“You’re high,” the dealer said.
Dooley smiled good-naturedly at the other smiling faces. He thought: How did I learn to play poker? Dooley bet twenty-five dollars. The cowboy matched, and raised fifty. Stringy hair folded. Frenchy, showing he was no fool, did the same.
With a sigh, Dooley called the cowboy’s bet and raised fifty dollars. And when the cowboy reached for the leather poke in his vest, Dooley said softly, “You don’t want to do that, mister. I have you beat. Trust me.”
The cowboy swore, and raised Dooley another fifty. This time, Dooley called.
“You show,” the dealer told him.
Slowly, Dooley turned over the ace of spades, his hole card.
The cowboy swore bitterly and shoved his losing hand—probably a full house, jacks over threes—but Dooley never saw the hole card.
“You did get the lady’s luck, sir,” said Frenchy.
“I guess so,” Dooley said, “but I’ve had enough. I’ll leave her luck with one of you guys.” He rose. So did the cowboy, whose right hand dropped near his belted revolver.
Stringy hair and Frenchy slid their chairs back. The dealer gathered the cards and gave the cowhand a familiar stare.
“Mister,” he said icily, “we won’t brook no trouble here. That was an honest game, and the man here, he won honestly.”
“I ain’t saying he cheated,” the cowhand said. “I just want to know his name. I know I know this fellow.”
“Mister,” the dealer said softly, “if you want to tell this man your name, that’s fine by me. And if you don’t, that’s fine by me, too. This is the West. Your name’s your business.”
Dooley, of course, saw nothing wrong with saying his name. And if that cowboy with his hand hovering over the ivory grips of a Colt knew him, maybe he could tell Dooley something about Dooley that Dooley did not know about himself—which was a lot.
“My name’s Dooley,” Dooley said. “Dooley Monahan.”
The man stepped back, shoving against a man in a plaid sack suit, who was playing poker at the next table. “Dooley . . .” The word came out like a gasp. “Dooley . . . Monahan.”
“Yeah,” Dooley said, and could not contain his excitement. This cowhand did know him.
“You . . .” The cowhand’s face turned white, then his eyes narrowed, and he straightened, before dropping into a gunfighter’s crouch.
Which caused Dooley to think: How do I know that’s a gunfighter’s crouch?
“You the same Dooley Monahan who killed all the Baylor boys?”
Dooley answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
That’s when the cowboy said, “They was cousins of mine.” And if that were not enough reason. “First cousins.”
At that moment, the dealer, Frenchy, the man with the stringy hair, a cancan girl who saw what was happening, the man with the sack suit at the opposite table, and just about everyone in Vanwy’s Gaming House were diving to the floor. All except Dooley Monahan and Jason Baylor’s first cousin.
The Colt leaped into Dooley’s hand, and he was firing. He didn’t have to be a good shot—not at that distance. All he had to do was keep fanning the hammer and keep his finger pressed tight against the trigger.
CHAPTER NINE
All I have to do, Dooley told himself, is keep fanning the hammer, and keep my finger pressed tightly against the trigger.
He was on the ground on the Nebraska homestead.
The first shot caught the man with the eye patch square in the chest. The second just an inch below. A. 32 caliber slug isn’t the strongest chunk of lead, but it did the job. The man staggered back, and Dooley, thinking about Doug Wheatlock—first cousin to the Baylors—but mostly thinking of Ole Something-another-dorf, came up and kept shooting the rimfire pistol.
In the dust, and through the white stinking cloud of gun smoke, Dooley kept firing. He saw the bullet turn the big brute around, then saw blood spurt from the man’s back, and then the man was gone. He just disappeared. But Dooley fanned the hammer and kept his finger on the trigger. Even when the hammer was landing on empty cylinders, even when the flesh of Dooley’s hand was bleeding from fanning that sharp piece of iron that causes a gun to shoot. He kept dry-firing until he heard Blue’s whimper.
Then reason took a firm hold on Dooley, and he stopped.
He remembered shooting Doug Wheatlock to death in that saloon and gambling den on Fifteenth Street in Cheyenne. Which had triggered—a bad pun, he knew—that flood of memories. Butch Sweeney and young Julia, Buckshot Bob and George Miller—and all of those damned Baylors—and even the Dew Drop Inn in San Francisco and the want, the need, to go to Alaska. He had even remembered Des Moines and Corydon and Monty’s Raiders and he remembered and cried over David and Janine Monahan, his loving parents.
Everything.
He remembered everything now.
Dropping the burning hot, smoking Smith & Wesson in the dirt, he clasped his bleeding hand and stared at the emptiness. Blue charged to him, jumping up and down, whimpering, and Dooley said, “It’s all right, Blue.”
He saw the well, but did not see the one-eyed murdering robber. He blinked, and finally he understood. That last bullet had sent the killer into the well. Vaguely, he even thought he had heard the splash of water as the dead man hit—but that had to be his imagination, for his ears still rang.
“Blue.” Dooley turned, pulled the bandanna off his neck, and wrapped it around his bleeding hand, wrapped it tightly, and then he was hurrying to the farmer, Ole from Norway—or somewhere. Dooley saw the big man lying in the dirt. He stopped, fell to his knees, brought his fists to his eyes, and cried without shame.
The blue-eyed dog whimpered, until Dooley lowered his hands and rubbed the dog’s dirty coat of matted hair. “It’s all right, Blue. It’s all right.” He made himself stand and walked over to the big, kind farmer.
The outlaw’s bullet had caught Ole in the throat. Maybe the bullet had shattered the man’s neck, Dooley thought, maybe death had been quick. Blood flooded the ground all around the dead farmer, and Nebraska’s soil quickly soaked up the sticky moisture. It was already congealing and blackening in Ole’s throat, and had poured out of his mouth. He had bled from his nose, and, naturally, from the hole in his throat.
The poor immigrant’s eyes remained open, staring at the harsh sky. Dooley slowly put his fingertips on the lids and closed the eyes.
His body began aching as he pushed himself to his feet. Muscles screaming, the scratches and cuts the brutal outlaw had inflicted burning, his body tensing over everything he had endured, but Dooley Monahan knew he had a job to do, though it was not one that he really wanted to do.
Apparently, the now-dead outlaw in the well had not lied. Dobbs or Handley had made him walk to find the money and General Grant. It made no sense to Dooley, because even though he had not counted what was in the saddlebags, it seemed like a whole lot of money.
If I had robbed a bank, he said to himself, I would have sent some men on horseback after a runaway horse.
But . . . He had reached the dugout.
“I ain’t an outlaw,” he said, this time, out loud.
He did find two canteens, which the man with the eye patch must have brought with him. Dooley shook one container, then the other. One was full, the other maybe a quarter full. He unscrewed both tops and sniffed. Water. Not whiskey. That was a good thing, because there was no way in hell he planned on drinking from that well.
He could not remember seeing any spade, shovel, or posthole diggers—anything of that nature—inside the farmer’s home. But a farmer needed something more than a grubbing hoe.
He went to the corral. The mule looked skittish. Dooley figured his face wasn’t the most comforting sight to anything, man or beast, right then. General Grant came up to the poles, and Dooley reached over with his hand that was not bandaged with the bandanna and rubbed the bay’s neck.
The plow he found on the other side of the corral. He walked up the hill to where the roof
had collapsed inside the dead Ole’s home. He looked down and shook his head. It would take a man days to dig through that earth if he had a shovel, and all Dooley had were two hands and a grubbing hoe. From here, Dooley had a fair view of the land, but no toolshed, no barn, nothing could be seen.
Well, maybe Ole Something-another-dorf had not been much of a farmer.
Cellar? Potato bin? Dooley saw nothing. The only place he had not looked inside was the privy. And, come to think of it, Dooley’s kidneys and bowels began strong suggestions that it was time.
Which is where he found the shovel. Some magazines. A pencil. An axe. A woolen blanket. A ball-peen hammer. An empty tin cup filled with rusty nails. Even two sacks of potatoes, which made Dooley a bit nauseous when he remembered all those potatoes Ole had fried.
* * *
He knew one thing. If the gold in the Black Hills did not pan out, Dooley would return to his farm near Des Moines and understand that he would never move to Nebraska to farm. On the other hand, he had told himself that he was done with the West after he had gunned down Jason Baylor’s first cousin, and here he was, back in the lawless frontier again. It was a hard land.
The dirt was hard. The sun was hot. The wind was bitter.
It took him well into the afternoon before he had the grave deep enough. Slowly, he then rolled poor Ole onto the scratchy blanket he had fetched out of the outhouse. Even more slowly did he drag the body on the blanket to the shaded side of the house where Dooley had dug the grave.
By the time he had Ole there, Dooley had to stop to drink from the canteen. The water was tepid, brackish, but it slaked his thirst and gave Dooley enough energy to drag the dead farmer into the grave. Dooley climbed into the grave and struggled, but finally managed to roll Ole over so he would be looking up, not down. You only buried bad men facing down—so they’d have a good look at where they were going. Carefully, he covered the dead man’s body with the blanket and pulled himself out of the grave.
Blue, that loyal dog, knelt at the side of the grave and whimpered appropriately.
A horse. A mule. A dog. A stranger.
It seemed like any man deserved more at his funeral. Dooley stood, trying to think of words, but none came. So he sighed, whispered, “Amen,” and began shoveling the Nebraska sod onto poor Ole something-another-dorf.
From the outhouse, Dooley tore off a chunk of wood. Thought about what else he should do, and used the axe to knock off another. He brought the nicest piece and laid it beside Ole’s grave. The other, he brought to the well. Then he knelt by the well, pulled out his pocketknife, and began carving. It was crude, but Dooley felt reasonably sure that he had spelled everything correctly. Using the hammer and two nails that he had fetched from the outhouse, he secured his signpost on the side of the well. Just to make sure no one would be tempted, he removed the well bucket and tossed it inside the opening. The splash was muted, probably by the dead outlaw’s floating body.
Dooley stepped back, and pitched the hammer to the ground.
POISON WATER
(DEAD VARMINT
IN WELL)
It was more than an evil killer like that brute with the eye patch deserved, but Dooley had not done that for him. He had done that to save any passerby from some horrible sickness one got by drinking foul water.
He spent more time on the next chunk of wood.
When he finished, he folded the pocketknife and slid it back into a vest pocket, then placed it at the head of the grave, and secured that with a few stones.
Ole
Farmer
R I P
Sure, it wasn’t fancy, and maybe the sign he had nailed on the well was more important, but the letters were even, and he had carved them wider and deeper into the wood so that the tombstone might last longer. He rose, looked at his handiwork, and the words that he could not think of earlier finally came to him.
“You were a good man, Ole.” Dooley wasn’t about to butcher the man’s last name, so he let the first name do. He looked across the homestead. “I bet, had God granted you a little more time on our earth, at this here farm, you would have turned it into a really good place. I appreciate all you did for me, and am sorry you got killed. I hope it wasn’t on my account. I mean, like as not, that fool killer would have stopped here anyway—if just to steal your mule. I’m sorry I couldn’t do much better for a headstone, or a grave, but this is the West. You know that. Life’s hard. Dying’s hard. But you’re in a better place now, and I have to think our good Lord’s welcoming you home now. You’re in peace. That’s a good place to be.” He smiled. “I bet Saint Peter enjoys a nip of potato hooch, too. But I bet it isn’t anywhere near as good as yours.”
Blue began growling, but Dooley paid little attention. He felt worn out, and the merle-colored shepherd often growled at spiders and snakes and grasshoppers. Dooley heard no horse, or horses, or metallic sounds of guns being cocked.
“Shut up, Blue,” he said, “and show some respect for the dead.”
The wind felt cool on his neck as he stood over Ole’s grave. He looked to the west and saw the sun beginning to disappear. Dusk, but he saw no reason to stay here. The mule brayed, and Dooley looked toward the corral.
“Yeah,” he said, “I reckon I’ll have to take you with us. Not much to pack, though.” He thought that maybe he could buy some more grub and things he’d need for the trail to the Black Hills, but quickly rejected that. This wasn’t his mule. He was no thief.
Blue still growled.
“I’ll leave you at the sheriff’s or the marshal’s or whatever law they have in Dutch Bluff,” he told the mule. “If they have any lawman in that town. If I can find that town.” He turned toward the saddlebags. “And I’ll take the money back to the bank.” He wet his chapped lips. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
The plan satisfied him. Honest. And Dutch Bluff appeared to be in the general direction of the trail he would take to the Black Hills. He had his horse back. He had his dog. He had his life. Which made him look again at Ole’s grave.
Blue stopped growling.
“It could’ve been the other way around, Ole,” he said. “I’m real sorry it was you. Hope you believe me.”
Now Blue began barking, and not a friendly bark. The hair stood up on the dog’s dirty neck, and the loyal dog bristled, backed up, barked some more.
Then he heard something else. General Grant’s whinny, which was answered by another horse. That made Dooley regret not listening to his blue-eyed dog, not thinking about danger. His stomach tossed and turned a bit, and the hairs on Dooley’s own neck began tingling. Slowly, Dooley turned around to spot the lightest-stepping roan gelding he had ever seen. The rider in the saddle held another double-barreled shotgun, and those barrels were pointed right at Dooley Monahan.
CHAPTER TEN
Something else caught Dooley’s eye, and he let out a sigh of relief.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Dooley said, and nodded at the six-point star pinned to the chest of the linen duster the shotgun toter wore.
“Am I?” The long face of the man with the keen pale eyes and the Roman nose said he did not tolerate nonsense. So did the sawed-off shotgun he held.
“I’m Dooley Monahan,” Dooley said.
The lawman did not care. He did not lower the shotgun. He did not even tell Dooley his own name.
Blue growled some more, but Dooley told the shepherd to hush. He didn’t want Blue to take any buckshot. He didn’t want to take any buckshot himself.
“There’s been trouble here,” Dooley said.
“Appears so,” said the lawman. For a peace officer, this man did not say much. On the other hand, most men holding sawed-off shotguns—the dead man in the well, for instance—usually did not have to say much.
“That fellow,” Dooley began, and pointed at the well. He stopped. The lawman might think Dooley was crazy as a loon. He wet his lips. He pointed at the corral. “My horse got stole,” he said.
“The one in the corral?”
the lawman asked.
“Yes, sir.” Dooley sighed. Certainly, he was sounding like a madman. “Can I explain . . . everything?”
The lawman kicked free of one stirrup.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m going to swing down off Blue here—”
“That’s my dog’s name!” Dooley sang out.
The shotgun came to the man’s shoulder, and he leaned his head so he could sight down perfectly on Dooley Monahan.
“I won’t do anything, sir,” Dooley said. “I don’t even have a gun.” He tilted his head toward the dead man’s Smith & Wesson in the dirt.
Slowly, carefully, the man came to the ground. He had experience doing that kind of thing. Dooley could tell. And he was really good at it. One moment he was sitting in the saddle, shotgun in his arms, one boot hanging out of the stirrup, and a second later he was on the ground, shotgun up and aimed, ready for anything. The blue roan did not even move.
“All right,” the lawman said. “Speak your piece.”
He stood ramrod straight, like someone had replaced his spine with a telegraph pole. And he was just about the size of a telegraph pole, maybe six feet six inches high, and the heels of his stovepipe boots weren’t high at all. He wore black woolen pants, a black gun belt with a nickel-plated Colt revolver holstered on his left hip, but the butt pointing outward—making him most likely a right-hander. Black suspenders. A yellow and blue polka-dot shirt, green bandanna with all sorts of designs on it, and the low-crown, wide-brim black hat. The face had been bronzed in the sun, and the beard on his cheeks and chin seemed just stubble from some days on the trail. The mustache and the underlip beard, both gray with a few touches of black, appeared permanent. His hair had been soaked with sweat, but it was salt-and-pepper, and well groomed, too.
No fat that Dooley could tell. No softness. Probably two hundred and thirty pounds of chiseled muscle and sinew. He stepped away from his horse, spread out his legs, and kept the barrels of the scattergun aimed at Dooley’s midsection.
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