Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  I stuck the pair of them in my vest pocket and got down on my hands and knees and just looked. Sometimes it takes a while to see what you're seeing. I learned a long time ago that most folks'll see what they're looking for, not what they're looking at, and it takes more than a minute or two to take in what's there instead of what you expected you'd find. I crawled around some and finally noticed how the grass was sort of laid down in one spot. Oh, it'd almost all sprung back up, even half dead like it was, but enough of it was still bent over to see where somebody'd laid out a piece of canvas, or a rubber sheet, or something like that. After I had it square in my mind where the corners was, I crawled around the outside and found some little black holes burnt into the matted-down grass.

  Whoever'd laid out here had faced Nell's place from this little rise and spent a good piece of time looking at her house or something around where she lives. Reason I knowed that was from the little burn holes. There was a lot of them along the edge of the blanketsized square that faced toward the buildings, and they was made from grinding out cigarette butts–lots of them, no question. Little rise like this, the snow would leave here first, though the ground would be froze hard, wet and cold as hell turned inside out.

  Clete was right, too. One man by himself, I would bet, because the holes made by the burning cigarette butts was in the center of the side toward Nell's house. Two men laying on a tarp looking down there would be more toward each side, even if one didn't smoke. Course there might of been three men, with one in the middle, but I doubted that. Fellow might talk one fool into laying out here in freezing weather spying on an old woman with him, but I doubted if he could find a second. Craziness to do a thing like that stays bottled up in one man by himself, mostly. And he was careful not to be discovered, too, because he'd gathered up his butts and taken them with him.

  It surprised me, then, that he'd been so careless with his shells. But maybe he was in a hurry to get out of here. Maybe he fired and run, or maybe somebody run him off, I don't know. I crawled around some more and out in front of where he laid, on the side toward Nell's place, I found a little scrap of cloth that looked a lot like the stuff holding the powder to the whole shells I found, only burned some. Well, he had fired at something-or someone. I checked all over for heel holes or boot tracks and fresh horse droppings, but there was none I could see.

  About the time I was thinking of riding down to Nell's and then to town, here she comes riding up toward me with Clete beside her, both of them going slow and looking for sign. Soon they saw me and waved and I mounted and headed down that way.

  "How do, Willie," Nell called. "You're about pretty early." She didn't seem to be jabbing me about sleeping late so I didn't take no offense. Clete smiled some, but he didn't say nothing.

  "Yeah, I saw the sun come up but not a lot more," I told her. "Been out here all night and I'm stiffer than a badger's tail. Got any coffee down there?"

  Clete raised his eyebrows. "How come you did that? I didn't ask you to do that."

  "Thought I might catch someone if he was out prowlin' with the coyotes," I answered. "Mighty hungry up here now, though."

  "You asking me to fix you something?" Nell ask me.

  "Would you mind, Nell?"

  "No, not a bit. Come down in a while and I'll have something ready," she said, and kicked her old mare around. She stopped a little distance away and looked back at us over her shoulder, suspicious. "You men have your private talk, if you must, but don't you keep me in the dark about nothing. I mean it!" Then she dug her heels into that mare's ribs and cantered on home. Wasn't an entirely bad rider either, for a woman.

  "You found something, huh?" Clete asked after we watched Nell for a minute.

  "I guess so," I said, and showed him the square spot where the grass was laid over a little and the burnt holes. Then I took the cartridges out of my pocket and handed them to him. "She say anything about hearing a shot?"

  That set him back on his boot heels pretty good. He turned them over in his hands and ended up smelling them, just like I did earlier. "Nice piece of looking, Willie," he said, kind of like he was congratulating me and kind of surprised that I done it, too. "What do you make of this?"

  "Well, I don't know. Ain't nothing I'm familiar with, but I sure as hell know I wouldn't want to be hit with a piece of lead that size."

  "Me, either," he said. "You know, I've seen something like this before, but damned if can remember where. Seems like I ought to, though."

  "I'm surprised she didn't say nothing to you about hearing a shot. Something that big would sound like a cannon between these hills."

  "How do you know he fired?" Clete ask.

  I fished out the little scrap of cloth and handed him that, too. Buckshot scared up and Clete took a minute to settle him. "Well, she didn't hear it, but Jesse McLeod did. He was around her place day before yesterday-Saturday that'd make it-and someone took a shot at him. Nell was in town buying things for the shindig, I understand." He took off his hat and wiped his brow, though it wasn't warm enough to work up a sweat. "Jesse didn't want to worry her about it. Sorry I didn't mention that to you, Partner. Just forgot to." He looked kind of hang-dogged after he said it.

  "Well, I didn't get no bullet hole in me over it so it don't matter … Pard. Though it don't look like I'll be calling you that much longer, does it?"

  He knowed what I was about. "Meant to tell you that, too, but it just came on before I had a chance."

  "Sure," I told him. "I'll bet you didn't even ask her yet that day in Clooney's when you invited me to them high old times at Nell's, huh?" I guess I could have been a little easier on him about it, but, damn, a man desertin' his friends like that!

  He waved me off and shook his head. "Shit, we didn't sign any contract about going south, just talked about it, as I recall. Things change, you know that."

  He was right, of course. I'd seen it plenty of times, had even talked about doing something myself with a fellow or two and then went and done the opposite. After a minute or so it was pretty clear neither of us had nothing more to say on the subject.

  "C'mon," Clete said, mounting Buckshot and heading toward Nell's. "I could use some more coffee while you're filling your gut."

  We rode quiet for a while. I guessed if I'd ever caught a bad case of the calico fever I might act the same way. "What'd McLeod tell you about gettin shot at?" I ask him.

  "Not much," he said. "Jesse was off his horse and walking toward the door and saw the dirt fly in front of him, like a big geyser, so he said. At first he thought somebody'd thrown something at him for a joke. But then he heard it and ducked for cover. Didn't figure out what direction it came from for a while, and by then it was too late to go after whoever fired at him. Probably a good thing he didn't anyway.

  "Mind if I hang on to these?" he asked, still fingering one of the cartridges. "I'd like John Tate to have a look at 'em."

  "Well, I wasn't plannin' on startin' a collection of unusual shells," I told him.

  "Wouldn't surprise me if you did do that. 'Willie Goodwin's Mementos of the Wild and Wooly West,' you might call it. Travel with one of those rough-riding shows and get rich telling lies to greenhorns. Ready for a belt-stretchin' breakfast?"

  Clete put away his share of flapjacks and eggs, too, but there was no shortage, I can guarantee. After we ate, Clete looked around the dooryard to see if he could spot where the bullet had hit, but he couldn't and neither could I. Been too many people tramping around after the big engagement dinner was my guess. He didn't say no more about me going out to look around again. Guess maybe he was afraid I would get myself killed, but I woulda bet that the old boy who laid out there watching was long gone by then.

  I'd a lost that bet, surely.

  Chapter Three

  Clooney's was still pretty empty when I sat sipping my first beer the next day. Truth is, I was hoping one of the girls might be trying to pick up a little extra money, but none of'em was. Clete come in and looked around and saw me.

 
"C'mon," he said, walking up my table, his eyes full of some annoyance or other. "Let's go ask John Tate about these cartridges."

  "Sit down and have a beer, and let me finish this one and we'll go do 'er," I told him. It was still nice and quiet in Clooney's.

  "No, it's too early for me," he said. "C'mon. Let that stuff alone. Let's go." He started for the door taking strides like he wanted to get somewhere.

  I couldn't see the sense of letting a nice, cool half drunk beer go to waste, but I picked up just the same and followed him outside, where he was lighting a smoke.

  We walked down toward Tate's store but neither of us said anything. It was a fine spring day, though. Sun had a little heat to it already, and you could tell the cold weather didn't have a chance no more.

  Nice town, Two Scalp-mostly a one streeter, but you can't help but notice that there's houses going up pretty regular. They had started another one over in the east end, and you could hear them banging away at it from all over town. Mabel's whorehouse was the oldest building in Two Scalp, I guess, but it certainly wasn't the handsomest. The bank would carry off that prize, for it was made of stone and higher than any other thing in town, except the water tank. Pictures of lion's faces and leaves carved into it, all around the top. The bank, I mean, not the damn water tank. Course, most places were like Jones' Barber Shop, pretty rough and small, showing all the saw-cuts, but at least the barber shop didn't try to look like more than it was with a squared-off false front like a lot of the businesses did.

  "What's on your mind, anyway?" I asked Clete after we'd walked for a while. "You worried about Nell or are them new pants too tight for ya?"

  "No," he said after a minute. "I was just trying to figure out how to tell you you've been drinking too damn much without making you mad." He kept walking while he said this to me, sounding like he was just commenting on the weather. "Of course, it's your business, but it seems every time I need you I've got to go to Clooney's."

  Well, I stopped right there and just waited for him to tum around, which he did after a few steps.

  "Now just a minute," I said. "You're the sheriff here and I do what you tell me, but I don't remember bein' asked to sign no damn temperance card when you offered me the deputy job. Besides, there's nothing for me to stay sober for, anyhow. Biggest problem in this town, outside of a few drunks firing off their pistols, is the dust settlin' on people's furniture."

  "Shit, Willie, I'm not against a man taking some whiskey, but not at the rate you're going. When was the last time you went all day without a drink? Or two or three?"

  "Why, I don't know when that was and I don't care to try and recollect it, either."

  Clete just stood there with a flat expression on his face expecting me to confess the error of my ways, I suppose, but I wasn't about to do that. "You want this badge, that what you want?" I ask.

  Well, he screwed his face up and glanced at the sky and finally walked back to me. "No, I don't want the damn badge," he said, letting a little mad show through his voice. "But you're wrong about there being nothing for you to do." He lowered his tone some then. "I don't like whatever's goin' on out at Nell's. I talked to Jesse McLeod again last night and he came damn close to being killed." He took those funny-looking cloth-backed things out of his coat pocket and held them under my nose. "Whoever threw one of these at old Jesse meant to kill him. He lay in ambush and shot from more than half a mile off, you realize that? Now that doesn't sound like the work of anyone we know here in Two Scalp, does it?"

  He waited a minute for me to answer. "No, it don't."

  "You're damn right it don't," he said before the words was hardly out of my mouth. "Look, I'm going to need your help here, Willie. I rode around out where you did at Nell's and I didn't see a damn thing. But you didn't have anything to drink that day except a swig from Talfer's pint. You were probably more sober than you've been in two months."

  He took a minute and hitched up his pants, likely waiting for me to cut myself a nice big wedge of humble pie, but I didn't.

  "It's your business, true," Clete said, looking at me a little sideways. "But if you're gonna keep trying to pickle your brain in alcohol, I'm gonna have to get a new deputy, and I'd rather have you backing me up, when you're sober, that is, than anybody else I can think of–even though you can't shoot worth a dog's asshole."

  Again he waited for me to declare myself a reformed man, but I'd already decided against that. A man's drinking is his own affair and nobody else's.

  "Well, come on," he said, "Unless you intend to stand there all day like a damn statue. Doesn't seem right, two men standing in the street squabbling like schoolkids. I'm going to talk to Tate." He turned and walked off down the street, but I wasn't sure I was going. If he looked back, I didn't see him.

  After a time I started down that way too. Truth is, I couldn't think of nothing else to do. Clete was already inside by the time I got there, but he was waiting for Tate to finish up with a customer, a lady who was buying some lamp wicks and yard goods, and I don't know what else.

  John Tate sold dry goods and hardware, but mainly he sold guns. Everyone around bought guns and ammunition from John Tate, because if there was anything worth knowing about firearms, he knew 'er. Had all kinds of catalogs and announcements from the companies that made them, too. I watched him helping the lady out the door with her packages, and I never would have guessed that someone as gentle and polite as him would spend all his free minutes studying on the tools that men use to shoot one another.

  After he said goodbye to the woman, Tate turned to Clete and me. "Can I help you gentlemen?"

  "I hope you can, John," Clete answered. "Would you mind closing your shop for a few minutes? I'd rather not have everyone in Two Scalp gossiping about what I have to ask you. I'll ask you to keep this to yourself, too."

  Tate's eyebrows sprung up. The spectacles on his nose slid down a notch or two, but he pushed them back up quick, locked his door, and then went behind the counter. "Of course, Sheriff, of course. What can I do for you?"

  Clete dug the two shells out of his coat pocket. "Ever see anything like this?" He laid them on the counter real careful. Wellsir, Tate picked one up and turned it around in his hands, eyeing it as careful as most men do a good-looking woman.

  "Yes, indeed, I know what this is. Haven't seen one in a while but I know it. Let me check my lists, just to be sure." He went into the back part of his store and Clete and I followed him. The place smelled of gun oil and turpentine, and I didn't see a cobweb anywhere. There were more revolvers and rifles back there than I ever seen in one place before, blued ones and browned ones and silver ones, enough to outfit all the Rangers and then some. After a minute he located the book he was after and flipped the pages quick. "Yes, indeed! Just as I thought, Sheriff. This is for the old breech-loading Sharps-fifty-two caliber!"

  He smiled at Clete and me like he had just found a double eagle in the mud of the street.

  Clete looked at me and I shrugged. Hell, I don't know nothing about firearms. "What can you tell me about the Sharps, Mr. Tate?" Cleteask.

  "Well, I don't think I can get you one, if that's what you mean, not a new one anyway," John Tate answered, looking pretty sorry about it. "I'm almost sure they don't make them anymore, but you can still buy the cartridges."

  "No, I don't want one," Shannon said. "Just tell me whatever you can about it."

  "Oh, I see," Tate said, kind of lit up again. "This has to do with the law, doesn't it?"

  "Yes, it does," Clete told him, trying to be patient, I could tell, even though he didn't feel like it. "And if you could just-"

  "Yes, sir, I understand." He checked his book again. "Single shot breech-loader. That's linen there," he said, pointing a stubby finger at the cloth part. "Separately primed, of course-regular percussion caps. Let me see, I think this was the piece issued to Berdan's Sharpshooters."

  I could see the hurry-up slide right off Clete's face. "This piece would have a pretty good range, then, wouldn't it?"<
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  "Oh my yes! A thousand yards or more! That's why Berdan's men got them. Of course, you had to have a sharp eye to hit something that far away. They came with good open sights, but I've seen some of them fitted out with telescopes for sights, peep sights too, now that I think of it. Pretty heavy ball, and apparently pretty good rifting, too. And of course it took quite a bit of powder to-" Tate took to examining the shells again and frowning, and for a minute it seemed like he just forgot we were there. "Why, this is peculiar … " He took out what I guessed was a little measuring tool with arms and sized up the lead I had sunk my thumbnail into before. "Well, it's the right size, certainly, but this isn't the standard projectile. I'm sure of that. Looks queer … "

  "What do you make of it?" Clete asked after a time.

  "I don't rightly know, Sheriff. Somebody has modified this cartridge. I've never seen that before. The rings are all right, I believe, but this shape is off. If you could spare this one, I could take it apart and tell you more."

  "Go ahead," Clete told him.

  Tate took the thing over to his work bench and I watched him cut it open. "Thousand yards is more than half a mile, if they haven't changed the numbers since I was in school," I said to Clete.

  "Lot longer range than my Henry," Clete allowed.

  "My God!" Tate whispered, "will you look at this?!"

  Well, we'd have like to, but we couldn't see a damn thing from where we stood. In a minute he brought it back.

  "Why, this is an explosive bullet, gentlemen!" Tate said, waiting for us to be as confounded as he was. When we wasn't, he decided he'd have to give us our lessons. "They called them musket shells during the War, but nobody ever made them for the Sharps, as far as I know. Judging from the look of this, somebody turned these out for himself. See the remains of the file marks here?"