by Carol
Charlie says, "I suppose you want to know what’s going on?”
“Damned right I do,” I tell him. “What is this crap about Joe Potter coming to take away my derby?”
“Don’t get excited,” Charlie says, “everything is in order. Potter is a new star on his way up. After Jeff Mangles got killed, it was natural to match up you and him. Potter went along with it. Your agent was approached yesterday and he renegotiated your contract. You’re getting a hell of a bonus for this shootout appearance.”
“Simms renegotiated my contract? Without asking me first?”
“You weren’t available then. Simms said it would be fine with you. He gave a statement to the newspapers about how you and he had talked about this many times, and that it had always been your desire to leave the Movie big, at the top of your form, in one last shootout. He said he didn’t have to discuss it with you because you and he had talked it over many times and you and he were closer than brothers. He said he was glad this chance had come up, and he knew you would be glad, too.”
“Christ! That simple-minded Simms!”
“Was he setting you up?” Charlie asks.
“No, it’s not like that at all. We did talk a lot about a final showdown. I did tell him that I’d like to end big—”
“But it was just talk?” Charlie suggests.
“Not exactly.” But it’s one thing to talk about a shootout when you’re retired and safe in your house in Bel-Air. It’s another to suddenly find yourself involved in a fight without preparation. “Simms didn’t set me up; but he did involve me in something that I’d want to make up my own mind about.”
“So the situation is,” Charlie says, “that you were a fool for shooting off your mouth about wanting a final match, and your agent was a fool for taking you at your word.”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll tell you,” I say, “as long as I’m talking to my old buddy Charlie, and not to Gibbs the SAG representative.”
“Sure,” Charlie says.
‘I’m going to waltz on out of here,” I say. “I’m thirty-seven years old and I haven’t practiced gunplay for a year. I’ve got a new wife—”
"You don t have to go into all that,” Gibbs says. "Life is sweet, that says it all. As your friend, I approve. As your SAG representative, I can tell you that the Guild won t,back you up if you break a valid contract made by your legally appointed representative. If The Company sues you, you’re all alone on your lonesome.”
"Better all alone than underground with company,” I tell him. "How good is this Little Joe?”
"He’s good. But not as good as you are, Washburn. You’re the best I ever seen. You thinking about meeting him?”
"Nope. Just asking.”
"Keep it that way,” Charlie says. "As your friend, I advise you to get out and stay out. You’ve already taken everything that can be gotten out of The Movie: You’re a hero, you’re rich, and you’ve got a pretty young wife. You’ve won everything in sight. Now don’t hang around and wait for someone to take it off you.”
"I’m not fixing to,” I tell him. But I find that my hand has come to rest on my gun butt.
I go back into the saloon. I sit alone at a table, a shotglass of whiskey in front of me, a thin black Mexican cigar between my teeth. I am thinking about the situation. Little Joe is riding up from the south. He’ll probably figure to find me here in Comanche. But I don’t figure to be here. Safest way would be for me to ride back the way I came, back to the Wells Fargo station and out into the world again. But I’m not going to do it that way. I’m going out of The Set by the way of Brimstone in the extreme northeastern comer, thus making a complete tour of The Territory. Let them figure that one out...
Suddenly a long shadow falls across the table, a figure has moved between me and the light, and without a thought I roll out of my chair, gun already drawn, hammer back, forefinger tightening on the trigger. A boy’s frightened, high-pitched voice says, “Oh! Excuse me, Mr. Washburn!” It’s that snub-nosed freckle-faced kid I saw watching me earlier, now gaping at the end of my gun, scared, as he damned well should be having just startled me out of a year s growth.
I thumb down the hammer of my .44. I get up, holster the gun, dust myself off, pick up my chair and sit down on it. Curly the bartender brings me another drink. I say to the kid, “Kid, don’t you know better than to move up sudden on a man like that? I should have blown you to hell just on the off-chance.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Washburn,” he says. Tm new out here, I didn’t realize ... I just wanted to tell you how much I admire you.”
He was new, all right; he looked fresh out of The Company’s School of Western Skills which we must all graduate from before we’re even allowed on The Set. I had been just as raw as him during my first weeks in The Movie.
“Someday,” he tells me, “I’m going to be like you. I thought maybe you could give me a few pointers. I got this old gun here—”
The kid draws, and once again I react without thinking, slap the gun out of his hand, chop him down with a fist to the ear.
“Goddamn you!” I shout, “haven’t you got no sense at all? You just don’t up and draw like that unless you’re meaning to use it.”
“I just wanted to show you my gun,” he says, not getting up yet.
“If you want someone to look at your gun,” I tell him, “take it out of your holster slow and easy, keeping your fingers outside the trigger guard. And first announce what you’re going to do.”
“Mr. Washburn,” he says, “I don’t know what to say.
“Don’t say anything,” I tell him. “Just get out of 41
here. You look like bad luck to me. Go show someone else your goddamned gun.”
“Shall I show it to Joe Potter?” he asks, getting up and dusting himself off.
He looks at me. I haven’t said a word. He gulps, he knows he’s put his foot in it again.
I stand up slow. “Would you care to explain that remark?”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it”
‘You sure of that?”
“Real sure, Mr. Washburn. I’m sorry!”
“Get out of here,” I say, and the kid scrams fast.
I go over to the bar. Curly has the whiskey bottle out, but I wave it away and he draws me a beer. “Curly,” I say, “I know they can’t help being young, but isn’t there something they can do about being so stupid?”
“I reckon not, Mr. Washburn,” Curly says.
We are silent for a few moments. Then Curly says, “Natchez Parker sent word he’d like to see you.”
“All right,” I tell him.
Dissolve to: a ranch on the edge of the desert. In the chuckhouse, the Chinese cook is sharpening his knives. Bud Farrell, one of the hands, is sitting on a crate peeling potatoes. He is singing as he works, his long horse face bent over the spuds. The cook, oblivious to him, looks out the window, says, “Rider comes.”
Bud Farrell gets up, looks, scratches his hayseed head, looks again: “That’s something more than just a rider, you heathen Chinee. That’s Mister Washburn, sure as God made little green apples!”
Bud Farrell gets up, walks to the front of the main house, calls, “Hey, Mr. Parker! Mr. Washburn is riding up here!”
Washburn and Parker are sitting together at a small wooden table over steaming mugs of coffee in Natchez Parker’s sitting room. Parker is a huge moustachioed man sitting in a straight-back wooden chair, an Indian blanket over his withered legs. He is paralyzed from the waist down because of an old bullet crease in the spine.
“Well, Washburn,” says Parker, “I heard about you and Little Joe Potter, just like everyone else in The Territory. Ought to be one hell of a meeting. Wish I could see it.”
I say, “I wouldn't mind seeing it myself.”
“Where is it going to take place?”
“In hell, I guess.”
Parker leans forward. ‘What does
that mean?”
“It means that I'm not meeting Little Joe. I'm riding for Brimstone, and then straight on, away from Little Joe and the whole damned West.”
Parker leans forward and vigorously rubs his shock of gray hair. His big face puckers together like he had bitten into a rotten apple.
“You're running?” he asks.
“That's it,” Washburn says.
The old man grimaces, hawks, spits on the floor. He says, “I never thought to hear you of all people say a thing like that. I never thought to see you go against the values you've always lived by.”
“Natchez, those were never my values. They came ready-made with the role. Now I'm through with the role, and I'm turning in the values, too.”
The old man chewed that over for a while. Then he said, ‘What in hell is the matter with you? Got too much to live for all of a sudden? Or just gone yellow?”
“Call it what you like,” I tell him. “I came by to tell you. I owe you that.”
“Well, wasn't that nice of you?” says Parker. “You owed me something and it was on your way anyhow, so you figured the least you could do was come by and tell me you was running away from a jumped-up baby gunslinger with one fight under his belt.”
“Get off my back.”
“Tom,” he says, ‘listen to me,”
I look up. Parker is the only man in The Territory who ever calls me by my first name. He doesn’t do it often.
“Now look,” he says, “I am not one for fancy speeches. But you simply can’t run away like this, Tom. Not on account of anything but yourself. You’ve got to live with yourself, no matter where you go.”
“I’ll manage that just fine,” I tell him.
Parker shakes his head. “Damn it all, what do you think this thing is all about? They let us dress up in fancy clothes and strut our stuff like we owned the whole damned world. They pay us plenty just to be men. But there’s a price for that. We gotta keep on being men. Not just when it’s easy, like at the beginning. We gotta stay men right straight through to the end, no matter what the end is. We don’t just act these parts, Tom; we live them, we stake our lives on them, we are these parts. Christ, anybody can dress up in a cowboy outfit and swagger down Main Street. But not everyone can wear a gun and use it.”
I say, “That’s a beautiful speech, Parker, and you’re such a pro that you’ve blown this scene. Get back in character and let’s get on with it.”
“Goddamn you,” Parker says, “I don’t give a damn for the scene or The Movie or any of it. I’m talking to you straight now, Tom Washburn. We’ve been closer than kin ever since you came into The Territory, a frightened tanglefoot lad who made a place for himself on sheer guts. I’m not going to let you run away now.”
“I’m finishing this coffee,” I tell him, “and riding on.”
Natchez suddenly twists in his chair, grabs a handful of my shirt and pulls my face close to his. In his other hand I see a knife.
“Get out your knife, Tom. I’d rather kill you myself than let you ride away a coward.”
Parker’s face is close to mine, glaring at me, the old mans breath sour in my face. I brace my left foot on the floor, plant my right foot on the edge of Parker s chair and push hard. Parker's chair topples over and I see the look of shock on the old man’s face as he falls to the floor. I draw my gun and take aim between his eyes.
“Christ, Tom,” he says.
I thumb back the hammer. “You stupid old bastard,” I say, “what do you think this is, some kind of a game? You've gotten sorta heavy-handed and long-winded ever since that bullet creased your spine. You think there are special rules, and you know all about them. But there aren’t any rules. You don’t tell me what to do and I don’t tell you. You’re a crippled old man, but if you pick a fight with me I’m going to fight my own way, not yours, and I’m going to put you down any way I can.”
I take up slack on the trigger. Old Parker s eyes bulge, his mouth starts trembling, he tries to control himself but he can’t. He screams, not loud, but high-pitched, like a frightened girl.
I thumb down the hammer and put my gun away. “Okay,” I say, “maybe now you . can wake up and remember how it really is.”
I lift him up and slide the chair under him. “Sorry it’s gotta be this way, Natchez. I’m going now.”
I stop at the door and look back. Parker is grinning at me. “Glad to see you’re feeling better, Tom. I should have remembered that you got nerves. All of the good ones have nerves. But you’ll be fine at the showdown.”
“You old idiot, there’s not going to be any showdown. I told you before, I’m riding out of here.”
“Good luck, Tom. Give ’em hell!”
“Idiot!” I got out of there.
A horseman crosses a high ridge and lets his horse pick its own way down the other side to the desert floor. There is a soft hiss of wind, glitter of mica, sand gathered into long wavering windrows.
The noon sun beats down as the rider passes through gigantic rock formations carved by the wind into fantastic shapes. At evening, the rider dismounts and inspects his horse’s hooves. He whistles tunelessly to himself, pours water from his canteen into his derby, waters his horse, puts the hat back on and drinks sparingly himself. He hobbles the horse and makes camp on the desert. He sits by a little fire and watches the swollen desert sun go down. He is a tall, lean man, with a battered derby on his head and a horn-handled .44 strapped down on his right leg.
Brimstone: a desolate mining settlement on the northeastern edge of The Territory. Rising above the town is the natural rock formation of Devil’s Highway—a broad, gently sloping rock bridge. The far end, out of sight from here, is firmly anchored just outside The Set, two hundred yards and 150 years away.
I come in on a limping horse. There aren’t many people around, but I do spot one familiar face: it’s that damned freckle-faced kid. He must have ridden pretty hard to get here before me. I pass him by without a word.
I sit my horse for a while and admire The Devil’s Highway. Five minutes’ ride to the other side and I’ll be out of the West for good, finished with it all, the good times and the bad, the fear and the laughter, the long slow days and the dull, dangerous nights. In a few hours I’ll be with Consuela, I’ll be reading the newspapers and watching TV . . .
Now I’m going to put down one last shot of redeye and then sashay out of here.
I pull up my horse at the saloon. A few more people are on the street now, watching me. I walk into the saloon.
* * *
There is one man drinking alone at the bar. He’s short and stocky, wearing a black leather vest and a Mountain Mans buffalo hat. He turns; he carries one unholstered gun high in his belt. I never saw him before, but I know who he is.
“Howdy, Mr. Washburn,” he says.
“Howdy, Little Joe,” I reply.
He holds the bottle out questioningly. I nod. He reaches behind the bar, finds another shotglass, fills it up for me. We sip quietly.
After a while I say, “Hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding me.”
“Not too much,” Little Joe says. He’s older than I had expected, nearly thirty. He’s got a tough, craggy face, high cheekbones, a black handlebar moustache. He sips his drink, then says to me, very gently, “Mr. Washburn, I heard a rumor which I don’t believe. The rumor said that you were leaving this territory in sort of a hurry.”
“That’s right,” I tell him.
‘The rumor also said that you wasn’t planning to stay around long enough to give me the time of day.” “That’s also true, Little Joe. I didn’t figure I had no time for you. But here you are anyhow.”
“Indeed I am,” Little Joe says. He rubs down the ends of his moustache and pulls hard at his nose. “Frankly, Mr. Washburn, I simply can’t believe that you’re not planning to waltz around with me. I know all about you, Mr. Washburn, and I just can’t believe that.”
“Better believe it, Joe,” I say to him. “I’m finishing this drink
, and then I’m walking out this door and getting on my horse and riding over Devil’s Highway.”
Little Joe tugs at his nose again, frowns, pushes back his hat. “I never thought to hear this.”
“I never thought to say it.”
“You’re really not going to face me?”
I finish my drink and set the shotglass down on the 47
bar. "Take care of yourself, Little Joe.” I start toward the door.
Little Joe says, "There's just one last thing.”
I turn. Little Joe is standing away from the bar, both hands visible. "I can't force you into a showdown, Mr. Washburn. But I did make a little bet concerning that derby of yours.”
"So I heard.”
"And so, although it pains me more than you can know, I'll have to have it.”
I stand, facing him, not answering.
Little Joe says, "Look, Washburn, no sense you just standing there glaring at me. Give me the hat or make your play.”
I take off the derby. I smooth it on my sleeve, then sail it to him. He picks it up, never taking his eyes from me. He says, "Well, I'll be.”
"Take care of yourself, Little Joe.” I walk out of the saloon.
A crowd has assembled opposite the saloon. They wait and watch, talking in hushed voices. The saloon doors swing and a tall thin bareheaded man comes through. He is beginning to bald. He carries a .44 strapped down on his right leg, and he looks like he knows how to use it. But the fact is, he hasn't used it.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Washburn unties his horse, mounts it, and sets it at a walk toward the bridge.
The saloon doors swing again. A short, stocky hard-faced man comes through, holding a battered derby. He watches the horseman ride away.