by Edward Gates
They didn’t answer. One Indian pointed to an old wood barn that seemed to slightly lean. Charlie dismounted, tied Archie to a hitch rail in front of the cabin and walked toward the barn. Dave came out of the barn and they both stopped and stared at each other.
“Well, look at you. All spiffed up in your new clothes and all.” Dave walked over to Charlie. “What are you doing here, Charlie?”
“Max told me where you live. He sent me out here.”
“Max? What for? I hope it ain’t to work. I ain’t got time to nursemaid you with my livestock.”
“He said you could teach me how to handle a gun.”
Dave’s eyes widened. He stepped back, let out a laugh and shook his head. He looked away and then back at Charlie. “What the hell are you trying to be now?”
Charlie was a little put off by Dave’s remark. “What do you mean by that?”
Dave stepped in close to him. “I don’t believe you ever worked a day in your life ‘til you got here. You think you can just move out west, change clothes and be a freighter? Now you want to learn to handle a gun? Why don’t you go back home to… New York… or wherever it is you ran away from?”
Charlie was shocked and confused by Dave’s attitude. He hadn’t acted this way on their trip together. A little aloof, maybe, but never like this. He was too surprised to answer. Dave turned and began to walk away.
Charlie hollered after him. “I’ve worked plenty before I got here. That’s why Max asked me to come work for him.” Dave kept walking. Charlie followed. “And I worked as hard as anyone else on that trip!” He stopped and folded his arms. “I guess Max was wrong. You can’t teach me anything new. I already know how to be an ass!” Dave stopped and turned. Charlie glared at Dave. Dave walked back to Charlie and threw a right cross that connected solidly with the young man’s jaw. Charlie went down. He fought to stay conscious. Dave reached down, grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him to his feet. Charlie’s legs were wobbly, but he stood.
“Sass?” Dave hollered. “I kept you alive for six long months and you give me sass?” He let go of Charlie’s shirt and pointed his finger in his face. “I didn’t want to take you on that trip. I have enough troubles on those trips without some greenhorn tagging along.”
Charlie stood motionless rubbing his jaw. He had learned a new lesson: don’t get Dave mad. Although his jaw hurt, it was minor compared to the empty pain he felt from Dave’s rejection. He’d thought of him as his friend and mentor.
Dave started to walk away, but stopped and came back to Charlie. He took a deep breath and appeared to calm down. “Charlie, you have no idea what you’re getting’ into, here. Go on back home. This ain’t no place for you.”
“I can’t. I don’t have a home anymore. I don’t have a choice in this. What the hell’s the matter with you? I’m sorry if I messed up your trip plans! What do you want from me?”
“I want to be left alone,” Dave said. “When I’m not working I want to be far away from Max and his business. That’s why I got this place.” Dave looked Charlie in his eyes. He sighed. “This ain’t your fault, Charlie. It’s Max’s. That sonofabitch knows I don’t like visitors.”
“Max? What’s he got to do with this?”
Dave chortled. “Do yourself a favor. Get far away from Max and Fort Smith as soon as you can. You’ll be better off.” He turned back for the barn.
Charlie watched him walk away in shock. Finally, he hollered after Dave. “Well, who taught you to handle a gun? And how’d you learn to do all that you do?” Charlie paused as Dave stopped but didn’t turn around. “You said as a young man you rode a lot in north Texas and the Indian Territory. You were on the run, weren’t you? You learned how to survive. How? Who taught you?”
Dave shook his head. “A lot was learned by doin’. Some things, ya just can’t teach.”
“Like fighting Indians?” Charlie asked with a tinge of sarcasm.
Dave turned to face Charlie. He tried to hide a smile but a portion of it leaked out a corner of his mouth. “All right. You wanna use guns? Let’s see how you handle your pistol. When I holler I want you to pull that smokewagon!” A pause. “Ready? … Now!”
Charlie reached down and flipped off the hammer strap, but before he could even begin to pull his pistol from its holster he was staring down the barrel of Dave’s Army Colt. He froze. Dave shook his head and holstered his gun.
“I think you might just be hopeless, boy.”
“If you didn’t want me on that trip, why’d you take me?”
“Because Max told me to,” Dave shouted back. There was a brief pause. “You do what Max tells ya. And ya do it with a smile.” Dave kicked a road apple out of his way. “Come on. Let’s get out of this sun and go in the barn.”
As they walked toward the barn, Dave continued. “Like I said, you don’t know what you’re gettin’ into. You better learn pretty quick that Max Weatherby ain’t your friend. He ain’t nobody’s friend. If he’s helping you out it’s because he wants something back from you. Max came out here years ago and started his businesses. When the army deserted the fort for a second time, a lot of citizens left as well. Max picked up all the abandoned properties and quite a few more. He and a few others got this town back on its feet, without the military. Now he damn near owns this town. Nothing happens in Fort Smith without Max knowin’ it. You do what he says or your life ain’t worth spit.”
Charlie took it all in but didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t think he could be that naïve. In all the various conversations he’d had with Max there was nothing that raised a suspicion, except maybe their conversation yesterday. But there was nothing to contradict what Dave was saying, either.
“Why does he want you to learn to handle a gun?” Dave asked.
“He’s making me a deputy sheriff.”
Dave stopped and stared at Charlie. “You joshin’ me?” he asked after a pause.
Charlie shook his head. “Why? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I guess. As long as you do what Max tells you to do. Hell, son, you’ll probably be sheriff within a year… if you live.”
“If I…? I don’t want to be sheriff. I don’t even want to be a deputy. He said that if I’m a government official I can stay out of the army and won’t be a deserter.”
Dave nodded. “I suppose he’s right about that.” He dipped a ladle into a water bucket and took a drink. “But Max don’t do nothing what ain’t for his benefit. He put George Hart in that sheriff’s job about three years ago. George is a fine man but ain’t got the backbone to hold up his butt. He’s easy for Max to control. About a year ago some fella was beat to death down on the row. Hart started looking into it, and everything pointed back to Max. The sheriff confronted Max about it and he told him to back off or else. Max thinks the laws are for everyone but him. Some of his dealings are a little shady.”
“You mean like smuggling rifles to the Confederacy?” Charlie interrupted.
Dave chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. Like that.” He looked at Charlie and smiled. “Maybe you ain’t so dumb after all. Anyway, Max and Hart have been at odds ever since.” He handed Charlie the ladle. “You be careful. It sounds to me like you’re being set up to be Hart’s replacement.”
Charlie was dazed. He didn’t want to be Max’s patsy, but he didn’t know what else to do. All this time he had thought Max to be a kind-hearted man who was helping him get started. His visions of Max were crumbling.
“What should I do?” he asked.
Dave shook his head. “You’re a smart fella. You’ll figure it out. You either work for Max, or you don’t. And if you choose not to work for him, you’d better get out of town. He don’t like it when people go against him. Especially when he’s already got his hooks in ya.”
Charlie gave Dave a look of disbelief. He didn’t have to ask.
“Well, he gave you a job and some clothes, found you a place to live and now he’s getting’ ya trained. You’re as much his as I once was,” Dave ex
plained.
Charlie sat down on a hay bale and stared at the ground. He had always considered himself a pretty good judge of people. He chided himself for misreading Max’s character. He looked at Dave. “Why do you work for him, then?”
“Cuz I don’t have to, that’s why. Me an’ him is even and I told him as much. Now, I can take it or leave it, and he knows it. I don’t do his dirty work no more. When I need some cash I’ll take a haul for him. Other than that, I come and go as I please.” He paused. Charlie looked at him, wondering whether there was more to the story than that.
Dave came over and sat next to him.
“You guessed me right. I was a real hell-raiser when I was younger. I lived through the Texas revolution, and I rode with them Rangers for a little while.”
“You were a Ranger?”
“Just for a bit. That got to be too much work and not enough excitement for a young buck like me, so I left them. I’d take on work wherever I could find it and work till I had enough money to do some drinkin’ with the ladies.” He looked over at Charlie and smiled at a distant memory he didn’t share. “Anyways, I was ridin’ herd for the Double-K just outside of Austin and met a few other fellas that were as free-spirited as me. The four of us started ridin’ together, picking up jobs here and there.
“One night in Dallas we were all short on money. A couple of them boys stole a cashbox from a newspaper office. I didn’t know nothing about it until someone came looking for us. I shoulda stayed in Dallas and let them boys go off on their own, but I rode out with ‘em… all with a posse after us. We lost them in the hills near Gainesville. A few weeks later, we got in a dispute with some cowboys over some cattle we sorta found. A lot of shots were fired. One of my friends and two of the cowboys died that day. The three of us ran again. And we stayed on the run for a long time. We eventually ran into Fort Smith. I met Max and he told me he could use someone like me and he’d clear my name if I worked for him. My other two partners hightailed it out of here. I stayed. At the time the military was the law here. Max convinced the magistrate that I wasn’t involved in any crimes. He saved my butt that day.”
“Is that when you went to work for him?”
“Yep. Figured I owed him. And I did. He needed somebody who wasn’t afraid of gunplay, mostly to strong-arm some of his opponents. I also rode guard on a lot of his shipments. He paid me real good. With all the time I spent on the road, I was able to put away a lot of money. I bought this spread here. Got almost twenty acres. It ain’t much, but it’s enough to run some cattle and horses through it.”
Suddenly Dave stood up. “Listen to me, would ya? Going on and on about all this? I ain’t talked that much about myself in twenty years.” He looked at Charlie. “You sure you want to do this deputy business?”
“No. But I don’t see any other choice. Like you said, you do what Max says. I’m in the same boat as you. He’s clearing my name, so I guess I owe him.”
“Well, you can at least shoot. Somebody taught you that, anyway. Let’s go out back and see how well you can handle that new revolver.”
Charlie followed him through the barn to an area behind it. Dave looked at Charlie. “First off, you’re wearin’ your gun too high. Wear it lower across your hips, not your waist.”
Charlie repositioned his gun belt a little lower, where it was more comfortable and easier to reach. Dave picked up a piece of limestone and scratched a square on the side of the barn and led Charlie about a dozen paces away.
“Think you can hit that box?”
Charlie pulled his gun, took careful aim and fired. His shot was close to the center of the square. He looked at Dave and smiled, proud of his accomplishment.
“Now do it without aiming.”
“What do you mean?”
Without hesitation Dave drew his gun, fired from his hip and re-holstered the gun. He hardly glanced at the target, but his shot was only an inch or two away from Charlie’s. Charlie was in awe.
“Like that,” Dave said. “In a gunfight you ain’t gonna have time to take aim. You have to see your target, fire and then move to the next target. And if you hesitate, you’ll be dead.”
“How? How did you do that? You barely looked at the barn!”
Dave pointed to the side of the barn. “When you shot, you weren’t looking at the box.”
“I was aiming at the center of it,” Charlie protested.
“Right. You just saw the center of it. When I shot, I saw the outline of the whole box. It’s a much bigger target than the center of it. When you can see the whole target, you don’t need to aim. You can just point your gun to the middle of it. It’s easier that way.” Dave smiled.
Charlie was confused.
“Concentrate on the whole box as your target, not a just single point inside it. Try it.”
Charlie pulled his gun and began to raise his arm to aim.
“No! You’re dead. As soon as you pull your gun you have to shoot. Any delay will give your opponent an edge. As soon as that gun clears leather, you level it and fire.”
Charlie tried to focus on the outline of the square, but his eyes kept drifting to the center. He pulled his gun, leveled it and fired. His shot was way high and far off to the right.
“Well, at least you hit the barn. Don’t worry about speed. That will come later. Most of the fellas you’ll have to face will be nervous. They’ll rush their shot. They’ll be fast, but they’ll be wild. You need to be accurate. Now try it again. You need to point a little lower and more to the left.”
Charlie shot again. It was a little closer this time, but still way outside the square.
“You got more ammunition?”
Charlie nodded.
“Good. I’m gonna set up a couple other targets back here so you don’t tear up my barn too much. I want you to keep practicing. Focus on the whole target. The more you do it, the easier it will get.” Dave set up some boards against a woodpile and scratched in a box on them. Then he left him to practice.
Charlie had fired off about fifty rounds by the time Dave returned. Thick white smoke from the gunshots hung in the air and clung close to the ground. The gun was scorching hot and his hand was sore from the repeated firing. His shots were getting more and more accurate as he practiced.
Dave watched his last few shots. “Looks like you’re getting the hang of it.” He walked up and stood on Charlie’s left and turned facing him. Charlie turned to face Dave with the targets to his right. “Close your eyes, Charlie.” The young man was a little hesitant. “Do it. Close your eyes.”
Charlie closed his eyes.
“Now, can you see that box in your mind?”
Charlie thought about the boards with the box drawn on them and was a little surprised that he could clearly picture the outline of the square in his mind. He had been looking at it for so long that it became etched somewhere in his brain. “Yeah, I can.”
“Good. Keep that picture in your head. I’m gonna count to three. When I say three I want you to open your eyes, pull your pistol and shoot that box. Don’t shoot the center of it, or the top of it. Just shoot the box. Ready?”
Charlie nodded. With his eyes still closed, he took a deep breath and focused on the outline of the square in his mind. He listened to Dave count. When Dave said three, Charlie pulled his gun and glanced toward the boards. The square was the only thing he saw. He pulled the trigger and his shot slammed into the center board of the square. He stood silent for a moment, hardly believing what he had just done.
“Did you see that?” He shouted with exhilaration. “Did you see it? I did it! I hit the middle of that damn thing!”
“You just might live.” Dave looked at Charlie. “Get you a few more boxes of those cartridges and be out here tomorrow morning. We’ll do some more practicing.” He looked around the area. “I’ll set up a few more targets so you can get the feel for other shapes and sizes. After we practice, we’ll mount up and I’ll learn ya how to round up horses.”
“Horses? What�
��s that got to with shooting?”
“Nothing.” Dave smiled and walked off toward the cabin.
For an entire week, Charlie visited Dave’s ranch. In the mornings Dave worked with him on the finer points of shooting. In the afternoons they rode side by side working the livestock on the ranch. On the last day Charlie and the Indians rounded up twenty-six horses and put them into a corral.
“I appreciate you giving me a hand fetchin’ these horses,” Dave said.
“I was glad to do it. It’s the least I can do for helping me shoot. By the way, how’d I do?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call you a cowboy just yet. But you’re a good learner and a hard worker. I’m sorry I was so tough on you earlier this week.”
Charlie smiled. “Don’t worry about it. You were right. Sometimes it’s good to have a dose of reality. I was getting a little full of myself.”
There was a lull in the conversation as they rode back to the cabin. Dave looked over at Charlie. “You know, there ain’t much more I can show you. The rest will be up to you.”
“Up to me? What do you mean?”
“Your choices. You got the know-how. Now it’s a question of when to use it. You’ve gotta keep a level head to know when to yank that hogleg and when to keep it in its holster. The only piece of advice I can give you is to stay calm and don’t pull your gun unless you really have to. But, when you do, you’d better be ready to use it.”
“That’s good advice. I’ll try and remember that.”
When they reached the cabin, Dave dismounted but Charlie didn’t. “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me,” he began. “Not only for this week, but also for everything you did for me on that trip. You said you didn’t want me along, and I appreciate you putting up with me. I really did learn a lot.” Charlie offered Dave his hand.
Dave shook Charlie’s hand. “Don’t mention it. You weren’t that bad. Like I said, you’re a good learner.”
“I’ll see you around town.” Charlie smiled and turned Archie down the trail toward the road.
“Charlie!” Dave called out. Charlie stopped and waited for him to walk over. “Don’t let Max take away your life. You’re a good man. Stay that way. When you feel you have to make a bad choice just to please Max, it might be time to walk away. Don’t lose yourself for him.”