Curly Bill and Ringo (15 page)

“Maybe you wasn’t ready, Curly,” the kid said. “You want to try again?”

“That’s okay, kid,” Curly said, putting his gun away. “If I wasn’t ready, it was my fault.”

The Bishop kid began reloading his gun. He looked at Ringo and said, “Would you like to try it?”

Ringo stood motionless against the barn wall, watching the Bishop kid through his cold blue eyes, his hard face showing no expression. After what seemed a long deliberate silence, he said quietly, “I’ll pass.”

The kid let his glance drop away from Ringo’s level stare, but he had the smug, sly look on his face as if he had won another victory. He and Cash exchanged a glance and then they walked out to take a look at the cans.

Curly and Ringo went back up the street, neither speaking for about twenty steps. Then Curly glanced at Ringo out of one eye and said, “I just let him win.”

Ringo kept his face blank and his eyes straight ahead. “Sure you did.”

“You think you could beat him?”

“I think so,” Ringo said.

“Hell, I thought I could beat him,” Curly said. “If you’re so sure you could, why didn’t you give it a try?”

“Never let a man know how good you are with a gun,” Ringo said. “As long as that kid thinks he’s better than me, he’s not likely to shoot me in the back. It’s those other three who worry me. They know they’re not in my class and they’d never give me an even break.”

“You don’t have to worry about them,” Curly said. “I’ll keep them in line.”

“I hope so,” Ringo said, and flipped his cigarette into the dust. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

Curly grinned. “Ringo, you’re a man after my own heart.”

Curly entered the hotel dining room at ten till six, about the time Miss Sarah usually ate her supper. But she was not in the dining room. As he sat down at a table, old Darius Winkler appeared from the kitchen, a look of pure misery on his oily round face.

“You sick or something, Darius?” Curly asked. Then he grinned, “Old Don Juan been using too many chili peppers again?”

Darius sighed and sat down on the other side of the table, shaking his head and wiping his eyes. “I know why you come early,” he said. “I don’t blame you. Feel the same way myself. But it’s no use. We both waste our time.”

Curly frowned. “What are you mumbling about?”

Old Darius raised his bloated face and looked at him with sad eyes. “Earlier she say she don’t feel so good. Is it all right if she go up to her room and lie down for a while before time to start waiting on tables. Sure, go ahead, I say. But when I think she going to be late I go up to wake her up. Just about to knock on her door when I hear them talking. It’s that tall bad man and he say—I know his voice anywhere—`Take off those ridiculous clothes,’ he say.

“Then as I try to get away a board creaked and he opened the door wearing nothing but only his pants and pointed at me with his gun. I waved my arms in the air for him not to shoot and he didn’t or say anything. He just stand there and watch me come down the stairs with a hard look on his jaw. But now I’m afraid to go back on second floor while he’s here.”

Curly sat numb and silent for a long moment, feeling as though a mule had kicked him in the belly. Slowly and carefully he lit a cigar. Behind the flame of the match he felt his eyes brightening with anger, with the thought that he had been tricked, betrayed. He puffed on the cigar and watched old Darius wave the smoke away from his damp eyes. For old Darius he had no particular sympathy. He needed it all for himself. For old Darius he felt nothing but a mild indifferent scorn, for ever believing he stood any chance with Miss Sarah when Curly himself had had no luck.

“You weren’t up there trying to eavesdrop and spy on them, were you, Darius?”

“I got responsibility to know what kind of people I got staying here in my hotel, because of the other guests.”

“What other guests?”

“The ones who may be arriving almost any day now,” Darius said. “They should be here already. But I think they afraid to come here while he’s here. But don’t change subject, Curly. Why he say her clothes ridiculous? Her clothes not ridiculous.”

“I reckon what he meant was, any clothes at all would be ridiculous under the circumstances,” Curly said, trying to hide the strange sick feeling inside him.

“Then it’s true, what I was afraid of,” old Darius said, wiping his eyes. “Old fool. Curly, why didn’t you say to me, ‘Darius, don’t make such a fool of yourself. You’re sixty years old. Act like your age.’”

“I reckon I was too busy making a fool out of myself to worry about you,” Curly said. He pushed back from the table and got heavily to his feet. “I’m not as hungry as I thought I was, Darius. Maybe I’ll come back later.”

“She may not even come down,” old Darius said. “I guess I have to wait on tables, to go with everything else.”

Curly left the dining room without answering. He had his own misery to think of. How much of it showed on his face he didn’t know, but there was no one on the street to see it.

The town was dying before his eyes. He felt like the whole world was dying, while he grinned like a fool and tried to hide the pain in his heart.

Somewhere behind the smile there was a growing anger that gradually covered the smile like clouds spreading over the sun. He felt gloomy and bitter by the time he got to the Bent Elbow.

Cash and Beanbelly were standing at the bar. He lined up beside them and poured himself a drink from their bottle. “Cash,” he said, “stop telling people I killed Mad Dog Shorty. It ain’t very funny.”

“I think you prob’ly did kill him,” Cash said. He and Beanbelly were both grinning.

“Like I say, it ain’t very funny.”

Cash shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

Curly downed his drink and poured himself another. “Ma said if you didn’t get them dogs away from there she’d take the shotgun to them.”

“What am I going to do with them dogs in town?” Cash asked.

“Maybe it would be better to let her shoot them,” Curly suggested.

“I don’t want them dogs hurt,” Cash said. “I reckon I’ll have to bring them in the next time I come.”

“I reckon you will,” Curly said. “But I reckon I won’t ride along with you that trip.”

“Guess they’ll have to live on scraps people throw out,” Cash said, reaching for the bottle. “I sure can’t buy feed for them.”

“Hell, butcher a steer for them,” Beanbelly said, grinning. “That won’t cost nothing. Or we could steal some chuck from Blondie’s free lunch counter for them. Except I’d hate to give them old dogs anything that’s fit to eat,” he added, licking his lips. “I sure wish old Jackpot would get in some chuck and some women so I wouldn’t have to walk over there every time I get hungry.”

“I’ll be here when they’re gone,” Jackpot said.

Curly gave him a mean look. “You prob’ly will. I’ve noticed it ain’t so easy to get rid of people you’d just as soon not have around.”

“I’ve noticed that too,” Jackpot said.

Curly looked at him with hard eyes, trying to decide how best to annihilate him. But Jackpot was like a fly that wasn’t worth swatting.

Curly again reached for the bottle. “Cash, what’s this stupid game you and the Bishop kid have started playing with Ringo? He ain’t the kind of man you play games with.”

“What game are you talking about?” Cash grunted.

“I heard Billy whistle to warn you when he saw Ringo. Was that your bright idea?”

“What if it was?” Cash asked. “I don’t want him sneaking up on us the way he did Mad Dog Shorty.”

“I thought you said it was me killed Mad Dog Shorty.”

“You know I was just joking about that.”

“I know. It was just your way of having fun. But don’t try to have any fun with Ringo. He ain’t got no sense of humor.”

“The hell with him,” Cash said. “He’s too high and mighty. He needs bringing down some.”

“I’ve felt that way myself a few times,” Curly said, wiping a big hand across his mouth. “But you ain’t the man for the job.”

“Maybe I ain’t,” Cash said. “But I know who is.”

Curly glanced aside at his lean pockmarked face. “Who?”

“Billy,” Cash said.

“Cash,” Curly said, “don’t get something started you can’t stop. It may seem like fun and games now, but it will get mighty serious. I know that man.”

Ringo rode out of town early the next morning, before anyone else was up. He was long gone by the time Curly got to the hotel. There was no one else in the dining room when Miss Sarah brought his breakfast. She must have guessed by the look on his face or his unusual silence that he knew something, for she retreated to the kitchen without a word and avoided his eyes when she returned a little later with the coffeepot to refill his cup.

He felt a sharp pain inside him when he noticed again how beautiful she was, how her black hair fell over her shoulders and how her large brown eyes seemed to glow with a strange fire and how smooth and soft and rosy her cheeks were.

Now that it seemed certain he had lost her, he felt that somehow he just had to have her. Nothing else mattered. Friendship didn’t mean a thing. Not even his friendship for Ringo. It apparently didn’t mean much to Ringo either, for he must have known from town gossip how Curly felt about Miss Sarah. But he hadn’t let that stop him. Well, two could play that game.

Curly muttered his thanks and Miss Sarah’s lips twitched in a nervous smile. She still didn’t say anything, because she could tell something was wrong. She was already on her way back to the kitchen when he said, “Miss Sarah, I think there’s something you ought to know.”

She turned and there was a look of dread in her eyes.

“I told you there wasn’t anything between Ringo and Doc Holliday’s woman, as far as I knew,” Curly said. “But I reckon I should of mentioned that when me and him were in Galeyville he used to get letters all the time from some woman.”

“I know,” Miss Sarah said quietly.

He stared at her in wonder. “You mean it was you?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Curly’s eyes were tortured as he said, “Is that why you came to this town? You knew Ringo would be coming here?”

“I knew he would sooner or later, when I heard the Lefferts gang was here,” she said. She hesitated. Her face was pale and that made her eyes seem darker, and somehow tragic. “Ringo didn’t know I was here till he got here, and he wasn’t very pleased to see me at first. He’s been trying for a long time to leave me. He says I’d be better off without him. But that’s not the way I want it. You see, I happen to love him, and I want to be with him no matter what happens. Nothing else matters.”

She swallowed and went on into the kitchen.

Curly sat there thinking about what she had said until his coffee was too cold to drink. All those years when he and Ringo had ridden together, Ringo hadn’t said a word about her. And all that time she must have been somewhere waiting for him to come back, waiting for letters that never came.

Then Curly remembered that there were times when he hadn’t seen Ringo for weeks or even months, and he wondered if Ringo had been with Miss Sarah. If so, he had always left her again, probably without even saying goodbye, for Ringo dreaded nothing on earth as he dreaded displays of sentiment or any situation where he might weaken for a moment and let someone see that he was human.

Miss Sarah deserved better than she had got from him, Curly told himself. Ringo hadn’t even had the decency to marry her.

But Curly was just as glad they weren’t married. He had his own brand of honor and had never been one to try to take another man’s wife away from him, although he might steal his stock and everything else. Even a thief had to draw the line somewhere.

He left some money on the table and went out to his horse. The town still seemed too dark for some reason, but he didn’t think much about it. Cash was just coming along the street and in the poor light his sorrel looked darker.

“Where’s them other two?”

“They’ll be along.”

Curly shrugged and stepped into the saddle. He was in no mood to hunt cows anyway. But he wanted to get out of town where no one would see his long face and wonder about it. Everyone would soon know the reason for his mood. Like a fool, he had told the Hatcher boys in the shack last night what old Darius had told him, and they had had a good laugh about it. All this time he hadn’t had a bit of luck with Miss Sarah, but Ringo had apparently made a conquest after only a couple of days. When Curly had told them, he hadn’t known about Miss Sarah’s past relationship with the gunfighter, and now that he did know, he didn’t reckon he would tell them. They would just laugh, and to him it was no laughing matter.