by Hazel Rumney
The street that ran through the center of town wasn’t anything more than a mud-filled, rutted path that the freight wagons used to haul ore down the side of the mountain to Denver, and haul supplies back up. An overnight soaker had left about six inches of mud that sucked at my boots as I waded from one side of the street to the other. I had checked out most of his usual hangouts, but I hadn’t found my buddy, Pete, anywhere.
Sloshing through the mud, I made my way across the street to Otto’s Saloon. Being constructed of rough-hewn lumber, Otto’s was one of a dozen buildings in Nuggettown. The rest of the town’s dwellings were old Army tents sold as surplus to prospectors after the war. Otto’s was currently the largest building in town, having a second story of rooms that were mostly rented out for an hour at a time. It was a nice day out, being early June, and someone had propped open the door with an old wooden beer crate with “Schueler & Coors” painted on the side.
There is a particular aroma that is characteristic of anyplace that men congregate to socialize. A strangely inviting mixture of beer, smoke, unwashed bodies, and horses hung in the air. A saloon was a damned fine place and I took a deep breath as I stood in the doorway for a few seconds to let my eyes adjust to the dim light inside.
I heard him before I saw him. That is, I heard the commotion, and where there’s commotion, Pete Canfield is usually right in the middle of it.
“You heard what I said, you damned cheat. I want my money back.” The guy sitting across the card table from Pete pushed his chair back suddenly and stood to his feet. The other two gents at the table hurriedly gathered their winnings and stepped back out of the way. Pete sat where he was, his chair tilted back, calmly looking at his accuser, who had a .44 caliber Smith & Wesson Russian tucked into his belt.
Pete let his chair fall forward. Resting his hands on the edge of the table he started to laugh. “You think I need to cheat to beat you at cards, you sorry sack? We all knew you only had a pair of sixes! You’re the one who called the bet. Consider your loss the price of a poker lesson.”
I had seen this guy around a few times before. His name was Kenny Bassett, but he went by the name of Bass. He was maybe a couple years older than Pete, who was twenty-five, which would have made Bass about my age. He didn’t work any claim that I knew of. He just hung around town playing cards and drinking and running his big mouth. He fancied himself some kind of tough guy and liked to flash his gun around, but, to be honest, I never saw him use it for anything other than decoration. Sometimes all it took was some tough talk and the butt end of a gun sticking out of your belt to bully people into submission. Pete wasn’t one of those people.
I heard Bass say, “I’ll give you ’til the count of three.”
Where did this guy come from? He must be reading too many of those dime novels.
Bass stood there with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, poised, as though he were about to do something stupid. Then, sure enough, he did it.
“One . . .”
Pete pushed out with his arms, causing the table to smash into Bass’s legs. The sudden impact forced Bass off-balance, and he wound up sprawled facedown across the table. Cards and chips and beer glasses were strewn everywhere. Pete, who was still in his chair, stood up, grabbed Bass by the collar, and dragged him off of the table.
Bass hit the floor and rolled onto his back. That’s when I saw the look in his eyes. It was the same look that I had seen once before when this fellow I knew down in Texas miscalculated the amicable nature of a horse he had just mounted. That horse jumped up and arched his back, then took to bucking and kicking like a grasshopper on a hot griddle. The guy wound up backside-down in a water trough with a “what-in-the-hell-justhappened” look on his face. That was how Bass looked now. Things had not gone as he had expected them to.
Pete bent over and grabbed Bass by the shirt front. He was kneeling with one knee pressed into Bass’s stomach, which made it difficult for Bass to take a breath.
“Here’s another lesson for you. There’s no such thing as a fair fight, you damned idiot.” With that said, Pete drew back his right arm and pounded Bass in the face three times in rapid succession, then stood up and waited for him to get to his feet. But Bass was out of it. He laid there, dazed and moaning, blood flowing from his nose and a split in his lip.
“Are you about done here?” I asked as I walked up behind Pete.
He turned and flashed a smile that would have made Lilly or any of the other girls in Otto’s melt. I’d seen it happen many times. Pete was young and lean with weathered features that made him look a little older than he actually was. He had dark hair and brown eyes that he said he got from his mother. She was half Mexican. He cut quite a swell with the ladies.
“Oh, I think that school’s out for the day.” He reached down and yanked the gun out of Bass’s belt. Bass flinched a little but he didn’t make any other move. Pete walked over to the bar and dropped the gun into a brass spittoon that was in desperate need of attending to. Then the two of us headed outside.
We stood on the boardwalk in front of Otto’s while Pete rolled a cigarette and struck a match to it.
“You know,” I said, “you could at least make an effort to go twenty-four hours without getting into some kind of trouble. He could have shot you, and you’re not even wearing a gun.”
“No, but you are,” Pete said with a grin. “I saw you walk into the bar.”
“So you were counting on me, once again, to pull your sorry butt out of the fire.”
“Hell, there was no fire there to speak of,” he said with a shrug. “One of these days, Bass is going to get his self or someone else killed. He should be thanking me for schooling him in the manly art of pugilism.”
“Where did you ever learn a five-dollar word like ‘pugilism’? Are you fixing to start a school and be a schoolmarm?”
Pete smiled and threw a playful jab that knocked the hat off of my head. I returned a couple punches of my own that nearly caused him to stumble right off of the boardwalk and into the muddy road.
Picking up my hat, we found a relatively shallow place in the mud and started across the street. We were almost to the other side when Pete, who was leading the way, turned suddenly and grabbed hold of my arm like he had just remembered something that couldn’t wait.
“You know, Ben, they hung McCall a few months ago.”
“You mean Jack McCall, the coward who shot Hickok last year up in Deadwood? Yeah, I heard about that. What of it?”
“Do you remember the cards that old Wild Bill was holding when McCall shot him in the back of the head?”
“They say it was two pair . . . aces and eights. All black.”
Pete looked around to make sure no one could hear. He took on a serious expression that was a rarity for him. If I hadn’t known Pete any better, I would have guessed that something had spooked him. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Those are the same cards I was holding in my last hand. What do you suppose that it means?”
I must have looked a little fearful because he laughed and gave me a wink and a slap on the shoulder. “I’m just joshing with you, Ben. You know I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.”
“Then you weren’t holding aces and eights?”
“Oh, I had them all right. I just don’t believe that ‘dead man’s hand’ superstition stuff.” He turned and took a big step across the last rut, and stood there on the other side of the road.
People had gone to referring to aces and eights as the “dead man’s hand” on account of Wild Bill Hickok holding those cards when he was killed. I don’t mind telling you, I was a little spooked by the whole thing. My ma used to read to me from a book of Shakespeare when I was a kid. There was this one line from a play where this guy named Hamlet says to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That line always stuck with me. There are some things that we just don’t know. There are connections between people and events, causes and effect
s that we don’t see. Pete, on the other hand, didn’t go in for any of this “superstitious nonsense,” as he put it.
I exhaled a deep sigh and joined Pete in front of the assay office. “I wish you hadn’t of told me that. It makes it all the more difficult to tell you what I know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s why I was looking for you. I’ve got some news you need to hear.”
“What news?”
I kicked the toe of my boot against the side of the boardwalk to loosen some of the mud; then I repeated the process with the other boot. “I just got back from Denver with a load of lumber for the Lady Belle. I saw Parker. He’s on his way here.”
Pete looked as though I had slapped him right across his face. “Parker is coming to Nuggettown? Today?”
“Yep. Wasn’t very far behind me. Should be here anytime.”
“What the hell is he coming here now for? He’s not supposed to be here for another week!” Pete sounded aggrieved, as though Parker had jumped the gun and cheated him somehow. I wasn’t sure if his question was rhetorical or not, so I ignored it.
Suddenly, the color kind of drained from Pete’s face as another thought occurred to him. “You don’t suppose that Sam knows Parker is on his way, do you?”
“That’s what I mean to tell you. Sam is with Parker. They’re both on their way here. They said that they had given you plenty of time, and since you weren’t coming to Denver, they were going to come to you. They said to tell you that your time is up.”
Pete started shaking. He sat down on a bench that was there in front of the building. Resting both elbows on his knees, he hung his head and sighed. A long moment of silence followed while he let the news sink in.
After a while, he sat straight up and took a deep breath. He turned to look at me with eyes wide and a sarcastic grin on his face. “Damn it all, Ben. You’re a veritable fountain of good news today, aren’t you? Anything else I need to know? Has my horse been snake bit? Am I dying of consumption? You might as well get it all out in the open.”
I never did like being the person to carry bad news to another, especially when there wasn’t any way to help share the burden. “Don’t shoot the messenger, Pete. You knew this day was coming. The two of them have been looking forward to this ever since you shot off your big mouth to Sam.”
Pete jumped up like he had sat on a burr. “What was I supposed to do? Sam had me in a corner and called me a coward. I had to say something.”
Pete started pacing the boardwalk. Then, in an all too characteristic show of drama, he threw his arms up into the air, a look of bewilderment on his face. But that was Pete. Everything was a theatrical production with him. He’d scratch himself on some barbed wire and he’d be sure that he’d need to see the doc to get it stitched up. If he got in a fight with one guy while playing cards, the next day it would be three guys that he “whooped,” and whooped soundly. To talk to Pete, he always had the fastest horse in the territory, could play cards better, drink more, and shoot straighter than anyone else.
“What was I supposed to do?” he repeated.
“Well, there’s no way to beat the devil around the stump now. You don’t say those kinds of things to Sam unless you intend to follow through with it.”
Pete looked hurt by my words. “I have every intention of following through with it. I just thought that I would have a little more time. You know . . . a little more fun.”
That was the thing with Pete. He never really took anything seriously. I was always the responsible, level-headed one. It was pretty much the pattern of our relationship. Pete would do something reckless and get himself in trouble. Then I would come along behind him and clean up the mess. Before the dust had even settled, Pete would land in trouble somewhere else, and I’d bail him out again. But he was my friend.
My folks hailed from Tennessee but moved to Texas when a neighbor of theirs, Davy Crockett, told my pa that fighting Mexicans would be a heap more exciting than plowing up rocks. Crockett had just finished serving six years as a United States congressman, so he probably figured that it was time to go somewhere where he stood a chance of actually getting something done.
Pa had more farmer than fighter in him, but he did like the idea of moving to Texas. So in the spring of 1836, my ma and pa settled on a little farm near Nacogdoches in the eastern hill country. I was born in 1850, the youngest of four boys and two girls, all born and raised Texans.
At the age of fifteen, I left home and drifted west and south, working on some of the biggest cattle spreads in Texas, including the Allen and King ranches.
I met Pete three years ago while pushing cattle from Waco to Abilene. We hit it off right from the start. Everyone on the drive liked Pete. You could never get a lick of work out of him. He was irresponsible and a bit of a braggart, but he always had a joke or a story handy. He was never dull to be with and he was generous to a fault. He would spend his last nickel to buy you a drink.
We wound up in Colorado because Pete had the notion that he might strike it rich prospecting. We told folks that we worked our claim together, but the reality of it was that at any given time I would be the one busting rocks or panning or shoveling gravel into the sluice. Pete would be lying on the ground chewing on a stem of grass with his hat pulled down over his eyes to keep the sun out. He’d lie there, oblivious to the work that I was doing, regaling me with stories of his exploits with the women he had known or the scrapes that he had been in.
Eventually, I gave up the claim and went to work as a freight hauler for the Lady Belle. Pete manages to get by with his card playing, horse racing, or whatever other diversions he can concoct to help separate Nuggettown’s miners and prospectors from the fruits of their labor.
Pete stood there with his hands on his hips, looking east out of town along the muddy road that wound its way through the aspen and white pine, down the mountainside and out onto the eastern plains. He looked the way a man looks when something that he has been running from is about to catch up to him. It wasn’t fear. I had seen Pete scared before. This wasn’t it. It was more like resignation.
After a minute, he turned to me again. “If Sam and Parker are coming here today, then I guess this is as good a day as any to get it done with.”
We had taken about three steps, turned the corner of the assay office, and there he was. Ezra Parker stood there in front of us, casually leaning against the corner of the building as though he had been there for some time. He held a cigar in one hand and a lit match in the other. Instead of lighting the cigar, however, he let the match fall and then ground the toe of his boot into it to extinguish the flame.
He spoke conversationally, as though the three of us were standing at the bar in Otto’s, sipping beers together and talking about the weather. “Hello, boys.”
Parker was an imposing figure in his mid-fifties, with keen, cold gray eyes that contrasted sharply with his all-black ensemble; from his low-crowned, flat-brimmed Boss Stetson, to a pair of knee-high cavalry boots. A black frock coat covered his six-foot, two-inch frame, and beneath the coat was a Colt .45 Peacemaker that had been broken in years earlier while scouting for General Crook. He had been with Colonel Reynolds up on the Powder River in his campaign against the Northern Cheyenne and had gotten a Sioux arrow in his leg during the Battle of the Rosebud. The arrow had left him with a slight limp that, on anyone else, might make them appear frail. But on Parker, it made him look seasoned, like a hard-earned battle scar.
He held up his cigar for us to see. “I know it’s a nasty habit. It’s one I’ve been trying to free myself of.” He placed the cigar into an inside coat pocket. “But I admit; sometimes I miss the smell of them.”
Pete hadn’t moved an inch.
Parker took a step closer and addressed his remarks directly to him. “You’ve got a nasty habit too, son. It’s the habit of not taking responsibility for your actions and your words. That’s a pattern of behavior that needs to end now . . . today. I aim to help
you out with that.”
He took another step closer so that he was within arm’s length of Pete. His gray eyes had a way of burning into you like ice on your skin on a hot August day. “Sam and I will meet you at the peach orchard outside of town. You’ve got one hour to ready yourself. It will be Sam’s show, but if you don’t show up, it’ll be me coming to look for you.”
Anyone who figured that this might be a good time for Pete to hightail it out of town and hide out in the mountains for a few days didn’t know anything about Parker. He had been one of the army’s top scouts, and folks said that he could track a butterfly through a heavy fog. Running wasn’t an option.
Pete stood tall and spoke calmly. There was no malice in his words. No fear. No bragging, haughty spirit. Instead, there was a maturity and an acceptance of the way things were that was foreign to the way that Pete usually handled himself. He looked Parker square in the eyes. “I’ll be there, but I’ll need a couple of hours to settle up a few matters.”
Parker pulled his watch from his vest pocket to check the time. “All right, then. One o’clock at the peach orchard. I’m gonna take you at your word, son. Don’t disappoint me.”
The two of us stood frozen in our tracks as we watched Parker turn and walk away. The sound of his boots on the wooden boardwalk was accented by the “ta-THUMP, ta-THUMP” of his game leg.
I got to thinking about those aces and eights. “What are you going to do, Pete? Are you sure that you want to go through with this? You know what it means, don’t you?” I think at this point I was even more worried than Pete was, and I wasn’t the one with the prospect of having Parker gunning for me. More than one man had found out the hard way that Parker’s gun wasn’t there as a fashion statement.
“I know what it means, Ben. It means that I face up to Sam, or I will have to face Parker. Either way, it’ll never be the same after today.”
“I’ll back whatever play you make, but you gotta be sure it’s what you want.” I waited a moment longer for Pete to make his decision. When you’re stuck having to make a decision that you don’t want to make, sometimes it’s best to let your instincts take over and not give it too much thought. Thinking a thing to death can drive a man crazy, especially a man like Pete Canfield, who generally acted first and thought about the consequences later—if at all.