Curly Bill and Ringo (10 page)

The pattern seldom varied and the fights generally occurred in a saloon. Two men drank too much and began to see things in a contrary light. It didn’t matter whether they were friends, enemies, or total strangers. They exchanged words, then blows, then hot lead. The dead man was dragged away and the living one was lucky if he got out of town ahead of the lynch mob. Justice was usually swift, though seldom fair and impartial. It was downright scary how the good people of a frontier town were always so ready and willing to drop whatever they were doing and string some poor devil up if there was any reason to believe he had sinned against the established order or failed to conform in his habits.

So far no vigilante force had been organized in Boot Hill, but that was probably because no one thought the town was worth saving.

Curly glanced at Mad Dog Shorty. He was still out cold.

Cash and Beanbelly got up and came across the floor, on their way out. “You coming, Curly?” Cash asked. The tone of his voice and the expression on his face said plainer than words that he didn’t care for the company of the Lefferts gang.

“I’ll be along,” Curly said.

He waited until the batwings flapped shut behind them. Then he said to Blondie, “You got religion or something?”

“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I reckon you ain’t,” he said.

He finished his whiskey and was about to leave, when Blondie said, “You ain’t paid for your drinks yet.”

“I thought my credit was good here.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “From now on everything is strictly cash.”

“I thought I might come back later, when you ain’t so busy,” he said. “But if my credit ain’t good here anymore—”

“You get on out of here,” she said. “Go ask Miss Sarah if your credit is any good with her. She’ll tell you what you can do with your credit.”

He glanced at Rattlesnake Sam and Scar-face Harry, who were down the bar looking on with interest. He silently paid for his drinks, adjusted his hat on his big shaggy head and headed for the door.

Behind him he heard Scar-face Harry ask, “What did he say, Rattlesnake?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Curly’s cigar had gone out and he stopped just outside to relight it. Glancing along the dark street, he saw the shadowy shape of a man out of the corner of his eye. He was in the narrow alley by the saloon.

“That you, Bear?”

Bear Lefferts grunted in surprise, but said nothing.

“If I was Ringo,” Curly said, letting the cigar smoke drift from his mouth, “you’d be dead by now. And his eyes are even better than mine.”

Bear still didn’t say anything. Curly glanced along the street and said with his back to the huge hairy man, “How did you boys find out Ringo wasn’t in town?”

Bear cleared his throat and muttered, “Rattlesnake and Scar-face snuck in earlier and talked to the Bishop kid. Found out it was Ringo we saw ridin’ out of town when we was holed up in the brush. Pike said we should plug him just in case it was Ringo, but he was afraid we’d miss him in the dark.”

“I can understand his thinking,” Curly said. “If you miss a man like Ringo you ain’t likely to live to tell about it.” Then he asked, “What happens if he rides back in, and you out here all by yourself?”

“I’m only here to keep watch and warn the others if I see him,” Bear said. “I wouldn’t try nothin’ by myself.”

He sounded shaky and scared—scared that Ringo might slip up on him in the dark.

“Well, don’t you go to sleep, Bear,” Curly said. “You might not wake up.”

Bear made a nervous sound in his throat and shifted his feet, glancing over his shoulder. He wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and got a better grip on his rifle.

Curly remembered that he and Bear weren’t exactly friends, and he didn’t feel comfortable with the big man standing there in the alley behind him with that rifle. So he strolled on, smoking and humming as if he had already forgot about the bearlike man.

He found Cash and Beanbelly in the Bent Elbow, drinking and sulking.

“Think I’ll go for a ride,” Curly said. “Maybe try to find Ringo and keep him out of town till Pike and them leave. He’s liable to try to take them all on at once and get himself killed.”

Cash shrugged. “Might be the best thing that could happen if he did. Then we wouldn’t have him or them either to worry about. Not all of them anyway.”

The same thought had occurred to Curly, but he didn’t want to dwell on it.

As he stepped outside he saw Mad Dog Shorty trying to mount his horse in front of the Road to Ruin. Curly stopped to watch him. Shorty seemed drunk or addled. His foot slipped out of the stirrup a couple of times but he finally made it into the saddle and turned his horse in the other direction. Curly watched him ride out of town, sitting like a lump in the saddle.

That night while Curly was out combing the desert in search of Ringo, Mad Dog Shorty was taking his last ride.

Shorty was afraid he might run into Ringo on the road, so he took a roundabout way through the hills. He thought he was safe among the boulders and brush and he was bobbing along without much attention to his surroundings. The first warning of danger came in the form of a tall rider sitting his horse on a rocky knoll off to his right, silhouetted against the night sky. The horse and rider were as silent and motionless as a statue and it seemed to him that there was something deadly and sinister about them. Something terrifying.

He screamed as if he had been shot and sank his spurs in his horse. There was a sudden blast and the horse also screamed, reared high in the air and raced away with an empty saddle, for Shorty had lost his seat and spilled to the ground. He scrambled away on all fours, trying to keep out of sight in the brush. There was another blast and another scream, and Shorty crawled on, whimpering in pain and dragging one leg, the other also partially disabled by the load of buckshot.

He found himself in what seemed to be a tiny rainwater streambed, now dry and sandy, and he dragged himself along it under the overhanging brush that grew on either side. The channel, growing hard and rough and rocky, climbed an eroded slope and then disappeared through a narrow gap in the rocks. Once through the gap, he found himself in a small opening that was completely walled in by tall rocks. It was almost like a room without a roof.

Shorty pulled himself across the hard ground and sat with his back against the far wall. He gritted his teeth against the pain and carefully straightened his shattered leg out on the ground before him. Then he sat very still and listened. For a time he heard nothing but the wind and his own painful breathing.

Then, right outside the rock wall, he heard the sharp metallic sound of a shotgun being broken open. He heard fresh shells inserted in the double barrels, heard the gun snap shut.

He clawed out his pistol and tried to pull himself behind a rock. But the tall dark figure of the man was suddenly outlined in the gap in the rocks. The shotgun was in his hands, held at waist level. Even as Mad Dog Shorty threw a wild shot, the twin muzzles of the shotgun coughed flame and death.

“You mean back toward town?”

“Might have been. They were pretty far off and I couldn’t tell for certain.”

“Prob’ly just the Hatcher boys letting off a little more steam,” Curly said, being careful not to mention the Lefferts gang.

“Are they as wild as they pretend?” Ringo asked.

“The Hatcher boys?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Comanche Joe’s pretty wild, though he’s real quiet about it and fools a lot of people. You should see him on a bad horse. That boy hangs on like a bur, and he can swing about on a galloping bronc the way a monkey swings about in a tree. Pretty fair hand with a gun, too. Cash ain’t much good with a handgun, but give him a rifle and a rock to hide behind and he’s a good man to have on your side. Beanbelly ain’t much good for anything, and don’t ever take him along if you want to sneak up on someone. If there’s a tin can or a bottle or a cat’s tail anywhere around, he’s just sure to step on it.”

“I’ve got a feeling those boys are headed for trouble,” Ringo said.

“Not if I have any say in the matter,” Curly said. “Trouble ain’t much fun, when you come right down to it. That’s something old Wyatt taught me. Before he blasted the devil out of me, I was having the time of my life raising hell. I didn’t change my ways even after all them other boys got shot, I had to get a dose of lead myself before I saw the light.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Ringo said. “Otherwise I never would have guessed that you’d changed your ways. And if you aim to keep the Hatcher boys out of trouble, you’re going about it in a strange way. How is teaching them to rustle cows going to keep them out of trouble?”

“Them boys didn’t need to be taught,” Curly said. “It just came natural. But you’ve got it figgered out all wrong, Ringo. It wasn’t my idea to start stealing Uncle Willy’s cows. It was theirs. Sure, I’d told them what a great rustler I was, but they talked me into throwing in with them. It wasn’t the other way around.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t need a lot of persuading,” Ringo said.

“Well, I had to make a living some way,” Curly said. “And it wouldn’t have made much difference if I’d kept working for Uncle Willy. Stealing his cows back from the Mexicans gave him ideas of going into rustling in a big way. He figgered he had a right to steal their cows because they were stealing his. But when his friends and even his own hands started stealing from him, he didn’t know what to do about that. But now it looks like he’s thought of a solution to the problem.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes, a nearly full moon lighting their way across the barren rocky desert. Then Curly said, “I sure hate to see you dirty your hands with Pike and them, Ringo. You’d have to lower yourself to kill men like that.”

“That didn’t keep them from trying to kill me,” Ringo said, an edge in his quiet voice.

“I reckon that’s mainly what I had in mind. I’d sure hate to see it happen all over again. Did I mention that there ain’t no doctor nearer than Tombstone? When people get shot around here they usually die.”

“I intend for them to,” Ringo said. “I don’t want to have to do the job twice.”

Curly glanced aside at him, but Ringo’s face was unreadable in the dark shadow of his hatbrim. “I was hoping you wouldn’t give them a chance to finish what they started,” Curly said.

“I don’t intend to,” Ringo said in a tone that suggested the subject was beginning to bore him.

Curly, for once unable to think of anything to say, began singing quietly.

When I get to hell, I know what they’ll say

Here comes old Curly, get out of his way

He rode with—

Ringo shifted restlessly in his saddle and asked, “You still singing that same old song, Curly?”

“Yeah, I never been able to improve on it.”

“Guess it takes talent,” Ringo said.

Curly glanced at him, but said nothing.

They rode on at a slow trot, soon entering the boulder-strewn hills. Remembering the Apaches. Curly glanced uneasily about, and saw a man on a dark horse, outlined on a ridge. The man wore a hat and didn’t look like an Indian. Whoever it was, he just sat his horse there as motionless as a statue, watching them. It sent a little chill down the rustler’s spine.

“Ringo!” he whispered. “Look up there. Somebody on that ridge watching us.”

Ringo rode on like he didn’t have a care in the world, not even looking toward the ridge. “Your imagination,” he said.

“My imagination, hell! Look up there!”

Ringo still didn’t bother to look, and when Curly looked again the rider was gone.

“I tell you there was someone up there!”

“You’re drunk,” Ringo said.

When they got back to town there was no sign of the Lefferts gang, or of anyone still up. The whole town was dark. They parted at the livery stable, Curly continuing on foot to the shack, Ringo returning to the hotel. The hall upstairs was dimly lit. Ringo left his door open until he could find and light the lamp. When he turned, Miss Sarah was standing at the door in her nightgown, her face pale, watching him with her large dark eyes. Ringo scowled when he saw her.

“You’re going to get yourself killed, did you know that?” she said softly.

Ringo grunted, reached out a long arm, grabbed her arm above the elbow and pulled her into the room, closing the door with his other hand before taking her in his arms.

She was just finishing her breakfast when Curly entered the dining room a little before six. The first thing he noticed was that she had made a complete recovery from whatever was bothering her the morning before. There was a glow in her eyes and her cheeks were as smooth and rosy as a baby’s. He reflected that some women spent a lot of time trying to look beautiful, but with her it just came natural.

When she saw him heading for her table she smiled but quickly rose from her chair, taking up her empty plate and cup. “Good morning, Curly,” she said cheerfully. “What would you like this morning?”

“The usual,” he said, watching her curiously, wondering at her strange behavior.

She hesitated. “The Hatcher boys aren’t coming?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. They were still trying to go back to sleep when I left the shack.”

She nodded and went into the kitchen just as old Darius Winkler charged into the dining room, shaking his finger at the big rustler. “Curly, why you always come too early or too late? I think you do it on purpose so you can talk to Miss Sarah. You know she always eat right before we start serving anyone else.”