by Clark Casey
“By God, you backed ’em all down!” I said.
“Guess so.” Buddy said plainly.
“I ain’t never seen no one back down seven men before.”
“Ah, half them was just sodbusters. Probably couldn’t shoot worth a piss anyhow.”
“I don’t expect that’ll be the end of it,” Sal warned. “A man can’t last long in Damnation after getting backed down in front of half the town.”
“Suppose not.” Buddy smiled, sounding almost cheerful about the prospect.
Just then Red burst through the door with two pistols already drawn and firing in our direction. He must’ve given his boys a pep talk because all six of them were lined up single file right behind him. The second man’s Winchester leveled over his shoulder and the other five pistols were waving in the air, trying to take aim on Buddy. Looked like a many-armed God of guns coming at us. A bullet struck the faro dealer in the face and he fell, spilling chips and cards on the ground.
I dove to the floorboards and crawled beneath a table for cover. Much as I wished I was the courageous sort, I found myself better suited for dodging fights. Whenever any action started, I prayed for it to be over as soon as possible. I’d shot my share of men who came at me head on—one every month or so when I first arrived. But eventually I learned it was easier to let the troublemakers sort each another out.
There was a pause in the gunfire, so I lifted my face from the sawdust to see if Buddy had been shot, along with the faro dealer. A cowpuncher was lying beside me with a fresh bullet hole in his head just beside an older one, but Buddy was nowhere to be seen. Then I looked up to see a strange sight. Instead of following the conventional wisdom of ducking from the hail of bullets, the chubby gunslinger was standing straight up and turned sideways to make himself a wee bit narrower. His belly still hung out, but he was less of a target. The bullets whizzed by him. One struck the chandelier, and the room dimmed, leaving just a few candles to see by.
Buddy calmly raised his pistol and fired, striking Red just above his heart. As he fell, Buddy was already adjusting his aim on the heart of the man behind him. This time he struck the fella right in the ticker. One after another, they dropped to reveal the man behind them, like they were all lined up to go to hell. If Red had cleared the doorway and let the others take aim before he began shooting, it might have been a different story. As the sixth man dropped, Buddy drew his other pistol and shot the seventh man in the forehead. The heap of bodies blocked the door, and nobody could get in or out. Without wasting a second, Buddy reloaded both guns. It was the only thing Buddy was diligent about. Putting off reloading for even a sip of whiskey could leave him clicking empty in the next gunfight.
“By golly, you got a new record now!” I told him.
“Guess so.” Buddy shrugged.
A moan came from within the pile of shot-up Irishmen. Among the dead limbs, a pale freckled hand stirred. The poor bastard wouldn’t shut up, so we lifted the corpses off him one by one. They were heavier than wet sacks of grain. As luck would have it, the moaning man who was still clinging to the afterlife lay at the very bottom. A bullet had pierced Red’s shoulder but it wasn’t anything he’d bleed out from.
“Better kill him now if you wanna sleep sound tonight,” Sal advised. “When he heals up, he’s sure to come at you again.”
“Nah,” Buddy said, slapping his pistol lazily into his holster. “I like having somethin’ to look forward to.”
Chapter 5
Jams O’Donnell
“You sure ask a lot of questions,” Ms. Parker told me between bites. Her plate was piled high with scrambled eggs and bacon strips. There wasn’t any toast on account of no wheat grew in Damnation.
Now and again, supplies rolled in on wagons with dead men at the reins. Sometimes, there were beer kegs or whiskey barrels in the back. After the drivers got shot up by bandits or Indians, they came through the dust cloud with their goods still intact. But mostly we just ate the dead animals that wandered down the road. If you were a vegetarian in Damnation, it wouldn’t be worth it to shoot you since you’d already be in hell.
“I used to work for a newspaper before I died,” I told her. “Now I write The Crapper to kill time—pardon my language. I get a nickel a piece. I ain’t much of a card player, so it pays for my drinks. Also gives me a reason to talk to folks and see how they’re getting along.”
“Well, I’m getting along fine,” she said cheerfully. “Damnation’s not such a bad place once you get used to it. Where else can a girl wear her wedding dress every day? And I can eat as much as I like—though I might not fit into my dress soon.” She patted her belly. Breakfast was a never-ending plate. Sal kept piling on the food till you pushed it aside. Ms. Parker put away two full plates without letting up. “Henry loved bacon,” she said. “He would have liked it here. Aside from all the shooting, of course.”
Ms. Parker had put on some weight since she’d arrived, which was unusual. Folks didn’t change much in Damnation. Of course, women didn’t usually last long enough to tell. And nobody’d ever seen a small-framed girl like her put away so much food.
“How did you get into the newspaper business, Mister…?”
“Just call me Thomas, ma’am,” I said. “My mother was a school teacher and my father raised steer. I broke my leg falling off a horse when I was a boy and it didn’t mend proper. That’s how come I got this limp. Wasn’t much work for a crippled cowhand and I was pretty good with my letters, so I guess you could say I fell into the business. My grammar ain’t what you’d call top notch. I just say it how I see it, ma’am, but I can put a bit of flourish into my words when I’m moved to.”
“So how did you, um, end up here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No, I don’t mind, ma’am. I’ve done bad things. Ain’t gonna deny it. I worked for a newspaper in the Dakota Territory that was owned by a man named George Hearst.”
“The senator?”
“Did he become a senator? Well, he ran a mining company when I was still alive. They were prospecting in the Black Hills and found some gold—only a lot of it was on land Mr. Hearst didn’t own. He told me to report that the Indians were coming back and the homesteaders should all clear out. I rightly refused to do it. Instead, I reported that the army had the Indians on the run and Mr. Hearst had a keen interest in the land. In response, he sent some gunhands out to scare the homesteaders off. They probably would have left, too, if I hadn’t already told them their land was worth fighting for.
“When Hearst couldn’t scare them off, he sent some real rough men up there and they killed all the homesteaders. Butchered five families and made it look like the Indians done it. Then Hearst bought the newspaper I worked for and said I could write up the story his way or find another job—if I made it out of town alive. Well, I wrote it up like he told me, blamed the Sioux even though there wasn’t no Sioux within a hundred miles.”
“You didn’t?” Ms. Parker gasped.
“I did and I got what I had coming to me for it,” I said. “A couple of years later, a young man no more than sixteen came into my office. Said he had survived the slaughter of the homesteaders out in the Black Hills. He was confused because first I told his parents to stay put since the Indians weren’t coming. Then after his family was killed by white men, he found out I blamed it on the Indians. He asked me for an explanation, and when I could not provide a satisfactory one, he gut-shot me.” I lifted my vest to show her the hole in my shirt that went straight through my belly.
“I died there on the floor of the newspaper office. Can’t really blame the boy though. Hearst had already left town by then. If he did become a senator, I guess the kid never caught up with him.”
“I don’t see why you should end up here.” Ms. Parker started working herself into a tizzy. “You had no choice! It was all Mr. Hearst’s doing.” It must have reminded her of her own straits and how she
wasn’t to blame neither. I’d already had plenty of time to consider why I ended up where I was though.
“I reckon it was on account I told people to take a stand, but I never did so myself,” I explained. “I got a nice raise from Mr. Hearst for writing them stories and I never tried to leave town. I wrote lots of things he told me to that weren’t true.” Ms. Parker stirred her eggs with her fork, trying not to judge me too hard nor show disapproval. “But if I had it to do over again,” I added, “I’d just shoot the sumabitch the first time I laid eyes on him—pardon my language, ma’am.”
“And you would be right in doing so,” she agreed. “Some people don’t deserve to be born in the first place, and it’s no sin in seeing to it that they don’t harm anybody else.”
“Interestin’ way of looking at things, ma’am.”
“So I heard you think it’s possible to get to heaven by refraining from shooting anyone.”
“Ain’t me that come up with it, but I suppose it helps to believe something.”
“And you’re the only man in town who doesn’t carry a gun because of this belief?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s beyond me how nobody has managed to test this theory by now.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“There ain’t been many women who lasted long enough to try, ma’am. As you may have noticed, the men here usually ain’t much concerned with the long term, being as how they’re more preoccupied with the day to day.”
“Well, I’ve never carried a gun in my life,” she said. “And I don’t intend on doing so now. So if I do last a year in this place, you can rest assured I won’t have shot anyone. Then you’ll know if it really gets you into heaven.”
“I can appreciate your conviction, ma’am, but a man such as myself has less to protect than a lady such as yourself. Plainly speaking, I ain’t got nothing these fellas want, but a lot of them ain’t had relations with a woman in a long time—if ever.” I nodded to the wily-eyed cretin at the end of the bar who was openly gawking at Ms. Parker. When I interviewed him a few months back, I learned that he had worked in a slaughterhouse and died from an infection after a chicken pecked his hand. I wrote it up in The Crapper and folks started calling him the Chicken Choker. He seemed to begrudge me personally for the nickname. A man like that didn’t have nothing to lose. Even with Buddy looking out for Ms. Parker, he’d try to have his way with her the first time he caught her alone.
“It’d be advisable for you to take some precautions,” I warned her, “in case you ever have to defend yourself at close range.” I lifted the wood-handled steak knife from her table setting, wiped its blade on my handkerchief, and handed it to her beneath the bar. “There are worse predicaments for you to worry about than prolonging your stay.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped the knife into a small handbag she had fashioned from old linens. The vampire walked into the saloon just then and sidled up to the bar. He ordered a cup of coffee but then caught sight of Ms. Parker. His fangs showed and he made an angry hissing noise, then walked straight out. Ms. Parker was nearly brought to tears.
“Now why’s he gotta do that?” she asked. “I didn’t do anything to him.”
“Ah, he’s just grumpy. Don’t worry about him, ma’am. He don’t usually bother no one ’less they bother him first.”
“Seems like every time I walk into a room, he storms out. And if he comes in and sees me, he flashes his fangs like that.”
As the vampire was walking out the door, Buddy happened to be coming in. Still groggy from the night before, he didn’t even bother looking up and their shoulders crashed directly into each other. The whole room silenced, waiting for blood to spill. Although the vampire had a much smaller build, the run-in didn’t cause him to budge an inch. He stood dead in his tracks, looking curiously at the pudgy gunslinger. Buddy was wiping the sleep from his eyes and muttered politely, “Oh, excuse me there, fella.” It was as close to surprised as I’d ever seen the vampire. One eyebrow dipped in confusion, then he continued on his way.
“I’ll be!” Sal remarked. “Seen a heap of men torn up for less.”
“A lot less,” Fat Wally conferred.
“Why you reckon he let Buddy go then?” Stumpy asked.
“Seemed like he just didn’t want to be delayed from leaving,” I said.
Buddy moseyed to the bar, still in the cloud of his hangover and entirely unaware of how close he had come to never eating breakfast again. “Hen fruit over easy and a whiskey,” he called out. “Make it a double.”
He must’ve been used to the bite of strong drink first thing in the morning because the first sip didn’t cause him to wince. Likely, he’d been a bachelor all his life, with no steady work or a sweetheart to keep him from doing whatever he wanted. Ms. Parker went over to thank him for coming to her rescue against Red. He flushed while fumbling to take off his hat and brush the crumbs from his mustache, not sure how to comport himself around a lady. He kept bowing like Ms. Parker was the Queen of England.
After breakfast, they played poker together. Buddy tried to give her some tips, but she already knew what she was doing. In fact, she had more of a knack for the game than he did, since she never got frustrated and threw away money on mediocre hands. Also, she always seemed to know if a fella was bluffing. Her winnings would be plenty to keep her fed and housed. She could keep the room in the hotel beside Buddy, and just below the vampire.
“I don’t suppose any man’s gonna get fresh with her now that Buddy’s taken a shine to her,” I said.
“Maybe not.” Sal replied. “But there’s more to worry about in Damnation than just men.”
Suddenly, Old Moe burst through the door. He’d been in town the longest by quite a spell and had seen every kind of dead outlaw. It was surprising to see him move so hurried. “You fellas gotta see this!” he hollered. “Hurry up’n get outside!”
Knowing that Moe didn’t impress easily, we all quick-footed it out to the road. I expected to see the gunfight of all gunfights going on, but there was nothing except for a few tumbleweeds blowing around. Moe stood on the boardwalk, pointing up at the sky. “Lookie there!”
The same old dreary gray blanket was hovering above with ashen yellow swirls and specks of violet. Then a flickering of light brightened within it, showing some depth to the sky. For the first time, you could see there was something beyond the cloud cover. There were layers. And still more layers beyond that. Must’ve been some ten seconds later when a low rumble sounded in the distance. The sound wasn’t just above us. It was far afield, stretching beyond the dust cloud border surrounding Damnation.
Those who hadn’t followed Moe outside now came to investigate the noise. For a moment, it was like I was back on my pappy’s porch, watching a storm brewing in the distance, counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder to figure out how many miles away the storm was, and how much time there’d be to batten down the hatches and secure the livestock.
“Ever seen anything like that before?” I asked Moe.
“As long as I been looking up at that rotten muck of a sky, there ain’t been a peep or a blink. Just the same old scraps of a dead sun.”
“What ya suppose it means?” Sneaky Jim asked from the doorway. It had been enough of a spectacle to interrupt his prime sip-thieving time.
“Maybe it’s God,” Red slurred drunkenly. He hadn’t gathered the nerve to go up against Buddy yet. Kept saying he would as soon as he sobered up. To avoid it, he started drinking first thing when he woke and didn’t stop till he passed out.
“Yeah,” Fat Wally added. “He knows Tom’s got his sights on heaven. Wants to let him know the inn’s all filled up.” Everyone laughed, grateful for a distraction from all the seriousness. All except the Chicken Choker, who’d been eyeing Ms. Parker. Now his crazy eyes were locked on me. It was the first time he heard I had my sights set on heaven, and it
rubbed him the wrong way.
“What ya think yer better’n us, pencil pusher?” he hollered drunkenly.
“Easy there, Choke,” Sal said. “Don’t go misinterpretin’ those flashes in the sky for your own brilliance.”
“No! I say if Tom don’t wanna be here, we should send him off today!” He pulled a pistol from his hip to gesture with. With a nickname like Chicken Choker, there was little chance of him lasting more than a few months. Too easy for folks to pick on him and draw him into a fight. He didn’t have the speed to win many draws. It was plain dumb luck that he’d managed to stay north of hell this long. But if he shot someone of note for no good reason, the story might give folks pause before they pulled on him. Could extend his stay some.
“Gunfight!” one of the cowboys called out. Some others joined in on the chant. The thunder had attracted a good-sized crowd from the rooming house, and they were all itching for some entertainment. As much as Sal or Buddy might’ve wanted to step in, it was past the point where they could.
“He ain’t heeled!” a high-pitched voice screeched from the crowd. Ms. Parker was standing on her tippy-toes just beyond the Chicken Choker’s shoulder. Her pale cheeks reddened in protest.
“Well, he shoulda got heeled before he done put himself up above the rest of us,” Choke said and raised his gun.
With my bad leg, he was well beyond the range where I could’ve rushed him. All I could do was take the bullet calmly and not go out like that newbie Fre who had bawled his eyes out. As the barrel leveled a flash of white suddenly sprang out from the crowd like a cloudburst. Choke got knocked down just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the ground, and he tumbled over in the dust. There was a wood-handled knife buried in his back. The bundle of white rolled over as well, and I could see it was Ms. Parker who had delivered the blade.
The Crapper
Comings: Ms. Sally Parker of Peoria, Illinois, joined us after an unfortunate incident that I will briefly relate here, once and for all, so everyone can stop pestering her about it. She was put in a compromising position by a man her father had owed money. Her fiancé, a luckless and no doubt regretful man named Henry, mistook the situation and ran off before she could explain. Ms. Parker bravely fought off her assailant, wounding him with a knitting needle. Seeing as how she had lost her sweetheart and her family’s farm in the same day, Ms. Parker fell into despair and took her own life by drowning. Sadly, she was with child at the time. Please do your best to make the young lady feel welcome. There are six men who recently left town that probably wish they had done so.