A Pair of Aces

by Joe R. Lansdale

  "The spirits in the wood, huh?"

  Elijah nodded. The firelight flickered across his copper face, and even in that silly suit and hat, he looked very, very Indian. The smile lines around his eyes and mouth had fallen off like dead leaves.

  "That is correct. The spirits in the wood are old as the world, and they collect to them new spirits when they die, providing those spirits are worthy to become the protectors of the Oglala."

  "You don't say?" Billy Bob sneered.

  "Oh, I do say. It is the spirits in the wood that keep the black magic of Hickok inside him, lest it be passed onto the whites. The whites have enough magic, without the gun magic of Hickok. "

  "And why don't you, or why didn't your father, let Wild Bill's magic pass onto you Indians?"

  "White man's magic. It cannot be used by Indians, and Indians don't want it. We have our own magic."

  "Lot of good it's done you," Billy Bob said.

  "That is quite correct, sir," Elijah said, "quite correct." But his voice had an edge to it, and I was beginning to get spooked. I looked at the body in the box and it seemed strangely alive. It wasn't that I expected it to get out of that box and walk or nothing. It was more like what that medicine man was saying about spirits and all, and there was something about that body, maybe the way the firelight glinted off the bone in those empty eye sockets, that made you think there was a powerful and ugly thing inside it. I somehow felt whatever spirits might have been in Hickok were bad. Maybe Hickok wasn't all bad his ownself but those spirits were, and now they were all that was left of him. I felt better knowing he was between them boards full of Indian magic.

  "You tell a good story, Indian," Billy Bob said, smiling one of his nasty smiles, "but it ain't nothing to me but spook talk."

  Elijah smiled slowly, so slowly you could almost count his teeth one at a time as his lips folded back. "Yes, you white men certainly have it over us ignorant savages."

  Billy Bob nodded to that. "How do I know this here is Wild Bill Hickok, and not just some drunk you've pickled?"

  Elijah stepped forward, put a finger on the body's head. "Bend close and look at that hole. Is that not an exit wound from a bullet? Was not Wild Bill shot from behind and the bullet came Out the front of his head?"

  "That's so," Billy Bob said, leaning forward for a look. In spite of myself, I leaned too, but I couldn't look into those empty sockets. Billy Bob was what I was looking at, and his eyes seemed to have fallen out of his head and down those sockets like two marbles tumbling down mine shafts. His face tightened for a moment, and then suddenly he turned.

  Elijah, after pointing out that bullet hole, had stepped back and pulled what was in his coat pocket out. A Bowie knife. And even as Billy Bob turned, and I turned with him, that knife came flying through the air. To this day I don't know how it missed Billy Bob. I couldn't believe he could move that fast. His left hand came out of his coat pocket, and it was full of Colt's 60. The Colt jumped and roared and Elijah's lips were parted by the bullet. The gun roared again, and this time the slug hit Elijah square between the eyes. The shots were so close together, they almost sounded like one.

  Before Elijah hit the ground, Billy Bob flicked his wrist to the left and had Checkers covered. Checkers had one hand to his nose and the other inside his coat.

  "Don't shoot me, fella," Checkers said. "I was trying to go for the Indian. I seen what he was about to do and I tried to go for him. I swear, it was the Indian I was after. It's just you're so blooming fast . . . Grief, but you just might be the son of old Wild Bill. That was the fastest damned draw I ever did see."

  Slowly Checkers went ahead and brought his gun hand out. There was a little pistol in it. He lowered his arm down by his side and let it dangle.

  "I swear," Checkers said, wouldn't throw in with no Indian against a white man."

  "Put the gun up," Billy Bob said, "and see if he's dead." Checkers did as he was told. While he did I smelt something burning, and glancing at the fire I seen it was Elijah's stovepipe hat. The first shot had knocked it off his head and it had rolled into the fire. It was just a black wisp now.

  Checkers bent over the body, then stood. "He's dead. Course he's dead. He's got two holes in his head. I could have told you that from over there."

  Billy Bob turned to look at where the Bowie had gone. It was stuck just to the right of Hickok's head. Billy Bob reached and pulled it out of the wood, and the knife 'squeaked free of it like a mouse that had had its back stepped on. Billy Bob stuck it in the belt around his coat.

  "Too bad he wasn't white," Billy Bob said. "Would have been my first kill. Hickok didn't count no Indians or niggers, and I don't aim to neither."

  "Didn't count spicks neither," Checkers said.

  "That's right," Billy Bob said, "no spicks neither."

  Billy Bob reloaded his pistol and dipped it back into his left coat pocket.

  "Checkers," he said, "you look that body over for money. He got anything you give it to me. I ain't so sure you didn't lead us up here to cheat and kill us, so you don't get nothing out of the deal, not even the twenty for the trip."

  Checkers' face went red and he forgot to put his finger in his nose. "That ain't fair."

  "Didn't say it was," Billy Bob said. "Don't feel like being fair right now."

  "I brought you up here in the rain, it storming—"

  "Shut up and do as I say," Billy Bob said. He opened and closed his hands above his coat pockets where the butts of his pistols showed.

  Checkers moved his jaw back and forth a few times, then he bent to searching Elijah.

  "Don't palm nothing," Billy Bob said. "I would find that disagreeable."

  Checkers brought over a pocket watch, a derringer, and a little bag full of bones, dirt, and beads.

  Billy Bob put the watch in his inside shirt pocket. "Indians are hell for trinkets," he said, "but what they need to know time for?" He poured what was in the bag into his hand then back into the bag. "What's this?"

  "His medicine bag," Checkers said. "Has his powers in it."

  "Did him a lot of good, didn't it?" Billy Bob said, and tossed it into the fire. He flung the derringer as far as he could to the back of the cave. "Whore's gun," he said. "That and tin horns."

  Billy Bob put the lid on the box, and we went out of there, back down to where Albert waited, me and Checkers carrying the box with Wild Bill in it. It was pretty heavy.

  I didn't tell Albert right then all that happened. I figured he knew a lot of the story from the way I looked at him, and I thought maybe he'd heard the shots, though later he said he hadn't. With the storm like it was, and us being deep inside the cave, he hadn't heard a thing.

  We strapped the box on the side of the mule, and Billy Bob took to leading it behind his mount. Me and Checkers rode behind him, almost side by side, and behind us was Albert.

  We'd gone a mile or so when the storm got so bad every little bit of the sky lit up with forks of blue-white lightning and the thunder roared like there was a cannon war going on.

  About the time all this storm business got built up, Checkers made his play. Maybe he and the Indian had planned such a thing all along and it hadn't gone good. I don't know. Maybe Checkers planned to rob us after we had the body and the Indian's money, that way he could make double. And maybe he hadn't planned nothing at all and was just mad because he hadn't made his share like he thought he should.

  Doesn't matter now. With Billy Bob in front of him, he had the perfect chance to do to him what Jack McCall had done to Hickok.

  I seen him go for his gun, and I tried to yell, but with the thunder and lightning like it was, I didn't know if Billy Bob could hear me. But he did, or maybe he'd just been waiting for Checkers to make his play all along. Billy Bob swiveled on his critter, and as he did, I seen there was a smile on his face, like he was about to get a present he'd been waiting a long time for.

  The way Billy Bob's hand moved was too fast to be real. I figured it was a trick of the lightning or something. O
ne second his hand was on his knee and the next it was full of pistol and the pistol was cocked.

  Only he didn't get to kill Checkers. The lightning did it. It was faster even than Billy Bob, and it reached down out of the sky and hit Checkers' little pistol and there was the sound like a giant whip cracking, then Checkers and his horse exploded and I was wearing some of him and some of his suit and some of his horse.

  Billy Bob, with a wail, threw himself off his horse onto the ground and started pounding his hand against the ground, screaming. "I had him beat. My first white man. I had him beat," then he began to cry.

  I just sort of sat there, dumbfounded, wearing Checkers, his suit, and his horse. Finally I got down off my horse, led him over a piece, got down on my knees, and threw up.

  When I was able to get up, I looked over and seen Albert was helping Billy Bob to his feet. Billy Bob was saying over and over, "I had him beat. My first white man."

  Albert helped Billy Bob over to his horse and put him in the saddle. He patted him on the knee. "There's just a whole bunch of white men, Mister Billy Bob. Don't you fret. There'll be others."

  "I had him, Albert. I had him whipped fair and square, didn't I?"

  "Couldn't have been no fairer or squarer," Albert said, like he was talking to a little kid.

  "It ain't right. I had him beat."

  "Plumb beat," Albert said.

  "By the time Wild Bill was my age he'd done a lot of his killing already," Billy Bob said.

  "Things were different then," Albert said. "Folks was more for killing in them times. Got up with it on their minds. They had more niggers to do their work, and there was lots of free time for shooting folks."

  "I had him," Billy Bob said, shaking his head. "I had him."

  Actually, I had a lot of him. I got a handkerchief and cleaned off what I could and got sick some more.

  When I was feeling some better, I went over and stood with Albert and he put his arm around my shoulder. We looked at what was left of Nose Picker Chauncey and his horse. It wasn't much. Just a heap of bones, smoking meat, some saddle leather, and a hunk of checkered suit.

  Maybe I should have felt-some worse about old Checkers, but to tell it true, I couldn't work up a lot of enthusiasm for feeling bad. I figured after he killed Billy Bob he planned to finish off me and Albert, not knowing we had guns on us and seeing us as easy pickings, which I reckon I would have been. And besides, I just couldn't warm myself to a man that spent the largest part of his life with a finger up his nose, even if he did end up sadlike, being cooked with a horse and a checkered suit.

  It seemed like it took forever to get out of the hills, what with the storm being like it was and Billy Bob sort of pouting along, stopping now and then to shake his fists at the heavens and to cuss God and the lightning, calling them some of the meanest, foulest names I've ever heard a mouth utter. The way that thunder rumbled and that lightning sizzled blue-white around Billy Bob, framing him now and then like a bright-colored picture, I half felt it was cussing and threatening him back.

  By the middle of next morning we got down out of the hills and back to Deadwood. The sun still hadn't come out.

  We collected the wagon, the mules, and Rot Toe, who smelled mighty sweet from all them women petting on him, and we got out of town lickety-split, started heading southwest, which was a direction that suited me fine.

  We hadn't gone a day out of that storm when Billy Bob decided to fix up some cracked sideboards in the wagon. He'd been putting it off for a month and there didn't seem any sense in it right then, but I think he did it to make light of what that medicine man had told him about them boards in Wild Bill's box being made out of sacred trees. He knew I'd told Albert the story, and he knew that Albert believed it, and I about half believed it, so he wanted to show us what fools we were.

  Like I said, we'd gotten ahead of the rain for a while, and had all been sitting on top of the wagon, trying to get us some sun, and suddenly Billy Bob had us pull over.

  Usually, any work to be done, me and Albert did it, but this time Billy Bob took it on himself He dragged the box with Wild Bill outside the wagon, propped the body against it, knocked out those old sideboards he wanted to replace, and put in some boards from Wild Bill's box.

  It took about half a day for him to get that done, as Billy Bob wasn't no joiner to speak of, and by the time he was finished and we were on our way, thunder was right behind us, rumbling loud, and when I turned to look back I got the willies, 'cause them dark storm clouds that were following us looked to have come together in the shape of Elijah's stovepipe hat.

  That was the day that storm started pushing for us, and it stayed after us from then on.

  A week or so later, we stopped in a little town to do our act, and Billy Bob had a joiner make a new box for Wild Bill. When that was done, he took the guns that were in Wild Bill's rotting sash out, cleaned them up, and put them in the corpse's bony hands, rigged up those hinges in the elbows and those wires that cocked the guns.

  And that's the true story of how we came by that body in the box, not the one Billy Bob was telling the crowd about a noble red man giving it to him because he was Hickok's son. I mean, his tale was a good story, all right, but it was nothing more than a damned lie.

  To get back-to this time in Mud Creek. Billy Bob told his story, then he went out to the clearing with everyone tagging along behind, and he did some shooting.

  And I mean shooting. I want to witness that I hadn't never seen him as good as he was that day. He split playing cards edgewise, like always, but now he was doing it from farther away. The same for when he held the mirror with one hand and shot over his shoulder with the other. And he hit nickels tossed in the air with either hand. Before he'd only done that kind of shooting with his right hand.

  To put it simply, the man could not miss.

  He even went as far as to strike a match with a shot, and I'd heard that was just an old wives' tale and couldn't be done. But he done it, and neatly.

  When next I looked out at the crowd, I seen Skinny had joined us. He still had on his apron. He was eating from a bag of peppermints, drooling it down his chin. His eyes looked like a couple of dark holes. It was kind of good to see the old boy.

  Then I seen something that made me considerably less happy.

  Blue Hat and Texas Jack.

  CHAPTER 5

  The way those two were smiling, I knew there was going to be trouble. They might as well have been waving flags. Texas Jack was grinning like what Billy Bob was doing was the silliest and easiest thing in the world, and wasn't it a damned shame that all those people were oohing and aahing over him so much.

  Blue Hat would look over at Texas Jack like it was all a big joke, then back at Billy Bob the same way. But I thought I could see a little something else in his face that he was trying not to give away. Surprise and pleasure.

  Next thing Billy Bob told the crowd he was going to do was a thing I'd never seen him do before, and I felt certain that he was about to go from star attraction to jackass. It was a shot I'd heard him talk about, one Wild Bill used to make, but it was something he'd never tried, not even in practice.

  He leaned over to Albert and said something, and Albert looked at him like he was crazy, then Billy Bob said, "Go on," loud enough that I could hear him, and Albert went back to the wagon.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Billy Bob said, "my father used to take a bottle with a cork in it, place it at thirty paces, and with a pistol shot, drive the cork into it and knock out the bottom of the bottle without breaking the neck. Never heard of no one else doing it, and I'd like to show you the spirits that guided my father now guide my hand."

  Albert came back with the bottle, walked off thirty paces and set it up, then he legged it back behind the line Billy Bob had drawn in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  Billy Bob, without so much as blinking an eye, drew his pistol—the left one, mind you—and without so much as aiming, fired.

  The shot drove the cork int
o the bottle and knocked out the bottom without breaking the neck.

  The crowd cheered, and I'll tell you, so did I.

  I reckon Texas Jack and Blue Hat didn't cheer, but they had their mouths open, and even when Jack got his cranked up, Blue Hat's stayed that way. Skinny dropped his bag of peppermints. It was a shot even an idiot could appreciate.

  "Well, that's some damn good trick shooting," Texas Jack called out.

  Billy Bob turned and looked in the direction of the voice. Texas Jack was elbowing his way through the crowd, and the crowd was stepping aside, fast.

  "Thank you, fella," Billy Bob said when Jack was up close. "Yeah," Jack said rubbing his chin, "that's about the best trick shooting I ever seen, except for Wild Bill himself."

  "You seen Wild Bill shoot?"

  "Yep, I did. Wasn't nobody could out-trick-shoot Wild Bill."

  Billy Bob smiled. "Reckon not."

  "But trick shooting isn't the same as facing' a man with a loaded gun. That's a whole nuther thing."

  The smile went off Billy Bob's face. "He proved he could do that too."

  "With drunks and yellow bellies. He wasn't so big when John Wesley Hardin backed him down."

  "That's just one of them stories," Billy Bob said.

  "And when I backed him down."

  "You?"

  "Yeah. Name's Texas Jack."

  For a long moment Billy Bob stared at Jack, looking for that Greek god he'd read about in them dime novels.

  Jack stared back, opened his coat, and showed Billy Bob the butt of that fancy pistol. I don't think Billy Bob even noticed the pistol. He was still trying to fit that face with the one described in the books, and he wasn't having any luck at it.

  Jack let his coat fall back over his gun, then he turned and shouldered his way back through the crowd. When he reached Blue Hat he said, "Just like his pa," then the two of them snickered their way toward the saloon.

  Billy Bob didn't even know he'd been called out; he was so amazed to see a dime-novel hero out walking around on two legs. But the truth of what happened slowly dawned on him. He turned to Albert and said, "Did that fella call me a coward?"