The Pistoleer (11 page)

Then Eddie Joe yells, “Son of a
bitch
!” and flings a blast of flowers at us. He kicks the door shut and yanks out his little two-shot and says, “I’ll kill you!”

I wasn’t real sure he didn’t mean
me,
he looked so steamed. That Eddie Joe was a hell of a good actor. He probably ought to have taken it up as a trade back east where he came from, or in one of them traveling shows. He likely would have lived longer if he had.

Anyhow, I give a screech and pull away from the kid and grab up some sheet to cover myself. The kid’s still kneeling there with his hands half raised and his long handsome rascal drooping between his legs. His eyes weren’t nearly full of devilment now.

“No, Robert!” I let out. “Don’t do it, don’t!” And start bawling to beat the band. I guess I was overdoing it a little, because Eddie Joe gave the bed a kick and told me to shut up, and by the look in his eyes I knew he meant it. So I cut it down to some steady sniffling.

“Say now, mister—” the kid starts to say, but Eddie Joe tells him to shut up too. Just then it dawned on me that I’d messed up the Murphy by actually getting down to it with the kid. The way it was supposed to work—the way we’d done it up to now—was for Eddie Joe to find us together in the room and be outraged at the galoot for trying to compromise his sweetheart’s virtue. But it’s pretty hard to accuse a fella of taking advantage of your sweetie’s innocence if you find her totally bare-assed and going at it dog style. Eddie Joe had to make this one up as he went along.

“I knew I shouldn’t have married no damn whore!” he says, glaring back and forth between me and the kid. “Once a whore, always a whore. That’s what they say and they sure right about that!”

The kid started to ease off the bed and Eddie Joe jabbed the gun at him. “Where you think
you’re
going, snake?”

“Please, mister,” the boy says, “all I want is to get out of here. I didn’t know she was married, I swear.”

“You damn well know it now, snake.” He honest-to-God looked ready to shoot him.

“I’m real sorry, mister,” the boy says. “I truly am. Just let me out of here, please.”

“Oh,
please,
” Eddie Joe says, mimicking him. “Why in hell should I? I got every right to shoot you, snake—her too, if I want—and wouldn’t nobody say a thing about it except it served you both right.”

“Yessir, I guess that’s so,” the boy says. “But please, I didn’t mean no harm to nobody. And listen—I got money! I do! You can have every bit of it. There’s fifty dollars in my britches there.” He pointed to the rack where his clothes were hung with his gunbelt. “And I got two hundred more hid in my saddle at the livery.”

A woman laughed as she passed by our door and said, “Just
hold
your
horses,
cowboy!” Eddie Joe locked the door as their voices faded down the hall, then he sidled over to the clothes rack and slipped the kid’s gun out of the holster. “Nice piece,” he says.

“Just for scaring the coyotes off,” the boy says.

“Feels made for me.” Eddie Joe gave it a twirl.

“Sure now, you keep it,” the kid says.

“Damn generous of you,” Eddie Joe says, backing away from the clothes rack and motioning for the kid to get over to it. “Dig out the fifty and then we’ll go visit those saddle pockets.”

“Yes,
sir
,” the kid says, looking mighty relieved as he quick gets off the bed and heads for his pants, paying no mind whatever to his manly parts swinging all about. Eddie Joe saw me staring and gave a mean frown.

The kid dug into his pants pocket and came up with a handful of money—notes and specie both. But as he reached it around to Eddie Joe, most of it slipped out of his hand and went scattering on the floor. “Damn you, boy!” Eddie Joe says. But he was practically chuckling as he bent down to retrieve the money at his feet.

Just as his fingers closed on a gold piece against his boot, a gun blast rocked the room and Eddie Joe’s head snapped sideways and a bunch of it splattered on the wall behind him. He slumped to the floor just as dead as a sack of clothes.

My ears were ringing like they’d never stop. I couldn’t take my eyes off the blood unrolling from his head like red velvet. I couldn’t believe so much blood. Then through the ringing I heard, “Hey!” and looked over to see the kid getting into his clothes even faster than he got out of them. He already had on his pants and boots and gunbelt and was putting on his shirt. There was a stampede of stomping feet coming up the stairs.

With the gun in his hand he motioned for me to pick the money off the floor, and I quick got busy doing it. I didn’t have a doubt in the world he’d shoot me too if he got the notion. When he swung his vest on I caught a look at the holsters on the insides of the flaps. He slipped the gun back into the vest and grinned at me. I’d had no idea. Neither had Eddie Joe, obviously. He retrieved his pistol from Eddie Joe’s hand and stuck it back in his belt holster and kicked Eddie Joe’s two-shot under the bed.

He was cool as well water about the whole thing. The hallway was in a clamor now and there was unholy pounding on the door. I handed over the money I’d scooped up and he stuck it in his pocket. All except for one silver dollar—which he held up for me to look at. “For your fine services, ma’am,” he said, and he bounced it off my tit and laughed.

Then he unlocks the door and throws it open wide. He points to me still hunkered on the floor in the altogether and says to the jabbering men crowded in the hallway, “Lookee here, boys!” And while all those stupid sons of bitches just stand there gawking at my nakedness, he pushes through them and scoots off down the stairs and gets himself long gone before the sheriff arrives.

The sheriff didn’t believe the kid’s name was Jeb Bishop any more than I did, but he was plenty mad about the easy way he’d made off, and he took much of his displeasure out on me. Said he didn’t much care for “city trash” grifting in his nice little town and threatened to lock me up for a good long time for prostitution and public lasciviousness. I had to French him in the jail house twice before he settled on letting me pay for Eddie Joe’s coffin and the undertaker’s fee, plus what he called “administrative expenses”—all of which just happened to total the exact amount of money I had on me. He didn’t mention the money he’d taken off Eddie Joe’s dead body and naturally I didn’t either. He ran me out with a warning never to show my face in Limestone County again if I knew what was good for me.

I didn’t work independent for very long after that. I got cheated too often and beat up too much. I finally went to work in a house in Galveston. I was twenty-two years old and looked damn near twice that.

A few years after the bad business in Kosse, I read about that boy in the Galveston newspaper. He was in jail in Austin, waiting trial for murder and claiming it was self-defense. In a big long interview with a reporter, he told about other times he’d had to kill somebody in self-defense, and one of those he mentioned was a fellow in Limestone County who’d tried to rob him in a hotel room at gunpoint after he’d been lured in there by a pretty female accomplice. That was how I found out Eddie Joe had been killed by none other than John Wesley Hardin.

Naturally I showed the newspaper to the other girls and bragged about how it was me and Eddie Joe who tried that badger on Hardin. And do you know that none of them believed me? Not a one. Laughed at me and called me a cheap-assed liar. Goddamn lousy whores.

T
he six months cousin Wes spent hiding out on our farm was probably the most peaceful time of his life. Since the start of his troubles with the law, I mean. It was surely an exciting time for
us,
though—“us” meaning me and my brothers Aaron and Joey. What was mostly so exciting about it was the times we all spent sporting at Mrs. Miller’s or Kate Vine’s over in Brenham, the closest town. It was Wes who introduced us to the pleasures of such establishments. Every Saturday—and on any day it rained or was too wet to work the fields—we’d all four ride into Brenham and have a high time at one or the other of those two fine places.

Of course none of us—I mean me and my brothers—ever had the money to pay for such sporting. It was always Wes treating us to the girls. The first thing he’d do when we got into town was go straight to the gaming tables and win enough to pay for all four of us at Kate’s or Mrs. Miller’s. I thought he could of been a rich man if he’d gambled for a living instead of just doing it for sporting money, but he said doing it for a living would take most of the fun out of it.

It was in Brenham that he met Phil Coe, the fanciest-dressing, fanciest-talking gambling man I ever knew. He was a big fella with a close beard. He carried a gold-headed walking stick and fastened his necktie with a diamond pin. His pistola was pearl-handled and he wore it in a holster under his arm. They said he was awful good with that gun, but I don’t know, I never did see him shoot. He sure saw how Wes could shoot, though—everybody in town did—because the first time we all went into Brenham together, Wes got into a contest with some of the local deadeyes and beat them all so bad they wouldn’t none of them shoot against him again. He finished up the show by shooting the windcock on the church steeple at the end of the street. He started it spinning with the first shot and kept it spinning with the next five. The fellas watching clapped and whistled like they were at a hoochie show. Reverend Hart came stomping over, all red-faced and mad enough to spit nails, but he calmed down quick when Wes gave him a twenty-dollar donation toward his good work for the Lord.

Later on when Coe and Wes got to be friends, Wes challenged him to a friendly shooting match, but Coe backed off. I was standing at the bar with them when he told Wes, “I never discharge my firearm except when compelled by serious circumstance, and the only truly serious circumstance is the defense of one’s own life.” That’s how he talked. But that was horseshit about never pulling his gun except to defend himself. He knew damn well he couldn’t outshoot Wes, and he didn’t want to get shown up in public, that’s all.

He couldn’t beat Wes at the gaming tables, either—not near as often as Wes beat him, anyway. But he was a genuine gambler, Phil Coe was, so he never got riled about losing. He’d just make a joke and play on and wait for the cards to start coming his way again, which they usually did once Wes dropped out of the game with his winnings and we headed for the sporting house.

It was Phil Coe who gave Wes the nickname “Little Seven-up,” on account of Wes’s constant good luck with that game. Pretty soon everybody in the saloons was calling him by it. One time Joey called him that in the house and Ma heard him and wanted to know what it meant. She knew plenty, but it was our good fortune she didn’t know the names of
all
the games of chance. That quick-thinker Wes told her it was a sort of ice cream soda he’d gotten so fond of that the fellers in town had started calling him by that name. Ma thought that was real fine. In fact, she liked the name so much she took up calling him by it. One night at supper Pa heard her use it, and he gave us a what-the-hell look. Ma caught it and explained to him about the nickname. “Oh, yes,” Pa said, “I believe I’ve cut my thirst with that particular soda a time or two myself.” When Ma went to the stove to fetch the stewpot, he gave us a wink behind her back. He’d been a hellion himself before he married Ma and she put the bridle on him.

One last thing about Phil Coe. I didn’t much care for his airs and fancy talk and I’ve said so, but he did become a true friend to Wes, so that made him all right with me and my brothers. We were sincerely sorry a few years later when we heard he’d got himself killed up in Abilene by none other than Wild Bill.

I
don’t mean to give the idea it was all high times in town while Wes was living with us, because of course it wasn’t. Mostly it was the same as before he came and after he went away again. What we mainly did was work. Pa made a deal with him that gave Wes a share of the crops he helped us bring in. When it came to axing timber, grubbing stumps, clearing rocks, plowing fields, hoeing cotton, splitting rails, putting up fences—all the kinds of work that keeps you at it from sunup to sundown on a farm—Wes matched our own sweat drop for drop. You might not have thought it to look at him when he was duded up in his black suit, but he was powerful strong. In his clothes he usually looked like a bean pole holding up a hat, but when he took his shirt off to swing an ax he looked like he was made of ropes and trace chains. There wasn’t a thing on his bones but long hard muscle.

T
he end of Wes’s good days on our farm came with the news that Ed Davis had formed up the State Police. Davis was a son of a bitch who got himself made governor back the previous December in the crookedest election ever held in Texas. He did it with the conniving help of the carpetbaggers and the scalawags and President Useless Ass Grant himself, who was the biggest son of a bitch of them all—except for maybe Lincoln.

The only good thing about Davis’s election was that Useless Ass took it to mean Texas was “reconstructed,” and he pulled all the Yankee troops out of the state. That was the good news. The bad news was that we now had the State Police.