by Bill Brooks
“It won’t be all day, now, go on.”
Jake could hear the shuffle of a man’s boots coming in his direction. He pressed himself against the wall of the hotel and waited with his gun at the ready. When the man came around the corner, Jake brought the pistol down hard over his head. Lon staggered, then sank to his knees and Jake hit him again and he toppled over and fell into the snow, his hat all caved.
Jake dragged him farther back into the alley and laid him up against the wood fence, then unfastened the man’s belt and jerked it free and used it to tie his hands behind his back and left him lying on his side, making sure his face wasn’t buried in the snow. Then he stood, breathing hard from the effort and the tension. By now he figured the ones who went inside would be upstairs already and it wouldn’t be but another moment before they discovered he wasn’t in the room.
He moved quickly back to the head of the alley and glanced around the corner at the one standing out front. He had a pistol in his hand and was standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot—nervous or cold. There was a wagon parked just to Jake’s left on the street and if he could slip around to the other side he’d have a clear shot at the man in front. The man looked up at the upper windows, as though there was something there to interest him, then he glanced off down the street in the other direction and when he did, Jake stepped out and went around behind the wagon.
The man didn’t bother to turn and look back toward the alley and Jake called to him: “Hey!”
Harvey had been standing there, thinking he didn’t care for it much—taking orders from Dallas, being left to stand guard out in the cold like some dog or something. It made him edgy, this business, all of it. He didn’t mind killing so much as he minded being told what to do. Who was Dallas Fry, any way, to tell him what to do? Then, too, it was cold and his feet were cold down inside his boots and the sun didn’t seem to have no strength to it and what the hell was taking them so long inside, anyway? It was just one man and three of them. Then he heard somebody shout, “Hey!” and he turned to see who it was, thinking it was Lon coming back out of the alley. But when he turned he saw the lawman aiming his gun at him.
“Shit!” It was about the first word he’d spoken in a day and a half and he raised up the pistol in his hand and fired without even giving it a thought and didn’t hear the lawman firing his own gun the first time. Between them they fired off four or five shots and it was like a goddamn bad dream or something, he told himself, like his bullets couldn’t kill nothing and the other man’s bullets couldn’t kill him, either.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Then something flat and hard hit him dead center and knocked him backward as if he’d been hit with the head end of a shovel. And right away it snatched his breath out of him and he tried to swallow in more air, but it wasn’t doing much good. Down he went and he dropped his gun and lost it somewhere in the snow and was reaching around for it, trying to find it. He saw red drops in the snow, then saw it was his own blood dripping out of him like water dripping from a bad pumphead. Bright and red and wet drops about the size of half dollars at first and he could feel his throat squeezing shut like someone had their hands around his neck, choking him.
Then he just felt like laying down right there and letting go because suddenly he had no strength, and that is what he did. He just lay out flat in the snow and let whatever it was have its way, and the world that was in his head went rushing out and a blackness came rushing in. He tried one more time coughing out whatever it was felt caught in him, then closed his eyes and said to himself, Well, that’s it, then…
Jake saw the cotton batting fly out from the front of the man’s coat, then watched helplessly as the man fell and groveled in the snow for a few moments before stretching out straight facedown, then lay still.
There had been other witnesses to the shooting death of the hired hand. They watched from behind plate-glass windows, the first shots attracting their attention. Gus was standing inside the barbershop, him and Carl, the barber, and Will Bird. And from inside the café, the waitress and the folks still there eating their breakfast had been drawn to the window and could watch the scene unfold slantways down the street. Otis Dollar had seen it from his store window, too, looking up the street in the opposite direction, and so had the dentist and his patient, a man with a rotted wisdom tooth, and the lawyer and all the others who had turned Jake down in the fight they knew was coming.
Clara was sitting at her table when she heard the shots. Each one caused her hands to shake so terribly she spilled the coffee in her cup. The girls sat across from her with frightened looks on their faces.
“Mama! Mama!”
Gus said, “Well, he just killed old Harvey.”
Will Bird said, “Goddamn I guess he did.”
“Yeah, but he’s still got them others,” Carl said. “I’m betting he don’t kill them all before they kill him.”
Dallas and the others had kicked in the door to Jake’s room, rushing in with guns drawn, and were standing there, looking at old clothes on a bed, when they heard the shots. They rushed to the window overlooking the street in time to see Harvey flop in the snow and the lawman who shot him rise up from behind the wagon, his smoking gun still in his hand.
“Goddamn,” Perk said, “he killed Harv.”
Dallas smashed the glass and fired through the window and so did Perk. There wasn’t enough room for Taylor to join in, so he just stood behind them, trying to see.
The shots splintered wood from the sideboards of the wagon. Jake looked up in time to see where the shots were coming from and something scored his cheek hot and stinging as a branding iron. He stood no chance if he remained where he was. He turned and ran across the street, the whiz and whistle of bullets flying all around him, blood dripping from his face where the bullet had grazed him.
“Let’s go!” Dallas shouted.
The three of them ran out the room and into the hallway. That’s when the kid, Frisco, pulled the trigger on his dad’s old gun, spending the ten-cent shell he’d bought at Otis’s store along with some honey for Marybeth to put on her teat. The bullet caught Taylor in the arm and knocked him ass over heels, causing the others to stumble.
“Son of a bitch, I’m shot!” he cried.
Dallas spun around and pulled the trigger and his bullet tore out plaster and wallpaper on the wall near where the kid stood, just as a hand reached out from the open door and pulled the boy inside and slammed the door shut.
“Why that little peckerwood,” Taylor cried. “What the hell he shoot me for?”
“He wasn’t aiming to shoot you,” Dallas said. “He was aiming to shoot me.”
“What the hell you grinning at?”
“Nothing,” Dallas said, begrudging the boy a small amount of respect. “Get off your lazy ass and let’s go.”
Taylor pulled off his coat and saw the kid’s bullet had gone right into where he’d patched the sleeve on his shirt. When he pulled the torn sleeve open, he saw red bloody meat right above the elbow. It stung like somebody had a pair of pliers pinching on it and his fingers had turned numb. The others were running down the hall, turning the corner and going down the stairs by the time he got to his feet.
“Little bastard!”
Sam Toe heard the shots, as he was shoeing one of the horses that pulled the funeral wagon for Tall John. He had a mouthful of nails and had been idly thinking about Rowdy Jeff, his old partner, the one he had the nightmarish dreams about from that summer the two of them spent alone in high country, tending a sheep camp. I don’t know why I keep thinking about him, he told himself. I don’t know what there is about it that keeps me going back to that time. It had plagued him so much he’d been drinking heavily and letting his work slip and now he had these two hearse-pulling horses the undertaker needed shoeing and had had them for a week almost already and just getting around to shoeing the one this morning.
“What the damn hell?” he mumbled. He dropped down the freshly sho
d foot of the horse and stood up and saw the marshal running down the street toward him. He spit out the nails.
“What’s going on, Marshal?”
“Better clear out,” Jake said.
“I don’t see myself being run out of own place.”
“This is where I’m going to make my stand. You can stay if you want to.”
With a snoot full of whiskey, his mind troubled over his strange thoughts about Rowdy Jeff, his work all getting behind, his payments to the bank late on a business he was losing money on every single day, Sam Toe wasn’t at all sure what he should do.
Then two shots rang out and Tall John’s funeral horse fell dead. It sounded like something smacking leather when the horse was shot. It just fell dead and Sam Toe ducked and said, “Jeez Christ!” and ran through the livery and out the back and kept going with nothing to impede his progress—just a field of snow, deep in some places and less so in others, for as far as the eye could wander. He knew there wasn’t a man alive could outrun a bullet, but he sure as hell was going to try.
Jake turned and fired at the three running figures, then ducked back into the darkened interior of the livery. There were lots of places a man could hide, shield himself—stalls mostly—but for how long was anyone’s guess.
He knocked out the empty shells and replaced them with fresh loads. Thing was, he couldn’t cover both doorways—one at either end—at the same time if they wanted to come at him from both ways at once.
He leaned against a stall. The scent of manure and straw was heavy, thick in the air. Horse collars and old traces hung from the rafters. Horseshoes hung from a spike driven into a post. He could hear the horses out in the corral nickering with excitement having been stirred by the gunfire. He waited.
For a long time nothing, then:
“You come on out or we’ll burn it with you in it!” Dallas called. “It don’t make a shit’s bit of difference to us how it goes. Either way, you’re a dead man.”
“That’s right!” he heard the other one say, Perk, he thought it was, that sharp high-pitched voice of his. “We’re good at burning things down!”
Then suddenly several shots rang out and the bullets bounced off metal buckets and chinked wood and he heard one of them say, “That’s for you, you son of a bitch, for shooting Harvey!”
Dallas turned to look at Taylor, his sleeve wet and dark with blood and said, “What the hell you talking about you stupid bastard. You and Harvey were never friends.”
“We was a little, sometimes, I guess.”
Perk grinned.
“Where the hell is Lon, anyway?” Dallas said.
“That son bitch probably killed him too,” Taylor said.
“Go around the other side, Perk, cover that back way.”
Perk scurried wide of the livery, worked his way through the rails of the horse pen, pushing aside the nervous animals, and climbed out the far side that brought him in view of the rear.
“I’ve got this covered!” he called to Dallas.
“You gone come out or we gone burn you like a witch!” Dallas yelled again. “Go find a lantern and light it,” he ordered Taylor.
“My arm hurts like a son bitch.”
“Just do what I tell you or that arm’s gone seem like it ain’t nothing when I get done with you.”
Taylor saw a lantern hanging from a nail on the outer wall of the livery. “There’s one,” he said.
“Well, go get it,” Dallas said.
“I’m aiming to.”
Dallas said, “I’m all over this if he comes out and tries to shoot you.”
“’At don’t make me feel none better.”
“Go on, you damn son bitch.”
Jake saw the man run past the open door and fired off a shot to no effect.
Taylor reached the wall and took the lantern and ran back and Jake fired again and missed.
“Here,” Taylor said. “You want any goddamn thing else, you go get it yourself.”
“Light it up.”
Taylor said, “I can’t hardly use my arm at all. You light it up.”
Dallas shook his head disgustedly, reached inside his coat, and took out a match. He struck the head of it off the base of the lantern, then lifted the chimney and lit the wick. It caught and he dropped the chimney back down.
“Now run it up and fling it inside,” Dallas said.
“Fuck that.”
Dallas cocked his gun and said, “Go on, you son bitch, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“Shit, Dallas, don’t be that way now.”
“I am that way, go on.”
Taylor judged the run to the open doorway to be about fifty feet or so. He took the lantern in hand and stood up and took a deep breath then started off. A single shot knocked him off his feet.
“What the hell?” Dallas said.
The shot didn’t sound like it came from the livery.
He looked round.
A slender, wild-haired, scraggly bearded son of a bitch was standing there with his arm straight out, a smoking gun in his hand, the gunsmoke curling out the end of the barrel.
Taylor flopped around on the ground like a rabbit had its back broke.
Dallas fired off a quick shot at the stranger. The son bitch never even flinched; just stood there sideways with his arm straight out, then moved his gun hand just a few inches and pulled the trigger, just as Dallas pulled his again.
Both men went down.
“What the hell’s going on!” Perk shouted from the rear of the livery. He couldn’t see the action because the horses in the corral were blocking his view. “Dallas!”
Jake had heard the gunshots, too, didn’t know what they were about. Then he heard Perk shouting questions.
“Dallas? Dallas, what the hell’s going on?”
Perk ran back to where he’d left Dallas, running around the corral this time instead of climbing through. He got around front and saw Dallas lying faceup, his arms flung out wide from his body, one hand still holding his pistol. He saw off to his right that Taylor was down, still moving, but shot to hell. Then he saw the other fellow, a few feet away from where Dallas was, lying on his side. It looked like a damn slaughterhouse, them down, and Taylor still wiggling around, bleeding.
Jake stepped out into the light.
“Throw it down,” he ordered.
Perk didn’t say anything, just stood there looking down at Dallas, all that blood pooled out into the snow around him like a red soup spilled.
“Throw it down!” Jake ordered again.
Perk turned slowly and looked at Jake.
“He’s dead,” he said.
Jake inched forward; they were still a good thirty feet apart in distance. He kept his gun leveled on Perk.
“Drop your piece in the snow, you’re under arrest.”
“Fuck if I am,” Perk said and brought his gun up and both men fired at the same time.
Perk pitched forward and fell facedown forward across the body of Dallas so that they seemed to form a human cross.
Then there was nothing but silence and the brilliance of snow where it wasn’t stained with men’s blood.
That’s when Jake saw the boy, Tig, standing there with his gun smoking. Jake realized then that his own shot had missed Perk and that it was Tig’s bullet that had shattered Perk’s spine and killed him instantly.
“I guess that makes me and him even,” Tig said, then turned and walked away.
28
FOR WHAT SEEMED like the longest time, there was just the sound of the wind, low and lonesome, crawling over the dead and the living alike. The horses in the corral had gathered along one rail and stood nervously, as though waiting for the next thing to happen. Then, in the quiet, Jake heard water dripping from the eaves of the livery, where the sun had warmed the snow enough to melt it. The water dripped into a large wood barrel Sam Toe kept there to collect it and rainwater in. The wind abated somewhat and there was just the sound of water dripping at first.
&nb
sp; He knelt by the unkempt young man with the scraggly beard and saw there was still a bit of life in him.
“Why’d you get involved in this?” he said.
Willy Silk’s eyes shifted to meet the lawman’s gaze.
He smiled slightly and tapped his pocket and Jake reached in and took out the wanted poster.
“Man in Denver…paid me…”
“A man named Shaw?”
Willy nodded.
“How come you didn’t, then?”
Willy looked skyward for a moment, then back at Jake and said, “I don’t know.” Then Willy went to meet his ma, who was just over yonder waiting on him. She and his uncle Reese, his pa, and the angels.
Then Jake stood and saw them approaching, the townspeople, coming on slowly, like coyotes after a kill, coming to inspect the dead, to pick over the bones, to feed and retreat. They came on in twos and threes—the lawyer and banker, the barber and Gus and Will Bird, Otis Dollar and Emeritus Fly, the newspaper editor. Men and women, folks he knew, and some he didn’t know all that well.
Their shadows came ahead of them, stretched long over the snow and the sky overhead as blue as any sky that ever was. Blood had frozen on his cheek from where the bullet had grazed him and the wound no longer stung; he couldn’t even feel it.
He saw the kid, Tig, walking off toward them, how they stepped out of his way and let him pass as though he were some sort of leper, with that awful face of his and Tig never spoke a word to any of them and they never spoke a word to him.
Farther out he saw a wagon coming across the flat white ground and knew that it was Toussaint. He had come despite every reason against it—he was that sort of man, and Jake was silently glad the killing was finished and that Toussaint didn’t have to be a part of it.
They came closer and closer, forty or fifty of them: drunks and ranchers, women and children—all coming to witness the spectacle of death—like a Greek tragedy, where admission was free and make of it what you will once you’ve seen it.