by Matt Braun
Now, crossing the hotel lobby, McCluskie had to chuckle to himself as he thought back on it. That was one thing about Belle. Any tricks her girls knew, she knew better, and she could just about cripple a man when her spring came unwound.
Whistling tunelessly, he walked down the short hallway and entered his room. Or what had once been his room. It was the kid’s now. He merely kept his clothes there and paid the rent. For the past week he’d been staying at Belle’s, and getting himself worn to a frazzle in the process.
The kid was propped up in bed riffling a deck of cards on his lap. When McCluskie came through the door, he looked around and broke out in a wide smile.
“Mike! We was just about to send the cavalry out lookin’ for you.”
“Evenin’, sport.” The Irishman sailed his hat in the general direction of a coat rack and walked to the washstand. “Who’s we?”
“Why, Belle and me. She just left a minute ago.” Kinch laughed and shook his head. “She’s a pistol, ain’t she? Said she couldn’t wait no longer or them cowhands’d be bustin’ down the doors.”
McCluskie glanced up at him in the mirror. “Belle said that?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?”
“Nothin’.” He peeled his shirt and tossed it on a chair. “Guess she figures you’re a shade older’n you look.”
The boy reared back and scowled indignantly. “Well hell, Mike, I’m pushin’ eighteen, y’know. Betcha when you was my age you’d been around plenty.”
“Kid, when I was your age I was a hundred years old.” McCluskie poured water in a washbowl and began his nightly birdbath. “But that don’t cut no ice one way or the other. Now, c’mon, own up to it. You’ve never had a woman in your life, have you?”
Kinch went red as beet juice and fumbled around for a snappy comeback. “Well I come close a couple of times, don’t you worry yourself about that. I’m not as green as I look.”
“Hey, cool down. I wasn’t rubbin’ your nose in it. Just meant there’s a few gaps in your education, that’s all. Soon’s you get the lead back in your pencil we’ll have to arrange some lessons down at Belle’s.”
It took a moment for the meaning to register, and then the youngster burst out in a whooping belly laugh. Suddenly his face drained of color and the laugh turned to a racking cough. The attack was fairly short, and his sputum was no longer flecked with blood, but the pain was clearly evident in his face. Still, he tended to accept it with a stoicism beyond his years. Though hardly an old friend, pain was a familiar companion these days, and lying around on his backsides had given him plenty of time to think it out. There wasn’t much to be gained in feeling sorry for himself—and moaning about it wouldn’t change anything—so he might as well make the best of what time he had. Besides, what with one thing and another, he’d come out smelling like a rose anyway. It wasn’t just everybody that got themselves hooked up with a slick article like the Irishman. Not by a damnsight, it wasn’t.
As his cough slacked off, the boy glanced up and saw McCluskie watching him intently. He forced a smile and went back to shuffling the cards. “Y’know, Belle says that with my hands I wouldn’t have no trouble at all learnin’ how to make these pasteboards sit up and talk.”
McCluskie finished splashing and started toweling himself dry. “Seems like Belle’s just chock full of ideas for you.”
“She’s some talker, awright. Smart, too.” Kinch cut the deck and began dealing dummy hands of stud on the bed. “But she’s right about one thing. I ain’t gonna be tied to this bed forever, and I gotta get myself lined up with some kind of work. It’s real white of you, footin’ all the bills like this, but I’m used to payin’ my own freight.”
McCluskie stifled the temptation to smile. Sometimes the kid was so damned serious it was all he could do to keep a straight face. Sat there chewing his lip and frowning, like a little old man puzzling over some problem that had confounded the world’s scholars. For a button, he was a prize package. In spades.
“Well now, I’ll tell you, sport—I’ve been giving that some thought myself. The Santa Fe has got me wore down to a stump pullin’ their chestnuts out of the fire. Just never seems to be no end to it. Truth is, I’ve been thinkin’ of hirin’ myself an assistant, and I got an idea you might just fit the ticket. Course, the wages wouldn’t be much to start, but it’d get you by.”
“Cripes, I ain’t worried about that, Mike. Long as I got three squares and a bed, I figure I’m livin’ high on the hog.”
“You mull it over some. No hurry. When you get back on your feet if you still like the idea, we’ll give it a whirl.”
McCluskie pulled a fresh shirt out of the bureau and started putting it on. The boy was watching his every move with renewed interest, and a quizzical look came over his face all of a sudden.
“Say, Mike, I ain’t never got around to it, but there’s something I been meanin’ to ask you. How’d you get that scar on your belly?”
The Irishman glanced down at the jagged weal running from his ribs to his beltline, then went on buttoning the shirt. “Some hardcase came at me with a knife one night in Abilene.”
“God A’mighty! What happened to him?”
“Nothin’ special. Just a regular ten-dollar funeral.”
Kinch’s eyes went round as saucers and he sat there staring, the deck of cards forgotten.
With his shirt tucked in, McCluskie deliberated a moment and then gave the boy a questioning look. “Listen, bud, if you and me start workin’ together, I want you to quit using that word ain’t so much. It’s not the word that bothers me, you understand, but it reminds me of somebody that rubs my fur the wrong way. Likely you’ll meet him first time we’re over at the depot.”
The youngster ducked his head. “Sure, Mike. Anything you say. Won’t be no trouble at all.”
McCluskie grinned. “Tell you what. I’ll go get us a supper tray, and after we eat, maybe I’ll show you how to make them cards sit up and say bow wow.”
Kinch’s face lit up and he got busy shuffling the cards. But as the Irishman went through the door he sobered with a sudden thought and gave a loud yell.
“Tell ’em to hold the milk! Belle’s got me swimmin’ in the stuff.”
CHAPTER 7
THE DAY was bright as brass, a regular Kansas scorcher. Lazy clouds hung suspended against the blue muslin of the sky, and the sun hammered down with the fury of an open forge. The air was still, without a hint of breeze, and across the prairie shimmering heat waves drifted soft as woodsmoke. Already the morning was a small slice of hell, and by noon the blazing fireball overhead would wilt anything that moved.
But it was the kind of day McCluskie liked. Clear and windless, and hot enough to keep a man’s joints oiled with sweat. Perfect for burning powder, and testing himself against his keenest rival.
The one that dwelled within himself.
The Irishman came each morning to the rolling plains north of town. There, in a dry wash fissured through the earth’s bowels, he played a game. The object was to beat his shadow on the gully wall. To draw and fire the Colt Navy a split second faster than his darkened image. Yet that was only part of the game. For while his shadow was allowed to miss, he granted himself no such edge.
Each slug must strike the target—a kill shot—or the game was lost.
McCluskie had been playing this game for three years, since the spring of ’68 when he came west with the K&P. Not unlike most things he did, it was calculated and performed with solemn deliberation. Broiling his guts out with a track gang, laying rails across the parched Kansas plains, he had decided to make something better of himself than a common laborer. Watching and waiting, he studied the matter for a time, and concluded that the job of railway guard would be the first step. That required a certain aptitude with a gun, and with no one to school him, he taught himself. He invented the game and began practicing in his off time. Through trial and error he perfected the rudiments of what would later become rigid discipline, and shortly thereafter,
his newly acquired skill came to the attention of company officials.
Later, after he had killed three men, people stopped joshing him about the game. They had seen the results, and the greatest skeptic among them became a devout believer.
McCluskie, along with Hickok and Hardin and a handful more, was a man to be cultivated. Befriended or won over somehow. Failing that, it was best to simply stay clear of him.
Even now, the Irishman still practiced the game religiously. Since killing the Quinton brothers, when they attempted to rob a K&P express car the summer of ’69, there had been no occasion to draw the Colt in anger. His name was known, and anyone deadly enough to match his skill had better sense than to try. But this in no way diverted him from the game. The world was full of men too dumb, or too hotheaded, to back down, and in his trade, the risk of coming up against these hardcases was always there. With spartan discipline, he practiced faithfully, seven days a week. It was a demanding craft, one that allowed no margin for error. A man’s first mistake might well be his last, and the prize for second place wasn’t a gold watch.
McCluskie had never begrudged the time demanded by the game. Curiously, he’d always thought of it as an investment. Money in the bank. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Which in his line of work made a pretty fair maxim all the way round.
So he practiced and improved and waited.
The past week had been a little different, though. Generally he played the game solitaire, but lately he’d started bringing Kinch along. The boy was recuperated, at least as much as he ever would be, and Doc Boyd had agreed that fresh air and sunshine were curatives in their own right. McCluskie enjoyed the company, and the kid seemed fascinated by the game, so the mornings had become a special time for them both.
There was only one thing that bothered the Irishman. Puzzled him in a way he couldn’t quite fathom. The kid had been watching him for days now and never once had he asked to fire the pistol. Hadn’t even asked to touch it, or evidenced the slightest curiosity in how it worked. Apparently his only interest was in the game itself, trying to judge who was the fastest. Man or shadow.
All of which seemed a bit queer to McCluskie. Most boys would have given their eyeteeth to sit in on these sessions. More to the point, though, they would have broken out in a case of the blue swivets waiting to get their hands on the gun. To see how good they could do. To learn. To feel the Colt buck and jump and spit lead. That’s what he would have expected from any kid old enough to wear long pants.
But Kinch just hung back, watchful as a hawk, plainly satisfied to remain nothing more than a spectator.
McCluskie couldn’t figure it, but as yet he hadn’t pushed it either. There were lots of reasons that could make the kid shy off. None of them worthwhile from a man’s standpoint, and some of them too repulsive even to consider. But he left it alone, saying nothing. The kid would come around in his own time, and if he didn’t, there would be plenty of chances to find out why.
This was the fifth morning Kinch had tagged along, and by now the boy was accustomed to the ritual. Squatting down against one side of the gully, he observed silently as McCluskie set about the game. The first step was a target, and for this they had brought along a gunnysack stuffed with empty tin cans. The tins were of assorted sizes, mostly pints and quarts. McCluskie had wedged a plank between the walls of the gully about chest high, and on this he arranged five tins at spaced intervals. Then he stepped off ten paces and turned, facing the target. From his pocket he withdrew a double eagle and placed it in his left hand. Ready now, he stood loose and easy, arms hanging naturally at his sides. The only tenseness was in his eyes, and to the watching boy, it seemed that every fiber of his being was concentrated on the five cans.
Like most Westerners, McCluskie carried the Colt high on his hip, with the butt of the gun resting just below waistline. There were those who used tied-down triggers, low-slung holsters, even swivel affairs that allowed a man to twist the gun upward and fire while it was still in the holster. But experience, and three years of watching self-styled badmen commit suicide, had convinced him that such devices were strictly the work of amateurs. Flash-in-the-pan braggarts who thought an edge in speed could overcome a shortness in guts. The place for a gun was where it rode comfortable, easy to reach sitting or standing, and where it came natural to the hand when a man made his move.
The Irishman’s left hand opened and the double eagle tumbled out. There was a space of only a split second before it hit the rocky floor of the wash. The metallic ring was the signal, and with it McCluskie’s right arm moved. To the naked eye it was merely a blurred motion, but the Colt suddenly appeared in his hand and exploded flame.
The center can leaped off the plank and spun away.
Alternating his shots left to right, McCluskie sent the remaining tins bouncing down the gully. From first shot to last, the whole thing had consumed no more than a half-dozen heartbeats. Working with deliberate speed, McCluskie pulled out powder and ball, and began reloading.
Kinch was no less fascinated than the first time he had seen it happen. There was something magic about it, like a man pulling a rabbit out of a hat. One minute McCluskie was just standing there, and in the blink of an eye the gun was in his hand and whanging tin cans all over the place. It was hard to believe, except that he’d seen it repeated five mornings in a row.
Grinning, he picked up a rock and chunked it at one of the tins. “Better watch it, Mike. The shadow almost caught you that time.”
McCluskie grunted, smiling. “Un-huh. Toad’s got six toes, too. You keep a sharp lookout, though, sport. Can’t let the bogeyman get too close or I’ll have to take up cards for a livin’.”
The Irishman directed his attention to the cans once more, and for the next half-hour blasted his way through what had become by now a ritualized drill. First, he increased the distance to twenty paces and began walking toward a fresh row of cans. Suddenly he halted in midstride, dropped into a crouch and started firing. Five tins again winged skyward.
Next, he stood with his back to the plank and held his arms in unusually awkward positions. Overhead, out to the side, scratching his nose. The way it might happen if he were taken by surprise. On signal from the coin, he would wheel around and open fire. Again and again he practiced these movements, spinning to the right on one exchange and to the left on another, each time changing the order in which he potted the cans.
Finally, he walked off down the gully a good fifty yards and halted. Turning sideways, he assumed the classic duelist’s stance. Thumbing off each shot with precise care, using the sights for the first time, he started on the left and ticked off the cans in sequence. He missed on the last shot.
Kinch felt like the inside of his skull was being donged by the clapper in a church bell. The morning’s barrage had left him all but deaf, and reverberations from the staccato bark of the pistol still rang in his ears. But the noise had little to do with the reason for shaking his head. By exact count, the Irishman had fired fifty shots.
He had missed only once. The last can.
While the boy was visibly impressed, McCluskie himself was muttering curses as he walked forward. Granted, it was the best score he’d racked up this week. But it wasn’t good enough. Not in this game. The missed shot might have been the very one to put him in a box with a bunch of daisies in his hand. Concentration! That’s where he had slipped up. Plain and simple.
Lack of concentration.
The Irishman squatted down beside the boy and began disassembling his pistol. This was something else that fascinated the youngster, the almost reverent care McCluskie lavished on the weapon. Kinch knew that later he would scrub out the black powder residue with soap and hot water. But for now he made do with swabbing a lightly oiled cloth through the barrel and the cylinder chambers.
McCluskie glanced up and smiled at the kid’s solemn expression. “Well, bud, we didn’t win the war but we scared the hell out of ’em. Still can’t figure ho
w I missed that last shot.”
“It’s important to you, ain’t”—he grinned and made a face—“I mean, isn’t it?”
McCluskie acted as though he hadn’t noted the slip. “Damn right it’s important. Not just because it’s part of my job, either. Y’know, you’re not back in Chicago any more. Out here a man has got to look out for himself.”
“Yeah, but they got law in Newton. I mean, it’s not like you was off in the mountains somewheres with a bunch of wild animals.”
McCluskie snorted and peered down the barrel of the Colt. “Lemme tell you something, sport. The tough things in this life are sort of like takin’ a leak. You’ve got to stand on your own two feet and nobody else can do it for you. That goes double in a place where everybody and his dog carries a gun. The law might arrest your murderer—maybe even hang him—but that’s not likely to do you a whole lot of good. Dead’s dead, and that’s all she wrote.”
Kinch picked up a pebble, studying it a moment, then shot it across the gully like a marble. “Belle says you’ve killed three men.”
“Judas Priest, there’s nothin’ that woman won’t talk about, is there?”
The boy gave him a sideways glance, then looked away again. Something was eating at him and it was a while before he could find the right words. “Is it hard to kill a man, Mike?”
“Well, I don’t know.” The Irishman paused and pulled reflectively at his ear. “Most times you don’t think about it when it’s happenin’. It’s like fightin’ off bees. You just do what needs doing to keep from gettin’ stung.”
“Yeah, but afterward don’t you think about it? Maybe wish you hadn’t done it?”
“Like feelin’ sorry, you mean?”
Kinch nodded, watching him intently.
“What you’re talkin’ about is all that stuff in the Good Book. Thou shalt not this and that. The way I look at it, guilt is for them that needs it.”