Canyon of the Long Shadows

by Carl Dane

  Meanwhile, I figured out why Tremaine was giving a speech. The bastard was embarrassed and wanted to set things right in a one-one-one.

  A man can put up with a lot, but for some, embarrassment just eats out their insides. On top of that, Tremaine was a man who made his business from being feared, and damage to his reputation would hurt the wallet as well as the heart.

  So now that I knew his motivation, I also knew his weakness and figured I knew how to use it.

  He wanted to draw on me.

  That was fine, but not yet. I had to up the ante because there was more at stake than just him and me.

  So I walked over to him and without breaking stride slapped him across the face.

  Chapter 59

  There’s probably no greater insult to a man than a slap, and Tremaine took it badly.

  He was in a bad spot because this wasn’t playing out the way he expected. He could, of course, draw on me, as he wanted to do, and I could draw back, but that wouldn’t work out for him and his pride: A man hits you with the palm of his hand and you shoot him? That’s not very manly.

  So he threw a punch. It was a strong punch and was a powerfully built man and the momentum of his blow was spiced with the extra ingredient of blind rage, but the hardest punch in the world doesn’t matter if it doesn’t land, which it did not. It was a straight right, and was preceded by such a big wind-up that he might as well have mailed me a letter to tell me it was coming.

  I stepped inside the punch and it sailed past my ear. Tremaine’s momentum carried him forward and I ducked low, pivoted ninety degrees, following the direction of his punch and body, jammed my hip into his groin, and straightened my legs.

  A sailor friend I’d sparred with learned that move in Japan and taught it to me. It was from a fighting style they called “gentle way” and it was all about using an opponent’s strength and momentum against him.

  Tremaine had an excess of both and when I flipped him over my hip I imparted a little altitude by lifting with my legs and my…that man just flew.

  He landed on his butt, hard. He grunted, and I think he’d had a little wind knocked out of him.

  Tremaine didn’t really know how to fight. Not this kind of fight, anyway. He should have flipped on his back and regained his breath and composure. He would have been able to kick me with his heels if I’d advanced on him or gone for sidearm if he felt it was necessary.

  Instead, he tried to scuttle to his feet with his back to me and of course for a moment he was on all fours with his butt in the air and that’s when and where I planted a push-kick.

  I’d learned that from someone who’d learned in when he fought it Siam. It’s basically the motion you’d use to kick down a door and with a little practice you can generate a lot of power.

  I’d practiced a lot.

  Tremaine slid forward, flat on his face, at least two feet. The ground was still a little damp and he actually left a furrow.

  I backed away, about ten feet.

  This time, Tremaine did roll over on his back, looked at me, and I kept my hands away from both guns, the one in my waistband and the one on my hip, as I wagged my fingers upward, motioning for him to get up.

  It took him a few seconds, and he wasn’t entirely steady. I’m sure that what I did hurt more than his dignity. I do believe I’d heard his tailbone crack when I kicked him.

  The guy with the beard and the wheezy voice was laughing. His left hand lay limp on the saddle and he pointed to Tremaine with his right, all the time braying, apparently without the need to breathe. Maybe he was like one of those harmonica players who can make noise blowing or sucking.

  He kept laughing for what seemed like a full minute until Tremaine shot him.

  Chapter 60

  The gun snaked out of Tremaine’s holster so fast I could hear it hiss against the leather and I didn’t even see the gun level off. It was back in the holster before the sound died away.

  Wheezy was still sitting straight up in the saddle and it took a moment for his stiff straight arm to drop.

  Despite what you’d expect, head-shot men don’t usually get flung backward. Sometimes the impact actually drives them forward, like what happens when you shoot a pail of water off a fencepost. There’s a small hole going in but a big one in back where everything gushes out and the bucket will usually fall toward you.

  Wheezy had a neat hole between his eyes, so precise it looked like the location had been measured by a craftsman to be perfectly equidistant. After the arm dropped the body followed, as though he were folding up in segments, and when his face hit the mount’s crest I noticed that the back of the head was missing.

  Chapter 61

  I was angry at myself for taking my eyes off Tremaine, although he had immediately holstered his weapon so as to not invite more shooting, at least not at the moment.

  The goons were stunned into silence, though some of the horses whinnied and bucked.

  The animals had quieted down by the time the body slid off to the ground, one boot still in the stirrup. The horse, uneasy, turned in a circle, dragging it, and then ran away, the body still attached. Nobody made a move to stop it.

  Tremaine faced me square again.

  I laughed.

  Tremaine was shaking, just a little, whether with rage or pain or fear or all three I don’t know, but I was happy to see it.

  “Who’s in charge here?” I asked, apropos of nothing, and the oddity of the question got everyone’s attention, including Tremaine’s.

  “I am,” Tremaine said.

  He wasn’t quite boiling yet, so I wanted to stir the pot a little more.

  I looked at what I took to be the oldest man in the gang.

  “Is that so?”

  I took him by surprise.

  “Well, I suppose. I mean, we was taking our orders from…”

  He pointed, realized there was nothing there, scanned the near hill, and started to raise his hand toward the running horse and the twisting, bounding body, which had already lost its shirt.

  Being dragged by a horse is a demeaning and sickening process. First the clothes get torn off, then the skin.

  The older man shrugged.

  “Yes, Tremaine’s in charge.”

  I took one small step toward Tremaine. My movement put him on edge, but not enough to pull on me. I knew if I started using my hands again he’d shoot rather than face additional humiliation, but I didn’t want to push that far. I just wanted to keep him off balance.

  “Tremaine.”

  I didn’t phrase it as a question. I just called it out and made him wonder what comes next.

  “Tremaine, you’re in charge. How much are you in charge?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Are you willing to raise the stakes? Or are you scared?”

  I could see hard knotty muscles in his jaw pulsing.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Tremaine, we have twenty men on this street and if we start a running gun battle everyone could die – plus who knows how many bystanders killed by stray shots. And if these assholes win who knows what they’ll do to the innocent people in town. I know that means nothing to you, but these are my friends and my…”

  It was then that I noticed Elmira standing under an awning and I took a minute to search for the word.

  “My friends and my loved ones.”

  Tremaine turned his head and spit.

  “So?”

  “So I want two things: Gillis and Davis. I want Davis to go to jail for attempted murder and theft of government property, and I want Gillis so I can beat the shit out of him.”

  “So?” Tremaine spat again. “What’s this to me?”

  “You want Davis and the counterfeit money he stole. Not because you want the money. You probably couldn’t spend it or wouldn’t want to take the risk. It’s because that’s the one piece of evidence that incontrovertibly ties your boss into a criminal enterprise. Not that you can about that, either, but you’ve
been hired to fix this for him.”

  “I’m running out of patience,” Tremaine said. “Get to the point.”

  “If you’re man enough, let’s just make this you and me, right now where we stand. If you kill me, you can have Davis. You can have Gillis, too, if you want him. The key to the cell is in my pocket.”

  “What about the money?”

  “My deputy will show you. I don’t know where it is myself.”

  Tremaine snorted a mirthless laugh.

  “Sure he will.”

  “I’m way ahead of both of you,” Carmody said, riding up beside us and opening a dirt-encrusted oilskin bag. “I seen where this was going and took the liberty of fetching it just now so Marshal Hawke can get to the business of blowing your head off.”’

  I hadn’t realized Carmody had been gone.

  Carmody reached into the bag and fanned some of the money so Tremaine could see it.

  “Not more than fifty feet away. Buried in in back of the outhouse. Nobody ever wanders back there, believe you me.”

  “Suppose after I kill you your friends go back on the deal,” Tremaine asked.

  “I could ask you the same question,” Harbold said.

  I spread my hands.

  “Then we’re no worse off than before we made the deal. Then we all go back to war and kill each other.”

  “You’ve got nothing to lose,” I said to the goons, “and everything to gain. I don’t know how many of you are from the canyon, but I see a few of you with charred pant-legs, so you’ve got an idea what the people fighting on my side are capable of.”

  Horses can sense emotions, and a few of the outlaws’ mounts began shifting and taking small, agitated steps.

  “Maybe we should listen to him, Mr. Tremaine,” one of the men said.

  I pointed to Taza.

  “And if you think these combat veterans are tough, wait until my Apache friends get through with you.”

  Taza smiled broadly.

  “Tremaine and Hawke shoot it out … sounds like a good idea,” another outlaw said.

  “And we’ve got one more to even up the numbers. Lydia Davis, the woman you kidnapped, is here, and she’s got a gun and a grudge.”

  “Lots of guns,” she said, riding to the front of the pack. She held a Sharps rifle aloft, pointed to a Colt .45 on her hip, and displayed an impressive scowl.

  There was some mumbled conversation among the outlaws. I heard the words hell, yes spoken a few times.

  And then the pack divided and they moved to each side of the street, out of the expected line of fire.

  “I was looking forward to this,” Munro said, pulling on the reins, and moving alongside where I stood. “You wrecked all the fun.”

  And then he whispered low so only I could hear, leaning down as I walked back a few paces to the spot where I’d stand.

  “Guess this isn’t our first battle by proxy. You’re doing the right thing. There are people like us and then there are the regular people – pastors, schoolteachers, women, children. We fight so they don’t have to. And now you’re fighting so we don’t have to, which normally would piss me off but this time you’re right. This entire shithole town of yours would be killed in the crossfire, right down to the last dog and cat.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” I said. “I get the feeling you’re going to rub some liniment on my shoulders and remind me to not to drop my left hand when I throw my right.”

  “Something like that,” Munro said. “All I can tell you is that he’s a show-off. He’s in a quiet, white-hot rage, and now he not only wants you dead, but he wants it to be spectacular. He wants to make the papers. Like you did.”

  Munro guided his horse over to the boardwalk, and as he pulled away he said, “Work on his head.”

  I looked at Tremaine and stepped back until we were sixty feet apart. In my business you get to gauge distances pretty well, and it may have been fifty-nine or sixty-one but not more either way, and it was the distance at which I’d done most of my practice.

  Tremaine didn’t move. Maybe he liked the distance, too, or just didn’t think about such things, but it occurred to me after seeing him shoot that bearded mouth-runner that I was going to need every advantage I could get.

  “I’m giving you a chance to back out, Tremaine,” I said. “You’re a dead shot against somebody who’s sitting on a horse and not even looking at you, but I’m not one of the cooperative victims your kind feeds on.”

  He almost went for his gun at that point; I sensed as much as saw it.

  Contrary to what you read in dime novels there’s no real etiquette in a shootout. The good guy doesn’t have to wait for the bad guy to pull first. And it’s not so much about who pulls first but rather who lands first, and who lands where it counts and often how many times you land where it counts.

  Pulling on me while we were jawing, though, might be interpreted by some as jumping the gun with a cheap shot, and reputation was what was on the line for him right now. I think his life was secondary to him at that instant.

  I figured the longer I kept talking, the madder he’d get and the better chance I’d have of getting out of this unperforated.

  “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Tremaine. The price of hubris is destruction. Just walk away.”

  Tremaine said nothing, but I had a feeling he didn’t follow.

  “It means ‘excessive pride,’ you dumb shit,” Carmody said.

  “Shut up and shoot,” Tremaine said.

  “Try only to make big wound and not kill him,” Taza shouted. “So I can torture him later.”

  The outlaws laughed, and Munro guffawed in his thundering bass.

  With my left index finger, I pointed to a spot between my eyes, then pointed at Tremaine, and made the universal shooting gesture with my empty hand.

  “I’m going to give you a third eye, Kid, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  I hadn’t finished when Tremaine lost the battle with his demons of rage and drew.

  Chapter 62

  As I’ve said, timing is everything.

  I wasn’t that much concerned about who drew first because I pretty much knew that I couldn’t physically out-shoot him. But this wasn’t a quick-draw contest or target match.

  He gave it away when he leaned forward just a bit. Some shooters do that unconsciously to bring the right leg back a bit, allowing a little more room for the barrel to clear the holster.

  As soon as I saw the tell-tale I dropped to one knee, pulling as I did so.

  I banked on the fact that he’d want to finish me with one spectacular headshot, especially as I’d goaded him into believing that I’d try the same.

  As I’ve undoubtedly said before, coincidences do happen, which is presumably why we invented the word.

  For the third time in as many weeks, some son of a bitch had shot my hat off.

  Chapter 63

  I fired and rolled and came up on a knee again, this time with the gun from my waistband in my left hand.

  Tremaine hadn’t expected either the drop or the roll.

  Nor did he expect the bullet that caught him in the thigh.

  I knew he’d go for my head, trying to end the confrontation with a shot he could gloat over and recount in bar-rooms for years to come.

  And I’m sure his bullet would have burrowed right between my eyes had I not moved before I tried to get off a shot.

  I hit him again in the stomach and fired with both hands.

  But my left hand wasn’t working. And then I felt the pain.

  It works that way sometimes, especially in the heat of battle. Whatever part of the mind that insulates one’s sanity delays the pain long enough for you deal with the fact that you’re in trouble.

  I shot again with my right hand, barely keeping my balance, and missed.

  Tremaine showed no emotion as he stumbled, fought to keep his balance, and raised his revolver.

  A man can get off a lot of shots in the time it takes t
o die, and he sent off two that snaked into the ground about ten feet in front of me. Sometimes they skid and bounce back up, and they would have caught me where it hurt with me hunkered down like that, but they just buried themselves.

  I emptied my revolver and believed I saw him start to fall. I picked up the gun I’d dropped and emptied that into him, too, and the last thing I remembered was clicking five, six, maybe ten times on expended chambers. I believe I was still pulling the trigger when I fell forward.

  That’s what they told me later, anyway.

  Chapter 64

  It had been a clean through-and-through shot and I could move around all right in a couple days.

  Carmody said that I had been envious of the attention he’d received and accused me of somehow contriving to get wounded too.

  Actually, I’d been hit higher and the round had broken my collarbone but not torn too much muscle, so my movement wasn’t impaired much. Carmody’s wound had ripped through his arm and chest muscle and he would likely have trouble reaching forward for some time, but he’d eventually heal up, according to the doctor who’d treated him in Gray Springs, who I tended to believe.

  Carmody had been treated by a doctor who had an office and a haircut and a diploma on the wall. My physician was an itinerant who rode by every week or so. He was a disheveled little man whose hair hung in his eyes and also, I am told, treated cattle as well as people and was vague about his qualifications for either job.

  In any event, I could do pretty much anything I wanted as long as I could tolerate the white-hot pain that went along with the process.

  I had a little trouble with the bass parts played with my left hand but could still passably navigate the upright piano in the Spoon. Most of the time I’d play cowboy tunes or folk ditties we’d sung during the war but there’s only so much material in that vein so when I ran dry I’d throw in some Beethoven or Mozart. If you keep a nice steady beat and play loudly enough – a process Carmody called cowpoking it up – even Chopin sounds like perfectly acceptable dance-hall music.