Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  “It was an accident!” Percy wailed. But this time nobody was listening.

  Taggart walked out to where the stranger still stood, looking on. “John Taggart,” he said, offering the man his hand.

  The man shook it, meeting the sheriff’s eyes directly. But he didn’t give his own name; didn’t say anything at all. Taggart noticed the metal bracelet the man wore on his left wrist, as it glinted like gunmetal in the late afternoon sunlight. He’d never seen anything like it, but something about it made his eyes skittish. And yet some part of his brain was starting to tell him the man looked familiar. . . .

  The stranger turned and began to walk away down the street.

  “Hey, mister—” Taggart called, before the stranger had taken more than a few steps. “I know you from someplace?”

  The man turned back again and studied his face; he looked as if he was trying to recall ever meeting Taggart before. Taggart’s well-cultivated handlebar mustache usually made him hard to forget, even in a place where a lot of men tried to grow one as handsome. And then, there was always his badge.

  The man shook his head. “. . . couldn’t say.” He shrugged and went on walking.

  Taggart started back toward his jailhouse office, having nothing else left to keep him from facing the scene he knew he was going to find there.

  THE WOMAN WHO had been watching them all, completely unnoticed for far longer than anyone suspected, slipped out of a sheltered spot between two buildings and began to follow the stranger.

  As she moved past Taggart, he didn’t even look at her, although she was also new in town, and a far more unusual stranger than the man without a name. Only the black dog that had come to Absolution along with the man she was following seemed to notice her. It accompanied her now as she moved slowly along the walkway, keeping her distance, but always keeping the man in sight.

  4

  The shadows of the cattle grazing in a field beside the river grew long as the sun set, bringing the blessed relief of an evening breeze.

  The three Dolarhyde cowhands who sat around a campfire, sharing their evening meal, had spent the entire day searching for strays and found only two dozen. They’d driven them back here, to a place they weren’t likely to wander away from during the night.

  Ed and Little Mickey, who had worked for Dolarhyde longer than most, ate in silence as they watched the third man, Roy Murphy. Murphy was a new hand, and he’d been doing more drinking than eating, having brought a full bottle of rotgut home brew with him in his saddlebag. Ed and Little Mickey could tell already that Murphy wasn’t going to work here much longer if he couldn’t stay sober long enough to remember what a man did—and didn’t do—when he worked for a mean-tempered hardass like Woodrow Dolarhyde.

  Finally Ed said, “Take it easy on that Taos Lightning, Murphy—Mr. Dolarhyde don’t like drinkin’ on the job.”

  Roy glanced up over the nearly empty bottle, and the look on his face told Ed he’d just wasted his breath. “Don’t give a rat’s ass what the high-and-mighty Colonel don’t like.” His flushed face screwed up in mocking disgust. “Don’t care how many Indians he sent under, neither.”

  Little Mickey snorted. “You sure flap them gums a lot when the boss ain’t around.”

  Roy drained the dregs of the bottle. “I’d say it if he was here! Money makes you soft, boys . . . take it from me.” He belched, and threw the empty bottle away. Ed heard it smash against a rock.

  Ed glanced at Little Mickey, whose eyes said the same thing he was thinking: Murphy wasn’t gonna work out. And unless he was luckier than he had any right to be, he wasn’t even going to survive the experience.

  Roy got to his feet somehow, and stumbled away down the embankment to the river to take a piss. Ed and Little Mickey went back to eating, content to let him go to hell in his own way.

  Roy came to a wobbling stop at the river’s edge, unfastened his fly, and leaned out over the water’s edge to relieve himself.

  A sound like the sky exploding knocked his brain sideways, as the air around him suddenly turned solid, and punched Roy into the water like a giant fist.

  For what seemed like an eternity, he floundered in a watery cloud of bubbles and fright, until he burst through the river’s surface again, gasping for breath, and then just gasping—

  The sight and sounds up on the field he’d just left filled him with more fear than he’d felt half drowning: Blinding flashes like bolt after bolt of lightning struck the ground, out of a perfectly clear sky; things erupted in flames wherever they struck. Cones of bright blue light darted through the smoke from the burning field, moving so fast Roy couldn’t tell where they were coming from or what they were doing . . . but he heard men shouting, and then screaming, as cows bawled in panic and pain.

  Before he could finish absorbing the assault on his senses, the air and water and the riverbed he was standing on began to shake as things crested the hill—enormous things, the forms of which he couldn’t make out as they shot toward him like flying bullets. Flying . . .

  The water rooster-tailed around him as they skimmed the river just above his head. Roy yelled and ducked back underwater.

  When he broke the surface again, out of breath, the river lay quiet, flowing as normally as it always had.

  Coughing and wheezing, he waded ashore. He could only crawl, with his heart pounding fit to burst, as he struggled up the bank to the place where he’d left the others.

  He finally managed to get up on his feet as he reached the top of the hill. He was instantly sorry he had, because the first thing he saw was a cotton-wood tree, burning like a torch. His jaw went slack as he looked down again, and saw the charred carcass of a steer . . . and then another, and another . . . half a dozen dead animals lying in the field. Some of them looked like they’d exploded—entrails and legs and heads scattered, with nothing left to hold them together. The rest of the heard had vanished.

  “Ed?” he called, his voice shaking. “Mickey—?”

  But they were gone, like the cattle, as completely as if they’d never existed.

  Roy’s knees collapsed, and he sat down at the edge of the field, still gaping, until his brain had taken all it could. And then he passed out in the flattened grass.

  BACK IN ABSOLUTION, in the hot, overcrowded jailhouse, Sheriff Taggart nursed a cup of room-temperature coffee, leaning against the wall alongside his other deputies as Lyle tried to finish patching up Duffy at his desk.

  Duffy was wailing and squirming like a baby as Lyle struggled to tie off the bandages. Small wonder the preacher had gone home as soon as he’d determined that neither Duffy’s body nor his soul were in any real danger. Adding to the general level of aggravation, Percy Dolarhyde was still all mouth, even locked in a cell in the back of the room.

  Days like this made Taggart wish he’d gone deaf. He was getting old enough—hell, he was fifty-two—but he was blessed with the constitution of a man half his age, and on a good day he still felt like one. This hadn’t been one of those days.

  Percy Dolarhyde had ensured he’d have to stay up most of the night, too—probably all of it. God only knew if the prison wagon would get here before Wood-row Dolarhyde did, and what would happen, either way . . .

  Duffy gave another yelp, and Lyle half shouted, “Hold still, dammit, hold still—!”

  Percy Dolarhyde hung onto the bars of his cell, sobering up now, but still more than halfway to drunk. “You know this is all your fault?” he said, glaring at Duffy. “Lettin’ that stranger dry-gulch me—”

  “Arrrgh, stooop—!” Duffy howled, as Lyle jerked the last of the bandage tight around his upper arm, and finally knotted it off.

  Kids these days . . . no guts and no sense, Taggart thought, thinking not just about Percy, but about some of his own hired help. Not that he could afford to be fussy, the way things were now in Absolution.

  He pushed away from the wall, too restless to stay still any longer. He thought briefly of his grandson, Emmett. Emmett was a good boy, and T
aggart hoped he’d grow into a good man. But it was hard with the kind of job he had, to keep the boy from seeing or learning too much, too fast. He was vaguely surprised—and relieved—that Emmett hadn’t shown up back here after he took care of the horses.

  Taggart supposed Emmett had gone on home like he should have, and Juanita, the housekeeper, had fed him and put him to bed like usual. Lord love her. She was a good woman who’d raised seven children of her own. She’d taken good care of Emmett ever since Emmett’s mother, Taggart’s only child, had passed away. He was sure she’d take care of the boy even if something happened to his grandpa, one day. . . .

  Taggart’s face turned bleak again, his mood driving the regret and weariness from his eyes. He went to the gun rack and began pulling down shotguns and rifles, handing them out to the deputies. He was going to need all the men tonight, and they’d damn well better be armed to the teeth if they had to face Wood-row Dolarhyde and his crew.

  Percy watched him from the cell, with too-knowing eyes. “Why don’t you do yourself a favor and lemme go right now; we’ll say this never happened. . . .”

  “But it did happen.” Taggart turned toward him, still holding a rifle, his stare more resigned than bitter. He turned back to Lyle, handing the rifle to him. In a low voice, he said, “Where’s the wagon?”

  “On its way—” Lyle said, his face showing Taggart his own mixed emotions. He began to pass out ammunition.

  “We gotta get him out of here fast,” Taggart muttered.

  “What wagon?” Percy said loudly. Nothing wrong with his hearing . . . . “What wagon—!” he shouted.

  Taggart finally looked at him again, keeping his own voice as matter-of-fact as he could. “We’re taking you to the federal marshal in Santa Fe.”

  “Federal marshal?”

  For the first time Taggart had the satisfaction of seeing a few simple words wipe the insufferable smile off that little cur’s face.

  “You done lost your mind?” Percy hollered, just as loud, but whining now. “It ain’t like I’m Jesse James! This might just cost you your miserable life. My daddy hears you put me in an iron coach, he’ll kill ya—!”

  “Percy, you wounded an officer of the law,” Taggart repeated again, wondering if the significance of that would ever sink into Percy’s brain, drunk or sober. “I don’t have to—”

  He broke off, stopping dead in front of the notice board papered with wanted posters and changes in the territorial laws. He pulled down a particular sheet, stared at it, speechless.

  “But he’s fine!” Percy waved a hand at Duffy, who frowned, oblivious to the fact that Taggart was no longer listening to him. “He’s all fixed up! My balls hurt worse than his shoulder!”

  “Sonofabitch. . . .” Taggart murmured, still staring at the poster. He looked up at his deputies; suddenly the Dolarhydes were the furthest thing from his mind.

  DOC SORENSON SET down mugs of beer for two customers at a table. He set the mugs down harder than he should have, and foam slopped over the rims onto the well-scrubbed wood.

  The two men looked up, surprised. He watched their surprise turn to amusement as they saw the anger still smoldering in his eyes, which the bent rims of his spectacles did nothing to hide.

  “Can you put that on Percy’s tab?” one of the men asked, looking at Doc like the soul of innocence. His buddy elbowed him, and they both snickered at the joke . . . laughing at him.

  “Very funny,” Doc said, his voice grating. He held out his hand. “Fifty cents,” he said.

  Across the room, Maria looked up as if she felt the pain behind his simmering frustration. She’d always seemed to know his moods better than he did, for as long as he’d known her. She was the reason he had come back here from the East; she was the reason he stayed here, in this land only an Apache could love.

  She came toward him and he saw the concern in her luminous brown eyes. God, she was so beautiful . . . and not just because she had a beautiful face: It was her soul he’d always loved the most, looking out at him through those eyes. She was the only one who’d ever really seen him for who he was. “I can take over, mí amor,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you rest . . . ?”

  Doc frowned, because right now her loving concern was the last thing he needed, after another humiliation at the hands of Percy Dolarhyde. He was a man, and in front of a bunch of strangers he didn’t need a woman, even his wife—especially his wife—treating him like a weakling. “We got customers,” he said. “I don’t need any rest. What’re you sayin’?”

  Maria took her hand from his arm, took a step back from the look in his eyes. “Nothing,” she protested, “just that I—”

  “They made a fool out of me,” Doc snapped, cutting her off. “You don’t have to dress it up. Now the people got less confidence in me—in this establishment—!”

  She shook her head, her long, midnight curls moving across her shoulders. “That’s not true; I just didn’t want you to get shot—”

  “Well, I’m fine,” he said angrily, only proving to both of them that he wasn’t. There was no way he could explain it to a woman, how in this world a man’s reputation for toughness was worth everything he had. His whole identity depended on the proof of his ability to survive, his ability to protect the people he loved and the things he called his own, with his skill . . . with a gun.

  “Maybe we don’t belong here,” Maria whispered, looking down, blinking too much.

  Impotent anger overwhelmed even his love for her—any emotion that would have let him understand what she was really saying. His self-disgust turned everything ugly, and made every word into a knife that cut them both. “You wanna leave?”

  “How can you think that?” He could see the hurt in her eyes. “I followed you here because I’d follow you anywhere. Esto es tu sueño, your dream! Remember how happy we were when we first came?” She only moved closer to him, not further away . . . but every gesture she made only added to his feeling of failure.

  “Don’t you understand?” The truth burst out of him as if he’d shouted it. “I can’t protect you! I can’t even protect myself. . . .”

  “You don’t have to prove anything,” Maria said softly. “You’re the bravest man I know.” She leaned toward him and tried to kiss him.

  He physically pushed her away. “I’m not a child.” He turned toward the stairs that led to the upper level and began to climb them, disappearing into the darkness—angry at her, and this world they were trapped in . . . angry most of all at himself.

  Maria watched him go, with the wounds his words had left in her heart still showing in her eyes. But the part of her mind that had not been stolen by sorrow registered another customer entering through the swinging doors. Hastily she pulled herself together, grateful for the composure her years of working in her parents’ cantina had given her.

  She turned back and saw the man who had ended Percy’s reign of petty terror so effectively, without firing a shot, put his foot up on the rail and lean against the bar. A dog was following at his heels, and though he did nothing to acknowledge it, the dog lay down on the floor beside him.

  Her smile became genuine as she approached the stranger to take his order.

  “Steak,” the man said.

  Maria uncorked a bottle of their best rye, and poured him a shot. She set the open bottle on the bar and left it there. “I have a nice pasole today. On the house. For what you did.” Still smiling, she turned away and went into the kitchen. Her mother had always made pasole with pork, but here everything was beef . . . Dolarhyde’s beef. She would make sure there was plenty of steak in this man’s stew, and put it in the biggest bowl she could find. He looked like a man who needed a good meal a lot more than he needed her gratitude.

  THE MAN PICKED up the shot of whiskey and tossed it back. It slid down his throat like flaming honey . . . this was the good stuff. He was vaguely surprised by her generosity; he hadn’t shut down Percy Dolarhyde for any other reason than because the little turd had stuck a big
pistol in his face. He wasn’t used to gratitude. But food and whiskey felt just fine.

  If he had some food, maybe it would help him think straight. Or maybe enough liquor would make him go numb. Either one seemed like an improvement over the way he felt right now.

  He leaned against the bar, resting on his arms. His eyes caught on the metal cuff he was still wearing. He stood staring down at it, watching the pattern of its colored metals change in the lamplight. How? Where—? Who . . . ? A thousand unanswered questions filled the empty space where a lifetime of memories from before today should have been.

  He looked at the bottle of whiskey, wondering what it would really take to let him remember the past; or at least to let him forget today. . . .

  He glanced up, into the mirror behind the bar, as someone else entered the saloon—a woman, all alone. The handful of other customers sitting around the room barely seemed to notice her, which struck him as odd. A woman who looked like that walking into a saloon alone would normally attract a lot of attention—particularly when she was wearing a gun belt over her dress.

  Maybe it was the pistol that kept them from staring. . . . Her eyes flicked his way, but she didn’t look like she had plans to use the gun on him. He looked down again and considered pouring himself another drink.

  The woman took the place next to him at the otherwise empty bar.

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, mildly curious.

  She was staring at him. He looked up at her, suddenly wondering if she knew him. Her eyes were the color of sage, ringed by darker green, and something about them was like a bottomless well. They caught his own, drawing him in until he felt like he was drowning. . . .

  He broke her gaze with an effort, tried to focus on her face as a whole. Her expression was as unsmiling as a judge’s, and yet her face was beautiful . . . heartbreakingly beautiful. . . .