . for me!’
Harry now sat down, with Lydia still holding him, this time his wounded arm. She saw that the bullet had nipped the flesh and gone through.
‘No, Lydia. Not for you. It was justice. I thought . . . I thought it existed without life being taken, without the shame of it all!’
‘Shame?’ She looked up at him, puzzled. ‘There’s nothing shameful about revenge. He killed my father . . . my real father, Harry. You evened everything up, and it’s settled.’
‘Settled? I wish I could believe that. I guess vows are meant to be broken. Life tends to step in and make a liar of us.’
They stayed out there for quite a while, and eventually an old man came out of a barn along the way, and walked stealthily towards them. He was crouching as he came near, and then seemed to relax as he saw that the noise he had heard appeared to have stopped. He was round and plump, with a distinctive Texan drawl, and he wore an apron over his ragged pants and torn, stained shirt. He was bald and shiny on the head, and his face broke into a smile when he saw Lydia.
‘Why, what was all that row? This man dead, is he? You shot him?’
‘Who are you mister?’ Harry asked, still half expecting the man to have a pistol tucked into his belt on the other side of the belly.
‘I beg your pardon sir. I’m Cal Mildew . . . Mr Carney knew me as Corney. I was his cook. Truth is, I sneaked back in here last night. He threw me out a while back. Didn’t like my chow.’
‘You don’t know what’s being going on then, Corney?’ Lydia asked.
‘Well, I know that some wild man arrived here and shot dead two of my amigos. I saw it . . . it was this heap of offal here at your feet. As runnin’ is better than fightin’ you see, I ran for the blackest corner of the old barn and lay down with the mules. I may be three score and ten, and livin’ on borrowed time a mite, but I’d like to keep my blood in my body some time longer, you understand.’
Harry was puzzled as to why Carney would let a man like this go from his outfit. He was entertaining, to say the least. ‘Mildew, do you think you could make this young lady and myself a meal . . . something simple and substantial? Because I’m not ready to move back to town yet.’
Corney Mildew was only too pleased to do it. He beamed with pleasure. ‘Just you sit there and nurse that wound, mister, and I’ll make a meal fit for a king. . . .’
‘He’s only a lord,’ Lydia said.
‘Well, I know what kings eat, but I can’t say I ever fed a lord . . . like a real English kind of lord.’
‘Oh, we eat everything that other folks eat. Somethin’ hot and sharp maybe.’
Mildew made himself busy, and he knew the ranch well enough to gather everything he needed. It was an appearance at exactly the right moment for Harry Lacey. He had been knocked back, forced to revise everything he had believed in since he began that new life. As Lydia made him sit still in a roomy armchair, she wrapped the wound. Though only a nick, there was blood enough. She let him rest and she busied herself with Corney when he called for her to help.
Harry was not ready to move at all. The day had been a severe test of his courage as well as of his will. He sat still and let his mind rove across time and place, trying to understand what had happened. The bottom line was plain: he had killed to avoid being killed, and for sure, the rat was sure to have put a bullet in the girl, or maybe run off with her. But what really set him back was the fact that he had drawn against a proven killer, and he had finished the man, even with his own best hand unable to move normally. He had overcome his sense of morality and eclipsed it with another morality. Whispering to himself he said, ‘So, Harry Lacey, the arms of justice have to be stronger than the bad men.’
Was he seeing himself afresh, now that he was too exhausted to walk or ride? Had he ever really known himself?
Soon the three of them sat down to eat, at the long, solid table of Itch Carney. Corney Mildew had only a few teeth and he apologized for the rough approach to chewing beef he had to adopt. He told the story of why he had left the Big Question, and how he and Itch had been partners many years back, starting out with just a few beasts and Red Carney’s skill in business. ‘He sure missed that brother of his, Lord Harry.’
‘Is it true that McCoy was responsible for Red’s death?’ Lydia asked.
‘Truth is, Mr Carney talked himself into seeing that as the fact. I don’t know. All I know is, this place went from bad to worse as soon as Itch was taken bad. You know, when a man is sick, he tends to hit out at everything, even the ones he claims to have some affection for. Shame he went to his death knowin’ he’d thrown out his oldest compadre . . . my good self!’
With full bellies and no sense of rushing, the three of them took to the road back to town, with Corney singing old ballads all the way, and their mounts never going beyond a steady trot. Harry thought it was strange, but he was sure that Lydia had been reading his mind. She said, suddenly and out of nowhere, ‘You know, Harry, I can see now that I made you a knight from my storybooks . . . I’m sorry for that. Was I too much of a pest?’
‘Like a meat fly around a shiny stallion!’ he said and then laughed so loud that she saw the teasing and joined in.
Back in Broken Man, when they rode in, Elias Hole had been found and freed of his shackles, and Preacher Hoyt and the literary club had agreed that he would be the ideal sheriff if McCoy couldn’t work again – and the signs were that he would never be more than a shell of the man he once was.
Harry dismounted and was greeted by his new friends from the club and The False Start. When he saw Alby Groot he said, ‘Mr Groot, there’s at least three corpses out there at the Big Question in need of your professional attention.’
Alby thought it was bad form to smile or look pleased in any way, but he did feel like rubbing his hands. Then the thought struck him that there was nobody to pay for the burials and the coffins, and he had to ask himself why he had ever come out to this unwelcoming frontier.
In The False Start that night, Perdy managed to raise enough strength to sing along with the band, and it was free drinks for all. Harry sat in a quiet corner, taking in some strong drink and trying to handle the feelings that were overpowering him. But all in all, he told himself, though he had taken a life, he had saved many. Most of all, he had saved the life of a young girl, and years back he had taken such a life. Some potent working of fate tends to even things out, he thought. Then in the midst of this soul-searching there was a lull, and he found himse
lf facing a deputation: it was the literary club. Hal Bornless, journalist and lecturer, entertainer and jester, spoke for them all.
‘Mr Lord Harry Lacey, on behalf of the Broken Man Literary Club of Colorado, I wish to thank you for coming all the way out here, where most of the refinements of cultured life tend to hit the buffers, and I want to humbly apologise for digging up the dirt on your past life as a gunslinger because I see now that you consider such a life debases a man . . . and, well, to cut a long speech short, we would like you to stay around a while and maybe do some more lecturing and so on . . . failing that, you could run the place, because we never saw a man take charge with such authority.’
‘Yes,’ added Chet, ‘and it also must be said that we’re all mighty glad you had that violent past, my Lord. Sometimes a man’s natural talents have to come through . . . and fortunately for us, Joe Dane and a few others got in your way!’
‘I’m very flattered, everyone, I surely am. But the events at the Big Question turned out to be the most ironical in my life. I did ask myself a big question after that shooting – the biggest of them all. What to do with your life. Well, in my case, it’s going to have to be a life with this again.’ He looked down to his waist, where his tough leather belt now held two revolvers. ‘If you still want to pay me for the lecture, I’d be happy to take a horse instead of cash.’
Preacher Hoyt was reminded that he had a fine bay mare that hardly ever went out beyond his paddock, and he took the hint and sent for it. He was still feeling mean for not paying the man his fee, and the horse was one he had been given after a family death.
Harry thanked them all, and explained why he was now a gunslinger again, but not so plainly. He had to lift the edge of his coat to show his belt and guns.
‘I bought these today . . . Frontier Colt Double Action . . . like I always had. Good friends if needed. I have a hankering to do some lawman work . . . but not around here. You got this young lady’s father for that. I think Elias Hole could be one excellent tin star sheriff.’ He looked across to the door, where Lydia had just come in. She heard what he said, and came to shake his hand. She wouldn’t have spoken a word about it, but she had never, until that day, been filled with a certainty that she would, some time soon, become the Liza di Buco of her dreams.
When she shook that hand and gave him a big, affectionate smile, inside she was thinking You could have been my Bonneville . . . maybe you still are, but what she actually said was ‘I want to thank you, Lord Harry Lacey, and wish you the best. Will you come around this way again soon?’
‘Sure. Might not be soon, but I’ll be riding into this main street again, and I expect you to be runnin’ the show and barkin’ out orders.’
The mare arrived and was given to him, saddled and ready. ‘I’m calling her Lydie,’ Harry said, ‘Now you go and make that romantic dream come true, young lady!’ He felt a disturbing shiver of memory come over him, as it was so long since he had ridden out, alone, with nothing but leather, fire-power and a strong horse beneath him, waiting for the dig of his heels.
The new day was the hottest of the year, and as folk were still working to clear up the mess and think about burying their dead, Harry Lacey, with the superb new bay mare given him by the literary society under him, rode out of Broken Man, his thoughts still diving between past and the possible future. So, the pretenders and gun-crazy kids might come looking for him, but in the end, justice needed to match the wrong-doers, not only look on them with contempt.
He turned and took one last look at Broken Man. Then he said to himself, what a borderland . . . just like the one I have inside me somewhere. . . . He had to believe, as he rode into an uncertain future, that he knew himself better now.
