The Long High Noon

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Try not to hurt him. He’s a white fellow when he isn’t in his cups.”

  SIXTEEN

  Partnerships are based on personal regard and mutual trust. Where one is missing, the other is inconsequential.

  He spotted Cripplehorn’s exaggerated hat before the train rolled to a stop. Alighting, he avoided shaking hands by carrying his bedroll by its strap with one hand and his Ballard with the other. “Where’s Frank?”

  “He’s arranged accommodations. Have you?”

  “I ain’t got the price. I’ll camp outside town. I sure do hope you wasn’t lying in that newspaper story.”

  “There’s no need to worry about that.”

  “I like to worry, Dodger. It’s got me this far.”

  “It looks like you took the rocky road.”

  “I ran into some excitement, but I’ll heal. I won’t ask you again about Frank.”

  “You’ll have to accept my word he’s in town. I can’t take the chance of old associations come to grief before their time.”

  “That’s a fancy way of saying I can’t keep a fence on my own self.”

  “I never doubted it, but I’m not so sure about Mr. Farmer.”

  “You like to light both ends of the match, Cripplehorn.”

  “I’d consider it a favor if you’d call me either Cripplehorn or Dodger; not both. I’m told the vigilantes are inactive at present, but aliases have a way of exciting old passions. Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat the stink out of a skunk.”

  Randy checked his gear in the station. They went into the Harvey House, where a hostess in a crisp white apron offered to help Randy into an alpaca coat from a rack.

  “No thanks. I ain’t cold.”

  Cripplehorn said, “It’s a house rule. They won’t seat you otherwise.”

  “What else do I need, a plug hat and a monkey stick?”

  “Just a coat.”

  He thrust an arm into a sleeve. “Place sure has got toney since I was here last. Next time I’ll have to bring along a brass band.”

  “I think you’ll find the food’s worth it.”

  “I won’t appreciate it. I been eating my own cooking so long I can’t tell a potato from buffler hump.”

  They were seated in a clean bright room with checked tablecloths. Another young white-aproned woman took their orders and moments later set roast sirloin and boiled sweet potatoes in front of Randy and a pile of blue-point oysters before Cripplehorn. Everything was on Santa Fe Railroad china. Randy watched his host pick up a half-shell and slide an oyster into his mouth. Cripplehorn noticed him staring and raised his brows.

  The other shook his head. “Just curious to see if you bothered to swallow.”

  “They’re a fine source of iron.”

  “You can get that sucking on a horseshoe nail.” He cut off a piece of steak. “This is a fair spread. You must be in tall cotton.”

  “The meals here are seventy-five cents apiece.”

  “Six bits, that’s what I’m worth to you?”

  “A moment ago you thought it was two dollars. It’s still the same steak, is it not?”

  “It should be, but it ain’t. Cow lives its life, maybe she knows she’ll wind up on a plate somewheres, ask her does she want to go for a banknote or pocket jingle? I reckon it’s all in the way you look at it, providing you’re a cow and got no vote in the election.”

  “Is it necessary always to be colorful? It must be a constant drain on the imagination coming up with all these frontier aphorisms.”

  Randy chewed his steak, letting the juice slide down his tongue. “Finding the time ain’t much of a challenge. To read your books, a man’d think there wasn’t time to use the outhouse for all the gunnies and greedy bankers and injuns on the warpath slinging lead like it grows on trees. I counted eighty-seven rounds from a six-shooter in that Brimstone Bob thing.”

  “I’ve never pretended to a knowledge of firearms. Blame my editors.”

  “It don’t signify: I’m talking about the life. I never read a word about all the time spent pushing the same two dollars around a card game in some line shack watching the snow pile up or sitting around some shit town playing mumblety-peg from noon till sundown waiting for the two-fifteen to get in from Cheyenne. I spent a year in Bismarck betting on when a busted gate would fall off its hinges. I reckon some of the boys are still there waiting.”

  “There’s such a thing as literary license.”

  “It needs renewing.”

  Cripplehorn slid another oyster down his throat and chased it with coffee. “I’m sure the world is holding its breath until you publish a novel of your own, with all the slow time put in. Against my advice, Pat Garrett insisted on putting that same lethargy into his life of Billy the Kid. Petticoat Betsy, the Bandit Princess, with all its relentless action and dearth of introspection, outsold it a hundred to one.”

  Randy swirled a piece of steak in its juice, watching the fat coagulate.

  “You know something?” he said. “I don’t believe you ever met Garrett. I’m starting to believe the closest you ever got to a Jack Dodger book is them copies you sling around like grain seed. Fact is, Mr. Cripplehorn, I don’t think you ever done a thing in your life a man could brag on. You’re so full of compost I’m surprised you don’t grow beans out your ears.”

  “I won’t argue the point or we’d be here all day. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, as they say in New York City. You know as well as I that what’s between you and Farmer is mother’s milk back East. People are plunking down their hard-earned dollars from Philadelphia to St. Louis just to see Buffalo Bill and his red-eye-swilling cronies pretend to shoot each other with cap guns onstage. They’ll tire of that soon enough and start demanding the real thing. I have ancient Rome as an example to back that up. Those old emperors filled arenas larger than Madison Square Garden to see Christians try their luck against African lions; knowing all the time how the contests would finish. I’m—we’re—going them one better. No one can say who will come out standing from a blood duel between Randy Locke and Frank Farmer.”

  Randy scooped a forkful of sweet potatoes dripping with butter into his mouth and followed it down with a pull from the pint of Old Pepper he’d bought in San Diego.

  “Well, I thank you for the top billing.” He grinned at Cripplehorn’s sudden interest. “Didn’t think I knew about such things, did you? It so happens I’m a reading man. When I plunk down a dime for a newspaper I get all the good out of it, from President Garfield getting shot to who’s playing the Bird Cage in Tombstone. But I know who’ll come out standing. Frank’s an artist with a Winchester, but if I was a fair man I’d give him a second’s head start when it comes to hip guns. Not that I would,” he added, chewing steak. “You don’t ever give the other fellow a break when it comes to killing, like in them books you claim you wrote.”

  “I know an alienist in Chicago who’d pay to cut up your brain and see what’s inside,” Cripplehorn said; “but I have my standards. I want you to sign this.” He drew a folded sheet of rag paper from his inside breast pocket and pushed it across the tablecloth.

  “What is it?” Randy left it where it was.

  “Look it over. It’s not a rattlesnake.”

  He wiped his hands on his shirt, picked up the paper, and snapped it open, holding it out at arm’s length until the type-written letters arranged themselves into language. His lips moved as he read.

  “What is it?” He put it down.

  “Merely a letter of agreement, attesting to the terms we’ve discussed: an equal division of the proceeds from your competition with Mr. Locke, between myself and the survivor, or his designated heirs should he encounter a fatal wound as a result. You can read, can’t you?”

  “I told you I read newspapers. I stuck through fourth grade like everyone else. Did Frank sign this?”

  “He’s considering it, as would any man of foresight. You may take as much time as you like, and consult an attorney if
you want. There’s nothing in it we haven’t spoken about already.”

  Randy refolded the paper and pushed it back.

  “I’ll sign it when Frank does.”

  Cripplehorn twisted his face into something he hoped was ironic.

  “He said the same about you. Are you sure you haven’t been in contact with him since Salt Lake City?”

  “If I was he’d be dead; or I would, if he catches luck. But we both worked for the old Circle X, and there was never nothing between the outfit and its hands but a handshake.”

  “That was then. Times have changed. You can’t put a handshake in a safe.”

  “A paper can burn up. A handshake never does. Some things don’t ever change.”

  “But there must be a record!”

  “What’s that, when one or both of us is in the ground? You city folk put too much store in records and such. They won’t grow flowers on any of our graves. I won’t sign it, and neither will Frank. I reckon I know him that well, if nobody else does.”

  Cripplehorn picked up an oyster; put it back. He wiped his hands on his napkin. “I’ll never understand your type.”

  “That’s the difference between us, Mr. Cripplehorn—or Mr. Dodger, whichever it is—Frank and me, we understand your type right down to the ground.”

  “A handshake it is, then; against my better judgment.” He stuck his hand across the table.

  Randy took it, in a grip that brought water even to Cripplehorn’s false eye. When the entrepreneur tried to pull himself free, Randy increased the grasp. An iron tooth showed in a bunkhouse grin.

  “You know why us frontier types put so much store in this here ritual?”

  Cripplehorn shook his head; at a loss between freeing his phalanges from their punishment and Randy Locke’s use of the term ritual.

  “On account of if you don’t hold up to it, the next time we show our hands is around the handle of a six-shooter. That’s what this western hospitality you’re always hearing about has to do with. If you don’t prove yourself to be a gentleman, you gave up your right to be treated gentle.”

  He let go then, and mixed a forkful of rare sirloin with sweet potatoes. His face registered full approval of the flavor.

  “I don’t know why a man’d drop two bucks in New York City on six bits’ worth of grub like this in Frisco,” he said. “I reckon that’s the difference between a railroad baron and a man works for plain wages.”

  Abraham Cripplehorn kneaded feeling back into his fingers and wondered for the first time if his wits and a belt knife were sufficient for survival in the American West.

  SEVENTEEN

  Diplomacy is crucial to enterprise. Many a promising arrangement has failed for lack of a judicious word.

  “One watch, tin,” said the clerk behind the bars.

  Frank said, “Platinum, you ignorant son of a bitch.”

  “One wallet, empty.”

  “I had a dollar in it when I got here.”

  “Take it up with the day man.”

  “Forget it. I’d as lief start over clean anyway.”

  “One Remington Frontier Model revolver, forty-five caliber. You need to replace those grips.”

  “I’m used to ’em.”

  “One cartridge belt and holster, cowhide.”

  He strapped on the belt and slid the weapon into the worn wraparound holster.

  “One quarter, two nickels, one penny: thirty-six cents total. Sign here.”

  Frank Farmer scribbled his name on the receipt the clerk had thrust through the opening in the bars and left the jail. No one was waiting for him outside the ironbound oak door leading to a back street. His clothes were rumpled, his imperial whiskers blurred with stubble, and one eye was nearly swollen shut, although he allowed as he’d given as good as he got when the men in uniform dragged him out of the saloon; one had gone over the bar into the bottles in back, he’d elbowed another’s nose flat, and the drunk-and-disorderly they’d dumped into the neighboring cell the next day said he’d heard a third man wound up with a splint on his arm.

  A judge with hair sprouting from his ears had sentenced Frank to three days underground for concealing a firearm and tacked on another ten for resisting arrest. He’d been given the choice of paying a fine of fifty dollars instead, but being as how he’d had only a dollar thirty-six cents to his name it wasn’t a choice at all.

  A wooden barber pole scratched all over by men striking matches hung outside a brick building on the corner. He turned in through the door. “Shave.”

  A man in striped shirtsleeves with his hair parted in the middle looked up from the newspaper he was reading in a chrome-and-leather chair and took him in from head to foot.

  “Fifteen cents.”

  Frank slapped a quarter on the counter, stirring loose hairs there. The barber got up, made change from a General Jackson cigar box, and snapped the creases out of a cotton sheet.

  The shop was all white enamel and black-and-white tile, with oak cabinets containing personalized shaving mugs and foo-foo juice in ornate bottles with glass stoppers. It smelled of citrus. Advertisements on the walls illustrated various sports with splendid curls and elegantly curved moustaches, and signs assured customers YES, WE CUT WET HAIR and offered special rates for children under age ten. Men wearing tights struck pugilistic poses inside pasteboard frames—showing off, thought Frank, for the lady in her underwear in the middle.

  Reclined looking up at the pressed tin ceiling, he eased the Remington out of its holster and rested it on his lap under the sheet.

  The barber whipped up a lather in a mug with a badger brush. “Interest you in your own mug? Fifty cents. Your name on it in copperplate, script, or fancy old English.”

  “What’s wrong with the one you’re using?”

  “Nothing, only it’s common. Folks come in, see your name there in the rack, they know you’re quality. I could stand here all day and tell you the business deals got made right here on the premises.”

  “I’m certain of that, this place being so close to the jail. Slap on the soap and don’t mess with my beard and moustache. I do my own trimming.”

  The razor’s gentle scraping lulled him into a half-doze. When the street door opened, tinkling the copper bell mounted on it, he came awake and tightened his grip on his revolver.

  Abraham Cripplehorn glanced around the room and smiled when he saw Frank. He was panting a little.

  “You’re next, mister,” said the barber. “Today’s newspapers there in the basket.”

  Cripplehorn nodded, but his eyes remained on the customer. “I took a chance you were here when I missed you at the jail. They let you go early.”

  “I got ten minutes off for good behavior. You got ten seconds to talk me out of drilling you where you stand.” He lifted the Remington, making a bump in the sheet.

  Cripplehorn riffled a pad of banknotes. “Barber, give this man your best shampoo and haircut.”

  The bump flattened.

  * * *

  It came about this way:

  After seeing Randy off on a cable car to the Oakland side of the bay, Cripplehorn called upon Sheridan Weber in his permanent suite at the Eldorado. French doors opened on a balcony overlooking most of the city, and his family crest, griffin rampant on a field of flax—aged artificially to disguise Weber pere’s recent purchase—hung above the four-poster. Cripplehorn held the door for a waiter pushing out a butler’s caddy heaped with silver-covered dishes.

  Young Weber stood in the middle of the Oriental rug in his underwear, curling a pair of black dumbbells. The exercise appeared to have made no difference in his hollow chest and slight paunch. His red hair was arranged in ringlets to disguise encroaching baldness and his attempt at recreating his father’s rich muttonchop whiskers had so far been no more successful than his fitness programme. He wore a monocle, of all things. His visitor thought the real Jack Dodger, whoever he was, would blush to write such a character into one of his books.

  “’Morning, Abe!”
Weber strove to be as democratic as his sire was autocratic. “You’re up and about early.”

  “It’s five P.M., Sherry. The nighthawking life has thrown your internal clock off the rails.”

  “Ah, well. Sundowns are as pretty as sunrises, I’m told; and one is awake to appreciate them. What have you there, the opening of another blood-and-thunder novel? I can’t keep up. I’m still slogging through Brimstone Bob.”

  “This won’t take long. It’s only two pages, and the wording is the same on both.” He thumbed the sheets in his hand to demonstrate their brevity.

  “Your last will and testament? Am I to witness the division of your worldly acquisitions?”

  “That would be even briefer.”

  Weber tossed his dumbbells onto the bed, mopped his face on the towel draped around his neck, and took the sheets. From the lines of concentration on his forehead his visitor realized he was one of those men who had difficulty reading when someone was watching them. Cripplehorn strolled out onto the balcony, gazing out over the city spreading out from Telegraph Hill and across the bay; from his perspective, a handspan alone separated Frank Farmer from Randy Locke. He’d felt far more at ease when half a continent stood between them.

  “Excellent!” said Weber, when he came back inside. “I’d thought these frontier types never put their names to anything.”

  “It took some convincing.” Cripplehorn privately prided himself upon his ability to make two signatures appear as if they’d been written by different hands; he’d even thought to use two different colors of ink. He was grateful that actual specimens of the men’s script were unavailable for comparison. “What about your end?”

  “What sort of expenses are we talking about?

  “A thousand, to start.”

  “Indeed, that much?”

  “The situation is unique. On top of printing, advertising, travel, and accommodations, we’re bound to encounter resistance from the authorities.”

  Weber returned the contracts and took a shirt off a hanger in the wardrobe. “My father is always entertaining public servants in Providence. My observation is they’re sporting men.”