by John Larison
“What’s to stop us from killing them and splitting the money in their pockets?” I asked.
He laughed. He put an arm around my shoulders and turned me from them. “And then what? Without them you and me just dogs in a world of wolves.” He patted my back kindly. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your boss none of this after.”
I watched as he counted the steps to his position. He kicked away some fallen limbs and stretched his arms.
I done the same. I heard the wind in the treetops and thought of my brother when he finally returned for his sister.
“In ten,” the Governor called. Cliffpatrick finished his drink and flung the crystal to the side. “Nine.”
When I looked again to Johnson I saw a new face, this one steeled off from all feeling, this one not reflecting me at all. His fingers flexed in the air over his pistols. I was but a target to him now.
All the hours alone, all the sorrows and hopes, every sunset and song condensed into a single point the width of a button’s eye, and I imagined my lead center punching that point on each number of their countdown.
I didn’t hear no signal. I drew only when I saw his action. But I did more than draw and it’s good I did or I would not be here writing these words. Johnson was the faster man. But he was expecting one thing and I give him another. As I drew I let my body fall between my feet into a squat. His bullet come so close it left a black burn on my ear.
He looked on me in surprise. He might’ve shot again and he could’ve had me, but he didn’t shoot twice. He holstered his pistol.
Blood bubbled from his nose and he wiped at it and looked at his fingertips. My bullet had popped the button free of his shirt, and now blood spilled from the hole as it might from a bucket shot through. He made a blow of the blood in his nose and wiped his face with his sleeve and blood smeared across his cheek and he wobbled. Blood spilled on his chin and dripped down in long filaments toward the earth.
Johnson reached a hand to me. He was wavering and he reached out so that I might help balance him. He fell before I arrived to him.
He was gasping. It was me he was looking on when his eyes went gray. My silhouette against the treetops and the vast nothing beyond. I saw it reflected back, I was darkness over him.
The Governor was whooping and hollering and his hat spun into the meadow. Johnson’s body gurgled as the muscles give in and the remaining air in his chest slipped into this world never to be drawn back.
“Hot hell and holy dickens!” the Governor’s voice echoed back.
“That ain’t allowed!” Cliffpatrick objected. “Ducking? The shooter can’t move!”
“Oh, no, no, no.” The Governor’s finger was in the air. He pulled a folded booklet from his pocket and held it between them. “Check the rules yourself, Cliff. The shooter can’t move his feet. Straight, did you move your feet? I didn’t see him move his feet.”
“I’m not suggesting he moved his feet. I’m saying he ducked. It is low. It is contrary to the spirit of the endeavor!” Cliffpatrick pulled a monocle from his breast pocket and put it to his eye. From another pocket he drew his own copy of the same booklet, and Cliffpatrick held the text at varying distances until the print went clear for him.
“There.” The Governor pointed to a passage of text on Cliffpatrick’s booklet. “Article seven, section four. Shooter shall not adjust his feet once positions are set.”
I passed my hand over Johnson’s eyes. His daughters had to know.
“There must be more.” Cliffpatrick studied his booklet. “Under article four, perhaps?”
“You won’t find what you seek, Cliff. Who wrote these rules?”
“And that’s why I am suspicious. How can we lack a ducking ordinance?”
“You voted them into use!” The Governor’s voice cracked like a boy’s. “Don’t sink low, Cliff, just because my tyke gunned down your fancy nigger. An upset is always tough to stomach. We both know losing is part of the game’s pleasure—it makes the wins all the sweeter!”
The older man removed his monocle and placed it back into his pocket. He folded his booklet. “Well, I will make a motion at this spring’s meeting to amend the current wording. We must have a ducking ordinance. It’s absurdly philistine not to.”
“We will discuss it then. Now, if you’ll congratulate me properly . . .”
Cliffpatrick straightened his coat. He took a breath to collect himself and then offered his hand to the Governor. “Well done, sir. Hell of a show. I’m still shaking with the surprise of it. As you so sagely point out, an upset is always hard on the stomach. A rum then? To settle us? Where is my blasted flask?” He laughed. “I almost called to Johnson to fetch it. That will take some getting used to. I liked that one.”
I stood over Johnson. “How will we get him on a horse? How will we get him to his family?”
Cliffpatrick shrugged. “Oh, yes, of course. Put him on a horse then.”
“But he is two hundred pounds. I can’t alone.”
“So don’t then.” He tipped back the flask and looked down on the dead man as his pink tongue passed over his lips. “Best damn shooter I ever had.”
“Mr. Cliffpatrick,” the Governor announced to the basin, “was on a streak of luck with this Johnson. What was it, fifteen victories this year?”
“And eight more from last autumn. Counting only the duels. I was finalizing arrangements just yesterday to sail for the Continent. Son, you have left me out to dry.” Cliffpatrick looked down his nose at me. “How much to recruit this one?”
The Governor laughed. He slapped Cliffpatrick on the back.
“I’m not saying to buy him,” Cliffpatrick said. “Just how much to let me lease him? I have these commitments now and no shooter, you understand. I’m thinking we split the winnings sixty-forty. What do you say, old friend?”
“We’ll talk.”
While they counted the money upon a saddle I bent down beside Johnson a last time. A spasm had his foot twitching. His eyes wasn’t nothing but glass now. In them was my burden to live a life worthy of this man’s death and all the suffering to befall his fatherless children. Every action I took from there out was an action weighed in counterbalance to those he would never take. Every moment of rest weighed against his own.
“We must bury him!”
The Governor shook his head. “So the wolves can undo our labors? Don’t waste breath warring those forces that cannot be arrested.”
I dug anyhow, I dug and dug and dug, with a rock for a trowel. We couldn’t leave him out.
But why was I so desperate to hide that dead man under dirt? Was it to benefit his soul or mine?
* * *
—
We rode along the tracks we had laid on the way in, but I saw nothing familiar.
“I speak here of our Republic, of our dignity—of our standing among the greatest civilizations of the world! These Southern men I deal with. They are forever warring. Even as they move west, as they have done in droves, they yet carry their anger at being crushed before the eyes of their servants. They seek to pass their resentments to their offspring, who will no doubt pass it to theirs. It is a poison that will transcend generation. And so they must be made to know that here, in our West, each man is made not by his father’s failings but by the character of his own grit.
“I hope you appreciate the depth of my affection for you. Jesse, thanks to this win I now value you more than anyone else ever has. That is love. There is no purer definition.”
The Governor pulled a purse from his pocket and tossed it to me. It was thick with cash. “Your share, plus a measure of generosity. We will have many offers after today. That Johnson had a robust reputation. Cliffpatrick’s reputation.
“Once Constance is married off and this wedding hubbub is passed by, you and I will make a tour. You will earn more in one month than your whole family could in this lif
etime, I promise. I will get us to New York. And from there to London. You watch.” He smiled at me. “Have you shot in a building? There is no rush greater. The sound! I am damn pleased, Straight. But enough of this ‘Straight’ business. It is time we name you properly.”
I held the money in my hand. I couldn’t reckon its weight against the man left behind.
The Governor said, “Embrace your moment! Ours is a new land, and such is the gift of a new land. What you do from here forward is what will define you. Son, hear me on this point.
“I hope you can look upon what I offer you here today and see it as your gateway to the life you desire. I will make you significant, I will make you a god among men. Our Republic is but a child among ancients. The families that rise up now and take hold of this place will govern it for a thousand years, until some new superior race comes from some yet undiscovered continent to supplant us. What I speak of here today is not about tomorrow, it is about forever, or as close to forever as we finite types are allowed to fathom. With this name, I will welcome you into your forever!”
He ducked a branch. “We will have you listed in the registry as ‘Spartan.’ The citizens of our city will know you as Mr. Spartan. Jesse works, but I’m prone to Samuel. There is something about the alliterative effect of Samuel. Samuel A. Spartan. It is daunting, isn’t it? People won’t soon forget a name like that. It would be an especially fine moniker should we have cause to name a river in your honor. The Spartan River. Yes, by God! Many of our rivers still bear the names of this land’s previous inhabitants. Of course it falls upon us to update them.” He looked at me and then again to the gaps in the trees. “I know what you’re thinking. You’ve been in the papers, but ‘Jesse Straight’ is not a name to be remembered. The Straight River? See my point.”
He pulled a big breath of air and said, “I cannot express the depth of my love for this mountain! Good God, what a land! Come, Samuel! Let us run these horses until they break!”
* * *
—
When we returned it wasn’t Will who met us for the animals. It was another man who was typical seen in the garden. He wasn’t a calming influence on Dash or the Governor’s buckskin. Dash kicked around until he could approach this new man from upwind.
The Governor went straight inside as he intended to send telegrams in all directions concerning the victory of his young ace, Samuel A. Spartan.
Agent Thorvald stepped out from the shadows, intent on me.
Inside the holehouse I sat on the bench with my drawers up. The sun cast blades of light through the room and flies tested the seams for escape. I was panting for no good reason. All that had happened and all that still needed to happen rose up at once like a dust storm and I was lost inside.
The agent’s boots cracked the gravel outside. Now his shadow erased the blades of light.
In truth, his presence was a queer relief. The dust blew free and I was holding my Peacemaker and if he opened the door I would seize him and drag him within my darkness.
I kicked open the door. “What do you want with me?”
He didn’t say a word. He still wore his sawed-down scattergun on his hip. A fly landed on his brow and he didn’t flinch.
He drew something from his shirt pocket, an envelope.
I watched him cross the yard and disappear around the corner of the house. I drew open the flap on the envelope and saw what was inside. A man’s ear.
* * *
—
I met Drummond on the road. He looked on me a long minute. I couldn’t tell if he was relieved or troubled to see me alive. “Was he quick as they say?”
“You knew I was going into that.”
“What did you want me to say? You know I don’t call no shots around here.”
Drummond stretched his stiff right hand. That’s when I saw the splatter of still-bright blood upon his sleeve. Now I saw there too was blood below his eye and along his neck, small drops like those that come from some knife wounds. I handed him the envelope. “What happened to Will?”
Drummond flicked the envelope to the earth and looked to the sky. He cleared his nose and spat. Then he reached into his jacket and I did believe for a half beat he was drawing on me. But he only drew a bottle. He offered me a pull. Drummond never drank in daylight.
By now I had it figured. The Governor knew who had his daughter’s heart. The Governor had sentenced his butler’s son to death. Drummond and Agent Thorvald had done it together. As they would’ve me if the Governor asked.
He offered again the bottle.
“I don’t want nothing you got.” I walked past Drummond and let my shoulder collide into his. “Coward.”
He called to my back, “It ain’t cowardly to do your duty.”
* * *
—
I went straight to the Governor’s office. He was not present. Tuss was keeping watch at the door. “It’s true! You had me worried, LP. Word was you was going up against Cliffpatrick’s gun. I heard you was back, but figured it must be as a ghost.”
I drew out my cash winnings. “Poker?”
“I love you, kid.” Tuss looked about us. He whispered, probably the only time in his life. “But Boss don’t take kindly to gambling on duty, you know that.”
I looked about us and shrugged. “You gonna tell?”
A smile come upon his face. “But I don’t got no cards.”
I told him to go get his set and I’d keep his post. “Won’t take you four minutes down and back.”
He rubbed in hands together. “I reckon we can get in a few hands.”
“Get them cards before Boss strikes up a notion to work.”
Once Tuss was off and down the stairs, I slipped through the office doors and locked them behind me.
Right off I pulled up the grizzly rug looking for a trapdoor. Then I got on my back and looked up at his desk. There was a scattergun sawed down in the manner of Agent Thorvald’s. It was bolted on a swivel below the desk. All them times I sat across from the Boss he could’ve ended me with two ounces of finger pull.
I stole the loads from the scattergun.
Now I was running on guesswork. I rose and examined the pictures on the walls and then the few books on the shelves, and then I stood and thought about it all as if I was the Governor in my own office.
I went straight to the stag head and lifted it free from its hook in the wall. It sank to the ground with unnatural weight and I could barely slow it. At the back of the thing was an iron door. It had an ancient lock but time had seized the latch open. I drew the door and saw the cavern within.
What was I hoping to find? A map with directions to my brother’s camp? Proof that our name was in fact Harney? Nothing in the Governor’s office was worth the risk I was taking by being there. But such was the oil that boiled in me. I didn’t rightly care what I found or if I was found out, so long as I could take something from that man. Something he would miss.
When I reached inside my fingers found pellets of gold. Surely the Governor had similar stashes all about his house, and maybe all across the state. This one was so rare visited a mess of spiders come pouring out. How many years would pass before he noticed this treasure’s absence?
Still I stripped off my boot and drew out my stinky sock and collected the gold pellets within it.
* * *
—
That night I laid out in the sage and watched the sky. It was my first night clean sober and sleep wasn’t nowhere for me to find.
I could burn this house down from within. I could pillage the Governor one stash at a time until I broke him. And then my brother could ride through the smoldering gates and take me home.
What a foolish notion. My brother wasn’t watching me from above. And if he was, he’d look down here at me and see only a guardsman like all the other guardsmen. What was to stop him from flipping his peep and takin
g steady aim and dropping me like a sack of feed?
* * *
—
Come dark a lantern was lit inside the old woman’s shack. Its light cast beams across the earth and I stepped into one and followed it all the way to the cracked curtain.
Inside I could see her ancient hands flashing over meat, her blade slicing and chopping and then herding the cuts into the pot. Only her hands and that blade, the rabbit laid out on the block and its body being turned to meat. Then I couldn’t see her hands no more. The flesh lay on the board untouched. All of us, meat.
I never heard the door open or her feet on the gravel. She was just there, at the corner of the house. “What’s your business?” she called. I could see the bore of a Spencer studying me. “I may be dusty with age, but don’t play me for no fool. Only shady intentions encourage men to go creeping around at this hour.”
“I am on my way back from the stable and I saw the light is all.”
“Who you be anyhow?”
How to answer that question. “One of your son’s guards.”
“You the shooter I see over on the range? The little one who sometimes sleeps in the stable?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s me. Didn’t know you was watching.”
She pointed the Spencer at the iron pump near the edge of the shack. “I need a pot of water and while you’re here creeping you might as well fetch it for me. Come on now,” she called. “Don’t be conditional.”
I filled her pot from the hand pump and returned to her porch by the light of the lantern lit inside. I counted one more rabbit and four quail hung by their legs along the rail. She saw me looking on them.
“I don’t see no wounds on them critters.”
“Why folks insist on peppering supper with lead I’ll never know. Die easy enough in snares that don’t cost a bit and won’t bust no tooth. Any reason you young’uns can find to pull a trigger. Sometimes I think your kind is afraid to let the echoes of that war finish.