Curly Bill and Ringo (11 page)

Curly grinned. “Morning, Darius. How the hell are you?”

Darius gave him an unhappy look and mopped his sweaty face with his apron. “Curly, you know this tall bad man I got staying here in my hotel now?”

“That’s the late great Johnny Ringo,” Curly said, biting off the end of a cigar.

“If they killed him already, then what’s he doing here in my hotel?” old Darius asked, nervously twisting his oily black mustache.

Curly glanced at him out of bright gray eyes. “To tell you the truth, Darius, I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

“What kind of a man is he like, Curly?”

“A very dangerous man. Don’t ever get him mad at you, Darius.”

A little later as he was on his way out through the lobby, he saw Ringo coming down the stairs in a spotless black suit, like he was on his way to a funeral or something. It made Curly’s brown suit look cheap and tacky. After last night, Curly was surprised to see him. Ringo was not by choice an early riser, and when he had the leisure he liked to take his time shaving and getting dressed. As far as Curly could tell, he had nothing to do at the moment except to wipe out the Lefferts gang, and they probably weren’t even up yet, what with their hangovers and all. It wasn’t like Ringo to plug his enemies when they were asleep.

Then Curly took a closer look at Ringo’s hard face and glazed eyes and he wasn’t so sure that would have made any difference to Ringo, the mood he seemed to be in.

“Morning,” Curly said, grinning uneasily as he scanned Ringo’s face for signs of trouble. “If I’d known you were going to rise and shine so early, I would have waited to eat with you.”

“Don’t let me keep you from your rustling, Curly,” Ringo said.

Curly told himself it was the sort of greeting he should have expected from Ringo. He glanced toward the dining room, where a few sleepy townsmen were eating breakfast. “Not so loud,” he said. “Someone might hear you.”

“Curly,” Ringo sighed, “there’s no way I could tell them anything about you that they haven’t already heard straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Now why would you say a thing like that?” Curly asked. “You’re going to have to start showing me more respect, or I’m liable to send word to old Doc Holliday that you’re still alive.”

Ringo snorted. One sure way to get him mad was to mention Doc Holliday. “I wish you would. Then I could finish up all my gun work while I’m at it. But I think I’d rather let him cough himself to death. That’s what he dreads more than anything else.”

When Ringo started talking like that it was a good idea to let him alone.

“Don’t worry about me sending for Doc,” Curly said. “I’m afraid old Wyatt would come with him and they’d get us both while they’re at it.”

Ringo’s blank face hid whatever was in his mind.

“Well, I’ll prob’ly see you about tomorrow,” Curly said. “It’s just a short drive to where we meet them Mexicans. Rounding the cows up is the hard part.”

Ringo went on into the dining room without answering.

Curly glanced through the doorway and saw Miss Sarah pause on her way to the kitchen. She looked at Ringo and there was a soft glow in her dark eyes that Curly wondered about all the way out to the Hatcher place to pick up old Parson.

She set Ringo’s breakfast before him and her eyes were anxious as she studied his hard, handsome face. “Please leave,” she whispered. Then, after studying him silently for a moment, she added, “I’ll go with you if you want me to.”

Ringo looked up at her and his lips twisted in a cold smile, but he didn’t say anything.

After a while he thought he heard something behind him and when he looked around he saw Scar-face Harry’s ugly face grinning down at him. Before he could move or speak, Scar-face brought a heavy revolver down on his head and laid him out cold.

When Curly arrived at the box canyon a little later, Parson was holding his head and trying to sit up. Scar-face Harry and the cows were gone.

“You should have been paying more attention, Parson,” Curly said, reading the story at a glance. “What do you think God give you them eyes and ears for?”

“Not for this,” Parson grunted.

“You never know,” Curly said. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

Parson only gave him a bitter look out of his bloodshot eyes and didn’t say anything. He had used that quotation often enough himself, but perhaps he thought it was sacrilege for a man like Curly to use it.

Curly put his fingers in his mouth, gave a piercing whistle to bring in the Hatcher boys, and then took a look at Parson’s head.

“It looks like you’ll live. But if I were you I wouldn’t let anyone else sneak up behind me for a while.”

Parson didn’t say anything for once. He sat there under the mesquite near the stolen horse and ran a trembling hand back over his scalp, carefully feeling the lump. Then he gave Curly another bitter look and said, “I knew something like this would happen.”

Curly just nodded and waited for him to get it off his chest. He had seen a sermon building up in Parson for quite a while.

“I knew nothing good would come of stealing cows and horses,” Parson said. “It was bad enough when we stole from the Mexicans, but to steal from Uncle Willy, the best friend I ever had—I don’t know why I ever let you talk me and the boys into it.”

“That ain’t quite the way I remember it, Parson,” Curly said. “I could swear it was the other way around.”

“It amounted to the same thing, Curly,” Parson said. There was no anger in his voice but his damp eyes remained bitter. ‘’You kept telling them boys how much fun you used to have stealing cows, till they just had to try it themselves. Then I let that woman talk me into it. She said if everybody else was stealing Uncle Willy’s cows, we’d better steal some of them too before they was all gone.”

The Hatcher boys rode up looking at their pa in silent wonder, and Curly said, “Pike and them got the cows. Let’s go get them back. You stay here and take it easy, Parson.”

They found the cows in a nearby canyon. They were being held by Scar-face Harry and Rattlesnake Sam while the others were out combing the hills for more critters. Curly and the Hatcher boys crawled to the rim of the canyon and looked down on Scar-face, who sat his horse directly below. Rattlesnake Sam was farther down the canyon, on the other side of the herd.

“Looks like them boys have been busy,” Curly said. “I’d say they’ve got close to three hundred head, including the ones they took from us.”

“Scar-face will hear you,” Beanbelly said.

“Scar-face couldn’t hear it thunder,” Curly said. “Think you can sneak up on him, Comanche?”

“Rattlesnake will see me and warn him,” Comanche Joe said. Coming from him, it sounded like a long speech.

“How? Scar-face is watching for us in the other direction, and he can’t hear Rattlesnake.”

Comanche Joe considered that for a moment, then silently rose and went to his horse and rode straight down the steep slope of the canyon, raising a small cloud of dust and rocks.

“What’s he trying to do?” Cash asked. “Get hisself killed?”

“Not that boy,” Curly said. “I sure taught him how to ride.”

“He could ride like that before he ever saw you,” Cash grunted. “You blame us for everything we do wrong and give yourself credit for everything we do right.”

They could see Rattlesnake Sam down the canyon frantically waving his hat, trying to warn Scar-face. Then he commenced yelling but Scar-face didn’t hear him. He hauled out his gun, but held his fire for fear of stampeding the cattle over his unsuspecting sidekick. In the end he watched helplessly as Comanche Joe rode right up behind Scar-face and clouted him over the head with a gun barrel. Scar-face slumped forward and then slipped out of the saddle, and Rattlesnake suddenly turned his horse and galloped away down the canyon.

Comanche Joe looked up at Curly, but Curly shook his head. “Let him go!” Then he said to Cash and Beanbelly, “Let’s get down there before them cows get skittish, boys.”

As he got to his feet he noticed several buzzards circling not far away. Cash saw them too and said, “Something dead up there.”

“Something—or someone,” Curly said. “If they were a little closer, I’d just think they’re after Beanbelly, seeing as how he never takes a bath.”

“They ain’t after me,” Beanbelly said.

Curly kept his bright gray eyes on the circling buzzards as he said, “You and Comanche Joe push them cows on back to that box canyon and hold them there. Keep your eyes open and don’t leave there till me and Cash get back. We’ll be along as soon as we find out what them buzzards are feeding on today.”

The buzzards led them directly to the rock-walled enclosure that had become Mad Dog Shorty’s tomb. Once inside they scared the flapping black carrion birds away and had a look at what they had been pecking on.

“It’s Mad Dog Shorty,” Cash said.

Curly nodded. “Looks like somebody emptied a shotgun at him.”

“Ringo?” Cash asked.

“If he’s got a shotgun I ain’t seen it.”

“He could have it stashed outside of town somewhere,” Cash said, “Who else could have done it?”

“I don’t know,” Curly said in a soft uneasy tone, his haunted eyes studying what was left of Mad Dog Shorty. It was not a pretty sight, and it was not the way Curly wanted to end up himself. “Let’s get back to that box canyon, before Pike and them get there.”

As they rode back down out of the hills, Cash suddenly grinned and said, “You sure it wasn’t you, Curly? You beat him up in the saloon last night and told him he’d be the next one to feed the buzzards. Then you followed him out of town and it looks like you must be the one who killed him.”

“Ha ha,” Curly said.

They trotted down steep rocky slopes and cantered along sandy washes where the dust fogged up from the hoofs of their horses, going as fast as the rough terrain would allow. But even so they didn’t beat Pike’s bunch to the box canyon by more than a few minutes. Curly could hear them coming when he got there and he turned the Appaloosa to face them, saying over his shoulder, “Get set. I’ll do the talking.”

“As usual,” Cash said, taking cover behind a rock with his Henry.

“And don’t do no shooting till I give the word. If I know Pike, we can bluff it out.”

Pike galloped up and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and the others ranged alongside him, all five of them fighting mad. Pike’s wild dark eyes went beyond Curly to the herd milling in the box canyon and his voice shook with anger. “We aim to let the hot air out of you this time, Curly!”

“Better men have tried. They’re doing time in hell.”

Pike’s black eyes went to Curly’s right hand which rested lightly on his thigh near his holstered gun. Then he glared at the Hatchers, armed and ready to take cover behind some rocks at the mouth of the canyon. That sight calmed him a little, but not enough. “We aim to have them cows back, Curly, one way or the other!”

“It’ll be the other,” Curly told him. “But I don’t know why you boys are worrying about a few scrawny cows. Hell, you’ll all be dead before the week is out.”

Scar-face Harry was there without his hat, looking battered and a little more grim than usual. His eyes were bloodshot, and flecked with cold rage. “What’s he sayin’?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s just talking, like always,” Rattlesnake Sam said, giving Curly a black look.

“Son of a bitch,” Scar-face muttered.

“What makes you think we’ll be dead by the end of the week?” Pike asked.

“Mad Dog Shorty’s already dead.”

“You’re lyin’!” Pike said.

“If he ain’t, then where is he?”

Pike uneasily rubbed his black-bearded chin. “I reckon he got scared and pulled out last night. But me and the rest of the boys ain’t scared and we ain’t runnin’.”

“You better go take a look at Mad Dog Shorty and you may change your mind,” Curly said. “Them buzzards must have pretty strong stomachs.”

The five men seemed to wilt in their saddles, and Pike looked a little sick behind his gray-streaked beard. “We seen some buzzards,” he said, “but we just figgered it was a dead calf, or maybe a beef them Apaches butchered.”

“It ain’t no beef and it wasn’t Apaches,” Curly said. “It’s Mad Dog Shorty and somebody made sausage out of him with buckshot at close range.’’

“I didn’t know Ringo used a shotgun,” Pike said. “It sounds more like that cold-eyed bastard Wyatt Earp. Him and Ringo are prob’ly workin’ together, like they was before.”

Curly eased his position in the saddle, but kept his big right hand on his thigh near his gun. “First you said it was Wyatt who shot Ringo. Now you say they’re working together. You can’t have it both ways, Pike.”

“I reckon they had a fallin’-out before, like everyone said. But now it looks like they’re thick as thieves again. It wouldn’t surprise me none if them two don’t turn out to be brothers or something.”

“You better get out of the sun for a while, Pike.”

“They could be, for all you know,” Pike said. “Nobody don’t know who Ringo really is. One day I saw him and them Earp brothers standin’ on the street in Tombstone and I couldn’t hardly tell them apart. He was even wearin’ the same kind of clothes as them, a black suit and hat. About the only way I could figger out which one was Ringo, his hair was a little more reddish or copper than the others. Them Earps has all got sort of brownish yaller hair. That’s the only way I could tell them apart. And they all had their heads mighty close together about something. Since then I ain’t trusted Ringo no farther than I can spit.”

Curly’s gray eyes were touched with scorn under the frowning black brows. “Is that why you boys bushwhacked him? You thought he might be Wyatt’s long lost brother?”

“You crack jokes all you want to, Curly,” Pike said. “But you won’t be crackin’ jokes for very long if Ringo’s got Wyatt helpin’ him. Old Wyatt filled your hide full of buckshot once and he’ll do it again, if he ever gets half a chance.”

Curly felt a cold uneasiness snake through his guts, but he said, trying more to convince himself than Pike, “I don’t think it was Wyatt who got Shorty. I ain’t seen any sign of him, and he’s always been mighty visible wherever he was in the past.”

“You better hope it ain’t him,” Pike said with a nasty grin. “He hates you a lot more than he does us. He’ll kill you for sure this time, if it is him.”

“If Wyatt’s here looking for me,” Curly said, “why did he kill Mad Dog Shorty?”

“He’s prob’ly after all of us for rustlin’ Uncle Willy’s cows,” Pike said. “I figger Uncle Willy sent for either him or Ringo. Maybe both of them. It wouldn’t surprise me none, the way things has been goin’ lately.”