The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  Stonewall repeated his earlier suggestion.

  He stayed down, though.

  When Bob pulled around in the buckboard a few minutes later, he threw down some rope from the jockey box, and I tied Stonewall’s hands together. After a little lively debate as to my brother’s exact meaning—get Stonewall out of sight how?—we loaded our prisoner in the wagon bed with the tarpaulin pulled up over him. To keep him out of mischief, I slithered in beside him and pressed my Bulldog into his side.

  “You’re makin’ a big mistake, asshole,” Stonewall growled, his onions-and-beer breath actually worse than the tarp’s stifling goat-stink. “Anything happens to me, you’re gonna have a lot of people gunnin’ for you.”

  “Well, then”—I pressed my iron deeper into his soft flesh—“I sure hope we don’t hit no potholes.”

  What followed was one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable experiences of my life to date, and bear in mind I’m a fellow who used to spend twenty hours out of a day sitting in a saddle. There I was, lying under stinking canvas trying to hold a gun on a reeking man, and as if that weren’t bad enough, Gustav and Squirrel Tooth eventually wriggled in behind me.

  “Oh, you gotta be kiddin’,” I groaned.

  “Ain’t got no choice—can’t none of us be seen leavin’ town together,” my brother said. “Get us rollin’, Bob!”

  I heard the snap of reins, and the wagon jerked forward.

  “You’re gonna regret this!” Stonewall hollered. “You’re all gonna—!”

  I gave him another gouge with my gun.

  “Bump bump,” I said.

  Stonewall shut up.

  After that, no one spoke for a good quarter hour—at least not loud enough to be heard over the rumbling roar of the wagon wheels. I would say I now knew how a sardine in a can feels, only you’d have to be a sardine packed in goat piss during an earthquake to come even close to what I was going through.

  And I was expecting it to go on all night, for it would take hours to get the wagon back to Bob and Lottie’s spread. So I was mightily surprised when the wagon lurched to a halt and Lottie called out, “You can come out now. We’re here.”

  I threw off the canvas cover and sat up.

  “Here” appeared to be nowhere. Bob and Lottie had lit up a lantern, but its light didn’t stretch far, and all I could see was the dim outlines of looming trees.

  Then a sound reached my ears through the chirpings of a million crickets: the low gurgle of slow-moving water.

  Memory sketched in the landscape around us.

  We were back at the springs.

  “Someone oughta keep watch a ways down the road,” my brother said, sliding out of the wagon bed. “In case anybody else comes out from town.”

  He turned toward me.

  “Bob volunteers,” I said.

  Bob hopped down from the driver’s seat.

  “If you insist,” he said, and he scurried off into the moonlit gloom of the trail.

  I’d volunteered the right person. Bob wasn’t just willing to take watch. He was anxious for it—grateful to escape whatever was coming next.

  Beside me, Stonewall was trying to struggle up into a sit despite his bound wrists. I didn’t stop him—though I certainly didn’t offer any help, either. When he finally got himself upright, I saw the first real fright on his face.

  It was seeing Lottie that put it there—her, and the way she was staring at him.

  “What you lookin’ at, bitch?” he snarled through an unconvincing sneer.

  Lottie didn’t flinch.

  “A dead man,” she said.

  Then she moved off into the trees, taking the lantern with her.

  My brother pulled out his Peacemaker and waved it toward the lake.

  “Alright…over there.”

  “And if I won’t go?”

  Gustav straightened his arm, bringing his .45 in line with Stonewall’s mouth.

  “Then it’ll be all the easier to cart your lousy carcass down to Bob and Lottie’s and let the wolves have at it.”

  “Alright, alright.” Stonewall started scooching out of the wagon bed.

  Squirrel Tooth was the last to get out of the buckboard. I helped her down—something a child could’ve done, she was so light. The poor woman wasn’t just skin and bone. She felt more like skin and toothpicks.

  I worried at first she wouldn’t hold up under Stonewall’s hateful glare—she wasn’t half the woman Lottie was, literally or otherwise. But she didn’t seem to notice Stonewall at all, so glassy-glazed were her eyes. Something in her had shook loose, come unanchored. When Old Red and I started marching Stonewall out toward the water, she didn’t so much accompany us as float along behind like a leaf caught in the breeze of our passing.

  Gustav had us stop sixty feet or so from the wagon, close enough to the spring pool to skip stones off its black waters. A dead tree was stretched out in the brush nearby, and my brother ordered Stonewall to sit up against the splintered stump and stretch out his legs. It took a little more persuading of the Colt-waving variety, but Stonewall finally plopped his bulk against the rotting wood.

  “Untie his hands,” Old Red said to me.

  “About damn time,” Stonewall grumbled.

  “Then hitch him to that,” my brother went on.

  He nodded at the tree stump.

  I can’t say who looked unhappier about that, Stonewall or me. Neither one of us liked the way this was shaping up. Stonewall, of course, had no choice in the matter. Me, I didn’t have any such excuse, but I went along with it anyway.

  Just as I got Stonewall’s hands tied behind him, his arms wrapped back around the stump, a light came flickering through the thicket.

  Lottie was returning with the lantern—as well as a small stack of wood that she dumped on the ground not far from Stonewall’s outstretched legs.

  She’d been out gathering kindling.

  “What’s that for?” I asked. “We didn’t come out here for a barbecue.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Old Red said.

  Lottie looked over at my brother and grinned. It was a grin I was learning to worry about.

  “Take off his boots,” my brother said to me.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  I started to reply that I had indeed—it was understanding him I couldn’t manage. I held my tongue, though.

  Gustav and Lottie had cooked up some kind of contrivance while upstairs at the Star. A trick to scare Stonewall into talking. That’s what I had to figure.

  That’s what I had to hope.

  I crouched down next to Stonewall.

  “Socks, too,” Old Red said.

  As I wrestled with our prisoner’s prodigious (and prodigiously odiferous) feet, Lottie put down the lantern and headed back toward the wagon. Squirrel Tooth, meanwhile, began fashioning the firewood into a little wooden teepee atop a bed of twigs. Contrivance or not, the women knew their parts.

  Once I had Stonewall unshod, I turned to find Squirrel Tooth using the lantern flame to light up a handful of dried-out leaves. When they were smoking and crackling, she put them under the kindling, and within seconds the whole heap was ablaze.

  “Alright, Stonewall,” my brother said, “now we’re gonna have us a talk.”

  “No, asshole…now you’re gonna listen,” Stonewall rumbled back. “You’ve screwed yourselves but good. All of you. Let me go, clear outta the county, and maybe you’ll live, but so much as lay a hand on me and…”

  Stonewall’s lips kept moving for a moment, though he no longer had the breath in him for words. He was staring at something off to my left, and when I followed his wide-eyed gaze I saw Lottie stepping into the circle of yellow-gold firelight. In her hands was what looked like a couple daggers joined together with a bent branding iron.

  She was holding a pair of sheep shears—or goat shears, more like. Huge, razor-sharp scissors for cutting through thick wool.

  Lottie crouched down and slid the bla
des into the fire.

  “I say again: We’re gonna have us a talk, Stonewall,” Old Red said, “and you’d best pray God I believe what you tell me.”

  23

  Burning Questions

  Or, My Brother Tries to Tear Stonewall Down Any Way He Can

  I don’t know if Stonewall took Gustav’s advice about saying his prayers. Somehow, he didn’t strike me as a praying man.

  I’m not usually one myself. Yet I had a favor to ask of the Almighty, and I sent it silently heavenward.

  Please, Lord…let this be a bluff.

  Lottie was fiddling with the shears, searching for just the right angle to leave them in the fire so the flames would lick at the blades but leave the handles untouched. When she got them just so, she looked pleased, like a lady admiring her fine china spread out for the Christmas feast.

  “Alright, you know what I wanna hear,” Old Red said to Stonewall. “Who killed Adeline?”

  “If I knew that, you can bet the SOB would’ve been dead a long time ago,” Stonewall said with grim conviction. Once he’d swallowed his panic at the sight of those shears, he’d become quite earnest indeed. “Nobody slices up one of our gals and gets away with it.”

  Lottie scoffed.

  “It wouldn’t set a good example,” Stonewall went on, eyes locked on my brother. “Customers think they can get away with hurtin’ whores, it’ll start costin’ you quick.”

  “You lyin’ sack of shit,” Lottie hissed, looming up over him. “What about all the hurtin’ you done?”

  “Lottie,” Old Red said, and that was all it took to pull her back, if not calm her.

  “Lyin’ sack of shit,” she muttered.

  My brother turned to Stonewall again. “But someone is hurtin’ your chippies. More than hurtin’ ’em. You’re losin’ one a year, come October, and you’re either doin’ the hurtin’ yourself or givin’ ’em over to him who does.”

  Stonewall glowered at Squirrel Tooth. She’d backed away from the rest of us, retreating out toward the shadows, face blank. The sparkle of reflected firelight in her eyes was the only life left in her to see.

  “You’re gonna believe that dried-up old hophead?” Stonewall said to my brother.

  “You bet we are,” Lottie snapped.

  Stonewall nodded Lottie’s way while still holding Gustav’s gaze.

  “And that one there? Take it from me, Gus—you can’t trust half the things that come outta her mouth. Why, your Adeline wasn’t cold in the ground before she bolted outta the Eagle, and she’s spent the last five years sloppin’ goats. So if she’s told you she knows what goes on at the Phoenix, well, you can bet the tricky bitch is just tryin’ to—”

  Lottie lunged toward him again. “Liar!”

  “Lottie,” my brother said, her name coming out hard and cold this time.

  It was too late. Her leg was already swinging up.

  Stonewall was almost able to jerk his head aside in time. Almost.

  Lottie’s kick caught him across the nose.

  There was a sickening splintering sound, and Stonewall sagged, moaning. Only the tree stump behind his back kept him from falling over entirely.

  Lottie reared for another kick, but Old Red grabbed hold and pulled her away. She screamed and flailed as she was dragged back, her screechings only slowly finding shape in words.

  “Make him answer! Make him answer! Make him answer for what he done!”

  Gustav shoved her at Squirrel Tooth, who wrapped her friend in her spindly-thin arms.

  “He’s just gonna keep lyin’, Gus,” Lottie sobbed. She looked down into the fire, face aglisten with tears. “You’re gonna have to do it. It’s the only way.”

  My brother followed her gaze.

  The shears were red hot.

  Old Red pulled out a handkerchief, draped it over the handles, and pulled the blades from the fire.

  Stonewall looked up. Blood from his crooked, gashed nose flowed down over his mouth, drenching his thick black beard.

  When he saw the shears in my brother’s hands, he folded up his legs, sweeping his naked feet away from the hot iron. He may have even whimpered, I’m not sure.

  “I swear I don’t know nothin’,” he said, words slurred, teeth mottled red. “I swear it!”

  I didn’t believe him for a second.

  “Brother…don’t,” I said anyway.

  Old Red was still crouched by the fire, the glow from the flames gleaming orange-red across his face.

  “I’m gonna give you a place to start, Stonewall…and where it goes from there is up to you,” he said. “What happened that night?”

  Stonewall spit out his answer so fast he was spitting foamy blood, too. “I took Adeline over to the Star for some drummer. A salesman just passin’ through. I was supposed to wait around back for her, but…and I can see how you might hold this against me, Gus, and I’m truly sorry…but I used to slip away to attend to my own business long as I was out from under Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Bock, and that’s what I did that night.”

  “What sorta business?”

  “You know what line I’m in. A feller owes money and he hasn’t been payin’, he gets a reminder. That kinda thing.”

  “I don’t wanna hear about this or that ‘kinda thing,’” Gustav said. “I wanna hear what you did that night. Exactly.”

  The shear-blades were already cooling in the night air, going from red to amber to near black. They were still hot enough to brand a man, though—to make skin sizzle and cook—and Stonewall knew it.

  “I swear to God, Gus, I don’t remember! I beat the shit out of some dumb son of a bitch, but you can’t expect me to remember who after all these years. All I know is, I came around back of the Star wonderin’ if Adeline was even gonna be there…she used to slip off on her own business, too, you know. And I found her there by the stairs, sliced up something awful. Dead. I went straight to the Golden Eagle and told Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Bock what had happened, and that was that.”

  “And that was that?” Old Red spat. “You go moseyin’ off when you’re supposed to be lookin’ after a ‘good earner’ and she gets killed and Ragsdale and Bock don’t skin you alive? Bullshit! Your bosses weren’t mad at you cuz you brought ’em something they could profit from. You didn’t just find Adeline dead. You caught her killer in the act, didn’t you? Then you and them leeches you work for—you cut some kinda sick deal with him!”

  Stonewall pushed back into the dead wood behind him. “That’s crazy, Gus. You’re just makin’ that up.”

  “Am I?” My brother looked down at the shear-blades—pondered on them, it seemed like—before speaking again. “Tell me about Milford Bales.”

  “The marshal? What’s to tell? Ragsdale and Bock hate his guts, and he hates theirs. Him and that loudmouth preacher Landrigan are the biggest enemies they’ve got around here. Surely you don’t think…that milksop…a killer?” Stonewall made the sound of a laugh, though a laugh it was not. “Jesus. You are crazy.”

  Gustav slumped, his head hanging, and I thought maybe it was over. He’d got all he could from Stonewall, and now it was time to figure out our next move.

  But my brother already knew it.

  He slid the shears back into the fire.

  “Someone’s gonna have to hold him down,” he said.

  Lottie didn’t pause a second. As soon as Old Red spoke, she was starting toward Stonewall.

  Squirrel Tooth just sort of swayed in place like one of the trees rustling in the soft night breeze.

  “Brother,” I said. “Look at me.”

  Old Red kept watching the shears, waiting for them to fire up red again.

  “Look at me, dammit!”

  There was a twinkle I needed to see in him. The little sly spark that would tell me this was all sham. A ruse.

  As Gustav picked up the shears again and turned back toward Stonewall, he finally did look my way—with eyes that were dull and flat, hardened with resolve. It lasted all of a second, that look, but that was all
it took.

  I stepped toward him and made a grab for the shears. “You ain’t doin’ this.”

  I got hold of the handles, but Gustav’s grip didn’t loosen no matter how hard I tugged. It was like the metal was a part of him now.

  That metal was hot, too. Even with a hankie wrapped around the handles, they were getting hard to hold, and I could feel the heat off the blades spread across my belly.

  “He knows who done it,” Old Red said. “I’m sure of it. All we gotta do is get him to say the name.”

  “So find a way. Another way. Do it like Holmes would. Use your brain.”

  Gustav tried to spin away with the shears, but I managed to hold him in place.

  “It’s Holmes brought us here!” he roared. “The Method ain’t workin’!”

  “It’s what we got!”

  “It ain’t enough!”

  Old Red wrenched the shears to the left now, then the right, then the left again, and I felt a searing pain slice across my stomach. I cried out and pressed my hands to my belly, and my brother was so stunned he let loose of the shears, too.

  They spun to the ground a few feet away.

  I looked down, peeling my hands apart slowly, afraid they might be the only thing keeping my insides inside. Through my shredded shirt I could see blood and—fortunately—two long, ugly scratches.

  I was just cut, not gutted.

  “Jesus, Otto…,” Gustav said.

  A bulky shape went crashing into the underbrush nearby.

  While we’d been scuffling, Stonewall had pushed himself to his feet, got his bound hands up over the stump. He was making a run for it.

  He didn’t get far. Lottie was on him fast, and it was only after the first shrill scream—Stonewall’s scream—that I knew she’d picked up the shears.

  “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” she shrieked.

  Her right arm swung, swung, swung, and kept swinging even as Stonewall slowed, then went to his knees, then toppled with a splash into the headwaters of the San Marcos River.

  When Old Red and I came stumbling up to the water’s edge, Lottie was still there, hacking at the shredded flesh that had bathed her in blood.