The Gunfighter Read online

  “I s’pose I was wrong about that Sly,” Silver Spike said.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Now how about this here fifteen-year-long feud?”

  “What do you mean?” Silver Spike said.

  “Now that you seen how damn foolish you are, the both of you,” I said, “you willing to call this here thing off? I ain’t going to ask you to shake hands nor nothing that cozy. I know that’d be asking too much. Just are you willing to call off your damn feud?”

  Them two looked up at each other real slow, and then they looked over at me.

  “I guess so,” said Hooper.

  “Yeah,” said Silver Spike.

  “Well, by God, that’s something good come outa all this,” I said, and I poured another round. Just then ole Rod Corley come a-hustling into the Hooch House. He was one of Silver Spike’s cowhands. He looked around and spied his boss and come a-running over.

  “Mister Hanlon,” he said. “I got to see you right away.”

  “Well, I’m right here, Rod,” Silver Spike said. “What is it?”

  Ole Rod, he looked kinda sheepish at me and then at Hooper. “It’s Billy,” he said.

  “Well?” Silver Spike said. “What about him?”

  “He’s been killed, Mister Hanlon,” Rod said.

  Ole Silver Spike’s face went kinda white, and he looked up at Rod.

  “How?” he said.

  Rod looked back at Hooper.

  “Well, sir,” he said.

  “Come on,” said Silver Spike. “Out with it.”

  “It was Davey Cline,” said Rod. “One of Mister Hooper’s hands. He shot him.”

  Chapter Six

  Well, I figgered that would for sure blow the lid offa ever’thing right then and there, and all my hard work was fixing to go for nothing. I figgered them two old bastards would commence to killing one another again right there in front a me and ole Happy and even the Undertaker hisself a-setting back against the wall a-watching. I figgered — But, hell, it never happened. The two old feudists both just looked real tired and real sad. I stood on up with a sigh and hitched my britches.

  “Where’s Davey at?” I said.

  Hooper spoke up right quick before ole Rod could answer me. “Baijack,” he said, “let me bring him in. I can bring him in without no trouble. It’s my fault this thing has happened.”

  “Yours and mine,” Silver Spike said. “Let him do it, Baijack.”

  “Well,” I said, acting like as if it was a real tough decision for me to make, but actual I didn’t want to go running off on no manhunt nohow, “I’ll give you till this time tomorrer, Sam. If you ain’t brung him in by then, I’ll have to go out after him with a posse.”

  “Thanks,” said Hooper. “I’ll bring him back, I promise you.” I handed him his gun belt. He took it and strapped it on. “I hope I won’t need this,” he said. Then he looked at ole Rod. “Come on,” he said. “You show me where it happened.”

  Rod looked at his boss, and Silver Spike got up too. I noticed that spike of hair a-sticking out on the right-hand side of his head. Funny, I hadn’t really noticed it since all his hair had turned white some years ago, but when he was still a young man, the spike had been white and the rest of his hair was brown. That’s how he come to have that name. I handed him his iron. “I got to go take care of Billy,” he said. Then, to Hooper, he added, “I’ll ride along with you that far, if you don’t mind my company.”

  “You’re welcome,” Hooper said. “We’ll all ride together.”

  I watched them all walk outa there in a bunch, and then I heaved up a heavy sigh. “Goddamn,” I said, “I hope them two ole farts ain’t fooling me none about all this. I hope they really have seen the damn foolishness of their ways and has made it up once and for all. Otherwise I might a just got someone else killed by sending them all out together like that with all their damn guns.”

  “I think they meant what they said, Barjack,” said Happy. “It’ll be all right.”

  “Hell, Happy, how would you know?” I said. I poured me a fresh tumbler of whiskey and took me a big gulp. “I hope you’re right,” I said. Of usual I was kinda rough on ole Happy, but for once, it come to me that I shouldn’ta said to him what I had just said.

  Well, it was still kinda early in the day, and them two old farts and their damn fool fight had caused me to already drink a little bit more whiskey than what I usual drunk by that time of day. To tell you the whole damn truth, I was beginning to feel just a bit woozy. I decided that maybe what I needed in order to face the rest of the day with any kinda equilibrium and dignity was just a little nap, so I got myself up. “I’m going upstairs for a little while, Happy,” I said. “Try not to bother me for nothing what comes up. Okay?”

  “Okay, Baijack,” Happy said. “I’ll handle things.”

  A cowboy come a-walking down the stairs with a silly grin on his face, and I reckoned I knowed what he’d been a-doing up there. I passed him by and started to making my own way up there. I was just about halfway whenever ole Bonnie come a-flouncing her way down. When the two of us was about to pass each other by, I reached out my arm across her big titties and grabbed onto her opposite-side shoulder. “Come on,” I said, and I turned her right around there on the stairs and took her on along with me back up to her room.

  We got us in there, and I just went right over to the bed and flopped down hard on my back, a-bouncing the bed and squeaking the springs. “Come here, Bonnie,” I said, and she come over and set on the bed by me. I pulled her right on down beside me, and then I used her big titties for a piller to lay my weary and dizzy head on. “I just need me some rest,” I said. “Just for a little while. That’s all.”

  “And you want me with you just for that?” Bonnie said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.” At that she put a arm right around me and hugged me tight, and then I said, “Bonnie, did you just now have that cowboy up here? The one I just seen going downstairs?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What of it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I ain’t going to make nothing out of it, nor nothing else you ever done before right now. Not even whenever you tried to kill me that one time.”

  “Which time was that?” she asked me.

  “Never mind,” I said. “But I been thinking, Bonnie. Since I went and made up my mind to stay over here with you and not go home to Lillian no more, you know, I’d like it better if you didn’t take on no customers no more. You know what I mean?”

  She squealed a little and squeezed me tight again, and she said in her littlest voice, “Yeah, Baijack. I know. From now it’ll just be you and me.” Well, I went to sleep on her then, and I slept real good.

  *

  Whenever I final woke up again I was hungry as hell. It was some after noon by then, and as you might recall from what all had transpired at nearly the break of day, I hadn’t got to eat up my whole breakfast that morning. I set on up, and ole Bonnie, she kinda moaned a little like as if she been a-sleeping too. She stretched around some, and her flesh wiggled all over, and then the both of us set up on opposite sides of the bed. I yawned real wide and loud. “You get enough sleep, honey?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did, but I could eat a whole damn horse right now. Not a little saddle horse, neither. One of them great big wagon-pulling bastards.”

  “I’ll just run on downstairs and get Aubrey to cooking you up a steak and taters,” she said.

  “Okay, darlin’,” I said, “but don’t run, just walk. I ain’t in such a hurry that I want you to go falling down no stairs. I’ll come a-crawling along behind you in just a minute or so.”

  Bonnie left the room, and then I seen that someone had pulled my gunbelt and my boots offa me while I was a-sleeping. It had to been Bonnie, but whenever I had went to sleep I was laying on her titties and when I woke up I was still there. She had to done some fancy maneuvering to keep from waking me up to do all that. Either that or else I was damn near dead to the world, and someone coulda
carried me off and hanged me till I woke up dead. Anyhow, I shuck my head to clear it, pulled my boots on, stood up, and strapped my six-gun back on. I noticed that I had to hook that belt buckle up to the very last hole. I didn’t have much room left for gaining no more weight. I hitched my britches and headed out the door and down the hall.

  At the top of the stairs I could see the whole big room down below. Ole Sly, the Widowmaker, was still just a-setting there in his favorite place. Either that or else he’d gone out and come back while I was sleeping. There was four or five cowhands setting around a table, and ole Happy was standing at the bar beside Bonnie. I didn’t see Aubrey nowhere, so I figgered that Bonnie had done sent him back to the kitchen to cook up my steak. I lumbered on down the stairs.

  I didn’t feel like bellying up to the bar, so I headed myself for a table, but before I could set my lard ass down, ole Sly kinda beckoned to me with his gun hand. “Would you care to join me, Marshal?” he said. I went on over there and set with him.

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “You’ve had a full day already,” he said, “and I think it’s all because of me. I regret that. Believe me.”

  “I reckon your presence in this here town had a little something to do with it,” I said, “but I can’t see it being your fault. Them two, Hooper and Hanlon, has been after each other’s ass for fifteen year now, and they can’t neither one of them even remember what the hell got it all started in the first damn place. All you done was just bring it to a head, you know, aggravate it a little, and that was bound to happen sooner or later anyhow. Besides, when it was all over with, it got them to call off the feud. If you want to take the blame for the fight, then you got to take credit for the finish of it, too.”

  “That much is well and good,” Sly said, “but it’s not the whole story. A man has been killed over it, after all.” “If them thickheaded young cowhands wants to go taking potshots at each other on account of the argument between their bosses,” I said, “then they just gets what they deserves. That’s how I see it. Hell, Sly, if I actual and for real thought that you was to blame for the unfortunate killing of young Billy Duvall, I’d slap your ass in a jail cell or at least run you outa town, and I got no intention of doing neither one of them things.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I’d hate to have to face you, Baijack.”

  I wondered just how he meant that, ‘cause I knowed for sure that I wouldn’t never stand face-to-face with the Widowmaker, not making no challenge. I might shoot him in the back or hit him in the back of the head with a two-by-four or something. Then I thought that maybe he somehow knowed that about me and that was how come he said what he said. Bonnie come over just then, and kinda put a end to my musings. She was a-carrying my bottle and tumbler. She give me a real sweet look. “You want this, honey babe?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Set down, Bonnie.”

  She set beside me and poured me out a drink. Then she hugged my near arm with both of hers and smiled into my face. It kinda embarrassed me, but I decided to let it go. “Maybe Mister Sly here would like one of them steaks,” I said. “Did you ask him?”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I had my lunch across the street.”

  “Oh,” I said, and I wondered how him and my Lillian was getting on. Then I caught myself on that one. She weren’t really my Lillian no more. She had run me off a-shooting at me to kill me, and I had done told Bonnie that I meant to stay with her and not never go back home no more. It really weren’t none of my business how ole Lillian was a-doing with Sly nor with no one else. I decided that I would have to get that notion set firm in my mind. I was hitched up to her firm and legal, but that was all. I figgered that maybe one of these days, I’d have to see if there weren’t some way of dealing with that annoying little problem. I took me a drink, and in another minute ole Aubrey brung me my plate. He checked on Sly’s coffee, went for the pot, and brung him a refill. I tied into that food on my plate and didn’t say nothing more till I was done eating.

  I did just happen to notice out of the comer of my right eye little ole Chester Filbert, the clerk over at the dry goods store, come a-fidgeting into the bar. I was some surprised at that, ‘cause Chester didn’t hardly ever come in, but I was too busy eating, and Chester was too damned insignificant to worry my head with. Then I seen Chester kinda lean across the bar and say something real low to ole Aubrey. Then he actual had hisself a drink. One drink, and then he left. By and by, Aubrey come back to the table to check on us.

  “What was ole Chester a-whispering to you about?” I asked him.

  “Well,” Aubrey said, “oh, it was nothing.”

  I seen, though, that he give a look at Sly while he was a-saying that, and I figgered he was lying to me. “What the hell did the little son of a bitch say, Aubrey?” I said, with my voice a little more forceful and demanding-like.

  “He asked me how long Mister Sly here is going to be in town,” Aubrey said.

  I looked at Sly then, and he was a-eyeballing me at the same time. “What’d you tell him?” I asked Aubrey.

  Aubrey shrugged. ‘Told him I didn’t know,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, dismissing ole Aubrey. He went on back over to the bar, and went to swiping at it with a dirty rag.

  “Another one,” Sly said.

  “Chester?” I said. “Hell, he couldn’ta done nothing to make a man want to pay real money just to have him get killed. Anyone wanted Chester dead would just swat him like a fly. He’s just nervous, ole Chester, that’s all. A running horse makes him nervous. A barking dog, even.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right, Marshal,” Sly said. “I hope so.”

  We set there a-jawing like that some more for a spell, and then I got me a real big surprise. In come Hooper, Hanlon, Rod Corley, and Davey Cline, big as you please. And ever’ damn one of them had his six-guns strapped on, even ole Davey hisself. They come a-walking over to the table where we was a-setting. I stood up to meet them, ready for most anything that might happen.

  “Let’s go on over to the jailhouse, boys,” I said.

  “Wait just a minute, Baijack,” Silver Spike said. “There’s something you need to hear first.”

  I set back down kinda easy-like. “I’m a-listening,” I said.

  Then Hooper, he took over. “Rod here saw the whole thing,” he said. “He was there when it happened.”

  “Go on. Tell the marshal just exactly what really happened out there, Rod,” said Silver Spike.

  “Well, sir,” said Rod, giving a shrug and looking down at the floor, “ole Billy, he drawed first. Even got off the first shot. But he missed.”

  I looked at each one of them faces a-standing there around me, and I knowed damn well if I knowed anything in the whole entire world that they was lying to me, but then I knowed a couple of other things too. One was that being as how I was just only a town marshal, I didn’t really have no jurisdiction over whatever it was that happened out there outside of town. And if I didn’t have to mess with it, I didn’t really want to be bothered none. But the main thing I knowed for sure by what was happening right there in fronta my own nose was that this here was the final proof that the long-standing Hooper and Hanlon feud was actual and forreal over with. Them two had final made up, so much so that here they was conspiring together right under my nose to cover up a murdering. I looked hard at ole Davey, the young killer, and he ducked his head to look at the floor between his boots.

  “Davey,” I said, “what ole Rod said, is that for sure the way it happened out there? And don’t lie to me, boy.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “That’s the way it was, and I’m real sorry it happened.”

  I looked from Sam Hooper to Silver Spike Hanlon, and then I said, “Is there going to be any repercussions from this here killing? Is this damn feud fixing to reinvigorate itself?”

  “It’s over,” said Hanlon.

  “There won’t be any more trouble,” Hooper said. “You have our word
on that.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “I’m a taking your word. You all can go on back to your ranches.”

  They went on and left the place then, and I took me another drink of that good whiskey.

  “Ain’t that nice?” Bonnie said. “Why, I swear I never thought I’d see the day that them two would agree on anything.”

  “You believe them, Marshal?” Sly asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do. If they meant to keep up the feuding and fighting, they wouldn’ta even come in here.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

  I give Sly a hard look then, and I said, “I know what you meant.”

  “Then I know what your answer is,” he said.

  Bonnie squinched her face up and looked at me and looked at him. “What are you two talking about?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry your pretty head none.”

  “You was talking about something,” she said. “Tell me. I don’t like to be talked around, and me a-setting right here listening to you like that. What was he talking about he knows what your answer was? Tell me, Bar-jack.”

  “Goddamn it,” I said, “they was lying to me. All of them.”

  “You mean the feud’s still on?” she said.

  “No, sweet,” I said. “The feud’s off. That’s for sure. They was lying about how Billy Duvall got killed. Billy never shot first. He was murdered by Davey, and that’s a certain thing for sure.”

  “But,” she stammered, “but — you let them go, Baijack.”

  “Number one, darlin’ dear,” I said, “if the only witness what seen it all says that Billy drawed and fired first, there ain’t nothing I can do. Number two, if the boss of the dead man ain’t wanting to press no charges, then I reckon I had oughta be satisfied, ‘cause, number three, what it means is that Hanlon and Hooper has quit the feud forever, and they ain’t intending for nothing to start it up again. That what it all means.”

  “Oh,” she said, drawing it out real long-like as if things was real slow settling in on her brain.