by Lon Williams
“No.”
“A play, Lee. Imagine!”
“Hmmm,” he mused. He remembered a stagecoach of loonies in bright clothes of past centuries. “What’s this play called?”
“Cavaliers and Roundheads.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Well, collar that!”
“Why? Have you seen it somewhere?”
“No, but I’ve seen them that’s in it.”
“Really? What did they look like?”
“Like Cavaliers and Roundheads.”
“Now, Lee!”
“Well, did you expect them to look like barn owls, prairie dogs, or something?”
“Of course not. I was merely thinking of their beautiful costumes and how I would love to be in a play”
Winters lifted his eyebrows. A vision of Wadsworth Jefferson Heath formed in his disturbed mind. “Myra, was there ever any crazy people in your family?”
“Lee, you should be ashamed.”
He passed his cup for more coffee.
“As Doc Bogannon would say, my humble apology. Reason I asked was, there’s been no cuckoos in my family except one of ma’s uncles by marriage. He was an actor.”
“Actors are not crazy,” insisted Myra. “They’re just different.”
“Ummm,” said Winters. “Anyhow, after supper I want you to read me some more about Cavaliers and Roundheads. Did they have a song that went, Boot, saddle, to horse and away?”
“Certainly. It was a song of Prince Rupert’s cavalry. Rupert was with King Charles, hence a Cavalier.”
* * * *
When supper and dishes were over, Winters replenished their fire and listened to Myra’s reading. He had, he’d discovered, an extremely imaginative mind. When Myra read of battles, like Naseby and Marston Moor, he visualized great numbers of men, horses, guns, swords, and noise and smoke of war. Mention of victory brought up scenes of chaotic flight, with pursuers cutting men down without mercy. And when she read about King Charles having his head chopped off, he verily saw it fall and heard it thump, so excited was his imagination.
“What a clumsy way to die!” he exclaimed. “What a beastly way to treat a king!” exclaimed Myra.
As she continued her reading, Winters grew drowsy. Her history recounted other beheadings, and in his mind he saw heads falling and rolling down a chute. He began to dream, and then he saw a head that looked like his own. It had bounced, and now it rolled—a head with dark, curly hair and a smoky, drooping mustache. He grabbed it as it was about to get away and set it back on his shoulders.
He heard Myra’s voice. “Lee, wake up. And why have you got your hands on your head like that?”
His eyes popped open. He stared around and blinked. “I guess I was scared I might lose it.”
“No wonder, after all that reading,” said Myra. “Anyhow, it’s bedtime.”
For three days thereafter Winters pursued his trade of hunting down wanted monkeys. On his latest excursion he went as far as a hideout at Lost Creek Junction on Brazerville Road, but all he saw was a flock of buzzards wheeling low over canyon country toward Lost Creek. As he wasn’t looking for anything dead, he turned back and arrived at Doc Bogannon’s saloon two hours after dark.
“Winters!” exclaimed Bogie, as his batwings swung in.
Winters strode up in good spirits and spun a coin. “Wine, Doc.”
Bogie grabbed a bottle. While he poured, Winters took a quick glance around. What he saw made his eyebrows fly up.
“Winters,” said Bogie, “meet a collection of gentlemen out of storybook land. Sir Thomas Fairfax, commander of Parliament’s New Model Army; Oliver Cromwell, his second in command; his Excellency, Lord Mayor of London, along with supernumeraries and various and sundry ghosts.” Winters looked them over coolly. “Yeah,” he said. “Play-actors, I hear.”
“You are so right,” said Fairfax.
“And you’re going to put on a play in Forlorn Gap,” Winters said dryly.
“Right again,” said Cromwell.
“Then why don’t you?” said Winters.
“Ah,” said Bogie, “they can’t.”
“No?” said Winters.
“No, Winters. They need somebody to play King Charles.” Bogie poured himself a small drink and wiped his spacious forehead. “They’ve been insisting that I would make a fine King Charles.”
“He would,” said Cromwell; “I don’t know when we’ve cut off a finer head.”
Bogie gulped and spewed wine from his nose. “That’s it!” he wheezed. Then he fell to coughing. When he was through, somebody yelled for whiskey. “Coming,” he responded.
Winters emptied his own glass and set it down. When he faced around again, Sir Thomas Fairfax was gazing at him.
“Oliver, we’ve found him.”
“Found him?”
“A new King Charles.”
“You mean Officer Winters?”
“I mean none other. With a powdered wig, powdered whiskers, a long coat and ruffled shirt, he would make an excellent Charles.”
Cromwell rested his chin on his right fist and scowled. “I don’t know about that, Sir Thomas; we need an actor who can strike a pose.”
“A regal pose, you mean.”
“Yes, a regal pose.”
“But after a rehearsal, he might surprise you.”
“Yeah,” said Winters. “I just might.”
“You mean you will join us?” said Fairfax.
“Why not?” said Winters; “I’ve nothing to lose but one head.”
“Hooray!” shouted a ghost. “Our numbers increase.”
They surrounded Winters and went gaily out, followed by London’s Lord Mayor with a half-empty wine bottle.
Doc Bogannon saw them leaving and rushed back from waiting on customers. “Winters!” He ran outside. “Winters!”
But they were piling into a stagecoach. Its driver swung his whip, and coach, horses and actors rumbled away.
Bogie yelled, “Winters, come back!”
But they kept going. Within these past few minutes, Bogie himself had passed through an onset of flattery and persuasion. Those actors had been fascinated by his head, had remarked on what an excellent one it would be for purposes of execution. Now he believed they’d meant it. He remembered a pompous Wadsworth Jefferson Heath who had gone with them and failed to return. There’d been a shouting, ranting reformer who’d come into his saloon and preached a sermon; he, too, had gone to act as King Charles. They had Winters this time. They’d cut his head off, too.
Bogie wiped his face on his apron, shook his head and went back inside. He could never tell Lee Winters anything.
Winters, packed into a coach with whooping, singing lunatics, regretted his failure to heed Doc’s warning. He was more a prisoner than a fellow trouper. These monkeys in gay clothes were too happy to suit him. In his opinion, they were a bunch of killers—homicidal maniacs who’d escaped from some prison.
At Forlorn Gap’s abandoned theater they tumbled out and rushed in to do their rehearsal. They swept Winters along in their rush. London’s Lord Mayor tried to hoist Winters’ six-gun but got his knuckles cracked by Winters’ hard fist.
Winters found a stage already set, with chopping block and accessories. Sir Thomas Fairfax handed him a book.
“You have only one line, King Charles.” He indicated with a finger. “There’s where it is. You ask permission to speak, but you are told that having been sentenced to die you are already dead in law and may not speak. Then you lay your head on Brodswig’s execution block and have it cut off. Of course, this block is fixed so it only looks like your head is being cut off. Actually, he only cuts a string and a lead ball drops behind a screen. Ready?”
Winters backed against a wall. “No. I never learn nothin’ except by first watching how somebody else does it. You go ahead and show me.”
“What!” exclaimed Fairfax. “Me? Have my head cut off?”
“Of course, it won’t actually be cut o
ff,” said Winters.
Fairfax turned to his second in command. “Oliver, you will have to show him how it’s done. He says he learns only by example.”
“Who?” said Cromwell. “You mean I’m to play King Charles?”
“Oh, no,” said Fairfax. “You are going through his act, so Winters can see how it’s done. In fact, as your superior officer, I order you to.”
London’s Lord Mayor stepped forward. “My dear sirs, you forget history. It is Grumble who rises to ascendency and lords it over England. I say it is Fairfax who should demonstrate.”
Fairfax and Cromwell rubbed their chins. They looked at London’s Lord Mayor, then at each other. They conversed with their eyes, and nodded.
“Correct,” said Fairfax. “It is London’s Lord Mayor who shall show our new King Charles how his role should be played.”
Winters looked on while men with drawn swords used persuasion. Their protesting Lord Mayor at last yielded. When all was in readiness, Fairfax read his death warrant and headsman Brodswig swung his axe.
Winters’ eyes almost popped from their sockets. “Why you murderers!” he shouted. “You did cut his head off.” He whipped out his six-gun. “You’re all under arrest.”
Fairfax looked at Cromwell.
A ghost cried, “Boot, saddle, to horse and away!”
They fled then like scared rabbits, presenting only their backs as targets. Winters, dumbfounded, watched them run; he’d never been able to shoot at a man’s back. Within seconds they were gone. He heard their stage driver yell and crack his whip. Thudding hoofs and rumbling wheels sped northward into Pangborn Road.
Winters recovered from his trancelike astonishment and paralysis, holstered his gun, took one parting look at London’s decapitated Lord Mayor, and set out afoot for Bogannon’s saloon. He’d left his horse there, tied to Bogie’s hitch rail.
* * * *
Doc Bogannon was behind his bar, uneasily polishing glasses. He looked up when his batwings swung in; his face lost its gloom. “Winters!”
Winters strode up and eased down a coin. “Wine.”
Bogie filled a glass. “Winters, you look sort of quiet. Maybe you don’t like being an actor.”
“Yeah, Doc. Maybe I don’t.”
Bogie put down his bottle and snapped his finger. “My apology, Winters; there’s a letter for you. Came today.” He handed Winters a long envelope postmarked Brazerville. “From Marshal Hugo Landers, no doubt.”
Winters stared at it, then opened it and read, Dear Winters: A theatrical troupe playing Cavaliers and Roundheads at Lost Creek have been murdered between Lost Creek and Lost Creek Junction. Their naked bodies were found in a pile, most eat up by buzzards. A gang of loonies are under suspicion. Watch for them. Yours truly, Hugo Landers, Marshal.
He handed Hugo’s letter to Bogie. “Read it, Doc”
Bogie read silently. Suddenly sweat popped on his face. “Winters! They were here—right here.”
“Yeah,” said Winters, taking his letter back. “As I remember, they wanted to make you a king.”
Bogie ran a finger around his collar, which had grown uncomfortable. “Scares me to think about it.”
Winters emptied his glass and backhanded his mustache. He stared at Bogie’s neck and grinned. “Opportunities like that don’t come often, Doc. And you’d have made such a fine King Charles.”
THE WATER CARRIERS
Real Western Stories, August 1956
Deputy Marshal Lee Winters rode leisurely down Forlorn Gap’s silent main street, in dread of a letter he hoped had not come. Lately his mind had been troubled by a sense of impending peril. Sooner or later, he reflected gloomily, a crisis would come from whose fatal decision he could not escape. Myra’s books inspired in him nightmarish thoughts; even more disturbing were Forlorn Gap’s empty, gaping houses, eerie noises and pervading loneliness. It seemed to him—especially when he rode alone— that he lived in a world where he did not belong, or in a time long departed.
This feeling of unreality sometimes made him think that possibly he had already died before some wanted monkey’s smoking gun, and rode now as a ghost of his former self. Possessed as he was of a surprisingly imaginative mind, strange creatures haunted him when he was alone with his thoughts. Unusual excitement—particularly that caused by singing lead from a badman’s gun—tended to carry him as an aftermath into regions of fantasy. There he had strange company, especially of a kind described in his wife’s stories. Some of these were pagan divinities. Some were human. Others were odd mixtures, unheard of except in legend.
But Doc Bogannon’s saloon looked familiar. When he hitched his horse Cannon Ball and strode in, Bogie’s greeting sounded as real as it had ever done before. “Winters! You’re early, Winters, but come in and welcome.”
Bogannon was large and intellectual in appearance. In contrast to Winters’ wiry, weather-beaten, unimpressive stature, Doc looked like a statesman too soon retired from leadership and momentous councils. In Forlorn Gap he lived with a half-breed Shoshone wife, and operated this one remaining saloon as his only visible means of support. His past was his own secret, which he kept even from his trusted friend Winters.
Lee dropped into a chair by a table. “Wine, Doc, and I hope that’s all you’ve got for me.”
“Wine it is, Winters,” Bogie responded sadly; “otherwise, however, I must disappoint you.” He came around with a bottle and two glasses. As he poured wine, he dropped an envelope beside Lee’s glass. “Midnight stage from Brazerville.”
Winters read his letter first, then downed his drink. “It’s from Marshal Hugo Landers, Doc.”
“Directing you to arrest two wanted monkeys, no doubt.”
“How did you know that?”
“They were here an hour ago. I had just opened for business when in they walked, a blond curly-head and a lean one I couldn’t have distinguished from you at fifty paces. Two-gunners, Winters, with looks of killers in their eyes.”
“New names among fugitives,” said Winters. “Dorcas Adfield and Cain Hargis. Hugo’s letter describes them as you did. This time he wants them dead. Robberies and murders. Which way did they go?”
Bogie refilled Lee’s glass and lifted his own. “Winters, let’s have a nip together.” He drank lightly and put down his glass.
Winters detected uneasiness in Bogie and his own worries increased in consequence. “Doc, what’s on your mind?”
Bogie turned to look at something far away. “I was just thinking, Winters. I know you don’t believe in ghosts; neither do I. Yet—now and then, odd sensations betake me. At such moments I’m reminded of a verse. I don’t know who wrote it. Could have been my own product, created, memorized, but its authorship forgotten. It goes like this:
‘What is today, is itself but ancient lore;
Time that was is something that is yet to be.
Old events are not behind us, but before—
Our tomorrows seen through eyes of prophecy.’”
Winters emptied his glass, backhanded his mustache, got up and dropped a coin. “I reckon your poetry’s got a heap of meaning in it, but it’s over my head; now tell me which way those wanted monkeys went.”
“I’m sorry you have to chase them, Winters,” Bogie responded darkly. “But if you must, they headed southwest across Alkali Flat. I know you’ll be careful; I’m hoping you’ll also be lucky.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Winters strode out without a backward glance. Some hours later he realized that he had not been careful—certainly not as careful as he should have been. Hoof prints had led him into a region of broken canyons, cliffs and dizzy, twisting trails. Just as he recognized that he had ridden into a high dead-end gulch, a voice snarled down at him. “All right, Deputy Marshal, here’s where you end up your chasing what you call wanted monkeys.”
Lee glanced up to right, then to left. Adfield and Hargis had him covered, one from either side; it was too late to turn back. Ahead were great rocks beyond which Cannon
Ball could not carry him. Yet he spurred forward. Adfield and Hargis fired and ducked out of sight as Winters in turn flung lead at them. When he could ride no farther, he swung off and darted behind convenient rock shelter.
Then, to his amazement, a voice called softly, “Climb, Winters. Climb high.”
He cast about uneasily, but he saw only Adfield and Hargis. They dodged from boulder to boulder, climbed as he climbed. Hargis, he observed with a weird sort of feeling, resembled him—so much so that he might have been a twin brother.
Adfield shouted, “You can’t get away, Deputy Marshal; we figured you’d trail us. What you didn’t figure was that we’d lead you into a trap.”
They had him cornered, that was certain. Adfield was coming up on his left, Hargis on his right.
Again that voice called softly, “Turn back, Winters; then hide and wait.”
He was mystified and scared; but a quick glance around showed him that if he went farther, he would be exposed to both of his enemies. If he stayed where he was, they’d ease up and pick him off at their pleasure. He turned back quickly, dropped under an overhang and lay still.
A few seconds later, Hargis appeared. He moved stealthily around a rock. Then, as a bullet hit him, he stiffened.
“Dorcas!” he screamed in shocked anger.
“Cain!” Adfield responded, horrified at his mistake. “I didn’t know it was you.” He scrambled over a rock and rushed forward to assist his wounded companion. “No! No!” he screamed as Hargis, moved by surly vengeance, beaded on him.
“You said you’d get me someday,” sneered Hargis, “but I’m taking you with me, like I said I’d do.” His gun smoked, and he and Adfield continued to blaze at each other until both crumpled beyond further harm.
Winters crawled from his hiding place, searched their clothing, found them loaded with loot from their recent crimes. With that—and such papers as they had which would be useful for identifications, along with their guns and belts—he descended to Cannon Ball, mounted, and started in a direction he thought was homeward.
But environment which had resembled scenes made familiar by his lonely rides began to change; once more he had that disturbed feeling of living as a stranger in another time. His trail led down into an amphitheater, or small meadow, where a stream flowed between banks of green grasses. A weeping willow grew there, its drooping branches alive in a cool breeze.