Curly Bill and Ringo (22 page)

“I haven’t got your shotgun.”

“All right,” Curly said. “I’ll settle for the shotgun you used on Mad Dog Shorty and the others.”

“I’ve already told you that wasn’t me. You better quit doubting everything I say, Curly. Sooner or later it will get you in trouble.”

“Then tell me who it was.”

Ringo stood very still. An infinite weariness was beginning to show through his poker face. “I can’t do that. I promised him I wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell you anyway. But if you think about it awhile you should be able to figure out who it is.”

“I’ve already thought about it,” Curly said. “And I’ve decided there ain’t anyone else. It’s just you and it’s been you all the time. The killing started when you came here and it will stop when you leave.”

Ringo sighed. “It doesn’t matter if you want to think that, Curly. I came here to kill them and I probably would have if he hadn’t beat me to most of them. So if you want to blame me for that, go ahead. But I think there’s more to it than that.”

“There is,” Curly said. “I don’t like the way you’ve been behaving.”

Ringo nodded. “I thought that might be part of it, and I guess I can’t blame you for that. A lot of people seem to share your opinion. I run into them everywhere I go. But by now you should know I don’t mean everything I say.”

“It ain’t so much what you said. It’s more what you didn’t say. I don’t mean just here lately. I guess it goes back a lot farther than that. I keep thinking about the way you used to ride off without a word to anyone and maybe I wouldn’t see you again for two or three months.”

“I never was much at goodbyes,” Ringo said. “And I knew I’d be back before long. When I say goodbye, I only want to say it once. But it seems some people won’t have it that way.”

Curly had a feeling he was thinking of Miss Sarah when he said that.

“I wish to God you hadn’t come back this time,” Curly heard himself say. “I liked you a lot better when I thought you was dead.”

Ringo nodded, hiding whatever he felt behind the hard surface of his face. “I sort of figured that. A lot of people feel that way, some who wouldn’t like to admit it. That’s one reason I didn’t try to let you know I was still alive.”

Curly reached for the nearly empty bottle and refilled his glass. His lids felt swollen and heavy over his narrowed eyes. “You didn’t care how I felt. I doubt if it ever even crossed your mind.”

Ringo studied his empty glass for a long moment. “I think we’re wasting time,” he said.

“Looks that way.”

Ringo reached in his pocket and laid some silver on the bar. “I hope you don’t decide to do anything foolish, Curly. I’d sure hate to have to kill you.”

Curly looked at him in blank surprise. Surely Ringo realized that was the worst thing you could say to a man with any pride. It was like a slap in the face. He should have known Curly couldn’t let the matter drop now. But Ringo had always felt that he could talk to him any way he wanted to and Curly would let him get away with it.

“Do you think you can?” Curly asked, his surprise giving way to bitter resentment.

“I’d hate to find out,” Ringo said.

Curly stood there drinking in silence and didn’t see him go out, although he heard the batwings swing open and shut. After Ringo left, Curly drank steadily for what seemed to him a long time. When he finally left the saloon himself, he was a little unsteady on his feet and feeling mean and nasty as a hydrophobic skunk.

The street was dark and there was a damp cold wind blowing. An odd-looking moon peered down through a ragged hole in a black cloud. He reeled along the street displaying a reckless grin to hide the misery he felt. He had no clear destination in mind, but found himself wandering from habit toward the Road to Ruin. There was nothing there that he wanted, but there didn’t seem to be any other place left that he could go to. All other paths and doors were closed to him.

He swung his head about, looking for any sort of diversion, and saw Ringo standing in the shadows near the hotel, smoking a cigarette. Even in the dark there was no mistaking that tall, proud, aloof shape. Curly stared at his cold hard face with hatred, a hatred born of frustrated love. Frustrated love for both Ringo and Miss Sarah.

“The high and mighty Ringo,” Curly said, sweeping off his hat and bowing so low he almost fell on his face. “Is it all right, sir, if I walk by you here on the street? I’ll try not to get close enough to offend you. Hold your nose and close your eyes and you won’t even notice me.”

“You’re drunk, Curly,” Ringo said. “Go sleep it off.”

Curly stood there swaying and frowning at his hat for a long moment before carefully replacing it on his head. “Drunk? Not yet I ain’t. I may get drunk later on, if the spirit moves me and the bug juice don’t run out. But at this point I’m sober as a judge. Sober as old Hanging Judge Parker hisself, when he sent twelve men out to stretch rope all at the same time. Can you picture that, Ringo? Twelve men doing a jig in the air all at once, hanging from a long row of ropes. And some of them prob’ly hadn’t done nothing worse than borrow some sodbuster’s broken-down plow horse for a while. Or maybe shot some cold-eyed marshal who was long overdue in hell for his crimes against humanity. Or maybe it was the jury the old judge hung that time. Maybe they decided to let some poor devil off and the old judge decided to hang them in his place, as an example to future juries. You’ve heard of hung juries, ain’t you, Ringo?”

“I hadn’t heard about that one,” Ringo said, smoking his cigarette and watching the empty street.

“That’s a mighty careless thing for a man with so many enemies to do,” Curly said. “Someone’s liable to take a shot at that cigarette.”

“If you mean one of your seedy friends,” Ringo said, “I wouldn’t put it past them. But they better make the first one count.”

Curly frowned, and stood stiff and dignified to offset the tendency to weave about on his feet. “You’re always running my friends down. That ain’t a polite thing to do. I never run your friends down that way. But come to think about it, you never had very many friends, did you, Ringo?”

“I never asked for any.”

“No, of course not,” Curly said, rubbing his stubbled jaw. “You never asked anyone for anything. You’d die first.”

“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” Ringo said, watching the street and the shadows as he spoke.

“I hope I ain’t boring you too much,” Curly said. “Let me know if you get tired of me standing here talking to you.”

“I will,” Ringo said, flipping his cigarette away.

“Always the same old Ringo. A stone face and a heart to match.”

“I don’t know why you ever bothered about me, Curly. I’ve often wondered.”

“So have I! I·can’t think of any reason why I ain’t already put a bullet in you!”

“Don’t talk yourself into doing something stupid, Curly,” Ringo said quietly.

“I keep thinking about what you said in the saloon,” Curly said, scowling. “About how you’d hate to have to kill me. I’m asking you again—do you think you can?”

“If I had to,” Ringo said.

“You never did have a very high opinion of me, did you, Ringo?”

“I don’t know how to answer that, Curly. I’m not sure what you mean by the question.”

“You always thought you could beat me at anything, didn’t you?” Curly said, surprised at his own bitterness. He was aware that he had lost his sense of humor. He was also aware that it no longer mattered. A lot of things no longer mattered. “Guns. Cards. Women. Anything. You were always a little better than me at all the things that counted, weren’t you, Ringo?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Ringo said.

“But it’s what you think, ain’t it?”

“What I think is my business, Curly.”

“Well,” Curly said, “we can find out about one of them things, right here and now. Draw, you bastard,’’

Ringo studied him carefully, his own face hidden in the shadow of his hatbrim. “You’re not actually thinking about going for your gun, are you, Curly?”

Curly wasn’t sure just what he had been thinking about. The idea must have been hidden at the back of his mind all along, festering and growing there in the dark, until the words were out before he realized it. He was more surprised himself than Ringo appeared to be. But it seemed to him that he had already done too much talking to try to back out of it now. He would feel like a fool. Worse yet, it might appear that he had lost his nerve at the last moment.

“You damn right I’m thinking about it,” he said. “I’m going to count to three and then draw. One.”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Curly,” Ringo said. “You wouldn’t stand a chance sober, much less drunk.”

There it was again, Ringo’s galling assumption that he could beat him at anything.

“What makes you so sure of that?” Curly asked resentfully.

“I’ve seen you shoot.”

“Maybe I really did just let Billy Bishop win that contest,” Curly said. “Did you ever think of that?”

Ringo didn’t say anything and Curly knew he didn’t believe him. Ringo never had believed much he said, taking if for granted, like everyone else, that Curly lied all the time. And Curly had never lied about anything important. Not to Ringo. While Ringo had often lied. Maybe not with words, but with his silence. Curly lied with words, Ringo with silence, what was the difference.

Curly felt his face contorting in a savage and bitter grimace. “I guess this is where we find out a lot of things. Draw, you bastard!”

And he went for his gun. Until that moment he had not really believed that he would do it, and it was obvious from Ringo’s surprise that he hadn’t believed it either. “Curly!”

Curly had his gun almost out of the holster before Ringo even started to draw. In fact Curly never saw him draw at all. One moment he was standing motionless, staring at Curly in disbelief. The next instant there was a gleaming pistol in his hand. But even then he held his fire, perhaps still hoping Curly wouldn’t shoot.

And Curly never did. The decision was taken out of his hands, not by Ringo’s gun, but by a rifle that roared from an alley across the street. The bullet whipped past him and hit Ringo somewhere in the head. Curly saw his head jerk and then Ringo fell without a sound.

Curly stood staring in horror at the motionless body of the strange lonely man whom he had loved and sometimes hated and never understood. He heard someone cry in a low broken voice, “Oh, God!” He did not recognize the voice as his own.

He did recognize the unbearable rage gathering inside him. This was not the way he had wanted it. He had done many bad things in his time, but he would have rather died himself than to be a part—even an unwitting part—of this treachery.

He whirled and moved his gun from side to side, watching for something to shoot at on the other side of the street.

But there was no one in sight. The traitor did not expose himself.

Miss Sarah screamed and ran out of the hotel, falling in the dirt beside Ringo, trying to shelter his body with her own.

Curly started toward them, almost sobbing. “Is he dead?”

“You keep away from him!” she screamed hysterically. “Don’t you come near him!”

She suddenly seized Ringo’s gun and pointed it at Curly and he backed off, stumbling and almost falling. Then the old Mexican, Don Juan, was suddenly beside her, gently taking the gun from her hand and saying something in a low soothing voice. He gathered Ringo up in his arms as if he were a child and carried him into the hotel, and Miss Sarah grabbed Ringo’s black hat out of the dirt and followed him.

Curly heard someone running across the street farther down and turned in time to see the shadowy figure duck into the Bent Elbow. The man was carrying a rifle and Curly knew who it was. He had known all along.

Grief and rage were like a team of strong horses pulling him down the street in long strides. He flung the batwing doors open and saw Cash hastily downing a glass of whiskey. His rifle was leaning against the bar beside him.

“You goddamn sorry son of a bitch!” Curly said, striding toward him with his hands clenched into huge fists.

Cash’s eyes widened in alarm when he saw the wild rage in Curly’s contorted dark face. He grabbed for his rifle, but not in time.  Curly jerked it out of his hands and broke the stock off on the bar, then sailed the rest of it through a window. He grabbed the front of Cash’s shirt with his left hand and shoved his right into Cash’s face. A piece of the shirt tore off in his hand and Cash ran backwards about ten feet and then sat down hard on the floor.

He pointed at Curly with one hand and wiped blood from his mouth and nose with the other, “I saved your life!” he cried. “He would have killed you!”

“I’d rather be dead than to be alive like this!” Curly shouted. “Can’t you understand that, you fool?”