by Paul Bagdon
“No, it didn’t. But that’s funny—Gettysburg was right where I parted company with the Rebel Army. I heard about Lee’s plan to take that cemetery hill, and it was not only stupid, it was flat-out crazy. I grabbed me a good horse and lit out an’ never looked back.”
“Sounds like you’re proud to be a deserter.”
“I’m neither proud nor ashamed—neither one. It’s somethin’ that happened. I didn’t care to die there, so I left.”
I didn’t answer. I turned and walked out of the room leaving the door open. The bedlam in the saloon was more than I could take after my talk with Powers, so I walked on through and out the batwings, again followed by a cloud of smoke and stink.
Even outdoors there was cacophony in Gila Bend. I watched as two drunken thugs arranged a horse race down the length of the town. Several others stood around, money moving from one hand to another.
Both horses looked good—far better than the crowbait I’d seen Powers’s men riding. Both horses dug out from the start and were in a full gallop in three strides. They were evenly matched, and both appeared to have a ton of heart and desire to win this race. They passed me head-to-head and running hard—at least until one of the riders decided to better his odds a bit. He reached over, grabbed his opponent’s shirt, and dragged him off his horse.
Some of the crowd laughed and cheered; the men who’d bet on the fallen rider started swinging, gouging, and kicking. I’d read one time about sharks in a feeding frenzy and how they often tore pieces out of other sharks as well as their prey. That’s what this kick-ass looked like—a fighting frenzy. I watched for a few minutes, then headed back to my hotel. As I picked up my key at the desk, gunfire broke out on the street.
It was stiflingly hot in my room, and although the window was wide open, there was no breeze. I took off my boots, stretched out on my bed, and gave the last couple of days some thought—which led to some other thoughts and memories.
What the hell am I doing in this hellhole? Powers is just as likely to backshoot me as not. I could gather up my horse, ride out, dig up my money, and keep right on going. But I didn’t.
I guess I’ve always been like that. Any challenge—even a perceived challenge that was unstated but nevertheless there—was something I couldn’t refuse. I saw myself at age eleven getting my ass kicked around behind the schoolhouse by a sixteen-year-old farm boy who’d knocked my books out of my hand. I knew I didn’t have a chance against this kid, but I laid into him, and we did a lot of rolling around in the dirt cussin’ at each other until the kid’s size and strength took over. I had a hell of a shiner and a broken tooth, but I hadn’t backed down, and that was more important to me than a little pain.
I sighed aloud.
It was the same thing with the War of Northern Aggression. I was dead sure the South would go down: we were outnumbered, outgunned, out-supplied, and most of our officers had the soft hands of men who’d never chopped wood or followed a mule’s ass over acre after acre of land, keeping the plow blade steady and perfectly in line.
Most of the Northern troops were working men, mainly farmers. They were tough and hardy and their leaders were clever and intelligent. We won some skirmishes and some battles, too, but even when we did, the Yankees came after us. It was a losing proposition.
So why am I here in Gila Bend? There’d been no challenge. The town was a cesspool full of murderers, rapists, whores, gamblers, and general lunatics who liked the smell of blood. Why was I still here?
I sighed again and never did come up with an answer that made any sense.
I drifted off to sleep and awakened early. I had breakfast at the hotel restaurant and walked down to the livery to fetch my horse. He was looking good: the liveryman had polished him up real nice with a soft brush, and it was obvious he was feeding the animal well. I tacked up the horse and rode down the street and out of Gila Bend. The mercantile owner was just opening his place and a fat man, yawning hugely, was fitting a key to the door of the assay office.
My good bay horse was frisky in the relative cool of the morning. He cow-hopped a few times and shook his head, trying to get under the bit and burn off some of his excess energy. I let him play but easily kept him under control. I’d have liked to let him run for a mile or so, but the area was too heavy on prairie dog holes to risk it. Instead, I held him to a slow lope.
The land around Gila Bend isn’t what you’d call pretty. It’s rocky in some places and there are stands of scraggly desert pines, but for the most part, it’s a haven for rattlesnakes and prairie dogs and the critters they feed on. There’s nowhere near enough buffalo grass to keep weight on beef. But it’s quiet—that’s one thing it has going for it.
I’d been riding for half an hour or so when I turned in my saddle and looked behind me, a habit I developed long ago. I was putting a good bit of dust in the air, but so was the rider a mile or so behind me. The dust pointed at him like an accusing finger.
Since I had no particular destination in mind, I swerved sharply to my left and let my horse have a bit more rein. The rider behind me made the same turn, making it clear that he was doggin’ me rather than going somewhere. That made me kinda curious—and kinda nervous, too. If he was out after me, he’d been within rifle range, and if he was a decent shot, he’d have picked me off. Still, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I rode, and that’s not usually a good sign.
There was a group of trees around a little water hole not too far ahead. I scanned them carefully, seeking a specific type of branch. As soon as I saw it, I heeled my horse into a gallop, directly at the trees. We approached like a runaway locomotive. I kicked my boots out of my stirrups and tied my reins together. The branch was coming at me real fast, but I was ready.
After all, I had practiced this move with my boyhood pals hour after hour, getting quite proficient at it.
I had to reach a bit higher than I wanted to as my horse thundered under the limb, but I got both hands on it and let my own momentum swing me up until I was bent over it. I adjusted myself in a sitting position on the limb. The other rider came tear-assing after me and I dropped onto his back, taking both of us to the ground, with him absorbing most of the impact. It was Jacob, the fellow whose face I’d slammed against the bar the night before.
The wind had been knocked out of him, but I was fine. I scrambled away from him and stood, watching him trying to suck air.
“You don’t learn real fast,” I said, when he was finally breathing almost normally. His nose was bleeding again. After a bit, he stood.
“Powers send you, or you out here on your own?”
“Some of each,” he answered, his voice sounding like that of a man with a bad nose or a sinus infection or some damned thing. “Billy told me to follow you out—see where you was goin’. He said if I killed you, it wouldn’t break his heart, but that was up to me.”
I’d already moved my coat behind the grips of my Colt. “No good reason for you to die out here, boy,” I said, “and that’s what’s going to happen if you draw on me.”
The damned fool had already set himself in what he thought was a good gunfighting position, his body turned slightly sideways, one boot a foot behind the other. I watched his eyes. When they told me he was going to make his move, I let him get ahold of his pistol and then I drew and shot him three times center-chest. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.
I walked out to fetch my horse. He’d never given me any trouble in walking up to him in a pasture, and I didn’t expect any now. I was right; he was cropping grass a couple hundred yards beyond the trees. I climbed on, and we fetched the young fellow’s horse and went back to where the corpse lay. He had a rope on his saddle, which made things easier for me. I hefted him across the seat of his saddle, arms hanging on one side, legs on the other. I tied him down nice and tight with his lariat, mounted my horse, and took the reins to the other. He followed docilely enough as we headed back to Gila Bend. I dropped his reins when we were a mile or so out. He slowe
d a bit but continued to follow. I figured he had a stall somewhere in town, and that’s where he’d head. I stopped and when the corpse-burdened horse drew up next to us I gave him a sound whack on the rump and he picked up his pace to his home—wherever that may have been.
It was still early when I turned my horse back into the livery and headed for a saloon. All that time out in the sun, breathing more dust than air, had given me a powerful thirst.
There were only a few hard-core drinkers at the bar at that time of the morning, but there were a couple of poker games going on at the tables. The men playing cards looked like they’d been there at least all night: they were red-eyed, their voices crusty with endless cigars and cigarettes, and they were totally silent as they played.
All of them looked at me as I came in, and then, instead of looking away, they held their eyes on me. Jacob’s horse had apparently gotten to town, just as I expected him to.
“Beer,” I said to the bartender.
He fiddled nervously with the bar rag in his hands. “Look, maybe it’d be good for you to go across the street or to one of the other saloons,” he said.
Well, hell. “Beer,” I repeated, a bit more force-fully.
The ‘tender drew a schooner, used his flat stick to whisk the excess foam and set the drink in front of me. He started to turn away.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You got some trouble with me, not wanting me to drink in your joint?”
He turned back, his face reddening. “Goddamn right,” he said. “Sending Billy’s man back over his saddle is gonna cause some trouble. I don’t want that trouble here. I lose enough goddamn money giving booze and beer away to Powers’s boys.”
“Why do you do it, then?”
The bartender shook his head in disgust. I didn’t know if it was my question that brought about his displeasure or the admission he’d just made. Maybe it was a combination of the two.
“You think I got a choice? I ain’t. When Powers first came to Gila Bend he demanded free drinks for him an’ his men down to the joint on the corner by the empty lot. The ‘tender—a friend of mine—told Billy to go to hell.” He poured himself a shot and dumped it down.
“We found that bartender hanging from a limb on the tree near where the church used to be before it was burned. They’d strung him up and then used him for target practice. There wasn’t a whole lot left of him.”
I nodded. The barkeep went to the far end of his bar, putting as much distance as he could between us. I finished my beer and called for another. He fetched it quickly, put it in front of me, grabbed the empty mug, and damn near ran to the far end of the bar.
I heard the batwings open but didn’t need to look up to see who was coming in. The looks on the faces of all the others there answered that question for me. I eased my coat behind the grips of my Colt and turned.
Billy Powers was wearing that same ridiculous white suit. He stood there, maybe fifteen feet away, motionless, not speaking, his eyes hard—like those of a snake that’d backed its prey into a corner. We held eye contact for a long time. I took a half step away from the bar.
After a long, long moment, Powers strode over to stand next to me. He motioned to the ‘tender, who set a bottle and a shot glass on the bar. Powers poured, drank, and poured again. I’d turned to face him.
He went through some facial contortions and then he laughed—hard and long. “Goddamn,” he said. “You got a set of eggs on you sendin’ my boy back over his saddle.”
I watched Powers’s right hand as he spoke and laughed and snorted.
I saw in Dodge City not more than a couple of years ago a laughing, apparently drunk man put his right arm over the shoulders of a man who had been an enemy for years. The jolly fellow had a stiletto up his sleeve and he used it like a surgeon, reaching his hand around to quickly and quite easily slash the neck of the other man. He’d laughed as he saw his enemy’s life spilling out his throat.
Powers eventually settled down. He leaned over the bar, picked up a shot glass and put it in front of me, then reached for the bottle.
I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“C’mon, Pound. A little morning bracer is good for the heart an’ bowels an’ so forth.”
So is a morning .45 slug.
“No thanks,” I said again.
“I’ll be damned if you ain’t a strange one,” Powers said. “You don’t want to ride with me an’ my boys, you ain’t played no cards, you sure as hell ain’t no miner, an’ you haven’t mounted a single whore. An’ on top of that all you gunned one of my men and rode on back to town like you was out picking daisies for your ma. What the hell you doin’ here?”
Good question: what the hell am I doing here?
“Someone real soon would have fed lead to your Jacob—if not me, then someone else. I’m afraid the dumb sumbitch has been reading too many of them dime novels. An’ why am I here? Well, I’ll tell you, Billy Powers—simply ‘cause I want to be. When I don’t want to be here any longer, I’ll ride out and go on my way.”
Powers was no longer playing the congenial buffoon. His face was tight. “You know,” he said, “one day you an’ me is goin’ at it—one to one.”
I grinned. “Could well be, Billy, but not right now, not on this day. This beer is tastin’ awfully good. Maybe one day we’ll have somethin’ to battle over, but not now.”
“You pulling the cork on one of my men ain’t somethin’ to battle about?”
I shook my head. “No. Maybe if he was your ramrod or had some value in your crew but not Jacob. I just happened to be the first in line to take out the mouthy little bastard.”
“I can’t argue that—the kid ran his mouth a lot. But still, you gunned one of my men.”
“True. I did just that.”
“I can’t let that go by, Pound.”
“OK,” I said, as I set my mug on the bar. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Powers seemed to think it over. “Even if you got real lucky and took me down, my men would…”
“Let’s cut the shit,” I said. “The scum you ride with are along for the free booze, the power, the free whores, all that. I doubt there’s one of them who’d come to me after I killed you, or even give a damn. No?”
“Maybe. Thing is, you think can beat me, drop me. You’re wrong.”
My old way of moving my coat behind my holster kicked in like a bad habit. “No, Billy,” I said. “You can’t beat me. You can beat your whores, you can beat the folks who live in Gila Bend, and you can beat the scum and losers you ride with. But you got no more chance of walking away from a gunfight with me than you do jumpin’ over the godddam moon.”
Powers finished his drink and left the saloon. After a minute or so, the poker games picked up where they’d left off, and a couple of drifter types came in and stood at the bar. It was, once again, business as usual.
I was still a little antsy, and I continued my walk around Gila Bend. All in all, it didn’t seem like a bad town. If Powers could be eliminated, the town would probably grow, get a school, more businesses, all that. I turned into the mercantile. A fussy little baldheaded fellow hustled over and asked if I needed help finding anything. I told him I didn’t; I was just looking.
There’s something about a mercantile that’s always appealed to me. It could be the scent. The smells of good, oiled leather; the steely metallic farm tools and plows; the barrels of apples; the bolts of cloth; and even the penny candy mixed in the air in a pleasant, comfortable cloud.
The store was well-equipped. I stood in front of the handgun case and looked over the stock, noting that there was no army junk for sale; Colt predominated. The saddles were fine ones, with precise stitching, assembled from excellent-grade leather that gave off the scent of neat’s-foot oil. The prices were somewhat dear, but the saddles were a type that would outlast a man—even a young man—if he took decent care of it.
I took an apple from the barrel and munched as I walked up and down the aisles. Finally, after se
eing everything, I went over to the counter. There was a glass jar of cheroots on display, and I took a couple.
“How much do I owe you?” I asked the nervous storekeeper.
He looked surprised. “Oh! I thought you were…well, anyway, that’ll be twelve cents.”
I paid and went back out onto the street. There was a wagon parked in front at the hitching rail; I fed the core of the apple to the horse.
I walked a bit farther after the mercantile and found myself in front of the burned-out shell of the sheriff’s office. The door was hanging from one hinge. I pushed it lightly with my boot, and it collapsed inward with what sounded like a sigh of relief. It was safe enough to walk into the place since there was no chance of falling through the floor. It didn’t have a floor as such; it’d been on leveled ground.
The office was as much a mass of charred wood and papers as it was the first time I’d seen it. There were a bunch of brass cartridge casings on the floor. Whoever was defending the office didn’t go down easy or without a big fight—that was clear.
There was a group of Wanted posters on the floor, and on some of them parts of the text were still legible. I paged through them and was somewhat disappointed when I didn’t find one that cited me.
It was a good goddamn shame about the tipped and burned rolltop desk. It was easy to see that it was once a quality piece, with the wood dovetailed rather than nailed or glued.
I often think that if I hadn’t become a teacher, a drunk, and a bank robber, I might have gone into carpentry and furniture making. There’s a very real something powerful and good that clings to a quality piece of work, be it a chair or desk or table or barn, that holds to the product and will do so until it’s destroyed.
There’s a simple beauty in the work, too: the cutting, the sanding, the joining of parts are straightforward, and the maker always puts his name somewhere on the finished piece. A bank robber or a killer doesn’t sign his work.