The Best of Subterranean

by William Schafer

  But now, here he was. And there they were.

  The horse with Cramp on it ambled right into the woods, and come up toward me like it was glad to see me. I stood up and got hold of its reins and led it behind me and tied it off on a limb and went back and lay down.

  I watched the white folks for awhile.

  “You don’t come back,” the fella who’d spoken before said, and they all turned and rode back toward town.

  I didn’t believe they’d given up on me anymore than they’d given up on breathin’.

  * * *

  Way I had it reckoned, was they was gonna slow me down by givin’ me Cramps to worry about, and then when they thought I figured they was gone, they was gonna get me. I knew they was worried about me, cause they had had no idea I could shoot like I could until that moment on the hill when I killed a few of them, and their snotty Chinaman too. So now, caution had set in. They were probably waiting out there until I felt safer, or got so hungry and thirsty, I had to leave out of the grove, then they was gonna spring on me like a tick on a nut sack. If I waited until daylight I could see them better, but, of course, they could see me better too, so I didn’t think that was such a sterlin’ plan.

  I lay there and listened and was certain I could hear them ridin’ in different directions, and that convinced me I was right about that they had in mind. They was gonna surround me and wait until they got their chance to shoot more holes in me than a flour sieve.

  I lay there with the Sharps and strained my thinkin’, and then I come up with a plan. I reloaded my revolver and went and pulled Cramps into the thickest of the trees, and there in the dark I cut him loose from that pole they had fixed up to the back of the saddle by lacin’ a lariat through it, and pulled him off the horse.

  Cramp stunk like a well-used outhouse and his face was startin’ to wither. I put his sombrero on my head, pulled off his jacket and tossed mine across his horse. I got my guns and the things I wanted from my saddlebags, packed them up, climbed on his horse and rested my back against that pole they had tied up, put my Winchester and the Sharps across my lap, tuckin’ them as close as possible, and then I clucked softly to the horse and left the other one tied back there in the trees. I had a moment of worrying about the horse, him tied and all, but I figured they’d eventually come in here after me if I managed to get away, and they’d take the horse. Thing was, though I gave the nag a thought, I was more worried about my ass than his. I tried to sit good and solid and hope anyone seein’ me would think I was just that dead fella on a pony, tied to a post.

  I pretty much let the horse go how he intended, except I had hold of the reins and was ready to snap them into play if a reason come up. I hadn’t gone far when I seen that there were a couple of white fellas, about twenty feet apart, sittin’ their horses, rifles at the ready. It was all I could do to play my part. One of the white fellas said, “There’s the dead nigger. That other coon didn’t want him no how.”

  Then the other one said somethin’ that made my butt hole grab at the saddle.

  “Let’s see we can shoot that hat off of him.”

  That gave me pause.

  The other one said, “Naw, we got to be quiet,” even though they was about as quiet as two badgers wrestlin’ in a hole.

  The horse I was ridin’ went between them, and it was all I could do not to put my heels to that nag and ride like hell, but I stuck to my plan. I rode right on through and nobody shot at me.

  When I was out of their range, about twenty minutes, I figure, I took the reins and gave the horse a little nudge, so that he’d move out faster but not take to runnin’. I went on like that for awhile, and when I was clear enough, I put my heels to the horse and rode right on out of there, kind of gigglin’ to myself and feelin’ smarter than a college fella. I figured sometime come mornin’, they might even get brave enough to go up there and find Cramp takin’ his long nap, the other horse tied and waitin’.

  * * *

  The horse I had wasn’t up to snuff, and pretty soon it was limpin’. They probably knowed that was the case when they tied Cramp on it. I got off and took the reins and led it and tried to figure on a new plan. The plains out there went on and on, and pretty soon I’d have to slow down more for the horse, and maybe shoot it and eat some of it, but then I’d be on foot with miles in front of me.

  I stopped leading the horse, bent down and looked at its foot. He wasn’t in bad shape, but he wasn’t in good ridin’ shape either. I found a wash and led him down in there, and with the reins wrapped around my hand, I lay down and slept.

  It was high noon when I awoke, and hotter than a rabid dog’s breath. I walked the horse out of the draw, and then I did the only thing I could think to do. I started leadin’ the horse back toward Hide and Horns, takin’ the long way around.

  * * *

  It was night when I come up on the town. I could see it laid out down there and there were lights from lanterns and it looked even bleaker to me now than it had at first.

  I went on down there, coming up the back way, where the Chinaman Chinamen were gathered. I found a little scrub bush and I tied the horse up there so he wouldn’t wander into town, and then I got my saddle and guns and such, and threw the saddlebag over my shoulder and toted the saddle with the Winchester and the Sharps tied off on it, my free hand near my revolver. I walked on down into the Chinatown part, and veered toward the tent where I had seen the crippled China girl go in to make my food. I strolled in like I had good sense. It was dark in there, and I fumbled around in my pocket lookin’ for a match, until I realized I was wearin’ Cramp’s jacket and mine was tied to the saddle I was carryin’. A light went on in the place suddenly, and I dropped the saddle and the revolver sort of hopped into my hand, but it was a lit match with a China girl face behind it. The cripple. She was down on one knee and her nub, about waist high to me lookin’ up.

  I said, “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Black man,” the cripple said.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  Then there was movement, and she was crawlin’ across the floor cause she didn’t have her leg strapped on. She lit a lantern and the room jumped bright, and there were all the Chinese girls. The wash pot girl and the other four, includin’ the cripple.

  It was a pretty big tent, but it was stuffed with all manner of stuff, includin’ pallets where the girls did the rest of their work, which was haulin’ all the men’s folk’s ashes, as they say.

  “I need a good horse,” I said, “and I need ya’ll not to say nothin’, cause I’d rather not shoot a woman. You savvy.”

  “Savvy,” said the most beautiful of the girls, who seemed too small and delicate to be real, and far too young.

  “I got Yankee dollars to pay for it, and I got my own saddle.”

  “We go too,” the little one said.

  “What?”

  “We go too. Get horse. We take wagon.”

  “Wagon? Why don’t you just bring a goddamn band and a clutch of clowns. No.”

  “We get horse, we go too,” the cripple said.

  “Damn,” I said. “Listen. Tell you what. You get me a horse and I’ll ride out, and then you bring the wagon along, and I’ll be waitin’ on you. Riders don’t come with you, and I end up havin’ to shoot it out, then I’ll travel with you until I can get you to another town. Course, what’s the difference between there and here?”

  “We go back to China,” said the cripple. I had come to realize the other two girls didn’t speak enough English to even understand what I was sayin’. The cripple was the valedictorian of their class.

  “Got news for you ladies, it’s a long ride to the Pacific, and I don’t think you can sail that wagon across.”

  “Get to San Francisco,” the cripple said. “Figure from there.”

  “You know San Francisco?”

  “We come there,” the cripple said. “Think we have Chinese husbands. Big trick. We have to do big fuckin’. Not let us go. I try to go. Man shoot leg off
with a shotgun, knock out a tooth.”

  I thought, damn, a leg ain’t enough, he had to have a tooth too.

  I sighed. “All right. I’ll go back to what I said. I’m in a tough spot here, and you may think I’ll ride away and leave you, but I try to keep my word unless there just ain’t no way it can be kept. I can get out of town easier by myself, and then you can bring the wagon. But how you gonna do that? What’s the excuse?”

  It took them awhile to process that, talkin’ to each other in Chinese, and I had to tell it different a couple times before they understood me. But it come down to me gettin’ a horse, and them waitin’ until daylight and sayin’ they had to go out to the prairie to gather up dried buffalo shit for fires. Buffalo shit will burn pretty good, it’s dried a fair amount, but it has one drawback. It smells like burning buffalo shit. Still, it’ll keep a person warm.

  Then again, I reckon I didn’t set out to tell you this story so you could know how to warm yourself and cook with dried buffalo plops.

  “You think they’ll believe you?” I asked.

  “We do all time,” the cripple said.

  “All right,” I said. “That’ll do. Just don’t try and trick me, cause I won’t like it.”

  “No trick,” she said.

  * * *

  They got me a good horse, and I got rid of Cramp’s jacket and put on a brown shirt the girls gave me. I put my saddle on the horse, and took my guns and rode on out. I went way out, like I told them, givin’ them a kind of guide to where I planned to go.

  I wasn’t an entirely trustin’ soul, so I actually went a little farther east than I told them, found a place where I could sit a horse down in a draw and see up over the lip of it. That way I could make sure they didn’t send someone else out to get me for some payment.

  It got along mornin’, and I had dozed on the ground with the reins of the horse clutched in my fist, and when I awoke it was already turnin’ off hotter than a stove fire.

  I heard hooves movin’ in my direction, and I got up and looked between that little gap in the draw and seen it was the bunch that had ridden out after me, and they was leadin’ the horse I had left, and they had Cramp’s body tied behind it with a long rope bound to his ankles, and they was draggin’ him along face down.

  At first I thought the China girls had done me in, and that this bunch was lookin’ for me, and then I got it figured right. They was just now comin’ in, finally snoopin’ out that I had snuck off on them in the night, disguised as Cramp. I counted them. There was twelve.

  Now, I tell you, I try to be practical, but lookin’ out there and seein’ Cramp being dragged along like that, even though I didn’t know him even a little, made my blood boil. I knew all I had to do was let them ride out of sight, back to town, then I could either wait on the China girls or not. It was the way to go, and the truth of the matter was, Cramp wasn’t any of my business and I didn’t know what he’d done to get folks mad at him in the first place, but I knew it didn’t take much when you was a colored man. It could be lookin’ at a white woman, or cuttin’ a surprise fart in the street, and that’s all it took for you to be thought of as uppity, and if there’s one thing a lot of white folks can’t tolerate, it’s an uppity nigger. We was supposed to know our place, and I was thinkin’ on all of this, and get madder and madder, and most of my common sense began to leak out of my head like water. Without realizin’ what I was doin’, I got on my horse and put the reins in my teeth, put the Sharps under one arm and the Winchester under the other.

  Now, they’ll tell you can’t hit shit shootin’ like that, and I’ll tell you right off, that’s mostly true, but most shooters ain’t me. I’ve gotten so good with a gun I can shoot right smart with any kind of weapon under almost any kind of condition. That don’t mean I don’t miss, but I hit a lot too, and if I got a still shot, I can knock the dick off a horse fly.

  I rode out and dug my heels into the horse, went to ridin’ right at them, takin’ them from the side. There was twelve of them, but they didn’t see me until my guns barked, and the first shot with the Sharps hit one of their horses, which was an accident, I might add, and the horse went down, throwing him. I dropped the Sharps, since it just had that one load, flipped the Winchester into my right hand, and took to firin’. With four shots I killed three. They started poppin’ off shots then, the ones that had figured out what was happenin’, and by then I had come in amongst them. I twisted my head, and with those reins in my teeth, I made my horse twirl, and using both hands on that Winchester, I fired as fast as I could, and four more was down, and one horse was limpin’ off with a bullet in his head, another unintentional, I might add.

  I fired the Winchester until it was empty, and then I rode up on one of them that had fired six shots off and hadn’t hit me or even come near me. He looked like he was about to scream with fear and he was snappin’ the empty revolver like bullets might suddenly appear in the chambers. I swung the empty rifle and clipped him off his horse. I wheeled, and then there was a barrage of shots, and my horse went down and I went to rollin’. When I come up, I had my revolver in my hand, and I started firing, dropping two more, hittin’ them both as they rode up on me. I fired at the others, not hittin’ anyone else, which meant I was probably tired.

  The ones that was left bolted and rode off, which was good, cause my revolver was empty.

  I ran over to my dead horse and got a couple loads for the Sharps out of the saddlebags, and ran back to where I’d dropped the Sharps, scrounged around till I found it. Then I ran got down on a knee and loaded the Sharps and leveled it off.

  They were far out now, but I took windage with a wet finger, beaded that fifty caliber, called them sonofabitches, and fired. As is often the case, it seemed like a long time before the bullet hit. In fact, I was already startin’ to reload, when one of the riders threw up his hands and went flying off. The other just kept ridin’. He was way out there, but I had the Sharps ready, and I aimed high to let the bullet drop. I fired. I got him somewhere near the back of the head and he fell off, his horse still runnin’.

  I know all this makes me sound a mite god-like, but, true story. No lie. I killed every one of them sonofabitches. It made me wonder how I’d managed to let one of them that had come up on me with Cramp get away. But, hell, even the gods nod.

  But the gods don’t bleed. I did. I had been hit. Didn’t know it right off, but I started hurtin’, and looked down at my side and seen I was bleedin’. I lay down on the ground suddenly, and closed my eyes and the sun didn’t feel all that warm anymore.

  * * *

  “You not dead,” the crippled China girl said.

  “No?” I said. “I feel dead, and maybe buried, but I still seem to be among the livin’ Chinese.”

  I was lyin’ under a wagon and the cripple was down there with me. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. She said, “No. Sit. Stay.”

  I had a dog I talked to like that. I felt my side. It was bandaged up. “We got to go,” I said. “They’ll be after me.”

  “You all shot up,” the cripple said.

  “That I am,” I said.

  “Rest a day. Have chop suey. Pussy. Feel better.”

  “I’m sure. But that rest a day part, not such a good idea.”

  I lay for awhile anyway, not having the strength to do much else. I probably laid there much longer than I thought, but finally I woke up and crawled out from under the wagon. The other Chinese girls had pulled a tarp over the frame of the wagon, and made a kind of traveling tent out of it. They had two horses tied on the back. One of the girls was missin’. I asked the cripple about that.

  “Washie girl. She stay,” said the cripple. “She make good money washie clothes.”

  I managed to walk around and gather up my goods, saddle and saddlebags and weapons, and found the horse that had been draggin’ Cramp. I cut the old boy loose and looked at him. He had asked me not to bury him out in the lonesome, but the thing was, he was lookin’ pretty ripe, and I come to the conclu
sion I had done my best, and he wouldn’t know the prairie from a place under a church pew. The girls helped me dig a hole, as they had shovels and all manner of equipment in the wagon, and I wrapped him in a blanket and put him down.

  I was bleeding pretty good by the time I quit, and I had been wrong about them knife wounds being all healed up. A couple of them was leakin’. I said, “We got to get movin.”

  As we walked away, I looked back at Cramp’s grave, said, “Sorry, Cramp. I done my best. It beats bein’ dragged around till your hide comes off.”

  I climbed in the back of the wagon and lay down and slept while the little China girl who looked about twelve years old drove. In the back, the cripple tended me, and the other two looked on. We rode on through the day and into the night, the wagon bumpin’ along, those two horses tied to the back of it, trottin’ to keep up, and finally we stopped near a little run of creek, and the girls got out and made a fire from some dried buffalo shit. They fixed up some food, which was pretty good and had a lot of hot peppers in it. I didn’t ask what it was, cause I couldn’t identify the meat and figured I might not want to know.

  Later that night, the cripple showed me how she could move around under me good as a two-legged girl, and then I had to show all of them that my pecker was black and the color didn’t come off in their little nests. I showed that to all of them to be polite, and to prove I wasn’t showin’ no favoritism, even though I was wounded good and bleedin’. A man has to have some priorities, I always say, and if a bunch of Chinese girls beg to see your dick, you should be willin’ to show it to them.

  Now, them townsfolk had to have figured out their men weren’t comin’ back, and in time I’m sure they found them. Maybe they sent someone out after us. But if they did, we never seen them. Jumpin’ ahead a bit, I should say the story about the gunfight began to spread, and since there wasn’t no one livin’ who’d seen it besides me, I knew the stories I heard about survivors who could tell it like it was, wasn’t true in any kind of way. Thing was, the stories didn’t mention I was colored. I just became a mysterious gunman, and in some of the stories I was a hero, and in others a villain. Cause of that, and some other things happened in my life, there was some dime novels written about me, basing themselves on true events at first, but not afraid to add a lie in when it made the story better, and then later, the stories was just dadgum windies. And though the stories didn’t mention I was colored, they did call the books stories about The Black Rider of The Plains, and named me Deadwood Dick on account of some things happened there in Deadwood, including a shootin’ contest where I shot against Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. But, again, that there is another story, and though it’s been told a thousand times, ain’t nobody told it right yet. I live long enough I plan to tell it the way it was, just like I’m tellin’ you how this was.