Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  “Be careful,” said Revelie, who was barely beginning to show. “Come back safe.”

  His wife smiled at him. It was a beautiful smile. The pregnancy seemed to make her more beautiful than ever. The happy smile that lit her beautiful face made her husband wonder if perhaps she was a little too happy. Was she glad to see him go?

  It was late morning before Goodnight rode away from his ranch headquarters heading in the direction of Tascosa. But he had no intention of going to town. As his horse trotted along the bank of the shallow red river, he hated himself for finally doing what Claw had suggested. Getting rid of Claw had been easy: he had just chased him off the place. But getting rid of the suspicions he had kindled, that was harder. Mistrust and jealousy were flint and steel in his chest, striking sparks, making fire. At last, Goodnight had decided that he just had to find out one way or the other. He couldn’t go on wondering.

  As horse and rider climbed the north wall of the great canyon, Goodnight told himself that Claw had probably been lying. Of course he had. He had lied about Revelie. He had lied about Loving. He had lied about being his son. He had lied about everything, top to bottom.

  But what if he hadn’t been lying?

  No, no, but he was. He had to be. Otherwise life was just too cruel. He couldn’t bear it. If Revelie was really betraying him with Loving, then he hoped the canyon walls would fall in on the ranch and the rancher. The canyon itself should be filled in and exist no more.

  When he reached the top of the wall, Goodnight rode along the north rim, just killing time, waiting for dark. He was wasting a day and it pained him. There was so much to be done on the ranch. He blamed Claw for all these wasted hours. Why had he ever listened to that monster anyway?

  Goodnight wondered: Who did he hate more, his son or the Robbers’ Roost outlaws? Well, by now maybe they were one and the same. As he was being evicted from the Home Ranch, Claw had promised to find Gudanuf and join his gang. Was it an empty threat? Probably. At any rate, he was gone and good riddance. Thankfully he wouldn’t be there tonight to see his drama played out.

  Goodnight sat on the bed in Claw’s room, spying the way Claw had spied. He was no better than his despised son. His body wanted to lie down, but he was afraid he would fall asleep. He had returned under cover of darkness—the moon was black tonight—and had crept into the big sandstone house by a back door. He hated being sneaky. He hated everything about this night. Of course, he hated Claw, but he also hated himself for giving in to Claw’s accusations. He hated Revelie and Loving in advance, as if they were already guilty. And he hated himself doubly for not being able to suspend judgment.

  It was getting late. He couldn’t see his big pocket watch in the darkness, and he couldn’t light a lamp without giving himself away, but it seemed to him that it must be almost midnight. Of course, he couldn’t be sure. Sometimes time passed slower when you couldn’t watch it go. Still he was fairly sure that it was past his bedtime. Working ranchers needed their rest.

  He dozed sitting up.

  Unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh.”

  The sound roused Goodnight from his shallow sleep. Shrugging and rubbing his eye to wake himself up, he recognized those moans. Oh, no. Why had he played this trick? Standing up, he rocked back and forth clumsily. Wake up!

  “Unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh.”

  He raised his shoulders again and then let them sag. He reached up and touched his eye patch, and then reached down and touched his six-gun tied to his leg.

  “Unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh.”

  Then he lurched forward. He reached for the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door open. Standing in the bright hallway, lit by oil lamps, he listened.

  “Unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh.”

  Disaster lurked only a few feet away behind another door. He paused in the hall that divided the two bedrooms to try to collect his faculties. What would he do? What should he do? He didn’t want to know for sure—it was the last thing in the world that he wanted to know—but he had to know.

  “Unnnhh, unnnhh, unnnhh.”

  Goodnight stumbled groggily forward and grasped the doorknob ofhis bedroom door. He quietly opened it and stood there staring. The bedroom was dark, but he could see well enough, or rather too well. Loving was on top of her.

  Claw was right! It hurt like that flint blade in his scrotum so many years ago.

  99

  As he reached automatically to draw his gun, Goodnight wanted to hurt the woman whom he had wanted to shield from pain all these years. He knew he would never again be able to love his greatest loves. Goodnight thumbed back the hammer of his sixshooter and pointed the barrel—as if it were a deadly finger—at the lovers who hadn’t even seen him yet. They were so busy fucking, they hadn’t noticed the danger they were in. He pulled the trigger. The gun made the loudest sound he had ever heard in his life. He had never fired a fieldpiece, a cannon, but he couldn’t believe one would make any more noise. The sound trapped inside that room seemed to shake the earth, shake the whole canyon, but perhaps it was only him that it shook.

  Goodnight saw Loving roll off Revelie and sit up. He was naked. Still lying on her back, the unfaithful wife pulled her discarded dress over her breasts. Now she felt that she had to hide her nakedness in the presence of her own husband.

  Goodnight, who had officially “won” the title of fastest and most accurate gunman in these parts, had missed his target. He wasn’t sure just why, but lots of reasons occurred to him. Now he felt embarrassed standing there with a smoking gun, as if he were the one who had done something disgraceful. Had seeing his best friend fucking his wife driven him to bad manners? Was taking a shot at them bad form—a word his wife had taught him?

  “Git dressed,” Goodnight ordered. “Then we’ll settle this. I cain’t shoot nobody nekked.” He started to turn and go, but then hesitated. He stared at his best friend. “Come out with your gun strapped on, and we’ll finish this up.”

  Goodnight was furious at Revelie and Loving, but he was also angry at himself. He damned them, but he also damned himself. They were too perfect—at least as he saw them—to be entirely at fault. He was the imperfect one, the flawed one, who had somehow allowed the betrayal to occur. He had given his permission without knowing it. He had worshiped them both and so put them on a higher plane where they had naturally turned to each other. He hated himself as much as he hated them. He wanted to kill himself as much as he wanted to kill Loving. By now, he already knew that he couldn’t kill his wife. Maybe he would rather kill himself than kill Loving. He deserved it more because he had somehow betrayed his best friend and his wife into betraying him. Or was the terrible pain behind his eyes—the one eye blind all the time, the other often enough—simply driving him mad?

  Turning, he fled the bedroom.

  Outside in the corridor, Goodnight felt that everything had changed forever, changed in a moment, changed utterly. It was as if he had returned his ax to the block of iron where he had found it. He had lost his magic. Lost his powers. Lost his belief in himself, which was the greatest magic of all.

  “Don’t shoot,” Revelie’s voice reached him from inside the bedroom. “Don’t shoot, I’m coming out. All right?”

  Goodnight desperately willed her to be ugly, but when she emerged from their bedroom—still naked—she wasn’t. She was as lovely as ever. Lovelier. Her beauty hurt him. Now it seemed a fierce beauty, a primeval beauty. At the same time, she was soft, pleading, frightened. She was as gorgeous as the setting sun that is at its finest just before it deserts you. She was one person more in his life that he had lost and he couldn’t stand it.

  “Don’t fight him,” Revelie begged.

  Goodnight didn’t say anything.

  “Please, don’t, because he won’t fight. He’ll just let you kill him. I know it.”

  Goodnight half-turned from her.

  “Please, just go,” Revelie implored. “Leave him alone.”

  “Shut up,” Goodnight said in a small voice.r />
  “Don’t kill him. It wouldn’t be right. Please. I beg you.”

  The more Revelie pleaded, the more Goodnight wanted to do just what she was asking himnot to do, for she was takinghis side even now. Of course, why wouldn’t she? But somehow it surprised him that even after the betrayal had been discovered, she would stick to Loving. She remained more her lover’s than her husband’s. Goodnight wanted to smash her lover, to destroy his rival, to make her pay by making him pay.

  “Come on out,” he called into the bedroom. “We gotta settle this thing. Sooner the better.”

  Goodnight strained to hear the slightest movement, but he neither saw nor heard anything. He might just as well be talking to God. Or the Great Mystery.

  “You don’t come out,” Goodnight said, “I’m comin’ in.” He took out his gun and fired it at the ceiling. “I’m serious. We gotta do this.”

  “No! Please!” cried Revelie. “You can’t kill him in cold blood.”

  “Maybe he’s gonna kill me,” the husband said, studying his wife. “You ever think a that? Or don’t you give a damn?”

  Even now he felt a pang at swearing in mixed company.

  “He won’t. He’ll just let you win again.”

  Oh, so she knew about that, too.

  “How do you know what he’ll do?”

  “Because he’s your friend.”

  “Some friend.”

  “Well, he is. He loves you.”

  “Awful funny love. Didn’t stop him from takin’ my wife. If ’n he’d do that, he’d do anythin’.”

  “No, that’s different.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But I thought you was such an expert when it comes to him.”

  “Stop this. Stop it before you do something terrible.”

  “Too late for that now.”

  “Why?”

  “Just is. You know that.” Goodnight turned. “I’m comin’ in!”

  As he moved toward the dark doorway, Revelie grabbed his left arm and tried to hold him. He angrily pushed her away. To hell with her.

  Stepping inside the dark bedroom, Goodnight saw his best friend standing in the middle of the room. He was dressed now. He was so graceful that he had somehow pulled on his clothes without making any noise. He even wore his gun.

  “I won’t fight you,” Loving said.

  “You gotta,” said Goodnight, his hand quivering above his gun.

  Goodnight tried to hate Loving and he succeeded to some extent. He was glad the familiar face remained obscure in the darkness. He picked out a spot on the dim chest as his target. He doubted that he would live to pull the trigger, but he was certainly going to try.

  “Go ahead and shoot me if it’ll make you feel better,” Loving said. “But I ain’t gonna draw.”

  Something in the tone, in the attitude, infuriated the wronged husband. He wanted to shut Loving’s eyes forever so they wouldn’t see his degradation, his embarrassment, his smallness. A husband who couldn’t keep a wife was such a pathetic thing.

  “Don’t do me no favors,” Goodnight said angrily. “I don’t need no damn favors from you.”

  Loving didn’t say anything.

  “I’m gonna kill you if’n I can, I’m warnin’ you, so you better try an’ kill me first. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Ain’t nobody stoppin’ you.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Hurry up and git it over with if that’s what you mean to do.”

  Now Goodnight could see a little better. The features were beginning to sketch themselves on Loving’s blank face. That was too bad. He was more real. More recognizable. His betrayal now seemed more personal. And killing him would be more personal, too. Goodnight told himself he should have drawn and fired right away before the shadow turned back into his best friend. He hadn’t then, but now he could—he would—before the face grew even brighter. It wasn’t going to get any easier, just harder. Then he heard boots climbing up the frontporch steps. The gunshots had alarmed the cowboys. He had to do this before they got there to stop him. Goodnight reached for his gun.

  “No!”screamed Revelie. “You can’t shoot him in cold blood.”

  Her voice stopped Goodnight. His revolver remained in his holster as he glanced back over his shoulder at her. Squinting, he saw his wife come rushing into the bedroom carrying something heavy. He thought for a moment that she was going to run over him, try to knock him down, tackle him. But instead, she squeezed past him and hurried to the side of her lover.

  “He won’t fight you,” Revelie said, “but I will.”

  Now Goodnight recognized the weight in her right hand. It was a gun. He had given her that gun one long-ago birthday.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Revelie. “Afraid to fight a woman?”

  Goodnight didn’t say anything.

  “It’s my fault. I’m the one you should be gunning for. I’m sorry I don’t have a holster, but I can hold it like this.” The naked woman whom he loved lowered the gun to her side so that it pointed at the floor. “Will that do? Then what? Shall I count three? I’d drop my handkerchief, but I don’t have one.”

  “I ain’t fightin’ you,” Goodnight said. “Right now my quarrel’s with him.”

  “But he won’t fight you,” she said. “And you won’t fight me. So there we are. This game of yours isn’t working out, is it? Maybe you should just leave. Go away!”

  The more she talked, the more she tookhis side, the more Goodnight hated her. And the more he hated her, the more he wanted to kill Loving. His right hand trembled in anticipation.

  “This is between me and him,” Goodnight said. “Ain’t but one of us gonna come outa here alive. You hear me, Loving?”

  Revelie raised her gun again and pointed it at her husband’s stomach.

  “If you try to shoot him,” the wife said in a controlled voice, “I will shoot you first. I promise. You know I don’t break promises.”

  The boot noise was in the hallway, coming on fast, almost on top of him. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  “You broke one,” said Goodnight and reached for his gun.

  The roar of the gunshots shook him so violently that he did not know he had been shot until he was already lying on the floor. He heard voices above him, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. Now he was not only half-blind, but deaf, too. Seeing Loving still on his feet, Goodnight knew that even as a gunfighter he had failed. He was relieved and at the same time angry at himself. Angry both at his failure and at his relief. He thought Loving had shot him until he saw the smoke curling lazily from the barrel of Revelie’s gun. Was he relieved again? Was he glad it had been her instead of him?

  “He’s dead!” cried Too Short. “You killt him.”

  “No,” Goodnight choked. “I ain’t dead yet.”

  He started trying to sit up.

  “Simon,” Too Short sobbed. “She killt Simon.”

  The bullet had gone through Goodnight and hit the unlikely cowboy who had turned out to be a top hand.

  100

  Goodnight rolled down Main Street in a contraption hammered together by Tin Soldier. It was an overstuffed easy chair with four wheels attached. The two larger wheels came from a buggy, while the two smaller ones had been borrowed from a couple of wheelbarrows. Tin Soldier, who pushed from behind, was panting but smiling.

  “Get a horse!” yelled a passerby.

  “Go to hell!” Tin Soldier shouted back good-naturedly.

  Goodnight suspected that the cowboy-blacksmith enjoyed finding his invention, this curious wagon-chair, the object of so much attention. But the man in that chair had very different feelings. He knew that the whole town—the entire country hereabouts—had been gossiping about him and his wife and his wife’s lover. Now he could see the townspeople turning to each other, talking him over. Some were even bold enough to point at him as he passed by.

  He couldn’t help comparing this trip down Tascosa’s Main Stree
t to that long-ago visit when he had seen Revelie for the first time. He had saved her then—anyhow, saved her thumbs—but he wouldn’t be able to save her now. She would have to face judge and jury on her own.

  The chair-wagon hit a bump and Goodnight winced. He was still too weak to walk. Just standing up made him break into a sweat and feel dizzy. She had almost killed him, but he had been lucky. Lucky the bullet passed just beneath his heart. Lucky it went right through and came out his back. Simon Shapiro had been the unlucky one. He had been buried beside Suckerod on the Home Ranch. Now he would be a part of the red canyon forever. Goodnight sure felt lucky, all right. Real lucky. Lucky enough to get one of his cowboys killed. Lucky enough to lose his wife and his best friend. Lucky enough to feel real sorry for himself. He told himself he had to snap out of it. He hated self-pity. He ended up pitying himself for not being man enough to escape self-pity’s clutches.

  Reaching the front door of the courthouse, Tin Soldier turned the wheeled contraption around and pulled it up the steps backward. There were only five of them. Then all too soon, Goodnight was inside the courtroom. Some fifty or sixty chairs—most of them cane-bottomed—had been arranged in rows.

  “That’s far enough,” Goodnight said. “I wanta sit in back.”

  Tin Soldier positioned the wagon-chair so that it became one of the chairs in the last row. Then he sat down beside his boss.

  “This okay?” asked Tin Soldier.

  Goodnight grunted.

  He knew that no matter how far back he sat, he would still be at the center of the case. His eye searched the room and found Loving sitting in the front row. He would be seated right behind Revelie when she arrived. Goodnight was jealous of Loving’s position, so close to her. Finding himself staring at Loving, Goodnight looked away self-consciously.

  He studied the floor, which was grimy. She shouldn’t have to be tried on a dirty floor. It wasn’t right. She was better than that. He started to tell Tin Soldier to get somebody to clean the floor, but then he remembered that he wasn’t in charge here, so he just seethed helplessly. He wondered if they had failed to scrub the floor on purpose. He knew by now that many people resented his wife’s supposed airs. He had heard talk about the great Boston lady finally getting her comeuppance. He wished he could protect her from such spitefulness.