Naw. It jest don"t take me long to look at a coffin handle. He blew on his palm. How much longer ye reckon ye gone be here laying em out?
Why?
I come see might ye go with me.
After Smonk? The blacksmith studied his black hands. Their black nails. It wouldn"t be right, he said. I can"t jest up and leave the girls.
What"s worse, leaving em to set a spell here or letting go the scoundrel that killed em? Seems like you got a lot of reason to want Smonk dead. If it"s true what they say about him and-not to speak ill of the dead-ye wife here. Seems you was spared. Like me. I ain"t never thought much of G.o.d, but if this here ain"t G.o.d saying get yer selves out on a mob I don"t know what is.
The blacksmith didn"t answer. Using his tongs, he raised a glowing bar from the fire and began to beat it.
Well? said McKissick.
Naw, said the blacksmith. I can"t. I ain"t shot a gun in I don"t know when. Don"t even own one. I"m a humble worker. If ye had twenty, thirty fellows, sure, I might go. But jest two of us? No thank ye.
They got a word for not going. It"s called being a chickens.h.i.t.
That"s five words.
Don"t be counting my words, Gates. Judge says we can supply up, charged to the town. New firearms and such. Mounts.
Preciate it, naw. These handles won"t forge they selves.
Suit ye self then, chickens.h.i.t. I"m taking off terectly, if ye grow some b.a.l.l.s.
He raised his hand farewell, shape of a coffin handle burned into the skin, and limped out past the covered bodies. In the town proper he sidestepped a dead horse and turned the corner and limped past the wagon with the machine gun, two young women guarding it.
They were making eyes at him.
In the store the owner"s widow had laid her husband"s body on the shelf where the tins of potted meat were usually displayed. She"d dressed him in his church suit and boots.
I can"t do business today, she told McKissick from behind her black veil. We closed for mourning.
Well, this re-supplying is on the judge, he said. He"s sending me out after Smonk. I"m sure he"d be happy to pay double. The judge, I mean. Or triple.
What is it ye need?
He bought her entire supply of firearms: four pistols, three rifles and two shotguns. She tried to sell him a used twenty gauge single but he glanced at it and said, Junk.
Then he bought all her ammunition. After that he carried his packages to the livery where he bought a tall paint (on the judge) and had the liveryman"s widow remove its shoes for a quieter ride. He noticed that the livery also sold fireworks, and he charged a box of Roman candles and several bundles of bottle rockets and firecrackers, too. His boy Willie if he were still alive would love such noise and fire. And if not, the bailiff would shoot them off in his son"s memory.
Then he was running back through the street, to the store, tromping up the steps, pounding on the gla.s.s.
Balloons, he told the lady, ye got any more sheep-guts?
Meanwhile, Gates the blacksmith had slipped off his ap.r.o.n and leather gloves and donned his hat and was walking toward the store when four women in black dresses and veils surrounded him with rifles. He raised his hands in surrender and they shoved him along at gunpoint to Mrs. Tate, widow of the justice of the peace and owner of most of the land around Old Texas and owner of the bank and the apothecary"s. And the hotel, recently destroyed.
They found her in her dark house at the edge of town, in her parlor with the drapes drawn. She sat beside her dead husband, very upright in an upholstered chair, fanning herself primly with one hand and with the other holding his fingers. He lay on a sideboard, dressed in a brown suit. Using pins, she"d arranged his hair despite his deflated head and placed a towel under his neck for the drainage and spread a plaid cloth over where his face had been. A tiny woman with tiny hands, Mrs. Tate flipped down her veil when they entered.
The widows shoved Gates forward and he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his cap and tried to smooth his wiry hair.
Are you drunk? she asked. Such your habit.
Nome. This all is sobered me up.
Mrs. Tate snapped closed her fan and rose to inspect Gates, circling him, her head level with his biceps, poking at his kidneys with the fan.
Why weren"t you at the trial? she asked from behind him. Account for being alive. When so many better men have pa.s.sed.
He stammered how he"d voted to lynch Smonk, how he"d planned to attend the trial and celebration after, but the gun-killers had robbed him and knocked him in the head. Did she want to feel the whop? He knelt as she pressed the needles of her fingers on the soft lump at the base of his skull, her touch lingering to a caress as he stammered the tragedy of his own family, dead and tarped, one and all, back yonder in his shop.
What he didn"t mention was that two of the three killers had visited his shed earlier that day, before the trial. Before the ma.s.sacre. How the smith had not realized that these two strangers with a packhorse full of guns on the day Smonk was going on trial meant something was up was beyond him. He ought to of reported it. It wasn"t like there was a pair of strangers through here every day. In fact, he couldn"t remember the last new face he"d seen-other than Smonk"s. The killers had asked about a wh.o.r.e and he"d pointed them to his house, but instead of paying him the three dollars, they"d knocked him in the head with a rifle b.u.t.t and took the coins from his pocket and left him for dead and he"d lain half-conscious on the floor in his own head blood for over an hour. It was just like Lurleen and her girls not to come get him after laying with the killers, traipsing off to the trial in their men"s duds. Lurleen would of done anything to see Smonk again, Gates knew-she still was in love with the one-eye. The blacksmith had just awakened on the floor and touched the throbbing lump at the top of his neck when he"d heard the machine gun going off.
I"m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Tate said. Though if those women had known their places they"d be alive yet. You need the church, Portis, you always have. Now more than ever.
Yessum.
Our Scripture is very clear on a woman"s place. And the place of children.
Yessum.
A man"s too, Portis.
Yessum.
She reclaimed her seat in front of him. I believe your story. She plucked a wet cloth from a washbowl and wiped her fingertips of his filth and waved the other widows out of the room and resumed fanning herself.
But when the time comes to pay the fiddler, she continued, we"ve all got to chip in. Ante up, as a sinner like he might say. So I must ask you, Portis, to delay your mourning and commit us two jobs. First, find that judge before he tries to flee. He"s been unaccounted for since we put out the fire. And the more I"ve been considering it, the more I see he had to have been mixed up with Smonk. Else he"d be ma.s.sacred too. Or at the very least knocked in the head like you or punctured like our new bailiff.
Yessum.
Second thing, she said, is that you must go with Bailiff McKissick. Make sure he kills Smonk. Help him. Come back and swear he"s dead.
Yessum.
And there"s only one way to prove that.
Yessum.
Do you know what that is, Portis?
Nome.
His eye. Bring me his eye.
Yessum. I will.
Good. Mrs. Tate gazed at her husband. She swatted a fly with her fan. She"d killed several already and formed a small pile at the justice"s shoulder and Gates watched as she used her fan to herd the fresh smudge over with the others. Then she resumed fanning. Is it true that Smonk took McKissick"s child? That boy William?
I heard it was.
Do I need to stress how your standing in our village will improve if you bring that little one back safely?
Nome.
You could be an important man in our town, Portis. Now that you"re a widower. With so little compet.i.tion.
Yessum.
I think you should wash, she said. So we can see what you look like, those of us in need of a man, you now in need of a wife.
Yessum.
In search of the judge, Gates ran building to building, zigzagging through alleys, and had not been looking a quarter-hour when he spotted a pair of legs jutting from the rear window of town hall. Gates recognized the judge"s boots and seized him by the knees and wrestled him hard down into the dirt, papers from his bulging valise spilling into the sugarcane.
G.o.d d.a.m.n, said the judge from the ground. He jabbed out his hand. Help me up and escort me to the gallows where I"ll see ye hanged.
They sent for ye, Gates said, pulling him into a headlock.
G.o.d d.a.m.n, the judge"s m.u.f.fled voice said. Let me go!
The blacksmith dragged the smaller man over the street as he flailed his arms and made a commotion of dust, still clinging to the valise. At the store across from the burnt-down hotel several women had congregated at the wagon in the alley as if the mounted gun had been scheduled to deliver a sermon or a serenade. When they saw the judge, they seized him from the smith and relieved him of his valise and raised him above their heads like a hero and he seemed to levitate down the street above them, his face the pallor of chalk.
Gates returned to his shack and sat alone at the table for the first time in ages-it was quiet without his wife"s fussing and the stepdaughters bickering at one another about whose turn it was to wash the clothes or who got to go and try to seduce McKissick. He left the table and rumbled in his dead wife"s trunk and found a shard of piergla.s.s, a fingernail of soap, a razor, a nub of brush and a cracked washbasin which he filled with water. He studied the reflection of his face and began to scrub and shave. Twenty minutes later a ruddy white man slightly cross-eyed and with one long eyebrow looked at him from the gla.s.s, the water in the basin black as ink and full of gray whiskers.
Not half bad, he said, for a fellow of sixty-some year.
There were no weapons in his shop, but wearing his church shirt under his overalls, he crossed the dirt hefting his iron tongs and a.s.sessed them workable. He moved Clena"s legs and picked up a large pipe wrench and tested its screw. Lastly he put a fistful of nails in the bib pockets of his overalls.
I"ll be back, he said to the room. I hope.
He put on his hat and took it off when he entered the store.
We closed, said the owner"s widow. Unless it"s billed to the judge.
Then tally em up.
With her following, Gates bought a new Stetson hat, a scarf, a denim shirt with silver star snaps, three pairs of corduroy pants, long johns, two pairs of socks, a telescope and a bugle and several coiled ropes and a horsehair whip and the most costly snakebite kit on the shelf and two machetes and a compa.s.s and a Bowie knife. He bought a sleeping bag and saddle and bridle and blanket and knapsack and five pounds of salt, a bag of jerked beef, sugar, coffee, flour, cans of sardines and oysters, crackers, apples, hard candy, cigars and lard.
He bought a root beer soda and, sucking on his straw, requested a matching pair of Colt revolvers with hair-triggers if she had them and a twelve gauge shotgun with a pump action, and several boxes of sh.e.l.ls, sixes or lower. No slugs, please.
We out of guns, she said. Bullets too. McKissick bought em all.
Ever one?
Well. I kept Abner"s birdshooter here. She drew the twenty gauge single from behind her counter.
How much?
What "ll the judge offer?
One hundred dollars.
Sold to the judge.
In the livery stable Gates bought a silver gelding fourteen hands high without even bartering or checking its legs or eyes and a pack mule which he instructed the liveryman"s widow to lead to the store and load with his parcels, charged, including any special fees or taxes, to the judge.
You want these animals fed? the woman sobbed. She wore a sling around her arm and had a number of broken ribs. She also had two black eyes, a smashed nose and busted lips. Her dress was still torn and soiled with a hoofprint on her back. Either she was leaving it on as protest or it was her only one.
On the judge, Gates said. Was it you tried to stop Mister Smonk?
It was.
Look where it got ye.
Least I ain"t the fools going after him now.
Gates had ridden less than a mile when the horse, which was blind, stepped in a hole and projected him in his new outfit into the dust. When he rose he saw the animal had broken its leg. He raised the twenty gauge to his shoulder but it clicked. He checked was it loaded, it was, and tried again. Click.
He was using his pipe wrench to finish the horse, which was taking quite a while, when a gun fired.
Gates leapt over the animal as it convulsed one last time. He lay panting on the turf, his hands and shirt sleeves bloodied.
It was McKissick, his revolver smoking. He rode up behind Gates and reined in his mount and looked down. Who the h.e.l.l are you out in these suspicious times?
The other half ye mob. Portis. Who"d ye think?
Who?
Portis Gates. The blacksmith?
Oh. McKissick put the pistol away and fanned his face with his hat. I ain"t never seen ye cleaned up"s all. Didn"t know you was so old. What the h.e.l.l was you doing to that poor horse?
Putting it out of its misery. It got its leg broke and my shooter"s gone south.
Here. McKissick tossed him a thirty-thirty.
Where we going?
The bailiff nodded east. Smonk"s house first. Few more miles yonder-ways. He extended down a hand. We can ride double to save time.
And double they rode, east through fields of ruined cane, the blacksmith remarking how happy he was he hadn"t put his whole lot in sugar, considering the spate of weather they"d had. Wasn"t it something? How many weeks? Could McKissick remember the last drop of rain? Did McKissick think they could stop for some licker?
McKissick did not.
An odor had caught the wind and blew in their faces. What the h.e.l.l is that? the blacksmith wanted to know and soon had his answer as they cupped their hands over their noses and McKissick tried to calm the horse, gazing down at a charred mess of burnt animal flesh beside the road, some dark satanic work of art, faces blended to other faces and eyes like strings of wax. Gates pointed out a few dog parts, a wildcat"s padded foot, a c.o.o.n"s tailbone and a fox"s skull. His partner spurred the antsy horse along. The blacksmith said he reckoned the ray bees plague that had haunted Old Texas these last years was spreading all over.
McKissick said nothing.