The bartender left the saloon to find the sheriff and arrange the delivery of three more coffins. None of the Hayes crew had kicked: Clem Stubbs was plugged in the shoulder, a bullet had grazed Owen’s thigh, and Roach Clayton had cracked a spectacle lens. Elwood told himself that he’d done well, done about as good as could be expected under such circumstances, but he still wondered if three men had needed to die so he could go upstairs and jaw with Ms. Ingrid Blomvik for five minutes. Part of him had known the coach guards wouldn’t like him going up to the balcony, before God and all, and that doing so was bound to raise their hackles. And that same part, that same devil inside him, hadn’t cared one bit if he and everyone else died tonight, so long as it was halfway interesting.
But they didn’t have time for dwelling on the past. The wounded needed tending and he was the only surgeon on hand. Hayes cleaned the blade of his knife with a whiskey soaked rag and started with the worst case first.
“Lord Sweet Jesus.”
“Hang on, Clem. I need to find the bullet.”
“Sweet Jesus sweet Jesus. I think I can feel you scraping against my arm bone, El. You hear that scraping?”
“Hush. This ain’t the first time I’ve dug a bullet from your hide.”
“No, but it’s the first time you had to dig like it was buried treasure.”
Elwood smiled at the idea of buried treasure and pushed the tip of his hunting knife a little further into Stubb’s shoulder. Roach had already flushed Owen’s wound with whiskey and bound it tight with a bar rag. The two of them sat at one of the few tables still upright, watching Elwood work on Stubbs like they were watching a play. Owen was white as a sheet and hadn’t said three words since the shootout.
Elwood nicked something with gristle to it and Stubbs howled.
“Give him some more whiskey, Roach. Give him all he can swallow.”
Roach handed over the bottle from their table. Stubbs took it with his good arm and swallowed a third of it in one long gulp, his fat gut pushing out against the fabric of his shirt.
“You ready, Stubbs?”
Stubbs lowered the bottle and let out a loud belch. Whiskey trickled down his beard and onto the floor.
“Fiddle shits,” he shouted, handing the bottle back to Roach. “Have your way with me, Doc Pain.”
Hayes renewed his digging until he found the slug tucked under a strip of muscle and popped it out with the tip of his knife. The slug made a hollow plunking sound as it dropped to the floor. Owen leaned to the side in his chair, coiled up, and retched heartily.
Stubbs laughed through the tears in his eyes. “Sweet Mary,” he sputtered. “Aren’t we all a pretty sight.”
“Fit for Paris,” Elwood agreed. “Now, don’t move while I wrap your arm.”
“Why? You going to shoot me sideways, too?”
“If I have to.”
Stubbs laughed again, but looked him over as if he wasn’t sure it was a joke. Elwood kept his face straight and staunched the flow of blood with a shirt taken from a dead guard. He wrapped the shirt round the big man’s arm and tied it off with a leather belt, which he’d also filched from the dead guard. Stubbs shuddered from the pain but held off from more bellyaching—either the whiskey was doing its work or poor Stubbs was starting to feel it for certain.
Ingrid Blomvik stepped out of the crowd and set her hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Here. Drink some of this.”
Elwood blinked and raised his head.
“Owen.”
His brother stared into the distance, a brown spot of vomit still on his cheek.
“Owen, Miss Blomvik is talking to you.”
Ingrid pulled a silk scarf from her pocket and dabbed at the spot of vomit. Owen sat there and allowed himself to be attended to, more docile than he’d ever been for their mother when she’d tried the same at church. Roach shook his head and removed his spectacles to consider the cracked lens. His wiry body looked smaller than normal, as if Roach had drawn himself in during the shooting and hadn’t quite let himself puff back out yet.
“Owen’s spooked, El. That leg graze is the least of his wounds.”
“He’ll come back round. He’s just never traded lead before. You always get a good jolt, your first shootout.”
Ingrid cupped Owen’s chin in her hands, helping him pry his jaw loose. She held the glass to his lips and tipped it back, sending the water into his mouth. Owen sputtered, spitting out half the water and swallowing the other. His eyes regained some clarity and he took another drink, looking up at the whore with the big brown eyes of a grateful pup. “That’s my brother,” Elwood said, his voice too loud and abrupt in his own ears. “That’s Owen Hayes.”
Ingrid smiled, her teeth clean and even and white.
“Howdy, Owen. So you’re this gunslinger’s little brother? Must have had a rough time of it growing up.”
Owen nodded, still staring up at Ingrid like a flower into the sun.
“He fought anybody about anything.”
“Did he now?”
“He’d fight you over how many stars were in the sky. He threw me out of a tree once and I broke my arm.”
Elwood laughed, remembering the day. His brother flapping his arms and hollering his lungs out. The feel of their father’s belt against his back, later that afternoon. Cracking the air like thunder.
“Well, I say. Is that true, Mr. Hayes? Did you throw Owen from a tree?”
“No, ma’am. He was trying to throw me out and got the wrong end of it. He was mad a girl liked me and not himself.”
Stubbs, who’d sunk into his chair until his beard touched his belt, groaned and slid to the floor, lying down on his good side. Elwood rubbed his face in his hands, wondering how they were going to fly town now. And that sheriff would come back from the mine, sooner or later, asking more questions. They could deal with him, maybe, but if they killed a company lawman you could bet the Dennison Mining Company would be twice as likely to pursue them across the States, maybe all the way into Mexico.
“What you doing, Stubbs?”
“My arm hurts.”
“You shouldn’t lie down after you’ve been shot.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You need to get good air. Down on the ground is where all the bad, musty air settles.”
“I never heard that before.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it wrong, does it?”
Stubbs sighed and sat up.
“I wish I were smart like you, Elwood. Like how you snuck up on those shotguns sideways like that. Bang, bang. Fight’s over go on home, everybody. That was fine reckoning.”
“I got lucky, is all.”
“And you’re quick, too,” Roach said, settling his spectacles back on his face. “I never seen anybody move that swift.”
Stubbs nodded.
“I’ll say. I’d prefer to be speedy, myself, but my weight don’t allow it.”
The Madam had regained her wits and started ordering her doves around, tasking them with returning the saloon to order. She examined the man Hayes had shot between the eyes, the knife man, with a pinched look of distaste and clucked her tongue. She sailed across the room and brought her large, round frame right up to Elwood’s chest.
“Look! Just look!”
“I’m sorry about the mess, ma’am—”
“You kill our customers—how will we make money tonight? No miners and now no coachmen, either.”
“I can pay for the damages.”
The madam’s eyes softened. She looked from Elwood to Stubbs, who was still sitting on the floor as his bandage darkened.
“Really? You can pay?”
She held out her hand. Elwood shifted on his feet and glanced at Ingrid. Her face had gone blank, as if they’d never spoken a word
between them.
“Well, not right this moment. But before we leave town.”
The madam laughed, a high, trilling sound that reminded Elwood of barbed wire and caused him to turn away and inspect the saloon. He saw the poorly dressed girls lifting tables and chairs back to their feet, their backs curved like old women, their movements cautious and sore. He saw three dead men who needn’t have died that evening lying on the ground, waiting for their coffins. He saw Roach Clayton with a cracked spectacle lens and Clem Stubbs lying like an upturned turtle on the floor and his brother, pale and hollow-eyed, with a wrap around his thigh. Most of all, though, Hayes saw Ingrid Blomvik, watching him with those damn blue eyes of hers, hoping this would all turn out good, hoping that she’d hitched her wagon to the right horse. It was a look like that made a man regret losing his temper, even if the ill-mannered bastards he’d shot had deserved it more than most.
15
The gunfire across the street lasted longer than Revis Cooke expected, an impressive symphony of noise and chaos, and the longer it went on the more squirrely Hollis Wells grew, pacing up and down at the front of the house like he was bent on wearing a groove into the floor, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air.
“Really, Mr. Wells. Look how agitated you’ve become.”
Wells scowled and returned to the front door, sliding the viewing slot open and peering outside for the twelfth time since the shooting had started.
“I should be with my men. I should be in that saloon.”
“Life does not always make way for our intentions.”
Wells turned back round.
“You are acting in a prissy manner, Mr. Cooke. Are you really so scared you cannot, for a moment, open this goddamn door and let me out?”
Cooke smiled and studied his fingernails. “You can rant and rave and call me names, Mr. Wells, but company policy is firm. I cannot, in good conscience, open that door until I feel certain the scene outside is secure and there is no danger of a holdup.”
Wells snorted and turned back to the door. Cooke got up from his chair, circled around the accounting table, and crossed the room to the bookshelf against the wall. He was about to recommend a volume on patience and fortitude when something crashed into him from behind, knocking him into the shelf. It was Wells—the coachman had sprinted across the room and bull-rushed him. Cooke whirled round, thrashing as white lights burst across his vision.
“Just give me the key, Mr. Cooke.”
Wells’ reach was greater, but Cooke was able to free one of his legs, pull it back, and land a solid kick to his assailant’s groin. Wells groaned and fell back, allowing Cooke just enough space to grab a heavy volume off the shelf and smack it across the side of the guard’s head with a satisfying thud.
Cooke scrambled to his feet while the other man, clutching himself, tried to recover.
“I haven’t fought another man in years, Mr. Wells, but I think you’ll find me suited to the task.”
Wells opened his mouth to reply, but Cooke threw the heavy book at the knot in his throat. The coachman coughed and gasped, grabbing at his larynx, and Cooke delivered another weighty kick to his groin, dropping the National man to the floor. More white lights popped in accountant’s vision as he staggered toward the room’s unlit fireplace. He grasped the iron poker leaning against the brick chimney, untouched for the past few summer months, and felt its solid weight in his hand.
“You’re not so different from the rock trolls here in town,” Cooke said, turning back round to face his fallen opponent. “They have little patience as well. You should see them, shifting from one foot to another as they wait in the line on payday, fidgeting as if their boots were filled with red ants.”
The guard was on his knees now, reaching for his belt. Oh yes, he was wearing a long-knife. Every good stagecoach man carried a knife.
“I am sorry, sir,” Cooke said, landing the iron on Wells’ arm with a crunching force that caused the coachman to drop the blade and holler. “A knife is not included in a fair fight.”
Wells raised his head, his eyes flashing as he clutched his forearm.
“Goddamn you. You broke my arm.”
Cooke laughed.
“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Wells.”
Tears filled the coachman’s eyes, his chest heaving like a bellows. He swallowed and spat on the floor.
“You think you’re so high and fancy in this stone shack, don’t you? Well, you ain’t. You ain’t any better than any other man in the town, or any other. You’re just a bagman for Mr. Dennison. No different from any of the miners you pay out, except they come by theirs through honest sweat.”
Cooke nodded, tightening his grip on the iron.
“Is that your true opinion of me, Mr. Wells?”
The coachman drew a hissing breath between his teeth.
“Yes, sir. It is.”
Cooke smiled and brought the iron down with all his might, landing it on the coachman’s right shoulder. Wells cried out and toppled back, exposing his body to any angle Cooke decided to take.
He’d take his time working the coachman over. Patience was a virtue, was it not?
Billy Atkins watched the shootout in the Runoff Saloon from the porch of the general store down the street, moon-eyed and delighted, his mission to bring his father home for dinner long forgotten.
Actually, there wasn’t much to see, since the gunfight was indoors, but he could watch the pretty ladies on the saloon’s front porch watching the fight, how they crouched real low and peeked inside the building while the shots went CRACK CRACK CRACK, still loud even from down the street. The ladies were so excited that they forgot to keep their short dresses down and he could see their bloomers showing, red and pink and white, and the sight made him giggle and rub his crotch.
Finally, two shots rang out, cracking so fast they almost sounded like one, and the gunfire stopped inside the saloon. The ladies got up off the porch floor, straightened their dresses, and went inside. Men poured out of the Copper Hotel and started mingling in the street. A minute later more folks showed up from both ends of town.
“Hey! Boy!”
Billy turned and looked into the general store. It’d gotten darker, both outside and in. He could barely make out the man sitting at his pa’s desk, chained up to that metal ring in the floor.
“What the hell is going on out there?”
Billy wiped his nose with the back of his hand, wondering if he should answer or run back home. Either way, he’d probably get a whipping for how long he’d dawdled. He could picture that juniper switch his ma kept beside her dresser.
“Answer me, son.”
“Why should I?” Billy hollered back into the store. “You’re a criminal, ain’t you? I don’t have to say nothing to you.”
The man didn’t respond. Billy took a few steps toward the doorway and peered in, wondering what he was up to. He saw him hunched over his pa’s desk with his face in his hands. His pa sat like that, too, when he was tired.
“There was shooting.”
The man raised his head and scowled.
“I figured that. Where was it?”
“At the saloon down the street. The Runoff.”
The man nodded his head like he’d been expecting that, too. Billy stepped inside the doorway to see him better, toeing the doorway with his foot.
“You see anyone get shot?”
“No. Just the ladies watching from outside.”
The man sat back in his chair, rattling the chains around him. “My friends were in that saloon,” he said in a soft voice. “I wonder if they took it to those shotguns, or if the shotguns took it to them.”
Billy squinted and scratched the back of his head.
“You have friends?”
“Yup,” the stranger
said. “One punched me out cold, too. But I reckon he had his reasons. I shot a man who spilt beer on my knee.”
“Shot him dead?”
“Dead as a stuffed cougar.”
“And that’s why you’re chained up and sitting in my pa’s chair?”
“That’s right, kid,” the man said, nibbling on one of the metal bands on his wrist. “You’re figuring it right out.”
Billy rubbed the instep of his foot with his other foot. He’d never thought much about criminals having friends or losing their tempers. The only trouble they ever had in Red Earth was fighting, and that was usually only between the miners, who his father said were just drunk and ignorant. The man in chains didn’t look drunk to Billy, though he did smell like beer.
“What’s you name, boy?”
“Billy. Billy Atkins.”
“Well, Billy, my name is Johnny Miller and I’m hungry. Haven’t ate all day, but I’m thinking my dinner is low on your father’s chore list tonight. Would you agree with that, boy?”
“I guess.”
Johnny Miller yawned and nodded his head.
“So, Mr. Billy, think you could fetch me something to eat?”
“From my ma?”
“No, you don’t need to run all over town. Just grab me something from behind the counter over there.”
Billy looked over to the store’s counter, which he’d never been behind his entire life. Only the Jamesons were allowed back there. He could see cobwebs covering the store’s two back windows.
“It’ll be square, son. I’ve got money. I’ll pay for the food when the men get back to the store. I only need you to fetch it for me.” Johnny Miller held up his wrists and gave them a shake, rattling the chains. “I can’t eat these, can I?”
Billy looked back to the door again, feeling another urge to fly outside and run into the street. He was tired of talking to this man, even if he really had killed somebody for spilling beer on his knee. He was tired of how the man’s eyes stayed on him every second, in a way no grown-up had ever watched him before. Just standing in the store with him made Billy feel unsettled.
And the Hills Opened Up Page 10