Some Kind of Courage

by Dan Gemeinhart

  Mr. Bishop had done just the same thing. At the mere mention of money, he’d sobered right up. And I knew he was ready to show his teeth.

  “Come in, then,” he said, turning around and sauntering into the cabin. “Let’s talk business.”

  I risked a glance to the corner of the porch, where I saw Ah-Kee’s face peeking ’round the corner. I nodded at him real quick and then screwed up my courage and stepped inside the cabin. I left the door standing open behind me, though. I reckoned when you walk into a bear’s cave, keeping an eye on the exit ain’t never a bad idea.

  It was a filthy mess on the inside, with gear and clothes thrown everywhere around the one room. Apple cores and empty bottles littered the dirty plank floor. Based on the smell hitting my nose, I’d have wagered there was a chamber pot or two somewhere in the shadows as well. It was a nastier hive than Mr. Grissom’s place, which I hadn’t thought was possible, and it was hot and stuffy from the blazing fire. I started sweating all over again.

  Ezra Bishop sat down with a grunt in a chair that creaked under his weight. He waved a hand at a stool sitting nearby. “Take a seat.”

  “No, thank you, sir. I’d rather stand.” Something about the man made me want to stay out of grabbing range of him.

  “Suit yourself.” He uncorked a bottle with a hollow plonk and held it out to me. “I always like to drink while making a deal. Help yourself.” I stared at the bottle. Firelight flickered off its grimy surface and the brown liquid sloshing inside.

  No one had ever offered me whiskey before. I hated being thought of as a child, but I sure wasn’t flattered. I suddenly felt trapped in that little cabin. I was hot and scared and ready to be done with it and there wasn’t one bone in my body that liked or trusted the man in front of me. I’m afraid that showed in my voice when I spoke next.

  “No, sir. I’d just like to get right to the business at hand.”

  His eyes narrowed into a squint.

  “What wrong I done you, boy? Why you comin’ after me lookin’ for trouble?”

  His voice was a low growl, seething and sharp and soft. He rose to his feet, towering over me.

  “You look familiar,” he said suspiciously. “Are you from those Injuns I got the better of up on Colockum?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, hell, you from them Entiat folks? You still sore about that horse deal?”

  “No, sir,” I answered, wondering just how many enemies Ezra Bishop had made on this trip.

  “Oh, wait,” he said, pointing at me with a blunt finger. “I know you. Up at Mission! The orphan kid.”

  “I ain’t an orphan.”

  “I bought your horse, right? That stubborn little Injun one?”

  I swallowed hard to keep my anger where it needed to be, in my belly. A fight with Ezra Bishop was one I could not win, and I sure enough knew it.

  “Yes, sir. You had no way of knowing it, sir, but Mr. Grissom had no right to sell that horse. She’s mine, and I’ve come to buy her back.”

  “God, that filly is a vicious nag! I had to whip her up one side of the mountain and down the other.”

  I ground my teeth so hard I was afraid they was gonna shatter.

  “Well, then,” I said, clenching my fists to keep my voice even, “I reckon you’ll be happy to get her off your hands, sir.”

  Ezra Bishop took a wet slurp out of the bottle. It looked like more of an act than real drinking. Like he was playing a part. I swallowed nervously. The man before me didn’t seem sloppy anymore, but cold and shrewd. And dangerous.

  “She was a hard one to handle, that one,” he said, his eyes sharp as railroad spikes.

  “Was, sir?”

  His eyes darted to the satchel over my shoulder.

  “You say you brought money for her? How much you bring, boy?”

  I licked my lips. This was the part I’d been dreading since leaving the trading post in Wenatchee.

  “Well, sir, I’ve got sixty-two dollars and fifty cents, ready to hand over to you to get my property.”

  “She became my property when I bought and paid for her, boy. And I paid eighty dollars, square.” His voice was tight and tense. It sounded as dangerous to me as the cold, deadly buzz of a rattlesnake. This was a man who lived by making dirty deals. I had no idea how I was gonna out-bargain Mr. Ezra Bishop.

  “Yes, sir, I know. But I have incurred some expenses in my efforts to catch you.” I tried squeezing in every fancy word I knew, in hopes of dazzling him into agreement. Maybe all them newspapers my mama’d made me read were gonna pay off.

  “Incurred some expenses?”

  “Yes, sir. Provisions and such. And besides, you won two races with my horse up at the racing grounds. A pile of furs and some horses, I hear. So you’ve made your profit on my horse already, way I see it.”

  “The way you see it? Way I see it is this: She. Ain’t. Your. Horse. And you’re forty dollars short.”

  “Forty? But you only paid eighty and—”

  “And I whipped and dragged that horse forty miles. You gotta pay me for time and trouble, boy. A dollar a mile.”

  I felt my heart start to break, but I knew I had to be some kind of strong. It’s what Papa would expect, and what my Sarah needed.

  “I don’t got forty more dollars, sir. But maybe we could work something out; maybe I could work it off in labor, or—”

  “How’d you catch up to me so fast?”

  “Sir?”

  “I’ve been riding fast, getting here. How’d you get here so quick, only one day behind me?”

  “On foot, mostly. But the Indians lent me a horse up on Colockum, so I made quick time today.”

  Mr. Bishop’s eyebrows rose.

  “You got an Indian horse? You never said that. That horse and your sixty-two and change would be just about right.”

  “I can’t give you that horse, sir. She ain’t mine to give.”

  “Get your money out, boy. Let me see it.”

  He took a step toward me. I didn’t like nothing about what I heard in his voice. I remembered what Frank Jameson had warned me: You keep your wits about you, and don’t give him a red cent ’til he hands you the bridle to that pony of yours.

  “Let me see my horse, sir.”

  “She ain’t your damned horse!” he shouted. He took another step toward me. “Give me the money, and I’ll trade you a horse for that Indian pony you rode in on.”

  Warnings went off in my mind like Fourth of July fireworks. Ezra Bishop’s words weren’t adding up in my mind.

  “I don’t want a horse, sir. I want my horse. And I want to see her now.”

  He took two more steps forward, kicking over the stool he’d offered me.

  I backed up quick, toward the door.

  “You don’t have her, do you? You don’t have my horse.”

  “Damn it, boy, she ain’t your horse!”

  I looked him right in his devilish eyes and there was sure enough steel in my voice when I spoke.

  “Yes, she is. She’ll always be my horse, no matter what.”

  “We made a deal.” His voice was like a cougar’s hiss now, hungry and hateful. Another step toward me, another step of my own toward the door behind me. “Give me that money and I’ll give you a horse.”

  “We made no deal, Mr. Bishop. Tell me where my horse is.”

  He was too close for me to go for my gun; by the time I had it out of my satchel he’d be on me, and I was no match for his brawn. He’d have me, my money, and Papa’s gun before I could get my finger on the trigger.

  I was standing there, thinking like a fever about all my bad options, when Ezra Bishop snarled and thundered toward me. I backpedaled quick out the doorway and into the gathering darkness of the night, stumbling off the porch and falling flat on my back in the dirt. He followed after, squinting at me from the doorway.

  That’s when I saw Ah-Kee, standing up against the front of the cabin, just to the side of the door. He had a shovel gripped in his hands, and that shovel�
�s head glinted in the blue light of the moon that had risen in the night sky. His eyes were on Ezra Bishop, and his body tensed, ready to strike.

  “No!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

  But at that moment, Ezra Bishop squared himself in the cabin doorway.

  “I will!” he roared. “We have a deal!”

  He took a ragged step out the door, into the moonlight.

  With a grunt Ah-Kee swung the shovel. It sliced through the air and the flat side of it caught Ezra Bishop flat in the face with a sickening thwock that echoed and died in the night air behind the Robber’s Roost.

  Ezra Bishop crumpled to the ground like a sack of rotten onions.

  I looked, gasping, to Ah-Kee’s stunned face, the shovel still in his hands, then to the limp body of Mr. Bishop.

  “Deal’s off,” I whispered in the moonlight.

  From the street behind me, on the other side of the Robber’s Roost Saloon, I heard laughter and the muffled sound of people talking.

  No shouts of alarm. No running footsteps.

  I waited a moment more, breathless.

  Ezra Bishop didn’t move, lying facedown in the dirt. Neither did I, frozen there on the ground with my heart pounding. Neither did Ah-Kee, still holding the shovel that had brought Ezra Bishop down.

  We three were like a picture from a dime novel, struck still in the moonlight. But this weren’t no novel.

  “Ah-Kee,” I said. “This is bad.”

  He lowered the shovel. I could hear his lungs working from where I stood.

  I stood up and stepped toward Ezra Bishop’s body, bracing my soul for the worst. But then I saw his back rise and fall.

  “Thank the Lord,” I breathed. “He’s alive. But he sure won’t be happy when he comes to.”

  I stood looking down at the sleeping giant.

  “Ah-Kee, when he wakes up he’s gonna be looking for blood! And you being Chinese, well, shoot—I reckon no one’d think twice before stringing you up from the nearest …” I stopped my panicked yammering when I saw Ah-Kee still standing there, his face a mask of fear. My words were a mess to him, but I’m sure he could tell that I was terrified and unhappy. I thought about what he’d done. He’d heard the shouting and he’d left his hiding place and crept out with that shovel. Coming to help me. He’d risked his neck and at the very least saved my money and my only shot at getting Sarah back. Heck, he may have even saved my life. Who knew what a man like Mr. Bishop was capable of?

  I walked over to him and gently took the shovel from his hands and set it down. Then I held my hand out to him. He looked at it for a second, then understood and reached out to shake it.

  “Thank you, Ah-Kee,” I said. His face and shoulders relaxed just a bit. “That was awful brave. Not as brave as talking down a grizzly, maybe.” I looked back down at Mr. Bishop, who grunted and jerked and then went back still. “But it’s right up there.”

  A few buildings down, a door creaked open. Someone stepped outside; my breath stopped. There was some grumbling and a clatter of glass, then the door closed and the alley got quiet again. From the street I heard some shouting, and the sounds of a wagon passing by.

  “All right, Ah-Kee, we gotta get him inside fast before someone sees him. Grab a foot.”

  Ezra Bishop was the heaviest thing I’d ever had to try and move. Picking him up, even with the two of us, was out of the question. Even dragging him was a trial. We each grabbed hold of one of his monstrous feet and had to put all our bodies into it to inch him back up onto the porch and into the doorway. His arms dragged behind him, hanging above his head like he was at gunpoint. When his shoulders hit the door frame he stopped solid and Ah-Kee went stumbling forward without him, ending up tangled in a pile of ropes.

  I stood, panting for breath, while Ah-Kee got himself untangled and stood up.

  He stood there a second, then started cursing and swearing in Chinese, his voice all choked and high.

  “What’s the matter, Ah-Kee?” I hissed, trying to quiet him down. He held something out to me in the firelight. It was Ezra Bishop’s boot. “All right, so what’s the—” That’s when the smell hit me, stopping my words with a gag.

  “Good God Almighty!” I coughed, covering my nose with my arm. “That’s the worst thing I ever smelled, and Mr. Grissom used to make me clean the privy!” Ah-Kee was still swearing up a blue streak in Chinese, his nose wrinkled and his eyes screwed shut. “Put it back on, Ah-Kee! Get that thing back on his foot!” I waved my arm frantically toward Ezra Bishop’s exposed stocking foot. A big, hairy toe stuck out a hole.

  Ah-Kee got the boot back on with plenty of swearing and gagging and we dragged him the rest of the way in and got the door shut behind us. Mr. Bishop was starting to rock and moan a bit, and I knew we needed to figure our next move out quick.

  The pile of ropes that Ah-Kee had fallen into caught my eye. I looked around and saw the sturdy post in the middle of the room that held up the crossbeam of the roof. Papa had taught me plenty before he died, and one of the things he taught me best was tying knots. “A man’s gotta know ropes, and a man’s gotta know knots,” is what he said, and I was sure enough thankful for it right then.

  Quick as we could, we rolled him over to the post and got him sitting up against it. He was moaning steady by then and his head was kinda lolling from side to side on his wobbly neck. Time was running out and I worked fast. In no time, using Papa’s knots, I had Ezra Bishop’s arms bound tight as a barrel behind him, ’round the post. For good measure I tied a rope ’round his waist, too, and bound his stinking feet together to keep his wiggling and kicking to a minimum.

  I was confident in the ropes and in the knots Papa’d taught me. Ezra Bishop weren’t going nowhere.

  I knew he was gonna wake up any minute but there was something I had to check. “Wait here,” I told Ah-Kee, then ran to the door. He looked more than a little displeased to be left alone with Ezra Bishop, even with him being tied up, but I dashed outside, promising to be quick.

  I ran right up to the stable and swung open the door, and my fears were confirmed.

  There were only two horses stabled there. A big sturdy bay that I recognized as Mr. Bishop’s from his visit to Mr. Grissom’s. And an old bent-back gray mare that I could tell even in the darkness didn’t have too many miles left in her. I reckoned sure enough that was the horse Ezra Bishop would have given me if I’d have made the deal. Dirty swindler.

  When I got back into the cabin Ezra Bishop was still out cold. Ah-Kee was standing warily across the room, as far as he could from our prisoner. I saw that he’d fetched the shovel from the porch and held it tightly in both hands, ready for another swing.

  “Good thinking,” I said with a smile, closing the door behind me. My thoughts were racing fast. When Ezra Bishop came to he was gonna be madder than a wet nest of hornets, but I badly needed some information from him. “What does Ezra Bishop care about most?” I asked myself out loud, and it didn’t take long for me to come up with an answer. I dug quickly through the piled-up mess around the cabin, desperately seeking the one thing I knew Ezra Bishop would do anything for.

  In a big leather folding case, inside a saddlebag under the bed, I found it.

  Ezra Bishop’s money. I flipped through it. He’d had a good trip of horse buying and selling, Mr. Bishop had. I counted more than six hundred dollars, in everything from one dollar bills up to a couple of crisp hundreds.

  I dragged the stool right over by the fire and sat on it, facing Mr. Bishop, the leather money case at my feet. From my own satchel I pulled out Papa’s pistol and set it across my knees and waited. Ah-Kee pulled the other chair over and sat next to me, the shovel resting on his shoulder. We were quite a pair, Ah-Kee and I. We looked in silence at our captive with his greasy black beard and bulging stomach and the beginnings of a shovel-shaped bruise starting to darken across his forehead. We sat there, waiting for the monster to wake up.

  And then he did.

  And it weren’t slow, like I was expectin
g.

  All of a sudden he jerked and his legs kicked and his eyes shot wide open.

  He blinked at us, breathing fast through his nose, confusion all over his face.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked in a yell, then winced. “God, my head!” he said quieter.

  “I’m gonna make this fast, sir. We ain’t gonna do you any more harm unless you give us a reason to. I just need you to tell me where my horse is.”

  “Why the hell would I tell you anything?” he growled, still wincing with one eye and keeping his voice low.

  “Because I’m asking you nicely, sir, and you’ve got no reason to not answer. Just tell me where my horse is, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “You gotta funny way of being nice, boy. I’m tied and bound with a headache that’d kill a buffalo. Why shouldn’t I just start yelling bloody murder and get help a-coming?”

  I picked the pistol up off my knee and rested it, real casual-like, across my arm so that its unblinking barrel was pointed vaguely but without question in the direction of Ezra Bishop’s stinking body.

  “Here’s one reason, sir.”

  “Bull. You ain’t never gonna—”

  “I know how this is s’posed to go, sir,” I cut in. “This is where you tell me that I ain’t never gonna shoot you. That I’m just a boy and all that. I’ve had this conversation before. The last fella was wrong, and you are, too.” Mr. Bishop’s eyes widened, and I swallowed nervously. I was playing a bit of a bluff here, and I had to play it well. “You are a liar and a thief, sir. You took my horse and you cheated those Indians and you were gonna take my money. I don’t think most folks would find too much fault if a fella like you ended up with a bullet in him. And I don’t think they’d cast too much blame if it were just a boy like me, defending myself against a violent swindler like you, who sent that bullet on its way.” I lowered my voice and fixed Mr. Bishop with what I hoped was a murderous, cold-hearted stare. “If I were you, I sure enough wouldn’t doubt me like Mr. Grissom did when I found out he’d sold you my horse.” The way I said it sure made it sound like I’d shot Mr. Grissom, and I was gonna let that illusion lie where it was. Ezra Bishop thinking that I’d already killed a man was a point in my favor that I wasn’t giving away.