Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  “So you said.” Yancy turned to Drew. “Think it was Apaches?”

  “One Apache.”

  Yancy laughed. “With an accomplice who opened the gate—am I right, Drew?”

  Drew nodded, feeling his stomach lurch. He had thought Smart Crow would simply take the twins away with him.

  “What’s he know?” said Ogden, frowning. “He weren’t there to see it.”

  “That’s right, friend. He doesn’t know a thing, but he’s an opinionated boy, so I like to consult him once in a while.”

  “What the hell for?” Ogden said, torn between concentrating on his cards and following the difficult conversation.

  “Respect,” said Yancy. “This boy saved my life a short while back, shot a cougar that jumped me. Shot it clean through the eyeball with a pistol.”

  “That ain’t true,” scoffed Ogden.

  “Pardon me, sir, I was there, under the weight of that dead cat, and the bullet hole in its eye was inches from my own. I know what I saw, and I know the debt I owe this boy, this sharpshooter here, so kindly don’t contradict a witness to the event.”

  “I reckon I’ll contradict who I please,” Ogden said.

  “Indeed you won’t, sir, if I’m the contradictee.”

  “Speak plain or shut your mouth.”

  “Excuse me; I forgot I was addressing an illiterate.”

  “What say there? Say what?”

  Yancy spread his cards across the table. Ogden studied them, then laid his own cards down. “Too bad,” he said, smiling.

  Yancy inspected the greasy boards. “I don’t believe it’s possible for you to have had that hand,” he said.

  Ogden’s chair fell over as he stood, mouth open in outrage. “You goddamn snake! Take it back!”

  “Take it back yourself,” Yancy told him, and began scooping up the meager pile of dollars.

  This action sent Ogden racing for his saddle, which Drew had brought into the room after corraling Ogden’s horse. He had noticed at the time a fine repeating rifle in the saddle scabbard, and it was this weapon Ogden lunged for now. He had half its length cleared when Yancy flung the table aside and advanced on Ogden with a small pistol in his outstretched hand. The first shot from it was loud, solely by virtue of being first, and the four that followed had the reduced impact of firecrackers. Ogden collapsed across his saddle at about the same time that Julio, until then a seemingly permanent fixture at the plank counter, ran on bow legs through the doorway and into the night.

  Drew still had a wedge of lemon stranded in midair near his mouth. Ogden’s body slid and met the floor solidly; it was clear he had died on the way down. Yancy stepped close to the corpse and made sure all his bullets had found their mark. He then ejected his spent shells onto the floor. “Drew,” he said, reloading, “go out to the stable and fetch back the shovel there.”

  Maria Huntzucker came flying to Yancy’s side, talking loudly in Spanish. He pushed her away and pointed to Ogden. “That’s the one to be yelling at,” he said, but her eyes wouldn’t leave him. The man on the floor might as well have been a sleeping dog.

  It required more than an hour to dig a grave by lamplight and haul the body over to it. Drew gave assistance as directed. He spoke only once, as Yancy gave the mound, a short distance from that of his previous victim, a final patting down. “Did he really cheat?”

  “Drew, I would never shoot a man for less. A simple apology and forfeiture would have seen him breathing at this hour. Bring the shovel; my hands are sore as blazes.”

  Inside again, Yancy poured himself a drink, then set before Drew a letter. “This was in our friend’s pocket. Seems he was on his way to Arizona Territory to meet with his brothers, ranchers just over the line and not too far from here, by what he says. Now then, if they’re expecting him, which the letter suggests they are, and he doesn’t arrive, they may well come this way to find out what happened. Julio and the lovely Maria wouldn’t hesitate a moment to let them know, if dollars were dangled before them, I think. So you and I must vamoose before that time arrives. You may have his saddle and horse. Yes, and his rifle also. Are you with me, Drew? If not, stay here and wait for them.”

  “I’ll come.”

  “Good. I suggest a southerly route, away from Ogden’s direction of travel. Ever seen the gulf by moonlight?”

  “Gulf?”

  “Gulf of Mexico.”

  “No.”

  “Then you shall.”

  Maria Huntzucker screamed a good deal at Yancy while they saddled up. She was screaming still as they rode away.

  12

  It was more than a week before someone had the gumption to ask Clay what had happened to his face. The question was posed in a saloon one night. The questioner was drunk, and had requested the information bluntly.

  “How’d you get them holes?”

  Clay looked at the man, his expression mild. “Pardon me?”

  “Them god-awful holes—you chew ’em out, or what?”

  “Disease,” said Clay.

  “You mean to say pox?”

  “A disease of the tongue. The tip is where it starts.”

  “Tip of the tongue?”

  “And spreads to the cheeks.”

  A considerable audience was listening now.

  “Hell, I’d shoot myself first, before I got to where I looked like that.”

  “Poke out your tongue,” Clay suggested.

  “Huh? Why?”

  “So I can tell if you’re infected.”

  “Oh, is that right?” The man tipped his drinking friends a wink. “Better do what the doc says, hey, boys.”

  He poked out his tongue, crossing his eyes at the same time for maximum comic effect. Clay brought the butt of his shotgun up hard, directly under the man’s chin. His teeth met, severing the tip of his tongue completely. As the man staggered back, howling with pain, Clay looked down at the scrap of pink at his feet.

  “Good news,” he said. “No sign of infection.”

  It was inevitable that the man should reach for his Colt, pain and humiliation together overcoming prudence. Clay allowed the gun to partway clear its holster before he fired. The man before him seemed to implode in the region of the gut. Clay and others were spattered with tissue as the blast drove the man back several steps. A massive welling of blood gushed from him as he fell. Powder smoke eddied in the air.

  “For the public record,” said Clay, “they’re bullet holes. I killed the man who did it, and I killed the man with him when he did it.”

  He walked out.

  Grover Stunce caught up with Clay shortly after.

  “Dugan! You can’t do that! There wasn’t the justification for it!”

  “I’d say a gun halfway to killing me is justification.”

  “The barkeep says all you had to do was answer the question straight and none of it would’ve happened.”

  “He was pulling his gun.”

  “Because of what you did!”

  “He asked for it, and he got it.”

  “But it didn’t have to happen, is what I’m saying. You can’t just shoot someone because he’s a fool.”

  “He was an armed fool.”

  Clay was not so nerveless as he seemed. He had already vomited twice in alleyways, and Grover couldn’t see his face well enough in the darkness to observe its waxy pallor.

  “This happens again,” he said, “and I’ll be taking back that badge.”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t act so unconcerned. I know you now, know your type. You like it, don’t you, pulling the trigger.”

  “If I believe it’s the right thing, why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t the right thing!”

  “In my opinion it was.”

  “The badge. Now.”

  Grover put out his hand. Clay unpinned the badge and surrendered it.

  “You can sleep tonight in the office, same as usual,” Grover told him. “Tomorrow you find some other line of work, and not in this
town, you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be out by morning.”

  Grover became entangled in argument with Mrs. Stunce that night.

  “You tell him first thing in the morning he’s hired again,” said Sophie.

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because he did you a favor. Now those saloon rowdies will think twice before they open their drunken mouths after what happened. You tell him he’s got the job again.”

  “I won’t go back on what I’ve already done.”

  “Nobody knows you did it, just him and me and you.”

  “That makes no difference. I told him, and he’ll leave Keyhoe tomorrow.”

  “You told him to leave? Oh, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you understand he’s exactly what you need here, to keep things calm? Can’t you follow that simple fact? People will be scared of him, and because he’s your deputy they’ll be scared of you too, and scared people behave themselves, Grover, it’s human nature. He’s made everything different overnight, with this one thing he did.”

  “It wasn’t a thing, it was a killing. He started the whole mess himself.”

  “I thought you said the other fellow did, asking that thoughtless question. Why shouldn’t Mr. Dugan get upset over something as personal as his appearance? I don’t blame him at all.”

  “Sophie, he shot a man clean in half, practically, and before that made him bite off his own tongue! What kind of behavior’s that for a deputy marshal! It won’t do! It isn’t professional conduct, and it’s just plain not right.”

  “You need him.”

  They glared at each other.

  “Look,” said Grover, “I’m not even sure anymore he isn’t crazy. He didn’t turn a hair when he did what he did, everyone says. What kind of man could do that and walk away without feeling a thing? He’s not a regular man, I’m sure of it now. Taking him on in the first place, I kind of wondered, but I said to myself he makes me uneasy on account of the way he looks, that’s all, but it’s more, something behind the eyes.… I never should’ve hired him.”

  “Yes you should, and you’ll have him working for you again before anyone finds out what you did.”

  “I won’t!”

  “You must!”

  When Clay awakened to the light of dawn behind the office blinds, he saw Grover Stunce seated behind the desk. It disturbed Clay that Grover had entered the office without waking him. He must have been very deeply asleep. He recalled having slept with profound depth on the first night after his killing of the Chaffey brothers. Did it mean something, this unnaturally deep sleep that followed a death at his hands?

  “Don’t know how you can rest so easy on that bunk,” Grover said.

  “I’ll leave soon.”

  Clay threw back the blanket. His body felt like lead.

  “Wait up.”

  Clay looked at Grover, who fidgeted with the badge in his hands.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Grover said, “and I’ll admit I might have been hasty, saying what I said.”

  Clay pulled on his boots. He stood and began buttoning his vest.

  “Don’t you walk out till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say,” Grover told him. Clay lifted his jacket from the back of a chair and put it on. He walked to the elkhorn rack by the door and picked up his hat.

  “Take it back, the badge,” Grover said. “You’ve still got a job here if you want it.” He saw Clay hesitate. “With a seven dollar a month raise in wages.” Clay put the hat on his head. “Ten dollars,” said Grover.

  Clay turned to face him.

  “Sure about this, are you?”

  “Dugan, the one thing I’m sure of is there’s a long box waiting for us all under the ground. I need a deputy. Seems like that’s you, rightly or wrongly. I’m asking you to stay on, only don’t do what you did last night again. That’s not law enforcement, that’s just terrorizing the citizens. That’s my opinion. I’m not saying you have to agree.”

  Clay looked at the floor. Grover continued fiddling with the badge. He’d been told by Sophie not to bother coming home without Clay Dugan on the county payroll again. Now Clay was approaching him, taking the badge, pinning it on.

  “One more thing,” said Grover.

  “What?”

  “You can’t sleep in here anymore. It’s not civilized, gives the wrong impression. There’s a shack in back of my place, not big, but it’s weatherproof. A man your height, he’d have to stoop some, getting through the door, but you’re welcome to it.”

  “No rent?”

  “Ten dollars a month, including meals.”

  Clay smiled crookedly. Grover saw that his teeth were a curious gray, most of them misaligned. He’d never seen them before, since Clay talked with barely a movement of his lips, probably due to the scarred stiffness of his holed cheeks.

  “I’ll take that deal too,” he said.

  Grover was relieved. Sophie was his again.

  The domestic element of Clay’s closer acquaintance with the Stunces proved less intolerable than he had anticipated. His decision to join them as a kind of backyard renter had been made to keep the peace with his employer, and Clay admitted the office was an uncomfortable place to live full time. The wisdom of his choice would be proven, ultimately, by the cooking provided at the Stunce residence, and he was not disappointed. He had expected a certain frostiness from his landlady, given their unfortunate first encounter, but such was not the case. The woman was positively effusive in her welcome of the new tenant, lavish in her cuisine.

  Clay was suspicious at first of such unwarranted friendliness, but saw soon enough it was Sophie Stunce’s way of rewarding him for having provided her husband’s office with a measure of backbone it had not previously possessed.

  Proof of this came from the lady’s lips the next day, as she delivered what had become the traditional lunch basket. Clay was alone, as on the first occasion, and Sophie told him with a smile, “Our credit has been extended.”

  “Pardon?”

  “At the store. Our credit.”

  Clay nodded warily. What did this have to do with him? Divining his confusion, Sophie explained that her husband’s salary was not large, nor was it made available on what might be termed a regular-as-clockwork basis, which necessitated the running up of a credit sheet at the store where Sophie did most of her shopping for essential foodstuffs and basic items of clothing. That day, on entering the establishment to increase the Stunces’ debt even further, Sophie had been taken aback when informed by the proprietor that her husband’s line of credit had been doubled. “And the reason,” said Sophie, “is the way things have been so quiet around town this last week. Mr. Simmons, that’s the owner, he said it was thanks to you and Mr. Stunce there hasn’t been hardly a peep from the rowdy element. Mr. Simmons took his wife for a walk down the street last night, and he hasn’t done that for a long time, nor plenty of others, believe me. It just shows how appreciative folks can be when you give them something to appreciate.”

  Clay understood; the Stunces were better off in their community because of what he had done to the fool he’d killed. Clay didn’t begrudge them their newfound propriety, but didn’t wish to share in it, even if he was actually its cause. He had killed because he felt justified in doing so, not in order to inflate the social prestige of Grover Stunce and his wife. He felt uncomfortable. Clay fully intended killing more stupid men who dared to cross him, but this future winnowing of society’s fools was to take place in an aura of personal judgment and retribution, not out of some moral or legal code acceptable to the majority.

  Clay’s itinerary was his own, conducted by himself, for himself, under the convenient aegis of state-mandated law enforcement. It had nothing to do with the Stunces, or with Keyhoe, or the price of silk in China. Sophie’s triumph was something Clay found objectionable, a trivial thing clinging to the coattails of his act, his ridding the town of an inferior human being. Did she understand? It was unlikely. He felt a little sorry
for her, despised the obvious joy she was trying to bring him with her great news of extended credit. Sophie Stunce knew as little of what went on inside Clay’s head as she did of the moon’s dark side.

  He knew better than to reveal his thoughts. Clay was politeness personified that evening, an avid listener at Sophie’s dining table as she held forth on whatever took her fancy. The subject of her choice was usually culled from newspaper articles. Grover was not a great reader of newsprint, and relied on his wife to supply him with tidbits while he ate. He seldom commented on anything she quoted, a frustrating reaction to a woman of such gregariousness as Sophie, so she aimed her reading and commentary in equal measure at Clay, in hopes of a conversational partner.

  Clay played his part with reluctance, feeling that any response to another man’s wife, in full view and hearing of that man, had of necessity to be both circumspect and uninflammatory. While he agreed with some of what she said regarding the political news, he had to remain silent when Sophie ventured opinions contrary to his own. Clay reminded himself it didn’t matter what she thought, or what he thought; neither of them, or Grover Stunce, mattered a damn in the wide world. She could spout and opinionate as much as she pleased; the planet would turn at its own speed and life proceed as if none of them was there. His rejoinders over supper were therefore of the tamest.

  He sensed Sophie’s frustration with him, and ignored it. Heated debate with Grover’s wife under the nose of Grover would have constituted a gross breach of etiquette, Clay felt, and he was not about to antagonize the man who had given him a job in which it was Clay’s legal right to eliminate those persons who stepped from the narrow path of righteousness. Such was Clay’s chosen work, and he would jeopardize it for no woman. He had a sneaking admiration for her anyway, if only because Sophie was a handsome individual despite her faint mustache.

  The town was indeed a quiet place for more than a month following the shooting. Then, as the incident receded from the common experience of Keyhoe’s transients, and a fresh wave of cattle herders swept into the saloons, boisterousness and gunplay were heard on the streets again. Clay had known it would be only a matter of time before new targets were set up before him.