Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  I stooped and studied those shoeprints for a long time, burning them into my brain. The foreleg shoes was pretty much a match, but the hindleg two was both different. Now, I figured this man for a traveler, someone who didn't stay in the same place very long. Man works on a ranch or lives in town, his horse's shoes all look pretty much the same, because it's likely the same farrier does the work, though maybe at different times. But a man who's moving on, he takes what he gets depending on where he is, 'specially if his mind is on something else.

  I studied and studied, but I wasn't sure I'd remember the shape of them, much as I wanted to. Sometimes, the face of a shoe will be as different as one man's face from another's, but sometimes not. And as unregular as these were, as big or shaped funny or something, there was nothing, no detail I could latch on to, so's I could be sure to remember them later.

  After I got back to town I sat in the office for a while trying to figure things out. Towards eight o'clock I went over to Doc's.

  "Glad you're here, Willie," he said. Doc didn't have to say how tired he was, his face showed that. Not a young man, Doc Plum-mer. Older than me by ten years, I'd guess.

  After he left, I took the lantern and went in back and stretched out on the narrow bed he said I could sleep on, right beside Clete, who looked about the same as he did that afternoon. If he was coming out of his concussion, I couldn't see it. Ever once in a while, though, he would move around some and make sounds that seemed like he was trying to say something, but it was more like a man talking in his sleep than anything else. I read the paper and looked at the pictures in one of Doc's doctoring books. The things that can go wrong with a man's skin! Before long I was itching and scratching and feeling miserable from scalp to toes.

  About the time I decided to throw that damn book in the comer, Clete let out a yell that would have woke a winter-sleeping bear. I jumped a foot off that bed, got over to him quick and took hold of his shoulders, he was twisting around so.

  "Hold still!" I told him, but he paid me no mind. After a while I figured out what he was saying.

  "Where am I, where am I?" he kept asking over and over.

  Well, I told him several times he was at Doc Plummer's, but it seemed like he didn't understand me. His eyes were open, but it didn't look like he knowed who I was. He was thrashing around so bad at one point I had to hold him down, I thought he would hurt himself. I could see fresh blood coming through his bandages, especially on his jaw. Also, he seemed like he was trying to get up off his bed. And I knowed he oughtn't to do that. For a while we had as much of a tussle as I wanted and then some. I was about to call out for someone to come help me when he just stopped.

  "Willie?" he asked. "Willie?"

  "Yes, damnit, it's me!" I said to him.

  But he just kept asking, "Willie? Willie?"

  He moved his hands to my arms and then to my face. I admit it felt strange to have a man running his hands over my nose and chin and everywhere and poking his fingers in my mouth and eyes, but then I seen how things was. He couldn't see. My, his eyes looked wild, I put his hand on top of my head and shook it yes about as big as a man can.

  "Willie," he said, not asking now. "Willie … "he laid back, all out of breath and looking as played out as a newborn calf. He said something and I leaned close to catch it.

  " … see. I can't see. I can't see anything and I can't hear." His voice got real loud then: "I can't hear!"

  Damned if I knew what to do but pat his shoulder, and that seemed to quiet him some.

  He said my name a time or two and from the way he was squinting up his eyes, I could tell he was trying his damnedest to see, but he could not do it. "Where am I? Where am I?" He repeated everthing that way.

  I told him again, of course, but it did him no good, for he was as deaf as an adobe wall. After a while, he sniffed the air. "Doc's-Doc Plummer's office," he said. And then he said it again and again and again until I thought he had maybe lost his mind. Pretty soon he started to go off, asleep or into his concussion I didn't know which. Whichever it was, he kept saying "Doc Plummer's office" all the way out.

  I went back to that other bed in there and after a while I blew out the lantern. Sleep didn't come easy that night, but I guess I did drop off after a while, for the next thing I knowed it was starting to gray up in the room and Clete was calling my name.

  It was still pretty dark, so I lit the lantern and sat on the bed beside him. His face was as white as the belly of a fish and the sweat was running off his forehead in streams, though it was pretty cool. Mostly, it was his eyes that looked so strange-open as wide as the doors to hell. He was scared, I could see it plain, and that made me feel scared myself, for I never seen him afraid before. Why, we had stood against more than twice our number in that shootout at the old Haney place, and Clete never showed a sign that he even considered that he could be killed, though I surely did. And he'd faced down Whitey DuShane all by himself that snowy afternoon last year without a trace of being afraid, and he knowed as certain as a skunk will piss on you if you give him the chance, that DuShane was faster than he was by a long shot.

  "Move closer," he said, all out of breath.

  I picked up the lantern and did as he wanted.

  His eyes straining hard. "I-I think I can see you a little. Move closer," he said again, his voice like an iron rasp on an old oak board.

  "Take it easy on yourself, Pard," I told him, but it was clear he didn't know what I was saying.

  He grabbed my shoulder and I thought for a minute he was mad at me, he gripped me so hard. "Closer, damnit!"

  Well, I was only a hand's breadth from his face when he stopped yanking at me.

  "I can see you!" he yelled. "Not very plain, but it's you, it's you!" And with that he lay back and closed his eyes. Pretty soon he was out.

  I laid back down, but sleep was gone for that night. Before long I heard Doc Plummer coming in the outer door and I sneaked out so as to let Clete rest. I told Doc what'd happened, and he smiled. When he did that, I felt better than I did in a week.

  The tall, scrawny man sat his horse where Medicine Creek flows into the Missouri and pondered deep and long. He had hit him, he was sure, for he had watched him go down in the street. But was he dead? Did the ball pierce his body or didn't it? He had been sure when he rode away. He was not sure now, though. He would have to be sure.

  Over the next week Clete found himself. His sight come back gradual and then his hearing too, but he said things was faint still. He complained about his ears ringing all the time and of having a headache that never left him, but I figured he was lucky to have a head at all.

  The next week, he was sitting up in a chair. Looked to me like he was tired as a canal boat mule, though. We spent some afternoons playing poker for match sticks, but he was pretty quiet. Mary visited him every day, sometimes twice a day. Doc said Clete was fighting him all the time to let him go, but Doc didn't want to because Clete was talking about taking off after whoever'd shot him. It would be all right for Clete to get out of the sick room, Doc thought, but Clete had to take it easy for some time-and wouldn't I talk to him about staying out at Nell's for a while, please?

  I said I would, but I didn't look forward to it. Shortly after Doc talked to me, I went over to the office and rounded up Clete's gun and holster and took them with me when I went back.

  "Here, strap this on," I said going in. "'Bout time you earned some of that fortune the town's paying you for strutting around and talking big."

  Well, that got a laugh from him. He stood up, a little slower than he usually done, and took his gun. "I've been thinking the same thing myself," he said, buckling the belt. "Only Doc's been telling me to stay here. You clear this with him?"

  "Damn right," I told him. "Only you're going to have to do your sheriffing out at Nell's for a while, boss her chickens and milk cow around for starters. Better to get some practice before you start pretending you're a real lawman in front of everone in town again."

  He looked at
me a minute. "What I had in mind was to start after the bastard who shot me."

  "That's what I thought you'd say, you damn fool. Got any idea which way to go? Cause I don't!" That was a lie, of course, but he didn't suspect it-not from me. "He's lit out of here more'n two weeks ago, and his trail's colder'n a Missouri whore's heart."

  About that time Mary McLeod come in, and I didn't know whether she'd heard me or not. I could tell she'd sized things up about Clete leaving Doc's place and wasn't very happy about it. "Where do you think you're going, Mr. Shannon?" she asked, real smart and sassy.

  "Well, I'm not exactly sure about later, but Willie here has sprung me from this sick man's jail and I'm getting out. Now, you can go along over to Taylor's while I eat the biggest damn steak he's got, or you can stay here and play some checkers with Doc when he comes back, take your pick. But if you're interested in what I'd like you to do, you'll come along and eat with me. And you too, Willie."

  "As long as you're paying," I said.

  Chapter Six

  That next week it took a lot of doin' to talk Clete out of going after the bastard who'd shot him. Once he was well enough to ride, we went up to where the bushwhacker'd laid out in ambush. I told Clete the direction the man took off in, north by east, though there was no trail left at all by that time.

  Clete remembered the lie I told him that day I sprung him from Doc's–that I didn't know which way that backshooter went. He got over it quick enough, but still, he was mad as the devil at first. Truth is, I was catching hell all around. Mary thought it was my fault that Clete wasn't resting any more than he was, and Doc bawled me out a couple of times for not seeing to it that his star patient wasn't living out at Nell's like he oughta be.

  I had just collected me the latest of Doc's tongue-lashings on that subject one evening when I spied the lamp lit in the office.

  My hand wasn'teven off of the knob before I started ordering him around. "C'mon, get your things together. I'm taking you out to Nell's. I've heard enough bitching from both your intended and old man Plummer to last me. Whatcha doing here, anyhow?"

  "Just going through the posters again," he said, sounding weary. "Seems like there should be something here on him." He wiped his eyes and stretched his arms, but then he went back to leafing through them. I seen the dark color was almost gone from the lines beneath his eyes, but he had recently stopped wearing the bandage by his ear. The gash there looked just terrible, all red and raw. You could still see the string marks where Doc'd sewed him back together, too.

  "Now I mean it, damnit," I told him, taking the posters out of his hands and putting them away. "I'm delivering you to Nell's if I have to tie you up to do it. Weak as you are, I don't think you'd be no trouble."

  He smiled and stood up then. "Well, all right, but my guess is she's asleep by now."

  "Don't matter," I told him. "Won't be the first time we woke her up and probly not the last."

  I had a drink at Clooney's while he gathered up his things from upstairs, and before very long we was on the way out to her place.

  The man in the high-peaked hat lay where he had lain before and watched the old womans house through his glass. He saw when she lit her lamp and he saw when a man rode up on a dark horse and took his animal into the bam. The woman didn't come outside. A minute later, the rider led his unsaddled horse into the corral, took the bit from its mouth, and turned it loose. When the old womans caller went inside without knocking, the scraggly man on the hill smiled a thin-lipped, flinty smile. Half an hour later, the lamp went out and half an hour after that, the bony man picked up a satchel and a can and walked silently down the long hill toward the house.

  We didn't talk much, I remember, but it was a real nice night to be out. The moon full as a pumpkin and it'd got warm enough to be comfortable riding after dark.

  Clete seen the glow in the sky before I did. As we topped one of them big hills south of Nell's, he said something I didn't catch and then pointed. The sky to the east was lit up like someone'd lifted the lid off of hell. Clete kicked that big black of his hard enough to make him grunt and I took off after him. Most times I can outride him, but that night I couldn't keep up. I think he'd figured out what that glow in the sky meant long before we crested the rise where you can see down on Nell's ranch good. My God, her whole place was a sheet of flames, licking out most of the windows and even coming through the roof close to the back door. I'd stopped for a second, so surprised I was, but Clete was going flat-out down the last few yards by then. He was off his horse and kicking in a front window before I was even there.

  By the time I got up on the porch, he was handing Nell out the window to me wrapped up in something. I hate to admit it, but the smell of burned flesh and hair nearly made me vomit right there. We got her out in the dooryard a ways and I went a few rods off so I could throw up by myself. I come back soon as I could and I seen she was burned as bad as I was afraid she was. By the light of the flames that was eating away her house, I seen that her hair was mostly all gone except for a little patch in front and I didn't even want to think about her legs and feet.

  She coughed real weak, and Clete sat her up a little so's she could breathe better, but she winced at the least touch.

  Nell said something, but we had to lean close to catch it. After a minute, we figured out what she was saying. "Jesse?" she was asking.

  "No, it's me, Clete," he said, kind of surprised she didn't know him.

  "Clete?" she ask. "Clete?"

  "Yes, it's me," he said. "You just take it easy and you'll be all right."

  "Where's Jesse?" she ask. " Did Jesse get out safe?"

  "Who?" Clete ask.

  "Jesse! Jesse McLeod! He was in there with me." She turned her head a little and looked at her home as the fire burst out the window we had just dragged her through. Already it was catching the overhang of the roof in front. "Oh, God, if Jesse's still in there, he's dead." She cried real quiet after she said that, and then she started coughing again.

  "Jesse McLeod? Mary's father?" Clete asked. He was as taken back as I was. I figured she was maybe hit on the head or something.

  "Yes, Jesse McLeod. We …" That old gal just stopped talking and watched her home bum down.

  A big black scorched place on her cheek and neck was oozing clear stuff down onto the checkered tablecloth that Clete'd wrapped her in, probably to smother out the flames that'd been on her. Pain grabbed at her then and she screwed up her face worse than I could stand to watch. When I looked back, I thought for a while she had died, but after a minute her breathing told me that wasn't so.

  "We got to get her in a wagon and over to Doc Plummer's fast as we can," I told Clete.

  He looked at her while she was sleeping there or whatever a good long minute. Then he shook his head slow and turned them wolfish eyes on me. "She'd never make it, Willie," he said. That was the closest to crying I ever seen him.

  "Yes," Nell whispered. "I'd never last the trip."

  Well, if Clete Shannon wasn't the sorriest looking man I ever saw then, I don't know what. "I didn't mean-Nell, I-"

  "'Tell the truth and shame the Devil,' my Elmer always said." She gripped Clete's hand real tight and said something that was hard to hear. " … figure it. I just … "

  "What's that, Nell?" Clete asked after a while.

  "What started it?" she said, louder than before. "What started that fire! The stove was banked off good, and it was practically new, no trouble with it at all!" Her eyes looked crazy at him, and I was glad it wasn't me she was looking to for answers.

  The roof fell in about that time, and a million sparks flew up into that moonlit sky. I walked over and lay my hand on the side of the bam. It was hot, all right, but it was in no danger of catching fire, so I figured the animals in there was better off than they'd be outside. I went in and looked around and then checked the corral. Sure enough, there stood Jesse McLeod's big old chestnut standing right by the door. I penned him in the bam and then went back out and walked around the b
urning house, looking to see whatever I could. Well, I didn't see nothing worth talking about, but around back, where the smoke was going, I smelled it. I saw my buckskin out at the edge of the firelight and he let me catch him easy enough, though Clete's horse was still jumpy as hell.

  After I tied them both in the bam beside Jesse's, I come around front to where Clete was still bent over Nell. I sat down close to them, for I couldn't see what else to do. I could of used a drink.

  Nell stirred some and squeezed Clete's hand. I could hear most of what she was saying if I listened real close. "There's something you can do, if you're able to, son. Find out who did this to Jesse and me. And when you do, string him up from the highest tree you can find. Somebody must have set it, fire around both doors like that. Somebody must have set that fire, there's no other way. Poor Jesse … Tell Mary … "Her voice faded and I saw her go limp against Clete. He held her up while the walls fell in and after some time the fire burned lower and lower. Nell's breathing got real coarse and unregular and finally so faint that we wasn't sure exactly when it was she slipped away from us.

  It's peculiar how a man can both know something and yet not know that same thing at the same time. I seen it before, of course, but that night it was as clear to me as the moon and just as natural. We sat there with Nell propped up and the fire in the house dying away to embers all night long. We knowed she was dead, both Clete and me, though neither one of us said so. And at the same time, it was like if we didn't say it, she wasn't entirely gone either. And that's how we were 'til first light.

  When daylight comes on, Clete stood up and brushed off his pants. "She's dead, Willie."

  "I know."

  It was pitiful to see the look on his face then. "First time I laid eyes on Nell, she was pointing her old Winchester at my heart," he said, his voice full of catches and burrs from sitting there all night and not saying anything, I guess. "I slept the night in her bam, uninvited. After we talked that morning, she fed me and then threw Wilson's men off my trail. I still owe her for that."