The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  “They’d say we were smart not to waste money on rented mounts when we ain’t left town all day,” I said.

  Bob gave my suit and lace-up shoes a scornful squint. “Oh, I ain’t listenin’ to you. You look like a damned banker today. What’s the matter with you, Gus—lettin’ your brother strut about in public kitted out like that? It’s positively shameful.”

  Gustav let all this hot air blow right by. “Thanks for comin’.” He turned to Lottie. “I’m gonna need both of you before the night’s through.”

  “Good. I didn’t come all this way just to keep Bob company,”

  Lottie said. “What are you thinkin’?”

  “Well, I got some notions as to who it is we’re huntin’ for, but I ain’t ready to take that head-on just yet.”

  My brother’s gaze flicked my way, and I nodded my agreement…not that Old Red would need it to do as he saw fit. Still, it was a relief to know he wasn’t simply taking us gunning for Milford Bales. Go after a town marshal, you’d best have more backing you up than a couple former cowboys and a reformed harlot. You’d better have you some proof.

  “So we’re gonna go about it roundabout,” Gustav went on. “Like this.”

  It wasn’t a bad plan, really. In fact, the only part I objected to was Step One: Old Red and I were to sneak back into town unseen—by lying in the back of Bob and Lottie’s wagon under a tarp fished from the jockey box.

  If you don’t understand what I disliked about this, I can only assume you’ve never stretched out in the bed of a buckboard under canvas that’s normally used to cover loads of fresh-shorn goat wool. Needless to say, by the time we pulled around behind the Star, my suit stank of Angora so bad I could have taken shears to it and sold it as fleece. I would’ve changed into something less goaty the second we got to our room, only Gustav and I sneaked up the back stairs with company—Lottie was sticking with us while Bob got Step Two rolling solo.

  We let our guest have the room’s one chair, and she perched upon it stiffly, face grim. When her gaze fell upon our unmade bed, she looked like she wanted to spit on it. It took me a moment to realize why, oaf that I am.

  This room was nothing new to Lottie. For all I knew, she’d spent time in that very bed, staring up at the cracked ceiling, praying for escape that came only after her best friend was hacked to death not fifty paces away.

  Old Red, of course, couldn’t be counted on to lighten a mood—if anything, he dependably darkened them, and this night was no different. He just hovered by the window, staring down into the black alley below, looking sour and saying nothing.

  We’d been waiting maybe half an hour when the knock finally came: four light raps on the door, just as we’d agreed out by the springs. Bob was back.

  “It’s all set,” he whispered when I opened the door a crack. “Come on.”

  We followed him down the hall into another room—the one he’d just rented posing as a rancher in town on business. A lonely rancher.

  “Didn’t take much wink-winkin’ to get the clerk to talk turkey,” Bob told us. “I laid out what I wanted, slipped him a couple greenbacks, and he said he’d ‘ring for room service.’ It shouldn’t be long now.”

  “You sure he didn’t suspect nothing?” Gustav asked.

  “Hey, who spreads bullshit better than your ol’ pal Bob?”

  My brother looked at me.

  “Let’s just hope it didn’t get spread too thick,” I said.

  After that, we were on to Step Three: waiting again. Old Red resumed his watch by a window, and it wasn’t twenty minutes before he spotted someone moving around down in the alley. It was time to see if his plan was going to pay off.

  Just in case it didn’t, Gustav and I drew our guns.

  Soon we heard footsteps out in the hall. They sounded slow, hesitant—not like the brisk, businesslike gait of a good-time gal anxious to get another unpleasant job over and done with.

  The steps came closer, drew even with the door, stopped.

  Then…nothing. No steps, no knock, no “Anyone home?” Just silence.

  Someone was out there, though. Doing what we were.

  Standing.

  Listening.

  Perhaps, as in my case, sweating. A lot.

  At last, there was a knock.

  Bob looked over at my brother. Gustav and I were side by side, pressed against the wall so as to be out of sight when the door swung open. Lottie was in the far corner, well out of the way should Ragsdale and Bock have sent us Stonewall in lieu of the strumpet we wanted.

  Bob had asked for a skinny gal, preferably a blonde. Like a chippie he used to do at the Golden Eagle years before. That one, she was an animal—in all the right ways, ho ho. Squirrel Tooth Annie, they called her.

  Old Red gave Bob a nod.

  Bob put on a smile and stepped over to the door.

  I kept my eyes on that grin of his. It was my canary in the coal mine. It died, I knew there was trouble.

  Bob opened the door.

  “Well well,” he said, smile holding steady. “Come on in.”

  He stepped back, and a tall woman moved past him into the room. She had her back to me as Bob closed the door, but it was plain she was a bony-thin thing—sure as heck not Stonewall in a dress and shawl.

  I lowered my Bulldog and let out a sigh of relief…which was what spun the woman around and set her to screaming.

  “No!” she shrieked when she saw me and Gustav. “Stonewall! Stonewall!”

  Bob got an arm around her as she dashed for the door, but she opened wide and sank big buck teeth into his wrist. He let go with a howl.

  I tried next, jumping over to block the door, and took a kick to the giblets for my trouble. I spent the next few seconds so blinded with pain I was only barely aware that the screeching nutcracker who’d sent me to my knees was now clawing at my brother’s eyes.

  As Old Red hopped back out of scratching range, another shape swooped into the fray, wrapping itself around our wildcat from behind, pressing close to one ear.

  “Annie, stop. Annie, it’s alright. Annie, it’s me.”

  The woman twisted to look over her shoulder. Then the whole of her was spinning around, pressing into Lottie, sobbing.

  I started to get to my feet, then thought better of it on the advice of my stomach, which was threatening to evict my last meal if I didn’t hold still a little longer. Next to me, Gustav was tenderly testing the red-raw flesh of his face, apparently worried there wasn’t enough left on the bone to hold his eyeballs in place.

  “Good God,” Bob croaked as he plopped himself onto a chair and checked his wrist for blood. Somehow, Squirrel Tooth Annie’s bite hadn’t broken the skin. “If Custer’d had her at the Little Big Horn, it’s Crazy Horse would’ve got scalped.”

  “It ain’t her I’m worried about now,” my brother said. He’d holstered his Colt for the fracas, but now he drew it again and leaned in close to the door.

  The three of us listened for a moment, but there was nothing to hear beyond Squirrel Tooth Annie’s weeping and Lottie’s quiet words of comfort.

  “Neighbors ain’t complainin’,” I said.

  Bob grunted out a gruff chuckle.

  “That’s the Star for you. A ruckus like that’d be a soothin’ lullaby compared to some things you might hear.” Bob’s blubbery face reddened, and he glanced over at my brother. “No disrespect intended.”

  “Don’t bother apologizin’. It’s true.” Old Red turned to the women. “Ain’t Stonewall supposed to hang around in case there’s trouble?”

  “He doesn’t wait in the hall,” Lottie said. “Even for this place, that’d be too obvious.”

  “Especially these days,” Squirrel Tooth Annie added, her voice breathy and tremulous.

  “Whadaya mean?” Gustav asked her.

  She wiped a sleeve over her thin, sniffling nose. There was nothing even vaguely squirrelish about her until she talked: Her two front teeth were huge. One was slightly crooked. Both were gray. Taken to
gether, they looked like a couple gravestones side by side in the boneyard.

  “Things ain’t been the same since Milford Bales became marshal,” she said. Her voice gained strength—or perhaps just hardened—with each word. “Used to be the law didn’t give a shit what we did, but Bales…can you believe he actually arrested me once? For ‘soliciting,’ he said.”

  “Arrested you?” My brother’s eyes narrowed. “What’d he do?”

  Squirrel Tooth put her hands on her hips, shooting for spunky-sassy even with puffy red eyes and tear tracks on her gaunt cheeks.

  “What do you think he did? The son of a bitch put me in jail! Ragsdale and Bock had to send Stonewall over with fifty bucks bail to get me out. They said it was more than my scrawny old ass was worth, but I worked it off quick.” The woman cocked her head to one side. “You’re Gloomy Gus, ain’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  She looked over at Bob.

  “And Bob Harris. I’d just about forgot what you two looked like.”

  “Well, now you got something to remember me by,” Bob said. “I’ll be the feller with the tooth marks in his arm.”

  “Who’d you think we were, anyway?” Old Red asked.

  Squirrel Tooth let her fists drop from her hips, her arms going slack. “I thought it was my time to go. Like Adeline.”

  My brother was nodding along, understanding, unsurprised—until Squirrel Tooth went on, adding three words that changed everything.

  “And the others.”

  Gustav froze so solid it was actually Lottie who got in the obvious question first.

  “There’ve been other murders?”

  “I don’t know about murders,” Squirrel Tooth said. “Gals just…go. Disappear. And I’ve been thinkin’ for a long, long time that…that I was gonna be next.”

  She started to sway as she spoke, knees going wobbly.

  Lottie swooped to her side again.

  “For Christ’s sake, Bob,” she hissed.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Bob hopped off his seat like a frog from a frying pan, and Lottie settled Squirrel Tooth in his place.

  “Lay it all out for me, Annie.” Old Red pushed past Bob and knelt down before Squirrel Tooth. “Please. I need to know everything.”

  Squirrel Tooth looked at Lottie.

  Lottie nodded.

  Squirrel Tooth talked.

  “It happens in October…always October. Stonewall takes one of the gals out on a job, and she doesn’t come back. ‘She run off with a drummer,’ he’ll say. Or ‘She run off with a cowboy.’ Or just ‘She run off.’ You know how it is”—she looked up at Lottie and flashed a quick, quivery smile—“some of us really do get out clean. Others die of this or that. But there’s always fresh stock comin’ in to replace the ones that go. So by the time Stonewall’s sayin’ it again—‘She run off’—it’s mostly new gals he’s sayin’ it to. Kids, practically, and they ain’t got no idea. Me and Big Bess, though, we’ve been around since it all began, so we know the truth of it: October’s when they thin the herd.”

  “Who’d they do it to, Annie?” Lottie asked. “Who ‘run off’?”

  “The first was Belle, almost a year to the day after Adeline died. Then a year later it was Billie Jo, and Sunshine after that. Then last year, it was a gal you never knew—Sissy, her name was.”

  “Sunshine?” Lottie whispered. “Even little Sunshine?”

  Squirrel Tooth reached up and took Lottie’s hands in hers.

  “So the last one was October of ’92,” Gustav cut in, flinty and cold. “Ain’t nobody disappeared this year?”

  Squirrel Tooth shook her head. “Not yet—but we’re just barely into October, and I figure it’s gonna be me or Big Bess this time. We’re old and poxy and worthless, us two. It won’t be long ’fore Ragsdale and Bock rid themselves of us one way or another.”

  “Why don’t you just get out?” I asked. “Run off for real?”

  Squirrel Tooth scowled at me as if she wanted to sink in those big chompers and crack my thick skull like a walnut.

  “Run off to where? No man wants me, and I don’t want no man.” She turned away, talking to Lottie now. “Besides, you know I’ve got the kinda habits you can’t feed out on some dirt farm. I tried savin’ up money, like Adeline done, but it’s no use. It all goes up my arm.”

  Squirrel Tooth leaned into her old friend, fresh tears welling in her eyes.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she moaned, “it’s a wonder I’m still alive at all.”

  Lottie kissed the top of her head, looking like she was on the verge of sobbing herself. Then she looked over at my brother, and it wasn’t tears in her eyes but rage.

  The two of them held the gaze a moment, Lottie fire, Gustav ice. Some understanding passed wordlessly between them, and my brother turned and marched stiffly toward the door.

  “Wait here,” he said to no one in particular. “This won’t take a minute.”

  He left, closing the door firmly behind him.

  “Where’s he goin’?” Bob asked me.

  “You’re askin’ the wrong person.”

  We both turned to Lottie.

  She just smiled—but, oh, what a smile—malicious and bitter and gleeful and wild.

  It was a wolf grin. The kind with blood on the fangs.

  Seeing it, I knew where Gustav had gone…and what he was about to do.

  I tore out of the room and raced to the back stairwell and fairly threw myself down the steps. And before I was even halfway down, I heard it.

  Muffled curses, scuffling feet, something heavy hitting the ground. Then thrashing. Then gurgling.

  When I got outside, I found Stonewall hunched over Old Red, his big paws wrapped around my brother’s neck.

  22

  Bump Bump

  Or, We Put an Old Enemy’s Feet to the Fire

  It was too dark to make out more than thrashing shapes back there behind the hotel. Yet that’s all I needed to see.

  The silhouette the size and shape of a grizzly had to be Stonewall. The slip of a shadow on the ground beneath him had to be Gustav.

  And the moist, burbling sounds that little shadow was making? That had to be choking, though it was getting awfully close to a death rattle, too.

  I whipped out my new Bulldog and stepped toward Stonewall’s broad, stooped back. My finger twitched on the trigger.

  That’s all it did, though—twitch. It didn’t tighten.

  I flipped the gun around and brought the butt down on the back of Stonewall’s head.

  Bob came charging out the Star’s back door just as Stonewall went crashing to the ground…or almost to the ground, seeing as he had my brother to land on.

  “Holy shit!” Bob gasped. “Is Gus alright?”

  “I don’t know! If he ain’t been choked to death, he mighta just been crushed!”

  After some frantic heave-hoing, we managed to roll Stonewall over on his back.

  Old Red sat up, gulped in a lungful of air, and showed us he was alright by immediately starting carping.

  “Jesus,” he wheezed, “couldn’t you have pushed the big bastard off me before you brained him?”

  I scooped up Gustav’s Peacemaker, which was lying on the ground just outside the stairwell.

  “You’re welcome.” I stomped over and offered my brother the gun. “What the hell were you tryin’ to do back here, anyway?”

  Old Red snatched the Colt from my hand. “Talk.”

  “Talk, huh?” I nodded at his iron. “With that?”

  Gustav pushed himself to his feet and delivered a none-too-gentle nudge to Stonewall’s side.

  The man-mountain’s blubber jiggled for a moment, but beyond that Stonewall didn’t move.

  “I wanted to talk so’s he’d hear me,” Old Red said.

  “Well, I guess he had a thing or two to say to you, too, didn’t he?”

  My brother gave Stonewall another toe-prod. This time, the big man moaned.

  “The conversation ain’t over.”
Gustav turned to Bob. “You’d best go fetch the wagon. We’re leavin’. All of us.”

  “You mean”—Bob looked down at Stonewall—“all of us?”

  “What do you think ‘all’ means?” Old Red snapped.

  Bob put his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I didn’t know Stonewall counted as an ‘us,’ that’s all. Won’t take ten minutes to collect the wagon from the livery.”

  He stepped into the alley running along the Star and was promptly swallowed in darkness.

  “Why don’t you go up and tell Lottie and Squirrel Tooth what’s goin’ on?” I said to Gustav. “I’ll keep an eye on Stonewall.”

  “Feh. He ain’t in no condition to cause trouble now. You run on upstairs. I’ll wait here.”

  “It ain’t the trouble he’ll cause I’m worried about,” I said, and I crossed my arms and planted my feet.

  Old Red stared my way a moment, silent. There wasn’t enough light to see more than the general shape of him, an outline that was only slightly lighter than the blackness all around. His face was a smudge, a gray blur revealing nothing.

  “Get Stonewall out of sight soon as Bob’s back,” he finally said. He turned and headed for the stairwell. “I don’t want any fuss when I bring the women down.”

  As my brother’s clomping footfalls faded away up the stairs, Stonewall groaned and started to stir.

  “You are one lucky SOB, you know that?” I said to him. “It’d be poetic justice, you dyin’ on the very spot Adeline got done in.”

  Stonewall struggled to his hands and knees, then looked up and told me I’d committed an unmentionable sin with an immediate relation and should now repeat the act solo. (His phrasing was a tad more concise than that.)

  I laughed. “There you go—that’s the spirit! Pull yourself together. Get your strength back.” I walked around behind him, put a foot to his massive, meaty cheeks, and shove-kicked him to the ground again. “Cuz I reckon justice ain’t done with you tonight. Now stay down, or I’ll finish hammerin’ out what little brains you got. I’ve already had two goes at it since I come to town, and I’m thinkin’ the third time’ll be the charm.”