Feud at Broken Man

by Frank Callan

That was why, he thought, McCoy was going to be knocked out by a stranger. There had to be nothing they could pin on Itch Carney when McCoy was found dead as a plank in his own office. No, it was a job for his own man, his resolution man, as he termed him. You want to resolve a situation, you sent for the right man. This was the man who had made most of his stash from bounty hunting and now was keen to go north because there was a whole kin of Mexicans reported to be looking for him.

  McCoy had killed his brother, gentle, soft-headed Red Carney. Maybe not with a gun, but with ill treatment. He had arrested young Red over something and nothing, and he had died in the jailhouse. That was down to McCoy, damn him. Now the time had come to pay for that. The resolution man was coming. There were plenty of men around who could take McCoy out of the picture, but they were amateurs. The job needed Joe Dane, one of the very best killers. The reason for that was his total lack of emotion. He pretended everything, lied shamelessly, and took what he wanted whenever he felt like it.

  Itch knew that his health was shaky, too. There had been much too long a period of sniping and brawling, name-calling and annoying between Carney and McCoy, and now, his problems with his body mounting up, it was time to end it all and do a little thinking about settling scores.

  Meantime, he needed to gather some more stock, a cook and a few more hands, and then it was ‘so long, Broken Man!’ and off on the drive. Then a new thought struck him: hell, if the woman really could cook, then he wouldn’t need no cook. The cook problem had come along because of the rat. Corny Mildew had been competent enough with a pan and a fire, and his stew was tolerable, but his fear of rodents had done for him. He had walked out and gone back to Texas just a week earlier and left the Big Question without a cook. It had been a week or so of beans and sour dough biscuits, and stocks were low. That rat had been a sign of bad luck, he thought, and a woman could turn it all right. There was a magic about the weaker sex, Itch thought, recalling his one true love of years back, who had left him for a gambler: ‘You’re dull, Henry, dull as cold porridge, and you scratch your backside – now that gets to be too much for a lady. Even the loose women love some culture and style.’ The habit of talking to himself was another bad sign, he was sure. He was falling apart, and even that he put down at McCoy’s door.

  He had put every effort into de-lousing himself that time, after he had picked up the bugs on the trail. But that had been too late. She took off without a word more, and he was destined to be a loner.

  ‘That’s gonna change,’ he said to himself. But first, he was waiting for his resolution man – Joe Dane.

  Chapter 3

  Lydia Santo disliked many things, but mostly it was her name. That was even more troublesome for her image of a lady than the cow on the roof of the Santo sod-house. Strictly, it was only partly a sod-house, because Elias Hole, who had adopted her, being a man with a creative turn of mind, had purloined some wood from somewhere, so the place was half sod and half boards.

  Her pa had been a rascal called Rico Santo and she was stuck with his name. Now, for the girl, Santo was an undesirable word for obvious reasons, and Lydia, though packed with irony, being a classy name, given that all the Santos had worked as thieves in the past, she hated it because it just sounded bad. It had no style, and style was what she worked hard to achieve. In fact, it sounded plain religious – like saint – and that was unacceptable. Hence she repeatedly told the world to call her Liza, for that had class, and it was a word that defined what she wanted to be. One day, she said, time and again, she would be Liza Di Buco, which she had found out in some ladies’ periodical was an aristocratic name. In her journal, in which she kept her Liza di Buco thoughts, she wrote it real big: Liza di Buco. That was the name of a STAR.

  In The Journal of Liza di Buco, Actress, Lydia wrote:

  Both Bonneville men stride through the town as if they are part of some royal family. R.W.P. takes careful, studied paces, and the son matches him, by his side. Both look to their front, proudly, and both greet any townsfolk who pass with a polite ‘Good day, sir’ or ‘Good day, madam.’ In Broken Man they stand out like a canker on a cow’s nose. I shall one day walk with them, or at least, with him, for he is destined to be my partner in life, and I will have no other. It is in the stars that a true love appears to a lady of quality, and the lady always knows. I have to find a way to tell him our destiny.

  Writing the journal and dreaming about the made-up Bonneville was one of her little treats of her day, because for the most part in her waking hours she was washing, feeding, slapping, yelling at and restraining the rabble – the gaggle of young Santos that packed the sod-house from corner to rafter. She was supposed to have big brother Winfield to help her and Ma Lil, but he was almost always away learning cow punching and wrangling with Boss Itch. The result was a life of sheer misery and sweat-work for Ma Lil and Lydia. Any time of day there was one of the rabble screaming or destroying some household item. Lydia could only steal away and go out if Ma Lil let her, and luckily, her mother understood about the lusts of the young. In fact, she had been at its mercy so much that her family was in double figures, somewhere around eleven ‘if you count strays’ she would say when asked.

  Lydia spent the hours when the rabble slept, and when she was still awake, looking in her little mirror and practising actressy gestures and pouts. Then she would read her monologues and poems, ready for the day when she had a chance to shine on stage. She would walk around ten paces, turn, and say, ‘Good day Sir, my name is Liza di Buco and I’m a theatrical personality. Do kiss my hand.’

  She also drew, and she drew Ben Bonneville in various poses, in between the sentences in her journal: sometimes he sat with legs crossed; then he stood and put a finger to his chin, musing; or sometimes she had him walking with a sense of purpose. Then she drew herself: the journal showed the world a small, slender young woman in her early twenties, with long black hair, a sweet, shapely body with good hips and a bosom just forming in a way to attract men’s gaze. Best, she knew, were her lips and her smile. She had seen older men fix their stare on her luscious lips or melt as they were enslaved by her smile – and of course these notes went into her journal.

  Once Lydia said to Ma Lil, ‘Am I beautiful or simply pretty?’

  Lil, who was now a rounded, stiff-backed woman of forty, said, ‘You will capture hearts.’

  Lydia took that as a sort of motto to live by, something that led her forward. But there was just one heart she longed to capture, and that was a challenge, about as tough as riding a bull for more than three seconds, she reckoned. Still, she said sentences like ‘Mr and Mrs Bonneville seen here entering the theatre for the performance of Shakespeare. . . .’

  Then she giggled and thought how wonderful life could be when there was no angry little face to be wiped or no stink to be removed from a small person’s nethers. Sometimes she spoke of herself in the third person and giggled again: ‘Liza di Buco, the actress, wipes turds from the ass of a child.’

  But somewhere there was a Bonneville.

  Chapter 4

  ‘I was shown how to scalp a man when I was just learnin’ to put a second foot out in front and stagger on the ground. . . . Now if that is not a true piece of interesting fact then speak and be honest. My father told me I was born with a scowl, that my first words were kill the white man. Yes, I was brought into a world of killing. But this time I was recalling, was when the buffalo trod on my foot.’

  Alby Groot took his grubby hands off his belly to stick them in the air and shout in frustration: ‘Beg pardon, Mr Two Winds Sir, but can’t we shut up that damned pianer?’

  ‘Yeah, the lawyer has a point. We can’t have a meeting with that ruckus going on,’ Hal Bornless said. Then the strongest, most strident voice spoke over them both. It was Mrs Hoyt, whose words could quell a simmering gunfight. ‘Quit moaning and griping. Our society will go on, with or without noise. Now, the subject is the programme of speakers for this new year. It’s September – the new year for us, like we had
last year, in spite of your strange behaviour, Mr Bornless, and our first speaker is on his way here right now. My good husband is waiting to greet him as we speak.’

  Hal Bornless was the man who looked the most alert and alive. He was attached to a red shirt and ill-fitting pants, along with what he called his entertaining boots, complete with silver spurs, and never wore anything else, which is why he sat well detached from the other club members. ‘No ma’am, not yet, Mr Two Winds ain’t done with his story yet. Anyhow, my behaviour is always strange, Mrs Hoyt, it’s my profession. Jests and japes, belly laughs and ballads y’see.’

  ‘Back to business, back to business, ignore the music next door. You were saying, Mr Two Winds?’ This was Doc Potworthy, who thought of himself as secretary and leading light, next to Mrs Hoyt of course.

  ‘We can leave my story till next time. The lady is right. We should talk about the programme.’ Chet chewed a cigar and then belched. He was a mass of muscle gone a little spacious, but no one dared say he was fat. ‘It’s a good time for me to remind everybody just why we started up this group. We determined, if you folks recall, to offer the good citizens of Broken Man some recreational options beyond shootin’ at rats and brawlin’ in the back alleys.’

  ‘Mr Two Winds,’ Preacher Hoyt responded, ‘You really should have gone in for writin’ these here novels. Your brain manufactures supposed facts quicker nor a rabbit escapin’ a hawk. You ever thought of writin’ down your lies?’

  ‘Lies? By God sir, everythin’ I say is grounded in truth!’

  ‘Now calm it down you two, or the cultured folks is like to have a duel on its hands!’ Hal Bornless said.

  Alby Groot, who was many things, picked up the notion of a duel. One role he played was as undertaker and coffin-maker in the town, and he made his point, ‘If the world went back to the sheer wildness of your youth, Chet, I’d be a rich man. They would be deaths comin’ at me from all sides and I’d be generatin’ cash enough to buy a mansion.’

  ‘Just cut out the gripin’ and whinin’, Alby, and remember that you’re here to advance the cause of poetry and fine conversation.’ This was Mrs Hoyt.

  Everyone was then mumbling or insisting on a break for a drink, but the Doc took over, putting on his official voice, the one he used when he was selling his Golden Medical Discovery and patent puniness curative for little ones. ‘Now, if we’re movin’ on to activities and such, well, I have a guest speaker in mind.’ He smiled, as if there was a deep secret about to be revealed and he was the only one privy to the information.

  ‘You’re like a man with two legs sittin’ with maimed war veterans, Doc, get on with it,’ Alby said, in between nibbling a chunk of bread and fat.

  Mrs Hoyt frowned. ‘Look everyone, I must be serious for a moment and call for order. This town is riven apart by hatred. McCoy and Carney simmer with such murderous savagery that soon we’ll all suffer from their bloodthirsty intentions . . . and it’s up to our Society to bring in some much-needed culture to this town.’

  Doc Potworthy beamed even wider and then announced, ‘Quite right, good people. Broken Man is entirely typical of the new communities being set up out West, and someone needs to show that civilization has reached these parts. The West is not all about bullets and daggers. This is why I have arranged for this guest from back East, a real man of letters, a celebrated name in the publications of such homes of culture as Boston and St Louis . . . in fact, he is a man of British blue blood!’

  ‘By God, he’s covered some dust then! He desperate for employment?’ Alby asked.

  The Doc was a hairy man, everywhere except on his head, which was bald as a weathered rock, and his facial hair was well inside his mouth, so that he puffed out strands of grey hair every time he spoke, and his tongue lashed out onto his lips. ‘Trust a lawyer to be all critical and little-brained! Nope, he’s a speaker of some note, his political and literary talks reported in respected journals from every corner of the land – even in Texas I’m told.’

  ‘Doctor, surely no one in Texas reads? The very idea is ludicrous!’ Mrs Hoyt chuckled.

  ‘Beg pardon ma’am, but my Ma was from Texas and she read news sheets every week, even without talking the reports out loud!’ the Doc said.

  They all stared at him, unimpressed, so he shut up and muttered something obscene. Mrs Hoyt thought that a family that tolerated red jackets were beyond all estimation and were best shunned.

  ‘Will you listen?’ The Doc shouted this so loudly that the piano music stopped and the boozers in The False Start saloon stopped for a few seconds, expected gun shots from the back room, but then went on, most with their eyes on Perdy Candle’s stretch of bare leg, seen as she sat at the piano, singing sweetly of old-world romance.

  ‘This man is willing to come here for two hundred bucks,’ said the Doc, looking smug.

  ‘Well course, I’d go cause a belly laugh in Rapid City, South Dakota for two hundred!’ Hal Bornless said. The others all nodded and made approving noises.

  ‘Right, well if you’re all gonna be brutes and jaw-boned Calibans, then I’m going to do something useful like tend a broken limb! I knows when I am not appreciated for what I am – a man of learnin’.’ The Doc was ready to sulk.

  As he stood up, Mrs Hoyt saw that her little group was in danger of being reduced, so she appeased him. ‘Dear Doc Potworthy, do sit down again, and have some of this sarsaparilla, yes? Then we’ll all say what a wonderful speaker your man will be.’

  They all agreed, except for Hal, who was still worried about the competition, as he saw himself as the primary laugh inducer around Broken Man. He aspired to be the comic maestro of the Colorado Territory, and he made sure all his friends knew that. ‘Now, yes, this is a fine idea, but Doc, is this man a serious type? Does he have great themes, noble rhetoric?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s a man of classical learning. Very serious, very proper.’ The Doc smiled again, feeling welcome. Hal was happy. The man sounded like a dull bore of the highest degree and was no rival in the comedic art arena.

  ‘Then, it’s resolved, that we shall have a collection to pay for this man to come.’ Mrs Hoyt said, adding, ‘Where is he coming from?’

  ‘Oh back East. . . . I don’t know. I think somewhere in Nebraska.’ The Doc had no idea. He had simply read about this man in a newspaper.

  ‘His name?’ Mrs Hoyt asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s called Lord Harry Lacey.’

  There was an immediate and deep silence. Then Mrs Hoyt spoke, in a tone of whispered amazement and reverence. ‘Did you say “Lord?” ’

  ‘Yeah, a lord, from England.’ Doc now laughed with glee.

  ‘A lord, and he’s only asking two hundred bucks?’ Hal asked.

  Only Chet Two Winds was unmoved. He lifted a layer of old muscle off the table, ready to stand up, and said, ‘Lords are nothing to sing about. I skinned one once, in Montana, after I stuck him with an arrow through his throat. He died slow.’

  The literary folk of Broken Man stared in silence, unable to find any words to give Two Winds that would add any comfort to the subject. But everything came to a halt as Lord Harry walked in, alongside Hoyt, who announced the arrival of their guest as if they were dealing with royalty. Harry was almost mobbed, so enthusiastic was the reception. Then he was sat down at the end of their long table and questions were fired at him. Where had he come from? Had he met Queen Victoria? Did he take part in the Charge of the Light Brigade?

  Finally, Mrs Hoyt called for quiet and explained that their guest was weary and also very hungry. She had arranged for coffee and pie, and some cold meats, and these were being brought in by Happen Boodle and his hotel staff. Word had spread around the saloon and the rooms above that a British lord was in town, and the good inhabitants of Broken Man came to stare through every available doorway or window.

  Harry was not allowed to go to his bed until he had sung two or three patriotic or romantic songs. Eventually off he went, too exhausted even to undress.

  Chapter 5<
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  There might have been fun and games in the saloon and in the club room, but over at Carney’s place there was serious talk. Joe Dane had been fed and watered too, but now he was sitting with Itch Carney and Will Ringo at The Big Question. They were sharing Carney’s best whiskey, sitting around the table in the work-room where Carney had most privacy, and the Boss was explaining the job in hand.

  ‘See, Joe, we know each other pretty well, right? You know the situation.’

  ‘Sure do. The lawman done you wrong, so he has to leave the card-table and walk out of the saloon for keeps. The cemetery awaits . . . if this excuse for a town has one yet!’ Joe Dane liked smiling. He was always proud to say he hadn’t a serious bone in his body, and he would chuckle.

  ‘You cheer me up, young Joe. I wish I had a son like you!’ Itch slapped the man on the back and nodded for Will to bring more whiskey.

  ‘Joe, I’d like you to keep in mind the solid fact that McCoy killed my brother Red . . . my little kid brother.’

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Yeah, keep that in your mind when you have him close and you’ve cocked your revolver, son. You savvy?’

  ‘Sure. Now Mr Carney sir . . . if it’s not too painful . . . how did your brother die?’

  ‘Joe, he died in the worst way. Alone, in a cell, nobody listenin’ to his cries for help. You register that? That’s the kind of animal we’re dealing with, and he calls himself the representative of the law. Since that suspicious death, we’ve walked wide of each other, but if his friends meet my friends, there’s spite and there’s digs and sometimes there’s fists. You see the situation?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Carney. I seen these things afore. T’all comes of the basic cowardice of not bein’ able to close the show. Everythin’ gits a little edgy. Tempers fray, remarks are made. Your boys spit on his boys, and then one day, boom! There’s deaths and sufferin’ beyond the bounds of the real issue. Yep, I seen it afore.’