The Horses

by Bill Brooks

  Trout himself muttering: “Sweet Jesus, I’ve been slain. Sweet Jesus…”

  Cicero Pie eyed the onlookers to see if there were any more challengers to him. And there would have been had not the two deputies Woody tried to summon stayed in their houses, refusing to come. Wives saying, “It’s too much to ask of you to go out there and get yourself murdered for fifteen dollars a month and no regular work. It’s too much.” The two men glad their wise wives had talked them out of it.

  And when nobody made their play, Cicero Pie, the one called the Mortician, reloaded his pistols, dropping the empties there on the walk so that they clattered like spilled coins, then calmly stepped into the street and walked over to Tug Bailey and shot a round through the top of his skull. Then took three more steps to the fallen constable, his shadow falling long over Trout’s bulk, and stood for a moment blocking out the sun.

  “Just so you know”—and he addressed the onlookers as well as Trout—“I ain’t one to let my enemies suffer unmercifully…” Then shot him too, in the back of the head.

  Woody looked round to see if the other two deputies were on their way, but saw nary a soul coming up the street, and his heart sank along with those of all the others.

  “That’s it then,” the Mortician said and holstered his revolvers, and turned and said to the half-wit, “You see that?”

  The half-wit nodded.

  “All right, then.”

  They walked over to the telegraph office like two men going for a stroll on a pretty day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He rode with a single thought: horses. Domingo lay ahead. Hopefully the Mexican would have extra horses he could buy. There were wild horses to be had, but it would take time to locate and capture them. They’d be farther south still, grazing on the grasses before moving north onto the benchlands as the weather grew warmer. Until he had time to go after them, he’d have to buy a couple—one for Luz and one for the breed to ride.

  He rode at a steady lope, the weather clearing, the sun warm on his face and the backs of his hands. He rode with a purpose, the horse’s hooves kicking up muddy clots.

  Once he reached Domingo, he rode straight to the stables run by the Mexican, Pablo, who also dug graves at the cemetery with the Negro, Black Bob. Jim reined in, dismounted, and tied off. Nobody was around. He looked over the stock in the corral and back in the stalls, some poor-looking horseflesh at best; mostly horses the Mexican rented, hard-mouthed, some broke to rein with barbed wire. They whickered and swished their tails because of the greenhead flies that were already abundant this early in the year. A couple of horses finally took his eye: a gray filly for Luz, and a broad-chested dun should work for the breed—the best two in the lot. He figured not more than fifty dollars for the pair. Stood waiting patiently for the Mexican to put in an appearance, and when after ten minutes he still hadn’t, Jim remounted and rode into the heart of town to look for him.

  He got as far as the hotel when he saw what at first seemed like a large puddle of red rain, then quickly realized it was blood. There were few pedestrians. He rode up one block to the Cat’s Paw and dismounted and tied off and went in. You wanted to learn anything, you talked to the bartender.

  Bilk was behind the bar serving several galoots standing facing him. They were all talking loudly.

  Jim worked his way to the bar and said, “Pardon me, but I’m looking for the stable owner, Pablo. Anybody seen him?” Funny, but Trout wasn’t at his usual station end of the bar.

  “He’s helping to dig graves,” Bilk said. “Trout and that crazy old coot Tug Bailey got themselves shot to death less than an hour ago.”

  It was a shocking piece of news.

  “How’d that come about?”

  “Tug took offense at something a stranger in town said about Little Paris and challenged them to a gunfight.” Bilk shook his head. “I guess he wasn’t no good at math.”

  “How’s do you mean?”

  “Should have known two is a greater sum than one.”

  “That’s what it was, he went up against two men?”

  “Just about, except Trout got kindy in the middle of it. That fellow shot them both dead.”

  “Which fellow?”

  “One over the hotel. Him and some oaf he’s got with him, only the oaf didn’t so much as draw a gun. All the shooting was performed by the one—little fellow with snake eyes.”

  “That so?”

  Bilk nodded.

  “’Tis a damn fact.”

  “Trout wasn’t too bad with a gun.”

  “Not good enough it seems.”

  “Fair fight? Anybody here see if it was a fair fight?”

  Men nodded as they sipped their beers and shots of whiskey.

  “’Bout as fair as you’d expect, except it wasn’t,” one of them said.

  “I don’t follow your meaning?”

  “You could just tell that feller was a killer of the first rank. Tug never would have stood a chance even with a lesser man, old as Tug was. Trout, well, Trout’s mettle was tougher than his aim. This feller was about half his age and cool as a block of ice when it came to pulling the trigger. Trout got off three, four shots but missed ever’ one. That fellow hit him both shots he fired and put him down.”

  “I’m sorry to hear the news,” Jim said. He started to turn and walk out, to find Pablo over at the cemetery and bargaining for two horses. It was a troubling situation about Trout. Tug Bailey he knew only slightly, never said more than hello to the man, figured he was like a lot of old boots who’d once been too proud to do any sort of work couldn’t be done from horseback, but eventually found themselves taking what they could get. Maybe it beat an old-folks home—going down fighting for what you thought was right.

  Then Bilk said, “They was murdered is what they was. I don’t think he intended to kill them outright…”

  Jim turned to face the barkeep.

  “Say it plain.”

  “That fellow shot them bad enough to put them down but not kill them right off. I think he wanted them to know it was coming. He put them down and then walked over and gave them each a kill shot, like you would a mule deer or something you were hunting.”

  The others nodded and looked into their glasses.

  “They might have lived if he hadn’t delivered the coup de grâce. Hard to say but they might have…”

  “Nobody tried to stop it?”

  Every man in the place seemed to shrink a little from the question. Silence all up and down the line until Bilk said, “Who you think was going to stop it—a thing like that, except somebody didn’t care about drawing another breath his ownself?”

  “He’s right,” a feminine voice from the shadows said. “Somebody should have stopped it.”

  They turned then, all of them, and looked at Little Paris sitting alone at a table.

  “Didn’t see you jumping into the mix,” one of them said. Bilk felt ashamed she was even there, challenging them, challenging him directly, it seemed to him. Same as calling him out as a coward.

  She locked her gaze with Jim’s.

  “Nobody did a goddamn thing,” she said, “but watch that little son of a bitch murder Trout and Tug.”

  “Where they at now?” Jim said. “These fellows?”

  She shrugged.

  “What difference does it make? They’re out there walking around free and upright, and Tug and Trout are laid out on blocks of ice. Nobody’s going to do anything…”

  He turned to the others. Nobody offered an answer. Nobody wanted to know where they were at now. Everybody content to drink their drinks and talk about it and stay inside for now. It was too late to find a man among them to do anything but talk about it; something they would do for weeks, or until the next thing worth talking about came on the scene.

  “What happened with those deputies Trout employed?” Jim said. “How come they weren’t backing his play?”

  Finally a voice nearly as feminine as Little Paris’s, but softer, spoke from the
end of the bar. Jim recognized him as the hotel clerk, Woody something or other. What little light invaded the interior of the place reflected dully off his spectacles and their wire rims.

  “They are registered at the hotel as the Mortician and Assistant,” he said. “Trout sent me to get his deputies, but they never came…”

  “Why didn’t they?”

  The young man shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What’s the matter with you people?” Jim said, his voice edged with anger and indignation. “You all just stand by and watch somebody murder your constable?”

  Men shifted their weight, coughed, sipped their beer, said nothing in response. Jim felt disgusted with the lot of them.

  “Have a good day, gents,” he said sarcastically and walked out. He rode up the street and past the hotel where Woody said they were staying. What was it Woody said they registered as? The Mortician and Assistant? Seemed to him he’d heard something about such a man, maybe read about a fellow went around calling himself that, the Mortician. He had only a vague memory of it. But whoever or whatever they were, it wasn’t up to him to mete out justice—to take up for a town of men who wouldn’t take up for themselves. To hell with them all, he thought, and rode on to the cemetery, where he found the Mexican and the Negro, Black Bob, digging two graves side by side in sweaty silence except for the chunk of the pick, the chick of the spade.

  “I need to buy a couple of horses if you’re willing to sell,” he said to the Mexican.

  “Sí.”

  “Now, if you can break off your work here for a minute, I’m in a hurry.”

  “Sí.”

  Black Bob eyed the two of them warily. He got two dollars for each grave he dug. But nobody needed a grave here lately, and he was down to a can of beans and a thin slab of salted pork, and him with a wife and five children who all had mouths like baby birds needed feeding.

  “You want, I’ll finish yours for half,” he said to Pablo.

  “Sí.”

  The Mexican wasn’t much on talking. Just walked over to his mule and rode off back toward town with Jim.

  “I’ll take the little gray filly and the dun,” Jim said when they got there to the stable. “How much?”

  The Mexican scratched under his straw sombrero as he calculated what he could get for the two horses.

  “Maybe eighty dollars,” he said after a few moments, saying it with a slight uncertainty, testing the buyer.

  “Forty,” Jim said.

  The Mexican looked pained. Shook his head slowly.

  “Seventy.”

  “Forty-five.”

  “Those two are my best caballos,” he said. “Maybe sixty-five, but I don’t know…”

  “Fifty, and that’s my final offer.”

  The Mexican shook his head.

  “Oh no, señor, sixty is the lowest I could go.”

  “All right then, thanks for your time,” Jim said and mounted the stud. “I guess I’ll just have to find somebody else who wants to do a little business.”

  “There is no one,” the Mexican said. Jim knew that already. Still, he’d set a price in his mind of fifty dollars and wasn’t going to go beyond that.

  “Maybe no, maybe yes,” he said to the Mexican, and turned his horse away.

  “Okay, señor, fifty dollars for the two…” then said something in Spanish under his breath Jim couldn’t make out.

  “It’s a fair price,” Jim said. “Put a rope on them and I’ll go down to the bank and get your money and be right back.”

  The Mexican looked as though somebody had hit him across the toes with a hammer.

  Jim rode to the bank, dismounted, and went in.

  He waited his turn at one of the three teller windows. The windows had brass cage bars—the latest in security. Every teller kept a Colt pistol just below the counter next to his cash drawer. There was a big black steel vault in the back, a clock on the wall above the front door. At the far end of the cages was a small wood gate that led to the vault and area where the tellers stood, and a large oak desk with a swivel chair. It was a dry, quiet place with the feel of slow deliberateness to it. Hadley Prine was the bank president who sat at the desk where he could keep a keen eye on things and help out when the tellers needed a break for lunch or to go out back and smoke or use the privy.

  Jim stood behind a woman with ginger sausage curls. She deposited twelve dollars and fifteen cents into her account, and the teller smiled broadly at her, his sprig of hair barely covering his otherwise bald pate. He wore a striped shirt with garters on the sleeves and a green eyeshade.

  “Thank you, Glen,” she said.

  “Thank you, Polly,” Glen replied, shyly as a debutante.

  They both seemed reluctant to end the transaction, but finally the lady left and Jim stepped up to the window.

  “Good day, Mr. Glass. Did you hear the terrible news?”

  “I did. I’d like to withdraw seventy dollars from my account.” Jim handed him his bank book—the one that showed he had a balance of eighty-three dollars and forty-seven cents.

  Glen looked at it and said, “It won’t leave you much in your account, Mr. Glass.”

  “I can cipher, Glen.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Hadley Prine looked up from his desk.

  “Mr. Glass,” he said.

  “Mr. Prine.”

  Hadley wore garters on his sleeves too, but no eyeshade. His trousers were of a checked variety, and he looked overall like money.

  “We’ve had some bloody business here in Domingo today.”

  “So I heard.”

  Prine shook his head.

  “We shall never be a civilized town until the citizens are disarmed from carrying weapons so freely and men figure out a way to resolve their disputes without killing each other.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Jim said. “But the way I heard it, it wasn’t the citizens who did the killings, but a couple of strangers.”

  “True enough, but a complete ban on firearms might have saved us all such tragedy.”

  Jim waited for Glen to count out the seventy dollars.

  “Make ten of that in silver,” Jim said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jim pocketed the money and his bank book with the new balance in it, and it just felt a lot lighter when he put it in his shirt pocket, but what couldn’t be helped just couldn’t be helped.

  “Thanks,” he said, and turned and walked out. The way old Hadley Prine had been looking at him was like he’d expected Jim to have done something about the shootings. Jim wished now it had never gotten out that he had once been a Ranger in Texas.

  He rode up the street to Watson’s Jewelry and dismounted again and went in. Hettie Watson, Bart’s wife, pretty much ran things ever since Bart had fallen from a ladder when he was trying to shingle the second-story roof of their house and broke both legs and his pelvis. She was plump as a frying hen but with a quite pleasant nature. Jim could see old beauty hidden in her aged plumpness and imagined she was quite something when Bart had wed her.

  “I come to look at rings,” he said.

  “What size do you wear?” she said with a cherubic grin.

  He flushed.

  “Not for me.”

  “A woman’s ring, then,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Any particular type?”

  “A wedding ring, I guess.”

  She looked at him with her round bright face.

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure—a wedding ring, yes.”

  She took a tray out of a locked metal box and set it on the counter. “These are some nice ones,” she said.

  “What about this one?” he said, picking out a simple band.

  “Yes, that’s a very nice one,” she said. He looked at her knowing that it wasn’t something she herself would have chosen.

  “What would you recommend?”

  “If it were me, I’d be
impressed by this lovely gold band; see how it has the filigree work.”

  He thought it a handsome ring.

  “How much?”

  “This one would be forty dollars,” she said.

  He whistled low.

  “I guess I’ll have to look at something else.

  “May I suggest something, Jim?”

  “Ma’am.”

  “If you’re only intending to marry once, then you might want to get the nicer ring—it will last longer than that thin silver one. Last a lifetime, I reckon, and look pretty on Luz’s hand.”

  He flushed.

  “How you know it’s Luz I’m buying it for?”

  “Jim, everybody in town knows about you and Luz keeping company. You ought to marry her. She’s a fine woman.”

  “I’m not sure I’d care to hear what they’re saying about us.”

  “It’s not so bad what they’re saying, if that’s what concerns you. People will just naturally always talk, Jim. For my money, you two make a fine-looking couple, and she’s going to absolutely love this ring.”

  “You sure enough ought to go into the horse trading business if you ever quit this line of work,” he said. “You drive a hard bargain, but I just don’t have the money.”

  “Tell you what. If you’d be willing to help Bart finish shingling the roof when he gets back on his feet, I could knock half off the ring; you can pay some now and the rest later when you get it. What do you think?”

  “I’m sure not a roofer,” he said. “But if Bart don’t mind I’m not, then it’s a deal.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me just put it in a nice ring box.”

  “What if it’s not the right size?”

  “You tell Luz to come by whenever she wants and I’ll have Bart size it.”

  “Kind of you,” he said.

  “I suppose you heard about the shooting?” she said as she dug through a drawer of ring boxes looking for the perfect one.

  “I did.”

  “Real shame there’s murder in our streets.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Somebody should have done something. Trout was a good man and I reckon that old Tug Bailey was too, though I didn’t know Tug all that well.”

  Jim didn’t say anything but put the ten dollars on the counter and signed an IOU slip, saying he’d check in every once in a while to see how Bart was and bring her the rest of the money. Then he stepped outside again, the ring box in his pocket, mounted his horse, and rode back down to the stable, where he paid the Mexican fifty dollars for the horses, then led them by a lead rope at a walk before he put the stud into a gallop.