The Shootist

by Glendon Swarthout

  It was the maximum Walter Thibido would take. He turned to the closet, and when he had pulled the curtain he fixed his hat on his head, spread his legs, and spoke as evenly as Books had.

  "I also heard you are as mean a son of a bitch as ever lived. Well, you be a son of a bitch while you can. I told you, when I walked in here I was scared. No more. I'm not the one going away. You are. So be a gent and convenience everybody and do it soon. Six weeks is too long. I'll see you aren't lonesome. I'll drop in to cheer you up and watch your progress. And I'll do you another good turn."

  Books waited.

  "The day they lay you away, I will shit on your grave for flowers."

  Books adjusted his crimson pillow. "That is a damned handsome suit you're wearing, Marshal."

  A line of burros humped high with firewood for sale passed the house, coerced into a trot by a Mexican with a long cactus switch. Walter Thibido and Bond Rogers stood on her front porch.

  "He is J. B. Books, isn't he?"

  "Yes, ma'am, he is."

  "I wouldn't have let him in the door had I known."

  "I wouldn't have let him over the city limits."

  "Surely he's going now."

  Thibido hemmed and hawed. "Mrs. Rogers, I want to talk to you about that."

  "You didn't back down!"

  "I surely did not. But I'll put it to you confidentially, Mrs. Rogers. He won't be here long."

  "Marshall, when my roomers find out who he is, they'll leave like scat. I can't afford that. They are my livelihood. Do you mean to tell me I can't decide who lives on my premises and who doesn't?"

  "Ma'am, he's—" He clamped his jaw. "He won't be here long."

  "He certainly won't!"

  She was diverted. The ice wagon stopped, and she ordered fifty pounds. She watched closely as the iceman cut the block, weighed it, wiped off the sawdust, tonged the block onto his shoulder, then directed him to take it around and in the back way and mark her card, which was tacked by the door. Thibido meanwhile pondered how to soft-soap her and looked her over and concluded he wouldn't kick if he were required to snug up to her some cold night and hoped Ray Rogers had appreciated what he had at home.

  "You represent the law," she began again.

  "That's what I'm getting at, Mrs. Rogers. From a police standpoint, it's safer to have him here, where I can keep an eye on him, than letting him run loose. He's a dangerous man. He won't harm you, he's not that kind—guns and gunplay are his bread and butter. If he goes to leave, you telephone me right away."

  "But my roomers. When they learn—"

  "Don't tell 'em. We'll keep it amongst the three of us. That's counting your boy."

  "I couldn't sleep. Just the thought of such a man, sitting there hour after hour—"

  "In the meantime, the city will be much obliged to you."

  "Gillom says he's killed thirty men."

  Walter Thibido had other matters to attend. He struck an official pose. "Mrs. Rogers, I give you my word. He won't be with us long."

  Denver, Colo., Jan. 22—This morning Claude Hilder, aged nineteen, shot Emma Douglas and Harry R. Haley, and then killed himself. The woman will probably recover. Haley is dangerously wounded in the lungs. Jealousy caused the tragedy. Hilder's brother, a returned Philippines soldier, killed himself recently, his mother also dying as the result of self-inflicted wounds. The family is said to be tainted with insanity.

  Books put down the El Paso Daily Herald. He thought: This is where I am. A room in a rooming house on Overland Street in El Paso, Texas. I will be here until March, maybe, or April. It is the last place I will be. I had better have a close look at it.

  The room was commodious, perhaps eighteen by twenty-two. The floor was wood, oak possibly, which would be dear in these parts, and the Wilton carpet was patterned with red and purple roses. Beside the bed and before the washbowl hooked oval rugs of orange and black had been laid to protect the carpet. The furnishings were quality, too: the leather armchair in which he sat; a library table between it and the bed, which was brass; under the bed a china slop-jar, along its rim a row of cherubs playing harps and providing musical accompaniment while you pissed; a straight chair; and the massive chiffonier, with five drawers. On the table, on a large doily, stood a lamp with two bulbs and pull-chains and an ornate shade. The material resembled isinglass, but it was frosted, and under this crystal coating blue, brown, and green birds of paradise were painted, so that when the lights were on the effect was vivid, almost magical. The birds seemed to take wing. On the table, under the shade, sat a glass candy compote, its cover in the shape of a stem of grapes. The compote was empty. He valued the washbowl, mirror, and towel rack. Shaving might be difficult later on, but at least he would not have to leave the room to manage it. The wallpaper featured sprays of blue and golden lilies against a white background, and there were two pictures, framed and under glass. In one, the smaller, a noble Indian sat astride his pony on a rocky promontory, surveying a wilderness with sorrowful mien. In the other, the setting was a woodland glade, and a tranquil pool about which, gazing at their reflections in the pool, knelt several nymphs, clad just diaphanously enough to reveal their rather buxom charms. They were not alone. Spying upon them from the foliage was a gang of half-men, half-goats, with horns and hoofs and hairy tails and legs, who appeared to him to be working up a lust to leap and lay hell out of the nymphs. The ceiling fixture was two bulbs suspended in glass domes. The closet curtain, on a rod, was green muslin. There were two windows with lace curtains, and the one to the south being raised, the lace was stirred by a breeze. He saw a shadow on the wall.

  He eased himself off his pillow, edged along and around the bed and down the other side to the wall.

  He hunched and, bending his left arm, thrust it swiftly through the open window and along the wall of the house like a hook. When his fingers met something, he seized it. He pulled.

  Gillom was hauled along the wall by a suspender until his face was less than six inches from J. B. Books's face. Then another hand reached through the window and took him around the throat.

  "You little bastard! You spy on me again and I'll nail your slats to a tree!"

  The man had his throat in both hands now. "Recognized me, huh? Told your ma, didn't you? Who else did you blab to?"

  "Mose," Gillom choked.

  "Speak up!"

  "Tarrant. At the stable."

  He was lifted off his feet, shaken the way a terrier shakes a rat. "God damn you, boy! If you were mine I'd whip your setter so raw you'd stand the rest of your miserable life!"

  Gillom did not resist. And as suddenly as he had been seized, he was let go. Books's face seemed to deform into ridges and furrows. He groaned. He went down on his knees inside the room, heavily. He turned his head sideways and rested, cheek down, on the windowsill.

  Gillom withdrew a step and waited, rubbing his throat. Presently he asked, "Are you O.K., Mister Books?"

  "O.K."

  "Are you ailing?"

  "Not as well as I might be."

  Gillom chewed a lip. It was an unpleasant habit, chewing a lip and looking sour, as though he were eating himself and disliked the taste.

  "Can you draw as fast, though?"

  That brought up Books's head. He was prepared to let the boy have it again, both barrels, but the look on the face so near his was one of such unabashed awe, such flop-ear, wagtail admiration, that his anger was cooled, his pain assuaged.

  "How did you know me, son?"

  "Your guns."

  "I had my coat on."

  "I watched you. Through the window."

  "I can't abide a skulker. If you want to see me, knock on my door like a man."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What about my guns?"

  "Everybody's heard of 'em. Gosh. And you. You're the most famous person ever came to El Paso."

  "It doesn't please your ma."

  "She don't understand. Hell, she don't have the least idea who we've got living with us."

&n
bsp; "But you do. And you can't keep your mouth shut. If you don't henceforth, I will come down hard on you."

  "I will."

  "Why aren't you in school?"

  "Well, I quit."

  "I can't tolerate a quitter, either. When you start something, finish it. Or don't start."

  The boy was silent. Books grunted, got slowly off his knees. "Whatever you do, don't lollygag. Go do something useful."

  Gillom grinned. "What do you do useful?"

  Books was silent now. Divided by brick, they could not see each other.

  "Can I fetch you anything, Mr. Books?"

  "No."

  "Can I shine your boots?"

  "No."

  "I must clean the room."

  "Go ahead."

  Aproned, her hair done up in a kerchief, Bond Rogers entered, carrying as subterfuge a dustcloth, a cake of Bon Ami, and a carpet sweeper. The room needed less than a lick and a promise, but she had schemed to have housework an excuse for him and a distraction for herself. She simply couldn't walk in and stand, back to the door again, or sit opposite him and have it out, she hadn't the courage. But by moving about, by keeping busy, half her mind on what she was doing, half on what she was saying, she might not only survive the ordeal, she might achieve what she wanted. She planned first to dust, and while doing so to remind him of the lie he had used to cheat his way into her house, and then, as he writhed with guilt, and as she ran the carpet sweeper, she could persuade him to betake himself elsewhere, perhaps to a den of iniquity more suitable to his appetites.

  It went wrong from the start. In order to evade his eyes, to put the menace of the man in the armchair behind her, rather than dusting she began to scrub the washbowl. But that placed her next to the closet, in which hung his vest, and the proximity to his firearms gave her the shudders. She knew, too, that he was considering her, and probably her backside. She held the cake of Bon Ami to her nostrils as though it were smelling salts, but what she sniffed was vice, gunpowder, foul language, and the stench of death. And just as she opened her mouth to indict him again for taking criminal advantage of an alias, he spoke:

  "I apologize, Mrs. Rogers."

  "Apologize."

  "For taking Hickok's name in vain."

  "You should. But I will not accept it. The only way you can show repentance is to leave."

  She scrubbed righteously, waiting.

  "What is the sound I hear every half hour or so? Down by the corner. Like wheel rims on a wagon."

  "Oh. Probably the streetcar. It passes our corner every half hour."

  "The streetcar?"

  "Yes. Mule-drawn. We've had them in El Paso for some time. They cross the river, too, and run back and forth from Ciudad Juárez. Mr. Books, I was asking you to leave."

  "When will I have the honor of meeting Mr. Rogers?"

  "My husband passed away last year."

  "I am sorry."

  She rinsed the bowl. "When my other roomers hear who you are, they will go, I can't stop them. This house is all I have—the income from it—and there's a loan against it at the bank. If I lose that income—"

  "What did he do?"

  "He was passenger agent here for the G & H, the railroad." She picked up the slippery cake of cleanser, dropped it, picked it up again, turned, and the gall of him, seated on a velvet pillow like a potentate on a throne while she did his menial chores, engendered in her the gumption she had needed from the beginning. "Mr. Books, I know all about you." She put hands on hips. "You are a vicious, notorious individual utterly lacking in character or decency."

  "Passenger agent. Did he wear sleeve garters?"

  "You are an assassin."

  "I have been called many things."

  "I believe my son. And Marshal Thibido. You've killed I don't know how many men."

  "That is true."

  "So you are an assassin."

  "Depends which end of the gun you're on."

  "Rubbish!"

  He smiled. "They were in the process of trying to kill me." The smile, the mordant tone, most of all the remark, the common sense of which was unassailable, brought color to her cheeks again in spite of herself. Distraught, she snatched the dustcloth from her apron band and commenced to do the top of the chiffonier. "You misrepresented yourself to me basely, Mr. Books. You took advantage of a widow, a helpless woman."

  "I don't know about helpless. You appear to me full of vim and vinegar."

  "He said you won't be here long."

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Thibido."

  "What else did he say?"

  "That you are a dangerous man—which I scarcely needed telling." She ceased to dust. She bunched the cloth as though to make a weapon of it. "Long or not, I ask you for the last time to leave my house. If you cannot be a gentleman, you can at least take pity on my situation. Sir, I demand that you go. If it will give you pleasure, I will fall on my knees and beg—"

  "No."

  "Damn you."

  "Mrs. Rogers, I can't."

  "Can't!"

  "I have nowhere to go."

  "There are plenty of—"

  "I have a cancer."

  "You—"

  "I am dying of it."

  "Oh."

  She did not really comprehend. She tucked the cloth into her apron.

  "That's why I am in El Paso, to see Doc Hostetler. He took a bullet out of me once. He was here, as you know, and examined me. I have no chance."

  She moved past him to the bowl, retrieved the cake of Bon Ami. She was like a woman walking in her sleep.

  "Thibido was right. I won't stay long. Two months, maybe. Six weeks."

  She crossed the room again, to the carpet sweeper, took it by the handle.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am. I am the one helpless. I would leave, but no one would take me in."

  Bond Rogers gave way then. She sank to the far side of the bed, covered her face with her hands, burst into tears.

  "I know what is troubling you," he said. "Tending me. Well, you won't have to. Just bring me my meals and I will do what else is needed. I guarantee not to be a burden."

  She tried to speak but could not.

  "I will make it worth your while. I will give you four dollars a day."

  She said something unintelligible.

  "All I ask is that you keep this between us. It's out that I am in town, I can't help that, the harm's done. But I do not want my condition known. Somebody might get the idea I can't defend myself, and I am in deep enough as it is."

  "No, not in my house!" She was sobbing uncontrollably. "Oh, no, please, God, no!"

  Shoup and Norton were second cousins and drunk. They were playing billiards in the Acme. Concluding the game, they refilled at the bar and took a table in a corner of the saloon, bringing with them a platter of hard-boiled eggs and flies from the free lunch.

  "Bring back them eggs," said the barkeep.

  "They're free, ain't they?" demanded Norton.

  "You get one egg, not the bunch. Take one apiece and bring 'em back."

  Shoup pulled his pistol, laid it on the table. "You talk tough't'me, you slatty sonabitch, I'll part your hair on the other side."

  The barkeep was a man named Murray, called "Mount" because, though he was very thin, he was six feet, four inches tall. Stooping, he brought forth a double-barreled Parker shotgun and placed it on the bar. "See this, Shoup? I am very sure with it. You go to put finger to trigger in here and I will fire one barrel and then the other and take off your stones one at a time. Separate. Now bring back them eggs."

  Shoup kept one for himself, Norton kept one, Shoup returned the platter to the bar, then sat down again. They put heads together.

  "Books," said Shoup.

  "Books," said Norton.

  "Three blocks from here."

  "Three blocks."

  "Shut up. I owe 'im from way back, in San Saba County. I owe Books an' you owe me."

  "Unh-unh."

  "There might could be a way. Two of us, we might coul
d do it."

  "I ain't goin' up agin' him nohow," Norton stated, lifting his egg and opening his mouth. "He's too sudden of a man."

  Using the barrel of his pistol as though it were his hand, Shoup slapped egg, fingers, and mouth with one blow. Norton's eyes bulged at the impact. He choked on bloody egg. "You craven bastid," Shoup said. "I owe Books an' you owe me."

  His landlady knocked and explained that a reporter from the newspaper was waiting on the porch. He wanted an interview.

  "An interview? What about?"

  "He didn't say."

  "Send him in."

  Before his visitor appeared, Books rose with some effort, straightened his tie, dropped the crimson pillow behind his chair, thought of putting on his coat, thought better of it, stood waiting.

  "Mr. Books, J. B. Books, I'm most pleased to meet you, sir, and honored. The name is Dan Dobkins. I'm with the Daily Herald."

  They shook hands. They sat down.

  "As I said, Mr. Books, this is a great and unexpected honor. Thank you for seeing me, thank you very much."

  "How'd you know I was in El Paso, Mr. Dobkins?"

  "Why, it's common knowledge, sir. News like that spreads like wildfire, believe me. We ran the story this morning, that you're here and stopping with Mrs. Rogers and enjoying our salubrious winter climate, so on and so forth. Have you seen it?"

  "No."

  "Well, it was page one, I assure you."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Well, sir."

  Dobkins was a spindle-shanked young fellow in his late twenties, with a long nose and yellow shoes and a striped suit and an Adam's apple which was perpetually agitated. He smelled almost romantically of toilet water and talcum powder.

  "That's what I came to talk to you about, Mr. Books. You must appreciate, sir, that you are the most celebrated shootist extant."

  "Extant?"

  "Still existing. Alive."

  "I see."

  "All the others are gone, I'm sorry to say—Hickok, Masterson, the Earps, Bill Tilghman, Ringo, Hardin, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Rowdy Joe Lowe—all the great names."